#i personally think the only way a visual medium could work would be one where they commit to the power move of not showing kdj's face

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[silversodas]

I Think There Are Actual Hints That Vox and Alastor Work Really Well Together or More Like They Have All They Need to Work Together

So we know that Vox and Alastor like to define each other by how their preferred medium is better, but what’s interesting is that’s just how they define each other, Alastor being an old fashioned radio and Vox being a sell out TV, but that’s not what they are, what they are is Audio and Video. We even see when one might have done better with the others help, like Alastor’s commercial that he did for the hotel

His Audio was fine enough, got your attention, but holy shit, the video was awkward at best, it makes you uncomfortable watching it. And it makes it even more awkward when you can tell Alastor is overcompensating with his voice. But what he did know was a little impressive, some people pointed out that he probably did the editing himself. I believe that these out of place skills such as summoning tech and knowing how it works are remnants of Vox. Just like How Vox is always Smiling when he needs to take control of a situation is remnants of Alastor

They probably learned these things from each other. As a matter of fact the way Alastor kept jumping from scene to scene in the commercial was similar to how Vox kept jumping from visual to visual in the beginning of stayed gone, going vary fast to keep attention. Speaking of which

Stayed Gone is an example where Vox is really strong in visuals, buuuuut probably needed a little help audio wise

Alastor knows how to lure you in with what you hear, Vox pulls you in with what you see, and yeah he snatches your attention right away and (like I said earlier) jumps from visual to visual and you can’t help but be transfixed

Buuuuutt that’s Vox’s problem, they are just watching, his audience can’t even grasp what the fuck he is trying to say because Vox is overcompensating with visuals, and it’s how Alastor verbally slaughtered him in stayed gone. Alastor is so charismatic and experienced with capturing an audience with his voice alone that Vox immediately loses his.

Because, just like how Audio can’t do all the work, neither can video, and one can’t overcompensate for the other, they need to flow together

But I have noticed this a while back, what made me think that they probably work really well together, or rather they have all they need to work together, is what @cringefailvox said about the different outfits that characters like Vox and Alastor wear during songs that have symbolism to it

Like how Vox always dresses as roles that are the leader or face of an organization Bishop/TV Chef/Captain. Roles that have power, but are at the whims of many people and need the approval of said people to stay in power

While Alastor is dressed in more subservient roles Nun/Busboy, roles that are essential to run the organization but often go unnoticed, but can pull the rug out from under said organization if they decide to leave. In other words, it might be symbolic that he is a support (until he decides to take it away)

So Vox being the front runner and presenter basically being everything you see (Which is ironic because Vox means The Voice) and Alastor providing support and stability (he honestly doesn’t do to bad with support, stability is up for debate though) is another way they, in theory, could make a good team.

But the team up would work just like audio and video unfortunately, video is not the most important part, but it’s the part that gets the most credit. while audio emphasis and supports video, it’s part goes unnoticed until it’s not there. And Alastor’s ego has an ass so fat it’s aw inspiring that he can fit it through the door, so that may have been ONE of the reasons he said no to joining Vox (not saying it’s the only reason or even main one)

Vox may even see the potential for exactly what their partnership could be and it’s a reason why he took it so personally when Alastor shot him down

And it’s just so interesting that Vox and Alastor act like forces that should be pitted against each other but their capabilities show that they would go together like peanut butter and chocolate (in theory)

[girl-in-the-mirrorbluenight]

Okay I've been thinking about this pretty much all day since I saw the hbomberguy and then todd in the shadows video i just have so many thoughts. While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Video Essayist™ (I've only made a few over the years) as a youtuber and someone who has made video essays i definitely have more experience than the average person. There are so many things that stand out to me about this whole debacle i dont even know where to start.

First I want to just give a little insight into the process for making video essays from people who've never given it a shot and just how absurd it is to do the type of plagiarizing James has done. Video essays take a fuckton of research, even for pretty simple topics, but on top that you also have to make them with the medium of video in mind. it's really not enough to just take an essay you would write for a class and read it out loud. the flow is different, you have to have accompanying visuals, often background music, etc. They're a beast to make. My Twisted video for which i used literally two sources for my research (Sondheim's books and the musical Twisted) still took days of thorough reading, note taking, watching the musical, watching the musical again, watching the musical and taking notes, cross-referencing my notes, etc. For videos that synthesize multiple sources or are covering multiple pieces of media, that time goes up exponentially. Then there's writing, recording, gathering clips (often one of the most difficult parts depending on how obscure what you're talking about is), and editing. Even for a silly video like my Glee video, I still had to do a ton of research to make sure I was getting things correct, and that was a funny tier list about freaking Glee! There is just no way you could come up with a thorough analysis by just copying and pasting. Which brings me to my next point.

I think James may have thought (or more likely rationalized) what he was doing as analysis based on like the vaguest definition. When you do any kind of analysis, what you're doing is taking research from multiple different places (news articles, primary sources, existing analysis, etc.) and coming to your own conclusions, whether that's a synthesis of those different sources, or applying it to a specific thing like a movie. Really simple example is my Twisted video where I take Sondheim's writing and apply it to a specific piece of media (in this case Twisted). I'm using existing work but coming to my own conclusion. In the Spies Are Forever video, I took existing research about the Lavender Scare and the Hays Code, including primary sources from the time period, and applied it to the musical Spies are Forever. What James seem to do is take a bunch of existing scholarship, copy and paste it all together and then come to a "conclusion" that was not actually his own original thoughts but either "facts" he completely made up or something that didn't do anything to actually link his other "sources" together. I can see why it has the veneer of analysis, but making up a random "fact" you think might be true is not the same as a drawing a conclusion based on research.

I also think Todd made a really good point in the part about England's propaganda campaign against Italy around 9:30 that it's just really bad video making to not include examples of images from this so called propaganda campaign. I have a ton of examples of news clips, government reports, etc. in my SaF video about the Lavender Scare because...it was a real historic thing that happened! If something was supposedly so widespread and not even that long ago, you can probably find evidence of it somewhere. Kaz Rowe (who is also linked in the queer creators playlist on hbomberguy's vid) talked about this a lot in their video about tiktok misinfo where people often make these outrageous claims but the thing is if something so outrageous happened (like people constantly shitting on the floors of versailles), other people at the time would probably be talking about it somewhere. It's a big red flag when someone makes such bold claims and has no evidence to back it up.

Putting this last section under the cut because I go talk about WWII, Nazis, and HIV/AIDS a bit (watch Todd's video for some more context) so if you don't want to see that post is over here.

Lastly I wanted to talk about something else Kaz brings up in a lot of their videos when talking about historical topics and that is the tendency to dehumanize people of the past, often as unwashed, unintelligent masses who would just do any ridiculous disgusting thing because they were so stupid and disgusting. There are a lot of things to criticize about the people of the past and their actions obviously, but we cannot forgot that they were in fact, people. Real individual people with their own lives and dreams and ambitions and individual opinions and they have never been and never will be a monolith. Claiming anything is broadly true of "the victorians" or "the ancient egyptians" or whatever other vague historical group you want to talk about is usually a lot more nuanced than "they all thought or acted in this one particular way". I'm certainly not a historian and i've only done one history focused video but James Somerton seemed to make a lot of broad historical claims in his videos that I think fall into this trap.

The one that stood out most to me in Todd's video was the claim about Nazi body standards which is a whole mess in general that Todd goes into for a while, but the way he talks about WWII soldiers was just like...weird. Besides the fact that a lot of his claims about Nazis seem to be bordering on glorifying them and their aesthetics (gross), I think we should remember that WWII was less than a century ago. There are still over 100,000 surviving WWII vets in the US. My grandfather who was in the Army during WWII (he didn't serve overseas but he was an enlisted soldier I can literally look up his enlistment records in the national archives online) was a real person who I obviously knew personally and who died fairly recently. To think he enlisted because he was jealous of German fitness or whatever and wanted to prove how tough Americans are is an absolutely hilarious thing to think if you knew him. I'm sure there are as many reasons for enlisting as there were enlisted soldiers. When James talks about even as relatively narrow of a group as "WWII American soldiers," he's still talking about a very large group of real and diverse people and to make such broad claims that "most" or even "a lot" of them were just so taken in by strong german physiques or whatever is frankly insulting. I haven't watched the entirety of James video so maybe he does address this at some point, but from the clips I've seen it seems very generalized and implies some level of racism when WWII soldiers in fact included a lot of racially diverse people. IDK, i think if you're a supposed historical researcher and you're making a video about WWII and you don't know about groups like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers, that's on you. I don't want to discount some of the really horrible shit that American (and obviously other countries) soldier's did in the war and how many of them held disgusting views (even my grandpa who I love dearly was not the most politically correct person to put it lightly) but Jame's claims are not criticizing any real ideology or the consequences of them, they're oversimplifying complex and harmful historical ideas and attributing them to something he pretty much made up. I'll also give you a little hint about something. When people fall into Nazi ideology, it's because they ultimately agree with the ideology, not for some surface level aesthetic reason of "fitness" or whatever. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they are eugenicists, plain and simple. They don't just think the Nazis are cool except for all their beliefs. I also think (and again I could be missing a part of the video here) the hyper focus on the Germans and the Soviets and not mentioning Italy is at the very least an oversight too. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, had a pretty big campaign of promoting an ideal strong race which he tied to ancient Romans. Like this was also a country controlled by a fascist dictator that American soldiers fought in idk it just seems weird to me to leave it out. (okay edit i looked up the transcript and he does talk about Italian fascism a little bit but only about how Mussolini rose to power, nothing about his ideologies or anything really related to the main topic of body image).

And one more thing on that note that bothered me a lot. I think his claims about HIV/AIDS is probably the most well-known here on tumblr and has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by this point, but I do just want to say one more thing about it which is that AIDS isn't gone! I feel like they way he talks about it from what I've seen of this video makes HIV/AIDS sound like a problem of the past now that we have drugs for it, but that is just not the truth. There are still tens of thousands of new infections in the US each year and way more globally and yes, people do still die from it. I just don't like when people talk about AIDS as if it's this problem of the distant past, a separate era that people went through in the 80s rather than an ongoing epidemic that still does not have a cure. Safer sex, clean needle usage, and getting tested are just as important now as they were in the 80s and 90s and don't forget that.

[desceros]

Requesting a reader watching bayverse donnie work. Platonic or romantic, up to you, just thinking the way you write visual poetry would work good with explaining Donnie’s little work motions.

bay donnie, my beloved [strokes the picture of him i keep in a locket] donatello/reader; gn reader; rated t

Donnie is good with his hands. 

He’s also a sweetheart who patiently tolerates you spending literal hours of your life staring at him, chin propped up on your hands as you watch his work their magic. He’s repairing some piece of tech off his shell that had apparently gotten battered in their last tussle, and it looks like actual witchcraft from where you’re sitting.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” you gush as he glides some sort of metallic piece into place like it isn’t the size of a pencil eraser, the tiny little tweezers looking comically small in his hands and yet acting like an extension of him. 

Donnie huffs a laugh, glancing briefly at you out of the corner of his eyes, his gaze warm and intimate even for its short span. “What brought that on, all of the sudden?”

Adoringly, you watch him weave wires into place as easily as Raph knits those cute little scarves for everyone. It’s like he’s not even trying, you think, fully entranced. The electronic world at his hands is a tiny little microcosm of a universe, and he, its god for how effortlessly he creates and moves its parts. You think of all his tech, all around you; how easy it is to forget the mastery required to pull it all together, to maintain it, to treat machine as a medium of art.

“You’re just… amazing,” you repeat, helpless to say anything more without dropping a complete dissertation on the totality of space Donatello has taken as his own in your soul. “The way you can… Just make things. Out of nothing. It’s. It’s really incredible.” 

“Is that why you’re always in here?” he asks, lips quirked up into a little smile that feel a bit like a tease. “To watch me make things?” 

“Well, it doesn’t hurt that you’re easy to look at, either,” you confess, twirling a finger along the surface of his desk shyly. It’s not the first time you’ve flirted with him, and it’s not the first time you’ve watched him bloom under your attention; but it’s new, enough, that it takes a bit of bravery, still. 

“That’s good to hear. I was worried you were only in here for my tech, for a second there,” he says, and only the knowledge that he knows it isn’t true keeps you from swan diving into a lecture about otherwise.

Licking your lips, you slide your palm over your mouth as if muffling your next sentence will make it less dangerous to say. “I… could be in here just for you. If… you wanted me to. If… If you’d let me.”

“Let you?” he echoes in surprise, finally looking away from the delicate electrical work in his hands so his hazel gaze meets you full on. “You do realize you’re the only other person allowed in here, right?” 

Butterflies catching in your throat, you shift your weight from one hip to the other and swallow. “I-I know. But—”

Donnie narrows his eyes as he studies you, leaving you feel a bit like a specimen under a microscope. Still, you let him, because any amount of his attention feels good, even if it means peeling off your skin and letting him see the way your heart has changed to the shape of him. 

“—But I want to know,” you admit quietly, pressing the pads of your fingers to your lips before they fall to the table to trace anxious shapes. “…That it’s different. For me.”

Donnie’s face smooths a little as he understands what you’re asking of him, and smooth as silk, he dips in close and brushes his lips against yours. It’s gentle enough to make you gasp, shocked that something can be so soft and still raise sensation, every hair on your arms standing at attention from the sheer intimacy of it. Leaning in, you seek more, slotting your mouth under his and inviting him closer to your hummingbird heartbeat. 

His hands cup your jaw, pulling you towards him, holding you in place as he tilts his head and sinks further into you. He tastes sweet, you think dreamily, sighing out and curling your fingers on the edge of his plastron. 

“It’s different,” he murmurs against your mouth, his lips catching yours for how much he can’t bear to pull away now that he’s gotten started; like now that he’s allowed himself to have you, he’s never going to let you go. The thought makes you smile and laugh, because oh, how could he ever think you’d want to leave?

“You’re amazing,” you sigh out again, and this time, he laughs, his hands finding you instead of his tools.

[comicaurora]

This is probably a weird question, but what are some tips you could give on character design? I've been trying to feel confident with my own designs, but they feel kind of bland... what kinds of things would you suggest to help make designs stand out more?

Hoo boy. Hm. I feel like I am not the right person to ask about this because objectively I do almost nothing you're "supposed" to, but if it's working I guess that means I might be onto something?

A lot of my design considerations are practical. I don't want to give anybody a design that's going to be a nightmare to draw over and over again. I've done enough commissions in my time to know when somebody is overdesigned and therefore hugely annoying to draw, and that's a no-no. So I tend to stick with simple patterns at most, not too many layers, no need for five million belts, no need for incredibly intricate hairstyles, etc. This is a practical consideration for the medium of comic art, but other mediums have different considerations - 3D-modeled art, for instance, can overdesign the characters as much as they want because they only need to model them once, and a lot of visual novel characters are limited to a very small handful of poses and some interchangeable expressions, meaning it isn't prohibitively complicated to make them a little Extra. The most time-consuming and frustrating commissions I've ever done were for characters who were frankly never designed to be drawn more than once. A quick sampling of highlights for the design features I swore to myself I would never deal with again-

So on a basic level, if you're designing a character to draw over and over again, it needs to be something you're willing and able to draw over again. Intricate patterns, a lot of interlocking plates, anything with lace - those are all things I try to avoid.

I've often seen the advice that character silhouettes should be super visually distinct, that characters should be very strongly shaped like different things. I think that's great if your style is that flexible, but if you kind of want everybody to be shaped like a human being with a skeleton, this advice is not very useful.

I think a diversity of body shapes is great, but the style I favor requires the anatomy to at least sort of makes sense, which means while there can still be a lot of variation in the distribution of muscle and fat, everyone's bones are gonna be in roughly the same place. I can't just draw a square and fill it with a dude. So instead I try and distinguish my character silhouettes in other ways.

Everyone's hair is different, and because most characters have big hair, this plays a large part in their silhouette. Falst and Erin both have short hair, but Falst's is a bristling mane while Erin's is usually more swept and soft-looking. Dainix and Kendal both have long hair, but even when Dainix's hair is loose it doesn't hang or flow the same way Kendal's does - it gets in the way, drapes in front of his face and overall doesn't move the same. Alinua's hair is bouncy curls. On top of that, everyone's outfits are fairly simple, but no two of them are exactly the same - Erin has a monopoly on poofy sleeves, Kendal has cuffed boots and the back-slung sword, Dainix has the poncho and the poofier pants, Alinua has the v-neck top with slightly pauldron-y shoulders and the slippers, Falst's clothing is ragged at the edges, etc. Even without getting into their distinct color palettes, everyone's at least a little bit distinct.

And this is another place where I purposefully try to avoid overdesigning. If everyone has too much going on it can circle around to being hard to tell the characters apart, because too much is happening. Who can pay attention to the fact that one character is sleeveless and one has asymmetrical boots and one has a mullet when everybody is wearing eight layers of embroidered fabric with four belts and half a breastplate on top?

Avoiding same-face is hard, and I'm not very good at it. But I do try to make sure everyone's face shape, nose and eyes are at least slightly different from everyone else's. It might not show from a distance and it might not be as extreme as a pixar design sheet, but it's something.

Ultimately the main consideration I keep in mind when designing characters is - perhaps a bit redundantly - their character. Who they are as people, and how that will impact the way they look. Everybody stands differently, and shifts their weight differently when a situation is changing.

Despite both being short, lightweight guys with short hair, Falst and Erin are wildly different people and are not going to dress the same, make the same facial expressions or hold themselves the same way. Despite both being tall, long-haired, generally friendly warrior badasses, Kendal and Dainix carry themselves very differently and react to things in very distinct ways. Tess and Erin have the exact same haircut and nobody noticed for ages because of everything else.

The designs aren't complicated, and compared to some, they aren't even that distinct. But I try to make sure that their personality is visible in every aspect of their design. Every "why?" in their design has an in-character answer, and since they're all quite different on the inside, keeping things simple means that starts showing through on the outside.

This is also how I can visually distinguish between Vash and Kendal, who have the exact same body and clothes.

we can never underestimate the importance of ✨body language✨

[extasiswings]

Hi! If buddie does go canon, I was wondering how you think the show will address buck's journey with his sexuality? I feel like a lot of the time, the fandom focuses on eddie's journey and his repression/coming out, and buck doesn't really get those same discussions. A lot of people just act like buck is already out or has dated men (especially in fic), but the show has never indicated that. Maybe he has been with men and the show could explore past biphobia or maybe buck has never considered it before and that leads to some kind of crisis.

Frankly, I don’t think the show is addressing either Buck or Eddie’s sexualities (at least not in an expected way) and I not only don’t think it’s necessary, I wouldn’t want them to. Because it’s something that is so sensitive and complex and so easy to do badly, especially in the context of an ensemble show in a visual medium. I recognize that a lot of people seem to think Eddie’s arc is some sort of “coming out” arc (in a very traditional sense), but I have a very different read on it—that while they are absolutely queercoding the shit out of this narrative, the point is not about the specifics of his sexuality but rather a journey about reimagining what is possible/stepping out of the narrow box of heteronormative assumptions recognizing that life, family, and especially love are allowed to look very different from what you were taught they had to be. And while Buck’s arc is less loud about it, those ideas are still there—for both of them, this journey is about missing the obvious options that are right under your nose because your own biases and assumptions about what the world has to look like have prevented you from seeing them.

There’s a reason why Eddie’s arc, in my opinion, has been less about the gender of the person he’s dating (because honestly I think he would have the same issues with dating if he were dating men) but about the fact that there is someone specific that he’s in love with already (Buck). And Buck’s is the same. Both of them are on paths of reckoning with their past relationships and the mistakes they made in those relationships and the ways they were hurt by them—Eddie has a lot of work to do letting go of Shannon in particular, who the show has always been explicit was his first love, and whose loss massively fucked him up—and once they can do that then they’ll be in a position where they’re ready to be together. But I don’t expect the show to label either of them or to address their sexualities at all beyond the fact that they’re in love with each other and have built a life together because the story they’re crafting is much more nuanced than that. And on an overarching narrative meta level, one of the things the show seems to be doing within these broader themes of questioning assumptions and reimagining what the world can look like, is challenging the audience to do the same, to think bigger, to imagine more, to look at where our blind spots are and why we’re limiting the scope of what we’re willing to see as possible. It’s one of the reasons I don’t buy the argument that Buddie canon can’t happen yet because neither of them have “come out” on screen—queer narratives in real life are not nearly so limiting and when we’re in territory like this, something that has never happened on television, the idea that they are required to follow some sort of heavy-handed and constrained script to cater to the lowest common denominator of straight members of the general audience instead of just letting this be a love story that they can tell like any other love story strikes me as a flawed assumption based in the limitations of our own imaginations.

Anyway, all that to say, there is a place for coming out narratives and stories about characters struggling with their sexualities or having some form of sexuality crisis and stories about queer characters facing oppression. But in 2023, I think we should accept that those are not the only stories that can be told and, in fact, that we as queer people should be allowed to expect and demand more from our stories. And while I could be wrong, I think the love story they are telling right now with this show gets that.

[Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying that sexuality isn’t important or that Buck and Eddie’s sexualities aren’t separate and individual things—Eddie is not “Bucksexual” (ew), he is queer—but that a mainstream network procedural may not necessarily have the bandwidth to address the full complex realities of sexual fluidity and how sexualities can change over time etc and I think it makes sense to explore those things in fic rather than expecting the show to try and do something the medium isn’t necessarily conducive to]

[escapedaudios]

Hello! My name is Grim, and I fancy myself a bit of a researcher. Now, this is not for anything important or extremely serious. Instead, this is mostly for my own pure enjoyment and something I have in the works that is to be posted on Tumblr. You are not obligated to answer any or all of these questions I have posed. I know it’s a bit much. Feel free to add any additional input! Thanks for your consideration!

1. How different do you think your work would be, in terms of getting across a point, in a different medium thats not Audio RP?

2. How do you think your work would be different if it more reflected main stream industry forms of storytelling where you as a creator would be more separate? (ex. movies, tv shows, games, etc.)

3. How important do you find the voice acting in your work?

4. If you had the choice, would you stop voice acting in your work and take a step back to focus on narrative work?

5. Do you believe your ability to voice characters enhances the story overall?

6. Do you enjoy the idea of a “Listener character” or would you better prefer to not have one?

7. As a writer, how does the writing of the Listener take you out of your comfort zone? (ie their effect in relationships, plot movements, etc.)

8. Is Audio RP your favored form of art?

9. How do you believe Audio RP differs from main stream forms of art/entertainment?

How different do you think your work would be, in terms of getting across a point, in a different medium thats not Audio RP? I've toyed around with re-writing some scenes of my work in screenplay or novel format as a creative exercise. I love the immersive nature of audio roleplay, but there are some limitations. I do wish I could reveal things through visuals that are too quiet or subtle to work in audio roleplay. For example, in the alternate version of Matador Gothic, Scythus reveals himself by puppeteering a dead body under the last street light that he left functional, then stepping into the light and revealing his monstrous and blood-soaked face.

How do you think your work would be different if it more reflected main stream industry forms of storytelling where you as a creator would be more separate? (ex. movies, tv shows, games, etc.) I would make longer, more complex projects with longer periods of time between release. If I was working in legacy media for a mainstream studio, and had the backing of traditional advertisement and distribution I wouldn't be dependent on being recommended by an algorithm or on remaining relevant to inherently fickle online audiences. I would love to have the freedom to be able to work on a project for months or years without losing my ability to reach people. I would also indulge far more in controversial and uncomfortable topics. As a content creator you are extremely vulnerable and extremely dependent on the good will of the social media climate in a way that producers of legacy media are not. As a YouTuber I am also subject to the content restrictions of the platform. If I were making movies or shows, I'd be writing scripts for much more R-rated media.

How important do you find the voice acting in your work? Voice acting quality is important, but not the most important thing. I think the acting quality is roughly as important as the production quality, but nothing is more important than the script. A good script can greatly elevate a mediocre performance, but a good performance can't elevate a mediocre script.

If you had the choice, would you stop voice acting in your work and take a step back to focus on narrative work? I technically do have a choice because I can quit whenever I want and focus on something else, so I guess the answer is no. The only thing that would make me take that switch is if I was offered some massive opportunity as part of a professional studio.

Do you believe your ability to voice characters enhances the story overall? You mean me personally, or in general? Because the answer is yes to both.

Do you enjoy the idea of a “Listener character” or would you better prefer to not have one? I love the idea of a Listener character! It's what makes audio roleplay unique and what separates it from audio plays. Besides the element of immersion, I'm always happy to see the different ways that members of the audience interpret the way their listener's speak, look, act, react, and feel throughout the story. It is at times frustrating to write given things like the limitations of implied dialogue, but I have a net positive view on them.

As a writer, how does the writing of the Listener take you out of your comfort zone? (ie their effect in relationships, plot movements, etc.) It's a real challenge to write implied dialogue and make it feel authentic, that's for sure! When revising my scripts, the majority of my edits are changes to make the implied dialogue more fluid, reactive, and less repetitive (ex: removing crutch phrases like "what do you mean by..." or "so you're saying..."). Writing it to convey information while also leaving room for the audience to roleplay and freely interpret the scene is difficult but rewarding!

Is Audio RP your favored form of art? I've never thought about what my favored artistic medium is, but it might just be. I've consumed more audio roleplays in the past three years than movies, books, comics, and tv shows combined. Hard to say! I'm still a big movie buff, and I have an especially strong fascination with movies made by writer-directors.

How do you believe Audio RP differs from main stream forms of art/entertainment? Before I answer this, I'll need to give the caveat that I think the potential of audio roleplay has barely even been scratched at this point. It's such a new medium that it has a ton of room to grow. That said, I feel like audio roleplay is naturally the most effective form of immersive storytelling. Using sound to allow for interpretive, imaginative, and partly interactive storytelling just works. There's a natural fluidity there that doesn't exist in literature written in the second person point of view, and a range of imaginative freedom that can't fit into immersive video games, and a perspective that simply can't exist in visual media like movies, comics, or television. It's also an art form that is entirely amateur-driven and friendly to remote collaboration and low-budget projects. This environment of collaborative, low-overhead, amateur-driven story production opens the path for a lot of unique and fresh plot concepts, new perspectives on old tropes, and new ways of conveying narrative that have never been seen before.

[ponchusjbonchus]

i finished hazbin hotel so here is my master collection of all my silly notes

episode 1  

- treat angel dust better and give him actual lines and it’ll be better

- why do the background demons have more variety than the main cast 

- opening number is good 

- when will jesus appear 

- cannibal town is where i wanna live 

- i should keep a swear counter for this 

- charlie is the best character 

- adam shaving down a chicken bone in one bite is really funny 

- i like adam his voice actor is doing really good 

-  all the voice actors are really good. except keith david poor guy

- angel dust sexually harassing husk is not funny

- if adam is a human who sins then why is he in charge of the angel exterminators 

- nifftys commercial bit is funny

- alastors monocle  is on  his mouth in some shots and it’s funny 

- i like the foreshadowing of alastor hating tv 

- lutes design. heart emoji 

- adams song goes hard as fuck. very likeable villain 

- “fuck you i do what i want” contract made me giggle 

- i feel like all the main characters except for charlie and alastor are really one note and it bugs me 

- katie killjoy is still awesome 

- the cliffhanger is really intriguing and i will watch more

final score 8/10 despite the bad dialogue for angel 

episode 2 

intro song is good but the visuals are boring 

what is this cat. who

why is the animation worse in this episode 

paused to read valentino’s texts and the way he sways from calling angel a bitch to calling him babe and being like “don’t be like this” that is like.yeah that’s accurate 

foreshadowing is good 

JESUS APPEARED (sir pentious)

“trust us with your money” 😭

not really resonating with any characters. vox has the best character design so far though 

velvette is really entertaining 

valentino’s voice actor is good and his jokes are somehow better than angels. still a horrible person and i hope he gets exterminated

vox is really interesting and the thing his voice does is cool . i REALLLY wanna like this guy but so far i like adam better 

second time seven years has been mentioned . what happened 

WHILE HE HID IN RADIO WE PIVOTED TO VIDEO NOW HIS MEDIUM IS GETTING BLOODY RARE 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️vivienne be damned but the girl can write a song 

alastor fucking with vox after seeing him for seemingly no reason is really funny and in character . though funny it doesn’t really fit into the episode that smoothly 

hell being shaped like a pentagram is creative (side note when i looked up the name for it cuz i couldn’t remember the third result was “what is the star thing called”)

alastors angry demon design looks better than his regular design 

i love sir pentious so much he’s so cute

pentious and charlie are my favorites so far. i know pentious is a double agent but knowing him from the pilot/what we’ve seen in this episode i feel like he’s gonna be dumped by the vees cuz he’s a pathetic wet slop of a man 

the crackhead play joke is really funny 

angel dusts jealousy came out of.Nowhere. like i know charlie was saying like “hey you aren’t really a real resident” and he was mad about the game but it felt more like “ugh i can’t stand these people” not “ugh i wish i could be redeemed and people cared about me.” it was hinted at just not very well 

angel being lovebombed is portrayed.Fine.ly   like it’s realistic but not outstanding . it would mean more if valentino wasn’t making lighthearted jokes about how he kills and manipulates his workers 

pentious’ tail is randomly shrinking and growing 

the camera work in the fight scene is Awful 

pentious :-( 

first time in a while i have heard a show say you should kill yourself NOW 

imagine pentious immediately goes to heaven after the song /silly

final score 8/10 only because of pentious. overall episode is 7/10

episode 3 

pentious still being peak right off the bat. he gets the funniest jokes

alastor still isn’t very funny 

angel dust isn’t funny booooooo boooooooooo

vaggie centric episode? i think? idk i don’t like vaggie she’s kinda boring 

niffty is less funny than she was in previous episodes. she feels more remnant of internet “dark humor” from the time the pilot released 

okay i ended up watching the rest of this one during gym class so i didn’t have my notes. overall this episode was really good except for velvette kinda sucking . 7/10 

episode 4 

this isn’t the poison episode is it.

animation is noticeably worse

vaggies plain ass delivery of the “angel. what the fuck” line made me laugh

i thought the cold open of angel getting r worded would be a way of showing that his life is really fucked up.though it was just a joke bit which i was not expecting

pentious cowering in fear at pornography 

i really like charlie. kk said that she was one note and .i kinda agree but i still love her 

this one demon has a better design then the entire main cast 

angels real name is anthony 😭

okay the dressing room scene . the fear in angels voice through all of it is so jarring and it keeps you invested in the scene and Val being so fuckinh disgusting and evil . how do people like this guy at all. this scene is so creepy not just cuz of val being abusive but because of how horrified Angel is and the moment he asks the bare minimum of val not hurting charlie his life is put on the line. i feel like this was treated with the weight it deserves and it clearly paints val as a villain. unfortunately it’s tainted by the fact that the writers are aroused by this shit but they do a good job of hiding it i guess. maybe this will change 

it bothers me so much that angels head keeps randomly changing in size cuz all the animation is freehand

poison. im gonna be careful and respectful on how i go about talking about this . i actually really like this song and sequence but it’s brought down so bad and made so beyond creepy and horrifying to know that the writers are into this. i like the constant parallel of angel being his porn actor persona who loves sex and his abused reality where he wants to be free. and the scene where he’s dancing in front of a screen with the foxes intercut with his assault is really uncomfortable yeah but i like how it shows that he’s turning his own abuse and exploitation into entertainment . and the line “it’s so hard to resist another gulp!” or however it goes has a nice double meaning . it’s like “ughhh i love sex how could i resist it” but also “i want to resist but im so deep into this that i can’t” . i am not a sexual assault survivor so i don’t feel properly equipped to go into depth about the representation of angels ongoing abuse but from a PURELYcinematic standpoint as someone with a passion for this stuff i feel like this song did well, but again it’s made so much worse and creepier knowing the writers who made this 

the spots under angels eyes are more eyes??.huh

sorry for the lack of notes i am just. genuinely invested in this 

BEST SONG 💥💥💥yeah maybe i knew all the words to this song before i ever watched th show what are you gonna do about it

ohhi don’t really. like the message of that song actually 🙁 it has been established that angel dusts pervertedness and desperation for drugs is not who he really is nor who he likes to be but husk telling him “hey it’s okay to be like that” and angel immediately coming around to it just feels.ehhh…..it feels like he’s taking one step forward and two steps back . i get that the message was supposed to be “embrace the bad parts of yourself! it’s okay to be a loser!” but in the context of the episode it doesn’t fit. good song in a vacuum

iiiidont really know how to feel about this. the episode was great up until loser baby which,is a song that i really like but it kinda does kill the whole episode imo. 5.5/10 unfortunate 

episode 5 

halfway through the series who cheered

adam mention. win (adam and pentious are my favorites )

i hate niffty im sorry 💔 she was better in the pilot

dude. lucifer is so fucking funny right off the bat i love this guy 

is this guy autistic he feels autistic i like him

lucifer is peak character oh my god

why is??? alastor trying to fight lucifer for charlies dad figure??? i don’t understand this guy he just does shit

this is the character norm called out for being a jewish stereotype. and god i can see it jesus 

i love and hate mimzy. she’s ehh

okay nevermind i do kinda get alastors jealousy

i cannot express how good a character lucifer is. he is the funniest part of this show so far by a LOOOONG shot 

pentious does not know what a siege is apparently. honestly fitting 

mimzy served zero purpose dawg i hope this was just an intro and she comes back at some point 

baby charlie ❤️ 

meaning-wise more than anything is the best song we’ve gotten thus far. through the episode i didnt rlly understand lucifer i just thought he was funny but now i get it! and i love it 

this episode was okay. alastor and mimzy take up way too much screen time for barely anything to happen but lucifer was an awesome character and i love him a lot . unfortunately he can’t save this episode though 6/10

episode 5

this yuri tastes like chicken salad but not the good kind 

i despise cherri 

praying that pentious has a role in this one 

white man jumpscare THATS SUPPOSED RO HE SAINY BETER

the seraphims look sick as hell

emmy and charlie have more chemistry than charlie and vaggie im losing it 

why do the angels look exactly like the demons 

saint peter is .Stupid?????

ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JOY

charlie should be in heaven. she doesn’t deserve being in hell

vaggie backstory! hooray this is actually sick as hell 

how did charlie not know that vaggie was a fallen angel if she saw her in uniform ?? wouldn’t she recognize that “hey that’s the outfit angels wear” 

adam is a bitch and i love him so much 

karen joke (awful)

websters dictionary joke (not as awful)

adam struggling to think of words so he writes them down,,,,god i love him so much i know he’s a bad guy and a bad person and a bad. he’s just bad all around but i don’t care i love him so dearly he’s my favorite character i think 

niffty is better in this episode 

WATERBOARDINH 😭😭

emily i love 

“fuck yes!!!” oug or character 

i want pentious to get into heaven. please 

angel being a good father 

the delivery of “hey……….i see the club has a sex room…………” is fucking hilarious and i laughed out loud 

i have laughed more at this episode than i have the entire series pentious is so funny 

valentino. gross

angel standing up to valentino is really nice 

why doesn’t emily have a nose 

why are we having a deep song with emily as soon as we meet her???? i mean it’s technically not her song or sera’s but like. we JUST met them it doesn’t rlly make sense for them to have this big number 

yeah it’s really bothering me that emily has this big number. we barely know these people and they’re treating it like we’ve known her forever WHO IS THIS GIRL

if hell is forever then heaven must be a lie 💥💥

I CANT THID RUCKING FACE 

i hate this episode a lot more the writing is worse 

okay. the writing is noticeably worse than the rest of the series in this episode the pacing is completely fucked. at least we get some adam content and vaggie lore but vaggie isn’t rlly a character i enjoy. however the humor is peak in this episode and pentious really carries it with his running bit. he can’t save much of the episode sadly. 4.5/10 

episode 7

the more i watch the intro i really don’t like it . it’s so boring 

pentious petting keykey 

i dont like alastor  bad character bad character whenever he’s on screen i want to kick something 

cannibal town ‼️‼️

awwwwwi love rosie. she’s like mimzy but better and more likeable 

i wanna make a cannibal oc. if i were in this version of hell i would wanna be a cannibal. this whole area makes me happy 

rosie didn’t swear ONCE in her opening scene im so proud of the writers 

i really like carmilla’s design and her stupid nsr hands 

if helluva boss is in the same universe as this one then why don’t they go through extermination ??? or is that like. an au

rosie is so cute i love her so much. 

susan is such an underwhelming name that’s so funny 

this episode is much better 

i know that this show doesn’t have the best writing but it’s honestly just a fun watch

out for love is the best number we’ve had so far 

carmilla walks around in steel ballet shoes all the time i gotta respect the woman 

rosie’s first swear came 2/3rds into the episode. new record 

i relate to charlie 

I LOVE ROSIE.SO MUCH uuhg$hd,s

charlie’s song is really nice 

the cannibals are the best part of the show. easily 

SHE GOT SUSAN 🔥🔥

vaggie getting her wings back . i love 

this is easily the best episode so far. both musical numbers were great and vaggie and charlie being apart and their stories being intercut only for them to come together at the end was amazing. cannibal town is absolutely amazing and perfect and there was a noticeably less amount of swearing. 9/10, praying that  the finale is this good too 

episode 8 (finale)

is this technically just a part 2 to episode 7 

PENTIOUS DRESSED LIKE A GENERAL.AW

i love vox he’s so goofy . i wish he appeared more 

charlie’s message is really nice i love her a lot but it was kinda ruined by niffty

cherri makes everything worse 

angel dust’s development is nice 

pentious being forced into a hetero love with cherri,,,blehh this is the most aroace guy ive ever seen 

mini more than anything reprise with charlie and vaggie is really sweet . 

ADAM 💥💥💥SICK ASS NEW OUTFIT BRO 

adam is still the best character in this show. “chill lute fuck” i adore alex brightman 

the battle outfits are cool 

alastor finally doing something helpful 

gyat DAMN adam. awooga 

vox’s stupid dance 

alastor saying nuh uh to the person trying to murder him is funny

i don’t want to kin adam but i Do. i Do he’s Awesome

while it interrupts the action vox watching and cheering as alastor nearly dies is super funny 

okay Actually dies then

i am enjoying this so much 

SIR PENTIOUS CLUTCH 💥💥

adam is the best character in the whole fuckinh show him oneshotting pentious is hilarious . i know he goes to heaven and doesn’t rlly die i think 

what happened to the angels fighting with reckless abandon??vaggie is getting her shit rocked

GET FUCKED LUTE

ewww adam is a white guy.ew put the mask back on 

lucifer and adam interaction this is just peak

why aren’t the angels going after the rest of hell once they realize that they’re screwed 

adam without the mask is fugly

HE .HE DIES ??WHAY YHE FUCK

the hotel:(

“the ultimate sacrifice” i love pentious a lot but HE DIDNT DO SHIT BRO 😭

i choose to believe that lilith divorced lucifer because lucifer was a gay man and she was a lesbian

why is cherri a main character now i dony. ew

alastor is alive ! boo

bro thinks he’s jack skeleton 

husk being mad when he sees that alastor is alive is funny 

WHAT THE FUCK 

VOX GET A JOB. STAY AWAY FROM HIM

sir pentious gets into heaven :) thaht makes me happy 

season finale! this was a phenomenal episode to end of a good series, though ill be real i don’t know if having a second season is a good idea. most if not all of the conflicts are resolved among the main cast. ending it off with pentious getting into heaven is amazing though. episode is a 9/10 it was funny and engaging and really fun all around.

overall score for the series is a 7.5/10 i really enjoyed it 

[markantonys]

A weird trend I've noticed (at least among Twitter show to book first timers) is quite a few of them hating show Rand in s1 but loving him immediately when reading Eye of the World. Which is kinda bizarre to me? Especially considering how they aged him up in the show and he's way more mature than he is the books. And I adore book Rand he's my favorite character in the entire series and glad more people are liking him. But makes me feel more protective of show Rand cause he also deserves the love!

I think the reasons though are cause showwise we can't see inside his head so people who didn't like him in s1 see where he's coming from when reading the book since they see his thoughts? Idk

that's so rude!!! i would guess it's because s1 rand expresses anger (and expresses anger towards female characters lmao) much more than eotw rand, who is just kinda quietly vibing and drinking his milk and being wholesome and keeping most of his negative emotions in his head because he's too polite to express them aloud (which obviously can't work in a visual medium). overall, according to my vague memories of eotw, i'd say that s1 rand is a much stronger personality than eotw rand, which makes him a more dynamic and interesting character but at the same time puts him at higher risk of rubbing people the wrong way than Untoasted White Bread Blank Slate Boy aka eotw rand haha

and the maturity increase is similar. in eotw, mat is immature in a way that most people find grating and unlikable, and so most people agree that he unequivocally benefits from the show's maturity increase. but rand in eotw is less "immature" and more "naive", he's immature mostly in a sweet and endearing way, and so maybe this group of readers doesn't care that he's acting more like a tween (or even a straight-up child at times) than the young adult he's supposed to be, they just find him Cute And Baby, and meanwhile they find s1 rand rude and unlikable because he has more serious problems and reacts more seriously to said problems (thinking mostly in terms of his relationship with egwene here - a certain subset of viewers hate s1 rand for having his own feelings & opinions in the relationship rather than being 100% fine with getting dumped in ep1 and then 100% happy to jump back into egwene's arms like nothing happened in ep2 when she wants to reverse her decision, so i could imagine they like him more in eotw when his problems with egwene are mostly silly and childlike and treated comedically by the narrative, as opposed to legitimate conflicts in an established long-term romantic relationship which the narrative takes seriously)

but if you don't love rand at his throwing a tantrum at moiraine in s1, then you don't deserve him at his going to get a glass of milk at midnight and spitting it out in surprise upon running into a fade! i can only imagine that these people are going to start hating book rand in later books once he stops being Untoasted White Bread Blank Slate Boy and starts developing a stronger personality and rougher edges lmao

(also, all this is not to say that rand's eotw softness doesn't come across in the show, because it absolutely does! i think s1 rand is on the one hand angrier and more volatile than eotw rand (which gets him hate in spaces like twitter and tumblr among those who deem any male character who isn't nice and agreeable 100% of the time Trash) yet simultaneously he's also more openly affectionate & tender and more of a homebody (which gets him hate in spaces like reddit among those who deem any male character who isn't a badass power fantasy 100% of the time Lame))

[olderthannetfic]

Hi! So it says in your bio that you're both a filmmaker and novelist, so I'd like to ask you something. First, are you involved with the script part of filmmaking specifically, or fo you work mostly with other elements of filmmaking? Second, if you are, what are the major differences you've noticed between script writing and prose writing?

For context, I want to make comics, and I'd like to have a script to work from, but I've only occasionally dabbled in script writing. I know I could just use thumbnails and that's definitely something I want to be part of the process, but one of the reasons I want a script is so that I can have something to hopefully make my comic accessible to blind readers. I don't have the money to pay for an audiobook version to be made, so my thought process was if I make a text version of the comic, like a script, I can then make sure that at least a version of that copy is screenreader friendly.

So, do you have any advice for me?

--

I'm a film editor, or was, which definitely involves a lot of understanding of narrative, but that's different from being a screenwriter, and being a screenwriter and/or novelist is different again from writing scripts for comics.

That said, I have written scripts. The biggest difference is that if your script is intended for someone else to direct, you are asked to leave out a lot of commentary and stage direction that director-written scripts tend to have and that novels would have.

--

Dialogue is a fairly minor aspect of both novels and films—at least most good ones.

In a novel, much of the actual characterization is done in the actions characters take or in the way things are described in the narration.

In a director-written script, the writer will often include a lot of stuff that isn't put into actors' mouths to remind themselves of what the point of a given scene is. What would be narration in a novel becomes cinematography and editing choices.

As a rando writing scripts, you're not supposed to shove in that stuff because you're telling the director and other creatives how to do their job. You're just the writer: you don't get to decide those things. The script is less a finished blueprint and more a main melody line that someone else will improvise on top of.

Unfortunately, most of the ~great scripts~ people are told to look at for inspiration are by someone with more creative control (director, showrunner, creative producer) and do have a lot of interpretation already baked in. That makes them more fun for a layperson to read, but it doesn't always make them great examples of how to write commercially.

--

My impression is that a comics script is a specific thing in the pro industry, and it's not a thing that would necessarily be ready for blind readers. If you want to make an accessibility aid, I think you're looking at descriptive commentary along with any dialogue. Depending on the nature of the comic, it might be useful, or it might be pointless.

I would indeed storyboard your comic, not for future readers but to help you plan layout. The visual storytelling is a key part of any visual medium, and a good comic does more than just put the key actions on page. Where are people standing relative to each other and relative to the edge of the frame and how does this create a balanced composition or an awkward tension? Do you need the equivalent of a film insert shot and why? How is the eye being directed around the page, and does this make it easy to follow or chaotic?

What kind of comics format you're doing will matter a lot, obviously, but even in a basic 3-panel webcomic, you can control things like how close to the edge of the frame characters stand.

If you want some 101 on visual storytelling from a film perspective, one of the best regarded books is The Visual Story by Bruce Block. I personally also greatly enjoyed The Eye Is Quicker by Richard D. Pepperman. I remember the latter having more on film editing but nice storyboards and the former having a lot more visual arts-adjacent commentary on cinematography: line, color theory, negative space, etc.

--

People focus way too much on words as a crutch because they don't understand the far more important grammar of visual storytelling.

If your visual story—comic, film—cannot do 90% of its work without the words, it probably sucks.

That's my biggest piece of advice.

[princetofbone]

Goals/Resolutions

I have. Opinions. On goals and resolutions and all those fun things. One of the greatest things in life for me is completing a goal. That said, following through with the things you promise yourself is incredibly difficult- especially if you go for big goals (which is a-okay you just gotta prep right)

Note on resolutions: Please PLEASE start doing the thing a month or two before the new year. I know it sounds dumb because it's a NEW YEAR resolution, not a November resolution, but getting into the habit of (for example) going to the gym 3x per week in November, and having slip ups in November, means that when January rolls around, it isn't new and scary, and it's way less likely that you will stop doing the goal in a week.

Note for all goals: don't aim too high- like in the previous example, I said gym 3x per week. I know so many people who decided they wanted to go to the gym every day, and then missed one day, and gave up because their streak wasn't perfect. Depending on the importance to you, I might even pick a goal way lower than what you think you can do- just so you can give yourself grace if you have an off day, or if you get sick.

Onto my method!

I'm a visual person, and I also happen to enjoy decorating paper, so I make goal sheets. I typically have three at any point in time.

My quarterly goals. I'm still in high school, so I make a goal sheet for each quarter of the school year. These are going to be your most broad goals- get >85% in all my classes - or journal 2x per week. Goals that are longer term, or goals that are not incredibly difficult, but would do a lot of good for you. Try and make these goals easy/medium. For example- I hope to journal every day for this quarter because it does me quite a bit of good, however I know that there may be days where I get tired or don't have time, so I left plenty of room for error.

Monthly goals. These can be very similar to quarterly goals, so if it wouldn't help you to have both- don't. I do this, because I like to hyperofocus some months onto specific things. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this November, and so one of my monthly goals will to be writing every day. Separating this out to months is less stressful for me, because I can push through one months, but pushing through three is an awful lot.

The most important for me- Weekly goal sheets. I don't include weekends into these, and they are typically very focused on issues I'm having in that moment. I was finding myself skipping a lot of class, so a weekly goal was to go to every class I had. The weekly goal sheets allow you to focus in on issues you're having, and help push you towards achieving your quarterly/monthly goals.

The thing that allows all these sheets and rules and nonsense to work is a rewards system. As I'm making my sheets, I write in things I can do if I complete my goals. For the weekly goals, I will allow a trip to my fav tea shop, or organizing an event with friends. I try pretty hard not to make the reward buying something because that feels icky to me.

Monthly goals, I generally attatch a reward that could be read as a chore. For example, one of my goals this month is to read before bed three times a week. If I do that, I can clean out my bookshelves and get rud of books. This may not seem like a reward, but once I clean out my shelves, I'm allowed to buy more books, so it opens an opportunity. (without rewarding myself via consumerism)

Quarterly rewards are the most exciting (for me). I have a long list of things I can afford, I want, but feel like I need a special occasion to buy. this could be a tailored vest, a pen, a new notebook. Is it consumerism based reward? Yes. Does it massively decrease my purchasing bc I only by myself "for fun" things when I complete a quarterly task? Yes. It also forces me to use self control because I

1) have to wait a while to get the thing

2) If I don't do the goal, I cannot buy.

I hope something from this helped/sparked ideas, so go, be free, make some goals!

[bluberimufim]

Writer Q&A Tag Game

Hello. I got tagged for this by @squarebracket-trick on this post and I thought it sounded super fun. So, here we are!

1. What motivates you to write?

I started out as an artist, but I began writing once I realized that visual art as a medium wasn't enough to tell the stories I wanted to tell - it had no way of codifying lore, defining character traits, or even just easily telling a long story. I think it's still largely that, in a way. I come up with all these stories and I "get them out" through writing because I sure as hell can't keep them inside my brain for eternity.

2. A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

This one is pretty recent, from a few chapters ago in DoS, but I'm really proud of it. I just feel like it emphasizes how much Seth's experience with souls connects with the body, which is the Goddess of Time's domain. A lot of metaphors in this story centre around bodies and physicality because of this. Here's the snippet:

And yet, there was Theo, with her soul so unwound there was no fixing it anymore. The most she could do was keep healing and healing, covering the cracks of the bowl with her own hands in the hope that they'd go back to normal. Keep filling the ocean so that, no matter how many holes lined its bed, it would never be empty. [...] She held her so tight she thought her hands would fuse to her skin. As if she could cover the cracks of her soul with her own body.

Idk, I just vibe with it.

5. What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

(what happened to 3 and 4? where did they go?)

I'd say back-and-forth banter, probably because of my time in theatre, but also horror description. It creeps up on me. I keep writing horror on accident. And I always really like it. Just something about describing something weird and spooky.

6. What do you enjoy most about the Writeblr community?

Mostly the fact that there's all these other writers who have cool stuff and also wanna see my cool stuff. I already loved writing on my own, but knowing that there are people Out There who also care about my stories just feels amazing.

And also, the casual friendship between people. You interact with someone's blog, they interact with yours, and you suddenly feel like you're friends, kinda. I can only compare it to making quick friends with someone on the playground as a kid. I like it <3

7. A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech-to-text, a writing program etc)

I am a very ✨analogue✨ person, so my best writing advice in this scenario is always: put that shit on paper.

Feel unsure about a scene? Put that shit on paper. It's like a 0.5th (hehe "halfth") draft that you will copy onto your document and you will always improve it with that second look.

Worried about perfectionism? Put that shit on paper. Even pencil, at least to me, feels hard to erase. It's mostly about living with the stuff you've written and not looking back - erasing is such a pain in the ass that you might as well just keep going forward.

Wanna write secretly during class/lectures/whatever where you're not allowed to have a device? Wadda ya know, the answer is also paper.

Wanna edit? Printing stuff out helps you get some distance from your own writing and it also makes you see it more as a book than as just something you've made.

It also generally makes you feel less bad about changing stuff later in the document, because you have a solid, physical record of what you've written before.

Put that shit on paper. It works well.

(sorry for the rant sbdhagjk)

8. A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

I once made a post about the art movements in the world of the dystopia WIP (yes, seriously) but I can't find it anymore. I'm not gonna explain it again, it was stupidly long the first time around.

I guess, outside the dystopia WIP, I'm pretty proud of the whole Three Sister Goddesses thing from DoS. I have drawn designs, but I'll make another post sometime. I'm also proud of the relationship between the Goddesses tho.

They're at war with each other, but they're just doing it for entertainment. They kiiiinda hate each other but not as much as their desire to have fun. Like, they will send their daughters to decimate each other's armies, but they'll also hang out together in the Plane of the Gods. The war is kind of like a decades-long game of Monopoly they're having at the family function. And I just think it's cool. Goes into that whole thing about mortals being like ants to uncaring gods that I like.

9. What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Kinda cliché, but I'd say this: it happens to everyone, dude (gender neutral). Everyone has periods of time when they feel bad and can't write. Or where they feel like their writing is terrible. Doesn't make you less of a writer.

Even if you're not as productive as other people: who cares, honestly? As long as you're having a good time and doing something you love, it doesn't matter how much time you need or don't need to finish something. Even if you never finish anything. And if you feel like you're not as good as other people: who cares either, you know? Everybody starts somewhere. And everybody has different strengths. You'll get better. You always do.

At the end of the day, we're all just doing this because we love it. Don't force yourself. The time will pass anyway.

Ooooookay that last one was a bit more serious than the rest. Anyway, I wanna tag, no pressure, @fleurtygurl @stesierra @cheeto-flavoured-pasta and @sarandipitywrites

[randomfandomblabdom]

I have so many issues with the Anastasia musical...

It seems to me that the writers put certain moments in the musical simply because moments like that happened in the movie but instead of comprehending why those moments worked in the first place, they made what they most likely assumed would be small insignificant changes that only ended up fucking with the narrative as a whole.

One of the best examples of this is Dimitri and Anya's dance lesson during Learn to Do It. This takes place far too early in the show for it to mean anything substantial. The dance lesson happens at a very specific point in the film and has an equally specific purpose narratively. It is only after a time jump montage during Learn to Do It where it's implied Anya, Dimitri, and Vlad spend anywhere from several days to several weeks traveling together, that Dimitri and Anya's dynamic naturally shifts into something warmer than what it was several scenes ago. You, as the audience, do not question this shift because you know, subconsciously, that they've been spending a lot of time together and have developed a deeper relationship and possible romantic feelings for each other as a result. It's given its due time to make sure you as well as the characters understand that. The musical has no deeper meaning or realization attached to it as the two characters haven't spent a substantial amount of time together where those subconscious blanks would be filled in for you. Trust me, I understand that time jumps can be difficult to do convincingly in a stage production but this is live theater, you need to get creative about these things... or move Learn to Do It further back in the show. Yes, there's a line of dialogue that implies that it's been at least a couple of days but that's harder to grasp when there are no visuals to support it. It feels like Learn to Do It happens over the course of several hours. Instead of two people who have been traveling together for implied days/weeks and have become friends realizing their feelings towards each other may have shifted into more romantic territory, it feels like acquaintances realizing they merely find the other person attractive or perhaps not as bad as they thought. The musical takes all of the build-up and context and mashes it into one number that doesn't end up working the way I think the writers thought it would. I wouldn't mind the dance being so early on if Dimitri and Anya were given any other moment of realization that was allowed to breathe. And don't say In a Crowd of Thousands...

Speaking of, I love that song. It's gorgeous. It's become one of my favorite Broadway love songs of all time, I've been listening to it non-stop for the past week. Does that mean I'm peachy about the changes that were made just because it's connected to a pretty song? Hell no. I have sooooo many problems with that scene as a whole. I'm not gonna waste my time talking about the changed backstory, I'm sure that and how it completely diluted the story has been discussed at length and I'm fully aware that changes must be made when transferring media from one medium to another - animated movie musical to live stage production in this case - but these changes are just absurd to me. Dimitri literally just told Anya to essentially make up her side of his story as if she truly was the princess Anastasia riding by in that parade all those years ago. His bowing could very easily be something she just made up on the spot and convinced herself it was a real memory, Dimitri's reaction to it would be enough to tell her it was. They've been trying to convince her she is Anastasia, she may be just convincing herself things she learned actually happened to her at this point. Not to mention, yes, Dimitri didn't tell her that detail of the story but of course, a commoner would bow to royalty, how does that prove anything to him? It doesn't help that he just told her his side of the story which could easily influence her line of thinking. In the film, not only is Anya's memory of the boy opening a wall something she couldn't have guessed or made up even if she tried, proving beyond all doubt to Dimitri that she's the real deal but the subject of the princess's possible survival is not something that has come up before as evidenced by Vlad and Dimitri's nervous reactions when Sophie (Lily) asks that question. Nothing is influencing her thinking there. The whole interaction in the stage production makes it seem like Dimitri just suddenly falls in love with her because he just found out she's the princess when the film makes it abundantly clear that he is so far gone for her long before that information comes to light, their romantic tension fuels the dramatic tension once that's revealed. Both adaptations have an almost kiss and unfortunately, only one of these adaptations puts it before that revelation. In the film, it follows the dance lesson sequence. In the musical, it’s placed directly after that big revelation and it just feels… kinda wrong.

I think I'm gonna stop there. I have so many thoughts written out that I could probably write a multi-page essay on this and maybe I'll make a full post on it but I needed to get at least some of my thoughts out before my head exploded and those are some of the things that were most prominently sitting on the tip of my tongue. I could go on for hours about how the music box was entirely misused, the total misunderstanding of the song Once Upon a December, how the Empress's choice given to Anya towards the end is almost explicitly about Dimitri instead of how it's explicitly about her granddaughter's happiness in the film, and don't even get me started on how Anya realizing she's Anastasia at the same time as Dimitri kinda fucks with the last 15-30 minutes of the story...

It's all so disappointing honestly because this musical had all the groundwork to become a phenomenal show - good songs, a good story, a good romantic duo, fans who grew up with the film - and, in the right hands, I truly think it could've become a Best Musical winner but instead, it turned out to feel like an amateur production on a Broadway stage with two really likable lead actors that had really good chemistry together and ended up doing most of the legwork for getting people to look over the fact that it wasn't nearly as good as it could've been. In all honesty, I did not realize how tightly written the film is until I started picking apart the musical and now I think the film is one of the best-written animated films in Western media.

This isn't meant to bash anyone who enjoys the musical. You don't have to agree with me. I do genuinely enjoy parts of the show and think it did certain things well. Christy Altomare and Derek Klena were absolutely perfect casting, I like some of the added songs, Journey to the Past happening when they get to Paris and Meant to Be happening before the ballet are outstanding placements for both songs, the costume design was more or less gorgeous, and I do think excluding all of the supernatural aspects was the right call...etc. but those are just some of my scrambled thoughts on why I have such an issue with the writing in this show.

[if-confessions]

I've been in the IF fandom for almost two years now, and I don't think I've ever found a fandom I've liked as much. I like the community here, the stories, creativity, how diverse the games are compared to other media I see.

I like reading IF, but more than that I'd really to create an IF game myself. I've been creating stories since childhood and I've always wanted to tell them to other people. However, I was never able to find a suitable medium for doing so. Creating video games is a passion that met reality and died too fast, writing traditional books makes me incredibly anxious, and comic and visual novels require way too much drawing when I'm a concept artist at best. And IF... IF seems to be exactly what I was always searching for. But here's a twist.

I'm not a writer. I'm really not. The amount of writing that I've done that wasn't for my studies is... not a lot. Which makes me extremely self-conscious of my writing, and I'm a very anxious person to start with (and English not being my native language doesn't help). I just don't know where to start, I've never even written fanfiction. And then if I end up actually writing something and posting it for people to see, I'm afraid of what they'll say, of me not being good enough, or of people being uninterested in anything I create. It's dreadful really. And I know that this feeling is possibly shared by so many other people, but I just don't know what to do about it.

I had wanted to post this earlier, but Tumblr ate my essay again...

Welcome, Anon, to the wonders of IF! Have a seat, and a cookie, and enjoy the ride! It's quite the experience, you'll see...

Totes understand your worries. With so many good projects out there, it's easy to not feel... adequate (in writing or proficiency); and with many in the community having opinions, to be unsure whether to publish said work.

But here's the thing: many of us in the IF community (especially as hobbyist) have not studied writing (for a while or at all)* or are writers either, and quite a few of us are ESL (hi, hello!)**. So you are in very good company!! *sidenote: some of us consider ourselves game dev/creators before writers too. **Dear... you wrote an essay of an ask with no mistake (that I could find) - I would not have guessed you were not a native speaker, if you hadn't said it before.

To relieve those anxious feelings, here are some advice, from one ball of anxiety to another one:

You don't have to publish anything you don't want to have public. If you prefer to write for yourself and yourself only, it's more than fine. Having fun is what matters.

There are ways to "hide" your project from searches (on itch or tumblr) to have a bit more privacy, as well as disabling replies/comments/ratings...

Setting boundaries from the beginning with people interacting with your projects (whether it is in asks, or doing beta/feedback rounds/etc...) can also be quite helpful (even if some people don't follow them...).

Join writing groups and share snippets/ask for feedback. It's helpful to get some boosts of confidence and get pointers on how to improve.

Have beta/playtest rounds for longer feedback needs (like when you are ready to upload/update a demo, to catch bugs or typos and stuff).

Joining game jams with small projects can help with testing ideas/stories/gameplay, and get comments/feedback from people.

Anyway, we all start somewhere, and very often (most always) that somewhere is not good at all. But that's ok :) There's always room and time for improvement and change (until you're finally happy with it). The beauty of online games is that you can always tweak it and fix it when something doesn't feel right. Nothing is ever set in stone!

Good luck :)

[sailor-toni]

I Think My Neighbor’s Dead Son is Trying to Talk to Me?

You can also read this on A03, FF.net, or Wattpad

Summary:

Wes Weston has just moved into Amity Park but there is something seriously wrong with the destroyed house next door to him. Espically at night when the wind passed through the rusted Fenton Works sign. (AU Full Ghost Danny) (Phicc Phight prompt fill for kalyke/aggressivelyclueless)

The cold summer’s air blasted itself at the nape of his neck, chilling him to the bone. It was a threat, or a command from above to stop, but Wes saw something in the old Fenton Works, and he had to know whose eyes he saw in the brief flashes of lighting.

It started last week, his father had gotten a news anchor job in a medium size city called Amity Park, which according to the aged and weathered sign, was a great place to live. Was it really that great if they had to both underline and italicize the word? To Wes the strangeness of the sign was a single for the dull dread that was to come from life in Amity Park. 

It rained almost everyday in Amity Park, and when the sun decided to show itself the harsh winds kept everyone in jackets well past winter. The buildings were a mash up of white colonial paint with tall white columns, pointed Victorian roofs, and décor that looked like it belonged in the height of the eighties. All together it created a visual disaster of a town that seemed both lost in time and missing whatever soul it had once had. In short, Wes hated it here. He wanted to go back to Oklahoma where the sunset wasn’t obstructed by something every day, and back to where his friends were. 

Worst of all was the house next to them. It was a three story townhouse with a second metal house (It was a large metal circular structure with satellite dishes and antennas on top,  and random metal poles connecting it to the house below) on top, and a dead neon sign on the side that read Fenton Works. The whole building was abandoned and dilapidated with half the windows broken and the other half bored up. 

And Wes didn’t believe in ghost, he thought the idea was stupid. The dead can’t come back and anyone who told you otherwise was trying to sell you something. But one day at school he heard some of the other students talking. 

“So, Kwan are you in?” Dash, school bully, high school football star, and future used car salesman said.

“No way dude! I’m not about to spend my free night looking for Fenton’s Ghost,” Kwan, the only one on the football team who  had enough smarts go to college, said. 

“Aw, are you scared? Is the Kwan-ster scared of an old house?” 

“I’m not scared. We just don’t know what those people were doing there. What if they left a science experiment out and it gives us all cancer?” 

“You’re being ridiculous man, they probably took everything when they left.”

“You never know dude. I mean… their own son died because of what they were hiding in the basement. They probably didn’t want to carry that reminder with them when they left.”

“But doesn't that make you more curious to check it out? My Mom’s co-worker’s second cousin’s boyfriend said she saw strange lights in the house last halloween. Maybe the Fenton kid is still there as a ghost!” 

“Well, you and the girls can go deal with that. I will be home with fresh food, a warm blanket, and the new COD game.” 

  Wes tuned the rest of their conversation out. Instead writing down what he had hearn in his notebook. He didn’t know someone had died there. He assumed it was some business that lost all their money or something. But that would explain why every night as he looked out his window he swore he felt someone staring back. 

That night as the rainstorm turned nightmarish, he pushed his chair to the window in his room overlooking the old Fenton Works. If someone lived there he could have seen right into their bedroom. What kind of person lived there? He thought. Were they cool? Did they also like video editing and video games? Or were they like Dash and took sick pleasure in shoving peoples heads into the mystery meat specials. Wes was sure he could still smell it. 

BOOM! Lighting passed between the houses, staining everything a blinding white. He ducked his head and shielded his eyes, but in the bright light there was someone across the alleyway, with neon green eyes watching him. No, observing him. No, they looked like they were trying to say something. 

“Who…” The question sat on the tip of his tongue as the eyes faded into the clap of thunder. 

A week later, Wes stood outside the Fenton Works on a gray cloudy evening, Dash and Kwan standing beside him. The muted tones of the sky turned the world around them into shades of muted gray and blues, except the sign on the front door. The orange No Trespassing sign stood out like a neon flame. 

“Are you sure they are coming?” Kwan said. He looked nervous. 

“Yes! Paulina and Star just passed the Nasty Burger, they should be here soon,” Dash said. “Hey Kid.” 

“It’s Wes.” 

“Yeah, whatever, are you sure you saw something here?” 

“Yes, it was as clear as day, there was someone watching me with these neon green flashlight eyes,” Wes began. 

“Well you better be right. If we don’t see anything I’ll pummel your ass to timbuktu and back. Got it?” 

“Got it,” Wes said. He had only mentioned it to them because he didn’t want to go alone. 

“Hey guys!” Paulina yelled. Her and Star ran up to meet them with a bag of goodies. 

“What do you got babe?” Kwan said. 

“My Mom used to go ghost hunting all the time with friends back in New York, so she let me borrow some of her stuff. We have an EVP, flashlights, motion dictators, and this radio the ghost can speak through,” Star said. 

“A ghost is going to talk to us through that little thing?” Dask asked.

“Well, kind of, the ghost will flip through the radio stations and use whatever words are being broadcasted to speak to us. According to my Mom it can be a bit buggy at times.” 

“I think it’s pretty cool,” Wes said. 

“Thanks dude! I think it's amazing. I didn’t know she had all this stuff,” Star said. 

“And what did you bring Paulina?” Kwan asked. 

“My Mom made me bring a cross, a bottle of holy water, and a knife, just in case. God, she is so annoying,” Paulina pulled out a nine inch hunting knife as she said this. 

“Holy Shit! Paulina’s packing!”

“Don’t shout it Kwan! Do you want to get the cops called on us?” Paulina shoved the knife back into her low rise jeans. 

“Sorry.” 

“On that note let’s get in there, Wes you go first,” Dash said. 

“Me? Why me?”

“Cuz’, you saw the ghost first, now go before it tries to rain on us.” Dash pushed Wes forward. 

The inside of the Fenton works was worse than the outside. A pipe had burst some time ago and the carpet smelled of sour mold. There were some lights from the windows but the rest of the home was dark. Their shoes squished on the carpet, and the standing water threatened to fill their shoes. Through the groans of disgust and fake puking the teenager found their way to the staircase. The downstairs had nothing in it besides a broken stove and a fridge that had been locked shut. Dash and Kwan tried to pull on it but the lock hadn’t rusted through yet. 

The upstairs was picked clean as well. The fading sunlight showed spots on the wallpaper where pictures once hung proudly on display, but now there were brightly colored spots along the fading wall. Dash kicked open a door that was stuck and yelled for the rest. This room had everything, a bed, computer, desk, faded space posters, and action figures along the wall. 

“Woah! Do you think this is his room?” Paulina asked. 

“Whose room?” Star said. 

“The Fenton’s son, I think his name was Danny? According to the news he was messing around in his parents lab and suffered a fatal accident,” Kwan said. 

“And his parents left everything behind?” Wes said. He noticed a large window that looked directly into the building next door. 

“Maybe it was too hard. I hear some parents won’t touch anything that belonged to their kids after they pass,” Paulina brushed the dust off the computer monitor. 

“That is… understandable, but they didn’t even take his clothes with them. Apparently the kid wore briefs,” Dash was rummaging through the drawers. 

“That’s fucked up, Danny didn’t deserve this,” Kwan said. 

“Did you know him?” Wes said. 

“Yeah, we were in the third grade together. I wasn’t really friends with him, he was friends with Tucker, the nerd kid. But he was nice. I remember he did his whole show and tell about space and what it took to become an astronaut,” Kwan said. “We didn’t share a fourth grade teacher, but the school had an assembly when he died.”

“That’s rough buddy,” Dash patted his friend on the back. 

“It’s okay. I didn’t really know him too well, but I felt bad for his sister. She was in sixth grade and during the assembly all she did was cry.” 

“I would too. That’s a lot for a kid to go through,” Star said. “But maybe you can talk to Danny one more time with the radio.” The radio turned on with a loud static noise, with garbled speech mixed in as the dial moved back and forth. “DANNY IF YOU ARE HERE PLEASE LET US KNOW!” 

“Do you have to yell?” Paulina said. Wes could only hear her because he was standing next to her. 

“WHAT DID YOU SAY PAULINA?” 

“NOTHING!”

“OKAY!” 

“DANNY IF YOU ARE STILL HERE, MAKE THE RADIO SAY YES!” Star yelled. 

The radio flickered between a few channels “...zzzz…Now…Yes sir!...Home…” 

“KWAN DID YOU HEAR THAT! DANNY IS HERE!” 

“STAR THE RADIO IS TOO LOUD!”” Kwan yelled 

“WHAT!” 

“OH MY FUCKING GOD STAR!” Kwan grabbed the radio and turned down the volume. “Does it have to be that loud?” 

“Yes, we have to make sure the ghost can hear it.” 

“Star the ghost is dead, not deaf,” Dash said. “Here Wes grab the radio and let’s do it again.” 

“Why me?”

“Because you saw the ghost, maybe it left some ghost trace on you that will make the radio work better.” 

“I don’t think that’s how it works but whatever,” Wes took the radio from Kwan. “Hey Danny, are you here?” 

The radio flickered, “zzz…YES sir you are getting …. Yes … hello…zzz” 

“Omg did you hear it! He said yes! Quick, someone ask him another question!” Star began to jump with joy. 

“Danny, how old are you?” Paulina asked. 

“zzz…Now for the low price of nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine…zzz”

“Danny, how did you die?” Dash asked. 

“zzz… Supernatural … GHOST! … Home … Man … zzz” 

“What does that mean?” Dash said. 

“I don’t know. Danny, can you try again, we don’t understand?” Paulina said. 

“Zzz… Ghostly ghouls .. you are now entering … ghost! … Twilight Zone …” 

“Did you guys understand that? Paulina said. 

“Nope.” 

“No.” 

“Something about ghosts?” 

“Nah. Try something else, like where did he die?” Wes said. 

“Danny, where did you die?” Paulina asked the box once more. 

“Zzz… deep down below … Dad’s workshop … she opened the basement door … AHHH! ..zzz” 

“It sounds like it was in the basement?’ Wes said. 

“I don’t wanna walk through that carpet again, it’s so gross.” Star said. 

“You don't have much of a choice Star,” Dash said. 

“Here Babe, I’ll carry you,” Kwan scooped her sup in his arms. 

“Awww! Thank you Babe!” 

Paulina looked to Dash. “What?” Dash said. 

“Nothing,” Paulina rolled her eyes. 

The basement smelled of rot and decay, and like Danny’s room it was filled with stuff. Parts of the room had a strange green glow to it. It wasn't bright enough to illuminate anything, but when Wes moved his flashlight he could see it was emitting some light. 

“Okay Danny, what happened here?” Wes asked. 

“Zzz.. Zone … just turn it on and … bright lights of the city … hole deep below…zzz”

“Did you turn one of your parents' experiments on?” Star asked, her arms wrapped around Kwan’s neck. 

“Zzz.. yes.. Pain.. lights … AHHH!...zzz” 

“Omg! Kwan did you hear that?” 

“Yeah, poor Danny.” 

“Danny, why haven’t you left yet?” Wes asked the box. 

“Zzz … Mommy … Daddy … Jazz ha- … alone … zzz” 

“Oh Danny,” Paulina sounded like she was about to start crying soon. 

“Danny, your parents left. Why don’t you follow them?” Wes asked. 

“Wes! You can’t just ask a ghost that?” Star said. 

“Why not?”

“Ghosts are stuck where they die, Danny can’t leave.” 

The radio box sprung to life once again, “zzz… no! … he’s stuck in quicksand … Mommy! …zzz”

“Well can we do anything?” Wes asked Star. 

“We can help him pass on, usually you just have to find out what killed them or tell a relative some dark secret or something. My Mom was telling me that ghosts only stay behind when they have unfinished business.” 

“Okay kid, what do you want?” Dash asked. 

“Zzz… Mommy and Daddy … Jazz hands … Okay! Okay! Okay! … Love you! … zzz” 

“Uhhh kid, we don't know where your parents are, can we do something else?” Dash said. 

“Dash! Don’t be so mean,” Paulina shouted. 

“What, it’s the truth, nobody knows where the Fentons moved to. Plus I heard that the Dad was thrown in prison for child endangerment anyways. We can’t bust him out of prison,” 

The radio box flew out of Wes’s hands, the volume rising as the box did. 

“zzz… Mommy! DADDY! MOMMY! DADDY! … zzz” Junk started flying around them, slamming against the walls and trying to slam against them. 

“Oh shit! Run!” Dash shoved Wes out of the way and b-lined it to the door. Paulina grabbed Wes and they followed Kwan up the stairs. The floor rocking as they ran through the water and mold. Wes slammed the door shut behind them and kept running with the others into the night. He looked behind once to see a pair of eyes watching them.

[imaginariumpod]

The modern girl of the early 20th century

In this article, we are going to discuss the way in which art, comics and illustrations in the early years of the 20th century helped shape and cement the archetype of the new modern woman, not only in the western world but globally. After all, modernity happened everywhere. I don’t like to put countries and rank them as one set of countries as being the end goal that everyone else is trying to catch up to, because this is very much a tenet of imperialism and i am decidedly not here for it. However, there is no going around how this is part of a very prevalent narrative. That you can quantify progress and quote unquote civilization and modernity. I think of the prevalent idea about of how progress moves and how it’s a view that is generally associated with the current capitalistic understand of our world that values constant progress and growth, and that history works in that manner. However progress is never truly linear, and the way history evolves is full of ebbs and flows, of progress in certain areas, and regression in others, and there is always a judgement of value that is being made when thinking about the march of progress . The 1920s and the 1930s were an era of  constant change on all fronts, and the world as a whole was marching straight into the modern world as the repercussions of the first world war were still being felt. 

In those years, the printed medium was at its peak, illustrated strips, which were what we would consider to be the ancestor of the comic were gracing the pages of newspapers , and in an age with no internet, where the medium of radio or movies were just getting their start, newspapers were the main way people got all of their informations on the current events, the latest plays and the latest books and all of the knowledge about the right places to be if you were anyone. From the classified ads to the marriage announcements, the newspaper and the printed medium in general was solidly embedded in the culture. 

The 1920s and the 1930s were the beginning of the movement of art deco, a new modern style that was clean and streamlined visually, with very neat and geometrical lines, and it is very much a reflection of the current trends in fashion, architecture and design. It is very much in the spirit of the times and i think it was very much in keeping with the times where there was much more of a monoculture in general, you could easily pinpoint what were the big  lines of the trends of the eras as they all played off each other and reflected the world that existed around them  — through the visual arts, art and culture. There was a generalized aesthetic, if one can say it like that, in a way that I don't think we have anymore. I mean i have been trying to pinpoint what are the trends for the 2020s and when I tell you I absolutely cannot. I have to admit that trends are cycling at such a fast rate nowadays that they do not really have the time to truly permeate the general mainstream culture. On one hand, I do think it’s good that no one can feel the pressure to ascribe to a specific mainstream set of trends if they don’t like to, I think it’s way better to really be able to pick and choose what kind of style truly reflects the person you are and your interests, however I think this does imply a minimum of effort to truly try and discover those interests and curate a personal style and not follow the extremely fast trends that we have now. While before, those trends shifted on a cycle of roughly 10 years, and no matter how stark the transition from the 1910s and the Edwardian era to the shapeless and shorter dresses of the 1920s and then to the more feminine and elegant silhouette of the 1930s, the truth is that the change is very gradual, the shape relaxed and shortened season after season, and it’s only with distance that you can perceive how strong the change was. I think so much of it is in hindsight. Maybe in 10 or 20 years I will be able to pinpoint the changes and broad line of the 2020s tendencies, because history aways seems clearer when you are removed from it. 

Through art, images, fashion and advertisement, the world saw a changing and mutating definition and significance off what it meant to be a woman. First of all, I think I really have to stress that i’m talking in binary terms here because this is how the illustrations and advertising as well the shifting of the gender politics were at their base core. I totally acknowledge how it is so much more complicated than that, and the definitions of womanhood and femininity are as diverse and complex and Complicated as there are women in the world, and that our relationship to gender and gender expression is an ever evolving one and that understanding will always be within a certain societal context and you cannot divorce that understanding from the global realities. All of it is arbitrary in a certain way, but it is constructed with social interaction, customs,  and visual images contribute greatly to this understanding that we have of it. I will be taking about a very mainstream view of gender, and womanhood here through advertisements and images, which is how that identity was constructed during the period we’re talking about, and especially during the interwar period which was one of great change and shaking up the old ways of how things were being done and how people reacted to it, as well as how it translated to the world of visual culture specifically in the area of the illustrations and comics that were in the printed press and the advertisements of the era. 

During the 1920s, we can see that change very quickly and assist to a boom in consumerism, with the roaring twenties, the end of the first world war and the end of a very specific idea of traditionalism, there is this new and unbridled world of possibilities in the general culture and consciousness. The youth goes out to try and have fun, the magazines and stores are trying to sell anything and everything to a new modern young woman. The 1920s is the moment where we can see that shift, it’s that clinching moment where things become overwhelmingly mass produced and the predominance of the ready made. Not that this shift was not happening beforehand, the industrial revolution happened in the 1830s or so and it steadily continued during the 19th century, building over what was existing, and changing the cultural mores and the habits around consumption, but i think that break in the 1920s is absolutely obvious. It is the beginning of modernity as one calls it.

With the advent of modernity came new possibilities and understandings. Of course, this phenomenon doesn’t decline itself the same way everywhere in the world, the context in India will be very different from the society in Japan or in the United Kingdom or in France, however, it is possible to see a significant shift in the understanding of the concept in itself of womanhood, and this happened throughout the whole world. In a matter of a couple of decades, the way a woman existed had shifted to something new, exciting, and even a bit scary to those from an older generation holding on to their own definition of what a woman should be. It was the age of the flapper, a word that came to designate this very specific archetype of independent young women of the 1920s. 

The early 20th century was an era that was moving extremely fast in terms of the illustrated press. From articles and illustrated strips to publicity, the image was more present than ever before. During the last season of the podcast, I talked about the Golden Age of Illustrations which was from the 1870s to the 1920s, and the reason for this truly that it was the last years before the use of photography and video truly took over the use of illustration in the mainstream for entertainment and advertisement. 

These were also the years where cinema was making its way, the silent era, the beginning of the way we think about celebrity. It truly changed the game in a way no one could have predicted. It was an age of glamour and excess.  The early years of the film industry were absolutely insane, and please tell me on twitter or instagram if you would like a more in-depth foray into that subject and more precisely into the visuals, the art directing and the way the movies of that time looked, but suffice it to say that it was absolutely bonkers, Hollywood was so unhinged. There was glamour, beauty, but also murder and scandals and sin, and all of it being filmed in a soft focus of satin and sin. Even back then, as Hollywood’s myth and legend was being constructed, it was a place where you could gain it all, or you could lose it all, it had the appearance of perfection, and yet, everyone  talked about how it was a den of sin and vices. And I will say that the current Hollywood does not compare at all to those golden years, and especially not when you think of it in terms of the dream that Hollywood sells. All of the current players in the Hollywood scene bore me to tears, I am not enchanted by people trying their best to be hashtag relatable in their gigantic mansions and white tees and cargo shirts. I genuinely think that if you are rich, you should at least look the part somewhat, otherwise what is the point of it ? Where are the beautiful glamorous people at ? No one is even doing a scandal the way they used to anymore, it truly is tragic. 

Ralph Barton, a popular illustrator of the 1910s and 1920s created his illustrations for the book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes written by Anita Loos in 1925. His art was a beautiful complement to the story  and underlined perfectly the fun and comedic story of the way the young women were trying to climb the social ladder. That book was adapted brilliantly later in the 1950s and starred an absolutely brilliant Marilyn Monroe in the titular role of Lorelei Lee, and while the 1950s movie truly captured the heart of the story and made it their own, which just goes to show that an adaptation does not have to be completely faithful to the text to be faithful to the core of the story. But the original book was about the flapper and the gold digger and the new kind of woman that was started to rise in that era She was a social climber, desperate, and yet still fun and irreverent. The illustrations Barton created for this book were fun, fresh and very representative of the energy of that era, where there was a lot of social mobility, and people were making fortunes, looking to make fortunes, or simply losing these fortunes. It was simply an era of social upheaval in a lot of ways. It was in the air du temps.

This era was chock-full of illustrators and talented artists as visual arts was still extremely highly valued in the mainstream, a lot of female illustrators getting their names in the papers and becoming well known for their comic strips and illustration work. The visual of the modern girl or the new woman, both terms being used almost interchangeably and describing the same concept of this new type of women at the dawn of the jazz age was developed by these very artists. She had boldness, charm and a sort of sexual awareness and a fearlessness, with a desire to seize life and all its possibilities. A Sort of nihilism in line with the general sense of dread and celebration that often follows consequential world events, even a bit of a hedonism especially in western countries. After the first world war, a break from the past and toward modernity.

The short bobbed hair, the vamp makeup, the receding hemlines, even though the length of their dresses were still fairly modest by today’s standards, after all, their knees were still covered, it was such a scandalous break from the earlier traditional mode of dress, may it be the western Edwardian dress, or the places where dress was still majorly traditional and cultural outfits. After all, it is because of capitalism, fast fashion and cultural imperialism and globalization that nowadays we are all wearing very similar fashion and dress whether you live in Italy, Nigeria or Peru. Of course, cultural mores will make it be slightly different from place to place, but hoodies, trousers trainers are worn all over he world. However. A bit more than a hundred years ago, people were still wearing their caracos and djellabas in Algiers, and now those outfits are being left for special events. In Korea, Hanboks were worn on a daily basis. In less than a hundred years, most of, if not all, traditional and cultural outfits have been relegated to relics of the past. And yet, the 1920s is that moment where modern western dress started to really become the norm as the world shifted into modernity, and this new scary idea of the modern woman started to take hold. 

Beauty and the advertisement of beauty, makeup and fashions were a cornerstone of the way that identity was constructed, because for the first time since the 18th century at least in the western world, the use of visible makeup was no longer frowned upon. I say visible, because even though makeup was thought to be the purview of actresses and ladies of ill-repute in the 19th century and the Edwardian eras, women were still using cosmetic aids to beautify themselves. Of course, it's the ever-present no makeup makeup look that is infinitely more complicated to master than any colorful and ostentatious look could ever wish to be. So at the turn of the 1920s, women were wearing dark lips, in plums and dark reds, and surprisingly bright eyeshadows and rouge, and none of it was made to be discrete and hint to the notion of a natural face. The Modern Woman was painted and made-up, unbalancing the social norms that were established until then. It was a very visible shift from the obsolete and the traditional to the very made-up New Woman, and there is a list of beauty and makeup items and objects that are all absolutely gorgeous I have to say, that are associated with this. It’s the new accessibility of consumerism where it was before limited to the elites, now everyone could purchase eyeshadows and a compact of powder and rouge and those minuscule multipurpose makeup compacts with a tiny lipstick and a bit of rouge and powder and some mascara, so that you could touch up on the go and carry it in the tiny bags that were in fashion. Those items were luxurious and opulent, and fairly affordable comparatively to what they had been previously, especially with the rise of the ready-made. 

Is consumerism  a visual  symbol of modernity ? After all, the almost omnipresence of publicity in our visual world, which was definitely the case in the global world in the 1920s, is one of the ways in which that modernity, along with the dominion of capitalism that demands constant consumption from the people. As John Berger says in his foundational art history book Ways of Seeing published in 1972, which btw I totally recommend to get if you want to dive a bit deeper into art history theory, or you can just watch his 4 parts show of the same title which btw and i haven't said anything COULD potentially be on youtube but i haven't said anything at all. Anyway as he says  quote : publicity images […| belong to the moment in the sense that they must be continually renewed and made up-to-date. Yet they never speak of the present. Often they refer to the past and always they speak of the future unquote. This was extremely relevant in the world of the interwar, where the construction in itself of the identity of the modern woman was made through those publicity images. 

There is also something to be said about how the concept of modernity and of the modern girl truly blurs the lines of a social hierarchy., and that was a good thing, I do think those lines should be blurred to the point of non-existence. Now everyone could look like the popular starlets of the movies and buy their own makeup and clothes that could make them look as glamorous as the women on the silver screen, the easy availability of cosmetics, and of a climate of consumerism made it so that everyone could attain that status, the lines between the social boundaries and between the quote unquote elites and the working class are becoming more fluid than ever. Where the way you dressed immediately signaled your social rank and your place within the hierarchal structure, which, in turn, told other people how to treat you, this was no longer necessarily the case. However as those lines are shifting and moving, the way you could signal your status have also shifted. 

The year was 1925 and Nell Brinkley, a young reporter and famous illustrator, was sending the first strips of The Adventures of Miss Prudence Prim out for publication to William Randolph Hearst’s  Sunday American Weekly. Her stories of romance, love and  carefree amusement were capturing the zeitgeist of this period that was the interwar: these years full of change and when modernity was at the forefront of culture.  Born in the small town of Edgewater in Colorado in 1886, Nell Brinkley always had dreams of making art her career. At only 19 years old, after convincing her father that she could earn her life with a short contract as an illustrator at the Denver Post, she finally moved to the city where she would accomplish those dreams : New York. She came of age during the pinnacle of Edwardian sensibilities and was influenced by the ornate curves of Art Nouveau, but also by the new visual ideas of Art Deco. She created a style that was very unique for her time and was a woman who was constantly looking forward to the future. She was a perfect example of the New Woman of the 20th century. A woman that was bold, vibrant and who was not afraid to speak her mind. Her art was a vignette of a time that's now long gone by, and yet her art still feels as charming as it used to be. Those were delightful images of youthful fun and desire, ideas of romance, and, most surprisingly perhaps, issues of women’s rights and the working class. 

Brinkley got her start and her renown as an illustrator and journalist in 1907, while covering the gruesome and shocking case of Harry K. Thaw, a highly publicized trial involving the beautiful and popular showgirl Evelyn Nesbit. This case was sordid, involving a murder, a jealous husband, and a previous lover of Nesbit, and was a huge news story during that year. Brinkley’s interviews and various portraits of Nesbit put her in the limelight as a talented illustrator and reporter.  

Commentator and columnist as well as an artist, the career of Nell Brinkley was prosperous and she was a constructing a new vision of womanhood. She was writing and drawing for women, and they were her direct audience. She wrote about cultural events, reviewed plays, gossiped about the latest fashions and movies. Her columns and her art were a guide to living fully and encouraging women to realize their full potential. Brinkley’s work had a definite feminist slant to it, in favor of working women and pushing for the rights of women. Her cartoons and illustrations had a decidedly political element to them that was part of the spirit of the times, about the endless possibilities that they carried within them. Without necessarily being an activist, she was always pushing for progress and women’s rights and trying to unshackle the constrictions of gender norms that were remnants of a previous generation. She was a writer as well as an illustrator, and this is how she communicated a vision of womanhood that was new and fresh, and she represented the way a lot of young women felt during these years. The New Woman, as she became known, was the face of a modern generation of women. 

The archetypes of her illustrations were so strong that they were known as the "Brinkley Girls, » with their head full of short curls, their sleepy eyes and their darkened lips which brought a new vision of femininity. The Brinkley Girl was a break from traditional archetypes of beauty. She was no longer the demure and aloof women drawn by Charles D. Gibson that were in vogue. The Gibson Girl of the Edwardian era, with her long hair, her cold and distant beauty was now a thing of the past. The Brinkley Girls were far from being shy, and were not hesitant to take life as it came, and live fully and wholeheartedly. There was a certain desire of enjoying one’s life that was at the core of the illustrations of Brinkley. Emotion, passion and romance, as well as a sort of carefree independence were the new motto of a new generation of women who wanted to desperately have fun.  It was an idealized idea of life and romance that provided a definite appeal to its audience. 

 The Brinkley Girl archetype was so widespread that it was used for advertising during the 1910s and the 1920s for diverse products that the modern woman would be using in her daily life. She was thus set as a symbol of the eminently modern woman. From hair curlers that « will not break your hair » to henna dye and face powder, the curly haired young women of Nell Brinkley were a good example of how illustration was used as part of advertisement in the early 20th century, blurring the lines between art and capitalism. The Brinkley Girl was known in the cultural sphere as being a symbol of a new generation of young women who were fearless, representing a vision of womanhood that was progressive and a celebration of independence as well as pleasure. 

In the 1920s, her art involved sequential images and interesting stories, all starring young women as the main protagonists and centering their point of view. Starting with her serials in the 1910s and steadily creating comics during the rest of her career, she was an incredibly prolific author. From 1918 and onwards, most of her comics were full page and full color, a privilege reserved for very few artists during those years.  

The Adventures of Prudence Prim, written by Carolyn Wells  and illustrated by Brinkley, follows the life of a young lady who lives with her two sensible Edwardian aunts, and who has dreams of romance and  adventures. Prudence takes the opportunity of her aunts taking a nap to go out and experiencing life for herself, after all  « now if I just sit still and do exactly as I ought - I’ll never get a thrill ! » And so the adventures of Miss Pruddy Prim begin ! They are told each Sunday as she lives through new experiences and goes out and wears glamorous and fantastical ensembles. The pages are peppered with the different characters that Prudence Prim meets during her adventures, from society ladies with beautiful clothes and bobbed hair to dashing suitors who sweep her off her feet. Brinkley truly takes the time to dress all of her characters in fanciful outfits to match the universe she creates. The story is told by small, witty verses with a lot of good humor. Those narratives capture a certain desire for escape and the new daring sensibilities of young women, of their hunger for love and life. It is complete with the details of the latest fashion and decorated with illustrations of roses which will eventually influence the style of shoujo manga in the 1970s, with its abundance of roses, the drama, and extravagance of feelings.

The art of Brinkley creates a very indulgent feminine universe, where the men are dashing and noble, but still drawn in a very feminine way. It is in line with the slight gender fluidity of the time, where men were more delicate and women were cutting their hair short. Nonetheless, her worlds were utterly feminine and yet were trying to change what this world meant for the young woman of the interwar period —  to leave the past behind and move toward the future and document the rapid changing social norms for women.  Her style is especially striking in its transitional quality between art — the heavily ornamented and rounded lines of the Art Nouveau years in which she came of age and the streamlined and fashionable lines of Art Déco. It is a style that found a lot of admirers, but also a lot of detractors. She truly made her signature style one that captured the new woman of the era. She captured a very specific moment in time and the way women might have understood themselves. This understanding was not universal, however it captured the way American women wanted to visualize themselves. The way they wanted to represent and depict their future. It was an ideation that was becoming reality. In a way, Brinkley was creating the future through her art. Of course, she was not the only one. She was simply part of a moment in time, but I do have to say that Brinkley, with her frothy pictures and her fanciful curves was successful in a way a lot of artists were not. 

To me, she represents a very feminine idea, and to me, this type of art often receives criticism simply for daring to be feminine, maybe a bit shallow, maybe a bit superficial, but after all very cute and very fun. The rococo genre of the 18th century received similar criticisms in my opinion for being sugary and cute and overtly feminine. And this is simply always an unfair criticism to me, because judging something being aligned with femininity negatively comparatively to something more masculine is just plain old sexism. It’s not that the genre of rococo is devoid of criticism, there can be much to criticize, but people mostly bring up the fact that its frilly and pink and for some reason, that means it is not a sign of serious art. After all, this is what the neoclassical movement that followed was about. Something more visually sober, and more serious in its subject. And once again, the pendulum of taste swings. 

Nell Brinkley was interesting as an artist that had this idea of the new woman being at the center of all the work she was doing. She was active during an era of profound change in the way women were perceived and perceived themselves, and whose art was something that was created solely for the modern woman. Brinkley was a daring and brave woman, with a taste for excitement and joy. She did not back down from any challenge; she flew a biplane in 1914, illustrated it, and commented on it for her audience's pleasure:« Nell Brinkley Tastes Joys of Real Freedom Soaring in Clouds ».  She had adventures of her own and lived a full and brazen life. She got married to Bruce McRae II in 1920, and then she divorced him. I have to mention that he was several years younger than she was, so she was breaking boundaries in all sorts of ways, 

She was a mother but also a career woman, and always followed her heart and ambitions no matter where they took her. Despite knowing a widespread cultural and financial success during her time, Nell Brinkley went the same road as many successful women artists often do, and was subsequently rapidly forgotten by history apart from the niche academics and amateurs of early 20th century comics. What she accomplished was no small feat. She managed to create this pictorial universe that understood the preoccupations of a modern woman, from her leisure to work to romance, from her activism to her frivolities, and how to balance all of it. She was a modern woman through and through.

This archetype of the modern girl is an intrinsic part of national identity and how those identities shaped the way she was understood and the way she was perceived by the general public, not only domestically but also internationally. She was also used for pushing political agendas either as to how the youth, and especially young women, were out of control, and trying to reassert the previous order of things, were women were not going out partying at all hours of days, and were expected to stay home.  Or, on the flipside, using those young women living their lives as a political statement about how much more modern and civilized she was compared to the quote unquote retrograde societies and traditions. And this happened not only in the western world, but in Russia, India, China, Japan and elsewhere. From the illustrations and caricatures of Guo Jianying who satirized this new type of modern woman in China, with jokes and piques about the way things were changing, and changing fast, to the ads in various news papers across the world that promised  their customers beauty and pleasure.

During the interwar, the illustrated advertisements for the brand Shiseido, a brand that started in 1872 and still is a sizable part of the beauty landscape today, and that revolutionized the market for the modern woman in Japan, were at the intersection of art, design and advertisement. These images were ones that were communicating an idea of modernity and newness, and yet advertised products that helped the consumer access this new ideal and be able to adhere to the beauty standards of the era, that were particular to Japan. 

Shiseido’s graphic design communicated an idea of chic elegance that was becoming an aspirational quality during the interwar. The poster design by Sawa Reika in 1927 shows a young blonde woman wearing a fashionable evening dress holding a camelia flower, the brand’s logo, which was designed by Yabe Sue in 1924, all with the streamlined aesthetic conventions of art deco, and a limited palette of colors The result is minimalist and beautiful, and conveys so efficiently this new type of lifestyle and modernity that was being created, all through the use of graphic designs and cosmetics advertisements. 

Even though the concept itself the of womanhood during the interwar was a mix of effervescence in the way it developed and grew and changed, and how, it stayed the same in a lot of ways. The illustrations of journals and magazine covers such the covers of the german graphic design journal « die reklame » in 1929 by Albert Rabenbauer were just another way the image of the modern woman got used in the art and the advertisements, not only helping to construct the idea of a modern woman, but the way that cosmopolitanism and the life in the urbane centers, full of the busy bustle of cities is just another way young women could enjoy a certain anonymity and freedom.

The idea of a chic and cosmopolitan world of material goods, of parties, of champagne and music, of a worldly but extremely fun woman at the center of it was one that was dominating the imagination. Ethel hays had small comic illustrations in the papers that satirized and caricatured that specific archetype of the flapper. Her character « Flapper Fanny » was the woman who was fashionable, a bit silly and yet, still very witty. Hays’ illustrations are extremely adorable, and manage to land a joke or a line with only a small drawing. The modern woman, the flapper, the gamine, this idea of the intrepid fashionable new woman was constructing itself in reality and also through the art, the illustrations and the visual representations of her in the advertisements and those, in turn, helped shape the way that the modern woman saw herself. Despite what she represented about this new era, being used to express concepts of modernity, a fear of change when women are going out and gaining those newfound freedom, being bolder and more in touch with their sexualities and their expanding idea of femininity, these women were still people and not only concepts about which people could discourse and debate, and I think this is something that is quite often forgotten.