She's been rotating in my head like a microwave recently and I just needed to draw her again

Artists note:

I wasn't really happy with the way I drew her in my style, so I decided to try drawing her again, as well as doing some more experimentation with my style.

(Also pardon how tense Zanmu looks in this lmao, Hisami probably pissed her off that day lol)

as I was drawing her, I recently went to the (now finished) Touhou wiki page for her and wanted to capture the graceful side to her character as well. I was also inspired by that one tier list of the different ways Touhou characters refer to themselves in Japanese, and Zanmu refers to herself the same way old people do (lmao) so I added some white hairs and wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. I could've gone a bit harder on the wrinkles but I imagine she's probably aged gracefully. I also wanted to include some of the red eyeshadow that I see in other peoples art of her because it looks nice.

Also, I've recently been trying to improve upon the way I draw different body types with women, because I would sometimes make the shoulders too wide and it wouldn't look right. I feel like I've gotten better at that with this drawing.

I also wanted to practice drawing clothing folds as well as gaining a better understand of how her outfit works.

One last thing to note, the vibes for Zanmu in this piece were inspired by Renata Glasc from LoL (I don't play league I just like Arcane and animation and character design analysis videos for it).

Also on the topic of characters Zanmu reminds me of, she reminds me of ToTK Ganondorf for some reason maybe it's the horns but like, I haven't finished the game so no spoilers. Also, I think I brought this up in a previous post, but she reminds me of Meruem from Hunter X Hunter and Hisami reminds of Shaiapouf, like especially with the latter, those two have the same vibes.

Him. Buggy the Clown. I think you should kiss Him.

is it bc we're both clowns?

funny enough, my friend ships with him n i know a few mutuals that do (which im p sure are ok w/ sharing) BUT id rather not step on any clown shoes

how dare you leave this photo of him out /lh i dont know ANY context behind it but i dont need to, to know that hes full of hot air and if i knock him over i can sit on him like a whoopee cushion and he'll deflate to his normal size.

i just? briefly read his wiki and it said he can detach his body parts? idk to what extent or if he can just do it Willingly but uh; headcanon that matter the situation, if i ask for a hand, i have to catch his but im gonna throw it overboard or lock it away. what are you gonna do - grab it back?

assign me an f/o

i like this one he looks like an asshole

HELP THE NOISE I LET OUT QJSJJD THE SHOES. BLADES ARE FOR SKATIN. YA DINGUS.

SO i just finished wonder egg priority and i think that with confidence i can say it has been one of my favorite animes like... ever ?? and not even from hyperfixation or obsession over it just... its so fucking real yet so simple in a way that i havent rlly seen shown in any other shows you feel ??

but first i wanna talk about how sexy the art and animation is real quick... HOMIE ITS SO GOOD LIKE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT JUST... serotonin... the characters are all so unique and iconic and fun but not over the top in their designs yknow ??? they seem like regular every day girls but they stand out and theyre all sO CUTE !!!! also i love how the style is like this soft bubbly slice of life lookin stuff with bright happy colors and the most beautiful scenes you could find but they also have the SICKEST fight scenes complete with whimsical animal helpers and terrifying villains and crazy weapons unique to each character. and the animation. god DAMN shawty i am obsessed with everything in this show. i might make a post solely about the art later lol bc i wanna get into the other stuff.

so the themes in the show right ?? it starts just as this cute lil magical girl kinda deal but within the first episode we see that like.. oh damn... thats kinda heavy... tbh i was a little shocked and thought about stopping bc yknow bad mental health BUT i was so intrigued that i had to keep going and i am SO GLAD that i did. because this show just so beautifully discusses all these heavy topics in such an eloquent and artistically expressive way. and also like, , the juxtaposition of the charming childlike vibe with bright colors and 14 yr old girl protagonists against the dark themes of suicide and so much else,, i think is just perfect. bc a lot of heavy animes are more of the seinen genre and have some middle aged dude as a protag or make the entire color palette dim or offer little relief to the pain of these heavy themes right ?? but NO not wonder egg bitches B) because these problems arent just things that ppl face later in life or just problems that need to be talked about among adults or the edgy seinen watching squad,, these are REAL problems that face people of every age, gender etc and i think its awesome that wonder egg addresses that. some may cringe at the thought of their high schooler watching animes that discuss sexual harassment, suicide, abuse, self harm, eating disorders etc,, but in reality it is the most comforting thing i have ever come across and is basically jsut free anime therapy. because not only does wonder egg present these themes to the viewers as something real that happens to all kinds of people (making said people feel heard in a way that maybe they hadnt before), but it also makes sure to vanquish all of these forms of trauma. and the way the trauma is vanquished isnt always beautiful and it isnt always just magically gone with a poof. the struggles of overcoming or living with that sort of thing are shown in such a real and relatable way that addresses every hardship trauma survivors have to go through. and i just. god i cry bro. 

oh m y GOD and the lgbtq+ rep in this show ?? like shawty... as soon as i saw episode one i was picking up on some gay/lesbian themes but then again im sapphic and project that a lot so i tend to see that sort of stuff like... everywhere... but NE WAYS... episode ten made me FUKCING CRY BRO LIke i cant believe there was a whole trans character with a whole trans pride hoodie like LKGHKDGH my heart is just so.. so fucking full thinking about him. bc like yeah i know there are trans characters in anime but i feel like theyre always very ambiguous about actually being trans or not or erased or portrayed as a harmful stereotype or theyre constantly misgendered and still refered to as their assigned gender at birth and i hate it. HOWEVEr... Kaoru.. *chefs kiss* it was so amazing to see a character straight up say “yeah im trans” in such a casual yet powerful way bc i personally have never seen that before. and i love love loved how he went into his backstory and talked to momoe about gender bc i think thats what she rlly needed and that it helped her find herself and it makes me so happy oh my god,, and the way they talked about it never seemed forced or like it was the focal point of his existence yknow ?? like yeah he existed to help momoe overcome some of her trauma but he also just existed to be HIM yknow ?? also... personally, i headcanon momoe as a trans girl even though i dont remember it being explicitly stated plus the school scenes of her and stuff would seem like they suggest otherwise ??but,,, SHAWTY THE AMOUNT OF SUBTEXT and her complicated relationship w gender is... something i feel like a cis girl would not go through so harshly yknow ?? with all of the questioning and feeling detached from femininity or feeling like ppl dont see her as an actual girl and only like her as a guy or for her masculine traits,,, but dont take my word on this bc i myself am a cis girl but that was just my take on it as someone in the lgbtq+ community trying to educate myself on the transgender community :) either way,, wonder eggs portrayal of momoe and kaoru and the way that momoe becomes so passionate about expressing herself the way she wants to as a girl is just... good lord im gonna cry its so perfect,,,.so ... i just love this show way too much. i also am honestly super lost about the relationship btwn acca and ura-acca ?? bc i was gonna mention ura-acca as a canonically gay guy bc when i was watching i interpreted ep 11 as him being in love with acca and being jealous of Azusa (bc i mean,, they lived together (i swear to god there was only one bed in that apartment) and had a daughter together and def loved each other and also when Frill said they were husbands and then when ura-acca said he wasnt attracted to azusa but he was def jealous of their relationship ??) but then i saw somewhere that theyre brothers ?? which would make sense ig since they look kinda similar and accas daughter called ura-acca “uncle”.. but at the same time its ANIME SO THEY ALL LOOK SIMILAR and referring to gay couples as siblings is an EXTREMELY common euphemism soooo... IM JUST LOST HERE... but yeah i tried doing research and found different things so i cant say anything for sure >:( however,,, if they are canonically a lil fruity for each other... when frill refered to acca as ura-accas husband i imploded dude you never hear that sort of wording in anime.. but if theyre related i am so sorry. 

god this is so much longer than i planned it to be oops but i also love the theme about like.. relying on friends to help carry your weight but at the same time not becoming completely dependent on those friends and using their support to learn how to love yourself and rely on yourself yknow ?? bc that is exactly what healthy friendships look like. bc i think ai sort of had a codependency thing goin on with koito maybe ?? but now she has a whole squad of funky friends that are so so different but all struggle with different kinds of trauma and although they fight over it, they always get through it with each other together. and they push each other no matter what to be the best versions of themselves and they teach other that getting hurt is okay because theyre always gonna be there to pick up the pieces no matter what happens. they can give each other space when they need and adapt to meet each others needs but theyre always able to balance it out with their own needs and thats such a beautiful thing in friendships especially at their age like damn i wish i had that maturity when i was 14 but no all i had was depression. another thing is that through these friendships you get to see all the different sides of each girl; you get to see them being strong or a shining light to their friends when theyre hurting but you also get to see them being hurt and weak and allowing themselves to be on the receiving end of the comfort. their friendships allows them to have weaknesses but it also allows them to highlight their strengths and thrive off of each others. I LOVE FRIENDSHIP DUDE

next i wanna briefly mention some of the themes connected to suicide that ive noticed. a big one is the survivors guilt that ai feels once koito is dead. several times she screams that she wishes she couldve gone with koito and she dreams of a “perfect world” where they committed a double suicide. one of the main reasons for her troubles is that she blames herself for koitos death and feels like it should be her thats dead... but at the same time she feels like too much of a coward to do anything now that koito is gone. she just has all these complex and contradicting feelings that wear away at her in ways that ppl that havent gone through the suicide of a loved one could never imagine. a lot of the times when things like this are portrayed in media i feel like its more in a way thats meant to guilt trip those that have taken their own lives and paint suicide as this selfish sin thats unforgivable but... not only does wonder egg reject that idea and instead portray it as a heartbreaking tragedy with,,, so so many terrible reasons, but it focuses on the feelings of ai separate from koito without blaming her in any way. not once did i feel like the show antagonized koito or that ai blamed koito for doing any of this, but they simply mourned her loss and touched on ais reaction towards the event but separate from koito herself if that makes sense. and i think that discussing survivors guilt without painting koito as the bad guy is something so beautifully done in wonder egg that can really resonate with those that have lost a loved one to suicide and have struggled with these same things.

okay i think this is the last thing ill mention,,, but HOMIE THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE BIT AT THE END. I AM. OBSESSED. i am such a whore for anything about the multiverse okay n e ways...,, not only did this make a super epic trippy ending of season one and add a little bit more magical girl whimsy to the show,, but it had such a powerful message. from the perspective of og ai,, finding out that you killed yourself in another world is... i mean its definitely not a surprise but at the same time it rlly makes you think how close og ai herself couldve been to that point and what decisions led her out of that dark place in her life. if i were in her shoes i would be terrified and id cry bc the thought of going back to such a dark place and actually going through with something like that is my worst fear and probably something that ai fears too. but at the same time,,, think from the perspective of ai two !!! like yeah its true that theres this awful terrible version of ai that dies but theres also a whole version of ai that is a superhero magical girl fighting off monsters to save countless ppls lives !! and she has a badass lizard and a gang of awesome friends !!! at first i was worried that ai two would be jealous of og ai and compare herself to her and feel inferior but like.. THEYRE LITERALLY THE SAME PERSON AND CAPABLE OF THE SAME THINGS !!! and ai two realized that !! just within the span of one episode, she went from the version of ai who took her life,, to the version of ai jumping in front of a friend to take a bullet for them and save their life. and that just inspired THE SHIT OUT OF ME. i think that ai was sent another version of herself to sort of beat her own worst enemy yknow ?? those doubts and fears that shes no good or that shes that same bystander from episode one and that she hasnt changed at all. but getting to interact with her parallel self and see her grow was just what she needed to realize that while yeah sometimes the worst thing can happen and things can be terrible but on the other hand sometimes the most wonderful thing imaginable can happen because she has the power to do either. 

so im gonna go ahead and stop rambling bc i got all my thoughts out that i wanted to for this post :D but yeah lol i might make another if i feel like it sometime. long story short: this show is perfect and it is going on my favorite of all times.

The Sims 4 Paranormal Stuff: Developer Blog (Part 1)

SimGuruConnor has released part 1 of the Sims 4 Paranormal Developer Blog series.

Hello Simmers! Welcome to a small 2-part Dev Blog about our newest Stuff Pack, Paranormal Stuff! This pack has been an absolute blast to work on, and I’m excited to share what this pack is all about!

I’ll try not to reveal too many spoilers for the pack either, so I’ll keep things somewhat brief. Our topics for today are the new Scared Mood and the Haunted House Lot Type, plus an interview with our Audio Artist too!

Get Scared

Sims can now relish in the mortal dread of the Scared Mood! The Scared Mood affects Sims in a variety of ways, with my personal favorite, the new Scream Incoherently interaction, where a Scared Sim runs up to another Sim to scream their lungs out. This can result in the other Sim calming down the Scared Sim, or resulting in both Sims becoming Scared. This can create a Scared Mood wildfire if you’re not careful!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's okay!

Sims afflicted with the Scared Mood also have trouble communicating with others, the urge to panic-run everywhere, and are slightly more prone to accidents. If no other Sims are around to help calm down a Scared Sim, they might just have to Hide Under The Covers for a while.

But if being Scared just isn’t your Sims style, consider purchasing the new Brave Trait. This Satisfaction Reward Store Trait will rapidly reduce the incoming fear a Sim feels and help Sims regain their composure faster. While no Sim is totally fearless, this trait should help mitigate some of those creepy feelings.

The Scared Mood and the Brave Reward Trait are all base game features coming with the Paranormal Stuff patch on January 21st. Tons of previous Uncomfortable Buffs are now becoming Scared Buffs, such as the “Startled By Ghost” Buff or the “Thalassophobia” Buff from Island Living.

While being Scared might not be a common occurrence in your everyday Sims life, living in a Haunted House is a whole different story…

Happy Haunts

Introducing the Haunted House Lot Type!

The Duplantier Dwelling, created by Doctor Ashley! This “canon” Haunted House will be available in the gallery!

They’re like regular houses, only haunted! Although unassuming during the day, at night, these places get super weird. Your Sims may notice things like flickering lights, pipes rattling, or even creepy dolls staring at them in the corner. All are totally normal occurrences in a Haunted House, but it may take some time for your Sims to adjust to their new surroundings.

Sims living in a Haunted House will also be introduced to floating apparitions known as Specters. They’re cute little critters, but their motives aren’t entirely clear. You can try talking to them, or even offer them presents in hopes of establishing a good rapport. If they like you, they’ll drop special loot for you and your family. If they don’t like you, well, you’ve been warned.

o o o (> ‘ u ‘ )>

Learning to get along with your new ghostly inhabitants is crucial in a Haunted House. Things like botching seances, neglecting Specters, or letting accursed objects invade your house will have a negative impact on its spiritual serenity. There is a delicate art to co-existing with the entities of the house, and thankfully you’ll have an expert on the matter to assist you!

Meet Guidry

Claude René Duplantier Guidry was a seasoned Paranormal Investigator in his previous life, but now he exists to help anyone brave enough to live in a Haunted House! You’ll probably run into him eventually living in a Haunted House, but don’t worry, he’s a nice ghost!

Guidry will gladly offer his wisdom to those who seek it. If you’re confused, alarmed, or slightly uncomfortable by your new haunted surroundings, give Guidry a holler and he might be able to help. He can also offer valuable objects to help your Sims, too; all you need is to reach out!

Still got it.

All Guidry wants in return is to crash at your place for the time being. Sounds like a fair deal, right? But if you’d prefer to fly it solo, you can always disable his nightly visits—he won’t be too upset, maybe.

As mentioned before, Guidry was a Paranormal Investigator before his untimely demise. If he sees potential in you, he can certify you with a Paranormal Investigation License, granting access to the Paranormal Investigation Freelancer Gigs. Only those who are qualified enough can join the ranks of Paranormal Investigators, but more on that next time!

Be Brave!

Living in a Haunted House adds a layer of risk and reward for your Sims, and each successful night yields Reward Store Satisfaction Points for everyone in the Household. Specters can also drop treasure that can also be collected, consumed, or sold to an Oddity Collector. So although your Sims might go through a bit of peril, they’ll thankfully be compensated.

One of my favorite pieces of haunted treasure is the new Sacred Candle. Not only do they look cool, but they also help protect Sims from paranormal influences. Place them around your house to make sure Sims are properly shielded!

A properly protected Sim.

Things like Sacred Candles and performing ceremonies at the Séance Table are integral to keeping your Sims happy in a Haunted House. Without using these paranormal tools, the entities of the house might get a little bossy.

And while it might be in your Sims’ best interest to keep the spirits of the house in check, watching things go horribly wrong in a Haunted House can be just as fun too. So whatever works for you!

Like Tiny Homes, this Lot Type can be toggled on or off at any time. So whether you’re a casual thrillseeker who wants to spend a couple of nights in a Haunted House, or a seasoned Paranormal Expert who wants to take on a new challenge, this Lot Type should offer something for you!

Crosspack Stuff!

Pets get to share the fun too! They especially love the accursed objects that show up!

I think they’re gonna get along great.

As mentioned before, a ton of old Buffs from multiple packs are now being converted to the Scared Mood. I think 70 something Moodlets were converted? Honestly, I lost count. Anything that seemed more appropriate for the Scared Mood was transferred over.

Oh, and you might remember an old Lot Trait from City Living called Haunted. For clarity’s sake, it needed a name change, so now it’s the Spooky Lot Trait. It also benefits from being combined with the new Haunted House Lot Type and will have an increased chance of spawning Ghosts at night. So use both for maximum haunted-ness!

Audibly Frightened

Last but not least, I’d love to turn it over to our Audio Artist for this pack, Briana Billups! She did a killer job bringing Haunted Houses to life! Trust me!

Conor: Can you tell us what an Audio Artist does on The Sims 4?

Briana: Big, broad picture: an audio artist decides what everything in The Sims 4 sounds like. We record, create, and edit sounds to the art and animation of the game. Little, very detailed picture: creating the actual sounds is usually one of the smaller aspects of our job. We are meeting with other departments, like design, animation, and VFX, to understand the overall vision of new game features and how we can fit in sonically. We are meeting with each other to make sure all our new content still keeps the very fun and quirky vibe of the Sims. We come up with new tools and implementation where necessary.

Conor: What sort of things go into the creative process for creating audio?

Briana: Every audio artist/sound designer has their own creative process, but I like to make a “sonic mood board” of sorts. I typically like to have a good idea of what I want something to sound like in my head before I record or edit it, so it’s nice to have sound effects or music to refer to that represents my original inspiration or ideas. When I was in college, I would make Spotify playlists for whatever I was working on. I would listen to them once a day, adding and editing as necessary, so when I actually got to work, I was in the right headspace. Now I’m usually less formal about this sort of stuff, but for this pack, I would refer back to things like Vincent Price’s demonic laugh from Thriller or Casper the Friendly Ghost Cartoons and the looping soundtrack from the queue of a horror ride at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (Ghost Blasters)

Conor: What were you most excited to work on for this pack?

Briana: Definitely all the haunted house sounds! Good sound design is the crux of so many horror movies and video games, so even if we were keeping things more “Casper” and less “Poltergeist,” I still wanted to give a good scare here and there. I actually scared myself one day while playtesting another feature in the game!

Conor: If you had to choose, what is your favorite audio clip you’ve ever added to The Sims 4?

Briana: I would say my favorite SFX were the sports arena loops in EP08: Discover University. When you visit the arena for the soccer/esports match or graduation, you can actually listen to the whole game or ceremony. It was great to craft a whole story from start to finish using just sound. I also snuck in a lot of developer names when writing the scripts for our voice actors.

Thanks, Briana!

More To Come!

That about covers this first foray into the Paranormal Stuff Pack! This pack has been a ton of fun to work on, and watching my Sims flee in terror has been more enjoyable than I’d like to admit.

Next blog, we’ll focus on the Séance Table and developing your Medium skill, as well as the new active freelance career Paranormal Investigator.

Big thanks to the Stuff Pack team for helping this pack come to life, and thank you, Doctor Ashley, for building our featured Haunted House!

Until next time, SimGuruConor

To Distant Lands...

It has been quite a journey.

I have been a fan of Adventure Time for over ten years. But it wasn’t a great start.

Foolish 12 year old me disliked it at first glance just because I wasn’t used to the art style and didn’t take it seriously. I ignored it for almost a year. Then on one faithful day in my tutor’s house, I watched the newly aired episode Mystery Train with her kids.

I was... charmed by it. 

This new kind humor spoke to me and I... actually wanted to see more of it. Of course at first I was in denial for a bit but I got over that quickly. So from then on whenever I see it play on Cartoon Network I wouldn’t skip it anymore. I began to look forward to more episodes until I noticed that this series had an overarching plot.

The episodes that I thought were one-shot had purpose. Not all of them are great but they were satisfying for the most part. Like pieces of a puzzle being slowly formed over the years. When I got used to going online I started watch every single episode until I got to the latest. I would wait every week for a new one to drop.

Not everything was all sunshine and rainbows however. Around the mid seasons I thought that the plot was dragging, that the writing became pretentious in some episodes. I began to lose my love for it after 3 years by that point. So I just became a casual viewer.

It took 2 years for me to get back on going crazy over Adventure Time again and by then I was already 18 years old. But I was never ashamed by loving cartoons and my peers were also obsessed with this show so I had no problem getting back on track.

I know that they use storyboards to tell their stories and that writing was secondary. It’s a very risky way of creating a show. But for some reason it kind of works with a show Adventure Time. 

A world were the unpredictable happens, a world were your own imagination is the limit. 

The songs were always such a treat. They may sound simple but that’s what makes them so memorable and heartfelt. They capture the moments where the situations are laid out. The way they were made sounded on the spot and incorporated what the characters felt at the time has a touch of realism.

I will forever be astounded with the way they incorporated Jake’s powers. The ways the spells, the jokes and the characters work and being alive. The Land of Ooo has infinite possibilities. I love all of that jazz.

But what I love most about this show were the characters and their relationships. 

Sure they’re zany but the situations they find themselves in still felt real no matter how ridiculous they got. There were moments when everything suddenly just made sense and I just began to feel for them.

Marceline was a character that I felt infatuated with the first episode I saw her in. It was when she was ‘helping’ Finn ‘woo’ PB into going to movies with him. I was like “Who’s this vampire chick and why is she so fun?” 

Yeah I liked her, but I never thought that I would fall in love with the immortal known as The Vampire Queen.

Marceline is just a tragically beautifully written character. And the show has done something I never thought they would do: Address how being an immortal affected her and other people.  

This silly looking cartoon has tackled topics regarding existential crisis and put with a lot of thought on it and I live for that. What Marceline felt when she lost the people she loved over the years, how messed up her whole situation was. She didn’t know what to do and instead dedicated her life in killing vampires because she wanted to protect the memory of only one person she had left who couldn’t even be with her. It was so heartbreaking. 

Never had my younger self thought that Marcy would have relationship with Simon. When I saw the still image of them when I was about to watch Remember You I was psyched. Many scenarios were flowing in my head before I clicked the play button. I thought I was ready but I was so wrong. That episode was the first episode that made me cry watching this series. Afterwards I always looked forward to Simon and Marcy interactions. 

I felt the utter hopelessness when Simon was declining onwards to becoming the Ice King we’ve always seen but never really known. 

But even in his maniacal state, there was a semblance of the Simon who loved his Betty and Marcy with all his heart. It could be called hopeful but it could also be cruel. And that is the beauty of this tragedy.

Immortality will mess anyone up and they all cope it with different ways.

Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum is another immortal but had different priorities. She already had a goal set in mind and went through with it with almost no hesitation. She committed numerous acts with questionable morals in mind. She pushed everyone away and just focused on her kingdom. In her own way, she was winging it. 

Her way of thinking clashed with Marceline and it was all the wrong timing for them. Her closest friend’s care for strangers was already almost nonexistent and she herself was too stressed. 

In the process of finding their purpose and having the weight of responsibilities on their shoulders and just living, these two have lost themselves and are just so tired and broken.

This is one of the main reasons why I ship Bubbline. They are so different yet they understand each other in an unspeakable level. The lost moralities they had were slowly gained when they found each other. And it wasn’t even immediate. There were so many ups and downs with their relationship and it took them centuries to figure it out. Even in the present they’re still figuring it out but now they are healing and that’s what matters.

And let’s not forget the titular characters.

Finn and Jake’s brotherly bond is one of my most favorite things in all of the fictional media I have consumed. Because going through reincarnation together and being with each other for all eternity is literally the definition of their love not knowing any bounds.

Together Again was the perfect send off for Adventure Time. And while they’re brotherhood isn’t flawless like Jake not always being the best role model but he’s always there for his brother and Finn would do anything for the people he loves. They have went through so many things together, good and bad.

Their bond is unbreakable.

Finn’s breakdowns in losing his best friend was so painful to watch and I cannot help myself but cry for what these brothers have lost. I know people have to let go but maybe we don’t have to “let go” let go, you know? So imagine my surprise and delight when Jake decided to join his brother and said these very words:

“Because it’s great being alive with you.”

That sentence broke my soul into a million pieces and restored it at the same time. I just bursted into tears the second I heard that. It was so simple yet one of the most touching lines I have ever heard in my life.

This show had so much heart that it’s overflowing. The bonds that these characters have for each other. It has brought me so much tears of sadness and joy. It broadened my imagination for the unknown. The creativity of this series is absolutely outstanding.

I was the same age as Finn when the show started so you could say I grew up with him and the show. I wasn’t young enough for it to be a part of my childhood but it was there for me till I reached adulthood. And I think that it’s much better that way. It did help me grow up and let me see that there are a lot of things that while everything stays, they still change. 

Adventure Time’s had a lot of messages strewn over its seasons and always had a melancholic vibe to it. 

That’s life... and that’s okay.

It may get ugly and terrifying but Adventure Time has told me to just live. 

Sing, dance, cry and laugh. Something simple as hanging out with family and friends has so much meaning in the grand scheme of things. Life goes on and things will seem to be familiar yet foreign at the same time. Linger on nostalgia, but also appreciate what’s happening in the present and look forward to what will happen in the future.

I am so grateful to have been on this wonderful adventure.

Like what they always said: 

The fun never ends.

A Bleach Retrospective: In defense of Bleach

These are opinions, please respect that.

_______________________________

My Journey with Bleach (please skip if you want to go straight to the analysis):

On September the 8th, 2006 YTV’s weekend evening anime programming block (Bionix) aired the first episode of Bleach. I, unfortunately, did not catch this episode, instead, I caught the second episode on September 15th the following week. I was ten and from then on, Bleach fascinated me. It had an interesting concept, tight pacing, catchy music, a good story, and unique character designs. I also really enjoyed how Bleach lacked the same kind of emotional labour that Naruto demanded (as child who survived off of constantly seeking validation from others because of absentee parents, Naruto is way too much work).

My fascination with Bleach got me started in the fandom communities of yesteryear, for I was a child with zero internet supervision. My introduction to fanfiction was because I loved Hitsugaya Toshiro.

Bleach was my entry into poetry (poem at the start of every volume).

But alas, all good things were not meant to last and by the summer of 2009, I was officially done with Bleach. It had felt stilted for some time before then. Over the years, I would gradually revisit bits and pieces of Bleach, but I would not read it in its entirety until months after its finish, about a decade after I had first saw Bleach on my TV. Between the time I stopped reading and the series ended, I became friends with people who didn’t think highly of Bleach and I also started seeing criticism I had made about Bleach in 2011 being repeated by fans on the internet, I started to think that maybe Bleach was bad, but I knew what bad writing looked like —I started reading fanfiction through Bleach fanfiction AMVs on YouTube — and somehow Bleach didn’t sit right with me in the “bad writing category”. 

I sit back now, a decade and ahalf later from when I first started and ask, “was Bleach really that bad, and if so, why do I keep coming back to it?”

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What Made Bleach So Good?

Unique story and aesthetics: When Bleach first started in 2001, it was one of the first manga series to talk about souls and death in a poetic way and with such coherence. Bleach clearly knew what it wanted to say about life and death. It also had a very unique aesthetic, very similar to that of “The World Ends With You” or “Persona 5″ — an urban Japanese take on R&B kind of vibe. Also, Bleach had the most “realistic” and minimalist art style amongst the Big 3.

Cool Music: Bleach had cool music, from very solid rock’n’roll and R&B style songs in its OPs and EDs to very funky OST music with lots of pizzazz. Many singers feature by Bleach ended up successful (to varying degrees) outside of anime, eg: Orange Range, UVERworld, YUI, sid, etc.

Versatile tone: Bleach was edgy, there’s no doubt about that. It was willing to show a lot of blood and bodily violence, especially in the manga (eg half of people blowing up and bits of bone still attached). Despite this though, it was not pretentious about its edginess — it didn’t revel in it. To contrast the edginess, there is a lot of humour in Bleach with character interactions. It was able to be laid back enough with its strong characters that it would rely on the characters’ relationships for comedic relief. The post-credit skits and the fillers really helped to add to this overall feel as well.

Maturity of the Story: Bleach was very willing to handle topics that made people think. For example, the Ulquiorra - Orihime subarc was treated with a sense of carefulness about it, as if to reflect Ulquiorra’s own cautious curiosity about the heart. A less emotionally mature story would’ve gone for the cheap rape/torture porn, but instead we are treated to determined strong Orihime, who has found strength through the heart after the death of her brother, clashing with the nihilistic hollow who wants to know if there is happiness outside of emptiness. It’s a very loaded question and one that requires both perspective and life experience to fully understand both parties. As well, Bleach always knew what it wanted to say about life and death as the final conflict of Bleach is between Ichigo, who has accepted his transient life and Yhwach, who is scared of death. And ultimately, underneath all that action, Bleach produced takes on its themes that were hard to relate to unless the reader themselves had a certain level of emotional maturity (eg: 12 year old me got nothing out of the Ulqui-Ori arc, but 20 year old me spent a good 10 mins crying after)

Strong characters: Contrary to popular belief, Bleach does have quite solid characterization. In fact, Bleach is the journey of Ichigo as a character, from grappling with his weakness and pain to finally accepting all the parts of himself and his history in order to defeat Yhwach and protect those he cares about. Even the secondary characters of Bleach receive a sizable amount of backstory and/or development. Bleach also managed to have more proactive female characters. Even the damsel in distress Orihime stands up to Ulquiorra and slaps him. As a result of these strong characters, Bleach was able to rely on them and their relationships to drive aspects of the story (eg Ichigo crying in the Fullbringer arc).

Willingness to Deal with Emotion: Given that Ichigo is an internally motivated character, it was obvious Bleach would deal with emotion at some point in time. Making Ichigo just a normal high school boy also relives the previous edginess. Bleach also clearly too the time to make its readers feel in its early years. We are treated to beautiful panelling and very real displays of strong negative emotions. Bleach is also very good at giving its characters room to breathe and be sad. Eg: moping Orihime, moping Ichigo, etc. As well, Kubo went to extraordinary lengths to break Ichigo down during the Fullbringers Arc.

Interesting Character Designs: Every character in Bleach feels vibrant and unique with their personality showing through in their designs. For example: Shunshi’s sloppily tied up hair, visible stubble, and overcoat-hidden-haori show that he is both easy going and not looking for a fight; meanwhile Byakuya’s neatly pulled back hair and neck covered by scarf show that he is both someone who likes structure and is conservative.

Poetry and Symbolism: Kubo manages to weave poetry into Bleach in the beginning of each volume. The poem was said by the character on the volume. It gave the reader insight to this character and it gave Kubo a chance to flex his poetic chops. Further proof of this is the fact that many people don’t realize that the name “Bleach” refers to the bleaching of soul that is key to the story. Kubo loves to use rain to set sad scenes. It rains when Ichigo fights Grand Fisher, Zangetsu tells Ichigo that he hates the rain, etc. Kubo also specifies that he wishes for the reader to read certain volumes on stormy, rainy nights.

Panelling: Many people like to criticize Kubo for the lack of effort with the Bleach manga, but Kubo has stated that he uses negative space (i.e., foregoing backgrounds) to focus more on his character’s expressions. This not only further proves that Bleach cares a lot about its characters, but it’s done well enough that the average reader likely doesn’t notice the lack of background on the first read through. As well, Bleach has very cinematic panelling. Kubo uses the format of manga well, utilizing the human mind’s ability to fill blanks in with clever panelling to create tone and build tension and the feeling of movement through a scene.

In fact, in finding pages for this analysis, I found myself noticing that Bleach panels very similarly to slice-of-life shoujo but with a boy MC manga like "Horimiya": focus on expression through intimate angles and use of panels and breaks to create mood and the feeling of cinema; whereas something like DBZ panels like a shounen action manga with many hard lines and action shots, instead of a focus on subtle details and emotions.

Some Examples:

Notice now in Chapter 197: The approaching danger, Kubo uses a gradual zoom to build tension and the black background to add intensity and signal to the reader that Hitsugaya is relaying important information.

Here in Chapter 234: Not Negotiation, the immediate close up to Ulquiorra’s eye from the full body shots creates a sense of intimidation and unease with its sudden intimacy. As well, the immediate zoom in from Ulquiorra’s side full body shot to his facial profile creates tension and the change from the dark background to the white face with Orihime releases this tension (very fitting with considering the line for this panel is “but not you”). (This scene also ties into Ulquiorra’s central dogma of “that which is not reflected in my eyes does not exist’.)

Again in the same chapter, this gradual zoom in on the two creates tension that is then release in the next panel and summarily cements Ulquiorra as a terrifying BAMF.

In Chapter 262: Unblendable, Kubo uses the negative space to create a feeling of isolation, similar to how Orihime is supposed to be feeling.

In the same chapter, notice how Kubo creates a sense of intimacy (not in the romance sense) with the relationship of Ulquiorra and Orihime. He creates tension gradually with the zooming into Orihime’s eye and releases it with the zoom out to Ulquiorra. Through this scene, Kubo has shown us that Ulquiorra and Orihime have a tense relationship and with the implication of eye contact through the shots and panel breaks creating both the intimacy and showing Orihime’s defiance.

(Interestingly, I’ve noticed that Ulquiorra and Orihime have a lot of these intimate zoom shot-reverse-shot eye panels)

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What are the Bad Parts of Bleach?

Okay, so by now, you’re probably thinking that I’m ignoring the massive amounts of critique that Bleach gets and don’t get me wrong, while Bleach does have a very special place in my heart, I’m also not maudlin enough to pretend that Bleach was all good.

Pacing:

Pacing in the First Half of Bleach (Karakura Town - Arrancar)

When Bleach first started out the pacing was excellent. Kubo showed great mastery of pace to control the tone and highlight the emotions throughout the first two arcs. Mid-way through the Arrancar arc, the fatigue sets in and it was hard to keep up with, especially since Kubo would interrupt one exciting fight set up to go set up more plot elsewhere (eg Fake Karakura town right as Ichigo and Ulquiorra were about to battle). Whilst looking back and reading it all at once does help with the pacing, it was frustrating if you were reading/watching on a weekly basis.

Pacing in the Anime:

I don’t ascribe to a simplistic belief of “fillers bad” simply because I think that sometimes fillers can be a good thing, for example, since every chapter is ~15-20pp, some character interactions have to be cut for the sake for space, so filler is a great opportunity to add those moments back into your story. For example, a lot of early Bleach fillers are just the people of Karakura town just hanging out. That being said, Bleach does have an unfortunate amount of fillers, with some of them even interrupting tense fights (eg the Beast Sword Arc interrupts Ichigo’s battle with Ulquiorra). However, the padding that the fillers provided did wonders for the transition between Soul Society to Arrancar Arc in the anime. Ultimately, the Bleach anime adaption was a long-running anime made for syndication and that’s okay.

******* Brief Aside: many people like(d?) to point out that Bleach has a very cyclical plot structure. I used to think this way too; however, this is not the case. There are many other long running stories that repeat similar goals. The problem lies not in the idea, but the execution. The main complaint about the Orihime rescue was not that it was uninteresting, but instead that it felt a rehash of the plot of the previous arc. This is largely because the story was not given enough time to breath between similar character arcs. For example, in One Piece, Luffy and Co have to save Nami and by extension, her home village so she can join them; however, the next time a Straw Hat needs to be saved is 227 chapters (2 whole story arcs) later. In between saving Rukia and Orihime, there is only a really an arrancar encounter, a bit of training, cheering up Ichigo, and a Grimmjow encounter before Orihime goes with Ulquiorra, thus making the goal of this arc “save Orihime” in only ~59 chapters vs 227. These two similar arc goals so close to each other does indeed create the sense of repetition.

Pacing from Fullbringer to End:

This is where Bleach really lost a lot of people. If you weren’t gone after the Ulquiorra fight, you probably were by this arc.This arc went at breakneck speed, and ngl, during my first full read through I almost gave up here too. I mention earlier that Ichigo had been broken down in this arc, but it was hard to feel his despair and the weight on his shoulders because there wasn’t enough for the reader to take a beat and breathe. The Thousand Year Blood War, similarly suffered from sloppy pacing, with many readers feeling like story lines of Squad 0 and the Soul King were anti-climactic. As well, this arc started with a massacre and feature the deaths of many fan-favourite characters, and unfortunately due to the pacing, their deaths were not given a sense of gravity.

Missed Opportunities and Forgotten Story lines: Many people felt that Kubo forgot about a lot of his characters after the Aizen arc. Many thought the Fullbringer Arc was going to be a Chad/Orihime Arc. Whatever happened to Uryuu lolol? We all just collectively forgot about him for a large portion of the last half of Bleach. At one point in time, there was a rumour going around that Kubo had written out the story for Bleach and lost it. Idk if there is any credibility to it. However, in a 2017 interview, Kubo did say that he did end the series exactly the way he wanted to.

(If anyone wants to see me write an entire ass text post about Orihime and her treatment in Bleach, please let me know because I will do it)

Too mature:Even though above, I praised Bleach's mature handle on its themes, an unfortunate side effect of this is forgetting that the characters are only 15 at the beginning and for the first half of Bleach. This unfortunately, leads to some readers feeling disconnected from Bleach.

Epilogue: THE DESTROYER OF SHIPS!!! A lot of people hated this ending. Many people felt like the romance was shoe-horned in, others didn’t like the pairings, and there were some people who actually liked it. Personally, I didn’t like it too much, but it was a cute conclusion nonetheless. Since it didn't add anything to the story except for a "where are they now" look and because of that, I low-key felt like it was unnecessary, but w/e.

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Perspective

Making a long-running weekly serialized story is hard and doing it for 15 years is gruelling (obligatory “fuck capitalism” here). Like many artists of long-running manga, Kubo destroyed his health for the sake of publishing Bleach weekly. Kubo on his health after Bleach (photo from AshitanoGin on Twitter):

Given this insight, I think it’s only fair to be respectful and grateful for Kubo’s contribution to the anime-sphere. Also, through his work, Kubo seems to be a very understanding person and artist. I’m sure he knows better than anyone where Bleach went wrong, but there’s nothing that can be done now. Despite him having a twitter, he is not Joanne and doesn’t feel the need to constantly hemorrhage out word of god info about Bleach (and thank god for that).

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Final Thoughts

It’s hard to forget my happy memories when I think about Bleach. It had my first adolescent crush and first OTP. As a result, I think the best way to enjoy Bleach is to take what you want out of it. People always think that something has to be 100% without flaw for it to be good, but that is not true at all. It is totally okay to just like the parts that you like without engaging with anything else. It’s special to you for a reason, you know? 

There’s no use in fretting over what Bleach could’ve been, besides, very rarely is the reality better than the fantasy in your head.

I do think though that a lot of Kubo’s issues could’ve been fixed if he planned the story better but not all of us can be “I've been planning One Piece since elementary school” Oda Eiichiro.

Other voices on this issue: here

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Wow. I can’t believe you made it this far down. Congratulations! Thanks for reading my 2:30am non-sober take on Bleach (it only took me 7 hours to write). Here's a cookie <3

Wallice has shared her subversive new single 'Hey Michael'. 'Hey Michael' amplifies her blood-thirsty nature, a revenge anthem that finds Wallice turning into a worse villain than her erstwhile love interest. A song about toxic tendencies and how they manifest in our lives, 'Hey Michael' twists and turns around American Psycho imagery. Wallice labels "a revenge anthem for anyone who has encountered a gaslighting, manipulative person. It’s what I wish I would have said to all the ‘Michael’s’ I have met in my life. It can be substituted by many names, we all know or have met a ‘Michael’ though. Somehow the world revolves around them and they just can’t catch a break, because they never do anything wrong and it’s usually your fault. You should have listened to your gut instinct and swiped left on this Michael. This isn’t a man-hating song, it’s just something many people can relate to. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to admit just how bad a friend, date, or romantic partner was and a lot of the time, I would just smile and laugh off stupid remarks but when I think back, I wish I had told them off. But at the same time, my persona in the song is not the best person either. I literally say: I think I want to start a fight, which one is your girlfriend? The whole song is funny because I am so focused on how shitty Michael is that I don’t even think about how shitty I might be as well." Directed by Phil Stillwell, the video takes place at a house party, with Wallice interacting with various 'Michaels' before her behaviour spirals into something much, much worse. [via Clash]

In the same vein as Massive Attack’s suburban groove and social commentary in the mid 90’s, KITA have captured the rhythm and heartbeat of suburban Pōneke; a city abuzz with a vibrant music and dramatic performance scene in their brand new track and official video, ‘Private Lives’. Weaving together elements of vintage rock, pop and soul, and warm hints of synth, KITA have created a skin-prickling piece of magic with ‘Private Lives’, a deeply beautiful track penned in 2020’s lockdown, that delves into the unknown of what happens when the blinds are shut – the parts of life that are unseen by others. "Standing from my kitchen window during lockdown in Aotearoa, sinister thoughts entered my mind about what could be happening behind closed doors for people”, says front-woman Nikita 雅涵 Tu- Bryant. The video tells the story of a father and daughter’s relationship amongst snapshots of everyday life and its monotonous anonymity, while things aren’t always what they appear on the surface. Late at night the father can finally reveal his true self, adorning makeup and sequins, only to be spied by his daughter. The two then share a special moment of dressing up and dancing together, a true celebration of individuality, self-love and the beauty of self-expression.

'Just Chemistry' is the third single from Dance Lessons, a London-based, female-fronted and produced trio, creating what they define as Serrated Pop. 'Just Chemistry' is a delicate hymn to the unspoken. Dance Lessons return with their signature sound – minimal production, sleek vocals and intricate arrangements. Ann says: “'Just Chemistry' is about the over-complication of our relationships. It’s about the things that are left unsaid in-between the awkward text messages and conversations, and how the absence of knowing can be misinterpreted as doubt. Last year was a difficult one. For a long time, I felt at the mercy of my emotions. I doubted where things were going. I lived in the future and found it hard to commit to the present. But these moments of not knowing can be equally thrilling and beautiful. And that’s what the song is about: finding beauty in the unspoken. In most cases, it’s chemistry that makes us fall in love. Things end, all is temporary. Let’s not go to war with one another over it.” Nat says on the video: “A friend told us about this weird and wonderful house in North London that feels a little like stepping into an acid trip. We obviously wanted to check it out. It’s completely surreal, all over the place (in a great way) and generally eclectic, which felt inherently us. We instantly wanted to do something there and asked the owner for permission to shoot a music video. We filmed during lockdown and were let loose embracing all the oddness of it. Ann also designed and created the outfit she wears in the video, something she does with most of her wardrobe. It was shot, directed and edited by our hugely talented friends Ben Hanson and Simon Frost from Borderland Studios.”

Returning with her first offering of the year, North London’s rising star Laurel Smith is ready to reveal her anticipated new single, ‘Out the Cage’ accompanied by an action packed and thrilling cinematic style music video directed by Jeremie Brivet and Jai Garcha. Sticking to her winning recipe of moody, dark, electro-pop production paired with effortlessly edgy tales of narrative lyricism, ‘Out the Cage’ is the next huge single from the young, innovative artist that is sure to follow the same trajectory of success as its predecessor, ‘Game Over’ released late last year. A songwriter and recording artist, Laurel Smith has been writing songs since the age of sixteen. With each single she’s released, Laurel has continued to adapt her sound and aesthetic, consistently honing her craft and evolving her brand. She has carefully carved out her place in an ever crowded industry and proceeds to turn heads at every corner. “‘Out The Cage’ is a song about breaking out from your constraints, both physical and mental. Although it can be interpreted in any way, when I wrote it I created a story around a bored housewife, falling out of love with her husband, she fantasises about tying him up and leaving him to be a badass assassin in a video game type world, roaming the city at night and living a life of unpredictability and excitement”.

Hailing from the Philippines, singer-songwriter Laica is coming off a breakout 2020. Now the 21-year-old is gearing up for the release of her debut album I’m so fine at being lonely. The first single off the project, 'love u lately' is here, accompanied by a music video directed by Cooper Leith. 'Love u lately' is a relatable and infectious track. The song revolves around dating, understanding mixed signals, and the confusion that surrounds that world. Lyrically, Laica walks us through her experiences here, voicing her thoughts and frustrations about someone who she just can't seem to read right. Production-wise, the track is carried by a pulsing synth and a groovy bass. Together, the track feels upbeat. The vibe created by the production stands in contrast with the more emotional lyrics, making the track complex and interesting. The music video takes the concept of 'love u lately' to the extreme, in a fun and playful way. Laica is seen capturing her dream boy and attempting to use witchcraft to finally win him over. The video has a very DIY feel, which could serve to add to the reliability of the track. It’s a great extension of the track and taps into everyone’s most fantasy-driven realities. [via Earmilk]

At first, Emily C Browning wasn't sure what to think. Spurned, rejected, and cast aside, she was angry, furious, and - at times - utterly bereft. Usually she'd utilise songwriting as a vessel for her emotions, but when she was so conflicted, and feeling so negative, that it just didn't enter her mind. The Christchurch, New Zealand artist needed to take a step back, and when she located some perspective, she was ready to act. New single 'I Wasn't Into You Anyway' is a soaring slice of revenge, one that finds Emily C Browning taking full control of her music. Her first solo production credit, its reminiscent of those surging, empowering Maggie Rogers bops, while also containing similar DNA to Sharon Van Etten's work. Lyrically, it's absolutely her own creation, with Emily leaning on those often-hidden feelings. She comments... "Everyday for a month I wrote in my journal: I want to write a song about feeling rejected. But I couldn’t figure out how to keep it light and funny, it can be quite a painful topic and I didn’t want to sound too heavy. But I kept working on it everyday and came up with this song. I then spent another month recording it, trying to capture a sound that stayed upbeat and playful. I put so much time and energy into the song that I ended up completely forgetting about the person who rejected me in the first place (honest, I swear)." [via Clash]

Alt-pop force Holly Humberstone returns with new single 'Haunted House'. The songwriter's potent debut EP Falling Asleep At The Wheel was a sensation, racking up more than 100 million global streams. A bona fide phenomenon, Holly returns with a single that displays a more nuanced, reflective side to her work. 'Haunted House' digs into childhood, and looks at the way memory can frame the way we construct our identities. She comments: "I wrote this song about the old and characterful house I grew up in. The house is such a huge part of who I am and our family. With my sisters and I moving out and living separate lives, coming home feels very comforting and one of the only things keeping us all connected." Playing with concrete imagery and no small degree of invention, 'Haunted House' connects art to life in an enchanting fashion. She adds: "The house is almost falling down around us now though, and we’ve realised that pretty soon we’ll be forced to leave. There’s a cellar full of meat hooks and a climate so damp mushrooms grow out of the walls. Loads of people have probably died here in the past but I’ve always felt really safe. It’s like a seventh family member. It’s part of me." [via Clash]

In 2019, the Boston-born and Brooklyn-based indie rock album Crumb released their debut album Jinx. Crumb haven’t yet announced plans to follow that album up, but they’re definitely working towards something. Last month, the band came out with a one-off single called 'Trophy.' Now, they’ve followed that one with two new tracks, and they’re both winners. The new songs 'BNR' and 'Balloon' both fit nicely into Crumb’s comfort zone. The band’s sound is a rich, sophisticated take on psychedelia, with blissed-out lead vocals from Lila Ramani and with some great funky drum action. The band co-produced both songs with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, who’s done great recent work with people like Father John Misty and Weyes Blood and the Killers and who knows how to make oblique ’70s-style pop sound good. But Crumb themselves deserve a ton of credit for coming up with a sound this layered and weird. They’re the rare circa-2021 band who might remind you of Broadcast. In a press release, Ramani says, “‘BNR’ is an ode to my favorite colors. I had a weird obsession with those colors in winter 2018-2019 and felt like they would follow me around everywhere I went." 'BNR' also has a cool music video. Director Joe Mischo starts the clip off as a hallucinatory reverie, but he turns it sharply towards horror at the end. [via Stereogum]

Last year, Limerick poet/musician Sinead O’Brien released her debut EP, Drowning In Blessings. It was a unique work, a handful of songs featuring O’Brien’s sing-speak over spindly, post-punk guitars. It garnered O’Brien a bit of buzz overseas, and it left you wondering where she might take her music from there. Now, O’Brien’s back with a new song called 'Kid Stuff.' “‘Kid Stuff’ shows up all different tones on different days,” O’Brien said in a statement. “There’s something alive in it which cannot be caught or told. It is direct but complex; it contains chapters. This feels like our purest and most succinct expression yet.” Like Drowning In Blessings, 'Kid Stuff' found O’Brien working with Speedy Wunderground mastermind Dan Carey. Musically, it hints at a level up moment for O’Brien. There was something alluring and jagged about Drowning In Blessings, but 'Kid Stuff' places her usual approach over a song that is surprisingly groovy — maybe even a little danceable. It comes with a video directed by Saskia Dixie. [via Stereogum]

Das Beat are made up of German actress and vocalist Eddie Rabenberger and Agor of Blue Hawaii. The pair have just shared their first single 'Bubble' online now and are set to release their debut EP Identität on June 4 via Arbutus Records. Born in Berlin during 2020’s legendary lockdown, Das Beat seeks to blast both boredom and boundary. Dabbling in German New Wave, Italo Disco, Indie & Dance, their sound is unified by vocals from Eddie Rabenberger, sung in German and English. Amidst playful lyrics one finds a strong underlying pulse (das “beat”), pinning down the duo’s meandering atmospherics, dreamy synths, guitars and percussion. The duo is half-Canadian and half-German. Agor (of Blue Hawaii), moved to Berlin from Montreal in 2018. Eddie is a theatre actress originally hailing from a small town in Bavaria. Together they find a strange but alluring symbiosis - like Giorgio Moroder meets Nico, or Gina X Performance meets The Prodigy.

St. Vincent has fully embraced the ’70s aesthetic for her retro-sounding new record, Daddy’s Home. Now, she’s diving headlong into the animation styles of the era with the video for 'The Melting of the Sun'. Presented as a “betamax deluxe release” rip from “Candy’s Music Video Archives,” the clip blends live action shots of St. Vincent herself with the wavy, intermittent animation frames any Schoolhouse Rock student is familiar with. The psychedelic lines fit a song called 'The Melting of the Sun' perfectly, as do the drawings of the legends mentioned in the song’s lyrics like Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, and Tori Amos. St. Vincent co-directed the clip with Bill Benz, while Chris McD provided the animation. [via Consequence]

Bay Area slowcore trio Sour Widows have released a new single, 'Bathroom Stall,' from their forthcoming EP Crossing Over, which they announced last month with its title track. The song’s build-up is subtle and poignant like Sufjan Stevens, but Maia Sinaiko’s evocative, sweeping vocals are one-of-a-kind, and the lyrics are graphic and tragic: “Do you remember it like I do?/ Your lips turned blue I had my fingers in your mouth/ And I couldn’t get them out.” Sinaiko said of the song: "This song is about a relationship I had with someone who struggled with addiction, who very tragically passed away three years ago while we were together. It’s about some moments we shared, and how it feels to walk around carrying that person and those experiences with me while the world stays normal. I wrote the song because I wanted to preserve and document what happened to me. to write out the scary stuff and just let it sit there forever. I think its funny that its called 'Bathroom Stall' and that it has that image in it: the song goes from heavy and dark to ordinary and totally pedestrian in a sentence, which feels absurd. And that’s kind of what it’s like to grieve. That’s kind of what’s hard to explain about grief, how absurd it is. Part of you goes to a different planet and part of you stays walking around like an alien on Earth, going to the bathroom and looking at the moon and shit." [via Stereogum]

As JUNO-nominated singer Kandle Osborne prepares to launch her new project, Set The Fire this spring, she shares the album’s third single, 'Misty Morning.' From being penned on a napkin while abroad to a Vancouver studio, 'Misty Morning' is a sonic journey that echoes soulful vulnerability and an honest reflection of realizing true love. For the video, Kandle reconnects with 'Honey Trap' director, Brandon William Fletcher, to create classic 40s noir-inspired cine-magic, filmed along the Vancouver coastline and within the lush landscape of Stanley Park. Kandle says: “‘Misty Morning’ is my first real love song, captured on a napkin while in Ischia, Italy when I was truly happy. My songwriting usually comes from a place of turmoil and catharsis, but this was simply a snapshot of a perfect, vulnerable moment. In recording it, I wanted to hide behind lush orchestration, but my producer/ best friend Michael Rendall had other ideas. He wanted to strip it down to just piano & a single vocal to take me out of my comfort zone and re-capture the open-hearted feelings I had while writing it. The song and the recording both hold for me a time when I dropped my guard for pure authentic love in spite of all my flaws and failures. In that moment, I felt my true value as a whole person for the first time.”

On 'Vertigo,' Alice Merton’s first single of 2021, the 27-year-old describes the long road from uncertainty back to self-confidence. It emphasizes the unrest that seizes her again and again, the thought: “Why can’t I just let it go?” These contradicting thoughts and emotions that are so familiar to all of us sum up to an overwhelmingly positive effect - 'Vertigo' leaves you empowered rather than anxious: A powerful indie pop arrangement with distorted guitars, plus Alice Merton’s crystal-clear voice. The result is reminiscent of the British Invasion, with no air of self-doubt. With its energetic live qualities, 'Vertigo' feeds an appetite for summer festivals and concerts that will definitely return at some point. Largely responsible for this is the Canadian producer Koz, a multiple Grammy nominee, who has worked with Dua Lipa ('Physical') among others. Here, too, he adds on to what has already made Alice Merton stand out from the crowd in the past - her classic pop appeal - with an uncompromising and indie attitude. This enables Alice to take another big step: She equally encourages a shaken generation and herself that there will be easy summers again. That you can dance again and lie in each other's arms. That it is absolutely fine to have many facets, to not always be clear, and that strength and weakness are not mutually exclusive.

Canadian artist Olivia Lunny's new release 'Sad To See You Happy' is a shamelessly poppy track centering an acutely relatable break-up narrative. The Canadian artist follows up her breakthrough success with a bouncy cut to soundtrack 2021’s long-awaited spring. There's a relatable tale of break-up at the heart of the gloriously poppy new single, belied by percussive instrumentation that creates a warm, nostalgic feel. [via Line Of Best Fit]

After sharing the single last month, Charlotte Adigéry is now revealing the brand new video for ‘Bear With Me (and I’ll stand bare before you)’. The first new music since her 2019 debut EP Zandoli, Charlotte says of the video, “The video is about being confined thus confronted to the way we live. The cruel irony of having the privilege of standing still, questioning and observing my life in all safety while others are fighting for theirs. On the other hand, the video is about trying to stay sane while feeling that the walls are closing in on you. Embracing boredom and finding joy in the little things in life.” Director Alice Kunisue adds, “When I listened to Charlotte’s song and what it meant for her and Bolis, I wanted the video to visually encapsulate that feeling of being stuck inside and confronted to our deeper selves while paradoxically sensing the chaos going on in the outside world without being able to do anything about it. Choosing to film an apartment room from one single angle was a way to reflect that narrowness of thought that we all experienced, but also a constraint that allowed us to explore and develop visual ideas within a narrow system, in a way having to think only inside the box, which artistically was a fun challenge.” [via DIY]

Millie Turner has shared a video for ‘Concrete Tragedy’. It’s a cut from her upcoming mini-album Eye Of The Storm, set for release on May 16, which also features a rework of breakout song ‘(Breathe) Underwater’. “This video is a visual representation of dancing on your own,” she says of the clip. “Combining the many parts of who we are when we’re by ourselves, I wanted it to feel like you’re entering a world of imagination that comes alive when we express ourselves.” [via Dork]

Doja Cat and SZA have come together for a new single called 'Kiss Me More.' When the song was announced Wednesday night, the internet flipped out, which is to be expected with these two — especially Doja Cat, who is regularly going viral these days for all kinds of reasons. When it comes to collaborations, she always finds the best people. That includes Saweetie, who appeared on Doja’s recent 'Best Friend' but then claimed that it was released against her wishes. Given SZA’s long history of public frustration over TDE Records holding back her new album, she is probably happy to have any new music out. Despite recent single 'Good Days' hitting the top 10, her restless fanbase is still awaiting a follow-up to 2017’s iconic Ctrl. 'Kiss Me More' is the first single from Doja’s new album Planet Her, scheduled for release this summer. It returns to the disco vibes of Doja’s #1 hit 'Say So,' this time with no apparent resemblance to any Skylar Spence song. [via Stereogum]

Words with Jetson

Our next interview is with a producer and rapper out of a beautiful place known as Tauranga, in New Zealand, This creative is known as Jetson.

He happens to be one of my cat, Rain's personal favourites for sleep time and regardless of the amount of thumping bass Jetson's music creates and picture frames it knocks over, I understand why he sleeps so sweetly.

Probably a lot to do with the fact that bass has rhythm, just like the sweet sweet words Jetson correlates with his word-plays in tracks such as "Milk" and "SENSEI". Not only impressing cats, Jetson has made moves and connections beyond the long white cloud, proving isolation doesn't always silence brilliance. Jetson brings words any generation can hold some sort of relevance to, words that allow one to notice life moves fast and slow and sometimes you just have to chill and become an observer rather than an instigator.

This is something I feel Jetson has accomplished with his rather low-key approach to releases and interviews.

Jetson is a natural, a true prodigy of sound and a sharer of moods, and to me, is a reminder that with a little bit of passion and persistence, great things can happen, whatever your field.

Jetson’s collective and label - Chill Children is evidence of that, as through it , Jetson is able to work and release with producers and beat-makers all over the globe.

emo the optimist, BACKWHEN, fuyu, eets, and junyii are just some of the diverse talents working with Chill Children and everyone on the catalogue are game-changers that make music that’s anointed in chills. 

Creators that push boundaries and portray emotion through sound in the most soothing way, one must check Chill Children.

So with that I hope you enjoy rare words with the nuance wonder, and in his own words.

Sit back, relax, get baked, create, f**k it.

Enjoy and much love.

Hey man thanks for the opportunity to share words. Let's start with a few random quick questions to get things going. Favourite Beverage: Lemon water. Favourite thing to do in your down-time: Make music/skate. Views on Reincarnation: It will be cool if it is true but I guess it doesn't really change anything if it is 🤷‍♂️ Favourite Food: Sushi. Favourite Album of All Time: Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders A song to break it down to: Ethereal & Playboi Carti - Beef A song to chill to: Durand Jones & The Indications - Cruising to the park Do you prefer Sunrise? or Sunset? Why?: Sunset, because I'm never awake for sunrise. A childhood memory in regards to music: I remember saving up to buy Graduation by Kanye West and listening to that shit front to back for weeks straight. Favourite Place to be: Probably on an island.

Thanks for that, so let's start by asking what inspires you to produce and not only produce but continually produce, what to me is an array of tunes fitting so many genres?

Do you have a set of goals in place when you release a track or do you just hit upload and just hope people are feeling your sound?

What I like to listen to is constantly changing so I like to challenge myself to try and make the things that I'm inspired by.

I like to think that you never know what you're gonna get when you listen to my music but I've still got so much to learn and experiment with. I just try have fun with it and not think about it too much.

How long have you been producing music, and what did you find was hardest to get the hang of when it first came to producing beats?

I had no music theory knowledge or anything when I started making beats (I still don't have much) so there was a lot to learn right away.

Probably the hardest thing that I still battle with is knowing what you should release, what you shouldn't etc. It's hard to balance knowing when something is finished and when it still needs work.

Could you give a quick run-through of the process you follow when it comes to making a beat?

I try to change my process as much as I can to keep things fresh and fun for myself. But I really enjoy hearing a sample somewhere like keys, a quote or a rapper I want to remix, then I start working with that piece and see where it goes.

I'll mess around with the beat for a while and sometimes a track comes out. It can take one day, it can take months. Just depends.

Oldies are always goodies in my books and I have to mention your "bumps from 2014" mixtape, it truly is something special.

What inspired those little bumps? What were you doing back then? Also, can you remember the mood you were in when you made them?

I'm glad you like it haha. That was when I really had no clue what I was doing in terms of making beats, I was making all of those 'off the grid' in Ableton so I was placing drums in random places, I had no idea what bpm the samples were or anything. I really didn't know wtf I was doing, just going off of a vibe. 

My mood was really just being excited about making music, I was living in the basement at my mum's house blasting beats on the speakers all day.

[bumps from 2014] - https://soundcloud.com/sleepgodd/bumps-from-2014

You are also a rapper. My favourite NZ rapper to be more precise so thank you for the vibes you create. How did you find out you had it in you to rap and how old were you?

Damn, I appreciate that ✌️ I started rapping with a friend of mine, Jesse aka j cafe when we were around 20. We'd sit in my room smoking weed, and free-styling over beats on Soundcloud all night. 

Then we decided to make a track, so we found a beat and jumped in the closet to record some vocals on the laptop microphone.

We put it up on Soundcloud and I've been addicted to making music ever since.

Link to j cafe’s Soundcloud here - https://soundcloud.com/j-cafe

Cover art for Jetson’s 2019 rap release - bluntscraps

Album cover art by Takuroh Toyama

When did you first start rapping in front of others? What did it feel like in the beginning compared to now when you perform live?

I was insanely nervous the first time I ever did anything live and that feeling really hasn't left me lol.

Except now I know how to deal with nerves a bit better and actually enjoy the whole experience of doing something live.

I definitely think I'm a lot better now than my first time doing it, but I still kinda suck 😂 Staying on topic with your rapping, material-wise you have mad skills, your music is forever helping me chill out so thank you.

When did you start writing down your words and turning them into structured songs? Do you have any other artists that inspire your writing style?

When I was younger I really liked the flow of rappers rather than what they were actually saying.

Dudes like MF Doom and Earl Sweatshirt really influenced me at the start wanting to come up with lines that were catchy and different.

To form an actual track I usually just mumble over beats to get the flow, then I start placing words in the spots where I think they fit.

Does your family know you make music? If so what do they think of it, any dance parties in the Jetson Family Household? 

My immediate family all know and support my music. My mum used to have one of my tracks as her ringtone for years lol.

No jetson dance parties yet, but seems like every year more people in my extended family know about my music.

You were also a member of NZ Duo, Chill Children of which you rap and produce with yet another kiwi talent, both having low-key approaches when it comes to presenting yourselves through social media. What happened with that?

Me and J Cafe started Chill Children as a rap project in the early days but we moved to different places in the world and started doing our own solo projects so things sort of stopped happening with it.

I still credit those times with really getting me started on music though. He's still making dope shit and we'll probably link up on a track soon.

So then it became a sort of collective community, and through your Chill Children Soundcloud, you allow a platform for other artists to have their music heard.

Much Love on the concept, What inspired you to start sharing other artists music and what keeps you sharing? I'm very grateful btw, too many gems.

I work on music a lot with my friend emo the optimist (aka kodama) and we always wanted to run a label/collective kind of thing so we could release music from artists that we really liked.

After me and Jesse started doing our own thing, Chill Children seemed like the perfect place to start doing that.

It's one of my favorite things to work on as we have a hand in working with the artists on every release. I just love that we're able to share so much music that we really like with the world.

Check Chill Children here -

Bandcamp - https://chillchildren.bandcamp.com/

Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/chillchildren

Instagram - @chillchildren

Any new Chill Children material we should keep an eye out for?

We always have new music from new artists dropping so definitely follow our instagram/twitter if you want to stay updated on it.

We're currently working on a phonk compilation with guys like DJ Yung Vamp, Genshin etc. It's gonna be crazy 🤯

Back to your solo releases through your alias Jetson. What made you want to start putting out your material alone? Also, do you have a favourite Jetson release?

I really felt like I had to release music solo to see what I could do.

I've learned so much about myself through that process, became more confident and a better musician.

Probably my favorite rap track I've made is called 'Escape'.

Not many people have heard it but it's on Spotify and other places.

My favorite beat I've made is probably 'dylan rieder'.

Have to ask, are you working on any new releases we should keep an ear out for? If so, what can we expect with your coming releases?

I just released an album on Bandcamp called THROWED TAPES which was really influenced by DJ screw and other phonk producers.

I'm working on a lofi R&B tape for Bandcamp, a lofi beat tape, and I really want to release a rap EP.

Who knows when those will come out though haha

Taking it back a little to your rapping again I have to mention "Milk". What inspires the words in this track?

Also please share the story behind your track "Melancholy"? The words are somewhat mesmerizing, thank you!

With milk, I just heard the beat from bsd.u and really wanted to make something weird that just followed the flow of the beat.

On melancholy I tried to think about what I was saying a little more. The instrumental is so introspective and smooth I knew I had to come correct on it.

THROWED TAPES By Jetson, released August, 27, 2020

Musical Recommendations?

junyii - emo the optimist - knxwledge - j cafe - jesse james solomon - the smiths - dj yung vamp - shuggie otis - hm surf - alicks - MIKE - baccyard - meraki soul - steve hiett I could go on for days though lol

Creatives to keep an eye out for in music and art? Takuroh Toyama (photography) Moebius (visual art) Steve Hiett (photography/music) Any Last Words?

It really trips me out that people enjoy something I love to do so much.

So just thank you for vibing with me, I have a lot more to share ✌️

Support Jetson here -

Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/highimjetson

Bandcamp - https://jetsonbumps.bandcamp.com/

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/2bkf2PmiVyfCqg2uzIFIqJ

Twitter - https://twitter.com/jetsonbumps

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jetsonn/?hl=en

Milk by Jetson (Production by bsd.u)

[zombiebandido]

Can you recommend any Neil Gaiman to me, aside from Stardust or Good Omens? I’m not familiar with his work.

What's the best concert you've been to, if you've been? Jonas Brothers and Green Day.

What's the funniest screenname you've ever seen? I’ve been on the internet since I was like 9 years old, I’ve come across many.

Is there an animal you like that most people don't? I don’t think so. Most people don’t seem to dislike giraffes, which are my favorite animal. <<< Same. And doggos.

Is there an animal that you think is overrated in terms of how it's liked? No.

Is there a time period you think is underrated? I’d love to bring the 90′s back, that’s all. <<< I’m in.

What about music? Hmm.

Do you find yourself listening to music that's a bit more esoteric? No.

What are your three favorite books and why? I’m gonna give you my three current favorite artists instead: AJ Rivers, Willow Rose, and Mary Stone. They’re murder mystery and psychological thriller authors with tons of books and I’ve really enjoyed the many I’ve read from each of them.

What about authors? ^^^ Do you have any likes you wouldn't tell someone until you got to know them? Hmm. I think things would just come up over time, not because I’m waiting to tell them.

Do you have a favorite language? Spanish.

What about a place you've always wanted to visit? I’d love to be able to travel all over.

What's something someone does or says that just makes you laugh? Tell me a lame dad joke. I’m a sucker for those. <<< lol I am, too. I came across a compilation post recently on here that was pretty great.

Do goldfish crackers ever make you sick, or is that just me? I’ve never had that issue.

Do you have a favorite art style? No.

Do you have a favorite myth/fairy-tale? There’s several I find interesting and enjoy.

Who is your favorite person aside from family? Alexander Skarsgard. ;)

Do any of your pets (if you have them) have weird quirks? My doggo is very quirky. She’s such a goofball.

Do you listen to music from anywhere besides America? Some.

Have you ever "quit" a site and came back to it more than once? I don’t think so.

Do you have an "odd" fascination with anything? Hm. I don’t think I have any “odd” fascinations. 

What is the thing you want most at this moment? I’d really like to just feel decent today so I can enjoy a nice Easter with my family.

What was the last book you read and what was it about? I’m currently reading, “Cold Highway” by Mary Stone, which is the 4th book in a series.

What was the worst book you've ever read & why? I can’t believe I ever read the Fifty Shades of Gray books. *facepalm*

Do you have a favorite breed of dog or cat? Which? Labs and German Shepherds are awesome.

If you like any anime/manga, what are some titles you recommend? --

What do you think about school in general? I think it’s important to get an education. <<<

What's the hardest thing you've been through, & what did you learn from it? The accident that made me a paraplegic and everything that resulted from it ever since.

What are three "unrealistic" things you want most? Good health is the most unrealistic. 

What are some of your favorite foods? Ramen, garlic parm and lemon pepper boneless wings from Wingstop, and scrambled eggs and biscuits smothered in country gravy.

Where do you like to buy your clothes? Boxlunch and Hot Topic. 

Do you take any daily vitamins? No, but I definitely should be.

Who are three of your favorite fictional characters of all time? There’s so many to choose from, though.

If you had to give the world a pre-existing mythological/fictional being, what would it be? Superheroes, maybe? 

When buying Slurpees, if you do, do you get only one flavor or mix them? I always liked mixing Coke and cherry together.

Do you have a favorite 7Eleven food? I liked getting snacks and drinks from there, but I never ate their pizza or hot dogs or anything of that sort.

Do you have any desire to learn (a) foreign language(s)? Which? I’d just like to be fluent in Spanish.

If you could have any career, "realistic"-ness aside, what would it be? I still don’t know.

What are three memorable movies from your childhood? Mary Kate and Ashley movies, Disney movies, and The Rugrats Movie. Ha, I know I cheated by grouping some together, but whatever.

Do you, personally, put a space after ellipses, or not? No.

What do some of the things that inspire you have in common? I haven’t felt inspired in a long time.

Micky D's sweet tea, y/n/other? I used to like it when I was younger. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I had it, though. 

What are three of your best (non-physical) qualities? Blah.

What are three of your worst (again; non-physical) qualities? Blahhhh.

What is one of your firmest beliefs? My belief in God.

Do you ever question things until you're unsure of even the silliest thing? Sometimes.

Do you have anything that keeps you from doing something you'd truly enjoy? My health.

What are your three biggest pet peeves (personality-wise) in others? Arrogance, close-mindedness, and people who just jump on the bandwagon with certain things without doing their own research and forming their own opinions, not even really knowing what the issue is, they’re just following the crowd. 

Do you work to fix your faults? Or at least, admit to them? I’m quick to own up and admit to all my faults, but do I do I shit about them? ...

What are three of your best physical qualities? (NOT EYES!) Blehhh.

What are some of your greatest aspirations? I don’t have any. :/

How do you hope the world will change, if at all? I wish we could see less division and violence.

Who are three (fairly known) people you find very intriguing? Hmm.

What are three things that make you the happiest? God, my family, and trips to the beach.

What is/are your view(s) on god, religion, spirituality, or relations to? I’m a Christian.

Are you arachnophobic or scared of spiders in the least? YES.

Do you play WoW? What do you think of it either way? Nope.

What kind of computer do you have? Windows 7/Vista/XP/Other? I have a MacBook Air, which currently runs on macOS Sierra.

What are you good at? Nothing.

What career do you hope to have? I really don’t know. :/

Are you taking any interesting classes in school/do you not attend? I’m finished with school.

If you don't attend, are you taking any "lessons" for anything? Nope.

A book/piece that has had an exceptional impact on your life? The Bible.

If you know of pandora.com, what is your favorite station? Actually, I was listening to Pandora recently for the first time in years and came across this 90s, 2000s, and Today’s Hits station that I was really enjoying.

Have you ever "lost" a friend in any way? How did you deal? Yeah, I’ve lost a lot of friends. Some were harder to deal with than others.

Any music recommendations? Check out that Pandora station.

What are at least three of your biggest fears? Losing my loved ones, death, and never getting better/getting worse.

Most recently read book that you liked? I’m currently reading, “Cold Highway” by Mary Stone, which is the 4th book in a series. 

Do you have a piece of jewelry you don't like to take off? No. I haven’t worn jewelry in a long time.

Do you have a favorite quote? Why is it your favorite? I have many. Any odd pastimes you have? I don’t consider any of my pastimes odd.

Are you quirky in any way? (Name them please). My eating habits, for sure. I’m just really picky and particular.

Have any practices you aren't opposed to but wouldn't do yourself? Uhh.

Political standing?

Do you have any piercings/what do you think about piercings? I just have my earlobes pierced.

Do you have a favorite material? My soft, fuzzy throw blanket.

What are three names you'd name a pet if you HAD to get a pet right now? I don’t know. I’d have to see them and see what vibe I get.

Do you like to listen to dorky/amusing music? What would be considered dorky and amusing music?

Coffee vs. Tea vs. Energy Drinks: Order from favorite to least favorite. Coffee, energy drinks (only the Starbucks Doubleshot coffee energy drink), and tea.

Do you like more "fruity" sweets or "savory" sweets? Uhh, I like cupcakes, donuts, brownies, cookies, muffins, and cheesecake type of sweet.

What do you hate the most? My health, myself, and where I’m at in my life.

What genres of music are your favorite? I like variety.

Do you believe in true love? Yeah.

Do you believe in love at first sight? If yes, why? No.

What are some of your favorite clothing accessories? I just wear leggings and graphic tees.

If reincarnation exists, what sort of person would you want to be next? What are some things you believe strongly in? My faith.

Where's your favorite place you've been? Beaches and Disneyland.

What sort of books and movies do you like? Horror, psychological thriller, mystery, and YA for books, horror, psychological thrillers, drama, superhero films, some sci-fi and fantasy stuff like Star Wars, action, adventure, and romcoms for movies.

What's your favorite thing to do on a rainy Saturday? I don’t do anything different, but I do love when it rains.

Is there a book you've read that really touched you? Yeah.

Do you have a favorite artist? As in a painter? No.

PC or MAC? Mac.

What do you love doing? Spending time with my family, reading, scrolling through Tumblr, catching up on social media and trending topics, surveys, listening to ASMR, watching YouTube, watching my favorite shows, drinking coffee, sleeping...

If you could create the perfect world for yourself, what would it be? All my loved ones would be there, good health, money wouldn’t be a concern, happiness, I’d have a house on the beach, I’d be comfortable and relaxed and at peace... stuff like that.

Do you think that fate plays a part in people's lives? No.

Are you religious, spiritual, atheist...? I am a Christian. 

What are your opinions on the media? There’s the good and bad. It can be pretty brutal and problematic, for sure.

Do you think that people throw the words "love" and "hate" around too much? Yes.

What is your favorite piece of technology that you own? My laptop and phone.

What's a piece of technology you'd like to own? I have what I want at the moment. 

Are you afraid of technology developing to where we're too reliant on it? Oh, we’re waaaay past that point.

Does it bother you when people do things to fit in with a certain crowd? When they’re doing problematic things. 

Hot or cold? I’d much rather be cold. I like being wrapped up in a blanket, wearing hoodies/sweatshirts, and drinking hot coffee. Being hot is just miserable.  Do you think that Bzoink should extent the character amount for questions? I don’t use Bzoink.

Do you have a favorite combination of complimentary colors? A lot of colors look nice together.

Do you know why all the young people who have nice cars always look grumpy? I don’t think I’ve noticed that.

What's your favorite odd ice cream flavor? I don’t like any odd flavors. What’s with you and odd stuff?

Where do you like to get your ice cream? I’m not a big ice cream person, but the store is fine, ha. It was nice going somewhere like Cold Stone or something as well, though. I haven’t had ice cream in years, though.

What's your opinion on stereotypes/labels? Labels can be useful in some cases.

Do you ever use random word generators for Bzoinkoids?

Do you believe that history repeats itself? Absolutely. There’s proof of that.

Would you rather learn from your mistakes or just undo them? Ha, it’d be nice to be able to undo them.

What was the most interesting class you had in school? I always enjoyed English. And then of course I found a lot of my psych classes interesting. Do you write? If so, what? Nope.

Do you have a favorite website? Tumblr and YouTube.

Do you think that the quality of TV shows is going down? No, there’s so many good shows.

Do you have a favorite culture? Learning about different cultures is interesting. What was a story you heard as a child that really affected you? Hmm.

Who was your favorite grade-school teacher and why? Mr. McG, my 4th and then 8th grade teacher. He was everyone’s favorite. He made learning so much fun and really cared about his students.

Do you think that the world will end? How? Yes, how the Bible says it will.

Do you believe in Global Warming? Have you researched it? Yes.

Do you prefer piercings or tattoos? I only have my earlobes pierced and I have zero tattoos, soo I can’t say I’m big on either one.

Do you remember your dreams? Very, very rarely.

What we’re your thoughts about the book?

Some asks were answered already in this post already so I just smacked those asks in here at the part where I talk about the topic in question, which is why the answer may not 100% fit the question.

Massive “Seasons of War” spoilers below the cut:

First off, of all, this book read like GoT/any zombie movie ever. With the necromancers being like the white walkers, Vile is the night king and daugar are the wights. even with the necromancers crumbling away after Vile got killed Tell me I’m not the only one seeing that.

I think there was a lot of fanservice and some confirmed headcanons in the book, which I really liked. Saracen magic got revealed, there was a return to the Leibniz dimension, the Vile vs Vile fight so many wanted finally happened (tho that was kinda underwhelming) and the Dead Men returned which I’m sure made a lot of people happy. 

Ravel poisoning Saracen during the war and Vile being so powerful bc of being dead were two popular headcanons that got confirmed. And I am personally so happy that this book killed the ‘there is no sarcasm in the Leibniz dimension’ headcanon bc I bloody hated that.

Finally, Landy tries to please the old fans instead instead of what feels like purposefully pissing them off. I guess the phase 2 book sales weren’t that great so far (nice try blaming it on the pandemic, but no). 

I’m also glad that the romance in this book was kept to a minimum bc The Val/Militsa kiss in the beginning, yikes, fanfiction has better written kisses than that. And the the dialog for the lesbian love triangle (bc for some reason Ms.Wicked aka Laura’s self insert is Militsa’s ex??) was cringy and stiff as hell, it felt more like first graders trying to do a dramatic play and not natural at all.

Surprisingly enough Mevolent’s and Serafina’s relationship seems to be the most healthy and romantic in the entire series and I have no idea if that was on purpose or if Landy just has twisted views on relationships.

I however am actually kinda happy with how Mev was written. He was sympathetic and charismatic, tho some of the stuff he did doesn’t fit to they way he’s characterised when he’s on screen (I know he is probably lying 90% of the time he speaks, but still). Like, banning all languages apart from English doesn’t seem like something a man who cares about culture, literature and art would do. It also seems kinda stupid bc those languages will be forgotten eventually and if they need an old text translated no one will be able to do it. Also, why English? Isn’t Mev old enough that his first/original language should be Gaelic? So weird. I have the feeling this was mainly done so Valkyrie (and with that the audience) can understand what the people on the continent are saying bc I very much doubt she understands/speaks any languages apart from English. 

But I loved that Mev was also shown as insanely smart. He managed to outsmart Val multiple times. And I love how he doesn’t need his magic to fight, how quick and agil and skilled he is. So I take it that his fighting style is more based on agility and not getting hit, and he uses brute force only when forced into it (by Darquesse/the Unnamed). I was wondering about that bc his armor is made of leather and chainmail instead of metal plates which is considered light armor and not something a tank type of fighter would wear.

What really rubbed me the wrong way tho was when he was talking Tanith and Skul and more or less stated the war wasn’t a challenge anymore ever since Skul died. Or when he was talking to Val being like ‘you’re more powerful than I could ever hope to be’.It bothers me even more knowing that Val is based on girlfriend!Laura. Does really everyone and everything in-vers, even a big bad like Mev, rub Skul’s/Landy’s and Val’s/Laura’s ego? Big yikes.

Crespular Vies is surprisingly fun. At first I thought the two men going after the Obsidian Blade were hired by the Unnamed, but since that wasn’t the case, I think Crespular Vines hired them that so he could show up in time to save Omen and his friends. I think him opening up to Omen about being Skul’s former partner came too unprompted, too quickly and that he is trying to gain Omen’s trust so he can get close to Skul through him. I think another giveaway that that’s the case is bc one of the men Omen had to meet to get his brother back wore a Cleaver outfit and Vies gave that man probably the same reasoning Omen gave him.

That said Omen’s chapters were surprisingly enjoyable. By what I had heard of others I expected a sad sack that can’t fight worth a damn. 

I’m not found of the Temper/Kierre stuff, it came out of nowhere.

Val is overpowered AF, it seems that she can get on Darquesses level with more practise/learning how to keep the doors open. She certainly needs to be nerfed.

Also I skipped the Darquesse chapters bc I’m giving negative fucks about her and the plague doctor.

The last 10% of the book were too rushed and felt like half finished thoughts.

Also I was kinda really bothered by the citizen of the Leibniz dimension. They were cartoonishly racist and it was very pretty black and white for the most part AKA everybody good is in the Resistance and all other sorcerers are evil/corrupt. That is also shown by there being children in the Resistance camp while there was no mention of children in the mage cities. In reality, most people are fairly mellow and it’s just a small percentage that is either really good or really wicked. I would have liked to see more racism towards mortals in form of apathy or ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ like I’ve seen it from Serpine in DotL. You know, make it a little less black and white.

Also, I understand the mermaids, but the bats in Europe were random AF. Like, I would understand it if they were just in Romania/Transylvania as a nod to the Dracula-typ vampire legends originating from there. As a plot-device they weren’t really needed to keep the protagonists from flying bc the danger of getting spotted by necromancer by doing so should be enough of a threat to keep them on the ground. This might seem nit-picky of me, but the bats just seemed so bloody random to me like wtf????

And also bc I’m a slut for magical creatures, I would have really liked to see more of them than just daugar and giant bats. Some undead cut together and resurrected necromancer experiments would have been pretty cool tbh. Like whatever the hell this is.

Something like zombie bears would have also been acceptable, I mean, bears are fucking terrifying on their own, let alone when undead and decaying.

I’m kinda pissed at China that she wanted Skul to kill Nef, but it does seem in character. Of course I still don’t like it bc I headcanon as Nef, Eliza and China having been besties during the war (no matter what canon says, I’m keeping that headcanon). I’m surprised Skul didn’t let Wreath have Nef considering that. Then again, he thought Nef might still be useful. And he was right. I loved how Nef actually had an essential part in saving the world by throwing the bomb. So proud of my boi <3 But Skul refused to kill him even after that. Could it be that Skul is finally getting character growth and development? 👀

Aaaand, China’s continuing to be a tyrant. With Tanith’s sense of justices flaring up shown when he killed the city governor, Erato, and Nef being shown to go after people that betray him (Lorien) I think those two are being set up to go after China to kill her (and to probably kill Creed too). Imagine Eliza joining the team bc she want a piece of China too.

I feel sorry for Baron, but at least he got a few speaking lines this time around. Still, I really wanted Nef to save him. :C Like, he suffered so much before he died too considering he spend a year alone starving and thirsty with broken legs in the middle of nowhere wft, why is Baron getting fucked over like this? #BaronDeservedBetter2020 he is the only honorable person of all faceless followers and he’s the one that gets screwed over in every book he shows up in, why tho- 😭

Speaking of Nef, I absolutely loved him in this book, he was a delight and stealing the show whenever he was on the page, despite being used as  punching bag through pretty much the entire book. If people have always treated him that way I can see why he turned evil jfc that poor man. Despite that, he was still being such a clever, funny and relatable bae <3 He’s described as ‘cynical, and nasty but also kinda cheerful’ and as liking to ‘needle’ people (aka trolling and roasting) by Val and that essentially describes every shitposter on the internet ever. And I so loved the way he roasted Saracen lmao

And how he’s so clever, like the Lorien part was my favourite scene closely followed by how Nef essentially talked Remus Crux into getting himself killed, just 👌 smart snek boi, I love him <3 Also I hope he keeps poisoning everybody thoughts against Skul like how he had already been doing it to Tanith, he’s poison in human form and that’s just my jam.

That obedience bracelet was kinda fucked up tho.

Why does this thing even exist? Aren't electro shocks or any other form of pain enough instead of shutting his nervous system down/rendering him completely defenceless? I feel like some messed up mage 100% used it to keep himself (sex) slaves at some point in time :/ Landy might have gotten that idea from some fucked up hentai. Even the implications of the name "obedience bracelet".... I can’t be the only one that got creepy perv vibes from that thing, right?

Btw what the fuck happened to Harmony? You know, Leibniz Serpine’s girlfriend. She hasn’t been mentioned again. Did she die? She didn’t seem too found of him in DotL, was she plotting against him and he found out about it, killed her and fled the Resistance? Or did she die prior to him leaving and it was part of the reason he left bc she was the only thing that had tied him emotionally to the Resistance?? Or Landy just forgot  she existed. I would not be surprised.

Of course my biggest issue with this book was how he retconned Nef’s magic and how he took his trademark, his red hand, away, but more about that in a different post.

TL;DR: Nef was a delight even though he was done dirty. Mev’s scenes were a 50/50 split between good and bad. I actually liked the Crespulare and Omen chapters. The Unnamed was a disappointment. The last 10% of the book were to rushed and the final fights that were supposed to be the biggest were underwhelming. The rest is meh, didn’t really care tbh. Let’s be real here, I only bought this book bc Nef played a bigger role in it, anyways.

So,

The sky glowed light purple as Chelsea wandered down the train tracks to Red Sands. Our friendship had fizzled a bit over Christmas, while she engaged with a short-term boyfriend, but as summer approached we’d been hanging out again. She lived in a party house up in Rosemont that was covered in psychedelic paintings, and through her I’d been introduced to a local tattoo artist named Joe Nillo who specialized in avian artwork. He was in the midst of creating a trippy metaphysical version of Mother Nature, using one of her roommates as a model, and I’d written a glowing feature about him for the Star.

"There’s two quotes from that Joe Nillo story that I really love. There’s one where he compares watching Alex Grey work to ‘watching God with a sore back watering some flowers’,” I told Chelsea.

"Then the other was: ‘God made man in his image, but that doesn’t mean he looks like us and wears T-shirts. It means he’s a creator and he wants us to create.’”

Chelsea took a slug from the beer in her hand. “I like that. Except God is a she, for sure. The divine feminine giving birth to the universe.”

“I’ve always figured God would be a mix of both, like masculinity and femininity mashed together into a giant cosmic mix. Do you even believe in God?”

She shook her head. “Not God like most people understand it, but there’s definitely an energy that’s bigger than all of us. A power to the universe that’s beyond our comprehension.”

“I like that quote ‘a God comprehended is not God’.”

She turned to me, intrigued. “I’ve never heard that.”

“I picked it up in this comparative religions class in college. It’s this German hymn writer named Tersteegen. I get a kick out of that idea, that we can’t even try to wrap our heads around God, like we shouldn’t even try.”

“But we do anyways.”

“Exactly.”

As we rounded the bend towards Red Sands Chelsea was balancing on the track with her arms out, clearly tipsy. We’d been drinking for a few hours and had smoked three or four joints during that time. She always had killer weed. At least one of her roommates was a pot dealer, if not all of them, and they sustained a party lifestyle I was already too old for. At one point she lived with Blayne, who was now permanently settled out in Victoria, but now the house was occupied by her, her adorable friend Aussie Chris, and Joe’s ex Kylie.

“For me, it’s not even a choice,” she said. “I just have to create. My work just sort of flows out of me without my permission. I don’t even like thinking about a life without that creative outlet, without my writing, because it would just be empty.”

I nodded. “Plus you have that performance element. Most of my work is designed to be read in silence, but your poetry begs to be sung.”

She laughed. “I’m not singing for you tonight. Not while I’m drunk. I’d be too embarrassed.”

When we reached the opening in the forest that led to the beach, I walked in front of Chelsea so she wouldn’t slip out of her sandals as we worked our way down the slope. The horizon had darkened to a royal purple that made the ground lilac.

“So how does your friend feel about Joe spending all this time painting her? They broke up, right? Isn’t it kind of awkward he’s obsessing over an art version of her?”

“Kylie was kind of weirded out at first, but she gets it. His art is his whole life. And I think secretly she’s flattered. Even through all their fighting, he’s still spending all this time trying to get her exactly right. And I bet when he’s finished he’ll give it to her.”

“I saw the painting in his studio, with the universe growing out of her palm. Trippy shit.”

“Yeah, it’s dope. He’s been slaving over it for like a year now, adding details and layers and new elements. He works on it live at music festivals, feeding off the energy of the crowd.”

“That’s so cool. He told me he’s going to be at Kamp and Shambhala this year, and I’m going to both. I told Ed that this is the year I want to go to all the major festivals, become the resident expert.”

Chelsea took another long haul of her beer as we settled on a spot, right in the middle of the beach, to lay down a towel. This was becoming an increasingly romantic encounter and I was feeding off her flirtatious energy, even though I knew she was on the verge of road-tripping down to California for the summer. We’d established the platonic nature of our relationship many times, but tonight felt like a good opportunity to nuke that plan. I maneuvered my body under hers and she settled on my chest with her eyes heavenward.

“I heard you took naked pictures of Blayne here,” she said, after a long comfortable silence. “She showed them to my roommates.”

I took a sip of beer, not sure how to play this. “She asked me to do a photo shoot with her last year and there were just a few, yeah, that were nudes. She wanted to show off her new tattoo. I knew her from burlesque world.”

“And you guys weren’t even hooking up?”

“It wasn’t about that. It was the images I was most interested in. I feel like it’s more intimate than sex, letting someone see you like that. I actually wrote a non-fiction piece about it while I was at UBC years ago called ‘What I look like naked’.”

She rolled over, pressing her body tight to mine. She was close enough that I could smell the alcohol on her breath. “Have you done that a lot? Taken erotica shots for women?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think of them as erotica. I mean, I’ve sexted before and I’ve taken photos that are pornographic, but shoots like that are about worship. I want the women to feel worshipped. I want the images to reflect that. Reflect my obsession with the female form.”

She blinked for a long moment, her eyes in shadow.

“I hooked up with this girl in Thailand right around the end of my trip overseas a few years ago. She was a geneticist from Berkeley and she showed me these nude photos her boyfriend had taken of her in Yosemite Park,” I said.

“She took them in the exact place her mother had taken nude photos thirty years earlier. Her mother had told her that when she grew older she would want these mementos of how she looked in her prime, with the flush of youth and love. They weren’t crass or sexualized at all. They just showed this empowered girl mid-hike in love with her body and in love with life.”

“Cool.”

“I figure if that’s a gift I can give someone, then that’s pretty fucking meaningful. And honestly, those pictures of Blayne are some of the most beautiful images I’ve ever captured in my whole life.”

“I didn’t actually see them, but Kylie described them to me. She said there was one where you had her hold a little leaf to cover herself, Eve-style?”

I laughed. “Yeah, and I used the smallest leaf I could find. The whole shoot had a Garden of Eden vibe, an innocence to it. It was like going backwards in time back to Genesis, before the shame God rained down on us, and finding something pure.”

For a while we were quiet, as the wind picked up and pulled at our clothing. Chelsea kept her face against my chest, one hand stroking my ribs, as we segued back to the topic of God. I told her about my Christian upbringing, about Camp Qwanoes and how I lost my faith. I told her about how I’ve never really gotten over it.

“You’re going to find a way to believe again. I’m sure you will. I don’t know what you’re going to believe in, but you’ll find something.”

I sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

Then she was kissing me. We rolled together until I was looming over her on the blanket. She watched as I undid her jean shorts and shimmied them down her legs. Our mouths surged back and forth while my left hand stroked her legs, massaging them. I hooked her underwear with a thumb and pulled. When she began to moan moments later it sounded exactly like her singing voice, a rhythmic ululation.

“Hold on,” she said. “Hold on, hold on.”

I stopped, pulling my head back.

“I’m really into this and everything, but I can’t go there tonight. I’m sorry. My heart’s too raw, I don’t want to leave for California with any attachments, I just need to stop here, okay? Is it okay if we stop?”

I nodded. “Of course. That makes perfect sense. We’re okay.”

For the next few moments we fumbled our way through getting her clothes back on, my erection screaming disappointed. I stroked Chelsea’s hair and held her face with both hands. Sometimes I forgot she was a decade younger than me, but it was very apparent in these moments. She was a girl, open-minded but still inexperienced. I’d been consumed in the grey chaos of the Kootenays’ sexual landscape, but ordinary monogamy was the only mode she understood. It was either fall in love or don’t engage at all, which was how I used to be when I was her age. Her purity was heart-breaking.

“You’re such an awesome guy, really,” she said, apologetic. “It’s not about you.”

“Don’t say anything else about it. I understand. No worries.”

Chelsea stood up, cracked a new beer, and gazed up at the black silhouette of Elephant Mountain. She was visibly trembling. I wondered if I’d done something wrong here, if I’d fucked up our friendship irrevocably. Was everything going to be different now? It had felt right, connecting with her, but maybe I needed to fundamentally course correct how I approached relationships. I finished my beer, threw it down, then walked over to embrace her from behind. She sighed into my hug, pressing her face against mine. Then she turned to face me.

“One day I want you to take my picture.”

The Kootenay Goon

~Who Names The Colors~

Good Morning Lovers-I’m 12 hours early, because I’m takin my babies to the beach and am not sure when I’ll be back!! Are we all on fire from gucci? I hope this throws on some gasoline!! Scream at me, send me messages, songs,etc!!!

He’s much younger than her, but nobody is anywhere near illegal! Hope you enjoy!

I owe very much alot to @bleedinglove4h, @nocontrolforlouis, and @dirtystyles-who made the banner.

November 2014

"But that's not art, that's porn!" The girl in the front row was ready to stamp her foot, and there was part of Jo that agreed. Koons' Made In Heaven series was made to be deliberately pornographic. It was certainly made to titillate, but mostly to challenge norms, which made it art. Before Jo could say any of this someone spoke up.

"That's the point." Harry's lazy drawl tumbled out. She didn't look at him, though he had continued to sit front and center in her class. Jo did her best not to, she knew her eyes would linger and the distance she nearly crossed in her studio and had worked hard to reassert would be gone entirely. Today's class on eroticism in art, which she had taught matter of factly for three years, felt like a mine field. Jo kept her eyes off Harry though she usually liked to look at the speaker, she could not put her eyes on him without remembering all the other things she wanted to spread over him. Everybody else was looking at him, anyway. Maybe because he was relatively quiet in class. Harry responded when called upon, but Jo avoided that too. He still always caused a stir and Jo had found out from eavesdropping on her students, his art was known, and his eclectic style and perceived mysterious ways added to his mystique. Jo who had known him when, knew he wasn't being deliberately aloof, but was shy and introverted, and occasionally self conscious, saw his choices for what they were. He dressed the way he did, as armor, a display to appear braver than he was. Based on everybodies' obvious interest in him, it was working.

The girl who had spoken, Lara, Jo recalled, and her friend, Cecilia, loved to chat about Harry, and tried to catch his eye whenever they could. He didn't notice of course. Jo wondered if he was aware of what he looked like, the pull of his gravitas, and power of his presence. She'd think it was just her because of her 'feelings' if she didn't see everybody and hear some of the responses to him.

Lara looked completely confused. She was miffed that Harry had disagreed with her but Jo could see the excitement simmering that he was paying attention to her at all, that his eyes were on her as he participated in the discussion that she initiated.

"It's meant to be provocative, and you're lookin at it with today's eyes, which is anachronistic. This was 1990 or something. Seeing graphic sex was totally counter-cultural and pornography was a lightening rod. Like gay rights now- or trans issues.It would be like someone using a trans couple now."

Lara's face twisted a bit and Jo watched Harry bow up. "That would be porn too!" She said with barely concealed disgust.

Harry looked red in the face and Jo realized that the discussion had wondered into activist territory for him. She wanted to hear what he had to say, but didn't want him to blow.

"Harry is right," She interrupted with her professor hat on. "Though Koons is a controversial figure- it is a huge part of his schtick, the context of a piece can be what defines it as art. For instance, why is a collection of neon soup cans or spattered paint art?" Jo was trying to steer the conversation.

Harry's shoulders were heaving a little and she saw him shoot a not so nice look at Lara and pick up his iced coffee violently. She was actually glad for the turn of the conversation. Jo and Harry had a meeting today and the vibe of earlier was not how she wanted to go into office hours with him after their last time alone. Without a break in the tension, she knew she would be saying his name. But that crisis seemed to be averted. As was her very tiny, largely ignored fear that Harry may have noticed or liked Lara. She was lovely, he should like her, respond to her interest. Her little green eyed monster cheered when Lara again chimed in response to her question and put another nail in the coffin.

"Well, I'm not sure they are art!" Jo shamefully cheered inside at Harry's huff at Lara's statement.

His face twisted and it was clear he wanted to engage in the conversation again, but then another student started talking about abstraction and automatic art theory and the class had totally moved of the original topic but it was great. She was enjoying the ping ponging opinions in the classroom. She sat of her desk and smiled when by a crazy turn of events Lara was defending Warhol. Somehow Jo's eyes caught Harry's. He still looked frustrated but he  lit up a little at whatever he saw on her face and she nodded.

She was wondering if he'd want to talk about his frustration in their meeting- she wanted to. But it had little to do with his work or his final project that they were still trying to determine and everything to do with curiosity. Jo wanted to know things like that about Harry. When he was younger and would watch her, he would ask questions and she would answer, but they didn't talk about much beyond art.

They had reversed places, in office hours, he talked and responded to her questions and she listened. Harry had been an actively creating artist for years whereas Jo had been simply dabbling. The role reversal was exciting.  But Jo found that when he talked about his process she wanted to hear about his influences and his influences made her want to hear about him.

She wanted to talk about exactly why the Lara interaction had soured his mood so. Though the acidic tingle of the conversation meant Jo would be able to hear it rather than watching his lips curls and pout while he talked. That was helpful. Jo glanced at her watch, the smart one that yelled at her for sitting to paint for more than one hour at a time. Class was over technically and Jo would have let them continue talking about whether art could be high culture and pop culture at the same time. They had just gotten into Lady Gaga and Jo was living. And that was bringing them back to whether art could be low culture as well she could feel that they would get back to porn and erotic art and she was sad she was going to have to put an end to it.

There was another class who needed the space, but Jo was loving the class. Even Harry seemed to have perked up and was talking about Gaga and her relation to Warhol and she had to call time, because she could see the grumpy old lass who taught first year art history at the window. She, Victoria Persuppins, was not Jo's biggest fan, apparently she had an eye on Jo's work space and was happy to be the only female art faculty member, until Jo. She had especially side eyed Jo once she had started dating another faculty member and had a baby. How dare she! Jo wanted to roll her eyes at her displeased face. But instead.

"Sorry, guys, that is our time for today-though I could listen to you all go on all night!" She smiled huge at everybody, and they all smiled back, including Lara, but especially Harry. Jo had caught his eye when she scanned through the first time and she wanted to stay and look at his giant dimples. She made eye contact with everybody, but her eyes went right back to Harry and even when the rest of the student had moved on to looking at each other and packing up, a few even sprinting from class, he was still waiting for her gaze. Harry's eyes were glowing and she wanted to measure his asymmetry, the difference in his dimples. She loved that one was so much bigger than the other. It would make for a really cool cubist imitation, like the sides of his face could be pronated in. And she was still staring at him, and Harry her.

She packed up quick then. He came to stand by her desk while Professor Victoria, long may she reign, shouldered her way into the same area. Victoria was giving them a suspicious glance. Jo didn't like that one bit. There was a student waiting on Professor Persuppins too, a male one. It pissed Jo off that her age, and she would admit, looks, or maybe Harry's, made this bitch immediately look for impropriety. There had been none. Not for a year and he had been nowhere near her professionally then.

Jo looked up with a squished brow when Harry said "Professor Smith, our meeting?" and he looked like he was afraid of her. It's an act. "I'd really like to retake the test, please." He's laying it on thick, but bitchfessor looked impressed and Jo wondered how he knew that would work.

She played along, "I have office hours, and I need a real reason I should give you another chance, not just because you need me to, Mr. Styles. Everybody had the same opportunity and time to study." And Victoria nodded at her, and her mind was blown.

They got a safe distance down the hall and Jo looked at Harry and they both burst out laughing, startling the student sat outside another office waiting.

"Sorry!" Harry stage whispered, and gave her a boyish giggle as he opened the door to her office. She fell in and Harry closed the door behind her and pressed his wiggling nose into her back and the shift in mood was sudden like the earth had tilted on its axis. For just a second, she stayed there and pressed back into his nose, and he coasted it up her spine. The shiver that he caused, and neither of them can pretend it didn't happen, because he was basically against her from ass to shoulder, and it's not chilly, was like biting into ice cream. Her teeth hurt. Jo breathed one breath and smelled her office smells, the old books and wood, and remembered her office, and the look on her colleagues face and her umbrage at Victoria's assumption. Jo took a step forward and put the desk between them.

To break them both out of it, and to remind herself of what just happened and how it can't happen again. "What was that? Didn't know you were also an actor." And she forced a giggle to glance over the fact that he just touched her and she let him, loved it.

"Oh," he let out a breath and pursed his lips. Jo saw a quick shake of his head, and he sat in the chair across from her and she copied him and tried not to shift around to much. Harry was fixing his skinny jeans, and she busied herself putting papers she had collected away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pull the crotch of his pants down.  Fuck. "Oh," He started again, "I had her my first semester, and I was totally a fuck up for the first couple weeks. I'd just discovered girls--"

"What do you mean, just discovered girls?" Ethan was well aware of girls for ages before university.

"What I said. Most of college, I was kinda confused, because like I noticed earlier, when all the boys started talking about girls, that I thought they were nice, like the nicest to look at, but I really liked a boy." He was looking at her dead in the eye. Like he was daring her to respond to him, but he was gripping the sides of his chair, so Jo knew he was afraid of it to. "But I wasn't the best student in Professor Persuppin's class, she doesn't seem to believe in second chances. Got the lowest grade I ever got in her class. Thought I'd just play on her perception of me." He still looked worried about Jo's perception of him now. She was still going over his revelation.

"Oh!" Jo thought and it escaped through her mouth too. "Oh!" She said again. His cheeks pinked up, and Jo reached across the desk for his hand. He pried it from where it lay and she got herself together to speak, while she took it. "Sorry, I was just putting two and two together to make four. That's why Ethan never had to stop bringing you round, cuz you weren't attracted to me." She boggled at that, all evidence to the contrary now.

"Well, I thought you were very pretty and the nicest, but when I really like someone, I, like, can't seem to see anybody else when I'm feeling that. And it's why I was so crazy first year, this whole new world of flavors and shapes had opened up, and I wasn't hung up on anybody anymore. I really liked it, sampled a lot. Did that most of that year until it was normal and not so revelatory and exciting. Dated but hadn't really been hugely attracted until," he looked at their joined hands. "But I'm still me, and when I find one person who is compelling, that's where my attention or whatever fixates." And he made long eye contact, and Jo heard what he wasn't saying clear as a bell.

"So you had a boyfriend?"

"Not really, He didn't like me the way I liked him. But it went on for me for ages. I was just finally over it when I got to uni, and I got a bit drunk during freshers and this gorgeous girl kissed me, and I, just really liked the feel of her in my hands." Jo slowly released his hand at that. Because they had wandered into dangerous territory and she needed a break. Also, the thought of his hands on anybody else made her feel like Tinkerbell, only able to feel one thing at a time, and this one matched the fairy's outfit. Harry turned his mouth down and made a face like the displeased one in class, without the anger.

"Oh!" Jo said again, like an idiot. "That's why you got mad in class, at Lara."

"Yeah, Lara!" he said with loathing. And Jo was sure that even it he thought she was the prettiest girl in class, in all of the school, he wouldn't go for her. "She's a prig, and maybe a little homophobic. Saw that enough in college! At first, it was confusing for me. It seemed totally normal to me, to be attracted to boys, and then I realized I was the odd man out and that I was supposed to hide it. And I'm horrible at hiding things, especially my feeling. I have a glass face. I wanted to tell everybody, especially when the attraction seemed returned, but you can't do that around most people and it fucked everything up.... It's why," and he shut himself like a door slam. "Anyway, I can't stand it. The idiocy just makes me crazy, and I am around it less so have no tolerance. And how do you get to third year of an art degree with such a tiny mind? Arts always attract the outsiders and especially lgbt folk." He looked genuinely offended and curious.

But Jo knew enough about not being what people expected and narrow minds in every place from her own life to no longer be surprised, "I dunno, she seemed to be opening up at the end. Martha's explanation of automatic art was really good, and Lara seemed to be on board, at least with Expressionism. And she bought into pop art thanks to Gaga." And Jo is laughing at his face.

"That is supposed to be the other way around!" Harry looked offended.

"Oi, now you are a being a snob!" She was laughing in earnest now.

"Me a snob!" He gave her chicken neck, "And did you just Oi me, Jo?"

"I did, I definitely did!" She was giggling into her hand and he was grinning and his hand was still on the desk and he reached for her fingers and pulled them from her mouth.

"Why do you do that? Cover your mouth when you really laugh." His face was like a child looking at a magician's handkerchief, trying to see the secret.

Why did she do that? Her mother telling her that she laughed like a donkey brayed stuck out, and a comment Ethan's dad had made about her teeth. But she said, "I dunno. Habit really."

"You shouldn't! I remember that was the first thing that made me love your house, the way you and Ethan laughed together. Always thought he had such a fun laugh. I realized, like last year, it was yours. Shouldn't cover your joy."

Her heart was pounding. It felt like he hadn't blinked while he complimented what she perceived as a flaw. Jo was certain she hadn't blinked. She knew that she had crossed from attraction to infatuation, but was digging in her heels like a horse at a cliff side to stop from going farther. She had been discovering more and more between them, shared interest, and likes, and influences, and it was getting harder and harder to hold her horses.

The subject needed to be changed. "What did you need to meet with me about?"

"Oh, I wanted to set up for you to come see what happened with my amber lady in grains. And I started something new and she's in it too. That one, I may be able to manage to come in with. But it would be great if you could come see them." He looked really hopeful.

She was gonna dash those against those cliff side rocks to avoid going over. "I really can't, not for a long time, we have department meetings and a function before finals."

"Oh," his face popped like a helium balloon. "One is a final. You sure you can't give it a look?"

Jo could not go to his studio, full stop. "Not till after finals Harry, sorry! Can you send me pictures?"

"Yeah, but I don't think the flesh in the new one will translate." He was pulling on his bottom lip worriedly.

"I can try to imagine." Jo was absolutely not going back to the red room to discuss flesh. Talk about no trespassing. That was a big huge glowing danger sign.

"Alright." He gave in, his hopes deflated. Harry stood and Jo followed him to let him out. He closed the door when she opened it, not hard but definitively.

"Har-" She started then switched to "H!" Jo did not want to have to rebuff him. She didn't want to rebuff him.

"No." He said, "I need to say this!" And he hugged her tightly with affection instead of passion, "Thank you! For not freaking out."

"Oh!" Jo said dully again. Her vocabulary elluding her. "Well, if you are amazed that Lara has gotten this far into a art degree and can be a homophobe, how do you think I could get a professorship?" Because she was old, way older than him, she reminded herself, wrote it on the inside of her forehead.

"I knew I could trust you, it's just always scary. You made it not scary." He looked like he wanted to do something, his hand came up and hung in the air like a spider's web. Jo was definitely caught. But instead, he smoothed her hair behind her ear and gave her an open grin before leaving. She closed the door behind him and leaned against it with her head pointed up and eyes closed.

Jo was sorry that she wasn't able to go home and put Zoe to bed so she could paint his smile, those asymmetrical perfect dimples. Instead, she called Audrey and checked in, getting herself together for her department meetings, and talk3: as much as you could on the phone to a three year old before bed. Thank god for video chat, or she would not hold that firecrackers attention long enough to say goodnight.

When Jo came out of her department meeting actually smiling, Victoria was way nicer to her, even called her by her name instead of professor. She hated that is was because Harry laid himself out like Isaac on the altar, but she was thankful to him.

Speaking of him, when she looked at her phone, she had loads of texts from him and a desperate message to please come to the studio. Harry was frenzied like the last time she daydreamed about him filling his mouth with her quim. Jo knew she should not go, that that room and his creativity was her very own hamartia. But she pointed her car there anyway. Rationalizing as she drove, she was his advisor. It was her job, her job where she had earned more respect. She was a professional.

When Harry answered the door, his eyes glowed so bright they were nearly teal, they were definitely a turquoise, and he was in jeans with a blue and red plaid with only one button done. Jo was feeling less professional. He didn't greet her, but turned as soon as the door was open knowing she would follow. He might as well have been playing a flute for all she was able to turn away, and she slithered after him.

The backbeat was even her favorite Tori Amos song and she recalled him singing along long ago in her studio. When she had asked about his knowledge of Lilith Fair rock, he had shrugged and said his mum liked it at one point and he had continued to like it much longer. It seemed an odd interest for a 17 year old boy at the time. But now it just seemed like another thing they had in common.

Like the other day when he had gone off in office hours about his frustration with figure drawing. "My favorite artist is Frida Kahlo, and it makes me crazy, because if I can't paint anybody, I'll never be able to draw myself. Ya know, like, I love landscapes and what they can say, evoke, but people are where you can really explore emotion. And yourself. If I can't draw myself, do I know myself?"

Jo almost swallowed her tongue. She went through an entire phase in art school, a lingering obsession with Frida and her own frustration with not being able to really draw herself. She could only draw the 'her' her parents wanted and the one that Ethan's dad wished for. Now, she painted women, but couldn't find their faces. She'd never connected the two until that moment.

At the time, because she was already trying to untie all the threads knotting themselves between them whenever they talked, she had simply said, "I love Frida too. She's probably my favorite. 20th century anyway." Of all time, in truth, but Jo didn't reveal that, couldn't present him another string to connect knot.

He'd smiled and kept talking about their fave and she stayed enraptured. Like she was now.

"She's part of the landscape, but not, like she is rising from it, and I just love the way the skin looks, Jo!" No title. "It looks real, and like its moving so it has emotion. I feel like I've found something. Something that is mine. I just need you to tell me though if it isn't good. If I'm just in a frenzy. Ok, Ok?"

He looked back at her then, but her eyes had just found the new one. She had looked at his defined woman in Amber and was impressed by how she turned out.

But then she saw the other one, and Jo was rising from the plain too. Jo was levitating. It was so good. She could see all the emotion and movement of life in the painting.

That wasn't what had her off the ground, not just his growth. The woman, her body, it looked just like Jo's, the body Harry had never seen. It was there. The strands of the earth she came out of even looked like the stretch marks on her lower belly. And the jut of her breast, she saw them daily in the shower, covered them when she crossed the mirrored wall in the bathroom. But her reflection in the painting, through Harry's imagination, did not cover herself, she had no reason to. It was the most beautiful thing Jo had ever seen.

"Har-Harry!" She got out. And he froze. She knew what she was saying. And he knew too. Harry looked up to be sure she meant it.

He crossed the room like a barrelling patrol car at a clear green light and wrapped his huge hands around her face, cupping her ears and kissed her. There was no hesitation. No sweet lip lock to test out the waters. They were boiling, and they both plunged in.

His mouth slanted right immediately and she fit him in counterpoint and opened her mouth to his tongue when it slid in against hers. The lick, tangle, and taste of him, of the hazelnut coffee he had been drinking, was a jolt of caffeine to her veins. Her skin was alight, like it was in the painting. Like she was on canvas. She thought he set her skin to dancing with his eyes and the smile on his mouth, but it was nothing compared to his kiss.

Jo kept going, pressed her pedal to the floor and him to the wall behind them. She was kissing the hell out of him and her hands were inside his plaid, her fingers trailing his chest. Her nails found his nipples and she scratched him. She'd never done that before.

Harry moaned and shifted, it brought his leg forward a bit, and Jo pressed her mons to his thigh. He flexed in response and Jo gasped. Harry pulled back and was about to reverse them when a canvas fell like hollowed skin to the floor. That stopped Jo, because they needed to be careful with his creations.  It was just a blank one, could be wiped clean. She looked up at his blown pupils and his wide open shirt, and the red lines from her nails. Jesus, had she caused all that?

"Professor?" Harry said and it was a dunk in a glacial pool. Jo turned and was just about to run for the door but she had to tell him one thing. He needed to know. Had to know.

She couldn't look at him, over her shoulder, with as much force as she could, she said. "They're good Harry. NO! They are fucking great!" and she made her escape.

The Ideal Outfit Based on Your Zodiac Sign

So, who here is into reading their horoscope? Now, I’m sure we all know someone who is super into it and reads theirs on a daily basis— I am not that person. However, I do find myself getting sucked into articles such as “Find Your Ideal Honeymoon Destination Based on Your Horoscope” and “What Starbucks Drink You Should Order Based on Your Zodiac Sign”. I mean, they’re kind of fun and entertaining, right? Plus, I can almost guarantee that everyone at least knows what zodiac sign they are, so why not pair that with some cute outfit ideas to capture your zodiac’s essence?

After making the decision to write this blog, there was no turning back. Thus, began copious amounts of research on each sign. The sources of my information were www.horoscope.com and www.astology-zodiac-signs.com. If you’re into reading your horoscopes or learning more about your sign, these are great starting places. Now, let’s get into it, shall we?

Capricorn – The Goat

Dates: December 22-January 19

Colors: Dark green and brown.

Key Traits: Detail-oriented, responsible, and hardworking.

(Dress: Amazon, shoes: Zappos, jewelry: Etsy, bag: Michael Kors)

Due to the hardworking nature of Capricorns, it is important to have a bag that can take you straight from class to work. A backpack bag is perfect for on-the-go tasks and won’t slow you down during a busy day; you will sometimes forget you’re even wearing it! Furthermore, a spacious design allows for any essentials you’ll need throughout the day. A flowy tank top dress is the perfect base to layer on gladiator sandals (which, may I add, contribute to the “strength” element of this zodiac). Lastly, an intricate, layered necklace finalizes this look by sealing in the gold accented accessory theme. The end result? A perfect, detail-oriented ensemble that’s fit for a Capricorn!

Aquarius – The Water Bearer

Dates: January 20-February 18

Colors: Silver and light blue.

Key Traits: Independent, original, and humanitarian.

(Top: Polyvore, jacket: The Jacket Maker, jeans: Express, shoes: Adidas)

For this zodiac’s originality, an eccentric look is a must. So, I went for something that is original, yet wearable on a daily basis. This incomparable silver bomber jacket is clearly the most eye-catching part of this outfit, so you are sure to stand out from the crowd. Paired with silver accented tennis shoes to match, this trendsetter look is swoon-worthy. A mixture of textures is created with a baby blue ribbed tank tucked into some distressed black jeans, which helps balance out this look. Moreover, this outfit is super comfortable—always a plus in my book!

Pieces – The Fish

Dates: February 19-March 20

Colors: Purple and sea-green.

Key Traits: Compassionate, intuitive and artistic.

(Romper: Lulu’s, sandals: Kee Shoes, clutch: Contrado, rings: Etsy)

For the Pisces, The Little Mermaid immediately came to mind. With the key characteristics of being compassionate and artistic, Ariel’s musical abilities and considerate ways came to mind. In addition, who else would use a fork for a brush? That’s intuitive art right there. To channel your inner mermaid, this sea-green romper with a twisted belt detailing is flawless. Additionally, some light purple heels match Ariel’s color theme, as well as the Pisces’! Of course, I just had to add some fish scale inspiration with a perfectly matching clutch. The shiny texture also gives off a “wet” look—score! To further this theme, I added in some silver midi rings for even more sparkle.

Aires – The Ram

Dates: March 21-April 19

Color: Red.

Key Traits: Courageous, independent, and impatient.

(T-shirt: Nordstrom, shoes: Converse, leggings: JCPenny, jacket: H&M)

This is probably my favorite outfit of them all, and I’m not even an Aires (I just love me a good band tee)! Prior to writing this blog, even I knew that Aires are known for having a “fiery” personality. Low and behold, their color is red! With splashes of red in the t-shirt and shoes, this outfit is given a bold and daring personality (much like an Aires). Due to their slightly impatient nature, a comfortable outfit is key. Enter: leggings. Furthermore, an old band tee, jean jacket, and Converse give this look an old school, “cool girl” vibe—perfect for this zodiac.

Taurus – The Bull

Dates: April 20-May 20

Color: Pink.

Key Traits: Dependable, elegant, and devoted.

(Blouse: Lulus, shorts: Missguided, sandals: Lulus, necklace: Bija Bijoux)

Despite their symbol being a bull, this zodiac has rather elegant characteristics and mannerisms. Therefore, I put together a more girly, feminine look. Even for someone who isn’t the biggest fan of pink (me), this outfit is just too adorable to pass up. A cropped, ruffled crop top is a fabulous statement piece to have handy in the summertime. Paired with some white high-waisted buttoned shorts, the torso is balanced out. Keeping with this light, romantic theme, some blush pink lace-up wedges were added. As for the jewelry, I decided on a crescent necklace that reminds me of a bull’s nose ring so, naturally, I had to.

Gemini – The Twins

Dates: May 21-June 20

Colors: Yellow and light green.

Key Traits: Affectionate, curious, and kind.

(Dress: Forever 21, sandals: Lulus, bag: Hot Topic, glasses: Sunglass Casa)

What a ray of sunshine! After reading up on Geminis, it is clear that they are typically “old souls”. Therefore, this 70’s-inspired floral dress just screamed “Gemini” to me. It also serves as a romantic look, bridging back to this affectionate zodiac. For the first statement accessory, cat eye sunglasses further exemplify the vintage vibe. Another characteristic of this zodiac is curiosity, leading to their love for curling up with a good book. Needless to say, this rare “once upon a time” purse is an excellent find!

Cancer – The Crab

Dates: June 21-July 22

Colors: White and violet.

Key Traits: Emotional, loyal, and intelligent.

(Two-piece: Lily Boutique, pumps: Shiekh Shoes, clutch: Zatchels)

For the Cancer zodiac, I put together a vintage, 20’s era outfit based on their personality traits. To establish this feminine style, lace embroidery is an essential. Thus, a white lace monochromatic two-piece is absolute perfection for this sign. Furthermore, a touch of violet is added with a simple cross-body bag. Nude pumps pair flawlessly with this romantic look without being too overpowering and distracting from the intricate detailing. Plus, these pumps  also help to elongate your legs (a great bonus)! Finally, I couldn’t resist adding in a ribbon for your hair to finish off this vintage Cancer attire.

Leo – The Lion

Dates: July 23-August 22

Colors: Gold, yellow, and orange.

Key Traits: Bold, humorous, and creative.

(Dress: Rockray Clothing, sandals: Aetrex, earrings: AliExpress, purse: Ebay)

Hit the beach in this fun, lioness-inspired look! Leos are known for being humorous and creative, so a laid-back 70’s themed outfit was my goal here. This loose, brightly colored yellow sundress with bell sleeves effortlessly captures this essence. For a lion’s mane appearance, aim for some voluminous, beachy waves and statement feather earrings. This ensemble is finished off with a woven summer-ready handbag and some beaded sandals.

Virgo – The Virgin

Dates: August 23-September 22

Colors: White and beige.

Key Traits: Organized, kind, and practical.

(Top: Athleta, blazer: Lyst, pants: Neiman Marcus, shoes: Dillard’s)

Moving on to the Virgo! To emanate from their organizational qualities, a striped shirt is the building block of this outfit. Virgos are all about functionality. Now, what better way to go from work to play than having a trusty blazer handy? Leather pants also contribute to this dual purpose outfit with their ability to transition from the office to happy hour. Lastly, flats were chosen to complete this look due to their practicality. No one wants to be slowed down from task to task, especially a Virgo.

Libra – The Scales

Dates: September 23-October 22

Colors: Pink, blue, and green.

Key Traits: Cooperative, intelligent, and gracious.

(Shirt: Yours Clothing, necklace: Accessorize, capris: True Religion, shoes: Bohme)

Next, we have a style that is built with Libras in mind. With intelligent and gracious qualities, this zodiac is gifted at finding the ideal outfit for every situation. Due to the fact that their symbol is the scales, a balance between elegant statement and basic pieces is attained to encompass this attribute. A breathtaking statement necklace with blues and pinks does just the job for an otherwise casual outfit. These light, pastel tones mix and mingle with the feel-good vibes of summertime! Combined, these items make up a sophisticated, polished look for tactful Libras.

Scorpio – The Scorpion

Dates: October 23-November 21

Color: Scarlet.

Key Traits: Brave, stubborn, and independent.

(Top: Polyvore, skirt: Lipsy, purse: Venus, heels: Larizia)

For this zodiac, a dark, classy ensemble perfectly captures their essence. This flowy top adds just a pop of scarlet to pay homage to this sign’s symbol: the scorpion. With independence being a key trait, a straight-from-work look was achieved with a classic pencil skirt and gold accented pumps. Alas, we mustn’t forget about their bravery! To capture this characteristic, a striking leopard print purse was added to finalize this outfit.

Sagittarius – The Archer

Dates: November 22-December 21

Colors: Light blue and black.

Key Traits: Humorous, creative, and idealistic.

(Skirt: H&M, shirt: Asos, heels: Express, bag: Nicole Miller)

Calling all Sags! Last, but certainly not least on the list. After studying up on this sign (and being one, myself), I decided to go for an outfit made up of timeless pieces. Of course, these pieces consist of a plain white tee and some black strapped open-toe heels. Then again, a bold leather skirt packs a creative, unexpected punch to the look. To incorporate a light blue hue, this textured rectangular bag is an impeccable addition.

Here ends my list of outfits inspired by your zodiac. Do you agree with these picks? Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Paige

August 15th, 2018 Mix

Happy Thursday! I hope you enjoy this mix, I had a lot of fun curating a wide variety of songs that span over several different genres. Spotify Mix 1. Changes by Langhorne Slim - This songs moving acoustic sound and light hearted sound really correlates with the meaning behind it, the flowing feeling of life changing and the confusion of stepping into a new phase of life and being in the dark, but being ready for it at the same time. I think that this song really emotes the way that people grow apart during important shifts in life and how there is both beauty and sadness in this, it can be viewed as both because it represents growth and maturity. 2. Peach Scone by Hobo Johnson - Quite possibly the weirdest mix of musical genres in a song that is very strange but so much fun to listen to and very easy to sing along to also. Johnson combined a conversational spoken poetry and letter style message to someone he is in love with unrequitedly and adds a really cool guitar rhythm and beat to the back to turn it to a funny song. It makes you think about a first love or crush that you've had and for some reason can't let go of. I definitely never thought I would be into a song like this but the easy going vibe to it and the reoccurrence of the "maybe it's the thought of not being so alone" adds such a powerful to the center of the song. 3. The Record Player Song by Daisy the Great - The harmonies in this song immediately attracted me to this niche little artsy indie song that describes the ways that girls with a certain aesthetic try to portray themselves as being elusive and musically inclined, but in all reality are just misunderstood and a little self centered who don't really understand themselves. I think its so important that there is a song that pretty much outlines the "manic pixie dream girl" trope while validating that there is an issue with categorizing girls into one big lump even though they too are confused with their identity. 4. I Can't Tell What The Time Is Telling Me by And The Kids - I was so surprised to discover this perfect blend of rock and pop and that it was a sound that wasn't overplayed at all, mostly because, well, this band is pretty low key on the alternative rock scene. The musicians' proficiency is equivalent to the song's meaning which is always really cool to see with young bands. The essence of the song combines a person searching for deeper meaning with the current generation and the problems that lie within it concerning poverty and the epidemic sweeping the country; but it also talks about caring about someone while being unsure if they reciprocate feelings, smaller topics embedded within a bigger issue. 5. Bad Girls by M.I.A - This was a fun choice for me because I am in love with the show "The Mindy Project" and this song reoccurs in several of the episode when the main character, Mindy, is going to work and doing something that exemplifies strong female power, which we always love to see. I think that MIA the artist always adds a badass female persona to her music and opens up the possibility that not just male hip hop artists can be badass and have that gangsta style in their music. The beat along with the synth sounds is really catchy and great to pump up a night or a morning workout. 6. Art School Wannabe by Sorority Noise - I think the title basically sums up what the song is all about: basically the trope of having a tortured artist life and having to realize that maybe suffering doesn't always have to occur as much as artists think it needs to in order to create "good" art. I like the fact that a post punk garage rock band can laugh at their own perceived artist persona and that maybe life is a combination of highs and lows and the happiness can be portrayed within music too and can make enjoyable content as well. From a review of the song, a critic compared the song to the expression, "You can wear black on the outside and still be happy on the inside" which describes it quite well. 7. Hannah Hunt (cover) by I'm With Her - I am pretty sure I included the original song by Vampire Weekend in a past music mixtape, but my mom played this version in the car one day last week and I completely fell for this one. Something about the female take on this male to female love song made me think of it in a completely new light and the use of the mandolin and violin as well as the acoustic guitar completely transformed the song from a "feels" indie slow song to a folky indie song that breathes new life into it. The mandolin solo in the middle of the song combined with the violin solo made me feel l was kind of in the middle of an empty field listening to it. 8. This Is The Last Time by The National - Completely not acoustic or uplifting, in comparison this song is all about something ending and not wanting it to, but knowing it needs to because it is unhealthy and addictive. The National has come to my attention more and more recently because of their ability to include so many pieces of a band and make such simple sound at the same time, with such precise musical technicality. Berninger is such a proficient songwriter and is able to put a name and metaphor to feelings about relationships that us mere mortals are not always able to do. I think it's interesting that he has said in the past that he is very influenced by the writings of great poet Walt Whitman, as his influence is very clear in The National's song lyrics. 9. Table For One by AWOLNATION - This song comes from AWOLNATION's most recent album that was released a few months ago called "Here Come The Runts" which includes a lot of rock heavy ballads with very different storylines all centering around feeling like the smallest person in a group and being an underdog all the time, which I think is very relatable to a large demographic. I liked this song in particular because of the large swell of the chorus and it's sound shift in comparison to the very chill verses. The song's meaning is not that hard to understand from just listening to it once or twice, being that a summer love occurred and now one half of the equation is done with it, leaving the speaker at a "table for one". 10. Lady Grinning Soul by David Bowie - This romantically styled piano ballad is the last track off of Bowie's iconic album from his persona's Aladdin Sane perspective, which is a lot of people's favorite and has since then turned into kind of a cult classic in terms of music. The title, of all things, perplexed me the most and upon further inspection I discovered that a "lady grinning soul" refers to the feminine characteristics of a man's persona, which is so modern and ground breaking, especially for 1973 when this song was released. Bowie often talks about having a fantastical and idealized romantic obsession with people which didn't always pan out to be releastic, which totally correlates to the eclectic sounds of his music. 11. The Little Things That Give You Away by U2 - Taken from a commenter on Genius Lyrics this song is about: "Bono surviving an accident; a car accident it seems. He’s leaving clues all along the album about “a near death experience” that he has stated having no much long ago." This made me definitely think about the song in a different light and added much more depth to it for me. It has a classic U2 original sound that only the voice of Bono can give to a song, especially the deep writing that is focused in on a specific experience but can translate to much bigger world issues at hand, in this instance, communication and the trouble with people not being able to speak to each other normally. 12. Smoke Signals by Phoebe Bridgers - I could totally see this song being written as a poem first, being primarily that it follows like a storyline entirely and tells about a person reaching out constantly to the speaker in several ways in metaphor of a smoke signal on a beach. Bridgers voice is so soft and beautiful and makes you lean into the meaning of the song and listen carefully to every word there. I'd also like to point out the main use just of the bass guitar, a very quite additional guitar and the swell of string group that swells during the chorus which adds a very cinematic experience to the listener. She later revealed in an interview that this song was written to an ex lover and about their relationship and the complexities of it which is very heartfelt and personal. 13. Wes Anderson by Alex Lahey - Titled as the iconic director of our time who comes out with quirky adventure and life stories, Lahey created her one Andersonian love story within this song and brings us through a journey of her own with someone and the small things that one does with a lover can be the most special just because it's with that person who is held to such a high importance in our live's at the time. This song is just very simply written and laid out, not having to figure out that much to enjoy it because it's clear and concise about being a love song and it doesn't need to do anything more than that to be good and appreciated. 14. Big Sis by SALES - Very much reminded me of the beginning of Sonia Richardson's "Ruin Your Night" except instead of swelling and becoming a rock song, it was content with remaining a bedroom pop/dream pop style of song which I really liked hearing. I think the meaning behind the song can head in a few different directions but I heard it as being with someone who isn't content with themselves because they are trying too hard to be like someone else, most like their "big sis" which is well understood due to the repetition of that line which is pretty crucial to the song. But I think that the minimalistic style of song that is becoming popular in the indie world is really likeable. 15. Gap in the Clouds by Yellow Days - A singer and bedroom producer, artist Yellow Days came out with this song when he was only seventeen years old which is in itself impressive, but the fact that the music is so soulful and vintage sounding made me appreciate his youth behind the song even more. The artist explained about the song that, "It's about being in a depressed state for so long that your sky is full of clouds, but then that special someone makes a gap in those clouds and they can light up your world again" which is so beautifully put because it definitely describes love's ability to influence such a diverse range of music, even from someone with so little years on the earth. 16. Two Slow Dancers by Mitski - This track was released just a few days ago and I was so excited about more new music from Mitski, an amazing artist who is coming more and more popular on the alternative scene, having toured with Lorde on and off throughout the past year and doing shows on her own as well. This song lives and breathes nostalgia and the feeling of being young and slow dancing in a school gymnasium and wanting to recreate that feeling with a new love no matter what age you are. The feeling of being the only people in the whole world while in a dinghy school dance is so special, and as older people trying to stay the same is so difficult and sad. Needless to say, Mitski got it perfect. 17. 4am by girl in red - If a song were to correlate to anxiety and the overwhelming feelings one gets while trying to fall asleep, this would surely be that song because it's exactly what it is. Another great example of a young artist who is breaking onto the bedroom indie pop scene, girl in red describes how the feeling of thinking too much can cloud judgment and create this bedtime hysteria and creating an insomnia nightmare in such a short song. Songs like this are so good to listen to in order to gain the insight that music doesn't need to be seven minutes long to give a deep meaning into someone's emotions and thoughts. 18. Feeling Whitney by Post Malone - I'm not going to lie, when my little brother first put this song on in the car, I did not expect much from it because of his pension for heavy rap music that breaks the bass stereo system, but I was completely taken aback and completely shameful at my snap judgment just because of the artist that had created this song. Malone's completely unabashed story of his drug addiction and the struggle to try to find good influences who could help him get through a hard time in his life tugged at my heart strings so hard. The really interesting chord progressions totally impressed me along with his super folk inspired voice which rivals sounds that come from The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons. I would like to hear more of this from him for sure. 19. Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem - At first, I was convinced this song was about losing someone that the speaker was in love with but didn't appreciate fully and now wasn't able to talk to. In fact, it definitely could be perceived as a multifaceted song in terms of meaning, pertaining to losing someone and how everything that happens in life is colored gray by the loss of that person because it can't be shared with that person anymore. Upon research and reading I found out that this is actually about the death of James Murphy's therapist of all people, and then all of the details of the song really clicked into place for me and reached new levels of love for this track. I think it's so important to write about losing people that aren't just family members or loved ones, maybe just people you grow to care for platonically or professionally. 20. Los Ageless by St. Vincent - I have featured St. Vincent many times on my mixes by now because she deserves that and more at all times in her musical career. I believe that she has released this track as a single recently, as I have heard it a couple times on the radio recently and it has become one of my favorite car bops to dance in my seat to and then realize that the person in the car next to me is looking at me singing and dancing in the car. But although it is very much a dance electronic song, it still goes to the regular depths of meaning that all of St. Vincent's songs have, as it's about the complete juxtaposition from her other favorite city to talk about (New York). The you in the song can refer to losing a lover, a friend, a place, youth, fame, money, etc... I love this because the interpretation is left up to the listener. Thanks for tuning in, see you next week! Julia 

Behind the Scalpel #2 - Dar’s journey with cover design

Hey there, traveler!

Today I’d like to share a personal story concerning both the woes of being a writer, my mentality on self-publishing, and our current project. This is the story of how I created the cover for our WIP.

To tackle a few things heads up, I’m not a complete amateur when it comes to graphic design, however, I am only scraping the surface. I’ve never received any education in graphic design but it became a kind of guilty pleasure for me as soon as I found the magic of MS Paint, so I’ve got some years of self-education, reading up on the topic and long hours of just d*cking around with graphic software behind my back.

Given that, I’d only recommend doing the cover yourself if you know what you are doing or you don’t have any other options – me personally falling in the latter category. We are trying to self publish with little to no funds, to begin with, and thus have to make some tough decisions. One of them is the fact that we can’t afford to hire a professional cover designer, so I either do it myself or not at all. Since giving up is not an option, I decided to do it or die trying. Here’s how I did it.

Basically, I created the first version of the cover before we finished the first draft (not the first English draft, the first draft in our native tongue.) All I knew that it’s shaping up to be a desert fantasy, so I need something with that feeling. So as every newbie would, I hit up google, typed „desert fantasy art” and clicked images. I found a nice looking art, added a black border, slapped a title onto it and this is what arose from that witches’ brew of a design:

So, there are a couple of problems with this. First, it is boring. You look at it, admire the art for a splinter of a second, and go on about your business. Second, which keeps coming back, is the genre. This one looks like a Jane Austen romance when it should scream epic adventure and magic and stuff. The third problem was the method I acquired the art because Google Images is rarely a place to browse for royalty-free stuff you’d use on a book cover. But I was content with this for a while, shoved it into a folder on my laptop, and kept writing the book.

Months pass by and we both started to lose enthusiasm and needed something to fire us up once more. I remembered the rush of excitement when I designed the first cover, so I got on my trusted laptop to do it all over again – this time trying to follow the law and use royalty-free images. But learning from the first cover, I wanted to do something exciting, something someone would click on out of curiosity, so I started browsing digital artworks on Pinterest. This is actually good advice for anyone looking for inspiration – but inspiration only. Don’t go wildly right click-saving things from there, or you run into the royalty thing again.

What I found were fractals. If you’re not familiar with the term, fractal arts are procedurally generated, mostly geometrical images which look trippy as fuck and if an artist gives their personal touch, they can look spectacular. To give a great example, I searched for royalty-free (see? I’m smart :3 ) fractal images and found this:

As you can see it is really eye-catching and I haven’t seen this style used as cover before, so I thought I can make something different. I got to work, added shaded borders, and a more fancy title and created cover v2.0.

Way to go! But there were still problems with this. We realized that one of our strong suits as writers is painting a vibrant world that’s easy to imagine yourself into. By using a lot of different senses in the descriptions one could almost feel the heat of the desert, the cooling sea breeze from the port, or the smell of roasting shashlik – but this cover didn’t give off this vibe. It felt cold, brittle (hence the silver) so it still needed a few changes. That was pretty easy to fix, I just tampered with the color temperature and voile! Cover design v2.1 was born:

Now, this was hinting at the right vibe, it looked almost like a quicksand swallowing the title which was all nice and good, but this was about the time we run into a bit of advice we then saw everywhere – research the market. Now, dear readers, what the fuck does that mean? It took me a while to figure out, but what people mean by that is to go on Amazon or Barnes&Noble or wherever you satiate your bibliophile thirst and look at other successful book covers in your genre. So I did, browsed Amazon best-selling fantasy books for hours, and noticed a few trends. First, most fantasy books didn’t use a fancy font, those were mostly for romance novels. The second is, pretty much every fantasy (by that I mean the myriad of Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. Martin and Anthony Ryan books) used some kind of image in the middle instead of just the title. Armed with this knowledge I jumped back on GIMP and got to work once again.

Now it was looking more like the big names, an epic but simplistic font, a thing in the middle (in our case a two-headed viper bracelet, a piece of important jewelry from the book) and even a quote. Now was the time for me to send it to my taste-testers: my younger sisters, both book nerds in their own genre.

And they told me they liked the previous font better. They found the snake and the quote a nice touch, but the font was too bland. Because at this point I had no idea who to trust with advice, I rushed to correct it and come up with a new, better version combining those two elements. So after a bit of designing again, cover v2.3 got birthed into this shining world.

Looking fancy, eh? This was the time I learned how to create a golden text effect without photoshop (yeah, I forgot to mention, photoshop would eat up, chew, and spit out the 4 GB ram in my 6 years old laptop, so I use GIMP instead). This was almost perfection… almost. We were content with this for a few weeks, right before we ran into several niche fantasy covers we quite liked that were more on the simplistic side, with a dark background, a fancy title and a beautiful border frame. We thought if it caught our eyes, it would catch other people’s attention too, so the designing bug bit me again and I opened GIMP for the umpteenth time.

The idea was simple: create a black background with the fractal as a border, an artistic title and maybe some extra touches. This was the point we regressed back into the black and silver style because black and gold was too mainstream. It was more difficult to get right, but eventually I came up with this:

This time I was sure I hit perfection. It reminded me somewhat to Game of Thrones, it had two viper heads and a simplistic style. Around this time we found our first somewhat useful beta-readers, so I was brave enough to show them. The answer was in line with our reoccurring theme of being unable to paint a clear genre image: they thought it looked like a contemporary girl novel with some spooky snakes for a bizarre cavalcade effect. I’m gonna admit it, it felt like shit but being an author is about constant growth and learning from bitching beta-readers, so I decided to do some more research. I found a couple of useful resources, to be precise, a blogpost from Neha Yazmin (link here: https://nehayazmin.blogspot.com/2020/05/Book-cover-design-tips.html ) and a youtube video by Just Angus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgJV8wGkcI). They’re both useful and entertaining, so go give them a look. We realized looking beautiful to us means nothing if people pick up the book and think about the wrong genre, thus they will be disappointed by the book by default. We had to make it look like an adventurous fantasy set in a magical desert, so I had to change my entire mindset.

I was browsing Pinterest one evening and found the magical looking Arabic calligraphy, precisely Take the Leap by Everitte Barbee. With a rush of enthusiasm, I grabbed the image and ran away with it, not thinking about some important things, and created this.

Now things were shaping up to be almost pitch-perfect. The font was fancy but fantasy-esque, the style was eye-catching but minimalistic, it screamed middle-eastern and it was unique. But remember the important things I shrugged off? One of them was the royalty-thing again. Turns out this image (or to be precise the ink and paper version of it) was already used in another book cover. Also, Arabic calligraphy uses words from the Quran. Now, I’m not a very religious person and I know next to nothing about Islamic religion. As much as I adore ancient Arabic aesthetics, I think it’s common courtesy to leave things you don’t understand a word of alone and not use them obliviously in commerce. But I believe I hit something on the head with this silhouette filled with fractal art, so I searched for some free stock images until I found what I was looking for. So, at the end of this surprisingly long wall of text about almost a year of redesigns and trial-and-error style approaches, I’ll leave you with our final cover (for now at least). I hope you found it entertaining and somewhat useful, if you have any questions or even critique, please, let me know in any way you prefer. Bah, it was nice to get this off my chest. Stay sharp, travelers!

Dar

 The current version of our cover:

Learn Log #1 - Pixel Art Basics 1

So this was the first week of learning pixel art! This week I had a look at some very broad concepts such as Size, Style and Lines. I’ll start with the first two topics because I feel like they’ve got quite a strong connection.

Size & Style

So if you’ve ever looked into pixel art you’ve probably heard of terms like 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit but you might not be sure what that exactly means. These were various processing architectures involved in old school video games. I’d say an allure of pixel is the recreation of old video game styles so these terms reflect their respective art styles. Basically, these terms explain ‘Oh I’m going to go for the style of the NES’. Here’s a great Reddit post basically explain it better than I ever could. You could also argue that it connects to the size of the sprite be it 8x8, 16x16 or 32x32 - some people use the terms as such and so will we in this post.

So that’s all well and good but how do you pick a size for pixel art? Well, from my learning this week not only does it depend on the style/complexity you’re aiming for but also your skill level and sprite concept. As we just discussed video game styles play a big role but if you’re not aiming for anyone style then concepts such as colour palette and outlines do too. For example, if you have a limited colour palette or need outlines you might need a slightly bigger sprite to fit in the detail you need - which brings us to concept. If your sprite needs to be expressive, for example your game is story-based, you’re going to need enough size to fit the expression. A trick to figuring this out is making the smallest detail or the facial expressions as small as possible while maintaining your preferred style/level of detail and working out the size of the sprite from there. Of course, this all connects back to skill level. If you’re not that comfortable with pixel art don’t start with big 128x128 sprites. Start with 16x16 or 32x32 first. These larger sprites also make things much more difficult to animate and are a lot easier to mess up.

Going further into style, I want to quickly discuss 1-bit pixel art or minimal colour palettes. 1-bit pixel art is a two-tone style meaning it only uses two colours throughout the piece. This is an interesting style to work in because you have that new level of restriction. For example, how do you convey different materials with only two colours? The use of patterns is really useful for this but they can’t be too confusing or complex also. In general, these minimal colour palettes make animation a lot easier but can make readability a little difficult if you have a lot of things going on.

That’s the last thing I want to touch on - readability. Whenever you make pixel art make sure it can be read - especially if it’s for video games. Making interactable objects outlined or enemies a specific colour is a great way to do this. Readability should be the first priority.

Practice #1 - Resizing Logos

These 16x16 logos are based upon the Barbarian and Warlock class symbols in Xanather’s Guide to Everything. I tried using them to follow TutByKai’s tutorial on sizing symbols from 16x16 to 32x32 but they proved to be to difficult for me to size properly. Here they are for you to check out though! In the end I managed to practice sizing in practice #2 and #3.

Lines

When I was studying about line-work this week I found it funny that rather than learning what to do, I learned what not to do. I think this is because we all have a rough idea of what a pixel art line should look like but not what makes a line look wrong or weird. The main culprits for this are called ‘doubles’ and ‘jaggies’. Note that these are not rules you have to follow and if using doubles or jaggies actually helps convey meaning then you can definitely use them

Doubles are when a line doubles up, usually as it curves or turns an angle. This can make the line weird as it begins to look more blocky or the extent/where the doubles are is inconsistent (for example shifting between inside and outside a circle). A good fix for this is anti-aliasing but that will be discussed shortly.

Jaggies are when pixel don’t within an established patter for example if you had a curve going: 2pxX 1pxY, 2pxX 1pxY,2pxX 1pxY, 3pxX 1pxY, 2pxX 1pxY, 2pxX 1pxY. That 3px line is going to look weird (also sorry couldn’t be bothered to make a quick reference picture online). It may work for irregular terrain such as nature but with man-made objects and more spherical/round objects it just looks strange.

Anti-aliasing (AA) is a pretty useful tool. You can think of it has a half-pixel. However half-pixels don’t exist so it’s really just a pixel roughly the colour between that of the line and the colours next to it. This is useful for fixing up those doubles or making more detailed curves/angles. You’ve got to be careful to not to overuse it as otherwise things will just begin to look messy. Also don’t just stick it across the whole outline - remember this is to be used like a half-pixel for curves. Don’t forget, just like more complex colour palettes you have to animate anti-aliasing too which makes things more difficult.

Finally, I have a few tips for outlines. Firstly, outlines must reflect the nature of the contents (point object = pointy outline). Secondly, fill in any voids within the outline as it can be distracting. Outlines can also play a big role in the way your character is seen by others and how they pick up on the nature of the sprite.

Practice #2 - Robert

So I made Robert yesterday for my practical this week. I’ve presented him here in stages of the spriting process so I’ll just talk through each stage.

So in this stage I started with a 16x16 canvas. As you can see Robert has very little detail due to the small canvas size and 1-bit colour palette. You can kind of tell he’s a robot from his head, if I were to just have him in 16x16 I might want to make the shoulders or a bit blockier to represent that. I did try to do that on the outer pixel of the hands but they kinda felt like wings. When you do pixel art in this smaller sizes each pixel and colour becomes much more important.

So in this next one, while I had the same colours I resized him digitally to 32x32 and added in a lot more detail which you can clearly see. His antennas are now away from his head to make it clear that his head isn’t just a weird shape. I couldn’t do that in stage 1 because 1px there was about 1/6 (?) of his head width. Now that it’s 1/12 (?) I can separate the objects while making it still feel attached. These antennas had some extra detail thrown in but I really like the details on the face. It starts to portray a personality - I think the mouth looks like a mustache so that with his name makes him feel like some kind of ‘Dad-bot’. Also I was able to make the body feel a little more robotic while still remaining humanoid

This stage I just adjusted the the two colours and chucked yellow into the palette. It definitely gives off a completely different but I feel that maybe I should have used a different yellow colour as it is a bit bright. The addition of yellow does make the waves above Robert’s head look like electricity rather than some sound waves or something else which shows how one colour can change a lot.

Finally, in this stage I dived into the colour palette. This change meant I could directly attach the antennas again and also add some detail with slight colour changes (including some shadows below the head and inside the body). Overall, while I think stage 4 looked nice I am particularly fond of stage 2 and the ‘Dad-bot’ vibe it gives off. Sometimes less is more.

Practice #3 - Joey

So, I loved making Robert so much I wanted to try again with the colours flipped. This time I was inspired by Brandon James Greer’s 1-bit video to make a character portrait.

So since this was going to be a portrait I needed to start with his expression as it was important I had that nailed down. I wanted to go with a confused look with one eyebrow raid and the other furrowed down but when I added the mouth it seemed a little weird. I decided to keep it though because I wanted to see where it’d go. The expression took up quite a bit of space so I didn’t have much room for other stuff in the 16x16 canvas.

When I resized Joey’s expression I didn’t do it digitally like I did Robert’s body. In stage 1 the facial expression took up a large portion of the canvas size and if I resized it then that some issue would exist. Instead I decided to redraw the face slightly sized up. I wanted the mouth to show teeth so it needed to become 5px tall rather than 4px. Based off this I made the eyes 1px higher and wider to a 2x3 size. I decided to keep to keep the eyebrow width but I did lengthen them so they’d retain their expression. I also spread out the elements and added a nose. As I gave Joey a head I realised that his expression gave me a classic ‘Wolfenstein’ or ‘Doom’ portrait feeling so I went off that and gave a similar haircut and armour in the style of the original Doom. It looked pretty good although if I was to leave him in this style I might make the armour less intricate and focus on adding texture to the different components. Additionally, as there it’s 1-bit the teeth did look like giant lips.

The piece really came together when I added colour (I was too excited to do a minimalist palette style). I tried to keep the colour palette down to a minimum so the piece didn’t get too overwhelming. For example, the armour only uses three shades of green - one being the outline which is also used for the eyes and mouth. I actually didn’t choose black for the mouth because it contrasted too heavily with the white which took attention away from the rest of the picture.You’ll also notice I used a double on the left eyebrow. I did this on purpose to make the right eyebrow point seem thinner and more furrowed downwards. I tried a couple of iterations of the eyebrows and I think I liked these the most.

In this stage I just added some more detail including texture, the scars and some shadows. Basically, I chucked out any hope for a minimalist palette. I added the shadows with another layer that had a reduced opacity which worked ok. There’s not much to say about this other than I feel like this stage had a lot more depth and it was definitely my favourite of the four. Sometimes more is more.

Learning Resources

My studying and this blog post wouldn’t have been possible without these amazing resources. Go check them out if you wanna learn some stuff about pixel art!

What makes art 8, 16, 32, 64 bit?

What Size To Make Pixel Art by MortMort

What Size is Pixel Art? by Brandon James Greer

How to Choose Pixel Art Resolutions by TutsByKai

Creating Pixel Art from an Object by Brandon James Greer

Pixel Art 101: ‘Styles’ by Pixel Pete

Pixel Art 101: ‘Game Boy’ by Pixel Pete

1-Bit Pixel Art Techniques by Brandon James Greer

Minimalist Palette in Pixel Art by Luis Zuno

Constructing Lines and Curves in Pixel Art by Brandon James Greer

3 Pixel Art Techniques/Common Mistakes (Doubles, Jaggies & Outlines) by MortMort

Basic Anti-Aliasing for Beginners by MortMort