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charlie-minion · 4 years

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Still unresolved

DISCLAIMER: This is my blog and you’ll find my opinions here. If you don’t agree with me, I invite you to scroll past this post without trying to start an argument because I’m not here to prove who’s right or not. I just want to write meta without having to censor myself because I fear I might offend someone. I will delete any hateful anon messages I get, so you have been warned.

When I started writing meta 7 years ago, nobody knew who I was and my blog had probably 20 followers. I decided to share my own opinion (after reading hundreds of meta posts from other more talented people) because I loved Dean and Cas and there were things about their relationship that NOBODY was talking about at the time, at least not with the perspective I had.

I stopped writing Destiel meta sometime between seasons 12 and 13 because, to me, Destiel became canon around that time. When I say “to me”, I mean that I’m well aware the story hasn’t TEXTUALLY said that Dean and Cas have romantic feelings for each other, but it’s been WAY TOO OBVIOUS to deny it.

In season 8, the relationship between Dean and Cas was finally taken seriously (something that never happened before, at least not with endgame in mind). In season 9, Dean began to be set for a romantic interest while coming to terms with the fact that he could feel both familial and romantic love. In season 10, the codependency was proved to be a major obstacle in Dean’s (and Sam’s) relationships with other people, and we were told subtextually that Dean had feelings he wanted to experience differently (and that, according to him, were probably unrequited). We still didn’t know WHO he had those feelings for.

In season 11, we were subtextually told that a happy ending for Team Free Will was probably the endgame, moving away from Kripke’s original idea (which now we know was Chuck’s idea). We were shown it was possible to settle down with another hunter, someone who understood the life, maybe not marriage, but definitely romantic love, and even retirement.

In season 12, Dean was faced with his biggest fear: LOVE. Giving it without being afraid of losing the person who receives it, and being open to receive it back. He managed to express his love (and all the hate and hurt feelings he repressed) toward his mother, and he got an “I love you. I love all of you” from his best friend. If by this time, people had not been paying attention to how the relationship between Dean and Cas had been progressing, I recommend you read my meta masterpost in chronological order. I have 7 years’ worth of posts!

Let’s remember that Dean knew he had feelings for someone since at least 9x02 when he talked about love… and love. Or if you don’t want to take that moment, then since at least 10x16 when he confessed he had feelings he wanted to experience differently. Or if you’re not a fan of subtext, since at least 11x11 when he was told that he was pining for someone.

Truth is… he had feelings since PURGATORY. Since he realized he could NOT leave that fucking monster land without his angel… his best friend. Are you following? But, because Dean Winchester is not really with the whole love… and love, in 8x17 he confessed his feelings for Cas in the best way he could, with a “We need you. I need you”. And that’s why many of us, meta writers, have a tag for the need vs want conundrum, and for the singular vs plural conundrum.

Maybe Dean needed Cas because he was an angel in season 5 or in season 6, but when he lost Cas in season 7, that shit broke him. So, when they ended up in Purgatory, Dean realized that Cas was not just an ally. He was so much more than that! And don’t even get me started on the ‘WE need you’. I mean, we know Sam cares about Cas a lot, but every time they’ve lost Cas (when Castiel was possessed by Lucifer in season 11 or when Cas died at the end of season 12 and the first 5 episodes of season 13), the one who loses everything is Dean, not Sam.

When did Destiel become canon to me? After Dean’s mourning arc, after his 180 when Cas came back to life and “it’s never too late to start all over again” was playing, after Dean said “I do” to Cas with a cross behind them and they subtextually became married (with a kid).

After that, there was nothing I could say without repeating myself. We couldn’t expect any resolution between Dean and Cas until we reached the final season and I’ve been saying that since season 9 ended. I’ve even said that Dean and Cas will end up together and that if they’re textually made romantic it will be in the last episode(s) of the last season (even though some people had different expectations). If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you probably know I’m not lying about all these things. I’m just giving a summary of what I’ve been saying for 7 freaking years!

The fact that Dean hates it when Cas leaves, I’ve talked about it .https://charlie-minion.tumblr.com/post/102787887207/ill-stay-with-you-because-i-want-to-not-because

The fact that Cas needed Dean to ask him to stay, I’ve talked about it. https://charlie-minion.tumblr.com/post/171578528107/regarding-your-last-post-while-i-agree-that-dean

The fact that Destiel is endgame, I’ve talked about it, too! https://charlie-minion.tumblr.com/post/122136945257/how-would-you-make-destiel-canon-if-you-could-in

So, for the love of Billie (because I’m done with Chuck), enjoy the ride!

The resolution between Dean and Cas DID NOT HAPPEN IN 15X09. Why would you think that something that has been building for SO MANY YEARS would be resolved so easily and so soon, when we still have 11 episodes to go? That’s insane!

HOWEVER,

We got open communication. Dean’s prayer to Cas… beautiful! The tears, the hug, the desperation because he thought that he was going to lose Cas AGAIN!

That, my friends, is PAY OFF for so many years waiting.

And we’re not done yet. Dean was going to say something else and Cas stopped him. That’s storytelling 101.

What was Dean going to say? Can Dean finally overcome his problems with the “I” vs “we” and “need” vs “want” or even… “love”?

Of course he can! That’s still a possibility! The Dean that poured his heart out to Cas like that can do that and more. And that’s the resolution we’ve all been waiting for. But as I said 4 FUCKING YEARS AGO:

That’s for “the show’s final season and the final episodes of it”!

I can’t promise Destiel will be textually romantic by the end of the series, but I’m very happy with where the story is right now and the odds are favorable. What I’m sure of is that Dean and Cas will be together at the end, and if that happens, it’s better to make it canon than to leave it open for interpretation. Am I right? :’D

#supernatural #destiel #deancas #destiel meta #spn spoilers #15x09 #kinda #destiel is endgame #so canon only blind people can't see

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drkfought · 3 years

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─ the mirrors surrounding you did as they were meant to , reflecting back a spitting image of avan jogia - but it’s clear something is wrong from the moment that a vision of 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 strikes you . perhaps it was a passing daydream in the frenzy of the funhouse . you reassure yourself - you’re 𝐉𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐑 , a 𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘺 - 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳 year old 𝗕𝗔𝗥 𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥 / 𝗗𝗥𝗨𝗚 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗥 whose virtue lies in your + self sufficiency & + rationality , although you’ve been told that you tend to be quite - suspicious & - blunt , and you’re associated with 𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌 & 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒄𝒓𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒊𝒛𝒆 , 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒎 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂 𝒃𝒐𝒚 𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒖𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓 , 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝒏𝒐 𝒐𝒏𝒆 , by those around you . suddenly, however, you’ve found 𝐀 𝐉𝐎𝐘 𝐁𝐔𝐙𝐙𝐄𝐑 on your person - was that always there ? from the moment you leave the funhouse , memories from your life in 𝙨𝙪𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙡 have begun to return - leaving whoever you had been before in the mirror’s reflection behind you . you can almost hear 𝚁𝙰𝙶𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙾𝙽 𝙰 𝚂𝚄𝙽𝙳𝙰𝚈 by 𝙱𝙾𝙷𝙽𝙴𝚂 following in your wake .

if i could pick one character for supernatural to revisit ... it’d be this one . the potential they had with this kid ? unmatched . instead though they put him a literal singular episode & despite his open ended disappearance they never once mentioned him again . supernatural sure is a show . anyway ! i love jesse & will be giving him the acknowledgment he deserves .

full name : jesse anthony turner . alises : the antichrist . age : twenty four . gender & pronouns : cis male , he / him . sexual & romantic orientation : homosexual / homoromantic . species : virgin born cambion ( half - human , half - demon hybrid ) . identifying marks : several tattoos ranging all over his body , though none above his chin .

─ 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 .

as far as jesse knew , he was a normal boy from nebraska . his parents , though they often left him alone , loved him well enough . they doted on him when they were home , even . kept him almost sheltered in many ways but it never bothered jesse as a child . nothing bothered him . not until he was twelve .

after a series of extremely strange deaths in town , alliance , nebraska attracted the attention of the winchesters . upon investigation they found jesse being the only thing linking all the murders . the link ? harmless pranks & child superstitions were becoming true . joy buzzers would electrocute you . itching powder would cause you to scratch your scalp off . step on a crack ? well --- your mother won’t�� be in good conditions . all of these were pranks that jesse believed . when jesse was told the truth , that joy buzzers were harmless , sam & dean found they went back to being that way . somehow , though unexplainable to them , jesse was unknowingly warping the reality around him to what he believed .

answers came in the form of their angel friend , castiel , who informed them jesse was the ultimate weapon of hell for the apocalypse : the antichrist . jesse , it was revealed to them , was actually adopted . his birth mother was a woman named julia wright who carried & birthed jesse while being possessed by a demon which made jesse half - human , half - demon hybrid , otherwise known as a cambion . what was more important is that though julia was jesse’s mother , he had no father . not just in the absent sense , but in the entire sense . julia wright was a virgin . being what he was , jesse had immense powers that activated when lucifer escaped his cage in hell . the longer lucifer was on earth , the stronger jesse’s powers would continue to grow .

cas informed the winchesters of the dangers jesse’s existence threatened & though they disagreed with him , he went to kill jesse . when sam & dean made it to jesse’s , they found he had used his powers in self defense to transform castiel into figurine . the two of them explained to jesse that he powers in the easiest way they could , trying to spare the boy’s feelings to get him on their side , but demons had a different idea . they interrupted sam & dean’s attempt at recruiting jesse to their side by breaking the truth to him . about his mother . about what he was . about how powerful he was . jesse , tired of both sides , commanded the demon to leave ( which it did , unable to disobey jesse’s control ) then told sam & dean he would go upstairs to say goodbye to his family & get his things .

after waiting for sometime , the winchesters went to go check on jesse only to find him gone with nothing but a goodbye note to his family . cas , now back to being an angel rather than an action figure , appeared to tell them the antichrist had vanished once more . the boy had run away to spare his family from danger & get away from being used as a weapon . he was never found after his disappearance , his powers making him unable to be detected by any angel or demon , & it’s unknown what could have happened to him .

─ 𝐀𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 .

jesse grew up with his mother in this world , but it wasn’t pleasant . his mother hated his estranged father & because of this she put hate onto jesse who simply had to bare it . she drank & she ignored him & he made due for himself despite it all . when he was six , cps took him away from the situation & jesse entered the foster care system . he was already older than most adopting parents & his cold personality didn’t help either . he was bitter & borderline cruel sometimes if only because he didn’t trust the adults who came near him .

bumping around from foster home to foster home , jesse had very few constants in his life . one of them , though , was his best friend zagreus . the two started getting along when jesse was in middle school & zag quickly became jesse’s ride or die . they got into trouble together off & on & as they went into high school jesse would let his friend practice stick & pokes on him as he encouraged zag’s tattoo artist dreams when zag’s parents wouldn’t .

he was finally adopted at age sixteen & though his adopted family has tried to be close with him , jesse still keeps them at arm’s length . they’re a patient lot , though . which is new for jesse . an unconditional love isn’t one he’s often been around .

now , at age twenty four , jesse works for the cat’s meow in town as a bar tender . & when that’s not making him enough money he also deals drugs on the side however first time or inexperienced buyers usually end up getting overcharged for scams by him . if you buy from jesse , its recommended you go into the situation knowing what exactly youre talking about .

─ 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎�� .

resident bad boy that your parents warn you about . piece of shit little disrespectful delinquent . if you pay him $10 he’ll yell at your parents for you .

if you get close to him , though , he will secretly care very deeply . close friends will know the truth : he has a huge soft spot if you can find it . he will deny this fact if you say anything about it . he has a reputation .

he’s okay with his family & appreciates them adopting him but he’s still always kept them at arms length . needs to stop not trusting people for once .

in his canon , i have it that he fucked off to australia & basically made a pocket universe there to keep away from the world .

he is insanely powerful . cas said that , at his full power , he would be able to destroy the host of heaven “with a word” .

his power isn’t just because he is a cambion . if the antichrist was as easy to make as just a half demon , there would have been another . a virgin birth requires a lot of ritual . it’s something that takes a lot of time & planning & can only happen once . he is more than just a cambion because of his virgin birth . it’s that which makes him the antichrist rather than just a cambion .

his powers are activated when lucifer is around , but it’s never said that they disappear if lucifer goes away again . jesse’s powers stopped getting stronger after lucifer went away , but what he had gained stayed . when lucifer later returned later , jesse’s powers grew even stronger again .

his powers , when he doesn’t know how to use them , are sometimes used without him realizing it . some things may happen because of him unintentionally .

i will add more later but it’s like 4am .

#jesse: intro #duality.intro #THREE intros done now hell yes #abuse tw #neglect tw #drugs tw

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morinokunikara · 4 years

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Altschmerz w/ mishima mayhaps owo

Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

IM SORRY THIS TOOK A WHOLEASS MONTH TO RESPOND TO LIFE HAS BEEN HELL AND IVE ONLY RECENTLY GOTTEN THE MOTIVATION TO WRITE DAILY

Anyways I wrote this in my idol school au so enjoy!!!

“One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

The cheerful music and Yuuki’s muttered counts echoed through the large, otherwise empty practice room, each step landing softly as he followed the routine he had practiced again and again.

“One, two, three, four. One, two, three four.”

Right, left, spin, hop. Step, step, skip, hop. Cross, right, lef- Shit!

His rhythm was cut off as he tripped over his own legs, and his body met the wood flooring with a thud. “Ugh...damnit.” He crawled to the large speaker next to him and shut it off. The room went silent and he rested against the mirrored wall. Why can’t I get this right? Everyone else has already moved forward... He brought his knees to his chest with a sigh, and mentally went over the routine again.

Step, step, skip, hop. Cross, right, left, step.

It was that left step that got him. Every time, he’d stumble or fall over completely. The rest of his group had it. He was holding them back. If he didn’t figure it out, they wouldn’t pass this audition at all. He’d disappoint everyone. He had to keep trying, for their sake. He pulled himself back up and restarted the music track.

“One, two, three, four.”

Cross, right, left, st-

Thud.

“Damnit!” The fall was particularly painful compared to others. His left ankle twisted as he went to the ground, and he whined as he rubbed the hurt leg.

“That was quite the fall,” A gentle voice came from the other end of the room. The tall, slender figure walked over to Yuuki, kneeling next to him. “Oh...hey, Kitagawa...” Yuuki stopped tending to his leg and looked away. To be caught like this in front of a classmate, especially in front of someone as elegant and handsome as Yusuke Kitagawa. He was one of the best students in his class, and already fairly well known in the idol world. His beauty, his artistic eye, even his frequently eccentric behavior gained him a large fan following. And he just saw Yuuki crash and burn like some kind of newbie.

“Sorry to interrupt, I just believe I forgot my water bottle here.” Kitagawa walked to Yuuki’s side. “You aren’t too hurt, are you? Can you move your leg?” He asked. “Is it alright if I touch it? I just want to make sure it isn’t swollen or anything of the sort.”

Yuuki nodded slowly. He could only hope it wasn't so bad that he wouldn't be able to dance... He watched as his classmate pushed up his left pant leg and looked carefully at the injury. Kitagawa moved it a bit, and Yuuki winced slightly. "Did that hurt?"

"A little..." Yuuki's anxieties grew. Would he be able to dance in time for the next audition?

Kitagawa hummed thoughtfully. "Can you get up and walk around for a little bit?" Yuuki nodded and pulled himself up. He winced at the first few steps, but soon was able to walk through the pain with nothing more than a slight limp.

"I don't believe it's broken," Kitagawa said as he watched. "However, we may need to take you the the infirmary just in ca-"

"No!" Yuuki snapped. He shrunk back when he noticed Kitagawa's startled expression. "Sorry I just- I can't risk having to stop practicing even for a day. I have to get this routine perfect in time for auditions.”

Kitagawa stayed silent for a moment, biting his lip. “Well, if you won’t go to the infirmary, would you at the very least accompany me on a walk? You may be able to just walk this injury off, and return to practice without an issue.

Yuuki hesitated. Could he really afford to take such a break? But then again, walking with Kitagawa, going on a walk with an idol ranked so high above him... It might just prove to be beneficial for him. “A walk sounds fine. As long as it isn’t too long, I want to practice more before lights out.”

The two walked out into the courtyard together. The sun had just barely set, and the first stars of the night were starting to shine through the darkening sky. The cool autumn breeze whipped colorful leaves along their legs, a few of the leaves crunching under their steps as they walked down the concrete path under the canopy of increasingly vacant trees. Yuuki looked down at the leaves under them, unsure of what to say or do. His mind was flooded with thoughts on the situation. He could take this chance to learn what it meant to be a high ranked idol! But what if Kitagawa thought he was using him to get ahead? Or what if he saw other idols as competition and refused, or worse, gave fake, sabotaging advice? Lost in his thoughts, he ended up nearly tripping directly into the fountain in the center of the courtyard.

“Careful. We wouldn’t want you to fall again,” Kitagawa warned.

“Sorry,” Yuuki muttered, looking off to the side. “I must’ve got lost in my thoughts.” He laughed and rubbed the back of his head.

“Here, have a seat.” Kitagawa sat on one of the benches that faced the fountain and patted the spot next to him. “We can walk again when you’re more focused.”

Yuuki took a seat on the bench as well. Still unsure of what to say, he stayed silent as he watched the water sprouting from the fountain and down into the pool below.

“It’s relaxing, isn’t it?” Kitagawa broke the silence between them. “I frequently come here when I need some time away, or when I need inspiration.”

Yuuki didn’t reply. What was there to say? He didn’t need time away. In fact, he needed the opposite. He should probably get back to practicing already. He was starting to get antsy.

“You know,” Kitagawa apparently still had more to say. Wonderful. “Dancing and singing are art forms, just like painting. Idols themselves really are artists. I always admired them for that reason, and found myself wanting to expand my horizons outside of just a singular art form. However-” The ''however” caught Yuuki’s attention, and he looked to Kitagawa. “-Just like with painting, there is such a thing as practicing too much. How long were you in that practice room for?”

“Since dance lessons ended so...” Yuuki counted up the hours in his head. “About 3 and a half hours I think.”

“And did you take a break once in that time?”

“No.”

“Ah, see? You have to give yourself a chance to rest.”

“I don’t have time to rest. I have to work as much as I can. I have to catch up to everyone else. Almost everyone in the school is ranked higher than me, including-” Yuuki stopped himself. No, it would be selfish to mention her. It wasn’t his fault she was so much better than him.

“Including your sister, correct?” Kitagawa asked, looking to Yuuki.

Yuuki sighed. “Yeah. Including her. She’s always been better than me. She was our parents’ clear favorite. The ace student, the soccer MVP, the Theatre star... I always paled in comparison to her. So I have to keep working harder, so I can be on her level.”

It was something Yuuki had dealt with since his sister was born. In everything she did, she shined brighter than him. Everything became about her. She was the center of their lives, and Yuuki was almost completely forgotten. He always tried to work himself harder, push himself more, fight on despite exhaustion, but nothing ever worked for them. He was never good enough. He thought that maybe, just maybe, attending the Atlas Idol Academy would change that but of course it didn’t. His sister climbed far above him almost instantly, and ended up near the top of the rankings, while he stayed near the bottom.

“So you want to climb up to the top of this school’s ranking? And you think you can do that by dancing on an injured ankle?”

The question cut hard on Yuuki. Well, yeah, when he puts it like that of course it sounds bad. “No but...”

“You know, I was the same with my own paintings, at a time. I watched even younger artists soar above me. Naturally, my first reaction was that I wasn’t working hard enough. So I pushed myself more. First I gave up sleeping, then eating, then so much as putting the brush down for a few seconds. Despite my greatest effort, everything I painted turned out... soulless. They lacked emotion, meaning, everything. It wasn’t until I injured my wrist, and passed out from exhaustion, that I realized how much damage I was doing not only to myself, but to my art.” Kitagawa sighed and looked back to the fountain. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Yuuki stared at the fountain as he processed his classmate’s words. He understood but... that was different right? Wasn’t it? If he worked harder, if he pushed himself, he’d be the best. “It’s just not the same situation.”

“Not the exact same, but there are striking similarities. What will you do if your ankle gets worse, or if you pass out. You’re determined about this audition, are you not? If you end up hurt, you’ll only cause yourself to not be able to participate at all.”

Yuuki knew he was right but... but... No. No buts this time. “...I know...” He muttered. It kind of sucked to admit, but Kitagawa may have had a point. He couldn’t audition if he ended up hospitalized.

“Good.” Kitagawa smiled and got up. “So, what are your plans now?”

Yuuki rose as well, stretching his arms as he did so. “I think I’ll go back to my room for now. My ankle feels better, but I’ll keep an eye on it and go to the infirmary if things get worse. And uh...thanks for looking out for me. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course. Contact me anytime you’re in need of a reminder. Would you like me to escort you to your dorm?”

“I wouldn’t mind that at all.” Without really thinking, Yuuki offered his arm to Kitagawa, who...actually took it? He realized a second too late what he had done, and averted his gaze to hide the dusting of pink on his face. Not that anyone could see it with how dark it was.

The two walked arm in arm together until they reached Yuuki’s dorm room. They said their good nights before parting ways, and Yuuki went straight to bed so he could rest up for the next day. In the time following, Yuuki followed his own pace, and found himself able to master the routine in time for the audition, leading to his group acing the audition with flying colors. He still fell into his old mindset from time to time, but when he did, his new friend was there, always supportive, always willing to remind him to work at his own pace to be the best he could be.

#persona 5 #persona #p5 #yuuki mishima #yusuke kitagawa #Anonymous #mailbox

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dotthings · 5 years

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S14 has no mercy. None. It’s merciless. I’m a mess on multiple TFW relationships at once. NO MERCY. NONE. Thoughts on SPN 14.12.

Two things to get out of the way. 1. as usual, too much Nick. In every ep he’s in. Always. This comes from lanes that normally don’t ever agree with each other. TPTB cannot hear our piteous cries of boredom. We just sit through the Nicking and endure. 2. has nothing to do with an issue with the ep really, nor am I surprised, but hmmm yes nobody listen to anything ERL says from now on, trust me it’s best for everyone.

However despite item 2, I’m not going to downplay the Dean and Cas, and Destiel content of this ep because along with the bro bond and Sam and Cas and TFW stuff the Dean and Cas part of this was out for blood. And the Destiel storyline continues to ramp up, we’re all slowly boiled frogs. It’s really fun. Hahahah I have so many feelings. Help.

Just going to write out some thoughts based on my disjointed notes.

So Sam looped Cas in already and Sam is convinced neither he nor Cas can talk Dean out of it. Sam didn’t consult Dean about looping Cas in of course. Oh look, there’s Dean saying he can’t handle the “big goodbyes” so he’s actively avoiding Cas and Jack because he just can’t face their sad little faces as he marches off to his fated doom, which was plain obviously in 14.11 already, Dean’s just admitting it with words now. But I love that Sam has already gone to Cas with this crap. He went to Cas with speed. Misery loves company. And he hopes Cas, who Sam knows loves Dean a lot, can fix this. gdi. Sam having already confided in Cas (and of course we don’t get to see Cas’s initial reaction to this horrible plan but we can think about what it may have been and make everything worse) and Sam and Cas united together in looking for some way to get Dean out of this hurts my heart in good ways.

THAT SAM AND DEAN TALK IN THE CAR ABOUT JOHN. Dean convinced he wasn’t that great a brother to Sam and Sam not having with that or with “death-bed apologies.” Well I said Sam was miserable about having to go along with Dean’s plan and it’s showing in every scene. He’s trying to be brave. He doesn’t want to burn the world but also as I said recently, he isn’t exactly going to be ok with letting Dean die like this either.

“Dad would send me away when I really pissed him off.”

Up yours John, and the horse you rode in on. The thing here is Dean being so open about saying it, point blank like that. No “he did his best” prevarications. He just drops that and the sadness in Dean is eating my heart. This is actually giving me hope about the 300th ep and what it may accomplish here. This is setting up and telegraphing. We’ll see.

I noticed the ep drew a line between Sam and Dean, and male twins. Unusually close siblings. With twins it’s biological. With Sam and Dean, brothers biologically, but not twins, nonetheless were bonded unusually close by circumstance and trauma initially. I just think twins is an interesting parallel to make instead of a regular pair of siblings. And the way a twin feels when they lose the other.

CAS IS SO HAPPY TO HEAR FROM DEAN JFC CAS CALM DOWN.

As a character, Cas is not *effusive* usually. This just isn’t how he rolls. He can get intense and emotional but here he was just so openly damn excited and happy to hear from Dean and I want to cry forever.

“Dean we need to have a conversation.”

“Dean, we need to have a conversation.”

I actually scribbled in my notes, in sarcastic all-caps, “NO REALLY?!” with a pissy little arrow from that line of dialogue.

Well maybe this is a “turning point” because I certainly have waited a long time for Cas to get assertive about this.

And then Dean that little shit ends with “It’s good to hear your voice.”

At this point I’m internally screaming I barely even remember there being Nick scenes, were there Nick scenes after that Dean and Cas phone call, does it matter?

“Doctor.” “Doctor.”

SPN YOU DID NOT JUST RECREATE A SEGMENT OF THAT EXACT SCENE WITH DR SEXY FROM CHANGING CHANNELS ONLY WITH CAS IN THE DOCTOR OUTFIT YOU DID NOT JUST

Oh yes. Yes it did.

Dean and Cas aren’t done battering my heart and then holding it over an open flame in this episode.

Cas begging Dean: “Just stop.”

CAIN: She knew who I was... and what I was. She loved me unconditionally. She forgave me. She only asked for one thing.

CROWLEY: To stop.

-SPN 9.11

Oh so we’re back to this again, and right when I was just the other day thinking about Cas’s speech to Dean in 10.22, oh let’s quote some of that again, just to make everything even more painful: “if there is even a small chance that we can save you, I won't let you walk out of this room.”

But Dean is adamant. He’s not going to listen. So there’s all this goddamn WOUNDED STARING and Cas says “so this is goodbye?”

So there it is, Dean having to be face to face with Cas as Dean marches to the doom he believes he’s fated for and he has to see Cas react to it. They are looking each other right in the eye, people. It is not for the faint of heart.

And then they get INTERRUPTED because that is the life of a Destiel shipper.

Cas is realllly salty. “If there’s a spark of hope, then I have to try. You taught me that.” But he actually sounds...tender, as well. It’s another plea, not bitter, although yes he is salty and being really pointed.

Meanwhile Sam has gone to the salt mines, and mined the salt himself. “No rest for the self-destructive.”

Oh gosh I feel for Sam in this ep a lot. I just relate to this, as a fan of the characters, having watched their self-destructiveness for this long. Again...no they aren’t going to just let the world burn, but is self-destruction actually the answer either?

I am btw absolutely cheering that the ep lands on another chance to find another way, but without heedless to the impact of their actions or “screw it let the world burn.” They have to find another way. Save Dean, and the world both.

Sam is breaking my heaaaart. I really understand his frustration and he probably feels abandoned, even knowing it’s to save the world. It’s also a little brother desperate because his big brother seems to be giving up and seems too fatalistic. Sam needs Dean to have a little faith, and Sam isn’t at the moment on a hellbent path of “no matter the cost” like he was in S10. He just wants Dean not to give up yet. To let them try. It’s can’t be easy watching a loved one go off to sacrifice themselves, and Sam did it at the end of S11, which took courage, just as Dean did at the end of S5.

There’s a space between “screw all the consequences” and completely letting go.

I thought the bros scenes were really top-notch in this ep, however that wouldn’t have stopped me from feeling critical if Cas had been ommitted from that last scene, especially after all the Dean and Cas emotional stuff earlier in the ep that got interrupted. SPN is about the bro bond and it’s about Dean and Cas and it’s about TFW 2.0 as a family and here the ep reminds us we’re in S14 and this isn’t just about Sam and Dean, as Cas walks up to them and we have another singular-to-plural.

(to Sam) “I do believe in us...” (on seeing Cas) “I believe in all of us.”

And another singular-to-plural but less warm and fuzzy, what has to be done if their once more last ditch effort doesn’t work. (to Sam) “You have to promise me...you’ll put me in that box” (to Cas) “You too.”

Not only is the story telling us Sam and Dean aren’t alone, Dean is fully aware of it. He had that confrontation with Cas in the hospital--he looked Cas right in the eyes, he knows. It’s not just Sam who cares and it’s not just Sam that will dig in his heels. I would like to see Jack’s response to all this, since he has been accepted part of the family and it’s relevant, but I love the Sam, Dean, & Cas interplay here and the multiple levels of ouch and the multiple relationships.

#supernatural #supernatural spoilers #dean and cas #destiel #Team Free Will #Sam and Cas #spn #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #not a John friendly blog #not a Nick friendly blog #meta #sam winchester #dean winchester #castiel

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sweetdreamsjeff · 6 years

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Jeff Buckely Mystifying Caucasian Male by KARA VANDERBIJL

Jeff Buckley’s brief intro before launching into a cover of “Dido’s Lament” is murmured in a ghost’s timbre, barely outdoing the white noise on the recording even at highest volume. His audience laughs, spooked, then the piano opens. “Thy hand, Belinda,” Jeff sings. His is a freakish voice, made all the more odd by the grainy quality of the recording; a high falsetto mimicking the dramatic mezzo-soprano for which Purcell wrote the aria. He wails — his voice almost breaks, but doesn’t. Listening, we want it to break; the melody is too pure, its perfect desperation too stringent for this wild, unpredictable thing. Remember me, forget my fate. It’s this drama, the constant rediscovery and redelivery of a familiar, worked-over, oft-repeated tune that defines Jeff Buckley’s work. Like his voice, each song defies an original genre or mood, turning back to a more primal source. Is it a lament? A mockery? A strange self-issued prophecy from a man who, two years later, would walk into the Wolf River in Memphis, TN and drown? Like many of his other performances, this one (a set at the 1995 Meltdown Festival in the UK) now only exists on the web, maybe even on fragments of a video somewhere. Had Jeff Buckley lived past the age of 30, it might have remained among the other, less-than-perfect detritus of a long and successful career. But when the talented die young, we like to watch their home videos. Their unprotected moments. Their failures, blow-ups, fuck-ups. Anything that might give us clarity about their end: what “brought them to this point.” Short of simply accepting that it was death that did Buckley in, we might say it was the success that got him.

Only four years earlier, Jeff had sung in public for the first time, at a tribute concert for his estranged father Tim Buckley. They had met once, when Jeff was eight, after one of Tim’s shows; two months later, Tim overdosed on heroin. Neither Jeff nor his mother Mary Guibert were invited to the funeral. When Jeff stepped onto the stage at Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn to sing Tim’s “I Never Asked to Be Your Mountain”, most people weren’t aware that Tim had a son, and most people who knew Jeff didn’t know he could sing — he’d patented himself, stubbornly, as a guitarist — so the evening unveiled not only Jeff’s vocal talent but also exactly where it had come from. This pissed Jeff off. If anything, he had hoped to use the brief set as his way of paying his respects, of breaking away from Buckley senior. Years later, when a fan shouted a request for one of Tim’s songs, Jeff looked her straight in the eye and said, “I don’t play that hippie shit.”

Jeff escaped Anaheim, CA, where he’d been born, leaving behind what he described as a “rootless trailer trash” existence. He’d been struck by New York fever. Over the next year and a half, he played at coffee shops and nightclubs in Lower Manhattan, and eventually earned a regular Monday night slot at Sin-é in the East Village, accompanying himself on the guitar. He covered Bob Dylan. Nina Simone. Van Morrison. Singing “Sweet Thing” once, with Glen Hansard, a then still-obscure Buckley drew a crowd — so large that people began pressing up against the windows outside the club — by taking the second verse through a series of vocal gymnastics that lasted fifteen minutes. A brief writing streak with Gary Lucas resulted in two original songs, “Mojo Pin” and “Grace”, that Jeff nevertheless rarely played in his set. Lucas also invited Buckley to perform in his band, Gods and Monsters, early in 1992. By that time, however, the streets outside Sin-é were lined with record label executives hoping to snag Buckley for a solo album. That October, Buckley signed with Columbia, hired a drummer and bassist, and recording for what would be his first and only studio album, Grace, began the next summer. A quick EP, Live at Sin-é was released in November ‘93, documenting Jeff’s coffee-shop years, a time he’d long for intensely almost as soon as he left it. Jeff was not prolific; of the ten songs on Grace, he penned only three on his own. Lee Underwood, Tim Buckley’s guitarist, said once that Jeff suffered from an all too-relatable sort of creative inertia. “[He] felt uncertain of his musical direction, not only after signing with Columbia, but before signing, and all the way to the end. He did not know himself — which musical direction he might want to commit himself to, because taking a stand, making a commitment to a direction, or even to composing and then successfully completing the recording of a single song, was extremely difficult for him. One the one hand, creativity was his calling. On the other hand, any creative gesture that offered the possibility of success terrified him.” To speak nothing of the looming shadow of a father he never spoke of, to whom he was inevitably compared, as well as a sort of dogged perfectionism that plagued his studio sessions.

Spending hours, as he did, overdubbing the vocals until he had reached what he felt was the optimal delivery, Jeff seemed reluctant to pin any one mood onto his work. Andy Wallace, Grace’s producer, had to piece several of the songs together from dozens of takes. The music was in constant metamorphosis, to the point where later, live renditions of the songs sounded different, singular, wed to whatever Buckley had learned or felt or needed in between one performance and the next. He seemed to rewrite them each time. Grace is disparate, wavering between the almost cacophonous landscapes of “Mojo Pin”, “Grace”, “Last Goodbye”, and “Eternal Life”, the hushed, sacramental “Corpus Christi Carol”, and the desperate “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”. Buckley alternately whispers or wails, seems to laugh and growl, shreds remarkably. The music is a story as emotionally complex as its author — calling it simply brooding or romantic minimizes its scope. In reality it is confused, mystifying, indecisive.

The album, like the EP preceding it, sold in a slow trickle. Jeff’s songs rarely made it to the airwaves. Critics were either charmed by its triumph or turned off by what, altogether, seemed to be a confusing melange of emotions and genres. The French loved it, though, and in 1995 awarded Jeff with the Grand Prix International du Disque, an honor he shared with the likes of Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. David Bowie claimed that Grace was the one album he’d want with him on a desert island. Meanwhile, Jeff silenced restless crowds in concert halls across the globe with a few strums of his guitar, with a Buddhist-like opening chant called “Chocolate” that hushed chatter until you could hear a pin drop. Only then would he break into “Mojo Pin”. Putting Buckley’s cover of the Cohen song in a separate category — as I undoubtedly must — “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” is Grace’s masterpiece. Jeff introduced it first at Sin-é when he signed with Columbia, luring listeners who had previously doubted his ability to produce a decent song of his own. Back then it was just Jeff and his guitar, sans the divine harmonium intro, the swelling gospel choir, absolutely pure. Lyrically, it’s as seductive as it is sad — as Jeff escalates to “It’s never over/my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder,” a tingle begins deep down. It’s as much the power of his voice as the power of his poetry. He chokes it out, like an old love letter he’s been forced to read aloud.

I will say this about “Hallelujah” — everything blooms from the single, conquered breath that opens it. Buckley is remembered for these quieter contributions, and appropriately so; in a way they serve as auto-epitaphs. An incredible mimic, he nails Nina’s voice during brief moments in “Lilac Wine” and rivals any choir boy with Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol”, which had been introduced to him by a friend in high school. But it’s palpable anger that colors the rest of Grace, anger that Jeff would take with him on tour and into the beginnings of his second album, My Sweetheart, The Drunk. He butted heads with the bigwigs at Columbia when he refused to make a music video. He alienated friends, his photographer Merri Cyr, and some of his strongest supporters with careless words. Seamlessly integrated into his public image were frequent moments of conflict, uncertainty, and stubbornness, most of them related to his burgeoning fame, and almost always triggered by casual comparisons with the late Tim Buckley. When People Magazine nominated Jeff as one of their “50 Most Beautiful People” in 1995, something snapped. He dyed his hair black and stopped washing it. He wallowed, thin, in giant thrift-store plaid shirts and Doc Martens. On stage, Grace changed: “Buckley and the band were now playing harder, faster, and louder than ever before, transforming slow-burning epics — ‘Last Goodbye’, ‘So Real’, ‘Eternal Life’ and the title track — into rock and roll firestorms that bordered on the metallic. ‘Mojo Pin’ circa 1996 was almost unrecognizable: Buckley screamed so hard as the song built to its thunderous climax that you feared he’d cough up a vocal cord,” wrote Jeff Apter, one of Buckley’s biographers.

Touring took its toll on Jeff; he needed peace and quiet to work things out, to create, but the frenzy of the road worked up a hysteria in him. Once, in Ireland, he disappeared for a few hours in the afternoon and walked around singing and playing guitar in the pouring rain, skipping interviews and a sound check. Another time he arrived so drunk on stage he broke into a rendition of one of his father’s songs. Yet another time, wasted, he fell asleep underneath a table at a show in Manhattan. Another musician would have been thinking of giving the public a second album to chew on; Jeff was just trying to stay alive. Returning to New York in 1996 after two years on the road, he found the Village, which had once afforded him the comfortable hum of cappuccino machines, the safety of coffee shop anonymity, completely transformed. Sin-é had closed its doors. What few shows he did play, he had to advertise under pseudonyms. He needed a quiet spot, a shrine. So, in early ‘97, he went to Memphis. During the last few months of his life, Jeff Buckley lived in a shotgun house which he rented for a paltry $450 a month. He owned little more than a couch, a telephone, and a telephone book. What time he did not spend cycling back and forth from a Vietnamese restaurant he spent lying in the grass in his backyard, or at the butterfly exhibit at the Memphis Zoo. He played at a beer joint called Barrister’s, quietly. He recorded sketches of new songs on Michael Bolton cassettes that he’d picked up for pennies and sent them to his band in New York. My Sweetheart, The Drunk tremulously came together. On May 29th, the band flew into Memphis to begin recording. That night, Jeff sang Led Zeppelin as he waded into the river.

#jeff buckley #mystifying caucasian male #kara vanderbijl

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houseofvans · 7 years

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Sketchy Behavior | Hellen Jo

Never afraid to speak and/or draw her mind, Los Angeles based artist and illustrator, Hellen Jo and her characters can be described as rough, vulgar, tough, jaded, powerful, bratty and bad-ass - AKA her own brand of femininity. Known for her comic Jin & Jam, and her work as an illustrator and storyboard artist for shows such as Steven Universe and Regular Show, Hellen’s rebellious, and sometimes grotesque artwork and illustrations are redefining Asian American women and women of color in comics. In fact, that’s why Hellen Jo was a must-interviewee for our latest Sketchy Behavior where we talk to her about her love of comics and zines, her antiheroines, and redefining what Asian American women identity is or can be; and what her ultimate dream project realized would be.

Tell folks a little about yourself. So is it Helllen with three “l”’s? Mainly because your IG handle and website has a whole lot of extra “l”’s?

Haha my actual name is Hellen with two L’s. All my emails and urls contain a different number of L’s to confuse everyone. My grandfather took my American name from the Catholic saint, but he spelled it wrong, and now I share the same name as the mythological progenitor of the Greek people. But I like it better than my Korean name, which literally means, “graceful water lily” HAHAHA. I am an illustrator-slash-painter-slash-I-don’t-know-what living and working in Los Angeles.

Let’s talk about your early childhood / background. I read you’re from San Jose, CA and both your folks were professors, which is really cool!! How did you end up making art instead of teaching a room full of students about Hotel Management or Medieval History? Just curious where you got your “creative bug” and what early comics, arts, and/or influences led you down the road to becoming an artist?

I grew up in South San Jose, and yes, both of my parents are professors, of finance and of applied linguistics. A lot of my extended family are professors too, so I grew up parroting their desire for academia, but really, I started drawing when I was a wee babe, and I’ve always wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was really young, my parents drew for fun, really rarely; my dad could draw the shit out of fish and dogs, and my mom painted these really beautiful watercolor still lifes. I was fascinated, and I’d spend all my time drawing on stacks and stacks of dot matrix paper by myself. My parents also had a few art books around the house, and I remember staring so hard at a book of Modigliani nudes that my eyes burned holes through the pages.

What was the first comics you came across?

The first comics I ever got were translated mangas that were given to me by relatives when we’d visit Korea. I remember getting Candy Candy, a flowery glittery shojo manga for girls, and I was mesmerized by all the sparkly romance and starry huge eyes. I was also enthralled by Ranma ½, a gender bending teen manga that was equal parts cute art, cuss words, and shit too sexy for a kid my age. However, I was mostly thrilled that I could understand the stories with really minimal Korean reading skills, thus cementing a forever love of comics. In junior high and high school, I read a mix of newspaper strips and some limited manga, and I was enthralled with MTV cartoons “Daria” and “Aeon Flux”, but I wasn’t exposed to zines or graphic novels until I moved to Berkeley for college.

Did you have a first comic shop you haunted? What did you fill your comic art hunger with?

Being a super sheltered teen with not-great social skills, I was lonely my first semester, so I would lurk at Cody’s Books and Comic Relief every single day after classes. I read the entirety of Xaime Hernandez’s Love & Rockets volume, The Death of Speedy one afternoon at Cody’s, and it literally made me high; I was so hooked. I amassed some massive credit card debt buying and reading as many amazing comics as I could those first (and only) couple years of school: all of Los Bros Hernandez’s Love & Rockets, Dan Clowes’ Eightball, Julie Doucet’s Dirty Plotte comics, Peter Bagge’s Hate series, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Charles Burns’ Black Hole, Taiyo Matsumoto’s Black and White, Junji Ito’s Tomie and Uzumaki volumes… I could not believe the scope and breadth of the alternative comics genre, and the stories were so insanely good; they literally mesmerized me. I was so obsessed; I even skulked around the tiny comics section at UC Berkeley’s Moffitt Library in search of books I hadn’t read, and amid the fifty volumes of Doonesbury strips, some sick university librarian had included an early English translation of the Suehiro Maruo collection, Ultra Gash Inferno. That book blew my tiny mind about a hundred times; it’s totally fucked up erotic-grotesque horror porn, but the art is unbelievably beautiful. I read that entire thing sitting on the floor in the aisle, feverishly praying to God to forgive my sins after I finished the book, because I was way too ashamed to check it out of the library.

How about zines? I imagine a comic devouring ….

I devoured zines at a nearly equally fervent pace, including those by Aaron Cometbus, Al Burian (Burn Collector), Doris, John Pham, Jason Shiga, Lark Pien, Mimi Thi Nguyen, etc. I had never seen a zine before in my life, and suddenly, I was living in a town full of zinesters. I was drowning in inspiration. I tried to copy the art and writing of everything I read, and I spent a lot of my time making band flyers, trying to pass off zines as suitable replacements for term papers (this worked just once), and making monthly auto-bio comics for a few student publications. Eventually, I dropped out of school, then dropped out of school again, and I made my first published comic, Jin & Jam; then it all became real.

What was your early works like? and how did these become fodder for your self-published stuff later? What about your own experiences did you feel needed to be expressed in your own comics and artwork?

As a kid I was mostly copying sparkly girl manga and Sailor Moon stickers, and I don’t think I’ve really strayed all that far from that. My first few zines were cutesy autobiographical comics about crushes and falling asleep at the library; incredibly dull stuff. I made a super fun split comic/ep with this band I loved, The Clarendon Hills, but after that point, I was tired of drawing cute, goofy shit.

I had also really been obsessed with Korean ghost horror movies in high school, and I wanted to make comics that reflected more of that kind of coming-of-age violence and rage, so I made a couple standalone horror comics, Paralysis and Blister. These were longer than anything I’d ever done (forty to fifty pages each), and I felt like I was finally figuring out how to write interesting stories. I eventually dropped out of school and made Jin & Jam, based a bit on growing up in San Jose and on other kids I had grown up with.

At the time, there were still relatively few Asian American women in comics, and I was tired of whatever hyper-cute, yellow-fever, Japanified shit we were being pigeon-holed into, so I reacted by writing and drawing vulgar girls who started fights and didn’t give a fuck. I went to art school for a few semesters, got better at drawing people, and went on to draw nothing but mean bad girl ne'erdowells. I’d never been a very strong or defiant personality outwardly, but I’ve always been a pretty big fuckin bitch on the inside, and I just wanted to draw how I feel, in the most sincere way possible. And naturally, over the years, as I continued to develop this attitude in my art, I was able to express it better in person as well. Self-actualization through making comics!

For folks who don’t read comics, can you explain why they are SO AMAZING and moving to you! What about the format, art and overall genre makes them so great and not just your typical “funnies.”

I truly believe that comics are the greatest narrative format and art medium of all time! They are completely full of potential; you can draw and write whatever the hell you can think of, there are no real rules, and you as author and artist can create a deep and intimate experience for your reader. You can bare your vulnerabilities or yell at the world or create a visual masterpiece or inform people, visually and narratively. I don’t even believe that good art makes good comics; writing is king, and the art should really serve to further the story. Some of the worst comics I’ve ever seen had the most amazing art, and some of the greatest comics I’ve loved have the plainest, most naive, even ugly visuals, but those authors were able to finesse a symbiotic relationship between the text and the images to tell a compelling story. People are already so drawn to images, so it makes sense to me that they can enhance a reader’s literary experience so much.

I read that Taiyo Matsumoto is one of your all time inspirations. Most folks probably don’t know much about this master of comics, heck my knowledge is limited, so what makes his work speak to you so much? Perhaps it’ll encourage folks to venture into a new world of art exploration through visual comics.

Taiyo Matsumoto is the all time master of coming-of-age comics. I worship at his altar, for real. He is a Japanese artist, so technically his work is manga, but his masterful storytelling and singular visuals are so different from most manga, beyond categorization. He writes quiet, powerful stories about boys, girls, and teens who live in uncaring worlds surrounded by unfeeling adults, but they rise to these challenges and thrive in spite of themselves. The characters feel deeply, and the reader can’t help but ache and rage and celebrate just as fully. The drawings are beautiful and sensitive, with rough, loose artwork consisting of scratchy lines and cinematically composed shots.

What were some of your first memories with his work?

I remember buying the first two Pulp volumes of Black and White (also published as Tekkonkinkreet) at Comic Relief, reading them both at home that day, and then, covered in tears, literally *running* back that evening to buy the last volume before the store closed. I probably cried a dozen times while reading it; it’s a story about two orphan boys who protect each other in a neo-Vegas-like city of vice, but the characters were so brutal and brilliant and poignant. I had never read anything like that before, and it literally made me sick that, at the time, none of his other works were available in English. Eventually, I figured out that he was more widely published in Korea, so on every family trip, I’d run away from my folks for a day and buy as many of his books as I could carry back to the US. I made my way, slowly, through the Korean translations of Hana-otoko, Ping Pong (another incredible favorite!), and Zero. A beautiful collection of short stories, Blue Spring, was published in English, and then VIZ began translating the series No. 5, but they abruptly stopped mid-series due to low book sales. I was so starved for his work that at that point, I’d ebay his art books and comics only available in Japanese and just stare at them. Eventually, Black and White was made into the anime film, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ping Pong was made into an anime mini-series, and his rise in popularity ensured a wider English availability of his work. His current series, Sunny, is being translated and published here, and every volume breaks my heart a million times.

I’m sorry, this just turned into a gushy, gross fan fest, but Matsumoto’s books really changed my entire perspective on how comics can be written and paced, how characters can be developed fully, and how important comics really are to me. I love them so much!!!!!

You’ve worked in so many cool fields such as a storyboard artist and designer, and on various cartoons, such as Steven Universe. For folks who are interested in those fields, what can you tell folks about that? I’m sure like most artists, you’d rather be spending those long hours working on your own personal art, so how do you balance them? How did you move from a comic artist to working as a storyboarding artist?

I stopped working in animation about a year and a half ago, but the transition from indie comics to storyboarding was rough one, for me. I got into storyboarding at a time when a lot of kids’ animation networks were starting to hire outside the pool of animation school graduates and reach into the scummy ponds of comics. In my case, the creator of Regular Show, JG Quintel, had bought some of my comics at San Diego Comic-Con from my publisher, and he offered me a storyboard revisionist test.

Some cartoonists, like my partner Calvin Wong, were able to transition wonderfully; cartoonists and board artists are both visual storytellers, and once they’d learn the ropes, many of them thrived and succeeded. I can’t say the same for myself; I have major time management issues, I draw and write incredibly slowly, and going from working completely alone to pitching and revising stories with directors and showrunners was just a real shock to my system. For most of my time at Cartoon Network and FOX ADHD, I wasn’t able to do much personal work, but I crammed it in where I could.

Storyboarding also requires a lot of late nights and crazy work hours, to meet pitch deadlines and to rewrite and redraw large portions of your board. I just couldn’t deal. I lost a lot of weight, more of my hair fell out, and the extreme stress of the job put my undiagnosed diabetes into overdrive (stress makes your liver pump out sugar like crazy, look it up, people!) I realized that this industry was not meant for lard lads like me, and when the opportunity came to stop, I did. I could never figure out the balance between my job and my personal work, and I finally chose the latter. Now I’m trying to figure out the balance between making personal work and surviving, but I’ve yet to crack that nut either!

From your art I get a sense of rebellion and angst, how did this morph into an outlet through comics, cartoons, and illustration? Some aspects of your work that are so cool is the fact that your characters are female and women of color and in a completely new way. Asian characters definitely get stereotype in art and comics, so when did you consciously start to create these awesome antiheroines and redefine what Asian/Asian American women/girl identity is or can be?

A lot of the seething rage bubbling behind my eyes has been simmering there since childhood, and a very large portion of that anger comes directly from all the racism and sexism I’ve experienced as a child and adult. I’ve been treated patronizingly by boys and men who expect an Asian girl to be frail, demure, receptive, and soft-spoken. I’ve experienced yellow fever from dudes who are clearly more interested in my slanted eyes and sideways cunt than in whatever it is I have to say. Even in comics and illustration, people constantly tell me I must be influenced by Japanese woodblock print (pray tell, where in the holy fuck does that come from???), or they’ll look at a painting I’ve done of a girl bleeding from her mouth and dismiss my work as “cute”. I despise this complete lack of respect, for me and for Asian American women in general, and I’ve made it my life mission to depict my girls as I would prefer to be seen: fucking angry, violent, mean, dirty and gross, unapproachable, tough, jaded, ugly, powerful, and completely apathetic to you and your shit. Any rebellion and angst in my work comes directly from my own anger, and in my opinion, it makes that shit way better. Girls and women of color get so little respect in real life, so why not “be the change I want to see” in my drawings?

I think I was always aware of this lack of respect, and the “othering” of Asian American women, but once I got to college and learned to put a name to the racism and xenophobia and sexism and fetishism that we experience, my heart burst into angry flames, and it exploded into all of my art. I’ve never been able to hold that back, and I’m not interested in doing so, ever.

Talk about your process and mediums and process. Are you a night owl or an early bird artist? Do you have stacks of in-progress works or are you a one and down drawing person? Do you jot down notes or are you a sketch book person.

I am a paper and pencil artist all the way; I do work digitally sometimes, to make gifs or to storyboard, but I hate drawing and coloring on the computer. I’m terrible at it! I draw everything in pencil first, erasing a hundred thousand times along the way toward a good drawing. For my paintings, I’ll then ink with brush pen and paint with watercolor, all on coldpress Arches. For comics, I ink with whatever, brush pen or fountain pen, or leave the pencil, usually on bristol board. I’ve also been keeping sketchbooks more recently (never really maintained the habit before), where I like to doodle fountain pen and color with Copic markers. In sketchbooks, I’ll slap post-its on mistakes, a trick I learned from paper storyboarding on Regular Show.

I am a total night owl and a hermit; I have to be really isolated to get anything done, but at the same time, being so alone makes me crave social interaction in quick, fiery bursts. I’ll go on social rampages for a week at a time, and then jump back into my hidey hole and stay hidden for months, avoiding everyone. It’s not a very productive or healthy way to be, but it’s how I’ve always been.

I have great difficulty trying to juggle multiple tasks; I tend to devote all my mental energy and focus into whatever I’m working on at the time, so I need to complete each piece before I can do anything else. It’s an incredibly inefficient, time-wasting way of making art, but it’s also the only way I can produce drawings that I am satisfied with.

If we were to bust into your workspace or studio, what would we find? and what would you not want us to find?

You’d find an unshowered me, drawing in my underwear, which coincidentally is also what I do not want you to find!

You’d also find a room half made into workspace (more below), and half taken over by boxes of t-shirts and sweatshirts (I do all my own mailorder fulfillment, like an idiot!) I also like to surround myself with junk I find inspiring, so the walls are covered in prints and originals by some of my favorite artists, a bookshelf along the back wall is filled with about a third of my favorite comics and books and zines, and every available non-work surface (including desk, wall shelves, and bulletin boards) are covered in vintage toys, dice, tchotchkes, bottles, lighters and folding knives, weird dolls and figurines, a variety of fake cigarettes (I have a collection…)

Work-space wise, I have two long desks placed along a wall; the left desk has my computer and Cintiq, as well as my ancient laptop. Underneath and to the side of this desk are my large-format Epson scanner, fancy-ass Epson giclee printer, and a Brother double-sided laser printer. The right desk has a cutting mat, an adjustable drawing surface, and a hundred million pens and half my supplies/crafts hoard. I have a giant guillotine paper cutter for zines underneath this desk. I’ve got two closets filled with button making supplies, additional supplies/crafts hoard, and all kinds of watercolor paper, bristol paper, and mailing envelopes are crammed into every shelf, alcove, gap. This room has five lamps because I need my eyes to burn when I’m working. Also, everything is covered in stickers because I am obsessed with stickers.

What is something you’d like to see happen more often if at all in the contemporary art world? How’s the LA art scene holding up? Whaddya think?

As an artist who adores comics, I have a deep affection for low-brow mediums getting high-art and high-literary respect. Not that a comic needs to be shown in a gallery to be a valid art form, but I am so excited that comics that used to be considered fringe or underground are gaining traction as important works of art and literature. I wish this upward trajectory would continue forever, until everyone understands the love I feel for comics, but who knows what the future holds: the New York Times just recently stopped publishing their Graphic Novel Best Seller lists, and I think it’s a damn shame.

The LA art scene is really interesting to me, because it embraces both hi and lo brow work so readily; fancy pants galleries that make catalogues and sell to art dealers have openings right alongside pop-art stores that sell zines and comics, and I enjoy having access to both. I will say that I think LA galleries are a bit oversaturated with art shows devoted to television and pop culture fan art; yeah, I get that you loooooooove that crazy 70s cult classic sci-fi series and you want to draw Mulder and Scully and Boba Fett in sexual repose for the rest of your life, but I’m more excited about seeing new and original work from everyone. I know you have something to say, and I want to see it.

Mostly, I’d obviously love to see more women of color making art and making comics; we’ve come a long way since I started making zines in 2002, and there are some incredible WOC cartoonists making amazing work right now, but we need more more MORE!

What would be your ultimate dream project? What is something you haven’t tried and would love to give it a go at? Dream collaborations?

My ultimate dream project is the Great American Graphic Novel, but I am so shit at finishing anything that I have not been able to even approach this terrifying prospect. But I figure I have until the day of my death to make something, so … one step at a time?

As far as something I’ve never tried, I’ve been recently interested in site-specific installation; I’ve always been a drawer for print, confined to the desk, and I’m in awe of cartoonists and illustrators who have transitioned to other forms of visual media, whether it be video, sculpture, performance, whatever. I know my personality tends toward repeating the same motions forever and ever, and I hope I can break out of that and make something really different and challenging for myself. I also secretly want to make music but I am the shittiest guitarist ever so maybe it’s better for the world that I don’t!

The dreamiest collaboration I can think of is to illustrate a skate deck for any sick-ass teen girl or woman skater. Seriously, if any board companies wanna make this happen, EMAIL ME

Give us your top 5 of your current favorite comic artists as well as your top 5 artists in general.

Top 5 Current Favorite Comic Artists:

1. Jonny Negron 2. Jillian Tamaki 3. Michael DeForge 4. Ines Estrada 5. Anna Haifisch

Top 5 Artists of All Time

1. Taiyo Matsumoto 2. Xaime Hernandez 3. David Shrigley 4. Julie Doucet 5. Daniel Clowes

What are your favorite style of VANS? And how would you describe your own personal style?

My favorite VANS are the all-black Authentic Lo Pros, although I have a soft spot for my first pair of Cara Beth Burnsides in high school (they were so ugly and I never skated, but I loved them).

My personal style can be described as aging colorblind tomboy who dresses herself in the dark; my favorite outfit is a black hoodie with black denim shorts and black socks and black sneakers.

What do you have planned for this 2017? New shows? New published works?

I’ve got two group shows with some of my favorite artists in the works; I’m so excited but I can’t share any details yet. I’ve also been writing a new comic, but don’t believe it til ya see it!

Best bit of advice and worse advice in regards to art?

Best Advice: Never be satisfied; always challenge yourself to make your art better than everything you’ve done previously.

Worst Advice: Make comics as a stepping stone towards getting a job in animation. When people do this, you can smell the stink of insincerity a mile away. Fuck you, comics are a beautiful medium, and every shitty asshole who does this, I hate your guts!

Follow Hellen Jo

Website: http://helllllen.org Shop: http://helllllen.bigcartel.com Instagram: @helllllenjjjjjo

Images courtesy of the artist

#vans #vans art #hellen jo #comic #cartoonist #indie #zine #sketchy thursdays #interview

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