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peachnewt · 4 years

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Midnight Snack - Playing House

Fluff to the max. Intimate times between two men insinuated but not graphically described in text. Deep kissing is present. Skip between the &&& if you prefer to not read it. The Getting In Deep series and it’s short stories are my own creation. Do not steal or alter.

Papers, magazine cutouts, and equations sat in piles on Will's desk. Will, headless of the slippery magazine paper that threatened to kiss the ground, kept taking notes from his screen.

When Reese arrived, he was surprised to see Will at work before everyone else in Main Tech.

"Getting a head start on a case?" asked Reese.

"No." Will tabbed his screen and frowned. "I'm helping Louis find a house."

"Really?" Reese wondered how far Louis and Will had gotten in their relationship. "Why would he want to move?"

Reese walked around Will's desk to look at the screen.

When house hunting, most people imagine realtors, property tax, curb appeal, square footage, and zoning issues. The average challenges one would find on HGTV shows. Reese expected to see Zillow listings, or Homefinder. He hadn't expected Barbie's Malibu Dream Home from Toys-R-Us.

Reese blinked, wondering if the morning caffeine had yet to kick in. "A dollhouse?"

Louis walked into Main Tech with two mugs. "Yeah, because everything I found is, in Will's words, "dinky plastic trash"."

"They don't even have it proportioned right. I did the calculations," said Will, scrolling through the preview images of other child- sized dollhouse. "The bathtub is right next to the door, who does that?"

"Those things are meant for playing with, not living in," said Louis, nursing his second cup of coffee and handing Will his tea. They had spent the last half hour descending into a research spiral of toy sites looking at houses and miniatures. Louis began thinking this was actually worse than real house hunting.

"I have a civil engineering degree, I'm allowed to be offended," said Will.

"You would be offended at the construction of a gingerbread house."

"Those are for decoration and eating. It's not the same thing."

"One moment. I feel like I need a little bit of clarification." Reese struggled to catch up with the train of thought Louis and Will had gotten on, apparently leaving him behind at the station. "Louis, why are you in the market for a dollhouse?"

Louis sat and spun his chair to catch the slipping pile of magazine clippings. "Because some nights I'm sleeping in a shoebox on Rachel's desk."

There had been nights when Louis was too exhausted to switch back from his tiny sized self and had to sleep in Rachel's office. His "room" consisted of a shoe box with a tiny flat pillow for a mattress, a linen square for a blanket, a charging stand for his large sized phone, and a rectangle hole for a door.

"I feel like a kitten awaiting adoption by the side of the road," Louis continued.

"I see. I wouldn't mind sleeping in a shoebox on Rachel's desk," said Reese, a dreamy look in his eyes.

Beni, carrying a dozen doughnuts in one hand and a RockStar energy drink in the other, paused as she entered Main Tech. "I think I need context."

***

Ten minutes later, Beni had been pulled into the communal craze of looking up tiny dollhouses. They pulled up everything from antique houses made in the 1950s, to Lego replicas of Hogwarts. By a stroke of a keyword during Beni's search, she hit the mother load with DIY Dollhouse kits sold on specialty hobby sites. They ranged from Modern loft apartments, to Chinese homesteads complete with a throne room. They even had miniature cafe's with tiny pastries. Each dollhouse listing came with a video on how to construct it. Of course, with a specialty hobby, it came with a specialty price.

"It's a friggin' bed," said Louis, gesturing to the miniature furniture on the screen. "How hard is it to make a proper bed for at 1/24th scale that isn't going to cost a fortune? That's what... eight popsicle sticks?"

"If you want quality at that size then you are going to pay what its' worth," said Reese. "What is more expensive, a Rolex, or a bedside clock?"

Will pulled up a video with a house similar to a few of the magazine cutouts. "Most of these do-it-yourself kits use either hot glue or E6000. Not keen on having a building kept together with hot glue."

Louis grunted, mesmerized by large hands setting up a tiny living room. "Are we spiraling again?"

"Yes, but it's a very satisfying spiral."

Louis, Will, Reese, and Beni gathered around one screen, tallying the pros and cons of certain designs, and pulling up more DIY dollhouse videos.

When Cetz arrived at Main Tech, he saw four of his agents picking out dollhouses.

Cetz felt a headache coming on. "Know what. I don't need context. Meeting in ten."

Eventually Louis picked a DIY kit for a cabin that put him back sixty dollars. It arrived a week later and Louis set up shop in a spare workroom at the Watch. He proceeded to burn his hand with a hot glue gun while trying to assemble the walls. Will approached with ice, tweezers, and a small tube of craft glue. They finished the small dwelling in an afternoon.

Half of the tiny furnishings, flower pots, pictures, cute figurines of boats, never made it into the cabin. They were pasted together for posterity to say it had been finished, and they left in a heap by the dwelling. None of the furniture went where it was supposed to; Louis didn't trust the stairs to hold if he walked up to the second floor. The bed ,made of thin wood, looked better than the tiny pillow in his shoebox. If nothing else, it looked more like a bed. It looked like a dwelling meant for a human. It even had lighting he could turn off and on with a switch at the bottom of the display platform.

Louis stood back from the cabin and cracked his back. His fingers had nearly been glued together while applying wallpaper, and his eyes ached having to look through a magnifying glass. Will clicked on the light to the house. They looked proud of their creation, showing it off to Beni, Reese, and Rachel when they came by.

"It's a good starter home," said Rachel, handing Louis a bag of coffee grounds with a bow taped on it. "Happy housewarming."

Louis grinned. The cabin itself was slightly wider than his shoebox but twice as tall, and the platform it stood on was as big as a desk blotter.

"I want one," said Beni, flipping the switch on and off.

"Make your own," said Louis.

"I will!" said Beni, a spark of competition in her eyes. "I'll make one so nice you'll want to sleep there instead!"

Reese, enticed leaned over. "Care to make a wager?"

The next day, Beni and Reese also ordered DIY dollhouses.

Louis vowed to never set foot in any of their deathtraps.

Will vowed to make sure neither of them burned their fingers or used adhesives that could cause respiratory distress.

While Beni and Reese awaited their kits, Louis ended up exhausted after a long day of testing, and unable to switch back to normal size. The first night in his new, self-made home. Rachel left him on her desk, the shoebox on one side, and his cabin on the other. Louis stumbled wearily to the cabin. When he laid down on the bed he immediately regretted the thin bit of padding he had mistaken for a mattress. It had looked fluffy enough when he had glued the stuffing down. He dragged the cheap pillow out of the shoebox and into the cabin.

Will found him the next morning splayed akimbo on the cushion, wrapped up in the thin "bed spread" like a croissant.

"Bed not work?"

"I could feel beads of dried glue under the mattress." Louis snuggled tighter into the pillow until Will coaxed him onto his palm and into the lab to "grow up".

Louis had been so miserable with the construction of his tiny bed, he actually looked forward to Beni and Reese's dollhouses

The two kits arrived and Will made sure the construction was a surprise to Louis, warding him from the workshop as Beni and Reese unpacked their kits with child-like glee.

They wondered if the two former thieves ever got something like a dollhouse in their younger years.

Instead of cranking out the houses in an afternoon, Beni and Reese took half hours off between shifts to work on them. Both seemed to find contentment in their distraction. After a week, they were finished.

Reese had constructed a gothic themed Victorian home with a tiny staircase hidden behind a bookshelf full of miniature books. Several windows were painted to look like stained glass. And the bed was a four-poster with a canopy. His pride had been renovating the kitchen area to have a tiny fridge that actually worked and held tiny shots of pudding he had made himself. And on one wall he had put up a tiny grandfather clock, made with a working clock face.

"Somebody likes their gothic," said Will as he squinted to see inside the hidden staircase. "Good detail."

"Classic taste is good taste."

Beni had gone modern with a split level house. White on silver furnishings with touches of neon purple and one of the accent walls for a workout room consisted of an entire mirror. The bed was covered in multiple pillows, each a shade of gray or white. Her pride was adding a slide from the top level to the bottom, the landing cushioned with a layer of cotton balls.

"Very playful," said Will.

"Got most of the style stuff from a Home & Garden magazine. But who wouldn't want a slide in their house?"

Louis shrunk, bypassed all the fancy additions and special furnishings, shooting like a tired arrow towards the beds. First the canopy bed, then a gray bed with all the pillows.

Louis groaned in defeat. "It's still not comfortable enough."

However, he did try the slide, the hidden stairs, and the pudding in the tiny fridge. Beni and Reese then made Louis promise to shrink them so they could experience the houses themselves.

Will eyed the beds and the shoebox a warm glow coming to his eyes. It had been a while since he had done a construction project.

***

The magazine clippings came back out; Will organizing different furniture pieces and photos from Architectural Digest. Over the next month, between date entry and retrieval missions, Will peppered Louis with random questions.

"Dark stain or light?"

"Oriental, log cabin, industrial, modern?"

"How much do you cook verses eating out?"

"Do you like gardens?"

"How about koi ponds?"

"Silk sheets or cotton?"

"How do you not know the answer to that?" said Louis, setting aside another patent. "Cotton."

"I mean if you won the lottery and could afford anything, silk or cotton?" said Will.

"Still cotton."

It wasn't until Will pulled Louis over to look at a blueprint that he caught on to what Will had been doing.

"Are you designing a custom dollhouse for me?"

"Kinda. I'm not an architect, but I thought I could make you something more than a shoebox or a DIY kit." A light blush bloomed on Will's neck. "I want your input on it. You'd be sleeping there after all."

"All I want is a better bed," said Louis. "I respect that little pillow, it's gotten me through some rough nights, but I want a real bed."

From the blueprint it looked similar to some of the custom DIY dollhouses the three of them had constructed. Everything from the steps to the sofa had equations measuring out its diameters so it would match Louis' stature when he shrunk. Multiple chambers, the front wall of the house on a hinge so the insides could be exposed or not, a set of stairs, all on a platform with an outside space with a...

"Is that a gazebo?"

"Yep," said Will. "Do you want a pond or a pool?"

"It's a place for me to sleep when I have to stay the night, fanboy," insisted Louis. "You don't have to go all out with this. I just wanted something better than a shoebox."

"But I want to."

Louis smirked. "Feeling a little competitive after Beni and Reese made their own houses?"

"...little bit."

"I thought so." Louis brushed his lips to the side of Will's mouth, leaving a coffee ghost of a kiss, and grabbed Will's empty mug. They both needed refills. "Have at it, fanboy. Surprise me. Just... no koi pond. Especially no koi; those suckers can get huge."

***

A month later Will led a blindfolded Louis to Rachel's office.

"Are we there yet?" asked Louis.

"One moment." Will let go of Louis' hands with a squeeze. "Stay here. No peeking."

Louis heard the flicking of switches and the opening of a door.

"Okay, you can see."

Louis peeled off the blindfold. Rachel's office was dimmed, the majority of the light coming from another dollhouse. His jaw dropped. It spanned half of Rachel's desk. The house was modern, mostly white trimmed in dark blue and splashes of red. Like most of the DIY dollhouses the insides were exposed for "play", but this one had a full roof and a panel that acted like a door to the whole front half of the house. However, the house only took up a third of the platform.

Behind the house stood a stately garden of green moss, flat pebble paths, and a gazebo overlooking the rise of real seedlings from a small herb patch. In the center of the garden rose a bonsai strung up with tiny lights like a Christmas tree, and a swing. The bonsai stood small in comparison to a regular sized shrub, but to an almost three inch human, it would look like a grand tree.

Louis came closer, leaning in to see the tiny details of the dollhouse. "How in the world did you do something like this?"

"Civil engineer, remember. A lot of my college projects were making models of infrastructure. That and a lot of model kits."

Louis motioned to the hinged front of the house. "Can I...?"

"I made it for you, yes!"

Louis opened the front of the house to an open floor plan, tiny lighting, bits of shiny tile, and dark stained furniture. The DIY houses had similar plans, but this one seemed polished, more real than play.

"Cetz and Reese helped assemble most of the house," said Will. "Beni picked out the bonsai."

"The furniture." Louis gently picked up the coffee table from the living room. I weighed heavy in his hand, not balsa wood or cardboard. "Those aren't popsicle sticks. How the hell did you...?"

"I have some crafty friends on the con circuit that were willing to do some detailed commissions. A lot of it was 3D printed, but the finer furniture was done by hand. Not a hot-glue stick in sight."

Louis set down the coffee table and took a closer look at the kitchen. "Those drawers actually pull out?"

"Yep."

"The sink... holy shit there is actual water."

"Yeah, actual plumbing. We'll have to do the dishes by hand, no dishwasher that size. But there is water in the kitchen area and the bathroom, both connected to a gallon water heater under the desk."

Louis noted the "we". One of them washing while the other dried with the tiny towels and the tiny drying rack. A domestic image he never thought he'd get in real life. Well, really tiny life.

"Reese installed his patented snack fridge, I see," said Louis.

"Snacks are a must," said Will. "Fully stocked with bits of cheese, chocolate, pudding, and a slice of pepperoni. Eating like borrowers."

"Every window has curtains."

"And blackout curtains if you need some dark space."

A refuge, Louis realized. If I need space or time and I'm stuck, I don't have to feel like a lab rat.

"That's actual leather on that couch," said Louis, dragging his mind back to the house tour.

"I could afford a quarter yard of real leather."

Louis saw two charging ports for phones set into the wall so the screens could act as a television. He could imagine the movie nights. One giant kernel of popped corn between them.

"The doors actually shut and lock?" asked Louis.

"Tiny magnets in the door and door frame. Also..." Will pointed to where the front of the house closed, hiding the view of the inside. "Push a latch here, and the whole front of the house will lock from the inside so you can have privacy."

Louis reopened the front of the house. He followed the line of sight from the living room, up the stairs, to the bedroom. Dark wood furnishings and soft gray upholstery. The bed looked neat and tidy as a stuffed envelope, lined in silvery blue and deep red pillows.

"I made the bed."

"Like you folded the sheets or you made the bed and bed frame personally?" He had to ask because it seemed Will had been willing to spin his own thread for the sheets.

"Both. Took a couple of live video tutorials for the frame. No craft glue, or double sided tape. Half a drop of wood paste, tiny dove joints, and teeny finishing nails. I know you said cotton, but I got denier microfiber silk fabric for the sheets so the thickness is comparable what you would have at normal size."

Louis pressed a finger down on the tiny bed, eyeballing the measurements. "California King?"

"Yep." Will skipped over the fact he had carved by hand a bed definitely made for two. "Cut the mattress out of memory foam."

Louis examined the rest of the bedroom. Interesting that Will had included a washbasin and washcloths when there was an en suite bathroom. No closet or wardrobe, instead an empty trunk lay at the foot of the bed. Louis wouldn't need changes of clothing since whatever he shrunk with would have to grow back with him. The lamp on the bedside table gave a golden glow. When he opened the bedside cabinet he found a few extra amenities that made the back of his neck heat up.

Will's bashful look said it all.

"Wow." Louis cleared his throat, trying to draw his mind away from the bedroom. The gesture of it all struck him deep. Will and he still lived in separate places. Will had made a place for them to be together. A home that belong to them, not one or the other.

Okay. No tears. Suck it up.

Louis sniffed, needing a distraction. "So, random question, what was the most expensive thing in this whole house?"

"Well, parts of the electrical plan and plumbing nearly cost me my patience."

Louis snickered, pulling Will in by the back of the head to kiss his temple. "Your poor brain. Let me guess, the leather couch?"

"Nope. Made from scraps. Very cheap."

"The tiny fridge?"

"The way Reese made it, no. It cost me a dozen maple bacon doughnuts and a cheesecake."

"The bonsai. Gotta be the bonsai."

"Actually the bonsai was the second most expensive thing. But Beni did some good bargaining."

"Really?"

"Mh hm."

"What was the most expensive then?"

Will touched the fine sheet on the bed.

"The bed?" said Louis.

"The sheets," Will clarified.

"How are a tiny set of sheets that expensive?!"

"When you include express shipping from Japan."

"Fanboy!"

"You said the bed was the most important thing, so I made sure it got the right stuff!"

Laughter took over when Louis refused tears. He hugged Will closed, his nose brushing into hair that still smelled of soap.

"C'mere. Thank you. I can't believe you went so far for this."

"I wanted to," murmured Will into Louis' neck, leaving a soft touch of breath.

Will had wanted to give him a home. Louis wanted Will to know he was home.

&&&

It sent a shiver down Louis' back, making his belly flutter. He leaned back on the desk until he sat on it, his thigh close to pushing off a pencil box. Then he pulled Will by the hips until he stood between his legs, chest to chest. Louis curled his head under Will's neck. Will's hands draped across Louis shoulders as if a buoy to a drowning man and breathed in deep. Warmth surrounded them like an atmosphere growing around a new planet.

Louis looked over at the house and smirked. He wouldn't mind spending the night, if he had company.

"Wanna test out the bed?" said Louis, pulling back. "Make sure it's up to your standards?"

"You mean you want to see if you can wreck the bed," said Will.

"I know I can wreck you on the bed; if I can wreck the bed with you, bonus."

The blush at Will's neck charged over the hinge of his jaw and conquered his cheeks and nose. Louis knew by experience the blushing army had already conquered collarbones and sternum. He planted the final flag of victory by drawing Will's head down for a kiss, deeper than the rest. Will relaxed into his embrace like a puddle needing earth to sink into. Their chests expanded wider with each breath, trying to catch each other in the air around them to pull into their lungs and keep.

Will pulled back, nipping Louis' jaw. "I dropped the bed, twice." Nip. "Survived both times." A kiss on the chin. "I'd like to see you achieve what my clumsiness and gravity could not."

"That a challenge?" Louis bent his head down, pressed his lips around Will's Adam's apple, and sucked.

Will moaned, his voice buzzing against Louis' mouth. Louis pulled Will in by the shoulders as he leaned back further onto the desk, and then focused on the light. In a breathless flash, they both sat on the desk, just short of three inches tall. After a moment to orient themselves, and calm down enough to get to their feet, they both ran to the door of the dollhouse.

The bed did not break. Though they tried.

They collapsed under sheets of light silk, catching their breath as sweat cooled on their aching bodies. Will had been wise to include a wash basin, thought Louis. He didn't want to go all the way to the bathroom for a washcloth.

&&&

Will tucked himself into the curve of Louis' body. "So... home sweet home?"

"Maybe." Louis leaned down and kissed right below Will's sternum, tasting heated skin. "I've got a home here too."

Oh, that blush would not go away for hours now.

"Yeah, you do," whispered Will.

A well deserved exhaustion overtook them.

Louis woke before Will. Making sure Will kept dreaming, Louis scurried out of the house and over to the side of Rachel's desk that still held the cabin. To the side lay the pile of extra frills that had come with the DIY house; bits of potted plants, fake books and posters. He picked up a piece of thick printed cardstock about the size of a large postage stamp, and carried it back to Will's house. It had been a miscellaneous bit of inspirational word art one could find in any furnishing or poster aisle at a craft shop, but it seemed very appropriate.

"Where there's a will, there's a way".

Louis set it by the front door of the new house and then went back in. He would see if Reese had put anything in the tiny fridge that could help construct a breakfast in bed.

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

If you enjoyed this short, consider buying me a ko-fi!

#GETTING IN DEEP #midnight snack #Giant/tiny #Louis Patriarch #William James Rowe #g/t #dollhouse #ideas that happen after seeing too many diy dollhouses on youtube #and now i want one

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wolfliving · 5 years

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The Maker Movement and its discontents

*Via nettime mailing list

James Wallbank:

Fascinating to hear about personal engagement in Making, Graham!

I, too, have been personally, hands-on involved in Making since Access Space's turn towards digital manufacture, and the interface of the physical and the digital, since around 2010.

(For those of you who aren't aware of Access Space, it started as a "DIY Media Lab" which I and various friends who had accreted around "Redundant Technology Initiative" (lowtech.org) in 2000. It re-interpreted donated digital debris as resource, rebuilding computers, installing free operating systems, making them available to participants, and encouraging and supporting creative, self-directed projects.)

Part of the motivation behind Access Space was our hope that digital engagement and skills had the potential to empower. This proved to be the case in the early 2000s, and numerous time-rich participants engaged with Access Space, taught themselves and each other technological skills, and became web designers, graphic designers, technicians or even better-known artists. (Though whether "art" is, in the context of networked global capital, a viable or empowering career for a statistically significant proportion of its participants is, I suggest, in question.)

By 2010 we'd seen far less business incubation, and proportionately fewer participants able to self-teach to a level that it made a real difference to their life prospects or creative leverage. We saw that hardware and software skills devalued as pre-installed devices became cheaper, and that the digital realm was becoming dominated by global digital services, including social media, that, while they didn't do a great job, diverted the vast majority of potential digital design clients away from bespoke, local service providers.

In short, the window of opportunity suggested by the first phase of the graphical internet was closing. While, in 2000, speed-reading an HTML primer, combined with a little design flair, a few copywriting skills, and some sales confidence could make you a web designer in a month, in 2010 this was no longer the case.

We concluded that when any new technology is introduced, there's a period of opportunity, before that technology has become fully adopted or systematised, in which the individual can get involved, and (in a short time, with a level of skill only one page ahead of their clients) can empower themselves, converting an interest into saleable skills, products or resources.

We've seen the same window open and close with blockchain (which I believe to be illusory, unproductive, and, in the end, simply gambling). A vanishingly few people made money though cryptocurrency trading, but now it's dominated by grinding Ponzi schemes, viral mining fiddles, or blockchain is being repurposed by multinationals. The moment of opportunity for the individual has passed.

At Access Space we saw Fab Lab or "Maker Technologies" as a more genuinely productive line of approach, and, even though many of the technologies had been around for a decade or more, saw that the window of opportunity had not yet closed. As technology requiring significant physical engagement and investment (you need to buy real-world machines and materials!) the timescale of its adoption and exploitation by capital would be far slower.

So at Access Space we raised money (thanks EU structural funds!) and bought a CNC, a Lasercutter, a 3D Printer, Arduinos, Raspberry Pis, a digital embroidery machine... and set about a research partnership to explore the potentials of these technologies for creating local jobs and enterprises.

In the end, for those not in the highfalutin' and disconnected academic realm (sorry, researchers - you're my friends really!) a key element of whether a technology is empowering or not is "Can you get paid for using it?"

And "using it to engage and educate" doesn't count - actually using it to create product or paid-for service is key. In Access Space's particular case, we took the position that we didn't care about "industrial transformation", nor "increasing supply-chain efficiencies". We cared most about actual, tangible jobs in Sheffield, not abstract (however numerically significant) jobs in San Fransisco or Shenzen.

The research engaged with local makers, both individuals and startup enterprises, and concluded that the technology we looked at with most potential to generate local jobs and enterprise was lasercutting, and the one with the least potential was 3D Print. Even seven years later, we still agree.

This failure, it seems to me, to engage with the economics of making is exactly what's thus far marginalised the "Maker Movement". It's also true of the Fab Lab - while it's a powerful context for education, the economics of fabbing just don't work.

To give a simple example: one of the Fab Lab founding principals its to engage with a wide range of materials and processes, on a wide range of scales. For a business to become profitable, the imperative is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. To optimise manufacture, it's necessary to reduce the number of processes, and minimise the variety of materials. In terms of marketing, the key is to focus on a particular product and market. It is supremely irrelevant to a person who wants to buy a new pair of shoes to know that you can also make customised wifi amplifiers, repair bicycles, design lamps or sell toy robots.

Shoe advertisers (physical or digital) sell shoes, not "Anything... uhh... including shoes".

The Maker Movement comes out of academia, where the core product is learning. To the business world, high skill is the enemy. Skilled processes are expensive - you want your highly skilled people to be doing as much as possible, over as wide an area as possible, so you can employ as few of them as possible.

So, with this context, my wife Lisa and I opened "Makers". It's a shop, where we make things. You can commission us to make things, or come and make things with us. We run educational workshops, too - but it's not the mainstay of our business. We did this with the intention of further exploring the opportunities afforded by digital manufacture, with a view to uncovering the sustainable business models that might emerge from it. Having just done two and a half years of research into the employment potentials of digital manufacture, I thought we might have a head-start.

Makers is now coming up to its fourth birthday, and we haven't gone bankrupt yet. (Not to show off, but that fact alone apparently puts us into the top 5% of UK retail!) We've discovered a whole load of stuff about digital and analogue making, the economics and sustainability of local manufacture, that we just didn't know, and we've not seen the wider Maker Movement really touch upon.

We've rejected whole categories of product lines, and focussed on particular processes and products to make our living. We still make a wide range of things, and we're constantly experimenting with new ideas, but bearing in mind that we need to create things that aren't characteristic of the typical maker-space product ("really fascinating, but I have no use for it!"). The objects we make must have the key characteristic that people are prepared to put their hands in their pockets and buy them - for a sensible price - and that means that they must be appealing.

We have a range of clients for our making services, including individuals and businesses. For individual clients, we're typically making home decor, but for micro-businesses we're at the cutting edge of business incubation - people come in with an idea (often its something crafty, with a very specialist market) and we help them design and produce their products.

But... get this... around 80% of clients who commission us to make things, or make things with us, are women. It's a completely different demographic from the typical "maker dude" who inhabits our friendly neighbourhood makerspace. Our repeat making clients are often making money out of making - we're helping to design and manufacture stuff that they sell. There's also an interesting line of products that helps people to sell - signage, packaging, point-of-sale displays.

We're also thinking about how making impacts on our locality. Traditional retail is in freefall - but we're finding that shops are being replaced by "makey" and "crafty" services. Our shop was (twenty five years ago) a greengrocer. Now it's "Makers". On our little block of 16 shops we see computer and phone repairs, a dressmaker, bicycle repairs, baking, and of course, a barber and takeaway food shops. Very nearby we find micro-brewers, woodworkers, picture framers, upholsterers, photographers...

These sorts of services seem, over time, to be replacing the once ubiquitous mini-marts and retail outlets that have been displaced by online shopping.

Recently, we've been a research partner in research into making (MakEY - Making in Early Years) which has been very interesting, but again does what academia is wont to do - assume that the product is learning. In my view, far from being over the hill, making may now be transforming from academic and hobbyist interest to actual economic models. I think it has huge potential to revitalise localities and communities, and I urge researchers to get involved. (Will lecture for food!)

But let's lose the glamour - and start thinking about real products, real places, and real business models. Want an example of "sustainable superlocal digital manufacture"? How about key cutting? Yeah, it's not so cool now, is it?

All the best,

James =====

On 11/06/2019 18:43, Graham Harwood wrote: I just want to interject a little into the Post-Maker universe.

I work a lot these days with the maritime, a technical culture of wooden boat repair that in Essex, I also worked a lot with people who restore old telephone exchanges and people who build steam engines - through having run a free media space in 00 ties were we hacked, pirated recycled at will. Among the many things that are interesting about these technical cultures is that they produce value for those engaged in the process - but this value has only a limited relation to the accumulation of capital. The maker phenomena could be seen in this context as a way to monetise the non-discursive technical cultures - a tinkering world that has an unbroken line back to at least the enlightenment but probably before. In 1799 the Royal Institution of Great Britain was established to put science to work for particular class and keep the theoretical away from a populace that presented a threat (the demon of the French revolution) - The Royal Institution was a place where an artisan class built technicals object but where not allowed in, or allowed to lecture.

Faraday had to have elocution lessons, learn how to eat properly before being allowed to lecture and even then had to be deemed a genius to escape the his class background and address gentleman. What Im trying to suggest is that non-discursive technical tinkering exist within many technical cultures and long may it remain so.

I'll tag on a little introduction this I wrote.

“The science which compels the inanimate limbs of the machinery, by their construction, to act purposefully, as an automaton, does not exist in the worker’s consciousness, but rather acts upon him through the machine as an alien power.” Karl Marx(1858)

In 1958 the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon published On the Mode of Technical Objects to address just this form of cultural alienation implicit in the quote above. He writes, among other things, about two ways in which people come to know technical objects. He says technology viewed from a child's eye, which I imagine he is seeing as, naive and innocent we gain an implicit, non-reflective, habitual tendency.

A baby strapped into a buggy, is given a parent's mobile phone and is happily learning to play a game but cannot yet utter the words to express these interactions. Simondon then imagines an inverse, a trained adult engineer, reflective, self-aware using rational knowledge that is elaborated through science. Something like an Apple engineer who creates closed technologies imagining its users still strapped in that buggy unable to articulate their critical needs.

Simondon seeks out another form of relationship with technical objects which he finds in the Enlightened Encyclopaedism of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert (Encyclopédie (1751–1777)) in which concrete knowhow is abstracted and assembled into a technical orchestra. Contemporarily, is it worth considering our networked technologies in this mode of encyclopaedism? An evolving off-grid, red-neck, student, coder, geek pedagogy producing technical information, hacks, howto’s, shakedowns, and open source code repositories, that respond to an evolving technical culture. This technical republic is nothing new, it’s genealogies can be traced to and beyond the amateur experimentalistsof the London Electrical Society and William Sturgeon (1783 - 1850) and the artisanal formation that knowledge can be contained in the object built and it’s functioning is its explanation.

Is a tinkering internet a critical technical republic? A social space that potentially can break down the state actors with encryption, corporations by opening up software and proprietary technics by hacking them open, making things public? Is the marginal technics on a teenagers dirty bedroom, the dank basement of a bored salaryman, the ham radio garden shed a strategy to unfold the clean room and its magic men in white coats? Or is this largely a white male space that has eradicated other forms of objectivity and subjectivity from view? How can we attempt to instate a devolved technics that refuses misogyny, racialisation and yet envisages technology outside of the paradigm of human slave or potential human enslaver.

Harwood

From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of John Preston <[email protected]> Sent: 11 June 2019 17:39:00 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: <nettime> The Maker Movement is abandoned by its corporate sponsors; throws in the towel On the mention of recycling I just wanted to mention the Precious Plastic (https://preciousplastic.com/) project, which is very much in this vein and currently active. Looks good, I'd like to build a recycling machine and melt down some plastic at some point.

On a more local and mainstream level, my town has a show that sells 'upcycled' furniture which has been done up (new handles, repainted with flower motifs etc). Recycling and maker culture is great but I'd like to see more projects which are local or community oriented: this is essential to truly address the problem of waste. We separate glass in my borough, maybe we could feed that into local double glazing firms, or something else.

*stopping here before I ramble on for 10KB*

John

On 2019-06-11 16:27, Jaromil wrote: > dear Bruce and nettimers, > > On Sat, 08 Jun 2019, Bruce Sterling wrote: > >> *Well, so much for the O’Reilly Web 2.0 version of popular >> mechanics. Fifteen years is not too bad a run by the standards of >> an increasingly jittery California Ideology. Now what? — Bruce S > > Felipe Fonseca has seen it coming years before and express it well: > https://medium.com/@felipefonseca/repair-culture-65133fdd37ef > > he wasn't alone: for those of us who were into the "recycling" and DIY > scene in the late nineties, the Make magazine circus was the sort of > poison to kill a movement by sugar coating and extraction aka > franchising. While doing that for 15 years, there are a three points > it missed to address IMHO: > > 1. the right to mod your hardware, esp. video-games which represent > the vast majority of new hardware sold and thrown away around the > globe > > 2. the "peripheries of the empire" aka South of the World (remember > Bricolabs?) where DIY is *amazingly* developed in various forms. > As usual, we have learned nothing from that, just advertised us > westeners doing it better and with more bling. > > 3. the "shamanic" value that can be embedded in uses of technologies, > as opposed to the sanitized and rational interpretation given by > designers in the west. Techno-shamanism is something Fabi Borges, > Vicky Sinclair and other good folks in Bricolabs have been busy for > ages! > > so then, what now? I believe the functional need of aggregating places > for "hacker culture" is lowering: everything can exist virtually as > software, more or less. Machinery + franchising have a too high > production cost compared to their output, not sustainable at all. Also > moving hardware around is a *big* effort and the only ones lowering > overhead costs for new players are in China (...Aliexpress). > > Plus the acceleration of hardware production resulted in way less > sustainability especially in relation to obsolescence: buy a part now > then ask if it will be still available in 20 years! you'll be > presented an NDA to sign and then discover there is just a 3-4 years > plan behind it. Spare parts anyone? Meanwhile is almost 2020 and there > is no service to print and sell-on-demand USB sticks with stuff on: > what a contrast if you think of the CD/DVD on-demand industry of 15 > years ago! which partially resists only on garage music productions. > > So, software still offers possibilities, but will it produce a > cultural shift? I doubt it will do more than what it did already in > crypto, which is already highly controversial and poisoned of a sort > of unstable sugar coating mixed with toxic financial capitals. > > At last, looking at the new generations, the bling is what really > counts: I guess most "fablabs" could be converted to > "fashionlabs". Personally I'm planning to revamp dyne:bolic which > besides running on old computers and modded game consoles did one > thing which is still actual: it was a media production studio. The > best part of "maker culture" was its cultural expression, mined for > its value until exhaustion; but isn't it harder to express cultural > values using hardware? Much easier with music and videos etc. they > also travel easier. > > For more *practical examples* of projects who may inspire new > horizons: you are all invited to an event we (Dyne.org) are setting up > in Amsterdam on the 5th July. We will fill the stage with many new > faces: 16 projects we awarded with EU funding for their pro/vision of > "human-centric" solutions, purpose driven and socially useful. Hope to > see some of you, we will also have a new call end of year, its about > 200k EUR equity free so lets engage in new sustainable challenges > https://tazebao.dyne.org/venture-builder-eu.html > > ciao

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houseofvans · 6 years

Photo

ART SCHOOL | Q&A with SARA M. LYONS

Influenced by the works by the likes of designer Lisa Frank and Saturday morning cartoons, artist Sara M. Lyons’s illustrations are colorfully eye-catching, vibrant, and filled with fun! Not only ONE thing, Sara also runs an online shop filled with her awesome creations from patches, pins to an upcoming Tarot card deck she’s creating. We’re stoked to chat with Sara and learn about her process, her favorite artists to follow, and about her local art scene in this week’s Art School w/ Sara M. Lyons. Make the leap!

Photographs courtesy of the artist

Hi Sara!, Could you tell us a little about yourself ? For sure! I’m Sara M. Lyons, and I’m an artist, illustrator, muralist and product designer living and working in Orange County, CA!

When did you first get into drawing? Was it a hobby turned career or something you knew from the start that you’d eventually wanna do for a living? I’ve been drawing since before I can remember, and it’s always been something I did for fun, but I never really considered that it could be a career until I suddenly found myself in the middle of it. I didn’t start leaning into this as a living until I was in my late twenties (I’m 32 now), so I feel like I’m still learning the best ways to navigate everything.

Who were some of your early artistic influences? Art mentors? I was born in ’85, so I was surrounded by Lisa Frank and Saturday morning cartoons, and I think a lot of that spirit is present in my work. I also grew up reading Betty & Veronica obsessively, so Archie comics and the drawing style of Dan DeCarlo in particular was what I started emulating as a kid when I was teaching myself to draw. In high school that developed into an interest in indie comics, and I was really inspired by Los Bros Hernandez. I think you can really still see the influences of both of those comics in my character drawings.

You make some much fun and colorful things, for a lack of a better word, from pins to patches to just about everything? What’s some of the stuff that’s in the works now? I love making small pieces of art that are accessible and affordable, and that’s always been my thought process when designing products like pins and patches. I think I’ll always be doing stuff like that, but this year I hope to try some new things too. I’m working on a deck of Tarot cards right now (I released a Lenormand fortune telling deck in 2016), and it’s really exciting to create a bunch of highly detailed illustrations in that context - knowing that when I’m done with these 78 drawings, they won’t be just one-offs going on a wall somewhere, but that they’ll be accessible to anyone who is interested.

Do you keep a sketchbook or work your ideas as you go along? Organized, Sort of, or Complete Chaos? What’s your process for new ideas like? I’d say I exist in a constant state of Organized Chaos. My ideas, sketches, and concepts are spread all over the place - I’m usually bouncing between my planner, my journal, my phone, my sketchbook, my iPad Pro, and my desktop computer, and that’s probably the approximate order of where ideas get parsed out as well. When I’m working for a client, I move really quick, but with my personal stuff I’m a slow starter - I’m both heavy on self doubt and a perfectionist, so there’s often a LOOOOOOONG stretch of time between conception and completion of any given concept. I’m not one of those artists who can sit down and knock out two or three completed drawings in a day. Sometimes I’ll have a sketch on a Post-It in my office or an idea in a note on my phone for over a year before I even start to develop it. But once I really get going on something that I believe in, I get laser-focused.

What mediums do you love to work with? What are your essential art tools? My favorite medium right now is a huge wall - I’ve been working on murals since late 2016 and it’s so much fun and such a complete departure from my usual artistic process!

But my most comfortable, well-loved mediums are digital and plain old pen and paper. Drawing digitally, I used to work mostly in Photoshop on my desktop using an ancient Wacom tablet, but these days I spend a lot more time drawing in Procreate on my 10.5” iPad Pro (rose gold, obvi!). I know they’re not for everyone, but the iPad and Pencil have been a game changer for me creatively - I love being able to sit on the couch watching trashy reality TV while I work on fully layered digital pieces.

But still, sometimes nothing beats the classics. I pretty much exclusively use Canson Mixed Media XL sketchbooks, any size, because I like the heavy paper, spiral binding, and turquoise blue covers. I’ll draw with any old pencil - I mostly hoard and use ones I take from hotels when I’m in on trips - and Microns are my favorite drawing pens.

Who are some rad artists you think folks should definitely check out and follow? I love Jenee Larson’s super distinct style and sassy digital illustrations of petulant ladies - @bobbypinss Bianca Xunise makes the most poignant, funny, personal, emotional diary comics - @biancaxunise Ayaka Sakuranbo is a Tokyo-based artist and I’m obsessed with her whimsical paintings and incredible color palette - @ayakasakuranbo Ashley Lukashevsy makes powerful illustrations with a focus on intersectional feminism and anti-racism - @ashlukadraws Ms. Wearer based in the UK does amazing rainbow-drenched pop art - @ms_wearer Lilly Friedeberg in Dusseldorf is one of my favorite graphic designers; I love her clean, fun sensibility - @elfriede_s Yoko Honda’s work makes me want to transport myself INSIDE the beautiful world she’s created and live there forever - @yokopium

What’s a common misconception about what you do? There’s a lot more “boring office stuff” to my job than most people think. I wish I was drawing and painting and creating all day every day, but in truth I spend like half my time answering emails, fulfilling orders, taking inventory, going to the post office, keeping the online shop up to date, managing all manner of legal nonsense, staying on top of social media, hustling for new work, and so on.

What do you do to take a break from art life and just the day-to-day hustle of running a shop? Drawing is still a release for me, and my husband (@therealjoshr) is an artist too, so it’s not uncommon for us both to still want to be making stuff in our “off” time. When we’re not doing that, we like to do a lot of really grown up stuff like going to theme parks, arcades, swapmeets, and toy stores. We also like taking weekend trips, and I really love being in the desert, so we try to get out to Palm Springs and Joshua Tree as much as we can too.

What can you tell us about the art community around where you are? What’s the art scene and culture like? Orange County sometimes gets a bad rap, but I think it’s a really cool and diverse place to be a creative person. A lot of iconic art and punk rock and culture has come out of this area (just look at Vans!!)!

As an artist today in OC, I feel like there’s breathing room here - the contemporary and alternative art scenes are still growing and finding themselves here, so it doesn’t feel as high pressure as the larger LA art scene - but you’re close enough to LA to get involved in that scene, and you still have easy access to so many amazing shows and museums and events. There’s just something distinctive about Orange County that is hard to put your finger on unless you’ve kinda grown up here. I went to high school in Newport Beach; I’ve lived in Anaheim now for years - of course there are pockets everywhere where those Real Housewives stereotypes are painfully true, but that hasn’t been my overall experience in OC. I love it here and I really hope I can help the creative community here continue to develop.

What’s something you liked to see more of in art? More women in the spotlight.

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist? Oh my god, probably working on a cruise ship or something. I didn’t go to school and I don’t really have any other marketable skills, so hopefully this works out!!

What are your FAVORITE Vans? It’s a toss up between two SK8 Hi’s - blush pink suede or baby blue faux fur. Don’t make me choose!!

What advice would you give someone thinking about art as a career? This is a super nebulous job choice, and “art as a career” in general is really subjective. Know yourself well, but don’t pinhole yourself. The scope of this creative industry is constantly shifting and changing, and things come in and out of fashion quickly. Something that’s your livelihood one year might become a nonstarter the next. If you can identify and remain true to the things that make you unique as an artist and the things people respond to in your work, the knowledge of that point of view will carry you from phase to phase.

What’s on the horizon for 2018? I’m still trying to figure that out myself! After some major plans I had for this year fell through at the last minute, I’m at kind of a blank slate phase in my career. I have a ton of different ideas and I’m trying to nurture them all to see what blossoms first! I’d really like to paint more murals this year, travel more for events, and continue to develop my more personal illustration work. Something I’m trying to keep in mind this year is that it’s OK to be small - not chasing the giant clients or the big money projects, and just doing work that fulfills me creatively and resonates with the people who care about what I do.

Follow Sara Lyons | Instagram | Website

#Art #Vans #Vansart #Vansgirls #art school #interview #creative #painter #pins #women

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eunych-born-eunych · 7 years

Note

tell us more about witchcraft tumblr

oh boy. follow @alkaloidwitch for my unironic witchcraft opinions. I’m a witch! and a materialist with a background in empiricism/scientism, also a materialist in the marxist dialectical sense! you can be all of those things at the cost of your popularity among idealist witches, non-witch materialists, and most of all:

Normies.

my materialism and my witchcraft both grow out of madness; human beings are computers complex enough to perceive things that are not real. For things I know to be real, there is materialism; for things I know to be chimerical, there is witchcraft. as the chaos magicians, wankers that they are, put it: belief is a tool. believing something now may serve a purpose, even if you do not intend to continue believing it later. Playing make-believe with my literal demons now will help me try to make sense of the material world better later.

And it is imaginative play, much as it is deadly serious; much of what we do in life is imaginative play of some kind. let’s pretend there’s a thing called money and let’s pretend it belongs to this specific kind of paper, these specific bits of metal. let’s pretend a corporation is a person. let’s pretend sex is simple; no, let’s pretend sex and gender are different; no, let’s pretend to stop believing in gender and start pretending to believe in ungendered sex.

materialism, again, is the resolution. imaginative play doesn’t have to be bad, but things that are only imaginary play by certain rules; we learn them as children. so when your imaginative play, witchcraft, seeps into your view of the world (as it must), other people calling themselves witches are sometimes going to believe or imagine mutually-contradicting things; the politest way to resolve an imaginary conflict is to come up with some imaginary solution, the more minimal the possible, and stop talking about that because it’s gonna harsh yr witchcraft to get snippy.

entirely different things happen when people come, materially, into conflict. and witch tumblr frustrates me a lot because my tacit acknowledgement that

“none of this is real like rocks are real, so when your imaginary collides with the material world, the material world is always going to trump. if it is materially bad, I don’t care that your imaginary justifies it, and if it is entirely immaterial there’s no point arguing about it”

…is not super popular with tumblr witches. there’s lots of, like, arguments and discourse and positivity posts about the wildest shit.

a three-screens-of-scroll witch tumblr textpost: positivity post for lazy witches! uwu // • positivity for lazy witches who [emoji-capped bullet points all the way down]me: it’s so inspiring that lazy witches can be positive despite the incredible scrutiny and terrible hardships the morning people witches subject them to, ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌟

so, like, I don’t have the same reaction to the idea of demon apologia that OP did. thinking highly of demons just isn’t that uncommon in my circles. to me, that post’s fucking ridiculous because why would you ever bother making it? if you wanna work with demons, do it, but like… other people don’t like demons, and make their own witchblr posts from that perspective, and you can resolve that conflict by just ignoring the imaginary content that is not meant for you.

a clarifying example is in order.

‘don’t use sigils you find on the internet, anyone can upload a curse and say it’s a different spell!!’

my guy. that is so far from being anybody’s real, substantive problem. you would never know unless they told you. their imaginary isn’t accessible to you and you can ignore it. if someone tells you they made a sigil you used to be a curse, and you feel like you have indeed been cursed, that’s still an event internal to you. and after all, someone could lie and tell you their beneficial sigil was actually a curse after you’ve already used it, just to fuck with you.

I can’t get this level of panicked about that level of made-up problem! if the idea of curses hidden in graphics created by random Internet denizens appealed to me, I’d engage with it on my own and not waste time trying to convince other people they should care about my niche paranoia.

the thing is, cultural appropriation is way less imaginary than witchcraft. there’s a real, economic impact to the mass-production in the West of symbols indigenous to ‘exotic’ colonies. there is a real dehumanization involved in treating someone’s proudest and most mundane garments, alike, as being a gaudy costume purchasable cheaply from any two-bit metaphysical store.

(privilege claim for the next bit: I’m a white, American settler-colonialist. that’s a me. I’m a that.)

and on the subject of metaphysical stores…

… run by white settler-colonialists who claim to have spirit animals and have no sense that there might be something inappropriate about shopping for toys in the cultures and religious practices of living indigenous populations whose homeland we are still occupying by force, whose access to their own cultural history we are still actively sabotaging, to sell bastardized sweatshop lookalikes whose significance is less than half-remembered and wholly stripped of context to other white settler-colonialists

there’s endless newb questions in this form:

Q: “can I use this color candle to mean this thing?”A: “I don’t care?”[a reblog insisting that actually they CAN’T use that color candle to mean this thing is the version that went viral]

, which indicates extreme hesitancy to break the rules of the imaginary.

on the other hand, witch tumblr is actively resistant to any demonstrable criticism. these same people fretting about candle colors also throw bizarre tantrums mocking the concept that they should stop cleansing with smoke from white sage, a critically endangered sacred herb that isn’t farmed, and how dare you say they shouldn’t call their white ass waving burning herbs in the air on occupied land ‘smudging’.

no-one cares if you think about the candle differently; stop asking for our input on that shit, because you don’t need it and we have better things to do. on the other hand, people very much do care if you engage in the alt religious scene’s rampant bigotry, but you don’t wanna listen to us on that. those priorities are fucked.

also witch communities have long, long memories, and some things happen again and again. a sampling:

the annoying

‘fluffy bunnies’ who read one barely-researched pop-Wicca text and are here to tell non-Wiccan witches what they’re doing wrong.

relatedly, ‘curse-shaming’, a practice in which even ‘respectable’ Wiccans participate, is genuinely aggravating if you’re at all into, like, historical witchcraft, because for a very long time (Wicca under that name had no public presence before 1954) there’s been not much more traditional for a witch than a curse.

arguments about “male witches” (that no-one acknowledges arose out of transmisogynistic practices in Dianic Wicca, and not really in reaction to men).

‘the Burning Times’ (not real, any historical events embarrassingly misrepresented).

“Easter is a pagan holiday;” relatedly, “Easter is Eostre is Ishtar”.

“Christmas is a pagan holiday.”

the ugly

an entire alt-history of Europe and European magical practice in which Jewish people play no perceptible part.

neo-Nazi physiognomies being passed around as “correspondence charts”.

every reputable resource on Norse mythology, Heathenry, or Asatru has an explicit public disavowal of Nazis, for very good reasons.

anti-Black propaganda, dated to the sixteenth century, about Afro-Carribbean syncretist esoteric/religious practices being repeated with all explicit reference to race left out on Tumbler Dot Com in 2017.

gentiles doing Kabbalah.

an all-white vision of the Hellenistic Mediterranean.

that one girl who stole black people’s bones from burst/eroded graves in a Louisiana graveyard and posted about it on Tumblr (one of witchblr’s few big mainstream crossover posts), leading to her arrest.

the (mostly) harmlessly bizarre

god-marriage

god-phones

what is a familiar really? (& relatedly: sex with spirits. EXTREMELY traditional, by the way),

etsy shops where you can buy custom spirits (NOT as in alcohol),

chemically-treated quartz named as if it was a real mineral,

“correspondence charts” broken alphabetically into individual readmore posts listing the magical properties of various objects (with a reblog later on in the chain complaining that people need to be more obsessed with pointless minutiae)

minors-only witchcraft discord server drama that you’re actively, unsuccessfully trying to avoid learning about

looking for witchcraft podcasts that aren’t run entirely by dudes

“my dog is horrifyingly sick, what spell should I cast?”//”GO TO THE VET”

a wealth of incredibly shitty and boring and unreadable esoteric PDFs by snake-oil salesmen

skyclad discourse

my tarot cards just read me for filth

thirty-year-old woman who should know better by now: christian witch is an oxymoron

christian witchblr: the Law of Attraction is just the prosperity gospel for Democrats

someone’s angry about the existence of secular witchcraft again

#madz #witchblr exposé #asks #j0ules

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the-faculty · 7 years

Note

I am wondering if there are any bdsm activities that can be done during a woman's period that don't involve the actual act of sex?

144 here. There is a whole world of activities that do not revolve around vaginal intercourse (which I assume it what you mean by the “act of sex”). So, of necessity this will get a bit graphic …

First, there’s the crude (but funny) meme:

“My doctor said I can’t have sex this week.”

“What did your dentist say?”

In other words, she can gratify him orally.

Second, she can jerk him off, or he can jerk off all over her.

Third, there’s anal, though a lot of women are uncomfortable with having him go anywhere “down there” when they have their period.

Since a girl’s got her needs too, he can gratify her with a wand or vibe.

And then there are all kinds of impact play, sensation play, mind-fuckery, etc etc.

Talk it through in advance, respect the sensibilities of the person who has her period, and don’t be afraid to experiment and get creative. The great thing about the wild, wild world of D/s sexual activity is, it tends not to be as vaginal-intercourse-focused as vanilla sex, where vaginal intercourse tends to be the thing.

Wolf

—

From the angle of the question, I’m going to go out on a limb and say your current dynamic is a bedroom one based around kinky sex. Certainly there are a plethora of different activities that don’t have to involve intercourse - wax play, impact play, sensation play, bondage and that list can go on and on, but how about you look at broadening your perspective. Essentially anything can be a ‘bdsm activity’, it’s the context in which it is done that determines this. You as the Dominant/Top are in control - so what control excites you both? Think about engaging her mind and exciting her through that. Anticipation, a dash of fear, keeping her just out of her comfort zone will spice any situation up.

I’ll give you a simple example - dinner. Tell her you’re going out, tell her what lingerie she is to wear, have her dress and shoes already picked out. Don’t tell her where you’re going, just that she needs to be ready at whatever time. Don’t answer her questions, but calmly watch her get ready. When you get to the restaurant, don’t ask her what she wants - you know her well enough already, order for her, including a drink. She’ll be wary and wondering what’s happening. Halfway through the meal tell her to go to the toilet and take off her knickers, send you a photo from the toilet proving they are off and to give them to you when she returns. When she does, make a point of being calm and put them in your pocket. After dinner go home via an adult shop and tell her you have a task for her to do when you get inside. Inside she is to choose 2 different styles of nipple clamps/toys and ask the sales person 5 specific questions about the pros and cons of both designs before choosing one that you will buy.

Now depending on your partner, this type of scenario could be a walk in the park or an extremely embarrassing situation. The key is to use your knowledge of her and set a scene that shows who is in control. If the above would set her a lovely shade of red, trust me, she won’t forget it quickly.

Heels 👠👠

144 again. Well said, Heels! Almost anything can be a “scene” within the context of D/s! The focus on “penetrating orifices” simply isn’t how one rolls in the D/s world. Not that there’s anything wrong with penetrating orifices. ;)

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martens-movie-reviews · 6 years

Text

Released: August 2017 Running Time: 12 minutes

“In a post apocalyptic world where the air is toxic to breathe and oxygen is a precious resource, a young boy embarks on a perilous supply run to obtain water and medicine for his ailing mother. With just his toy robot as a companion on his journey, he faces many obstacles, but the real danger is waiting for him back at home.”

I will be reviewing one short film a month, beginning with ‘The Survivor: A Tale From the Nearscape.’ The film has seen some success during its continued festival run, winning Best Sci Fi at the Festigious International Film Festival, and Best Sci – Fi at the Top Shorts Film Festival.

I’m always interested in watching movies, and with short films it is always interesting to see how the filmmakers compress the story in such a small amount of screen time.

Below is the full short film, which can be found on Vimeo and Youtube, its runtime is 11 minutes and 53 seconds. Check out my review for it below the link, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Christopher Carson Emmons.

The Survivor Short Film – Saga Flight Entertainment

Cast & Crew

The director of The Survivor is Christopher Carson Emmons, who has worked on numerous other short films, as well as 3 full length films, and several series. Emmons also has an upcoming short film called ‘Roebling’s Bridge‘ that is mentioned in the interview with him below.

Written by Mark Renshaw who has previously written other shorts such as ‘No More Tomorrows’ in and ‘Surrender’, he’s also written a television series in called ‘So Dark’ that will be premiering soon.

Nick Kordysh as Billy – Source: Saga Flight Entertainment

The cast of The Survivor includes Nick Kordysh, Valerie Dewie Lighthart, Sam Kozé, Anna Kordysh, Alida LaCosse, Tawnie Thompson, Carl Chopp, Zach McLain, Martin Doordan, Rodney Craig Dukes and Matthew Nichols.

Review

I found that the music in the film which was done by Zaalen Tallis, was futuristic yet familiar. I really enjoyed the ambience and hectic feel that it brought to the film. It enhanced the movie, just as music is supposed to do. I did find that the music was a little loud in some points of the short, however that could just be my preference and my inexperience with short films and their style. The acting in this short was well done, especially the young Kordysh, who portrayed the main character, Billy. The other actors while doing a good job with what what they were given, had too little screen time to get to know them as well as you might like.

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The quality in the story for The Survivor was really thought provoking and made you fear this dystopian future. We don’t have to worry about aliens or vampires or zombies in this movie, but each other. The humans in this film are what’s horrifying about this future, where people are capable of killing another human to use as food. At another point the cops are about to shoot Billy because they don’t want to have to deal with the paperwork that would be involved if they brought him in.

Roy killed Billy’s father because he wanted his mother, that is something that is reprehensible, and it makes you wonder in what kind of society would that be acceptable. It’s also telling of Roy’s character that he doesn’t acknowledge Winny anymore since she’s been sick, even going as far as turning his back to her and focusing on the television instead of trying to take care of her and lessen her suffering.

Another point that I might be misreading is at the beginning of the film, Roy is zipping up his pants after coming into the room with Billy, whatever that is supposed to imply is potentially even worse than killing the father to be with the mother.

I enjoyed the way in which Billy killed Roy with the rat poison that he had grabbed at the shop, when I first watched it, I thought it was just a comedic effect in the film to have a bodyguard be afraid of mice, but when the flashback happened, everything clicked together, and I appreciated that they didn’t show that part the first time around.

Matthew Nichols as Preacher – Source: Saga Flight Entertainment

I believe that this short has potential as full length film one day, as it sets up the world really well, and makes you want to know more. Who was that woman that saved Billy from the other cops? What organization is she with? What happens to Billy and his mother after the death of his step father? What disaster lead to the drastic change in society? These are all questions that I would like to see addressed if ever it would be turned into a full length film, which I hope it does.

Officer – Source: Saga Flight Entertainment

Overall, I feel like this film definitely deserved those awards that it has won, and I’d love to have this film adapted as a full length motion picture. I think that the story was simple, yet displayed a world that had been shown in many works of science fiction beforehand. The acting in the film was good, especially Kordysh, as from what I understand this was his first acting role.

The music in the short was really well done, as well as the cinematography which was done by Nate Haban. I loved the futuristic feel of the film, and every single part of the film was relevant to the overall story and world building. Based on other shorts that I’ve seen, I have to say that it told the story that it wanted in the limited amount of time, had great music, the visual aspects of the film were beautiful, and had a good message / warning for the audience to take from the film. I’m giving this short film, a final score of 8/10.

What did you think of the short film? Did you enjoy it? What are your opinions on the genre? Let me know in the comments below!

What movie do you want me to review next?

Thanks for reading,

Alex Martens

Q&A with Director Christopher Carson Emmons

What inspired the style and tone of Survivor? What nobody ever tells you about the phrase “ignorance is bliss” is that it has an expiration date. Ignore any problem long enough, it’ll make itself known to you in a way you can’t ignore. So this is a look at the world we’re hard at work on leaving for our grandchildren.

The theme I tried to zero in on during every decision made from pre-production through post-production was abuse of power. I tried to touch on many abuses of power within the context of the film’s short runtime, chiefly the continued burning of fossil fuels due to special interests we know still drive legislation, and if you watch closely there are three manmade earthquakes as a result of fracking in the film. The film also delves briefly into police brutality, child abuse, mass surveillance, and religious fanaticism. I tried to address these issues while still providing what was hopefully an entertaining narrative.

Are there any other projects that you are working on that you can talk about? Yes, I have a project called “Roebling’s Bridge” coming out that I’m very excited about. It’s about the family that created the Brooklyn Bridge. And then there’s that mountain of yet to be produced screenplays I’ve written

I know that Mark Renshaw was the writer for the film, but I’m curious about whose decision it was to not have Billy speak until the the very end? Mark Renshaw, the writer, made the decision to keep the lead character, Billy, mute until the very end of the film, which I absolutely loved. I’m the first to admit some of my earlier work was very talky, as if it would be the last time I could ever have a character speak to an audience so I desperately needed to seize it. Film is a visual medium, so what better way to receive information than through a protagonist who does not speak and we just see what they see? If you look at children who are living through wars or famines, they rarely emote or speak, and their eyes look like those of an elderly person, spare a few wrinkles. Our lead actor, Nick Kordysh, did such wonderful and subtle work in really capturing that.

What message or feeling do you want people to experience after watching the short film? If you listen to the words that the mother sings in the opening of the film, that really sets the stage for what it is about. She sings “The Black Snake comes, comes for the water, for our sons and daughters, the sun sets on the world.” She’s referencing the Lakota prophecy about the Black Snake, which in recent history was linked to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Also if you listen carefully to the words in the video with the sunrise graphic that takes over the TV set twice in the film, which are “the sky is ablaze from the evils of men, survival’s for naught if not do we rise, to oppose those who oppress the very hope of sunrise,” you get a sense of what’s at stake. This is the chant from a resistance group in this world that is trying to change things around before it is too late. One of the members of this group is shown in the film, she poses as a cop and blows her cover to save the lead character’s life. This group’s chant points to something I think is important, the idea of survival for survival’s sake, vs. survival for a purpose. Consider the idea of a massive power outage in a large city. Do you want to live in a world where the power going out takes away the distractions we think give us meaning and purpose and we all go crazy, or do we want to live in a world where the power goes out and that has no effect on us because the human race shares a common united goal that is clear and Earthbound?

I’d love for us to get off the track we’re on so that this film isn’t anything like our future. When the candidates put forward by any given country’s left and right are both basically Scrooge McDuck with different catch phrases, you’ve punctured the condom on the phallus of inequality and hatred. Issues that literally threaten our species’ existence need to be dealt with immediately in a non partisan way. Or we can keep fracturing into smaller and smaller tribal sub groups as we are now and choose to finally consider the bleak options that remain later, as our major cities are underwater, and the remaining land above ground faces constant quakes and fires. Maybe as the ship sinks, we’ll watch the water rising to our throats, then look one another in the eye, and realize how beautiful we were.

The Survivor Review Released: August 2017 Running Time: 12 minutes "In a post apocalyptic world where the air is toxic to breathe and oxygen is a precious resource, a young boy embarks on a perilous supply run to obtain water and medicine for his ailing mother.

#Alida LaCosse #Anna Kordysh #Christopher Carson Emmons #IndieFilm #Mark Renshaw #Matthew Nichols #Nick Kordysh #Sam Kozé #Sci-Fi #Short #The Survivor #Valerie Dewie Lighthart #Zaalen Tallis #Zach McLain

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Getting Comfortable with Sexy and Silly Art

Jason Pickleman, “SEX” (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

CHICAGO — I’ve been thinking about growing up as a first-generation Taiwanese American in suburban San Diego. I left for school and came back smug, telling my family the places I’d been, the people I’d met, the art I’d seen — and became frustrated when they didn’t care or couldn’t understand. I always wanted to forget that San Diego suburb, and forget those Asian American traditions that I thought stifled one’s inability to comprehend the culture and politics of art. But SEX, an exhibition in one of those places I’ve been since I left San Diego — Chicago’s Lawrence & Clark gallery — features works that struck me as laughably brash before they slowly revealed their intimacy, pulling the rug out from under my feet. It showed me that the Taiwanese American bubble of an upbringing I had tried so hard to leave behind actually gave me the ground to think about art, that art only means as much as you can bring to it, and that I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss my identity.

SEX is an exhibition that doesn’t follow the structure of one, but that’s because Lawrence & Clark is a gallery that doesn’t adhere to the conventional model either. The art exhibited is all from the collection of Chicago-based graphic designer and gallerist Jason Pickleman, who has been collecting the work of emerging and established artists, most with ties to Chicago, for the last 30 years. SEX changed frequently during my visits over the summer — pieces were moved, added, and taken out; and walls were repainted different colors. Pickleman hangs works salon-style and lets them spill off the walls onto the floor, giving the space an instinctive, stimulating, but snug atmosphere that encourages visitors to get closer and gradually notice the details and connections in and between works.

Installation view of SEX at Lawrence & Clark

SEX came together when Pickleman decided to re-create the titular bold, hot pink sign that hung above Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s King’s Road boutique in the mid 1970s, which he first saw in a magazine as a teenager in suburban Chicago. In the gallery, the letters look like they might fall at any minute; vinyl is wrapped tight around beckoning bulges and curves sculpted out of MDF. “SEX” shows how text, simply read or uttered, is sounded out and thus becomes physical and sensual. But the piece isn’t sordid or gratuitous; instead, it boldly proclaims and subverts taboo with punk flair.

Puppies Puppies, “Spaghetti and Condoms” (2015)

The same audacity is present in Puppies Puppies’s “Spaghetti and Condoms” (2015), a sculpture made up of a narrow, rectangular, mirrored pedestal on which a can of Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti and two boxes of Trojan condoms sit. The work is based on an image of a spaghetti-filled condom that strangely went viral on Tumblr in 2014. To write critically or poetically about a mesmerizingly disgusting internet trend seems absurd, but maybe Puppies Puppies appears to have made this piece specifically for this reason: to make art criticism and art history look just a little contrived. The mirrored stand almost disappears as it pulls you in and reflects the space and objects immediately around it. It’s incredibly hard to take a photo of the sculpture without catching a reflection of yourself in it. Normally, by the standards of today’s selfie-focused art, that would be a big plus. But Puppies Puppies wryly satirizes selfie culture by highlighting a viral image too gross, embarrassing, and fetishized to want to be in a photo with.

Detail of Puppies Puppies, “Spaghetti and Condoms” (2015)

Ultimately, “Spaghetti and Condoms” is smart in its subversion. The sculpture slowly reveals itself to be visually simple and beautiful. The royal blue in the Chef Boyardee logo matches the blue on the boxes of Trojans, and the stacked forms appear minimal and confident. I visited on the day Pickleman decided to “finish” the piece by spooning the spaghetti into a condom, and the resulting curved, bloated shape was oddly elegant and restrained. Puppies Puppies asks viewers to suspend their initial disbelief, and questions why we might be so quick to discount the sometimes irrational allure of low or popular culture, while giving art more credibility because it is labeled as such.

Sam Lipp, “Free Hospitals” (2015)

Across the gallery, Sam Lipp’s painting “Free Hospitals” (2015) quietly but assertively balances out “Spaghetti and Condoms” with an equal but opposite reaction. It’s a medium-sized painting with red, green, blue, and black rectangular forms that waver in each corner, with the words “Free Hospitals” placed between them. “Free Hospitals” isn’t even proclaimed — the painting doesn’t read “We should have,” or “There need to be” free hospitals; rather, the text is stated plainly. Each rectangle is mottled with the three other colors in the work; little specks of paint stand up ever so slightly, like the polyester on a paint roller left out to dry. The shapes and words hover beneath this thin, gauzy sheen of paint that appears rough and abrasive — like you’d skin your knee on the surface if you fell on it. “Free Hospitals” appears sad and gentle at first, but is actually quite cutting, especially when the simple idea of “Free Hospitals” — ie. basic health care — seems so far out of reach.

Cameron Clayborn, “Coagulate 1” (2017)

“Free Hospitals” works in layers, first eliciting a gentle appreciation that builds into a devastating, melancholic wash. It resonates with the rest of the work in SEX, which seems to focus on the subtle intimacy that can be drawn out of art. In this regard, Cameron Clayborn’s sculpture “Coagulate 1” (2017) is patient, proud, and sensual, but never vulgar. “Coagulate 1” features 10 dark brown, tan, and gray leather and felt sacks in varying heights in front of a mint green wall. Some forms stand erect, some fall limply, some are rolled over and scrunched into each other, but they all touch, the wrinkled leather and soft felt rubbing up against each other. Visible stitching crawls up the sides of these carefully handmade forms, and some are sealed at their tops with sharp, rusted, threatening metal clamps.

Matt Stole, “Modernist Phallus” (2005)

The rest of the works in SEX likewise mix humor and thoughtful critique. If much of modernism has been about macho male bravado, Matt Stole dismantles its ego with “Modernist Phallus” (2005), a drawing of just those words, austerely inscribed in pencil on an Art Institute of Chicago letterhead, ultimately erasable. Sterling Lawrence’s “Casting Elbows” (2015) features an abstract, awkwardly-shaped, and flesh-colored body part — is it a sex toy? — protruding from a small, burnished metal square. Out of any clear context, the elbow looks curiously uncomfortable and unsexy.

Several years ago, I would have ignored SEX. I would have been annoyed by the work, likely because of my Asian upbringing, which championed a serious, reticent, and demure work ethic above all else. There was no time for brashness, or silliness — my dad certainly didn’t see the point 35 years ago when he moved to San Diego alone to go to school, nor does he see it now, waking up at 6am six days a week to open up the family print shop. Though my parents did not and still do not understand the work I’m interested in, they support me the best they can. Indeed, if growing up Taiwanese American has taught me anything, it’s to do your job, but still be respectful of difference; to be silently and individually proud of identity, and never to engage in negative, aggressive arguments.

To be sure, there are problems with the conservative submissiveness that is part of my cultural inheritance, but it has also encouraged me to strive for patience in the face of difference. And so, even though SEX initially made me uncomfortable with its flagrant absurdity, it challenged me to take my time. SEX pulls you in with an awkward recklessness that eventually gives way to a woozy intimacy, reminding you how raw and personal art can get.

Sterling Lawrence, “Casting Elbows” (2015)

SEX continues at Lawrence & Clark (4755 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois) through October 1.

The post Getting Comfortable with Sexy and Silly Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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ba1bkbm · 7 years

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Alice Adaptations and Notes

Alice in Wonderland has been a long and running hit with Walt Disney since the get go. From his first company, Laugh-O-Grams, in which he and Ub Iwerks made a series of cartoons featuring a live action girl called Alice in a cartoonland, to the 1951 animated feature length movie, to the recently released and critically acclaimed Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), directed by renowned animator and moviemaker Tim Burton. In this essay I would like to discuss the various narratives, animation styles (or lack thereof in the live-action versions), and the classic piece of literature that they stemmed from.

Alice in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking Glass, What Alice Found, Lewis Carroll

The story of Alice began when Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was rowing a boat that began at Folly Bridge in Oxford and ended in the village of Godstow, with companions Reverend Robinson Duckworth and the three daughters of Henry Liddell (Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and Dean of Christ Church): Lorina Charlotte Liddell (“Prima” in the book’s prefatory verse); Alice Pleasance Liddell (“Sencunda”); Edith Mary Liddell (“Tertia”).

It has been suggested that some of the characters are actually based around real people – Alice being Alice Pleasance Liddell and the Mad Hatter being Lewis Carroll himself. In many adaptations of this story, there is emphasis on the bond between these two characters.

“For 150 years the curious creatures from Carroll’s topsy-turvy world have been part of popular culture the world over, not just in books, plays and films, toys, games and millions of products from food to clothing but also in – cartoons!

This is hardly surprising since when Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was seeking an illustrator for Alice he chose John Tenniel, the leading cartoonist of his day, whose caricatures of Victorian politicians and celebrities appeared every week in the pages the humorous magazine, Punch.

The stories were an instant success as were the illustrations and within a very short time people were using the characters and their quotable lines to make satirical comment on current affairs. Even John Tenniel created a topical cartoon for Punch based on his own illustration of Alice’s encounter with the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle.” http://www.cartoonmuseum.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/50128-alice-in-cartoonland

The narrative finishes with her in a dream – refer to Paul Well’s book of “Understanding Animation” and what this entails.

Alice in Cartoonland, (1920s), Dir. Walt Disney

“In 1922 Disney and his friend Ub Iwerks, a gifted animator, founded the Laugh-O-gram Films studio in Kansas City and began producing a series of cartoons based on fables and fairy tales.

In 1923 Disney produced the short subject Alice in Cartoonland, a film combining both live action and animation that was intended to be the pilot film in a series. Within weeks of its completion, Disney filed for bankruptcy and left Kansas City to establish himself in Hollywood as a cinematographer. Alice in Cartoonland turned out to be a surprise hit, and orders from distributors for more Alice films compelled Disney to reopen shop in Hollywood with the help of his brother Roy—a lifelong business partner. The Kansas City team soon joined the Disneys in California, and the company produced mostly Alice films for the next four years.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Disney-Company#ref738564

“Alice in Cartoonland celebrates Alice’s many misadventures at the hands of cartoonists, caricaturists and satirists, animators and graphic artists through 150 years of parodies and pastiches, jibes, jokes and gags aimed at making political points, social comment or just intended to make us laugh.” http://www.cartoonmuseum.org/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/50128-alice-in-cartoonland

Essentially a cartoon short featuring a real live action girl. Commissioned by Margaret Winkler to create 12 Alice shorts.

Understanding Animation, Paul Wells

“Disney established Walt Disney Productions in 1923, making his Laugh-O-Grams, which were mainly adaptations of popular fairytales like Puss in Boots, before embarking on his part animation, part live-action Alice in Wonderland films; which featured all quasi-revolutionary form and content which so enamoured Eisenstein.” (Page 22)

Alice in Wonderland, (1951), Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske

Not Disney’s first attempt at animating Alice – see Alice in Cartoonland. This film is very colourful and was animated as a piece of visual storytelling rather than a spoken film. The plot was carved out by the soundtrack at first – documenting conflict and substantial meetings – and then it was fleshed out in animation with voiceovers afterward.

The World History of Animation, Stephen Cavalier

“After Song of the South (1946), a financial success which saw advances in mixing animation with live action, the 1950s and 1960s at Disney were short on innovation and progress compared with the previous decades…Most of the changes at Disney were to do with increasing industrialisation and profit rather than any aesthetic or technical improvements. After getting his fingers burnt in the war years and now forced to be more cautious in his approach by post-war economic austerity…did not make another top-grade animation feature for eight years after Bambi (1942)…followed in quick succession by Alice in Wonderland (1951)…These were all brilliantly crafted films but lacked he innovation, inspiration and pioneering of spirit of his earlier work. Part of the reason for this is that Walt Disney’s passion for animation had faded, probably due to the paints of the 1941 animators strike, and to reservations from some critics about his beloved projects Fantasia and, to a lesser extent, Pinocchio…His creativity was focused on his ideas for Disneyland and he left the animation department largely in the hands of his trusted “nine old men,” his famous senior team of super-skilled animators…Alice in Wonderland may seem like a more adventurous choice of material, but it is not so surprising when its remembered that Disney’s first success was with the Alice comedies of the 1920s, and Disney had intended to tackle an Alice feature for some years…Like some of Disney’s “package” features of the 1940s, the audience’s interest was intended to be maintained with songs and visual appeal rather than overall storyline…fans of Lewis Carroll’s classic disapproving of the Disneyfication, and Disney fans a bit uncomfortable with the story’s surrealist episodes and the spiky and somewhat grotesque nature of the supporting characters.” (Page 154)

Understanding Animation, Paul Wells

“The proliferation of mass-produced ‘cel’ animation has done much to overshadow the styles and approaches adopted by other animators in other contexts.” (Page 35)

“The animation is achieved when ‘key drawings’ are produced indicating the ‘extreme’ first and last movement which are then ‘in-betweened’ to create the process of the move…the images are drawn on separate sheets of celluloid, painted, and photographed frame-by-frame against the appropriate background.” (Page 36)·

“Most early cartoons echoed or illustrated the musical forms of their soundtracks. This provided proto-narrative before particular scenarios were later developed. These were most often based on character conflict and chase sequences, where common environments became increasingly destablished as they became subject to destructive forces.” (Page 37).

“Metamorphosis is the ability for an image to literally change into another completely different image.” “It can also achieve transformations in figures and objects which essentially narrate those figures and objects, detailing, by implication, their intrinsic capacities.” (Page 69)

Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), Dir. Tim Burton

Answers the question of whether the animated version could be replicated in live action: yes, but only to an extent. Alice in Wonderland (2010) heavily relies on the ability to use special effects and CGI to transform movie sets and characters into more believable fairy tale versions. With this taken away, it would have to rely more on costumes and props, making it less appealing as the type of film that it is, if it could even be created this way. I believe it would work quite well as a play, but would make quite a plain and difficult movie.

This adaptation discovers a much more diverse storyline, most of which is not covered in Disney’s original 1951 movie – in fact, all the events occur later on in Alice’s life instead of as a child like the classic movie. It could almost be treated as a sequel to the original animated film, as it happens later on when Alice has once already met all of the Wonderland – now called “Underland” – characters and forgotten them. Characters have a more detailed past – you both learn and know more about their backgrounds (especially when paired with its counterpart; Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016). It is dark and twisted, and like a lot of Tim Burton movies, would most likely be questioned as to whether it suits a younger audience.

Absolem

represents transformation and metamorphosis “remains the constant locus of animation” (Wells)

as he transforms, so does Alice - he cocoons as Alice realises that the Jabberwocky is real and isn’t from a dream

he represents Vogler’s “mentor” archetype - he is always the one that tells us whether Alice is Alice or not, and he explains the Oraculum and Frabjous day etc.

#narratology

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