Consume Media Critically

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Due to the hateful position taken by a certain author, we at JenEric Designs can not morally support them or the world they created.

All Harry Potter crochet and coffee will be discontinued.

50% of all sales of remaining stock (including a beautiful Hufflepuff inspired scarf) will be donated to the Trans Women of Color Collective (TWOCC).

Use code BTLM for 15% off your entire order until Midnight June 14th.

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

Consuming media critically is something that I encourage everyone to do. You can love a story and still admit its faults.

I firmly believe that once a story is out in the world it not longer belongs (metaphorically and spiritually, not legally) to the creators. I wrote about this from a creator’s point of view in Your Stories and Characters don’t Belong to you. Get over it!

When you consume a story and love it, you take from it what you need. Once the story is out there and communities build around them, the entire world of it changes and grows. The fans fundamentally change the story, usually for the better.

That being said, it’s important to listen those who are hurt by the things we consume. To look at the negative aspects and accept that they can be hurtful. If someone says they are hurt by something, we must listen and learn from that.

Harry Potter is filled with racist, homophobic, classist, pro-slavery, colonialist, and antisemitic themes. I’m sure there are other things in there that I haven’t noticed. It’s also filled with messages about the power of love, found family, doing the right thing, and standing up against oppression. Nothing is perfect. It’s your responsibility to decide if the good outweighs the bad.

We plan on keeping our Harry Potter books and making sure we explain the faults to our kids. However, we gave away our Marion Zimmer Bradley books and I refuse to read Lovecraft. You need to decide on your own balance.

If the Harry Potter universe is important to you, if you have fond memories of waiting in line for the books, if you smile when you hear the words Mushroom and Badger close together, or if your life was influenced for the better by these book; those memories and events are still good and valid. As much as the creator influences the work, so do the consumers. Don’t allow the author’s misguided hateful views to dim the positive that the books have done.

If you still love the world and still want to consume things about it, I recommend looking into fan fiction, fan art, and other creators that have played with those worlds.

Art by the talented itsnucleicacid on DiviantArt.

Consume responsibly,

Éric

Sailor Scouts

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Mysticfae Art and friends got together an awesome Sailor Scout group cosplay! Pardon the blurring of the background – the art was distracting from the props and costumes.

l-r: Chibusa, Sailor Moon (Monet of Mysticfae), Sailor Mercury, Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Venus (Vivian of Mysticfae), and Sailor Mars

It Came from Outer Space – JenEric Movie Review

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How This Works – Read Other Reviews

Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 1953 movie It Came from Outer Space.

Story

The story was interesting and delivered in a pretty good combination of dialogue and action. It was ridiculously dated, but I liked that it basically came down to the aliens crash landing in a bad neighbourhood and trying to GTFO as soon as possible.

I like the underlying narrative that we as a species are not ready to accept what we can’t understand and that what looks strange isn’t always evil.

Score: 1

Characters

Angry sheriff, writer with an open mind, scream queen, and various others. This was a standard cast for a sci-fi story from the 1940’s and 50’s.

Score: 0

Dialogue

This felt written by two people. The dialogue between the sheriff and the writer was pure Universal horror movie. The dialogue between the writer and the girl was pure Bradbury.

Half of it felt philosophical and high minded and the other half standard horror movie.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

This was a very well shot film. Other than a few odd angles it really did a great job building atmosphere and being pretty.

The music was pretty much a re-hash of other Universal monster movies at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if everything was from something else.

Score: 0.5

Fun

This was a cerebral science fiction concept that the filmmakers desperately wanted to turn into a creature feature. That being said, I really enjoyed it.

Score: 1

Overall

At 70 years old, it’s a quaint film from a simpler time exploring ideas of what the cosmos might have in store. I love the narration at the beginning.

If this were made today it would either be an indie film or some weird action horror and frankly neither would do it justice.

Final Score: 3 Stars

Renaissance Virtual Convention and Formatting for Authors

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

This weekend I did a thing… I participated in a virtual convention. It was wonderfully run and a lot of fun. Super proud of the organizers and how awesome they are. The panellists were fantastic and despite my hate for Discord, the conversation there was impressive.

I look forward to the next one and I hope they are happy with how it went.

I was on two panels, which is fair since I’m not an expert in most of the topics. I know a little about a lot. One was my book launch with some other fantastic authors. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on my book, I only wrote it. My wife read it three times so she’s more of an expert.

The one thing I know very well is layout. I ran a workshop on Saturday evening that was all about layout for authors. I’ve noticed dealing with authors that there are some large gaps in their knowledge of word processing and I wanted to make their lives easier.

I’m hoping to write a series of blogposts about it but I’ve been really low on energy lately and I have a novel to finish by September.

If you are reading this and want more information about formatting, here’s a short list of resources from me.

This is a short list that I hope to be adding to. However, if you have any questions feel free to contact me on the Layout Services page.

Thank you,

Éric

An evening of Mystery and Fantasy: virtual book launch

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Hello my Imaginary Friends,

It’s time to release this book! And it’s being released with 3 other fantastic sequels.

Join us for a virtual book launch filled with mystery and fantasy!

We are launching FOUR novels during a virtual party. The authors will read from their book, and we will draw prizes for those in attendance.

The event will be via Zoom, and places are limited so make sure to register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7lICanqfSX-yE56cB0ZtZw

About the books:

A Case of Synchronicity by Éric Desmarais: A young adult supernatural time-travel mystery partially set in the 1980s.

The Unavoidable Quests by John Haas: A fantasy comedy involving dimensional treasure hunting.

Death by Association by Madona Skaff: A thrilling contemporary mystery with a disabled amateur sleuth.

To Pluck a Crow: Death Stalks the House of Herbert by Sue Taylor-Davidson: A gripping historical mystery following a dual narrative and concerning itself on the Shakespeare authorship question.

So come by and see the awesome stuff we’re doing for the launch.

Facebook Event

Zoom Meeting

Hope to see you there,

Éric

George of the Jungle – JenEric Movie Review

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How This Works – Read Other Reviews

Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 1997 movie George of the Jungle.

Story

The story is riddled with puns, fart jokes, 4th wall breaking, and silly slapstick. Some of that is good, some of that is bad. It’s a story that doesn’t take itself seriously but has some interesting things to say as subtext. Great moments where the script flips the tropes on their heads, especially those of toxic masculinity and ignorance.

Score: 0.5

Characters

George is a lovable idiot with a better understanding of how to respect others then the rest of the characters.

Ursula was the stand in for the every man-character and bland because of it. The rest were a mixture of tropes and silliness.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

The dialogue in this, specifically the narrator, makes me laugh every time. Despite the silliness, the movie does a great job at not overdoing the dialogue. It’s not perfect but it’s certainly quotable.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

The visuals were okay. Scenery was pretty and the special effects held up well.

The music was so 1990’s it hurt. Even the theme song was a punk rock late 1990’s cover.

There was nothing special here but nothing terrible.

Score: 0.5

Fun

I have fond memories of this movie as a kid. Brendan Fraser is charming (as always) and the movie still has some of my favourite gags, but also has a lot more crotch punch and fart jokes then I remembered.

Score: 0.5

Overall

This is a fun movie, not great, not terrible but definitely fun. It has less awkward sexism or racism than a lot of movies from it’s time, and even has some good feminist messages.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars

Join me at the Renaissance Virtual Convention

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Hello My Imaginary friends,

This coming weekend I’ll be participating in the Renaissance Virtual Convention. And you can too!

I’ll be at my book launch at 6pm on Saturday and running a workshop on basic formatting for authors at 8pm on Saturday.

Renaissance Press presents an entirely FREE, entirely online convention!

Join us for a three-day conference from June 5 to June 7th, 2020, featuring over 50 guest authors!

All the programming will be broadcast over Zoom. You will be able to sign up for the individual panels or readings you want to attend. Everything is free, but places are limited, so please make sure to sign up!

For announcements, you can also follow our Facebook event, and you can join the Vendors’ room Discord!

Accessibility

Please note that the panels will not have live captioning due to budgetary limitations, however, they will be posted to YouTube at a later date with full captioning.

PANELISTS
VENDORS’ ROOM
FULL PROGRAM

Hope to see you there!

Éric