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svsss-fanon-exposed · 6 months

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Honestly it may not be your intention or of other people in the conversation but some comments around the sqq light eyes post have really rubbed me off the wrong way. I'm saying this with all the respect in the world and acknowledging your post about how you don't condemn harassment, but even before with the curly haired binghe and overall in danmei fandom it feels overly judgey towards westerners. Like these physical characteristics being a result of "whitewashing" when there's examples of official art or asian artists (the ZeldaCW art you linked) being some of the earliest examples. Most of us don't know Chinese, many don't even speak english and have to rely on MTL. I really appreciate this work you're doing and going to the original source, but I'm not into the gatekeeping tone some people are taking. Like, AHA! I knew this and actually all the people who don't are stupid for regurgitating fanon like it's canon. I'll be honest, there's plenty of fanon I don't like nor agree with, and I also make dumb mistakes myself (it's me, I'm one of the people who'd forgotten the hand scar came from jin lan woops). Sorry if this is too long or overly rambly, also feel free to ignore it. I mostly wanted to share this as a PSA that tone matters, be kind to others, and that preserving canon is not justification to regard people who go with fanon with a high brow. Regards, a non white non asian ESL 3rd world country svsss fan that's been in the fandom for a couple years (I point that out because I've seen way too many times any criticism be attributed to butt hurt white americans).

Thank you for your message!

When I make my posts here, I try my best for a neutral, informative tone, but between neurodivergence and linguistic issues, I’m not always certain exactly how it comes across. Perhaps a bit too blunt, perhaps the academic or formal tone I often use may seem stuck-up… really, I don’t have the best sense of it, though I do try quite hard.

I want to provide information here. This is to provide information for a few types of people: those who wish to maintain canon accuracy, and those who wish to know where an idea might have originated whether or not they care about canon accuracy in their own works.

Some people will hold canon as the most important. Others don’t particularly care. Some prefer fanon. How one interacts with fandom is entirely their own decision. My blog here isn’t trying to tell people they’re wrong. Or tell people that I’m better than they are, or that those who didn’t know something was fanon, or who enjoy fanon, are stupid or otherwise less than those who follow canon.

Fandom is supposed to be fun. I do this because I like analyzing things. Because it might be nice to have a record of details to see where trends came from. Even some things, I haven’t been sure about myself until doing the research, and some I’ve been mistaken on too!

Things can get muddled up. Especially when the wiki is updated with fanon information. It’s not hard for something to be thought of as canon when it isn’t, especially if trying to quickly reference something without reading the book again. No one is better than anyone else for what they do and don’t know about a fictional book.

And when it comes to design choices, there’s no need to jump right to whitewashing. A knee-jerk reaction is common in fandom spaces to anything that may be “problematic,” but sometimes a design is just a design. I only went into more detail on the post regarding LBH’s hair texture because that’s something i have experience with, and it’s not something widely known about that there are differences.

At any rate, there’s no reason to be unkind to others. People should be having fun in fandom. Those who wish to stick to canon should respect those who don’t care to, even if it’s not for you.

My posts are not meant to create a moral judgement against anyone.

If you’re using it for anything but information, then you’re using it the wrong way.

I don’t have the best eye for tone, but I will continue to do my best to maintain neutrality, and informativeness. Everyone who makes conversation on my posts, just because you knew something and others didn’t doesn’t make you better than them. It just means you knew something. Just because you didn’t know something, that doesn’t make you worse— it just means you didn’t know.

Let’s not moralize this sort of thing.

Enjoy the novel, enjoy the adaptations and interpretations that you like.

#psa #answered #this also got rambling #really I try not to come off as high and mighty #aside from my intro post which was a joke and playing into peerless cucumber persona #but I don’t actually know if I do a good job at it #I also cannot fully tell if anon refers to my own posts or just to comments on the posts themselves #again I will continue to try my best #sometimes I am not the greatest about getting my intention across #be nice to each other #at the end of a day it’s a silly little novel #just have fun and don’t nitpick other people too much since their enjoyment doesn’t really have to do with yours

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bee-ina-boat · 6 months

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hi friends :D! i FINALLY finished my concept art for mythos!Jon and im so happy with him- look at him. plese. i spent so long on this

the sketches were all of my initial concept art for him! he's. so fun to draw. even if it did take me a bit to figure out how to do so. i love his hair ;_; <3

overall his design is very inspired roman Catholicism but. like. more fun? idk lol i just vibe with it. might make the tie darker? and the gloves with his cassock might look good with another color? eh! whatev, i might change it i might not- but this is it so far :D!

for context the Magnus Mythos is an au where the fears are gods rather than paranormal entities like in canon- here is my initial post on that if you want to know more! or if you just want to see art of the Ceaseless watcher :3!!! im really so happy so many of y'all seemed to like it ;w; it makes me feel so warm aa ilu all <3

putting all Jon's lore stuff under the cut!!!

highly recommend you read the linked post because alot of this probably wont make much sense otherwise dsjgfdjgfdb-

so, as a young child Jon grew up neutral on religion. his grandmother didn't favor any one of the gods more than the other and that sort of thinking carried over to him for a good while

when Jon was 8, he had a close encounter with a creature born from the Web: a giant spider that would tell you your fate (and possibly offer you a gift) if you gave it a sacrifice

Jon had found an old fable book with a map to it's nest. of course he had no intention of following it, just enjoying the stories inside! but a thief snagged the book from him- and upon realizing what the book led too -took Jon with him as his sacrifice

when they reached the nest after a long journey, the thief presented Jon to the spider. but the spider did not take him, it took the thief- and the little Jon could only watch, frozen in terror, as his captor was eaten by the giant spider.

after it finished its meal, the spider told Jon that his fate was of a cosmic importance, "I'm quite excited to see how this plays out," it said.

naturally this was kinda traumatizing for the child that literally just wanted to read but ok :l

the whole experience brought jon a phobia of spiders, a distrust and fear of strangers, general paranoia, ptsd, and a rejection of the webs power and the concept of fate as a whole

now- its not uncommon for some people to reject the powers of certain gods? some things born from their power are quite unpleasant, so there are steps one may take to protect themselves from the powers of one or more of the gods. (its complicated to explain but i hope that makes sense-)

suffice to say jon does NOT want to be controlled or have his fate decided by anyone or anything like that! being THAT important is scary!!! so he tries very hard to prevent any powers of the web coming near him- and he also tries to keep a low profile so he can live a calm and peaceful life without. yknow. being an important part of the fate of the entire bloody world.

he turns to the cult of the Beholding for salvation. after all, its whole thing is being aware and knowing things, and jon wanted nothing more than to know what wanted to hurt him and what didn't.

moving to London, he joined the House of Magnus, and went from a devotee to a researcher.

he became friends with Tim: a man who turned to the beholding out of his own rejection for the Stranger, and Sasha: a young woman who'd worshipped the beholding and worked at the house of magnus her entire life.

things were great for a while, and then the head archivist, Gertrude Robinson, disappeared.

normally the previous archivist would choose someone to pass the position down to, but her disappearance meant that the current head of the church, Elias, would have to choose instead. and he gave the position to Jon

it was absurd! Jon didn't want the position of archivist- everyone knew about the prophecy and Jon certainly didn't want that much pressure on him!!

not to mention- it became pretty much expected that Sasha would become the next archivist! given her history of devotion, her skills, all the work she did for everyone, hell- Gertrude even mentored her for half her life for god's sake!

Elias's reasoning was that Gertrude had broken the Archivists oath: to always protect and preserve knowledge. he claimed that the Ceaseless Watcher itself had requested Jon rather than Sasha, as Gertrude's choices were not to be trusted. and it was not up for debate what their patron wanted...

so there was no choice. jon was terrified, sasha was devastated, and tim was furious for them both.

the ceremony went on, jon was given the Watchers Crown (the sacred headpiece of the archivist) and then he went down to the archives with tim and sasha as his chosen assistants.

Elias sent down another down with them- Martin, a librarian who devoted himself to both the eye and the web. Jon was not so keen to be trusting a devotee of the web, especially with all the stress going through his head at the moment- so he wasn't very warm to martin.

as the archivist- jon does his best to do the work he was given, frequently requesting help and teachings from sasha as she clearly knew more about this than him. all throughout, he squished any spider he found. and stubbornly refused to give in to any possible notion of him being the one from the prophecy. he couldnt be. he refused it.

but the will of one man is far outweighed by that of a god, and at some point he just might have to accept the responsibility he deep down knows is his...

AAAAAAAAAAA THAT WAS ALOT- if you read this entire fucking essay then just know i love you so so so much and i am hugging you tightly ;_;

thanks for dealing with another round of my brainrot!! im thinking of working on sasha, martin, or the web's design next :3

#my art #myart #religious themes #religion tw #tma #magnus archives #the magnus archives #magpod #tma fears #the fear entities #tma au #the magnus mythos #the archivist #jonathan sims #tma jon #jon sims #jarchivist #digital art #long post

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mareenavee · 10 months

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5 Random Things

Ah yes a very clear title for you hehe. Another not-entirely-tes tag game, which, since I've been relatively deep in the hyperfocus I thought I'd surface and do a couple of these before diving back in lol.

I was tagged by @dirty-bosmer to share 5 random things I enjoy! (Their post is here!)

I will tag @paraparadigm, @changelingsandothernonsense, @thana-topsy, @archangelsunited, @snippetsrus, @kookaburra1701, @friend-of-giants, @elfinismsarts, @thequeenofthewinter, @rainpebble3 and anyone else who'd like to write one of these!

Chicory Coffee which baffles a few people in my household, and I enjoy that too. I've been calling it canis root tea for funsies because I feel like that's basically the tamrielic equivalent. There's really nothing else like it, I don't know how to explain why I love it so much. But I have that as frequently as regular coffee despite less caffeine -- I have the kind that's mixed with regular coffee. Otherwise it'd be caffeine free lol

The Legend of Zelda which is my favorite game series of all time, followed close by Elder Scrolls, of course. The reason is because I've been playing these games since the days of the NES lol though as a small child I had absolutely no idea how to puzzle through that first game. It still brings me joy though. Tears of the Kingdom is very fun, but I think my favorite remains Breath of the Wild.

Mechanical Keyboards. Even inexpensive ones. They are extremely fun to pull apart and repair or redesign, plus I love the noise feedback. I do less typos on these things, plus they're pretty. What's not to like, honestly? A very writerly/gamerly thing of me to say.

Dungeons & Dragons. Oh look another game on the list, hehe. This one sort of combines everything I love about video games with everything I love about storytelling. I've been a DM before and seriously enjoy the world-building aspect and the absolute chaotic nonsense that players can create. I might enjoy being a pc more for causing said shenanigans :> Also, dnd dice. Shiny 🤩

Sketching. I don't share my art on my blog because I usually draw Pokemon if I'm being honest LOL but the act of just sketching for the sake of sketching or learning more about drawing is super soothing to me. No pressure to share them, no pressure to get them right. I just draw because I can. Though sometimes I will write apologies in the margin if a sketch turns out really fucked up. :> But even then, it's all part of the process.

#AskMareena #sorta :>#tag game #not tes

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ryuichirou · 3 months

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Replies

A bunch of shorter replies today! Starting with a question about commissions and a then slowly diving into shippy territory…

Anonymous asked:

question for the chibi commission

if we’re adding more characters and want them in color would that add to the price? like would it add to the $25 for more characters in color?

Yes, in general $40 is the base price and +$25 is for each additional character. So, a drawing of three chibi characters in full colour would be $90.

But if you have a large group of characters or a big set of chibis, the price will be calculated in a different way (depending on the specifics of the commission itself).

Thank you for your interest and sorry for the late reply!

Anonymous asked:

Hi, I sent a fanfic draft to my server concerning teenage romance (M-level stuff) and a member (abt 16) positively replied I'm "a responsible artist not exploiting the subject matter". Am I being unreasonable finding this response extremely backhanded? That I'm classy and restrained enough to get a pass from antis who'd otherwise harass me? I wanna ask you given your experience dealing with those kinds of folk.

Hi, Anon!

Honestly, this would’ve rubbed me the wrong way too, so I see what you mean. It really feels like it’s “you’re better than the rest of these freaks, but you’re still on thin ice”, as if your art only exists to get their approval. Still, I don’t want to put words into that person’s mouth though, who knows what they actually meant.

Our experience is that we just don’t deal with those kinds of folk. We avoid minors as much as we can because they tend to stick to this attitude of “well if you do it like this it’s okay, but don’t make it weird”. But it’s not exclusive to minors; we avoid adults who talk like that too. We just feel like it’s always the same thing: even if you try to be as unproblematic as possible, you’ll end up being their punching bag sooner or later, so is censoring yourself even worth it in the first place?

But this is how we feel about it as someone who doesn’t get this type of comments, Anon. We are on the other side of this situation, where they would tell us “Why does it have to be sexual?” “Why do you have to draw siblings like that, what about other characters?” “Why don’t you just ship him with someone his age?”

So yeah, even though that person technically complimented you, it does sound super condescending to us personally, as if they’re just patting you on your head for not breaking their arbitrary rules. Then again, if they’re a minor, the server is clearly a safe space for them, so maybe it’s not a good place to have this type of discussion… I wouldn’t really know.

We, based on our specific content and circumstances, decided not to waste our time trying to reason with them, but once again: I can’t know for sure what that person meant when they commented on your fic. I can only guess that if you were to write something spicier than M, they would act betrayed and disappointed, and that sucks. We just stick 18+ on literally anything we do also to get rid of the majority of toxic people, especially children.

For us, it’s easier to be a terrible person overall than to try and follow their constantly changing rules of what is acceptable and “a responsible way to portray something” – they’ll claim your passable content has been yucky all this time as soon as they want to be done with you.

I hope this makes sense…

Anonymous asked:

HELP HELP RYU YOUR TWEEL/IDIA ART IS SO GOOD!!!! I LOVE THE BLOOD ON THE TILE AAHHH!!!! i love how it goes in the grout, very real. very amazing. i've always liked seeing the flow of blood, it adds a good amount of realism (but not too much!!!) i stand with your katsu because those fish CANNOT go unfucked.

AHh thank you so so much, Anon!! I am so happy to hear that hehe! I’ve been trying to work on how I draw blood, so it’s amazing to hear that it looks good.

Katsu and you are people of culture and lovers of fish, and honestly this is beautiful. I am so proud and happy for you…

Anonymous asked:

Idia….why the freak are you falling like Mikan? I suppose next you’ll fall and end up with no pants and all tied up….

YES, EXACTLY LIKE MIKAN. Oh my god. This is because he’s been playing too many videogames, now moe fall physics affects him in real life. Whenever he falls, his pants magically disappear, and the rest of his body is… well.

Anonymous asked:

… I want to touch the butt….✋👁👄👁🤚

I want to hold the butt…👐

I’m assuming you mean Idia’s moe butt, and I that’s the case, go ahead and do it! Be careful though, the guard dog might bite you…

Anonymous asked:

Digging your Catherine AU. Any more art or headcanons?

Thank you so much, Anon! We had no idea anyone would like this AU when we first posted it hehe, I’m still very excited when people comment on it.

But unfortunately, I can’t give you anything new. As I stated before, it’s been quite a while since we’ve played the game, so we don’t have much thoughts or any new art for now :( We just wanted to convey a vague concept because we liked the idea of Azul being Katherine too much lol and then the rest of it just made sense.

Anonymous asked:

How do you think tsums have sex?

Passionately. Animalistically. Roundly….

We haven’t seen the tsum event yet, but I’m sure we’ll have more opinions about their reproductive system when we do lol For now I just think they jump on people (…I mean, other tsums, other tsums!) and rub against them violently until something happens. Do they even have genitalia?

#replies

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soothingmelody · 11 months

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Video Essays, Jealousy, Melancholy and Lies

Have you ever found yourself living a lie?

This question has been stuck in my head ever since I started therapy earlier this year. And I don't mean it in some grand way of being a kind of double agent or stringing an elaborate web of lies to trick your childhood friend into playing sudoku to save your past self from burning down in an incinerator, but... Something much more mundane.

I guess I should start from the beginning, cause otherwise the title of this post won't make too much sense.

It is interesting how much we can experience through communication. Be it a Discord message, a Tumblr blog post like this, a tweet or a meticulously put together video essay, finding out about other people's experiences has been one of my favorite things throughout my life. I find people endlessly fascinating. I love it when people talk about their lives and their life experiences, so to me, the long winded, sort of pretentious format of the video essay is right up my alley.

So, this morning, while enjoying a bowl of instant-ramen with some haphazardly cut green onions and a creamy eggy broth, I was watching this one video essay that one of my good friends had recommended to me the night before. Said video essay was about the appeal of Elfen Leid and the video itself, I found quite entertaining and very interesting. But, it did leave me feeling a tinge melancholic and I realized that this is far from the only video essay that has had that sort of effect on me.

Growing up in Ukraine, a land ravaged by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of uncontrolled capitalism, where you could easily find syringes behind a children's playground and your average neighborhood screamed "Half-Life 2 Level", I was a pretty quiet kid, despite my extremely extroverted nature. I do think a lot of these issues start here, which is why I wanted to mention this. I was bullied from a pretty young age, disregarded by people I found important to me and disregarded by people I called friends. To me, it was always a feeling of being not "cool enough". I wasn't into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I wasn't into Transformers, being "girly" for a "boy" such as myself was seen as disgusting, was met with slurs and even more bullying. And in this environment, I was just a quiet kid, with a big heart, who'd sit at the back of the class and draw his funny Sonic the Hedgehog comics.

All of this is to say that I grew up in a pretty cynical place, where cringe culture was way more commonplace and I could only find respite in the internet, mainly the russian Sonic forums of the era, where plenty of judgemental people remained still. That cynicism has really seeped through me and followed me through so much of my life. There were so many times when I would do something that felt natural to me, that didn’t hurt anyone and I would be shut down even by people I trusted the most and I would once again retreat into my own shell.

This constant environment led me to not really participate in many subcultures actively in fear of being seen as weird and cringy, this constant environment led me to not stand out to much, to not take opportunities that would’ve led me to a more interesting life and left me with barely any skills to express myself, besides music or art. It made me afraid of my own queerness that I had to come to terms with and understand for many many years, dealing with my own toxic masculinity, finding out that I was not really straight or that I am not even truly a “man”.

And now looking back, when I am more mature and have changed and grown so much, that I finally managed to open myself up somewhat and “be cringe and free”, honestly, there is a strong melancholy there. There’s a regret. I wish I’ve done so much over my teens that I sadly cannot turn back anymore. To please those people that were holding me back, I gave up so much. That I am having my self indulgent phase when I am in my early 20s and not my early 10s. And I am still a work in progress, I have no idea if I am still living some sort of lie, cause that is stuff you admit to yourself down the road and figure out with hindsight. But I am happier today. But, for how sad this all may sound, I wanted to tell you, the reader, that it is never really too late to change and open up a bit.

It is however interesting, that even with all of this said and this regret that I do bear, I consider that my experience was still rather valuable. I met many people, I developed in my own way and now I love who I am. Maybe that regret, a desire for a better teenage life is yet just another lie, me trying to conform. But, that will be for future me to decide in hindsight.

If you relate to anything I’ve said in this little self indulgent post, please remember, that no matter what, if you are not hurting anyone, you should be free to do whatever you want and nobody has the right to take that away from you. If they laugh, let them, you are the master of your own life, so go and be cringe. Go buy that anime figurine. Go write poetry. Go ask out someone you like. Do something that will make you happy today and maybe you won’t be stuck writing long Tumblr posts.

Stop living a lie. Be yourself.

#random thoughts #I felt like writing #sorry this is a really personal post

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anauro · 2 years

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it’s so confusing to me and i’m trying to educate myself but i get so much backlash when i ask and i get it no one owes someone to help educate them but then they ask why people aren’t educated on a subject it’s like no one will explain

how can you identify as a man and still want to be pregnant? does that not go against your gender identity? i understand some people can’t afford bottom surgery but wouldn’t getting pregnant as a trans male go against who you are considering giving birth is well a women or i guess nb thing?

im not trying to be hateful or rude i’m just curious and trying to learn

Hi anon,

I am not a trans man, so I may not be the best person to address this. I know there are trans men following me, but currently none has this information in their bio, so I will not be tagging them. They can interact with this post if they’d like to.

I will put the rest under the cut, because it's a sensitive topic and some people may not want to read it. I will also tag your ask with warnings, even though I understand you are just curious. Don't take it the wrong way, it is just to avoid dysphoria in people who'd rather not read this.

My advice would be to either google this (quora and reddit has plenty of threads like that) or ask a trans man directly.

I can provide my opinion as a person who isn't cis, but I don't see myself as a man either.

So.

In my opinion, genitals are not something that define you or your gender identity. A trans man may chose to undergo full surgical transition or may stay in the body they were born in and not even go on hormonal treatment. Trans men who aren't on T or who don't bind are just as much men and as valid as the rest of the male identifying community.

I believe this is the first thing you, anon, need to understand. Genitals do not equal gender. Not all trans people want to change their bodies and their genitals. Not only is this a painful, long and expensive process, it is also a risky one and sometimes it's just something that's not desired by the person in question.

I personally am not happy in my current body, I find it too feminine and gross, but it brings me great joy to think there are trans and nb folks out there who don't experience that. I don't identify with they/them pronouns, I go by she/he but am AFAB. For that reason, consuming trans men media (reading, writing, art, porn) feels very euphoric to me. I don't always relate to them, I wouldnt want to be viewed as strictly a man (I like both), but my anatomy relates closer to trans men than it does to trans women or cis women. It makes me feel happy to write trans male characters, simply put.

A man with a vagina or a woman with a penis is perfectly valid.

People who are born with a uterus can choose to use it and I don't think the desire to have biological children invalidates their gender identity. This mentality that pregnancy is a women-unique experience is a social construct and nothing more.

If you want to understand the trans and nb community, you must first understand that nothing in this world belong strictly to one gender only. Anyone can wear suits. Anyone can wear dresses and heels. Anyone can have a penis. Anyone can be pregnant.

Pregnancy for me is something extremely dysphoric. Even before I realised I am not cis, I have had extreme reservations about it. If I ever become pregnant, I would consider myself a pregnant man cause the mentality that I am a pregnant woman would be too damaging for me.

So to wrap it up, this is not a trans man talking, but a genderfluid person. You, anon, need to get rid of this 'x is a women's thing and y is a men' thing' mentality. Or that the state of one's body and their organs and genitals define them. Gender roles are a social construct and a very harmful one.

If anything in this post is factually incorrect or transphobic, please feel free to point it out to me. I too am still learning and always willing to be pointed out where my obnoxiousness or privilege is showing. Similarly, if I missed a tag - let me know asap!

Lastly, I'd like people to not comment on the personal things I described here. If you know me a bit better (aka if we talked one to one on discord), then feel free to message me, but otherwise I am sorry, but I don't care what people think of my personal experiences.

#roc answers #personal #tw dysphoria #tw transphobia #tw trans pregnancy #trans men #trans pregnancy #trans experience #genderfluid #nb #tw pregnancy #tw transitions

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dreamsister81 · 3 years

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Jeff and MI:

By age, you fit in the G.I.T generation, but you obviously are not one of them...

These facilities are a mystery to me. There they tell you only one thing: hurry up! This leads you nowhere, afterwards your own children run away from you. Through these trainings you get to know women, you get to know men, music is inoculated into people who have no feeling for it; then they can only scare other people or insult them...

I was in this terrible place too, by the way-G.I.T That was a complete waste of time, apart from the theoretical lessons and the friends that I had there. Otherwise: an absolute wrong decision.

How long have you studied there?

One year, the normal program. They give you tons of material, you have to absorb everything, you practice, you are tested and you go to the next course. An intensive support with development is simply not possible. I did so many things: theory, single string technique, jazz class, rock class, all sorts of genres. My friend John was teaching bass there, and he once said that there is not a single teacher at the institute who says to the students, "OK, you're learning all this stuff here now, you're learning how to entertain people and you're learning to learn. But do you even know that there is no one in the universe other than yourself who plays the music you play? " John left the school then. For me it was all a joke that cost me $ 3,900. People interested in music should take private lessons somewhere, start a band, do something with people who like them and have what it takes. These schools are a scene in their own right, a very small, secluded world-the music, on the other hand, is gigantic and open. If you don't notice it, you miss a lot of magic, pain, development...(thinks) and rock! Apart from Paul Gilbert, there was no one there who really rocked. Session musicians are bred there; and at the end of the year you get a piece of paper that says, "Now you have the skills to become a professional musician." Well, congratulations! And then you look for jobs and play what other people want. But that's not all the music, there's something else isn't there? Where's the music coming from? From your own head or stomach, or the concepts of the people you work for?-Gitarre & Bass, October, 1995

I had a friend named John Humphrey. I went to this really crappy guitar school for a year, and he used to teach there, he was a bass teacher. And then he left, and we ended up being roommates later on, after I graduated. This is the kind of school where you give them a shitload of money in order to spend a year learning their curriculum.

What was it, G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles)?

Yeah, it was G.I.T.. They give you their curriculum, and it's not too comprehensive, but it's just enough, and then you can [snaps his fingers] move on to the next thing. And pretty soon you have all this shit inside you and then they give you this paper that says you have what it takes to be a professional musician.

It's a rock-oriented thing, isn't it?

In the end, I think, the only true product of that kind of learning is to get you gigs on the studio circuit and to get you gigs on the session guy circuit.

So, Lee Ritenour went there or something?

G.I.T. was started by Howard Roberts, the guy who played the wah-wah guitar on the theme to Shaft. And this other guy named Pat Hayes. I don't know. It just seemed like a racket, really. John said a lot of things to me that stuck in my mind. He said that there was nobody who stopped you, sat you in a room and said, okay, we have all these artists that you're learning the licks from, you have your guitar heroes, your virtuoso lust objects. But there's nobody who can make the kind of music you can make now except for you. And you can make it now. You don't even have to know how to go fast. And that makes all the sense to me in the world. It's also kind of an unseen process, that concept, originality. It's like that in all the education systems; there's never any real...identity education, self-generative identity art sort of thing, to be yourself. If everybody in Melbourne had a Wurlitzer organ and had the passion to sing something or make something, you'd have hundreds of thousands of different styles, if they were coming exactly from only their DNA, only their makeup, and their emotional percepts, their idea about what art is. You could have way-removed genres from what is already accepted, avante-garde country-rock-punk-folk-whatever. It's unlimited. But for some reason, the conventions always take over and there's a very ready and powerful formula to step into...

Those are the type of [formula-derived] players who can say, "Well, I was listening to the radio in 1967 and I heard the guitar solo in Jimi Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower,' and that guitar sound, that tone, would work perfectly for this television commercial."

Yeah. See? "Stealing from the greats, that's okay." That's right. Once I stopped in [at G.I.T.] years later, when I was on tour going through L.A., just to see what it was like. They've got a completely high-tech, multi-million dollar facility...

More so than when you had been there?

Way more. When I was there, it was just a ragtag bunch of teachers, and they had all left by then. They had video facilities and a class for stage moves and all kinds of things. And I saw this guy who was working the desk, the guy who watches the door. He had a bass on, and he was practicing his Nirvana chops! He was playing "In Bloom" on his bass, way up on his chest, jazz-fusion style, to the Nirvana song. I thought, oh shit--he was practicing his grunge riffs! He was getting his grunge down! Best fucking thing you can do, if you have the interest, is go to a private teacher, go someplace, some college, and learn theory. That was something I really enjoyed, actually, something that wasn't totally pointless. Theory meaning the meaning of the musical nomenclature. I was attracted to really interesting harmonies, stuff that I would hear in Ravel, Ellington, Bartok.-Double Take, February 29, 1996

Once the site of a seakeasy and a bra factory, the 30,000-square-foot quarters were now the home of Musicians Institute, a vocational school for anyone who considered himself or herself a serious musician. With its wooden desks and chipped-tile hallways, MI resembled any other urban school, but at those desks, student guitarists and drummers studied scales and power chords in hopes of becoming the next Eddie Van Halen or Neil Peart, the flashy drummer with Rush. On their way to class each morning, flaxen-haired guitar gods in training could be spotted holding their guitars and practicing licks as they walked down Hollywood Boulevard.

Jeff had heard about Musicians Institute (and its subdivision, the Guitar Institute of Technology) while in high school and told everyone it was his one and only destination. However, potential superstardom did not run cheap. The school charged $4,000 for its one year course, and by the time Jeff Graduated from Loara High School, Mary Guibert was beginning to fall on hard financial times as she went in and out of jobs. In need of money for herself and her two sons, she prematurely broke into a $20,000 fund earmarked for Jeff, but only after he tured nineteen. Once Mary proved to the courtsthat Jeff needed it for his education, he and Mary received it a year early. In a deep irony, the father Jeff had barely met and increasingly resented would be paying his son's way through music school.

On graduation night, September 15, 1985, at the Odyssey in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley, Jeff, Stoll, and Marryatt closed the ceremony by playing Weather Report's "Pearl On the Half Shell."-from Dream Brother

With its 30-odd thousand feet of floor space and row upon row of "labs", where hopeful guitar heroes could jam with such shit-hot players as Scott Henderson, LA's Musician's Institute must have seemed like nirvana for someone like Jeff Buckley, trapped as he was behind the Orange Curtain. According to his buddy Chris Dowd, that's exactly why Buckley enrolled there, arriving just before autumn, 1984, bankrolled by $4,000 that Mary managed to squeeze from a Tim Buckley trust fund.

Originally known as the Guitar Institute, which in itself says plenty, the school was opened in 1977. Drawing on the educational philosophy of journeyman guitarist Howard Roberts, it was co-founded and managed by Los Angeles music businessman Pat Hicks, "a real shyster opportunist", in the words of Tom Chang, an expat Canadian who would become very tight with Jeff Buckley during their two years at the Institute. In 1978, thr Bass Institute was opened, followed by the Percussion Institute two years later. Desppite Hicks' questionable business ethics-amongst other things, he'd hire students as cheap labour to do essential maintenance work on the building, which led to Buckley being hired as an electrician's assistant soon after graduating-he did manage to persuade well regarded players and bands to lecture, and play alongside, the hopefuls who'd enrolled there.

What Buckley lacked up in "front" he clearly made up for in ambition. That was proved, in spades, by Buckley's graduation performance which was played out on September 15, 1985, at a venue called the Odyssey in Granada Hills. While the sonic crush and enviable chops of Rush and Led Zeppelin still rocked the world of this Orange County teen, Buckley had also developed a real taste for such "noodlers" as Weather Report.

The number chosen by Buckley for graduation was their "D Flat Waltz" (not "Pearl On The Half-Shell", as documented elsewhere, which they'd performed at a previous event), a typically complicated few minutes of Weather Report neo-fusion-a "really cool piece, very involved", according to Tom Chang-and a standout from their 1983 set Domino Theory. But Buckley, accompanied by Stoll on drums and Marryatt on bass, didn't just play the piece, he also wrote the individual parts out beforehand for the band.-from A Pure Drop

MI pics by me

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