#though its hard to pinpoint exactly which aspects of him are only due to his powers

[oceanwithouthermoon]

ive never liked powerless saiki aus because the entire conclusion of the series is him accepting his powers as being a part of him that he cant change so like.. in aus where the power remover works, half of his development is erased..

if he had been "powerless" for longer, we wouldve gotten to see him realize this himself and im genuinely sad that we didnt.. we got to see him realize that being powerless wasnt the change he wished it would be and that its something he cant change, but its literally over a two day long period and we miss out on sooo much potential development..

and then in aus where hes born powerless, people think he would have the exact personality and development that he THOUGHT he would if he got rid of/didnt have his powers, like NO ? "without powers he would be another satou-" NO he would be a shy, borderline flamboyant, weird, awkward, genius LOSER.

he would have a more normal relationship with his brother (still probably competitive but in a way more average sibling way and kusuke wouldnt have had the motivation to become so murderous) and he would probably be even more friendless but with less trauma.. he may or may not have ever befriended akechi at all, and the classroom incident wouldnt have happened.. even some of his current friends might not be around if not for coincidences due to his powers or direct involvement from his powers.. (nendo and kaido would for sure still be there though, but this only ensures the idea that he would be the biggest fcking loser ever)

he would still be saiki, but. his powers are a key part of him. he would be totally different without them, but NOT in the way he thinks he would..

[shining-magically]

so I’ve wondered this since the trailer came out years and years ago and Chloe defended the movie - was the red shoes teaser written by the same team that made the movie? were they forced to market it like that, was that based on an earlier draft, etc?? not sure if you know but you seem like the leading expert!

Sorry, this is gonna be an absolute novel because you know I’m an animation fan and the history and production of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is SO interesting and insane. Like, Tangled levels of insane. Thanks for calling me an expert, no one else was gonna do it so I just kind of took up the helm lol.

Here’s the low-down... The timeline of the movie’s production is an absolute mess and kind of an extremely wild ride. It was in production for ten years, went through a lot of different crew members, and went through at least two other major versions of the story before landing on the final version.

Since there’s not a ton of info on the movie’s production, a lot of this is pieced together from different interviews and context clues, and also a lot of what I’ve read and what I am quoting has been translated from Korean, sometimes pretty roughly. But yeah.

Here’s the story of why the Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs teasers and poster were so, so bad and fatshame-y and the actual movie was so, so good and body-positive. (With pictures and production artwork!)

(This is a beast of a post so I’m putting it under a cut.)

All right, so. After its conception originally as a short story by the South Korean studio Locus Creative in 2009-2010-ish, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs was being worked on and was set to come out in Summer 2017, as evidenced by this poster at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, featuring a different logo and very different character designs for most of the dwarfs.

In early-mid 2016, the first teaser (in which we see Snow White undress and then two dwarfs recoil in horror at her fatness when she takes her magic shoes off) was released, after the film had kind of been slowly chugging along for 6 or so years. (I am having such trouble pinpointing when the second teaser was released (in which one of the dwarfs basically attacks Snow while she is sleeping to steal her shoes), but I believe it was around the same time.) The teasers didn’t get that much traction because this was a small film from a small indie studio in South Korea.

None of the final actors had been cast yet. At this point in the production, the story was different, one of the many versions that the movie went through. As in the final movie, the dwarfs were actually cursed knights/princes and Snow White switched back and forth between two body types due to her magic shoes, but in this version, the dwarfs needed to steal the shoes from her in order to break their curse (rather than needing “a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the world” like in the final movie).

The weird thing is, I believe they had JUST changed the movie’s story when the teaser came out. I’m almost positive it was released more as a proof of concept than as an actual trailer for the movie. They had just recently combined two separate characters (seen above), a typical pretty, skinny princess character (Snow White) and a cute chubby girl character (’Bonnie’), into one single character that switches back and forth between the two appearances when she wears the magic shoes (also they had just dropped literally half of the movie taking place in the real world, with a magic mirror portal, it was a whole thing). 

They didn’t have the details of this aspect of the new story hammered out yet, and the first pass at presenting Snow’s magically changing body type, was, yeah, not good and super offensive. This was a really inexperienced indie studio making their first film on a low budget, so even the animation and voice acting wasn’t great. I think they just wanted to get SOMETHING out there because it had been 6 years and they wanted to have something to show for it.

But here’s the thing. Despite how the teasers make it seem, this was always supposed to be a movie about body positivity, letting go of appearance-based prejudices, and loving yourself and others for who you are and for who they are, which we see in the final film.

I like to think of our film as a kindhearted one. Our intentions are nice.

- Director Sung-ho Hong

It’s important to keep in mind that this movie was made in South Korea by a 99% Korean crew, and, as I understand it anyway, in Korean culture, ‘fatshaming’ is not really a thing that is seen as overtly offensive. Also, children’s media there seems to have more adult things in it than in the US, which probably accounts for the more risque parts of the teasers. That said, I really believe that at this point in the timeline, the movie was on-track to be bad (or at least not very good) when it was released, and it would have ended up bad IF a few key players hadn’t signed on (which I’ll get to in a moment).

Interestingly, the movie’s producer, Sujin Hwang, said in a 2017 interview:

“[Both teasers] were solely produced to induce curiosity. They’re completely irrelevant to the actual story.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

I think what she was trying to convey was that neither one is a scene in the actual movie, because while the teasers didn’t reflect the revamped story as it existed in summer 2017 (the time of the interview), they DID reflect the earlier version of the story where the dwarfs wanted her shoes, which is what the story was at the time they were made.

Now that we’re in post-teaser 2016, HERE’S where things start to turn around. After the teasers were released, my guy Disney veteran and native Korean Jin Kim joined the project. He and Red Shoes director Sung-ho Hong had been buddies for about eight years and Sung-ho had been trying to get Jin to come to Seoul and work with him at Locus for a long time, and he finally succeeded.

Jin and his twenty years of Disney experience as an animator and senior designer on films like Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana, had a HUGE HUGE HUGE influence on the movie. He redesigned almost all the characters, oversaw all the visual development from the moment he signed on, and heavily (HEAVILY) supervised the animation, literally going frame-by-frame through preliminary animations and drawing over them, teaching the inexperienced animators at Locus everything he knew. (Literally almost everyone except him either only had TV experience or had no professional experience because they just gotten out of school.)

From an outsider’s perspective, it really seems as though Jin joining the project (and his gargantuan effort) made the quality SKYROCKET. Not just in character design and animation, but also in things like effects animation, story, etc. After he joined, Locus really started pushing HARD to make a good, high-quality movie, and his influence and experience from being a prominent figure at Disney was absolutely key. The studio also began to really study Disney films and other well-made animated films from other studios to really try and pinpoint what the DNA of a good animated movie really is.

I don’t have any solid evidence, but I’m pretty sure that Tony Bancroft (an animator and the co-director of Mulan) then joined the project because he’s good friends with Jin Kim. He is only credited as the voice director (the movie was recorded in English and the characters were animated to the English dialogue), but I am SURE that he probably also had a pretty big influence on the movie, because like... How could he not? I really really think there was more to his role than his title would have you believe, even though there’s almost no info out there about it.

So now the movie goes through a gigantic metamorphosis. Character designs, visual development, and animation quality are all rapidly improving, the story is tightening, and the themes of the movie (which, again, were always the same and intended to be positive) are being presented in a more sincere way. The movie is becoming the sweet, self-love-encouraging and body-positive movie that was eventually released.

I’m putting a gif from the credits of the final movie here. As we move into 2017, when the giant eruption of backlash occurred, please keep in mind that the story was finalized at this point and that THIS was the movie people were so mad about:

Chloe Grace Moretz accepted the role of Snow White immediately after she read the script and she recorded her lines (I think) in early-ish 2017. Her co-star Sam Claflin also immediately accepted the role of the romantic interest, Merlin, after reading the script and recorded his lines in (I believe) July 2017.

In the summer of 2017, the story and script were more or less the same as in the final movie. Promotional images from that time show that most of dwarfs had been completely redesigned by this point and didn’t have their teaser designs anymore.

They also released a few screenshots that look exactly like the final film. The movie was advertised as coming out in ‘2018′ at this point. Here’s a promo image from 2017 that is MUCH more tactfully worded than the infamous Cannes poster:

So now we’re in summer 2017. The Cannes Film Festival. The movie’s script and story have been basically nailed down, animation is underway, and the Korean film company Finecut is beginning to market and sell the movie to worldwide audiences. They are planning on showing some footage to potential buyers at the festival, and they make a poster to advertise the film there.

Unfortunately, it’s THIS POSTER:

Now here’s where there are some unknowns. By this point, the movie is basically in its final form, which is an adorable, body-positive story about loving people for who they are, loving yourself for who YOU are, and that provides commentary on society’s standards of beauty and how they affect how people are treated/viewed. So why this poster??? All I can really tell is that someone (I think Finecut) really, REALLY messed up and either horribly mistranslated the tagline, or didn’t do enough research to know that this kind of thing is REALLY NOT OKAY in western culture.

The above picture is shared and the internet backlash begins, fueled by tweets from prominent body-positivity activists like Tess Holliday. Even Chloe Grace Moretz speaks out against it, because she of all people KNOWS that that’s not what the movie is about. The internet then finds the old teasers from before the movie was revamped and it makes things worse. Producer Sujin Hwang profusely apologizes and says that that is NOT the message of the movie. Locus pulls the advertising campaign, and takes down the two old teasers.

“Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

Voice director Tony Bancroft also tried to explain the situation:

“The truth is the film has a body-positive message as its core theme–it’s the opposite of what reports are saying. The problem is one poorly translated movie poster that has been taken dramatically out of context.” 

- Voice Director Tony Bancroft

And then... There was nothing for a while. The movie didn’t come out in 2018 and was delayed. From what I can tell, I DON’T believe this delay was related to the Cannes backlash. I think it was mostly due to Locus’s limited budget and resources, because as we know, animation is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and easy to do badly but hard to do well. Also, probably with Jin Kim and Tony Bancroft’s influence, they REALLY wanted to make sure to do a good job with the animation because they now had a great story and they really wanted the movie to be a quality, worldwide hit that would kind of put South Korean feature animation on the map. Just take a look at how nice the final animation was:

The movie was released in South Korea on July 25th, 2019. Unfortunately, the damage was done in the English-speaking markets and it was not released to an English-speaking audience until June 22, 2020, when it was released digitally in the UK. At the time of this post, there is no set US release date, but the distribution rights were recently bought by Lionsgate and the MPAA gave the film an official PG rating.

So who’s to blame? There’s no good answer. You could blame Locus for making those old teasers. You could blame Finecut for the competely tonedeaf Cannes poster. You could even blame cancel culture for raging against the movie based on one poster and two old teaser trailers without researching what the movie was actually about.

All I know is, it’s a damn shame.

[chibimyumi]

when did you become a fan of Furukawa? i really want to learn your story of being a fanmom~💟

That’s an excellent question…….

It is rather hard to pinpoint the exact moment, but I think this dates back to 2012 when I became entirely smitten with Takarazuka Moon Troupe’s “Elisabeth” 2009.

There are no words for how much I adore Sena Jun’s Death, and my favourite scene was ‘Die Schatten werden länger’ where Death manipulates Elisabeth by manipulating Rudolf into suicide.

I however, found myself disappointed by Rudolf in this musical, because he seemed nothing more than a poor puppy that was just supposed to be kicked for maximum woobie-effect. I thought that perhaps the problem was the actress playing him, so I started digging for more versions of Takarazuka’s “Elisabeth”. Even after having seen many, many Rudolfs however, I still had the feeling something was lacking, but I could not put my finger on what that something was.

Then not long after, I found Furukawa’s Rudolf. Of course his portrayal in 2012 was nothing compared to his Rudolf in 2016, but even back then his voice alone conveyed an unbelievable emotion.

Rudolf was both strong and broken at the same time, which was very refreshing after the long series of just-woobie-Rudolfs. Despite being strong (though struggling and crumbling), there was something in his voice that was so incredibly fragile and hoping as well. In short, I did not know what exactly I was looking for, but Furukawa made me realise that this thing was ‘duality’ in this character.

At the time however, I was not really ‘fan-mom’ yet, but he did leave a mark on me.

In 2015 when Furukawa was announced as Sebastian, I immediately started worrying, because my only impression of him until that point was the soft-boii. “Would this ‘soft-boii’ be able to play Trash Demon™?” (Furukawa used to be type-cast as woobie characters a LOT. And especially after he returned from his dismissal by TOHO in 2013, he appeared even softer).

In the most spectacular fashion, Furukawa proved everyone wrong; none of the softness about him was visible in his Sebastian. I had in fact never seen anything as monstrous, and was incredibly impressed with Furukawa’s boldness to ‘try defy elegant-Sebastian canon’ and go for the beast-like interpretation.

This is the tweet by Yana that made me go: “Same Yana, same.”

“When the production committee showed me Mr. Furukawa for the first time through a video, I trembled with the thought: “S-such a fresh and gentle-looking young man for Sebas…!? I can’t imagine this.” But now every time I see him, [Mr. Furukawa] always manages to charm and move me, making me go “Eek~ So evil and yet so cool!” (My vocabulary is not rich enough for this)”【Toboso】

According to Furukawa himself too, playing Sebastian was a very important steppingstone in breaking free from the soft-image people had of him. It was indeed only after “The Lycoris that Blazes the Earth”, that he started getting more diverse roles, and was truly able to show the full arsenal of skills he has.

What finally blew me away entirely was his portrayal of Robespierre in TOHO’s 2016 musical Dance Dance Revo uh “1789 - The Lovers of the Bastille”. I have seen a lot of portrayals of Robespierre due to the French Revolution hype in Japan (in the theatre world in general I believe), but Furukawa’s portrayal was the first dualistic evil Robespierre I had seen. The script of the musical mostly told the build-up towards the revolution in 1789 wherein the historic Robespierre still played a role as ‘the benevolent father-figure’.

Furukawa however, managed to incorporate the aspect of the man who would later be responsible for the Reign of Terror. Whenever he was interacting with the revolutionaries on stage, Furupierre was angelic. But the moment he turned away and faced the audience instead, he would show a side that was cold as ice, calculative, and incredibly manipulative. In the scene where the revolt hit its climax, Furupierre could no longer hide his manipulative grimace, and with just one twitch of his lips, it was as though you could see the plans he was cooking up to rule France himself after the revolution.

And from that point on… I just decided I needed to join the league of fan-moms AND PROTECT HIM LIKE A MAD DOG!

Thank you for your interest, Anon ^^

[juunshua]

Most of the girls' ankles are straight but their bent knees go over their feet instead on the balls. They are probably accounting for the heels or boots they will have to wear, so still not great but better. That squat happens at 1:25, end of the hook. The foot is supposed to be parallel to the ground with the knee facing upwards. Vixx has that as a part of their black out choreo (~1:23). N does it well. Sorry I can't remember a choreo where the arms are included. Absolutely agree that good (1/)

Technique more impressive things possible. Taemin for example doesnt have the best vocal technique but his voice has grown so much considering hiw small it was at debut to consistently supporting A4s (I think Ive heard resonant ones from him before too but it's been a while). Following technique doesnt mean everything needs to be textbook or it is going to be, but by doing so it builds a foundation for the stylistic belts and runs. As for dance, they probably started with hip hop which is notorious for the number of injuries it causes, shoulders, waist, and hips in particular. It's as much an issue with the genre as it is of lack of education. As for Joshua, I'm not sure what is going with his body. He said he didn't dance much before seventeen so to be put into a group with experienced members and expected to perform accordingly probably caused him to rush through whatever technique pledis taught to keep up. Oh and definitely, for some reason society equates the amount of visible effort with talent or aptitude when it is almost always the opposite. Ballet looks deceptively easy because it takes years to develop the strength necessary to go en pointe or to support someone en pointe. That's not to say the most awarded ballerinas or ballerinos are because of their technique but they learned how to emote while making the choreography look effortless. In fact injuries are more commonly due to overuse. Than to improper technique. Some of my favorite dancers lack the technical aspects of their chosen genres but they are hyperaware of bodies in their everyday life. Their bodies, their voices are investments into an artistic journey that could be made that much easier with good technique. I saw a jeonghan fancam from clap and marveled at compared to everyone else how much more smooth and captivating his movements were during the transitions of the breakdown. Thats what good technique can do!!

im sorry im like 50 years late in responding i hope i got all ur messages !! under a read more bc i feel like its kinda long laskdfj

but ahh ok!! that squat movement!! its kinda hard for my untrained eyes to pinpoint exactly what they were doing wrong but its super nice to know! thank you!! so the main difference im getting is that hakyeon is the only one who keeps his foot flat for some of the time? bc even hakyeons knee goes over his ankle...unless im seeing things wrong which i probably am. but its not a surprise that he’d be doing things correctly...if i remember right, he has received formal education in various dances before becoming an idollaksjdf ngl though i would consider taemin one of the better singers in kpop like the fact that we can even question whether or not he can or at some point has resonance (and even just support) on an a4...already puts him above like literally 85% of all kpop tenors. like obviously he isn’t perfect by any means, but no vocalist is. i think he has respectable technique and considering his huge improvement from debut...i’d be extremely comfortable with him teaching kpop tenors if he ever had that interest...i’m not sure about taemins exact vocal prowess (im really not at all familiar with his lower and higher registers) since i havent followed him too closely as a singer but i do know of his improvement. but yes i completely agree! just having vocal technique as a foundation just tends to open so many doors and makes so many other things more easy..ahh i gotchu! but i feel like as kpop has progressed over the years, there has been an almost shift to a more contemporary style of dancing for the dominant style? but i know next to nothing about dance so i could be wrong about thatagain i agree! dancing and singing are so interesting to me as a musician because ur body is basically ur instrument for both forms of music and its like !! u only have one!! i grew up primarily on string instruments but the thing is that if i neglect my violin or something and it breaks, in theory i can just buy another one ? the same isnt true for ur body necessarily. if u screw up ur body due to lack of technique (or even overuse while using correct technique), its harder to get back to where u were before that major injury...if even possible like you only have one body one voice u cant get another one its unique to you...if u dont take care of it like u would take care any other instrument then....?? which is why i dont understand why technique isnt stressed as much as it should be ooh im curious as to what jeonghan fancam and where! 

[blankpagesofmine]

This past Friday, I had the pleasure of e-chatting on Instagram with a friend and fellow writer by the name of Craig Atkinson. I could spend time pre-ambling by saying just how great of a wordsman/sketch artist he is, but I’ll let the writer chat speak for itself. Mind you, this was kind of a laidback conversation between two fans of literature, creating literature, and general passion project fiends, so apart from a few corrected typos during the live talk, the majority of this is unedited. Also be sure to stop by Iron Lung Press and order a copy of Craig’s chapbook titled “The Longest Weekend.” It’s currently out of stock (because it’s that wonderful), but I’m sure the reprint will be making its way webside very soon. You can also find two of my chapbooks on the ILP website, titled “The House of Wander en Crone” and “Regection.”

  Blankpagesofmine: So first off, good morning. I find it interesting that when you and I chat on Instagram it’s on completely opposite schedules.

Craig: Haha. Good morning.

Blankpagesofmine: It’s funny because I’ll be up at the crack of dawn and we’ll chat for a bit, then I’ll go to work, you’re out for the night, then by the time I’m leaving you’re up again. Not sure it gets much more backwards than that haha. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to chat with me a little about our beloved craft.

Craig: You’re welcome. It works the same for me too. While I’m at work, the US is quiet. But I’ve always lived in this time zone, so nothing new to me. Australia is a hour ahead of Japan.

Blankpagesofmine: Makes sense, it’s become your normal day-to-day routine. How long have you been out in Tokyo now? What brought you out there from Australia in the first place?

Craig: It’s a little complicated, but I first landed in Tokyo in 2007 on a working holiday visa, after a year and a half in London. I lived here for another year and a half, and in that time a met my wife. We’d been together a year when my visa ended, so she decided to move to Australia with me. We lived there for 5 years, then 2013 we moved back to Tokyo.

Blankpagesofmine: That’s a very interesting movement back and forth between a few places! And also a very cool romantic story, by the way. No wonder you’re a writer, the backstory of Craig is easily something I could picture reading in an engaging novel. I’m jealous of the relocation aspect of your career because it’s something I’ve never experienced personally. I’m sure it’s had a fair share of work and effort put behind it as well, but I imagine you’re pleased with how everything turned out since first leaving Australia. I also find it fascinating because as writers, I believe that our words and stories are products of the environments we’ve lived and roamed around in. How do you draw on those locations in the chapbooks, zines, etc. that you’ve written?

Craig: My whole childhood is broken up into moving houses. I moved so many times within the same town, then in my 20s involved a lot of moves too.

A lot of my work is drawn and about the past. A certain memory will be linked to one of the places I lived.

The story sounds interesting now, but to a confused 22 year old, it was hell.

Blankpagesofmine: Wow, you’re a dude on the move for sure. I can relate, in my twenties I moved five times leading up to where I live today. And let me say for the record, the more books you buy, the more books you have to move up and down flights of stairs. The last place I relocated to, the mover actually almost threw out his back when carrying my box of espionage books! Whew. I did warn him in advance though haha. Anyway, that’s very cool! It’s interesting how your twenties, for many of us at least, were confusing and disorientating, but make for some of the best writing material one could possibly conjure up. Moving, puddle jumping from place-to-place, I can definitely pinpoint some of that in the works I’ve read of yours. Let’s get to some of your amazing publications. Between Coffee & People and The Longest Weekend, I can’t choose which one I enjoyed more. I also am drawn to the way you mesh art with writing, which isn’t something you see blended with such finesse. What inspired you to be so bold and creative with it?

Craig: Firstly, thanks.

I always considered myself terrible at drawing. And the first two Coffee & People I used photos. Then I heard on a podcast how important it is to just play for 5 minutes each day, so I bought a small notebook and started drawing, and what has came out of that is all sorts of things, including zine covers. If my writing has taught me anything, it’s by doing something every day improvement will usually follow, and that’s happening in my drawing. And for bold….

I’m 39 now, so one thing I’ve realized is that you just have to pick one or two things, you don’t even need to be good at it. Just pick something you like and are interested in, and go all in. You never know what might come of it. Also, throw some of your past in there. In my late teens I was into diy punk rock stuff. I might have lost touch in my late 20s and early 30s, but it’s never too late to return to your true love.

Blankpagesofmine: Probably one of the best tips that an artist could get, to practice for small windows of time each day just to see how the experience ups the ante a little. I agree, my sketches aren’t what I or anyone would call pieces worthy of an art gallery, but I try to spend time with it each day in the manner that you suggest. And in your case, it’s easy to see how it’s payed off. You designed one heck of a catchy logo for Iron Lung Press recently and did a mockup for the brand that I’m developing as well. Would you say that there’s a simplistic beauty to drawing and sketching that manages to see the light of day because of the wonderful world of zine and chapbook writing?

Craig: Totally. I used to have a blog, and felt so limited due to my very limited computer skills.

Blankpagesofmine: I’m inspired just to read how you feel about sticking to the passion projects that a person holds sacred. No matter the age, these things are vital to who we are and personally I couldn’t imagine a day without writing/sketching/creating. If the world has some intangible system of checks and balances, responsibilities and routine lay on one side, while being an artist/creator course corrects the other side to an even level. Glad to hear that you’re working hard at it! What’s next for you in terms of projects? What can your fans and fans-to-be expect in the upcoming months?

Craig: I just wrote a very short book review that I made into a mini zine. I want to do more of them. I’m also in the middle (and struggling) of a longer story that I’m trying to write. In the past few months. I’ve made 5 or 6 mini zines as they are easy to do in my down time at work, and also fit well while I’m working on a longer piece of writing.

Blankpagesofmine: I remember you mentioning the book review mini zine before, that’s going to the top of my queue if you end up pushing it out into a bigger release. It’s like they say in baseball, “these are the dog days.” The intro to a story or novel usually starts with a bang and then it’s surviving those hallowing dog days through to the end. I wish you luck with that, I’m sure you’ll find a way to see through it. That’s a versatile approach which I dig very much, not putting all your eggs in one basket and piecing together a few works at once. On a side and complete unrelated note, I’ve been wanting to ask for awhile now. 1) Are you big into music/what bands and songs get the creatively motivational wheels churning for you? 2) What’s a big to-do in your region for fun? Going to a theater to see films? Outdoors time? Exercise? All of the above?

Craig: Yeah, writing is a weird beast. I fight with it for months, then in some random place I get the answer of how to end the story, and I’ll have to scribble it down on a piece of paper there and then.

I used to be heavily into music.

Since 95 when I was 15 and heard Dookie for the first time. I was also learning the drums at that time, so a few years later I met some friends and we decided to start a band.

We played together for 3 years, also practicing daily.

I moved away from music when I was 25 (2005) when I started traveling. I didn’t, and still don’t have a computer (write on my phone or iPad), and just started reading.

Now, I listen to a bit of music, but currently focused on books. (I know some people will be mind blown)

Fun things??? Hmmm…. Drinking good coffee, writing, and reading.

Blankpagesofmine: To shamelessly quote one of the greats, “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” And here’s the living proof! Dookie was a crazy addictive album, I’m with you there. Between that and a few other 90s rock/punk/grunge boppers, it’s all I wanted to listen to. That must have been a heck of a time, what instrument did you play? Any vocals? And of course, the most prominent and important question here…what was the name of the band?? Haha. If there was ever a more perfect substitute based on the circumstances, you can’t go wrong with reading. NO WAY! We love those things over here too! I guess the world is smaller than I originally thought 🙂 nice to see that opposite ends of the world share similar interests.

Craig: I played drums. I wrote one song, and sang it. I’d drummed for 2 years and the other two just started learning their instruments the week we started. We were friends first. You can find an album we recorded on Spotify. We were called Mondo Pest. I had very little to do with words and reading back then, but the lead singer (who is still playing live shows) did introduce me to my favorite zinester, Cometbus.

We recorded on a number of things (comps and alike), but the album is the only thing I can find online.

Blankpagesofmine: Get out of here, an album on Spotify? How insane is that, I never would’ve known. I know exactly what I’ll be listening to come Monday on my commute to work. Drumming is one of the most skilled instruments out there and I think that’s awesome. Never had a knack for it, but I did play the trumpet for awhile. I do dabble in the fine art of Guitar Hero every now and again though (insert rock on emoji). This has been a really great chat man and I appreciate you taking the time out on an early weekend morning to do so! We will have to rally again for a Part II to this discussion, because I didn’t get a chance to get through a chunk of what I wanted to because the topics just transpired into an incredible realm of their own.

Craig: Haha. I was terrible, and still are. Seriously.

Thanks man.

Diorama Society – Writer Chat w/ Craig Atkinson – 4/12/2019 This past Friday, I had the pleasure of e-chatting on Instagram with a friend and fellow writer by the name of Craig Atkinson.