How did you learn to draw human figure?

as mentioned in a recent answer, an extensive amount of research and analysis helps before or while drawing them myself- looking at finished works, speed paints, animation, and tutorials- anything i could get my grubby little hands on. Have enough retained in my mind and a few warmups and a lot of hours to kill and rested eyes and im in business for decent drawings baby!

And I've never taken an anatomy class.

Being able to think visually or being able to imagine certain poses and movements in my head from said inspo/research also helps. And looking at various art styles doing one thing with the human body helps me narrow down the common, key features or rules in drawing them. I like to go a step further and figure out the mindset of the artists to understand their process a lot better and try to think in a similar way after being inspired, which I did a while ago after watching an artist youtuber's sketching process. Or I place it on the back burner of my mind for a later comparison.

This (the above last point) is fun to do for me as it makes me feel more competent than I actually think I am when it comes to drawing bodies, and I typically think about the dynamics of a pose + compared to the overall composition- provided I have a frame or sense of space somewhere like a scene and not floating in empty space that drawings in sketchbooks usually have. I never strive to make the poses in particular look bland and usually want to push myself the tiniest bit to try a new angle or limb placement. But I'm notoriously flip-floppy with it: Some days I properly plan out the spacing and proportions and do the pillow/bean body skeleton with basic lines and shapes. Other times I'll only want to draw the proportions from my idea like it's my first clean draft and feel how its coming along line by line instead of following a previously-mapped guide (gauging limb thickness, joint placement, general outline, etc. w/out references). If it looks nice and looks like it makes sense, then it stays.

It also helps that i like drawing fashion more than anything, so I had to end up learning a bit about the human body at some point, XD. For most of my life I've drawn faces and torsos. The lower body is still a learning curve that i hate doing sometimes but I'm more confident with how knees work and look like now, LOL.

I do the freehand expansive thing as a: hey I just drew this whole profile face free-handed just from expanding one eye I drew! kind of personal achievement. Sometimes it turns out good, but most often with this (lazy) method, I end up going back to basics and pathing the skeletal line on the dirtied page or sketch layer, mostly due to frustration in it taking so long and not looking right. Or I abandon it. So, in short, I make it hard for myself because I try to make it look good first try but I do resort to references like my hand sometimes XD.

Miraculous: Reborn Chapter Five

Omg it’s been so fricking long I’m sorry

AO3

First Previous Next

~~~~~~~~~

What their history teacher neglected to tell them was that the assignment assigned the day prior was going to be unbelievably difficult. They only had one day to work on it, and they had barely made any headway in study hall.

Damian huffed to himself as he watched Mari stare intently at a book.

I could’ve done this much quicker without her. He brooded to himself, although deep down he knew that was probably a lie. Mari had worked much faster than he expected.

“Aha!” She smiled, pointing victoriously to a passage in her book. Her eyes lit up, and if possible her smile made her eyes look more blue. Damian finally noticed her freckles too.

He felt a smirk tug at his lips by how excited she got a small triumph. Not unlike Jon, he noted. Ugh another Jon.

But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, he decided when he saw her tongue stick out slightly from her focus as she wrote into her notebook.

“Okay!” She exclaimed, snapping her notebook shut, “Done with the research! Now off to the project part.” She let out a small groan, “Any ideas?”

Damian held his sketchbook closely to his chest, not ready to let her see it. “Perhaps we can devise a poem and be done with it all.”

Mari pouted, then she smiled smugly, “Wanna take the easy way out, huh Damian?” She jibed.

“W-what?! No!” Damian spluttered, how insulting how dare she-

Oh...Damian realized as she saw her hold back a chuckle. She was joking.

Well two could play at that game.

“Very well, what do you suppose we do oh great Dupain?”

“Well...if you’re not opposed...maybe we could meet up later to work? We don’t have a lot of time now, but I can probably explain my idea.”

Damian hesitated, he didn’t want to bring this girl back to the manor. Solely because he wasn’t sure he could trust her, certainly not because he didn’t want her to judge him for being a Wayne.

“We can meet up at a nearby coffee shop once school is over. I’ll inform father. What’s your idea?” Damian asked as he pulled out his phone.

“Well...I’m an amateur designer.” Mari said, looking slightly flustered, “And I thought since the project is an extension of what we’ve learned maybe I could design some period appropriate clothes? Just a sketch of course, I doubt I’d have time to actually make something seeing as its due tomorrow but-“

“May I see what you have?” Damian interrupted.

Mari nodded slightly before pulling out a black book, not unlike his own sketchbook. She handed it to him and immediately looked away, embarrassed by her own work.

Damian flipped through the pages, “These are more than adequate Dupain.”

Mari blushed at the praise. Damian considered showing her his own drawings, but...considering he would seldom show his family or even Jon his sketches he was not inclined to show his to a girl he’d known for not even a full day. He handed the book back to her just as the bell rang.

“I’ll meet you outside of the main entrance when school ends. Goodbye Dupain.” Damian said hiking up his book bag and heading off to his next class.

Of course she was in his next class.

And the one after that too. She was even in his last period, which meant Mari Dupain was in All. Of. His. Classes.

He understood, she was gifted academically and so was he, so they would share classes. Plus, the private school was relatively small in the number of students who attended, but still there was no other person Damian shared all his classes with.

Suffice to say, if he hadn’t tolerated Mari before he’d need to now considering the new circumstances. Just as the final bell rang, instead of meeting Marinette outside he walked to her desk and silently waited for her to gather her things.

“I’m ready!” She beamed, zipping up her backpack.

Damian eyed her, small and frail at first analysis. Her backpack had accumulated lots of books because she had transferred so late in the year.

“Would you like me to carry something?”

“No! I’ll manage! Thanks for asking though-“

“Ice Prince Charming.” A girl snickered on her way out to her friend. Damian glared at them both. Then without another word he walked with Mari out of the building.

“Why do they call you that?” Mari asked as she walked with Damian through the halls to the exit.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Damian stated harshly before seeing her deflated expression and softening, “But it’s because I’m a black sheep here I suppose. I don’t play by their rules— that is, date, socialize, be on the football team, etcetera.”

“Huh, you seem normal to me.” Mari said, of course, unbeknownst to Damian she was leaving out the part where she hadn’t been with another human that wasn’t her parents, a villain, or Chat Noir for six years.

Damian side-eyed her, not sure how to respond. He realized quickly that she expected no response. It seemed her conversations were organic and raw, rather than ones in which the other person already knew what the next was going to say and planned for it. She wasn’t bothered by the silence that they walked in, which was odd, considering that she was a teenager most of which talked just to hear themselves talk.

Reaching the school’s exit, Damian pushed open the door for her.

“Thanks!” She chirped.

“Damian!” Jon called from across the courtyard, slowly registering Mari’s presence, “Oh, hi Mari!”

“Hi Jon!” Mari waved while Jon dashed over.

“So...what are you two doing now?” Jon asked, a glint in his eye as he smirked at Damian.

“If you must know, we’re heading to the local coffee shop to finish a project.”

“Ooooh!” Jon exclaimed. Damian knew what he was going to ask next before the boy even asked it.

“And no, you cannot come with us.”

“Bummer. Oh well, I have to go back to my parents’ house anyway, but I’ll still see you later for...ya know?”

Damian sighed, great cover Kent, “Yes.” He gritted his teeth and led Mari away.

“Here.” He said, pulling out a spare helmet from his bag. “I’m assuming you’re not afraid of riding a motorcycle.”

Mari brightened, “Yeah! My Nonna and I rode all the time before I di- before she died.” Marinette sighed internally for her quick recovery, even if she kind of had to lie about her grandmother being dead.

“My condolences.” Damian said as he cleared his throat. Marinette could tell it was sincere which made her feel a lot worse…

Damian got onto the motorcycle and made sure to get close enough to the handlebars so that Mari would have enough space. He was really hoping she wasn’t stupid enough to hang her arms around his shoulders.

As she got on, he realized she was very proficient at being a passenger. She got on quickly and placed her hands on the tank to stabilize herself. Mari’s helmet was already on, so Damian started off.

He started driving slightly slower than normal, just because he wasn’t sure how comfortable she was riding a quick pace. That could mess both of them up if she wasn’t ready.

It wasn’t a big deal anyway, as it turned out, the coffee shop was less than a mile away from campus and they arrived quickly.

Damian hopped off the motorcycle and extended his hand. Mari took it daintily as he pulled her off the vehicle. She dismounted easily as well. She handed his helmet back to him and they walked inside.

“Alfred, I found something interesting.” Bruce said as he pulled up a document on his computer.

Alfred looked over the document once and sighed, nothing really new, “You can deal with that later Master Bruce. There’s another matter that requires your attention.”

“Oh?” Bruce asked, raising and eyebrow, but not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Remember when Master Damian said earlier that he was going to work on a project? Well, it seems it was a partner project and pictures of him and his school partner are all over social media.” Alfred typed into the Batcave’s computer and pulled up Twitter, the most trending post was a picture of Damian helping a girl his age off his motorcycle in front of the coffee shop and the caption read, “Does the youngest Wayne have a date?!?!?!”

Bruce sighed, “Just tabloid gossip, nothing new.” He eyed the picture again, “Though maybe I should look into this girl…”

He scanned the picture in quickly and had the results he was looking for within minutes, “Mari Dupain. Moved from Paris, France to Gotham not too long ago.”

Alfred rubbed his temples, “Dupain...as in-“

“Yes.”

“How will you tell the young master?”

“He’ll...understand.” Bruce sighed, “Maybe not right away, but he will eventually.”

Alfred looked at him disapprovingly.

“Okay, you’re right.” Bruce muttered, “I'll talk to him about it when he gets home...I hope he’s not too attached to that girl...he’s not going to be happy.”

~~~~~~~

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kind of a strange que at ion but if anyone has any insight it would be helpful

so i’ve been researching true crime shit since back in high school (it started for a class and continued as one of my many research interests) and thus am aware of a LOT of cases of basically every type, and that combined w my extensive rewatching of my favorite show criminal minds has made me relatively numb to most cases (of course i still theyre all awful and sad) on the surface but every once in a while i come across a case that just...breaks me. and i feel so much for the victim that i break down over it. and it’s only happened a few times, but every time i usually sketch out some sort of...memorial? for them? i can’t remever the last victim that i drew, only that it was a little girl and she looked strikingly like me as a child. and so i sketched her a few times to get the emotions out of my system. but recently i came across the case of junko furuta and it really fucked me up. im talking i was sobbing and shaking on the floor crying to god? why would any human being do that to another human being. it consumed me for days. and so o sketched up some drawings of junko...and i really wnat to finish at least one. as a sort of memorial for her, a remembrance of her when she was alive. but im concerned maybe it would be idk...disrespectful? i almost always draw fan art, very rarely do i draw real people, and i don’t want it to seem like i’m just drawing her as a “fan” of true crime. like no i drew her to honor her. i drew her smiling. and i really wanna finish it but i don’t want to be disrespectful. anyone have any thoughts on it?

some random thoughts / things i’ve learned about rori in the last couple days:

her sexual orientation is basically ‘yes’  ie… she doesn’t give a flying fuck about what gender her partner’s sleeve is, what gender they identify as, whether they’re asexual or aromantic, whatever.  this is something that would be part of her regardless of what era / verse she was in but this is extremely amplified in the atlered carbon verse just out of the stack vs. sleeve contrast / debate that is literally inundated into their society especially having been ‘raised’ (i say raised in quotation marks because by meth standards she’s still a kid) in Meth society where they literally treat sleeves with the same indifference as tissues.  use, throw away, replace. this made it very easy for her, from an early age, to learn that attachments to the stack are way more important than attachments to the sleeve it’s in.  

this is not to say that she does not experience attraction based solely on sleeve and appearance.

this is also not to say that she isn’t emotionally attached to certain sleeves and equates them with certain people – Claire, for example, has maintained the same sleeve for the entirety of rori’s existence [unless I’m wrong in which case correct me @theblueeyedvampire / @magicandsciencemuses] and it is the one that rori clearly associates with claire.  the same goes w/ Elias ( w/ Liz’s anyway ) – people that are in the habit of sticking to one sleeve for long periods of time will receive a funny look or asked what’s up if they show up in a different sleeve but her feelings, obviously, wouldn’t change.  some things are just comfortable / familiar.  

she has stayed in the same sleeve; she has had to switch to a replacement sleeve twice after extensive organic damage, once in her teens, and once about eight years ago.   she is in her forties, her sleeve age could be guessed at mid 20s - somewhere in her 30s depending on attire, makeup, general health etc.  

she is not obsessed with maintaining a youthful glow or keeping up with the kardashians type lifestyle, she doesn’t care if she looks her age, at least for now, she’s comfortable in her own skin though, she will probably end up continuing to re-sleeve within her current age range – she already has a small number of backup sleeves in the family vault, though she’d probably have to jump through hoops to get access to them, since she’s kind of the black sheep of the family – or just bug claire, since claire maintains the family vaults at psychasec.  

she has a lot of tattoos.  most of the major pieces can be found HERE.  other smaller pieces tend to come and go, as tattoos / tattoo removal is much less hassle in general in the ac verse but she usually doesn’t get ink unless she knows what she wants / plans on keeping it.

she has a lot of piercings too, though less than she could. that list is HERE.

rori isn’t against long term relationships, she just doesn’t usually have them.  she is very vivacious and active, she’s a wild child and the idea of settling down with one person is something that she has a hard time wrapping her brain around, at least at this point in her life.  she would have to have really real feelings for someone to contemplate a monogamous relationship.  

she is definitely more likely to commit to a relationship that is emotionally monogamous, but open for other physical & sexual encounters or a poly amorous relationship with two (or more) people that were all committed relatively equally to each other and the relationship status as a whole.

that isn’t saying she wouldn’t ever be strictly monogamous if that was what her partner wanted but it’d have to be a Very Special person.  

it is possible that even while attempting to maintain a monogamous relationship she might cheat on her partner – this is not something that I usually plot & wouldn’t ever just throw out there at random, if this happens it will be plotted / discussed before hand.

rori is sexually active and sexually adventurous.  she’ll try anything once.  maybe twice to see if it was a fluke (good or bad) the first time.  there are some squicks she avoids and she strongly believes in the necessity of consent, implied or overt - she doesn’t mind playing rough, and if her partner wants to go to extremes with that, she won’t necessarily complain, but she will not participate in anything that is not agreed upon ahead of time in those regards.  

she’s also highly likely to kick the living shit out of somebody if she catches them trying to roofie or use any kind of mind altering substance to get someone to sleep with them etc.  and if she can’t kick their ass she has no problem calling in favors or calling the cops to do it for her, if it comes to that.  she does not mess around with that shit.

when it comes to general mannerisms, typically what you see is what you get.  she’s very open about who she is, what she’s passionate about.  she’s smart, but tends to swear like a sailor and prefers blunt honesty to anything else so she can come off more abrasive or less intelligent than she actually is / means to.  

she can clean up nicely, she does know her table manners and which fork to use for the escargo and how to do the tango and the waltz but those are generally very distances from her day to day life.

she’s an artist.  she’s always drawing, sketching, usually w/ her oni & holo arts, most of her work is digital until it’s time to put it to skin.  

her specialty in tats are three-dimensional and/or holo interactive pieces.  for example, the tattoo on her side that looks like her skin has been cut away and that shows a busted ribcage, muscles, cybernetic and steampunk era materials making up all of the parts you can see on the inside?  that’s her design - only because of the blend of technology and physical art, it appears black and white 3-d to the naked eye but with an Oni or other holographic viewing device, the piece literally seems to come to life – the gears move, the muscles shift and ‘breathe’, veins pulse in time with her heartbeat, the cybernetic pieces will light up or shift position from time to time, etc.  her work does not come cheap.

Your advice for drawing was very inspiring and helpful! thank you!! Was just wondering if you had any advice on what specific drawing tools/brushes you use to create your art or if you'd consider maybe doing a guide on it one day? :):)

Nonnie!

I’m so sorry it took me so long to reply to this. I’m glad my last reply was helpful and I really hope you’re still around to see this 😶

SO let’s talk brushes/tools. 👇Under the cut for length👇:

Tools: It’s nothing special. I’ve been using a portable version of CS5 for a while now and I draw on a Medium Wacom touch and pen, which I’ve had for 4 years and it’s traveled well. I’ve used PS Elements, Paint Tool Sai and Corel in the past, with Corel being my least favorite. 

Brushes…well, I have to confess that I’m a brush hoarder. I have amassed a large collection of them over the years from all different kinds of artists. Some were free and still available, some I’ve paid for…..and yet for the most part I use the same four brushes for everything.

-I use a hard round opacity brush for sketching and another hard brush for line art (Deharme’s “hair single”). The line art brush has a bit of a texture and tapers nicely so it feels a bit like a mechanical pencil, which makes it my favorite.

-For blocking off colors, a simple Hard Round brush or for large areas sometimes i use the lasso tool and paint bucket. The hard round brush is exactly as it sounds it’s just a blunt, full opacity brush. No bells or whistles.

-Finally, the Hard round opacity brush again and a soft round brush to flesh out the details. Shading and highlights, that kind of stuff. The hard brush feels a bit like a marker while the soft brush is more like an air brush. 

I use the same versions of these brushes as an eraser btw, whenever i need to.

Here’s the link for Deharme’s brushes. His set is really great because it has a ton of other brushes you can experiment with to do details and fun highlights or textures to your finished piece. He has a particular set of brushes for painting skin that’s really challenging but awesome, if you have the patience for it. I couldn’t find the free link to Goro’s brushes anymore but here’s his site if you wanna go digging around. Really, though, you could just experiment with the presets  of the PS brushes you already have and you’ll have the same version...they’re pretty basic and straight forward.

For things like Michonne’s hair, I use a brush with more texture. I was lucky enough to snag Kyle Webster’s brushes before they became exclusive to CC. If you use it then the old brush 2 or the rough cutter from his inkbox are great.

If you want to know more about experimenting with brush presets to create your own, here’s a great tutorial I came across recently:

http://zuzartii.tumblr.com/post/179635817705/some-photoshop-tips

The last thing I would strongly recommend is an extension program called Lazy Nezumi Pro. It’s a pen stabilizing tool. If you have an amazing steady hand drawing on the tablet you won’t need it or if you’re using Paint Tool Sai, it’s a feature that’s already built into the program. Unfortunately, PS doesn’t have it and I don’t know about you but even though I have very steady hand, my lines still look like I drank ten cups of coffee. Now this one you have to pay for but imo, it’s totally worth it. You can do a free trial, it has a student license option if you’re a student and it’s a lifetime license so you don’t have to purchase it again (unless you change OS). I love the thing. It also has a bunch of other features I never use but that you might find useful.

ok... These were the very basics, I hope it’s somewhat helpful? 😂😂😂 and let me know if I can help w/ anything else. 💖

Hey, everyone! I’ve been planning this post for a while since I’m an app addict and wanted to share mine with you guys! I divided things in two: the first part of each section is the overall info on the app and then my personal review of it. Without further ado, here are my favorite apps. Hope you enjoy it~

FORTUNE CITY (Free with in-app purchases) Expense Tracker Available for iOS/Android Fortune City is my absolute favorite expense tracker. It’s from the same developer as Plant Nanny! In the app you’re the mayor of your very own city, each expense you insert create a specific type of building depending on what kind it is (shopping, food, transport, medical etc.). You can level up buildings by merging them and also merge parks (that are built automatically from time to time). It has the option to track card expenses differently and also a balance. By upgrading (monthly $3,99 subscription) you also have a few more options such as setting a budget etc. Besides being extremely useful and fun to play, Fortune City is beautifully designed, bonus points!

VANTAGE (Free with in-app purchases) Calendar and to-do list Available for iOS Here’s something you need to know about me: in order for me to like and actually use an app, I need to like how it looks. I’ve been searching for a nice free calendar/to-do list app for the longest time, but either it was too simple or too crowded or simply not for me (a.k.a “ugly”). Or at least until I found Vantage. Vantage is gorgeously designed and brings a totally innovative way to look at your calendar. In it’s free version, you can add events and use your calendar in general, with the upgraded version (a one-time $9.99 purchase) you can use the to-do list section which is divided by notebooks (reminds me of Paper 53), add tags, change the background, use schedules and much more. What I love the most about Vantage is how its super customizable and minimalistic yet equipped with a variety of options that’ll surely support all tastes, besides all that, it’s very nice to see an app with a one-time purchase (totally worth the price btw) instead of monthly memberships (yikes).

ANY.DO (Free with in-app purchases) Calendar and to-do list Available for iOS/Android/Web Any do is a great, simpler option for calendar/to-do apps that also has a web version so you can keep track of your day anywhere! Any.do is very user-friendly and has a very minimalistic interface that focuses more on to-dos. There are many subscription plans with different options (not that worth it in my personal opinion). I used it for a long time and it suited me just fine, the option sync it with other calendars is also very useful. A great option for those who want an easy application to get them through the day.

YOUPER (Free) Mood tracker and anxiety reliever Available for iOS/Android I have anxiety and depression so tracking my mood is kind of a big deal for me. Youper changes the whole experience tho, instead of a simple chart with moods or anything like that, Youper is an AI that is designed to help you track your mood more efficiently and, in case you’re feeling down, it helps you relax with breathing techniques and other little activities. It also has an anxiety/depression tracker you take every 15 days to help you get an overall idea of your progress! It also has various articles and videos on different mental illnesses to help you understand them better! It’s definitely one of my favorite apps for mental illness and has helped me keep track of myself without making it seem like a burden. !!NOTE!! No mood tracker or app designed for the mentally ill replace the help of professional medical assistance. If you’re feeling unusually down or showing signs of any mental illness, please reach out for a psychologist and never medicate yourself before that. It’ll be okay.

WYSA (Free) Mood tracker and anxiety reliever Available for iOS/Android Wysa is very similar to Youper, but it’s a bit more talkative and friendly, it also has a variety of activities depending on your mood (anxious, sad etc.) that’ll help you get focused, relaxed, create to-do lists and etc. Wysa also has the option to contact a professional coach for $29.99, I have never tried it tho. It’s surely a great application full of cute gifs and a very relaxing interface. !!NOTE!! No mood tracker or app designed for the mentally ill replace the help of professional medical assistance. If you’re feeling unusually down or showing signs of any mental illness, please reach out for a psychologist and never medicate yourself before that. It’ll be okay.

COGNI (Free with in-app purchases) Mood tracker Available for iOS/Android Cogni was an app indicated by my personal psychologist and also my psychiatrist, both of them said the report chart used in this mood tracker is very similar to the one used, for example, to recognize bipolar disorders and you’re able to share your chart with your therapist. It’s very simple and easy to use. Personally not my favorite since it bugs in my phone and always log out and it’s not that aesthetically pleasing either, although it’s full of options such as thoughts and what situation triggered your mood. It has a free version and a few other subscription plans with some other options such as a full chart of all the moods and some sharing options for your therapist as well. !!NOTE!! No mood tracker or app designed for the mentally ill replace the help of professional medical assistance. If you’re feeling unusually down or showing signs of any mental illness, please reach out for a psychologist and never medicate yourself before that. It’ll be okay.

TAYASUI SKETCHES PRO ($5.99 with in-app purchases) Drawing Available for iOS/Android Tayasui is an app very similar to Paper by 53, but with more customizable tools and options. I personally like to use it for my comic journal. The textures from the brushes are very realistic and nice and the option to creates notebooks is very great. A simple yet complete app.

QUIP (Free) Documents Available for iOS/Android/Web Quip is my favorite writing and document storage app. You can create folders and many different types of documents. It has a very clean design and user-friendly interface as well as many business tools such as synching between different accounts and layouts to choose from that’ll surely be helpful. It also syncs automatically between mobile/web and has an in-built chat. Definitely recommend it.

TIDE (Free with in-app purchases) Focus & sleep Available for iOS/Android Tide is a Pomodoro app with many included ambiance sounds (rain, library, cafe etc.), it also has the option to track your sleep or quick naps. It’s very beautifully designed and easy to use. Its free version is pretty complete but you can also purchase subscriptions and more sounds. A cool bonus thing is that it also has a daily quote (and they’re usually very nice and inspiring).

MERRIAM WEBSTER (Free with in-app purchases) Dictionary Available for iOS/Android/Web I doubt anyone doesn’t know about Merriam Webster but I decided to include it anyways. Merriam Webster is one of the most complete English dictionaries out there and now it also has some games and quizzes. You can purchase the 1-year ads-free version for $1.99. 

PAPAGO (Free) Translator Available for iOS/Android/Web (extension) I’m crazy about learning languages and the last one I’ve been trying to learn is Korean and because of that, I was looking for a good translator. Google Translate kinda sucks, we all know it by now, Papago, on the other hand, seems to be one of the best Asian languages (and a few others) translators I’ve ever seen. It can translate up to 11 languages (English, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Thai, Traditional Chinese and Vietnamese) and it’s very user-friendly. Its speech recognition is also pretty good and it has a built-in phrasebook for Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese! There’s also a kids version for young learners out there. 

CLUE (Free with in-app purchases) Period tracker Available for iOS/Android Clue is, in my opinion, the best period tracker out there. I love that you can input other data besides the flow of your period, such as pain (cramps, headaches, tender breasts etc.) or your energy (energized, exhausted etc.) and many other things as well as create your own tags! It also gives you a prevision of when your next period is going to be and, for me at least, it’s pretty accurate. It also gives you plenty of info on the period overall and specific aspects. The free version is pretty complete but you can purchase some subscription plans if you want some more tools. 

MEDISAFE (Free with in-app purchases) Med reminder Available for iOS/Android Another thing you need to know about me: I forget absolutely everything all the time. Hence, if I have no one (or anything) reminding me of taking my meds, you bet I’ll forget about it. I went on the search for some med reminder apps and MediSafe was the best find in my opinion. It’s super complete and fairly easy to use, it also has many customization settings and you can even set a reminder to refill your meds! You can add reminders for medicine you need to take periodically or just meds in general, just input a dose whenever you take it. Depending on the medication, it also gives you some info (and sometimes even a video of a doctor) explaining a little bit of it. You can also add a friend or doctor so, in case you forget to take your meds, it sends them a notification. Its free version works wonders on its own, but you can also purchase subscription plans to change the design of your pillbox or even have Obama’s voice remind you to take your meds among other things! Amazing, right?

GOOGLE PHOTOS (Free) Photo/video storage Available for iOS/Android/Web If you’re anything like me and have trouble deleting your pics (a.k.a memes) because “I might need this sometime!”, Google Photos will be your holy grail. You can store an unlimited amount of photos and videos in the app and delete them from your phone. They’ll be safe and sound and you can see them again anytime you log in anywhere! Pretty neat right? It also organizes the photos based off who’s in it, date etc. You can also create a shared folder, send them to anyone and even search for specific places and dates. A must-have for any photo junkie out there.

So those were some of the apps I use the most! Hope you could find something useful in this list. Feel free to add other apps you use and think people should know about or your own reviews on these. Sharing is caring!

“ oh. uh... you had your eye on that last laffy taffy, too ? ”   awkward. peyton reaches for the candy anyway. his fingertips close around the treat and nudge it closer to the person beside him. “ go for it. my favorite’s banana anyway. ”

or, alternatively : i have zero restraint & ‘tis i, linc, comin’ atchu w/ my third, peyton pellegrino !! resident senior class treasurer & lacrosse co-captain & theatre techie. he’s a wholesome boy but jeez... is new ham gonna break him. dun dun dunnnnNNNN .  ; )

✔ ┊❝ noah centineo. he/him &. cismale ) eighteen year old peyton pellegrino was listening to “no place like home” by marianas trench when the field trip buses turned around. rumor has it he’s on a missing children’s list in delaware & his dad is actually his childhood kidnapper, but who knows if that’s true? what we do know is that their friends describe them as suave & bona fide, even if they’re known to be a little restless & yielding from time to time.

i’m... not gonna do my long intro format for him bc ain’t nobody got time fo dat! and i’m lazy sfhiefh. but here we go !!

( tw: mentions of kidnapping, false death, anxiety, familial deceit )

AMBER ALERT, MILTON PD, DELAWARE —  MILTON TOWN POLICE HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED EIGHTEEN-MONTH-OLD JAMIE CLAVERTON WAS STOLEN FROM HIS MOTHER’S STROLLER IN BRUMBLEY PARK EARLIER TODAY. SUSPECT WAS NOT IDENTIFIED AT THE SCENE. ANYONE WITH INFORMATION IS ENCOURAGED TO CALL POLICE IMMEDIATELY.

spoiler alert : little jamie claverton never quite found his way home. with no witnesses to the kidnapping ( thanks to his mother’s ignorance... yikes ) ,  matthew pellegrino, age 30, was able to make an easy getaway with the child. in 2010, milton police closed jamie’s case. the clavertons, heavy-hearted, buried an empty casket for their lost boy, unaware that he was alive and well just two states away, living comfortably with his “ father ”  in west ham, connecticut.

peyton pellegrino’s mother abandoned her family shortly after peyton’s first birthday –– she’d struggled with postpartum depression & decided she wasn’t made out to be a mother. despite matthew’s pleas, his wife disappeared into the night. and just like that, it was just father and son. us two against the world, peyton’s father would say. they moved around frequently, spending almost each passing birthday in a different place. new york city, boston, miami, chicago, philly. it wasn’t until peyton’s seventh birthday that they finally settled somewhere long-term: phoenix, arizona. and, by the time his tenth birthday rolled around, they hopped across the country once more.

to west ham, connecticut. a dramatic change of pace. matthew had landed the position of fire chief, his record of improving local fire departments finally recognized. so ten-year-old peyton careened into fifth grade, then middle school. he fit right in. and west ham? west ham ate up the pellegrino family story. nobody suspects a thing.

in a hidden compartment locked under matthew’s desk lies the only record of peyton’s past. duplicated fingerprints. forged social security documents. fake passports, just in case. the key’s hidden somewhere in the house. but it’s the two of them, father and son, them two against the world.

and up until now? peyton hasn’t had the means to discover the truth.

peyton pellegrino, aspiring broadway set/lighting engineer:

inspired by “no place like home” by marianas trench.

peyton moved to west ham when he was 10, so i would love some long-term connections for him. his dad’s the fire chief, so he’s definitely... involvedˆin the smell stuff. more on that in the future.

he’s heavily involved in lacrosse, mock trial, theater, & student gov. he’s the senior class treasurer because freshman year, his pals on the lacrosse team joked he had the only face people wouldn’t be mad to hand class dues to. he’s been voted into position ever since.

will be attending eastern connecticut state university for a degree in theatre & theatre design !! he’s SUCH a techie and very unashamed about it, but he will get bashful if he gushes on too long about the importance of a crisp curtain or how much of a difference fading spots can make. he acts as well ( see his excellent performances in mock trial competitions ) but he’s got such a love for framing the stage, making his performers look good. making the visual effects an extension of the story.

works as a pizza delivery boi for one of the local faves — and you best bet this kid makes amazing tips. in the summers, he techs at a bunch of theatre camps and throws in a gig scooping ice cream just for some extra dough. it’s not that his dad doesn’t make good money as fire chief, but they struck a deal that peyton would foot at least half of the bill for college. so he’s trying to getting a jump on that.

one of those rare breeds that is hella involved and seems really relaxed about it? but... he does have anxiety & struggles with panic attacks from time to time. they were really bad when he was around 8 to 11, but they’ve calmed since being here. it’s one of the reasons why matthew looked for a position in such a small, calm town.

sike !!!!!  west ham ain’t calm no more !!!!

speaking of his dad. they’re fuckin’ best friends, alright? saturday nights are reserved for the pellegrino boys. foosball. ping pong. b-rate game shows.

he’s the kind of dude to go out of his way to help you and say it was no sweat. even if it was all the sweat.

if he loves you, watch him lay out his jacket so you don’t have to step in mud.

has a bad habit of nipping at the edge of pens. it’s one of the anxious ticks he hasn’t quite been able to shake. sometimes his right leg bounces, if he’s forced to sit still in one place for too long.

will likely join the committee on going home, if something like that arises. leadership courses through his veins, but peyton’s not really one to pursue it very much. he’s more content to chip in and help everyone else than sit at the top. but if someone close to him ( cough cough, @cvssndra​, cough ) decides to take the reins, he’ll be right there to support.

he eats his pizza rolled around the crust, like an italian taquito.

notable fashion choices include : leather bracelets, cuffed jeans, lots of solid colored and colorblocked tees. when he dresses up for mock trial, the girls kinda swoon. boy looks dashing in a suit. has a glasses prescription but always wears contacts. his dad says he looks sharper that way ( but it’s actually because, with glasses, he looks too similar to the claverton family. )  beat up chuck taylors, kind of untied on purpose. he’s got that whole loosely kept together, sleep deprived look down pat.

in middle school, he did a social studies project on milk carton kids. his project partner said there was this sketch from delaware that kinda looked like him. they both just laughed it off. young peyton came home and told his dad all about it over dinner. his dad laughed. the next day, peyton tried to find the same webpage, and was met with a notice that it had been permanently disbanded.

catch him longboarding around town like an absolute boss.

his favorite gum flavor is juicyfruit. it reminds him of go kart racing with his dad in arizona.

has functional knowledge of asl. he began learning at his school in chicago, and pursued it a bit further in arizona when he learned their next-door neighbor, patricia, was deaf. young peyton would walk the nice lady’s mail up to her door and learn a few signs from her each day, then practice them at dinner with his dad.

i imagine his dad’s reputation makes him fairly well-known around town. it’s likely peyton knows the owners of most businesses around here, so he’s the dude you stick near if ya want free shit.

he knows his dad’s disappointed he’s not pursuing a career in law enforcement or medicine. but peyton barely survived one day of junior firefighter training.

he actually just went back on anti-anxiety meds recently. so that’s gonna be interesting, when that supply starts going bye-bye.

people always assume he’s from cali, because of his overall vibe. his dad says he was actually born in ohio. peyton did a whitepages search in ohio for kenna pellegrino. the search came up empty.

his pals have a running inside joke where they hand him bottles of san pellegrino mineral water. it’s hilarious. and he hates it.

aight cuttin’ it short so i can hop onto this dash!! as always hmu for plots, bants, and good times !!  xx

So these are the other outfit possibilities for Twitch. from Left to right it goes Bunny Girl, Flyer (a trapeze artist), Magical Girl, Loli Princess, Ring Master, Scientist, and The original Art for the Alchemist 

these are found in Twitch’s Costume Sketch pad along with specifications for what everything is made of as well as the specifications for weapons, accessories, and utility items. the first four weren’t ever a consideration for Twitch’s costume by me i just wanted to use her picking a costume as a way to flesh out the kind of person she is. The last three, however, had extensive consideration and took a long time to actually write out and stat for the system. 

Twitch, as a recap, is a tinker. She can make anything given that it is a one use item or something that uses one use items, such as ammunition and explosives as well as serums and medicine. Mostly Twitch used her powers to create munitions until one of her friends powers got irreparably altered in such away that it made him upset with his new power. she then attempted to return her friend’s power to normal. through weeks of testing she discovered an aptitude for temporarily giving others various “mid-level” powers in Mutants and masterminds she could, without a roll, give someone a power worth 17 points (she was level 7) though if she wished to give a higher power it would require a roll and take her considerably longer. 

The first iteration of Twitch’s Hero identity was The Scientist. She had an almost comically large sniper rifle (more of an anti-tank rifle, think Seras Victoria from Hellsing ultimate) that was equipped with targeting computers, recoil buffers, anti-grav (plates so she could carry it), and an alternate form of a 3x3 inch metal cube. 

Ring Master was going to be a team. Twitch would lead a team of four skilled individuals with little to no powers as The Troupe they would each get a near constant dose of one of her power giving serums giving them situation appropriate powers so long as she prepared them in advance.

Below are the process pictures for Ring Master the first is Front and Back, the second is the other possible iterations of the Ring Master costume, and last is the front view w/nameplate and color palette none of these feature her weapon, a cane it looks like a typical ringmaster cane but with an ‘L’ shaped handle. the shaft of the cane is actually the barrel of a pneumatic dart gun with the trigger being at the crook of the ‘L’. That she would use to shoot her serums at people in a pinch (her troupe has serum dispensers in their suits), or when she wanted to shoot some kind of poison or paralytic at her enemies.  

Lastly we have The alchemist. She is a bit less of a support or background hero. In this iteration she has drinkable/injectable serums. She kept the drinkable serums on her belt in tiny charms or in the pouch on her belt, once the charms were removed from her belt they turned into glass vials that can be drank. her darts are also kept in the pouch which hold more than it should via sub-space technology. She equipped her teammates costumes, with their permission, with mechanisms that when activated inject 1 dose of power serum into the bearer. Her staff is a three part firing mechanism. 1) a dart gun similar to the ring master’s, 2) a overly high powered rifle the butt of the gun being the swirl, and 3) the swirl while acting as the but of the rifle also activates the devices in her teammates costumes.

The Worst Advice We've Ever Heard About best portable keyboard

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens songs that she wrote over ten years in the past, the lady who arrived for being recognised only given that the piano teacher available what, in hindsight, looks like an eerie glimpse of her own upcoming.

Im going away now to a spot so far-off, where nobody understands my name, she wrote within the lyrics of the track referred to as Transferring.

When she wrote that tune, she was young and vivacious, a piano Trainer and freelance songs author who liked Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river sounds, extensive walks and every little thing about New York.

On a kind of beloved walks, through Central Park in the bright Sunlight of the June day in 1996, a homeless drifter beat her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to lifetime. Once the attack, the words to her song arrived true. She moved absent, out of Ny city, from her previous daily life, and all but her closest good friends did not know her identify. To the remainder of the entire world, she was — just like the far more popular jogger attacked in Central Park seven decades before — an nameless image of an city nightmare. She was the piano teacher.

Now, to the tenth anniversary of the attack, she is celebrating what is apparently her entire recovery from brain trauma. She is 42, married, with a small child. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and he or she hopes to explain to her story, her way.

Her health care provider informed her it could choose a decade to Recuperate, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I sense my existence has long been redefined by Central Park, she explained numerous days in the past, her voice delicate and hopeful. Right before park; following park. Will there ever be considered a time when I dont think, Oh, Here is the tenth anniversary, the eleventh anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch home within a wooded subdivision in a Ny suburb. She sat in the eating area strewn with toys, surrounded by pictures of her cherubic, darkish-haired 2-year-aged daughter. A Steinway grand loaded 50 % the place, and at one place she sat down and performed. Her enjoying was forceful, but she appeared humiliated to Enjoy more than a few bars, and shrugged, in lieu of answering, when questioned the name in the piece. She asked that her daughter and her town not be named.

She phone calls that day, June 4, 1996, the day After i was harm.

Hers was the primary inside of a string of assaults by the same male on four Ladies around 8 days. The last victim, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was crushed to death as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleaning shop, and in the end, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to everyday living in jail.

Nevertheless the attack around the piano Instructor may be the 1 men and women feel to recall the most. Part of the fascination should do with echoes of the 1989 attack on the Central Park jogger. But Additionally, it frightened persons in a means the assault around the jogger did not for the reason that its situations ended up so mundane.

It did not take place inside of a remote A part of the park late during the night, but near a favorite playground at 3 from the afternoon. It might have happened to any individual. The tension was heightened because of the thriller of your piano lecturers id.

For 3 days, as law enforcement and Medical practitioners tried using to determine who she was, she lay inside of a coma in her medical center mattress, nameless. Her dad and mom have been on getaway and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Finally, one among her students recognized a police sketch and was able to discover her while in the healthcare facility by her fingers, simply because her confront was swollen past recognition. The police didn't launch her title.

The very last thing she remembers about June 4, 1996, is providing a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then Placing her prolonged hair in a very ponytail and heading out for a wander. She doesn't don't forget the attack, Even though she has read the accounts from the police and prosecutors.

To me its like a point I learned and memorized, she explained. As if I ended up a scholar in class researching record.

She will not take into consideration The person who did it. I may have been indignant to get a instant, but not much longer than that, she explained. How could I be indignant at John Royster? He was declared not insane, but I assume by our specifications he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her health care provider at Ny Hospital-Cornell Health-related Center, as it had been recognised in 1996, instructed reporters that she had a 10 p.c potential for survival. Medical doctors had to remove her forehead bone, which was later on replaced, to generate home for her swelling Mind. When her mother built a community appeal to pray for my daughter, hundreds did.

Right after 8 times, she arrived away from a coma, initially in a very vegetative state, then in the childlike point out. As she recovered, she slept minimal and talked consistently, at times in gibberish. I was obtaining mad at people today if they didnt respond to these terms, she claimed.

Like an Alzheimers client, she experienced minor brief-expression memory and would overlook visitors the moment they left the room.

Around various months, she needed to relearn the way to wander, dress, read and write. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, frequented daily to play guitar for her. He inspired her to Enjoy the piano, in opposition to the advice of her physical therapists, who assumed she could be disappointed by her incapacity to Enjoy the best way she once experienced. Mr. Scherr played Beatles duets together with her, participating in the remaining-hand section while she performed the proper.

Which was my ideal therapy, she claimed.

In August, she moved back household to New Jersey, along with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She visited aged haunts and named good friends, trying to revive her shattered memory. I was very obsessed with remembering, she said. Any memory reduction was to me an indication of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists considered her development was fantastic, but her two sisters protested that she was not the deep thinker she had been.

What bothered her most was that she experienced misplaced the chance to cry, as if a faucet inside her brain had been turned off. A single night time, 9 months immediately after she was hurt, she stayed up late to view the John Grisham movie A Time to Kill. Just soon after her father experienced gone to bed, she viewed a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on demo for killing two Adult men who had raped his younger daughter.

The faucet opened, as well as tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought of my mother and father, my father, and the things they went as a result of, she mentioned. Minor by little, my sensation returned, my depth of thoughts returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went back again to school and acquired a masters degree in audio training.

Not every little thing went effectively. She and Mr. Scherr break up up five years once the attack, nevertheless they remain close friends. She dated other men, but she usually told them concerning the assault without delay — she could not assist it, she claimed — and they under no circumstances identified as for just a next date.

We've to find you a person, her Mate David Phelps, a guitar participant, claimed four several years back, in advance of introducing her to Liam McCann, a computer technician and beginner drummer. For the moment, she didn't say everything with regards to the assault until she bought to be aware of Mr. McCann, and after that when she did, he admired her energy.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who experienced typically frequented her at her bedside while she was in the medical center, married them in his Times Sq. Business office. She wore a blue gown and pearls. Although she was Expecting, in a burst of creative imagination, she and her good friends recorded While Ended up Youthful, an album of childrens music that she experienced composed prior to the attack, including the track Shifting. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, created the CD. On it, her husband performs drums and he or she plays electric piano.

Is her everyday living as it had been? Not precisely, nevertheless she is hesitant to attribute the discrepancies to her accidents. Her previous two piano learners left her, without the need of calling to explain why, she reported. She has resumed participating in classical new music, but basic items, for the reason that her daughter would not give her time and energy to practice. As for jazz, I dont even consider, she stated.

She want to generate additional, sensation stranded from the suburbs, but she is well rattled. She tries to be material with remaining household and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a medical professor of neurological surgical treatment at exactly what is now termed New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Healthcare Center, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the attack, explained last week that her amount of recovery was uncommon. Shes essentially normal, he said.

Other specialists, who're not personally aware of Ms. Kevorkian McCanns scenario, tend to be more cautious.

Regaining a chance to play the piano may well involve an almost mechanical approach, a semiautomatic remember of exactly what the fingers ought to do, mentioned Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of clinical rehabilitation drugs at The big apple College University of Medication. The moment brain-hurt, you might be normally brain-injured, for the rest of your lifetime, Dr. Ben-Yishay said. There isn't any cure, There's only intense payment.

The more telling A part of a Restoration, in his see, is psychological, and on that score he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns marriage and youngster as a significant victory.

For her part, the piano teacher knows she has improved, but she has built her peace with it. I was type of a hyper —— I dont know if I used to be a kind A, but I had been bold, she claims. Why was I so formidable? I was a piano Instructor. I dont understand what the ambition was about. I actually did come back to the person Im purported to be.

12 Reasons You Shouldn't Invest in best keyboard for beginners

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens music that she wrote greater than ten years in the past, the lady who arrived to become known only because the piano Instructor provided what, in hindsight, looks like an eerie glimpse of her very own upcoming.

Im moving away these days to a place so far-off, the place no person understands my title, she wrote while in the lyrics of the music named Shifting.

When she wrote that music, she was young and vivacious, a piano teacher and freelance audio writer who beloved Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Seems, lengthy walks and every thing about New York.

On a kind of beloved walks, by Central Park in the bright Sunlight of the June day in 1996, a homeless drifter beat her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to daily life. Following the assault, the terms to her tune came real. She moved away, out of Ny city, outside of her old lifetime, and all but her closest close friends did not know her identify. To the rest of the environment, she was — just like the additional renowned jogger attacked in Central Park 7 several years before — an anonymous image of an urban nightmare. She was the piano Instructor.

Now, about the tenth anniversary of your attack, she is celebrating what seems to be her complete recovery from brain trauma. She's forty two, married, with a little boy or girl. She is Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano Trainer, and she wants to explain to her story, her way.

Her medical professional informed her it would acquire 10 years to Recuperate, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I really feel my lifetime has actually been redefined by Central Park, she said numerous days back, her voice comfortable and hopeful. Before park; right after park. Will there at any time be a time After i dont Assume, Oh, This is actually the tenth anniversary, the 11th anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch household in a wooded subdivision within a Big apple suburb. She sat within a dining place strewn with toys, surrounded by images of her cherubic, dim-haired 2-yr-previous daughter. A Steinway grand loaded fifty percent the home, and at just one point she sat down and performed. Her taking part in was forceful, but she seemed embarrassed to play quite a lot of bars, and shrugged, instead of answering, when requested the identify of your piece. She questioned that her daughter and her town not be named.

She calls that working day, June four, 1996, the working day After i was harm.

Hers was the 1st in a very string of assaults by a similar guy on four Girls above 8 days. The last victim, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was overwhelmed to Loss of life as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleansing store, and ultimately, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to existence in prison.

Still the attack around the piano Instructor could be the one particular people today look to keep in mind by far the most. Section of the fascination should do with echoes of the 1989 attack around the Central Park jogger. But In addition it frightened folks in a method the attack within the jogger didn't mainly because its situation ended up so mundane.

It did not happen inside of a distant Component of the park late in the evening, but in close proximity to a well-liked playground at 3 while in the afternoon. It might have occurred to any individual. The tension was heightened by the secret of the piano teachers id.

For three times, as police and doctors tried using to see who she was, she lay within a coma in her hospital bed, anonymous. Her parents have been on holiday vacation and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Eventually, among her students recognized a law enforcement sketch and was ready to discover her from the healthcare facility by her fingers, for the reason that her confront was swollen over and above recognition. The police didn't release her name.

The very last thing she remembers about June 4, 1996, is providing a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then putting her extensive hair inside of a ponytail and heading out for just a walk. She will not don't forget the assault, Despite the fact that she has heard the accounts of the law enforcement and prosecutors.

To me its just like a fact I learned and memorized, she said. As if I were a scholar in school studying record.

She would not think of The person who did it. I might need been angry for a second, although not a lot longer than that, she said. How could I be angry at John Royster? He was declared not insane, but I suppose by our standards he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her medical doctor at The big apple Healthcare facility-Cornell Healthcare Center, as it was recognized in 1996, told reporters that she had a ten per cent chance of survival. Doctors experienced to remove her forehead bone, which was later changed, for making space for her swelling Mind. When her mom built a community appeal to pray for my daughter, thousands did.

Soon after eight times, she arrived out of a coma, 1st in a vegetative condition, then in a childlike condition. As she recovered, she slept tiny and talked continually, at times in gibberish. I had been having mad at persons if they didnt respond to these text, she stated.

Like an Alzheimers affected individual, she had minor limited-expression memory and would neglect site visitors as soon as they remaining the room.

Above a number of months, she had to relearn ways to stroll, costume, read through and publish. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, visited every day to Engage in guitar for her. He inspired her to play the piano, towards the recommendation of her Actual physical therapists, who believed she might be annoyed by her inability to Perform how she after had. Mr. Scherr played Beatles duets together with her, actively playing the left-hand section when she played the ideal.

Which was my most effective therapy, she said.

In August, she moved back dwelling to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mother, a schoolteacher. She frequented old haunts and known as mates, hoping to revive her shattered memory. I was very obsessed with remembering, she claimed. Any memory decline was to me an indication of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists imagined her development was wonderful, but her two sisters protested that she wasn't the deep thinker she were.

What bothered her most was that she experienced misplaced the opportunity to cry, as if a faucet inside her brain were turned off. One particular night time, nine months just after she was hurt, she stayed up late to watch the John Grisham Motion picture A The perfect time to Get rid of. Just soon after her father had long gone to bed, she viewed a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on demo for killing two Males who experienced raped his younger daughter.

The faucet opened, as well as the tears trickled down her cheeks. I considered my mothers and fathers, my father, and what they went by, she said. Little by minimal, my sensation returned, my depth of brain returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went again to highschool and received a masters diploma in new music schooling.

Not every little thing went well. She and Mr. Scherr split up five years once the attack, though they continue to be mates. She dated other men, but she constantly instructed them with regard to the assault without delay — she couldn't enable it, she explained — they usually hardly ever referred to as for any second date.

We have now to locate you anyone, her Buddy David Phelps, a guitar player, said four a long time ago, just before introducing her to Liam McCann, a computer technician and newbie drummer. For at the time, she didn't say nearly anything concerning the attack till she got to be aware of Mr. McCann, then when she did, he admired her energy.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had frequently frequented her at her bedside though she was in the medical center, married them in his Times Square Workplace. She wore a blue costume and pearls. Though she was pregnant, in a very burst of creativeness, she and her buddies recorded Though Were being Youthful, an album of childrens tracks that she had prepared prior to the assault, such as the music Shifting. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, manufactured the CD. On it, her spouse plays drums and she plays electrical piano.

Is her lifetime as it was? Not precisely, however she is reluctant to attribute the dissimilarities to her accidents. Her final two piano students left her, without having contacting to elucidate why, she claimed. She has resumed playing classical new music, but straightforward pieces, because her daughter would not give her time for you to practice. As for jazz, I dont even consider, she explained.

She would want to travel extra, experience stranded while in the suburbs, but she is definitely rattled. She tries to be articles with keeping residence and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a medical professor of neurological surgical procedure at what on earth is now referred to as Big apple-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Heart, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the attack, stated last week that her amount of Restoration was exceptional. Shes mainly ordinary, he stated.

Other professionals, who are not personally aware of Ms. Kevorkian McCanns circumstance, tend to be more cautious.

Regaining the ability to Participate in the piano may perhaps entail an Nearly mechanical system, a semiautomatic recall of exactly what the fingers must do, claimed Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at Ny University Faculty of Drugs. After brain-injured, you happen to be generally brain-wounded, For the remainder of your lifetime, Dr. Ben-Yishay said. There isn't any remedy, there is only intensive payment.

The greater telling Component of a Restoration, in his perspective, is psychological, and on that score he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns relationship and boy or girl as a significant victory.

For her element, the piano Trainer is familiar with she has changed, but she has made her peace with it. I used to be form of a hyper —— I dont know if I used to be a Type A, but I used to be formidable, she claims. Why was I so formidable? I used to be a piano teacher. I dont really know what the ambition was about. I actually did come back to the individual Im speculated to be.

15 Tips About best beginner piano

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens tunes that she wrote in excess of a decade back, the woman who came to generally be known only given that the piano Instructor offered what, in hindsight, looks like an eerie glimpse of her have long run.

Im going away currently to an area so distant, in which no person appreciates my title, she wrote within the lyrics of the music referred to as Going.

When she wrote that track, she was young and vivacious, a piano Instructor and freelance tunes writer who beloved Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Seems, long walks and anything about The big apple.

On a kind of beloved walks, through Central Park in the intense Sunshine of a June day in 1996, a homeless drifter conquer her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to everyday living. Once the assault, the phrases to her track arrived real. She moved absent, outside of New York City, from her aged life, and all but her closest buddies didn't know her identify. To the remainder of the earth, she was -- such as a lot more well-known jogger attacked in Central Park seven many years before -- an nameless symbol of the urban nightmare. She was the piano Trainer.

Now, around the tenth anniversary from the assault, she is celebrating what is apparently her total recovery from brain trauma. She is forty two, married, with a small youngster. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she or he hopes to explain to her Tale, her way.

Her medical doctor advised her it would consider 10 years to recover, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I feel my lifetime has actually been redefined by Central Park, she explained many times ago, her voice gentle and hopeful. In advance of park; immediately after park. Will there at any time be a time when I dont Imagine, Oh, This is actually the 10th anniversary, the eleventh anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch home inside a wooded subdivision inside a Ny suburb. She sat inside of a dining space strewn with toys, surrounded by photographs of her cherubic, dim-haired two-year-aged daughter. A Steinway grand filled half the area, and at one stage she sat down and played. Her playing was forceful, but she appeared humiliated to Enjoy various bars, and shrugged, as opposed to answering, when questioned the identify of the piece. She requested that her daughter and her city not be named.

She phone calls that working day, June 4, 1996, the day After i was damage.

Hers was the first in a string of assaults by exactly the same guy on four Females around 8 days. The last target, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was beaten to death as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleansing store, and in the end, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to existence in jail.

Nevertheless the attack over the piano Instructor will be the a single people today seem to be to remember quite possibly the most. Component of the fascination should do with echoes from the 1989 attack within the Central Park jogger. But In addition it frightened men and women in a method the assault around the jogger did not mainly because its circumstances had been so mundane.

It didn't take place in the remote Section of the park late in the evening, but in the vicinity of a popular playground at three in the afternoon. It could have transpired to anybody. The tension was heightened by the mystery on the piano academics id.

For 3 days, as law enforcement and Medical doctors tried to see who she was, she lay in a coma in her clinic mattress, nameless. Her mothers and fathers have been on holiday vacation and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Lastly, one among her students recognized a law enforcement sketch and was in the position to detect her inside the hospital by her fingers, mainly because her facial area was swollen beyond recognition. The police didn't launch her title.

The very last thing she remembers about June four, 1996, is offering a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then putting her extensive hair in a ponytail and heading out for the stroll. She isn't going to remember the assault, Despite the fact that she has listened to the accounts on the police and prosecutors.

To me its just like a simple fact I learned and memorized, she reported. As if I were being a university student in school researching historical past.

She isn't going to take into consideration The person who did it. I might have been angry for a moment, although not for much longer than that, she reported. How could I be offended at John Royster? He was declared not crazy, but I assume by our standards he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her medical doctor at Ny Hospital-Cornell Health-related Middle, as it was recognized in 1996, advised reporters that she had a ten percent possibility of survival. Physicians experienced to get rid of her forehead bone, which was afterwards changed, for making area for her swelling brain. When her mother produced a general public appeal to pray for my daughter, 1000's did.

After 8 times, she arrived away from a coma, very first in the vegetative point out, then in a childlike condition. As she recovered, she slept minimal and talked regularly, at times in gibberish. I had been finding mad at folks when they didnt respond to these text, she said.

Like an Alzheimers affected individual, she experienced minor quick-time period memory and would neglect visitors when they still left the place.

More than many months, she needed to relearn ways to walk, dress, read through and publish. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, frequented daily to Perform guitar for her. He encouraged her to Perform the piano, against the advice of her physical therapists, who believed she might be disappointed by her incapacity to Perform the way in which she the moment had. Mr. Scherr performed Beatles duets with her, taking part in the left-hand part even though she played the right.

That was my greatest therapy, she mentioned.

In August, she moved back again dwelling to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She visited aged haunts and named pals, striving to revive her shattered memory. I used to be quite obsessed with remembering, she reported. Any memory decline was to me an indication of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists imagined her development was great, but her two sisters protested that she was not the deep thinker she were.

What bothered her most was that she experienced misplaced the chance to cry, as if a faucet inside her brain had been turned off. One night, nine months after she was damage, she stayed up late to view the John Grisham movie A Time to Get rid of. Just after her father had gone to mattress, she viewed a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on trial for killing two Gentlemen who had raped his youthful daughter.

The faucet opened, as well as tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought about my mother and father, my father, and the things they went as a result of, she stated. Minimal by little, my sensation returned, my depth of brain returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went back again to school and acquired a masters degree in audio education.

Not every thing went effectively. She and Mr. Scherr split up five years following the assault, nevertheless they continue to be friends. She dated other Males, but she generally informed them in regards to the assault instantly -- she couldn't aid it, she mentioned -- and they hardly ever called for any second date.

We have to search out you a person, her Good friend David Phelps, a guitar participant, claimed 4 yrs in the past, ahead of introducing her to Liam McCann, a pc technician and newbie drummer. For as soon as, she didn't say anything concerning the attack until eventually she acquired to find out Mr. McCann, then when she did, he admired her energy.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who experienced usually frequented her at her bedside when she was from the hospital, married them in his Times Sq. office. She wore a blue costume and pearls. Although she was pregnant, within a burst of creative imagination, she and her friends recorded When Had been Young, an album of childrens tunes that she experienced penned ahead of the assault, including the music Relocating. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, generated the CD. On it, her husband performs drums and he or she plays electric powered piano.

Is her existence as it had been? Not specifically, although she's hesitant to attribute the discrepancies to her injuries. Her final two piano pupils left her, without having contacting to clarify why, she claimed. She has resumed taking part in classical songs, but simple pieces, mainly because her daughter doesn't give her the perfect time to exercise. As for jazz, I dont even check out, she explained.

She would like to drive much more, emotion stranded during the suburbs, but she is easily rattled. She attempts to be written content with being dwelling and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a scientific professor of neurological surgical procedures at precisely what is now known as NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare facility/Weill Cornell Healthcare Middle, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the attack, claimed previous week that her degree of Restoration was unusual. Shes basically usual, he explained.

Other professionals, that are not Individually informed about Ms. Kevorkian McCanns scenario, tend to be more careful.

Regaining the chance to Engage in the piano may entail an Virtually mechanical process, a semiautomatic remember of what the fingers ought to do, reported Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of clinical rehabilitation drugs at Big apple University University of Drugs. As soon as brain-injured, you're generally Mind-hurt, for the rest of your daily life, Dr. Ben-Yishay mentioned. There's no heal, there is only intensive payment.

The more telling Element of a recovery, in his look at, is psychological, and on that rating he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns marriage and child as an important victory.

For her aspect, the piano Trainer understands she has adjusted, but she has built her peace with it. I was kind of a hyper ---- I dont know if I had been a kind A, but I had been bold, she states. Why was I so formidable? I used to be a piano Instructor. I dont know what the ambition was about. I really did return to the individual Im designed to be.

Correction: June thirteen, 2006, Tuesday An short article on Thursday about Kyle Kevorkian McCann, a piano teacher who was beaten and sexually assaulted ten years back in Central Park, misstated the title of her album of childrens music. It can be Even though Have been Youthful, not When Have been Young.

VOLTRON COLLEGE!AU KEEF (KOREAN!KEITH) - moody art major with focus on mural arts + art as restorative medium - keith as low income who used to do graffiti but then saw how mural arts actually change communities - KEITH WHO VOLUNTEERS AT PUBLIC SCHOOL AFTERSCHOOL ARTS PEOGRAM - KEITH WHO WILL FORGET TO EAT SOMETIMES WHEN HES RLY CONCENTRATING ON HIS WORK UNTIL EITHER SHIRO OR HUNK (later lance) REMINDS HIM TO EAT AND FORCES HIM AWAY FROM HIS ART TO TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF - keith who is SICK OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION BULLSHIT IN ART COMMUNITY - keith as hellllla gayyyYyYy - KEITH IN DIRTY DOCS AND RIPPED BLACK JEANS + RED SHIRT THATS BEEN STRETCHED AT THE NECK AND HIS HAIR IN A PONY TAIL USUALLY (but he still had a mullet!!!!!!!) - KEITH FROM TEXAS - KEITH WHO LIVES WITH HIS COUSIN SHIRO AFTER HIS PARENTS DISOWNED HIM AFTER BEING OUTED - KEITH WHO DECIDES ITS BETTER NOT TO OPEN UP BC OF THAT(until ppl HIS SUPPORTIVE AF FRIENDS change his mind) - AWKWARD BB KEITH WHO NEVER??? HAD REAL FRIENDS??? - KEITHS BEEN WORKING SINCE HES BEEN IN HS SAVING UP FOR COLLEGE/ADULTHOOD - Keith who also works at campus bookstore across the street from lance and likes TO READ?????? - KEITH WITH HEADPHONES AND STILL LISTENS TO ANGSTY EMO/SCREAMO MUSIC - KEITH WHO ALSO LISTENS TO PODCASTS ESP ABT S P A C E - KEITH WHO DID TRACK AND FIELD IN HS AND CONTINUES TO RUN LONG DISTANCE TO KEEP IN SHAPE + ZONE OUT/MEDITATE/DESTRESS (think that one taekook fic i gave yall but less angst or the same lvl) - KEITH AS A CAT PERSON AND LOVES SOFT PLUSHIE THINGS BC THEY C O M F O R T HIM - keith who hates lance's guts/attitude when he initially meets him and makes assumptions abt him as a "typical frat bro" and complains to shiro one day and shiro fuckin defends lance by telling keith abt how lance is the one who doesnt tolerate toxic masculinity practices at ALL and is the one who brings it up during meetings AND THEN KEITH KEEPS LEARNING DIFF DIMENSIONS OF LANCE AND WELL SHIT - KEITH AS ULTIMATE LIGHTWEIGHT WITH PIDGE - KEITH WHO IS NATURALLY GIFTED ATHLETICALLY AND ARTISTICALLY (that doesnt mean he works FUCKING hard) - keith who sort of fumes into the library and tries to burn down the math section BC FUCK MATH WHO THE FUCK CREATED THIS BULLSHIT ALL U NEED IN LIFE IS ADDITION SUBTRACTION MULTI AND DIV until hunk + lance + pidge try to stop him and help him with his math hw and shiro will be there for moral support bc shiro is just as clueless abt math as keith is 😀 - keith who is gets caught up in everyone's competition during monopoly but is a p okay player - keith who bumps into lance after volunteering at the afterschool program and begrudgingly says hell treat lance to boba as payback for math tutoring bc pidge and hunk both arent the best at explaining concepts sometimes and lance's were the easiest to understand I JUST DONT WANT TO BE IN DEBT TO YOU OKAY? (lance offers indiv tutoring and keith initally REFUSES until he sees the practice midterm and ???? what the fuck are these symbols FUCK) LANCEEEE MA BOOIII (CUBAN!LANCE) - lance as marxist econ major who DOES MAJOR RESEARCH ON #FIGHTFOR15 AND CUBAN/LATIN AM ECON POLICY ESP DURING US IMPERIALISM AND HOW THISE AFFECTS HAVE LASTING EFFECTS ON LABOR + ECON - LANCE AS BISEXUAL AS HELL - lance who TUTORS AT SAME PUBLIC SCHOOL AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM EXCEPT MATH - LANCE WHO's FROM FLORIDA AND IS FIRST IN THE FAMILY FOR COLLEGE - LANCE WHO SEES HIS FAMILY GO THRU WAGE THEFT FUELING HIS WORK IN UNDOCU LABOR RIGHTS AND ECON POLICIES - lance who joins latinx affinity club with hunk (whos half filipinx) and while hunk is the master chef taste+recipe wise NO ONE MAKES _______ LIKE LANCE CAN BC HIS ABUELITA TAUGHT HIM THE FAMILY RECIPE - LANCE AS A FRAT BOI WHO FUCKIN SERVES AT BEER PONG AND FLIP CUP - lance as vp of said frat and wont let shiro pick the music at parties bc shiro only listens to old 80's classics, shiro we live in the 21ST CENTURY THESE PPL WANT BEYONCE AND NICKI OKAH (lance who listens to hella pop music) - lance who KNOWS HOW TO DANCE AND RELIGIOUSLY GOES TO ZUMBA CLASS WITH ALLURA WHO DRAGS PIDGE's LAZY ASS AS CARDIO BEFORE DOING HIS MUSCLE WORKOUT WITH HUNK AND SHIRO - lance who works at the campus hip coffeeshop/cafe and fucking snapchats the shit out of his shift - LANCE WHO LEARNS ABT HOW DRAWING/DOODLING CAN HELP WITH ANXIETY FROM KEITH AND STARTS TO CARRY AROUND A SKETCH NOTEBOOK - LANCE WHO IS EQUALLY AS GOOD WITH KIDS AS KEITH IS BC HELLO? SIBLINGS??? - LANCE AS AN ANIMAL PERSON BUT LEANS TOWARDS DOGS - lance who needs to be alone at the library when studying and mutters to himself softly a lot when thinking but is on top of his group project/study game with HELLA STUDY GUIDES + tutor tips - lance who chews on pen tips 😭 - LANCE WHO HAS ANXIETY THAT HE ISNT GOOD ENOUGH/SMART ENOUGH AT SCHOOL AND CONSTANTLY THINKS ABT THE SACRIFICE HIS PARENTS AND SIBLINGS MADE FOR HIM TO GO TO SCHOOL AND HIDES HIS ANXIETY+LOW SELF-ESTEEM BY TRYING TO BE RLY EXTROVERTED AND FUN AND FLIPPANT LANCE WHO OVERCOMPENSATES - lance who is initially jealous of keith's "easy" art degree until he fuckin sees the work that keith puts into his art AND THEN APOLOGIZES FOR UNDERESTIMATING KEITH - LANCE WHO ALWAYS LOSES AT MONOPOLY AND STARTS RANTING ABT DECAYING FORMS OF CAPITALISM SHEEREROOOOOOH - shiro as a senior after taking a gap year from a life-threatening injury on his arm FROM A CAR ACCIDENT (SHIRO WITH A PROSTHETIC LIMB??) - SHIRO WHO IS SCARED OF CARS IN RELATION TO INJURY WILL TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORT UNLESS HE HAS TO TAKE A CAR - SHIRO AS A POLI SCI MAJOR BUT HES NOT A BRO AND INTERSECTIONAL AF - SHIRO WHO IS STARSTRUCK WITH ALLURA's BRILLIANCE IN A CLASS THEY TOOK TOGETHER ONE TIME - Shiro who gets approached by allura for his insightful comment about aapi's for blm during a blm meeting AND THEY CONNECT - SHIRO AS FRAT PREZ AND STARTS CHANGING FRAT CULTURE TO BE LESS TOXIC/PATRIARCHAL/FUCKEDUP - Shiro who has to do rehab for his arm but also works out!!!!!!!!!!! HUNK WHO SPOTS HIM AND MAKES SURE SHIRO ISNT RUINING HIMSELF - SHIRO WHO ALWAYS CONSIDERED KEITH A LITTLE BROTHER SINCE THEY WERE KIDS AND RLY WORRIES FOR HIM SHIRO BEING AWARE OF KEITH's HURT AROUND BEING DISOWNED - SHIRO WHO WANTS TO BE AN IMMIGRATION LAWYER????? - SHIRO WHO GREW UP NORMAL MIDDLE CLASS (will think of family tree later) - shiro who listens to classic 80's pop and rock HE IS A REAL DAD - SHIRO WHO MAKES SURE EVERYONE IS SAFE WHEN PARTYING AND DRINKING ENOUGH WATER (ESP LANCE AND KEITH WHEN HE DOES COME TO PARTIES) - SHIRO WHO GETS ACTUALLY HELLA TACTICAL WHEN GAMING WITH HUNK LANCE AND PIDGE TO THEIR SURPRISE (the unknowlingly competitive type) - shiro who is merciless at monopoly/settlers of catan - DEMISEXUAL SHIRO B Y E PIDGE - GENDERQUEER!pidge - White!pidge (is this even, like a thing or do we already assume pidge is white?) - aromantic!pidge - Pidge as compsci/math slave major who always ends up doing their allnighters to finish their labs - pidge who lives off caffeine - PIDGE WHO IS SICK OF SHITT CISMEN IN GENERAL + MALE DOMINATED TECH INDUSTRY AND WANTS TO EMPOWER WOC/QTPOC IN TECH - pidge who is MORE ruthless during monopoly than shiro - pidge who is a fuckin genius at video games will whoop anyone's ass - PIDGE WHO IS AFRAID NO ONE RLY LIKES THEM AND USES SARCASM AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM - PIDGE FROM A DIVORCED FAMILY AND ADDS TO THEIR GENERAL DISTRUST IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS - PIDGE WHO HASNT MET THEIR BROTHER IN 10 YEARS BC OF THE DIVORCE - Pidge who met lance and hunk in compsci 101 when lance accidentally stepped on pidge's toe when they hadnt had their morning coffee yet (pidge hisses extremely loudly at lance and hunk giving them death glares) - pidge who forgives lance (and in extension hunk) and started hangin after lance got them an aesthetic avocado toast on the house the next day at the cafe - pidge who actually has a hella basic instagram + PIDGE WHO IS OBSESSED WITH GETTING THE PERFECT FOOD SHOT FOR THE INSTA - pidge and lance's snapchat streak is over 9000 - PIDGE WHO CANT EAT SPICY FOOD (i'm FUCKIN WHITE STOP LAUGHING GUYS) - pidge who studies with hunk in the library bc they need background noise/study partners until lance emerges from the quiet floor and they all do a study break leave to get fruit snacks - PIDGE AS LIGHTWEIGHT - PIDGE WHO IS ALSO COERCED INTO BIRD CLUB AT FIRST AND STAYS FOR THE MEMES WAIT HUNKKKKKKKK - hunk as PREMED/VETERNIARY TRACT - HUNK WHO VOLUNTEERS AT ANIMAL SHELTERS AND IS ALSO A ENV JUSTICE ACTIVIST - HUNK WHO LOVES ALL ANIMALS AND IS THE FAIRY OF ANIMALS IS GOOD WITH ALL OF THEM - HUNK AND LANCE AS FIRST YR ROOMMATES TURNED BFFS - HUNK WHO DESTRESSES BY COOKING/BAKING OBVS - Hunk who is actually p insecure abt his body type and isnt comfortable with showing a lot of skin - HUNK WHO WAS BULLIED FOR BEING "GIRLY" AS A CHILD AND WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT KIND OF SHIT AT ALL HE IS INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST AF BC FUCK GENDER EXPECTATIONS AND MACHISMO - HUNK WHO IS THE BEST SPOTTER FOR WORKOUTS - hunk who cant touch HIS TOES BB - HUNK AS HALF FILIPINX/LATINX - hunk who comes from the east coast but cant stand the cold at all and wears 50 layers - HUNK WHO RUSHES FRATS WITH LANCE BC HE WAS WORRIED ABT LANCE GETTING TOO FUCKED UP AND KINDA ENDS UP IN A FRAT I GUESS BUT HE LIKES SHIRO's LEADERSHIP AROUND GENDER EXPECTATIONS - Hunk who'll be the realest with anyone being an asshole, even if its his friends - HUNK WHO IS PERCEPTIVE AF ESP WITH LANCE WHO TRIES TO HIDE HIS ANXIETY/LOW-SELF ESTEEM - HUNK WHO FUCKIN KILLS AT KNITTING - HUNK IS IN BIRD CLUB BC ACTUAL INTEREST W A I T - Hunk who gets regular morning coffee check-ins with allura and buys coffe for pidge when they come crawling into the cafe - HUNK WHO ACTUALLY RLY LIKES THE BACHELORETTE AND WATTES WITH ALLURA - HUNK WHO MEETS SHAY WHO ALSO VOLUNTEERS AT THE SHELTER AND HAVE A WARM SHY BUDDING RELATIONSHIP ALLURAAAAA MY QUEEEN - Black!Allura - allura who was adopted after living in foster care for so long (Corran adopts her) - Ethnic studies and polisci double major allura who DOES NOT tolerate polisci bros/toxic af bros in general - ALLURA WHO WANTS TO BE A CRIMINAL JUSTICE LAWYER - ALLURA GOES TO ZUMBA WITH LANCE AND FUCKIN KILLS THE ROUTINE BOTH BOND OVER DANCING - fierce sorority queen who believes greek life shud be accessible to all fuck this elitist bullshit - ALLURA IS AS OBSESSED WITH INSTAPERFECT SHOTS AS PIDGE IS - allura who meets shiro at a #blacklivesmatter meeting and hits it off - ALLURA WHO HAS A RLY STRONG SENSE OF JUSTICE but sometimes it makes her rigid when it comes to giving ppl the benefit of the doubt which she did with keith+lance until she gets to know them better + apologizes for making assumptions - CORRAN's NICK NAME FOR ALLURA IS PRINCESS OFC - allura who sees a father figure in corran b l e s s - ALLURA WHO IS AFRAID OF COMMITMENT DUE TO EXP IN FOSTER HOMES AND SHIRO BEING UNDERSTANDING OF THAT - allura who gets competitive at all games MOST ESP with monopoly - allura who works at the cafe with lance - ALLURA ASKS HUNK TO TEACH HER HOW TO KNIT (SHE KINDA SUCKS BUT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!!!!) AND THEY BOTH WATCH THE BACHELORETTE TOGETHER - ALLURA WHO KNOWS MARTIAL ARTS - allura who drinks tea instead of coffee - allura who will join hunk and pidge at the library bc she also needs background noise to work - allura who teaches shiro math bc shiro is actually useless at math - allura who is actually heavy weight af when it comes to alcohol - ALLURA JOINS BIRD CLUB BC THEY ARE JUST FLUFF BALLS OF SOFTNESS (hunk: what bird is that allura: A GOOD BERB) - ALLURA HAS 3 HAMSTERS AS PETS OFC???? CORAN - your eccentric ass prof in the soci/anth dept with an INSANE mustache - teaches intro to soci/anth which a lot of students take for requirement credits - fuckin speaks 7 languages (two of them are coding lang to pidge's surprise) - loves puns + trivia - invites allura's study group for dinner and burns the pasta so hunk and him end up collaborating with the crew making dinner fest - your favorite uncle - always gives wise ass advice in times if need but will usually give out badly translated sayings (he speaks 7 lang give a break) - rigorous activist scholar - is mistaken for "easy prof" bc of his air-headed nature but actually doesnt take bullshit papers esp for a course that introduces race theory to a lot of privileged straight cismen (who underestimate coran) - will fuck u up with knowledge - asks lance for skin care tips and they bond over latinx music (lance hella impressed with coran's dancing actually) - cooks with hunk - pidge exasperately tries to teach coran abt sns: what is this chat that snaps??????? and these instant grams???? - shiro allura and him with have deep ass convos about systems of oppression + lance sometimes when he gets a chance to join + keith who will quietly absorb their convo if he's nearby (but pretend to read a book) - everyone needs to REST BC SELF CARE IS IMPT DONT KILL YOURSELVES BC OF THESE UNREASONABLE DEADLINES - voltron crew all take coran's class for variety of reasons and meet each other when they all rush to office hours and only to find coran's mess of trying to throw popcorn into his mouth - will stop by library during midterms and finals to give out encouraging messages + snacky snacks (will sneak extra for voltron crew's table) some moments id like to consider (klance and otherwise): - LANCE SEEING THE GWIYOMI VIDEO AND FORCING KEITH TO DO IT IN A GAME OF TRUTH AND DARE AND KEITH DOES IT A GLARE THAT FUCKIN BURNS UNIVERSES AND LANCE AND PIDGE RECORDS THAT SHIT shiro sigh-laughs hunk laughs nervously next to keith allura laughs brightly corran does not know what the fuck keith is doing - Keith and Lance find out they listen to the same NASA podcast when lance annoyingly takes out keith's headphones while abt to enter the school for afterschool program - Keith searches out soft things when he's drunk like hunk's hair or pidges sweater or lance's skin-WHATINTHEFUCK - lance teaches keith how to REALLY dance when he brings voltron crew to a latinx heritage month party (and keith secretly enjoys it) - keith had a big ol crush on lance the minute he saw him until he started acting like a "frat bro" and was turned off (but not rly?) - SHIRO AND KEITH GO HAVE BROTHER BONDING DATES AT SHIRO's INSTANCE BUT KEITH LOVES IT INSIDE - lance and hunk both cry when they watch titanic together - pidge lance and hunk become better friends over avocado toast and rly annoying debugging procedures during lab in compsci101 - they also bond over video games - the voltron crew have board game bight which usually ends up being monopoly and things get fuckin ruthless - the crew once tried to play mario party wii but people broke windows when their remotes went flying off their wrists and they vowed to never play again - they all meet each other (like ALL of them) in corab's intro to socianth class and create a study group-ish thing for it - lance and hunk rush shiro's frat thinking its gna be rly shit but shiro genuinely wants to do teamwork bullding exercises and talk abt feelings and lance and hunk are fuckin set on a frat if shiro's gna lead it - hunk will secretly let keith play with the cats in the shelter - hunk will also secretly let lance play with the dogs - pidge starts to memorize the zumba moves unconsciously and their body will move automatically when they hear the musIC FUCK - they all go out for kbbq on keith's bday bc keith loves korean food bc its home before his home abandoned him and voltron fam try to repaint those memories of hurt with memories of love and NEW family B Y E keith is kinda speechless - keith shows lance how to make ssam with lettuce garlic kimchi meat and miso paste and laughs as lance stuffs it into his mouth - allura fuckin kills at meat grilling - pidge refuses to eat veggies until hunk gives them the mom look - corran is vegetarian but loves seeing his students sated and full - shiro and allura keep their pinkies intertwined the entire bbq when they can under the table - keith and lance hook up once after a frat party one night and the morning after they kinda ??????? oh?kay????? thishappened???? at the memory until they fuckin realize theyre attracted to each other - keith gets slurs thrown at him by other frat fuckbois and lance goes fuckin livid until hunk is there to stop an imminent fight and hunk gives off some p threatening vibes to fuckbois - voltron crew help pidge try to reconnect with their brother by calling diff numbers going thru yellow pages - keith recommends books for lance to read and lance makes keith playlists and tells him to "listen to smth bubblegum happy for one" (keith kinda likes it?) - the art kids start to recognize lance when he drops by to pick keith up to go home together after the program js over - they all do secret santa at coran's house for christmas - coran gives shiro some salad tongs that are decorated with rhinestones he found in a vintage store and shiro is just ??? okay?? (he uses it when they all have dinner at shiro's place a few weeks later) jk coran also gives him some hella effective medicine for muscle and bone ache for his injury hes not that insensitive - shiro gives hunk a rly nice apron that says youre a FINEapple and baking mittens and hunk almost cries - hunk gets allura like new knitting needles and yarn as well as hand-knit cap. allura squeals bc FLUFFY - allura gets keith some good books both nonfiction and fiction + live podcast tix (she got from a raffle) and keith's eyes glows a little brighter - keith gets pidge some yellow tinted glasses bc "pidge your eyes are gna get worse and youre basically already blind" and a fisheye camera lense for smartphones and pidge yeLLS AESTHETIC PHOTOOOOOOOS YESSSSS - pidge gets lance some face masks and a customized snapback that says QUIZNAK on it and lance's eyes go all sparkly ✨✨ - lance gets corran some bombass latinx music cds from his favorite artists and a mustache care kit that coran just "✨✨"'s at - for dem romance: keith invites lance to the podcast with him and lance just smiles his lopsided truly happy smile while handing keith some cute hair-ties ("??? what am i supposed to do with these????" "wear them so that u can look even cuter than u already are????" keith goes beet red and punches lance in the shoulder as lance laughs. lance finds keith wearing them the next day) - shiro gives allura a note planner with her favorite quote on the front and allura gives shiro a handknit scarf its zSo fuckin SWEEET - hunk and shay go in their first dare - pidge and coran have rly fuckin good hot chocolate on the kitchen island and revel in their friends' happiness and recount good memories of the past year - they then bring out the wine and the karaoke machine - pidge gets p drunk and both them and lance sing one of the zumba songs pidge can somehow remember all the lyrics to hoW THE FUCK do I RMEMmber this?!?! (allura laughs evilily) - allura fuckin perfectly raps superbass - lance sings taylor swift ironically but not rly - corran tries to sing a thai song and its gets like awk quiet as ppl are like ?? okay ?? - HUNK STARTS TO BELT OUT BONJOVI AND SHIROS LIKE HELL YE AND JOINS IN - shiro then tries to sing country music but everyone reaches for the cancel button - shiro and allura sing Lucky (jason mraz and colbie caliat or smth) - pidge starts to sing linkin park's numb and gets rly into it. everyone is hype esp keith - keith tries to sing screamo song next but lance cancels before he can start and instead turn on the tune of gwiyomi from his phone and keith chases after lance with intent to kill lance cackling he runs away everyone else shrugs and continues as if nothing happened (keith and lance later return looking a little disheveled and everyone gives them knowing looks: lance averts his eyes and starts to whistle while keith just goes rly red and face palms) - everyone gets spectacularly drunk and decide to all sing bohemian rhapsody together. it kinda works. - They all go to the beach one summer

i redesigned casey and now i kinda ship him w/ sal..... i’ve been Developing him a bit too and this is what ive come up w,

sal and casey would be a cute couple imo.... they'd probably butt heads at first, bc casey butts heads with Everyone at first by nature, and he's really argumentative naturally whereas sal is kind of Nervous around new people, but like... sal can find the good in anyone, which is somethin' i think casey would need, because he's not good at expressing the good in himself!!then they probably found some middle ground......... sal has a very calming presence, i think, he's a very Sweet person and people like being around him a lot........ but he'd definitely be someone who wouldn't judge him or say anything cruel, he always puts a lot of time and consideration into the people around him and i think that'd be something very good for my boy, cause then he could also just....Develop a good and nice friendship with sal!! they probably became real close real quick and it....confused everyone, i bet!! casey probably gets frustrated sal doesn't tend to Value himself as much as he should and doesn't really stand up for himself. i feel like casey is.....Very Open about finding Sal attractive but just not in front of sal, like he's casually just like "hey, how is that man single when he looks like a literal god, jw. askin for a friend" and everyone in the groups like..........hey man do u wanna date sal? kinda sounds like you wanna date sal,

Casey is secretive to No One, except for Sal...................whenever Sal is around he clams up! He ain't gonna say nothing gay in front of that boy (who he would totally smooch if he offered tbh) i picture casey being like, that one kid w/ no friends who watches anime and decides he's gonna learn japanese........

Casey draws Anime in his sketch book which he shows to no one except friends, and also hates being asked to draw someone because he thinks its totally uncool (he'd probably draw sal if he asked though) he's probably pretty good by now since.......Not havin friends gives you time to work on stuff!! I think he'd be interested in animation to some extent, too!! casey is also a photographer and has a degree in filmaking....I Imagine him RLY wanting to take pics of sal but being too shy to ask, also he puts timers so he doesn't like sal's selfies too quickly bc he Doesn't Want to Look TOO gay. he probably flirts with sal a bit but makes sure it's mild and sounds like a joke!! sal has.......No Idea, honestly, he's just like.....Totally clueless to it, I mostly picture sal as having........ Self esteem Resembling a rollercoaster and sometimes he'll be like "YES I AM GOOD AND PEOPLE LIKE ME" other times he's like "me? i am a garbage rat and i come from the sewers, my truest home," so has a hard time really Believing people like him, For Some Reason, casey probably lowkey wants to confess but doesn't know how, he's also probably mildly terrified he's gonna make sal uncomfortable bc he really values the friendship and.....Doesnt wanna Gay It Up if it's not needed,  i kind of think casey's probably had a few friendships that...........Didn't pan out, bc they found out he was gay and got very Weird about it, and he probably tries to......Not Replicate that, despite sal being Very considerate..... he singlehandedly organized a gsa in highschool and then also planned their Queer Prom almost Completely by himself...........  he's like, the last person in the world who would be unkind to casey about something like that!! 

  Casey is just a nervous boy who often worries about being Accepted, even by other Very Gay folks...........he's probably a lil nervous about like, intimacy and stuff. doesn't like being touched without being explictly asked.......

he had a casual relationship with riley but riley is.............Very chill, so i think it wouldn't be too unpleasant for him.............. casey probably doesn't like not being the one in control though!! it works out bc sal is kind of uncomfy w/ sex in general and demisexual......... he's not adverse to it but it does make hm nervous!!   

he animates sometimes in his freetime, i think, he has.......Lots of free time, lbr, his  parents are both like...... Doctors, so he doesn't worry that much about Money or anything! and tries to fill his spare time with...... Whatever, really, he pobably has a few weird skills he never talks about,

mitch was probably casey's first real friend... he and riley didn't know eachother very well by the time riley dropped out, but he and mitch both stayed and finished college, so they probably became pretty good friends!! mitch stayed in touch with riley, so by extension so did casey. otherwise casey probably would've been too insecure to put any effort into the connection.

he’s kind of typically “flamboyant.” snarky. will not take any shit. he’s a photographer, he has a degree in filmmaking and enjoys it a lot. very secretive, doesn’t really share any personal details with people. pretty judgemental. will comment on your outfit if he thinks it’s bad or like… straight up laugh at your opinion sometimes. he can win arguments but……Often Unintentionally hurts feelings doin so!!

he secretly likes people more than he lets on he’s just….Super bad at socializing because he’s like inherently argumentative and cant turn it off. he was also not a popular kid, he moved to a new town and was really chubby  and people were just… not nice to him. he was v self conscious ab it!! hes Very New to friendships!! his first real friend was when he was an adult already.  he’s got a lot of softness inside of him!! 

OTHER FACTS...........

*casey self harms, he’s not proud of it but doesn’t hide it either.......

*he’s been diagnosed w/ adhd and anxiety but...... Does Not Believe He has either of those things

*constantly on the defense

*doesn’t have a good relationship w/ his parents but..........Doesn’t really bother fighting w/ them, they’re not the nicest but he just.Gnuinely doesnt care anymore.

* he and sanchez dont have the best relationship,casey’s theory is its bc he used to be fwbs with riley and Was Not at all subtle about it but like…. when he first meets sanchez he comments how he thought he’d be taller, and then immediately follows it up with “Btw, i fucked your bf.”

i’ll add more to this later................. also if anyone read this whole thing what would be a good ship name for them cause i got,.......No clue

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO (Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial)

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

Investments/Contracts/Superior/Technically Competent and Right-Hand Men

NGO - (Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

To my Pharma Hubs, Technology Hubs, Social Creative/Personal Hub, My Private Hubs, My Financial Hubs and my Health and Wellbeing/Scientific Hubs, Legal and Innovation Hubs, Hinterland Hub and to my Eastern Caribbean Hub, Linguistic/Psychology Hub, to my beloved additions and to my Institutions and Partners and Team, Pool of Potential Personal Assistants and Private Secretaries and Business Managers and also to my Fitness Hub which is an extension of my Health and Wellbeing Hub and not to forget my beloved Brooklyn Hub and my Wine/Adviser Hub, Influential Legal Cashier, Strategic Partnerships, STATEMENT OF INTENT, MY WEALTH FUND AND PERSONAL ATTORNEY and PROPERTY EXPERT GUY and THE ATTACHMENT AND MY PERSONAL BOARDROOM AND MY CHIEF STRATEGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER. The core founding support regions of this Network and Global Structure.

All Options remain on the Table applying the finishing touches to our Genius and my Genius and the Network and this Global Structure Genius. DRAFT

A court has affirmed me as the  Quasi Judicial Global Legal Authority and solidify my legal Authority across the Globe and have approved, legal first one of the largest acquisitions , rejecting an attempt to overturn a lower court decision approving the deal and clearing the way for the companies to begin integrating their businesses and further that the transfers to myself must continue without intrusion, interruption and delay.  Today decision will pave the way for the delivery of the entire Network to myself, all of the Global particulars, the delivery of all the Global Tool kits and the delivery of the Offices both Private and Official and for the Attachment.  I was beginning to get impatient with you, but I'm delighted to read of the good news and I'm looking forward to our meetings.  This is exciting times for development, exciting time to be an intellectual, exciting time to be working in policies and exciting time to wanting to deliver for our further responsibility to the environment and also the Philosophy on living your best life. I'm looking forward to viewing the set up of your new plush offices lol.  I'm looking forward to the delivery of my Private Offices and the delivery of the portfolio tat will house all of my official attachments.  I will deliver the requisite narrative in a fire brand, Intellectually Astute and technically delivered, linguistically relevant address to the thousands of Intellectuals, who work so hard over the years in building this office and delivering on these particulars, you will indeed be the highest and best paid in the world. We will deliver the foundations on which the difficult work will and must begin to build upon.

In a 35-page opinion on Tuesday, three appeals judges unanimously sided with  me and my CEOs and my Team et al, you've done it, the companies, backing the Network, backing my Personal Attorney and backing my Strategic Partner/Adviser and most of all backing the Economic Community of Sector and Industry Corporation and not only backing the Private Hubs, but delivering an earthquake proof Intellectually and legally flexible foundation.  They are buzzing with excitement at my leadership, they are buzzing with excitement with regards to how far I have brought this process, they are buzzing with excitement as to the scope and depth of the further responsibility mandate and they are uber and overly excite about my personal boardroom and the processes involved.  I'm exceptionally happy, because indeed with this type of Intellect data will indeed be seen as added value and this is indeed the seriousness of foundation people.  Swell done Gary for the progress you're making in such difficult climate that was manufactured for nonsense.  It's mad money, it's real money, it's cash money and my Personal CEO is doing a great job and you and I will go away together alone on our private value session as we develop the requisite important details.  I love the leader Gary.  Institution will now indeed have an opportunity to function they way they ought to.  This is indeed exciting time for Education and Intellect and an exciting time for politics as this process is without a shadow of a doubt rebranding it to it's original purpose even though he's using and Intellectually correct and financially astute; the bridge.

The district court judge who approved the deal in June last year, had not made any errors or neither did I make any error in my assessment and analysis of the transaction.  These mounting settlements must reach me for perusal and ratification. “In this evidentiary context, the there was no objections that the district court misunderstood and misapplied economic principles .Accordingly, we affirm,” the opinion said. A senior executive at the  company said the Company must wait on my decisions after delivery and perusal and after te development of the various offices. “While we respect the important role that the  Department plays in the  review process, we trust that today’s acknowledge the unanimous decision,”  general counsel, said.I'm looking forward to be sworn in my official capacity as soon as possible.  The ruling was a blow to them  whose dramatic and controversial attempt to block it began to unravel dramatically. There effort to stop the merger was painted as improperly motivated. Those Official particulars will reach me and those ceremonies will take place and the perusal must and will be done by me personally. The credibility of this Network and the Global Structure rose slightly in the morning after the opinion was released via CIM, reflecting the  expectation that I and my CEOs have prevailed and my Statement of Intent and my Strategic Partners and all of my Hubs. These are legally binding commitments.

The Network, my Property Expert Guy and the Global Structure and the additions and my Strategic Partnerships and the Statement of Intent have and my Investors Council yesterday firmly established that beneath the sleek veneer of chaos et al and uncertainty dwells a slick perfection of a set of Companies and Corporations and Partnerships and Institutions and Team who are working around the clock in various Regions in order to earthquake proof the particulars and all of the details and tool kit for delivery to me personally. They are also working around the clock in order to make the delivery of the Global Portfolios and the Investors Private Portfolios a reality and as a matter of urgency. What they and other stakeholders before them had in common was their politics. They were hard-line Intellectuals sharply critical of a society and Environment that didn’t possess the requisite critical Classical Intellectual Infrastructure. Most people until now seemed happy to accept the exceptionalist self-image of the “previous model” as an example to the world. Not so these now and not so with this set of teams working on getting these particulars to me and the delivery of the Offices.

Interlaced with their stories, they sketch disturbing episodes from history, and purposed that this Network and this Global Structure with the Statement of Intent and the Strategic Partnership will be delivered. The evolution of this model that I have created is acknowledged as an economic success but portrayed as a kind of paternalistic dictatorship in which pressure to conform has suppressed murkier cross-currents. Telling of it, the story was suppressed by those until I and my Global Structure reporting forced it into the open (this version is strongly contested by the daily newspaper that finally ran the story). Intellectuals criticism is that the mediocrity sympathisers refused for years to acknowledge the growing influence first of the Global Network of Companies and Corporations and Institutions and Partnerships that I personally own. Second, they refused to acknowledge the Global Structure of Sector and Industry as a community and our growing Intellectual Influence and the suite of leverage that we have at our disposal.  Thirdly the Strategic Partnerships and the Statement of Intent which to the naked eyes doesn’t seem right but to us it’s an Intellectual Romance that has all the correct plus requisite ingredients to stand the test of time.  When confronted with the push back and the evidence of Economic success which can be audited straight back to me, they abruptly changed tact as the evidence was too strong and too compelling to refute. In recognition of his lasting influence a compilation of his works will be published so to speak, and the process of official recognition will be displays throughout the Global attachments. Intellect doesn’t seek to apportioned blame but seek to get to the root cause.  These particulars and these portfolios and the delivery of the Offices will be delivered to me personally with the requisite tool kits and the corroborating details.  The Statement of Intent and the Strategic Partnerships will in the years to come have an environment that will be delivered by me and this Network that will allow you first to live your best life and further to allow humanity to live their best life.  We will deliver for Humanity and we will deliver for Intellect and we will deliver, we will win and continue to win because it’s time for this Community of the Sector and Industry to live their best life! This family have a rendezvous with Destiny! We will win on Law and Order and regulations.

You tell me Influential Adviser, it there Truth to Tell, it seems yes, you have a rendezvous with me as we must get the particulars and all of the corroborating details to myself, we must get the tool kits and corroborating HR names to me personally, we must get every piece of the Global Portfolio to me Personally and we must deliver for the Investors Council.  This family must win, this family must deliver on full capacity Intellect, you and I have a rendezvous with Law and Order, we have a rendezvous with regulations, we have a rendezvous with Property, and we have a rendezvous with the Statement of Intent. We won, we won big, and very big.  You do know how to romance intellect.  This is your time, yes you and them and them over there and them at the side there and them in there and them to live their best life.  It’s the Hour of Power! We will deliver for Humanity.

QUASI JUDICIAL

Chairman and Managing Operational CEO (Global Legal Authority Quasi-Judicial)

(Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

QUASI JUDICIAL

“that’s a lifestyle” video

the animated video for “that’s a lifestyle” is out today. the director, kitty faingold, and i discussed bringing the song to life as a series of ethereal animated sketches, cronus the greek god, the visual metaphor of broken statues as a vanishing empire and much more . - dave 

i feel like i haven’t seen animation like this … maybe ever, definitely since i saw bill plympton’s cartoons when i was a kid!   what is your process — how do you make it look like that?

Basically, this animation was hand drawn with an HB pencil onto white paper and then photographed and put onto a timeline on a computer. I drew between six and eight drawings a second, which is not a lot and is why it looks jumpy and choppy - if you want a sleek look you need to draw more per second. But I’ve always liked lo brow & lo fi stuff, where you can see the artist’s hand at work and feel the human presence behind the piece. I like it when things look like they were made with the intense passion of a very dedicated amateur, it denotes enthusiasm, effort, aspiration, dreams. It’s flawed and personable and relatable. Maybe my taste is influenced by having lived in Latin America with it’s magical realism and it’s poetry of the mundane.

what’s the story you’re trying to tell in the video — and how does it relate to the story it seems like i’m trying to tell ?  

The story is that we, the audience, are a spectral being hovering above a lake in front of a strange house that has infinite rooms. We float in through a window and decide to take a quick disembodied tour of the house that’s inhabited by a group of enchanted statues which some strange electric life force has animated for all eternity. They are the eerie marble remnants of an extinct civilisation, long annihilated, the silent survivors of a by-gone atomic end time. Like dancing shadows burnt into a wall by a nuclear blast. It’s tragic but also strangely optimistic - something survived, perhaps at the end of the world, human consciousness liberated of its material constraints, spread at light speed throughout the universe, and fuzzy bundles of memory, thought and emotion seeped into inert matter in distant galaxies and parallel universes, creating the world portrayed in this animation.

The video is an imagined outcome of the story that’s sung in the song, which as I interpret it, is about a society at the cusp of destruction, looking out from itself into its past and its future and wondering will we survive? or will the monster eat its young til they’re gone.

do you hate it when people ask you questions like that, because you have this feeling of like, ‘uhhhh, hopefully the work articulates the thing in a way that words cannot — that’s why it’s an animation and not a piece of prose; why are you asking me to bastardize & diminish what i’m doing??’ or do you feel like words / discourse provide a different and useful lens?

Haha! both I guess, most things that I make feel like they come from a place in my mind that doesn’t understand or speak a verbal language, and others are created in harmony with a more intellectually stimulated region of the mind, something with a narrative, a reference to some historical thing, for example. Words themselves can have power that goes beyond the literal meaning and melts into something more emotional. But I do often feel that contemporary art can be overly wordy and rationalised; when you explain or justify what you’ve created with a lengthy text, the piece looses elasticity and ossifies into a concrete message, or as Susan Sontag says “a sensibility is ineffable… a sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system.. has hardened into an idea.” I like this way of thinking about art as sensibility.

Also, when a piece of art or music has a precise explanation, it sort of becomes redundant, it’s just an illustration to accompany that other thing you’re saying. In art, I think, if words are used at all it should be to infuse the work with another layer of poetry, mystery and psychic life.

in this video, did you think much abt correlating image & sound — ie having the visual gestures harmonize with the movements of the music? (i think they go together super well…)

Yes, I wanted the images to resonate with and respond to the sound. On a macro scale, I wanted them to inhabit the same world, to belong together, so the look and feel of the images is enhanced by the sound of the song and vice versa. On a micro scale, the cuts are based on the rhythm of the song, and there are different moments in the story and particular characters and happenings that also relate to the specific moments or moods in the song.

when you’re working in this way, you’re the writer, director, artist and editor.  does it feel natural and seamless to be in all these different roles, or do the imperatives of one role sometimes come into conflict with another ?  like, does the draftsperson in you occasionally want to take things in a direction that the director simply can’t allow?  if so, how do you resolve these conflicts?

That’s an interesting way of looking at it and very true; yes, I definitely had multiple voices in my mind whispering different things throughout the whole process - as an artist you are constantly engaged in an internal dialogue with many different elements of yourself and even with a fictional “other” that pretends to be an outside audience, so it’s challenging work. But this way of working does feel natural to me, I like being in control of as many aspects of my work as possible, so it doesn’t feel like a conflict that needs to be resolved, rather a conversation that’s had.

do you think there’s something special abt using old-school labor/time-intensive practices, even when there are readily available software/digital shortcuts ?  like, maybe you value the specific unique feel to the finished work, or maybe you just get something you get from the process itself (eg meditative zen state that comes out of doing the rote repetition by hand?)  

Yes, there is definitely something special about labour intensive work and, in this case, using analog rather than digital methods. On one hand, repetition as you say, let’s the mind wander into a meditative state which in a hyper stimulated world feels healthy and grounding. On the other, when you’re working purely in a digital realm you feel a sort of underlying existentialist horror as you are essentially one dimension removed from your work, or else you get a sense of plastic claustrophobia and you just need to run outside and roll around in some prickly grass or something! after a while of being on the computer you desperately need to feel the real material world around you, to feel phenomenologically “in” your body - to embody your reality. I think there is such a thing as a digital malaise akin to cabin fever. So I really enjoyed getting back to paper and pencil.

why roman / greek statuary?  in general, where does your imagery come from?  has it changed much over time, or from project to project, or do you find that there are leitmotifs and vibes that you return to consistently?  

That was mainly based on the imagery that came to mind from the lyrics; words about an empire, a senator, a decaying civilization, violence, power, greed etc. Also when the song talks about a monster eating its children, I thought of Cronus the Greek God. I associate these things with the ancient classical world, and the marble skeleton of it that we have inherited. Also, surrealist works of art, for example by De Chirico, often feature statues and in particular greek/roman ones; there is evidently something about them that resonates with the subconscious mind, they are a meaningful symbol to us, they have a dreamlike and strange quality to them. This video was conjured up mainly by a stream of consciousness, which is a surrealist method for creating images. To the second question I would say both, each project is different as I am a pretty eclectic person and the world is full of new inspirations, but there is a river bed under the passing currents that doesn’t change much, a soil made up of a certain composition of minerals which, in my particular case, has surrealist foundations and an interest in myth, symbolism and the occult, and drawing eyes, people in trances, odd faces and strange places.

w the greek/roman statuary, do you feel like there’s some parallel you’re drawing to an idea of the vast, broken, vanishing empire — and the West today ?   or maybe in general do u feel like that’s part of the operative fascination that vaporwave has with that imagery?  

I definitely think that a broken statue is a clear visual metaphor for a vanishing empire, which might be why it populates the allegorical world of surrealism and vapourware as its digital extension- maybe for the last hundred years we’ve all felt on some subconscious plane a pending apocalypse, the world that we’ve created on the brink of an extinction level event. It makes sense, after the world wars, the cold war, the atomic/nuclear threats, climate threats, financial threats, etc. everything has seemed to be in a constant state of mortal danger for the past century! even our food is supposedly poisoning us, our clothes, bodies, water, air itself, everything is menacing and threatening and hostile, so it’s little wonder our art would express this sense of doom.  

one of the things im kinda thinking out loud abt in the song is this question of, ‘in our insanely interconnected world, is it actually possible to draw our actions into congruence with our beliefs?  what would that mean?  and what does it mean if/when we can’t?’   sometimes it feels like the chains of production, ownership, causality etc are so deeply enmeshed that it’s impossible to chase down the global implications of our choices as consumers & citizens with any kind of confidence or accuracy … and that makes us feel powerless in the face of hideous injustices … like we’re all frogs in a pot of water slowly rising to a boil.  so in the song, even though i don’t have a resolution or conveniently optimistic way of thinking about it, i hope there’s a value in articulating the feeling anyway.  my question is, do you feel like art has a responsibility to be political?  or do you feel like art is inherently political — and there might be something more human / empathetic / mysterious when art is fluid enough to evade the reduction into easy sloganeering ?  for me it’s a question right now, because i’ve often landed in the latter camp, but this song woke up like this .. .

Yeah, it’s a tricky subject, politics and art. I guess that, in my opinion, your only responsibility as an artist is to give your audience your best and most genuine work, whatever that may be. The content of the work will vary hugely from artist to artist. There are many important things in the world, important parts of the experience of being, that don’t include politics at all, and perhaps are even antagonistic to it, so I don’t think that art has to be political. Sometimes it feels gratuitous and disingenuous when an artist injects some politics into their work or their discourse just because it’s in vogue. Lots of artists don’t have a clue about politics, they inhabit a parallel world of emotions, fairytales and daydreams! They might be an outsider, a rebel, or a romantic for example. Others are very passionate about being the voice of their own society, and are deeply entrenched in their cultural surroundings and make of their political ideas their body of work, in the hopes that their message might challenge certain prejudices or else that the audience will identify with the ideas and find expression for their own political thoughts. I don’t think one approach is more valid or moral than the other, as long as it’s genuine. However, on the other hand, anybody that has a visible social platform and access to a certain level of impact could be a useful tool to raise awareness for a number of social causes, but that’s something different.    

how long did this video take you ?

Nearly a month! In fact I’d like to take the opportunity to thank Max Mannone who helped me sooooo much to make it in such a short time! he took all the photographs and digitised most of it, as well as giving me creative input. It’s super important to bounce off of someone you respect when you are working alone, because it’s such a self centred process that you can lose all perspective and start to drown in yourself!

do you like to revise a lot, or is it a first-thought-best-thought headspace ?

With a stream of consciousness type method definitely first-thought-best-thought although as I said above, bouncing off somebody else throughout the process is also good.

what kind of music do u like to listen to when you draw?

Well, for this video I listened to a lot of Dirty Projectors :-) I love this song, and instead of growing tired of it which can happen with repetition I grew to like it more and more! it’s definitely alive. I also have lots of synth stuff on my playlist like New Wave songs and Italo disco music. Probably because I came into the world during the eighties so it kind of feels like home. I actually listen to a lot of podcasts when I draw & animate, I like finding undiscovered youtube channels about weird topics particularly about magic, myths and the fascinating shadowy world of the occult which are all sources of inspiration.  

thanks so much for this, kitty!!  i love the animation a lot, and best of luck with future projects!

Thank you Dave! It was a real pleasure to work on this project, I love the song and hope the video did it justice :-) I'll look forward to hearing the new album!