#(real story. happened to me on instagram. followed new artist that said they started drawing that year. got 5k likes 1st post in a day)

[alchemiclee]

the best advice for how to become a good and well known and loved artist online: be lucky. nothing you do matters if you dont have luck and break out by chance 🤠

[xotication]

☆,

how i think tattoo artist ken & slightly generic y/n would cross paths..

alright so, i think y/n would have a somewhat boring job. maybe you work in an office, a coffee shop, yk something of the sort.

you'd follow the same routine everyday; wake up, go to work, come home, eat, rot, sleep, repeat. it was starting to get a little bit sad, sometimes you didn't even know where to begin to make the change.

one day you're sitting at home on your day off, mindlessly scrolling through instagram. one of your good friends juuzou posted a story & it happens to be a new tattoo he just got. he didn't have many but he was starting a tattoo journey for sure. you pondered a bit.

"maybe this is what i need.." you said it to yourself & quickly shot juuzou a text to see where he gets his work done.

he immediately ends up calling you.

"y/n, are you getting a tat??"

"yeah i think i might. i want some change in my life zo, help me out, yeah?"

he wastes no more time & just sends you the address of the shop he normally visits. he refers you to one of his favorite artists too & reassures you that he does really beautiful work.

that's all you needed to hear. with no real plan, you got dressed & set out on your way to the tattoo shop. it was about a 20 minute drive so that gave you time to think up at least a little something.

juuzou texts you, "i'll meet you there, i have GOT to see this.."

you laugh & send him a couple emojis before focusing on your drive once again.

+

you're now in the shop, looking at all the art that littered the walls. now that you're here in the flesh, hearing multiple tattoo guns & seeing others getting pierced.. it was all overwhelming. juuzou notices the look on your face.

"oh come on, you can't back out now. we're already here."

he was right.. you wanted to do this, there's no going back, "you're right, i'm not backing out. i'm gonna do it"

"alright. i'm gonna go grab the artist okay? sit tight."

you did, still thinking of what you were gonna tell said artist when they asked what you wanted. your main thought was, go big or go home.

+

"hi, are you the virgin?"

you practically choked on your own spit. who just asks that..?

"the tattoo virgin.. nothing to do with your sexual relations.."

"oh. yeah."

"nice. i'm kaneki, i'll be the one designing your tattoo, & of course tattooing you. do you have any questions or concerns? do you know what you want done..?"

"well first, how bad is this gonna hurt..?"

kaneki chuckles, "where are you getting it?"

"uhm, my thigh"

"ah.. it'll sting lots but you're a big girl. you can handle it, yeah?"

your cheeks get warm upon hearing his remark, & juuzou looks between the two of you, already not liking the tension between you.

(not in a jealous way, more of a, really.. my best friend? way)

"why don't you tell him what you want, y/n."

...

"& i want there to be fire too, maybe coming out of it's mouth, or somewhere around the body of it. i dunno, but def some fire.. please"

juuzou & kaneki sat there, perplexed.

"what.. what?? don't tell me you can't do it.."

"nono, trust, i can do it. i just wouldn't expect for a girl like you.. to want a tat like that."

"a girl like me?? juuzou what do you think?"

"i mean, i- yeah. it's definitely a tattoo."

"i'll start drawing it up, you can tell me what you think & if you want any changes to be made. this is gonna be on your body forever so don't be afraid to tell me if there's something you don't like, okay?"

+

after a long design process, you guys finally got the perfect drawing.

now it was time for placement, & skin prep.

"can you take your pants off?"

"what????"

"uhm y/n.. how else is he gonna put a tattoo on your thigh?"

"oh..." you clearly didn't think this out very well.

you removed your pants & sat on the cold leather chair.

kaneki grabbed a fresh razor & shaved the area, just in case of any hair. then he places the stencil, & asks you to go look in the mirror to see if you like the placement. you genuinely love it, so you sit back down.

kaneki begins piecing his tattoo gun together & reality is setting in. you're really about to get a tattoo, a HUGE one at that.

you decided on a piece of a dragon with fire coming through the twists & turns of the body. not only that, but it was going to be a color piece, so that means extra time & work- on top of the line work & shading.

you were too caught up in your own thoughts until you heard the tattoo gun start up.

"you ready, y/n?" juuzou asks you & you violently shake your head no.

"you'll be fine, sweetheart. i'm all ready so, let me know when you are." kaneki tells you.

you sat there for a bit & then finally gave him the okay to start tattooing.

"holy fucking shit!" the pain was like nothing you'd ever felt before, & you were not enjoying it in the slightest.

you just started & you already wanted it to be over. to think you had multiple hours of this to endure? you wanted to shrivel up & die in the middle of this tattoo shop. how were you gonna survive? would you?? god, you didn't think you would. you were damn near biting your fist trying to resist screaming out in agony.

"you got this y/n, just remember to breathe, okay?" you felt like slapping kaneki for saying that.

you hadn't even really paid attention to him but now that you’re stuck in this chair with nothing else to distract you. you took notice of all his tattoos. i mean, they go from his neck all the way down his ankles. how he managed to do it? it's beyond your own comprehension.

you thought this was going to be your first & your last.

+

it had been 3 hours. juuzou left & kaneki was just finishing the last couple of touches.. before color that is. but that'd be left for another session, much to your dismay.

"alright, y/n, you're all done for today."

"for today..? what. why can't you just finish it now..?"

"that'd be a lot for you. it's your first tattoo & you're already overwhelmed with pain. plus, your skin is puffing up. i think this is a really good place to stop, hun."

"ugh just give me a 30 minute break. i wanna finish it today."

"no. it's done for today & that's that.

"oh fuck you."

"excuse me?"

"sorry."

"mhm. i'm gonna clean it & wrap it. then i'll go over the treatment & aftercare process & you'll be good to go.. after you pay me of course"

"mkay."

...

"you should take down my number so we can discuss when would be a good time for you to come in."

"uhm, can't i just call the shop?"

"well yeah, but why do that if you could just text me directly."

"mmm.. okay"

the two of you exchange numbers, you pay him, & he sends you on your way home.

the whole way there, you couldn't stop thinking about how you really just did that. it still hurt like fuck, but you'd live.. hopefully.

+

it was around 9pm, you were showered, & cozy in bed. damn near ready to just knock the fuck out after the day you've had..

ping!

"you still hanging in there, pretty?"

it was kaneki.

here you are tat artist! ken obsessed anon ^.^

[n0wornever]

Feelings Change Like Seasons - Luke/Reggie x Reader

I have an idea...the reader likes Luke but Reggie likes the reader but then the reader one day realizes that she only sees Luke as a brother and truly likes Reggie.

I tweaked it a little bit so the brother part might more vague, but yeah!

He watched as she looked at the brown-haired boy as he strummed on his guitar, his teeth gripping on his bottom lip as he concentrated on the melody. She let her cheek rest in her hand and let a small smile begin to appear across her face. 

“Hey ‘heart eyes’ have a second to talk to me?” Reggie said, waving a hand in her face and smirking down at her, a piece of notebook paper in his hand. She shook her head, not responding. Reggie took the silence as an invitation and sat down next to her. He placed the piece of paper on her lap for her to look over. 

“Jules and I roughly sketched out an idea for a band gig poster to put up on social and in coffeeshops around town.” He started, pointing down at the drawing.

“It’s not great, but that’s what we have you for,” He nudged her arm, she rolled her eyes in response “Do you think you could take a look and sketch a more polished copy for us to look at?”

She nodded “Of course Reg, you know I got you guys.” 

A hand fell onto her shoulder and she turned to meet Luke’s smile. “Hey, Y/N, can you listen to something I just thought of. I want your opinion!” 

She jumped up right away “Sure,” she said, following him over to the couch. Reggie watched her move across the room, analyzing her smile and giggles as his bandmate played his new solo for her. He watched her eyes swell as he began to sing and sighed. 

“You know, you could just tell her. Creepily watching her interact with Luke is going to get you nowhere.” 

Reggie jumps at the sudden noise, looking over to see Julie staring at him with a sympathetic smile. Reggie rolled his eyes at the girl, shaking his head. 

“It’s not like that...”

“Reg...” 

He sighed again, throwing his hands up in defeat “Okay, it’s like that. How can I compete with Luke? I mean, you see the way she looks at him...”

She watched as Y/N pushed her hand against Luke’s chiseled chest, head falling back with laughter. Reggie placed his elbows on his knees, leaning his head against his open palm. He felt Julie’s hand touch his shoulder, patting it softly.

“She just hasn’t seen you show any interest! You need to wedge yourself in there.” Reggie met Julie’s gaze and she smiled “You can be smooth Reg, I’ve seen it. You just need to test the waters.” 

He stood up, slinging his guitar over his shoulder before moving to his band position. Luke, Julie and Alex soon joined him. Y/N kicked out her legs and started her sketching process as the band moved forward with practice. 

As the music started to die down, Y/N started to pick up her stuff. She looked up when she heard a familiar female voice enter the room. She sighed as she watched Carrie gravitate toward Luke, her arm sliding through his. Ever since Julie and Carrie became friends again, the girl had been slowly inching her way toward him.

Reggie was startled by Y/N’s abrupt movements as she stood and swung her backpack around her shoulders. “Guys, I’m heading out” she said, throwing up a peace sign and avoiding Carrie’s gaze. As she moved toward the door, Reggie found himself reaching out to grab onto her forearm. 

She turned around fully, facing him. He rubbed his hands together as he began to talk to her. 

“Hey, Y/N, before you go...I was just curious what you were doing tomorrow?”

She cocked her head in confusion before answering “Nothing, why? What’s up?”

His smile grew a bit wider, taking a step closer to her. “I was hoping that you and I could hang out? We haven’t really done anything, just the two of us, in awhile....we could also go over your sketches maybe?”

She gave him a small grin “That sounds great Reg, meet me at my place at like 11?” 

“Cool,” He responded, feeling his anxieties melt away. 

She looked at her arm, still stuck in his grip and back up to his eyes. “So...could you let me go so I can get home before then?” 

He let go immediately, lowering his head to hide the growing pink cascading over his face. “Sorry.” 

She giggled “No worries, see you tomorrow?”

The next day

Reggie knocked on her front door. He heard a dog bark and some loud hushing before she appeared, smiling at him. She was dressed down, her glasses on and hair up with a Phantoms t-shirt she designed and some joggers. She moved to invite him in.

“The sketches are at the table if you want to look at them!” She called from the staircase “I just have to grab my phone real quick.” 

He walked over to the kitchen and looked through the scattered papers. He was always so impressed with her art. She took details to the next level, and always made the band look more professional than they really were. He touched the line work of her logo drawing as she appeared next to him, cheek leaning against his arm.

“They aren’t too bad, are they?” 

He peered over in her direction with furrowed brows “Too bad?! Y/N these are next level!” 

She bit down on her lip, smiling at him “You mean it?”

He nodded enthusiastically, his fingers grazing a few other drawings “The hardest part will be narrowing it down to just a few options!” 

She giggled at his wide eyes, taking a seat at the table. She opened her phone, clicking on the Instagram app and snapping a photo of him while he wasn’t looking for her story. She captioned it “hanging out with my biggest fan @RegTheMan.” She scrolled through her timeline a bit, eyes widening at a particular photo. It was a candid of Luke and Carrie, her kissing his cheek and his eyes squeezed shut with a big smile on his face. She sighed loudly, turning off the screen.

“What’s up?” He asked, looking over the table at her pursed lips. 

“Nothing....”

His look pressed her and she finally continued “I just don’t see what Luke sees in Carrie, that’s all.”

Reggie nods, walking across the table to her. He sits down in the seat next to her, taking in her side profile as he forms the next statement. “Honestly, I don’t know what you see in Luke!” He joked, giving her a small smile

She giggles at that, pushing back his shoulder “I don’t know...” She chews on her lip “It’s honestly a long overdue crush, but I can’t help but think about him sometimes.” 

His smile drops as he takes in her tense features. He feels a knot begin to form in his throat as forms the next sentence. “Yeah, I totally get what you mean.” 

His double-meaning was lost on her as she leaned forward into her hands. He kept his focus on her as she continued.

“But how do you compare with Carrie?” 

He scoffed at this statement, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You’re kidding me, right.” 

She sat up straight, finally meeting his gaze. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head at the girl, retreating his hand to his side. “Carrie has nothing on you, Y/N. You’re so talented, and artistic and kind....”

She gave him a brief smile, rubbing her hand up and down his arm. He felt a shiver at her touch, but tried to avoid being obvious about his racing anxiety. 

“You have to say that, you’re my friend...” 

He rolled his eyes at her “I don’t have to say anything. I mean that.” 

The room went silent for a moment before she whispered a thank you over in his direction. He saw her shoulders begin to shake and sprung forward, when he met her eyes they were welling with tears. 

He started wiping her tears away with his thumbs “See, even beautiful when she’s crying.” 

His statement made her laugh through her heavy breathing. He let his hands fall to her thighs as she composed herself. 

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess, I must have been holding that in for awhile.”

“Never apologize for feeling.” He tapped her legs with his hands. 

She let her gaze fall onto his again as they sat in the quiet. His eyes fell to her lips quickly before springing back up to her face. Her soft cheeks had splotched with red and her eyes were bloodshot, but he still couldn’t help but smile at her. 

“What?” She said, bringing her hands to her cheeks 

“....Nothing, just looking at you.” 

Her cheeks burned pink again as he held her glance. She moved forward and kissed his cheek quickly before looking back to her work, holding up pieces for him to evaluate. He sighed to himself as he realized how long of a journey this would really be. 

Reggie showed up at the next rehearsal early, helping Julie set up the space. Julie went right for the kill as she moved the mics to their spots. 

“So how did it go?”

“What?”

Julie pursed her lips, rolling her eyes at him. “You know what I’m talking about.” 

Reggie laughed to himself, picking up his guitar and wrapping it around his torso. He strummed for a second before responding. 

“It was fine. We went over artwork and she...well...she kind of confided in me about Luke.”

Julie’s mouth opened “Oh? And what happened with that.”

“She basically said that she liked him, but knew she had to get over him because obviously he and Carrie are a ‘thing.’

Julie clasped her hands together, bringing them up to graze her cheek. “And you were there to comfort her. Oh how sweet.” 

Reggie rolled his eyes at her “stop Jules, it wasn’t like that..” He diverted his eyes, focusing on his strings. 

Y/N entered the room and he brightened up immediately. She smiled as she met his eyes, coming in for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her and they stood there for a moment. She looked up at him, chin grazing his stomach. “Thanks again for yesterday.” she said before breaking apart and moving toward the couch. 

Julie looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but he shooed her eyes away from his quickly. Luke walked in with Carrie on his arm and Alex trailing behind them. Reggie looked between Carrie and Luke before asking the question everyone was thinking. 

“So....is this...an official thing now?” 

Luke’s whole face went red as Carrie moved quickly to kiss his cheek. They both nodded, Luke hugging her closer to his side before placing a kiss on her head. 

“I’ll see you after practice?” Carrie said, looking up at him with her hands on his chest.

“Of course,” He leaned down to place a kiss on her lips before she ran out of the garage, the bandmates howling after her. 

Reggie’s eyes immediately went to Y/N, her eyes was focused on her sketchbook. Luke walked over to her, placing his bag next to her and ruffling her hair. “Hey kid.” He said, Y/N slowly shrinking as he walked away. 

Luke rejoined the group and the band started rehearsing. As the evening ended, Reggie moved over to the couch, sitting down next to her as she packed her bag. 

“You okay?”

She looked up with puffy eyes. “Yeah, I’m alright.” 

He gave her a questioning look, standing and holding his hand out to her. He grabbed it and he brought her up to meet him.

“Let’s go on a walk?”

She nodded, placing her backpack around her shoulders and trailing behind him out the door. He ignored Luke and Julie’s wandering gazes as the pair walked past them. 

When they were finally in the cold, crisp air he let go of her hand, staying close enough for their shoulders to brush as they walked down the street. They stayed quiet for a few blocks before Reggie spoke.

“You deserve better.” He said, exhaling sharply after the words left his mouth.

“What?” She said, inching closer to him, hooking her arm around his. 

He cleared his throat before continuing “You are such a catch, Y/N, Luke is just too vapid to notice it. You deserve someone who sees how incredible you are.”

Her giggle vibrated against his arm “Let me know when you find him, I’d like to talk.”

“I think I know a guy actually...” 

She went quiet for a moment before she halted her movements. His heart began to race as he wondered if he went too far. However, his intrusive thinking was stopped by Y/N grabbing his hand and pulling him to the left.

“Where are we going,” He breathed heavily, trying to match her pace.

She didn’t respond, pulling him forward until they made it to the school’s open field. She led his hand to the middle before dropping it and laying on her back in the grass. 

“Didn’t they just water this-” 

“Reggie don’t be a baby, get down here,” She patted the section of grass near her and he gave in and laid next to her. 

They sat in the quiet for a moment. Reggie moved his gaze from the stars to her, watching as she beamed at the open air. She eventually must have felt his gaze, because she turned to the side and met his eyes with hers widened.

“WHAT?!” 

He laughed at her aggression “I told you, I just like looking at you.”

She shook her head, holding back a grin as she took in his dark eyes in the dim light. “Why do you like looking at me?” She finally said, fully leaning on her side to face him.

“I’m not sure if I could fully tell you that, all I know is that I’m afraid if I don’t, I won’t get the chance again....and I don’t like those odds.”

He smirked as he watched her face overcome with blush. She bit on her bottom lip. “You’re too sweet.” 

“You deserve it.”

She exhaled heavily, letting out a short laugh “You just have an answer for everything.”

“Maybe so.” 

She looked at him again, taking in everything from the crinkles near his eyes, to the slight freckles on his nose. She was overcome with how soft his eyes looked at her. She let her eyes fall toward his lips and back up to his eyes. She leaned forward and heard him gasp before she connected their lips for a split second. As she pulled back, she smiled at his dumbfounded response.

“Well...” He started, heat racing to his face “Maybe I don’t have an answer for everything...because....wow.”

She laughed again, snuggling into his side as they watched the moon. 

.

.

.

.

Tag list: @marinettepotterandplagg​, @lukeys-giggle​, @joshy-obx, @epikskool, @daisiesforlacey, @bestdressedandstressed, @txrii, @musicconversedance, @dasexydevitt13, @bathtimejish, @xplrreylo, @lovesanimals, @kiss-themoongoodbye

[anxiouslyfred]

The Rainy Painting

Summary: Remus paints the memories he gets from his soulmate and posts them online. Since it’s Tumblr he posts to he never expects that his soulmate could actually find them though.

/\/\

Remus had leapt on the idea as soon as he encountered it, and ran away with it completely over the years that the internet and social media was growing in the world. At this point there were honestly a number of blogs convinced that he was actually the one to start the trend that picked up, rather than than he'd stolen the idea from classical artists.

True, it really was only speculation that some of the masterpieces of art were inspired by soulmate memories, but that had been enough for Remus to start posting his drawings online, eventually finding Tumblr as a home for them.

Drawing them had just been a way to make the memories feel more real to him. There were places he'd never been but could tell you everything that happened to his soulmate there and he kind of wished the memories were more solid sometimes. Place names would really be useful, but despite knowing it was possible to get them, his parents often mentioned that helping them meet, Remus's soulmate never seemed to focus on locations.

It wasn't really an attempt to locate his soulmate, as Roman was far to regularly pointing out he'd have a higher chance of managing that on something like Instagram, or Twitter, or just about any social media. He just wanted to post the art that came from the memory dreams, and see just how much of the emotions around the memories he could convey in them.

Something in the art must have at least resonated with people since his art filled the most popular posts under the #soulmate dreams tag.

/Another Approach to Memory Dreams\

There were journals spread over Virgil's shelves. Sometimes the pages had full memories he'd gained while dreaming recounted in them, but usually it was descriptions of the location, everything he could remember that would stand out if he ever found himself there. All of his soulmate's memories preserved on shelves to the right of his door.

He had journals and trinkets from things he thought could be the memories sent to his soulmate too. They were kept in books to the left of his door, with pen pots and extra scrapbooks holding identifying things for the locations. How could Virgil know if someone was talking about somewhere he'd visited without a pencil or postcard stating where that was? Place names just weren't that important to him to actually remember.

Sometimes, when Virgil was feeling extremely alone and unloved by everyone, he'd read and reread all the memories of his soulmate, just trying to figure out if he could find them. If there was actually a way he might manage it from the information he'd gotten.

He'd overheard some teens talking about memory art, or soulmate art while they'd been browsing in the art store he worked at and was wondering about looking it up. Virgil would never dare to post anything he drew online. The only thing that would happen was it'd get ignored, in the best instance, otherwise he'd probably face a lot of criticism.

Virgil had seen more than enough of that hate and criticism of anything when his cousins had convinced him to get a twitter for a while. That had only lasted a week before Patton had deleted his account as well as the app from his phone, refusing to watch Virgil panic over things happening a world away they could do nothing to help, or just freaking out over the amount of things people tried to claim made someone evil that were really just coping mechanisms for stressful situations.

If people describing or painting the memories they got from their soulmate was a thing though, surely any social media would have some people posting it?

That thought had Virgil hesitantly searching it on Tumblr while trying to get the idea out of his head.

He did not expect to see the store he worked in painted red and tilted on one side. Just the brashness of the brush strokes in the painting made it feel angry, a lot like the customer from 3 weeks ago that had argued over the size a top was labelled and started throwing things when he'd informed them that he was that days working manager.

Looking on the blog that had posted it, their most recent picture was also familiar to Virgil; a soaked city street, with a blue car driving away in the distance. That could have been taken from the day Patton had left for one of his family celebrations, leaving with the comment that possibly Virgil could try making a new friend while he was away. It had left Virgil feeling abandoned and guilty, as though his isolation from the world made him a burden upon his only real friend.

Holding his breathe and wishing to anything that was listening in the universe, Virgil opened their ask box and started typing out his memory of saying goodbye to Patton. He tried to play it off, pretend it was just a strange coincidence that he'd lived the scene the painting seemed to reveal, but had to know if this could be his soulmate, could be someone actually painting his memories and posting them.

/Returning to Remus\

It wasn't often people actually commented on the scenes he painted. Sure, occasionally someone would praise the emotions Remus worked to capture in paints, but the images wouldn't get asked about. They all knew it wasn't his memory to share and that he'd only post the stories if it was something that caught his interest in absurdity.

So when Remus had a message basically telling him the memory with some details that the dream hadn't included added, he was excited and very very confused.

The message just ended as though the person sending it didn't think they could be soulmates at all, “Just you know, the latest picture made me think of that, is all.”

He wasn't replying publically if he was about to get rejected. “O.o You got the entire bloody scene completely right and are saying it 'just made you think of it'??? Honey, unless you literally have your soulmate sat right the fuck beside you, I'm claiming that role right now!!! Wanna give me the shortest description of your last memory dream in a DM and see if I can fill in some details????”

Thank goodness they hadn't sent the ask in on anon so Remus could reply privately, but this felt huge, and like he'd explode if he didn't do something right now.

By the time the alert on his phone went off again, Remus had climbed out of the window of his apartment and up onto the roof. Sure there was a fire escape but that was taking the easy route, and never let it be said that Remus took the easy route to do anything.

The message on his phone simply read “angry red dude screaming and throwing paint.”

Whomever Anxietoid-Mess was, it was now confirmed that they were Remus's soulmate.

“My brother getting angry a week ago, because I pointed out the story he's been writing is all innocent and predictable with nothing really interesting for me to want to read it. We'd been painting together in an attempt to get along because his friend doesn't think families can be as dysfunctional as ours is.” Remus recited, bouncing in his seat.

The sun was setting on the city and as much as he'd love rain, or a thunderstorm, it was easier to use a phone in dry weather. And now he was messaging, and with a few clicks now he'd remembered following, his soulmates Tumblr, well Remus's future sure looked interesting. Perhaps he could even get some place names eventually.

[swanlake1998]

Article: Why I Left My Classical Ballet Job to Explore My Roots in Javanese Dance

Date: February 6, 2021

By: Cat Woods

At the peak of her career, dancer Juliet Burnett left the Australian Ballet to explore her Javanese roots. Now, the Indonesian-Australian ballerina is drawing on her heritage to expand the often narrow world of performing arts.

When Juliet Burnett smiles, the full gloriousness of her high-cheekbones and angular face are both feline and balletic, not dissimilar to the finely boned, regal faces of Javanese dancers. Her facial expressions, like her body — sculpted by almost two decades of professional dance — are deliberate and refined.

It's been five years since Burnett left The Australian Ballet at the peak of her career, having been steadily promoted, over 13 years, to the role of senior artist within the Melbourne-based company.

From her family home in Sydney, where she is temporarily living while borders are closed for travel due to COVID-19, Burnett is fired up about the attitudes of classical dance. She has memories of feeling like an outsider amongst a largely middle-class, white company that espoused creative adventurism but failed to appeal to — or recruit — more than a couple of Indigenous dancers, nor to make the Asian-Australian dancers in the company feel that their cultural heritage was encouraged in the imperial values of classical ballet. "Black dancers, Asian dancers, and dancers of color aren't made to feel like their cultural provenance is celebrated," she tells Allure.

"I felt like the role of women in classical ballet is to be subservient," she says now, reflective and thoughtful in her wording, though not cautious. Burnett is not one for tip-toeing about. "Not just the roles for women, but the very system of classical ballet.”

The Australian Ballet encountered backlash in June this year after it published a black square on social media. The national ballet company was accused by its Instagram followers of being "lazy," doing the bare minimum in its response to Black Lives Matter.

In 2019, in a review of the Australian Ballet’s version of The Nutcracker for Australian arts publication Limelight Magazine, the critic viewed the production as perpetuating "racialised stereotypes of Chinese characters." The lack of diversity in the ballet industry as a whole has been brought to public conversation by numerous dancers over recent years, including Misty Copeland, who, via a  2019 Instagram post, called out dancers who were in blackface during a rehearsal for a performance for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. (Following the post and media coverage, the New York Times reported that the general director for the Bolshoi said in a statement at the time that the ballet company "will not comment on the absurd allegation" of racism.)

A statement provided to Allure from The Australian Ballet says: "The Australian Ballet aims to reflect the diverse Australian community that we operate in and foster an inclusive environment for all. We’re continuing to learn and we are working on longer-term strategies to increase participation in dance across all communities, and provide more access to The Australian Ballet for all Australians, it may take time, but we are committed to working on the bigger picture."

The statement continues: "The Australian Ballet recruited its first Indigenous dancer [Ella Havelka] in 2012, and since then has recruited a second First Nations dancer."

While Burnett would eventually become an outspoken advocate for diversity in ballet, her experience with dance began without an agenda towards a career, nor even the intention to practice classical ballet.

"My grandmother, Raden Ayu Catherine Ismadillah Brataatmaja, was a professional Javanese dancer," she says. "As soon as I was five, my mother was curious about whether dance was in my blood too, so she enrolled me in ballet with the idea that I could follow in her footsteps. She was totally not a pushy dance mum."

Brataatmaja was the star palace dancer of the Surakarta Sultanate (Javanese monarchy in Indonesia), performing the royal court dance Bedhaya Ketawang for Indonesian royalty. Widyas Burnett, while also fully encouraging her daughter to embrace classical ballet, endeavored to make the costume for 14-year-old Juliet's first school choreographic effort, "Campursari." The final number combined classical ballet moves with Javanese dance positions, set to the soundtrack of traditional gamelan music.

Like many young dancers who are recruited to train endless hours through their pre-teen and teenage years to be auditioned for international ballet schools, her talent was spotted by her dance teachers, Valerie Jenkins and Christine Keith. Her graduation from The Australian Ballet School led to the beginnings of her career in 2003. As a dancer with The Australian Ballet, she embodied Odette in Swan Lake, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, and La Sylphide.

In 2011, Burnett was awarded the Khitercs Hirai International Scholarship, intended to allow members of The Australian Ballet companies to travel internationally. She used the scholarship to visit Indonesia to study her grandmother's art of Javanese dance and to initiate workshops for Indonesian kids — particularly those in underprivileged "slums" along the Ciliwung riverbank in Java. Burnett also trained in the theatrical, dance, and meditation techniques as pioneered by her uncle, the actor, poet, and activist, W.S. Rendra.

"When visiting my Mum's side of the family in Indonesia, we'd arrive in Jakarta and there's this big fly road that was built during Suharto's time, and you go across this modern freeway and you peer down the side and there are all these shanty towns," she recalls. At a young age, Burnett was struck by the financial inequity in such a big, prosperous city. Her parents were very open about the fact that many children didn’t have access to clean drinking water, but "then I'd go to my aunt's place and have a beautiful home-cooked meal and watch their big screen TV and everything’s clean and they’ve got their maid cooking for us." Once her dance career started taking off, she "wanted to go back and try and reconnect and bring something back to [those children]."

"Ballet dancers can live in a bubble," she says. "The level of training, rehearsal and performance becomes more than work, it's a lifestyle. I knew, from early on, that I would have to work to maintain my curiosity for other cultures, other forms of dance, to ensure I was not losing my own spirit."

There was no sudden event that resulted in Burnett's choice to leave The Australian Ballet. In fact, Burnett says she had been open with the Ballet from the beginning of her tenure about the fact that she found the hierarchical structure to be outdated and felt that it clashed with her values, and saw the system of promoting dancers destroy careers. Since leaving The Australian Ballet, Burnett has been more creative and vocal in demonstrating how dance can be a political and social statement, and provocation to limited perspectives on culture, poverty, justice, and gender. She created and shared “Injustice: a short film” on her website last year. To get the clips seen in the film, Burnett made a call out on Instagram, inviting people to submit videos of themselves following her choreographic instructions.

In pre-pandemic times, Burnett resided in Belgium, where she is a dancer for The Royal Ballet of Flanders. Burnett has also just launched her own company, A-Part. "It's purely online for now," she explains, "but obviously, once the travel restrictions allow and it is safe to do so, it will be a real-world dance company that travels and performs."

For Burnett, working with the Pina Bausch Company and alongside Akram Khan as a first soloist dancer with The Royal Ballet of Flanders allowed her to shake off the shackles of rigid, classical training and methodology in favor of the liberation, the sometimes feral and primitive nature of contemporary dance and to finally indulge her need to journey into her own Indonesian roots.

"What's wonderful about the Royal Ballet of Flanders is that it's enabled me to dance the choreography of Pina Bausch, Akram Khan, and Édouard Lock, all these contemporary choreographers who I'd never have had access to in Australia," she says. "After I left The Australian Ballet, I wanted to delve into my artistic identity."

Burnett's activism has been creative, positive, and aligned with her belief that education and collaboration are the only ways to provide inclusive, safe environments for those in the dance world. She has presented master classes in collaboration with Ballet.id (Yayasan Bina Ballet Indonesia), which is a non-profit foundation enabling partnerships between Indonesian and international dancers and academics.

In an essay for Pointe in August, writer and educator Shaté L. Hayes writes that the only meaningful response to racial insensitivity within ballet is to genuinely commit to change within ballet schools through major companies. Posting PR-approved hashtags isn’t enough.

David McAllister left his role as artistic director of the Australian Ballet last year. In the statement provided to Allure, the new artistic director, David Hallberg, says, "The future of The Australian Ballet will continue to uphold the rich repertoire of classical ballet but as well, search for new ways to communicate the spirit of dance in this country. I am absorbing the diversity that makes Australia the great country it is, full of varied voices in dance, music, and art, that will be a part of building the repertoire at The Australian Ballet."

That can't happen too soon. Burnett's bravery in speaking of her own experience of working within the ballet world as an Asian-Australian also echoes the experiences of Black, Latinx, and multiracial dancers internationally. “For those of us who were mixed race or fully Asian, Black, or a dancer of color, the ballet world can feel really homogenous, and difficult to find your place and to find a way to celebrate your cultural identity with truth and authenticity,” Burnett says. “It’s important not to be afraid to question the systems that we work in, to say things to your directors. I really hope for a day when the structures we work in don't ask dancers to be mute, subservient, and to comply all the time."

[riverxkeichains]

4 Days Later, So Far...(UPDATE!!!)

WARNING: THIS IS LONG!

4 Days Later, After coming back from work? I looked at my Tumblr Account.

...

HoLySHIT!

I Didn't Expect This to happen So Far, I got 50+ likes? and Some Reblogs on my Mavis x Rosie Art? Omg...

*Screams, Cries of Joy*

I'M SHOOK, SURPRISED, AND I'M SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS AT THE SAME TIME!!

And you Know? I Think I got there So Far.

Okie Okie Sorry About that I got really Excited there, Because my other art and post either got little likes + Reblogs or Noun of them stuff, And This? I didn't really expect to get this much likes and some reblogs on my Mavis x Rosie Art ;;v;;.

Alright *takes a deep breath* Allow me to introduce myself For all time sake, For those of you Who don't Know? Hi My name is River K.C., However you can call me R.K.(Mainly), Rio, Keithlyn, Keith, Kei, R.K.C.M., or any nickname as long as it's not rude. I'm a user who post a lot of My Art for the most part, sometimes shitpost and Personal stuff(Not all, Since I rather not reveal most of them and Will for the most part, keep things a Secret. I'm very protective towards my Life and History, So NEVER EVER! ask me questions such as my age, my real name, or even asking me to do a face reveal -.-, So Please Don't  ask me those type of personal questions~). As of Recently I've been getting a Tons of likes, Some Reblogs, on my Recent Art and Honestly I can't Thank you all enough. This Is just Beautiful, Like Really Beautiful, That I didn't expect That I would get This much Likes. Like I said from the started I haven't get too much likes on any post form my other stuff for a very long time. Before I made this account I was once formerly using keixblade, Reason why I didn't uses Account anymore because I felt like I need a new Fresh Start of my blog and Things have been changing over the Years so That's why I decided to make a new blog and you know after making a new blog I've been starting to post again, such as my previous art, older post, welcoming myself, and I started to finally reblog for the first time which I haven't done in my old previous account. After that, I checked out my favorite artist, have plans to follow them soon. I don't usually post at the weeks but I'll definitely try my best to post my stuff at the weekends, You know Saturday, Sunday, But Sometimes Friday, I might be able to sometime post on the week of I had the free time to do so.

Story Time~! Before I made this Account and During Late March 2021, when I started to have some interest in TTTE for the first time, I looked up at some websites to research on the series and watched abit of Episodes about it(Thanks to Steve' Reviews Tugs, Thomas for PS1(Highly Recommend you all check it out if you had the JP PlayStation or an Emulator ;), and a Fan Animation That I won't tell because I'll talk about this in the Future, it's that one Fan Animation that I'll give a review on soon it's a pretty controversial one 😅 Yeah you know Exactly Why I'm Talking about, So DON'T Bash on me for this) So far It's Interesting, For the most part I Mostly got some Thomas info from the Wiki, Reddit, and Tumblr as well. When I did got to Tumblr, I check out some of the TTTE Art Most of them that I came across from my experience are really good :) But out of all the artist in the site? One Actually caught my interest and decided to check their blog out, their art is Beautiful and how amazing their Humanized Version of TTTE style is. And that blog I'm talking about is none other than @asktrio516, I always looked up to them, so much so that this was before when I started to come back to tumblr to started fresh. This blog gave me so much nostalgic feelings for some reason, not because of Thomas But Because of the human Version of these Characters, In Fact? This isn't my First Time That I look up to an artist for their art and for their humanized version form Another Show I'll take about soon(I Even alot of Fanart of this person's Human Version of these Characters, Again will make a separate post about it). So 2 months after Getting into Thomas for real, I saw the asktrio516 blog posting the Official Ships in their blog, Obviously I was very Excited when I saw it and In Fact? I Actually Loved Most of these Pairing that is Featured in this posted(Stay Tuned for the next post ;))). After reading the post, I saw one Pairing that Interested me and it was Mavis × Rosie, I always have this feeling that ngl? I always see them being together and wish they can have some Screen Time Together(Yes I know What's Going on but we don't Talk about that Disaster...yet....😤.....Damnit just God Damn You Mattle). So For A while? I've actually been planning on making an Mavis and Rosie Drawing in Emma's TTTE Human Designs. So it only took a quite for a while to get there, Reason I didn't do this sooner because of work, I had to help with my Friend, and I was very nervous yet shy at doing Mavis and Rosie being together at first. Thankfully with enough confidences and encouragement? In August, I ask the asktrio516 admin on Instagram if I can Asked something on tumblr, Fortunately they respond with yes(Honestly I was so Happy About It 😁) so at the same month, That's where I officially got my new Tumblr Account since I felt like my old Account is a bit dated and This is where I also have the confidence to ask the asktrio516 admin if I can draw Mavis with Rosie being together(Since Again they mentioned of having interested of doing this ship) and That's how the story goes c:.

I Really Apologize This is this So Frickin Long!

...

Again I Have to Thank all you all for the Likes and Reblog of my Mavis x Rosie Art for asktrio516 blog~ It really Means alot, and I definitely have to Thank asktrio516 She's one of my Inspiration and i'm glad they accept my permission for doing this art(I'm sorry but Thank you so Much and Also Happy Birthday Emma 🥳).

You know Because of that? I might post some more Thomas the Tank Engine stuff soon and Even at some point? Might make a Full on TTTE Side Account for both Normal and my TTTE AU(Since There's at times that I will posted other things that isn't Thomas related(Also more info of my TTTE AU Coming Soon-) Heck! I might do some more TTTE Ships Later, If there's a high demand for them from Me? I might able to do Murdoch × Arthur, Gordon × BoCo, Proteus × Lady, and Hiro × Henry Next(4 of one of my Favorite Underrated Pairings, there's more I will do but for now I'm putting the ones that people haven't heard of or haven't talked about that much, Yet~ ;;))).

Hell! I might even do my favorite popular Thomas the Tank Engine pairing soon.

(Don't ask why because I'll make a expiration soon on why I love them but for now, There's just something that They have in my taste of shipping)

Thank you for Reading this and Have a great day, Goodbye~☆.

[crazycookiemaniac]

Omg why are you losing so many followers youve been drawing gay shit for forever??? (Or maybe i as a gay was just interpreting it that way)

Because I literally spammed people every day for one week lmao. And also, a lot of people follow others for specific content. The moment I stop drawing that exact thing they followed me for, they unfollow me. There are also accounts that follow just to make you follow them & if you don’t, they unfollow you after a while. There’s people who followed me for haikyuu & weren’t interested in BC content, and there were people who followed me for BC content but got showered in gay art instead and that was not their cuppa tea. 

But mostly, i start appearing on people’s feed the more I post. So having me post incessantly for one week made me show up on feeds that I hadn’t shown up for  a good while, so there were probably people who forgot they had followed me in the first place & me posting was a reminder to unfollow.

Truthfully, follower counts are dumb. Yes, it is important for you to have a high follower count for you to get attention, but the amount of people actually following you if you don’t have a consistent art style & rarely ever post something with different vibes than your usual ones, is equal or less than 1% of your total amount of following.

My instagram tells me I have 43k. I do not have 43k people following me. I’ve had 43k that once saw my account & pressed the follow button, but their feeds are filled up with other people’s accs that interest them more than mine (as well as my own feed does not show all the content of the 200+ something people I follow, unless I scroll down till the depths of hell to find every single post on that day and then do so on the next day as well).

Essentially, 95% of your followers are there because of content. They want to see what entertains them. Most of them don’t care about the artist and don’t interact with them at all. Many of them are scared to, given the high follower count. Social media & big accounts make people forget that there are other, real, living & breathing people that are behind them all.

So, to many, I was just a random artist they found and “lol”ed at one of my comics & pressed follow without thinking about it. Most of them don’t go to my account and see all other art I’ve posted to see if they actually like what I do, or me as a person and as an artist at all.

People who don’t know this get really discouraged when they don’t earn a lot of followers, or when they lose a lot (like I did). And some people think you gotta have hundreds of thousands to be famous. I’ve seen accs going around that paid for ads, that had over 150k followers and less than 1k likes on their posts.

Truly famous, loved, growing and/or steady accounts have an amount of likes per post proportional to their follower count. For example, if someone has 150k followers, most of their posts will vary from 20k to 100k likes.

When I was growing my account because I hopped in the fandom bandwagon and stupid little me didn’t know that would only make me crash later, I had like 20~30k and some of my posts reached more than 20k likes (because people liked my stupid comics). Nowadays, I’m not part of the fandom that made me grow anymore. I’m part of a very underrated one (Black Clover), as well a I am drawing a very underrated ship (LuGna) that above all else is getting hated on. I have everything against me in this, so it’s no wonder I lost so many followers.

They didn’t wanna see gay art. They didn’t wanna see Black Clover. They didn’t even know what the fuck was going on. Not everyone paid attention or kept up with my warnings. Despite me explaining multiple times in multiple posts what the Thunder Flames project was about, a lot of people still didn’t know what I was doing that for.

The thing about being a big follower count is that, unless you’re actually loved for what you do (and to do that, once again, I need to emphasize that you need to keep a steady rhythm, a steady vibe, a steady you. Because people follow you for your first impression on them, and you gotta keep up to that first impression if you wanna keep your followers.

I’m unsteady. One look at my gallery and you’ll see how disorganized everything is. Oh, lookit, a 1 min speedpaint of a random drawing I did on an old piece of paper! And right on the left there’s a stupid random comic I did–on the right there’s this super detailed, shaded drawing I’ve done that actually looks terrible to me and I will 100% archive it later, and then there’s B&W mixed with gray shaded, flat colored and fully shaded characters of different fandoms + OCs from commissions and whatever else. 

The thing is, I made my follower count based on a fandom, and now that I’m not there most of that follower count does not have me on their feed. And most of them do not want me on their feed. Now, I’m trying to build a follower count for who I am as an artist, because the few people who have actually stayed and followed me throughout the years know how inconsistent I am in terms of art style, fandoms and everything else.

A solution to this would me either keep creating/posting the same thing all over again (just in different patterns), or creating original content (which I do plan on doing at some point). But for now? Since my follower count does absolutely not reflect on how many people actually like me and/or my art, I’m going to be as chaotic as fucking ever and do whatever the fuck I want.

So yes, I do find it comical that I lost 1k followers over this and am not fazed in the very least, especially because I literally foreshadowed losing 1k and hit the fucking jackpot.

The only reason I’m talking about this at all is because 1- it’s impossible not to notice my follower count decreasing, especially because every new 1k I thank people publicly through stories; 2- some people were actually worried I was upset over it and I have to 3- show that I am not, while simultaneously trying to show people that just because you’re losing followers doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you want to create content to please people. It doesn’t mean you should be upset, and it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is bad or wrong.

It means you’re fucking renewing your followers & you’ll now grow for what you’re trying to grow for, bitch. That’s what it’s all about.

Obviously, people do take a great risk doing this. I am taking a great risk doing this. I could’ve lost 5k, I could’ve lost 10k. But I only lost 1k! And that’s because I believe in the project I worked on; I knew there were people out there who enjoyed what I was doing and it’s on them that I was focused on. On the people who supported me AND my art, not just that one single funny comic post I did 3 years ago.

This answer is 100% a lot longer than what you could’ve possibly expected for and I am typing this while being awake for more than 24h so I’m sure that I’ve repeated myself a lot and that there are a lotta typos or w/e and I apologize for that!! But I’m too lazy to go back to read everything over & turn this into a neat post & I’m pretty sure I could answer your question in the first paragraph.

Oh and also. Yes. Yes I have been drawing gay shit ever since I’ve become an artist because I’m so fucking pissed at the lack of canon gay content in a way that it’s depicted as a normal fucking romantic couple instead of having eeeeeeeeveryone point their finger to the gay couple and scream “HEY THAT’S GAY!!! THIS CAN’T BE PART OF THIS VERY HETEROSEXUAL SHOW WHERE EVERYONE IS OBVIOUSLY HETEROSEXUAL EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THE CHARACTERS HAVE EVER SAID THAT EXPLICITLY BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT THE CREATORS ARE EITHER HETEROSEXUAL OR TOO AFRAID TO LOSE AUDIENCE IF THEY TREAT GAY PEOPLE AS NORMAL PEOPLE!??!! WHAT SORT OF ABSURD NONSENSE IS THAT??!! GAY PEOPLE AREN’T NORMAL!! THEY’RE GAY AND THEY SHOULD HAVE A GAY SHOW JUST FOR THEM IF THEY WANNA GET SCREENTIME” and yadda yadda yadda.

I’m tired of this bullshit. Ever since I was an artist I’ve been rooting for gay ships in shonen manga while knowing they would never happen just because they were gay, and now that we are in our Blessed-By-Satan, Pandemic-Chaotic, What-The-Fuck-Is-Going-On, We-Don’t-Know-If-We-Wanna-Go-Back-Or-To-The-Future-Or-Just-IDK-Fucking-Die year 2020, in which the LGBT community is thriving and being louder than ever to fight for our rights, Me, in my twenty four years of fucking age, having gone through several fucking disappointments ONLY regarding this matter, am sitting here on my ass, hopeful as all galactic, glittery shit that for some fucking reason, my new OTP formed by very underrated characters from this very underrated franchise in the southern and western communities, becomes canon because my stupid eyes can see chemistry between them even though those stupid haters’ can’t. But that’s because they’re stupid and homophobic, and they really should just shut the fuck up. I don’t wanna dream, I want to believe. Let a bitch pray in peace.

But even if I’m getting ready for disappointment, I’m gonna make this project happen and I’m gonna have a shit ton of artbooks from this Thunder Flames project inside my fucking garage if no one wants to buy them. But I am going to invest a shit ton of money in it and I am going to have these artbooks come to life. Because I am spiteful and petty and homophobes should shut the fuck up, and I wanna do what I wanna do bc as an independent artist, I’m building my future with my own two, very toned and buff by now from all the drawing I did, hands. 

God fucking damn it.

Jesus christ I’m just rambling at this point, I’m so sorry. If anyone ever reads this out of context people are going to be so confused.

But that’s fine. They won’t. You know why? Cuz I got almost 11k followers here on tumblr but less than 0.5% gives a shit that I’m here, so I’m safe.

Have a nice day, drink your water and fuck homophobes. Peace

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | INTERVIEW WITH JUSTINE JONES

Baltimore based artist and illustrator Justine Jones creates her vein of psychedelic fantasy horror drawings–filled with tiny black lines and an occasional pop of bright colors–which have been featured on the covers of Kobold Press and Warlock magazine. Using the hashtag #VisibleWomen to amplify the voices and portfolios of women comic artists, Justine has be able to do more illustrative work and character design. We’re excited to find out more about Justine’s artistic journey, her love of role-playing games, comics, art, her influences and much more. . .  Take the leap! 

Photography courtesy of the artist. 

Introduce yourself?    Hi, I’m Justine!  I’ve lived in Baltimore Maryland for the past decade and currently live in a small apartment downtown with my partner and my shiba inu Mo, who is a cool and grumpy guy.

How would you describe your work to someone who is just coming across it? I used to call it storybook surrealism, but now I guess it’s more like psychedelic fantasy horror?  Monsters and Wizards.  Lots of tiny black lines, sometimes with lots of bright intense colors.

How did you start from doodling and drawing to what you do now? I feel like it sort of happened organically.  When I was younger, I would do just pencil drawings, and then in my late teens, I got more into using micron pens.  I didn’t really discover color until a few years ago, so I’m a huge color noob.  I think a lot of it also came from working in comic shops for years and going to conventions.  Seeing all of these amazing artists grow, and thinking hey, I could maybe also do that! I first started with t-shirt designs because it just seemed really fun, and I used to have a really hard time selling prints.  People don’t need more prints, but they can always use clothes!  Now i’m getting more into illustrative work and character design, and I’m loving it!

Who and what were some of your early artistic influences? When I was a baby, my dad hung an Aubrey Beardsley print over my crib.  My mom thought it would make me deranged, and maybe it did, but it also made me love ink work and Art Nouveau style haha.  I was obsessed with sword and sorcery stuff and loooved cartoons like He-Man and She-ra, and later, Pirates of Darkwater. I also spent a lot of time in elementary school copying sexy comic book ladies from 90s comics, and I know that is pretty far from what I do now, but it’s honestly how I learned to draw.  I also copied a lot from children’s storybooks when I was little.  

What are some things that inspire the drawings you make? What are some of your favorite creatures and beings you like to explore in your art? Video games are a huge inspiration to me, from SNES JRPGs, to games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.  Also folklore and mythology from around the world, and fantasy artwork from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.  Basically anything fantasy.  My favorite things to draw are wizards and monsters.  I love body horror, anything disgusting and beautiful at the same time.  I take a lot of inspiration from Manga, like Berserk, or anything Junji Ito.  I’ve done a lot of Illustrations for Clark Ashton Smith stories, which I find endlessly inspiring, visually.  Just like, fantasy/ sci fi/ dying earth type stuff.

When did you start collaborating with Kobold Press on creating some awesome fantasy art covers for their publications?  I remember getting the email from them when I was on the way to Necronomicon Providence in 2017.  I thiiiink they found my stuff through the visible women hashtag on twitter?  I was very excited because I owned some of their adventures from back in the day when I played Pathfinder!!  Plus, I have always always wanted to draw things for table top RPGs, so it’s been really cool to actually do it! The Warlock mag that I’ve been doing covers for is awesome because it’s going for an old school DND vibe, but it’s all things that are made for 5th edition.  You can get it on their patreon, and I hiiiighly recommend it to anyone who plays 5e dnd!!  

Take us through your artistic process? What’s a typical day in the studio like? Haha extremely chaotic!  I don’t even have a real set workspace, which I really need to change, I just draw where ever. Just chill out, listen to music or a podcast, and draw.  If I’m further along in a drawing and don’t need to focus so much, I’ll watch movies or video gameπ– let’s plays while I’m drawing.  I also love to listen to/ watch things that are in theme with what I’m drawing, to give me some inspiration.  I try to go to coffee shops to change things up sometimes!  Basically I just do a bunch of sketches until something materializes, and then I will just slowly refine the sketch.  I guess it’s not that exciting, but it’s cool to see the first sketch and the finished product because in my head, the sketch always looked like the finished product, but when you go back to look at it, it’s usually just indecipherable scribbles.

What are your essential art tools and materials? 90% of my art is just done using a .05 mechanical pencil and micron pens.  I also draw everything on smooth bristol.  If I have time and want to make my lines super crisp before I scan them in, i will use a light box.   Then for color, I generally use Kyle T Webster brushes in Photoshop with my Wacom tablet.   If I’m on the go, I like to draw things in Procreate on my iPad Pro, but I’m definitely not as good at doing detailed lines digitally.  

What do you do when you’re not drawing or working on projects? How do you unplug? Haha, I wish I ever truly unplugged, I think my brain is now melded into the internet!  But mostly I love to play video games.  JRPGs and anything From Software/ Soulsborne (currently obsessed with Sekiro!)  I also love comics and manga.  I’ve been reading The Girl From the Other Side, which is a beautiful dark fairytale Manga by Nagabe.  I also just got one called Witch Hat Atelier, which has the most amazing art! My partner also owns an insane amount of board games, so we play a lot of those.  I’m obsessed with coffee, and work part time at a coffee shop, and my favorite thing in the world to do is eat good food.    

What has been the most challenging project you’ve worked on? How did you overcome those obstacles and what did you take away from it? I made a kind of cosmic horror short story in mini comic form last year for SPX, I had very little time,  and it was my first time actually writing a story/ dialogue to go with my pictures.  It was insanely challenging.  I ended up with a finished product that I’m really proud of and that I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on.  I think it really drove home the fact that I just need to stick with things and finish them, even if I don’t feel like they’re perfect.  I’m never going to have the time that I want, and I’m never going to feel like anything is perfect.  I can still make a great thing!  

What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps and pursue art? Don’t spend 4 years doing nothing, but playing World of Warcraft (Or doooo?).  Uhhh, believe in yourself.  Be nice to other artists.  Draw all the time! Immerse yourself in things that inspire you!  Also, like I said before, things don’t need to be perfect.  Let go of perfect, because sometimes it’s an unattainable ideal.  Just do as good as you can, and don’t beat yourself up so much!  I’m horrible at advice!!!

What’s your best Art School tip that you want to share with folks?   Haha, I moved to Baltimore to go to MICA like, 14 years ago, and then realized I was poor, and would never be able to go to MICA… sooo… I never went to real art school.  I wanted to go so bad, and I still wish I’d had that experience, but I want other people who can’t afford it to know that you don’t NEED it.  Things are a bit harder, but you can find so much free info online if you have the drive, you can teach yourself so many things.  Don’t get discouraged just because art school isn’t gonna happen for you.

What are your favorite style of VANS? I love my lavender/ sea fog Authentic Vans, because they basically go with anything, but I am always eyeing those Sk8-His.

Anything you can share that is coming up?   Ahhhh, I have some realllly cool things that I can’t share yet, but just everyone keep an eye out (It will be very exciting, i swear)!!  As for things I can share, I’m working on some new t-shirt designs, and another comic, and also plan on drawing some more cool wizards in my spare time.   So if you wanna see some cool wizards, uhhh, come to my Instagram–you guys!  Let’s hang out and look at wizards.  And talk about wizards.  And if you don’t like wizards well, don’t come I guess.

FOLLOW JUSTINE: INSTAGRAM | WEBSITE | TWITTER | STORE 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Dogleg Interview: Buckle Up, Motherfucker

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Earlier this year, Michigan punk four-piece Dogleg released one of the most blistering, endlessly playable debuts of the year in Melee, which, yes, is a Super Smash Bros. game. At this point, much has been written about the band, from their beyond wild live shows to their Pokemon-referencing and video game-playing prowess. Lost in the shuffle is that 2020 was poised to be their year to gain even more of a national following. Released on March 13th, right as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Melee was supposed to be supported by three cancelled tours--SXSW, an opening slot for Microwave, and an opening slot for Joyce Manor--and an appearance at this year’s cancelled Pitchfork Music Festival. Listening to the songs on the record, you can only imagine how they translate: the jerky momentum of “Bueno”, build-up of “Prom Hell”, gang vocals of “Fox”, clear-vocal anthem of “Wrist”, and odd groove of “Ender”. The band agrees that playing live is what makes them Dogleg: “Our live shows is what made us the forefront of the DIY music scene for as long as we were with such little released music,” bassist Chase Macinski told me over the phone in April.

The band’s self-titled debut EP--at the time, the band was simply a solo project of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Alex Stoitsiadis--was released in 2015. Full-band follow-up Remember Alderaan? (Macinski, drummer Parker Grissom) came out in 2016. In the four years between EP2 and LP1, Dogleg took their time writing what would become Melee but wasted no time debuting unreleased songs as they were finished. It was not just their energy, but their steady stream of new material that garnered the band a growing fan base, local and beyond, and eventually a deal with venerable indie punk label Triple Crown Records. “Fox” and “Kawasaki Backflip” were released as singles last November and February, respectively, and the generated hype garnered them rave reviews from publications like Pitchfork that, 10-20 years ago, probably would have scoffed at them.

Dogleg’s bigger moment--they’ve certainly had plenty of already big ones--may be on hold. Macinski continues his day job as a janitor in Southfield, about 20 minutes northwest of Detroit, while Stoitsiadis has played around with live-streamed acoustic and solo electric sets. While the group approach to writing that allowed the band to flourish when making Remember Alderaan? and Melee may not be possible without a completely reopen Michigan, and while Dogleg won’t be able to feed off of crowds for a bit, I have no doubt they’ll come back when they can with an even greater drive.

Read my interview with Macinski below.

Since I Left You: To what extent can Melee be fully appreciated without the context of the Dogleg live show?

Chase Macinski: I think you get a feeling for it. You understand it. But you still haven’t experienced it. We have been playing these songs for a long time. “Headfirst” for example, we basically had that song written by the time Remember Alderaan? came out in 2016. But we didn’t want to include it on the EP because it was close but not finished. Two weeks later, I’m pretty sure we wrapped it up, and then we were like, “Cool. We have the first song for the new album.” At that point, we thought it was time to make an album. We were playing it ever since it’s been done. As we were writing songs for the album, we were incorporating them into our live shows. A year ago, when the album wasn’t even out, half our set was still this album. Locals who saw us on the most recent tour we got to go on did catch that experience but didn’t get the whole context of the album, you know?

SILY: "Headfirst”, especially, is the most maximal song on the record.

CM: Oh yeah.

SILY: At the same time, when I read reviews of your music that say things like, “Dogleg plays loud,” or “Dogleg has energy,” it seems to leave out the complexity of the arrangements. The stop-starts, the drum fills, the crescendos. There’s a lot going on in the music, beyond it obviously being loud and fast. Can you talk about achieving a balance between raw energy and composition?

CM: We want to build up a lot of tension when we play, and we keep that in mind when we’re writing songs. We definitely try to think of, “What’s really hype? What builds up a lot of energy? What gives us butterflies in our stomach and makes us really jazzed up to hear this or anxious?” For the live shows, since we focus so much on those details, the start-stops and crescendos, it fills itself in pretty easily since we’re all focused on that and on the same page in terms of execution, that it just happens, and on the other side of that, we’re trying to be as energetic and involved and engaging with the music as possible. What we do in theory helps us out in practice, if that makes sense.

SILY: How did you approach the sequencing on Melee?

CM: We took it very seriously. It took us a lot of time to figure out what order the songs should be in. I immediately said we should start the album with “Kawasaki Backflip”, and I got some backlash on that. The other two contenders for the first track were “Fox” and “Prom Hell”. “Prom Hell” had more of an argument than “Fox” did. My attitude was, “‘Kawasaki’ starts off like a roller coaster, and that intro guitar riff is just like, ‘Buckle up, motherfucker.’ Let’s go for a ride.’” I really thought it had that tension immediately out the gate and blasted you with what could be a middle ground for the entire album, where I thought “Prom Hell” didn’t really address or show you what you can fully expect on this. For the first track, you might think something differently. After that, it was a lot of, “Okay, how does one song end and another begin?” We thought a lot about what key songs were in, what note songs ended on, how they ended, what the band was doing, what they sounded like, and then we thought about the same thing for how songs begin. “How does this one start? Does it start full-band, just guitar, drum fill?” We wanted to make sure we weren’t being too repetitive and created a sense of flow that could make one song go into the other. We even incorporated those moments where we were very specific about the time change between “Kawasaki” and “Bueno”. We were very specific about when “Kawasaki” ended and how much time passed between that and for you to hear the drums of “Bueno”. We wanted it to be an exact timing just for enough tension to be built up.

SILY: Were there any considerations to the thematic sequencing of the songs?

CM: No, not really, other than when we wrote “Ender” and decided to call it “Ender”, we knew it would be the last song. Otherwise, there wasn’t thematic sequencing because the lyrical content and the themes through the lyrics throughout the album were Alex’s thing. We write a song, and when the whole band writes the song, it’s an instrumental. Then, Alex comes up with a melody, and we all pitch in with what the lyrics might sound like, and Alex writes all the words. I’ve contributed when he’s got writer’s block and have helped him out a bit there, but for the most part, all of the themes for the lyrics he puts in. 

SILY: There’s a line on “Kawasaki Backflip” that does seem like an appropriate introductory mantra to the record: “We can destroy this together.”

CM: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a pretty powerful statement as an introductory song on the album. “Kawasaki”’s that “buckle up” song, as well, so the instrumental aspects definitely lead into that idea of “get ready for what you’re about to experience.”

SILY: A song like “Cannonball” is a bit more swaying instead of clearly uptempo. When you go into write as a unit, do those differences occur naturally, or are they forced with any sort of intention?

CM: “Cannonball” I would say occurred naturally because we wrote the song as we were practicing one day. In between songs we were practicing and making noise, I played that main verse riff, that A to C progression. I was just bored, not thinking, and playing my bass, waiting for Alex and Parker to be like, “Okay, let’s play another song.” While I was doing that, Alex was like, “Yo, what’s that?” I was like, “I don’t know, I was just messing around.” We started building on that and took that swaying feeling for what it was, and the lyrics to add to that--I think “Cannonball” was maybe the 4th, maybe 5th song on the album, so we didn’t have any idea what would be on it at that point. We knew it was a Dogleg song.

SILY: On “Ender”, are those actual strings in the outro?

CM: Yes, those are our friends who go to music school in Chicago. We know them from the School of Rock music program we all did when we were in middle school and high school. They were home for summer vacation and had their instruments, and we asked, “Yo, can we record y’alls playing violin”...I forget the other instrument. [Editor’s note: It’s double bass.] Those are actual strings. Honestly, I thought they played the parts so well, I made a comment that, “I don’t think people will think this is real because it sounds so genuine and good.”

SILY: I actually assumed it was a synthesizer.

CM: It’s legit. They’re just really good at playing their instruments. The horns are real as well.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

CM: The cover art is Alex’s aunt’s artwork. She’s a really great artist, and we’ve used her designs in the past. If you’ve ever seen the dog pack t-shirt, where it’s the bunch of dogs in watercolor--it’s also the artwork of our first EP--she also did that. She just really likes drawing dogs. We’ve never really commissioned something from her--she’s always already made something that we’ve thought is really cool, and then Alex asks her whether we can use it for the band, and she says, “Yeah, sure go ahead.” One day we were playing a show in 2017, way before we had half the songs on the album written, before “Fox” was even an idea. [Alex] was scrolling through his aunt’s Instagram and came across that picture. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and was like, “What is that?” He just goes, “It’s just something my aunt made.” I was like, “That is a fucking phenomenal piece of art. We have to use that for our album artwork.” He was like, “Okay.” He asked, we got permission. We made no edits to it. I don’t know when it was drawn or made, but when I saw it, I immediately knew it was perfect.

SILY: Is she a fan of the band?

CM: Yeah, she likes the band. She thinks it’s really cool.

SILY: Have any of these songs evolved, from the song structure to the performance, as the fans get to know both the recorded and live versions?

CM: We play the songs faster live, that’s for sure. Before we did any recording for the album, we had to decide on a tempo we wanted to play them at for the album. But since the songs were written, it’s just whatever tempo we’re feeling. For Melee, none of the song structures have really changed. But for the Dogleg self-titled EP, a lot of those songs, we play very differently live. Alex did that all by himself, recording, drums, bass, vocals, guitar. When we got incorporated in the band, that’s when we had the ability to put our spin on it. We changed and added those stop-and-go’s, different solos. No major changes to structure, but they feel more like Dogleg songs you’d expect to hear today.

SILY: Have you written anything during quarantine?

CM: Alex has been making some riffs, but we haven’t written any music. Alex says it’s pretty difficult for him at the moment. The songwriting process for every song on Melee and every song on Remember Alderaan? has been a band experience: Someone comes to the table with a riff, melody, one piece of the puzzle, and then the entire band fleshes it out. It’s pretty difficult for us to write music at the moment when we can’t get together.

SILY: Is there anything else next for you? Are you releasing any more music videos?

CM: We have some ideas. Nothing fleshed out yet. The last thing we did was the “Wartortle” video. We also have the Eureka [Records] sessions, which were all filmed before Michigan was put under lock down. We have some guitar play-throughs that will get out eventually, where it’s Alex playing along with the songs.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading during or before quarantine that’s inspired you, comforted you, or caught your attention?

CM: I’ve been listening to a lot of music that I’ve listened to in the past. Once I graduated college and was really active in the temporary jobs I had and on the road, I stopped using Spotify for a long time even though I still had my account. My senior year, my Spotify minutes were huge: You listen to music when you study, do homework, whatever. Once I graduated, I couldn’t listen to music while doing things. A year ago, I was working at a hospital on a research project, and you’re not allowed to listen to music during work. I had like 15% of the music usage I did the previous year. So I’ve been revisiting a lot of old music. I’ve been listening to a band called Colossal. I forget the name of the album--it’s the only one I have in my car. The first track is called “The Dusk of Us” so it’s the first thing that comes to my mind. [Editor’s note: It’s Welcome the Problems.] Phenomenal album, really nice. I’ve listened to that a lot. My roommate has an extra PC, so I’ve been playing a lot of PC games, which I haven’t done in a long time because I don’t have a PC that can keep up. I’ve been playing [Civilization VI] with friends over Discord, which is nice, because I haven’t talked to them in a while. I haven’t really been reading anything, and I’ve been trying to watch movies I’ve been expected to watch for a while. Yesterday I watched The Matrix for the first time. 

Melee by Dogleg

[is-this-a-skam-account]

Shelter Chapter 1 by shawnie1718 (me) on ao3

Drummer!Lucas/Model!Eliott

Omega!Lucas/Alpha!Eliott

It’s that fateful Instagram story which helps connect a certain Omega and a certain Alpha.

(Someone asked me if I posted it on my tumblr because they couldn’t see the photos so here we are!)

———

It was that fateful Instagram story that Lucas’s friend Yann had posted which would later change Lucas’s life. It was only fifteen seconds long. The video itself was jerky and fuzzy, so it didn’t do much in the viewing department. But there in the center of the frame was Lucas, jamming out in the street with bins scattered around him. The jamming session had been totally unprompted. Lucas and Yann had walked up to a street performer as he was playing on his “set of drums.” Lucas had commented something which prompted the performer to ask “would you like to play?” Lucas hesitated and it was Yann who actually pushed him to perform. So Lucas got up there and began to play a simple beat, pretty soon mixing it up and playing more advanced rhythms. Lucas thinks he looks stupid in the video, with his backpack slung around his back and hair flopping around as he jumped. But Yann argues that “that’s what gives it character!” And of course his friend claims that he brought on Lucas’s rise to fame.

Lucas’s following on Instagram blew up when the video went viral. Everyone began wondering who the sexy drummer was that could create awesome rhythms totally unprompted. So, Lucas decided to feed a growing fan base a video of him playing the drums upside down. What else was a man to do? The internet went wild. Lucas didn’t really understand why, but he took it. Lucas then did a follow up video as a thank you, and decided to share with his fans his love for playing guitar and singing.

Thus, he earned the title of the “French Cutie Who Can Do Anything.”

Then came the night Lucas and Yann had been chilling in Lucas’s apartment (which he shares with two other people. Yann always gets upset at him for not getting an apartment of his own “since you have enough money!” But Lucas likes sharing a space. Plus, living with another Alpha and Omega is comforting.) He had been on multiple press tours by this point, and had just finished with his USA tour which hit the main cities such as LA and New York. But it felt nice to be back in Paris, in his apartment, nursing a crappy beer with a French TV show on in the background.

He was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, Yann doing the same but on the other side of the couch, when he suddenly got a notification. Lucas frowned, he thought he had his push notifications for Instagram turned off. He slid over to his messages and read the profile name. Srodulv? How do you even pronounce that? Sro-deulv? Shrodulvsjdn? Like what?

Lucas shoved his phone into his friends face, “do you recognize that name?”

Yann narrowed his eyes at the screen, “the ‘srodulv’ one?” Lucas gaped at him, how did he pronounce that so well? Yann continued, “nah, but you can click on the profile.”

Lucas was about to protest but Yann beat him to it, already tapping on the phone screen to pull up the account. Yann shoved Lucas’s phone back into his face before going back to continue mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. Lucas went immediately to the profile picture and ho- holy shit this guy was hot. His eyes trailed down to the bio where it read “elite model/actor 🇮🇹” Ah well that explains the hotness level.

Lucas continued scrolling to look through the photos. It was obvious the guy was an Alpha, from his air of confidence to his rather dominant features, like how tall he was or his sharp jawline. I bet that jawline could cut glass... Lucas shook himself out of his thoughts and decided to start from the bottom. It started off with some odd posts that didn’t seem to really fit together, some drawing and some videos of old animations. But slowly it turned into more headshots and posts of that sort, probably as he became more into his modeling career. Lucas clicked on one post which caught his eye. Lucas wasn’t sure if he was drooling as he looked into the steely gray eyes. Jesus, is he even real?

Lucas meant to click on the exit button, once, twice. You liked the picture! Lucas felt his heart stop. Nooooo. He looked down to see the date. Lucas wanted to chuck his phone at the wall. Three years ago. Fuck. No getting out of this one.

Lucas began panicking and hitting Yann on the shoulder “bro, mec, ow abuse!” Yann yelled. Lucas ignored his friends remark and shoved his phone back into his friends hands. Yann took a few moments to catch up through evaluating the phone. There was no way Lucas could voice what he had just done. He was too busy trying to fold in on himself. He heard Yann laugh and mumble a “duuude...”

“No, no!” Lucas said frantically and grabbed the phone from his friend, “don’t ‘duuude’ me! HELP me!”

Yann shrugged, “I mean, he’s a model right? He probably gets thousands of likes a day. He probably didn’t even notice.”

That helped calm Lucas a little. Yeah, maybe he didn’t notice. His hopes were crushed, however, when we got another notification. @srodulv sent you a message!

Lucas hovered over the message for a few minutes, really it felt like centuries, before deciding to open it. He first saw the photo @srodulv had sent him. It was a drawing of a small hedgehog sitting at a set of drums, spikes going everywhere. And another small sketch of the same hedgehog with a guitar in hand. Lucas smiled at the photo despite his efforts to repress his smile. He then looked down to see the next message

@srodulv: like what you see?

Lucas wanted to go run...somewhere. No, what he really wanted to do was to just crater in on himself until he was nonexistent.

“Shit, he just messaged me again.” Lucas finally mentioned to his friend.

Yann huffed and sat up from his position on the couch to look over at the phone.

“So? Message him back?”

“Are you crazy?” Lucas squeaked.

Yann laughed, “uh, no. I mean, he’s a model right? Maybe being his friend could help boost your career!” Lucas eyes his friend, “also not that I’d date him, but man those eyes...”

“Okay, okay, get off me.” Lucas said grumpily and shoved his friend off his shoulders.

Lucas hadn’t really been into anyone ever since his crush on Yann. He still wasn’t out to his friends, or the internet. (Though he will say the internet is onto him. They are much smarter than his friends. The internet has speculated that he’s actually an omega despite the fact that he uses suppressants. They help him appear more beta like, especially in person.) He’s come to terms with his sexuality and secondary gender himself, but taking the step into the public eye is a large step. Well, more like a large jump. Especially with how much his life is on display to the world.

When he first presented as an Omega at 15, he was scared. He saw what happened to his mom, who was also an Omega. He loves his mom, he really really does. But he just doesn’t want to end up like her. So, he started taking suppressants. Luckily, his dad wasn’t against getting the prescription, because he was ashamed of having a male Omega as a son. So they agreed to keep that secret between them. That is, until Lucas moved in with Mika. He had to tell him about his secondary gender mainly because of his heats. That would have been a rude awakening for Mika if he were to walk in on Lucas. Lucas usually forces himself into heat, which means he stops taking his suppressants every couple months and sets aside a week for it to happen. He hates his heats. He hates how he becomes so needy, but at the same time he wishes he had an Alpha who could actually satisfy that neediness. Braving heats alone is not an easy task. Every time, it feels like his inner Omega is trying to rip itself from his skin, clawing at it, whining constantly. But it’s better than having an Alpha to control his every move.

Lucas pulls himself out of his thoughts and glances at his friend who is back on his phone, watching...is that a compilation video of dogs catching frisbees?

Lucas takes a deep breath, opening up Instagram.

@lucallemant: well I like the drawing. I suppose the artist isn’t bad to look at either.

He sets his phone to the side, heart pounding. Suddenly, his phone bings. He wasn’t expecting a response so quickly.

@srodulv: I would hope not.

Lucas felt like punching himself in the face he was so anxious.

@lucallemant: so...why a hedgehog?

@srodulv: maybe because someone always has such unruly hair. And maybe because someones nose just looks so boop-able.

Lucas is glad @srodulv let’s the change of subject slip by. But did he just say his nose was...boop-able?

@lucallemant: excuse me, what did you just say?

@srodulv: I think you heard what I said.

@lucallemant: heard? I didn’t hear anything?

@srodulv: you know what I meant! You’re mean... :(

@lucallemant: haha I’m sorry I’m sorry.

@srodulv: so do you accept my compliment on your nose?

Lucas smiled to himself, pretending to rub at his lips to make it seem discreet.

@lucallemant: I suppose I have to. And may I have the honor of knowing the name of the person who gave me such a nice compliment?

@srodulv: where are my manners?! I’m Eliott

@lucallemant: Lucas. Though I suppose you already knew that.

@srodulv: at least I know now for sure that your name is really Lucas. Not just “French Cutie Who Can Do Anything.”

@lucallemant: oh god that is going to haunt me forever, isn’t it?

@srodulv: haha I’m afraid so.

Lucas pauses before saying: so you’re a model then? What’s a model doing drawing ME of all people in fan art.

@srodulv: cmon if anyone deserves fan art it’s you!

Lucas blushes and tries to swipe it away before Yann sees.

@srodulv: I suppose I draw because it’s an outlet of some kind.

@lucallemant: that’s awesome. Well, since my fursona is apparently a hedgehog, do I get to know yours?

@srodulv: haha you know I would like to think of them more as soul animals, but thanks for that thought. My “fursona” is a raccoon.

@lucallemant: a raccoon?

@srodulv: yeah! They wear masks. 🦝

“Dude, quit smiling at your phone like that. You’re freaking me out.” Yann mumbles from beside Lucas, pulling him out of his little Eliott and Instagram bubble.

“Sorry...” Lucas said before letting his gaze trail back on his phone. He saw Yann roll his eyes, but Lucas just brushed it off.

@lucallemant: so how did a model such as yourself stumble upon me?

@srodulv: I couldn’t let a pretty face like yours slip away, could I?

@lucallemant: try again, this time without flirting.

@srodulv: ouch getting called out lol. But I suppose I was in a rough patch and your video sort of helped pull me out.

@lucallemant: which video?

@srodulv: that’s a surprise ;)

Lucas lets a smile take up his lips. His eyes drifted up to the time. Holy- it’s already 1:30 am? He’s gotta go to bed. Classes tomorrow. Thanks college.

@lucallemant: I have to go :( classes early tomorrow.

@srodulv: aw man, you’re still in high school?

@lucallemant: college actually

@srodulv: oh! What are you studying? (Last question for the night and then I’ll have to come to terms with our conversation ending D: )

Lucas snorted a laugh: I’m a bio major. (And I’m sorryyy! I wish I could keep talking too)

@srodulv: then show me how sorry you are. Meet me in Paris when I get back from Japan?

Lucas chewed at his bottom lip. Should he trust this guy? He is an Alpha...

But what’s the worst that could happen...right? Eliott seems like a nice enough guy. Lucas lets his inner Omega instincts take over on deciding what to do.

@lucallemant: sounds like a plan. When do you get back?

@srodulv: it’s a date! I get back in a month!

@lucallemant: looking forward to it. Goodnight, E.

@srodulv: goodnight, Lulu.

Lucas hugs his phone to his chest.

It’s a date!

[judithsupportsteamchampery]

Why you’ve made my winter!

- by Judith Dombrowski

My personal Team Champéry season review

This is dedicated to figure skater Deniss Vasiljevs, coach and figure skater Stéphane Lambiel and their manager Christopher Trevisan!

My very special thanks to my mother Beate. Without you nothing of this would have been possible. I can say with my whole heart that you are the best mother I ever could have imagined.

Also special thanks to:

Anastasia, Charlie, Estephanía, Jelena, Laia, Maria R., Maria T., Marina, P., Susanne, Szilvia

You all have become amazing and true friends. I love you with my whole heart!

And to everyone else whom I met because of Team Champéry this winter, either personally or via the internet. We are the best fan community I can imagine.

On March 2nd 2019, after I had been able to take THAT picture, that picture thousands of skating fans dream of, that picture I would never ever had imagined to happen, I turned around and thanked both of you: “Thank you so much for everything!“, I said. Then I looked at you, Deniss, and said: “You’ve really made my winter! Thanks!“ You looked flattered and surprised but didn’t respond anything. But you, Stéph, said something like: “Wow, you are really so positive!“ It was the second time you said that that afternoon and I do understand why you said it in this situation: For the two of you it definitely hadn’t been the winter you’ve dreamed of. It must have been a hard winter full of worries, concerns and disappointments. It seemed to surprise you, Stéph, why you’ve made somebody’s winter even though so much seemed to have gone wrong for you.

So I am writing this blog post / article / review to explain to the two of you and to everyone interested, why this sentence was incredibly true. Why I actually couldn’t have thanked you in a more accurate way. Beware, this might gonna be long. I usually fail saying things short and there has been really a lot going on this winter relating to the two of you. I will also miss out some moments because it has just been too much.

When to start? Should it be the moment when we decided to go to Grenoble? The moment I started to be your fan, Deniss? Should I go back to Worlds 2005 when I had my first big crush on that handsome Swiss figure skater? This would turn into a novel so lets start right at the beginning… of… this winter:

October

“Hey, I just wanted to tell you that I am free earlier than expected today. So if you’d like we can meet earlier?“

“I am sorry I fear I won’t be able to come over before 18.30? Hope that’s still alright?“, I replied to a good friend of mine on WhatsApp.

“Haha, yea, sure, thought you have holidays…“

“Well, yea“, … she was a really good friend so I could be honest, “but my Mom doesn’t. She’s only free from 3pm and we’ll have to watch a movie together this afternoon. This is like the only possibility before next weekend. Will explain you later!“

“Okayyyy…!“

It was a Wednesday afternoon in early October during my autumn holidays and I spent the week in South Germany with my mother and tried to meet up with as many old friends as possible. It was also the week before Japan Open, the first time you, Deniss, were supposed to skate your new free program. And it finally had leaked that you would be skating to the soundtrack of the movie “Last Samurai“. So to totally understand the program my mother and I watched the movie together, listened to the music very precisely, discussed about the plot, read and learned about the history of the samurai on Wikipedia.

We liked and appreciated the theme and that music choice right away. As we did with the whole program when it had finally been uploaded. Despite technical difficulties we saw the efforts and the great thoughts behind the choreography of this program right away and were really looking forward to see this program grow and bloom over the season.

It was different with the Short Program. When “Papa was a rolling stone“ was posted first, I listened to the song in the car and it left me quite puzzled… How was that supposed to be the song of a skating program? And those lyrics? Well… I liked the beat and the rhythm of the song from the beginning and I put all my trust in your good taste and I wasn’t going to be disappointed.

The figure skating season was speeding up: The first Grand Prix was coming along together with a small competition called “Minsk Ice Star“ - the warm up contest for you, Deniss. I spent that weekend in the Netherlands where a friend celebrated her birthday. The moment I remember best of these days is myself walking up and down at the beach streaming the free program in bad quality on my phone screaming and jumping up and down at every landed jump. This weekend brought the first fully rotated and landed Quad in competition for you, Deniss, and the first gold medal of the season. For me this weekend made me like and appreciate the short program and I “met“ my “soulmate“ because of this competition:

Until then I hadn’t been too active about figure skating on social media, because most of my followers on Instagram were my real life friends who didn’t care about this sport at all. There was no official livestream of Minsk Ice Star. But I found some Russian girls via Instagram who were in the arena and were so kind to stream the practices and the competition. That’s how I met my today very very good and close friend Maria. We started texting since then, we went through this winter together, kept each other updated all the time and finally went to Innsbruck together. But that happened many moments and stories later.

November

NHK Trophy was after all the only competition this entire season I didn’t manage to follow live. Despite all efforts I didn’t make it home from work in time for the SP, and I also missed the LP the next day because of my tennis practice. I did come home when Shoma Uno was about to start his Free Skate performance but of course he skated deep in the second group. I clicked on “pause“ and scrolled back to start watching the competition from the beginning. There had been a number though in the left upper corner of my screen I couldn’t have avoided seeing: The leading skater at the moment Shoma started to skate had the technical score of 70 points. 70 Points! DAMN! That was…. low. Very low for that moment in the competition. And 70… that was a number you, Deniss, were likely to score. My heart started racing. Could it be possible? If you were the leader at that moment you were… about to win a medal.

“It was hard to see how excited you still were!“, my Mom told me on the phone an hour later when I was full of disappointment. She had been able to watch everything live and knew that it unfortunately hadn’t been you, Deniss, who had scored those 70 points, it had been Matteo Rizzo. I felt really sorry for you, missing that opportunity. “Keep your head up, keep your heart strong…“, I kept listening on repeat during that weekend and I wished you could also hear that motivating song by Ben Howard. The next competition was going to be better. I was sure! And the next competition was: IdF in Grenoble. THE competition. Our competition. Where my mother and I would go to see and support you live. The weekend I had been waiting for since the end of June when the assignments came out. And now it was not even two weeks away…The Sunday after NHK I spent in the kitchen baking my gifts for the two of you: The lion and the ladybug as German gingerbread. I am not the most artistically talented person, and I didn’t honestly expect this project to be successful, especially drawing a lion with chocolate and sugar icing on a piece of cookie seemed like a far too motivated project for me. But I did it, every millimeter drawn with concentration and passion. And succeeded: I had baked a lion and a ladybug gingerbread. The presents were ready, the flags had arrived and got inked, all tickets were printed, we were ready to go.

You probably all remember a weekend or an event you once desperately had been waiting for. And then the moment when it is really happening. So you can probably imagine how I felt: I see myself as if it was yesterday walking from the parking lot in Mainz to the station where I had to take the train to Frankfurt airport, feeling like I was flying: It was real, yes, it was. I was on my way to Grenoble, I had everything prepared, I had gotten the extra day off at school, I had the gifts and the banners in my bag, I had your program music in my ears, I was so so ready for it!

I had high expectations for this weekend just as you probably had as well, Deniss. Unfortunately yours weren’t totally fulfilled again especially in the long program. Mine instead were outreached by far:

That moment, when I saw the two of you live right ahead of me in practice. The moment you really nailed your SP, how I was screaming and celebrating of relief. The moment I was able to give you the gifts after the second practice. The moment when you walked around proudly showing my baked lion to other fans. All those moments of wonderful and magical performances by your fellow skaters, all those people I had been admiring in front of the TV screen for years: Evgenia Medvedeva, Rika Kihira, Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, Nathan Chen, Jason Brown and Dimitri Aliev just to name a few…

And that moment, Saturday 24th of November, 6 pm during the Ice Dance medal ceremony when I checked on my emails and my heart skipped for sure more than one beat: Email by Christopher Trevisan: “Sorry for the short notice, if you are still interested you can have a fan meeting with Deniss tomorrow morning either at 10 or 11 o’clock. Let me know if you are still interested.“ If I was interested? Hell, YES. But: Our bus to the airport was booked tomorrow at 10 o’clock from the main station in Grenoble. Our flight home was leaving Lyon at 2 pm. I was in shock, excited and concerned at the same time. It was hard to think straight.

I will never forget the night from November 24th to November 25th in my entire life. So many insecurities: When exactly? Where? Who will come? How will we get home? Take the train instead of flying? Take a taxi to the airport? Skip the whole fan meeting myself?

Charlie, my mother and I were sitting together until far after midnight without having any solutions. The three of us mainly discussed the question: Where? There was no nice café that had opened Sunday morning just around the corner…

We noticed that the only space we had available on this short notice were our own hotel rooms. Probably our entire hotel woke up by us laughing loudly about the joke: “Imagine, when I come home, I will be able to say: There was Stéphane Lambiel… in my hotel room!“ We weren’t sure back then if you’d accompany Deniss, Stéph.

Sometime during the night after sleeping for a few hours I was able to calm down and think more straight again. I checked the Lufthansa App and found out that it was actually possible to change our booking to a flight that flew to Frankfurt four hours later than our original one. I got the idea to ask in our hotel if there was a possibility to hold the meeting in a free conference room or another silent place. It was all coming together. We got a space in our hotel, we had people who messaged they would come to the meeting, we had the time to sit down and think about some questions that I wanted to ask you, Deniss. You came, you had quite some time, you were incredibly nice and the two of us got more and more relaxed while the interview / meeting went on and I had the feeling that I could continue talking with you forever. You are such an interesting, intelligent, nice, humble and funny person. Before Grenoble I had liked you mostly because of your beautiful and amazing skating, after Grenoble I knew where this was coming from. Before Grenoble I had been amazed by you, after Grenoble I was totally enchanted.

December

I was on endorphins for the next weeks straight. That weekend had been far better and beyond all my expectations.

But at the same time I was afraid: Was it ever going to be that perfect again? Should I maybe keep this one perfect weekend as one magic memory and not let it get destroyed maybe by disappointments coming in the near future? Would I maybe expect too much from future events? I told around: “That weekend was perfect. I will not go again this season. Next season again!“

What a luck I hadn’t been able to resist. Because my heart, longing to see the two of you again, won over my anxious head.

Christmas time came, I followed the Grand Prix Final together with my Mom, we got up in the middle of the night to cheer for Koshiro, we were worried when you, Deniss, withdrew from a competition in Zagreb, were relieved when it was announced that it wasn’t an injury. And we decided that it was finally about time to see you skate live as well, Stéph! So we ordered our tickets for Art on Ice in Davos in February. And with booking those tickets my plan not to go anymore this season had already faded away. I spent hours on the internet searching for possibilities to make it to Minsk for the European Championships. Meanwhile I knew many fans via social media and almost all of them were about to be in Minsk to support you, Deniss. I wanted to be part of it really  badly. As a teacher though it is hard to get days off apart from the public holidays. Flights for the weekend only costed a fortune. It seemed impossible. My frustration grew. I am a person who fights really hard if she really wants something and usually tries everything to make it happen.

January

New years eve came along, together with a very nice and enthusiastic video of the two of you: “We hope to see you in Bellinzona for Music on Ice!“, you said, Stéph. And after countless times watching this lovely video and a sleepless and crazy night from the 1st to the 2nd of January my decision was made: Instead of the impossible mission going to Minsk, I would to go to Music on Ice in Bellinzona. I was going to take a train from my hometown Osnabrück in the Northwest of Germany on Friday afternoon to Stuttgart in the South of Germany. The next morning I was going to take the earliest train to continue traveling all the way to Switzerland where I would arrive in Bellinzona on January 12th at 11 am. I would go to the show on Saturday night and early Sunday morning I was going to take the train back, 10 hours all the way up to Osnabrück where I would arrive at 6 pm, ready to go back to school on Monday morning. But going to the show wasn’t the only plan I had. With help of the amazing Jelena from Daugavpils who runs the official Fan Club on Facebook we activated fans from all over the world to send me pictures with good luck wishes for you for Europeans. I was overwhelmed by the positive responses on the project. I received exactly 50 pictures, most of them amazingly creative.

When I entered the train on Friday afternoon, January 11th 2019, I felt the company of all those 50 people. I was nervous because I hadn’t heard of Chris yet, whom I had messaged with the idea of the project and had asked for an opportunity to give you the album personally.

But the sun was shining, I had motivating music in my ears, the train was riding further and further South and I felt the support of all of my friends and of my mom, who unfortunately couldn’t accompany me this weekend, so the nervousness turned into major excitement.

In Bellinzona I also wasn’t alone at all: I teamed up with two friends that I had both met in Grenoble. After our arrival we checked out the ice rink and sat down on a bench nearby the arena. The girls went through your album, Deniss, when suddenly my phone vibrated and I saw the message: Christopher Trevisan had written: “Hey Judith, can you be at the rink at 15.00?”

Have you ever been waiting for a message to come in for five consecutive days? Do you know that feeling that whenever you get a message you have that slight hope inside you that it could be the one you are waiting for and you get disappointed over and over again? And then the releasing moment comes? And you know my temper, right? Then you can maybe imagine how I screamed and jumped up and down when seeing that message. Did you maybe even hear that scream from somewhere far away that afternoon? Quite possible since Bellinzona isn’t that big and my joy was… LOUD! My two friends shared my joy and enthusiasm but not as loud. We had an “appointment”! I messaged all of my good friends right away: “Appointment at 3 pm!” I was so happy and excited. I carried the hopes and wishes of 50 people in my bag and now I knew I wouldn’t disappoint them.

That moment on the bench had only been the beginning of a day that again turned out so much better than all my expectations:

Hearing you say: “So nice to see you again!”, and being really thankful for the book. Being able to watch all three hours of show rehearsal, including the two of you practicing throw jumps.  Recording an successfully landed throw jump for all my friends and many other fans. Seeing you, Stéph, skate live for the first time in my life. You, that man that had carried me through my teenage years with all your wonderful programs. Finally seeing you perform in person was magical. Seeing that wonderful and touching duet of the two of you. I had tears of joy in my eyes. And that moment after the show when you, Deniss, were walking beneath us and you turned around and came back thanking me for the album: “Thanks for the book. It’s fantastic!” These six words meant so much to me and to all those who had participated. My heart was full of joy and my body full of dancing endorphins again. It didn’t matter at all that the train ride the next day didn’t last ten but twelve hours. I was the happiest and luckiest girl on the planet.

Thanks to my amazing two girls who were my company during these crazy 21 hours I have spent in Bellinzona. Wouldn’t have been the same without those two and we do have an appointment at our “Appointment Bench” next year.

Still… after the Bellinzona - Fun it was getting serious! Europeans were on their way and it felt like the most important competition for you this season, Deniss. The season hadn’t gone as planed yet for sure… plus: Skating really well there would give you the chance to medal. Even though I had been in Bellinzona it was really hard for me to follow the action in Minsk from home. But that week showed me what great friends I had got to know because of you, Deniss. Those girls, who kept me updated the entire week, and never forgot about me were my personal heros. Some special mentions: Jelena, who waved at me through the TV stream during the Ladies Short program. That was so hilarious and made my day. Szilvia, whom I would have loved to share that horrible hostel with. Maybe with the two of us that place would have been less spooky? And thanks to her for sending birthday wishes to my mom during the live stream of your fan meeting, Stéph. Marina, for telling me the “they-only-want-me”- story right after it had happened and for asking Brian Joubert about his inspiration for the tiger jacket. And my amazing girl Maria. Thanks for just everything. I felt with her and like her at every moment during the entire week. I shared her excitement, her fears, worries, tears and joy. And I am proud and thankful to all of the girls who organized both fan meetings and streamed it for us at home. You’ve got the most amazing fans, I really hope you know that both.

Deniss? We all know you gave your best! You wanted it so much and we know you actually are able to do everything you had planed. That makes the outcome of this competition so sad. Thanks for keeping your smile for us fans, thanks for still performing amazingly. Thanks for that intense gala-program. “Iron“ is now one of my personal top 5 programs of all times.

And Stéph? Your week must have been nerve-wracking and cruel. Thanks for being there for your students, giving them strength and confidence. Thanks for trying everything you could to support Deniss and Emmi and still staying that nice and friendly to us fans. The pressure must have been immense. Maria summed it up so perfectly as an Instagram caption, so I will quote her here: “Thanks for being in the world!”

February

During Euros you were so nice to confirm that Team Champéry would keep its tradition and would come to the Cup of Tyrol in Innsbruck, Stéph. The planing for us attending and supporting you at that event started the moment Europeans were over. That Sunday still after watching the Gala my mother and I booked the last available cheap apartment in the city centre of Innsbruck. All February long we were busy planing that trip but hadn’t there been another appointment in February? My second 10 hour long train ride was scheduled from February 15th to February 17th. Osnabrück - Davos and back. Art on Ice was about to happen. I imagined that trip to maybe be a little less exciting. I expected to watch the show, see you perform two wonderful programs and was also looking forward to see James Blunt live again after more than 10 years. Back in 2006 James Blunts concert had been the first concert I had ever visited, so it was going to be a bit nostalgic… But… probably no surprise anymore: Also this trip turned out to be so much better than expected.

The afternoon in Davos was beautiful already, the sun was shining brightly and we had an amazing walk through the snowy landscape. We managed to sneak in to watch the practice again and: I  got the opportunity to talk to you, Stéph. It was short and since totally unexpected I also didn’t really know what to say but it was extremely special for me. And I could take a selfie with you. A picture I had wanted to have ever since my teenage years. I am not the type of person who collects pictures with celebrities. I think asking for a picture is such an unreal and awkward situation. But I really longed for that picture with you, Stéph. With the guy I used to tell all of my friends about, who all didn’t know you, because figure skating is not too popular in Germany. With the guy I had admired ever since my teenage years. With the guy that is in my opinion the most passionate and elegant skater ever. With the guy that touched me to tears and overwhelmed my emotions when skating to the song Goodbye my Lover some hours later. With the guy who gave his second last performance at Art on Ice ever that night.

I read your post about quitting Art on Ice when my train had almost reached Osnabrück again. I felt incredibly sad and incredibly blessed at the same time: I had still been able to see your magic. Art on Ice will miss you incredibly, Stéph. But you surely made the right decision for yourself and we as fans will support you and keep loving you no matter what projects will come for you in the future.

I had two more weeks until the crazy road trip to Innsbruck was about to happen but well… there was one weekend in between. And I found the perfect place to go for that weekend: Barcelona, Spain.

You have already heard some names of great people I got to know because of you two, but I haven’t told you about Laia yet what is a shame because, Deniss, you would certainly like Laia as much as I like her: She’s an artist, she draws amazingly. She’s a baker and an excellent cook. She’s a bit of a philosopher. She is a big Star Wars fan. She’s incredibly funny and sarcastic but at the same time a bit shy and introverted. And she is a big fan of the two of you. Even though you know the story how Laia and I met already, Deniss, I think it’s worth telling it here again: Laia was also at the Grand Prix in Grenoble. I didn’t know her back then. And we also didn’t meet at the event itself. But she was the girl who took the picture of you holding my baked gingerbread lion. I discovered that picture on Instagram some weeks later. We started to chat, and we chatted even more. I talked with her for hours because, Deniss, in many ways she seems like a female version of you.

So at that last weekend in February I took a plane to Barcelona to finally meet her in person. She showed me some skating tricks on the ice and I showed her that the mediterranean sea is not too cold to swim in in February. She introduced me to traditional Catalan food and I brought her some Swiss Chocolate I had bought in Davos.

And she gave me the most precious gift I ever received from anyone: An amazing drawing of you, Deniss, skating to “Iron“. You have seen it in Innsbruck yourself and I am quite sure you will remember it.

So that weekend was another amazing experience thanks to the two of you.

March

“Good morning everyone”, I told my Instagram followers totally excited at the morning of February 28th, “my last big journey of the figure skating season is about to start. I will drive to work first and then I will drive from my school via Frankfurt airport and Munich airport all the way to Innsbruck. It will be a really long journey but I will pick up some amazing girls on the way. And I actually can’t wait to see Deniss and Stéph tomorrow.”

The Cup of Tyrol in Innsbruck was the smallest event I visited this season but it highlighted up everything that had happened before. At the beginning of the season my mom and I had been alone. The trip to Innsbruck ended with seven good friends from five different countries sitting together in a small apartment, laughing and celebrating you, ourselves and life.

Marina had flown to Frankfurt from Kyiv and Szilvia from Budapest. Maria had come from Chelyabinsk, Russia, to Munich. I met both, Marina and Maria for the first time in real life and that alone was really special. Suddenly sitting with those three girls together in my small car, singing along to Britney Spears songs was unreal and amazing enough. But of course we were here to support you, Deniss.

All three of you, Chris included, seemed quite surprised to see us around. Cup of Tyrol was such a small competition. Why should anyone go there? Well, we were and we weren’t the only ones, even though probably the loudest ones. Here are again some very special moments picked from many special moments:

Imitating your car karaoke to Britney’s Toxic on our way to Innsbruck with Marina and Szilvia.

Stepping out of our apartment early Friday morning in Innsbruck and seeing this city in all of its beauty: The river, the colorful houses and the mountains in the beautiful morning sun.

Watching you skate a nice and clean short program after some struggles during practice.

Chris laughing loudly about our designed shirt for you, Deniss: “I am not coaching Stéph!” Do you wear it from time to time? If you don’t I am sure Chris would…

Giving you my self knitted hat in Latvia colors.

Showing you Laias drawing and you complimenting her amazing “shade work”.

You, Stéph, telling us that we were just about to hang up our “Team Champéry banner” mirror converted. Oh dear…

Suffering with every quad attempt. Cheering for every jump that seemed “okay” somehow- especially for underrotated quads…sorry Stéph, but that’s what fans are there for.

Crying with Matilda after her Free Program. It was hard to see this but those moments belong to the sport just as tears of joy at another time. Please, Stéph, tell Matilda, that she is a very beautiful skater. She is very graceful and a joy to watch on the ice and we all hope to see her shining on the ice sometime again.

Calling ourselves to be the “Crazy Rabbit Crew” after constantly eating carrots and joking about what to throw on the ice. Carrots, maybe?

Watching your little extra show on the ice after you won the title, Deniss.

Joking with you, Stéph about our petition to bring Britney Spears to Art on Ice.

And for me, personally, receiving the compliment from you, Stéph, of being such a positive person. I am aware that you, the first time you said it, thought that my positivity was even a bit too much when we discussed the success of your Quad attempts, Deniss, but when we all said goodbye I had the honest feeling that you liked me, Stéph. And that means more than a lot to me!

And of course THAT picture. Yes, again a celebrity picture. But what a special one. Standing in the middle of both of you. In the middle of the two people who made my winter. You didn’t understand it back then, right?

I am sure you understand it now!

Of course Innsbruck hadn’t been the end of the season yet: Worlds were yet to come. Far away in Japan. The competition where you wanted to show everyone what you actually could do. In the country that you love so much and where your season had started. The country on which history your free program was built. The Last Samurai. The last dance of the season. It was a hard week for us as fans because it was obviously a hard week for your whole team. I watched the Short Program locked into the music room of my school during our break. Afterwards I had to teach a Music lesson, singing cheerful and happy songs with eight year olds. It was tough. But I can hardly imagine how tough it was for you.

The free program was a huge fight. After everything you had gone through that week, it was even an incredible fight. The score still wasn’t probably what you had dreamed of neither the placement in the end.

But you can be incredibly proud of that fight, Deniss. This whole season was surely a hard learning process. It was a season without a single competition you were completely happy with. After all the hard work you put in every single day it must be horribly frustrating. I got to know you though as a person who is thinking thoroughly about everything. And I got to know you as a person who is able to see this season as a learning process for the future. You never stopped performing no matter what happened to the jumps. All three programs this year were incredibly well choreographed and performed even better. And during that hard and rocky road you made so many people incredibly happy.

Stéph, this winter was surely also a hard one for you. One of the reasons why I like you that much is that you, just as I do myself, put your whole heart and passion into everything you do. I could feel your pain when things didn’t turn out as you wanted them to go for your skaters. It must be so hard to just watch and not being able to actually do something in those moments. I do imagine those intense emotions you had during your last Art on Ice shows. Thanks so much for sharing some of these moments with us.

And equally I want to thank you, Chris: Thank you so much for being there for the whole team whenever you are needed. Thanks for staying calm, positive and objective throughout the season. Thanks for sometimes probably being the connection between the two artists. I am sure it hasn’t always been easy. Thanks for the great cooperation with us fans. You are doing an amazing job in every way.

You as a team managed to go through this season together and I hope with my whole heart that it brought you even closer together. Success, failure, joy and sorrow are so close together in this sport. The future seasons will bring all of that again. And I am looking forward to laugh, cry and celebrate with you again next winter and hopefully many more winters. Until then I will spend time with some of the amazing people I met on the road. Next weekend Szilvia and I will visit Marina in Kyiv. It will be another amazing trip. You are about to make my spring, too!

[orbemnews]

Beeple Brings Crypto to Christie’s Mike Winkelmann never used to call himself an artist. But that was before he made $3.5 million in a single weekend from selling his artworks. In December, he auctioned off multiple editions of three digital artworks, each priced at $969, and 21 unique works, most of which sold for about $100,000 each. It was only the second time he had put his art on sale. The digital artist, who goes by Beeple, has created a drawing every single day for the last 13 years. He started with pen and paper but now mostly uses computer software such as the program Cinema 4D. On Thursday, a two-week-long online auction of a composite of the first 5,000 days of the project will begin at Christie’s, which says it’s the auction house’s first sale of a solely digital artwork. It will also be the first time that Christie’s will accept payment in the cryptocurrency Ether. Beeple is selling these works as NFTs — nonfungible tokens — digital collectibles that use blockchain technology as authentication. An NFT can take any form, but for Beeple, it usually consists of an image or video file, sometimes with a physical object attached, verified with a digital signature on a blockchain. NFTs cleverly respond to the art world’s need for authentication and provenance in an increasingly digital world, permanently linking a digital file to its creator. It makes digital artworks unique, and therefore, sellable. The speculative market for NFTs has skyrocketed in the last 12 months, and continues to grow. According to the NFT Report 2020, published by L’Atelier BNP Paribas and Nonfungible.com, the value of the NFT market tripled in 2020, putting its current value over $250 million. Now, the same investors who speculate on cryptocurrencies are trading wildly increasing volumes of NFTs on websites such as MakersPlace (which is partnering with Christie’s for the Beeple sale), SuperRare, and Rarible, where recent transactions are front and center. Memes and graphic collectibles are sold alongside artworks like Beeple’s, blurring the line between them. Although it’s the first time that Christie’s will sell a purely virtual work, the art world is familiar with this genre of sale. To take one example, anyone could duct tape a banana to the wall, but it wouldn’t be Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian.” Likewise, someone could easily make a digital copy of Beeple’s “Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” but even though the content would be exactly the same, they wouldn’t own the artwork itself without blockchain verification. NFTs make it possible to collect digital artworks in a similar way to paintings, sculptures or conceptual artwork. “I don’t know anything about the traditional art world,” said Beeple, a computer science graduate, who only began researching NFTs in mid-October. Though he was a newcomer to both fine art and crypto-art, his “Everydays” project, now 13 years in, has become popular online. He’s amassed a huge following (nearly two million on Instagram, 200,000 on Twitter) with his apocalyptic, warped aesthetic leading to commissions from brands such as Louis Vuitton, whose Spring 2019 collection was emblazoned with his images. Beeple’s work has a brash, in-your-face appeal, like a political sketch cartoon set in a dystopian video game. Politicians like Donald J. Trump, Kim Jong-un and Hillary Clinton feature (often nude with mutant, robot bodies), as do Buzz Lightyear, Mickey Mouse and Pikachu. Since Winkelmann creates one drawing per day, his works often riff on what’s been happening in the news, instantly metabolizing internet culture into visual commentary. It’s a style that speaks the native tongue of a cadre of meme-literate speculators, many of whom have made huge sums from tech and crypto investments. After an initial “drop” (a term laced with streetwear overtones) of NFTs in October, Winkelmann decided to conduct his December sale through the website Nifty Gateway. The sale broke the top records for digital art within five minutes. Many buyers immediately resold the works at higher prices, seeing their initial investment multiply within minutes. Today, many of these works are selling for more than 1,000 percent of their original price. “That was a real wake up call for all of us,” said Noah Davis, a specialist in postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, “to see such significant sums being paid.” “We’re right up against a potential paradigm shift,” Davis continued, pointing to the recent boom in cryptocurrencies and the GameStop revolt against Wall Street this year as evidence that financial marketplaces are swiftly changing. Beeple works with two gigantic TV screens always on, one tuned to Fox and the other to CNN, both muted, on the wall of his studio, which is also furnished with a leather couch and plush beige carpeting. Reached for interview on Zoom, he was enthusiastic and irreverent, with an unabashed demeanor, with neatly parted hair and wearing a half-zip gray sweater with a button-down underneath. He looked, in short, more likely to offer you tech support than a radical new medium of artwork. For a long time, Beeple felt dismissed by the art world. He is taking great pleasure at this crypto-fueled reversal. These works, most of which he offhandedly describes as “crap,” are suddenly being anointed by one of the art world’s most venerated auction houses. “The traditional art world is like: ‘Who’s this kid,’ but I also have 1.8 million followers on Instagram,” he said. “The Christie’s thing brings a level of validation for this.” The fine art world is “finally starting to recognize digital artists as real art,” he added. For a whole raft of digital illustrators and graphic artists who have struggled to make a living from their work, this is a game changer. NFTs represent a do-it-yourself shortcut to get around the establishment gatekeepers. “There’s an argument to be made for this as ‘punk’,” said Ruth Catlow, a researcher and curator at the decentralized art lab Furtherfield in London and an editor of the book “Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain.” “It speaks to the battered dignity of a long-suffering artist class perpetually struggling to make a living, but who are devalued by the higher art-market machines and the marketing platforms.” The huge sums of money being made on NFTs, however, tell a different story. Typically, the art world disdains “flipping” — when a collector buys a work and then immediately resells it at a profit. But unlike traditional artworks, with NFTs, the blockchain that authenticates the work can also create a set of rules that govern its future use. For example, Beeple’s contract will ensure that he, as the artist, earns money as others speculate on his work — in his case 10 percent of every sale on the secondary market (an industry standard for NFTs). In this sense, NFTs offer a model for artists to capture the value of their work as it grows. “When you buy the artwork, you’re sort of entering into a relationship with me,” he said. Catlow said in a video interview, “They are enabling these artists to program a set of contracts with the collectors into the work.” She added that she sees the Beeple sale at Christie’s as “pure spectacle,” a “financial event,” while many artists are migrating to platforms like Zora and Foundation, and creating D.A.O.s (decentralized autonomous organizations) that allow them to put community values before art speculators. “You can see these programmable artworks as a way to create new forms of relationships,” Catlow said. This opens up more radical possibilities for sharing the profits of artwork using NFTs. The artist Sara Ludy, for example, recently announced that she has pre-emptively negotiated a 7 percent profit for each of the workers at her gallery, bitforms, for any future NFT sales. “I wanted to set an example of one of the many ways funds could be redistributed with this new market,” Ludy wrote in an email. “This is the first time, at least I’ve seen, where artists have an upper hand in a market,” she said. “That’s a really great feeling.” Like many artists considering minting NFTs, Ludy is also concerned by the huge environmental impact of cryptocurrency, of which Bitcoin is the worst offender. But NFTs, which mostly run on the separate Ethereum network, are rapidly transitioning toward a proof-of-stake model (as opposed to the current proof-of-work model) that will be not only more energy-efficient but also faster, and cheaper — incentives that are likely to encourage the shift. The low bar to entry (anyone can mint an NFT, in theory) and outsider mentality offers one obvious parallel: street art. “I think of them as being similar in the way that they are disrupting the traditional categories for collecting contemporary art,” said Davis, of Christie’s. Beeple, however, had his eyes on the numbers, noting that Christie’s auctioned off 21 works by Banksy in September, the same number of works as his $3.5 million drop. “They only,” he paused to put air quotes around the final word, “did $2.9 million,” he said, before bursting into full-throated laughter. The estimate on his own Christie’s auction? “Unknown.” Source link Orbem News #Beeple #Brings #Christies #crypto

[orbyssarchives]

A Brief tl;dr

This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and I know I can be fairly long-winded so if you just wanna skip ahead and click through the pictures I’ve put up, I understand.

The TL;DR is

Hello and welcome to Mage Punk Archives! My name is Tables and this is some of the work that I’ve done over the last few years and what I’ve been up to in my little corner of the world. This is the third and last of a series of posts, outlining a number of updates that I completed on the site.

Included are some of my inspirations and a little of what I’ve learned so far about myself as an ever growing artist up to this point.

After this, I want to keep the content more focused on the actual art and story.

  I’ll post to this site as often as I am able.

    Thanks for reading!

  ***

Long Ago, Before the miracle of handheld internet searches and Instagram

When I was but a young, internet webling, I was heavily into shitty online flash games and looking for anything even remotely related to my interests at the time. From Mario and Sonic to various comics, videos games, anime and things never to be said aloud (pornpornporn). My love of the likes of Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog (big fandoms for me at the time) would later lead me to sprite comics. Today, my feelings for the little hodge podge collage strips of old video game sprite sheets and backgrounds are a little mixed.

(They were beautiful and I’m gonna make one someday)

Then, in Highschool, I took a basic Web Design class. It was a VVoid World Web of Notepad and Internet Explorer where a kindly old crone passed on to those of us there, some knowledge of the ancient runic language which forms the foundations of the World Wide Web: HTML. Tables, frames, css, oh my! This knowledge would eventually prove invaluable.

Throughout our studies we were occasionally allowed to venture out into the Wider World Web. It was during these little adventures and travels across the Web that I happened upon the magical land of Webcomics. It was also during this time that I began break free of the enchantment of sprites. Even though I would probably never return to them, they would always hold a special place in my heart.

  The Internet is for [Comics]

    Webcomics – Synonymous with “Masochism”

At first, I had no idea just how grueling webcomics could be. Most webcomic artists pump out pages one to three times a week. At the time I got into them, MegaTokyo, then still partially a video game webcomic, was just releasing its third printed book; 2-3 updates a week with a loosely set schedule. Evan Dahm was wrapping up his surreal fantasy epic, Rice Boy; with updates consistently going up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The various sprite and drawn webcomics that I was following at the time were updating all the time. Seeing all the great work going up, I felt encouraged to try it myself.

I drew these closer to the end of my junior year of high school.

Desu

Taking major inspiration from a lot of the manga and anime that I was enjoying then, I used pen and ink to make my comic pages. I liked working in black and white because it felt direct and skipping on color made it easier to finish faster. I figured I could work faster if I didn’t have to worry about the extra step. When I did want to use color, as is typical for the early pages of a new manga, I used markers.

At the time, I had no idea that mangakas used assistants. That’s messed up.

Not to say that it was completely unrealistic, but back in the real world I could only average one black and white page a week. If even. The spider webs I was drawing all over were so that I wouldn’t have to use a ruler to draw my panel proper borders. I thought it gave the comic an “old archive”. In the end, I concluded that the spider webs should have their place and not be all over.

This time, I decided to work a little more carefully and deliberately.

  Moving Forward

It was going pretty well but by the time page 7 rolled around, it was time for midterms and I had become too self-conscious and uncomfortable with the way I was drawing my comic pages then. Then, it was time to take finishing high school seriously and before I knew it, I was a freshman at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. I did a lot of growing in the next four years that I attended there. Unfortunately, I never revisited those pages. Instead, near the end of my sophomore year, I took a Sequential Art class where the Final was a full-color, 5-page comic.

These are the ink-wash versions of the 7-page Final that I submitted. I’d originally colored them digitally to meet project requirements but I don’t want to post those just yet..

  In the End

I wasn’t satisfied. The truth was that I waited until the last minute, rushed it, and over-reached on a re-draw that wasn’t much fun for me to work on. During the course of that Sequential Art class my professor turned my attention to artists like Moebius and Mike Mignola. I also came across Katsuya Terada’s stuff around this time.

  And school went on…

    I worked on Mage Punk when I could between assignments.

    Between thinking I could possibly work on a for-print comic…

    …and a webcomic at the same time.

  The End was Near

Most of these were actually made towards the end of my four years at Ai. Those of us graduating were tasked with compiling our work from the years past in accordance with the requirements for obtaining our degrees. I believe that we were given two semesters to gather our pieces and do any revisions to previous works to get them up to date with the rest of the portfolio piece. Illustration Graduates at AiFL were typically required to gather a required selection of their work into an on-demand printed book. The year that I graduated, my department decided to change things around a little. Specifically, we were given the option to collect the requirement work into a plain black binder portfolio and make the printed book more geared towards our pursuits. I opted to make a Mage Punk/Orbyss Archives “Zine” as my main portfolio piece.

  And Then College was Over

I drew a few more pages of the comic until I became employed full-time. These days, there aren’t enough free hours in my days for me to keep up with any typical webcomic’s update schedule so for a long while I stopped working on the comic altogether. I’m squeezing as much work out of every second that I’m not there; with whatever energy I can muster. This includes planning, writing, sketching and drawing. Before I got back to work on the site, I was posting fairly regularly to my Twitter and Instagram; those posts took time to do as well.

  Most of this post was written in separate sessions on my commutes to work.

“Shortcuts”

Even though I always wanted to present Mage Punk as a webcomic, I always worked on it like it would go to print eventually. This created a confusing mindset for me when working on the comic, where I had to work on a whole book, but I have to rush to finish every page. If I wanted to put out pages more frequently I took shortcuts at any point I could to be done with them. Even if I created a good buffer of finished pages, I’d still run into that same pitfall eventually. I wasn’t enjoying my project because of a pressure I applied on myself to finish it in a way I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with. I didn’t even get that much done in the end.

It’s important that I work on it at a pace that lets me show the best of my ability. I would love it if I could be properly finished with the pages before I post them but if I wait before it’s all good and done I’ll just never get around to posting anything, forever floating, aimlessly, throughout creative internet limbo.

Instead, if I have to work on my comic in piecemeal, I’ll just post it up in piecemeal. Mage Punk will still be presented as a webcomic but, until the end of the book is done, certain changes are still a possibility. Editing is an important part of producing any book and I’m going to make its presentation reflect that.

  Cue Rhidiculous shouting “I told you so!” from some nearby bushes.

  A Webcomic in Presentation Only?

Those Two Images are the Same Page

Instead of trying to finish things at breakneck speeds, I’m going to work on the comics at a more reasonable pace. I’ll try to work on it mainly Chapter to chapter instead of page to page like how a webcomic normally is done (buffers aside) This gives me the opportunity to take a step back and get a broader look at the story while still putting out content in enjoyable chunks.

It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around drawing a comic on a start-to-finish, page-by-page basis. While I was working on the later pages in the chapter I kept finding myself jumping around and making changes to previous pages to make some things more consistent with later parts of the story. Instead of working page-by-page, I was editing the chapter as a whole to try to strengthen the narrative I’m trying to tell.

To that end, I still want to present it on this site as a webcomic; if only in name and archive.

The Process

At the VERY longtime behest of my editor, I’ll be presenting the comic as a work in progress at various points in the following production stages.

Writing

I’ll post dialog excerpts here and there. Nothing that can spoil the story too much.

This step will be kept largely behind the scenes.

Thumbnails

I do these on index cards in ballpoint pen to figure out the sequence of events that I most prefer.

This is the step where I’m prone to overloading a page with information.

First Drafts

Full size roughs of the earlier thumbnails. This step helps me get a better sense of how crowded or unbalanced a page might be early on.

This step also helps to prune out any strenuous scenes or dialog that could otherwise have their own pages.

If it isn’t working visually at this point, it’s not going to work in the next step.

Pencils

This is where the real drawing happens. Drawings in this step are made by either digital or traditional means depending on when or where I’m working.

Inking

This step is exactly like the drawing step but in pen and ink. Despite my affinity for real pen and ink, I’ll mainly be working this step digitally.

Color

This step is wrought with indecision but it also one of the faster, more fun steps to do.

Lettering

I’ve removed the dialog from all the pages currently up, opting to keep that out until a chapter is completed; it’s the thing I’m likeliest to change the most frequently until the end.

All lettering is currently done digitally but I’m considering the possibility of hand lettering.

Drawing dialog can be quite fulfilling but it takes a lot of practice.

Editing

This part will be happening all throughout. Page re-orders, panel redraws, changes in dialog.

Until the book is done.

  Here We Are

I’ve already made some revisions to a handful of the pages that are already up; if you browse through the comics you can see the revisions noted in the comic descriptions. I’ll make blog posts for any major revisions or series of revisions that I do. I have a few ideas for some smaller projects that I can work on while I work on Mage Punk. Whether they be illustrations, stories, or even mini-comics like this silly thing down here.

      Moving on

I might have also mentioned before that I have a few other drawings that I wanted to make for the site. In particular I have a neat idea for some social media icon illustrations. I wanna make something that takes advantage of what I’ve learned with using CSS. It’s nothing too fancy.

All that said, future posts will be a bit more brief than these last three were. I’d much rather write and post about the work itself, but I feel like I’ve hit a personal milestone and felt the need to ramble on about it a little.

    Until next time,

  Thanks for reading!

    The Big Site Update (Part 3) A Brief tl;dr This is probably a lot to say for 20 unfinished webcomic pages and 

[eurello]

Media Diet, Week of April 19th

I am forever working on improving the quality of the deluge of culture I am taking in at all times. Lately, I’ve been especially rigorous about this, as I keep realizing exactly how much valuable time I am wasting slurping up really dumb stuff. In an attempt at accountability (and to make myself ashamed to spend too much time on anything purely dumb), I am going to try logging and posting about the culture I consume. I will analyze what attracts me to the trashier things, and attempt to train myself, little by little, day by day, into better habits.  

Sunday, April 19th:

As I was getting ready and making breakfast, I listened to podcasts as usual — the end of Oh No, Ross & Carrie, and the beginning of Baby Geniuses. I enjoy both of these podcasts a lot, and I think they are good things to listen to, although this particular episode of ONRC went on for too long. I have gone through phases of listening to a lot of political podcasts, but I have recently admitted to myself that I’m not that interested in politics, and that is perfectly fine. I think it’s important for a citizen to remain up to date and aware of what is going on, but I have this sort of weird feeling that smart people are obsessed with politics? And I don’t know why I feel that way. There’s nothing especially noble or intelligent about political governance; quite the opposite most of the time. Politicians are often venal, and even if when they aren’t, the more time you spend paying attention to the largely broken processes they attempt to navigate and massage every day, the worse it probably is for your own sense of hope, and certainly for your own creativity. So I’ve let myself off the hook on this one, and now I mostly listen to humor podcasts and weird fictional things.

As I drank my breakfast (smoothie/coffee) and procrastinated at doing something more worthwhile, I spent probably two hours on Twitter, Instagram, and various websites. This is becoming a big problem for me. On Twitter, I follow mostly comedy writers, liberals, feminists, black Twitter, and weird Twitter (and intersections of all of the above), and some local political organizations. I tweeted a lot this morning, as well. On Instagram, I follow a lot of the same people I do on Twitter, plus a TON of visual artists. I am not a visual artist, but because Instagram is a visual medium, it’s nice to follow artists, and I sometimes find it inspiring — if not to create art myself, at least maybe to make my house look nicer (although I never do). I also follow some old school fashion and lifestyle bloggers who I’ve been following for like ten years, and although I do not find that kind of blogging interesting at all anymore, I am interested in these particular people, and invested in their lives at this point. I also embarrassingly have been paying a good bit of attention lately to a certain terrible influencer, who I won’t name because I don’t want to draw the wrong kind of attention here, but you probably know who she is. She is entirely boring, but people are interested in her for a variety of reasons, and they all have complicated explanations for why. I think it’s that she’s sort of the purest example of the sort of woman (blond, thin, pretty, performatively aspirational yet empty enough to be completely non-threatening to anyone) that middle-class Americans have always been culturally encouraged to admire and, if they are women, to emulate, and yet, it’s so apparent that there is no there there. I imagine most people who follow her are thinking, “I can’t believe I thought I needed to be this in high school!” For me personally, there’s something else to it, and after thinking about it so that I could write it down here, I think it is that I spend a lot of time mildly regretting that I had not been more intentional about pursuing my creative dreams in my 20s (I was sort of dabbling in comedy and performance and writing; I had some talent but little intelligence), but at the same time, when I look back over my work and writings from that time, I am horrified by how stupid I was without realizing it (and not just stupid for my age, because I was surrounded by far more intelligent and creative people who have gone on to do amazing things, and there are many preternaturally wise and hilarious babies who are creating right now). Had I had a bigger platform at the time, I fear I would have looked a lot like a less successful this girl. So, it’s a sort of cautionary tale that really just serves to make me feel better about having avoided exposure I’d now regret (albeit through laziness rather than foresight). And also, being able to realize this now is a reminder that I am at least smarter now than I used to be, so I have been growing in some way, even if it feels like I’ve just been atrophying intellectually and creatively ever since I got a real job. I think now that I’ve written this down, I’m ready to let go of paying attention to her. Also, though, I just feel bad for her, and I want to see what happens to her and if she ends up ok or not. Which possibly sounds nobler than it is — am I really just rubbernecking at an accident? I don’t think I wish her harm. Anyway, in non-shame scrolling, two of my favorite comics on Twitter and Instagram right now are Eva Victor and Alyssa Lamparis. They are both brilliantly hilarious.

The first few chapters of “Joshua”, while working on one of my blog posts about the Old Testament.

A chapter of The High Growth Handbook, for work, which I’m finding more interesting than most business books.

Moral Clarity by Susan Neiman, which I’m not really enjoying. This isn’t necessarily why I’m not enjoying it, but I gave some thought while reading this about why I find the left’s current backlash against “identity politics” to be disingenuous. I mean, other than the fact that it is only white people (and mostly white men) who argue that identity politics are a pointless distraction from real social change. And it’s that nobody — no matter how naive — thinks that we are going to transform all human systems overnight. Abrupt revolutions rarely happen in established societies, and even when they do, they never stick; no matter how you come about it, lasting social change always takes forever. So, eschewing identity politics as a mere distraction implies that those who unfairly have less power and influence under the current system should just be content with their marginalization until we have a new system altogether. And that those who are over-represented in the current system shouldn’t be criticized or made to lose anything in the interests of equity and social justice until we have a new system altogether. That this is the same old self-serving bullshit from a different direction seems so obvious to me, I don’t understand why so many smart people are buying into it. There is no getting around our historical legacy of racial oppression! There’s just no scenario in which white people are not going to have to deal with that first, before we can successfully build systems that are more just and more fair! You have to address both things at the same time, and no, just focusing on economic class is not going to cut it — especially not when so many people pretend that they don’t understand that poverty results from lack of access and limited options, and has little to do with whether you have much money at any given time (in reality, they understand this very well). And I can’t take any leader seriously (no matter how far left) who does not get that, and/or who won’t force their followers to acknowledge it.  

“Where outrage itself is exhausted, even despair is impossible. The resulting inertia is not the result of an ideology, postmodern or otherwise. But anyone who wants to oppose it must oppose an ideology that makes inertia the most rational response.”

Finished Baby Geniuses and started listening to Get Rich Nick as I prepared for my run, and as I showered after my run. Nick V is a good pal of mine from Chicago — we came up through iO at the same time and were on a Harold team together for like a year. He’s hilarious and I enjoy his podcast, but I suspect I partly find it so funny because it’s just very…Nick.

I listen to the same Spotify playlist on every run. I made it for running and it’s all exactly what you’d expect someone like me would listen to while running.

I watched an episode of season 2 of “Big Little Lies” while I ate dinner. I thought the first season (while it had its faults) was perfectly cast and pretty impressively honest in how it dealt with domestic violence and rape. I wasn’t interested enough to seek out season 2, but I recently noticed HBO is streaming some shows for free right now on Amazon Prime (which I have finally, finally canceled because #morals but still have through August), so I started watching it, and I still love the cast. I will watch Laura Dern in absolutely anything, and it’s really fun to watch Reese Witherspoon play what I imagine is basically herself.

Listened to more Get Rich Nick while I cleaned up the kitchen and got ready for bed.

Finished the night off with The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty — she’s one of my faves and I’ve read two of these four collections multiple times, but right now am on The Wide Net which is new to me. Read the titular “The Wide Net” and really enjoyed it and then “A Still Moment,” which was boring but made me want to get my computer out and google Audubon. Then fell asleep reading this weird old novel I’m slowly working through called The Man Who Loved Children.

“‘She’s a lot smarter than her cousins in Beulah,’ said Virgil. ‘And especially Edna Earle, that never did get to be what you’d call a heavy thinker. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the ‘C’ got through the ‘L’ in a Coca-Cola sign.’”

Monday, April 20th:

Instagram on the toilet, Get Rich Nick while I performed my ablutions and made coffee, and Instagram stories and Feedly for a bit while I drank it. I spend less time on this today, the awareness of accountability is already working! About Instagram stories — I usually ignore them altogether but every so often I go through phases of watching them. I find them mostly very boring, but because I mostly follow creatives on Instagram, there’s something inspiring about starting my day by watching a bunch of creative people all around the world making things. At least starting a day off this way (which today fortunately is); starting a work day this way makes me feel an intense despair. I also follow a few farmers, and it’s fun to see their daily lives. And also just a bunch of people who live in gorgeous places around the world. And ok, yeah, a couple of hate follows, which for me are people who I just find so unbelievably grating and irritating in every way that I can’t stop watching them — I just can’t believe they exist and yet aren’t entirely consumed with self-loathing. And I think for me it’s like, I find them so utterly obnoxious in every way, but they still all have lots of people in their lives who truly love them, and that’s affirming to me personally, because I often feel like I couldn’t ask anyone to tolerate me for very long unless/until I’ve attained perfection in every sphere, so it’s a nice reminder to me that that’s not really how people operate. In Feedly, I follow 3 Quarks Daily and The Morning News, some political digests, a number of old school bloggers I’ve been following forever (mostly funny ones), a handful of newsletters (mostly by people who used to be bloggers), and some sustainability bloggers to guilt me into making better choices. I probably spend about 90 minutes on all of this? Which is too much time!

More “Joshua.”

I poke around online and find and follow a handful more artists from around the world on Instagram and/or Twitter. These aren’t really very interesting ones, and so I’ll probably unfollow them soon, but they’re a bunch of diverse young people, and lately I feel out of touch with what young people are doing. One funny thing about young people is they have so much energy and so many interests, so all of them are doing like ten really shitty things — they’re making crappy art, they’re writing nonsense, they’re performing dopey shows, AND they’re in a shitty band. And then they get older and they realize that it takes an incredible amount of time and effort and research and angst to do even one thing semi-well, and at that point, they either disappear or focus. Anyway, I mostly stick to Twitter for these — I only follow artists on Instagram whose work I find genuinely appealing; Twitter is more for people I’m interested in hearing more about how they perceive the world, but am not necessarily interested in what they’re making. Also, for Twitter, I use TweetDeck and make lists, so it’s a lot easier to follow and unfollow groups of people than it is on Instagram. Like I’ll make a list of “possibly interesting” and watch it for awhile, and then I might move two people on it to a more permanent list and then just delete the whole list.

Listen to The Read while I make a smoothie.

Two short stories from an old issue of Salt Hill, both terrible.

A chapter of High Growth Handbook, and two of Moral Clarity.

Listened to The Read and Scam Goddess while gearing up for run, walking back from run showering, cooking dinner, and cleaning up the kitchen. Usual playlist on run.

Spent some lost time on Twitter and Instagram while crouching on the floor and shivering in my sweaty running clothes, and then again after dinner while sitting on the couch. I’m starting to realize that I look at social media when what my brain really wants to be doing is just….sitting and staring and not taking in anything.

Three Welty stories, “Asphodel” (enjoyable), “The Winds” (in which Welty is starting to find the voice she will master in The Golden Apples), and “The Purple Hat” (eh). Interrupted, I am embarrassed to admit, by looking at Twitter and my email and also reading some articles about Welty.

The Man Who Loved Children

Tuesday, April 21st:

There are two things I want to stop doing, and I did both today. First, after my alarm went off, I spent 90 minutes hitting the snooze button and also pursuing Twitter and Instagram in bed. My entire goal is to reserve as much time for myself in the evenings as possible, for doing what I want to be doing. And I waste a lot of that limited time in procrastinating what I don’t want to be doing. And this is the first place it happens — lounging in bed staring at my phone instead of getting up and going to work.

Finished Scam Goddess and started The High Low while I got ready, made coffee and my smoothie.

After work, I did the second thing I want to stop doing — I spent 90 minutes sitting on the couch looking at Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and rubbernecking at a long train wreck thread on NextDoor (people are wilding out at this point), procrastinating getting my running kit on and going out for my exercise. All together, this is THREE HOURS of wasted time that could go toward my evenings, where I get to do the stuff I want to do! I’m robbing myself of this valuable time.

I walked for most of my run because I was sore from some exercises I did, and I finished The High Low. When I got home, I listened to Office Ladies, which is not a very good podcast, but it’s just mindlessly comforting to listen to and I like thinking about The Office, which is mindlessly comforting to watch, as I took a shower, made dinner, and cleaned up the kitchen.

The Man Who Loved Children

Wednesday, April 22nd:

Well, I still hit the snooze for an hour but I DIDN’T browse Twitter before I got out of bed. Listened to Lady to Lady while I got ready and made a smoothie and coffee.

Couple of breaks during my workday, during which times I looked at Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

I worked later than usual and it was rainy out, so I didn’t go out for exercise, but I still spent TWO HOURS on the couch mindlessly scrolling (Twitter, Instagram, NextDoor train wreck). So, all told, I still wasted three hours on garbage today.

Listened to Lady to Lady and Your Favorite Band Sucks while I made dinner, ate it, cleaned up after it, and got ready for bed. Your Favorite Band Sucks takes down a lot of bands I genuinely like, and I truly do enjoy hearing people rip apart things that I enjoy for some reason (cultural masochism). This episode, though, is on Billy Joel, which I feel is low-hanging fruit, although it reminds me of when this guy I had a massive crush on in high school got super into Billy Joel (I know) and so I spent a few months listening to him and trying to convince myself I also thought he was brilliant. Listening to this podcast makes me realize how much time I spent trying to convince myself that I liked bands that guys I had a thing for worshipped. I don’t really listen to music very much (note absence of it from this entire week) since podcasts became a thing -- I just always vastly prefer narrative if I have a choice. Either music is too distracting from the thing I’m trying to do, or I have enough bandwidth to listen to a podcast while I’m doing the thing, which I prefer. There’s just very rarely any place in my day where music makes sense. You will never find me getting stoned or drunk and just sitting and listening to music -- I can’t fathom how people do that. Whenever I’ve tried it, I’ve just gotten so angry that I took away the mental capacity to read and am wasting all that excellent reading time just sitting there. I guess I don’t really like turning my brain off. Some people spend all their time trying to turn their brain off, but that actually causes stress in my case; fun for me is more taking a ton of adderall to really get it jumping. I don’t mean to imply by that that I’m smart or I use my brain for anything worthwhile, I really, really don’t. I just like the feeling of being alert and I like thinking my dumb thoughts and following along with narratives of whatever kind. 

The Man Who Loved Children

Thursday, April 23rd:

Success! I hit snooze for 20 minutes only and then I got to work!

Listened to a new podcast by a comic I like while I got ready, and I won’t say which one, because it wasn’t very good, and I don’t want to slam the first episode (I’m sure it will get better).

Very brief Instagram/Twitter/Feedly breaks a couple times throughout the day.

Success again! After work, I only looked at Twitter for 20 minutes before heading out for my run. Usual playlist on run. On my walk back, I recorded an Instagram story.

Listened to old episodes of Sawbones and By the Book (both of which I’m trying to decide if I like or not) and You’re Wrong About while getting ready for run, showering, cooking dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, getting ready for bed. This episode of You’re Wrong About was about Marie Antoinette and was really fun, although I have a hard time with this podcast, because the voice of the woman who hosts it kind of traumatizes me. I do not like criticizing women’s voices and she can’t help her voice or how it affects me, but she has this sort of sarcastic, flat, patronizing tone that makes her sound like a cool girl of the intellectual cast of cool girls who thinks you are the stupidest little try-hard femme ever to be brought before her, and it gives me some unpleasant flashbacks to certain incidents in college. But I like the podcast overall (and her probably!) and so I just try to get over it.

Read “Livvie” by Eudora Welty, and then finished The Man Who Loved Children.

Friday, April 24th:

Hit snooze for a full hour, but then got up. Listened to another first episode of a new podcast by another comic I like that also was not very good while I got ready, etc. and also a bit later in the car as I made a grocery store run.

Couple very short Twitter/Feedly breaks throughout the day.

Usual music playlist on run. I’ve got a podcast playlist of weird fictional stuff that I’m mostly listening to old episodes of from the beginning and many are new to me and I’m trying to decide if I liked them. Today, during the usual periods of podcast listening, I went through episodes of Welcome to Night Vale and The Lost Cat Podcast, both of which I am enjoying, although I have trouble paying attention to Welcome to Night Vale and always realize after I finish an episode that I didn’t really hear any of it.  

Watched 1.25 episodes of Big Little Lies while I ate takeout and spotted my friend Mike playing the marriage counselor in one of them! Having a background in performance makes for very weird TV and movie experiences now, because I’ll pretty often see someone I know well in something. Often, it’s a really happy surprise like this one, but sometimes it’s a really unpleasant one, like when you’re sitting around with your family and you see a guy who dumped you pretty brutally playing the dopey, amiable dad in a commercial and get plunged into despair and self-hatred in the midst of a bunch of oblivious people in your aunt’s living room and start to feel like you are living in a surreal world no one else is actually a part of and also like your personality is fragmenting in what is possibly a psychotic way.  

Started The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I’m really happy to be done with The Man Who Loved Children and on to a new book, and this one looks to be an easy, possibly dumb page-turner, which is well-timed.

Saturday, April 25th:

Snoozed for 40 minutes. Listened to Tanis while coffee etc. Bit of Instagram and Feedly.

While I cleaned the house and deep cleaned my office, I listened to The Bright Sessions, Within the Wires, The Box Podcast, Tracks, and Rabbits.

While I got ready for run, walked back from run, made dinner, cleaned up kitchen, put the laundry away, and got ready for bed, listened to Father Dagon, The Amelia Project, Glasgow Ghost Stories, Middle: Below, The Last Movie, The Van, Video Palace, Blackwood, Dreamboy, Caledonian Gothic, and The London Necropolis Railway. I went through a ton of podcasts today (but also these fiction ones are quite short).

Started to read “At the Landing” by Welty, but I fell asleep super early. I usually save fiction for a couple hours in bed before I go to sleep, because fiction is my favorite thing in the world, but I am so tired by the time I lie down that I often can’t really enjoy it, and fight to stay awake while I try to read and then just fall asleep. So I might need to rethink this timing.

Overall, I think this has been a successful first week of doing this! On Saturday, I had a day off, and I spent basically zero time procrastinating with garbage media! I can really see how my consumption of dumb stuff went down through the week.

[ocdaniel]

KILL THE NOISE (WIP)

Concept I’m playing with of something I’ve been thinking about a lot these days. Here are the first few pages:

SOCIAL MEDIA EPIDEMIC

Socrates believed that written word would harm memory. What has the emergence of social media done to our minds and memories? If the mind acts as a hard drive, keeping what is necessary and deleting what is not… What is it doing to those memories that we document with photos and videos? If Socrates believed written word would damage your memory, what would he think about the effects of new media documentation?

I’ve been working in the digital media space for almost 20 years now and have seen the evolution from geocities web pages, xanga, friendster, myspace, facebook, instagram, snapchat, and now tiktok. Since 2003 i’ve had to stay on top of various platforms as they emerged to capitalize on the online trends for my business. I’ve built websites and online marketing campaigns in the entertainment industry for half of my life now and it’s provided quite the incubator for understanding online human behavior. I started as an intern at Interscope records in their new media division. It was the smallest division for that record label at that time. In just a few years, it took over as the main division and ultimately became the go to department for the future of music. I still remember encoding cd’s into mp3’s and sending them off to Apple Computers in Cupertino in 2003 curious why we were mailing these compressed files over to them. A week later, iTunes was launched and the way we consumed music was forever changed. A complete adoption from analog to digital was under way.

I ended up starting my own digital agency while at Interscope Records and built out a ton of web campaigns for them. I built Lady Gaga’s first website, Gwen Stefani’s first website, Pharell Williams first website, and the list goes on. I probably built all these “first websites” because i entered at a time when websites started to explode. Websites became the digital storefront and the main source of content during those years. All of a sudden, Myspace pages became popular and we started developing social media pages for these entertainers. It was still very new at the time but the engagement was incredible. Next came YouTube, then Facebook and the story continues. I got to see how entertainment and social media collided and had front row seats to the show.

Even though i was building all these digital campaigns, i personally didn’t really get involved with marketing myself. I had a myspace page, xanga blog and accounts to the other platforms but it was really just used for personal use. I never viewed it as a resource to market myself or my business. It was just a way to communicate with close friends and keep in touch online. Fast forward to today, and life as we know it is synonymous with social media.

I saw the rise of YouTube stars and eventually started partnering with them very early on and building online businesses for them. Several of them doing millions of dollars in ecommerce sales with us. Business was great and we got in at a time when the era of social influencers started becoming a trend. Looking back, my interest in the social influencer space was probably just a result of working in the entertainment industry and absorbing the trends that were emerging. I don’t think it was a real thought out process but an eventual evolution to the path i was already on.

“Eventual evolution to the path i was already on….” To me that’s an interesting concept. I kinda feel like life is just a sequence of paths that we initiate or transfer onto. A series of choices to put us on a path that will eventually evolve into a new reality for us. Depending on the choices you make, the output will result accordingly. My path had social media written all over it. I just didn’t know it at the time.

I remember in 2010 right after i had my son, a new platform instagram came out. I had a feeling this platform would do well and i remember having a conversation with my wife and i said “I think i gotta really figure this social media thing out for myself. I’m going to force myself to post once per day and see what happens.” That was the beginning of my personal journey into the “Digital Noise.”

I did just that. I posted at least once every day. I thought perhaps i’d do it for a month and see where it would go from there. One month turned into two, two to six, six to a year and kept going and going. I was posting more content than anyone else i knew that was on social media. There were moms using social media as a way to document their kids and family activities but i was documenting EVERYTHING. Because i forced myself to try and post at least once a day, I developed a thought pattern to capture anything that my mind felt interesting. If i saw a cool sticker on the street, i’d take a picture of that. If my son was spacing out on some patterns, i’d snap a photo. It was literally like i was trying to capture what my brain was thinking. “Oooh, my food looks good, imma take a photo of this!” This was before taking pictures of photos was a thing. I literally forced myself to do social media experiments and started making a habit of making consistent posts on social media.

As i would meet people, they would add my on social and engage for a while but i think after a bit, they would stop because i posted so frequently. I think because i wasn’t a celebrity, it would be a bit creepy if someone i met liked EVERY SINGLE posts i made for a month lol. The funny thing is that i wouldn’t see any engagement for years from someone but i’d run into them IRL (In Real Life) and they would know everything i’ve done for the past few years because they were following my social media account. I’d run into people after not seeing them since college and they would see my son for the first time and say “oh man, i feel like i’ve seen you grow up and i finally get to meet you! I’ve seen you on instagram and facebook for years!” If this isn’t a cultural phenomenon, i don’t know what is. I think this particular example of modern engagement is a transformative shift in the way humans are now living. It’s not a small thing nor should it be looked at as casually.

Over the last few years, i’ve seen way more studies talking about the effects of social media and the increasing need for digital detoxing. As i said earlier, i was at the forefront of all this emerging so to me, social media is equivalent as living in smog my whole life. You just get used to it. Apple released screen time to help you see how much time your spending on your phone. Viral memes would showcase artists drawing social media logos as drug usage showing the addictive natures of these platforms. Awareness of the habit addiction of social media was starting to get more traction. The problem is that people still couldn’t get off the platforms. It was too late. Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and the other platforms successfully recruited the world’s top talent pool of creative minds and built the most addictive platforms on the planet. If you want to see the most consumed products, just look at the stock market for the highest valuations. Money comes in, talent comes in, brainpower is used to make their products more addictive resulting in a larger customer base and ultimately a change in culture behavior.

Behavior shifts any time culture adopts new norms. Today, new norms are dictated by money. Follow the money and it will lead you to where new norms are being developed. Today, technology dominates the global marketplace with companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (FANG) leading the charge. The problem is because these companies are focused on increasing revenue and increasing stock prices, their motivation is singular focused. “How can we get more users and get them spending more time with our product.” Drug dealers ask the exact same question.

DIGITAL ADDICTION

Like and hearts. Today that is our culture. I work with hundreds of social media influencers and one of the questions i like asking is… “Does it get depressing?” I’m shooting 100% with answers of YES! Even though social media influencers are making careers of broadcasting their lives online, the consequence is almost always a loss of self identity. They have to constantly keep up to date with their followers and are no longer on their own schedules. If they miss a day or two posting, followers get impatient and start up a ruckus. I’ve heard influencers tell me, “It’s like i’m not really living my own life anymore because i have to be something my audience wants.” Their social accounts may have started innocent and authentic at the beginning but over time, the pressures to continue momentum takes a toll. I’m not a social influencer and i even had those feelings. I’d get a ton of likes on one post, then another wouldn’t engage. It was make me question, why would one type of post get hearts and likes while the others wouldn’t. It’s human behavior to want to be accepted and held in esteem. Maslow’s third and fourth rung right after your primal survival needs of living and safety.

Physiological needs - food, water, warmth, rest

Safety needs - security, safety, health

Belonging needs - relationships, friends, community

Esteem needs - respect, status, accomplishment

Self actualization - fulfillment of one’s potential

It’s no wonder that as a culture, we’ve flocked to these social platforms to fulfill our belonging and esteem needs. At what cost though?

As a human species, if we’ve sorted out our primal needs to survive by figuring out resources to eat and have shelter, the next eventual stage would be to make friends and get respect among our colleagues. In the past, we would need to go to events, functions and meet with people to do this but with the emergence of online communities, online gaming and general online engagement, we can get the same feeling of fulfillment with social media. While i feel that social media was intended for something very positive and useful, it’s really taken on a new shape with the amount of content that is now being released.

See, social media has now successfully created an online ecosystem of users that engage on a daily basis. This is now a common habit for a majority of the world today. I’m not sure if the originators of the social media platforms had any idea that their creations would have as much content on them as it is today. With more content, comes more moderation, with more moderation come more control and so on. The funny thing is, human behavior has patterns and they continue to emerge over the history of man kind. We love getting more of the things we love. You put a kid in a candy shop and he’ll eat until he gets sick. The good thing for kids is that we have parents and lack of funds that will cut off our supply of candy. Social media is free. You can consume all you want. The genius minds creating these companies are also paid very well to make sure you consume all you want and not only that… they try to make the content even more addictive.

A few years back, i started working on a new mobile app called “Binge Mix” with someone from the entertainment industry. The idea was that finding things on Netflix to watch has become so time consuming that we wanted to make it more “efficient” to binge with your significant other. Looking back on this concept, i’m glad it didn’t work because i don’t know how i would feel today knowing i made binge watching more accessible. Binge watching… when did that become a thing? We have so much disposable time now that we sit and watch addictive shows 4-8 hours at a time now? I’m guilty of this phenomenon myself. When my wife got into the show “Lost” our common phrase was.. “Just one more and then we will sleep.” If you really think about it, the days when we had 13 channels on a tv box to now thousands of shows at your finger tips is a result of blitzscaling media companies that have tapped into an addictive human behavior. Legalized media drugs.

Humans can’t help themselves. It’s our nature to consume more of what we want if it’s available to us. There is a dopamine hit in the brain that rewards us like a pavlovian dog every time it gets a treat. You might feel you have free will but every time you watch another video, click another link, or start another show…. You throw your freedom out the window and have become a slave to that platform. I don’t use that word lightly either. A SLAVE TO THE BINGE. To “binge” is synonymous with “addiction” and that is now the culture we live in today. The era of digital addiction. The question i have, is WHAT IS ALL THIS DOING TO OUR BRAINS?!?!?!

DIGITAL DETOX

Noise. Too much noise.

A few years back, i started a new experiment with my company. My wife would probably consider me a workaholic and i really have a hard time shutting my mind off from work. I get obsessive about things that catch my interest and it’s my nature to work hard. It would be really hard for me to leave my company operations for more than a few days for any time of vacation or time off. Even when i’d leave on vacation, i’d be on my phone checking things, writing new ideas down, taking down pages of notes on strategy and just not being able to relax. I started making it a point to intentionally power down my phone when i’d take a break at a certain point. It would suck going on a vacation, then working on vacation only to come back the same as i left. The hard part was trusting that the business wouldn’t crash and burn without me being there.

I started realizing that it would take me about a week to really disconnect from work. I considered the first week just a work detox to get my brain to settle. So i did my first 2 week vacation and turned my phone off for a week at a time. I would throw my phone into the hotel safe or dresser drawer and shut it off for a week. That to me was insane but i figured, if it takes me a week to decompress.. Perhaps turning it off completely will speed the process up. It did!

It was like a magical antidote for my workaholic pace of entrepreneurship. Turn the phone off, the brain starts forming back into a natural state. It freaked me out a bit but at the end of the week, i’d check in and see what was going on. I’m not going to lie and say everything was perfect. I had several fire drills and tons of anxiety doing this but i kept trying. After doing a week no phone, i tried 2 weeks. I would try these breaks over the next few years and would eventually get to 3-4 weeks without using my phone. Sounds almost impossible with the way the world works today but I was so desperate to recover from my overthinking at work that i made it happen. Well, actually my wife probably made it happen for me! hahah. I think she was getting tired of our vacations getting ruined with emotions and phone calls from work.

I know this isn’t possible for everyone to do right away but to me it was a goal. How long can i be without my phone and just connect with nature. In the 80’s we didn’t have smartphones and survived, we could probably do it today…. It’s just not “normal” anymore. The thing i started realizing when i’d do these digital detoxes, my brain would change. The noise would start to fade and my thoughts would get clearer. My ideas didn’t seem so cluttered and i was able to THINK!

The brain is supposed to be able to retain 7 numbers at a time as our working memory capacity. If this holds true with numbers, what is going on with our brains as we are saturating it with content? Is it deleting old files? Getting rid of old memories? I personally want to keep a lot of good memories and hopefully keep my brain running at top performance for the rest of my life. My instinct tells me that binge watching 4 hours of a Netflix show is definitely going to alter the way my brain works. It’s going to tell my brain… “If your focusing on this for 4 hours of your waking day, it must be important and i need to use processing power for this.” Even though we feel that binge watching helps us to disconnect and zone out, i’m pretty sure the opposite is happening. We are filling our brain hard drive with more stuff to process and it’s probably not good for our overall production as a human being. 

More content makes for more noise. More noise makes it harder to focus. Focus is what helps us achieve great results. Perhaps the reason why we are not getting the progress in life we want is because there has been a massive influx of content that has become way to easy to become addicted to. I think of it like trying to play basketball while drunk. The more you drink, the less effective your body functions perform and the more horrible choices you make on the court. Think of digital content as the alcohol and life as the basketball game. If you want to live more effectively, reduce the noise.

[bangkokjacknews]

Tourist suffers CHEMICAL BURNS from Bangkok Henna Tattoo

A holidaymaker felt "claustrophobic" in her own skin after a £23 black henna tattoo in #Thailand left her with a foot-long chemical burn and oozing blisters.

Amanda Drish-Adolf decided to get a large intricate design in Bangkok during an pre-children "bucket list" trip to with her husband Nick Adolf last month. Violinist Amanda, 30, had a half-sleeve mandala-style design inked on her left arm - from the top of her shoulder down to her elbow. Hours later, the black pigment flaked off and Amanda flaunted the dark design on her arm as she and IT programmer Nick, 30, explored the capital.

Amanda Drish-Adolf gets the tops of her blisters scraped off in hospital (Image: Kennedy News and Media) But two days later Amanda spotted she had developed a chemical burn on her arm that erupted in countless oozing blisters, leaving her needing hospital treatment. Amanda was left with a 13in by 5in chemical burn that staff treated by popping the blisters and then scrubbing off the top of the fluid-filled bumps. Concerned medics then applied antiseptic cream, bandaged the affected area and asked her to return for two follow-up hospital appointment, which in total cost £530.

Violinist Amanda's arm after getting the black henna tattoo in Bangkok (Image: Kennedy News and Media) It's believed that the burn was caused by paraphenylenediamine (PPD) - a chemical commonly found in black henna and dark hair dyes. Amanda, who is also a manager of education and community engagement manager at an orchestra, was forced to cancel plans they had to rock climb, swim, snorkel and kayak and instead sat on the beach or in their hotel room watching Netflix. Amanda, from the US city of Des Moines, Iowa, said: "We'd really looked forward to it, it was a bucket list trip we'd picked specifically because of the beaches. "Looking at all those crystal clear waters and knowing I couldn't swim and do the things I wanted to do was heartbreaking, this was our big Asia trip we were taking before having kids.

The US woman suffered a foot-long chemical burn on her left arm (Image: Kennedy News and Media) "I was hoping to go rock climbing, snorkelling and kayaking on our trip but couldn't. Nick got to go snorkelling and kayaking while I sat on the beach or in the hotel watching Netflix. "He felt guilty but I still wanted him to experience everything he could. "I got full-on anxiety looking down at my arm and seeing what it looked like, it was disgusting. "I've had anxiety in the past and luckily I had the forethought of bringing my meds with me. "I was also having a lot of claustrophobic issues. Because my skin was so swollen I was claustrophobic in my skin and then having my arm wrapped tightly was making me very anxious. "Also you want to have special holiday times with your husband and when you feel disgusting that doesn't really happen." Amanda visited a pop-up vendor near their hotel on January 24 and paid £23 for the intricate design that took an hour to complete. Amanda said it felt as though her skin was "burning" as the intricate design was painted onto her skin, but was assured it was a normal sensation. She said: "I've had large henna, both true henna and black henna, tattoos two or three other times, but I've never had this reaction before. "It felt like it was burning as it was being painted on, like the gel you put on when you have a sore muscle that feels hot and cold at the same time. "I used Google Translate on my phone to tell the person painting it on that it was burning and was told 'that's normal', the tingling stopped after it dried. "Later that night I flaked off the paint and it looked great, I loved the piece, but it was really dark.

Amanda tries to relax on a beach in Thailand after her arm was bandaged (Image: Kennedy News and Media) "Most of the time when henna is done it stains your skin red or light brown but this was black. "It was fine for 24 hours, I had no reaction, but the next day my arm started feeling hot to touch and little blisters popped up. "I was concerned as I thought maybe I'd got sunburn on it, and when I popped the blisters clear liquid came out of them. "In the evening the larger part of my arm that was coloured started to blister and that's when I started to do my research about skin reactions to black henna. "That's when I realised we had a problem." That evening the couple visited a pharmacy and picked up saline solution, anti-itch cream and a steroid cream to treat the area.

The red markings on the American woman's arm as they began to fade (Image: Kennedy News and Media) Amanda diligently washed the area in bottled water, applied the creams and wrapped the affected areas in bandages for two days. Despite taking care of the affected area, the couple realised Amanda needed hospital treatment on January 28th when her hands, feet and arms started swelling up. Amanda said: "I was washing the thing constantly, keeping it wrapped and out of the sun. "My hands and feet were swollen and when I was letting my arm air on the Tuesday evening I looked down and on the underside of my elbow there was a grapefruit-sized swelling. "It was massive and it had a hard core in the middle. "Once we saw that specific localised swelling we knew we had to go to the emergency room."

Amanda had a half-sleeve mandala-style design inked on her left arm (Image: Kennedy News and Media) The couple went to a nearby hospital at 10.30pm where Amanda's arm was cleaned and dressed in bandages that would help draw out the infection. The following day, January 29, Amanda's blisters were popped and cleaned using cotton pads and antibiotic solution and then carefully wrapped in bandages. She said: "I was pretty freaked out by it all. Everyone likes their arms, but I'm also a musician so I really need my arms to be highly functional. "I was told the swelling was a symptom of the infection and that the blisters were going to be popped. "Not only did she pop the blisters but she scrubbed all the tops of the blisters off with saline and antibiotic solution. "It took about half an hour to do, the pain was just awful and I was crying. "Every time she took a cotton pad off my arm it was covered in black, my body was rejecting the dye." After three appointments at the hospital staff, told her to keep the wound bandaged and dry until the infection had cleared up. Now home, Amanda is urging people to avoid black henna and only get natural henna artwork providing the artist can tell you the ingredients in it. She said: "Before this happened to me I didn't know what PPD was. "Natural henna should smell nice and you should be able to ask what ingredients are in it, if you can't then I wouldn't recommend getting it done on vacation. "It's doing amazing now. Right now it looks like the opposite of a black henna tattoo - instead of black, it's white. "I've been taking really good care of my arm by putting vitamin e oil, coconut oil and other really high quality serums and moisturisers on it. "I've also been taking omega 3 fish oils and vitamin d, so I'm also doing internal stuff that's good for my skin - it doesn't look like it's going to be a long-term scar. "This story is one that will be told every time we talk about Thailand, which is a bummer. "I felt guilty that I monopolised our time and we weren't able to do some of our activities because of my arm. "At the end of the day we got to see what a Thai hospital looks like - and not many people can say that." British Skin Foundation spokesperson Lisa Bickerstaffe said: "Tourists don’t always realise that ‘black henna’ temporary tattoos contain para-phenylenediamine (PPD) – a substance found in hair dye – which can lead to blistering, burns, scarring and even severe allergic reactions when used on the skin in this way. "In 2018, three quarters of people surveyed by the British Skin Foundation were not aware that ‘black henna’ contains PPD and that when used on the skin it can be dangerous, as well as drastically increasing the risk of allergic reactions to hair dye in the future. "The British Skin Foundation strongly recommends avoiding ‘black henna’ temporary tattoos at all costs. "It’s not worth risking your skin health now or in the future, in addition to ruining your holiday." – You can follow BangkokJack on Instagram, Twitter & Reddit. Or join the free mailing list (top right) Please help us continue to bring the REAL NEWS - PayPal Read the full article