#Delicacy and Anarchism

[astralshipper]

You about Lonnie: Bastard (affectionate)

—Nic

@me-myself-and-my-fos

ASKDKDJJF YOURE RIGHT YOURE RIGHT listen ndnfnf,,, he’s incredibly bastard but like... sometimes he smiles w that lil sideways grin and u can’t expect me to not instantly coo at him he is bastard babey

[me-myself-and-my-fos]

Also, Sam Winchester is President of the @astralshipper Love Squad... Lonnie is Vice President and has lost the election for presidency 2 years in a row

[superheroshippinq-archive]

mini DC dates ,, bc i can ,, 

1. [ @iwillalwaysreturm ] recently made a joker s/i and ?? had to draw them. also i owe her for drawing me and barry :)

2. [ @astralshipper ] and lonnie + the bi flag bc she made a post abt it last night and i thought i’d draw it

3. me n’ kate !! sometimes i go off on a tangent abt all my favorite superheroes and kate doesn’t mind listening ,, wow ,, i love my girlfriend

i did a couple more of these for a couple other mutuals ,, but i wasn’t proud of them at all so they’re only sketches ,, 

might do more if i feel like it ?? these were fun and i’ll take any excuse to draw dc characters pfppff

[argyrocratie]

"Why should I regret what I am, anyway? I believe that the only purity that means anything is that which results from working one's nature out harmoniously, not suppressing it. Terry must be a wonderful man, to have been able to encourage me in many new directions, and to take away the maiming sting of regret for what I inevitably was and could not help being.

"I do not think an ordinary person could have made me see the beauty of anarchism. I know that the anarchistic ideas are rather shocking, even at their best, and of course they naturally appeal most to the man with the hoe, inciting him to rebel, while the man behind the idea is usually endowed with so much sensitiveness that he shrinks from the rebellion part of the programme himself; he is not a man of action, only a man of ideas. It is shameful, some think, to disturb the blissful ignorance of the man with the hoe, for when the gleam of intelligence shines in his eye and he is aroused to the knowledge of his degrading position, he is likely to rebel in the most healthy but brutal manner, so much so that the æsthetic reformer shrinks back from the consequences of the propagation of his own ideas. Of course, the brutality of the proletariat is not nearly so subtle as that of the aristocracy, and it takes some cleverness to discover that the latter is brutality at all. It requires time and patience to drive into the thick heads of the workers that they are downtrodden, and that their oppressors are worthless parasites. When they finally do awaken to this idea and rebel, how terribly shocked the world is because these brutes have not the cleverness or delicacy to be more subtle in their brutalities.

"In your last letter you wrote of the crudeness of most propagandists of anarchism, naming Anatole France as one of the rare anarchists who express themselves otherwise than crudely. He rarely or never, you say, ever mentions the word 'anarchism,' although much of his writing is calculated to destroy belief in the value of organised society as it now exists. Don't you think you are perhaps prejudiced too much against certain words because of their associations? I know that many words are objectionable to refined, cultured people because they have been so long associated with the coarse and brutal mob, the working class, as the socialists would say. But you must remember that anarchism is intended to appeal to this 'mob' especially; that its doctrines might not be needed by refined people who ought to have enough sensibility not to enjoy 'freedom' unless it is shared by the coarse and brutal workers. Believe me, there is nothing so degrading as poverty. It makes the slave more slavish and the brute more brutal. It acts like a goad, spurring people on to do things which make them seem to themselves and others lower and lower, until they are truly no longer human beings but animals.

"Therefore it is that the propaganda of anarchism is generally crude. It is true that much good literature is permeated with the ideals of anarchism, for instance, Shelley, Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson. Such reading is excellent as a means of humanising and making anarchists of refined people, but how could you appeal to the rebellious workers with such books as these? For instance, my father, do you think he could read Ibsen or any of the others? Indeed not; but let him go to a meeting where he can hear Emma Goldman speak, or let him read Jean Grave, or Bakunin, or some other writer of 'crude' pamphlets, and he might become interested, he might be able to understand. But since it seems that truly refined people cannot enjoy the pleasures of freedom without being, at any rate at times, worried because of the condition of the 'mass,' what is to be done? This objectionable crudity must remain until there is a demand for something more subtle on the part of the workers for whom is intended all propaganda. The rich and cultured presumably have brains which they can use to solve the problems for themselves or to digest the things written by Anatole France and others. But how do you suppose that I, for instance, could a few years ago have relished Anatole France? Wouldn't you think it idiotic for anyone to have given me such books, at that time, with any expectation of my appreciating their refined and evanescent anarchism?"

- “An Anarchist Woman“  Marie to the author Hutchins hapgood (1909)

[fedtothenight]

Disgusting 50-year-olds, homophobic men. For years, I have dealt with gross people because of my circles. I grew up with this shit. Even the trap environments make me uneasy: the air, dense of fake testosterone, the manufactured tribal language, the emotional detachment towards women and, in general, the picture of the object-woman I grew up with. I am allergic to the male, ignorant ways I grew up with. So, wearing women’s clothes, in addition to makeup and the confusion with genders, is my way of dissenting and reiterating my anarchism, of rejecting the conventions that discrimination and violence generate from. (Reject rules, institutions, burn your documents, have fun.) I am like this, I put on whatever I want and like: are fur, clutch bags, glittery glasses female? Then I’m a girl. Is that all? I want to be mortally infected by femininity, which for me means delicacy, elegance, candour. Sometimes people ask me: What happened to you? I reply that I’ve become a lady.

Achille Lauro, from his autobiography Amleto Sono Io (I Am Hamlet). 

[robdelicious]

How Robert Pattinson And Willem Dafoe Made It To The Lighthouse

Out of a swirling fog emerges the prow of a boat, knifing through a foaming sea. Two figures, shadows in the murk, stand silhouetted on the foredeck, confronting the horizon, their backs to us. Presently an island swims into view. No more than a crag, really: lonely, battered, forbidding. Then a lighthouse can be made out, blinking in the gloom.

Now we see the men head-on, a striking dual portrait in high contrast black and white: a double exposure. They are wearing sailors’ caps, greatcoats, and hefting wooden trunks. One is younger, taller, moustachioed. The other, more deeply crevassed, sports a wild beard, out of which pokes a small wooden pipe, like Popeye’s. Theirs are, by any standards, remarkable faces, extreme faces, unyielding as rock yet sculpted with great delicacy, skin stretched tight over jutting bones: sharp noses, strong jaws, deep set eyes. And, oh, the cheekbones! And would you look at all those teeth?

Before anything else — before they are handsome faces, or expressive faces, or famous faces (they are all of those things) — these are photogenic faces. On first inspection they appear impassive, almost blank. And yet an air of foreboding is struck. The older man’s features are fixed in a roguish grimace. The younger man is wary, tense. These might be the faces of a father and son, or brothers separated by decades: hard, thin, stern faces, built for hard, thin, stern lives. Lives filled with mean disappointments, festering resentments, blood feuds. Here are men who have seen trouble before and will see it again. Maybe they’re looking for trouble. Maybe they’ve found it. Is this a dual portrait — or the portrait of a duel?

Whatever has thrown these men together in this place — fate, karma, the thirst for adventure, the desire for escape (in the case of the characters, but perhaps the actors, too?) or (in the case of the actors specifically) the need to stretch oneself artistically, or to challenge oneself physically, or the reputation of the director, or a really good script, or all of these things — one senses they are aware already, as they square up to the stinging reality of their circumstances, that they may have got more than they bargained for. What we can be sure of from the off: there will be weather. There will be conflict. And there will be acting.

The film is The Lighthouse, the second feature film from the 36-year-old American writer-director Robert Eggers, who made a stir with his debut, The Witch. Eggers, who is based in Brooklyn but grew up in rural New Hampshire, is a man possessed of a rare and creepy gothic sensibility. The Witch was an arthouse horror film, a twisted fairytale with the insidious power of a nightmare. It concerned a family of 17th-century puritans banished to the woods of New England, and it involved possessed children, birds pecking at human flesh, and an unholy bond with a goat. It cost $4m to make and earned that money back 10 times over, making Eggers not just a critical darling, but a coming man in commercial cinema.

For The Lighthouse, Eggers is reunited with A24, among other production companies, and with much of his crew from The Witch, including his director of photography, Jarin Blaschke, and composer Mark Korven, who between them do as much as anyone to set the eerie mood. His co-writer is his brother, Max Eggers. The actors were new to him.

Those faces that I have been at pains to describe, then, belong to Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. They play lighthouse keepers on a wind-slapped, rain-lashed rock off the Atlantic coast of North America. The year is 1890. Pattinson is, or appears to be, Ephraim Winslow, the taciturn apprentice. “I ain’t much for talkin’,” he says early on — a statement, like so many in this film of shifting and unfixed identities, that turns out to be not entirely true.

Dafoe is Winslow’s irascible, peg-legged senior partner, Thomas Wake, an experienced “wickie” and a cruel taskmaster, obsessively enraptured by the beacon he tends. “The light is mine!” he declares, mad-eyed. Wake consigns Winslow to the bowels of the building, where the younger man stokes the fire and swabs the floors and nurtures his grievances, while indulging in some quite epic, mermaid-focussed masturbation. Winslow and Wake are to spend four weeks alone on the island before they are to be relieved. But when a storm blows in, the odd couple are stranded — maybe, or maybe not, because a violent act on Winslow’s part has brought down a curse upon them. Slowly, and then in spasms of ultraviolence, they unravel.

The Lighthouse is a twisted buddy movie, a surreal black comedy, a psychological thriller set at the hysterical pitch of Grand Guignol. It was filmed in the spring of 2018 on sound stages in the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Canada’s Atlantic coast, and on location on the tiny fishing community of Cape Forchu, nearby. (“People tend to spend up to 45 minutes here,” Google Maps tells us of Cape Forchu. This fact might, or might not, amuse the filmmakers who spent weeks there, battling Biblical conditions. “It snowed in May,” notes Dafoe.)

With the exception of the Moldovan model Valeriia Karaman, who makes a number of brief, though memorable, appearances in her debut film, Pattinson and Dafoe are the only members of the cast, and their seesawing power struggle is the film’s entire focus, with point of view switching sides like a sail boat’s boom in a storm. Its success or failure rests heavily on their shoulders.

Pattinson and Dafoe are big stars, both. They are also men from different generations, different backgrounds, different countries and traditions. The Lighthouse was not an easy film to make for a number of reasons — the remote location, the raging weather — but not the least of the filmmakers’ challenges were the contrasting approaches of the two actors.

“They really did have incredible chemistry on screen,” director Eggers tells me on the phone, “but it was chemistry through tension. I know there’s been discussion about their different acting techniques and the trying conditions on set…” He pauses. “That couldn’t have been better for the movie.”

If you happened to be out and about in Halifax, in the early spring of 2018, you may have noticed a slender young loner stalking the streets day after day, muttering to himself. Noticed him, and felt concern for his emotional wellbeing. Had you followed him, and listened closely, you might have heard the same words repeated over and over again, in a gravel-voiced near-grunt: “Woyt poyn, woyt poyn, woyt poyn…” Come again? “Woyt poyn, woyt poyn...”

“White pine,” the slender young man enunciates into my voice recorder, 18 months on, in the accent of a nicely brought-up southwest London boy, rather than a 19th-century working man from a highly specific part of Maine. White pine — I’m sorry, woyt poyn — is one of the trees which his character lists when telling his colleague of his past misadventures as a lumberjack. Pattinson developed the accent with the help of a dialect coach and by speaking to a contemporary Maine lobster fisherman on the phone. “It’s one of those accents where if you say one syllable wrong it’s suddenly Jamaican, or something,” he says. “So it took ages.”

Pattinson arrived early in Halifax, before his director and co-star, to psych himself into the role of the saturnine Ephraim. Having approached Eggers after seeing The Witch, in the hope that they might at some point work together, Pattinson had declined the director’s first suggestion, for a part in a more conventional, mainstream film that the director was then developing.

“He said he was only interested in doing weird things,” Eggers says. “So when The Lighthouse came around I said that if he doesn’t find this weird enough, I guess we’ll never work together.”

It’s true, Pattinson says, that at that time, in 2016, he “wanted to do the weirdest stuff in the world.” (Mission accomplished, Rob!) Still, he spent a good deal of time agonising over whether or not to take the role in The Lighthouse. “I remember reading it and I thought it was very funny, but I was also thinking, ‘I don’t understand how the tone would work?’”

When Dafoe signed on, Pattinson was excited. “I knew Willem could bring that kind of anarchic energy,” he says, “but I really didn’t know how I would do it at all.” Dafoe, he says, in one of his many moments of self-effacement, “has one of those faces where he can literally sit in any room in the world, doing almost nothing, and it’s fascinating to watch. Whereas I sort of blend in with the chair I’m sitting on.”

Before filming began, the pair spent a week in rehearsals. Pattinson dislikes rehearsing, preferring to do his experimenting on camera. “It was very, very frustrating,” he says. “I just couldn’t achieve what they wanted me to achieve in that room. Robert [Eggers] was getting furious with me because I was just sitting there, completely monotone the whole time. He could not stand it.” Pattinson tells the story with no rancour whatsoever. He knows it sounds funny, but it wasn’t at the time. “I just don’t know how to perform it until we’re performing it. By the end of the week, I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to get fired before we’ve even started’. I definitely feel like, with the rehearsal period, we were quite angry with each other by the end of it. Literally, we’d finish for the day, I’d fucking slam out the door and go home.

“I knew that there was diminishing expectations of me throughout the week of rehearsals,” he says. “I definitely became an underdog. They’re like, ‘Wow, this was a big mistake. He’s really shit.’”

Pattinson and I talk on a sweltering August morning, in the comfort of a private members’ club in west London, near the flat he’s rented for the summer on Airbnb. (He’s in town to shoot Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi spectacular, Tenet, about which he is permitted to tell us, with fulsome apologies, precisely nothing.) Rather than swigging kerosene and chaining tobacco, as in the film, he orders a banana smoothie, and when he’s finished that, an apple juice. Occasionally he sucks on a Juul.

Pattinson is 33. He grew up in affluent Barnes, the son of a dealer in vintage cars and a model booker. More or less untrained — unless you count some teenage am-dram — at 19 he was cast as Cedric Diggory, the hero’s doomed frenemy, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But his Hollywood breakthrough arrived in 2008. Twilight was a teen B-movie, but it became a pop cult phenomenon, spawning four sequels of diminishing charm, making an otherworldly $3.3bn worldwide and creating megastars of its leads, Pattinson, who played a sexy vampire, and Kristen Stewart, who became his girlfriend on screen and IRL, as they say, before, in an unseemly frenzy of prurient salivating, she became his ex-girlfriend.

While for some he may always be the pallid tween heartthrob, in the six years since the final instalment of Twilight, Pattinson has worked hard to reinvent himself. His post Young Adult years have been cussedly uncommercial and impressively adventurous. In that period, Pattinson has worked with some of cinema’s most fêted directors: David Cronenberg, Anton Corbijn, James Gray, Werner Herzog, the Safdie brothers. Most recently, he was an intergalactic castaway in High Life, an enjoyable, if bonkers, dystopian sci-fi from the French director Claire Denis.

“Even in the Twilight years I never said, ‘Oh, he’s just a pretty boy,’” says Robert Eggers. “I always thought there was something interesting about him. I could tell that he wanted to be a great actor. And in the past years it’s been very clear that he is.”

The attraction of more avant garde or outré material, Pattinson says, is it allows him to let rip in a way he never could in real life. Pattinson compares the experience of acting in a film like The Lighthouse with joyriding. “A lot of the movies I’ve done recently, you literally feel as if you’ve stolen a car and you’re kind of careening through stuff.” (Such are the fantasies, perhaps, of a boy who grew up with a father who imported American sports cars for a living.)

In person, Pattinson is a mild-mannered English actor, albeit a slightly eccentric one. On set, however, “because you’re playing a mad person, it means you can sort of be mad the whole time. Well, not the whole time, but for like an hour before the scene.”

What does he mean by being mad? “You can literally just be sitting on the floor growling and licking up puddles of mud.”

This sounds figurative. He really means it. On The Lighthouse, in the scenes in which his character is meant to be drunk on kerosene (there are quite a few of them), he was “basically unconscious the whole time. It was crazy. I spent so much time making myself throw up. Pissing my pants. It’s the most revolting thing. I don’t know, maybe it’s really annoying.”

It’s hard not to speculate that yes, it might be really annoying. “There’s a scene,” Pattinson remembers, “where Willem’s kind of sleeping on me and we’re really, really drunk and I felt like we’re completely lost in the scene and I’m sitting there trying to make myself gag and Robert [Eggers] told me off because Willem’s looking at him going: ‘If he throws up on me, I’m leaving the set.’ I had absolutely no idea this whole drama was unfolding.”

In some ways, Pattinson concedes, all this acting out is a reaction to his terrifying early super-fame. He speaks of himself in the second person when talking about it. “For a long time you’re very self-conscious in the street. You’re hiding a lot, so [on set] you have an excuse to be wild. It’s like being an adrenaline junkie. And also, when you don’t know how to do something, why not just run headfirst into a wall? See what happens. I haven’t got any other ideas.”

On The Lighthouse, he spun in circles before each take, to make himself off-balance. He placed a stone in one of his shoes, to increase the already considerable physical hardship. He can see — from my disbelieving laughter, apart from anything else — that all this strikes non-actors as funny, even preposterous. It may be that it sounds this way to some actors, too.

The most famous story (possibly apocryphal) of an encounter between an adherent of the Method — in which actors don’t so much pretend to be someone else as try to temporarily become them — and a more traditional, outside-in actor, who puts on costume and makes believe, is Laurence Olivier’s withering put-down of Dustin Hoffman, when they were working together on John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man. At some point, Hoffman, a graduate of the Actors Studio, confided in the great English Shakespearean that, in order to bring the correct verisimilitude to a scene in which his character has not slept for three consecutive nights, he had forced himself to stay awake for the same period. “My dear boy,” Olivier is said to have smoothly replied, “why don’t you just try acting?”

Eggers says that any suggestion of that kind of relationship between Dafoe and Pattinson is wide of the mark. “The idea that Dafoe is outside-in and Rob is this method actor, that’s not the case. I think maybe they lean the tiniest bit into those directions but they’re both combinations of things.”

ESQUIRE: https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a29300396/robert-pattinson-willem-dafoe-interview/

[theangrypokemaniac]

Fav pomemon?

Hello!

I'm sorry if expect you expect a one-word answer, but I don't seem to be capable of those. I'm ashamed of how long it is, as I realised I had a lot I really liked, and I don't know if I feel strongly enough about any of them specifically to warrant promotion to favourite.

Prepare yourself:

Such a question to ask, and so many to choose!

Being wholly indecisive, I have several answers to give:

1. It'll seem strange but I don't remember ever having a favourite Pokémon. It was the people that interested me the most, their quirks and personalities. There being Pokémon was a means to an end.

2. At the same time, I had a soft spot for Pokémon that, once evolved, just looked like fatter versions of their previous selves:

• Pikachu and Raichu

• Clefairy and Clefable

• Jigglypuff and Wigglytuff

• Chansey and Blissey

• Marill and Azumarill

3. Out of love for the anime, all the Pokémon Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie and James had from Kanto to Johto, but especially Pikachu, Meowth, Butterfree, Psyduck, Vulpix, Togepi, Lickitung, Victreebel, Horsea, Lapras and Snorlax.

4. My mom's favourite's still remain Vulpix, Ninetales, Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, Ponyta, Rapidash, Horsea, Seadra, Staryu, Starmie, Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon, so them too.

5. Vileplume, not only it belongs to my main girl Jessibelle, and is capable of holding a cup of tea at last, but because it sounds like a Cockney flower girl, like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.

Vyyyyyulploooooom!!!

6. My favourite film is The Power of One, so Lugia, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. I always preferred Pokémon Silver to get Lugia at the earliest.

7. Mewtwo and Mew for giving us the only film based on the games' plot.

8. I'm still stuck on Johto being 'new', because no following generation has ever made me that excited. These days fans expect another generation every three or four years, but then it was genuinely surprising for there to be a sequel.

What, you mean there are more of them?!

All of that set. Particularly Mareep, Flaaffy, Ampharos, Wooper and Quagsire. Never once played a game without them on my team.

9. Groudon. Can't remember why. I just know I played Ruby a lot more than Sapphire.

10. I quite like Xerneas's delicacy, but they gave it a female voice in the Diancie film.

It's a stag!

11. Shaymin when a hedgehog, and not the mouthy film one that slags off Ash.

12. Eeveelutions, although it still niggles there wasn't a Grass type in the First Generation that needed a Leaf Stone.

13. Houndoom, the dog of Satan!

We have a lot of folklore about demonic, fire-breathing dogs in England, so it makes me feel at home.

14. Sabrina is my favourite Gym Leader as she has a backstory, so Abra, Kadabra, and Alakazam.

Everyone had Alakazam! He laid waste to enemies!

15. Jigglypuff! There ain't no party without Jigglypuff. I never knew why the posters had her dark pink with green eyes whereas the anime version was light pink with blue eyes, but I preferred that.

16. Snubbull for being adorably gruff and grumpy looking yet still being a girl in the series. I liked the set up of Jessie and James having a cat and a dog. Her owner looked just like my nan too.

That's where she went!

17. The sort of bizarre freaks there were in the First Generation that you don't get anymore, where you'd just stare at them in disbelief.

Mr. Mime, the slave of Dame Ketchum.

A mime artist!

There are female ones!

It was called 'Marcel' in Red and Blue, after Marcel Marceau, so was probably a Frenchman.

Jynx, the slave and possible wife of Santa.

An opera singer!

It's got armour-plated bosoms!

It's from The Ring Cycle!

To this day I wonder where that man in Cerulean City got his.

If from Johto, why is it a Kanto Pokémon?

18. Slowpoke and Slowbro, for their Psyduck-esque bossed-out expression.

19. Litwick, Lampent and Chandelure. Interesting idea.

20. Bulbasaur was my first ever Pokémon, so it will always be special, even more so because it was erased by an Xploder cheat cartridge! As was the Mew I had, and you had to attend the download then!

Rest in peace.

21. Babies, so Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff and Azurill, but not Mime Jr. or Smoochum.

I can't believe they try and make Mime Jr. 'cute'.

It's a clown! It's evil!

Smoochum is alright, but it's a duck.

Isn't it?

A duck with the haircut of a mediæval page.

22. Gible. Not just Ash's, which brightened up the series and always came across as far more knowing than it let on, but the one Lyra and that fella she was with had, because it honked when it fell over!

23. Cofagrigus for being Tutankhamun's sarcophagus. It's surprising James didn't have one. Every time it came out, it could've stuffed him inside, but I suppose that doesn't fit with such a humourless era.

24. The Pikachu character, though I went right off Emolga when it was caught by Iris.

Togedemaru is the anarchic one, does what it wants and doesn't care.

25. Cats, especially Espurr because of the noise it makes, and being all alone in that old woman's house.

26. I like Empoleon's design. It looks to be wearing a doily for a waistcoat, but Barry is a dickhead!

27. Hoppip, Skiploom and Jumpluff. Useless in battle, but they're so sweet!

28. Shinx, Luxio and Luxray: thunder cats!

29. Raikou, Entei and Suicune, but especially Raikou for it's colours. I still remember the first time I ran into one in the grass of Johto, and being frightened as to what it was coming at me.

30. Magmar for the classic volcano war with Charizard, though slightly spoiled by speculating that it too is a duck.

31. Tough Pokémon like Gyarados, Dragonite and Tyranitar that are difficult to obtain, worth it, and have to be given double weakness to make it fair for everyone else.

Why is Gyarados a Flying type?

32. I do like Type:Null and Silvally as they remind me of Final Fantasy foes, but 'Type:Null' is one of the worst names there's ever been.

33. Zeraora, even if it does looks more like a Digimon having gone through Golden Armour Energise.

34. Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother! Marowak is her avenger!

Brings out the emo in me.

35. I realise how strange this is, but Tangela. I think because the only one you see in the Indigo League is Erika's, so it had mystery. Not to mention not being able to see its face.

It wears shiny red shoes!

Another Grass Pokémon who can't have a cup of tea with no arms!

[sweetdreamsjeff]

Remember Me? - Extract from Dream Brother Part 1 of 2

Jeff Buckley drowned three years ago. He’d seemed on the brink of a brilliant rock ‘n’ roll future. Yet he had never shaken off his obsession, part anger, part yearning, with the father he had barely known - Tim Buckley, legendary singer-songwriter. David Browne on their lives and destiny

Friday 15 December 2000 19.17 EST

Although dusk was in sight, the moist, breezy Memphis air still felt mosquito-muggy inside and outside. It was May 1997 and Jeff Buckley, who had turned 30 about six months earlier, emerged from his bedroom in black jeans, ankle-high black boots, and a white T-shirt with long black sleeves and “Altamont” (in honour of the Rolling Stones’ anarchic, death-shrouded 1969 concert) inscribed on it. Though officially out of his 20s, he remained a rock'n'roll kid at heart. As he and his tour manager Gene Bowen stood outside on the front porch, Jeff said he was heading out for a while. Generally Bowen would accompany Jeff on expeditions while on tour, but tonight Bowen needed space. Some mattresses would be delivered shortly, and the last thing he needed was Jeff bouncing around the house when they arrived.

           So, when Jeff told Bowen he would be leaving with Keith Foti, Bowen was mostly relieved. Foti was even more of a character than Jeff was. A fledgling songwriter and musician and a full-time haircutter in New York City, Foti had accompanied Bowen from New York to Memphis in a rented van, the band’s gear and instruments crammed in the back. Stocky and wide-faced, with spiky, blue-dyed hair, Foti, who was 23, could have been the star of a Saturday morning cartoon show about a punk rock band.

Jeff told Bowen that he and Foti had decided to drive to the rehearsal space the band would be using during the upcoming weeks. Bowen told them to be back at the house by nine to greet the band. Jeff said fine, and he and Foti ambled down the gravel driveway to the van parked in front of the house.

Suddenly it dawned on Bowen: did Jeff and Foti know where the rehearsal space was? For non-natives, Memphis’s layout can be confusing; it wouldn’t be hard to get lost or suddenly find one’s self in a dicey part of town. Bowen bolted through the front door, but the van was already gone. Oh, well, he thought, they’ll find the building. After all, they had been there just yesterday.

Cruising around Memphis in their bright yellow Ryder van, past weathered shacks, barbecue joints, pawnshops and strip malls, Jeff and Foti made for an unusual sight. Foti was in the driver’s seat, which was for the best; Jeff was an erratic driver. They cranked one of Foti’s mix tapes, and the two of them sang along to the Beatles’ I Am The Walrus, John Lennon’s Imagine and Jane’s Addiction’s Three Days. Foti and Jeff both loved Jane’s Addiction and its shamanesque, hard-living singer, Perry Farrell. It took Jeff back to the days in the late 80s when he was living and starving in Los Angeles, trying to make a name for himself.

It wasn’t Jeff’s fault that he shared some vocal and physical characteristics with his father and fellow musician, Tim Buckley. Both men had the same sorrowful glances, thick eyebrows and delicate, waifish airs that made women of all ages want to comfort and nurture them. It wasn’t Jeff’s fault, either, that he inherited Tim’s vocal range, five-and-a-half octaves that let Tim’s voice spiral from a soft caress into bouts of rapturous, orgasmic sensuality. In the 60s, Tim wrote and sang melodies that blended folk, jazz, art song and R&B; he had a large cult following himself, and some of those songs had been recorded by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Blood, Sweat & Tears.

When Jeff had begun writing his own music, he, too, moved in unconventional ways, crafting rhapsodies that changed time signatures and leapt from folkish delicacy to full-throttle metal roar. None of this, he insisted, came from his father’s influence. His biggest rock influence and favourite band was, he said, Led Zeppelin. To his friends, Jeff talked about his bootleg of Physical Graffiti out-takes with more affection and fannish enthusiasm than he ever did about the nine albums his father had recorded during the 60s and 70s.

Tonight, for once, Tim’s ghost was not lurking in the rearview mirror. If anything, Jeff seemed at peace with his father’s memory for perhaps the first time in his life. Whenever Jeff had mentioned Tim in the past, it was with flashes of irritation or resignation. He sounded as if he were discussing a far-off celebrity, not a father or even a family member. In a way, Tim was barely either: he and his first wife, Mary Guibert, had separated before Jeff was born, and Jeff had been raised to view Tim’s life and music warily. But in the past few months, Jeff seemed to have begun to understand his father’s music and, more importantly, his motivations.

Jeff’s years in Los Angeles hadn’t been fruitful, but when he moved to New York in the autumn of 1991, a buzz began building around the skinny, charismatic kid with the big-as-a-cathedral voice and the eclectic repertoire. Many record companies came calling, and he eventually, hesitatingly, put his name on a contract with one of them, Columbia. After an initial EP, an album, Grace, finally appeared in 1994. A brilliant sprawl of a work, the album traversed the musical map, daring listeners to find the common ground that linked its choral pieces, Zeppelin-dipped rock and amorous cabaret. Certainly one of the links was Jeff’s voice, an intense and seemingly freewheeling instrument that wasn’t afraid to glide from operatic highs and overpowering shrieks to a conversational intimacy.

Beyond being simply one of the most moving albums of the 90s, Grace branded Jeff as an actual, hype-be-damned talent for the age. The record business was always eager to promote newcomers in such a manner, but here was someone with both a sense of musical history and seemingly limitless potential. Like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison before him, he appeared to be on the road to a long and commanding career in which even a creative misstep or two would be worth poring over. Comparisons with Tim were inevitable, and a disturbing number of fortysomethings had materialised at Jeff’s concerts to ask him about his father. But, much to Jeff’s relief, the comparisons had begun to diminish with each passing month.

Grace hadn’t been the smash hit Columbia would have liked, but worldwide it had sold nearly 750,000 copies, and it was talked up by everyone from Paul McCartney and U2 to Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Fans in Britain, Australia and France adored him even more passionately than those in America. To his managers and record company, Jeff was a shining star, a gateway to prestige, money and credibility. A very great deal was riding on the songs he was testing out on the four-track recorder in the living room of his house in Memphis. Jeff didn’t like to think about those pressures, which is partly why he moved 1,000 miles away from New York. Here, he could think, write, create.

The drive from Jeff’s house to Young Avenue, where the rehearsal room was located, should have taken 10 minutes down a few tree-lined streets. But something was wrong. Before Jeff and Foti knew it, nearly an hour had passed and there was still no sign of the two-storey red-brick building. They found themselves circling around a variety of neighbourhoods, past underpasses for Interstate 240 and pawnshops. To Foti, everything began to look the same.

Jeff had an idea. “Why don’t we go down to the river?” he said. It sounded good to Foti, who had brought along his guitar and felt like practising a song he was writing. Having a talented, well-regarded rock star as an audience wouldn’t be so bad, either.

The Wolf River did not look particularly wolfish; it barely had the feel of a river. The city government had passed an ordinance banning swimming, but no signs indicated this restriction. According to locals, there didn’t have to be, since everyone in Memphis knew it was far from an ideal swimming hole. The first six inches of water could be warm and innocuous-looking, but thanks to the intersection with the Mississippi the undercurrents were deceptive. All day long and into the early hours of the morning, 200ft-long barges carrying goods from the local granaries and a cement factory hauled their cargo up and down the Wolf. With their churning motors, the tugboats that pulled the barges were even fiercer and had been known to create strong wakes. Local coastguard employees had once witnessed a 16ft flat-bottom boat being sucked under the water in the wake of a tug. Memphis lore had it that at least one person a year drowned in the Wolf.

Even if Jeff had heard these stories, he either didn’t care or disregarded them. Hopping over a 3ft-high brick wall, Jeff and Foti strode across a cement promenade strewn with picnic tables. Then Jeff hiked his black combat boots on to the bottom rung on the steel rail that ran alongside the promenade and jumped over. Foti, gripping his guitar, followed, and they found themselves barrelling down a steep slope, swishing through knee-high brush, ivy and weeds.

On the way down, Jeff shed his coat - just dropped it in the brush. “You’re not gonna leave it here, are you?” Foti asked, stopping quickly to pick it up. Jeff didn’t seem to be listening. Carrying Foti’s boom box, he continued down to the riverbank. The shore was littered with rocks, soda cans and shattered glass bottles, and it quickly sloped into the water just inches away. As gentle waves lapped on to the shoreline, Jeff set Foti’s boom box on one of the many jagged slate rocks on the bank, just an inch or so above the water. “Hey, man, don’t put my radio there,” Foti told him. “I don’t want it going in the water. It’s my only unit of sound.” Jeff didn’t seem to pay particular attention to that request, either.

By now, just after 9pm, Foti had strapped on his guitar and started practising his song. Looking right at Foti, Jeff took a step or two away, his back to the river. Before Foti knew it, Jeff was knee-high in the water. “What are you doin’, man?” Foti said. Within moments, Jeff’s entire body eased into the water, and he began doing a backstroke.

At first, Foti wasn’t too concerned: Jeff was still directly offshore, just a few feet away. He and Foti began musing about life and music as Jeff backstroked around in circles. “You know, the first one’s fun, man - it’s that second one … ” Jeff said, his voice trailing off as he continued to backstroke in the water.

With each stroke, Jeff inched more and more out into the river. Foti noticed and said, “Come in, you’re gettin’ too far out.” Instead, Jeff began singing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. “He was just on his own at that point,” Foti says. “He didn’t really observe my concerns.” Jeff had an impetuous, spur-of-the-moment streak. Many of his friends considered it one of his most endearing qualities; others worried that it bordered on recklessness. Like his father, he liked to follow his muse, to leap into projects passionately and spontaneously, even if they weren’t fashionable or appropriate. Take that night in 1975. Tim was on his way home from a gruelling tour. His record sales were in freefall, but lately he had tried to cut back on his drinking and drugging, and was attempting to get his music and even a potential acting career on track. On the way home from the last stop on his tour, he stopped by the home of a friend, who offered up a few drugs. What was wrong with a little pick-me-up after some exhausting road work? No one knew if Tim realised exactly what he had snorted that late afternoon, but it ultimately didn’t matter; he died that night of an overdose at the age of 28.

Although Jeff had experimented with drugs, he steered clear to avoid his father’s fate, both physically and artistically; he had learned from Tim’s mistakes in the matters of artistic integrity and handling the music business. Onstage, Jeff would often make cracks about dead rock stars, pretending to shoot up or breaking into spot-on mimicry of anyone from Jim Morrison to Elvis Presley. Once this new album was completed, he was planning to dig deeper into his family heritage and unearth the truth behind the seemingly ongoing series of tragedies that haunted his lineage.

Tonight, as he backstroked in the water, Jeff appeared to feel freer than he had in a while. The mere fact that he was in water was a sign of change. Although he had grown up near the beaches of Southern California, Jeff was never a beachcomber.

It was now close to 9.15pm, and Jeff had been in the river nearly 15 minutes. His boots and trousers must gradually have become more sodden and heavy. He began swimming further toward the centre of the river, circling around before drifting to the left of Foti. Then he began swimming straight across to the other side, or so it appeared to Foti. Directly across from them, on the opposite bank, was a dirt road that ran right up from the river. It looked so close - maybe Jeff felt he could reach it and take a quick stroll.

The tugboat came first, moments later. “Jeff, man, there’s a boat coming,” Foti said. “Get out of the fucking water.” The boat was heading in their direction, up from Beale Street. Jeff seemed to take notice of it and made sure to be clear of it as it passed. The next time Foti looked over, he still saw Jeff’s head bobbing in the water.

Not more than a minute had passed when Foti spied another boat approaching. This one was bigger - a barge, perhaps 100ft long. Foti grew more concerned and started yelling louder for Jeff to come back. Once again, Jeff swam out of its path, and Foti breathed another sigh of relief. In the increasing darkness, the speck that was Jeff’s head was just barely visible.

Soon, the water grew choppy, the waves lapping a little more firmly against the riverbank. Foti grew worried about his boom box. The last thing he wanted was to see it waterlogged and unusable. Taking his eye off Jeff for a moment, he stepped over to where Jeff had set the stereo down on a rock and moved it back about five feet, out of reach of the waves. Foti turned back around. There was no longer a head in the water. There was nothing - just stillness, a few rippling aftershock waves, and the marina in the distance. Foti began to scream out Jeff’s name. There was no answer. He yelled more. He continued screaming for nearly 10 minutes.

On the other side of the river, Gordon Archibald, a 59-year-old employee of the marina, was walking near the moored boats with a friend when he heard a single shout of “help”. Concerned, he looked out on to the water. But he saw nothing, nor heard anything more.

The folk singer Tim Buckley, who was to become Jeff’s father, married Mary Guibert in 1965.

It was spring 1966, Mary Guibert was three months pregnant, 18 years old, and Tim was out of town. Even before Tim left for New York, his wife suspected he was spending time with other women. “By no stretch of the imagination was this a marriage made in heaven,” she says. “He hadn’t been faithful to me for very long. And I thought that was perfectly acceptable because, after all, he was so wonderful, and I was so nobody.”

Mary says she told Tim about the pregnancy before he left for New York, but that he told her he had to leave town and that she should move back in with her family in Orange County, near LA, get a job, save money, and “maybe get an abortion or whatever you want to do”, she recalls him saying. Even then, Tim made no mention of another woman. “I just had no idea,” Mary says. “A lot of denial going on. Tons of denial on both sides, because he wouldn’t bring himself, to the very end, to say, 'You know, I really don’t love you very much’.” She sent Tim letters to various addresses in New York; his replies came fitfully and were pointedly vague. Finally, a mutual friend gave her the news: Tim was in New York with a new girlfriend, and would be back in Los Angeles shortly.

Lee Underwood, guitarist in Buckley’s band and a great friend, recalls the situation being a topic of discussion while he and Tim were in New York that summer. Given the choice of returning to Mary and Orange County or following what Underwood calls “his destined natural way”, Tim “decided to be true to himself and his music, fully aware that he would be accepting a lifetime burden of guilt. Tim left, not because he didn’t care about his soon-to-be-born child but because his musical life was just beginning; in addition, he couldn’t stand Mary. He did not abandon Jeff; he abandoned Mary.”

Finally, some action had to be taken. Tim came to meet Mary at a coffee shop near her home. What exactly happened remains unclear. Tim never talked to his friends about it, while Anna Guibert, Mary’s mother, recalls Tim giving Mary an ultimatum: divorce or abortion. According to Mary, she asked Tim what they should do about the marriage and pregnancy, and he replied, “You do whatever you have to do, baby”, and hung his head.

Afterwards, Mary, who was by now many months pregnant, walked home, told her mother the news and cried. As Anna Guibert remembers, “I said, 'That’s the best thing, honey. If he doesn’t want you, be free.’ She was crazy about Tim. But he wanted his career. There was no place for a baby in his life."Mary, however, did want her baby.

He was born on Thursday, November 17, 1966, at 10.49pm, after 21 hours of labour. The issue of identity loomed even before the child left the hospital. Mary named her son Jeffrey Scott - "Jeffrey” after her last high-school boyfriend before Tim (“my last pure boy-girl relationship, my last pure moment”) and “Scott” in honour of John Scott Jr, a neighbour and close friend of the Guiberts who died in an accident at the age of 17. Yet because Mary preferred Scott, the child was instantly called Scotty by his family. Tim was not available for consultation, since no one knew his whereabouts.

At school, Scotty was the eternal clown, making jokes, craving attention and being more interested in music (including cello lessons provided by the school) than grades. His second-floor bedroom became a rock enclave, his most valuable possessions being a Hemispheres picture disc by the prog-rock band Rush and all four of Kiss’s solo albums.

He had a guitar given to him by his grandmother, and although he hadn’t learned to master it, he would sit and cradle it, “like Linus’s blanket”, according to Willie Osborn, his childhood friend. Although Jeff had taken his father’s name, his music tastes reflected none of Tim’s influence. He was just eight years old when Tim died; they had had their only proper encounter just months before.

The meeting between Tim and Jeff Buckley, April 1975.

Mary Guibert was flipping through a local newspaper when she saw a listing for Tim Buckley’s upcoming show. It was, she says, “an epiphany”. It had been six years since she and her first husband had seen each other, and nearly as long since they had spoken. Mary and Jeff took the hour-long drive to Huntington Beach, an oceanside town 10 miles southwest of Orange County, and arrived at the Golden Bear just before Tim walked on-stage. They took a seat on a bench in the second row.

Jeff seemed enraptured, bouncing in his seat to the rhythms of Tim’s 12-string guitar and rock band. “Scotty was in love,” Mary says. “He was immediately entranced. His little eyes were just dancing in his head.” To Mary, Tim was still a dynamic performer, bouncing on his heels with his eyes shut, but she also felt he looked careworn for someone still in his 20s.

At the end of the set, no sooner had Mary asked her son if he wanted to meet his father than the kid was out of his seat and scurrying in the direction of the backstage area. As they entered the cramped dressing room, Jeff clutched his mother’s long skirt. It seemed a foreign and frightening world to him, until he heard someone shout out, “Jeff!” Although no one had called him that before in his life - he was still “Scotty” to everyone - Jeff ran across the room to a table where Tim was resting after the show.

Tim hoisted his son on to his knees and began rocking him back and forth with a smile as Jeff gave his father a crash course on his life, rattling off his age, the name of his dog, his teachers, his half-brother and other vital statistics. “I sat on his knees for 15 minutes,” Jeff wrote later. “He was hot and sweaty. I kept on feeling his legs. 'Wow, you need an iceberg to cool you off!’ I was very embarrassing - doing my George Carlin impression for him for no reason. Very embarrassing. He smiled the whole time. Me too.”

Tim’s drummer, Buddy Helm, recalls. “It was a very personal moment. The kid seemed very genuine, totally in love with his dad. It was like wanting to connect. He didn’t know anything personally about Tim but was there ready to do it.” The same seemed to be true of Tim; after years of distance from his son, he seemed to feel it was time to re-cement whatever bond existed between them.

Shortly after, before the second set began, Judy, Tim’s new partner, asked Mary if it would be acceptable for Jeff to spend a few days at their place: Tim would be leaving soon on tour, but had some free time. It was the start of the Easter break, so Mary agreed. Next morning, she packed Jeff’s clothes in a brown paper bag and drove him to Santa Monica to spend his most extended period of time with his father.

Tim and Judy lived a few blocks from the beach. As Jeff remembered it, the following five days - the first week of April 1975 - were largely uneventful. “Easter vacation came around,” he wrote in 1990. “I went over for a week or so, we made small talk at dinner, watched cable TV, he bought me a model airplane on one of our 'outings’ … Nothing much but it was kind of memorable.” Three years later, he recalled it with much more bitterness: “He was working in his room, so I didn’t even get to talk to him. And that was it.”

Mary recalls Jeff telling her that he would dash into Tim’s room every morning and bounce on the bed. At the end of his stay, Tim and Judy put Jeff on a bus out of Santa Monica, and Mary picked him up at the bus station in Fullerton. When Jeff stepped off, she noticed he was clutching a book of matches. On it, Tim had written his phone number.

By his teens, Jeff was exhibiting impressive musical skills, as another school band member, drummer Paul Derech, discovered when he visited Jeff in the Guibert home in early 1982. Sitting on his bed, Jeff played songs from Al Di Meola’s Electric Rendezvous and the first album by Asia. Even though Derech had to listen closely to Jeff’s guitar - Mary couldn’t yet afford an amplifier for her son - his dexterity was so apparent that Derech literally took a step back.

Once, Jeff pulled out a picture of Tim from his closet and softly said, “I’ve spent a lot of time looking at that picture”, before moving on to another topic. Derech, like other kids, sensed immediately that his father was a sore point. Instead, they talked music. Although punk and new wave were the predominant rock styles of the moment, Jeff had little interest in them. He preferred music that challenged him and transported him to imaginary worlds. In the late 70s and early 80s, that music was prog (short for progressive) and art rock - bands such as Yes, Genesis and Rush that revelled in complex structures, science-fiction-themed lyrics and virtuosic, fleet- fingered guitar parts that only a few teenagers could hope to master. In a friend’s garage, Jeff and Derech soon began jamming on versions of Rush songs. Jeff declined to sing, though; he told friends and family he wanted to be a guitarist, plain and simple.

The reason, some felt, was because he didn’t want to be compared to the musician father he barely knew. “He had exactly the same speaking voice as Tim,” recalls Tamurlaine, the daughter of Herb Cohen, Tim’s one-time manager. She befriended Jeff when he and Mary would visit the Cohen family for dinner. (Cohen and Mary kept in touch after Tim and Mary’s break-up.) During those meals, Jeff’s vocal and physical resemblance to his father led Cohen often to mistakenly call Jeff “Tim”.

Jeff moved to New York City in 1990.

Often sporting his black Hendrix T-shirt, Jeff immediately took to New York, hauling his guitar into the subway to play for change and roaming the streets. “I talked to him right after he got to New York and he was loving it,” recalls his friend Tony Marryatt, a fellow student at Musicians Institute in Hollywood. “He said it was just like a Woody Allen movie.” To support himself, he took a series of day jobs, from working at an answering service (for actors such as F Murray Abraham and Denzel Washington) to being an assistant at a Banana Republic clothes store.

© David Browne 2001. This is an edited extract from Dream Brother: The Lives And Music Of Jeff And Tim Buckley

[fairytail-whathesays]

Mangaka’s Manual

A list of 50 things every mangaka-to-be should be made to swear on before putting that pen to paper.

While fantasy and fictional events may not reflect real life, the personalities, attitudes, and actions taken by the characters within the story do. With that in mind, I will not portray in a positive light actions which bring unwarranted harm to other fellow humans, most especially evil actions such as rape and pedophilia. I will not fail to portray them in a negative light and will treat sensitive topics with the utmost care.

I will not portray my main character as so incredibly dumb and/or naive as to be impossible to sympathize with.

I will not portray my main character as so incredibly dumb and/or naive  as to be incompetent without the aid of “the power of friendship”, “the power of emotions”, or “nakama power” unless an in-story reasons specifically exists for said powers boosting my main character’s competency or efficiency and not that of others alongside them. This is unrealistic and breaks the suspension of disbelief in the story.

I will not portray any character as so lustfully overcome by the sight of the female member of the human species as to given heart-eyes by the mere appearance of one or unreliable amongst his friends should one jeopardize or threaten his friends or his mission. This paints a negative picture of the character’s priorities for a relatively low return of “comedy”. The same goes for any character towards the male sex.

I will not portray any character as so lustful that they can be counted on to flirt with, ogle, inappropriately touch, or provide unwanted or unwarranted attention to a member of either sex. This is unrealistic and no one in real life, hopefully, actually acts this way.

I will not portray a woman’s love life as her sole aim, goal, or reason for existence or action in a story, ever. This is insulting and, even though there are women in real life who pursue love voraciously, it should never be the only concern a woman has.

I will not minimize the role played by women in my story, to the point where merely rewarding her with a successful romance at the end is her end goal achieved. I will strive to produce, if not active, then at least three-dimensional women who can move on if their pursuit of love should happen to fail.

I will include prominent nonwhite characters in my manga.

I will include prominent LGBT characters in my manga.

The LGBT characters I write will not be lustful predators, one-dimensional comedic relief, or killed off to result in a cast that is suspiciously free of LGBT characters. I will to the best of my ability avoid stereotypes that harm the LGBT community.

I will take the utmost care and delicacy in approaching topics of mental illness, making sure to portray mental illness itself not as something to be feared because it produces evil, outside of widely accepted cases like psychopathy.

Even virtuous behaviors are dangerous in excess and best put to the side in serious situations. I will strive to show my characters taking the options which provide the least risk to themselves and others when at all possible, and if they decide risk their life, it will not be for such ideas as “pride”, “chivalry”, or “honor” when safer options exist.

On the note above, a man’s pride is not equal to his life. A man who loses his pride will gain it back with time. A man who loses his life will never get it back, and a man who throws away his life because of a threat to his pride can be said to have deserved it. I will not portray pride itself as something worth dying over, as this teaches dangerous ideas to anyone young who may peruse my manga.

I will not portray rebellion to authority, anarchism, or complete disgust for the idea of rules as inherently admirable. Authority itself is not evil, and rebellion against it is not inherently good. Rebellion against authority should only be portrayed as acceptable when that authority is visibly corrupt.

Any suffering portrayed in my story should have reason behind it, and this is not to say that all suffering should contribute to a muse’s character or arc, as pointless suffering does exist. What this means is that if the suffering I portray is not adding anything notable to a scene or arc, it will be cut like any other scene, as the basics of storytelling demand. “Torture porn” becomes the result otherwise.

Fanservice will not drive the scenes I create and the scenes in my manga will not be interjected at random with scenes that show off female characters’ bodies. Fanservice is to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. Fanservice pertaining either sex should not be part of the same scenes that show torture or humiliation.

I will produce fanservice to equal amounts per sex. If there is prominent female nudity in a scene, I can and will counterbalance it with equal male nudity, and I will not shy away from drawing a man’s penis as if it would turn me gay if I do.

I will not portray a character as a brooding asshole who should be loved regardless. Any character I intend to be loved by another character will need positive qualities to justify it, and this will be done without excusing or hand-waving the negative qualities.

I will not write a main character as completely static and unchanging, most especially a central protagonist and most especially if their behavior lines up with any of the above described negative qualities I am to avoid in the first place.  A character who is not perfect is a good character, but one who is not perfect and learns lessons and changes is a better character.

I will not write any character at all who always wins. This is unrealistic and diminishes any threat I wish to provide to the story, especially if wins are obtained without any significant losses or permanent changes.

Redemptions for villainous characters will be handled with care and not merely handed out as a free pass. Tragic backstories provide reasoning for actions if done well--and only if done well--but not excuses. A character cannot be redeemed without an effort to change on their part or a realization of the sort that causes them to act, and a character who is redeemed merely by being defeated may as well have not been a villain at all.

I will showcase an approaching antagonist’s threat level in terms of how much damage they deal to the characters, not how much damage they deal to the surrounding environment. Houses can be rebuilt, lives cannot. Blowing up an entire mountain range will mean nothing to my audience if my protagonists simply power through anyway.

I will maintain a careful relationship with my fans and a smart mindset when it comes to how much I allow them to influence my work. When my fans ask for something or complain about something I wrote, I will carefully confer with my editors whether the fan desires being heard are wise directions to push the story in or not, and I will do so while to the best of my ability maintaining the tenets described in this manual.

I will take accountability for the things I write. That is to say, I will be careful as to who I enter contracts with so that I can write my story without too much damaging interference from editors, and if I allow my editors or my fans to sway me into a decision I am not happy with, I will admit this instead of blaming it on the people who are unhappy or saying that I intended a decision that wasn’t really mine from the beginning.

Bruises, scars, and broken bones are not phenomena that only happen to men. They happen to women as well, particularly those who are just as active on the battlefield as their male compatriots, and I will not sacrifice the realistic depiction of the consequences of battle in order to maintain the sex appeal of a female character.

Quantity does not equal quality and commitment does not equal coherency. Larger amounts of praise for my work do not mean the smaller amounts of complaints are invalid, and I will examine both sides of my fanbase with an unbiased eye when interacting with them.

A blind audience cannot read a manga, and so I will not treat my audience as if they are blind. If something fairly obvious happens onscreen, I will not have my characters hold the audiences’ hands through what just happened with their comments. They can see for themselves.

Abuse is never funny. Inversions of the typical, commonly accepted treatments of abuse in fiction (happening to men instead of or at the hands of women) are not funny merely because of the gender inversion, and I will not treat them as such. A woman that mistreats a man will be given the same narrative treatment as a man who mistreats a woman.

I will have the entire framework of my story planned out from the beginning. While stories that evolve over time are natural, a story being made up from arc to arc with no prior planning is not the natural progression of a story. This is a basic story-writing skill and I will not neglect it. The basic sequence of events will be planned out before I put pen to paper.

I will spend an even amount of time on each part of my cast. Opportunities to show side characters evolving will be taken, and I will not be afraid to leave my main character out of the spotlight for a while. 

I will not portray any character that looks, acts, or thinks in a child-like manner as pursuing or being involved in a romantic or sexual relationship. This is pedophilia, and no amount of attempted justification will change that.

Love plots that rely on reincarnation, destiny, or any other factor that removes a certain amount of choice or personal agency to function are not love plots and I will not attempt to write them into my story.

I will avoid the pitfalls placed in my path by my predecessors in the endings of their manga: a satisfying conclusion to my story cannot merely be achieved by tying off characters in romantic relationships and showing them married with children.

I will strive to make satisfactory explanations for new events possible, and if it sounds hollow or weak in my head, I will keep working on it before I show said event or said explanation.

Sequels are nice, but they are as vulnerable to unwritten frameworks as single-shot stories. If I intend certain plot threads within my first story to be continued and resolved in a second, I will make sure that second story is constructed start-to-finish before I make the decision to allow it to carry said plot thread. One innocuous plot from the pilot cannot carry an entire second story when most of the other plots were already resolved.

Death will not be a cheap device for drama in my story only to be undone later. If I need a character around for more involved matters later, I will not bother to fake killing them off in the first place.

I will not shy away from consequences and sacrifices in my story. Even in such matters as romance comedies, a character will have to work for their achievements and goals, and not merely have their story reduced to “winning everything”. 

I will not make the overarching antagonist the main protagonist’s brother. That plot point is overused to death and entirely too coincidental.

I will not fail the hype I have built up for incoming antagonists. My characters will struggle to defeat them, if they defeat them at all, and I will not show an allergic reaction to the very idea of my protagonists not winning a battle or retreating. Merely assuring my audience that the antagonists were strong, just not enough to compare to the protagonists, is a band-aid patched over a gaping wound.

I will not portray intangible attributes such as “resolve”, “determination”, or “emotion” as enough to win a fight with a stronger or more skilled opponent. These tropes have been endlessly written, decried, and mocked, and no audience has any patience for them anymore. 

I will be careful with the power levels achieved in my story. A balance must be created between the protagonist’s power and that of the stronger peers--while my protagonist should not simply win every battle, I cannot continue to push the stronger allies out of the story to keep them from ending battle-heavy arcs early. 

I will be careful with who I enter contracts with so that I can ensure that my story stops when I want it to stop, and will not be pushed and dragged through the mud when I am out of plot points because publishers desire more money from my series. Everything dies, and avoiding this just tortures what remains of the story and the fanbase.

My fans will be treated with respect, as it runs paradoxical to mistreat those whom I want to pay attention to my work. Even loyal, content fans will be dissuaded by mistreatment of the unsatisfied ones. This is professionalism and I will practice it every day. 

To put to use the enduring and wise words of one of the heads of Nintendo, a bad chapter that gets delayed is eventually good, while a bad chapter published immediately is bad forever. If necessary, I will take hiatuses whenever I need more time to properly organize and write my story’s journey from point A to point B.

If I am lucky enough to have an anime of my manga made, I may run into moments where filler is created in order to give me more time to publish chapters without the manga overtaking it. If this occurs, I will do my best to give my input to the filler team where possible to ensure the new material meshes with later manga chapters without contradicting them. I will also attempt where possible to ensure the greatest quality possible from filler, as it is a reflection of my work even if it is non-canon.

I will think ahead and have a plan for my antagonists and decide beforehand if I want them redeemed, and if so, I will ensure care is taken that they are not shown crossing moral boundaries that would make them pure evil and make their redemptions weaker. I will also plan ahead and show the details of my redeemed antagonist’s moral character before I have them redeemed, not after, so that the redemption feels earned.

What works for my central protagonists should be equally as applicable to my side characters or antagonists. If resolve is enough to win a fight when my main character is fighting (and it shouldn’t), it should also be enough to carry side characters and antagonists through their battles. Otherwise, this becomes hypocrisy and character favoritism on my part.

Comedic relief is to be judged the same as any other aspect of my story. Perversion, invasion of privacy, abuse, and obsession are not acceptable forms of comedic relief and I will not attempt to brush criticism of them aside by saying they are. Better yet, I will portray them the negative way they deserve.

Science, logic, and physics are to be used carefully. Neglected as they are in manga from all eras, using them merely to hype up a character I favor spits on their applications.

I will not attempt to apply science, logic, and physics in ways I have not thoroughly researched, as fantasy logic cannot always cover my weak spots. It is better not to include these things at all than to get them dreadfully wrong and appear unintelligent because of it. 

[bhutrastones]

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[wanderingmoonsword]

Greruor Demon

Appropriately and accurately named frog demons, greruors are only middling powers as demons go at a measly CR 10 but these sadistic and brutal demons have a reputation for strength and power.  They also have a tendency for following orders that’s unusual in demons, something a canny summoner could exploit to make it easier to recruit minions that aren’t quite so eager to slip the leash, especially by giving them opportunities to sate their dark impulses.  Their capabilities in battle are notable for three things: First, greruors like to fight with ranseurs, although other weapons may be a good idea if you’re running into a number of them to create variety.  Second, their confusion spell-like ability can wreak havoc, shattering the cohesion of a weak-minded party, although by 10th level, most parties should be able to weather DC 18 saves reasonably well.  Finally, there’s the spittle these demons expel, a burning, seething mass that corrodes and pits the flesh, then erupts into flames for several rounds to burn its victims alive.  As what amounts to demonic heavy infantry, greruors make a good addition to an adventure – direct, straightforward as demons go, and without the ability to teleport away that can make dealing with many outsiders maddening, they’re in a do-or-die mode that can make players feel a sense of accomplishment.  Better yet, despite their hulking physique and brutally direct approach, greruors are still quite intelligent, organizing into mobs when hunted by other demons (apparently their legs are a delicacy) to bring down more powerful foes by weight of numbers and more than capable of playing the part of leader or chief minion.

Determined to fight the corruption and intrigue plaguing the Grand Duchy of Xagrein, a group of masked heroes have fought back against the cabals and plots of their homeland, exposing malefactors and unmasking the villains that prey on society.  When they finally penetrate the inner sanctum of the manipulative banker Mabyn Restarick to prove she’s none other than the succubus Jilania, the demon taunts them before disappearing into a puff of smoke, leaving behind her hulking, frog-like bodyguard to deal with the would-be saviors of Xagrein before burning their evidence to ash along with their corpses.

Most named demons are feared as individual terrors, known for their solitary deprivations, but the greruor Uatixoch is prominent as the leader of a small cabal of cambions.  Enforcing a certain amount of order through brutality, the frog-like demon has gotten her anarchic minions to cooperate in battle, directing them with a degree of tactical cunning and coordination that unnerves many of the demon hunters sent to banish them.  In many ways, the small band resembles groups of mortal adventurers and Uatixoch studies their tactics, but she doesn’t hesitate to strike down any mortal-blooded fool who refuses her orders once the battle is over.

Stormed by demons and cultists a generation ago, the ruins of the once-stately Perrigwyn Keep are believed to be haunted and unlucky by the villagers nearby, who practice warding rituals to try and keep its evil at bay.  In that, they’re at least half-right, as the cult never truly left after completing its grisly work.  Now marked by burns and fallen into disrepair, Perrigwyn is home to a small cell of the cult.  The cell’s leader is the greruor demon Shedzhar, a veteran of the assault that tore down Perrigwyn’s east wall.  Two of the schir who helped burn the keep have been bullied into his service, venting their resentment on the petty cultists who come and go from Perrigwyn’s ruined grounds.

- Tome of Horrors Complete 164

[me-myself-and-my-fos]

@astralshipper

Lonnie will say this to you whenever you feel down or you’re not feeling good about yourself. Whenever he sees any doubt, he squashes it with these words. He will always remind you this, no matter what because he never wants you to forget it.

Whenever he hears you coming, Lonnie gets this smirk and looks at you hungrily. You’re his girl and he knows it, and he’s always excited to see you no matter what. It’s never a bad time for him to see you

If someone disrespects you in anyway or upsets you, this is what will greet them that night. Lonnie with his flamethrower not giving them a chance to repent. For Lonnie, it’s one strike and you’re out if you upset his girl. Once he he’s done filleting them, Lonnie will come home to you and give you nothing but affection.

[mishinashen]

Donna del Lago or Le Bout du monde II by Leonor Fini, ca. 1953

Leonor Fini embodied the anti-muse in both her life and work, constantly defying, subverting and surprising the largely male-led Surrealist movement. Although she befriended, had relationships with, worked with, and exhibited alongside other key figures of Surrealism, she resisted the confining roles usually cast upon women associated with the group - namely those of muse, lover or student. Never officially joining the movement, she powerfully asserted and defined herself as the anti-femme fatale in her extraordinary and fantastical woman-led worlds.

Painted circa 1953, Donna del lago / Le Bout du monde II is a seductive and mythological articulation of the feminine gaze. At the centre of the composition, emerging from the dark pigments of Fini’s chthonic otherworld, is the defiant female figure, dramatically spotlit in ethereal opalescent tones. Although above the surface her gaze is slightly averted, her reflection stares directly at the viewer. Whilst theories of the “female gaze” had yet to be fully articulated when this work was executed, in this mirrored space, Fini explores this notion of what it means to be both the viewed and the viewer at the same time.

This active gaze is not singular. It emerges from all corners of the canvas through the half-submerged skulls which look out, the pupils of their roving eyes retaining their final traces of consciousness. Although in form they take the shape of prehistoric or mythological beasts, for Fini these represent men rather than animals: “The men around her are dead. They are too limited in understanding, too brutal to survive.” (L. Fini in P. Webb, Sphinx, The Life and Art of Leonor Fini, 2009, p. 143). Diametrically opposed to the projections of women by the male Surrealists around her, in this world Fini depicts her protagonist enacting exactly what these male artists most feared: castration and the dissolution of the ego. In an act of retaliation, these men are stripped of their physical bodies and muscularity with their features reduced to almost still-life like objects. With the holes of their skulls and the porous surface of bone insidiously penetrated by water, the feminine substance of life, and here death, Fini disrupts the iconography of Surrealism through the creation of her own subversive mythology.

The present work is the later version of one of Fini’s most acclaimed paintings, Le Bout du Monde, painted around five years earlier in 1948. The painting evolved with the passage of time: a city has emerged in the distance, the sky appears darker and the hair of the figure unravels further into Fini’s signature medusa-like tendrils. Although this image is certainly one of Leonor herself, in conversation Fini downplays this attribution: “It’s me but not just me: it’s the essence of the feminine. She is woman, symbol of beauty and deep knowledge. She emerges from the water, the essential element of life, the primeval material, because she knows how to survive the cataclysm.” (P. Webb, op. cit., p.143).

Whilst oneiric and mythological in scope, a powerful assertion of personal female reality lies at the centre of the picture. Leaving behind her submerged breasts, in Donna del lago / Le Bout du monde II the figure has emerged more fully from the water: she takes up more space, her sphynx-like neck is proudly elongated and her nipples are on show as she confidently and knowingly asserts her own erotic desire and sexual power.

This sexuality notably does not incorporate any of the usually idealised evocations of potential fertility. To the side of the figure lies a symbol of an egg, its shell broken, the branch from which it grows brown and withered. In this image of vegetal decay Fini explores both her body’s and her own psychological rejection of personal physical motherhood. Whilst being averse to pregnancy herself, this was also a possibility taken out of her hands after she underwent a medical hysterectomy in 1947: “I was so glad to have that operation. The thought of having children horrified me” she recalled later (P. Webb., op. cit., p.133).

Painted with her signature exquisite delicacy, which seductively belies a virile and anarchic agenda, Donna del lago / Le Bout du monde II is an extraordinary assertion of Fini’s mythical and fantastical imagination. Using herself as a subject, she captures the universal alchemy of women, as the bringers of both physical and metaphorical life and death, and explores the complicated domain of female selfhood - the viewed object and anti-muse, the relationship between motherhood and individual sexual freedom.

The work is inscribed Fée à Beltem in reference to the Druid calendar’s Beltane or Beltaine May Day celebrations. According to Gaelic folklore it is during this liminal time that fairies and otherworldly forces are at their most active.

[cafewildlife-blog]

WILDLIFE #3

19 May, 2018,  20-00 till 23:30

Wildlife is an on-going series of contingent and irregular happenings at Goleb Project Space. Wildlife aims to be both try-out space, meeting place and a café. Drinks and music are intermittently interrupted by the sound of a gong, which announces the next act. We invite everybody to join us for a slightly anarchic good time. Wildlife presents: Robbert Voges will attempt to ‘ignite the romantic soul in us all’ through drawing and text. Saxophonist/composer Marc Alberto's music is influenced by jazz, minimal music, dance and performance art. His idiosyncratic sound and often unorthodox technique demand the utmost of his instruments and body. In her cooking show,  artist Fernanda Romann will teach us the secrets of brigadeiros, a Brazilian sweet delicacy. Róża Zamołojko's work revolves around themes like openness, pleasure, and ease of movement.  Listening to what's inside and allowing it to appear through movement. & DJ EI ________________________________________ Practical information: The bar works until 11:00 pm. Cash only ________________________________________ Organized by Sema Bekirovic and Justina Nekrašaitė.  

[fedtothenight]

From Achille Lauro’s autobiography Sono io Amleto (I am Hamlet):

“Disgusting 50-year-olds, homophobic men. For years, I have dealt with gross people because of my circles. I grew up with this shit. Even the trap environments make me uneasy: the air, dense of fake testosterone, the manufactured tribal language, the emotional detachment towards women and, in general, the picture of the object-woman I grew up with. 

I am allergic to the male, ignorant ways I grew up with. So, wearing women’s clothes, in addition to makeup and the confusion with genders are my way of dissenting and reiterating my anarchism, of rejecting the conventions that discrimination and violence generate from. 

 Reject rules, institutions, burn your documents, have fun. 

I am like this, I put on whatever I want and like: are fur, clutch bags, glittery glasses female? Then I’m a girl. Is that all? I want to be mortally infected by femininity, which for me means delicacy, elegance, candour. Sometimes people ask me: What happened to you? I reply that I’ve become a lady.”

[astralshipper]

I have no self control and the idea of this made me fucking LOSE IT I’m so sorry