#godzilla drawing in white board

[xpaintedladyx]

When you start writing multiple fanfictions at once...

Based off a draw the squad base. That’s me the writer in the back regretting my choices.

#writers block #writing problems #too many thoughts #myself #qrow branwen #RWBY #greed the avaricious #fma brotherhood #gundam #Godzilla #murdoc niccals #gorillaz #white board #draw the squad #inside jokes #my shitty doodles

[commandtower]

Godzilla Decklist Series: Biollante

Welcome to the first in a new decklist series here on Command Tower focusing on an ongoing project of mine. I’ve been a fan of Godzilla and kaiju movies for just as long as I’ve been into Magic, and so when the Godzilla series was first unveiled as part of the Ikoria set treatment, I was very excited. Since the set has come out, I’ve been in the process of building a Commander deck for each of the unique kaiju represented on a legendary creature card, and now that I have a few of them finished, I thought I’d share them here on the blog.

Today we’ll be looking at my decklist for Biollante, the kaiju version of the White-Black-Green legendary creature Nethroi. The antagonist kaiju of the 1989 film aptly titled Godzilla vs. Biollante, this creature is a man-made hybrid of Godzilla’s own cells and genetic information from a species of rose, and after being defeated in its original beautiful and melancholic Rose Form, it revives as a massive reptilian maw atop an enormous, misshapen mass of intertwined vines and roots. True to that idea, this deck utilizes Biollante’s unique mutation trigger to manipulate the graveyard and return a multitude of powerful creatures to the battlefield. By filling the yard with creatures that have zero power until they enter play, this deck can effectively bypass the restriction of its Commander’s ability and reanimate many more bodies and much more power than it might seem at first glance.

In the early turns, Biollante’s deck gets started by preparing the graveyard for her arrival. Cards like Jarad's Orders and Buried Alive quickly build up a presence of potential reanimations, and when backed up by early creatures like Fauna Shaman or Mindless Automaton that can pitch any higher-cost creatures trapped in your hand, it’s easy to get a head start on the later gameplan. Ideally, a card like Old Stickfingers or Wrenn and Seven will let you really get a leg up, quickly pushing for more value.

Because Biollante specifically looks at the power of the creatures in the graveyard, it’s possible to cheat the system a bit by utilizing cards that have zero power outside the battlefield. Cards such as Phantom Nishoba, Sekki, Seasons' Guide, and Multani are all powerful bodies that have zero power until they come into play, and so when Biollante looks at them in the yard, they don’t add anything to her total. As an added bonus, cards like these are amazing to mutate Biollante onto as well as she reaps the bonus of their +1/+1 counters or abilities that increase power.

Despite utilizing creatures that apply counters to themselves and each other, this deck isn’t really interested in manipulating those counters, so there are only a few pieces that interact with them once they’re in place. Most of the cards that do this are in here for other reasons, such as Yawgmoth's ability to draw cards and get creatures from play back into the yard or Kalonian Hydra and Ghave having zero power for Biollante's trigger. For the most part, the plan is to push for a lasting presence over moving the pieces around too much. Once the board is set up in this deck’s favor, it’s pretty easy to stay in the lead - traditional boardwipes are mostly ineffective against this list as Biollante can simply bring everything back again. Exile based wipes are a bigger problem, but the majority of them can be handled by a few creatures in the list that can sacrifice each other, allowing you to place your best options back in the yard for another round before they’re blown away. The new uberwipe Farewell is still a problem here, but if the deck gets set up quickly enough, it can deal with the players most likely to be running it to keep itself safe.

Overall, this is a fun and fast list that keeps coming back for more once things start going its way. It has the tools to defend itself simply by continuing to play to its gameplan, and its aggressive go-wide playstyle makes it fun to pop off with and watch the gears mesh into place. Biollante is one of my favorite of the Godzilla kaiju stable, and this deck really showcases her as the central piece of the puzzle.

COMMANDER

Biollante, Plant Beast Form [Nethroi, Apex of Death]

CREATURES

Ghave, Guru of Spores

Reyhan, Last of the Abzan

Grakmaw, Skyclave Ravager

Polukranos, Unchained

Old Stickfingers

Golgari Findbroker

Fiend Artisan

Faeburrow Elder

Phantom Nishoba

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Yorvo, Lord of Garenbrig

Toski, Bearer of Secrets

Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar

Sekki, Seasons' Guide

Birds of Paradise

Sylvan Caryatid

Fauna Shaman

Wood Elves

Farhaven Elf

Vizier of the Menagerie

Beast Whisperer

Cytoplast Root-Kin

Golgari Grave-Troll

Kalonian Hydra

Bane of Progress

Realm Seekers

Craterhoof Behemoth

Mindless Automaton

Solemn Simulacrum

Battra, Dark Destroyer [Dirge Bat]

Anguirus, Armored Killer [Gemrazer]

Necropanther

Boneyard Lurker

Migratory Greathorn

PLANESWALKERS

Wrenn and Seven

Vivien on the Hunt

MANA ARTIFACTS

Sol Ring

Talisman of Hierarchy

Talisman of Resilience

Talisman of Unity

Orzhov Signet

Golgari Signet

Selesnya Signet

Arcane Signet

SPELLS

Eerie Ultimatum

Abzan Charm

Despark

Anguished Unmaking

Jarad's Orders

Culling Ritual

Mirari's Wake

Vanquish the Horde

Demonic Tutor

Damn

Mythos of Nethroi

Buried Alive

Phyrexian Arena

Farseek

Life's Legacy

Eldritch Evolution

Krosan Grip

Skyshroud Claim

Return of the Wildspeaker

Rishkar's Expertise

LANDS

Indatha Triome

Murmuring Bosk

Sandsteppe Citadel

Command Tower

Godless Shrine

Shattered Sanctum

Vault of Champions

Isolated Chapel

Fetid Heath

Tainted Field

Overgrown Tomb

Deathcap Glade

Undergrowth Stadium

Woodland Cemetery

Twilight Mire

Tainted Wood

Temple Garden

Canopy Vista

Overgrown Farmland

Bountiful Promenade

Sunpetal Grove

Wooded Bastion

Krosan Verge

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire

BASIC LANDS

Plains (x3)

Swamp (x3)

Forest (x5)

#wall of text #2022 #magic #magic the gathering #magic: the gathering #mtg #magic tcg #card games #wizards #wizards of the coast #magic cards #tabletop gaming #commander #edh #social gaming #decklist #decklists #commander deck #edh decklist #abzan #godzilla #godzilla series #biollante #multicolor #multicolored #ikoria #godzilla mtg #tokusatsu #kaiju #nethroi

[anotherdndblog]

Fictober Day 16 But Late Tho: 17- “give me a minute or an hour”

Title: Coffee Beans and Silver Strings

Chapter 5: The Gap Between Us

Words: 909

Fandom: TAZ Amnesty

Characters/Pairing: Sternclay

Rating: T

Tags: Canon divergence, coffee shop AU, mall AU, Barclay is still bigfoot tho, idiots to lovers

Summary: Barclay and Stern go on their big date 

Author's note: I’m obsessed with Sternclay at the moment. 

Link to AO3 

____________________________________

Friday. 8 o’clock. Regal theater. Barclay was a half an hour early, completely beside himself with nerves. He was wearing his signature look--blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a red plaid jacket topped off with a little beanie because it was a frigid night in late November. Stern has never seen Barclay outside of his apron--and while some little anxious voice in the back of Barclay’s head told him Stern was either going to not recognize him, or ditch him, he knew it was just the nerves talking. 

Barclay stared down at the tickets in his hands--which he had already purchased because they decided previously that they would be watching that new Godzilla movie, at Stern’s request. Guess it wasn’t just cryptids he was into. Barclay didn’t really get it--he didn’t understand the fascination humans had with all that junk. When it came down to it, and they were really faced with the things they depict in those movies, fear was the response every time, followed by disgust, anger, and finally, violence. Barclay had seen it enough times to know that was true. 

Stern came running up to him, 20 minutes ahead of schedule, waving enthusiastically. “Barclay! Hey! You made it! Should we buy the tickets?” Stern was wearing a very obvious Godzilla t-shirt and some black jeans, with a lined denim jacket over and a light grey scarf.

Barclay did his best to not blush. It was almost cute--the t-shirt, that it. And Stern. Definitely Stern. He held up the tickets. “Already done. I wanted to get them early. Assigned seating and all.”

Stern looked from the tickets back up to Barclay. “You didn’t have to do that! I could have paid!” His bottom lip pouted slightly, and his nose was ever so slightly pink from the cold. 

Barclay chuckled. “It’s fine, I wanted to. Should we get some popcorn?” He pointed to the theater and began walking toward the doors. 

Stern huffed. “Fine, but I’m buying the food and drinks!” 

Barclay laughed and adjusted his beanie. “Ok, ok. Deal.” 

The pair entered the theater and went straight for concessions to get a large popcorn and some drinks for each of them. Stern got a soda, where Barclay opted for some iced tea, and they were off. It didn’t take long for them to find their seats and settle in. They were early, and the commercials hadn’t even started yet, so Stern struck up a conversation. 

“Have you ever seen a Godzilla movie, Barclay?” He sipped at his drink. 

Barclay shook his head. “No, it’s not really my thing, but give me a minute--or an hour--of a good film and you can usually get me on board.”

Stern’s face twisted in confusion. “If it’s not your thing, why agree to the movie?” 

Barclay shrugged. “It may not be my thing, but it is yours. And you were clearly excited about it. Besides, I want to get to know you better.” 

Stern turned to face Barclay, gently placing his hand on top of Barclay’s. Barclay’s heart jumped in surprise, and maybe he did too, but then Stern was looking deep into his eyes and he couldn’t do anything but sit there and look back. “I want to get to know you too, Barclay.”  

Barclay smiled awkwardly, a desperate attempt to hide the amount he was currently freaking the fuck out. “Well, here’s the first thing you’ll learn tonight: I’m not that big into monster films, but I do enjoy watching them from a film standpoint.” 

“We can see a different movie.” 

“Nope, we’re already here, and you want to see this one.” 

“But-” 

“Nope!”

“Barclay!”

“Joseph.” Barclay stiffened instantly. That, he realized, was the first time he had ever called Stern anything other than, well, Stern. He blushed and looked away, clearing his throat. “Like I said, this movie is fine. I’m curious to see what draws people to it so much.” 

Stern eyes Barclay slightly, not looking bothered by the fact that Barclay used his first name. He leaned back in his chair. “You can call me Joe if you want.” 

A smile played on Barclay’s lips, and he made brief eye contact with Stern. “Joe? Alright then. Joe, it is.”  

The theater lights dimmed, and the commercials began. Barclay settled in for an interesting night. 

Stern was at the edge of his seat the whole movie, staring at the screen with awe. Apparently, it was good. Or Stern seemed to think so. They were walking idly around the mall, Barclay listening to Stern rant about everything the movie did right--and everything they got wrong. 

“I just wish there was more flair, overall, I mean, this is Godzilla!” Stern threw his hands in the air dramatically, and Barclay chuckled. “What?” Stern lowered his arms a little, embarrassed. 

“Nothing, nothing, I just think it’s cute that you’re so into this.” Barclay turned bright, bright red. “I mean, nice! It’s nice that you’re so into this.”

Stern blinked a couple of times, then grinned evilly. “Barclay! Do you think I’m cute?”  

Barclay hid his head with his hands. “Oh, god, I’m never going to live that down.” 

Stern nudged him gently, his laughter filling the mall hallway. “You don’t have to.” He shrugged, his fingers brushing against Barclay’s hand. “Besides, I think you’re pretty cute yourself.” 

Barclay’s breath caught in his throat as their hands intertwined. 

Cute. 

Joseph Stern just called him cute. 

Barclay never wanted that moment to end.

#fictober20 #taz amnesty #sternclay #stern x barclay #agent stern #taz barclay #my fics

[gojidraws]

Godzilla Ultima drawing that i made today.

#godzilla singular point #gojira #godzilla ultima #godzilla sp #godzilla #godzilla drawing #godzilla drawing in white board

[k00234425]

16/10/19

Research of Godzilla 1985 movie directed by R.J Kizer and Koji Hashimoto.

Especially looking at camera angles, panning shots, framing, suspense, starting scenes and setting scene.

I printed out screenshots of different scenes that I would like to incorporate into my own video, that I will draw out with my own character of Toothless (Makra) and then make my own story board in preparation for the shoot.

I am using this film because the original Godzilla (1954) is black and white and isn't as clear. This movie doesn't have amazing graphics either but it's colourised which helps a little when trying to make out what's happening.

I chose these older movies instead of the new ones as they don't rely so heavily on CGI and special effects. The set was built in real life and the monster is a man in a suit. This rough-around-the-edges approach is more favourable for me, as my video would have many of the same rough-around-the-edges qualities.

[michaelmyersmalewife]

LEVIATHAN | 14. The Coronation | MASTERLIST

words: 5k+

A/N: early chapter update because some family business came up so i'll be pretty busy for all of friday; with that aside, i cant believe we're already at this point,,,it all went by so fast and i cant wait to share the ending with you next monday !!

you can also support this fic on wattpad & ao3

Madison watched as her parents began to repair the ORCA.

It had been a long time since they had been together, and even longer since they had worked for a common purpose. It was weird, seeing them like this. It reminded her of how it was before - before they lost Andrew, when her father was sober, and before her mother lost touch with reality. They were becoming almost completely in sync, both working like crazy but somehow not getting in each other's way.

"You sure about this?" her mom asked.

"It's the only way to save him," her dad replied. "We fix it, get on the Osprey, and draw that thing away from Godzilla. Buy him time to get back on his feet."

Her dad connected a wire only to be met with a sharp snap of electricity. The ORCA's cracked screen flickered on for a second before turning back off. He cursed, looking at the device's inner workings with a confused gaze.

"Well this is new."

"I, uh, made a few changes while you were gone."

The Regulator, impatient, pushed her way through them, hands flying to work on the ORCA.

"Could you patch that cable there?" she said, eyes not leaving the jumbled mess of machinery as her mother joined her.

"And who are you?" her dad asked incredulously.

"That's not importa - no, the red one not the white!"

"Okay, okay!"

"You sure this thing is gonna work?" one of the Monarch soldiers asked.

No one bothered to answer. In fact, they were so caught up in their work that they probably hadn't even heard him. Her mother held up a piece of wire for the Regulator to solder, and Emma's hands flew straight for it like a machine.

"If you replace this five-pin, I can reset the transmitter and everything should work as normally as possible." the Regulator said.

No one had a chance to say anything in response before the ground began shaking again.

Behind them, Ghidorah was already on top of Godzilla, his heads snaking around his body. The heads at his side wrapped around him like coils while the center head bit into his neck. The other two followed suit, and with every bite Godzilla's glow grew weaker while Ghidorah's wounds closed up before vanishing completely. That was when Madison saw Ghidorah lift him up, and she could literally see the dragon absorbing the titan's life, Godzilla's internal fire glowing down all three of his throats. Godzilla let out a terrible, mournful cry. He was dying.

Hold on, big guy, she thought.

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast." Jodie said in a fearful tone.

"Are you good to go?" her dad asked.

The Regulator nodded. She set the solder, her mother sparked it, and her father flipped the switch.

"That's it!" he said, relief in his voice. "That's it."

Overhead, an Osprey descended toward them, floodlights illuminating the wreckage they stood amongst.

Her mom turned to her, gently holding her head in her hands and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Madison wasn't sure how to feel about the sudden act of affection, but there was too much that needed to be said, and there wasn't time for all of it.

"I love you, Maddie," her mother said. "I'm sorry."

All of the hurt, her feelings of betrayal, felt like a knot in Madison's stomach. A single sorry couldn't undo all that had been done, but it felt a little better now. It was a start.

"I love you too." she replied.

Madison knew that it was never going to be the same again. She could never go back to that kid who thought her mother had it all together, knew everything, understood what was best for everyone. No more than she thought of her father as perfect. But that was for the best, right? To finally live in reality and not some idealistic world she had created for herself.

The Osprey touched down, almost immediately her father ushered her toward it. Shortly after, Jodie and the two Monarch soldiers carried the wounded third aboard the rescue craft. Her mother held back, joining the Regulator in fiddling with the ORCA.

"C'mon, Emma, let's go!" her father shouted.

"Take her!" she yelled back, still messing with the controls. "I still have to activate it."

Her father gave her a skeptical look.

"I'm right behind you, just go!" she insisted before turning to the Regulator, the taller woman firmly grasping her wrist.

"Mom?" Madison called after her.

Before she could realize what was happening, Madison felt herself being lifted in her father's arms, suddenly finding herself coming closer to the Osprey. Over his shoulder, she saw her mom and the Regulator activate the ORCA, its heartbeat starting once again.

"Mom!"

That was when she saw the Regulator give her mother a strange look, shaking her head so lightly that Madison hardly noticed it. She mouthed something to her mother before finally she let go of the ORCA, taking a few hesitant steps backward before running toward the Osprey. Madison felt her mother's hand press itself against her back, fingers squeezing the fabric of her jacket.

In the distance, she heard a shriek. One by one Ghidorah's heads detached themselves from Godzilla, dropping his limp body to the ground and swung around, searching for the source of the sound they had come to hate. The only remaining threat to his rule.

Elena froze mid-step, just as she was about to board the Osprey.

All three of the monster's heads were trained on them, and with a terrible speed that shook the ground, he knocked down everything that was stopping him from getting to the ORCA. While they had managed to buy time for Godzilla, they were starting to run out of time themselves. Elena had already been face-to-face with this thing enough times to know that she didn't want to be in that position again. Ever. But while every inch of her body told her to run and hide, she felt nothing but hatred for the creature. Hatred and rage.

Fight it, she thought, thinking of Godzilla even though she knew there was no way for him to hear her. Madison believes in you, and goddammit so do I.

But that was when Ghidorah began to gallop, leaving buildings as nothing but piles of rubble.

"Maddie, thank god." she heard a woman with short black hair say as she lead them aboard the Osprey.

A white-haired man with glasses herded them inside before giving the pilot a thumbs-up. As they each buckled down, Elena almost did a double-take as a woman with long black hair pulled aside in a braid sat across from her, right next to the short-haired woman. They looked exactly alike, and they even seemed to mimic each other's movements. Looking around, taking a mental head count, Elena's brows furrowed.

One of them was missing. It didn't take long for her to realize it was the Regulator. Had she been left behind during the rush to be rescued?

"Hold on!" she yelled to the pilot.

Unbuckling herself, she moved to the front of the Osprey. Out of its doors, she saw that Ghidorah's pace was only quickening, more full of rage than ever. Elena's skin began to prickle.

"We gotta lift off, now." a woman in a military uniform responded. If Elena was remembering right, she wore the marks of a colonel.

The pilot obeyed the order from their superior, and the Osprey began to rise. But the Regulator still wasn't on board. Elena moved over to the door, reaching her arms out so that she could pull her up when she got there. She still wasn't moving, glued to the ORCA's side.

"Just grab it!" she yelled over the Osprey's whirring.

It was then that the Regulator's eyes met hers, and as she glanced back at the dragon barreling toward them, maws gaping and ready to tear the Osprey asunder - with them inside it - Elena had made a brutal realization.

If they stopped their lift-off to wait for her to get on board, none of them were going to make it. Even if they managed to get just a few yards off the ground, it wouldn't even matter if the ORCA was on board. Ghidorah would follow its sound wherever it went, and Elena knew that he was faster than their sorry little Osprey.

And if the ORCA was turned off, he'd follow them anyway - or rather, he'd follow her and Madison. And then he would return to finish off Godzilla.

She saw the Regulator's lips form words, she saw the smallest of smiles appear on her face. Sad and serene all at once.

Elena understood.

Walking away from the slowly closing door, she watched as the Regulator stepped into the jeep that Madison's parents had arrived in. As she drove away into the ruins of Boston, the Osprey rose higher. And as she suspected, Ghidorah turned to follow her, seemingly forgetting about the Osprey altogether.

Give him hell, she thought.

Sitting back down, Madison turned to her.

"Is she..?"

"She's setting things right."

_____

"It's alright," she said, knowing they couldn't possibly hear it over the sound of the Osprey and Ghidorah's stampede. "Just let me have this."

For so long, she had kept her feelings locked away where they could never interfere. Follow orders or be discarded. That was her life, the only life she was allowed to know. But standing in the ruins of the human city, it all came back to her with a frightening ease.

Never in her life had she had the courage - the willingness - to act. But this world, it stood apart from the other innocent planets she had been complacent in destroying. It stood a chance. And she'd be damned if she wasted the opportunity to right her wrongs, no matter the cost.

She saw Elena nod with that same serious face she always wore, brows knit together. Only this time, she bore a lopsided smile as a look a realization grew on her face.

Though no words had been exchanged, the Regulator had seen the same thought in Emma's eyes, but it was something she couldn't allow. She couldn't imagine being the one to live while someone who had been tricked so deviously into an unforgivable crime was the one to die. It was just the next logical step. She knew no one would stop her. Why would they? Up until then she was just another pawn in the Controller's game, a little toy soldier that could easily be replaced. And she was perfectly fine with the thought of dying. She had found a purpose, something she had chosen to do on her own terms.

She just wished she could've thanked Elena for that opportunity.

Taking the ORCA into her hands, she rushed to the car parked just outside where Madison's house had been. Laying the humming machine on the passenger seat, she started the engine and slammed her foot on the gas.

Taking a quick glance back, she saw that her plan was working. Ghidorah had taken a sharp turn, dismissing the Osprey and coming directly after her. His eyes shined in the dark, his usual draconic smirks replaced with furiously bared teeth.

Not this time, she thought. Never again.

She didn't know how far she would get, but she hoped that it would be far enough. The Osprey was already close to vanishing under the cover of smoke and ash that wafted through the air and into the clouds. Hoping that it would be enough was all she could do at that point.

But none of that would matter if Godzilla didn't wake up.

Was he dead? The last she had seen of him, he hadn't been moving, limp like a three-hundred-foot ragdoll. If he was, there was nothing they could do. Ghidorah was unstoppable - not even the Controller had power over the dragon. At the very least, if Elena and the rest survived, maybe they could find some way to stop him from tearing the world apart. Even though a part of her knew she wouldn't be around to see it all carried out. But she was undoing some part of the terrible damage she had allowed to take place, and though it couldn't possibly atone for the countless worlds before this, it was the most she could do. And that was alright with her.

The Regulator dodged piles of rubble, swerving down roads that weren't blocked by what used to be buildings, trying to stretch the time was surely running out.

She couldn't stop herself from looking out of the car's mirror, and just as she sped down a narrow path of skyscrapers she saw him. He was right behind her, no more than a meter or two away. His trilling shook her bones, and with each thud from his galloping the car jumped a few inches off of the ground. He was getting faster, as his middle head stretched farther from between his brothers and snapped his jaws at the car, barely missing her by mere feet.

Spinning the wheel, she went careening down a pile of burning debris before entering a flattened area. It was the end of the line.

At that moment, Ghidorah pounced into the air, wings kicking up smoldering rubble and knocking over a building with one misplaced flap of his wings as he hovered close behind. Her face bunched up into an expression of pure frustration as she pushed the pedal all the way down.

As he glided, the left head shot a bolt of lightning her way, striking the pavement just beside her. With an annoyed shriek, the right head tried next, toppling over the top half of a skyscraper as it fell right in front of her. She didn't have the chance to swerve out of the way as the middle head opened his jaws, sending a bolt of yellow lightning directly at the small, banged-up car that scrambled down the blocked road like a trapped mouse.

Everything flashed white.

The Regulator closed her eyes, let go of the wheel, and took a deep breath as a pain unlike anything she had ever felt jolted through her body, twisting every nerve and lighting up her skin like a match. It was like being shot with one of the stunners dialed to a hundred.

But the agony didn't last long. As it faded, she felt herself spin along with the car, rolling, bounding until finally it became propped against something. All she could hear was the sound of fire crackling all around her and the beat of Ghidorah's wings.

Opening her eyes, she found that she had been completely thrown from the car, pieces of glass and gravel imbedded in her skin. Not that it meant much to her. Everything was hurting, but everything was numb at the same time. But that was alright. It was just fine. Rolling over, she stared up at the Golden Demise that crouched low to where she lay, sniffing and snarling.

His signature sneer was back, something self-righteous and proud glinting in all of his eyes. But there was nothing about him that could frighten her in that moment, for there was nothing else he could possibly do to her.

Behind him, her eyes could barely make out a reddish-orange glow growing in intensity from behind him. It was different from the burning city around her. It was alive. Setting her head back down on the gravel, she smiled.

"Long..live....the king." she breathed.

Time to restore balance.

_____

As the Osprey rose above the battlefield, Jodie's gaze tracked the jeep where the strange woman inside vanished behind the thick cover of smoke or piles of debris before reappearing.

She hadn't known who she was, but she had seen her face somewhere before. It didn't quite click with her where at first, but as she watched the little car race out from behind a crushed building, it suddenly came to her. She was the merc that from Antarctica, the one that was holding an unconscious Elena. Why she had a sudden change of heart, she didn't know. But she did know that she had helped Madison and Elena, and that was enough for her to silently cheer her on.

That is, until Ghidorah swooped down on her like a hammer, blasting the jeep with his lightning. Energy wracked all around it, and the car went flying. After seeing Ghidorah drop low to the ground, heads slithering toward where the jeep had stopped, Jodie looked away.

"Jesus," Stanton exclaimed, pointing over her shoulder. "Look."

She didn't want to turn back to the inevitable demise of some stranger, but something about his tone made her eyes follow to where he was pointing. Jodie suppressed a gasp, hand flying to cover her mouth.

She was half-expecting to see Godzilla rising from the crater, but instead it was something else, something smaller but far, far faster than the old lizard ever was. Hovering low, wings pressed flat against his body as he dove, was Rodan.

Like a flurry of dancing flames, he burst out the side of a building, barreling into Ghidorah at full force and knocking him off of his path. With a screech, he swooped up, spreading his wings as he came back around like a boomerang.

Ghidorah was on his full defensive now, heads swiveling around to prepare for another attack. His left head wasn't so lucky, as Rodan flared his talons, digging into the dragon's head and hooking himself onto his horns. The left head let out a shriek as the flying reptile's claws dug into his eyes before the right and center heads focused their lightning into a concentrated beam of energy, shooting the firebird square in the chest.

He drew back, landing on the top of a half-demolished building. Squinting through the smoke, Jodie saw that the injury he had obtained during his tussle with Mothra was still glowing, but not even that stopped him from going back at the dragon. The center head let loose another bolt while the left thrashed in pain, trilling and screaming as his brothers fought in his stead.

Stretching out his neck to take a bite out of Rodan's leg, he dodged, weaving out of the way before he banked hard, aiming for the right head like a ravenous hawk. Ghidorah was fast, but Rodan was faster. With one quick swoop, his talons found purchase on the right head's snout, digging deep into his mouth and clawing up toward his eyes. But he couldn't get far, as he felt the center head's teeth wrap around his leg.

With one strong tug, the center head ripped Rodan from his attack, throwing him into a building, shattered glass cascading down on both of them.

Ghidorah looked down at the bird with a burning fury, lightning building in their necks as the center head nipped at his brothers, tugging the left one by his horns to correct his aim. As each of their maws opened for the finishing blow, Jodie saw something.

It was far behind the dragon, but the space where Godzilla's body lay was now an empty crater, smoking pouring from the ignited rubble within. Jodie stood up, bracing one arm against the Osprey's half-open door.

"There.." she found herself muttering, too wrapped up in the scene playing out before her.

Everyone's gaze followed to where she was pointing. Behind her, Madison was leaning out of her seat with wide eyes.

Massively wounded, Godzilla had pulled himself up and out of the crater, staggering toward Ghidorah as the dragon prepared to take out the already injured titan below him. His steps were slow, uncertain, but as he waded through the remains of Boston his strides built up in strength. And as he regained his power, he was glowing a bright red now, pulsing with an inner radiance that leaked through his scales like lava, light spilling from his eyes as if his body was the core of a star about to go supernova. All around him, everything within his immediate radius began to melt, the heat waves coming off of his body distorting the air around him. Rearing his head back, Godzilla roared.

Madison had thought she had seen true power back in Antarctica, when Ghidorah had first awakened with all the bottled rage of an angry god. But looking at Godzilla, the dragon seemed far from powerful. Finally, she heard his voice right at the front of her mind, and she couldn't help but grin.

Checkmate, asshole

It was then that Ghidorah's center head whipped around, hissing as the rest of his brothers turned their attention to the massive heatwave behind them. Rodan took his chance to slip out from under his talons, flapping his wings to get as high into the air as he could.

With an insulted trill, Ghidorah's middle head spit out a stream of lightning, but the titan just took it, hardly even flinching. He continued stomping forward, the bright red pulsing around him growing brighter and stronger. The dragon backed away, taking a single tentative step back as Godzilla's pace was unimpeded. Ghidorah, unwilling to back down completely, let out three simultaneous shrieks, flaring their horns in defiance as his necks struck out like snakes.

Despite his wounds, the titan never slowed, only stopping to curl into himself as the pulsing around him grew so bright Madison thought he was about to explode. And in a way, he did. The scutes on his back crackled with light, blue streaks mixing with the thermonuclear red. The pulses running up and down his spine became so fast they were blinding. She had to shield her eyes when the pulses condensed, expanding into a massive wave of radioactive energy.

For a brief second, squinting through the light that filtered between her fingers, Madison could have sworn she saw something within the wave, something like gossamer wings flying out of Godzilla's back and toward Ghidorah. Mothra's chittering cry echoed in the back of her mind.

The wave phased through Ghidorah, knocking him down as it burned straight through the thin flesh of his wings as if they were nothing but paper. In a single moment the dragon's wings had been stripped down to the bone. Ghidorah let out an agonizing scream.

On his back, he braced himself up, focusing all three heads on the titan that still lumbered ever closer and letting loose three concentrated beams of lightning. But that did nothing to stop him, if anything, it was only fueling him.

Godzilla released another wave of radiation, and as it expanded around them, the center head recoiled, the screams of his brothers filling the air as the left head was stripped of his scales, sinew and muscle burning away until there was nothing left but bone. The right head disintegrated completely, wilting like a flower from Godzilla's atomic radiance. Their cries died out in an instant as Ghidorah slumped to the ground, writhing like a snake. It was odd, seeing the dragon so small compared to Godzilla. Ghidorah's remaining head screamed.

Taking a step forward, Godzilla's foot collided with his chest, caving it in as the bomb within the titan set off, creating a blinding dome of light over what was once Boston.

Madison's eyes slammed shut as she felt her parents shield her from the light, desperately hoping that they were out of range. As the shock wave from the blast expanded, the Osprey rattled something within the craft sparking and nearly shutting off before starting again, getting swept up into a thermal and continuing its retreat. Everything was still a little shaky, but at least they weren't dead.

Godzilla? Madison opened her eyes.

She was greeted with a mushroom cloud lifting from the skyline, or what remained of it. Gradually, the cloud began to lift before clearing below. Through the smoke, she could see that almost all of Boston was gone, a wasteland of charred ruins. Streets were burning, the steel beams that held up its skyscrapers were twisted and melted.

Her eyes narrowed, trying to discern where exactly the two titans were only to find no sign of either. Had they been destroyed? She could still feel his connection, it was waning just a bit, but it was there. He had to have made it. He had to.

Then, something shifted beneath the wreckage, something big. As the thing emerged, Madison waited for Godzilla's signature dorsal spines, but instead a pair of golden horns appeared, followed by a draconic face. Her stomach dropped.

Ghidorah's head continued to rise from the smoke, further and further until she saw something..weird. His neck didn't look right, as it wasn't the slender serpentine neck she was used to. It was then that she understood, as Godzilla rose above the ruins with Ghidorah's only remaining head in his mouth.

Madison flinched when the dragon's eyes snapped open, seeming to stare just past her. Following his gaze, she saw Elena. The two were locked in one last stare-down. The woman felt a sharp chill run down her spine, but she stared back, jaw tightening as she watched him desperately try to wriggle free from Godzilla's jaws. Shaking it like an alligator would, Godzilla shook the head from side to side until a familiar blue glow built up in his mouth. The whirring from his atomic breath grew quicker and quicker until Ghidorah's entire head was glowing electric blue. With one last trill, Ghidorah's head was ripped apart as the titan's fire erupted through him and into the air.

As the blast died out, Godzilla jittered, shaking his head as a little bolt of lightning crackled in his mouth. He turned his head toward the Osprey.

Told ya everything would be fine, Madison heard him say.

She tried to hide the smile forming along her face. No one else in the Osprey seemed as amused.

Godzilla had won. They had one. But the world was changed forever. So many cities had been left in ruins, and even more people had died. Despite feeling a glimmer of relief, Madison knew that things weren't just going to bounce back to the way they were. Maybe they never would.

But maybe that was as it should be.

If her mother was right, and with Ghidorah gone, the world could rebuild. The places ravaged by titans would flourish, and maybe someday the smoking remains of Boston would become a sprawling forest. She found herself not minding that at all.

Though, she had to admit, she hadn't wanted it to happen this way. But there was no going back now. It was the dawn of a new world, or the return of a very old one. Hopefully, she thought as she huddled closer to her parents, resting her head on her father's shoulder, they could all find out how they fit into this new era. Together.

Jodie jumped, relaxing after finding that it was Gill who had bumped her arm with her own. She gave her a half-smile, reaching for her hand. Smiling back, she grabbed it, squeezing as they stared at the morning sun poking out from the horizon.

Seeing Godzilla silhouetted by its rays, she thought back to what Chen had said about dragons and redemption. Maybe there was something to that. Sure, they might still have a long way to go to reach the coexistence from Serizawa's vision, but something about this battle felt like a reset. A new start.

"Good thing he's on our side." Stanton remarked.

"For now." Chen replied.

Madison bristled at that comment. He wouldn't turn on them, right? She knew that humans haven't exactly had the best history with Godzilla, but he had fought on their side.

Right?

"Look.." she whispered, unsure if she had said it out loud or to the lizard.

As the smoke faded away into the wind, everyone in the Osprey saw what had grabbed the girl's attention. Even Godzilla seemed to turn to where she was pointing.

Behind him was another titan, one that resembled a cross between a woolly mammoth and a ground sloth, complete with long, sweeping tusks that hung low to the ground. It was ambling slowly, and nothing about it seemed aggressive. Blowing out a puff of air from his nostrils, Godzilla continued to turn as two other titans - one with six long legs and the other resembling a bull with a mountain on its back - continued stalking toward him as well.

But there was more.

Jodie recognized them all, or at least most of them. A hunchbacked MUTO was ambling toward the group, followed by a flock of leafwings native to Skull Island. And quickly gaining on the herd was a Titanus Anguirus, Mokele-Mbembe, Kumonga, Sekhmet, Varan, Kamacuras...dozens of titans with names she couldn't remember fast enough all converging in one place. It struck her as odd. Ghidorah must have called them in, but his cavalry was much too late. Godzilla's gaze roamed over them all as he continued to turn, taking them all in. Sizing them up.

Then, Rodan had swung back around, having saved himself from Godzilla's meltdown. He landed before him, letting out a screech as his wings outstretched toward Godzilla. The firebird didn't sound defeated, or afraid. It almost sounded like he was genuflecting. Like he was in the presence of royalty.

But Godzilla didn't seem too trusting, and rightfully so.

Battered and bruised, the titan was still ready to fight. Letting out a hot puff of air from his nostrils, he snarled. Rodan seemed taken aback, pausing for a moment before laying his wings on the ground in submission. He was bowing.

And one by one, the other titans followed suit, each bowing in their own way.

The sun's first rays filtered from behind him, almost seeming to cast him in a golden halo of light.

This planet does not belong to us, Jodie thought, watching as the titans welcomed their new king. It was something she often heard among her peers, a quote from one of Monarch's earliest founding members - Bill Randa. And now, looking out at the primordial scene before her, she couldn't agree more.

"This is Godzilla's world." Jodie said. "We just live in it."

Godzilla threw back his head and roared until the heavens shook.

#godzilla #king of the monsters #godzilla king of the monsters #kotm #godzilla fanfic #leviathanfic

[theliterateape]

Why Bird Box Is A Great Horror Flick

By Don Hall

Great art asks questions and lets the audience come up with the answers.

I loved Hereditary. Donnie Smith, my brilliant friend in L.A., hated it. The film has that love it/hate it vibe pretty much across the board. I believe that it’s the ending. People were way into the dread and the scares and the general direction things were going. They loved the performances. They hated the ending because it explained the sacrificial lamb from the perspective of the lamb concept with a defined monster — a demon. Like Stephen King’s IT, where Pennywise turns out to be a big fucking spider, which sucks balls, the build up followed with disappointment because it was more fun to theorize what what causing all the mayhem rather than have it told to them poorly.

I loved Get Out. I think everyone on the planet loved Get Out. Rather than have the cause for the scares be obfuscated, however, the monsters of Get Out are obvious. It’s white people. Not too much of a strain on the imagination and no big surprises once you’ve figured it out, which is almost the very moment they introduce the parents.

I’d argue that neither film fits in the genre as one of the best because the best horror films are allegories that can be spun in several directions. No answer to the question “Who are the Monsters?” is given. 

✶

I remember clearly when I first saw The Blair Witch Project. 

A friend of mine had just been on a trip to Los Angeles. He was living in an old porn studio in Edgewater, in a back room, and invited my wife and I to come over and watch this VHS copy of a documentary he had been given while there. I didn’t know anything about the film because the tape was part of the viral marketing campaign and it hadn’t been released yet.

Jen and I headed over. His apartment was in the back on the second floor. We walked up the inlet stairs into what was a cobweb infused dark room filled with old film equipment. In the light, I imagine it would be fine — just clutter — but in the dark, it was ominous and a little weird. 

We sat down, cracked some beers and he put the VHS copy in the machine. The television was small, maybe 20-inches, and we watched this bizarre thing, and we freaked out just a little. The movie provided no explanation for what happened and it felt real. Walking through that dark chaos to get to our car on the street after midnight was fucking skin-crawling. While the zeitgeist of the movie is the gimmick of the fake documentary style, what sticks with me is that I still don’t know what happened to the protagonists. The film refuses to answer the questions it poses.

Night of the Living Dead is the first zombie movie, but I’ve read a billion think pieces that suppose the zombies are a stand-in for the Vietnam War, racism, consumerism, conformism — the list is long and fun and forces a repeated viewing if you are really into getting in the intellectual weeds of these sorts of films. I enjoy The Walking Dead but not because of the zombies. The Walking Dead uses zombies as an apocalyptic  endgame to explore the real monsters: us. How societies are organized, what motivates democracy or totalitarianism is all in the journey of Rick and his band of survivors.

Godzilla is about WWII or our fascination with the atom bomb or the environment. Dracula is about sex or disease or the buttoned up morality of the Victorians. Videodrome is about the fears of the (at the time) new world of videotape, the pernicious dark corners of technology, or just a generalized anxiety of Debra Harry. The Mist isn’t about the monsters flying through the fog but about the monsters we become when faced with an unexplained horror (which could be spun into an argument that the mist is the internet, yeah?).

The list can go on forever but the essential point is that the best of the horror genre refuse to define exactly what the monster terrorizing the flawed humans is and allows the viewer to play the game. M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is not a bad movie until it is discovered that you defeat the aliens with water and then the whole feels like a waste of the energy enjoying the scares. He answers the question and we hate it.

Bird Box is completely open to debate. 

I watched it at my folks’ house over the holidays. There had been so much Faceborg squawk about it, I kind of had to sit down and subject myself to it. I loved it. I loved the question of what the monsters were, I loved Sandra Bullock playing a wholly unlikeable but understandable character, I loved Malkovich playing a wholly unlikeable but understandable character. I loved the immediacy, the ideas that what people were seeing that caused them to either kill themselves or become cultish believers forcing it on others were very personal. Christ, I even loved the concept behind the title.

What I loved the most was this:

Netflix's Bird Box Is Really About How White People Don't Want to See Racism

“If you haven’t seen or read the viral social media discussions of the Netflix thriller Bird Box, you’re missing one of the greatest race allegory movies that has ever been released in the last part of December 2018. It’s about how white people suddenly realize racism is spreading across the world and they can only escape its wrath if they refuse to acknowledge it because...”

And this:

Bird Box is the First Great Monster Movie About this Poisonous Invention

“The monsters of Bird Box are social media. Seriously.

Think of Bird Box as a new entry into the old-fashioned 1950s monster movie genre, but instead of the midcentury fears about the Cold War, nuclear weapons, and communism we’re exploring the New Cold War and fears of what social media is doing to our brains. By putting on the blindfolds, the characters of Bird Box are protected from the monsters, which are actually the influences of social media.”

And this:

Bird Box's Ending & Monsters Explained

“Based on the fact that the entities seem to have supernatural knowledge of people's weaknesses (they know to call out to Malorie in her sister's voice, and in Tom's), and Gary's drawings of them, Charlie's theory that the monsters are demonic in nature seems pretty sound. This is also reinforced by the fact that birds are able to sense their presence, since in many mythologies, cultures and religions birds are associated with psychopomps — spirits that guide people from the land of the living to the land of the dead.”

Are the monsters an allegory for racism? Maybe. Maybe not. But watching the film with that lens gives the argument merit. It isn’t what I saw but I completely dig the perspective, and it makes me re-see the whole experience in a different way. Are the monsters a metaphor for social media? Could be. Whether or not I am compelled to believe that argument, it’s awesome that there are enough clues in the film that can be interpreted that way to make it credible and fun.

I understand our current need for answers and I understand our almost mania for those answers to conform to our political angst. We want movies like Get Out to justify our outrage further. The best films of the horror genre don’t give us answers. That’s why we keep mining the zombie trope, and the giant atomic monster trope, and the fear of technology that was started by Mary Shelley endures in films like every fucking Jurassic Park.

Great Art asks questions and lets the audience come up with the answers.

#film #horror #Bird Box #Get Out #Hereditary #The Blair Witch Project #Art

[mooifyourecows]

What kinda of tattoos would the Open Tab Squad have?

Yo. Let’s see. (I’m slightly drunk so I am probably gonna forget some people but shhhhhh…..)

Kuroo would dead ass just have Kenma’s name on his hip with like little hearts and flowers around it. He’s had it since high school and showed it to everyone like, “Yo, look at my sick new ink.” And no one had the heart to shatter his “I’m totally straight” soul into dust so just kinda went along with it like, “Yo, yeah, Kuroo that’s totally sick and not gay at all.” Like… Dude… you’re so gay. How did you never fucking notice.

Bokuto has the Tootsie Pop owl on his ass. But also something really cool like a badass angel or some shit on his back. Maybe some tribals on his beautiful biceps… Mmmmm

Oikawa said that the only thing he’d ever allow someone tattoo onto his body is his own damn portrait, and Iwaizumi didn’t want to be known as the dude dating the narcissist so he forbade him to have it done. But then a few years later, he got really drunk and Hanamaki and Matsukawa dragged him off to get a pink dolphin with butterfly wings on his wrist. When he went crying to Iwaizumi, he kicked Makki’s and Mattsun’s asses, bought Oikawa an expensive watch that hid the tattoo and then took him to get it covered up once it had healed. (He replaced it with a peony and Iwaizumi’s name.) (he wears the watch on the other wrist now.)

Iwaizumi has had Oikawa’s birthday in Roman Numerals on his left bicep since high school graduation. (Also Godzilla scales breaking through the skin of his right shoulder.)

Hanamaki’s entire back is a huge Yakuza-esque koi fish. Also dickbutt on his ankle.

Matsukawa has “Ph.” tattooed next to his dick for the sole purpose of being able to use the line, “Wanna see my Ph.D?” as a proposition for sex.

Kenma has the Hylian crest on his right forearm, Majora’s mask on his left shoulder blade, the Triforce on the back of his neck, and a half sleeve of various characters from Nintendo games.

Akaashi has Bokuto’s name because he’s been hella thirsty since puberty first struck. He got it when Kuroo got his Kenma tattoo. No one but Kenma and Kuroo know about it because it’s on the back of his thigh, directly underneath his left buttcheek. Just wait til Bokuto gets a load of that.

Kiyoko has a half sleeve of flowers and the cycle of the moon down her spine. (Which adds to the appeal of her wearing backless dresses…. if ya feel me.)

Yukie has a pair of lips on her collarbone, a cliche tramp stamp with roses and shit, and a dream catcher on her left calf.

Misaki has the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland on her ribs. Also a flower garter belt.

Asahi is terrified of pain and didn’t ever want to get a tattoo in his sorry life, but was eventually forced into it and now has small, minimalist elephant on his right pectoral. (It’s so cute and perfect for him that no one can ever make fun of it so I guess Asahi won that round.)

Nishinoya definitely has like a mother fucking phoenix on his chest. and like, an octopus on his back, taking down a pirate ship or something, with tigers on board, and lightning in the background.

Miya has some gorgeous tree on his back and one of those geometric cuff looking tattoos around his wrist.

Shirabu is untouched. Pure™. (for now)

Hinata and Kageyama: voll-ball

Daichi has like a fancy lookin liquor bottle on the back of his right calf and that’s pretty much it. But a few years down the line, Suga drags him off to get some lame couple tattoos to prove to Oikawa that their love is more special than his and Iwaizumi’s. They probably get some lame quote like, “You’re the one that I want.” or  “Stick it in.” or “Surprise me”. Or I guess Suga could draw something, being a lame ass artist and all.

Suga has Luffy’s straw hat on his right hip. He got it with Tendou one day on a dare. He’s also got Yukie’s name on his ankle with a line through it. Then Misaki’s name directly above it, also crossed out. A little later on, he and Oikawa decide to add a little to the list, such as Daddy’s Dick and Being Gay. (Both of which Daichi takes Suga in to get crossed out.) Suga also has a small, simple paint palette behind his right ear that most people don’t know about. He eventually takes in a note that Daichi wrote for him and snuck into his pocket before he went on a business related trip. He has the artist tattoo the entirety of the note in his handwriting on the inside of his right forearm. It reads something like, 

“Dear Love of my Life,

Come home soon. 

Love, Daichi”

Suga looks at it when the stress gets too heavy. It reminds him to stop what he’s doing and go home.

And that’s all I can think of at the moment. I know I probably missed some people but oh well. Good enough. Tatts are great. Let all get a matching tattoo.

#open tab #daisuga #tattoos

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Five, Number Six

Photo of Anna Tivel by Matt Kennely

This edition of Dust considers twee pop and 1990s influenced electronica, Malawian street music and stenchcore and a wonderfully understated, gorgeous record by folksinger Anna Tivel (pictured above), among other musical finds.  This time, writers included Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Isaac Olson, Peter Taber and Jonathan Shaw.  Enjoy!

Barrie — Happy to Be Here (Winspear)

Brooklyn based multinational twee poppers Barrie’s debut album Happy to Be collects a charming array of sweet, feather-light classic AM radio-influenced songs performed by leader Barrie Lindsay (voice/guitar), Spurge Carter (keyboards), Dominic Apa (drums), Noah Prebish (guitar/synths) and Sabine Holler (bass). Lindsay’s songs subtly and acutely describe life as a newcomer to New York. The production and musicianship on Happy to Be Here is never less than expert, full of detail and space that allows each instrument room to breathe. As a singer Lindsay is polite to the point of being demure, and the band follows her lead. Pretty harmonies, delicate guitars and keys, tasteful drumming, unobtrusive but effective bass. You’ll hear echoes of Laurel Canyon, 1980s white soul and The Style Council at their most languid. Perhaps if Barrie weren’t quite so Happy to Be Here the debut would have more impact but if one is considering punting down the East River to a picnic this would be an ideal soundtrack.

Andrew Forell

 Big Bend — Radish (Self-Release)

Radish by Big Bend

Nathan Phillips works in one of music’s uncanny valleys, a place where experimental electronics and ambient drone converges with semi-narrative pop. These eight songs enlist avant garde collaborators—Susan Alcorn on guitar, Laraji on zither, Shahzad Ismaily on percussion and moog and Phillips’ bad-ass opera-singing mother Pam on vocals — to create music that is warm, human and accessible. Phillips himself sings plaintively on a number of tracks, inserting vulnerability and uncertainty into a glitchy, glossy texture of electronics; he might remind you of Dntel. Elsewhere tracks veer off into untethered, unpredictable zones; “03 12’-15’,” the track with Alcorn pits trebly abstract guitar against the warmth of synth and piano. “Swing Low” centers its dreaming agitation around Pam Phillips��� spectral soprano, which is inviting but also remote. Electronics buzz and twitter around her like mechanical insects and birds. The Laraji track “Four,” lays in the pinging, tremulous tones of electrified zither over fat resonance of acoustic bass. It’s full of magic, or at least sleight of hand, and you expect something wonderful to emerge from its eerie cascades of dream-sequence zither notes. Shahzad Ismaily works his customary wonders, coaxing strange atmospheres out of the most skeletal of notes and rhythms. With these songs, you feel like you’re waking up in a strange country, not exactly unwelcoming, but not what you were expecting either.

Jennifer Kelly

 Com Truise — Persuasion System (Ghostly International)

LA musician Seth Haley, AKA Com Truise, releases nine short tracks of woozy 1980s influenced electronica on Persuasion System. Listening to foregrounded hi-hat driven beats, fretless bass sounds, giant swathes of anthemic synth, you’re almost waiting for Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal to start ruling the world again. Haley is unafraid to reach for the big emotional release. That he doesn’t always hit it is due more to familiarity with those triggers than any lack of compositional skill on his part. When it goes a little darker on the drum & bass driven “Laconism”, the mock doom epic “Privilege Escalation” and the ambient restraint of “Gaussian” Persuasion System shows Com Truise’s aptitude in using stadium synth pop tropes to translate big sounds into big statements.  

Andrew Forell  

 Shana Cleveland—Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art)

The La Luz leader turns introspective on this eerie solo album, sketching glowing just-off soundscapes with a squeaky acoustic guitar and voice. Like many of the songs, the single “Face of the Sun” subdues a spaghetti western swagger into just a hint of wide western horizons; there are bits of cello and bowed bass in the interstices of “Night of the Worm Moon,” shading the folk-acoustic-surf tones towards baroque. Cleveland sings in the common space between bewitching beauty and sing-song madness, Ophelia-esque and surrounded with flowers. She takes command, however, with her guitar, which defines and directs and originates this fetching dream state. Gorgeous, floating, spectral and surprisingly empowered.

Jennifer Kelly

 FACS — Lifelike (Trouble in Mind)

FACS constitutes the latest iteration of the ongoing partnership of singer/guitarist Brian Case and drummer Noah Leger, who each discharged those same duties in Disappears. Expressed mathematically, 2/3 FACS = ½ Disappears, but FACS ≠ Disappears. While the old band’s music moved in a quick and linear fashion around Case’ bleak bark, this new ensemble, which is rounded out by bassist Alianna Kalaba, prefers modular construction and choppy flow. Kalaba’s distorted tone, which recalls Graham Lewis’ playing in mid-1980s Wire (especially live), is a looming presence, stomping through Leger’s sequences of chopped-off rhythm patterns like Godzilla playing a kid’s game with the real estate: “I think I’ll stomp every third house on this block. Next block, I’ll kick every tree to the left. Do I step on the lines, or jump on the cracks?” Case’s guitar blows in and out of the grooves’ vast empty spaces like a flock of metal-coated swallows, absorbing the fading light one moment and then banking up to reflect tiny flashes of the distant red sun the next. His singing has also changed, inching incrementally from the monochrome of yore towards a world-weary, side of the mouth croon. Why, you wonder, does this Chicago band sound so bleak? Hey, it snowed twice in April; what more do you need to know?

Bill Meyer

 Forest Management — Passageways (Whited Sepulchre)

Passageways by Forest Management

Electronic musician John Daniel may call himself Forest Management, but don’t be fooled; there’s nothing pastoral about this music. The passageways he had in mind when he composed the music on this LP are remembered from a childhood home in a suburb of Cleveland, and he made the stuff in an apartment in Chicago. Daniel nicely straddles the digital/analog divide by playing a laptop computer but recording some of the music to reel-to-reel tape deck.  This enables him to achieve a blurry patina of nostalgia-inducing atmosphere that’ll sit right with Boards of Canada fans. But where BOC used beats and samples to highlight their emotional messages and keep things moving, Daniel’s willing to let the music throb and drift. While Forest Management is a fully mobile project that is quite capable of occupying stages around town, this stuff is best appreciated under controlled conditions at home, where you can cultivate a mindset and manage the setting without facing any risks that one might face while zoning out in public.  

Bill Meyer

 Madalitso Band — Wasalala (Bongo Joe)

Wasalala by Madalitso Band

The two musicians of The Madalitso Band, who made their name on the sidewalks of Lilongwe (Malawi), play four-string guitar, cow-skin kick drum and homemade, one-string bass. If that sounds like a gimmick, albeit one born of necessity: it is, but all good street bands need one. Like all good street bands, the Madalitso Band’s necessarily formulaic music is inviting and undemanding enough to draw in spare-change-laden passersby all day, if need be. And, like most street musicians and small-time festival favorites, Madalitso Band’s crowd pleasing tricks don’t directly translate into gripping LPs. Wasalala, at 40 minutes, is about double the recommended daily dose (when was the last time you watched even a great busker for more than 15 minutes?), but, play it while you, say, put the dishes away, and this wholly charming, frequently gorgeous record is guaranteed to move the body and brighten the mood of any sentient person within earshot. Its pleasures are as real, necessary, utilitarian, and unvaried as a fan on a hot day.  

Isaac Olson  

 Minotaur Shock — MINO (Bytes)

MINO by Minotaur Shock

On MINO, Bristol-based David Edwards turns away from his characteristic blend of orchestral acoustic and synthetic instrumentation to hone his synthesis craft. Edwards’ obvious composition chops have been a double-edged sword on past releases. Approaching his works as songs rather than tracks has lent them undeniable musicality; but since that approach is unidiomatic for beat-smithing, it sometimes has felt like the work of someone whose primary business was in sync for film dipping their toes into electronic music and bringing the resources of an entire soundstage orchestra with them. MINO’s focus on a single instrument results in a more inventive sound, defrays the risk of sounding excessively filmic, and retains Minotaur Shock’s strengths of earworm tunefulness and emotional sweep. The textures and polyrhythms bear a surface similarity to LA beat scene notables, while the album’s overall sunniness recalls Machinedrum, who underwent a similar turn to synthesis in recent years. A very different direction for Minotaur Shock and some of Edwards’ best work.

Peter Taber  

 MotherFather — S-T (Self-Released)

MotherFather by MotherFather

MotherFather, a four-piece band from St. Louis, makes broody, duel-guitar-driven post-rock that builds in a slow inexorable way like rough weather or a tidal surge. They build up layers of deep, shadowy sound, churning up the noise gradually so that when abrasive bass saws up through the bottom of “Burning” late in the album, its cinematic metal upheaval is as surprising as cathartic. Two of MotherFather’s members—guitarist Nelson Jones and bassist Brian Scheffer—run a studio in their spare time, and they surround these chugging, chiming onslaughts with clarity. However, the sound is gloomier and less buoyant than epic instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky, more like the torpid reveries of vocal-less Mogwai or even post-rock-into-metal outfits like Pelican or Red Sparrowes. Guitars drive the train here—that’s Jones and Eli Hindman—but drummer Tim Hardy puts in a strenuous, battering days work on drums and you can’t move the tectonic plates like MotherFather does without muscular, fundamental bass.

Jennifer Kelly

 Neolithic—S/T (Self-released)

Neolithic by Neolithic

Do genre labels really matter anymore? At various sites around the web, Neolithic’s music has been described as death metal, grindcore, hardcore and, in one especially bewildering formulation, “pitch-black death/crust.” This reviewer’s ears hear a pretty straightforward species of stenchcore all over this record, but that begs the question: What does “stenchcore” mean to you? In any case, the good news is that this is a terrific record. Nasty, brutish and way too short. The Baltimore band has only been making records for a little over a year, but the music exudes confidence and, whatever we want to call it, a song like “Myopia” demands attention. Its riffs are precise, its bottom end is deep, its textures and affect are simultaneously razor-sharp and dripping with miasmatic, fluid yuck. Sort of like a zombie’s mouth. One gets the feeling that’s something like what the band intends. Enjoy!

Jonathan Shaw

  Ivo Perelman / Jason Stein — Spiritual Prayers (Leo Records)

Brazilian tenor saxophonist is never one to settle for half measures. If he has a good idea, he’s liable to make a series of records out of it. Google the words Ivo Perelman Matthew Shipp if you need an illustration. But some ideas are self-limiting, such as the one that generated this record. Perelman decided that he was going to record duos with free improvising bass clarinet specialists. There just aren’t that many of those around, so the total so far stands at two CDs; one with Rudi Mahall, the other with Jason Stein. Stein has deep roots in the New York area that Perelman has called home for years, but the two men had never met before they unpacked horns and improvised this album in a Brooklyn studio. You wouldn’t know it from listening, though; they two men throw themselves into the endeavor with the sort of fearlessness that only deep acquaintance or utter self-possession. The first quality only existed on a metaphysical plane — each man reminded the other of a beloved and long-lost ancestor. The latter, both have in spades, and for the best of reasons. Both are masters of their horns, both are close listeners and responsive partners, and the hitherto empty field of tenor saxophone / bass clarinet duets turns out to be rich earth. The horns can sound quite like each other, or hit pitches as distant as opposite ocean shores, and the musicians traverse such spaces in a split-second.

Bill Meyer

 Sick Gazelle — Odum (War Crime Recordings)

Odum by Sick Gazelle

Releasing improvised music involves risk. Musicians often sacrifice quality control for spontaneity, and some seem unable or unwilling to abandon, edit or control their experiments. However, when it works, the rewards are many. Former Crucifucks and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley joins Chicago saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza and Bloodiest) and ambient guitarist/bassist Eric Block (aka Veloce) to produce a debut album Odum under the moniker Sick Gazelle. The first three tracks combine slow-core jazz and illbient atmospherics with Lamont’s saxophone ,a powerful yearning voice sympathetically supported by Shelley’s percussion and Block’s layers of guitar and bass. The longer pieces “Atlantic” and “Pacific” work best, as Sick Gazelle builds grand spacious structures with an innate sense of dynamics and a muscular foundation. On the short final track “Laguna” the band lets go as Lamont foregoes the sax for a chant-like invocation over a driving rhythm that sounds closer to Sonic Youth than jazz. Odum is dense swamp of sound, easy to get lost in, harboring beauty and danger in equal measure. Leave the compass and venture in.

Andrew Forell

 Stander—The Slow Bark (Self-Released)

The Slow Bark by Stander

Pensive guitar lines surge up into tsunamis. Liquid, lyrical melodies disintegrate under a firehose spew of distorted sound. Stander shifts dynamics like it’s wielding a weapon, and maybe it is. These long-form instrumental meditations build from pastoral, serene interludes into raging towers of feedback (and vice versa), though you can often glimpse the original plaintive theme shrouded in noise and fury. Stander is a Chicago-based heavy post-rock instrumental trio built around guitarist Mike Boyd (who, full disclosure, we know from his job as Thrill Jockey’s publicist), Derek Shlepr on bass and Stephen Waller on drums.  On The Slow Bark, the band’s first full-length album, Stander masters the slow rolling crescendo in cuts like “Cicada Tree,” where a moody, pondering, unsettled guitar melody unspools so gently that the kick of drums, the onslaught blare of amplification, comes like a defibrillator, which maybe, at that point, you need. “Cold Fingers,” too, alternates the loud and the soft, the rage and the quiescence; it calms enough that you can hear how the interplay works, how Shlepr’s bass underlines and reinforces the melodic line, how a riff gets penciled in once, then returned to for an obliterating refrain. There are no vocals—just a subliminal growl near the end of “Cold Fingers” and some eerie altered voice effects tucked into “Cutting Ants, Conquering Ants”— but this is in no way just an extended instrumental jam. Stander’s tracks are carefully constructed, thoughtfully plotted, even if they all end up blown to bits.

Jennifer Kelly

 Anna Tivel—The Question (Fluff and Gravy)

The Question by Anna Tivel

Over four albums, Anna Tivel has quietly been building a reputation as a formidable folk songwriter, a storyteller whose hushed voice weaves simple words into complex narratives about people on the outskirts of society. The Question is tensely, transparently lovely. Tivel’s voice runs toward the calm and matter of fact and never goes much over a conversational murmur. Her melodies, likewise, are precise and pretty. However, the lives she limns in her songs are unruly—a man transitioning to womanhood, a migrant testing a fence line, a homeless child trying to make it through the night—and the thickets of dense, conflicting instrumental sounds seem to echo these complications and strife. She makes wonderful use of strings—viscous throbs of cello, twitchy pizzicatos of violin—to underline but not sweeten her arrangements, and the guitars, too, have a clarity and sharpness that reinforces the acuity of her verses. “Fenceline”’s insistent piano and keening, tremulous strings underline the tension of the southern border crossing; the instrumental interlude zings with anticipation and fear. “Homeless Child” is more overtly folky, but still unblinking and unsentimental as it tells the story of an abandoned child with her own child coming. The refrain couldn’t be sadder or more beautiful, when Tivel sings, “And Jesus Christ, it don’t take much to go from just enough to nothing in the end, and oh my god, homeless child, the world will leave you hanging by a thread.”

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Hearts and Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 (Canary Records)

Hearts & Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 by Canary Records

Ian Nagoski, the proprietor, curator, researcher, and dogs body of Canary Records, has assembled some marvelous collections of music from records that most 78rpm collectors would leave in the bin. But is that what the people want? Even the characters who populate the farthest corners of record nerd-dom are prone to the influences of groupthink and fashion, and they want you to come up with something just like your last hit, only different. One of the crosses on Nagoski’s shoulder is that while passion compels him to investigate shellac sides of woman whistlers and birdcall imitators, people remember him for his genre-spanning marvel, Black Mirror. Hearts and Livers is Nagoski giving people what they think they want and subtly chiding them as he does so. Both album emblem (there’s no cover — this thing is download-only, and thus not really a thing at all) and title can be read as gentle mockery of the enterprise. But once you get past them, Nagoski’s unerring knacks for selection, sequencing and sound restoration deliver the goods. Exiled rembetika singer Rosa Eskenazi’s quivering lament resonates with Horace Britt’s melodramatic cello recital; a sinuous Korean melody and a beseeching Turkish air impart a common stern spirit. Since he hasn’t written any notes to explain the compilation, it’s all just music, each track equally foreign and mysterious.

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — New American Standards Volume  2 (Sound American) 

New American Songbooks Vol.2 by Kris Davis, Matt Mitchell, Aruán Ortiz, Matthew Shipp

To some, the Great American Songbook (which isn’t really a book, but a body of popular songs that captured the hearts of both general audiences and jazz musicians in the pre-rock and roll era) represents the acme of American musical creativity. But while some great and flexible material came out of that era, do we really want to concede that the middle of the 20th century was the best we could do? Careful, such thinking paves the way to donning an unflattering red ball cap. Sound American Publishing initiated the New American Standards series to investigate notions of Americanism and standards. Volume 2 taps four pianists not known for their frequent dips into the Songbook to propose material that speaks for communities didn’t quite make it into the original metaphorical volumes. Matthew Shipp proffers brooding extemporizations upon Protestant hymns composed by individuals you’ve probably never heard of. Matt Mitchell invests two tunes sourced from Bandcamp-era singer songwriters with solemn romanticism. Kris Davis’ prepared piano recasts Carla Bley’s “Identity Picks” as a quasi-gamelan reverie that invites the listener to consider which quirks of identify might lock you out, then and now, and what you might do with (or to) a piece of ubiquitous cultural equipment in order to make your voice heard. And Aruán Ortiz offers a luminous exposition of a piece by cultural critic and polymath Ed Bland. All four musicians played the same piano, which serves to make clearer the individual differences of the four players.

Bill Meyer  

 Various Artists — Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 (StabUdown)

Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 by Piezo

Fuzzy technoise is the game being played here with varying degrees of earnestness, as suggested by the goofball album art. Listeners may come for marquee names like Kerridge and Powell, though they’re easily outshone by some nicely varied lesser-known acts. Koehler’s “Below Andromeda” is rhythmically inventive but straight-ahead techno. “Mourning Etiquette” from Grey People isn’t far from the crunchy atmospherics of Modern Love artists. Entries from Bad Tracking and The Rancor Index take things to a considerably grittier, Wolf Eyes-esque level. Vanity Productions’ “No Peep Show Here” could be melodic drone from Yellow Swans, while Organic Dial’s “Absolute Other” is an unexpectedly delicate slice of dub-inflected ambient. Piezo offers a dramatic highlight in “Sponge Effect,” which morphs from a melodic arpeggio into an odd-time paroxysmic blob and back again. Hopefully a taste of more great things to come from all concerned.

Peter Taber

 Woe —A Violent Dread (Vendetta)

A Violent Dread EP by Woe

This two-song EP is a welcome reminder of how good Woe can be (insert snarky pun here). The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Philly quartet seems to have found a stable line-up, with Lev Weinstein providing drums and Matt Mewton’s second guitar rounding out the band, as they did on 2017’s Hope Attrition. Weinstein’s drumming is less acrobatic than the whacko stuff he pulls off for Krallice — but Woe’s sound is more firmly anchored in black metal’s traditions. Woe’s cover of Dawn’s “The Knell and the World,” recorded by the Swedish band back in 1998, celebrates the continuity of that tradition. That doesn’t mean Woe’s music is derivative or pedestrian. The nine minutes of “A Violent Dread” flash past with a sustained intensity that makes the song feel half that long. Chris Grigg’s singing, playing and songwriting are sleek and tough, feral and rigorous. It’s peak USBM. 

Jonathan Shaw

#dust #dusted magazine #barrie #andrew forell #big bend #jennifer kelly #com truise #shana cleveland #facs #bill meyer #forest management #madalitso band #isaac olson #minotaur shock #peter taber #motherfather #neolithic #jonathan shaw #ivo perelman #jason stein #sick gazelle #stander #anna tivel #hearts and livers #ian nagowski #new american standards #tombstone trance #woe

[micaramel]

Takuro Tamayama

Artists: Takuro Tamayama, Tiger Tateishi

Venue: Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles

Exhibition Title: Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi

Date: July 27 – August 31, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Takuro Tamayama, Eclipse, 2019, digital video, 19:00 loop

Full gallery of images, videos, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Videos:

Takuro Tamayama, Dance, 2019, digital video, 1:00 loop

Takuro Tamayama, Eclipse, 2019, digital video, 19:00 loop

Images courtesy of Nonaka-Hill, Los Angeles 

Press Release:

Nonaka-Hill is pleased to present a two-artist exhibition, Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi.  The show features a new installation, video and sculpture works by Takuro Tamayama, brought together with Tiger Tateishi’s large oil painting Rotating Fuji from 1991 and selected prints dating from 1973-1981.

Takuro Tamayama and Tiger Tateishi, while generations apart, share penchants for surprising fantasy narrative works depicting evolutions of our planet and others, often through the anthropomorphism of common objects.  While both artists engage a repertory of domestic symbols, always colorful and often spinning, Tamayama’s work appears distinctively spare and Tateishi’s work is distinctively baroque.

At the gallery entrance, Takuro Tamayama’s new monochrome yellow video Dance plays on a monitor, bathed in blue light from the underside of a semi-circular table.  On the tabletop, a sculpture of a sandwich linked to a hamburger stands upright on a plate, looking “human”.  The one-minute video shows a choreography of six rotating gold rocks, swirling into a configuration resembling one body as we know it (head/torso/ two arms/ two legs), then repositioning in three pairs, suggesting three even-more rudimentary bodies (head/body), all nodding, before all exit stage left/right.   Adjacent, Tiger Tateishi’s Planets Blossom silkscreen presents a narrative image sequence of round planets cracking, transforming into rose planets.  A red curtain leads to Tamayama’s colored light-saturated room scale immersive experience entitled Eclipse Dance (2019).  A cluster of tables forms a new Pangea-like plateau, dividing the atmosphere’s light into intense red above and hazy blue below. A rotating veined white marble form, again evocative of a human, is positioned with tense relationship to a spherical form, evocative of a celestial body – perhaps a sun, or a moon. In the next space, Tamayama’s Eclipse, a new large-scale video projection with sound composed by the artist, presents well-known objects of domesticity (especially cleaning), cast into a weightless and elastic, unknown space.  This atmosphere is also a narrative which shifts to reveal the silhouette of Tamayama’s rudimentary figure slowly eclipsing a hazy planet, all set to a repeating, trance-inducing stanza.  A fourth space, saturated with blue light, presents Tamayama’s spinning red monochrome sculpture of a hanging, double-headed mop whose fiber string head has fully transitioned into long red, human hair.  This rotating work confronts Tateishi’s comic-strip format painting Rotating Fuji (1991), which is lit precariously by white light imposed into the blue atmosphere.  The painting depicts six views of Mt. Fuji tumbling outside the window of room, occupied by scampering furniture, all set within grids of floral wallpaper and marble.  A fifth room, painted yellow, displays Tateishi’s prints dating from 1973 to 1981.  Each of these works show a fantasy of planet formation, evolution and/or anthropomorphic transformation.

Takuro Tamayama: Attracted to the narratives which common objects can create in relationship with each other, Tamayama began staging objects and sculpture in room scaled installations as early as 2012. These immersive environments offer no linear means to comprehend Tamayama’s narrative, rather the environment is the decentralized narrative of symbols.  Often, tools of the mundane rituals of cleaning and grooming abandoned of its designated role anthropomorphize into alien objects. In absence of human presence, the mop, an abstracted marble figure, hybrid hamburger and sandwich statue, and combs imbedded in irregular concrete forms, all having some human resonance, occupy the human void.  In his recent works, Tamayama has utilized curtains to reorganize the space experience, and colored lights to saturate and destabilize the visual senses.  He produces long-form video and music, adding to the time and non-materiel dynamics of these constructed spaces. Tamayama’s new video installation, Eclipse is inspired by Tateishi’s fascination with aliens, UFOs and outer space, as both artists construct alternate dimensions of illusions and fantasy.

Takuro Tamayama was born in 1990, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. He lives and works in Tokyo. Tamayama was awarded first place in Aichi University of the Arts, 2012 Class Bachelors of Fine Art Graduate Project, 2013. Tamayama received a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2015.  He is the recipient of Art Award Tokyo Marunouchi 2015 Shigeo Goto Award.  Tamayama’s developing oeuvre includes installations, video, music, wall-based and sculptural works, as well as collaborative installation projects for Nike and the fashion brand, Zucca. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan including recent solo shows, Dirty Palace at Calm & Punk Gallery, 2018 and They Hardly Ever Stand Still at Talion Gallery, 2019, both in Tokyo. This is Tamayama’s first exhibition outside of Japan.

Tiger Tateishi: Enchanted by Disney cartoons and American movies in his youth, Tiger Tateishi was later drawn to Mad Magazine and stories by science fiction authors, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Sheckley.  He began his art career in 1963, producing “Pop Art” paintings from a Japanese point of view, colliding Japan’s iconic Mt. Fuji, Godzilla, and Samurai together with international icons such as Mao Tse Tung, an atomic mushroom cloud, MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, Coca-Cola, the American Western landscape and KKK processions. To parody the tourism initiatives of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, Tateishi founded The Institute of Tourist Art (1964-66), creating works which operated off the Mt. Fuji as beloved national symbol and tourism moneymaker.  His first solo exhibition of the same year was titled Accumulated Civilization, an idea which echoes through his oeuvre.

With the desire to draw “nonsense cartoons”, then unpopular in Japan, Tateishi and his wife Fumiko left for Milan in 1969, drawn to the city of Futurism. Notably, their move was concurrent with other new frontiers felt globally; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the Apollo 11 first moon landing.  As a consummate absorber of his surroundings, Tateishi met Giorgio de Chirico (whose perspectival style he had appropriated earlier in 1964) and merged de Chirico-style images into a new storyboard sequencing in his paintings. This format, usually only seen in comics, proved ideal for making paintings of Sci-Fi narratives.  An employee of Ettore Sottsass’s saw these works and introduced the architect/designer to Tateishi and an extraordinary group of drawings were produced setting Sottsass’s early proposals for fantastical and erotic architectural forms in outer space terrains.  While attributed to Sottsass, these works are often signed “Tiger pinxit”, Latin for “Tiger painted it”. Tateishi also started making silkscreen prints from the early 1970s in Milan, a selection of which are on view.  These works, and Rotating Fuji incorporate the story-board format which Tateishi continued to utilize in paintings, drawings and artist’s books throughout his career.

Tiger (Kōichi) Tateishi was born in 1941, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He passed away in 1998. He received a degree from Musashino University Junior College of Art and Design in 1963. Tateishi’s vast oeuvre includes oil painting, prints, comics, illustration, children’s books, and ceramics. Since 1963, the artist has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan, Europe, and the United States. After his death, two retrospectives were organized: Tiger Tateishi: The Endless Tiger at Tagawa City Art Museum, 1999 and Metamorphose Tiger: Walking through the Labyrinth with Tiger Tateishi, O Museum,1999 (cat.). Tateishi was featured in a two-artist shows, The World is Strange! The Manga and painting of Tiger Tateishi and Yuichi Yokoyama, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 2017. Recent group exhibitions include Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant Garde, 2012; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Japanorama: A New Vision on Art Since 1970,Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2018. A touring Tateishi survey exhibition is planned for 2020/2021 appearing at Chiba City Museum of Art, Aomori Museum of Art, Takamatasu Art Museum and The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama.

Link: Takuro Tamayama, Tiger Tateishi at Nonaka-Hill

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#micaramel

[xtillos]

I’m trying a different direction with the posts I will be putting here. This and the following posts under this title will share parts of my world. What helped to create the artist in me? Why am I driven to create? What has influenced and inspired me to do these things? What do I like to create?

As an artist, it’s important that my work find you guys and others like you. I want to share the things I imagine with everyone. There are so many people, places and things to show you.

But before that I should do a better job of introducing myself and sharing why this is such an important thing. My name is Richard Thaxton. In my Bio I explain about the reason why I chose the name XT Illos. The oldest being that an “X” was the way most people who couldn’t read or write would mark their signature.

Due to differing processes in training kids to read early on in school, many of my classmates and myself did not learn how to read properly. The new pilot program was not continued when we were transferred back to our original group the next year. This is where my choice to express myself visually took roots and grew. Even though I took an advance placement test in middle school and scored 11th to College level, I struggled with reading a lot all the way through high school. In the first quarter of college I taught myself to read.

I’ve been drawing for a long time. As a kid, I would try to reproduce small images of art that came in catalogs into larger pencil and colored pencil drawings. I got pretty good at catching the details. My favorites were the old tall sailing ships, pirate ships and different animals.

I was and still am a avid cartoon junkie which of course includes anime! Those and the live action dramas would keep me glued to the TV on Saturday mornings or the theater, when we could go. Many films about great works really mesmerized me. Some of my early favorites were Kimba the White Lion, Ultraman, Speed Racer, King Kong, Godzilla, Star Trek, Tarzan, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, the Land That Time Forgot, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolfman.

There was lots of influences all around. there was lots of primers for the creativity to start flowing in my imagination. One day in high school a friend shared a book with me that really set things into motion. It was by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the John Carter series A Princess of Mars. This story and the artworks by Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta was the final push. I was enchanted and felt driven to learn how to tell stories with my art.

It’s been a long road from then until I could properly relate what I was seeing in my imagination. Lots of frustrating attempts in the beginning. As I would practice and study the things I was attempting to create I began to pick up more details. I took art in middle and high school. I also took classes in college for art both fine and commercial. One day I decided to give story illustration a try but that’s a story next time.

I don’t have any examples of my old work because of them being lost in a storage fire. I will drop in older pencil sketches, design processes and finished art that has not been seen since most of them were published.

“Wack” 16in x 20in Oil on Illo Board 1995

  An Artist’s Journey I'm trying a different direction with the posts I will be putting here. This and the following posts under this title will share parts of my world.

#Art #Artist #Commissions #design #digital #DigitalArt #Drawing #etsy #etsystore #Fantasy #FantasyArt #illustration #journal #Magic #mygreatestloves #Painting #Pen&Ink #Prints #scifi #sketch #TraditionalArt #TraditionalMedia