#this is loaded with not even veiled imagery

[nichtimhandelerhaeltlich]

ddf!f1: young Samuel Reynolds, confidence bordering on arrogance, burning hotter than a flame and fully prepared to burn if it meant success , ready to dominate the grid with his reckless and stubborn driving style. The next season he meets his Match and polar opposite William Grey. He is calm, calculated but not any less stubborn or arrogant than Reynolds. Both of them only focused on winning the championship, they quickly develop a Rivalry.

With time they both start to mellow each other out. Reynolds fire starts to be less destructive, turning from a wild fire into the fire that fuels a oven in a well loved living room. Grey's Ice starts melting, less of a ice berg and more the first snow on a long awaited winter morning.

Somewhere along the line of several won and lost championships and more or less successful seasons the both of them fell in love.

But some things were meant to burn. And some things aren't. One day, during what should have been a normal grand prix, Reynolds, arrogantly trying to overtake Grey because neither of them ever lost their competitive spirit, lost control of his car driving himself and what should have been - and maybe even was - the love of his life into the barricade. Reynolds came out on his own - later getting dubbed the man that walked through fire by the media - but Grey had to be rescued. They never managed to save his legs.

During the time Grey spent into the hospital, he waited for his rival, his partner to visit him. After Reynolds never showed up, his love for his fellow driver turned into hate. And it wasn't the hot, burning kind either, no William M. Greys anger is a thing of ice picks and ice bergs. Firstly only blaming him for not visiting, he later went on and blamed his former love for the loss of his leg movement on the other driver.

Samuel Reynolds can't remember the first few weeks after the crash. He only remembers burning and trying his hardest to put out that fire that has encompassed his whole being. But his flames were fueled by his guilt like a candle is by oxygen. He remembers pushing himself and his car beyond what's possible, however he doesn't remember any of these wins.

the first thing he clearly remembers was finally manning up and visiting Grey in the hospital,whos anger had already started to infest his limbs so much he couldnt actually feel it anymore. After getting yelled at by what he truly thought was his future life partner, the man he thought would spend the rest of his life with, and being told to get out of his life and never come back again, he went on and absolutely ruined his already well established leadership - which would have been a guaranteed win with his only real rival out of the race - so hard.

Even tho he didn't stop racing for a few years before retiring and taking over a more passive role in his Team, he never truly recovered to the success he had at the height of his career before the crash.

[mutual-vigilance]

The Traveller and the Tyrant

This is my honest review and critique of the Witness's characterisation. I would ask you to "enjoy", but, considering its themes and the fact that it is over 3,700 words long, perhaps a better phrase would be: "you have been warned."

When I loaded into Excision last week, I was immediately struck by the opening cutscene’s resemblance to the final, climactic battle of The Lord of the Rings, where the steadfast commander of humanity gave a rousing speech to his allied troops before bravely charging forward into the shambling mass of deformed, mutated enemy foot-soldiers, all under the shadow of a monolithic tower, the abode of the ultimate villain of the story. This was nearly enough to make me tune out, and, alas, what followed was not much better.

I have myriad complaints about the Witness’s portrayal in Destiny, and this cinematic is as good a place as any to begin. I do not think the introduction to Excision was fitting for the end of the Light and Darkness saga. Throughout the series, we have fought off a number of escalating threats, beginning with opportunistic Eliksni scavengers, and ending with a being that can end the universe itself. I do not think that a horde of Scorn ought to be the best this being can come up with for its final stand. I would have preferred to see it bend reality, drag us into the arm-tunnel shown in the trailer, shatter an allied warship on the spot, do anything, anything other than tread the worn war-paths of Sauron and his hundreds of imitators in various works of fantasy. First, because this is science fantasy after all, and second, because many of those themes are deeply rooted in xenophobia, unfitting for our current day and age.

The visual designs of the Witness itself and its precursors draw heavily from the historical and present cultures of southwest Asia and north Africa. Their monumental structures of stone evoke the architecture of the region. Their tetrahedral ships remind one of the Egyptian pyramids, and their murals, of the intricate paintings in buried tombs. They are said to hail from the sandy desert. The precursor aliens covered their heads and sometimes entire bodies in cloth; the concept art clearly contains sketches based on humans who dress this way, in burqas; and even the Witness is clad in a long, black robe that hides its lower face, showing only its dark, single brow and dark eyes. I could go on, but I believe I have said enough to back up my next statement: It was not a wise decision to base this particular sci-fi faction on the peoples of the Levant.

The Witness’s army of Scorn is portrayed as a savage horde, in stark contrast to humanity and our allies. The Scorn don’t even have guns. They have crossbows and torches, yet they are a deadly threat to our shining ships. We are told that our enemy is magnitudes more powerful than us, but we are shown that its troops hail from the Bronze Age. Why is the Witness not allowed to demonstrate its technological or paracausal superiority? We are told that it is made of many people, but it is single-minded, ruthless, and its cruelty is unmatched. In fact, its constituent minds are not even slaves; they literally do not have individuality until they dissent, and any dissent is, of course, summarily suppressed. These characteristics – the savagery or “backwardness”, the collectivism and despotism – are common Orientalist stereotypes. And to top it all off, the Witness is driven purely by religious fanaticism. Its robed, veiled selves are ontologically evil and irredeemable, except in death, naturally. I note that Savathûn gets a pass, decked out as she and her throne world are in Gothic imagery and ball gowns, and roll my eyes. And in the game, our characters speak of the Witness as a poison, a disease. A corrupter of all that is good. A foreign snake in our Traveller’s garden. There is concept art of that. Appalling. 

I have always known that Destiny is a game made by and for Americans, or the West in general. I was even recently reminded of this by the way that Bungie hiked up the price of The Final Shape expansion for many non-USD currencies, but I still held hope for a satisfactory conclusion. I was too optimistic. It appears that even in this modern tale, the tired tropes that have plagued genre fiction since genre fiction existed are inescapable. I saw the Witness’s multi-armed form (reminding me immediately of Guanyin and perhaps others of Shiva) coming from a long way off, and I still laughed when I first finished Iconoclasm. It was like finding myself situated in that old drawing depicting the Christian nations of Europe as a group of humans, arming themselves against the distant, threatening silhouette of... the Buddha. An image published in 1895. Maybe a being with a thousand arms is threatening, who knows, but I’ve seen too many sticks of incense burnt before her altar to be afraid or awed. Buddhist villains are rare in fiction, and there was some potential in contrasting the Witness’s concept of the world as made of suffering with similar ideas in Buddhism, but the resemblance, in the end, was used for superficial, visual shock value. Sigh.

So then I went ahead anyway, defending the City upon the Hill (ringed with spears) against Satan, via feats of marksmanship and acrobatics through five exciting encounters, riffling through a diary that I picked up in the Monolith to try and learn more about my enemy. If I knew my enemy, and knew myself, then I could potentially complete Salvation’s Edge in a reasonable time-frame! Or not. The raid took my team and me a month and a half. Probably because the lore left me more confused about my enemy than I was at the start.

We are told that the Witness comprised a multitude when it first entered the Traveller, since people were still actively being cut out of it shortly thereafter. And then, by the end of Excision, the game implies that the multitude is gone, and only a single consciousness remains, which we kill with little fanfare (when we could’ve used a 2-minute cutscene. In my completely unbiased opinion). 

Where did the many go? Did they all become dissenters? How? Why?

It is possible that, like the lower-case gardener described in page 2 of the raid's lorebook, all of the constituent minds grew frustrated with being unable to achieve perfection even with the Traveller’s Light, abandoned their original goal of imposing the Final Shape upon the universe, and were sealed off into statues one by one until only the last remained. But this would imply that we, the player, had little to do with the Witness’s downfall, that it imploded from its own loss of faith. Hardly a triumphant victory for us to brag about when we go home, and it comes with the “bonus” moral that mortals should not aspire to godhood because such attempts are doomed to failure. This explanation is too dull for me to accept.

The alternative, then, is that we did do something to cause the constituent minds to defect en masse. But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what. Remember, we killed the dissenters to weaken the Witness. Why would committing murder make other people dissent, people that are one hundred percent committed to the Witness’s goal? I imagine myself as a sailor on a warship in the heat of battle, or a member of a raid-race team that has been awake for 47 hours straight. I see the enemy ship fire at me. I see the 48-hour deadline drawing closer and closer. What could possibly make me turn against my own crew, sabotage my own team? Yes, it could be because my captain has been yelling at me and I am completely fed up with them and I would rather die than suffer them for another minute, but that is also either a preexisting weakness that we merely exploit, or a stress fracture within the Witness that is caused by destroying everything and everyone it throws in our way, not by convincing these constituent minds that our philosophy and goals are better than theirs. Yes, this is the genre of game where shooting and slashing solves all problems, but come on. It could’ve been different.

On page 4 of The Rubicon, the raid’s lorebook, we learn of a previous occasion upon which the Witness was nearly defeated. Its adversary offered it peace, but the Witness struck it down. The dissenter narrating this story was not shocked into individuality by the betrayal, but by the fact that the thing they created to be literally single-minded in its pursuit of the Final Shape... is single-minded in its pursuit of the Final Shape? And then, more pertinently, the dissenter dismisses any notion that the Witness could be changed, and begs us little lights to not hesitate when we are the ones holding the knife to its throat.

This dissenter, while earnest, is wrong. The death of the adversary did change the Witness. It dislodged one mind from the collective, did it not?

So imagine, if you will. 

We encounter the dissenters. We listen to their story. They beg us to destroy them to weaken the Witness. They desired to be exonerated in death, to be redeemed, to be saved by us and the paracausal entity behind us. 

And we refuse.

We are given a blade, but we strike the statues with the hilt instead, cracking the stone. We pull their living flesh – made of what, we do not know, but it is living – from the rubble and we spirit them away to the camps we’ve made. We sit them by the fire and we protect them from retribution and, though these nocturnal beings do not see very well in the Light, the Witness sees, and it knows. It may seethe at how we escape its clutches time after time, it may sneer that we are making everything harder for ourselves, that we forget the ultimate goal is survival, but, through our selflessness and our seemingly endless capacity to forgive, we stir up hope within the multitude that what awaits them could be better than death, than even finality. They begin to remember the ancient enemies that once offered them mercy, and they are confronted by a new enemy who, for the first time, uniting Light and Darkness, has the power to defend such a truce. Slowly, they realise that they do not want to be our enemy. They are cast off. We save every person we can. And in the end, together with all our allies, we confront those vicious minds that remain.

But page number 4 shut that down, and all I’m left with is my fireteam member’s gripe that wow, this is just like how the United States deals with uppity foreign countries. It doesn’t really attempt to show that it is better, but prefers to fund dissident groups within the enemy state until it collapses, and everyone there is worse off. Which is harsh, but I can understand my friend’s position, since I have related gripes of my own. You see, the campaign forced me to protect the Traveller, the very model of a foreign interventionist, and I cannot overstate how much I resent that.

I started to become interested in Destiny’s lore after seeing some amazing fanart. Through copious amounts of research, I came to the conclusion that the Traveller is a downright bastard. If you haven’t read Shattered Suns, Rhulk’s backstory, you should. But below is a summary of what Rhulk said about his society as he sat on the Witness’s therapy couch, looking directly into the camera:

“Long ago, my planet, Lubrae, was inhabited by clans of hunter-gatherers. One day, the Traveller came and provided us with resources that helped us survive the dangerous flora and fauna of the forest where we lived. (It may have also genetically modified his people, if his ‘we evolved’ phrasing is to be taken at face value.) People were of two minds about how to continue after that. Some wanted to take advantage of these resources and settle down in a well-protected City. Others preferred to stay in the forest, and live like how they did before. As a result, they fought, and they were still fighting by the time I was born. I grew up watching the better-fed, better-armed City people murder members of my forest-dwelling clan on sight.”

His clan, Rhulk explained, was egalitarian, and relied on one another for safety. The Traveller’s uplifting of his species changed all of that. Lubraeans were able to manufacture Glaives and other tools to better protect themselves against the wildlife. The newly-introduced technology shifted their very conception of safety from the clan to the Glaive, from their fellow Lubraeans to objects that could be gathered into one City, be cordoned off, monopolised, hoarded, controlled. In that City, they invented oligarchy, soldiering as a profession, and the death penalty. They started to march troops into the forest, trying to rid it of its original inhabitants.

I have read books and reports on modern hunter-gatherer societies, and all of them conclude that first contact, if unavoidable, should be made with extreme caution. To quote the 2013 IWGIA report on indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact:

“[When we make initial contact,] what we are actually doing is forming the spearhead of a complex, cold and determined society that does not excuse adversaries with inferior technology. We are invading the lands they live on without being invited, without their agreement. We are introducing needs they have never had. We are destroying extremely rich social organisations. We are taking their peace and tranquillity away from them. We are launching them into a different, cruel and hard world. Often, we are leading them to their death.”

I do not like how the narrative of Destiny persistently exonerates the Traveller. At times, a character will rail vaguely against the “chaos” it causes, and the most frequent complaint we hear about it is that it left their species too soon. Rhulk was, to my knowledge, the only one to see the Traveller come to his world, distribute its technology among his people, dump a pile of societal problems into their laps as a result, saunter off without so much as a word, and subsequently come to the conclusion that Lubrae never needed the Traveller in the first place. And he was correct; it never did. I hope it is abundantly clear that if humans were to ever encounter an alien planet inhabited by hunter-gatherers who are themselves hunted by predators, our first course of action should not be to hand out shotguns left and right.

But what if we granted them different technology, such as high-yield crops? If human history is anything to go by, they would go on to invent chattel slavery. Agriculture increased the efficiency of food production, but humans, instead of distributing the labour evenly, have universally chosen to create an artificial underclass, and then force them to perform the majority of the labour. This was true in 2000 BC, and it remains true today. The fact of the matter is, societal issues can be much, much more difficult to solve than technological ones. The Traveller tripled human lifespan? So what? Humanity has already doubled it on our own, but we’re still struggling with concepts like “women deserve rights.”

Some might say that it does not matter, because those aliens would have invented all these things sooner or later, both the good and the bad; that the Traveller merely eased their transition into a prosperous future. To which I would respond: it does matter. They must be allowed to choose their fate. At the very least, they deserve an answer for why their prayers for safety and sustenance were answered in this ham-fisted manner. We are told that the Traveller wants to grant us freedom, but all it does is run roughshod over peoples’ right to self-determination. Look at what it did to the Witness’s homeworld. It terraformed an environment that sapient beings were already living in. Were the precursors not already adapted to the dry environment, physically and culturally? What is the purpose of making a forest sprout from the sand? Is it for the benefit of the nomads of the desert, or is it to reinforce the audience’s preconception of how utopia should look? Why does the game’s narrative re-iterate that the precursors ceaselessly sought answers from the Traveller, framing them as greedy, entitled, and unsatisfied with the “blessings” bestowed upon them? If I were a precursor, I would have questions too: what was wrong with the way I lived before? Why do you get to decide how I ought to live? Is walking away even an option at this point? Paradise is a prison when you cannot leave. Lubrae’s Wanderers tried, but they could not escape the new material conditions that the Light had imposed upon them.

Humans have had our share of prophets, many associated with millennia of internecine warfare. Now imagine if God, literal God, showed up in the desert one day, and stuck around until we achieved interstellar flight. The Traveller destroyed the precursors. We’re the unfortunate ones who have to deal with the consequences of its actions, if not its words. Destiny’s narrative insists that because the Traveller was silent, it is not responsible for what befell the precursors. That is untrue. Silent or not, the damage was done. The Traveller touched world after world, sending their peoples into crisis after crisis, and all the lore says on the subject is how much the Traveller cares about all of them. Truly. It can care all it likes, as long as it stops wielding the weapon of mass destruction strapped to its belly. Come here. Hand over the beam.

My opinion may sound extraordinary, but I assure you it is not. The following are some translated user comments, taken from the most-viewed version of the Witness origin cutscene from the Season of the Deep uploaded on Bilibili (video ID BV1Jm4y1t7cn):

“I feel that Traveller was messing around with the entire universe. In order to stop it, the Witness's people discovered the Veil and the Darkness, and tried to stop the Traveller from flooding everyone with its ‘kindness’. This caused the Traveller to embark on a foolish journey, drawing even more species into a cosmic war, just so it can continue to spread its so-called grace.”

“In summary: the Traveller tosses technology everywhere to all species, and then every species wants to expand their territory. It’s just setting fires everywhere.”

“I think the narrative may end up depicting the Traveller as a neutral power, or even close to a villain. After all, its existence has disrupted the fates of many species in the universe. No matter its original intentions, its unilateral interference is not a good thing. I don’t know how the plot will resolve; whether Light and Darkness will no longer continue to interfere in the universe, or whether the Darkness (Veil) will show its true face after the Witness is defeated…”

I am not cherry-picking. These are all highly-rated comments. You can go see for yourself. It’s fascinating that reactions like these are almost completely absent from the Anglophone fandom. I only reached my own opinion on the Traveller after extensive research, yet these fans on Bilibili took one look at that cutscene, and instinctively decided that our war is the Traveller’s fault. A vast Pacific lies between the writers of Destiny, and the messaging these players saw in its story. The game insists that the Traveller is innocent, that it always had good intentions; these fans say that intentions don’t matter when its actions have been the ruin of so many. Self-determination is more precious than any paradise a foreign saviour can grant.

On page 5 of The Rubicon, we see that the precursors learned well from their god. They began to journey among the stars, and render aid unto the other species they encountered. They did one better than the Traveller, in fact, as it appears that they actually bothered to ask those species beforehand why they may or may not desire aid, rather than park their ships in their skies and skip straight to the terraforming. Unfortunately, after too many refusals, the precursors decided to go to an even further extreme than their god. They would interfere in the life of every being in existence, all at once, forcing them to exist in an eternal, perfect moment. And unlike the Traveller, they would tell everyone exactly what was coming. The Final Shape.

Early on in the eponymous expansion, we discovered that the afterlife exists. Cayde-6 was perfectly aware and conscious after his death, suspended in a bright and comforting forever alongside his Ghost, Sundance. He enjoyed the experience, and disliked being resurrected yet again. This raises an incredible number of questions, but the thing that stood out to me the most was how familiar it sounded. How much it resembled what the Witness promised. For Zavala to be reunited with Hakim. For Crow to be reunited with Amanda. For Ikora to find peace in victory. And for us to…

I do not think the Witness was lying when it offered all of those things. It was not lying when it gave each of its disciples a different vision of its ultimate goal. Whether it was capable of carrying through is one thing, but whether it was honest is another, and I believe it was honest. Its Final Shape is a natural extension of what Guardians receive in death. Whereas Guardians are granted a peaceful eternity with their Ghost, the Witness would try to simultaneously grant every sapient creature an end in kind, tailored to their individual desires. That is not to say, I agree with its end. The Witness was a tyrant as much as the Traveller is a bastard, especially since it threatened to punish people for eternity, too, out of nothing but the pettiness in its bitter heart. Yes, I concur, I am a pawn of the light, but I will not suffer to be your pawn, either.

What I wanted to say after that, rebuking its offer to make me into a disciple, is: “I will join you, if you let me save you.”

[crowning-art]

TGCF SPOILERS

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

Whew! Feeling loads of mixed feelings (mainly good ones!) but wow

Lmao this is me and you guys celebrating reaching the end of book 3:

So first of all, OH MY GOD OH MY FREAKING GOD I CANT HANDLE THIS CUTENESS I WILL PASS OUT WHY ARE THEY SO CUTE I WILL CRY

Having been held onto like this, Hua Cheng’s eyes were twinkling, and a moment later, he smiled. “I suggest you both hold your tongue and just follow. I’m in a good mood, so I won’t fight you for now.”

This line really caught my attention because it really brings to light how Hua Cheng and White No Face are two parallels in so many ways, and like yes Hua Cheng would never kill Xie Lian and neither would White No Face.....but for very different reasons

Xie Lian shook his head. “It’s not that, San Lang, We’re not the same. He…won’t kill me, I can swear it.”

MY HEART IS ACTUALLY BURSTING WITH EMOTIONS CUZ I CANT THIS IS TOO MUCH FLUFF LIKE OVERDOSE OF FLUFF LIKE TOO MUCH TOOTH ROTTING CUTE FLUFF I LOVE IT SO MUCH I wanna squish them, put them in a little bottle, and just keep them in my pocket

Only with his reminder did Xie Lian recall there was such a thing, and he quickly said, “Wait! The other things aside. San Lang, your…are your ashes properly hidden away?”

“A long time ago,” Hua Cheng replied.

Xie Lian nodded, but after a pause, he still couldn’t help but double check. “Are you sure it’s properly hidden? That place is secure enough? It won’t be found?”

Hua Cheng answered leisurely, “To me, it’s the safest place in the world.”

Xie Lian, however, didn’t think there was anything that was absolute in this world and pressed,

“You’re absolutely sure?”

Hua Cheng smiled cheerfully. “If its hiding place is destroyed, then there’s no need for me to exist either. Of course I’m sure.”

Oooohhhh OK BUT IMAGINE THIS? SO BEAUTIFUL YET HAUNTING and also WTFFFFF????? LANG YING????? NO WONDER HUA CHENG WAS SO APPREHENSIVE OF HIM And also what the hell it's so creepy that he had been with Xie Lian dressed as Lang Ying the whole time....like again back to how White No Face and Hua Cheng mirror each other in that both followed Xie Lian but one did it in such a disturbing and boundary breaking way while the other was so respectful

Under the white veil was a divine statue of him. This was a God-Pleasing Crown Prince statue, a sword in one hand, flower in the other, a smile hung on the face. Only, there was a trace of blood on that smile.

The source of that blood was the sword gripped in its hand. There was a youth pierced upon the blade, his head wrapped full of bandages, his body covered in blood. It was Lang Ying!

Ok but I love love love the imagery here and the underlying message cuz it's like yes White No Face was the one causing trouble, but it was Xie Lian's OWN sword that broke his statue and I feel like this is some heavy metaphor for what is to come....

Xie Lian’s face was instantly paled by a shade, the veins on the back of his hands popped and he slashed with his sword, shouting, “SHUT UP!”

White No-Face sidestepped and avoided the strike, but CLANG! The attack sliced through the sword gripped in the hands of his own divine statue. Now he’d done it; the God-Pleasing Crown Prince statue wielded a broken sword, and the statue itself thus became a ruined artefact. Xie Lian instantly snapped out of it, like he was suddenly drenched by a bucket of cold water.

One of my fave shades of Xie Lian is flustered Xie Lian!

Xie Lian “en, en, en”-ed randomly a couple times, and was just about to run away when Hua Cheng pulled him to a stop, pointing out, “Your Highness! Where are you running to? You’re going in the wrong direction.”

Only then did Xie Lian discover he was running back the way they came and immediately turned back around, even slipping on the ice once. He quickly pressed down on his bamboo hat.

“N-No. I, I’m just a little cold, thought I’d jog around a bit, warm up…”

ALSOOOOO AHHH THE KISSS OH MY GOD IT WAS SO SOFT AND SO GENTLE OH MY GOD I WILL CRY DJDMDKCKFMFMF

See!! Again the similarities are so blazingly obvious and yet Hua Cheng and Xie Lian couldn't be more different. Like one came for safety and protection while one came for pain and distress, and I guess I didn't notice til now since we are finally getting to see White No Face interact and all

White No-Face easily dodged every single one of his strikes, and Xie Lian cried in rage, “Why haven’t you died? WHY DID YOU COME TO THE KILN?”

“Because of you!” White No-Face replied.

Xie Lian’s movement faltered, and he huffed a breath. “What do you mean?”

White No-Face answered languidly, “Because you’ve come. So, I’ve come too.”

Just had a sudden, rather freaky thought. What if White No Face had been with Xie Lian throughout the book (present day) the whole time the same way Hua Cheng had....

WHAT THE FLIPPING HELLL WHAT THE AUDACITY THE ABSOLITE AUDICTY but also that's low key kinda so smart BUT ALSO HOW DARE YOU?!?!?!?

White No-Face lifted his face to look at his eyes, and he said warmly, “Your Highness, I think you might have misunderstood. There certainly will be a Supreme who will emerge from this Kiln, but, it won’t be me. It will be you.”

OH MY GOD HUA CHENG WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU WHAT THE HECK MAN COME BACK QUICK I am so worried for my baby T-T

Then, without giving him a chance to protest, that tragically pale cry-smiling mask melted with the infinite darkness as it was heavily pressed onto Xie Lian’s face.

And with that book 3 = done!!! I'm so excited for book 4 and am ready for whatever comes my way! 😊✨️

[pokemon-ash-aus]

Heyo it's person who was gon make a glitch trainer, I've yet to draw her still but my god I'm rotating her in my mind giving her so much backstory lore and problems because I can't make a normal person apparently. She's now developed into, well I suppose another cautionary tale about cloning this time the they won't necessarily be the same person anymore cautionary tale that they might look the same but they might not be the same and she's not the same to the original the professor/her mother was hoping to bring back. So baggage there for her to deal with the whole individualism how she's perceived by peers who knew the version before her the original, not to mention the whole actual glitch problems on top of that as I've kinda taken the concept of missingno jumbled shaked stirred flambéd and sizzled it into lmao what I want so it's somewhere between a real just virus and probably to some degree an incomplete diety pokemon where only parts of it can access the world and unfortunately these small particles make pokemon sick until it managed to cross species into the original character so she became infected unfortunately the infection ended up killing her, (and honestly the trauma of losing ur kid and probably having to ya know study what is happening to determine if this could happen again probably resulted in a lot of issues for the professor hence then deciding to just clone a new daughter likely out of this isn't fair she deserves her life and to not remember their child for the experiments they had to run) when the dna from her was extracted to clone some of the virus strains of this being were taken too and fused during the cloning growth process kinda combining the human and this otherworldly unknown creature. Luckily human passing but now she has extra problems of these powers that result in 'glitches'; teleportation, item duplication, terrain manipulation/altering, probably a level of autonomy instability so her arm might be too long in the morning but go back to normal general me lightly knocking on the sv games. Also to some degree she could theoretically destroy the whole world being missingno was a game corrupting glitch there's probably a reason it's not meant to be in their world but now in a way it is and she could bend reality to her whim with branching arms of unown floating around just behind a veil ready to enter this world. Mainly cause when she snaps the mental imagery of the unown either in taunt or warning floating into the phrases "Run" "get away" "flee" is just mwah. Basically she is an eldritch horror waiting to happen yall are lucky she has so much anxiety and would find doing that mean. Unfortunately though school is stressful, being sent away from home to another region because your mother can't even look at you because she can't stand you is stressful and wow that's a whole load of trauma, students being bullies and probably puberty have caused her powers to start manifesting hence ya know only happening in Paldea she's got a lot going on on her plate.

Again I can't make normal characters she's just trauma and problems incarnate apparently

Hdjejen thats a mood

[amiedala]

DINCEMBER #3: CONSECRATION

PROMPT: Gift

SUMMARY: “Stay,” Din will murmur, in the pitch-black. He’s explored every inch of your body, by now, with his expert touch and his trembling mouth. It’s enough that you’d know him even in darkness, even in death. You don’t remember when this started—the skin to skin, being allowed to whisper love into his mouth—but you thank the stars above for it every single day. It’s a gift you receive every time the helmet releases, every time the gloves disappear. You don’t beg for it. You don’t need to. He comes back to you, every single time, and sinks into your skin, your blood, your bones.

WARNINGS: angst, hurt/comfort, possessiveness, insinuations of spicy things but nothing super explicit

WORDCOUNT: 2,091

AUTHOR’S NOTE: day 3 of @dindjarindiaries’s Dincember!!! all throughout the month of December, i’ll be writing (relatively) short din djarin x reader oneshots (alongside all the other incredible participants!!!). today, what came out was laden with repentance, want, and forgiveness. (can you guys tell i'm primarily an imagery-obsessed poet? well, after this one, you will!)

You’ve memorized his footfalls.

You can hear them in your dreams, the sound of beskar reflecting off of the steel floor of the starship. There’s a sharpness to them—no, an intentionality—a pattern you’ve categorized and kept locked away in your chest. Back before any of this—the outrunning, the sacrifice, the loaded silence the two of you sit in now, after Grogu’s gone and the womb of this new ship is empty except for two voices—you could hear Din’s steady gait before he even entered the Crest. It’s like bated breath, like something hidden just behind the veil of seeing.

You know them. You know him.

He’s more man than Mandalorian these days. There’s an emptiness to the way he moves around the new ship, a sense of going through the motions. He’s collected bounty pucks from Karga back on Nevarro, but they blink on a loop, a ceaseless beckoning for Din to chase down the quarries. Sometimes, he hovers over them, watching them with the steady, focused sharpness that he reserves for anything that holds his attention. Sometimes, the two of you travel to planets that bounties are on, but even then, Din doesn’t pick them up. You wonder if it’s punishment. You wonder if it’s because there’s something hurt and wrong deep inside of him, and he can’t reconcile his past life with the current one. Sometimes, you feel him wake up next to you in the dark haunt of midnight, whispering things to himself. You don’t understand whatever language he’s speaking in, but it sounds either like prayer or repentance. He hasn’t touched the Darksaber since he won it from Gideon back weeks ago. It hangs like it belongs in a mausoleum, under lock and key in the armory. He’ll disappear in the night when you’re on-planet, and sometimes, the bounty pucks are missing. But he never comes back with anyone or anything. Just himself, the armor, and the broken heart you know is beating inside of his chest.

But he’s never empty with you. Ever. He kisses you like he’s drowning and you’re the only form of oxygen. He drags his fingers over the sore knots in your shoulders, coaxing out the ache. He drags the soap over your skin in the shower—the suds that smell like him, cleanness and metal and gunsmoke and something you can’t ever identify—and washes you clean. He curls his fingers in your hair when he’s kissing you in the darkness, like he’s memorized every single strand. He worships you and all that you are. Sometimes, you think it’s his penance, his atonement. Other times, you think you’re proof—proof that his loss isn’t an open, frothing sea of regret, proof that you’re still here, proof that there’s something still alive, but if it’s in you or in him, you can’t ever figure it out.

“Stay,” Din will murmur, in the pitch-black. He’s explored every inch of your body, by now, with his expert touch and his trembling mouth. It’s enough that you’d know him even in darkness, even in death. You don’t remember when this started—the skin to skin, being allowed to whisper love into his mouth—but you thank the stars above for it every single day. It’s a gift you receive every time the helmet releases, every time the gloves disappear. You don’t beg for it. You don’t need to. He comes back to you, every single time, and sinks into your skin, your blood, your bones.

But right now, when you hear the familiar hiss of the airlock on the gangplank, when you feel the draft from outside blow into the hull of the new starfighter, your heart sinks. You’re not even sure what planet you’re on, but the breeze of night isn’t frigid and cold. Earlier, Din took you out with him—into the open air, into town. He’s not your captor. You’re free to leave the ship whenever you please, but usually, he goes off without you, into the wild, to repent or fight or cry, whatever he does alone. And whenever he’s separated from you and the belly of the ship you’ve both learned how to call home, there’s a hollow haunt to the metal bones of it. It follows you out into the world, lives dually under both of your skin.

“Hey,” you hear, soft and modulated, poignant in the darkness. You squeeze your eyes shut tighter, feeling the hulking, broad form of him behind you. The tiniest touch of his steel-toed boot knocks into the flesh of your hip, and you roll over, eyebrows furrowed, staring up at him in the darkness. A sigh. A long, breathy one, like he’s well aware of the apology that needs to follow. You hear rustling, sense movement, and then Din’s kneeling down behind you. You can’t see him—you can’t see anything in how dark the hull of this ship is—but you can sense him. You can feel him, without sight, without touch. “Talk to me.”

You close your eyes, gathering the blanket up around your shoulders, drawing your knees in close against your chest. You shiver, even though there’s nothing cold here. “What happened,” you whisper, flatly, “earlier?”

Din sighs again. It’s not a sound of annoyance, or one of frustration—it’s just what he fills the silence with when he can’t conjure the words. He’s never been talkative—he communicates in protection, in sensing, in gifts—but right now, the silence feels especially loud. “I lost my temper.”

You transfix him with a withering stare. He can’t see it—or maybe he can, you have no idea of the extent of the features embedded in the helmet—but you can feel him wince. “He wasn’t doing anything—”

“He was wanting you,” Din snaps, his voice low and unyielding. “He touched you.”

You close your open mouth, fishlike and gaping. You’ve seen him protective, watched him fight back. Everything about the armor indicates a warrior, someone unafraid. Unflappable, you think, that’s the word for him—but it only applies, it turns out, to the Mandalorian.

Din, underneath, when something unhinges and separates Mandalorian from man—Din’s wanting. Possessive. Hungry—and insatiable with it. He throws himself into battle, even when there’s no fight to be had. Once, a man at a market touched his fingers to your neck, and before you could register it, Din had the point of his gleaming beskar spear against his throat, begging for a reason to spill it scarlet. Back a few planets ago, you got yourself into a bit of a tight scrape—cornered in an alley by three stormtroopers, your hands in the air—and he appeared out of nowhere, ruthless in his defense, leaving white-shelled bodies on the ground in his wake. And, earlier, in the cantina, when he disappeared to get your food, the man eyeing you from the corner had come up, started talking to you, low and sleazy in his offering, his bare hand tracing a line up your thigh. You weren’t defenseless—you were quick with your blaster, even quicker with the knives strapped against both of your legs—but you didn’t have a chance to do anything other than slap him away and loudly rebuke him before Din had him by the throat, heaving him off of you, hand clenched around his windpipe, depriving him of air.

Now, you stare at him—where you know the visor is, even without your eyes to trace it—trying to come up with a way to chastise him, to remind him that you can defend yourself—but everything inside you clenches, wet and dangerous with want, so you just gape.

“I am perfectly capable,” you manage, with only the tiniest quiver in your voice, “of protecting myself.”

“I know,” Din says, so bald and quick that you know the truth of his conviction. “I’ve never doubted that. But—I can’t stand by and watch anyone else think they can—”

“Own me?”

Din sighs through the blackness. “Know you.”

You gape at him. You can feel the buzzing of his body, leaning in close to you, into the mess of blankets and pillows the two of you have made on the floor. He wants forgiveness. He wants you. But he won’t reach for it, won’t force your hand—not until you say so. That’s how this works, how it’s always worked. “Din—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts. It’s so quick, so honest, that you’re stunned into silence. Apologies—verbal, written records of them—aren’t usually his style. Everything he speaks is intentional, chosen for a reason. You’re not sure if you’ve ever heard him verbally apologize before.

“I know,” you say, suddenly weak against what he’s offering you. “I know,” you whisper, again, your fingers hooking under the rim of the helmet, kneeling level with his body. There’s something cloying and crushing in the air surrounding the both of you, thick with need and desire and something else you can’t quite put your finger on. It escalates, you think, when he pries off his helmet, when you can feel the hot air of breath meeting yours in the tiny space between you. He’s not just protective. He’s possessive. Where you thought emptiness lived inside the hollow of his chest, something swollen and raw grew instead. Warmth. You.

His lips crash forward, knocking against yours, and you inhale, letting him in. He’s soft, pliable in your hands—even through the armor. There’s something dangerous about the way he’s kissing you, hungry and wanting. You lean into the stardust and fire of it, letting him take you down from the inside out. For hours, he just breathes against your lips, the hollow of your collarbone, licking repentance into the palms of your hands. It’s sickly and full of something burning, and you’re helpless to the weight of it. The weight of him. “Sweet girl,” he rasps against you, and you internalize it, turn his words over in your mouth. It’s everything you want, and still, it’s all-consuming. You can barely breathe.

Finally, eventually, you break apart. Your bodies are heaving and full of reverence, apologies, need. “I have to show you something,” Din mumbles, against the soft skin of your neck, words slithering out to tickle the pulse point just below your ear. You shiver. “A gift.”

Your breath catches in your throat, staccato rhythm stifled. “Please tell me you didn’t kill the man from the cantina,” you whisper out. Your ears still feel underwater. “Or that his dead body is currently encased in carbonite.”

“No,” Din answers, ripe with conviction. His hand finds yours, and through the feel of his palm, you realize that he’s slipped his gloves back on. You let him pull you off the floor, wrap your body in your jacket. The air of the starry night outside feels beckoning as the gangplank descends, and you stare up at the Mandalorian you love—who you think loves you back—walks out into the quiet echo of the darkness. Whenever you’re parked is in the centerfold of a forest; the leaves dance and whisper as you walk, hand in hand, towards the sound of rushing water, following in Din’s decisive footsteps. Even underneath the crush of it, you can hear the way his feet hit the ground. It’s etched somewhere primal. You’d know him in nothingness.

The sound is echoing off of a plunging waterfall, hidden in the crook of the woods. It feels like you’ve stepped into something magical and untouched by time. Under the light of the full moon, as your eyes adjust against the navy plunge of midnight, you can see the blue of the water, the constant outpour of tide against tide, how it cascades into a pool in the ground, the water so clear that you can see all the way down to the bottom. Din bends down, plucks you out a shell—so intentional, you know he memorized where it came from. Nestled, in the center of it, against the gentle, sea-worn ribbing, is a pearl.

Your eyes fill with tears, feeling the silk of the stone, the weight of the pearl. It’s so gentle, so delicate—so enduring, like the mesh of Din’s lips against yours in the pitch-black—that something unhinges inside of you.

“Thank you,” you manage, and then, without warning, Din lifts just the lip of his helmet up, enough to see the dark stubble that rubs your chin raw. His mouth is a hollow of pink, alive and pulsing, and you close your eyes in a wordless promise.

He doesn’t need to apologize again. The desperate, starved, holy press of his mouth against yours in the dangerous, open air—the thrill and risk of his penance—that’s enough.

*

TAGLIST: @myheartisaconstellation | @fuuckyeahdad | @pedrodaddypascal | @misslexilouwho | @theoddcafe | @roxypeanut | @lousyventriloquist | @ilikethoseodds | @strawberryflavourss | @fanomando | @cosmicsierra | @misssilencewritewell | @rainbowfantasyxo |  @thatonedindjarinfan | @theflightytemptressadventure | @tiny-angry-redhead | @cjtopete86 | @chikachika-nahnah | @corvueros | @venusandromedadjarin | @jandra5075 | @berkeleybo | @solonapoleonsolo | @wild-mads | @charmedthoughts | @dindjarinswh0re | @altarsw |  @weirdowithnobeardo | @cosmicsierra | @geannad | @th3gl1tt3rgam3roff1c1al |@burrshottfirstt | @va-guardianhathaway | @starspangledwidow | @casssiopeia | @niiight-dreamerrrr | @ubri812 | @persie33 | @happyxdayxbitch | @sofithewitch | @hxnnsvxns |  @thisshipwillsail316 | @spideysimpossiblegirl | @dobbyjen | @tanzthompson | @tuskens-mando | @pedrosmustache | @goldielocks2004 | @fireghost-x @the-mandalorian-066 | @ka-x-in | @yuiopiklmn | @hellspawwn

[crazypossumman]

Dr. Whyte {a short story by r. h. stoker}

Author's Note: I'm not sure how much sense this makes as a story, but it’s based on an extremely vivid dream I had.

Edited: Sort of

Genre: Horror

Summary: Two sisters schedule a house call with their therapist to settle a infantile dispute, and the visit quickly takes a dark turn.

Content Warnings: Dark imagery, blood, violence, etc.

There was a knock at the door.

Serenity stood up to answer it, rushing to the door. Her twin sister Trinity was sitting on the couch, fingernails clacking against the screen of her phone as she wrote out a text. “I can’t believe you really called him here for this,” she muttered. 

“Shut it,” Serenity snapped, “He makes house calls for a reason, you know.” 

Trinity rolled her eyes. “This isn’t it.”

Serenity didn’t reply, opening the door. It was dark outside, late evening already, and a man stood outside the door dressed in black. His long coat fell far below his knees, and he wore a button-up shirt tucked into a pair of dress pants. His face was long and pale, with deep eyes and a crooked nose, and he greeted the girl with a smile. “Hello, Ms. Serenity,” he said calmly, nodding his head to her.

“Dr. Whyte!” she said with a bright smile, “It’s lovely to see you!”

“And at such a late hour, at that,” he said, stepping inside as she held the door for him, “Tell me, why would you need a house call from your therapist so late at night?”

“A stupid reason,” Trinity spoke up from the couch.

“It’s not stupid,” her sister argued loudly, closing the door behind the doctor, “This is the problem. We’ve been having a disagreement.”

Dr. Whyte nodded. “And where are your parents?”

“Dinner,” Serenity said, brushing the question off, “Anyway, we need your help settling an argument.” 

The doctor nodded, walking in and setting his bag on the table and taking off his jacket. He had a seat on a chair in the living room, gesturing for Serenity to have a seat on the couch next to her sister. A television show chattered quietly in the background, canned laughter sounding regularly. 

“Can I ask what you’ve found yourselves arguing about?” the therapist sighed, folding his hands in his lap as he crossed one leg over another. 

Serenity let out a deep sigh, looking at her sister, then back at him. “Are you superstitious at all, Dr. Whyte?”

“Superstitious how?” he asked, his eyes slimming a bit.

“As in you believe in superstitious nonsense about predicting the future,” Trinity said sarcastically. 

“It’s not nonsense!” her sister shouted. Dr. Whyte gave her a look, and she took a deep breath, inhaling through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. “It is not nonsense,” she said, calmly this time, and Dr. Whyte nodded, signaling for her to continue. “I have a gift,” she told him, “I’ve just recently discovered it. I can pierce the veil. I can see the future.”

“Such things are not a gift, my dear,” Dr. Whyte told her calmly, “I believe it exists, but as a talent: something that is practiced and harnessed over time. To claim to just stumble upon it is rather nonsensical.”

Trinity finally looked up from her phone, putting it down on her lap. “I told you,” she said, “Your cards are a load of boloney. They weren’t telling us anything useful, anyway.”

Dr. Whyte raised an eyebrow. “Cards?”

“Tarot cards,” Serenity said, her eyes bright. She stood up and left the room, returning with a silver and gold box in her hands. She sat back down on the couch, and Dr. Whyte leaned forward to watch as she pulled the lid off of the box, revealing a deck of oversized cards. The backs of the cards were gold with white etchings around the edges, spiraling in an otherworldly design. The sides of the cards glinted silver as she carefully removed them from the box, beginning to shuffle them around in her hands. Dr. Whyte watched silently, his fingers tapping on his leg. “Would you like me to do a reading, Doctor?” Serenity asked.

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Serenity continued shuffling the cards, moving and flipping them rhythmically with her eyes closed. Once they were shuffled to her liking, she set the deck down on the coffee table in front of the couch and picked up the top card. She set it down, and her eyes slimmed as soon as she saw it.

“The ten of swords,” she said, quietly. 

“You drew that one earlier,” Trinity pointed out.

“I… I know,” she said. The picture on the card was a man lying prone in the dirt, ten swords embedded in his back. The sky behind him was dark, a storm cloud rolling in overhead. As she stared at it, she thought she could see blood leaking from the body, over the dirt, and off of the card, spilling onto the table. She blinked, and it was gone. 

“What does it mean?” Dr. Whyte asked.

“It symbolizes betrayal, usually,” she said, “It came up earlier, too. But… it just seems unlikely, doesn’t it? I don’t understand what kind of betrayal I should be prepared for.” 

“These things can surprise you,” the doctor pointed out, “Dark things can be hidden in plain sight. Betrayal can come unexpectedly.” 

Serenity shook her head as if she wanted to brush it off. She pulled the next card off the deck, then flipped it over next to the first. It was a picture of a tower going up in flames, two bodies falling perilously from it. For a moment, she would have sworn that smoke was rising from the card, but, again, it disappeared before she could be certain. “The tower,” she said quietly, “It means a sudden change. A revelation. A hidden truth.”

Dr. Whyte raised an eyebrow. “Pick another,” he said.

She looked up at him to see his eyes fixed on the cards, not moving. Slowly, she drew the third card and set it down on the table. The figure on it was easily recognizable: dark red skin, horns, wings, and legs like a goat. “The Devil,” she said, swallowing. She stared at the card, waiting, but it didn’t move like the others had. Instead, it was perfectly still, the Devil’s dead yellow eyes staring at her. 

“How would you interpret this hand, then?” Dr. Whyte asked plainly. 

“I… I don’t know,” she said honestly, shaking her head, “This many dark omens… I don’t know.”

Dr. Whyte finally looked up from the cards, and she looked up to meet his eyes. For a second, they seemed to gleam yellow before returning to normal.

“I thought you said you were gifted,” he said. She felt her heart sink.

He reached over the table and grabbed the deck, shuffling it in his long, gnarled fingers. The cards slid gracefully from hand to hand, and then he grabbed one and set it on the table. Serenity had been through her deck again and again, yet she had never seen the card he laid. Strange letters lined the edges of the picture, a language she couldn’t decipher. The picture itself was of a girl, blonde-haired just like the twins, wearing a strange shirt that looked almost like wings.

“They look like wings, don’t they?” he said, “She’s trying to take flight, but she has never left the ground. Potential, yet no results.”

The girls began to shake, sitting on the couch. Dr. Whyte pulled another card, setting it down on the table. Again, it was a picture she had never seen before, a black and white drawing of a lion, its mouth open and teeth bared. The only splash of color on the image was the scarlet blood dripping from the lion’s jaws. “Your heart’s courage, your ambitions, your pride. It eats you alive.” 

Slowly, he flipped the third card. The picture was a knife, dripping with blood, words engraved on the side of the blade. “What does it say?” he asked Serenity.

She was shaking, unable to move when her sister began to speak. “Omnia iam fient quae posse negabam,” Trinity said quietly. 

Dr. Whyte looked at her, smiling as if impressed, before he looked back to Serenity. “I thought you said you were the gifted one,” he said again.

Serenity felt something move inside of her, an instinct to defend herself, and she rushed to the kitchen. She grabbed a knife from the butcher block, shaking, and hurried back to the living room. She held it out in front of her with trembling arms, pointing it at Dr. Whyte, when her world went black. She felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. It was as if she was floating in a void of nothingness, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw her own hands covered in blood. The knife was still clenched in her fist, dripping blood onto the carpet, and her sister’s body was crumpled at her knees, eyes wide and lifeless, staring up at the ceiling in frozen horror.

Dr. Whyte stood on the other side of the body from her, motionless as she began to sob. Slowly, he stepped toward her, walking up behind her and kneeling down with a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t move, didn’t struggle, as he slowly turned the knife around in her fist, pointing it toward herself. “Betrayal, revelations, evil,” he said as he slowly moved her fist for her, pressing the tip of the blade against her throat, “Perhaps you were the best.”

The blade plunged deep into her throat. With a gargled scream and a pained spasm, she fell backward to the floor, dead. 

Slowly, Dr. Whyte stood up, brushed himself off, and looked at his watch. He let out a huff, grabbed his jacket and his bag, and walked out the door. There was only ten minutes until his next house call.

Pinned (Commissions) | Writing Masterlist | Kofi | Etsy  

[vide0-nasties]

Dragon Age personal HC: the color red is to Andrastianism as the color white is to Christianity.

Here! Have a thing absolutely no one has ever asked for while I take a break between writing smut and cooking dinner.

Pointless, subjective as shit bullet point essay under the cut.

Right so the color red features heavily in Andrastianism, probably because of the way that Andraste died, i.e., tossed on a pyre and then driven through with a sword. So fire and blood and boy howdy that's some tasty-ass, visceral imagery.

Apparently there is also a banter between Cassandra and Sera about Andraste being a redhead, even though she's depicted blonde everywhere. I've never heard it personally, but I've always had that HC in the back of my head, like Andrastians changed her hair color to fit an image they preferred.

Moving on. Since most Chantries prefer to depict Andraste as a motherly looking lady in robes instead of an Actual Sword Swinging War Lord, I imagine that red has some of the same connotations as white does in Christianity, alongside the more traditional connotations that would still very obviously fit.

Meanwhile it would probably take on some of White's characteristics simply bc Andraste was involved in a lot of red. Probably more of the big ones: faith, purity (this one along with virginity I'll go into in another point), spirituality, protection, etc.

PURITY/VIRGINITY. Andraste dealt with a lot of blood, and in what's pretty much an overarching and backwards-ass theocrarcy (illegal same-sex marriage, what's most probably a completely broken sex ed system, an actual fucking standing army at their mercy due to addiction and conditioning, and C i r c l e s, to name a few faults) I've got no doubts that most everyone thinks you're 'supposed' to bleed during your first time having sex. If you bleed, you've never been touched by the demon of premarital dick.

And purity in its less literal form, such as blood being red and blood being a thing you absolutely need to have to survive. An animal sort of purity, if you will. Bc why be woke when you can be broke.

Anyway this is all leading to societal stuff at large. Mostly the things one has mental connections with, without actively thinking it goes back to some aspect of Christianity.

I'm talking weddings and funerals, and here's where most of my semi-grounded ideas fall from the sky like dead-engined jetliners for the sake of The Aesthetic ™

Red wedding gowns are traditional for brides living in Andrastian countries, replacing white's 'purity' connotation. If you want to buck the system, you'd go for literally any other color.

Red underwear/lingerie is also traditional for a wedding, and it's considered a bit salacious/provocative to wear them at different times.

It is to be noted that, while a completely red ensemble is desired, most of the time it's more feasible to go with red elements in a wedding outfit. So long as there's red, it's acceptable.

(Of course, considering modern AU's such as mine, the rise of a mostly secular society [e.g., witches were considered a very real threat up until the last few centuries give or take, and now we happily embrace it for the aesthetic or lifestyle, etc] would probably drain red of much of its iconographic power and symbolism, leaving it just a pretty color and subtle tool, though tradition is still tradition and a lot of folks don't think to ask why)

Grooms usually have some element of red on their person, whether it be a boutonniere, a sash around the waist/hips or across the chest, or even something like a shirt or vest.

Re: funerals, the red element rule also applies.

Re: re: veils, I will probably write another overly bloated HC post about how I think Thedosian funerals would go, esp concerning the difference between the way humans and city elves are 'allowed' to mourn

By and large, I would imagine some people (mostly women) choosing to don mourning veils, or 'weeping' veils. Usually made of a sheer lace-like fabric so the wearer can see through them, and I think the length of the veil is telling of how high your stature is. If your veil has a train, you're LOADED.

There was probably some very ritualistic ways to mourn (esp if you were one of the rich), but that has fallen by the wayside as time moved on and death became less of a concern. (This will also be touched on in my bloated Thedosian funeral post). Mostly, we're going back to red accent elements (pins, brooches, etc), if anything at all.

And there we go, I ran out of steam. I might add more if it strikes me, but holy shit this is already too much time spent on a COLOR.

[mythographers]

I was surprised to see you post about Dany. I wasn't sure if you liked her. It's weird because Dany haters who are POC use that as a weapon against Dany. Then Dany lovers who are POC say they love Dany. Seems to me like people liking Dany or hating her have little to do with them being POC. I'm a POC and I see these Dany haters reach to call her a white supremacist. Then I see POC Dany lovers excuse Slaver's Bay because she had good intentions!

I’ve had this ask in my inbox for a while. Sorry, anon, for taking so long!

To address what you said about POC, POC are not exempt from internalizing regressiveness. So those POC like Dany or POC hate Dany posts are meaningless. 

This is a loaded ask so I have a long answer. I am ambivalent about Dany is the most succinct answer. I think Dany as a person, divorced from story context, is great. Dany within story context can be troubling because of how GRRM has positioned her.  I think if someone victim blames Dany or attacks her ruthlessness, you should not take them seriously. But if they call out Slaver’s Bay without resorting to “Dany is an imperialist white supremacist!!!!” or you know being a slavery apologist, you should probably listen without dismissing them.

Dany is not a white supremacist. Dany is not an imperialist. Dany is not a colonialist nor a white saviour by definition but Dany’s narrative is clothed in colonial and white saviour imagery. This is why I separated Dany from story context earlier.

Colonialism’s main purpose has always been for the benefit of the coloniser. In present-day, scholars like Niall Ferguson and Bruce Gilley still mythologize that British colonialism was different, that it was benevolent. This thinking forgets that whatever “benefits” British colonialism brought to its colonized countries was first for the benefit of the Empire. The fact that it also benefitted the native population was secondary. Often these “benefits” like railways were initially restricted to native populations due to racism.  America does not wade into the MENA like a bull in a china shop because America is just so outraged for the native populations. America did not invade Iraq because they wanted to free Iraqis from Saddam’s brutality. America wanted to benefit America first and foremost. The lie they sell the public is not the truth of why America invades countries. 

Dany did not go to Slaver’s Bay to benefit herself. Once Dany had the power to act and the conviction to act, she saw an injustice and tried to save people from slavery. She is not a colonialist by her actions in the story. The slaves Dany frees are not all black or brown people either despite what the show did. 

But on a meta level from our position as readers who know other narratives and know history, Dany’s narrative is clothed in colonial and white saviour imagery so I wonder if that’s where POC who know this imagery and are ~woke~ become uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable, but it’s reductive to not unpack this stuff and label Dany a colonialist and leave it at that.

Dany being a mother to the slaves she frees (”Mother! Mother!”) is emphasized in the story. Queen Victoria was seen as an Imperial Mother to her colonial children. The Victoria Memorial in London alludes to this. “Victoria is figured by association as unvanquishable force and “Great White Mother” who civilizes and protects her so-called children - those subjects of territories colonized under her gaze.” Remaking Queen Victoria. 1997. This reply is already too long but look up White Woman’s Burden, White Man’s Burden, read Edward Said. For a feminist twist on colonialism and Western women trying to save Third World (I hate this phrase) women, look up Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Dany is a saviour. But when paired with GRRM’s otherizing writing of Slaver’s Bay, that’s where the white saviour comments come in. The characters are caricatures and aren’t written the same dimensional way as the Westerosi, or even the Wildlings. If he’d written a narrative that wasn’t top-down and where the slaves got to be actors in the revolution that frees them rather than be acted up on, things would be different. All of this is narrative and writing - Dany as herself is a revolutionary character. Dany with her narrative accoutrements as written by GRRM alludes to aspects of colonialism and white saviourism, while herself not fitting either descriptor.

We can talk about cultural imperialism because Dany imposes her views on an entire region and demands they change, but there are few issues that muddle up that water. Cultural imperialism, by precedence, has been enforced by whole civilizations that were already practicing imperialism and not by one individual whose sole purpose was to eradicate an evil. And it’s slavery that Dany tries to eradicate. I’m really okay with that. We’ve all been told white women go abroad and see veiled women or cultural practices they disagree with and try to ban it - white feminism bad! If you read the author I mentioned above, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, she talks a lot about white women trying to save Third World women. The difference is context. Mohanty mentions “while your countries are bombing us.” Dany doesn’t go to stop Slaver’s Bay’s cultural practices while being part of an Empire that is exploiting the people of Slaver’s Bay. Slaver’s Bay IS exploiting the people of Slaver’s Bay. I think the slaves outnumber the masters. I think this makes a vast difference in how you treat the cultural imperialism of the British banning sati in India while exploiting India and Americans trying to save women from countries that are exploited by America. 

 You can like Dany who is a revolutionary character and criticize the allusions to colonialism and white saviourism in GRRM’s writing for her story. I’m not going to analyze the show for deep thoughts. 

(House Targaryen’s imperial conquest of Westeros and Dany’s attempt to retake the throne is often criticized but the Andals and the First Men, also being colonizers are rarely mentioned. If we are to take a hardline on conquest, House Stark should concede the loss of the North and leave it all together)

[ashxpad]

Surreal Photo Series Developed with the Unusual Mordançage Process

A photographer has documented the disappearing American West using a unique alternative photographic process called Mordançage which gives the finished images a surreal and ethereal look.

When J. Jason Lazarus, an Alaska-based photographer and educator, first started showing his work at a local gallery space about 15 years ago, he realized that the effort he puts into his darkroom printing is not always recognized. People browsing his work would often presume that his silver-based prints were digital black and white images, not hand-printed by the photographer in a darkroom.

Lazarus tells PetaPixel that, although he enjoys shooting and printing digitally when he creates work in the darkroom, he wants that element of the image to be called forward.

“Even though the processes I use are rarely intertwined with the actual concept behind the work, I enjoy getting my hands dirty and like it when some of that workmanship shines through,” Lazarus says.

“Whether that’s the brush strokes on the edge of a Cyanotype print, the handmade texture of the watercolor paper peeking through, or the accidental thumbprint left behind on a Lumen print, those imperfections are a bit of the artist in the final print and a great story for a client that may want to know more about the image and process.”

His interest in alternative processes began when he started pursuing his MFA in Photography through the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and Lazarus started challenging himself to learn these antiquarian processes. He spent time teaching a few of the processes himself, as well as relied on the university’s alt-pro courses to learn others, and also began a mentorship under Christina Z. Anderson. The latter, Lazarus reveals, completely changed his perspective and understanding of “the hidden complexities behind truly mastering some of these processes.”

The idea of the project, titled “The Westward Consumption,” arose naturally during the hands-on process. Whilst waiting in the darkroom for images to expose or for prints to process, there is a lot of time that can be spent on thinking, brainstorming, and processing ideas and thoughts. Combined with Lazarus shooting new material in the American Southwest, it gave him a reason to pursue this project.

“You start thinking about what sort of imagery works best with the process, how you can use and manipulate the process to encourage a story or theme, and then, if it’s something you’re keen on developing, your passion for the subject matter fills in the rest of the blanks,” he explains how his projects originate. Although any planning prior doesn’t completely eliminate “misfires, failures, and restarts.” In fact, Lazarus welcomes them as an important part of the learning process as well as that of creative exploration.

The initial traces of the project started around four years ago, when Lazarus shot infrared (IR) film with his medium format cameras and enjoyed the unique, alien-looking landscapes that it created. He created a selection of IR landscapes — although without an underlying concept or theme at the time — and shelved them for a couple of years. This body of work was later resurrected in 2019 when he had to test out some Mordançage chemistry for a workshop. Simultaneously, he realized that the black skies in his IR landscape shots gave him the necessary tones to start experimenting with the fragile veils that the Mordançage process creates.

The fragile veils produced using Mordançage chemistry

The way this technique begins is with a bleaching process. The darkest areas of the print’s emulsion lift, creating very fragile veils that can be moved and manipulated with paintbrushes and the gentle flow of water. The print is then washed thoroughly, reprocessed through developer and fixer, and then washed thoroughly again. While transferring to each of the separate baths, utmost care must be employed, as the veils tend to carry a lot of water between them and the print’s paper backing, making them heavy and easily spoiled.

An image isn’t ruined if one rips — in fact, a lot of photographers rip them on purpose for a creative result. However, photographers have to be willing to change the intended outcome of the image drastically if they are careless or rushed. Lazarus also employed this unique characteristic of the process by allowing the veils to burst — which adds an additional dimension to each print — as it creates an impression that the landscape is “quite literally falling apart.” After working on this process for some time, Lazarus realized that perhaps this is something special to continue working on for his project.

Each individual Mordançage print takes him about five hours to create, from loading up the negative in the enlarger to final print. He only spends about one hour on his initial black and white print, one-hour processing it through the various chemicals and washes, and two to three hours manipulating the veils in the final rinse.

As this type of process uses a traditional fiber-based darkroom print that is then bleached in a fairly toxic mixture of chemicals, Lazarus urges anyone interested in this technique to first attend a workshop to learn in a safe environment. If the chemicals are mixed incorrectly, the process can create chlorine gas. It is important to follow safety procedures and to wear appropriate gear to enable safe handling of the chemicals, which, Lazarus points out, can and will eat through metal.

Overall, anyone who tries their hand at delicate processes like these has to be prepared and willing to go where the process takes them, with any imperfections that may arise. “The more you make this creative process a conversation between you and what the process is willing to grant you, the more successful you will be,” explains Lazarus. “If you’re used to controlling every variable, Mordançage might not be for you — although if you can relinquish some control, it can be an incredibly rewarding experience.”

Having said that, Lazarus recommends all artists get their hands dirty and try alternative and historical photographic processes hands-on. Immersing oneself in a different way of creating can provide a different perspective on the process, especially for those who have grown up familiar only with digital work.

As complex as the technique is, the shooting stage hasn’t always been easy either. Working with IR requires strong sunlight for maximum effect, which means overcast days are out of the question. Lazarus is also required to shoot through an R72 filter — that decreases the light striking the film by five stops — and needs to shift his focus slightly, too.

As for the imagery present in the project, most of the early work was captured on or around Route 66 with the initial project focused on this “disappearing slice of Americana.” The more he traveled around the American West, and the more he explored its history, Lazarus realized that the neglect on the Route 66 was “just part of a much greater problem of land misuse throughout the region.”

This was the moment when Lazarus shifted the focus of his series away from just documenting Route 66 to photographing the scenes that define this continued development of the land and what is in danger. “Whether nuclear dump sites, failed power stations, ceaseless urban sprawl, toxic mining remnants, they all represent failed experiments toward progress that now taint this once pristine landscape — and what hasn’t been touched is under increasing danger from fires and floods caused by climate change,” says Lazarus.

“Iconic historical photographs of the region have defined it as an unspoiled paradise, so vast that crowding, pollution, and overuse are unfathomable. These early images, along with the ideals surrounding ‘Manifest Destiny’ encouraged each successive generation to reap the benefits of the land without regard, leaving hundreds of years of detritus littering this vast region — while saying all of it was done in the name of ‘progress.'”

The resulting body of work is intended not just to challenge what the people define the American West as, but to also show where this neglect of it has lead to.

“Much like the Mordançage processes’ veils suggest, the American West is going up in flames, crumbling at our feet, and disappearing in the wind,” he says.

More of Lazarus’ photography, including a variety of projects using alternative processes, can be viewed on his website and Instagram.

Image credits: All images by J. Jason Lazarus and used with permission.

from PetaPixel https://ift.tt/2SKC49u

[greenstarmovement]

How Well-Curated Public Art Adds Value, Attracts Tenants To CRE

By Chuck Sudo

December 5, 2017

The amenities arms race often focuses on what a tenant uses within a building — fitness centers, tenant lounges and loaded technology packages. But one amenity is often overlooked even as people interact with it daily. Savvy developers have come to realize that thoughtfully curated public art that stands out while blending in with a building's overall function can attract and maintain tenants. Courtesy of Irvine Company Office Properties A detail of "Suspended Light Veils" Courtesy of Irvine Company Office Properties and James Carpenter Design Associates Irvine Company Office Properties recently installed "Suspended Light Veils," a 29-foot-tall sculpture, in the lobby of 71 South Wacker Drive. CBRE Vice President Cody Hundertmark said the value public art adds to an asset cannot be measured with dollars and cents. Art enhances a building’s buzz.  “There is no question that investors and tenants alike appreciate quality that extends beyond offices and amenities,” Hundertmark said. Irvine Company Office Properties is particularly dedicated to art in its projects across the country. 

Irvine has an in-house planning and design team, dating back to when the company master planned Irvine Ranch in Orange County in the 1960s. That team comes up with the designs for artwork in its properties and works with a dedicated group of art consultants to source its pieces. The team is also tasked with folding new art installations into planned capital improvements across its portfolio. President Doug Holte said video art displays are being installed at Irvine's assets in San Diego and Irvine, California, and Chicago’s 71 South Wacker next year, and he believes well-curated 3D sculptures can help a building with its tenancy. Holte was in Chicago last week for the public unveiling of “Suspended Light Veils,” an 800-pound, 29-foot-tall sculpture from James Carpenter Design Associates, at 71 South Wacker. Holte said Irvine spent six figures installing “Suspended Light Veils” and the work included removing material from the walls, installing new steel support systems to support the piece, and new lighting to give the sculpture different color textures throughout the day. Irvine looks at expressions of art on a regional basis to determine what matters most to its tenants.

 “In Chicago, there’s a high-minded attitude toward the visual arts, so a fixed object is consistent with that. In some of our California markets, we find that performing arts are more valuable to local customers,” Holte said. Holte said the renewed focus on art in office buildings is partly directed at the younger generation of workers. Millennials expect the workplace to have something visually stimulating as an incentive to come in. Holte compared it to when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ordered remote workers to return to the office. “Workers asked, ‘what do I get for that?’ As landlords we’re trying to provide spaces where people say, ‘I like to come to the office,’” Holte said. Chuck Sudo/Bisnow Riverside Investment & Development installed a 200-foot-long video art display in the lobby of its new office tower at 150 North Riverside. For newer trophy assets, art can make a statement that aligns the asset with the high-profile tenancy it aims to attract. At 150 North Riverside, one of Chicago’s newest trophy office towers, developer Riverside Investment & Development installed an 18-foot-high video art display that runs nearly the entire 200-foot length of the building’s lobby. 

Riverside CEO John O’Donnell said the firm struggled to determine what to do with the wall from a material finishes standpoint when the project’s architect, Jim Goettsch, asked if Riverside would be open to a technology-based solution.  "We didn't decide on the installation until the building was 60% leased. We were focused on building the best building we could, and thought this could add to the uniqueness of the product," O'Donnell said. O’Donnell and Riverside Executive Vice President Tony Scacco toured several installations in New York to find concepts they liked, and hired New Jersey-based design firm McCann Systems and a Chicago digital arts firm, Digital Kitchen, to come up with the form and substance of the wall. O’Donnell said Riverside had one simple qualifier. “We wanted the art installation to be a noncommercial enterprise,” O’Donnell said. Scacco would not say how much 150 North Riverside’s video wall cost — he would only say that it was significant but worthwhile. The display is of a scale that complements the lobby's size, while adding a unique wrinkle to what is an otherwise cavernous lobby.  “We simply wanted to create fortress real estate by enhancing the experience of current and future tenants,” Scacco said. He likened the video display to other amenities like food and beverage, wellness and health, and outdoor space. Each contributes to the value of the building. 

Chuck Sudo/Bisnow A detail shot of 150 North Riverside's video art display. Riverside also used the art wall to connect to Chicago at large, bringing the community inside its building. As the installation took shape, Scacco said Riverside took the idea to 15 local institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Adler Planetarium, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago History Museum, View Chicago, University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which offered feedback on how to curate the digital arts portfolio. O’Donnell said Riverside quickly realized it did not have the resources in house to curate the installation. The Art Institute suggested Riverside hire Yuge Zhou, who holds dual master's degrees in computer science and fine art, to curate the wall. Zhou helped solidify the relationships with cultural institutions and built relationships with 15 individual artists. Currently, 150 North Riverside’s video art display has a collection of 150 unique pieces from sources ranging from linear video playback to collaged still imagery, as well as generative art relying on outside data sources like weather and internet search data to create custom and ever-changing pieces. The featured art on the wall runs a gamut from internationally recognized artists like Jason Salavon to art from SAIC graduates who created a pop art illustration of Chicago. Scacco believes the surest sign of the display's success is the level of feedback Riverside receives on specific pieces from its tenants or seeing custom Instagram feeds directed toward the installation. 

"We've taken that feedback, and it has enhanced our appreciation for creating cultural touchpoints which inspires or motivates," Scacco said. Chuck Sudo/Bisnow Akara Partners commissioned artist Hebru Brantley to create a painting, based on Brantley's "flyboy" series, for Kenect, a multifamily development. Kenect, a multifamily transit-oriented development in Chicago, is also using art as connection. Akara Partners CEO Rajen Shastri commissioned an original work from noted artist Hebru Brantley to grace the lobby. Shastri felt Brantley could bring something unique to Kenect's theme of connecting its tenants to the surrounding neighborhood, and each other, through entertainment and amenities. 

 "Art brings people together," Shatri said. Shastri explained Kenect's mission and theme, and Brantley returned with designs featuring characters from his "Flyboy" series of art and sculpture. The final piece reflects the demographic mix of Kenect's neighborhood while also connecting tenants to the building. Shastri said Akara teams up with local art galleries to bring rotating exhibits and networking events to its other properties, like art and wine soirees and meet-and-greets with artists who have exhibits in nearby galleries. These events and the artwork also serve to bring tenants together and give each building a unique identity. "The art absolutely must complement the architecture, and it's different from asset to asset. Art also must fit the interests of our tenants and demographics. We think a lot about that," Shastri said.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/how-well-curated-pubic-art-adds-value-attracts-tenants-to-cre-82323?rt=51343?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks Star Kyle MacLachlan Promises "Everything Will Make Sense"

Before embarking on Showtime's new Twin Peaks, fans were ready to sip on some damn fine coffee once again. They were ready to return to the Black Lodge and the dark mythology surrounding Dale Cooper's last known whereabouts. Indeed, they were ready for more Cooper, full stop.

They were not ready for Dougie Jones.

Eight hours into David Lynch's return to the world of Twin Peaks, Kyle MacLachlan's eternally optimistic federal agent remains at arm's length. Sure, he's returned to the mortal realm after spending the last two decades and change stuck inside the Black Lodge, while an evil doppelgänger (also played by MacLachlan) was running around causing carnage in the real world. But that Agent Cooper you liked has not yet come back in style. Instead, he's inhabiting the life of yet another lookalike named Dougie Jones, wandering through casinos, corporate culture and domesticity with childlike wonder. He is showing signs of the old Cooper, slowly but surely — albeit a little too slowly for some viewers' tastes.

For his part, MacLachlan knew that Dougie would be a difficult pill for fans to swallow. "Many people wanted the nostalgic return to Twin Peaks that they remembered," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "And that's not what we're representing here." Instead, the new Twin Peaks is representing the duality between two extremes: darkness and light, largely through MacLachlan's own opposing roles as Cooper's doppelgänger and Dougie Jones.

Read on for the actor's take on the new Twin Peaks and its "challenging" nature, what went into playing two different versions of Cooper and more as the season approaches the halfway point of its 18-hour run.

Twin Peaks was shrouded in so much secrecy before its return. Now that the cork has been popped, at least to some extent, what has been your reaction to the reaction?

It's really fun to see. I think we all knew it was going to be a challenging journey for the audience, simply because it is 18 parts of one giant piece, and it's sequential, so people really have to stay with it. And also that David's storytelling is filled with imagery and different perspectives and characters and things that may initially be confusing to people, but ultimately everything will come back together and make sense. It will be clear. But it's challenging, you know? The other part of that is there has been a real, complete love from a large part of the audience for this new direction of Twin Peaks. No one has ever seen anything like this on television before. That's some of the excitement, I think.

You can apply that idea just to Part 8 on its own, an episode that's so hard to define, but makes sense within its own context.

There's definitely a cohesion there. It's just things you haven't necessarily seen before. In some ways, I think of it as moving art. David is first a painter. What he's created is this moving canvas. He pretty much tells you how long you're going to be looking at a scene, and he dictates that by the editing. While you're looking at that scene, he's also infusing it with music and sound, into the visual element. He's the maestro at giving you this experience. You just have to go along for the ride, if you're up for it.

Twin Peaks was shrouded in so much secrecy before its return. Now that the cork has been popped, at least to some extent, what has been your reaction to the reaction?

It's really fun to see. I think we all knew it was going to be a challenging journey for the audience, simply because it is 18 parts of one giant piece, and it's sequential, so people really have to stay with it. And also that David's storytelling is filled with imagery and different perspectives and characters and things that may initially be confusing to people, but ultimately everything will come back together and make sense. It will be clear. But it's challenging, you know? The other part of that is there has been a real, complete love from a large part of the audience for this new direction of Twin Peaks. No one has ever seen anything like this on television before. That's some of the excitement, I think.

You can apply that idea just to Part 8 on its own, an episode that's so hard to define, but makes sense within its own context.

There's definitely a cohesion there. It's just things you haven't necessarily seen before. In some ways, I think of it as moving art. David is first a painter. What he's created is this moving canvas. He pretty much tells you how long you're going to be looking at a scene, and he dictates that by the editing. While you're looking at that scene, he's also infusing it with music and sound, into the visual element. He's the maestro at giving you this experience. You just have to go along for the ride, if you're up for it.

You have so much on your plate in this show, even more than we could have imagined coming into the series. Before the series started, what aspects of your performance were you most curious to see how people would react?

I've never had the opportunity to play these extreme characters. The evil dopelgänger is of course a remorseless killing machine, basically just going around consuming. It's what he wants. He moves through the world in that way. That was challenging and exciting to play, to get into that character, to find his look and his feel and his energy and his drive. I was also very fortunate to have David as the director, so we could work together to move this character through this story. The other character of Dougie is not too dissimilar to a character I played in The Hidden years ago. It's just a further degree of someone who is new to the world and is discovering it as he goes along. There's a veil that he's not able to get through. I watched Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Jeff Bridges in Starman, Peter Sellers in Being There; that was a big influence. Those were influences in terms of how to tackle this character. It provided a lot of opportunity for comedy, too. We were mining that. The comedy of timing and exasperation for those around us — particularly Naomi [Watts, who plays Dougie's wife, Janey-E Jones]. She carries the lion's share of the load.

These two extreme characters really embody the tonal dissonance that's at play in the new Twin Peaks. There are monstrous moments of haunting imagery, shots of New York City skyscrapers, or even the actual town of Twin Peaks — often without music, which makes this familiar world look almost like a graveyard at times. On the other side, you have Dougie, with "Take Five" playing in the background as he discovers coffee for the first time — a moment of joy and whimsy. Was this something you felt while you were filming the project, this tug-of-war and push-and-pull between light and dark, not just in terms of the content of the story and the characters, but tonally as well?

That's definitely there. It was in the script and I recognized it. The genius of David Lynch is that he builds all of that in as he edits and lays in the music and the sound. But even in the process of filming, there are certain lengths of time for a take, and extra pieces he wants, and timing. It's all rhythmic with David. I've worked with him enough to know it's really important he feels that what he's getting on the day is going to fit with what's going on in his head. I certainly felt those very things. Tonal dissonance is a really nice way of describing it.

How did you react when you first learned that Agent Cooper had been trapped inside the Black Lodge for all of these years since the original finale? Was it as heartbreaking for you as it was for the audience?

I knew that the audience was excited, just based on social media, for the return of the Cooper that they remembered. I couldn't say anything about that — that there was a process that had to happen before the ship could right itself, let's say. I also like to say we're basically ... my take on it is that the world is out of balance, and we're trying to take it back into balance now. We have 18 hours to do that. But I knew it would be difficult for people. Many people wanted the nostalgic return to the Twin Peaks that they remembered. And that's not what we're representing here. There are a lot of new stories going forward.

It's certainly not something you're getting easily. You have to work for those moments, like when you see Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) gazing upon Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) again for the first time in years.

Exactly right. And you see Kimmy Robertson and Harry Goaz together again as Lucy and Andy. There are reminders. But there are also reminders of just the passage of time. Shooting it was one thing, but seeing it, I was just reminded that it's been 25, 26, 27 years. We've all gotten older. You just acknowledge the fact that we're all mortal and time moves on. I also say, a lot of the time, Twin Peaks has continued on in its way. Now we're revisiting Twin Peaks after all this time, but the town itself never stopped. All the action and activity there never stopped.

Speaking of the passage of time, one of the biggest questions heading into the new version of the series was how would it handle the fact that some of the castmembers who played essential characters had passed away since the original run. We have our answer now: archival footage being used in compelling ways, like Frank Silva appearing as Killer BOB in ethereal spheres, or Major Briggs' (Don Davis) disembodied head floating through space. It's powerful to behold as a viewer. What is it like for you, as someone who worked with these actors, watching them live on through this work and remain such an important part of the narrative?

I think it's beautiful. As actors, this is how we stay around. To see even Catherine Coulson, who was able to work as the Log Lady [shortly before she passed away in 2015]. It's bittersweet. There's a sadness there. I think it's intentional, and a recognition again that we are mortal. We have had some real tragedies with the show. Losing Miguel [Ferrer, who plays Agent Rosenfield] and losing Catherine ... it's not easy. It was challenging to David. But he has done an amazing job remembering, appropriately, I think, and with impact. The characters are still making an impact. As an actor, that's what you want.

There are a lot of new faces as well, and the most prominent one as it relates to your world is the arrival of one of the most iconic characters in Twin Peaks lore, who we had never seen in the flesh until this series: Diane, played by Laura Dern.

That was fantastic. I remember hearing about it for the first time. I had a big smile on my face, and I said, "Of course. It's perfect." Because I didn't even know about it until it was announced. That was brilliant. That was also one of the secrets that I had to hold onto, knowing people were for the most part going to be stunned and excited and happy and all, "Oh, my lord!"

Before, we would only see Cooper speaking to Diane through a recorder. Now, she gets to speak back, and she swears like a sailor. It's almost hard to imagine this Diane being so simpatico with the Cooper of old. What were your thoughts about Diane during the original run of the show, and how did they match up with the reality of the character?

I deliberately left it sort of without any definition. In other words, when I was speaking, I wouldn't think of a certain person sitting at a desk somewhere back in Langley taking all of this down for whatever reason. I thought it was more about Cooper expressing his thoughts in a soothing way. It was a way for him as a character to make sense of what was happening around him and focus himself down. It was less about the person and what that relationship was or wasn't, and more about me working through my stuff as the character. It's gotten much richer now, knowing Diane is being played by Laura Dern, of course, and also to see her personality, which I wasn't thinking about when I was working 25 years ago. It's really funny. It's kind of reminiscent of Albert, Miguel Ferrer's character. She's a little bit on the rougher side.

What was it like becoming the bad Cooper for the first time, seeing yourself in the wig and the leather jacket?

It was really helpful. That character was developed over a period of time where we would find one part of it, and then another part of it, and then another part, and finally we put it all together. I'm really pleased with what's happened with the character. He's a real, pure definition of evil. It's really what I wanted. It was a layering of things. When I saw him and I walked out, I was still not sure. But the beauty of working with David Lynch is if David sees it and feels it and is right with it, then I'm right with it. His confidence in what he saw gave me confidence to go with what I had.

How about Dougie, and stepping into his plus-sized neon green suit? Was that helpful to get your head around Dougie?

(Laughs.) The idea that he went from that one character who we saw briefly, to someone who resembles Cooper a little bit more ... I knew it was going to be tricky. But I knew it wasn't up to me. It's going to be up to the people around me to make that work. The character of Jade [Nafessa Williams], the character of Janey-E and the people at work — they were all going to have to look at him and go, "Why has he changed? What's happening here?" As an audience, we have to go with that. I knew it was going to be a bit of a challenge. But it's also a reflection on Dougie from before. He probably wasn't that memorable, either. People probably didn't look at him too closely: "Oh, it's you. You look a little different. Did you change your hair or something?"

Never mind losing 20 pounds in a night.

Exactly. (Laughs.) "What? Did you go on a diet?" I can only imagine people weren't paying that close of attention to him from the beginning. That's how I justified it.

How was shooting the casino scene, and the "HELLO-OH-OH" of it all?

We were working outside of Los Angeles at a casino, and I remember playing the reality of what was happening with the character. I didn't think too much about it. It felt organic and real and kind of awkward and slightly inappropriate. That was all perfect. The little things, like when you sit down, and the process of learning from watching people. I would watch, and then I would repeat, and then something would happen, and I would react to that. I would then go onto the next thing and the same thing would happen again and again. Trying to keep that as believable as possible was really the goal.

I spoke with Robert Broski recently about playing the Woodsman, and he was an incredibly nice man. You're a very nice man yourself. By your own account, Frank Silva was "a lovely guy." What is it about good people that make such compelling monsters?

Well, from my experience, it's a new place to go. The nice thing is, it's not who I am. I guess it's a part of what I could be, but it's not how I choose to live. It's fun to be able to explore, in a controlled environment, what that feels like, I think. I'm able to put him on in the morning and then I can take him off in the evening when we're done filming. I'll tell you one thing it does: It makes you think about the people who can't. The people who are closer to this than not. That's a horrible place to be as a person.

Almost two weeks have passed since Part 8 aired. The feeling of watching it for the first time won't wash away anytime soon. What was your reaction to that installment, an hour that all on its own stands out immediately as one of David Lynch's seminal works?

I think this whole journey is going to be that. I think Part 8 was the culmination. It was an extraordinary sequence. It was certainly challenging to the audience, but just an amazing piece of work to sit there and absorb. It almost makes me feel that this is not a show you can necessarily binge-watch. I felt that after I watched the first two hours: "I need some time to process this and think about what just happened, because this is much more complex than just a show you would watch and forget." It's very challenging and stimulating, I think. In a way, it was probably great that there's been enough time for people to really think about what they saw and process it and figure it out. It's very complex.

That's an interesting perspective, because you have said that you sat down and read the entire script for the new Twin Peaks in a single sitting, a couple of breaks notwithstanding. How does that experience measure against seeing what David had in mind with the finished product?

It's one of the most fun things about being an actor. You read the script. You visualize everything as you go through. Then you film those pieces, which is different again. Then they edit it, and we see it, and now it's a third film. So it's a process of three, I think, and it changes each time. It continues to evolve. Because it's David, it continues to get richer and more interesting. Certain imagery he uses over and over again, variations of that imagery ... I'm coming to the show now just as an audience member, because I haven't seen any of the [upcoming] sequences yet. I'm experiencing this the same as the audience. It's a gift.

Link (TP)

[neoduskcomics]

Samurai Jack Season 5 Review - Part 1 (SPOILERS)

So, for those of you not in the know, Samurai Jack had a final, conclusive fifth season this year that aired on Toonami/Adult Swim. It consisted of ten episodes which ran successively over 11 weeks (one episode being displaced by a Rick and Morty surprise season premiere). This is going to be a review of that season, with one section dedicated to each episode, and then a “closing thoughts” segment. This review will also be split into two parts since it’s so damn long, so hopefully that will allow more people to actually read it. The second part will go up tomorrow.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

XCII

This episode was loads of fun and set a high standard for what was to come. While not a whole lot happens in terms of advancing the plot, this definitely felt more like an episode that sets the stage for the following nine. It allows us to see what sort of a state both Jack and the world around him are in. The world itself seems very unchanged, but Jack has changed a lot, and we can understand a sort of causality between the two.

We see how fifty years of status quo has left Jack in a torn and jaded state, haunted by hallucinations that chide him over his failure. A Jack tormented by shame, frustration, and survivor’s guilt really gives you a compelling gateway into this new story arc for the character—not to mention the fact that he’s lost his sword. But, we also see that the old Jack is still in there somewhere, as he’s still not willing to back down from a fight or run away from innocents in peril (at least, when he’s not being overwhelmed by tree leaves carrying the visages of his dead parents).

Ashi, our deuteragonist, is also introduced in this episode, and we can see through the circumstances of her birth and upbringing just how deeply Aku’s shit storm has seeped into the earth. We get some really dark and intense imagery in this episode that is unlike anything we’ve seen in the series thus far, and it really serves as a great starting point, pulling the audience in to wonder if and how things could ever go right again. Aku’s got cult followers birthing and torturously training assassins to kill Jack, Jack has lost his sword and nearly his mind, and Aku is no closer to releasing his dark hold on the world at large.

When Jack says in the opening “hope is lost”, these first couple episodes really make you feel it. And yet, again, we can still see glimmers of humanity and hope in our central characters to keep us connected. Jack still fights to survive and to help survivors. Ashi, despite her horrendous upbringing, shows glimmers of a soft side and curiosity in the beauty of the world beyond her underground den. The episode does a great job of balancing out its darkness and light. It lets things get intense, but also remembers to keep a bit of warmth and sentiment, however subtle, to keep the emotional stakes from getting out of hand.

And with that in mind, this brings me to Scaramouche, who is, to me, the absolute best part of this episode, and maybe one of the best parts of this whole series. After such carnage and emotional distress, we get introduced to a scene that reminds us “Hey, guys. This is still Samurai Jack. We can still have fun.” And “fun” is definitely a fitting descriptor for this character. Apparently he was modeled after a real actor and singer, Sammy Davis Jr., and while I’m not personally familiar with his work, I’m sure he was a great entertainer if Scaramouche is anything like him. The way this robot assassin talks, moves, dresses, and fights are all wildly stylish and amusing. Moving mindless puppets with a magic flute did give me Naruto flashbacks, but telekinetically manipulating his sword through scatting and his kickass tuning fork blade that blows up shit with residual vibrations were crazy creative and fun.

Overall, this was a great episode. It wasn’t mind-blowing, but it definitely hooked me in to see what came next.

 XCIII

This is probably my favorite episode of the entire season or, hell, the entire series. Not only does Jack have seven highly trained and highly deadly assassins chasing after him, not only is he in the most mortal peril he’s ever been in in his entire life, not only is it fantastically animated, not only are the pacing, music, and atmosphere drenched with the most palpable tension and adrenaline…but—BUT—it completely removed all of my hang-ups about Aku having a replacement voice actor.

And I don’t want to make this out to be like it was the highlight of the episode. Because it wasn’t. There was way more stuff to like in this episode. But goddamn, man. In the middle of all this horrible, super dark, super serious and traumatic shit, what is the first scene we get reintroducing the show’s main antagonist and the literal sole cause of all this horrific chaos and torment?

We get Aku waking up to an alarm clock, smashing it, opening his nightstand drawer, pulling out two flaming eyebrows, and then placing them on top of his eyes as though they were miniature eye-hats.

That was it. I was on board.

And let me emphasize the fact that I don’t think this scene was comedic genius for the fact that it had some of the absolute most clever visual or scripted humor ever in an animated series. But for me, especially in a show such as this, comedy works best when it is used to break up tension. A lot of comedy comes from surprise—seeing something somewhere or in such a way that you weren’t expecting. When you use comedy to unexpectedly break a pattern of darkness and desolation, it becomes that much funnier simply because of that contrast. Aku could’ve been reworked to be a much more serious and diabolical threat in this season, sort of like how he was in the “Birth of Evil” prequels, but they did not go that route, and I was super happy that they didn’t when this scene happened.

Giving Aku such a comical introductory scene not only provided much needed levity to the opening of this season, but it also reaffirmed to the audience that we weren’t just getting some post-apocalyptic nightmare-scape. We were going to get a story with a widely varied tone which, for me, is my favorite type of story. I enjoy narratives that let you gasp, cry, clench your teeth, and laugh. Hideo Kojima, the creator and overseer of the Metal Gear franchise (before leaving Konami) said something similar about how he thinks all stories, no matter how serious, require levity. This was a primo example of that.

But, okay, on with the actual bulk of the episode. Whatever that initial Aku scene did for giving the show brightness and levity, the main Jack plot did for reinforcing the show’s drama, atmosphere, and tension. This episode is so beautifully paced, scored, and animated that I honestly don’t even know where to begin in extolling it. Keeping Jack’s humanity in tact from the first episode proves to be an incredibly essential calculation on the part of the writers here, because without it, all we would’ve been seeing is a man who has given up on life and success, following his animal instincts to survive.

But this is Jack. Even without his sword and without his ability to look at anything without it turning into an emaciated victim of war, he still wants to live and fight another day. We remain invested in Jack as a character, and so we are completely and absolutely terrified for him as we see him go up against an enemy the likes of which we have never seen before. Jack is completely outnumbered and seemingly outmatched, and the episode plays this out with masterful execution. Jack tries to fight at first of course, and we get not a fight where Jack is just mowing down baddies effortlessly, but where he’s in a real, life-threatening struggle. It’s packed with adrenaline. And then, when he’s quickly cornered, we shift into a state of survival horror. Where are they? What will Jack do? How will he survive? Can he survive?

The colors, the lighting, the environments, the slow pacing of the events punctuated by huge rushes of intense action—it all plays out beautifully and made me feel like I was watching a segment of a foreign animated film. We also get a deeper look into Jack’s heavily weighted psyche as he converses with an illusory version of himself. We see all of his shame, frustration, and even suicidal notions given a voice—and not just any voice, but his own. It works very well to show us the struggle going on within him, even if it is a bit played out as a plot device.

The ending sequence where he slits that girl’s throat, while we all knew it had to happen eventually, is still a bit of a shock both for us and Jack. And even with this pyrrhic victory, Jack is not only now at death’s door, but he’s still being pursued by the seven (now six) still-deadly and still-threatening assassins. It’s a grim ending to the episode, and it really leaves the mind to wonder just what could possibly happen next.

 XCIV

This episode basically marks the end to the new season’s opening act. It’s where Jack pulls his shit together, is reawakened with a new resolve to fight and survive, and (mostly) puts an end to his deadly pursuers. While it didn’t give me the same highs as the previous episode might’ve, it still worked quite well to give this segment of the story some closure and have Jack undergo some real growth as a character (something that’s almost a bit of a stranger to the Samurai Jack series as a whole).

Seeing Jack in such dire straits, bleeding out into the river, still running for his life, struggling to remain conscious and yet still vigilant and on guard, keeps us on our toes as we know he’s not out of the woods yet (literally). But we are allowed to ease off a bit once the wolf from the previous episode returns (who we may have thought was just a thinly veiled symbol) He meets Jack and we see the healing process that Jack undergoes. While this part of the episode may come across a bit as padding, I think it was important for us to see Jack recuperate and see him form a connection to something—in this case, the wolf. Again, it’s a reminder that humanity still dwells in that guilt-ridden mind, and it makes the process of Jack’s both physical and mental healing seem natural, so that he is prepared for the climactic fight at the end of the episode.

It is also in this time that Jack is able to recall a vital lesson from his childhood. It was nice to see Jack when he was a child living with his family—a good reminder of the time before; what it was that Jack lost and once sought to reclaim. And, more importantly to the plot, it provided Jack with some much needed guidance. Jack understands from this memory that he is responsible for his actions, but his actions are also what define him as a person. It was a succinct if a bit simplistic way of getting Jack through the guilt of killing another human being. To me, this also helped absolve Jack of some of his other guilt as well—the guilt of never having returned home to save his people. The flashback itself is well-told, giving us just enough to understand what Jack experienced, what he and his father were feeling, and why it was such an important lesson for Jack to learn.

The resolving fight that follows is of course greatly animated and a lot of fun. The tides have turned, and Jack is now ready and capable to take his assailants down. This turning of the tide is also reflected in the background. In the previous episode, the landscape was always dark, foggy, and obfuscated in one way or another, complementing and enshrouding his black-clad enemies. Here, the land is so pristinely white that the only thing you can actually see is Jack and his opponents. It harkens back to the “Samurai vs Ninja” episode wherein while the Ninja uses the darkness as his domain, Jack uses the light to combat the darkness.

We also get a tiny bit more of Ashi’s humanity working its way to the surface in this episode. We see her volunteer for guard duty and then use the opportunity to gaze at the starry sky. It’s not a lot, but it communicates to us that there’s something more to her than there is to her sisters, and that we can probably expect more to be explored.

Jack, of course, beats all the bad guys as the episode leaves us on an almost literal cliffhanger, as Jack and Ashi are dropped from a towering precipice to the ground far below. It’s not quite as intense or exciting a cliffhanger as the last couple episodes, but the show at this point has demonstrated enough quality and gotten us invested enough in the characters and events that we’ll definitely tune in again anyway. Overall, a well-told story and a pretty fitting end to the season’s first act.

 XCV

This is probably what you could consider to be the first “comedy” episode of the season, and it actually comes at a good time. Jack has just dealt with probably the shittiest situation in his life (maybe short of the time he realized that he was sent thousands of years into the future, that his whole family and nation were dead, and that Aku essentially had taken over the world). If there was a time for some levity, it was probably now.

Here is where we first see Jack and Ashi directly interact outside of combat, and we really get a sense of just how thorough her brainwashing is, in spite of her glimmers of humanity. What results from these interactions varies a bit. We get some genuinely funny exchanges, but we also get a lot of Ashi consistently and unyieldingly berating Jack and praising Aku. While I still welcomed the episode at the time despite it not being my favorite, and while I do still think it was a nice change of pace for the season, I now kind of recognize that it wasn’t just a break from the incredibly tense first several episodes. It was actually more of an indication of the general direction the show would now move in, and this has caused me to revise my initial opinion of it.

This is getting ahead of the episode, but a lot of the story that follows relies heavily on Jack’s relationship with Ashi. In fact, their relationship is kind of the emotional backbone for the final act of the whole season, and for that to work, we really needed something skillfully and gracefully defined. This episode, if you ask me, was a bit of a missed opportunity—in retrospect, at least.

This was basically 20 minutes of us having nothing but Ashi and Jack alone together, but instead of learning more about them and them learning more about one another, we spend most of it just repeating the same motions over and over again, either to play up the pointlessness of Jack trying to reach Ashi, or for the sake of escalating the absurd comicality of it all. Or perhaps both. But in either case, especially when the past few episode were so rich with characterization and insight, it does kind of feel like some time was wasted here, and this is reinforced by the fact that we really don’t get much meaningful dialogue or interaction between Jack and Ashi even after this episode, which I will discuss when we get to the relevant episodes.

This is part of why I felt like Ashi’s turnaround at the episode’s end was somewhat unnatural. Okay, as a scene by itself, it’s pretty well done. We have Ashi flash back to a moment from her childhood concerning a ladybug, and then a parallel is drawn with Jack and another ladybug. It mainly uses visuals to communicate to us how Ashi has a change in perspective, and it’s done pretty well. But I couldn’t really shake just how stark a change it is when, for the first couple episodes, Ashi was unyieldingly determined to kill Jack, and then for this entire current episode, Ashi was totally closeminded and did nothing but hold fast to her belief that Jack was evil and Aku was the shit.

I’m not saying that I didn’t believe this shift in perspective could’ve happened, but, again, it feels like there were a lot of opportunities, not just in this episode but in the whole season, to give us a more natural and emotionally poignant transition. This discussion of Ashi’s turnaround from evil to good will be further explored in the next episode, and I hope that my views on it will be more substantiated by the evidence provided there.

However, all that said, this episode was still good. It was nice to see Jack find himself resolute enough to try to save Ashi not just from bodily peril, but from the poison in her own mind. We get more of Jack debating with his inner, negative self over whether he should continue to bother with all the trouble, and Jack struggling to remain steadfast in his resolve. We also got a bit of a return to the show’s roots, putting Jack in a new and fantastical environment with strange creatures and obstacles for him to explore and overcome—only this time with a very, very vexing and trying companion (who also wants to kill him). The comedy in this episode also still worked pretty well, and I did enjoy some of the ways in which Ashi and Jack displayed that comical chemistry. Not an amazing episode, but still a pretty good one.

 XCVI

Scotsman is back. This is easily the highlight of this episode. He is very old, but he hasn’t lost a step (well, figuratively speaking). And he and his (now deceased?) wife were apparently very busy making an able-bodied army of warrior daughters, except not the vicious murderous kind that we were familiar with from the first couple episodes. Seeing Scotsman charge into battle against Aku before bombarding him with his trademark longwinded flurry of insults was great for longtime fans of the show, even if it did end with Aku laser-eyeing him to death (and then thankfully him returning as a ghost). It was another fun and funny return to a beloved character from the show’s history, not unlike Aku’s own introductory scene this season.

That being said, I actually did not care for much of the remainder of this episode. I discussed previously how I felt that there was some missed opportunity in exploring Jack and Ashi’s relationship. It instead devoted an entire episode to Jack fruitlessly trying to reach Ashi, only to be spurned at every turn and then only for Ashi to undergo a decisive emotional epiphany through a single moment at the episode’s end. Here, we now spend half the episode with Jack providing Ashi with exposition, explaining to her how Aku is evil and, like, literally just the worst with some visual aids.

Now if you were to ask me how else I would’ve done it, I honestly couldn’t tell you. All I can tell you is that the high bar set by the first several episodes of this season left me a bit disappointed with this one and the ramifications that spread outward from it, both forward and back. It lessened my appreciation of the prior episode and it made me feel like there was something missing from the episodes that followed. Again, this turning of Ashi from Aku to Jack, her emotional transformation, and the resultant relationship between Jack and Ashi was all incredibly important to the season’s ultimate plot, and having an episode that’s half exposition and half nearly meaningless action took a lot away from all that, at least for me.

And, yes, I felt that a lot of this episode felt kind of insubstantial. Once we get to the village with the dying villagers and abducted children, it basically turns into a generic villain-of-the-week plot where we don’t really learn anything new or interesting about the characters, the characters themselves don’t really undergo any interesting changes or experiences, and the plot itself is just not really all that captivating. Jack has that moment at the end where all the children seemingly die and he finally gives into the mysterious horseback rider in the distance, but it all feels a little cheap. After all, those children didn’t actually die, for one. And for another, Jack didn’t even cause their seeming death, which is obvious. It’s not as though he finally gave into his anger and started beating the kids up, and then they all collapsed and Jack was like “oh, no! I killed them all! I must accept my punishment!”

You could argue that it was more guilt from not being able to save them rather than from causing their deaths directly, but I would argue that this is in direct contradiction to the seminal lesson he learned only two episodes ago—it is the decisions you make and the actions that follow that define who you are. Jack knows this now. He decided to help the villagers and save those children. He decided not to harm them and do whatever he could to survive and help. They SEEMINGLY died anyway, but if he really understood this lesson, and it was pretty clearly conveyed that he did, while he may not be totally absolved of guilt, he definitely isn’t at a tipping point where he should now face the music and kill himself.

But perhaps that isn’t really the problem. Maybe the real problem here is that, I mean, come on, it’s all just a misunderstanding. Jack left two minutes too early to see that the kids were actually fine and for Ashi to explain to him what happened. Whatever character development (or regression) that follows is merely the result of an overly convenient plot device and not because of any natural causality. I might be sounding a bit harsh, but this is exactly the sort of character drama that I hate. I hate drama that is caused not by problems with the characters and the consequences of their inherent flaws and deliberate actions, but drama that happens because it’s necessitated by the story to promote conflict.

This episode was quite underwhelming for me as it was half heavy-handed explanation and half mindless, predictable action. It lacked the emotional punch of the first several episodes and really left me wanting more.

When Ashi was left at the end to go save Jack, it was also the first time where I really felt that more should’ve been done to establish a more meaningful or at least complex relationship between her and Jack. Sure, Ashi now had to save Jack, but is there really enough of a connection there to make it a journey I’m going to be invested in? After all, their relationship is presently defined by nothing other than a single one-sided connection Ashi made via flashback and Jack lecturing Ashi about how wrong she is and how bad Aku is. I would have to watch the next episode to see for myself whether that would be enough.

PART 2 TOMORROW.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News Fact-checking the fourth Democratic debate - Washington Post

News

Back to Prime

“We saw the horrifying stare of a girl with the dull physique of her child in her hands asking, ‘What the hell took place to American leadership?’”

— South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg  appears to referring to a video first printed on Oct. 12 by the broadcast news outlet Kurdistan 24. The video depicts a girl sitting with a baby in her lap. Within the first frames, she is feeding the baby with a bottle. Then, fixed with Kurdistan 24’s translation, she says, “Where can I snatch this daughter to? I attempted to grab her to a sanatorium, but there used to be none.”

While the imagery is definitely upsetting and without reference to some news reviews to the different, the baby in ask appears to be ill, not “dull.”

“Need to you eliminated the total Pentagon, every single thing — planes, ship, troop, the structures, all the pieces, satellites — it would pay for a total of four months [of Medicare-for-all].”

— Dilapidated vice chairman Joe Biden

veil the worth of Medicare-for-all has dominated the Democratic debates. At an estimated $30 trillion tag over 10 years, the opinion, as outlined in a invoice by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that is supported by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), comes with a hefty tag designate.

As an instance the high tag, Biden talked about that eradicating the U.S. defense funds would pay for four months of Medicare-for-all. It’s unclear how he did his math, and his campaign didn't immediately present a breakdown.

The nonpartisan Congressional Funds Situation of job estimates $7 trillion in defense spending from 2019 to 2028. That’s about one-fifth of the worth of Medicare-for-all around the effect 10 years. It suggests that — all else being equal — defunding the military would veil two years, not four months, of the worth of Medicare-for-all. But with such a sweeping and complex opinion, it’s sophisticated to plot a solid estimate, and it’s unlikely that defunding the military entirely would ever attain to movement.

“There used to be a level the effect there had been extra opiate prescriptions within the articulate of Ohio than human beings within the articulate of Ohio.”

— Commerce govt Andrew Yang

That is factual. Ohio had a top of 102.4 opioid prescriptions per 100 folks in 2010, fixed with the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Ohio’s price has since declined. In 2017, it used to be 63.5 opioid prescriptions per 100 folks, but that used to be aloof elevated than the U.S. common of 58.7.

“And a wealth tax makes a quantity of sense in precept. The problem is that it’s been tried in Germany, France, Sweden and all of those countries ended up repealing it because it had massive implementation considerations and didn't generate the income they projected.”

—Andrew Yang

Yang is nice about this. Based on an Group for Financial Co-operation and Pattern file, “whereas 12 countries had acquire wealth taxes in 1990, there had been easiest four OECD countries that aloof levied recurrent taxes on folks’ acquire wealth in 2017.” (And in 2018, France also modified its acquire wealth tax with one targeted on valid property wealth.)

“Choices to repeal acquire wealth taxes luxuriate in on the total been justified by effectivity and administrative concerns and by the observation that acquire wealth taxes luxuriate in continuously failed to meet their redistributive desires,” the file added. “The revenues accrued from acquire wealth taxes luxuriate in also, with a pair of exceptions, been very low.”

Moreover France, Germany and Sweden are amongst the countries that deserted the wealth tax, as Yang talked about.

“Other folks haven’t had a elevate — 90 percent of Americans luxuriate in not had a elevate for 40 years.”

— Commerce govt Tom Steyer

That is not very the case, not even when pondering inflation. A look by the nonpartisan Congressional Funds Situation of job analyzed a virtually 40-one year period from 1979 to 2015, adjusting for inflation and changes in federal (but not articulate or local) taxes. The CBO found that wages grew for all profits groups, from top to bottom, all around the period. The price of amplify, on the other hand, used to be most dramatic for the tip 1 percent, whereas all people else saw slightly modest will increase.

Based on PolitiFact, a quantity of be taught articulate that the tip earners luxuriate in absorbed a rising half of all recent profits within the final 40 years. However the claim that wages luxuriate in not elevated in 40 years is unsupported by the guidelines.

Twelve candidates are on stage tonight at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, birth air Columbus. The debate, hosted by  CNN and the Unique York Instances, starts at 8 p.m. Eastern; the Fact Checker is writing on the candidates’ claims here.

Fact-checking and prognosis from old debates: June debate | July debate  | September debate

Loading...

[skqq-net]

The Best eCommerce Website Builder: Choose The One

Launching your own eCommerce web sites is also a truly easy direction of and eCommerce web sites builders enable you to indulge in correct that.

No longer most effective will they permit you to operate an on-line retailer with none coding files, but it undoubtedly obtained’t label a fortune as successfully.

Nevertheless as a result of increasing choice of eCommerce platforms available, it is going to recurrently be no longer easy to select on which one is the supreme possibility for your industrial so that that which it is seemingly you’ll operate a launch and procure things off the bottom.

With that concept in mind, we maintain made up our minds to test and analyze utterly different eCommerce reveal builders and witness how suited they’ll be to operate your own on-line industrial. We tested a vary of things – including its ease of use, reliability, and characteristic location – to gain the terminate 5 strategies within the marketplace.

And with out extra ado, listed below are our most effective eCommerce web sites builder picks:

Shopify (all-in-one eCommerce builder acknowledge)

wix.com (most effective eCommerce web sites builder for simplicity)

Squarespace (web sites builder with stunning visuals)

Weebly (easy-to-use eCommerce web sites builder)

BigCommerce (eCommerce builder for gargantuan projects)

1. Shopify

Essentially top-of-the-line eCommerce web sites builder for all industrial wants

Uptime Unavailable Velocity Unavailable Month-to-month site traffic Unlimited eCommerce templates 70, 10 free

Shopify is the no 1 paid eCommerce platform that affords the total instruments for any model of on-line industrial. Nevertheless extra importantly, with the selection of 70 templates, it lets you edit web sites theme even with none coding files.

A gargantuan choice of the templates are cellular-good and near with free updates. To operate it more uncomplicated so that you just can decide on, they’re listed in utterly different categories – from tiny to gargantuan shops and consistent along with your trade.

The interface itself is unassuming to use and offers plenty of strategies when checklist merchandise. And to praise this, Shopify uses an organized database to video show buyer files. Right here’s a important characteristic that enables you to preserve a watchful look for over which merchandise your customers need, and track sales and order traits.

To shine a mild on about a of the most fascinating eCommerce parts, here’s a checklist of them:

60 cost gateways including PayPal, Amazon Funds, and BitPay;

Unlimited merchandise and inventory;

More than one sales channels;

Shopify App Store with a total bunch of apps and widgets;

Shopify POS for selling in-particular person;

As that which it is seemingly you’ll witness, there would possibly per chance be a bucket load of parts to operate an very supreme on-line retailer.

Talking about Shopify pricing, that which it is seemingly you’ll launch selling as low label as $9/month whereas you happen to maintain already bought a web sites. This lets you add Hang Button to an already existing web sites or any utterly different sales channel.

Pricing for eCommerce web sites builder fluctuate from $29 to $299 per month. On the different hand, whereas you happen to are running a tiny but increasing industrial, I’d counsel the $79/mo Shopify conception – it involves 5 workers accounts, 24/7 strengthen, manual elaborate advent, reward cards, unlimited merchandise and many extra.

While these parts label rather moderately, most of them is also in actual fact necessary for many on-line shops.

PROS

70 eCommerce-explicit templates

24/7 buyer strengthen

Unlimited merchandise with every conception

CONS

Pricing is on the upper facet of web sites builders

2. wix.com 

A straightforward to use web sites builder with extremely effective eCommerce instruments

Uptime 99.99% Velocity 422ms Month-to-month site traffic Unlimited eCommerce templates Over 100

wix.com is a web sites builder known for its client-good interface and an dazzling choice of templates that veil a gigantic choice of on-line shops.

There are over 100 responsive templates designed namely for eCommerce web sites. Every body has a spruce and desirable layout with a excessive focal level on imagery, which is a precious notify for increasing an on-line retailer.

The wix.com interface is amazingly easy to use and there are many components that can objective also be customized utilizing its plod-and-fall editor.

Total, the wix.com invent is plan from easy, but thanks to its intuitive invent parts and stunning templates – even the most inexperienced client can operate a legitimate-making an strive web sites.

Furthermore, the wix.com App Market is residence to hundreds of apps to preserve terminate your organization or label. Alongside with things admire wix.com chat, events, and iPlayer HD – there are 39 on-line retailer apps. 

Essentially the most favorite app is neatly-known as wix.com Retail outlets, and listed below are about a of its parts:

Unlimited choice of bodily or digital merchandise;

PayPal, credit score cards and offline funds;

Built-in electronic mail advertising and marketing;

The intuitive retailer manager will enable you to track your sales;

wix.com cellular-app for managing your on-line retailer on-the-lumber;

On the different hand, wix.com is now not any longer the most cheap acknowledge on the checklist.

Essentially the most cost-effective eCommerce conception will label you $23/month and it offers 20GB of storage to your merchandise and unlimited bandwidth. If your store beneficial properties reputation that which it is seemingly you’ll with out concerns upgrade to the Industry Unlimited for $27/month or Industry VIP for $49/month. There is also an Project acknowledge for $500/mo. 

Furthermore, all paid plans are 100% payment free – the total on-line funds you procure are yours and the platform would now not consume the prick.

PROS

100% payment-free sales

Accepts all important on-line cost gateways

24/7 buyer strengthen

Hundreds of on-line retailer templates

CONS

When you take a template that which it is seemingly you’ll no longer return to change it

3. Squarespace

Web page builder for dazzling eCommerce web sites

Uptime Unavailable Velocity Unavailable Month-to-month site traffic Unlimited eCommerce templates 10

Squarespace first and predominant is a web sites builder known for having top of the vary templates and insanely lawful image quality. The invent of each template is minimalistic but extraordinarily subtle – which nearly ensures that your merchandise will witness big.

Entirely a tiny choice of templates are namely designed for on-line shops – on the other hand, very most fascinating a lot the full templates is also tailored to swimsuit eCommerce web sites.

When it involves constructing your web sites, this is done by including blocks to pages that retain your pronounce material. Squarespace uses a are residing editor, so your applied changes would possibly per chance per chance be visible straight away. And even though it is no longer a plod-and-fall editor, you’ll quiet be ready to with out concerns operate your reveal with none coding files.

Squarespace also has a cellular app for constructing and managing your retailer, so that that which it is seemingly you’ll operate changes wherever that which it is seemingly you’ll presumably be.

You also can merchandise to weblog posts which is a important manner to pressure sales and promote distinct merchandise. Squarespace running a blog platform also permits the customer to zoom in on product crucial points and operate the many of the image quality that Squarespace offers.

To present you a clear ogle of about a of utterly different Squarespace parts, we maintain maintain made a helpful little checklist. With Squarespace that which it is seemingly you’ll:

Calculate valid-time beginning charges from FedEx, UPS, and USPS at checkout;

Name your most helpful customers and indulge in insight into elaborate label, elaborate history and extra with the CRM instruments;

Uncover PayPal, Apple Pay, and all important credit score card funds;

ShipStation permits Squarespace customers to ship seamlessly;

While Squarespace pricing starts at $12/mo, that which it is seemingly you’ll add eCommerce to your web sites with the Industry conception starting at $18/mo. While you need extra parts, there would possibly per chance be the In model Commerce conception for $26/mo and the Advanced Commerce conception for $40/mo.

The Industry conception charges a 3% transaction payment whereas each of the Commerce plans indulge in no longer. So we would counsel sticking to on the least the In model Commerce conception as the transaction rate would possibly per chance add as a lot as the value plenty.

PROS

Specifically designed on-line retailer templates

24/7 buyer strengthen

Uncover PayPal and Apple Pay

Mighty image quality

CONS

Lack of integrable strategies

4. Weebly

Straightforward plod-and-fall web sites builder for eCommerce

Uptime 99.98% Velocity 366ms Month-to-month site traffic Unlimited eCommerce templates 15

Weebly is renowned for being one in every of the most client-good web sites builders around on the novel time. Nevertheless since eCommerce web sites became extra current, Weebly has improved its parts on this field to became one in every of the supreme eCommerce web sites builders.

There are a total bunch responsive themes namely designed for on-line shops, and they each maintain a particular invent with a latest layout. While about a of the templates characteristic a one image background for catching the viewers consideration, others consume on a grid-admire layout to repeat a pair of merchandise.

Weebly has one in every of the most simplistic and client-good editors in our checklist, which is big for increasing top eCommerce web sites. Which which it is seemingly you’ll presumably operate your web sites Weebly uses a plod-and-fall editor – add pictures, text, video backgrounds, and even parallax effects for an look for-catching web sites.

There are plenty of invent strategies built namely for on-line shops, admire product search and badges, coupons and reward cards. And including buyer experiences is a lawful manner to preserve a watchful look for over their thoughts for your products and companies.

Weebly also has a cellular app, correct admire Shopify, wix.com, and Squarespace. This allows making changes to your retailer even whereas you happen to are away.

Due to Weebly’s Transport instruments, selling, beginning, printing, and tracking is all done in one put. It uses valid-time beginning charges, and with the developed inventory instruments, that which it is seemingly you’ll with out concerns preserve track of your inventory. The final step to your customers is checkout, and with Weebly, cost strategies are PayPal, Stripe, or Square. 

Users who upgrade to the Industry conception ($25.00 per month) can maintain procure entry to to integrated beginning with Shippo. Furthermore integrated on this bundle is a beginning and tax calculator, inventory management, digital goods, product experiences and extra.

Weebly offers 3 plans namely for eCommerce web sites. The most cost-effective Pro conception is priced at $12/month and involves a free domain, unlimited storage, SSL security, and utterly different top class parts. On the different hand, whereas you happen to need 0% transaction payment – you’ll must upgrade to Industry conception ($25/month).

Essentially the costliest, Efficiency conception for $38/mo, gets you such eCommerce parts admire Abandoned Cart Recovery and valid-time beginning.

PROS

Person-good interface with a plod-and-fall editor

Chat, electronic mail and make contact with strengthen

Somewhat priced paid functions

CONS

Manufacture parts are restricted

5. BigCommerce

All-in-one eCommerce web sites builder for bigger shops

Uptime Unavailable Velocity Unavailable Month-to-month site traffic Unlimited eCommerce templates 80, 11 free

BigCommerce, correct admire its important competitor Shopify, is aiming to be an all-in-one eCommerce acknowledge with a built-in web sites builder.

Its fleshy-featured eCommerce platform lets you arrange merchandise and categories, add and edit pages, and even start a weblog. Adding merchandise is unassuming, and also that which it is seemingly you’ll add an unlimited choice of pictures and an intensive description of each product too.

Additional settings contain making use of spruce product principles for sales items and tracking your inventory with Google Procuring.

After including your merchandise, BigCommerce offers you a vary of big advertising and marketing instruments. Banners, coupon codes, reductions, abandoned cart notifications, and Google AdWords are at your disposal.

Nevertheless that is now not always all, there are a bunch of utterly different parts, including:

Sync your inventory with Fb, Amazon, Pinterest, and eBay;

Abandoned making an strive cart characteristic;

Uncover funds equivalent to PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Amazon;

Right-time beginning charges from UPS, USPS, FedEx and Royal Mail;

Entirely-responsive cellular web sites;

As for the pricing, there are 3 paid plans to pick from that change from $29.95-$249.95 per month. I would possibly per chance counsel the most favorite Plus conception $79.95/mo because it involves abandoned cart saver, unlimited accounts, and as a lot as $150k on-line sales per year.

The greatest downside of BigCommerce is its top class themes. Despite the undeniable truth that the platform has many templates, most effective 11 of them are free. Others’ pricing fluctuate from $140 to $235 per month. 

PROS

24/7 are residing agent strengthen

Hundreds of free on-line retailer themes

Unlimited workers accounts and merchandise

CONS

Costly top class themes

Entirely eCommerce Web page Builder – The Verdict

Every of our reviewed eCommerce web sites builders is big to operate an on-line retailer with out concerns. On the different hand, relying for your wants and value range, that which it is seemingly you’ll objective opt the one who fits your venture most effective:

Shopify is supposed for increasing eCommerce web sites and is also outmoded to manufacture extremely purposeful shops.

wix.com is one in every of the supreme, the most dazzling, and absolute top to use web sites builders within the market with added eCommerce functionality.

Squarespace is supreme for users who desire a particular making an strive retailer for showcasing expensive merchandise.

Weebly is the supreme eCommerce web sites builder for launching professionally-making an strive on-line shops bother-free.

BigCommerce is most effective apt to companies that desire a legitimate web sites to characteristic at a gargantuan scale.

Create you own on-line industrial and use a utterly different web sites builder? Or presumably you maintain questions? Fragment your thoughts within the comment part down below.

The post The Entirely eCommerce Web page Builder: Hang The One seemed first on Web Hosting Reports by Right Customers and Web Hosting Consultants.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2MsYwOD via IFTTT

[joel-furniss-blog]

Shock Art and Andres Serrano

Being edgy habits itself in the breaking of social taboos, the unspoken rules between people designed to keep interaction clean and not bring people any unnecessary feelings of horror or disgust. But if rules are made, even unspoken ones, it is almost inevitable that they will be broken.

But broken for what reason? Sometimes they are broken to bring attention to their outdated ideals, sometimes broke to make radical and overall important advances in ideas, and other times they are broken to bring attention. The latter example is where the genre of ‘shock art’ falls, art whose subject or visuals instantly instil elements of disgust or overwhelming confusion within the wider mainstream audience. The idea is to get publicity and become memorable within the public eye, which is an interesting point, these pieces are rarely meant to effect the closer artworld when the artworld already feels like it has seen everything. For example to the regular passer-by, a painting revealed to be made of an artist’s menstrual blood might be cause for serious disgust and questioning into their psychological state, but to me and many artists who have heard or seen these works multiple times, it loses it’s lustre around the second time. Those kinds of works are designed to get headlines from the Sun or Daily Mail, drawing direct attention to them with shocked headlines.

But I must realise I am being entirely too dismissive, often times there are intense messages that the artists must convey, it is just that when they use their shocking methods of creation, the motif of the piece can be lost behind the shock value. Often times the message is largely relatable rather than alienating, but the visual elements often seem hostile to viewers, with use of gore, infamous visages, over-sexualisation and general use of grotesque imagery often take away from the original idea rather than enhance it.

But once again I feel I am being too critical, there are many works that are considered shocking enough in their contemporary era as well as being considered classics of their time. One of the most famous examples of this is Michel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), a repurposed urinal placed on its back. Duchamp used it to ask a question and gain an answer to the artworld’s tolerance to new and radical ideas, and as a result saw shock and controversy come his way. The idea behind the piece was simple at the time, a simple question of ‘What is art?’ but I believe that the actual object Duchamp used helped stir the controversy. The actual craftsmanship and shape of the urinal may be fairly soothing and unremarkable, the shocking white porcelain it’s made of paired with the shoddy signature adorning the side make it seem visually unappealing. But of course behind it there is the grotesque implication that the art object Duchamp displays is an object made for urinating in, not for a gallery space.

One particular artists who has maintained an element of shock and veritable command of the grotesque and disgusting is Andres Serrano, an American photographer and artist infamous for his breaking of taboos in his artworks, specifically with his confrontational and frankly harrowing photos of deceased bodies within a morgue, use of bodily fluids to create uniquely beautiful artworks, and challenging subjugations of heralded imagery. The latter of which is best represented through one of his most famous works, Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987), a piece labelled both blasphemous and beautiful due to its subject matter and visuals. The 150x100cm print shows a small and lightly detailed crucifix featuring the slumped body of Jesus Christ, however the entire sculpture is submerged in a yellow liquid. While at first glance it may simply appear as a very heavy sepia tone and film grain, the liquid is reportedly Serrano’s own urine. The piece obviously brings up many questions, mainly what Serrano (a Christian himself) intended to say with the piece, but instead of attributing an idea to his practice Serrano stresses ambiguity and that it was not an attempt to denounce religion, despite the implication. The photograph itself is strangely beautiful (despite the knowledge of its contents), the combination of the deep and murky crimson of the background paired with the glowing orange creeping up the shaft of the crucifix and finally ending with the vibrant yellow of where the light hits Christ’s sunken form forming a saturated yet fiery image, representative of the crucifixion scene itself and baptism by fire Christ had to face. The piece won multiple awards and was favourably received within the art community but also faced scandal due to its supposedly blasphemous subject matter and was even attacked multiple times, with angry protestors breaking the glass frame in an attempt to deface the print. Instead of Serrano replacing the frame and print, he decided to keep the broken glass at other exhibitions in the future.

 One of Serrano’s taboo breaking series dealt with our relationship with death and the dead in The Morgue, a series of deeply confrontational photographs of cadavers within a morgue. Despite the morbid subject matter of the series, Serrano once again captures a sense of rare beauty in his subjects while also lending a window into the subtle and sometimes hideously chilling end to us. Using very stark and vibrant lighting against pitch black backgrounds, Serrano brings the subjects to the forefront but not as if he is shoving them in our face, they are often presented with beauty and respect. Serrano pays attention to specific body parts, hands, feet, fingers, torsos, legs, genitalia, and faces, but never shows the full model, always keeping the images tightly cropped in order to protect the anonymity of the corpses. It’s strange, when we see a corpses at a wake it is prepared by a mortician, designed to look almost alive out of respect for the former self, but with these images they are shown in their fullness, extremities purple, embalming fluid still wet, and dried blood on their skin yet still treated with a manner of respect and dignity. Serrano often uses fine, clean cloth to crop or cover the models features, often letting them drape and veil their faces, a visual reminiscent of classical Italian baroque paintings, especially paired with vivid lighting and the striking expressions permanently held on the subjects’ faces. The series directly plays with the grand taboo of death with a no-holds-barred attitude and produces stunning results, much like the previously discussed works, Serrano seems to be masterful at combining the physical beautiful and philosophical disgusting into one. Standouts of this series include: Fatal Meningitis I, Blood Transfusion resulting in AIDS, Child Abuse I, Killed By Four Great Danes.

Serrano’s pairing of the gorgeous and the gross is perhaps best represented in his Bodily Fluids body of work, specifically one piece Semen and Blood III. As the title suggests, the image is a combination of cow’s blood and Serrano’s own ejaculate compressed between two glass slides and photographed against a black background. Obviously the disgust comes from the two fluids, a natural inclination to be afraid and disgusted at the sight of blood and the social disgust we feel about semen, but combined in the context and format that we see, the capture of the two liquids melding under the glass is beautiful, reminiscent of the uncapturable beauty of a roaring fire. The details, tone and forms seen contained within the smoothly shaped borders of the liquids are almost unstudiable in their murky and flowing features, leaving significant time to view the image. It captures the viewer and invites them in, but the name pushes them away. I have a theory that all taboos are based within two factors, sexuality and death, and in this image we see two prime examples of these taboos. The sexuality aspect is obvious represented by the semen, a product of intercourse and a necessary part of reproduction, and the concept of death represented by the blood, the sight of which implies danger and injury possibly leading to death. In this case Serrano shows both the taboos in stark detail, mingling on a physical level but still maintaining that sense of visual appeal. The piece has also been represented within pop culture with Metallica using an edited version of the photograph for the cover art of their album Load which in turn led popular clothing brand and skateboarding shop Supreme to produce a skateboard deck and pair of hoodies baring the pieces design.

Shock art is difficult to pull off in a respectable manner, and even when it is it will often face backlash and criticism, but Andres Serrano has found a work around for that. He appeals to the viewer’s shallow side, the side that values the visual over the message and in that creates extreme emotional reactions. The edginess he displays has shot him to one of the most infamous contemporary artists, he uses it in passing and pairs it with exquisite visuals to masterfully elevate himself. Some say that he offends for the sake of offending, but I’m a firm believer in ‘if it works, it works’.

[dawnajaynes32]

Solid Air, Liquid Earth

Solid Air, Liquid Earth

By Tom Wachunas

   “To a nonpainter, oil paint is uninteresting and faintly unpleasant. To a painter, it is the life's blood: a substance so utterly entrancing, infuriating, and ravishingly beautiful that it makes it worthwhile to go back into the studio every morning, year after year, for an entire lifetime.” – James Elkins

 “The secrets of alchemy exist to transform mortals from a state of suffering and ignorance to a state of enlightenment and bliss.”

― Deepak Chopra

      EXHIBIT: in the whisper of silence / paintings by Mona Brody, on view THROUGH OCTOBER 27, 2017, at Main Hall Art Gallery, Kent State University at Stark, 6000 Frank Avenue NW, North Canton, Ohio / viewing hours Monday-Friday, Noon-5 P.M. 

 http://www.monabrody.com/

     Early in her gallery talk at Main Hall Art Gallery on October 6, visiting painter Mona Brody - currently Professor of Art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York - described her methodology. Several times she used the term alchemy in an overarching way. It’s a wonderfully loaded term in this context, useful as both a practical and philosophical descriptor. Without traveling too far into painting arcana, suffice it to say that Brody is an alchemist extraordinaire.

   Start with regarding alchemy in the sense of transmuting common, ordinary materials into uncommon ones, or a process of changing one thing into another. Here I’m not talking about using paint to make merely prosaic illusions of plastic realities. Yes, there are certainly indications of terrestrial or celestial metaphors to be seen in Brody’s paintings, such as animal forms and aerial views of landscapes, or volatile skies. But in her process of altering pigments and oil to transport us beyond their innate materiality, Brody constructs altogether discrete sensory experiences, independent of recognizable nature, and stunning on their own terms. 

   In considering alchemy as it might be applied to making abstract imagery, think of it as the practice of reconciling dualities or opposites: temporality and timelessness; permanence and ephemerality; the apparent and the implied; the literal and the metaphorical. Brody’s paintings are on one level really about the paint and, paradoxically enough, the paint transcending its paint-ness in the same way poetry employs words.

   The linear elements in such works as the magnificent diptych, “Keep Out,” might be seen as bleeding, or crying, or simply an overflowing, like rivulets  of emotive energy. They’re a drawing out, which is to say an identification, memory, or preservation of pathways - an intuitive sort of cartography to navigate through all those surrounding organic forms. Some of those forms  are in turn indeterminate, cloudy and vaporous, while others are relatively more substantive and defined. 

   As in many of the other paintings here (15 in all), these amorphous structures bloom toward us and also fade away simultaneously, all the while hovering or perhaps incubating, as if waiting in our present moment. The intimate scrutiny that they invite reveals a subtly mesmerizing depth of entities both veiled and exposed – a layered history of gestures and responses, of diaphanous things emerging and changing, or hiding in plain sight. 

   Throughout her paintings, Brody has incorporated a product called “interference paint.” This remarkable product’s name seems somewhat antithetical to its purpose of causing certain colors to change right before your eyes - with varying degrees of opalescence, iridescence, or otherwise translucent shimmering - depending on your proximity and viewing angle to the work. Maybe it should be called something more relevant to its effect, such as ‘augmentation paint’ or ‘enhancement paint.’  In any case, there’s often the delightfully uncanny sense that parts of the canvas surfaces are being illuminated from the inside. Brody uses the effect judiciously.  It’s most apparent in those hints of warmer and more verdant colors, or little flashes of metallic accents, that seem to lurk underneath a palette dominated by off-whites, muted greys, browns, and intermediate earth tones.

   So as the title of this exhibit tells us, Brody is not shouting. The sensations evoked here are not exclaimed via hyperbolic hues or heavy impasto, but uttered, even sung, quietly. Gazing at all the paintings, especially “Keep Out,” I went in. And what I heard when I got there was the exquisite sound of my looking. That’s alchemy.

   PHOTOS, from top: 1. Keep Out  2. Indistinguishable  3.  Leaning Into the Wind  4. In There  5. Layered Soil and Bone  6. Artist talking, photo by Jack McWhorter      

Solid Air, Liquid Earth syndicated post