#i could just read the wiki but the black + white contrast makes my head hurty. thank you <3

[the-bloody-masquerade]

End of Year ask! So I'm playing Amanda, the Ventrue PC in Coteries. It's my first time playing a Ventrue, and I never realized how difficult their bane is. What's the most difficult Ventrue bane you as a player have taken on, and/or given one of original Ventrue characters?

Also from baddass-at-cuddling: Second end of year ask is what do you think LaCroix's Ventrue bane is? Maybe he can only feed from handsome mobsters like Mercurio? 🤔 [I’m gonna throw both your asks in one because the second answer is gonna have a lot to do with my first answer.]  And heads up trigger warning for mention of rape and slavery as I discuss a couple of White Wolfs more *edgy* character arcs.  How about post-first-week-of-the-year ask. That’s about all the quicker I move with these asks. 😅 So! The Ventrue! I love them so much and they are my favorite clan. A lot of people with project their frustrations of the real-world “top 1%” onto the Ventrue and tend to treat them scornfully, or worse yet, project those frustrations onto the people who like the Ventrue. Its just make believe folks! There are numerous reasons to be fond of the vampire aristocracy and not all of them automatically equate “I want to lick the boots of harmful capitalists in real life.”  Anyway, the Ventrue bane can be tricky but I think it is also one of the more appealing aspects of the clan due to how it is springboard for creativity and character development. There is no official “rhyme or reason” to why a certain Ventrue gets a certain Bane but I wanna take a little time to explain my personal pitch for how a Ventrue gets their Bane.  Its not really a singular cohesive idea but I cannot fathom not making a Ventrue character’s Bane relevant to their personality or backstory. Something that explores some aspect of their psyche. Maybe constructs that sense of “personal horror” that vtm says it so loves to cultivate.

I actually know of very few canonical ventrue banes and a lot of them are... dicey. 😬

On the completely innocuous end of the spectrum you have characters like Victor Temple from LA by Night who’s preference appears to be people who “know who he is” ie recognize his fame. Its simple, and not at all difficult as long as he stays in LA or its culture sphere where he as a music industry mogul and social media personality is well known. Pretty easy to tie this to Victor psychologically, he craves recognition and maybe a human aspiration was transformed by supernatural Ventrue ambition upon his embrace. Sure would be an interesting challenge for Victor to travel to an area of the world where his music empire wasn’t well known...

Then there’s Alexander of Paris who’s blood preference only allowed him to feed from women who were in love (but not married). Devilishly specific, perhaps tricky, perhaps not if the Toreador-level-pretty Alexander could just make his blood dolls fall in love with him. I don’t know enough about this character to say if this is backstory-relavant to him. 

On the dicey side you have things like our dear Jan Pieterzoon’s canonical blood restriction to only feed from rape survivors. Sort of recently I’ve seen people tossing about the headcanon that this could be made less stereotypically “White Wolf edgy dark shock value bullshit” if this was a reflection Pieterzoon being a survivor himself, and then exploring the aspects of a “personal horror” how having a blood restriction that reflects that. Because as far as I know, canon never does that, his restriction is just that way in canon to be edgy.  On the other hand, yet another canonical Ventrue with a... squicky blood preference would be Andrew Seneca, a former black American slave who found out after his embrace that his blood preference was in fact, slaves. 😬I am not equipped to parse out the handling of this storyline so I won’t try but he’s got a listing on the white wolf wiki if you want to know. Without getting into it, his backstory and blood preference certainly seem to be made for a very hardcore impactful case of “personal horror,” especially regarding what he was going to do as the ages marched on, but again, I can’t really speak to how it was handled. 

So by now you’ve figured out that I have a preference for Ventrue whos blood preferences speak to something intrinsic to their backstory or character arcs. I actually have something of a mini-dynasty of Ventrue OCs who’s blood preferences I’ve put a lot of thought into. I’d love to go into that but I’d prefer to do it on my personal project blog. So I’ll do that and tag you in it, okay Badass? But I will answer the question of my speculation on LaCroix’s blood preference here (finally, lol). I’ve seen a few people in fandom take a pass at it and many of them do wrap it into psychological aspects of LaCroix that they’ve explored in their own works. 

I have seen a version of LaCroix where his blood preference is blood that is laced with alcohol and/or opium, ‘old timey comfort drugs’ speaking to his 19th century wartime backstory. 

I’ve also seen a take in which LaCroix’s blood preference is dominant women, setting up an accidental embrace and romance that the author wanted to explore.  The take that I use for my own fics is that LaCroix’s blood preference is real down to earth kind of people. Peasants, working class, to put it one way, but not because it contrasts with LaCroix’s presumed aristocracy. No, in my version LaCroix was born a common citizen into a family with only fair means. His vampiric blood preference for low-born hardworking folk is a reflection of almost all the people who surrounded him in life, family, hometown friends and soldier buddies. The kinds of people he remembers fondly from life. And our favorite even-tempered salt of the earth smuggler Mercurio fits that bill for LaCroix.  Another thing I’ve always pondered is if a Ventrue’s ghouls are necessarily a “tell” as to their blood preference. I think for young Ventrue it would be, since traditionally you gotta feed on the person you’re going to ghoul to ghoul them so they have to fit their blood preference. That and one of the primary purposes for a ghoul is a quick easy snack. I suppose older Ventrue could acquire ghouls who aren’t their preference by going out of their way. To make a ghoul you just gotta exsanguinate them, you don’t necessarily have to drink it. [Edit, I mixed this up, the only difference between a ghoul and embracing a new vampire is a ghoul drinks vampire blood while in a state of good health, a new vampire is created when they drink blood while having barely any other blood in their system, ie being exsanguinated. I ALWAYS get the methods of ghouling/embrace confused] So yeah, there’s a whole big barf of my thoughts and ideas about Ventrue. I just kinda tend to do that, take a relatively simple ask and be like “WANNA SEE HOW LONG I CAN TYPE???” When I get there I’ll post about my Ventrue OCs’ blood preferences on my personal project blog. Until then thanks for reading!

[ohnohetaliasues]

Tokyo OC (Setsuna Miyuu)

(Kat)

So, an anon sent me a note about this OC, and I found her almost immediately on Hetalia Fan Characters Wiki. Let’s get into it.

I made a Tokyo OC a while ago, so this should be interesting.

Tokyo (東京 Tokyo) is the capital city of Japan in the series Hetalia: Axis Powers. She is sometimes referred to as Tokyo Metropolis (東京都 Tokyo-to). Her human name is Miyuu Setsuna (刹那 美夢ー Setsuna Miyuu).

Okay, so both Miyuu (more commonly spelled as Miyu) and Setsuna are first names.

Also I read the Kanji for ‘Miyuu’ as ‘Mimu’ so there’s that.

This looks like a Love Live character.

Okay, so as cute as this chibi is, I think this character is a bit whitewashed. She looks Caucasian as opposed to Japan, who does look Asian for the most part.

Name: Tokyo Metropolis (東京都) Human Name: Miyuu Setsuna (刹那 美夢ー Setsuna Miyuu) Alternative Spelling(s): N/A Age: 16

No.

Too young.

Tokyo was originally called Edo, and Edo castle was built in 1457, then became the center of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s military government in 1603. She would be a little older than 16.

Gender: Female Birthday: February 10th

This date has nothing to do with Tokyo’s history.  You could try May 1st, which is the day Tokyo was established as a city.

Hair Color: Caramel Brown (manga), Caramel Brown (anime) Eye Color: Maroon (manga), Cherry Red (anime)

Seeing as none of the countries have abnormally colored hair and that they physically cannot dye their hair, this is not normal because Japanese people typically don’t have red hair. They have dark hair.

Case in point.

Height: 145 cm

Why in fresh hell is she 4′7″? The average height of a Japanese woman is around 5′2″ or so.

Appearance

Tokyo, Japan

She has brown hair that reaches a few inches below her shoulders and a P-shaped curl on the middle of her head.

Does this represent anything?

Her hair is wavy and some of it on the side also curls inward. This was from the effect of having to tie her hair up too often when she was a child.

No. This isn’t how hair works. I tie my hair up plenty and it doesn’t leave a permanent dent, even if my hair is naturally curly.

Despite this, Tokyo's original hair color is actually black.

Like I said, countries cannot dye their hair, so this is not plausible. Leave her hair as black if you wanna stay accurate.

In her first appearance as a character, she wore an above-the-knee black yukata with a reddish-pink sash and a bell at the side. However, when she grew up with Japan, she is seen wearing a seemingly military-type set of clotes with gold linings and black accents.

She would still wear pants and not a skirt because wearing a skirt as a military uniform in combat would be really silly.

Her left boot is noticeably shorter than the right.

Is there a practical reason for this?

As a child, she wore a white kimono that looked big and loose on her. Her hair was styled like two triangular-shaped buns that looked like riceballs.

A white kimono?

From what I know about kimonos, you don’t wear white kimonos unless you’re getting married. Other than that, white kimonos are only ever worn under the actual kimonos and are called nagajuban.

Personality and Interests

Though described as determined and strong-willed, Tokyo doesn't know much of other nations. She tends to be rather shy and gentle to strangers, sometimes acting nervous like she would make a mistake.

Tokyo has the best metropolitan economy in the world, so I’d imagine she’d be generally pretty outgoing. She’d talk to others in a business-like manner because of this, possibly. My own Tokyo OC is afraid of explosives because of the bombings that took place in Tokyo and she is also careful with what she spends because of the economy thing.

Despite this, Tokyo shows a more outgoing and cheerful side to the nations or capitals she's already a bit close to.

Tokyo secretly likes making robots but she doesn't usually reveal her inventions to the other nations or capitals, only to Japan.

I mean, Japanese electronics are pretty common, so I find this silly.

She has a verbal mannerism to say 'ryuun' just like the way China says 'aru'.

Is there an actual reason for this?

Tokyo was relatively quiet and timid as a child. There showed one time when she kicked Susanoo square on the face for eating her sushi, showing that she was quite aggresive.

Who in the hell is Susanoo?

Relationships

Japan

When she was a child, Tokyo lived in Japan's house at a separate room and only went outside to eat a snack or use the bathroom. Eventually, she started to open up more when the other nations China, America and England started visiting Japan. This lead to her meeting Washington and London and seeing her childhood friend Beijing again.

Um.

No.

Holland was the first to visit Japan after he closed his boarders for nearly 263 years, and I’m concerned that he’s not mentioned. I mean, sure America arrived around 1853.

Also, why Washington? It isn’t inaccurate since Japan sent cherry trees to plant along the Potomac River in 1910, but that was 57 years after the boarders opened again.

Okay, did this person even do their research?

China

Main Article: China

China took control of Japan when he was a kid. Before being Japan's capital, she secretly followed him. When China found out about her, she was forced to work as a servant.

N O.

NO.

NO.

Okay no.

China never formally occupied Japan, at least not as far as I know. They were connected politically, but China never actually totally controlled Japan.

However, during WWII Japan did actually occupy some of China’s land.

Do your goddamn research.

Beijing

When Tokyo became China's servant, she met Beijing. Beijing introduced himself as her boss, being China's capital, and often made fun of her and made her work twice as usual.

One time when Beijing asked for Tokyo to cook siopao for him, Tokyo screwed the dish and made Beijing throw up. Since then, he never asked her to cook for him.

This is irrelevant since this was never a thing.

Germany

When Japan became part of the Axis, Tokyo had an opportunity to meet Germany. There is not much known about there relationship, save for the fact that Tokyo dubbed him as a "respectable person".

Uh, okay.

Berlin

Berlin met Tokyo through Germany. They became friends and often shared thoughts, only about war and fighting. Tokyo stated that Berlin was "a person to go to when you're in trouble", contrasting the fact that other nations avoid Germany when they have trouble.

This is irrelevant.

Paris

When Paris went to a vacation in Japan, she met Tokyo and made friends with her. She thinks that Tokyo is her little sister and loves going shopping with her. Paris likes her a lot and is the reason why Tokyo has a lot of "weird" clothes. Despite this, Tokyo hates shopping and going to places with crowds.

Okay, no. Tokyo is a giant city. She would have to be pretty used to crowds and shopping since Tokyo has many markets and shopping districts.

I might even say she would like things like this.

Italy

Italy met Tokyo when he was running away from Germany. Tokyo introduced herself while Italy forgot about being chased.

???

Italy said that Tokyo was like a kid by the way she looks and sometimes calls her "sorellina".

Um. Okay.

Rome

Rome and Tokyo hang out as much as Italy and Japan. They are shown to have good relations with each other as Rome feels that he can trust Tokyo to tell about his problems. Rome often asks Tokyo for tips on how to woo women but it eventually turns out to a disaster since Tokyo doesn't know much about "wooing".

South Italy (Romano)

Tokyo and Romano don't have a good relationship. When the two met, Tokyo was dressed up as a boy so Romano didn't recognized her as a woman. The two bumped into each other and Romano cursed at her, still not knowing her actual gender.

Tokyo's gender was only revealed to Romano when Tokyo went with Japan to look for Italy. But since then, Romano's harsh attitude still hasn't changed towards her.

WHY ARE EITHER OF THESE RELEVANT?

London

Yes. This is accurate. London and Tokyo have a partnership agreement. They even have universities which are connected.

Tokyo and London are close friends just as Japan and England are.

But that’s not why they could be friends.

They met from London being introduced by Japan and since then they have been good friends.

No.

London and Tokyo both enjoy having conversations about anime or about who they ship. Due to London being honest with her opininon Tokyo is always able to confide in her.

Don’t trick me into thinking you did your research when you didn’t.

Name

The exact inspiration behind her human name was from the Japanese word "setsuna"

Japanese name, you mean. But yes, also a word.

which means "in a split second" and "miyu" meaning "beauty" or "dream". This in total gives her name a meaning of "beauty in a split second" or "dream in a split second".

And, my dear readers, this has nothing at all to do with the city of Tokyo.

Discussing further, it is known that Tokyo has a hobby of drawing scenes or events that happen in her dreams. She does this first thing in the morning or whenever she wakes up from sleep. It is revealed that she keeps a pencil and a sketchpad underneath her pillow which she calls her "dream board".

Okay, but this is again, irrelevant. Characters are allowed to have their quirks and hobbies, but with Hetalia OCs, you have to be careful of giving them totally unrelated hobbies.

Character Songs

Marukaite Chikyuu

Hatafutte Parade

Mawaru Chikyuu Rondo

There are no links even on the wiki page, so I guess those are useless.

Trivia

When the Axis celebrated Tokyo's birthday on February 10th by buying her cake, she ate it all without sharing which lead to the fact that Tokyo loves confections. She said sorry after not giving the others the food.

Alright, I guess.

In a comic strip, Beijing mumbled to himself in his room that, "I'm gonna be her boss so we'll finally meet so she can notice me," revealing that Beijing was quite lonely and only wanted Tokyo as a playmate and not actually a servant.

What comic strip? Is this person just pretending Himariya wrote their characters in? I’m confused.

China once called for Tokyo and Japan and looked at them in their eyes. He stated that their eyes looked dull and same but had a different hue.

China just called Japan and Tokyo to look at their eyes? Doesn’t he have better things to do with his time?

Okay, so all that is left is a bunch of art in the gallery, but I don’t know how much of it is stolen and how much of it isn’t, so I’ll just leave it where it is.

Anyway, this OC needs research. Look up information about Tokyo’s history, about Japan’s history. Surprisingly, that video on YouTube, ‘History Of Japan,’ that’s actually a usable source, as silly as it is.

Anyway, I’ll see you guys later. Thanks for recommending this character to me, Anon!

~Kat

[tlbodine]

The End of 1960s Horror...

After a few delays, we’re back on track with our jaunt through the horror decades. Last night’s films were two favorites and genuine classics. 

First up, Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

The film, directed by Roman Polanski, is an adaptation of a novel by the same name by Ira Levin (the guy who wrote The Stepford Wives). I’d never read the book, and @comicreliefmorlock​ had read it but never seen the film, so that made for some interesting compare/contrast. 

The big takeaway? The movie is so much sleazier and, well, rapey-er, despite being an extremely faithful adaptation (even down to exact dialogue lines being replicated). 

This may have been influenced by the director. It’s hard to watch Rosemary’s Baby now without the film being clouded by knowing that Polanski was charged in 1977 with drugging and raping a 13-year-old (a charge which caused him to flee the country, allowing him to continue making critically acclaimed movies without suffering any particular consequences for his crime). You can read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_case

It’s also interesting to note that, a year after Rosemary’s Baby came out, Polanski’s pregnant wife and four friends were among the victims of the Manson family murders. 

There’s a lot to unpack there. 

But let’s get back to the movie. Rosemary’s Baby tells a pretty straightforward story: A pair of newlyweds move into an apartment and develop a relationship with the eccentric elderly couple next door. The husband is a struggling actor who serendipitously gets his big break shortly after meeting the old folks. The wife, raised Catholic and from a large family, is eager to start having children of her own. She succeeds in getting pregnant, but it’s a difficult pregnancy, and through a series of odd events, she becomes convinced that everyone in her life is part of a satanic coven of witches intent to sacrifice her baby. 

Ira Levin has always impressed me with his skill at writing about women -- not just writing female characters well (which he does) but deeply understanding the fears and anxieties of womanhood in a way that is frankly surprising from a male writer in the 1960s. That shines through clearly in the film, and I can’t say for certain how much of that was influenced by Polanski -- not having seen any of his other movies, I’m not sure how he handles other source material. 

Anxieties explored head-on by the film include: 

Spousal rape 

Gaslighting (and “hysteria” perhaps) 

The loss of bodily autonomy inherent in pregnancy

Woman-as-vessel-for-baby as opposed to “whole individual person” 

I could write whole essays about this movie, and I probably will at some point. The primary plot fails to shock or frighten me anymore, of course, but there are still some lingering fridge horrors that are deeply unsettling in the vein of “oh my god can you IMAGINE how it would feel to be her right now.” 

Next up, and our final film for the decade, Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Written and directed by George Romero, Night of the Living Dead was a groundbreaking work for the zombie genre. Drawing clear inspiration from Richard Matheson’s story “I Am Legend,” Living Dead was an original tale that pulled together disparate strands of mythos to create many of the tropes that remain staples of zombie media. 

The story centers on an event of possible cosmic origins, with radiation leading the recently deceased to rise and go on a murderous, flesh-eating rampage. Well-dressed corpses shamble about and kill. A group of strangers are stuck defending a house together, one of them is secretly infected, the group tears itself apart with infighting -- you name the zombie apocalypse trope, it’s all here. 

One of the really interesting and groundbreaking things of Night of the Living Dead is that it features a black male protagonist. Now, I can’t say for certain that this is the first time in history someone made a movie about a heroic black man, but it’s certainly the earliest in our chronology that we’ve seen. And Ben (played by Duane Jones, an accomplished stage actor) is truly a great character -- resourceful, kind, brave, sometimes sassy and never afraid to stand up for himself. 

The role wasn’t written for a black character -- Romero said Jones just gave the best audition -- and the film is all the better for it because it avoids all of the troubling stereotypes that would haunt black people in horror for several more decades. 

In my opinion, the movie deserves a spot in history for that reason alone, but even aside from this historically significant casting choice, it’s just a good movie. A bit slow by modern standards, but with plenty of good action and some clever storytelling. Large chunks of it play out almost like a silent film, with the score and visuals doing most of the heavy lifting. The choice to film it in black and white helps to make it seem almost timeless (and likely helped to assuage the concerns of the viewing public, who were still squeamish about gore). A lot of the story is also told through snippets of radio broadcast and second-hand accounts, which adds to the claustrophobia of the main storyline while hinting at a much larger and more devastating event. 

And the ending! 

I remember watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time when I was in 8th grade. It was on TCM, I think, and I gleefully watched it alone in the dark and was totally blown away by the ending. I won’t ruin it in case you’ve never seen it, somehow, but man I didn’t see it coming, and cynical-preteen me thought it was the coolest shit. I still think it’s a very daring ending. 

Incidentally, WOW, the post-Hayes era of filmmaking took off with a bang. A few films ago we could hardly show a married couple kissing, and now we’ve got full nudity (including an appearance from Mia Farrow’s nipples in Rosemary’s Baby), on-screen graphic violence, and “morally corrupt” endings where the bad guys win. 

It must have been a wild time, growing up on the films of the 40s and 50s, and then coming of age in the 60s to see how WILDLY DIFFERENT they became in a few short years. 

The 1970s are coming, and I am stoked, because we’re entering the era of movies I adore (and which the Morlock has never seen) and I’m so excited to revisit them. 

[nerdsideofthemedia]

Bumblebee was always the plan

After seeing a few comments on this, I made a  part 2.

I’ve written about this before and I was hoping never to return to this subject, but hanging around RWBY communities has kind of forced my hand. Unfortunately, this probably won’t be the only controversial post I write about RWBY’s fandom.

Even though a huge chunk of the fandom has been convinced Bumblebee was going to happen, there were more than a few people who decided to ignore all the signs. Even after 6×12, there were still people trying to remain in denial, which is fine: you do you, but it’s amazing how then they got upset when BBers turned out not to be interested in believing in their lie. Now, I don’t intend to go through all the moments of foreshadowing for the relationship – there are tons of texts about it – but I am still going to address a few moments to prove that it was heavily hinted at, while also addressing the ignorance towards LGBTQ+ experiences.

The injury

To me, I think Yang’s and Sun’s injuries are everything I should need to prove the likelihood of BB as they contrast the two main Blake ships: Bumblebee and Black Sun. While heroes tend to save many people who are indeed just friends or sometimes not even that, there’s a reason why Superman and Spiderman usually include Lois Lane and MJ (or whoever the love interest is in said film) in the climax – it makes it more personal, raising the stakes. From this perspective, it’s easy to understand the importance given to either by comparing: what the injury was, who caused it, why and Blake’s reaction, thus allowing to conclude which couple was given more weight.

What was the injury? Yang lost an arm and suffered from PTSD. Sun, on the other hand, received a minor injury from which he had almost completely recovered from by the next episode and left no lasting damages. Point Bumblebee. Some have tried to argue that Sun was actually hit by an electric weapon, so he could have died, but, ultimately, what matters is what actually happens, not what could have been. As far as we know, he didn’t even get a limitation in movement.

Who caused it? In Yang’s case, it was Adam, while in Sun’s, it was Ilia. So ex-boyfriend vs friend whose feelings were not reciprocated. This one is a no brainer: again point Bumblebee as the first one is more associated with romance. Yang having her arm cut by Adam linked them. By the way, don’t forget Yang and Adam are foils for each other.

Why? Yang was trying to save Blake, while Sun… questioned Ilia’s being a Faunus. If you want to super charitable with him, I can give you: because Ilia was trying to intimidate Blake into giving her back her scroll. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter because neither scenario holds a candle to the first one. Point Bumblebee.

What was Blake’s reaction? When it was Adam vs Yang, she put herself between them and used her semblance to get the latter to safety. When Sun got injured, instead of putting herself between him and Ilia, she stood still and refused to comply with Ilia’s demand. If you feel tempted to say: well, that’s because Ilia’s not as dangerous as Adam, then I have to say: exactly! She could have been, but the writers decided not to do that. Pretty much like Sun could have been the one being associated with Blake’s ex, but he wasn’t. Again, point Bumblebee.

Bonus points:

The use of the Kuleshov effect when Adam says “I’ll destroy everything you love…”, Yang appears, “starting with her”. I can already hear the screeches “Love doesn’t have to mean romance”. Thanks dude, I know. This is where looking at the rest of the scene comes in: it’s why I compared the scene where Yang gets injured to the one with Sun. The writers could have chosen to phrase it differently like “I’ll destroy everything you care about”, but they didn’t. Also, in V5, they got the opportunity to associate that word with Sun and Blake, yet they went for… “classmate”. You know writers care about the words used, right?

By the way, some people tried to argue that Adam just immediately notices the deep love between Yang and Blake. While I don’t disagree that he understands that Blake cares about Yang, the point is for the audience to associate the word “love” with those 2.

More bonus points

Sun was there when Yang decided to go after Blake in V3 and put Weiss in charge of going after Ruby. This shows 2 things: 1) Blake means more to her than to Sun; 2) Yang prioritizes going after Blake over her own sister. That only changed during V4 and V5 because she felt betrayed by Blake for leaving, especially when she needed her as she was struggling with losing an arm and having PTSD.

After the fall, Sun looks at an injured Blake and Yang while the first apologizes to the latter with tears in her eyes. That shot exists for Sun to realize the connection between the 2 girls, not for him to see Blake injured, otherwise it would have been better if Yang had been kept out of the frame, not to mention that he had already seen her injured. If I had to get inside his mind, I’d say that is the moment he realizes how much Yang means to Blake and it’s the reason why he brings up Yang in V4 after his injury.

If you need proof of the romantic undertones of this scene, just tell it to a friend, but swap Yang’s gender and you’ll see just how much more impactful Yang vs Adam is in relation to Sun vs Ilia. Don’t forget to mention that Adam is Blake’s ex-boyfriend while Ilia is the friend whose feelings weren’t reciprocated. Also, Adam’s line “I will destroy everything you love… starting with him”, while our gender-bent Yang enters the scene.

Dance arc

It also accomplishes a few things:

It straight up shows us that Yang understands Blake better than anyone and can get through to her like no one else;

It has Yang flirt with Blake, phrasing her invitation to the dance as “If you feel like coming out tomorrow, I’ll save a dance” and winks;

Yang comments on how she’ll be turning heads, yet the only head she turns is Blake’s.

All of the rest of team wears a dress of their colors: Ruby-red, Weiss-white, Blake-black, yet Yang uses a white one instead of yellow. I think that was to create a yin-yang effect with her and Blake. (apparently this was the result of an animation problem).

Establishes the parallel between Bumblebee and Arkos as their scenes are intertwined, which happens again in V3

(After reading the comments on rwby wiki, I have to add: those were phrased deliberately that way. I know: writers care about how they word things... shock! If you think the "coming out" or the "turning heads" were phrased accidentally with Blake turning her head also accidentally, I'm sorry but you don't know anything about writing and filmmaking. There is no way the writers didn't know "coming out" is associated with LGBTQ+ and they didn't have to phrase that way. Also, there's this thing called "editing" where writers (and others) reread the script - if those weren't intentional, they would have been detected and changed during this phase. It's about other scene, but here you go). 

Bumblebee also resembles Renora as the friendship turned more and one could easily make an argument there were no hints of romance for Renora until V4, yet no one bothers to as if there are huge double standards when it comes to straight and LGBTQ+ couples: whenever two characters of the opposite gender have an interaction that can be seen as romantic or platonic, it’s seen as the first, while if the same happens to same gender, they are put in the platonic category.

Songs

Ok, so Bmblb isn’t canon, but it was still written with Bumblebee in mind. It is full of references to bees and puns, the latter was probably like the third thing the writers put on Yang’s character sheet, which probably looked like this: 1) anger issues 2) semblance: absorb and dish out energy 3) loves puns.

Bmblb is undoubtedly a love song between Yang and Blake, unlike BS song Not Fall in Love With You which was a pop song written before RWBY was even a thing. Oh, and Like Morning Follows Night isn’t romantic, except for a few Sun’s lines, but Blake’s part never treats him more than friend. Once, I read a comment saying this song was written because Jeff hates BB and finds BBers annoying. Look, if that were true (and it’s a big “if”), then, not only Jeff would be pretty petty, he’d also be incredibly stupid (again, huge “if”), because he’d OK with queerbaiting, plus it’s pretty obvious BBers would get louder as it confirmed their ship.

Armed and Ready’s first 2 verses are about Yang losing her arm and replaying the scene in her mind and within those verses she mentions “there’s nothing I won’t do for her”, which often is associated with love (“and I’d do anything for love” – not the time to express my love for that Meat Loaf’s song? My bad).

All that Matters, which includes the lines “never thought you would stay forever/never asked you to commit your life”, that definitely have a romantic connotation. The entire song reveals just how much Yang feels for Blake, even though she feels betrayed.

Red Like Roses compares Blake to the Beast and Yang to the Beauty. Tale as old as time indeed.

I could go on, but seriously just read the posts I linked to before.

So, why did Bumblebee caught so many by surprise?

Well, that one is obvious: because it’s a LGBTQ+ couple. When it comes to those, most will remain in denial and interpret everything that can be romantic or platonic as the latter while they won’t do that for heterosexual couples. Again, Renora didn’t have to be framed as romantic until V4, yet most people did think of them that way and (almost) no one complained when they became a couple.

Yet, with Bumblebee, people chose to stay in denial until the very last episode of V6 (some even after that), though it was obvious 2 episodes before. A huge part of V6 was about Bumblebee: them mending their wounds and understanding their (and each other’s) feelings. Adam attacked Yang out of jealousy, tried to make her insecure about her relationship with Blake by claiming she had promised to stay with him and didn’t keep it and, then asked “what does she even see in you?”. In spite of this, there were still people trying to deny Bumblebee as if that question appears outside a romantic context.

After all… Blake and Yang were totally straight, right? Content warning for fragile egos: yap, we’re going to talk about heteronormativity and bisexual erasure.

What do heteronormativity and bisexual erasure mean?

In this context, heteronormativity means the assumption that everyone is straight until proven otherwise. By the way, some people like to pretend this is the skeptic’s position, but it’s not. An actual skeptic (which are much rarer than internet would have you believe, because it conflates skepticism with atheism) would assume ignorance when they don’t have the complete facts. Unless a character said they are only attracted to the opposite gender or something that makes it unambiguous they are straight, they might not be. Sorry, but I’m just a bit too old to believe in a “straight of the gaps”. Sure, most people/characters are straight, but if you assume everyone is, you’ll be wrong a bunch of times.

Bisexual erasure is the failure to consider bisexuality is a thing. To be fair, most people who do this, also fail to consider pan and asexuality. To them, people are either gay or straight. And, yes, most will recognize bisexuality exists when called out, yet still fail to consider it when making an argument. They’ll point out Blake can’t be into Yang, because she had a boyfriend as if that excludes interest in girls. Spoiler alert: not only it doesn’t exclude bisexuality, it can actually not even exclude her as a lesbian (I’ll return to this later).

Both of the comments above illustrate the problems I pointed out (with the second being pretty douchey and hilariously proven wrong now). The people above act if characters aren’t straight, writers need to show it right away. After all, don’t we all meet people by saying “My name is X and my sexual orientation is y”? Or make sure people see us check out people of the opposite/same gender or both genders to reveal our sexual orientation? Just me? Not even me? OK.

I think I’ve covered the fact that attraction to the opposite gender doesn’t exclude attraction to the same. Now, let’s take a look on Yang and Blake’s interest in boys.

The only time Yang expressed interest in boys was in episode 1×03, when she was ogling some shirtless ones. “Yeah. How do you explain that? Zing”. Hold your horses mate, here’s how:

Compulsory heterosexuality (yes, I intend to explain that too, so hold your tongue/fingers before doing a GoT impression saying “shame!” over and over again);

Episode 1×03 is pretty early on, so the writers may not have yet figured out the character’s sexuality, which is supported by an interview with Monty where, when asked about future LGBTQ+ characters, he responded they might already be there, they (and writers) hadn’t figured it out yet;

It was just a joke. I have to ask if you put so much weight on Yang being straight because of that joke, why do you not exclude her as being straight (or even bi) when she makes a joke revealing disinterest in Sun’s abs? Yang is totally straight because she likes guys with abs and when she doesn’t, it has no meaning. Sorry people, but if you put so much weight in one moment where she shows interest in guys for comedic purposes, then you have to put it in equal amount in the moment she shows disinterest in guys for comedic purposes. I may not like Sun, but eternally-unbuttoned-shirt-guy-with-well-defined-abs was definitely designed to be hot. So was Neptune, by the way, yet our flirty girl couldn’t have shown to be less interested in him even though he tried to flirt with her. Our straight girl!

Compulsory heterosexuality refers to the concept that heterosexuality can be adopted by people regardless of their personal sexual preference. Basically, heterosexuality is expected and we are raised to believe that is the normal, as a result many LGBTQ+ people believe to be straight until something or someone makes them question that. So no, not everyone who is LGBTQ+ knows it right away. Many figure themselves out during their teenage years, others find out much later.

About Blake’s sexuality, all we know is she dated Adam and might have had a crush on Sun at some point. Again, this does not exclude LGBTQ+, not even the L, since, again, she might have not figured herself out. I doubt she’s a lesbian, pan/bi is more likely, but it’s still a possibility. Oh, and asexual people can have relationships too.

I’m sure some may be thinking “she has only liked guys”, but 2 isn’t a big number (and only 1 was confirmed). Like I said, in order to assert she’s straight there needs to be evidence, which there isn’t. At most, you have evidence she probably likes guys, which again doesn’t exclude her liking girls (I may be sounding awfully repetitive, but trust me, this case warrants it).

Now, some people like to pretend to feel shamed when someone claims that “If Yang was a guy, you wouldn’t see them as just friends”. I agree with the argument because… well, it’s obviously true: most people think of relationships as involving 2 people of the opposite gender, even if they are aware others exist (didn’t we just cover that some LGBTQ+ go through a self-discovery process because of that?). However, it’s ultimately counterproductive. People who do this usually aren’t aware of it (and if they are, they’ll lie about it) and it can’t be proven, usually.

Of course, some let their masks slip away too much. The person who inspired this part of the rant constantly faked outrage when called out for their behavior. They did all of it: presumed straight until proven otherwise and pretended one can be only either straight or gay. Even after being called out several times, they constantly demanded evidence that Yang and Blake weren’t straight (this was before the end of V6, obviously), though they, of course, had to provide no proof they were. Still, when someone said the endgame pairings would be SunxBlake, YangxIlia and OscarxRuby, guess what evidence they asked for? If you guessed Yang being LGBTQ+, congratulations! You win the internet!

I think I don’t have to point out the ridiculousness of asking for that when neither Oscar nor Ruby have expressed any romantic or sexual interest in anyone, regardless of gender (in 6 volumes). According to the logic of these internet-skeptics (which means: believers in gut feeling, but in denial about it), Ruby and Oscar should be asexual and aromantic until proven otherwise. Yet, even then, the assumption is they’re straight. Again, LGBTQ+ needs evidence and absence of it means evidence of absence, straight doesn’t. No double standards at all.

I think it’s time to wrap this up: writers don’t have to tell a character’s sexual orientation in the beginning. And if two characters of the same gender have interactions that can be seen as either romantic or platonic, yet you frame them always as the second, while doing the opposite for pairs of different genders – that’s on you. And if you insist on faking outrage and shame when someone points all this out (yes, it’s fake – I know it, you know it, everyone knows it), and want to keep playing the “I’m not going to be part of the system” card (’cause it’s so brave to be part of the status quo) and throwing stuff on the ground, go right ahead. Throw a hot dog, a birthday cake, your cellphone, your computer even. In the end, it changes nothing: LGBTQ+ people exist and so should LGBTQ+ characters. If you have a problem with that and demand a ridiculous standard from them that you’d never do from a straight couple, here’s a hint: sometimes, you’re just not the target audience.

More RWBY posts:

Filmmaking and Bumbleby

Bumblebee was Always the Plan part 2

Faunus and the White Fang: The Portrayal of Racism

BB & Renora

Weird Post on Weiss’s Clothes

Foils: Adam and Yang (this one is in wordpress; it was my first one and I didn’t have Tumblr then)

Let’s talk about Adam Taurus (I didn’t post this one on Tumblr because the title and tags could lead Adam fans thinking this was about “his wasted potential” when really it defends the decision of killing him off and explains why it happened)

Original post: https://rwbytalk.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/sorry-rwby-fans-bumblebee-didnt-come-out-of-the-blue/ 

[nicolahndphoto]

Research - Photographers

Wednesday the 11th of September

During Tuesdays double studio class, we were asked to research about 5 portrait photographers; both historical and current. Doing this will demonstrate our knowledge of reading photographs as well as broadening techniques of portraits and how different photographers approach the aspect.

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz will forever be known as a hugely successful portrait photographer who regularly photographs celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Anne Hathaway (pictured above). Born in October 1949, in America. Leibovitz work has been featured in many magazines. During John Lennon’s era, she was the photographer who photographed him before he was murdered. At the start of Lebovitz’s career, she was a staff photographer for the The Rolling Stones magazine. Working for the magazine allowed her confidence when working with celebrities. Both portraits are very similar. Most of her images contains a delicate hand, which give Leibovitz her trademark. Both images have very much in common; a sharpness in the eye, a clean background with no distractions and of course, a simple outfit that adds a little something to both individual photograph. Anne Hathaway’s (left) coloured outfit is the only colour seen in the image which allows a very mute colour palette with no tones clashing. However, the one of Angelina Jolie (right) wearing a black top blending in with the background makes a strong contrast between the black and whites.

Diane Arbus

The images above are very similar as they both feature a woman impersonator. Left is of a man wearing nothing but make-up and a wig whilst holding a pair of tights in preparation for what looks like a show. The background features a rack of women’s clothing and tables of make-up set up in row with mirrors and lights above them. The set-up is clear to be some sort of a show/job. Despite the background being messy and all over the place, almost a distraction, the model is clear. As the image was taken on film, the greys are flat with no contrast unlike the second image which features strong blacks and whites. This image is also featuring a female impersonator smoking a cigarette with curlers in their hair which makes the image feel very 60’s. The first image was photographed in 1959 and I’m sure the second one wasn’t very distant from that. Out of the two, the most successful image is the second as I have seen it before. Furthermore, it features an extreme amount of quality and detail from the fake nails to the eyes. Flash was used for this image which is evident in the models hair which has that artificial light glint, making the hair look like a wig, plastic like.

Phillipe Halsman

Marilyn Monroe 1952 & Andy Warhol 1968

Phillipe Halsman was an American photographer who was born in Russia. He died in the late 70s in New York. Halsman focused many bodies of work on humans and portraits, many of which are different and unique. The first image I selected of Marilyn Monroe is very mysterious due to the way she is sloughed against the wall with her eyes half shut. Monroe is positioned at the join of two walls: one dark and the other a white. Despite Monroe wearing a white dress, she still stands out in the image but isn't outlined in black lines. The image overall is relaxed and informal which gives the impression that Halsman got to know her allowing her to relax. As this image is clearly photographed in a studio, small soft shadows are seen behind her left arm and head meaning a light possibly a soft box was positioned not far from her right side. The second image is of an artist called Andy Warhol. Warhol was similar to Halsman in respect of their creative sides. Warhol was a creator of pop art and unusual pieces of art similar to Halsman. The image itself is so beautiful with the light shimmer of colour over the models head with harsh shadows to the side of his face. I'm guessing the image was shot in a studio due to the hard light. The image perspective is tilted allowing a different perspective. Warhol is photographed as if removing a contact lens - so surreal. Dark and unreal is how I'd explain the image as I have never seen anything like it.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

André Breton, 1961 & Rue Moufetard, 1954

Both images are so brilliant. Especially the second one which makes me laugh. First image involves a man who is possibly a carver as I think I can see a tool in his hand - I could be wrong. He is however surrounded by wooden almost South African carvings. The man in the image is photographed inside, near a window which is seen by the split of light on his face with shadows on the other. Location is similar to that of a workshop or even his own house with a bookshelf holding thousands of books. Furthermore, I feel the first image to be very personal as Cartier-Bresson photographed this man in a well-known and comfortable environment of his. He looks almost angry that his environment was intruded. Following on from the first image, we have an almost full body portrait of a young boy carrying two corked bottles. From the reaction of the girls behind, the image causes me to feel as though the boy has items that he shouldn't, possibly alcohol. The confidence is radiating from the young boy but this could be because he noticed the camera and is acting cool for the passing audience as well as Cartier-Bresson. The image was photographed on the street which is evident from the buildings seen in the background. The composition is on point in the image as it allows just enough information to be shown in the frame. If taken straight on, the atmosphere wouldn't be the same. That slight tilt really makes the image.

Herb Ritts

Lastly we have Herb Ritts who I have heard of for so many years but never looked into his work. These two portraits really caught my eye. The first one is of a young woman sat against a brick wall. Despite the grey tones of the image, I feel that it isn't necessary a black and white portrait. I'm not sure what it is but the image almost has an overlay of colour. As if black and white and sepia are both featured. The photograph is really complimentary for the model as it features soft shadows on the wall as well as herself. Including the shadows around the cheek bones also. Despite her almost expressionless emotion, I feel as though she is empowering the camera with her stare, direct and firm. Overall, I really love how this image was constructed especially the viewpoint that Ritts perceived where it isn't full body. The second image is less serious and more comical. A lady in what looks like a bed, wrapped in a sheet with Minnie Mouse ears on. The background is very flat which is why I feel as though it was shot in studio. The model herself stands out despite the image itself I feel being very soft. Her expression with her dark lips as well as nail polish and the headband is what draws my attention. Yet again the shadows are very soft as there is no harsh lines or even many shadows apart from a few gathering around her collarbones. Ritts is another person who captured the composition perfectly. As this model has her hand resting under her chin, it is sat almost perfectly straight, aligning the photograph creating the illusion of a straight image, despite the background being wonky.

Sources:

https://lifesprism.com/photography/portraits-annie-leibovitz-2442

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/618189486324548491/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Leibovitz

https://nypost.com/2016/07/09/diane-arbus-life-was-stranger-than-her-often-odd-subjects/

https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11483/diane-arbus-photography-exhibition-in-london-hayward-gallery-2019

http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?page=article&idArt=2279

https://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/artists/79-henri-cartier-bresson/overview/#/artworks/9978

http://fulloftaste.com/iconic-photography-herb-ritts/

[chrismalcolmhnd1d]

Clean White Research

The clean white brief is about taking studio portraits on a clean, white background. While studying NC5 photography last year, I was taught the best way to achieve a bright white background was to point 2 lights, left and right, angled onto the middle section of the backdrop. I adjusted the lights until they were registering F11 on the Sekonic light meter. Next, I would place my model approximately 2m in front of the backdrop (to avoid shadows from the front lighting) and set my lighting up to measure F8 under the model’s chin.

My lecturer suggested researching photographers who used this kind of set up and my findings are below.

David Bailey

David Bailey by Ben Hassett bromide print, 2014

David Bailey (1938-), Photographer and film-maker

“Graduating from being an assistant with fashion photographer John French in 1959, Bailey began the 1960s with a contract with Vogue to become the decade's iconic chronicler with two defining portrait publications David Bailey's box of pin-ups (1965) and Goodbye Baby and Amen (1969). They focussed on a new social order that evolved from the decade of change. Bailey was a leading figure in the Swinging Sixties London scene and provided some of the inspiration for the role of the photographer, played by David Hemmings, in Antonioni's cult film Blow Up (1966.) Bailey had his first Museum exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1971.”

Source: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp05044/david-bailey

Famous Portraits by David Bailey

Mick Jagger, 1964

Kate Moss, 2013

Damon Albarn, 2007

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/feb/05/national-portrait-gallery-david-bailey

Richard Avedon

“Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon

Famous Portraits by Richard Avedon

Katharine Hepburn, actor, New York, March 2, 1955

Martin Luther King, Jr. with Father and Son, 1963

Janis Joplin, singer, Port Arthur, Texas, August 28, 1969

Irving Penn

“Irving Penn (June 16, 1917 – October 7, 2009)[1] was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn's career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique. His work has been exhibited internationally and continues to inform the art of photography.”

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Penn

Marlene Dietrich, New York, 1948

Vogue cover shot, 1950

Salvador Dalí, New York, 1947

Tips from the web...

4 Tips for a Perfect White Background in High Key Photography

A guest article by Tony Northrup.

A bright, white background creates a high energy, happy, and distraction free scene, perfect for pictures of your friends and family. Known as high key photography, this technique instantly cures problems with ugly backgrounds and focuses the viewer’s attention on your subject.

Besides being a popular for portrait photographers, it’s a more modern choice, rather than traditional (ie., painted muslin). Here are my favourite tips for creating high key photos.

4 tips for perfect white backgrounds in high key photography

Tip #1 – Use a Solid White Background to Eliminate Distractions

I used a big, white piece of paper as the background for this portrait of my twin nieces because anything natural for a background would have clashed with their colourful outfits. The brightness also perfectly matches their expressions.

Tip #2 – use sunlight as your background

To create a solid white background, you need to completely overexpose your background without overexposing your subject. That means you’ll need much more light on your background than on your foreground subject; about 16 times more light (or four stops of light).

Fortunately, we all share a very powerful and free light source: the sun. For this photo of a radio talk show host and his dog, I had him kneel in my kitchen at midday when the sun was streaming through the glass doors behind him. I added three stops of exposure compensation to properly expose their faces. Because the sunlit background was much brighter than the shade in my kitchen, the camera captured it as solid white.

Tip #3 – use a flash on the background

Another easy way to create a bright background is to light it with an off camera flash. Simply move your model four to six feet away from your background and hide a flash behind your model, pointing it at the background. When you take your photo, the flash will light the background to overexpose it and make it appear completely white.

An off camera flash doesn’t have to be expensive. Any manual flash with an optical slave will work, including the $60 (US) YongNuo YN-560 that I often use. Simply turn on both the flash’s optical slave and your built-in flash. When you take a picture, your flash will trigger the off camera flash to light the background.

Tip #4 – don’t over, overexpose the background

You can overexpose a high key background too much. If you bounce too much light off your background, the backlighting will overtake your model and wash out your picture. For example, the picture on the left had too much light on the background, while the picture on the right had just the right amount.

To get a perfectly white background without washing out your picture, start your background light at its lowest power and increase it one stop at a time until the background is barely overexposed. In this video, my wife Chelsea and I show you exactly how to find the perfect flash output. Our book, Stunning Digital Photography, includes more than six hour of video integrated into the lessons, because photography is a visual art, and often it’s easier to learn by watching than reading.

Source: https://digital-photography-school.com/4-tips-perfect-white-background-high-key-photography/

Test Shoot with silhouettes and recreating lighting 

Today, we set up in the studio to capture our first test shoot for the brief. The lecturer had asked us to bring in a print out of a shot by a famous photographer on a clean white background to try and emulate the lighting and viewpoint. First we set up the backdrop and positioned two lights onto it, left and right, and metered until the left, centre and right sides were all metering at F16. We achieved this by increasing and decreasing the power of the lamps and moving them inwards or outwards until we had an even spread of light. Next we took silhouette shots to make sure the backdrop was evenly lit before we worked on the lighting on the model. The shot I decided to try and emulate was a portrait of Madonna by Herb Ritts.

I think we managed to get the correct lighting to replicate the shadows in the final shot and stood on a ladder to get the correct viewpoint.

Shoot 1 - First Attempt

I decided to ask James in the class to be my model and brought in a selection of props to see which would work best. I liked the idea of dressing him either as a hacker, using an “Anonymous” mask to show him as if he is revealing his true identity. I wanted the mood of the shot to be quite dark and mysterious so I used a single light above and slightly to the right go his head and fitted it with a snoot. I also brought in a microphone and a set of headphones as I wanted to see if I could make him into a pop star recording in the studio or maybe paying live to his audience. I think the “hacker” shot worked best so optimised this one and submitted it for a class critique the following Friday.

Contact Sheet from the session

Final shots chosen pre-optimisation

Post optimisation

Final chosen shot optimised and submitted for class critique

On the whole, the critique was quite positive, with comments such as “Love the crop”, “Good contrast” and “Love the lighting rig!” The suggestions were, “Tilt mask to show more” and “More effective without headphones?”, which I agree with as, on reflection, they detract from the mask and suggest he could be a DJ. I did further research before the second shoot and decided to drop the headphones and introduce a hoodie along with a 3″CD I wanted him to point towards the camera as if it contained important data. I also thought the highlights from the CD would work well and balance with the highlights from the mask. The film I shot for this session didn’t come out when I developed it as there was very little front lighting, suggesting the lamp hadn’t been firing, so I’ll re-shoot on film too at the next session.

Second session contact sheet 

Shot chosen to be optimised

Evaluation

I think this shot works better than the first one and optimised it using Photoshop in my Imaging class, where I created a B&W layer along with a curves layer and added the black key-line. I asked my model to pose as if asking the viewer to “shhh...”, imagining he had revealed his identity to them personally but still wished to remain “Anonymous” from all but a chosen few. I wanted to frame the shot quite closely to the subjects face and keep his eyes in the right upper third but balance that off with the mask in the bottom left lower third. I also cropped in on the mask tighter than previously as I think the shot works better if the viewer has to work out what the object is. The addition of the hoodie as a prop also lends some mystique to the image and I feel gives a better contrast to the face and makes a more flowing shape to the centre of the shot, taking the viewer’s eye from the subjects eyes down towards the mask. This shot also had the least amount of negative or white space, which I felt there was too much of in the earlier attempts. I think the key to a successful portrait is in the planning and propping of the model along with careful consideration of the framing and shapes and balance within the frame.

[sachablack]

It’s been a month since I published a Writespiration. Slack I know. But what could I do, I had to finish my book! Anyway, it’s back now…

So, I’m a kid at heart. Ok, a teen. Whatevs. The reason I’m telling you, is cause I was at mumzy’s the other day and I found a super cool kaleidoscope. Obviously it was farrrr to dangerous for baby black to play with… *cough* so I kept it safe for him instead!

It resulted in some what I think are awesome photos (click in the post for a slide show) and the inspiration for today’s post.

Write about a Kaleidoscope – maybe its a kaleidoscopic fantasy world, or a memory, a maze or perhaps a toy. Let your mind wander and see where it takes you. Entries short this week – under 100 words, deadline 9th October. Post entries in the comments or use a pingback.

Image Source – Wiki, By Source, Fair use, here

Kaleidoscopes remind me of an awesome (albeit slightly scary at the time) movie from my youth – the Labyrinth

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

  Now for your entries and last time, where we were condensing our stories into 3 sentences.

First in Ritu,

Aashi had her hands full, planning her dream Indian wedding. Until she caught him with his pants down, and not with her! Aashi grows up, and learns the real ways of the world and still gets her happy ending.

and she gave us a little background to her blurb too – personally, I can’t wait to read it.

This is a novel that has been a long time in the writing… Started over 15 years ago, and been written in stops and starts… It’s still nowhere near finished. I wish I could sit with no distractions for a few weeks and get back until it. It’s my little baby! A genre I like to call Chickpea Curry-Lit – Rom Com with an Indian flava!

Next in, Judy,

A mixed race couple come together with a world of differences between them. Domestic violence, duty, obligation, and culture try to separate them, but sex keeps them together. An unhappy marriage is finally over when his wife joins him from overseas – with their children!

Next in Reyna Favis from the introvert broadcasting network,

Fia is in a mutually abusive relationship with the dead. Can she overcome her necrophobia and serve the Psychopomp, guardian of the dead, to earn a normal life?

Next up, Geoffle who makes it short and sweet

Harry wants to get laid. For 320 pages, he fails. Then he doesn’t.

Next, Diana,

Conall and Treasa are at odds about the imprisoned dragons. Conall’s wounding and recovery at the Mirror brings a change of heart. Conall and Treasa fall in love and work together to free the dragons.

Sean Carlin, experienced screen writer and author teaches us about screen writing and loglines, his was only an example but I felt compelled to include his entire comment because of the interesting lesson from screenwriting. So his comment and example:

In screenwriting, we call this a logline, and it’s a crucial component of the outlining process: More than a mere sales tool, it is the conceptual nucleus of the story around which all the other particles organize. You can mix-and-match the details — set pieces, subplots, etc. — but the logline is sacrosanct. Ideally, it should convey the protagonist, the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the genre, and the tone — all in a single sentence (two at the most). Here’s an example: On the Fourth of July, a resort-island sheriff finds himself in deep water — literally — when his beach is attacked by a great white shark that won’t go away. See that? Tells you everything you need to know.

Babz up next with a dark plot,

New school, new environment, new friends. but in the end, he ended up dead.

Next in is Shaun,

Kolast is a Blood Mage who has traveled home to save a dying king. He meets a talented young girl who requests his tutelage. Together they uncover and disrupt an insidious plan to kill the king and send the country, and potentially the world, into disarray.

Next up Jane,

Jon is bitter resentful and angry with life but mainly with his dad. Dragged into a barbaric parallel world where egocentric bitch fests just get you a slap round the head or dead, he learns that survival means cooperation. He finds a lot of things in the mistlands that help him become a man, and one that breaks his heart.

Next up Hugh, with his epic Bloggers Bash inspired tale, the Truth App

A group of unsuspecting bloggers become the victims of a terrifying new App which threatens to wipe out humanity from planet Earth. In a rush against time, the son of one of the bloggers does all he can to ensure the App is wiped from the face of the planet. However, somebody is out to stop him and they have a mysterious power helping them.

Icy shares with us her pitch sentence and her 3 sentence condensing:

My 3 sentences…

The Council of the City Above want to clear out the Underground City. Jyx and the necromancer general need to resurrect an ancient goddess to thwart the plans. The goddess removes the corruption from the Council and the Underground City is saved.

By contrast the start of a blurb…

To save his city, Jyx needs to unbreak the heart of a stone goddess. Can he defeat the Crown Prince and halt his schemes before his city is destroyed?

Next in Debby with this emotional corker, she’s just released the book, so go check her out.

After almost 50 years of emotional abuse, a daughter of a narcissist finally breaks the ties that binds and learns forgiveness in the process.

Sarah up next with a couple of versions for us:

This is the pitch for Give in to the Feeling “Chicago 1924. Arriving to America, Susie thought she found everything she never dared to dreamed of in China. But only when she meets Blood, she realises the exciting flapper life she’s been living, the speakeasies, the illegal booze and the daring dances are just a little, unimportant part of the true freedom she yearns for”

And this is one of the most successfull tweets for my novel “Chicago 1926 Her bones are ashes, mixed with the mortar of the house they built on her land. She remembers and they’ll regret it”

Next up, Ana,

Quiet, withdrawn Charlie finds a book in her library that transports her into the world of her birth, where magic abounds. Torn apart by incredibly powerful twin sisters, Argravia is slowly dying and Charlie sets out on a quest to restore balance to the world. She frees each nation-state in turn and eventually finds out the truth of her birth.

Last but by no means least, Marje, who has given us her three sentences and then elaborated too:

Amelina Scott doesn’t know it yet, but she is a magical Krystallos. That knowledge might just save her family from the cruel roller coaster ride which has bugged her family’s happiness, since The Curse of Time. A shadow hides, crystals twinkle, and gossamer wings threaten to bring Amelina full circle on the ride of her life.

I thought I’d elaborate upon this to make an initial blurb idea which would go very roughly something like this:

Sixteen year old Amelina  Scott lives in Cambridge with her prematurely aged father, cranky mother, a black cat called Shadow, and a self-harming mirror girl.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she is a magical Krystallos. That knowledge might just save her family from the cruel roller coaster ride which has bugged her family’s happiness, since The Curse of Time. A shadow of two halves hides – Ryder’s  mesmerising eyes and dark charisma draw her to him – but appearances can be deceptive. While crystals twinkle, and gossamer wings threaten, Amelina’s spirit is brought against her will to a tranquil meadow in Grantchester. Whilst there she is encouraged by her captor to paint a  bizarre puzzle of art, and all the while, a threat lingers groaning to turn youth into old age, and to turn neighbour against neighbour.

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Writespiration #95 Kaleidoscopes, Labyrinths, and Maze Worlds It's been a month since I published a Writespiration. Slack I know. But what could I do, I had to finish my book!