Yesterday I developed the idea for two characters in Julian’s universe, Clementine and Fuchsia. They are dicephalus parapagus conjoined twins, and they ride a motorcycle. Of course this means that they have to have a motorcycle and the appropriate gear, particularly helmets. This is a bit daunting, as finding realistic helmets for sixth scale dolls is right up there with finding realistic power wheelchairs in terms of difficulty.

I think of New Year’s resolutions as recipes for failure and disappointment. I do, however, like to use the occasion of a new calendar year to establish a list of things I want to accomplish in the next 12 months.

Goals for this year include the following, in no particular order:

• Obtain satisfying job that pays what I’m worth, provides diversity of tasks and intellectual engagement, offers career development and opportunities to work with respectful, friendly people, does good in the world, and is less than 45 minutes away one way.
• Move out of parents’ house and in with sister.
• Promote social justice. Donate monthly to nonprofits promoting civil rights. Volunteer in person monthly for a nonprofit promoting civil rights. Harangue goverment officials and other public entities weekly. Blog about actions.
• Sew. Make as many sweaters as possible out of current hoard of novelty socks. Use sewing machine wherever I can. Make at least 5 collared shirts out of the fabrics I bought about two years ago. Also make leggings.
• Finish BJDs in progress, Delmar and Fritillaria, or sell them. Faceups and wigs are first priority. Outfits are lower priority.
• Do Zombieville regularly. Keep main plotline and Meanwhile going. Repaint Isabel.
• Get Julian and her lab up and running. Complete Julian. Complete Julian’s steampunk wheelchair. Complete Fiendish Device. Post stories about Julian.
• Play with other doll lovers. Run VTDL, publicizing, recruiting, and inventing themes for meetups. Attend 2016 NERDS doll show in Lowell, MA in March.
• Improve digital skills. Catalogue all 2016 acquisitions. Avoid discount club memberships and spending orgies as in 2016. Find better way to organize content. Work more with Carrara. Model a simple thing in Carrara. Learn how to render Carrara scenes quickly and efficiently. Do a mini universe photostory using Carrara digital assets for the set.

Ever since I got the idea for a doll version of my steampunk inventor Julia/Julian, I’ve been brainstorming scientificish stuff and characters for her and her lab.

For characters, there’s the Clockwork Droid, who helps her with personal care. There’s also Viktor, who is more of her friend.

There’s Julian’s wheelchair, which is going to be an overstuffed wingback chair, a hearing aid case for the main electronics, some wheels, and various steampunk scrapbook supplies.

There’s Julian’s tablet, which does text to speech and also functions as a universal remote. :p

There’s the Fiendish Device, made primarily of record player innards.

And, in my latest brilliant idea, there’s a bunch of Julian’s smaller machines made from diecast pencil sharpeners. Metal knockoffs of the original Spanish Play Me brand can be had for relatively cheap. I’ve identified the following as useful steampunk elements: coffee grinder, Roman numeral clock, sewing machine, table fan, phonograph, box camera, balance with weight, blowtorch, pot belly stove, kerosene stove, candlestick phone, French phone, cash register, floor safe, slot machine, bingo cage.

While I’m thinking of it, other things that look scientificish include music box innards, calculators/innards, circuit boards, vacuum tubes, radios/innards.

@natalunasans shipped me 10 lbs. [?!?!?!?!?!] of 1:6 scale stuff the other day, including a Big Chief Studios headsculpt of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor mounted on an early BCS body. Since I have a crush on David Tennant as that character, I was very happy…at first.

Then I tried to find him some pants. The BCS body, being a slender sculpt, did not fit any of the standard male pants I tried on. Just for the hell of it, I tried a pair of sparkly Barbie leggings that Nata had included, and he managed to slither into them! Of course, he can’t sit down, as his pants will fall down, but sitting’s overrated when you have stuff to strut.

While I originally planned for this doll to be a jerk anti-PWS politician in Zville, he and his pants apparently did not want to be a jerk politician. He would rather be a fuckin’ fabulous guy. Okay then. I couldn’t think of a name for him, so he went by FFG for about 24 hours until I used those initials as a starting point and came up with Farrier Frederick Giroux.

Farrier’s in his 30s, ABD in something mathematical. He spent an inordinately long time on his thesis, only to have a recent crisis in the realization that he has pretty much limited his career prospects to academia, and yet he hates academia. Still reeling from the feeling that he’s wasted most of his life, he’s working as a cashier in an upscale grocery store and trying desperately to figure out what his next move is.

Farrier both runs on anxiety and doesn’t give a fuck. He tried to blend in when he was younger; he was beaten and sexually assaulted in the boys’ locker room in high school on account of being a “fag.” In college, he changed his style to more of the one that he wanted. The first night he dressed the way he wanted, he was mocked and sexually assaulted by a bunch of sorority members. He then decided that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, so he might as well be himself as long as he could before the next time he was attacked. So that’s how he dresses, and that’s why he has a gun in his purse [and under his pillow], and that’s why no one ever touches him unless he lets them. [Plus he has Reynaud’s syndrome, and his hands are always cold, and he’s excruciatingly self-conscious about that.]

Regularly assumed to be gay and/or a drag queen and/or flamboyantly sassy, Farrier is actually none of these. He swallows his annoyance everytime someone makes one of these assumptions, but he feels like he’s been eating bombs. One of these days, he thinks, he’s not going to be able to be polite anymore, and he’s going to explode.

EDIT: Farrier’s head, body, pants, and magenta sweater details come from @natalunasans. The sweater is, of course, one of my notorious novelty sock sweaters, modded to be a crop top turtleneck [to hide the Long BCS Neck of Doom]. I’m pretty sure that the BCS Facebook group would really love these pictures. >:}

Continue reading Farrier Frederick Giroux, looking suspiciously like David Tennant

While I’m making little shirts, I need to produce the following for Zombieville:

• I BITE
• I’d rather be hunting zombies [and ensuing controversy]
• I eat brains. [Don’t worry — you’re safe.]

I’m pretty sure Lumberjack wears the last one. :p

With all the laudatory reviews surrounding the recent release of Star Wars Part 4 Million and 2 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, I notice a distinct lack of discussion [at least in published reviews] about Chirrut Imwe [Donnie Yen], one of the dudes who joins protagonist Jyn Erso [Felicity Jones] in her attempt to steal plans for the Death Star. Namely, Chirrut is a horrible mishmash of stereotypes.

Chirrut Imwe, according to Lucasfilm President and Rogue One producer Kathleen Kennedy, is a classic “warrior monk.” This in itself is a trite beginning, but it worsens because Chirrut’s not just any warrior monk. He’s a blind warrior monk. The fact that he has no functional vision apparently forms an integral part of his character, as Entertainment Weekly summarizes him as someone who “has used his spirituality to overcome his blindness and become a formidable warrior.” We’ll return to that nasty term overcome later…

I don’t need to see the movie to know that Chirrut Imwe embodies a crapload of romanticized bullshit tropes associated with so many fictional depictions of blind/visually impaired people. Let’s count them, shall we?

1. Visually impaired people can’t see at all. Statistically speaking, this is not true. People who are visually impaired have wide ranges of vision capability and loss; in fact, a WHO stat sheet estimates that 285 million people worldwide have visual impairments, with about 14% of them being blind, or completely without vision. Thus the vast majority of visually impaired people can see to some extent. Vision isn’t a binary trait, though popular culture portrays it as such, and visually impaired people don’t just have their eyeballs switched to OFF.

2. Blind and visually impaired people look weird. Though played by a Hong Kong Chinese person, member of a group in which blue eyes are very uncommon, Chirrut has blue eyes. His blindness is literally written in his eyes, but this is actually not the case for all blind or visually impaired people. Surprisingly, you can’t always tell by looking at someone if they are blind or visually impaired! It’s also noteworthy that Chirrut apparently has no pupils. With lack of pupils commonly used in pop visual media as a visual shorthand for Something is really wrong with this character!, Chirrut’s pupillessness thus makes him seem strange and inhuman.

3. Blind and visually impaired people are, like, so deep, man. The trope of visually impaired person with great spirituality goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, in which Tiresias, prophet of Apollo, was blinded by Hera when he said that women enjoyed sex more than men. He’s a seer, but he had too much insight, so she took away his vision — get it? People have a longstanding tendency to turn people with visual impairments into figures of speech. Sight is equated with intelligence and competence, while visual impairment and blindness are equated with ignorance and poor judgment. And yet a character’s lack of physical vision is almost always an opportunity to develop some metaphorical [religious, spiritual, prophetic] vision. This trope turns characters with blindness or visual impairments into Important Thematic Symbols, depriving them of opportunities for robust representation.

4. Blind and visually impaired people need to get over their disabilities. Entertainment Weekly, clearly picking up on the messages in the promo materials, describes Chirrut as “us[ing] his spirituality to overcome his blindness,” whatever that means. His disability is shown as a problem, but fortunately he has “spirituality” to cancel out this little obstacle. The world doesn’t work like that, though. People have disabilities and live with disabilities. They don’t do things despite their disabilities; they do things while being disabled. Their disabilities affect their lives, and a blind character who cancels out his disability with his “spirituality” isn’t really a character with a disability at all. He’s a stereotypical superhero whose romanticized depiction of blindness does a dehumanizing disservice to actual blind and visually impaired people.

I bought the latest lite version [Manga Studio 5] of what was formerly Manga Studio, and the creators REMOVED the word wrap feature within text balloons that was available in Manga Studio EX4. I don’t care if Manga Studio 5 can import 3D models and allow people to poses proprietary puppet-like figures in the panels; it’s a useless piece of shit if it doesn’t have such a basic feature as word wrap, which is STANDARD on all other comic software I’ve run across. I am extremely frustrated.

I am currently making a digital changing room for use at one of my favorite mini universe events to recreate in digital — a kink fest. First I thought it was going to be a vintage theater dressing room with a well-lit vanity and old playbills on the walls, but I didn’t feel like spending money on this set. Then I thought maybe old circus posters, but I couldn’t fit good ones with high resolution and unrestricted reproduction rights.

And then I discovered freevintageposters.com, which has a whole section of freely reproducible circus posters. Great! I’d hit the trove for all my circus poster needs! Then I noticed that, interspersed with the circus ephemera, were ads for magic shows. Obviously, methought, magical characters partaking in an event of illusion and performance should try on disguises in room decorated with signs of sleight of hand. I began to download….

Check out the Circus/Magic category on freevintageposters.com, and you too might be hooked. The vibrant lithographs promise sensuous delights by which modern advertising’s porno gloss loses luster in comparison. Kellar will [neatly, bloodlessly, and without disturbing the accuracy of the portrait rendition] perform “self-decapitation” in “his latest mystery!” Neff’s “Midnite Ghost Show” abounds in “speed, flash, thrills, color, surprise, beauty, action,”  presumably all embodied by the “beautiful girls with ‘hex’ appeal!” Thurston, “the great magician,” will leave crowds asking, “Do spirits come back?” [In an unintentionally amusing juxtapositional riposte, the archive also includes a poster for the actually truly great Harry Houdini, in which he performs “magic — illusions — escapes” and calls bullshit on “fraud mediums:” “Do spirits return? Houdini says no and proves it!” Harry Houdini, folks — skeptic, realist, and scientific realist extraordinaire!]

And, in my favorite of the bunch, the clairvoyant Alexander “sees your life from the cradle to the grave.” A lovely macabre illustration shows a skeletal hand holding a crystal ball that encompasses the sacraments of heteronormativity. There is no way the content of such a show could even begin to approach the awesomeness promised in that poster.

The tension between image and reality forms part of my fascination with these posters. Produced before rigorous standards of truth in advertising were developed, these ads make claims upon which they cannot possibly deliver, implying that the magic is real. Note, for example, that the Kellar levitation poster doesn’t even stipulate magic, just simple “levitation,” as if it’s a plain and simple fact that Kellar can shoot lightning out of his fingertips [?!] and raise someone off the ground. Note also that Alexander is billed as “the man who knows” in another poster, with no hint that he’s performing illusions based on cold reading for entertainment and diversion. In such instances, the ads raise audience expectations so high that any gaps between said expectations and the actual performances will be likely be glossed over. The audiences, hoping for spirit communications or levitation demos or whatever and conditioned by the posters to look for them, will convince themselves that they are seeing those things instead of illusions. In some way, the images perform the ultimate sleight of hand.

Whenever I see pretty much anything by powerage or Exnem, I’m like, Damn — that’s gotta chafe! I certainly understand that one of the main points of digital is that it don’t chafe. I mean, heck — that’s why I have a whole section of my digital wardrobe devoted to fetishy stuff. But it tends to be more like models of things I’ve seen in real life, as opposed to stuff like, uh, this [Exnem’s G3F Spike and Chain].

Wtf is that? I mean, I know what it is, and it looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Just about as useful as putting buckles on underwear. Whyyyyyyy? I guess injury by clothing is t3h sexx0rs. Or something.

May you suffer from ill-fitting shoes.

Context: Three pairs of insoles and one pair of Achilles tendon cushions later, I’ve just about had it with these shoes. I just need to accept that I bought the wrong size, and I need to go get another fucking pair.

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR.

For BJDs who bug me:

• Delmar needs faceup, hair, restringing, and tail. Faceup stalled.
• Fritillaria needs faceup, eyes, wig, outfit. Temporary outfit completed, faceup, eyes, and wig stalled.
• Mellifer needs a complete do-over. Stalled.
• Never the Less needs faceup, wig, clothes. Clothes done, working on wig, mask/faceup stalled.
• Polly needs a seat belt. Stalled.
• Thalia needs a shirt. Stalled.
• Timonium needs a new wig cap and new hair. Working on wig cap. Done!
• Touralyn needs a new body and clothes. Body in progress.

For Zombieville denizens:

• Doctor Z needs her own body with appropriate neck. Ordered!
  Done!
• Sylvia needs a new fat body. New base body procured and cut down. Fats need sculpting.

Yes! Something doll-related is happening in an accessible location in New England! Lyrajean and I are planning to go and split a vendor table. I hope to publicize VTDL too.

Hollywood Reporter says that Columbia Tristar made a deal with the Jim Henson Company to have Nicole Perlman write a script having something to do with Labyrinth. Could be a redo, could be a sequel. Given the vagueness of details, I seriously can’t tell if this is legit. I dunno — is the Hollywood Reporter a reputable source?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to work on something definite from a movie, i.e., my Pouty McShouty project.

Mad Mazzy Mickle Goes Looking for Love owes significant and obvious debts to some real-life music and musicals. In no particular order, here they are.

1) That entire subgenre of songs in the 1950s and 1960s about vehicle crashes. Epitomized by Ray Peterson’s insufferably whiny Tell Laura I Love Her [1961], this group also includes the iconic Dead Man’s Curve [1964] by Jan and Dean. The song I most associate with the genre, though, is the Shangri-Las’ Leader of the Pack [1965], which actually includes sound effects of the devastating car crash at the climax of the song. As a bonus, it also contains the line “They told me he was bad but I knew he was sad,” which is a concise summation of the appeal of the Byronic hero right there. This subgenre probably serves as the source for the automotive theme in the film.

2) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie. Mazzy’s general appearance recalls David Bowie’s circa 1975. Also much of the album has haunting, otherworldly notes of melancholy that I envision underpinning MMM. Lady Stardust really encapsulates the tension between ecstasy and depression because it describes the speaker’s — and everyone else’s — excited fascination with the performer, but the song itself is delivered in a halting, lugubrious manner, full of regret and nostalgia. Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide, with its desperate plea for connection — “Give me your hands because you’re wonderful” — also embodies that alienation.

3) The Rocky Horror Picture Show by Richard O’Brien. MMM initially rose from my desire to explore the transformative effects of cult movies on people’s identities without using RHPS as an example. Thus Mazzy is a Frank analogue, while the Dude and Cyn are analogues of Brad and Janet, and all their trajectories are roughly the same, as is the general flow of the plot. Songs like Toucha Toucha Touch Me definitely gave me the idea for playful, punny songs.

As all of you who pay attention to my blog [maybe two of you] know, I have a cult classic film, Mad Mazzy Mickle Goes Looking for Love, recurring in my fictional oeuvre. Modeled after The Rocky Horror Picture Show, MMM is a musical melodrama about sex, death, and drag racing in really cool cars. So far it has appeared in two places. One, a short story with the same title as the movie, follows Sarah, who played Mazzy, dealing with the legacy of stardom and typecasting in her 30s. The film also shows up in Me and My Muses, where college student Ellery watches it as part of her journey of self-discovery. I’m also planning to bring MMM into Zombieville, but I’m not giving any details.

Characters

Preferred name: Mad Mazzy Mickle
Given name: Lee Masters
Age: north of 16, south of 21
Sex: “Sure!”
Pronouns: Ze/hir
Race: “Fast.”
Family: Unknown, except for twin sibling who died shortly after birth
Colors: Pale blue, pale green
Motif: Comet
Style: Neo-retro astro-chic
Job: Ticket seller/concession manager/usher/factotum at the Psycholodeon, the city’s art-house movie theater
Pastime: Star gazing
Car: Hearse rat rod
Conflicts: Parents are actual movie stars, but ze keeps this a secret, wanting to live unaffected by them. Convinced that ze should have died instead of hir twin. Not-so-secret death wish.

Preferred name: [the] Dude
Given name used at start of movie: Richard “Dickie” John Hitchcock III
Age: 19
Sex: Male
Pronouns: He/him
Race: South Korean
Family: Adoptive super-rich white fathers, adopted younger brother
Colors: Black, dark grey
Motif: Moon
Style: Greaser/biker/Goth
Job: Back-up vocalist for the Thereminions, an ambient space techno band
Pastime: Lucid dreaming
Car: Limousine
Conflicts: Feels divorced from origins as a transracial adoptee. Dropped out of high school and now working on GED, but feels fake. Has no idea what he wants to do with his life, which freaks him the fuck out.

Preferred name: Cyn
Given name used at start of movie: Cynthia Ann “Cindy” Sweet
Age: 17
Sex: Female
Pronouns: She/her
Race: Black woman of color
Family: Working class, mother, father, two older sisters
Colors: Red, orange
Motif: Sun
Style: “Whatever’s cleanest.”
Job: Auto mechanic at Sweet Rides, the family garage
Pastime: Queering old movies
Car: 1980s station wagon with fake wood paneling that she rebuilt herself
Conflicts: Overshadowed by academically successful siblings. Feels invisible and ugly. Pretends that she doesn’t care about her practical, grease-stained look, but would much rather be “elegant.”

Plot

Intro to Dickie and Cindy and their respective families and conflicts. Then Mad Mazzy Mickle shows up, and we’re off. Everyone sings a song about what they want, and Mazzy sings seduction songs with both Dickie and Cindy with automotive puns. Seduction scenes also include stylistic transformations for Dickie/the Dude and Cindy/Cyn. Dickie/the Dude > handcuffs off, color on. Cindy/Cyn > grease off, elegance on.

For a brief, shining moment, Mazzy, the Dude, and Cyn form a happy family. Mazzy sings a song about finally feeling happy, worth something, excited about life, not wanting to escape to the stars. Planning for the big drag race — car prep, more automotive puns, increasing excitement and obsession.

Cyn’s and the Dude’s families confront them, warning them to slow down. The Dude and Cyn interpret this as rejection of their new selves, Mazzy, and their coming out in general. They remain defiant. In fact, they throw themselves into race prep even more. Mazzy sings, worrying about going too far, too fast, crashing and burning, how nothing good can last.

The race occurs: Mazzy competing against Cyn and the Dude. Cyn and the Dude tie for first, but something goes wrong with Mazzy’s car. It hits a tree and gets totaled. Cyn and the Dude discover that Mazzy appears not to have been in the car, but no one knows where ze went. Convinced that ze’s dead, each of them grieve with their families. The final scene shows Cyn and the Dude watching stars together, and they see a shooting star. Mazzy sings a song over the credits about being a star.

Fandom

MMM came out a while ago — I have to check my notes. Critical consensus thought that the young unknowns were hot and the costumes were fabulous, but the acting quality was dubious, script hackneyed, lyrics inane, and ending a tonally discordant downer. Popularly, though, MMM proved to be a hit, especially with genderqueer, trans, and/or queer youth, poly people, Goths, transracial adoptees, gay dudes, lesbian women, bi people, lucid dreamers, amateur astronomers, feminists, femmes — anyone who could find something of themselves in the main characters. MMM was a movie that people came out to and cited as life-changing. [It also changed the lives of Sarah, Sean, and Bebe, who played Mazzy, the Dude, and Cyn. They were inevitably typecast and confused with their characters, but that’s another story.]

MMM showings turned into gatherings for all the weirdos who identified with the movie on some level. Talking about the movie and celebrating favorite characters, fans naturally started yelling at the screen, dressing up for the showings, and acting out the whole thing in front of the screen. Over time, people formed casts to do regular showings, and an audience participation script was codified.

In the present day, though MMM is decades old, it remains popular for all the reasons it originally sparked interest. MMM now has a reputation of being a rite of passage that enhances one’s cred, especially if one is gay, lesbian, bi, poly, trans, genderqueer, intersex, non-binary, or otherwise non-conforming in sexuality and/or gender identity and/or gender expression. Given the intensely personal nostalgic admiration with which this crowd views MMM, you’d think it was an exemplar of sympathetic, inclusive representation, intersectional feminism, and general awesomeness. Let’s just say it’s not, which gives scholars endless fuel for their academic analyses of the film and its subculture.

I should also mention that the ending of MMM has prompted much controversy. It’s a tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet. It’s the ol’ homophobic Kill the Queer stereotype write large. It condemns Mazzy by killing hir off. It idolizes Mazzy by making hir a star. Cyn and the Dude are totally getting together at the end, and this is awesome. Cyn and the Dude are totally getting together at the end, and this is some heteronormative cop-out. Mazzy is dead, having become a metaphorical star. Mazzy is not dead, because the song ze sings over the credits proves that ze survived the crash and became an actual star like hir parents. Let’s argue till the cows come home!

Just stick a D-form on the crotch, kind of between the legs, pull out and down, and inflate a bit.

Hmmm, apparently not. I thought I had successfully made one for G3F in about three minutes. However, close examination [i.e., I compared it to someone else’s] reveals that the deformation is occurring too high on the pubis. Fortunately, I saved the D-form preset, because I’m a genius like that, so, when I get home, I can move it a little more down and under and redo.

And yea verily G3F shall have multiple bulge morphs — because it’s 2016, people, and I know I can’t be the only one who wants them.

About eight and a half years ago, I failed spectacularly in my attempts to find mainstream gay or lesbian content, specifically poses, for digital models. I was also seriously pissed by my inability to put clothes designed for one figure on another figure.

Eight and a half years later, gay and lesbian poses have appeared slightly in mainstream markets like Renderosity and heavily in porno markets like Renderotica. The autofit function in Daz Studio 3+, and/or the Clothing Room in Poser Pro 10+, and/or PhilC’s Wardrobe Wizard, and/or Evil Innocence’s CrossDresser [okay, now it’s XD 4, to be cooler, I guess] allow users to fit almost all clothing items on different figures, though special things like therianthropic parts remain a challenge. I guess I can say that one of my greatest sources of digital frustration has disappeared.

Of course, I have a new one: clothing fit across the breast. Daz’ autofit does pretty good work in clothing conversion, but it can’t handle the pectoral area well. Conversion of clothing for prominent breasts to clothing for minimal breasts = weird peaks where the breasts used to be. Conversion from clothing for minimal breasts to clothing for prominent breasts = shrink-wrap effect with no realistic draping. Conversion from clothing from figure A for prominent breasts to clothing for figure B with same = shrink wrap and no draping.

Of course, there are the most problems with the two types of body shapes I most use: a) flat, minimal breasts [e.g., Jareth] and b) prominent, fat, sagging breasts [e.g., me and pretty much everyone else]. In the first case, rippling and puckering develops around the pectorals as autofit tries to flatten out all that “boob geometry,” as it’s referred to on the Daz forums. In the second case, autofit tucks the clothing up under the breasts and refuses to drape it. This is why vendors make a small fortune in products like “breast fixers,” “fit control,” and other suites of projection morphs to forcibly shove the mesh into a more realistic position. And, of course, prominent breasts [and fats] distort clothing meshes and textures unrealistically.

Thus, besides HAIR, one of my prime motivations for learning how to model is BOOBS. Specifically, I want to make some basic clothing that accommodates prominent, fat, sagging breasts without shrink wrap. I also want to make some basic clothing for same that doesn’t get stuck up under the breasts. Of course, I haven’t seen anyone else achieve this, but I also haven’t seen anyone with the same level of frustration as me. And frustration is a powerful motivator.