#i cant explain it but its like. the film version of my brain. in a literal and incredibly soecific way only i get even if its not that deep

[cr0g-0]

Hello, I’m Marmo (@pygmy-marmo) here to drop more Goncharov information on you (because it’s wild out there)

So, basically, everyone is doing the improvisation exercise of “yes and” to each other. This has lead to a fairly consistent plot, albeit the details vary (this has been fixed by asserting that multiple edits and versions of the film exist and were made in different languages, for various countries releases, and at different times so there is a general consensus)

The key points include that Katya wears white all of the time throughout the film. There is a boat scene, set in the Bay of Naples (the film is set in Naples, which is a city in Italy) and Katya dies or fakes her death there

Katya shoots Goncharov (her supposed fiance/husband/partner) at some point in the scene, betraying him. The man that Tumblr has decided is the gay love interest, Adrey/Adrei/Adrea (spelling varies dependant on person) also betrays Goncharov. This betrayal takes place later in the film, on a bridge, with a clocktower in the background, and Goncharov is shot

At some point Goncharov says a variation of the phrase “It’s Gonchin’ time” which is referenced by Morbius

Clocks are a large part of the film’s symbolism. Katya has a sapphic love interest in a woman named Sofia, who might have died (this is unclear). A man known as Ice Pick Joe is an antagonist of sorts who kills with an ice pick. He’s an immigrant from America and some versions of the film imply that he was lobotomized by an ice pick hence his use of it. He gets murdered at some point

There is the Fruit Scene. This seems to be referring to two events that are similar, but might not both be present. In the gay version, it’s between Goncharov and Andrey, in the lesbian version it’s Sofia and Katya

In short, the film is explained a bit like this. Goncharov moves to Naples (or might have already been living there) and is involved in the mafia there. He might be in control of it or trying to gain control of it, depends on what cut of the film you watch. Goncharov is married or is implied to be married to a woman named Katya, who is Russian in origin—Goncharov is also from Russia or implied to be. Goncharov meets a man named Andrey who is a banker, and they become close, while Katya meets a woman named Sofia, and they become close. At some point, Katya betrays Goncharov and attempts to kill him, and later, Goncharov is betrayed by Andrey and dies. Katya dies or fakes her death, probably during the Boat Scene in the Bay of Naples, and Sofia is seemingly the only person of the main group left alive

Meanwhile, Ice Pick Joe is going around during murder at the orders of a mafia man named Mario something (forget his last name). He is murdered, presumably because of his actions. It has been implied that Ice Pick Joe and Katya knew each other to some degree, but it is not a romantic bond. Ice Pick Joe is generally agreed to be a cat owner

Clocks are very important as a theme and motif of the story. It is very gay and very sapphic even if there’s not an explicit kiss in most cuts of the film

And I cannot stress this enough; this film does not exist and never has. People are composing a score, writing fanfiction, making trailers, etc, but there is No Canon or Source. At all

This is all very intesting and makes my brain feel better and less confused because I legitmatly cannot handle unreality anymore its odd i used to but now i cant

[ev1lmorty]

watching blackcoats daughter puts me in auch an upside down mental state that lasts for weeks so i cant afford to watch it Again but understand, emotionally, i am always watching it,

[calciferstims]

honestly, im gonna watch them, the lotr films, no matter how many pauses i take, its going to be BLOODY WATCHED!! loool, im determined!

haha not mocking you but the "cyborg octopus man" had me chuckling, sounds funny. but yea basically that is what he is. i remember when i first saw him in the movie i was thinking he looking kinda hella mad interesting.

what are some of your favourite plushies, if you have any? i honestly have so many, like i dont even have room for them all on my bed so i have had to put some away in boxes lol...and yet, i want more haha. one heartbreaking, okay kinda exaggerated but not really, is that i threw away some aaaaaaages ago and every so often im bashing myself for it, really, because some were given when i was a little child, and some of my grandparents, that are no longer with us. makes me sad that i threw them away because i just get in what i call "depression" cleaning, so i dont care about anything and will throw away legit anything. luckily last time i had me mum stop me though, so i didnt throw away a massive amount of books...hate when that happens. idk why tf im blabbering on about that lmfao im sorry.

that gotta have been annoying, wanting to talk a lot about your interests that you are more into than others, i imagine?

i dont really have any, like, interests that i know about, like i have zero information about films, stuff i watch and whatnot lol...whenever someone asks me what something is about that im watching, i just cant explain it lol, im like, i- im watching it but idk how to explain it? lol...

yeah that last portion sounds like hyperfixation/special interest in a nutshell for some lol. sometimes it lasts longer, sometimes it doesnt. whats the longest on-going hyperfixtion you have had?

thanks for your reply mate!

YOU CAN DO IT!! I BELIEVE IN YOU! YOU WATCH THOSE MOVIES!

Listen. What is very important to understand is that I do not like Doc Ock for deep reasons 😌 He is simply a cyborg octopus man and that is very funny! The tentacles are telling him to do crime!! He’s a funny man and I like him! Also I want him to forcibly adopt every version of Peter Parker until they are all his children ok goodnight

I’m really sorry to hear that you lost some of your plushies that way, that sounds like a really difficult problem to deal with :( I highly encourage you to keep having fun getting new stuffies tho, if it’s something that makes you happy! :))

Hm, well I don’t have many stuffies anymore but one of the oldest ones I have that I care about a lot is Wolfy (yes very creative name I was 5 okay) and he’s a grey wolf I got from Build-a-Bear :) He’s permanently dressed in a Star Wars pajama top and firefighter overalls, one arm is stuck bent backwards for some reason, but his heartbeat still works and he’s a huge comfort item for me 🥺 If I get more soon, I really wanna get some cow plushies and maybe some bee plushies!!! The brown cow Squishmallow looks so freaking cute, and there’s so many adorable Jellycat plushies too!

As far as being into things more than others goes: it’s alright really? I have some very lovely friends that are willing to hear me talk about things even if they don’t know it 🥰 I have developed some insecurities around my infodumping, but they’re always there to reassure me and I’m getting better! :)

Hm, well I can’t really remember all my fixations or how long they lasted, so it’s hard to say what was longest.. technically I think my longest is Loki because I went from Original Big Hyperfix - to general continued interest - to the big Loki Hyperfixation Revival of 2021, so that’s definitely stuck around 😂 but you asked for longest ongoing hyperfixation, so I gotta be real honest as to what I think it was.. 😅

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. AND that spawned an equally large Tim Curry hyperfixation. For seven freaking months. 7 months of hell-brain, baby 😔 I try to never shame myself or others for hyperfixations, but I gotta admit, that’s one thing I’m happy to move on from lmao. But hey, if you ever need to know anything about renowned actor Tim Curry and his extensive filmography, I’m your guy 😂

Thank you for your lovely responses as well!

[la5t-res0rt]

this was written several weeks ago in response to asks i was receiving i am posting it now it is very long the longest i have ever made and it is not very well edited but here it is in this final essay i talk about how shitty rae is about black people in her writing as well as just me talking about how her writing sucks in general lets begin

hello everyone 

as you may know i have received a lot of anons in the last week or so about issues of racism in the beetlejuice community both just generally speaking and also within specific spaces 

i was very frustrated to not be getting the answers i wanted because i typically do not talk about what i do not see but in an effort to be better about discourse i went looking through discourse from before my time in the fandom and i also received some receipts and information from my followers and from some friends

keep in mind that the voices and thoughts of bipoc are not only incredibly important at all times but in this circumstance it is important that if a bipoc has something to add you listen and learn and be better

i admit that when this happened i wasnt aware of the extent of what occurred and im angry at myself for not doing more at that time and i want to work harder to make sure something like this doesnt go unnoticed again

im a hesitant to talk about months old discourse because i have been criticized for bringing up quote old new unquote but this is very important and i am willing to face whatever comes from to me

lets talk about this

content from our local racist idiot that may be months old but its important

putting my thoughts under a cut to spare the dash but before i begin obviously this is awful

lets fucking unpack this folks

right out the gate op states that she supports artistic freedom but then within a couple words she goes against that statement

being entirely canon compliant isnt artistic freedom and even so if this person has so much respect for canon they wouldnt be out here erasing lydias obvious disgust for beetlejuice in the movie or ignoring lydias age for the sake of shipping that shit isnt canon either 

also we love the quick jab at the musical there hilarious we love it dont we because god forbid a licensed and successful branch on a media have any standing in this conversation but whatever

now lets scroll down and talk about the term racebending

the term racebending was coined around 2009 in response to the avatar the last airbender movie a film in which the east asian races of the characters were erased by casting white actors in the three leading roles of aang sokka and katara 

whenever the term racebending is used in a negative light it is almost always a case of whitewashing like casting scarlett johansen in ghost in the shell or the casting of white actors of the prince of persia sands of time instead of iranian ones

this kind of racebending erases minorities from beeing seen in media and is wrong

all that being said however racebending has also been noted to have very positive after effects like the 1997 adaptation of cinderella or casting samuel jackson as nick fury in the marvel movies nick fury was originally a white guy can you even imagine

i read this piece from an academic that said quote writers can change the race and cultural specificity of central characters or pull a secondary character of color from the margins transforming them into the central protagonist unquote

racebending like the kind that rae is so heated about is the kind of creative freedom that leads to more representation of bipoc in media which will never be a bad thing ever no matter how pissy you get about it

designing a version of a character as a poc isnt serving to make them necessarily better it serves to give new perspective and perhaps the opportunity to connect even more deeply with a character it doesnt marginalize or erase white people it can uplift poc and if you think uplifting poc is wrong because it tears down white people or whatever youre a fucking moron and you need to get out of your podunk white folk town and see the real world

the numbers of times a bipoc particularly a bipoc that is also lgbt+ has been represented in media are dwarfed by what i as a white dude have seen myself represented in media is and that isnt okay that isnt equality and its something that should change not only in mainstream media but in fandom spaces as well

lets move down a bit further to the part about bullying straight people which is hilarious and lets also talk about the term fetishistic as well lets start with that

this person literally writes explicit pornography of a minor and an adult are we really going to let someone like that dictate what is and what isnt fetishistic

similarly to doing a positive racebend situation people may project lgbt+ headcanons on a character because its part of who they are and it helps them feel closer to the character and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that

depicting lgbt+ subject matter on existing characters isnt an inherently fetishistic action generally things only really become fetishistic when the media is being crafted and hyped by people who are outside of lgbt+ community for example how young teens used to flip a tit about yaoi or how chasers fetishize trans people

but drawing a character with top surgery scars or headcanoning them as trans is harmless and its just another way to interpret a character literally anone could be trans unless if their character bio says theyre cis and most of them dont go that deep so it really is open to interpretation and on the whole most creators encourage this sort of exploration because it is a good thing to get healthy representation out in the world

as for it being used to bully straights thats just funny i dont have anything else on that like if youre straight and you feel threatened and bullied because of someone headcanoning someone as anything that isnt cishet youre a fucking idiot and a weak baby idiot at that like the real world must fucking suck for you because lgbt+ people are everywhere and statistically a big chunk of your favorite characters arent cishet sorry be mad about it

lets roll down a bit further about the big meat of the issue which was when several artists were drawing interpretations of lydia as a black girl which i loved but clearly this person didnt love it because they have a very narrow and very racist and problematic view of what it means to be a black person

and before i move forward i must reiderate that i am a white person and you should listen to the thoughts of poc people like @fright-of-their-lives​ or @gender-chaotic it is not my place to explain what the black experience is like and it certainly isnt this persons either

implying that the story of a black person isnt worth telling unless if the character faces struggles like racism and prejudice is downright moronic 

why use the word kissable to describe a black persons lips now thats what i call fetishistic and its to another extreme if youre talking about a black version of lydia on top of that

the author of this post says herself that shes white so clearly shes the person whos an authority on the black experience and what it means to be a black person right am i reading that right or am i having a fucking conniption

how about allowing black characters to exist without having to struggle why cant a black version of lydia just be a goth teenager with a ghost problem who likes photography and is also black like she doesnt have to move to a hick town and get abused by racist folks she doesnt have to go through any more shit than she already goes through and if you honestly think thats the only way to tell a black persons story you need to get your brain cleaned

you know nothing about the complexities about being a black person and i dont either but you know wh odo black people who are doing black versions of canon characters they fucking know 

lets squiggle down just a bit further 

so the writer has issues with giving characters traits like a broad nose or larger lips if theyre a woman but if theyre a man suddenly its totally okay to go all ryan murphy ahs coven papa legba appropriation when approaching character design like are you fucking stupid do you hear yourself is that really how you see black men like what the fuck is wrong with you

none of the shit youre spewing takes bravery it takes ignorance and supreme levels of stupidity

do you really think you with your fic where a black lgbt+ woman is tortured and abused where you use the n word with a hard r to refer to her like that shits not okay its fucking depraved and yeah we know you love being shitty but like christ on a bike thats so much 

can we also talk about this

what the fuck is this fetishistic bull roar garbage calling this black character beyonce dressing her up in quote fuck me heels unquote are you are you seriously gonna write this and say its a shining example of how to write a black character youre basically saying ope here she is shes a sex icon haha im so progressive and i clealry understand the black experience hahahaha fuck you oh my god

on top of that theres a point where this character is only referred to as curly hair or the fact that the n word is used in the fic with the hard r like thats hands down not okay for you to use especially not in a manner like this jesus christ

oop heres a little more a sampling for you of the hell i am enduring in reading this drivel

oh boy lets put a leash on the angry black woman character lets put her in a leash and have the man imply hes a master like are you kidding me are you for real and what the fuck is with calling her shit like j lo and beyonce do you actually think thats clever at all are you just thinking of any poc that comes into your head for this 

also lydia fucking tells this girl that she shouldnt have lost her temper like she got fucking leashed im so tired why is this writing so problematic and also so bad

hold up before i lose my head lets look at some of her own comments on the matter of this character and what happens to her

hi hello youre just casually tossing the word lynch out there in the wide open world as if thats not a problem that is still real like are you fucking unhinged there have been multiple cases of this exact thing happening in our firepit of a country in the last five months alone like how can you still have shit like this up for people to read how can you be proud of work like this in this climate

and also what the fuck is that last bit 

what the actual fuck

i dont speak for black people as a white person but you do!? im sorry i had to get my punctuation out for that because wow thats fucking asinine just because one black person read your fic and didnt find the torture and abuse of your one black character abhorrant doesnt mean that the vast majority of people not only in the fandom but in the human population with decency are going to think its okay because its not 

i started this post hoping to be level headed and professional but jesus fucking christ this woman is something else white nationalism is alive and well folks and its name is rae

if you defend this woman you defend some truly abhorrant raecism

editors notes 

in order to get some perspective on these issues more fully some of the writing by the author was examined and on the whole it was pretty unreadable but i want to just call back to the very beginning of this essay where the person in question talked about holding canon in high regard but then in their writing they just go around giving people magic and shit and ignoring the end of the movie entirely like are you canon compliant or nah 

the writing doesnt even read like beetlejuice fanfic it reads as self indulgent fiction you could easily change the names and its just a bad fanfic from 2007

also can we talk about writing the lesbian character as an angry man hater like its 2020 dude and als olets touch on that girl on girl pandering while beetlejuice is just there like here we go fetishizing again wee

i cant find a way to work this into this already massive post but

im going to throw up

okay so thats a lot we have covered a lot today and im sure my ask box will regret it but this definitely should have been more picked apart when it happened

please feel free to add more to this i would love more perspectives than just my own.

[citialiin]

FIVE SONGS

list five songs associated with your muse and its meaning to them as a character, or to you as the writer. this can be applied in-character or out-of-character. it can go as deep as looking at the song’s real-world origins or meaning along with the themes it carries to the muses’ story, values, or experiences, or as simple as if your muse would listen to this kind of music, or even if you just listen to these pieces for inspiration.

TAGGED BY: @dansiere​​, who did such a good detailed job they even included an “honorable mentions list” ? i am embarrassed to type mine out now TAGGING: @blossomingbeelzebug​​ @zhrets​​ @dirtyfilthysunshine​​ @prcphesise​​ @hyakiru​ @foxcharmed​

01. kaun komsott - ros sereysothea

this song actually lyrically has absolutely nothing to do with ziggy !!!!  kaun komsott /  កូនកំសត់ actually just means “poor/pitiful child” it’s just a khmer dub of a song from a taiwanese movie lol but i feel like this is the kind of music he would listen to that made him fall in love with, like ... humanity, as dumb as that sounds. it’s time period appropriate (late 60s/early to mid 70s), the song is really good and it’s SO emotional.  i could see him sitting in the apartment of his bandmates after being “found” and they teach him how to use the record player and he sits there going through each and every record they have and listening to this and its like the fucking scene in ratatootie where the goddamn rat can visualize tastes as colors but he would be so enamored with the song he would see it in colors or something i dunno.  something has definitely fucking happened to my brain because ever since nat and alex and i rewatched ratatootie we keep referencing it for our characters. anyways i ended up using an instrumental of kaun komsott in the final film i made as the song that plays during the end.  so this song just also means a lot to me because it’s part of how i made this character and the film/story i animated to go along with him, i am sure you are all absolutely sick of hearing me talk about it <3  

02. who can i be now - daveed booweyywywy now you found me, now can I be real?  can I be real? if it’s all a vast creation / putting on a face that’s new someone has to see / a role for him and me someone might as well be you

one of z’s most obvious character motifs is figuring out self identity through adopting different guises.  he markets himself as being so overly confident and almost arrogantly certain of himself -- rock god space idol whatever -- as his own way of learning who he thinks he might be underneath it all.  i think at first it started off a little innocuous, a ‘ fake it till u make it ’ thing at the least and maybe more obviously a ‘ im not a human so i have to pretend to be someone else ’ deal, but over time it became almost all consuming and just obliterated all his previously held sense of self in favor of some weirdly demented version of who he wanted to be.  683 starts off with the same core personality traits as ziggy: maybe he’s a little vain, a little selfish, but he’s very interested in creativity/self-expression and he wants to be thought of as a unique individual and appreciated for his differences.  but the difference is that 683 isnt an arrogant asshole who has no regard for other people in the slightest.  so yeah ... who can u be now ... is it worth it to adopt a different guise or should he go through the effort of figuring out what parts of his personality were corroded by human influence and what parts are genuinely him?  my big endgame thoughts for his story would be that he eventually just decides to retire from the public eye and fucks off entirely.  this would be over the course of a long long long time -- maybe he has a good 20 yr run in the industry -- but there are some things about him he has to deal with (mental health issues, drug addiction, also the fact that you’re a freaky alien creature who doesnt age like a human so you’re physically like 46 and you still look like you’re 25?) so he inevitably decides he doesnt need the horrible pressure of fame and he ought to just live his life for himself.  i think this would be a nice final song for him to sing/perform -- then he goes into the dressing room and cuts his hair and just vanishes. bye.

03. sunny afternoon - the kinks Help me, help me, help me sail away Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay 'Cause I love to live so pleasantly Live this life of luxury Lazing on a sunny afternoon

1. i think this would sound A LITTLE like the kind of music he would write/play albeit i feel like his would be more exciting and have more samplings of like laser noises or pewpewpew or weird spaceship sounds BUT.  its also pretty time period appropriate.  even in “modern” verses ziggy is inexplicably obsessed with the 1970s, he likes bell bottoms and thinks groovy patterns are neat and he owns too many lava lamps.  anywayz. 2. just the general idea of feeling unfulfilled with luxury -- even if ziggy enjoys his fame and wealth and the absolutely insane amount of pussy/dick he gets at some level he is still cognizantly aware of how weirdly empty he feels.  he ditched atomina and came here because he felt unfulfilled and bored and unwanted.  now he feels wanted (clearly, everyone loves him) and he feels entertained (earth is So Good at fun distractions) but his fulfillment still isnt quite there.  he’s getting there -- but in exchange of being able to live this life of fame, he’s had to kind of change everything about himself and live this almost caricature version of himself, and he knows he cant keep it up forever.  the luxury will run out one day and he’ll be a washup and no one cares about celebrities once they stop being hip.  it is literally only a matter of time before ziggy has to find out who he is because no one can be a “rockstar” forever.

04. i hate jimmy page - mindless self indulgence SUCKAS CAN REACH OUT TOUCH ME EAT ME BITE DA FUTURE & FUCK DA PAST  I'm lower than most animals and fear what might be weird and all those voices in my head have every right to be there i ain't a girl just cause i rock the boat i ain't a boy just cause i rock your world

i mean he does hate jimmy page but that’s beside the point. its just a good song about being a crazy rockstar and has the same Craziness that i feel like accompanies his character ... just go listen to it you will understand. there is nothing to explain here.  even the lyric “ill show u how official midgets jack me off” like just accept it. it’s whatever  but yeah i aint a girl i aint a boy ... i guess his gender (or lack thereof) never really comes up in rp but its still an important part of his character.  if any of u guys ever call him a man in prose again ill kick ur ass.  gender is like an accessory to him and he just takes whatever aspects of masculinity/femininity he prefers and discards everything else.  to him he’s just as much a “man” or a “woman” as he is a “human” which is to say he isnt, at all, and he just pretends to be because he feels obligated to.  also ziggy’s brain kind of sounds like this...just Noises.  his brain sounds like a microwave that’s been going off for 26 years.  i think his brain is a single uncooked pinto bean rolled in glitter that’s been left in a box with a cobweb

05. ghostride - crumb daydreaming I stay in the backseat / the slow beat rocks me back to sleep keeps me on automatic  press my face up close against the glass i see the people when they pass they move so automatic you wake up when I go down / the radio reminds me I'm alive we've been hearing it all night

i care more about 683 on atomina than i do about ziggy on earth sometimes (BUT I CARE THEM BOTH. DO U?) so ... 683 feeling aimless and drifting but trying to find purpose through passion, a person, some sort of concrete meaning -- going through the motions of life makes him feel empty he spends almost every day going through the same toil while feeling guilty or like a burden and also feeling like he’s ultimately nothing more than a replaceable cog in a machine. his species had a near extinction = bottleneck which made them so genetically similar they’re almost clones of each other.  no one ever seems to do anything wrong except him, he finds no joy or fulfillment in anything at all.  all he ever wanted (which isnt a selfish desire at all) was to feel purpose, or feel wanted, or appreciated. inevitably he leaves because of his own imagination -- he yearns for something More, and he doesn’t know What, so he figured he ought to at least Try instead of waste his life away. also atomina is supposed to sound like “automatic.”  do NOT make fun of my bad scifi.  i am trying to mimic the way 1970s scifi is endearingly cheesy.  come here.  i just want to touch you with this knife.  gently tho it wont go inside of you. bro you are bleeding. bro we are bleeding and i keep putting the knife in your soft parts.

[calumcest]

they got so many films out of that bc they kept adding ridiculous stuff like magic (? i think there was some magic in like part 4) and vampires 😅 and amazing i hope you know you have gotten yourself into endless requests of this verse now whenever you post a prompt list 🙃 oh i feel that though like german makes it incredibly difficult to be funny/communicate in general. maybe that's where the stereotype that germans don't have humor comes from. our language fucked it up (1/5)

wondering whether if i put some text before the read more it actually works 

(2/5) KÖNNTE MAN MIR DIE BUTTER REICHEN i'm screaming this is so funny mainly bc it's so true that's such a STRUGGLE like who the fuck thought that was a good idea. i had to write my deutsch abi about this btw we had to discuss whether du/sie should be removed and i never had stronger opinions about a topic so that was fun to write 😅 oooh alright 🙈 but very true since we started talking about the disgusting overuse of verbs in german i keep noticing it and it's just too much.

(3/5) i don't understand that at all i love your accent so much really. maybe particularly bc it sounds a little harsh? idk i like it and i could compliment it for days 😅 your friends apparently don't have taste 🤷‍♀️ & i am very interested to find out what your oma says bc kinesisch has been haunting me ever since i heard it for the first time. also i would love to hear her reaction to you just calling and being like "oma hallo sag mal bitte china"

(4/5) since the acoustic version of stand by me practically slapped me in the face with being so amazing i'll be sure to listen to that live album thank you for educating me about oasis. do you have other oasis recs that are not like the basics? & helen don't play with my feelings like that you don't understand how soft i am for soulmate lashton and how much i miss them. though i saw you said you're feeling a bit uninspired with them which is so scary to me bc of the trauma from your other fics

(5/5) oh i have a question about them tho that i'm sure i could find the answer to if i just reread the fic but then i'd miss them more so: what do ash and luke look like in that verse? bc if i remember correctly (which i'm not sure about forgive me if i'm wrong please) they were originally dating up to the age they are now (so 24/26) and are two years older in present time of the fic? so they could look very differently technically. just wondering if you had specific looks in mind -spoiler twin

HELLO WHAT I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE VAMPIRES???S DFKJWEFKHBWEHR however i did rediscover my dwk dvds...perhaps i will have to give them a cheeky watch...see if i can actually piece together any of the plot...also skdfjnskhjdf listen germans have such a fucking good sense of humour you just have to undersand it german memes are some of the funniest ive ever seen also something that i cant explain to british people but one of the funniest things germans do meme-wise is when they literally translate english? so when they’ll be like manchmal tut es so sein wie das or something idk why but its SO funny to me also the memes where they deconstruct the words to what they actually mean like this one or this one i dont konw why but they SEND ME 

SDJNFSKJDNF OKAY LISTEN I KNOW i’m so glad you’re on the same page its just so stressful like when i was working at a school last year people would introduce themselves to me by their first name and then still siez me and i’d be like ?!?!?!? this is not what i was taught ?!?!?!? 

omg please...youre so cute i cant believe u like it skdjfbwehbf my abrasive little south london accent has rights with one person on the planet and that is good enough for me <3 also i will literally ask her the next time i speak to her if she says kina i’m actually going to disown her so stay tuned for possible family drama

OKAY!! i have a lot of oasis recs let me make a separate post so you can see ok this is the playlist that started off intending to be a britpop playlist but just devolved into oasis/noel/liam so theres a few non-oasis songs on here but i have categorised them all for you also the slide away acoustic is so good isnt it!!! other favourites off that album are half the world away acoustic there is a light and importance of being idle acoustic too but honestly all of it is brilliant noel can do no wrong in my eyes 

okay listen i actually wrote another chapter of soulmate au but i hate it i’m trying to work up the courage to look over it so i can edit it into something thats acceptable to post but just know there is another chapter out there fear not <3 also that is actually a good question i hadnt really put too much thought into it i think ashton looks like current ashton in my head iirc he has got the black hair i think in the first restaurant scene i imagined him as that pictureo f him in the lace shirt and luke just looks like current luke all i ever think about is their hair sjdkfnwkhefb luke has curly hair and ashtons in black hair mode thats all i can tell u i apologise i have no brain cells or creativity

[theseadagiodays]

April 27, 2020

Art Became the Oxygen

It is true that artists, many of whom rely on public gatherings for their livelihood, are some of the hardest hit during this crisis.  Yet, it’s musicians who are toiling away in basements to serenade us through isolated days.  It’s comedic actors who are offering us essential nighttime laughs.  And it’s visual artists who make meaning from this madness with images that inspire, console and provoke.  The individuals of the creative community are like the unsung frontline workers of this pandemic, only without any salary to support their craft, or a 7 pm cheer to motivate them.  Yet still, they make things because they must, just as artists have done since the beginning of history, particularly in times of strife. (SEE: https://usdac.us/news-long/2017/8/9/art-became-the-oxygen-free-artistic-response-guide-available-now)

In previous periods of economic hardship, the US government responded with forward-thinking programs like the WPA (Works Progress Administration) of Roosevelt’s New Deal (1935 to 1943).  It was designed not only to fund huge infrastructure projects, but also to employ thousands of artists, musicians, writers, and theatre performers to stimulate the economy.  Legacies of this program include Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Jackson Pollack’s Composition with Pouring; and Mark Rothko’s earlier urban studies like Entrance to Subway, where you can see the seeds of his famous color studies from later work.

After natural disasters, senseless violence or war, artist activists have also rushed to the front lines, time and again, to help rebuild communities by activating their social imaginations and stimulating their civic agency with creative collaborations.  

Philippe Thiese gathered digital stories of Hurricane Sandy volunteers in this short film: https://www.sandystoryline.com/stories/sandy-volunteers-remember-the-storm-and-explain-how-they-got-involved/.  

The siblings of Eric Garner, a young African-American man killed by unjust police violence in 2014, came together in grief to write the song, I Can’t Breathe,based on his harrowing last words.  Their music served as a rallying cry to a community berieved and betrayed by their law enforcement: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eric-garners-family-drops-moving-new-song-i-cant-breathe-192574/

And when a 2011 tornado took 161 lives in the small town of Joplin, Missouri, mural artist Dave Loewenstein asked kids about their dreams for the future of their town, resulting in this stunning piece, The Butterfly Effect.

So, in the great hope that we’ll kick this virus’ butt, and we will be left with a glut of ventilators, how about we use them to revive our society’s artists, since they are the vital oxygen that feed our souls.  

In Vancouver, we are already lucky enough to have our City government responding with funding for the Murals for Hope project (#makeartwhileapart), which is transforming solemn, boarded-up shops and restaurants into colorful and encouraging messages that can help sustain us until their doors reopen again.

Geoff and I are also trying to do our small part to stimulate the creative economy, while beautifying our home in the process.  We are very excited to have just commissioned a mural artist to spruce up our tiny backyard space, which we’re transforming from a gravel parking spot into our own tropical oasis.  Here are some inspirational images as well as a shot of the yard in its current state. And hopefully, I can post the finished product, which will be painted onto the rotting fence, in a couple of weeks.

April 28, 2020

Art of Relationship

This period is not just requiring us to get creative with keyboards and canvases and cameras.  It is forcing us to re-examine the very patterns that make up our daily lives and fit them all inside the same four walls with the same self, spouse, and/or kids, 24/7.  Suffice it to say, this is no small task.  But, if any of you are like me, the grand solutions have sometimes involved tiny changes.    

Personally, my greatest challenge has been to find ways to carve out slivers of shared pleasure amidst my partner’s insanely stressful, often 13-hour work day, now that the pandemic has his team at our local transit authority in serious crisis mode.  Of course, I’m a firm believer in hard-work.  The pursuit of a classical musician requires many years of 5+ hours-a-day of practice.  But I’m also a fun-lover, and a huge proponent of life/work balance, particularly having had to learn this the hard way, thru a chronic overuse injury.  So, for me, Geoff’s manic schedule during the first month of isolation seemed far from optimal. And while this was especially difficult for him, it compromised joy for both of us.  

Seeking guidance as we adapted to the new normal, we found a great online series by Esther Perel, whose regular podcast, Where Should We Begin? always leaves us with sound, simple dance steps that we can apply to the Art of Relationship.  Here, she has created a 4-part series that specifically addresses problems which co-habitators might face in our current reality.  https://events.estherperel.com/april-2020-webinar-resources/?fbclid=IwAR0kRHkuQvEGxcpNuHvPKmmExamZ2Jj_EMZzR-zGp8eDejCR94hE-ZvGYjY

Inspired by her wisdom, we decided that the 7:30 am meetings, which had been occupying our kitchen and bleeding into our morning coffees, every day, could be skipped for a 15-minute walk thru our neighborhood park.  And, let me tell you, what a difference a quarter of an hour can make!  

April 29, 2020

Finding Variety in Repetition

It occurred to me, the other morning, that this experience feels a bit like fasting.  Since college, I’ve routinely devoted a week, every spring, to some kind of dietary shift, for my general health, and as a general mindfulness exercise.   While I’ve tried versions of the Wild Rose and other popular cleanses with some benefit, the method recommended in Staying Healthy with the Seasons has always suited me best. It requires you to slowly wean off many foods (meat/fish, then sugar/alcohol/coffee, then dairy), gradually move to only liquids, eventually evolve to a middle day of just water, and then similarly reintroduce each food gradually.    What I’ve loved about this approach is how much more aware of my cravings I become, how much I notice the “manufacturing of consent” that happens all around me to inspire my “wants”, and finally how various symptoms are suddenly absent once I’ve eliminated certain foods.  Consequently, the slow reintroduction of foods allows me to notice, in much more specific detail, which foods stimulate which responses in my body (IE. huge bursts of energy from fruit; afternoon crashes from sugar; indigestion from soy; sustenance from bread and pasta - NOTE: Contrary to the wheat-vilifying trends that currently prevail, I typically thrive on an anti-Atkins diet, as someone who reaps tremendous fuel from carbs).  

The parallels we are experiencing now relate to the stimuli that we’ve been “denied” by our self-isolating reality.   Speaking for myself, instead of travelling frequently, as I often do, or eating at different restaurants every week, or working at a different café every day to switch up the creative energy around me, I have had, like everyone else, to learn to find sustenance and interest in a much less diverse set of circumstances.  I am eating at Chez Me three meals a day.  We are grinding our own beans and whipping up our own daily lattes.  And most all of our daily walks and bike rides now start from our home.  

But even within the boundaries that we can reach from the nexus of our own address, we have been able to slowly expand our radius of exploration to corners of our city that we had never seen before.  This has felt a bit like switching to a vegetarian diet and gaining new appreciation for the crunchiness of a snap pea, or the filling nature of a portabello mushroom.  

In these explorations, we have discovered infinite surprises which include a cliffside view of the Fraser River from Everett Crowley Park (top image), an old landfill-turned-lush green space in Vancouver’s southeastern-most quadrant.  We’ve seen old growth forest that we had no idea existed so many kilometres from the shore, in Burnaby’s Central Park on our city’s eastern border.  I’ve spotted my first-ever fisher (weasel) sneaking around beachside boulders on the northern edge of the city.  And closer to home, I’ve noticed the whimsy of our neighbors’ gardens in far greater detail than I had ever looked before (as in the Gaudiesque, smiley-face hedge pictured above).  Our ventures from home have been guided by little more than our edict to “follow the pink”, as in the most blossoming streets.  And to document these journeys, I’ve been mapping the various routes we’ve taken.  Interestingly, the trajectory somewhat resembles a many-petaled flower.

Looking for minute changes in what seem to be patterns of sameness is also the secret to one of my favorite movements in music and design: Minimalism. Perhaps this is why Max Richter and Steve Reich have become the soundtrack I’ve turned to most during the pandemic.  Because their music trains our brains to find beauty in repetition while seeking excitement from the subtlest nuanced shifts.  

Meanwhile, I know that many of us would love for there to be a magic wand that could lift all of our restrictions over night and allow us to return to exactly “the way it was before”, in the same way that I long for a mocha frappuccino when I fast.  However, what we have been hearing from our leaders is that the more likely and safe choice will be to move into a gradual re-opening of our cities - a slow reintroduction of certain freedoms.  So, the lessons we can learn from fasting and Phillip Glass ought to prove very useful as we try to be patient and appreciative of this prudent approach.   Then, once we begin to shop and drive and socialize more, perhaps this perspective can allow us to also more clearly notice how we respond to each stimuli as we re-engage with it, And hopefully it will inform a new normal that can be more sensible and moderate and in harmony with this planet that we call home.

And, in case you’re curious to listen to a little minimalist fare...

Notice how welcomed the first chord change is in Max Richter’s Catalogue of Afternoons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubjylmxrj9o

Or drape yourself in his hypnotic music like a warm duvet with his 8-hour lullaby, Sleep: https://open.spotify.com/album/0JLN7JryQ2T7lBEYIrSQF1

And for a mind trip of the eyes and ears, try Steve Reich’s Piano Phase on marimbas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QoM7dgs_0

April 30, 2020

Film Festivals for free

Pahokee, at this year’s live-streamed Vancouver International Film Festival

Done wondering if Carol Baskin killed her husband?  Couldn’t care less if Giannini and Damian actually ever get married? Well, for those who’ve exhausted the Netflix catalogue, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy film from your home. Lots of festivals have generously uploaded their content online.  So, whether it’s mountain adventure, short films, foreign movies, or arthouse you’re looking for, here are some easy ways to link to those that are totally free:

Banff Mountain Film Festival - https://www.banffcentre.ca/film-fest-at-home

Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, Venice, Berlin and others have collaborated to bring an awesome line-up of livestream videos to the world in their 10-day We Are One Festival, starting on May 29th.  While the festival will stream for free, viewers will be asked to donate to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 solidarity response fund.

If you happen to remain gainfully employed, and it’s important to you to keep supporting independent film making, Vancouver International Film Festival has created a rental-fee structure for a number of films that they’ve now made available for streaming, too: https://viff.org/Online/default.asp

And Sedona Film Festival has done the same - https://sedonafilmfestival.com/mdfhome/

May 1, 2020

Boredom Killers: Ping-pong, birthday song, and Magritte gong wrong

Combing the internet for creative inspiration that I can share with readers has truly been a joy.   It’s also got our own creative jucies flowing.  So today, I thought I’d post just a few of the ways we’ve staved off boredom over these past weeks.

Tennis is one of our true passions.  It’s actually sort of how Geoff and my relationship began.  Given that we didn’t want our paddle skills to get too rusty, we didn’t let the fact that our little laneway house couldn’t fit a ping pong table stop us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kait-zCV94s

Coming from a huge birthday-celebrating family, I’ve tried to make sure that friends with birthdays during quarantine could still feel pampered on their special day.  So, 6 of us put together this silly ditty for our good friend Roger: https://youtu.be/EZKyrdOlvPk

And, we’ve jumped on the art replication bandwagon too.  The Met & the Getty Museum have both followed the lead of the Dutch gallery that first initiated the Instagram art challenge which asks people to recreate famous pieces of art with only 3 objects from their home. https://www.instagram.com/tussenkunstenquarantaine/

Here’s Geoff and my attempt with Magritte’s Lovers. The challenge also asks for participants to create new titles, so this is ours, Kissing Strategy for Stay-at-home Lazy Toothbrushers.

[isisisak]

Hello. Ily. Could you please tell me what Isak and Even's arguments are about? Both teasing and serious

halla!! i love that you differentiate between “arguments” and Arguments. So, when they “argue”: 

They “argue” about Even for the life of him not being able to do laundry. It’s about Even not remembering to do the laundry on time. Isak puts on a dark hoodie and (everyone who once forgot dark laundry in his life knows it) scrunches his nose up when the wet-dog smell hits his nose. He scowls at Even and drags out his name in an exasperated but still fond way. Even looks up from the magazine about photography he is currently deep into and gazes quickly from the hoodie to Isak and back. Then he pulls his mouth into a yikes grimace. 

They also “argue” that Isak prevents them from seeing their friends (or leave the flat for that matter). It’s about Isak constantly forgetting their plans. Listen. Isak is a cuddly dude ok? You wouldnt expect it (or well, we would but say, the rest of the squads wouldnt (maybe eskild)) but give him the chance and he stays with sleepy hair and crinkled shirts all day, eyes always half closed (ready at any given second to drift off to sleep) and just so warm! Even swears he is cosiest boy. And I mean, how can Even resist that? So, when he comes into their living/bedroom after doing the dishes (Isak offered his help but then proceeded to give Even kisses every time they crossed paths - which, always since that kitchen was like one square foot - and Even had to ask him to leave to get anything done bc their meant to meet the others) and Isak is laying on his stomach, duvet tangled in between his legs and he mumbles “Evi, come here. I warmed it up for you.” Even can’t really do anything other than slip in there. “Babe we said we would meet Mahdi and Mags.” But Isak just shuffles closer until he only has to lift his chin for their mouths to meet and oh well, friends? Even doesn’t know her. There are a lot of other things that they “argue” about, but they only once or twice had an Argument. Arguments are different. With the little daily stuff that sometimes is more annoying than other times, but is mostly just met with fond glances or excused by sweet kisses, they never really feel hurt or really mean it. When Even sighs and jokes about Isak never being the one that cooks, he doesn’t really want that to change. Because he pretty much loves preparing food for Isak (with as he would insist on … even though he only sits there and rewards spice choices with kisses or gets to measure something before it is added). 

But the Arguments they have, are about deeper laying things. They both internalise. They both get frustrated. Even learned to communicate a bit better but he also shys away from confrontation. So they do talk about everything that bothers them or happens to them. But there are a few things they keep for themselves. And when those pile up or they are stressed those rise to the surface. It’s quick and ugly and as soon as the heat of the moment is gone their shoulders slumb, Even looks at the floor and Isak with deer-wide eyes at him. Both incredibly sorry for what they said. Because that’s not how they do things. That’s bc of stress or bc they feel guilty or not worthy. They usually handle it better. And one of them will do the first step. Right before the other is about to run off, one of them will take a step toward the other. 

Closer and closer until their foreheads touch. Eyes closed and finally able to breathe again they will stay like this for a second or two. And then the one that was about to run off will croak “Halla.” And the other will answer “Halla.” in the softest voice. And they know they will be ok. 

They are extra clingy after one of the Arguments with a capital A. But it really just rarely happens. They will make sure the other knows just about 239% more than exaclty how big their love is for the other. And touch all the time. And tell each other everything they love and explain over and over how that argument could happen. And will talk through that thing that they piled up and never voiced before. 

So the banter “arguments” are good to communicate or negatiate in a way that is not heated or mean. The Arguments are tough and few but they always end in them being closer than before. Bc they handled the big stuff. 

(Im so sorry, I can for the life of me not write anything other than fluff. I did write a post-fight oneshot once and had to lay down bc i am not built for that, so i chickened out and did a semi version of what you asked for…. ily and im sorry )

(also, i could not come up with stuff that annoys them bc my brain was always “oh but they probably adore the shit out of that one” so… if you have something in mind? maybe isak cant iron and ruins evens shirt even tho its his only one and he needs it for this internship interview at this radio station? its not film but its something. And Isak wanted to surprise him. And Even is anxious and nervous and now has nothing to wear. But Isak looks so heartbroken that Even will just melt bc faen he KNOWS Isak wanted to do something nice for him. So he wear the dark grey one from Isak. (And runs late bc Isak practically jumps him bc its a bit too tight on Even. “Babe, you do realise youre getting hot from your own clothes” - “you wearing my clothes always gets me hot” - *muffled giggly kissy sounds as the camera pans away from the scene*) 

[caredogstips]

In accolade of the humble fruit fly

Drosophila, the hard-working fruit fly widely used in genetics investigate, is a lot more like us than we might care to think. Time we got to know the little pest

In a series of areas in the Fly Facility of the Department of Genetics at Cambridge University, around 5m return wings are kept in test tube at any given point in time. Theyre stored at different temperatures to adjudicate running durations of life cycle at 25 C, its about 10 dates; at jug temperatures as long as five weeks.

Out in the wild, “they dont have” pest quite so likable to human needs as the humble pomace fly. It may have spent the summer feasting on the contents of your return container, but not until your assembled plums and peaches were starting to canker. But while gastronomic predisposition are typical to be applauded in a run, the drosophila, to present it its official title, has more going for it than good table manners.

For the past century, it has also acted the crucial serve of a science and medical search tool. Today, its often the first stop in research into a wide range of human illnesses, including Alzheimers disease, Huntingtons disease, spastic paraplegia, cancer and obesity. By compared to mice and dogs, let alone apes and humans, its massively inexpensive and easy-going working in cooperation with and there is little chance of sucking dissent from even the most radical anti-vivisectionist.

In many respects its position as a crucial search tool is a historical accident. Between 1910 and 1915, the pioneering American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan worked on Drosophila melanogaster in his renowned Fly Room at Columbia University and been demonstrated that genes provide the basis for chromosomal inheritance, for which he won a Nobel prize winner. It was a critical breakthrough, but there was no particular reason that it had to be made via the fruit fly. Yet ever since then, the tiny drosophila has been at the vanguard of genetic research. In the 1920 s, another American geneticist, Hermann J Muller, has showed that radioactivity leads to genetic mutation in fruit wings. The reason were careful about exposure to x-rays is no tiny portion due to Mullers work.

But some of the mutations that Muller grew, such as pilots with legs coming out of their premiers, subsequently played into the postwar period of atomic paranoia, acquainted George Langelaans short story The Fly, which was constructed into a film first in the 50 s and then remade by David Cronenberg in the 1980 s.

Jeff Goldblum mid-mutation in David Cronenbergs 1986 cinema The Fly. Image: Sportsphoto Ltd/ Allstar

In the tale and the films, research scientists mutates into a wing, an idea thats shaking precise since we are experience ourselves as being so altogether differences between moves, with their strange the organizations and massive, honeycombed leaders and plainly creepy practices. This deep-seated nervousnes about runs has led to some famed misunderstands of biology. The most appalling speciman was in 2008, when Sarah Palin, extending for vice-president in the US presidential elections, told an audience that their money was going to is planned that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Concepts like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Despite Palins clueless doubts, one of the reasons that operates have become important to much genetic and medical investigate in its relationship with humans is that they tolerate a impressive genetic similarity to us. The sci-fi fear of a flys otherness may well be based, somewhere direction down, on its unsettling closeness to us.

It was Michael Ashburner, the godfather of fruit fly research at Cambridge, who first established that of the genes that in their mutant anatomy campaign diseases in humen cystic fibrosis being one example around 75% have very similar equivalents in return hovers. When Ashburner started out in the 1970 s, runs were maintained in milk bottles in a temporary laboratory on the outskirts of Cambridge. As an expression of the results of his foundational act, which includes his classic book Won For All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced , Cambridge has become arguably the worlds passing centre of fruit fly research.

Its Fly Facility is run by one of Ashburners former PhD students, Simon Collier, who showed me around the labs and fly storage of the facility. Hes been working with fruit operates for 25 years and in that time hes come to know and realize many of their obscured to most human observers characteristics.

If you take a tube of runs and left open here you notice that they have practices, he alleges. The males courtroom the females. They follow the females and put one wing out and it vibrates. Theres a person in Leicester whos experimented this and what theyre doing is producing a kind of love song.

Apparently, the females are not looking for a long-term affair and, certainly, theyre likely in their short life span to have multiple spouses. The question with this for geneticists is that they store semen so paternity is a disputed issue. To counter the embarrassment of this brazen immorality, geneticists tend to work with innocent females.

How can they tell? I ask.

The look in their seeing, Collier says drily.

A colourised SEM micrograph, amplified 70 epoches. of the head of a fruit fly, evidencing compound seeing. Photograph: Tom Hartman/ Getty Images

He shows me a magnification of a onu of fruit operates that have been knocked out by carbon dioxide. Theyre still blinking but essentially stationary. He points out the differences between males( a bit smaller) and females and shows that young wings virgins if you like are pale and unpigmented.

He explains that for study determinations special chromosomes have been developed that enable geneticists to draw exactly what genes have been inherited. With mouse, for example, its necessary to check gene by gene whats been inherited, which moves genetic study much more time-consuming and costly.

Because the fruit flys life cycle is so short and they procreate so fast( sexually maturity is reached within eight epoches of incubating ), drosophila are ideal subjects for its further consideration of inherited traits, including genetic aberrations, over many generations.

Still, to the amateur, even one slightly more versed in the exigencies of scientific research than Sarah Palin, theres something intensely counterintuitive about doing genetic research on wings. For one thing, theyre so small. Doesnt that make it a whole lot trickier?

Collier shakes his head. Its fairly simple if you want to look at the fruit flys genome. You exactly place them in a tube and squish them up and do some simple DNA extraction. Whats more complex is becoming the other route implanting genetic substance into them.

He takes me to a special lab where this procedure is carried out. They take the tent-fly larvae and strip the eggs off their eggshells by putting them in bleach. Then with a long and highly fine needle, the relevant genetic material is introduced into the posterior of the eggs where the germline cells are located.

Drosophila melanogaster gaze quality variants, picturing grey and cherry-red. The grey seeing gene is sex-linked. Picture: Alamy

Given that an egg is about 0.5 mm in length( about the dimensions of the a particle of sand ), and the DNA administered into it is about the capacity of a millionth of a drop of ocean, you can see how delicate an operation it is. It takes about six months to master the instant motor skills necessary to do the job.

Usually half the embryos will survive that procedure, enunciates Collier. And we are in a position reproduction from them and examine them.

But study what exactly? And to what end?

Collier innovates me to two colleagues who are active in fruit fly research, a reader in genetics announced Cahir OKane and Damian Crowther, a director of neuroscience the investigations and change at the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who still holds links to the Fly Facility.

We go out to lunch and talk fruit operates. I expect Crowther first of all why “hed left” academic study to go into industry.

The story I tell, he alleges, is pals, and perhaps even adversaries, would ever insert me as, This is Damian, hes the tent-fly guy. In my occasion, Ive been a registrar in neurology and a research scientist in many areas I didnt conclude fly person certainly summarized me up.

OKane resembled the detail and both men agree that fly investigate has not made them either health professionals or social acknowledgment they speculate their work warrants.

What seems to matter most, to its implementation of professional appreciation at the least, is what is known as rendition, that is, passing the findings of fly research into productive contributions to medical applications for humen. There is little doubt that hovers study does contribute, in a wider appreciation of biological understanding of how all organisms piece, but also in specific examples of human illnes. However, its not easy to become direct links.

Its problematic, for obvious grounds, to lead from run tests to human experiments; there often needs to be a whole scope of happening stagecoaches in which other scientists take over and, unavoidably, take the spotlight and accreditation.

I cant tell you that theres a drug that Ive tested on return flies[ with an artificially created version of Alzheimers disease] thats benefited the fruit fly thats then gone on to benefit the human, articulates Crowther.

But, he excuses, Alzheimers commits the overproduction of proteins that species plaque in the brain that destroys neurons. So you can oblige frameworks of runs that raise these proteins, get their own plaque and succumb, he shows, and you are able to measure various ways of preventing the plaque formations.

Fruit wings dont naturally develop Alzheimers, although they have all the genetics of the Alzheimers pathway in their brain.

You have to give them human equivalent genes and push it really hard to get them to have Alzheimers in three weeks, shows Crowther.

Life hertz stages of the pomace fly, Drosophila sp, presenting larva, pupa, adult male( dark abdomen) and adult female. Image: Ed Reschke/ Getty Images

Instead of thinking of pilot research as a direct route to medical breakthroughs, its better to see it, Crowther quarrels, as a style of doing quick and dirty research. He believes that because its so cheap, it should be used in a multiplicity of ways that might spot the direction to most productive routes of research. And whenever there is drugs that have already been measured on humans and have passed safety requirements but have failed in their efficacy with the targeted disorder, they could be retargeted by first testing them on flies.

The contemplating around really bad maladies like engine neurone malady, Huntingtons disease, is if you can get anything to work in a cell culture replicated in an animal, thats the beginning as long as its safe of promptly get it to patients, remarks Crowther.

OKane is especially suspicious of overblown claims for translation. For him, the allure of the fruit fly is that it is a organism that rewards analyse in a larger context.

Im interested in it because I think its a great arrangement for finding out how living things in general can work. I conceive by understanding the principles of how tent-flies labour you are able to make better prophecies for humans. The better you understand how “were working” the most rational you can be about trying to pattern rehabilitations; I imagine even without directing your work towards therapy, you are able to speculate more intelligently about cares five or 10 years down the line.

It has been said , not least by Collier, that more know anything about the biology of the drosophila than any other animal on Earth. For speciman, we know that fruit moves have a kind of built-in compass in their mentalities that allows a sense of direction. As all animals need to know how they move, its not unreasonable to assume that its a way of universal computation.

Another study to demonstrate that male fruit moves that are rejected by a female teammate are more inclined to drown their anguishes in food spiked with alcohol than male fruit tent-flies that have succeeded in copulated. Again, a mentality chemical that governs the wings stomach and is predictive of their thirst for alcohol has an equivalent that has been linked to alcohol uptake in humans.

In another consider, this time at Oxford, it was found that fruit operates are capable of what are liable to be worded intelligent deliberation. Rather than doing solely impulsive decisions, they take time to react when will come forward with a difficult choice.

In other terms, once again their behavior could be described as human-like. It seems that the common ingredient in both human and operate action is a gene announced FOXP, which is closely linked to cognitive developed as humen. Pilots with defective FOXP take longer to arrive at policy decisions, just as flaws in the human type of FOXP have been correlated with low-toned intelligence.

It is this long and valuable history of consider of the drosophila that should guarantee its continued involvement in genetic investigate. But much of what has been very successful about working with operates is now being be repeated in human stem cell research, which has the added advantage of being species-relevant. This was the other is why Crowther moved into the private sector: the competition from stem cells meant that he found it increasingly difficult to get fruit fly-based experiment funded.

The fly is yesterdays person, he mentions, yesterdays engineering. For me, stem cells are the next fruit fly.

OKane searches fairly glum at the prospect and argues that there have been queries over the future of pomace fly study ever since he started his laboratory 25 years ago. But he maintains that the work hes done in inherited spastic paraplegia would have taken 10 times longer to perform with mouse. OKane has grown to appreciate the rich biological and social development of fruit flies in the time hes been working with them.

The more you look at their behavior, he says, the more sophisticated you realise they are. Even in aggressivenes, how a male pomace fly behaves in a fight is dependent on his previous experience of fighting with other male and female what the other males previous know-how of fighting is. Its amazing to be considered all the machinery thats involved to be able to do that. Undoubtedly were more sophisticated, because were studying them, theyre not analyse us.

For the time being, until some over-ambitious genetics professor does manage to mutate into a run, thats the practice the relationship should be pursued. And both humans and return wings, it is about to change, can drink to that.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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