#george cecil

[walmart-the-official]

What if I did something horrible to my notification box.

I made a poll with some of the newer trends. I vastly miscalculated what the results would be due to how close the Ides were and how few people knew about the rosin thing.

But now, I redeem myself with the classics and I'll probably miss one so feel free to reblog and make fun of me for it so I can get a larger sample size.

Have fun (:

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

British gay/bi male writers and their social circles

As a great admirer of gay literature, the social circles of gay and bisexual male writers is something that piques my interest. Due to the dangerousness of the matter in the past and also because it revolves around a relatively small niche, it seems that there was high level familiarity between these figures. The United Kingdom, a country whose literary input has abundant homoerotic tones, is a very adequate setting to analyze such a configuration.

I've been building a graph on this subject for some time, and now it seems mature enough for me to post it. It's a diagram based on friendship connections — deep or superficial —, although romantic and family-related connections are also included. Just a mutual recognition of existence isn't enough to justify a connection (otherwise most of them would be linked to Wilde!), and rivalries were not considered too. All the writers included were born during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1837-1910), where this interconnectivity seemed particularly strong.

This is just an early version, as I imagine there is still a considerable amount of information that I missed. Therefore, I'm very open to suggestions and comments on it!

(Three Irishmen were also included in the diagram: Stoker, Wilde and Reid)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

PART 1

Never-before-seen photo of four royal mothers, including Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret with their newborn babies, as a personal token to doctor who delivered them to go on display at Buckingham Palace

By Rebecca English, Royal Editor and Mark Duell

16 May 2024

—

It is a remarkable and never seen before snapshot of royal motherhood.

The image, taken by Lord Snowdon, shows Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Princess Alexandra, and the Duchess of Kent holding their newborn babies in 1964.

It was captured by Princess Margaret's celebrated photographer husband as a personal token of thanks for Sir John Peel, the royal obstetrician who delivered all four babies within two months — Prince Edward, Lady Sarah Chatto, James Ogilvy, and Lady Helen Windsor.

And it will be one of the highlights of a new exhibition Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, opening tomorrow at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace.

The charming picture will be displayed along with a handwritten letter from Princess Margaret to her sister, asking her 'Darling Lilibet' to sign a print 'as a souvenir of an extraordinary two months of delivery.'

The new exhibition — the first to be held at the The King's Gallery since it was renamed following the death of Queen Elizabeth — will also include The Queen Mother's personal copy of her daughter's Coronation portrait and the earliest surviving colour photographic print of a member of the Royal Family.

It charts the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day through more than 150 items from the Royal Collection and Royal Archives.

The photographs presented in the exhibition are vintage prints – the original works produced by the photographer – most of which are on display for the first time.

Alessandro Nasini, curator of Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, said: 'The Royal Collection holds some of the most enduring photographs ever taken of the Royal Family, captured by the most celebrated portrait photographers of the past hundred years – from Dorothy Wilding and Cecil Beaton to Annie Leibovitz, David Bailey, and Rankin.

Alongside these beautiful vintage prints, which cannot be on permanent display for conservation reasons, we are excited to share archival correspondence and never-before-seen proofs that will give visitors a behind-the-scenes insight into the process of creating such unforgettable royal portraits.'

'Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography' is at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, from tomorrow (May 17) until October 6, 2024.

[filipofmounthonora]

first year vs fourth year

aka im back in sge mode heyyyyy 😭 just doodling some (mostly soon to be featured) characters from my prequel / young callis+arthur series (i know its kind of old BUT. i AM working on the next installment which is probably going end up 3x as long 💀 stay tuned for wip posting. and callis posting 🥰)

ummm random ideas / explanations under the cut:

gareth and gaheris are arthur's cousins (gaheris is 15 (1 year older than arthur), gareth is 12) and both in his class. they generally dislike arthur for various reasons but mostly because they think he's cursed + stole the crown from his brother

callis is gareth's best friend. he is Not hers. he might also be in love with her but that is a tale for another time. you'll see

george (or grog) and alek are callis's roommates (alek is barely 16, george is turning 12). they both got into evil technically by nepotism. you'll see

it will be Ages before i can properly explain why lesso's name is completely different in this series so ill just say it here. its quite silly actually but its been this way for Years and Years so "leonora" is actually a portmanteau name of her first nickname (nora) and a second nickname (leo). the road to nickname 2 will be a long one paved with the power of friendship and not dying in the trial by tale etc etc. you'll see

emma is a surprise tool we will use later or something. she's not relevant after first year or so but im doing my own spin on her not being asked to the snow ball but somehow not being failed. what i'll say now is that callis and gareth are involved. you'll see

uhhh and if you're reading this have a snippet

[mariocki]

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

"Miriam? He really... isn't here, is he? Just now, I thought I heard... sometimes at night, when I wake up, it seems as if he really is here. Don't turn on the light. It's not real when it's light. It's only real when it's dark - dark and still."

[george-the-good]

KING GEORGE VI photographed by CECIL BEATON, Buckingham Palace, 1942

The King was amenable, but I found myself completely uninspired. The lights would not do my bidding, although there in front of me were great possibilities, provided by the raw, bony, medieval aspects of that handsome face. I could only fall back in desperation on a Bond Street ‘camera-portraitist’ form of flattery!

- CECIL BEATON, 1942

[prismaticxchromatics]

A Room with a View (1985) Director: James Ivory

“A far off the towers of Florence and she wandered as though in a dream through the wavering golden sea of barley touched with crimson stains of poppies. All unobserved he came to her. Isn't it immortal? There came from his lips no wordy protestations such as formal lovers use, no eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the lack of it. He simply unfolded her in his manly arms… What is it about Italy that makes lady novelists reach such summits of absurdity?”

[seeksstaronmewni]

Chris Reccardi appreciation post

In memoriam one of the greatest Spümcø veterans of all time, who, over 5 years ago, on May 2nd, 2019, died of a heart attack while surfing...

Seriously though; notice that Spumco guys like Chris Reccardi went from working on The Ren & Stimpy Show — including episodes starring THE George Liquor... American — to drawing gorgeous dolls like Ms. Keane (The Powerpuff Girls), Ms. Butterbean (The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy), and even Linda from the Cow and Chicken episode "Dream Date Chicken"???

God be with ye, Chris Reccardi.

Tweet version here.

Still hard to believe he died as young as he died... and I found that the day after his death through Animation Magazine... [tweet version]

https://www.animationmagazine.net/people/passings/ren-stimpy-powerpuff-girls-artist-chris-reccardi-dies-age-54/

Here are additional words from controversial Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi (post contains some language)...

who worked with Reccardi as far back as DiC's 1988 Beany & Cecil reboot, which was likely referenced in PPG episode "Child Fearing"...

Oh, and Chris didn't draw cameos of just Don Shank or Carey Yost (both Spumco and PPG crew) into the episodes on which he storyboarded; he even got narrator Tom Kenny to call Charlie Bean out!

[operaqueen]

Julie Andrews, the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady. New York, 1956.

[imgibbon]

A "Brief" History of Shade, the Changing Man & Woman

In the beginning, ie 1978, there was Ditko, and he gave us Shade, the Changing Man, and it was good.

Rac Shade was a Bond-type agent of an advanced society on a world called Meta - not an alien planet, but the Earth-analog of another layer of reality, and journeying between them meant crossing "The Zero Zone" and trying not to run afoul of its Area of Madness.

Shade had been framed for treason and the crippling of his fellow agent and fiancé Mellu Loran's parents, high-ranking government officials. Escaping from prison and heading to Earth and making use of a bit of contraband experimental technology that was being held at his hideout for Earth operations prior to his frame-up, the "M-Vest", he tracks down escaped Metan criminals while also seeking to find the one who framed him, who has been hiding out on Earth by integrating into its mafia underworld.

The M-Vest allowed Shade a range of powers. With it he could manipulate gravity, employ enhanced strength, fire off energy blasts, and gave him an odd force-field that mitigated harm, but was also sensitive to the psyche of those around Shade, contorting to look like a weird image of their fears, as well as reflecting Shade's unconscious thoughts. He was a "changing man" as, to others, he was a constantly mutable and unnerving entity.

Across the 8 published issues (we got issue #9 later, and Ditko purportedly had up through issue #15 plotted out), Shade convinces his superiors of his innocence, returns to Meta, makes up with Mellu, and starts to make his way back to earth to deal with the criminal mastermind behind his framing infiltrating and taking over the Earth observation outpost that Shade's organization had been working out of.

And then the series was cancelled on short notice due to DC being in financially dire straits at the time.

A decade later, in 1988, Shade was rescued from the void of the Zero Zone by The Suicide Squad, joining their ranks in return for helping him liberate his org's outpost as if it were the next issue and he hadn't been absent from pages for a decade since we last visited that plotline. The mastermind is killed during the scuffle, and with him any chances of Shade being able to go home and formally clear his name. Waller and co offer to help him out while he figures out another way home in the meantime.

He ran with the Squad for a good twenty issues, taking part in the giant Janus Directive crossover, and even journeying to Apokolips and fighting the New Gods with them. During that arc, he is talked into making a bad call that betrays the team, though he helps them get out of the resulting mess. In the end, when everyone is zapped home by Darkseid's eyebeams, while the rest of the Squad is blipped to Earth, Shade is finally returned to Meta.

Six months later, mid 1990, Peter Milligan's first issue of the new Shade, the Changing Man hit news stands. And it was... different.

Milligan expanded on Shade's backstory, revealing that Shade had been an aspiring poet prior to being recruited into the agency that trained it out of him, and delving more into Metan culture, while also using Shade as a vehicle for exploring the weirdness of being in a familiar yet alien society he felt as a British man newly moved to America.

After returning to Meta and before he'd had time to reunite with Mellu, Shade's superiors had tasked him with going back to Earth to pick up an assignment that another agent had been on but failed at: figuring out where the Madness in America was stemming from, and stop it from leaking out into the Area of Madness and influencing Meta. Shade had to journey deep into the Area of Madness to get a bead on it, and ended up on Earth by possessing the body of a freshly executed serial killer, unknowingly leaving his original body an empty lifeless husk floating in the void.

He started travelling the States with Kathy George, whose parents were the serial killer's final victims, and the two eventually are joined by Lenny Shapiro, and sarcastic and witty woman in her own right. The three end up in what would today be called a polyamorous trouple, and eventually confront the living embodiment madness of America, which had infected the other agent, driven him insane, and transformed him into what manifested to others as the giant twisted skeleton of Uncle Sam known as The American Scream.

Shade's M-Vest has grown in power, and possibly is just a part of him now, vastly increasing his abilities to raw reality-warping levels. He can more or less just do whatever the story needs him to do now, basically.

Once the Scream had been dealt with, Shade died. Not that that really slowed him down at all. He wasn't even really aware that it had happened. His at this point powerful madness-riddled psyche was keeping him around as a ghost of sorts, and Kathy & Lenny found a recent corpse to posses, as someone had just driven their car into the lake near where they were staying.

They only discovered after the fact that it was a woman.

After a brief detour where Shade transitioned back into being a man (transmasc baybeeeee), he went back to Meta, finally reconnecting with Mellu after what was now some years, only to learn that the agency had told her that he was dead, and she'd met and wed someone else. She has a mental breakdown, asking in tears why he hadn't come home sooner. Taking this in, Shade returned to Kathy and Lenny, to let them know that he was dying again, said his goodbyes, and allowed himself to be killed by the same FBI/Meta duel operative who'd done him in before.

This is where the Vertigo imprint spun up. The next issue, under the Vertigo banner, picks up after a bit of a timeskip, where Kathy and Lenny are informed by the ghost of Kathy's dead ex that angels in heaven have plans for Shade, and they're sending him back, having prepared for him a body to use in the form of a adult man who's been basically braindead since birth and kept in a medical institution. But the angels have kept a bit of Shade's soul so they can exert some power over him, and it's made him a bit less hinged than he used to be.

Shade, Kathy, and Lenny, per the angels' direction, set up shop as managers of a hotel, helping the weird visitors who come to stay there. During their time there, Shade manages to get Kathy pregnant, and Lenny reunites with the daughter Lily that she had in her teens before running away from home.

But as Kathy comes to term and approaches the time to give birth, she is brutally assaulted. She dies, though they manage to save the baby. Shade, however, is not in his right mind, and rejects the child, walking out of the hospital to wander, while Lenny leaves with her daughter.

This, purportedly, was where Milligan intended to end the series. But for whatever reason it didn't, so it kept going, and the status quo was obviously massively different than what it used to be.

After another not-too-lengthy timeskip Shade decides to kill himself, not seeing the point in continuing, though the literal devil sends him back to posses yet another body. Shade, in an attempt to find meaning, sets up shop in a dimensionally transcendental crack in the pavement in NYC, spends some time existing as the floor in a dance studio, and finally goes to check up on his son, George. Who, it turns out, is aging extremely rapidly, due to not being fully human.

Reunitings with Lenny are had, George ages to death over the course of six months, his soul merges with Lenny's daughter Lily, Shade picks up a few more strays in the form of Angela and Sinita, the latter of which he starts a new relationship with, before everything goes tits up again and he decides the solution is to build a time machine so he can fix all of his (and his friends') problems. He prevents Kathy's parents from being murdered, prevents his younger self from joining the agency, helps Lenny out in her youth, etc.

The series ends with Shade and his now-daughter Lily visiting this new revised timeline's version of Kathy to see if they can strike up a relationship with her.

Things apparently didn't go well.

The next time we see Shade outside of cameos is a story arc in Milligan's run on John Constantine, Hellblazer, in 2010. Constantine summons Shade to help with some Madness-related issues he and his fiancé Epiphany are experiencing, and Shade, unable to get together with the new Kathy and Lily nowhere in sight, becomes obsessed with turning Constantine's bride-to-be into an idealized version of Kathy. It doesn't work, and Constantine is able to properly wed Epiphany, but Shade is shown to be crazy and depressed and have basically the powers of a god. In the middle of all of that we also met back up with Lenny, who has cleaned herself up and is now a school teacher, go figure.

The very next year, DC would cancel the Vertigo line, and everything else, and reboot their universe with the Flashpoint event. During it, in a miniseries from Milligan, Shade is forcibly taken back to Meta, where they reveal that A) the vest has grown to be a part of him, and can no longer be removed in a way that matters, and, B) because of this he is, to an extent, immune to all these reality rewrites. Or at least less affected by them. Shade is put in charge of a team, the Secret Seven, but the madness overtakes him (with a bit of help from some double agents for an enemy faction) and he winds up back in the Area of Madness

Afterwards, in the New 52, we see him trying to forcibly manifest a new Kathy with his godlike powers, but apparently not godlike enough, as she just melts when he's not around. He's interrupted by Madame Xanadu, putting together a team, the Justice League Dark, largely comprised of many of the members of the Secret Seven, and tasks Shade in a leading role to help her save the world from some threats she has foreseen.

Milligan wrote this series for the first 8 issues, and when he left, so did Shade (as well as Milligan's other OCs he'd brought to the table), but it served as a nice little coda to his era of The Changing Man that had begun some twenty odd years earlier.

It would then be another half-decade or so before we'd see hide or hair of Shade again. In late 2016, DC started up the Young Animal line, a young adult-aimed successor to the Vertigo imprint, with many of the same faces headlining its titles. And among them was Shade.

Sort of.

The new Shade, the Changing Girl, from writer Cecil Castellucci, starred young adult bird alien Loma Shade, who was raised on Meta and had adopted Rac's last name after becoming enamored with his poetry and counter-culture views while he was acting as a guest lecture at her university before disappearing form Metan society again.

Loma steals what is purportedly Rac's vest, which has been sitting in a museum, and uses it to transfer her consciousness to Earth, wanting to follow in Rac's footsteps, taking over the body of a comatose high school girl named Megan. And leaving her now empty bird alien body behind on Meta for her boyfriend to deal with, oops.

Living as "Megan", she learns about our culture, experiences dysphoria being in a body she doesn't identify with, and explores sexuality, hormones, and learns how to be a better person than she used to be (and than Megan used to be as well). Meanwhile back on Meta, we learn that Mellu, now getting up there in years, is the head of the agency that used to employ her and Shade, and becomes obsessed when learning that someone has stolen Rac's vest and managed to use it, thinking she'll finally be able to reunite with Shade again after all these years.

Eventually, Loma runs away from home, learns never to meet her heroes, has to deal with Megan wanting her body back, and Mellu wanting Rac's coat back. Her original body dies without her soul in it, and Megan's body dies in the process of Megan trying to get back in it. Shade ends up possessing the body of her favorite black & white sitcom star, Honey Rich, who happened to look a lot like Megan in her younger years, and returns it to youthfulness to attend Megan's funeral.

Mellu also gets the coat back and uses it to reunite with Shade, who had left behind the vest for Mellu and was waiting for her in the Area of Madness where time has no meaning.

It was at this point that Loma got caught up in a really bizarre crossover event that involved all the titles in the Young Animal line called Milk Wars, which was largely Doom Patrol focused, but saw Loma splitting in five, each color-coded and embodying one of her emotions Inside Out style, and serving as Wonder Woman's personal helpers in a world overtaken by a weird 1920s aesthetic organization called Retcon. It was very weird lol.

The series then returned with under the new branding Shade, the Changing Woman. We are subjected to a five year timeskip, during which Loma has grown and slipped into old habits, sleeping around with men and women, indulging in food, drugs, and other things to fill the void in her heart. Her friends have all graduated, gone on to higher education, and gotten jobs in their fields. And she still doesn't really know what her place in the world is. So she's been couch-surfing with Rac in the Area of Madness while she figures out what to do with her life.

And in the midst of all that, the giant interdimensional crayfish that destroyed her birth planet, causing her to be a refuge child on Meta in the first place, begin to attack the Earth.

By the end of the final issue in late 2018, Loma and Rac had become one person, Kathy, Lenny, and Lily had put in an appearance, Mellu got some closure, Megan had come back in a male body and tried to hijack Loma's again, Loma's old boyfriend had become a green lantern, and Loma ended up possessing the body of her dying black non-binary friend River.

And that's where the series ended.

And we haven't seen Shade, in any iteration, since then.

[weirdlookindog]

The Mummy's Hand (1940)

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

An original signet ring of the Order of Chaeronea.

The Order of Chaeronea was a secret society founded in the mid-1890s by George Cecil Ives, an English writer and early gay rights activist. It was one of the earliest known organizations in the Western world exclusively dedicated to homosexuals and the promotion of “the Cause”, as Ives called it. Its name is derived from the Battle of Chaeronea, where the Sacred Band of Thebes, an ancient Greek elite fighting unit made up of pairs of male lovers, ultimately fell. This historical reference underscored the Order's emphasis on the valor and nobility of homosexual love and relationships.

The society provided a safe space for homosexuals to socialize, discuss literature, philosophy and politics, and support one another emotionally and intellectually, without fear of persecution. It operated discreetly, given the legal and social constraints of the time, with members using symbols and codes to identify themselves and maintain secrecy. The “prophet” Walt Whitman and his writings about the "high towering love of comrades" deeply influenced the Order’s overall philosophy.

While no membership lists survive, it is speculated that Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas, Edward Carpenter, Laurence Housman, S. E. Cottam and Montague Summers were among the perhaps two or three hundred members of the society. Many of them were early campaigners for homosexual law reforms in the United Kingdom.

The Order’s service of initiation:

That you will never vex or persecute lovers. That all real love shall be to you as a sanctuary. That all heart-love, legal and illegal, wise and unwise, happy and disastrous, shall yet be consecrate for that love's Holly Presence dwelt there. Dost thou so promise?

[adobongsiopao]

"Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars" (Revolution Software; 1996)

[the-busy-ghost]

Love that Wilkie Collins apparently kept getting letters from guys who were convinced that Marian Halcombe must have been based on a real woman, begging him to introduce them because they were desperate to marry her

[jazzdailyblog]

Exploring the Genius of Steve Lacy: A Jazz Innovator and Soprano Saxophone Master

Introduction: Steve Lacy, born Steven Norman Lackritz ninety years ago today on July 23, 1934, in New York City, was an avant-garde jazz musician and a master of the soprano saxophone. His contributions to jazz span over five decades, during which he pushed the boundaries of the genre, collaborated with some of the most influential musicians of his time, and created a body of work that continues…

[troublewithangels]

robert donat, deborah kerr, edith evans and isabel jeans in george bernard shaw's heartbreak house, 1943

📸 by cecil beaton