#took a lot of editing and rewriting whole paragraphs and it's still not a proper description of everything i wanted to say

[fivewholeminutes]

so. wembley.

Once I have finally gathered my wits the words did not want to stop coming. This rambling is long; apologies for that. And for the messed up tenses I hate tenses we only have one past tense why is English like this

No photos/videos yet, they are still not properly checked/deleted/edited by me.

It was. Unsurprisingly. One of the best days of my life. But also, I don't remember much from my life, so don't trust me on this one. (Kidding, it totally WAS one of the best days of my life). And uhh... I have a problem with processing events and emotions, so it still feels like I have seen it on a TV screen instead of, you know, actually, physically having been there? Idk how to explain that, I still have to convince my brain that I've been there. I feel detached from it completely. But!! I!! Have!! Been!! There!!

I woke up so early that foxes were still roaming the streets. Didn't talk much with people around me in the queue (hello anxiety), but they were lovely! I signed the blue flag for iii from me & Lia, got the sticker for Projekt Atlantic, received some bracelets, exchanged some bracelets, put some sea creatures tattoos on people (LIA I FORGOT TO GIVE YOU THE WHALE!!!), slept on a pavement, bought merch for myself and others (I've never had anyone to buy concert merch for before, it's such a nice feeling 🥺).

And queueing for so long was so fucking worth it! Third row, baby!! For the first time in the middle!! (Which was my downfall later, but the pre-show me was not aware of that just yet). I couldn't actually hear HEALTH that well, but I really liked their drummer, he was enjoying himself and his joy was contagious. (I've checked them later though and. Last album, my beloved.) During the break, well, you all know what was happening, I have been liveblogging everything (sorry about that <3). The moment someone in the crowd literally screeched when they saw the new masks on instagram was a blessing, I wouldn't have survived seeing them in new masks without a warning. Also, my blind ass would probably realise 3 songs in that they have different masks, I shit you not. Besides, it was super fun having a mental breakdown here on tumblr with y'all <3

When Espera entered the stage, everything else stopped being of any importance to me. I remember my first thought was "oh yeah, sure, the ladies are dressed up and moving like this and you expect me to focus on anything else that is happening on this stage?". And of course, my second thought was "I GOTTA TAKE PICTURES FOR DARYA". Naturally, I was trying to keep up with everything else anyway. I haven't seen ii all too well though and it makes me sad :( Alas. I've had a good vantage point for the ladies. Yeah. Brain went brrrrr every time I was looking at them. Where was I again-

I was still coughing at that time. I got a terrible coughing fit after literally 3 short screams during HEALTH and my idiot ass has left all the lozenges except one in the hotel room an hour before the door opening. I thought I would have to spend the rest of the night not singing along nor screaming and felt utterly heartbroken for a few minutes, but after my Holy Grail Lozenge (and a LOT of water from the venue's crew) my cough has abandoned me for the duration of the whole ritual (thank you, Sleep). Even though, when Sam told us that we have to sing, my only thought was "I CAN'T FUCKING SING EITHER, MATE". But I did. Oh, I so fucking did. I sung my lungs out and did not cough even ONCE.

But you know. I was exhausted, anxious, surrounded by strangers and had more sugar in my veins than red cells at that point, so I wasn't my best self. I really thought the karaoke was for shits and giggles at first. "Oh yeah, it's The Most Popular Song, let's see how it sounds when 10k people sing it without the singer's help!", you know. Thought it was for the recording the announcements warned us about. But then we sung Granite. Ohhhkay. And then The Love You Want - certainly not a song they would leave for an impropmtu singalong. It was then that I (belatedly) realised that yeah, something really was wrong and so my heart broke again. So many preparations! Their biggest gig so far! Even iii managed to be there! And something had to happen!! Specifically!! To Vessel!! Of all people!! That was just not fair. He totally didn't deserve this. But it's just life and its endless fucking bad surprises for everyone, huh.

I didn't have enough time to collect all the broken pieces of my heart from the sticky floor and mend them after this realisation, because after Vessel joined the singing for the last few lines of TLYW, he dropped to his knees in front of us crying and thanking everyone. That sight is now carved into my brain. This is when I realised the 3rd row was a mistake. The psychic damage it gave me is irrevocable. Do you have those moments that you will never forget? A few seconds of an (usually traumatic) experience that will haunt you forever, replaying in your mind like a broken record? It was a bit like this for me. It wasn't traumatic, mind you, but it was definitely something that made a permanent dent in my heart and a home in my brain. And I wouldn't change it anyway.

Another thing that made me think that I will just fall down and never get up was iii & iv's hug. It was. So full of love and reassurence. Idk, you could just feel that emitting from them, okay? I was standing there thinking "yeah sure, just fucking murder me tonight instead, okay. Should've kept staring at Espera only-". Ah yes. The ladies. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Where was I again-

The goosebumps when the whole venue yelled "they won't be missing you" during Nazareth, oh my fucking god. On my previous rituals, in way smaller venues, there's always been a handful of people screaming it. And everyone doing it? Unparalleled feeling. Bordering on the shrimp emotions scale.

The lights were spectacular. I cannot describe how amazing the light show was. I am sending a kiss to each and every light crew member.

Also, Vessel being more emotional during the ritual as a whole. The TLYW moment was the worst for me, but there were many others. (Ascensionism and Bloodsport stabbing me with a rusty knife the most.) I mean, who could've blamed him for the emotions, he would probably be very emotional even without the voice issues. Who wouldn't be!! It was a big night, after all. God, it must have been so difficult for him, I really, really fucking hope the love coming from his bandmates, crew and the crowd was enough to help him focus on the good parts of the evening only. And!! It wasn't even that bad!!! Sure, he lost his voice for a while, but once it was back you could!! Barely!! Hear!! The difference!! I have a whole new level of respect for Vessel because of that. And for staying onstage with us for the songs he couldn't sing. Didn't know I could respect him even more than I already did, but hey. Love being surprised like that. I have seen concerts where the singers were singing way worse live while being completely healthy. Like sure, you could notice he's not using so many uhh, how do you call this in English, vocal ornamentations??? and that his voice is strained, but it was still beautiful. Take care of your voice now though, dude, jfc. Thanks for the sacrifice, much appreciated, but TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL FUCKING FIND YOU- (kidding, kidding. or am i.) I also liked that he was leaving the more screamy moments in songs for us. Aiming the microphone at us, positive we'll have his back. Like yeah, yeah, other bands do that relatively often, but it's not something they usually do, you know.

I can't vouch for everyone in the crowd, but I sure as fuck did not have a SINGLE thought that the show sucks because of his voice issues. Like it didn't even occur to me. Honest to god. I was shocked when I saw on tumblr that people were leaving? Asking for a refund????????????? I was having the time of my life singing those songs. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, probably!! Who can say they karaoked whole 3 songs with the band playing for them live?? Your local karaoke bar could never. (Bonus points, you could hear Espera better bc of that! Yes, I know, you are not supposed to hear backing vocals too loud in general, I'm just saying it was nice hearing them, bc usually I hear them on recordings only.)

Yeah, sure I was disappointed after the show that there was no Euclid, but that's just me, a total whore for Euclid. It's a completely different thing than being a bitch who leaves halfway, because something out of the ordinary has been happening.

Anyways. I would like to wish all the crowdsurfers a very fuck you. Hope you will all step on a lego every day for the rest of your lives <3

Crowdsurfers and constant giving away of water (which I understand, it was terribly hot there and it was needed) were a bit distracting, I missed some things because of the commotion, the drum solo has been disrupted by me getting a (fortunately very light) kick in the mouth and DRUM SOLO IS SACRED. I HOPE THE CROWDSURFER WHO DECIDED TO GO UP IN THAT MOMENT WILL STEP ON 3 LEGOS DAILY. IT'S LITERALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE RITUAL FOR ME AND THEY HAVE RUINED IT. Thanks to another crowdsurfer, I missed the moment the band was throwing stuff into the crowd and I promised Lia I will catch a pick/drumstick for them!!!!!!! I've had a banner for this occassion and all!!!!! And!!!!! For the whole time things were flying from the scene!!!! I have been under someone's legs and ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Side note: Vessel was throwing away his rings. That's so fucking cool, ahh.

All in all, half of the things that happened there, I've learned from tumblr. The announcements about the recording, people leaving, Vessel being covered in runes (I WAS STANDING RIGHT BEFORE HIM AND DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING. A N Y T H I N G. I HATE BEING A BLIND IDIOT), the Espera ladies laughing at iii for not coming to the photo, hell, even Vessel trying to get his attention. I have NO idea what I've been doing back then, it's a blur again lmao. And. The most important thing: Vessel's "thank you". I didn't catch it back then. I don't hear it on my recording. Tbh I couldn't believe y'all for a long while that it really happened (I'm sorry). But it did and you know what? I'm glad the broken pieces of my heart were left on the arena's floor earlier during the show. I don't want them anymore.

I would also like to thank that one security guy in huge headphones who was our warning that another fucking crowdsurfer was coming our way. I hope the headphones guy's pillow is always cold on both sides, his skin clear, his crops- and so on. Our hero <3

There was also a moment during Atlantic (another important moment disrupted. Smh) where 2 security persons dived into the crowd?? I still have no idea what was happening, bc if someone faints for example, they are always brught to the barricade by the crowd and security picks them up, I've never seen security getting into the crowd before. And because of that, people around me were talking loudly during Atlantic. Kill kill murder kill

Still, Projekt Atlantic was a huge success and I am so proud of the organisers!! They're in the same category of lovely people as the big headphones security guy

Sending a kiss to @murderofcrow for this gif 🖤

To sum up. I will forever be grateful for this band. This music has activated the dormant parts of my mind. I am making art again. I am meeting cool people because of them. I have people to talk about it with who are as excited about it as I am. For the first time in ages I really feel alive again. And life is not good, far from it, to be completely honest with you, they haven't magically fixed all my problems, but I do have something that actually fucking works on me. I know Vessel wouldn't agree, but they are saving people. And you all, lovely ST pocket of tumblr motherfuckers who are reading this, you are saving people too.

And, last but not least!! In hot pink, because I can! Thanks to this ritual I could finally meet @vesselsscarlet and @thevenomousseprent in person!!!!!!!!! I love you guys, you are amazing and I can't wait to see you again 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 You've made me feel so loved that weekend and it's something I haven't felt in a while!!

#it was surprisingly hard to write #took a lot of editing and rewriting whole paragraphs and it's still not a proper description of everything i wanted to say #i don't know how to talk about emotions #and i have. a lot of them since wembley #a word of advice: attend concerts. beg for money for them from your family members sleep in tents during rain #or in hostel rooms filled with random people #go for gigs without a place to sleep and spend 4hrs waiting for your bus home in a local mcdonalds #watching drunk guys split their eyebrows on the stairs there #(not now tho now we're boycotting macdonalds #but there are other places open 24/7) #go to gigs alone #but by god. go to them if you are able to and if your health allows you to go #(and yes it is coming from someone with anxiety. i wouldn't travel or sleep in a tent alone for anything else trust me) #it is always worth it. ALWAYS #sleep token

[eye-of-enigmatic-thought]

2019, a retrospective to this year and decade

Long post in-comin’

I’m gonna be honest, I’m not really sure how to describe this year and by extension, this decade, I guess that’s to be expected in a way, so many things can happen in 365 or more days to the point of a information overload, but I suppose the best way to describe this year was ‘complicated yet also stale’. Not much happened in the beginning aside from therapy and support group appointments, which were pleasant albeit I don’t remember much from them aside from drawings I’ve done that I showed to the other members, nothing of significance happened that I can recall during the middle of the year, and around near the end I took part in art therapy groups that I managed to make a few friends out of (though I sadly don’t chat with them often), at September I was beginning to try and get into college after being out of education for a year and managed to enrol (though court issues made me miss the first five weeks that I had to quickly catch up to), most of my memories of this year actually came from college.

College has been going good, so far! I have been learning a lot and my tutors are very kind, of course it can get stressful due to the long days I have and also due to some of my more rowdier peers, but I’ve managed to also befriend a few others that I am very happy to have met. Currently I’m in my break and I will use it to advantage as much as I can to post as much art as I can.

Also, I’ve just recently been exploring my gender, and well, I’m now transmasc rather than a demigirl, I still go by whatever pronoun and still see myself as nonbinary, but I am more masculine leaning now? I guess I might be a ‘demiboy’ but I still feel a bit more ‘fluid’ than that, sooo... masculine leaning demifluid? I dunno, but overall I’m not a girl anymore! :D

Rebirth is still being rewritten, admittedly I haven’t been focusing entirely on it due to some things in the way, but some of that is now gone so really my only enemy is my lack of motivation and poor time management, but even times where I’m not writing and/or editing the rewrite I’m still thinking of how I want certain scenes to go or what things I want the characters to say, so it’s still being worked on! I do feel incredibly bad that I haven’t been doing a lot of my Undertale-related stuff lately or even attempting to at least finish off the HS’ blog’s first arc (I at LEAST wanna finish that arc before I go on a official hiatus to fully know what to do with it), but you can rest assured that I have NOT forgotten about it and I do want to continue on with it, I guess that’s probably one of my goals for 2020, ‘more Undertale fanart’, yes, good, very good, mwahahahaha.

And now, a little something more personal, mostly in regards to this decade as a whole. Warning for mentions and discussions of pedophilia, bullying, suicide, and trauma for the next three or so paragraphs.

(Warning starts here)

My memories from around the beginning of this decade are hazy, but very notable, I’m not going to sugarcoat it by saying that from 2010-2013 were some of my worst years of my life, I was only 11-14 around this time, but when I wasn’t going through awful bullying at school that the teachers did nothing about, I would come back home to a toxic friend circle on DeviantArt that was filled with constant irrelevant drama and some REALLY creepy adults that would do smut rps with the minors in our group. Thankfully I never was a victim of this due to mostly staying in my corner and didn’t interact with others much, but I saw it happen to many of the other minors in said group, it left me disturbed but I rationalised it by thinking it was just some ‘teenager thing’ that I was too young for (because I was a little cretin that lied about my age and said I was 13 when I was really 11 when I first signed up haha), it was only when I was late into being 17 I realised ‘Oh my god the people who I called my friends and RP’d with were pedophiles and groomed the other minors what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck’. 

This whole shitty ordeal with that dA friend circle and the constant bullying I went through in secondary school were so bad that it literally led me to have a suicide attempt at the age of 13, I survived of course, and I’m really glad I did, because I wouldn’t have met friends that through them I would manage to get away and abandon the old dA group because ‘fuck you guys I have BETTER FRIENDS NOW!’ Unfortunately all of that dA friend circle are now deactivated or are no longer active with all the evidence deleted so there’s no use making a callout or name dropping any of them or even searching for the other minors in attempt to rekindle with them (and I don’t think my heart would be able to handle it in that regard...), but I did find out that one of them who was a pedophile apologist at one point commissioned a ton of Darkrai pregnancy porn with one of it being fucking mpreg, so I can at least get a laugh from that shit, doubt she’s reading this but if you are... 

You may be gone, but your darkrai mpreg porn will live on FOREVER... Forever for ME to laugh at!!! >8DDD  So anyway get rekt and suck my non-existent dick you fucking creep.

(Warning ends here)

Phew alright, all that nasty stuff out of the way...   2014 was where things began to improve, I had moved secondary schools and I switched from a mainstream to a specialist school for other autistic children and I found the people who would become my closest friends, through one of them I also got a tumblr blog, and when Undertale came around (so late 2015 to around 2016 when the fandom was most active), through it’s fandom I managed to gain really kind and lovely friends that I love dearly, it’s somewhat strange to me, in the beginning since childhood I never had any close friends and the only ‘close’ ones I had were ones that either kept me around out of pity (because I was a awkward autistic kid), kept me around to constantly bully and push my buttons, or (in this case with the dA friend circle) were potential predators that I thankfully was never THAT close to, and actual close ones I lost contact with too quickly, to this day I’m so thankful for these friends and I dunno if they’d be comfortable with me namedropping them here, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are <333.

I of course had rough patches throughout the years, recovery from my traumas wasn’t easy and I was constantly having issues with pretty much everything from my mental health problems to environmental factors that were out of my control, I’m not going to go into detail on this one because this post is long enough already, but I am much better now than how I was when I was younger, I still have a long way to go, but I have definitely improved and I hope I can still improve, hell, I’ve even improved my art! Wanna see an example?

I drew this back in 2011 on mspaint on a mouse! Yeah! Can you believe that? Whilst to me my art right now isn’t exactly ‘artist goals’ I have definitely improved a lot since!! And I’ll keep on improving forever because that’s what this decade was like anyway! I’m not sure what the future holds, but I want to set these goals for next year:

Create more digital art Finish my unfinished short comic ideas and parodies Continue to chip away at Rebirth’s rewrite and finish Hissterical Scientist’s first arc. Work on my original stuff Continue to improve my mental health Get proper time management skills Learn to do commissions (I be gettin munz lol) Thank you to all my friends and family who have helped support me and stuck by me throughout all these years, I am so happy I get to spend a life with you and I hope we’ll continue to go through the future together, you mean so much to me and I can’t say thank you enough. Thank you to any followers who have sticked by me for so long and if you’re new, I hope we’ll make memories together! 

Onward and upward, and leave behind the pain! <3

#tara's text

[eyeodyssey]

Film Production Log #3

A frame from “The Death Of A Home″. What year is this? It’s been a long time coming that I finally got around to writing another one of these things. It’s three months into 2019 already and I hardly even noticed, made a rude awakening when I looked to the calendar to see that it went from 28 back to 1. With all that, it hit me that I hardly wrote about the progression of any of my current film projects in that period of time. I thought I had a rough idea of how the passage of time worked, as it turns out I know as little about a concept as abstract as time as I do about every other thing in life that defies explanation. There’s a reason why I simultaneously dread everything and nothing after all. I’ve written through many variants of this first paragraph beforehand, each draft starting off with the same “long time coming” comment, which gained further relevancy with each rewrite. Let’s go and cut this ongoing habit before it goes beyond simple procrastination into flat out absurdity.

A frame from “The Death Of A Home″. Like mentioned with the second production log, we spent most of the December of 2018 haphazardly preparing a forced move that we had to undergo with the sudden gentrification of our apartment at the time. This wasn’t the first time I faced the systematic Kafkaesque horror of gentrification. I was pissed, to say the least, and I did the only thing I could do, I documented it. With The Death Of A Home as it is currently, all the footage from the move itself has been compiled and made into a rough cut, adding up to my first proper feature length film at an hour and 12 minutes. The film is comprised of long shots, with scenes ranging from a crew of biohazard workers cleaning the basement of a black mold infestation that was never reported to the tenants to a sequence where long kept hand-painted furniture is forcibly discarded (tossed down a staircase into the back lot to lead to a rain of multicolored paint shards). The whole film will also be accompanied by a harsh noise soundtrack, I mostly have Merzbow stuff playing throughout as a placeholder. I’ll be shooting on the side some abstract visual sequences for the documentary, communicating certain details of our story that weren’t captured on film. I have a lot of ideas brewing for the mixed media techniques I could use for creating these images in a live action format, specifically ones that return to the sort of trash bag special effects that I used in my prior film concerning the subject of gentrification, Weightless Bird In A Falling Cage. Setting foot in the new apartment, the first thing we came to notice was the absolutely vacant house next to us. The building was completely abandoned with electricity still hooked up, looked like no one set foot there in years. Having it face the bedroom every day, with our constant visual subjection and time to contemplate we came to the conclusion that something was gonna happen to the building at some point. It was clearly the middle child to an estate that left it to rot. Just in time for when we wrapped up unboxing everything, the building caught fire. At first I didn’t pay much mind to the sound of sirens driving through (it’s an Atlanta custom). It eventually hit me that something wasn’t quite right when I looked to one of the windows to see bright red, Suspiria technicolor light shining through.

A frame from “Burning Fragments: Mode 3 - Winter 2019″. Did I go out to have a look? Of course, so did the rest of the neighborhood. Made an interesting meet your neighbor type of gathering, to say the least. I also brought my camera with me, and I came back with a metaphorical stack of raw footage along with a slow-cooked pair of lungs, the film is more important though. From that raw footage, I got the visual edit for the short Burning Fragments, a part of my seasonal “Mode” series that was first kicked off by Hard Drive and continued by my currently unreleased Factory Dreams. Burning Fragments is a montage of morbidly humbling sequences, from a roof visibly caving in through the smoking windows to medical staff cautiously carting out a stretcher, prepared for the worst case scenario. No one came out injured luckily, though I don’t mention that in the film (to keep up the haunting atmosphere). Power was cut to the building, the fire was put out and the street stunk of smoke for the next month. I thought it smelt like a smoked rib, one neighbor of ours said it smelt exactly like pot smoke.

A frame from “Factory Dreams: Mode 2 - Fall 2018″. Right around there was where we thought the story would end, but several days later the building went back up again. This time around I went to one of the firefighters to ask what started the fire in the first place. As it turned out this second eruption was from the ongoing work of someone who had a great disdain to a singular sofa in the abandoned building. The first fire was started off by the arsonist setting this certain sofa aflame, and the guy returned to the scene of the crime to incinerate it for good. Our friendly neighborhood sofa arsonist is still on the run to this day. Going into rapid-fire mode, some other noteworthy moments of the year so far include: OS updating, film editor street fighting, more OS updating, cool experimental film screenings (as seen in my documentary Moonlight Tunnel), one last OS update for good measure and discovering the new OS is as thought out as a tumble down a staircase.

Kafka’s Supermarket sorta ended up bunched between everything, seeing one quick, sporadic development at a time. The issue with actors still stands, gotta track down some people for the film to act in those pesky performed segments. It all goes smoothly until you’ve gotta spend the time and physical resources of other living, fleshy beings into your freaky unscripted cinematic daydreams. Around the end of February, I collaborated with local collage artists Steven and Cassi Cline to write the dialogue for the film, collage literature style. We took several different approaches when it came to fully fleshing things out, some were done as experimental writing games while others were the more familiar cut n paste technique. The script took a wide variety of resources, including the FBI documents printed from the internet archive, the prologue of a Georges Bataille philosophical text and a book on nuclear weapons. I was largely the supplier when it came to the process, while I do visual collage stuff often I’m less of a writer (both letter by letter and cut up source by cut up source). Readings of the literary collages will be interspersed throughout the film with an announcer who seems completely detached from the surreal nature of the scenes he describes. Burroughs’ approach for writing Naked Lunch aside, the primary source of inspiration for this detail comes from my memories of a radio clock that we had during my childhood. I would tune through channels with it searching for classical music, but most often I’d find news stations. Not knowing anything about politics at the time (being 5 to 6 years old and all), the nature of what was being discussed was completely alien to me. With how Kafka’s Supermarket is focused on the nightmarish distortion of everyday life in capitalist America, I felt it was necessary to recreate the atmosphere of those broadcasts that confused me all those many years ago. One detail that left the production hung for a significant amount of time, as minuscule as it may seem, was the masks the actors would be wearing. The visual style of Kafka’s Supermarket was adapted from my 2017 zine What Brought Me To This Point, an experiment in nihilistic writing that focuses on the mental state of a man with prosopagnosia and a non-specified mental illness. My general understanding of prosopagnosia at the time was admittedly limited, I had just heard of a condition where someone couldn’t recognize faces and something about the idea creatively resonated. From this, all the characters were designed with the same basic facial template, prioritizing the bare essentials of the human face with an emphasis on the uncanny. Kafka’s Supermarket further branches out this aesthetic in using it as a wider embodiment of the lack of individual personality in a capitalist state, where everything is selling to a set of categorized markets that represent the general populace.

A frame from “Kafka’s Supermarket”. The thing is, human heads aren’t structured like these figures I was drawing. I spent an absurdly long time contemplating how exactly I could recreate the look of these characters not only with a budget but with a budget without having it look too “store-bought” in a way. The main catch was I was going by realism and not surrealism. At that point, I briefly lost sight of what exactly I was doing. We all make mistakes. I brooded on how I could convincingly recreate an abstract illustration. It took until I started reading the screenplays of Kōbō Abe that sense hit me again when I questioned how it would be done in a theater production. That was when I remember that I’m making a non-narrative experimental film, not something like a superhero fan film where a certain level of suspension of disbelief is expected. Since then I plotted out an alternative that’s simultaneously more affordable than anything I was theorizing beforehand while also being more surreal and true to the theories and atmosphere behind Kafka’s Supermarket (and even it’s predecessor, What Brought Me To This Point). Since then I’ve found myself further experimenting with the fusion of film and theater, specifically the use of minimal props and images to convey a greater concept. I’ll be reposting cast calls for actors through the next several days, hoping for the best while I also simultaneously pester a nearby grocery store for permission to shoot a short sequence on their property. Productions like this are the ones that leave me realizing the oxymoronic nature in pursuing capitalist chains about the production of strictly anti-capitalist cinematic rhetoric.

A frame from “Empire Of Madness: A Wilderness Within Hell 2″. While juggling well more than a handful of personal projects (all the films mentioned earlier, a second chapter of Iron Logs and a harsh noise album experiment), I also convinced myself that I can get back into animation again. I was publicly tiptoeing around the idea of a second Wilderness Within Hell film for a while, and now it seems that it will likely be a thing with Empire Of Madness. It’s not really a direct sequel as much as it is a continuation of the style that was first started with Madhouse Mitchel. Set in the same age of industrial totalitarian inferno as Madhouse Mitchel, Empire Of Madness follows the life of Prometheus after his divine punishment for giving mankind knowledge. Having finally passed physical torture in the complete separation of his physical body, Prometheus wanders the Earth as an anomalous figure that assembles itself in a seemingly manufactured, mechanical nature. With pieces of his blood and flesh inherited by every man and woman with his given wisdom, he is inconsequently responsible for a curse put on all of humanity that destines man to collapse in paranoia and violence. Prometheus is shunned by everyone who crosses his path, seeing him as a sickly demon. Prometheus comes to realize that aside from his physical torture, the true act of divine punishment enacted on him will be the experience of having his own creation slowly destroy itself while it collectively tries to kill him.

A frame from “Empire Of Madness: A Wilderness Within Hell 2″. I’m simultaneously writing the film’s screenplay while I draw certain visual intensive scenes. Like I mentioned I’m still a bit rough around the edges with writing, so for this phase of production, I’ll actively study Kōbō Abe’s scripts and also the screenplays to an Akira Kurosawa film and Battleship Potemkin. I’ll still in a way aim more to minimalism with how certain things play out, with this series’ influences in Japanese guro art it’s more inclined to create a certain nightmarish atmosphere above all else. While Madhouse was largely anti-systemic rage, this film leans more to bleak existentialism. Bits of the soundtrack are already recorded, the main theme can currently be heard here. That’s about all I have to write for now. Now to wait another four months until I post anything text based on here again.