testing out the mechanics of the bracelet as described by aa4 and can confirm even tensing up a little bit does in fact make "perfect fit" accessories feel tighter

W7. Mid Sem SDL - Collected objects + written comments

some objects I have collected so far + why/my current thoughts

ceramic house – received this from a childhood friend. We are not as close anymore but I still value our friendship and how we grew up and experienced crucial parts of ‘girlhood’ together  - makes me think of how at that age we dreamt of idealistic worlds together, how naïve we are when young – a mundane experience everyone goes through. series of letters – links to sentimentality and the collection methodology – I hold onto people's words  - reading them again after a while takes me back to the day I first got them and how different I was/what stage of my life I was at. Design-wise – I love handwritten copywriting, it's unique and personal in a way messages never can.  heart pendant(s) – I collect variety of pendants  - they each hold sentimentality of the place I found it or the person who gave it. It makes me think of the idea of holding onto otherwise usless things – how we all do it for different reasons but beneath it all we do it so we don’t forget. pendant from dubai – like to document my traveling aswell as who I was when I bought it – when I look at this pendant I am automatically taken back to being 18 and being in the giftshop in dubai looking for gifts for my friends – amongst other people who were doing the same. It was sweet seeing how everyone at that gift shop was doing it last minute because they forgot during the actual trip.  orbit pendant – found this on the floor at school, ofc I could have returned it to the office  - my friend and I decied to keep it and split the neckalcne into sperate beads/pendants and kept them. Reminds me of doing relatively harmless things as a kid but then it was a big deal – how much we change as we grow and age.  twin peaks CD booklet – explores human experience – like the physical look of the shots aswell as design choices in the soundtrack booklet – the moody desolate photography  - blues, purples. Amy Winehouse Frank CD booklet – amy being a person, a girl, a woman – her everyday life  - her experience – how relatable yet unique her experiences are. Photography also captures the beauty of everyday life  - how we all are the same.  Enya Mag – about her girlhood, growing into a woman and struggling with death and human experiences – photofraphy showing snippets into her daily life – made me relate to her thoughts about growing up and relationships dissolving – how we all grow through it yet to us it seems like we are the only one going through that.  Y Tu Mama Tambein DVD – coming of age movie about a relationship fizzling out  - explores naïve and idealistic childhood and the often sad outcomes of everyday life once the roadtip is over and you are grown – makes me think of my journey of girlhood and my need to keep objects from them In the mood for love DVD eyeshadow palette – feel like for me and many girls our relationship with makeup also changes as we age – maybe starting as a way to look better, or something you refuse to associate as you ‘arent like other girls’ its something I came to love and use to express whatever I feel like in the morning  - makes me think of the many scenes of girls getting ready to face things in their lives, something that feels grounding.  brian eno CD cover – music plays a large part in my life as it does everyone else – I find it fasincating seeing songs I know played in the back of movies, maybe when the character is getting ready or theres a death scene. How the same songs I use to fall asleep may be something someone sings to their baby or something that hlds memories of grief for another. 

These are obviously not the final written explanations - they are more word vomits that link to the questions in the SDL - I plan to build on them as I go forward. I also think I may change some of the current objects.

I am having a harder time articulating why I have chosen something for something, especially in the matter of everyday life and girlhood - i think reading up and looking into similar projects/contexts could help me find the right terminology for what I am trying to express.

“Please, ask me about my favorite manga...”

Okay, then. What’s your favorite manga, Ryu-san? 👀

+Anonymous said:

What’re some of your favourite manga? :)

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

I love you guys… :”3 You always make my dreams come true haha. I hope I’m not forgetting anything, these are the ones that come to mind first:

Shingeki no Kyojin by Isayama Hajime – the most obvious thing in the world lol Of course, it’s a very dear manga to us, but even if we forget all the sentimental value it has, it’s still an amazing manga both story-wise and art-wise. For some reason Isayama is still considered a bad artist, which is a shame, because not only has he gotten much better with time, he also does the thing that I love very much: he draws whatever he wants even if he isn’t sure how to draw it. The very first chapters are so bold in that regard. And the way Isayama draws expressions is amazing: he draws faces that I’ve never seen in any other manga.

Do I even need to talk about story and characters after all the meta posts we’ve written over the past year… And the fact that we haven’t gotten tired of it despite the fact that we’ve reread it 1000 times already is very telling. There’s just so much stuff going on, so many details and elements that you can miss when you read it for the first time… rereadability is one of the greatest things about SnK.

Litchi Hikari Club (and Bokura no Hikari Club) by Furuya Usamaru  – another favourite of ours and an obsession of mine. I have volumes both in English and Russian, some Japanese magazines with chapters/mangaka’s art and artbooks… LHC is such a bleak story. It’s dark and messed-up just for the sake of being dark and messed-up, and I love it: it’s theatrical and morbid. It also manages to still be comedic and entertaining. Plus, the story behind the manga creation fascinates me (it was based on a stage play from an underground theatre ok I won’t go into details now lol), it’s like an entire phenomenon for me haha. I think this manga started my obsession with gakuran uniforms and student caps.

Uzumaki and Tomie by Ito Junji – I genuinely enjoy all of Junji Ito’s work whenever we reread them, but Uzumaki and Tomie are my faves. It’s very fun to watch how Ito-sensei takes one simple concept (spirals in “Uzumaki” and ehhh idk a beautiful but deadly girl in “Tomie”) and takes it further and further with every chapter, making it more and more creepy and grotesque. He’s extremely creative.

Berserk (Golden Age Arc) by Miura Kentarou – not to spit on everything that went before and after the Golden Age, but let’s be real: the Golden Age is special. The art of Berserk is absolutely stunning. It’s one of those mangas that belongs to museums honestly: every page is worth looking at for hours. The level of details and design of characters and the world… unreal.

The relationships between Guts and Griffith are also so beautifully written, we didn’t expect them to be this painful and deep. Talk about misunderstandings and breakups with consequences, geez. Griffith’s story build-up is just... amazing. The whole eclipse thing is wow, and the events that happen before it are as well. It’s like its own story within the whole story.

I also want to mention Maruo Suehiro, because he is another horror/guro author we like a lot, but I can’t pinpoint one manga of his that could count as a favourite just yet…

Hetalia by Himaruya Hidekaz – it’s stupid, it’s funny, it’s educational (in “it makes you interested in history and politics” way, not in the “it tells you what exactly happened” way). It doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s here to have fun and make its character as gay as possible, which I appreciate a lot. I feel like Hetalia influenced the way I draw comic strips and my humor in general. But maybe I’m just imagining it lol, it’s hard to tell at this point.

Gravitation by Murakami Maki – I’m forever obsessed with Gravi. Of course, a portion of it is just out of nostalgia, but we actually read the manga fully a couple of years ago, and god it was much better than we anticipated. It’s extremely stupid and fun (how many BL mangas have tom and jerry style slapstick comedy??), but at the same time sometimes the jokes are surprisingly clever. Nothing is too serious though, every character is a clown to some extent, and this is exactly why all of them are so fun to watch. The relationships are also… surprisingly well-written in my opinion.

It’s an old school BL, but I still think it’s a bit different from other BL mangas from 90s-early 00s… Also the fact that Murakami-sensei draws smutty doujins of her own manga under a different pseudonym is still the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard; I’ll forever respect her for that.

And ofc Yuki Eiri is a bottom for us, like... duh.

Otome no Teikoku by Kishi Torajirou – it just makes me a bit happier when I don’t want to think and just want to look at girls having crushes on each other. I usually hate yuri manga with school setting, but this one slaps me in the face with how good the cast is and how unusual some of the themes in it are for a yuri manga. I feel like the author actually wants his characters to be interesting and not just gushes over how pure and innocent they look when they hold hands, and it makes a huge difference.