#The last one is exclusively for Dandy

[jazzzzzzhands]

✨🧡🌙SEND THIS TO OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING ✨🧡

HELLO IM GIVING YOU ONE HERE YOU GO AND TAKE THIS TOO JUST FOR YOU

I am a simple man whom loves groovy so so much. Have some gift art~

YOU!! Firstly your WORDS you are having him say!! Poetic! Perfect!! Absolutely VIBING!!! Secondly, I am staring VERY RESPECTFULLY You draw him so so CUTELY THANK YOUUU!!! <333 (Holding this forever) You are so bold for that chest line and gave me courage for my own self indulgence... You've unlocked!! Hair-Down Mode!!

He loves Pet names.. Sunshine, My Dear, Sugar, Little Flower .... UwUr<33333

[ragnarokhound]

can vamp Tim give Jason a blood transfusion if needed? 🤔

in your vamp/wer verse I mean

Oh, that's an interesting question! In my vampire!Tim/werewolf!Jason verse and the accompanying fic, Tim drinks almost exclusively off of Jason because a) Jason loves it and b) Tim would near-starve himself otherwise :') (and he kind of does anyway, Jason has to bully him into feeding). So the only blood inside Tim at any given moment is usually Jason's original blood anyway. But can Tim give that blood back in an emergency?

tldr: yes, under certain conditions. lol

My reply was getting long because this kind of speculating is my favorite game to play, so if you're curious about what those conditions are and how I reached that conclusion, more details are under the cut:

In this verse, Jason is the kind of werewolf who doesn't have a lot of control/retained personality when he shifts, but he DOES have a lot of meta powers. (As a treat for becoming a mindless, violent monster lol ur welcome Jay)

One of those powers includes rapid healing ala deadpool/wolverine (unless the wound is inflicted by silver, ancestral or otherwise) so it would be remarkably difficult for Jason to reach the point where he even needs a blood transfusion. But let's consider that worst case scenario, in which Jason has suffered enough silver-inflicted wounds that his healing factor breaks and he needs blood, yesterday. Wuh oh.

Tim is the #1 candidate to consider for a Jason blood transfusion because that's his gamer fuel of choice - but for Tim to be a viable donor, it would depend on the length of time it's been since Tim drank from Jason, and how much. They're on a time limit because Tim's body doesn't replenish blood on its own, he has to steal it.

Brace yourself for the suspect use of rough science facts in the middle of supernatural fantasy speculation about vampire/werewolf AUs, lmao

So supposing Jason has about 12 pints/5.7 L of blood in total, he could lose maybe 5 pints/2.4 L of blood at a time without dying (and that's a high estimate, he'd start going into shock way before that lmao), AND it would take him weeks to restore that blood - if he were human.

Luckily for Tim, he can steal quite a bit from Jason without killing him because of the handy dandy werewolf healing factor that restores Jason's blood almost as fast as Tim's dusty ass can absorb it. (Tim's veins @ Jason's blood: 𝔪𝔬𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔷𝔢 𝔪𝔢). Unluckily for Tim (and Jason), Tim has about a zillion hangups over drinking that much all at once. Aw.

A brief google search tells me that in an average human body, red blood cells live about 120 days. For simplicity, we'll say that Tim being a vampire and having weird vampire powers counteracts Jason being a werewolf and his blood having weird werewolf properties - so when Tim is full (and I mean full) of Jason's blood, he's good for somewhere just under that 120 days.

The blood isn't immediately starving in Tim's stupid vampire body because it's strong, sexy werewolf blood; it stays hydrated for a million years and could thrive like a dandelion in a crack in the sidewalk, let alone a perfectly good, albeit abandoned, vascular system. (Jason's blood @ Tim's veins: 𝒾𝓉'𝓈 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝑒 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓁 𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓉𝑒)

That being said, Tim starts getting very hungry near the end of that time frame as the blood is used/dies, and that time frame shrinks every time he bleeds (which is often, RIP Tim). But he'd still have a solid month or so of healthy, viable Jason blood pumping through his undead ticker. (unless Tim gets REALLY beat up lol, which is not unlikely OTL)

SO all this to say: can Tim give it back?

I would say yes, IF Tim has fed recently, and he's fed A LOT. Otherwise, he just straight up might not have the blood to give anymore because his stupid husk of a body already used it all.

If he tried to give Jason blood around the time he's getting hungry again, when Jason's blood is on it's last legs after sustaining an active vampire without reinforcements for weeks to months, it wouldn't be as effective as a blood transfusion from someone who can make their own blood and therefore has a fresher supply.

tldr (again lol); Tim could become a blood donor for Jason, but only once he's regularly letting himself drink from Jason, and drinking until he's full.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

So, Ahti II, huh?

I've explained Ahti II's backstory a bit in the past, but there's not really... any general information on him. What he's like. So I'm talking about him now! First here’s this handy dandy information sheet I made of Ahti some time ago:

(+ Art reference)

King Ahti I (the First) formed the Kingdom of Osmeri about a millennium ago from the scattered groups of merfolk living in the Baltic Sea, and his descendants have been ruling ever since. Ahti II is the oldest child of the current queen (if barely, him and his sister are twins) and therefore he’ll be next on the throne. He’s been raised for that purpose pretty much his whole life: he’s knowledgeable in politics, history, literature and languages. Now he just has to learn what people really care about! Hence why his parents sent him and his sister off to the coast of Finland. They’re privately tutored as they navigate normal life and try to make friends.

Ahti II would indeed make for a pretty good ruler: he’s kind, he’s patient, his manners are impeccable, he’s very knowledgeable, and he wants to take absolutely everyone into consideration, although that last feature does make him more of a people pleaser… he would like everyone to be happy, but since that’s frankly impossible he takes it a bit hard and blames himself when compromises don’t satisfy everyone. Still, the role of a diplomat is a natural one for him and he slips into it very easily. He keeps his own interests and thoughts on the background and centers other people and the actually important topics first. Ahti II can handle crowds, even able to entertain and hold the attention of big ones, but prefers quieter environments and just a few people whose company to enjoy.

Ahti II’s big interests include literature and, by the heavens, FISH. He is ridiculously excited about fish! His interest was sparked by the domestic pikes his family raises and it never once has died down. He loves learning about fish and aquatic life from foreign waters and keenly eyes the fish that he can see while swimming. He’ll very enthusiastically explain everything he knows to anyone who’s willing to listen. Like stated above he’s also very enthusiastic about reading and stories, it’s how he often learned other languages as a child. He dabbles a bit in literary analysis and even writes himself, but he’s shyer about showing his poems to others. Along with writing, his other hobbies include collecting vintage animal illustrations, hiking in nature, and swimming, since now he can’t do it all the time. He likes to keep himself busy with activities!

Ahti II has a speaking quirk where he tend to exclusively use formal language, in every language he knows. In part this is because he often liked to read older books as a child, but also he just really likes speaking that way and he likes the sort of reputation it gives him. He wants people to see him as a polite and jolly person first and foremost, whom one can trust when there’s trouble. He never swears, often he exclaims “heavens” when things go badly (the “heavens” he talks about are not “the heaven” you might think of, “heaven/haven” is the common name of a species of giant sea turtle that according to legends sailors could trust to help them if their ship sunk). He might not drop the act even when he’s upset.

His favourite type of music is cheerful corporate pop music that most would find annoying. His favorite food overall is cheese and cucumber sandwiches, his favourite snack is sweet liquorice. His favourite animal is the northern pike, if you asked him what his favourite land animal is he’d say lion. His favourite flower is coltsfoot. His favourite smells are rain and saltwater.

[hlupdate]

W​​hat’s the secret to a great portrait? At 86 years old, David Hockney has a few ideas. A lifetime of looking has taught him to always start with the face. “I begin with the head first,” he says, matter-of-factly, from his home in France. “From there, I place everything else.”

That was his approach when, late last May, Harry Styles traveled to his light-filled studio in Normandy and stationed himself on a cane chair, ready to become the esteemed artist’s latest subject. Over two days, Hockney worked to capture the exact hues of red and yellow in Styles’s striped cardigan, the indigo of his jeans, the string of pearls at his neck—not to mention the unmistakable tousled fringe of one of the world’s biggest pop stars. For the artist, though, the goal was merely to capture the essence of the person in front of him. “I wasn’t really aware of his celebrity then,” Hockney says, with a shrug. “He was just another person who came to the studio.”

The pair struck up an instant rapport that was likely helped by Styles being a full-on fanboy. For his Vogue cover shoot in 2020, Styles wore a pair of hand-painted Bode cords that featured a talismanic illustration of Hockney by artist Aayushia Khowala. It’s also hard to imagine the wide-eyed wonder of a flamboyant Brit discovering the sunny thrills and spills of California—a theme, and sound, that has permeated the former One Direction singer’s solo albums—without Hockney as a precedent. “David Hockney has been reinventing the way we look at the world for decades,” says Styles. “It was a complete privilege to be painted by him.”

The unveiling of the portrait kicks off the second iteration of the National Portrait Gallery’s Hockney exhibition “Drawing From Life,” which first opened in February 2020, only to close weeks later due to the pandemic. With the addition of a new room of pictures charting Hockney’s creative impulses throughout lockdown, the show returns on November 2—a few months after a refurbishment of the entire museum—with Styles’s portrait as its crown jewel. “The whole world shut down, and the exhibition was still sitting there, in the dark,” recalls Sarah Howgate, the gallery’s senior curator of contemporary collections, who oversaw the exhibition in both phases. “So it’s nice to know it will have another life.”

The Styles painting may bring star wattage, but the unassuming genius of Hockney’s portraiture is still the main exhibition draw. What makes his images tick, you quickly learn, is their honesty: whether in the tension bubbling beneath the surface of his famed double portrait of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, painted between 1970 and ’71, or the seated figures that populated his 2016 Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, which included the likes of his own sister, Margaret, and the late comedian Barry Humphries. Hockney’s eye for the human figure may be playful, often kaleidoscopic, sometimes fantastical—but it’s always, most importantly, frank.

Styles’s portrait will hang alongside those of writer Gregory Evans, Hockney’s printer Maurice Payne, the mayor of his local town Dozulé, his gardener, and even his chiropodist, or in Hockney’s words, “the dandy who cuts my toenails.”

One of his more recent subjects was the eminent music producer Clive Davis, who first suggested inviting Styles to swing by. “Clive told me about Harry’s new album, and JP [Hockney’s studio assistant] sent Harry a note and asked him if he’d like to come to my studio and sit for his portrait,” Hockney remembers. “He replied straight away and said, yes, he’d love to.” From there, Hockney’s process of painting Styles was instinctive. “Everybody just came to sit,” he says, breezily, before admitting: “Now I know Harry’s a celebrity, though: I’ve seen all his music videos.”

“He’s not a traditional portrait painter,” says Howgate. Hockney’s interest is not in what people do, but rather in who they are. “He’s not interested in fame. He’s interested in depicting people and their relationships.” It’s why his eye is primarily trained on his inner circle these days—but it also pays testament to his enduring curiosity that he’s still willing to open that up to a newcomer every so often. Styles seems to know how lucky he is, adding, with a tinge of disbelief: “I’m in awe of the man with enough one-liners for a lifetime.” As to what those one-liners might be? Styles and Hockney’s mutual silence on that question suggests that what happens in the studio, stays in the studio.

“David Hockney: Drawing From Life” will be at the National Portrait Gallery from November 2 to January 21, 2024.

[freddiemercurylegendabovelegends]

Today, on 28th January, 2011

Q Magazine published with Queen 16-page exclusive - May & Taylor Speak! / 'The Unseen Freddie'

Brian May interview (extract)

Who did you have most in common with when Queen first got together?

That’s complicated. We had quite a complex, sort of multi-way interaction. That’s why it worked, really. I was very close to Roger in some ways because we’d already been in a band together. We were – and we are – kind of brothers. We were so close in our aspirations and the way we looked at music, but of course so distant in so many other ways. Like any pair of brothers, we sort of loved and hated each other all along the line. In a way I was very close to Freddie, particularly in the songwriting area. Some of my best times were producing a vocal out of Freddie, sort of coaxing him in various directions.

Did calling the band Queen seem like a good idea to you?

I had reservations but it was very democratic. We had a list of suggested names and Queen had come from Freddie. One of the others was The Grand Dance, which I don’t think would have been very good. Freddie was very much a dandy in those day, Roger was as well. Everyone was into dressing up but it wasn’t an expression of sexuality, it was just an expression of freedom. The most fancy of the peacocks strutting around would get called queens. At the time I didn’t know Freddie was gay and I don’t know if he did either; I think that he was finding himself at that point. So we were aware of all the connotations of the word “queen”, of course, but in a way that was an attraction because part of what we stood for was freedom and equality, whether it’s racial or anything else.

Freddie’s moustache became a part of the band’s iconography. Did it make much of an impression on you at first?

If you want the truth, I think that the only significant thing was the music.

Would you say that how you each appeared in the video for 1984’s I Want To Break Free was an accurate reflection of your personalities?

Of course! Everybody thinks that was Freddie’s idea because it looks like something that he would love to do but it actually came from Roger’s girlfriend at the time, strangely enough. It was her idea to pastiche the Coronation Street women.

Was it her idea to have Roger dress up as a schoolgirl?

I think that was probably his idea [laughs].

Did you have any idea that Queen’s 1986 Knebworth show would be the last time that you all played live together?

No. Freddie said something like, “Oh I can’t f***ing do this any more”, but he normally said things like that at the end of a tour so I don’t think we took it seriously. “My whole body’s wracked with pain!”

Roger said that he never had a cross word with Freddie. Did you?

I never did either. I think that’s an odd juxtaposition with Freddie’s image of being a prima donna. Actually he was the great diplomat and if there were arguments between us Freddie usually was able to sort them out.

When you learned that Freddie was dying did you want to continue recording?

Yeah. He loved being in the studio and I think right up to the end that was his greatest escape. He was singing vocals when he couldn’t even stand. He’d prop himself up against the desk, knock a couple of vodkas down and go for it. The very last time we ever did that, me and him, was singing Mother Love, which is one of my favourite tracks on Made In Heaven. He never finished that. He said, “Oh Brian, I can’t do any more. I’m dying here” [laughs]. He never seemed to let it get him down.

Did you find those final sessions upsetting?

We developed such a great closeness as a band that they were actually quite joyful times. The thing is, there’s always a big element of disbelief. Yes, we knew the prognosis but I didn’t think we quite believed that it could happen to Freddie. He’s Freddie, after all. He’s invincible. So when the news finally came it was a real bolt from the blue.

Did you get to say goodbye to Freddie?

We were with him a lot in the final days but it wasn’t a question of saying goodbye, it was a question of just sharing a moment. I remember an occasion when he was lying in bed and he couldn’t see out into his garden very well. We were talking about his plants, which he loved. Actually Anita [Dobson, whom May married in 2000] and I were there. He said, “Guys, don’t feel like you have to entertain me. Just you being here is what’s important and I’m enjoying that.” So I think, in a way, that was him – amazingly – finding acceptance of the way things were. So, no, the word “goodbye” didn’t happen but we reached a very peaceful place.

Is it difficult for you because I’m thinking of Freddie Mercury, the great rock frontman, but to you, above all, he’s your deceased friend?

It is. One of my hardest moments was unveiling the statue of Freddie in Montreux [1996]. Obviously it’s a very nice tribute and the ceremony was very moving but I just suddenly became overcome by anger. I thought, “This is all that’s left of my friend and everybody’s thinking it’s normal and fabulous but it’s actually awful that I’m looking at a piece of bronze which is … [sighs] the image of my friend and my friend’s not here any more.”

What went through your mind when David Bowie started saying the Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert?

What the f**k is he doing? [laughs] It hadn’t been rehearsed. I suppose it would have been nice if he had told us but maybe it was truly spontaneous. I never had that conversation with him afterwards.

When did you last see John Deacon?

Oh, a long time ago. He’s very private now and he communicates by emails when there’s a business discussion, but that’s it.

(➡️ source: brianmay.com website)

📸 In this pic: 1981 - Freddie Mercury posing

Photo by © Lord Snowdon

[mr-styles]

When Harry Styles Met David Hockney: An Exclusive First Look At A Special New Portrait

A legendary painter and a pop lodestar? Sparks were inevitable. David Hockney and Harry Styles share a very special sitting with Liam Hess

W​​hat’s the secret to a great portrait? At 86 years old, David Hockney has a few ideas. A lifetime of looking has taught him to always start with the face. “I begin with the head first,” he says, matter-of-factly, from his home in France. “From there, I place everything else.”

That was his approach when, late last May, Harry Styles travelled to his light-filled studio in Normandy and stationed himself on a cane chair, ready to become the esteemed artist’s latest subject. Over two days, Hockney worked to capture the exact hues of red and yellow in Styles’s striped cardigan, the indigo of his jeans, the string of pearls at his neck – not to mention the unmistakable tousled fringe of one of the world’s biggest pop stars. For the artist, though, the goal was merely to capture the essence of the person in front of him. “I wasn’t really aware of his celebrity then,” Hockney says, with a shrug. “He was just another person who came to the studio.”

The pair struck up an instant rapport that was likely helped by Styles being a full-on fanboy. For his US Vogue cover shoot in 2020, Styles wore a pair of hand-painted Bode cords that featured a talismanic illustration of Hockney by artist Aayushia Khowala. It’s also hard to imagine the wide-eyed wonder of a flamboyant Brit discovering the sunny thrills and spills of California – a theme, and sound, that has permeated the former One Direction singer’s solo albums – without Hockney as a precedent. “David Hockney has been reinventing the way we look at the world for decades,” says Styles. “It was a complete privilege to be painted by him.”

The unveiling of the portrait kicks off the second iteration of the National Portrait Gallery’s Hockney exhibition Drawing From Life, which first opened in February 2020, only to close weeks later due to the pandemic. With the addition of a new room of pictures charting Hockney’s creative impulses throughout lockdown, the show returns on 2 November – a few months after a refurbishment of the entire museum – with Styles’s portrait as its crown jewel. “The whole world shut down, and the exhibition was still sitting there, in the dark,” recalls Sarah Howgate, the gallery’s senior curator of contemporary collections, who oversaw the exhibition in both phases. “So it’s nice to know it will have another life.”

The Styles painting may bring star wattage, but the unassuming genius of Hockney’s portraiture is still the main exhibition draw. What makes his images tick, you quickly learn, is their honesty: whether in the tension bubbling beneath the surface of his famed double portrait of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, painted between 1970 and ’71, or the seated figures that populated his 2016 Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, which included the likes of his own sister, Margaret, and the late comedian Barry Humphries. Hockney’s eye for the human figure may be playful, often kaleidoscopic, sometimes fantastical – but it’s always, most importantly, frank.

Styles’s portrait will hang alongside those of writer Gregory Evans, Hockney’s printer Maurice Payne, the mayor of his local town Dozulé, his gardener and even his chiropodist, or in Hockney’s words, “the dandy who cuts my toenails” .

One of his more recent subjects was the eminent music producer Clive Davis, who first suggested inviting Styles to swing by. “Clive told me about Harry’s new album, and JP [Hockney’s studio assistant] sent Harry a note and asked him if he’d like to come to my studio and sit for his portrait,” Hockney remembers. “He replied straight away and said, yes, he’d love to.” From there, Hockney’s process of painting Styles was instinctive. “Everybody just came to sit,” he says, breezily, before admitting: “Now I know Harry’s a celebrity, though: I’ve seen all his music videos.”

“He’s not a traditional portrait painter,” says Howgate. Hockney’s interest is not in what people do, but rather in who they are. “He’s not interested in fame. He’s interested in depicting people and their relationships.” It’s why his eye is primarily trained on his inner circle these days – but it also pays testament to his enduring curiosity that he’s still willing to open that up to a newcomer every so often. Styles seems to know how lucky he is, adding, with a tinge of disbelief: “I’m in awe of the man with enough one-liners for a lifetime.” As to what those one-liners might be? Styles and Hockney’s mutual silence on that question suggests that what happens in the studio, stays in the studio.

via vogue.co.uk

[astaraels]

Day 8 — Femslash February — Kiss/Secret Relationship

fem!gallavich, van kiss. (ao3)

@m4ndysk4nkovich @holymurdock @lovekenney @callivich @echosluvr

Mickey was always good at keeping secrets. She had to be, growing up in the Milkovich household. The threat of pain and violence was always hanging overhead if she or any of her siblings ever set one foot out of line. So when she and Gallagher started hooking up, Mickey knew it had to be secret, locked up tighter than anything. It didn't make things easy—landed her in juvie twice, even—but now she was back, and they were together again like Mickey had never even left.

Well, almost like she'd never left. They weren't boyfriend-girlfriend, never had been exclusive—Mickey still fucked guys sometimes, to keep her reputation—but now Ian had some geriatric sugar mama who bought her things and ordered room service for her at fancy hotels. Not to mention that, according to Ian, wasn't afraid to kiss her on the mouth. Fucking dumb as hell, if you asked Mickey. She never saw any appeal to dating old people, anyway. Ian did, apparently, and she'd looked Mickey dead in the eyes, her bun having fallen into a ponytail that trailed along the back of her shoulders, gaze as fiery as her hair. Standing there with that fake rifle cocked on her hip, white t-shirt tight across her shoulders, Ian knew exactly what kind of picture she painted. All Mickey could do was take a long drag off her cigarette and fiddle with the safety on her gun.

Fuck.

Why did Gallagher have to go and get so pushy? Usually Mickey didn't mind it—she liked when Gallagher got a little rough, it made the sex a lot more fun. Ever since the day they'd gotten caught by Frank, though, Gallagher—Ian—seemed like she was determined to get more out of Mickey than she knew Mickey could give. And…well.

It's not like Mickey didn't feel something for her, too; she wouldn't keep going back to Gallagher if there was nothing there, regardless of how good the sex was. They had fun together. Last summer when they'd been working at the Kash and Grab had been one of the best times of Mickey's life, if she really had to admit it. They'd become friends—really good ones, too. It made the boring-as-fuck job not quite so boring, and after work they had usually spent time together drinking, smoking, shooting the shit, not to mention fucking their way up and down the South Side of Chicago.

But all that got ruined when Mickey got herself sent back to juvie. Just proved that nothing good could last, no matter what Gallagher wanted to think. She was so fucking naive, with her dumbass freckles and her big green Bambi eyes and that stupid goddamn ponytail that Mickey liked to hold onto when they fucked. And now some cougar lesbo had gotten her claws into Ian, who didn't seem to realize how gross it was. So she'd thrown down the fucking gauntlet, and now it was all on Mickey. Goddammit.

And sure, she'd thought about kissing Gallagher before. Of course she fucking had. Pink pretty lips that looked good whether she was smiling or scowling—what wasn't to like? But kissing another girl wasn't allowed. Gallagher should know better than anyone how queers got treated around here. Just because she didn't give a fuck about being out apparently meant she thought it would be fine and dandy for Mickey, too. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Not a goddamn bit.

So maybe she'd bashed on Ian's sugar mama a little bit. Bitch had it coming, though, giving Ian and Mickey both a look like she wanted to eat them alive. Nasty as fuck. Mickey didn't feel bad about punching her in the face, or kicking her in the stomach, or letting the heel of her boot connect hard with the bitch’s kneecap. If Gallagher hadn't stopped her, Mickey would have given her a lot more than that. She deserved it, too. Ian was too…too good for that sort of thing. She oughta have something better than some asshole who just wanted a young, pretty, naive thing like Ian.

But now here they were, doing a stupid goddamn favor for the cougar; the only reason Mickey had even agreed was for the chance to rob the bitch. Sounded like fun, if you asked her. Get back at the sugar mama and show Gallagher exactly what Mickey could do? How she was the better choice? Fuck yeah, Mickey was in.

They'd sat together in the front of the van all the way to the North Side, Ian giving her sideways looks and dopey grins the whole time. Mickey was just glad that Iggy and their cousins were too high to notice anything, otherwise she and Gallagher would be having fucking words. Keep that shit under lock, and all, but…part of her liked it, in the same way she'd liked how Ian had run off with her after Mickey bashed the cougar. Liked that it meant she was the one who'd come out on top, that she had been the one Ian chose in the end. Mickey didn't have much going for her, but Ian Gallagher saw something in her worth sticking around for. She rubbed her face, cheeks growing hot at the very thought of it, and hoped Gallagher didn't see anything.

Then Ian was backing the van into the driveway, Mickey's cousin opening the door so they could all hop out. No one was supposed to be home, so this should be an easy in and out, and maybe afterwards she could convince Gallagher to go up to the abandoned warehouse with her and they could have a celebratory fuck or two. It didn't even dim Mickey's spirits when Ian told them they didn't need to take any guns, although Mickey's self-preservation instinct still told her it was better to have a gun than not. Whatever. Maybe she was a little bit pussy-whipped, because she did what Ian asked and made sure her cousins did the same.

The other three headed up towards the front door of the house, and Mickey began to follow them, but stopped halfway up the path. Her mind raced as she weighed her options, thinking about Ian's words that day. She isn't afraid to kiss me. And here they were, robbing that very same bitch’s house, and all Mickey could think was I'll fucking show you who's not afraid. She ran her hands through her hair to calm her nerves, then turned back around. Gallagher was sitting in the driver's seat of the van, smoking a cigarette like she didn't have a care in the world. Mickey swallowed nervously, and jogged back over to the van, opening the passenger door. Before Ian could say anything, Mickey braced her knee on the seat, leaned over, and pressed her lips against the other girl's own in a firm kiss.

They were just as soft and warm as Mickey had always imagined, and she could taste the nicotine still lingering there from Ian's cigarette. Ian's lips parted in surprise, but much as Mickey might have liked to, she didn't push things further. She pulled away and smirked at the look of joy and disbelief on Ian's face, mouth still hanging open slightly like a damn idiot. Gotcha, Mickey thought, adrenaline surging through her. As she ran back up the front pathway to the door of the house, she had to take a moment to fight the grin on her face. She had kissed Ian Gallagher, shown her that a Milkovich never turned down a challenge. And for a moment, she didn't feel afraid at all. Her heart pounded in her chest, her stomach turned with butterflies, and she let herself think about the way Ian's lips felt pressed against her own.

For a moment, it felt like victory.

[thestylesindependent]

W​​hat’s the secret to a great portrait? At 86 years old, David Hockney has a few ideas. A lifetime of looking has taught him to always start with the face. “I begin with the head first,” he says, matter-of-factly, from his home in France. “From there, I place everything else.”

That was his approach when, late last May, Harry Styles travelled to his light-filled studio in Normandy and stationed himself on a cane chair, ready to become the esteemed artist’s latest subject. Over two days, Hockney worked to capture the exact hues of red and yellow in Styles’s striped cardigan, the indigo of his jeans, the string of pearls at his neck – not to mention the unmistakable tousled fringe of one of the world’s biggest pop stars. For the artist, though, the goal was merely to capture the essence of the person in front of him. “I wasn’t really aware of his celebrity then,” Hockney says, with a shrug. “He was just another person who came to the studio.”

The pair struck up an instant rapport that was likely helped by Styles being a full-on fanboy. For his US Vogue cover shoot in 2020, Styles wore a pair of hand-painted Bode cords that featured a talismanic illustration of Hockney by artist Aayushia Khowala. It’s also hard to imagine the wide-eyed wonder of a flamboyant Brit discovering the sunny thrills and spills of California – a theme, and sound, that has permeated the former One Direction singer’s solo albums – without Hockney as a precedent. “David Hockney has been reinventing the way we look at the world for decades,” says Styles. “It was a complete privilege to be painted by him.”

The unveiling of the portrait kicks off the second iteration of the National Portrait Gallery’s Hockney exhibition Drawing From Life, which first opened in February 2020, only to close weeks later due to the pandemic. With the addition of a new room of pictures charting Hockney’s creative impulses throughout lockdown, the show returns on 2 November – a few months after a refurbishment of the entire museum – with Styles’s portrait as its crown jewel. “The whole world shut down, and the exhibition was still sitting there, in the dark,” recalls Sarah Howgate, the gallery’s senior curator of contemporary collections, who oversaw the exhibition in both phases. “So it’s nice to know it will have another life.”

The Styles painting may bring star wattage, but the unassuming genius of Hockney’s portraiture is still the main exhibition draw. What makes his images tick, you quickly learn, is their honesty: whether in the tension bubbling beneath the surface of his famed double portrait of Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, painted between 1970 and ’71, or the seated figures that populated his 2016 Royal Academy of Arts exhibition, which included the likes of his own sister, Margaret, and the late comedian Barry Humphries. Hockney’s eye for the human figure may be playful, often kaleidoscopic, sometimes fantastical – but it’s always, most importantly, frank.

Styles’s portrait will hang alongside those of writer Gregory Evans, Hockney’s printer Maurice Payne, the mayor of his local town Dozulé, his gardener and even his chiropodist, or in Hockney’s words, “the dandy who cuts my toenails” .

One of his more recent subjects was the eminent music producer Clive Davis, who first suggested inviting Styles to swing by. “Clive told me about Harry’s new album, and JP [Hockney’s studio assistant] sent Harry a note and asked him if he’d like to come to my studio and sit for his portrait,” Hockney remembers. “He replied straight away and said, yes, he’d love to.” From there, Hockney’s process of painting Styles was instinctive. “Everybody just came to sit,” he says, breezily, before admitting: “Now I know Harry’s a celebrity, though: I’ve seen all his music videos.”

“He’s not a traditional portrait painter,” says Howgate. Hockney’s interest is not in what people do, but rather in who they are. “He’s not interested in fame. He’s interested in depicting people and their relationships.” It’s why his eye is primarily trained on his inner circle these days – but it also pays testament to his enduring curiosity that he’s still willing to open that up to a newcomer every so often. Styles seems to know how lucky he is, adding, with a tinge of disbelief: “I’m in awe of the man with enough one-liners for a lifetime.” As to what those one-liners might be? Styles and Hockney’s mutual silence on that question suggests that what happens in the studio, stays in the studio.

David Hockney: Drawing From Life will be at the National Portrait Gallery from 2 November to 21 January 2024

[locution-youngster-enjoyer]

One headcanon for pretty much every wordgirl villain

Amazing Rope Guy's birthday is April 1st

The reason BLHG has a.. big left hand is because he has the condition Hemihyperplasia (which from what i've seen causes a part of a person's body to be larger than the other. Pls correct me if this is wrong, i am not familiar with the condition)

Brent is multilingual (since Chuck is his half brother, Brent's father spoke spanish, which inspired Brent to learn more languages)

Captain Tangent binge watches pirate movies in his spare time (E.g: Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc)

Chuck has a video game collection that he's very proud of. It's full of older, retro games, and he also owns all the consoles to go with them.

Glen owns a body pillow, im not specifying of who. That's up for interpretation.

You know how Dr Two Brains is based on the myth that mice like cheese? In reality, mice prefer grains and berries. I'd think it would be funny if in a situation where he was forced to exclusively eat berries and grains, it'd make him ill (similar to how cheese really affects mice).

Eileen's last name is 'Rucker,' which is a German last name meaning 'thief' or 'Greedy'

Maria and Eileen are the absolute bestest of friends, with Eileen treating Maria like a little pet.

Granny May used to do ballet when she was younger, which gave her some of the agility she now has.

I couldn't think of a headcanon for Guy Rich specifically, but his brother's name is Duke.

Hal and Granny May went to the same school when they were young. They do not like each other at all.

Invisi-bill is simultaneously the worst and the best at playing Hide and Seek. He can just go invisible to hide, but is usually way too fidgety to stay in one spot permanently.

Lady Redundant Woman is a heavy sleeper. She also snores really loudly

Leslie is actually a mixed martial artist, but generally prefers Karate

Miss Power is fully capable of blinking, but is also capable of licking her eyeballs just to freak people out. She thinks its funny

Mr Big is really fond of 80s music because it reminds him of his band

Ms Question didn't realize this immediately about her powers, but she can produce electricity. If you touch her bare skin, she can accidentally shock both you and her. She can also stick magnets to herself.

Nocan.... ok im gonna be completely honest, i can't think of anything for this guy.

Reason and Rhyme have a secret handshake. Rhyme is the one who made it, and Reason messes it up everytime they try to do it

Royal Dandy calls Dave dad :) (but in a british way so probably something stupid(/j) like papa)

Seymour is insanely good at poker. He's perfectly capable of playing any version of it, but he's also really good at cheating at it. He hides cards in his sleeve and in his shirt and then swaps them out for whatever hand he has.

While it's not obvious, the Butcher likes jewelry. He doesn't wear it much, but you'll always find a ring or two and earrings in his house. (Reginald x Butcher shippers, do with this as you will)

The Coach was actually a highly successful man before trying to trick the Whammer. Most people don't realize that he went to really prestigious schools when he was younger.

The Learnerer's real name is Alfred, in reference to his voice actor

The Whammer was an actual pro-wrestler at one point, but was forced to stop because 'whams' aren't a legal move in the wrestling world.

Timmy Tim-Bo is the Coach's nephew

Tobey will play little puzzle games when not building robots (Crossword, Sudoku, etc)

Victoria Best tries to sneak into the villain convention, but usually gets caught pretty quickly.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

📷🎵🦖🐸

ooohh thank you!

📷 What’s set as your phone’s lockscreen?

aha so, this one is tricky because my phone does This Thing where you can set 15 different images as lockscreens, and it cycles through them. This has VASTLY improved my ability to look at my OCs all the time.

If I lock/unlock it right now it is...

a picture of Raff and Penn by @spielzeugkaiser 🥺

🎵 Last song you listened to?

According to Spotify, it was a song I don't know from a generic instrumental playlist lmao

the last one I actively chose to listen to (I think) was Optimistic Nihilism by Epic Mountain, who does the background music for Kurzgesagt.

🦖 Favorite extinct animal?

DINOSAUR. Hmm probably some flavour of Weird-Ass Shark, I think. Possibly the Helicoprion? Or my old pal the Meg.

🐸 Describe your aesthetic.

Because it's summer here, at the moment I pretty much dress exclusively in denim shorts and button-down short-sleeve shirts with absurd prints on them. I am such a stereotype.

In the winter I tend to aim to look more like a dandy gentleman 🎩

[justforbooks]

In a spoof obituary written while he was still in his 40s, Barry Humphries, who has died aged 89, described himself as “an ancient comic” who had long since become “a self-indulgent and inaudible has-been” with no sense of progressive social relevance.

The Republic of Australia’s Art Squad had, he said, banned Humphries’ work in his native land. He had endured his last years of “exile and obloquy” in the tarnished splendour of “a Lusitanian spa”, where he occasionally gave clandestine performances to his dwindling, reactionary and hard-of-hearing followers. He was survived, the obituary concluded, “by innumerable wives, great-grandchildren and creditors”. It was a generally appropriate death notice of a satirist who delighted in guying both himself and his critics.

Never a genial humorist, there was always a whiff of sulphur in his comedy. “What is there to say about me?” he would gull his interviewers. “I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I am Church of England – I wash my car on Sundays. There must be some way you can jazz me up.” This was Humphries disguised as a candid interviewee. Being oneself, he would add, is a form of disguise.

There were many other disguises. One minute he would be a monocled Edwardian dandy or a mad scientist or a sad, sexless suburbanite. The next he would assume the mask of a beach bum or a shady art dealer or an embittered intellectual. But the most famous masks of all were his hellcat, the housewife megastar Dame Edna Everage, and his alcoholic political freeloader, professional adulterer and family man Sir Les Patterson.

Humphries grew up in suburban Melbourne, the son of Louisa (nee Brown) and Eric Humphries, a prosperous builder. He was an old boy of an exclusive school (or as he put it: “self-educated; attended Melbourne grammar”) and was briefly a student at Melbourne University. He began his extraordinary career on the back of an arts council bus touring the country towns of Victoria in 1954. It was his first professional role – the lovesick Duke Orsino to Zoe Caldwell’s Viola in Twelfth Night.

At each town, a patron of the arts, often the lady mayoress, would welcome the company over refreshments. Later, to help pass the time on the bus, Humphries invented a character to lampoon these municipal occasions. She was a drab, mousey and relentless hostess, simply named Edna.

The character was thought amusing enough to try out on stage in a Christmas revue in Melbourne. So it came about, on 13 December 1955, that Mrs (as she then was) Edna Everage made her stage debut – a volunteer hostess for the Melbourne Olympics, six feet tall, with brown basilisk eyes and a large chartreuse cabbage rose pinned on her charcoal suit. Her family – husband Norm, son Kenny, daughter Valmai, and mother (in a twilight home) – were given honourable mention, although their miserable fates in Edna’s triumphal backwash were not yet evident. Humphries, then as always, wrote the script.

The sketch was only a moderate success, but enough to point Humphries away from dramatic acting and towards the revue, music hall or cabaret. Also in 1955 he married Brenda Wright, and the following year they moved to Sydney to join a London-inspired theatre of “intimate revue”. He had found his metier, although Sydney satire was still too bland and self-congratulatory to satisfy his dandiacal rage. What Australia still needed, he said, was not mild satire, but a heroic act of espionage.

He finally found it playing the anguished Estragon in a 1958 production of Waiting for Godot. Humphries tramped the streets of Sydney in a sandwich board advertising the play, stuck Godot stickers on posts and windows, and scoured the scrap yards for trash with which he designed the stage sets. The audiences received the play with overwhelming indifference, but Humphries said it changed his life.

When he returned to revue, it was a new Humphries and a new Edna. She became at last a fully ad-libbing monologuiste, teasing if not insulting her audience. This was Edna’s breakthrough. She never looked back.

Australian theatre, however, remained in the doldrums. One critic said there was better theatre in a march-past of lifesavers on Bondi beach. In London, meanwhile, Beckett, Brecht, Osborne and Pinter were leading “the great uprising” from Sloane Square to Stratford East. Humphries found it irresistible.

His first marriage having come to an end after a couple of years, in 1959 Humphries married the ballet dancer Rosalind Tong, took a steamer to London – and into a decade of obscurity (and deepening alcoholism). He found some small parts, notably the undertaker in the original production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! (1960). But his future fame lay with the one-man shows which at that point only his faithful Australian audiences would even contemplate. Three years after arriving in London, he returned to Melbourne and staged, in mid-1962, A Nice Night’s Entertainment, in which he again paraded Edna and her family, along with some of his other creations, from a tortured, expatriate-hating journalist to a nose-picking, guitar-toting beatnik.

The popular success of the show emboldened Humphries to try out his characters in London – at the Establishment Club in May 1963. It was a flop (or as he put it, “a highly successful five-minute season”). He returned to small roles, notably in Frank Norman’s A Kayf Up West, at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal, Stratford East (1964). He also created for Private Eye the randy hobbledehoy Barry (“Bazza”) McKenzie, whose boozing, vomiting, urinating adventures, narrated in comic-strip form in a largely invented vernacular, reflected and mocked Humphries’ life in the swinging 60s. A film based on the character, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, was released in 1972, and a sequel, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, two years later, with Humphries taking several small roles in each; in the latter, the Australian prime minister of the time, Gough Whitlam, apparently invests Edna as a dame.

Humphries did two more Australian tours before testing the water in London again. The first – in 1965 – was the triumphant Excuse I, which filled huge Australian theatres for weeks on end. No one-man show had ever done such business in Australia. It was on this tour that Humphries introduced the gladioli-hurling finale. The next tour – the 1968 Just a Show – introduced further variations. Edna now abandoned her dowdy appearance and came on stage smiling like a shark in a red Thai silk coat over a green dress. (“Am I overdressed?” she asked, looking around. “No, I don’t think so.”) She also began entering from the stalls chatting to her “possums”.

The enormous success of Just a Show encouraged him to try again in London – at the Fortune theatre. Once again the show was a flop. Harold Hobson dismissed it in one devastating sentence: “Most of Barry Humphries’ Just a Show will give pleasure to most Australians in London.”

The great turning point in Humphries’ career came in 1970 when he collapsed, an alcoholic wreck. That June, he was arrested in the streets of Melbourne’s leafy, affluent Camberwell and charged with being drunk and disorderly. A sensible magistrate adjourned the case for six months, ordering that charges be withdrawn if there were no further “incidents”. Humphries booked into a private hospital specialising in alcoholism. The man who for more than 10 years had started the day with a “grappling hook” (brandy and port) became an abstainer – and one of the great comedians of his age.

Still he had not yet conquered London. His Australian shows of the early 1970s (A Load of Old Stuffe, in 1971, and At Least You Can Say You’ve Seen It, in 1974) further refined Edna. She was now a name-dropping predator of radical views and treacly-trendy sentimentality, wearing glittering scarlet hotpants split to the groin. Soon critics were ransacking the dictionary for adjectives to describe her: psychotic, hysteric, Dionysiac, Amazonian, crypto-fascist, anally obsessed, a piranha, a hectoring Medusa, a blue-rinsed beast of Belsen, the Australian daughter of Torquemada.

As her curtain raiser, and to incarnate his disgust with alcoholism, Humphries also created a new character, half Sir Toby Belch, half Apeneck Sweeney – exuberant clown and revolting drunk, the cultural attache Sir Les Patterson. Staggering down the aisle, whisky in hand, he would invite his audience to give Edna the clap she so richly deserved.

In 1976 had come yet another assault on the West End, this time succeeding sensationally when Housewife-Superstar opened at the Apollo. It ran to packed houses for four months and almost 500,000 people saw it.

This was the first of Humphries’ enormously popular one-man shows in London, which included A Night With Dame Edna (1978-79) and Back With a Vengeance (for a number of seasons 1987-89 and 2005-07). Critics now acclaimed him as the greatest one-man showman since Charles Dickens and perhaps in the history of theatre.

He reached an even wider audience on British television, including two series of The Dame Edna Experience (1987-89) for LWT, a highly successful comedy chatshow in which Dame Edna interviewed celebrities – or delivered monologues interrupted by total strangers, as she herself described it. On both stage and screen a silent, doleful background presence was provided by her “New Zealand bridesmaid” Madge Allsop, played from 1987 to 2003 by Emily Perry.

The US took longer to conquer. In 1977, Humphries presented Housewife-Superstar at West 55th Street, off Broadway, where the critics dismissed it as “abysmal”, “pointless” and “like the litter on 42nd Street, something worth missing”. It was to be 20 years before the New York critics submitted to the Humphriesian tornado. In 2000, he was awarded a special Tony for the “theatrical event” of the year – a category invented for the occasion since his show, Dame Edna: The Royal Tour, was neither play nor musical. His success led to subsequent US tours, and a role in the TV comedy drama Ally McBeal in 2002.

In March 2012, Humphries announced a farewell stage show, Eat Pray Laugh!, which toured Australia, the UK and the US. It featured his best-known characters – Dame Edna, the stoic old convalescent Sandy Stone, and Sir Les Patterson (with a bit part for his brother, Gerard, a paedophile priest). But in an eerie finale, there were glimpses of other unforgettable creations: among them Lance Boyle, the trade union racketeer; Brian Graham, the 1960s Sydney executive and closet homosexual in navy blue shorts and long white socks; and Phil Philby, the lefty experimental film-maker.

Before the final curtain, Humphries himself took the stage, thanked the packed house, and ambiguously urged them to come to his final “farewell”. In a wave of emotion while the band belted out “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye”, his tearful fans delivered a standing ovation.

In 2015, Humphries was artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret festival, where, with characteristic panache, he announced that he had banned the use of the word “fuck”, which too many comedians, including some good ones, use in a desperate attempt to get a laugh. (Humphries himself had often done so.) The patrons, he said, would be relieved and delighted by his new espousal of censorship.

As intended, the resulting controversy generated enormous publicity for the festival, but nonetheless he continued “to defend to the ultimate my right to give deep and profound offence”. Remarks of his on transgenderism – including dismissing it as a fashion – led in 2019 to the Melbourne international comedy festival dropping his name from its major prize, the Barry award.

Perceptions of what was considered either cutting edge or decadent in the jazz-infused music of Germany of the 1920s and 30s had fascinated him since finding a bundle of sheet music in Melbourne. In Australia in 2013 and in London seasons in 2016 and 2018, he explored it in the show Weimar Cabaret, with the chanteuse Meow Meow.

Humphries was based permanently in London from the late 1960s, although he visited Australia frequently, maintaining good relations with fans, friends and family. “To live permanently in Australia,” he would say, “is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one’s mother.” He collected art and books, describing himself as a “compulsive bibliomaniac”, and owned 25,000 volumes.

Over the years, he made recordings, wrote books, a novel and a volume of verse, and in 2007 he held an exhibition of his paintings in Melbourne. He had roles in several films, including Finding Nemo (2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012). He dismissed most his books as trifles and promotions, but not his autobiography More Please (1992), which is less a comic story of an actor’s life than a de profundis or an alcoholic’s almanac; it is also noteworthy for its piety towards his family. It won the JR Ackerley prize for autobiography in 1993. Humphries was the subject of several biographies, including John Lahr’s Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilisation (1991), One Man Show (2010), by Anne Pender, and my own book, published in 1991, The Real Barry Humphries.

He was appointed OA in 1982 and CBE in 2007.

From his marriage to Rosalind, Humphries had two daughters, Tessa and Emily. In 1979, he married the artist Diane Millstead, and they had two sons, Rupert and Oscar. Following his third divorce, in 1990 he married Lizzie Spender, daughter of the poet Stephen Spender. She survives him, along with his four children.

🔔 John Barry Humphries, comic actor and scriptwriter, born 17 February 1934; died 22 April 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[stickytm]

carrd || playlist || pinterest || headcanon || art || memes

a study in: intention vs. attention, always getting back up , guilt, processing grief, life behind a mask, self-definition, the weight of responsibility, learning how to share that weight & how the person you become affects the people around you.

rules for mobile. under co. very duplicate friendly. minors dni.

**MINORS DNI** if you are under 18, i dont want to talk to you! i do not want to talk to children on the internet. if you hide your age & i find out about it, i will block you immediately.

hi! i'm xan, i'm 25 & i never learned how to fucking read. jokes aside, i've been writing peter on & off since 2018. i was formerly at spiderwebbed & boywebbed, but i thought it was time for a fresh start. i've built a mixed canon timeline that cherry picks from my favorite peters & headcanons alike. there is a lot of information to take in & i don't expect anyone to know all of it! I will be highlighting the most important parts of his story on his timeline when i am done reworking it. the last time it was updated was 2022 & there is a lot to add & rearrange. i do ask that if you have any questions about the progression of his story, feel free to ask. i prefer to talk things out than leave any questions hanging.

on that note, tumblr rp is a social hobby as much as it is a creative one to me & i love keeping in contact with my mutuals. however, on this blog it is especially vital to building long-lasting relationships ic & ooc. my availability it not always consistent because i am Literally Insane & need to be away from tumblr sometimes, but that doesn't mean i value the friendships & relationships i make here any less.

i do not practice exclusivity. nothing against anyone who does, it's just not for me! i do, however, have mains. what are mains on this blog? they're characters written by friends who i will go to first for plot ideas. my mains will usually be woven into blog canon, one way or another whether or not that character is written in tumblr! if that is not something that appeals you, that's okay!

i have notoriously spotty activity. it's part of my flavor . it stems from a mix of mental illness & blanacing life, but this is just a hobby to me & it utilizes any energy i have leftover from everything else i have to do to live. this being said, if i don't respond to you ooc right away, again, it is nothing personal. i prefer having friendships & building them up over time, but it does take time & it is not always easy. active on the dash = / = active ooc& if you try to guilt me about this, i will block you <3

i do not have any triggers. i have a few icks, but nothing that triggers a huge emotional reaction from me. i will do my best to be mindful of any triggers that might appear on this blog, but if there is anything i fail to tag please feel free to point it out to me. i would like to maintain a safe space i can share with my friends!

if i'm following you, i absolutely want to interact with you. i want to write with you. i want to plot with you. i reblog a lot of memes & try to send a lot as well. this being said, i do not expect you to respond to everything i send you & vice versa.

i prefer to plot & send memes over starter calls starter calls are fine & dandy, i just become overwhelmed by them quicker than i care to admit & usually do not finish them. i prefer plotted starters & memes with a place we can start already defined.

if we have any problems, i would rather talk about them than leave them hanging between us. if it's worth unfollowing me over, please block me instead. i hate softblocking, I've never understood it & would rather just be blocked. i know this is not always possible because there are sooo many reasons someone might softblock me, but if you don't hardblock me i will probably refollow you without thinking about it.

don't be an asshole. it's easy, it's simple. treat people the way you would like to be treated. if you vague, i will block you. if you bring drama onto my blog, i will block you. i am here to play barbies not mean girls.

i do make art for peter, but it will always be tagged as my art. whether i post it here or on a personal blog, it will be tagged as something i made. if anyone wants to use my art for any reason, just make sure to dredit one of my blogs!

i am so duplicate friendly. i am so thrilled for the opportunity to discuss & share thoughts on peter parker with anyone willing to do so. i do understand, however, that not everyone shares this sentiment. do what you need to do to keep your space safe if you write peter & need to avoid other peter blogs, but if you ever want to talk shop i am sooo super game.

[savior-of-humanity]

OH YEAH I bought the Separate Ways DLC for RE4R last night and finished it today, here's my thoughts on it below the cut (spoilers obviously);

To clarify; I've never actually played the OG RE4 or the OG Separate Ways story. I am aware of events that happen in OG RE4 though.

Anyways,

Starting off with a few issues I had with it, though they're relatively minor;

The bosses felt... okay. Like, they're not bad, but they didn't really feel like they stood out all that much. The El Gigante fight basically felt the same as the times you fight it in the main story, except there's the element of moving around on roofs. That bit is cool! But other than that it just felt basically same-y. The Black Coat is cool, and I liked the reveal of it not being a Verdugo but rather Something Else. My only complaint about it is that the arena you fight it in just feels really boring, at least in visuals. Let me elaborate. Using some notable examples (the first and last fights with Krauser, the Verdugo, the first El Gigante fight), something they always had were at least one of two things; interesting level layout, and interesting set design. For Krauser, you have the light coming up through the grill floors and the semi-maze of crates to navigate around, and the circular arena with upper levels to hop onto. For Verdugo, you had the claustrophobic hallways that I feel paired really well with its hyper-aggressive attack behavior. And for El Gigante, it's mainly just the ambience rain and lighting from the braziers and torches combined with the kinda-cramped arena. Black Coat had neither of those things. In the first phase, you're literally just fighting in a flat rocky area that's super grey, dull, and with no notable set pieces other than "oh this is underground and kind of industrial". In the second phase, it's another flat area, except it's bigger and circular, with basically the same boring feel. I though the fight with Saddler was cool as a concept but MAN were some of his attacks annoying. Maybe it's because I was low on ammo/had only one knife but he felt like a total fucking bullet sponge. It didn't really feel satisfying taking him down because he barely reacted to my attacks excluding the progression of dialogue and the handful of times he gave me an opening to stab him in the face.

I kinda wish Ada had more in-depth interactions with some of the characters? I liked what she had with Luis (especially the little tango they do in the beginning) but I feel like there could have been More. Luis probably should've reacted negatively to her mentioning Wesker but then again, I don't actually know if he would know about Wesker. I wish she had an actual interaction with Krauser that isn't just chasing him until we see him hand the Amber to Saddler. I also wish her interaction with Ashley wasn't literally just "leon needs help!!!" (nods)

My biggest gripe, however, out of the entirety of the DLC; what the fuck was the deal with her being infected with Las Plagas? Like, I think it's cool she was infected (and also because I am a weirdo sucker for whump shit). But the way they handled her being cured is just completely fucking bizarre. To clarify; the first time she fights the Black Coat, I'm pretty sure that's when she gets infected as she gets nicked by one of the explosive-orange-dart things. Later on, she starts showing symptoms, and helps Luis gather the ingredients needed to make a suppressant to buy her (and Leon/Ashley) more time to get rid of the Plagas. Except, after she kills the Black Coat, she... pukes up??? The parasite??? And then she's all fine and dandy??? Okay so like. On one hand, you could probably explain this as her having been infected with an alternate form of Las Plagas, which would make sense as she experiences dramatically distinct hallucinations that seem to be tied exclusively to the Black Robe (and are absolutely NOT the same as the hallucinations Leon gets). On the other hand... we KNOW that Las Plagas reside in the chest cavity and more or less connect themselves to the host's nervous system(?). Like a chestburster. If this was in fact supposed to be a REGULAR type of Las Plagas then she shouldn't have been PHYSICALLY ABLE TO VOMIT IT OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE, because it wouldn't be inside of her stomach. Idk. I'm just miffed that she literally vomited out this thing and went "lol I'm fine now" and went on her merry way and didn't have to visit the lab whatsoever.

Other than that though, I thought Separate Ways was pretty decent. It doesn't hold up as well compared to RE4R in terms of story but for what it offers, I'd say I got my 10 dollars worth.

[dissvicious]

Tell me if this is a case of „It’s not that deep fam“ or if I’m reading too much into this but I just love the triplets handwriting on the last panel and it gave me thoughts.

First off:Not much to say about her except that her blocky handwriting is charming. Very kiddie. Very cute. Straight to the point

Second: Blaze or rather „BlaSe“ having the messiest handwriting, perfectly showing off that he’s not as book smart as his two siblings but also it’s so energetically written, like a kid who just writes really, REALLY hard, to the point of almost tearing the page. Certainly getting the feeling he held pencils in a fist for way longer than his brother and sister and that he may have had more issues learning to write. I am proud of him. (I also do wonder if he may at least be partly dyslexic because writing letters mirrored can be a sign of that. )

Third: Rory, the the only one to sign his name in cursive… but only on the goodbye note. The posters in his workshop aren’t written in cursive, which leads me to believe that A: he wrote those when he was young and that’s hysterical because it brings to mind of this preschooler writing down bomb notes, or B: He writes cursive exclusively when he writes stuff for other people but foregoes being fancy when he takes notes for himself. Also love the mental image of him being all „Gotta show the world I’m the smart one“ while relaxing more when he’s by himself. There are probably notes written in particularly powerful Eureka moments that make Blazes hyroglyphics look like calligraphy.

And that would be it thank you for coming to my ted talk about your ocs

You're 100% right and I'm really glad someone noticed what I attempted to do with the triplets handwriting! From Rory being a dandy poseur but manic genius in his personal notes to Blaze having dyslexia.

Thank you for showing me I didn't put all those details in for nothing 😭 I love working on characterization and I'm glad when people notice it !

[natromanxoff]

RCD Magazine - 1992

(x)

Transcription and the rest of this interview is taken from brianmay.com:

It's been a traumatic year for Brian May. Freddie Mercury's illness and death, and the ensuing tabloid onslaught would have broken lesser mortals but May found refuge in his own work. the result is his solo album, Back to the Light. In an exclusive interview with Rock CD, Brian May tells Kirk Blows about life after Freddie.

COME WHAT MAY

The hair, as ever remains a trademark. Brian May's familiar curly black locks caress the side of his face as he pores over the photographs in a copy of Queen's Greatest Pix that detail the first decade of their career.

'It's funny, sometimes it seems like yesterday and sometimes it seems like a hundred years ago," he muses, reflecting on the images that document Queen's ascent from an intriguing British rock act with an acknowledgement of glamour and elegance - mainly down to their vocalist, one Frederick Mercury - to a stadium-filling entity, via some dandy sophistication.

He's more than entitled to consider many changes of the band's career as a blur, but the guitarist merely comments that 'all this has definitely had an effect on me. I'm not normal'. An ironic statement considering that Brian May is considered probably one of the most 'normal' beings within the rock fraternity. As he talks up at the group's Notting Hill headquarters of the final days of Queen, the death of Freddie Mercury and his new solo project - Back to the Light being his first solo album proper following 1983's Star Fleet Project mini-LP) credited to Brian May and Friends) - May comes across as an intelligent and sensitive human being with a great respect for privacy and protocol.

He's more than happy to appease fans and sign autographs when recognised, as long as there's a polite request, though 'there have been times when I physically haven't been able to relate to what's said. It makes you feel almost sick because somebody comes up to you and tells you how wonderful you are, but inside you really honestly feel that you don't relate to that and that they're talking about someone else.'

'There's also a part of me that just cringes every time I see a camera lens,' he admits, relating a time when he fell victim to paparazzo king Richard Young. 'There are certain situations where I don't feel comfortable having him around. Richard was one of the people that the band did kind of trust, but when all this stuff came out about me and Anita (Dobson, May's actress girlfriend) there was a picture that got published which Richard took at Fred's private party of me standing with Anita, and that still hurts me that he would sell that picture for that purpose.'

It was when news broke of that relationship in the tabloids that 'the spotlight came squarely on us. And it was hell, it was miserable,' he says.

'The way they treat people's lives is just disgusting. I don't think that people have a right to know everbody's private life. I don't see how that benefits the world at all. I think this country wins as far as pointless smut. And there's nothing you can do. There's a point where if something looks like it's going to sell newspapers they can all come and camp on your doorstep. They can be looking in your window, taking pictures of you on the toilet, there is nothing you can do and I think it should be change.'

The death of Freddie Mercury last November gave the tabloids another opportunity to wreak havoc.

'I think it's all very predicatable,' May sighs. 'After his death even, they went both ways. There were some who wanted to bathe in the glory and some who still wanted to have their little digs, and, of course, now they had more freedom, because they're free of the laws of libel. So some of them really laid into him with complete lies. I was appalled... it made me so angry. Not just because they were slating Freddie, which is bad enough, but because it was dangerous for other people. They were saying things like "Fred got AIDS because he was promiscuous, the rest of us needn't worry". I think the Evening Standard was one of the worst offenders. And to print that stuff is gonna make a few kids think, I'm okay, and the next day they'll be HIV positive. I think the people that put out that kind of stuff are guilty of something very serious.'

It almost goes without saying that the closing annals of Queen's career were indeed painful, as May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor witnessed the gradual demise of their vocalist. Both Th Miracle (1989) and last year's Innuendo were recorded in the knowledge that they would probably be Freddie Mercury's last efforts.

'I think we all thought The Miracle was going to be last one because there were no guarantees how long Fred was gonna last at that time, and he'd been told by his doctor that he probably wouldn't last the duration of that album. So we just knew we had to press on and do what we could,' reflects Brian. 'In Freddie's mind it was totally clear to him, he just said "I want to go on working, business as usual, until I fucking drop. That's what I want, and I'd like you to support me in being able to do this and that's why I don't want any discussion about this".'

'I think we were all going through miserable, difficult times, and the studio becomes the only place where you have some sort of refuge. And I know for him it kept him alive, and even when he got to the point... he was already having problems doing The Miracle, but by the time Innuendo was there he could only just stand, and he could sing - by end of that album - just one or two days a week. It was tough psychologically having to sort of... keep it from everyone else, I suppose, because I never told my family or anything.'

When did the band actually discover that Freddie had AIDS?

'Well... various private moments, but I suppose... it was a gradual thing. There's a lot of unspoken stuff for a long time and then, yeah, there was a point where we sat down and talked about it, but I suppose that was only about... talking about it directly, only a few months before he went, nine months before or something.'

'You'll find things on The Miracle where we're already sort of... on The Miracle we actually managed to write stuff together, which is a miracle in itself, becaue we all used to be very pig-headed and very possessive about our songs. But we did, we wrote together, and there's certainly stuff in The Miracle where we're talking about what it's all gonna mean as we wind it up. You can see that now and it got very direct on Innuendo.'

Is listening to Innuendo a painful experience now?

''Mmmmmm... yes, it is. It is painful, especially on the radio when you're unprepared. Sometimes you just hear a snatch of his voice and you think, Christ, he's not around doing that no more.'

Rather than throwing May off course from his solo album - the genesis of which took place five years ago ('I've written a little explanation on the album, and what it says is I've been doing this for five years and during that time my life and my feelings changed, and so the music is a cross section of all that. I was in a pretty sort of low state five yars ago, I was very untogether and in much pain,' he states) - he sought refuge in the recording process.

'I made a conscious decision that I would work my way through it and I think it's helped,' he declares. 'I just plunged into recording almost every day. We all did get... I don't know if we're actually through it yet. There's a part of us that doesn't believe that he's not there yet. It takes a long time to really adjust and redraw your map, you know. I still expect him to come in the door really, particularly in the studio, there's still that feeling.'

'Some of it's quite nice, you know, sometimes when I'm doing something I sort of feel like he's... I'm not a heavily spiritual person but I would feel what Fred would've said. I can hear him saying "No, c'mon, you can do better than that". Part of me is beginning to feel sort of comfortable about it, and he's not suffering anymore, thank God.'

'You think you're prepared but you can't... we were totally destroyed. He was exceptional. I know I'm biased, you know, but I think he was a very unusual person, quite complex in a way, and yet inside, like the rest of us, quite small. You know, the feelings of insecurity and smallness that we all have propel us to do all sorts of things, don't they, you build up your compensation screen. You develop all these ways of dealing with life, but it's always... even if you lose touch with it, which some people do and I did at some point, it's always in there somewhere, this little person that's still basically a child, that's very vulnerable, and Fred was, definitley.'

'I think I'm stil trying to get my perspectives on what this all was. And I feel very proud of what we were, you know. I just consider that I was very fortunate to be part of all that, and we found a combination that was magical and worked. Freddie in particular is... sometimes his methods were very blunt with people, to stir up... sometimes he stirred up hatred in people, but he got a reaction from everyone.'

'It's almost a selfish thing to say, but you lose a part of yourself. I lost my dad not too long ago, and you grieve because he's not there, and then there's also something else going on, which is that you've lost a piece of yourself. And that's how I feel, I've been close to Freddie for 25 years, which is most of my adult life, and so there's a gaping hole. And it'll be a long time before it doesn't feel like that, I'm sure.'

How did Roger Taylor and John Deacon handle Freddie's death?

May takes a long pause. 'Er... .. I think we all got completely messed up in our diferent ways, you'd have to talk to them, you know. But it was a continuous process, of which the actual death was one part. I think we all got seriously messed up in the time leading up to it, because you're part of it and you feel so helpless. None of us could believe that it was happening before our eyes.'

'I think the last two or three years actually brought us together, as there was this feeling that the world outside can crumble but there is something in here which is worth doing. So I think we did get pretty close and I think we are still fairly close.'

Back To The Light - made with the assistance of bassist Neil Murray ('a favourite player of mine') and drummer Cozy Powell ('we actually developed a good way of working together, so hopefully there's the beginnings of something there') - may reflect a range of differing emotions but it's inevitable that Freddie Mercury's death permeates some of the record.

'There's quite a bit, I suppose, you'd have to fish it out quite carefully. Some of it's quite ambiguous; when I used to listen to Dylan and John Lennon I'd get a piece of life from them that meant something to me,' he says.

'Nothing But Blue happened because Cozy came in with a backing track and said play something on it. It was the night before Freddie went, but for the first time I had this complete conviction that it was imminent, and I felt that he was going at that point. I used that track and wrote the song about how I felt at that point.'

Rather less emotional was the experience of penning Drive By You, a version of which appears as the soundtrack for a Ford TV advert, after being approached by some advertising execs in LA: 'I said to them, "If you throw something at me I'll tell you whether it means anything to me or not." It was only after recognising the ambiguity of the phrase 'driven by you' that he decided to write the song.

'I approached it on two fronts, one was for the advert - which has different words, obviously - and the other was for me. And it was only because I could do it for me that I did it at all.'

'This album to me is a sort of divide, a crossroads. I wanted to make this record on my own, with nobody else to argue with, just to see what happened. My major driving force really is to do something worthwhile, so that when I do die I can say I'm proud of that. The worst thing you can do is stick out more wallpaper for the world. I would hate to put anything out that I thought was just repetition or superfluous or whatever. The only reason I've put this out is because I think I actually do have something to say, and it's worth saying. That's why it's taken five years, I suppose, I could have chucked out all sorts of stuff. I'm quite good at being a craftsman, I can make pop songs to a certain extent, I know I can. But I wanted this album to be... to be special to some people.'

The ultimate goal, though is to take it out live. Does he see himself as a frontman?

'Erm... interesting question,' he says, laughing. 'It's early days yet. I sung until I bled in the studio and it's for other people to judge whether I pulled it off or not, but I did some things I didn't think I could do in the beginning. But it's very different doing it on stage. I don't know if I have the expertise or the flair, or even the physical capabilites to deliver that stuff for two hours. I seem to suffer from colds half my life anyway, but there's only one day in three where I can sing that stuff on the album, so I'm still wrestling with that problem.'

There's still been no formal notification of Queen's split as yet.

'I don't know what splitting up means, really,' May says. 'I mean, we're not doing anything together at the moment except making sure that the all the old stuff is properly handled (the band have been overseeing the remasering of their catalogue for CD; And if you don't keep an eye on all that stuff it doesn't get done right. Half the original master of the first album is missing, nobody knows where it is. It's quite shocking,' he says). But we talk, and when we feel a bit more ready for it we'll go in and look at the material which Fred has sung and that we haven't released yet, because there is a bit left,'he declares, estimating that there's 'about half an album's worth.'

'We always said that if any of us disappeared that would be the end of it and I think that's right really, I don't have any inclination to try and be Queen without Freddie. That doesn't mean that I don't ever want to work with the other two again because I like working with them and I think we do have the ability to play together which the (Freddie Mercury tribute) gig showed. But how we do that in the future I've no idea. All I know is that at the moment, I don't want to do another thing like Wembley.. it's been suggested that we could do other things like that, but I don't want to make a career of it. That was for a purpose.'

'I think a lot of people thought that Queen was very calculating,' he opines, 'that we had this world domination plan, but in fact we didn't. The major thing for us was to keep ourselves in areas that we thought were worthwhile. And even though we didn't have a masterplan we always fought for control, and I think all the mistakes we made we made ourselves. But I don't feel like we have to make any apologies, if you have any spirit of adventure in you you do make mistakes.'

'It's funny, I went to a book launch the other day, and this guy came up to me and said "Hullo, pleased to meet you, I'm a socialist," or something like that, and he said, "I just want to tell you I really like some of your work. That was the first album, and after that you did crap and everything was commerical and everybody knows that". And I said, "I guess so, I guess that includes Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You and all that stuff", and he said "I still wanted to say, y'know, you did some good stuff". And that was the conversation really, and I thought, everybody has their own view. That's his view, and it wasn't worth arguing, because that's the way he sees it. There's some people who hated everything we did, you know. That's life.'

Kirk Blows

The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert

'We had a lot of doubts. On the night that Freddie died we announced that when the time was right we'd send him off in the manner and style to which he was accustomed, so it was in our minds from the beginning. But we went through quite a while where we actually didn't want to do it. When we looked at it and thought we're gonna be on stage with someone else singing Freddie's lines, we weren't sure whether we did want to do it or not. I think Deacky in particular said that he didn't.'

'Then we got to the point where we said, okay, let's contact some people and see how they feel about it - some key people we thought it would be nice to work with and who we knew had special feelings about Freddie. And they were so enthusiastic, we sort of gained momentum from that point. I'm talking about George Michael and Elton, Guns N' Roses...'

'A lot of it happened in rehearsals, the moments where it would all get too much... the first time we met all those people and went through the songs, there were some incredibly emotional moments. And I think the three of us got through a lot of that before the actual gig, not all of it but a lot of it. I think we were aware that if we were in tears the whole time it would be a joke, it just wouldn't work. It had to be a up thing; Fred would've hated people mooning around and being maudlin over him. So we wanted it to be big and actually rejoicing about his life, 'cos that's what it was about.'

'I think most of it worked. We made some mistakes... but I think for what we took on most of it came off, as an event. As far as playing, it was a case of getting through, because there was so much to worry about in terms of the show.'

'But there were some great things, you know, seeing Axl and Elton... there were some amazing things and I was personally very proud of Liza Minnelli being there because I think Freddie would have wanted that. I think she's quite close to him in spirit, and almost everybody disagreed with me, but I don't think anybody else could have stepped into that spot at the end of the show (for We Are The Champions). I could've sung it, but I don't think it would've meant what it did done that way'.

[blessedbywater]

MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN LAST TIME, ERYX IS ABLE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RELICS OF THE HINDU PANTHEON. HE BEGINS TO FIND MORE BOOKS ABOUT THE BOW THAT VARUNA ONCE POSSESSED, LEARNING THAT IT IS CALLED GANDIVA. IT WAS CREATED BY BRAHMA, THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE BEFORE BEING PASSED FROM ONE GOD TO ANOTHER, FROM ONE LEGENDARY HERO TO ANOTHER, TO SAFEGUARD THE COSMIC LAW OF SOCIAL ORDER. THE BOW WAS LAST SEEN WITH THE HERO, ARJUNA, AND HAS BEEN LOST SINCE HIS DEATH. HOWEVER, IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE BOW IS BURIED SOMEWHERE IN KURUKSHETRA. ERYX ALSO LEARNS ABOUT THE OTHER TWO RELICS, STARTING WITH THE KOH-I-NOOR. THE KOH-I-NOOR IS A MYTHICAL DIAMOND, ALSO KNOWN AS THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT. THIS DIAMOND IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN WORN BY GODS AND KINGS, BESTOWING THEM WITH GREAT PROSPERITY AND POWERS. THOUGH, IT IS CURRENTLY UNKNOWN WHAT EXACT POWERS THEY WILL PROVIDE. HOWEVER, THIS RELIC HAS BEEN STOLEN BY GREAT BRITAIN AND IS EVEN TREATED AS ONE OF THE CROWN JEWELS OF THE ENGLAND. THE DIAMOND IS CURRENTLY SET IN THE CROWN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER. AND LASTLY, KARNA'S KAVACHA. THE KAVACHA IS A LEGENDARY ARMOR BESTOWED TO KARNA BY SOLAR DEITY FATHER, SURYA. THE ARMOR IS SAID TO BE INDESTRUCTIBLE IN BATTLE. THIS ARMOR WAS ALSO WORN DURING THE BATTLE OF KURUKSHETRA, HOWEVER, IT IS CURRENTLY UNKNOWN WHERE THE ARMOR IS NOW.

After everything he learned last time during his research, he was back for more. He had his handy-dandy notebook to take notes. This notebook was designed to be exclusive for the Hindu relics notes so he would always know where to find all the information he needed and wouldn't lose them. Eryx sat and reviewed his notes so he would know what to search for this time.

The diamond sounded like a nightmare to retrieve so he would leave it for later, especially given how it said it was unknown what powers it bestowed upon you. It could be a dangerous mission. Later.

He had two possible objectives now: the bow and the armor. It hinted at both of them being around the same location so he researched further into both. The bow was last seen with a hero named Arjuna, which reminded him of a singer funnily enough, and it was believed to be buried somewhere in Kurushetra. He looked further into this, seeing if he could find a more precise location within the town, maybe a town map, or a way to track it down.

After that, he moved to the armor. It was last worn during the battle of Kurushetra but it was unknown where it currently was. He looked deeper into this for the possibility of the armor to still be in the town but if it wasn't he was determined to find out exactly where it was.