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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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I love your art, it is very detailed in a neat way. Was wondering how you got started making it as a source of income? How did you get your first paid work, I'd love some advice on how to get started, if that's ok

Thank you. Of course it's okay, although I doubt I have enough work experience in art to really delve into this. I only went full freelance this year, and had been juggling art as a side hobby until then. If you're still interested in my somewhat narrow perspective, and are okay with my long-winded rambles, I'll give it a shot:

So to answer your question fully, I'll describe how I started and move into personal advice and learnings later on. As a disclaimer, I am a white cishet dude in my late twenties with a moderate cocktail of mental illnesses, but overall I can pass for a functioning adult so a lot I have to say may come laced with privilege I cannot fully identify.

So uhh I began drawing in around 2012? I think? Maybe halfway through 2011? And I mostly made fanart for things I enjoyed and tried to branch out in communities that felt nourishing to my style and interests (I caught a bug for alt posters and enjoyed mainstream movies so I spent a long time on posterspy early on). There were a handful of opportunities that came from there but I could only accept a couple because of primary workplace commitments. Still, it showed that networking in a focused community was definitely a good place to start; I myself have huge trouble committing to social networks and really staying socially active, but I knew it was an essential ingredient in succeeding so I tried to make myself be involved in challenges and art support trains etc. as much as I could.

In parallel to all that I also ran a few third party online stores (redbubble, teepublic) for disposable income and would sometimes, if rarely, hit around $100-150 a month from those sources combined. It is a sort of thing that requires helper accounts on other social media sites to promote it on, because the stores themselves have a huge volume of content that translates into low organic discoverability. Obviously it was never gonna be the way towards financial independence through art, and with community projects being few and far between, I opened private commissions in around uhhh 2017 I think, focusing on offering a few styles I knew I could do well, and sometimes operating in individual fandoms (it was mostly a bioware thing to be frank). But I had to close them back down after a year or so, again because of work-life conflict and how badly it was burning me out. The reason I kept trying to monetize this hobby is because I honestly hated what I did for my main job and wanted to see a way out in some shape or form in the future.

And then in 2020 I had to quit my main job altogether because of *gestures at pandemic* and deal with a mental breakdown from all the wonderful things it did to us and me specifically. I took a short break and decided to give art a shot full-time, and that was around May this year. I was planning on opening up commissions again (and I still am), but a few sudden opportunities that fell in my lap moved that timetable down and now I'm grateful to even be doing something I am getting adequately paid for.

So, with that somewhat limited perspective, here's what I've learned that I'd tell myself if I was just starting out:

1. Being a fan of something can be a shortcut towards effective networking kickoffs. Which are important evidently. If you love something and enjoy making content for it, join communities, settle into a combination of social media websites that feel right for those interests + your body of work + your inner rhythm, and try to play to content discovery as much as your mental health allows you to. Like I said, I know that I myself am incredibly bad at self-motivating to talk to people, so I found that synergizing common interests into fanart - which I enjoyed making anyway - could be a way to give myself a gentle nudge forward and build those bridges leading to community activities, which then net experience and coverage. Sometimes even freelance projects from official avenues. Again; picking the right spaces for what you're after is key. Companies roam twitter, concept art recruiters scour artstation or linkedin etc, instagram can land you private commissions and collab opportunities, so on and so forth. Find your niche and try to kick up dust. However...

2. I do not believe that any social profile can replace a good portfolio. The thing that made an immediate difference to me this year was building a coherent, simple website with my best work front and center and a contact form on top. Every single opportunity I got came from that form (maybe via twitter or instagram initially, but always sealing the decision after going through the website), so I firmly believe that showcasing your skills and portfolio in a visually arresting and user-friendly way is a big priority. I had some reservations about tackling that task but fortunately I had help from a savvy life partner and we slapped it together via wordpress in less than a day. Twitter/whatever social media is prevalent in your target groups is definitely important to get the right eyes on your shit, yes, but those eyes will then look for a second stop where your work and rates are more clear and concise. Simplicity is key imo, I cannot overstate this. So make a cute, simple portfolio!

3. Your skills and rates will grow and change as you do. Let them. Over the years I built several lasting professional relationships from my obsession over mass effect and kept getting opportunities both from bioware and their partner companies, some small and some a bit bigger. A one-off job earlier this year opened an unexpected door to another much larger commitment, and then the work I did there brought some attention from small businesses looking for commercial commissions. These were all incredibly different projects in terms of scope and budget, and I've been tackling them all on a case-by-case basis and slowly coming into my own irt my needs, rates, and SOW thresholds. It is still a work in progress (and a LOT of literal work as well), and very much a thing I struggle with in publicly marketing, which is why I felt a tad underqualified to answer your question in the first place (obviously I did not let that stop me). But what it means for me now is that I am rapidly developing into whatever my "version" of a functioning freelance artist is, and when the conditions for that guy are met, I need to be able to confidently plant myself and operate from that space despite past precedents. Do not let anyone bully you into downpricing what you yourself perceive as legitimate products of personal growth and development. Speaking of which...

4. The shitty challenge of turning envy into inspiration, and paddling outside your comfort zones in full riot gear. it is hard, but realizing that being a miserable, self-hating artist in my early days got me nothing but more misery back was the first real step I took and what truly blew the hinges off. I was just not pleasant to be around, I would badmouth my work all the time, and it all somehow made sense in my broken mind because the validation I sought was purely external and the way I sought it was through eliciting sympathy via self-victimization (even when I made something objectively nice). It all led fucking nowhere. Except perhaps to my own narcissism that I one day managed to identify and start managing. So I started looking at things that made me seethe with envy and calmly deconstruct and figure out their inner workings instead, do studies, and find nuggets of inspiration or discover new ways to approach rendering or building up specific elements. It was an application of analytical diligence to what I wanted to be a purely emotional, esoteric workflow, but that I deep down knew wasn't. Art is a discipline and a skill, and maybe it isn't a straight line, but you gotta find some line to thread nevertheless. Being self-hating was almost an identity I had to break out of, and despite it still being like, 4-5% there? I realize its cause and effect on me, my work, and those around me, so it is with a conscious choice that I gently set it aside when I work and especially when I learn. It won't always stay quiet, but the effort is the difference. Your doors towards accepting true growth and venturing into uncharted territories, art styles, and networking will really open from there. But there's a huge caveat...

5. Toolsets, accessibility, privilege, and all the good things that enable artistic expression and profitability are not given equal to all. you might do all the mental work I mentioned to be ready to rock and roll and learn and draw your way out of anything, but digital art is a fucking money pit that asks almost too much at times. I don't got a good case study here but identifying and ensuring accessibility to the tools you need to do your best work is, like, super important. The ergonomics can improve as you make money and settle into the job, but the basics have to be made available to you. And some of that might not even be under your direct control. That can be anything from pen tablets to software subscriptions to opportunities in hiring sullied by sexism or what have you. You gotta navigate all that through careful networking and money/time management. I don't do a good job of devoting specific slices of time to work/study, and my primary clutch is iPad software which went from a good deal to a nightmare scenario over the years. So all I can say here is do what I didn't; network, invest in a PC/tablet, and pick a software you'll learn that won't burn a hole in your pocket.

6. Be nice to work with? This one is hard to articulate and has landed my own ass in hot water in my early years because of how socially inept I am, but nothing is more worthwhile than being.. like. a good person to work with. That can be anything like meeting deadlines, or sometimes missing them but eloquently articulating why, being generous in early stages, being communicable and not too wordy in your emails, having a good grasp on abstract artistic concepts and how to describe them in simple terms, having a clear, laid out framework of your working rates in commercial and non-commercial projects and sticking to those guns with grace, understanding when you need to say no and saying it well, the works. Just being nice. Sometimes that might mean going headstrong with something you believe in, or simmering down and sucking up to the big man, all relative and adaptive. Part and parcel of the service provision dance that we all have to do in order to make bank. Know your lines here, obviously, and don't like. work for nazis. or uh.. *shudders* exposure. but be nice and empathetic and communicable and word will travel eventually. Skill may be in abundance these days, but good people are most certainly not, and capitalism has a way of bubbling up scarcity. Grim, but uh, them's the breaks.

I know I'm ultimately telling you to like. Have a body of work, make a portfolio, grow, and network. But that's really how I see it for now. And being nice can be a cherry on top that sets you apart, along with the inherent irreplaceable voice of your artwork. I think I rambled on enough, but if there is something specific you need my help with, even if you want to come off anon and talk in private, please feel free.

#anon #asks #long post #sorry I cant actually condense ideas better :(

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c4p3n · 3 years

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Control, Remedy

When I was about 80% of the way through Control, I turned on the option that allowed me to kill every enemy with a single bullet, and to never die. I am so glad I did.

The one sentence summary of mainstream reviews for Control is, roughly: "A beautiful game with an engrossing story, aesthetic, and characters...and the shooting is fine." I think that's true, but when you're playing a recent game where the shooting is just fine and everything else is so good, fine quickly turns to "in my way".

There is so much cool stuff to see and hear in Control. The Oldest House is a terrific maze of banal, mid-century modern offices that ooze with ominous otherworldly horrors. The premise of the Federal Bureau of Control leaves open the possibility of almost anything while building a believable explanation of why everything is so weird.

Then there is the combat. The idea of the Service Weapon is a cool one, but it isn't explored very deeply in the game. On the literal other hand, there are the telekinetic powers you get which let you grab stuff and throw it at people, use it as a shield and later on, fly. Throwing a huge chunk of concrete or a desk or another person at an enemy is satisfying every time. The sound is great and the devs were so smart to give you something to throw no matter what's around you. The main problem I have with the combat is twofold:

It draws me back into the menus too often for upgrades and mods that don't feel like big changes

As the game goes on, combat felt more and more like padding.

There isn't much to explain about the menus. I loved to pause and check the audio log or memo I had picked up to get another little piece of color about the world. I didn't like pausing to pick a different upgrade or try a different shooting style (pistol, submachine gun, sniper) in case it helped get me past an annoying enemy.

But when I say the combat feels like padding, I mean it is conspicuously getting in the way of the next cool area of The Oldest House or getting some more information. After about the halfway point, there aren’t even new types of enemies to fight.

And that’s fine, as long as you turn on One Shot God Mode. As cool as it feels to play a badass like Jesse Faden, it does not feel cool to get shot in the face by some guy who used to work on the HVAC. There’s a level called The Ashtray Maze that’s way too close to the end of the game. You know as soon as it starts that this is your special gamer treat. The developers give you a bunch of weaker enemies to crush. At this point in the game you would probably have no problem dispatching them but why chance it? One Shot God Mode baby.

If all that wasn’t enough reason to trivialize the shooting, here comes the "boss" fight to make my point for me. It’s more or less a gray box level where you do a short horde mode of all the enemies you’ve faced so far in the game. There’s no big bad that fights differently than any other enemy in the game. It’s just more of the same in a featureless level.

So why am I justifying this decision so much? I bought the game, I can play however I like. Well, there was still that nagging voice in the back of my head saying "You're not playing the real game. You're cheating." That's an old voice, from a younger me and a different time in video games. A time when my friends and I would play shooters and try to either beat each other or not drag our team down. That doesn't happen anymore. When I rarely play games with my busy friends who have children, we are still playing shooters. We are still talking about other games. But no one is blaming me when I miss a headshot. No one is checking to see what difficulty level I beat a game on. So I was finally able to tell that voice: "Yes I am cheating, and it is so much fun."

#video games #review #Control #Remedy

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edh-a-to-z · 4 years

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Theros Beyond Death - Top 5 Blue Cards

Hi Folks, back at it again with my favorite five blue Theros Beyond Death cards. This list is highly subjective, and I’d love to hear your picks for your favorite blue cards of this set. Have any fun plays in Arena? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it!

5) Stern Dismissal

Grade: C-

Home: Spellslinger Decks

Range: Narrow

Finally, after all these years - a strictly better Unsummon! Since Unsummon is always at the verge of being played, and I think this pushes that type of card to playable. Blue has occasional problems with Enchantments, and the ability to deal with them, albeit temporarily, feels like a nice extra bit of functionality.

4) Thassa’s Intervention

Grade: C

Home: Blue Utility Cards

Range: Very Wide

Options are great, especially on Counterspells with “Cost Extra” which can end up dead in later turns. This insulates from that since the cost is pretty hefty, making it a spell I don’t mind playing at 4 or 5, which I hate doing for Counterspells. Digging for cards at instant speed and usually drawing the best two is a great fallback, especially at instant.

3) Thassa’s Oracle

Grade: B-

Home: Lab Man Deck

Range: Very Narrow

Alt Win-Cons can always be abused, and this can be redundancy for Lab Man decks. That alone gets a mention on the list.

Aside from that, the digging is rather tame.

2) Nadir Kraken

Grade: C+

Home: Kraken Tribal, Literally any Blue Deck, Draw-Go, Sac Fodder

Range: Narrow

Hello, annoying creature. Assuming you just keep paying, netting a decent sized kraken and an army of chump blockers is chief and efficient. Being able to do this at least once a round is nice. It’s also odd for other players to try to justify to themselves using single target removal on such a creature - it’s slow to become a threat, doesn’t have evasion, leave it for others to deal with.

1) Kiora Bests the Sea God

Grade: C+

Home: Steal Decks, Sacrifice Decks

Range: Narrow

Casting anything over 4 mana, especially when you get to 6+ CMC, always feels riskier thanks to the prevelence of counterspells in a multiplayer game. But sometimes, a card is so splashy you make an exception for it.

A hexproof 8/8 Kraken to start is great. That brings up all kinds of shenanigans for recursion and Flickering, like Sentinel of the Pearl Trident or Venser the Sojourner.

The hard tapdown effect and stealing effects as well? Just gravy. Sure, it targets a player (not scaling well to Multiplayer), but opening up one player to get ganked by the table is a great idea. A finale of stealing the best permanent on the board makes this a godly card in a battlecruiser game.

More so than White, Blue has some great cards at all rarities - here are a solid bunch I felt worth mentioning.

Honorable mentions -

Wavebreak Hippocamp, Stinging Lionfish, Naiad of Hidden Coves - A lot of decks like playing on other turns anyway, and Draw-Go can get some utility out of these. The fact that they’re all enchantment has some potential synergy with White tutoring or Constellation, but that’s just ambient synergy - I don’t see a build-around.

Sphinx Mindbreaker - Scales fairly into EDH, and flickering it like crazy is a good way to end a Mill game.

Serpent of Yawning Depths - For all your Kraken needs! Kraken and Co support is rather rare, and for a casual Whelming Wave style decks, this can do some work

#mtg #edh #edhatoz #commander #theros beyond death #theros #blue #Set Picks #new set picks

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eggoreviews · 5 years

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E3 2019 Nintendo Direct - BREAKDOWN

Oh wow. That big ol direct sure was something. So now I’m here to break down everything that happened in unnecessary fashion and give my personal reaction to everything that happened with my tried and true Excitement Rater. Want to see my heavily scientific and not at all arbitrary process? Then click down to see the deets.

Before we kick off my (very very scientific) breakdown of this year’s packed direct, I thought I’d briefly go over how I rate things:

A random string of letters/numbers = Immeasurable excitement

YEEHAW BABEY = Big excitement

Heck Yeck = Vague excitement

Yeah! = Not really excited, but still could be good

Sure, why not? = I’m more confused than excited but sure

Oh = The excitement isn’t there

Oh no = Used on the rare occasion I really don’t like what I’ve seen

The Hero from the Dragon Quest series in Smash!

After a brief montage of some games that already came out I guess, the direct jumps straight into an ominous shot of World of Light baddie Dharkon, followed by a seemingly hopeless fight between Link and one very possessed Marth. Then the Luminary turns up gloriously on his horse. With all the leaks that had been flying around for so long, I think pretty much everyone had accepted the presence of Dragon Quest at this point and I was totally stoked when this happened! I love Dragon Quest! And my boi from 11 is here, along with a few other DQ veterans as alt swaps and a pretty awesome looking stage overlooking what seems to be the land of Erdrea and the World Tree. Now to wait until summer and hope the Smash team have some sick ass remixes for us when the time comes!

Excitement Rating: YEEHAW BABEY

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

In a move that makes it a lil obvious that DQ’s Smash addition was more than a little commercially minded (not that I really care I’m still big hyped), a trailer for the expanded edition of the series’ latest installment follows. Seeming as I’ve already played this, I doubt I’ll be picking it up again but I still heartily recommend the game to any JRPG fan. Admittedly, the fact you apparently get to explore worlds from past games is pretty exciting.

ER: Heck Yeck

Luigi’s Mansion 3

In a way I thought was surprising, Nintendo’s first proper focus of Luigi’s Mansion 3 actually took up more time than Animal Crossing, but I guess that’s because it’s further along in development. We now know that the game is set within a haunted hotel and had some new gameplay features shown off, including the various ways Luigi can succ a ghost. Most exciting I think for me was the various multiplayer aspects, such as the local co-op option to play as Gooigi and the seemingly challenge and minigame-based ‘Scarescraper’ which I think incorporates online co-op too. Overall, this is looking to be a creative and well thought out entry in the series and I’m here for it.

ER: Heck Yeck

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance - Tactics

A licensed tie-in game for a thirty year old film feels a little odd, but I suppose stranger things have happened. This looks to be a sort of top-down tactical thingy involving the various characters from The Dark Crystal and for some reason Netflix is involved, I don’t know, but I guess it could be interesting.

ER: Sure, why not?

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

The adorable remake of this classic Game Boy title seems to be coming along great and this direct’s extended trailer gave us a good look at what we’ll be exploring come September 20th. The overhaul Koholint Island has had is phenomenal, giving us designs for Link and various other characters that we’ve never seen before and that makes this remake look especially unique. Another very exciting aspect for me was the dungeon builder that looks like great fun! You collect different dungeon parts as you go and then you can build and explore your own! Am I a goblin child or does that sound like the best thing ever?

ER: YEEHAW BABEY!!

Trials of Mana / Collection of Mana

I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with the Mana series, but from what I was shown in this direct, it looks to be a fairly standard JRPG. That’s definitely not a bad thing, as most JRPGs are amazing, but nothing in this trailer really stood out and came into its own. That being said, the gameplay and graphics look pretty solid and I’m sure the Mana fans have been fairly starved for content for a while so that’s something to look forward to. On top of this remake/new game with the same title as an older game (I really don’t know), the Collection of Mana containing the series’ first three games is being released real soon on the eShop.

ER: Yeah!

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

Following a few scattered rumours, we finally have confirmation that a Witcher 3 port is in fact in the works, coming packed with all the game’s DLC. This basically legendary RPG is not one I personally had a great experience with, but I’m sure a lot of people are gonna be happy to play this in handheld. I’d keep expectations tempered however, with the likes of Assassin’s Creed 3 and Saints Row the Third proving that these ports don’t always function brilliantly on this platform.

ER: Yeah!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Yet another and probably our last Fire Emblem trailer was shown in this direct, giving us a better look at how the story might play out and what our villains are going to be. With most of the gameplay features explored in the previous February direct, it’s good to have a slightly better idea as to what’s actually going on in terms of story and, to me, the results seem pretty damn good. Definitely one to keep an eye on!

ER: Heck Yeck

Resident Evil

In a slightly unnecessarily convoluted advert, we were given a two minute reel of two teenagers playing the original RE in tabletop mode in an abandoned house (??), along with the kind of less than exciting announcement that we’re getting the two weakest entries in the series for Switch, RE 5 and 6. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt a little passive about this whole thing. That being said, definitely not complaining about 1 & 4 being ported over.

ER: Oh

No More Heroes III

After the very slightly disappointing Travis Strikes Again, I really wasn’t expecting them to drop a trailer for the series’ third mainline installment so soon after. What we’ve seen looks pretty much like classic Travis, with a smidge of gameplay seen that looks just a bit more like what we’re used to. Of course, with this being the first reveal, there’s still a lot to find out but this looks very promising.

ER: Heck Yeck

Contra: Rogue Corps / Contra: Anniversary Collection

I’m not gonna pretend to be familiar with the Contra series, but this doesn’t at all look like what I’ve seen in the past. Honestly, this seemingly tactical shooter didn’t elicit much excitement from me and neither did its rushed character drops or its oddly rough textures. I’m unsure of actual fan reactions to this, but in my mind this one kind of sits in the ‘guess this exists’ category. As well as this, we got a shadowdrop for the Contra Anniversary Collection, whereas Rogue Corps comes on September 24th.

ER: Oh

Daemon X Machina

In what seems to be almost a mainstay in Nintendo directs, we’ve got another vague trailer for this mech shooter that finally has a confirmed release date of September 13th. The gameplay looks harmless enough, with the mechs seeming to be a blast to pilot, but beyond that, I can’t really see a lot of substance that would draw me in beyond the cool robots. I’m sure it could be good, but not really one for me.

ER: Yeah!

Panzer Dragoon

I was completely unsure of what this one was, but it looks a bit like a cross between The Last Guardian and those bullet hell sections from Kingdom Hearts 2. They’ve certainly nailed the smooth graphics and the cool looking creatures, but this one is mostly a case of needing to know more.

ER: Yeah!

Pokemon Sword & Shield

This one’s obviously a title so monumental that it consistently needs its own directs, but there wasn’t any *real* news about it in this direct. We were given a brief explanation as to how the Pokeball Plus works in conjunction with the games (something to do with taking your Pokemon for a walk) and the fact that we’ll see more gameplay during Nintendo’s Treehouse streams. Still, excitement remains pretty high for these titles.

ER: Heck Yeck!

Astral Chain

This game, to put it bluntly, looks awesome. The newest Platinum Games IP seems to be set in Blade Runneresque futuristic city with an alien threat and some cool ass looking fighting police people. Our second proper look at this game has cleared up a few murky doubts as to what exactly is supposed to be happening, so now we’ve got a much better idea of what this game is going to be. The story seems pretty full and polished, the gameplay looks like brilliant fun and I’m definitely not mad at the cool monster designs. This is one I’m definitely watching.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!

Empire of Sin

I know very little about what this game is supposed to be, but it looks to be a 40s gangster XCOM, substituting alien fighting marines with gun toting mafia dudes. The trailer went for style over substance, giving us an edgy visual thing of some burning playing cards and broken bottles, but the little gameplay we saw looked decent enough and may just end up injecting more variety into this genre.

ER: Yeah!

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

An obvious pick for any Marvel fan, this hack-and-slash is jam packed with various heroes and villains from the comic series’ rich history. Ghost Rider and Elektra were among those revealed to be playable, while the likes of Mysterio, Hela, the Destroyer, Doctor Octopus, Surtur and MODOK are seemingly part of growing cast of villains. Looks like a good bit of fun if nothing else, though the immediate presence of a season pass is a tiny red flag.

ER: Yeah!

Cadence of Hyrule

In an unexpected but greatly welcomed crossover between Nintendo’s RPG titan Zelda series and the indie developed Crypt of the Necrodancer, a new rhythm based dungeon crawler with some brand new Zelda remixes and the presence of Link and Zelda as playable characters. This game’s retro graphics look totally adorable and the addition of the Gohmaracas were a definite highlight.

ER: Heck Yeck!!!!!

Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Tell you what, this definitely looks like a Mario and Sonic Olympic Games game. There looks to be a decent amount of variety in terms of what sports are involved and with its online multiplayer, there’s no shortage of vaguely cartoon sportyness to be had with friends both real and virtual. I’d be lying if I said I was totally disinterested because it does look a bit fun, but we all know it won’t be anything groundbreaking.

ER: Yeah!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

In a fairly drastic formula change, Nintendo have decided to strand us on a desert island rather than move us innocently to another village, but Tom Nook is still here and oh yes he’s coming to collect his bells. From this surprisingly brief trailer, most of Animal Crossing’s core gameplay seems to be intact, with the return of craftable items from Pocket Camp, and the sudden bombshell that the game has been pushed back to March next year. Never going to be a bad thing if the finished product is all the better for it, but I guess that just means more info is to come!

ER: Heck Yeck

Highlight Reel

In what looks like a list of honourable mentions, Nintendo gave us a laundry list of other titles coming to the system:

Spyro Reignited Trilogy is joining Crash on the Switch with his acclaimed remaster trilogy.

Hollow Knight: Silksong, the prequel to the original game, looks just as charmingly dark as its predecessor.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is showing up I guess, but I’ll come out and say I know nothing about it except that it looks cute.

Minecraft Dungeons looks better than it has any right to be and looks a bit like blocky Diablo I guess

The Elder Scrolls: Blades sure exists and I’m unsure of what it’s trying to be, but whatever quells off the need for Elder Scrolls 6 I guess.

My Friend Pedro, another strangely unique title from Devolver Digital, looks like it somehow incorporates banana peels into its combat system.

Doom Eternal looks like Doom always does, but a distinct lack of gameplay may put its dual release with the other consoles into question.

The Sinking City with its Lovecraftian inspiration looks totally brilliant and looks to be a unique experience for sure, so eyes firmly open for this one

Wolfenstein Youngblood definitely looks all Wolfenstein-y, but rumours of Dishonored-like sandbox levels has definitely piqued my interest.

Dead by Daylight still looks unfortunately a bit eh, with its slightly not great graphical quality from what we’ve seen in the trailers.

Alien Isolation was an extremely odd one, but I’m not gonna say no to more good horror content on the console.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles seems to be continually delayed, but they’ll probably get round to it eventually.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 looks adorable and I’m very into the idea of Dragon Quest Minecraft, so sign me up.

Stranger Things 3: The Game looks a little more SNES-like in terms of graphics than its 8 Bit mobile predecessor, which is definitely a decent step. An obvious pick for fellow fans of the show.

Just Dance 2020 is definitely a Just Dance game. Yep, sure is. I even checked. And it is.

Catan is a tabletop game of sorts, but I really couldn’t figure out what kind from that few seconds of vague footage.

New Super Lucky’s Tale looks like Bubsy, but actually good and worth real money

Dauntless looks like a bit of a Monster Hunter clone, but you know, doesn’t look terrible.

And lastly, Super Mario Maker 2 was tacked on the end there to remind us all that Nintendo is taking our money in 2 weeks.

Banjo-Kazooie become Smash Ultimate’s 3rd DLC Fighter

Just when we all petering out a little and the hype seemed all but dormant, they go and drop this on us out of nowhere. While I personally don’t have an attachment to the bear and bird, I’m fully aware of their significance and how much they mean to a lot of people out there. And that excitement ended up being contagious, so this fact coupled with a pitch perfect reveal trailer has got me hugely hyped to see these guys join the fight come autumn.

ER: YEEHAW BABEY

Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

And now, dear reader, for the reveal that removed my scalp and cut out my eyeballs. At first, I was totally confused as to what this could be. And then I recognised the symbols, and then my perfect lil Hyrule eggs come on the screen and it’s all spooky and there’s dead Ganondorf and I don’t clock the fact that I’ve just screamed out loud. A direct sequel to my absolute favourite game of all time is happening and it’s real and I get to live another adventure in the best game world ever crafted all over again. I think it’s safe to say I have transcended the definition of hype when it comes to this one.

ER: AAA!!! AA!!! GFFGF!!! THIS!!! ZELDA!!!! HGGGG!!!!

So there’s my probably a little stupid breakdown of everything Nintendo bestowed upon us this E3. Guess I’ll jump in after the next direct to give you yet another heavily scientific analysis of its events. Or I’ll babble at you until I start punching the keyboard. Either way, happy trails my dudes. Don’t let the hype bugs bite.

#e3 #e3 2019 #zelda #loz #the legend of zelda #mario #smash #super smash bros #super smash ultimate #astral chain #fire emblem #animal crossing #pokemon #Luigi's Mansion #dragon quest #final fantasy #nintendo #marvel #resident evil

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surveyjunkie · 6 years

Text

Your Autobiography.

Little kiddies. (Grades 1-5) What color hair did you have? Very dark brown, almost black.

Did you wear glasses or have contacts? Yep, got glasses in the 3rd grade

Did you have braces? Nope

Did you go to pre-school or go straight to kindergarten? I went to pre-school for two years before kindergarten.

Out of grades 1-5, which one was the best for you? 2nd, for sure. I was at a 4-H school that year and everything was just better there - the kids, the curriculum, the teachers, the playground. Then I got moved to a hardcore, college preparatory school and everything went downhill.

Did you have a lot of friends, or just a couple? I had lots in 2nd grade, but when we moved to the city in 3rd grade I barely had any. I had maybe 1 or 2.

What were your favorite shows? Spongebob, Sailor Moon, Powerpuff Girls, Ed Edd & Eddy, Dexter’s Lab, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Lizzie McGuire, That’s So Raven, The Amanda Show, the list goes on and on....

What were your favorite movies? The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Life Sized (I was kind of obsessed with Lindsey Lohan, if you couldn’t tell)

Did you read Goosebumps? Rarely. If anything I read “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” more, which now that I’m adult I realize HOW FUCKED UP IT IS THAT THAT IS A CHILDREN’S BOOK.

What was your favorite thing to do on weekends? Watch cartoons, play online computer games (like Neopets - woo!), draw, write stories, and have sleepovers. Damn, I miss being a kid.

Pre-Teens. (Grades 6-9) What color hair did you have? Dark brown, still

What color hair did you want? I wanted blonde highlights at the time.

Was your Middle School a seperate school from Junior High? No, they were considered the same thing where I went. Grades 6-8 was all Middle School.

Did you have a lot of boyfriends/girlfriends? I had one “boyfriend” in 7th grade.

Did you still watch Disney movies? Duhh. I STILL watch Disney movies and I’m 25, so.

What kind of music did you listen to? A mix of everything. I definitely went through phases though. 6th grade was hard/alt rock because I was trying to be a goth for some reason, 7th grade I became preppy and started listening to hip hop and pop, and then 8th grade is when I discovered “emo” music and got heavily obsessed with that, but still listened to pop and hip hop.

What were some of your interests? AIM, Xanga, music videos (loved Fuse), the show Degrassi, Abercrombie, Starbucks frappuccinos, Etnies skater shoes, boys, MySpace

What was your favorite animal? Dolphin

What was your favorite color? Blue, then changed to pink, then changed to black

Did you draw? That was actually when I started losing interest in drawing. << Same

What was your favorite subject? I’d have to say social studies.

Did you have any piercings? No.

Did you wear make-up to school? Just lipgloss in the 7th grade and eyeliner in the 8th grade.

What kinds of clothes did you wear? Anything from Abercrombie or Hollister. Then in 8th grade all I wore was hoodies, jeans, and converse or skater shoes. Lol.

What did you do on the weekends? Hang out at friend’s houses, go to the mall or the movies

Smells Like… Teeeenagerrrrs. (Grades 10-12) Did you like your high school? Meh.

Was it as bad as they were on TV? Nooo, not that bad. It was just, meh.

What color hair did you have? Freshmen year was 9th grade for us, and I had red streaks in my bangs because I thought I was edgy.

Did you have any piercings? Just earrings.

…How about tattoos? Nope.

What age did you learn to drive? 16

When did you get your license? 17

What was your first car? '99 Chrysler 300

What was your style? It varied. I went through an emo phase in 9th grade and that’s how I dressed, but I got over it and started dressing like a bum basically. Yoga pants, sweatshirts, and uggs err’day.

Did you have a lot of friends or just a few? I had a pretty decently sized group of friends.

What did you do on weekends? Football/basketball games, homecomings, hang out at friend’s houses, go shopping or to the movies, go to the park and mess around, go to “parties”.

Did you have a lot of boyfriends/girlfriends or did you have one or two? I had one towards the end of junior year through my senior year, but we were never official. I don’t even know what we were.

What were some of your favorite bands? The Spill Canvas, My Chemical Romance, From First to Last (freshmen year), Taking Back Sunday, The Academy Is...

What college were you considering? Ball State. Of course I ended up staying local.

Did you get along with teachers, etc? For the most part. There were a few difficult ones.

Young Adults. (College years) What did you look like? I was SKINNYYYY when I graduated high school. I also had dyed my hair black, and had dark skin from tanning all the time. I also actually cared about my appearance back then and would constantly straighten my hair, do my make up, and pick out outfits.

When did you first move out of your parents’ house? Right when college started since I chose to stay in the dorms.

What college did you end up going to? UC.

What kind of music did you like? Don’t judge me, but I was really into Kesha, 3OH!3, and Katy Perry at that point. And DRAKE. I was obsessed with Drake. My music taste was kind of trash in college, but it went along with my lifestyle :)

Did you like college? I loved it, up until junior year. Then it felt more like a prison.

How long were you there? (2 years, 4 years, mooore) Five years. I had to re-do my junior year because I became severely clinically depressed.

Careers. (Any time of your life) What was your first job? My first job ever was a cashier at Stein Mart, but my first “big girl job” was here at the hospital.

Did you like it? I really enjoyed it when I first started, but it started to wear on me after a while. The customers were all older, rich women and constantly had a bug up their butt. And some of the managers were awful.

Are you still there? Noo, I left that place after maybe 6 months.

What do you do now? I’m a research coordinator.

Do you like it? For the most part. I do a lot of different things at my job which is nice because it doesn’t ever get boring and I work flexible hours, but it can also be a bit unpredictable and unstructured which I don’t like. I also don’t get paid super well, so there’s that.

What do you want to do? I want to get MS in business psychology and do something in that field.

Odds and ends. Were you a loud baby or a quiet one? I was loud when I wasn’t being held or paid attention to. My mom said I was fine in public though.

Did you collect anything growing up? Movie tickets and Chinese fortunes.

Do you still have anything from it? I kept a bunch of them in a memorabilia box.

What was your first IM screen name? liltashie92. DONT. JUDGE.

When did you first hear about Myspace? When I was in 7th grade.

Did you have a VF? (VampireFreaks.) Nope.

Do you party a lot? Rarely.

Did you? I did all throughout college, and the first year of being post-grad.

When did you get your first tattoo? Don’t have one.

Have you ever dyed your hair? I’m pretty much always dyeing it.

Did you study any languages (other than the one you were raised to speak)? Just Spanish.

Are you still into the things you were into when you were 12? Some of them. I mean, I took surveys like this then and I do them now, hahaha.

How about 15? Eh, yeah, I suppose. Honestly, I have more in common with my 12 year old self than my 15 year old self....

Do you listen to the same bands you did growing up? I do, every now and then. Currently, I have a thing for 70′s and 80′s music though.

Were your parents cool parents or were they strict? Strict. As in, I was never allowed to go to concerts unless they listened to the band first and approved it.

Have you ever been in a car accident? Yes. Nothing major, although I did total my car in 2011.

What was your favorite food as a kid? It’s always been cheeseburgers.

What is it now? Cheeseburgers.

#survey

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kierongillen · 7 years

Text

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine 28

Spoilers, obv.

I mentioned in the back of the issue that I was thinking that Imperial Phase Part I would just end with no climax. As in, what would be more proggy and self-indulgent than to do that? Just to assume that people would accept a whole year of issues as a single trade, and have that slow build. And if people are expecting a surprise, not having a surprise would be the bigger one?

Except I plotted out the fucker, and realised this issue would end the trade, and that works pretty well as a climax. Not as big as any of the other ones, arguably, but wider and certainly a change of status quo. Plus it's an unexpected answer to the question of “Who's going to die?” undermining the assumption that it has to be one of our core cast.

This is probably a good example of how I talk about knowing everything in WicDiv, but the execution being more flexible. As in, all these beats are there, but working out how to play them came when planning these two arcs.

It's a hard issue for me, to be honest. WicDiv is definitely in a cause of anxiety place for me now, and thematically I can see why. WicDiv is always a juggling act, but I'm aware I'm juggling knives.

Jamie's Cover: The last of the first half of Imperial Phase. The design continues to the second half of Imperial Phase, with variations. I think this one is particularly beautiful, but pointed.

Elsa Charretier's Cover: We met Elsa when we were launching WicDiv in France. Glenat, our French Publisher, had commissioned her to do a WicDiv print. That was beautiful, and we asked her if she'd be up for a cover. And lo, this was born. The commission was glamour and sex – I think I suggested the idea of a sun in a martini glass. Elsa summoned this panorama that I just lose myself in.

It's also one of our rare Alt covers which is actually coloured by Matt Wilson, who took a pretty radical approach to the image. Matt Wilson for Eisner!

Page 1 Last time I talked about having a surplus of material and working out how to present it, and it actually all compressing down worryingly well. I had my list of things I wanted to happen before the party. I realised that some of them – mainly Sakhmet related – I could move into issue 29. Which left this, which I felt as an incredibly low-key mundane scene made a fun thing to hard cut from to the party.

Roehampton chosen due to me doing a seminar at the University there last year. I felt that Blake would be teaching in a place like it.

Jamie had a hefty re-write of this one when drawing it, and we chewed over the execution in chat a little. “The script is the start of a conversation, not the end of it.”

Wall stuff was also done in conversation. I gave Jamie a bunch of suggestions and we unpacked a little more. Shall I go though and say what they all are? I'm not sure if I can recognise them in fragments. That's Girl's Generation, the K-Pop band on the left. They were the primary visual inspiration for the Valkyries. Oh – and Jamie tells me that's Katy Perry on the right.

Page 2 I am very fond of the side-eye of Blake in the second panel. Strong Jamie expression.

Behind Blake is... League of Legends, Ghost in the Machine and Voltron.

And another really strong face in the last panel.

Page 3 Oddly, Cassandra's habit of little encouraging asides to people seems to be a thing now. How will people read them in world? Actually sincerely or patronising? I guess it depends how defensive they were feeling on any given day.

Page 4 A call back to Larkin's This Be The Verse, quoted by Luci in the first issue, recalled by Laura in issue 6.

My first draft title was Pride, drawing a line between Blake's parental pride and Sakmet's pride of lions. And then we remembered it'll also call to mind Pride, which when there's a slaughter at a pansexual orgy, is definitely not a comparison we wanted to make. So we went to this.

I suspect these writer notes are mainly my “here are some of the landmines we nearly stepped on” log.

Page 5 Originally the line was a lift of Lady Vox's in Phonogram, but something more noxious was clearly better. I called for the cocaine-tool, and Jamie out-did himself. The mosquito-like device emerging from the helmet is quite the thing. I suspect this is a left over Iron Man idea.

The visual element of the performance of the colouring-stage added symbols came from Matt. He was playing with various overlapping shapes, which were beautiful, but didn't seem to be anything other than a cute aesthetic. And then we realised that if we made them all Amaterasu symbols it'll integrate into the whole book. And lo, it does.

When plotting this issue, it's very much a “okay, what order CAN they be in.” I suspect I'd have rather taken more time to get to the confrontation, but everything else is more important to be in its place. Space is the interesting one – I suspect given an infinite budget we'd have have played more space to introduce this party/temple, probably with a issue-8 style dance-floor shot. But we don't, so we go completely the other way with this very TIGHT open, and put you in the middle of this slightly disorientating party you build up piecemeal.

Page 6 This involved some consultancy here, as I suspected (and I was right) that the original draft of Cassandra's dialogue let Woden off the hook too easily. We ended up tweaking a bunch to make her angrier to start, and still angry at the end, even after she takes Woden's point. I suspect I'd have gone even further given a chance to do it again.

(I mean, do you believe Woden that he didn't click? Plus that he knows the implicit threat by saying he didn't click – as in, he definitely could click if he wanted to. This is particularly noxious by Woden.)

End of the page is the closest we get to an establishing shot of the club/temple, btw.

Note that Jamie has moved away from a strict eight panel grid here, which suits the material. That panels two and five are these relatively smaller moments means that it would be dead space.

Page 7 And notice the strict eight panel grid here, which Jamie maintains as all these beats are basically of equal narrative weight.

Panel 7 is Jamie redrawing the splash from Brandon Graham's issue. Clearly relevant to what's coming further down the line.

In an issue of fairly bleak jokes, I think Woden's last panel takes the prize.

Page 8 The sequence is the last bit of set-up for the end of the issue. I suspect a re-read of the last couple of issues will see what I considered the necessary Sakhmet beats to get here. Next issue has more, but it's all very morning-after.

Special call out for Clayton for the second panel, which uses a PING! To basically split this panel into two panels in terms of reading. There's Amaterasu's first line... a small delay – and then the next piece of information. This is joined to the left-right movement across the panel from seeing the back of her head (I'm leaving!) to the right side of the panel (Where we then see she's looking at her phone.)

The softest beat of the issue, and probably one that I'd have stressed more if it was only a grace note, would be the reason for Baal's absence. Persephone assumes it's because that she is there, hence the segue in conversation on hurting people.

(In a boring practical way, Baal and Minerva not being here streamlines an issue which all the cast are present at. They don't need to be here, and their absence says more.)

The last three panels on the page are the closest that Sakhmet has come to a speech. Originally, there was about twice as much dialogue, but we worked it over obsessively to get to the core essentials (and try and avoid juxtapositions which we simply didn't want.) C and I shouting various takes and word-switches for about an hour in the living room.

All the WicDiv characters depress me. I think Sakhmet depresses me most of all.

Page 9 Anyway, yes, Sakhmet, that is a very good look.

Sakhmet's entry for the bleak joke competition, evidently.

Page 10 That we cut away from Casssandra means we get to cut back to her after the reasonable stage of an exchange and straight into this.

Hmm. There's something odd about this issue in terms of how pretty it all is, versus the emotions that are flying around. That's Amaterasu all over though.

The third panel was key for us to have Amaterasu's lines juxtaposed by Cassandra's response, so that it couldn't be taken out of context. A character responding to another character's incoherent racism is important context. I considered the archaic spelling “Moslem” but decided that while I'm sure that Amaterasu would use it, it wasn't worth putting in the text. It's offensive enough anyway.

Page 11 Some fascinating character work by Matt and Jamie on Amaterasu's speech to camera. The passive-aggressive nature of her threat is particularly sickly.

Cass' swearing is a delight.

I think I originally did something like “Clawing her eyes out” and tweaked as I) gendered ii) with where the issue goes, sets up all sorts of uncomfortable resonances with both Morrigan and Sakhmet. WicDiv is designed to be viewed as a hologram, so removing data strands that aren't intended is key.

(I mean, I talk about being anxious earlier? That's certainly a reason. There's so many moving parts in this fucker, and for all our efforts we can’t be sure that some of them are going to mesh awkwardly. We can always miss something.)

Anyway – there goes Cass, told to go home, the first of the people to leave the party. Everyone else gradually leaves, until it's just the people who remain. Woden doesn't get an exit, but let's be candid – no-one would have ever assumed Woden would be invited to the orgy.

And Dio takes over as the connective tissue. Hmm. Re-reading this after a few weeks is making me realise how tightly wound it really is. I had a friend write to tell me how many panels the last two issues had. 26 with 127 and 27 with 142. I did a quick count, and this one is (about) 119, so a little down, but when an average mainstream comic would have around 80 panels in (No more than a 5 panel beat, with average panel count lower than due to splashes, action pages, etc) it speaks to how compressed this is running on. No wonder I feel like it's going to explode.

Anyway, Dio. What have you seen?

Page 12 The main worry on this page was not making the storytelling too comic. The “someone leaves” And then “Someone unexpected follows pushing first person out of the way” can definitely come across as slapstick. Jamie doesn't do that, so phew. It's setting up for the destination.

The hyper-distorted close-up-to-reader Amaterasu symbols here are fascinating. Well done, Matt.

Page 13 And out in the street. Matt's glow from the door, into the cold blues of the street is strong. Immediate change of mood.

(Also, has me thinking of the break to darkness in issue 8 before going back to the party, as a structural parallel)

I don't actually use much contemporary slang in WicDiv. I suspect this isn't actually something people have noticed. As such, I had a good hard think before using Ghosting, but it's the right word and sentiment. And – well – Ghosting and Goths is an interesting line.

The goth kids absence from the comic have been notable. As they'd been major players earlier, they were always going to step back so other characters can move closer to the spotlight. I realised pretty early in planning Imperial Phase that the necessary retreat from the spotlight would be a way to explicitly introduce the plot. We could delineate their absence.

Page 14 Yeah, I'm uncomfortable too.

I don't think it's worth talking about this in any more detail now. Probably more later as we continue into the story.

Dionysus is the character who has most often surprised me in WicDiv. When he enters a scene, he goes in an unusual direction. He asks slightly different questions from most of the cast. “She chased him out the building and now he looks like this? Clearly...” seems a fair leap to make.

Page 15 “I love you, but...” is one of the more obvious bits of connective tissue in the issue.

Jamie does an interesting choice in terms of panel 4 and Persephone's response.

Another bit of peak Amaterasu here in the “What happened to my party?” response. Upset of her party not going according to her plans is, of course, how the arc starts for Amy as well.

Matt obviously gets the colouring interesting – all amber here – but Jamie is doing a lot to bridge the gap between two sub-scenes. That fifth panel re-sets it all, and hopefully Amaterasu's voice carries people back inside.

Page 16 The first panel landed very well. There's a lot of emotional weight that this has to carry, and suggesting of other things, and it seems to hold together. I suspect you can patch together all the Persephone Lines To Camera in WicDiv and get an interesting portrait of where she thinks she is.

(I mean, this is Jamie. It's never just about the line. I can't even imagine trying to write this stuff for another artist.)

My favourite person in all of WicDiv may be the guy in the hat in the bottom panel who goes “You know – actually, no, I don't think so. I think I'll have an early night” when presented with this offer. Good call, random person.

Interesting choice of panel breaking by Jamie on the last panel, which gets a sense of the rush of the response.

Page 17 Well, yes.

Page 18 When someone asked me about sex scenes a while back, this was already written and perhaps even being drawn, so I was aware of this in terms of a hypothetical WicDiv scene scene. Let's quote the thing here for reference...

We certainly don’t linger on the sex scenes. There’s an orgy in issue 11. There’s one beat where you see Morrigan and Baphomet in issue 16. There’s the repurposed Sex Criminal pages in 14. There’s very little kissing in terms of what you actually see - there’s one in 20 and one in 24, so far. While at the same time, characters having sex with one another is one of the things which drives the plot.

Speaking generally, I’ve got no moral reservation about sex scenes in stories per se. It always speaks to the effect the story is trying to have. To state the obvious, in erotica it’s very much the point of the thing.

There’s a couple of problems specifically in WicDiv…

1) Seeings someone have sex has a tendency to make the scene about you watching. Our characters are often, in their own way, viewpoint characters. Anything which makes a character perform for the viewer is against our intent there. There’s times we’ve approached it, and Jamie has very much backed away when we approached the page, as it was just extraneous. Why do it if it serves no purpose? 2) Probably more importantly, sex is usually dead pages in terms of drama. The fight scenes WicDiv does are almost always not about fighting. They’re about a change of dramatic states, a visually interesting way to push the plot along. Go through a fight scene and note down what you learn about each character in it. You can certainly do that in a sex scene… but dramatically speaking, the “decision to have sex” and “how you feel afterwards” are the key beats. So we linger on them a LOT.

But there’s certainly sex scenes I’ve written in my notes, and they’re much more character driven things, one way or another. I suspect one will come up sooner rather than later, though watching how we do it will be the interesting one.

That “interesting” sits uncomfortably with me, as it sounds like I'm foreshadowing this awful mess, when I'm talking in terms of craft. How do you do that and stay to our aims? The things I'd point to here is primarily Jamie's choices – how he chooses to frame nakedness, how he chooses to frame sex. Generally speaking, this is an illustrative scene. The neutrality is key – Amaterasu's nakedness in panel 6 would be a key one. There is no pose for the readers' eye's delight. This is a character who happens to be naked. Or at least, that's how we hope it's read.

(There's also other things – we thought that if Sakhmet is the first character to be shown naked just as she turns on a killing range, that has a lot of semiotics in there we'd like to avoid.)

Page 19 You know how life can just shatter in a second? I guess that's what we were going for here. Just one character being thoughtless, and...

(Fill in “That escalated quickly” gif, obviously)

For my money, perhaps Jamie's best art of the issue is the last two panels. The suspended glass, and then that close up – which is not one, but both of the best single expressions in the book.

Page 20-21 Amaterasu runs – I've seen some people think that Sakhmet killed her in this scene, which is one of those “you always must remember your audience is diverse in terms of how much they're aware of things like knowing what a character's power looks like, especially when a larger than normal percentage of your readers are new to comics.” I'm not sure there's much we could have done, except maybe a “come back!” from Sakhmet in the first panel. But that feels too crass for the people who DO get it. Balancing what is too opaque and what is too crass is basically 95% of comics for me.

This spread was budgeted as a single page, in terms of the amount Jamie has drawn. I may have done it anyway, but it is a way to ensure that we have a page turn onto the image on page 22.

(Also visual symmetry with Sakhmet in issue 17, where the black out image is also used.)

Page 22 I like how careful Jamie is here as well. I suspect the page with the most colouring tweaks in it, as Jamie wanted it to have the correct level of horror to it.

I originally had a more on-the-nose element to the image – a message scrawled in blood – but as much as I like a good System Shock homage, it was decided it was just too much. It's a Grand Guignol beat, sure, but not like that. It seems that there is a thing such as “too unsubtle” even for WicDiv.

Page 23 When originally planning the book, I thought this flashback was going to be at the end of Rising Action. After writing it, we realised we didn't need it – Persephone terrible and resplendent, with all the awful potential didn't need anything else. This is probably a good example of what I talk about in terms of when we say “we know all the material – it's just a question of execution.” I find myself thinking of how movies are really made by the editor, cutting scenes around.

(There's certainly things I've wanted to get in this arc which I've lost as something else was always more pressing. You may remember me saying one of my worries about year 3 in WicDiv was it was mainly girls being involved with girls, and there wasn't enough male/male intimacy? That would be an example of something which I'd like to find a place for, but have failed to do so far. Still, onwards.)

As a craft note, I'd point towards “6 months earlier” as a choice worth considering for creators. If you just write dates to control flashbacks rather than stating the relative position, you will lose your reader almost completely. They don't remember what period a story is set in just via numbers. They need either word based hand-holding or something much more visual in the story. Be very careful with this shit.

Page 24 In an issue as compressed as this, a page of Ananke way back in issue 21 me a luxury. But for someone like Ananke, it's so rare I hope it's interesting. Some strong expression work in here.

Clearly the advantage of that mask of hers is that it means it's harder for people to see that she's been crying.

Page 25 A “free” page in terms of budget, though Jamie clearly committed to it with the hand.

In the third year's hardback, we may include our somewhat hilarious lettering trial runs where Chrissy and Katie tried their handwriting. The final one is actually the work of Marguerite Bennett, who as a self-described Supervillain seemed a good person to ask to do it. Also, I've seen enough of her pen when signing issues of Angela, so knew she had a fascinating font. She was enormously ill and bed-ridden, so it was touch or go whether she would be able to do it, but thankfully it all came together. Thanks, M.

Page 26 A complete re-use of the opening of issue 21, with the final panel turned into a (tweaked) repeat of the penultimate panel. Once more we return and all that.

We'll be doing a little tweak to this page in the trade in the penultimate panel, to put a little glow on the machinery.

Page 27 We had to debate whether to put the present date or the flashback date here, but settled on this.

And that's it. Coming up shortly is the 455 AD special, which certainly fits thematically in with this arc and Andre (and Matt) have done wonderful work on. Then the trade in June, and back with Imperial Phase Part II in July.

Thanks for reading.

#WicDiv #elsa charretier #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

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fuchashok · 7 years

Text

ACOUSTIC SIGNALS

FS: Can you tell me some of your influences?

VO: Oh gosh. I’m always bad at answering this question. I don’t even know where to start because I listen to such a broad range of music. Ani DiFranco and Bjork were big influences on me when I was growing up. Sylvan Esso may be my biggest influence right now. I just saw them in concert. They’re a duo, producer and singer, and she’s an incredible songwriter. It’s somewhat dance music but really quality songwriting. Also the rhythms of Tune-Yards. A lot of trip-hop like Portishead. I just got to see Hamilton, so I’m listening to the soundtrack nonstop and I listen to all the artists on the Hamilton mixtape, I definitely have some hip hop influences.

I don’t have a top 3 in terms of influences right now. Kimbra is big influence on me so it was cool to see her speak at Loop. My friends are very influential on me, especially when they’re pushing hard and putting music out, producing. I’m part of 2 groups -Women Beatmakers & Female Frequency- both challenging yet inspiring.

Female Frequency creates albums that are made entirely by women. All the songwriters, the instrumentalists, engineers and singers. Even the studio owners are women. I’m going to work on remixing one of Female Frequency’s recent releases. I’m trying to get involved more with actual releases that women are involved with. I’ll be on the next Female Frequency album, producing a track by myself - maybe my first official solo production?

When it comes to production, I usually co-produce. I’ve produced things for placements or to pitch but I haven’t released anything official under my name that I produced by myself, yet.

FS: At what point did you feel you wanted to become a singer?

VO: Well, I’ve been singing since I was like 4 so I don’t think there was any kind of light bulb that went on where I was like “Oh I should be a singer.” As a toddler, I distinctly remember singing to the painter who was painting my mom’s bathroom. I was on stage by 5, doing plays, then later musicals in high school and college. I did stop music for a while because I worked on grassroots campaigns for environmental and social justice. I missed music, so once I started learning songwriting and guitar I felt like I had come back into my own. I wrote about justice in my songs too in different ways and try to have an impact that way.

FS: What kind of singer do you consider yourself? Folk?

VO: Definitely not anymore. My style as I call it is Electro-alt-pop. That pretty much covers the range of things that I do. I don’t write “shiny” Pop, like Katy Perry. But it’s a pop structure: there’s verses, choruses, usually a bridge. To me that’s Pop. When I go to these electronic shows like in Berlin, it’s different. I wouldn’t call myself “electronic” exactly, even though I use electronic elements and I work in Ableton. When I heard some of the women from Female Pressure perform, I was like ok, I don’t do that kind of electronic music. That’s often way more experimental, too.

After Berlin was when I defined myself as a Pop writer. Took me a while to call myself that - for one, people have this thing about pop. But it’s really such a broad genre and I’m proud to be able to write a concise, catchy song.

I wouldn’t call my music folk, though some of it may be political, and some of my influences are folk, but I rarely play acoustic guitar live, for example. I sometimes write on acoustic guitar but I always go back to my electric guitar and I now always go back to some kind of electronic production.

FS: So you made a transition at some point?

VO: Yes, just within the last couple of years… With my old band, I was doing alternative rock but then I started exploring more electronic production. Sometimes I miss all live instruments for sure, but I think this is the genre that’ll I’ll stick to for a while. “Electro Alt-Pop” covers the Alternative side of me with electronic influences and the Pop song structures with catchy melodies.

FS: What about another musician would make you want to collab?

VO: Thinking about the musicians that I collaborate with now, I have to feel super comfortable around them. So I tend to work with close friends. But the last album I released I didn’t really know the co-producers well, initially. Working with them over the course of a year, I of course got to know them. Now, if I’m starting on a production myself I’ll probably give it to somebody else to work on back and fourth, I’m usually going to pick somebody I’m already comfortable with.

The most important thing for me is that I don’t feel stupid bringing up an idea or doing something that doesn’t sound good. When you’re working on music, its ok if it’s bad at first, so I have to feel comfortable brainstorming or working on stuff that won’t be perfect at first. So I collab with this producer Audible Doctor, who’s more established than I am but I feel comfortable working with him. I know that he’ll appreciate my ideas and where I’m coming from, even if he’s got more production experience.

So, that’s one thing: feeling comfortable. Then there’s their talent and skill. I have to like their beats. And they need to be hard workers because I work really hard and anyone who I work with is most likely going to be working really hard along-side me, so…

FS: How do you come up with most of your song titles?

VO: Most of the songwriters I know come up with their song titles first. That’s a very natural way of writing Pop and Folk. I think it’s a really strong way to write. Still, I tend to do it the other way around. The idea is to keep a journal with you all the time, where you write song titles whenever you think of them - and draw from that list when you have a chance to write a song. Sia, who top lines a lot, does that. It’s a really good way to do it. But right now for the most part I come up with the song titles from the choruses.

“Wake You,” my EP title, and most of my album titles, come from a lyric in the song. My last album was called “Fires and Overturned Cars,” which is a lyric from my song “Incite Riot.”

FS: What instrument do you feel compliments your voice the best?

VO: I would love to have a keyboard player in my band, again. In terms of songwriting, genre and style along with the sounds that I want, they come more from the synth world than the guitar. But, I love guitar and I’m never going to stop playing it. I’ve taken a break from it, though, to work more on my production, but I still play guitar at all my shows. I also really like writing to drum beats. And to other vocals, writing more layers than record over that.

It’s hard to say that any one instrument makes my voice sound better. I think it’s more of the sound or rhythm that I’m writing to. I write to tracks for film and tv, and learned I pretty much can write to anything.

FS: Lets get into performing. How has performing helped your songwriting?

VO: That’s a great question. I tend to be more inspired to write when I’m performing more. I practice more before the performance to get ready and get in the head space of a songwriter and artist. It keeps me in that space so I’m more excited about writing.

I’m in a bit of a transition now because of my new EP, “Wake You.” Translating that to a live performance has been really different than anything else I’ve done in the past. Now, when I’m writing I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to perform those songs - probably too early in the process to be thinking about that- but I don’t like to use tracks live. So that’s holding me back from writing new material a little bit. It’s going to take time and experience producing more tracks.

The main thing about my music is that I want to keep the live instrumentation in there. I want to sure make my guitar is there. My songs often come from me sitting with my guitar and writing. But when I produce a beat and write over that, I take a really different angle to play it live. I don’t know how much I can translate my fully produced non-guitar based songs onto guitar. Sometimes it just doesn’t sound as good. My song “Call You My Own” was written on guitar and then we manipulated it so much you can’t really tell- but that one I still play the whole song on guitar live.

FS: How has New York influenced your music?

VO: Oh my god, it’s probably the number one influence on my music right now because of the people that I’ve met here. When I first moved here in November 2012, I went to shows every night to meet people. Compared to San Francisco where I lived before, it seemed that the music was edgier, harder-hitting which was what I was going for. Also I got involved in Women Beatmakers and Female Frequency. I met so many different producers and felt really empowered to be able to produce myself because I saw all these other women doing it. That’s a huge part of why I make the music that I do now.

And all my collaborators are here now. The reason I have a side gig now writing for T.V. and film is because of someone I met here who runs a music library. There’s just so much opportunity for musicians. It’s hard to live here, it’s really expensive but the quantity of the music here and the quality of musicians has pushed me to be a better musician. It’s a constant hustle here but that’s my personality anyways. It’s inspiring to see so many other people hustling so hard, too.

FS: What are some other places you want to perform at?

VO: I’m dying to perform in Tokyo, not for any good reason but wanting to go there, and play in a really different place than here. I have a friend there who says I should just come and play. But mostly, I want to have longer and bigger tours around the US. Of course, I would love to perform in Europe. I want to perform everywhere but I think the next steps are getting my show together - so I can put on the best show possible and represent my music in the best light, and so I can also play everything from a house concert to a large venue. That goes for gear, too - What’s the most minimal I can bring and what they can provide in order to put on a really good concert in someone’s house, for example.

I always want my show to be really great.

FS: How was it performing in Europe?

VO: Berlin was awesome. I was definitely still working out the kinks playing Ableton PUSH Live. But it was really cool. I pulled together a night with Female Pressure and Female Frequency. Female Pressure is an international group of female-identified producers. I met them through a friend that lived in Berlin for a while. I put on a showcase of about six producers. I performed with my bass player. I back her up for her songs and she backed me up for my songs. That was a really awesome night.

Then we played another show that was only for headphones. The entire audience only had headphones on. Have you ever heard of this? It’s like a silent disco. But everybody was sitting, watching and listening through headphones only, while we had headphones on too. It was really a great opportunity for sound designers and mix engineers that have a perfect mix. I don’t know its not as great for live instrumentation, but it was a cool experience and it was fun to take your headphones off and just watch. I definitely want to get back to Europe and play more of Berlin, too.

FS: You want to speak on Loop?

VO: Loop was amazing. Last year was the first year that I went. It was incredible to meet so many other producers. Its not really a scene that I’ve been in. So it was inspiring being with producers from all around the world. There was some really cool workshops, especially the one where we all got to work on each other’s beats. We would listen to someone’s beat and then work on it in Ableton. It was called “Production Carousel.” So we got to work on five different producer’s beats and five different people worked on my beats. Then at the end we could hear entirely different version of our own beat. Super cool. Also at Loop, I got to meet a bunch of people from Female Pressure. Obviously the shows and the big panels were really inspiring.

Of course it was really weird to be in Germany during the US presidential election, that kind of put a damper on the whole trip. But the Loop Summit was incredible I hope to go again this year.

FS: How has your work as an activist influenced and helped?

VO: Well, in terms of songwriting, especially at the beginning, it influenced my songs a lot. I wrote a lot of political folk songs. At this point I don’t write a lot of political stuff but there’s definitely a theme of empowerment that runs throughout all of my songs and I think that comes from doing social justice work. I was trained as a grassroots organizer. Every independent artist has to promote themselves now, and all my marketing skills come from being trained as an organizer and running political campaigns.

FS: What’s a personal song you wrote describing your life? It could be off the recent EP or the album before that?

VO: “Call You My Own,” the first track off the “Wake You” EP, I wrote when I was doing a couple shows in Cape Cod. I was single living in New York not feeling the dating scene there. I was alone in a room where I finally had some quiet then started thinking about somebody that I reconnected with from high school. Before I didn’t feel much, but after reconnecting, I thought maybe it’s my second chance accepting this person into my life. The line “Did I wait too long?” is wondering if he’ll give me that chance. The verses are rooted in me being on the road thinking about him. Then the second verse is about seeing him in high-school then seeing him recently. There’s this weird (musically) bridge at the end, running through some memories of him. So that’s the personal story behind that song.

FS: I noticed on one of your early albums you got to work with Mystic?

VO: I was a big fan of Mystic and living in San Francisco while she was in LA. I reached out to her about I song I had called “Black and White” which was about white privilege and racism. After she read the lyrics she wrote back “This is a really important song, I would love to be a part of it.” I was friends with Ice Cube’s engineer and ended meeting her at Ice Cube’s studio to record her rapping. It was a really cool experience to meet her and talk to her. It’s still one my favorite songs that I have because of her verse and just the vibe of the whole song, the back and fourth we have at the end. It’s all live instrumentation except for a couple of loops. The producer I was working with at the time was Jon Evans, an incredible bass player.

I don’t perform it much live anymore because it’s different from what I do now. I would love to collaborate with her again. She said at the time that most people ask her to sing and rap. But I always thought of her as a rapper.

FS: What are you listening to right now?

VO: Like I said, Sylvan Esso. Also Empress Of, who producers a lot of her own stuff. Alice Smith who’s R&B and Pop, some of Phantogram. Bishop Briggs is a great artist. Feist, who’s more on the folk side of things now but used to be in a punk band. FKA Twigs. Anna Wise. Frank Ocean. Laura Mvula. Francis and the Lights. Glass Animals…

Live Setup

VO: I’m on Electric guitar with live pedals, and controlling Ableton with the Push 2 and a Softstep. My bass player plays electric bass and she has a midi controller which I think is a MPK small keyboard. She runs Ableton into the synth bass. My drummer as an acoustic drum set then he has SPD FX, which is a drum pad that he has sounds stored in so he doesn’t need Ableton. And then I have 2 to 3 soul back-up singers.

FS: Do you have anything to say to your fans?

VO: Thanks for interviewing me. It helps to talk about my process because it makes me stop and think about it. To my fans: more music will be coming! And I always love to hear from new so I want to know what you think of the new songs. If you want me to come to your town, just let me know!

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• 3 years ago I was stocking shelves at Target, living on Ramen noodles, and crashing at Billy’s house. Now I’m on tour – Benji Madden • A lot of people in this country are obese because of a form of malnutrition. One thing I’d like to do is to help people understand the correlation between a steady diet of empty calories – though you may not experience hunger pangs, you can’t really function well if all you’re eating are things like ramen noodles, or chips, cookies, and sodas, things that are quite typically inexpensive and affordable because of the way we subsidize the ingredients that go into them. – Lori Silverbush • A professional player is smarter than a college man. He uses his noodle. He knows what to do and when to do it. He rarely goes up in the air as is the case with most of our college players when they get in a tight place. – Red Grange • All the dreamers in all the world are dizzy in the noodle! – Edie Adams • Almost anything can be stretched to serve more people by being added to a white sauce or canned gravy or undiluted or very slightly diluted canned soup and served over noodles or rice. With chops or chocolate eclairs, however, the only solution is to claim you don’t like them. – Jo Coudert • And what have I done?” What? WHAT?…You’ve stolen them.” With that, Cornelia fled, but Buttercup understood; she knew who “them” was. The boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattledskulled clodpated dim-domed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed BOYS. – William Goldman • As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that’s what I do, too. – Richie Sambora

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Noodle', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_noodle').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_noodle img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself. – Bohumil Hrabal

• But I couldn’t draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy. – Jhonen Vasquez

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• Can’t make chicken salad out of chicken noodle – Mike Ditka • Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I’ve been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I’ve cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta. – Cynthia Kenyon • Censure is a limp noodle across the wrist of the president. I think the way we vote on the articles will express the way we feel stronger than any censure vote. – Larry Craig • Even now, when I do a slide show of the Geek Squad story, the first slide is a photo of ramen noodles. Because for me, ramen noodles are the international symbol for struggle. – Robert Stephens • He’s smaller than me, did you see him? He looked like a noodle next to me. – Adrien Broner • I can make things, but I don’t cook them, exactly. Like salmon, I can stick that in a pan. Or the other day I made noodles, but they were hard. It never occurred to me to check them; I just stopped cooking them when I felt they were ready. Really, I’m too absentminded. – Paula Poundstone • I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles. – Ted Allen • I don’t put cream in any pasta noodles ever. I would use a little butter, but I don’t ever use cream. – Mario Batali • I hate to admit this but I don’t even know how to make a cup of tea or coffee. I can boil a kettle for a pot noodle and I’ve been known to warm up some food in the microwave. – Michael Owen • I have a rescue dog named Fideo, which means ‘noodle’ in Spanish, and a cat named Hutch. – Ana Ortiz • I love Chinese food, like steamed dim sum, and I can have noodles morning, noon and night, hot or cold. I like food that’s very simple on the digestive system – I tend to keep it light. I love Japanese food too – sushi, sashimi and miso soup. – Shilpa Shetty • I remember when I couldn’t afford to eat like this. It was ramen noodles and the San Francisco Treat [Rice-A-Roni]. Dessert? Get you a honey bun and put a slice of cheese on it. Put it in the microwave for 45 seconds and you had the gift of a lifetime. – Rick Ross • I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘cooking’ but I can make noodles. That means I can boil water, put the pasta in and wait until it’s done. – Devon Werkheiser • I’m not as good as a man as you are, Sundown. I find it hard to give an enemy my back under any circumstance.” – Ren “Oh, I didn’t say I was giving her my back. I’m not lacking all my noodle sense. But I’m not holding a grudge neither. Sometimes you just got to let the rattlesnake lay in the sun.” – Sundown “Men? You do know I’m standing in this little box with you and can hear every word?” – Abigail “We know. I merely don’t care.” – Ren – Sherrilyn Kenyon • If it’s possible, I will have some noodles in the morning and start talking to people, start to think about a few things in my head – the project or a few ideas which are not finished or if there are possible directions and what will lead into another game. It’s always like setting up some kind of game you can continuously play. – Ai Weiwei • If you think you can lead your flock of sheeple and peeps to some glorified noodle fest on the mall, you got another thing coming, mister. – Stephen Colbert • I’m Italian. I love to cook Italian food, so I learned from my dad how to make sauce and meatballs and all that stuff. With my wife and kids, I started making homemade pasta. The very first time, I didn’t have a pasta maker, so I had to cut it with a knife, the old-school way! The noodles were all jacked up, but it was fun. – Joey Fatone • I’m layering away: sauce, noodles, I belong to you, cheese, sauce, my heart is yours, noodles, cheese, I hear your soul in your music, cheese, cheese, CHEESE. – Jandy Nelson • I’m not the kind of guy who sits around at home and writes songs. Once in a while I’ll pick up a guitar and noodle around, but it’s rare. – Scott Ian • Instructions for Adam Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keyes. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible. – Jenny Downham • It turns out that Molly wasn’t her mother’s daughter in that respect. Charity was like the MacGuyver of the kitchen. She could whip up a five-course meal for twelve from an egg, two spaghetti noodles, some household chemicals, and a stick of chewing gum. Molly … Molly once burned my egg. My boiled egg. I don’t know how. – Jim Butcher • Life was so much simpler in pre-video days when everyone refused invitations because the ‘Forsyte Saga’ was on. Now we all just have a long list of unwatched shows, all of which, it seems, our friends are raving about. I feel as outdated as if I wore a Fair Isle sweater, ate Pot Noodle and had a two-bar electric fire in the sitting room. – Simon Hoggart • Memory, in my opinion, is a complete noodle. It hangs on the silliest things but forgets the stuff that really matters. – Ellen Potter • My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale, New York, society woman, best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book ‘Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers’ – this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford’s wire hangers look like pool noodles. – Sloane Crosley • My mom cooked pot roast with noodles and frozen vegetables. Or she’d make spaghetti or hot dogs, or heat up TV dinners. Before I started modeling at age 19, I was 5’8″ and weighed 165 pounds. – Carol Alt • Noodles are not only amusing but delicious. – Julia Child • OH KYO KUN! Isn’t it said that eating pink noodles turns you into a horny pervert?! – Natsuki Takaya • Once you’ve started a film you don’t become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don’t know, and they don’t know. It’s through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with. – Jack Nicholson • Peace will come to the world when the people have enough noodles to eat. – Momofuku Ando • Ramen is a dish that’s very high in calories and sodium. One way to make it slightly healthier is to leave the soup and just eat the noodles. – Masaharu Morimoto • Sam was starting to feel anxious. Nutella and noodles were fine. Great in fact. Miraculous. But he’d been hoping for more food more water more medicine something. It was absurdly like Christmas morning when he was little: hoping for something he couldn’t even put a name to. A game changer. Something…amazing. – Michael Grant

• She led him past the engine room, which looked like a very dangerous, mechanized jungle gym, with pipes and pistons and tubes jutting from a central bronze sphere. Cables resembling giant metal noodles snaked across the floor and ran up the walls. “How does that thing even work?” Percy asked. “No idea,” Annabeth said. “And I’m the only one besides Leo who can operate it.” “That’s reassuring.” “It should be fine. It’s only threatened to blow up once.” “You’re kidding, I hope.” She smiled. “Come on. – Rick Riordan • Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve been eating a lot of popcorn, cereal, instant noodles, and snack bars. I have a hot plate in my bedroom, a microwave, and a small fridge. That’s the kind of kitchen I know how to get around in. – Karen Marie Moning • Spaghetti… I can’t eat spaghetti, there’s too many of them. No matter how hungry I am, 1,000 of something is too many. I’ll have 1,000 pieces of noodles. – Mitch Hedberg • ‘Tampopo’ is a deeply odd film about Japan, ramen noodles, love and sex. It made me very hungry and desperate to travel to Japan. It started my love affair with this amazing country, its culture, its food, its cinema and made me buy my first ticket to the land of the rising sun. – Jamie Cullum • The boys. The village boys. The beef-witted featherbrained rattleskulled clodpated dimdomed noodle-noggined sapheaded lunk-knobbed boys. How could anybody accuse her of stealing them? Why would anybody want them anyway? – William Goldman • There’s a Polar Bear In our Frigidaire– He likes it ’cause it’s cold in there. With his seat in the meat And his face in the fish And his big hairy paws In the buttery dish, He’s nibbling the noodles, And munching the rice, He’s slurping the soda, He’s licking the ice. And he lets out a roar If you open the door. And it gives me a scare To know he’s in there– That Polary Bear In our Fridgitydaire. – Shel Silverstein • There’s only one rule in photography – never develop colour film in chicken noodle soup. – Freeman Patterson • We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much. – Richard Siken • When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… …they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle. – Dr. Seuss • When I would feel down…I’d have some noodles father prepared, and all the worries I had that day…Poof! They would all disappear. – Kim Young-kwang • Yes, but I’ve already made my fortune in other things. (Solin) Such as? (Geary) Viagra. My brother learned to take a personal problem and profit by it. (Arik) It’s true. It pained me to see a man as young as Arik stricken with impotency. Therefore I had to do something to help the poor soul. But alas, there’s nothing to be done for it. He’s as flaccid as a wet noodle. (Solin) How creative of you to project your problem onto me. But then, they say celibacy is enough to make a man lose all reason. Guess you’re living proof, huh? (Arik) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • You can’t be wishy-washy. That’s the most boring thing in the world, to be a middle-of-the-road wet noodle. That’s my greatest fear, to be like, “Oh, whatever.” That’s just not who I am. – Chris Black • You have to find a group that really desperately cares about what it is you have to say. Talk to them. They have something I call otaku. It’s a great Japanese word. It describes the desire of someone who’s obsessed to, say, drive across Tokyo to try a new Ramen noodle place ’cause that’s what they do, they get obsessed with it. – Seth Godin • You noodle around with tempo and sound until you get the perfect fit for that particular song, and then, so long as you can sustain it, God is on your side and everything comes easily and even the waiters smile. – Wilfrid Sheed • Zen is to religion what a Japanese “rock garden” is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks “What is Zen?”, the master’s traditional answer is “Three pounds of flax” or “A decaying noodle” or “A toilet stick” or a whack on the pupil’s head. – Arthur Koestler • Zerts’ are what I call desserts. ‘Trée-trées’ are entrées. I call sandwiches ‘sammies,’ ‘sandoozles,’ or ‘Adam Sandlers.’ Air conditioners are ‘cool blasterz’ with a ‘z’ – I don’t know where that came from. I call cakes ‘big ol’ cookies.’ I call noodles ‘long-ass rice.’ Fried chicken is ‘fry-fry chicky-chick.’ Chicken parm is ‘chicky-chicky-parm-parm.’ Chicken cacciatore? ‘Chicky-cacc.’ I call eggs ‘pre-birds,’ or ‘future birds.’ Root beer is ‘super water.’ Tortillas are ‘bean blankets.’ And I call forks ‘food rakes.’ �� Aziz Ansari

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'o', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_o').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_o img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'u', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '4', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_u').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_u img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); );

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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Noodles Quotes

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ultralifehackerguru-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/jennifer-lawrence-new-light/

Jennifer Lawrence, A New Light

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

She may be the highest-paid actress in the world, but Jennifer Lawrence has had a tough year: an emergency landing, a romantic breakup, and her (reluctant) first nude scene, for this month’s Red Sparrow. It all has her looking to the next phase in her career—and life.

It is nearing dinnertime as I wind through the streets of Beverly Hills, passing the storied haunts Craig’s and Tower Bar on my way to the home of Jennifer Lawrence. She has offered to host, and who would turn down an invitation to hang out with this supernova? At 27, she is the highest-paid actress in the world and the youngest person to have earned four Oscar nominations (she won best actress for her work in Silver Linings Playbook) and three Golden Globe awards. Her potent combination of talent, beauty, charm, and chutzpah makes her seem like a throwback to an earlier era. And her authenticity is a refreshing, much-needed antidote for a world drowning in a digital sea of meticulously curated social-media accounts, photo filters, and sponsored tweets.

Yet, for all her successes—in addition to her critical accolades and awards she has starred in a pair of multi-billion-dollar franchises, The Hunger Games and X-Men—she is at a defining juncture, when youth fades and adulthood begins, a transition that has stymied many promising acting careers. Lawrence, however, is the rare prodigy whose next chapter could be more interesting than the first. Lawrence is imbued with insatiable curiosity, professionalism, a work ethic, and extraordinary natural talent. She may be the last true movie star to emerge from Hollywood before the industry stopped making them.

CELEBRITY. CULTURE. POLITICS. Get what’s new and what’s next. Subscribe to Vanity Fair today.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

So, what does maturity look like for the world’s most famous ingénue? Let’s start by having her cook me dinner—roast chicken, to be exact. (I supplied the alcohol—wine and vodka, as I wasn’t sure what the menu or mood would be.) “I’ve done this a few times, but I’m not superconfident,” says Lawrence, casually attired, without a trace of makeup, in her kitchen. “I have ramen, so either way we’re fine,” she says, only half joking.

While the chicken is in the oven, Lawrence makes us martinis (my drink of choice) in the style that Michael Fassbender, one of her X-Men co-stars, taught her—a drop of vermouth swished in the glass, then tossed out before the vodka goes in. The French-style house is her first major purchase, made back in 2014, a perfectly appointed, comfortable environment and exactly what you would expect from this gal from Kentucky: vintage mixed with modern. A gorgeous custom curved long sofa in the den, we both agree, is what she should try to salvage first if a California fire were headed her way.

Lawrence admits that her style is ever evolving and that she is in the process of redecorating. “My bedroom looks like Vegas meets . . .” Her voice trails off. “Well, you never want to decorate anything before you’re 25.” A portrait of her dog and constant companion, Pippi, commissioned by her mother, hangs in the gym, which is well equipped but doesn’t run the risk of overuse from this openly disgruntled exerciser. As she takes me on a tour of the lush grounds outside, she admits having been in the pool only once, on her birthday—the downside of a career lived on the road.

This month Lawrence stars as Russian prima ballerina turned Soviet operative Dominika Egorova in Red Sparrow, a spy thriller based on the best-selling novel by former C.I.A. agent Jason Matthews. After an injury ends her dance career, Lawrence’s character is recruited by the government to join an elite squad of officers who use psychological—and sexual—warfare to extract secrets from state enemies.

About seven years ago, when Lawrence co-starred in Jodie Foster’s filmThe Beaver, the director told her that one day she would look back on her film roles and see a pattern. It was Lawrence’s good friend Laura (more on her later) who identified the archetype even before Lawrence did, noting that the actress tended to play “white trash with too much responsibility.” Sure enough, in her early films, including Winter’s Bone and the Hunger Games quartet, Lawrence embodied what she calls “the young-adult maternal figure.”

During a shoot at this 24-acre biodynamic farm, Lawrence modeled the latest in ranch dressing.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

The character of Dominika presented Lawrence with an opportunity to break from her past in more ways than one. “Red Sparrow really scared the hell out of me because I get nude,” says Lawrence, who first balked at the idea. “I tried to do the movie without nudity but realized it just wouldn’t be right to put the character through something that I, myself, am not willing to go through.”

Lawrence, who had personal photos stolen and uploaded to the Internet in a hack, in 2014, said that she was wary of potential criticism over her artistic choice. “My biggest fear was that people would say, ‘Oh, how can you complain about the hack if you’re going to get nude anyway?,’ ” Lawrence says, referencing the stolen photos, which were meant for her then boyfriend, Nicholas Hoult. (The man responsible for the hack was prosecuted and sentenced to 18 months in prison; Lawrence’s stolen pictures will live forever on the Internet.)

But the actress draws a big distinction between the involuntary release of her photos and her decision to shed her clothes on-screen. “One is my choice.” That choice ultimately proved to be empowering. “I got something back that was taken from me, and it also felt normal,” she says.

It helps that the director of these potentially uncomfortable scenes was Francis Lawrence (no relation), who has worked with Lawrence since she was 22 and started making the second film in the Hunger Games quartet. Though she was particularly nervous about filming a violent shower-room fight scene, she says Francis immediately put her at ease. “He looked me right in the eyes like I had clothes on and then all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh, O.K., it’s just like I have clothes on.’ Everybody here is professional. You’re still at work. One look just made me comfortable. It didn’t make me feel naked.”

Francis wasn’t the only person on the Red Sparrow set to watch Jennifer grow up—many on the production team were also Hunger Games alumni. “They all knew me since I was a baby,” says Lawrence. After wrapping the nude scenes she teased the camera team: “I hope you guys feel creepy.” (For all her dramatic accolades, comedic timing may be Lawrence’s true gift.) The director says he always had Jennifer in mind for the part. “First and foremost, she’s a terrific actress,” he says. “What excited me the most was just how different it would be for her—the way she looks and the way she behaves and the way she sounds . . . that was really, really exciting to me.”

“I get my happiness from my friends and my house,” Lawrence says.

“She is one of the most intuitive people that I know,” adds Francis. (Lawrence’s Red Sparrow co-stars include Joel Edgerton and acting icons Charlotte Rampling and Jeremy Irons.) “She’s kind of a savant when it comes to human behavior. When she’s acting in a scene, it’s not something that’s been rehearsed or practiced—it’s really fun to watch, and it’s pretty magical.”

The director also sees an authenticity in the offscreen Jennifer Lawrence. “I think a lot of people think the behavior portrayed in articles and interviews—when she falls and all that kind of stuff—has been fabricated by her. It’s really not. She really is who she is and who she presents herself to be. There’s sort of a blunt quality. She doesn’t really hold back in terms of beliefs and being goofy and she just says what she’s thinking.”

Another thing that isn’t fabricated: Lawrence’s oft reported resistance to dieting and working out. To accommodate his star, Francis arranged to shoot the ballet scenes in Red Sparrow first, so that she would be in her best shape. (The movie was shot in parts of Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and the U.K.) He adds, “She really trained a tremendous amount. She worked with a ballet coach for three months and did a lot of exercise.”

For Lawrence, the issue of body image and weight is a particularly sensitive one. Last fall, as the Hollywood sexual-assault reckoning gained momentum, Lawrence revealed in painstaking detail an incident in which she was asked, early in her career, to stand nude in a lineup of other actresses in front of a producer who judged her body and pressured her to lose weight. “I’ve always wondered what it would take to get me to really diet, to really be hungry, because I’ve never done it for a movie. For Hunger Games, they told me to lose weight, and then I discovered Jack in the Box. Red Sparrow was the first time that I was really hungry, and disciplined. I can’t be in character as an ex-ballerina and not feel like an ex-ballerina.”

Jen’s next act? The 27-year-old can see herself as a television executive.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

Though she tried to maintain that dancer’s level of control, once she was done with the ballet sequences, all bets were off. “I can’t work on a diet. I’m hungry. I’m standing on my feet. I need more energy. I remember having a meltdown, freaking out that I had eaten five banana chips.”

Nourishment came in a European form of street food. “I discovered this Viennese kielbasa sausage in an uncircumcised French-bread roll, with pickle relish,” she says. “I had that almost every day in Budapest—which you can see, because I continue to grow in the movie,” she says, laughing. “Dieting is just not in the cards for me.”

Back in Lawrence’s kitchen, she plates a delicious meal: perfectly tender chicken with onions, potatoes, and green beans. And then we sit in the kitchen and talk about what almost everyone else is talking about around the table. “I’ve always thought that it was a good idea to stay out of politics,” says Lawrence. “Twenty-five percent of America identifies as liberal and I need more than 25 percent of America to go see my movies. It’s not wise, career-speaking, to talk about politics. When Donald Trump got sworn into office, that fucking changed.”

She’s joined the board of Represent.Us, a bipartisan grassroots organization that aims to root corruption out of politics. Fellow board members include directors Adam McKay and David O. Russell, who directed Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, Joy, and American Hustle,and the advisory board boasts a number of activists from all political stripes, including Democratic, Republican, and Tea Party leaders.

Now that she’s politically woke, Lawrence isn’t holding back her opinions. “It did steamroll, thanks to my personality,” she admits. “If I’m thinking something, I’ve made it very clear I’m going to talk about it. My family obviously hates every time I talk about politics because it’s hard to see your kid get criticized and they live in Kentucky, where nobody is really liking what I’m saying.” (Kentucky, where polls closed at six P.M., was one of the first states Trump won in 2016.)

Although Lawrence divides her time between New York City and Los Angeles, her southern upbringing gives her a different perspective. She maintains close ties to her hometown of Louisville (her parents still own a house there, and each Christmas she visits children at the city’s Norton Children’s Hospital), and she understands viscerally the reasons why Donald Trump’s candidacy resonated with many Americans. Here’s “a big powerful man in a nice suit, pointing at you and going, ‘I’m going to make you rich.’ It’s so appealing,” she says. “The Democrats made a huge mistake by chastising the Trump supporters, and that was disgusting to me. Of course they’re not going to vote for Hillary Clinton; they’re going to vote for Donald Trump. You laughed at them when their plight is very real.”

But she scoffs at the criticism of Hillary Clinton as a “career politician.” “I’m like, ‘I want a career politician!’ I wouldn’t hire an assistant if they didn’t have experience; we’re talking about the president of the fucking United States!”

A Kentucky native, the actress looks right at home among horses.

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

Two thousand seventeen was a fitful year for Lawrence. It started with negative reviews for Passengers, her outer-space movie co-starring Chris Pratt. The film wasn’t a financial flop—it made $300 million worldwide—but Lawrence, who garnered a career-high $20 million payday, couldn’t distract from the movie’s troubled plotline.

In June a private plane she was flying on, from Kentucky to New York, at 31,000 feet suffered double engine failure and was forced to make an emergency landing. (No one was injured.) Over dinner Lawrence told me the terrifying experience sent her into therapy for the first time to combat the post-traumatic stress she was dealing with. And every time she got on a plane in the aftermath, to soothe her nerves she watched Disney movies on rotation. “Thank you, Emma Watson, for Beauty and the Beast,” she says. “I’ve seen it six or seven times. If anybody has any questions about it, come to me.”

She also ended her relationship with director Darren Aronofsky. The two met making the allegorical Mother!, a controversial film that critics loved—Lawrence won praise for her performance as a young tortured wife and mother—but one that audiences rejected as too complicated. “I thought it was genius, a masterpiece, and . . . a cry for Mother Earth seemed right and cool. He was the perfect filmmaker to do it with.”

Although they are no longer romantically linked, they are still friends. Lawrence prides herself on healthy relationships—and healthy breakups. “We have an amazing friendship that started before the movie, then we had a partnership with the movie, and then we had a romance that came from the movie, so when you strip the romance away, we still have immense respect for each other,” she says. “As cliché as it sounds, we were good to each other. I read stuff all the time that I think would be perfect for Darren. And I think we’ll work together again.”

Lawrence has strong friendships—fellow actresses Emma Stone, Brie Larson, and Amy Schumer, to name a few, as well as a very tight group outside the industry she has known for more than 10 years. “When I was doing X-Men—that was right when Hunger Games was starting to come out—everyone just starts looking at you like you have something on your face, and the whole world starts reacting to you differently,” she remembers. “If I was not living with a best friend at the time, I don’t know what would have happened, because every day I came home, and it was the exact same: we’d talk about boy drama, and we’d talk about her [life].”

“She is one of the most intuitive people that I know,” says director Francis Lawrence.

One member of that group, Laura, whom she had met when she was 17, was with her when Vanity Fair photographed Lawrence in December. I saw something on that shoot I have never seen in 20 years of living in Hollywood. Upon arriving, Lawrence’s dog, Pippi, defecated on the property almost immediately after getting out of the S.U.V. Laura, who was helping Lawrence that day, reached in her purse, pulled out a plastic bag, and then did the unthinkable. She handed the bag to Lawrence, who proceeded to pick up her dog’s poop.

Hollywood is home to an egomaniacal industry where movie stars tend to be enabled and coddled, and at a certain point actors begin to surround themselves with sycophants and paid pals. I have watched Lawrence grow up in this community, and it gave me such a sense of pride that the world’s biggest movie star is still humble enough to pick up her own dog shit.

Lawrence provided some of her own insight: “Being an actor, you become a professional at talking about yourself,” she says. “And it’s not even our fault—we do it for months and months and months at a time. But I have my girlfriends and I’m genuinely interested in their lives.”

When Mother! was doing poorly, Lawrence initially was disappointed by the public’s indifference to the film. She remembers thinking, “ ‘Did you guys not get it? I gave my body, Darren gave his fucking heart, he bled for that script, and you don’t get it.’ It’s a little sad. And I remember letting it be sad for a couple of days, and then I was like, ‘You know what? This is not where I get my happiness from. I get my happiness from my friends and my house—they’ve brought me so much sanity.’ ”

In The Hunger Games and Winter’s Bone, Lawrence played the “young-adult maternal figure.”

Photograph by Inez and Vinoodh; Styled by Jessica Diehl.

Working steadily since the age of 16, Lawrence uncharacteristically has some time on her hands. She is signed on to star in a film with Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), but with the script still being written, there is plenty of time for Lawrence to explore other opportunities.

After our dinner we leave the dishes in the sink and head to her living room, where there are two stockings hanging from the mantel—one for her, and a miniature one for Pippi—and a Christmas tree. I ask about future projects. Lawrence has made no secret of her love for television—especially reality programming. She’s become unlikely friends with Kardashian matriarch and “momager” Kris Jenner, who posted on Instagram a picture of a mini toy Porsche she received from Lawrence. In November, Lawrence gave interviewers everywhere a run for their money when she grilled Kim Kardashian West as part of a guest-host stint on Jimmy Kimmel Live.(Sample questions: “Have you ever been cheated on?” And “Do you think it’s a coincidence that [ex-boyfriend] Reggie Bush’s wife looks just like you?”)

Over glasses of red wine I ask Lawrence, “If you could make your own reality show, what would it be?”

“I’m happy you asked,” she says, a Cheshire-cat grin crossing her face, “because I have actually been toying with the idea of becoming a billionaire and I’d like to start my own TV network.” Because of her viewing habits—heavy on Real Housewives, all things Kardashian—she declares, “I am pretty much a television professional at this point. And I have a brilliant idea for a reality show called Breakup Island.”

She goes on: “I can’t tell you the details, but there are very distinct cast members like The Bachelor, between the ages of 20 and 50, who you stay with and care about.”

Lawrence has obviously given this a lot of thought, but she plays coy. “That’s all I’m willing to disclose about Breakup Island because I really think it’s going to happen,” she says. “My agent was laughing at me when I told him. But I am clearly obsessed.”

Lawrence leans back on the fainting couch, her face lit perfectly by the natural firelight. She takes another sip of her wine, and after a beat, with the confidence of a mogul, she says, “Seems like a natural next step.”

(C)

#celebrities #Jennifer Lawrence #Lifestyle

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beyondforks · 7 years

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Playing Catch Up! Walk the Edge by Katie McGarry

Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*

Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!

Walk the Edge (Thunder Road #2) by Katie McGarry Genre: Young Adult (Contemporary Romance) Date Published: March 29, 2016 Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Smart. Responsible. That's seventeen-year-old Breanna's role in her large family, and heaven forbid she put a toe out of line. Until one night of shockingly un-Breanna-like behavior puts her into a vicious cyber-bully's line of fire—and brings fellow senior Thomas "Razor" Turner into her life. Razor lives for the Reign of Terror motorcycle club, and good girls like Breanna just don't belong. But when he learns she's being blackmailed over a compromising picture of the two of them—a picture that turns one unexpected and beautiful moment into ugliness—he knows it's time to step outside the rules. And so they make a pact: he'll help her track down her blackmailer, and in return she'll help him seek answers to the mystery that's haunted him—one that not even his club brothers have been willing to discuss. But the more time they spend together, the more their feelings grow. And suddenly they're both walking the edge of discovering who they really are, what they want, and where they're going from here.

Walk the Edge is the second book in the Thunder Road series by Katie McGarry. This is Razor and Breanna's story. Breanna is smart. I mean super smart, and she's never felt like she fit in anywhere. Not even with her family. Razor doesn't trust the Reign of Terror. They haven't told him everything involving the death of his mother, so, naturally this causes him to doubt them. Yet, they insist that he trust them anyway. That wouldn't be a possible thing for anyone. Together, Breanna and Razor form a partnership of sorts. It's funny, because with the first book, I didn't like the Reign of Terror in the beginning, then they grew on me. By the end, they won me over. I followed the same pattern in this book too. There are just so many mysteries and secrets the Reign of Terror keeps from one another. Wouldn't it be easier if they were up front with those they love from the start? Hmm. Despite that, Breanna and Razor are completely lovable. Both of these characters were fully fleshed out, and I got completely lost in their lives. Their emotions were raw, and the romance was steamy, but not overboard. It's a rare second book that is better than the first in a series, but this one definitely is, in my opinion. And, I liked the first book quite a bit. So, that's saying something. I can't wait to get my hands on the next book!

There are certain common-sense rules all girls in town comprehend. It's not knowledge that has to be taught. In fact, sitting here on the top step to the entrance of my high school and watching this potential disaster unfold, I search my memory for the first person who mentioned I should stay clear of the Reign of Terror Motorcycle Club. Because when it pertains to the threat that is the Reign of Terror MC, it's not learned, it's known. Like how an infant understands how to suck in a breath at the moment of birth or how a newborn foal wobbles to his legs. It's instinctual. It's ingrained. It's fact. "Do you think his motorcycle will work this time?" Addison asks. "Hope so," I breathe out, too terrified to speak at a normal level out of fear that we'll draw the scrutiny of the men wearing black leather vests circling the broken-down bike. Reign of Terror arches over the top of the black vest; in the middle is a half skull with far too much fire in and around it. It's ominous and I shiver. It's edging toward nine in the evening, but the August sun hasn't completely set. Darkness, though, has claimed most of the sky. Temperatures during the afternoon hit over a hundred and I swear the concrete stairs and pillar absorbed every ounce of today's sunshine and are now transferring the heat onto my body. Sweat rolls down my back and I shift to peel my thighs off the step. Why I thought it was a fantastic idea to wear a jean skirt, I have no idea. I take that back. I do have an idea. Tonight is the first time my entire grade has been together in one room since the end of last year. My goal for the year may seem simple to some, but to me, it sometimes feels impossible. I'd like to be seen, to be known as something more than "freakishly smart Breanna Miller" at least once before I leave this town. I'd like to somehow find the courage to be on the outside who I am on the inside. An annoying sixth sense informs me that I'm about to make a huge impression—on the evening news. Two friends on the verge of starting their senior year vanish without a trace. Because that's how motorcycle clubs would handle this—they'll kidnap us and then hide our bodies after they're finished with whatever ritual act they'll use us to perform. One of the gang members stands from his crouched position at the motorcycle and the guy we attend school with inserts a key and holds on to the handlebar of the bike. As he twists it, I pray the motor will purr to life. My heart leaps, then plummets past my toes and into the ground when the motorcycle cuts off with a sound similar to a gunshot. Addison's head falls forward, and I bite my lip to prevent the internal screaming from becoming external chaos. Addison pulls her phone out of her purse and taps the screen. "I'm texting Reagan. If we go missing, I'm telling her to point the finger at Thomas Turner and his band of Merry Men." Thomas Turner. He's the guy that swore loudly the moment his motorcycle's engine died again. Thomas is the name called on the first day of school by our teachers, but it's not the name he responds to. He goes by his "road name," Razor. He glances over his shoulder straight at me and my mouth dries out. Holy hell, it's like he's aware I'm thinking of him. "Oh my God," Addison reprimands. "Don't make eye contact. Do you want them to come over?" I immediately focus on my sandals. As much as every girl knows to keep a safe distance from Thomas and his crew, we've all snuck a glimpse. Thomas makes it easy to cave to temptation with his golden blond hair and muscles from head to toe, and he owns this sexy brooding expression a few girls have written about in poems. My cheeks burn and there's this heaviness as if Thomas is still looking. Through lowered lashes, I peek at him and my heart trips when our eyes meet. His eyes are blue. An icy blue. His stare causes me to be simultaneously curious and terrified. And I obviously have a death wish because I can't tear my gaze away…

KATIE MCGARRY was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings, and reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan. To learn more about Katie McGarry and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter.

#Katie McGarry #walk the edge #Thunder Road #young adult #new adult #contemporary romance #book review #Teaser #Texas #playing catch up

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