#2 : Inspirations

Introduction

New week, new post for the newsletter ! Wait... Wasn't it supposed to be monthly ?

Ah, who cares ! Turns out (despite the honorable length of the first one) I forgot about a few facts you might be interested in. I'm sure I can allow myself to cross out some of those self-imposed rules then... Besides, with such a cute interface here on Leaflet, it would be a shame not to succumb to this desire to share and express.

By the way, thank you everyone for receiving the first post so well ! I didn't expect much of it, having originally thought of this project as niche and probably barely interesting to the average member of the fandom, but it has been a delight to realize I was mistaken. Instead, I received a lot of kind words and support from people I wouldn't even have expected ! So thank you, you all rock.

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On Paradise 18 these days, an aspiring fandom-wide artistic endeavor, some music and an overlooked connection...

Let's look into all of it !

- LesReptiles.

Justober 2025

Some may not have seen it here first, but yes, it's here, and it's real. Justober, founded by @dogspard on Tumblr and ran by two self-described "anonymous islanders", is seeing the light of day this year ! And not with one but two lists of prompts, following a fluff/kink separation.

The concept ? To put out a piece of fanwork (of any type ! Can be fanart, fanfiction, audio and/or visual...) every day of October, based on the given prompt in the list. Of course, this is only an ideal, but unity is strength ! Take part in a day or two, and it's already a success. Justober exists as a tempting suggestion, our goal now as a fandom to take the time to bring ladders and reach the apples hanging from the tree. We could make a yummy pie with them all !

If the idea piques your interest and you want to know more, you can head over to the Justober's Carrd page below !

justober

And for the most determined of you, I've in fact been able to hear some whispers emanating from the intersections of some corridors already, a bold idea to create a work based on both prompts for each day...

Excited to see what will come out of it !

Paradise 18's Astrobox

Let's welcome this new recurring section, Astrobox, in which I'll give out song suggestions based on Justice's own inspirations, and music from friends they've shared over the years. Have you ever wanted to dive in Justice's sonic universe, but never knew where to look or to start ? Well, no need to search anymore ! Just sit down in front of the Astrobox and let yourself be transported elsewhere by the sweet melodies it plays... A party on Paradise 18, perhaps ?

The Buggles - Astroboy (And The Proles On Parade)

Because I just had to choose one. But the entire album, The Age of Plastic (in which we can find the international hit Video Killed The Radio Star ) is the core reason Gaspard and Xavier bonded in the first place, and was their motivation to make their first song together. Did you know that Sure You Will, from the Hits Up To You compilation, was made as a tribute to The Buggles ? No, really ! They even made the outfits sort of match.

Left : Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes photographed by Fin Costello, 1979. Right : Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay for Musclorvision : Hits Up To You, 2003.

If there is ONE album to listen to in relation to Justice, it's definitely this one. And I promise, you'll probably enjoy the ride !

Saint-Preux - From the Seven Cities

Another album, another X&G classic, another reason why they ended up spending all their time together, another artist, another world... Welcome to Saint-Preux's Atlantis, a land of mysteries and beautiful compositions bracketed with eerie synths and guitars. Somewhere between ambient, classical and rock, and a lovely voice to narrate the tragic fate of this forgotten land.

Fun fact : Another song by this composer, Concerto Pour Une Voix , found a big audience in France and worldwide around August 1970 ! Reaching Top 20 in Japan and 10 in Mexico, it earned a (well deserved) gold record.

Space - Deliverance

Now, to stay on the theme of Xavier and Gaspard's early mutual references, one last track from a band you might already know. Not to be mistaken for the similarly named british rock band nor the electronic music act Space Art which we'll get to in a future post, Space is a french dance/disco band who skyrocketed to popularity the very year of its formation with the song Magic Fly in 1977 !

Very sci-fi and claiming this influence, you might enjoy taking on this little musical voyage, on your way to get a drink at a party on an utopian planet...

Jamaica - When Do You Wanna Stop Working?

...Only to end up lamely spitting it all out on the hair of a girl who might just be the girlfriend of your then best friend, Antoine Hilaire !

And you find yourself, almost ten years later, in a professional studio. Your new best friend, business partner and massive crush, Xavier de Rosnay, is in the middle of producing this album for Jamaica, the band of your buddy Antoine.

It's punchy, it's rock, and you like the vocals, always about insignificant things. Here, a lamentation on the fact someone works too much.

Ah, your friends in the studio ask you if you can go fetch lunch for them. No Problem.

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Find all the songs played on the Astrobox in this convenient Youtube playlist , that I'll update with every new post !

Moebius and Le Monde d'Edena : A proper reverence

I'll parachute a fact just now : Xavier and Gaspard are big fans of the french comic artist Moebius. Living parallel lives, both got their hands on Métal Hurlant (french precursor of the comic magazine Heavy Metal) issues at perhaps too young of an age, and were enraptured by the beautiful landscapes, rich universe and masterful hatching of one of the most influent sci-fi comic artists ever.

Moebius, "La Déviation" (1980), p.8-9.

Concept art for Jodorowsky's Dune, Alien, Tron or The Fifth Element, Jean Giraud aka Moebius put his hands (and his pen) in many defining movies of the genre, influencing Justice in turn in their work. It has always been more or less subtle and drowned in an 80s french sci-fi mixture, like the reference to the spaceships from Jodorowsky's Dune in the cover for the Planisphère record, or the graphic influence (which also takes a lot from Philippe Druillet) in the music video for The Parachute Ending , a song they produced for Birdy Nam Nam.

But it seems that for Hyperdrama, they decided to do things differently. Namely, go all in on the Moebius influence.

Let's take Explorer for a start ! In many interviews, Justice have mentioned not having been able to collaborate face to face with Connan Mockasin, making him the only featured artist whose parts were done remotely. To try and bridge that gap without sacrificing the artist's own input, Justice opted for reference images, to guide Connan's imagination. Their choices ended up on two extracts from comics, respectively from Pierre La Police and Moebius.

To this day the exact images used are unknown to us, but there might be a decent hint as to what Moebius' was, in the first lyrics of the song. Connan opens it like this :

Step out through the bed door

Nothing but plain blue sand in sight

(Note : The lyrics were taken from the official Japanese lyric translation booklet for Hyperdrama. I know they differ from consensus.)

Having read a lot of Moebius' catalogue, there was an image that did ring a bell in my mind, from one of his collections of illustrations, Starwatcher.

Moebius, "Starwatcher" (1986).

Mid step and looking at an expense of blue land, if it wasn't in the little digital gift package forwarded to mister Mockasin, it at least gives us an idea of what it might have been.

Though now, let's dive into the real juicy stuff... The back cover of the record.

Thomas Jumin for Hyperdrama, 2024.

We can derive two essential elements from this visual, which are the see-through spherical spaceship with two seats and their all-white outfits, like the uniform of two workers on a mission, which is supported by this teaser visual of their collaborations with Tame Impala.

Justice photographed by Jérémie Beylard and Vincent Luc, 2024.

Two men (?) supposedly contacting a superior or an outsider due to the dissimilar outfit Kevin wears, the framing of his face and the grave expression. Whatever Justice are doing, they're doing it together as a team, wandering through space in their little hamster ball of a spaceship...

...Let me talk to you about one of my favorite comic series by Moebius, Le Monde d'Edena (1983-2001).

No, in fact let me show you the cover of the integral edition before I go any further.

Similar, right ? And with Justice's inclinations to copy and immoderately reference the things they love, we can decently assume that this is where the main idea comes from.

Two beings overseeing a large forest from the skies, impressed and dumbfounded at the scenery. Despite the complementary colors of their outfits and the slightly differing shapes, they do seem to wear something resembling an uniform, at least in the sort of cap adorning them.

Visually reasonably alike, I do now want to shed some light onto the contents of Le Monde d'Edena. More specifically, the overall storyline, and how it might echo Justice's own work.

Stel and Atan, travelers from far away, end up accidentally crashing their spaceship on a paradisiacal-like planet with no way to contact home. Coming from an over-controlled futuristic society that feeds them with pills and sterilizes their bodies to the point of underdevelopment, they are now forced to make do with the resources of this unknown land. To survive, they turn to unprocessed foods like apples, and it restarts the halted development of their bodies. Until now sexless and genderless, Stel and Atan rapidly discover that they are respectively male, and female, and all the hormonal changes that come with it, such as the feeling of love.

As the story progresses, Stel will lose Atan to the dangers that inhabit the land, and will make it his sworn duty to save his partner. He will even end up in the delirious realm of dreams and the esoteric during that pursuit, kept prisoner there by the evil Trollopen. A true fever dream, with philosophically charged conversations and fantasist landscapes, one could make the easy link with an use of psychedelics.

Which is funny, as Justice sometimes describe Hyperdrama as some sort of psychedelic trip.

As for the rest, I think for example, that a case could be made for the link between their all-white outfits and an idea of body sterilization. On top of that, Stel and Atan also discover the beauty of love on their strange trip. Would Xavier and Gaspard go through something similar on their own journey ? The tracklist of Hyperdrama, from a Moonlight Rendez-Vous to a culmination like Saturnine, and hinted to through a song such as Mannequin Love, might indicate that indeed.

We can also mention the music video of Generator, which lightly plays with the idea of gender and performance, and a man/machine (analog/numerical) dichotomy that is found throughout the album, asking the question of what a robot love would look like.

Sterilization might have glided to become a robotisation in Justice's own work then, and through this lens come some answers but also many other questions.

Who could Xavier and Gaspard be in this strange configuration ? Is this album a tale of their own ? If Justice are hypothetical robots inside, could one decently assume the Generator music video was about them ? What does this all mean ? Will I eat rice or pasta for dinner ?

Not much can be really certain, but one thing that is, is that this back cover is an interesting twist on Le Monde d'Edena. A lovely albeit unabashed tribute to Moebius' work.

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In this modest Google Drive folder , all of the volumes from the Le Monde d'Edena series (UPDATE : in english !), for those who might be curious to see what it looks like !

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read this second post of the newsletter ! I hope it was as entertaining as it was for me to write it, and maybe also a bit informative :)

Next time, expect another round of Astrobox, new fun facts about Justice and some other things I hope you'll like !

If you've made it this far and moreso enjoyed it, don't hesitate to check out the new fanfiction my dear collaborator and myself just put out, " The Summer of My Loving ", on AO3 <3 It'd mean a lot !

See you all next time for the future updates of What's New on Paradise 18 ;)

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Cette unité de protection, forte de ses contradictions et convictions, fera vivre aussi longtemps qu'elle le sera la magnifique mais fragile PARADISE 18. Ils ne sont pas beaucoup, à se partager son uniforme. Mais ils ont la niaque, une niaque de vivre plus que de survivre, et le courage d'en faire profiter leurs camarades, le torse cabossé des flèches qu'ils reçoivent dans le plastron.