A school shooting is every parent’s worst nightmare. Unfortunately, this nightmare is real for many parents in the United States. According to researchers at Education Week, in 2024, there were 39 recorded school shootings resulting in injuries or death; so far in 2025, there have been 3 events relating to gun violence on school grounds in the US (“School Shootings Over Time”). The persistence of school shootings in the US and the fear and grief they cause are extremely devastating to students and affected families. Communities like Mothers Against Gun Violence, Americans for Responsible Solutions, and Sandy Hook Promise demand change for schools and gun legislation. In this blog, I will analyze the use of colour and sound in Will McCormack and Michael Govier’s animated short If Anything Happens I Love You (2020), reflecting on how these elements of style convey a harrowing outlook on school shootings

Cinderbrew Meadery is one of the most distinctive dungeons in The War Within expansion. Here, players must not only fight enemies but also survive while dodging streams of flame and volatile magical potions that provide both buffs and debuffs. The dungeon is known for its quick completion, and many established groups use it as a fast source of gear and gold. However, if you're a newbie or solo player, the pace and results can be slow and inconsistent due to the random group members.

Joseph Campbell identifies the refusal of the call in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a story trope where the main protagonist of the story is called to an adventure but refuses to go. The hero’s reluctance to act can come from a variety of reasons that are usually psychological in nature. Emotions such as guilt or fear try to keep the hero homebound so that he/she cannot soar and reach their full heroic potential. It is an age-old trend that is found in all mediums of mankind’s story form. Everything from epic poems, oral fairy tales, literary fiction, television shows and finally movies. It is a part of the storytelling tradition that Campbell famously calls “The Monomyth.” 

There's something special happening in the world of mobile gaming, and it goes by the name Wuthering Waves. Released in May 2024, this action RPG from Kuro Games has quickly become the game everyone's talking about—and for good reason. It's not just another anime game trying to grab your attention with flashy visuals. This one actually delivers on its promises.

The third exploration in this series focuses on those musicians and artists who prefer to foster a sense of obscurity and anonymity within the medium, therefore offering an alternative to the approaches to persona projection in the music video format made by Bono and Holly Johnson described in the previous two posts. In 1996, Fluke (John Fugler and Mike Tournier) created one of the main tracks for the new PlayStation game, Wipeout 2097 (Psygnosis) entitled “Atom Bomb.” Fluke were one of several emerging electronica artists who also created tracks for the game, including Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Orbital.

Animation director Shaun Magher, who created the video, recalls that “In 1991, I was keen to establish my own animation studio, after recently graduating from the National Film and Television school, and was represented by a new production company, headed up by Fiona Stylianou, called Popata. We were approached by MCA records to look at a new release from Holly Johnson, who had firmly established his solo career beyond the earlier success with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Holly wanted to develop a fantasy sci-fi adventure for his latest track Across the Universe, where he and his sidekick, Funky his faithful pooch, would traverse the universe. Johnson wanted a mix of “Tintin styling in a Star Trek universe.”

This piece combines the analytical and contextual writing of Shaun Magher and James Clarke with a series of first-person accounts and recollections offered by Magher relating to a series of specific case studies that illustrate the article’s area of exploration.

Across the spectrum of popular music, there’s a fascinating seam that intersects with music, visual culture, and animation. That intersecting seam is the form of the animated music video. These short animations have a rich tradition, and the animated aesthetic can offer a version of a rock/pop star as a fantasy incarnation of themselves.

The Tricky Women International Animated Film Festival, screening works by female and genderqueer artists, aspires to the fantastical vision, “to imagine a world that is different from the one we currently live in.” Given its radical agenda, it is remarkable that host city Vienna has consistently supported this event for twenty-five successive years in some of its finest cinemas, attended by diverse audiences and sponsored by prestigious patrons (Fig. 1). The strategic positioning of the festival to coincide with International Women’s Day welds it into feminist history. The ambition for transformation is proposed at both the organisational level, the shared director role broadening strategies for inclusion, and the programming, with films characterised by fantastical themes of transgression, mobilised most persistently through the figure of the monstrous female body.