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lcdyblackwood · 5 years

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♔ → westeros presents CLARA BLACKWOOD, the LADY of RAVENTREE HALL. a raven sent word that she bear(s) the resemblance to ANNA POPPLEWELL. the TWENTY FOUR year old FEMALE was INTELLIGENT & ADVENTUROUS before the dawn of war, but have now become DISTRUSTING & SANCTIMONIOUS. when songs are sung, their verses speak of HAIR AS DARK AS A RAVEN’ WINGS, THE YELLOWED PAGES OF AN OVERREAD BOOK and THE DEAD LIMBS OF A WEIRWOOD TREE. whispers throughout the seven kingdoms claim that their allegiance lies with HOUSE STARK, but fealty means little when you play the game of thrones. ( cree, 25, est, she/her. )

Clara of House Blackwood, Lady of Raventree Hall, daughter of Tytos and Lenora Blackwood (nee Dayne).

Clara never expected to be the Lady of Raventree Hall. In fact, it was something she always thought was impossible. But when her father and brothers fell in the War of Five Kings, suddenly she was the heir of House Blackwood, with only she and her sister Bethany left to carry on the name. She keeps a brave face and tries to maintain her status as a strong lady of her house, but there are times when being strong can leave one exhausted.

Despite the ever growing duties of her position, Clara never fails to find a few moments to hide away from her advisors with a book. When she was younger, she wanted nothing more than to become a maester. When they told her that women were not permitted to become maesters, she wept until she couldn’t weep anymore. That didn’t stop her from spending her days in Maester Teague’s chambers, learning all that he was willing to teach her. He is, perhaps, her favorite person outside of her family, and she heeds his council closely.

House Blackwood is the only southern house that still follows the Old Gods, thus their words, “Old Gods Hear,”. Clara was raised so be a devout young woman, who prayed to the weirwood everyday. With the loss of her family, she is finding it harder to believe in any gods.

When she lived in Dragonstone with House Stark, Clara happened upon an injured raven and nursed it back to health. Now, she calls him “Artys”, for the winged knight. She always expects him to fly away and never look back, but he has yet to leave her side. Often times, she whispers her secrets to him.

While her house is pledged to the King in the North, Clara holds a bit of resentment and bitterness towards him. Afterall, he was the reason her father and brothers rode off to war and never looked back. While she knows that Robb isn’t to blame, she still can’t help the bitterness she feels. Her father believed in Robb and her family was torn apart because of it.

Against tradition in the Seven Kingdoms, the Blackwoods train both their boys and their girls in the bow and arrow. Their archers are almost legendary. Clara was no exception to this rule, as her father began teaching her before she could walk.

#rev.intros

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tothewaterhq · 6 years

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ACCEPTED // SATINE HARRIS

district 8 → victor of the 67th hunger games → anna popplewell fc

positive traits: determined, gentle, caring negative traits: sensitive, self-critical, over-protective

describe their arena:

When the tributes rose up into the arena for the sixty-seventh hunger games, they found themselves in a frozen wasteland, sparsely decorated with small, dead shrubbery. The only animals present were moose, but these were muttations and designed to kill. Tributes were dressed in a baggy knit jumper with thick thermal underwear and snow trousers.

The arena shifted on the third night, when half of the tributes remained. A blisteringly hot desert, the moose were replaced by oryxes- smaller, but in larger groups, and with sharper horns. One of the hardships was adapting to this change in climate, with three tributes failing to remove their clothing and succumbing to the heat within forty-eight hours.

biography:

Satine was born in the middle of a treacherously cold winter. Her mother died a few weeks later, the difficult birth combined with the horrible cold too much for her weak, malnourished body. The baby was raised by a single father for the first six years of her life, picking up on his anxieties and accepting them as normal, making them a part of her own being.

When she was six, her father remarried. Jenny, her new step-mother, was a fellow factory-worker, and she took to Satine immediately. The first of her three younger siblings was born within a year. They named him Marino, and Satine adored him instantly. As time passed, he’d be followed by two more; Lettie (or Camlet) and Tyler.

The Harrises did not have much, but they had more than many. Their terraced house was cramped, even more so when her maternal grandmother moved in, unable to pay her rent and too crippled by age to work a full shift. Although Satine was her only biological grandchild, she doted on all the children in equal measure. Nana died in her sleep when Satine was thirteen. It was four year old Tyler who found her.

School was a pain, and Satine was so desperate to impress her teachers that she never really made any friends. The highlight of her week was her dance class on Thursdays, set up by her favorite teacher as a way of relieving stress.

Satine was not surprised when she was reaped, because death seemed to follow her like a dark cloud. Part of her was actually relieved it wasn’t somebody younger than her. Her family might miss her, but they would move on; there were girls in Eight who would be mourned far more than her should they have gone in her place.

No-one had particularly high hopes for her. She was small for her age, underfed, with no useful skills beyond cookery and basic first aid. Her greatest strength was in her ally: Kailani, the career from District Four, agreed to teach Satine the basics of throwing knives if she could show her how to bind a wound. Despite the three year age difference, the two became fast friends, and Kailani even went so far as to cut off ties with the careers from One and Two to keep an eye on her in the arena.

Satine ran from the bloodbath, killing the boy from District Nine when he tried to stop her. She returned to the cornucopia a few hours later, where Kailani was waiting. Although they’d lost the cornucopia itself to the career pack, she’d scrounged up a sword for herself, a belt with three knives for Satine, and a tent. The two girls set out in search of their fellow tributes, Kailani killing while Satine stood back and handled the domestic matters- moving their tent, ensuring that they ate each night.

After three days of this, there were twelve tributes left. The arena changed dramatically on the third night, and the girls awoke to found that not only had the snow melted away, but that they were in a desert. Shedding their sweaters and cutting their thermal leggings into shorts with a knife, they continued on. Satine was unused to the heat, but Kailani almost thrived in it. She pinned Satine’s hair up in a bun for her so that it was off of her neck, and recalled stories of summers spent on the beaches in Four.

They stumbled across Kailani’s district partner on the fifth day. He was a thirteen year old called Leomaris, and had survived the cold weather by digging into the snow and creating a small shelter for himself. They gave him some of the water and food they’d been fortunate enough to be sent by sponsors, and took him in as the third member of their party.

In the end, it came down to their alliance and the star-crossed lovers from District One- not truly lovers, but both very beautiful, and very good at manipulating viewers. They had been favorites amongst the more whimsical Capitolites, and the trio knew that. But they weren’t about to give up just because.

They split, Kailani pointing Satine towards the female tribute, insisting she would be right there when she’d disposed of the male. He was bigger than his partner, and much stronger- and it was Kailani who had the career training. They told Leomaris to hide.

A cannon sounded just over five minutes later. The four teenagers stopped mid-combat, looking around, confused, before Leomaris’ picture flashed in the sky. Satine later learned he’d fallen afoul of a herd of oryxes.

She sustained a serious injury when a knife was plunged into her thigh, her vision already blurred with tears for Leomaris and her first kill and everything that had happened over the last few days. Eventually, she was able to pin the girl from One down on the ground and slit her throat.

Looking up, her eyes found Kailani’s just in time to see the light fade from them. She’d lost two friends in less than ten minutes.

She was devastated and wild, throwing herself at the boy from One, crying and clawing. She pulled the knife from her thigh and stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed.

Once she was certain he’d died, she hurried back to Kailani, brushing her hair from her face, telling her she’d won. She’d won. She’d won. But Kailani hadn’t won, and when the hovercraft came to collect the victor for the sixty-seventh annual Hunger Games, they took Satine.

Victory was a surprise for Satine, and she struggled at first. There were death threats from avid fans of the tributes from District One, as well as PTSD to deal with, and all the pressures that come with being the Capitol’s latest sweetheart. And that was what Satine was; the sweetheart, the surprise victor who won viewers over with her kindness and her gentle humility.

Living in the Victor’s Village with her family, who suddenly had more than enough room for the first time, she decided to put her victory to good use. Satine set up a soup kitchen in the heart of her district for the hungry, and bought a small hall for her beloved Miss Rodriguez to continue teaching children to dance.

For the first time in her life, Satine had friends; people other than her parents to send birthday cards to. Her connection to Kailani and Leomaris gave her a deep appreciation for District Fours victors, who can all look forward to cards from Satine on their birthdays, and she “accidentally” bakes too many cupcakes regularly so that she has an excuse to pop over to Cecelia’s house and fuss over her children.

With Woof being so elderly, and Cecelia having three children depending on her, Satine tries her best to keep the focus of certain Capitolites on her alone. The President’s prostitution ring for victors was revealed to her when she was sixteen, less than a year after her victory, and Satine understands when it is safer not to argue. Over the years, her “good girl” persona became something more; no matter how depressed Satine feels, no matter how low she gets, she has to maintain this identity as Eight’s sweet, kind, angelic victor, because that’s what the Capitol expects of her now. That’s what her clients expect.

PLAYED BY // DAISY

#hunger games rp #oc rp #satine #accepted

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georgieh · 6 years

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Georgie Henley for The Times of London - ‘There is pressure on child actors not to admit it’s hard’

She had a ball as a child playing Lucy in the Narnia films, but her schoolmates were unkind — not that it stopped her. Now she’s on the London stage // Keep reading for full interview

Georgie Henley vividly remembers her first day in Narnia. She was eight years old, 12,000 miles from home and surrounded by a film crew waiting for her to act on camera for the first time. Henley was playing Lucy, the plucky youngest child of the Pevensie family in the Walt Disney film version of CS Lewis’s wartime fantasy classic The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. On the first take she looked at the camera because she didn’t know better. That error aside, she thought she spoke her lines all right. Yet the director, Andrew Adamson, kept asking her to do the scene again. And again. And again.

After about an hour of this she started welling up. Adamson came over and asked why she was upset. “And I just said, ‘I’m getting it wrong, that’s why you keep doing it over and over again, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, we have to position the camera in different places, we do different shots and then we edit them together.’ ” She laughs at the thought. “I mean, it’s basic stuff, but I didn’t know because I was just plucked from nowhere.”

Now 22, Henley has just started her first professional stage role. She is starring in Angry, a collection of monologues by the restlessly provocative playwright Philip Ridley at the Southwark Playhouse in south London. She is upbeat, articulate and aware of the negative narrative that surrounds child actors and quietly determined to buck it.

She is hugely grateful for her experience on the three Chronicles of Narnia films: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in 2005, Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010. They have set her up financially, so that after finishing her degree in English at Cambridge University in 2016, she was able to move to a flat of her own in London. Unlike some other child actors, she says, who get pressured to support their families, her parents — Mike, a former solicitor who now works for HSBC, and Helen, who chaperoned her on all three Narnia films — made sure she kept her earnings.

“And I don’t take any of this for granted,” she says. “To have a franchise at a young age, it’s what a lot of actors spend their whole lives trying to get because you have guaranteed work and a guaranteed pay cheque. Not that I really thought about that at the time.” On the first film she didn’t even realise she was being paid. She did by the second film. ��But it was like Monopoly money to me.”

Yet while she thinks there is “scaremongering” about what it’s like to be a child actor, she is quick to admit that it had a big impact on her school life. It happened almost by accident: a casting director, Pippa Hall, who had discovered Jamie Bell for Billy Elliot, held an audition at the drama club to which the seven-year-old Henley went each Tuesday after school in Ilkley, Yorkshire. “I was just lucky,” she says. She laughs awkwardly at the suggestion that, however she got the job, she was unusually good once she started doing it. “Thank you! I can’t cope with people saying nice things to me.”

She was “quite a weird child; on the fringe socially, just always off in my own world”. At first she thought she was auditioning for a panto in Bradford. As the process dragged on for months, and she started to travel down to London to audition alongside children from stage schools, she and her parents got to realise what it might involve. In fact, her parents pulled her out of the process when they were told it would involve four months filming in Canada. Her older sisters Rachael (who played the older version Lucy in the first film) and Laura stepped in, insisting that this was too big an opportunity to pass up. Her parents relented. Whereupon it became seven months in New Zealand instead.

“It changed my life,” Henley says. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. And I didn’t know anything. All I knew was what I had learnt in my drama club every Tuesday, and having parents who never told me to be quiet or anything, who liked me for being a little bit odd.”

Filming, give or take that first-day wobble, was wonderful. She apologises again for cheesiness. “It was like this magic thing. Every day it was a new costume, a new setting, new creatures to imagine you were talking to.” She watched the first film again two Christmases ago with her grandmother and enjoyed it. Certain memories from filming linger more than others: the day she played mini golf with Tilda Swinton, who was playing the White Witch, or the surprise party on set for her ninth birthday, when her father and sisters flew out to join her mother. “It was one of the best days of my life. It was just amazing. But it’s so funny when I meet children that age now and I think, ‘You are tiny.’ I remember what I was doing at that age and I can’t believe it.”

She has kept in touch with her co-stars, although they are rarely in the same room together. William Moseley, who played the oldest boy, Peter, acts in Hollywood. Anna Popplewell, who played Susan, still acts and lives round the corner from Henley in north London. Skandar Keynes, who played the younger brother, Edmund, overlapped with Henley at Cambridge. He was in his final year when she was in her first, but by that time he had stopped acting. “Nobody else will ever be able to understand what we did together. It’s this crazy, amazing thing. You just can’t explain it.”

As well as filming in New Zealand — and Eastern Europe and Australia in the later films — there was foreign travel for publicity junkets. She has visited Japan three times, she says, but doesn’t feel she knows the place since she spent most of her time there in hotel rooms. The same goes for New York. She will never forget being 15, waking up in her hotel room in Tokyo and remembering that she had a mock chemistry GCSE to do. She kept up with school work through tutors. The child actors shared classrooms as well as dressing rooms while on location.

Returning to normal life between films was difficult, though. Her family did a great job of keeping her feet on the ground, she says. They are all “very close”. However, she struggled when she got to Bradford Grammar School when she was 11. “Secondary school is where I struggled. I loved the work side of school, I loved learning, but the social side was a minefield. And part of that was worsened by the films that I had done, by me being in and out of school.

“There is such a pressure on child stars not to admit that it’s hard. To smile in interviews and say, ‘Yeah, I love my double life,’ and pretend they are a special agent or something. Because if they admit that it’s hard sometimes they sound like they are difficult.” She wouldn’t change anything about the films, but wishes she hadn’t played her achievement down so much when at school. She didn’t act in anything at school until her final year. “It was that thing of not wanting to put your head above the parapet for fear of it being sliced off, but I should have had the confidence to be proud of what I did. I was bullied mercilessly; people were so awful to me at school. It was amazing getting to uni and people being, like, ‘That’s so cool!’ And I was, like, ‘I know, right, isn’t it?’

“So I wish I could say to the 13-year-old me, ‘Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.’ And that doesn’t mean being arrogant. They are not the same. I think I conflated the two things.”

At university she studied English, but did theatre too. “You can experiment and f*** up or succeed, and if you do well nobody cares a week later and if you f*** up nobody cares a week later.”

She wrote and directed a couple of short films while there. She also kept up her film acting, although without Narnia budgets. In Perfect Sisters she played one of two Canadian teens plotting to kill their mother. The Sisterhood of Night, an American film, was a bit like The Crucible reworked for the age of social media. She also made Access All Areas, which was about a bunch of teenagers who go on the run to an island music festival. “It was amazing to be doing different characters,” she says. “People thought it was me trying to get away from the Lucy Pevensie thing, and maybe it looked like that, but your tastes change.” Before that, she was offered other fantasy or period films, but preferred to wait until she could do something different.

Talking of which, her professional stage debut certainly ticks that box. Ridley, known for troubling plays such as Mercury Fur or Dark Vanilla Jungle, has written six “gender-neutral” monologues, including one long one that is one of Henley’s favourites, about a teenaged sexual experience that may or may not have been entirely consensual. How you view it, Henley suggests, depends on which night you attend. She and her co-star, Tyrone Huntley, alternate who performs which three monologues each night. “You’ve got me, a white, straight woman, and Tyrone is a black, gay man; it’s two entirely different identities, but it’s the same words.”

Henley was already a fan of Ridley and had even written an essay about him at Cambridge, although she was mortified when one of the producers told him this. She will not let him read it, she says with a chuckle. She did some directing at university and would like to do more. Later this year she shoots her next short film. Beyond that some other work seems to be looming, but nothing she is sure about yet. She lives on her own, loves having her own space and isn’t in a relationship. “I’m a single Pringle. I don’t know how people my age have time for anything like that because I sure as hell don’t. I’m trying to keep myself together, let alone worry about someone else.”

The previous day she had picked up her first pay cheque for Angry.Fringe wages can’t be huge, but she’s thrilled to be paid for doing a job she loves. She is happiest when working. “Some child actors grow up and their career gets quite calculated. Their management say, ‘You can do an indie film, then you have got to do a blockbuster, and then you can do two more indies,’ but I’m just looking for stuff that scares me and challenges me; things I haven’t done before. Because I still feel like I don’t know anything and I have still got lots to learn, so having to jump in at the deep end like this . . .” she laughs. There is nowhere to hide when you’re doing monologues. “And that is terrifying, but it’s also a gift.”

#georgie henley #IM SCREAMING THIS PHOTO OMG AND THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE INTERVIEW EVER

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myaekingheart · 4 years

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So this is going to be a conglomeration of both last night’s dream and Sunday night’s dream because I forgot to log when I woke up on Monday. Starting with last night, though, while it’s still fresh in my brain.

I was at my parents’ house, and they said something about moving again which had me panicked because I thought their current house was finally the one that was going to stick, and they haven’t lived there very long either. So I was panicking about them moving, and then there was something about me also feeling guilty and terrible and like I was making them go broke because I’m financially dependent on them and the guilt is real. Then there was something about a Cinderella transformation dress similar to this one. I don’t remember quite as much about this particular little plot point though other than, like, standing in my parents’ formal living room messing with the mechanics of this sort of dress on myself, and it was dark like dusk and the ball gown underneath was luminescent blue. After this, my subconscious gave me a little throwback. Still at my parents’ house, William Moseley and Anna Popplewell showed up and were going to stay with us. I remember all of us (Will, Anna, my parents, my grandmother, and myself) sitting on the couch in the living room talking and I remember Will sitting next to me and we were flirting. And then we all went outside to jump in the pool and go for a swim but we got suddenly bombarded by three different monstrous insects. The first was a giant yellowjacket that was floating over the pool that my grandmother pointed out, I can’t remember the second, but then the third was a large cricket/alligator hybrid that was lumbering across the pool deck. That one I remember the most vividly. He had a bulky cricket body and a small, round cricket head but the legs and tail of an alligator, as well as the size of one. I remember leaping out of the pool and snuggling close to Will for protection as I watched it. I remember Googling it in the dream and dream!Google apparently said it was some mythical Mexican creature whose name I can’t remember (but it was two words, the first starting with an s and the second starting with a c, and the name of it was very non-Mexican, way more Germanic) that apparently served as a bad and daunting omen about getting pregnant/having a baby.

Then the dream shifted and I was with my fiance. We were heading to some event hall to attend a party hosted by his work. I remember we were still at my parents’ house, and we were at first contemplating walking versus driving but ultimately just ended up driving. When we arrived, it was quickly evident that every single person in attendance was a Naruto character. Outside the event hall, we ran into a tiny genin Hinata carrying a large jug of something to drink, perhaps water or juice, and struggling with it so we helped her inside and to the food + drink table to drop it off. Then we followed her to a guest table and sat with her there, but then Kakashi showed up and sat on the other side of me. So here I was flanked by my fiance on my left and Kakashi on my right, and I was lowkey just kind of losing it. And then Kakashi turned to me and asked me to dance and I said yes so he took my hand and guided me to the dance floor where we started slow dancing and it was honestly really cute and romantic and sappy.

The dreams from Sunday night are considerably hazy but this is what I remember from what I jotted down anyways:

I ran away to Alberta, Canada but it was super rural and dystopian there. Very much a “middle of nowhere” type town with old crumbling brick building and no one around. Amid all of this, there was a fully glass hairdresser’s place. I stepped inside to find a man in there who looked very much like a combination of josephpaulreed on instagram and someone I knew back when I was a teenager. I went in and told him I wanted hair like Hayley Williams in Misery Business and he basically told me that he had no idea who that was and that they didn’t have Paramore in Canada despite having the exact same hair color scheme as Misery Business Hayley Williams. Then there was apparently some weird video about my Naruto OC involving green-screened Japanese backgrounds? This part is getting into really hazy territory, though, like in retrospect I remember nothing of this. There was also apparently something else that had to do with a brothel where my fiance and I were stealing other people’s stuff? Again, super hazy. This is all just going off of what I had in my notes app. The only thing I really remember at all from this night was the hairdresser part because it was just so strange and so specific??? I don’t know, man, at this rate every night just feels an acid trip in my subconscious lmfao

#weird dreams #ramblings

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khalilhumam · 4 years

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COVID-19 causes Trinidad and Tobago to cancel its Carnival for 2021

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/covid-19-causes-trinidad-and-tobago-to-cancel-its-carnival-for-2021/

COVID-19 causes Trinidad and Tobago to cancel its Carnival for 2021

There is still hope for a virtual festival

“Carnival Tuesday meggie”: Carnival lover Attillah Springer gives a “meggie” – a hand gesture that brings the thumb and four fingers together in a sign of derision, scorn or rejection. Photo by Georgia Popplewell, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

It may have been anticipated, but now it's official: thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trinidad and Tobago's 2021 Carnival celebrations have been cancelled. Prime Minister Keith Rowley made the announcement on the afternoon of September 28, calling the national festival “the perfect environment for the spreading of the virus.” Despite the inevitable economic blow the decision will have, he said, he's not prepared to take the risk. Reaction, predictably, was split. While most people applauded the decision, calling it both “expected” and “solid”, others wondered about the fate of those whose income depends on the national festival. When one Facebook user called the decision “insane”, Josie Aché-De Goulard retorted:

NO! it's realistic and logical is what it is. Everyone else has already gone ahead and cancelled theirs. I do not possibly see how any “right thinking” citizen of T&T could possibly think to put the country under further threat from Covid-19.

Trinidad and Tobago Carnival 2020 was already over by the time the country recorded its first case of COVID-19 in March. Other countries that host annual Carnivals, including Brazil, have already postponed their 2021 events, but it is only the third time in history that Trinidad and Tobago has put theirs on hold—a history that Trinidadian author Michael Anthony chronicled in his book “Parade of the Carnivals of Trinidad, 1839-1989″. In the chapter etitled “Carnival in a World of War,” Anthony noted that the festival continued as usual during World War I, which was fought largely in Europe. After the war ended, the 1919 celebrations were known as “Victory Carnival”. During World War II, the festival did not take place at all between 1942 and 1945, although “spontaneous” celebrations happened on May 8 and 9, 1945 in honour of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, and on Aug 15 and 16, 1945 for Victory over Japan (VJ) Day. The country's street festival was postponed from February 1972 to May 1973 because of the threat of the polio virus, so it is not as if the move to put off next year's Carnival celebrations is unprecedented. In fact, many netizens saw it coming, but hoped that a virtual celebration might take its place. In a Facebook status update on June 24, Maria Rivas-Mc predicted that “promoters are going to have to Zoom in fete-goers to the music and the vibe from concert halls in ‘foreign’ [abroad]!” Virtual Carnivals are something that costume designers like Clary Salandy have already been experimenting with—the band she and her husband created for Notting Hill Carnival 2020 was showcased online. Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival stakeholders have also expressed excitement about the opportunity to share their creativity in the virtual realm. Facebook user Marc Bejai suggested:

We keep forgetting that there are elements of carnival that are outside the realm of the street parade. We should adapt and showcase our calypso, pan, extempo and dimanche gras much like how sporting events are still being carried out.

Both calypso music and the steelpan instrument originated in Trinidad and Tobago. Extempo refers to an extemporaneous form of calypso, and Dimanche Gras, literally translated as “Big Sunday,” is a grand show at which coveted titles like the Calypso Monarch are decided. Franka Philip of Trini Good Media, which produces the “Talk ‘Bout Us” podcast, crowdsourced opinions on what a virtual Carnival might look like. Most commenters felt that simply delaying the celebrations would be best, with Zahra Gordon suggesting that it may be an opportune time “to re-focus to community Carnivals and limit the size of large bands.” Anthony Bisnath added:

Aside from the issue of a vaccine being made available globally, it’s difficult to envision any Carnival 2021 at all, due to the commercialization of the festival, and the limitations of two major sources of revenue: Government expenditure will be prioritized elsewhere, and corporate entities will slash sponsorship budgets. Having a 2021 Carnival may jeopardize the planning cycle for one in 2022. It will be almost impossible to execute, as Carnival mas [costume] production is essentially a 12 month cycle. So there are challenges to logistics, Sponsorship, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Costuming, International Travel, Consumer Patterns, Disposable Income and Statutory Approvals all changing for the next 18 months.

Carnival enthusiast Tillah Willah was not perturbed, however. She posted on Facebook:

You don’t always need a crowd to observe your ritual, to praise your ancestors, to offer thanks to the universe for your life.

One Twitter user, however, wasn't quite so optimistic:

I woulda rather get horn than be told it having no carnival — Travis World (@itstravisworld) September 28, 2020

“Horn” is Caribbean slang for infidelity. Other netizens wondered whether, given the cancellation of the physical street parade, they would have to go to work on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Apart from essential services, most workplaces are closed on those two days, even though they are not official public holidays. It didn't take long for the memes to surface. This one poked fun at what the 2021 designs in a sought-after band—known for its skimpy costumes—might look like:

Meme about Trinidad and Tobago Carnival 2021, widely shared on social media.

It is a question that both the producers and loyal participants of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival are still trying to figure out, but stakeholder Rubadiri Victor certainly hoped that a virtual Carnival 2021 is in the offing:

Trinidad and Tobago should see virtual Carnival 2021 as the launch of T&T's virtual economy! […] We are creating a telegenic event with brilliant filmmakers and Carnival, Creative, and Business stakeholders for international consumption with brand T&T as the winner!

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Janine Mendes-Franco

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yeskraim · 4 years

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CES takes half-baked stance on cannabis

A cannabis company won a CES award for 2020. Called Keep, the desktop storage device features biometric security to secure cannabis products, and looks good while doing it. The CTA gave them an Innovations Award Nominee in October and then weeks later told the company they were unable to use the word “cannabis” when exhibiting.

Keep Labs decided to stay home and not exhibit at the massive Consumer Electronics Show, potentially missing out on distribution deals, funding and increased brand awareness.

Vaporizers, cannabis and tobacco alike have long been found on the CES show floor. They’re often hidden under different names, like aromatherapy devices. This year is different. They’re gone from the show floor. I spent hours in the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo center. The vapes are missing from the 2020 show.

That could change, according to a spokesperson for CES. The trade group behind the show is evaluating if cannabis has a place at CES.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) runs CES. It’s the largest such trade event in the world and attended by some 200,000 people. After speaking with a CTA spokesperson, it’s clear the trade organization knows its under close scrutiny and yet it’s still willing to blur lines to allow some companies ancillarily to cannabis to exhibit. That is, if they don’t talk about the device’s true intention.

In the past, sex tech was explicitly banned, so companies like OhMiBod exhibited under Health and Wellness. Vaporizers could be categorized as aromatherapy devices. Emails obtained by TechCrunch show the CTA has told cannabis-adjacent companies it can exhibit if cannabis is not mentioned on the show floor.

Keep Labs submitted its cannabis storage device exhibit under the “Home Storage” category. Upon its acceptance, the CTA nominated the device to the coveted Innovation Award and told the company it could present, as long as it doesn’t mention cannabis. You see, to the CTA, Keep Labs’ product is acceptable as it could have another purpose other than storing cannabis gummies; it could, in theory, be used to store candy gummies. Keep Labs told TechCrunch that avoiding saying “cannabis” goes against the company’s best interest, so it decided to skip the show.

Canopy Growth operates several prominent brands in the cannabis space. Like Keep Labs, it feels CES is not the right place to exhibit its wares if true intentions need to be hidden.

The Canadian company announced a new line of vape pens and cartridges in late 2019. With smart features and an app component, it would be perfect fodder among CES’ high-tech exhibits. The company also owns Storz-Bickel, a vaporizer company with historic roots that could exhibit in this CES gray area.

Canopy Growth acknowledges it’s banned from the show while some smaller competitors are able to exhibit by skirting the rules.

Canopy Growth CTO Peter Popplewell tells TechCrunch he still attends CES. It’s essential for him and Canopy Growth’s brands, even if the company isn’t exhibiting. For him, as the CTO, he’s meeting with component makers and suppliers.

“As the largest producer of legally produced medical and recreational cannabis and hemp products, and now a hardware manufacturer, Canopy Growth is constantly looking for ways to provide next-generation innovation to our customers and enhance their cannabis experience,” Popplewell told TechCrunch. “Within its portfolio of brands, Canopy has brought to market five different vaporizer products this fiscal year and our R&D pipeline is full of exciting developments.

“CES is the tradeshow where I am able to meet with a host of component manufacturers that help us develop safety features on our devices — such as accurate temperature control and locking the devices to address the unique needs and concerns of cannabis users,” Popplewell said.

Pax is one of the largest cannabis hardware companies and does not exhibit at CES. To be clear, Pax still has a presence in Las Vegas during CES, even though it’s not at the show itself. Like many companies at CES, Pax holds meetings and attends third-party events during CES. This lets the company bypass the CTA’s rules and still access CES attendees.

Earlier this week Pax released its Era Pro vaporizer that features PodID, a clever feature that brings a lot of information to the user.

Pax VP of Policy Jeff Brown, tells TechCrunch he’s puzzled by the CTA’s stance.

“CTA’s stubborn refusal to allow cannabis companies on the show floor is both comic and puzzling,” Brown said. “Cannabis is fully legal in Las Vegas, and there are multiple dispensaries within a mile of the convention center. Inside, companies offer an open bar in their booth, and hundreds walk the floor with a drink in hand.

“Nobody is asking to consume at CES,” Brown added. “There’s a lot of interesting technology being developed to take the guesswork out of weed. There are vaporizers with apps that tell consumers what they’re smoking, they detail the chemical attributes, and provide controls to measure each dose. There’s even a numeric lock to make the vaporizer unusable by children.”

As he told TechCrunch, this technology is legal, and cannabis itself is legal in 33 states and Canada.

“Unfortunately, you’re not going to learn about it at CES,” Brown said.

Right now, even in 2020, there are ways around the CTA’s ban. In the case of Keep Labs, the CTA granted the company permission to exhibit — as long as cannabis wasn’t mentioned. The company decided that to exhibit without saying “cannabis” wouldn’t do the brand justice. They don’t want to shy away from cannabis.

This is the puzzling part. The CTA will let companies exhibit, as long as their true intentions are hidden. The CTA used to do the same with sex toys, too.

In the run-up to the 2019 show, the CTA awarded sextech maker Lori DiCarlo with an Innovations Award. It later rescinded the award after the trade organization decided it was too sexy for CES. Fallout followed and expanded as the show opened, and sextech was found throughout the show floor, despite the ban affecting Lori DiCarlo. As with cannabis, the CTA allowed sextech under the guise of as “personal massagers” alongside therapy and sports massagers in the Health and Wellness category.

The CTA introduced the Sex Tech category for the 2020 show on a trial basis. I’m told the category will likely live on to future shows, too. This is how the CTA operates, the CTA told TechCrunch. It trials a category, and then if it works out, the category is rolled into the show.

“For us, cannabis is a tough decision,” a CTA spokesperson told TechCrunch. “It’s complicated, and the laws are changing quickly. We are watching closely, and I would not be surprised if, at some point in the future, it was part of the show.”

The CTA tells TechCrunch it continually looks at the regulatory environment, pointing out that cannabis is still an illicit substance at the federal level in the United States. The CTA however acknowledges cannabis is legal in the state of Nevada.

Nevada is one of the 33 states in the United States where cannabis is legal in some form. In Nevada, it’s legal to consume for recreational uses. The state law allows for cannabis consumption in a private residence, making it illegal to consume in a hotel, public space or convention center. There are dozens of cannabis dispensaries within miles of CES.

Cortney Smith’s vaporizer company DaVinci is based in Las Vegas and has exhibited at CES a handful of times. As he tells TechCrunch, the company didn’t have a problem presenting on the show floor, but “didn’t paste pot leaves all over.”

Smith explained that he feels the CTA’s radar has grown more sensitive in part by the vaporizer scare in 2019.

“In the past, [cannabis products weren’t] challenged,” Smith said. “So when we were there, as a cannabis vaporizer, we did not get scrutinized because [the CTA] was not on alert.”

DaVinci isn’t exhibiting this year despite recently launching a new product. The dry herb DaVinci IQ2 just hit the market and is among a new crop of vaporizers designed to bring more transparency to cannabis use. It uses on-device processing to track and record active compounds produced per draw. The sleek device and smartphone app would look at home among the latest gadgets found at CES.

As he puts it, if CES doesn’t want the business, there’s an opportunity for other trade shows to pick up cannabis products and run with it.

“CES has competition,” Smith said. “There are other consumer electronics shows around the world that would love to steal their thunder and star power. And the chance [the CTA] takes when they limit their innovation — like no sex toys or no cannabis — it gives the opportunity to some other electronics show to welcome adult toys or adult devices. So I guess they’re willing to make this compromise to play it safe.”

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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CES takes half-baked stance on cannabis

A cannabis company won a CES award for 2020. Called Keeps, the desktop storage device features biometric security to secure cannabis products, and looks good while doing it. The CTA gave them an Innovations Award Nominee in October and then weeks later told the company they were unable to use the word “cannabis” when exhibiting.