#there's been instances where you can tell the actors are having to do English dialogue they're not comfortable with

[kennyomegasweave]

Sooo. With the bad dubbing of First and Soong's scenes twice now are we ready to talk about how their English was never "unintelligible" or "stilted", they just had accents? And the dubbing over cause y'all couldn't handle accented english is worse? Or no?

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

re. people fanoning Izzy as Super Working Class I think they’re often making a (patronising, inaccurate) generalisation about (English) Northern accents. That’s never been a one-to-one mapping for class and income and is DOUBLY misrepresentative of the 1700s, but I think it was a springboard for people who wanted it to be true

interesting! im USAmerican and i literally cant tell the difference between british and australian accents so like, i REALLY have no context for this. i do remember ppl talking abt accents from back in my tma days, but all i can recall was just "people get classist towards people with Northern accents" and "the RP accent is the Posh Fuckhead accent" (and i could very easily be remembering those wrong, it's been a while)

i guess it makes sense that accents aren't always that neatly categorized. but because this is a topic i am INCREDIBLY ignorant about, i don't personally feel comfortable dismissing the "con's accent means he's poor" argument because you, an anonymous stranger on the internet, have told me that generalizing northern accents as working-class is patronizing and inaccurate, no offense

(i mean genuinely, please dont be offended by that, anon. like tbh when i write it out like that im like "yknow what anon, youre probably right" bc i feel like generalizing ANY aesthetic marker like that can get pretty dicey, but i would have to do more research on the cultural significance of UK accents before im ready to fully agree with your statement)

what i do feel comfortable saying is that the accents in ofmd are literally all over the place and for THAT reason the "izzy has a northern english accent so CANONICALLY he HAS to be working class" take seems like a pretty big reach, imo. if someones gonna choose to cling to con's accent specifically as proof of something in canon then i want to hear their explanations for ed and stede's kiwi's accents, for ed's british accents in the backstory, for doug's american accent. there are SOME instances in ofmd where character accents do have deeper implications, but it's mostly subtle, character-specific things, and i can easily see that those instances dont necessarily indicate that con o'neill's accent is one of them:

so disclaimer again that im VERY bad at telling UK accents apart (british accents especially), but im pretty sure the british characters who have dialogue and hold positions of power all have Rich Douchebag british accents?? (please correct me if im wrong lol). im talking abt the king, stede's two prisoners, and the badmintons, specifically. and it makes sense that they'd want to get the accents right for those guys, bc ofmd is VERY clear in making sure we know that The British Are The Enemy. giving them a stereotypical Rich Jerk accent just emphasizes that

(also the only reason im specific abt brits who have positions of power is bc i know there's at least 2 random british soldiers who have lines in e9, but i have no FUCKING idea what their accents are. if theyre ALSO douchebag richman accents, that further proves me point. if they DONT have posh fucker accents, that also kinda makes sense bc theyre like, cannon fodder to the british navy. theyre still bad racist ppl, but theyre dont hold power the way the other 5 characters i mentioned above are)

i might not be super informed abt all the details abt what accents signify in the UK, but i know enough abt history to know that ewen bremner going ham on the scottish accent in a show where the british are all portrayed as irredeemable colonizers is Based As Fuck. and this doesnt rlly apply to con/izzy bc con's accent is still english and izzy literally aligns w the british navy to achieve his goals, something that ofmd explicitly condemns

i know samba schutte personally chose to have roach's accent say something about the Roach Backstory he made up as part of the show's encouragement to have the actors for some of the side characters come up with backstories for their characters, but idk if all the actors chose to have their accents mean something. also, coming up with backstories obviously wasnt something that actors playing characters with more importance to the plot were asked to do. rhys, taika, and vico were given their characters' backstories. izzy is more important to the plot than roach (and wee john and fang, two other characters whose actors' have talked abt the backstories they came up with for their characters), and while we dont have a backstory for him yet, i wouldnt be surprised if con didn't get to come up with one. basically, samba deciding to have roach's accent mean something doesn't inherently mean izzy's accent means izzy is poor

[kmclaude]

Forgive me Father, I have no awful headcanons for you, only a general question on comic making. How do you do it, writing-wise/how do you decide what points go where, how do you plot it out (or do you have any resources on the writing aspect that you find useful?) Not to get too bogged down in details, but I attended a writer’s workshop and the author in residence suggested I transfer my wordy sci-fi WIP into graphic novel script, as it might work better. (I do draw, but I don’t know if I have it in me to draw a whole comic—characters in motion? Doing things? With backgrounds? How dare, why can’t everyone just stand around looking pretty)

I was interested but it quickly turned into a lot of internal screaming as I tried to figure out how to compress the hell out of it, since novels are free to do a lot more internal monologuing and such compared to a comic format (to say nothing of trying to write a script without seeing how the panels lay out—just for my own sake, I might have to do both concurrently.)

As an aside, to get a feel for graphic novels I was rereading 99RM and was reminded of how great it was—tightly plotted, intriguing, and anything to do with Ashmedai was just beautifully drawn. I need more Monsignor Tiefer and something something there are parallels between Jehan and Daniel in my head and I don’t know if they make sense but it works for me. (As an aside, I liked the emphasis on atonement being more than just the word sorry, but acknowledgment you did wrong and an attempt to remedy it—I don’t know why that spoke to me the way that it did.)

I thought Tumblr had a word count limit for asks but so far it has offered zero resistance, oh well. I don’t have much else to say but on the topic of 99RM, Adam getting under Monsignor’s skin is amazing, 10/10 (about the Pride picture earlier)

wow tumblr got rid of the markdown editor! or at least in asks which means the new editor probably has no markdown....god i hate this site! anyway...

Totally! So first, giant thank you for the compliments! Second, I have a few questions in turn for you before I dive into a sort of answer, since I can give some advice to your questions in general but it also sounds like you have a specific conundrum on your hands.

My questions to your specific situation are:

did the author give any reason for recommending a, in your words, "wordy" story be turned into a graphic novel?

is the story you're writing more, like you said, "internal monologuing"? action packed? where do the visuals come from?

do you WANT it to be a comic? furthermore, do you want it to be a comic you then must turn around and draw? or would you be interested in writing for comics as a comic writer to have your words turned into art?

With those questions in mind, let me jump into the questions you posed me!

Let me start with a confession...

I've said this before but let me say it again: Ninety-Nine Righteous Men was not originally a comic — it was a feature-length screenplay! And furthermore, it was written for a class so it got workshopped again and again to tighten the plot by a classroom of other nerds — so as kind as your compliments are, I'm giving credit where credit is due as that was not just a solo ship sailing on the sea. On top of that, it got adapted (by me) into a comic for my thesis, so my advisor also helped me make it translate or "read" well given I was director, actor, set designer, writer, editor, SFX guy, etc. all in one. And it was a huge help to have someone say "there is no way you can go blow by blow from script to comic: you need to make edits!" For instance, two scenes got compressed to simple dialogue overlaid on the splashpage of Ashmedai raping Caleb (with an insert panel of Adam and Daniel talking the next day.) What had been probably at least 5 pages became 1.

Additionally, I don't consider myself a strong plotter. That said, I found learning to write for film made the plotting process finally make some damn sense since the old plot diagram we all got taught in grammar school English never made sense as a reader and definitely made 0 sense as a writer — for me, for some reason, the breakdown of 25-50-25 (approx. 25 pages for act 1, 50 for act 2 split into 2 parts of 25 each, 25 pages for act 3) and the breaking down of the beats (the act turning points, the mid points, the low point) helped give me a structure that just "draw a mountain, rising action, climax is there, figure it out" never did. Maybe the plot diagram is visually too linear when stories have ebb and flow? I don't know. But it never clicked until screenwriting. So that's where I am coming from. YMMV.

I should also state that there's Official Ways To Write Comic Scripts to Be Drawn By An Artist (Especially If You Work For A Real Publisher As a Writer) and there's What Works For You/Your Team. I don't give a rat's ass about the former (and as an artist, I kind of hate panel by panel breakdowns like you see there) so I'm pretty much entirely writing on the latter here. I don't give a good god damn about official ways of doing anything: what works for you to get it done is what matters.

What Goes Where?

Like I said, 99RM was a screenplay so it follows, beat-wise, the 3-act screenplay structure (hell, it's probably more accurate to say it follows the act 1/act 2A/act 2B/act 3 structure.) So there was the story idea or concept that then got applied to those story beats associated with the structure, and from there came the Scene-by-scene Breakdown (or Expanded Scene Breakdown) which basically is an outline of beats broken down into individual scenes in short prose form so you get an overview of what happens, can see pacing, etc. In the resources at the end I put some links that give information on the whole story beat thing.

(As an aside: for all my short comics, I don't bother with all that, frankly. I usually have an image or a concept or a bit of writing — usually dialogue or monologue, sometimes a concrete scene — that I pick at and pick at in a little sketchbook, going back and forth between writing and thumbnail sketches of the page. Or I just go by the seat of my pants and bullshit my way through. Either or. Those in many ways are a bit more like poems, in my mind: they are images, they are snapshots, they are feelings that I'm capturing in a few panels. Think doing mental math rather than writing out geometric proofs, yanno?)

Personally, I tend to lean on dialogue as it comes easier for me (it's probably why I'm so drawn to screenwriting!) so for me, if I were to do another longform GN, I'd probably take my general "uhhhhhh I have an idea and some beats maybe so I guess this should happen this way?" outline and start breaking it down scene by scene (I tend to write down scenes or scene sketches in that "uhhhh?" outline anyway LOL) and then figure out basic dialogue and action beats — in short, I'd kind of do the work of writing a screenplay without necessarily going full screenplay format (though I did find the format gave me an idea of timing/pacing, as 1 page of formatted script is about equal to 1 minute of screentime, and gave me room to sketch thumbnails or make edits on the large margins!) If you're not a monologue/soliloque/dialogue/speech person and more an image and description person, you may lean more into visuals and scenes that cut to each other.

Either way this of course introduces the elephant in the panel: art! How do you choose what to draw?

The answer is, well, it depends! The freedom of comics is if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. You have the freedoms (and audio limitations) of a truly silent film with none of the physical limitations. Your words can move in real time with the images or they can be a narrative related to the scene or they could be nonsequitors entirely! The better question is how do you think? Do you need all the words and action written first before you break down the visuals? Do you need a panel by panel breakdown to be happy, or can you freewheel and translate from word and general outlines to thumbnails? What suits you? I really cannot answer this because I think when it comes to what goes where with regard to art, it's a bit of "how do you process visuals" and also a bit of "who's drawing this?" — effectively, who is the interpreter for the exact thing you are writing? Is it you or someone else? If it's you, would you benefit from a barebones script alongside thumbnailed paneling? Would you be served by a barebones script, then thumbnails, then a new script that includes panel and page breakdowns? What frees you up to do what you need to do to tell your story?

If I'm being honest, I don't necessarily worry about panels or what something will look like necessarily until I'm done writing. I may have an image that I clearly state needs to happen. I may even have a sequence of panels that I want to see and I do indeed sketch that out and make note of it in my script. But exactly how things will be laid out, paneled, situated? That could change up until I've sketched my final pencils in CSP (but I am writer and artist so admittedly I get that luxury.)

How do I compress from novel to comic?

Honest answer? You don't. Not really. You adapt from one to another. It's more a translation. Something that would take forever to write may take 1 page in a comic or may take a whole issue.

I'm going to pick on Victor Hugo. Victor Hugo spent a whole-ass book in Notre-Dame de Paris talking about a bird's eye view of Paris and other medieval architecture boring stuff, with I guess some foreshadowing with Montfaucon. Who cares. Not me. I like story. Anyway. When we translate that book to a movie any of the billion times someone's done that, we don't spend a billion years talking at length about medieval Paris. There's no great monologuing about the gibbet or whatever: you get to have some establishing shots, maybe a musical number, and then you move tf on. Because it's a movie, right? Your visuals are right there. We can see medieval Paris. We can see the cathedral. We can see the gibbet. We don't need a whole book: it's visually right there. Same with a comic: you may need many paragraphs to describe, say, a space station off of Sirius and one panel to show it.

On the flip side, you may take one line, maybe two, to say a character keyed in the special code to activate the holodeck; depending on the visual pacing, that could be a whole page of panels (are we trying to stretch time? slow it down? what are we emphasizing?) A character gives a sigh of relief — one line of text, yeah? That could be a frozen panel while a conversation continues on or that could be two (or more!) panels, similar to the direction [a beat] in screenwriting.

Sorry there's not a super easy answer there to the question of compression: it's a lot more of a tug, a push-pull, that depends on what you're conveying.

So Do I Have It In Me to Write & Draw a GN?

The only way you'll know is by doing. Scary, right? The thing is, you don't necessarily need to be an animation king or God's gift to background artists to draw a comic.

Hell, I hate backgrounds. I still remember sitting across from my friend who said "Claude you really need to draw an establishing exterior of the church at some point" and me being like "why do you hate me specifically" because drawing architecture? Again? I already drew the interior of the church altar ONCE, that should be enough, right? But I did draw an exterior of the church. Sorta. More like the top steeple. Enough to suggest what I needed to suggest to give the audience a better sense of place without me absolutely losing my gourd trying to render something out of my wheelhouse at the time.

And that's kinda the ticket, I think. Not everyone's a master draftsman. Not everyone has all the skills in every area. And regardless, from page one to page one hundred, your skills will improve. That's all part of it — and in the meantime, you should lean into your strengths and cheat where you can.

Do you need to lovingly render a background every single panel? Christ no! Does every little detail need to be drawn out? Sure if you want your hand to fall off. Cheat! Use Sketchup to build models! Use Blender to sculpt forms to paint over! Use CSP Assets for prebuilt models and brushes if you use CSP! Take photographs and manip them! Cheat! Do what you need to do to convey what you need to convey!

For instance, a tip/axiom/"rule" I've seen is one establishing shot per scene minimum and a corollary to that has been include a background once per page minimum as grounding (no we cannot all have eternal floating heads and characters in the void. Unless your comic is set in the void. In which case, you do you.) People ain't out here drawing hyper detailed backgrounds per each tiny panel. The people who DO do that are insane. Or stupid. Or both. Or have no deadline? Either way, someone's gonna have a repetitive stress injury... Save yourself the pain and the headache. Take shortcuts. Save your punches for the big K.O. moments.

Start small. Make an 8-page zine. Tell a beginning, a middle, an end in comic form. Bring a scene to life in a few pages. See what you're comfortable drawing and where you struggle. See where you can lean heavily into your comfort zones. Learn how to lean out of your comfort zone. Learn when it's worth it to do the latter.

Or start large. Technically my first finished comic (that wasn't "a dumb pencil thing I drew in elementary school" or "that 13 volume manga I outlined and only penciled, what, 7 pages of in sixth grade" or "random one page things I draw about my characters on throw up on the interwebz") was 99RM so what do I know. I'm just some guy on the internet.

(That's not self-deprecating, I literally am some guy on the internet talking about my path. A lot of this is gonna come down to you and what vibes with you.)

Resources on writing

Some of these are things that help me and some are things that I crowd-sourced from others. Some of these are going to be screenwriting based, some will be comic based.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud: I think everyone recommends this but I think it is a useful book if you're like "ahh!!! christ!! where do I start!!!???" It very much breaks down the elements of comics and the world they exist in and the principles involved, with the caveat that there are no rules! In fact, I need to re-read it.

Comic Book Design: I picked this up at B&N on a whim and in terms of just getting a bird's eye view of varied ways to tackle layout and paneling? It's such a great resource and reference! I personally recommend it as a way to really get a feel for what can be done.

the screenwriter's bible: this is a book that was used in my class. we also used another book that's escaping me but to be honest, I never read anything in school and that's why I'm so stupid. anyway, I'd say check it out if you want, especially if you start googling screenwriting stuff and it's like 20 billion pieces of advice that make 0 sense -- get the core advice from one place and then go from there.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: many people I know recommended this. I think I have it? It may be in storage. So frankly, I'd already read a bunch of books on comics before grabbing this that it kind of felt like a rehash. Which isn't shade on the authors — I personally was just a sort of "girl, I don't need comics 101!!!"

Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate: this has been recommended so many times to me. I cannot personally speak on it but I can say I do trust those who rec'd it to me so I am passing it along

the story circle: this is pretty much the hero's journey. a useful way to think of journeys! a homie pretty much swears by it

a primer on beats: quick google search got me this that outlines storybeats

save the cat!: what the above refers to, this gives a more genre-specific breakdown. also wants to sell you on the software but you don't need that.

I hope this helps and please feel free to touch base with more info about your specific situation and hopefully I'll have more applicable answers.

[hopetofantasy]

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT - Nona Janssens

Other podcast transcripts: Veerle Dejaeger, Nora Dari, Nona Janssens, Nathan Naenen This is one of the literal transcripts of the wtFOCK cast podcasts by Ender Scholtens (’Gossip Guy’). You can watch it on YouTube with my contributed English subtitles as well. I didn’t put in any of the sounds, movements, hesitations or laughter, just the plain dialogue. Heads up: they never or barely mention the show, because they’re not allowed to (contract restrictions)!

--- “Nona Janssens: Do Tinder relationships work?” ---

Source: Gossip Guy - 1st of May 2020 (Podcast via webcam)

Nona Janssens: Hello! Ender Scholtens: Hey! Everything okay? Nona: Yes, you? E: Excellent, even. Nona: Should I sit somewhere else? E: You really don't have to. But do you have earbuds with a good mic? There is a bit of an echo. Nona: I always lose everything, I lost all my earbuds. I have some, I'll try them. E: Suspense... Nona: No, doesn't work, right? E: It actually does. Shall we get started? There are a bunch of fun questions. Nona: Exciting! E: Really exciting, even. Alright. Waddup people, welcome to a new episode of 'Gossip Guy’ podcast. My name is Ender Scholtens and today I’m here with Nona Janssens. Waddup, Nona, everything alright? Nona: Hallo, yes, yes. And you? E: Certainly, I'm happy you're in the podcast. For the people who don’t know you, could you introduce yourself? Where could they know you from? Nona: I play in a tv series for young people, whose name I cannot say. E: And we're not gonna talk about today. Nona: Exciting. No, yeah. But I don't think you know me from something else. E: Yeah, okay. No. Cool. I guess it's good summary, indeed. Nona: Yeah. E: So, I asked the people on Insta for some questions about you- or rather, for you. Nona: I'm very curious... E: Yes, you thought we wouldn't get a lot of them? Nona: No! I was seriously thinking: people are going to laugh at me, when he doesn't receive any questions. E: There are *still* some laughing at you, though.  Nona: Ah, yeah. E: No, no, no! But why did you think that? Nona: Yeah, I don't know. No, I'm curious. I think- Yeah... I don't know which questions they would- E: The kind of questions they would ask you? Nona: No. E: Now, I received- Around 200 questions. A lot about topics we're not gonna discuss. The C-word... And a tv series... Nona: Yes. Yes. E: Anyways, someone asked - since you're clearly an actress: 'Did you get any drama education'? Nona: No.  E: No? Nona: I've always done 'Diction' at the music school and stuff like that. E: Ok, cool. Nona: And in high school, I studied Modern- I mean, General Education. There I could pick four optional hours of theatre per week. So I did that. But I never went a 'real' drama school. Even though, I was very much interested, I did choose a different 'direction'. Just to have certainty. Although, I want to act for real in the future. E: Okay, okay, cool, I get that. Which 'direction' did you study in high school? Nona: Human sciences. With cultural education as an option. E: Okay. And 'Diction & drama', I did that too. All through high school. Loved it.  Nona: That's fun, right? E: Yeah, had a blast! Nona: Yeah, it's nice. E: Do you have any hobbies beside that? Since I received questions about youth movements? I think some people of *your* youth movement asked me questions? Is that possible?  Nona: I don't know, tell me their names. E: I'm not going to. But you're in a youth movement? Nona: Yes, yes. I'm in the 'Chiro'. E: Okay. Apparently you're playing a 'De Mol' (= 'The Mole') game at the moment? Nona: Ah, yes, we're playing 'De Mol' right now. [A popular reality game tv show]. I've seen * and she wanted to know who my 'mole' was. E: Okay! Nona: I'm not... going to say that... That wouldn't be good... If I already revealed my 'mole'. E: Sounds very logical. Ah, here. Let's ask this question to be done with it, it's been asked a lot: 'Are you single?' Nona: No, no, I have- I have a partner. E: Okay. Is this something that can be revealed to the public, otherwise I'll cut this part out? Nona: Yeah, of course, that's totally okay. Doesn't matter that much. E: No, that's usually something I ask beforehand. But I forgot. Not everyone likes to talk about relationships. Which I get. Been with your boyfriend for a long time? Nona: Yes, almost two years now. E: Wow, solid! Cool. Nona: Great, huh? We're doing well, right? E: Yeah, you go! Fantastic! Here, other people who are interested in your hobbies: 'Did you ever dance?' Nona: Yes, I did. I've done a lot- a lot in my life. I did dance, Chiro... Now not much extra... E: Dance, Chiro, music school... Were you one of those kids in primary school, whose week was filled to the brim? Nona: Yes, indeed. I did some sports too. Yet, every two years, I got bored and changed to something else. E: I'm laughing, but I was exactly the same. I've done- What did I- Tennis, hockey, volleyball, golf. I did a lot. Nona: Same, every time something different. E: What's your favorite? The one you really loved doing? Nona: Dancing, I did the longest. Still love doing it. I don't really do it anymore in a fitness or something... Always been the most fun. But I did every sport you'd ever imagine. For example, horseback riding. After a few weeks, I thought 'no'. 'No thanks!' At least I tried it. Oh god... I don't even know why. I don't like horses anyways. Still... Wanted to do it. Probably since my friends did it. E: Just checking where the hype of typical 'horseback girls' came from? Nona: Exactly. Didn't get it! E: Honestly... I don't get it. In movies, it always looks so cool. A man on a horse. Yet, in real life? People laugh if you say: "I do horseback riding". Nona: A 'horseback girl'. E: Although, it's fucking cool in movies. At least I think so. Nona: I think so too. Yet, it's not my thing. E: Prince Charming on his white horse, must've said the same thing, right? "I'm going to my riding lessons". People laugh. Still, everyone wants a Prince Charming. Nona: Yes! E: You said you wanted to be- You didn't get any drama education, but you want to act in the future? Do you have international ambitions, something in foreign countries? Hollywood, for example? Is that the dream? Or do you want to stay in Belgium? Nona: I would be happy already if I ever succeeded in Belgium. E: Yeah, I thought- My question was all over the place. Since everyone would like to succeed here, right? Nona: Yes, but- I'm not that fluent in a lot of languages! Not my greatest strength. I might be able to do it, but then I'll probably keep thinking: 'Is this correct?' or 'How should I say this?' I would get sick due to stressing too much! So I don't know if that's in my future. E: And are there any productions in Belgium, where you thought: 'Cool, I want to act in that?' Because I- There have been recent movies like 'Patser' and all that. I was really impressed. 'That's from Belgium?! That's fucking cool! So good!' Nona: Yes... E: Has there been a recent project, where you wanted to say the same thing? 'Wow, that's really cool to join'? Nona: Yes, right now, for instance 'De Dag', 'De Twaalf', ... Those kind of shows are great. If I could play in a series like that, I would be super happy. Yeah, those things certainly interest me... Super fun. E: Funny coincidence, I've interviewed one of the actors of 'De Dag' - Nabil - for a new Netflix series. Nona: Really? E: Yeah. Honestly, I was a bit starstruck in the beginning. My first question was really... bleh! I stumbled over my words. I hope they'll edit it to make it seem more spontaneous. Exceptionally friendly dude, by the way! Seriously.  Nona: Yeah? E: Every time- That's- For example, we're seeing each other for the first time. We're 'meeting'. In a way. It's a risk every time. Because you don't know... How someone really is. You never know. You see an online persona, someone in a series, or whatever, it's always... Hard to tell... how they'll be in real life. Nona: Certainly in a- You know their character isn't real, but still, if you meet them in real life, you keep thinking that they'll be somewhat similar. E: That's- Nona: It is. E: Indeed, indeed. Nona: Weird, huh? Yes. E: Do you think it's difficult for a lot of actors? Like, for instance, Game Of Thrones. Have you seen that? I don't know if you did. But the actor playing King Joffrey, a boy who's gotten hate in the show from episode one, received a lot of hate *in real life* too. Nona: That's weird, huh? E: Do you think that happens a lot? Nona: With 'Thuis' too, if they do something in the soap, I've heard that they get verbally attacked on the street. I didn't get that. My character gets a lot of hate, but I haven't gotten any of that, fortunately. E: Not in real life? Nona: No, but it happens often, you know, people really think you're like that... I've struggled with it, though. That if I go somewhere, I want to show *even more* that I'm different from my character. E: Okay. So you're faking a personality right now? That you-  Nona: Oh, no! No, no, no, I'm not doing that. But yeah... E: I'm just joking. Nona: Imagine. No. E: I know that. Do you experience difficulties in separating the art from the artist? Not only acting, but music too? For example, 'Justin Bieber is awesome' and then every bit of his music is awesome? Or 'I don't really like that artist, so his music is bad'?  Nona: No... E: No? Nona: No, I don't have that... It's not because they put out a bad song... If they produce a bad song, even if it's a good artist, I'll still say it. Then, then... Yeah... E: No, okay, alright. Are you a 'Belieber', by the way? Nona: No! E: No?  Nona: No, not really no. E: I am, that's why I'm asking. Or actually, I was more of a 'Belieber' during 'Purpose' and now with the new album... That's why I asked you, because I really *wanted* the album to be good. And then- Nona: Do you have that experience? Or do you separate it? E: The moment I heard the question for the first time - I've used it multiple times in my podcasts, it's an interesting question - I actually had to think... 'Am I listening to the music or the artist?' Am I- As... With someone like 'Russ' - a rapper that gets plenty of hate, the rap world hates the dude or idk - it might be easy to say "Fuck him and his music", while you could still hate the artist and like his music. Or love a song. So I never said 'Fuck that dude', but it made me think: 'Okay, do I listen to the music or the artist?' Nona: I don't have that. E: No? Nona: No. Great right?  E: Cool. Super, even. Nona: But I really don't have an artist that I'm crazy about. I listen to various genres, so I've never experienced that. E: Even better! Nona: Great, huh? E: Nice, nice. Someone asked to talk about social media. A topic I often explore in my podcasts. But... I don't want to drag it out. Since people made me aware of that fact. However, it's still an interesting topic and certainly for someone in a position like yours. Who gets a lot of attention on the socials. How do you deal with that? Do you feel like there are a lot of eyes on you? 'I should be careful of what I post'? How do you feel about it? Nona: I have... mostly... I'm like... There are people who always take good pics,  everything they post is amazing, and I'm like: 'I can't!" I want to try, but I don't know how! Someone told me I should do more with my social media, ask more questions, stuff like- E: Engagement with your audience? Nona: Yes! Things like that. But most of the time, I'll think of the people in my small town, who will laugh at me if I try to do that! Even if I do it as fancy as the others. I- I- I want to, but I don't seem to succeed! E: I get that. I have- What I personally- Last time, I saw on your profile that you sometimes - since I put it in my story for the questions - have beautiful, serious pictures. The one in black-and-white? Fucking cool! Because of you, I've posted a similar picture.  Nona: Really?! E: Yeah, it's *really* difficult for me. Sorry, I can't keep my face straight. I laugh all the time. If the photographer asks me: 'Give me a serious look.' I can't! Nona: Yeah. E: Do you have the same? Can you keep a straight face in front of the camera? Nona: I try to, because I keep thinking about how the pictures might turn out. E: So you have the goal in mind? Nona: I do. I laugh too, though, but I try to stop it. E: What you said about the people in your town: they might think it's weird if you're into social media... But it's not a secret anymore that you've... acquired some level of fame, right? So isn't posting on your socials considered normal? More accepted? Nona: Yeah, maybe... Yet, I still don't know what to do. I'm not good at that! I don't know *what* to post. Or something. Yeah, I should research that... E: Searching what you want to do. Nona: Yes. E: Okay, nah. Okay! A deep question... You don't have to have an answer. I wouldn't even know how to answer this myself. 'If you could turn back time, is there something you would change? What you did?' Heavy, huh?! Nona: Yes, never thought about that. E: Maybe to this morning, then I could ask Nabil the first question without stuttering. That's it. Nona: But yeah... What could I change? No, actually... If you do something wrong, I still think you learned a lesson. I couldn't think of something. Maybe later, when this is done. Not now. E: Like 'Ah, shit, shouldn't have said that'? Nona: Yes, indeed. E: I have the same feeling with a tv program that will be released soon. I totally forgot I filmed that. It's about... It'll be clear, when it appears online. But I totally forgot that I filmed it. I wasn't thinking then about the things I said and what they'll do with it. Not that I said mean things, but personal stuff. And then suddenly, you realize that it'll appear online. Literally everyone could see this. That's crazy. Maybe I shouldn't have said this now, but when it gets released. In a clear way. But I get what you mean. Like 'shit...' Nona: I have that *often*. Or when you were little, during fights, not knowing what to say until you're done. "Ooooh, I could have said that!" E: That moment. That moment! When you're in your bed and think: "Shit! That's it!" Nona: And it's a good one!? "Oooooh, I should have said this!" E: Usually the comebacks you see in movies. "If I had said this, it would've been a movie scene". Some time ago, I saw an online video about a so-called UFO. Every so often, there is always a video circulating.Always fucking vague, I don't know why we still don't have high quality cameras to capture a UFO in detail. But someone here is asking: 'Do you think there's life beyond Earth?' Nona: On the one hand, I don't think it's possible. On the other hand, we can't be the only living things that exist. E: Why do you think it's *not* possible? Nona: Yeah... yeah, I don't know.  E: Because we haven't seen it?! Nona: Yes, it would be a coincidence if we're the only living things, but on the other side I think- I mean, I don't believe the vague UFO images. I *really* don't believe that. But I mean... Some other life forms, not aliens or stuff like that. E: Rather some kind of microbes that live somewhere? Nona: Yes. E: Okay. Nona: Yeah, things like that. You? E: So... not something with the same brain capacity as us? Living the same way?  Nona: I think it's- I think- Yeah, not at the moment. If it does exist, then I would- Ah yeah. I don't know. Difficult. What do you think? E: Of course, it's all speculation! I can't say: you're wrong! What the fuck do I know? Nona: Yeah, nah. E: That's why I think it's interesting! But it's weird to assume that we- Do you know those videos were they start with 'the Earth' and then zoom out? The Earth compared to the sun. The sun compared to this, this and this. When you realize: 'WTF, how fucking small is Earth, how fucking small are we?' Then I can't imagine that in the whole entire universe, we're the only ones. Nona: It can't be. E: With the same intellectual level as we are. Nona: Ah, yeah... E: Crazy to think about it. Weird, right? Only two o'clock and we're already theorizing. I think it would be cool if... That's something I want to experience:  the first interaction with extraterrestrial life. If that ever happens, that would be phenomenal.  Nona: That would be... wow... E: That's probably something that would bring together humanity. Realizing that we, as humans, are one. We have to- There are others out there. I don't know...it's... By the way, there are a lot of compliments in here. About you. About your acting. I'll send them to you. They're adorable. Nona: Aaawww... Thank you! E: Something I forgot to ask you: you said you've done Human Sciences? So follow-up question: What are you studying right now? Are you a student? Nona: Yes, I study 'Remedial Education'. E: Okay, why that choice? Nona: I studied 'Criminology' last year in Leuven. But... Yeah, I think it's a shame, but I simply... Don't. Study. E: Okay. Nona: Seriously, I can get really angry at myself, but I don't do anything for school. If I get an assignment, then I'll start it at the due date. I want to change, but I can't. So I didn't do anything that year, still had loads of fun. E: As you should! Nona: So now I do 'Remedial Education'... And there... I have the end trajectory of 'Applied Juvenile Criminology'. Still in the same field and yet, the studies are far more interesting. I think it's - I'm *so* happy I changed. Oh yeah, really, I am. I need that, knowing what I'm studying for. I didn't have that in 'Criminology'. Now, in 'Remedial Education', everything we learn there, I know why. There are goals, why we learn it. I can remember the materials better. E: So, what's the goal exactly? Do you have an idea what you want to be later on? Nona: No.  E: No? Nona: I still want to be an actress. If it doesn't happen, then I don't know what... E: Yes, yes. Nona: Actually, within the 'direction' I study, almost every job is... somewhat interesting. I could be happy in a lot of jobs, I guess. E: Okay. Yeah, I'm asking in detail, because there are people listening to this podcast, who will have to make a choice in one or two years about what to study. That's why it's always interesting to ask a student- Nona: I would like to say something! For me, the exams are easier now, but you'll have way more work in university college than university. Since it seems easy, the way I told- E: No, no. Nona: You'll have to work harder in university college, more assignments, but for me, the exams are just easier now. My study has a six-week-system. [New modules with finals every six weeks]. So less tough. That's better for me. I can remember more. In short, I'm working harder for school. Not to minimize- E: No, no, no. Nona: As if I don't do anything... E: What you said about the purpose, why you study those topics. What the goal is of a certain class. Is it because they are less abstract graphs or something? Or literally: 'this class is named...' I don't know which classes you take, but that it's... Nona: No, there are similar classes to those I had last year,  but... Just... What we learn, is way more specific. Less 'general'. In uni, we had 'History’. I get the importance, but you don't do anything with that, later on. Now, when we have 'Psychology', those are exactly the things we'll apply. Useful for the future. E: Okay, super. Super. Now a question, that could piggy back onto the previous topic. A girl - also an actress - asks: 'Would you drop out, if you got a role,  where the combination studying-acting isn't possible?' Nona: Yeah, I thought about that.  E: Thought about it? Nona: I got lucky before, I was able to combine both. I don't always have to be in class. Self study is achievable. On my own. If attendance is not required, naturally. So yeah... I've thought... That's really... You have to think long and hard about that. Then I might think: 'That's my dream!'. But afterwards, when the series or project is done, I've got nothing. I didn't do drama school either. I wouldn't have a diploma. E: You have to have a back-up, right? Nona: Hopefully, you can keep going. If not too much time passed by, I think you can go back to school? I hope so. I think I would, if I know I can come back to where I left off. I would. E: Okay, nah, cool. I guess people our age, who do something creative, might think a lot about dilemmas like that. Nona: Yes. E: They say the same thing. That they would like to finish their studies, but if the opportunity of a lifetime arises... I get that. I had a good question, but I scrolled past it. Quite a few people are asking the same thing. I once posed this question to someone during a podcast and now it keeps coming back. They ask: "If you had to describe yourself in one word..." "What would that word be?" One word is not much. Someone else is asking three words. Let's say three words. That's such a yearbook question. Nona: Questions you need to answer often and I still don't know the answer to them. E: You should have it ready in your head. Nona: Always be prepared. E: That's like: "What's your positive and negative quality?" I never know! Nona: Yes, honestly, negative - no problem. But positive? E: Really bad, right? Quite a few people feel that way. "I'm bad at this, at this." "And now something positive?" Nona: "Euh, yeah..." Nah, I am... I think... Usually... Spontaneous. E: That was very spontaneous of you! Nona: Should it be a deep answer? No, right? E: No. Nona: Friendly. And... Two, is that enough? Or still going for three? E: Thats... You may stop at two, for me. Nona: I can say a lot of negative stuff. E: We'll try and keep it positive. Nona: Lazy... E: Nah, let's be positive! Some questions make me wonder... Funny, though! "What do you think 'week animals' (= mollusca) do in the weekend?" Okay... The same person as the funny question, but this one is important for me. I often have a discussion about the topic, with my mom. "What's your favorite chips flavor?" Nona: Super bad, but I only like paprika chips. E: Paprika, I can live with that. Salt is the most boring variant there is. Sorry to those who prefer salt... Nona: Yeah... E: You like that too? Nona: I could eat it. Yet, if I have had to choose, of course I'll go with paprika!  E: How can I stop this podcast... ? No, no. Nona: Paprika, no doubt about it! And you? E: I like plenty of variants. There aren't many I don't like. That's why I think: there are so much flavors. A world of choices. Large shelves. Filled with options. And then you go for salt?! Nona: Yeah... But I meant, not- At parties, for example, you can't go wrong? E: Fact. Big chance that people go for any chips, if they wanted to. Most of them will. Nona: That's important. E: True. My tactic in the past, when going on a bus trip or camp or school trip - I don't know what, I took chips with me that nobody would like, so I could eat it all by myself. Nona: You liked them yourself? Otherwise, that's not clever. E: I'm not a picky eater. I could eat salt chips. I just think if you have the choice, then why go for that? Yet, there are still people who go for basic. I get that. That happens. So, Pringles - Sour cream and onion. The smell alone, people hate it. I love it. Your face! Nona: Never tried it, but I don't know if I want to. E: Yeah, I love it, it's great. Quite a few who hate it. Nona: With so many flavors, once you open the bag, I'll... It can smell *so* bad. E: When I was little and tried to hide my chips from my parents, I would put the bag behind the sofa. Then my parents would enter: "Are you eating chips?" Nona: Chips is one of the hardest foods to hide. E: The crunch is too loud. Nona: Opening the bag... Yeah, then it'll be too late. E: Exactly. Again, hobby questions. I don't know... How many do you have? Did you put pics of it online? You seem to like skiing? Nona: Yeah, yeah, yes, the most fun one. E: Okay.  Nona: It's amazing.  E: How long have you been doing it? Every year... ? Nona: From age four. E: Cool! Me too. Same. Nona: Yes, fun. E: Did you ever do Austrian skiing school? Or with- Nona: No, always Flemish instructors. E: Okay. Nona: I think it's- If you ever feel bad about yourself, go skiing! You can't think about anything else, because you have focus on so many other things:  not falling, not crashing, following the right path. You can't concentrate on anything else. The perfect solution when feeling bad. E: I agree completely. Why I asked about the Austrian ski school... As a three or four-year-old little guy, in a ski school filled with all German speaking children... Nona: I did it once when I was little. Bad, huh? E: I couldn't handle it. E & Nona: I cried so much! [said at the same time] Nona: Yes! Bad right?! E: Yeah. But It's just- I mean, you can't ski, can't talk to others who can't ski either. Everyone is talking, you don't know what they're saying, 'are they talking about me?' Nona: You go to the lessons to learn things, but you can't understand what they're teaching you! E: Exactly! Then they suddenly said: "Go into a pizza shape! Let your skis touch like this!" First, I was just copying it with my hands. Then he skied backwards to show the shape, but backwards. Just a point! So I turn, go backwards too. The instructors go ballistic, they were angry at me. What do you do, as a small child? Nona: Fortunately, I just did it once. You don't really learn from them, right? E: Good for you. Indeed. I've got another question. Separately. You've got a boyfriend, so maybe it doesn't apply to you. But I've had fun on Tinder, recently. I get some funny pick up lines on the regular. Did you have a Tinder profile?  Were you ever active on it? Nona: No, never. E: Okay. Nona: I saw my friends' profile, just for laughs. But I really don't know how it works. E: The funny thing is, everyone does it for the laughs. They'll send a message, because 'it's just a Tinder match'. If everyone does it for fun, then we're still going about it in a serious way? Nona: Yeah... Do you have it? E: I have it. I just don't send a lot, just here for the pick up lines. I'm exactly the person I bitched about before: doing it for the fun. Nona: Do you start or the other person? E: I've never send anything myself. I would want to, though, since it's a good topic for a video or something. Just recently, I asked for pick up lines, so I could use them. But I haven't gotten the time to do it. In the meantime, I just answer to the messages they send me. Still nice. So you weren't a fanatic Tinder user, before? Nona: No, really, never. I wouldn't know how to use it. I've seen the process on a video, or something. Yet... E: Do you believe that... relationships formed through Tinder, could be good? Nona: Yes, I do. I think so. E: I think so too! There is always such a stigma surrounding it. Nona: That's not true, because if you go on a date, you still get to know each other? E: See? That's the answer I would say too. Nona: It's still a thing: 'Where did you guys meet?' 'Tinder'. Then everyone laughs at you. I think a lot of people make up stories. E: Make up different things. 'Yes, in the library.' Nona: 'What should we say?' E: See? Like that! Where did you met your boyfriend? Nona: We've been classmates since primary school. But I didn't really know him. Now- No, I mean, two years ago, he was also a 'Chiro' leader... E: So... Tinder? No, no. Okay, we've been talking for a while now. Is there something you would like to - Wow, my voice. Stuff you'd like to say? What you thought about recently? Something people should know? What people should know... About you or about life? Wisdom to share? Nona: No, don't have that. E: 'I don't have wisdom'. Nona: No, but I was- Before this conversation, I thought about how awkward I was going to be. E: No, of course not. Nona: Honestly, it takes a while. Fortunately, you're alone. But in group? I'm very uncomfortable, very quickly. It takes a while before I can be myself. I get so angry at myself. "Just be yourself" and then it doesn't happen. It takes so much time. I really get annoyed at that. E: Were you able to be yourself now? Nona: Yes, yes. If it's one person, I can. With a group, however... E: Can I be honest? I never told this. I'm exactly the same. People always think I'm super smooth. I'm only outgoing when I can talk one-on-one. It's easier. Nona: Right? E: Yes. Put me in a group and I certainly don't stand out. I'll wait and see. I'll try to read people. Who would laugh with this and that? And then I might talk. I won't be the loudest screamer. Nona: No, that's... Yeah... It might even happen that, in a group, I'll never be truly myself. Then I think- I don't know- It's not the people- No, probably is, but I don't know what's stopping me. That's really super... crazy, actually. When I finally can be myself, I think people think: 'I want to be the same. Speak my mind.' It has to develop, though. E: I feel you. Completely the same. It still happens with the people I know. I've had great one-on-one conversations with them. Yet, when they're together in a loud group, I still struggle. 'I know these people, they're my friends. I can talk to them.' Then trying to shout something in that group? Still... 'I'll keep quiet'. Nona: So crazy. Especially when they're all immediately themselves, from the first second. Loud and all that. Respect. I would love to be the same. But that makes it harder. 'Shit, I wouldn't dare to...' 'I don't know what to say' E: Indeed. Indeed. I feel you. I think a lot of people have this, we're not the only ones. Nona: No, and I think that, when you get older, it will probably pass. E: I think so too. You'll care less and less about what people think, after a while. Focussing more on people where you truly can be yourself. Okay, what a nice touch, to end the podcast on. Nona: Right? E: Super. I would like to thank you for stopping by. Is there-  'Stopping by', I say. Quotation marks. Are there accounts where they can follow you? Something you're doing? Where you'll post stuff? Nona: No, I'm not doing anything. I'm mostly focussing on school. E: As you should. Nona: And, yeah... the rest, not really... Bad, right? E: Instagram @nonajanssens? Nona: Yes! E: TikTok? Nona: No! E: No TikTok? Nona: I have it, but I don't use it. I've posted one video, where people- I'm in it too. I've got a lot of videos in which people fall. Coincidentally, I'm always the one filming it. E: Okay. Nona: And I've mixed them together. Everyone's falling. That's not really me. No dance video or something. E: No TikTok dancing? Nona: But I love watching stuff. E: Yeah, no, there are- Nona: So much fun stuff. E: The hours fly by if you scroll, that's crazy. Nona: Indeed. Sometimes I think 'Oof', but sometimes things are so funny. I have so much fun with that. E: Sometimes you think: 'People share too much on this app'. I feel you. Nona: That's true. E: I've said it too many times in a short period of time: 'I feel you'. I never say that. But 'I feel you', so... So, Nona Janssens, on Instagram and Twitter? You use that? Nona: Yes. E: Perfect. Thank you very much. Oh shit, I forgot, I have to give a Twitter shoutout! I'll do this quickly. You've probably seen it. So, one of the retweets. Follow and retweet the tweets @gossipguypodcast, if you ever want a shout out. The shout out of this week is 'Astrid', '@Houdjou'. Thank you for listening, Astrid. Thanks for talking to me, Nona! Nona: You're welcome! E: Until next Monday! Peace! Nona: Bye! E: Now I can stop the recording.

[freddyfreebat]

Jack Dylan Grazer’s interview with HERO Magazine

[In] a far step from his first appearance on stage at six years old, during which he adopted a British accent and warbled out an opera ballad, [Jack Dylan] Grazer is currently gearing up for his role in Luca Guadaginino’s upcoming HBO series, We Are Who We Are, a love story set on an American military base in Italy.

Lindsey Okubo: Let’s start by talking about the on-set chemistry between you, Zach [Levi] and Asher [Angel] in Shazam! It was amazing to watch and I imagine that the influences you have on set play a large role in your life. How has your understanding of yourself been influenced by the roles you’ve played? Jack Dylan Grazer: Oh for sure, I think that if I wasn’t living through the opportunities that I have with acting... Oh my god, I’d be a mess. I would be all over the place [laughs]. This is my outlet. This is my world. I tried doing sports when I was little and it just didn’t work for me and then I started doing theatre and was like, this is my tribe, this is where I belong, this is my niche. To live in these fantasy worlds has been so cool because when I was growing up, I used to dress up as Captain Hook or Batman and do little scenes in the mirror. I just enjoyed living through these characters. Lindsey: You must feel a certain level of freedom as you disassociate from who you are? Jack: Yeah, it’s so liberating. Some people choose to bottle thing up, but for me, being on a stage or in front of the camera is freedom. Being someone else is really just me being me in a weird way, it’s who I am, it’s living out loud, which I’ve been doing my whole life.

Lindsey: Yeah, and growing up nowadays we really do have larger platforms to express ourselves, to live out loud and actually be heard compared to past generations. Jack: It’s definitely easier to speak your truth, be your real self, choose your destiny and not have a pre-orchestrated future. It’s easier to carve your own path because people are more understanding – or more empathetic. Lindsey: Are there ever any moments where you do feel vulnerable in those instances? With acting, you really have to open yourself up and be in tune with your emotions in a way that most people aren’t, it’s your livelihood. Jack: Totally. But when you surpass that wall of being afraid, of being vulnerable, you’ll find there’s comfort there. With acting, you’re also this other character and you get to speak your so-called “truth” through his character who may or may not be similar to you. Lindsey: Right, but how do you then fend off moments of doubt when you’re stretching your understanding of yourself? It’s the thought process of like, I know who I am, but how do I become someone else? Jack: Of course there’s going to be doubt, but when you know that you have the capability then it’s easier. You have to have some kind of empathy for your character and an understanding of why they’re doing what they’re doing. A while ago I watched this interview with actor Steve Railsback, who is this super nice hippie dude, but he played Charles Manson in Helter Skelter (1976). Charles was a sickening human but Steve was like, “I can understand why my character does what he does. I can convince myself of his motives.” That’s a tough thing to do but it’s just that, it’s convincing yourself of your character’s motives instead of holding onto your own. Lindsey: Going back to what you were saying earlier about our generation being able to empathise to a greater extent, I’m wondering how do you differentiate between understanding and empathising? Jack: Empathy is putting yourself in the person’s shoes and comprehending the outcomes, while understanding is like, okay, I get where you’re coming from but I’m not going to fully go there. Lindsey: Do you ever feel suffocated by the fame while still figuring out who you are? Jack: Originally I felt, yeah, kind of suffocated, but what really grounded me was school and the fact that it’s super important to me. I plan on going to college and if I start thinking of school as a necessity, like brushing my teeth, or taking a shower, then it’s not as big of a thing. I do my final take on set and then it’s back to school. I never want to neglect it. Lindsey: That’s funny because I feel like now more than ever, people are questioning the importance of the schooling system – where does school become important for you and what value do you see in it now? Jack: Education in any field informs your art because there are always so many references to draw from, it’s so useful and I myself applying these when it comes to acting or anything creative. Subject-wise, I’m super into English, history and world civ, but it doesn’t need to be drawing from school directly, it can just be life experiences because I like to know a bit about the character and what that kind of person they are. Lindsey: Right, but there’s also something to be said about the people we are learning from. What makes a good teacher to you? Jack: I think it’s important when a teacher focuses on each student individually, instead of teaching students as a whole. It’s important to understand everyone has different learning capabilities, everyone learns at a different pace and has a different process. Lindsey: Taking that a step further and applying it to your own career, you’ve spoken about wanting to direct and write... Jack: Yeah I definitely want to extend into other creative factions – I want to stay in this environment and industry because it’s what I love. The cool thing about my experiences on set is that I’ve always been able to apply my own creative input. Like on It, me and Finn [Wolfhard] were always coming up with stuff. The majority of the dialogue between him and I was improvised and Andy [Muschietti], our director, was super fantastic about that. Lindsey: That’s cool. What do you think is the inherent power of storytelling? Jack: I think it’s the ultimate entertainment. It’s so vast, there are a multitude of conduits that go into telling a story and there are so many ways in which to be a storyteller. I’m equally interested in both telling the story and being a character in the narrative. On set, we’re all building the story as open, it’s a team, an ensemble. That being said, I think the key to being a good director is being flexible and doing away with the formalities, to allow for free reign. Lindsey: And it’s also about having trust in the people that you’re working with. I feel like that can be a difficult thing when so many of us have our walls up – how do you begin to break them down through storytelling? Jack: I’ve worked with actors before where I’ll be in a scene with them and they’ll be trying to flex their jawline to look good for the camera when it’s a serious scene. That’s great, but if you’re there in the body of that character, in that moment he wouldn’t be flexing [laughs]. It’s that self-aware thing where it’s like, “Wow, how good does my jawline look right now?” There are levels to it. For instance on social media, I’m a pretty open book but there are things I won’t share because it’s not other people’s business. I keep it lighthearted, I keep it easy, not because I want to make it seem like the life of Jack Dylan Grazer is all fun and games but it’s like, what’s the point in sharing if that’s not my purpose? I think my current purpose is to entertain and that’s what I want to do. My goal is to be funny, to be moving, to be storyteller. Lindsey: Does entertaining ever get tiresome for you to the point where you feel like you’re always performing instead of just being? Jack: I guess sometimes. But I really do feel at home performing. I remember the first time I ever went on stage to do a play, I was six, doing a British accent, singing opera and I found myself. I was like, I can’t do anything but this, I won’t allow myself to do anything but this. Now I’m here and have realised that I want to stretch myself – and sometimes it does get tiring to entertain. Humour is my number one trait, I like making people laugh – that’s my favourite thing. Lindsey: To what extent is sharing that creativity for yourself? Jack: If you’re a creative person and you’re confident in that, then it’s better to be open about it and express it to people who you feel you can share it with. I’m not saying show it off to the world if you don’t want to, but be proud of yourself and have assurance in yourself. There are always flaws in creativity but it’s all part of the art. It’s different for everybody, but for me, I love showing off what I do. Lindsey: Does it have anything to do with needing validation at the same time or are you past that point? Jack: I don’t know if it’s validation. I guess the simplest way to put it is that I’m just proud of what I do and if someone’s like, “Oh, it’s shitty,” I’m like, “Oh, okay, cool, I don’t care.” Unless it’s intelligent, constructive criticism of course. Lindsey: How do you define personal growth? Jack: You’re never done evolving. It’s pretty hard to detect when you’ve reached your full potential, which is like the blood of everything we do, it’s how we operate. By having dedication, commitment and discipline you’re able to access your ability and that’s my ultimate goal, as a human being and as an artist.

[confinedmadness]

[Review] Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds

Overall

I’ve now finished all the routes in Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds and would like to compile my thoughts into one last post. Every time I finished a bachelor’s route, I did write my thoughts about it in separate posts. Links to those posts are found below. This will be pretty long.

Art

I love, love, love the art! It’s so beautiful. My only complaint is that the guys don’t have equal numbers of CGs. For example, the most number of CGs for a character is 10. However, poor Yamazaki only gets 6!! And even among those with the same number of CGs, it isn’t equal. For example, Harada and Heisuke both have 10 CGs each. But Harada is with Chizuru in 7 of them. Meanwhile, Heisuke is with Chizuru in only 3 of his 10.

Music

The music is also good. “Corridor of Memories” and “Yearn for his Heart” are my favorites. I just really love good soft, touching music. Though the comedic music and the red light district music are also fun.

Translation / Text

I’m on the fence about this one. On one hand, the translation wasn’t wrong. However, sometimes the word choices and the tone just didn’t fit. When Hijikata suddenly says, “The hell you say?” or when Kazama says “Shit happens”, I just end up frowning because I personally feel the first one would have been better if it was written properly “What the hell did you say?”, while the second one could have just been “That’s just how things are.” 

I wish they’d taken into consideration the personalities of each character and took that into account when translating their dialogue. Not everyone speaks the same way. Not everyone spouts out slang. Some people are formal. Some people are too casual.

I also mentioned this in my post on Souma’s route, but “senpai” isn’t “teacher”. And though this is low priority, I wish they’d done something to show that Sakamoto speaks a different dialect from the Shinsengumi guys. (Especially since they’d taken the time to get a voice actor who actually speaks the dialect.)

Also, there were a lot of typographical errors--repeated words, missing words, wrong word order, etc. It becomes bothersome after the first 15 instances, and it breaks your immersion into the story.

Interface / Controls

I don’t really have problems with the interface and controls per se. The interface is easy to understand and navigate. The controls aren’t complicated, either. However, there are bugs here and there where suddenly the story won’t move forward no matter how many times I click my mouse. But then I pick up my controller and it continues no problem. As well as vice versa, I mash my controller buttons and it doesn’t work but I switch to my mouse and voila!

Voice Acting

Overall, I think the cast did a really good job. Some of my favorite voice actors that voice characters in Hakuoki are: Yoshino Hiroyuki (Heisuke), Miyano Mamoru (Iba), Kaji Yuuki (Souma), Ono Daisuke (Sakamoto), and Tsuda Kenjiro (Kazama). And while they did awesome as usual, other performances I enjoyed were by Morikubo Shoutaro (Okita), Toriumi Kousuke (Saito), and Ito Hasumi (Kaoru). 

I like the fact that they got Ono Daisuke to voice Sakamoto using his Tosa dialect. I found out through some searches that Ono actually voiced other fictional versions of Sakamoto Ryoma for the same reason. I know the Tosa dialect Ono speaks may already be different (evolved) from the Tosa dialect Sakamoto spoke in his time, but the fact that they made that effort was really nice. (Which again brings me to the point that I wish they’d made the effort in the English translation as well. But I understand that’s difficult to do when there’s no equivalent.)

Also, Tsuda Kenjiro’s voice is always a stand-out. I felt similarly when I first heard Kazama speak as when I heard Hatori Hanzo from Nightshade speak (which Tsuda also voices). Sometimes, I close my eyes and feel that any time now Inui (Prince of Tennis) will rattle on about his newest Inui Juice, or that Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh!) will yell “YUGIIIII”  😂

History

Admittedly, I’m more of a Sengoku Era girl than a Bakumatsu Period girl. And my experiences of the Bakumatsu period in a fictional story is limited to the anime/manga/film Rurouni Kenshin, the drama Tenno no Ryoriban, and the otome game Ikemen Bakumatsu. None of which really inspired me to look further into the history. 

This time, though, I did a lot of reading. I really love how they incorporated the historical events into the storytelling. As well as how they portrayed the characters’ deaths.

What was a little confusing, though, was I didn’t know at first that the game shows dates following the lunar calendar. So I was searching for events that happened in January 3, 1868 only to find that it is equivalent to the western date January 27, 1868.

Routes

In order from ‘awesome’ to ‘meh’ according to me (though the middle is pretty dependent on my mood), here are links to my individual reviews on the routes:

Okita Souji

Kazama Chikage

Yamazaki Susumu

Saito Hajime

Harada Sanosuke

Sakamoto Ryouma

Toudou Heisuke

Sanan Keisuke

Iba Hachiro

Hijikata Toshizo

Souma Kazue

Nagakura Shinpachi

Well, that was honestly difficult to rank. In terms of raw fun, Yamazaki’s route is probably my favorite. But when story and depth and the like are considered, Okita and Kazama’s are definitely on top. In terms of whose route I’m interested to play in Edo Blossoms, Iba will be high up there. But I didn’t really enjoy his Kyoto Winds route that much. So yeah, take this ranking with a grain of salt.

I mention this in probably every individual review up there, but I wished they put more effort on the bad endings. I do understand though that there is little that can be done with the suddenness of the events in the bad endings but I wished more care and thought was put into it. Just a shame that it’s an ending but it’s really just there to tell you “Oops, not the right ending.”

Also, consistency is a problem depending on whose route you’re playing. Things that were mentioned earlier on suddenly become a surprise for the characters later on. It’s kind of frustrating.

Yukimura’s Ending

I really like this ending. It’s probably the most realistic, too. I’m glad it’s there.

[skammovistarplus]

Culture and Translation - S01 E07 and SKAM+ Clip 3

I hope I get these done before season 2 starts dropping, that’s all I’ll say. 😂

CLIP 1: Foreshadowing

Es un poco rancio, ¿no? (“It’s not hip, no?”): Fucking Jorge and his untranslatable slang. Okay, so “rancio” literally means “rancid” — and a bunch of other things besides, but this is the meaning closest to the way Jorge uses it. Jorge means that the power of invisibility is overused, boring, the kind of thing someone totally out of touch would pick. Simply put, it’s not cool, and may not have ever been cool.

Es como el superpoder de los cotillas (“It’s like the gossips’ superpower”): “Cotilla” is both a busybody and someone who gossips a lot. Either way, they like being all up on your business.

I think it’s notable that this is all that remains from the og storyline where Jonas wants to meet Eva’s mom, but ultimately bails because he’s smoking weed at Ingrid’s. Eva simply puts Jorge’s request off and it’s never spoken of again.

Personally, I have to say that Eva sharing basically none of her life with her mom rang true to me. I spoke with one of the people who attended the research groups, who told me they were asked about how much or how little they share with their parents. She said most people agreed that teens spend time with their families, but they don’t talk to their parents about their lives all that much. As a teen, my parents were on a need-to-know basis when it came to who my friends were or who I was dating, much less at what point sex, booze and other drugs came into my life.

CLIP 2:  Diseased Pomeranian

Ay, que me mato (“Ah, I’m gonna die”): There’s a bit of a nuance to what Eva says. To die, in Spanish, is “morir”. “Matar” means to kill. Eva means she’s going to hurt herself getting off Jorge’s back and then die, so not quite the same as passing peacefully, lol.

Que me pica un huevo la nariz (“My nose is itching something terrible”): Indeed, Viri says that her nose is itching, but she uses “un huevo” as an intensifier. “Un huevo” would usually mean an egg, but in this register it means a testicle, heh. So her nose is itching in a testicley way.

Viri says in episode 8 that the girl that runs into Eva is a second year. At any rate, Alicia and Inés hung out over the summer with her.

We get a medium close-up of Alicia as the nameless second year passes by her. Alicia has noticed that the second year has herpes, as well. It’s a brief moment, but we can tell that Alicia puts two and two together, as well.

CLIP 3: In which ALEJANDRO tries to get a passing grade in Maths

This is an underrated moment, but I find it hilarious that Eva invokes the “not all men” defense. Especially since Inés preys  on Eva’s insecurity at the end of the clip.

No me jodas (“don´t fuck me over”): This is just one of those Spanish things that we’ll say over and over. I tried different translations through the course of the season, but I still haven’t settled on one that I think really hits the spot. “Don’t fuck me over” works, but it might come across as Eva’s feelings being hurt, rather than something we say… over and over, heh.

Please don’t miss Alejandro adjusting his junk. Lol he’s so douchey.

There’s a school desk in the bathroom. This is not an uncommon sight in Spanish high schools, but I don’t really have a good explanation for it. Like, it’s just a thing. I guess people will drag a desk over at recess, so they can more comfortably hang out in the bathrooms, and then nobody ever bothers dragging them back?

And, of course, this has been noted, but the graffiti on the wall is a pun. If you read it without the R in parenthesis, it says, “Woman, love yourself.” If you read it adding the R, it says, “Woman, arm yourself.”

Pues a la de mates le está saliendo uno (“the Maths hardass is developing a cold sore too”): What Cris actually says is, “So, the Maths [female pronoun] is developing one,” but for the sake of clarity, I rephrased it to remind the people watching that the girls see the Maths teacher as a toughie, and also, so what Cris is implying about Alejandro and the Maths teacher is more obvious.

I really love that Inés actually smells Jorge’s sweatshirt/hoodie (it’s not clear from dialogue which is it). That’s a power move in any culture.

CLIP 4: Corviches are so hot right now

Encaja todo, claro (“It makes sense, of course”): The closer translation is, “It all fits, of course.” I just wasn’t sure the meaning would be clear, especially when they’re all talking so fast.

Tío, ¿y si nos acoplamos a tus hermanos? (“Dude, and if we crash your brothers’ plans?”): First off, Amira is addressing Cris, but she uses “tío” and not “tía.” This is common and there’s nothing noteworthy about it, but I wanted to mention it in case people had noticed characters of any gender addressing female characters as “tío.” Second, Amira is using slang that would be literally translated to, “what if we dock up with your brothers?” The visual is adorable (to me anyway), but I went with a less literal phrasing that makes more sense in English. I also love that this is apparently something Cris and Amira have done enough that it’s what comes to Amira’s mind first as an alternate weekend idea.

Lol easy there with the age foreshadowing, show. Looking at Cris, Jorge and Lucas specifically.

Jorge says he wants to spin tecno (or techno, in English ). In Spain, tecno has become something of a catch-all term for all EDM genres, rather than the specific mid-80s genre. In hindsight, I’d use EDM instead of electronica.

In case you hadn’t looked corviches up yet, here is a recipe + pic in English.  They’re similar to hot pockets, but the dough is made with peanuts and plantains. Also, apparently, very successful with girls! I have not had them (yet!)

Cris notes that daylight savings time ends that weekend. She and the script writers are correct! She remembers because that gives them an extra hour of partying, but the social media updates stopped before 2 am. Who knows when Cris got back home, though!

At some point in this clip, Jorge and Lucas talk to each other among the general chatter. For once, Lucas’ voice doesn’t carry over the others like a powerful siren, so I was never able to make out what they said. Missed opportunities.

CLIP 5: As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in joy and were suddenly silenced

Debuti (“G shit”): This is one of the translations that I’m happiest about. Debuti sounds very Madrid-specific to me, and so I wanted something really specific and that would stick out. “Debuti” comes up a few times over the season, but it is always said by Eva. It’s Eva’s catchphrase.

I hope it came through in the subs, but while Eva is reading Jorge’s texts, the gang is having a ridiculously hard time trying to pronounce corviches, in the background. To be fair I’m biased because I’ve studied linguistics, but it doesn’t seem like a word a native Spanish speaker would have trouble with.

We first hear Alejandro’s voice as he comes in Nora’s house! Unless you watched the Aitana extra clip, of course. On that note, there’s no animosity whatsoever between the boy squad and Alejandro’s crew. They give each other friendly high fives, it’s all chill.

This party only came to be the day before. Imagine what Cris would’ve done with a few days heads up.

I wonder if Cris was looking to hook up with Lucas at this party, and, since he didn’t feel like being social, she hooked up with Hugo, instead. Seeing how hard a time she’s had shaking Hugo off, I think it would’ve gone better for her if Lucas had agreed to a dance.

And speaking of Lucas, you can kind of see the order in which some scenes were shot, by tracking Lucas’ actor’s cold sore. And yes, it is an actual cold sore and not make up for the show, lol. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that. What amazing timing on the cold sore’s part to be at the scab stage during ALEJANDRO FERNANDO ROBERTO’s herpes week.

Pues muy bien (“Good for her”):  It’s not exactly what Alejandro says. What he says would be closer to, “Okay, very good.” But I think “Good for her” really gets across how little Alejandro cares about what Nora is saying, at this point of the confrontation.

¿Es que no te salían pelos en los huevos? (“You didn’t grow hair in your balls?”): Omg. It’s ON. ON. I am cringing so hard at this mistake in the subs.

CLIP 6: 🙃🙃🙃

I saw someone asking on twitter, so yes, those giant plastic cups are a thing here. They have different names depending on what part of Spain you’re from. In Madrid, they’re called “mini,” and they have a volume of 750 ml (or a little over three cups). They’re most often used for street drinking.

Eva drinks KNEBEP Vodka, which is sold at (you guessed it) Mercadona, for 4 euro per bottle. My liver is crying just thinking about it.

The first song that plays over this clip is Aitana’s Teléfono (Telephone). We remember Aitana from Cristian’s party!

CLIP 7: 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

Te he oído que estabas con Inés (“I could hear you were with Inés”): Literally, “I have heard you, that you were with Inés.”

Por eso he coincidido con Inés (“That’s why Inés was around”): Collins dictionary says that “coincidir” in the sense Jorge is using it would be translated as, “to happen to meet.” I.e. “That’s why I’ve happened to meet Inés.” But I didn’t like it, because Jorge was at Inés’ house. Of course Inés was around. He didn’t just happen to run into her somewhere random. Hope the translation worked!

Tranquila (“It’s okay”): We had something of a debate over the way to translate this. Jorge says “tranquila,” which is the female form of the adjective “calm.” TAJTA wanted to translate it as “calm down.” I didn’t agree, because in Spanish, that would be “tranquilízate.” Jorge is simply repeating “tranquila” to Eva as a means to soothe her, like you do with a crying person. So, rather than “calm down,” I suggested that Jorge repeat “It’s okay.”

Jorge does say “tranquilízate” over the credits, and in that instance we did translate it as “calm down.”

EXTRA CLIP 3: Hugo psyches himself out

This clip takes place between clip 4 and 5! It happens on Friday evening.

At the 00:21 mark, the camera focuses on a graffiti of a blue-skinned woman, with yellow text next to her. It says, “We are the witches you couldn’t kill.”

Pero si estoy más sudado que el rabo de Nadal (“I’m sweatier than Nadal’s wang though”): This is the exact translation, word for word. I just wanted to make clear I did not make anything up in that sentence. By the way, it took a bit to settle on wang among all the many words for a penis.

Nos alegramos porque un colega nuestro está a punto de mojar (“We’re happy because a buddy is gonna get his dick wet”): Dilan is not quite so explicit, he just says Hugo is going to “mojar,” literally, “to wet.” But, it just made me realize that “get his dick wet” is pretty much what “mojar” has meant all this time, and I just hadn’t really thought about it until I had to translate it for a teen show.

Concha de tu madre (“hurry up”): This is Latin American slang. I actually had to read up on usage, because it is most often used as an insult having to do with someone’s mother’s vagina. But I’m pretty sure that, in this context, Dilan only intends to hurry Hugo up. 😂

Social media:

I just want to have a minor breakdown about Eva actually referring to Lucas as her and Jorge’s son, lol.

Jorge has the Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir poster up in his room. As I mentioned in a previous post, Tomás Aguilera seems to be both a fan of cats and of French. The three videos of Jorge messing with his DJ system are among my very favorite Skam España social media content, because for once, they’re not a selfie.

It looks as though the shipname for Hugo/Cris is Crugo, to answer a question I posed when I posted the social media updates.

“Olé” finally makes an appearance on Skam España. I’ve decided to keep it as is, because some things would be a crime to translate. In case you’re not aware, “olé” is used to express approval and it’s commonly associated with flamenco music and bullfighting. However, it’s not just used in those two contexts. It can be used in any context. I often use it sarcastically, when someone has fucked up. 😋

[cerastes]

xenodile: On top of that, they then have to get good voice actors to actually put the work in and make the dialogue work, which is where a lot of stuff falls short because stuff like anime and video games don't tend to attract the dedicated people.  It's gotten better and we have way more high quality dubs nowadays, but even then it can be a mixed bag.

Yeah, for games with voice acting, there’s that Extra Difficulty.

For example, Yakuza, from the 2nd game and on, opted to go with JP voice tracks, not because the Y1 was bad (it was pretty damn good in my opinion), but because it was EXPENSIVE, given the sheer amount of lines there are in each game. So they have to pour all that effort into the text instead, and man, you played Y0, you can see how much effort they put into it, the dialogue is god damn solid and it feels like actual people talking. I can tell you this very much has always been the case.

But for games that actually have an English dub, damn, you need to find the talent, and the talent has to deliver, it’s all a big effort. For instance, in P5, they do a pretty damn good job, even if a lot of people mispronounce names, the only real bad aspect of it, but they really put the effort. As you said, it’s gotten better the last few years.

[nedraggett]

Run ragged

It didn’t work.  And while I wasn’t surprised by that, I did want to tease out why, at least for myself.

I honestly was openly skeptical of Blade Runner 2049 for a while, so I can’t hide my bias there.  I wasn’t totally ‘salt the earth and never mention it again’ then and am certainly not saying that now.  But each new trailer left me feeling more ‘uh...really?’ and the explosion of immediate praise from many critics even more so.  I wasn’t contrarian, and neither did I think groupthink was at work, but I suspected a massive wish fulfillment was. 

So I generally avoided reactions after that and figured I’d wait for things to die down a bit -- even more quickly than I might have guessed, seeing its swiftly collapsing commercial performance over here. My Sunday early afternoon showing near here was about maybe 2/3 full on its third weekend, so it’s found an audience, but I’m in San Francisco -- I expected an audience there. Enough friends have posted theater shots where they were the only person in the room to know this is dying off as an across the board thing, and never probably was.

I’m not glad it failed, but I’m not surprised -- in fact, being more blunt, I think it deserved not to be a hit.  The key reason for me played itself out over its length -- it was boring.  It’s a very boring movie.  It’s not a successful movie except in intermittent moments.  

That said, of course not everyone agreed (I’ll recommend as an indirect counterpoint to my thoughts this piece by my friend Matt, which went up earlier today). And boredom is not the sole reason for me to crucify it -- there were a variety of things one can address.  I’ll note two at the start since they could be and in a couple of cases I’ve seen were particular breaking points for others:

* The sexual politics of the movie, however much meant to be in line with the original scenario as playing out a certain logic, were often at least confused or hesitant within a male gaze context, at most lazily vile beyond any (often flatly obvious) point-making.  I often got a mental sense of excuses that could be offered along the lines of ‘well...you know, it’s supposed to be like that in this world, it’s a commentary!,’ which is often what I’ve seen in positive criticism of, say, Game of Thrones. Maybe. That said: not that any sort of timing played into it, but the fact that Harvey Weinstein’s downfall began two days before release, and the resulting across-board exposure and on-the-record testimonials from many women against far too many men, couldn’t really be escaped.  Further, since the fallout was first felt, after all, in the film industry, seeing any film, new or old, through the lens of what’s acceptable and who gets through what hoops -- and who is broken by the experience -- is always important.  It’s not for nothing to note that the original film’s female lead Sean Young got shunted into the ‘she’s crazy’/’too much trouble’ file in later years where male actors might perhaps find redemption; the fact that she played a small part in the new film made me think a bit more on her fate than that of her character’s.  (Another point I saw a few women brought up as well -- having a key to the whole story be pregnancy and childbirth as opposed to infertility wasn’t warmly received.)

* It’s a very...white future. Not exclusively, certainly. But people of color barely get a look in, a quick scene here, a cameo there. A black female friend of mine just this morning said this over on FB about the one African American actor whose character got the most lines, saying: 

to have the only significant black character be this awful, creepy man who seemed to be an "overseer" type to the children, was really uncomfortable and another perfect example of scifi using an 'other' narratives or american slave narrative but within a white context. We all know what it's supposed to represent and so it's just straight up lazy writing at the end of the day and exploitative.

Meantime, another sharp series of comments elsewhere revolved around how a film perhaps even more obviously drenched than the original in an amalgamated East Asian imaginary setting for the Los Angeles sequences barely showcased anyone from such a background. Dave Bautista certainly makes an impact at the start, but after that? The fact that I can think of three speaking roles for actors of that (wide) background in the original, as in actually having an exchange with a lead character, and only one in this one, maybe two if you count the random shouting woman in K’s apartment building, is more than a little off.  Add in a ‘Los Angeles,’ or a wider SoCal if you like, that aside from Edward James Olmos’s short cameo apparently has nobody of Mexican background, let alone Central American, in it, and you gotta wonder.  My personal ‘oh really’ favorite was the one official sign that was written in English and, I believe, Sanskrit.  Great visual idea; can’t say I saw anyone of South Asian descent either.

Both these very wide issues, of course, tie in with the business and the society we’re all in -- but that’s no excuse. And there are plenty of other things I could delve into even more, not least my irritation over the generally flatly-framed dialogue shots in small offices that tended to undercut the grander vistas, or how the fact that Gosling’s character finding the horse carving had been telegraphed so far in advance that it was resolutely unremarkable despite all the loud music, etc. My key point remains: boring.  A sometimes beautifully shot and visually/sonically striking really dull, draggy, boring film.

The fair question though is why I think that.  A friend in response to that complaint as echoed by others joked what we would make of Bela Tarr films, to which I replied that I own and enjoy watching Tarkovsky movies. Slow pace and long shots aren’t attention killers for me per se; if something is gripping, it will be just that, and justify my attention. Meanwhile, the original film famously got dumped on for also being slow, boring, etc at the time, and plenty can still feel that way about it. Blade Runner’s reputation is now frightfully overburdened and certainly I’ve contributed to it mentally if not through formal written work; it succeeds but is a flawed creation, and strictly speaking the two big complaints I’ve outlined above apply to the predecessor as much as the current film, it’s just a matter of degrees otherwise. But if you told me I had to sit down and watch it, I’d be happy to. Tell me to do the same with this one, I would immediately ask for the ability to skip scenes.

I’ve turned it all over in my head and these are three elements where things fell apart for me, caused me to be disengaged -- not in any specific order, but I’m going to build outward a bit, from the specific to the general, and with specific contrast between the earlier film and the new one.  These discontinuities aren’t the sole faults, but they’re the ones I’ve been thinking about the most.

First: it’s worth noting that the new film brings in a lot of specific cultural elements beyond the famed advertising and signs. Nabokov’s Pale Fire is specifically singled out both as a visual cue and as an element in K’s two police station evaluations, for instance. Meanwhile, musically, I didn’t quite catch what song it was Joi was telling K about early in the film but a check later means it must have been Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” featured on the soundtrack.  Sinatra himself of course shows up later as a small holographic performance in Vegas, specifically of “One For My Baby,” while prior to that K and Deckard fight it out while larger holographic displays of older Vegas style revues and featured performers appear glitchily -- showgirls, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis in his later pomp, Liberace complete with candleabra. All of this makes a certain sense and on the one hand I don’t object to it.

But on the other I do.  Something about all that rubbed me the wrong way and I honestly wasn’t sure why -- the Nabokov bit as well, even the quick Treasure Island moment between Deckard and K when they first talk to each other. The answer I think lies with the original film. It’s not devoid of references either, but note how two of the most famous are used:

* When Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty introduces himself to James Hong’s Hannibal Chew, he does so with a modified quote from William Blake’s America: A Prophecy. (This fuller discussion of that quote and how it was changed from the original is worth a read; it’s also worth noting that Hauer brought it to the table, and wasn’t planned otherwise.) But he doesn’t do so by spelling out to the audience, much less Chew, that it is Blake at all.  You either have to know it or you don’t. If, say, we saw Batty clearly holding a copy of the book -- or maybe more intriguing, a copy in Deckard’s apartment -- then that would be one thing...but it becomes a bit more ‘DO YOU SEE?’ as a result. Clunkier, a bit like how Pale Fire worked in the new film.

* Even in the original soundtrack’s compromised/rerecorded form, I always loved the one formally conventional song on the original soundtrack, “One More Kiss, Dear.” I just assumed as I did back in the mid to late 80s, when I first saw the film and heard its music, that it was a random oldie from somewhere mid-century repurposed, a bit of mood-setting. It is...but it isn’t.  It’s strictly pastiche, a creation of Vangelis himself in collaboration with Peter Skellern, an English singer-songwriter who had a thriving career in his home country. It just seemed real enough, with scratchy fidelity, a piano-bar sad elegance -- which was precisely the point. You couldn’t pin it down to anything, it wasn’t a specifically recognizable element. It wasn’t Elvis, or Liberace, or Sinatra. 

This careful hiding of concrete details -- even when the original film showcased other clear, concrete details of ‘our’ world culturally, but culturally via economics and ads -- is heavily to the original’s benefit, I’d argue.  There’s a certain trapped-in-baby-boomerland context of the elements in the new film that, perversely, almost feels too concrete, or forced is maybe a better word. It’s perverse because on the one hand it makes a clear sense, but on the other hand, by not being as tied to explicitly cultural identifiers -- whether ‘high’ literature or rough and ready ‘pop’ or whatever one would like to say -- the original film feels that much more intriguingly odd, dreamlike even. I would tease this out further if I could, but it quietly nags -- perhaps the best way I could describe it is this: by not knowing what, in general, the characters, ‘human’ or not, read, listen to, watch in the original, what everyone enjoys -- if they do -- becomes an unspoken mystery. Think about how we here now talk about what we read, listen to, watch as forms of connection with others; think about how the crowd scenes in the originals feature people all on their own trips or in groups or whatever without knowing what they might know. We know Deckard likes piano, sure, but that suggests something, it doesn’t limit it.  We know K likes Nabokov and Sinatra -- and that tells us something.  And it limits it.

My second big point would also have to do with limits versus possibilities, and hopefully is more easily explained.  Both films are of course amalgams, reflections of larger elements in the culture as well as within a specific culture of film. The first film is even more famously an amalgam of ‘film noir’ as broadly conceived, both in terms of actual Hollywood product and the homages and conceptions and projections of the term backwards and forwards into even more work. It is the point of familiar reference for an audience that at the time was a couple of decades removed from its perceived heyday, but common enough that it was the key hook in -- the weary detective called back for one last job, the corrupt policeman, the scheming businessman, the femme fatale, etc. etc. Set against the fantastic elements, it was the bedrock, the hook, and of course it could be and was repurposed from there, in its creation and in its reception. 

2049 is not a film noir amalgam.  Instead, it’s very clearly -- too clearly -- an amalgam of exactly the wrong place it should have gotten any influence from. By that I don’t mean the original film -- above and beyond the clear story connections, its impact was expected to be inescapable and as it turns out it was inescapable.  Instead it’s an amalgam of what followed in the original’s wake -- the idea of dystopia-as-genre -- and that’s poisonous.

Off the top of my head: Children of Men. The Matrix. Brazil. Her. Battlestar Galactica, the 2000s reboot. A bit of The Hunger Games, I’d say. A bit of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (not a direct descendant of the original at all, of course -- George Miller always had his own vibe going -- but I caught an echo still). The Walking Dead. A fleck of The Fifth Element. Demolition Man, even, if we want to go ‘low’ art.  But also so many of the knockoffs and revamps and churn. There could be elements, there could be explicit references, there could be just a certain miasma of feeling.  But this all fed into this film, and made it...just less interesting to me. 

Again, the first film is no less beholden to types and forebears.  But the palette wasn’t sf per se, it was something else, then transposed and heightened and made even uneasier due to what it was.  2049 has to not only chase down its predecessor, it has to live with what its predecessor created.  But did it have to take all that into itself as well? It becomes a wink and a nod over and again, and a tiring one, a smaller palette, a feeding on itself. And it’s very frustrating as a result, and whatever spell was in the film kept being constantly rebroken, and the scenes kept dragging on.

This all fed into the third and final point for me -- the key element, the thing that makes the original not ‘just’ noir, the stroke of genius from Philip K Dick turned into tangible creations: the replicants, and the question of what it is to be human. Humanity itself has assayed this question time and time over -- let’s use Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a start if we must for the modern era, it’s as good as any. We as a species -- if we individual members can afford the time and reflection at least -- seem to enjoy questions of what makes us ‘us,’ and what we are and what we have in this universe.  This much is axiomatic, so take that as read.

The replicants in the original film -- famously thought of differently by Dick and Ridley Scott, to the former’s bemusement when they met and talked for their only meeting before the latter’s death -- set up questions in that universe that are grappled with as they are by the characters in different ways. Between humans, between replicants, between each other, lines always slipping and shading. Their existences are celebrated, questioned, protested against. But we don’t live in these conversations for the most part, we tend to experience the characters instead; it’s often what’s unsaid that has the greatest impact. And if the idea of a successful story-teller is to show rather than tell, then I would argue that, again, flawed as it can be, the original film succeeds there be only telling just enough, and letting the viewer be immersed otherwise. (Thus of course the famous after the fact narration in the original release insisted upon by the studio, and removed from later cuts to Scott’s thorough relief.)

By default, that level of quiet...I would almost call it ‘awe’...in the original can’t be repeated with the same impact. The bell cannot be unrung, but that’s not crippling. What was crippling was how, again, bored I was with the plight of the characters in 2049. How unengaged in their concerns I generally was. One key exception aside, I never bought K’s particular angst outside of plot-driven functionality, and frankly they often felt like manikins all the way down from there. Robin Wright’s police chief had some great line deliveries but the lines were most often banal generalities that sounded ridiculous. Jared Leto’s corporate overlord, good god, don’t ask. As for Joi and Luv, Ana de Armas and Sylvia Hoeks did their best, and yet the characters felt...functional.  Which given the characters as such would seem to be appropriate, but their fates were functional too. Of course one would do that, of course the other would do that, of course one would die the one way, of course the other would die that way, and...fine. Shrug. 

So, then, Deckard? Honestly Harrison Ford had the best part in the film and while I found him maybe a bit more garrulous than I would have expected from the character, he did paranoid, wounded and withdrawn pretty damn well. Not to mention comedy -- the dog and whisky combo can’t be beat, and it’s worth remembering his nebbishy ‘undercover’ turn in the original -- and, in the Rachel scene, an actual sense of pathos and outrage. I bought him pretty easily, and it made everyone else seem pretty shallow. When K learns about the underground replicant resistance and all, the bit about everyone hopes they are the one was nice enough, but the rest of it, clearly meant to be a ‘big moment,’ was...again, dull, per my second point about the limited palette. A whole lot of telling, not much showing, and such was the case throughout. It was honestly a bit shocking -- but also very clear -- to myself when I realized how little I cared about humans or replicants or any of it at all towards the end. It all felt pat and played out, increasingly unfascinating, philosophy that was rote. It could just be me, of course -- maybe this is an issue where the stand-ins of replicants versus realities of robots and AI, along with the cruelties we’re happy to inflict on each other, means the stand-ins simply don’t have much of an imaginative or intellectual grip now.

Still, though, I’ll give the film one full scene, without Ford. As part of his work, and to answer the questions in his own head, K visits Ana Stelline, a designer of replicant memories. This, more than anything else in the film outside of certain design and musical elements, felt like the original, or something that could be there. It introduced a wholly new facet -- how are memories created for replicants? -- while extending the idea that instead of one sole creator of replicants there are multiple parts makers with their specialized fields in an unexplained (and unnecessary to be explained) economy. Stelline’s literal isolation allows for space and the limits of communication to be played out in a way that makes satisfying artistic sense, and Carla Juri plays her well. It builds up to an emotional moment that sends K into an explosive overdrive that is actually earned, and Juri’s own reaction of awe and horror is equally good.  But -- even better -- the scene ends up taking a wholly new cast later in the film, when more information reveals what was actually at play, and what K didn’t know at the time, and makes the final scene a good one to end on in turn (and by that I mean back in her office, specifically).

The problem though remains -- one scene can’t make a film. One can argue that it’s better to reach and fail than not at all, but it’s also easily argued that one gets far more frustrated with something that could have worked but didn’t. I don’t think an edit for time would have fixed the film but it would have made it less of a slog while not sacrificing those visual/sonic elements that did work; it still would leave a lot of these points I’ve raised standing, but it would have gone down a little more smoothly, at least. But sometimes you’re just bored in a theater, waiting for something to end.

[yeonchi]

Dub Logistics Part 18: Japanese Voice Licencing

“In the situation where companies are unable to include the original Japanese voices in a localised game, it is better to just dub the game than to redub or edit the Japanese audio.”

Logically, a “full localisation” of a game would include the dubbing of dialogue in addition to the translation of text. In recent years, however, many companies have favoured the use of original voices in localisation (as an option or an enforced language), but there have been some instances where the original voices cannot be used. One reason for this is because the voices have not been cleared for use in other countries, or in other words, licenced.

During my debate with Gamers Against Greed, I asked them this question:

Now usually, Japanese voices have to be licenced before they are included in localised games. So what if one of your voice actor’s agents said that you couldn’t use their voice in releases outside of Japan? What would you do? Would you rather not localise the game than dub it at all?

This was the reply I got from their admin:

I think the dev would hire another voice actor.

If they were implying that they would dub the game in this situation, then that would be the more logical thing to do. However, when I first read their reply, I got the impression that they would rather hire another Japanese voice actor instead. But seriously, even if you still wanted Japanese voices on a localised game, hiring another voice actor for the “localisation” of the original voices is a useless measure. It’d be better to just dub the game and move on.

In March 2013, user Stuart444 quoted from Xseed translator Tom “Wyrdwad” Lipschiltz on the NeoGAF forums about why all games don’t get dual audio in localisation. I thought that what Tom said was pretty well done, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to highlight the first paragraph that he wrote:

You have to understand that most of the time (pretty much 99% of the time at this point, really), when the original Japanese voice-acting is removed from a game during localization, it's done out of necessity, NOT by choice. NO publisher is going to remove the original voice track if there exists an option to keep it -- there'd be no reason to, after all! But I speak from personal experience when I tell you that there are many, many times where publishers aren't given any choice in the matter whatsoever. Technical limitations and storage space aren't the only factors, either -- there's also that dreaded specter known as LICENSING. Sadly, everyone who's ever spoken a line of dialogue or sung a phrase of music in a video game signed a contract of some sort... and some of those contracts, ESPECIALLY in Japan, can be pretty draconian when you get down to the fine print. It's not at all uncommon for a Japanese voice-actor to record his/her voice for a game under the stipulation that it ONLY be used within the country of Japan, making it ILLEGAL to use those lines anywhere else in the world.

Seeing as many of the games I’ve reported on for the #NoDubNoBuy page have either Japanese voices or dual audio options, I’m going to say that the licencing issue for localised games is pretty much non-existent. But then again, I’ve mostly reported on popular Japanese games and the games that Xseed has localised don’t seem to be as popular as them, so I’m guessing that the licencing issues only apply to unpopular games or voice actors. As for technical limitations and storage space, well, that’s what DLCs are for.

There have been cases where the original Japanese voices are not included in the game because some content in the localised version of the game is censored for various reasons. A particular example is the Fire Emblem Fates series on the Nintendo 3DS, which was compared to the 4Kids dub of One Piece in an article published on Medium by user Professor Flayton. Personally, I don’t approve of localisation censorship even if it means that we get games dubbed. If there is a risk that something in the game would “offend” some people, it would be better to not localise the game than to censor it and do a half-assed localisation, with missing voice files and game options.

Despite this, even if the voice actor’s agent has banned the use of a certain actor’s voice in animes or games released outside of Japan, people are going to find ways to circumvent this ban, with one obvious method being to import the game from Japan or watch the fansubbed version of the anime. So really, voice licencing issues are pretty much moot points unless talent agencies and production companies actually take measures to enforce the ban against fans.

It should be noted that what I’ve said in this instalment does not constitute a trigger for companies to stop dubbing their animes and games into English. If the companies have intentions to dub something, then by all means they should, while also providing an option for fans to switch to the original voices if they wish. If, for some reason, the company cannot provide the original voices in the localised version of the anime or game, then fans could either import the original version or just learn to appreciate and respect the dubbed version and their fans. This would likely apply to dub fans as well by extension. Dubbed or subbed, one side of the fanbase is going to be disappointed either way. However, as long as the company gives an official apology and explanation to their fanbase, then they will probably be a bit more understanding to the problem.

Thank you for your patience over the past few months. This gAgging miniseries will finally reach its conclusion in the next instalment before we go back to normal instalments of Dub Logistics. In the final instalment, we’ll be looking at the intended target of #NoDubNoBuy and if we were doing it wrong all this time.

[weekendwarriorblog]

Interview: In Order of Disappearance (and Cold Pursuit) Director Hans Peter Molland and Stellan Skarsgård

On February 8, Lionsgate Premiere and Summit will be opening an action-thriller called Cold Pursuit, directed by Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Molland, and those who have seen his previous film In Order of Disappearance might find more than a few similarities other than the main star. That’s because Cold Pursuit is indeed an English remake of Molland’s earlier film, replacing Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård with Irish actor Liam Neeson, who clearly has more box office prowess, if not a rather bad sense of when he should keep his deep thoughts to himself.

A few years ago, I had a chance to talk with Molland and Skarsgård when they were in New York promoting In Order of Disappearance, and I thought some might find it interesting especially if they’re interested in Cold Pursuit. (Note: This interview previously appeared on another website.)

Stellan Skarsgård has been one of Sweden’s hardest working acting exports for many years, but his recognition in the States may have reached a new high when he was cast as Dr. Erik Selvig in Marvel Studios’ Thor in 2000. Ever since then, the Marvel Universe has been keeping Skarsgård busy, but not enough to have him turn down his good friend, Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Moland, when he comes to Skarsgård with a role.

Skarsgård plays Nils, a quiet snowplow driver in the middle of a snow-covered section of Norway in Moland’s new film In Order of Disappearance, his main responsibility being to remove snow from a long strip of road that connects the towns. When Nils’ son turns up dead, he starts going after the men responsible, leading him to an outlandish crime lord known as “The Count,” who is also interested in finding those responsible for taking out his men.

In Order of Disappearance is meant to be more of a comedy than the duo’s last collaboration, A Somewhat Gentle Man, but who knows if Americans will be able to appreciate that dark and dry Scandinavian humor? The movie does get some points for having a lot of original ideas on display, and it’s one of a number of Scandinavian crime films that Hollywood is already looking at as something that might be remade into an English language film, possibly starring Liam Neeson.

You and Hans have worked together three times before, so is doing a movie like this fairly organic in terms of how you decide whether to do another movie together written by the same writer as “A Somewhat Gentle Man”?

Stellan Skarsgård: We’ve tried to do something new in the last two films. The first two films were heavy dramas, very serious, and we tried to be funny for two films now-- with some success. We’ve developed the language a little, but when Hans Peter came with this script to me, I didn’t quite understand it, because it was such a mixture of genres and tones. I didn’t see the film. I couldn’t see what kind of film it would be, so I was hesitant to do it, even if I love working with Hans. But he just said, “Trust me,” and I decided to trust him and I did, but I didn’t know exactly what kind of film it would be until I saw the first cut.

I feel that actors have to take some projects blindly, because you can have a great script and scenes that work on set, but until you see the final movie, it’s almost impossible to tell what it will be.

Skarsgård: Yeah, you have no idea.

While there’s a lot of dialogue in the movie, your character doesn’t talk a lot. He’s one of these classic--

Skarsgård: Quiet, strong man. (chuckles)

So what was the appeal of that and what did you think might be interesting about playing that kind of role?

Skarsgård: I love working without dialogue. To me, film acting is about everything between the lines, more than what’s happening in the lines. I love showing rather than telling, and Hans Peter understands that very well and is lovely in his way of shooting what you’re expressing when you’re not talking. A bad director shoots who is talking at the moment.

(At this point, we’re joined by director Hans Peter Moland, and we exchange a few pleasantries.)

My first question was about the two of you working together and the process of you approaching him with the script for this one, and how much convincing you have to do to get him to commit to do a movie.

Skarsgård: Hans Peter doesn’t have to convince me really because I want to work with him all the time, but as I said, I didn’t know what kind of film this was, and I was hesitant, but he just said, “Trust me.”

Hans Peter Moland: But also, sometimes it’s healthy to have somebody question your stuff, because it sharpens your own perceptions about what you’ve written or what you’ve made. In a way, I had to formulate both for myself and for him what it was that I wanted to achieve. It’s a good input in the process in the long run.

Since this was written by the same guy who wrote the last movie you did together, were you aware of it while it was being written or did you get it after it was done?

Moland: No, it originated as a story that I wrote many years ago, and then presented it to the producer after the A Somewhat Gentle Man premiere in Berlin and we decided to develop it. I pretty much had my hands in it, the whole time.

Stellan mentioned the comedic aspects of the movie that may not be so obvious on the page than in the final movie. Was that something you were shooting for, more of a comedy than other stuff?

Moland: Yes, I think all along that was a very integral part of it, both the absurdities. There’s a lot of humor in it and a lot of different kinds of humor—it’s high comedy, even slapstick comedy occasionally and there’s satire in it. The only rulewas that none of the characters in this film are aware that anything is funny. They’re dead serious-- or dead-- or both.

Especially the actor who plays “The Count” -- I mean, he’s hilarious without making jokes so much, but he’s so over-the-top. Was that an actor you both knew beforehand?

Moland: He’s a very famous Norwegian actor. I’d never worked with him before. I had a lot of people I thought could do it, who ultimately are in the film in other roles, people who I like to work with, but he came in and he did an audition or a test which really brought something fresh to it that I hadn’t really thought of, and it really inspired me, so we developed the character a lot together after that.

You mentioned before about not knowing how the movie might be until you see the final movie. There is that whole section of stuff going on with “The Count” and his life and you’re off in your own movie.

Skarsgård: Yeah, that worried me, too, because there was a big part of the movie that I wouldn’t even be on the set for. Where’s that going to go? (chuckles)

I’m not sure if you are familiar with Michael Mann’s “Heat” but that whole movie is the two main actors doing their own things and then appearing together for maybe ten minutes. Were you around at all while they were shooting the other stuff?

Skarsgård: No, I just did my things. I wasn’t around when they were shooting with The Count’s story. With Bruno Ganz a little more.

Moland: But that was one of my ambitions with this film was to break the genre limitations and conventions and allow myself to freely movie from one type of genre onto the next without missing a beat and not be shy about being playful when we were in one certain setting for instance, when the Count is looking for the gym bag of his kid. It’s a totally ridiculous thing, but it says a lot about his relationship to his wife that she can wind him up like she does.

The setting of the movie is interesting because a lot of that is on that one stretch of road where it’s constantly snowing. Was that an early decision to have that as part of the original idea, to have him driving the snow blower and have that be a part of the plot?

Moland: And also to have it being desolate, so his house is-- I don’t think it’s in the script, but my idea was that both graphic and symbolically, his house is on the edge of civilization and he’s like a pathfinder that drives out into the wilderness and forges this path to the other side, which we never see, for his fellow man. I think it gives him a sense of purpose, but it also gives him a sense of being civilized, which is actually quite shallow and untested.

I think you might have actually gotten a credit as a stunt driver on the film, which comes from you driving that giant snow blower. Did you have to get training to do that?

Skarsgård: The man who owns the plows, he taught me how to drive them and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That credit was added by the stunt coordinator after I crashed into a couple of cars -- on purpose.

The use of equipment as part of the plot is interesting, not just the snow blower but also the log lifting device. I don’t think a movie like this would get made in America.

Skarsgård: Sexy things, a snow plow.

Visually, it adds a certain scale to the movie by setting this in the middle of nowhere with a snow plow cutting a path through the snow.

Moland: It’s almost poetic, too, sending the snow flying. I spent a lot of effort with the designer to find the right-- all of the modes of transportation are important in this film, for instance, the Fisker Karma that the Count drives is a totally ridiculous car for a man who’s six foot six or six-seven, whatever he is. Especially to have a chauffeur in the car like that, because it’s a sports car, but it’s perfectly fitting for his personality. It’s an electronic car, for those that don’t know, so it’s a super-expensive electric car, but it fits his own self-image of being environmentally conscious and vegan and all that. Then sitting squooshed up in the back, because a man of his stature of course has a chauffeur, but the car is clearly designed for people that drive themselves

It’s a very strange character and one of the things I enjoyed was the artwork in his house and the shelf of hand statues. Every time they cut back to that room and I see the shelf full of hands, I was curious about who came up with that idea and who might have a shelf of hand sculptures in their house?

Moland: I had a wonderful designer working on this film. He came up with a lot of really delightful ideas that we both went with and expanded on. I think he found those hands and he found a lot of other stuff for the hands from a source that he kept presenting us. One thing leads to another. I think the hands have something to do with when he says he’s going to cut his hands off at the end and cut his nose off, so I think it was related. In a subtle ways, for anyone who makes the connection, it has to do with him having chopped off hands prior, but we also actually made the hands say something in sign language.

I was hoping you’d tell me that you filmed in someone’s house and that happened to be the artwork they had in the house already. I was curious about that mindset.

Skarsgård: Somebody was in jail so we could use the house.

I do want to talk more about the humor in the movie. I’ve been to Norway quite a bit myself so I have experience with Norwegians and their sense of humor, but does the humor go across Scandinavian countries well? I notice a lot of Swedish actors work in Norway and vice versa, and you have a Danish writer.

Moland: There are differences. I think the differences between Sweden and Norway are not as big as between Norway and Denmark, for instance. Danes are less dry wit and understatement is not the forte of Danes. Although they enjoy this film, I don’t think they could have made it themselves. I think they recognize that it’s something that isn’t part of their DNA, but they enjoy it. It’s not that they don’t have a sense of humor, it’s just that it’s different. Danes are much more tied to European or German culture historically and to a much greater extent are a part of Europe as Norway has just been this satellite or colony that’s been exploited by the Danes.

Any thoughts on this, Stellan, having worked a lot with Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier?

Skarsgård: There are small cultural differences, but like Sweden and Norway is basically the same thing, but also, humor, as we talked about it before, because we got a lot of questions after “A Somewhat Gentle Man”--Is this Scandinavian humor?” but the humor we grew up with was Monty Python, it was Anglo-Saxon humor more than anything else. Billy Wilder.

Moland: Yeah, Billy Wilder for me.

Skarsgård: Whose humor is not very Austrian, is it?

Moland: No, he’s more like New Yorkish.

The Monty Python comparison I can see.

Skarsgård: Jewish, maybe.

Moland: Yeah, Jewish. I remember when I was living in New York in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I felt like I was being exposed to a lot of brutal, dry humor, and it was new to me that nothing was sacred, that you could make fun of anything. I remember when Marvin Gaye’s father shot him, only maybe a half hour later on the radio news, the first joke came out. “What did Marvin Gaye’s father say to Marvin Gaye before he shot him?” “This is the last 45 you’ll ever hear.” Which is a really brutal thing to say. I don’t think you can make that joke today in this country but at that time it was very common way to--

Yeah, people are a lot more sensitive these days than they were. The reason I asked about the difference in humor is at one point your character is talking to one of his neighbors and he’s talking about your character being an immigrant since he’s a Swede living in Norway. I think if Americans watch this movie, I don’t think they would know the difference, so I was curious about that comment.

Skarsgård: Yeah, but it’s not that big a difference. The joke about that is that you don’t consider Swedes immigrants, because they look like you. To be a real immigrant, you have to have darker skin I think.

Moland: It’s a man who slices the baloney very thin. When he makes the distinction between Swedes and Norwegians and even saying he’s well-integrated, it’s like complimenting a man from Connecticut for having made the transition to New York without stumbling.

Obviously, when you entered the Marvel Universe, you reached a new level of recognition in the States in some ways. How has that transition been and do you find yourself being recognized more now?  

Skarsgård: It’s been gradual, because I’ve done more commercial American films before like Good Will Hunting or the “Pirates” films, and stuff like that, but of course, the fans of the Marvel Universe is a new group. Then I have small girls that love Mamma Mia and then I have arthouse movie buffs that love my small, independent films. I’m in a pretty good place.

Cold Pursuit opens nationwide on Friday, February 8.

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Found in Translation - Translating the Kyoto Dialect in "Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga"

Blue Exorcist is back this winter, and so far it’s been quite a change of pace from the first season. The action has shifted to Kyoto, the former capital of Japan for over a thousand years. In many ways, it’s an ideal setting for the Blue Exorcist story. The characters’ powers are often inspired by Buddhist motifs (Suguro, for instance, recites Buddhist chants in order to cast barriers). Given that Kyoto is famous for its historical Buddhist temples and imperial palaces, it makes complete sense for the setting to shift to Kyoto as the story delves into the characters’ backstories and the events of the past.

  There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Kyoto and how the city is typically portrayed in anime, but today I want to introduce you to one particular technique used in Blue Exorcist to help set the scene in Kyoto—the characters from Kyoto all speak with a dialect. This might be difficult to fully appreciate in translation because the differences in the characters’ speaking styles are not marked in the subtitles. Dialects are notoriously difficult for translators to handle in general, so how are English speakers meant to understand the Kyoto dialect used in the Blue Exorcist anime?

    First, let’s take a step back and talk about what the Kyoto dialect is and how it’s used in anime. Most of the Japanese you’ll hear in anime (and, well, Japanese TV and mass media in general) is spoken with the standard dialect—otherwise known as the Tokyo dialect. Yet Japanese, like all languages, has its variations, and each locale has its own particular dialect.

  If you ever hear an anime character speak with a non-standard dialect, it’s usually because they come from the Kansai region, which is the southern part of Japan’s main island. The “Kansai dialect” actually refers to a group of dialects spoken in the Kansai area, each with their own idiosyncrasies, but within Tokyo-centric media, the Kansai region is often stereotyped the same way. Everyone from Kansai apparently speaks with the same grammar and inflections, no matter which part of the region they come from, and they often serve as comic relief characters. It’s important to remember that the non-standard dialects you hear in anime aren’t entirely reflective of how people actually speak in those regions, and this applies to the Kyoto dialect in Blue Exorcist as well.

  Kyoto is located in the Kansai region, and thus shares a few of the distinctive features associated with the Kansai dialects. The word ii (meaning “good”) is pronounced as ee, and the negative sentence ending -nai is turned into -hen. The vowels also have more intonation, so it’s quite possible for even non-Japanese speakers to notice the differences between the Tokyo and Kansai dialects. The Kyoto dialect also has more unique grammar and vocabulary that you don’t hear at all in the anime, probably because it would make the dialogue harder to understand for viewers outside Kyoto. (Here’s a list of words used in the Kyoto dialect compared to their Tokyo dialect counterparts—it’s pretty exhaustive.)

  In other words, the Kyoto dialect you hear in Blue Exorcist is a pretty watered down version of the actual dialect, but it works as a storytelling device. You can tell, at the very least, that Rin speaks differently from the Kyoto residents, marking him as an outsider. Take this scene from episode 2, for instance:

    The priest says, “Chotto tetsudatte kurehen ka?” If he were speaking Tokyo dialect, he would have been saying “kurenai ka” instead. But the meaning is exactly the same.

  The scene then cuts to a watermelon, where Rin exclaims, “Suika da!”

    This is a simple utterance, but the da on the end of the sentence marks Rin as a Tokyoite. (Suika just means watermelon.) Da is the copula, often used to mean “to be”—i.e. “suika da” would mean “It is a watermelon.” This part of Japanese grammar has a lot of variation across different regions, however. In the priest’s next utterance, he uses the Kyoto version of da, although you wouldn’t be able to tell this just from looking at the subtitles:

    Specifically, the priest says, “Omimai ya” instead of “Omimai da.” Also, a moment later, when he says, “You can have a slice too,” he pronounces it as kimi mo tabete ee kara instead of kimi mo tabete ii kara.

  These are all simple ways of indicating a different dialect without changing the grammar much, or by using obscure words. Nevertheless, the sounds are noticeable enough that you’d be able to hear them easily, especially if you pay attention to the sentence endings. As you may have noticed, however, the translations here don’t mark the dialect differences at all, so you’d have to use your ears to notice them instead of reading the subtitles.

  The English dub (which you can also watch on Crunchyroll, by the way) also erases the dialect differences, for better or worse. Suguro, Shima, and Konekomaru all speak with a Kyoto dialect, but their English voice actors don’t speak noticeably differently from the rest of the cast. You only know that they’re from Kyoto because they say so in the narrative.

    (By the way, you can totally tell they’re from Kyoto because the famous Kinkaku-ji is behind them when they’re introduced in the first season’s OP, among other famous Kyoto landmarks.)

  It might sound unfortunate that the English translation of Blue Exorcist does not use an equivalent for the Kyoto dialect, but localizing a dialect brings up a whole other range of translation issues. In other anime dubs, most notably the Azumanga Daioh dub, a character from Kansai is sometimes played by someone using a Texas accent. But does a Texas accent really have the same connotations to an American speaker as a Kansai accent would to a Japanese speaker? And what about non-American speakers watching the English dub? How would they perceive a Texan accent? What sort of image would they have of the American South? The harder a translator looks for a neat, one-size-fits-all equivalent for a regional dialect, the more elusive it becomes.

  It’s harder still to mark an accent in written form. It is perhaps possible to indicate that the Kyoto characters speak differently from the Tokyo characters by making them say “ya” instead of “you” or something along those lines, but not only would this kind of strategy be at risk of failing to evoke a particular geographical region to an English speaker, it would make the subtitles more difficult to read in any case. Failing to mark a dialect in the subtitles themselves can certainly be a problem for deaf or hearing impaired viewers, but given that the number one priority of subtitle translations is for the viewer to be able to read them quickly, the tradeoff may not be worth it. These are all considerations that translators keep in mind.

  In the end, there’s no easy way to handle dialects in translation. Choosing not to translate them at all, as was done with Blue Exorcist, could be interpreted as taking the easy way out, but I think it was a very reasonable decision here. The lack of localization means that viewers can listen to the sound of the dialogue and form their own impressions of the differences in Japanese speaking styles, while using the subtitles to understand the core meaning of what was said. It doesn’t alienate the viewer, and it doesn’t over-interpret the content for them either.

  Nevertheless, the question of how to translate dialects across different languages will always be a matter of considerable debate for as long as dialects continue to exist. How do you think dialects should be translated?

  ---

  Kim Morrissy is a freelance writer and translator. He writes about anime, light novels, and Japanese culture on his personal blog. You can also follow him on Twitter at @frog_kun.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[operationrainfall]

As of January 2019, there are currently over 1,200 visual novels for sale on Steam, many of which were developed by small teams with big dreams. One such title is Bloody Chronicles – New Cycle of Death. This title serves as Igrasil Studio’s debut release and was added to Steam less than a month ago. Currently in its alpha/early-access phase, New Cycle of Death is act one of what is planned to be a three part series. It’s a murder-mystery visual novel with slice-of-life elements thrown in. It began its life as a Kickstarter campaign back in early 2016 and surpassed its funding goal by an additional $17k. Boasting nearly 30 hours of content and around 70 different decisions to make, Igrasil Studio certainly set its goals high for this one. The question is, was it able to succeed in reaching them?

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The core story revolves around a group of young detectives, all of whom are fresh out of school. As part of the non-governmental detective agency IGRASIL, they take on cold cases that normal organizations like the police are unable to solve. At the onset of the game, a string of bizarre murders has left the public afraid and the police baffled. Most of these have been attributed to a maniac known as “the Phantom”, whose work is both grizzly and grandiose. He or she leaves a series of clues behind with each murder, many of which seem to hold some form of symbolism. Among our group of detectives is the protagonist, Kazuki Koyama. Kazuki is relatively new to the IGRASIL team and makes it his goal to solve these puzzling clues and catch the Phantom before the police can. Along the way, we learn a bit about his troubled past as well. Having lost both of his parents in a fatal car accident just one year earlier, Kazuki seems to have found comfort in solving cases and helping others. He can be a bit of a curmudgeon at times and is often blunt with his teammates, but his heart seems to be in the right place. He’s joined by by fellow detectives Suzumi, Kaoru, Akito, and Aki, all of whom have ended up with IGRASIL under different circumstances. With the Phantom case being their first murder investigation, IGRASIL team (much like the development team) sets their sights high and aims to make a bigger name for themselves.

All exposition aside, how’s the writing? Well, it varies. I enjoy murder mysteries and stories that incorporate a variety of religious elements, so to that end I was pleased. The story as a whole is interesting, but its main problem stems from that fact that it doesn’t seem air-tight. Some loose ends are to be expected when your game is separated into multiple acts, but a number of existing pieces didn’t seem to mesh. For one thing, I’m fairly certain that certain scenes were either missing or pulled out without changing the others. There is a “side-quest” of sorts that is introduced about half-way into the game which involves a character named Bradley. If the dialogue between the characters is to be believed, Bradley should’ve been introduced earlier in the game. All of the characters (including Kazuki) seem to know him and reference meeting him a few days prior. As far as I can recall though, he was never introduced. My assumption is that an earlier scene was removed, either by accident or to quicken the pace of the story. There are other instances where characters are introduced and then never mentioned again. In cases like that, perhaps I simply didn’t make the right decisions. Still, having these character interactions just exist without further context was a bit disappointing.

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Stranger still are the points where story elements will change without warning. Towards the beginning (before you meet him), the new police officer in charge of the Phantom case is referred to as General Akiak. When you go to meet him though (and from that point forward), he inexplicably becomes General Coya. I think it’s safe to assume that his name was changed at some point during the game’s development cycle. Finally, the game’s description indicates that player choices can lead to multiple different scenarios, but during my playthrough most of the decisions didn’t seem all that important. There were some larger ones to be made, but the majority of them revolved around choosing to spend time with Kazuki’s teammates or blowing them off. This did seem to affect romantic options with characters, but most didn’t appear to be story-centric. I did read some user comments on the Steam page which seemed to indicate that decisions would carry more weight in acts II and III, but I can’t vouch for that since those are not out yet. There are some romantic moments available, but it would seem that more will follow in acts II and III. My first suggestions to the developers would be to flesh out the story a bit more, make sure all the scenes fit together, and find a way to convey the importance of each decision. Perhaps a flowchart of events or an easier way to return to these decision points would help.

The English voice acting is also mixed in terms of quality. The only options are English or no voices at all, so I chose to stick with the English voices. The voices for the main team of characters aren’t too bad, but some characters’ voicework is better than others. All in all though, the main characters’ voices grew on me over time. Additionally, I could tell just by listening to them that the actors all had a really great time recording their lines. What I wasn’t as impressed by was the difference in pronunciation between characters. Some of the voice actors would address people or things using one pronunciation, only for another actor to immediately pronounce that person or thing differently. The most standout example of this is the way in which the team addresses Kazuki. Some pronounced his name as “ka-zu-key” while others would pronounce it as “kazoo-key”. While I eventually got used to this, it was a bit grating at first. As for the other characters (those not imperative to the story), the voice acting was not nearly as polished. Some of these characters didn’t even have voices at all, but those who did were not voiced as well as the main characters. My second suggestion for the developers is to revisit the voiced dialogue as well as provide more where gaps exist. This goes for both the main and supplemental characters.

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My concerns with the voice acting and the subtitles go hand-in-hand. Spelling and grammar were indeed an issue. I’d say 75% or so of the subtitles were okay, but the other 25% could use some heavy spelling/grammar updates. Given that the game is still in early-access, some spelling and grammatical errors are to be expected. Having said that, there were a number of other issues outside of these simple ones. The largest issue was the placement of the subtitles. More often than not, I’d read the subtitles while listening to the voices and the two wouldn’t sync up. Part of this was likely due to slight variations between the script and the subtitles, but another part was simple misplacement of the subtitles. Not all of the main character lines are voiced of course, so I can see how this mismatch may have occurred. One major example relates to a scene in which your teammate Akito talks with his mouth full after eating some donuts. This audio is played again several scenes later and paired with unrelated subtitles. There are also times when the opposite is true. This issue was peppered throughout the game and I found myself trusting the subtitles more than the spoken lines (though the spoken lines didn’t have translation issues). To their credit, the development team does make mention of possible translation issues when the game first boots up. Since they seem aware of the spelling and grammar issues, I’d suggest that they also take a look at the subtitle pairings and make sure that they sync up with the correct audio.

In terms of art style, I must once again say that it has its ups and downs. Hands down, the best aspect of the artwork is the main character designs. All character portraits are hand drawn and the irises of their eyes really stuck out to me. Each character is uniquely designed and has a distinct personality, which the portraits do a great job of conveying. While not all of the other, supporting characters have portraits, those that do are generally not as detailed as the main characters. All of them are still hand drawn, but the eyes aren’t as detailed (for the most part) and the linework isn’t as neat. Given that some of these extra characters don’t even have portraits, I’m assuming that most of the focus was dedicated to the main characters. While not a huge deal, I would’ve preferred a bit more continuity between the designs. Character portraits aside, there are also times where scenes will break away to chibi art renditions of the characters, complete with matching backgrounds. These were a nice change of pace and, while infrequent, were all very well done. Lastly, the backgrounds for the normal scenes were nice, albeit unassuming. None of them stuck out as overly unique or memorable, but they certainly got the job done and fit well with their associated scenes. In looking at the original Kickstarter images, there have been some noticeable changes since the game’s inception. Having said that, many of these changes aren’t necessarily for the worse. In my opinion, the largest changes exist with the character designs. As far as the main characters are concerned, these changes are merely stylistic and the new designs look really nice.

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The music and sound design as a whole didn’t really stand out to me. That’s not to say that there was anything wrong with it, but I only found myself paying attention to one or two of the tracks. The opening song and the track played during melancholy points of the story both stood out as really nice. As for the other tracks, while I can’t say that I found myself jamming out to them, each fit the mood of the game pretty well and I have no complaints. You can actually buy the soundtrack itself through Steam as a separate purchase if you’re so inclined.

While we’re on a more positive note, let me briefly touch on the game’s sense of humor. When Kazuki and the gang aren’t tracking down leads on the Phantom or looking at gruesome crime scenes, they’re either harassing one another or having a good laugh at the Red Dragon restaurant. Akito and Aki are siblings, so they have a tendency to pick on each other and get into childish arguments. Suzumi and Kaoru on the other hand seem content with picking on Kazuki for his laziness and stubborn attitude. Of course, all of this takes a back seat to Akito’s goofy behavior, which all the characters take part in laughing at. Akito is definitely the comic relief of this game, so emphasis is often placed on him during light-hearted moments. Interactions like this helped break apart the more serious parts of the game. I actually tend to prefer serious moments over comedic ones, but I can appreciate the way that they are handled here. Also, I didn’t just mention that Red Dragon restaurant at random. It seemed like after every other scene the characters would all head to a restaurant for food, usually the Red Dragon. They would even take the time to discuss what menu items to order once getting there. I’m being serious here; someone on the development team must really love food and I’m not knocking that.

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Looking into the future, there is also a bit of bonus content in the works for this title. The full release will see the introduction of IF Mode, which will include four unlockable episodes. These episodes will each center around a different member of IGRASIL and will feature some form of adult content. There is also a beach-themed episode planned, which will be packed with fan service. The menu options exist for both of these options currently, but the content itself won’t be available until the final release. Also keep in mind that this is but act I of III, so two more games will expand upon the content that is already there.

In short, Bloody Chronicles – New Cycle of Death is an interesting visual novel that shows potential, but its absence and/or misuse of story, voice, and art assets leaves a lot to be desired. Missing assets aside, the fact that many of the existing ones don’t sync up is something that will definitely need addressed before the official release. Bear in mind that there’s still time for the developers to fix these issues and they seem dedicated to doing so. In fact, as I was writing this, several fixes were already put in place to improve the opening chapter (among other things). The team aims to make update announcement each week, so it’s safe to say that the game will continue to see refinement. Some of my more minor suggestions include tightening up the story a bit and making player decisions seem more important (and appear more frequently). I like the idea of having decisions that carry over to acts II and III, but would’ve liked to see some immediate changes in act I based on my choices. Lastly, I would’ve liked the game to last just a bit longer. I put in right around 22-23 hours, but there were a number of things that I would’ve liked to see play out further (namely interactions between non-IGRASIL characters). The game is set to see a full release in mid-February of this year, so there is still time for some of the kinks to be worked out. If you’d like to give the game a try yourself, head over to its official Steam page. It is currently listed at $24.99 USD, but the price will see an increase once the game has officially released. Assuming that all of the above points get addressed and the game releases with all of its content in sync, I look forward to seeing what acts II and III have in store.

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IMPRESSIONS: Bloody Chronicles – New Cycle of Death As of January 2019, there are currently over 1,200 visual novels for sale on Steam, many of which were developed by small teams with big dreams.

[todaybharatnews]

via Today Bharat nbsp; In cases of sexual violence, power is a big factor at play. And unless we realise how this power plays out in everyday situations, we can keep harping ndash; ldquo;Oh but why didnrsquo;t she speak sooner.rdquo; Nandhini* was on the lookout for a job in 2009, when she made the acquaintance of a senior journalist in Hyderabad. The man was a big name in news television and told her that he would help her with leads. The news that Nandhini had outed a predator in the organisation where she was working had spread, and the then-21-year-old was desperately looking to get a new job as the environment in the newspaper she worked with was getting uncomfortable. The senior television journalist added her on Facebook, praised her courage for outing her predator, and on the pretext of setting up a meeting with his wife ndash; also a senior journalist ndash; he took her to his house and sexually assaulted her. ldquo;When we went up to his house though, I realised that the door was locked. I got uncomfortable and said I will come back later. He said his wife must have stepped out to pick up their daughter, and asked me to come in and sit down. This man then went into the kitchen to get some water. When he came out, he had unzipped himself and had his penis out. I was frozen, shocked and scared, and got up to leave. He held my hand pushed me down on the sofa and forced me to give him a blow job, even as I was crying,rdquo; Nandhini says, ldquo;He then threw a box of tissues on me, asked me to clean up and get out of the house.rdquo; ldquo;When the incident happened a decade ago, I was too shaken and shocked to process it. All I felt was shame,rdquo; Nandhini tells TNM, ldquo;Since I had just gone through the trauma of being harassed at my then workplace and being stigmatised for having raised my voice, I felt that if I spoke up about the assault I would be shamed again.rdquo; The journalist who assaulted her also made her believe that no one would trust her if she spoke up. ldquo;He told me no one would believe me because many in the media circles thought I was lsquo;offrsquo;. I guess I believed that and didn't want to put myself through another round of being stigmatised, so I did not reveal what happened to anyone,rdquo; she says. ldquo;I thought this was the best thing to do for self-preservation. Now I know it's this culture of silence that allows men to get away with impunity and predatory behaviour,rdquo; Nandhini says, days after she spoke up about the assault for the first time in a #MeToo post. In the last decade, the journalist ndash; and his wife ndash; have only grown more powerful in the industry, and while she has heard whispers of his misconduct with other women, he has not faced any repercussions for his behaviour so far, she says. Like Nandhini, many women who face sexual abuse, assault, and harassment donrsquo;t report it or speak up about it immediately after it happens for many reasons. In many cases, there is a power differential between the survivor and the perpetrator; survivors risk losing their livelihood if their perpetrator is a powerful man in the same industry, and for many women, redressal mechanisms are not immediately apparent. Reason 1: lsquo;Good girls stay quietrsquo;Singer Chinmayi, who has accused prominent Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu of misbehaving with her, says there is a conspiracy of silence that women are forced to follow. ldquo;When it first happened, I told my mother about it ndash; and in the course of several years after that, I have told some other people too about how he misbehaved with me; so in these discussions, others have told me that he has behaved inappropriately with them as well ndash; but wersquo;re in a culture where women are told to not speak out about these things,rdquo; Chinmayi tells TNM. ldquo;Maximum ndash; we share with our lsquo;girl gangsrsquo; about who is a pervert. That women must take care of themselves around certain men. Wersquo;re not in a society where we are encouraged to speak up about sexual harassment,rdquo; she adds. ldquo;We are conditioned from childhood to hush up when something bad happens,rdquo; Nandhini says, ldquo;An uncle touches you inappropriately and you tell your parents, and parents hush you up. They either don't believe you, or believe you and worry too much about you being tagged lsquo;violatedrsquo;. In schools too, there is very little conversation on consent, safe touch, unsafe touch ndash; and somehow, girls and women are brought up to carry the burden of shame that isn't theirs.rdquo; Reason 2: lsquo;No real mechanisms for redressalrsquo;Veteran Bollywood writer-producer Vinta Nanda, who recently accused actor Alok Nath of rape 19 years ago, tells TNM that when the crime happened, such behaviour was so normalised there was rarely a question of seeking redressal. ldquo;It was not considered lsquo;wrongrsquo; anyway, so what will you go and report?rdquo; she asks, ldquo;Now there is a provision for ICCs (Internal Complaints Committees for sexual harassment) ndash; back then there were no platforms for redressal. So, who would I go to?rdquo; Going to the court, Vinta says, is a process that not many women can afford ndash; both financially and in terms of time. ldquo;Itrsquo;s only in the last month that ICCs are being set up in the film industry. Before there were ICCs, where could we go? Going to court would take our life away. I did not feel empowered to speak up 20 years ago,rdquo; she says. Reason 3: lsquo;When the man is powerful, no one believes yoursquo;ldquo;More than anything else, the man who misbehaved with me was very powerful,rdquo; says Chinmayi, ldquo;so there was fear.rdquo; ldquo;In many cases, coming out means losing all the support you have, if the man yoursquo;re accusing is powerful,rdquo; Vinta explains. In Nandhinirsquo;s case, the man in question has already displayed how he will react when someone accuses him. ldquo;When another woman came out with her #MeToo story about him, his wife decided to intimidate her, and he decided to shame her in a statement,rdquo; Nandhini says, explaining why she has chosen to not reveal her identity. The day she made her #MeToo statement was the first time Nandhini spoke out about the assault to anyone ndash; the first instance she has acknowledged the assault. ldquo;Reliving my trauma is difficult enough,rdquo; she explains. Reason 4: Layers of oppressionNandhini says that among the many disgusting things the senior journalist said when he assaulted her, was, ldquo;Glad you were upper caste, no way I would let anyone else touch my penis.rdquo; The very fact that most of the voices that have been heard in this wave of the #MeToo movement in India points to how much more difficult it is for marginalised women, men, and non-binary folks to speak up. As former Miss India and actor Niharika Singh said in her #MeToo statement, shared by journalist Sandhya Menon, ldquo;Violence against women may be a common feature faced by all women in India, but there is no denying the fact that certain kinds of violence are customarily reserved solely for Dalit women. More so for those who assert themselves and reject caste and patriarchal domination. While crimes against upper caste women are taken seriously and elicit more empathy, violation of rights of Dalit women and the injustice meted out to us has an excruciating long history. Statistics show that crimes against Dalits have risen by 746% in the last one decade. A Dalit atrocity is committed every 15 minutes and six Dalit women are raped every day. Most cases are neither registered nor acted upon and the perpetrators go scot-free.rdquo; The way forwardldquo;When people ask why women donrsquo;t speak up, or why women donrsquo;t speak up sooner ndash; I think that question can only be asked after you make the society safe for women,rdquo; Vinta says, ldquo;Me Too has brought the discussion about sexual violence into the mainstream, and has brought men into the discussion as well. Therersquo;s a tectonic shift in the discourse.rdquo; ldquo;We need to create safe spaces for everyone ndash; whether they have support systems in their industry or they are outsiders. Only then can women feel empowered to speak out and seek justice,rdquo; she adds. Chinmayi says that itrsquo;s only when there is more dialogue that people will feel confident about speaking out. ldquo;We as a society are in a constant state of denial that something like this can even happen,rdquo; she says, ldquo;We need to understand that itrsquo;s possible that an extremely talented individual could also be a sexual predator. Itrsquo;s possible that someone whorsquo;s work we have really loved is a sexual predator. We, as a society, need to figure out how wersquo;re going to treat someone whose work we love, admire and respect ndash; but the man has personal failings.rdquo; ldquo;If the culture of silence needs to stop, then hear us survivors out. Without shaming us. Without judging us,rdquo; says Nandhini. Most importantly, we need to dismantle power structures that enable such sexual violence, as Niharika Singh said. ldquo;Itrsquo;s time to realize that the pompous, neoliberal, savarna feminism is not going to liberate anyone. Unless the Savarna feminists dismantle the same power structures from which they have benefitted, women in this country will continue to be gaslit, exploited and maligned; their dreams thwarted, voices silenced, bodies assaulted and histories erased. The selective outrage of the supposed lsquo;liberalsrsquo; and lsquo;Indian leftistsrsquo; benefits only their convenience, and we most note that it finally took a Dalit student, Raya Sarkar in academia and a beauty pageant winner, Tanushree Dutta, to burst the Bollywood bubble while they silently looked on for years.rdquo; nbsp;

[vitalmindandbody]

Eddie Izzard:’ Everything I do in life is trying to get my mother back’

Transgender hero Eddie Izzard has done standup in French and German, guide dozens of marathons, and is now in a period drama with Judi Dench. But, he divulges, his can-do position has a melancholy source

There was a literal turning point in Eddie Izzard’s lifelong pursuit of personal freedom. It came one afternoon in 1985 when he had gone out for the first time in a dress and ends and full makeup down Islington high street. He was 23 and “hes been” contriving- and evading- that minute for just about as long as he had been able to remember. The turning point came after he was chased down the road by some teenage girls who had caught him changing back into his jeans in the public toilets and wanted to let him know he was weird. That seek purposed when eventually, faced with the screamed doubt” Hey, why were you garmented as the status of women ?”, he ended simply to stop running and pas and explain himself.

He spun around to give an answer, but before he got numerous words out the girls had run in the opposite attitude. The experience schooled him some things: that there was ability in meeting fright rather than eschewing it; and that from then on he would never let other beings define him. After that afternoon, he says, he is not simply felt he could face down the things that feared him, he went chasing after them: street perform, standup slapstick, marathon operating, political activism, improvising his stage show in different languages- all these things detected relatively easy after that original coming out as what he calls” transvestite or transgender “.” You recollect, if I can do something that hard, but positive- perhaps I can do anything .”

The ” anything” he has been doing most recently is to take over the challenges facing playing opposite Judi Dench and Michael Gambon. In Stephen Frears’s interpretation of the real fib of Queen Victoria’s late-life relationship with an Indian servant, Victoria& Abdul , Izzard plays a full-bearded, tweed-suited Bertie( later Edward VII ), reining in his comic impulses to occupy the scandalize and scheming of a son accompanying his mother apparently making a buffoon of herself. Izzard has done abundance of cinemas before- he was in Ocean’s Twelve and Thirteen alongside George Clooney and Brad Pitt and the rest- but good-for-nothing that has required fairly this level of costume drama imprisonment. He loved it.

Watch a trailer for Victoria& Abdul .

He and Dench are old friends. She has been a regular at his stage shows and has been in the habit, for reasons forgotten, of sending a banana to his dressing room each opening night, with” Good fluke !” written on it. Discovering her path Victoria at close quarters was a daily masterclass. The cinema was shot partly at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight( the first time any cinema crew had been allowed inside by English Heritage) and the throw would give their mane down in the evenings. One hour, Izzard recalls:” I was dancing with Judi to Ray Charles’s’ What’d I Say ‘. She felt like a young woman, a young teenage girlfriend nearly. Judi has this amazing activated of vitality that traces all the way back to her youth .”

Watching the movie, you’re so ready to see Izzard slip into one of his rebellious moves of consciousness that for a while it seems odd that he stays on dialogue. Does it feel that lane to him more?

” Not now ,” he says.” My early effort as an actor wasn’t very good because I merely swopped all my slapstick muscles off, and I didn’t know what to replace them with. I guess I have learned more how to just’ be’ on movie now. It is just like knowing how to both razz a bicycle and drive a car. If you are in a car you don’t want to lean sideways to turn a reces. You know the difference .”

Ever since he bunked off institution and conned his way into Pinewood Studios as a 15 -year-old and wandered the film sets for a epoch, he has imagined himself an actor. The first thing he did when his humor finally taken away from after years of trying and often is inadequate to acquire people laugh was to get himself a drama agent and see if he could haunt a twinned career. He has never been satisfied with precisely doing one thing, and it is suggested that determination to diversify has only grown. He’s 55, and because of his running- which peaked at 43 marathons in 57 daytimesin the UK and 27 in 27 daylights in South africans for Sport Relief– he appears lean and almost alarmingly bright-eyed. We are talking in a inn chamber in London, and he is garmented sharply in” son with eyeliner” mode. He works on the notion, he says, that human beings were never made to sit still or decide, but to place themselves in defying places, and then work up how to cope.

” World campaign two is an excellent example ,” he advocates.” People went descent behind enemy lines with no suggestion of what they were going into. They had to learn to do a great deal under extreme pres and on the move. And they substantiated we are able to. In a most varied mode, I guess coming out as transgender allowed me to put myself in other frightening situations and labor them out formerly I was in them. I knew I would get through the bad, terrifying bit- and there was a lot of that when I was a street performer- and eventually get to a more interesting place .”

Loping one of many marathons for Sport Relief in July 2009. Photograph: Alfie Hitchcock/ Rex

He has, of late, paused to reflect on the motivations behind that compulsion, firstly in a documentary film, Believe: the Eddie Izzard Story , made by his ex-lover and long-term collaborator Sarah Townsend, and then in an autobiography, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens . The first two elements of that latter subtitle largely guided Izzard back to his mother, who died of cancer when he was six years old. Constituting the film, Townsend came to suggest that all Izzard’s inspired digressive attires clique around this true, and in his journal, in opening chapters very harrowing to read easily, he expands on that thought.

” Toward the end of the cinema, I started talking about my mother …” he remembers.” And I said something revelatory:’ I know why I’m doing all this ,’ I said.’ Everything I do in life is trying to get her back. I think if I do enough events … that maybe she’ll come back .'” When he said those statements, he says, it felt like his unconscious speaking. The thought stood with him that” I do feel I started performing and doing different kinds of big, crazy, ambitious acts because on some degree, on some childlike magical-thinking height, I contemplated doing those things might raise her back .”

I wonder, having got those happens out into the public, nearly half a century on, if it has changed how he thinks about himself?

” I certainly appear I am in a better place ,” he says- but also it has given him a sense of his own strangeness.” There is that circumstance where people say wow about the marathons or whatever. And I kind of say wow very, because there are some things I did that, looking back, I don’t know how I did them. Running a double marathon on the last day in South Africa. It was 11 hours of not recreation. And about five minutes of euphoria. I’m not sure how I did that .”

One of the things about marathons- even if you are running, as he was some of the time in the UK, followed by an ice-cream van reverberating the Chariots of Fire theme- is that there is an horrid spate of day for reputing. Does his attention ever pause for breather?

” I have a lucky situation ,” he says,” which is that I am interested in any question- how did we get here? all the religions. I can think about anything. For instance when I did the 43[ marathons] I moved past a signed saying’ the Battle of Naseby: 1 mile’ and I’m immediately off thinking about Cromwell and Fairfax, Prince Rupert perhaps, and how this road I was loping on would have been a track back then and maybe the cavalry came down it, how did they get cannon round that stoop, all that, at every moment …”

Campaigning for Labour during the general election in 2015. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/ PA

Talking to Izzard, and watching him perform, you feel he has a kind of need of not ever wanting to miss any scrap of ordeal. It’s partly, he shows, why he has increased his range of doing standup in different languages in recent years.

” German has been the more difficult in so far ,” he says. He is doing Arabic next, scheduling a show in the Yemen( he was born in Aden, where his father worked for a meter for BP) to draw attention to the harsh civil campaign there, and after that, Mandarin Chinese. As he shows this, blithely, I’m reminded both of the moves in his notebook where he writes about the strategies he developed to overcome severe dyslexia as small children, and his uneasy relation with his late stepmother, Kate. The antithesis of performing as a younger soul for the recollection of his mother was a refusal to be limited by Kate’s efforts to control him. She required him to be an controller because he was good with quantities, if not with learning. He recollects her once telling him:” You’ve got to understand that you are a cog in the machine. As soon as you understand that, they are able to fit in and get on with life .” You can only imagine how that went down. Does he ever think he will become more accepting of restrictions?

” I have a very strong sense that the government only on this planet for a short duration of period ,” he says.” And that is only originating. Religious parties might think it goes on after death. My sentiment is that if that is the case it would be nice if just one person came back and tell us know it was all fine, all proven. Of all the thousands of millions of people who have died, if just one of them could come through the gloom and say, you are familiar with,’ It’s me Jeanine, it’s brilliant, there’s a really good spa ‘, that would be great .” He delays.” Although what if heaven was simply like three-star, OK-ish. You know,’ Some of the taps don’t work …'”

He puts his success down not to any particular knack, but to his being” brilliantly accepting. Some parties are perhaps brilliantly fascinating. But I have the opposite talent .” That, and stamina, and that inexhaustible interest about the world.

For a BBC series about pedigree he went to Africa to marks percentages per of his genetic make-up that was Neanderthal. It reinforced his sense that there was nothing brand-new under the sun, that people had always been the same.” We never think of cavemen being spiteful of the neighbours with the better cave, but no doubt they were ,” he says.

In hamlets in Namibia, girls were fascinated by his nail varnish; some of “the mens”, very.” You know if you have a football and some tack polish and a smile you can walk into any village in the world and find pals ,” he says.” “Theres” 7 billion of us on countries around the world now and we should be relation up more. Ninety-nine per cent of us would be live-and-let-live and’ Hi and how are you ?’. But the 1% aren’t happy with that, they want to actively budged it up and tell us that is not the way to go on .”

Convening the Bakola Pygmy in Cameroon for a BBC series to marks his genetic make-up. Photo: BBC

Talk of politics is a reminder of Izzard’s involvements in last year’s referendum expedition, in which he tried to use its own experience of doing humor in French and German and Spanish as an example of how Europe might be a place where you could share culture, rather than be defensive about it. In those fevered weeks, his arguments were sometimes made to look naive; the Mail and the rest cooked him after an awkward encounter with Nigel Farage on Question Time .

He admits that he is sometimes still learning in politics, but is unrepentant about his efforts to try to advance a cause that he has been engaged in as a performer for a long while.

” Running and disguising from Europe cannot be the way forward for us ,” he says.” The sentiment that Britain can go back to 1970 and it will still be all the same just can’t be an option .”

Does he think there is still hope for Remainers?

” It seems to me parties are always capable of being either brave and curious or fearful and suspicious. If you track humanity all the way through, the periods of success for civilisation are those periods where we have been brave and strange .”

There is plenty of anxiety and feeling in the world though. How does he think it “il be going”?

” I don’t know. If you look at the 1930 s there are obviously clear examples of how individuals can twisting this type of dreads and twist them, and then you get what historians frequently announce mass-murdering fuckheads in superpower .”

He has long has spoken of looking to run as a Labour MP in the elections. Is that still the speciman?

” Yes, the program was always to run in 2020, though Theresa May has changed that with her failed superpower seizure. So now it’s the first general election after 2020.”

He will likewise apply himself forward for Labour’s national executive committee at the party discussion this year. He didn’t make it last-place hour, though he got 70,000 votes. And if and when he has become a MP, he will give up playing and acting?

” I would. It’s like Glenda Jackson; she gave up acting for 25 years to concentrate on it, then she grows up back as King Lear .”

With Ali Fazal, Judi Dench and administrator Stephen Frears for a screening of Victoria& Abdul at the Venice film festival. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/ Getty Images

I wonder if another desire, to eventually have children, still applies?

” I always said kids in my 50 s. But I too always felt that I had to do stuffs firstly. Get this substance done. But yes, I haven’t given up on that .”

For someone who was treated an early reading about the fragility of life, his long-term contriving musics strange. Does he feel that inconsistency?

” I think we should all choose a year we would like to live to, and do everything we can to manufacture that the project works. I signify it could all go wrong at any point, obviously. But we also know that if we don’t get ill or get hit by a bus we are able ourselves by sucking enough liquid and continuing as fit as you were when you were a kid. As we get older and we get a bit creaky we take that as a signed to stop doing trash. My sense is we should push through creaky. I was appearing a bit sluggish lately, about a month ago, I believed right, I’ll do seven marathons in seven days. And off I proceed. The first four were a bit rubbish, but you push on through that .”

He must have good seams?

” I mutilated my knee up a while ago, trying to startle over a barricade ,” he says.” But it healed up, and now it grumbles only when I don’t use it enough .”

Is there some genetic cause for his intensity?

” Dad desired football, played until his late 30 s. I don’t know about Mum. She liked singing and comedy and Flanders and Swann but I’m not sure about play .”

I sounds his expres escape just slightly. Izzard still can’t really talk about his mother easily, at the least not in an interview. In his volume he describes how in the immediate consequence of her fatality he and his daddy and two brothers screamed together for half an hour and then stopped in case they went on for ever. In situate of rehabilitation dad bought his sons a simulation railway set and they improve it in the spare area and immersed themselves in it. The create recently resurfaced when Izzard had it reinstated and donated it to a museum in their home town of Bexhill-on-Sea, another part of his excavation of that time.

” Dad spurred us with it after Mum died ,” he says, by way of rationale.” He made a counter for the americans and we expended hours and hours building it. Then in 1975 my stepmother, Kate, came along and it was put away into chests and never came out again. It proceeded from Dad’s attic to my brother’s attic, and he didn’t know what to do with it. I imagined, why not give it to the museum in Bexhill? I guessed there might be plenty of representation railway lovers in Bexhill, and they rebuilt this thing, it’s kind of a collector’s item. They are now going to build another one, a Christmas version. We had a grand opening and Dad came down to see it .”

He likes the facts of the case that he is in a position to stir these kinds of things happen. Is he happier now than ever?

” I ever wanted the various kinds of profile that they are able to leveraging to do the things you crave ,” he says.” There is no path into it. You have to work out how you get there- over the wall, or tunnel your method in. I ever considered doing the same thing was actually going backwards. And if you start saying’ Hi, I like chicken’ on some advert, you know you have probably contacted that degree .”

You hesitate a little to ask him what he is working on next, but I do anyway.

” I’ve written my first film ,” he says.” It is called Six Minutes to Midnight , set in the summer of 1939. I’m developing a show in French in Paris. This December I am going to be on a boat, just below Notre Dame, doing two indicates nightly. What else? I’m not a good reader but I always wanted to read all of Dickens, so I have found someone who will let me read them as audiobooks- I have done a third of Great Expectations and it took four periods. So: 12 eras. And then there is the premiere of Victoria& Abdul for which Dad is coming up from Bexhill to spend his 89 th birthday with Judi Dench …”

Out of all the things he has done, I question, of what is he proudest?

” Mostly I hope I have done things that help other people to do them ,” he says.” That was the thing with coming out as transgender, and “its been” the same thing doing the marathons, or memorizing its own language. I hope parties might conceive, well if that moronic can do it, why can’t I? I symbolize, I’m just some guy, right. Nothing special ?���

I’m not quite convinced.

Victoria& Abdul is released on Friday 15 September. Guess Me issued by Michael Joseph( PS20 ). To ordering a replica for PS17 go to guardianbookshop.com or announce 0330 333 6846. Free UK p& p over PS10, online tells only. Telephone tells min p& p of PS1. 99

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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Gunshot Dramaturgy: Dionna Michelle Daniel @ Edfringe 2017

New writing on the fight for Black lives comes to the Fringe

CalArts Festival Theater Presents:

GUNSHOT MEDLEY

Young American playwright Dionna Michelle Daniel makes her international debut with her original new work, Gunshot Medley, where past and present meet in a haunted North Carolina graveyard to explore the deep seated racial tensions in the United States.

Set to classic Appalachian folk music and gospel spirituals, this provocative new work stretches across the Antebellum American south through present day to weave a rich history of the Black-American experience, blending poetry and song to respond to the historical expendability of Black bodies and the lives lost to hatred, racism, and police brutality.

Three slaves—Betty, Alvis, and George—are stuck in a state of limbo, perpetually tasked with cleaning up the wreckage of systemic racism purveying contemporary America. Numbed by the continuous loss of Black lives, each character grapples with the meaning of their own death as they witness history repeat itself time and time again. An ever present fourth character, the High Priestess of Souls, an incarnate of the Yoruban goddess Oya, awakens each character to their condition, inciting action and social change. Betty, Alvis, and George must confront the need to answer her call and their fear of what it means to do so.

Gunshot Medley was born out of the Charleston church shootings and the debate surrounding the insensitive usage of the Confederate flag. A combination of spoken word and live music shed new light on the American slave narrative while paying homage to the real Betty, Alvis, and George, three historically documented slaves that died in North Carolina before the emancipation proclamation was signed. Daniel’s haunting new tale is a call to action; it is a story of many generations and the perseverance of the human spirit.

Gunshot Medley, one of three shows presented by CalArts Festival Theater, opens at Venue 13 on Saturday, August 6 at 14:45 and runs through Saturday, August 26. There are no shows Monday August 14th and Monday August 21st.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Every human being has a moment when their soul cries, “Enough is enough!” Gunshot Medley was the product of one of those moments. While staying with my parents in North Carolina during the summer of 2015, I watched racial tensions fester in the South after the Charleston church massacre. 

As the news of these nine deaths played across my

television screen, my body began to overflow with an array of emotions. Each life of another African-American person that has been lost to racism and police brutality reopens the wound of grief Black America has endured for centuries. While their nine faces flashed on CNN, I was shattered. I was angry. I was broken. Enough was enough but I didn’t know what I could do. Where was I supposed to channel my pain in times of intense mourning? During that time, I vividly recall the fury in my bones when white men road up and down my street with huge Confederate flags hoisted onto the backs of their pick-up trucks. The Confederate flags that some southerners kept tucked away in closets, chests, and attics due to shame were now proudly displayed on porches and flag poles all throughout North Carolina. 

However, this was nothing new. All throughout my life the Confederate flag was made visible in many different ways. It is just that after Charleston, my instances of encountering this symbol of racism and ignorant pride tripled.

One day while visiting one of the oldest cemeteries in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I came across a segregated graveyard that housed the bodies of both African-American slaves and white Confederate soldiers. The section where the Confederate soldiers were buried was well kept while the slaves’ graves were hidden from view. In the slave section, there were three tombstones with the names Betty, Alvis and George. All that was left were their first names and the dates of their deaths. 

All of the deaths preceded the Emancipation Proclamation. The moment I saw those names and dates etched into stone, my soul knew I must tell their stories.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

I believe performance will always remain a good space for public discussion of ideas. Theater has always been that sacred space of ritual and discourse. I believe, especially in the American theater, that we are coming into a new chapter of political and socially engaged theater. Due to our new president and the social unrest in the United States, art is becoming even more weighted. Plays that could promote escapism seem futile at this moment. The work that we want to see breaks open a discussion about the issues that we normally find too hard to address.  

How did you become interested in making performance?

I vividly remember viewing Jackie Sibblies Drury, “We are Proud to Present…” which was directed by the brilliant American director Nataki Garrett. That show changed my perspective of what the theater can be. The play touched on topics such as appropriation, colonization,  and genocide all while making me laugh, cry and become incredibly angry. 

The play was experimental, the actors breaking into an almost Brechtian conversation with the audience, while in other parts reenacting the genocide that took play in Namibia. That production made me realize that theater that tackles politics and social issues can be cathartic as well as utilizing a distancing effect. The two tactics together, creating this strange dissonance in me sparked a need for further dialogue and action.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

The approach to making Gunshot Medley is traditional. However, the heart of the play lies in its mysticism. The actors and I speak about the idea of possession. We talk about it as letting the words speak through them instead of them speaking the words.  It is essential to this piece to tap into the world of the sublime because the play

began as an act of possession. It is a story that found me and needed to be told no matter what.  

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Usually, my role in the theater is that of the actor. This production is my debut as a director. It is also one of my first plays I’ve written. However, my writing and art have always been political. Gunshot Medley combines my fascination of politics, music, and poetry all in one.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I am interested in bringing this show to the Fringe due to Appalachian folk  music’s roots in English ballads, and Irish & Scottish traditional music. The play, interweaved with these classic songs, makes it evident that good music speaks to the soul. I want to offer hope to those who come to view this piece and to the next generation.Gunshot Medley highlights the intersection of these cultures to show that we as humans are more alike than we are different. This piece is not solely a play about what it means to be black in the United States but a story about the perseverance of the human spirit.

 Three slaves—Betty, Alvis, and George—are stuck in a state of limbo, perpetually tasked with cleaning up the wreckage of systemic racism purveying contemporary America. Numbed by the continuous loss of Black lives, each character grapples with the meaning of their own death as they witness history repeat itself time and time again. An ever present fourth character, the High Priestess of Souls, an incarnate of the Yoruban goddess Oya, awakens each character to their condition, inciting action and social change. Betty, Alvis, and George must confront the need to answer her call and their fear of what it means to do so.

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