#with all of the women approaching Tamara about how her art

[sassmill]

In Act 2 of Lempicka when Tamara and Rafaela enter Le Monocle for the first time they look around at all the women together and Rafaela says “a room full of nothing but US” and Tamara says “let’s never leave” and guys I just went to a lesbian bar for the first time (okay it’s actually a deli but they turn it into a lesbian bar at night) and GUYS? That is the safest I have ever felt out drinking and dancing and I felt so natural and I was surrounded by other queer women and that’s. That’s the first actual queer space I’ve been to in YEARS and especially post-pandemic. And I’m feeling such an overwhelming mix of emotions right now because I didn’t realize how isolated I felt from the queer community in my day to day life (ie not online). I just. God.

Dedicated queer spaces are so important. Lesbian bars are so important. This is the only one I’ve been to but I’m VERY aware that these days there are fewer and fewer of them but I just. I didn’t know how badly this kind of place and experience and connection to community was missing from my life until I suddenly had it tonight.

[popblank]

Lempicka at the La Jolla Playhouse:

This was one of the shows I had wanted to see before the pandemic, even though La Jolla is a little out of my way. I saw it twice, both times with Amber Iman as Rafaela so unfortunately I did not see Ximone Rose in the role.   

I have been trying to write this post for weeks and every time try I end up having more thoughts, so this is absurdly long compared my usual post-viewing notes. The show is full of ideas about art, revolution, love, women’s agency, and how these things all mix and and it makes me want to take the show apart and examine all the pieces and see how they fit together (this is a good thing, by the way). Hopefully there will be more productions in the future so I can continue doing so.

General thoughts follow, with spoilery details further down below the cut:

The show’s frame is Tamara de Lempicka reflecting on her life in Los Angeles in 1975. The 1975 scenes bookend a chronological depiction of her life starting from the Russian Revolution to around the time she left Europe, apparently before WW2. The story focuses on how her art career develops and how the societal and historical forces (that at the time were upending countries and ideas) affected her and her relationships.  

Generally the songs sound like modern pop musical theater, some with lots of electronic production in line with the recurring theme of Futurism. There are also cabaret numbers performed in-universe as well as some familiar modern musical theater style belty solos.  

Overall, I really enjoyed it.  First act is stronger than the second act, and the ending seems a bit muddled.  

At my first viewing, the audience was more excited to see the show.  Both Eden Espinosa and Amber Iman got a bit of entrance applause, and I think every song got a decent reaction.  At curtain call I’d say the largest reaction went to George Abud (Marinetti) and Amber Iman (Rafaela).  That day, they were filming audience reactions just outside the lobby for promotional videos; I was approached on my way out by someone with a clipboard to ask if I enjoyed the show (I did) and if I wanted to talk about it on camera (I didn’t).

The 2nd time, the audience was a little more reserved. It was less responsive in general (hardly a giggle at some of the jokes that went over well the first time) and some of the people near me barely clapped at all, which I rarely see in a theater. However, at the end of the show this audience seemed quicker to stand for an ovation, and gave an actual roar for Amber Iman at curtain call (deserved, as she knocked her songs out of the park that evening).

Spoiler warning: below is as much detail as I can remember about plot, staging, etc. Song titles were not listed in the program so these titles are 100% guesses for songs not yet released, and it is entirely likely I have missed some details or gotten things in the wrong order.

-------------------- Plot details below --------------------

Show details

There was no curtain - the main thing you see on stage before the show is a huge image of Tamara de Lempicka’s painting Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti).

The lights went down for the overture, which is electronic and propulsive and thrilling in combination with the lighting, neon arcs and diagonal edges on sliding quadrilateral panels. The audience at my initial viewing burst into applause at this point. The panels were otherwise blank white surfaces and were used throughout the show, often as a canvas for projections that signpost exactly when and where the scene is taking place.

The action starts with Lempicka (Eden Espinosa) sitting on a bench in Los Angeles, 1975 (with a projection of those words and some sepia-toned palm trees as I recall). She addresses the audience and sings a song asking "How Did We Get Here?”

Flash back to the Russian Revolution.  Workers sing about how it is now “Our Time” in soaring and optimistic tones. Tamara’s Polish aristocrat husband Tadeusz Lempicki (Andrew Samonsky) however actively supports the Tsar and is hauled off by the secret police to Solovetsky prison. Tamara follows and attempts to bribe a series of prison guards with pieces of her jewelry to try to get to her husband.  The guards (at first) take the jewels for themselves while sneeringly declaring that they are merely taking back what was stolen from the people in the first place, and one gets the sense that the revolution is not as noble as it claims to be. The third guard is not interested in jewels and it is strongly implied that she has to perform sexual favors in exchange for her husband’s release from prison. At this point we see a second Tamara portrayed by a dancer, who occasionally appears in what I interpret as moments of dissociation.  

I liked “Our Time” for its irony; the words and music profess the ideals of the revolution while the audience (hopefully) knows the historical truth of what the revolution was and will become, with the Lempickis’ treatment an example.  It will not be the first time in the show where the pursuit of ideas without regard to people leads to poor outcomes.  

The couple travel by train to Paris with their baby daughter Kizette. In song, Tadeusz frets about how she got him out while Tamara tries to soothe both him and the baby. Paris is alive and exciting and full of people (we briefly see Rafaela pass through here; at my first viewing Amber Iman got entrance applause). The Lempickis need to build a new life; both of them need to get actual jobs for money, even though he thinks it’s beneath them and their class. But she is determined to go out and work, representing the “New Woman.” She appears to be working as a cleaning lady when she sees an street artist selling a painting.  Remembering when her youthful talent for painting was discouraged, she decides that she could totally do that instead.

She paints on the street and tries to sell a painting to a Baron and Baroness (Victor Chan and Jacquelyn Ritz, though I saw Luke Monday as the Baron the second time). The Baroness is skeptical but the Baron is impressed enough to give her a recommendation to take painting classes with Marinetti. Tamara manages to do so despite the expense. Marinetti (George Abud) is a veteran of the Great War and now has little patience for whatever he doesn’t consider truth congruent with his experience. She paints a portrait and Marinetti is bored by it, not at all interested in her layering of shades of blue (which she incidentally remains fascinated by throughout the show). He talks about how painting is only colors on a canvas (that is the only thing the artist can control) and the representation is not the thing itself, but the painting must convey what the artist is trying to say. He instructs her to lighten up and go have a glass of wine at the “Dead Rat Café”/Café du Rat Mort. 

At the café Tamara meets Suzy Solidor, who is working as the bartender.  She also sees Rafaela for the first time. While Rafaela sings the uptempo cabaret number “Love is for Fools” to a raucous and appreciative crowd, Tamara looks on from the bar gobsmacked, and falls head over heels in artistic lust. (I spent half the song watching Amber Iman as Rafaela and half the song watching Tamara watching Rafaela, entertaining all around.)  She then waxes rhapsodic about how she wants to experience Rafaela’s body with all of her senses... in order to paint her portrait (”Beauty/I Will Paint Her”). (Sure Tamara, whatever you say.) 

Meanwhile Tadeusz has managed to get a job at a bank, monotonously exchanging currency for bank customers. The job is boring and he starts ruminating once again about what his wife exchanged (get it?) in order to free him. It’s Tadeusz’s big moment song-wise and Andrew Samonsky sings it with considerable emotion and skill (I didn’t realize his voice had that much range), but it’s a kind of dull song with not particularly inspired lyrics.  Granted, it fits the character as we have seen him so far.

Tamara is finally showing her art at a show along with Marinetti’s other students. Suzy is hanging around as well serving drinks and offering other services, since she “knows a guy who knows a guy.”  Marinetti is characteristically impatient with the series of landscapes and portraits until he sees her painting, which apparently is more in line with his vision of art.  He insults the other students while singling out Lempicka (who as I recall is signing her paintings with this name at this point) for approval in a rather sexist way, and explains his vision (”Perfection”) while perched a the top of a rolling ladder with all of his students running around below him.  It’s a great performance from George Abud and he is totally compelling as Marinetti, especially in this song.  

Rafaela shows up at the show (she hangs around with Marinetti) and Lempicka is more or less like “It’s you! Model for me!” She makes a bet with Marinetti about finishing Rafaela’s portrait and Rafaela is intrigued by her self-assuredness.  Eden Espinosa sells this part well.

Weeks later, Lempicka is painting a portrait of her daughter Kizette (Jordan Tyson), who now appears to be approximately tween-ish. Lempicka is clearly not all that enthused about the role of “mother” and while their relationship seems to be amicable, it doesn’t seem like Kizette has much of her mother’s attention except through art. When Rafaela unexpectedly shows up, Kizette is promptly sent off. Rafaela models for Lempicka and during this process they sing about the experience of being together with the other person in this oddly intimate way (”Stillness”).  At some point they take a break to go to the Dead Rat Café, where Rafaela and Lempicka smoke opium together with lots of flirtatious and sensual implications before Rafaela sings “The Most Beautiful Bracelet.” Lempicka is entranced and a little high. She and Rafaela kiss, and then go back to Lempicka’s studio and sleep together. Lempicka watches Rafaela as she sleeps and sings “Woman Is.”  It’s fierce and dramatic and Eden Espinosa sang the hell out of it, but the song itself (indeed the show itself) has more dramatic high notes than it needs. 

Even so it is hard not to get carried along with the sweep of emotion. One moment I particularly liked was the final image before intermission, when Lempicka returns to bed with Rafaela and the sliding panels close, with the diagonal gap framing Eden Espinosa’s profile as the lights fade to black. (It was at this point where I said to myself, “I have to buy a ticket and see this again.”)

To start Act 2, Marinetti brings a stool on stage to lecture the audience and set the scene while two mimes (yes, mimes) dance behind him to provide farcical emphasis. As we flash forward through the late 1920s and into the 1930s aided by projections on the panels, the world is going through several upheavals (stock market crash, Depression, rise of the Nazis) but “Paris Will Always Be Paris.”  There is a repeated wishful refrain along the lines of “We’ve made it through the Great War, now that’s done/There will never be another one” and it lands harder each time because of the very earnestness of each character singing it.  

Lempicka has become very successful and popular and is selling many portraits of women (with a distinctly female gaze) to the wealthy and stylish crowd.  She has her own career and her lover and her husband (who has his own lover) and is a representative of the “New Woman”.  However there are obvious strains in her relationship with Tadeusz, and she is still trying to save the marriage because for reasons that are somewhat unclear to me, she still loves him very much.

Rafaela wants to go to Lempicka’s upcoming show at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, but Lempicka doesn’t want her to because it’ll be awkward for multiple reasons. Rafaela is frustrated at constantly being hidden away, so Lempicka takes her to Suzy’s new underground lesbian bar Le Monocle. Suzy sings a song extolling women (”Women”) that is very well-performed and choreographed, though the song itself is not quite as strong.  During this song, the bar’s clientele dance and flirt and drink and glide around elegantly; Lempicka and Rafaela affirm their love for each other, talk about a world where they could be together, and Lempicka gifts her a bracelet. Rafaela considers whether love and stability might be good for a change (”Stay”).

Lempicka’s family relationships are still difficult. Tadeusz wants to go back to Warsaw to help build an independent Poland while she wants to stay in Paris.  Kizette is back from boarding school and is resentful of her mother’s attention to Rafaela. Kizette manipulates Rafaela into going to the exhibition (although Rafaela is not entirely unaware of what Kizette is doing).

At the art exhibition, the Baroness sees Lempicka’s paintings (one specifically mentioned is “Adam and Eve”) and declares that she sees what Lempicka is trying to do and that she in fact has achieved it. I believe it is also at this point that she warns Lempicka that things are changing and bad things can happen to outsiders.  Earlier in the show it was mentioned that the Baron is Jewish, as is Lempicka in part; Lempicka’s relationship with Rafaela also puts her at risk.  Rafaela shows up and encounters Tadeusz; they circle each other warily and sing a somewhat antagonistic duet about how they each “can see what she sees” in the other, because they are so much alike. (I take this to be irony.)  Marinetti appears wearing a military uniform and makes a flippant comment about the similarities between the art of Communism (represented by the Soviet Union) and that of Fascism (represented by Nazi Germany) at the exhibition. He himself has joined the Italian Fascists, because the Italians have made Futurism the official art of the movement. It’s quite a shocking and disquieting moment in the show (even more so because I had no knowledge of the real Marinetti), yet everything he has said so far in the show is a consistent lead-up to this point.

Things start to fall apart very rapidly for Lempicka after this. Marinetti and his Fascist cohort violently raid Le Monocle in choreographed slow-motion destruction. Lempicka tries to get Rafaela to leave Europe (giving her a passport and papers) just as Lempicka plans to go with her family, but Rafaela is tired of being expected to follow behind Lempicka in her wake, and leaves her. Tadeusz freely admits he’s seeing another woman, and leaves for Warsaw alone. This all occurs in a dramatic trio. Lempicka attempts suicide and is basically ready to give up because she has lost everything she cared about, but the Baroness shows up and tells her to get back to work and paint a portrait before she leaves.  Apparently the Baroness has a terminal illness and only has a couple of months to live (”End of Time”). She also asks that Lempicka take the Baron with her when she leaves, given their previous fondness for each other.  It’s a big song for the Baroness and I enjoyed the actress and her singing, but the song seemed a bit strange since it sits where I would expect the eleven o’clock number to be.  At this point in the show I would like to know what Lempicka is thinking and feeling after all of these events, and I don’t have that much emotional investment in the Baroness.  

In any case, the Baron and Lempicka end up together in California (”Starting Over”) where she is thoroughly uninspired by the environment (there are a few amusing digs at LA) and no longer creates art. The Baron eventually dies, and as Lempicka ages she looks back and wonders what the point of it all was.  She imagines a vision of Rafaela, who tells Lempicka she has to live not knowing what happened to her.  Lempicka’s physical health seems to be declining, and Kizette (who is still present in her life) appears to support her. Nevertheless, she is still determined to dictate her own terms as much as possible and demands that after her death, Kizette should throw her ashes into an active volcano.

Eventually someone finds her paintings hidden away in storage in Paris, and once again her work is recognized and celebrated and sold for a lot of money.  It is unclear if this is meant to be happening during her lifetime, but in a reprise of “Woman Is”, onstage Lempicka sees the myriad of women she has painted pass before her and has a realization, which seems to be that the point was in fact the representation of all of these women in their uniqueness and individuality and diversity, which was her vision of the world and the future, and is her legacy.  

The meaning of the ending is a little murky, but there’s a good line in that scene about how it’s “a bitch to outlive one’s context”. The idea that her own greatness seemed so dependent on living in a particular time and place, and that fact that the same interwar mix of ideas and politics and culture that fueled her success also spawned the things that destroyed the world she lived in.  It’s not addressed further, but it’s one of the many things to chew on afterward.

When I went to read articles on Lempicka (where apparently plenty of prominent people admired her for decades) the idea that her art was suddenly “discovered” seems a bit disingenuous even if it makes for a supposedly more satisfying ending.  Maybe there’s an idea which could be made clearer about the cycles of time and history.

Staging

Staging was very fun to watch and it was probably one of the better uses of projections I’ve seen, where projections provide actual context and information and are not just literal representations of the setting. There is extensive use of the turntable, which was occasionally distracting because as the show went on, the noise from the turntable could be heard clearly in the background (it took a while for me to figure out what it was because it sounded like crumpling paper, amplified).

Character thoughts

Tamara de Lempicka:  I can see why Marinetti’s vision of art would appeal to her; she goes through the show trying as best she can to control her own destiny, but also trying get the people around her to fit into her plans and that clearly didn’t work. I wish I’d gotten a better idea of how she reckons with that failure in Act 2 as mentioned above, which I think would make her arc clearer.  As the character, I thought Eden Espinosa acted the part very well and carries the show well as the emotional center. Her singing was very good although she had to do a lot of high belting, which didn’t always sound as great. Though this was also an issue with the music - often those high notes seemed like overkill. Surely there ought to be other ways to show the characters’ huge, cathartic feelings in a way that allow for musical expressiveness and also don’t sound so similar between different characters, but I am not a songwriter.

Tadeusz Lempicki: Boring (not to mentioned old-fashioned and classist); while stability is a thing I personally value, it is really hard to understand why Lempicka is so devoted to him. Andrew Samonsky sings the part well, but Tadeusz is written as a something of a stick in the mud who doesn't understand the art his wife is doing, and even the song where he expresses his feelings about how she got him out of prison seems ineloquent in a way that is fitting but doesn’t do him a lot of favors.  The song that seems to best fit with the guy in the portrait is the duet with Rafaela.

Marinetti is a fun, mad visionary and his vision of the future is seductive, even if full of alarming undercurrents. As a supporting character and semi-villain he drives a decent amount of the action, has his own arc, the catchiest song (”Perfection”) and steals the show for me.  I think George Abud was excellent as Marinetti both times - I was completely absorbed whenever he was on the stage, his energy and singing were consistently great, and I fully believed his character.

Rafaela: Still a bit of a mystery even though she has three full songs on her own plus parts of duets, though two of the songs are in-universe performances even if they partly express her personal feelings. I think it is fitting that as currently portrayed in this show the woman who finally inspires Lempicka’s woman of the future is not a white woman.  Amber Iman has a ton of presence; I remember seeing her back in the first tour of Hamilton and she seemed like a bit of an odd fit for the Peggy Schuyler half of the role. She played Rafaela in a relaxed way that felt modern to me, as if Rafaela could drop into the present day smoothly, in contrast to Lempicka feeling herself to be out of context in 1975 Los Angeles. At my second viewing, Amber Iman was having a great nigh; during "The Most Beautiful Bracelet" I had no idea where her vocal runs were going to go but they were controlled and ended up solidly exactly in the place where they needed to b, which was pretty exciting to listen to. 

Suzy Solidor: very fun and a welcome contrast to the aristocratic properness of Lempicka, her husband, and the Baron & Baroness. Could easily be another scene-stealer depending on how the show goes. 

Final thoughts: 

There are shows that I’ve seen that were “pre-Broadway” that seemed more obviously Broadway-ready, but it’s been a while since I’ve been hooked by a show and that is always fun.  I haven’t read anything that says what this is doing after La Jolla but I hope to be able to see it again somewhere.

[glassofsweetsalicineester]

I'm just sitting thinking about girls suppressors and I need nothing else

And unfortunately I have no art of them :(

I like Diana, who went from humble accountant to protector, almost like mother bear, to, well, good accountant. I like her hidden anger, I like her unleashed violence, I like her straightforward problem solving, I like how she doesn't please people, I like how she breaks down when she sees blood, but needs to keep calm look and nails that

I like Tamara who is an aspiring doctor who at first followed her friend into suppressing superpowers, but further developed her own vision of suppression and transformed how suppressors operate

I like Arina who came to suppressors for help for her beloved and stayed there because she found new purpose. How her caring side and her harsh side meet together and create both good couch and good fighter. How she overcomes her feeling of weakness, how she recognizes her strength, how she unlearns false truths (and false fighting style)

I like Sonya, who went from "fathers daughter" type to a high class mercenary. Her practical look at life, her broad vision. Her management from discomfort to full embrace of her superpower. Her assertive approach to people. And despite all harsh personal qualities she has weakness for bats and handsome women. And how she betrays literally most dangerous woman in her circles and walks away FINE after that

[lovelylogans]

the warmest hello (to the coldest goodbye)

once a spy, always a spy forever, forever the warmest hello to the coldest goodbye remember, remember -spies are forever, the tin can bros

warnings: undercover spy work, mention of weapons, drugging someone into unconsciousness/giving someone a roofie, essentially the start of an enemies to lovers fanfiction

pairings: virgil/logan, offscreen roman/patton

words: 4,465

notes: this is for day 7 of @analogicalweek! the prompt of the day is “free day” and i have decided to write a combination soulmates and rival spies au! please enjoy!

⁂

Not that Virgil would admit it, but, like literally every other marked person, he's tried to imagine how he might meet his soulmate. He just didn't ever spare any thought on what he'd do if it happened on the job.

His official cover to his friends (which was mostly his cousin Roman and Roman’s husband Patton) was that he was an analyst—he was always vague about what exactly it was he analyzed, but since neither of them were particularly mathematically inclined, and both were maybe a bit too trusting for their own good, they took him at his word.

Even when he was sent off on various unusual "business trips.”

It’s not like Virgil’s mark is very specific about when and where it’ll happen. Virgil knows that variations of "sorry about that” make for a large percentage of common soulmarks. 

There’s protocols in place, of course, but Virgil had never really paid attention to those classes while training to be a spy. The Lewis clause is the kind of thing Virgil didn’t pay as much attention to, because it didn’t seem as useful as understanding the technology or how to make a cover. The Lewis clause is what to do when someone meets a soulmate on the job—there are specifications for if the soulmate is a target, a team member, or an enemy.

Virgil hadn’t really cared at the time. He’d kick himself for that later.

Any number of meetings occurred accidentally—knocking something over, bumping into someone, or, like his cousin Roman's soulmate did, take Roman's coffee thinking it was his own hot chocolate. They got married two winters ago, just so they could serve hot beverages in cold weather.

He thinks the iteration stamped in black along his left inner arm, "I'm very sorry about this," with the addition of "oh no, it's you” tacked on at the end of his makes it likely that whatever he says will, A, likely be first, B, be somewhat unique, or unique enough to be immediately recognizable, and C, be in the aftermath of some kind of accident.

He ends up being partially right. What he says is first and it is somewhat unique. What his soulmate apologizes for is no accident, though.

Virgil does undercover work, sure, but it's very rare for him to enter the James Bond style locale he's at today, and that he’s been working for the past couple months; the marble ballroom he's circling is dripping with gold chandeliers and matching heavy, velvet curtains that accent the floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a string quartet in the corner, barely audible over the chatter of rich socialites. Virgil, deeply uncomfortable in his white-tie attire, is circling the room in an attempt at looking like he attends charity balls all the time.

He sucks at it.

As if on cue, his earpiece crackles to life.

"How the fuck did you ever qualify to be a spy?" Janus, his tech man and eye in the sky, snickers into his ear. "Your acting skills are horrendous. If you auditioned for The Room right now, they wouldn't let you into the cast.”

"Fuck off,” Virgil fake-coughs into his shoulder.

"Christ, at least try to look like you're mingling, not like you've stalked the target here."

Unable to stop himself, he glances toward the target he's meant to be watching.

The target, who is so staggeringly wealthy it could make Virgil, who is trying to pay off his student debt on a spy's salary (not as high as one might think) burst into tears. Or, much more likely, start ranting about the myriad flaws of capitalism. If so inclined, he could honestly probably steal the amount of money necessary from one of her offshore accounts, and it would be as unnoticeable as someone taking a penny from him.

Mary Lee Truman is standing amidst a flock of suited men, like a dove amidst a flock of dour crows; her dress is slinky silk, a shade of champagne that glimmers rose-gold in the right shade of light. She’s standing leaned to one side, her hip popped out and an arm crossed over her stomach, a crystal-cut champagne flute dangling in her fingers as if she was born to hold one.

Her husband, Lee Truman (fuck if that wasn’t confusing, it was really easier to think of them by their codenames) is off by the bar, seemingly getting himself another drink. 

His eyes stray to Mary Lee again; he can tell a couple of the suits are hired muscle, bodyguards, which makes sense, as the Trumans are allegedly a massive crime family, doing their dirty dealings in plain sight. A couple of the suits he recognizes from dossiers; one is a business partner of Lee’s father, who might not even know what the Truman family really gets up to; one absolutely knows what the Truman family gets up to, as Virgil’s read his rap sheet and knows he’s been in and out of jail due to his assignments from the mob.

There’s one suit there that really doesn’t seem to fit the mold of either category.

For one thing, he’s around Virgil’s age; for another, he isn’t rippling with muscle. Not that he doesn’t look fit; his well-tailored suit shows off his broad shoulders, his biceps, his lean waist. He’s dark-haired, and pale, and blue-eyed, and he’s standing next to Mary Lee with a look that Virgil would think of as dour, but now that he’s looking closely, the blue-eyed man looks almost... calculating.

This man wasn’t in the dossier.

Almost everyone at this ball was in the dossier.

Virgil looks away from Mary Lee and the handsome man, and instead decides to start taking up Janus’ advice; he slowly moves through the room.

Well. He's doing it to get closer to Mary Lee, but sure, he can attempt to mingle.

He traverses through the room, his fancy shoes clicking on the marble floor, mindful to not step on any dress hems—he has it easy, as his directive was simply to wear his white tie with his hidden weapons, his ear piece, and his lapel pin that records everything he's seeing. The women in the room provide the only splashes of color outside of the black suits and white shirts of the men, the gleaming marble, the gold- accented glasses and dishware. Even what little art he's seen follows that color theme -- white marble busts, abstract black and white paintings in their gilded frames, a gold statue outside the front steps, as if to greet the partygoers.

But the women of the party aren't beholden to this strict color scheme. Gowns of pink chiffon, red lace, blue taffeta, deep violet velvet, Virgil passes them all, keeping one eye out for rose gold silk.

He ends up instituting himself in a ring of people listening intently to an art history professor talking about the architectural significance of his building—he introduces himself with his cover name, James Walker, to the man next to him, who Virgil already knows is a Truman cousin. He gives a fake first name too—he says his name is Alex, when Virgil knows it’s really Bruce. Okay. Something to take note of.

He listens to the art history professor talk about art deco with just one ear, the other straining to eavesdrop on Mary Lee and her suits.

“Do you think our beneficiary approaches?” Mary Lee murmurs to the blue-eyed one, the one that wasn’t in the dossier.

“Oh, I know he does,” the blue-eyed man says to her. He has a pleasant British accent, the kind of voice that would be right at home on a nature documentary calmly narrating the eating habits of wolverines, or something like that. “According to all my research, our previous beneficiary is no longer within our purview. A new one will have been instilled in hasty time. As a matter of fact, I believe I would be able to point him out to you right now.”

Mary Lee sighs, a little, and the man continues talking about their charity. Virgil’s mind races. He knows the Truman’s “charity work” almost always acts as a sieve to run dirty money through, so what would it mean, that they got a new beneficiary? A new target, maybe? A new directive?

Either way, this is almost definitely some kind of code they’re talking in. He tunes a bit more into the art history professor’s impromptu lecture—he’s taking a brief tangent into talking about Tamara de Lempicka—as he ruminates on that particular conversation between the blue-eyed Brit and Mary Lee.

Then he ends up in conversation with an elderly woman beside him, who wants to know who he is—James Walker, I run a business a state or two over, I’m interested in diversifying my assets—and if he’s been to any art museums in town. Both he and the man he is meant to be have not, but it turns out she’s a curator and has numerous suggestions for him.

He also knows this woman, Ida Kelly, has been paying into the Truman business for quite some time, and has potentially ordered hits using the Truman’s muscle.

“Madam,” a suited waiter shows up at her side, as if on cue, and hands her a small glass full of what looks like a gin-and-tonic.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” she says, taking her drink immediately.

The waiter turns to him. There is a singular champagne flute on the tray. “Sir.”

“I didn’t order anything,” Virgil says stupidly, before he realizes that almost everyone here is taking champagne flutes off of trays, and he supposes this waiter just wants to clear his before he has to double back and get more. “Oh, all right.”

He takes it. It’s a delicate, crystal-cut glass. He’s almost a little afraid that if he holds it wrong, it’ll break.

“Really, we’re doing an Impressionism exhibit, and it is positively divine,” she says.

Very suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder, emanating warmth through his suit and Virgil jumps, a little—he hopes whoever it is didn’t feel one his knives. Or, God forbid, his gun.

He turns to see no one, when a hand touches his opposite arm, and he turns again. It turns out to be the blue-eyed Brit, who is staring only at Ida, brushing past him, allowing his hand to trail down Virgil’s arm, touching his hand as if to say, please stay there, I do not want to bump into you.

At such a close range, Virgil can smell his absolutely incredible cologne, see his defined jawline, the way his blue eyes gleam.

Ida brightens. “Darling!”

“Ida,” the Brit says warmly. “I visited that display myself, it was simply wonderful.”

“Oh, you’re too kind,” she says, clearly drinking up the praise. Virgil looks between them, feeling even more awkward than he has all night.

“Wait a goddamned minute,” Janus murmurs in his ear, after such a long stretch of silence that it makes Virgil jump again. There’s the sound of rapid typing.

“A victory!” The man says, lifting his glass—it looks to be full of whiskey. “A toast, to your latest triumph.”

“Oh, now,” she says, but when the other surrounding suits start lifting their glasses, Virgil lifts his, as well.

“To Ida Kelly,” the Brit says. “One of the finest artistic minds to walk the earth at our time!”

Virgil takes a sip of his champagne at the same time as everyone else; another woman in a deep green gown with a shawl edged in feathers takes Ida’s arm, rhapsodizing about the Impressionism movement and the latest event that her art gallery had put on.

It takes about a minute for Virgil to notice his vision going blurry in the corners.

It takes him about ten seconds of blinking hard and rubbing his eyes, hoping to clear it, to stumble over his own two feet.

It takes five seconds for Janus’ voice to buzz to life in his earpiece, urgent, “Virgil, get out of there, get away from that man, that’s Lo—”

It takes him about two seconds after that to notice that the blue-eyed Brit is looking at him with an expression clearly lacking remorse.

It takes him about half a second to realize the finger tapping one shoulder, his hand at his hand—the same hand that had been holding his champagne flute. He hadn’t been looking at his drink. The Brit had made him turn away from his drink.

The Brit put something in his drink.

Virgil’s been made.

“Good God, man,” another suited man says, when Virgil stumbles over his own two feet, “had enough of the bubbly, have you?”

Virgil ignores him; even as his vision is growing blurrier and blurrier, his eyes are intent on the Brit, staggering towards him, and he doesn’t even really know why. He’s been made, he should be running, but—

"Did you just fucking poison me, you fucking asshole?" Virgil slurs, and his sudden lack of physical control resoundingly answers the question before the Brit can; the arms that catch him before he can full flat on his face are muscular and warm. He’s distantly aware of the crystal-cut grass slipping from his hand and shattering on the marble.

The warm, muscular arms are more pressing than that. And, for a dirty rotten criminal who has probably killed people, the man is quite handsome. His bespectacled face swims in Virgil's vision.

"'I'm very sorry about this," he says smoothly, before his eyes widen in alarm. "Oh no.”

As Virgil is on the verge of unconsciousness, he hears, "It's you."

His last three thoughts before he slips under: did he just fucking say what he thought he said, then, good God his eyes are so blue, then, fuck, I should have paid way more attention to the Lewis clause.

⁂

Virgil is aware of three things as he wakes up: one, he feels like he has a dreadful hangover. Two, he’s pretty sure he’s in a plane or train or car or something moving, which makes him feel motion sick.

Three, he’s been stripped of his earpiece and his weapons.

He blinks his eyes open slowly, squinting; it’s night time, but even the low light is making Virgil’s eyes hurt.

This is a limousine, he can tell that much off the bat; the partition is closed, the glass tinted as dark as it legally can be, the interior leather light-colored, the bar fully stocked with different sodas and crystal-cut decanters full of various liquors, which makes him wince in memory of the champagne.

He feels like shit, but when he looks over and sees the blue-eyed Brit—his soulmate—his soulmate who had fucking drugged him and was working with the mob—it makes him feel even shittier.

“Ah,” his soulmate says. He’s sitting with one ankle resting on his knee, a squat glass of whiskey in hand. He has glasses on now that he hadn’t had on before. Also, his accent is no longer British; he’s got a nice Italian lilt to his voice, now. “Good. You’re awake.”

Virgil stares at him. He doesn’t say a word.

“I’ll admit this,” he gestures between them, “rather put a cinch in my plan on how to deal with you.”

“Would you have killed me?” Virgil asks. His voice comes out a croak. “If we weren’t...”

He trails off.

The man’s eyebrow arches, before he shrugs, and rolls up his sleeve. His soulmark is in the same place as Virgil’s—stamped across his left inner arm, in the spiky handwriting Virgil only uses in his personal notes, not the more uniform one he writes reports with.

Did you just fucking poison me, you fucking asshole?!

Undeniably a matching soulmark to his.

“My parents were quite bemused by it, when it showed up,” the Brit—or American?—the blue-eyed—his soulmate says. “I suppose we have our answers now.”

“Do we?” he says. 

The man takes a sip of whiskey. Then, he says, “Your predecessor was FBI. Are you the same?”

Virgil tenses. The man rolls his eyes again.

“Please,” he murmurs. “For an organization meant to be secretive, your lot are quite obvious when you trade moles in and out. One comes in, goes out, and coincidentally someone new is knocking on the door within the week. It’s absurdly simple to pinpoint who’s reporting back to your government. So. FBI, CIA, military...?”

“Who gives a fuck,” Virgil says.

“One should know what one’s soulmate does for a living, shouldn’t they?” he says. “This is a very unique situation. I’m simply trying to find out—”

“What do you do for a living, then?” Virgil snarls. His head is pounding, his mouth is dry and it tastes dreadful, his soulmate is an asshole working for the other side, and he’s being carted off to God knows where. This day is one of the worst of his life. Why couldn’t he have had a nice little café meet-cute, like Roman had had?

The man smiles at him, not particularly kindly. “I diversify.”

Virgil pulls a face, because he knows that’s poking fun at his cover.

“What,” Virgil says, “poison people on Monday, go to Ida Kelly’s resort on Tuesday, with a fun little Friday jaunt of killing people who cross the Trumans?”

“I’ve never actually been to the museum Ida Kelly curates,” the man admits. “It was an easy way to insert myself near you, to put it in your drink. And for goodness’ sake, it wasn’t poison.”

“Roofie. Drug. Whatever.”

The man’s eyebrows pull together, in a rather petulant expression. “I designed that myself, you know.”

“Well, it’s shit,” Virgil snaps. “I feel like I have the worst hangover of my goddamn life.”

“Yes, that was part of the design,” the man says, and offers him a glass of water.

Virgil stares at him. “Seriously.”

“No trust between soulmates?” He says.

“Yeah, well. Fool me once.”

The man shrugs, putting down the glass of water into a cupholder, before digging out a sealed water bottle. Virgil takes it and places it into a cupholder near him. No fucking way he’s accepting any food or drink from this man.

His lips quirk up into a smile.

“Where are you taking me?” Virgil says, ignoring the way that smile makes his heart pound.

“That rather depends,” he admits. 

“On?”

“Well.” He says. He uncrosses his legs, planting both feet on the floor. “I’m assuming that now the man in your little earpiece—he was rather rude—is aware that you have been, what is it you say? Made?”

Virgil nods.

“Well. Now that he, and therefore your employer, knows that you are made, you won’t be poking your nose into Truman business anymore, will you?”

Virgil grits his teeth. “Not undercover.”

The man ignores that. “And I know that no matter which you work for, the Lewis clause has been adopted across every arm of that government, and as such you’ll be prohibited from any mission that might bring you into contact with me.”

God damn it. How does he know the spy lessons better than Virgil does?

And then it occurs to him: Janus knew that man. He warned Virgil to get away from him, to get away from Lo—

He rolls this information around in his head. The Lewis clause isn’t exactly a widely advertised part of being a spy; there was a whole trilogy of novels that got adapted into secret agent movies, years ago, that concerned opposing agent spies coming to face each other again and again, and the secondary soulmate agents teamed up together. Which the Lewis clause would prevent, but the public who went and read those novels or saw those movies wouldn’t know that. 

So either this man—Lo? Lo what?—either knows a lot about spies, because he’s one of those know your enemy types, or...

Or he sat down and learned about the Lewis clause the same way that Virgil did, except he actually sat down and listened. Maybe he defected, maybe he’s dirty? Or maybe Virgil’s just overthinking it.

Look. Virgil’s got a lot of questions here. Chief among which:

“Where are you taking me?”

“Away,” the man says vaguely, looking at him. “Are you gay?”

Virgil gapes at him.

“I’d be perfectly fine with a platonic soulmate, but for the sake of disclosure, I am gay.”

“For the sake of disclosure,” Virgil repeats disbelievingly, and pinches the bridge of her nose, rubbing it. God, his head hurts terribly. 

“Bisexual, or pansexual, perhaps?” He prompts. “Asexual? Or... you could be straight, I suppose.”

“Ugh,” Virgil says reflexively, then shakes himself. “I’m not—okay. Fine. Yeah, I’m gay too.”

“All right,” the man says, as if noting it. “What’s your name?”

Virgil snorts.

“What?”

“Okay, I don’t—” he gestures to the limousine around them. “Again, you just drugged me. I don’t know where you’re taking me. You probably would have killed me if I hadn’t said those words.”

The man makes a moue of distaste.

“Or had someone kill me, I don’t know,” Virgil amends. “Either way, you’re working with that family, who I’m assuming aren’t pleased at having a spy getting caught trying to work himself into your ranks, so I’d rather you not know all that much about my life, thanks.”

“It’s not like I’m asking for your,” an infinitesimal pause, as if he’s wracking his brain, trying to remember something, “social security number or anything. A name.”

Virgil stares at this man. Lo—. Lo something. Lochlan? Loyd? Or was it a codename?

“Yours first.”

The man pauses.

“You drugged me,” Virgil says.

He smiles at Virgil. “Will you hold this over my head for the rest of our lives?”

The rest of our lives. Yes, that’s meant to be the fairytale ending for soulmates, isn’t it? A nice little meeting, the swell of overdramatic violins in the background, falling into each other’s arms and forming a life together. That’s the popular answer.

More and more recently, though, people have been advocating for choice; that soulmates are not always the best person for you.

Virgil doesn’t know which camp he and this man will fall into, just now.

“Yes,” Virgil says quietly. “Yes, I think I will.” 

The man sets aside his whiskey.

“Logan.” He says at last, and his accent has changed again; it’s vague, almost indecipherable, but if Virgil had to guess he’d say Midwestern American. Virgil wonders if it’s his real one. “My name is Logan.”

Logan.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Since discovering you’re my soulmate? I haven’t lied to you at all. Not a word.”

“Except for the accent.”

Logan laughs.

“Habit, sorry. It’s a long story that perhaps the man screaming in your earpiece will be able to tell you one day.”

Virgil jolts with surprise. “You know—?”

He cuts himself off before he can say Janus’ name.

“Reputationally,” Logan says, and, as strange as it is, Virgil believes him. In this, at least.

His soulmate’s name is Logan.

“Virgil.”

Logan smiles, his blue eyes glittering. “It’s nice to meet you, Virgil.”

There’s the sound of a soft knock on the partition, and it lowers; Virgil can’t see the driver.

“Sir? We’re here.”

“Right,” Logan murmurs, shaking himself. He reaches into his jacket and withdraws an envelope, offering it for Virgil.

Virgil hesitates.

Logan rolls his eyes. “It’s not like I’ve laced it with anything. I’m holding it with my bare hands.”

Virgil huffs, but he takes it, opening it and pulling out a thin piece of paper.

It’s a commercial flight ticket to Washington, D.C.

“Why D.C.?” Virgil says quietly.

“Most of those organizations are based there,” Logan says. “Is it too far a jump to assume that you are, as well?”

It is actually too far a jump; it’s not even remotely close, he lives in an entirely different part of the states. But. To be fully honest, he doesn’t want Logan to know the state he lives in, and therefore the state that Patton and Roman live in, until Virgil knows if he can be trusted or not.

Logan opens the limousine door from inside, revealing they’ve pulled up to the local airport.

“What, no private plane?”

“I assumed you wouldn’t trust that,” Logan says with a shrug. “The Trumans may be powerful, but you know as well as I that manipulating a flight of this nature is well outside their purview.”

Logan’s right, he absolutely wouldn’t have trusted that, but. This limo’s pretty swanky. For the time he wouldn’t have been obsessively running over every crack and seam in a private jet and interrogating the pilot, he probably would have had a pretty swell time.

Virgil swallows, looking up at Logan. “There are programs, you know? If you wanted to be a witness. Be in service to—”

Logan smiles at him in a way that’s almost pitying. “I left that life behind a long time ago.”

Virgil looks to the airport, then back at Logan.

“Will I see you again?”

Logan shrugs again, almost delicately. “Who’s to say?”

Virgil nods, once, and he says firmly, “I’ll see you later.”

Logan grins at him. “Not if I see you first.”

Virgil slips out of the limo, slams the door shut, and, with what feels like Herculean effort, manages to get into the airport without looking back to see if he can see Logan through the tinted glass.

He does exchange the ticket for another that’s an hour and a half later, though. He’s not a total idiot.

He gets through security pretty quick, and sits in one of the incredibly uncomfortable chairs, his brain pounding with his headache, the questions swirling around in his head making it even worse. Virgil puts his head in his hands.

He just met his soulmate.

His soulmate is working for a mob family.

He just met his soulmate.

His soulmate is apparently smart enough to specifically engineer a roofie.

His soulmate, though!

Janus knows his soulmate. Janus recognized his soulmate.

His soulmate knew about the fucking Lewis clause.

Was his soulmate a spy too? Was his soulmate in deep cover? Had he betrayed his organization? Was he a good person, or had the universe seen fit to hitch Virgil to someone awful?

How had Logan gotten entangled with the Trumans in the first place? Why wasn’t he in the dossier? 

Where was Logan even from? Did he like coffee? Hot chocolate? What had he studied in school? What was his favorite food? If they were normal people, would he have asked him on a date and not drugged him and dragged him off in a limo? 

Who was Logan?

Whatever the answers to his questions are, though. Virgil knows himself enough to know that he isn’t about to let this case go. Not the Trumans. Not him.

Lewis clause be damned.

[dulwichdiverter]

Desperately seeking Susan

Words Elizabeth Rust; Photo Ben Meadows

Susan Wokoma is a breath of fresh air. That may sound like a cliché, but it’s true, she’s honest, clever and absolutely delightful to speak to.

The West Dulwich actress and writer has had an incredible year too. She’s written, produced and acted in her first comedy short for Sky Comedy Shorts called Love the Sinner about a mother’s reaction to the death of Princess Diana.

She’s currently filming Dark Mon£y for BBC One, a fictional four-part drama series about a north London family whose son has just returned from Hollywood where he was abused while filming a major movie. And in January she’ll start filming The Year of the Rabbit for Channel 4, a Victorian-era inspired comedy detective series.

“I’m actually trying to balance both my writing and acting – which is quite hard time wise – that’s why I like to find cool comfortable quiet places where I can get stuff done in really big bursts,” she says.

She likes Gail’s Bakery in Dulwich Village for that reason. She can sit at a table for a couple of hours with her laptop and scripts knowing they’ll keep her topped up with their delicious teas and coffees.

But sometimes she’s acting and writing simultaneously, like when she was filming the series Porters about a group of porters working in the NHS for the television channel Dave.

She was getting editing notes back from Sky about her comedy short and using her mobile phone to edit the script. “You have to keep the momentum up with those things. It doesn’t really work for me to neglect one and go on to the other,” she says.

Recently she was working at Netflix as a script writer. She was in an office with other writers doing a 9am to 5pm shift, but it was really strange for her. “Even though it’s more stressful, I’m best at balancing both acting and writing than focusing on one thing,” she says.

As an actress Susan first came onto the scene when she was 14 years old in CBBC’s Serious Jungle. It was suggested by a teacher that she turn to acting as a way of getting rid of all her excess energy.

At the time her family was living in Elephant and Castle, although she was born in Peckham and lived in Camberwell for a couple of years. At 19 she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada), but she says her big acting breakthrough didn’t happen until she was cast as Raquel in 2016 in the Netflix sci-fi television series called Crazyhead about two demon hunting teenage girls.

Before then she was acting in supporting roles, like the role of Cynthia, a sheltered sexually curious religious virgin, in Chewing Gum. Eventually this role would garner her international recognition, giving Chewing Gum a cult following, but this was only down to Netflix buying the series off Channel 4 Susan is quick to resolve.

“For me more than anything it shows how television is changing because normally if you’re part of a show, if people don’t watch it, or even if it airs, that’s the end of it. Maybe you can watch in on Sky Catch Up or On Demand Channel 4 for a month, but then there’s no way for it internationally. But [Chewing Gum] is part of a spate of shows that have a life internationally through Netflix. It’s a bit annoying for Channel 4 because people discovered it as a Netflix show, and not a Channel 4 show, but it shows how it’s changing a lot of things.”

As a writer she received good advice from Howard Overman, the writer of Crazyhead, who told her to always keep her drawer filled with scripts. He told her these can be full ideas or ones that you abandon, but your goal should always be to keep writing.

Thankfully she says she took his advice, because after her comedy short aired on Sky in October, she was approached about doing more work, which has since resulted in three projects.

Her writing is mostly autobiographical, focusing on the narrative of black women, “write what you know,” she says, resulting in her comedy short, “just make sure you tell the person who is being written about”. In this case, her mother was just proud to be included in her career.

Eventually Susan would like to commission and work with other writers and write for actors and actresses. At the moment she’s the writer and performer, but she sees so many other talented actors she’d like to work with, like working with actresses Whitney O’Nicholas and Layo-Christina Akinlude again (they both appeared in her comedy short) or actresses Tamara Lawrence and Leah Harvey.

But Susan makes no qualms about how difficult life can be for an actor. “It’s a learning profession with differing opinions. It isn’t like being a lawyer or a doctor where you spend x amount of years studying and then you pass an exam or you don’t or you become a doctor or you don’t.”

She also knows plenty of successful actors and actresses who aren’t happy either, or who have zero confidence. She says as an actor it’s important that you make your own confidence, confidence doesn’t come from getting a part, winning an award or getting on the right acting scheme. Confidence comes from within.

“Concentrate on your own journey. Make sure you keep having fun, which sounds vague, but I think especially true in this political world climate. It’s really important that you’re having fun and being good to yourself and exercising self-care,” she says.

So is she having fun? “Yes,” she says. “I also just got a dog which is fun. He’s eight months old and called Roo. Or it will be fun once he’s taught exactly where to pee,” she laughs. “Having a dog around is really nice. I’m just not there with my thoughts going, ‘that line is rubbish!”

But we think this is highly unlikely anyway, given how multi-talented Susan is.

[erhiem]

Already pandemic memorial tattoos are on the rise: sound waves from the last voicemail before undergoing COVID-19 complications; a masked nurse like a god; “I survived a global pandemic and I just got this stupid tattoo.” But the coronavirus also changed how we’re getting tattooed in less obvious ways. A year of trauma has imprinted on us thoughts of solidarity and empathy, and shops and studios flooding in as customers – artists across America with doubling of inquiries and bookings compared to the summer of 2019 – have been a trauma-informed one. The approach is taking hold.

The country’s 20,000 tattoo shops close their doors for months, some all year. With the reopening, they are making up for lost income and postponed appointments. Clinical counselor and trauma therapist Jordan Pickel wasn’t surprised to hear that the Instagram bios of many tattoo artists read “Books Closed” for another reason. Not only did we experience a pandemic, but the global death toll continues to rise. Survivors’ guilt and surrounding anxiety are feelings that settle in the body and stay there, even if we don’t notice them. Covering the body with symbols to see is a form of resistance and an act of recovery after a crisis.

“When something traumatic happens, it can shatter a person’s sense of security or stability, the idea that the world is a just place. Tattoos communicate ‘I have changed’ or ‘my worldview has changed,'” ‘” says Jordan. “Healing from trauma is multi-layered and self-determined, which means you get to decide what your healing process looks like. Getting a tattoo can totally play a role in emotional transformation.”

Photo courtesy of Alicia Chung

“I protect myself by decorating myself. It’s armor,” says Alicia Chung, a 24-year-old art student and accountability facilitator in Vancouver, Canada. Since restrictions were eased last fall, he’s been getting new inks almost every week, often occupied by his growing network of friends in private tattoo studios who run a rotary machine. A lot of his pieces make no sense, and he thinks he might as well be stupid — a spider on his elbow, a mud gun with a halo, a sexy peanut, “fast and furious” above the crotch — but the point is Alicia Chosen them. “It’s my weird, twisted way of gaining autonomy.”

The sudden and complete absence of autonomy is the hallmark of the pandemic era. This is at the root of complaints from anti-mascars and anti-vaxxers. This seemed to be the central conflict – even more powerful than the disease – of the quarantine essays written from vacation homes. Our newfound autonomy in a now-reopened society is stressing us out, creating FOMO in some and a fear of being left out in others. Emphasis on self-determination has always been a reason for getting tattoos, but in the post-pandemic scenario it has taken on new meaning.

“When my studio reopened in August, I was worried that people wouldn’t come,” says Ocean Sing, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. “But more people wanted tattoos than before the pandemic. I think there was a zest for practicing agency, and I ended up getting tattooed on a lot of designs that people said they wanted for years. “

Psychologically, periods of separation and pause can act as a value reset. “Many of us had never faced the reality of ‘life is short,’ which leads to ‘why not’ decisions,” Jordan explains. For those who had money left over from government stimulus checks after paying rent and debt, getting a tattoo was something exciting.

Part of why Alicia has been under the needle so often is that the restaurant they work at has temporarily closed, the school has gone virtual and parties have been cancelled. They had too much time and too little socialization. “That’s when I can take a little rest or allow myself to rest,” he says. “It got to a point where I didn’t mind spending the money to get them all” [tattoos] Because I’m paying for those four hours to be on the table and get professional service. We become intimate and vulnerable but it maintains this customer relationship because I am paying for their trust and interaction. And the isolated pain of a billion vibrations.”

As social beings, we have suffered the loss of non-pod contact. Ocean could still sketch in lockdown if he had the energy, but couldn’t tell Miyazaki to chat with a stranger about movies while by the bathroom. spirited Away on their back. (“I prefer customs these days because they’re so cooperative,” he explains.) We remembered our third-tier friends, the people we laid eyes on the subway from and the professionals we called expertise. was paid instead.

Photo courtesy of Ocean Sing

“Tattoos are an experience you’ll never forget,” says Detroit artist and shop owner Chrissy the Butcher, who’s engaged anytime in her 13-year career. “You’re nervous, the adrenaline rushing. People want that feeling again. i have designed [my shop] So that it’s so quiet, people can bring their friends… there’s a vibe to it.”

According to Jordan, physical intimacy is an important part of restoration even after trauma. “Being around other people is a way that we co-regulate, which means our bodies go back into a sense of groundedness and security. It’s not something we really do on our own. ” For artists who see themselves as healers, this understanding comes first.

Jude Le Tronick specializes in flora and fauna – as nature was “a major healer” in his life – and does freehand blackwork exclusively from private studios established in Seattle. “Freehanding is for me and for the client. I think it’s a respectful process to be fully present.” Judd, which provides free scar cover-up tattoo services to survivors of domestic or sexual violence, believes that tattooists are not therapists, but still have stories of inner pain emanating from their clients. There should be room for

In Tamara Santibanez’s phenomenal manifesto/guidebook/love letter Could this be magic? tattooing as emancipation, published in March and developed from discussion groups conducted during the pandemic, they claim that a tattoo shop has the potential to be a significant site of community building and change. Historically, that ability has been undermined by a masculine culture lacking tenderness. There’s a dispute between street shops and DIY private studios, between artists asking you for consent to shave and between artists who photograph your lower back while you’re oblivious. Lily, 20, knew that for a memorial tattoo of her cousin who died by suicide during the quarantine, she wanted to patronize a queer-led shop and get a tattoo done by a non-male artist. “When I was doing this I didn’t have to worry about anyone maybe attacking me,” she says.

We are in a unique moment of systemic change and the impact of the pandemic on the future of tattoo spaces is beginning to show. For many, this is taking a trauma-informed direction; For others, a selfish fight-or-flight. Pat Fish has been tattooing for 37 years, and she estimates that the dozen tattoo studios around the Santa Barbara Valley have shrunk to six since Covid hit. “I think everyone else is advertising on Craigslist that they’ll be visiting a house, a completely unwell condition. The major effect of the pandemic is that people realized ‘I’m going to have to inspect me once a year. Why should I pay $380 to the health department?’ They are not taking their responsibility as an agent of change seriously.”

“The old thing was you were grassroots because you want someone randomly walking to hear the sound, buzzzz, and to intrigue in the door,” Pat continues. “Now I think, ‘I don’t want you to move, who are you?’ If I’m going to have face-to-face contact with people, let it be that.

A safe space requires acknowledging the dynamic force between the tattooer and the client. When Ocean holds a stencil, for example, they tell the client it’s not a big deal to move or replace, they won’t go crazy. “When I was getting my first tattoo, I was afraid to ask for what I wanted. Even if you’re not traumatized, it’s a scary thing to be in a situation where a stranger might notice your presence. Changes forever.”

Getting a tattoo has always been scary for some people. Jade Bell is a Los Angeles tattoo artist and illustrator who grew up seeing her mother being deprived of shops for being a black woman. When they found an aspiring artist, they weren’t necessarily trained appropriately. “I literally saw a girl give my mom a keloid scar because she didn’t know how to work with darker skin tones,” Jade says.

America’s “plague years” included one of the largest protest movements in the country’s history, making it impossible to close the ongoing racial count. This resonated throughout the tattoo community, as Instagram infographics circulated resources for inking various skin pigments and white artists were singled out for a culturally appropriation flash.

Photo courtesy of Chrissy the Butcher

“People started to realize they had no black art [tattoo] collection,” says Jade. “I asked my partner, ‘Hey, can you name five Blacks’ [tattoo] artist’s?’ we could not. ‘What about five famous tattoo models who are black?’ We couldn’t think of anyone at all.”

Luckily Jade is a Virgo, so she was fearless at the idea of ​​changing the culture herself. “I like to represent myself in the things I love. I had never seen black women drawn in the portrayal style that I see other women drawn all the time. I’m four-eyed black girls.” I am developing my universe.”

Chrissy the Butcher lives and works in Detroit, America’s largest black-majority city. Over the past year, she has seen ideas about race and society make their way onto the body. “Tattoos help people heal from generational trauma. It causes you to research the imagery presented by our ancestors. I see people getting African symbols with the turn of 2021, and I’m getting that tattoo. I’m building what I love and know, anything that relates to the black female form.”

A common counterargument is ‘Why remind yourself of your hardship on your body?’ “I’m thinking about it anyway,” says Kansas City physician Jesse Lee. “My trauma defines a lot of who I am and I was offended by it. Now I’m really happy [for it] Because I love who I am now.”

In February, Jesse got a bicep tattoo of a plant blooming from a can of tomatoes. For years, she pointed to her “nonsense childhood” without actually addressing it. When someone described her trauma to her as a jar of rotten tomatoes that gained more and more pressure over time, until the lid burst and the juices spilled everywhere, Jesse summed it up in a poem. Changed. After a one-year hiatus, in which she finally stuck with therapy and did things she wouldn’t allow herself to do as a fat woman – like roller skating, wearing crop tops, and considering her body a canvas – She was ready to make it a permanent reminder.

“People have experienced more trauma in the last five or so years than I think we have ever experienced collectively. Just by going to the Internet we are constantly digesting other people’s traumas,” Jesse says. A tattoo becomes a positive part of your story.”

It is beautiful to see collective grief metamorphose when we heal individually. “So much healing from trauma involves humor, at least for me,” Alicia says. “People ask me what I’ll think of my sexy Peanuts tattoo in 30 years. Maybe I look back and say to myself, ‘You could probably love yourself a little more, apparently it’s yours’ There was a way to compete. I think it’s nice to have a mark of remembrance for being a wrinkled old woman with a portrait made during a crazy time in the world.”

Follow iD on Instagram and TikTok for more culture.

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The post The tattoo artists healing our collective trauma post-pandemic appeared first on Spicy Celebrity News.

[eimitagtag]

Carrie Mae Weems

Weems describes herself as a “vehicle” — a vehicle through which to approach questions of power, for questioning societal roles and relations. In what ways does Weems, throughout the oeuvre of her art practice, engage in many of the same questions—the same activist work— that Denise Murrell engaged with through her recent scholarship? How do these two realms of activism work separately, and how can they be used in conjunction? It’s baffling to consider the benchmark that Weems’ retrospective at the Guggenheim sets...in 2014. As such, I’m wondering how a methodology like Murrell’s can be used to center the artwork of contemporary ‘Others’? How can one use the realm of scholarship to document and give a voice to artists like Weems who use their own bodies and skin as a vehicle for activism? 

***

In her experience teaching photography at Hampshire College in Amherst MA, where she found herself to be an outlier in a small town, Weems not only realized that her female students struggled to image themselves as subjects in their own works, but that she too struggled with this “quandrary”—constructing herself as a protagonist. Weems describes the Kitchen Table Series as a seminole work, the work in which she found her voice, her own specificity, a manner in which to image herself, and women in general, from a space of power. 

I want to address the textual components of Weems’ work through consideration of the “Kitchen Table Series” (1990), the series, “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” created in 1995, and “Framed by Modernism” and “Not Manet’s Type,” which followed in 1997. What is the dichotomy of text and imagery in Weems’ artwork? How has Weems’ use of text evolved over the course of these different series? How does Weems draw from text/poetry to shift the meaning of her photographs from one realm to another? Without the text as a mediating device, would her works read differently?

***

Going through the two articles this week I was already so shocked that Weems was the first African American woman to have a major retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2014, and that this was her first major NY show. But upon reading the two articles, I was even more baffled hearing about the way in which the Guggenheim cut down her exhibition so significantly, despite probably being such a large/central museum, and despite highlighting Weems asa ‘step int he right direction’, blah blah, etc.  In particular, the separation of the ‘Museum Series’ struck me as potent example of the Area Studies dilemma with a large dollop of institutional hypocrisy mixed in. I just wonder if anyone knows any details about how this decision to separate them took place, how the curators could’ve missed the irony of  sidelining Weems’ works that specifically engage with institutional critique and institutional whiteness to a smaller venue in Harlem—of course also an important gallery—but still I’m just honestly flabbergasted by how this move  really exemplified exactly  what Weems was pointing at in this series narrative. How do you think institutional critique factored into this curatorial decision?

***

In 1996 Harvard threatened to sue Weems for the use of the eugenic archival daguerrotypes in her “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” (1995) series, because she photographed, enlarged, and appropriated the images without permission..

This Harvard-Weems scandal came up again last year when Tamara Lanier sued the university for ownership (and damages) of a daguerrotype of her enslaved ancestor Renty (whom Weems also photographed for her series). I read the lawsuit complaint and jury demand and there is a short section about Weems in it and thought her response to Harvard at the time is worth sharing:

158. Weems urged Harvard to reckon with the implications of their position. She told University representatives, “I think your suing me would be a really good thing. You should. And we should have this conversation in court.”

Rather than moving forward with litigation against Weems, the university ultimately agreed to take a cut from each work sold and put those funds towards acquiring Weems’ works to their own collection. (NYT: “Harvard ultimately agreed to accept a fee for each work sold, which it used to buy part of the series for its art museum.”)  Reading about all this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the recent Whitney acquisitions controversy—can we talk about this yet? How is this a prime example of large, premier institutions with massive endowments abuse (and ignore?) their elite positions with a continued refusal to pay Black artists accordingly, and instead exploit their works to their own benefit? 

***

When watching the 2016 Fresh Talk, it became very clear to me what Franklin Sirmins was writing about in the Guggenheim exhibition catalogue—how central performance and presence is to Weems. Even in her artist talk, it really felt like a performance, almost like slam poetry in a sense, in the way that she integrated the poetry of the textual works with the slides shared—speaking for over an hour seemingly entirely from memory. For me, it pushed the point home how watching artist talks and performances can be much more powerful than simply seeing the work silently in an exhibition space, because it really gave so much more context and voice to the works i saw on her website and read about in the catalogue and article. I wonder if any of you had similar thoughts while going through this weeks content, and if you all had any thoughts on the power and agency of performance, performativity, and self imaging while learning more about Weems’ photographs, texts, and talk this week?

[kamillapeter96]

Question 1: Describe and discuss Isadora Duncan’s (1877-1927) approach and key ideas about dance, the body and womanhood.

One could argue that the turn of the 20th century saw a revolution in the art of dance. Three American dancers: Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan introduced new ideas and new discourses about dance and the use of the body (Reynolds, 2003). Duncan (1877-1927) is known and remembered as the “Mother of Modern Dance” as the website, Biography.com (2016) states. She was the first individual who thought that ballet is unnatural and dance should come from nature. As she states: “It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations”. (Flitch, 1912, p.105) Therefore her dance was anything but “else” and against of the previous appearance of dance. The “new dance”, as Duncan referred to, was forged, practically and discursively, out of three American movement traditions: social dance, physical culture, and ballet. (Daly, 1995, p.31) This essay will describe and discuss her key ideas about the body, dance and womanhood.

Firstly, it is needed to discuss her main concept of impression and look of the moving body as her other ideas developed from this. Barefooted, barely something light (Greek apparel) on her to prevent nudity, like an excited Greek statue, obstinately look like a shape, a movement from a Greek vase, statue or relieve. Her dreams belonged to the Ancient Greek world but she saw clearly that: “To return to the dances of the Greeks would be as impossible as it is unnecessary.”(Duncan, 1928, p.54) Related to the Greek philosophy, her idea’s main factor was nature. As she mentioned at her speech called The Dance of the Future in Berlin:

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of the soul will have become the movement of the body… She will dance not in the form of a nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette but in the form of a woman in its greatest and purest expression.

(Duncan, 1903, p.24-25)

Therefore her choice of clothes stood out from other dancers at that time and Duncan was very aware of that. It was not an object to desire nor was it aiming to attract, instead it was just a kind of naturalness that she was very keen on. She had an earthy, natural style. It can be deduced that she was very interested in taking nature as a source of inspiration. The human body is something to be celebrated and not hidden away. There is a harmonious relationship between the mind and the body. She loved that the ideal person in Ancient Greek was an Olympic athlete who was also a philosopher. (Vitányi, 1963, p.244)

Secondly, to follow her ideal body it is necessary to describe her idea of dance itself. On the website, burgeononline.com Valerie Durham (who is a direct lineage Duncan Dancer according to the isadoraduncanarchive.org [2014]) describes that Duncan believed that the human’s soul is housed in our solar plexus, that mushy place where the ribcage begins to separate and therefore, she felt that all of true human movement that showed dance as the true luminous manifestation of the soul as she called the dancer, must stem from that place and undulate outwards. Her technique developed from that theory and from the time of her earliest choreography each movement she did began in the solar plexus and spread throughout her body from there. While her technique changed throughout the years as she matured and as the subjects about which she danced changed that motivation stayed constant. The movement of the body and feet were replaced by pure terre á terre, performing on or close to the ground or floor, few jumps, static poses inspired by nature (for example: the movements of wind, ocean and earth). (Vitányi, 1963, p.250) To express feelings she used her face, arms and Greek apparels. Her dances were performed by herself and “no one else could perform it” acknowledged by Valéria Dienes, Hungarian dancer who was taught by Raymond Duncan, Isadora’s brother. (Dienes, 1978, p.32) Unfortunately, there was no time for her to be clear about her movements as she died early in a car accident caused ironically by her beloved Greek draperies. Her nostalgic longing from the era of her own headed to the denial of ballet known from decadence. What can prove more her denial that she escaped from ballet practice after three lessons? (Vitányi, 1963, p.245)

Thirdly, it desires to discuss her ideas about womanhood as it resonates with her main idea as well. Dance can and should be an expression of the dancer’s soul. Women should dance their true identity. The human body is natural, not shameful (as the Victorian era clearly believed).

She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into one another. From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women. She shall dance the freedom of women.

(Duncan, 1903, p.25)

Clearly, Duncan believed in womanhood as equal and strong as manhood. In that time most women were at home (raising up children, cleaning the house and cooking) but more and more of them started to work (as the website, striking-women.org states [2013]). Perhaps this was the factor which gave her the motivation to fulfil this desire to be just as strong as the other gender. “She evoked wholeness and unity as a woman at one with her body through dance.” (Francis, 1994, p.32) She changed how people saw women. Not like an artificial being but like a naturally beautiful creature of our world without untruth covering.

Finally, it is crucial to explain her technique and other’s point of view of Duncan’s moving body and performances. To begin with, the tragic death of her – unfortunately – prevented the productive ideas to be well experienced and practiced. Her dance did not have much system in it, but she left us with an enormous amount of motivation to fulfil it with. She was not a creator of highly intricate technical movements and a lot of times she improvised. The audience could get a sense that her work were not generally choreographed very tightly, they were very improvisational. It was not her movements themselves that were interesting it was her performance. People in the audience talked about a kind of charisma, energy and authenticity emanating from her. She had a spiritual presence that people in audience really could respond to. (Vitányi, 1963, p.245) “It was not simply a matter of what dance should be, but what it should do – what it should accomplish within the social sphere.” (Daly, 1995, p.26)

According to The Guardian (2002) George Balanchine (ballet choreographer) who saw her on the stage - when she was forty - acknowledged: ‘Drunk fat woman who for hours was rolling around like a pig’, in other sources other less impolitely words from him can be found: If she practice every day from early age, she would be a great dancer. (Vitányi, 1963, p.246) This paradox just illustrates that Duncan’s purpose was to destroy the rotten traditions. “You do not play the piano with gloves on.” On duncandancers (2008) website Valerie Durham deduced that:

Moreover, as much as Isadora criticized ballet, ballet has grown tremendously in its breadth of expression. And much as Balanchine criticized Isadora… his choreography was profoundly influenced by the artistic breakthroughs Isadora made throughout her career.

Tamara Karsavina (Nijinsky’s partner) had written

“In her strictures on ballet, which she termed a “false and artificial art,” Duncan blindly attacked the essential element of all stage art - artificiality. Like a child who knows the alphabet but cannot yet read a book, in her limited sectarian vision, she laid down the principle that the art of dancing must return to its natural state, it is very alphabet.”

(Karsavina, 1961, p.170)

When she saw her again she admitted: “She moved with those wonderful steps of hers with a simplicity and detachment that could only come through the intuition of genius itself.” This suggests that years later it turned out how much she affected the people who denied her as well. Her phenomenon effected a whole world incredibly even decades after her death. Surprisingly her name can be found in unlikely sources such as one of the well-known Jewish director, Woody Allen’s books, Mere Anarchy.

It can be suggested that Isadora Duncan achieved her ideas of herself as a moving body and women. Her naturalness influenced the audience. Someone (like George Balanchine and Tamara Karsavina) would say her dance was nothing but poor improvisation, precisely because she wanted her movements to look natural created in the moment without any untruth step, gesture just like a wind or river. Anyone can see there are two sides of every question. But no one can deny her life work’s importance in the dance world. She was a revolutionary, she broke down boundaries for women, for dancers and for humanity. She changed how we perceive the art of dance and she is in many ways directly responsible for what we call dance today.

   Bibliography:

Biography.com (2016) Isadora Duncan Biography Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/isadora-duncan-9281125#difficult-personal-life (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

Daly, A. (1995) Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America

Dienes, V. (1978) A század nagy tanúi Translated by K. Péter for the essay

Duncandancers (2008) 10 Myths About Duncan Dance Available at: http://www.duncandancers.com/10myths.html (Accessed: 29 January 2017)

Duncan, I. (1903) The Dance of the Future

Duncan, I. (1928) The Art of Dance Edited by Sheldon Cheney

Flitch, J. E. C. (1912) Modern Dancing and Dancers

Francis, E. (1994) American Studies

Isadoraduncanarchive (2014) Valerie Durham Available at: http://www.isadoraduncanarchive.org/dancer/123/ (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

Karsavina, T. (1961) Theatre Street The Reminiscences Of Tamara Karsavina

Reynolds, N. (2003) No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century

Striking-Women (2013) Women and work in the 19th century Available at: http://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/19th-and-early-20th-century (Accessed: 19 February 2017)

The Guardian (2002) Dancing queen with feet of clay Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/27/biography.features (Accessed: 04 February 2017)

Vitányi, Iván (1963) A tánc Translated by K. Péter for the essay

[frosted-cinnagrifs]

Cobalt’s Visual novel/Sim date recommendations

because playing these is what i spent all valentines day doing and i don’t have anybody to talk to them about,so here- for all you vn lovers,have some recommendations you may or may not have already played!

Starting off simple.. Pacthesis games.  if you’ve been playing vn/sim dates for a while,you’ve probably played or at least heard of pacthesis. her games are fun and cute,and simpler then a lot of other vns i’v played- and actually,her games sparked my interest in the genre. her games are great if you are just getting into sim dates,or want something small just to pass time. (my fave is number days- so personally,i recommend playing that first)

Next up, Halloween otome at the moment,this is my absolute favorite vn. the story beings when you,the main character,wins a contest and gets to take part in a Halloween costume party event for celebrities. while participating in the event,which is done in the form of a story and many fun little mini games to play,you can fall in love with one of your three team mates. personally,i found all the characters very endearing,and i have played this game over again many many times. the art is very good,and i’m very excited for synokoria’s next game~ Autumn’s journey is another personal fave of mine.  the story is centered around a wannabe knight named Auralee,and her adventures with two dragons-turned-human,named Kerr and Ilmari. the story is very easy to fall in love with,an interesting fantasy world with lovable character’s- and who doesn’t love dragons?? this game centers more around friendship,though each character has a romance ending,which i thought was really cute. the art is absolutely adorable,and the story had me in tears by the end- definitely give this one a play if you like vn’s~

Aloners waking up in a post apocalyptic world with no memories is quite upsetting. even more so when the first person you see if holding a gun in your face. aloners is an interesting game,with a story that revolves around surviving in a world that’s trying to kill you and falling in love with your sole companion. one of my fave things about this game is how you can sort of define who your main character is on your own. it feels like a bit of a longer game fist time around,but i’d definitely give this one a go. i really got into the story,and grew very fond of trash,the main/persuadable character~ Backstage pass unlike the previous games,backstage pass is not a free game. however,i personally think the price is pretty worth it (if you can get it on sale then definitely go for it,haha) the story stars Sian,a makeup artist and college student,who happens to be best friends with Adam Eaton- a talented musician and singer. during their first few days at college,sians father falls and injures himself. the game involves making friends with other stars (such as a model named Matthew,and an actor named john) while trying to make enough money to survive off of. the stat raising gets a bit stressful at times,but i found that after my first play i could figure them out pretty easily. the at is very nice,it has an animated into and ending,and is voiced. all in all,backstage pass is a pretty great game in my eyes- i’ve played it several times,though since it takes longer to play,i haven’t found myself finishing the friendship endings just yet... Nusantara let me start off by saying- bird people and lizard people. Nusantara stars Tamara,a girl who’s being forced to move in with her uncle. while waiting for him to pick her up,she comes across a talking bird and follows it. She meets a strange women in an alley way,and falls into her adventure alice in wonder land style- and then almost drowns. out of all of these games,nusantara has one of my favorite stories,and i played this game from beginning to end without stopping,i was so in love with it. the characters are all interesting,though let me just give a small trigger warning for some sensitive themes during parts of the game (mainly suicide mention and self harm) its a very interesting game with beautiful art,that i highly recommend. i’m very excited for this creators upcoming game,as well! a2 ~a due~ one of the first ones i played,a2 holds a special place in my heart. it’s a cute,simple game about the love of music and overcoming language barriers. the game features Sona song,a rocker who’s father has passed on after years of not talking to him. much to her annoyance,she inherits his orchestra. while she’s not very interested and would rather slack off,she meets Hao- a Chinese man who’s determined to whip the orchestra into shape. the game has a friendship and romance ending,plus some extra surprises for finishing everything~

My favorite match to quote the synopsis, ”After her heart's been shattered by the man she'd loved for years, the protagonist is approached by a young man offering his services as a matchmaker to help restore her faith in love.” that really is the easiest way to sum this one up! its simple and cute,and hey- kinda perfect to play on valentines day~ the art is adorable,and the story is simple and pleasant. pick this one up if you want something more chill~

Magicial otoge ciel part of a series that’s still in production,magical otoge ciel is a simple game,with really one deciding point for the route you get on. it follows Ciel,a princess who just wants to explore and go on adventures,and her partners- Florien and Anton,her royal guards and a man named Yvin who is..well,i’ll let you figure that one out yourself. it is a very cute and pure game,and managed to bring a dopey grin to my face. the art style is very pretty,and the game is packed with humor and puns~ if you like this game- give Magical Otoge Anholly a try too! but uh,be ready to cry.

Locked heart a ‘goldilocks and the three bears’ and ‘Beauty and the beast’ inspired story,Locked heart is based around Aura- an outgoing girl who stumbles into the cured d’lockes house while trying to avoid a storm,and accidentally gets wrapped up in the lives of the house,and reversing the curse. its a fairly short game,but super endearing in my opinion~

RE: Alistair++ made by sake visual- the creators of backstage pass,though it was made long before it. this is another one of my first plays,and though i haven’t replayed it in a while,when i first found it i played it again and again for hours on end.  the story begins when merui,the main character,gets fed up with a jerk in an MMO. after discovering he goes to her school,she makes a bet on finding him. there are three possible suspects. Shiro,a kind of quiet classmate that shes never really spoken with. Travis,a grumpy guy who spends a lot of time in the computer lab. and Derek,an outgoing,popular basketball player. the art in this game is a little old,compared with their new stuff,and if i remember right the stat raising is a bit more annoying- but its still a very good play~

Hustle cat i. love this one. i honestly do- and not just because the main character shares a first name with me,though that IS rare~ before getting into the story,let me just say that this game is not free. however,it features the option to choose you appearance and pronouns (you can even change them mid game play!) the art is very very cute,and i grew very attached to all of the main characters very quickly. like in autumns journey,i really felt the kind of warm,friendship feeling between the main characters which i love. the story line is very interesting,and has a lot of magic to it. i don’t really wanna spoil anything for this one,but the price is really worth it. <3

Lucky rabbit reflex! i’ll begin by saying that the art is..not great. if that bothers you,you may want to skip this one- especially since it’s not free. HOWEVER,if you can put that aside- i personally found the characters,humor,and story quite interesting. i’ve played every single route,and can say i was honestly really happy with them. the stat raising is a bit harder then RE: alistair and Backstage pass,but its not a game breaker for me.

Mystic messenger if you like sim date games and haven’t played mystic messenger,go on your phone and download it because it is...so good. it kinda ruined my life?? but i will say,make sure you have time- because this game requires attention at random points during the day for 11 days.

Heart baked i’m..almost not sure how to explain this one? look it just kinda is what it is and its very cute. give it a look.

April was a fool i’m going to quote the synopsis again for this one,because it does it much more justice then i could off the bat “Two years ago, six heroes rose to stop an Evil Overlord from taking over the world. They were honored as World-Class Heroes for their efforts. When a new threat appears, His Majesty King of Castle City calls upon these same Heroes once again. However - for tragic reasons, only five of them are available.Faced with the reality that admitting to the king why one person isn't there would be too difficult, the Heroes approach May, a young girl who is just starting her first job to raise money for school, for help. Soon, she's whisked away with them to battle Dragons, inner demons, and the occasionally pushy suitor on a journey to vanquish Evil and save the world.” it has very bright,cute and shiny art and endearing characters. i believe there is a paid version in the works,but for now it is free and i highly recommend this one.

and finally.. Hatoful boyfriend date birbs. just do it. this game costs,so if its worth it or depends on..how much you want to date birbs. bonus! Animal lover this just came out today,and it took me all day to play one route- but goodness..i adored it so much. it has a similar vibe to hustle cat in a way,and i was enthralled in the story the whole time i was playing. the art is amazing and the characters are fantastic. i feel as though i can’t give a full review yet,but give this one a try with me if you like~ heads up though,this is not a free game. it also contains some nudity.  Thanks for reading! i hope i’ve given you something new to enjoy. if you play any of these and wanna come yell about them with me,please feel free,hahaha

[ladystylestores]

That Old-School Runway Is Looking Pretty Good – WWD

https://pmcwwd.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/couture-stills-fall2021-1.png?w=640&h=415&crop=1

A thought crystalized clearly, before 9 a.m. New York time on Monday, less than five hours into haute couture’s first digital fashion week: The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough. The real, physical runway walked by real, live models in venues open to — hope against hope — live audiences.

This couture season was destined to be a learning curve, one necessitated by an unforeseen, cataclysmic global pandemic that attacked without notice, and certainly without respect for institutional events we once held sacrosanct, like fashion weeks. Thus, to critique fall 2020 haute couture’s creative output at all negatively may seem unfair and even small. But sometimes, “small” is reflected in the job description. The point here isn’t to criticize  — Oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts (but, oh, Lord, how pretentious are some of these film shorts) — but rather to note that, early on, this digital fashion week is making the live show model feel plenty relevant, and even essential.

“I think [the week] won’t have the same splendor as a normal haute couture fashion week,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, told WWD on Monday. He nailed it.

Technology has changed our lives with more power, speed and wonder than we could possibly have imagined 20 years ago. But fall’s early couture showings indicate that digital has a long way to go — light years — before it can replace the live fashion event. Oddly, watching these short films under the current forced intimacy — home alone — one was reminded of the genuine, enjoyable intimacy of actually “being there,” an intimacy borne of the gathering of a finite number of people in a finite space watching a one-time-only event, shared communally. It doesn’t get much more intimate than that.

To expect the short-films construct to substitute fully for fashion shows, immediately and seamlessly, is ridiculous; film and live performance are not the same, and this inaugural digital fashion week was orchestrated in haste. But who expected to be over it midday through Day One?

Since March, the haute houses have had to shift gears on a dime to try to make compelling brand statements for fall — perhaps inclusive of a real collection, perhaps not — in a medium not previously utilized for that specific purpose in a major way. At the same time, as a genre, fashion film/video is no longer special. It’s everything and everywhere, a 24/7 onslaught, from high-minded to cheesy and from mega-brand messaging to influencer/editor musings on topics from red-carpet winners to the best summer t-shirt. To be memorable, a fashion film must resonate with power. But watching back-to-back on Monday, the viewing got dull.

For some reason, fashion seems to have decided that “interesting” house-messaging must be capital-A artful, with moods registering between soulful and downright dark, sometimes to the point of skin-crawling pretension. That was the case with Monday’s first seven offerings. One by one, they’re fine; some are even beautiful. One after the other, they made for an exhausting litany of heartfelt, ethereal, introspective and sober — in too heavy a dose for one workday morning.

Schiaparelli opened the couture film festival with a mini feature on creative director Daniel Roseberry’s “Collection Imaginaire” — so titled because the collection won’t be produced. Rather, from his favorite outdoor perch — Washington Square Park in Manhattan, far away from the house headquarters on Place Vendôme — Roseberry sketches out the collection that’s in his mind. No words, just intense drawing scored with intense music against (happily) a beautiful blue-sky day.

Next on the schedule, Ulyana Sergeenko’s film takes the respect-for-craft route, highlighting the outside Russian lacemakers with whom the designer works before shifting focus to her atelier in Moscow. Reverential scenes of busy workers are spliced with photos of the Forties Hollywood sirens who inspire Sergeenko’s work. The film closes with a fast-moving take on a fashion show, a Busby Berkeley-type kaleidoscope of models, only digital, and one of Monday’s few overtly upbeat elements.

Maurizio Galante’s film is seven minutes of a woman walking downstairs. Stairs that appear to be elegant Haussmann-era Parisian stairs, but stairs nonetheless. She descends to voiceover incantations of color names delivered with great passion by a female speaker: “Bleu! Bleu! BLEEEU!” (Add 12 more “bleus.”) “Mauve! Mauve! Mauve! (Add nine more “mauves.”)

Iris Van Herpen enlisted filmmaker Ryan McDaniels and “Game of Thrones” actress Carice van Houten for her film, a mesmerizing study of a single dress — white structured petals with black center filaments — in her signature oeuvre of poetic high tech. Despite some dense accompanying show notes, the film itself is dialogue-free, a creative treatment shaping up as couture’s first bona fide trend.

Through much of the morning, the clothes’ screen time varied, from no real clothes at all at Schiaparelli (though Roseberry’s illustrations project a distinct power-woman attitude with dashes of house-proud surrealism) to Van Herpen’s single dress to Sergeenko’s mini collection, each look shown in full focus. Galante’s stair-walker has numerous costume changes which look lovely — what you can see of them, anyway. Given the moody-broodiness of it all — including the blurs of those passionately identified hues — the clothes were hardly the point.

By the time Maison Rabih Kayrouz and Ralph & Russo aired at 10 and 11, one couldn’t help but delight in sightings of their orange and hot pink dresses, respectively. Like Van Herpen, Kayrouz focuses on the creation of a single dress, his crafted entirely from strips of orange ribbon. The film highlights the dress’ journey from Beirut to Paris, against captivating music by the singer Shadia, which offered distinctive relief from the morning’s more tedious soundtracks.

Ralph & Russo’s Tamara Ralph provided a different kind of relief. She opted off the film artistry path in favor of speaking — yes, words — straight-on into the camera, for a while at least. She discussed her inspiration — the Seven Wonders of the World — before introducing her brand’s new avatar, Hauli, whose name “symbolizes strength and power.” Born of the necessity to find new ways to show clothes in the COVID-19 era, Hauli flaunts several form-fitting gowns against those Seven Wonders backdrops.

Yet, as always during couture, Monday was “Dior Day” — and a curious one, to boot, as once or twice the house’s visually exquisite film veered toward fashion satire. (See preening Narcissus, below.) Maria Grazia Chiuri commissioned Matteo Garrone — he directed last year’s Pinocchio — for “Le Mythe Dior.” In it, two handsome young porters carry a Dior dollhouse filled with miniature dresses through an enchanted woodland populated by magical creatures — nymphs, giant snail, living statue, mermaid, Adam and Eve (or some such naked couple kissing in a tree), Pan (or some such beautiful horned fellow) and Narcissus, whose Sophia Petrillo-meets-Horshack hairdo should have been rethought.

Along their route, the porters stop to allow the mythic types, some in states of semi-undress, to admire and select clothes. Now, the unwoke reality is that most of us look better in clothes than naked. But these young beauties are earthy goddesses (not to mention gorgeous young women in real life). The idea that they’d be so smitten with dresses from the human realm suggests unbecoming self-reverence by the house. Maria Grazia likely didn’t think of that, and she didn’t make the film, Garonne did — oh, well. A more difficult issue: the surprisingly un-diverse casting.

A fashion matter is less troubling. For this collection, Chiuri created 37 miniature looks — doll-size clothes, done to human scale. WWD’s preview featured mostly Fifties-inspired ball gowns. But the dresses chosen by the woodland lasses are more of the Mount Olympus peplos sort, a favorite of Chiuri’s, and nymph-appropriate. They’re beautiful, but the dichotomy makes the focus of the collection unclear. Film-wise, Garrone worked the no-dialogue approach, setting the non-verbal, spritely goings-on to the strains of monotonous music, with a running time of about 10 minutes. Though not at all sober, the lyrical-ethereal vibe at times flirted with tedium.

In aggregate, this sequence of films lacked a fashion “wow” factor, a film-short version of that instant when, at a live fashion show, a collection — or a single dress — just takes your breath takes away. Apart from that, while the productions weren’t downers per se, none delivered something that would feel great right now — a moment of full-on joyful fashion distraction from life’s current larger grim realities. Oh, for some haute joy. Or intrigue. Or something where the mind doesn’t wander for the duration. Or dialogue.

Still, be careful what you wish for. Morning session over, the time came for afternoon viewing. First up: Antonio Grimaldi’s film by Asia Argento, who also co-stars as the elder in an abysmal mother-daughter relationship. The work opens upon the ghostly daughter, clutching a bouquet of dreary flowers against her blood-stained white dress. She’s polite. She introduces herself: “My name is Ælektra, the Unhappy. My companion is grief.”

The runway can’t reopen for business soon enough.

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[education-r-evolution-blog]

Who Has What? Book Review: A Parent’s Perspective With An Academic Backdrop

Who Has What? All About Girls’ Bodies and Boys’ Bodies

By Robie H. Harris, Illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott

:)  :)  :)  :)  :) 

Parent’s Perspective, by Tamara Drew

My Mommy Rating:  5/5!!

Out of all of the books I have explored for this age group on this topic, this book is BY FAR my favorite!

It starts out on page one introducing the information as universal and mundane right off the bat, reinforcing the fact that, “Everybody everywhere has a body!”  coupled with an illustration of a mixed race family heading to the beach with their dog. It then goes on to tell the truths about how alike boys and girls really are, combatting gender stereotypes and social gender norms, and, with finesse, segues into the actual biological attributes that are the same, and into those that are different.

This book compares and contrasts between boys & girls, men & women, mommies & daddies, babies, and boy dogs and girl dogs.

Key Words

nipple, vagina, uterus, ovary, penis, scrotum, testicle, breast, breast milk

Accessibility

Language was clear & simple and communication style was consistent throughout, focused around repetition of language to effectively high light similarities and differences.

Ie: “Girls & boys have _____________.

So do men and women. And so do babies.”

 This phrasing occurs multiple times throughout the text, with the insertion of various body parts that are present on all human bodies.

 Accessible for Middle Childhood through Early Adolescence (ages 5-15). *My son was 4 when we introduced this book, and he handled the language with ease!

 Key Images

 “opening where pee comes out”              “opening to the vagina”

“opening where poop comes out”           “penis”                 “scrotum”

(x-ray) uterus, ovary, vagina       (xray) penis, testicle, testicle

 The illustrations in this book are fun and cartoony, and the use of thought and word bubbles add to the reinforcement of learning AND to the fun and busy nature of the illustrations in this book.

 The characters in this book are white and a racially ambiguous brown. I appreciate this approach, and particularly appreciate that the kids on the cover are racially ambiguous. Out of six books that I have recently purchased, this is one of only two that featured a non-white child on the cover.

 Even BETTER, a closer look at the busy illustrations will reveal a woman in a hijab, an elderly couple, a boy in a wheelchair, a woman breastfeeding, kids with dads, kids with moms, interracial couples, a boy pushing a baby doll in a stroller, all happily interacting and going about their merry lives at the beach…imagery that is as socially and culturally valuable as the information being presented in type! 

Science vs. Values

This book nails this category as well, through the subtle art of omission. Where some other books for this age group discuss more sensitive topics such as sexual sensory experience and curiosity, sperm & egg interaction, good touch/bad touch, and heteronormative standards for reproduction (When a mommy & a daddy love each other, etc.), Who Has What doesn’t touch any of it, simply stating that when girls grow up and become women they can become mommies, and when boys grow up and become men they can become daddies. This book also mentions that a woman can feed a baby milk from her breasts, or breast milk or formula from a bottle; a very simple and non-partisan presentation of relevant information.

Curricula Concerns (Ponzetti Jr. 2016)

1.       Sex Differences

a.       Male vs Female

YES using human and canine examples

  (Basic nude illustration (child) AND x-ray of interior sex organs (child & adult) ) 

b.      Child vs Adolescent/Adult

YES Also covered in a VERY general context

2.       Genital Naming: Proper biological names for genitalia are the only names presented

YES Vagina, penis, scrotum, ovaries, testicles, breasts

3.       Good Touch/Bad Touch

NO  Nothing regarding touching of any type, personal or interpersonal is mentioned at all.