#and nobody looks like that. animation actually became realistic and they can now include the imperfections that people have on their skin

[silver-horse]

lol

[considerthehorses]

Heterosexuality Is A Misleading Term For "No Homo"-Moids. Men Do Not Feel Attracted To Women, They Do Not Like Women, And They Do Not Love Women.

1.) Men are not attracted to women.

Men constantly talk about how disgusting vaginas look, smell, taste, and how much they hate the idea of going down on women. If they have the choice, they prefer female genitals that are mutilated: either via "old-fashioned" techniques like in some African and Islamic communities or via "modern" cosmetic surgeries that some women in porn have performed on them. The goal of this is always a kind of sexless, "genitalless", pedophilic look of a pink little slit.

Men also hate any amount of natural body hair on women although (or because!) it is a sign of sexual maturity. Men hate normal amounts of body fat on women although (or because) it is a sign of sexual maturity and fertility as well.

Men want babies with big tits.

And what do they want to sexually do to these babies with big tits? Fuck them in the ass, fuck them in the throat, beat, rape, torture, and humiliate them until they cry.

Male sexuality is nothing but fetishized violence against women. They love anal sex because it is hurtful to women and doesn't give women a chance to orgasm themselves. And the moment they realized that some women actually enjoy giving blowjobs have they come up with "throat fucking" and "deep throat": they HATE women, they HATE female bodies, and they HATE the idea that a woman could enjoy sex.

It is often said that "Porn tells lies about women, but it tells the truth about men". And the truth is that if you take the brutal anal/throat penetration out of male sexuality, what's left is men casually beating, hurting, whipping women. The distinction between "vanilla" and "kink" doesn't make sense in the case of men. It's just a matter of degree. "Vanilla" men want to rape women and beat them - "kinky" men want to rape women and beat them and electroshock and water torture and mutilate them.

Men are not attracted to actual female bodies. Men only enjoy the idea of DESTROYING female bodies: both through absurd beauty norms that effectively destroy these bodies and turn them into absurd dolls and through sexual practices that are always about hurting, beating, whipping, raping, anal fucking, throat fucking female bodies.

Men are MONSTERS. There is some creepy shit in nature: viruses and predators and parasite larvae that eat their host alive. And, of course, other animals also rape women. But nothing is as cruel and disgusting as the human moid: at least a lion doesn't masturbate over the idea of a female lion being torn to pieces by an elephant or whatever. A predator just wants to eat you, a coronavirus just enter a cell nucleus and replicate ... but the human moid gets erections and masturbates to the thought of women being humiliated and tortured and hurt until they cry and bleed or even die.

2.) Men do not like women.

Men do not feel attracted to real women. And men do obviously not LIKE women. They hate women so much that the moment women like something, men hate it: if women like flavored-coffee drinks from Starbucks, men hate it BECAUSE women like it. (As if bacon and bacon memes are funnier or better than women making memes about pizza or enjoying pumpkin-spice lattes!)

If women join a fandom, men leave because the moment women like it, they start hating it. Some sociologist has coined the term "gender pollution": it is a sexist term itself but it describes a real phenomenon: the more women enter a particular space (e.g. a profession or a hobby), the more it is "polluted", the less it is valued and the less people in this job get paid. I think in some Eastern European countries this is actually the case with doctors even: but as there are many women in this field - both among nurses as well as among doctors - doctors are also not valued anymore.

The moment women became good in school was the moment boys increasingly dropped out. Men now associate doing your homework and reading books with women - and they rather ruin their lives than to be engaged with something women like! So instead of doing their homework are they now playing video games 24/7. But now women have obviously started playing video games as well. So now they become mass shooters because they hate the idea of female video game characters.

3.) Men do not love women

Winston Churchill famously said that you have the Germans either at your feet or at your throat.

Now, I’m not sure about the Germans, but I think that this is definitely true for males: they are always either at your throat or at your feet. Males fall in "love" with e-girls … but the moment they find out that those women already have boyfriends they want to kill them. (I’m not even sure if I have to put "love" in quotation marks here because the idea of a REAL love in contrast to quotation-marks-love feels a bit like the idea that only "men" in quotation marks are toxic and shitty while REAL men are all these heroes and these supermen…)

I think pornsickness and “lovesickness” are, in a way, two sides of the same coin. “Love” feels like the surrogate religion of a secular age. I’m not a Buddhist but I agree with this part from a text, explaining why this religion is critical of the concept of “romantic love”:

The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. It is held to be solid when nothing else is, and though it frequently gives way and dumps them into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability. No matter that this reputation is illogical — it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in any book. Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity. What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching? The search for love — the sublime, the nebulous, the consuming — remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred. When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love. With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love, or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/price/bl124.html

I couldn’t agree more. Just consider how many males murder others and/or end their own lives because of love. Just like being pornsick makes it hard for males - and for women - to develop a realistic understanding of human sexuality with its possibilities and limitations, being “lovesick” makes it hard for males - and for women - to develop a realistic understanding of human relationships. People these days expect love to do what previous generations expected miracles and gods to do. “All you need is love” vs “All you need is Jesus”.

There are also studies that show that males fall in love easier and earlier than women. And they surely fall out of love easier as well. Males are like the flickering flame of a candle that burns brightly for a second and then goes out again. This is why it’s so super common for women to think that they do not know their husbands anymore because they feel that these males are completely different persons suddenly.

Males can be lovesick and pornsick at the same time. They masturbate to torture porn in one moment, and the next moment they write a 20-page love letter to some e-girl and emotionally vomit all over them, confessing their undying love. (Many women receive as many rape threats as they receive cringe love letters in which males emotionally vomit all over them.) And one moment later do they already want to kill those terrible “e-thots” again: males are always either at your throat or at your feet: the romantic concept of "love" is a literary construct at best and a religious tool at worst but it's simply not true that men are able to "love" women in the sense women dream about being loved.

Men are not attracted to actual women.

Men do not like actual women.

Men do not love actual women.

PS - Quote from the Reddit Comments:

Regarding love, this is hormonal thing. The feeling of romantic love, of falling in love, "the honey moon period" etc is caused by hormone called Oxytocin. Oxytocin induced social bonding including bonding with sexual partner, and maternal love. It is found in women in far higher amounts than in men and it is major reason why women exhibit more pro-social behavior, are less selfish, more empathic, better parents, more generous, more trusting, more romantic etc. Men do not normally have much Oxytocin, but they get a temporal boost when they fall in love, which makes them bond to their partner and mellows them down, making them less dangerous and more attentive partner and father. But the effect is always temporal and only lasts few months.

PROOF : The results showed that OT plasma levels (pg ̸ ml, mean ± SD) were significantly higher in women than in men (4.53 ± 1.18 vs 1.53 ± 1.19, p ˂ 0.001).

[katyatalks]

MP100 “Characters & Such Official Guidebook” - Interviews ENG Translation

The Characters & Such Official Guidebook was released mid-April 2019 as a guide for all things related to MP100 season 1 & 2. The guidebook also includes interviews with the voice actors of the main five characters (Mob, Reigen, Dimple, Ritsu, Teru), followed by interviews with Director Tachikawa, Series Coordinator Seko, Character Designer Kameda & finally with ONE himself.

Contains a bunch of interesting trivia and conversations (eg. Tachikawa and Kameda looked at fan art before they began the anime, an alternative past for Reigen was once considered, plenty of references to S3 & broccoli arc.) This is a pretty long read, so please enjoy!

Original thread on Twitter here. TN = Translator’s Note "Bold denotes a direct quote of a question,” & “italics denotes a direct quote of an answer.” I’m a little bit inconsistent with where I decide to give full question and answers rather than summaries here...

--

ITOU SETSUO [Mob]

On being asked how he approached voicing Mob during the audition, he says that he went for something flat as Mob doesn’t really inspire “main character” vibes in him.

He takes it as a compliment when he is told that he’s like Mob as a person.

Initially he didn’t think too much of himself in the role as Mob but after being told by co-stars just how well his voice and performance suit the character, he began to believe it too.

On being asked what’s so charming about Mob, Itou says his honesty, and that he doesn’t take a negative viewpoint. Brings up that when Mob is against a foe, rather than “are you my enemy?” he’ll ask “what are you doing here?”.

Itou’s favourite character is Teru, as he thinks the way Teru behaves with his powers originally is the most realistic in terms of standard human nature.

He says the same thing applies to Shou & Touichirou.

The fact that Mob is different is his strength; the fact that he doesn’t think of his powers as anything special. He gives credit to Reigen for Mob thinking this way about his powers.

“At first, Mob-kun suffered because of his powers. But then he meets shishou, who tells him that his powers are just one part of him - this is linked to why Mob-kun is so charming now.”

Mob considers “you shouldn’t use your powers against people” a given fact.

Itou originally found it difficult to know how far he should go adding emotion to Mob’s voice.

Since MP100 is the first show Itou has been a regular & leading part for, he wanted to be the first person in the recording booth for episode 1, and as a result ended up arriving 45 minutes early.

Asked about his favourite scenes from S1 & S2, he mentions the scene that’s stayed with him is when Mob first appears in S1E1.

Has a few scenes he mentions as favourites; he loves the whole Teru vs Mob fight, but especially when Teru is shouting while using his powers as he recalls the passion Matsuoka [Teru] had when recording it.

He mentions when Mob saves Ritsu in S1E8, also mentions that’s something they covered in the stage play, and that it makes him emotional thinking about it.

Says he loves the scene when Mob shouts “Shishou!” as Reigen is ‘killed’ by Sakurai in S1E11.

Mentions S2E1 as well. “Mob-kun doesn’t express his emotions much, but he does then. Showing his powers to another while crying. I remember being glad when I first read the script for episode 1 as it’s a scene I wanted to do. I think of it as the moment Mob-kun starts to change.”

When asked about the stage play, says he thinks the Mob he portrays in the stage play is slightly different to the one he portrays in the anime.

Asks the fans to please continue to watch over MP100 and Mob’s growth, and it would be good if we could all continue to support MP100 as much as we can, from a stage play angle as well.

SAKURAI TAKAHIRO [Reigen]

Sakurai says if he were to have powers he’d probably use them to commit wrongdoings with.

Asked on his impressions of Reigen, says he sees Reigen as an “unbalanced person”, but thought he was mysterious in season 1.

Thought of Reigen as a fraud and not a good person in S1, but with S2 we see his uchizura (private, more ‘real’ self) and real emotions, so his feelings re: Reigen changed from S1 to S2. “It was hard to know who he was, back in season 1.”

“So you felt pretty strongly that he was simply a fraud?” Sakurai; “Well, he lies to people, but at the same time he does actually put some work in (laughs). Clients go home feeling refreshed, so he definitely gives a good massage.”

Calls Reigen eloquent, and that the things that he says are sound. Calls him a good speaker. Brings up his speech to the “claw guys” (likely referencing S1E12). “He can be irresponsible, but he’s got a mysterious intelligence.”

Says that from the middle to the end of S2 there would be as many as 20-30 people in the studio.

Asked about his favourite episodes S1+S2 inclusive, says S2E1 and that the transition from the end of S1 to S2 is smooth with it. “A really fantastic episode”, “you can also see signs of Mob’s growth.”

“On that note, when Reigen hears that Mob got a girlfriend...” Sakurai; “It’s a shock (laughs). His mind goes blank. ‘There’s no way Mob managed to get a girlfriend,’ is what’s running through his mind. He doesn’t celebrate it. Actually, it’s an upsetting thing for him - since Mob would be all over her, Reigen’s business would end up in trouble (laughs).”

Sakurai describes the “Shishou and Deshi” relationship that Mob & Reigen originally have as something that’s quite fabricated and disregards a lot of truths.

“Reigen was an adult floating in limbo for some time, and starts a business in a calculating move. And it starts going well once he meets Mob in their chance encounter.”

“The nickname ‘Mob’ signifies him as a boy without a presence, and yet it’s from that point that Mob starts to grow, and something like a desire for recognition sprouts within him.” [TN: This appears to be implying that Reigen began the ‘Mob’ nickname.]

Sakurai considers Reigen arc 1) a story in which Mob's popularity skyrockets 2) a story in which we see a more raw side of Reigen and start to like him more.

On being asked if there’s any part of Reigen that he sees in himself, starts off with saying that he tends to give out advice to those younger than him (he’s in his 40s and implies he can’t compare himself to someone who’s young in their 20s). Then after knowing what’s running through Reigen’s head in S2; “I suppose we do overlap in one way or another.”

Sakurai says he was very much one of the “mob” (a nobody) in his 10s.

Finally, asked to give a message to fans; “I’d like to do a Season 3, so please continue to love Mob Psycho 100.”

OOTSUKA AKIO [Dimple]

Asked about his thoughts on MP100, Ootsuka says that the art style of the manga caught his eye - he thought it was fun that the anime doesn’t lose the style of the manga while making it more stylish.

Finds in modern manga, the trend is an ordinary kid will get powers by some chance & the adventure starts from there, but found it interesting that in MP100 Mob has had powers since he was tiny & the adventure begins after he comes crying to Reigen with “I don’t know what to do”.

Also enjoys how Mob isn’t exactly the “main character” type. Thinks that it’s a breath of fresh air in the shounen manga genre.

On being asked about Dimple’s charm, Ootsuka; “He’s bad, but you can’t hate him.”

Says that Dimple is ugly but that’s fun, since most of the time mascot characters are cute.

When asked what was running through his mind when preparing for the role of Dimple, he says “dishonesty, slyness.” Acting as if he’s smarter than people but he actually isn’t.

“Speaking of dishonest/sly adults, I feel Reigen is a different type.” Ootsuka; “I’d say Reigen is more dishonest/sly than Dimple... nah, actually they’re about the same. (Laughs)”

When asked if there was anything he finds difficult about playing Dimple, he says that with other acting jobs he finds it hard to play a character where he can’t connect, but “there’s a similar kind of guy to Dimple that lives inside me. So I just go, ‘oi, come out’ (laughs)”.

Says he thinks we all have a bit of Dimple in us.

Ootsuka is also the narrator in MP100. Said that originally he felt there was a difference in the way he played Dimple & the narrator, but that difference kind of became smaller.

He was told to no longer put on a voice that sounds similar to the person Dimple is possessing for season 2, which disappointed him as he wanted to put on a Mob-like voice for when Dimple possesses Mob in S2E4.

Discussion of how director didn’t like Hoshino’s [Serizawa] original takes as they were too silly. [TN: this is mentioned again by Inoue [Suzuki] and Hoshino [Serizawa] in this interview.]

He recalls bursting into laughter over Iwasaki Hiroshi’s performance as Ishiguro in S1E12.

“Reigen becomes able to see Dimple as well in the last bit of Season 1, so he gains another conversation partner.” Ootsuka; “Reigen and Dimple, they both view the other as unnecessary (laughs). So the back-and-forth they have with that in mind is pretty fun.”

Asked about his favourite scenes or episodes, he says the end of S1E3. Dimple’s “Great morning, isn’t it, partner?” line really stuck with him.

Compares Dimple to a dog by Mob’s side.

“Dimple has the kind of face that you just might want to slap (laughs).” Ootsuka; “Well, that’s why I was careful to not give him a too audacious manner of speaking.” Says the interesting thing about his line of work is really having to think about how to say lines.

Also voiced Dimple for the live action adaptation [TN: AKA Netflix ver]. Says it was fun but found it a massive shame that he wasn’t able to bounce lines off of anyone.

“I really didn’t do much in middle school. I was just a chuunibyou (laughs).”

When asked to give a message to MP100 fans, “You guys wanna see more, right? There’s still more to adapt, isn’t there ;) (laughs). So, we can make a sequel to S2 a reality if everyone works together. A ‘if you speak up, then your dreams might come true!’ vibe (laughs).”

He makes a sneaky reference to Broccoli Arc and wanting to see it animated.

IRINO MIYU  [Ritsu]

On being asked his initial thoughts on MP100, Irino states he originally thought it was a lighthearted jokey manga based on the art style and the way the story was introduced, so he was surprised as the story progressed.

States that Ritsu is a relatable character with the issues that he faces (eg wanting something that’s out of reach so hiding your want).

Asked about anything that was difficult to perform as Ritsu, he states his two-sided nature; his general honour-student self and the other side of him.

Says that when Ritsu enters into his darker side, rather than playing some kind of bad guy Ritsu is simply more frank with how he expresses himself. “He lets the emotions in his heart be heard one by one.”

Irino is asked if he personally admires Mob, to which he replies that he’s jealous of the fact that Mob is so unbeatable.

He says Ritsu must also have the experience of looking at Mob and thinking something like, “Compared to him, I’m just...”

States he himself, Ritsu, and just about anyone has likely yearned to become something overwhelming, but we don’t believe in our ability to achieve that.

Following this, interviewer comments that Mob carries feelings of unease in his heart even though he’s so unbeatable. Irino comments that something fun for him with MP100 is that Mob doesn’t really realise how unbeatable he is.

Something that Ritsu admires about his brother is that he doesn’t show off the fact that he’s unbeatable.

“Even with powers, there’s plenty of things you can’t do.” Irino; “Such as not being able to confess to the girl you like (laughs).”

“Seems like even if he abused his powers he’d still be able to turn heads.” Irino; “Because he’s charming - that’s something good about him. That’s why everyone loves him, and why he gives off main-character-of-a-shounen-manga vibes.”

Asked about his favourite scenes/episodes from seasons 1 & 2, Irino says around when Ritsu's powers are awakened in season 1. He found it interesting to watch how his heart becomes disturbed.

"He finally obtained the thing he'd been longing for, but everything around him that was once so calm gets thrown into disarray."

He also liked it when Ritsu stands atop the telephone pole in S1E7.

Speaking in terms of Power Rangers & character colour association, ever since he was a kid Irino has admired characters that are more blue or black rather than red.

Interviewer comments that Ritsu holds the ‘blue’ role in MP100.

After Mob & Ritsu reconcile, Irino states that he feels Ritsu has come to understand his brother more.

“How should I put it; Ritsu is overprotective, or there’s a side to him that’s too fussy over his big brother...” Irino; “but that kind of brotherly love is pleasant to see.”

“In Season 2, Ritsu and Shou go through a joint struggle.” Irino; “Shou’s father has tremendous powers, and he has one fear with that; he doesn’t know when his father will go on a rampage. Their circumstances are similar, in that sense.”

“Truth is, in parts MP100 is quite like your typical shounen manga.” Irino replies that there’s a bunch of great lines in the manga, and importance hidden within casual words.

Following this response he’s asked if there’s certain line(s) from MP100 that have stuck with him, to which Irino replies quite a few of Reigen’s. “During the last part of season 1 when he marches into Claw’s hideout, you get to hear a lot of his thoughts. It’s hard to tell if he’s being truthful with the things he says or if he’s lying, and on top of that he says quite a few important things. That unbalance is interesting.”

“The broadcast of season 2 has already come to an end...” Irino replies that he’d like the MP100 anime to continue and adapt the manga to the very end.

“I’m sure all the fans feel the same way.” Irino; “Everyone worked together as one to create the MP100 anime. For it to continue, we need your support; so please continue to give that to us.”

MATSUOKA YOSHITSUGU [Teru]

Asked his initial thoughts on MP100, Matsuoka says it was that it’s a piece that you can easily empathise with; regardless of if you’re in primary school, middle school, high school, an adult, an old man or woman...

Matsuoka thinks of the anime as something you watch and go, “I’ll try my best tomorrow, too.”

Matsuoka voices both Teru and Tokugawa in MP100. He was first offered the voice of Teru, and then it was decided he’d also voice Tokugawa.

It’s brought up that Tokugawa appears earlier in the show than Teru. “They’re two very different people, so in that sense performing both roles was easy. If they’d been similar characters I think there would be some confusion.”

Regarding Tokugawa, Matsuoka describes him as being quite firmly in the “student council” role with how strict and resolute his character is, in a way that Matsuoka himself very much isn’t.

Describes him as a cool-headed person, but given the way he interacts with Kamuro and is able to persuade him, says he has a hot-headed element to him as well. Matsuoka uses this as an example of how MP100 shows us the multifacetedness of human nature.

Regarding his other character, Teru; describes him as the personification of ‘chuunibyou’. “I think of him as the embodiment of the answer to the question, ‘if you had powers, what would you do?’”

One line he still remembers from S1 is Teru’s “Muscle training? Studying? That’s for ordinary people!” Matsuoka says that there’s a part of him that agreed with that line, and he says that if he were to get powers he’d likely be as conceited as Teru was.

States that Mob’s “From my perspective you’re just ordinary” line also stuck with him.

“From S1E5?” Matsuoka; “Yes - and then Teru replies, 'shut up!', and strangles Mob.” He says that he was really able to project his own emotions during this part and mix them with Teru’s own.

“People can’t change so easily” - Matsuoka says the things that Teru was saying to Mob, he was also saying to himself, like looking in a mirror. Uses this as an example of Teru’s own multifaceted nature.

Matsuoka says that the original Teru we see (who the interviewer describes as having a "poisonous nature" & putting on airs) is simply playing the role of what he considers to be an 'ideal' person, but then that comes away and we're left with the real Teru.

Interviewer makes a joke that Teru gets his personality trimmed along with his hair.

Is asked about Mob & Teru's rivalry, and says "No way, no way - there's no way they're /actually/ rivals." Says the power difference between Mob and Teru is way too big for that to actually be the case - "compared to Mob, Teru is ordinary."

Calls MP100 a work from which you realise "Everyone is a hero, and everyone is ordinary".

Asked on his opinion on MP100 season 2; says that there's more moments that get to you emotionally than season 1. Brings up S2E8 as an example (when Mob's house burns). "Say if that was actually Mob's family who burned in there... I think he'd destroy the world."

Asked about his favourite scenes from season 1 & 2, he says (as previously mentioned) the part where Mob says “From my perspective you’re just ordinary”. He also likes when Teru says to Onigawara, "it must be sad to be ordinary."

He likes the whole of S1E4, and calls Dimple a "famous-saying-production-machine".

Continuing on the topic of Dimple, interviewer says that Dimple is an ally, but teeters between good and evil. Matsuoka; “Setting aside his actions for a moment - the things that he says are essentially evil (laughs). He tries to tempt Mob and the other characters.”

He is asked if he has anything to say to fans of MP100. Matsuoka; “Season 2 is over, and now you’re holding this Character Guidebook in your hands. The fact that we’ve reached this point is thanks to the support of you all, the fans.” [...] “Season 2 brings an end to the grand fight between Shou and his father, but as those of you who’ve read the manga know, Mob Psycho 100 doesn’t end there. The giant broccoli is yet to come (laughs). I personally would like to do the whole of Broccoli Arc. As for when we can do that, I don’t know - I don’t even know if it’ll be possible to do it - but I’d like to believe that we’ll do it. I think that if you all believe in it too, then it’ll become reality.”

TACHIKAWA YUZURU [Director]

On being asked why he decided to work on MP100, Tachikawa; “Naturally, it was because of how charming the characters are.” There’s a lot of main characters who hold immense power, but Mob doesn’t want those powers, which is rare - this is why he finds Mob charming.

He compares and contrasts to Reigen - “[He] has no powers, but puts on a bold front and deceives people… well, that’s a misleading way to put it (laughs).” He thinks Mob and Reigen’s combo is amusing as a result.

He’s asked about MP100s character design, to which he describes Kameda drawing up a whole bunch of ideas. There’d be designs that were similar to ONE’s, and designs that made Mob a bit more handsome, “since at the time, if you looked at Mob Psycho 100 fan art on the internet, there were plenty of depictions of Mob being all sparkly and good-looking.”

“But looking at that, Kameda-kun and I decided we both wanted to go for something more akin to ONE-san’s art. When we showed ONE-san the rough sketches of the more handsome designs, he said ‘they’re attractive - I'm good with that’, but Kameda-kun and I replied ‘no, no - ONE-san, your art leaves more of an impression than this, so let’s go for something more like what you draw.’”

Tachikawa wanted to include the more ‘catchy’ kinds of stories in the anime. He brings up that Mob and Reigen dressing in women’s clothing and infiltrating the school happens in Volume 7 of the manga, but they decided to bring that to S1E2.

Asked about convos that happened with ONE regarding scenarios in the anime - Tachikawa mentions how in S1E11, there’s a segment where a younger Mob and Ritsu are lost in a forest. “I expressed to ONE-san that I’d like to witness why Mob respects Ritsu, to which he gave this idea.”

“In the manga, what Reigen did before he began S&S isn’t shown to us, but we get an implication of his past based on a line he says to do with businesses. I said the following to ONE-san; ‘An insurance salesman, or water marketing?’, to which ONE-san replied ‘water marketing.’”

Also mentions that Tsubomi coming to S&S in S2E8 wasn't something they adapted from the manga, but something ONE specifically created for the anime because Tachikawa expressed he wanted to see that kind of scenario, and then ONE added it as an omake to the manga. [TN: This is mentioned again here.]

He thinks he would have had the choice to handle both the screenplay and the series coordination but decided to ask Seko to handle Series Co-ordination instead.

He is in charge of the screenplay for S2E6-7 (Reigen arc). It was decided that Tachikawa would be in charge of storyboards for S2E7 before it was decided he’d handle the screenplay.

“Do you feel you have an emotional attachment to Reigen?” Tachikawa; “Yes, I do (laughs).” Calls him a character surrounded by mystery back in S1, and other than his courage and the occasional line that would resonate with Mob there’s a lot about him that’s unclear. “But with S2E6-7, we step into his uchizura (more private, “real” self). It’s interesting to see who a character appears to be on the outside, and their uchizura.”

Tachikawa finds stories in which someone falls to their lowest point and then recovers charming - thus, Tachikawa was charmed by S2E6-7 which depict Reigen’s fall and his subsequent recovery. Says that Ritsu and Teru also go through something similar (fall and recovery).

He loves when you can feel the humanity of characters. Says that when you show character development the charm of that character increases, and so does the popularity of the whole work. “I suppose it’s not just me who likes that, it’s all the fans, too”.

Makes a point of mentioning that all the characters have reached a turning point by the end of season 2, apart from Dimple.

Asked on his opinion of Mob, he says he relates to him and he was the type of kid in school to be in a position removed from everyone else. “He’s a character I really like, though I’m told by others that I’m ‘Reigen-ish’ (laughs).”

“I think there’s a few ways you could take ‘Reigen-ish’...” Tachikawa; “To put it another way, ‘shady’. Kameda-kun made that clear to me (laughs). As if I’m feigning friendliness.”

Tachikawa handled the rough layout of the illustration cover (Kameda finalised it). “It’s something I could imagine happening that wasn’t shown to us during S2E8. I thought to myself, it would be nice to show Dimple, Reigen and Ritsu working together for Mob’s sake. A theme of season 1 and 2 is Mob’s growth, so I thought the marathon episode would fit as a cover for this guidebook. As a result of his growth, he’s got people gathered around him…”

“I think Reigen would’ve run with them on the first day they trained together, but then he’d start using the bike instead. Since his muscles hurt (laughs).”

Asked to give a message to fans, he says that all the support from fans gave them a lot of energy throughout the production of seasons 1 & 2. Tells the fans to enjoy the OVA.

SEKO HIROSHI [Series Co-ordinator]

Asked on his thoughts of the MP100 manga, Seko; “it’s a work in which the characters are all charming. This is a misleading way to phrase it, but they’re a hopeless bunch; yet, the way ONE-san deals with them is very warm.”

“They’re not just characters, they’re much like us - nothing but human.”

Asked about how he wanted to deal with coordinating the series; “At the time of season 1 discussions, the most recent volume was around 9. I’d read up to that point and thought that if the anime is covering 12 episodes, then we should reach up to the fight with Claw’s seventh division in volume 6. My thought process from there was, ‘in what way can we make it so season 1 ends there?’, and with that I began.”

Asked if there was anything he fussed over, “making sure to not tar what makes the manga so charming. For example, when Mob reaches 100% for the first time in S1E3, that’s a highlight of the story, and I wanted to keep it that way.”

Reason for the movement of the high school infiltration from Vol 7 of the manga to S1E2 was to help build up to Mob’s 100% in S1E3.

The “student council” part of the manga spans S1E6-7 of the anime. The decision to condense it was due to the anime having only 12 episodes.

Reigen & Mob’s initial meeting being portrayed in S1 is brought up; “In a screenplay meeting with Tachikawa-san, we discussed depicting their initial meeting from Mob’s point of view, whereas in the manga it’s from Reigen’s. It comes up a little later in the manga but we thought it would be good to show their meeting in S1. And, if we ever got the chance to make a S2, we’d have the scene again much like it appears in the manga from Reigen’s perspective. So they wouldn’t be entirely the same scene.”

To being asked if there were any requests from ONE regarding the screenplay of the anime, Seko; “We had a discussion in which he said that while the final part of S1 has a serious atmosphere due to the fight, he didn’t want it to end that way. For that reason I proposed that we could end S1 with the tsuchinoko segment. I think ONE-san is uncomfortable when there’s nothing but seriousness.”

Seko says he had a feeling that they’d get a season 2. Much like season 1, he finished off season 2 in such that way as to give off the impression that there’s more to come.

“Did you struggle figuring out how to start S2E1?” Seko; “Regarding that, I’d already decided that if we were to make a S2 we’d start it off with Wriggle Wriggle.”

A deliberate choice was made to start off S2, and finish S2, with the broccoli (Mob receives the broccoli seeds at the start; broccoli becomes the giant broccoli at the end).

The interviewer describes an important part of S2 as being “hold your emotions dear to you”.

Seko; “Wriggle Wriggle is a pretty silly story, so I thought having a pleasant story after that would keep the balance. I think that balance between silly and serious is representative of what Mob Psycho 100 is.”

“Season 2 has one more episode than season 1, making it a total of 13 episodes. Could you tell us why?” Seko; “The original plan was 12 episodes. Had we kept to that, the scene in which Mob’s house burns would come at the end of part A of episode 8. But Warner Bros. producer Matsuda-san said, ‘I’d like that to come at the end of the episode.’ However, doing that would mean we’d have to give the battle with Claw that follows that a squeeze... so Matsuda-san said, ‘let’s go for 13 episodes then.’” [TN: This is mentioned again here.]

“Are there any scenes from S1 & S2 that you feel an emotional attachment to?” Seko says when Reigen is invincible in S1E12. “The scene in which he scolds the 7th division embodies what Mob Psycho 100 is all about.”

Says that in typical shounen manga the situation would be resolved with a fight but MP100 isn’t like that. “The things that Reigen says are completely justified, realistically. The things an evil organisation does are a crime; the clothes that they wear are weird... (Laughs)”

“Speaking of Reigen, a phrase of his that leaves an impression in S1E11 is, ‘When things get tough, it’s okay to run away!’” Seko; “In conventional shounen manga, there’s the belief that the protagonist shouldn’t run away, but with ‘it’s okay’, ONE-san’s personality shines through. Reigen is truly an intelligent person. The things he does are questionable, yet he has common sense that comes out at strange times.”

“You can’t sum up his character in a single word.” Seko; “I think he’s a respectable person, but he also cons people (laughs).” He enjoys the back and forth Reigen has with clients, and his stinginess and the way he edits ghost photos. “He’s both eloquent and skilled, which is unbearable (laughs). Despite that, he doesn’t rip people off with what he charges. You get the idea that he’s got some sense of ethics, which is calming.”

“He’s simply a difficult character to understand.” Seko; “Honestly, at first I couldn’t understand him at all. It was difficult to think of things that he might say when creating scenes that weren’t in the original manga. But when it became clear to me that he has morals, it all fell into place. I’ve forgotten when exactly this happened - it was at some point near the start or middle of season 1 - but I came to understand the kind of person Reigen is.”

Speaking about Mob, “He’s introverted, quiet and bad at socialising, but he has this immense power inside him... when you hear that, some other works will probably spring to mind, but when you read MP100 you realise this is different. Mob is Mob[.]”

“It’s interesting to see a character as powerful as he is work very hard at training his muscles.” Seko; “And his incentive for that is that he wants to be popular (laughs).”

Seko was in charge of the next episode previews (which Reigen would announce in a meta-ish way). He says that he ran out of ideas of what to end them with by season 2 so they start repeating a little.

Asked to give a message to fans, he says thank you for watching S2 and look forward to the OVA.

KAMEDA YOSHIMICHI [Character Designer]

Asked his thoughts on the MP100 manga, Kameda says he didn’t have much of a clue what direction the story would take upon finishing the second volume. “After Claw gets introduced the story takes on an action-like atmosphere so I thought it would carry on that way, but then the story starts digging deep into uchizuras. I was surprised at that. That’s a true-to-life middle school boy being depicted.”

Kameda says that he took on working on the MP100 anime after reaching the part of mob psycho that explores uchizuras. “The way I felt was, ‘I want us to make a season 2, so we can definitely animate this part. I’m doing season 1 for this purpose.’ (Laughs)”

“What were your first thoughts with the character design?” Kameda; “In the manga there aren’t really any illustrations that are coloured. Even the front covers of the volumes aren’t too expressive with how they use colour. The way lines are drawn is dependent on colour, so the first decision to be made was on that subject, while checking my choices with ONE-san. In the manga, Reigen’s tie is black. But in the anime Mob is painted all black, so I thought it’d be a bit too heavy to leave his tie that way. Reigen was the only one with a coloured illustration in which his hair is painted yellow, so based on that I tried creating a whole bunch of tie patterns - purple, green, blue, pink, etc. ONE-san wanted to go for a blue tie, but I thought that was too salary man-ish, and didn’t give off fraud vibes. The final decision was made based on a colour necktie that the average person wouldn’t buy - it would be pink, wouldn’t it.”

Asked if there was anything difficult after colours, he describes having difficulty trying to figure out how to convert ONE’s style to the screen. “It would’ve been interesting to leave his art as it was for the anime, but it seemed like it would’ve been very difficult to do so.”

Describes ONE’s talent as being the way he applies shadow, calling it very real.

Interviewer follows on this by asking anything else that marks ONE’s art as ONE’s, to which Kameda replies the shape of ears, and describes his struggle trying to replicate the way ONE draws them.

Kameda would correct the ears drawn by the other animators to try and match ONE’s style. Leading on from this the interviewer mentions hearing that Kameda would touch up any cuts that caught his eye. Kameda; “Around 10 cuts an episode.”

Calls Mezato a favourite character of his, to the extent that he volunteered to do the part that she appears in S2E13 (and did so).

Says that S1E5 was the only episode in S1 he didn’t touch, which Fujisawa Kenichi was animation director of. “The character design in that episode is a little different but I thought that episode would be better off with Fujisawa-san’s style.”

Kameda proposed the scene that happens at the start of S1S1 (Mob fighting the “evil apparitions”) by saying he wanted a depiction of a middle school boy fighting with his powers as our start, but he actually proposed it in anticipation of the kind of action we’d see in S2E5. [TN: I think it’s been a rumour for a while that the start scene is from Mogami arc and this sorta confirms that the line of thought there is correct]

The first episode in S2 that they started drawing production work for was S2E5.

When Kameda watched S2E5 what he was most surprised by was Part A of the episode (ie. Mob’s day to day life), rather than the action scenes. “The layout is good, as are the use of bugs as an expression device[.]”

Kameda speaks of S2E7 as a part of Mob Psycho 100 so important to him that if it didn’t exist he wouldn’t have chosen to work on MP100.

He fussed over the press conference and Reigen’s expression(s) when he talks to Mob by the river at the end of the episode.

Interviewer mentions that we don’t see Reigen’s face in the manga when Mob calls him a good person, so seeing it in the anime leaves an impression. Kameda; “we struggled with that cut, but we struggled with Reigen’s expression when he’s walking alongside the river more so. Originally his expression was hidden as he approached, but when the camera pulled in close you could see his face.”

We end up seeing his face the whole way through. Kameda calls Aoyama Hiroyuki (who animated the whole end segment) a “super(hero) animator”.

Kameda makes an edit to Reigen’s expression upon being told by Mob that he’s a good person, with respect to the expression Reigen pulls in the final volume, “when [he] lays bare his real emotions to Mob.” [TN: This appears to be implying Reigen was originally drawn with tears in his eyes that were removed to make sure that the scene in which Reigen finally cries maintains its impact.]

“The performance by Reigen’s VA, Sakurai-san, was amazing... and I loved Mob’s ‘By the way, Shishou. Happy birthday.’ Itou-kun’s way of speaking is so gentle... I can’t quite express the feeling properly, but hearing him say those words, I was brought close to tears.”

Kameda is asked if there’s anything that proved a lot of work, to which he says, “Hmm... there’s a lot of characters in MP100, aren’t there. (Laughs)”.

Describes that he designed ~90 characters for S1. “I thought I’d get to relax a little for S2, but in the end I ended up having to design around 90 more. (Laughs)”

“Some of the main character designs that were established in S1 changed a little for S2, didn’t they.” Kameda; “Ritsu changed a little with S2. In S1 he had a bit of antagonism toward Mob, so I had the hair that frames his face be a little longer to try and hide those emotions.”

“A character’s state of mind is something that can be expressed through their hair.” Says that Ritsu’s hair gets a refresh in the final part of S1 when he’s talking to Kamuro in the park, to represent that the “demon plaguing him is gone”.

He’s asked if there are any characters in the huge cast of MP100 that are memorable for him. He mentions Tarou and Hanako as two characters that were fun to draw as they set the trend for the other “guest characters” in the show.

Also says he likes Mitsuura as a character with high energy who was fun to pose, though he’s unpopular with the animators due to the patterns on his clothes being a pain.

“I’ve mentioned this here and there before, but I really love Shinra Banshoumaru. The reason why I was the animation director for S2E2 is because it’s his entry episode (laughs).”

“Why did you want to draw Shinra Banshoumaru so much?” Kameda; “Because he’s chubby!! The swell of his cheeks, his tummy, his large butt... I’m obsessed (laughs). I was so charmed, thinking, ‘I want to make him even bigger and move him around!’”

He’d do things like add extra belly sways to the storyboards. “I didn’t intend to go as far as I did, but I think I went overboard in a lot of ways (laughs).”

Asked to give a message to fans, Kameda; “I’m happy that you all continue to involve yourselves with Mob Psycho 100. Since we’ve come this far, I want to finish off animating what remains of the MP100 manga. A television season 3 - no, wait, perhaps even a film...? Please be sure to continue to support Mob Psycho 100.”

[TN: this marks the fourth mention of a MP100 film I’ve seen from Kameda, and also marks him as the only member of production staff interviewed in this book to explicitly state anything to do with season 3.]

ONE [Original Author]

He is asked how Mob Psycho 100 came to be. ONE; “I love psychic powers as a theme, so I thought to myself, in what way can I make the most of that theme? How can I add colour to it? Through that thought process, I incorporated puberty, stress, ‘being used’, complexes, unrequited love, ‘shishou’, lies, the dual nature that exists in many things, and so on… then, the protagonist; a passive, introverted person, but someone who is able to become the eye of a hurricane, someone who through the influence of their relationships changes, grows… it was with that foundation that I began developing the plot, and through that process I solidified the setting; this protagonist would have their heart burdened by a buildup of stress and the shift of their feelings, and after passing a certain boundary they’d explode, and their powers would run wild… I thought it would be nice if the manga was a little strange, with the buildup until the boundary crossover being shown to the reader via a numerical percentage value. Ideas for titles included things like, ‘Mob Psycho’, ‘Psycho Helmet’, and ‘Mob Psycho 100%’.”

He is asked to recall how he felt when the MP100 anime was confirmed. ONE; “I was delighted. A lot has happened in relation to Mob Psycho 100, but for me the anime has been the thing to make me the most happy.”

He is asked what he hoped for with the anime, to which he replies the happiness of the fans, and for MP100 to bring a smile to the faces of the staff working on the anime.

What he looked forward to was the way the voice actors and animators would approach the characters, and how they’d flesh out the MP100 world as a result.

“What kinds of conversations did you have with director Tachikawa?” ONE says he doesn’t really remember their initial conversation(s) but he knows that he told Tachikawa that he has the freedom to be as creative as he wants. “I didn’t want to be a nuisance.”

He recalls being told by series coordinator Seko that he may need to shift around a few of the chapters to make the story in the anime flow a little easier.

Asked his thoughts on Kameda’s character designs, ONE; “Amazing. I’d resigned myself to the fact that the characters would get an overhaul for the anime and become more handsome, but Mob has remained Mob, Reigen has remained Reigen. Their anime designs are charming. I was moved.”

He says he holds several pages of character designs drafts that Kameda drew up dear to him, and mentions that the Body Improvement Clubs designs were perfect from the get go.

ONE says that he feels blessed with the amazing voice actors giving depth to the characters, describing how when they’re given voices it feels like they’re alive, and regrets that he didn’t go to recording sessions more.

“How did you feel when season 2 was announced?” ONE: “Season 1 was amazing, so I expected there’d be a season 2.” Describes Tachikawa and Kameda’s hard work, to which he responded with his own. “It was around the time that I was ending the manga, so I buckled down to finish it.”

He looked forward to seeing how the anime would deal with adapting the more “drama” feel of season 2, with human emotions being explored.

He describes his process with writing problems and their solutions in MP100. “Mob & Reigen each have their own way of dealing with a problem, so I’d say, ‘this is how this problem would generally be dealt with’, and from there I’d explore different ways of solving that problem.”

“I let the characters start thinking for themselves - that kind of delusion awoke within me. Like, ‘Hey, Reigen, I’m going to sleep, so think it over for me.’ With that, it became easier to plan.”

He is asked his thoughts and feelings on the anime; he states he doesn’t really watch anime but was reminded of how interesting it can be, and the power of anime as simple entertainment. “I was able to recognise anew just how amazing the production team is. [...] I felt so grateful that they chose to work on Mob Psycho 100, devoting their precious time to really putting their all into the production work. It’s how I’ve felt with every episode. Right now I’ve watched up until the end of S2E5, but I’m already running out of tissues.”

He is asked anything that’s left an impression on him during the broadcast of MP100; “The amount of correspondence I’d receive from overseas Mob Psycho fans increased with the anime broadcast.” Says that it’s amazing that even with a translation foreign fans are able to laugh at the same things, be moved by the same things, etc.

Finally, he is asked to give a message to the fans who purchased the guidebook. ONE; “Thank you for always supporting Mob Psycho 100. The way I see the situation regarding Mob Psycho 100 as a work is as something that overlaps with Mob’s own development. Mob Psycho’s value as a piece of entertainment greatly increased with the powerful aid of the anime, and with everyone who offered a hand, gave their opinions and support, and reached out. I’d always thought to myself, ‘I want to create a manga that’s able to influence those who read it in some way, if only even a little,’ but as it turns out it’s Mob Psycho 100 that has become what it is now thanks to all of you. I’ve still got my eye on what Mob Psycho 100 will become in the future. Nothing would make me more happy than for all of you to continue enjoying Mob Psycho 100.“

--

Thank you for reading!

Posted on twitter here.

ONE & Director Tachikawa’s comments on the main five are here.

[harrowdubois]

okay, i said if there was interest i would think about making a post listing all the references i squeezed into the locked tomb fic i spent the last month or so writing, and now i’ve realised i don’t care if there’s interest because i want to be self-indulgent SO

under the cut is a (somewhat spoilery) chronological list of all the memes, vines, and cribbed tumblr posts, as well as homages to various books, tv shows, song lyrics, etc. that made their way into blessed with a wilder mind! 

(cw for suicide mention)

this is of course a reference to the legendary bodybuilding forum thread where they did, actually, argue over how many days there are in a week (cw for ableist slurs in the thread)

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buzzfeed unsolved meme. i am dirt and i love to eat dirt

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this is so well-known it’s almost not worth listing it but oh my god they were roommates

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in itself, this isn’t a reference to anything in particular, but if you didn’t do this on your first read then i’d recommend taking another look at this scene and thinking about the specific wuthering heights/frankenstein/rebecca excerpts discussed by harrow and mercymorn but in relation to canon!harrow’s trauma/relationship with the body in htn :~) 

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also not really a reference to anything in particular but when i looked back over the fic for this post it struck me that the ‘sex panther’ phrasing was probably at least partially unconsciously inspired by the shoebox project (professor mcgonagall’s oiled man panther was a formative moment for me, truly)

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cw gross/unsanitary: it’s the tinder poop window incident. i mentioned this in the end notes of the fic as being what i had in mind for that scene but if it’s too gross for you (UNDERSTANDABLY) then feel free to Death Of The Author me to your heart’s content!

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i listened to a lot of orville peck while writing this

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 very very very loosely inspired by this clickhole article

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respectively: fourth of july by sufjan stevens / wuthering heights by emily bronte

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TWO BROS, CHILLIN IN A HOT TUB, FIVE FEET APART BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT GAY

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there was absolutely no need to stretch this across three paragraphs, and yet

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iconic

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i already linked to this one in the end notes of the fic itself, but it’s good, so here it is again

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 i can’t find the actual original post but it’s this fucking horrible thing 

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the last line is a reference to the secret history by donna tartt:

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”

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a lyrical double whammy!

from ‘last words of a shooting star’ by mitski: “they’ll never know how i’d stared at the dark in that room with no thoughts like a blood-sniffing shark”

from ‘a better son/daughter’ by rilo kiley: “sometimes in the morning i am petrified but can’t move/awake but cannot open my eyes” 

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*

shout-out to maybe my single favourite video game moment, the encounter with the sky cat in night in the woods: “There is a hole at the center of everything, and it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming, and you are not escaping, and the universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it, not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole... You are atoms, and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence.”

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“Nothing is ever fulfilled, not until the very end.” - rust cohle, true detective s1, this reference is VERY tonally dissonant because in context it’s actually grim as all hell but w/e w/e i couldn’t resist the shout-out

also harrow quotes from the goldfinch again here! i had the reference included before i read this post and realised tamsyn muir also quotes from the secret history in htn. terrible synergy 

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they are in fact all real. you’re welcome

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this one’s doing a lot of work lmao. it’s paying homage to this quote by tamsyn muir talking about the draco-in-leather-pants trope in relation to ianthe by loosely referencing drop dead gorgeous, the best drarry fic ever written, in which harry is part veela

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“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.” - that’s right it’s another reference to the secret history, with a little bit of mary oliver (tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?) sprinkled on top for flavour

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a small one, but it’s the goldfinch again: “And I feel I have something very urgent and serious to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you...”

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my FUCKING cinnamon apple

 what if i... put my minecraft bed.... next to yours... aha ha just kidding.... unless?

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[cw: suicide discussion in these next two]

*

robyn can have little a rust cohle quote, as a treat.

1. “I'd consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction; one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

2. “This... This is what I'm talking about. This is what I mean when I'm talkin' about time, and death, and futility. All right, there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Fourteen straight hours of staring at DBs, these are the things you think of. You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read 'em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... Not at first, but... right there in the last instant. It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah, they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were. You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life - you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain - it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person.”

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ahaaa this one’s particularly rough. evil monkey no one alive dot jpg

“Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.” - annie proulx, brokeback mountain

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a TRIPLE lyrical whammy!

- harrow’s words to gideon in the dream are a bit of a vague reference to the song ‘adventures in solitude’ by the new pornographers (”we thought we lost you/welcome back”) - gideon’s words to harrow are a reference to the song ‘blush’ by wolf alice (”you’ve got two hands to take all you can/but don’t take too long”) - what harrow texts to gideon is a line from ‘about today’ by the national, aka the most devastating song ever written (”hey, are you awake?/yeah i’m right here”...)

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i CANNOT find a clip of it but harrow’s repetition of “life is short... it’s short” was me paraphrasing from memory a line from pride (2014), because i am the worst

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spooky scary skeletons! 

“jail for gideon” is obviously a reference to the “jail for mother” tweet that tm also referenced in htn. so, not original in the slightest, but it’s a great tweet

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one of my favourite tumblr posts

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because naberius tern absolutely would watch rick and morty. he would. i know it in my heart. 

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and that’s it, i think. hope you enjoyed this horrid little post and my horrid little fic!

[nadziejastar]

What’s the relationship with Disney like? Disney’s attitude to games has changed in recent years to become focused on mobile and social games. Have you noticed their attitude change much?

The relationship with Disney has [remained] the same. Actually the contact person at Disney is still the same person from Kingdom Hearts 1, and Disney has given us lots of requests in terms of the Kingdom Hearts franchise and they did mention some smaller titles for other platforms, but our common, most important goal was to [complete] Kingdom Hearts 3. So it’s the same.

Oh, for sure. I get sad when I see Nomura’s old interviews. The above quote is from June 2013. He was so much more upbeat. KH3 actually had a plot back then, too. Sora would look for the ‘Key to Return Hearts’.  

Disney has changed tremendously since 2006. Obviously Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, totally different style of animation. How your relationship with Disney and its properties evolved over the past 10 years or so in the context of Kingdom Hearts? Tetsuya Nomura: I can say that it has actually been increasingly difficult to get approvals from Disney. That's mainly because in the past Kingdom Hearts titles, the creator wasn't around anymore or the team that used to create those titles wasn't there anymore. There was just this one person that we would just have to go to and they would approve it and we'd be fine and good to go. But because we've been featuring recent titles, they still have existing teams for existing creators that are still working in Disney and still working on a certain title. That feedback process just has been a little bit more difficult than before. And each team would have a different set of rules and guidelines and they would say different things, or they would look at different things. It's just been a little different that how it used to be because Kingdom Hearts is a bigger title than it was before. I think that whenever we would bring our previous titles, a lot of people at Disney, and this is my assumption, but I do assume that they probably didn't know what Kingdom Hearts was. They'd go, "What's Kingdom Hearts? I have no idea." But now that it's become a bigger title, a lot more people have been involved in than before. In that sense the relationship with Disney has changed quite a bit. Emotional changes I don't really know if there has been any changes emotionally for me. But at least physically I can say those were the changes that we had with Disney.

After Versus XIII got cancelled, he became a lot more negative in his interviews. This is from June 2018. Five years later. Around the same time as Versus XIII, BBSV2 got cancelled. And also his relationship with Disney changed. So in a way, even KH3 was kinda taken from him, like Versus XIII was. Nomura was trying to dodge the subject of his emotional changes toward the KH series, but there obviously were some.

You've grown up as a person and as a designer alongside the players and it's been so long since the last Kingdom Hearts was released. How has your perspective on making the game changed over time? Do you still have that passion for it? Or is it just like you feel more of a responsibility to people to make it and end it?

I'm getting older now, so my body really can't take all that difficulty anymore. When I was younger I was definitely more aggressive and I was the one pulling everyone forward, but now there's a lot more energetic staff around me who are more aggressive, so I feel like I'm more like a sage now. Like I'm in the sidelines just telling people what to do. The Kingdom Hearts series has become a huge title nowadays and back then it was more like I was making it secretively in the corner, but now that a lot more people are involved I do feel that it's not my title anymore, it's everyone's title. And just talking about all this … It actually kind of makes me really sad.

This is another interview from June 2018. He said that with all the people involved, KH3 wasn’t really his title anymore and it made him really sad. At this year’s E3, Kitase said that the FF7 Remake was the first game in a long time that Nomura has been really heavily involved with. So, it sounds like Nomura wasn’t as heavily involved with KH3 as he was with past KH games.

Kingdom Hearts means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it represents their childhood or it's a story about friendship. What does Kingdom Hearts mean for you?

It's probably the title that represents who I am. When I was a starting as a developer, like I wasn't an industry veteran yet, when I was creating Final Fantasy titles with Mr. Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy, and at that time, he said that Final Fantasy is a game that has everything in it. I don't think that there are that many people left in Square Enix that have actually worked with him on Final Fantasy. Of course, Final Fantasy is still continuing on--they still are committing to push out titles. But when I started creating Kingdom Hearts, that was when I kind of had this time away from Final Fantasy. And of course, I am working on a Final Fantasy title right now, but it was at a time when I was not working on a Final Fantasy title, and I really wanted to realize what Sakaguchi-san said about Final Fantasy, that it is a game that incorporates everything, to Kingdom Hearts. So I brought that idea to Kingdom Hearts. Currently looking at the newer Final Fantasy titles, to be honest, I don't think it really incorporates that idea of having everything. So I think that Kingdom Hearts, to me, is a game that has everything in it.

Nomura actually said that Versus XIII was more of his preference than KH. He enjoyed working on it because it was a break from the super happy, always positive KH universe. 

Nomura: "Kingdom Hearts is not too realistic, but I do want my players to grasp a sense of reality from it as well. For example, I'm sure you had friends when you were young, a good group of friends, but as you grow older things change and it doesn't always stay the same." 

And I think that’s why Lea is (was?) my favorite KH character. Versus XIII was a “fantasy based on reality”. I got the sense that Nomura used Lea/Axel to inject a lot of himself and his preference for realism into KH, since he was so different from other KH characters. He was an adult with a dark backstory. He and his best friend were human lab rats. His best friend later became a sociopath and is possessed. But he longs for the times when they were innocent and happy. Axel was very complicated. I DID get that sense of realism Nomura wanted to convey in his character. That’s why I loved him so much. There was such genuineness in his dialogue.

But I think what Nomura was doing with him and Saïx was so subtle it went over most people’s heads and they couldn’t appreciate it. It sucks because the subtlety made it even better. He basically lived inside the world of his memories. But he hid all of that from everyone (even the player) by smiling. Because he knew happy-go-lucky kids like Roxas and Xion wouldn’t be able to understand him. He was the most realistic and human character for me. He had a dark backstory, but he was still charming, intelligent, and funny. He had many layers. It was devastating to see him get dumbed-down and turned into a caricature of himself in KH3. Flat comic relief whose dark backstory was totally stripped from him. Just like that...poof. Gone. Now it’s all about Retcon X.

October 2014

“If I had to pick, I am a person more on the dark side like Xehanort and co., I harness the burning anger in my heart into what I create,” “Kingdom Hearts 3 current development explodes very much in this sense.”

When I first saw this quote, I had no idea what Nomura meant by channeling his anger into KH3. After playing KH3, I finally understood. That’s why there was so much breaking the fourth wall. Axel was Nomura’s mouthpiece. He was basically acknowledging that the story was crap, like during the scene where he reunited with Ventus and was commenting about how stupid the whole situation was. That B.S. ending? The result of Nomura’s depression. Things aren’t the same anymore. They’ve changed. The whole game just felt like it was phoned in. Nobody who actually cared about the story would do what they did with Kairi and also Lea and Isa’s backstory. KH3 was just so depressing for me because of that. Reading Nomura’s interviews just made it sadder.

2018 Famitsu interview

Tetsuya Nomura's cats were included. He speaks of how his cats cheered him up when he was depressed and how they inspire his work on Kingdom Hearts 3. -The reason he got these cats: Our family really loved cats and dogs, so we always had them in the house. For this reason, when I got a little depressed I was recommended to get cats.

I was really looking forward to Versus XIII when it was announced. Everything about it just sounded so cool. The story was supposed to be the saddest FF, but it would still have fun and humor in it. It was going to be like a road-trip. Noctis’s family was involved in organized crime, like the Yakuza. I still remember the tagline that was a quote from Hamlet. “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Nomura said Noctis wasn’t going to be super serious like Squall. He was shy and awkward. Somnus is still an awesome song. The Noctis in the above picture just felt totally different from the Noctis in FFXV. They give off a completely different vibe. 

After I beat KH3, I was so disappointed with it, I started looking for a bunch of info on Versus XIII, since that game’s cancellation obviously influenced KH3 so much. I have seen a lot of stuff from people who claim to have leaked info about Versus XIII. I find this particular leak to be credible since the person correctly leaked the plot of FFXV six months in advance:

The game centered about death, ghosts and hallucination/dreams. Noctis killed the female protagonist before the game started but he didn't remember. Ardyn was Noctis ancestor and he was responsible of the crystals disappearing over time (the only one left was Lucis crystal). Regis died in front of Noctis because his bodyguards betrayed him. The protagonists had to leave the capital because their nation lost the war.

The game didn't focus on summons that much (they still existed) and instead there were actual gods which didn't appear physically. One of the gods was the main antagonist of the first FF game. Each nation was inspired by a different capital of the world. The empire was using ghosts as weapons. Ravus wanted to kill Noctis for having killed her sister. The game ended in another dimension which was supposed to be their version of the after-life.

This sounds a lot like what Nomura would do with a story, and is consistent with the info and trailers about Versus. I think I remember one where people were being turned into ghosts/monsters. The goddess Etro was supposed to be worshiped in Lucis. And I remember one of the things that interested me most about Versus XIII was that Noctis was able to see some light in the sky that others couldn’t, and it was due to having had a near-death experience as a child. That sounded SO cool.

I can believe the whole Stella being a ghost thing, because Tabata said they had to create Luna because Stella just wouldn’t make sense in the new story. The dreams/hallucinations part sounds cool to me, but is probably thought of as being “too weird” for a mainstream game. Also, the fact that the game ended in the after-life stood out for me. KH3 already had something similar with the Realm of Sleep. But they tried to connect it more with the after-life, even though Nomura previously said there was “no concept of death” in KH. This made me think he was still hung up on Versus while making The Final World. 

I definitely think that the original Versus XIII would have been a much more interesting game, since Nomura was SO passionate about it. The script was finished, too. It was jsut scrapped. The voice actor of Noctis, Suzuki Tatsuhisa, mentioned during the release date live stream that he still has the Versus scripts at home that he reads on his days off. And he said he couldn’t figure out how to move from the Versus Noctis to XV Noctis and struggled to find middle ground. 

He said he had a hard time getting into the character towards the end of the game, so he had to re-do his lines from the middle of the story again a few times to get it right. The fact that he still reads the Versus scripts tells me that he was really disappointed when Versus became XV. It sounds like he enjoyed what Nomura/Nojima wrote a LOT more and had a hard time masking his displeasure.

I stand behind what Sakaguchi said about big budget games development: it’s not worth it anymore. But they are also very disorganized. The staff -200 souls- had to work when the story still wasn’t completely defined. In fact, this story kept changing every 3 months and the definitive delivery date for the game was for the end of 2014. ---Roberto Ferrari

Sadly, the big budget style of production seems to be at the root of why Square Enix’s console games have been so soulless. KH is not for everybody, but it was a series that was made with passion. I actually enjoyed the handheld KH games more than KH3 because they felt like Nomura was able to do what he wanted creatively, instead of feeling like it was made to appease a focus group. I would give up the super fancy graphics in a heartbeat to get KH0.5 and the original vision Nomura had for KH3.

[hansoloschubbybrother]

My Opinion On The Last Jedi...For What It’s Worth

Having just watched The Last Jedi again and having seen way too many YouTube videos from people who hated the movie, I just had to write down my thoughts on it because I disagree with so many of the things that people hated about it.

It wasn’t perfect but, on the whole, I still think it is a great movie, mostly because of the choices made regarding the story arcs for the main characters.

But before I get into that though, I’m going to confirm some of the things where I can agree with the haters.  Firstly, Mary Poppins Leia.  It’s a nice idea that, by being blown into space, Leia’s survival instinct kicks in and enables her to use the force in a way she hadn’t before but I thought it looked awful and by just not having her blown into space in the first place would have been better.  The moment with Kylo Ren deciding not to shoot would have been more poignant and instead of Holdo being needed, Leia could have remained in charge and Admiiral Ackbar could have been the one to sacrifice himself by using light speed to obliterate the First Order fleet, giving him the noble death such a character deserved.

Just on that whole using light speed as a weapon thing, I’ve listened to people using it as another reason to put down the film, saying that if it was a plausible weapon it would have been used already so having it in TLJ doesn’t make sense.  Rian Johnson or someone had a cool idea that looked great in the movie and if other people involved in previous movies had thought of the idea then I’m sure they would have used it too.  It was a great moment in the film and people need to stop trying to find reasons to dislike the movie that aren’t there.

Next up is some of the humour.  Whilst I enjoyed some it, overall it felt a little out of place in a good Star Wars movie and harked back more to the prequels.  It may have been an attempt to appeal to children, but I felt the same way about Luke milking that animal and going fishing and the way BB-8 is used. In the original trilogy, R2-D2 would never actually ride a AT-ST, he may have found a way to control something by interfacing with a computer terminal but not actually driven something himself. This step toward children’s comedy was just one of the reasons I mostly disliked the prequel trilogy and wasn’t necessary here either.  The original trilogy didn’t have that and it didn’t stop those films from becoming an obsession for most children at the time.

My final gripe about TLJ is the over arching story of the slow chase.  Not only does it seem silly that the First Order would need to wait to destroy them, it created the need for the whole Canto Bight scene.  I enjoyed Finn and Rose’s scenes when they were on Snoke’s ship and I also enjoyed DJ as a character, but they needed to find a better way to make that all play out.  I really enjoyed the film’s opening battle with the dreadnought and the end battle on Crait but the story they created to get them from one place to the next was very underwhelming.

In spite of these issues, I still really enjoyed the film and that was mostly because of how they developed the story of each of the main characters.  On the whole, I thought they got this spot on and is generally where I seem to differ hugely from many of the online posting star wars fanbase.

I will leave Luke until last as I think his treatment in the film is what has caused the most hate from the fanbase, not least from Mark Hamill himself.  Instead, I’ll start with Rey as she is probably the character where there is the most common ground.  Undoubtedly for me, Rey is far too much of a Mary Sue.  As the central character of this new trilogy, this is not great film making.  If they needed her to have these abilities/skills from the get go, they shouldn’t have made her an orphaned desert girl at the start.  The journey they needed her to make was too far, too soon.  I know they are trying to explain how this is possible by saying that she basically downloaded Kylo Ren’s skills but it’s not very believable.  This said, I don’t actually believe that TLJ is what makes her a Mary Sue.  This problem is one created by TFA.  In TLJ, she doesn’t actually advance her skills set a great deal, other than to move a bunch of rocks, which is Jedi Training 1.1. Therefore, this is not a problem with TLJ, it’s the knock on effect from a big failure with TFA…which is not the last time I’ll say that.

We then have the issue of Rey’s parents, the source of much speculation between the two films.  I mentioned in a post I wrote after the film came out that I’m glad that her parents are nobodies.  Star Wars is a vast galaxy, why does she have to be some blood relative of an existing character.  It would be difficult to realistically explain that she is a relative of one of the key characters from the original trilogy and very unimaginative.  It is far better that her heritage broadens the Star Wars landscape, not enclose it furthermore.  For those that wanted her to be a Kenobi or a Solo or whatever, there is always the possibility that Kylo was lying.  Rian Johnson did, after all, include the mysterious but unresolved scene with Rey and the mirror thing on Ahch-To.  So for me, it was a positive that Rey’s parents were nobodies.

Finally for Rey, there is her connection with Kylo Ren, which brings me to another aside.  Many people are up in arms that Rian Johnson would use the force in a way that they have never seen before but for me this is just ridiculous.  It’s a sci-fi fantasy film.  If you can extend your disbelief in the originals then why not now?  The Jedi’s are supposed to have kept peace for thousands of years and we have only followed a handful for a few years but somehow we have seen the force used to its fullest extent.  Come on now.  You wouldn’t have worried about this as a child, so why now?  It’s totally not important and totally possible.

Anyway, back to Rey and Kylo.  For me, their connection is the most interesting arc of the new trilogy and using the force as a way to further develop this relationship was an important reason as to why I enjoyed the film.  Without that, they would not get the chance to interact as frequently as they do, thus removing important character development.  Many people, have said that it is not realistic that they would feel some kind of connection after knowing each other for such a short space of time but I see it completely differently.  Maybe it’s linked to personal experiences when it comes to relationships but, to me, it is perfectly plausible that two people with so much in common and who both share the same insecurities would feel an immediate connection.  They are in the same position as each other just on different sides of the force.  It’s natural to feel drawn to someone who is going through a similar experience to yourself, so that you don’t feel alone and for support.  For me, their relationship is an intriguing way to consider the force and how idea of light and dark sides exist.

This leads us nicely onto Kylo Ren.  Many people disliked the fact that in TFA he was basically a power brat.  For me, I was immediately drawn to this idea that we are seeing the proper development of the main bad guy.  His journey in this trilogy is much more what I was hoping to see for Anakin’s journey in the prequel trilogy.  Unfortunately, in the prequels, we a got a few brattish comments and then he basically became a full on bad guy after a short conversation with Palpatine/Sidious.  Kylo Ren’s character development is far more considered than Anakin’s.  He is a powerful brat but, especially because Adam Driver is as good an actor as Hayden Christensen is bad, you can understand why. You can also see that has not completely turned to the dark side, that it isn’t a switch.  This is developed even further in TLJ and, as I said before, I have enjoyed his development and how his character has mirrored Rey.  Kylo Ren has become my second favourite character in the Star Wars universe after his father.  I enjoyed how he first appears to be a Darth Vader clone, evening looking up to his Grandfather, but then falls way short.  I enjoyed the line TLJ when Snoke reminds him of this and tells him to remove his helmet.  I suppose some people don’t want to see their bad guy go through some dark coming of age story but I think it makes it much more interesting.

It is the same reason why I thoroughly enjoyed that Rian Johnson just killed off Snoke.  No back story, no big bad, just everything opposite to what people might have been expecting.  For me he was Sidious 2.0.  A powerful bad guy who we thought was going to be defeated at the end of the third film. To me he was unoriginal and another reason why TFA was described as a love letter to the original trilogy.  He felt very “Star Wars” but that was it.  People felt short changed after Snoke’s back story was ignored and became insignificant but thought it was exactly the right decision.  He played his part and moved aside for Kylo Ren to become the main bad guy for the second half of the trilogy.  On the subject of his back story, I just don’t get this obsession with needing to know everything about every character’s back story.  We never got that in the original trilogy.  We didn’t get told a single thing about Darth Sidious.  He was just the powerful bad guy that ruled the Empire.  We didn’t need to know more and we didn’t care.  That we got to learn more via the prequel films was great but it wasn’t a vital part of the story that was missing from the original films. This is the same with a whole host of other characters from Jabba, Boba Fett, Lando and even Han and Chewie.  Why do people now suggest that the new films lack characterisation or some shit because we don’t know the back story of every character?  It’s just not necessary.

Poe was another character whose story arc has been criticised.  When I first watch TLJ, I also thought that having Leia and Holdo hold back their plan from him seemed like a stupid decision but this felt more and more reasonable with each watch.  In order to avoid him being just another boring hero pilot character that destroys lots of enemy ships and always survives, Rian Johnson clearly wanted him to have some kind of journey to help develop his character.  It makes total sense to me that a hero pilot would have an ego that is too big and gets in the way of strong leadership decisions, so Rian Johnson develops this through the film, from Poe unnecessarily sacrificing lives and ships to destroy the dreadnought at the start, to his demotion and subsequent exclusion from leadership decision and then redemption at the end by choosing to pull the Resistance fighters back when they’re being picked off easily on Crait.  I can’t help but think that having two women leaders decide not to let the male hero pilot in on the plan goes against male sensibilities in this situation.  He’s the hero, the man and, in all previous eras, would be the one who knows what the right thing to do is.  The truth is, that if it were two male leaders and a female hero pilot who was denied knowledge of the plan, we probably wouldn’t bat an eye-lid.  Is it feminist politics unnecessarily introduced to Star Wars?  I don’t think so.  It’s not forced down our throats, just used to help develop what could easily become a boring character.

The final character I’ll focus on before Luke is Finn.  As mentioned before, I enjoyed his scenes on Snoke’s ship with Rose and Captain Phasma but really didn’t like how they got him there.  It’s a shame that it made his character seem marginalised.  The only part I did enjoy was how DJ made him question his defection from the First Order and whether there is a good or a bad side in war.  This is quite deep stuff for a Star Wars film and quite political but I liked that they asked these questions and it seemed fitting that Finn’s character be the one to contemplate these ideas.  Again, it’s a shame they couldn’t have found a better way to do it, that made him more integral to the story.

Finally, we come to Luke. More than anything else, it’s people’s comments about Luke that get me shouting at my screen.  Maybe it is because I was never drawn to Luke as my favourite character as a child but, for some reason, I just don’t see things the same way as all the haters.  For me, Luke’s story through TLJ needed to follow on from what we were told in TFA, in a manner that is both realistic to how you might think someone would react having been through that experience and also realistic to how Luke, the character, would react.

So, what were we told in TFA?  We learnt that Luke is in hiding and has cut himself off completely from his family and friends as a result of the part he played in the failure of his Jedi Academy and turning his nephew into Kylo Ren.

This leads me to the first of the things that annoy me about some of the arguments laid at the door of TLJ and Rian Johnson.  People claim that Luke would never abandon his friends and cowardly hide away and cut himself off from everything.  This idea is played out in TLJ but this story was clearly set in motion in TFA.  If people can’t believe Luke would act in this way then be angry at JJ Abrams because it was his idea.  Rian Johnson continued Luke’s story from this situation because it’s the only place he could have started from.

Next is to decide whether Luke’s reaction to what has happened is a realistic way for someone to respond.  This is obviously subjective but his failings have led to the creation of a potential new Sith Lord, the death of many young fledgling Jedis, the estrangement of his nephew from his family and the break up of his sister’s marriage to his best friend.  This is quite a heavy burden bare, considering this is on top of how someone would naturally feel after failing so badly.  Imagine someone is revered as a hero around the galaxy, a new Jedi Knight to help bring peace.  Your self-esteem would be sky high.  You would be pretty happy with how your life is panning out. It is clearly absolutely plausible that someone could react to what happened the way Luke does in TLJ.  If people were happy to believe Luke’s set up in TFA, then they have to accept that someone could react the way Luke does. I believe that this is a far more likely way that someone would react than to remain positive and not question your beliefs and the part they played in what happened.

Therefore the question is whether Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and hero of the galaxy, would react this way.  Clearly many fans and Mark Hamill say he wouldn’t.  I just don’t see how they can come to this conclusion based on his actions in the original trilogy.  The main argument I hear is that he was a great Jedi who saw the good in Darth Vader and defeated Sidious.  This just doesn’t stack up I’m afraid.  How do we know Luke is a great Jedi?  He was only taught by Yoda for a little while and clearly never finished his training. In fact, choosing to be so loyal to his friends was against his Jedi training.  Additionally, he beat Darth Vader, not by being a great Jedi but by turning to the dark side and using anger to fuel his fight with him.  Vader threatened Leia and he threw anything Jedi out the window and got plain mad.  This made him a hero but certainly not some grand Jedi.  Then we come to Sidious.  Luke didn’t defeat Sidious at all.  Seeing the good in Vader pulled him back from killing his father but he was about to be killed by Sidious.  It was Vader/Anakin who killed Sidious.  So, Luke was a hero, a bastian of hope but he was not some infallible human or a Jedi dedicated to their code.  If anything, he was the first grey Jedi.  For me, the fact that he felt so strongly for his family and friends is a reason why he would have reacted the way he did when he caused it all to go to shit.

People have also suggested that Luke would never think, even for a second, about killing his nephew. Again, I just don’t have this picture of Luke as all things light and good.  He is not so squeaky clean that when faced with the prospect of a new Sidious or Vader and acknowledging that he is not able to control him, that, for a second, he wouldn’t think that right thing to do is kill him.  Everyone has thoughts they shouldn’t have for just a split second.  Again, why is Luke any different?

It seems to me that people who loved Luke in the originals can’t face the idea that he is somehow a flawed human being and a flawed Jedi.  This character that they idolised as a child is actually a human and not some unrealistic hero type.  For me, it gave Luke something interesting to contribute to this trilogy.  Did people who hated it just want Johnson to forget what was set up for him in TFA, something he is criticised for in other areas, and suddenly have Luke forget all about why he was where he was?  Was he supposed to return to the Luke from the original trilogy just because some girl he doesn’t know turns up with his old lightsabre?  That would have been bad film making in my eyes, not good.

Another criticism is that he died a coward.  I just don’t see it that way.  Was it cowardly to hide away? Possibly but, as mentioned, this wasn’t Rian Johnson’s fault and also not an unrealistic way for him to react to what happened. Having been put in this position, you then want Luke to redeem himself and I thought he did that.  As the film progressed, he slowly became his old self. First he saw Chewie, then the falcon and news of Han’s death, he then agreed to help Rey a bit, then he saw R2-D2 who played him Leia’s recording for Obi-Wan and finally Yoda’s force ghost helped him come around.  There was a progression to his arc and, in the end, his actions were both brave and saved the day.  He would have known that using the force to project his image for all that time would lead to his death but that it was necessary to save the rebellion.  His death gave hope, renewed the idea of Luke the idolised hero, and then echoed the death of both Obi-Wan and Yoda, so was more than fitting, especially with the twin suns setting.  I thought it was a great way for him to “die” and not at all cowardly.  He will almost certainly be back as force ghost in IX as well.

As before, anyone moaning that force projection has never been done by a Jedi in any other material, needs to open up their imagination a little.  Also, if Luke is supposed to be such an amazing Jedi then surely he could find ways to use the force that others before him hadn’t.

My final point about Luke, and of this ridiculously long essay about a film, relates to how people have criticised the idea that Luke could ever feel that the Jedi order needed to end, the idea that an order that kept peace for thousands of years could ever need to move on or evolve.  I can’t believe people even say this without thinking about our own history. Religion, the British Empire, slavery, etc have all been institutions used over 100s of years to keep peace and maintain the powerful but there always comes a time when life and people learn and move forward.  They find better ways to live.  The Jedi might have kept peace for 1000s of years but in the recent past, and Luke’s understanding, they have not kept the peace, they have only been one side of a conflict.  Luke would be absolutely right to reflect on his Jedi beliefs and could easily be correct in his new found stance that the Jedi need to end.  He comes round again at the end of the film, when he corrects Kylo that he is not the last Jedi, but in my eyes his questioning of the Jedi order is not only right but interesting and made for a great film.

[amphtaminedreams]

Sustainability for Beginners: Lookbook no.2

Hi to anyone who’s reading!

From the title, you can probably get an idea of what this little excerpt will be about. Fast fashion, its impact on the environment and its exploitation of workers in developing countries is a topic that has been brought to the forefront of online debate, and for good reason; most clothes that end up in landfills take over 200 years or more to decompose and garment production is one of the most significant pollutants of the planet. 80% of garment manufacturers in developing countries are women, 60% are under 18 and basic workplace expectations as we know them are non-existent: minimum wages, health and safety regulations and workers’ rights are severely lacking.

That being said (and this is a very first world struggle), making the transition from being blissfully unaware, or rather, wilfully ignorant of the damage caused by fast fashion when it is something you’ve mindlessly indulged in for years to partaking in it with a critical eye can be quite difficult. The reality is that whilst some high street retailers have a slightly better reputation than others, most do continue to outsource their production to countries with looser regulations such as Indonesia, Morocco and India in order to keep profits up. To stay away from fast fashion completely requires redirecting your attention away from the high street (online “budget” fast fashion retailers included) and towards independent, sustainable boutiques, second hand stores and charity shops. For a lot of people, this isn’t something that can be done overnight, similar to making the change to veganism or vegetarianism. Habit is a hard thing to conquer; I think a lot of people will relate to using binge eating as a means of instant gratification. In a similar vein, if binge shopping isn’t a term, I want to make it one, because I think it’s just as much of a high. Many a night has been spent giving in to poor impulse control and making a serious online shopping order. At least it’s not hurting myself, I’d think, not sparing a thought to the harm fast fashion does to others and our planet. We all have the need to consume so deeply ingrained into us that I think we develop a kind of blind spot with regards to the suffering it can cause; it’s a bit of an out of sight, out of mind situation.

There’s definitely a class dynamic to the fast fashion discussion too. It’s not realistic for everyone to purchase from sustainable brands, nor do they have the time to trawl charity shops for whatever’s “on trend”. A lot of people do also depend on high street retailers for their jobs. I think the ideal scenario would be that retailers start to realise how much consumers care about issues such as sustainability and workers’ rights, and make changes accordingly. Their intentions may be to keep us coming back, but if they are willing to treat workers more fairly, and we as consumers are willing to be more mindful of what we’re throwing out, that would already be a drastic improvement. 

So what’s the point of this post? What am I actually suggesting we do?

Well, if you can stop buying into fast fashion on the spot, great. But honestly, it would be naive to say this is achievable for the majority. Controversial, but I don’t think that the fashion industry as a whole needs to be crushed. I love everything about fashion. It sounds a little dramatic but I do think of it as an art form and one of the greatest outlets of self-expression. IMO, it comes down to, on a microlevel, being conscious of what we do with our clothes once we’ve bought them (check if your local charity shop actually needs clothes before lumping them with several bin bags of your stuff! It could easily end up in a landfill! Don’t throw stuff out! Use Depop! Swap clothes with friends!), but more importantly, letting retailers know that we do care about environmental and workers’ issues. The biggest way to do this? Speaking out, but more importantly, reducing their profit and thus reducing our consumption. The speaking out part of the equation is pretty self-explanatory. There was recently a petition going round, for example, to pressure H&M into following through on their promise to ensure a living wage for all their workers (had around 150,000 of 250,000 signatures when I signed it so it was doing pretty well, though I need to follow up on what became of it). Research the tragedies of fast fashion, the Rana Plaza collapse of 2013 being a pretty well known one, and keep it in circulation. 

With regards to reducing our consumption, personally, I’ve made an agreement with myself not to buy any new clothes until October. I recently went on a bit of a mad one, lol, and bought way too much from Motel Rocks and Pretty Little Thing, and so I intend not to buy anything else (unless it’s second hand) for 3 months. I’m generally pretty good at this; said shopping spree was my first since January. In the meantime, I want to look into sustainable but affordable brands for when I do next go shopping again (my friend recommended Nobody’s Child to me! I had no idea they were a sustainable brand as they are so affordable! House of Sunny is another one I just made an order from and their clothes are beautiful!). Good on You is a really helpful app that I recently downloaded that gives clothing stores ratings based on how ethical they are; they take multiple factors into account including how a brand treats its workers, its carbon footprint, and whether animals are harmed in the production of any of its garments. Until October, if I do feel like going shopping, I’m going to stick to Depop (which is super easy to browse and convenient to use), Ebay, and vintage/charity shops. Charity shops are definitely the more affordable option but most metropolitan cities do have areas dedicated to vintage shops and fashion and most will have a range of garments to suit all budgets. Of course London has Brick Lane’s Vintage Market and Camden Market, but I recently visited friends in Sheffield and Bristol which also both have areas known for a wide range of vintage shops all in close proximity. Ask the people you know for suggestions, as they’re likely going to be the best points of reference. Fuck Google, lol. 

Most importantly though, USE WHAT YOU HAVE, and this is the point that ties into this whole post. See, I challenged myself to come up with at least 10 new looks without any new clothes and clearly went a bit overboard, as I ended up with 18. There’s no neon, bodycon, or biker shorts, soz, so they aren’t necessarily the most “trendy” but I do feel they reflect my personal style in way that’s current. Layering is your best friend and simple touches like a belt or a piece of jewellery can bring something up to date if it’s been neglected for a year or so. I’m not gonna lie, I do intend to do a lookbook including some of the new clothes I got the other week (like I said, they’re the first lot of clothes I’ve bought since January, give me a break!), but I wanted to affirm to myself that I can do it without buying anything new as well and that I’ve got more than enough to last me until October. THE FACT THAT OUTFIT RECYCLING IS SOMETHING THAT EVEN HAS A FUCKING NAME, LET ALONE IS SUPPOSEDLY LOOKED DOWN UPON IS RIDICULOUS. Good fashion is timeless, you don’t need whatever ugly trend consumerism is trying to convince you is the peak of haute couture to make a statement, lol. 

So to finish off my ramble, here is the 18 outfits I put together from my already owned clothes. I’ve labelled where things are from just to fill the empty space, but I’m now realising it was a bit of redundant effort as it’s not like any of the things are available. Creating unnecessary tasks for myself: A Saga. Anyways, I intend to put a couple of pieces on my Depop over the next couple of days (@lozpez), so if you read all the way to the end and like anything, keep an eye out. And also thanks for reading!

Lauren x

DISCLAIMER: Background in the first 2 images are mine. 9 below are not. 3rd is a Malcom T.Liepke portrait sourced from Google, 4th is Alphonse Mucha! I’m not sure about the rest but if anybody happens to be reading this and does know, hmu!

[neohanaa]

From a Nobody Fan: For Those Who Don’t Like Killing Stalking...

***This post in particular will be updated based on other things noted in the story that may be problematic or something involved in discussion. Also, I/m looking out for any spelling mistakes as I read this over and over for it to make proper sense. I also won’t be using the word “antis” as it is derogatory and I want this post to encourage CIVILIZED dialogue. Additional examples will be added to further prove points. Thanks for reading and understanding. 

I go into the Killing Stalking general relevance posts (memes, pictures, summaries, theories) and I’m seeing all this hate for it as of recent to the point where I just see negative posts. I am a fan but I’m not crazy. I think the story is interesting and the memes are funny. I get that you don’t like it but you can’t say that the fans are evil and against everything you stand for. Have YOU (the ones against KS) liked something like Hannibal? How about Stephen King? Hell, maybe even something as popular as Shakespeare! I can even mention video games if I wanted to!  Were there any problematic characters in there? Were there problematic themes in stories? How about the situation?

If you answered yes or even gave a thought as to what media/show/book/character/movie you like that may include gore, mental issues, abuse, shitty characters, setting, dialogue, and whatever there is included, then I have no clue as to why you give KS fans that much hate. The majority of fans that I have seen on here understand that this is a fictional piece of visual literature (at its most basic, a comic). 

“But this can happen IN REAL LIFE!!! SANGWOO IS A MURDERER AND YOONBUM IS A STALKER!!! HOW CAN YOU LIKE THOSE CHARACTERS?!?!!?!HOW CAN YOU LOVE A MURDERER AFTER SEEING WHAT HE DOES?!?!?! IT’S AN IDEALIZATION OF AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP!!!! IT’S TOO GORY AND VIOLENT!!!”

I have seen fans defend KS time and time again, I will repeat them in defense of KS.

1. Distinction Between Reality and Fiction- A lot of the fans, if not most, understand that something like this can happen in real life BUT the fans also understand that this is a fictional piece of work with the general purpose of being a form of entertainment to read and talk about. We know Superman comics are fiction, so why can’t we treat KS as fiction? (Even though one character is from a different planet and the other is a human, who’s to say that a fictional piece of literature can’t be compared to other literature based on genre and characters? The thing they have in common is that they’re fiction. Obviously the fans have the common sense to not do the sorts of acts portrayed in Killing Stalking)

2. Problematic Characters- The characters were given their circumstances and personalities and looks by the author. The author fleshes out their characters through bits and pieces of information that reveal their pasts in various chapters. It’s the complexity of the characters (and design even) that makes a person like them or not. Fans (a lot or most idk) like Sangwoo not just because he is handsome and a murderer, but rather they like him because of what he adds to the story: tension. We as fans can’t always tell what he’s thinking and his facial expressions and way of talking and acting makes the whole story even more tense because one minute he’s calm and then the next he will go batshit hysterical. Fans either want to see Sangwoo dead or succeed or in jail because he’s too far deep into his current lifestyle to go back to a normal life. Fans wanna see what happens. He has a pretty realistic character design and personality if you think about it because people have the ability to be two-faced: A social face and the true face. You never know what someone is truely thinking. Yoonbum even. He’s not perfect at all in the least. He is a classified stalker with a mental illness. Yet fans like him because he is a character with a bad past (sympathy) which causes him to distort the space around himself and cause his eventual trouble with the law in being a stalker which makes more problems with him becoming one of Sangwoo’s eventual basement dwellers (we want to see him succeed in escape or even other outcomes). These people aren’t perfect and I will reiterate that because this is fiction, the fact that it is fiction it is something most fans make a note of. These characters are fictional and in no way do we condone any of these characters’ actions in real life. If you like, say, Eddy from the cartoon show Ed Edd and Eddy, but you know that he is a greedy asshole and sometimes even gets the kids from the block hurt, do you think I would say you’re evil for liking him? NO because that’s his character and how he was made and his actions reflect off that personality and you like him because of that personality and shenanigans he gets his friends and himself into. Too lighthearted? The how about if you like Hannibal Lecter? As overused as he is, he is a manipulative cannibalistic murderer that people like. In the end, personally, the really unlikable character I have ever come across in my life that I truly did not like was Makoto from School Days (anime based on visual novel) because he was made so unlikable (became a general asshole without spoiling the actual premise).  

Another thing I want to maybe mention as to why you might feel disgust by the characters is how realistic they might actually be. Absurd? Yes and no. It’s bonkers to probably think this because they can be anyone we know in our life, thus you become repulsed by these characters. You have a social face and a “true” face. Have you ever had the face when you talk to someone you don’t want to talk to? I mentioned earlier that Sangwoo is two-faced. The fact that no one really knows he’s a murderer makes it even worse when you know when not anyone else in the story besides the victims and Bum and our police man know. To refer back to the first point, it’s this distinction between reality and fiction that that the fans acknowledge that allows us to read and, dare I say, enjoy these characters and story. Sangwoo and Bum are fictional characters, can’t we treat them as such while we judge their actions on our own terms?

3. Idealization of Abuse in Relationship and Romance- This one is a tough one considering all the mixed stuff going on in the story. I haven’t really seen anyone on Tumblr so far saying “SANGBUM ARE MY GOOOAALLSSS!!” So if you met someone who said that, then that’s the equivalent of teenagers I have seen saying “HARLEY AND JOKER ARE MY GOOAALLS!!” and that, I think, is not a healthy relationship (unless you know they’re trying to be funny about it like in some meme posts. it’s dark humor at that point). However, I do see people saying they would like them together in a healthy relationship in an alternate universe which is fine. Now, back to the problem at hand: As far as I know and the fans (generally) know, Sangwoo and Bum’s relationship are not official. Bum fell in love with Sangwoo (the fake face) and then once he finds out about Sangwoo’s murderous side, because of his illness, it brings all these conflicting emotions that allow for the manipulation to take its course. Bum isn’t in a position to completely think for himself because of his illness and his illness appears to be at a severe stage at some points especially when hallucinations happen. Even though the two did kiss and performed oral, they are not considered to be dating in any way. The fans know that this relationship is toxic because of the physical and mental abuse involved. We know a relationship between people dating should be much more positive, but this story portrays a pretty gritty and manipulative and forceful way about it which makes it negative. The acts of kissing and oral were only a small fraction of what the story offers albeit save for some pretty off-sounding dialogue. Maybe the author will explore the “romantic relationship” (please don’t ignore the quotations) but as you know, it will be abusive, so it will always be toxic. As for the fans who do ship them, at least respect the right to their opinions, even if you think it is wrong. And instead of antagonizing them, ask them why they ship them as a way to understand their thinking. We’re people after all. The story is given the genre of BL (Boys Love) because the relationship we are exposed mostly is between two men in the story. The “romance” parts are a bit weird, but reading the story, it’s all abuse. I know that there is also the argument of the story being homophobic, and while I just see the relationship as toxic and abusive, I don’t know if I can say anything on it being homophobic aside from the fact that Sangwoo seems to be a homophobic person that is confused by his sexuality. No relationship is perfect and relationships like this do exist in the world. If you want to cover a story that a shitty relationship that abuse, go to Fifty Shades of Grey where it claims to be bdsm when it’s really just not. 

4. It’s Too Violent and Gory- As simple as this answer is, if the cover photo of the story doesn’t give a hint to how everything is going to go, then it’s on you really. If you go in expecting minimal violence only to find out it’s brutal, then you really have been warned. I think because the story is expressed visually and is graphic with detail with very gritty textures and gross looking atmosphere, especially with the first two chapters, it appears much more brutal. Literature can make things visual with words, but it’s how the imagination creates the image that affects the intensity and atmosphere of the book (the mind translates details differently). We’re given raw images that showcases death and brutality and it’s disgusting and painful, just as the story is made out to be. So while I understand how disturbing the images are and how you feel towards them is complete and utter disgust, don’t look for them and then talk about how problematic they are. This story is written for audiences above a specific age that can handle this element and its general story for a reason.

So that was the defense. Now, here are the things I acknowledge about your stance:

1. It’s Triggering- For those who suffered abuse and find this story triggering because of being in a similar situation, then I’m sorry about whatever you’re going through. This story is brutal and no one should have to go through anything of the like.

2. Some Fans MAY Be Underage- As mature as this story is, age isn’t as regulated as it should be and anyone can bypass age by lying about it when signing up for the website or finding it online randomly. We can’t all monitor what children watch. It’s like an R-Rated movie. Have you ever attempted to watch an R-Rated movie without an adult? If yes, then I won’t judge you. If not, then that’s also cool. (some R-Rated movies are pretty decent you just gotta look at the reviews) As someone who found out about yaoi/boys love genre in general at age 15 but wasn’t fully interested until I was 17/18, I can see the stigma. Generally underage fans are any age below about 17-19 depending on the content and are generally considered to be immature, loud, overexcited, and very... imaginative...(?) about the story and characters. Generally, they may make a fandom unapproachable because of the extreme ends of the spectrum in views they have in regards to the story. I don’t know how old most people are in the KS fandom, but the posts I come across are generally either memes and fanart, theories and character analysis, cosplay, or “Sangwoo X Prison!!!” I haven’t seen alarming things that would make me think the fandom is under the age of at least 17 or 18 and there are mature teenagers that can handle this story. There really isn’t anything you can do if you meet someone who likes it and they’re younger than you. You’re not their parent.

3. Fan Hostility and (Sangwoo’s) Violence Toward Characters (+ Because of Personalities)- This is something that I have seen with the emergence of the female character Ji Eun. I can’t really tell how many fans were hostile because of her presence. She was made with a purpose to be a jerk and be interested in the handsome murderer (because if the murderer was ugly and straightforward, there would be much more suspicion on Sangwoo). I have seen people not like her because she was in the way of the “relationship” between Sangwoo and Bum and I have seen people not like her because she was an asshole towards Bum. Some people like her and that’s cool. Ji Eun is this character that relies on our hatred for her and then become the Roman Colosseum spectators of a lion fight. I’ve seen fans sympathize and say she doesn’t deserve to die, which makes us hate Sangwoo’s character even more because he manipulated this poor girl and yet we see her as this shallow person. In the end, I think I’ve seen many fans agree that while Ji Eun was a mean person, she shouldn’t have to die. As for Sangwoo and how he kills, he, as far as fans saw up to this point, mainly killed women. However, He does gain a male victim after Bum becomes his prisoner. And the violence is brutal no less. However, his decision to target women seems to be based on his superiority complex and even possibly his past since he also has an Oedipus Complex going on.

4. Ruining the Song Killing Me Softly- Okay, not gonna lie. I love the fandom and I love the song but on this song’s youtube video(s) nowadays includes comments that that say “KS brought me here!!!” and I get it. Personally, I actually avoid the song on youtube in general so that KS doesn’t ruin the song since now it became such a staple to the story in the first 13 or so chapters, but it’s still a good song; It’s a classic song. It’s great that people are into the song, but only being into it because KS made it relevant and cool but then crazy-twitch-eye trigger is a bit too much and can actually ruin its song’s personal value to you if it becomes simply labeled as “The song KS made relevant and trigger inducing”. To be fair to the fans though, the song was implemented really well in the story because it sounds like a bell a master would ring. It’s a good tool to really exercise control and the song choice was interesting and random in a good sense. Sorry if this one sounds like I’m attacking the fans right now, but note that it’s not horrible for you to be introduced to the song, but it seems to just be less meaningful in the long run because it’s going to be that song that some story made relevant and it will only ever be attached to that instead of taking it for what it was initially.

One final section here is the middle-ground section. This is where things that have both sides occur but cannot really be decided due to it really depending on the reader and how this affects them:

1. Illness. Namely, Mental Illness- This story specifically states that the character Yoon Bum has an illness called Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It seems to be a very bad case on top of the fact that he has been sexually abused by his Uncle and mentally (and physically) abused by Sangwoo, his captor. His thought process and actions are affected by this illness throughout many of the chapters. I have come across people saying that they can relate to Yoon Bum and his symptoms and way that he acts and praise the accuracy. I have seen people say that it’s a misrepresentation. I have seen people say that because of how accurate it is that it triggers them and then turns them away from the story, which is understandable because we don’t want you to relive that dark time. A person with a mental illness will most certainly act one way when compared to another person with the same illness who will act a different way. Whatever influence you have in your life on top of that illness may either help you or harm you depending on the circumstances. You can act aggressive, upset, irritated, calm, in-control, lost, weak, and strong. WE ARE ALL HUMAN! WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT! NO ONE WILL BE THE SAME AS THE OTHER SINCE WE ARE ALL UNIQUE! (as cheesy as that sounds but you get my point) Understand that if you have a mental illness, whether it’s depression, BPD, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and other things, know that one person will handle it differently. Just because he or she doesn’t exhibit the same exact traits and way of dealing with it, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have a right to an opinion. One of my best friends has depression and she is affected differently when compared to a former classmate of mine in University. Neither one of them is considered any less than the other. In the realm of the story, one of the biggest deals (a bit of a scandal really) to come out of this story is an interview with the author of Killing Stalking, Koogi, where she admitted she didn’t do much research and fans are even on the fence about how they feel about that. Maybe she’s bluffing when she says that since mental illness might be a taboo thing to talk about depending on where she lives or how she might think the media might think of her. I still support Koogi, but the comment on just choosing the illness without much research and having the symptoms coincidentally match was a bit too risky because of everything that could have gone wrong. But we know that she’ll be more careful (hopefully) from now on. Mental illness it something I noticed is very difficult to talk especially if you don’t have it, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t be aware of how differently it affects people. It’s simply unfair unless they really don’t understand and shut you down by saying “you don’t have an illness” when you are proven to have it and are trying taking the steps to become better. 

2. Sexuality and Homophobic language and the Argument of Fetishization- This is a big discussion/debate between the fans and the ones who don’t like KS. The fans see the characters as either homosexuals or bisexuals with Sangwoo being more confused and then the two are just in a unofficial and abusive relationship and acknowledge this is not a relationship. As for the ones who don’t like KS, they see it as a fetishization of homosexual relationships and go straight into fujoshi/yaoi/BL lover fantasy. Both of these are valid reasons for the reasons you see fit. There are fans who are LGBTQ+ and there are people who are LGBTQ+ who dislike it. It’s all a matter of taste and if they enjoy the story or not and the characters. Fans know this is abuse and some aren’t even into the story for the “relationship” because the story is intense and arguably well written. However, fans are trying to make sense of the sexuality of Sangwoo especially since he has an unstable personality. He is mostly straight but physically and possibly emotionally sticks to Bum. He says words and talks with homophobic language sometimes but he sticks up for Bum when people make fun of him. I don’t think fans would even want to adopt Sangwoo’s homophobic language or murderous character. Actually, no fan would condone this type of behavior if someone acted like this and even fans condemn his actions. The Problematic Characters section also ties to this since his actions reflect his personality. But this is really how the fans see it. They don’t see it as fetishizing, but instead abuse. It’s the interactions between each other that they feel push the story. Now, as for the people who don’t like KS, I understand their view that it’s like it’s a fetishization of a homosexual relationship. I’ve seen that sort of thing with yaoi but it can get cringe-worthy for me when I see real-life girls shipping real people. The art in the story and scenario for Bum and Sangwoo when they do oral feels almost out of a fujoshi fantasy really, so it can be uncomfortable for those who see it that way when they read. Personally, I thought the scene was awkward and uncomfortable because of the initial situation of Bum being held captive and Sangwoo being a murderer, but it’s something that gives development to their distorted characters oddly enough. However, I will reiterate that this relationship is not official as it is manipulative and abusive as stated in the Idealization of Abuse in Relationship and Romance. Another problem lies with people who don’t like KS that say that all fans fetishize homosexual romance. That’s just outright generalizing. And I get that BL stories get flack for having that sort of thing. But I say that Shoujo manga can get pretty bad in the ideal department. All in all, it’s all on you to see if this is fetishization or an example of abuse/manipulation because there is no right answer on how to argue this. This section is the most difficult to discuss and organize so any additional input would be nice in order to edit this section properly.

If I’m missing anything, I’ll look into it and maybe mention it, but what I have here are the general concerns so far.

So, Killing Stalking is a brutal and triggering story. Will you antagonize your real life friends if they like it? Why antagonize those who like it? Why look for the tag only to bash it and say how nasty it is? We respect that you don’t like it. We can’t force you to like it. And if someone is all up in your face about it and saying “YOU SHOULD LIKE THIISSSSSS” like how you guys tell us that we shouldn’t like this, then be the better person and not act hostile. And if you dislike it that much, then blacklist the tag. Don’t tell someone to go kill themselves because that makes you just as bad as the story you say you hate with some real consequences. If the person you follow like KS, just respect that they do and unfollow them unless you like the funniness or some other thing they do. If you have people following you and they like KS, unless they specifically request something in relation to it and you know it’s uncomfortable, make it know. They follow your stuff because they like it. And stop looking for trouble if you dislike the fandom or story and then constantly talk about how bad it is. If you didn’t give the story a chance and go based off other people who talk about then, then do the research yourself and then come up with your own views on it. If the story is too much for you, then fine. If it makes you change your views and you can tolerate it, fine. Just stop harassing fans when they aren’t bothering you. So, yeah, I hope this clears up a few things about the fandom and why we enjoy the story and how reading something does not make us (the fans) evil people.

********Yo everyone, I know I keep updating this post, but feel free to tell me if I should or shouldn’t tag “anti ks” in comments because I seriously want to promote an understanding between parties instead of hostility. I can’t tell if my writing is aggressive but all I know is that it’s wrong to punish people and be mean to them for following something within their interests despite it not being the most sunshiny thing on the planet. Thanks for reading and answering.

[firedragon1321]

Hero Training- What it Is and Why It Sucks

This is the sequel to this rant nobody cares about- http://firedragon1321.tumblr.com/post/158868041331/so-it-is-time-for-me-to-rant. I recommend you read that one first, though I will summarize the short version in this rant.

The short version of the above rant will include a definition of Hero Training, which I think is necessary before I start-

“I never liked having my favorites taken down a peg by “awesome” characters who called them weak or whatever- ever since I was young. Is it favoritism? Yes. But also because they didn’t deserve the negative treatment half the time. In a lot of shonen anime, this often leads right into training arcs with painful/impossible/emotionally draining training that makes the character stronger somehow. Often it makes them a bit of a Stu too (since this normally happens to male characters). I call this phenomenon Hero Training.”- Me, 2017, not that anyone gives a crap

Now, the short version of the other rant is “Hero Training is bad, the only good example was in Digimon Adventure with Piximon because it was required for the target character to get his shit together and the half-example in Pokemon’s Battle Frontier (aka- the King of Pokelantis episode) was just piss-poor writing and had no business being there.”

Now that we’re all caught up, it’s time for Rant 2.0. The Uber-Rant. The rant to end them all.

Okay, not really. But it still is a long-ass post, so I hope you’re ready for a read.

Hero Training is the fast and easy way to power up a character, especially when stronger characters are over the horizon. It usually occurs after the main character loses a battle, but it can just pop up whenever it wants. Of course, by “fast and easy”, I mean “every shonen anime does it at least once in some form”, so it’s a stock cliche. Hell, it has a TVtrope. The TVtropes pages even links to sister tropes that make Hero Training what it is (aka- annoying).

So why exactly does this trope grind my gears to the point that I’d write two rants about it? Let’s break it down.

Annoyance 1- Usually, the protagonist did nothing to “trigger” the training (i.e.- new, stronger foes are coming or some other event outside of the protagonist’s control). If they did, it was due to a character flaw they had from Day One. For example, Character XYZ felt like being reckless that day- but he’s always reckless. Not saying that said recklessness can never be grown out of- just that it was always there and a silly reason to “trigger” additional training unless it caused something big (like powers going out of control accidentally destroying a town, but in shonen anime, these are rare cases). Or Character ABC was lacking certain skills that almost no-one else used up until this point (Nen in Hunter x Hunter is an example).

Annoyance 2- So the protagonist loses in battle or encounters some other difficulty due to lacking skill or their character flaws. How does the writer fix this? They either introduce a new character or an existing one fulfills this role (it’s usually the former, but it was sort of the latter in my Marchen Awakens Romance example in the other rant). Sometimes, they even defeated the hero themselves. The problem is, this character is 99.9% of the time an asshole. Okay, maybe they’re just strict. Maybe I’m over-reacting. But come on- it’s ALMOST EVERY TIME.

Annoyance 3- Now that the characters are in place, it’s time for some shaming! Because not having the right knowledge/skill/personality wasn’t bad enough, the new character (let’s just call him “the mentor”) has to list every reason why the hero is weak/stupid/has XYZ character flaw and is therefore weak and stupid. I don’t know about you, but that would make me feel really badly about myself. If the hero wasn’t a flat character from the start, it’s easy to imagine that they’d feel bad about themselves, too. Perhaps this is what leads to...

Annoyance 4- ...the actual Hero Training itself. Low self-confidence combined with a possible looming threat of fifty foot whatevers trying to kill everyone leads the protagonist to accept the mentor’s offer of training. Here’s where shit gets real. The training methods in shonen anime are often extreme and unrealistic. For example (and this is a real one from our friends at TVtropes, from Katekyo Hitman Reborn- “being set on fire...thrown off a cliff with a whirlpool beneath it and made to stand one-legged on a rock in the middle of a mine field”). If any real human tried to copy many of these training regimens, they would die. Sometimes, it’s all too easy to imagine the trainee dying too.

Annoyance 5- If the hero doesn’t die from any of the above (and they usually don’t), then there is a high chance of writing’s worst scourge moving in- Gary Stu. It can be Mary Sue, but this rant will use Gary Stu since this trope mostly affects male characters. Let’s go all the way back to Annoyance 1 and our friend Character XYZ. He landed in this pot of hot water (perhaps figuratively, perhaps literally) because he was reckless. Instead of gradually growing out of his recklessness like most characters would, the trait is suddenly erased after training. If that was XYZ’s only personality flaw, well, guess what, buttercup? He now has no flaws at all. I have three rules to detect a Stu or Sue- the world revolves around them, they face no difficulties and (most importantly) they are everything the author/reader wants to be but “more”, which means no character flaws like real humans have. If XYZ now has his single flaw erased, he is a third of the way to being a Stu. The mentor’s training might have strengthened his body, but (from a writing standpoint), his mind is now weak.

These five annoyances are also the five steps of the typical Hero Training method. They might be repeated over and over through the course of long animes like Bleach. If that happens, the hero is bound to fall into the Gary Stu trap eventually. If the first round of training didn’t do it, maybe the second will. Or the third. Granted, the Gary Stu step doesn’t always happen, but this trope still frustrates me beyond belief (come on I wrote two rants about it).

Oh look, here comes another bullet-pointed list, this time on why, exactly, we need to abandon this trope (not counting the risk of Gary Stu-ism).

It’s a cheap way to get character development done: This is probably the biggest one. I’m dragging out Character XYZ again. Perhaps he has more than recklessness as character flaws, but that’s the one that causes the most trouble over the course of the story. Training it away is the easiest way to get rid of it (other than pretending it never existed in the first place, which most readers or watchers will easily notice...). Therefore, Hero Training is sometimes used in place of real character development. 

It introduces unlikable characters, characters that don’t have any use in the plot other than to Hero Train, or both: Of course, not every character has to be likable, but some characters are only in the story to serve as Hero Trainers, then they exit stage right. (This is basically Wing from Hunter x Hunter, who only had small appearances after the Heaven’s Arena arc where he trained Gon and Killua- fortunately, neither Gon or Killua ended up as a Stu). A subversion would be Izumi from Fullmetal Alchemist, who has an actual role in the plot beyond being a Hero Trainer and development of her own.

It makes the protagonist overpowered: This is related to being a Gary Stu, but Stu-ism is not just being overpowered. Being overpowered is a part of Stu-ism. Not all rectangles are squares and all that. The issue with being OP by itself is it makes the story less fun to read. I mean, in a shonen, a character will slowly get stronger in XYZ and beat stronger opponents. That’s kind of the formula. I’m talking about blowing away every single opponent without the slightest of struggles. A character may have average ability at the start, but Hero Training is a quick and dirty way to get them to max power in a few chapters or episodes.

It makes me worried: This is a stupid, selfish point, but I wanted to say it. A lot of the impossible training is harmful physically or mentally to the characters. There comes a point where we stop cheering them on to succeed. At that point, we worry if they’ll even make it out alive. If they do survive- realistically- they have a high chance of being traumatized. Since Hero Training often serves as a shortcut to do other things, however, we never see that trauma- just Gary Stu. Again, Fullmetal Alchemist is the exception as both Ed and Al are afraid to meet with Izumi again. Another subversion is in Boku no Hero Academia, where All Might became concerned when Izuku pushed himself too hard during his training- he was trying to prevent excessive physical and/or mental strain.

I’m not saying protagonists should get the easy road (that leads to Stu-ism also). It is possible to have everyone hate the hero for his or her actions and not deal with Hero Training, such as in the video game Tales of the Abyss. It’s also possible to do Hero Training right like in my Digimon example in the other rant, but that requires a certain type of character and mental state for both the mentor and the trainee.

But Hero Training itself is all too often used as a cheap way to get from Point A to Point B, and it’s the hero themselves who suffers the most.

tl;dr- Hero Training is an over-used plot point that makes me worry for the protagonist’s safety while also serving as a quick and cheap way to develop a character when real, gradual character development is more intriguing to watch and read.

[meggannn]

andromeda review

I finished the game Monday night so I’ve had a few days to think over my feelings. No major plot spoilers in this post but putting behind a cut anyway.

I want to rip the bandaid off, so I’ll get the bad news out of the way first.

THE BAD

It’s clear what influence Frostbite -- and by extension EA -- has had on Andromeda, and it’s not always good. It’s a big world, which was kind of what they signed on for by setting the stage in a new galaxy: if it wasn’t big, people would complain we never got to “really see” Andromeda. So they made it big and pushed the exploration thing. It’s not as big as Inquisition, thank god, with not nearly so many pointless fetch quests, but there are still enough sidequests to deter the average player and don’t really move the plot further. I’m actually the kind of dedicated idiot who actually doesn’t mind collecting pointless shit across seventeen maps if it actually gives me more information about the lore or characters, but when it just comes with XP and a check mark, it irritates the living heck out of me. Andromeda has a fair amount of both types.

In the long run, this is a very minor complaint, more about what Bioware doesn’t put in the game than what they do, but I was let down in the lack of… creativity? In the new Andromeda species. After finishing the game however, for plot reasons, I can see why there are several reasons why they would keep the bipedal humanoid alien design, but it’s still a little disappointing. Lore-wise, I think traveling to a new galaxy would be the perfect stage to design more mind-bending aliens like the Leviathans or rachni (the Reapers controlled the direction organic life evolved in the Milky Way, but not Andromeda, right?). Aliens with different types of societies! Aliens that are bigger or smaller in scale than us! Aliens that have different ideas of the word ‘intelligence’! And we got only two sentient species, one of which actually has some form of settled home in Andromeda, the other of which we try to slaughter when we’re within fifty meters of each other.

For people who have played the original trilogy, it becomes kind of obvious they’re retreading familiar ground, and sometimes it gets predictable. Not just with their themes -- which I expect -- but their plot twists. I’ll avoid spoiling too much. There are also moments it feels as though they’re trying to ‘top’ the trauma Shepard went through in the original series by putting Ryder through worse, so much so that when Ryder’s in serious danger it feels a bit like they’re crying wolf. They somehow managed to do this without making Ryder feel like ‘the new Shepard’ -- which is a good thing -- but still, it’s a bit odd and disconnecting. It’s like you can see the talks at the tables when the creative director said “and then we’ll do THIS” and nobody considered if it was, um, logical.

With the writing, there was occasionally a lot of -- for lack of a better phrase -- telling and not showing, or in some other cases, stretching the limits of lore believability just to create conflict for the player to fight. I tend to hate when people use “show don’t tell” as a criticism because I think they’re usually overlooking something, but this is a common theme with BW games and in Andromeda it happens pretty consistently. We are constantly told that the angara are always “free” with their feelings and rarely if ever hide their emotions from the world, yet aside from Jaal’s consistent emotional vulnerability (who I thought was great btw), angara mostly tend to speak and talk and walk exactly like us. Having a conversation with an angaran NPC felt exactly like an asari or human NPC, except, you know, in how they looked.

((MILD PLOT SPOILERS: If you’ve reached Aya you’re probably fine to read)) I’m obviously relieved Bioware didn’t go in the colonization direction -- something I didn’t want to have to worry about the first place -- but instead there’s an undeniable white savior (or “human savior”) theme instead. (It became especially prominent later in the game.) This is difficult to document exactly because it’s not as explicit as other classic examples -- in MEA, Jaal has a large presence and is actively involved in protecting and saving his people; the Initiative/Ryder has to work their ass off to prove their intentions are peaceful and even then the angara are portrayed to rightfully still be skeptical -- but at the end of the day, the angara are a POC coded culture and ~only a stranger can save them~. The angara have also become Mass Effect’s elven equivalent from Dragon Age, in terms of how much and how often the story throws them into the mud. At least unlike the elves, they don’t argue that it’s the angara’s fault, but after a while it feels like slow and cruel torture of a native species that’s already been through hell.

The Chosen One narrative is how Bioware operates, I get it. But I’m getting tired of people treating the Pathfinder/Inquisitor like a hero-in-the-making before they have the chance to prove they’re even a person. (Sorry to keep bringing DA2 up, but this is why I liked Hawke so much -- you worked to Championship from the ground up, and everyone knew it.) What is so freaking special about the symbol of Pathfinders that makes everyone flock to you when you first step onto the Nexus? Did the Initiative really pin all their hopes on scouting landscapes and settling colonies in hostile or extreme environments on the shoulders of four people?

The disappointing LGBT romances are already well-documented, but I have to give a particular call-out to how they handled the only mlm’s storyline, because it was terrible. (It’s honestly astounding how it passed the desks of multiple people and nobody thought to say hey, maybe this is offensive?)

After watching Jaal’s romance… I’m still not convinced aliens should ever be straight in any circumstance, but I don’t think just a patch would solve this one -- I think Jaal’s romance employs a lot of you’re-the-girl-of-my-dreams tropes that were meant to specifically appeal to women, so swapping Sara for Scott in this case might feel lazy or contrived. Liam’s romance, though -- which I LOVED and I highly recommend people watch if they have a few minutes on Youtube -- is completely free of any sort of gender stereotypical tropes and would work just as well with any Ryder.

Okay now onto the good stuff, which was fortunately most of it.

THE GOOD

Despite all of the above, I really, genuinely, enjoyed this game and think both old and new Mass Effect players would enjoy it. There are some growing pains -- Ryder asks a few dumb questions for exposition that most ME fans know by heart and other times an NPC comments on this or that lore reference that new people wouldn’t understand in the slightest, but it doesn’t ruin the experience. I finished at around 75 hours and 97% completion with most of the remaining activities the ‘no lore included’ fetch quests I was complaining about earlier. And despite my whining about the sidequests, I actually did genuinely like them, for the most part. They gave me more information about each of the worlds and how people live there, often because the same people would give me multiple quests, or reference each other, so the locations felt like real places that people lived in.

The companions and their relationships -- including romances -- are really good. Like, not to call it leagues better than Inquisition, because Inquisition had great companions, but unlike the Inquisitor I actually felt like Ryder had a place on the ship. I knew what their job was, sure, but I also know who they were when they interacted with people, even allowing for the freedom of player choice. The Initiative isn’t military, and neither is your ship, though plenty of the squad have professional firearms and crisis training, which is a great shift from Shepard and the Normandy -- it comes with more casual banter, but it also has its downsides, because there will be fights on your ship between people, because many of them are not professionals, just highly skilled expertises, and they aren’t used to working with others. It sucks because you have to mediate the arguments, but it’s also realistic.

The animation is fine, and yeah the CC sucks and I wish it were better, but it’s hardly the end of the world. Mass Effect always did better with aliens than it did with humans, so it’s hardly a surprise, and personally I think if people are going to throw a fit over their PC not having the right kind of eyebrows or a glitch where a character holds a gun backwards that happens once in a 70+ hour game, and that ruins the entire experience for them… they might want to pick another hobby.

I’ve seen people complaining that the writing is shit, and it’s true that occasionally I’ll hear a cheesy line and think a fifteen year old could’ve done better, but the largest majority of the time, I wonder what those complaints were smoking. The writing is great. I feel like these are all real people -- and I especially feel Ryder is a real person, a real sister/brother, a real twenty-something thrown into a million problems they’re unequipped to handle.

I was surprised to actually be… impressed by the way they handle angaran relations. The white savior thing is still true and will always be true, but I appreciate that Ryder has to work their ass off to prove they’re trustworthy, and even then, the angara that still openly distrust aliens aren’t wrong for it, and Ryder has to respect that or risk their respect. They’re wary, and they have every right to be, and the story doesn’t punish them for it. (Even the Roekaar are slightly sympathetic in a way, because a majority of them are fighting because they’re scared.)

Open world games are usually something I dread, but I didn’t mind the open landscapes for the most part, because the Mako -- I mean Nomad -- gets you around pretty fast, you’ve got banter to listen to in the meantime, and the upgrades really helped whenever the terrain became challenging. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s really too much, but for the most part, I honestly didn’t mind, and I was surprised I didn’t.

The journal prioritization system reminds me of DA2 in a good way; compared to previous ME games, and even Inquisition, MEA makes it a lot easier to tell which quests are worth doing/plot relevant, and which would just amount to my dicking around in the wilderness for XP or loot.

The combat is excellent -- not to rag on the original series’ system because there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but I can definitely see major improvements in creativity and flexibility. It’s fluid, much more mobile, and the jumpjets let you get so much more creative. Letting people mix and match powers is a little far-fetched, but you can handwave a lot of with SAM’s profile implant, so I don’t really mind. The only irritating thing is that you’re limited to three powers at once, but since you have about a million powers available to you in the first place and can equip four favorite profiles at once, it seems a fair trade. (I’ve found a way around this anyway -- instead of bringing up the HUD and going to favorites, if you pause the game in the middle of combat, you can fool around with your skills AND change profiles and resume combat with no cooldown.)

It felt like ME1 in all of the best ways. Like I mentioned above, it’s true they’re sort of treading familiar ground in their themes and plot twists, but there were certain parts of the final mission in particular were most definitely purposeful references to/love letters to the original trilogy. It makes it feel like the start of a new journey; I told a friend when I finished that I felt exactly like I had when I finished ME1 for the first time, excited and scared and pumped to start playing sequel.

My overall experience was a great one; I’m planning on starting my second playthrough as soon as I can, probably tomorrow. It was familiar to old fans who loved ME1 for its newness and strangeness, it’s friendly to new players, and I think it’ll be remembered strongly in the future if it is the beginning of a new series like I expect it to be. (LBR, if it isn’t “part one” of a new story...... it makes no sense. It’s practically screaming for more.)

[emsykesillustration]

Skills Audit & Action Plan (And a bit of a reflective PDP post)

Although it’s been a while since I initially worked on this part of my Survive Guide, I feel that it’s really helped shape my work as a whole, as well as my visual language and the front I put on as a professional illustrator. 

Looking into my strengths, specific skills, and how they can be applied within the industry has helped me open my mind and think about where I can take my work, as well as apply these strengths to units after this exercise - I’ve become much more confident as an illustrator, and also spent more time honing the skills that I feel are primary to what I do, and rather than shaping myself into an industry, it has helped me shape an industry to me - there is a place for everybody, and as Keith Haring said, art is for everybody. I’ve now just gotta make mine really good!

 In the audit, skills I highlighted were: 2D Digital 

It’s pretty clear that my most primary method of working is 2D - recently, I have been adding things such as drop shadows, slight dimensions to my work however, such as here. I think that allowing my work to remain 2D keeps texture as the forefront of my visual language - I would like to explore into 3D design, however it’s quite a ‘clean’ dominated area from what I’ve seen, and I still have so much more exploring and prospering to do within 2D! 2D work is also super fitting for media and units that I’ve worked across, for instance editorial briefs, commissions for a beer bottle label, and media campaigns - things to be put onto posters, billboards, and even small animations. Abstract 

Abstract is a weird one, I see my work as quite abstract in how I use texture as a shape form and a platform to add onto my illustrations and the parts around that one texture I’ve used. Looking back to second year, my What Do You See? Zine was very abstract, images and shape were intertwined, the zine was a method of enticing an audience to dissect what they saw and become engulfed in the chaos that had been laid before them. Although I feel that this was a successful piece of work and I enjoyed my methods of working, I think I’ve evolved a little more as an illustrator since, and even in the process methods of how I worked, layering, distorting allowing things to be in front of what I see as more important now; legibility, message, perspective, gesture, and shape, I’d like to say abstract work could be something I perhaps look into in the future, or if I want to create extra pieces of work, accompaniments for a client, crops of parts of texture and works could prove as nice abstract pieces. My textures set so much of a mood for me and my work that I feel that this could be, if done rightly, a strong thing to keep hold of - I guess it’s a case of whatever creativity I yield and what’s required of me in the future! Animation

 Animation will aaaaaaalways be something I keep aspiring to do. It’s something I keep doing, and something that’s been included in my work each year, but I still can’t quite put my finger on it and keep it mine. Experimentation with stop motion in James’ workshop in first year really got me more confident in seeing that animation wasn’t people sat behind MacBooks on really fancy software that nobody else could do, it was more than Pixar stuff, but it was and still is, simple movements, lo-fi ways of making things happen, making them happen in a different way, and I think a method of me either enhancing my work or adding a little movement to it. Drawn frames have been something I’ve used a lot, particularly in my Illustrator/Authorstrator unit, I’ve drawn hundereds. Some have worked out lovely, and some just haven’t done it for me. Compiling an animation of a collection of ‘90s inspired MTV idents was a huge learning step for me. I learned things along the way, mastered making GIFS, became a little more familiar with frame rates, and saw the importance to detail and consistency. For me, I think the biggest thing is the context requiring the animation, media used, and simplicity. I need to stop focusing on how many frames I have and how intricate it is (although this did work for such specific movements in the Inflatable Man ident animation), but really nailing what I need to. I was recently shown a bit of work from one of the artists in the We Are Goodness agency, and it just blew my mind that a few variations of one frame can come together and be so effective. I’ve begun to become familiar with Adobe Character Animator, and I think this’ll be a great place to start looking at developing my animation skills - there’ll be less of a separation of stuff being too hand rendered and media use being limited (my Jeff Koons animation was almost solely line, and even after hours of deliberation it still didn’t mix in properly), and working with my illustrations and introducing a little movement. Architecture

 Architecture is a strange one. I still struggle to see past fancy pants diagrams and blue prints, but in my work it’s something quite comfortable for me. I like illustrating things. I loved the concept of how objects evoke nostalgia and memories in my (Re)Collection unit, and having something to focus on and make it really work is something I love doing, not just in Architecture based work, but as a whole. First year saw me use a little sketch from inside the John Rylands Library in a screen print experiment, to commissioned work outside of uni of The Palace Cinema, which I actually just casually showed the owner who I work for, and she actually loved! 
I’ve more and more begun to look into what actually makes up what I’m illustrating, for instance in the Palace Cinema illustration, I spent hours gathering the different colours of the bricks, to make it look bricky. I’ve begun to see that you can own something that’s real, make it your illustrative style and visual language without it having to be realistic. I spent less time on making sure every little thing was the exact same, and used the colours and shapes I’d studied within each detail to highlight them, exaggerate them, introduce daring blues into greys, and oranges into bricks, to get an end result I was pretty impressed with. I think that’s what helps make my work so striking. Not just the texture and shape, but separating myself from expectations, what it should look like, and make the item itemy.
 Business

 If I’m honest, I’m a bit of a kid and easily stereotype this bit. I see grey computer chairs and a murky office. BUT, applying myself into the industry, as well as other industries as an illustrator, has really helped me realise the importance of illustrating for business. If you work well and present as a confident, professional illustrator, you’ll be taken seriously. Businesses look to you as an illustrator who specialises in something that they don’t, and it’s important that you keep in mind that that’s why you’re there. If a business wants you to illustrate something, or illustrate them as a company, you need the output to gather the essence of them. Even if I got a commission for a magazine on something like wooden pegs, it’d be so important to study their importance, function, and what the client wants and needs. I think that the b biggest creative challenges I’ve faced, especially in one day briefs, have been because I’ve either not been familiar with the subject topic, or the industry itself. Recently, again, I’ve become involved within the cinema business. It’s all about illustrating things you’re not comfortable with, or haven’t illustrated before. But that adaptability, to a certain level, and making it yours, it’s what’s important. Publications and organisations such as the Financial Times, Guardian, and Business Insider/Weekly are highly successful commissions for illustrators and I’d like to aim high! Collage 

I like to see past collage as something kids did in school as an ‘art’ class. It’s all about instinct, and for me, collage is my skills of bringing hand rendered things, textures, markmaking, objects, cut shapes, together with Photoshop and creating something unique and eye-catching. I like to see my illustrations as collages themselves, I’m literally adding bits and bobs together for people to stand back and go ‘Oh, yeah its a person climbing a mountain but she’s made up of all bits and bobs, that’s pretty cool that’. For something that I used to see as just photomontage and for people who’s work was solely strong as hand-rendered and perhaps just scanned in, it’s now a skill I see over a lot of the time, but definitely the roots of my visual language.  Design 

DESIGN IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME, I NEVER REALISED HOW MUCH I ACTUALLY FIT INTO AND ROCK THE LABEL AS DESIGNER! I think that since working on my Future Self part one, the beer project, I’ve begun making much more informed decisions about my work. Type, placement, composition have all become really important in my creative process. Design allows me to make my work apply to certain things, such as my zine being more than just a zine for uni, but a self-published piece that I can have in my store and say “I made this, it’s about beer, it’s unique, and you can buy it if you’d like” and be confident in saying that! Each illustration now has so many possibilities, and I think that design is more important than ever for me because such texture-based works need the design element there, to allow for space around them, and elements within them that push them that little further to being something that’s worthy of being professional. Design has also taken on now as being a part of my actual visual language rather than just a skill - it’s now on the drafts for my business cards, as I do see myself as a designer. I’d like to think that because of the informed decisions and time put behind my recent (Re)Collection work, the logo, the brand, authenticity, space as advertisements themselves, that my work’s been seen not only by university as design-led, but the outside world and the industry. I’ve been asked to design and illustrate actual things outside of university because of my skills and design behind my final works.  Fantasy

 I’ve developed past someone that saw fantasy work as pixies, fanfic illustrations and very 3D based, realistic work. I think I actually fell into the Fantasy skillset by accident! A major step in dong this was probably my Future Self part 1 work, such as the illustrative responses, Elvis Juice and IPA ’74. I I mean, a skeleton fully clad in biker gear, with a grapefruit helmet, on a bike with grapefruit wheels is cool, but it’s definitely not real. But I managed to illustrate that, and make it conceptually plausible. Channelling my responses to the tastes and experiences from the beers I was trying, the content for my unit, past what I just tasted, to what it felt like and would really work as was probably one of the first big things that allowed me to start feeling like a proper illustrator. I saw Elvis Juice as a badass, punchy, refreshing fruity number, and channelled Brewdog’s punk scheme of things as was, to create a damn cool illustration. I saw drinking the first proper IPA I’d ever had, the most hops I’d ever tasted at once, into a pool, no, a sea of beer. I added colours I’d never have thought to add to something when illustrating beer, and it really worked. 
Editorial

 Almost as a combination of both fantasy and design, I like to push the boundaries of what something should look like and represent, but also keep it cool and professional - not too abstract - although I take much more of an Authorstrator response, I like to keep to the brief and adapt to the client’s needs, but keep my visual language at the forefront of things. The one day brief really helped me to see this - although it was a slightly shoddier version of my better work, it still grasped the topic and article content - I enjoy the challenges of using limited colour pallettes, and although I like to make my work hyper representative of what I’m illustrating, taking the actual colours away from something and applying a new palette can really help embolden my work and add meaning and context however I may need to. I like creating work that I can see applied throughout various media in the industry. Although my Peak of Culture piece wasn’t for anything editorial as such, it was the first piece in my (Re)Collection work that really hit it as a piece that could be distributed into the media. The way that I’d really worked with the perspective of the climber’s legs, to allow her to stand out, and make sure that you could see she was climbing and almost leaping - the true lengths she was going to - was something important for me - it was as if I’d adapted this frame of mind where I can see that I may have a limited size of image, or audience - either familiar with my style or not - to get as much as I need to out there, in the best way that I can. I like making my work accompaniable, and strive to see the final outcome as something I could see out there as a professional piece.
 Merchandise 

Merchandise isn’t something I have too much experience with, as I’ve made t-shirts as a secondary product to my What Do You See? Zine, but it was very rookie and basic. The t-shirts had linocut designs of mini illustrations featured in my zine, and although they were somewhat aesthetically okay, there’s something more I need to keep doing. I enjoyed getting appropriate photos to fit the feel and crowd of my t-shirts, and putting them online - I’ve also learned the importance of social media as an illustrator, as well as self-promotion. Plus, my visual language has evolved from there. Being more confident now, I’d love to be able to adapt some of the ‘90s work I’ve used in my (Re)Collection work onto t-shirts and even tea towels - ‘90s fashion is such a comeback right now and it could really nicely adapt. Perhaps screen printing work and illustrations, definitely text, would prove quite nice as some merchandise. My own merchandise is also important, as it’s a source of money. Aside from commissions, getting my own work out there as something saleable is important - I’ve got prints and my zine of past works up there in my store, but there’s so much more I could do. Merchandise in terms of commissions for others is something I really really aspire to become involved in - campaigns such as Everpress are really good ways of me kickstarting this and getting my work, on t-shirts and merchandise, out there into the industry - it has a very tight knit creative crowd, and there could be fashion designers and brand owners amongst them. Aiming high, I aspire to create merchandise for brands such as Vans, to even smaller brands - merchandise for bands, posters, t-shirts has always been something I've liked to do - it’s applying! I’ve currently been experimenting with screen print at home using DIY stencils, mixing colours and applying ink in ways that create texture - this has proven successful, and with some tweaking could be something I could further with and really grasp onto for my last unit. Narrative 

I very naturally and comfortably allow my work to take on a narrative approach, as my visual language can be very high-energy, and telling of the subject. If an object or character requires movement, I’ve adapted the surroundings or features using shape, space or form to be able to enhance the movement. Pieces such as the Saxo or Dancer from my (Re)Collection work, required a lot of time into skewing, perspective, and strength in colour to be able to get their angle, energy, and capturing their possible movement. I think that narrative is something I improve on with each brief (hopefully!), adapting to the needs of what's asked of me, and how my work can meet that. Social Issues
 Social issues are something I’m very aware of, and as many people know, voiced around. Because of this, I do take time to explore any issues I cover, and although most of the time I do tend to choose briefs that don’t cover social issues, when I’ve had works that include concepts of it, or decisions that require a moral or social input, I’ve always been happy to add to it and take the time to think it through. I think the most prominent socially aware piece I’ve made is one of the double page spreads for my What Do You See? Zine.  I’d collaborated with photography student Ellie Andrews to swap works covering sexuality and identity, and mixed with her work as well as my own illustrations, it became a successful piece, I think covering it as it should be. Freely. There was nudity, masturbation, and topics that required equal exposure. Gender fluidity, the male and female body, and it would have proved quite difficult if I hadn’t considered why I was covering this, and how. I ensured every subject was covered, and that things weren’t too vulgar or in your face, but things such as the female nipple, and male anatomy were clear for all to see. These are such things that currently are being more accepted in society, but art is a great platform to be able to get this out as well as laying out facts.
 Generic Skills

 The generic skills I selected as my strongest, rating at 4 and 5, were:

 -Coherent visual language 
- Reading and understanding a brief
 - Using visual research
 - Recording your process 
- Making corrections to your work 
- Working in a given format
 - Scanning artwork
 - Preparing artwork digitally
 - Sending hi-res artwork 
- Sending a professional email
 - Verbal and written communication
 - Working to a deadline
 - Working under pressure 
- Working independently 
- Working in a team
 - Adapting to change 
- Establishing client needs I feel that I work really well on all of these, my visual language is something that’s come together really neatly over time and something that will continue to develop thanks to these exercises, my briefs, and feedback, as well as the creative process itself. I’m used to recording my processes, however things like working to my sketchbook need to be looked at nicely as well as stuff on here - I need a good balance as sometimes I forget how important my sketches etc are. So much of my work is prepared digitally, and preparing for things such as the One Week Exhibition at Kosmonaut at the start of the year really helped me to get a hang of hi-res, the right format of colour, and sending things over to be printed. Emailing practitioners to get feedback is something I’ve worked really well on, as I managed to hear back from some great people! I’m hoping to do the same again when asking for Portfolio Reviews. Specialist Skills

 Specialist skills concerning the parts of the industry I aspire to go into include creating a range of works which link, and marketing myself - I think I’ve managed to do this well throughout - the previous units, both the Future Self part 1 and (Re)Collection had really helped me to get out there and pull my work together as one combined, consistent piece. I was lucky enough to get a commission out of my work in Future Self part 1, as a small brewery in Ambleside that I’d visited saw my work on Twitter, illustrative responses to beers similar to theirs and beers they were interested in, and asked me to create a bottle label for them! Putting myself out there as an illustrator as if I were being commissioned by the people I’m interested in is very cheeky but also very effective. Obviously I wasn’t commissioned by MTV for the (Re)Collection unit (I wish), but by allowing my work to look as though I had been professionally commissioned actually made myself look really professional and stepped me up out there a little bit. Because I’d put my work into mockups and adapted it that it were possible that I could have been commissioned, it really did attain a lot of comments and likes, a lot of people paid attention and I actually felt really confident. Emma Reynolds’ talks about being a professional out there also restored a lot of confidence - you don’t and you won’t hear back from a lot of people when asking for work or putting yourself forwards as an illustrator - particularly concerning things like editorial work - you have to put the work in as an illustrator and contact the right people - and if you don’t hear back, you don’t hear back. There are so many opportunities out there, that you just keep going and something will find you. Looking at the directories for agencies and editorial contacts was also a real confidence booster - I’m sure I’ll be terrified when I get to it, but it’s so nice to see that there’s people I can actually get in touch with in terms of getting my work out there! Aaah! The ability to visualise clearly was also something I rated myself quite well for, as I enjoy the creative process of brainstorming potential ideas, writing about them, what works and what doesn’t, and along with research and drafts, selecting the best ideas to represent not only my abilities and visual language, but the brief itself. Finally, one of the skills includes working to a tight deadline - I’ve really worked hard to get what I needed to done as well as I can, and as best as I can this year particularly - and after all of the grouchiness, tiredness and stress, it really pays off and I take a lot of pride in it. This is something I keep aspiring to do, as the final unit coming up is being cut a little short as I’m away for the actual deadline (!) so I’ll have to keep cracking on and ensure I can get everything handed in a little earlier and to the best that I can. Action Plan

 1) I need to learn more from professionals on how to deal with clients and financially work, such as sending invoices, how much to charge people, and taxes.

Professional practice talks with Emma Reynolds and Jo have really really helped me to be able to see how you work as a professional in terms of dealing with clients and finance - I’ve looked at what powers I’d have as a professional in terms of not being paid, and how to go about any difficulties with a client. I’ve also learned the hard way in terms of being paid on time - it’s best to ensure you have the money in case you don’t get paid on time! Looking at day rates for new graduates and what kind of work costs what is definitely something worth talking to illustrators about - it’s normally the same generally, and people are normally happy to share it with you. This may be something I may ask my contacts when getting some Portfolio Reviews, as this is pretty important to know and learn about before I graduate. Talking is good!
 2) Get myself braver and used to the commission process - the best ways to create rapport and how to approach the market myself. 

Creating rapport is something that still scares me now, but I’ve started noticing people and illustrators alike in the creative industry are actually really nice, and like-minded - sending messages to thank them for following me, commenting on work that’s really nice, and general appreciation is so important.  3) Market myself - find people who are interested, followers etc. 
It’s important that I continue to get myself out there, as this isn’t something that just happens. Especially with the importance of social media, although people use it so much, clients don’t just flock to you. It’s important that I ensure I keep my portfolio up to date, available online for people to see my best work, keep my website looking clean, and always have business cards to hand - you could meet someone that could be a potential client anywhere! Looking into the people who illustrators and those out in the industry are interested in, in contact with, and look up to is always a good way for me to not only open my eyes, but keep up to date with happenings in the industry, as well as trends, and good things to know. 4) Filter thoughts/ideas into the best that I can

This is a work in progress for me, and as a creative, I think it always will be. You can’t get better at something by not doing it. I’m going to keep filtering my ideas to the best that I can, and if I have the time to in a brief or a commission, sit back and think about if and how I could do something better, not only visually but as a professional. This proved really important in my work creating the logo for the (Re)Collection campaign, where authenticity was key. I actually had to look and find out what font the Guardian used, and when finding out how expensive it was, had to use the help of other creatives out there in the same position to be able to create a worthy piece!  5) Become more sophisticated with my craft, how I work, techniques, and myself.

God, I don’t leave myself much rest do I? This is so vital. The art world changes, and after learning through university how much illustration has actually merged into different disciplines, it’s more important than ever that my work is sophisticated, out there, and as professional as I can get it. Looking at my work and how I create it constantly will be something I need to get into the habit of doing, as it’s the only way I’m going to improve it! Looking back at my book cover from last year, to my most recent work, is quite scary - something I thought was the best I could be at the time compared to now, is so different!

[thelondonfilmschool]

London Film School’s Matthew Button on the ‘bonkers’ experience of LOVING VINCENT - Part One

Interview by Sophie McVeigh, Photos by Matthew Button

As labours of love go, it’s hard to think of one that’s more laborious. Originally conceived as a short film by director Dorota Kobiela, six years and over 65,000 hand-painted frames later comes the mind-boggling achievement that is Loving Vincent, the world’s first fully-painted feature film. It has to be seen to believed, but we were given a unique insight into the process by our very own Head of Production Design, Matthew Button, who headed the production design on the project. It has been referred to variously as ‘miraculous’, ‘truly insane’ and ‘this century’s best animated film’ - if you thought your set build was complicated, wait until you hear about this one …  

Sophie McVeigh: Could you tell us a bit about the film, for those who don’t know anything about it?

Matthew Button: “Well, it’s probably the most bonkers film that anybody’s ever undertaken. The director, a lady called Dorota from Poland, and her co-director/co-producer is also her partner in life, called Hugh Welchman, and they had an avid interest in the work of Van Gogh. Dorota is a fine artist and a film maker in her own right, and Hugh is a film director and producer – he got the Oscar for Peter and the Wolf, the animation. So, they undertook this crazy project. It was first envisaged as a short, to create a short film about Van Gogh as a painted animation. So, basically, every frame was a hand-rendered painting on a canvas. And the idea, which was so interesting that it took off, they actually decided to develop it into a feature film. So, they started developing a feature film script. And I think what they were quite interested in – lots of people knew about Van Gogh’s work but not that many people maybe knew about his journey, the fact that he never sold a painting during his lifetime, and also the circumstances of his death, which is a bit of a murder mystery to some extent. So, the film they did is not necessarily exploring his work, it’s exploring his life and his death. There’s a bit of a thriller element to it, because I didn’t really realise but there was a lot of mystery about how he died, whether he committed suicide or whether he was shot. So, there’s a lot of interesting characters, there’s a lot of people who were jealous of his work … Dr Gachet, who was somebody who was incredibly envious and fancied himself as a painter, was actually a military surgeon and, yet, he failed to treat Van Gogh when he had this gunshot and let him die of his wounds. So, there are some really strange intrigues going on there. And the film’s in two parts – it’s got a black and white, almost realist painted rendering, which is the flashback scenes featuring Van Gogh himself. But then there’s also this character, the postman’s son who was a friend of Van Gogh’s, who goes back to try and find out a little bit about his life and death, and that’s rendered in the style of his work. So, there’s two very different looks to the film. There’s a contemporary murder mystery going and on, and also the flashbacks.”

S.M: Can you explain how the animation process worked?

M.B: “They produced, I believe, 65,000 original paintings on canvas, which was a crazy undertaking. They worked out that if they laid them next to each other it would cover an area of Greater London; this gives you an idea of the kind of epic undertaking! They had about 150 painters, painting full-time in Poland, producing these works. My involvement was to provide the sets and props for the live action work. This was shot and then projected onto canvases. The Artists would then paint over the live action work in the style of Van Gogh’s paintings frame by frame. My job as Production Designer, which was a real challenge was to recreate sets from his paintings that we’d then film with live action actors. These would then get rendered, and then projected onto these PAWS (Painting Animation Work Stations) where the painters would over-paint the images frame by frame.”

S.M: Did it all go to plan or were there any challenges along the way?

M.B: “It did go to plan – I was just saying to somebody earlier today, I feel a little bit of a charlatan in so much as my work was very, very hard work, but I probably had about two months of very hard work on this project, whereas for many people involved it was ‘years’ worth of work, an epic undertaking. My end of it was really, really challenging. What we initially envisaged was going to be a lot of green screen sets that could be reconfigured almost like building blocks soon changed. What we quickly realised was that the more I could give them, the quicker the process, and the more effective it would be. The project was sold to me initially like, “Matt, we just need you to come and organise a few basic hand props and organise getting some green screen scenery elements built”.

What was initially on the face of it a quite a pedestrian undertaking, suddenly became a real challenge. Matching sets and props to paintings. No objects still existed so everything was a ‘make’. I ended up recreating cafes, train carriages and fields of wheat!!”

S.M: Were you a Van Gogh fan before you started working on the film?

M.B: “Not necessarily, I love his work but would never have said I was a Van Gogh ‘fan’, however I think the process of working on ‘Loving Vincent’ has probably changed me in some way. I have an amazing respect for his work and I think there’s such sadness to his story, he had such a vision and a tale to tell and it was such a waste that he never reaped any of the rewards in his lifetime. He had an incredibly tortured life, and his early demise was a tragedy.”

S.M: Is there anything particular about his work that you think works in this format?

M.B: “Well, strangely, I think his work’s has really lent itself to this form of animation. It’s nothing he could have ever envisaged being done but it’s worked incredibly well. It’s an absolute visual feast. The palette he used is so rich and sumptuous and there is nothing dour at all about his work. The directors have at times juxtaposed his ‘pallete’ to deal with quite disturbing material such as his ‘bloody ‘ death. This proves shocking to the viewer.”

S.M: Would you take on the challenge again, knowing what you know now?

M.B: “I absolutely would do it again, but I also know for a fact the directors would never undertake this again! They said it’s the most un-financially sound way to make a film!! (laughs) It’s absolutely bonkers and I don’t think anybody will ever do it again; it makes it all the more interesting and such privilege to be involved. I truly believe it’s unique and this is the only time it will ever be done.”

S.M: If it was to be done again, are there any other artists that you think would work?

M.B: “I don’t know… it’s a bit of a difficult one. As I say, I just think, because his work has lent itself so well to that rendering, I couldn’t think of anybody else who’d work. I just think, what’s nice about him is that it’s got the whole landscape element, the figurative elements, the still life elements, he was so eclectic that as a film it really, really works because it’s got all those mediums you almost want. You’ve got the ‘landscapes, you’ve got your cutaway shots (still life’s’) and you’ve got your ‘real drama’. It’s almost like he’s laid it out for you, as if he’s been thinking about the way you’d make a film through his paintings, which is quite uncanny really.”

S.M: Have you seen the finished film yet?

M.B: “I haven’t, I get to see it on Monday night. The premiere is at The National Gallery – they’ve got a screening where people can go and see it that amazing environment. They managed to secure a very good cast for it – it’s got Helen McCrory, Aiden Turner who plays Poldark, Saoirsie Ronan, Jerome Flynne, Douglas Booth, Chris O’Dowd.”

S.M: Will they all be at the premiere?

M.B: “Well, I hope so, we’ll see. But they were all on set when I was there and they were all lovely. It was such a strange thing for them to get involved in, it was really good esprit de corps because nobody was paid particularly well and everybody just did it because they wanted to including my whole department, we worked crazy hours and absolutely went way beyond what you’d normally be expected to do, but it was just such a unique thing to be involved in.

Unique is certainly the word for it. Just watching the trailer, you’re left with a sense of sadness that Van Gogh is no longer around to see the mammoth amounts of time and effort that have gone into bringing his story to life. But more than that, there’s a sense of joy and awe that there are filmmakers like this in the world, willing to dedicate years of their lives to making the impossible happen. And all for the love of Vincent.”

You can find out more about the fascinating process of making this film and the motivation behind its inception in this Making Of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE9Q_7bfHsM

[kim26chiu]

The London Review of Books Is Required Reading

People often ask me how they can follow my career path into urbanism writing. I generally discourage that. But for those who are interested, it involves reading – lots and lots and reading. And not just on urbanism but not a wide range of topics. I can only make many of the connections I do because I’m tapped in a wide of range of things, most of which are like the parts of the iceberg underwater you never see.

As it happens, some folks also ask me what they should read or what I read.

One thing of course is to sign up for my exclusive monthly newsletter, where I include my hand-selected list of some of the best links I read that month.

One periodical that most people don’t read but should is the London Review of Books. Virtually all newspapers and periodicals are fungible at some level. They cover the same stories with the same slants and frames. But the London Review of Books is different.

The LRB does review books, but is unlike a typical book review. They often get the best or one of the best people in the world on the subject at hand to write the review. This sometimes backfires because of a de facto rivalry with the book author. But generally it works great. They also provide such in-depth summaries of the books in question that your rarely need to actually read them, non-fiction at least. This is important because realistically nobody can come close to reading all the books out there.

They also have longform essays on a wide range of other topics that bring perspectives you are unlikely to get elsewhere. Some of their articles are directly relevant to urbanism, such as this James Meek piece about a Cadbury factory that relocated from England to Poland.

The online version is subscriber only, but a number of articles are generally available for free. I want to share a selection of these free pieces from the current issue to give you a flavor of what you’ll get.

Malise Ruthven takes a look inside Saudi Arabia, its royal family, and its wealth.

The faith tradition that holds the Saudi system together – for now – is Wahhabi Islam, the iconoclastic creed of the 18th-century Islamic reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, whose pact with the Al Saud family led to the creation of the modern kingdom in 1932. Al-Wahhab’s stormtroopers, the Ikhwan, enabled Ibn Saud’s rise to power. They killed unarmed villagers regarded as apostates, thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, and routinely slit the throats of male captives. Contemporary accounts describe the horrors afflicted on the city of Taif in 1924, when the Ikhwan murdered hundreds of civilians, in a massacre similar to the violence committed by Islamic State or al-Qaida today. As an Arab witness wrote, Ibn Saud’s forces ‘normally give no quarter, sparing neither boys nor old men, veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one escapes’. Some 400,000 people are reported to have been massacred by the Ikhwan during the early days of the Saudi state. The Wahhabi understanding of tawhid, the theology of monotheism or divine unicity, which forbids the veneration of any person or object other than Allah, is still used today to justify the ban on all forms of non-Muslim public worship in the kingdom, as well as the confiscation of non-Wahhabi textual sources such as Quranic commentaries brought in by pilgrims from South Asia, who have had them removed by the religious police while attending the Hajj. But tawhid, a theology that claims to be fundamentally opposed to polytheism, has an unexpected consequence. It mines the Islamic discourse to sustain a totalitarian outlook whose actual purpose is the preservation and enrichment of the tribal dynasty that owns and governs this enormous country in its exclusive interest.

Novelist Colm Tóibín takes a brief look at Barcelona, Joan Miró, Las Ramblas, terrorism, and tourism.

At that time the Ramblas was still the place where locals strolled in the evening. It had begun as a small stream whose channel was used in the dry season as a roadway. In the 18th century the stream was diverted and the Ramblas became a place to walk, with plane trees offering shelter. It is about the width of a four-lane street, with kiosks selling newspapers, flowers and (these days) ice cream, and some outdoor tables for bars, with two narrow lanes on either side, like an afterthought, for traffic. Although the pedestrian section is slightly raised, there is no real barrier between the lanes for cars and the boulevard for walkers.

Miró’s tiles were put down in an almost-circle at Plaça d’Os, just above the Liceu Opera House, near the Boqueria Market. Miró loved the idea that people would actually walk on his tiles, made in his customary colours – blue, yellow, red, black – and using some of his customary iconography. This was the first sign of a new spirit in Barcelona, which would use culture, civic pride and the idea of vivid street life to reimagine the city, giving rise, in turn, to the development of mass tourism.

Amia Srinivasan takes a fascinating and creepy look at octopuses.

Octopuses do not have any stable colour or texture, changing at will to match their surroundings: a camouflaged octopus can be invisible from just a few feet away. Like humans, they have centralised nervous systems, but in their case there is no clear distinction between brain and body. An octopus’s neurons are dispersed throughout its body, and two-thirds of them are in its arms: each arm can act intelligently on its own, grasping, manipulating and hunting. (Octopuses have arms, not tentacles: tentacles have suckers only at their tips. Squid and cuttlefish have a combination of arms and tentacles.) In evolutionary terms, the intelligence of octopuses is an anomaly. The last common ancestor between octopuses on the one hand, and humans and other intelligent animals (monkeys, dolphins, dogs, crows) on the other, was probably a primitive, blind worm-like creature that existed six hundred million years ago. Other creatures that are so evolutionarily distant from humans – lobsters, snails, slugs, clams – rate pretty low on the cognitive scale. But octopuses – and to some extent their cephalopod cousins, cuttlefish and squid – frustrate the neat evolutionary division between clever vertebrates and simple-minded invertebrates. They are sophisticated problem solvers; they learn, and can use tools; and they show a capacity for mimicry, deception and, some think, humour. Just how refined their abilities are is a matter of scientific debate: their very strangeness makes octopuses hard to study. Their intelligence is like ours, and utterly unlike ours. Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

The LRB often takes a look at parochial topics like some king from way back in the day, or some debate in contemporary London, that may or may not be of interest to you. If not, you can easily skip them. (As with the New Yorker, it’s difficult to keep up with the LRB, even though the latter is deceptively thin and only comes out every 2-3 weeks. So some skipping is generally needed).

Here’s one of those British pieces, a look at the life of Prince Charles.

At the age of 23 Prince Charles embarked with no great enthusiasm on a six-week training course at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The course had been reduced from the usual three months for him, but it was long enough for Charles to realise that seafaring was yet another area in which he and his father had nothing in common. Prince Philip had a distinguished naval career. His son struggled with navigation, which he found confusing, and he didn’t much like the rough and tumble of life onboard ship. One exercise involved performing an ‘underwater escape from a submarine’: a not inapt image for a life spent trapped in a role he didn’t choose doing things he doesn’t like for people who don’t much appreciate them. That at least has often been his own view. He has made no secret of his difficulties or of the fact that his childhood was unhappy in many ways. An awkward boy who didn’t take after either his bluff father or his pragmatic, dutiful but distant mother, by the age of eight he was already worried about doing the right thing. Once, at lunch with the Mountbattens, Edwina Mountbatten explained to him that he shouldn’t take the stalks out of his strawberries because he could pick them up by the stems and dip them in the sugar. His cousin Pamela Hicks noticed a few minutes later that ‘the poor child was trying to put all the stems back on. That was so sad.’ ‘Sad’ is a word that has often been applied to the Prince of Wales, with every shade of intonation from empathy to contempt. It recurs here in books which are interesting more for what they reveal about the continuing narrative of the royal family and its symbiotic relationship with the media than for anything new in the way of facts.

Not everything is perfect, of course. The LRB has some definite biases that render their takes on various issues suspect. Israel-Palestine is one of them. You’ll quickly find out most of the rest yourself and adjust accordingly. (Hint: one of them is illustrated in the Barcelona piece).

However, I find the LRB consistently the best and most illuminating periodical I read. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this. In fact, I pay them to subscribe. If you want one reading suggestion from me that you’re not likely to get from others, it’s the London Review of Books.

  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/09/01/the-london-review-of-books-is-required-reading/

[barb31clem]

The London Review of Books Is Required Reading

People often ask me how they can follow my career path into urbanism writing. I generally discourage that. But for those who are interested, it involves reading – lots and lots and reading. And not just on urbanism but not a wide range of topics. I can only make many of the connections I do because I’m tapped in a wide of range of things, most of which are like the parts of the iceberg underwater you never see.

As it happens, some folks also ask me what they should read or what I read.

One thing of course is to sign up for my exclusive monthly newsletter, where I include my hand-selected list of some of the best links I read that month.

One periodical that most people don’t read but should is the London Review of Books. Virtually all newspapers and periodicals are fungible at some level. They cover the same stories with the same slants and frames. But the London Review of Books is different.

The LRB does review books, but is unlike a typical book review. They often get the best or one of the best people in the world on the subject at hand to write the review. This sometimes backfires because of a de facto rivalry with the book author. But generally it works great. They also provide such in-depth summaries of the books in question that your rarely need to actually read them, non-fiction at least. This is important because realistically nobody can come close to reading all the books out there.

They also have longform essays on a wide range of other topics that bring perspectives you are unlikely to get elsewhere. Some of their articles are directly relevant to urbanism, such as this James Meek piece about a Cadbury factory that relocated from England to Poland.

The online version is subscriber only, but a number of articles are generally available for free. I want to share a selection of these free pieces from the current issue to give you a flavor of what you’ll get.

Malise Ruthven takes a look inside Saudi Arabia, its royal family, and its wealth.

The faith tradition that holds the Saudi system together – for now – is Wahhabi Islam, the iconoclastic creed of the 18th-century Islamic reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, whose pact with the Al Saud family led to the creation of the modern kingdom in 1932. Al-Wahhab’s stormtroopers, the Ikhwan, enabled Ibn Saud’s rise to power. They killed unarmed villagers regarded as apostates, thought nothing of slaughtering women and children, and routinely slit the throats of male captives. Contemporary accounts describe the horrors afflicted on the city of Taif in 1924, when the Ikhwan murdered hundreds of civilians, in a massacre similar to the violence committed by Islamic State or al-Qaida today. As an Arab witness wrote, Ibn Saud’s forces ‘normally give no quarter, sparing neither boys nor old men, veritable messengers of death from whose grasp no one escapes’. Some 400,000 people are reported to have been massacred by the Ikhwan during the early days of the Saudi state. The Wahhabi understanding of tawhid, the theology of monotheism or divine unicity, which forbids the veneration of any person or object other than Allah, is still used today to justify the ban on all forms of non-Muslim public worship in the kingdom, as well as the confiscation of non-Wahhabi textual sources such as Quranic commentaries brought in by pilgrims from South Asia, who have had them removed by the religious police while attending the Hajj. But tawhid, a theology that claims to be fundamentally opposed to polytheism, has an unexpected consequence. It mines the Islamic discourse to sustain a totalitarian outlook whose actual purpose is the preservation and enrichment of the tribal dynasty that owns and governs this enormous country in its exclusive interest.

Novelist Colm Tóibín takes a brief look at Barcelona, Joan Miró, Las Ramblas, terrorism, and tourism.

At that time the Ramblas was still the place where locals strolled in the evening. It had begun as a small stream whose channel was used in the dry season as a roadway. In the 18th century the stream was diverted and the Ramblas became a place to walk, with plane trees offering shelter. It is about the width of a four-lane street, with kiosks selling newspapers, flowers and (these days) ice cream, and some outdoor tables for bars, with two narrow lanes on either side, like an afterthought, for traffic. Although the pedestrian section is slightly raised, there is no real barrier between the lanes for cars and the boulevard for walkers.

Miró’s tiles were put down in an almost-circle at Plaça d’Os, just above the Liceu Opera House, near the Boqueria Market. Miró loved the idea that people would actually walk on his tiles, made in his customary colours – blue, yellow, red, black – and using some of his customary iconography. This was the first sign of a new spirit in Barcelona, which would use culture, civic pride and the idea of vivid street life to reimagine the city, giving rise, in turn, to the development of mass tourism.

Amia Srinivasan takes a fascinating and creepy look at octopuses.

Octopuses do not have any stable colour or texture, changing at will to match their surroundings: a camouflaged octopus can be invisible from just a few feet away. Like humans, they have centralised nervous systems, but in their case there is no clear distinction between brain and body. An octopus’s neurons are dispersed throughout its body, and two-thirds of them are in its arms: each arm can act intelligently on its own, grasping, manipulating and hunting. (Octopuses have arms, not tentacles: tentacles have suckers only at their tips. Squid and cuttlefish have a combination of arms and tentacles.) In evolutionary terms, the intelligence of octopuses is an anomaly. The last common ancestor between octopuses on the one hand, and humans and other intelligent animals (monkeys, dolphins, dogs, crows) on the other, was probably a primitive, blind worm-like creature that existed six hundred million years ago. Other creatures that are so evolutionarily distant from humans – lobsters, snails, slugs, clams – rate pretty low on the cognitive scale. But octopuses – and to some extent their cephalopod cousins, cuttlefish and squid – frustrate the neat evolutionary division between clever vertebrates and simple-minded invertebrates. They are sophisticated problem solvers; they learn, and can use tools; and they show a capacity for mimicry, deception and, some think, humour. Just how refined their abilities are is a matter of scientific debate: their very strangeness makes octopuses hard to study. Their intelligence is like ours, and utterly unlike ours. Octopuses are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.

The LRB often takes a look at parochial topics like some king from way back in the day, or some debate in contemporary London, that may or may not be of interest to you. If not, you can easily skip them. (As with the New Yorker, it’s difficult to keep up with the LRB, even though the latter is deceptively thin and only comes out every 2-3 weeks. So some skipping is generally needed).

Here’s one of those British pieces, a look at the life of Prince Charles.

At the age of 23 Prince Charles embarked with no great enthusiasm on a six-week training course at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The course had been reduced from the usual three months for him, but it was long enough for Charles to realise that seafaring was yet another area in which he and his father had nothing in common. Prince Philip had a distinguished naval career. His son struggled with navigation, which he found confusing, and he didn’t much like the rough and tumble of life onboard ship. One exercise involved performing an ‘underwater escape from a submarine’: a not inapt image for a life spent trapped in a role he didn’t choose doing things he doesn’t like for people who don’t much appreciate them. That at least has often been his own view. He has made no secret of his difficulties or of the fact that his childhood was unhappy in many ways. An awkward boy who didn’t take after either his bluff father or his pragmatic, dutiful but distant mother, by the age of eight he was already worried about doing the right thing. Once, at lunch with the Mountbattens, Edwina Mountbatten explained to him that he shouldn’t take the stalks out of his strawberries because he could pick them up by the stems and dip them in the sugar. His cousin Pamela Hicks noticed a few minutes later that ‘the poor child was trying to put all the stems back on. That was so sad.’ ‘Sad’ is a word that has often been applied to the Prince of Wales, with every shade of intonation from empathy to contempt. It recurs here in books which are interesting more for what they reveal about the continuing narrative of the royal family and its symbiotic relationship with the media than for anything new in the way of facts.

Not everything is perfect, of course. The LRB has some definite biases that render their takes on various issues suspect. Israel-Palestine is one of them. You’ll quickly find out most of the rest yourself and adjust accordingly. (Hint: one of them is illustrated in the Barcelona piece).

However, I find the LRB consistently the best and most illuminating periodical I read. And no, they didn’t pay me to say this. In fact, I pay them to subscribe. If you want one reading suggestion from me that you’re not likely to get from others, it’s the London Review of Books.

  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/09/01/the-london-review-of-books-is-required-reading/

[themomsandthecity]

4 Ways to Stop Your Three-Year-Old From Begging

It's remarkable how much I knew about parenting before I had kids. Placing my stack of Lean Cuisines on the grocery store conveyor belt I'd watch as moms and dads held up the line, desperately negotiating with their toddler over a candy bar or a pack of gum. "Jeez – grow a pair," I'd think as I watched them bargain their way right into their child's sticky little palm. This 20,000 foot view offered me a pathetic picture of what little power some parents had over their children. Then I became the parent of a 3-year-old and reality exposed itself to me like a mustached man in a pick up truck. We're tired. We're poor. We're huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We would sell our souls for five minutes of peace, however, nobody tells us that cutting corners to get this five minutes of peace comes with a price tag. A few wrong turns and quick fixes and suddenly you find yourself at the mercy of something that hits you mid-thigh. You say no, she says pleeeeeeeeeease. You dig in, she throws herself on the floor. The post office closes in 15 minutes so you break, giving into whatever she's been pleading for. You promise to stick to your guns next time but each day the begging becomes more persistent and abrasive and you suddenly understand why some animals eat their young. Related 5 Steps to Stop Your 5-Year-Old From Begging It's a vicious cycle - beg, negotiate, placate, repeat with more intensity. I was at my wits end and though my daughter had the stamina of a salmon returning home to spawn, I had access to the internet. Here's the best of what I've learned, as well as a couple of my own tricks. 1. Think before you speak. Many times my instinct was to mindlessly say no, then upon further consideration I realized it would have been okay to walk the long way out of the mall and throw a coin in the fountain. What I said: "Now, I'm not changing my mind because you're begging," I warned as we walked toward the fountain, "But because I changed my mind." What she heard: "Good begging! Do it again next time and you can write your own check!" When your child asks for something, take a breath and give it some thought before you spout off a knee jerk "no". 2. No means no. Once it leaves your lips, there's no going back. Say it with me now: THERE. IS. NO. GOING. BACK. Prepare yourself for the worst of the worst in the beginning (I recommend having headphones and two fingers of Scotch on hand 24/7). Eventually she'll realize you're not going to budge and decide not to waste her time. Don't be alarmed if your toddler moves onto alternative methods of negotiation, like holding her breath, or facial prison tattoos. I promise it will get better, albeit a little at a time. 3. Bring it down to their level. It's easy to tune out annoyances, especially when you're engrossed in cooking or other household chores. And by cooking and other household chores I mean scrolling sangria recipes on Pinterest or cyber stalking your ex-boyfriend's new wife. We're busy. Sometimes all it takes to re-route your kid is spending five seconds to show him that you hear his request and offer a simple explanation for your "no." So put down your phone, kneel onto his level, look deep into his soul and say, "We can't go to the water park today because I have to renew my driver's license." It helps to do this in your lowest and most intimidating (read: demonic) voice - bonus points if you can make your eyes glow red. 4. Set realistic consequences. Obviously, we are only human, and yet sometimes you need to nip that begging business in the bud. Lay down the law - tell her that if she begs one more time there will be a consequence. And ain't nobody gonna believe you'll actually leave the zoo, including your 3-year-old. While you might think it's the ultimate threat and want to get her attention, she knows you parked in east Jesus and aren't going to abandon that 30 minute sunscreen sesh. A few days ago we were at the pool and at 10am I heard a mom threaten her son with leaving the pool if he didn't stop splashing people. She was still robotically threatening that same thing four hours later. It's imperative the consequence is something you will follow through on. "If you don't stop begging, we are going to sit on the bench for ten minutes while your friends go visit the tigers," or, "One more 'please' and I'm going to shit in your Crocks." Get creative. Parenting is fun. The bottom line: While it seems like your 3-year-old is being a huge turd, she is simply trying to figure out where your boundaries are. She'll bend you little by little and if you don't push back you'll eventually break. So keep your cool and stay strong. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Related 5 Phrases That Will Make Your Kids Stop Crying and Begging http://bit.ly/2ttOrb4