My Illustrative Life

I like these colours. I feel like a stretch of countryside.

The badge is from an Eduardo Paolozzi exhibition which I saw in Scotland a few years ago. It was fantastic. It really opened my mind - the validity of collage as an art form; semi-/abstract colourwork as an intellectual pursuit; how impressive and invigorating modern sculpture can be. I saw one of his small sculptures on Cash in the Attic once (or was it DIckinson’s Real Deals?), an elephant in plastic or rubber all made of angles. Oh, and there was a recreated Artist’s Studio as part of the exhibit - he has a Geordi LaForge figure in there. I am pro TNG.

Look at this - this version of Vulcan/Hephaestus was at the showing I saw. You could look at it from three different levels I think. Photo via nationalgalleries.org!

And how good is this?

Changing subjects, this is my annotated copy of the book I’m preparing a (thorough) review for (two thousand words in..):

Each of those turned-over pages stands for something I have a problem with. Kind of impressive I actually still plan to read the last two books in the series, huh?

Don’t frown at me. It’s a mass-produced paperback.

I’m doing it for the LOVE of books! Come on! Paper isn’t always sacred..

Yup! I’m wearing the same as yesterday. Sue me!

I didn’t really feel like dressing in something new just to sit and puzzle over tailoring my CV for the job I have my eye firmly on (please cross your fingers for me!). But that worked out for the best, because after finishing that up I needed a change of scene so I went and picked flowers. Which I’ve been looking forward to since I first spied this skirt - the pocket are so perfect for meadow-wandering! Don’t you think?

Please, enjoy these flowers as well!

After that wholesome interlude, I want to share some music with you. Which I don’t do that often, because it usually seems a bit pointless - who doesn’t know about the Misfits being awesome, or Faith No More or Cheap Trick of the Runaways or Elvis Costello or Suzi Quatro or Michael Jackson or the Pixies or Tom Waits or Kana? And when I am listening to things I don’t hear people talking about I kind of.. have nothing to say other than “this is really good, I like it” most of the time. I don’t know how to talk about music! If you read here regularly, you should know that.

But suddenly I have found a reason to talk bands with you guys!

Let’s talk Danish pop, shall we?

Of course, by that I mean “The Cartoons and Aqua were brilliant and I love them”.

I was ten when Barbie Girl came out, and eleven when Witch Doctor came out and they hit me right in the joy buttons. Even then, there was a little bit of ‘must pretend to like ironically in public’, but I asked for their albums for my birthday and christmas and I got them. At this point, my music collection was like so: Eternal; Boyzone; Spice Girls; [repeat].

They both found their way into my farm in the same way that they managed to fool most of the people most of the time (I’ll get back to that) - they wore bright colours! And had super-gimmicky prop-instrument-costumes! And they moved really fast and were exaggerated! Their videos gave me something to look at, instead of fourminutes of a bunch of guys standing on a dark stage kicking up dust and strumming soulfully. I hate boring music videos, I really do. And yeah, I genuinely like the sounds that they make - they’re unserious, and joyful, and sort of shiny-heartfelt. I like the volume and mania they have in their noise.

You may laugh, but the most important thing about these bands (once you get past the image, because I did need that to notice them) were their lyrics. I know, it sounds ridiculous, right? Ooh ee ooh ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang.

But really. They’re both kind of filthy, if you listen. Filthier than ten-eleven year olds are used to, and filthier than you’d assume from the perky-perky toon-music and the perky-silly costumes and videos.

I’ll say right now that I have no idea if they wrote their songs or not - I know that the Cartoons mostly did/do covers. That doesn’t matter, actually.

That is enough to make me a life-long convert, to be honest. I remember listening to this song, being eleven, and thinking, “I know I am hearing a song about oral. Nobody is noticing. I know that nobody would want me to listen to a song about oral. This CD didn’t have ‘explicit content’ on it. Nobody knows. They have tricked people by looking silly.”

Again - rape? The word “rape” in a song for me, an eleven year old? It’s allowed because they are a novelty band? Mind: blown.

‘They’re talking about fucking, aren’t they”, I thought.

Even as a ten year old, you could hear the satire in “Barbie Girl”. I thought it was aces, I mean come on, it was funny! So daft, so obviously venomous, so true to life. This satire about gender roles was at number one for three weeks, here. Mattel sued, and it was dismissed. That’s fucking landmark stuff! A pop band skewers the shallow, unquestioned ‘perfect life’ dream sold mercilessly by a toy company, gets sued, and wins. Feminist victory, gone unnoticed!

I like these bands because they make me laugh with what they say, and when they aren’t making me laugh they’re making me go “awww, that’s nice!” The way that Aqua crafted most of their songs into stories (and had the videos to back them up) mattered to me, particularly as pre-bedtime listening. Fairytale castles in songs with horse-feet sound effects in. Flippin’, rigging’d airships.

And I like the technobilly echoing depth of shallow that the Cartoons give. “Who put the bomp” is one of my favourite songs. I can’t help it! It just sounds nice, and the lyrics are sweet, and, I like it! They have a double bass disguised as A CARROT, you know? Give them a chance.

First: on theme!

Harsichord-sound. Pirates. Badass princess. Narrative progression. Someone playing their own dad. HURRAY!

They went there. “Giant lizard”!

I am always pro-band who use animation in their videos. Or rather, I am always pro-using animation. That’s a wiser statement.

Click here for the Witch Doctor video. CURSE YOUR DISABLED EMBEDDING!

I’m including this one because it has the official video included; it’s one of the weaker ones, I rekkin.

Maybe all bands, really, are dirty mouthed horrors. Eh. I still love these ones. I don’t know what it is about you, Denmark! But I like it.

Sometimes there are things which inspire and one admires and aspires towards somehow, without the specific desire to be/be in/be with the places, characters, wardrobes, movie. Sometimes a film will take you by surprise, and speak to you with atmosphere and colour scheme and attitude in a way that heightens your intent to do your thing your way, without actually being a film that you want to poach costume from.

Let’s learn about one such film, my fine comrades!

Let’s learn about RED SURF. A George Clooney movie with an 18 certificate, from 1990. Which according to imdb comments went straight to video!

The cover LIES, you guys! Yeah, even bargain bin dvd releases bother to photoshop their covers in an attempt to cash in on more lucrative, starry periods of their lead actors’ careers.

This is what George Clooney actually looks like in this movie:

Lulz!

The back cover was what convinced us to buy it, actually -

- the back cover’s picture of how George Clooney actually appears in the actual film. Why do they think people buy cheap-ass dvds? Either because they can’t afford expensive ones, or because they like sub-par cinema. Or both. Don’t lie to us. Don’t patronise people who know they aren’t at Blockbuster, don’t put off people who don’t want to be. That said, check out this alternate cover/poster, as well as this one (Check’em all here). What, can no-one in the world appreciate 90s grunge metal surf criminal drug choker George?

Apparently not, I guess.

So. In Red Surf. George Clooney plays Remar, man without a family, man without law, man without qualms about lying to his 90s-earnest girlfriend. He loves to play pranks like convincing his best friend his girl is cheating on him, then tricking him into thinking that they have accidentally murdered her. Fun times! Then they follow that up by going out on jet-skis (loaned from Gene Simmons, “the Doctor”) to collect drugs from the sea.

This is the apparently communal party drugs casual crime beachhouse, also home to sensitive hat-wearing girlfriend Rebecca:

(This is Rebecca, later in the movie:)

This is George Clooney/Remar feeding best buddy Atilla (actually? the movie’s real eventual hero) some delicious cocaine from his lap whilst driving. They love to weird out the squares!

Did I mention this was a movie about George Clooney, looking in no way how I imagine “George Clooney” to look? Acting the part of a leather-wearing curly hair having ex-professional surf bum large-scale drug dealer? Who is also able to get a sensible, on-the-wavelength multi-necklace wearing art-loving girl pregnant (again; implied abortion alert) and convince her that he will change and raise a family with her, through thoughtful gifts of guitars and well-timed fake promises?

Well, it is. WEIRD MOVIE.

Aaaanyway. Remar finds out Rebecca’s pregnant, and she tells him she wants to keep it. He’s all, “okay..” but when she tells him she wants to go to Portland to raise it with a friend of hers who has kids already, he starts getting protective and territorial. Promises her he’ll change, blah blah no more drugs and crime, more time for romance and kisses. She gets up for ice cream, and by the time it takes her to serve two bowls full he’s all *coffcoff*I really love drugs*coffcoffff*. Sadface.

Later, Atilla and Remar have a heart to heart about how Remar’s going to screw things up and lose lady & baby - Atilla is psyched at the thought of having a baby around - and Remar talks about how for the first year, you hope the baby won’t die, and it doesn’t, and then the second year it starts to hate you. And it hates you and hates you.. with this honest frightened bitterness. And he tells his buddy how he feels like he’s suddenly lacking control. There’s a later scene where Doc tells Remar to quit with the drug deals, and later than that Remar refuses, outright refuses with yelling and a pushfight, to take money from a deal that all his buddies planned without him with the explicit intention to set the couple & child up for a secure life. Why is it that movies with these real relationship scenes and true-person complexity get bargain binned? I have no idea what makes a “good movie”.

The whole thing keeps building - running big drug deals get you in to trouble, did you know? Well, Red Surf is here to tell you that they do. They have to fake a murder, and Remar misses doctors appointments with Rebecca, and Atilla becomes her rock (it’s really nice) and they talk about girl babies playing little league, and they have to send off one of their gangbrothers to save his life after he talks to the police. He cries! He’s the most annoying sort of character, that you just want to squash and yell SHUT UP!! at, but when he leaves his guys he cries and it’s sweet and sad. Bargain bin film. I don’t know. Then there’s more peril, and more apologising/lying to Rebecca, and the blabbermouth gets stabbed and then probably fed to wolves. The antagonist/drug partner lives in this decrepit ruined house with two guys in slacks and vests with big guns and slicked back hair, and he has a pit of wolves in his front room. Did I not mention that?

Soooo eventually Remar dies. He gets machine gunned and blown up on a jet-ski. Atilla and Rebecca set him on fire and push him out to sea for burial. But not before he tells Atilla he loves him, when Atilla is trying to convince him to let the boys do the run so he can stay safe for baby! BARGAIN BIN MOVIES. He literally says “I love you”.

Atilla doesn’t take too kindly to his friend being all killed and such so he goes off to infiltrate/murder the antagonist/partner’s (..okay, just antagonist by this point) gang. With Doc Gene Simmons, who was in ‘Nam. I really, really want a video game out of that scene. Or all of this movie. He kills them all and avoids the wolves (not everybody else does, om nom nom) and hurray, he wins!

There’s actually a very nice, assumably realistic ‘person unused to machine-gunning has to use a machine gun’ scene. Atilla wears his heat on his sleeve!

By the closing credits, Atilla and Rebecca look to be starting this super-sweet, semi-awkward, adorable take-care-of-each-other romance. He follows her to the train station as she’s leaving, bereaved, for Portland and.. it’s sooo cuuuute. I was completely satisfied by the progression of this film. My beloved and I both had that “no wai, for reals!” expression of surprised enjoyment - for £2.99, in a village shop, we’re used to expecting Jaguar Wong or “Richard Harrison IS.. a ninja“. Not an honestly watchable, variably heartfelt, fun movie. With George Clooney in a bandanna with a crack pipe.

This is my favorite George Clooney movie. Of all time.

No Rebecca, really!

All the clothes in this movie are so worn-in. they look like they’ve been walked over by the whole cast, and have sand ground in and the colours worn out. Nobody’s constrained by what they wear - comfort first, expression of wild-life values second. Honestly I’m not sure if I like it so much only for itself, or for the fact that it has such an un-George Clooneyish George Clooney. I mean, that’s a compelling element, right?

But I think a fair part of it is that it’s that 1990s grunge-metal-taste-of-hippy aesthetic that’s so present in a lot of films & shows I really love but completely divorced from the music that made the scene. This is what I know about music in the very late 80s - early 90s: Patton-era Faith No More and Primus existed (excellently). Also, people liked the bands they namecheck in Bill & Ted and Wayne’s World. THAT’S IT. I guess Nirvana happened some time around there..? I’ve made no secret of my hatred for music journalism and I find the sartorial guidelines hard to use as an entry point to the sounds because as far as I can tell there was an extreme gender divide - dudes wore baggy t-shirts and loose trousers, girls wore leather bras, spandex and hotpants. Neither of these looks have really worked for me, as yet, and for some in-brain reason that really impedes my investigation and understanding of the knots of bands and sub-genres that make up the cultural era. And that failure to break through the bubble surrounding my perception of the music scene means that I feel inauthentic approaching the dresscode with increased zeal. It’s a vicious cycle! Of ignorance!

A movie like Red Surf though, which I assume has no budget to source big soundtracks and which only broaches the question of “what do you listen to” with mostly-covered t-shirts and easy to miss flyers pasted on bedroom walls in scenes where character tension is high, doesn’t make me feel like a double outsider. I can assimilate the costume apart from the intimidating musical context.

Here’s a question that Red Surf raises for me - what’s so wrong with me that I’m suddenly not finding 90sgirl hats completely, ultimately ugly?

Wanna know a secret? I wrote this entire post saying “Lisa” instead of “Rebecca”. Yeah, she doesn’t get that much autonomy. I still have this film a ten out of ten on IMDB.

BONUS: Here’s the pretty shitty trailer! With really awful sound quality!

It’s a day full of things, isn’t it?

I’ll do them in this order.

First of all, my Hankshirt arrived this morning!

And it is a very pretty colour, actually. Like egg yolk, or those white and orange daffodils.

Do you know who Hank Green is? Well if you don’t, I will tell you: he is half of the Vlogbrothers, who are two brothers who started keeping up with each other in video blog form a few years ago, and kind of caught on. Basically they are nice people who do nice things, and their fans (”nerdfighters”) are nice people who help them do nice things. Oh, just go and watch them, there’s more to it than that.

Anyway, the Hankshirt was created for his 30th birthday earlier this month and proceeds went half to giving him presents an half to plating Rainforest. The Hankplants are plants planted in honour of Hank (see video below). Honestly it does feel a little weird having a shirt and some plants all about some real live guy I don’t even know, but it’s an odd mixture of “nothing personal”, and something personal.

But I didn’t wear it. Because you see, today is also a protest day for Take Back Parliament. Which called for purple to be worn. And you know, why refuse when asked?

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

The twenty-fifth of May has quite the full schedule!

It’s time to Wear the Lilac, too. Which is an idea that I cannot consider at length without my eyes getting a little something in them. If you read Night Watch, the Discworld title I mean, this will mean something to you. Probably something that will squeeze your heart a bit (and something nicely relevant to a day also about political reform), but what it’s come to mean in.. the ballworld(ours)?.. is something else. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer’s, and Wear the Lilac aims to raise money and visibility for research. DONATE if you can.

I know I’m not alone in considering the Watch books my favourites of the Discworld library. I have my problems with world and with the writing (I find that the women adhere too closely to a sensible/silly binary, f’rex) but even so - I love these books. They have seen me through long/boring/sad/sleepless hours. I so enjoy the ‘jaded mentor finds earnest and true vigorousness due to new charges and remembrance of the importance of The Job’ trope, and Vimes fulfills it perfectly and adds in a bit of that-could-be-my-brain-be-careful-but-be-proud. I owe Mr Pratchett’s mind. I’d appreciate you helping me try to pay it back a little. I haven’t donated yet because I literally can’t, but when I can? I will. Remind me, if you like.

And then on top of that it’s towel day. I’m not what I’d call a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, to be honest - I can appreciate it, but it didn’t stir me like it does a lot of you (oh, and, the 2005 movie SUCKED) - but Dirk Gently’s adventures are my kind of fiction. So I’ve got my towel with me, too, and I’m not panicking even though that’s a lot of referencing to fit into one day, one outfit, one post.

Whew. One politics, one environmental and two britlit (hahaha I just thought of that portmanteau and it is SO OBNOXIOUS that I am going to use it) and slacktivisms. NERDFIGHTERS! DFTBA!

I have two posts I planned to put up today - Clueless’ Makeover Movie Madness and some thoughts on posture in character design, fashion and “celebrity culture” - but they are both currently long and unfinished. Bummer!

So instead, here are some pictures that I took but don’t need for the posture post, an illustration of two, and a picture of a Victorian corkscrew. The latter is my Dad’s birthday present - the brush is to rid yourself of cork crumbs. Smart, huh? Those Victorians. If it existed, they could make it fancier.

Page one, page two, more to come;

Corkscrew!

Woo woo, voting day!

All the men (there were no ladies) doing Official Duties at the polling station were wearing red, which made me wonder. But not judge!

Today has been pretty good all in all actually, apart from the nightmare I woke up from. It was about goats. They were eating EVERYTHING. They ate John Green’s head and his body just remained upright. There was soil instead of blood! The goats could jump really high, and climb, and.. blaugh!

On the subject of the illustrated photo above, I have always liked the Romulans. They have hair like mine, and they get mad easily. On the other hand, I like the Vulcans because they have hair like mine, and they like to overanalyse. The Romulan military, though, gets to wear stuff like this:

Pretty fantastic. Quilted fabric giving flexible structure - the extreme boxiness vs the padded stitched pliable material. The Romulan penchant for extreme views on right and wrong and passion, and their weakness that comes from their hotheadedness and the pliability that comes from living only on emotions.

The other way in which today is pleasing: COMICS! Delivery of a package spanning.. what, nearly half a year?.. from my old local comic shop - The first three issues of Joe the Barbarian, all four issues of X-Men Noir v.2, issues two and four of Beasts of Burden, my missing issue of Captain Britain and MI:13! And the Punisher issue featuring Morbius and Werewolf by Night! Score!

And because the shop owner is a) super nice and b) apparently a good businessman, four books from Free Comic Book Day last Saturday!

And the cherry on the sundae, this gift for my beloved:

Yeahhh.

Expect semi-reviewing soon, readers!

I don’t know who Melissa George is. I don’t know what the Met Ball is. But this -

Is like seeing this spring to life -

And so I thank both Melissa George and the Met Ball and whoever made Melissa George’s dress for the Met Ball. Good call, Garth. Good call.

Picture pinched from gofugyourself; Belle google image’d

Watching Ironside, talking to my gent about Bloody Roar, we came to thinking what if they had new outfits, a bit like outfits from the sixties?.

Bloody Roar actually has some really good character design; I like it a lot. Google Image “Busuzima” sometime. Actually no! I will show you right now. This is great work! It’s plain engaging to look at, I want that jacket, it’s an unusual fashion sub-genre to exploit, it telegraphs “this guy is weird”, it works with the fact that he can turn into a chameleon. It’s a pleasing counterbalance to his lab-based scientific career:

So anyway - I drew a couple. Simples. Tiny sketchy fun! Please try to enjoy.

Protip: Don’t paint with inks over fountain pen lineart. Because, this happens! Bleeding.

Gado (Gadeau!):

Busuzima:

Jenny, again (she is my favorite, because we have the same haircut. Yeup).

Desperately Seeking Susan is a film about a woman who hasn’t quite realised that her life doesn’t fulfill her finding herself through her idolatry of the romance gathered around a selfish free spirit, and amnesia.

It’s even better than that sounds, though.

When I was twelve or thirteen and staying up late to watch TV was still a relatively new and clandestine operation, I had the luck of being in a part of the country that received Channel Five. Channel Five (as well as showing the Tribe, natch) did (does) pretty great theme nights. I got exposure to Bruce Lee beyond what I’d seen on badly printed Market t-shirts from Five’s Bruce Lee Night (thank you), I was introduced, unironically and without peer judgement, to the Osmonds by their Osmonds Weekend (thank you!), and I spent a lot of happy evenings watching my VCR’d Science Fiction Night tapes. But the particular and relevant Five Night was (obviously?) Madonna Night.

I didn’t really know much about Madonna; this was about 2000 and she was a vague, other-people-like-her metastar. We saw her videos discussed on Live and Kicking by Zoe Ball and Lene from Aqua (”I couldn’t stop staring at her tits!”) and were generally aware that she was “important”. But I didn’t know anyone who was A Madonna Fan and when I asked, the next day, if my friend had watched Madonna Night she said “No, I’m not really into that kind of thing” and gave me a dubious look (Hi Laura!). So I was watching out of a sense of curiosity and out of enjoyment of the wow I am up late factor.

There was a bunch of documentary, talking heads type stuff which I don’t remember but also, as I think you have guessed: Desperately Seeking Susan! I watched it and I didn’t really get it all and I didn’t watch it again until boxing day 2009, but the reason that I did watch it on boxing day 2009 was that I realised when my beloved and I talk fiction and character motivation and costume design, which we do and always have done regularly, Desperately Seeking Susan was a source I repeatedly turned to (in my memory) to illustrate my points and clarify my thoughts.

Don’t you think that’s impressive? One watch, and nine years later I’m still using it as an example par excellence? And I mean various parts of the movie, not just one.

Susan!

Transcription: “Because the film is very much about identity, who somebody is on the outside vs who they wanna be on the inside, we decided to open the movie in a beauty parlor because that’s so much about female identity and appearance and transformation. I think in the original script the opening was actually set in a department store where she and her sister in law were trying on clothes. And ultimately it, in one of the many re-writes, it was changed to a beauty salon because i think that the idea of being remade - which is what beauty salons are about, you go in being one person and you hopefully come out having been transformed into somebody else - is really the essence of what the whole movie is about.”

Susan is more of a straight-up Makeover Movie than Billie Jean - the above clip from the commentary track (commentary tracks by writers and directors are basically the only sort of DVD extra that mean anything to me; they can be so fascinating and educational and inspiring. I recommend Larry Cohen’s commentary on the Q: The Winged Serpent DVD release if you’re into hearing about creative budget film shoots) says in as many words that this is a film about identity. Billie Jean, I rekkin, is a film about integrity rather than identity. They’re very closely related concepts, but they’re not identical.

You should watch this movie. I’m not going to detail everything that’s good about it, because that would take too long and rob you of the discoveries. But artistically and entertainment..ly.. it’s a really, really satisfying and enthusing film. And it’s written, directed and
double-starred in by women! And the main character starts the film by turning thirty, which I love. It’s never referred to again, and she has her coming-of-age teenage self-awakening plot and it’s positive, all the way along.

Anyway. I do have one element of this fantastic story that I’ve picked to epitomise the make-overyness and the pivotal themes and the wonderful, WONDERFUL AMAZING EXCELLENT work done by the costume designer / production designer (Santo Loquasto: your work was brilliant here. Looking up Mr Loquasto’s name in imdb, I just noticed that Richard Hell is in this movie. I missed that!). There’s a scene half an hour or so in, that goes like this:

(Actually first there are some scenes like this, skip the next two centered paragraphs if you haven’t seen the film:)

Roberta goes to meet Susan in her Susan drag and Susan gets held up, which means that the Very Bad Man currently looking for Susan mistakes Roberta for Susan. Which means that the Very Nice Man currently looking for Susan to offer her shelter against the VBM also mistakes Roberta for Susan. And Roberta falls over and hits her head - which means that by the end of the scene, Roberta mistakes Roberta for Susan.

Left: Susan-Roberta! Right: Jim (the Very Nice Man)!

This is the outfit that Roberta wears for this scene.

Oh my GOODNESS, it is so spot-on!

It’s so patently an ita-loli approximation of Susan-clothes I could choke. It’s someone so keen to get the look (and you can’t be that keen without wanting something of what the look means, on the inside) but lacking the tools, someone uncomfortable with who they are and where they’ve been going but not completely au fait with where they think they want to go now, either. It’s so vulnerable and unconscious-self-conscious, it makes my heart squeeze for her. I get that; that’s probably what I did get from this movie when I watched the first time around. This outfit tells the whole story of the film! People say that the clothes don’t make the woman, but mortar doesn’t make a wall. It just really helps to hold a lot of them together.

First of all, don’t even ask me what’s up with that little acorn-bag thing. Gosh that looks annoying. It can’t relax into you, it’s just going to be hitting you awkwardly whenever you walk (like Roberta’s current constructed identify?). It’s non-identifiable (like Roberta’s current self?). I kind of hate it. No, I hate it a lot. I guess that the reason it’s round and rigid is so that it can roll away into the water when she hits her head (taking ID with it), so there’s that. Beyond that I’m not going to touch it, because I would just be mean about it.

The colours aren’t strong or pure. Lilac is a powder colour, it’s decorative and passive. That weird red-peach on the sweater is vague and indefinable. But red and purple clash, and that’s a bold confrontational mix. That’s the Susan. That and the jacket, which actually belongs to Susan.

The sweater has the collar cut off, which is a little bit tough and rebellious, in a studied sort of way (yeah, I do it too and it makes me feel better), but.. I think she’s wearing it over a lady-collar shirt. The kind which you get to wear at school during summer if you choose not to wear a tie. Or I did, anyway. You know the style I mean? Even if it’s a normal collar, it’s a soft purple and raspberry-striped shirt in that 80s-weight cotton, which is the least rebellious fabric I can imagine. Florals worked for grunge, because you can subvert something so veryvery delicate and girlish (flowers!), but you can’t subvert innocuousness. Innocuous things have, like, magical negative power. They’re the antimatter of cool.

Having noted the shirt, even the punch of the purple/red combo is lessened. If you’re co-ordinating your aesthetic break-out with your existing sensible-person shirts, you’re not really breaking so far, huh?

The trousers aren’t wide-legged, or flared, and they aren’t tight. They’re just.. there. They aren’t baggy but they aren’t slim-fitting. They’re just crinkly and probably let air circulate a bit. They’re high-waisted but they’re worn with a baggy, airy sweater that hits at the hip-bones which blocks any flattering or enhancing they might have done. They aren’t even actively ugly or frumpy. They’re just there! They don’t tuck into the boots with an interesting pouf over the ankle, or fit neatly! THEY ARE JUST THERE, plopped there. They go loose at the knees. They have no aggression, just an air of sitting obediently, waiting for someone to say “..Yes?”. These trousers are Roberta, as she was in her life before and during the start of this film.

It’s all in the body language too, you can’t ignore body language when you’re character designing or costuming. The Fug Girls are always complaining that people have ruined their great dresses with slouching and people like Grace Jones pull of the wackiest stuff because they wear it so fiercely - this outfit could work, if the person inside of it was comfortable with their/its awkwardness. There is no dearth of bloggers who have run with waif-chic and granny-chic and make their pigeon toes and rounded shoulders a matter of personal trademark. But Roberta has fear in her physicality, and the fear that’s written in her wardrobe bounces it back complimentarily.

The mass of scarf in her hair is arranged so precisely, and the curls she’s done herself are so soft and arranged so softly. Here’s the real Susan in this same scene:

Difference, right? One’s Done, one’s just done. The difference between constructing a persona and living one again, yeah? Susan wakes up, gives herself a blast of supercool just by looking at herself in a mirror or shiny surface, and leaves to hang about town or maybe do petty crimes. Roberta prepares herself, practices before the (full-length bedroom) mirror, arranges everything just-so, and steps in. Then she leaves, for the purpose of learning-by-voyeurism ad waiting to be told if she’s doing it right.

The Susan jacket isn’t even a match for Roberta’s Susan outfit; amongst the fit and the colours it floats and hangs. Every shape from Roberta’s wardrobe is soft and giving (as in, it gives in if you oppose it, not that it is a gift) and the jacket doesn’t have a harsh enough presence to make a real statement against them. It would have been simple to make The Jacket be one that’s worn by Susan but wears Roberta, but instead Loquasto (I think) designed this one that is worn by Susan, and doesn’t even bother to wear pre-amnesia Roberta. Because: which rock star cares about wannabees?

The whole thing works just as well if you consider that she’s also wearing this immediately after she bangs her head, and the amnesia and complete identity crisis sets in. She literally doesn’t know who she is, but thinks/is helped to think that she might be (and then is convinced that she is) Susan. She doesn’t know how to be Susan, and she’s nothing like the image of dangerous flightly Susan that Jim has been told to expect. She’s not-Susan, just like her clothes are telling us-her-him!

Would it be going too far to draw comparison between unconscious-Roberta and primordial ooze? These clothes and the curled hair pool about her shapelessly, ready to form.. a new life! The Pokemon Ditto is a pink blob, which can take on the identity of any Pokemon it faces. Hmmm. Maybe this is overthinking? I mean, it works, but maybe I have just made it work and am being unscientific.

There’s a lot more to say about this movie. But I’ma let you watch it and say it for yourself now. This was the real “Makeover” nucleus of the film, in my opinion, because this was the outfit that was designed (both meta-wise and in-movie) for the specific purpose of transition. Roberta’s continued evolution was organic and intuitive - not “A Make-Over”.

On the subject of the word “bitch”:

I am one of those who tries to convince those around her that “bitch” is not an acceptable word to use when not speaking of literal female dogs (or, I guess, in a clear ironical sense). As a derogative, it’s a sexist term that exists to belittle people based on [either: femininity or membership of ‘the female gender’].

I find it hard to deny that it isn’t a word with its own special, nuanced meaning though. I mean, I do deny it, I encourage people to say “spiteful” or “vindictive” instead, since that’s the closest I can get to how I’ve encountered the word used viciously. But like I say - it’s the closest I can get. It isn’t the exact same. “Bitch” has its own definition/s because if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have used it so widely.

I’m thinking about this because the other week I was considering my favourite character from one of my favourite book series. I was thinking about her in terms of blog post, because that’s a useful thought exercise, and I was letting my mind run ahead of me loosely and lightly describing her character at the start of the trilogy as opposed to at the ending; I caught myself running out bitch. Descriptive.

The character is Malta Vestrit, of Robin Hobb’s Liveship Trilogy. Which is fantastic, you should read it. If you’ve read this series, you’ll know what I meant when I stumbled it out - she’s horrible and petty and spiteful and vindictive and spoilt and mean and selfish and thoroughly invested in traditional gender roles and sparky and hateful. She debuts at age twelve, I think.

“Bitch” as I know it, and I’m talking non-reclaimed, perfectly describes her. Which is fascinating!

Wikipedia says:

The Liveship trilogy is gorgeously, wonderfuly written, and the best kind of high fantasy in that it uses differently built, magically infused societies to put the spotlight on aspects of real life. Malta was raised in a port township that is isolated, and where though day to day life is matriarchal due to the main masculine profession being seamanship, the laws and relationships are still strongly patriarchal. Girls don’t go to sea or own ships, women take their husbands’ names, girls are to be married off, the most admired celebrity women are the Satrap’s concubines. She was also raised in a household where her father, who is from an even more radically patriarchal, class-based society and whom she adores, cows (so horribly apt, this word here) her mother and wields a lot of practical, decision-making power.

Malta is clever. She’s bright, and romantic, and passionate, and has a lot of diplomatic aptitude, and she fits easily within her society’s beauty standards. She’s good at being flirtatious and coquettish, she’s dramatic. She’s this great wellspring of potential person, and she was raised in these oppressive, ignorant circumstances which had absolutely no expectations of her.

When I started the first book I hated Malta. I could barely read her pages; I wanted to rush ahead because she caused such an outraged pressure in my head. Much like reading Umbridge, in HP&OOTP. By the end? I adore her (this does not go for Umbridge). Gosh, she’s a wonderful character! You see, the world changes in such ways that an awful, awful lot becomes actually required of her - and she rises to it! It’s not quick, or easy, and she’s still kind of judgmental by the end, but the blossoming of her character arc is a wonder to behold. It’s inspiring reading! Ahhh I heart these books. Come to think of it, comparing the way I felt about Malta at the beginning and at the end probably turned a few major cogs in my “actually, I don’t and shouldn’t resent all females at all, even though I am unhappy at my all-girls school, that’s interesting. Maybe I should investigate this non-hatred of all of my gender further” journey.

By the series’ end, she’s saved three-four entire ways of life, fallen in adult-style love, talked her way out of numerous situations in which she was technically powerless and definitely vulnerable, resurrected a dragon, kept people she despised alive, learnt the value of female community and community in general, negotiated with royalty, managed to find an emotional/ideological truce with the members of her family who she naturally clashes with, and impressed her native high society with her wit and societal balancing ability. The only way I can imagine her being called a bitch by then, is in the watered down, general anti-woman “I don’t like you” way (which as far as I’m concerned has no legitimate uses).

The interesting thing is how clear to me my reflections on Malta made the fact that “bitch” really is a misogynistic word, because it describes female products of misogyny - and puts them down, unconcernedly, for the failings that their culture and unique circumstances have forced into them.

I think that that’s a pretty good reason for saying spiteful or vindictive instead of bitchy; it covers the same reactive bases, but it doesn’t punish or belittle a person for the fact that they live in a historically screwed up society.

Fiction is so cool.

I don’t credit bloggers and street style photo culture with my current level of inner confidence and self-pleasure. I do credit them, large-partly, with my confidence about where I stand in the public, every-day world. Bloggers, online alt-fashion communities and street style photo culture are why I could not keep up my teenage idea of the whole world is against me and nobody wants me to look how I want.

Seeing people dressed outside of the highstreet (and even outside of the known sub-culture) norm(s), happily, at various ages, all over the world, being themselves, made it impossible for me not to know that no matter where I am, there is someone who understands a bit, who doesn’t resent my self-expression and personal visual comfort, who is pleased by my constructed image and who, if we met directly, would give the metaphorical fist-bump of solidarity.

This is all I wish to provide here.

My main memory of highschool peer wardrobe approval was when my friend said to me “Why did you buy that?” about a skirt.. that I was wearing. Whilst we were out. Gee that made me feel comfortable!

I’m sure that I was as much of an ass as anyone.

I feel it like a duty, frankly (pompously?), to honestly present my thoughts and some e-semblance of my philosophy/personality so that people who are similar to me and who haven’t yet found any or many allies don’t have to feel alone in the world.

I’m not asking anyone to make a connection, or cruising for buddies - I just want to be visible as a subject of comparison. Just in case.

It’s not that I don’t do it for the plain satisfaction of self-expression, “activism”, to show off, for mental exercise, to keep me busy, etc etc as well. I like writing this blog! But I probably wouldn’t, because I am lazy, if I didn’t have the blog-related life experience that I do.

I am not sure if this counts as a manifesto, because I find the concept of “a manifesto” hard to grasp. Do you have to use particular language conventions? But it’s a “why I do this”, which I think is basically the same? Right?

Oh and I am not asking for gratitude, obviously!

Today what I did, was I sat in the garden watching Sweet Valley High and writing up blog posts for Waterscape and getting lightly sun-altered. Then, I removed a very young blackbird from my house,

..and let out a full-grown one from the living room. Which was exciting! And then, I watched some more Sweet Valley High and did drawing practice.. with some X-Men fanart. Including the below!

This is the series I want to be reading right now. Well, actually, I maybe want to be reading the new vampire X-Men arc? I do heaaaaaart Marvel vampires, generally. But I am unkeen to touch modern Rogue/Remy interaction, because they won’t let them be happy aughhhhh.

BUT MY POINT. My point is, my favourite type of Wolverine is kid-mentor Wolverine. Growing up with the 90s series — [pause for most excellent intro]

– I always subliminally knew that Wolverine was There For Me. Or, you know, would be if he were “real”. Jubilee was a character I resented and disliked at the time (love her now!), but she served her purpose for child-me - Logan was protective of her as a girlchild, and I was one too, so I related to the character of Wolverine as a protector. When I meet or walk past muscular hairy grouchy older dudes, I have in the back of my mind, he’s looking out for me rather than eee he’s maybe scary. That’s good. That makes me a more secure person.

So it makes me sad, and eye-roll-y, that Wolvie’s biological son (I’m not forgetting the adopted daughter, she’s there too, she and Laura are just out getting groceries in the pic above) is not someone with whom he has a loving and healthy relationship. I really want that to be so! I want all of Logan’s kids to be able to look up to him and live in some great hand-built cabin and BE A FAMILY, DARN IT. People are bored as shit with xtreeeeeeeeeeeeme on-every-team Wolverine - lets bring him back to his roots (kind of his roots). Just some guy, struggling with his past, trying to make the world better for the children who depend on him.

Also I just really enjoy Daken’s design (remember how I approve of Mohawks?), feel that bisexual characters need a wider and less evil-creepy representation, and HATE CHARACTERS HAVING “RAPE” AS THEIR SUPERPOWER.

He has pheremones, you know. That he manipulates people with. Sexually. Vom.

I just want my favourite characters to be HAPPY. Is that so much to ask?

GOSH IT’S SUNNY!

When it is warm enough for shorts and my mum getting sunburned in April, something feels off. But something also feels that it is necessary to spend weekend days in the garden on one’s belly.

So, I did. More on that, and the shorts situation, later. I had.. let me see.. four books and two newspaper supplements to read Garth Nix’s Lord Sunday (thank you, beloved!), Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s New X-Men “ultimate collection v.1″ (because I only have spotty issues here and there from the Morrison run due to not always being able to get my hands on Essential X-Men, but what I have is SO GOOD), Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years (birthday present! Excellent!), Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: Calvin & Hobbes Collection (because my sister’s school was THROWING AWAY TWO HUGE COLLECTED C&H VOLUMES, CAN YOU BELIEVE, ARE THEY CRAZY), supplements from the Independent so I figured I would be doing not-much on the outwardly creative front. I figured wrongly, though.

I mentioned on twitter that I drew a princess doing carpentry earlier, and that I liked it a lot. I can’t show you the one I meant then, because it’s on a birthday card for my cousin (I don’t think she reads here.. D:), but I can show you the ones I did afterwards. It’s so pleasing! Fancy calm dresses and destructive physicality. Yeuhhhh.

I gotta look up non-euro-fairytale style princesses. I would like to make the Princess’ Woodcutting and Carpentry School open to international students, very much.

Third princess referenced from a shot of Mohammed Ali Chopping wood; the two-princess saw’s from a picture you get if you google image “two-man saw”.

I told y’all I’d give you a peek into the give peace a chance exhibition I saw for my birthday; a bunch of photos taken during the Bed-In which were never published back in the day. I think it’s a travelling exhibition, that’s only recently or semi-recently Come To England. The photographer had kept them all (in his attic? It’s usually in the attic, right?) and once he decided to share them, convinced by the curator (his friend), he died. I don’t think the death was related, but, it happened the day after he agreed. That’s interesting, maybe?

Like I mentioned, there was no photography allowed in the ‘gallery’ (Cathedral basement), and I hadn’t taken any paper, so! Here are some approximations of what my beloved and I can remember were in some of the pictures we saw. Some were black and white, some were colour. Enjoy! Catch the proper pictures when you can!

I’ll show you in the order we saw them:

The second arrow has a caption next to it that you can’t see, it says “other gift, possibly a book or a flower”.

These little cartoons were drawn on John’s guitar - they’re probably not that unseen, but all I know of Beatles legend I absorbed through the skin growing up, basically, I have no specific trivia. We went to the show because Yoko Ono.. well, she’s wonderful really, isn’t she? My tutor in Uni had a huge great fancrush on John Lennon, though, and after seeing these pictures I can kind of get the idolatry. He was just kind of cool, wasn’t he?

Sniffin” a flower, takin’ a stretch, in The Bed.

Adorable girl-child! Much cuter in the actual photo than here. I did not mean to make Yoko look so Pocahontas or John so stodgy, either, but what can I do? I was drawing from memory!

Yoko and (I am presuming) the girl who climbed in through the fire escape and was asked to stay, making lifelong friends and getting a, authorial career boost. Lesson: Break and enter! Cool people will admire you for it!

BARE FEET PEACE

This is my favourite picture of John Lennon. The thought bubble caption is “LOL FUNNIEST EVER”, because that was really the air the photo gave off (as well as a bunch of artists and writers and creatives who were down with the bed-in idea, they asked Al Capp (did I mis-remember the K in KRAPP?) because his cartoon strips were vitriolic towards hippies, apparently). There is, as beloved says, a reason that Ringo is regarded as the “funny one”. I looked at this picture and said to him (my gent), “Everybody smoke weed” because I am not as good at misremembering memorable/relevant lines as I am at humorous reintegration. Oh well!

There was a wishing tree, of course. I drew a wishing tree with many wishes on my tag. Are you supposed to keep that secret, like birthday cake wishes? I don’t think so.

When I was younger the idea of people participating in BDSM or violence-related sexual roleplay kind of upset me. Not in an “arrest them!” sort of way, I just didn’t understand why people would want to be what i understood as ‘mean to each other’ in their intimate relations.

BUT THEN, I read the first issue in the “Kissing Mister Quimper” volume of Grant Morisson’s Invisibles - pencilled by Chris Weston, Inked by John Stokes, coloured by Daniel Vozzo. This issue has this scene in it (the last page is separated from the first by a section of a different scene):

The back of this volume hold this quote from Spin: “A timeless battle between the forces of psychic liberation and their dark counterparts, sleazy insectoid gents of control and repression… Basically, it’s about everything.” Robin and Mob, seen below, are the leaders of a cel of psychic magical armed freedom fighters combatting the combined forces of aliens from another dimension (which might be more understandably one-sentence described as chaos gods?) and human malevolence and cant-be-bothered. Does that help, if you haven’t read any of it?

And then I was like, ohhhhh right! No I can see that, sure Because for these characters, that makes sense.

So thanks for helping me become a more enlightened person, Grant and Chris!