#its been SO. SO SO LONG. since ive drawn together with anybody and i miss that feeling ngl 😭😭

[daughterthethird]

PONDERING RN… does any of my artist mutuals/friends wanna maybeeeee… yknoooowwwww… draw with me on aggie.io… someday… or possibly even today… 👉👈

[vincent-marie]

A Look Back on TREASURE PLANET

So recently I rewatched TREASURE PLANET for the first time in about fifteen years and… I'm not gonna lie, it's still my personal favorite of the 2D Disney animated features from the early to mid-2000s.

Let's be real. Of the 2D features Disney released around that time period, TREASURE PLANET is one of the more solid films. ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE had some interesting ideas and some really nice design work and animation, but it really needed to be at least two hours long if it wanted to flesh out the characters and the world-building without requiring supplementary material (like a special edition of Disney Adventure magazine). Hardly anybody remembers BROTHER BEAR was even a thing, and the less said about HOME ON THE RANGE, the better. (Seriously, that movie wasn't even worth the Steve Buscemi cameo.)

The only other film of that era that has really held up was LILO AND STITCH, and I'll admit it's probably a better film than TREASURE PLANET. It took more risks in terms of character, setting and originality, and emotionally it leaves more of an impact. (That scene when Nani sings to Lilo makes me cry like a baby every time.) My only problem with it is it always felt like two entirely different movies collided with each other and it never felt like they really meshed well. Otherwise, I agree with most fans that it’s a good film.

Also, of course, there was the excellent THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE, which was just such a huge departure from Disney’s normal schtick and trying something more Tex Avery-esque, only for it to be a perfect storm instead of a total crash and burn. That is much to be proud of.

Going back to TREASURE PLANET, I can understand that most folks walk away saying it’s an "okay" film. I, however, am not one of those people. I've had a real soft spot for this movie ever since I saw it, but now I appreciate this film for additional reasons.

Namely, the animation and effects work. Holy crap, is this movie gorgeous! It's like watching Don Bluth's ANASTASIA, except I don't have to feel guilty about historical inaccuracies. (Now it’s just scientific inaccuracies, but STAR WARS gets away with that all the time.)

Directors John Musker and Ron Clements had apparently wanted to do a sci-fi retelling of "Treasure Island" since before they started working on THE LITTLE MERMAID. With that in mind I do feel like this movie would have fared better with critics back in the early 90s during the Disney Renaissance. However at that time they would not have had such elaborate and detailed CG effects within arm's reach. There's something I really enjoy about the use of 3D backdrops so that they may do sweeping camera movements, and that's not even getting into the lighting effects to establish atmosphere.

What's more, there are a lot of subtleties to the character animation that I never appreciated until now. You could just pick one character and focus on him or her during the whole movie and find a lot of fun little quirks in their dialogue or walk cycles.

Admittedly, much of this film’s appeal probably depends on how much of an animation fan you are. In my case I was watching John Silver’s animation and I suspected that Glen Keane was probably in charge of animating him (as there are moments when Silver looks so much like Ratigan). Those suspicions were confirmed during the end credits and I was delightfully geeking out about it.

It’s also easy to see where this film might not have had a lot of mass appeal. Most of the focus on the story is on Jim Hawkins and his daddy issues, which by the early 2000s was already a cliche of a character arc. And it’s not helped by the fact that Jim himself is... well, kind of on the bland side as a protagonist. There’s not a lot about him that makes him any more or less interesting than any other teenage male lead. But for what it is I think the movie did fine at establishing and building the relationship between Jim and Silver, which does have its warm and comforting moments. For both of them.

And at least the film is straightforward with its plot and characters and it’s not a structural mess like HERCULES, a previous venture by Musker and Clements.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is that TREASURE PLANET has a little bit of a cult following. I distinctly remember this one time when I was taking a storyboard class in college; we were assigned to do a “Master Study” assignment by recreating the key story frames in our favorite scene in a favorite animated movie. One of my classmates picked the scene when Jim is brought home to the inn by the police and embarrasses his mother. I recall being so impressed, and even a little envious, that she got the character design style down to a T. (If you’re wondering what movie/scene I picked for my Master Study, I picked the Big Ben scene from THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE.)

Then, of course, some friends and I suspect that TREASURE PLANET might have fared better if it had been released a bit later, more towards the height of the Steampunk craze. It’s not quite what I would call “Steampunk”, as it takes place in a sort of alternate universe version of the 18th century and not the Gothic era, and most of their transport is solar-powered and not steam-based. Nevertheless it’s easy to see how fans of Steampunk could find it appealing, with its mostly earth-tone color pallet to evoke the painted illustrations of the classic novel it was based on. Also that combination of a pre-20th century aesthetic with out-of-this-world science fiction elements is pretty much, in my opinion, what makes Steampunk so much fun to play around with. Also, a robot made out of copper. End of story.

In terms of why this film didn’t do so well when it was released, I suspect what stunted its success was the marketing. I could be wrong, as I was actually living in Honduras at the time of the film’s release, but we got some TV stations from Denver, Colorado. I remember a lot of the TV spots spent most of their time highlighting the goofy comic relief moments with Morph, and there was a real emphasis on the presence of B.E.N., even though he's in less than one-third of the movie. In other words, the film's success might have been partially sabotaged by a marketing team that seemed to think if you don’t take your film seriously at all that will somehow draw in the crowd.

Although speaking of the comic relief characters, I actually don’t mind them that much. I always thought Morph had a lot of cute, funny moments that weren’t too obnoxious. As for B.E.N., I kind of have mixed feelings for him. On one hand, the directing team made better use of Martin Short’s improvisational skills than PEBBLE AND THE PENGUIN or WE’RE BACK! ever did. But on the other hand, does B.E.N. have to be so loud and shouty? However, while B.E.N. is a real screw-up, he’s not so much to the point where I want to see him get smashed with a sledgehammer. He’s generally likable, not at all loathsome, and just annoying enough, but not TOO annoying.

However while we’re still on the subject of B.E.N., I’d just like to add that the CG animation on him is really nice. Making him 3D gives him a sort of sense of solidity compared to his hand-drawn humanoid compadres, and to top it off his animation isn’t at all stiff or feels like the CG is holding him back. There is some really expressive squashing and stretching going on with his dialogue. It’s so subtle in places that you’d probably miss it if you’re not looking for it. A lot of CG animation studios at the time like Pixar and Dreamworks had not quite mastered squashing and stretching themselves, so kudos to Disney for pulling it off so well.

Now if I may indulge a little on why I remember this film fondly, my favorite characters were always Dr. Doppler and Captain Amelia. They are both fun and engaging on their own, but together they are weirdly adorable. Granted, I've always thought them getting together at the end was a bit rushed, but I still totally buy it.

(What I don't buy is that they'd be so eager to have kids after Doppler showed such annoyance and revulsion towards that toddler alien girl at the beginning. I get that the creators wanted some visual shorthand to indicate that they're an official couple, but they could have just been wearing wedding rings or throw in a little more of them dancing together.)

Part of the reason I love these characters on their own is the casting. I was already familiar with Emma Thompson from Ang Lee's adaptation of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, and her character of Eleanor Dashwood was very quiet and reserved. You can imagine my disbelief and delight hearing her play an assertive, witty badass as Amelia. (As if I didn't already think Amelia’s design was cool.)

As for David Hyde Pierce, I had only occasionally watched FRASIER growing up, but when I saw this movie I was familiar with him through some other memorable voice acting roles, particularly that excellent Season 8 episode of THE SIMPSONS, “Brother From Another Series.” In other words, I already knew him to be funny, snarky and charismatic.

While I'm on about the casting, I feel like there's a totally wasted opportunity to have these two characters in a room together, say, before the black hole scene, exchanging witty banter to show how compatible they are in a casual setting. It’s a shame that Emma and David didn’t record their dialogue together, because with her being an accomplished writer and with his skills at improvisation, there could have been some good verbal combat by way of “Much Ado About Nothing-Meets-Frasier.”

But looking back, I remember I immediately loved Captain Amelia just on principal. As a kid I never really gravitated that much to any of the Disney princesses. I can’t really describe why, but it was mostly how they were marketed as just looking pretty and (arguably) kind of passive in their own stories. Not to mention how when Disney Princess became a brand, they really amped up the girly cutesy-ness to their preexisting images. Not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with cute or feminine things, but it really made me feel like a weirdo who somehow wasn’t fit to be called a girl.

Captain Amelia, on the other hand, had her own style of femininity by wearing a classy, more masculine captain’s uniform along with thigh-high high-heeled boots (that she has no problem running in). She had a no-nonsense attitude, she was focused and cool-headed in a stressful situation, she was downright snarky and took crap from no one. In other words, she was the type of woman I wanted to be when I grew up, and to this day she is my favorite Disney Lady, bar none.

And while I’m at it, I’m just going to add that I’ve always found Dr. Doppler more attractive than your standard Disney prince. Besides his character design looking like a canine version of Roger from 101 DALMATIONS, he just always seemed like he’d be fun to get a coffee with.

Well, that’s about all I really want to talk about regarding TREASURE PLANET. It’s a shame it’s not remembered by more people as it does have some really good elements to it, but in some regards I can kind of see why it wasn’t a huge critical success. If you haven’t seen it already I recommend checking it out as it’s a pretty solid standalone film that doesn’t need supplementary material and covers all the bases with the plot and some fun character moments here and there. If you’re an animation fan I cannot stress enough how you really need to watch it, or even rewatch it, because, again, the animation and effects work is just a real feast for the eyes.

[grizzbe]

Well, The Golden Circle has come, and what we feared most became true. So I've tried to fix it! It should go without saying that this isn't connected to the other chapters in Mission Reports and as we go forward, any chapter in which Tilde is around at all is an AU for The Golden Circle and any chapter where Eggsy and Roxy have been together since The Secret Service is a different AU. It should also go without saying that the fic contains TGC spoilers and you shouldn't read if you haven't seen the movie yet. All of that being said, I hope y'all like this! As always, if you have an idea for a one-shot you'd like me to give a look at, just leave a comment!

You could hear a pin drop. The others sat silently at the table, their jaws slack, staring at their guest. Eggsy's shout still echoed faintly from the ornately designed walls. He had just seen one of his best friends vaporized by a missile through his Kingsman glasses.

How could this be? His house's location was top secret… Charlie. Eggsy knew that this had to be that tosser's fault. There wasn't enough time to focus his anger on the failed Kingsman candidate, though. If his house had just been hit, it was only a matter of time…

"Rox," said Eggsy, not bothering with the pretense of texting anymore. "My house was just hit, the mansion has to be next."

To her credit, Roxy didn't miss a beat. While she had just been lounging a moment before, by the time Eggsy had said "hit" she was up and moving towards a fortified shelter. Eggsy was already stepping away from the dinner table, the Swedish monarchy still confused by what had just happened.

"The Golden Circle is making a move," said Roxy, her mind already on the mission. "If I don't make it, all of the data I've gathered is uploaded to our data center in Berlin."

"Don't talk like that, Rox," said Eggsy as he moved for the door.

Roxy had made it to the shelter and was locking it down when the screen on Eggsy's glasses flashed white. He could make out a grunt before the display went blank.

"Fuckin' hell!" shouted Eggsy.

Tilde had recovered and was making her way to his side after giving her parents a quick apology.

"What is going on, Eggsy?" asked the Princess.

"An emergency at work," replied Eggsy a little too tersely, the clock was ticking, and Roxy's life was hanging in the balance. "I'm sorry, I've got to go."

With that, Eggsy gave his girlfriend a quick kiss and darted through the door to his waiting car. He could make it to the mansion, or what was left of it, in a little under three hours if he was quick. If Roxy needed his help, he had no time to dally.

A little voice in the back of his head whispered that he had just insulted the royal family of Sweden, but he quickly shut it up. A lot of blood had been spilled tonight; he had already tried to hail Arthur and the other Kingsman to no avail. His only shot at rescuing anybody now was Roxy, and he was going to be damned if he couldn't do it.

"Ur da best."

"Best friend or best agent?"

"Both ;)"

Eggsy had spent the last two hours poring over the interaction before his whole world had been upended for what felt like the thousandth time. It hadn't even been a real conversation, but it had spoken volumes about his fellow agent and how much she meant to him.

A winky face. If the last normal thing Eggsy had sent to Roxy before everything went tits up was a fucking winky face, he wasn't sure he could ever forgive himself.

"Best friend or best agent?"

He had glossed over the question when she had asked it, but he found himself returning to it over and over again. Roxy was more than either of those things to Eggsy. His mind clouded over whenever he tried to figure out just what that was, but he was confident that "friend" and "agent" couldn't cover everything that Lancelot meant to him.

His thoughts wandered while his training kept him from stepping on the gas as he cruised through the country roads towards what had to be the rubble of his former base of operations.

A full on attack had been executed against the Kingsman, and the last thing he needed to do was draw unnecessary attention his way with a flashy car going high speeds through the countryside.

He pulled up to the gate, and his heart sank when he saw it bent in a tangle. Whatever had hit the mansion was big enough to twist the heavy metal gate a kilometer away. Eggsy pushed the black thoughts to the back of his mind as he got out of the car and began making his way through the thicket between him and the house.

As he quietly stepped through the woods, he readied his pistol. If the Golden Circle meant to ensure their work had been thorough, there could very well be an enemy fire team picking through the rubble.

The flames from the house slowly started popping into view, and Eggsy took a knee behind a tree as he watched and listened. There was nothing but the shifting rock and the crackling of the fires, and it quickly became apparent that he was alone. Whoever the Golden Circle were, they were arrogant enough to think they didn't need to make sure their work was finished properly.

"They were right for the most part," thought Eggsy grimly, but they weren't right about this. Roxy was the toughest person he knew, and if there was a chance for her to make it, regardless of how slim it was, she was going to get it done.

The rain started coming down as Eggsy moved across the shattered lawn, his pistol drawn and ready and his eyes on the lookout for any targets. He began going over their last interactions; she had been in her room on the southern end of the building making the nearest shelter to her the closet on the southwest corner. The missile had hit on the other side of the building, which just might have given her the time she needed to get there.

He started climbing up the blackened stone and granite roughly around where she should be and started calling for her.

"Roxy! I'm here! Where are you!?" shouted Eggsy, trying his hardest not to let the strain and worry into his voice. "Com'on Rox!"

A muffled cry answered him in the rubble. Eggsy's heart skipped a beat and a grin popped up on his face from nowhere. It was all he could manage not to give a gleeful whoop right there in the rain and the ash.

"Hold on Roxy, I'm coming," said Eggsy, deliberately keeping his voice calm.

He immediately started at the debris, digging down toward where the noise came from in his tux. After what felt like forever, Eggsy shifted one last thick timber scaffold out of the way when a blackened hand reached out for him. He fell to his knees and grasped it with both of his.

"It's okay Roxy, I'm here, you're going to be fine," Eggsy needed to say it, but he knew she was a long way away from being fine.

He began digging her out of the last bit of debris, the remainder of her hardened shelter. It had saved her life, but just barely. The reinforced, blast-proof pod had taken a beating and had obviously only managed to keep Roxy from the truly life-threatening injuries. By the time she was free, the extent of her wounds had come fully into focus. She had fallen unconscious while he had been digging, but he could see heavy bruising and what had to be several broken bones. If that was what was immediately apparent, there was no telling how bad it was internally.

Eggsy made sure she was secure before sprinting back toward his car and the Kingsman medical kit that was stored in the boot. It wouldn't do much, but it was certainly better than nothing until he could get her to a hospital.

"Gallaha- -ome in Galla-" Eggsy's earpiece piped up in static.

"What? Yes! Merlin is that you?!" shouted Eggsy.

"-oomsday scenario, Eggsy, we need to rendezvous," Merlin's stoic voice came through, getting clearer with every word.

"Merlin, listen! Lancelot is in a bad way! We need a medevac, asap," said Eggsy, grabbing the medkit and sprinting back to his injured partner.

"Lancelot? She was at the mansion, the sensors say it was leveled!" said Merlin, doubt creeping in over the earpiece.

"It was, but this is Roxy we're talking about," countered Eggsy. "She has a broken arm and leg, and the rest of her looks like a plum, but she's breathing."

"10-4 Eggsy, a helivac is on its way," said Merlin, seamlessly changing gears and jumping into action.

"Atta girl, Rox," Eggsy heard Merlin whisper in quiet triumph and joy.

"You're the governor, Merlin," replied Eggsy as he slid next to the downed agent, quickly setting up the medkit.

With a practiced hand and the handheld x-ray tablet that Merlin had just perfected the week before, Eggsy quickly made a note of all of the injuries that Roxy had endured, information that would be invaluable to the medics when they got there and set up an IV. After that, there was nothing more he could do but do his best to cover her with his jacket and wait. Eggsy took up position by her side, holding the IV bag up with one hand and Roxy's right hand with the other.

Before too long, the whir of a helicopter's rotor drowned out the soft patter of rain. As the medics made their way towards him with a stretcher, Eggsy finally began to believe that his best friend, the best agent he knew, his partner, was going to be okay.

Eggsy smiled.

[obscuraxrp]

The smoke settles to reveal SEO EUNJOO, also known as JANG GYURI, a 24 year old human of Sunseong. She is a freelance hunter and janitor at a bar who appears to be adept in supernatural tracking, supernatural knowledge, and akido defense – but like most things in Sunseong, there seems to be more to her than meets the eye.

FACECLAIM: Kang Seulgi, Red Velvet

APPEARANCE:

⋙ EYE COLOR: Brown / HEIGHT: 5′4 (163cm) / BODY BUILD: Toned / HAIR LENGTH: Shoulder length / HAIR COLOR: Black / NOTABLE FEATURES: Monolids, Lip scar, Thumb mole / PIERCINGS: Ear lobes / TATTOOS: Family flower (monkshood) behind her right ear, Ward of Reduced Presence down her spine

⋙ POSTURE: Slouched / RESTING EXPRESSION: This / APPAREL: Dark palettes, Clothes that are tattered and worn (hand-me-downs), Boots with clean soles

BIOGRAPHY:

THE SEO FAMILY CODE

𝐈𝐈𝐈. DO NOT FORCE YOUR CHILDREN INTO HUNTING     Article i. section b         If your child encounters a supernatural before the age of thirteen, it is your duty to train them when they reach of age.

Once they see your face, they’ll remember you. That’s what your parents told you a week before your thirteenth birthday. On that night you learned the reoccurring nightmare you had wasn’t just in your head. The monster that came into your house and fought your dad was real. Everything that your family kept locked behind tight smiles and clenched jaws actually happened.

Because of the decision that the monster made, you had to be sent to your aunt and uncle’s for defense education, as they called it. You remember your older sister being gone for a year during her thirteenth birthday. She came back but something about her presence felt hardened and more guarded.  

The words “happy birthday” chimed from every mouth a week later but joy was absent from the premise.

[ … ]

𝐈. FAMILY FIRST     Article iv. Section a         In the case that any member goes missing, if there is probable cause to start a search, you must follow through until their living status can be confirmed.

You never wanted to do this again, but this time it was different. The ones who trained your sister, who trained you, and even your baby brother were missing. “They’re trying to stop us from having new hunters,” you were told.

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, you thought.

But then you traveled and saw the deaths the creatures left behind. With the deaths came tears, anguished voices, and trembling hands that didn’t know where to start in order to grasp the truth.

There were those who knew the truth of what laid dormant in the shadows and that knowledge was your burden to bear. Your duty was to bring peace to the victims even if they would never know the truth or even your name.

𝐈. FAMILY FIRST    Article iv. Section b        If no new leads come up within the span of a year since the last lead, then the search must be dropped and the member is to be presumed dead.

That was it. After all your hard work, you were forced to give up.

[ … ]

𝐗𝐈𝐈. THE FAMILY MUST NOT BE WITHOUT A TRAINER

Your parents placed the bull’s eye right over their head by accepting that position. You thought you could digest the horrors reaped by the supernatural, but you threw up at the thought of your parents becoming their prey.

They gave you the choice to leave this life but you couldn’t.

( But you wanted to. )

[ … ]

𝐈. FAMILY FIRST    Article iv. Section a        In the case that any member goes missing, if there is probable cause to start a search, you must follow through until their living status can be confirmed.

They called the fae madness. Your sister had changed– In what ways you weren’t sure yet, but the unknown scared you all the same. Nobody stepped in to relieve your parents of their duties as trainers. For the sake of their first born, they would have broken the code.

You offer a different solution. Give me a year, you pleaded. A year in which you would go with your brother and search for her yourself. ( The three of you faced life and death together. If anybody could find her, it’d be you two. )

Your search led you to a city called Sunseong where the mother tongue traces back far into your lineage. You should feel at home here but you don’t.

CHARACTERIZATION:

EYEBAGS UPON EYEBAGS. She looks and sounds older than her age, because the stress behind the nature of her job has aged her greatly.

SECRETIVE. Before settling into a new town or city, she always constructs a new identity and backstory for herself. It’s drilled into her that it’s imperative to always start off on a fresh slate. She also doesn’t reveal too much of her habits and personal information out so nobody can track her.

FOLLOW THE SHADOWS. So much of what she does is hidden and never revealed so she’s used to not confiding in people. Since she doesn’t trust others, it doesn’t surprise her when they give her the same treatment. As far as she knows her life is in the shadows.  

DISTANT DREAMER. As far as she knows she doesn’t have any personal goals or dreams outside of the family business. Every time she’s tried to venture out during their hiatuses away from hunting, they inevitably get drawn back to hunting.

GOOGLE IT. She’s cunning and resourceful. If she doesn’t know something, she’ll know who to ask and where to look to find the answers. This goes beyond the supernatural too. Whenever the family moves to a new country, she’ll throw herself into studying the culture and language.

THROW HER TO THE LIONS. She’ll also throw herself into new situations to learn through immersion. For her, experience is the best teacher and she’s good at thinking on her feet.

SPECIALTIES:

SUPERNATURAL TRACKING ( 𝐈𝐈, +40 pts | major ): Being able to track first starts with being aware of the setting, what is the area’s history with the supernatural and what is known about the current supernatural climate? Sometimes current events are standalone occurrences, often times they tie back to similar events from years back. In order to efficiently track a crime back to a creature, or even a pack of them, requires being able to dig for information and knowing your enemy. 

She does most of the field work that leads up to the actual “hunt.” She’s known to scour old primary sources as well as making calls and appearances in order to extract information from people. Most importantly of all, she can usually do it without raising suspicions. Depending on the case itself, sometimes she can become over tenacious and blow her cover once the enemies start connecting the dots together. 

SUPERNATURAL KNOWLEDGE ( 𝐈, +35 pts | major ): To know your enemy is to know yourself. You can’t hunt what you can’t understand. The family code requires all hunters to go through a year of basic supernatural education where trainees are introduced to a variety of creatures that the family has encountered. Anything beyond that is learned while being active on the field.

Being the curious cat that she is, she is one of the family members who inquires more about the cultures of certain species than others who are just into the physical aspect of hunting. Some of her information comes from their allies ( various hunters and witches ) but the validity of it prone to being flawed as with any secondhand knowledge.

Her knowledge dips slightly into crafting traps and weapons against certain species but this is largely less perfected.

AKIDO DEFENSE ( 𝐈, +20 pts  | minor ): Along with general education, the year long introduction training includes physical conditioning. The physical training, also referred to as PT, covers building endurance, agility, and pain tolerance. 

Although hand to hand combat has been disclaimed as “basically useless” against most species, she can still defend herself using the art form of Akido. 

WARD OF REDUCED PRESENCE ( unranked, +5 pts  | minor ): This comes in a form of a tattoo so it may be easily concealed. An alliance with a witch coven is new so the practice of getting wards of this form is novel as well. Once a year or so, the ward must be redone since it fades over time and loses its properties.

[makingscipub]

Genome editing: Invisible mending

Last week I had a few days in Oxford to visit old haunts, such as the Ashmolean, the Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum. I also went to a little exhibition in the basement of the Museum of the History of Science. The exhibition by Anna Dumitriu was entitled BioArt and Bacteria. It dealt with two topics I am really interested in, namely synthetic biology/genome editing and antibiotics.

On the way down to Oxford I had read a few articles about a new advance in genome editing, namely a first attempt at genome editing inside the human body. This had been reported in newspapers and on social media on 15th November.

When walking through the BioArt exhibition, my eye was drawn to one exhibit, namely that of a toy sewing machine (see photo at the end of the post). This central piece of the exhibition was entitled ‘Make do and mend’.

This reminded me of a phrase I had read in some of the ‘gene editing in the human body’ articles, namely that of ‘invisible mending’. Dr Sandy Macrae, president of Sngamo Therpeutic, the California company which is testing the new genome editing technique, had used this metaphor in an interview. She said: “We cut your DNA, open it up, insert a gene, stitch it back up. Invisible mending…It becomes part of your DNA and is there for the rest of your life.”

She had created the invisible mending metaphor in the following context: “A treatment where genome editing takes place inside the patient’s body is being trialled in California to combat the metabolic disorder Hunter syndrome. The patient, Brian Madeux, was given an infusion containing billions of DNA copies of the gene that codes for an enzyme he lacks, as well as a type of genome editing machinery called zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs). Previous genome editing treatments have involved altering extracted blood or skin cells in the lab, and then returning the treated cells to the patient.”

Almost all the news outlets reporting on the new genome editing advance repeated the ‘invisible mending’ quote. As a metaphor hunter, I picked up that metaphor and pinned it down as a collectible. I also asked myself whether anybody had used it before and how it fitted in with similar metaphors of repairing, stitching, sewing and tinkering. (By the way, ‘tinkering’ as a molecular metaphor, is 40 years old; François Jacob coined it in 1977).

Stitching metaphors in synbio and gene editing

I first became aware of ‘small’ metaphors, such as ‘stitching’ or ‘tinkering’, when researching the metaphorical framing of synthetic biology (Hellsten and Nerlich 2011). I was surprised to find such metaphors used alongside ‘grander’ metaphors, such as ‘deciphering the book of life’, ‘revealing the building blocks of life’ and such like. When digging a bit deeper, I discovered something that will not be surprising to working scientists, namely that such metaphors have been around for quite some time, probably at least since the time of recombinant DNA in the 1970s.

As one blog post says: “By the mid 1970s, scientists had discovered DNA-snipping molecular scissors known as restriction enzymes, and DNA-stitching enzymes called ligases. It became possible to cut and splice the genetic code, stitching components from different organisms to create recombinant DNA.”

Around 2008 the stitching metaphor was revived in the context of early advances in synthetic biology, especially the man-made creation of the genome for the pathogenic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium by Hamilton Smith and his colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland. Philip Ball announced this breakthrough in Nature under the title “Genome stitched together by hand”, and the caption underneath the image accompanying this article said, humorously: “Stitched up: more than 500,000 bits of DNA have been assembled in the lab, creating the instructions for a bacterium.”

The stitching metaphor was also used in 2010, when Craig Venter announced the creation of a first synthetic cell, and in 2014, when xeno DNA was created. That’s probably only the tip of the stitching iceberg.

More recently, we have had another surge in such metaphors, as scientists thought that they could now do this snipping and stitching more easily and precisely using a new technique called CRISPR Cas9.

However, more recently still, some doubts have been raised about this promise of precision, for example in an article published in Nature: “The Cas9 enzyme breaks DNA strands, and cells can attempt to repair the damage by haphazardly stitching the genome together, often resulting in missing or extra DNA letters.” Scientists hope that an even newer technique, namely base editing, will revive the old promise of precision and overcome the haphazard stitching problem.

Invisible mending

Let us now turn our attention to ‘invisible mending’. As far as I can make out, this metaphor has not been used in genetic/genomic discourse before 15 November 2017. It’s a new creation by Sandy Macrae, but it is, of course, embedded in older metaphors of stitching and repairing. Let’s just recall what she said: “We cut your DNA, open it up, insert a gene, stitch it back up. Invisible mending…It becomes part of your DNA and is there for the rest of your life.”

The metaphor was first made public in an Associated Press exclusive by Marilynn Marchione on 15 November at 10:02 pm (according to the news database Lexis Nexis). After that it was picked up by numerous English speaking articles published in traditional and social media (about 30). Macrae’s quote was used mostly after a paragraph saying: “This time, the gene tinkering is happening in a precise way inside the body. It’s like sending a mini surgeon along to place the new gene in exactly the right location. That also means there’s no going back, no way to erase any mistakes the editing might cause.” The miniature surgeon metaphor has, of course, its own long history, reaching back to Richard Feynman’s 1959 speech “There’s plenty of room at the bottom”.

Some articles led up to the invisible mending quote in a different way, focusing on the type of ‘scissor’ involved in this intervention, scissors that are a bit more old-fashioned than CRISPR Cas9: “Through an IV, Mr Madeux received billions of copies of a corrective gene and genetic tools to cut his DNA in a precise spot. They travel to the liver, where cells use the instructions to make molecular scissors – called zinc finger nucleases –   and prepare the corrective gene. The fingers cut the DNA, allowing the new gene to slip in. The new gene then directs the cell to make the enzyme the patient lacked.”

The role of the mending metaphor in the BioArt exhibition

So what is invisible mending? Wikipedia tells us the following: “Invisible mending is a sophisticated weaving method consisting in rebuilding the fabric of a damaged garment or upholstery, following damage caused for example by a snag, burn, or accidental scissor cut.”

In our case neither sewing needles nor a sewing machine were used, but a “GPS like recognition system” (see video at 1.13; a metaphor that I briefly mentioned in my blog post on public uses of metaphors relating to genome editing) combined with something called (metaphorically) ‘zink finger nucleases’ (the ‘scissors’)

All this is literally and metaphorically rather complex, something that is reflected in the BioArt exhibition (click on the link for pictures and video), to which I will now briefly turn. At the exhibition I saw what one might call many different patchworks or quilts of MRSA or TB, as well as a dress onto which the letters G, T, C, and A were projected and much more. All the exhibits (and all the metaphors used) together told a story, which, to be frivolous, the viewer had to ‘stitch’ together in order to make sense of both science and its social and ethical implications. As one reviewer of the show, Annick Bureaud, said (and as I can’t say it any better, I’ll quote her at length):

“Anna Dumitriu is using craft techniques, often connoted as feminine, in her artworks while working with the latest biotechnologies to address crucial contemporary issues […] Each technique acts as a metaphor to the other to deploy the embodied enmeshed stories. In this respect, the homologous recombination technique can be compared to patching and the whole process of gene editing to craft with its meticulous steps and endless pipetting and ‘cooking’ procedures. Moreover, the clichés of ‘male-science’ and ‘female-craft’ are put upside down: science is craft.”

“The mending metaphor is even more powerful and the sewing machine the real key element of the piece for bringing to the forefront the ethical issues that the work carries: it is a toy which is the exact replica of the real machine. Are we like kids playing with matches when thinking or ‘repairing’ faulty genomes or our own past medical and scientific mistakes?”

These are good questions to ask around the fast accelerating genome editing project, which some frame as scientists playing God, while others may see it as scientists just playing… What really happens probably lies somewhere in between.

Image: Mending jeans (got it!?) (from Pixabay)

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