#<- had that specific movie on my mind while drawing that first piece

[worblewobble]

assorted space odyssey things. can you tell im normal about that series

[copperbadge]

In the ongoing discussion of aphantasia (see "an aphantasia fantasia" tag for more) an article popped up recently which has some details to share, including a history of how aphantasia was discovered in the scientific sense. I don't have "spatial thoughts" the way the author does, but it's also a pretty good discussion of how people who don't form mental images (or can't access sound, smell, etc in their minds) still interact normally with the world.

Here's some fucked up shit I didn't expect, however:

In a 2015 paper, a group of researchers [...] identified a new syndrome they called “Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory,” or SDAM for short. People with SDAM lack the ability to relive past experiences in their minds. While this condition is rare among the general population, a preliminary survey hints at a link with aphantasia, with as many as 51 percent of a sample of 2,000 SDAM individuals also having aphantasia. My own experience is similar. Past episodes of my life—when I can recall them at all—feel distant and non-sensory. [...] I would describe my recollections as summaries of key facts rather than first-person “mind movies.” When asked, out of the blue, about an experience I’ve surely had—say, any childhood birthday party—my mind first responds by drawing a blank. It feels as if my episodic memories were filed into a “mental cabinet” without an index. Many memories are in there, somewhere, but retrieving them is a daunting task unless I’m provided with very specific prompts. With some groping work of deduction (where did I live at the time? Who did I hang out with?) I can gather enough hints to bring out some locations and non-visual facts: I had a big party in our countryside garden when I was 11 or 12; there was cake; a lot of kids running around and … that’s about it.

This is one hundred percent how I access memory and how I assumed everyone did -- I am well aware I don't remember chunks of my past (or only remember them if prompted by something) but I do the same thing he does. I ask myself where I was living, or what other things were happening at the time, or I snag on a rare memory of a piece of clothing or a feeling, and I extrapolate from there. I don't relive memories in the way that the article implies regular people do, and while I will recognize say, the smell of a specific library, a deeply ingrained scent for me, I don't remember the smell if I'm not standing there smelling it. And this explains my dedication to making an annual photobook documenting the past year, each December -- the photobooks are powerful memory triggers and have more than once reminded me where I was or what year it was when I did XYZ thing.

Also, turns out that one of the key methods for emotional regulation in most people is calling up a happy memory to counteract sad ones, which is why depression is so pervasive, because depressed people have literal biological impairments to remembering or reliving positive memories.

And SDAM, associated with aphantasia, is an impairment to reliving any memory at all, so...

Big ol' neurological yikes, guys.

[girl-in-the-mirrorbluenight]

Okay I've been thinking about this pretty much all day since I saw the hbomberguy and then todd in the shadows video i just have so many thoughts. While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Video Essayist™ (I've only made a few over the years) as a youtuber and someone who has made video essays i definitely have more experience than the average person. There are so many things that stand out to me about this whole debacle i dont even know where to start.

First I want to just give a little insight into the process for making video essays from people who've never given it a shot and just how absurd it is to do the type of plagiarizing James has done. Video essays take a fuckton of research, even for pretty simple topics, but on top that you also have to make them with the medium of video in mind. it's really not enough to just take an essay you would write for a class and read it out loud. the flow is different, you have to have accompanying visuals, often background music, etc. They're a beast to make. My Twisted video for which i used literally two sources for my research (Sondheim's books and the musical Twisted) still took days of thorough reading, note taking, watching the musical, watching the musical again, watching the musical and taking notes, cross-referencing my notes, etc. For videos that synthesize multiple sources or are covering multiple pieces of media, that time goes up exponentially. Then there's writing, recording, gathering clips (often one of the most difficult parts depending on how obscure what you're talking about is), and editing. Even for a silly video like my Glee video, I still had to do a ton of research to make sure I was getting things correct, and that was a funny tier list about freaking Glee! There is just no way you could come up with a thorough analysis by just copying and pasting. Which brings me to my next point.

I think James may have thought (or more likely rationalized) what he was doing as analysis based on like the vaguest definition. When you do any kind of analysis, what you're doing is taking research from multiple different places (news articles, primary sources, existing analysis, etc.) and coming to your own conclusions, whether that's a synthesis of those different sources, or applying it to a specific thing like a movie. Really simple example is my Twisted video where I take Sondheim's writing and apply it to a specific piece of media (in this case Twisted). I'm using existing work but coming to my own conclusion. In the Spies Are Forever video, I took existing research about the Lavender Scare and the Hays Code, including primary sources from the time period, and applied it to the musical Spies are Forever. What James seem to do is take a bunch of existing scholarship, copy and paste it all together and then come to a "conclusion" that was not actually his own original thoughts but either "facts" he completely made up or something that didn't do anything to actually link his other "sources" together. I can see why it has the veneer of analysis, but making up a random "fact" you think might be true is not the same as a drawing a conclusion based on research.

I also think Todd made a really good point in the part about England's propaganda campaign against Italy around 9:30 that it's just really bad video making to not include examples of images from this so called propaganda campaign. I have a ton of examples of news clips, government reports, etc. in my SaF video about the Lavender Scare because...it was a real historic thing that happened! If something was supposedly so widespread and not even that long ago, you can probably find evidence of it somewhere. Kaz Rowe (who is also linked in the queer creators playlist on hbomberguy's vid) talked about this a lot in their video about tiktok misinfo where people often make these outrageous claims but the thing is if something so outrageous happened (like people constantly shitting on the floors of versailles), other people at the time would probably be talking about it somewhere. It's a big red flag when someone makes such bold claims and has no evidence to back it up.

Putting this last section under the cut because I go talk about WWII, Nazis, and HIV/AIDS a bit (watch Todd's video for some more context) so if you don't want to see that post is over here.

Lastly I wanted to talk about something else Kaz brings up in a lot of their videos when talking about historical topics and that is the tendency to dehumanize people of the past, often as unwashed, unintelligent masses who would just do any ridiculous disgusting thing because they were so stupid and disgusting. There are a lot of things to criticize about the people of the past and their actions obviously, but we cannot forgot that they were in fact, people. Real individual people with their own lives and dreams and ambitions and individual opinions and they have never been and never will be a monolith. Claiming anything is broadly true of "the victorians" or "the ancient egyptians" or whatever other vague historical group you want to talk about is usually a lot more nuanced than "they all thought or acted in this one particular way". I'm certainly not a historian and i've only done one history focused video but James Somerton seemed to make a lot of broad historical claims in his videos that I think fall into this trap.

The one that stood out most to me in Todd's video was the claim about Nazi body standards which is a whole mess in general that Todd goes into for a while, but the way he talks about WWII soldiers was just like...weird. Besides the fact that a lot of his claims about Nazis seem to be bordering on glorifying them and their aesthetics (gross), I think we should remember that WWII was less than a century ago. There are still over 100,000 surviving WWII vets in the US. My grandfather who was in the Army during WWII (he didn't serve overseas but he was an enlisted soldier I can literally look up his enlistment records in the national archives online) was a real person who I obviously knew personally and who died fairly recently. To think he enlisted because he was jealous of German fitness or whatever and wanted to prove how tough Americans are is an absolutely hilarious thing to think if you knew him. I'm sure there are as many reasons for enlisting as there were enlisted soldiers. When James talks about even as relatively narrow of a group as "WWII American soldiers," he's still talking about a very large group of real and diverse people and to make such broad claims that "most" or even "a lot" of them were just so taken in by strong german physiques or whatever is frankly insulting. I haven't watched the entirety of James video so maybe he does address this at some point, but from the clips I've seen it seems very generalized and implies some level of racism when WWII soldiers in fact included a lot of racially diverse people. IDK, i think if you're a supposed historical researcher and you're making a video about WWII and you don't know about groups like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers, that's on you. I don't want to discount some of the really horrible shit that American (and obviously other countries) soldier's did in the war and how many of them held disgusting views (even my grandpa who I love dearly was not the most politically correct person to put it lightly) but Jame's claims are not criticizing any real ideology or the consequences of them, they're oversimplifying complex and harmful historical ideas and attributing them to something he pretty much made up. I'll also give you a little hint about something. When people fall into Nazi ideology, it's because they ultimately agree with the ideology, not for some surface level aesthetic reason of "fitness" or whatever. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they are eugenicists, plain and simple. They don't just think the Nazis are cool except for all their beliefs. I also think (and again I could be missing a part of the video here) the hyper focus on the Germans and the Soviets and not mentioning Italy is at the very least an oversight too. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, had a pretty big campaign of promoting an ideal strong race which he tied to ancient Romans. Like this was also a country controlled by a fascist dictator that American soldiers fought in idk it just seems weird to me to leave it out. (okay edit i looked up the transcript and he does talk about Italian fascism a little bit but only about how Mussolini rose to power, nothing about his ideologies or anything really related to the main topic of body image).

And one more thing on that note that bothered me a lot. I think his claims about HIV/AIDS is probably the most well-known here on tumblr and has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by this point, but I do just want to say one more thing about it which is that AIDS isn't gone! I feel like they way he talks about it from what I've seen of this video makes HIV/AIDS sound like a problem of the past now that we have drugs for it, but that is just not the truth. There are still tens of thousands of new infections in the US each year and way more globally and yes, people do still die from it. I just don't like when people talk about AIDS as if it's this problem of the distant past, a separate era that people went through in the 80s rather than an ongoing epidemic that still does not have a cure. Safer sex, clean needle usage, and getting tested are just as important now as they were in the 80s and 90s and don't forget that.

[crispycreambacon]

I thought I'd share the sketch of this poster/book cover as well as my initial concepts! You can click the "Read More" button for more in-depth explanations on my design process.

Thhis is all for my latest fanfiction, Snip Snip, so if you'd like to check that out, then...

Now let's crack in!

For the release of "Snip Snip", I actually had several different directions in mind! One was a comic of one of the scenes from the fanfic—specifically the one where the Professor breaks down in front of Kate and Joyce with the line "I don't like being a woman"—and the other was a series of doodles showing the Professor's transition. Unfortunately, both directions met dead ends as I couldn't find the motivation to do either. The most progress I made were these sketches.

If you're wondering, "The first one looks familiar..." that's because I reused that pose for my first promo art! It was too good of a pose. I couldn't waste it :P

But anyways, after a period of getting extremely frustrated over the lack of progress, I realized my main problem: I was biting off more than I could chew. I didn't know this at the time, but I was dealing with burnout from school assignments that made drawing more ambitious ideas like the ones I had very difficult. Hence, I had to scale it down. It made me think, "Why not do something like a movie poster or a book cover?"

That's how the sketches at the top of the post came to be! I consulted a friend of mine over which pose to choose, and he picked the third one which I understand why so. The obscuring of the Professor's face not only made it cool, but it adds symbolism in how we don't really see his true identity—the real him—until his transition. Here's the first sketch!

As you can see, the title is on the top left corner! However, I moved it to the bottom for two reasons

It's advice I learnt while looking up how to make movie posters since moving the title to the bottom tends to bring more focus to the illustration above.

I couldn't find a font that fits! And the idea of doing typography again (especially after the Keep Yourself Safe poster...) was really not what I signed up for.

But then it left the problem of the top corner looking empty. It was too distracting! So what did I fill it in with? The subtitle: This is their story. The composition is now more balanced, and also the subtitle tickles me.

As I said before, I looked up movie posters for this! Special thanks to the Nashville Film Institute and Muse by Clio for their articles that guided me during this poster making process. I will say though I got really sidetracked watching Filmmaker IQ's The History of the Hollywood Movie Poster 😭 It's really interesting, I'd recommend watching it!

One thing I learnt is that movie posters limit their colour palettes. Of course, this is good advice for art in general, but movie posters emphasize on its colour usage to attract the audience with their simple yet bold schemes. It is a piece of advertisement after all! Following their footsteps, I limited my colours to the primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and purple to make the scissors pop and allude to the nonbinary flag colour scheme.

And from there, it was just a matter of experimenting with rendering! I wanted a mix of pop art and storybook illustrations, so I mixed lineart with lineless, and I wanted to retain the energy of the sketch while still polishing it, so I cleaned the sketch, merged it with the colours, and painted on top of it rather than make a separate lineart layer.

Overall, I'm extremly proud of the end result! The struggle of figuring out the promo art for this fic has been tormenting me since the beginning of the year, so I'm glad to bring it to an end. Thank you for reading my ramblings! I hope you learnt something or at least had fun? Either way, have a good day!!

[pjunicornart]

FIRST OF ALL I LOVE UR LITTLE OTP SO MUCH. how they never crossed my mind baffles me bcuz that is gen such a good pair??

ANYWHO any hcs?? im so curious like yes yes tell me more about ur ot4.,.,..

ALSO ANY IDEA OF A SHIP NAME???

Hey! Sorry it took me so long to get to this. It was because my body was basically BEGGING me to take a break... I had a pounding headache and my drawing arm and hand felt heavy and sore. So to any artists out there... don't be like me. Take breaks. In fact, I'm probably not gonna be posting any art for a few days so I can give my body time to rest. Unfortunately, I inherited my father's workaholism...

ANYWAY. Glad you like it! Meet the Robinsons needed more... gay. So, I provided! When I first revisited this movie and saw all four of those characters I knew my gay ass brain was gonna do something with them. And that, it did.

The piece I did was them within the AU. Let's give the characters some brief summaries before going into detail (under the cut)... - Lewis is a nerdy finger gun bi disaster. 'Nuff said. - Goob is a jock type. - Lizzy is the goth girl, with a hint of weirdcore influences. - Franny is the choir girl. - All of them are 16.

Lewis He was the one Goob, Lizzy, and Franny had in common. Essentially, all three of them liked Lewis "in that way." The three of them had kind of silently agreed they all wanted to get with Lewis. Nevermind that Lewis was completely oblivious to all of this and deep within his own bi panic! In this AU, he attends high school like everybody else, but he does go off campus for a couple of periods for college classes. He's a star student! Not popular in the sense that he's the school hot shot, but in the sense that everybody knows him for being very kind and an overachiever. Oh, and Lewis was never given up for adoption! He lives with his birth mom and about-to-be step-dad.

Michael (Goob) He's the ACTUAL school hot shot. Star baseball player who holds the school athletics records. I'll admit, Goob was kind of my way of making Jock Paperjam from the OG NaJ AU not problematic, and like how I imagined him being. To channel the trauma and come out from it, y'know? (Heh, I even gave him his face shape...) He's the tallest of the four, and the strongest, too. Only his girlfriends and boyfriend know how sweet and loving he is. His love language is definitely physical touch and protection. I specifically imagine him holding Lewis close to his chest while laying on the couch. Goob is not a bully, I want to make that clear. He's just a little cocky.

Lizzy Ah yes, the goth girl. I expanded her special interest from ants, to bugs in general. Her favorites are still ants, obviously. I imagine she has a couple of creepy crawlies in resin sitting on top of her dresser. Like a tarantula named Nacho. She's not necessarily full goth, because in the image I drew she has purple as well. So she's more of a pastel goth, maybe nu-goth. Lizzy is definitely a teaser! Her favorite to tease is Goob, because she likes to see him get worked up. She may be small, but she's a fire cracker!

Franny Last - but certainly not least - Franny. She's in the school choir, and is overall very musically gifted. Both of her older brothers are away at college, so it's just her and her mom in the house. Within the relationship, she's the one who showers them with kisses and hugs. She's very bubbly and energetic, and she has no bad bones in her body... except when you talk shit about her boys and girl, then you better hope you're not karate chopped in the throat. I also turned up her love for frogs into a hyperfixation, hence the froggy bucket hat. You have no idea how tempted I was to buy that hat when I saw it in Hot Topic...

The ship name is really quite simple: Family.

I saw the templates in your other ask! I'm gonna keep there for a bit, and I'll fill them out when I'm not actively dying hopefully!

[public-trans-it-deactivated20240]

Fleurs de Mort

Content warnings for cults, death, suicide ideation, and mental trauma

A lot of people have a fairly common fear of death. I… kinda don’t. I have a pretty uncommon fear of death, I think.

For those not in the know, I used to be in a cult. Cult in several scare quotes. The creators never intended it to become a cult, and it was only meant to be like a study group for the overlap of occultism and the founders spirituality. Specifically around how their view of the afterlife was shaped by the three of them being Jewish people that got into occultism. I should stress that there were no fees or divisions of labor or any of the manipulation tactics that make cults dangerous, which is why I’m hesitant to actually call it one.

It was, however, in ever sense of the word a death cult, but not the kind you hear about in media. It was focused on growth, and suicide was considered the single worst thing a person could do. It was about exploring occult teachings to explore your own life in new ways, and grow to be more and more, because when you died you became something more. Something greater. And you required lived experiences to grow enough to survive in that new state.

The founders of the cult did a lot of work, filtering out people who had a mental state that might not mesh well with it. The first signs of depression or suicidal ideation and they would pull you aside and do their best to help you because they were well aware of how dangerous the subject matter was and none of them wanted blood on their hands.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really… interact much. I wasn’t that active a member. I just kind of observed passively. So there were no red flags, nothing they could have spotted or done to pull me aside and help me. They had no way of knowing what was happening inside my head, and how it changed me, at a fundamental level.

I ended up leaving, explain my mental health was in a bad state and it wouldn’t be safe for me to be around the subject matter much longer. The heads of the cult understood and wished me the best. We still talked for a while after that, played minecraft together a few times. Watched some movies. Just stayed friends for a bit before slowly drifting apart.

But the seed of that flower had already been planted deep in my mind, and had begun growing into something else. Blossoming isn’t the right word for what it did though. It constrained a part of my mind. All those teachings, all my neuroses, it bound them together tight and sealed them away in the back of my mind, repressed thoughts I forgot even existed until about a year ago. That became my first alter, the first hint of my DID as my mind fractured itself to stop the growth of that seed. It now lies dormant, pruning itself, culling away aspects of my personality that are unsatisfactory to it. The rest of us are slaughtered, rarely surviving more than a few months, torn apart and stitched back together as the pieces of us that fall away are used as the fertilizer for its growth.

The only time it awakens is long enough to stop me from pulling the trigger when things get to bad. It won’t ever help me fix my life, help me do the things I need to make the pain stop. Pain and suffering is inconsequential to it. They are just more lived experiences with which it can foster its own growth. As long as I don’t pull the trigger, as long as I don’t take that step off the edge, it doesn’t care what happens to me.

If I manage to fix my life and get it on the right track? Well that’s useful. Those parts make the best fertilizer for what it needs to grow, and so it cuts those parts away and digs its roots into them, hiding them away from me. It’s frustrating, and it makes life incredibly difficult.

The person I am changes so quickly, rebuilding myself out of the scraps it leaves behind. Making an identity or two out of the remains and hoping against hope that this time it’s functional enough to allow me to live without drawing its attention.

And so I’m left here, thinking about life, and about death. Most people fear death as an end. What if nothing exists after it? How horrifying, they think. My fear of death is far more complex. I’ve felt it so many times, felt my identity crumble and be ripped apart. If the death of my body was just that again, I have nothing to fear.

My fear, is that it’s not the end. My fear is this plant finally blooming, and what will happen after that. Will it take us with it? Will it leave us behind? Are we just a means to and end for it? Something to be discarded after this stage of our existence is over with?

I have lived with this thing in my head for nearly a decade now. And my fear is that only in death will I find out if it was the tether holding me together, or the parasite ripping me apart.

[nessietessie]

RULES: answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions.

thanks for the tag, @menkhu!

coke or pepsi: i don't like soda lol

disney or dreamworks: disney i GUESS but like specifically pixar just because as a kid i watched both toy stories and also the incredibles over and over again

coffee or tea: i don't like either. i'll take milk though

books or movies: i guess movies, though i should read more.

windows or mac: unfortunately i'm a mac guy. it's what my family used when i was growing up and it's what i know how to use.

dc or marvel: neither lol. though i guess gun to my head i'd choose dc. i liked shazam.

x-box or playstation: playstation of the two of these, but i'm more of a nintendo guy

dragon age or mass effect: i haven't played either of them, nor do i have any desire to

night owl or early riser: kinda neither? i'm at peak power midday. but i do like to stay up kinda late sometimes. if 11:30 counts as late lol

cards or chess: cards. i'm not smart enough for chess, but i LOVE me some solitaire

chocolate or vanilla: tough choice. kinda depends on how i'm feeling but i do tend to lean vanilla more often

vans or converse: chacos. i love sandals

Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash, or Adaar: idk what this is lol

fluff or angst: i don't really have a strong opinion on this one

beach or forest: maybe beach, if only for the novelty of it. landlocked gang rise up!

dogs or cats: dogs! i haven't had many good experiences with cats

clear skies or rain: clear skies these days

cooking or eating out: depends on the mood. oftentimes i'm too lazy to cook lol

spicy food or mild food: i'm kind of a weenie when it comes to spice, so mild. but i'm getting better!

halloween/samhain or solstice/yule/christmas: christmas, just because i have the opportunity to hang out with my fam and not be at work for a little while

would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: a little too hot

if you could have a superpower, what would it be: like. shapeshifting. or teleportation.

animation or live action: animation for the most part, HOWEVER the live action one piece slaps so. points for that i think.

paragon or renegade: assuming this is one of those games i didn't play. so idk

baths or showers: showers

team cap or team ironman: don't care. i don't like marvel

fantasy or sci-fi: fantasy

do you have three or four favourite quotes, if so what are they: i have no idea at the moment. trying to think of what i frequently quote. a lot of opla these days. one of my faves is luffy's little "mutiny..." in the beginning of episode one lol.

youtube or netflix: well. i'm pretty selective either way. so both and neither i guess.

harry potter or percy jackson: percy jackson, though i only read like. the original five books and half of the first book in heroes of olympus

when do you feel accomplished: uuuuh don't ask me that lol. felt pretty good about getting 100 notes on a drawing i posted a few days back lol

star wars or star trek: don't care really

paperback books or hardcover books: prob hardcover because of my careless ass. harder to ruin a hardcover

to live in a world without literature or without music?: writing and reading are neat and all, but i think i would literally lose my mind if i had to drive the 5 hours to my parents house without music.

who was the last person to make you laugh? probably kat

city or countryside? small city? does that count?

favorite chips? sour cream and onion lays

pants or dresses? shorts, but also pants.

libraries or museums? libraries, because i respect what they do but also museums are really neato

character driven stories or plot driven stories? character driven

bookmarks or folding pages? bookmarks

Dream job? voice actor. i would also love to get paid to play video games, which i guess can happen if you're a letsplayer or a twitch streamer or something

What gives you comfort? recently, watching one piece lmao. also sorry i guess for all the one piece on this blog but it's my house.

what are some of your favorite song lyrics? i don't often listen to songs with lyrics so this is kind of a hard question lol. but how about all of the lyrics in "We Can" which is team Sonic's theme in Sonic Heroes. Love that. lol

favorite video game?

Tagging: lol. uh. anyone who wants to do this? i don't actually interact with people much on here, but if you see this on your dash and would like to take part, i say go for it!

[astrabear]

15 questions, 15 tags

tagged by @ongreenergrasses. Not gonna tag 15 people, that's like 30% of all the people I follow.

Are you named after anyone? I have the name that my mother would have had, if my grandmother hadn't changed her mind at the last minute and given her a popular name instead. My mother always resented being one of many [name]s in her classes at school and was determined that if she had a daughter, she'd use this name.

When was the last time you cried? Man, I don't fuckin know. My dad died a year and a half ago, my stepfather died a few months ago, I've been unemployed and looking for work since December (just accepted an offer the other day, so that's cool), I visit my mom regularly and she's having a really hard time, and there was an ice storm a couple of weeks ago that left us without power for 36 hours and brought up a bunch of trauma from a debilitating storm two years ago. Also I have depression and anxiety. I can't be bothered to keep track of when or how often I cry, is what I'm saying. Sometime in the past week, probably.

Do you have kids? nope

Do you use sarcasm a lot? When joking with my roommate, yes. As part of general communication, I use it but I think not a lot?

What's the first thing you notice about people? Doesn't this depend on what's noticeable? Like if someone has blue hair, I'm gonna notice the blue hair first. Anything that stands out or seems unexpected - unusual hair color, tattoos, certain hair styles, size/height/other features that are at either end of the bell curve, dramatic clothes or accessories.

What's your eye color? Dark brown

Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings, definitely.

Any special talents? I notice and remember stuff about people, and I connect pieces of information. Someone once described it as my superpower. This makes me very good at giving gifts. Sometimes I have to keep it to myself in order to not sound creepy (because people aren't necessarily prepared for you to remember something they said in passing a year ago, and then connect it to something that someone else mentioned last week, and use that to infer something they had not yet told you.) I'm also bizarrely good at finding specific Old Guard fanfics.

Where were you born? Houston, Texas

What are your hobbies? I have had so many hobbies that I no longer currently practice. I want to get back into cooking and baking (as hobbies rather than just necessity). I write. I play the Sims. For a while I was using the Sims to make fanvids, but that's fallen away as the writing has picked up. I'd like to start drawing again. It's going to take some time to get back in shape enough to do it, but I'd love to one day take up weightlifting again.

Do you have any pets? I have two cats, Truffle and Tristan. They will be turning 4 in a couple of months. I adopted them in 2019 and I can't imagine getting through lockdown without them. I made up these song lyrics about them, back when "Bad Guy" was still a thing: So he's a buff guy Not got lots of fluff guy Likes to play real rough guy Tail always so puffed guy She's that smart type Take my things apart type Face a work of art type Got a loving heart type They are good cats Duh

What sports do you play/have you played? None. The only physical endeavor that I've ever been serious about was weightlifting, but never competitively.

How tall are you? 5'3, 160cm. I'm basically a hobbit.

Favorite subject in school? In high school, English. In college, probably history.

Dream job? Alas, there is no job out there that would include doing complex work in spreadsheets and databases, and coaching/mentoring other people, and doing some kind of problem solving/information and referral work that gives people immediate assistance. When I did social service type jobs, I felt like I wasn't getting enough mental stimulation, and now that I'm working more analytical jobs I miss the satisfaction of helping people. Oh well.

Like I said, I'm not going to tag 15 people. But I will tag @lazaefair, because you're my most recent follow so I know you the least well.

For cat pics, see below

Truffle, my perfect angel baby:

And Tristan, my little goblin boy:

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Dark City (1998)

Dark City (1998)

Rated R for violent images and some sexuality

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2023/04/review-dark-city-1998.html>

Score: 4 out of 5

Dark City is a film that failed at the box office in its time and, despite a critical reevaluation as one of the hidden science fiction gems of the '90s, still gets overlooked quite often nowadays, for one simple reason: despite its mind-bending plot and creative visual design homaging classic '40s/'50s film noir, it had the misfortune of coming out just a year before The Matrix, a sci-fi masterpiece with very similar themes about what we think of as reality being just an illusion designed to control us. This film was a much more cerebral thriller whose effects shots, while no less visually impressive, were a lot less punchy and action-packed, instead feeling like if the first half-hour of The Matrix got stretched to feature length, given a retro gloss, and focused mainly on Keanu Reeves slowly peeling away the layers of his world, saving the big action sequence for the very end. It's a moody, foreboding film that built up to a great reveal while slowly imbuing the viewer with a paranoid suspicion that their own world may not be "right", and while the finale wrapped things up a bit too neatly and conventionally for my tastes with a rather silly-looking confrontation, the meat of the film was still a slick and highly effective tale that I won't forget anytime soon -- ironic, given what the villains here like to do to people.

The film takes place in an unnamed city with vaguely mid-20th-century technology, aesthetics, and feel, specifically the kind lifted out of a Raymond Chandler novel, a place where the streets are always cloaked in shadows even during what feels like it should be the daytime -- and hey, while you may have childhood memories of sunny days, when's the last time you saw the sun, anyway? We start with a man who wakes up in a hotel room with no memory, only figuring out that his name is John Murdoch from the ID in his wallet, surrounded by the corpses of dead prostitutes that he probably killed, which is not a situation that most of us would want to stick around for so they can calmly explain everything to the police. On the run from the law and searching for both Emma, a cabaret singer who he finds out was his wife, and Dr. Daniel Schreber, who he finds out used to be his psychiatrist, John gets pulled into a twisted web as he's pursued by the Strangers, mysterious, inhumanly pale-skinned men in hats and trenchcoats who he soon finds aren't entirely human, and who seem to control the city from the shadows and regard him as a threat to their plans. Meanwhile, Inspector Frank Bumstead sets out hot on the tail of the suspected murderer, not knowing exactly what he's getting himself into.

I can't really go into much more detail about the plot. Like a lot of old-fashioned mysteries, this is a movie where part of the fun is piecing the puzzle together yourself and then the film revealing how close you came to the truth, albeit one that puts a sci-fi twist on the usual noir story. I can, however, speak to the production values and writer/director Alex Proyas' sense of style, and on that front, I was at once pulled into the film's world and wondering what awful truths lay outside it. The city is the kind of seedy place you'd set a hardboiled detective story, exaggerated to the point where it feels like a warped parody thereof and creating an unsettling feel that this place should not be. Some of the supporting cast members having spotty American accents (this was shot in Australia), something I'd normally ding a film for, only lent to the uncanny valley feel of the city, as did countless other little quirks that made the place feel like somebody trying to draw a picture of a mid-century East Coast metropolis without any reference points as to what that would look like beyond old movies. And that's before you get to the Strangers who are after John, who wear conspicuous trenchcoats and have names like "Mr. Book", "Mr. Hand", and "Mr. Sleep" that sound like somebody tried to come up with ordinary-sounding "John Smith" names to blend in and... didn't pull it off, on top of their general weirdness and stilted manner of speaking calling to mind the G-Man from Half-Life. While it takes a while to get to the "why" of the titular dark city, the film lets you know rather quickly that this is not a normal city, and even before we get to the big special effects shots, Proyas did a great job right off the bat heightening its artifice and pale imitation of humanity. More than anything, it felt like I was watching the darkest possible film adaptation of The Sims, predating the first game by a couple of years but otherwise, without spoiling anything, taking some of the series' central concepts and playing them for paranoid horror.

The cast also did great in making this world feel just the right mix of real and artificial. Rufus Sewell as John, Jennifer Connelly as Emma, and William Hurt as Bumstead all felt like they could've been lifted out of a real 1940s film noir, while Kiefer Sutherland played Schreber as a character wholly unlike the take-charge heroes he's been coded as since 24, a dweebish doctor who serves as the main characters' bridge between the world they know and what's really going on through his exposition. The special effects were not the focus, but they were astonishing to watch for a fairly low-budgeted '90s film, especially a key sequence where we witness the city's buildings shifting around as the Strangers' true power over the city is made clear. Only at the very end did it feel like Proyas ran out of ideas, as John's final confrontation with the Strangers after unlocking his true power ended with them shooting beams of light at each other with their minds while buildings crumbled around them. It all felt pretty goofy, like they needed to find a way to wrap this up and have the hero prevail, even though if I was writing this, there are some seriously dark directions I could've taken the story. The ending, I feel, underlines the big reason why The Matrix was the big late '90s sci-fi movie about reality being a lie that everybody remembers; when it did similar battles between the good guys and bad guys, they came in the form of epic shootouts and martial arts sequences straight out of Hong Kong.

The Bottom Line

Dark City is a film that doesn't get talked up nearly enough, even if I can't really say much more in a non-spoiler review. Ending aside, it makes a great companion to The Matrix as a more cerebral and noir-tinged take on very similar concepts, one that will, at the very least, make it very difficult for you to play The Sims the same way again. A big thank you to Popcorn Frights for screening it last week. Check it out.

[jacscorner]

An analysis on "Anime Rock, Paper, Scissors".

OR

"Debating the ethical and morals of an AI Tool with an E-Rate Artist."

Okay, so, like, first of all: I love this video. I've been watching and rewatching it all day. I love it that much.

It captures everything about anime I fell in love with. The over-the-top dialogue, the dramatization over something so mundane as, the the trappings of dark fantasy. It taps into a very specific core of nostalgia for me.

BUT!

Yeah, I love this video to hell and back. But, well, there's no real getting around the messy fact that AI was used in the process-hell, you can even see it in the video thumbnail. Even if this is a few steps above most AI art, AI art will always have a certain 'look' to it that makes it stand out.

So, full disclaimer: I'm not an animator. And I feel I have no real horse in this race, even as an artist. Hell, I wouldn't even really call myself an artist. Sure, I can say I have roughly 13 years of experience drawing, but I don't think my art is really on a level that makes it very appealing and I honestly feel as though I've reached a peak. Like I've reached the apex of my potential and, well, it's not much.

So excuse me for putting my foot in my mouth about a topic I don't really have much to contribute to.

So, Corridor Digital's animated short is 1/2 rotoscoping and 1/2 AI art generation. The AI was trained to emulator a dark fantasy anime style by feeding it screenshots of Vampire Hunter D. The process for how its done can be seen here.

I'm kind of on two minds on this. For the most part, I don't think AI is gonna replace actual artists. Cause there's just a lot of stuff an actual artist can do an AI can't do. And while the entire process isn't shown, a lot of editing and manipulating had to be done in order to get the AI where they wanted it. A lot of choreography and filming technique was needed. How effects work, writing-art is more than just scribbling on paper and an AI might be able to mimic art, but it can't 'draw'.

Hell, the video still has a lot of jank going on after what was most likely months of work. Like I said, AI art just has a very specific look to it.

But let's get to the nitty gritty: feeding the Vampire Hunter D art into the ai to replicate the style.

On the one hand, this is kind of what I think of when I think of AI being a tool to be used rather than an outright replacement of animators. And I think this is a good showcase of how amazing the technology can be. It looks amazing despite the hiccups.

And artists try to replicate art styles all the time. Hell, some people market themselves on their ability to replicate a certain show's look. I've seen people try to sell Hades style commissions, there's an artist who redraws screenshots of various anime as if they're an early cartoon network show, and don't get me started on Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and Sonic - the big three of style emulation.

BUT!!!

And yes, it's a big 'but'; that's not really what's happening.

I'm not smart enough to put what it does in my own words, but I'll do my best anyway: it's more-or-less a glorified trace job, with (ideally) hundreds of different pieces to work off of to generate a completely new image. Usually without the agreed upon consent of the artists.

I hate to throw around accusations like this, especially when I lazily and hungrily eat up this content like potato chips, but it really is art theft on a grand scale.

I still admire the technical skill that went into this. Even if 'anyone' can do it, there's still a lot of work that went into making this and getting something that's workable. But I don't blame people for calling Corridor Digital out on this when it's so damn blatant.

Now, I won't stop watching the video - like I said, I'm not someone with a real foot in this race, now do I wanna start some kind of revolution against or anything. It's just something to think about after seeing some backlash.

Now, the movie's out on YouTube. In fact, there are 3 different videos of this movie, dubbed.

And the movie came out roughly 23 years ago. This is NOT yanking it out of starving artists like many are claiming it is. It's practically collecting dust.

However, it's still blatantly robbing other artists who worked on this movie of their credit. But, again, they're using the ai to mimic a certain style and using their photos as a template to follow. But it's still using someone else's work as a reference. Speaking of, it's not like what I uploaded was a legit upload of the film - it's a pirated, uploaded without the rights holder's consent.

So...?

I don't know, I guess I can just kind of see both sides of the argument. I'm not here to tell you that the video is bad or that AI art is inherently bad or that AI generators need to be destroyed. And I'm not telling you that the video is completely and totally free of any shady practices. Personally, this all just feels morally gray to me and Corridor should've hired some concept artist to feed into the AI.

Just wanted to throw my thoughts out there.

[3rdrainbow]

hehe my spouse tagged me in dis

1. Are you named after anyone?

not actively 🤔

2. When was the last time you cried?

this past weekend when i was spending time w my spouse and i jus got all soft emotional sdkjlfdsjlfk

3. Do you have kids?

technically one i suppose 😭

4. Do you use sarcasm?

i try to be honest and true but the sarcasm is still natural in my bones

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

i dont rly kno, def their appearance but i guess it depends on what of theirs really sticks out to me, aside from appearances, definitely a person's voice and how they talk

6. What's your eye color?

dark brown

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

this question is a bit weird bc like you can have a happy ending in a scary movie, or a not scary movie with a bad ending you know?

in a general sense, i guess i prefer happy endings, mostly because i get stressed out easily and id like for the people who went thru stuff to chill after its all done

but i also enjoy some scary movies, most i find really hard to watch because of jumpscares or the gore might be a bit much for me, but im def a fan of jordan peeles works

8. Any special talents?

i dont really kno dksjfklasdlkj bc like in my mind i dont understand what i do that others cant do that would then thus make my talent special

9. Where were you born?

in da philippines

10. What are your hobbies?

legitimately? jus sitting and listening to music while conjuring images in my mind jklsdfjlksdf but i do draw a lot, i used to write more often, and i used to do a lot more photography

11. Do you have any pets?

yeth! i have two dogs :3

12. What sports do you/have you played?

i hate sports kjsldfjksldf i am not a team player nor am i one to enjoy doing athletics, and also i dont have a competitive nature

13. How tall are you?

5'1? maybe 5'2? i havent checked my height in a very long time but i havent grown so

14. Favorite subject in school?

science! but very very specifically biology, i was always very good at it and it just came to me more naturally than other subjects

i also really liked ceramics bc of the really fun hands on work and the fulfillment from each piece, but not the other art classes i took

15. Dream job?

working in a library or a bookstore! truly the simplicity of it all and being able to organize books and being surrounded by them, ive had this dream ever since i was a TA in my middle school library, so chill and not very likely to be overstimulated, the best

um, tagging some of my mewchuals 🥺🥺 if yall wanna do it @irradiatedclown, @tetrissyndromes, @bikerboyfriend, @butchlinkle, @jellyfishgay, @jkgaycf, and anyone else who wants to

[king-there0f]

🖊 🖊 🖊 for you!! free spaces for three different kiddos (or just three facts about one! up to you!) :D @kerra-and-company

Aw thank you so much!

Lets give these kiddos a chance to shine. Under the cut are some snippets about 🖊Kerxsus, 🖊Meena, and 🖊Asphreah

🖊KERXSUS

I never talk about him which is a shame because of all my salads, he might have my favorite design. He is based on three plants in particular, those being a begonia maculata, maple and japanese maple, as well as the red burning bush plant.

I just love red plants.

Kerxsus was my first monochromatic sylvari design, though yellow and green feature as well, his color palette is predominately red. He is my autumnal salad and he's been on my mind a lot lately since I live in a place where maple trees are abundant. There are so many beautiful changing colors right now and so many different shades of reds and oranges and yellows and muddy greens. Muah, chefs kiss. Best season.

Kerxsus is an odd egg. He met a Nightmare Courtier very early upon waking and was intrigued by their sympathetic nature. He does not get very caught up in right VS wrong. He thinks the courtiers have their place. He doesn't like things that are overly dogmatic though, so joining as a formal member never held much appeal to him.

He has a fascination for insects and arachnids, and keeps several as odd pets. He's a bit of a mad scientist type and is constantly experimenting and testing new poisons and antidotes and solutions and solvents and isn't always the most discerning about what or who he tests them on.

He loves shiny things and likes to adorn himself with pretty gems. Sometimes he goes to what some might call extreme measures to acquire pretty shiny things. Very nearsighted. probably a monsterfucker. He likes a specimen.

🖊MEENA

My beautiful Not-Norn baby. The youngest of all my GW2 characters (not counting sylvari since they are basically born adults) Meena is in the 17-20 ish range. I haven't worked out a ton for her yet so I haven't nailed down the specifics.

But I'd love to spend more time with her character! Her color palette is very inspired by Lady Amalthia from The Last Unicorn, which is one of my favorite movies. And I really love her design - she's fun to draw!

Meena is a human who was found abandoned as a baby in the shiverpeaks and was adopted by a loving Norn couple who desperately wanted a child and felt the spirits of the wild blessed them when they found her. They assumed that a child that could survive such extreme temperatures long enough to be found bust be a Norn, so they never questioned it. She was raised like a Norn, though she never got quite as tall as her peers. Her dad's love her very much and fret over her constantly.

I have a couple different comics drafted for their family. One being of her dad's finding her for the first time. Hopefully I'll get that actually finished someday haha ; ;

I like the idea of her general vibe feeling somewhat fairy-tale or folklore-ish. There's some mystery surrounding where exactly she came from and how she didn't die as an infant in the snow and I would love to delve more into that. I feel like there are a lot of opportunities for some fun environmental pieces and warm cozy illustrations of her and her dads.

🖊ASPHREAH

They're based on a Purple Queen plant, which my Grandmom always had in her garden!

Their name is a combination of the words Asphyxiate and Freya.

They are more attractive than you and they know it.

While not an official member of the Nightmare Court, they might do the odd job for them every now and again. More of an independent contractor kind of deal. They despise the idea of working under anyone long term. It's simply beneath them.

Asphreah appreciates fine fancy clothes and things that look fashionable and expensive and they dress themselves like they want to be noticed. They wear lavish materials that they hate to dirty or stain and will consider murder over a spilled drink.

When contracted or asked for favors they will accept payment in the form of rare out of print books of poetry and they keep an extensive library of books and manuscripts worth a frankly ungodly amount of money.

They're most definitely a wine snob. They're a snob about most things actually. They hate having things chosen for them because other people are more likely to make shit choices. Unless, of course the choice being made is in their favor.

Absolutely the kind of person who flirts and convinces you to dump your partner to date them, only to dump you not long after because they only wanted to prove they could make you fall for them.

They would rather not perform strenuous tasks, preferring to convince other people to handle things for them.

All in all, not a very nice person, but certainly one that knows their own worth.

[amdigitalcharacterillustration]

GROUP DESIGN TASK 07/06/24

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

For the Thursday lesson, we were out into groups and tasked to create a character, with a simple backstory and vague design. These characters then got swapped around the class, with the idea we were to draw the character we got like a faux commission. The catch was that each group member was assigned a specific style to replicate for the piece. There were four styles given out, the same for each group. - Graphic Novel - Childs Book - Mobile Game - Cartoon None of the four I was particularly fussed about receiving, so picked out Mobile Game style on a whim, since it isn't an art style I explore on the regular. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… The character we were given was that of Johnson Leebourne. A troubled Victorian man who is two people combined into one! We were told he has a violent temper, a cane, and the tendency to like money over his peers. As a group, we first decided on the colour palette of this man, and soon agreed that he'd have more dulled down tones. A possible splash of colour here and there to keep values balanced, but overall nothing insane to look at. Also while bearing in mind that this palette had to work for each style without massive adaptation. The palette finally agreed upon.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Now I have everything I need, it's onto the actual drawing. I gathered references. I knew I wanted the character to look like a character meant to be tweened, and to have a simple-ish palette with a lack of shading. Most mobile games to date have very little effort put into them, and I wanted to replicate the low-effort' nature, while actually producing a decent product. My first come across was the popular late 2015 YouTube series ASDF Movie. The characters simplistic style, yet emotional and poseable range, was perfect. Round heads, simple eyes and limbs, that just barely resembled something human. Putting my mind into the head of a cheapskate developer, that certainly tickle my fancy of being cheap, easy and appealing design choice.

I then thought of the app store game 'Dumb Ways To Die', a funky yet gory game that had a choke hold on me as a child. I liked the flat colouring style, which was pulled off effectively enough to not seem lazy. And decided to take inspiration from there are well.

I also picked up a few references for some Victorian era clothing, keeping in mind the colours and styles that would have been available at the time. And as much as I looked to real-life examples, I sought out cartoon versions as well, to give myself a better idea of how I'd simplify a suit design.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… I then thought about what kind of game my hypothetical mobile character would be from. My mind instantly landed on a tycoon style game, maybe with a side story of our brief character. I concocted the title 'Coin Capers', with the idea that Leebourne was most likely a tax-evading rich man, and his dodgy company a mass cover up for his true money-leeching plans. There'd be scenes where he'd talk to the player, though the game would mostly consist of repetitive, boring coin clicker gameplay. Those scenes would look like how most narrative story games do.

A semi- transparent text box, that contains the dialogue, and a solid box of colour above it that contains the speaking characters name. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… And here is my design for Johnson Leebourne, after everything I just talked through. I tried to incorporate all my ideas in a cohesive manner, that I feel came through better than I hoped. I apologise since I completely forgot to record my timelapse for this piece.

I did his full body character design, a dialogue box, and the app icon for the fictional mobile game. One half of his body better resembles his 'ex-wife' who's personality merged into his, with a dress and noticeable eyelashes to differentiate her. I wanted his face to look like it was almost split in half to resemble both sides of his personalities. His eyes are a simplistic cartoon-like design that would be easily interchangeable with his other expressions. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

[kevinlaforest]

HOUR // Peter Gabriel présente "New Blood Live in London 3D" à Montréal (12 septembre 2011)

The legendary Peter Gabriel was in Montreal this afternoon to present an advance screening of New Blood Live in London and hold a press conference.

The concert film, which was shot last March during two concerts at London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo during which the former Genesis frontman was accompanied by a 46 piece orchestra, will be shown again in select Cineplex theaters (including Montreal’s Cinéma Banque Scotia and Cinéma StarCité) on October 12 and 17, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 25.

The New Blood CD will be released on October 11.

PETER GABRIEL ON…

3D as a gadget: “It’s just a gadget in the same way that your eyes are just gadgets. But they connect to the brain and they allow you to process images, and you have two of them. So I think it’s a device, it’s a tool [that] allows you into this world which I think is closer to real life.”

The challenges of making a 3D movie: “Blue Leach, who directed it [and] did a fantastic job I think, he had most of the problems. A thing we tried that I think I would have loved to have a little more time with, I put on a camera rig myself, just a few shots that we used from that… I think if I’d had my own monitor and just a little more time, I would have learned how to use it better. But I thought it was quite interesting, and the other thing I liked is when the camera’s able to move through the musicians, cause obviously you don’t get to do that when you’re sitting in the audience. And again, had we known how that was gonna work, I think we would have tried to engineer more of that.”

Making music with a full orchestra: “This grew out of the covers project which is called Scratch My Back. It was a song exchange: you do one of my songs, I do one of yours, that was the original idea. We’ve only got half the number of songs back again, but… Then it was a question of how to arrange the songs and I thought at first about all hand-made instruments, I wanted to do something that was different and fresh for me. And then actually, as I began thinking about that, I thought, ‘If I use traditional instruments, it’s gonna be, you know, more range of expression and great players to draw from.’ And I’d never really done an orchestral project… We always try to make some rules to help the process cause I think if you really wanna castrate an artist, tell them they can do anything they want; they haven’t got a clue what to do. If you tell them, ‘You can’t do this, you definitely can’t do that, and you absolutely must’nt do this,’ then they start thinking creatively. And so I try to do that to myself. In this case, we said, ‘no guitars, no drum kit’ – we use classical percussion – and we’ll try and make some things really, really empty, sparse, and other sections so very full. So, with that in mind, we sat down with John [Metcalfe], this amazing arranger I’ve been working with on this, and we talked about our influences, things that might have reference to this project, for instance Bernard Herrmann, who did all the wonderful Hitchcock work, with a track like Intruder [...] So we wanted to be bold. I specifically avoided some of the more popular songs, we went for things that would be an interesting journey from start to finish. I think that some of the classical projects can sound like rock-lite, and we were trying to avoid that.”

How he can navigate various genres of music while not losing his fans: “I think the best policy is to follow your passion – Joseph Campbell used to say, ‘Follow your bliss’ – and then you try and find find a way to sell it afterwards! Because I think that way, if things don’t work out, you still had a great time and an interesting journey, so that’s sort of been the way I approached things. And I know with this project, some people who like Sledgehammer and Solsbury Hill don’t like the orchestra; some do. But then I’ve also come across people who really disliked everything I’ve ever done, but they like this! So I think you have a chance, if you do something different, you lose some and if you’re lucky, you win some.”

What he likes best about the film: “I see plenty of myself so I prefer so I prefer to watch the others! The thing that I got most excited with was an idea to take the drums sections of Rhythm of the Heat and I thought, maybe what we could do is try and take the parts of drums and put them on orchestral instruments, and that’s what I asked John to do. I think that’s my favorite moment in this and in the concert.”

His relationship with Montreal: “Well, it’s always been very kind to me, Montreal, so I appreciate that. And it seems it is a home from home.”

How he sees himself: “I think, um… A man who went for an interesting life.”

His greatest achievement: “There’s this dream [I had] to make an organization of former statesmen and women which is called The Elders (theelders.org). Sir Richard Branson and I were determined to get Mandela to found that, and he was at first reluctant, but then agreed. The fact that that’s in existence is amazing to me, so I think that’s probably well up there.”

REVIEW

Up until now, save for 2008′s U2 3D and maybe a few others, 3D concert films have been reserved to teen idols à la Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber and the Glee cast. Enter Peter Gabriel, who couldn’t be farther removed from that, especially the way we find him here, singing in front of a 46 piece orchestra conducted by Ben Foster and focusing in great part on lesser-known art rock numbers such as Intruder (off 1980′s Melt), San Jacinto and The Rhythm of the Heat (off 1982′s Security), Blood of Eden (off 1992′s Us), as well as Darkness and Signal to Noise (off 2002′s underrated album Up ).

Also included are a few tracks from Gabriel’s 2010 covers album Scratch My Back (Regina Spektor’s Après moi, Lou Reed’s The Power of the Heart, The Magnetic Fields’ The Book of Love) and some favorites from his own repertoire like Biko, Digging in the Dirt, Mercy Street and Red Rain, culminating with the timeless Solsbury Hill and, during the encore, the very moving one-two punch of In Your Eyes and Don’t Give Up.

Visually, Blue Leach’ film is not the most dynamic thing in the world, relying mostly on Peter Gabriel holding our attention with his powerful voice and presence, which he does. White-haired and dressed in black, often bathed in red light, the singer is surrounded by the orchestra, through which the camera swiftly moves. There are also some interesting mise en scène tricks, notably involving LED screens. The use of 3D is immersive enough, if not particularly impressive.

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[zybynarx]

IT’S HERE!!! IT’S FINALLY HERE!!! This is artwork done for the @dcbtv and specifically for the INCREDIBLE story written by @whitster-lizzy​ ! Check it out HERE!

Aaaah! I feel like I could geek out over these drawings and the entire process for a long while, so I’ll just throw that rambling under the “Keep Reading” (there will be fic spoilers talked about there too so be warned!).

Hope you enjoy the story! And seriously, go read it!

Hello! Welcome to the ramblings!

So starting with the banner... the concept of what I wanted to do came to me pretty quickly. I thought it would be cool to have the guitar and cover it with some relevant stickers that applied to Dean and Cas. The biggest challenge on the banner was honestly the colors... there are SO MANY cool color options for guitars, but I wanted to be sure that the words, the important story information, stood out significantly. So there was a lot of color tests that my friend sort of “supervised” for me, and finally get the colors fine tuned where you still have the bold red from the KC logo, but it wasn’t the ONLY thing your eye would stay drawn to. XD

Next is the Cas in his room drawing... and boy howdy I am OBSESSED with this drawing! the DCBTV bang was a very collaborative project. There was no “rough draft” to read off of, or “rough sketches” to look at. It was just me, Whitney, and our chosen song. So we had some brainstorm sessions where we pin-pointed the concept for the fic, which would have musician!Cas/football player!Dean, with some high school angst. And of course, you can’t really have an angsty high school story without a dramatic “looking out the window like you’re in a music video”, so I sketched this out:

I shared it with Whitney, and then she added this scene into the story itself! To which then I was like, “Well heck! Now I REALLY have to draw this!” But I was already at about 50% with the other piece I had done, and so I told myself that if I had time, I could draw this up. I finished the other drawing with time to spare... and then drew up the Cas drawing over the course of 3 days. My brain wouldn’t let me rest until I had drawn it! XD (Also quick fun fact... the poster on Cas’ wall is Totoro, because I was watching that movie for the first time ever while I was coloring it, and I thought it would be a fun little easter egg for myself ^_^ ).

The 2nd drawing (well, technically 1st since I had completed that one first) may look simple... but there were things about it that was NOT so simple! XD The lighting/shading... it was certainly an adventure trying to figure out exactly how this sort of lighting would work. From the spotlights on Cas and Dean, to the lighting of the “peanut gallery” just a little behind them, and then finally the crowd. A lot of playing around with different colors and layer settings, but I found an option that I felt like worked very well! On another note of the collaboration effort for this bang, Cas’ outfit and tattoo design were inspired from reading what Whitney had added into the story. Specifically during the high school years. I read the detail about Cas’ mom making his own version of the “Black Parade” jacket and was like, “Omg that’s gotta be referenced a bit with this drawing now! It’s perfect!” And the part where Cas compares himself to a phoenix instead of Icarus? My mind was blown and I got chills so I had to make a subtle nod to that as well!

Whitney had asked about creating some chapter/section dividers to put throughout the story and I thought it was a great idea! I came up with this design for Dean when we switched to his POV and even little section breaks within the chapter:

And these were the designs I came up with for Cas’ POV switches and section breaks:

...wanna know something funny about those musical notes? Got the inspiration from this:

:3c

I signed up for this bang as sort of a last second decision and honestly I’m so glad that I did! My author was incredible, it helped push me a little more as an artist, and also I got to relive my Jr. High years a bit because this song was honestly the first Taylor Swift song I had ever heard (also a bit of High school because of the angst, but I loved it). Super thankful to have been a part of this! 

A huge huge shout out to the mods for putting it together and for creating the event! Seriously, you all did a great job and I’m so happy that this event was received so well!

If you’ve made it this far... thanks for reading! <3