#john matthias

[diioonysus]

objects in art: swords/daggers

[featherbreak]

holy fuck we're back from Dragoncon and TLT COSPLAYERS REMAIN UNDEFEATED YAAAAAAARGH

without further ado, I present an initial dump of selected photos I took at the official TLT meetup -

Third/Fifth/Eighth House serving absolute cunt:

Cristabel Oct, the Woman that you Are, completely wrecking everyone's day:

Dios Apate, complete with traumatized Ianthe & Harrow:

all the Harrows & Gideons flipping one another off:

Individual mentions go to this INCREDIBLE Matthias Nonius, Ms. Gideon Frizzle, & a self-indulgent nod to the doomed triad:

feat. @eldritchw1tch and @incandescentorrery as two of our Ianthes, me as Cam, @tenebrari as Pal, and @aduck8myshoes as a pitch-perfect Dulcie. if you're also in any of these, definitely let me know (& tag me if you upload them, here or on IG at @feather.break) - I'd love to keep in touch!

I'll be editing and posting more individual images & solo shoots of various friends & co-conspirators for weeks, probably - stay tuned!

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[totallynots8tan]

He’s just a funky little white boy

[zaddyazula]

i’d never cry over a real boy, but i’d have an earth shattering meltdown for a fictional one

[robertisaworkofart]

I can’t stop seeing:

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

Matthias Stom; Onorio Mariani

Luther with the Head of Klaus the Baptist

Netflix

[blackramhall]

Amsterdam - Written and Directed by David O. Russell (2022)

[thetarotsequence]

Part Two - Half House and The Tower

✨From here on out, there will be spoilers ✨

Half House:

This chapter is foundational knowledge, in my opinion, on how to build a lovable character and then let them do disagreeable things. Honestly, THE LAST SUN is a masterclass in character building, already, but this chapter is the cornerstone of getting the reader sucked in, and the next chapter (which I'll get to, pinky promise) is the string that tugs the stick out from under the edge of the box, effectively trapping the reader in complete and total love for these stories. I don't make the rules, that's just how it happens.

The key, I think, is how relatable Rune is. From his claim that the stories about the worst night of his life "Just. Won't. Fucking. Die," to the pause he has for the unsettling feeling of did I just fuck up? that he feels after the encounter with Max in the bathroom, Rune is just a regular guy. I mean, yeah, he's technically a fallen prince with the capability to incinerate everything in an as-yet-undetermined radius, but he's a normal dude with a shitty day job, spooky boss, and bills to pay! He worries about his weight and wears laundry of questionable cleanliness! Just me? Listen, once you start having a chair pile, you never go back. But I digress.

I will die on the hill that these books - while fantastic to read - are even better when listened to. Josh Hurley, the narrator, is my dream narrator for my OWN book (if I get lucky enough to be published one day - I hope he can do a British accent). I hated audiobooks, legitimately hated them, until these stories, because the narration just feels like listening to a friend tell you about what's going on in their life, until all of a sudden it doesn't and you're in an epic battle with a lich, or struggling not to cry as your worst fears and biggest hopes are confirmed one right after the other (but that's HOURGLASS THRONE talk). So, if you're a hands-on reader who hates audiobooks, just trust me. I've listened to these books so many times I don't hear my own brain voice when I read them anymore. It's just the incredible talents of Mr. Hurley that have been engraved on my memory like grooves in a vinyl record.

It's the narration, too, that enhances that relatable factor, especially where Brand is concerned. He's definitely doing a violence on Max that would get American CPS called, but the narration makes it funny, the way I think it was intended to be. And again, they all clearly grow from this point over the series, and moreover, no one is perfect, and if you haven't wanted to stick someone's head in a toilet and flush, you're probably a liar.

Speaking of liars - Queenie. Settle in and grab some tinfoil for your hat, because I Have A Theory:

I think Brand went fucking nuts on Max - and granted, this is mild considering what he, a literal sharpshooter mercenary, is capable of - because he was programmed to do so. I have the benefit of having read all the way through the 3rd book and the EIDOLON, so I know that evidence supporting my theory exists, but that's an essay for a different day. What matters now, dear reader, is that I think that Queenie fucked up, and she's realizing it in the background of this scene when she tries to stop Brand, only to have him steamroll the conversation right over her. He goes oddly (and humorously) formal in his recount of what he did and why, and the ferocity of his protectiveness coupled with his recount of events just never sat well with me. It was disproportionate; there's no doubting that. I've always been suspicious of this sequence of events, specifically because this happened on the heels of Rune mentioning that the Empress, in her "unhinged grief" (such a mood) vanished into thin air and obtained Cryptid Status. From the first time I read these books, I thought (and continue to think) this bitch is the Empress, isn't she? Every time.

But! More on that theory soon.

Queenie's gentle manipulation, asking Rune how it was for him, after he lost everything, was masterfully done, Empress or not. It speaks to someone who has been a parent, or at least has been responsible for giving guidance (which, ahem, the Empress is the Mother archetype in the Tarot soooo...I am, as the kids say, standing on business) and knows that a delicate hand is needed. Where she couldn't stop Brand's irate retelling, she is able to successfully pull one of Rune's heartstrings and get him thinking about what she wants him to think about.

Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this passage not only for the breadcrumb trail beginning in front of us as readers, but also for the dynamic emerging between the characters. Especially knowing how much trauma exists between the three of them now, and being a parent of a child with trauma (she's bootleg, don't worry, I didn't give it to her) and being a parental figure with my OWN trauma, I could really relate to the feeling of fucking up because of a trigger being set off when I was unprepared.

The last thing I loved about this chapter is how Brand and Rune work a case. It's incredibly smooth, subtle world-building that SHOULD, by rights, feel like an info-dump, but it doesn't, because of how expertly this is written. The personality embedded in Rune and Brand saturates the page and obfuscates any sense of things being spelled out for the reader. Plus, the way Rune and Brand riff off of one another is fun, and funny, and 100% the reason why my wife ships them romantically, because they DO bicker like an old married couple. It feels more than anything to me, like conversations I would have with my wife (if we were magic-case-solving-mercenaries, obviously). It's impossible not to love Rune and Brand. They're iconic.

Favorite Quote:

Not so much a quote, but the way Josh Hurley narrates Rune proudly theorizing "Maybe he wants to give me a big fat check" is stuck permanently in my vernacular, cadence, tone, everything. I have quoted it while opening the mail several times. There is never a big fat check.

The Tower:

This, as I said before, is where the string gets pulled, and we, the readers, get trapped. It's not the hook - that was buried back in the sparkly lure of the Heart Throne chapter - this is us being reeled in so swiftly we can't even struggle on the line. The continued world-building is seamless, concise, and vivid. I love the line where Rune says the rest of the world thought New Atlantis pulled their Gotham out of a cereal box, and the way he follows it up with "not a bad rep to have". This sentence does so many things at once: it establishes how New Atlantis came to be, it establishes what other people thought of it happening, and it establishes that it was costly on multiple levels, AND it establishes that it is incredibly unlikely to happen again. This makes New Atlantis feel more real, to me, because it's the difference between living somewhere and just visiting, or seeing photos online. Y'all might see a picture of bluebonnets in a meadow and think "Wow, so pretty," and I would see it and definitely think "God, it was probably 102 degrees when this was taken."

Speaking of differences in perspectives! When Rune said that Lord Tower and Brand "didn't get along" my first instinct is best described as uh huh...sure, Jan. HOURGLASS THRONE survivors know what I'm talking about.

I also loved the stealth-worldbuilding of wandering the streets of New Atlantis with Rune and Max on their way to the Pac Bell. And did you notice the seamless way Rune interrogates Max? I literally didn't notice that that was what it was, an interrogation, until THIS REREAD, so like...yesterday. And then Rune effortlessly provokes Max to reveal his true feelings about the situation? Slow clap goes here.

Another thing I just realized this reread is that IF QUEENIE IS THE EMPRESS, IS SHE THE ONE WHO TOLD LORD TOWER MAX WAS THERE????? Because who was holding New Atlantis together in her wake? Oh, just good ol' L.T. That takes LOYALTY, a deep kind of loyalty that most political figures don't deserve, and I'm curious to see if I'm right, if the loyalty was reciprocal, or if Queenie/The Empress was still trying to call the shots from behind the scenes instead of stepping back. Also, calling it now: I don't think it was just grief that sent Queenie to ground. I think she had something to be legitimately scared of coming for her, and she bolted for her own survival. I feel this way because New Atlantis, according to Rune, treats grief differently than we might. He refers to himself as a cautionary tale, even - why would a society designed to not support victims have space for grief? So my next question is - did she participate in the raid? Or does she know something about it?

Going back to Lord Tower - this is a weird experience, this reread, because of the loss of my own Dad, but it's even weirder to realize that I can see how Rune identifies L.T. as a father figure, now. It's right there on the page, but in THT, the recognition of that role in his life was a sucker punch for me. So that's interesting. I look forward to seeing what else this reread elicits for me.

Also, what happened to that AI, KD? It's been a while...I'm just saying. Is this Chekov's AI?

Another 'love it' moment for this chapter, to close out my TEDx talk, is yet more casework, this time in the form of Rune getting info from L.T. It initially felt like a mysterious-benefactor-and-protege situation before, but like I said, this reread, I can feel the difference, and like a paperback that's gone soft as fabric from too many rereads, I hear the soft affection in Lord Tower's sigh and "Must you make me so terrifying?" quote. I also hear that paternal vibe in "Addam is special, and I worry." You even hear it in the OBVIOUS (except to Rune) matchmaking energy from Lord Tower calling Addam a "confirmed bachelor, much like you." Which I love, every time.

Favorite Quote:

"His walkabouts?" (Emphasis to try to capture Josh Hurley's narration). Honestly, Rune's entire snarky commentary is just so funny, especially now that I know what happens, and it's obvious just how not like what he expected Addam turned out to be. But that's another topic for another day.

[lionofchaeronea]

Christ and Nicodemus, Matthias Stom, 1640s

[edgarmoser]

matthias codden by john hart

[bcisaidso]

I have TTS fever! Editing is a lot more harder than I thought. I could not add Corrine and Mayan in this😮‍💨. Also, could not find a picture of Queenie, so The Empress.

Edited- Okay! The amazing @cysgod found the original artists of almost all the arts used in the video, along with the art links! 🙌🙌 (I just had to copy paste it here😬😬)

Artists are @oblivionsdream @ace-artemis-fanartist @xaviercollette , @glasspunkart, and @krittaart

Would be great if someone could help me track down the artist of the Lord Fool's art

https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com

https://ace-artemis-fanartist.tumblr.com

https://www.xaviercollette.com/

https://glasspunkart.tumblr.com

https://www.tumblr.com/krittaart

1. Rune (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/663393407187795968/rune-saint-john-from-the-tarot-sequence-by-kd)

2. Ciaran (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/679437684358479872/ciaran-from-the-tarot-sequence-by-kd-edwards-the)

3. Layne (https://ace-artemis-fanartist.tumblr.com/post/621105772376506369/happy-pride-month-book-the-tarot)

4. The Hanged Man (https://www.bragelonne.fr/auteurs/xavier-collette/)

5. Anna (https://ace-artemis-fanartist.tumblr.com/post/190915606772/its-not-that-they-forgot-its-that-theyd-rather)

6. Lady Death (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/677448098543550465/lady-death-from-the-tarot-sequence-by-kd)

7. Addam (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/663577408223494144/addam-saint-nicholas-from-the-tarot-sequence-by)

8. Quinn (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/670320789764079616/update-a-new-version-of-quinns-card)

9. Lady Time (https://www.bragelonne.fr/auteurs/xavier-collette/)

10. Lord Tower (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/664392853265481728/lord-tower-from-the-tarot-sequence-by-kd-edwards)

11. The Empress (https://glasspunkart.tumblr.com/post/634854789656854528/a-character-design-commission-for-kd-edwards-of)

12. Corbie (sadly no direct link to artwork https://www.tumblr.com/krittaart)

13. Brand (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/666333865274671105/brand-saint-john-from-the-tarot-sequence-by-kd)

14. Max (https://oblivionsdream.tumblr.com/post/673914066533810176/max-saint-valentinesaint-john-from-the-tarot)

15. Lord Fool (source not found – maybe someone else can help?)

[byneddiedingo]

Two Takes on a Hardy Novel

Julie Christie and Alan Bates in Far From the Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967)

Cast: Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, Peter Finch. Screenplay: Frederic Raphael. Cinematography: Nicolas Roeg. Production design: Richard Macdonald. Film editing: Malcolm Cooke, Jim Clark. Music: Richard Rodney Bennett.

Matthias Schoenaerts and Carey Mulligan in Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge, Michael Sheen. Screenplay: David Nicholls. Cinematography: Charlotte Bruus Christensen. Production design: Cave Quinn. Film editing: Claire Simpson. Music: Craig Armstrong.

Almost 50 years separate these two adaptations of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, and the differences between the two owe as much to film technology as to changing tastes. As always, translating page to film involves compromises. Screenwriter Frederic Raphael remains faithful to the plot, with the paradoxical result that characters become far more enigmatic than Hardy intended them to be. We need more of the backstories of Bathsheba Everdeen (Julie Christie), Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), William Boldwood (Peter Finch), and Frank Troy (Terence Stamp) than the highly capable actors who play them can give us, even in a movie that runs for three hours -- including an overture, an intermission, and an "entr'acte." These trimmings are signs that the producers wanted a prestige blockbuster like Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965), which had also starred Christie. But Hardy's works, with their characters dogged by fate and chance, don't much lend themselves to epic treatment. David Nicholls's screenplay for the 2015 film is much tighter than Raphael's, and about an hour shorter. Nicholls makes most of his cuts toward the end of the film, omitting for example the episode in which Troy (Tom Sturridge) becomes a circus performer, one of the more entertaining sections of the Schlesinger-Raphael version. I think Nicholls's screenplay sets up the early part of the stories of Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan) and Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) much better, though he has to resort to a brief voiceover by Mulligan at the beginning to make things clear. His account of the affair of Troy and the ill-fated Fanny Robbin (Juno Temple) is less dramatically detailed than Raphael's, but in neither film is their relationship dealt with clearly enough to make us understand Troy's character. John Schlesinger, a director very much at home in the cynical milieus of London in Darling (1965) and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and New York in Midnight Cowboy (1969), doesn't show much feeling for Hardy's rural, isolated Wessex, where the weight of tradition and the indifference of nature play substantial roles. What atmosphere the film has comes from cinematographer Nicolas Roeg's images of the Dorset and Wiltshire countryside and from Richard Rodney Bennett's score, which received the film's only Oscar nomination. And where atmosphere is concerned, Thomas Vinterberg has an edge thanks to technological advances: In Schlesinger's film, despite the fine cinematography of Roeg, the interiors seem impossibly overlighted for a period that resorted to candles and oil lamps for illumination. The change in film technology now makes it possible for us to see the way people once lived -- in a realm of darkness and shadows. (We can almost precisely date when this change in cinematography took place: in 1975, when director Stanley Kubrick and cinematographer John Alcott worked with lenses specially designed for NASA to create accurately lighted interiors for Barry Lyndon. Since then, the digital revolution has only added to the arsenal of lighting effects available to filmmakers.) So cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen's adds an element of texture and mystery to Vinterberg's version that was technologically unavailable to Roeg, and not only in interiors but also in night scenes, such as the first encounter of Bathsheba (Carey Mulligan) and Sgt. Troy (Tom Sturridge), when he gets his spur caught in the hem of her dress. The scene is meant to take place by the light of the lamp she is carrying, which Christensen accomplishes more successfully than Roeg was able to. On the whole, I think I prefer the newer version, which is less star-driven than Schlesinger's, but in the end the best version of the story is Hardy's novel.

[toxictrannyfreak]

Just read Nona the Ninth and. what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK. Cows watch sunsets We just wanted to save you you were so sick She could hear Varun sing You haven’t been in the River lately And I’m MEGA dead Go loud You could have lived for her but you didn’t know how You’re on Kevin toilet duty for being a zombie Is this not how meat loves meat? I’m going insane and dying and suffering AND there wasn’t even a mention of my beloved niche blorbo Matthias Nonius. I have to go to school tomorrow what the hell.

[partly-functioning-liver]

Love reading fantasy series with absolutely fucking unhinged stories; The Raven Cycle, The Locked Tomb, Six of Crows

There are fifteen different ongoing plots and everyone is a bit in love with each other and at least one of the main characters is a unapologetic murderer

[noahhawthorneauthor]

Ok I'm two chapters in, this is gonna hurt like hell.

Oh I wonder who is who.

[ode777]

I’ve cracked the code, Outer Banks is just Six of Crows if the crows were all dumb