#he's from a story i created during the pandemic. it was originally called 'The Other Side'

[skeletoninthemelonland]

"The Exocannis Ressurection"

#been experiencing (seasonal) difficulties to feel satisfied with my art. especially if it's digital #i can't make fanart of other things i enjoy besides fnaf or listen to new music without feeling 'unknown' to it #everything is too much. new stuff becomes overwhelming and discouraging. people might not like it. (IT KEEPS HAPPENING RAGHHH)) #so im breaking the cycle by trying something that i came up with months ago (AGAIN) #as some people might know. the character i drew here is Hunter. and he's my OC #he's from a story i created during the pandemic. it was originally called 'The Other Side' #i got obsessed and started making art. it truly felt like i was part of a huge community. when it was just me in my room #i feel like i said this before. but after Behind The Codes. this story is probably going to be the next thing i'll be working with #starbsart #original character

[comicweek]

Just to get this out of the way at the top, this isn’t really the space for me to critique the promotional and commercial system that justifies the sale of Ezra Miller’s image in relation to this movie, given all they stand accused of. Nor is it my place to judge Miller for the numerous legal issues swirling around them. While I don’t believe in separating art from the artist, film is a collaborative medium that hundreds of other people worked on to bring a movie to light. Miller’s off-screen episodes are the least of this film’s problems unless you want to get into a discussion about the film’s marketing. If you don’t want to see this movie because of Miller’s involvement in it, go right ahead. The Flash is, ultimately at best, a middling film that offers nothing new and perpetuates the reflexive hollow nostalgia that has propped up Hollywood blockbusters since Batman (1989). If this is one of the best superhero films DC Studios co-head James Gunn has ever seen, either he hasn’t seen very many of them or has a low opinion of the genre. Now if you want to find out why I think of the film in this way, read on.

Honestly, the fact that this film isn’t a Suicide Squad (2016)-style garbage fire – because of the sheer amount of developmental hell, corporate changes in direction, and everything in between – is commendable. It isn’t technically broken in the way that film was butchered, most likely because reshooting major chunks of the film would’ve been cost-prohibitive. This movie had three endings shot! So much has changed about this film that I am certainly forgetting something. The swirl of intrigue around the meta-narrative of this film is more interesting because the film itself is honestly kind of boring. To screenwriter Christina Hodson, director Andy Muschietti, and his producing partner Barbara Muschietti’s credit, this isn’t a bad movie. It just never offers viewers anything new.

Timing is everything, something the lead character Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), abundantly lacks. He’s always late to work at the CCPD crime lab, which makes it fitting that The Flash is ultimately so late to the comic book movie party, any novelty over the promise of the multiverse in storytelling or the nostalgic extended cameos of heroes from previous eras feels like old hat. Now some of this lateness isn’t entirely the film’s fault, the COVID pandemic did set off a chain of events that pushed the film from July 1, 2022 to June 2023. But that is after the films original release date of March 23, 2018, where it would’ve beaten Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to the punch and introduced the multiverse to cinemas. (Which still would’ve been well after the The Flash TV show as part of the Arrowverse had already done that years prior.) Instead of being one of the first films, The Flash is one of the last with Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Across the Spider-verse all coming out and laying the groundwork for how audiences understand these multiverse movies. To say nothing of Everything Everywhere All At Once coming out last year and really showing everyone how it is done.

The “Flashpoint” story-event from 2011 inspires the core of this film, wherein Barry goes back in time to stop the murder of his mother and the imprisonment of his father, something the show also already did, better in their own way. In the process, he creates a nightmarish alternate earth where there is no Justice League, or in the case of the film, Superman, to stop General Zod during the events of Man of Steel. To try and fix this Barry must go on a search with an alternate version of himself, also played by Miller and Ed Wade, and find Batman. Only this Batman isn’t Ben Affleck; it’s Michael Keaton reprising the role, and the Superman is Supergirl, Kara Zor-el played by Sasha Calle.

The film’s core themes of accepting the bad things in our past and learning to move forward are essentially what Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness wanted to be about. This film is perhaps more structurally competent than Multiverse of Madness but lacks any sequence on par with the Rami-esque energy of Wanda’s horrifying destruction of the Illuminati. There is nothing about this film that is emotionally or thematically new or interesting. The fact that this movie comes out a couple of weeks after Across the Spider-verse is perhaps the worst timing imaginable. The animated Spider-man sequel is a plainly better movie on every level. Go see that or watch Everything Everywhere All at Once.

#The Flash #Michael Keaton #Sasha Calle #DCEU #andy muschietti #movie review

[jecook]

My Hero Academia and Mutual Aid

My Hero Academia continues to fascinate me not just for its fun cast of characters and sweet action scenes, but also for the well-observed commentary on justice.

An anecdote: this morning, my father told me a story about visiting a state park by a lake where many people bring paddleboards, canoes, etc. On his way to the restroom, he ran into a board that someone had left in the hallway, which was strangely darkened so he couldn't see what he was about to run into. His leg was bleeding--not bad enough for stitches but enough that they would need some first aid. He and one of our relatives couldn't find anyone in the lakeside building, so they went to a ranger station. There, the rangers said it wasn't their job to do first aid and they had no ability to give first aid. They informed my father and our relative that the state had sold the right to the lakehouse business to a private company, therefore the park rangers were not responsible for anything there. This of course includes surfboards left in dark hallways and injuries received from them. So my dad and my relative head to the camp store, where they say that he can purchase a first aid kit or he can find a medical center, but that's all they can do. The whole time, my father is annoyed that none of these people extend any help and each claim it isn't their job to help. Meanwhile, our relative keeps defending these people, reminding my father that "well, they're rangers, not emergency medical responders" and such. In the end, my dad was far angrier with the relative for defending these people than those who refused to do anything at all to help him.

If you read MHA, I hope you can see why I find this related. I am reminded of Shigaraki Tomura's origin, wandering the streets looking haggard whilst civilians all assume someone else will help, it isn't their job, that's for the heroes.

I speak from an American perspective. American culture is obsessed with "heroes." We look to police, to EMS, to firefighters, to military service members, veterans, and during the pandemic, "essential workers." We call all these people heroes and look to heroes to help others, to fight crime. So often, it is not our job to help. Yet, more and more lately we encourage mutual aid, we want programs like STAR in Denver, we want to help each other. I think about Uraraka's scene on the wall of UA in chapter 324 and the ending line, "The story of how we all became the greatest heroes," just as the Ordinary Woman and Kota rush to Midoriya's side. We see the beginnings of civilian people just like you and me who can become "heroes."

The messages in MHA can often become muddied under the gigantic cast of characters, issues with how women are (or really, how they are not) represented, and subplots being shortchanged in favor of shonen audiences being appeased, among other things. But I love this story and I love Horikoshi for what I believe shines through: his observation of our society (both in Japan and America and I am sure elsewhere) and his vision of the future. He sees (has seen for a long time) this problem of how we build up the notion of heroes and how we ignore other human beings because it is the job of the heroes we have created, not our own responsibility as neighbors to one another. Horikoshi wants us as readers to see that we need to reach out, we need to be the ones to lend a helping hand, we need to take initiative to help others who we see in trouble. My Hero Academia is a lesson in compassion, one that aligns with how our generation already wants to change our world.

Personally, I am excited to see how this manga ends; I want to see how he envisions this change when all is said and done. Will there be "heroes" anymore? How will regular people act to help others after the events of the story are over? I think about how our world is changing here and now and how it mirrors this story and I won't lie, I hope Horikoshi can show us a bright future. Maybe we will see first responders with the aim to de-escalate and provide care. Maybe we will see volunteer groups that aid others. Or maybe we will just see regular people who see a child alone and offer them love and shelter or who see a man bleeding and offer him some disinfectant and a bandage. Whatever the case, I'll see you all at the end of this manga, whenever that might be.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #bnha meta

[fearsmagazine]

Legendary composer, Philip Glass, takes refreshed view on beloved work, SOLO, out now!

Philip Glass, one of America’s most esteemed composers, releases a new album, Philip Glass Solo, via Orange Mountain Music. The collection is an intimate portrait of the renowned pianist at 84, as he takes a new look at some of his most enduring and beloved piano works. It is available in both digital and limited-edition condensed vinyl formats—Listen/order HERE. Watch/share Glass performing at home HERE.

Philip Glass Solo was recorded at a time when the world was undergoing a major shift—for Glass, that shift manifested in going from a busy tour and premiere schedule to time spent at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The storied musician dedicated this time to revisiting some of his most critically acclaimed piano music, taking to them with a new view in his home studio in New York. It is his most personal record to date, offering a snapshot of his life, and a portrait of daily practice over eight decades through several cherished works.

Now 86, Glass reflects, “This record revisits my works for piano. From 2020-2021, I had time at home to practice the works I have played for many years. This record is both a time capsule of 2021, and a reflection on decades of composition and practice. In other words, a document on my current thinking about the music. There is also the question of place. This is my piano, the instrument on which most of the music was written. It’s also the same room where I have worked for decades in the middle of the energy which New York City itself has brought to me. The listener may hear the quiet hum of New York in the background or feel the influence of time and memory that this space affords. To the degree possible, I made this record to invite the listener in.”

Philip Glass Solo features “Opening,” originally written for the 1982 album Glassworks, which remains one of Glass’ most transfixing pieces and established a sound that quickly became a calling card, “Metamorphosis” I, II, III, and V, the series of music Glass arranged for his first solo piano concerts in the 1980s; one of his most beloved pieces and longest performances on record (at 16:35), “Mad Rush,” which he composed as an organ piece in 1978 when the Dalai Lama made his first public address in New York; and a reworked version of “Truman Sleeps” from the soundtrack of the beloved 90s film The Truman Show, where Glass appeared on screen performing the piano in one of the pivotal scenes of the film. His changes speak to the heart of all artists’ evolution of both themselves, and their music, over time.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and, while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts and the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson. Since Einstein, Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra and film. His scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Glass’s memoir Words Without Music was published by Liveright Books in 2015. Glass received the Praemium Imperiale in 2012, the U.S. National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama in 2016, and 41st Kennedy Center Honors in 2018. Glass’s recent works include a circus opera Circus Days and Nights, Symphony No. 13, Symphony No 14, and Triumph of the Octagon, commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Glass is currently writing his 15th symphony commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra.

PHILIP GLASS—PHILIP GLASS SOLO DIGITAL & CD

1. Opening | 5:57

2. Mad Rush | 16:35

3. Metamorphosis I | 7:26

4. Metamorphosis II | 7:31

5. Metamorphosis III | 6:17

6. Metamorphosis V | 5:29

7. Truman Sleeps | 4:39

PHILIP GLASS—PHILIP GLASS SOLO VINYL

Side A: 1. Opening | 4:01

2. Metamorphosis I | 7:26

3. Metamorphosis II | 7:31

Side B:

4. Mad Rush | 8:08

5. Metamorphosis III | 6:17 6. Truman Sleeps | 4:39

#music news #philip glass #PHILIP GLASS SOLO #Orange Mountain Music #digital #cd #vinyl

[rebelwheelsnycpoetry]

And The Papers Said

AND THE PAPERS SAID by RebelwheelsNYC / Michele Sommerstein Part One

And the papers said Michael Hickson, a black disabled man. And the papers said Hospital. Texas. COVID. infection And the papers said Killed. For his doctor did not feel And the papers said that a… quadriplegic could possibly have a quality … of life. And the papers said and thus was not worth saving And the papers said (was not saved) disabled people are not of worth message repeating and… sent.

And the papers said the doctor had the audacity to say And the papers said it's not personal, to Hickson's wife, And the papers said There are set criteria from the state And the papers said As to who will live and who they let die And the papers said Michael Hickson. a black disabled body, that did not comply

Once again, reunited Eugenics & Capitalism America's not so secret friends fucking each other furiously for the sake of mindless fucking, like machines wallowing in their own stains, covered in their own blood and filth, crimes. unclean Disgusted? You should be.Part Two

Shortages! Hospitals! Ventilators! Low! This that was avoidable & created by the vulture capitalists who see death… elated - pandemic as an opportunity – Cha-ching! Soulless! Shortages! Created by, the powers that be Like when, Cuomo – the hero praised at times for merely being, better than Trump! (Raise the bar! This drinks on me) cut funding, healthcare. home care. hospitals (before and during the pandemic) Shortages! so the billionaires would be spared from paying their fair, share, of… taxes Shortages! While marginalized people are blamed for, “costing too much” the audacity of austerity… Shortages created when patients, infected knowingly sent to nursing homes, locked up. death traps, unleashing COVID on the people in places where social distancing was never, even, an option.Part Three

There are those, who will hear these words, shrug and nonchalant they will say things like Well, these things happen, what can you do? Those who are complacent, able bodied, complicit and still living, possibly numb. They will repeat, their response so casually even to the face of those visibly disabled, as if it's nothing in a tone used to discuss sweaters and their… plans for lunch as if we as a society can't do better? (We can. We must.)

Who taught you about disability? Who lied to you saying disabled people are less than, undeserving That we are better off dead?Part Four

And the papers said… His wife implored, insisting, knowing he lived a full life. And the papers said for in her eyes, in her heart, her love's life was worth saving. And the papers said, doctors withheld treatment including hydration… nutrition read: starving him for six. days Michael Hickson. a black disabled body that did not comply. “Michael Hickson, [a black disabled man] died leaving, his wife and five children, behind.“ This poem was taken from the zine Rebelwheels NYC: A Call For Healing And Rebellion. Please check it out. About the poem: I originally wrote this poem because, so often as a disabled person, you read these headlines and it’s absorbed into you, but there's not always an outlet to really express the emotional toll. A lot of times, I read the headlines and somewhat shut down because I can’t feel every time I read something like this, but it’s still in you. Michael Hickson was the first time I read an article that actually included a name when they were discussing “state criterias' and the pandemic. The conversation between the doctor and Hickson’s wife was recorded and when I heard it, it just hit me on a deeper level and I had to write something. That said, to learn more about the intersections of ableism & racism, I suggest checking out the following peoples: @Imani_Barbarin , @VilissaThompson , @BlackDisability & @powernotpity on Twitter. You can read more about Michael Hickson’s story here: https://notdeadyet.org/2020/06/adapt-of-texas-protests-hospital-killing-of-michael-hickson-a-black-disabled-man.html

#poetry #poem #disabled poet #disability #disabled #ableism #activist poem #michael hickson #systemic ableism #disability rights #eugenics #discrimination #covid19 #covid

[ssoulsearcher]

Blog #1 Letting a "dream" die.

As I am writing this and gather my thoughts on this personal post. I am writing this on the table I had set up for myself months ago in mi hogar , in fact during the fall of 2022. This table was to help me figure to create a space for deep focus on my goals. I had taken the time to create something called the Vanitas project. It is a basic map to help me guide which goals I needed to complete first before doing the others. Set one is the foundation of the goals but also the most hardest. First set was to lose weight , improve on my artistic skills and Spanish comprehension. The goal of Project Vanitas is to to help keep mis metas in line and focus rather than jumping around confused. But there was a mistake on this project: It's personal. There is no professional deadline. 13 year old me would beg to differ-Why include XYZ if Crystal is the priority?

The origin of my goals can be traced back when I was younger. Lets refer this version of myself as Ally. Ally represents my inner child and the origins of the first goal when I was 12. Most of the goals set here have a foundation- to one day publish the story of Crystal my first ever OC. Ally loved her despite how flawed Crystal was. Crystal had 100+ powers, transformations, anime husbandos AKA a Mary Sue. She would envision many moments of putting Crystal in pain, tears or happiness whatever Ally liked. Up until she grabbed a pencil and paper. Ally went on a journey to draw just to turn her creation to life. 85% of the stuff she drew was of Crystal. Crystal was a soul and alive.

The Mary Sue had many revisions and so did Ally's style. Ally improved her anatomy her style and before she knew it she could draw hands. Ally's priorities were just to draw all the time and maintain straight A's which were a piace of cake, until she met boys aka relationshiippsss. There was Boy 1, the sweetheart. Boy 2, what was I thinking? Boy 3... boy number 3.

Drawing and Crystal became secondary. Her grades were still great. Despite the change in Ally's focus, her creativity stayed the same till boy #3. Hay caramba, Boy #3 met me back in 2018. But he never met Ally. Back in late 2017, I had shifted went to a trade school under a graphic design program. And in the first time in my life I felt like I knew were I had to navigate my life. I was gonna go to college and earn an associates degree in graphic design and eventually publish Crystal's story as a comic. The portfolio mattered more than the degree and I was at my panicle of creativity and art. Art was now something I was doing seriously and for fun. I gotten praise from my mentors and eventually got a scholarship for a local college. Ally was fully present at her graphic design program. She fully bloomed her portfolio in to an magnum opus, until she had her great, unfortunate fall.

Ally was present during the first 6-7 months with Boy # 3. After that, I don't know what to call myself during the remaining time frame. It was just a cycle of my self-neglection that was attributed from Boy #3. During that time I abandoned my core beliefs all for a selfish stupid boy. Thankfully the cycle breaks. Instead of telling myself lies, my core-truths kicked in and we started arguing. The tip of the iceberg broke by a text from him. Telling me that I could do so much more in life and that he was holding me back. I didn't believe that text until a month later. In that month included, he did what every melodramatic boy does in soap operas- " I AM SO SORRY I MISSED YOU BLAH BLAH BLAH."

I focused on myself with Panera and the gym. The only things I had along with my mother to support me. The break up was in the October of 2020, 1.5 years after I graduated and 6 months after the college I was going to attend shut down.

At this point I accepted that I had no direction in that moment of my life. This brought me to my current self. Spring of 21, middle of the pandemic, I spent 13 dollars on Bumble and found a bee. A bee that gave me the happiest 2 years of my life. Ally still wasn't present. The feeling I felt post-break up with Boy #3 was "forged Passion". I was trying to force myself to draw when Ally wasn't present and despised staring at a canvas for so long I didn't create anything . She represented my inner-child but she was also my muse. Which would explain the many times I had mini-life crisis and doubts of what I wanted to do long term during my current relationship. " I don't know what to do", "Should I learn a trade", etc etc. I was bouncing between careers. Ally as a muse died when I was a few months into my last relationship. On May 20th of this year I laid Ally to rest which was also the dream of pursuing a graphic design career.

I fell in love with the idea to move to Europe and hopefully attend college-not sure what I will pursue- there after my spouse finishes with his studies. So I thought about studying German. I didn't feel sad for changing my dream because I can't force myself to be an old version of me. Change was inevitable. Letting go of an idea I built upon more than half my time here alive was never a bad ending. It was much much needed after having doubts for 2 years of what the next stepping stone of my life would be. All that I know patience will allow me to embrace this next chapter of mine.

Project Vanitas needs some adjustments because the core is still the same. Crystal is still around, her story will continue to evolve and adjust as I do. One day she will be out and about either as a web comic or novel. That I do not know yet. I'll continue to improve my Spanish and exercise but not draw seriously; only as a hobby.

Requiesce in pace my muse.

#Youtube #momentomori #vanitas #journal entry #art is just a hobby

[coghive]

Award-winning Producer Kevin Bond Releases First Solo Album Christmas Everyday

Atlanta, GA —  Musicologist and Consultant Kevin Bond is a 10-time Grammy® and Stellar Award-winning producer, songwriter, and music industry veteran who has a monumental forty-year career in music.  He is the former VP of A&R for Gospocentric Records in Los Angeles, CA, and former Governor of The Grammys Atlanta Chapter of the Recording Academy.  Kevin has produced and written songs for Grammy® Award-winning artists Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, Donnie McClurkin, Oleta Adams, and countless others. His discography includes contributions to the inspirational original soundtrack for the DreamWorks animated epic film THE PRINCE OF EGYPT, LOVE ALIVE IV by Gospel legend Walter Hawkins, BIBLE STORIES (Donald Lawrence & The Tri-City Singers), AWESOME WONDER (Kurt Carr), THE STORM IS OVER (Bishop T.D. Jakes), OUT THE BOX (Tonéx), TWENTY SIX FOUR (Avery Sunshine), and a vast list of other iconic albums and songs. Kevin Bond is a musical genius whose ingenuity has helped contour the sonic attributes and commercial success of the Gospel music genre.  He has devoted his prowess to Billboard Chart-topping, Gold, and Platinum albums and now takes the spotlight with his first solo album CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY.   “Through the years, I’ve worked for others, guiding their career desires, but this is something that I could do the way I wanted to do it,” Bond explains.  “I’ve been thinking about doing a Christmas record for about 20 years.  After this pandemic, everyone is looking for something new and fresh.  In addition, the pandemic should have birthed something out of us all during that time. So, this was the perfect time for me to do this project.” With a heartfelt love of Christmas music, Bond wanted to offer an album that would resonate for years to come.  CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY is a musical tapestry of holiday classic songs in which everyone can find delight.  Bond puts a cool vibe of groove on “The Little Drummer Boy” and offers a jazzy “White Christmas” to set the mood for holiday gatherings.  He includes a soulful and soothing version of “O Holy Night” among the fifteen beloved holiday tunes on the album. “The significance of this record at this time in my career is that I’ve helped others to ascertain and promote their dreams,” says Bond.  “I’ve taken a moment to reflect on my career and create a timeless piece.  I created a work of legacy and a timestamp for this generation. In 2022, this encapsulates the sound of the atmosphere and will be available for my children’s children.”   Christmas music is special and is an essential part of the holiday season.  Music helps usher in celebratory gatherings as we honor the birth of the risen King.  Holiday music offers hope and guides us in moments of reflection as we set the tone for the forthcoming new year. “Christmas music is always joyful, happy and bespeaks glad tidings,” Bond shares.  “From the slay bells to the timbers they use, it’s happy, not a lot of minor or dissonant chords – everything is in harmony and reflects how we should live our lives.”  He continues, “I want people to take this mindset and take it throughout the year and not just during these last few days of the year.  This album signifies how we should love, care and watch over one another all year long, being overly concerned for one another.  That’s why I called the album Christmas Everyday.” CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY is an album of songs birthed out of love.  Through music, Kevin Bond expresses his desire of bringing people together as we have endured the last few years apart and have experienced so much loss. Take time to offer gratitude as we gather with loved ones and worship the Savior and hope of the world.   This extraordinary album full of the sounds of the season is available now on all digital music outlets.  Create, save and share your CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY playlist on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music .  You will find your favorites on this album and truly enjoy Christmas every day for many years to come! Listen To “O Holy Night” Below; https://youtu.be/FHbroFPaCLA https://open.spotify.com/album/0h9tsUH7lb4lVraohbaY8d?si=6dda760f7a294998 Follow Kevin Bond: @ItsKevinBond Read the full article

#KevinBond

[rook-specter]

Stuff about Object Avenue (+ redesigns!)

I'm gonna make some new content for Object Avenue, except... on here.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had an idea of making an object show about a bunch of objects living in the city, in contrast to most object shows being competitions. That's when I created Dark Oak Tree! I drew a tree-looking thing on Scratch, and said... YEP! That's good enough! But now, here's his redesign!

So basically, I was like... "Yep! This is the main character!" And then, I got bored and made a funny little sidekick for Dark Oak Tree, named Fountain Pen! Here is his redesign!

Originally, Fountain Pen was supposed to be really silly and goofy, but then I decided to make him more of a straight man, but still a bit weird and naive. Anyways, those are the two characters and how I came up with them! If you don't know, I created a LOT of characters for Object Avenue. And some of them appear in the background of the first part of the first episode, but some don't. For example, Chrysalis!

She was supposed to be a character who's one of the main antagonists of the show. Not really a dangerous antagonist, more like a recurring Team Rocket-like antagonist. She's in one scene of the first part of the first episode looking at... a mirror? A box? Something? During the stealing montage at the very beginning of the episode. Dark Oak Tree steals her hat and that's supposed to be one of the antagonists! She's supposed to be a reoccurring character, that was supposed to be her origin story, but in that part she just... has a shocked expression on her face. And the other characters are like... Scale,

He was in the second episode, he's the person that Dark Oak Tree steals a knife from in the first one, and in the second one, he's one of the people that Dark Oak Tree and Fountain Pen helped, and he has... kind of a dark side. He attacks with knives in self-defense and he may have accidentally killed a person or two because of that. There's Cosplay Mask, Dark Oak Tree stole a yo-yo from her, if you've seen that, and there's all of Spiky Star's platoon, which includes Traffic Cone, Swirl, and Fountain Pen himself! All of those characters in that platoon have their own personalities, that I wanted to show off in later episodes, but... y'know. I didn't. And on top of that, there's this criminal organization that's an actual threat, called Stormdrain, they were supposed to catch Dark Oak Tree because he's actually a [REDACTED]. And I feel that was kinda wasted, because I only made an episode and a half.

And that brings us back to that episode and a half. I'm... not proud of it. I'll go back to it every once in a while, but it's not really anything I'm proud of at all. The art is super outdated compared do how I draw objects nowadays, and yeah. Still not the worst thing I've ever made. I was proud of it when I first made it, but I'm not really proud of it now. I feel like the problem was that I didn't really get much recognition for making Object Avenue, like, at all. And I also lost motivation for making it, which is why I didn't continue it until now, here, on Tumblr.

Which leads us to the great reveal! I am turning Object Avenue into an ask blog here, on Tumblr. Some asks will have full drawings, while others will be just text. I wanted to create an ask blog for SO LONG! And since Object Avenue was like, a fun little original project sprouted by the pandemic, and not based on an already existing object show, this is gonna be me making an ask blog on Object Avenue! A new ask blog, and hopefully it's successful! I might resort to posting with tags that aren't even related to it, but it will get fame, I am sure of it. The ask blog will pick up right where the first episode left off, and yes, Cursor will still get introduced as a third wheel, but with sort-of a retcon of when and where he shows up. I'll split up each event into parts, and you'l get to ask more and more people, including Chrysalis, and shenanigans will ensue. It's also still gonna be a comedy, and I'll answer asks whenever I can, meaning it may take a month or so to get through half a part, and those are my plans for the Object Avenue ask blog! I don't know when I'm gonna make it, but hopefully soon, but I'll make a promo for that ask blog, so y'all can see that, and that's all!

And, oh! Before I go, if you haven't seen Object Avenue, here's the studio that contains it!

#rook says shit #long post #object shows #osc #inanimate insanity #battle for dream island #bfdi #hfjone #sorry for tagging this things that it shouldn't be tagged #but it has to be done

[fictionfromafar]

Deceit by Jonina Leosdottir

Deceit

By Jónína Leósdóttir

Translated by Sylvia Bates & Quentin Bates

Corylus Books

Publication Date: 30 October 2022

I’ve long enjoyed reading novels set in Iceland since I first read Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City around 15 years ago, so I was excited to read Deceit, the first translation of Jónína Leósdóttir. In her homeland she is known not just as a novelist, playwright and former journalist but also as the spouse of the Prime Minister of Iceland from 2008 until 2013. Her works to date have included a dozen plays, eleven novels, two biographies and a collection of articles she originally wrote for a women's magazine. A prolific author following her thirteenth publication she decided to switch to the crime genre to create a series of five novels which would be placed firmly under cosy crime. They feature a recently retired bookshop manager and amateur sleuth called Ebba who has plenty of time and energy, boundless curiosity and an attraction to mysteries.

Deceit is her first novel in a new series which the author wrote during the Coronavirus lockdown. Unlike many novels penned within that time, Leósdóttir chose to feature the pandemic within her story with the novel being set in those uncertain months of spring 2020 when concern was highest about infection rates and the lack of vaccination. Covid-19 actually provides quite a handy tool for the author as it forms a good reasoning for a small cast of characters that feature in the novel. It also forms a bone of contention between the two protagonists one being extremely cautious and unwilling to go within 2 metres of another individual, while the other has a much more lax approach.

Deceit is quite a compelling but rather odd novel which at its heart features a middle aged divorced couple who solve crimes together. 49 year old English expat Adam is the main character in the story which is told in his perspective with a third person narrative. He has spent over two decades living in Iceland and while the relationship that brought him to the country has broken down he remains in the country close to his student daughter Margret. As well as having private patients, Adam provides a consultancy the Icelandic police when they have requirements for a psychologist. He is most frequently contacted by detective Soffía who just happens to be his ex-wife. The lucid and easily readable translation by Sylvia Bates & Quentin Bates clearly reveals in Adam a man set in his ways and in many ways old before his time, except for one particular aspect of his private life.

With many of her police colleagues are in self isolation, Soffía reaches out to Adam when the police are alerted to fruit which has been pierced by needles in a small corner shop. While Adam is reluctant to leave his basement flat and very nervous of contracting Covid, he gradually gets pulled deeper into the case as Soffía continues to contact him with every subsequent development. As the malicious activities widen in scope and area, Adam has to try to help Soffia find a connection between them in order to establish a motive and discover the culprit. A large degree of deduction is required to do so.

With Adam being a non-Icelandic character it did mean the novel could focus on some specific characteristics of the country that I found particularly interesting. A key aspect to the book that I did enjoy emerged though the reminder that Iceland is a very small country in population side and gene pool. As a result many Icelanders are often very related in some way to each other. Within Deceit there are a selection of characters who are related to one other to form an extended family with tensions and rivalries between them. This is an important factor which you might expect would be used more regularly in Icelandic crime fiction. Like the aforementioned Jar City the novel also creatively considers the theme of inherited diseases with an emotive secondary story arc relating to one of Adam’s patients which was intriguing but also very sensitively dealt with.

Deceit is quite unorthodox for crime fiction in that the police character’s sidekick is in an advisory role rather than a fellow officer. Not just an advisor too but also her ex-husband. As we follow the insights into their marriage there is a very specific revelation about the principle reason for their separation which came as quite a surprise. Using sparingly in this story, I think this would definitely be a feature of any subsequent stories in the series, as would Adam's relationship with his daughter. While the author can get away with a small investigative team due to the pandemic, I would expect a more normal police station team environment to unfold in future novels.

While it has its peculiarities, I believe that Deceit is a very worthy Icelandic export as it convincingly reflects some of the unique aspects of the country’s society. While many novels by Icelandic authors could be set in a range of possible locations, Deceit is a novel that could only work the way it does because it is set in Iceland. For that reason more than any other it is definitely worthy of your investigation.

Many thanks to Corylus Books for an advance copy of Deceit and to Ewa Sherman for invitation to join the blog tour. The tour started yesterday, please check out the other reviews from the bloggers shown on the above poster.

Preorder Deceit here:

Jónína Leósdóttir is an Icelandic author and playwright. She studied modern languages and Latin and has a BA-degree in English and Literature. She has written twenty books, fiction and non-fiction, many short stories and plays for radio and television. In 2016 Jónína ‘turned to crime’ with a five-book series about amateur sleuth Edda. In 2021 she introduced a new crime-solving duo, detective Soffía and her ex-husband and psychologist Adam. The first novel about the pair will be published in English in autumn 2022 by Corylus Books.In 2013 Jónína published a memoir about her relationship with Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Prime Minister of Iceland. The couple fell in love in 1985 and had a turbulent relationship in the closet for 15 years, before finally setting up home together in 2000. They later married and Jóhanna became the first openly LGBT+ leader in the world.Jónína Leósdóttir has received awards for her work – for poetry, short stories and books for young adults. She was instrumental in establishing The Icelandic Women’s Literary Prize in 2007 and is now an honorary member of the association that awards the prize.

Quentin Bates is a writer, translator and journalist. He has professional and personal roots in Iceland that run very deep. He worked as a seaman before turning to maritime journalism. He is an author of series of nine crime novels and novellas the Reykjavik detective featuring Gunnhildur#(Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to writing his own fiction, he has translated books by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, Óskar Guðmundsson and Ragnar Jónasson. Quentin was instrumental in launching IcelandNoir, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

[uomo-accattivante]

Excellent article about bringing a re-make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to fruition, and the twenty-year friendship that Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain share:

There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.

The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.

On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.

“It was just a lot,” he said.

Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.

Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)

“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)

The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.

“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.

“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.

The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)

So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.

But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.

Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.

So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.

Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.

Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.

In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)

In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,”opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.

It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”

Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.

That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”

Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.

“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”

Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.

“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”

The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.

Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”

But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.

“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.

She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”

“It felt so dangerous,” she said.

I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.

Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”

The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.

“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”

By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.

Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.”

###

#oscar isaac #jessica chastain #scenes from a marriage #hagai levi #michelle williams #elvira lind #behind the scenes #article

[d-criss-news]

The Glee star and Emmy winner for The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Darren Criss, 34, will be releasing his first album of Christmas songs, titled A Very Darren Crissmas (October 8). It includes duets with Adam Lambert, Evan Rachel Wood and an original song, “Drunk on Christmas,” featuring Lainey Wilson.

What was your goal with this Christmas album?

To reintroduce familiar songs in a new way. But I also wanted to take lesser-known songs and make those feel more familiar. And, most importantly, I wanted to take songs that people don’t associate with Christmas but I do—like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”—and try to make them feel like Christmas songs.

What inspired you to write “Drunk on Christmas”?

It’s about the end of Christmas when everything’s been done. There’s wrapping on the floor, you’ve cleaned things, the in-laws have left and there’s nothing else to do. It’s two people having a sit-on-the couch moment, sipping a glass of cocoa with some SoCo [Southern Comfort] in it.

What is it about Christmas music? Why did you want to do the Christmas album?

Christmas or the holiday season is something that, whether we like it or not, we experience every year, and that comes with a litany of wonderful songs and music that again, whether you have been proactive about listening to it or not, it’s pretty hard to avoid. It’s permeated our cultural consciousness for our entire lives. So if you happen to be someone like me who consumes music at a hyperactive level, I’ve always adored Christmas music.

People say this because of the way that it makes them feel and the things that it reminds them of. There are so many layers to why people enjoy Christmas music. It’s nostalgic, it is very romantic, at least in the true dictionary meaning of the word romantic. And to me, I’ve always loved it for a much more anthropological reason, which is for one month or several weeks out of the year we suddenly subscribe to a certain sentiment that the other 11 we don’t really dial into. We want it all, then we want it to just go away.

What makes Christmas songs different?

As a musician I’ve always loved that Christmas music can employ certain musical elements that otherwise aren’t very popular. To me, it’s incredible that without a doubt the estates of many artists are guaranteed placement on the radio even though many of them have been deceased for many years. The pop charts are dominated by whatever contemporary, awesome artists there are nowadays, but in December you can guarantee that Burl Ives and Dean Martin will be on the radio with the best of them. I find that so charming. It’s because people really, really love this music.

And those songs don’t sound like the sounds that we’re hearing on the radio, sonically, harmonically, rhythmically. They employ a lot of “classic” sounds that evoke the feeling of Christmas. I’m a self-proclaimed genrephile—this is a term I use for myself throughout all the stuff that I do. I can’t help but be so enchanted by this idea that artists have license, and by license I mean an excuse to do things that you ordinarily wouldn’t be encouraged to do, or that audiences wouldn’t necessarily be as quick to absorb.

So, when you’re talking about classic Christmas writing, for lack of a better word, you use clichéd Christmas terminology, you use certain chords, and harmonies, and instrumentations that you just wouldn’t do throughout the year. It leans on the slightly more sophisticated, slightly more musical, and that is really exciting for someone like me.

How much does the fact that your last name is Criss play into this?

If you play music and your last name is Criss, every year someone says, “You know what you should do?” as if they’re the first person who’s ever thought of this idea. So I’ve always wanted to do this; it was just a matter of time. And I also didn’t want it to be phoned in, I didn’t want it to seem like, “Oh, here’s some songs that you know already.”

I wrote this in my liner notes that my favorite thing to do with art, but particularly music, is curate, interpolate, create and personalize. That’s my main thing. I’m an OK singer, I’m an OK musician, but what I really think I have a yen for is trying to interpolate something new that people didn’t know before.

If you think about a song like “Jingle Bells,” it was not written for Christmas. It was a song from 200-something years ago that bears no mention of Christmas whatsoever, but we associate it so heavily with Christmas. Lately I hear Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” come up on Christmas playlists. I think it must have something to do with the Christian angle of the song and the reverence of the word “hallelujah,” but there’s no mention of Christmas.

So there’s a lot of different things that can make people feel like Christmas if you arrange it a certain way, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted this cocktail of songs that people didn’t know and I might be able to introduce to them in a really new, interesting way.

You duet with Adam Lambert, Evan Rachel Wood and Lainey Wilson. These people couldn’t be more different. How did you select your song partners for this?

Honestly, people are busy, so I leaned on friends of mine. The album is called A Very Darren Crissmas, and I wanted to make it just that. Songs that are very, very me, doing things that are very me, and using the talents of people who are legitimately in my life. Adam has been a pal for a long time. We’ve known each other from just adventures in Hollywood, but he, of course, was on Glee with me. Evan Rachel is a dear pal of mine; we’ve done some things together. She’s played my festival, and I’ve done comedy sketches with her and stuff. These are all extraordinarily talented singers. As I told them when I asked them to be a part of it, “I’d be very lucky to have you on this record.”

I had not met Lainey Wilson before I started this. But when you’re in Nashville, you are in the Olympic tent of USDA certified prime country singers. And that’s a bit of a blind spot for me as far as who’s on the up and up, who’s somebody that can really give a level of authenticity, legitimacy to a more classic ’50s Nashville sound, which is the song that I wrote called “Drunk on Christmas.” My producer Ron Fair, who has been living in Nashville for a while, suggested Lainey and we got on like a house on fire. She’s an extraordinary talent and I was happy to have her. These were all people that were part of this grassroots friend to friend thing. That’s how I got them and I’m very lucky that they’re on the record.

There are hundreds of Christmas songs. How did you choose what to include?

Choosing was extremely hard. I had a list of about 100 songs. I’m not done; this record is only phase one in my mind. There are so many songs that it will make your head spin. If you go, “Did you think about this song?” The answer is yes, and I absolutely had to deliberate which ones I had to triage out of the sequence.

I even said no to “The Christmas Song,” which is on the album. I didn’t want to do it because I was like, “Everybody knows it; it’s perfect by Nat King Cole,” and Mel Tormé [who wrote it] is one of my favorite artists of all time, much less songwriters and musicians. So I was like, “I don’t want to have to do that.” And on the day when we were there, we just had a guitar and said, “Let’s just do it for fun,” because I love singing that song. But I was like, “It’s been done perfectly too many times, I really don’t want to have to put myself up against that.” But we had a nice take, it’s live in the room. And hey, come on, it’s Christmas. So I left it on there.

If we were to come to your house during the holidays, what would you be listening to?

I’d probably sit you down and play you my favorite songs that you’ve never heard that I think are great Christmas songs. But what’s nice is I’ve now put those songs on this album, hopefully, in a perhaps delusional effort to standardize these songs in the Christmas pantheon. There has to be an air of delusion to being an artist in the first place. If one of these songs that no one’s ever heard before catches on with a family or a person and becomes part of their Christmas playlist every year, then I will have succeeded in my efforts.

What did the Emmy you won for The Assassination of Gianni Versace do for your career?

Although the Emmy has just my name on it, the number one thing that I’m most proud of is it’s more symbolic and representative of the work of the whole team. It is a validation and celebration of the really hard work of people that I spent a lot of time and energy with creating this role.

You have a couple voice roles coming up—in Trese and Yasuke—but what are we going to see you in next, not just hear you?

I don’t know. Let me know if there’s any opportunities. A huge reason for why this album was made was because I had the time. Making records takes a lot of time, and I’m envious of people who are just singers. I don’t know how people do that, that’s just not who I am. I’m a producer, I’m a writer, I’m a musician. It takes so much out of me to make a body of music because someone doesn’t say, “OK, here are the songs, show up on a Tuesday, you sing it and then you leave.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some of my favorite artists can do that and are blessed enough to be able to just do that. I can’t.

It takes so much time for me to really get in the weeds, arrange, edit vocals, edit instrumentation, mix tracks, really getting in the jungle of music production. I can’t function any other way and that takes an extraordinary amount of time. Even when there was a global pandemic, I still had deadlines that we could barely make to finish this album because that’s just how my brain works.

So I haven’t been able to act. I haven’t had an acting job in almost two years. That’s not entirely true. I’ve had little bit things during the pandemic, but no big series or films or anything like that. It’s just been mostly working from home and being as proactive as I can be. I started a weekly podcast with a friend of mine, I put out an EP. I’ve been extremely busy with high output and low visibility. I’m waiting for the next thing, but I’m not one to sit still. If you give me time, I’m going to fill all the spaces out. So I did that with music this past two years.

Are you going to go back to Broadway now that it’s opening again?

I don’t want to say anything that is not perhaps confirmed 100 percent, but I will say with full confidence that I have always had the intention of going back exactly where we started. I’ll let them announce what’s happening because every show is in its own unique holding pattern. But, yes, right before the shutdown I was doing American Buffalo in New York, and talk about the actor’s dream, that is right up there. Doing a great American play that I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve had a long history with that show, and I finally get to do it for real with two of my favorite actors—Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne. They are two acting heroes of mine.

So I was in rehearsals for that. We were about to go into tech, and things got shut down. But we’re in a very fortunate position where you’ve got two huge movie stars, you have a very well-known play and you have a fixed set and just three guys. There are musicals that have orchestras, big choruses and huge set pieces, and the overhead and upkeep of these productions is quite complicated. And a lot of them, for that reason, fell by the wayside during the pandemic, and it’s an awful tragedy. But our set and our billboard and our posters are exactly where we left them. It’s kind of a trip. If you go to Circle in the Square, I keep telling people it’s the longest I’ve ever been on Broadway because it’s just sitting there dormant, waiting to be resurrected.

I think all of us are planning on going back. I think the show is scheduled to reopen almost to the day that it was supposed to open in 2020. We’ll see how the schedule ends up, but you have three guys whose heart and soul is the theater. I don’t want to speak for the other two guys, but I’m almost positive that all three of us would rather be doing that play on Broadway than anything else. So when I say I haven’t had an acting gig in two years, it’s been a comfort to know that that was waiting for me on the other end. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll be able to do it. We’ll have to make sure that everything is hunky-dory with theater audiences, et cetera, et cetera, but that’s the idea.

How did Ryan Murphy casting you in Glee change your life?

I said during my Emmy speech that actors are only as good as the moments they get. I used to say actors are only as good as the parts they get. Take that with a huge grain of salt, obviously, it’s not entirely true. But in context of that moment, certainly you can understand what I meant. Acting is a proactive craft, but in many respects it’s a passive career, where you have to hope and wait for a benefactor, a patron, a supporter to say, “OK, all right, kid, you’re up. I think you can do it.”

I think any artist’s life is a constant compromise between knowing what you can do and what you want to do, and having other people, audiences and creative authorities alike, have an idea of what you can do. You have to have that balance of somewhere in the middle, where hopefully you can rise to an occasion that you know you can do, that somebody’s going to give you the opportunity to do. But you’re not in control of that relationship, and so you have to sit and hope and pray that someone is going to give you that moment and that opportunity. That was something that I’m fully indebted to with Ryan.

Because he did say, “All right, kid, you’re up,” and gave me that shot. We talked about the The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story series for years before we did it. I didn’t think he was ever going to do it. By the time we started shooting, he probably mentioned it to me three or four years prior. And I kept asking about it like, “Hey, you still want to do this thing?” I think he was just always obsessed with the fact that I was half Filipino and that I bore a certain resemblance to the guy. Age and everything, it seems pretty spot-on. But he was a man of his word, and he really did end up making it. So I’m incredibly indebted to him and I’ve always been very effusive about that.

Now that you have this modicum of fame, what would you like to use it to accomplish?

For me, there are so many things that I love in this world that I don’t think other people are familiar with. One of the things about having a modicum of a platform is hopefully embracing that to use it as a gateway drug for stuff that people might not be familiar with. I don’t know if they’re going to like it as much as I do, but I’m looking at this track list and there are songs that I guarantee that you don’t know.

These are all things where I go, “OK, I have this moment of people’s attention, hopefully, this is a fun way to have them have eyes on something that I think is deserving of eyes, and not because of me, but because of other people who have made something amazing.” And, hopefully, they have the same proactive curiosity that I had growing up where I look at the liner notes and see who wrote the songs and where they came from. But we’ll see. We’ll see if people have that reaction.

You’ve accomplished so much. What’s the dream going forward?

The dream is to keep doing me, really. I think all you can do is be as true to yourself and try and do as accessible and as valuable work as you can. And, hopefully, in so doing, represent people, giving them visibility and encouragement towards their own place in the cultural conversation.

#darren criss #parade magazine #a very darren crissmas #press #oct 2021

[neocatharsis]

NCT 127 Reveal The Hobbies & Obsessions They Can’t Give Up In Their Down Time

In Elite Daily’s series Rent-Free, celebrities unpack the one thought, memory, or unforgettable pop culture moment that'll always live in their head. In this piece, NCT 127 reveals the interests and hobbies even die-hard fans will be surprised to learn about.

In the past year, most musical acts had to cancel their highly-anticipated tours due to the coronavirus pandemic, and NCT 127 was no exception. That’s why its members — Johnny, Haechan, Mark, Taeyong, Jaehyun, Yuta, Taeil, Jungwoo, and Doyoung — have taken every opportunity to get closer to their fans with new music. After dropping their second Japanese EP, Loveholic, in February, the group returned on June 4 with “Save,” their latest single all about making unforgettable memories. Up next? An entirely new era. On July 7 (the group’s fifth anniversary), they announced their next album is coming in September. In celebration of all the exciting things ahead, NCT 127 opened up about how they wind down after a hard day’s work.

NCT 127 tells Elite Daily these past five years as a group have been worthwhile, and it’s all thanks to their fans, called NCTzens, who have supported them throughout their journey. “[We have so many] memories from practicing together pre-debut to our actual debut stage, and also all those times we spent working on our music and performance to meet our fans at our first concert and first world tour as well,” the group collectively says. “Each and every moment we spend on our music is for our fans, and we are working hard to better show ourselves in various different ways, so we hope you’re all excited!”

Fans have impacted the group so much that they’ve become the muse behind NCT 127’s biggest tracks. “The inspiration [behind ‘Save’] comes from wanting to save our precious memories with each other and with our fans,” the group says. And NCT 127 hasn’t let go of a single one. While they haven’t been able to perform in front of a live audience since early 2020, they held their online Beyond The Origin concert in May. They add, “It was new getting to meet fans from every part of the world at the same time.”

While the guys have their hands full recording their next project, they’re making sure to get some much-deserved R&R whenever they can. Below, NCT 127 reveal the interests that have been living in their minds rent-free.

Johnny

Johnny is a major fan of horror movies. “I love how they keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time you’re watching,” he says. His favorite scary movie of all time is Shutter, which is about a couple who accidentally run over a woman and then see her ghost in photographs they develop. “Even though I watched it when I was young, I still remember the movie, and it’s one I think about often. I’ve seen the movie multiple times since I first saw it in high school, and I recall being scared of red-lit rooms for quite some time afterward,” he says.

His most recent watch was The Conjuring franchise. He adds, “After I saw the movies, I looked up some articles about the behind stories. They were pretty interesting!”

Taeil

Taeil keeps music on his mind even after a full day of rehearsals. “Audio speakers really amplify music so you can hear the intricate details of the track, and there’s also that sense of excitement from when you hear a sound you like!” Taeil says, explaining his love for audio. “I like the speaker brand Focal. There’s still a lot I don’t know about speakers, but I find the brand very attractive since you can experience a flat sound that’s similar to what the songwriter intended to create.”

Taeil says the group’s sound has changed a lot since their debut in 2016. He says, “With time, our team color is definitely becoming more distinct and defined. I think the sound we have now is a very captivating one with strong hip-hop and R&B colors.”

Taeyong

The group’s leader enjoys connecting with others, but especially with NCTzens. “[Our relationship] is a very precious and one that I’m truly grateful for. Not only do we enjoy the same things, but we also try to improve and show that to each other. All of this is very special and meaningful to me,” he says. “It’s nice to learn of each other’s culture, and by singing in different languages, it makes me feel as if I’ve grown closer to our fans from those countries.”

Yuta

Yuta loves exercising because it’s very rewarding, and although he doesn’t have a specific fitness routine, he prefers working out at a gym rather than at home. “I like how exercising makes me feel stronger and helps me to build up my strength... which is very helpful when practicing group dances that require attention to body angles,” he says. “We had a short preparation period [to learn ‘Save’], but I was able to learn the choreography quickly and had a fun time preparing.”

Doyoung

Ever since he was cast as Axel von Fergen in the Korean adaptation of Marie Antoinette, which is based on the 2006 musical of the same name that originally premiered in Japan, Doyoung has found a newfound appreciation for theatre. “I find it very precious how you can share emotions through singing and acting,” he says. “It’s been very meaningful preparing for my musical debut, and it’s really all thanks to the amazing seniors and producers! The process in itself has been a very fun one, and I have been preparing with a heart of gratitude.”

Doyoung is set to make his musical debut on July 13 when the production opens at the Charlotte Theater in Seoul.

Jaehyun

Jaehyun says he “fell in love” with tennis in April because it helps relieve stress. “I’ve always enjoyed trying out new sports like basketball, bowling, and boxing whenever I had the chance. But I actually started tennis because my father recommended it,” he says. “I know this is the case for all sports, but tennis isn’t something you can master after a few tries. It requires persistence, and I started to enjoy it even more as I saw myself gradually improving.”

Jaehyun’s favorite tennis player is Jannik Sinner, a 19-year-old Italian athlete who competed in the 2020 French Open as the youngest quarterfinalist in the men’s singles event. He says, “I’d really like to go see a tournament.”

Mark

Lately, Mark is interested in taking better care of his hair. “It’s really important to me because I change my hair color a lot, and because I want my hair and scalp to be healthy,” he says. While he’s experimented with just about every color in the rainbow, there’s one he always loves going back to. He adds, “I think I liked my blue hair the most. It is my favorite color, after all, and I believe my fans liked it as much as I did. I was glad to be able to film the ‘Save’ music video during my blue-haired period. It fit well with all the scenes and the aesthetics!”

Jungwoo

Similar to Yuta, Jungwoo has also had exercising on his mind. “My life has become more lively since I started exercising. More so than exercising to improve my physique, I exercise in order to have a healthier, richer life. Also, it makes me proud knowing I’m spending my day more productively,” he says. “The first thing I do after I wake up is to start off the day with simple stretches that improve body balance... Stretching helps to warm up the body, which reduces the risk of injury, and can also boost your mood! I think this is why when I dance, I’m able to express those movements in more detail.”

Haechan

Haechan is now experimenting with all things fragrance. “I started using perfume since scents can give a sense of self-satisfaction and because I wanted to smell good all the time!” he says, adding he doesn’t have a favorite perfume. “The scent that suits me well, that I personally like, and that will suit me is always different!” However, there’s one scent that will always remind him of a certain memory with NCT 127. “This might sound funny, but I’d have to say the smell of sweat in our practice rooms,” Haechan says, adding it’s “satisfying” because it makes him feel like they worked hard after a long day. As for what draws fans to NCT 127, Haechan credits their “sincere music and performances.”

© Elite Daily

#nct #nct 127 #Taeil #Johnny #Taeyong #Yuta #Doyoung #Jaehyun #Jungwoo #Mark #Haechan

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User Concert Q&A Excerpts, Part 1

(Part 2 here)

Not sure if folks out there are aware, but there was a "User Concert" last September where the director and cast of Buried Stars answered various questions about the development of the game, characters, etc.

There was originally supposed to be a live Q&A section at the end, but they ended up canceling it due to the pandemic and asked fans to submit their questions online instead. The ones that they answered are all compiled here.

I haven't seen an English translation out there so I thought I'd take a crack at it myself! I only picked out questions that I personally thought were interesting (because the whole thing is like 37 pages long and there maybe 4.5 of you out there who are going to see this anyway L O L) but if anyone has any questions/requests (like if there are any mentions about X or Y) I'd be happy to answer them!

This got long as hell, so I'm splitting this into 2 parts and putting it under a cut, but here's part 1, which are questions related to the main game as well as any post-game speculations.

Obviously, #spoiler warning for Buried Stars below.

Q. 무대 붕괴 사건을 겪지 않았다면, 진범은 살인자가 되지 않았을 거라고 생각하시나요?

If the stage collapse incident had never happened, do you think the true culprit would have still committed murder?

A. 아니었겠지만, 어쩌면 살인자가 되는 경우도 있었겠습니다. 대상은 자신이겠지만… Probably not, but it's possible that they could still have become a murderer. Though I suppose the victim would be themself…

Q. 신승연 PD가 이규혁에게 "그 제안"을 한 이유는 무엇일까요?

Why did PD Shin Seungyeon make “that proposition” to Gyu-hyuk?

A. 이규혁이 진상을 알고 있는지 떠봄과 동시에 자신이 통제하려는 시도였을 것입니다. 이규혁의 거절 이후 신승연의 마음에는 의심이 자라나기 시작했습니다. 협박장 역시 이규혁의 짓으로 생각 했고, 끝내 사고 현장의 그 발언이 나오게 되었습니다. She was trying to feel out whether Gyu-hyuk knew the truth, and at the same time, attempt to control him. After Gyu-hyuk’s refusal, doubt began to grow in Seungyeon’s heart. She mistook the blackmail letter as Gyu-hyuk’s doing, and in the end she ended up saying what she did at the accident site.

Q. 베리드 스타즈를 플레이하며 스토리에 인간의 선과 악, 이면 등의 철학적인 고찰을 담았다고 느꼈습니다. 이에 디렉터님이 생각하시는 "인간"은 어떤 존재인지 궁금합니다.

While playing Buried Stars, I felt that the story contained reflections on things like the virtues and evils of humanity, duality, and other philosophical topics. I'm curious as to the director's thoughts on what the nature of "humanity" is.

A. 베리드 스타즈의 등장인물들을 빌드하며 한 생각으로 국한한다면, "가면을 쓰고 자신을 감추지 만 동시에 가면 아래를 내보이길 바라는 존재"인 것 같습니다. If I had to limit it to what I had in mind when creating the characters of Buried Stars, I think that a human being is "something that wears a mask in order to hide itself, yet at the same time wishes to reveal what's underneath."

Q. C 루트에서 "그것"은 이규혁의 모습으로 현신했습니다. 한도윤이 바라던 것이었다는 이유였지 요. 그렇다면 민주영, 이규혁, 오인하, 장세일, 서혜성, 신승연의 경우 "그것"은 무엇으로 나타났을 까요?

In the C route, "That" appeared in the form of Gyu-hyuk. The reason being that that was what Do-yoon wished for. If that's the case, what form would "That" have taken in the case of Juyoung, Gyu-hyuk, Inha, Seil, and Hyesung?

A. 한도윤이 이규혁을 본 것은 "자신이 배신자가 아님을 증명해줄 사람"을 간절히 바랐기 때문입 니다. 잔해에 파묻혔을 때 생각했던 것처럼요. 그 외에 TOP 5 이규혁에게는 한도윤이, 오인하에게 는 민주영이, 민주영에게는 비러브드 멤버들이, 서혜성에게는 어머니가, 장세일에게는 신승연이, 신승연에게는 자기 자신이 보였을 것입니다. The reason that Do-yoon saw Gyu-hyuk was that he desperately longed for "a person who is proof that he is not a traitor," just as he was thinking when he was buried under the rubble. Gyu-hyuk would have seen Do-yoon, Inha would have seen Juyoung, Juyoung would have seen the BELOVED members, Hyesung would have seen his mother, Seil would have seen Seungyeon, and Seungyeon would have seen herself.

Q. C 루트가 이규혁 시점이었다면 한도윤의 전화 내용은 어떤 것이었을까요?

If C route had been from Gyu-hyuk's POV, what would a phone call with Do-yoon have been about?

A. 한도윤 자신을 “절대 믿지 말았어야 했다”고 했을 것입니다. 동시에 "믿지 말아야 했다고 이야 기하는 자신"을 끝까지 믿어달라고 빌기도 했을 것 같네요. Do-yoon would have said, "you never should have trusted me." But at the same time, I think he would have also begged him to please "trust in him until the end, even though he himself told him he shouldn't have."

Q. 서혜성과 이규혁이 둘 다 살아남는 엔딩이 없는데 혹시 계획했다가 빠진 거라면 이유를 알고 싶습니다.

There's no ending where Hyesung and Gyu-hyuk both live, but if there was one planned and it was cut, I'm curious as to why.

A. 이규혁과 서혜성이 둘 다 생존하는 엔딩은 최초부터 계획에 없었습니다. 둘은 서로 양립할 수 없는 존재이며, 이규혁이 본격적으로 탈피하는 계기가 서혜성이기 때문입니다. 다만… 그게 아냐 에서는 모두 생존합니다. 죄송합니다… …. From the start, we hadn't planned on any endings where Gyu-hyuk and Hyesung both survive. This is because the two cannot coexist; Hyesung is a catalyst for Gyu-hyuk to truly shed his skin, so to speak. If only that weren't the case, then everyone would have survived. I apologize…

Q. 모 인터뷰에서 한도윤에게는 "커뮤니케이션"과 "햄릿"이라는 키워드가 있다고 본 기억이 있는 데, 혹시 다른 인물들에게도 그런 키워드가 있는지 알고 싶습니다.

In a certain interview, I recall seeing that "communication" and "Hamlet" being listed as keywords for Do-yoon, and I'm wondering if the other characters have similar keywords as well.

A. 계열은 다르지만 레귤러 조연은 진상에 맞추어 내면을 대변하는 정서가 하나씩 설정되어 있었 습니다. 이규혁은 "자기혐오", 민주영은 "분노", 오인하는 "공포", 서혜성은 "수치심", 장세일은 "열등감"입니다. Each of the supporting cast has a specific emotion that represents their inner selves according to their own realities. Gyu-hyuk's is "self-hatred," Juyoung's is "wrath," Inha's is "fear," Hyesung's is "shame," and Seil's is "inferiority complex."

Q. 오인하는 민주영을 "빛이 나는 사람"이라고 생각하는데, 그렇게 생각한 첫 순간이나 이유는 무엇이었을까요?

Inha called Juyoung “someone who shines brightly”; what was the moment or reason that made her think this?

A. 먼저, 오인하는 옛 비러브드 팬-그중에서도 민주영의 팬-이었을 것입니다. 키워드 대화에서 민 주영을 오래전부터 알았던 티가 나지요. 오디션에서 만나 대놓고 티를 내진 않았겠지만, 항상 주 목했을 것입니다. 또한 "변화"를 위해 쇼의 지시에 복종했던 오인하와 달리, 민주영은 아니라고 생각한 일에 반대를 표명하며 대립했을 것입니다. 이런 점들이 오인하에게 더 깊은 인상을 남기 지 않았을까요? First, Inha was a former fan of BELOVED—and of Juyoung especially. In the keyword discussions, there are some hints that she’s known about Juyoung for a long time. When they met during the audition, she didn’t show it, but she always paid special attention to Juyoung. In addition, unlike Inha who always obeyed the show’s orders in order to “transform,” Juyoung would have objected to things that she didn’t like and opposed/confronted them. Wouldn’t this have caused her to leave an even deeper impression on Inha?

Q. 신승연이 서혜성을 조금이라도 사랑했긴 했나요? 단순히 가지고 논 건 아닐지 궁금합니다.

Did Seungyeon love Hyesung even a little bit? Or was she truly just toying with him?

A. 기본적으로 "가지고 놀았다"고 생각합니다. 가끔 인상적인 면을 발견하기도 했겠지만, 일단 시작부터 잘못됐습니다. 학폭 건이 불거졌을 때 신승연은 해명조차 듣지 않고 결별을 선언했고, 이 에 서혜성도 해명을 포기했을 것입니다. 신승연은 오디션 쇼에 안타깝게 매달린 서혜성의 영혼을 한 번 더 부숴버린 사람이겠습니다. Fundamentally, I think she was “just toying” with him. She may have discovered some aspects of him that impressed her, but it was a bad relationship from the start. When the school violence scandal was exposed, Seungyeon broke up with him immediately without even hearing his explanation, and Hyesung gave up trying to explain from his side as well. I suppose for Hyesung, who was hopelessly clinging to the audition show, Seungyeon was someone who crushed his spirit twice.

Q. 서혜성의 부친은 이혼했거나 죽은 건가요? 학폭 사건 이전의 서혜성은 어떤 아이였을까요?

Are Hyesung’s parents divorced or deceased? What was he like as a kid before the school violence incident?

A. 서혜성은 외동이며, 아버지는 일찍 돌아가셨습니다. 장세일의 뒷조사에서 보신 대로 어머니는 시장에서 건어물 가게를 하고 있습니다. 혜성이는 쭉 시장 상인들 틈에서 자랐을 것입니다. 퇴학 전에는 말썽꾸러기지만 인사성 바른 아이였겠지요, 학폭 사건 후에는 시장에 발길을 끊었으리라 생각합니다. Hyesung was an only child, and his father passed away at an early age. As seen in Seil’s investigations, his mother was a dried fish vendor at a fish market. Hyesung would have grown up with the vendors at the market. Before his expulsion, he was seen as a mischievous but polite and friendly boy, but after the incident he stopped going to the market altogether.

Q. 서혜성의 말투만 유독 나이 들어 보이는데 이유가 있습니까?

Hyesung’s particular speech style makes him sound older, is there a reason for this?

A. 서혜성은 시장 상인들 틈에서 자라 갓 스물치고 고색창연한 구석이 많은데요. 아마 시장 어른 들은 어린 서혜성을 예뻐했을 것이고, 우정과 놀이를 중시하는 성정도 여기서 비롯되었을 것입니 다. 어릴 때는 말하는 게 웃긴다며 인기도 있었겠지만... 고등학교에 진학해 송건욱을 만나며 많은 게 바뀌고 말았습니다. Hyesung grew up amongst the market vendors, so though he’s only twenty he has a lot of aspects to him that are old-fashioned. The elders at the market likely doted on him as a child, and this was probably where his emphasis on friendship and playful nature came from as well. When he was younger, his funny style of speech probably made him quite popular...But after entering high school and meeting Song Kun-Wook, everything changed.

Q. 구조 직전 분장실에서 신호 불량으로 PlugHole의 메시지가 끊기는데, 원래 이어질 내용은 무 엇이었나요?

Just before the rescue, PlugHole’s messages are interrupted due to a failed signal, but what would have been the next message?

A. "사실 나는" 뒤의 내용은 "진실보다도 네가 무사히 나오기만을 바라.” 였을 것 같습니다. After “Actually, I...” I think the next message would have been “want you to get out of there safely, even more so than I want the truth”.

Q. 신승연이 장세일이나 오인하에게 건넸다는 위로들은 진심으로 한 말이었을까요?

Do you think Seungyeon’s words of comfort to Seil and Inha were in earnest?

A. 신승연은 장세일에게도, 오인하에도 진심을 말했다고 생각합니다. 다만, 순간의 진심일 뿐이라 얼마 뒤에는 기억도 하지 못했을 것입니다. I think her words to both Seil and Inha were in earnest, yes. However, it was only in the moment, so she probably didn’t even remember them after a little while.

Q. 신승연은 마지막에 제 명을 재촉한 느낌인데요. 왜 위기의 순간에 그런 말을 했을까요?

It feels to me as though Seungyeon really dug her own grave in her final moments. Why would she say something like that in a moment of danger?

A. (범인도 마찬가지로) 패닉 상태였던 것과 더불어, TOP 5는 자신을 거역할 수 없다는 생각이 기 본으로 있었기 때문입니다. 신승연은 "금수저" 이규혁의 실체를 알고 있었기에 먼저 찌르고 들어 가면 자신을 구할 수밖에 없을 거라고 보았겠지요. 어쨌든 저는 당시에 둘 다 패닉 상태였을 거 라 생각합니다. 정상적인 판단이 가능했다면 말에도, 행동에도 분명 수위 조절이 있었겠지요 (Just like the culprit), she was panicking, and she also fundamentally believed that the TOP 5 were incapable of disobeying her. Since Seungyeon knew the truth about “Silver Spoon” Gyu-hyuk, she thought that if she came in with the offensive Gyu-hyuk would have no choice but to rescue her. In any case, I believe that at that moment both of them were in a state of panic. If they were in a situation where they retained their normal sense of judgment, then of course both their words and their actions would definitely have had more restraint.

Q. 오인하의 관계도 이벤트를 보면 부친을 신고했을 때 "웃고 있었다"는 본인의 대사와 달리 겁 에 질린 이미지가 등장합니다. 이 차이를 넣은 의도는 무엇인가요?

In the rapport conversation with Inha, she claims that when she reported her father she “was laughing,” but the image that’s displayed contradicts this by depicting her as fearful. What was your intention with this disparity?

A. 제 이야기를 할 때 솔직해지지 못하는 사람의 심리와 더불어, 담담한 듯이 이야기하는 오인하 가 그때 얼마나 두려워하며 한 발을 내디뎠는지를 부각하기 위한 설정이었습니다. I was trying to depict the psyche of someone who can’t be honest when talking about themselves. Despite how calm she acted when telling the story, I wanted to emphasize how terrified Inha must have been when taking this first step.

Q. 오인하와 서혜성은 언제부터 사이가 나빴나요? 나중에 사이가 나빠진 거라면 초반에는 서혜성 이 오인하를 누나라고 부른 적도 있을까요?

When did Inha and Hyesung stop getting along? If it wasn’t right away, was there a time when Hyesung called Inha “noona”?

A. 서혜성이 오인하를 누나라고 부른 적은 없었을 것 같습니다. 또한 둘은 서혜성이 민주영에게 공손하게 (?) 굴지 않은 사건에서 본격적으로 티격태격을 시작했을 거라 생각합니다. I don’t think there was any point when Hyesung called Inha “noona.” In addition, I think that the incident where Hyesung refused to be polite (?) to Juyoung was when they really started quarreling.

Q. 무대 붕괴 사건이 일어나지 않은 상태에서 이규혁이 신승연 PD의 비밀을 알았다면 어떤 선택 을 했을지 궁금합니다.

What would have happened if Gyu-hyuk had discovered Seungyeon PD’s secret in a situation other than the stage collapse incident?

A. 적어도 죽이진 않았을 것입니다. At the very least, he wouldn’t have killed her.

Q. 이규혁이 어렸을 때 친모에게 학대를 당했나요? 태어나지 말았어야 할 자신 탓에 수모와 고통 을 당했다는 표현을 보니, 혹시 어렸을 때 직접 들은 말을 옮긴 것인지 궁금해졌습니다.

Was Gyu-hyuk abused by his birth mother as a child? Considering his saying that he never should have been born and that he was the cause of her humiliation and suffering made me wonder if maybe that’s something that he heard her say when he was young.

A. 육체적 학대는 없었습니다. 친모는 이규혁에게서 계속 이병희를 떠올리고 그 그림자를 좇았을 것입니다. 이규혁은 제 존재로 친모가 이병희에게서 벗어나지 못했다고 생각해왔습니다. He was never physically abused. For his mother, Gyu-hyuk was a constant reminder of Lee Byung Hee, and she spent her life chasing after that shadow. Gyu-hyuk came to believe that it’s because of his existence that his mother could never be free from Lee Byung Hee.

Q. 이규혁이 넉넉하지 않은 가정환경에도 실용음악과를 선택한 이유가 궁금합니다!

I’m curious as to why Gyu-hyuk chose to major in applied music even though he didn’t grow up in a well-do-to household.

A. 친모가 그것을 강하게 바랐기 때문입니다. That’s because those were the wishes of his birth mother.

Q. 이규혁이 가족과의 관계를 "서로 기댄다", "의지한다"는 어휘로만 설명하는 것은 의도인가요? 관계도 이벤트에서의 과거 설명과 특정 후일담에서 "힘들면 기대라, 서로 의지하며 살아가자"고 한 부분이 유사하게 느껴집니다. 이런 스크립트 어휘에 세세하게 신경 쓰신 건지 궁금합니다.

Was it intentional that Gyu-hyuk only describes his relationships with his family using words like “depending/leaning on one another”? His story about his past in his rapport events and in particular his epilogue where he said “If you’re having a hard time, lean on me. Let’s live life depending on one another” feel very similar to me. I’m curious if using these particular words in the script was a deliberate detail.

A. 맞습니다. 이규혁은 "비슷한 처지가 서로 의지하는 형태"의 관계만을 쌓아왔기 때문입니다. That’s right. This is because to Gyu-hyuk, relationships where “people in similar circumstances depend on each other” are all he’s ever known.

Q. 장세일이 베스타 탈락부터 스탭 일을 할 때까지 부모님과 어떤 관계였을지 궁금합니다.

What was Seil’s relationship with his parents like after being eliminated from Bstars and before he started working as a staff member?

A. 장세일은 군인 가족으로, 오디션 이후 특히 아버지에게 수치스러운 자식이 되었을 것입니다. Seil comes from a military family, so after the audition his father especially saw him as a shameful son.

Q. C 루트에서 ???가 "돌이키기에는 늦었다"고 하는데, 이 "늦은 타이밍"이 무엇에 대한 것이었는 지 생각하신 바가 있었나요?

In C route, ??? says that “it’s already too late to turn back”, but do you have any thoughts on what they mean by “too late”?

A. 한도윤의 마음 안에서는 "배신", 즉 “마스커레이드가 이미 끝났음을 인정한 순간”을 되돌릴 수 없다는 의미였을 것입니다. It means that in Do-yoon’s mind, it’s impossible to undo the “betrayal,” i.e., “the moment he acknowledged that Masquerade is already done for.”

Q. 한도윤은 유독 1달 넘게 병원 신세를 지는데요. 어쩌다 혼자만 그렇게 다친 걸까요?

Do-yoon is the only one who stayed in the hospital for over a month. Why was he the only one who was hurt?

A. 한도윤은 시작 시점부터 잔해에 파묻히는 큰일을 당했습니다. 정상적인 몸 상태는 아니었을 거 라 생각합니다. 구조되고 나서야 자신이 얼마나 다쳤는지 알았을 것 같습니다. At the very start of the game, Do-yoon suffered an accident where he was buried under the debris. His physical condition wasn’t exactly normal because of this. It was only after his rescue that he realized how badly he was hurt.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 한도윤은 마스커레이드에 다시 복귀했을 거라고 생각하시나요?

After the true ending, do you think that Do-yoon would ever return to Masquerade?

A. 개인적 의견이라면, 돌아가지 않는 길을 택하지 않았을까 합니다. 신승연의 말처럼 "이미 마스 커레이드는 끝났다"는 사실을 본인도 스스로 인정했기 때문일 겁니다. My personal opinion is that he would probably choose not to go back. The reason is that, as Seungyeon told him, “Masquerade is already done for,” and he himself already internalized that truth.

Q. 트루 엔딩 후 한도윤은 밴드 멤버들과 영원히 척을 질지, 몇몇과는 연을 이어갈지 궁금합니다.

After the true ending, will Do-yoon continue to be on bad terms with the other band members forever, or will he continue to have relations with some of them?

A. 꽤 시간을 가진 뒤에 결국 모두와 연락하게 되지 않았을까 생각합니다. I think that after quite some time has passed, he would reach out to all of them eventually.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 오인하와 민주영은 이규혁에게 찾아갔을까요?

After the true ending, do you think Inha and Juyoung would have gone to see Gyu-hyuk?

A. 민주영은 퇴원하고 재참가를 위해 다시 상경한 무렵부터 이규혁을 방문했을 거라고 생각합니 다. 오인하에게는 조금 긴 시간이 필요했을 것 같네요. I think that Juyoung would have paid him a visit around the time that she left the hospital and came back to Seoul for her re-entry in the next season. As for Inha, I think it would take her quite some time.

Q. 서혜성이 안타깝습니다. 정들어버릴 때쯤 가서 더 그래요. 살려내도 결국 바뀌는 게 없는데 이 친구가 행복한 엔딩이 있을까요?

I feel bad for Hyesung. Especially because he was killed right as I warmed up to him. Even if we save him, things don’t ever change for him, so is there such thing as a happy ending for him?

A. 서혜성은 베스타 쇼에서 만난 기회를 통해 성급히 자신의 길을 찾으려 했지만, 그가 택한 방법 을 통해 행복을 찾을 방법은 없었던 것 같습니다. 생존 루트에서는 이런저런 시도 끝에 남의 비 밀을 폭로하는 것으로는 반등할 수 없음을 알게 되고, 반대로 제 두려움을 드러내고 가해자 송건 욱과 맞부딪히는 게 진짜 반등의 시작임을 깨닫지 않았을까 합니다. 진짜 싸워야 하는 대상은 거 기 있으니까요. 나중에는 생존한 장세일하고도 만나보지 않았을까요? 퇴원한 한도윤까지 세 사람 이 만나는 일이 분명히 있었을 것 같습니다. Hyesung recklessly tried to find his own path through the opportunity that Bstars afforded him, but my thought is that there was no way to find happiness through the method he chose. I think that in the route where he survives, he comes to realize after various attempts that exposing others’ secrets won’t help him rebound, and on the contrary, that facing his fears and confronting his assailant Song Kun-Wook is the real start of his comeback—because that’s where his true fight awaits. Later, I wonder if he also would have met with fellow survivor Seil? I definitely think the two of them plus Do-yoon would meet again at some point.

Q. 후일담 (3)의 오인하는 언젠가 꿈을 이룰까요? 그 무대에 오르는 한도윤이 있을지 궁금해집니 다.

Will the Inha from epilogue (3) ever reach her dreams? I wonder if Do-yoon will be one of the people to perform on one of her stages.

A. 오인하는 끈기 있게 노력해 꿈을 이루었을 것입니다. 크루 멤버들로 시작해 언젠가는 민주영과 한도윤의 무대도 만들어냈기를 바랍니다. Through patience and hard work, Inha will achieve her dream. She starts with her crew members, and my hope is that eventually she gets to work with Juyoung and Do-yoon as well.

Q. 이규혁은 항상 누군가와 유대감을 느끼려는 것 같고, 강하게 의지하며 살아가기를 바라는 것 같은데요. 트루 엔딩 시점으로 출소하게 된다면 또 누군가와 강하게 의지하며 살아갈까요?

Gyu-hyuk seems like he’s constantly looking for someone to feel a connection with, and wishes to live life leaning heavily on them. If he’s ever released in the true ending timeline, will he once again live his life depending on someone?

A. 트루 기준으로 출소하게 된다면 이젠 누군가를 의지하거나 도피처로 삼지 않고 홀로서기를 할 수 있게 되었길 바랍니다. My hope is that if he is released post-true ending, he becomes the kind of person who doesn’t need to rely on or turn to others for refuge, and can instead begin standing on his own.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 한도윤은 음악 자체를 포기하나요?

After the true ending, does Do-yoon give up on music altogether?

A. 혼란에서 벗어나 자신이 행복해지는 길을 찾았으리라 믿고 있습니다. 거기엔 아무래도 음악이 있었을 것 같네요. I believe that Do-yoon is able to free himself from the chaos and find a path that leads him to happiness. I feel that whatever that path is, music must be a part of it somehow.

Q. 트루 엔딩 후 오인하와 민주영은 계속 연락을 하며 지냈을까요?

After the true end, do Inha and Juyoung keep in touch?

A. 자주 연락했을 것입니다. 인하가 "만들어주겠다"던 무대의 약속은 민주영에게도 마찬가지일 테 니까요. They would keep in touch fairly often. The promise Inha made to "make [Do-yoon] a stage" would naturally also have extended to Juyoung.

Q. 하수창과 한도윤은 트루 이후로 좀 친해질까요?

Will Suchang and Do-yoon become friends after the true ending?

A. 전 친해졌을 거라고 생각하지만 어느 쪽이든 도윤이가 좀 행복해졌으면 좋겠네요. 제가 도윤이 에게 선빵을 날렸다고요? 그건 그렇지요… I think that they will, but regardless, I do wish Do-yoon can be a little happier somehow. Are you saying that I’m the one who sucker-punched him? Well, that’s true, but…

#Buried Stars #cam thoughts #My Stuff #My Translations #liveblog: bstars #maybe if there's enough interest I'll do more but *checks tags* somehow I don't think that'll be likely #corrections welcome; i'm not a professional translator; etc. etc.

[justice4falum]

do NOT give money to tumblr user roboticwheelchair

Hi, so you’ve probably seen this post or some of its permutations on this website lately! (The old version of this post broke because I mistakenly deleted it. Let’s try this again, shall we?)

This is a “RAFFLE” for a Nintendo Switch Lite and the poster is asking people send them $10 to earn a spot in the raffle, of which there are 52. People have already sent money in.

This post was made by user roboticwheelchair and the name which currently displays on their paypal is “Mick Garcia” - it’s very possible you’ve heard their story already from several weeks ago. User roboticwheelchair claims that they were physically assaulted for being a transgender man, and that they sustained a concussion.

The BAD news is that roboticwheelchair is a blog which has been on tumblr for a very long time, and used to belong to someone named Falum Gibson. You may have heard this name from their #justice4falum campaign ages ago. They are a notorious scammer and has been doing this since 2016. LET’S REVIEW (LONG, LONG, LONG POST AHEAD.)

Part 1: #BieberMeetFalum and Meeting Ed Sheeran

In 2016, Falum ran a Justin Bieber fan account on Twitter called @bieberfreezer (account has since been suspended). They began a campaign called #BieberMeetFalum by posting a Twitter thread about their disability, cerebral palsy, and how they had intended to meet Justin Bieber personally because his music was important to them. However, the venue he was performing at was not wheelchair accessible and Falum uses an electric wheelchair. They were trying to get the attention of him or his team in order to ensure they met. (LINK)

This was a reasonable thing to post about! Accessibility is a necessity. We know this. And they weren’t asking for money. Twitter got this the attention it needed and they were able to meet Bieber despite the trouble. (LINK)

Later on, they gunned to meet Ed Sheeran and succeeded.

Part 2: #TaylorNoticeFalum

In 2018, Falum was on Tumblr as user taylorsgetawaycarxo. At this point they still say they have cerebral palsy, but has also said they have COPD (something they later will drop.) Claiming that they are terminally ill and has 2 years left to live, they talk about how Taylor Swift is their idol and they want to meet her before they die.

This came right after they had done the same thing with Demi Lovato fans, claiming they idolised Demi and needed to meet her, so on and so forth. They ran a GoFundMe for this. 

The GoFundMe is now defunct, but the URL was “falumlastwish” I believe. Here’s where the plot gets a little lost, because the sheer number of different GoFundMes, donation posts, and meet-a-celebrity campaigns that Falum was running in these couple of years is... pretty wild. There’s a post from another blog here on Tumblr about the Taylor Swift fandom’s run-in with them. (LINK) 

Here’s a GoFundMe they ran from a music fan account on Instagram, where they were asking for help escaping homelessness. They raised almost 5,000 dollars out of the 10,000 they were asking. (LINK)

At some point they also ran a GoFundMe for a PTSD service dog. I’m not sure how much they were asking for this one, but they apparently made $880 off of it. 

Part 3: Ellie Elizabeth

This part is a little muddled, because the tumblr blog connected to it has been deleted and it’s really difficult to find archives of the posts, but at some point in early 2019 Falum started using the blog ellie-elizabeth21 to ask for money as well. The story was that they were being sent to conversion therapy for being bisexual by their father, who had them deemed legally mentally incompetent. Further stories they posted about were potential evictions, needs for grocery money, etc.

Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the posts this account made. Many of them achieved their goal of over $200 or more. (LINK)

“Ellie” also ran a GoFundMe to escape conversion therapy. Although the person running the campaign was listed as Ellie Elizabeth, the “beneficiary” listed on the campaign is Falum Gibson, proving that Ellie was another pseudonym - just a better hidden one. Here’s the link to that GoFundMe, where you can see it for yourself. (LINK)

This was Ellie Elizabeth’s PayPal account at the time, I believe? And anyway, you might note that they apparently made nearly $6,500 on this account.

Part 4: #Justice4Falum

Now in November of 2019, Falum moved away from the world of Fan Internet and decided to try out something new. They made the blog roboticwheelchair in September of 2019 and reblogged a photoset of cats to it, which for a while was the only thing on the blog besides the donation post they initially made. They’ve gone through a cycle of reblogging and deleting things there, basically clearing out the blog every couple of weeks to make a new post.

At this point they were also @falumgibson on Twitter. The account has since been locked. This is when they posted a GoFundMe describing medical abuse they were allegedly undergoing at the Ottawa Hospital. Weird side note, this GoFundMe is still running and can be donated to, though obviously I’m recommending you don’t do so. (LINK)

They made several donation posts on Tumblr about this campaign, frequently linking it or their PayPal account and asking people to donate. Sometimes it was to go directly to their legal fund for this lawsuit, other times they were asking for money for medications or other immediate costs.

Side note, they had claimed to be in the hospital since August of 2019 due to suicidal ideation and claimed they had been psych warded. From what I can tell, the Ottawa Hospital General Campus they claimed to be hospitalised at does not actually have a psychiatric ward. It has a mental health team, but they appear to do outpatient work. It’s not really clear what they were in the hospital for at this point.

#Justice4Falum was originally about fundraising for a place to live because apparently they were in danger of being forced to leave the hospital due to homelessness. Later on they turned it into a legal fund to sue the hospital for mistreatment.

Part 5: Further Fundraising, Coming Out As Trans

While Falum was in the hospital, they started identifying as nonbinary. I’m not in any position to speculate about whether or not Falum is transgender, because that’s honestly not the point. Either way, they have started using their trans identity in much the way they use their disabilities - as a way to garner sympathy and trust, and to scam people out of money.

On their Twitter at this point, they did seem to have kind of a bizarre interpretation of how transition worked and appeared to be under the impression that the first thing trans men do is get top surgery? (LINK)

Shortly after this, still during the November that #Justice4Falum ran during, they began asking for donations to a different PayPal account than their normal one, because their stepdad was dying of cancer. There was a GoFundMe for this as well, but it appeared to feature their parents and was possibly not created by Falum.

No date on this tweet unfortunately, but right after that, they made a post about how they had been outed to their transphobic father and needed to escape living with him.

At this point, Falum has added several diagnoses to those they claim to have. In addition to cerebral palsy, they now claim to have multiple sclerosis and several mental illnesses. No more COPD, though! I’m very impressed that they recovered from a terminal illness!

Now that they’re out of the closet, in early December they begin making donation posts on Tumblr again and have now made a Patreon. (LINK: POST) (LINK: PATREON) Soon after this, they apparently left their home and became homeless, and started posting about this on Twitter and linking their PayPal.

In late December they posted on Twitter about having attempted suicide by taking 75 extra strength Tylenol. Warning for a photograph of their IV in this link. (LINK)

Not very long after, Falum returned to their narrative of being terminally ill by posting about how their multiple sclerosis (something they have only claimed since 2019, I believe) causes them over 20 seizures a day and will eventually kill them. (LINK)

Then they locked their Twitter account and decided to try something new.

Part 6: Connor Kay, “anontransman”

Enter Connor Kay. At this point Falum makes a new Twitter account called @ConnorIsTrans which eventually morphs into @anontransman. They initially link this account to their old main account, saying that they’ve switched in order to be openly trans on their new account because their transphobic father is stalking them. (LINK)

They continue asking for donations on Twitter, now with a Ko-Fi account called Connor Rocks.

They also post a story about an ex-friend of theirs spitting on them for being trans, apparently, and say they’re calling the police on her, which really doesn’t seem like something that’d be safe for a disabled trans person to do but whatever. (LINK)

On their blog at roboticwheelchair, they post stories about how they are being assaulted and mocked for being transgender. I should note that on Twitter they’ve said they are not out IRL and have not taken steps to transition.

Not only does this particular story sound kind of like the “down with cis bus” post, it’s also somewhat suspect that they allege they were called a tr*nny as an AFAB trans person, given who is generally targeted by that word. But. Moving on.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came around, Connor created a Facebook group for disability support. This was run by the Facebook account Connor Kay, which has since been deleted. It was the same account that they used to have and they’d not changed anything except for the name; prior posts showed it was Falum Gibson’s account.

It turns out they deleted this Facebook account because someone on Facebook posted about their years-long history of scamming people online. Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the Facebook callout and the images the OP posted. (LINK)

So Falum, or Connor, decides to start anew with an all new PayPal, Ko-Fi, Patreon and Twitter account. At this point they begin to break away from linking these accounts to the name Falum Gibson and their past donation posts, although they are still using the same Tumblr blog. They change their Twitter handle to @anontransman and remove links to Falum. (TWITTER SCREENCAP) (KO-FI SCREENCAP) (PATREON SCREENCAP)

Then they tweet about how they have been diagnosed with cancer. (LINK) Then they begin asking for $100k to go to the US for treatment. (LINK)

Soon after, this Tweet has been completely deleted and they have instead started asking for money for top surgery. (LINK) I believe this is in reverse chronological order, but here are a week’s worth of tweets from them - all deleted at random times in order to make room for the others - asking for money for various reasons. Yes, this was all literally within the same week. (LINK)

Note the very last image of that album contains a reference to an “Amazon Raffle” - they were basically telling people that donations would win them a spot in a raffle for an Amazon gift card or something? It seems they moved on from the @anontransman account before the raffle could come to fruition, or possibly that they just deleted all references to it. Not sure.

In April of 2020, roboticwheelchair posted a specific donation post about being attacked for being transgender and sustaining a concussion. They said they did not see a doctor after the assault because they didn’t think it was important, so their concussion went untreated and because of it they were unable to get groceries. The donation post linked to Connor Kay’s PayPal account. It was deleted and reposted several different times, with basically the same text.

Part 7: Mick Garcia

This is a more recent post with the exact same story, now about their multiple sclerosis medication. The only difference is now that the PayPal link sends you to the PayPal of Mick Garcia. Mick Garcia has a different PayPal username than Falum, Ellie, and Connor did.

On April 12th, the @anontransman account deactivated after Falum, or Ellie, or Connor, or Mick decided to leave Twitter. Then yesterday on April 19th, it reactivated and they tweeted once again.

However, around this same time, another Twitter account under the name Mick Garcia with an icon @anontransman used to use and a very similar tone/style cropped up.

The Mick Garcia account has not tweeted yet, as it appears that they may be staying with @anontransman for their current purposes, but it appears that for some reason or another they’ve decided to start going by Mick Garcia now.

I guess it’s probably relevant to note that while I suppose there are probably some white people out there with the last name Garcia, Falum is really seriously white and it’s suspect they would pick out Garcia as a pseudonym, whether they list “white” in their Twitter bio or not.

More from the current state of the roboticwheelchair blog includes many, many posts where they’re either reposting their own petitions or basically grabbing for as many followers as possible. You can probably guess why. (LINK)

As of April 20th, 2020, there are 2 donation posts still standing on their blog. Here are both of them. (LINK)

Finally, The Switch Raffle

Literally today, April 20th, roboticwheelchair posted something that is allegedly a raffle. They claim to be giving away a Nintendo Switch Lite to a lucky winner. There are 52 slots in the raffle; they are asking that people send them $10 over PayPal in order to enter. They’re also claiming this is to further fundraise for their medication.

They are claiming their doctor has put them on an MS medication that costs $450 every two weeks. (Note that if they’re trying to make money for that right now and also going to buy a Switch for the winner, than they’d only have about half of that at the end? The Switch Lite is about $260 in Canada and their total earnings from a full raffle would be $520.)

You should not give money to them for this raffle, or for any reason. The reason I’m compiling all of this is because after months of seeing them pull this scam over and over again, they’re now promising people an actual product that given their history, I would say they are highly unlikely to deliver.

Given their past, it is most likely they will delete this raffle once they have the money they want, and refuse to allude to it ever again. Or maybe they’ll just disappear! Or hell, maybe they’ll have some kind of nebulous problem ordering the Switch when someone wins, and that’ll be that.

But it’s clear based on this history, I hope, that Falum or Ellie or Connor or Mick has a long history of taking lots and lots of money from strangers online. Like, a lot of money. My estimate is that they’ve made over $15k on this, and that’s exclusively based off of the visible numbers on their GoFundMes and Ko-Fi accounts.

Please do not give this person your money. They are not trustworthy. There are other people who need it - like you, or maybe like, someone you personally know and not some complete stranger who keeps telling people they’re terminally ill so they can meet a cool musician.

Disclaimer

I’ve compiled all of this information to the best of my ability, but I am just one person and it took a lot of digging due to the deleted accounts involved.

Falum is actually disabled; I believe they do have cerebral palsy and may have other disabilities. I do not know if they really have MS, but it’s hard to trust them because they previously lied about having terminal COPD.

I have no idea if Falum is really transgender or not. They have apparently taken no concrete steps to transition, which I know means very little. That being said, if they are transgender, they are leveraging their identity in dangerous ways against other people for money and sympathy. Their stories about being assaulted by strangers for being transgender are highly suspect, given their lack of transition and the fact that the scenarios they describe are highly cliche.

Finally, I’m not trying to harass Falum or threaten them in any way. I don’t know them. If they’re interested in talking candidly about what they have been doing all these years and why, that’s fine. I would honestly love to understand, but at this point it seems like the only thing they can do is apologise for their dishonesty and stop doing this.

Reblog this post if you want! The point is to get the word out there, because this person has been a pervasive presence on this website for some time and has not yet been called out.

#tumblr scam #signal boost #donations #falum gibson #roboticwheelchair #anontransman #connor kay #mick garcia #ellie elizabeth

[dallonm-archive]

LIFE CYCLE OF MASSIVE STARS | A CAMP NANO 2021 (RE)-INTRO

CONTENT WARNINGS: death of a parent, classism, anti-autistic ableism, mental illness, trauma, light adult content (nothing explicit)

Genre: literary fiction, contemporary, new adult, ?????, who knows :)

POV: third person present, split POV

Setting: Sheffield, UK. 2020 but i am simply pretending there is no pandemic 

Camp Nano Goal: 15,000

Deals With: parental trauma, death, sexuality + gender identity, anti-autistic ableism, classism, complicated family dynamics, the “help i’m in my last year of university and i don’t know what i’m fucking doing or who i am” mood, chloe talks shit about the uk + uk gov for ~80k words straight

The Vibes: rainy days, empty streets at night, libraries at 3am, house parties you shouldn’t be at, misty mornings, highlighter stains, cheap alcohol, city skylines, countryside views, going to big tesco/aldi just to feel something :(

Summary: Thomas’ father died over summer and he doesn’t know how to tell his housemates. Instead, he hides in the IC library or the Botanical Gardens or West Street clubs and decides that he is a blank canvas, and that his trauma can stay with his family in Rotterdam. (it’s not that easy)

Kristen likes to pretend that Uni will last forever. He likes to pretend a lot of things: that nobody will look at him differently when they learn he’s autistic, that people will understand his relationship with gender, that his family isn’t hiding secrets from him about his mother. (it’s not that easy)

Junie thought coming out would come with all the answers. But she only has new questions: what does “lesbian” mean for her? Who is she beyond that? How does she find her place in amongst people who experience the world so differently to her? (it’s not that easy)

Literal Logline: girl help i am still attached to OCs i made in 2013-2016

So if you’ve been following me a while (I say as my blog is only seven months old), you may remember a little wip I introduced here named Patchwork, a new adult novel that dealt with the messy experience that is trying to figure out what it means to be an adult when you’re plunged into the fast-paced adult world of university. That story has always been very close to my heart but it was difficult to progress on because: 

I was working on it whilst going through ~the worst time of my life at university~. My second year was already awful before the pandemic started, and the pandemic just made it worse, and since this story is so inherently connected to my own experiences at university I couldn’t work on it whilst dealing with all of that. I’m currently taking the year off until things calm down and I think it’s the perfect chance to sit back and reflect on those experiences, and I think writing this novel would help

I simply was not ready for it! Drafting Revelations, Revelations has really refreshed my perception on novels because it’s taught me that I suit slow-paced, plot-light, discovery written novels the best and the original plan for this novel was way too plot heavy because I thought that’s what I had to do. But it’s not!

But! Whilst this novel and myself needed a lot of growth before I could think about drafting it, I’m at a point where I do feel ready to return to it. I think drafting Revelations, Revelations especially has given me the confidence I needed because I! Really tried to hard to give a heavy plot to this novel initially and I’ve since realised that I work best with slower novels that are really just a snapshot of people’s lives and their emotional growth. I also am at a point where, whilst I know not being there is the best thing right now, I miss University so so so much and I miss pre-pandemic University like I miss lecture halls and cafes and house parties and library all nighters so much it’s unreal!! This novel is practically a love letter to the year I lost as well as calling out the absolutely awful way the UK government has treated University students both before and during this pandemic. I was actually originally going to set this in the pandemic, because I think there are so many conversations that need to be had about the handling of it in this country but I also don’t think I am Ready for that (and I really just want my characters to be able to go outside lol). I think Camp Nano is the perfect kickstart to actually work on this novel because I now know just need to start writing rather than worry about ~plot~ - my plan is to just pants the fuck out of 15000 words and see where the story goes! I probably won’t return to it until I finish drafting Revelations, Revelations, but I appreciate the chance to get a head start + a little break from RR that I think will be needed by April

The biggest and most important change going into this however is: all three protagonists are autistic! I see a lot of posts about how to write autistic characters on here, but I think I’ve only seen one or two stories that actually had an autistic protagonist (if you have a contemporary and/or literary wip with one please please tag me in it! I really want more autistic rep and I want autistic rep from non autistic people too) and, as an autistic, I decided that I Will Simply Create It. All three characters have their own unique relationship with their autism and I am super excited to have a story that can explicitly navigate that whilst it’s not all the story is about, it is an important element as it shapes how our narrators see the world. And whilst there is anti-autistic sentiment they have to deal with, it’s not at the centre of their narratives or autistic stories. They are just autistic and existing and that’s not always easy but it’s ultimately what makes them who they are and they wouldn’t change it for the world. Being autistic is a wonderful thing! I love being autistic! I also would love to talk more about autistic rep on here (unfortunately relevant thanks to a certain movie): my biggest frustration is that it is SO clear that mainstream autistic rep is not actually for us. It perpetuates harmful ideas and only serves as inspiration porn for neurotypicals. They frame our condition on how it impacts others and don’t consult us or let us tell our own stories and pretend we’re all cis white verbal boys with bad social skills. I am only one autistic person, and I cannot write for everyone in the community (please make sure you are listening to and supporting all sorts of autistic people!), but I hope that telling a story influenced by my own will not only help myself but others - and maybe help out any of you that aren’t autistic and are looking to write autistic rep.

The main characters haven’t changed much, but a little re-intro :)

Thomas

studies psychology

bisexual disaster

panic attack! in the library cafe 

wannabe plant dad (one of them is named monty :) will monty survive?)

looks like he’d invite you to watch pulp fiction in his dorm but he’s probably never seen it and his favourite movie is probably like. ratatouille

taking italian classes to cope

Junie

studies psychology 

16 year old chloe made a pretty girl oc and was like hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me and here we are

bakes to cope

the BEST fashion 

lets go on an adventure :) -screams in the forest- 

she’s done your birth chart and she is NOT happy

Kristen

studies english and music 

the way i literally can’t let go of this bastard and it’s been 8 years

former emo kid who never really got over it

BEST party playlists

often found in the kitchen at 4am making cinnamon rolls

unsupervised access to the internet as a child

i have no taglist for this, but like with NaNoWriMo, i’ll likely do a dedicated taglist for Camp Nano updates and we’ll see where it goes from there! As I said I likely will take a long break from this story after April until I finish drafting Revelations, Revelations, so the taglist will just be for Camp Nano, but I’m excited to spend a month getting to know it and sharing that with y’all so if you’d like to me on a taglist for this, let me know! <3

#i promise my next novel wont be third person present split pov but it is <3 so good <3 #wip intro #amwriting #writeblr #atlastracking #LCOMS #once again i am making a post at 5am and i am also autistic so ignore typos pls <3

[naturedust]

The Arcana characters during the Covid-19 pandemic: Part 1 (Asra, Julian, Valerius)

hi everyone! i felt really happy whilst writing this. in each set of headcanons, the apprentice lives with that character! i don’t specify if there’s anything romantic or sexual going on between them though. this is VERY detailed, i’m still writing out muriel, nadia, portia, and lucio’s headcanons so they’ll come in part 2 <3 i hope you enjoy!! AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529276/chapters/67324228

Asra

asra hosts weekly magic workshops (covering very very basic magic) with the apprentice over microsoft teams 💻 each workshop has a small fee, with all proceeds going to local vesuvian charities like mask suppliers, and food banks (who he tries to donate extra food to every week) supporting the poorest amongst their population. it was the apprentice who first suggested he do this, on a day he was feeling really afraid in the face of the pandemic.

i think he has days when he feels really helpless and trapped – and it runs a little deeper than cabin fever and restlessness. other than the pain he’d experience if he lost the apprentice again, being unable to do things freely is the worst situation he can think of... as much as asra prioritises the apprentice’s mental health, he doesn’t practice emotional expression a lot. he truly strives to be there for the apprentice and even when he remembers how they suffered after coming back...asra only cries silently at night when they are asleep – when he knows they can’t hear him. 

that’s part of the reason why he’s always seemed so mysterious in the game — growing up without his parents meant that he learnt to push down his fear and put on a brave face... and one of the reasons why he goes on trips without much explanation is to escape reality for a bit. he lets his vulnerability show only on the worst of days (like the day the apprentice died). on days where asra feels really afraid of the world and defeated, the apprentice takes over his shop duties and brews much more lapsang souchong than usual to comfort him. so much that even passerbys outside the shop are caught in the smokiness of it! unlike the red plague, every community in the world is affected, and there is nowhere for asra to escape to. this includes nopal. after vesuvia’s Covid-19 situation gets better though, he and the apprentice stay there sometimes as a mini vacation of sorts and it brings him peace 🏜

asra’s leading an effort to make high quality masks more accessible to vesuvians. in fact, that local mask provider i mentioned earlier is his initiative. he set it up after seeing people buy all the beaked plague doctor masks (the PPE of vesuvia) that actual working doctors need access to. he would never admit it but, when asra thinks about the doctors, julian is the first who comes to mind. anyways, the masks asra designs are stunning. he spends tireless nights testing their 3-ply efficacy, and they aren’t just plain blue or white – there are intricate details imprinted on them through his magic 🔮 

i think asra would also be really into coming up with new herbal concoctions for customers, after he notices how tired people look from being indoors all day – for example, he’s developed an immune system-boosting drink that’s a gorgeous swirly purple colour 🍶 it’s similar to traditional chinese medicine. also he only uses ethically sourced, 100% local herbs (by local, i mean from nopal and the tarske forest, where muriel helps him collect wildflowers and herbs!!)  🌿 he uses spells to counter the toxicity of his favourite belladonna flower and it becomes a superfood staple of his concoctions

he goes out every couple of days just to gather herbs and ingredients for aforementioned concoctions, always prioritising the ones he makes for the apprentice and always making those sweeter, taking more time to create colourful depths in them that resemble galaxies. asra also makes particular effort to bring back a wide range of fruits from his local trips as it always cheers the apprentice up 🍈

asra invents the most effective, affordable, environmentally-friendly, non-toxic and skin-friendly hand sanitiser and because this magician is the sweetest person ever and cares much more about people’s lives than making a profit during the pandemic, he shares the recipe online for free & magicians all around the world recreate the hand sanitiser for their local neighbourhoods. he’s since been featured in a couple of “Top 10 People You Should Follow” lists in business magazines and there’s an online petition with over 200k signatures calling for his nobel prize nomination lol. asra insists he doesn’t care about fame but when the apprentice laughs about these recognitions, they always notice asra’s eyes crinkling

asra would also become a lot more active on his youtube channel. that’s right, he’s always had a youtube channel, he’s just had a million hiatuses because of all his adventures. he has around 20,000 subscribers (and a similar amount on instagram...his feed is colourful and full of pictures depicting his travels, the shop, and above all, the apprentice). since he’s decided to stay at the shop with the apprentice – who is actually a little more vulnerable than others to viruses, because of their “reborn” form – he has the time to post weekly videos again. i think asra wouldn’t want to show his face in any of the videos, and not on his instagram either... and it’s got nothing to do with his self-esteem – he just wants the focus to be on what he’s doing rather than how he looks. the videos vary from very domestic vlogs with titles like “what two magicians do in a day” to packed af guides like “🐍 SPELLS TO REFINE AT HOME 🐍” & “crystals that can calm you during these times” and his wildly popular “carving crystals i mined: in real time” ⏳ the apprentice is a permanent fixture in all of them <3 viewers always assume they’re together and whether they are or not...that’s for you to think about ;)

asra is big on healing crystals and gemstones. like really, really big on them. he always makes sure to inform his customers and audiences that they are alternatives and not substitutes, and that sicknesses need real medicine & they can’t just wear a crystal in place of a mask (bc that’s happened before and he felt so guilty for carving and selling the crystal in question) what’s strange is, even though he usually sources his crystals from other countries during his travels, there seem to more than ever all around the shop and the apartment upstairs..

when the apprentice asks about it, it turns out that asra goes mining alone in nopal! he doesn’t really like to mine the actual desert as he’s only ever dug up gold and silver there. one time, he accidentally stumbled upon a cave at the edge of nopal and – ever the curious wandering magician – he ventured deep within it and found amazing crystals and gemstones everywhere 💎 he never mentioned it to the apprentice because he always thought it was too dangerous for them to go, until they remind him it’s dangerous for him too. from that day onwards they go looking for crystals every weekend together :’)

if asra was living alone, he would be fine with just wearing a mask to go outside. but since he lives with the apprentice – and especially after what happened during the red plague – he’s not risking ANYTHING. he wears aviator goggles and eco-vinyl gloves when he’s in the market, just to be extra safe, though when he’s out foraging he takes off his mask because there’s usually no one else there & it’s way too humid. the apprentice likes to make fun of how steampunk he looks & the way the big goggles make his hair extra poofy  🤍 

Julian

julian is on the frontlines of the vesuvian pandemic response. with his experience as a doctor – specifically, a frontline doctor during the red plague who discovered the cure (!!!) – he is revered by new doctors and nurses, most of whom are volunteers. when the pandemic first begins, there aren’t formal hospitals or medical schools set up in vesuvia, so he has to make do by reopening his clinic in the centre city, as an alternative to valdemar’s one in the palace – which, quite frankly is the stuff of nightmares for most of the population

as you know, julian is universally loved by the vesuvian people... so the waiting list of the hospital branch he works at is ALWAYS full. patients always report how gentle and attentive he is and how comforted they feel in his presence. even though he has to wear a hazmat suit and the plague doctor beak mask, he is known for visiting the most severely affect Covid-19 patients and holding their hands in their last moments.

the apprentice brings different flowers to put inside his beak mask every day (this is a headcanon that i’m pretty sure originated from the writer telanaris on AO3!!) to give julian some small comfort amongst all the death and suffering he’s witness to every day. they go out to the tarske forest or even to nopal with asra, or sometimes alone. because julian mentioned wolfsbane was his favourite flower once, the apprentice picked some without knowing that they’re poisonous. long story short, they blacked out and woke up in his clinic with an extremely worried julian nearly in tears launching into a self-blame monologue, about to black out himself from staying by their side the whole night

i also think julian would be featured in the news a lot and sometimes pretty randomly. he gives official weekly Covid-19 updates on the main vesuvian tv news channel – though the apprentice stands in for him after the first two weeks (he tries very hard to refuse their help because he doesn’t want to burden them, even though they assure him they actually want to relieve him of at least one of his burdens since he’s a full-time pandemic doctor – and because he almost fainted from exhaustion the second time. the apprentice kindly, but sternly asks him to take care of himself too, as he does everyone else)

he would just be on the news in general too...his random acts of kindness would go viral on social media – “Vesuvian Doctor Helps Elderly In Race for Toilet Paper.” ❤️ “Local Doctor Delivers Groceries for Struggling Families.” and his “grandmothers” in nevivon always get excited when they see him on the news and send letters to congratulate him (much to his embarrassment). julian would also go viral on twitter. one photo of him has 100k retweets: “oh my fcking god i just rounded the corner and there’s this really fucking t a l l man handing out free bottles of sanitiser. i don’t need to see him under his plague beak to know he’s hot af HELP” and the apprentice would retweet it saying “so proud of my bf” and the internet would go wild over this comment. it’s up to you to decide if they’re actually together or not hehe bc who knows the apprentice might’ve meant best friend 🤷🏻‍♀️

he sets up a youtube channel with no profile picture or description to upload a single video... “How to PROPERLY use hand sanitiser!” and all the comments are just about his looks and voice 😚 it reaches cities outside of vesuvia and because the hand sanitiser in the video is locally made (by asra!) it quickly becomes sold out by either those who don’t know how to do magic or people without access to the products being replicated by other magicians... because a lot of them actually marked up the price :(  + even communities that are afraid of magic buy it because asra’s detailed method and julian’s instructive marketing combined are that effective. a power couple... in another life, perhaps 💫

julian would then be invited to do a city-sponsored video guide on how to wash your hands (the idea is helmed by nadia, of course, who recognises the usefulness of his newfound fame). not only would he be extremely exhausted from full-day shifts, he’d also be overthinking to the point of hyperventilation before filming starts – but he surprises the apprentice with how professional and clear he is in the videos. a true thespian at heart, instead of happy birthday, he improvises on set and sings an old tune from nevivon instead as he washes his hands for 20 seconds 🌊 lemme just say...his hands also go viral lol. also, julian could be a tik tok star if he wanted to. he’s certainly got the moves for it, and can easily achieve the e-boy vibe – plus, he’s gone viral on there several times already!

even though julian doesn’t seem to care when he’s in danger, he’s very meticulous when it comes to the apprentice’s safety. living through his second pandemic and working with patients first hand means that he is very aware of how severe the situation is. every morning he prepares a 99:1 water:bleach ratio spray to spray his shoes when he comes home. he refuses to even touch the apprentice (for fear of passing on anything from the clinic) before he’s taken off his mask, thrown it away safely – then showering and washing his hair thoroughly.

having grown up in nevivon, i like to think that julian is really environmentally conscious, especially with regards to the sea. he used to go diving in the sea to retrieve trash, and as a young man he made a habit of going to the docks every weekend to remove plastic containers and wires from around the necks of salt seals 🌫. so, no matter how tired he is, when he comes home to the apprentice, julian never forgets to snip the ear loops of his surgical masks in half, as he knows sea creatures can get caught up in them. i’m sure he makes a second youtube video at some point to talk about this issue. tldr julian is an environmental activist <3

Valerius

so it’s been a long while since valerius was freed from you-know-who. his personality has definitely changed a lot since then... he’s back to his old and real self (which we never really saw in the game) 🌄 he works side by side with nadia now, not only as colleagues but also genuine friends, and he oversees the health department. he sets up dozens of hospitals and more general clinics in and out of vesuvia, consulting experienced doctors in vesuvia like julian as well as officials from neighbouring countries and states. as a side note, valerius is actually a very humble person and the most attentive listener you will ever meet. people from neighbouring governments & royal households admire him immensely as a result <3

out of everyone, i think valerius would be the most careful during the pandemic. during the red plague he witnessed lucio’s illness up close and it’s had a profound impact on him. he worries about the apprentice, a lot. more than anyone who knows him expects him to. he’s always the first to notice and remind them if their mask is falling down their nose, or if they’re about to rub their eyes with unwashed hands. you will never catch him forgetting to wear a mask or touching his face at all when he’s outside. he takes the time to use disinfectant wipes to clean everything he brings back home one by one, and though valerius is adamant it’s not the apprentice’s responsibility (because most of the things are usually files from the palace he has to go through before the next morning or things he brings back from the market) the apprentice always insists they want to help out :’) so it becomes a nice daily evening ritual, sitting together on the floor after returning from the palace, cleaning their things in silence together 💜

speaking of things he buys, valerius loves the marketplace. he discovers it one day by accident when looking for a bouquet of 🌹 red roses 🌹 to bring back for the apprentice, who was particularly upset that day after helping valerius out at the new hospitals and not being able to help any of the patients as much as they would have liked with their magic. when valerius stumbles across the marketplace, he is absolutely amazed by the colours and smells that surround him. he spends a lot of his free time and lunch hours looking through jewellery stalls – especially hairpins and hair sticks. 

anyone looking at him would be able to see how much care valerius puts into maintaining his hair. because he washes his hair every day (to avoid bringing any Covid-19 related germs into bed), and because being free from you-know-who has made him a lot more open to magic... not to mention because he actually lives with the apprentice now 💜 i think valerius would also consult asra about magical hair masks and conditioners, to keep his very long and thick hair healthy and soft, despite washing it every day.

he knows from accidentally overhearing asra a long time ago that the apprentice loves pumpkin bread, so he asks around for hours until he finally finds the baker’s stall 🍞 it takes hours because valerius is really bad with directions and gets lost a few times... it doesn’t help that he’s distracted by all the different foods and jewellery that he’s never seen before (he picks up a nice ring for the apprentice, and yes he’s so attentive and familiar with jewellery that he guesses their ring band size correctly). from that day onwards, once or twice a week, he wakes up a little earlier than usual to sneak out of his estate and buy the bread, so that the apprentice can enjoy it – freshly made, warm, and their favourite – for breakfast 🥣

yes, he has an estate (this mr. darcy-like headcanon is from jane_ways on AO3!!) and he treats his household employees very well, offering paid leave for all of them so that they can stay with their own families. in their absence, he proves to be an incredible cook, albeit a little rusty because he hasn’t cooked anything substantial since being under you-know-who’s influence and because he’s been too busy at the palace to eat anything that isn’t catered. 

due to social distancing, the apprentice and him eat in a lot more – valerius is very ambitious and soon moves past making homemade dishes... he cooks blown out, elaborate dinners and prepares creative and (visually) beautiful packed lunches to bring to work 🍴 whenever the apprentice has to work late he brings them dinners inspired by the colours of the shop that day – he is hesitant to admit it, at first, but he’s always admired the crystals there, and he is often inspired by them in his food presentations. asra is ever perceptive and gifts him a few (polished amethyst because he used to be an insomniac, black tourmaline and selenite to keep you-know-who at bay 💎) soon after the apprentice frees him from the curse

i really see valerius as someone who against all expectations is really into hands-on work like welding and carving – things that can get messy. he’s slowly trying to get rid of it, but since he first started working at the palace he’s maintained a very prim and posh appearance. he really loves to weld jewellery like rings and earrings. before the pandemic began, he took a few classes in the marketplace – classes which are on hiatus now, of course. he's set up a little studio in his estate and wears a blacksmith’s apron and goggles and everything. it’s honestly quite the sight. whenever the apprentice is working longer hours at the shop making potions with asra, he goes into the studio to continue his projects. some of the ones he’s proudest of are: the pure-silver wine rack, the gold headbands and rings he makes for himself – and then for the apprentice too when they keep “borrowing” his – and his favourite of all is his first ever project: the cast iron skillet that took him over a week to weld. he hand engraved the apprentice and his initials onto its handle <3  you don't need to read any of this as a romantic gesture, because friends can definitely do the same!

i like to think that prakra managed the pandemic especially well, and that valerius sits down to have zoom calls with queen nasrin to discuss ways the two places can collaborate and help each other 👑 she becomes his mentor of sorts, as he’s still relatively young and inexperienced when it comes to governing a city-state like vesuvia. when nasrin visited nadia before at the palace, she was not a fan of valerius at all and was just as wary of him as nadia was. however she becomes very fond of him as a result of their collaboration, and even starts to see him as a son ❕ other than the apprentice, nasrin would be the second person valerius talks the most freely with. initially he is very reluctant to share anything about his life, let alone his past before landing the consul job – but he eventually opens up and nasrin plays a role in helping him move past his failures (his eyes are opened after the apprentice frees him, and he feels immense shame from how he didn’t lead vesuvia very successfully in nadia’s absence)

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