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my-weird-news · 1 year

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🚨 Exposing Rampant AI Publishing Scams! Unbelievable!

AI's Wild Ride: From Scammers to Suckers, Let the Chaos Begin Hey there, folks! Strap in, because AI is like the new kid in town who swears they're going to change everything, but they're facing the classic problem that every flashy tech fad before them has faced: They got the fancy VC funding, but they ain't got a solid business plan, especially for us regular folks. So, what do we do with these huge language-model AIs that can whip up words like an overcaffeinated Shakespeare? It's like having a hyper-intelligent parrot – it talks, but do we really understand what it's saying? So, here's a not-so-novel idea: why not sell that AI-written text? But where, oh where, should we sell it? Somewhere that truth is optional, where wild tales can become literary gold – ah yes, the book market! It's the last haven where people still drop a few coins to get their hands on words. But wait, there's a catch. You can't legally sell AI-made text because, apparently, machine words don't deserve copyright protection (with a few exceptions, because laws love exceptions). But those sneaky scammers are onto it, blending AI into their scheming ways. Imagine publishers having hush-hush meetings, debating how to bring AI into their secretive fold. Meanwhile, authors are sharpening their pens, ready to take on what they're convinced is an AI-powered Armageddon for their craft. It all started with a bang when sci-fi mags cried out, "Help! AI stories are flooding our inboxes!" Apparently, some guru influencers were telling their minions to use AI to whip up short stories and then sell 'em off, as if short stories are suddenly the key to Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. And then, oh boy, by July, the Author’s Guild was shaking in its quills. These big language models are trained on mountains of text, but here's the kicker: some of that text is swiped from pirate treasure troves known as "shadow libraries." Like, arr matey, isn't that, like, a bit illegal? The Author’s Guild wagged its finger at AI companies, saying, "Yo, you're sipping our creative juices without giving us a sip!" The Guild's letter was like an alarm bell ringing in the AI headquarters. But even with these words of caution, some cheeky influencer decided to crack the AI ebook code on Amazon. They're like, "Hey, I've cracked the secret! Let's churn out AI books and roll in those sweet, sweet royalties. It's like fishing, but for words!" 🎣 And then, kaboom! The AI plot thickens. People started selling "Jane Friedman" books on Amazon, except it's not the real Jane Friedman. It's like AI went to a Halloween party dressed as Jane and stole all her candy – I mean, books! 🎃 Now, none of this stuff is new, folks. Garbage books have been floating around Amazon for ages, like cheap knockoff handbags. People even submitted plagiarized stories to literary magazines before AI turned fancy. What's new is the scale – AI is pumping out content like a factory of malfunctioning robots. It's like a literary equivalent of a chocolate factory, except the chocolates are words, and the Oompa Loompas are rogue AIs. And as if that wasn't enough chaos, some authors went all Judge Judy, slapping lawsuits on OpenAI and Meta, saying they swiped their words for training. It's like a courtroom drama where the witnesses are neural networks and the judge is an old typewriter. Ding ding, order in the court! Meanwhile, in a galaxy not so far away, there's this website called Prosecraft that decided to rank books based on their wordiness, adjectives, and other fancy word things. But hold your horses, it's not even AI – it's an algorithm, like a literary Fitbit. And, you guessed it, authors were like, "Hey, hands off our precious words!" and made such a ruckus that Prosecraft had to pack its bags and sneak away. Oh, but that's not all, folks! The New York Times reveals that around 50 companies jumped on the AI bandwagon, crafting, editing, and marketing books with AI magic. But here's the kicker: publishing is like a pie with tiny, tiny slices, and those slices are getting tinier. A survey said authors make peanuts, and only a handful can afford to live solely off their books. It's like a dystopian movie where writers have to fight each other for crumbs in a word wasteland. 💸 So, there you have it, the wild world of AI chaos. It's like a circus, but instead of clowns, there are schemers and suckers, all riding the AI roller coaster. Let's just hope the AI doesn't learn to write books about AI taking over the world, because that's a whole different can of worms! 🎢📚# AI's Wild Ride: From Scammers to Suckers, Let the Chaos Begin Hey there, folks! Strap in, because AI is like the new kid in town who swears they're going to change everything, but they're facing the classic problem that every flashy tech fad before them has faced: They got the fancy VC funding, but they ain't got a solid business plan, especially for us regular folks. So, what do we do with these huge language-model AIs that can whip up words like an overcaffeinated Shakespeare? It's like having a hyper-intelligent parrot – it talks, but do we really understand what it's saying? So, here's a not-so-novel idea: why not sell that AI-written text? But where, oh where, should we sell it? Somewhere that truth is optional, where wild tales can become literary gold – ah yes, the book market! It's the last haven where people still drop a few coins to get their hands on words. But wait, there's a catch. You can't legally sell AI-made text because, apparently, machine words don't deserve copyright protection (with a few exceptions, because laws love exceptions). But those sneaky scammers are onto it, blending AI into their scheming ways. Imagine publishers having hush-hush meetings, debating how to bring AI into their secretive fold. Meanwhile, authors are sharpening their pens, ready to take on what they're convinced is an AI-powered Armageddon for their craft. It all started with a bang when sci-fi mags cried out, "Help! AI stories are flooding our inboxes!" Apparently, some guru influencers were telling their minions to use AI to whip up short stories and then sell 'em off, as if short stories are suddenly the key to Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. And then, oh boy, by July, the Author’s Guild was shaking in its quills. These big language models are trained on mountains of text, but here's the kicker: some of that text is swiped from pirate treasure troves known as "shadow libraries." Like, arr matey, isn't that, like, a bit illegal? The Author’s Guild wagged its finger at AI companies, saying, "Yo, you're sipping our creative juices without giving us a sip!" The Guild's letter was like an alarm bell ringing in the AI headquarters. But even with these words of caution, some cheeky influencer decided to crack the AI ebook code on Amazon. They're like, "Hey, I've cracked the secret! Let's churn out AI books and roll in those sweet, sweet royalties. It's like fishing, but for words!" 🎣 And then, kaboom! The AI plot thickens. People started selling "Jane Friedman" books on Amazon, except it's not the real Jane Friedman. It's like AI went to a Halloween party dressed as Jane and stole all her candy – I mean, books! 🎃 Now, none of this stuff is new, folks. Garbage books have been floating around Amazon for ages, like cheap knockoff handbags. People even submitted plagiarized stories to literary magazines before AI turned fancy. What's new is the scale – AI is pumping out content like a factory of malfunctioning robots. It's like a literary equivalent of a chocolate factory, except the chocolates are words, and the Oompa Loompas are rogue AIs. And as if that wasn't enough chaos, some authors went all Judge Judy, slapping lawsuits on OpenAI and Meta, saying they swiped their words for training. It's like a courtroom drama where the witnesses are neural networks and the judge is an old typewriter. Ding ding, order in the court! Meanwhile, in a galaxy not so far away, there's this website called Prosecraft that decided to rank books based on their wordiness, adjectives, and other fancy word things. But hold your horses, it's not even AI – it's an algorithm, like a literary Fitbit. And, you guessed it, authors were like, "Hey, hands off our precious words!" and made such a ruckus that Prosecraft had to pack its bags and sneak away. Oh, but that's not all, folks! The New York Times reveals that around 50 companies jumped on the AI bandwagon, crafting, editing, and marketing books with AI magic. But here's the kicker: publishing is like a pie with tiny, tiny slices, and those slices are getting tinier. A survey said authors make peanuts, and only a handful can afford to live solely off their books. It's like a dystopian movie where writers have to fight each other for crumbs in a word wasteland. 💸 So, there you have it, the wild world of AI chaos. It's like a circus, but instead of clowns, there are schemers and suckers, all riding the AI roller coaster. Let's just hope the AI doesn't learn to write books about AI taking over the world, because that's a whole different can of worms! 🎢📚 Read the full article

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rollingsunblog · 2 years

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Who’s Who In Japanese Roleplaying?

Having now looked at some of the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese tabletop RPGs, let’s dive a bit further into the scene’s movers and shakers.

Since the Japanese roleplaying industry has a fairly clear divide between game developers and game publishers, I’ve decided to look at these separately. There is, of course, another important group in the RPG space not covered here: independent developers, who I’ll be exploring in a later post.

PUBLISHERS

Kadokawa

A true media juggernaut, Kadokawa’s businesses include books, magazines, movies, music, games, and even the popular video-sharing portal Niconico - Japan’s answer to YouTube.

The conglomerate initially entered the roleplaying space in the mid-’80s trying to capitalize on the success of Dungeons & Dragons - first by licensing TSR’s D&D novels and gamebooks, later via pushing RPG coverage into its electronic gaming magazine Comptiq. That gamble paid off when Comptiq’s monthly Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Record of Lodoss War - originally pitched as a way to teach newcomers the basics of D&D - became a breakout transmedia hit.

Over the course of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Kadokawa and its subsidiary Fujimi Shobo published a steady stream of original, licensed, and translated games, often based on Kadokawa’s own IP. Its most ambitious project of the era, MAGIUS, was a beginner-oriented universal RPG supported by 30-odd standalone releases covering franchises from Tenchi Muyo! to Neon Genesis Evangelion. However, the line’s sales fell short of expectations; this, coupled with an overall decline in RPG sales, saw Kadokawa effectively withdraw from the market in the late ‘90s.

After the release of D&D’s Third Edition in 2000, Kadokawa became notably more active in the tabletop space again, both directly and indirectly: in 2004, the conglomerate acquired the parent company of fellow publisher Enterbrain, who had been pushing out notable works like FEAR’s popular Night Wizard and the 6th Edition of Call of Cthulhu. Kadokawa would continue to release dozens of RPGs through Enterbrain and Fujimi Shobo until 2013; following an extensive restructuring, the company’s RPG output is now published directly under the Kadokawa name.

Kadokawa’s clout and aggressive media mix strategy created additional mainstream visibility for RPGs and RPG-adjacent properties like Record of Lodoss War during the hobby’s boom years.

Shinkigensha

The other heavyweight in the industry, Shinkigensha was founded in 1940 but only formally incorporated in 1982. At that time, the company was best known as a publisher of computer guides, but soon diversified into fantasy and military reference books as well a small number of RPG products.

Following the gradual revival of the roleplaying market in the early 2000s, Shinkigensha significantly stepped up its activities in the space, investing in translations of high-profile titles like White Wolf’s New World of Darkness line and the 4th Edition of Shadowrun alongside a variety of homegrown releases. In 2003, Shinkigensha also launched Role & Roll - at that time Japan’s first new roleplaying-focused magazine in almost a decade - in collaboration with gaming company Arclight. “Roll and Roll RPG” would subsequently become the publisher’s dedicated imprint for tabletop releases.

Like Kadokawa, Shinkigensha maintains a sizeable portfolio of original and translated games, the undisputed crown jewel of which is Call of Cthulhu - currently Japan’s most popular RPG by a significant margin. The publisher also has cultivated a fruitful relationship with the developer Adventure Planning Service, whose Saikoro Fiction line has become a staple in Shinkigensha’s Role & Roll RPG output over the past decade.

Hobby Japan

Hobby Japan is the epitome of “from humble beginnings.” The company started off as an import shop selling foreign-made die-cast cars, but grew dramatically in the ‘70s and ‘80s by expanding into areas like model kits and wargaming. In 1984, Hobby Japan released Japan’s first translated RPG, Traveller, marking the beginning of a four-decade-long relationship with the roleplaying market.

While the company is probably best known for its localized games, Hobby Japan’s output during the boom era included several notable originals, including Metal Head - Japan’s first cyberpunk RPG - the sci-fantasy mech saga Wares Blade, and the first edition of FEAR’s Tenra Bansho. Hobby Japan’s Tactics magazine - later retooled as RPG Magazine - also served as an important early voice for the industry, creating greater awareness for the hobby among the Japanese public.

Unlike Kadokawa and Shinkigensha, Hobby Japan trades almost exclusively in translated titles these days. For nearly twenty years, they were WotC’s official D&D licensee in Japan, overseeing localization of the game’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions before WotC semi-abruptly revoked their publishing rights in late 2022. The company currently handles the Japanese editions of Cyberpunk RED, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and the D&D 5E-compatible Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos.

Tsukuda Hobby

An off-shoot of one of Japan’s more notable toy manufacturers, Tsukuda Hobby was also a pivotal force in the embryonic tabletop scene, publishing the country’s first homegrown RPG, Enterprise, its first fantasy RPG, Roads to Lord, and its first generic ruleset, WARPS. Despite this, the company never seemed to achieve the kind of success its competitors saw and left the tabletop market in 1993, ultimately going bust just a decade later.

Shinwa

Formerly an importer of American wargames, Shinwa struck it big when it secured the D&D license, but was unable to sustain its momentum once Group SNE’s Sword World entered the market in 1989. After its localization of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition failed to find an audience, Shinwa abandoned the roleplaying industry, sliding into obscurity and bankruptcy soon after.

Shinwa during its heyday in 1989. [IMAGE: Meyjuka/MESGamer]

DEVELOPERS

Group SNE

Formally incorporated by sci-fi translator turned gaming evangelist Hitoshi Yasuda in 1987, Group SNE could arguably be seen as Japan’s answer to TSR. Thanks to the one-two punch of its phenomenally popular Record of Lodoss War campaign series and the blockbuster RPG it eventually spawned, Sword World, this small company dominated the early years of the roleplaying industry. Beyond its own creations, Group SNE also oversaw the localization of many major Western properties, including Shadowrun, Mechwarrior, GURPS, Tunnels & Trolls, Earthdawn, and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

Following the release of Magic: The Gathering, Group SNE pivoted to collectible card games with 1997′s popular Monster Collection, one of the Japan’s first homegrown CCGs. Unfortunately, subsequent titles proved significantly less popular, and by the mid-2000s, the company renewed its focus on the tabletop space with Sword World 2.0 in 2008, which was followed by Sword World 2.5 in 2018.

Group SNE’s more recent output has included localizations of Kenneth Hite’s Trail of Cthulhu and the anthropomorphic fantasy RPG Pugmire, licensed RPGs based on the Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Goblin Slayer franchises, and a number of original board and card games. The company also produces the quarterly magazine GM Warlock, which covers a variety of analog hobbies.

Key Works: Record of Lodoss War, Sword World, Crystania, Demon Parasite

Far East Amusement Research

More popularly known as “FEAR,” Far East Amusement Research represents the second generation of Japanese RPG talent, coming to prominence just as the country’s roleplaying market started collapsing in the mid-’90s. Born from a collective of experienced writers and designers, FEAR played a major role in the hobby’s transition to a more narrative type of play and was instrumental in popularizing the use of structured, scene-based game sessions.

In its earliest years, the company struggled to get its titles to market as more and more publishers withdrew from the roleplaying space, ultimately opting to establish its own publishing and distribution arm, Game Field, alongside a monthly magazine called Gamers Field. As a result, from 1998 to 1999, FEAR was virtually the only significant source of new RPGs in the Japanese market.

Unlike its competitors, the company has never ventured too far outside of the tabletop genre. The one notable exception is its work in the video game industry: since the mid-’90s, FEAR’s staff have provided story and world-building support for a number of titles, including Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default II.

Key Works: Tokyo N◎VA, Tenra Bansho, Seven = Fortress, Double Cross, Night Wizard, Alshard, Arianrhod

Arclight

Technically no longer an independent developer - the business has been wholly owned by Shinkigensha since 2020 - but bears mentioning all the same. Arclight started out in the play-by-mail market as a branch office of the company You-En-Tai before going independent in 1998. After a brief stint in electronic gaming, the company refocused its operations around the analog scene, and now develops and publishes a broad slate of board, card, and roleplaying titles. Its most prominent property by far is the Japanese edition of Call of Cthulhu, which Arclight has overseen since launching its 6th Edition back in 2003; in addition, the company currently handles Japanese localization for Pathfinder and Shadowrun.

CoC aside, Arclight is arguably more notable for its general business activities than its game releases: the company operates dozens of specialty retail outlets in addition to providing editorial oversight for the monthly RPG magazine Role & Roll and organizing Game Market, one of Japan’s most significant analog gaming events.

Key Works: Call of Cthulhu (6E/7E), Pathfinder (1E), Shadowrun (5E)

The now-defunct Akihabara branch of Arclight’s Role & Roll Station, one of the company’s three retail chains.

Adventure Planning Service

Formed in 1987 by designer Koji Kondo (近藤功司) - not to be confused with the legendary Nintendo composer - APS has had three distinct incarnations over the years. During the RPG boom, the group’s claim to fame was its generic rule system Apple Basic, which underpinned most of its early releases, including 1991′s Kiki’s Delivery Service-indebted cult classic Witch Quest. By the early ‘90s, however, Kondo and his colleagues shifted their attention to the electronic gaming market, providing production, planning, and story support for various titles across six console generations in addition to penning an assortment of strategy guides and fanbooks.

The company’s return to roleplaying in the late 2000s was driven by the arrival of developer Toichiro Kawashima (河嶋陶一朗), whose Saikoro Fiction system now powers a majority of APS’s releases. To date, there have been over a dozen Saikoro Fiction titles, most notably multi-genre horror RPG Insane, modern-day wizarding game Magicalogia, and contemporary ninja drama Shinobigami.

Key Works: Witch Quest, Satsupe, Labyrinth Kingdom, Shinobigami, Insane, Magicalogia

ORG

Though effectively inactive in the tabletop space now, ORG was one of the very first RPG development groups to go professional. Its founder, Masayuki Onuki (大貫昌幸), earned his spurs translating the original D&D and would subsequently author WARPS, an anime-inspired universal system emphasizing high power levels and flashy action, which released soon after ORG’s establishment in 1987.

Whlie the company developed a number of original and licensed roleplaying games in the ‘90s, it is perhaps most fondly remembered for Legend of Double Moon (ダブルムーン伝説), a play-by-mail “reader participation” RPG featured in the gaming magazines Marukatsu Famicom and Marukatsu Super Famicom from 1989 to 1993. Following Onuki’s death in 1993, ORG largely refocused its activities on the CCG market, helming tie-ins like the Digimon and Monster Hunter card games.

Key Works: WARPS, Legend of Double Moon

#tabletop roleplaying #pen and paper roleplaying #rpgs #trps

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independentaussie · 2 years

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Drawing From My Infinite Dark Well

When I was hungry for success, I used to rise at 5.00 am and write for 2 hours straight before getting ready for my paid job. There was no shortage of material. I had a bottomless dark well from which I could draw. The stories flowed. Some contained barely restrained anger; others reflected my deep cynicism about how the world worked. A few seemingly came out of nowhere. An exception to the rule was an award-winning story called Rosa's Place, which drew on some song lyrics, a chance experience and fairly well-worn tropes. Every morning without fail. I used to subscribe to this paperback monthly called Scavenger's Newsletter. It would list all the small press magazines accepting submissions. I'd pick out the most likely and submit my work. Everything was done by snail mail. The process from submission to rejection or occasional acceptance was treacle-like. Getting published was such a buzz, but the remuneration was barely enough to pay for stamps and paper. The competition was intense. Many well-known writers were ploughing the same fields. The business model was not sustainable, but I loved writing and hated my job. There are a lot of ways to earn a crust writing, but your head and heart have to be in them. You can't bluff your way through. One of the worst decisions I have made in my writing career was to stop drawing from the dark well and focus on "more profitable" writing channels. I covered the dark well and relied upon my conscious skills to fulfil whatever I thought I was looking for. The last piece I wrote was what felt like the opening chapter of a sci-fi/dark fantasy novel. But I didn't know what to do with it. It felt like I'd written myself into a dark corner without planning a way out. Other more lucrative writing projects beckoned, and the story was allowed to sit forgotten. My life took a severe turn for the worse for a while. That usually happens when we forget who we are and try to be someone else. I'm not going to retread that old ground. Been there, done that, moved on. Part of my recovery involved extensively writing about elements of my life that I had suppressed and ignored. The process was cathartic not only because it allowed me to confront my demons but more importantly, it allowed me to tap into that subconscious part of me where the good stuff comes from. Ultimately, that process resulted in my book Postcards From Hell, which I think put a final full stop to what had been a traumatic but necessary period. One of the things that learned over that period is that we can't run from who we are. I uncovered the dark well and peered into the depths. Was there anything still there? I didn't know for sure, but I had to find out. My old material was dusted off and reread. Some of it seemed better than I remembered. Bits needed to be polished, but there were good stories there -stories that deserve to see the light of day. I got excited. That piece that felt like the beginning of a novel has been reprised, and I'm now eight chapters in and drawing from the dark well daily. So the plan for the coming year is simple - 1/Release the best of my stories in collections of short stories, Dark Weird Stuff due out on January 6, 2023, and - Dark Byways of Possibility which will be released as an eBook only two weeks later. 2/ Finish this novel that has a working title of Elsewhere 3/ Find whatever else is waiting to be drawn from my dark well. It feels like I've come home.

Read the full article

#horror #sciencefiction #speculativefiction #writing

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tabbycasto · 3 years

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Hello 2022 Brides ! I’ve been getting lots of enquires so I thought I’d pop on here to mention a few bits ✨

💐 If you’re looking for a wedding mua, send me an email (link in bio), I will send you the details of my fees & protocols of how I work. I tend to always reccomend having a Trial with just the 2 of us, taking between 2-3 hours to come up with a look that’s just right for you! This is a good chance for us to get to know one another & try a few different products to find out what’s best ! I reccomend having trials in the AM so you can wear the makeup for as long as possible to get a clear idea of how the makeup looks & feels to you throughout the day.

💐 I get asked a lot if I do Wedding Hair, unfortunately I do not, occasionally you’ll see hair credits in my portfolio as I do basic hair sometimes for commercial work, but I don’t offer wedding hair. I can however recommend some amazing hair dressers if needed.

💐 I mainly work in & around London

💐 I’ve had my work published in some of the top Wedding Magazines including @rocknrollbridemagazine , Your London Wedding, @bridalmusings & more ! Please see the bridal section of my professional portfolio for more imagery www.tabbycasto.com & checkout my bridal blog https://thebridalstories.tumblr.com for some inspo & photos of some of my previous brides ✨

💐 Don’t forget, you can also book in for a pre wedding mani pedi pamper session as I also offer hand & foot treatments, as well as wedding nails !

💐 Please note I’m currently still only operating with 1 person at a time in the treatment room due to Covid. I’m working in PPE daily & taking lateral flows regularly

If you’ve been in touch about your wedding day & are interested in booking, Saturdays in March - July are starting to fill up! To avoid disappointment, get booked in ASAP. I tend to get an influx of last minute requests, but can’t always accommodate these, get your trial booked in as soon as you can 🙃

Image Credits Your London Wedding: 💄by Me, 💇🏻‍♀️ @londonbridalhair 📸 @curious_rose 🌸 @harrietparryflowers Model Laura Gardiner

#londonwedding #weddingmakeup #makeupartist #londonmakeupartist #bridalmakeup

#london #beauty #makeup #bride #bridetobe #london makeup artist #makeupartist #makeup artist #mua #tabby casto makeup artist #londontown

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harrisonarchive · 3 years

Photo

George Harrison, 1969; photo by Apple Scruff Cathy Sarver, screenshot from the documentary Beatles Stories: A Fab Four Fan’s Ultimate Road Trip.

Spotlight on... Apple Scruffs.

“Outside the studio door [at Trident in London], whether it rained or not, there was always a handful of Apple Scruffs, they called them — Beatles fans. One was a girl all the way from Texas. Sometimes George would record from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and there they would be, waiting through the night [...]. In the morning they’d go off to their jobs and in the evening they'd be back outside the studio door again. Their grapevine was infallible. I wasn’t there a minute when they knew that ‘Big Al from New York’ was inside.” - Al Aronowitz, The Blacklisted Journalist, July 2001 (x)

“A lot of [Apple] Scruffs had a George fixation. We used to call him ‘The Body’ because we imagined what he was like underneath. Very skinny, all muscle, you know? We had a Beatle blanket to keep us warm during the night and we were in our sleeping-bags outside Abbey Road while George was recording ‘All Things Must Pass.’ George drove in and we scrambled to get out of sleeping-bags, George got distracted by the blanket that was hung up over the railings and drove his new BMW straight into the wall. We couldn’t stop laughing. We had a good little routine going. We had our breakfast out there under the tree — milk, cornflakes, a few little provisions to make the experience bearable. Often we’d stay out all night, see The Beatles, go home, wash and then go off to work. Anyway, Phil Spector comes toddling out and asks what we were doing. ‘Breakfast,’ we said. ‘Can I have some?’ So there we were, the dawn breaking over London, crouched under a tree with Phil Spector munching on cornflakes and he’s really enjoying himself! Phil was lovely to us, he understood exactly why we were out there. He sent us a letter when All Things Must Pass was finally out addressed to the Apple Scruffs at ‘The Steps,’ 3 Savile Row. He used to send us cards and was always enquiring how his Apple Scruffs were doing.” - Gill Pritchard, MOJO, October 1996 (x)

One Apple Scruff, Carol Bedford, wrote a book, Waiting For ‪The Beatles‬, published in 1984. “I think an awful lot about the Scruffs has been misinterpreted. The other Beatles did not look down upon us, in fact a magazine used to be published by the Scruffs that George, John & Ringo used to have copies of. I would urge people to try to see were reality began & fantasy ended with Carol Bedford’s book, sadly she upset quite a few people including George.” - Gill, songfacts dot com

“There was always a little knot of them [the Apple Scruffs]. They weren’t fashion model types, they were just little girls — just kids. [George] always took time to have a word with them, and I seem to remember him going out with tea for them sometimes when it was cold. I was impressed with how caring he was about these girls. I’ve been around a lot of other folks who have quite a different way of dealing with people, let’s put it that way.” - Bobby Keys, George Harrison: Behind The Locked Door

“George stopped close to Apple Studios, where, as ever, a group of fans was waiting. ‘Hi Liz, how are you, how’s your mum? Is she still in hospital?’ That was typical of George. He always greeted everyone personally and had a few kind words for you too.” - Klaus Voormann; translated from Warum spielst du Imagine nicht auf dem weißen Klavier, John?

“I did hear from him again — one last contact between us. In 1975, I listened to George's new album Extra Texture: Read all about it. The first track on side one was You, the song he had told me about at the Apple Christmas party in 1971. He had finally recorded it, four years after writing it. I wrote a cheerful, chatty note to George to thank him for recording it. The song would always bring back happy memories for me. By return post, I received George’s letter. It was addressed to ‘Carol Bedford’ which pleased me because I had signed ‘Carol from Texas.’” - Carol Bedford, Waiting For The Beatles (x)

“We used to curse The Beatles sometimes under our breath whenever it was too cold or they ignored us, and that night it was particularly cold and we were particularly miffed. It was 6am and me and Carol Bedford, who was a big George fan, Lucy, Cathy and Margo were all outside Abbey Road. Mal Evans had been looking out through the letter box every so often. He opened the door and said, ‘Come inside girls, George wants to see you.’ We wondered what we’d done. We were ushered into the control room of Studio 3 and George said, ‘Sit down, I’ve got something to play you.’ He was very nervous, pacing up and down. He put this track [‘Apple Scruffs’] on and we all went gooey, it was the first time any of The Beatles had actually acknowledged the Scruffs by name publicly. He told us it was going to be on the album then slipped away in typical George fashion. We all just looked at each other, it was unbelievable. We were so moved we went home in a daze that morning and made him a giant wreath of flowers. When we gave it to him he said, ‘Well you have your own magazine, your own office on the steps, so why not your own song?’” - Gill Pritchard, MOJO, October 1996

“It was like he had seen it all, understood how we felt and, most of all, knew that we weren’t just sad, stupid girlies.” - Wendy Sutcliffe, MOJO, October 1996

“Apple Scruffs was played to us about 6am one Sunday morning by George himself, Mal came out onto the steps at Abbey Road & took us into studio 3 to hear it.” - Gill, songfacts dot com

“George, in particular, always had a problem with the fans, being naturally shy and a bit diffident, but he grew very fond of them [the Apple Scruffs] because he got to know them and they were there when he was going through some bad times [in 1970].” - Derek Taylor, MOJO, October 1996 (x)

“When George finished the song ‘Apple Scruffs’, he asked us to all come in. And of course, we were dumbfounded because we were never asked to come in. We’re all sitting in there and they turn on the song ‘Apple Scruffs’. ‘Apple Scruffs, how I love you.’ It was amazing. We were all in a little huddle around him. He handed us this letter. [reading in full] ‘Dear Carol, Cathy and Lucy. Now as it’s finished — and off to the factory. I thought I’d tell you that I haven’t a clue whether it’s good or bad as I’ve heard it too much now! During the making of this epic album (most expensive album EMI ever had to pay for) I have felt positive and negative — pleased and displeased, and all the other opposites expected to be found in this material world. However, the one thing that didn’t waver, seems to me, to be ‘you three’ and Mal, always there as my sole supporters, and even during my worst moments I always felt the encouragement from you was sufficient to make me finish the thing. Thanks a lot, I am really overwhelmed by your apparent undying love, and I don’t understand it at all! Love from George (P.S. Don’t hold this evidence against me.) P.P.S. Phil Spector loves you too!’ He was a sweet man.” - Cathy Sarver, Beatles Stories: A Fab Four Fan’s Ultimate Road Trip (x)

#George Harrison #quote #quotes about George #fan recollections #fan recollections: 1960s #Apple Scruffs #screenshots #Harrison fan photo #Harrison correspondence #fits queue like a glove

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phroyd · 3 years

Text

Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, died on Tuesday in London. He was 80.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his publicist, Bernard Doherty. No other details were immediately provided.

The Rolling Stones announced earlier this month that Mr. Watts would not be a part of the band’s forthcoming “No Filter” tour of the United States after he had undergone an unspecified emergency medical procedure, which the band’s representatives said had been successful.

Reserved, dignified and dapper, Mr. Watts was never as flamboyant, either onstage or off, as most of his rock-star peers, let alone the Stones’ lead singer, Mick Jagger; he was content to be one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, playing with a jazz-inflected swing that made the band’s titanic success possible. As the Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” “Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically.”

While some rock drummers chased after volume and bombast, Mr. Watts defined his playing with subtlety, swing and a solid groove.“As much as Mick’s voice and Keith’s guitar, Charlie Watts’s snare sound is the Rolling Stones,” Bruce Springsteen wrote in an introduction to the 1991 edition of the drummer Max Weinberg’s book “The Big Beat.” “When Mick sings, ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll but I like it,’ Charlie’s in back showing you why!”Charles Robert Watts was born in London on June 2, 1941. His mother, the former Lillian Charlotte Eaves, was a homemaker; his father, Charles Richard Watts, was in the Royal Air Force and, after World War II, became a truck driver for British Railways.Charlie’s first instrument was a banjo, but, baffled by the fingerings required to play it, he removed the neck and converted its body into a snare drum. He discovered jazz when he was 12 and soon became a fan of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.By 1960, Mr. Watts had graduated from the Harrow School of Art and found work as a graphic artist for a London advertising agency. He wrote and illustrated “Ode to a Highflying Bird,” a children’s book about the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker (although it was not published until 1965). In the evenings, he played drums with a variety of groups.

Most of them were jazz combos, but he was also invited to join Alexis Korner’s raucous rhythm-and-blues collective, Blues Incorporated. Mr. Watts declined the invitation because he was leaving England to work as a graphic designer in Scandinavia, but he joined the group when he returned a few months later.

The newly formed Rolling Stones (then called the Rollin’ Stones) knew they needed a good drummer but could not afford Mr. Watts, who was already drawing a regular salary from his various gigs. “We starved ourselves to pay for him!” Mr. Richards wrote. “Literally. We went shoplifting to get Charlie Watts.”In early 1963, when they could finally guarantee five pounds a week, Mr. Watts joined the band, completing the canonical lineup of Mr. Richards, Mr. Jagger, the guitarist Brian Jones, the bassist Bill Wyman and the pianist Ian Stewart. He moved in with his bandmates and immersed himself in Chicago blues records.In the wake of the Beatles’ success, the Rolling Stones quickly climbed from being an electric-blues specialty act to one of the biggest bands in the British Invasion of the 1960s. While Mr. Richards’s guitar riff defined the band’s most famous single, the 1965 chart-topper “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Mr. Watts’s drum pattern was just as essential. He was relentless on “Paint It Black” (No. 1 in 1966), supple on “Ruby Tuesday” (No. 1 in 1967) and the master of a funky cowbell groove on “Honky Tonk Women” (No. 1 in 1969).

Mr. Watts was ambivalent about the fame that he achieved as a member of the group that has often been called “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” As he said in the 2003 book “According to the Rolling Stones”: “I loved playing with Keith and the band — I still do — but I wasn’t interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming. It’s not the world I come from. It’s not what I wanted to be, and I still think it’s silly.”

As the Stones rolled through the years, Mr. Watts drew on his graphic-arts background to contribute to the design of the band’s stage sets, merchandise and album covers — he even contributed a comic strip to the back cover of their 1967 album “Between the Buttons.” While the Stones cultivated bad-boy images and indulged a collective appetite for debauchery, Mr. Watts mostly eschewed the sex and drugs. He clandestinely married Shirley Anne Shepherd, an art-school student and sculptor, in 1964.

On tour, he would go back to his hotel room alone; every night, he sketched his lodgings. “I’ve drawn every bed I’ve slept in on tour since 1967,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1996. “It’s a fantastic nonbook.”Similarly, while other members of the Stones battled for control of the band, Mr. Watts largely stayed out of the internal politics. As he told The Weekend Australian in 2014, “I’m usually mumbling in the background.”Mr. Jones, who considered himself the leader, was fired from the Stones in 1969 (and found dead in his swimming pool soon after). Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards spent decades at loggerheads, sometimes making albums without being in the studio at the same time. Mr. Watts was happy to work with either, or both.

“Never call me your drummer again,” he told Mr. Jagger, before grabbing him by the lapel and delivering a right hook. Mr. Richards said he narrowly saved Mr. Jagger from falling out a window into an Amsterdam canal.“It’s not something I’m proud of doing, and if I hadn’t been drinking I would never have done it,” Mr. Watts said in 2003. “The bottom line is, don’t annoy me.”At the time, Mr. Watts was in the early stages of a midlife crisis that manifested itself as a two-year bender. Just as the other Stones were settling into moderation in their 40s, he got hooked on amphetamines and heroin, nearly destroying his marriage. After passing out in a recording studio and breaking his ankle when he fell down a staircase, he quit, cold turkey.Mr. Watts and his wife had a daughter, Seraphina, in 1968 and, after spending some time in France as tax exiles, relocated to a farm in southwestern England. There they bred prizewinning Arabian horses, gradually expanding their stud farm to over 250 horses on 700 acres of land. Information on his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Doherty, the publicist, said Mr. Watts had “passed away peacefully” in the hospital “surrounded by his family.”

Eventually the Stones settled into a cycle of releasing an album every four years, followed by an extremely lucrative world tour. (They grossed over a half-billion dollars between 2005 and 2007 on their “Bigger Bang” tour.)But Mr. Watts’s true love remained jazz, and he would fill the time between those tours with jazz groups of various sizes — the Charlie Watts Quintet, the Charlie Watts Tentet, the Charlie Watts Orchestra. Soon enough, though, he would be back on the road with the Stones, playing in sold-out arenas and sketching beds in empty hotel rooms.He was not slowed down by old age, or by a bout with throat cancer in 2004. In 2016, the drummer Lars Ulrich of Metallica told Billboard that since he wanted to keep playing into his 70s, he looked to Mr. Watts as his role model. “The only road map is Charlie Watts,” he said.Through it all, Mr. Watts kept on keeping time on a simple four-piece drum kit, anchoring the spectacle of the Rolling Stones.“I’ve always wanted to be a drummer,” he told Rolling Stone in 1996, adding that during arena rock shows, he imagined a more intimate setting. “I’ve always had this illusion of being in the Blue Note or Birdland with Charlie Parker in front of me. It didn’t sound like that, but that was the illusion I had.”

Phroyd

#rip #rolling stones #charlie watts

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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Not sure if this has circulated before, but here’s a link to Henry Jenkin’s reactions to 227, largely as responses to an interview he did with Sanlian Lifeweek magazine (三聯生活周刊), a publication modelled after TIME magazine and published under China Press Publishing group (中國出版集團), the largest and state-owned publisher in China. The magazine asked for Jenkin’s opinions on the fandom-related aspects of 227 back in March, 2020. Henry Jenkins, as many may already know, is among the most renowned scholars of (Western) fan culture ... if not the most renowned.

Personally, I find this article to be quite limited in perspective, because 227 had a significant non-fandom-oriented, sociopolitical component ~ and hence its scope, its chaos, its damage. IMO, 227 stopped being a fan war, stopped being about solos, cpfs, and even Gg the moment AO3 was shut down ~ the powerful Chinese state had intervened, and the incident necessarily became a political incident. That One Fic on AO3, the conflict between solos and cpfs about whether and where That Fic should exist was at most a lighter left at the scene of what would become the blaze; it wasn’t even responsible for igniting the first fire. Most i-turtles (i-fruits?) are probably aware too at this point: if fan wars are sufficient to start 227, then there wouldn’t have been a 227 ~ because 227 would have been every date of the year.

Fan culture is fundamentally transgressive, and what that means can only be defined in the context of the subculture’s “mainstream” sociopolitical and cultural environment. I therefore find the article’s attempt to transplant Western fan culture’s observations / theories / analysis / conclusions to the incident without explicitly comparing, addressing in depth the differences of the pre- and post-transplant environment to be ... prone to rejections (as organs are after transplantations!)—exclusion from being useful or valid. And this article was very short on such comparisons or address. Jenkins being a fandom expert aside (and he was careful about not treading outside his area of expertise), early “antis” of 227 presented themselves as crusaders for the freedom of speech and, by late March when this article was published, the heated debates surrounding the incident on Chinese social media had already led to embarrassment for multiple powerful state publications. It was probably a wise choice to not make another dive into the political aspects of the incident.

Being a new(-ish) turtle who joined the fandom a full half-year after 227, I’ve been backtracking, trying to really understand the incident, which remains very much beyond comprehension in many aspects. The discussions I’ve dug up that have most fascinated me have been those in non-fandom spaces, by non-fandomers / politics enthusiasts who barely knew who Gg was, who didn’t know That One Fic involved more than one idol and had zero knowledge about solos vs cpfs. In these discussions, “antis” are not referred to as “antis” because while the action of the so-called “227 coalition” was to kill Gg’s career, that wasn’t considered its ultimate goal ~ its ultimate goal was to warn whoever tried to clamp down the freedom of expression that their opposition was strong enough, populous to fight back and take away whatever, whoever those who attempted the clamp-down care the most about. In this case, “Gg fans”—I put this in quotes because eventually, no one would know who would lurk behind those pro-Gg Weibo IDs (and the anti-Gg ones as well)—were the perceived enemies of creative freedom. Gg, assumed to be the one, the symbol of what “GG fans” cared about the most, naturally became the target of the coalition.

Gg wasn’t special in that sense ~ and that was perhaps, the saddest thing I found about this incident as a Gg fan (without quotation marks); Gg could be any idol who achieved top fame at the moment, who had enough fans to make the point known. The coalition was therefore not “anti-Gg” in its ideological sense. It was anti the fan circle culture that had cemented Gg’s popularity, that had already been known to deal extremely poorly with dissent—complaints had been abound that c-ent was no longer fun for bystanders because the latter could issue no critique, not even doubt, about an idol without the fear of being reported, torn down by fans. The coalition eventually grew to include anti the many happenings, the many censorships and imprisonments in the past few years that had silenced the creative crowd in China, happenings people dared not speak about beyond a loud grumbling ...

The coalition tried to take down Gg, because they couldn’t take down the force that had shut down AO3, that was truly responsible for the silencing. They played the Hunger Games in the Weibo arena instead of challenging Who The Real Enemy Was, because some might not have given much thought about The Enemy; some might have thought the Enemy too invincible to be worth the effort; some might have got too carried away by their blood thirst, the cruel schadenfreude of shredding a beautiful, successful young man into pieces, and forgot why they were there in the first place ...

And that was only the political side of 227. 227 was also widely suspected to have a commercial component, which added another layer to the symbolism behind Gg the Idol ~ pretty much as soon as 227 happened, netizens investigated, tried to uncover the chain of capital behind Gg. With the scent of money was the memory of filth associated with it, in a country not exactly unknown for its corrupt business practices. Much like in The Book of Exodus in the Bible, the Idol is believed to be forged with gold; it is ungodly, tainted. Whether Gg the Person was identical to Gg the Idol, Gg the Symbol mattered to few. That Gg *was* a person seemed lost to many ...

I’ll have to dive into the non-fandom aspects of 227 with more rigour. As much as I'd love to leave 227 behind, every time I see Gg, I see its legacy on his face, in his smile, and perhaps, I’m not the only one ~ ADLAD cast him as Patient #5 because of 227′s effect on him. Put it another way, 227 is already modifying, writing Gg’s career trajectory ~ a trajectory that is undoubtedly under scrutiny by many who wish to duplicate his success but circumvent his pain. And every time I see a young idol—Gg, Dd, and anyone else—I wonder if the hurt of 227 can happen to them (again) because the crux of the incident has never been resolved; the oppression and silencing have remained strong as ever.

Anyway (sorry for the rant) ... what I found noteworthy about this article was the quotes the magazine highlighted in its published form (in Chinese), which weren’t highlighted by Jenkins on his own website. They reflected what the magazine would like to be the take-home messages of the interview. I’ve listed them below; all of which had Jenkins as the speaker:

[Pie Note: About Real Person Fiction (RPF) in Western fandoms]

“American fans often do have some shared norms about what is and is not appropriate to write, mostly having to do with protecting the privacy of other people in the star’s life. Writing about the star is seen as fair game; writing about their family members is not.”

---

[Pie Note: About GG being “cast” as a transgender woman in The One Fic that started the incident; gender in fandom]

“We write fan fiction as a form of speculation and exploration. For some people, it may be one of the few spaces in the culture where they can express who they are, what they are feeling, what they are desiring. And for others, it is a place of “what if” where they explore in fantasy things they would not necessarily desire in reality.”

---

[Pie Note: Whether GG should be held responsible for his fans’ behaviour]

“Under these circumstances, I would not hold a performer responsible for his fans’ behaviors but the performer is responsible for their own behavior and fans may respond negatively to performers who over-react to the existence of alternative fantasies and insult or hector their audiences.”

---

[Pie Note: About AO3 and why fans were so upset about its closure] “Keep in mind that AO3 is a particular kind of platform. Alongside Wikipedia, AO3 is one of the greatest accomplishments of participatory culture in the digital era.”

---

[Pie Note: About the “problematic” content on AO3]

“Among my findings were that fan fiction sites can be a valuable space for young people to acquire skills (and receive feedback) on their writing from more experienced writers who share these same passions ... That said, while teens have participated in fandom, a large part of those on AO3 are adults, engaging in adult conversations on adult topics.”

---

[Pie Note: About media text in the new media era]

“First, I would stress the proliferation of media texts at the current moment ... We have access to a much broader range of media content than ever before and in this context, fans play a constructive role in curating that content, helping some shows get greater visibility ... Second, these texts have become more malleable”

---

[Pie Note: About idols not producing “good” media texts]

“Rather, the question should be what are fans finding meaningful about these performers and the texts they generate. I start from the premise that human beings do not engage in meaningless activities. I may not immediately recognize why something is meaningful but my job as a scholar is to understand why cultural materials are meaningful to the people who cherish them.”

---

My understanding of this selection of quotes is this: this state publication (as others) was quite ready to forgive Gg, to put this incident behind. It could choose to not publish this interview; it could choose to leave out certain quotes, or not do the highlighting that cast both AO3 and Gg in a positive / innocent light. But it did all these things. This article furthers my impression that the state never intended 227 to blow up the way it did, and that it did—enough for stories about it to be found in non-China websites, and in English—was what I’m still trying to comprehend. 227 was, admittedly, how I was first introduced to Gg beyond Wei Wuxian. And as I got to know Gg, like Gg, my want to understand 227 only becomes stronger, perhaps because only through comprehension I feel I can find peace for the GG fan (again, without quotation marks) in me.

Maybe I should email Dr Jenkins and ask if he’s looking for a PhD candidate. 5 years of research and thinking ... maybe that’s what it’ll take.

I feel I’ve already started anyway.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

#replies tag #not pulp heroes #comic books #dr fate #wolverine #captain america #namor #wario

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tiesandtea · 3 years

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Simon Gilbert

Simon Says

We interviewed Simon Gilbert, Suede’s drummer, whose book So Young: Suede 1991-1993 is a journal and photographic document of the band’s early years that will be published October 8th. So Young has foreword by journalist Stuart Maconie and a vibrant, lively text by Simon himself, documenting his move from Stratford-on-Avon, his hometown, to London, the audition with Suede, life in the van, the early success years and the many amusing things that come with it. It is one of those rare books that make an outsider feel like they were there, in the van. Or in absurd mansions in L.A. belonging to industry types. Or was it record producer(s)?…

The conversation extended to Coming Up, Suede’s third album that turned 25 this year and drumming. Simon’s witty, often, one-liners contrast with my more elaborate questions, proving an interesting insight into our way of writing/replying.

by Raquel Pinheiro

So Young: Suede 1991-1993

What made you want to realease So Young?

I was searching through my archives when researching for the insatiable ones movies and found lots of old negatives and my diaries. They had to be seen.

When and why did you start your Suede archives?

As you can see from the book, it stared from the very first audition day.

From the concept idea to publishing how long did it took you to put So Young together?

30 years … I’ve always wanted to make a book since I was first in a band.

What was your selection process for which items – diary entries, photos, etc.- would be part of the book?

I wanted to form a story visually with a few bits of info thrown in here and there, also most of the photos tie in with pages from the diaries.

Which methods, storage, preservation, maintenance, if at all, do you employ to keep the various materials in your archives in good shape?

Boxes in an attic … one thing about getting the book out is that I don’t have to worry about the photos getting lost forever. It’s out there in a book!

Other than medium what differences existed between selecting material for The Insatiable Ones documentary and for So Young?

Video and photos … photos don’t translate well on a TV screen.

Do you prefer still or motion pictures and why?

I prefer photos … they capture a particular moment in time … as video does, but there’s a unique atmosphere with a photo.

So Young’s cover photo has a very Caravaggio and ballet feeling to it. Its chiaroscuro also contrasts with the images inside. Why did you choose it for the cover?

It was a striking shot and I wanted the book to be black and dark …it fitted perfectly.

How many of the photos on So Young were taken by you?

Probably about 3/4 my 3 school friends who were there with me at the beginning Iain, Kathy and Phillip took a load of us onstage, backstage, after the gig, etc., photos I couldn’t take myself.

So Young can be placed alongside books like Henry Rollins’ Get in The Van and Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, that not only chronicle and show the less glamorous, more mundane side of being in a band, but also totally immerse the reader so deep in it that we are there, feeling and going through the same things. Was your selection of materials meant to convey that “band being your(our) life” sensation?

Yes, exactly that. I was fascinated by photos of bands, not on the front cover of a magazine or on TV. The other bits of being in a band are far more interesting.

In the foreword, Stuart Maconie mentions the brevity of your diary entries which, as someone who keeps diaries, I immediately noticed. Do you prefer to tell and record a story and events with images?

I haven’t kept a diary since the end of 1993 … looking back on them they can be a bit cringeful … So, yes, I prefer images.

Contrasting with the diary entries brevity your text that accompanies So Young is lively, witty, detailed and a good description of the struggles of a coming of age, heading towards success, band. Do you think the text and images reveal too much into what it really is like being in a band, destroying the myth a bit?

I think the myth of being in a band is long gone … Reality is the new myth…

In So Young you write that when you first heard Never Mind The Bollocks by The Sex Pistols music was to be your “future dream”. How has the dream been so far?

Still dreaming … lose your dreams and you will lose your mind … like Jagger said.

Is there a reason why So Young only runs from 1991 to 1993?

Yes, I bought a video camera in 1993. It was so much easier filming everything rather than take a photo, wait 3 weeks to get it developed and find out it was blurred.

So Young has a limited deluxe numbered and signed edition already sold out. The non deluxe edition also seems to be heading the same way. How important is it for you to keep a close relationship with the fans?

So important. I love interacting with the fans and is so easy these days … I had to write replies by hand and post them out in 1993…

Playing Live Again & Coming Up

Before Suede’s concert at Qstock Festival in Oulu, Finland on 31.07.2021 you wrote on your social media “cant fucking wait dosnt come close!!!!!” and Mat [Osman, Suede’s bassist] on his “An honest-to-goodness rehearsal for an honest-to-goodness show. Finally”. How did it feel like going back to play live?

It was great. Heathrow was empty which was amazing. A bit strange to play for the first time after 2 years …., but great to get out again.

Coming Up was released 25 years ago. How does the record sound and seems to you now compared with by then?

I haven’t listened to it for a long time actually … love playing that album live … some great drumming.

Before the release of Coming Up fans and the press were wondering if Suede would be able to pull it off. What was your reaction when you first heard the new songs and realize the album was going in quite a different direction than Dog Man Star?

Far too long ago to remember.

Coming Up become a classic album. It even has its own Classical Albums documentary. Could you see the album becoming a classic by then?

I think so yes .. there was always something to me very special about that album.

Is it different to play Coming Up songs after Suede’s return? Is there a special approach to concerts in which a single album is played?

No … didn’t even need to listen to the songs before we first rehearsed … They’re lodged in my brain.

Which is your Coming Up era favourite song as a listener and which one do you prefer as a drummer?

The Chemistry Between Us.

Will the Coming Up shows consist only of the album or will B-sides be played as well?

Definitely some B-sides and some other stuff too.

Simon & Drumming

If you weren’t a drummer how would your version of “being the bloke singing at the front” be like?

Damned awful … I auditioned as a singer once, before I started drumming … It was awful!

In his book Stephen Morris says that all it takes to be a drummer is a flat surface and know how to count. Do you agree?

No.

Then, what makes a good drummer?

Being in the right band.

Topper Headon of the Clash is one of your role models. Who are the others?

He is, yes … fantastic drummer.

Charlie Watts is the other great …and Rat Scabies … superb.

She opens with drums so does Introducing the band. Your drumming gives the band a distinctive sound. How integral to Suede’s sound are the drums?

Well, what can I say … VERY!

Do you prefer songs that are driven by the drums or songs in which the drums are more in the background?

Bit of both actually … I love in your face stuff like She, Filmstar …, but ikewise, playing softer stuff is very satisfying too.

You’re not a songwriter. How much freedom and input do you have regarding drum parts?

If the songs needs it, I’ll change it.

Do you prefer blankets, towels or a pillow inside the bass drum?

Pillows.

Do you use gaffer tape when recording? If so, just on the snare drum or also on the toms? What about live?

Lots of the stuff … gaffer tape has been my friend both live and in the studio for 30 years.

What is the depth of your standard snare drum and why?

Just got a lovely 7-inch Bog wood snare from Repercussion Drums … sounds amazing. It is a 5000 year old Bog wood snare.

Standard, mallets, rods or brushes?

Standard. I hate mallets and rods are always breaking after one song. Brushes are the worst …no control.

How many drum kits have you owned? Of those, which is your favourite?

5 … my fave is my DW purple.

How long to you manage without playing? Do you play air drums?

7 years 2003 – 2010 … and never.

Can you still assemble and tune your drum kit?

Assemble, yes …tune no …have never been any good at that.

You dislike digital/electronic drum kits, but used one during the pandemic. Did you become more found of them?

Still hate them … unfortunately, they are a necessary evil.

When you first joined Suede you replaced a drum machine. Would it be fair to say you didn’t mind taking its job?

Fuck him!

Brett [Anderson, Suede’s singer] as described the new album as “nasty, brutish and short”. How does that translates drums wise?

Very nasty brutish and short.

When researching for the interview I come across the statement below on a forum: “If you’re in a band and you’re thinking about how to go about this, get every player to come up with their own track list & have a listening party. I’ve done this, not only is it great fun, it’s also massively insightful when it comes to finding out what actually is going on inside the drummer’s head!”. What actually is going on inside the drummer’s head?

Where’s my fucking lighter!

And what is going on inside the drummer as a documentarist head? How does Simon, the drummer, differs from Simon, the keen observer of his own band, bandmates, fans, himself, etc.?

There is no difference … I’m Simon here there and everywhere…

What would the 16 years old Simon who come to London think of current Simon? What advice would you give to your younger self?

Don’t smoke so much you fool!

#simon gilbert #suede #so young book

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Text

Brother Dearest Pt 77

A morning of scheduling in a stop at Freckled Moose Publishing Company had them grinning widely as you mapped out dates for the planned four stops for signings when the book would be ready to be released in August. Sealing for them the firm back half of the two year contract they had once lucked out on that brought them more clients in their affiliation with you. Curiously at the end of the meeting you asked, “Just curious, if I ever wanted to put out a sort of History book could I call you, would that be possible for the company to publish?”

Excitedly the Editor asked, “You’re writing a History book?”

And the other asked, “History on what?”

“Well, I sort of have a notorious ancestor that I’ve been digging into. Found letters from Kings and even a few Popes who tried to sentence them to death,” widening their curious grins. “Granted it’s probably years away from being done.”

The head guy stated, “We would be beyond interested and honored to publish your book whenever it is ready. How’d you find out about your ancestor?”

“I got a letter from the King of Spain who had been researching them out of fun growing up and he saw a portrait in what he’d found and then saw pictures of me and King George and he had to write to me about it and I’ve been a bit hooked digging myself. They’re sort of turned into this legendary person who’s been all over the world through history, which is sort of odd and people may just shout that it’s got to be made up, but there’s official documents for it all.”

“Well we’ve certainly been lacking in our non fiction section of authors so whenever you are ready please do send us a draft or some hint of this intriguing thing.”

“We will,” you said and they showed you down so you could stop at the comic book studio next to hand over the next chunk of storylines that had the guys beaming at the direction you were leading the story from its latest cliff hanger.

“I think it was nice throwing them that bone,” Victor said that had James agree. “You can tell they were bound to try and offer another deal for something when this book was through.”

“At least I know now, they might be inclined to humor a History book from me which borders on a creature like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster.”

“You are neither of those,” James said.

“I’m not tall enough, I know.” You said making the brothers chuckle and shake their heads.

“Well let’s feed your tiny mythical self, Darling.” James said helping you back into the car for the drive home again.

Mr Yarbrough’s stop in on Monday did little to calm your nerves at being expected at a new campus the following morning. Sleep somehow attained didn’t feel like it had lasted the full night and more like a sort of jump in time, while not tired all the same it was an odd feeling to have to get up again. Comfortably in a skirt and blouse with cardigan in hand from the house once you were fed and had nursed again snuggly into the car you sat chatting anxiously with James and Victor around you on their joint task to see you off to school pre stop into the comic studio again.

The excitement was palpable from the moment you exited the car with bag in hand to join the hundreds of students who had arrived on this first day of the summer classes that each one you got close to greeted you fondly. Aids in the halls helped to guide the way to where those who hadn’t taken tours were headed. One of whom excitedly guided you to the Art Wing where you found the first of your classes. One on the styles of art mediums and the deeper meanings and symbolism to each of them to further deepen not just your knowledge of pieces of art like the class you had taken but the reasoning behind them and how to recognize various styles. This class usually was paired with another, your next one where it would be continued lessons on the styles and according to the course description would be more of an advanced art class.

The first Professor however froze when he saw you and promptly nodded his head when he noticed you were looking his way as you entered and crossed the room to get to the stadium of seats. “Baroness Howlett, good morning.” His fingers fidgeting around the button on his vest atop his neatly pressed shirt on the man who reminded you a bit of a bird by the slant of his cheeks and chin to match his slim forehead.

“Good morning. Just Howlett is fine. No need to complicate things for another student to teach.”

“I can imagine you will never be just another student,” he said and then added, “As you wish. Mrs Howlett it is.”

“You won’t regret it,” you said and made your way to the second row of seating along the wall to keep out of the way from the other students who filed in, each stuck between their confusion on if they should choose a seat nearby the famous face amongst them or to keep their distance. All the same a cheery group of young ladies chose to settle a few seats away from you in your row who only lured more students to fill the rows in front and behind your chosen seat. Mainly slides and ample discussion upon each piece to get right into the kick of the lessons inside the notebook you had for the class ample notes were taken and eventually you were off to the next class.

A robed woman on the raised platform inside what seemed to be more of an art studio lit both by a wall with windows across the top third and the dangling light fixtures. All to make it the perfect setting for the 30 easels that a man you would take as one who prized himself on his artistic prowess huffed through hanging more large sketch pads on each easel. It wasn’t until the third one he hung up that you took notice of the names scrawled across the backs to name where you stood. And of course you as the shortest of the students who had entered and would enter in the very back you were settled in a stunning move for everyone but the smug Professor who at the snap of his fingers had the woman drop her robe.

“Pick a style of art and interpret what you see. You have an hour, impress me.” From the bar of the easel you lifted the box of Mongol brand colored pencils also with your name on a strip of tape to mark it as yours and opened the case to pull out a grey one.

Basic outlines in dots for the shape of the odd crab like couch that the model was draped across. A yellow set of dots lined the body’s end points before a light green was used to work on a few things behind the couch. For some reason you heard hour and wanted to have the hardest challenge possible so you aimed for pointillism. Not just for difficulty but also an excuse to not be too terribly detailed without aiming for something abstract like Picasso could have dreamed up.

Obviously not much was expected and when the professor who hadn’t so much as said hello just about fell down as you completed a series of smaller dots between larger dots to complete another chunk of the blurry yet clearer scene. It seemed he had already in his made up decision to be distant to each of his students to glance down his nose at their work so far continued on to the next easel in his lap through the room. This was his chosen method and this was just how it was going to go and when the class was through your piece and another had his focus linger as he switched the sketch pads for the next class wondering how the next time he saw you all would fare.

Anatomy and Physiology came next and another look of shock bled into an impressed question from this former Doctor of a Professor who heard you had repaired an artery with just a heated pin that had him agree to speak further on possible difficult cases you had faced in the war that cost him his left foot. While more technical and loaded with all male students to surround your seat up front at his suggestion for a clear line of sight at least he seemed pleased to have a fellow Army Medic to help boost up the usual lower end of his summer grading curve.

Communication came next and seemed a rather simple statistic laced course that was followed by another male centered course of Engineering. And while you were in a skirt the basic schematic sheets offered for you all as tests of intuition on what you could do in a long string of what could come for the rest of the few months you would be studying here with mention of actually constructing something for your exams.

From your last class you couldn’t help but grin at the thought of being able to return home again to your girls. So much so that when you saw James’ back you hastened a few steps to take hold of his suspender strap luring a smirk across his lips in a prompt turn to lower and kiss his bubbly wife no matter how many people could see the display of affection. “I take it you had a good morning?” Victor crooned in the midst of the lip lock and smiled at you when you broke apart to cuddle into James’ chest around your bag and notebooks.

“I did, be glad to get home though.” You said making them smile and guide you into the middle of the front bench seat to make the drive home when you shared your day and heard about the latest on their morning in the comic studio.

Wednesday tutoring was followed by on campus classes the following day to finish off the stretch of schooling for the week. All in all not a bad load to bear and one that could easily be laid onto a schedule to manage with ease. Your final hours leading into Friday however had Norma back at home and excited to take you on a family trip for the day to LA.

‘Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!’ words that were etched across the covers of magazines and newspapers alike with ample radio mentions. Amongst the hype of the latest Stark film in the works with one of the minor characters in this film word of your touching down with Norma had a sea of cameras there for an explosive amount of press for the film. Right away Norma’s smile was locked in place and she answered questions as best she could on the way to the waiting car and of those already camped outside the home rented for all of you on the beach.

Nice and quiet the moonlit beach had you on the back porch listening to the waves lap once the children had been put down to sleep. Random strolling couples and a few lone teens with telescopes were in your view stealing watch alone together under the rarely seen stars deeper in the cities. “Almost makes you wonder,” Eddie said joining you on the porch as Dawn and Norma started on the nightly facial routine you said you’d join in a moment a few minutes prior. “Just how much we’re missing out on down here with the tiny telescopes we have.”

“I think I’d settle on knowing what heartbeat I’m hearing out in the ocean.”

Eddie chuckled saying, “Probably a shark or a really old turtle.” He nodded his head to lure you inside saying, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up for a short nap then we have to get you ready for the premier and we can all head to the beach after.” Under his arm you were led back inside to wash your face and have Norma’s smile spread at the calming act for her to play specialist to your beauty regimen. Nerves however would have to be set aside as you all laid down with your adoring husbands for the nap to bring you closer to the premier.

Only you and Norma had seats so special care from the others came in help to get the pair of you ready to ease into the car that came to carry you there and back again for the premier. Dolled up to the nines in a wave of flashes you exited the car and stepped aside with hands smoothed down over the skirt of your dress for Norma’s exit after. Down along the carpet you strolled at her side ignoring the waft of your loose curls pulled back on one side the breeze kept blowing about your face and chest no matter how many times you brushed them back. A plot to keep you set apart even more from Norma on her big day who had her every curl secured in place in an elegant bun and while she did her bits of press you stood aside and happily mingled with the other members of the cast who had finished their turns.

Nerves however did not wane and with hold of her hand Norma’s confidence was bolstered enough to settle into your chosen seats for the opening speech from the Producer and Director that was followed by the start of the film. All through up to the minor line that she gave that had her grip tighten on your arm and remain so until the credits rolled and in the rise of the lights a brief after luncheon was called for. Compliments and talks from the heads of 20th Century about her next picture they had lined up for her to audition for once this assumed once off film Stark had wrangled them into allowing her to play a large part of had her a bit deflated when she returned to your side even against the peaceful grin on her face.

“You want me to punch them?” You asked making her giggle and loop her arms around yours again.

“They have another walk on bit for me in a musical comedy with the Marx Brothers they want me to audition for after we get back to New York.”

You nodded and said, “Well I’ll just have to keep writing stories for Stark so he can keep giving you things to sink your teeth into won’t I?” You teased widening her smile. And sweetly you patted your free hand on her arm, “They’ll learn Jeanie, nowhere near just another bombshell blonde they can bop around in the background. Audiences will be gnawing at the bone to get a better look at you. Just the beginning.”

“You are an amazing writer, truly, you should keep it up.”

“I just might, Howard’s last call just about had him asking for one, I can feel it. And with my wild dreams no telling what my head can come up with. Just as long as I don’t have to sing or play in the next one,” you said making her giggle again.

“You singing made that scene. You will see when it comes out.”

“As long as it helps with the press to get more in those seats to see my treasured younger sister,” you said making her giggle with you, “Then I will take a stroll across a scene in whatever film I can to help.”

Playfully her mood shifted and remained upbeat until back at the beach house the pair of you washed your faces and changed into two piece swim suits matching Dawn’s in complimenting bright colors to help carry the babies out to go and play. Across the sand towels were laid inside of a fitted sheet held out by your shoes with a large umbrella set up for the babies to be in the shade with the brothers. Just beside the towels Teddy giggled as you helped him build a sand kingdom with a moat of water Eddie brought from the ocean in a bucket to Norma and Dawn’s gleeful trip into the water.

A curious sound turned your head to the beach making you ask, “What is that?” James’ head turned as you asked, “Do you guys hear that?” And over the wind, the waves, distant chatter of photographers creeping in for pictures and giggles from your sisters in helping their daughters to their first steps into the ocean they too heard the odd sound of shifting sand.

Victor said, “Sounds like a cracking and scraping.”

“There are heart beats,” you said and shifted closer to the source of the sound with Eddie behind you.

“Couldn’t be sea turtles this time of day, could it?” Victor asked James who shrugged.

“It’s cool enough, almost sunset here in an hour.” He replied.

Teddy between you and his dad’s arms poked his head and gasped at the sudden sink of a small circle of sand. Gradual progress was made as you accepted hold of your camera from Victor who had been snapping pictures of the four at the water now on their way back when he called for them. Gasps sounded at the first head and in a gradual flurry of heads and front flipper arms that came into view the first of near to a hundred hatchlings filled the circle of sand around their entrance to this world. “Ooh, got you little guy,” James said in a reach down to bring out the one still in the hole who had gotten stuck on his back to join his siblings all focused on discovering their bearings. “There you go,” he said with a smile lowering it down after you snapped a picture of the duo.

A few random gulls were easily swayed by the bits of your picnic left over thrown a good distance and arms used to shoo them away from the tiny parade to the ocean ending in bittersweet cuddles at the somehow profound loss of these tiny newfound friends now out in the wide unexplainable ocean. Teddy broke the silence asking, “Where’s their Mommy and Daddy?”

Eddie said as he lifted his son in his arms, “They’re out there, Teddy Bear. Don’t you worry, they know where their babies are, bound to have tons of food to make up for the long crawl back to them.”

Victor said, “They lay the eggs on the beach so they’ll be nice and safe until time for them to hatch. Most of the time it happens at night, when it’s nice and cool and most of the birds are away at their nests.”

Eddie said, “Let’s finish up this city of yours, Teddy Bear.” Turning back while you stayed with Norma and Dawn and their girls at the water a few moments to James and Victor’s slip back to the shade across the towels.

James hummed sweetly, “Let’s get you girls back in the shade.” Not much longer you lounged with your head on James’ lap to play with your girls and under a spare towel leaned against his chest feed the three as Victor claimed his proud task of capturing more candid moments of his family then claimed a turn with his Petal in the water as Norma came to lay out beside you. Sure to rival the images that would be splashed over the pages of newspapers and magazines for weeks to come dissecting every moment of this trip and more especially for the newspapers that you couldn’t have possibly been pregnant with three children so recently without having had some sort of surgical procedure to get your figure back.

The remainder of your weekend allowed you to steal some time with Victor and his dark room and a private dinner alone with James as a sort of date night on your own after crowded and cramped traveling. Time together was one of his main concerns after having gotten you on your feet and the girls onto a schedule so that in the long run as they grew older and things grew more complicated when the trio were fully mobile and had the chance to let their free will grow. A day both aspired for and anxiety inducing for when they could drive you both apart to keep them contained and only let you find each other at the end of the day to collapse in a joint heap of exhaustion to recharge for the following day.

He had to make certain he wouldn’t let his love for the children you would gift him cloud his daily need to remind you just how deeply he loved and cherished you. He had faced those rough patches with his first wife and hoped to avoid that, knowing how it hurt his son and himself, that was unacceptable to allow to happen again. Not with you. Victor had made it clear there was no chance of this marriage breaking apart, he’d sooner face death than to repeat his former mistakes and hurt his family as he had in the past. And while a dinner alone on a blanket under the stars didn’t seem like much every shift closer to him and grip of his shirt and ample stolen kisses let him know it was amply desired from you as well.

Tests with Mr Yarbrough came again on Monday for History, Geography and Religion, which again you aced and after he was amused to hear from Teddy the swarm of turtle hatchlings you backed up with pictures to prove the encounter. Tuesday on campus again came with repeats of the news of turtles that a few relatives from America had mailed pictures of the hatch related part of your beach trip that had your family played as true nature lovers. Excitement had burst with news of the premier and each chance capable questions were asked about the cast members and famous people you had mingled with while there. And Wednesday brought the end of June with more tests at home from your tutor Mr Fenske for Economics, Government, Political Science, and Anthropology, all your major serious subjects with thicker exam packets that the results for the final two would have to be named for you at the following week’s tutoring session.

Thursday came with the final stop on campus that came with buzz from not just fellow students but your family as Sunday was your birthday. A day that began with a family birthday breakfast followed by a party with the whole town that showed up to your home proud to spend the after noon with their dear friends and admire the new girls added to your family. Girls who amongst the toddlers in your family and those of families in town were glad to have the change to increase of children to play with.

Sharp cries however cut short the tries to get an early night’s sleep and with Herc you tried to calm the elder three toddlers who squirmed and writhed in pain against your efforts while James and Victor were sent into a near tailspin of panic and needed to take a long walk outside.

“It’s chicken pox,” you echoed in their minds calming the duo enough to come back inside to find the trio slightly more relaxed after being given some medicine for their fevers and to help them sleep.

And when they entered Victor came over to take hold of his precious Petal from your hold as you answered another call from some of the parents in town to warn of their children who had caught the unfortunate bug. “Come here precious.” He said nestling her slumbering body into his chest to pepper the top of her head with kisses between muttered comments to her every irritated slumbering grumble.

Dawn in her path from the kitchen had a familiar set of pocket journals in hand, “I’ve added chicken pox to the bug books. The triplets are still symptom free?” She asked eyeing Elliot, Sarah and Erich feeding them with the bottles you had pumped in the cooling baths you had made for the sick three.

Erich answered, “No symptoms, sleeping soundly. Jaqi didn’t catch her pox until she was over a year.”

Sarah answered, “It’s from the milk, babies are safe if their mother’s have the antibodies already until they pass their first year.” A fact that calmed James and had him move in to kiss their heads and circle back to comfort Victor as Eddie swayed on his own feet keeping hold of Teddy as he nodded off to his own dose of medicine. Herc after another check of Marigold’s temperature from her armpit had him contently handing her over to Dawn again and accepting the books reading the marked down cases of colic or diarrhea up to the few shots available for infants and even Teddy’s teeth coming in to not miss a single illness of any severity.

“Unfortunately like the common cold our medicines don’t do much to dent this illness. However Erich was able to aid us with how Jaqi reacted to the illness so we have a good idea on how this could unfold. Compared to how mortals experience it fairly easily. There is a ten day window of no to few symptoms then the bumps arrive that baths and ointment can mend.”

Victor said, “I’m not sleeping for two weeks then.”

And you crossed the room to stroke his back, “We’re all here to watch the babies Kitty.”

Victor said, “You need to get some sleep. You calmed my Petal down, thank you.”

“It’s an unsettling wait, but it’s fairly easy to get over, we’ve got plenty of oats and baking soda for the baths and we can make fruit popsicles if they get some in their mouths like Gina’s boys did.”

He simply cuddled more around her and nodded his head to the side urging you to bed, a gesture you sighed and turned to reluctantly head to bed as your girls were being carried back to the nursery to get some sleep.

“Here you are my dear,” Edie said pouring your tea in the morning an hour after breakfast that had almost lulled you back to sleep in wait for your tutor. With a smile she watched you unfold from your uncomfortable ball in the armchair of your choice lined up perfectly in a stream of sunlight stating, “Rather a rough night. I shall aid in the baths when the bumps arrive, I apologize for missing the fevers, the most frightful part.”

You shook your head, “Around the Brocks I have seen more pox than I could have dreamed possible. If I couldn’t tell them apart I’d say one of them had caught it twice.” You said making her chuckle in your sip on the tea to help perk you up.

“At least you have tons of practice. In my own youth I was surrounded by ample children myself. Some mothers can be rather frightened with their first child, I was rather at home with Erik’s colic to his worst fits or growth.”

“James handled it rather well compared to what I assumed for the first big illness.”

“Your parents agree, the brothers did bear through the pain rather well. Victor did sleep, more proof there. A few more fevers and I do believe he will calm from his panics.”

After another sip you replied in a soft sigh, “I wish I could do more.”

“You are,” she answered luring your eyes to her. “You aid in mothering his daughter while her mother is away. He is not alone in fatherhood. That is a great comfort more than you realize I would wager.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t want to come with us?” You said widening her smile.

“My son is strong and shall be safe under your watch. No mother wishes to release their child upon adulthood, and I could wonder how difficult it should be when to release your trio.”

“It’s eighteen years away, I would say, though shockingly my husband has been in my life for six years already. Numbers cannot be a comfort there. Have to let go before I know it. I should probably try to not think about that too often. Might start to make me sad for no reason when I’m back in school and they keep growing while I’m away.”

“They are always growing, away or in front of your eyes. We shall bear it together. You guard my boy and I shall help to guard yours in the summers and winter breaks. My work keeps me rather busy while we are apart.”

Tutoring came rather easily and somehow free of yawns thanks to the tea and a few stolen snacks and let loose a bit of work time that in the library was free of visitors Erik jumped at the chance to claim the seat across from you. Back into his own borrowed textbooks from your courses he wished to sign up for this year he delved with a few questions asked and answered for him until the eventual dip of your head that had him chuckle and scoop you up to carry you to your room for a much needed nap until supper. Another feeding however woke you as your parents settled around you to hold the girls until the trio were nursed by you fully, both who smiled at each drowsy droop of your eyes in slow waking still from the nap then helped to get you up to take a few laps inside your wing to stir your body and mind.

The nap however did fuel a change between you and James, him who required an early trip to bed for his exhausted self that allowed you and Victor, with hold of his daughter still, to get the surprise cake for James ready. Still he refused to leave her to sleep alone and only let her go to steal brief naps in hold of Herc or one of your parents if James was not himself awake. “I am doing better,” Victor said turning your head as you mixed the cake batter to pour into the readied pan for it. “I am, thank you. Nora called earlier about in tears she’s missing it. Comforting her, calming her pain helped to show how much better it feels knowing you’re here for support. I didn’t take to the fever as terribly as I thought I would. Had a hunch I might need to break something, but Herc says Petal’s strong.”

“Just doesn’t seem fair at times,” you said parting his lips as you sniffled and poured the mix into the pan to keep distracted from crying, “Just because I’m here now, why she’s safe and why they weren’t. Why you had to lose two of your babies, why I could heal Teddy but I couldn’t help Ambrose when she lost one of her babies.”

That had him draw you into his chest and kiss your forehead closing his eyes to the tear he felt soak through his shirt when you hugged him as firmly as you could around his hold of his slumbering daughter. “None of that is on you. Herc says my babies are ready to come back to me,” your head tilted back to peer up at him and he nodded, “So if we do have another baby, they would be able to come back, in safer times. So don’t you cry over our past sufferings. Look forward with us. We have days of suffering through oatmeal baths to come yet.” He said making you shake your head and inch back to finish pouring the mixture into the pan you then added to the warmed up oven to bake.

“Funny, very funny. It’s like a lit fuse, now I’ll have to wait a year or more for our girls to catch it as well, no telling how many more babies Dawn would have had by then,” you said making him chuckle. “I would say Jeanie,”

“She has work, we are pacing ourselves on babies. Her figure is important to the company and she hoped to at least have Petal talking full sentences before we tried again without sleeves.”

“At least you have a plan,” you said moving to mix up the icing next. “I was on the pill and we used sleeves, still, triplets. And people say God has no sense of humor.” Making him chuckle. “Hopefully we can wait a few years at least, have me into my graduate courses a good way. Maybe just one that time, or twins if I’m destined to only have multiples, maybe this time I can work in a few pushes in labor.”

“There was nothing wrong about your labor. Two day standoff is nothing to shake a stick at and you know it. Most women would have begged to be knocked out or to be sliced open by the first dawn.”

“I know. I suppose, going against the grain is going to be painful. Missed moments, while I study or, write or, take pictures and work on our comics.”

“It takes a village. We will make time, the girls won’t be left wanting by you or anyone else. Promise,” he said and you nodded again, “You chase those dream degrees of yours and you could do anything, on any schedule. Could even work from home if you got the right deal going. Jimmy and me know, we missed time working on our degrees and licenses, and we got paid more for it and our babies were better taken care of while we had them. You have to lay down the foundation first, can’t just drop a bridge in the middle of the ocean, they don’t float very well.”

“I think I found the next quote for another throw pillow for your parlor,” you said making him smirk your way.

“Looking forward to it.” Cake with breakfast was a welcome surprise and sampled to be saved partly for lunch with you when you had returned home to spend the rest of his birthday exactly how he wished it with the women of his life. That company alone was the greatest gift he could have ever received and ever would.

Pt 78

All –

@sherala007, @mariannetora, @jesgisborne, @knitastically, @catthefearless, @theincaprincess, ggbbhehe4455, @lilith15000, @alishlieb,

Not nsfw(smut) - @otakumultimuse-hiddlewhore

X Marvel-Cast - @himoverflowers, @theincaprincess

Brother Dearest - @thorinanddwalinsdwarrowdam, @swoopswishsward

#James Howlett x oc #Victor Creed x Norma Jeane #Eddie Brock x OC #Venom #Edie and Erik Lehnsherr #Chicken Pox #Old Memories #Marvel #Surprise Birthday Cake

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famej · 4 years

Text

Model

Mammon x Reader

Camera flashes filled the room, capturing the demon’s face. Poses after poses, from cute to extra hot and with or without clothes, every little patch of Mammon has been immortalized.

I was sitting on a bench, far away from all the lights, on the side of the shooting spot. Mye yes were glued to the handsome demon, unable to understand how this man who always made bad decisions for himself and getting himself in trouble most of the time, coudl also be a model for the most famous fashion brandin all the devildom.

Apparently, his thirst for money could make him do anything and « anything » meant becoming hot to the point he’d make you wanting more.

The flashes died down and the photographer put his camera down.

-« Five minutes break and we’ll do the swim suits » he said before the crew scattered around in the studio.

Mammon looked in your direction and waved before leaving his spot and trotted twoard you.

He stopped right in front of you with a bright smile, you stood up.

« How was it ? Did I make your heart melt with my beauty ? » he teased, flexing his muscles exageeratingly.

After rolling my eyes and chuckling at his antics, I answered :

You were really good ! Honestly I have trouble admitting that the Mammon I kno can be that good looking and charismatic »

« Ah thanks ! I knew you… Oi ! What does that mean ? I’m always good-looking and charismatic ! And you forgot smart as hell ! »

« Sometimes more than others… » you teased « Want some water ? » you asked, grabbing the bottle of fresh water you’d kept especially for him.

He accepted your gift and took a big gulp ; he didn’t even finish drinking that a member of the staff came to take him to get changed.

« See you later, MC, don’t take your eyes off me or you’ll miss one of my glorious pose » he shouted through the room before running off.

I shook my head and let myself fall back on the bench.

While Mammon was in the changing room, the background completely changed . The color whent from white to night blue and on the floor was a sort of low pool of water . Going with this set up came hoses placed above the water. Only with the materials before your eyes, you had a brief idea of what could be the incoming photoshoot.

Next thing, Mammon re-appeared, wearing a white swim trunk, matching his hair and fitting perfectly i ncontrast with his tanned skin. Oh and were those abs I was seeing ? Yeah they were ! It definitely wasn’t the same person you were living with ! The one doing stupid things, who stole his brothers’ stuff to buy ridiculously luxurious items, and who ended more often than not hung by his feet from the chandelier. But this Mammon walked past you, throwing yo a wink over his shoulder before settling in his previous spot. He stepped in the water while the photograph ordered two of his minions to work the hoses.

« This one will be for summer, you’ll make all the girls fawn over you and the other demons will be crazy jealous ! Give it your all and you’ll be our next face, Mammon » he told his model

The staff turned the hoses on and the avatar of greed received the water from above, switching to super model mode. Arms extended and head lighlty thrown back, eyes closed with a satisfied smile. The water poured down on him, drops glistening on his exposed skin.

« Yeah ! Just like that ! »

Mammon brought his hands to his hair, pushing his wet mane back, then gave a seductive look at the camera. Followed, was a cliché of him sliding his hands from his neck down to his lower belly, stopping a few seconds on his defined abs. The photographer was capturing every bit of his sexiness as, well as you, trying to immortalize this image in your mind forever.

« For the last one, be sexy as hell, we want our readers to drool »

The demon grabbed the hem of his swim trunk and lowered it enough so the white hair of his happy trail was exposed. He lowered it even more to show off the very last few of his pubes before his engine. V-line perfectly shadowed and garanteed to please all Majolish fans.

The photographer let out a bunch of satisfied noise and obscene onomatopeias before putting his camera away.

« Perfect ! Mammon, dear, you will be Majolish next man model, you’re amazing ! »

The latter looked at you and gave you thumbs up, punctued by a wink, with an exaggerated mouth movement. Yeah, usual Mammon was back.

I waited quietly until he came back from changing, all the previous sights of Mammon clear in my head.

« Y/N are yo uready ? »

I shook my head, chasing my impure thoughts away and followed him out of the studio, eager to got my hands on a copy of that magazine.

Two weeks later, Majolish had published their new edition of their ashion magazine and on the cover was an unknown handsome demon.

Knwoming the release date, thanks to that unknown demon who kept throwing hints your way, in case you forgot, you decided to wait for the morning opening and buy as much as you could.

When you left, a bunch of girls were gushing over Mammon’s pictures and you thanked yourself for being so well organized, ‘cause the news had spreaded and all the copies have been sold out within the first minutes of the shop’s opening.

The house of Lamentation was rather quiet at this hour, weekends meant that the inhabitants, except Lucifer would sleep in, leaving the household in utter quietness.

So, itw as easy to trottle back to your room without been seen. Arrived there, you sat on your bed and spreaded all the copies on your blanket. Your took one and admire dit. The picture was beautiful, Mammon’s skin was wet, his hair pushed back and trunk low on his hips. Sooooo hot !!! You couldn’t refrain a squeal of happiness. Yo uhad to keep those copies somewhere safe where no one especially the second born, who has the curious habit to rummage through your stuff like a raccoon, would find it.

Speaking of the devil, he bursted through your door, screaming, terrorizing you in the process.

« MC ! Have you seen the cover ?! I received the picture by e-mail a minute ago. I’m so hot ! »

He speed walked to your bed, not caring that he was still in his pajamas, his hair looking like a bird’s nest.

Before you could do anything, his eyes fells on the numerous magazines.

« Ugh… »

None answer came to your mind due to the embarrassement you were feeling.

« How many of these did you buy ? Damn, this picture is amazing ! What do you think ? »

He looked at you intently, his self pide evident on his face.

« Why do you think I bought some many ? You look marvelous ! »

It was too much to look at him, you kept your eyes on the magazine, hoping that not seeing his face would prevent the incoming blush. The silence became heavy, normally Mammon would blabber nonsense to fill the blanks.

« AHAHAH Of course I am ! I always look fabulous , I’m the great Mammon after all ! »

It shoulve have sounded so confident but the stutter and blush didn’t make it very convincing.

« You’re right. I’ve seen you during the photoshoot and it’s not surprising, you’re a really good model. Here, take one as a souvenir, I keep one for myself and distribute the others to your brothers, I bet they’ll be proud of you » you smiled at him, handing him one of the copies.

He seized it and looked at the cover, before lowering the magazine, and looking at the floor.

« Do…you really think that ? »

He looked adorable when he was flustered. Oh Mammon…

« Of course ! And if you ever get the other pics I can make an album so you’ll have you own professional book that we can look at whenever we want »

He perked up at your words and dared to show you his flushing face.

« Well, thanks, I’ll think about it. But… you know, you have the real me to look at right ? »

That made you get off your bed and walk up to him. And got on your tiptoes and kissed his cheek, which made him blush even more than he already was.

« I know that . But I’m just showing how proud of you I am, Mammon »

And then you wrapped your arms around him, hugging him tightly.

The avatar of greed was speechless, his arms laid at his side, under his disbelief. But he slowly encircled your little frame, letting himself slump against you, even burying his face in the crook of your neck.

« Thank you » he whispered , holding you thight

« Don’t thank me for pointing how amazing you are, Mammon »

That was the only thing he need to start tearing up in their embrace, thanking whoever decided to send you to him.

#Mammon #obey me #otome game #obey me brothers #mammon x reader #lucifer #leviathan #satan #asmodeus #belphegor #beelzebub #obey me imagine #mammon imagine

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