#i looked up references and i couldnt emulate them

[seekerquest]

Rephrasing my question: What would Seeker look like a Jackalope?

[shadeslayer]

Would you be willing to talk about the inspiration for you sinti, shunti, kanunuk, & nunni designs? They're really cool!

absolutely !!! :D i usually have pretty explicit stuff that im referencing or am inspired by so im always happy to share <3

*ramble incoming*

[the dr pepper cans are how you know im a real southern usa babe. earlier today there was 5 empty cans in a row until i put them in the recycle bin]

i take a Lot out of the book "sun circles and human hands: the southeastern indians - art and industry" (2001 edition, not the 1957 one) which i have a physical copy of and i have sticky notes tabbing out out and also annotated highlighting every mention of the chickasaw and of sites where i know the chickasaw [or our ancestors, like the chicaza and other early mississippian/SE ntv cultures] so i can reference stuff i know would be from us, but i also take inspiration from all the designs in it because we were all a part of an interconnected cultural network of art

if you are from a tribe that would be from mississippian culture or the southeastern ceremonial complex/southeastern cult as it used to be called, or you know your people wouldve come from places within that like spiro or moundville, and you want to bring more native styling into your art this is THEEE book i would recommend. it is insanely useful. i cant vouch 100% for the text of it, and the second half is mostly kinda grainy b&w scanned photos of pottery and other items lmao, but the first half has lineart depictions OF designs found, with the attribution for the site they were found at. it is a Massive wealth of symbols and style and has been the best thing for wanting to study and emulate SE ndn art. for real i lent a copy to my grandma and then couldnt find where it was and i had to just order a new copy bc i use it so damn much

like i would post pages of it, and before i bought it i survived off the pinterest pics of scanned pages, but i cannot say enough just buy the book and look through it bc its just perfect its so useful. just posting a few pages doesnt do any justice to the wealth of style and art in it. ive tried to make myself some mock style/symbol guides from it, but even those fail to capture the variety of stuff in there and its why i still have it on hand for reference bc every time i get stumped theres so many ideas in there

but ok . book rec rant over (partly.)

i had done sinti homma, the red snake earlier, and i wanted to do a little motley of other simple transparent animals to go with it. so i did! ive got a few different animals that i played with doing, but a lot of them ended up veering too much off of the more hardline ntv style i wanted to do, and the others didnt fit the guideline i had made - i wanted them all to have a pointed tail that pointed to some corner of the frame, and curl around in the square a bit to have more of a sense of motion. i was thinking deer, turtle, spider... but none of those really fit that. so i flipped thru SC&HH for some ideas and came up with some :3

the bottom left one on the first pic there gave me a good idea of what to do with a rat tail, and on the bottom right of that same pic is the Fattest fucking fish and i lifted a lot of that design to use for my fish (and while we're here, the rattler tails on the top right of that pic were what i used for sinti hommas tail), and the bottom left on the second pic gave me the idea for the lizards legs/feet shape, and then i used the chickasaw vocab flashcards of animals to think of animal ideas and so i used the pinti from there to jump me off into doing a rat

theyre all named after the chickasaw words - sinti (snake), shunti (rat/rodent), kanunuk (lizard, specifically green striped lizard, which is why i made it green with stripes lol), nunni (fish) . i use the chickasaw dictionary webpage a lot these days though i should use my dictionary copies more bc they use the spelling style i dont prefer lol

i also want to do maybe a sort of pop art style big print of them, like repeated with different colors behind them? and/or them in a medicine wheel? but those are still wip so we shall see!

[all-the-heart-you-cannot-see]

Mulan 2020 review

This is the first Disney remake i've cared enough about to review it, and i can only describe it in one word: dissapointing.

Spoilers ahead.

Now lets start with the things is did like!

I think the movie looks very beautiful, it's a nice color palette and the locations are all stuning, the set desing and photography is really good, i think this is the only aspect in which this movie manages to outshine the animation. It's never boring or ugly to look at, and im a sucker for a nice aesthetic.

I also liked Mulan, her internal conflict was nice, it showed she was a true warrior at heart, yes she was brave, and loyal, but she knew she wasn't true because she was being dishonest, the fact that it made her uneasy to know she was lying showed she had a good understanding of what it meant to be a warrior. I liked that.

I liked the ending and the reference at the begining to the original ballad with Mulan and the rabbits, i liked the action scenes, they were nice and i really, really liked the mid portion of the movie, it was the time i was the most entertained, the training part is the best part, the begining and the end were kind of meh for me.

As for the supporting cast, Shang was okay (i know his name is not Shang, i just dont remember how to write it) he didn't bother me, i like the ending they gave them, im annoyed by the fact thay they tried to made it seem like he knew she wasn't a man since the begining, we all know Shang was bisexual, Disney.

The witch and Mulan are sapphics and no one can change my mind, i liked her motivations, she just wanted to live in a society that would accept her for who she was, but the way she died was stupid, if she was going to die it had to be more epic than that, an arrow through the back while trying to save Mulan was lame (and also the death of a love interest, you can't fool me)

Now, with the rest of the soldiers we enter territory of what i didn't like.

When i first watched the trailers i was super excited. I love the animated version, but i was all on board with a live action Mulan that was all about war, battles, epicness and cool action scenes. I didn't want this to be a copy or try to emulate the original. My favorite part of maleficent is that is a new take on the original movie, it is not a afraid to go away from the source material, now i know Mulan is widely more loved than Aurora so they were probably scared of making it too different (also is disney kids movie) but if you took Mushu, grandma and the songs away, then go all the way.

I wanted an epic Mulan movie, i think the fact that it was princess movie held it back. Yao, Cricket and Ling only reminded me of the fact that this wasnt charming like the animated movie. If they wanted to keep them they needed to give them more screen time. Those characters are developed in the songs on the original, we don't have that in this version and honestly i don't think the cast had great chemestry together.

Mulan and Shang sure, but Mulan and the rest of the soldiers felt distant from each other which didn't help to sell me on them. I didn't find them annoying or unnecesary, just underwelming because everytime she said Yao my mind went to animated Yao (and how little we had seen about movie Yao to justify the playful i'll kill you myself banter).

The other thing i didnt like was the Chi thing. Like i know it is a thing in chinese martial arts, but part of the appeal of the original is that Mulan learns to be a great warrior like the other soldiers, there is nothing inherently special about her, she is just a girl in the army trying to bring honor to her family. When i saw kid Mulan do the back flip off the roof on the first scene i rolled my eyes so hard i could see my brain.

If they wanted to show Mulan wanst content with her role in society, little Mulan chasing the chicken was enough, the crazy ninja skills just took away from the experience in my opinion. The message of the original ballad is that you can't distinguish a rabbit from a female rabbit (i dont know the word in english for it, lol in spanish is a liebre from a conejo) when they are runing side by side, the message is you too little girl at home can be a fierce warrior, by giving Mulan an innate magic chi power they mess all that up. It was the WORST part of the movie, honestly without it i would like it more, even without the movie being an epic battle against invadors.

Keep the Chi, i dont care, its part of chinese traditions, but dont make it fucking magical, it didn't need to be.

Finally the ending. Mulan's magic kicks were cool to see in action scenes, but they were an awful way of killing off the villain, it was so anticlimatic i was legit waiting for the dude to actually catch the arrow and keep on fighting Mulan. I guess because it is a kids movie they couldnt have Mulan put a sword through his chest, but still, a cooler death would've been fine. I guess they wanted to trick us into thinking it was good by not having him die by falling into the fire thingy, but no Disney, death by arrow kick is just as lame.

Im ngl i missed the part where the emperor says to Shang to go after the girl but it wasnt something that made me like the movie less, i just wish they had made it different enough so i wouldnt have to miss those things. Like i said im okay with her and Shang not being really endgame, if they had Shang meet her at the village then i would've wished grandma was there so that was a smart move on their part.

Overall i think kids will enjoy this movie, but the rest of us who grew up with Mulan will just be dissapointed, this movie had great potential, i think the people who made it actually liked the character and cared about making a good movie, the fact that they had to combine action with a princess movie i think did not work in their favor.

I don't want to be too harsh on the movie, because i think they managed to give Mulan as a character something new, and im also a huge Disney simp, but if im honest, its probably a 6/10.

[saifey]

this is a list mostly for my own reference, but for anyone else interested, here’s the list of films i’ll be looking into for my essay on male homosexuality in hollywood movies during the code era:

first off, goes without saying (i hope) that i don’t recommend these movies for someone hoping for, like, love simon. dunno why youd want to watch love simon in the first place. and i don’t know why you’d want to watch code era movies for fluff anyways. that’s why yall got love simon in the first place. cause yall couldnt shut up and watch maurice. anyways.

films with homosexuality or subtext in the final product:

wings (1927)

you’ve almost definitely heard of this one. it was the first hollywood movie to feature a kiss between men. it’s not really a gay film, though; it skirted censors by having the relationship between men be purely platonic (flapper icon clara bow has a prominent role as the Real love interest for one of the men. the other, of course, dies.)

maltese falcon (1941)

criminal joel cairo’s character (a ‘simpering, sleazy fairy’) brought the ire of the code office down on the filmmakers. in the original script, sam spade notes that cairo’s business card ‘smells like lavender’; in the final script, this was changed to gardenia. he carries around a cane, which he is constantly fiddling with. this was seen as phallic imagery.

red river (1948)

it’s.... a western.... i mean

some like it hot (1959)

this is from a letter written by a literal bishop and chairman of an episcopalian film censorship board about it. (a VEHEMENT protest!)

spartacus (1960)

in the released version, the wealthy character crassus takes a male slave (to be his ‘body-servant.’) there was a deleted scene in which the master and slave use eating ‘snails and oysters’ as a metaphor for being gay.  it was added back in in the 1991 re-release of the film.

victim (1961)

first english-language movie to actually use the word ‘homosexual.’ this was a british film, but the PCA screened it, and rejected it. it was released anyways. i’m watching this one this weekend, i’m pretty sure the guy ends up straight so my expectations are in the dirt.

films that were originally slated to have ‘pansy-types’ in them, with subtext removed because of the PCA:

tea and symapthy (1956)

originally a stage play about a closeted boy whose father sets him up with a girl to ‘cure’ him, the adaptation changes him from being a straight-up sissy to being a sissy who happens to be straight.

fellas is it gay to have divorced parents

swing time (1936)

cafe society (1939)

sweet sweet pansy flavor........

rope (1948)

in a similar situation as tea and sympathy above, the murderous couple in the movie aren’t actually a couple! the real-life story of the two was familiar enough to audiences (via a popular stage play of the same name) that people were aware that they were supposed to be homosexuals, and rope is credited with starting a new age of films where homosexuals were allowed as perverts whose behavior should never be emulated. of course, that idea has existed forever. from the adaptation’s time review: ‘much of the play's deadly excitement dwelt in the juxtaposition of callow brilliance and lavender dandyism with moral idiocy and brutal horror... in the movie, the boys... are shrewdly plausible but much more conventional types.‘

every adaptation of a tennessee williams play i can find (big shock)

not an exhaustive list even going by the restrictions the class has put on me, just the most notable ones. there’s obviously a lot of joke characters who are sissies for laughs who can really be covered in one broad stroke.

also as a random aside: there was a b-movie, outrage (1950) with a premise about a girl being raped. the pca responded to it by saying it was a horrible topic to cover, but since the provision against on-screen ‘sexual perversion’ in the code was meant to cover the topic of homosexuality, it was allowed.