My Illustrative Life

A little while ago, I asked for concrit on my narration of the first two pages of a ghost story by A.C. Benson. None of you gave me any, which is a grudge I shall naturally hold forever, but nevertheless I am giving you a SECOND CHANCE. Look pleased!

Here’s a re-post of the first section. It’s audio only, but I know how to upload to youtube and so I will use that knowledge! Just keep it open in a tab at the back while you do something else, if you feel you may be bored by a lack of visuals.

And here is the newly uploaded, recorded today SECOND PART. Three whole pages this time, o yes I SPOIL you! Our Hero Paullinus has reached the point of no escape, though the really monstrous happening are yet to surface.

I really would like constructive criticism on my reading. I will even help you; upon listening in order to edit I have noticed that I need to:

1. speak less portentously
2. make more differentiation between voices, or voices and narration
3. need to slow the heck down sometimes

for example! What else? Please tell me! I will say, “thank you”.

Hallo.

It may be spring, officially (or it may not? I’m not actually sure), but that does not mean it’s warm and balmy. No, I still need a double-layered underskirt and wool shorts to keep me comfortably warm. And a fine-knit woolen sweater.

I was going to hang around in the garden and draw flowers and bits of wood and such, because illustrating backgrounds (or; anything that isn’t people) is something that I don’t much do. Because I don’t like to, and subsequently when I need to it doesn’t come out very well, which again - makes me like it less. NO NO SHAMEFUL LAZINESS. Draw from life, draw from life!

But! Like I said. Too cold for only one skirt means too cold for bare fingers, so alas I must stay indoors.

I use my house arrest to watch the latest Linkara review and do other kinds of study. Today, I swallow my mad pride and study Tove Jansson’s Moomin* expressions. They are so painfully good. I say “mad pride” because, in my arrogance, I hate to admit that people have skills and knowledge I do not! It is ridiculous!

And so, la! Theme work!

‘Ow do you like my new scarf-pin? “New”; I found it in one of my local-ish antiques centers. How truly antique is it? Who can say! I don’t much mind; it does the job I need it for, and looks like an anemone. It doesn’t have the middle-nub, but I figure everyone’s entitled to modesty. Anemones are my favourite. Plus, it makes me feel a little safer and more practical. You never know when you may need to pin something to something!

Wore it to make my fire, too.

*I know, I know - I had the Little My nightmares too. But that was the cartoon, not the gorgeous gorgeous books or comic strips, and in the books? Her character is wonderful. My very favourite. Referring to her as an “action girl”, which TVTropes does, is a massive injustice. And she doesn’t have THAT VOICE.

Coming later today or tomorrow: Makeover Movie Madness SPOILERS edition 2: Desperately Seeking Susan

Unrelated: How good would a Vanessa Paradis / Kana duet/battle album be??

My sister, and my foot again. I’m just unable to colour things without using yellow. Why, I wonder? I barely ever use white for highlights, even when I’ve built up enough pigment to block out the paper or canvas. Or if I do use it, I start to hate it and feel put-upon.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be posting these every day!

Plus: I’ve been twittering my discontent with Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker’s “official” sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula; Dracula: The Un-Dead. I drew this in the night, after reading a particularly enraging, faith-breaking passage. Please excuse my vendetta.. Dracula is just too darn GOOD.

Warning: Possible rape triggers

My mum and sister had half-term last week, so we took an overnighter in Buxton. To walk in nature, and.. look at stuff. We stopped at Chatsworth House (because my sister is a big squealer for Pride and Prejudice), which as you can see above is quite delightful. This is the view from one side of the bridge:

One of several reasons I am proud to volunteer for BW: Waterways are wonderful. So pretty! I drew as much as my freezin’ fingers would let me.

There are links to more pictures (reference/stock) of these gorgeous landscapes in the righthand sidebar.

Also fascinating was the toilet paper, where we stayed. No really, take a gander!

Lots of charming pokey shops, too; antiques and bookshops aplenty. A surprising amount of clothing, in the antiques emporiums in and around Buxton actually - maybe it’s a local thing, but ‘vintage’ seems to be creeping in all over where it was once disdained. I may be being overly romantic.

There was the most excellent bookshop. Second-hand, antique to current, FIVE FLOORS. It had free tea and coffee! That you could make for yourself! It was glorious, and I kick myself for not being in the right sort of mood to really appreciate it. Then again, I really can’t afford to be stocking up on old, old thick books with the sorts of covers that make you want to weep from the perfection of illustration.

Where was my mind? Photographic evidence:

The horrors (and adventures) of my youth.

Truth be told I came out with exactly what I did want - Teacher’s Pet by Caroline B. Cooney, a Point Horror (remember those?) that chilled me so royally that I refused to use the downstairs bathroom for years. I’ve been looking for it for months; I wanted to see if it still had the power.

In the story the heroine finds a rough workmans glove in the woods, which turns out to still have a hand in it. My dad keeps his work gloves in the downstairs loo. I was a nervous and imaginative child!

So, watch out for THAT review, coming soon..

It snowed! The end!

Today seemed like a ‘first day of Spring’; it was sunny though still cold, and crocuses are coming up. I sat on the front steps and read the first story in The Temple of Death.

The first story in the anthology The Temple of Death happens to be called The Temple of Death. It was written by Arthur Christopher Benson (1862 - 1925(1926?)), a man who seems to have had a rather painful life but who also seems to have been quite dedicated to making the lives of others better, if he could. The introduction to the book mentions he was a teacher, who was of the following opinion:

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered accutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

I get a little of the impression that he wasn’t exactly pro-woman, but I also get no impression that he was anti exactly, either, and it was hardly his fault alone that Eton was for boys, so lets allow him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, he also (according to the introduction of my volume, by David Stuart Davies) said that he wrote his (horror) stories for the purpose of the following:

..[To] touch with a light romance some of the knightly virtues which are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace and uninteresting duties.

I have to say, I think that’s marvelous - and a darn fine raison d’être. I admire this man.

As far as I can tell, since A. Benson died in 1925 (or 26? wiki says one, intro says another), these stories of his are public domain. So here are the first two pages of The Temple of Death, read by your host (me). There are just over fourteen in all, and if you’d care to give me con-crit I’d be much obliged and attempt to improve my methods before narrating the next two or so. I’m doing voiceover work at both of my places of employ, and as such I rather need the practice. I hope you enjoy the story.. the devil’s yet to come.

Sunday Sunday Sunday.

Well, I finally got to reading Tank Girl: Armadillo. I read it in bed, reading reading reading for a decent couple of hours like I always, always used to. Was it good? Should you buy it (or borrow, or.. loan it)? Let’s start at the start! And finish before the end (of the book), FYI; the second half is short stories and suchlike, and I haven’t read’em yet. You can do THAT for yourself.

There’re two prefaces, from the author, and I want you to read this little bit of one of them and understand why I didn’t read past it, in the common room lunch place at work, because of having “something in my eye”.

That’s kind. Kindness and fiction-appreciation are important. Honestly, I think this book is worth the purchase for that sentiment alone.

When I was reading I started out feeling uncomfortable, to be honest. You may be different and probably are but I really don’t find it easy to come in fresh to a story and start yellin’ WOOO, BLOW HIS HEAD OFF! I mentioned in the Jennifer’s Body SPOILERS how touchy I am about cannon fodder. I don’t need ameri-dubbing on my Dragonball to her “I think I see their parachutes!”, or whatever it was. I only catch six pokemon per game if I can manage it, for goodness sake, because shoving them inside a computer seems mean. I’m a big ole bleeding heart and hearing the idol of the novel say Okay, so we shot down a cop in cold blood. So fuckin’ what? makes me go “eeeeehhh” and squirm a bit. But what felt unusual is that the book (author/protag both) seems to acknowledge that. She say the italicised sentences in a page-chapter devoted to explaining how that’s not as muddy as it seems, how I shouldn’t judge her anyway, and how she doesn’t even care if I do. And not in such a deluded, self-convincing, distancing way as the way I put it makes it sound.

I still wasn’t completely cool with the thing of it, though. Which is why it was a relief when everybody revealed themselves to be such complete stinkers who were just as willing to solve problems with murder and carnage and pain as Tank Girl and her gang, only without being fun and kind and caring the rest of the time. In a world of shooting out brains before breakfast, motivation comes to be very meaningful. It’s an interesting authorial quirk, I think - the mixture of boisterous cartoonery and irredeemable-to-the-point-of-2d villains with the 3d motivation and realistic emotional resonance. Tank Girl really does, after a while, become a vessel for violent revenge/lesson fantasies. I don’t really feel ok thinking about feeding grenades to real world despicable people, or people who have crossed or simply annoyed me - it just feels counter-productive and even in my mental Holodeck I can’t ignore that people have.. well, whole people within themselves. But here? These people whose innards I can see are bad, bad, no-good people through and through. I have it on highest authority.

Tank Girl really was my armour, as I read this book.

It’s not just that though; Armadillo is a novel. It has a story. She and her peeps are making war on this one town full of heinous characters, who’ve ruined or messed with the lives of two (really three, I guess, but Sub Girl’s ex is never relevant as her ex) of the crew. It’s full of backstory, and re-weaving of now-story, and I think that makes it backstory for some of the previously published comics cos there’s no talk of any babies. I have no idea how Tank Girl canon works. I sort of don’t want to.

There’s also (I warned you in the post title here, SPOILERS) time travel. Which I enjoyed as a plot contrivance and a method to get extra emotional facts out there, but also because it was a very, very similar method to the one used in the film Somewhere in Time. I really dig that movie; Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, gorgeous clothing, heart-wrenching plot. Excellent rainy day movie, and the leitmotif is a keeper. Tank Girl yammers on about a movie (and a particular song from it) she accidentally managed to see as a child which no-one else had heard of periodically, too, so I figure this is an extra relevant tangent.

Reading this book made me feel better about things. She’s not “the perfect person” and she’s not, of course, “real”. I’ve said before that reading T.G. comics make me want to dress like myself, not like her, and want to celebrate being myself, not like her. And that’s true, because you know when you read her that if you were to meet her, then she would either think you were rad or disgusting - and thinking that oneself is not rad is not the way to go about encouraging Tank Girls esteem. Plus, she speaks a lot of wisdom:

Buy it.

Wearing today addendum:

Learning by Doing is excellent; today at work I learnt about twenty things about website fiddling and coding by being thrown in at the deep end, finished a marketing video and started reading Tank Girl: Armadillo. I’m only.. let me check.. seven pages of preface/story in (I spent all my breaks doing extra learnin’! I have all these ideas I need to be able to include!) but I have laughed and YEUHH’d and thought “Hmm, I might wear that”. I won’t say more! Let’s keep the spoilers for the SPOILERS post!

Gonna have a quiet evening of horror illustration, working on a logo for my beloved, and having another strike at Rachel’s tattoo. And watching Martial Law.

Unrelated tangent: I decided to start buying summery-appropriate clothes. So I have something to wear when it isn’t chilly chilly.. I’m just so picky. So far I have my eye on a Jane Marple (of course) skirt and Gogol Bordello ‘track shorts’, and I cut the arms off my too-big and previously unflattering Misfits pumpkin tee.. Anyone got any suggestions?? I like layers and structure! So not summer-ideal!

Trying out this new, extra comments format since people’ve mentioned they’ve had trouble with the built-in form.. :O

Four whole pictures. Because I say so!

These next two, see, I find interesting. Because if you could see the expressions I have under the pixels you’d know they were completely different to the ones that I drew. But the ones I drew look like they might be similar, don’t you think?

Listening to (hence double mus-tash whammy):

Gonna be talking about ART this next week. I just found out that one of my favourite artists is the son in law of another of my favourite artists, to whom my mum compared some of my stylings (best compliment in memory, possibly). And after I cook these blueberry muffins, I’ma start reading Tank Girl: Armadillo for SPOILERS v.3.THE FUTURE! IT GLISTENS!

I don’t actually know if there is/is going to be a softcover of this book.

Jennifer’s Body, first-off, was a horror movie out last year. Written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox (jennifer) and Amanda Seyfried (Needy); about a pair of teenaged, highschool friends who give up pretending that they don’t feel like enemies once Megan’s character, titular Jennifer (and no, I’m not taking that pun out - it was accidental and I don’t feel like redacting it to avoid rubbish jokes), becomes some sort of demon. I hated it when I saw the posters, I resented it when I saw Megan Fox being used for sexyface yet again, I rolled my eyes and sneered at it when I heard the “HELL IS A TEENAGE GIRL!” tagline. But when I read the coverage it got on Jezebel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (’6 reasons to love Jennifer’s Body’)) I started to think it might actually be really fantastic.

I still haven’t watched it, though. I’m a rubbish cinema-goer (I still haven’t seen Where the Wild Things Are, for goodness’ sake!).

I was and am super-keen on the idea of a horror movie about teenage friendships full of resentment and stangancy (not a real word?), about how objectification and patriarchy turn people against themselves and each other, and a deeper examination of high school/teenage problems than “my parents don’t understand or listen to me” or gender-divided court hierarchy. Not that those things aren’t interesting and true and painful, but that isn’t all that sucks so hard about growing up. I was-am also super-keen on examination (& debunking) of sexism within horror movies. And how that comes from, reflects and focusses sexism and gender-based assumptions in ‘real life’.

But like I said, I haven’t seen the movie yet! So I should shut up about it, and talk about the comic which I HAVE read!

They were still shooting when I was writing so I haven’t seen the film but I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. - Rick Spears, author of the compilation, to Atomic Comics

I mentioned that I bought my copy in a regular book shop rather than a specialist comic shop - this meant that I got the Cho-drawn cover:

Now, I twitter’d this before, but the fact that this comic came wrapped in cellophane makes me go HAH and then EWW.

When I started writing this today I decided I should check good ole wikipedia to see if it had any interesting facts I had missed. it didn’t, but it did provide me with this paragraph synopsis of the book:

The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her “going in for the kill” several times. It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.

I’ll just day that “conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered” is not what I did when I was reading. Why? Oh! That’s right! Teenage boys DON’T deserve to be murdered! You nutter, anonymous wiki editor.

I don’t actually think that that was what the author intended me to do either though - I got much more of an impression that this was a book written out of a funny sort of sensitivity. Boys don’t deserve to be murdered, but horror movies need victims.. but victims mean nothing if they weren’t people first. I leave the room when Luke’s rebel friends are being burst like fireworks as they’re all assaulting the Deathstar, because it’s sad. Phelous often mention that the films he reviews miss the mark because the characters who get skewered (or whatever) are so irritating or vapid that the viewer doesn’t care or is glad when they pop their clogs - the more a victim matters, the more of a reaction will be gleaned from their demise. Or from any trouble they meet, really.

Just like in Nation X there are four stories, and just like in Nation X the first one is the best.

Chapter One: JONAS follows a jock who vaguely wants to bone Jennifer despite his girlfriend’s presence, and who’s feeling the strain of staying the sports hero he’s always naturally been whilst living the life of sofa-riding and snack-scoffing that he’s also inclined towards. It’s drawn by Jim Mahfood, who is great.

Second-page in and Jonas is getting a Strickland-esque dressing down from the headteacher - Jonas is never going to go anywhere, his life’s peaked already, he’ll end up hating his whole life and his whole life caving in on him. Jonas shrugs it off, but he can’t.. quite.. ignore it..

He gives it a good try though.

Spears keeps adding little extra bits of pending doom onto Jonas - ones that are unrelated to Jennifer.

Then he figures out his girl isn’t quite all his, then classmates are lost to a mysterious fire, then Jonas can’t keep it all in any more when the school’s grief councillor schedules a visit.. Jonas knows his life’s not what he wants. He knows his story is supposed to be better than this. And then, beautiful powerful popular Jennifer appears, and Jonas knows she can make the right things happen.

Jennifer’s not so into making out or hooking up any more though, so she whacks his head off.

Jonas’s story is over, and Jennifer was really only the end of it.

Chapter two: COLIN is about a kid who wears a shirt with an anarchy symbol on it, who has been “in love” with Jennifer since childhood, and who cannot bring himself to buy music from a mainstream record shop in a mall.

He can’t even speak in front of Jennifer, even after they become lab partners (is this really such a romantic appointment as the movies suggest?). Until..

So he can talk to her, but when he decides to overcome the dismissals of his sub-culture peers and ask Jennifer out, DISASTER STRIKES.

Don’t worry! Jennifer isn’t going to let him get away so easily. Romance may blossom after all! In an building site. Nice, Jennifer. But Colin’s not so impressed.

Jennifer looks like she’s hoping for some naked time, and Colin’s thinking of backing out because he’s a kid with emotions, you know? I’m not making fun Colin, I think that’s nice.

Sorry, Colin. Jennifer wants your body.

Chapter three: Ahmet from India made me ask “What the fuck is this?”. Is this dialogue straight-up racist, or is it just me?

What’s up with the sentence construction?

Also, is circumcision that common? Really? Uncommon enough that a team of baseball players will taunt their new expert bowler off the team based upon his present foreskin?

Really??

I don’t know if there was a Bollywood scene in the movie, but either way its inclusion here makes me feel uncomfortable. Ahmet is at the club everyone goes to, a band plays, the music is SUPER AWESOME and Ahmet gets Bollywood vision, rainbows and bare-chest-waistcoat and all. Dance routine time.

???

I liked the character that came through from Ahmet. He seemed like a decent kid. It’s interesting to get a view of a character whose international schooling year goes terribly, what culture shock feels like, and it’s true that food from ‘back home’ can be immensely comforting to someone in a place that feels hostile. For example, I started eating courgettes having hated them previously because I was glum in my uni town, and our crop at home had just ripened. It’s good to be reminded how extremely unkindness can effect people - you really never know how much other stuff someone’s dealing with as well. I am just completely baffled by the way that this section is written. The art’s pretty good - it’s just not used entirely for good, I think!

I considered that the odd dialogue might have been an author’s technique to bring home how culturally out of place Ahmet is or seems to the other kids at school. But if it is it is SO badly applied.

This last couple of panels was smart though, I think; Ahmet starts his story by talking about grasping his own American Dream, and ends (doubly) by quoting an American film classic.. about his ‘foreign’ home.

The last story is Chip’s. Chip is the boyfriend in the movie, Needy’s boyfriend. He wants to have sex with her, a lot, she’s intimidated by her body (Chip’s words) and doesn’t want to do it much. He fantasises about Needy, and sometimes about Jennifer too. Eventually Jennifer kills him and it is sad. I thought this was the most straightforward of all the shorts, which is why I didn’t include any pictures.

The four short stories are bookended by Jennifer, at (I assume) the beginning of her rampage and at the end of the film. The caption boxes show her inner monologue.

Start:

End:

And they say it all, really - there’s zero insight into Jennifer in this book. No more than I got from the trailers, anyway, or the exchange between her and Needy:

Needy: You’re killing people!

Jennifer: No, I’m killing boys.

She knows boys want her, and partly because of that she disdains boys. She knows she’s hot, and partly because of that she disdains her body. This book was about the boys, and it causes me slight to middling pause that they went ahead and called it “Jennifer’s Body” on the cover.

Jennifer’s body wasn’t what killed them, and the stories show that. What killed them was Jennifer’s actions. What led up to Jennifer’s actions were the pressures upon her, and upon the boys. and their reactions to these pressures. Oh, and of course, what caused Jennifer to start “killing boys” was the demonic entity which possessed her, after she was murdered in a misogynist ’sacrifice to Satan”. Thanks wikipedia.

It’s true that each of the boys in these stories are sexually attracted to Jennifer and her body, but in no story does the kid in question simply want to fuck her. They think she’s ‘hot’, but they also want what she (with personality, standing, artifice) represents. Jonas wants the comfort and potential of a partnership with her. Colin wants to spend time with her doing things he likes that it turns out she might enjoy too. Ahmet wants someone to be his friend - a bond, maybe even someone he can share love with. Chip is the only one interested in Jennifer’s body, and even he rejects her because he doesn’t want her body. He just responds with boners to the sexual interaction that she flaunts as a possibility. Maybe all this is why they kept the title, I don’t know.

It’s all over pretty fast, anyway. I was left with that feeling oh “oh.. huh” that I also got from the Buffy season six/seven tie-in comics I read years ago. It does feel like a tie-in, I think is the problem, and I think the psychology of the various attractions to Jennifer (and her reactions to them) are set out a bit simplistically. Or maybe I mean straightforwardly? In Colin’s story, particularly, I felt like I was reading the bad sort of soap opera webcomic, where relationship dramas are settled by enormous speech bubbles of self-help book join-the-dots. This was a really bad comparison to draw, because I can;t link to a comic that I think does this sort of thing because that would be terribly rude. I think what I’m saying is that I felt that some of this book were too neatly drawn. And when I say ‘drawn’, I mean ‘written’.

Apart from the baffling aspects of Ahmet’s chapter, I think I recommend this book. It is, at the very least, an interesting artifact: the “but what about us?” response to a feminist slam of internalised misogyny’s effect on teenage sexuality. What about you, boys? You matter too, of course! And that’s why you should be on our side.

Oh, pee ess, the reason that I actually did turn out to write a review with no mention of the character design or wardrobe choices? Because it was apparently no-one’s priority here at all, and I barely noticed what anyone was wearing ever. Bah.

Sorry this got so long.

Ugh ugh ugh, sorry for the multiple edits! >_<

OKIE DOKIE! ‘Review’ numbuh one: NATION X, issue 2.

Nation X is an anthology miniseries, far as I can see. All sorts of things are going down in X-Men proper; Mutants now have an island home and Magneto’s joined them, apparently. I don’t read any X-books regularly anymore (except X-Men Noir. Which is alternate reality stuff, so does not count) so I am in the ignorance boat, and I really don’t feel like doing much deep searching of info right now. The X-Men’s various threads tire me, currently. The whole freakin’ sliding time-scale, mash-up, retcon, blahblahblah MESS of it tires me!

But like I mentioned, for Jubilee (and No-Girl, and Quentin), I’ll take a peek. Here is my peek.

The book has four stories - one for each of the cover characters. Jubilee goes first, and it’s the winner of the collection: She’s writing a letter (to who? Who else?), she’s sort-of mentoring mutant teens, she’s dealing with her loss of mutancy (Dear M-Day, I hate you), she’s finding her head and the balance of the dear past with the painful past with the possibilities of the future with the dearth of direction currently. And all within eight pages. Nice work, CB Cebulski, Jim McCann, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback.

I like the letter ‘voice over’ concept and I like the repeated editing of what she just wrote. I like that she’s a hero to (most of) the current teen X-members. I like that she’s still in touch with Wolverine because Logan is best when he’s profound-emotional, and since he is so unlucky in love I feel he really, truly shines when he’s got a kid on one arm and the mentor-stick in his hand. Jubes + Wolvie 4eva, no??

What I am also honestly impressed with is the character design. Junilee’s wardrobe. That must be Mike Choi, I think? I’m assuming Sonia Oback’s on colours since I know Choi does pencil and the penciller usually comes first in credits. Whoever it is though, it’s great.

You see, Jubilee used to look like this. Well, she’s looked a few different ways, variously enjoyed and meaningful, but the “classic” Jubilee outfit - to me.. I don’t think I’m alone? The choices I’m talking about suggest I’m not - looks (as wikipedia shows us) like this:

She looked like this for the 90s cartoon (<3) and it bled into the comics. She looked like this because she was a mallrat and it was the early 90s. In this comic, she looks like this:

That’s a pretty fantastic blending of classic look with current trends.

One of my never-ending rants about comics from the Big Two is that a LOT of their illustrators seem to care bugger all about civilian dress modes. Seeing comics published in the last three, four, seven years which feature teenage girls wearing exclusively belly tops and boot-cut jeans makes me go “argh”, only louder and more intensely than “argh” looks”. Seriously, SERIOUSLY GUYS, it is not that hard. Look out the window. Copy what someone’s wearing. It is not 199X, or even 2001.

But Jubilee! Big yellow coat? Check! May I say, by the way, nice purple lining. And what luck that yellow coats are showing up everywhere just now. Google Yellow coat 2010 (I did it for you!) and you’ll get it-girl names and online shops just waiting to offload daffodil cheerfulness into your late-winter-spring. Some pretty stylish bloggers are having a ball with them, too. Coincidence or design? Who knows, but it’s a plus. In celebration, here’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who also happens to be wearing a yellow coat.

The pink shades are updated, the pink shirt is made an underlayer (and the cardigan’s a nice call; I have always been anti-cardi but the sheer number of varied designs made me waver, a little, last month purple Chanel-inspired Laura Ashley example, I am looking at you), the blue shorts become jeans. And, even, low-slung jeans that aren’t there to display a thong to the public! High five, Mr Choi

Pee Ess: one panel of this story made me feel a bit like I might want a cry.

Do you need to hear about the rest of this issue? Quick summary:

The Quentin vs Martha story was fun; I liked the Morrisonny pomp, Quentin was still in his “I’ve got a mad-on at the world” outfit, I liked that he seemed to just be having a bit of a fun go of villainy to pass the time, I liked that Martha got a moment in the sun.

Nothstar’s story was CUTE. I am pro-Kyle. More stories, please!

Gambit’s story made.. not much sense to me, to be honest, and I was saddened by his apparent character backslide. I also think that he looked too young and not quite.. mean enough? Self assured enough? Gambit, you see, was my ideal man from when I started watching the X-Men cartoon at maybe age six until when I met my beloved. I frown at stories which do not involve - I’ll be honest, naturally - he and Rogue being happy, being boisterous, being deep, and then going home and having loads of really excellent sex.

What? I ship that and they deserve it. Marvel fed us the “oh no, ALL PHYSICAL INTIMACY demands skin-to-skin contact!” for years (Rogue’s power meant, until recently, that skin-skin touch = lifetheft) and I did not buy it for a second– in maybe year.. eight or nine we had a sex education seminar where we were taught the possibility of condom-blowjobs, for goodness sake.

I liked this page though, because it reminded me of But I’m A Cheerleader!, and that movie is adorable.

No-Girl and Gambit pages from the official previews. Other pages ’scanned’ by myself. All characters copyright Marvel blah blah?

No outfit photos today, because I’m decked out in my Dad’s old boarding school sleepwear. It’s Sunday! I can laze if I want to!

I just recently ate this:

It was delicious. As well as being an excellent shade of green, pistachios are an excellent flavour!

Having written yesterday about “what I have bought this month”, naturally today I went out and made four more purchases. You’re ruining it for me, I hear you cry! My predictions are all thrown off! Well, that will teach you to make assumptions based in consumerism. But I know, I know, it’s all my fault.. So to make up for it, I’m going to have a go at saying I will do this in a blog entry and then actually doing “this”. It’s not that I’ve given up on all the posts I’ve said I’m going to do - these things just take time! And sometimes, equipment.

Anyhow. Coming up in February (or maybe a bit before), four separate reviews of four separate books.

First, because it’s smallest, this single-issue floppy. I picked it up after finding neither of the trades I wanted in the comic shop that’s technically local to me, but ridiculously tricky to get to, and then having seen both Jubes and Gambit and No-Girl on the cover. Then when I flicked through, Quentin Quire! I think that kid is just adorable, his angstpain is just so all consuming and his anger so impotent — despite his great psychic abilities. And he’s so SURE that he’s RIGHT! Grant Morrison, your work is often groovy.

After I left the comic shop (and after I completely failed to find anything I was after for research in HMV) I wound up in Waterstones, where I found three separate comics - or comics-derivative - books. I feel guilty! Comics should be bought from speciality stores! Or they’ll DIE! But I didn’t seen any of these things in that shop! So to make up for it, here’s a plug..

Anyway. Onwards.

Tank Girl. Always a plus, no? Yeah, even the movie. If you don’t appreciate it, maybe you’re looking at it funny? This is a text-only book, a novel. I bought it for novelty value, honestly - can Tank Girl work without images?? We’ll find out!

Jennifer’s Body: this isn’t a novelisation of the movie, apparently. It’s four short stories about how boys in the school perceive Jennifer. I haven’t seen the movie yet but the commentary on Jezebel was fascinating and I’m planning on a dvd watch; I’m generally interested in less than franchise-y peripheral add-ons to fiction and, yeah, I want to see how the (male) writer adheres to or strays from the feminist slant of the film’s plot. STAY TUNED.

The Complete Nemesis the Warlock vol. 2. I want to read more classic 2000AD in general, more Pat Mills in particular, and a black-and-white phonebook post-apocalyptic epic is just what I need on a rainy day. Plus, my beloved said it was good one time, and he usually has pretty good taste.

SO. Let’s see, huh? I’m excited! I hope you are too! And please, don’t think you’ll be bored if you’re here for fashiony stuff. Don’t expect a review from me that ignores character design.

Pattern-model style, Christmas day, exhibiting one of the presents my sister and I gave our immediate ancestors.

Boxing day, walking; I love the English countryside. I love it. Quotes from Guthrie in Bloomability by Sharon Creech, one of those books that I might describe as “almost perfect” and only almost because calling a thing perfect seems foolish. You should maybe read it, though, especially if you are feeling unhopeful or hopeful.

Post-walk, building a fire before watching Desperately Seeking Susan. Wearing gift-dress (H&M) and gift-tights. Thanks Mum! And gift-slippers, thanks Dad!

No, my modesty is safe. Knitted shorts.

Peace out.

1 Skirt: etsy

Jumper: Jaeger

Tights: H&M // H&M

Slippers: Fit-Flop

2 (vest: Next, Thermal: M&S, slip: ebay)

Sweaterdress: H&M (gift!)

Sweaterdress: NoaNoa

Suede overdress: Fanny & the Cave

Tights: H&M

Boots: Dr Martens

Hat: RSPB Capercaillie tartan

Coat: Camden

Gloves: Accessorize

3 as before!

In London on the day before Halloween, my Dad and I took a stroll about Brick Lane whilst waiting for two o’clock. I dipped a toe into each Rockit, but I was just not feeling the garment warrior spirit. So, we mosey’d on. Enticed through a door by a record taped to the wall outside, I was more enthused by the vintage-and-crafts stall-based sellers but still not expecting to part with my coinage.. UNTIL..

I saw the Holy Grail, and I understood that I had always been searching for it and just never realised.

Oh goodness, this is the best bit of memorabilia EVER. The lady selling mentioned that she’d never seen the like elsewhere, which I certainly hadn’t either, and in my jubilance (o hey, a pun!) at my purchase I nodded happily and said “and I do love the Queen!”. To which she laughed, with her whole face. I feel it was a delighted sort of laugh.

I wear it non-ironically. I am pro-monarchy. I am also pro-having a government, but Royalty, despite or because of how much it must suck to be born into that life, is important. Basically I do believe that a human can live up to the precedent set by Robin Hobb’s Queen Kettricken. I believe in duty and figureheads and all sorts.

If Michael Graves can be a Republican punk..

The news part of the exciting is actually not well-described by “exciting”. Pff. The news is, I have decided to become a video reviewer of stuff on the internet. But not the cool kind; I am going to review books for children and “young adults” and talk about why the author is a tool for writing books that will make the readers a) cross or b) jerks. Hurraaay! I am the new morals police of literature! Goodness me, I am coming across conservative in this post, huh?

Really though, a lot of fiction that is otherwise good is littered with sexism, racism and/or ablism, and that shit is not what we want to be building the minds and imaginations of the people of the future with. Also, I have been reading the books my mum ordered for her class to test them before she releases them into the wilds of a primary school classroom, and one of them was so lazy, so offensively uncreative and barren of effort or care that my beloved and I both agreed that we could not with good conscience allow it to be read by kids. No jest. Reading is awesome, adventure novels are awesome, they should be better than they are.

So. Look forward to that? I have six pages of written review for Anthony Horowitz’ Raven’s Gate, which is up first. Read it? It’s good.. except for a few little things.