Why I Obsess

First off, I’m thinking that I’m going to be changing the update days of this blog from Sunday and Wednesday to Monday and Thursday, simply because that’s when my schedule allows me free time to write these. 

           

My last few posts have generally been less then glowing with happiness, and I don’t want this blog to be turning into a place where I just rant about things that upset/irritate me.  When the biggest tag on your blog is “rants,” you know that something’s wrong.  Therefore today’s post is something that’s a little bit lighter in mood as well as an explanation to anyone that doesn’t really know me (if there is anyone that reads this that doesn’t really know me) about why fandom seems to be so prominent in many of my posts.

Over the course of the nineteen years that I’ve been on this planet, I’ve accrued many obsessions.  When I was younger I was fascinated (read: obsessed) with natural disasters, by roller coasters, by meteorology and would learn all that young little me could through books.  Ask me what keeps a roller coaster from going backwards when it’s going up a hill, or what was the greatest cause of death in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted, and I could probably tell you.  Over time, these obsessions fell back one by one, with a few major exceptions.  Throughout all those years, I held onto my obsessions with Harry Potter, art, and Lord of the Rings, to name a few.  Now, when I say obsess, I don’t mean in the “OME I THINK EDWARD CULLEN IS SO HAWT AND NO BOY WILL EVER BE THAT AWESOME” way.  Yes, I am picking on Twilighters, because a large portion of them are the ones that give fandoms a bad name.

So what do I mean when I say: “obsess?”  I mean that it takes a lot to really get me into a fandom, so when I do get into one, I really get into it.  I like to theorize about what’s coming up, I like to talk about it with friends (who I usually manage to get obsessed too…and they get me back for it with other fandoms), I draw fanart for fun, I listen to podcasts, I visit websites, and you know what, it’s perfectly okay.  Because the thing is, I honestly don’t obsess over too much.  Harry Potter, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, FMA, etc, there’re not really too many that rank among the “totally obsessed” list here. 

It’s been through fandoms that I’ve found some of my best friends, my oldest friend and I bonded through Harry Potter, and it was with she that I waited outside the theater for nine hours to see the final Harry Potter movie.  It’s partially because of fandoms that I’ve realized that I want to be an illustrator for a career…Mary Grand Pre’s illustrations for the Harry Potter books and Alan Lee’s illustrations for the Lord of the Rings books have especially influenced me in this regard.  Most important of all, honestly, is that I just enjoy being involved in fandoms.  They transport me to new worlds, they create characters that I’ve grown to love, they have served as a common ground to meet new people and discover new interests, and they have overall given me hours upon hours of fun and relaxation (and in the case of this last series of Doctor Who, headache). 

So when people tell  me that it’s not a good thing to be obsessed, I say “screw them” because you know what, I enjoy it, and it’s all good.  Whether it’s art or fandom that I’m obsessed with, it’s something to give me a break from reality and I love it. 

Women's Portrayal in Advertising: A Rant

Ahem.

*Steps onto virtual soapbox*           

           Earlier this week, I mentioned to a few of my friends at college how I always feel guilty after I eat a couple cookies and don’t do anything exercise wise that day to balance it out.  It wasn’t so bad during high school when I was at home, but I think that the stigma that surrounds college and the dreaded “freshman fifteen” has gotten to me. 

            Later that day, my friend sent me a link to this video about the way that women are portrayed in the media, and especially in advertising.  If you have the time, I would seriously recommend watching it...believe me, it’s worth it.    

            I’m glad my friend sent this to me, because it certainly made me feel better about myself.  But then it did something else…it made me angry.  It made me angry at the western ideal of beauty, and how we’re conditioned from a young age to believe a standard that just a tiny percentage of the population will ever be able to attain.  I mean, even as little kids girls we’re are shown an ideal of beautiful that is unrealistic.  Yes, I’m talking about the Barbie doll here.  I personally never was much inclined to play with the Barbie, but I think that I’m in the minority when I say that I’ve never owned a Barbie doll of my own.  Think back to your childhood…what did your Barbie look like?  With her petite frame, waist that was tinier then her head, gigantic bust, and ever-growing list of accessories, she pretty much kills two birds with one stone: she reinforces the western ideal of sexy in the minds of young girls, and she sells kids early to the idea of consumerism…if your Barbie has the new Christmas/Halloween/Justin Beiber outfit she’ll be more fun to play with!   

            Watching this video, as well as the video lecture “Killing Us Softly” by Mrs. Jean Kilbourne, really started me thinking about the way that the media is affecting us.  Do we see tv shows that feature a slightly chubby girl but never comment on it?  (I know that there are overweight characters on television and movies, but their weight is always called into notice, shunning them if they look less then the ideal that we as a culture are told to strive for.)  Not only do women and girls feel bad about themselves because they can’t be the tiny, lithe, tall, sexy things that we see in magazines and in adds, but the way that many men look at us changes as well.  Men may see real girls, real women, as second rate because they don’t fit into the beautiful image that we see in the movies.

            Anecdote time!  When I was in junior year of high school, I had a crush on a guy that sat at the desk opposite me in my AP studio art class.  This boy was slightly heavy, had a very boyish face, and generally didn’t look like the stereotypical high school idiot.  I didn’t even think about that, I thought he was funny and nice and after much pushing from my mom, I actually asked him (stomach twisting this whole time) to prom.  He said no.  Now, I wouldn’t have been so hurt by this if it weren’t for his justification…his reason for turning me down was that he liked skinny girls and I wasn’t thin enough.

Wasn’t thin enough.

The ass.

The next time I saw him in class, my friend that worked at the table next to me told him to jump in a lake.  So much for nice and funny eh?  And you think you know a guy…

            And now if I may direct your attention back to the video above…while watching the video I felt the ways that the human body, the female body especially, is treated in advertising absolutely disgusts me.  There are ads of topless women, carefully posed to conceal the nipples, to sell brand name jeans.  There are sandwich ads that say things along the lines of “is 7 inches long enough for you?” showing a woman about to bite into the sub sandwich.  Gee I wonder what that’s supposed to make people think of.  In many ads, the women are clearly shown as sex objects, somehow silenced, or even turning into the objects that the ad is advertising.  What do I think of this?  It’s wrong.  Plain wrong.  Disgustingly wrong. 

            That night I was talking to my roommate about the same topic and I asked her what she, a business major, thought of the whole subject of the portrayal of woman in the media.  She replied, “I did a paper on whether or not sex sells…and it does.  I don’t always agree with it, but from a business standpoint, it makes sense to continue with what works.”  Wow.

            But even more then the business big wigs making the decisions, I’m ashamed of the artists.  As an art major, as an artist, in general it infuriates me that there are graphic designers that sell their souls (figuratively speaking) to the large corporations and mistreat women in the world of advertising.  Even more then infuriates me…it makes me ashamed.  It’s so wrong, and the artificial ideals of perfection that are being perpetuated are harmful. 

I guess that when all’s said and done, the only thing that I can actually say to those behind these things is this....

  What. The. Hell.  

"The Son of Neptune" - AMAZING BOOK YOU MUST READ!!!!!

           

Title: The Son of Neptune

By: Rick Riordan

Rating: 5 stars

          Attention YA authors that want to write stories that add a modern flair to old mythology *coughAimeeCartercough*:  Read. This. Book.  Actually, read this entire series, and the entire Percy Jackson and the Olympians series as well.  This book, this series, is how it should be done. 

            Over the past few years, I’ve noticed several authors attempting to take the Greek mythology and make it so that the gods are still present in modern society, or some variation thereupon.  I’ve also noticed that said stories are absolutely butchering just about everything possible about the mythology upon which they are supposedly based.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely against unique stories, or using old stories to build new ones.  What I do have an issue with is the usage of classic mythology and twisting it until it is unrecognizable and bastardized to be the fodder of some stupid Mary Sue fantasy.  For further ranting, see My review of "The Goddess Test."

            My point in just giving that soapbox speech is that this book is everything that those other books wished they could be.  In the first series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” Percy learns that he is a son of Poseidon, the sea god.  He attends Camp Half Blood for other demigods where he learns that the Greek gods are real, and that they just follow where the heart of western civilization lies, which at the time of the story is America.  Throughout the first series Percy encounters other creatures of Greek mythology, battles monsters, and faces challenges that fill a wonderful story arc that I really must insist on people reading.  Where Rick Riordan goes right, however, is that he keeps the mythology true to its source.  Even more importantly, he doesn’t make the foolish, inane, STUPID mistake that Hell = Hades!!! In fact, he even has Percy ask that very question in the first book to clarify that they are not the same thing.

            Now, some may wonder why I’m saying all this about how well the author stuck to Greek mythology on a book in which the title contains the name of a Roman god.  That’s where this second series has started to get good, because it turns out that in the world that this book takes place doesn’t just have a camp for the Greek gods’ children, but one for the children that they have while in their Roman aspect as well...but due to conflicts between the two camps in the past, the young demigods aren’t alerted to the existence of the other anymore.  In “The Lost Hero” the first book of “The Heroes of Olympus” arc, Jason, a demigod like all the others, finds his way to Camp Half Blood with absolutely no memory and no idea who he is.  What is eventually revealed is that he is a camper of the Roman camp who was taken and brought to the Greek camp for reasons that I won’t spoil here…at the same time, Percy has gone missing…

            And that’s where “The Son of Neptune” takes off from.  Percy finds his way to the Roman camp, to find that things are a bit different from the camp that he has flashes of memory about.  Not much time passes before his friend Frank is assigned a quest, and Percy along with Frank’s friend Hazel accompany them to the land beyond the gods…Alaska.  Despite the familiar quest sort of format, this book is fantastic, and the story is shiny and new.  If there’s one thing I can say about Mr. Riordan, it’s that he never writes the same story twice.  The writing style is engaging, and I wanted to find out what happened stat!  For this reason, this book was good for my art homework here in college, as I was listening to it on audiobook and just worked for five hour straight increments…but bad for every other class since I wanted to just get out of class and continue listening.  It got to the point that I would listen to it while eating breakfast in the dining hall (although considering that there aren’t too many people to eat breakfast with at 6:30 in the morning, it wasn’t exactly rude…)

            Since the previous series was written in first person from Percy’s point of view, his character was pretty darn fleshed out by the time that he gets to this story, but even so he manages to have a decent amount of character development before the curtain fell.  It was strange at first to read his character from a third person perspective in “The Son of Neptune” but after a chapter or two I didn’t even notice anymore.  Where I think “The Son of Neptune” surpasses the previous book in its series is in the development of new characters.  Both Frank and Hazel are very dynamic characters that have sucky lives a plethora of struggles and whose written voice is very clear.  The ring of secrets that are kept throughout this book make for some interesting conflicts and since the viewpoint is passed around for the duration of the story, the reader knows more then the characters, which for me just made me want to read more because I wanted to know if they would let spill their terrible secrets, who would survive, and so much more.

Really, even if you have given up all hope on finding decent YA that doesn’t massacre mythology to the extent that it’s unrecognizable, read this series.  These books are wonderful for any age, I read the first one in the “Olympians” series when I was in elementary school, and now even as a freshman in college I truly enjoyed the most recent one.  The characters are great, the stories are fun, and the world building is fantastic!

Oh, and if you have just seen the movie and decided that these books weren’t for you, read the freaking first book!  The movie is fun, yes, but the director took far too many creative freedoms with the plot, and the books are 100 times better (as the books almost always are.)

One last note...check out the cover of this book, it's absolutely gorgeous! John Rocco has outdone himself this time with this phenomenal, visually dynamic book cover.  Of all his covers so far, this is my favorite yet!

Ickle Firsties

Well everyone, this is it...the last Harry Potter fan art you'll probably see me doing for a little while...and by that I mean about four weeks.  The Golden Trio, as ickle firsties....ahhhhhh they were so little back then.  I don't know why they're all looking at Harry's wand, it just worked for the composition and I wanted to play around with light. 

I started this a few days before leaving for college, and then it sat unfinished for so long while I was getting all settled in and working on homework (6 hours of studio time outside of each class for my 3-D Approaches course is no joke!), but I finally had some free time yesterday so I just sat out in the common room and worked on this.  I think I might just like this college thing after all.

Fullmetal Alchemist (aka Why I Should Listen to My Friends)

Last spring, my friends Kayla and Anila (of The Cuckoo’s Nest and Keep Calm and Om Nom, respectively) sent me the link to read a manga online, insisting that I absolutely MUST read it.  It was for a series by the name of Fullmetal Alchemist, which I had heard of before but wasn’t all that interested in reading. Over the next few months, the conversation went something like this:

ANILA: “Rae you absolutely have to read FMA, it’s SO GOOD!”

ME: “m-hmm…maybe.  I’m really busy right now with AP Studio Art though…”

Two Weeks Later

KAYLA: “Rae, have you started reading FMA yet?  There’s some crazy stuff in there!”

ME: “I can’t right now, I have five art classes all with projects that need to be finished and really don’t have the time…”

Four Weeks Later

ANILA: “Rae, you’ve finished your AP studio art portfolio, so get START READING FMA!!! Four volumes, that’s all I’m asking you to read!”

ME: *resigned* “Fine, fine, I’ll read four volumes, but that’s it!”

And so I read the first volume and a half, and over and over I was geeking out over the pen and ink technique, and was so distracted by the art that it was taking me about seven times longer then it really should have.  Eventually I said, “ah, screw it,” and watched the FMA: Brotherhood anime instead.

OH. MY. GOD. 

First off, thank you Anila and Kayla for pressuring me and pressuring me and not letting up until I actually buckled…you were right.  There, I’m not going to say it again.

For those who do not know – which would be ridiculous as the only two people that I know are following this blog are the two friends aforementioned in this post – FMA is a story about two brothers, Alphonse and Edward Eleric, who try to resurrect their mother using a taboo form of alchemy, and instead end up losing their body, and arm and leg, respectively.  Honestly that super, super basic description doesn’t even do the story justice.  It’s also a story of loyalty, of good versus evil, of a corrupt government, of frenemies, of alliances and espionage, and of how much one will sacrifice for the greater cause. 

In short, it’s just damn good.

Even in the anime I was stunned by the quality of the animation and the detail.  Although it was not as detailed in the inking (I loooooove pen and ink), it still was exceptional in the varying line thickness and the color palette that many American animators could do well to learn from.  More then anything, however, I was impressed by the backgrounds.  I know it may seem strange that I was looking at the backgrounds when there is so much going on with the characters, but the painted backgrounds are so truly magnificent that I have to give them a shout-out.  I actually was jumping up and down in excitement when I was trying to explain this to one of my friends…art nerd, okay?  Give me a break!

As of now, I’m currently working on actually reading the manga (on a much smaller screen as to avoid the massive art geeking out that was occurring earlier) and it is just as exciting the second time around.  So, to anyone that is in the tiniest bit curious about Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood, if you’re watching the anime), go, watch it.  Read it.  Just experience it. 

To Live, To Love, To Let Go

This doesn't really depict any particular scene in the series, rather I was trying to capture my emotions that I felt as I drew this in line while waiting for the last Harry Potter movie.

Pen and Ink with Watercolor

This also was the first painting that I completed using the Windsor-Newton Series 7 sable watercolor brush that I received as a gift after graduation.  For those that don't know, in 1886 Queen Victoria, an avid watercolorist herself, ordered that Windsor-Newton produce a line of the highest quality brushes in size 7 - her favorite size.  This line became known as Series 7 and since then has been continued with the same quality standards.  It's absolutely amazing the difference that sort of quality makes with how it feels to paint with it.  Hence, I wasn't as thrilled by the actual technique in this one, since I was getting used to a different flow compared to the acrylic watercolor bristles I was using.

Time is Making Fools of Us Again

This last Thursday, I waited in line for the final time in anticipation of the last Harry Potter movie.  It's hard to put into words how I felt while sitting out in the sun, amongst a thousand other fans, with the excitement so thick it was almost palpable.  My friend Kayla and I had insisted that we get in line much earlier then we had for previous installments, arriving at 3:00 p.m. and sure enough, we were able to set up camp (well, a blanket really) right up near the front of the line for our showing (12:05 a.m.)

For me, waiting in line for a midnight opening is nearly as much fun as watching the movie itself.  I've gone to the midnight opening for the last two books, the last four movies, and honestly wouldn't have missed any of them for the world.  There's something about the atmosphere that accompanies a midnighter that is contagious, or perhaps the better comparison is to a drug...once you've experienced it once, you want more.  Most importantly, everyone around you is connected by a single common thread, a single passion that has caught up the hearts and imaginations of many for the last twelve years...Harry Potter.

I mean, think about it!  Never before had a book series garnered so much excitement from adults and children alike.  The Harry Potter books are credited by many for being the books that got them to read, and despite the objections of people that protested the books (without reading them, for shame) on the grounds that the books promoted devil worship, the adventures of Harry, Ron, and Hermione blazed across the world.  Before the Harry Potter books became a hit, there was no such thing as a midnight opening for a book release, let alone for movies!  Now look at the impact that the books have made on this one phenomenon alone, for there rarely is a large budget film that doesn't have a midnight release - warranted or not.  

I have Harry Potter, and J.K. Rowling of course, to thank for many things growing up.  As a little kid with Aspergers (a form of autism) I was extremely socially awkward.  For the first few years of my elementary school experience, I had very few friends...but Harry was always there.  I grew up with Harry, only a couple years younger then he was as each new book was put out.  It was through our mutual love of Harry Potter that I met my best friend Kayla (of The Cuckoo's Nest blog).  Because of this, I feel like I really can say that Harry Potter not only taught me about what true friends are, but introduced me to one too.  Aside from friendship, the characters also were there when it came to who I admired...Hermione, naturally, was my ultimate role model, for she not only had the wild hair that I possess, but was very intellectually driven and proved time and time again that it was more then okay to be a bit of a book worm.  The Harry Potter books also played a crucial part in the relationship that I formed as a little kid with my sister.  When the first couple books came out, I didn't read them by myself at first - rather my sister read them to me, always comforting me when I became too scared and reading them with such inflection in her voice that I could hardly have done better if I'd listened to the audiobook instead!

Anyway, back to Thursday night.  The line was every bit as much fun as I expected it to be.  I drew a few dark marks on friend's arms, met a couple of awesome fun people, and of course had a wizard duel with my partner in crime, Kayla.  That part was probably the best bit of silly fun I've had in a long while.  We just started with figuring what types of spells could be acted out, and then went for it without any other plans.  One of our other friends filmed us, and halfway through, some random girl that we never had met before started to film us too...strange...

The Gryffindor on the left is yours truly, the Ravenclaw on the right is her partner in crime

As the time drew nearer and nearer, I felt a whole mix of emotions: excitement for the movie, anticipation, but at the same time a twinge of sadness.  My whole childhood has been connected to Harry Potter, to the waiting, excitement, and theorizing that came with it.  In a strange way, the release of this movie feels more like a definite coming of age mark then anything else so far, even my high school graduation.  (Sorry Anila, but I had to say it...)  I know that the books and movies will always be there, but the waiting and sense of immediacy that has accompanied their releases over the past decade is finally drawing to a close.  

The lights dimmed, the audience cheered, and the film began to play...

Thank you Harry, and you Jo Rowling for the magic that filled my childhood. Thank you for the memories, for the friends, and for the adventures.  As Dumbledore said, "Time is making fools of us again," for it seems like it was only yesterday that I was sitting up late listening to Harry's adventures for the very first time.  I solemnly swear that I will never, ever forget.

Mischief Managed.