#When I was reading my old diary I saw many concept art and such of my old oc story-

[hinsaa-paramo-dharma]

Do anyone have any OC writing tips?

#When I was reading my old diary I saw many concept art and such of my old oc story- #I had completely forgotten that I even have any OCs #I wanted to revamp their story but then I realised I would need writing skills for this. #Something that I don't have. #Soo uhhh anyone have any tips for the world building? #It's supposed to be an urban fantasy setting set in modern day India because duh #It's a soft fantasy with not much rules and stuff #(It only has one law which is kind of the reason why the plot even begins) #I literally have the whole story complete #Just the world-building is giving me trouble- #I am especially confused about how technology will fit in.

[positivelyamazonian]

What do you mean by “more focused on general TRAOD lore than in Kurtis as character which doesn't surprise me anymore given what we know” - what is it given we know?

Hi, you’ve sent this question concerning my tags in the last post about Kurtis’ journal as merchandise from The Dark Angel project - just stating it for the readers that might be confused about what you’re asking about.

When I say “what we know” I refer mostly to all those - rather scarce - TRAOD/TR fans who have bothered to read every detail about TRAOD’s lore, every making off video and documentary concerning this game, every interview and beta/hidden/deleted/unused content related to all this universe - which I did. I also refer to those who have discussed all of it in this Tumblr over the past years - and honestly if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s because, perhaps, you’re not totally up to date about it.

I would recommend to catch up  - and those are long hours of reading - with all this content so you can have the whole picture of what I’m talking about, but just to reduce it to the point that concerns us now, it’s not surprising Kurtis’ journal was gonna end being just a TRAOD lore concept art compendium than a Kurtis focused item as character because:

1. It was always announced and marketed like that. Murti Schofield has always stated the journal was gonna be a compendium of fresh TRAOD concept art - it’s not old, the old one you can find it in the notes I pledged for in the Kickstarter - more focused on Konstantin Heissturm - Kurtis’ father - character than in Kurtis himself. 

2. Murti also said there’s no content related to the game itself, but a collection of data and lore prior to the events of the game.

3. He also said there was not gonna be big notes or textes or written lore, mostly concept art, maps and short data file about some characters he didn’t have space to develop more in the final version of the game, such as the Cleaner. 

4. Finally, that most of the present lore belonged to Konstantin Heissturm and not Kurtis Trent. The journal belongs to his father in origin and he receives it from him. 

Now with all of this is not surprising the journal has turned out like this, but to be fair I must admit I, myself, was expecting a bit more because, after all, it’s called Kurtis’ journal, not Konstantin’s journal. I wanted it to look more rough, used, and worn out fitting not only Kurtis’ hazardous lifestyle - as it was marketed - but also Konstantin’s himself. But it’s Murti doing it, and Murti Schofield is extremely delicate and polished in his calligraphy and design. So in the end it’s more a Murti’s journal containing lore of the game than some item in-character. For me, it looks like more like an add-on to the old notes I pledged for than a whole new product.

Again, though I’m a bit disappointed - because I wanted to see more of KURTIS himself in here, not Murti/Konstantin - I am not surprised of the result and here’s the point you’re asking about: Murti was never that interested in releasing more lore concerning Kurtis himself. If you’ve paid attention to all of his interviews, statements, and the way he sees the whole TRAOD project itself - I am now talking about the game released in 2003, not the Dark Angel music project - which I did because I’ve been in some contact with him recently and also following his activity due to my backing of the project, Murti wasn’t the only creator of the story, neither he was of the characters, Kurtis included.

In fact, the final version of the story we see in the game has much more to do with Adrian Smith and Richard Morton’s involvement and creative decisions than with Murti as storywriter. Soon you realize he cares much more about Konstantin - a character that barely appears in the game because he’s already deceased, not even his name’s mentioned - than about Kurtis. That doesn’t mean he isn’t involved in his bio and lore and other details, because he absolutely was, I just mean that the final version of what we saw is a teamwork, not just Murti’s ideas. Even Murti is not at all behind the dynamic between Lara and Kurtis - the delicious dynamic we all know about - this being a product of the creative ideas and process of Morton rather than Murti.

From the moment only Murti Schofield was involved in TR Dark Angel project and not other Core Design members, I’ve had very clear in my mind than only a part of the final lore of the game was gonna be present at the project. And it’s fine, I don’t mind, it’s amazing they gave me the chance to meet this fantastic writer. But as I’ve been following all the content related with the project and the game I realized he doesn’t know everything or could answer to everything he was asked, because, naturally, he could only respond to the parts he was involved with - and that’s perfectly fine, and he had no problem to admit it, and nothing otherwise was expected!

This means many details about what Kurtis is, looks, and we enjoy about him were born by Richard Morton’s decision. So I knew this part was not gonna be present in the journal. Also, if you explore Murti’s activity and statements, he’s been recently working more on the past lore of the game. He’s been talking and headcanoning more about Konstantin than Kurtis, he’s been talking about more of the Nephilim, the Lux Veritatis, and producing content for Morgau and Eckhardt rather than for Kurtis and Lara at all. And it’s because he handles the part in which he was involved, the lore of the game, not the game content itself. For that, they should have included Morton or Smith, as far as I’ve found out.

This means Lara was never gonna be present at the journal, neither Kurtis as personality, because it was Richard Morton who created this personality - he chose the final name, I think, after all! Murti wanted him to be called Vance Renner - and of course Murti has been more seduced and interested recently in Konstantin as character than in Kurtis himself. And more invested in describing artefacts, power devices and other lore definitely not present in the final version of the game because he left the team before the game was released, since his task had been concluded: giving lore and plot. 

As you can see, this way, it is not surprising the journal is not a piece of merchandise that responds 100% to the final version you saw of what Kurtis is in the game, nor I expected it, but rather a recently crafted product that reflects more of the immediate past of the game’s universe, than the game plot itself. I would say it looks, at most, as if Kurtis has just gotten this diary from his father and the blank pages are still to be filled by him.

Which again, despite it was noted in advance, and we all could see photos of the inside pages, and nothing that wasn’t marketed was delivered, I still would have preferred it to look like a Kurtis’ journal, not a TRAOD lore concept art compendium whose pages don’t even look aged. But yet again, if you’ve been digging and listening to Murti’s part in the whole project, it was expectable in a way. And all of this I am not saying in a derogatory manner. It’s natural. TRAOD was the result of a teamwork, not just one single man. This one single man, thus, gives you his part in the story, but not the whole picture at all.

I hope I’ve made myself clear with this. Sorry for the long post, and I recommend you to read the whole content around this game, because it’s worth the time if you care about such things.

#tomb raider #lara croft #kurtis trent #traod #trdarkangel #kurtis' journal #murti schofield #richard morton #my answers #traod lore #but not all murti's lore was meant to be included

[mcrmadness]

I really shouldn’t do this. Just thinking about people who are no longer a part of my life either because they decided to stop talking to me or because I decided it was better to part ways. And it’s making me sad and I hate it. Mainly because I’m again starting to feel invisible and lonely and apparently I then tend to torture myself even more by making me go and do things that I then associate with these people.

But I also hate it how I feel like I don’t have a normal concept of human relation(ship)s at all. Sometimes I wonder if I have played just too much The Sims games in my life (I started when I was 9 so I have played these games for 20 years) because I feel like the way I see the relationships is exactly how it is in the sims games. Don’t interact in a while and soon you get a message “you are no longer friends with X”. That’s literally how I feel friendships in my head. I feel like whenever there’s a long pause, that will mean that the friendship will be automatically reset back to 0 by time. Whenever there’s something we both like and have in common, it’s immediate green plus marks on the friendship and a positive moodlet. When we disagree or don’t have something in common, it will give red minus marks. And maintaining relationships feels as difficult as it is in the sims games too - tell them the same thing twice and it will be minus points. Tell them a thing they don’t like and it’s minus points, if you’re too close to 50%, maybe it drops from friends to acquintances. If you tell a succesful joke, you’re friends again. And right now I’m feeling like I’m “losing” all my friends because there’s been too huge pause with everyone and I feel sad about anything I associate with them because I feel like a friendship is over even when no one has said anything like that. It’s all in my head and it’s like a delusion because the second someone talks to me again, I forget ever even having such feels. But when the next pause comes, I again start to prepare myself for the moment where I’m left alone and never talked to again. Maybe I just have had this kind of situations so often in my life that I’m already preparing myself for that moment so that it won’t be that big of a shock when it happens.

I know it’s not healthy and it’s not RIGHT towards my friends to constantly be like this but can I change? Is there anything I could do to change this? I don’t always even recognize when I’m doing this, only lately I have woken up to this and it makes me feel bad because, like that one post I made several weeks ago, I’m really concerned that am I one of those unstable friends that will drive everyone around them into exhaustion eventually. Are people getting out of my life only to protect themselves? I feel like I’m always just too much to everyone and that I’m left alone in the end because I’m the only one who cannot escape me. I have to live with my brains and listen to all the shit it comes up. I’d love to cancel myself too if I could, but I can’t.

When my depersonalization/derealization was at its worst, I acually felt like I was invisible. Some days I was legit wondering if I was even alive. I was wondering if I was a ghost or idk, in a coma but just had no clue. I felt like people did not see me anywhere, I still can remember being to a grocery store and almost being run over by someone with a shopping cart and so many people almost walked against me and I just remember that moment so well as I got really frustrated and I was almost certain that I must be invisible, how else would people almost run over me with a shopping cart and they did not even look at me, as if I was not even there! Some days I thought maybe my minor car crash in 2010 put me into coma (yeah, Life On Mars uk much???) because I haven’t felt like the time would have passed AT ALL since that. I still feel like I’d be 19 and I’m supposed to be 29. Like, HOW???

And now I’m starting to have that feel of being invisible again. I have a nice amount of followers on Tumblr and this is something that I don’t really want to address at all because I appreciate every single one there and I could not care less about the number itself. But I’m starting to feel like... how could I gain more followers who would be interested in my stuff too? Like, I feel like talking to walls here. I bet no one is reading this post either. I so often feel like venting and writing down my thoughts but then I feel like there’s no point in that because I could as well write in a diary, which I hate, because as many people are going to read these as there’s people who can read my diary. Aka none. Not even me. I don’t like reading my diary and usually I also do not come back to these posts I put in Tumblr. Sometimes I browse my posts and am like “wtf have I been writing???” but I guess that’s the main point too, just to get it out of my system and I don’t need them back, mainly because they never really leave, they just evolve into new stuff I will vent here sooner or later too.

I am an attention whore who is afraid of being the center of attention. Sure if I tagged my posts more I might get more people to find me but I’m also afraid of being found or that my personal posts get reblogged. I don’t really want these to be on anyone’s dash except when it’s my original post. My social anxiety is afraid of notes and my HSP is afraid of the reactions I might get because of notes. But whenever I do something that I wish would get notes, I get none. And every time that happens, my perfectionism feels violated and I feel like a failure and that I suck at everything ever. Sometimes I am even shocked by the fact I post something like this and then suddenly remember that I have no idea how many people out these even is seeing these on their dash. What do they think? Do they see these and be like “oh god again that pathetic creature is whining some shit *eyeroll*” or do they just skip because idc.

I have so many times in my life felt like I am less than everyone else. It’s because when I was 13, my best friend turned out to be a narcissist (if that is possible for a 13-years-old) and we stopped being friends and eventually I made everyone else mad at me too and was alone, lonely and hated by everyone for a couple of years and your teens is the worst time for that to happen. I still don’t know if I was the villain or those girls. So I start feeling like a failure and worse than everyone very easily. AT some point I tried to get attention with my art but I didn’t succeed and I always felt like a failure then. “I should be better at arts, maybe I’d then be seen and approved.” During my worst time I actually thought I was relating to Garfield’ Jon so much and I legit thought I exist in this world only so that everyone else can feel a little bit better about themselves because there’s always at least one person who is worse than them. I literally felt like the meaning of my life was to make others feel better just because of how much of a loser I am. That’s why I feel sad when I see people getting asks all the time. I’m not really jealous or angry, I’m just sad because it just makes me remember how useless I am and how boring my life is and how bring absolutely nothing to this world and how... just invisible I am. I bet all ask posts have been on people’s dashes but no one just find me interesting enough to send questions. But I can’t blame them, because would I send myself asks if I was someone else and saw me on their dash? No. (Well, soon I will if no one else does, let’s see how out of my mind I will look for other people then lol.) I’d probably just unfollow my user because of what a pain in the ass I really am after all.

So whatever, a long post and useless blabber and just letting out some steam. I’ll go to watch some TV now and try to get over this. I’m also feeling like I hate Tumblr, I don’t want to come here to be disappointed because no one wants to know anything about me but I also can’t keep myself away from here because I want to know if I’ve got any asks because that would be some interesting stuff to do for my brains. So it’s like I have my hopes high only to be crushed in a minute and I keep doing this cycle every 5 minutes because I can’t decide if I should be a pessimist or an optimist.

Gosh, am I being selfish or what? I hate being selfish and I hate selfish people. But why am I still constantly talking about myself? Hypocrite much??? I wish I could unfollow the “blog” in my brains.

#mcrmadness' deep thoughts #oh look it's just me hating myself aka absolutely nothing to see here #personal #long post #rsd #or is that even rsd???

[limitless-rose]

The Signs as things I wanted to be when I grow up

[This has literally been in my drafts since December because I wasn't sure if each option matched with the sign I chose but whatever (it's also a long post again, oof)

Also I didn't really post anything related to 2020 so... Happy New Year, let's hope something good will happen this decade!! 💖]

♈ Aries: Be part of the army. I was quite fascinated by the idea of guns and protecting the nation and actually getting my life together. I was actually thinking about it for quite a while until I realized that in order to get accepted (at least according to the Greek system) you need to have excellent grades (especially maths/physics), to be taller that 165cm and to be excellent in sports. Guess what, I don't understand physics/science/chemistry, I've been about 158cm for the past 3 years and the only two sports I'm good at are badminton and tennis (while you need to be good at running, swimming and things like that I guess 😕)

✧

♉ Taurus: A chef/baker. Cooking and baking always seemed pretty fun. I would always sit by my grandma whenever she cooked/baked goodies and observe the whole process. I also got inspired by the movies "The Princess and the Frog" and "Ratatouille" and thought that one day I could possibly come up with my own recipes and open my own restaurant. But while growing up I realized that I can't cook properly when I'm stressed/multi-tasking (I'm capable of burning the food AND the kitchen if I get slightly distracted, ooof)

✧

♊ Gemini: A TV presenter or a weather woman. My mom told me that from the age of three I would always pretend to talk to an audience and answer questions from the callers or announce news/talk about the weather. Maybe that explains why I talk to thin air (as if I was a YouTuber) about anything and everything when I'm alone. Though it sounds cool, I don't really think I could do it now because I have social anxiety.

✧

♋ Cancer: A writer. I really like writing, I don't know why. Authors have been inspiring me since my childhood, I remember I used to read so many books and try to write something of my own based on it. 😅 I like taking notes and then re-writing them more neatly. I like re-doing old homework in a different style and see if I have improved. I really like writing in a diary/a bullet journal too, I feel like it's much better than bothering others with my problems anyway. I also love coming up with random scenarios/stories/characters and writing about it but I don't know if I should share it. Idk, sometimes I feel like my writing is a bit boring or that it's nothing that impressive. So, honestly, if more people took writers seriously instead of thinking it's a hobby as it doesn't always pay well (when did the world even start revolving around money that much, oml) and if I was more confident about my work I'd definitely chose to become a writer/author (I'm still keeping it as a hobby no matter what I end up doing, lol).

✧

♌ Leo: A model. Omg, I honestly don't know why I even thought of it. Probably because I really liked watching ANTM when I was younger (and I specifically chose the American version because the one we have in my country makes me cringe a lot, just hearing girls from my school talking about it is painful). My friends also liked the outfits that I put together or how I would always pose for pictures (a few years ago, I'm too awkward now asdfghjkl). Looking at it now it's just so funny. There's literally so much competition in the name of beauty, the community can get kinda toxic sometimes and the standards are pretty high. Also I'm way too short and I still can't walk like a normal person when wearing high heels lol.

✧

♍ Virgo: A teacher. Specifically, a teacher for elementary or even kindergarten. Back then, the concept of teaching seemed pretty fun to me and I had lots of ideas about how to make class more interesting. The thing is that I have good chemistry with most kids and I actually kinda dislike teenagers because of how rebellious we can get when it comes to school (idk but like teens in my country are like pretty rude to everyone 😐). I'm not so sure about it now, though it's still an option.

✧

♎ Libra: A psychologist. I always liked helping others out and offering advice when they're having a tough time and I was also curious to see what makes each person feel angry, sad or stressed and the way they respond. It's also interesting because you can learn a lot about someone's personality, preferences and way of thinking or understand what caused someone to commit a crime. I still really like psychology and it's one of my main options for uni. The only problem is that psychology is pretty much overrated in my country so people say it's best to choose something else. 😒

✧

♏ Scorpio: A criminologist. And, surprisingly, I still want it. I was always intrigued by things that required research, was interesting in learning what caused a murder/crime to be committed and I would always watch crime thrillers with my dad. I also like it because it's a field of Sociology which is one of my favorite subjects. I'm just hoping finals aren't super difficult so I can get accepted in the college that I want on the first try lol.

✧

♐ Sagittarius: A flight attendant. Back then I found it kinda fun, as I was always curious about what going on a plane is like. It could also be because of their outfits (like the ones you see in movies or in Britney's MV for Toxic, idk why 😅). Plus I would get to travel around the world without paying as much as the passengers. But then, at the age of 14-15 I got on an airplane 4 times and I saw that it wasn't really like the movies and that literally everyone ignored the flight attendant so yeah, it's not an option anymore. ✈️

✧

♑ Capricorn: A fashion designer. So because I would always draw and constantly ask for new crayons/markers and other art supplies, my mom bought me a few coloring books that focused on fashion. It came along with stickers, stencils, ideas for Victorian dressses, advice for how to design lace or mermaid tail dresses and I was so impressed. A few years later, my grandma showed me a few dresses that she had made for my mom when she was younger (which were so gorgeous like I'm definitely going to wear one of them on my graduation day) and taught me sewing. I also got to see these small floral designs that you usually see on lingerie and it was so pretty, I wish I could do it as perfectly as her. I decided to follow my grandma's advice and keep it as a hobby instead (because she ended up doing nothing but designing clothes and repairing them which she regrets 🧵🧶).

✧

♒ Aquarius: An astronaut. This was pretty random, I have to admit. I guess I really liked space and looking at at the stars in the night sky. I read a few books about space and learned a few things about NASA back in elementary too, though I realized that it's something I could never really do, as you have to sacrifice a lot. I'm still fascinated by this profession but there's no way I could ever do it, since I can't even understand basic physics or mathematics. 🤷‍♀️

✧

♓ Pisces: An artist. Honestly I didn't really care if most artists didn't get recognition/fame or if they didn't earn enough money, I just wanted to make art because I liked it. It's also fun because while you are expressing your thoughts through an art piece, another person might interpret it differently, based on their likings and thoughts. Art also plays an active role in my life: I've been drawing and painting since I was 5 and I would always watch the show with Bob Ross on TV with my grandma. Instead of completely giving up on this idea, I thought that I could choose another profession (also my family didn't really like the thought of me doing art for a living 😐) and keep art as a hobby.

#astrology #zodiac #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces #me and my thoughts #yeah idk #for fun ig #at least for me #random

[eternaleve]

I’ve spent the course of COVID lockdown cycling through hyperfixations while also trying to engage in some much needed therapy (lolsob), and I’ve been essentially encouraging myself to try and do more things I can enjoy without feeling shame. Anyway, that’s a short way of saying I decided to blog about all the music videos of Depeche Mode for reasons of science.

The science is that my basic premise is that most of the videos are pretty bad in ways that I find to be pretty strange. Full disclosure is that I spent my teen years being a huge Cure fan and there’s an overlap there? Of songs with very niche high-concept ideas that don’t necessarily map onto a model of popular music but found mainstream success in the rise of new wave music in the wake of the collapse of first wave punk and amplified by the creation of music videos and music video TV. And I owned all the Cure music videos and played them on my iPod Nano because I was a very strange child. But to get back to my central thesis, many of The Cure’s videos are very stylised and fun and memorable in ways that are good. And yet, despite existing in the same sphere and having an overlap of fans, the music videos for Depeche Mode mostly stay bad until the end of the eighties, a fact I will prove by watching them all.

Can you tell that I am bored because i have lost my job and my mental health is making me fixate on strange shit currently because that is absolutely the case right now

Speak & Spell

Dreaming of Me (Feb 1981)

The single art is really lovely - the red/yellow contrast is very striking against the white, and I really love the design. Hey remember when people used to go out and buy singles and you would appreciate them and the work that went into them? I don’t think I’ve bought a physical single since I was about sixteen. I used to buy them from the Woolworths music department because it was cheap and all my friends worked there, so they had a pretty lenient attitude about what exactly constituted paying for things. Woolworths policy of only hiring teenagers is probably what destroyed their business.

Anyway, Dreaming of Me did not chart super well, getting to number 57 and having no official music video - or actually getting onto the album. It wasn’t included on Speak & Spell in the UK until the 2006 re-release. So, there was no music video for me to look at…

Apart from this video I found from local TV in 1981 to promote the song. It’s a maybe-music video. Because music videos had only been around for about six years and MTV didn’t exist until later in the same year, my guess is that Mute Records were pretty cautious about putting money into a medium that might cost more than they would get in publicity. That’s only a guess. I don’t have a crystal ball for forty years ago. 

Anyway, here are some children recording music.

If i was 19 and someone offered me a recording contract I would have taken it without thinking (like i took on all those student loans without thinking through any consequences wompwomp) but now I am nearly thirty I watch this and think, ‘These children shouldn’t be outside unaccompanied’. The passage of time has made a fool of me.

They go bowling and play Space Invaders which, hey, still sounds like a great night out to me, but I’m guessing that because this is very clearly aimed at teenagers the TV producers didn’t want to encourage teen drinking by showing them performing a gig at a club night.

I call it high fashion. The all-grey really sells it.

This reminds me so much of a advice column in teen magazines - when they’d have problems set out in a little faux-comic strip of still photos? ‘My best friend stole and read my diary’ ‘My crush found out about how I feel and now he’s going out with my best friend’, that sort of thing. That is also a classic carpet pattern. I think my grandma’s living room had that carpet. 

The video is very naive! It’s the sort of thing we would all see now on Youtube from bands just starting out and it is wild to me that this went out on TV. It’s very un-glossy and normal, the stuff that bands put out on YouTube now because of DIYness.

New Life (June 1981)

This is also a really great piece of single art. It’s very bold and striking - it would definitely be the standout record in a sea of other 7’’ released the same week. It also doesn’t particularly match the tone of the single but eh, it looks pretty cool. New Life did much better than Dreaming of Me and got up to number 11 in the UK singles chart. Still no official music video, but the charting meant that the band got onto Top of The Pops! ToTP was cancelled when I was a wee baby teen, because the BBC decided to stop caring about yoof viewership and promoting music was circling the drain everywhere as streaming hit, but it was the place to promote music so was definitely a sign that You Had Made It.

So, last video was silly and made by children, but now they’re wearing see-through mesh shirts, leather trousers, and leather hats with a design that I am a little bit dubious about. I grew up on the oi/punk scene and let me tell you about how many first wave punks wear iconography of bad regimes for faux edginess reasons because I met a LOT of them in my time.

Oh boy do i have thoughts about that hat. It also looks like a Leather Daddy hat which, well, let’s leave that thought to one side. Most ToTP performances were lipsynced. Playing things live would sound weird in the studio, be picked up strangely by the audio equipment and the cameras, so 99% of performances were mimed to the single. Now, some acts would deliberately play up to the pretence and refuse to act like they were doing anything that corresponded to the song - The Jam, The Communards, and The Cure are literally the first examples that come to mind who would just… not do anything close to pretending it was real. 

This is not that. It is very earnest and awkward and serious, which sort of makes it very sweet.

Just Can’t Get Enough (September 1981)

Right, that is shibari, isn’t it? I’m not blind, am I? It’s a very striking image that 99.9% of people would not recognise other than being a striking black and white image. 

I don’t think I can overstate how… innocent, in a way, this point of time was? As in the general level of knowledge about non-conventional stuff in the wider public at large. As in my mother, an almost teen at this point, saw George Michael walking with his boyfriend in central London and had no idea he was gay until he came out. It’s actually the widest cultural gulf I can think of between her teen years and my teen years because I was very aware of queer people from a young age.

Anyway, moving on, I feel like it bears repeating that this song fucking slaps. It’s the last single to be written by Vince Clarke and the last single until 2006 to be written by someone other than Martin Gore. This is one of those songs that just works on every level. Can you imagine coming up with this for the first album of your band? That blows my mind. It’s so overpoweringly good that it was probably for the best that it was saved for last - coming out the gate with a guaranteed fucking banger was been the nail in the coffin for a lot of other eighties synth/electronica bands. They scored a huge hit and then nothing after that managed to be as good or meet the hype. Depeche Mode had built up a far bit of radio play and interest before dropping this which turned out to be very good in the long run!

This got to number 8 on the UK charts and the first to get a music video! It is the only one with Vince Clarke. Full disclosure in that I had this song on my iPod through downloading the video to my computer (that’s how we got songs without using stuff that would give us viruses because i got a ton using bearshare for rare cure demos) and I remember watching the video, all of sixteen years old, and thinking, ‘Man, all these people look so grown up, compared to me, I can’t wait to be an adult!’.

Twelve years have changed my view, somewhat.

Look at this little baby man. Were you in one of my A Level classes - as in, ones that I have taught, not ones that I have been in.

Vince Clarke, however, has had a significant glow up in the six months and now looks like he is the bouncer in a leather bar. This is the One Adult in the room.

Ahh, I see it’s Open Mic Night at the local leather bar. You know what I was saying about how teens in the eighties tended to be significantly more naive about what we might call certain signifiers? Because what this outfit says to me, a queer woman in 2020, is susbstanitally different than to my mum and her friends watching this when it first came out. She would read this as ‘This is totally rebellious and cool!’ while I go ‘Someone just joined the university kink club and spent all their bursary’.

I don’t remember the member of Blazin’ Squad that wore a slave harness. (Now, there’s a reference that shows my age. A Blazin’ Squad reference in the year of Our Lord 2020. Hoooo boy.)

I read somewhere (that I can’t find now because, of course I can’t) that these are the band’s girlfriends and I always remembered that because it made me think, lol, same. One of my closest friends is the Head of London, so she’s in every band in London and if she’s not in yours yet give her time, and my partner was in a locally successful metal/hardcore band for about a decade and being connected with any sort of band means you will be helping out hugely behind the scene constantly. I have held lights, moved speakers, picked up instruments, been in music videos, and have bought tearaway trousers and glowsticks for gigs. You get called in to help all the time which is a lot of fun, so that fact always just stuck with me. It also makes sense financially because then you don’t have to hire any professional backing dancers, you can rely on people who will happily do it for free (while looking pretty rad while doing it!).

Anyway, the band look like those generic raiders that you run into when randomly walking across the map in a Fallout game.

I love awkward choreography in music videos. It feeds me.

Filming a night out provides A) Great footage and B) Can be done for limited overheads, leaving more money to be put into promotion. 

I always like seeing this sort of footage in music videos. I tend to see a lot of it, given the DIY punk scene, and it always charms me. I am easy to please. And all those women have the most amazing eye makeup that makes me super jealous because it all looks so good.

That hat is on point. This looks like a still image for some sort of cyberpunk big band style swing revival that, sadly, lives only in my dreams.

It took me so goddamn long to screenshot this shot probably because i was also blasting dream nails whoops

Anyway those are my reactions to Speak & Spell’s one solitary music video with some other things thrown in and this took me way too long. I make myself laugh though, that’s the main thing. I will do A Broken Frame… at some point. I think I have a bunch of vinyl for A Broken Frame? My mum actually bought all the singles for that album and I stole most of her collection years ago. I will have to search and see what I can find.

#depeche mode #speak & spell #i make myself laugh #and that's the main thing

[back-and-totheleft]

His anger is his art

Oliver Stone is worried that Donald Trump doesn’t get enough sleep.

“He doesn’t sleep a lot. He doesn’t take good care of his health. Don’t you think there’s some pile-up, if you don’t sleep for several years like this?”

I feel a movie coming on. Stone, after all, made W, a film about President George W Bush; this one, perhaps, could be The Don. Sure enough, he seems to be thinking about it.

“There’s nothing that could quite capture this fellow. He’s quite a whirlwind, a fascinating dramatic character. Shakespearean too, in the sense that he’s so emotional — at times he creates a storm, almost purposely every day, to keep the energy going. He creates a storm inside himself. He’s King Lear in a strange way too — which daughter loves me more?”

He’s also thinking about the murder of George Floyd, but he thinks a black director should make it.

We are Zooming. He is in Los Angeles in a large book-lined room, I am not. He’s not lost his looks — sort of handsome, friendly but in your face — and his conversation is warmly attentive.

The talk of possible films is all Stone business as usual, running towards the news and the gunfire, especially if it’s American. At 73, his soul is still that of the gonzo movie-maker who turned out almost unbearably violent films such as Platoon and Salvador. But he did them because he hates film and television violence. He learnt about the real thing when, in 1967, he joined up and volunteered to fight in Vietnam. He left garlanded with honours but angry.

“I was known for my violent screenplays, but it came from a background of real violence. There was a lot of it I saw, and I wanted to depict it accurately. I really hated that. All the TV shows — 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Same old bullshit. I hated the fake violence, so I was trying in my movies to move away from Rambo bullshit. It just doesn’t look as good as it does in the movies; it never does.”

And now he’s written an autobiography, Chasing the Light, covering his life up to 1986. He was 40 then; Platoon had just been released and, earlier that year, Salvador. Platoon won four Oscars, one for best director, and Salvador was nominated for two, one for best writing — Stone co-wrote it. It was, as he says, “a remarkable two-film journey from the bottom back to the top of the Hollywood mountain”. He had arrived, he had been accepted. The book ends with him trailing clouds of glory.

“I’d managed to crest into the light,” he writes. “Money, fame, glory and honor, it was all there at the same time and space. I had to move now. I’d been waiting too many years to make films. Time had wings. I wanted to make one after the other in a race against that time — I suppose really a race against myself in a hall of mirrors of my own making.”

Will there, I wonder, be another volume?

“Yes, of course. Why not? I think it’s important for me to at least come to grips with things because it goes so fast. You don’t really get it all. You don’t — one event after the other. One movie after the other. You’re always dealing with people, people, people. It’s hard to have that solitary space.”

He kept diaries “to understand myself, to understand what happened”. As a result the book is phenomenally well detailed. It opens with an account of filming a scene from Salvador. It’s a cavalry charge being shot in Mexico; everything that could go wrong seems to be going wrong, and the money — where on earth is the money? But somehow he pulls it off. Reading that made my head spin: how could anybody live with such levels of risk? Reading his diaries made him ask the same question about himself.

“I always knew I was bold, but I never realised that I was crazy too and risked a lot. At 39, with nothing in my future, my father dying, my mother dependent on me, a new wife, a new baby — and I go and put everything I have into this idea, this crazy idea to shoot this movie.”

He has, as the critic Pauline Kael noted, a divided sensibility: “He’s working outside the industry, in freedom, but he’s got all this Hollywood muck in his soul.” She never liked his films, but he accepts this judgment. The book also stands up her analysis — one minute he’s the guerrilla film-maker, the next he’s lapping up the glamour, the drugs and the schmoozing with stars. But the real divisions are much deeper than that. The first is the division between his father and mother.

He was born in New York. His father, Louis, was a high-ranking soldier turned stockbroker; his mother, Jacqueline, an elegant, beautiful French lady Louis met while fighting with the allies in Europe. She loved parties and glamour — Stone says she would have loved him to make a flowery romantic film. His evocation of her character is laden with love for her. Louis was more complex, serially unfaithful and constantly at war with the demon money.

One day, when he was 16, Stone had a phone call at his private boarding school: his parents were separating. It was a pivotal moment.

“I was naive. I thought it was a happy, loving family and I was very privileged to have that. The divorce was cruel in the way that it was done. It was brutal, and it shocked me because I was naive. The whole world fell apart. They split, and there’s nothing else. There’s no brothers, there’s no sisters. There’s no home. And as a result you become an orphan of the storm. If Charles Dickens were writing it, it might be an Oliver Twist story … I used to get kidded that my name was Oliver. And maybe I did feel an identification with him.”

His education faltered. He went to Yale but never completed his degree. At 18 he started wandering the world and at 20 he enlisted, then apparently forced himself to see the worst things that could be seen in Vietnam. The book starts 10 years later when he is at his lowest ebb. He speaks of himself in the third person while talking about this moment.

“He confronts his failures in life. He sees that he hasn’t gotten his dream, what he wanted to do. And his grandmother dies. He had gone to see her on this deathbed in Paris and he talks to her. And she communicates to him, and she tells him how he must live his life the way he is doing it, he’s following his instincts. And she loved me, and she’d always loved me and believed in me. That was a big thing. Something happened at 30 with her death. And I became more mature, and my success started to flow from there.”

His attempts to reconstruct a family have been patchy. His present wife is his third, and he has two sons and a daughter. There’s a moving moment in the book when he holds one of his sons, Sean, in his arms.

“If ever there was proof,” he writes, “we are born with a sweet nature, this was it; the veils come later.”

He has a Wordsworthian sense that we arrive trailing clouds of glory, but somehow the world takes all that away. So does he think we are born good? “Yeah, I think so. A baby is innocent, beautiful. You see it in baby animals. They don’t know what the world is.”

The second division is America. He came back, he says, “very divided and alienated”.

“Nobody was walking around over there saying: I’m against the war. No. A lot of us knew the war was bullshit. Certainly the black soldiers knew that, they didn’t really believe in it.”

Stone became an American exceptionalist. Usually that means somebody who regards the US as an especially good country; Stone regards it as especially bad.

“The divide was growing when I came back and that’s still with us. You see it coming down to us to this very day. We have a law-and-order candidate in Mr Trump. He talks like a fool, but he talks like many people — more military, more power, more application of force, more violence.”

From Salvador and Platoon onwards, Stone’s work became an angry charge sheet, an indictment of US postwar politics. His 1989 film, Born on the Fourth of July, attacked the treatment of veterans; JFK (1991) embraces conspiracy theories about the death of Kennedy; Heaven & Earth in 1993 skewered the behaviour of Americans in Vietnam, and so on. Postwar American history became, for Stone, a descent into insanity.

“America just goes mad after the Second World War — it just goes mad. Under Eisenhower the beginning of this madness sets in. The question we have to ask ourselves now is: was there really an enemy? Russia was not the threat to Europe we pretended it to be. And, for that matter, China neither. And we created this postwar scenario that was culminating in this economic concept that had come out of the Depression, that we cannot go back to the old way again and have to keep going. We have to put money into this military economy, to keep the country pumped. There’s been no end to that, no end at all. It just keeps going up. It doesn’t matter who the president is in the end. It’s the system. And no one can beat that system. No one can control it.”

This is, you will gather, a tremendous book — readable, funny and harrowing. It’s also full of movie-making gossip, scandal and fun. If you want to know what working with a truly difficult actor is like, read his account of handling James Woods on the set of Salvador. Nevertheless, Stone sticks with Woods because “he is a genius”. Also if you want to know what it’s like to be so intoxicated at a Golden Globes ceremony that your speech is so bad and almost denies you an Oscar, then you need this book.

There is much to disagree with about Stone’s politics — America’s iniquities in the postwar period are nothing next to China’s — but his anger is his art. It’s a way of balancing out the deep divisions in his character and his feelings.

For the moment he is not too worried about the pandemic, but he is taking on a new cause: nuclear power.

“The virus seems to me the ongoing business of history. It’s just... there’s so many viruses. I don’t see it as an existential threat to the world. It’s more of a mood thing. No, I think the real issue is global warming.”

He is making a documentary, A Brighter Future, about the need to deploy nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions. “Renewables,” he says, “cannot solve it.”

There he goes again, running towards the news and the gunfire, like Oliver Twist always asking for more.

-Bryan Appleyard, “Oliver Stone interview: the Platoon director and Vietnam vet on his new memoir about his early days in Hollywood,” The Sunday Times, July 12 2020 [x]

#oliver stone #chasing the light #platoon #salvador #the times #the sunday times

[melodramaticarting]

My first fanfic on Tumblr! This is for an anime called Bungou Stray Dogs. I’m a little obsessed with the character called Osamu Dazai in it. He’s named after a real life author, and his power “No Longer Human” is named after one of the guy’s works, which I read for research purposes.

After getting an image in my head (concept art picture above this text), this is my take on some thoughts/diary entry things Dazai has on different things other characters have said to him so far. Spoiler alerts for the anime and manga, which is all I've gone through for now.

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Life Had a Meaning?

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No Longer Human. Hah, I was never human.

Other than surviving for as long as possible (a human’s common sense), there’s very little meaning to life for me. I am a creature…that is somewhat emotionally deprived, generally speaking. I knew that much. The term was…psychopath, I think? An old man I tortured said that to me once. Most people set values and goals in life because of a feeling called “I want this to happen” has urged them to do so.

Allow me to present my resume.  The world is my oyster. I am cunning and uninhibited by the laws of common men. I am dedicated and relentless with virtually no emotional fatigue if there is a goal. My record of “136 murders, 312 cases of extortion, 625 cases of fraud, along with various other sundry crimes” should prove these points if nothing else. Or did I really do those things for a reason in the first place?

So tell me.

What exactly is the point of living? I can own the world around me, destroy it, nip it’s buds and watch it re-grow in morbid fascination, but it wouldn't even be worth the work put in for it. Logically speaking.

Why does it matter? Is it because someone assigned the act of living a value?

“...man fears death and yet, at the same time, man is drawn to death… It is a singular event in one’s life that none may reverse.”

I wanted to unravel the secret in that phrase. I thought it would give me reason to live if I solved it’s puzzle, so I decided to use life for it instead. It became my raison d’etre, for death. That which has evaded me to this day.  Successful suicide has proved to be a long-term project I must put everything into. And sadly, In the meantime, I’ll have to live. Ah, how I want to sleep till the end of the world like a log instead. The physical pain suicide attempts usually give me aren't that nice. As opposed to what everyone thinks, I’m just used to it.

The pain of drowning in your own blood when your lungs are punctured by bullets, it gives a burning sensation like your chest is on fire. The pain of involuntarily gasping for air when they don’t fill up because it’s leaking at the same time. The pain of actual water flooding your lungs when you drown in a river, when you can’t fight the involuntary response of your mouth opening to breathe anymore. The nausea that takes over your head when low blood pressure settles in, because you lost too much blood. Your body fights when you tell it to stop wasting effort, so you just let it. Then it gets excited all on it’s own, pumping blood more fiercely than ever to keep you awake and functioning. Sometimes weird things pop up, like that “life flashing before your eyes” thing. I just see a hole most of the time though.

It’s like an alarm clock you can’t snooze, so annoying. Then it gets really, really cold. I totally can’t stand those things. Just like that GSS Soldier who attacked Randou-san. I asked him if he wanted me to cut it short. Even though it was more than he deserved. I thought I’d be kind, but Chuuya stopped me.

Oh…right. A human doesn't think like this. I must carefully manage my persona on display. Like that scene I staged for him when we went to rescue Q in one of The Guild’s basements. I threw the knife down and muttered a logical half-hearted excuse for not killing him, like keeping myself valuable to the mafia. In truth I could already think of so many other ways to achieve the same effect, but one must be tactful when playing human. A moment of giddiness bubbled across the surface of my sinful pride as Chuuya said, “how naïve. Your goody two-shoes act also puts me off.”

Despite practicing over ten thousand hours, I've yet to achieve true mastery. Dogs can still sniff me out if I don’t keep them occupied, even the occasional human that acts like one. When someone comes close enough scratch the surface, they see The Hole, and they run in fear. I am a hopeless cannibal, serving this bottomless pit that will never be satisfied. If only I could find something that could fill it up.

“You told me that you might find a reason to live if you lived in world of violence and bloodshed..”

My hand slipped off the edge. No, don’t talk about that Odasaku. Now’s not the time.

“I did, but who cares-“  The edges of the hole are further crumbling away. Didn't that man see it?

“You won’t find it.”

…What are you saying, Odasaku? That’s not true. Don’t tell me that. It’s not. You’re wrong, Odasaku, please be wrong. Stop it.

“You must know that already. Whether you’re on the side who kills people, or the side who saves people. Nothing beyond what you expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity.”

What are you doing? You’re scaring me. I’m shaking. No. Stop. Stop digging this hole more. Stop making It bigger.  

“…What should I do?” An inhuman voice is crying to the sky. Is it mine?

“Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that would at least be a little more beautiful...”

“How do you know?” I stopped trying to mend the edge. A pit so deep, there’s not even blood.

“Of course I know. I know better than anyone.”

Does a monster have to be alone forever? Can they be with others?

“Because…I am your friend.” I had a hole in me too.

“Your methods…your sadistic way of hollowing out your enemies’ heart…Your blood…is Mafia black, more so than anyone else’s in this country.”  Higuchi sounded so cold when she said that. I just wanted to share myself and connect sincerely with others, just like Kenji. People always ended up confessing their hearts to him, didn't they? It was just the same thing.

But it’s alright, she doesn't have to understand. Odasaku taught me that day already. Monsters could make friends, too.

---------------------------

One day I found a guide. Someone who had been where I am, and he found a way out. He told me how.

I didn't cry when he died, because only humans cry. I've long been disqualified as a human, but I’ll take a look at where he pointed.  He gave me a new direction.

…maybe a reason to live, too.

----------------------------

“Nakajima Atsushi-kun, do you know whose grave this is?”

“No, but it’s someone dear to you right?” Did he just mean sentimentality? An emotion reserved for humans?

“…Why do you think that?”

“I've never seen you visit a grave after all.”

“Does it look like I’m visiting a grave?” Am I acting like a human?

“It does…why?”

…He’s just like a dog.

“Was it someone you loved?”

Haha, what a naïve face. Great for molding. I've been trying to do that. A little differently than my hellhound back at Port Mafia. My little kouhai that is strongest when he is chasing after me. Like a beast, without a single care for dignity. Another reason I left the mafia.

What? I didn't just leave because Odasaku told me to. No, even my tolerance had a limit sometimes. Mori sacrificed my friend to get a Gifted Business Permit (I do acknowledge it was a logical course of action.) All I could see from then on was a piece of paper dyed in his blood, that would stain my hands forever, if I stayed. That would be a liability for me in the future. I also placed a bomb in Chuuya’s car before leaving.

Exploited Ango to erase all my past crimes on paper.

Severed the connection between the accelerometer and Ango’s airbag to make sure he landed within an inch of death.

Just a little exchange to clarify personal boundaries between old friends. A natural course of friendship. Then there were the women, right. I didn't know what to do with the women.

“I’m gonna send your address to every woman you've left crying.”

I think real fear struck me for a moment. Chuuya…sometimes I think he’s a woman too. He fucks like one.

He also…doesn't leave me alone like one.

“Enemy of all women!!” His name-calling that night reverberated in my head for a while.

As a mentor, I love both Atsushi-kun and Akutagawa equally, but they just couldn't be raised the same way. It would be best he didn't realize, but I do wonder sometimes why Akutagawa doesn’t understand that. His strength is best brought out by pulling out the rug beneath him. He developed an intense desire to survive in his childhood days, and I attached that to a leash (what good is training a dog that you can’t control?). A pathological need for approval from me. It’s like a drug that makes his growth self-sufficient. Atsushi-kun on the other hand, needed a warm and loving environment. He’s too paralyzed by trauma.

When Atsushi-kun asked me how he should feel about the headmaster’s death, I repeated what I most commonly saw. “When someone’s father passes away, they will cry.” (The only death that ever arrested my conscious for more than a moment was Odasaku’s. I can only say it made the hole bigger, which I didn't know how to explain in words.)

Another reason being his first teacher already having taken up residence in that part of his heart, where his abuse carved out a gaping cavern. It would be unwise to compete for the same space, or use the same paralyzing trauma as a motivational device. Atsushi-kun’s fragile mentality requires my daily presence right now, but I do see him improving as time goes by. In a way he’s actually stronger than Akutagawa because of that.

“Victory is yours, Atsushi-kun.” I remember how his face lighted up at those words. I was right. “Your spirit prevails, and this city is saved.”

And with that setup, Akutagawa will crash at him repeatedly for me, and Atsushi-kun will always stop him. Iron sharpening iron, meaning I have less work to do. There’s too much to prepare for before judgment day, I can only nurture so many soldiers at the same time. Especially if they’re in two different organizations that can butt heads anytime. I even have to take care of the toys around Atsushi-kun to make sure they don’t break.

Kyouka-chan was so distressed because she killed thirty-five people, so I gave her some inspiring pep-talk—and compared her case with Atsushi-kun. I couldn’t let her know how many people I've killed. How annoying. I reminded myself again it was for Atsushi-kun’s growth. Raising him was essential in the quest Odasaku guided me to ---save people. To save myself.

“People exist to save themselves...”

Can I believe Odasaku had a feeling called “care” for me, and I for him? Did we need to be certified humans for that?

“A mafia member who doesn't kill...huh,” Odasaku…are you telling me I’m in the right place? Were you leading me to Atsushi-kun? Hah…if only you could see this. He even made the hellhound I trained swear off killing for six months. That’s so incredible. You were right. Being on the side that saves people just might be way more beautiful.

A/N: Yes, I researched how people die and what it feels like in case you’re wondering.

#bungoustraydogs #nakajimaatasushi #osamudazai #anime #manga #fanart #nakaharachuuya #dazai #fanfic #no longer human

[thespoonplayer]

(DJ) Spoon’s Review of 2018

This year I haven’t listened to much music at all, at least not in comparison to previous years and I certainly haven’t been to many gigs. I’m sure this won’t last but this year I’ve been busier at work so less likely to plug in, I’ve stuck to the radio in the car just to keep up with how messy Brexit really is (ooer a bit of politics) and my runs have been 100% fueled by podcasts so music has just taken a backseat. However, I couldn’t let the year go past without some kind of list...so here is a pot pourri of my favourite discoveries of 2018.

1. Podcasts

Seeing as these have been so important this year I’ll start here...and cheat slightly by bigging up some oldies, but good enough to bang on about again.

Old favourites : Running Commentary (Comedians Paul Tonkinson and Rob Deering take you on their runs and chat sometimes about running, but always about life, kids, comedy and anything that pops into their heads), Adam Buxton (always entertaining ramble chat from Dr Buckles whoever is on, I’ve learnt stuff and I’ve laughed a lot), My Dad Wrote a Porno (Sheer filth as ever but genuinely caused me to LOL during my runs, wondering if people can hear that I’m listening to chat about vaginal lids).

New entries : Off Menu (Ed Gamble and James Acaster opened their genie run fantasy restaurant a month ago and it has quickly become one of my favourite podcasts ever. Eclectic guests pick their fantasy 3 course meals, simple premise and it works. The Scroobius Pip episode was a perfect clash of two excellent pods), Blank (another late entry into 2018 from Jim Daly and Giles Paley-Phillips ostensibly about blank moments in life but just rammed with infotaining chat from ‘non standard’ guests including a jaw dropping episode with Michael Rosen and fun with Gary Lineker and Susie Dent), Poddin’ on the Ritz (sadly now finished with maybe its only series) this pod recorded backstage at Young Frankenstein by Hadley Fraser and the sublime Ross Noble made me laugh more than any other in 2018, it might be about musicals but their search for Kenneth Branagh’s snowglobes and Lesley Joseph adoration was a joy.

2. Board games

They say a family that plays together, stays together. Well we are together more than you can imagine. We’ve played over 220 games this year! Here are our favourite new games into our collection:

The game of the year is Azul, a seemingly simple tile grab and place game, building up a mosaic prettier than anyone else, is full of strategy and a little (but not too much) shafting of others. If you really want to shaft your fellow players though then pick up Unstable Unicorns, a card game where you aim to grow your stable of unicorns, whilst stopping others filling theirs. SO many different cards, tactics and ways to mess it up, you will swear at some point. Discovered in the excellent new board game cafe The Dice Box in Leamington, we bought Meeple Circus before we left, it’s that much fun. Rehearse and perform the best tiny wooden meeple circus performance, accompanied by a bespoke playlist. Stack the acrobats, balance the lions and raise the bar. Another board game cafe, Chance & Counters in Bristol introduced us to the frantic game of Klask, a cross between air hockey, pool and table football. Slide the magnets around to flick a ball into your opponents hole, avoid the magnetic biscuits and don’t KLASK! When is a game not a game? another game of the year has been played a lot in our house, and it’s The Mind. 100 cards numbered 1-100, no words between players and a tense task to lay cards in ascending order. Simple? yes? possible? nope! but it’s sure to cause fun and arguments. The final two of MY favourite sadly aren’t quite as loved by my family, but I’ll get them there. Sagrada is a similar game to Azul with you attempting to build a beautiful stained glass window with coloured dice. More variations and thinking needed than Azul which adds to the challenge. And finally and lovely chess like 2 player game which transports you to the sun dappled Greek island of Santorini. Take the powers of a god and build the traditional blue domed white houses of the island whilst trying to stop your opponent climbing onto a roof. A lot of ‘aha, you’ve stopped me’ moments.

3. TV

It’s been a long old year at work, and in the world of parenting so we’ve found ourselves flopped on the settee many evenings just soaking up great drama, comedy and chilling ;o)

We are very late to the party with Suits but that means we have 8 series to wade through! Really neat writing, bants and relationships between characters, a ‘don’t worry they will always win’ calmness about it and you get to see the Queen in her knickers...ish. Another Netflix treat this year was Magic for Humans with Justin Willman, a hugely likeable and funny magician pulling off tricks that constantly make me smirk with a huge dollop of WTF? amazing. A huge recommendation. A late entry to my TV highlights of 2018 is from the warped warped mind of Charlie Brooker...of course with Bandersnatch. An interactive choose your own adventure TV ‘event’ (I know) that had us hooked for the full 90 minutes (only if you want to see how much bloodshed you can invoke!). Completely on the other end of the spectrum was the sublime and minimalistic Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. I don’t like fishing and why would I find two old mates just teasing each other for half an hour entertaining? No idea but it was beautiful. Like Radio 4, comforting and perfect. Then a few suspenseful dramas that got us on the edge of the settee, Killing Eve (quirky AF), Bodyguard (did they really kill Keely Hawes that early?) and Informer (bleak bleak bleak) and sweaty bullocks in ‘should be in the next section really’ Bird Box (made Informer seem like a giggle fest).

4. Films

Really haven’t been to the cinema much in the last 12 months and only once to see a ‘grown up’ film I think but kid’s films are SO good at the moment that’s ok. A few stand out films for me were:

Ralph Breaks the Internet, much better than the first one, lots of #lolz internet jokes and more than a little heart. Wrap me up in a duvet and give me a hot cocoa and Paddington 2 any day, tears at the end. A little more sighing but just as much emotion in Christopher Robin, not sure why Eeyore had an American accent but the characters were spot on and nicely faithful to the original concepts. The one time I did venture out for an adult (it’s a 12 so almost ;o) and saw Ready Player One I was delighted, yeah it might not be a) as good as or b) anything like the book but a visual treat and an enjoyable romp.

5. Books

I read A LOT, until my Kindle donks me on the head in bed anyway...literally a tiny selection of books that have kept me awake. 

The Secret Lives of Colour - Kassia St Clair. They say never judge a book by its cover. Well that didn’t work...I bought this purely because it is a beautiful package, the hardback a lot more pleasing imho. Simply 2 coloured pages about how each colour was discovered, invented and introduced throughout history. I never really gave it a thought that colours were...made. Weird and fascinating.

This Is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay. A hilarious ‘secret’ diary of a junior doctor that horrifies at the same time. I think we all knew it was a hard life but bloody hell, if you didn’t love the NHS before you will after this. A thoroughly enjoyable and insightful story of Adam’s journey through medicine. And that ending...wooof.

Moose Allain - I Wonder What I’m Thinking About. I love Moose, I love his colour-me-advent calendars, I love his tweet threads that show the best in Twitter, I love his cartoons and this book is all of those wrapped up in one. And a certain Mr Spoon is to thank for the publication, find me in the back of Unbound funders! An inspiring book for anyone who loves art, creativity and childish humour.

Factfulness : Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - Hans Rosling. A brilliantly clever and educational book about why the world is NOT as shit as it might seem some times. It’s all backed up by real data and lovely lovely graphs!

Lee Child and Ian Rankin. A highlight of the year is the next Reacher and Rebus novels and these two didn’t disappoint. Rebus’ latest adventure Past Tense, is a self-contained story that could introduce anyone to the man machine that is Jack Reacher. Rebus however is back, retired but won’t lie down, in In A House of Lies, an old case comes back to haunt him and will this finally be his downfall? I doubt it!

6. Music

As mentioned, I haven’t ‘been into music’ as much in 2018 for various reasons but I’ve still enjoyed some great new discoveries:

Barns Courtney - The Attractions of Youth, discovered via the use of Glitter and Gold for the theme tune of Netflix’s Safe. An album of ‘cheesy, commercially viable blues and folk rock’ apparently. I just liked the visceral nature of some of the tracks and it always fired me up at work on slow days.

Isaac Gracie - Isaac Gracie, a rare listened to recommendation from my wife. Isaac is everything I claim to like, fragile thin sensitive boys with acoustic guitars....and I do very much with this. Painful screeched out tales of heartbreak. Sublime.

R.E.M. - Live at the BBC, 104 rare and live tracks from arguably one of the best bands ever. Some of the tracks I haven’t heard since my bootleg cassette buying days at Sheffield Uni, when the world was in black and white. Not all tracks are of the greatest audio quality but bliss for a fanboy like me.

Creep Show - Mr Dynamite, a spin off project for Mr John Grant and even from the eclectic crooner this is an odd one. Glitchy electronica with vocoders all over the place. Weird and very Marmite.

Public Service Broadcasting - Every Valley and everything else. The latest offering from the other PSB was a trip through the miner’s crisis and Thatcher years. Bleak? yup but fascinating snippets of well, public service broadcasting and guest stars including the obligatory Welsh rockers the Manics. This album is perfect by itself but it ‘forced’ me to go back and really discover all the PSB albums. The Live at Brixton release is a huge recommendation, I wish I was there.

Rex Orange County - Apricot Princess, maybe I just added this in to seem cool as Rex, aka Alexander O’Conner, was ‘one to watch in 2018′ from the BBC. A multi-instrumentalist that dabbles with hippity hop, R&B and piano pop. The first track alone contains about three musical styles if you wait. 

7. Food & Drink

I run, because I really like food. And thankfully I’ve run a lot in 2018 so I got to enjoy a lot.

I was introduced to the weird fermented tea monstrosity that is kombucha by my sister-in-law. Vinegar tasting drink that may or may not help your gut that grows in your living room. WTAF? However, health benefits aside the LA Brewery Strawberry and Black Pepper drink is something, alongside my pilgrimage to Leon, worth going to London for. I’ve heard it’s also for sale in Solihull but I don’t often travel that far beyond my class ;o) I’d say, try it...but I suspect 9/10 people with hate the flavour. 

I suspect 10/10 people that try the Aldi Black Forest Mince Pies would love them, but you won’t get a chance as I’ve bought them ALL. Aldi are a bugger for getting you hooked then never restocking. I only managed 10 boxes in 2018 and we’ve rationed well so have 12 left to get us through the bleak January weather. Cherries, Dark Chocolate, Chocolate pastry and a smidge of mincemeat. Perfect!

There are many ingredient delivery services available and I’ve only tried Gousto but I don’t know why you’d go anywhere else. 33 recipes tried and 32 of them I’d have again, with the one not so good one was still far better than anything I’d cook by myself. So easy, so tasty and if you want to try it I can give you a big discount that will help us buy another box, a tad expensive without a discount but worth a treat every so often.

Genuinely I traveled to London just to visit Max’s Sandwich Shop...kinda. It was certainly the deciding factor in a day out at the Summer Exhibition (see below). I downloaded the Kindle version of this book when it was promoted in an email, I bought some Scampi Fries and made a Fish Finger sandwich, I crumbled up some Ginger Nuts into a Mascarpone and Jam sandwich and I made a Fried Egg, Shoestring Fried and Gammon sandwich then I NEEDED to go and see how it’s really done. Amazing over the top sandwiches in a rough little hipster cafe in Stroud Green (no me neither and it’s a long walk from the tube!). So good I had to a) buy the hard copy of the book and b) carry half the sandwich home as even I couldn’t manage it all...not with deep fried macaroni balls filling me up ;o)

8. Places

A family that plays together, stays together as a great man once said. And we don’t just play inside, we love adventures so adventures we had.

I’d never been to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, as it’s in that there London which often seems hundreds of miles away...but I’m so glad that I visited this year. A trip with a good friend with neither of us knowing quite what to expect. We saw, and laughed, and marveled at, paintings, sculptures, videos, photos, models, and weirdness by Banksy next to Joe Lycett next to Grayson Perry next to Harry Hill, next to me mate Lorsen Camps from Coventry. The SA allows ANYONE to submit artwork for consideration and anyone can be accepted. I think this has to become a yearly visit, awesome.

My parents have been wanting to take our kids, and their big kid, to The Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire for a few years now...and I’m so happy we finally got round to going. Started as a folly to entertain his children this huge labyrinthine site is crammed with strange sculptures, mazes, tricks and squirting fountains. Many hours were spent squeezing through holes, getting lost and getting wet. Beautifully eccentric.

A family holiday to Brittany meant we could visit the loopy city (it’s their phrase!) of Nantes and more importantly Les Machines d’Ile. Ostensibly the workshop of  a group of engineers and artists that make huge animatronic machines and animals...that you can ride on! Needs to be seen to be believed, the Elephant brings out the big kid in everyone...and we can’t wait to go back in a few years when they’ve built a huge forest over the river with ride on caterpillars and dragonfly. Incredible. The city itself is dotted with crazy art and interactive pieces encouraging play, I know a city closer to home that should be the UK Loopy City of Culture!

Luckily Tilly is a Harry Potter obsessive AND it was her birthday last year so it gave us the excuse we didn’t need to visit the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour. Wow, just wow. The incredible detail in everything made for the film, the engineering, the amount of artists involved and the presentation of the exhibition blew us away. I’ve enjoyed everything in this list but this maybe was the most magical in the best way.

Many many amazing experiences warrant a mention, but I just don’t have enough words, include Talking Birds - Walk with Me, Print Manufactory Darkroom Workshop, Ludic Rooms Random String Festival, Go Karting with Tilly, some dancing balloons in Broadgate, Godiva Festival with Tony Christie et al, Bristol Gromit trail, Disc Golfing with my girls, Edinburgh Fringe with Dick and Dom and with another wonderful dick from Coventry starring in Bon Jovi musical We’ve Got Each Other, Pandas! at Edinburgh Zoo, Matilda the Musical with Tilly at last, running the Coventry Mile with the girls’ school, Dippy the Dinosaur in Brum, Wicksteed Park (amazing family fun theme park like what they used to be), Cycling on Stratford Greenway in the sun, Autotesting at MotoFest, Bourton-on-the-Water (it’s just a shame 3 million other people know about this gorgeous village), Giant Pac Man in the city centre, Pork Pie making with a good friend, CET several times, Novelty Automation in London and being on The One Show, a couple of Hope & Social gigs and much much much more fun with my wonderful fam and friends. Roll on 2019!

[dailydosemiku]

So I just beat Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- 100%

I’m gonna write this as an in depth review I guess. So I got done just recently discussing it with an old friend, the very same friend who roughly a decade ago showed me the original game. We have pretty polar opposite opinions of the game and I’m seeing that seems to be the trend with people who have played it so far. This isn’t a call out post or “Your opinion is wrong and mine is right” bullshit. I just want to explain why I liked it and maybe help some people see the game from a different light.

First things first. I want to premise, if this even gets read, that nothing will ever top or match Yume Nikki the RPG maker game that has gained a cult following. Even Yume Nikki on a second playthrough, will never feel like Yume Nikki on a persons first playthrough in my opinion, granted that is if they enjoyed it. Before this re-imagining came out there were mostly 2 kinds of people and barely anyone in between. People who loved it for it’s entire concept and execution and people who thought it was the most boring chore in the world. There is barely anyone I know or have met that’s in between those who are just like “yeah it’s ok I guess” Just because this re-imagining came out does not mean the original is now bad or doesn’t exist and I will respect your opinion if you think one is better then the other, because it’s an opinion, and they aren’t the same.

Below this is the Steam Store page, I want anyone reading this to read it and read it again.

“Yume Nikki has been hailed as one of the greatest (and most controversial) games ever created with RPG Maker. The new YUMENIKKI -DREAM DIARY- is not a remake, but a full reimagining of the original―reconstructed and enhanced using elements and styles of modern indie games. “

If you read this and thought this meant that this is going to be the same game, you went in with your expectations to high. One of the biggest reasons Yume Nikki was so beloved and how most people go into it was, THEY KNEW NOTHING, hell I knew nothing, I got like 2 sentences and like a 5 minute gameplay video of the game and that sold me. Then these people were to learn after diving into this strange game that only told you things with visuals, the creator disappears. For years even. So to do both games right I want to break them down into some basically game design elements to the best of my ability. Gameplay, Soundtrack, Story, Visuals, and Atmosphere/Presentation. Of course I’m going to reference both games because that’s what everyone else is doing for each of these.

Gameplay, well there really wasn’t much of a game to play in Yume Nikki the RPG maker game. I’m sorry I love Yume Nikki, but there’s not a lot of interactivity. It’s more of an experience, a long giant question of How and Why did this game get to this point? If you were at all like me, you kept playing to answer these questions and ultimately you either didn’t get an answer and were happy with it or you found your own answer, which if you ask me is part of the magic of that first playthrough. But as a 2D free RPG Maker game with no admission to entry, it was an experience and just that AN EXPERIENCE. As for Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- the 3D platformer, there’s actually a game to be played which understandable makes it very different then the RPG maker original. But this is an re-imagining, it’s not fair to directly compare the 2. They are in completely different medians and special in their own ways. In it’s essence, whether you agree or not both games at their element are about exploring an experience. If one having gameplay elements, that if you ask me were fairly well tested but not perfect, makes it less of an experience and was frustrating, then I don’t think you remember some of the frustrating non-sense that the RPG maker version had, such as navigating NES World, Locating the Bike which for most of the playthrough you were guaranteed to use because the normal movement speed was slow as shit and that’s usually what stopped a bunch of people from getting farther into it. But I say this with pride, it was part of the experience, it was part of the fun and by all technicality, was it’s own form of rudimentary puzzles and gameplay. Now yes I hear some of you die hard fans cry but there’s not as many effects and not as many doors and worlds, not as many themes and they took out so much. I am sad to say some of the things they took out I will miss, that is if the original game was wiped off the face of the planet with this games release, but it wasn’t.The original is still there as it always was. Because it can’t be replaced. It won’t ever be replaced, people have tried. So onto the point, the gameplay of the 3D one. It’s a horror platformer with puzzle solving and a few jumpscares I guess. You are sitting here reading this, I hope, going wow it’s that easy to categorize? Well yeah sorry to say guys it’s 2018 not 2004, in the time between the first RPG maker classic which I love to death and this newer retake of the very concept of Yume Nikki in 2018 we have had 3 different presidents, saw the rise and fall of many platforms like Vine, went through not 1, not 2 but 3 generations of Video Game Consoles, got 10 versions of the IPhone, like 8 versions of Samsungs Phones and a bunch of other stuff. Needless to say, times change, information is easier to access and we have gotten older and more analytical when it comes to the things we do as hobbies or otherwise. If we are to just look at the word re-imagining at face value and by definition.

reinterpret (an event, work of art, etc.) imaginatively; rethink. 

Is the new Yume Nikki a reinterpretation of the RPG classic? Absolutely, it’s a different take on what the game was. Key word different, problem is in 2018 things are easier to find then 2004, communities are larger, people are older, and things in general are going to less surprising. So from a gameplay standpoint is the new Yume Nikki the 3D Platformer a well thought out game from a gameplay standpoint? Yes it is, it has it’s bugs which is unfortunate, but even games that got GAME OF THE YEAR were horrible buggy messes when they came out and those were backed by Triple A developers, COUGH COUGH FALLOUT 3 EVEN THOUGH I LOVE YOU YOU ARE A MESS COUGH COUGH. Moral of the story for the gameplay, it’s different yes but that doesn’t make it bad just not the same. If you can effectively get from beginning to end regardless how the journey goes, the game did what it needed to do. If you felt obligated to finish -Dream Diary- that was nostalgia and that almost need to feel the magic of the first playthrough of the RPG Maker classic, meaning you aren’t taking Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- as it’s own game, you are trying to take it as a replacement for a beloved classic.

Now that I’m done with that portion I guess, hopefully my point was more or less digestible and hopefully didn’t come off as if you disagree I hate you, cause that’s not my intent, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, I just want to give a separate perspective. The Soundtrack. I think the Soundtrack in both games is just weird and beautiful and bizarre and conveys messages on a spectrum going from of uncomfortable to serene to almost intimidating. I’m no music expert or major or whatever but the music in Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- not only was very good and did what it meant to do in my opinion but was an incredible nod at the RPG Maker classic featuring a lot of remastered tracks from the original which I think portrayed similar emotions as I felt from the first game. I don’t have much else to say on the soundtrack, it’s timing and consistency felt as good as the original in it’s own special way but should not be interpreted as the same.

So the next thing I want to bring up is story. Now if you are a fan of the RPG Maker classic, you know as well as I do that the story is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, it’s almost entirely up to interpretation. The story was what you thought it was, you just get kind of a beginning and kind of a ending. People who wanted a classical game with a story with a beginning middle and end, would not really even touch this game. Cause it doesn’t hold your hand, but not in a “is this the dark souls of RPG Maker games?” kind of way. It’s entire conception, how it came to be, how the game played, how the game ends and how you get an ending to begin with and the mysterious creator and their disappearance are all ultimately part of Yume Nikkis’ Story in my opinion. The time the game came out, the so little information about the game that was known, the fact that Youtube was still young, fuck me I was using SKYPE when I played this game in like 2008, it was the perfect storm but only because of the games story outside of the game as well as inside. It was a mess, but it was such an amazing mess that was so hard to describe and time and time and time again the only thing people could really say is “you just have to play it, I can’t explain it without ruining it” That was also a part of the games story if you ask me. It was so strange and so meta but it always made people say the same thing. Now 14 years later, the developer is back, is older, sees his own mistakes better then any of us ever could, and I know if anyone reads this, some of you are artists or content creators or game designers and you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about being hyper critical of your own work. And now he has help now, a team of developers and even though he worked side by side with these people, of course there’s going to be a disconnect, something lost in translation, that’s exactly what fangames are, an interpretation of the original. So yes sadly there’s a bit more going on that’s coherent now but it’s 14 years later being lead by a guy who knows his own mistakes for a game he made alone, which is an achievement yes, but he has seen and allowed to be published in the very beginning of this new game a nod at where his last game left off. Meaning of course he acknowledges what he made and knows people adored it, but people also hated it. It was a judgement call, and you may not like the result but I assure you it was a decision in good faith, at least that the message I got from this game. Now enough beating around the bush, this games story? It does it;s job without telling you to much and honestly I still feel like in this games case like the last one, explaining what happens loses the impact, and some of the impact is because I played the game prior. So I think it does it’s job at re-imagining the story of Yume Nikki the RPG maker game well enough.

Next is visuals, now as an RPG Maker game you could argue it’s not good looking, till you think about it, that one guy, made all of that basically from scratch, it’s poetic, it’s awe-inspiring, that this one guy makes this strange game and it moved people so much and all you really do is just look at things. It’s a stunning game to the eyes because you want to know what this guy could have possibly created next and each environment is so different from the last, each effect so silly and cute or scary and gross all at the same time making you feel these mixed emotions of joy, excitement, nausea, tension all at the same time. It almost mesmerizes you into this feeling of wanting to do everything while simultaneously fearing when it’s all over and the dream ends both literally and metaphorically. It’s only because of this, in my opinion is why visually the RPG maker game is such a work of art. Now for Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- if you ask me I think the game is breathtaking, there’s so much care put into so many little details, yes there are clipping issues and the animations aren’t great but remember Yume Nikki the RPG Maker game wasn’t perfect either, we didn’t care though, we were young, we just wanted to take whatever it was in for what it was worth. From a technical standpoint I feel like this game is stunning in the visual department, but it’s not that complicated compared to games of it’s time, much like the older classic. The older classic came out the same year as Half Life 2, which was a technical marvel when it came out, now it’s kinda dated but regardless that didn’t make Yume Nikki in 2004 any less of an unique experience, and I feel like that same way of thinking should be applied to this new title as best as a person can. I’m going to steal a line from another reviewer loosely, Portal 2s biggest flaw is that it came out after Portal 1.  I must have heard those words 5 years ago or something and they still stick with me. If you look at Portal 2 it’s literally an evolved embodiment of Portal, but you already knew the concept of Portal cause it already came out so it’s shock value, it’s rare and raw punch is lessened because something did that already. It’s the same reasons fangames and Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- won’t feel the exact same. Cause it came out afterwards.

Lastly I wish to touch on a final point before closing this review I guess, more of an analysis. The presentation and atmosphere. Broken down as simply as I can both games share this. They are Surreal Horror Exploration games whose job is to seemingly immerse you in the strange world of a little Japanese girls dreams. That’s where the disconnect begins. Cause even though you wouldn’t think of the RPG Maker classic to be a horror game it has horror themes and the occasional jumpscare or visual for shock value. Now as a re-imagining does the new Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- fit the bill for an amazing strange atmosphere just like the first? Absolutely, it tells most of it’s story passively, no dialogue, nothing crazy, just you and a simple platformer. But alas, it’s a platformer with tension and parts with severely more interaction then the original causing you to feel urgency and demand to escape or jump the next hurdle or challenge, which is not the same as original. Which understandably is this games biggest flaw, if from the very beginning it said it was a remake and that the original is no longer an actual concept. If we were to look at Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- the same way as the original, where we had nothing to compare it too, it’s a lot better of a game and it’s creepy atmosphere is on point, the environments are great and the nods it makes to the older game make me happy.

All in all I think that even with it’s flaws on release that Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- is a stunning love letter to the original game, written by a team of people copying down the words of the creator, ultimately dedicated to those of us who gave Yume Nikki it’s following while simultaneously being something more accessible to wider audience so that by chance they may also play the original game to fully understand why this game exists and what purpose it serves. It’s a thank you letter, an attempt to redo in a different sense what we have tried ourselves many times to recreate and even though a lot of the fan games are great they don’t feel the exact same and neither does this, it’s fantastic but we should all know by now that it can’t be done again, that’s why it’s special. But the creator knew this and wanted to try again but with more knowledge this time and I respect him for it, I respect the team who worked on this game, flaws and all. Perfect or not they wanted us to feel that special feeling one more time, and maybe it wasn’t what you wanted but I don’t even know what I wanted.

-Katy

#yume nikki #yume nikki -dream diary- #kikiyama #kadokawa #kadokawa corporation #madosuki

[maisyfmp-flipside]

Evaluation

For my final major project, I chose the flipside words of artificial/natural and originally, I had a concept of looking into the artificial side, the social medias impact on beauty standards, but I felt it was very vague and I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone researching something I know very little in but find fascinating. This is where I started looking into the topic technology, the futuristic side that had an artificial element like a dystopian world. I read into the book ‘1984’ that has an interesting perspective on a dystopian world controlled by powerful people, this is what sparked the idea of war. I feel like when powerful people have control over people’s thoughts that when people fight back, war starts. You can argue protests are a type of war usually a war that is fought by average people against powerful people, there are many types of this but commonly peaceful protest, or violent protest. Either or people can get hurt.

About my outcomes:

I created five a4 posters and four animations to go with. The official message is to show a combination of love and peace with the protesting against anti war but also a contrast of stress, pain, and conflict that people do not see or history that we do not accept. The quotes on the protest posters were from the film ‘the trail of Chicago 7’ as I felt there is such a big message behind the quotes, that came directly from Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden; they hold a big inspiration behind the artwork. For the other three posters I wanted a more simplistic element but impactful with combination of many layers of own photography as well as vintage war photos. To link to the theme natural, I wanted to show the natural components when distress is caused mentally and physically. War has an impact on many things, things we do not think of, even the land ruined, homes destroyed, and poverty created. The protest is a natural movement when the people fight back and try to stop and spread as much awareness about being against something we should have a say over and not be discriminated.

Three artists that have inspired me throughout my project were Robert Rauschenberg, ben Giles and peter Kennard. Reason being at the very start of the project I was very interested in Roberts work as I feel like he has a very strong message that is portrayed a had spoke out about his ideas and thought processes when creating his work that I really took in for consideration. As much as his art pieces are very abstract the meanings and colours expressed say a lot and hold much symbolism, as you look carefully into certain sections. The many layers stand out, this is something I did in my project layering my work covering parts so when you look closely you pay attention to the small detail.  

   Instantly when looking at Ben Giles’ work is all collage work but has this common theme of flowers that are integrated into all pieces. With my message of showing the violence, destroyed buildings and landscapes, having flowers here and there would symbolise the peace that holds massively when thinking of the death of soldiers, using flowers as a remembrance for the fallen soldiers in the war. Also, in the Vietnam protest they would give out flowers or use flowers as a symbol of peace. With bens work he uses very vintage imagery of people or places, I took this into my own hands to do a similar thing when doing my final outcome collages. I had bought a vintage war book showing all original photographs of the front-line demolishment. There was even small journal diary entry about what they saw with images to support it, this brought out the old imagery that ben uses.

 Peter Kennard is a graphic design artist who uses ‘the concept of history’ bodying current political events going on over the 50 years but also linking it to the future and how things have an impact on the future to come. Peter is also someone who uses vintage imagery but a colour pallet of black and white but likes to use the same type of imagery in most art pieces, so his work is easily noticed. The process I feel drawn to the most with Kennard is the importance of linking quote text to his work or a small statistic. This could be a current movement or past information; this is important because it feels informative and gives the artwork context.

Two pieces of wider world research that has helped with my project was watching an insightful film called ‘the trail of Chicago 7’ which shows the flipside of the people fighting for peace but ironically it was supposed to be peaceful, but a few events triggered it to go the wrong way. People argue it was the police enforcement that turned it violent others blamed the 7 men that organised the meet: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale that prepared the protest ‘Democratic National Convention’ in Chicago. This is one of the sides I wanted to show, a few protest art pieces representing the peace and community coming for anti-war in hope for things to change.

The other side of the wider world research was visiting Duxford imperial war museum which shows the stories behind the people who fought in the war and what they had to go through. Also, there was a showcase of loads of different aircraft and machinery, that I would have never found very interesting until I found out the history behind everything it gave a insightful look into the past and how things were. These are shown in my final outcomes of the old transport and weapons.

For the weeks I was creating final outcomes it consisted of creating collages, experimenting with photoshop, making drawing sketches and finding photography. The main skill I have got out of this project is not only learning about the history of war but found something I really enjoyed is the process of making hand-based collages and creating them digitally. I love this technique as it is a helpful process to use and gets so many ideas flowing. I’m glad that I kept to my project proposal and made the outcomes I wanted to create, hopefully giving the message I wanted expressed by my art pieces.

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: Kawaii Box March 20

I just wanted to mention that tomorrow I’ll be busy, so my plan is to hopefully get the next review posted on Tuesday. 

Word of the month: fantaji - fantasy 

Event of the Month: March 3rd is “Hinamatsuri” in Japan, a doll festival that has also become known as “Girls Day” over time.  

“Delve into the world of magical cuteness with this kawaii haul!“

Some months back we had a magical girl themed box that I was pretty fond out. I love fantasy-themes, magical girls, etc. So let’s see how this one holds up in comparison!

Fantasy Jellyfish Plush

Our first item is this really frilly-looking Jellyfish plush. It has a sort of bean-bag body, so it’s really fun to squeeze. Around the body are pieces of white lace and pastel strands coming in yellow, pink, and blue. It has a small loop so that you can attach it to various items.

It was available in green, pink, purple, and yellow, but right now on Blippo.com it’s only in yellow. It costs $6.90. It’s a Blippo/Kawaii Box exclusive. The quality of the plush seems to be really nice.

You guys know I’m not a big fan of yellow, but this is too cute x3 I don’t have a name for her at the moment, nothings really sounded right yet.

Shiny Galaxy & Magical Girl Washi Stickers

Our next item is this really cute set of sticker sheets. You get 4, each featuring different designs and characters, including some small fillers like gold stars. Several stickers include gold outlines or detail.

I couldn’t find this set on Blippo at the time, but it’s by the brand Treein Art, a brand I’m finding myself becoming a bigger fan of with each item in our box. It’s so pretty and magical looking~

Disney Fruit Gummies

Meiji are the producers of these fun, cute-shaped gummies. Which right away, as you can tell are not as bright as what’s on the package. It doesn’t make a difference but some people like it when you point out those details, so I try to if I notice any significant difference.

Anyway, these gummies are made from various red fruits/vegetables: tomato, strawberry, and apple. They also include a lot of calcium, so they’re pretty good for kids. They come in many cute shapes famous to the Mickey branding, such as mickey’s head, Minnie’s head, and circles with bows, stars, hearts, or mickey heads on them. The entire bag is 133kcal, and is resealable.

I couldn’t find these on Blippo right now, but you’re not missing too much honestly. For someone like me who hates tomato, I found these to be okay. They remind me of a juice box flavor with a tomato note at the end. I didn’t like these a lot, but they were much better than those apple-tomato gummies I got a while back <_<

Colorful Candy Cup Keychain

We got another Blippo exclusive in the box, this one featuring adorable non-edible candies in a cup that you can attach to whatever you want. Besides these pastel stars, you could also get one filled with konpeito, or jellybeans in various sizes.

All three of them are very cute in my opinion, but right now only the star cup is available for purchase on the website. It costs $3.90. But I also saw some other cup keychains on the website, like the creamy milk tea collection, and the frozen drinks.

I used to collect keychains when I was younger, and I’m still pretty fond of them now; I really like this. It’s a lot of fun to shake around too.

Fluffy Sanrio Character Headband

If you read my recent NMNL review, you might recall that I just got a fluffy headband. Today, we get this adorable Hello Kitty themed one, which feels pretty similar and was even packaged the same way.

I couldn’t find this one on Blippo.com either, but that’s just to be expected when a box is nearly a year old.

In comparison to the other one, this one felt a lot tighter. It has a stretchy band on the back, just as the other did, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have a big head. But this was kind of uncomfortable, even without tucking it beneath my hair. It was uncomfortable, but for maybe 10 minutes it would be tolerable.

Dreamy Unikitty Notebook & Magical Girl Star Wand Pen

This pastel themed notebook is a sale item on Blippo.com at the time, being only $2.45 instead of its original $3.50 pricing. There are 4 possible designs, all of which are available.

Besides it’s cute design, what I like about this notebook is that it’s compact for easier carrying, and it has a matte covering to help protect it a little from moisture that could possibly damage it, but you can remove that if you don’t like it. Also, there are 4 sections within the book that feature 2 different, unique designs on each side. The pages are lined, so this would be purrfect as a diary or various lists.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

To go with our magical theme, we have this pretty pen featuring a clear colored (mine looks white, but it has a faint purple or pink tint) tube with a gold winged loop on top with a gem star in the middle. This was available in a few colors, the gold detailing of the loop is lovely~

It’s a basic black-ink fine tip, and for as pretty as it is, I have to point out the obvious glaring flaw (depending on who you ask): the cap doesn’t fit on the end.

Shiba-Inu Wonderland Multipurpose Pouch

Our last item is also on sale right now for $2.03 on Blippo.com. This is a thin pouch featuring 4 unique Shiba Inu designs, from this pattern to larger designs. Each has a pastel zipper and pull.

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ After being disappointed by the previous -destroyed- box, I feel like this one was a lot better. The items are of good quality and very cute, fun, good sizing, pricing is fine. If anything, I kind of wish we got a different accessory, because I know for a fact they have all sorts of clips that would have fit this theme better- and because I just got a headband for the same purpose in another box. 

Theme - ♥ ♥ ♥ I love this theme concept, but in comparison to the last time they went with a fantasy-magical theme, I felt like they pulled it off better last time. The front of the booklet shows a winged-unicorn/pegasus with horn/alicorn, but there’s nothing of the sort in the items (does unikitty count?). The color scheme of most items go well with the theme yeah, but a handful of items don’t really suit it in my opinion.

Total Rank: 8 out of 10 Cuties. Definitely a step up from the prior Kawaii Box, but not as good as a previous themed one that was similar to it. I do like the items, and if I didn’t have the previous themed box like this one i probably would have liked it a lot more. I would still recommend the items though, the ones still on Blippo.com that is :P

Before I go, I wanted to mention that I was considering ordering from Blippo.com again! If you enjoy those posts, you can possibly look forward to that later in the month/next month.

#kawaiibox #cutie reviews

[spiralatlas]

GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific) 2017 Day 1

I’m in Melbourne for GCAP and PAX Australia, and GCAP started today.

Sadly things were cut short by me BREAKING MY WHEELCHAIR in a DOOMED QUEST FOR A SMOOTHIE. I got a replacement, but it was a hassle and I needed to go rest afterwards. But what I saw of GCAP was good!

Below: descriptions of talks by Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya (creators of Gone Home and Tacoma) and by David Gaider (narrative designer on Dragon Age), plus misc other conference things.

There were three introductions, all about How Great The Melbourne Games Scene Is and how Everyone Is Friends And Awesome.

Keynote: Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonya from Fullbright Games: The names didn't mean much to me but then I realised THEY'RE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE GONE HOME AND TACOMA :D

The theme of GCAP this year is The Ripple Effect, and the theme of this talk was how people connect and affect each other.

Steve and Karla met as part of the team for Bioshock 2. Karla was a researcher, and Steve a level designer, and when they were in those roles they didn't interact. But they both finished their assigned tasks and asked around for other things that needed doing, which led them both to the massive task of writing all the little bits of extra dialogue around things like what enemies say when they attack, flavour text on objects, optional little stories told through random audio diaries etc. They made a great team (Steve as writer and Karla as editor) and got really into it. I think you can totally see how this grew into their later approach to games.

The company 2KMoran being willing to let them develop like this was part of them being a good company, with many ex-employees who have gone on to make interesting games.

Steve then got to design his own DLC, and went I MUST BRING IN KARLA. And after they did that, and Bioshock 2 was done, they created Fullbright and started working on Gone Home.

At some point Steve encountered some cool Bioshock fanart and became mutuals with the artist on twitter. Since she was a lesbian, he asked her if she'd be up for discussing things to help with the game. She brought along her wife for an extra point of view. The wife turned out to be a 3D artist, and both of them ended up hired to work on the game.

David Gaider: Creating a World and Making it Stick

So this was like 50% general advice and 50% morality tale about the Hubris Of The Writer Who Thinks His Worldbuilding Stands Alone.

Basically he created all the basic Thedas worldbuilding by himself, then told the rest of the team, and worked with his writers, and never checked in to make sure the game worked as a whole until it was Far Too Late.

He was trying to create a relatively grounded, dark, realistic story...and the art team was making orcs and bikini armour. He had lore about the mages being too oppressed to learn offensive spells or do anything flashy in public, while the gameplay team was implementing fireballs, and specialisations like Reaver which were not connected to the worldbuilding at all. And by the time these incompatibilities became apparent everyone was committed and refused to budge. So the final game is a hodge podge of inconsistent parts that all make sense individually but don't fit together.

Now my general notes:

He scrawled out the original Thedas map on paper the same way he would for a D&D game (his original draft looked very Middle Earth-ish in style), expecting someone who knew geography would go through and fix the rivers at some point. They did not.

One lesson he learned is that you can't just throw pages of worldbuilding at people and expect them to both read and be engaged with it. You have to have a "razor", a short description of the core of the game, and make sure everyone understands what it is. Anything that doesn't fit the razor gets cut. For example, DA2 had themes of The Price of Freedom, Family, and All Things Change. And you have to sell them on why your worldbuilding elements are interesting, and what makes them cool. Once the art team understood what darkspawn were they got invested and redesigned them to not just be orcs.

Remember to feel: Don't just come up with the history of your city: what is it like to visit, is it loud and friendly and sunny or oppressively silent?

Pick your battles: choose the parts of your worldbuilding you really value and emphasise those, be willing to let the others go, especially if it’s to follow changes that make the game more fun. The game being fun is the final aim, your worldbuilding is just a tool to get there.

He got confused by his cursor a lot :)

One good thing about the DAO worldbuilding is that he didn't know where it would be set at first, so worked out all the history for everywhere, and that added lots of depth.

Names are the devil, totally subjective so everyone argues about them and hates any new suggestion. Many names for DAO were bandied about, like "Chronicle". He has a rule to never put Shadow, Dark or Blood in a list of possible names or the publishers will go THAT ONE.

His two rules: 1) People aren't allowed to complain about a name unless they have a better suggestion. 2) Wait six months. Chances are people will be used to it and not mind any more.

When the Grey Wardens were first suggested they were supposed to be pretty minor, based off the rangers in Tolkein. So they got named the White Rangers, but that was too similar, so White Wardens, but that wasn't morally grey enough, so: Grey Wardens! Which was fine until they turned out to be important, people suggested "cooler" names like Blood Knight Brotherhood/Lords of War/Disciples of Pain (not sure if he was joking) but he waited six months and took a vote and lo, the old name stuck.

Track your changes.

Have an elevator pitch (not the same as the razor) If you can't come up with one your concept needs work.

Question your biases. He was originally inspired by Middle Earth and D&D, and his own ideas of Medieval Europe...all of which are way too white. Some of this could be fixed in later games, but the world he created closed off a lot of possibilities (he didn't say any examples but I guess he meant, like, Africa and Asia equivalents)

When he took inspiration from Jews and Romani for the elves he thought he was being very clever, and only later realised that this created all sorts of unfortunate implications, since now anything that happens to elves seems like a statement about those cultures.

He was happily surprised to be able to include bi characters in DAO.

The writers were all pretty happy with how they'd handled gender in DAI, then the Voice Over person was like "why are the vast majority of our lines for men?" and they realised they'd all made most of their background characters men for no reason.

At the start it's hard to walk the line between a long, boring, exposition heavy intro, and players getting confused by lack of explanation. (It felt like he wished players would just be smarter lol) He said "If DAO had started at Ostagar then the PC's backstory would have felt irrelevant" which made me think "So like DAI?".

Players have to know why to care about an event before it happens, or the emotional reaction will fall flat.

When you introduce the first member of a group, they should be fairly typical so the player gets a feel for the default. For example, Sten is a pretty typical Qunari. Only after that can you introduce outliers like The Iron Bull.

Every main character the player interacts with (for a RPG, the party members) should represent a different interesting facet of the worldbuilding.

They didn't think DAO would get sequels, and thus had those wildly differing epilogues. He isn't sure he'd change letting the player died, since it was a cool moment. But it was certainly inconvenient to deal with later.

They had a rough idea of how the history of Thedas would continue after DAO "but no plan survives contact with the enemy, in this case I guess that's EA" loll

Having player decisions affect so much has been a bit of a nightmare.

Card tricks in the dark: if you do something clever and the player doesn't notice, it doesn't matter.

If the enemies drink potions and it's not obvious they're doing it, it just looks like the AI is cheating. If a choice affects the plot but this fact isn't made clear, players will just think that's how the plot always goes. Need to heavily lampshade that this is the consequence of that choice. And keeping track of all the possibilities gets ridiculous with characters like Alistair, who can be any one of dead/king/a drunk etc.

The players who DO pay attention to these changes tend to want way more reactivity than is practical. So nobody is impressed. And most new players found the save game editors confusing and off putting. He thinks perhaps it would be better to have a smaller number of major choices.

He's not going to judge other writers but the HUGE changes at the end of the Mass Effect trilogy mean they can now no longer set anything in that galaxy again.

Question time!

Something about the process leading to Krem being written. He talked about the bad stuff previously, and them realising they'd screwed up. A trans fan on the forums said "Could we have a trans character who isn't a sex worker or the butt of a joke?". They got jumped on, but the team read it and went "Oh."

Gaider wrote Maevaris in the comics, talked to a trans woman friend about it. One of the other writers was working on Kress...*audience shouts KREM* and he seemed a bit boring so he got made trans, since it added some interest and fitted in well with the worldbuilding about the Qun etc.It would have been better with a trans voice actor but they couldn’t find one.

What program is best for explaining stuff to the art team etc early on: Biowre had a sort of Grey Box level for playing through choices, but something like twine is good, just to test pacing. (not sure this actually answers the question asked)

Are there any genres you would like to work on but haven't: Yes :D :D But he can't tell us about it yet :D :D

He got sick of high fantasy after ten years. Would look longingly at Mass Effect sometimes just for a change but then they would implode and he'd think"Actually I'm fine".

Off the top of his head: Victorian London, finding husbands for your girlfriends while fighting zombies and also it's a Western?

Misc other things: I didn't make it to any more talks because Wheelchair, but met some cool people, and played some of the student games on display. My favourite was a time travel murder mystery called Lacuna where you have to connect clues. Apparently I was way better at it than most people :D I also actually enjoyed one of the puzzle platformers (I forget the name but it's about a little grumpy blue hexagon), which is a pretty big achievement.

GCAP has a "food intolerances station" with special food options and knowledgeable staff which was pretty great. Morning tea was just various gluten free biscuits, but for lunch there was poached chicken and salmon and various plain chopped vegetables, as well as dressed salads and gluten free bread and dessert. I could eat about 1/3 of it which is pretty good odds, I ended up happier than my partner who doesn’t have as many intolerances but just didn't like any of the food options.

#gcap 2017 #gcap #migw 2017 #game dev #david gaider #indie game dev #conferences #dragon age #fullbright #gone home

[rapuvdayear]

1994: “Intro” The Notorious B.I.G. (Bad Boy/Arista)

Strap in, this is going to be a long post (even by my standards). Like, more than 5000 words long.

In the annals of rap history, there are certain periods that are just plain loaded. For example, between 1986 and 1988, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Boogie Down Productions, the Beastie Boys, Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Too $hort, and NWA all released absolute classics that not only redefined the genre, but have become touchstones for the rappers who followed them. 1992-1996 boasts a similar embarrassment of riches: The Chronic, Doggystyle, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), The Infamous, Soul Food, All Eyez On Me, The Score, Ridin’ Dirty, and ATLiens, among many, many more. Smack dab in the middle of that run, 1994 was arguably the apex of rap’s golden era. In any other year, The Diary would’ve taken the crown as the best/most important album. But Scarface’s opus gets unfairly ignored because 1994 also saw two releases that appear on any serious (read: not trolling) all-time top ten list, and are perennially in greatest-ever discussions. I already covered Nas’s Illmatic back in April. And today, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Christopher Wallace’s debut, Ready To Die.

Properly assessing Biggie’s impact and legacy is a near impossible task. No other rapper has burned as brightly for so brief a period. After doing a nine-month bid in North Carolina for crack dealing as a 19-year-old, he was featured in The Source’s Unsigned Hype column—back when it was the still rap’s undisputed publication of record—off the strength of a now-infamous demo tape, a recognition that also helped launch the careers of Eminem, DMX, Common, and others. Big’s come up after The Source nod was similar to that of his contemporaries, like Nas, in that he stole the show on a couple of posse cuts. But while Nas went the “lyrically lyrical” route for a time and, with Illmatic, made an album featuring a Who’s Who of boom bap era producers, Big’s style was harder to pin down. He recorded just two official full-length albums, and only Ready To Die was released during his lifetime; in fact, Ready to Die is now officially older than Big was at the time of his murder, a crime that is still unsolved (and if that’s not a depressing statement about rap, violence, and blackness in America, I don’t know what is). His debut was recorded at a time when the West coast g-funk aesthetic was dominant, and East coast rap still meant “NYC,” which was primarily divided into two camps: the Timbs-and-hoodies style of the so-called New School rappers who could trace their lineages back to the Def Jam superstars of the 80s and Queensbridge’s Juice Crew, and the more “alternative” and Afrocentric stylings of the Native Tongues clique (there was also Wu-Tang, who combined elements of both but were also just weird as fuck). Ready To Die, in this sense, is much more representative of the Timbs-and-hoodies crowd, but it also paved the way toward a much more introspective, darker style of rap focused on violence and material wealth in equal measures that would become the standard in New York for the remainder of the decade. It’s a gangsta rap record with a boom bap sound. And though Biggie was certainly no slouch on the mic—his internal rhyme schemes are complex, and his flow is versatile—he didn’t need to rap fast or sound like he’d memorized a thesaurus in order to distinguish himself, either. His greatest strengths were his lovable-yet-dangerous personality, bawdy sense of humor, and unparalleled skill as a storyteller, which he would showcase to even greater effect on 1997’s Life After Death. Add everything up, and it makes perfect sense why Big is remembered as one of the—if not the—best to ever do it: he emerged at the peak of the golden era, but was also an originator rather than an imitator.

The 2Pac beef, East Coast-West Coast war, and “playas vs. thugs” dichotomy in mainstream 90s rap have all been broken down in painstaking detail elsewhere, with conspiracy theories lurking around every corner (for anyone interested, I think that the best resource for understanding those stories and where Biggie, Pac, and LAPD corruption fit into it all is this 2001 Randall Sullivan article in Rolling Stone). Separating history from hagiography is tough enough in a culture that is built on braggadocio; no rapper worth their salt has ever “let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.” But Biggie’s tall tale/folk hero status is on a different level, arguably even more so than Pac’s, with whom he will forever be linked. Much of that is due to the fact that his career was so short and his talent so undeniable; as distasteful as it is to admit, Biggie’s legacy undoubtedly benefited from his early passing, leaving us with two outstanding, classic albums and a handful of loosies, guest appearances, and posthumous compilations that continue to fuel speculation about the heights that he could have reached. Just as Jimi never made an experimental jazz guitar album and Otis never made disco, Big never recorded Nastradamus or Kingdom Come.

In the final analysis, Biggie’s career is defined by death, but not necessarily his own. Many have observed that the title of his debut album, Ready To Die, was, in a way, a foreshadow of things to come, and that the second, Life After Death, serves as a chilling acknowledgement of what occurred just two weeks before its release. But on a deeper level, a careful listen to both records reveals Biggie’s obsession with death: what he sees happening around him, the ways in which he might die—possibly even by his own hand—and the unanswerable question of whether or not death is the end. Behind all of the jokes, tales of sexual escapades, and reflections on how enjoyable the playa lifestyle can be, at its heart Ready To Die is extremely nihilistic.

That nihilism begins with the cover art, which along with The Chronic is the first rap album cover I can remember noticing. Despite what Nas and Raekwon may think, Ready To Die’s cover probably owes more to Nevermind than it does Illmatic: Nas’s childhood photo laminated over the Queensbridge housing projects on his debut evokes nostalgia for his roots; Ready To Die, on the other hand, is a bleak statement about being born a black man in America. Here’s this cute baby with an afro and a diaper set against a stark white background, and we the viewers are invited to wonder what his future holds. In other words, the point is that every American black male is born “ready to die” because that’s what the statistics tell us (in actuality, the photo model is alive and well). As an 11-year-old American white male from rural Maine, this was completely lost on me at the time. Looking back on it now, I can’t help but feel goosebumps.

The cover also simply yet effectively communicates the album’s narrative arc, such that there is one. Ready To Die isn’t a concept album by any means, but it does chart the life of Christopher Wallace from the womb to the tomb, so to speak. The first sounds we hear on the intro are a heartbeat, a woman in labor, her partner urging her to push, and then a baby crying. The last sounds are of a gunshot, a body falling to the floor, a voice on the other end of the line pleading, and a heartbeat slowing to a stop. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go through it track-by-track; this is one album that is all killer, no filler.

Intro (link above): This is a classic rap album trope: the introductory skit that establishes where the rapper is coming from, sort of like a superhero’s origin story. Maybe this is symptomatic of having recently been listening to only mid-to-late 90s rap, but it seems to me that these sorts of intros used to be more common than they are now. There’s no actual rapping here. Instead we get something very similar to “The Genesis” on Illmatic, a mashup of different iconic sounds from “the culture.” Whereas for Nas it was an excerpt from Wild Style followed by a skit over that movie’s theme, Biggie’s intro is more personal, and more comprehensive in terms of situating him in a time and a place. It begins with Christopher Wallace’s birth in 1972 over the sounds of “Superfly,” followed by an argument between Biggie’s parents about his antics that turns quickly to violent threats while “Rapper’s Delight” (1979)—the birth of rap, officially-unofficially—plays, then Big and a friend discussing a plan to rob subway passengers set to “Top Billin’” (1987), and finally Big being taunted by a corrections officer as he’s released from prison and Snoop’s “Tha Shiznit” (1993) can be heard in the background (this last part is definitely pure fiction; Big’s only recorded stint inside was back in 1991). The point of the narrative is obvious, but the musical choices are also significant. Biggie was part of an emerging generation of rappers who could still remember a time before rap, but who also grew up alongside the genre, their lives’ milestones scored by a soundtrack featuring the likes of The Sugarhill Gang, Audio Two, and Snoop. By 1994, rap itself had changed several times over already, and with Biggie’s entry it was set to change again. This theme continues on the next track…

Things Done Changed: First of all, this is one of the few songs I can think of that takes full advantage of stereo sound as the beat jumps from right to left and back again before the first harmonies kick in. In college, my friends and I used to love driving around with Ready To Die in the tape deck and performing a ritual of sorts to this opening, nodding our heads and pointing to the speakers on one side of the car and then the other (Side note: after college when I moved to Prague, a group of friends rented a car one night for the express purpose of driving around the city and listening to this album in its entirety. We actually got pulled over when we accidentally found ourselves in a Czech police extortion trap and had to bribe our way out, but that’s another story…). “Things Done Changed” is exactly what the title declares: a mix of Biggie waxing nostalgic about the bygone days of his Brooklyn childhood and communicating the harsh reality of post-crack NYC. The “back in the day” rap is another trope, but whereas previous examples like The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” (1992), Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s “T.R.O.Y.” (1992), and even Nas’s “Memory Lane” (1994) all are accompanied by production that emphasizes the slow, sweet, happy remembrances of things past, “Things Done Changed”—with samples from 70s funk group The Main Ingredient—sounds downright foreboding. The message is that there’s no time to lament the past because it’s over and done with and the future is anything but certain. As if this point weren’t clear enough, the Dr. Dre sample on the chorus—“Remember they used to thump? But now they blast, right?”—and Biggie’s appeal to his contemporaries—“Motherfucker, this ain’t back in the day/ But you don’t hear me though”—eliminate any sense of ambiguity. There are so many great Biggie lines sprinkled throughout (e.g., “And we coming to the wake/ To make sure the crying and commotion ain’t a motherfucking fake”; “Back in the days our parents used to take care of us/ Look at ‘em now, they even fuckin’ scared of us”; and “The streets is a short stop/ Either you slingin’ crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot,” which incidentally was quoted in the cringeworthiest way possible in 2000’s Boiler Room), but one in particular stands out to me: “It make me wanna grab the 9 and the shotty/ But I gotta go identify the body.” A former roommate of mine always loved this part because it encapsulates not just Biggie’s moral dilemma, but in many ways the definitive contradictions of gangbanging and the drug trade: I’m so angry and in pain that I want to visit extreme violence upon the world, but at the same time I have to deal with the fallout of the violence around me in the most intimate of ways. Did I mention already that this album is nihilistic to the core?

Gimme The Loot: This song will always hold a special place in my memory. It was either this or Snoop’s version of “Lodi Dodi” that was the first rap I memorized word for word. In high school, my friends and I used to go out to the cross-country running trails after school to, uh, do what burnouts do, and more often than not would end up reciting “Gimme The Loot” in its entirety at the top of our lungs (I hope that we changed all the ****** to “suckas” or something…). Biggie voices two characters, both plotting small-scale robberies with grotesque levels of passion. For real, some of the lyrics for the album version had to be censored because, well, this: “I don’t give a fuck if you’re pregnant/ Give me the baby ring and the #1 mom pendant.” “Gimme The Loot” is also a perfect example of Big’s style: it’s played for laughs, but the subject matter is darker than dark. I like to think of this as a companion piece to “****** Bleed” from Life After Death—my all-time favorite Biggie track—which is about a much more ambitious robbery that is also full of jokes. In line with the album’s theme, “Gimme The Loot” ends with Big presumably dying in a hail of bullets during a shootout with the cops, “a true motherfucker going out for the loot.”

Machine Gun Funk: Ooh, this beat! As anyone who follows this account already knows, one of my favorite things about rap is how much great music I’ve been introduced to via samples. In this case, “Something Extra” by 70s funk band Black Heat. Easy Mo Bee, who produced this and five other tracks on Ready To Die, doesn’t get the acclaim of contemporaries like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, or Large Professor. But his bona fides are solid—coming up with the Juice Crew—and his work on this album is spectacular. As with “Gimme The Loot,” some of the lyrics in the second verse censored: “For the jackers, the jealous-ass crackers in the blue suits/ I’ll make you prove that it’s bulletproof.” This was, after all, around the time that NWA and Ice-T had provoked outrage—and FBI investigations!—for their anti-police lyrics. “Machine Gun Funk”’s overall gist is summed up in one line: “I’m doing rhymes now, fuck the crimes now.” In other words, Big is just as hard as he was on the ascent, but he’s transcended that life now and is making bank from rap. It’s another well-worn trope that’s become almost obligatory for rappers to talk about now.

Warning: Another funky Easy Mo Bee beat, this time with an Isaac Hayes sample. Biggie relates a story of being awakened early in the morning by a friend who has gotten wind that his enemies are plotting his demise (he also shouts out fellow Brooklynites M.O.P., which is a nice touch!). He demonstrates his capacity for catchy internal rhymes—“They heard about the Rolexes and the Lexus/ With the Texas license plates out of state/ They heard about the pounds you got down in Georgetown/ And they heard you got half Virginia locked down”—and penchant for clever metaphors—“There’s gonna be a lot of slow singin’ and flower bringin’/ If my burglar alarm starts ringin’”; “The criminals, tryna drop my decimals.” There’s also the continuation of the “ready to die” theme with a depressing statement about trust and paranoia: “It’s the ones that smoke blunts witcha, see your picture/ Now they wanna grab they guns and come and getcha.” “Warning” ends with a darkly funny skit of sorts that leads right into the next track…

Ready To Die: I mean, it’s right there in the title: this is the entire album in a nutshell. Big is defiant here and completely nihilistic: “My shit is deep, deeper than my grave, G/ I’m ready to die, and nobody can save me/ Fuck the world, fuck my moms and my girl/ My life is played out like a Jheri curl, I’m ready to die!” And why all the violence? It’s simple, really, a means to an end: “Shit is real, and hungry’s how I feel/ I rob and steal because that money got that whip appeal.” This Easy Mo Bee beat is appropriately eerie, too, flipping the organ from blaxploitation film score legend Willie Hutch’s “Hospital Prelude Of Love Theme.” “Warning” ends with Puffy reciting “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep,” similar to how he would start “You’re Nobody (‘Til Somebody Kills You)” on Life After Death with the 23rd Psalm: both are prayers about death and the afterlife.

One More Chance: This was one of the tracks that Big recorded during the second half of the Ready To Die sessions at Puffy’s urging. While Big allegedly didn’t want to make any concessions to commercial tastes, being the ever-calculating businessman that he is, Puff encouraged him to include a few tracks that weren’t just about robbing and killing. As such, the tone here is a little different from the album up to this point. However, it does give Big a chance to explore another of his signature topics and themes: sex, but in the lewdest way possible (I mean, he raps about shifting kidneys, shattering bladders, and “fuck[ing] her ‘til her nose bleed”). As my friend Jason pointed out to me recently, the skit in the intro is more interesting than it would appear at first, too. Ostensibly, it’s recordings of women on Big’s answering machine who he’s ghosted. However, the second caller doesn’t seem to be someone he’s slept with, but rather a female friend chiding him for being inconsiderate. Who knows whether this is meaningful or not, but maybe just maybe it’s a small subversion of the “g’s up, hoes down” mantra pervading rap? Eh, it’s a stretch. “One More Chance” was remixed and released as a single in 1995, becoming one of Big’s biggest hits. The original version is far superior, though, IMHO. Another minor note: verse 2 contains a cool shout out to Houston’s Geto Boys and the “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” video, complete with the beat switching up briefly to index that song.

Fuck Me (Interlude): A skit featuring Lil’ Kim. I usually don’t like rap skits, but this one is notable for making “Oreo cookie eatin’, pickle juice drinkin’, chicken gristle eatin’, biscuit fuckin’ suckin’ … V8 juice drinkin’, Slim Fast blendin’, black greasy muthafucka” into passable dirty talk. And that’s all I have to say about that.

The What: When Nas said, “My first album had no famous guest appearances/ The outcome: I’m crowned the best lyricist” on Stillmatic, this is the song he was talking about (well, either this or “Brooklyn’s Finest”… yeah, it was probably the latter). Given how rappers have stuck to the formula of paying for the services of more accomplished figures to drive interest in their debuts, it’s a testament to Nas’s and Big’s greatness that both Illmatic and Ready To Die only had one feature apiece: AZ on “Life’s A Bitch,” and Method Man on “The What.” With all due respect to AZ, no one’s mistaking him for a “famous” guest. Meth, on the other hand, had only really been famous for a couple of years at this point, but he was far and away Wu-Tang’s breakout star and would become the first group member to drop a post-36 Chambers solo just two months later. His participation here is also unexpected given the less-famous-yet-still-potent beef that existed between Wu-Tang and Biggie. Collabos and features are often underwhelming; either the guest feels like an unnecessary afterthought, or ends up “murder[ing] you on your own shit.” In this case, though, Meth is able to keep pace with Big and vice versa. Although his chemistry with Redman is legendary and their work together was super enjoyable, “The What” makes me wonder what a Meth and Biggie full-length would have sounded like. Easy Mo Bee laces the beat with the most stonerific production on the album, a laid back, fried melody that samples the outro to Leroy Huston’s “Can’t Say Enough About Mom” (1974). It works!

Juicy: It’s funny, this used to be my least favorite track on Ready To Die, entirely because of the chorus, which I thought was too “soft.” But now that I’m older, I appreciate its anthem-ness and the funky-ass Mtume sample. “Juicy” was, of course, the album’s lead single, but it was recorded toward the end of the sessions because Puff realized that they needed a radio-ready hit if Biggie was going to be a success. As a result, it’s the most discordant track on the album because of its uplifting tone, message of positivity, and nothing in the lyrics about death or dying. Along with “Things Done Changed,” this is the most autobiographical song on Ready To Die. And it’s chock full of quotables: “Time to get paid/ Blow up like the World Trade” (which has subsequently been censored in post-9/11 radio versions); “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way”; “Considered a fool cuz I dropped out of high school” (that one always resonated with me, haha); “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/ When I was dead broke, man, I couldn’t picture this” (which sounds hilarious now as far as stunting goes); “Birthdays was the worst days/ Now we sip champagne when we thirstay.” Also like “Things Done Changed,” “Juicy” is a nod to the past—the first verse is basically a list of 80s rap influencers—while signaling that a paradigm shift is happening; when Big says, “You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far,” he means for both himself and for the genre as a whole. He probably would have been a star anyway without “Juicy,” but its inclusion on Ready To Die definitely helped drive his early mainstream appeal.

Everyday Struggle: This anthem is still relevant today. They wouldn’t be brave enough (or stupid enough, depending on your perspective) to actually do it, but Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders could totally use this as a campaign song in 2020. The name of the game here is “precarity” and the choices people make just to survive. The sample, from Dave Grusin’s cheesy 80s jazz composition “Either Way” (1980), starts off in a vaporwavish muffle that makes the intro sound like a classic TV theme song. And then immediately we’re vaulted back into Biggie’s bleak, nihilistic take on contemporary life, and his suicidal ideations (a foreshadowing of things to come…): “I don’t wanna live no more/ Sometimes I hear death knocking at my front door/ I’m living everyday like a hustle, another drug to juggle/ Another day, another struggle.” The whole song is about drug dealing, but it’s not all glorification: Big makes it quite clear that a) violence and the possibility (inevitability?) of death are ever-present, and b) it is an endeavor that is fundamentally about preying on one’s community. As he puts it, “Baggin’ five at a time/ I can clock about nine on the check cashin’ line/ I had the first and the third rehearsed, that’s my word,” all of which is to say that he had a clear understanding of the temporal rhythms of government assistance, wage payments, and the financial habits of the unbanked. It’s less of a lament than what appears in other rappers’ odes to “the game,” but I think it’d be remiss to ignore his discomfort with being a participant in an activity that clearly destroys lives and neighborhoods.

Me & My Bitch: Woooooo, talk about a problematic song! This is Kevin Gates before Kevin Gates. On the one hand, you could make a legitimate case for “Me & My Bitch” being the most romantic gangsta rap song ever (which is saying something in and of itself). On the other hand, Big would definitely be cancelled in 2019 for this. The opening line is classic Biggie humor: “I’ll admit when I first saw you my thoughts was a trip/ You looked so good, huh, I’d suck on your daddy’s dick.” But it soon devolves into your run-of-the-mill rap misogyny: “When the time is right, the wine is right/ I treat you right; you talk slick, I beat you right.” It’s all a fantasy—AFAIK Big never had a romantic relationship like the one depicted here—that’s the textbook definition of “ride or die.” Emphasis on “die” because that’s where the song ends up (because of course it does, this is Ready To Die after all). At first, Big tells us, “And if I deceive, she won’t take it lightly/ She’ll invite me, politely, to fight, G/ And then we lie together, cry together/ I swear to God I hope we fuckin’ die together,” which say what you will, that’s kind of a sweet sentiment. But alas, he doesn’t get his wish, as his lover is gunned down by his enemies, collateral in a war against him. Again, his eulogy for her is also kind of sweet, in a perverse way: “It didn’t take long before the tears start/ I saw my bitch dead with a gunshot to the heart/ And I know it was meant for me/ I guess the ****** felt they had to kill the closest one to me/ And when I find ‘em, your life is to an end/ They killed my best friend.”

Big Poppa: Another of the more radio-friendly, Puffy-inspired tracks, and consequently one of the album’s biggest hits (and second single). This is also the closest the Ready To Die comes to emulating 1994’s pop rap zeitgeist as the production on “Big Poppa” is clearly g-funk, complete with a high-pitched synthesizer straight out of Dre’s toolkit. It’s quite the contrast with the previous track, going from “ghetto soap opera” to “big willie playa fantasy.” Overall, “Big Poppa” is solid club song. Also, did Biggie invent the “weird flex” with this line: “A t-bone steak, cheese, eggs, and Welch’s grape”?

Respect: This one’s a nod to Biggie’s Jamaican roots, and introduces another chapter in the autobiography established through “Things Done Changed” and “Juicy.” “Respect” features Jamaican reggae/dancehall singer Diana King on the hook and reggae-ish beat from Poke of the Trackmasters that interpolates KC & The Sunshine Band’s “I Get Lifted” (1975). Even here Biggie pushes the “ready to die” theme as he narrates his birth!: “Umbilical cord wrapped around my neck/ I’m seein’ my death, and I ain’t even took my first step.” Verse 2 contains some more reflection on the uncertainties of the drug game: “Put the drugs on the shelf? Nah, couldn’t see it/ Scarface, King of New York, I wanna be it/ Rap was secondary, money was necessary/ Until I got incarcerated, kinda scary/ … Time to contemplate, damn, where did I fail?/ All the money I stacked was all the money for bail.”

Friend Of Mine: Easy Mo Bee does it again! Another of my favorite beats on Ready To Die. This one’s mostly Biggie-style sexual humor, similar to “One More Chance” only funkier and more misogynistic. It’s Big’s version of “g’s up, hoes down” or “Scandalouz.” The double standard regarding male and female promiscuity is in full effect. Even so, there’s a cleverness to the lyrics; Big’s descriptions are just plain different from other rappers’ (side note: the same argument can be made for Gucci Mane): “I don’t give a bitch enough to catch the bus/ And when I see the semen, I’m leavin’”; “Now I play her far like a moon play a star.”

Unbelievable: Scoring a DJ Premier beat for your album in the 90s was basically confirmation that you were someone worth paying attention to. Nas did it with Illmatic, and Big pulled the legendary producer’s card for this, the final track recorded for Ready To Die. Premo even gave Big a discount, charging him less than his usual fee because he’d gone overbudget already! The sample, from The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach The President” (1973), is well-traveled territory in rap, having been sampled in dozens of songs already by that point. “Unbelievable”’s content is mostly just Biggie boasting about his greatness at all things. And you’ve gotta respect the audacity of sampling yourself, from another song on the same album, giving yourself props (“Biggie Smalls is the illest!”). Even without a clear narrative or any deeper message, “Unbelievable” is a showcase of Biggie’s range of technical skills from internal rhymes—“And those that rushes my clutches get put on crutches/ Get smoked like Dutches”—to sly metaphors—“I got three hundred and fifty-seven ways/ To simmer sauté”—and original adjectives—“car weed-scented.” Big and Premier would link up again on Life After Death for two of that album’s standouts—“Kick In The Door” and “Ten Crack Commandments”—but three tracks still feels like far too few for such a potent combination.

Suicidal Thoughts: Dear lord, what an ending! If you doubted that Ready To Die was nihilistic up to this point, “Suicidal Thoughts” leaves no question as to the tone that Big intended. This is my second favorite of Biggie’s songs, and IMHO his most poignant. I almost feel as if he invented emo-rap here, letting the listener into his tortured psyche in a way that only Pac and Eminem have even come close to imitating. I’ve written about this track and my fondness for it already, naming it my “rap of the year” for 1994. The overall concept is Big calling up Puff to deliver what amounts to a suicide note. As Puffy pleads with him not to go through with it, Biggie enumerates all of the reasons that he’s “a piece of shit, it ain’t hard to fucking tell” and why the world would be better off without him: his criminal escapades, his sense that he’d let down his loved ones, his lies and infidelity. The key passages: “All my life I been considered as the worst/ Lyin’ to my mother, even stealin’ out her purse/ Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion/ I know my mother wish she got a fuckin’ abortion/ She don’t even love me like she did when I was younger/ Suckin’ on her chest just to stop my fuckin’ hunger/ I wonder if I died, would tears come to her eyes?/ Forgive me for my disrespect, forgive me for my lies”; “People at the funeral frontin’ like they miss me/ My baby mama kiss me, but she glad I’m gone/ She know me and her sister had somethin’ goin’ on.” Additionally, this is one of the things that truly separates Big from Pac when it comes to their musings on death and the afterlife: while Pac rapped about heaven and “thugz mansion,” Big seemed convinced that he was headed to hell both here and elsewhere: “When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell/ … It don’t make sense goin’ to heaven with the goodie-goodies/ Dressed in white; I like black Timbs and black hoodies.” If “Ready To Die” was a defiant declaration, then “Suicidal Thoughts” is Biggie proving that it was no lie, that he is, in fact, ready to pass on even if it’s his own doing. The beat is handled by Lord Finesse—another boom-bap veteran—and complements perfectly the tension that builds until the final moments: the gunshot, the thud, and the flatlining heartbeat (the sample is Miles Davis’s “Lonely Fire” (1974)).

There’s no denying Ready To Die’s place in the pantheon of rap history. People can debate whether or not it and/or Big are the greatest ever, which is fine, but ultimately meaningless. What we have here is an album that can be enjoyed on many different levels. And even if it is all about death, as with any work of art, it will live on as long as people keep listening to and loving it.

#25th anniversary #biggie #ready to die

[poetrybooksya]

#EMPTYSHELFIE Spookie Shelfie TBR

  Empty Shelfie is a year-long reading challenge to empty your incredibly long TBR list. For the Halloween season this month, here are 7 challenges from 7 hosts: Heather at Zether Books, Taylor at Bookish Taylor, Roya at Unicorn Hunter Books, Britt at Britt, Ali at Hardback Hoarder, and Desi at Libri Labra Twitter. Challenges: Serial Killer POV Read a book involving a spell or curse Supernatural/paranormal elements Freakish characters Read a book with a Mask in title or cover Black and orange cover Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you

I'm not a huge fan of horror or supernatural genre, so my TBR will be pretty small, compared to last month. Challenges:

Serial Killer POV - Because You Love to Hate Me by  Ameriie, Renee Ahdieh, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, Nicola Yoon, Sasha Alsberg, Whitney Atkinson, Tina Burke, Catriona Feeney, Jesse George, Zoë Herdt, Samantha Lane, Sophia Lee, Raeleen Lemay, Regan Perusse, Christine Riccio, Steph Sinclair, Kat Kennedy, Ben Alderson  Best-selling authors working with Booktubers on the perspectives of villians? Yes, please!! Summary: Leave it to the heroes to save the world--villains just want to rule the world. In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like "Medusa," Sherlock Holmes, and "Jack and the Beanstalk" provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage--and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again! Featuring writing from . . . Authors: Renée Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, and Nicola Yoon BookTubers: Benjamin Alderson (Benjaminoftomes), Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), Whitney Atkinson (WhittyNovels), Tina Burke (ChristinaReadsYA blog and TheLushables), Catriona Feeney (LittleBookOwl), Jesse George (JessetheReader), Zoë Herdt (readbyzoe), Samantha Lane (Thoughts on Tomes), Sophia Lee (thebookbasement), Raeleen Lemay (padfootandprongs07), Regan Perusse (PeruseProject), Christine Riccio (polandbananasBOOKS), and Steph Sinclair & Kat Kennedy (Cuddlebuggery blog and channel). 

Read a book involving a spell or curse - One Wish Away by Ingrid Seymour I'm a member of Ingrid's ARC team, but I haven't read her latest works since her first book, Ignite the Shadows back in 2014. So I'm excited to try to get into this one for this challenge.  Summary: Faris is a Djinn with a secret and Marielle the first master to give him hope. Will she be the one to break his curse? There is no telling. All he really knows is she's ONE WISH AWAY from breaking his heart. When Marielle was little, she used to believe Grandpa about his wish-granting Djinn. But now that she’s older, her beliefs have changed, and things like lousy ex-boyfriends and alcoholic fathers have become her reality. Life isn’t done shattering her truths, though, and when Grandpa dies and the Djinn he warned her never to trust shows up at her doorstep, the world becomes a dangerous, magical place she never knew existed. Reeling for her once-normal life, Marielle soon realizes there’s no going back—not when she’s become part of a mortal conflict between two spell-bound Djinn. Faris—her handsome slave. And Zet—his vengeance-hungry brother. They both want something from her. One, her love. The other one, her life. Now she’s afraid she will die in love. One Wish Away is a young adult paranormal romance that will appeal to lovers of Hush Hush, Twilight, and the Fallen series. 

Supernatural/paranormal elements - Unreality by Ingrid Seymour (blog tour with Marked by Fate box set, where the book is from) Summary: Ever since she helped solve her mother’s gruesome murder twelve years ago, Meadow Bright has kept her psychic abilities locked away. As a five-year-old, the brutal visions of her mother’s death nearly destroyed her. Now, a senior in high school, she still fears her nature and what opening up could do to her. But when a classmate is found viciously tortured and murdered, her powers return with a vengeance, flooding her mind with new visions and opening old wounds. Worst of all, the new victim wears the signature of her mother’s killer, a man who’s still in jail under a life sentence without parole. It seems that, all those years ago, she made a mistake and helped put the wrong man in jail. Now, she must redeem herself before more people die.

Freakish characters - Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Summary: Cassandra Clare meets Caribbean legend in SHADOWSHAPER, an action-packed urban fantasy from a bold new talent. Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra's near-comatose abuelo begins to say "Lo siento" over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep.... Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on. Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order's secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick's supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family's past, present, and future.   Read a book with a Mask in title or cover - Sadly, I can't think of a book that can fill in this prompt, so I'll skip it. 

Black and orange cover - Mexican Whiteboy by Matt de la Pena Summary: Danny's tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. Ninety-five mile an hour fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it. But at his private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’ s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blond hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged. But it works the other way too. And Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. That’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he may just have to face the demons he refuses to see--the demons that are right in front of his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming. Set in the alleys and on the ball fields of San Diego County, Mexican Whiteboy is a story of friendship, acceptance, and the struggle to find your identity in a world of definitions. 

Concept of a person/place/thing that terrifies you - The First Hour I Believed by Wally Lamb Not only does the cover haunt me, but the summary does too. Columbine High School shooting? Trauma? PTSD? Whoa...what an experience.  Summary: Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity. What's your TBR list for Empty Shelfie's Spookie Shelfie season? Leave comments below!

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#book club #book sets #cassandra clare #Empty Shelfie #ingrid seymour #October 2017 #personal #sabaa

[halloweendailynews]

The new horror comedy Boo takes place on Halloween night in 1984, when a killer in a bed sheet ghost costume targets a group of teens, and while it pays homage to some of our favorite classics, it also marks the arrival of an exciting new voice to the genre in the film’s writer, producer, director, and star Dana Melanie, who’s ready to scare you and excited to get bloody.

Boo is Melanie’s first feature-length project as both writer and director, but she is no stranger to acting, having starred as a kidnapping survivor in the 2014 thriller Treehouse, a murderous outcast in the 2016 short film Lissy Borton Had an Axe, and most recently as legendary author Emily Dickinson in this year’s Wild Nights with Emily, which had its world premiere at the prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

In each role, she is unafraid to completely commit to transforming her physicality to fit each part, convincingly embracing a southern drawl for the tough heroine of Treehouse and a tragic lisp and braces as the title character in Lissy Borton. In the short comedy Waiting to Die in Bayside, Queens, she fully embodies a native New York teenager in 1976 talking to her diary about all the ways she is likely about to die.

Having written and directed a few smaller projects before, Boo will be Melanie’s feature film directorial debut, and when we talked a few weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to find out how she landed on Halloween in 1984.

In our pleasantly candid conversation, we discussed recreating the innocence of the ’80s, finding the right balance between Mean Girls and Halloween, and the timely importance of a woman calling the shots in the #MeToo era.

Read on for our exclusive interview with filmmaker Dana Melanie, on creating a killer in the gray area between comedy and horror.

Dana Melanie

What are some of your Halloween memories from when you were growing up? Did you celebrate Halloween a lot as a kid?

Yeah, I remember in my elementary school, we had a Halloween Day parade. We’d all dress up in our costumes and just parade around our track, which was not a big track. It was elementary school sized, but in my mind it was gigantic.

I remember my mom used to make my Halloween costumes. I was a gypsy one year, and it was freezing and raining. I was probably 7, and it was a midriff, so I was like, ‘But I want to show it, because you made it’. I had to wear a jacket because I was freezing and the rain was ice cold, but I was determined. My mom had spent all the time making it. She had the pattern and everything.

The homemade costumes are the best.

Very true.

How did you get into acting? Did you grow up in Los Angeles?

Yes, I’m from Los Angeles, born and raised. My whole family is from New York, so I spend a lot of time back and forth.

I have been acting and writing for several years now, basically my whole life. My mom is also a writer and she used to act a little when she was younger, so I don’t know, I just fell into it. It was always what I wanted to do and what I’m meant to do.

I’ve been writing a lot recently, and Boo is the script that I decided to take the leap with first, because I think audiences will respond to it. I have another film that I wrote, but it’s a little more dramatic and heavier. With Boo, I thought it would be a good starting point.

This is a first step for you as far as writing and directing a feature, but you’re certainly not new to acting. I love your work in Treehouse and Lissy Borton Had an Axe. Can you talk a little bit about those projects? Treehouse seemed like a pretty demanding role.

Treehouse was amazing. That was basically my first real project as an actress, my first big role. We shot it in rural Missouri for about a month. It was a fantastic experience. I met some of my best friends on that film. Actually our first A.D. on Treehouse is the director who directed me in Lissy. I learned so much. I got a taste of the horror/thriller side of the industry. It was a very good jumping off point for me. I’m so happy that I got the opportunity.

And then Lissy, I’m just obsessed with. It kind of takes the horror and has a little bit of comedy in it also. I love those films.

Dana Melanie directing a short teaser for ‘WS16’, which she also wrote.

Let’s talk about Boo. Where did this idea come from, and why did you decide to set the film in 1984?

I just love the ‘80s. I love films that are set in the ‘80s. That’s sort of how I came about wanting to write Boo. I just think that there’s this realness to them and a simplicity, but it’s also so entertaining, which I think is what movies are about.

I wanted explore what it would be like to have a scream queen that you kind of wanted to die, because she’s so mean. I started toying with that concept, and I was coming up with one liners and ideas. I thought, ‘Well, if you throw it back to back in the day on Halloween, costumes were kind of quirky and funny, and they weren’t necessarily like what we have today.’ So you had little kids in sheets with black eyes running around, and it was so simplistic and endearing and cute, but it could also still be terrifying if you saw that in the middle of the road in the middle of the night staring at you. It’s unsettling.

Then adding in the ‘80s itself, I mean, I thought it was a no-brainer because there’s so much to work with. The ‘80s just was an explosion of film and art and politics, so I just love it. Plus jazzercise, I mean, you can’t go wrong with jazzercise. (laughs)

 So it was honestly because I love watching films that are from or are set back in the ‘80s. And you’re seeing it more and more in TV right now too.

Between things like Stranger Things and Glow on Netflix, the ‘80s are definitely all over the pop culture landscape right now.

I think it’s because there are so many different layers to it. So much happened in that time, and there are so many avenues to explore with it.

That’s what I thought was such a great thing about the ‘80s, was just how pure and just entertaining the films were, so that’s what we hope to bring back with this.

Obviously Halloween was different in 1984 than it is now, so I imagine you’ll be playing with that quite a bit in the film. I’ve seen where you’ve described Boo as sort of Mean Girls meets Halloween with a dash of Scream and Clueless thrown in, which sounds great. How will you be using those influences?

  Again, I love stylized films, with wardrobe especially, which is how the ‘80s is really going to play a big part. That’s where like the Mean Girls and the Clueless comes in. And then you have Halloween, which is the actual gut of it.

We have our three main girls, Blair, Betty, and Becca, the three B’s. They’re the ones that you love to hate, who are the popular girls, naturally. So playing with all of that is really what we’re planning on doing, and just going with the whole concept of how back in the ‘80s you had all those Pretty in Pink, where it’s a popular girl and a not popular girl and how they’re clashing with each other. So we play a lot with that, and just getting back to those old movies and how the vibe was in high school.

It’s really about these high school kids and how they’re dealing with this psychopath who decided to show up and start killing people.

Would you say the tone is going to be more comedic or more horror, or will it walk the line?

 It’s going to walk the line. The comedy of it may read a little slapstick, but it’s not going to be that, because it will be performed very real. It’s like real life, you know, you have these tragedy moments, but then there could be something funny that happens, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’m not supposed to laugh, but I’m going to laugh because it was funny.’

Nothing is black and white. Real life is all about the gray area, so we’re going to be toying around a lot with the gray area.

Scream is one of my favorites, and it’s very funny throughout the movie, but when the horror comes, it’s serious horror. Would you say that when the horror does come into play in Boo that it will be similar to that?

 Yeah, it definitely will. I think Scream makes fun of the whole concept of horror films a little bit more than we are going to, but when it gets down to the horror, I mean, it’s definitely going to be a murderer after these kids, and that’s scary.

‘Boo’ promo image

How did you decide on the look of your killer, using just a simple ghost sheet?

You know, I think it goes back to what I said before, being back in the day and having these simple costumes. I was thinking, ‘How could I make a monster that people wouldn’t necessarily find scary, but then make it scary?’ I think a sheet that you have on your bed, everybody’s got one, is a great way to play with that, and be like, ‘Well, you don’t think ghosts are scary, but wait until you see our film. You might change your mind.’

And it’s such an iconic old school, classic costume idea too.

Exactly, (we can) kind of bring it back.

You mentioned that a lot of what’s going to bring the ‘80s feel is in the costumes. Are you doing things like trying to find vintage Halloween décor of the time to incorporate?

It’s great because the location where we’re shooting is a school that’s actually been abandoned for a few years. We just location scouted for it the other day, and it looks like it was locked in that time. So the location itself is going to be so incredible and really add to the aesthetic of it.

And the language, some of the lines that we have are going to cater to the slang that was used back then. And yeah, of course the decorations also, and the ghost himself in the sheet.

It all sounds great. You’re running a crowd funding campaign now, but the film is definitely going into production, regardless if the Indiegogo goal is met or not, is that right?

Yes. We’re talking to investors right now, so that’s where the majority (of our budget) is coming from. But we wanted to start our Indiegogo because we wanted to start hype and we wanted to engage with our audience as soon as possible, and allow them to give us feedback of what they’re responding to, and allow them to be involved. It’s a great way to engage with an audience, and it’s not just giving us money, you’re buying a perk that’s going to give you a download of the film the day it premieres.

So we thought it was just a great opportunity for everybody to learn and engage, and to see what’s working and maybe what’s not working.

The more money we raise, the more blood we can have, the bigger name actors we can have, the more extensive our stunts can be. Every bit helps, especially when it’s on an indie film like ours.

What are some of your other influences as far as filmmakers?

I’ve been heavily inspired lately by the directors that I’ve recently worked with. I’ve done a lot of independent films, and each one is a completely new experience.

You know, indie films, they’re hard. You’re working against the elements to make this art, and hope that people respond to it and see it, so all of these directors and writers that I’ve worked with really inspired me to push forward and create my own stuff, and especially now. As a woman writer, my voice I think is important in its own unique way, so I want to be heard.

I’ve just been learning by watching. I love being on set. I don’t hide away in my room or trailer, I like to be there (on set) asking questions and learning, and figuring out as much as I can. Honestly that’s where I’ve been really heavily inspired, by all the directors that I’ve been working with recently and in the past.

Dana Melanie at the premiere of ‘Waiting to Die in Bayside, Queens’ in 2017.

Can you talk a little bit about the significance of the fact that you are a female writer, director, producer, and star of your own feature film in the current #MeToo era?

I just got back from South by Southwest, because my film Wild Nights with Emily premiered there. Our director, Madeleine Olnek, wrote and directed it, and she did an outstanding job. It’s a really artistic piece of work. I was inspired by her. And there was another film there that had a male who wrote, directed, and starred in his film, and I thought, ‘I can do that. Why don’t I just do that?’

It’s terrifying. I’ve never done this before. I’ve written before and I’ve directed a little short before for a script I did. I think I’m starting to gain enough experience. And because I’m so terrified, I think that means that I absolutely have to do this. I think what scares you is something that is – you need to take that leap. Otherwise, what’s worth it in the end? It’s the things that scare you which have the biggest rewards.

And then being a woman. Blair, the main character, I didn’t want her to be just your typical scream queen. In my opinion, she’s deeper than that. She’s got layers. She’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s an alpha woman girl who’s figuring all this out on her own. I think as a woman writing a female lead in a horror character, I think it’s important, and I’m excited to see how audiences respond to her and to the whole film itself.

So when do you begin shooting Boo?

Filming is going to take place this October.

So you’ll be filming right during Halloween season and getting those real October vibes, which is awesome.

Exactly.

And you’re filming in Minnesota, right?

Yes, Kiester, Minnesota.

How did you pick that location?

Actually, our producer, Mike, is from Kiester, Minnesota. It’s this extremely small town. Hardly anybody’s heard of it. Their claim to fame is a Preparation H commercial was filmed there I think last year. So we’re bringing Hollywood to Kiester. (laughs)

We originally assumed it was going to be filmed here in Los Angeles, because that’s where we’re all based, and our producer, Mike, was just telling us stories one day about his childhood in this small town. And I went on Google Earth and was just going through the streets and everything, and I thought, ‘Hey, this would be a great location for Boo to be filmed.’ The script wasn’t even finished yet. It was just kind of sitting there, because I was working on other things.

When I saw the town, it sort of just put everything into full gear, and I finished it and decided we’re going to do this now.

We’re shooting for 12 days in October. Then we’ll go into post production. And hopefully we can make a deal and get this out for October 2019.

I can’t wait to show it to everybody. I’m so excited.

‘Boo’ writer/director/producer/actor Dana Melanie

What else can you tell us about Boo?

 Let’s see. I’m trying to think of how many people die. There’s a lot, actually. (laughs) I want to say that there’s going to be seven deaths.

Are you excited about shooting those scenes?

I’m so excited. I can’t wait to start killing people and get that blood gushing everywhere. Yeah, it will be really fun. And we’re playing with it. We’re going to get a little Hitchcock with it, where you don’t necessarily see things, but you will.

I assure you, there will be blood and guts. (laughs)

_

Boo is currently raising a portion of its budget through an Indiegogo campaign running until July 11, which you can contribute to in exchange for some sweet perks here.

Keep watching Halloween Daily News, as we are excited to cover the development of this fun new Halloween film.

Dana Melanie

For more Halloween news, follow @HalloweenDaily.

'Boo' Writer/Director Dana Melanie [Interview] The new horror comedy Boo takes place on Halloween night in 1984, when a killer in a bed sheet ghost costume targets a group of teens, and while it pays homage to some of our favorite classics, it also marks the arrival of an exciting new voice to the genre in the film's writer, producer, director, and star Dana Melanie, who's ready to scare you and excited to get bloody.

#Boo #Dana Melanie

[allyousaidisshit]

1-100 🐬🐬

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? more milk

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? no

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? sheets of paper

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? i don’t drink coffee unless it is this sugary ass coffee from the super market / i drink my tea without anything

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? yes, i’m conscious of everything lol

6: do you keep plants? yip

7: do you name your plants? why would i

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? photography idk??

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yes 

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? side

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends? 1. “du gute Hure” 2. “Stangentanz” 3. “Jesus M.”

12: what's your favorite planet? idk the earth lol

13: what's something that made you smile today? my friends

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? it would be fucking messy like really really really messy

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! your weight on mercury would be 38% of your weight on earth

16: what's your favorite pasta dish? Spaghetti 

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? Silver

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. - i once managed to throw one friend of mine over my shoulders - wrestling style AND I DIDN’T MEAN TO

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? I have like a diary of a genius and i write in it once in 231423 years

20: what's your favorite eye color? blue

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. - I have a love/ hate relationship with my blue Leo print bag that i take with me to school since like idk 8th grade

22: are you a morning person? i’m not that moody in the morning

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? obsess over gayness and watch random youtube videos

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? i don’t even trust myself

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into? never did that

26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit? Dr. Martens 1460 in black but they have like flowers in black on it

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor? peppermint 

28: sunrise or sunset? sunset

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? my friends aren’t cute, they are Horen

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? yes, in 3rd grade bc of a stupid youtube video

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. - i don’t like to wear socks

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. - it was my 16th birthday and we went outside into my garden, played a stupid song and played with glow sticks

33: what's your fave pastry? idk

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? i don’t remember a stuffed animal that i was obsessed with

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? i like pretty pens, but i am to stupid to use them soooo

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now? Queen bc queen fits always

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? i would like to keep it clean but it isn’t 

38: tell us about your pet peeves! - stupid people

39: what color do you wear the most? black

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you? - golden earrings that my grandparents bought for me, i love them and wear them ever since

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving? Harry Potter

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! don’t have one

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? My friends

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? i don't know

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? yes

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. - i can’t think of one

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? - Brussels sprouts

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? - spiders idk and no it isn’t

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? I love to buy CDs, the last one was a Freddie Mercury one

50: what's an odd thing you collect? i don’t think that there is anything odd about keeping post cards and other travel related stuff

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? Bohemian Rhapsody

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? myself, I’m my favorite meme

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? nope

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? one of my friends

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point? i honestly don’t remember

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? their smile

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? bitch this is my fucking favorite song of all time, i fucking celebrate it

58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? - idk

59: what's your favorite myth? - idk

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? - well i enjoy the poetry in Kill your darlings

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received? i once gave toilet paper with asians on it to someone

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? don’t drink any

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? - they are inside of a shelf

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? black

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with? many people

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? idk

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? idk

68: what's winter like where you live? cold and idk

69: what are your favorite board games? Mensch ärgere dich nicht

70: have you ever used a ouija board? nope

71: what's your favorite kind of tea? peppermint

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it?kinda

73: what are some of your worst habits? saying stupid stuff that offends people

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. - stupid and a hoe

75: tell us about your pets! i have a bunny

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't? nope

77: pink or yellow lemonade? idk

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? hateclub

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? existing 

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? pastel pink and i choose it because i liked it

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. - the ocean

82: are/were you good in school? i am very good

83: what's some of your favorite album art? idk

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? yes, mostly words and lyrics

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? don’t read them

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? idk

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? Harry Potter

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? idk

89: are you close to your parents? depends, but yes

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. i love London, it is just really beautiful

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? Italy

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? i don’t like cheese on pasta

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most? open

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? my cousin

95: what are your plans for this weekend? i’m traveling to Italy

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? i procrastinate 

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? INTP, Gemini, Slytherin

98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? never went hiking

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. bohemian rhapsody

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? idk, it’s difficult to answer that