#i exclusively make art for games made before 2010 it seems | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

introvertguide · 4 years

Text

15 Badass Movies for a Fun Time at Home or with Friends

There is a buzz in the air as COVID-19 vaccines are rolling out and the hope of having a movie night with friends is again becoming a reality. Watching alone isn’t as fun because I want to talk to somebody about what I have just seen. A full theater does not agree with my introvert nature because somebody screaming or laughing or talking on their phone will ruin it for me. Watching with a fellow cinephile or two is perfect. But what to watch first? People have been stuck inside, so fantasy and alternative worlds have been overly popular. All I do is talk over zoom for a living. I think what I need most right now is a movie about realistic people with realistic skills that go into a situation and just wreck house. I need a badass movie. What is this “badass” movie you might say? Well, here are some basic criteria: 1) There must be a tough lead character who kicks butt while spouting one liners and doesn’t need superhuman powers (high levels of peak skill with speed, aim, or strength is OK if they are plausible in the real world), 2) most of the characters (good and bad) must be likable, admirable or at least memorable, 3) the lead must face and defeat overwhelming odds against them, and 4) extra points for memorable one liners. Also, I am only dealing with human protagonists (sorry Terminator), but slightly superhuman opposition is acceptable. This list is by no means exhaustive, it is just an example of some badass movies. So in no particular order:

1) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

To start off the list, I want to mention the most well known American badass. Indiana Jones is a smart guy with a gun and a whip. He is rugged and punches guys in the face. He has weaknesses but works through them to get the job done. Harrison Ford was in his early 40s for this role and had this tough-as-nails and seen the world kind of feel while still being young enough to fight hand to hand. Any of the first three films featuring Indiana Jones would work here, but this is the original and it started the fun. Easy to watch. Easy to cheer for. Great movie. You can’t really go wrong with any age or group with this one.

2) 13 Assassins (2010)

This movie is extremely badass but not for everyone. This is one of the goriest films I have ever seen as 13 warriors kill off a couple of hundred soldiers and the evil leader that they guard. The movie was directed by Japanese extreme horror icon Takashi Miike if that means anything to you (hey made Audition and Ichi the Killer). The movie has gallons of blood, but also an amazing story of redemption and honor. There are tons of scenes of a single warrior taking on dozens of soldiers and managing to overcome. Not for everyone, but still very much a badass movie.

3) The Raid (2011)

This is an Indonesian action thriller with the word action in bold. The film is directed by Gareth Evans and stars Iko Uwais as part of a small police force that tries to take down an old building that houses a drug lord and his violent gang. It has a lot of what I like in badass movies: one-on-one fights between the lead and almost superhuman villains, long well-choreographed scenes, a banging soundtrack, ridiculous weapons, and ridiculous gore. The fight scenes in tight places and the use of the environment for weaponry is amazing and the sound design makes sure you can feel every punch. The lead character should have no chance, but he makes up for it with skill and being a pure badass. This movie is one of the few that I would describe as having non-stop action.

4) Jon Wick (2014)

When did Keanu Reeves become so cool? I grew up with him being part of the Bill and Ted duo. He decides to learn martial arts and play a god-like being in the Matrix movies and then becomes a one man wrecking crew? I guess he is a badass because he does it so well. Keanu plays a retired hitman who is wronged and decides to go back to work for vengeance. He just won’t stop coming and seems to constantly survive out of pure hatred alone. There are 3 films in the series and any one of them will impress. Pure fun too watch.

5) Casino Royale (2006)

When I was asking around, there were many people who thought that James Bond was the ultimate badass. I disagree in that many of the older films show Bond as overconfident with the assistance of many people. In fact, Q is more of a badass in many ways than James Bond. However, when the series was taken back to its roots with the last book that had not been made into a serious film and made darker, it reached badass levels. From the parkour chase to a poisoning to an extreme torture scene, this was not like any James Bond movie before it. Roger Craig plays a much colder lead who gives no quarter, much more like what the greatest secret agent would have to be. Heavy on violence but light on gore, this film is more for all audiences than other films on this list.

6) Desperado (1995)

What makes this movie is not all about Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek. It is that every other character is memorable and badass as well. The street standoff with Bucho’s men versus El Mariachi, Quino, and Campo is iconic. El Mariachi murders everyone in a bar with precise skill. The rogue assassin Navajas with all the knives played by Danny Trejo. Nothing but extreme shoot outs and fight scenes with a ridiculous variety of guns and explosives. I think what makes this movie so amazing is that all these amazing assassins are incognito and, when they suddenly produce an arsenal out of nowhere, it is always a pleasant surprise. Quino and Campo are amazing when they bring their guitars.

7) Pulp Fiction (1994)

Truly the role that made Samuel L. Jackson into the ultimate badass. He and his partner Vincent are hitman that keep running into the worst situations. The thing about the film is that everybody is so cool. The characters are cool, the music is cool, the dialogue is cool, hell even the diner featured in the movie is cool. The movie only spans a couple of days (in completely separate segments shown out of order) but packs in 7 distinct situations that are all berserk. From the mind of Quentin Tarantino, this movie is dripping with the best characters traveling through the best story. Highly recommend.

8) Leon: The Professional (1994)

Also known simply as The Professional in the U.S., this film features the debut of Natalie Portman. It is directed by Luc Besson at his best period, right between La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element. The lead is actually a quiet hitman who reluctantly takes a little 12-year-old girl on as an apprentice to become a paid assassin. Her parents were killed by a corrupt cop and she wants Leon to help her exact revenge. He is an absolute badass and somewhat of a caring surrogate father to the girl. Unlike a lot of the films on this list, the premise is not simply kicking butt in a bad situation. There is serious character growth. Apparently you can be a caring parent and a cold-blooded murderer...and that is badass.

9) Kill Bill (2003)

Being a badass is not exclusive to men and The Bride is a prime example of this. She survives a shot to the head, kills deadly assassins, slaughters a gang, and takes on a crazy school girl bodyguard. She is tougher then any lead I can think of and she has the bad attitude and sense of vengeance that makes for a badass. Combine this with the soundtrack and beautiful cinematography associated with director Quentin Tarantino and you have a beautifully violent movie in which the hits keep coming. Even on this list, the fight scene between the bride and Gogo Yubari is insane. Also note the nod to Bruce Lee with the bright yellow motorcycle suit. Beautifully badass film.

10) Aliens (1986)

In nature, there are few things more dangerous than a mother protecting their young. A mother will fight you to the death and make sure that, at the very least, you won’t be able to go after her kids. Now imagine an alien planet covered with hostile beings created in the mind of James Cameron and Stan Winston and you have a setting made to create a real badass. In the beginning, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is just desperate to survive and barely knows how to use a weapon. She meets a little survivor named Newt and then has a real reason to become aggressive. She and a group of marines fight through a station filled with super destructive xenomorph aliens made straight from nightmares to save this kid. The transformation is truly amazing and culminates in a mech suit versus a giant queen alien and it is extremely badass.

11) Army of Darkness (1992)

Far and away the funniest movie on this list, this is the third film stemming from Evil Dead and again stars Bruce Campbell taking on the deadites that were raised by reading from the Necronomicon. The opposition is the undead evil that faces the world which makes the violence very unrealistic. This was early work from Sam Raimi and features a variety of different shots done to the extreme. What really makes this film stand out is how Bruce Campbell is amazing at delivering a one liner. His classic quips have been used as fun Easter eggs in video games like Duke Nukem and World of Warcraft for decades. The quintessential horror comedy and a perfect example of a badass.

12) Die Hard (1988)

Apparently, I am a big fan of single characters that need to work their way through a building of villains using mostly intelligence and the element of surprise. Throw in some one liners and I am all for it. That is exactly what this is with Bruce Willis crawling barefoot around a 40 story building and fighting off a gang of villains. The movie also has Alan Rickman as the main bad guy and he is chewing the scenery. This is a great example of being a badass, but it is too bad that the follow up sequels were so poor. Definitely stick to the original and let the rest pass by.

13) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)

An OG of the badass movie genre, this is some of the best of Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western. Instead of one badass, this movie has three different leads that are all amazing. You have the good, Clint Eastwood, who is an amazing shot and a heart of gold under a rough exterior. You have the bad, Lee Van Cleef, playing an conniving assassin that will kill anyone that he doesn’t have a use for. Finally, you have the ugly, Eli Wallach, as a desert rat that will do anything to survive. They all gain information about a gold stash and need to work together to get it, but this creates a vortex of cheating, undercutting, and straight up murder. Clint Eastwood is more of the classic badass with his cigar, hat, and poncho, It is an iconic look on an iconic character in an iconic movie. That is what I call badass.

14) Ong-Bak (2003)

This less of a badass movie and more houses some of the most amazingly badass fight scenes that can only be described as badass. This movie introduced the great Tony Jaa to the western world and showed the high flying nature of Thai boxing and Muay Thai in general. The main character is entered into a street fighting tournament and the moves include a flying double knee drop and a full splits kick. If the whole movie was the tournament, it would be the best movie that ever existed. The variety of opponents makes the fighting even better and the cinematography is top notch. Tony Jaa is truly badass in this film.

15) Dredd (2012)

Not the crappy version with Stallone, this movie is seriously badass. It features Karl Urban who is helmeted for the entire film (as Dredd would be) taking on a 200 story mega slum filled with residents that want to shoot him dead. There is a drug dealer high up in the building and she locks down the entire compound with instructions to kill Dredd, who only has his rookie partner to help. He takes on random resident mobs, groups of gang members, and even a trio of mini guns that have bullets that can rip through walls. He has a smart gun with a bunch of ammo that he uses judiciously to kill everybody. This movie was seriously underrated since it had not been that long since the garbage Judge Dredd came out in 1995. The 2012 is a far superior movie, being much more violent and dark instead of having Rob Schneider as the comedy relief (not badass).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know there will be a lot of opinions about what makes a badass film and what movies i didn’t add. Feel free to add your own movies or critique my choices. I will stand by my choices, however, and recommend any of these films for a night of cheers and badass action.

31 notes · View notes

manicdragondreamgirl · 4 years

Text

I haven’t had chemistry since like 2008, and I’m also an idiot who likes to make my friends upset, so I rated the periodic table in order to tilt my friends:

Hydrogen - this is like your childhood friend who has always been with you more or less and always will be down to get a drink and chill even tho you haven’t spoken in years. Solid bro imo 7.5/10

Helium - always down for a good time, even if probably created Alvin and the Chipmunks which in some places is considered a war crime. 4/10

Lithium - Gives me bitchy vibes and is flammable as fuck if I remember. Skinny bitch with an attitude 3/10

Beryllium - idk this sounds like a sailor moon villain lol for that it can have a 6/10

Boron - more like BORONG amirite ha ha wait no seriously I have no idea lol 5/10 clean neutral rating

Carbon - *screaming* 2/10 I will not be taking questions

Nitrogen - cool cool cool tight tight tight 9/10 Nitrogen just is the cool hot chick you wish you were

Oxygen - kid who takes up all the glory for the group project even tho you did all the work, 4/10 for natural charisma

Fluorine - lol what are you knockoff chlorine lmfao bitch 3/10 reminds me of the dentist

Neon - I can vibe with this boy for his contributions to signs which cause my eyes to scream 8/10 modernized Art Deco thanks you

Sodium - 10/10 this is me and I won’t be taking questions next element

Magnesium - magnesium is a close relative of magnificent and therefore I think the case is closed folks 9/10

Aluminum - 10/10 for providing a home to my Diet Coke addiction I’d be dead without you

Silicon - 6.9/10 :smirk:

Phosphorous - This has a very soundly name and it’s welcome to do that but idk, not a fan, seems like he’d be smelly, 2/10

Sulfur - 1/10 pretty sure that dog farts are purely comprised of this and as such if I was leaving negative ratings I would

Chlorine - 7.8/10 for being in pools so we could swim without brain eating amoeba in the south you a champ

Argon - he seems like a nerd jk this guy has a good color 9/10 for just being himself

Potassium - I hate bananas and this word gives me the physical sensation of biting into one but only by thinking of abstract letters and making them into something which we can nutrientise from bananas and to me that shit is bananas, b a n a n a s — 3/10 for making me sing hollaback girl thru adhd word association

Calcium - hm my brain went to mega milk so you get a 2/10 today bud I don’t make the rules

Scandium - pretty sure this is fake lol what’s next faxdium, e-Mailite and copinium? 5/10

Titanium - this song’s a banger and also is the only thing that lets me wear earrings 10/10

Vanadium - if your erection lasts for longer than like idk it’s supposed to then don’t take vanadium wait what do you mean it’s not an ED treatment 4/10

Chromium - decent bloke shame the browser eats all your memory 5/10

Manganese - if a weeb tries to tell me how to pronounce mayonnaise one more time... 1/10

Iron - excellent tool against the fey, in your blood, what a bro, 10/10 this bitch slaps

Cobalt - has a powerful energy; I respect him. 8/10

Nickel - if I had a nickel for every time someone made this joke lol 5/10 he’s doing his best

Copper - taste bad 3/10

Zinc - isn’t that the dude in the green tunic and white tights who saves premcess Lelda or something lol 7/10 those games are good

Gallium - seems like a prick 4/10

Germanium - sounds like a child pronouncing geraniums which are superior 3/10

Arsenic - bad vibes coach 1/10

Selenium - isn’t this just sailor moon lol 10/10 love this bitch

Bromine - farmine wherever you aremine - 9/10 I love a good bro

Krypton - he’s okay I guess 5/10

Rubidium - yet another Steven universe villain who will be redeemed I imagine 4/10 seems a bit dull

Strontium - I feel nothing when I see this lad’s name and that seems like a shame 1/10 I don’t like it

Yttrium - this is an atrium in Yharnam, or something 8/10 would love to sit in one and make contact with higher beings

Zirconium - oh wait THIS is the sailor moon villain from the dead moon circus! 9/10 I enjoyed that arc

Niobium - seems sassy, I like that in an element 7/10

Molybdenum - I hate this one, rancid. 1/10 for making me have flashbacks to difficult Ancient Greek vocabulary there is no fucking way that sound combination is anything but Beta and Delta borking and then Latin being like oh imma steal that

Technetium - 6/10 decent name but seems a bit forced

Ruthenium - 5/10 kindly old lady element I guess lol

Rhodium - 10/10 this ain’t my first rhodium babee this lad has good vibes what a name what a king

Palladium - 10/10 for making me think of paladins

Silver - 12/10 I’m breaking the rules for this silver is the best it is so cool and also it is the other best tool for dealing with supernatural creatures when iron has failed you highly suggest Even if I am extremely allergic to it going into my ears...wait hold on

Cadmium - 2/10 sounds like a total douche

Indium - 8/10, i just think it’s independent and neat

Tin - 10/10 good ear sounds when involving rain and roof shapes and automatically reminds me of Nora Jones’s come away with me album which is also 10/10

Antimony - 7/10 decent protagonist good name all around seems rad

Tellurium - tell ur mom what? That’s so early 2010s league of legends humor bro 2.5/10

Iodine - strikes fear in my soul from having it poured on my wounds but this is why I have more pain tolerance than god 5.3/10

Xenon - I think this is a declension of Xena warrior princess which is a win in my eyes, 8/10

Caesium - kind of has a cunty Latin name, 4.5/10

Barium - yeah boss, bury’im! 7.5/10 I love a good mobster gag

Lanthanum - A bit pretentious on the Tolkien spectrum sorry bud 3/10 sounds like you’d be the dickwad elf everyone hates

Cerium - 6.5/10 I like this one, gives me a clean vibe

Praseodymium - the fuck who sneezed all their alphabet soup onto the paperwork and called it an element Christ we can’t keep doing this 1.5/10

Neodymium - oh my god what did I just say 1/10

Promethium - thank Christ we’re back to greek 9/10 Prometheus was a Chad I could get behind

Samarium - 5/10 gives me boring wizard vibes

Europium - 4.5/10 don’t rename opium chrissake can’t take these nerds anywhere

Gadolinium - 5/10 it’s a starship knockoff but it’s trying to be bold with the G sound

Terbium - 2/10 I don’t vibe with this one

Dysprosium - sounds like an antidepressant that has a lot of shitty side effects 3/10

Holmium - sounds like someone anxious asking their beloved to hold them 8/10 I like hurt/comfort fics

Erbium - you can’t just describe something as herby you daft bastard 2/10

Thulium - sounds like a spell I like it 8.5/10

Ytterbium - macguffin in a shite sci-fi show that gets highly overrated because BBC produced it and superwholock stans emerge and go utterly feral 1/10

Lutetium - bards are an element I agree 10/10

Hafnium - sounds like a river (my dog) sound and has a cute vibe, I’d offer it head pats 7/10

Tantalum - noooo you can’t be sad yuor so sexe haha 6.9/10 tantalizing

Tungsten - 10/10 this is a lad with history

Rhenium - 5.5/10 it’s ok

Osmium - 4/10 I wasn’t a big wizard of oz fan

Iridium - 9/10 sounds like iridescent and that’s in my top 10 favorite words and concepts

Platinum - 10/10 best Pokémon game

Gold - 7.9/10 all that glitters and all but it’s still pretty on some people, silver is better tho

Mercury - yikes 8/10 so it doesn’t kill me

Thallium - sounds like the brother character in a ps4 exclusive western rpg that oddly falls under the radar in terms of reviews and gets shafted at awards for no reason 7/10 I’ll support you tho

Lead - 2/10 that’s gonna be a no from me dawg pretty sure I still have lead in my hands from stabbing myself with my mechanical pencils

Bismuth - 6/10 sounds good in mouth and reminds me of biscuits for some reason, I’ll take it

Polonium - to thine own self be true so stop trying to act like the arts don’t influence science jk pretty sure this is named for Poland but hey that’s where we get the Witcher so you get a pass 6/10

Astatine - 1/10 I don’t even know what you are

Radon - 7/10 this motherfucker knows his shit and how to party, rad is right

Francium - I bring you francium...and I bring you myrdurdium... 7/10 for a good vine

Radium - killed the video star probably 9/10 I can get behind her

Actinium - as opposed to passtinium I prefer actinium in the voice of writing 8/10

Thorium - overrated Norse god 5/10 because lightning is still cool

Protactinum - sounds like some pretentious condom brand 4/10 wouldn’t do it with a dude who bought these

Uranium - I always thought she was a hot sailor scout 10/10

Neptunium - same for her I knew they weren’t cousins you couldn’t lie to me 4kids 10/10

Plutonium - sounds like a macguffin unfortunately 5/10

Americium - I read this with a pivotal letter missing and nearly died, 7/10 for the laugh

Curium - 10/10 gives me Curie vibes and also reminds me of curiosity which reminds me of—[old yellered before the association could set in]

Berkelium - what I shout when I want Burke (fam dog) to slaughter innocents and raze territories 2/10 world was not meant to know his commands

Californium - 1/10 California is cool with geography but probs could stand to chill with the ego sorry to my friends in Cali

Einsteinium - 6/10 it’s alright but we’re really running out of ideas huh

Fermium - 3/10 this one is porny

Mendelevium - 1/10 my brain didn’t like parsing this and I stand by my earlier statement of running out of good names

Nobelium - 0/10 you didn’t name any noble gases this cowards this gas can’t be a noble oh wait it’s NOBEL I take it back 5/10 seems an alright chap

Lawrencium - fear the old blood my sorry dead hunter’s ass I’ll never get back my life from the hours I spent trying to beat this lava shitting bastard 2/10 for being a boss who eats Taco Bell specifically before being challenged to have fresh lava shit with which to punish you for having the audacity to exist in his space

Rutherfordium - my god what a snob 4.2/10 I respect him a little but only because he sounds like a right lad

Dubnium - DROP THE BASS 10/10

Seoborgium - not sure about this one but it can have a 7/10

Bohrium - as an American English speaker this sound combination makes my pathetic throat become a black hole as I try to properly create the sound of it 10/10 I love when my body becomes a massive void in the universe

Hassium - lazy 2/10

Elements 109-118 can go fuck themselves I hate them all, collective 6.66/10 for their general demonic vibe

#the periodic table #made by an idiot #it’s me your manic dragon dream girl #long post

35 notes · View notes

gemsofgreece · 4 years

Text

10 Greatest archaeological discoveries in Greece the previous decade (2010 - 2019)

*You can see original Greek article by Pengy Riga here. This is a summary of what I read there translated in English and closer to my personal tone.

10. Possibly the oldest Homo sapiens skull in Europe (2019).

The skull was found in the caves “Apedema” in Mani and it was estimated to be 210.000 years old, five times older than any other Homo sapiens skull found in Europe. According to another research the skull comes from a transitive phase between Neaderthals and Homo erectus. This discovery invites the reexamination of the time the first men left Africa and spread to Europe and Asia as it might have happened way before we thought.

9. Ancient wooden artifacts (2011, 2013, 2014).

These include a wooden statue of a woman found in the Temple of Artemis in Brauron (5th Century BCE), the coffin of a young person from the Archaic Era (610 - 480 BCE), a small statue of Hermes and more than 550 other wooden artifacts and objects from the Hellenistic Era (150 - 86 BCE) in Piraeus. What is so important about all these findings is that they are made of wood, which naturally decomposes easily and quickly, so wooden archeological findings are very rare.

8. Neikó, the possessed lady of Síkinos (2018).

In the remote island of Sikinos there is an impressive mausoleum of the late antiquity. It was turned into a church during the Byzantine Era and remained a functional church till recently, when it closed for the public because it needed extensive restorations. During the restoration project, archaeologists found for the first time the unlooted tomb of a high-class woman, to whom this mausoleum was apparently dedicated. The woman was buried with all her dearest and most precious belongings but the tomb was so well hidden that it escaped all three known invasions throughout the centuries and was found accidentally when a wall collapsed in 2018. The tomb was not in the regular crypts of the mausoleum but hidden in a blind spot between two walls within the building. Her tomb was also sealed tightly, her skeleton was found in an unusual position and sulphur and tar were placed on her chest. It seems that she was believed to be possessed so they had taken precautions to ensure she wouldn’t rise after death. Nevertheless, she was loved by her family, judging from the beauty of her Mausoleum as well as the memorial scripts found in the monument. Her name was Neikó.

7. Ceramic plaque with verses from Homer´s Odyssey (2018)

The plaque was found in Ancient Olympia and has 13 verses from the Odyssey. It is estimated to originate from the Roman Era, before the 3rd Century AD. It might be the oldest Homeric text of that length found in the Greek territory and the only one carved into pottery. It was included in “Archaeology” magazine’s list of the 10 most important discoveries for 2018.

6. Tomb of Casta in Amphipolis (2014)

Easily the discovery that drew the most attention worldwide and a neverending archaeological and political thriller to this day. This is the largest burial monument ever found in Greece, in east Macedonia. It has a perimeter of 500 meters, four underground rooms, sphinxes in the entrance, two big Caryatids that would block the intruder from entering the last room with their arms, a beautiful large mosaic that depicts Hades kidnapping Persephone and finally four skeletons, belonging to two men, one old woman and a child. The excavation drew so much attention that it was abused for political reasons and it basically happened livestream, as the entire nation would watch the progress in the news every day. This inflamed the war between the two leading political parties, it messed up the excavating process itself and it caused unprecedented animosity amongst archeaologists and historians. The greatest reason for the fights was the initial disagreement for the dating of the monument as well as the identity of the dead found in it. Depending on their political affiliations, half the politicians and scientists would jump to wondrous conclusions without evidence while the other half would downgrade the importance of this discovery beyond belief. When the government changed, the Tomb of Casta was inexplicably and mysteriously abandoned. Only the local people kept protesting and pushing the authorities to continue the excavations. Since then, the leading party has changed again and the new government promises to continue the work as quickly and efficiently as possible so that the monument will open to the public until 2022. The scientific community has at least agreed that the tomb dates back to the late 4th - early 3rd Century BCE. There are many extremely optimistic estimations about the identity of the dead and equally many counter-arguments. Hopefully, we’ll eventually get some objective answers as the excavations continue. It’s been realised that excavations should continue in all the area as it is suspected that the Tomb of Casta is not the only monument waiting to be unearthed there.

5. Daskalió of Keros (1963 - 2018)

Daskalió is a settlement on the westmost cape of Keros island. Multiple excavations have taken place there from 1963 to this day by the University of Cambridge and the British School of Athens. The excavations have revealed a prehistoric shrine and settlement, densely and skillfully built. The shrine and the artifacts found in the excavations date to the 3rd millenium BCE, which makes Daskalió according to Cambridge professor Colin Renfrew the oldest known coastal shrine in the world. The findings suggest this was the work of an expert architect and the infrastructure on the location was based on a well planned project. Furthermore, there are indications that Daskalió was an important center of metallurgy. However, they imported the metals they used from other islands which also suggests nautical expertise.

4. The eternal couple of Dirós (2015)

The skeletons of two young adults, a man and a woman, were found in an embrace in a hill in Dirós. Double burials with the dead embracing are extremely rare and this one is one of the most ancient found, if not the oldest, dating back to 6000 - 3800 BC.

3. The Underground of Thessaloniki (1986 2013 till forever)

If Amphipolis is a political thriller, then the underground of Thessaloniki is the national comedy. Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece and thus has a bad need for a subway. The creation of a subway began in the 80s and... it’s still in the process, making the (future) subway of the city a Greek meme and a joke everyone at this point understands. However, there is a solid reason for this delay. Back in 2004 the archaeologists warned that the subway routes that were planned to be dug under the city’s central part should be modified because the area was of extreme archaeological interest. They were ignored and eventually the works were interrupted by the unavoidable discovery of Ancient Thessaloniki. Some of the most impressive findings are the largely intact main roads of the city, such as the Roman built Decanus Maximus and the Byzantine built Middle Avenue, which survived till the 18th century. Crossroads, houses, shops, graveyards and monuments have also been found. Scratches on the roads made by carriages can be seen. More than 300,000 artifacts were discovered, such as statues, jewels and other small objects. Now the fate of the underground has also become a political game as the two leading political parties fight on whether the artifacts should remain on their spot undisturbed which would make the subway’s creation harder and more dangerous or they should be removed until the subway is complete and then returned to their original place with a claimed accuracy of 90%. What’s certain is that when (or if) the subway is complete, the ancient city will be easily accessed via the metro, visible from its windows and there will also be the option to walk on the ancient roads.

2. The Tomb of the Griffin Warrior (2015)

A grand tomb was found next to the Mycenean palace of Nestor in Pylos. A skeleton was discovered in the tomb along with no less than 3500 burial gifts. The gifts were weaponry, jewels and other objects exclusively made of valuable metals and stones. Not a single plain object was found, such as a ceramic amphora for example. Many of the artifacts are made in typical Minoan style which invites a reevaluation of the relations between the Minoans and the Myceneans. The monument took its name from an ivory plaque depicting a griffin, a power symbol for both Pylos and Minoan Crete. The tomb dates back to 1500 BC and it is the best evidence of wealth in prehistoric Greece found in the last 63 years. The most important finding however is that of a tiny seal, which is unique because it’s a masterful work of miniature art that resembles the much later classical Greek art. Archaeologists deem impossible the creation of this gorgeous piece of art without a magnifying glass. The art depicts two warriors, one slitting the other’s throat with his sword. The imagery has elements that suggest an event resembling those from the Iliad - which suggests that this event depicted on this tiny seal in the Griffin Warrior’s tomb was part of the inspiration of the oral lore of the Homeric epics that began in the following centuries. It is obvious that the dead man was a most influential figure of his era.

1. Necropolis of Fáliron (2012-2016)

The most macabre discovery makes it to the first place. The largest part of the necropolis, a mass graveyard, was found already in 1913. Numerous people were executed there with the violent method of Apotymbanismós (Αποτυμπανισμός) that might have inspired the Roman crucification. A century later, in 2012, the excavations expand and unearth thousands of different burials spanning from the 8th - 4th century BCE. The most sensational discovery would happen in 2016 though; a mass burial of no less than 80 prisoners, tied and placed next to each other. All were young men of good health and were not executed with the method of apotymbanismos. Based on the evidence, the mass execution took place in the middle of the 7th Century BCE and these men must have tried to take over the rule of Athens. This was an unstable political era in the Athenian history indeed. This discovery was included in the 10 Greatest Discoveries for 2016 in the magazine Archaeology.

152 notes · View notes

tswiftdaily · 5 years

Link

In the 2010s, she went from country superstar to pop titan and broke records with chart-topping albums and blockbuster tours. Now Swift is using her industry clout to fight for artists’ rights and foster the musical community she wished she had coming up.

One evening in late-October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became -- as it often does -- an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello -- the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in -- I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

Swift, who will celebrate her 30th birthday on Dec. 13, has been impossibly famous for nearly half of her lifetime. She was 16 when she released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and 20 when her second album, Fearless, won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2010, making her the youngest artist to ever receive the honor. As the decade comes to a close, Swift is one of the most accomplished musical acts of all time: 37.3 million albums sold, according to Nielsen Music; 95 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 (including five No. 1s); 23 Billboard Music Awards; 12 Country Music Association Awards; 10 Grammys; and five world tours.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop -- hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 -- reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation -- which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West -- as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family -- there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” -- 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year -- starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to -- in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary -- claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights -- and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists -- and make them nonrecoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come -- and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise -- but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year -- like Saturday Night Live and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert -- I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say.

That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time recalibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way -- on your Tumblr page.

Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around -- they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue -- like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to?

Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop -- we all have each other’s numbers and text each other -- but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now?

God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally?

From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas.

The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent?

That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so.

“Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in -- if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about?

Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all?

I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists.

I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently -- staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals.

We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about recalibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers.

We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal -- not as a renegotiation ploy -- and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me.

Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take?

I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time?

Oh, God -- I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but … I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

#taylor swift #interview #billboard #women in music #woman of the decade

451 notes · View notes

path-of-my-childhood · 5 years

Text

Billboard Woman of the Decade Taylor Swift: 'I Do Want My Music to Live On'

By: Jason Lipshutz for Billboard Magazine Date: December 14th issue

One evening in late October, before she performed at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Taylor Swift’s dressing room became - as it often does - an impromptu summit of music’s biggest names. Swift was there to take part in the American Cancer Society’s annual We Can Survive concert alongside Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Camila Cabello and others, and a few of the artists on the lineup came by to visit.

Eilish, along with her mother and her brother/collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, popped in to say hello - the first time she and Swift had met. Later, Swift joined the exclusive club of people who have seen Marshmello without his signature helmet when the EDM star and his manager stopped by.

“Two dudes walked in - I didn’t know which one was him,” recalls Swift a few weeks later, sitting on a lounge chair in the backyard of a private Beverly Hills residence following a photo shoot. Her momentary confusion turned into a pang of envy. “It’s really smart! Because he’s got a life, and he can get a house that doesn’t have to have a paparazzi-proof entrance.” She stops to adjust her gray sweatshirt dress and lets out a clipped laugh.

She also finishes the decade in a totally different realm of the music world from where she started. Swift’s crossover from country to pop - hinted at on 2012’s Red and fully embraced on 2014’s 1989 - reflected a mainstream era in which genres were blended with little abandon, where artists with roots in country, folk and trap music could join forces without anyone raising eyebrows. (See: Swift’s top 20 hit “End Game,” from 2017’s reputation, which featured Ed Sheeran and Future.)

Swift’s new album, Lover, released in August, is both a warm break from the darkness of reputation - which was created during a wave of negative press generated by Swift’s public clash with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian-West - as well as an amalgam of all her stylistic explorations through the years, from dreamy synth-pop to hushed country. “The skies were opening up in my life,” says Swift of the album, which garnered three Grammy nominations, including song of the year for the title track.

She recorded Lover after the Reputation Stadium Tour broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour late last year. In 2020, Swift will embark on Lover Fest, a run of stadium dates that will feature a hand-picked lineup of artists (as yet unannounced) and allow Swift more time off from the road. “This is a year where I have to be there for my family - there’s a lot of question marks throughout the next year, so I wanted to make sure that I could go home,” says Swift, likely referencing her mother’s cancer diagnosis, which inspired the Lover heart-wrencher “Soon You’ll Get Better.”

Now, however, Swift finds herself in a different highly publicized dispute. This time it’s with Scott Borchetta, the head of her former label, Big Machine Records, and Scooter Braun, the manager-mogul whose Ithaca Holdings acquired Big Machine Label Group and its master recordings, which include Swift’s six pre-Lover albums, in June. Upon news of the sale, Swift wrote in a Tumblr post that it was her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “bullying” her throughout her career due to his connections with West. She maintains today that she was never given the opportunity to buy her masters outright. (On Tumblr, she wrote that she was offered the chance to “earn” back the masters to one of her albums for each new album she turned in if she re-signed with Big Machine; Borchetta disputed this characterization, saying she had the opportunity to acquire her masters in exchange for re-signing with the label for a “length of time” - 10 more years, according to screenshots of legal documents posted on the Big Machine website.)

Swift has said that she intends to rerecord her first six albums next year, starting next November, when she says she’s contractually able to - in order to regain control of her recordings. But the back-and-forth appears to be nowhere near over: Last month, Swift alleged that Borchetta and Braun were blocking her from performing her past hits at the American Music Awards or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary - claims Big Machine characterized as “false information” in a response that did not get into specifics. (Swift ultimately performed the medley she had planned.) In the weeks following this interview, Braun said he was open to “all possibilities” in finding a “resolution,” and Billboard sources say that includes negotiating a sale. Swift remains interested in buying her masters, though the price could be a sticking point, given her rerecording plans, the control she has over the licensing of her music for film and TV, and the market growth since Braun’s acquisition.

However it plays out, the battle over her masters is the latest in a series of moves that has turned Swift into something of an advocate for artists’ rights, and made her a cause that everyone from Halsey to Elizabeth Warren has rallied behind. From 2014 to 2017, Swift withheld her catalog from Spotify to protest the streaming company’s compensation rates, saying in a 2014 interview, “There should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” In 2015, ahead of the launch of Apple Music, Swift wrote an open letter criticizing Apple for its plan to not pay royalties during the three-month free trial it was set to offer listeners; the company announced a new policy within 24 hours. Most recently, when she signed a new global deal with Universal Music Group in 2018, Swift (who is now on Republic Records) said one of the conditions of her contract was that UMG share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify equity with its roster of artists - and make them non-recoupable against those artists’ earnings.

During a wide-ranging conversation, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade expresses hope that she can help make the lives of creators a little easier in the years to come - and a belief that her behind-the-scenes strides will be as integral to her legacy as her biggest singles. “New artists and producers and writers need work, and they need to be likable and get booked in sessions, and they can’t make noise - but if I can, then I’m going to,” promises Swift. This is where being impossibly famous can be a very good thing. “I know that it seems like I’m very loud about this,” she says, “but it’s because someone has to be.”

While watching some of your performances this year - like SNL and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert - I was struck by how focused you seemed, like there were no distractions getting in the way of what you were trying to say. That’s a really wonderful way of looking at this phase of my life and my music. I’ve spent a lot of time re-calibrating my life to make it feel manageable. Because there were some years there where I felt like I didn’t quite know what exactly to give people and what to hold back, what to share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade. I broke through pre-social media, and then there was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music. I’m not really here to influence their fashion or their social lives. That has bled through into the live part of what I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to interact with your fans in this very pure way - on your Tumblr page. Tumblr is the last place on the internet where I feel like I can still make a joke because it feels small, like a neighborhood rather than an entire continent. We can kid around - they literally drag me. It’s fun. That’s a real comfort zone for me. And just like anything else, I need breaks from it sometimes. But when I do participate in that space, it’s always in a very inside-joke, friend vibe. Sometimes, when I open Twitter, I get so overwhelmed that I just immediately close it. I haven’t had Twitter on my phone in a while because I don’t like to have too much news. Like, I follow politics, and that’s it. But I don’t like to follow who has broken up with who, or who wore an interesting pair of shoes. There’s only so much bandwidth my brain can really have.

You’ve spoken in recent interviews about the general expectations you’ve faced, using phrases like “They’ve wanted to see this” and “They hated me for this.” Who is “they”? Is it social media or disparaging think pieces or... It’s sort of an amalgamation of all of it. People who aren’t active fans of your music, who like one song but love to hear who has been canceled on Twitter. I’ve had several upheavals of somehow not being what I should be. And this happens to women in music way more than men. That’s why I get so many phone calls from new artists out of the blue - like, “Hey, I’m getting my first wave of bad press, I’m freaking out, can I talk to you?” And the answer is always yes! I’m talking about more than 20 people who have randomly reached out to me. I take it as a compliment because it means that they see what has happened over the course of my career, over and over again.

Did you have someone like that to reach out to? Not really, because my career has existed in lots of different neighborhoods of music. I had so many mentors in country music. Faith Hill was wonderful. She would reach out to me and invite me over and take me on tour, and I knew that I could talk to her. Crossing over to pop is a completely different world. Country music is a real community, and in pop I didn’t see that community as much. Now there is a bit of one between the girls in pop - we all have each other’s numbers and text each other - but when I first started out in pop it was very much you versus you versus you. We didn’t have a network, which is weird because we can help each other through these moments when you just feel completely isolated.

Do you feel like those barriers are actively being broken down now? God, I hope so. I also hope people can call it out, [like] if you see a Grammy prediction article, and it’s just two women’s faces next to each other and feels a bit gratuitous. No one’s going to start out being perfectly educated on the intricacies of gender politics. The key is that people are trying to learn, and that’s great. No one’s going to get it perfect, but, God, please try.

At this point, who is your sounding board, creatively and professionally From a creative standpoint, I’ve been writing alone a lot more. I’m good with being alone, with thinking alone. When I come up with a marketing idea for the Lover tour, the album launch, the merch, I’ll go right to my management company that I’ve put together. I think a team is the best way to be managed. Just from my experience, I don’t think that this overarching, one-person-handles-my-career thing was ever going to work for me. Because that person ends up kind of being me who comes up with most of the ideas, and then I have an amazing team that facilitates those ideas. The behind-the-scenes work is different for every phase of my career that I’m in. Putting together the festival shows that we’re doing for Lover is completely different than putting together the Reputation Stadium Tour. Putting together the reputation launch was so different than putting together the 1989 launch. So we really do attack things case by case, where the creative first informs everything else.

You’ve spoken before about how meaningful the reputation tour’s success was. What did it represent? That tour was something that I wanted to immortalize in the Netflix special that we did because the album was a story, but it almost was like a story that wasn’t fully realized until you saw it live. It was so cool to hear people leaving the show being like, “I understand it now. I fully get it now.” There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work. You can never express how you feel over the course of an album in a single, so why try?

That seems especially true of your last three albums or so. “Shake It Off” is nothing like the rest of 1989. It’s almost like I feel so much pressure with a first single that I don’t want the first single to be something that makes you feel like you’ve figured out what I’ve made on the rest of the project. I still truly believe in albums, whatever form you consume them in - if you want to stream them or buy them or listen to them on vinyl. And I don’t think that makes me a staunch purist. I think that that is a strong feeling throughout the music industry. We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important.

The music industry has become increasingly global during the past decade. Is reaching new markets something you think about? Yeah, and I’m always trying to learn. I’m learning from everyone. I’m learning when I go see Bruce Springsteen or Madonna do a theater show. And I’m learning from new artists who are coming out right now, just seeing what they’re doing and thinking, “That’s really cool.” You need to keep your influences broad and wide-ranging, and my favorite people who make music have always done that. I got to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the Cats movie, and Andrew will walk through the door and be like, “I’ve just seen this amazing thing on TikTok!” And I’m like, “You are it! You are it!” Because you cannot look at what quote-unquote “the kids are doing” and roll your eyes. You have to learn.

Have you explored TikTok at all? I only see them when they’re posted to Tumblr, but I love them! I think that they’re hilarious and amazing. Andrew says that they’ve made musicals cool again, because there’s a huge musical facet to TikTok. [He’s] like, “Any way we can do that is good.”

How do you see your involvement in the business side of your career progressing in the next decade? You seem like someone who could eventually start a label or be more hands-on with signing artists. I do think about it every once in a while, but if I was going to do it, I would need to do it with all of my energy. I know how important that is, when you’ve got someone else’s career in your hands, and I know how it feels when someone isn’t generous.

You’ve served as an ambassador of sorts for artists, especially recently - staring down streaming services over payouts, increasing public awareness about the terms of record deals. We have a long way to go. I think that we’re working off of an antiquated contractual system. We’re galloping toward a new industry but not thinking about re-calibrating financial structures and compensation rates, taking care of producers and writers. We need to think about how we handle master recordings, because this isn’t it. When I stood up and talked about this, I saw a lot of fans saying, “Wait, the creators of this work do not own their work, ever?” I spent 10 years of my life trying rigorously to purchase my masters outright and was then denied that opportunity, and I just don’t want that to happen to another artist if I can help it. I want to at least raise my hand and say, “This is something that an artist should be able to earn back over the course of their deal - not as a renegotiation ploy - and something that artists should maybe have the first right of refusal to buy.” God, I would have paid so much for them! Anything to own my work that was an actual sale option, but it wasn’t given to me. Thankfully, there’s power in writing your music. Every week, we get a dozen synch requests to use “Shake It Off” in some advertisement or “Blank Space” in some movie trailer, and we say no to every single one of them. And the reason I’m rerecording my music next year is because I do want my music to live on. I do want it to be in movies, I do want it to be in commercials. But I only want that if I own it.

Do you know how long that rerecording process will take? I don’t know! But it’s going to be fun, because it’ll feel like regaining a freedom and taking back what’s mine. When I created [these songs], I didn’t know what they would grow up to be. Going back in and knowing that it meant something to people is actually a really beautiful way to celebrate what the fans have done for my music.

Ten years ago, on the brink of the 2010s, you were about to turn 20. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time? Oh, God - I wouldn’t give myself any advice. I would have done everything exactly the same way. Because even the really tough things I’ve gone through taught me things that I never would have learned any other way. I really appreciate my experience, the ups and downs. And maybe that seems ridiculously Zen, but... I’ve got my friends, who like me for the right reasons. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my boyfriend. I’ve got my fans. I’ve got my cats.

Taylor Swift Discusses 'The Man' & 'It's Nice To Have a Friend' In Cover Story Outtakes

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 12th 2019

During her cover story interview for Billboard’s Women In Music issue, Taylor Swift discussed several aspects of her mega-selling seventh studio album Lover, including its creation after a personal “recalibrating” period, her stripped-down performances of its songs and her plans to showcase the full-length live with her Lover Fest shows next year. In two moments from the extended conversation that did not make the print story, Billboard’s Woman of the Decade also touched upon two of the album’s highlights, which double as a pair of the more interesting songs in her discography: “The Man” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend.”

“The Man” imagines how Swift’s experience as a person, artist and figure within the music industry would have been different had she been a man, highlighting how much harder women have to work in order to succeed (“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” she sings in the chorus). The song has become a fan favorite since the release of Lover, and Swift recently opened a career-spanning medley with the song at the 2019 American Music Awards.

When asked about “The Man,” Swift pointed out specific double standards that exist in everyday life and explained why she wanted to turn that frustration into a pop single. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “The Man” below:

“It was a song that I wrote from my personal experience, but also from a general experience that I’ve heard from women in all parts of our industry. And I think that, the more we can talk about it in a song like that, the better off we’ll be in a place to call it out when it’s happening. So many of these things are ingrained in even women, these perceptions, and it’s really about re-training your own brain to be less critical of women when we are not criticizing men for the same things. So many things that men do, you know, can be phoned-in that cannot be phoned-in for us. We have to really — God, we have to curate and cater everything, but we have to make it look like an accident. Because if we make a mistake, that’s our fault, but if we strategize so that we won’t make a mistake, we’re calculating.

“There is a bit of a damned-if-we-do, damned-if-we-don’t thing happening in music, and that’s why when I can, like, sit and talk and be like ‘Yeah, this sucks for me too,’ that feels good. When I go online and hear the stories of my fans talking about their experience in the working world, or even at school — the more we talk about it, the better off we’ll be. And I wanted to make it catchy for a reason — so that it would get stuck in people’s heads, [so] they would end up with a song about gender inequality stuck in their heads. And for me, that’s a good day.”

Meanwhile, the penultimate song on Lover, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend,” sounds unlike anything in Swift’s catalog thanks to its elliptical structure, lullaby-like tone and incorporation of steel drums and brass. When asked about the song, Swift talked about experimenting with her songwriting, as well as capturing a different angle of the emotional themes at the heart of Lover. Read Swift’s full thoughts on “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” below:

“It was fun to write a song that was just verses, because my whole body and soul wants to make a chorus — every time I sit down to write a song, I’m like, ‘Okay, chorus time, let’s get the chorus done.’ But with that song, it was more of like a poem, and a story and a vibe and a feeling of... I love metaphors that kind of have more than one meaning, and I think I loved the idea that, on an album called Lover, we all want love, we all want to find somebody to see our sights with and hear things with and experience things with.

“But at the end of the day we’ve been searching for that since we were kids! When you had a friend when you were nine years old, and that friend was all you talked about, and you wanted to have sleepovers and you wanted to walk down the street together and sit there drawing pictures together or be silent together, or be talking all night. We’re just looking for that, but endless sparks, as adults.”

Read the full Taylor Swift cover story here, and click here for more info on Billboard’s 2019 Women In Music event, during which Swift will be presented with the first-ever Woman of the Decade award.

[link to this tweet]

Was there ever a part of you that was like, “Oh shit, I like this darker vibe, let’s go even further down that path?” I really Loved Reputation because it felt like a rock opera, or a musical, doing it live. Doing that stadium show was so fun because it was so theatrical and so exciting to perform that, because it’s really cathartic! But I have to follow whatever direction my life is going in emotionally... The skies were opening up in my life. That’s what happened. But in a way that felt like a pink sky, a pink and purple sky, after a storm, and now it looks even more beautiful because it looked so stormy before. And that’s just like, I couldn't stop writing. I’ve never had an album with 18 songs on it before, and a lot of what I do is based on intuition. So, you know, I try not to overthink it. Who knows, there may be another dark album. I plan on doing lots of experimentation over the course of my career. Who knows? But it was a blast, I really loved it.

I mean, look, a Taylor Swift screamo album? I’ll be first in line. I’m so happy to hear that, because I think you might be the only one. Ha! I have a terrible scream. It’s obnoxious.

Why Taylor Swift's Lover Fest Will Be Her Next Big Step

Billboard // by Jason Lipshutz // December 11th 2019 - [Excerpt]

On why she chose to put together Lover fest: “I haven’t really done festivals in years - not since I was a teenager. That’s something that [the fans] don’t expect from me, so that’s why I wanted to do it. I want to challenge myself with new things and at the same time keep giving my fans something to connect to.”

300 notes · View notes

insanityclause · 5 years

Text

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

A Director Making His Mark in More Ways Than One

LONDON — The director Jamie Lloyd was giving me a tour of his tattoos. Not the Pegasus on his chest or the skeleton astronaut floating on his back, though he gamely described those, but the onyx-inked adornments that cover his arms and hands, that wreathe his neck, that wrap around his shaved head.

When I asked about the dragon at his throat, he told me it had been “one of the ones that hurt the least,” then pointed to the flame-licked skulls on either side of his neck: his “covert way,” he said, of representing drama’s traditional emblems for comedy and tragedy.

“I thought maybe it’d be a little bit tacky to have theater masks on my neck,” he added, a laugh bubbling up, and it’s true: His dragon would have eaten them for lunch.

It was early December, and we were in a lounge beneath the Playhouse Theater, where Lloyd’s West End production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring James McAvoy in a skintight puffer jacket and his own regular-size nose, would soon open to packed houses and critical praise.

Running through Feb. 29, and arriving on cinema screens Feb. 20 in a National Theater Live broadcast, “Cyrano” — newly adapted by Martin Crimp, and positing its hero as a scrappy spoken-word wonder — capped a year that saw Lloyd celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.

In London last summer, his outdoor hit “Evita” traded conventional glamour for sexy grit, while his radical reinterpretation of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” starring Tom Hiddleston, was hailed first in the West End, then on Broadway. Ben Brantley, reviewing “Betrayal” in The New York Times, called it “one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.”

When Time Out London ranked the best theater of 2019, it gave the top spot jointly to all three Lloyd productions, saying that he “has had a year that some of his peers might trade their entire careers for.”

Lloyd, who is 39, did not spring from the same mold as many of those peers. There was for him, he says, no youthful aha moment of watching Derek Jacobi onstage and divining that directing was his path. Epiphanies like that belonged to other kids, the ones who could afford the tickets.

If there is a standard background for a London theater director — and Lloyd would argue that certainly there used to be — that isn’t where he came from, growing up working class on the south coast of England, in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.

The first time I laid eyes on him, chatting in the Playhouse lobby after a preview of “Cyrano,” he was the picture of working-class flair — the gold pirate hoops, the pink and black T-shirt, the belt cinching high-waisted pants.

He looks nothing like your typical West End director. Which of course is precisely the point.

What’s underneath

“It’s quite often said of him,” McAvoy observed by phone, once the reviews were in, “that he strips things away or he tries to take classical works and turn them on their head. I think he’s always just trying to tell the story in the clearest and most exhilarating way possible.”

The “X-Men” star, who put the number of times he’s worked with Lloyd in the past decade at a “gazillion,” calls theirs “probably one of the most defining relationships that I’ve had in my career.”

Yet Lloyd himself is on board with the notion that his assertively contemporary stagings pare back stifling layers of performance history to lay bare what’s underneath.

Like the tiger and dragons that he had emblazoned on his head just last May, though, the unembellished nature of his shows — as minimalist in their way as his tattoos are the opposite — is a relatively recent development.

Lloyd’s first “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Douglas Hodge in 2012, was also his Broadway debut. It was, he said, “absolutely the ‘Cyrano’ that you would expect,” with the fake nose, the hat, the plume, the sword-fighting.

There is, granted, sword-fighting in the new one — but the audience has to imagine the swords.

Lloyd’s productions, including a lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Passion” in 2010, long marked him as a hot young director on the rise. But he sees in some of his previous work a noisy tendency toward idea overload.

The pivot point came in 2018, with a season that the Jamie Lloyd Company — which he formed seven years ago with the commercial producing powerhouse Ambassador Theater Group — devoted to the short works of Harold Pinter. The playwright’s distillation of language forced Lloyd to match it with his staging.

That immersion led to what the director Michael Grandage — one of Lloyd’s early champions, who tapped him at 27 to be his associate director at the Donmar Warehouse — called Lloyd’s “absolute masterpiece.”

“I had quite a lot of ambition to do a production of ‘Betrayal’ in my life,” Grandage said. “And then when I saw Jamie’s, I thought, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t ever, ever want to direct this play.’ Because that’s, for me, the perfect production.”

Playing dress-up

Charm is a ready currency in the theater, but Lloyd’s is disarming; he seems simply to be being himself, without veneer. Like when I fact-checked something I’d read by asking whether he was a vegan.

“Lapsed vegan,” he confessed immediately, with a tinge of guilt about eating eggs again.

Pay no attention to any tough-guy vibe in photos of him; do not be alarmed by the sharp-toothed cat on the back of his head. In conversation, Lloyd comes across as thoughtful and unassuming, with an animated humor that makes him fun company. If he speaks at the speed of someone with no time to waste, he balances that with focused attentiveness.

His father, Ray, was a truck driver. His mother, Joy (whose name is tattooed on his right forearm, near the elbow), cleaned houses, took in ironing and ran a costume-rental shop, where young Jamie would sneak in to dress up as the children’s cartoon character Rainbow Brite.

“It’s very embarrassing,” he said, squelching a laugh.

Seeing professional theater wasn’t an option then for Lloyd, whose grown-up passion for expanding audience access — one of the things he has made himself known for in the West End — grew out of that exclusion. His company has set aside 15,000 free and 15,000 £15 tickets for its current, characteristically starry three-show season, which will also include Emilia Clarke in “The Seagull” and Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House.” At the 786-seat Playhouse, that adds up to just over 38 full houses.

Lloyd, who was studying acting at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts when he decided he wanted to direct, found his way to theater as a child by acting in school shows and local amateur productions. Twice he was cast as a monkey; in “The Wizard of Oz,” thrillingly, he got to fly.

The details of his early days have always been colorful — like having a clown as his first stepfather, who performed at children’s parties under the stage name Uncle Funny. But Lloyd is quick to acknowledge the darkness lurking there.

“It sounds a little bit like some dodgy film, because he was actually a really violent man,” he said. “And there were times where he was very physically abusive to my mum. There was a sort of atmosphere of violence in that house that was really uneasy. And yet masked with this literal makeup, but also this sense of trying to entertain people whilst enacting terrible brutality behind the scenes.”

This is where he locates his own connection to Pinter’s work.

“A lot of that is that the violence is beneath the surface,” he said. “And on the top there is this sort of, what I call a kind of topspin, a layer of cover-up.”

Long relationships

Lloyd was still at drama school when he staged a production of Lapine and William Finn’s “Falsettoland” that won a prize: assistant directing a show at the Bush Theater in London. Based on that, Trevor Nunn hired him, at 22, to be his assistant director on “Anything Goes” in the West End — a job he did so well that Grandage got word of it and hired him to assist on “Guys and Dolls.” While Lloyd was doing that, he also began directing in his own right.

The costume and set designer Soutra Gilmour, who has been a constant with Lloyd since he cold-called her for his first professional production, Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” said theirs is an easy relationship, with a “symbiotic transference of ideas.” Even their creative aesthetics have evolved in sync.

“We’ve actually never fallen out in 13 years,” she said over mint tea on a trip to New York last month, just before “Betrayal” closed. “Never! I don’t even know how we would fall out.”

Of course, the one time she tried to decline a Lloyd project five years ago, because its tech rehearsals coincided with the due date for her son’s birth, he told her there was no one else he wanted to work with. So she did the show, warning that at some point she would have to leave. Now, she says, he understands that she won’t sit through endless evening previews, because she needs to go home to her child.

Lloyd and his wife, the actress Suzie Toase (whose name is tattooed on one of his arms), home-school their own three boys (whose names are tattooed on the other). Their eldest, 13-year-old Lewin, is an actor who recently played one of the principal characters, the heroine’s irresistible best friend, on the HBO and BBC One series “His Dark Materials,” whose cast boasts McAvoy as well.

Enter the child

Lloyd’s interpretation of “Betrayal,” a 1978 play that recounts a seven-year affair, imbued it with a distinctly non-’70s awareness of the fragility of family — the notion that children are the bystanders harmed when a marriage is tossed away.

Its gasp-inducing moment came with the entrance of a character Pinter wrote to be mentioned but not seen: the small daughter of the couple whose relationship is imperiled. In putting her onstage, Lloyd didn’t touch the text; it was a simple, wordless role. With it, he altered the resonance of the play.

To me, it seemed logical that Lloyd’s production would have been informed by his experience as a husband and father — and maybe also as a child in a splintering family. How old had he been, anyway, when his parents split up?

“Five,” Lloyd said. “The same age as the character would be.” He paused. “Oh God, yeah, fascinating. I’d not thought about that. Exactly the same age.”

If that fact was of more than intellectual interest to him, he didn’t let on. He volunteered a memory, though — of being a little one “amongst these kind of big giants, and I guess what we can now see as the mess of their lives.”

Blazer-free

Doing “Betrayal” in New York, Lloyd was struck by how eager Americans were to chat about his tattoos. Still, he told me after I texted him a follow-up question about them, he hadn’t expected his appearance to be such a talking point in this story.

It’s not just idle curiosity. It’s about what the tattoos signify in a field where, in Britain as in the United States, the top directors tend to have grown up very comfortably. It’s about who is welcome in a particular space, and who gets to be themselves there.

For a long time after Lloyd started working in the theater, he wore a blazer every day: a conscious attempt to conform in an industry where he felt a nagging sense of difference.

“Every other director at the time was from an Oxbridge background,” he said, “and looked and sounded a particular way. I spent a long time pretending to be like them.”

It was a performance of sorts, with a costume he donned for the role.

It was only about seven or eight years ago — around the time he left the Donmar and started putting together his own company — that he stopped worrying about what people might think if he looked the way he wanted.

“My dad had tattoos” was the first thing he said when I asked him about his own.

“I guess it’s partly getting older,” he mused, “but it’s just sort of going, ‘You can’t pretend to be someone. You’ve got to be who you really are, in every way.’”

The tattoos that have gradually transformed him are from a different aesthetic universe than his recent work onstage. Yet the impulse, somehow, is the same.

In shedding the blazer, in inking his skin, Lloyd has peeled back layers of imposed convention to show who’s underneath.

And should you spot him at the theater, where he is hard to miss, you’ll notice that he looks just like himself.

30 notes · View notes

popscenery · 5 years

Audio

LMFAO, »Party Rock Anthem«

by Jake Cleland

‘Party Rock Anthem’ isn’t the best song of the decade, it is the song of this decade. The rotten nucleotides that comprise its DNA and its video’s captured everything that would define the 2010s even before the decade had properly started. JJ Abrams’ franchise dominance, cinema’s sequelitis, Malcolm Goodwin’s role in iZombie — seen in retrospect, ‘Party Rock Anthem’ makes LMFAO seem downright prescient. But as an early decade phenomenon, it’s also an epitaph to a brutally missed 2000s. The Cobrasnake-via-Dim Mak-via-Ed Banger-via-Mad Decent street party fashion makes the post-#mensfashionadvice 2010s look hopelessly conservative.

So much of art and politics was deastheticised by the project of fundamentally reorganising how art and politics meet and whether that casualty was necessary has yet to be reckoned, although it was probably inevitable. But ‘Party Rock Anthem’ came out when hipster irony (a phrase, kids, that folks used to use with a straight face) was only uncertainly dead, with poptimism still holding the gun cautiously to its chest. The ensuing cultural/political schism ultimately wasn’t drawn on the line between left and right, but overwrought exegeses on the meme of any given week (sup) vs. pleading to just like what you like (aka Like Everything). Two fronts battling basically for the same humiliated cause of pop supremacy made the previously delicious sport of music snobbery just not very fun. The only available rebellion was to [extremely Big Sean voice] go stupid.

(This also meant the only space left for sincere irony was, like, /mu/ and /r/indieheads and Fantano’s comments section. (Pass.))

If ‘Party Rock Anthem’ came out a few years later, it might’ve been wilfully embraced, although its pariah status also left the life in it, so we take small blessings with gratitude. After all, it’s a safe song to like: it is exclusively about the unifying force of The Party. Lyrically it even reifies the previous paragraph: “Stop: hatin’ is bad.” Where it missed a trick was not predicting the trickle down stanonomics of K-Pop’s influence, but it was a utopian vision. Superficially, it’s apocalypse-pop but if so, it’s the only example that doesn’t sound hopeless or lifeless (James Murphy arrived five years late to this, but succinctly, at least, with LCD Soundsystem’s ‘tonite’.) You watch Redfoo - convincingly scared while two-stepping through a sea of Air Jordans and lame - finally succumb to The Party and tell me that the alleged zombies aren’t the good guys. NB: the only other guy afraid of them is wearing a shirt and tie.

He’s also the only one pushing a product in the whole clip. For all the zombies-as-consumerism metaphors, who’s really a conformist consumer here? Let’s not stretch this too far, but hand-on-heart finger-tapping-forehead: makes you think.

A month before ‘Party Rock Anthem’, Tom Ewing wrote a piece for The Guardian I still think about a lot. Riffing on Girl Talk’s pointillistic reference dropping, Ewing laments the deficiency of celebrating Moments in songs/albums/patchwork sample monster mixtapes which get lost in the holistic approach. In that spirit, the Beats product placement in the ‘Party Rock Anthem’ clip created a Moment which gummed up my brain creases all through this decade almost more than the song itself. The lone survivor tells LMFAO to use their earbuds. “You got ‘em in?” he says. And Skyblu says:

“What? Vitamins?”

No matter which way you interrogate this moment, it is downright hilarious. To research for this piece, I watched over 100 music videos. I watch a lot of music videos, so the research for this piece consisted of a lot + 100 music videos. That’s more than a lot of music videos. I also watched the ‘Party Rock Anthem’ video more than 100 times, just to make sure I was awarding this Moment the appropriate gravity. So I can say with scientific credibility that not only is ‘Party Rock Anthem’ the song of this decade, but that this moment is the Moment of every decade. It is a non-sequitur nonpareil. Was this scripted or improvised? And either way, in that moment, why would someone say to them, “Vitamins”?

The story of LMFAO concluded in another particularly 2010s way. Another victim of the neverending Scam Season, Redfoo allegedly ripped Skyblu off of all LMFAO royalties. Karma rewarded Redfoo a couple years later when he was hit with a glass in Sydney. In this, we may see ourselves, inevitably disgraced by time.

There are ways ‘Party Rock Anthem’ predicted the zeitgeist and ways ‘Party Rock Anthem’ created the zeitgeist and I was present for plenty of the latter. At least in Melbourne, LMFAO’s recycling of the Melbourne Shuffle filtered back to nightclubs in a way Klein et al. warned was already happening generally. Happy to have our culture regifted if it was also represented, it was less impossible than you might imagine to find yourself inside your own LMFAO music video. But it’s what I came home to after those nights that makes ‘Party Rock Anthem’ the song of the decade, which was: inbox notifications, gchat alerts, dashboards full of posts and replies wringing meaning from meaninglessness in the most seriously unserious way. Epitaphed plenty elsewhere, Music Tumblr doesn’t need another bouquet laid here, but ‘Party Rock Anthem’ is prominent on the playlist of associations I have with the first definitive part of the decade (other triggers: ‘Video Games’, ‘Gucci Gucci’, ‘Bangarang’, ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, ‘Furisodeshon’, ‘Hey QT’, SSSSSSSSOME NIGHTS I STAYYYYYYYY UP...)

Coming from the Gawker/Defamer/Idolator readership to find a group of mostly-communal-but-sometimes-adversarial-but-for-the-better (via “Iron sharpens iron” - Coach Wade) weirdoes eager to unwrap celebrity looms large, I have no doubt, in the definitions of this decade for the people involved. Most have since left music writing or been pushed out and found fulfilling lives elsewhere, but although the pop of the era trended towards the annhilistic, let’s not cave. When I first started writing about music on Tumblr, old heads were quick to say the jobs were gone. Defiant and determined to prove them wrong, I made a pretty good go of it, and others are still doing as much. All the pieces are there for anyone with a willingness to be wrong to pick up.

That’s enough navel gazing for a time long ago. Put it to bed. The revelation of ‘Party Rock Anthem’ isn’t that you should never leave The Party, it’s that the whole world is The Party. “Dancing all night isn’t legendary, only dancing all night is.” The only thing to do in the decade ahead is to keep listening attentively. Let music fill you up. It’ll get in your bones.

#lmfao #party rock anthem #vitamins

19 notes · View notes

liugeaux · 5 years

Text

The Master of Blasting

Months ago, once I realized my Retron had a save-state feature, something got into me. I realized I could go back to old retro games and actually finish them. Sure, I played 100s of games in the 8 & 16-bit eras, but I’ve never been that good at anything with a steep difficulty. Most games of the late-80s, early 90s were punishingly tough and typically, without cheat codes I never got to see the end of them.

After playing through all the old Donkey Kong Country games and Sonic the Hedgehog 1, I turned my eye towards a peculiar series I had only dabbled in before, Blaster Master. With the release of Blaster Master Zero on Switch, I was extra interested in diving into the well-regarded B-tier NES original.

With a little research, I found that a total of 8 Blaster Master games have been released...that’s when the classic Sergio completist kicked in. I convinced myself that I shouldn’t play the new Switch games until I’ve completed all of the retro titles. When I began my journey I didn’t realize it would be such a headache. Here’s my run-through of all the Blaster Master Games.

1988 - Blaster Master (NES)

Ah, the original. This little game has a charm to it that most games of the late 80′s don’t have. It was clearly inspired by Nintendo published games like Metroid and Zelda. Blaster Master’s key gimmick is the ability to play as the armored tank Sophia the 3rd or as an on-foot character named Jason, the pilot of the tank. As needed, Jason jumps out of the tank and enters human-sized doors.

Blaster Master is a 2D platformer, but once Jason enters a door, the game switches to an overhead perspective for navigation through maze-like dungeons. None of the mazes are particularly hard to solve, but all of the game’s bosses are found in these dungeons. As a kid, having a game that completely switched perspectives was rad. I never owned it as a child, but I vividly remember my time with it through rentals and such.

This first game is super hard and I found myself using known glitches to get past the game’s harder boss sequences. In true Metroidvania-style, there’s heavy backtracking throughout Blaster Master and if you don’t know where you’re going getting to the next level can be quite annoying. Having played the whole game, I can finally say that despite a super strong first impression, Blaster Master isn’t that great.

It's WAY too hard and by the halfway point the luster had worn off the unique gameplay. For some reason, this is the point where I decided to dive headfirst into the rest of the Blaster Master games. I’m a glutton for punishment I guess.

1991 - Blaster Master Boy (Game Boy)

Prior to playing the original, I had no idea there were so many titles in this series. I definitely didn’t know there were multiple portable entries. Blaster Master Boy is less a Blaster Master game and more a Bomberman game. Technically its a sequel to the Bomberman spin-off Robo-Warrior. A quick trip over to Youtube can confirm that the gameplay and music are lifted directly from Robo-Warrior. To add even more confusion, in Japan, Robo-Warrior was called Bomber-King, Blaster Master Boy was Bomber-King Scenario 2 and it wasn’t even published by the same company.

Because of this weirdness, I didn’t spend too much time with Blaster Master Boy. It also didn’t help that there isn’t a decently priced copy anywhere on the internet.

1993 - Blaster Master 2 (Genesis)

Five years after the original, Blaster Master returned to the console market with Blaster Master 2. It was a Sega Genesis exclusive and the only title in the series released in the 16-bit era. Playing this immediately after the original really made it quite hard. The controls aren’t as precise and the difficultly level is somehow ratcheted up. Blaster Master 2 is a more straight forward platformer without the backtracking of a traditional Metroidvania.

Unlike the first game, when you enter the human sections of the game, you don’t start a top-down sequence. Instead, the pilot levels are 2D platform shooter areas. All of these seem half-baked, clunky and compared to the game’s contemporaries, quite sad. Fortunately, top-down gameplay wasn’t completely abandoned, before the end of each level there’s an odd top-down sequence, where you pilot Sophia. This mechanic never returns in future games, but taking the rest of the game into consideration, it really isn’t terrible.

Unfortunately, there’s not much good to say about Blaster Master 2, It hits most of the design notes that the first one hits but the entire experience feels like it was made by a completely different team. Funny enough, after saying that, I looked it up and Blaster Master 2 was, in fact, made by a completely different team. Ha!

The game’s only saving grace is its vivid color pallet and solid sprite design. Like the first game, the music solid, but unless you’re taking a trip through the whole series like me, Blaster Master 2 can be skipped.

2000 - Blaster Master: Enemy Below (Game Boy Color)

It took Sunsoft awhile to get around to the Blaster Master series again, but in 2000 they came out swinging. Blaster Master: Enemy Below was released for Game Boy Color and of all the games on this list, it is the game that most resembles the original. Much of the art is designed to look nearly identical to the NES games’, even down to a nearly pixel-perfect recreation of the SOPHIA tank.

The top-down Jason segments return as does the extreme difficulty and fantastic soundtrack. It’s hard to really complain about the execution of this title. It was clearly an attempt at just trying to make the closest thing they could to the original and in many ways, it is a tighter and more consistent experience. Unfortunately, that’s also a strike against it. Enemy Below doesn’t bring anything new to the table. The bosses are basic re-hashes of the originals, the levels feel like a “lost levels” DLC pack and the game being portable doesn’t really encourage innovation.

I guess the coolest thing I can say about Enemy Below is that it's still available for purchase. On the 3DS Virtual Console, you can pick up Enemy Below for about $5. At that price, it’s easy to recommend, especially since it comes with built-in save-state functionality.

2001 - Blaster Master: Blasting Again (Playstation)

Also, released in 2000 (in Japan, 2001 in North America), is the weirdest game in the series to date, Blaster Master: Blasting Again. For those of you too young to remember, the Playstation/N64 era of video games was full of 2D series trying their hand at 3D games. Blasting Again is an egregious example of this frustrating industry trend. You still pilot a tank, with all the same features, like homing missiles, and hover, but you’re dropped into a fully realized 3D world with painfully bad anime cut-scenes.

The “Jason” sequences are still here, but they too are 3D and mundanely boring. Also, with this being an official sequel to the original, you play as Jason’s son Roddy, not Jason. Much of the music from earlier in the series is remixed, and rerecorded, so not all is lost in the odd one-off. Unfortunately, the antiquated tank controls and punishing difficulty makes Blasting Again hard to recommend. I was able to play it on PS3 with no issues, but the toggle switch for the digital and analog controls was initially hard to find.

I ended up sinking about 40 hours into finally beating this tragedy. I wasn’t able to use save states and despite it being objectively bad, I grew to love it’s janky and unfair presentation. As a whole, these games have really tested my ability to control my anger, but Blasting Again was the first one to truly get all the way under my skin.

2010 - Blaster Master: Overdrive (WiiWare)

Notice, I have yet to say any of these games are good, that’s because they aren’t. What they have is a charm to them that conjures the aura of the scrappy beginnings of gaming and the forced appreciation of only owning 4 games that had no checkpoints. Thus far, despite initial misgivings, I’ve enjoyed my time on this journey. Blaster Master: Overdrive is where that joy ended. The fun I was having with the series was taken out back, brutally beaten, and left to die in the town square as an example to anyone daring to play this absolute nightmare.

Overdrive starts innocently enough. It does it’s best to try and evoke the gameplay and tone of the original and for what it's worth the art style isn’t terrible. The Sophia and Jason gameplay loops are in-tact and even the gun-upgrades are more important than ever. Where Overdrive falls apart is its difficulty and embarrassing lack of control options.

I’m sure most of you are at least familiar with the Wii-Remote. With this being a Wii-Ware only game, it could only be played with the Wii-Remote. The real downside is that the developer either ran out of time or opted not to explore the myriad of control options the Wii offered. There’s no classic controller support, no Gamecube controller support, there’s not even a way to map buttons to a nun-chuck. You are stuck playing with the Wii-Remote turned sideways.

This wouldn’t be that big of a deal if they had found a better way to implement strafing into the controls. To strafe, the player must hold the B button. That’s the button underneath the Wii-Remote. In a world where the player is using the remote like an old-school NES controller, B button usage is a legit finger-bending-nightmare. Couple this broken control scheme with punishing difficulty and you have the perfect recipe for rage-quitting. I‘m not proud of my behavior during my time with this game and let’s just say I own 1 less Wii-Remote now.

The last thing I want to say about Overdrive is less about the game itself and more about its availability. The Wiiware marketplace is 100% closed, which means there’s no legit way to purchase this game, outside of buying someone’s Wii who had already bought it. This is an ominous foreshadowing of things to come. I would have paid for this game. Hell, I’m deep enough into this BM adventure I would have paid a premium to play this dumb game, but Nintendo’s shut-down of the Wii-Ware shop is a low-key attack on game preservation that us archivist, CANNOT forget. *steps off of soap-box*

2017 - Blaster Master Zero (Switch/Steam)

With the release of Blaster Master Zero, the series got the most attention it’s had since the original game. Most of that attention was because Zero was basically a launch game for the Switch. The best way to describe Zero is to say that it’s developer Inti’s attempt to take the Blaster Master formula and actually make a decent game. For the most part, they succeed. Oddly enough, almost 30 years later, Zero is the first legitimately good Blaster Master game.

Much like Enemy Below, Zero tries its hardest to evoke the look of the original NES game. Some refer to games like this as pixel art, others refer to it as lazy...I float somewhere in the middle on it. It was great playing a Blaster Master game with a proper controller where the mechanics actually work. However, it was frustrating seeing a game, based on a design aesthetic that hit its ceiling in the late 80s, try to beautify itself. Many attempts were made to make the design stand out, but it just kept hitting the ceiling established by its predecessors.

Alternately, by Inti making the game super-playable, the flaws of the older games stand out even more than before. Typically, good Metroidvania’s have an intuitive way of hinting at where you need to go next or a good way of telling you what access you’re new power-ups give you. Due to Zero’s obsession with evoking the original, that intuitive gameplay is replaced with a red box on the map screen. This turns the game into a “drive to red box, shoot things, drive to next red box and shoot more things, experience”, rather than the naturally explorative nature of other games in its genre. The anime story seemed unnecessary from the start, but I’m sure someone will enjoy it.

While playing Zero I honestly asked myself, “Is this game way easier than the older games, or can I finally control this little tank properly?” I’m sure the real answer is somewhere between those two extremes, but ultimately Zero was a blast, albeit WAY too easy. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the sequel improves upon this wonderful jumping-off point. However, I’m positive I’ll be disappointed that more wasn’t done to bring the series into the modern 2D-platforming space.

2019 - Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

Zero 2 is very much a sequel to Zero. In true anime fashion, the story immediately gets super self-serious and consequently superfluous. I’m sure some players will love the dialog between protagonist Jason and all of the various anime-faced characters, but that’s not what I’m here for. Needless to say, the story gets involved in ways other Blaster Master games haven’t. That’s not a strike against it, it’s just a characteristic that may not actually matter.

All previous mechanics are intact here and new ones are introduced almost immediately. If Zero was truly the first good Blaster Master game, then the refinements introduced in Zero 2 make it...wait for it...THE BEST BLASTER MASTER GAME EVER MADE! It controls well, the levels are interestingly built, and where previous sequels in the series lacked innovation, Zero 2 is full of cool and weird, new stuff. The bosses are fresh and interesting, the Jason sequences have been enhanced with a brand new counter mechanic and the space travel segments add a level of depth not seen in previous games.

I hate that I’m being so positive about the game. It’s been so much fun talking shit about Blaster Master games. Unlike the previous game, developer Inti found a way to modernize the gameplay and still make a genuinely challenging experience. I had trouble with multiple bosses, but never did I feel like the game was unfair, or something was broken. Many of the additions to the story also benefited the gameplay. Something as simple as making the Frog from the original game the reason Jason can immediately leave dungeons serves both the story and gameplay.

This has been a long journey, and the real hero is Inti Creates. Hopefully, Zero and Zero 2 have done well. The work put in by Inti deserves praise. They have perfected a formula that’s been pending since 1988. Both titles are only $10 on the Switch shop, and at that price, you are basically stealing them. Anyone with a Switch has no reason not to pick at least one of them up and check it out.

As for the series itself...I have very mixed feelings. There are very few good Blaster Master games. It's a series that trades in loose nostalgia for a widely forgotten NES game. From that, a bunch of often half-hearted sequels were developed trying to capitalize on the little bit of cache the original game still has. I don’t regret my time with the series and I think more titles deserve the Blaster Master treatment, but subjectively, I wouldn’t recommend anyone pick up any games outside of the original and the 2 newest Switch titles.

#blaster master #blaster master zero #blaster master enemy below #blaster master blasting again #blaster master overdrive #blaster master 2 #blaster master zero 2 #blaster master boy

13 notes · View notes

asterinjapan · 5 years

Text

A whole Latte (window) shopping

Good evening from a rainy Tokyo! And no apologies for that awful pun in the title, haha.

Yeah, so uhm, two new tropical storms have formed… One has already dwindled down to a low pressure system, bringing in a ton of rain tonight into tomorrow over areas that have already had plenty of rani last week. The second is a typhoon right now and will probably tun into a low pressure area as well when it approaches late this week. The already battered parts of Japan really can’t catch a break, yikes.

For me, it’s just a mild inconvenience. Tokyo will get rain, and pretty much all my side trips are falling through as they’re in dangerous areas due to risk of landslides and what not, but I can definitely keep myself otherwise entertained. I can only hope that these storms blow over without too much additional damage.

Anyway! I finally managed to wear myself out today, haha, and that despite just sticking to the city I’m staying in. Climbing mountains is easy, but (window) shopping does me in!

Follow me below for my report of today, consisting of Shibuya revisited, hopping over to Harajuku and Akihabara and ending with dinner with a certain bright yellow mascot. Pictures will be up tomorrow morning!

First things first, I had a train ticket to secure for a trip that will happen no matter what: the ride to the airport on the 28th. The Narita Express doesn’t often go through Ikebukuro, but it does at a convenient time for me for once on the 28th, so I wanted to get a seat on that train, haha. Sure, I have to get up early, but I can throw my luggage into the luggage corner, take a seat, and only get up once I’m at the airport. I’ve nearly always had to transfer after the Yamanote line, which is not a lot of fun when you have heavy bags with you. So! I made my way to the JR East travel office, since the normal ticket office apparently can’t reserve seats on the Narita Express for you, and secured my seat. I also asked about trains further out, and got confirmed what I was already suspecting: dangerous, cancelled lines, etcetera. Well, I’m not gonna risk it. Too bad about my JR pass, but it’s given me my free seat in the Narita Express, and the shorter trips throughout Tokyo secretly add up a lot too if you don’t have a free pass. It has long since paid itself off!

Well, I had gotten a relatively early start today, so I went to Shibuya again at a calm pace. It was only a little after ten, so the crossing was pretty empty compared to yesterday, haha. I first hopped over to the Disney store to secure my ticket for Disneyland. Hey, it’s tradition by now! There was only one person in front of me instead of a long line (going on a Monday morning really helps), so that was quickly arranged. After some shop browsing, I traced my way to my Miyamasu Mitake shrine (I’m getting possessive over it by now, haha). And behold, the shop was open! I could finally hand in my omamori, protective charm, which I’d gotten almost 2 years ago (you’re supposed to hand it back in after a year). I immediately got a new one, of course. Still white, because I think the other ones were more specific, and ‘general luck’ has worked fine so far I’d say!

I had a light and early lunch at a nearby café and then went back to the station to go one stop further on the Yamanote line: Harajuku. I usually go to the fancy Omotesando street or the Meiji shrine, but today, I went into Takeshita street. That’s what you think of when you hear Harajuku, I guess, haha, sinc this street is lined with a ton of fashion stores and all kinds of food. There’s one stall that’s gotten pretty well known for its huge rainbow colored candy floss, which are indeed a sight to behold (but I held off for now, I needed to be hungry for dinner). My main mission here was finding a coat, but I got immensely sidetracked by super cute clothing everywhere. No coats that fit my criteria, but I sure had fun window shopping and I’m seriously considering a couple of outfits. Not the very fancy frilly gorgeous dresses, though. I mean, they are amazingly gorgeous and not as outrageously expensive as you might think (not cheap by all means, but I’ve seen more expensive clothes in my little home town) but still… I don’t think I’d dare to wear them? Also, those would definitely mean I have to buy a second suitcase, haha.

Once I went back and forth through Takeshita street, I went back to the station for my next stop on the Yamanote line: Akihabara station, also known as nerd central I guess, haha. Truth is, in earlier years I didn’t really like Akihabara. As it turns out, it really depends on what shops you visit. I know a couple now that mostly cater towards my interests, but there are also a lot of shops here that cater to a male audience, if you catch my drift. But now, I had a lot of fun window shopping and making a mental list of what’s available. I accidentally bought a couple of figurines last year and that’s definitely a trap, now I keep looking, haha.

It was cooling down, so I fled into the station for my final stop for today: Tokyo station. I was going to head to the café I had my reservation for, but it was like an hour and a half in advance, so I first strolled through the underground Tokyo Station city. There is a street called character street which has a lot of specialized merchandise stores, and I always struggle to find it, but today I just – walked right into it as I was looking for my exit for the café, haha. This time, I ended up buying a couple of clearfiles, and then I slowly made my way to the Yaesu North exit.

A short walk later, I was at my destination: the Pokémon DX store with adjacent Pokémon café! You can only get into the café for a meal if you have reservations. I found out in the nick of time that you only need a credit card if you want to pre-order exclusive goods, so I managed to make a reservation for today a week or so before I hopped onto my plane. I was still too early, so I did a lot of browsing in this Pokémon store. I’ve visited quite some Pokémon stores by now, but this one takes the cake. It’s roomy, big, interactive, and has a ton of products I haven’t seen anywhere else yet. Do you want a Pokémon plushie? You can literally get one for every single Pokémon from the first 2 generations, so like – 251. I was strong and steered clear of plushies today, but I did have a wishlist now, haha. There is also a long wall that shows the development of the games throughout the years, that was so fun and nostalgic to watch!

At long last, I got to enter the café! I was seated at the long table in the center, right next to the statue of Pikachu, and got to order my dishes through the tablet on table, which had multiple language options. Of course, I opted for the limited time Pikachu Halloween plate, and I also got a latte with Pokémon art on it. You can pick from the first 251 Pokémon, but I went with Eevee. I was going to get an Eevee mug separately, because I thought you could only order it with the hot cocoa, but it turns out you can get it with the latte too if you have the Eevee art, haha. So I got a receipt for my order plus mug and settled in to eat. But there was a surprise: Chef Pikachu came out to meet everyone! Japan sure loves its mascot characters, so you bet they have tons of Pikachu suit characters. (Heck, there’s a whole parade of them in Yokohama in summer.) Pikachu made his rounds to shake hands with everyone and seemed rather taken by the small Pikachu I had brought with me and remembered to put on my shoulder in the nick of time, haha.

The plate was actually pretty good! I mean, not haute cuisine, and you can definitely get more extravagant meals for this price elsewhere, but hey, will it be shaped like Pikachu with a witch hat? I think not. Don’t go to character cafés if you want quality food, but do go if you want to take in the atmosphere and enjoy the way the food looks. Japan is all about presentation.

I had a good time here, although I was too full for dessert, so I ordered a float drink instead inspired by the legendary bird Pokémon Articuno. It was a fizzy drink that was a tad too sweet for my taste, but hey, it came with a free coaster! For every drink, you get a coaster. You can pick a random card on a tablet, and that card determines which coaster you get. Since it’s Halloween season, you could also pick the official Halloween 2019 Pikachu coaster, which I had done for the latte. For the random pick, I got Espeon! Nice.

You can spend at most 90 minutes at the café before your time is up, so after my last photos, I made my way to the register to pay for my food, a set of clear files, and of course my new Eevee mug, which they promptly wrapped up nicely for me, so I can’t show a picture of it yet, haha. I then wandered into the store to grab some goods I had gotten my eye on (not all for me! I do souvenirs for others too!), and finally made it out again. Sadly, it had started to drizzle, so I walked to the station fast and made way to Ikebukuro.

So now here I am! Tomorrow is a holiday since it’s the enthronement of the Emperor, but they postponed the procession until November due to typhoon Hagibis (and I bet they don’t regret that decision now, what with the current weather). It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot to see for us mere mortals. Although I suppose this means I’m physically closer to my country’s king and queen than I’ve ever consciously been back home, as they’re attending the ceremony tomorrow, haha. Ah well.

With the weather forecast, I think I’ll go over to Ueno Park to visit the National Museum of Nature and Science, since I’ve been throwing that one longing looks since 2010, but never let myself visit before. And after that, I’ll see – maybe some karaoke? I’ll hold off on more shopping for now as Wednesday will be busy (Disney!), and then I’ll just see what the weather will do and what my safe options are, because I’m not gonna take unnecessary risks.

It’s getting late here, so I’ll upload the pictures tomorrow morning. Good night for now!

#japan 2019 #report #report: japan 2019

2 notes · View notes

walterisaacson-blog · 5 years

Text

Holbrooke in Heat

A review in the New York Times

Walter Isaacson

Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

By George Packer

608 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $30.00

Richard Holbrooke was a large man with gargantuan appetites – for food and women and movies and acclaim and, above all, diplomatic and undiplomatic maneuvering – appetitesthat struggled to feed an outsized ego that was matched only by his insecurities. As the last great freewheeling diplomat of the American Century, his turbocharged zeal and laughable lack of self-awareness earned him fervent admirers and fevered enemies, including a few longstanding colleagues who fell passionately and paradoxically into both camps. In fact, Holbrooke himself was caught in this duality of being his own most fervent admirer and worst enemy (although when someone once commented that he was his own worst enemy, a national security adviser he had worked with snapped, “not as long asI’m around.”)

I doubt that any novel, not even one coauthored by Graham Greene and F. Scott Fitzgerald, could have captured Holbrooke fully, and I certainly thought that no biography ever would. But now one has. George Packer’s Our Man portrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory: relentless, ambitious, voracious, brilliant, idealistic, noble,needy, and containing multitudes. It’s both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy, with Holbrooke strutting and fretting his hour on the stage.

Perhaps intentionally, the book emulates the rollicking cadences, lapidary character descriptions and exhaustive reporting of The Best and the Brightest by Holbrooke’s close friend David Halberstam. (Packer on Halberstam: “Jewish and middle-class, with thick-framed glasses and big hairy hands and violent gestures and moral certainties, with his gift for dramatizing everything, including himself.”) Informed by complete access to Holbrooke’s intimate diaries and letters along with more than 250 interviews, the book overflows with the trait that was Holbrooke’s saving grace: an in-your-face intellectual honesty that is not tainted, as Holbrooke’s was, by being manipulative. The result is so bracing that Our Man not only revitalizes but in some ways reinvents the art of journalistic biography.

Packer pulls no punches, and the complex shadings of the all-too-human personalities – including Holbrooke’s widow Kati Marton, his lifelong frenemy Tony Lake, his patron Hillary Clinton and his nemesis Barack Obama – are painted with vibrant complexity. They will likely wince but then nod as they read. So too, I think, would Holbrooke himself, who died in December 2010 when his heart exploded from the strain of unappreciated diplomatic exertions. I can almost hear him howling at Packer from the grave, berating him for the brutalpassages, and then, after realizing how brilliant and brilliantly he has been portrayed, pouring on his flattery and ham-handed charm. (Full disclosure: when I was a journalist, I fell into the camp of his alloyed admirers, and he would do all of that to me, albeit while looking over my shoulder to see if there was someone more important to flatter and berate.)

Packer establishes a Holbrookian intimacy by talking directly to the reader at times. “Holbrooke?” he begins. “Yes I knew him. I can’t get his voice out of my head.” And a few pages later, “Do you mind if we hurry through the early years? There are no mysteries here that can be unlocked by nursery school.”

The key to the mysteries, instead, begins with Vietnam. When Holbrooke arrived in Saigon in 1963 as a newly minted foreign service officer, America was not yet waist-deep in a quagmire. His role as a rural affairs advisor was to help win “hearts and minds” in “strategic hamlets” as part of the “pacification” program, before napalm and Zippo lighters had imbued those words with an ironic and then sinister stench. He and his colleagues read Graham Greene’s Vietnam novel The Quiet American, but they did not yet fully appreciate Greene’s deft description of his title character: “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”

Holbrooke was among the first diplomats to harbor doubts about the war. “I sometimes think this first year in Vietnam was the best of Richard Holbrooke,” Packer writes. “His ambition still had a clean smell, and youth was working in his favor – physical courage, moral passion, the boundless energy and enthusiasm and sheer sense of fun, the skepticism, the readiness to talk straight to ambassadors and generals.”

In Vietnam Holbrooke became best friends with Tony Lake, a fellow foreign service officer “who kept his ambition more tightly wrapped,” a talent that came naturally to someone born into the WASP establishment that Holbrooke hungered to join. The intensity of their friendship and then their falling out provides one of the many wrenching plots in the book. They play tennis, invent games, party, smoke pot, and travel together. But when they return to Washington, Holbrooke’s social-climbing among the Harrimans and Alsops of the Georgetown elite turned Lake sour. “Friendship with Holbrooke had acquired a whiff of the instrumental,” Packer writes. Eventually almost all of Holbrooke’s colleagues, even the admiring ones, came to feel used.

Also at times abused. With his appetites, Holbrooke couldn’t help himself. In one of the most egregious examples, he decided to pursue a romance with Lake’s wife. “Holbrooke’s betrayal,” Packer writes, “would stay secret from almost everyone, while the acid it released would take years to eat silently at the bonds of youthful ambition and Vietnam and tennis and American greatness that had held the two men together.”

Holbrooke’s compulsion for cheating on or with women – and also Packer’s willingness to report with gusto the psychological and physical details involved – would seem shocking were these passions not so interwoven with the neediness and drive that was at the core of his professional life.Holbrooke was perpetually in heat. Chapters recounting feveredstatecraft are interspersed with those chronicling Holbrooke’s three marriages and multiple affairs and romances, including one with Dianne Sawyer, all featuring the same detailed reporting and sharp personality portraiture.

The most intense and intensely described relationship is with his last wife, Kati Marton, who gave Packer exclusive access to his papers. A vibrant reporter and writer of nine highly-acclaimed books, including an extraordinarily powerful memoir of the family betrayals and secret love affairs that accompanied her parents’ escape from Nazi and then Communist Hungary, Marton’s career ascended during periods when her husband’s languished. This was not a recipe for marital harmony. Each has dramatic affairs, but they were tethered by ambition. “She became what he never had,” Packer writes, “a climbing partner.”

The peak of Holbrooke’s career came under President Bill Clinton, when he shuttled around the Balkans cajoling Bosnian warlords and Serbian war criminals to make peace. His work culminated with three weeks of negotiations in November 1995 at an air force base near Dayton, Ohio, where he pushed Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and others into a peace agreement.“Let’s given him his due. He ended a war,” Packer writes. “Diplomacy is not for the short of breath.”

True to form, Holbrooke personally led his own lobbying campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote letters extolling his accomplishment and pressed others to sign them. He also repeatedly found excuses to travel to Oslo, where he made a point of meeting several times with the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. “He campaigned so hard for that Nobel Prize that that’s probably one reason he didn’t get it,” President Clinton remarked.

He also did not get the other prize he wanted. After Dayton, Clinton passed him over for Secretary of State and gave the job to Madeleine Albright. Even though (or perhaps because) they agreed on most major issues, Holbrooke’s contempt for Albright, which mixed sexism with rivalry, oozed out regularly. On the back of a menu card at a lunch she hosted, he jotted his unfair opinion of her: “MKA – very articulate, even eloquent on values – weak on process, policy + diplomacy – uneven, unpredictable – charming + mean – insecure – her biography was her career – very strong will.” In this universe, particles of like charge are destined to repel each other.

When Barack Obama was elected president, Holbrooke again lobbied hard to be Secretary of State, but the incoming president became allergic to him. Obama, who took as much pride in telling people he hadn’t read their books as Holbrooke did saying that he had, was disdainful of Holbrooke’s compulsion to flatter and be flattered. When the president called him Dick at their first meeting, Holbrooke stopped him and, as Marton had instructed him to do, asked the president to call him Richard instead. “If Holbrooke had tried to repel him in their first minute together he couldn’t have done a better job,” Packer reports.

Instead, Obama recruited Hillary Clinton to be secretary and Holbrooke’s erstwhile friend Tony Lake to be National Security Advisor. Bravely defying intense resistance from the White House, Secretary Clinton appointed Holbrooke as her special representative to handle Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unlike the no-drama Obama crowd, she understood that what made Holbrooke a handful also made him effective.

Holbrooke’s tenacity as he whirled relentlessly through the region might have, if he had been given time and support, allowed him to cajole and browbeat the prideful warlords there like he had done in the Balkans. But it soon became clear he was completely lacking in support from the President.

Obama thought that Holbrooke was “disruptive,” and Holbrooke thought, as he told a young woman he had an affair with, “Obama has ice water running in his veins.” The problem was they were both right. When Obama made a surprise trip to Kabul in November of 2010, he didn’t invite Holbrooke aboard Air Force One or even let him know about the trip in advance.

Exhausted by his missions and drained by his tumultuous commuter marriage with Kati Marton, Holbrooke woke up anxious on the morning of December 10, and barreled into the White House, sweating and pasty-faced, to make yet another effort to wrangle a private session with Obama. He was rebuffed. He then dashed to the State Department for a meeting with Secretary Clinton. Suddenly, his face turned red, his legs collapsed. An aneurysm in his heart had burst, ripping a hole in his aorta. When he arrived at the trauma bay of the hospital, the doctor told him to relax. “I can’t relax,” he replied. “I am in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Three days later he died.

His multiple memorial services were packed with friends and enemies. Marton later took pride that she had choreographed the one at the Kennedy Center so that Obama had to sit through two hours of testimonials. “I could never understand people who didn’t appreciate him,” Bill Clinton said in his eulogy. “Most of the people who didn’t were not nearly as good at doing.” At aservice a few weeks later in the U.N. General Assembly chamber in New York, Tony Lake, with a gray beard, sat alone in the balcony, feeling conflicted as always.

The overriding theme of Holbrooke’s life, detailed with unnerving accuracy in this book, was ambition. He was relentless in forcing his way into meetings to which he wasn’t invited and clambering into motorcades where he wasn’t manifested. During the Carter Administration, when Holbrook was an assistant secretary, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s personal secretary had to send him a memo. “Henceforth, you may not insert yourself as a passenger in the Secretary’s car unless this office has specifically approved,” it said, adding that the security detail had been given instructions to enforce this edict. As Packer notes, “Holbrooke, undeterred, had the memo framed.”

“Ambition is not a pretty thing up close,” Packer writes. “It’s wild and crass, and mortifying in the details. It brings a noticeable smell into the room… Because of Holbrooke’s psychological mutation of not being able to see himself, and maybe not give a shit anyway, he let us ogle ambition in the nude.” Lurking in this description is a more subtle point. It wasn’t just Holbrooke’s ambition that hobbled him, it was his inability to cloak his ambition like the more polished members of Washington’s striving elite.

The difficulty in writing biographies of grand players, as I know from trying to do it with Steve Jobs, is to be honest about their rough personalities while guiding a reader to the conclusion, which is as true for Holbrooke as it was for Jobs, that their unvarnished drives were part and parcel of their true greatness. “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,” Jobs once said. “I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right. Maybe there’s a better way – a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words – but I don’t know that way.” Or as he put it more poetically: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

In corporate as well as government realms, leaders often prefer, as Obama did, teammates who are low-maintenance. But as Packer shows, there can be a payoff for those able to harness a Holbrooke. “Don’t forget that inside most people you read about in history books is a child who fiercely resisted toilet training. Suppose the mess they leave is inseparable from their reach and grasp? Then our judgment depends on what they’re ambitious for – the saving glimmer of wanting something worthy.”

Why such a mammoth book – and such a long review of it – about a mid-level diplomat whose only major achievement was helping settle a war in a faraway place with unpronounceable names? Because if you could read only one book to comprehend America’s foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past fifty years, this would be it.You have to begin in Vietnam, as Holbrooke did, and understand that U.S. involvement there was a complex mix of sincerity and blindness and idealism and hubris. Likewise, our subsequent involvements, including Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan, have involved good intentions, outsized ambitions, and a deficit of humility. Just like Holbrooke. “Our confidence and energy, our reach and our grasp, our excess and blindness – they were not so different from Holbrooke’s,” Packer writes. “He was our man.”

Our man, our man in full. “I still can’t get his voice out of my head,” Packer concludes. “One day I know it will start to fade, along with his memory, along with the idea of a life lived as if the world needed an American hand to help set things right. By this point you’re familiar with its every failing. But now that Holbrooke is gone, and we’re getting to know the alternatives, don’t you, too, feel some regret? History is cruel that way. He loved it all the same.”

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, is the coauthor, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men and the author of biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci.

1 note · View note

caveartfair · 6 years

Text

7 Zines That Helped People Work through Mental Health Issues

For the uninitiated, a “zine” is often defined as a self-published, small-circulation magazine that documents the happenings of a subculture or a niche topic. But in practice, the art of the zine is governed by “non-rules.” A zine can be consist of 40 pages, or just one. It can be entirely made up of pictures or feature no pictures at all. It can make sense, but it doesn’t have to.

During the 1980s, zine-making often involved taking a pile of collages, poems, essays, images, or doodles; lining them up, just so, over the glass of a Xerox machine; then making copies, and stapling together a series of printed pages like this. Copies might be shared with friends or left in a stack at a local record store. Today, publishing a zine can be as simple as one person creating a web page or as elaborate as a small editorial team collaborating on a printed periodical with a cover star. But the non-rules haven’t changed: If you make it and publish it yourself, and it has text, images, or both, you can probably call it a zine.

Perhaps because of this flexibility, artists and other creatives have found in zines a judgment-free space, and for some, it’s a prime medium for discussing serious, personal issues, like mental health. This point was made late last month when an art exhibition in India, organized by one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, Dr. Vikram Patel, illustrated how zines can help break down the stigma surrounding mental health. To explore the topic further, we share below seven examples of such zines, with insights from their creators on how these creative projects helped them navigate their own experiences with mental health.

For Girls Who Cry Often (2016)

Excerpt from Lina Wu, For Girls Who Cry Often, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Lina Wu, a Toronto-based artist and illustrator, collected stories and testimonies from over 20 contributors to create the 40-page zine For Girls Who Cry Often. “It’s a nice feeling to be a part of something bigger,” she said of the collaborative creation process.

For the zine, Wu focused on exploring mental health through a femme lens and let her own experiences inform her process. “For much of my life, I noticed that ‘getting emotional’ was seen as a girly or feminine thing—meaning it is often dismissed as dramatic and frivolous,” she explained.

Wu created a dreamy pink atmosphere to backdrop the contributors’ candid and sometimes dark confessions. The zine’s adolescent tone is a nod to the fanzines of the 1990s that gave teenage girls a voice. In fact, Wu points out that zines are accessible art objects because people can easily share and buy them (readers buying copies of For Girls Who Cry Often are encouraged to pay what they can afford).

An interdisciplinary artist, Wu experiments with poetry, illustrations, comics, photography, and design in her zines. And while she doesn’t bring For Girls Who Cry Often to zine fairs anymore, she noted that making it has helped her grow as an artist.

Fuck This Life (2005–present)

Excerpt from Dave Sander, Fuck This Life, 2018. Courtesy of 8ball Community.

Today, Dave Sander (a.k.a. “Weirdo Dave”) is a visual artist known for collaborations with Vans and Supreme. But back in 2005, Sander was cramming newspaper and magazine clippings into his desk drawer almost out of habit. “After I got a lot,” Sander said, “I thought it would be time to make a zine.”

Flipping through the pages of any issue of Fuck This Life is like witnessing the end-of-life montage people describe after a near-death experience. For Sander, zine-making can be an aggressively cathartic process: “You get to kill shit in your own way,” he offered.

Fuck This Life is a stream-of-consciousness compilation of found imagery—like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb or porn stars mid-orgasm—the result of Sander channeling his pain to “create a beautiful, loud, brutal fantasyland.” He refers to the zine ashis deepest, darkest best friend. “It was my reason for living, so I guess it saved me,” he said.

Grief Poems (2017)

Excerpt from Chloe Zelkha, Grief Poems, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Chloe Zelkha describes her father’s death as a “sudden, heartbreaking shock.” Within months, she’d printed out a collection of poems she found in books or discovered through teachers and grieving groups, then spread them out on her kitchen table. There, the Berkeley-based Zelkha began painting onto the pages, cranking out one after another in succession, without drafting or revising. As she found more poems, she created more pages. The result was Grief Poems, a 26-page exercise in letting go.

Zelkha’s introduction to zines was Project NIA’s The Prison Industrial Complex Is… (2010–11), a straightforward explainer zine with minimal text and simple black-and-white illustrations. She sees zines are an inherently raw medium. “That permission that’s kind of baked into the form,” she said, “is liberating.”

Poems by everyone from Kobayashi Issa to W.S. Merwin are coated in Zelkha’s uninhibited brushstrokes. She compared her process with child’s play or dreaming: “If you watch a kid play on their own for long enough, you’ll see lots of fears, feelings, ideas eeking their way into their game, and then transforming in real time. Or when we dream, and different people, places, concerns visit us in weird ways.”

Identity Crisis (2017)

Librarian–slash–zine-maker Poliana Irizarry is probably better known for their autobiographical black-and-white zines, like My Left Foot (2016) and Training Wheels (2013). But with Identity Crisis, the San Jose–based artist seemed the most vulnerable they’ve ever been. “My abuela suffered many miscarriages at the hands of American doctors, and her surviving offspring also struggle with reproductive issues,” Irizarry wrote. “Many Puerto Ricans do.”

Before the birth control pill was approved by the FDA in 1960, nearly 1,500 Puerto Rican women were unknowingly part of one of the earliest human trials for the pill. Between the 1930s and ’70s, nearly one-third of Puerto Rico’s female population of childbearing age had undergone “the operation,” often without being properly educated on its effects.

Irizarry made Identity Crisis,their first full-color art zine,during a South Bay DIY Zine Collective workshop. Personal and family histories intersect across fragmented pictures of succulents and Southwestern landscapes in a half-prose, half-verse journey through Irizarry’s identity. In just a few pages, Irizarry wrestles with intergenerational trauma and their own post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Irizarry speaks directly to their oppressors, defiant and resolute: “I live in spite of you.”

Shit I Made When I Was Sad (a.k.a. sad zine)(2018)

Excerpt from Shit I Made When I Was Sad a.k.a. sad zine, 2018. Courtesy of Malin Rantzer and Anna Persmark.

It started when Swedish friends Malin Rantzer and Anna Persmark were showing each other drawings and writing in journals they’d made while they were feeling low. “I noticed that some of the stuff we’d drawn resembled the other’s drawing,” Malin remembered, “and I think at that point we realized we should make a zine about being sad.” Rantzer turned to social media and put out a “swenglish/svengelska” (Swedish-English) call for submissions.

The then–Sweden-based duo (Persmark has since relocated to Portland, Oregon) made sad zine by cutting out and taping or pasting their artworks onto new pages, then scanning them and folding them into a booklet. Persmark sees zine-making as one of the most intimate ways of sharing her feelings; she goes out in person to share copies with her community.

“Even if all the submitters did not know each other,” Malin explained, “they were all friends’ friends or friends’ friends’ friends, and maybe that also can contribute to an atmosphere where it is safe to be vulnerable.” While making the individual works helped them heal, Persmack noted that the process of compiling the zine proved to be revelatory: “Sadness is both intensely personal and universal,” she said.

Sula Collective Issue 3: Mental Health (2015)

Oyinda Yemi-Omowum, An Emotional Response to Colours, 2015. Excerpt from Sula Collective Issue 3: Mental Health, 2015. Courtesy of Sula Collective.

Sula Collective calls itself an online “[maga]zine for and by people of colour.” Initially an exclusively online zine—different from a blog in name and ethos—it reflected its Gen-Y creators and their new ideas of what a zine could be. It’s one of the more visible new zines, among many, with the purpose of turning an online network into an IRL community. Ever since they founded it in 2015, co-creators Kassandra Piñero and Sophia Yuet See knew they wanted to dedicate an issue to mental health.

Sula Collective Issue 3: Mental Health sheds light on how teenagers of color navigate their parents’ more conservative understanding of mental health issues. “We wanted to discuss the things we kept hidden from our parents or couldn’t talk about with friends,” Piñero and Yuet See explained.

The issue was published in November 2015 and serves as a record of how today’s young artists are taking intersectional approaches to dealing with mental health issues. For example, Oyinda, a then–16-year-old Nigerian girl living in London, submitted a color-coded collage of self-portraits and textures called An Emotional Response to Colours. The literary submissions are paired with original artworks, sourced from Sula Collective’ssubmissions inbox, which range from digital art to watercolors. When asked about what makes zines a unique medium, Piñero and Yuet See answered, simply, “control.”

Shrinks: A Retrospective (2018)

Excerpt from Karla Keffer, Shrinks: A Retrospective, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Shrinks is part of Karla Keffer’s zine series “The Real Ramona,” where she discusses being diagnosed with and treated for PTSD after almost 30 years in therapy. The Mississippi-based artist found a sense of direction for her work, and Shrinks in particular, through learning about the Satanic Panic of the 1980s.

This phenomenon (which gave daytime television hosts the ratings of their dreams) involved psychologists across America fueling a nationwide hysteria by diagnosing patients with satanic ritual abuse (SRA) and sending them off to tough-love camps.

“Shrinks are human and fallible,” Keffer explained. “I had put a great deal of trust in their infallibility.” In Shrinks, Keffer created profiles of every therapist she’s ever had—like Julie the gaslighter and Jill the racist. Survivors of abuse are often—and paradoxically—burdened with the task of seeing through the abuse and saving themselves. “One of the things I found difficult was sorting out what had happened with each therapist—like, did she/he really say that outlandish thing?” Keffer recalled.

So much of zine-making is about reclaiming—reclaiming the freedom of expression, reclaiming space, reclaiming the past. And, as Keffer put it, “you’ve made your own book, which is not something you experience when you’re writing short stories and sending them to lit mags.” If any one thing can define zines as a medium, it’s the unbridled control it gives artists.

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

4 notes · View notes

queensofrap · 6 years

Photo

Most Misunderstood: Iggy Azalea's American Dream

he early reality of Amethyst Kelly is difficult to imagine. There was once a small home in the tiny Australian town of Mullumbimby, made of red brick, cemented by mud and laid by her father's careful hands. Her mother would spend her days emptying trash bins at a motel as a vacation rental cleaner, a path Amethyst would eventually follow at age 14. Water didn't always run, clothes were never new, and bathrooms were separated from the home by a muddied path. It's a tale of immensely humble beginnings, a hemisphere away from the life she would come to inhabit as Iggy Azalea a decade later. And while her origins are unfathomable for some, it's Amethyst's American dream that remains universal.

I first witnessed a glimpse of that dream in the fall of 2011. It was through a cracked iPhone screen, held casually by my friend. "You have to see this bitch," she announced, flicking her perfectly coiled locs and turning up the volume. "She's every-fucking-thing!" There, on the screen, was a tall, curvy woman with ice-blonde hair and creamy incandescent skin. She was surrounded by two brown cheerleaders in matching green uniforms, strutting in towering heels and rapping furiously: My world, rhyme vicious/ White girl team, full of bad bitches. Immediately, I recognized her: this confident, eccentric girl who didn't fit into preppy white hierarchies. While others girls were quoting lines from Mean Girls, imagining themselves Regina George, she appeared as someone I knew. A girl unruly and self-possessed, always late to class, always blasting D4L. I could see her crafting beats with her knuckles and strolling into class hours late, another detention slip placed on her desk. We were sold.

If "My World" was the bait, "Pussy" was the hook, line and sinker. Iggy, Iggy/ Pussy illy/ Wetter than the Amazon/ Taste this kitty! Her accent was thick and affected, reminiscent of our cherished childhood favorite Diamond from Atlanta's Crime Mob. The "Pussy" video was a Boyz N The Hood homage with ATLien pastiche. There were ice cream trucks and babysitting, front porch posing and concrete runways, sherbet-colored pants and shredded shorts. And we weren't the only ones taking notice of Iggy and her ways. Seemingly overnight, our private cafeteria secret had become a viral phenomenon.

“ Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch.“

Press came quickly, grand and bold. The New York Times suggested that "all this proximity to blackness characterizes Iggy Azalea as a person who is no stranger to black culture and communities, suggesting it's no anomaly for her to rock the mic." The Los Angeles Times described her flow as "brash and aggressive," while Complex decided that she was ready to "really make her mark on the game." Classmates had her image as their screensavers and sprawled across their Tumblrs, and were dropping her name in new music debates. She performed at small venues in Atlanta and cars across the city boomed with Never not better/ Law should ban it! A few months later, when "Murda Bizness" featuring T.I. dropped, her dream was actualized. She was not a one-hit wonder. She was a star, poised to rise.

There are many forgotten Iggy freestyles from that era. In one, she raps over Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now," prophesying her divisive nature. In another, titled "Home Town Hatred," she reflects on her time in Australia and her desire to leave. Over Kanye West's ominous "Hell of A Life" beat, she details how industry executives told her to dumb it down. But it was her 2011 "D.R.U.G.S." freestyle that first illuminated the parameters of her ignorance.

Reflecting the industry's tendency not to look at things too deeply, at first the song went unchallenged. (It would be a year before its lyrics were critically examined). In fact, Complex covered the freestyle, commending her craft and comparing her to fellow white rapper Yelawolf. The following January, Iggy signed to major label Interscope, tweeting, "Get used to me + Jimmy [Iovine] smashing shit, cause that's the plan."

In February of 2012, she landed the coveted cover of XXL's Freshman Class issue: an annual declaration of hip-hop stars poised to break big. Between up-and-comers French Montana and Future stands Iggy in a lush green fur. She was the first woman to ever grace the cover — a backhanded achievement. For many, XXL is a bastion of hip-hop excellence. To be a cover star and stamped with their approval was to suggest an imminent dominance. If Iggy could be shot, styled, and photographed for her buzz, where were the black women who broke the boundaries, paved the lanes, and inspired her craft?

It was Harlem-born musician and artist Azealia Amanda Banks who first articulated concern about Iggy's image and her space within hip-hop. On Twitter, Banks wrote, "Iggy Azalea on the XXL freshman list is all wrong. How can you endorse a white woman who called herself a 'runaway slave master'? Sorry guys, I'm a pro black girl. I'm not anti white girl, but I'm also not here for any1 outside of my culture trying to trivialize very serious aspects of it."

Media outlets immediately crafted Bank's criticism into a heavily publicized rap beef, thrusting Banks into the insidious stereotype of bitter black woman. The line Banks referred to was a re-interpretation of a Kendrick Lamar lyric on Iggy's "D.R.U.G." freestyle. In Kendrick's 2010 track "Look Out For Detox," he raps, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway slave. In Iggy's version, she says, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway/ Slave master/ Shittin' on the past/ Gotta spit it like a pastor.

Conversations surrounding the lyric lacked necessary context. Journalists missed questions and painted simple proclamations. In October of 2011, Banks had tweeted, "how sexy is iggy azalea?? It's kind of ridiculous…*tugs collar to let out steam*." In January, she wrote "Iggy Azalea's hair looks really great in her new video. How long do you all reckon that hair is? 40" in? By March 2012, the dream was dented, with Iggy being called out as misappropriating at best, racist at worst.

She issued a heartfelt apology, which fell on mostly unsympathetic ears. Two months later, Iggy was dropped by Interscope. Her debut album, The New Classic, stalled indefinitely. But still, there was room for redemption. In April 2013, Iggy signed with Mercury Records, a UK subsidiary of Universal Music Group. After recording new music in England, she returned stateside, armed with a completed album and a firmly set 2014 release date. During press runs she's tested: asked if she's an imposter; if her body is enhanced; if the cringe-worthy assumptions about her mentor T.I. are true. Old tweets were dug up, which made the disdainful murmurings worse. She's asked to freestyle on Sway, but instead inexplicably recites a line from her own album. Her music begins to change, becoming less lyrically explicit and trap-influenced, and more poppy and prim. Now a Complex cover star, she fumbles when asked about her divisive rapping accent. She's quoted saying, "This is the entertainment industry. It's not politics." Soon enough, that statement would no longer be true.

In 2012, political discussions had begun to dominate all forms of media. The slain lives of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis became proponents of combustible change. Movements like Black Lives Matter materialized, refusing silence or forgetfulness of the innocent and slaughtered black people, churning hundreds of American murders into global narratives. Each case, though singular and specific, represented the transgressions of America's not-too-distant-past and its perpetual present. If there was once a time when innocent victims could be smudged from history and their murderers left unscathed, that clock no longer ticked. Images of callous violence circulated more than music. Cellphone and camera footage displayed women being beaten, children being shot, and men being strangled. Language seemed to shift, relegating all ignorance to silence; expanding itself to capture the expansive feelings of others. And at the top of the same year, "Fancy" was released. Like lightning, Iggy's dream merged seamlessly with reality. She was now a star with a verifiable hit.

With her Clueless themed video for the inescapable track, 2014 became the year of Iggy's art. She held the number one spot on Billboard's Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. She luxuriated in the second spot too, appearing as a featured artist on Ariana Grande's "Problem." Billboard claimed Iggy tied with The Beatles and attached her name to the legacies of Mariah Carey, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, and Nicki Minaj. She was now booking prime-time television spots — appearing on Good Morning America with Charli XCX — and on the covers of grocery store aisle magazines. Forbes declared her "Hip Hop's New Queen of Rap" and she was nominated for four Grammys. Simultaneously, America's racial rhetoric and division began to feel claustrophobic. In early February, Yvette Smith was murdered on her front porch. In August, Michael Brown Jr. and Ezell Ford were shot and killed. November was the month Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice became portraits of unfinished lives. In July, Eric Garner was placed in an illegal chokehold, his last words becoming a symphony of unbearable sadness. The dichotomy between a world callously slaughtering black people on one end and rewarding a white rapper with success and visibility on another was dizzying.

What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you?

By 2015 the dream dissolved completely. Iggy was accused of racism, cultural appropriation, minstrelsy, and ignorance, becoming the perfect conduit for whiteness and all of its horrors. Her silence during racist events was considered complicit. A world tour was canceled, and neither a follow up album or a Top 10 hit reappeared. In 2016, she announced Digital Distortion, her sophomore album that was ultimately held after three singles — "Team," "Mo Bounce," and "Switch" — and a leaked music video. This year, Iggy released "Savior" with hopes of a refresh.

To some, she was an untalented white supremacist Barbie, infiltrating a space crafted by black people and laughing to the bank. Her dream — an innocent one of music, money, and acclaim — had become grotesque. To others, she was an iconic legend who was just easily projected upon. Now a refracted mirror for public opinion, a line was permanently drawn: black or white — no in-between.

But for me, there's always been a gray area. In art, in music, and in life, there is a space where the eye can shift inward to ask and answer questions. What might it look like for a young girl in Australia to re-discover life through hip-hop? What did it look like to want to manifest a world of make-believe, to create art once unseen? What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you? What do you do when you can't separate criticism from hate? When each day you're bombarded with projections based on media machinations? What does it look like when your dream comes true, when it's finally real, only for it to be mocked? To me, it's a perfect portrait of America.

At The Roxy Hotel, in New York City, I sat with Iggy Azalea. We spoke about her life, her dream, her craft, and her upcoming music. She was thoughtful and articulate, eyes glinting with Gemini humor and intellect, deeply apologetic and severely misunderstood. This is what transpired.

youtube

Can you take me back to your childhood? I read that your hometown is called "The Biggest Little Town in Australia." What was it like?

I still don't know why the fuck they call it that. It was a really small town, incredibly rural, but there's a looser, less stereotypical element to it. There were a lot of crystals and hippies, weed smokers, and horoscopes. The town was split between this hippie, carefree fairy spectrum, or conservative farmers and their crops. My parents were on the fairy spectrum, but I went to public school. Everyone there was straight-laced with names like Amber and Stephanie and there I was as Amethyst, with platform shoes, and immediately it was like, Okay, bitch prepare to get bullied.

What were the students like?

There were two schools. One was private and more artistic, and that's where all the people that could be considered carefree and more imaginative were able to go. The public school was very sterile, very conservative. The private school was expensive and my family had no money for that, so I went to the public school and I was miserable. These were the children of bricklayers whose parents drove tractors and guys who played football on the weekends. I got teased for everything. Literally everything, there was no winning with those kids.

I'm ignorant to Australia — I've never been — but there is the classic stereotype of the tanned, athletic, white Australian. When we think of whiteness, we often forget its specifications, even the types that are lauded and coveted. For instance there's the archetype of the popular blonde. You were tall, pale, and curvy…

Oh my goodness, yes! And I was never that girl. Not even anywhere near that girl's posse. I never fit in and there was a time I really tried to fit in. I remember getting teased because I hadn't shaved my legs yet. I was only in sixth grade and I had never even thought of something like that. They would call me "monkey" everyday. One day I got my mom's razor and shaved my legs thinking it would finally be over and it wasn't. There was always a new thing. My hat. My mole. My weight. All of these things now seem so dumb, but I didn't do anything like them and there was no appeasing those kids.

When did you first think of leaving?

I always knew I was going to leave because I knew I didn't belong with any of the people that lived there. I only decided I wanted to go to America when I visited the states with my grandparents. I was 11, and I remember seeing all the showgirls in Las Vegas, all their sparkles and rhinestones. They were the most fabulous girls I had ever seen. I had only seen something like that on TV, and it blew my mind. Then we went to Hollywood, and there were all these wig stores and the Star Walk, and just seeing all the ways people dressed, how they styled their hair, the color of their wigs, I wanted to be able to do all of those things. When I wanted to dress like this in Australia, I'd get shitted on. But coming to America and watching people put on a show, watching them being ridiculously fabulous, no one was doing that where I was from. Nobody was even wearing high heels in Mullumbimby.

When did you put the plan in action?

That happened when I really started to get into music. I was insanely confident, with the kind of deluded grandeur that I think you need when no else believes in you. I thought I was good at it even though in retrospect I was bad still. I was about 14 and that's when I started writing music. I'd go to open mic nights and take the bus all over the city. I'd go to battle raps, I'd get booed. There was a sound audio engineering school, called SAE, and the first music I ever recorded was there. From 14 to 16, that's when the plan formed. As soon as I started writing, I knew music was what I had to do. Even if I wasn't a rapper, I thought I could be a sound engineer or a writer. I just knew I wanted to be involved in music. And I knew I had to get the fuck out of where I lived. It was suffocating me. I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America, and that's where I had to go and that's where I thought people were going to accept my wild thoughts. I tried Sydney and Melbourne and they just weren't it. Nothing else was.

"I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America."

Why Miami first?

They had a SAE campus in Miami. I thought I would be able to get in and get a student visa. I saved up enough money to live there for a couple of months, but I didn't have enough to live and go to school, so I ended up not going.

Next was Houston. What was that like?

I only lived there for a year. This producer found my music through Myspace, and he said if I was ever in Houston to let him know. Then he told me all the people he produced for, and I was so excited because I really loved Rap-A-Lot records, so I went. I met him and he was really cool. We recorded a bunch of songs and we would go to Metropolis. It was in a strip mall and everyone would just hang out in front of their cars, and inside one side was reggaeton and the other was a Slim Thug record chopped n' screwed. The plan was to give the DJ your cd and hopefully he'd play it, which they never do. Then you'd hangout in the parking lot until someone has a fist fight and then you go home. Those were my nights there. Just absorbing everything. I made some friends and then Hurricane Ike hit. Most of my friends were moving to Atlanta because their homes were destroyed. I went too.

How were you making money?

Two of my friends introduced me to their sound engineer and his girlfriend would come to the studio and drop him off lunch. She and I ended up becoming roommates. I told her how I had gone to Thailand before and how fascinated I was with the hair. How you could get in bundles and stuff. She said we should save up money to go and then bring it back and sell it to salons. So we saved up and went on our last dime. She had just graduated college and was working at Bank of America and we went out there and got a bunch of hair. When we came back we sold it super quick, wholesale, to all the salons. It was insane. Technically, even though I didn't have a work visa it isn't illegal if you invest in someone's business. So she registered it as little corporation under her name and I invested in it.

There's this idea that there was "Fancy" and then boom — immediate success! But there were a lot of setbacks.

Obviously there are years that people don't know about. I was in Atlanta for nearly two years just writing for people. I was doing so many writers camps for other known artists, just trying to get my spot. That's why there were a lot of pop demo references that came out. Everyone accused me of wanting to be a pop star and that wasn't something I've ever been interested in. I would write pop music with other people and try to get it placed. I've always rapped. Even the video that came out of the pop song, that was just some shit I did with my friend. We were playing.

The wildest thing is that there are so many reports that I used to be a model and that's always been strange. Just last week on my Spotify profile my bio says, "Iggy Azalea was a high profile model before she became a rapper." When?! I would have loved to be a high profile model, but last time I checked I'm a fucking size eight. What the fuck runway or editorial model do you know that size? There's so much of those kind of rumors that have a mind of their own now.

How did you end up in LA?

The music I was making in Atlanta, I started putting a couple of songs online. They didn't have anymore than 300-400 views. I still don't know how the fuck they found me, but an A&R at Interscope messaged me. He told me he had asked his girlfriend at the time, "Who do you think is cool?" And she played him my music. I was skeptical but he ended up being legitimate. He said I should move to LA and as soon as my lease was up, I went.

When I moved there they put me with a bunch of people. They were trying to help me make connections, but they didn't really understand what I was doing. I met these guys who make up "D.R.U.G.S." about a year after I moved to LA. We'd record in their garage. YG was there. Mustard was there before he was DJ Mustard. Ty Dolla $ign was there all the time. That's where I made Ignorant Art and put out "Pussy."

That song was such a success, Interscope must have been happy.

I had gotten to the end of things with Interscope and was at the point where I felt like since they didn't understand me, this would be a "fuck you." As soon as I put out "Pussy," they called me and said they totally understood the vision. It was a "what the fuck" moment. For nearly a year I had been trying to explain it to them, and suddenly when I did it on my own they want me? I don't think they truly got it, I think they just saw the numerical element to it.

Were you signed to Interscope yet at that point?

I finally had my meeting with Jimmy Iovine after that, and they wanted to sign me. The problem was my A&R wanted to manage me. Interscope, at the time, was working on an in-house management team with LMFAO. They wanted me to sign a document that literally detailed how signing would be a conflict of interest. They gave me two options: sign or leave. I had so many potential deals with other labels but in the end I chose Interscope. We got all the way down to the agreement and, the day of, the deal was dead. Completely done. I had bigger offers, better offers, and I stayed to be loyal to the people who helped me when I was in Atlanta.

What happened?

That was a Jimmy situation and it had a lot to do with Azealia Banks. They wanted to sign her and it became a conflict of interest. Once that happened, everyone wondered why I wasn't signed, why Jimmy didn't want it, and it brought into question my worth as an artist. No one wanted to fucking touch me at all. I couldn't get a deal anywhere after that. Before this I could've asked for a fucking elephant, a Ferrari, four monkeys, and a million dollars — after there was nothing. People wondered, What was wrong with Iggy Azalea? That's how it works with these things. I was done.

What'd you do next?

I had to go to England. I got new management based out of the UK and went and recorded a bunch of music in Wales with a few producers from America. I recorded "Work" and most of The New Classic there and went and shopped a deal in England. They were the only place that didn't give a fuck about what had happened in America. I signed to Mercury Records and after putting out my music there, I came back to America to get upstreamed through Universal Records. I put out five singles through Def Jam before I ever had "Fancy." I toured with Nas before "Fancy." I toured with Beyoncé before "Fancy." I toured my own tour in Europe and North America before "Fancy." I had done five tours before I ever made "Fancy." "Fancy" was truly the last attempt. Not for me to quit music, but for the label to quit me. They had given me four video budgets, none of them exceeded their expectations, and "Fancy" was their last hurrah. For them it was like either this works or it doesn't, but we're gonna put the album out and see if it sells. I decided to do something left and do Clueless, and it worked. Luckily, we had so many attempts before that with the label and this one worked.

What was that moment like?

I was really happy and surprised. I've always known the art I make is pretty left. I didn't expect it to connect. Music has changed a lot from when I first started, but at the time, my music was considered left. There was a lot of monumental success from "Fancy" that I didn't anticipate. All these people were discovering my music and suddenly I'm doing shows with 6,000-7,000 people. It was way more than I ever imagined. I thought I'd be doing basement shows or college parties and even that was so cool to me. I thought I had fully made it! I didn't think beyond that. To see brands that I knew, magazines, all of these mainstream fixtures, people, and media embrace my music, I never could have dreamt that.

When "Fancy" gained such visibility, the media seemed to adore you. Billboard said you tied with The Beatles and bested Michael Jackson. Forbes declared you "Queen of Hip Hop." What were your thoughts during that time?

It was very strange. I never said I was the queen of rap, I've never even thought that. I truly think it was like a great white hope, similar to the film Rocky. All of these people were championing me and branding me these things because of their own projections and not only were they outlandish, they were all incredibly premature. I had just started and there was this influx of, "Queen of rap! Queen of the world! Best record ever! Song of the century!" And so everyone starts saying, "No she's not, fuck her! She has some fucking nerve!" And all of those are things I never said.

What were your thoughts when you were then nominated for four Grammys, including Best Rap Album and Best Record of the Year?

I remember sitting at the Grammy's praying to God I didn't win, literally crossing my fingers, hoping there was no media frenzy. I didn't ask to be nominated. I don't even think I deserved nominations. People were so frustrated with those headlines and all those articles became attached to me personally. People assumed that's how I saw myself, or how I thought of my music. It's never been that. There was this element of trying to humble me, a moment where it seemed like, "Oh this bitch thinks she's this? We're gonna fucking show her that she ain't shit."

Did you ever anticipate that side of fame?

I've always known that I'm controversial. I love to move the needle. Things like "Murda Bizness," yes — I'm going to put toddlers and tiaras in a music video and I know many won't understand it. Or with "Pussy," yes there is a child and I know it pushes buttons. But I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing. I knew I would always come with controversy, but that was a different kind of controversy. I didn't anticipate that. I didn't even anticipate the success. I didn't think that would be the thing that made it all come crumbling down.

"I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing."

What is your biggest regret during that time?

I wish that I would've handled criticism better in the beginning. I knew I was polarizing. I aim to be polarizing, sometimes too polarizing where I've pushed the limit too far. When I first got here, there was so much I thought I understood that I really didn't. I've really had to learn a lot of things by being here and having friends and seeing things play out in real life. Especially in the last few years in culture and how far conversations have come, I look back and cringe.

Like what?

Things like the Kendrick lyric, something I profusely apologized for and have learned from. That wasn't okay. It was insanely ignorant. That wasn't an experience to toy with. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, specifically with that line, like fuck, I hate that I said it. There was so much criticism that came with "Fancy" and I wish I would've handled it better, but it felt very thick.

Everything was coming from every angle. My success. Being worn out. Having lawsuits. I had five different court cases and all of that factored into my responses. It was hard to decipher what criticism was valid and what criticism was just hate. Even with Azealia, we've since spoken and in retrospect, I'm sorry that I trivialized the way she felt about her experience as a black woman navigating the music industry. She and I have our own history and beef about other shit, but when she went on the radio and spoke there was validity to it. Those were her experiences that many others could relate to and I can't take those away, but at the time I thought it was her saying 'fuck you' and trying to hate on me.

You felt what she said was valid in the end?

There were so many critiques she made that were valid. I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked. It created a situation where it looks like I'm unable to be accountable, or I'm unable to accept criticism, that I'm tone deaf, and a fucking idiot. I felt like I had to defend myself against everyone, and that attitude didn't work in my favor. I wish I didn't give impulse responses and say things that made it worse. I was just popping off shit, and I wish I would've thought before I spoke. The problem got so big that I didn't know how to handle it, and I just thought I'll just go away and wait until it blows over or gets better. But it won't just get better, I have to acknowledge it and have conversations about it because otherwise it seems like I don't give a fuck or I'm not ready to take accountability.

Why do you think you weren't able to hear the criticism at the time?

I think when you're an artist and you're just starting out, especially as someone who isn't American, there's a difficult line to walk. I came here when I was 16 and people don't seem to understand that that time period truly defines who I am. They don't get that a lot of these things are my genuine influences, the same way they were informed and influenced by their surroundings. I really did live here. I lived in apartment full of people from Jamaica and after work we'd battle rap by the pool. I really did have friends that were involved in illegal activities. I was actually in the south, recording with Dem Franchize Boyz, listening to Outkast, Dungeon Family, Field Mob, Crime Mobb. And that seems incredibly hard for people to swallow. People think I should rap about Australia in an Australian accent but I'm 28-year-old woman now. I can't rap about being 10 and living in Australia. That never inspired me. My time in America, my time in those cities, were when I really started having life experiences that were worthy of going into my music. It all happened here in this country.

"I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked."

On some of the leaked tracks for Digital Distortion you didn't seem afraid to acknowledge it. Tracks like "Middle Man," "7Teen," and "Elephant" were incredibly aggressive and direct. What happened with that era?

For the record I love Def Jam, there are a lot of people that I truly respect and like. The problem I had during this time was that I was preparing to address how I felt. I had gotten so pop, and when you have success as a pop artist it makes the label a lot of money, so they pushed me to keep churning out hits. They pushed for more branding money, more endorsements — that's their job. And I made the conscious choice to go along with it because I was making a lot of fucking money.

But in doing that I think I isolated a lot of my original supporters. I also stifled myself creatively because I wasn't making the kind of music I wanted to make. If I wanted to make endless hits, I would have been making pop music from day one. I just lost my passion. I didn't feel motivated in the studio. When I told them I was going to make an album, I sat there with the president of the label and told him that his 10-year-old daughter is probably not going to like the songs. I said, "She's not gonna want to come to the concert," and I could see a look of pure horror etched on his face. The expression of, "Fuck, the money maker is going to make some weird, non-radio album."

They weren't backing you up.

There was no support in my decision. They couldn't understand it unless it fit into a radio format, but I knew I would never have success again unless I connected with my original fans. That's what I knew I needed for me to have authenticity and for me to feel passionate. Not only that but for me to just endure life. Everything was falling apart and I need to love the music I'm making and truly believe in it. When I delivered the album, they wanted to know where the radio hits were. All they wanted to create were songs like "Switch." And those songs are great, but pop records don't work without a foundation. Those big songs are supposed to be cherries on top, not just a roof with no house. Pop records are like Skittles, they taste really good but if you eat too many you'll feel sick. They're not a creative meal. Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch."

Can you tell me a bit about this new era — Surviving The Summer?

Releasing "Savior" was incredibly therapeutic for me. It felt good to have a record where I can talk about depression, and just let down all my cards. It's completely different from a lot of the other tracks which are heavily rap.

Who are you collaborating with?

I'm working with Detail. I'm working with Pharrell. There's still going to be those unexpected Diplo elements like my early mixtapes. I'm really taking it back to that place. I started with Digital Distortion, but that was really aggressive and angry. I'm not in that place anymore. I'm happy. I know my fans want me to rap and I want to give them that. I want to give them the hard shit that they love, the shit that's different, that moves the needle. I hope people will support it.

From your rapping accent, to your pop accolades, you're constantly criticized for being inauthentic — specifically within the hip-hop realm. What do you think, ultimately, of those debates?

The way I've always felt about music is that I never approached anything as partial to a genre. There's never been a sense of this is a pop record, this a rap record. Even with the way music is today, there are so many melodies and variations to any song, any genre. I think a big part of the judgement in those things — not exclusively for me, but for most women in the music industry — is misogyny. Do you know how many men are on pop records? When they do it, it's rewarded and they're considered smart for reaching a bigger audience.

People like to pick and choose the rules. We bury things that don't give our theories sense. Everyone does it, it's human nature. I feel like with me, there's a lot of reasons why people are trying to invalidate me. Is it not authentic because I make pop music? Or is it because I'm from Australia? What about the fact that I've been here for 12 years? What about white rappers who are saying the most absurd things about hip-hop, but in the club everyone's singing their songs? Other rappers are allowed to do the things that I do — even things I would never even think of doing — but it's okay because they have likability, or a different perception attached to their image, or a fucking dick. People are misogynistic. It is what it is.

"Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting."

Do you feel like you're a new artist now?

Yes, 1000 percent! It's almost harder now because when you're new people have no preconceived notions about what you are or what you represent. When you become mega successful and you go mainstream, no longer is the sky the limit. It becomes, "Oh she's mainstream, she's had a Steve Madden deal, she's on Cosmo," and the art becomes dissected in a new way with more eyes. But I like it. Sonically, when I'm in the studio, it's fun approaching music as a new artist. Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting.

#a really insightful and great read #iggy azalea #rap #rapper #female rap #female rapper #hiphop #hip hop #paper magazine #paper mag

53 notes · View notes

storyofmorewhoa · 7 years

Text

Fan Review/Rant: Rogue & Gambit #1

"Ring of Fire:" The arc "Ring of Fire," links Rogue and Gambit with another iconic Southern duo in sharing its name with the 1961 country song written by June Carter and covered by Johnny Cash-- while they were both still married to other people-- equating sensuality with destruction. A line from the song, “I fell for you like a child,” particularly fits Rogue and Gambit. For in leaving home, traveling the world, and in ending up falling in love someone from the other side of the river-- is the unspoken hope of a second chance at childhood. Further layering the multi-tiered work R&G is proving to be, is the possibility that the title could additionally refer to the zone of volcanic and seismic activity that surrounds the Pacific Ocean which is also called the "ring of fire". This is interesting because not only does volcanic activity have the potential to create lush and fertile tropical islands, which is where R&G is set, but because it further alludes to natural intensity churning below the surface which has been essential to much of Rogue and Gambit's relationship.

The cover: The cover of R&G #1 is drawn as though from the perspective of someone about to be punched in the face by Rogue with a split second before the punch lands to enjoy a superb view. Kris Anka’s proportions and foreshortening are flawless. With Gambit’s care-free grin, Rogue’s smug smirk and raised eyebrow, the cover suggests that the series is going to be as much fun as those two are having. Frank D'Armata makes fantastic use of their signature colors, incorporating both the same shade of pink for Gambit’s eyes, armor, and charged playing cards, and the same green for Rogue’s eyes and suit into the series’ title lettering. Though the cover is undeniably enjoyable and gets the reader’s curiosity as peaked as Rogue’s eyebrow, it would have been more engaging if it was specific to this particular issue since the absence of plot-related substance makes it feel slightly generic. However, the technical skill behind it is too solid for any criticism beyond that.

a spread of ice or glass?: The comic begins with nine ordered rectangular panels containing: white blank spaces; images of Rogue and Gambit in a fight that is yet to come; and images of their shared past. The next two pages contain a spread of the two crashing through more past images in broken shards, displaying both Rogue's borrowed "flying brick" powers and Gambit's explosive force powers that break things apart from the inside. The broken shard imagery calls to mind two things: glass and ice. Viewing the shards as glass can be further broken down to two readings-- the first of which is best described by Battle of the Atom's Zach Jenkins as a shattered stained glass window. It is as though their relationship itself is a great mosaic of moments that is being destroyed. The second reading regarding glass is that each shard is merely reflecting Rogue and Gambit, but at a different times in their relationship. This recalls the images of Rogue contained under glass in framed photographs and on screens in Gambit vol.4-- as though their relationship was preserved but inaccessible. Lastly, the imagery also suggests ice, and that what they are crashing through is merely the surface of their relationship. Only once that is broken through can a deeper meaning be discovered. The significance of ice is evident with Rogue #1 (2001), in which Rogue is described as "a river of anger beneath... frozen indifference," the events in Antarctica of UXM #348-350 (1997), and XML #234 (2010) in which Rogue likens her sexual attraction to Gambit to melting snow.

"If time is a circle...": The prologue: “If / time / is / a / circle / then / everything / happens / at // once" indicates that the series will recap the evolution of their relationship. Much of this approach works and is achieved with small details in the writing and art. For example Gambit leaning in a doorway, allied with "Stormy" lightly retreads his introduction in Uncanny X-Men #266 (1990). Pérez gives the characters a fantastic range of facial expressions from smug to sensual, and Gambit's boyishness shines through, especially in the shard containing the aftermath of the X-Men #4 (1992) basketball game in which Gambit grabs Rogue. Gone is the chiseled pirate that Jim Lee drew. Instead Pérez draws Gambit like a big goofy kid, suggesting that even though the basketball game was over, Gambit and Rogue were still playing, although it was another kind of game. My favorite of Pérez's variations on back issues is the addition of Gambit's smile in a panel from X-Men #24 (1993). Pérez's action sequence in the Danger Room is fantastic, particularly when Rogue is so distracted by Gambit that she is hit by a sentinel fist, which takes on symbolic poignancy as a superhero whose powers are initiated through touch is immobilized by a giant hand. After the training session, Gambit ends up on top of Rogue with their lips centimeters apart, recalling Gambit #1 (1993). Their post-breakup friendship which was highlighted in XML #265 (2012) is emphasized as Gambit calls Rogue his best friend, and later Gambit suggests that they seize the opportunity for legitimate romance in the midst of an obvious trap as he did in Astonishing X-Men #4 (2017).

"Same as ever?": Other details in the characterizations do not work quite as well, specifically Rogue's return to her XM #4 (1992) disposition that requires Gambit to insistently initiate any kind of communication, and even worse, perpetuates the stereotype of a woman who says no-- but really means yes. It reads like they are back in the 1990s-- before they lived together, and before they were able to treat each other civilly as friends. Rogue even protests being in the same room as Gambit. While this is done to reestablish their early dynamic within this series, I would rather that behavior be left to the past. I also disliked their discussion on Deadpool. Instead of taking issue with Rogue becoming romantically involved with an assassin (to which Rogue could have rebuffed with Gambit's marriage to the head of the Assassins Guild), Gambit complains, "He doesn't even have a face." A lot of Gambit's charm is not just that he is conventionally attractive, but that he treats others as though they are too, and in Deadpool v Gambit (2016), Gambit even seemed to think of Deadpool as friend. While I understand that it is meant as a joke, and appreciated Rogue's defense of, "I didn't kiss Deadpool. I made out with him," her line: "maybe not having a face makes people... I don't know try harder. Maybe people as pretty as you have it too easy" struck me as too immature to be redeemably funny. In Uncanny Avengers #8 (2016) Rogue is confronted with Deadpool appearing as he would prefer to look, and tries to break the illusion gently knowing he is sensitive about it. Part of what made Rogue's brief romance with Deadpool so memorable was her willingness to take on Wade's scars and tumors in UA #22 (2017)-- especially when taking into account her character growth since preferring to kill Angel rather than take on his physical mutations in Dazzler #22 (1982).

"...something bigger": Shadowcat's line, "You're focused on the wrong thing. These mutants need your help, Rogue," and the inclusions of a gay couple and an interracial couple suggests a progressive social commentary in the background of R&G. Already, two very different sides of Paraíso are shown: a city where people presumably live, and the beautiful exclusive resort that locals probably could not afford to stay at. Perhaps R&G will indirectly touch on the effects of colonialism, or the exploitation of a country's natural beauty while ignoring the needs of the people who actually live there. As Gambit is from New Orleans, which depends on tourism for a large part of its revenue, it will be interesting to see if these dynamics will play a role as the series continues. The greatest of Rogue's and Gambit's many similarities to each other is not that they are from the south or had troubled childhoods. It is their acknowledgement that everyone needs to be accepted regardless of their differences. Being on a team that works towards everyone being accepted as they are and being free to love who they love is what brought them together. It's not just fighting, it's work, and I hope R&G allows them to work towards achieving that acceptance and love for others, and finally for themselves.

#Rogue & Gambit #marvel comics #but what i really want to know is if rogue and gambit took turns sleeping on that couch

8 notes · View notes

pokefan531 · 4 years

Text

My take on Pokemon Unite and covering the problems

Hey guys. I am gonna do my take on Pokemon Unite and put out what is going on with it, and what I think about it. I see a lot of negative feedback, so I'll address a couple of sides of this situation.

Well, last week, we got Pokemon Presentation that has more than one thing, and it covers Cafe Mix, New Snap, Sword and Shield Isle of Armor that came out the exact day, and new things about sleep and home. Last week has a lot of content on it, and they then say next week is a big announcement. It will make it seem like it's worth seeing since the first presentation was a good one due to its content.

When I saw the recent presentation, it was just Pokemon Unite on the entire presentation, and people seem to be disappointed of it. First off, I don't hate it and just thought it was just a League of Legend reskin to Pokemon that is on Switch and Mobile. We will be breaking down to each problems. I will put the good, the bad, and what they could've done to be neutral to the situation.

First problem is the marketing and what the last Pokemon Presentation said about the next presentation on the following week that it will be a big announcement. Well, if they say it's gonna be a big announcement, it will make people have high expectations like wanting a johto or sinnoh remake. You're pretty much giving it more hype by saying. So, I only saw the recent presentation with no expectations, because I didn't want them to make any remakes to begin with since Let's Go Games cost them development time on Sword and Shield, that brought up #BringBackNationalDex situation as well as being really rushed for the holidays with less effort on animation and graphics that I saw from DistantKingdom. I wanted games to be developed well and not disappoint people that last year's problem has. At the same time, I never really have high expectations on most panels since they always come unexpected, so the presentation didn't anger me or anything. I just thought if the game was really worth a big presentation. Mobile and Free to Play games aren't really a big announcement since they are just small games, but what is would be something that is exclusive on game consoles as a paid game. I do think they could've included the game on last week's presentation to have at least a bit longer presentation that is with all its games being announced. That way, it would've been more neutral and people would be like "Okay...A Pokemon MOBA game." instead of "THAT'S A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT?! A POKEMON MOBA GAME?". You can see the attitude change, if they either include that game on last week's presentation or swap it with Pokemon New Snap since it's an iconic game, and if New Snap was covering the whole presentation from Wednesday, it would've been a deal breaker. People would be more happy and it should include gameplay for a little bit. I think they should've present Unite better. Also, a presentation should have at least two things, with a little bit of showing off merch and stuff. I know Diablo has that problem two years ago because it was marketed as a big announcement for a PC franchise and it turned to be a mobile free to play game, and it was booed on the panel and blizzard people has some attitude on the fans, especially since there was no new Diablo game for a long time. With Pokemon Unite, it wasn't as worse since I don't every gaming news overreacting to its feedback, so the drama is pretty smaller than Diablo's situation.

The second problem of Pokemon Unite was it was made by Tencent, a Chinese company who makes free to play mobile games. People do not like that company and I'll explain why based on my research. Tencent is a level of EA, aka Electronic Arts. As we should know, EA is a very greedy company that is unfriendly with its consumers, and fill their games with microtransactions and trying to get more money from people. The best example of a game that has this problem was Star Wars Battlefront 2 when it came out, and it has microtransactions that let's players become stronger when paying powerups so it's a pay to win kind of thing. Also, you have to pay for characters to get it instantly, as you would have to grind for too many hours otherwise. There is also a game from EA called Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, a free to play Mobile game. It was heavily forced to pay microtransaction to progress the game much quicker, and it recently banned a player for reporting that there are hackers, and they ignored him and thought he was breaking their TOS. EA is a very shady company. So with Tencent, they're almost the same level as EA, so that is pretty much the reason why people don't like Tencent. They do stuffs like this too as far as I heard. I don't really play those type of games because I don't like when they decide to make free to play games that heavily relies on Microtransaction that really impacts the enjoyment of a game, but as for Pokemon Unite, we haven't seen more information yet besides the gameplay. I wouldn't expect it to be as much fun since I gathered information about Tencent.

[Edit 9/22: Well, right after I post this, people told me more about Tencent. They’re worse than EA, because they have huge connections with Chinese government, and they can control and see people’s data and such, as well as censorship, so they have much more government control, and they own so many things, moreso than Disney and Microsoft. Well, it was announced a year prior that Tencent would work on a Pokemon game, but SwSh not having dex was taking over, since it was a main game. With a poor presentation, it’s theorized that Tencent paid the Pokemon Company to have their own presentation for the game, or that TPC decided to do that, but more on the former. Still, it wouldn’t get as much backlash if it was included on the presentation a week before with the other games.]

As a concept, it looks decent. The models and its gameplay looks fine. I thought it would be all right on itself. MOBA games are really big in China and any mobile games there. They barely play console games since most consoles haven't sold there until the PS4 era, but everyone has phones so they can play games anywhere. It may be all right, but I wouldn't expect much. If you do want to play a new Pokemon free to play game, tryout Pokemon Cafe Mix. It's a lot more fun and its microtransactions are completely optional, and you an play the game without internet/mobile connection. Cafe Mix came out few days ago and it looks addicting. It's on Mobile and Switch.

So, do I think the fans have the right to be disappointed by the game, or are they really toxic? Well, I do think they were expecting the panel too highly because they said this presentation was gonna be big, but it isn't. I suggest not to make things clickbaity, and be more honest about it. Since I learned about Tencent, it isn't that surprising. [Also, I know they’re people who will have high expectations for the remakes and such, but they should remind themselves that Tencent made an announcement a year prior.] However, I don't think they should go after people that work on those games, or have a divide on a fandom of a particular game, because I don't want a split fandom. I had that problem with The Last Jedi and its problems (TLJ is much worse than this, believe me). [Yes, even with all the problems with Sword and Shield, Let’s Go games, and recently Unite, I believe almost every fandom I’ve been in had toxic sides that will react, and it is the companies fault for creating a mess of this hype and announcement. I didn’t feel ashamed enough with the Pokemon situations, unlike Star Wars, which was fueled by PC culture left and right since TLJ came out, and the fandom was worse. I am not doubting that Pokemon fandom, like most fandoms, have their bad sides, and we’re living in a social media era for over a decade. I never take part of any hashtags for protest, since I was BBND taking things too far to others on Twitter, and JusticeForChloeB was another one. I’ve seen things gets worse since mid 2010s because of stuffs like Twitter and shifts with game companies deciding things like Pokemon Unite, Star Wars Battlefront 2, or Diablo Immortal in this era that creates backlash due to companies decisions.] Overall, Pokemon Unite could've been presented better and the company who made it should try to avoid mistakes EA has made on their records. I personally don't play MOBA games or a couple of free to plays, so I am pretty much more neutral to Pokemon Unite itself. Still better than Sony's recent game, TLoU2. The beginning had a meaningful description of Pokemon fans, but I think it should've been with last week's presentation to have more neutral reaction. I'm glad it got sorta calm a few days after it. If you got information, you can comment.

My next take will be on Miraculous Ladybug Season 3, and my next video should be out nearly next week. Have a good night.

0 notes