#purple sphinx theory

[garfgorl]

I think the Puckett fam would be sooo excited to have cat boy Max

[starburstdragon]

wow max thats a lot of colors

[xamaxenta]

Marcosabo smoking together its a thing they do

Marco only says it once like, that shitll kill you yoi

And sabo looks up from where hes lit his own cigarette with a snap of his fingers

He looks awful, huge dark circles under his eyes, theyre deep purple and bruised looking, his cheeks hollower than usual and his scar looks particularly mottled and pronounced when cast in the light of the cherry red tip

He shrugs and exhales a thin stream of smoke through his nose “its comforting.” Is all he has to say, mumbles around the filter

Marco gets it. Being a man of flames himself, the Phoenix whets the effects and burns away the impurities, he wonders if the mera mera functions in a similar way, Ace never was the smoking type so he never thought to ask

“You should find better comforts” Marco replies

Sabo doesnt look at him, focusing on something far out in the distance on the sunset horizon from where they stand on the ocean torn cliffs together

Its quiet for a long while, the sound of night critters and crickets singing and chirping, the gentle whip of weather aged fabric fluttering beside them, Sabo brushes a hand over the sun warmed stone, stone that remained warm even on the coldest nights, bare fingers tracing the carved letters of his deceased childhood couldve been—

“Like what.” Its not a question or a demand or anything really.

“A hobby perhaps.” Marco suggests and Sabo smiles, lips curving into something a little mean and a little sardonic “I went out of my way and made the time to visit you on this shitty little island and all you have to say to me is get a hobby?”

“What would you rather have me say?” Marco turns to look at him properly, its their first eye contact since Sabo arrived with his bag of tributes, flowers of course. White roses, sake and a prayer for Newgate, and pink hibiscus, orange firelilies and sunflowers; for Ace.

Sabo says nothing continues to sink his fingertips into the grooves of the letter A and bites down harshly on the filter of his smoke.

“Marco I want you to ask me to stay.” Marco changes his voice, altering it deeper and accenting it in that infuriatingly posh and mocking tone that he often adopts when mimicking Sabos voice

“You know I cant.” Sabo says quietly, feels the heat of his burnt down cigarette dangerously close to his lips, he doesnt care though, if he closes his eyes he can pretend.

“Then what about when its all over?” Marco doesnt sound hopeful

“When its all over? Id be lucky to even be alive when its all over.” He doesnt usually do bleak, but Sabo doesnt expect to see the future hes been fighting so hard for

Marco heaves a great sigh, it comes from his belly and leaves his mouth ashy and smoky.

“I don’t particularly cope well with loss.”

Sabo flinches. Draws his fingers away from Ace’s headstone sharply and looks away. Guilt sinking sharp claws into his stomach and tearing him open from the inside.

Of all the foolish and tactless things he couldve said.

“I dont think this is working out for us.” Is what he says instead.

Instead of sorry

Instead of i didnt mean it

Instead of i love you, i want to come home to you

Marco remains quiet, its too dark now with the sun having fully set a few minutes prior, to figure out what exactly his expression had changed to.

“You made time just so you could break up with me?”

It’s a little ludicrous, when spoken aloud like that.

“This isnt love.” Sabo rasps, that tiny blip of heat sitting just on the tip of his tongue now, he’s tired, its always hard coming here.

“Couldve fooled me.” Marco drawls, his tone betrays nothing but theres a difference in the way he says me, he steps closer regardless.

Sabo cant exactly see him now, refuses to ignite to sate his curiosity, just his general silhouette because the moon tonight is new and the island of Sphinx is very quiet and very dark.

“Here.” Marco proves a personal hypothesis— the phoenix has some kind of night vision— because Sabo has no other theory to explain when Marco finds his hand with ease, threads their fingers together with familiarity, “at least spend the night.”

Before i leave you and this place forever. Sabo doesnt vocalise this.

“And let you have the opening to convince me?” Sabo doesnt pull away

“Im not beneath begging.” Marco replies and Sabo watches his silhouette move, that half cigarette gets flicked off the side of the cliff with a smart snap of the phoenixes wrist

“Then beg.” Sabo whispers through a mouthful of ash and blood, snarling because Marco will beg, when he doesnt have to and Sabo will stay and see in him what Ace always had and loved and will continue to

[thevelaryons]

if boys are children of corlys, how can they claim a Dragons? sorry, I haven't read the book

Addam & Alyn's closest known Targaryen relation would be from the conquest era, but that's a non-issue. There's several examples of characters with distant Targaryen ancestry with an affinity for dragons. Quentyn Martell almost managed to tame a dragon (but made the mistake of having his attention divided between 2 different dragons). Another character in the books, Ben Plumm, also has Targaryen blood from his ancestors and Dany's dragons were shown to be very fond of him.

This is what Tyrion, known dragonology expert, has to say about the degree of Targaryen blood needed to have an affinity for dragons:

“I know you as well, my lord,” said Tyrion. “You’re less purple and more brown than the Plumms at home, but unless your name’s a lie, you’re a westerman, by blood if not by birth. House Plumm is sworn to Casterly Rock, and as it happens I know a bit of its history. Your branch sprouted from a stone spit across the narrow sea, no doubt. A younger son of Viserys Plumm, I’d wager. The queen’s dragons were fond of you, were they not?” That seemed to amuse the sellsword. “Who told you that?” “No one. Most of the stories you hear about dragons are fodder for fools. Talking dragons, dragons hoarding gold and gems, dragons with four legs and bellies big as elephants, dragons riddling with sphinxes … nonsense, all of it. But there are truths in the old books as well. Not only do I know that the queen’s dragons took to you, but I know why.” “My mother said my father had a drop of dragon blood.”

Addam & Alyn would also have "a drop" of dragon blood but the only reason why Addam succeeded, where Alyn failed to tame a dragon, is because Alyn is depicted as an impatient and restless boy. He's the type to rush into it and get burned for his efforts. Personally, I go with this reasoning.

Another possibility is that their mother might have been a dragonseed (through some unknown Targaryen ancestry) and that increased the boys' chances at taming dragons. I don't personally believe this theory but I suppose it's still worth considering (how many secret Targaryens are there in this story?).

Though there is also a theory which suggests that Targaryen blood is not needed in taming dragons, just a great deal of patience and bravery. If Addam & Alyn really had no Targaryen blood from their father's side of the family, then this would be the most likely answer for the dragontaming.

[glitchy-creations]

Offical Alcaeus ref sheet!!

Not sure if anyone remembers the one off Valentine’s Day post I made with Alcaeus, but I finally made him a proper reference sheet! All the info and extra images are below the cut!

Alcaeus is a demigod; his father is Hermes and his mother was a mortal woman from Thebes named Ophelia. When Alcaeus was young his mother died (cause to be determined) and in an attempt to protect his son, Hermes took little Alcaeus to Ambrosia’s garden (Ambrosia is an oc I often ship w/Hermes for those who don’t know her). Ever the kind hearted goddess, Ambrosia took in Alcaeus and has been caring for him ever since. Alcaeus is pretty happy with the set up mainly because he gets to chill out most of the day. I imagine as a kid he was a fair bit paler than he is now, he just got a really good tan from being outside all day gardening lol. I have this hc that since ambrosia/nectar is what causes ichor to be gold (in some telling) that it could change other physical traits as well. Alcaeus’s little gold streaks in his hair are caused by being around the stuff so much, in theory at some point his hair will be completely gold.

I used this ref sheet as an opportunity to change up Alcaeus’ design a little bit, mostly with his outfit. His original outfit was more similar to my older Telemachus design but while I was looking at Greek vase art for inspiration I was drawn to this sort of skirt styled outfit. I wanted to keep his iconic (to me at least) purple element so I made the top bit of fabric purple, I imagine it’s like a thick sash or something. I also gave him more accessories just for funsies.

Also, fun fact, the design on the kylix he’s holding is actually a design I came up with inspired by Ambrosia and her garden! It was for a Greek pottery art exhibition I was part of in March, I thought it would be a fun Easter egg to add in! The concept for the tile is that, since Ambrosia’s garden is meant to be a secret place, its entrance is guarded by a sphinx who stops most unsuspecting mortals from entering.

[jbbartram-illu]

Started in on some glazing today - first up: a sphinx & two manticores!

In theory the pinky wash on the sphinx's body will become a darker purple-blue (it's a brand new addition to my underglaze collection so this is my first time trying it)...fingers VERY much crossed or spinxy's colour palette is going to be a bit weird.

[animusbell]

I just came across your sphinx theory, and really liked the points you had to make. Though I do have an idea for why the sphinx would be purple and still able to work with Max.

When doing digital art you can't usually use actual black since it often times gets greyed out by the other colours, so more often you'll see a technique called "true black" where you instead use a very dark version of some colours. One of the most common colours for this is purple actually.

THATS FUN... I don't actually think the comic would get that granular about color physics but I do think it would be really funny to encounter a plot twist thats just. max realizing his spectral energy color is slightly different from what he thought

[nochiquinn]

exandria unlimited: calamity episode 1: fantasy art deco

cautiously excited

oh is this gonna be one of the things where everything starts all fucked up and the rest of it is How We Got Here

(I'm specificially thinking of The Untamed)

that escalated quickly

oh no travis is Attractive

oh no

I am aabria hiding her face

"is it too late? can we go back? we're only five minutes in!"

"lucky 13!"

"a griffon" disgruntled wynne noises

draconic??

"that's the end of the campaign"

sam gets the mgs ! noise

aabria and travis experiencing trauma

weLP

tag urself I'm travis

ever since I made the dragon age joke I'm only seeing this guy as Duncan

"this whole episode is a trigger warning!"

hey the petals to the metal joke last week was a JOKE

dead gays and flowers

marisha's eye makeup in this light

dawnfather??

the campaign 1 kids losing their shit

ZERXUS that's his name

"I think I'm in the wrong class" "yeah I was auditing for the fun thing"

"stop being cool like we don't remember what just happened!"

changeling!

you made a 1920s fop type didn't you

BARD WARLOCK

1920s I CALLED IT

her??

RIDE ZE SHOOPUFF??

I put on my robe and bellhop hat

outer worlds, that's what this makes me think of

[stares out at the third night of rain] I want to live there

DIVORCED PCS?

yeah yeah hell yeah

ART

PURPLE

the era of hextech

The Ground Ones

"they'll move or don't"

"there's been a couple don'ts in the past"

"it's a choice"

AEORMATON

that feels unsafe

these two are going to kill me

oh no

"I'm not safe on this side of the table"

you have to tell me if you're a dragon

fantasy victor temple

oh no

fantasy racism

not the baby wizards

I'm gonna cry so much over these children later

"the sphinx is pitching alts on his roar"

ooooh the set

it's funny bc as soon as I heard "ring with an eye" I went "ukutoaaaa"

BIRB

ooh the gold shimmer animation on the art

!! that's the guy!!

this npc sounds like red green

"you're in a different movie from the rest of us!"

"new god of jerkin' off"

art!!!

this is some district 1 shit

brumestone??? in your HAIR???

cosplayers trying to figure out how to make shit float

GRANDFATHER?

"you can turn into a bear so WHAT"

"this used to all be orange groves!"

I love how reactive aabria is

is aabria left-handed? everybody take notes again

oh, so it's hubris

wizard racism

oh no

"I'll speak to nydas" can't believe we're gonna have a pc death in episode one

treason??

every single variation of eye emoji in the discord

"I think you mean his pet platypus-bear"

is patia's house the stain glass from the intro

sam

BOLO

the hot me dogs

WIZARD FIDGET SPINNER

"forgot to drop haste"

oh he's back

almost three hours later

oh we're setting me up to be sad again

my thought at the begining "you know I won't look like this when I get back" might mean he had been gone for a while - most of Elias' childhood, I'm guessing

he was like 5 in the vision, right? so if that's when zerxus saw him last he'd be like 12 now - the perfect age for resenting your dad being gone

I didn't absorb a fucking word of that

my theory is still mostly valid

birb children

"extra-terrestrial knowledge" moon lore

"is there something?" "I mean y - " "GIMME"

sam

aabria

exCUSE

keeps smacking it trying to get a better signal

aabria

aabria whatcha doin

aabriaaaa

PURVAN

"SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH BRENNAN LEE MULLIGAN"

"I'll tell you after"

he's just A Guy

I've missed level 14 rolls

loquatious is EXACTLY the type of person to have a magic verbal wite-out

is that the name that was on the raven statue in kymal? I think I assumed at the time that it was the raven queen's mortal name

and she like. directed mor to fucking powderize it

"free advice change your first name"

zoom and enhance

his eyes do jazz hands

HIS HAWKS

well rip this guy

oh cool I hate it

whAT

you leave my mom out of this

"goddammit not to ME"

"tune in next week and see if things get better"

[shakes the internet until episode 2 falls out]

[sanchoyoscribbles]

and 3 more of the girls, redesigned! Bios under the cut like last round. Full size view please! ✨

Persimmon/ Mew Persimmon. Persi (nickname) 17. Female. 5"4. Light ash brown hair. Gold/orange gradient eyes.

outfits: BOUGIE . VERY BOUGIE STUFF. Silvers, warm browns, SPARKLY things. She's all about High Class and looking cute!

Birthday: July 29th

DNA:  alien :^) She’s Team Earth and actually sewed her ‘mew costume’ herself!! But she doesn’t have any animal DNA!

Personality/backstory:  A member of the resistance against Queen, she was the only one who was able to flee and escape to Earth! Which is super lucky all things considered..because she's incredibly lazy besides that. Most aliens can fly and teleport to an extent, but it turns out she's super bad about it because she never practiced a lot when she was younger. She is also somewhat afraid of heights, so she refuses to practice more. She is really good with technology, which more than makes up for it. Since alien tech is light years ahead of Earth's, she finds human's tech primitive and considers helping them upgrade easy and hardly any effort. She's incredibly laid-back, and loves to pamper herself and her friends. She might actually be so stressed she's calm though; she's been through..a lot. She's happy to learn about Earth, and a fast learner! She LOVES the internet and very quickly got a popular account with fashion. Earth fashion in particular is her favorite hobby. She loves how diverse it is. And sparkly. She loves that.

funfact: She honestly hates fighting herself and getting all sweaty, so she usually has a chimera anima fight for her! She stole a parasite Queen was testing on and merged it with an anteater to make her adorable purple fluffy friend Grape. He.......is also lazy.

Aqua Shirogane. Mew candyfloss. 15. (robot?? 15 mentally??) Female. 5"3. hot fuschia pink hair, bright aqua eyes

outfits: CUTE. FRILLY. SWEET. Pastels, bright colors! Cute to her core!

DNA:  A ROBOT.

Birthday: July 10th

Personality/backstory:  A robot made by Ryou Shirogane as the next step of the mew project! He wanted to eliminate the risk of any more 'real girls' getting hurt, and wanted to make sure that even after he was gone, the one to carry on his work wouldn't die out so easily in the event the Earth had another Major Issue. So, a robot! After Masha and Ucha, he decided to go ALL OUT. It took 15 years of work, but he finally did it! He..didn't count on her sort of kind of gaining sentience at the level she did, the working theory is because she's powered by mew aqua so the uh..magical properties did. Something. Either way, she's happy to be here! She's pretty happy about everything! She loves her friends a lot and loves protecting people! She's adorable, so you wouldn't expect that she's the ultimate weapon! Seriously, uh. She can: fly, lift two tons, has xray vision to look thru stuff, light up ear and eye lights, can hear Really Well, amplify her own voice and can punch Really Really Really Hard. Also, her mew outfit has a detachable ponytail that's more of. a Blade/boomerang kinda dealio. Her main problem is that she Can't go outside of her specific mission or orders unless someone on her team tells her to. It's really hard for her to make her own choices at times! She tries really hard. 

funfact: Because she's a robot, her hair is totally just. Wigs. So she can change her hairstyle/ length on a whim! Persi loves playing dress up with her :”)

Sapote. Mew Sapote. 21. Female. 5"11. light honey hair and bright gold eyes in mew mew form, and milk chocolate hair and gold/orange eyes in her normal form.

outfits: baggy clothes, clothes that give her freedom to move around. think tanktops, comfy shoes, shorts, or baggy pants. (the jacket pictured doesn't even come in until later, but it's an Earth Jacket, a bomber to be specific! Once she gets it she always has it. It's. Fluffy. Warm. She's emotionally attached to it.

DNA:  Blackburns sphinx moth/alien DNA

Birthday: November 26th

Personality/backstory:  A little goofy, a little sadistic at times. Others make the assumption she doesn't care about her job because of her lackadaisical personality, but she went out of her way to ask Queen for it specifically, and literally Will Not let anyone else be in charge or watch after Cara. She doesn't particularly have anything against humans, per say, and considers her work just that: work, and can detach herself from it pretty easily. She's the first and only alien that was given a knockoff mew mew serum by Queen, who had worked on it for years. Even so, being that it's an earth animals DNA, it's not really.. compatible in the way it would be with a human (even then, only a few humans are compatible at that). Even so, Sapote did volunteer and will grit her teeth and take the side effects. Which usually aren’t pretty.

funfact: because she's infused with a moth, her schedule is kinda nocturnal. also, when she's not paying attention she sometimes finds herself chewing on her shirt. Because moth dna says EAT FABRIC. she hates that.

[talpup]

Ok so working theory so far (i haven't re-read everything yet,but i don't know when i'll get the chance to so here's what i have): we know the dragon king and griffon queen wanted to end the war/guarantee future peace/power so they wanted to imprint their young to secure that. The griffon king disagreed and hid Teris- but he couldn't hide a missing royal baby forever, so the dragon king/his servants tracked down teris' last known location; which was with shouta's sphinx family. The dragons attacked bc they were initially trying to get teris back-but when they couldn't find her, dragons and griffons ordered all sphinxes to be killed,not bc they didnt choose a side, but because by hiding teris they betrayed BOTH sides since she was a tool for them to unite dragons with griffons (and guarantee the survival of both royal families, with their power as rulers). This led to different factions being created in the war- some loyal to the griffon king only, some to the griffon queen and dragon king, some to the dragon king only. But eventually everyone turned on each other and the dragons and griffons were exterminated. (Orrrrr shit started getting out of whack with the elementals, so the council members banded together to secretly kill the royal familymembers on both sides, so they got the dragons and griffons to revenge murder each other).

The council is hiding knowledge of the war because if people found out that they turned on the kings and queens they swore allegiance to, then they are no longer trusted/respected authority figures, and EVERYTHING they do/say will come into question... including the festivals to appease the elementals.So if fourths lost their faith/respect towards the council, they wouldnt appease the elementals, and the elementals would start fucking oblvi up again. Also fourths might see that as valid reason to start a coup against the council.

Also i know all for one has something to do with this and i am missing analysis on a lot of stuff but its late so im going to sleep zzzz

Ooo... Theories! I love theories!!!

Brief reminder. In chapter 13, Teris' remembered dream shows her father saying it was time to leave, after she and Shouta spent the day playing together, and Teris asking her father if they could stay a bit longer. Her father said he was afraid not, and when she asked if she would get to see and play with Shouta again, the Griffon King's answer was "I hope so, my dear. For all our sakes, I hope so.”

Also in the latest chapter, His Purple Highness' thoughts shared what they asked the Sphinx leader for and the agreement Teris' father and Shouta's grandfather came to: "Finding the Griffon Queen and Dragon King’s plans as abhorrent as they did, Shouta's grandfather had asked for little in exchange for preforming a block on Teris to prevent a forced imprint. The only thing the Sphinx leader had wanted was King Lheas’ word that the Griffon’s would stop killing his kind for not choosing a side and joining in the war, and a private audience with Teris."

So we know that the Griffon King didn't ask the Sphinx's to hide Teris. But your current thought is that the King didn't take Teris back home after visiting the Sphinx's but hid her somewhere, and the Dragon's came looking for her, tracking her to the Sphinx's and killing Shouta's pack? Interesting... I like it.

But here's a few hinting/leading questions to help further your theories:

If the Griffon King had gone to the Sphinx's to put a block on Teris to stop any forced imprinting, why wouldn't he just return home to his mate and Queen, secure in the knowledge that a such a terrible thing could no longer be done to his daughter?

Presumably, so long as the Griffon Queen and Dragon King didn't find out what the Griffon King had done (in having Shouta's grandfather put a block on Teris) they would have merely thought the attempt to force an imprint on Teris and Kai had failed. It's not like they would've had a lot to go on to be sure such a thing would've worked in the first place, seeing as it's such a long held illegal thing to do and there's little to no remaining ancient records of it being done.

Also, if the Griffon Queen and Dragon King's plan to force an imprint was such an abhorrent thing that the Griffon Queen's loyal and loving mate/King consort was willing to work against her for the first time ever, it stands to reason that others (whether Griffon, Dragon, or merely severing them) would turn against them for it as well. Others like say the Dragon Court for instance.?. I'm not saying Ptick was right about the Dragon Court rising up and killing the Dragon's and only wrong about why (Ptick saying it was cause the Dragon King and Griffon Queen threaded Kai and Teris, instead of them wanting to force imprint them); but this might further lean itself to the "Ptick was right" theory.

As for the Elemental's. The scene in the last chapter with His Purple Highness telling Nemuri all that was mostly just to further explain how knowledge spells work, and (needless as it currently is) let readers know Nemuri is set to be the Dryad King's successor and be Dryad Queen.

Here's a couple lines from that scene where HPH is remembering: "The aged Sphinx had warmed to him during their meeting and privately admitted to being the sole bearer of a knowledge spell that imprisoned an ancient and terrible evil. Not so ancient as the Elemental’s the elemental leader’s were imprisoning, the Sphinx leader had told him with a wink; the great Sphinx naturally aware of the knowledge spell his ancestors had helped His Purple Highness’ ancestors with."

Since the knowledge spell Shouta's grandfather passed onto a young, unknowing Teris and locked in her head is the one keeping All for One imprisoned, and Shouta's grandfather admitted to HPH (His Purple Highness) that the ancient and terrible evil the knowledge spell he carried wasn't keeping something as "ancient as the Elemental’s the elemental leader’s were imprisoning" it's safe to say that All for One isn't an Elemental and the Elemental's won't be playing a part.

Actually, I'll flat out tell you, the Elemental's won't be playing a part in this fic. One, because I got so many moving pieces in this fic that I don't wanna kill myself by adding the Elemental's. lol And two, because this fic is part of an original series, and (whether I end up making it a fanfic or original fic) I have later plans for the Elemental's and the world of Oblvi in a later book.

One last thing. Seeing as it was so small that most might have overlooked it, I will say that there is a hint at what All for One is in the opening scene of the latest chapter.

In any case, thanks for sharing your working theories! I really did love hearing them. Feel free to share any more if you get a chance and want. I hope some of my hints and leading questions helped you along. Thanks again!

[garfgorl]

Edgy cat boy Max

[famous-aces]

Sun Ra

Who: Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount)

What: Musician and Composer

Where: American (active largely in US)

When: May 22, 1914 - May 30, 1993

(Image Description: a black and white photo of Sun Ra from 1979. He is standing in front of a brick wall that has words spray painted on it, partially blocked by his body. Legible is the word "Sunshine" in huge letters, the "I" dotted with a character or starburst. It is written in such big letters the last few have to be reduced to keep them from running over onto the door. Also legible are the letters "L, A" but the rest of that word is behind Ra. Ra himself is a stern looking, dark-skinned black man, shown here from the chest up. He has a longish face, a smallish mouth and eyes, a broad nose, and a cleft chin. He has a very serious expression.  He is wearing a wool cap, dark on top with a paler ring at the hem. On top of the hat is a huge 3D sun, about the size of his face. Poking out of the sun are a bunch of shiny wires ending on either small stars or pingpong ball sized planets. On his body Ra wears a cape and below that a robe. The robe is made of two distinct materials, mostly something wrinkled or rough, but in the center over his chest is smooth black fabric with white polka dots on which a sun and the planet Saturn have been painted. End ID.) 

He said he was born on Saturn. He wore bright robes and elaborate hats. He was a creature of Ancient Egypt and the unknown future. He never wanted to sleep and never drank. He said his biography was a mystery.  He was very fond of mysteries. 

Sun Ra was also a jazz pianist, composer, and the leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, a free-jazz big-band. He is also one of the fathers of Afrofuturism, but given the themes he embraced, the outfit, and the Saturn thing you may have guessed that. 

Ra became well known for his musical innovation and uniqueness of instrumentation as well as the drama that characterized his music and persona both on and off the stage. He was active in the jazz scene for roughly forty years from the late 1940s to the early 1990s and he always seemed to be at least a decade ahead in his trends.

Ra was always creating pieces that defied the common and brought together his many complexities of style.  In the 1950s, when he first became a band leader, he began incorporating electric piano (his instrument of choice), tympani, and flute, instruments then unheard of in jazz bands. He later would be among the first, if not the first, to introduce the synthesizer. In the 1960s he began incorporating improvisation into his compositions and became well known for his strange solos. And in the 1980s he integrated earlier works into his performances.

His flair for the dramatic was at its highest on stage where combining Ancient Egyptian and sci-fi themes in sets, dance, and costumes. His performances were huge and eclectic and energetic. As much a spectacle for the eyes as the ears. 

His best loved albums include SuperSonic Jazz (1957), Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy (1963), The Magic City (1966), Atlantis (1969), Astro Black (1972), Space is the Place (1973), Lanquidity (1978), Disco 3000 (1978), Sleeping Beauty (1979), Nuclear War (1982), and The Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt (1983). There are best of albums like Sun Ra: Singles 1952-1991 (2016) and In the Orbit of Ra (2014). I don't know anything about jazz (free or otherwise) but I did like listening to his stuff, it is very cool and weird.

His personality was as exciting and strange as his music. He had an "equation" rather than a philosophy. Whatever he called it, his thinking was a very New Age, UFO Religion mindset although he was getting into these themes in the 1950s, well before those were popular. His personal equation combined many different sources with his own thoughts to find the path that, one biographer states, "leads beyond the stars." He drew heavily on Ancient Egyptian mythology and mysticism, channeling, black nationalism, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Zen Buddhism, with a very heavy lean into Gnosticism. He frowned on most organized religions but was a highly spiritual being.  He was very much pro-civil rights but became disillusioned with the movement. Perhaps the most important things to him were outer space and music. He was always looking both to the distant past and far future.

His theories and equations were his own and explanations never gave a full picture. He took the role of eccentric teacher and apparently played the part well. He had many followers, especially among musicians. Overall, it seems, he embraced the strange and unknown and wore his identity with pride. He was queer and contentedly so.

He would not have been out of place today. Maybe he was from Saturn, but he could have easily been from the future.

(Image Description: the album art for Atlantis. It is all in yellows and purples.  It says "An Intergalactic Space Travel in Sound" on the top of the cover. Below that and on the left it says "Sun Ra and his Astro Infinity Arkestra". To the right it says "Atlantis". Below that is shows an amorphous blob of eyeballs and flame.  End ID) 

Probable Orientation: Aroace 

He is another one that aphobes say cannot be ace because they like him too much. They like and respect him so he cannot be sexually abnormal. They can accept him as queer, but aroace is too far. There are many who now accept him to be asexual, but many others who hold fast to their aphobia. Those people constantly claim that he was a sexual entity of some kind despite Ra's own profession to being "nonsexual.".

His queerness was noted before his persona was formed. In 1943 after having a nervous breakdown his doctor accused him of being "psychopathic" and "sexually perverted" because of his being queer. The same doctor also professed Ra (then Blount) was "a well-educated colored intellectual," evidence that his "psychopathy" and "perversion" were rooted in queerness, not something actually wrong with his mental health.

Over the years he had close confidants among his Arkestra musicians and other musical professionals. These were some of the people he was closest to in the world and all of these relationships were platonic, seemingly none I would classify as queerplatonic.  All of these confidants noted there was never any romantic or sexual partners they knew of in his life but some have asserted either he was too busy, he just never talked about it/told them (unlikely because he was willing to discuss just about anything which will be highlighted in the quotes), or this was part of his self-denial (he never did drugs or drank and liked to Go Without). Some people in his life assumed Ra as gay (and allo). He was more interested in music than relationships and role as teacher rather than as sexual/romantic partner.

But most of his time was spent with music.  His music involved a lot of talk of love but it was always a larger concept than romantic love. Brotherhood, universal acceptance, things like that.

But this should not be debate. Again, he basically said he was asexual in that he literally said he was "nonsexual.". 

(Image Description: a color photo of Sun Ra in his costume from Space is the Place. He stands tall with his head tipped up, again serious faced. He has his arms crossed over his chest like a mummy. He is wearing red robes with yellow sleeves that go to the floor. He wears bracelets, rings, and gold shoulder pads. On his head he wears a huge tall headdress. It looks very similar to a pharaoh's crown. Part looks like the lower part of an Egyptian headdress, like the thing the Sphinx wears, and it is striped shiny gold and black.  Sitting high on his forehead is a gold and jeweled crown piece and on top of that going probably two feet or so above his head is a gold pronged structure with a gold orb in the middle of the prongs. End ID) 

“I don’t believe that something like that [asexuality] exists. Everybody has his or her sexual orientation, be it secret or open ... I don’t think I ever talked about his sex life, but I am pretty sure that he knew Fernando [Vargas, a sound engineer] and I were a gay couple. It made no difference for him, so he was not like a religious fundamentalist who would object to work with people like us, you know. He was just the kind of a guy, if Fernando was drinking wine, he wouldn’t have wine. I heard that none of the guys was ever using drugs. At least they didn’t do it in the studio, but we did have them sleeping overnight. He seemed to be with a pretty clean group.”

-Warren Allen Smith, studio owner and friend of Sun Ra's. (Despite not believing in it Smith basically points out that Ra could have been asexual. He never talked about his sex life, spent the night in a platonic group, Smith also mentioned in the same interview that Vargas and Ra would spend long nights alone just talking about music, that seemed to be what Ra wanted to do. To talk and philosophize.  It seems his sexlessness was not about being straight edge.)

"[Vargas was] a good gossip [who would] tell stories about the pope’s testicles." 

-Warren Allen Smith (he also describes Vargas as being "outgoing" and "unreservedly gay". The point here is that these men were close friends of Ra's.  And Ra was perfectly into this kind of discussion. Indeed he told Vargas and Smith about his own testicles, one of which was undescended. He was not afraid to be completely open about himself and his body.  He did not shy away from sex or sexuality, he just wasn't interested in it. It would be out of character for him to avoid talk about his sex life or bring around a romantic partner.)

"Sun Ra abolished sleep from his 'so-called life,' just as he had come to do without the distractions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, women [sex]."

-John Szwed (Ra biographer in his book Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra) 

"I have heard from Damon Choice and others that Sun Ra used to turn to his Arkestra and declare: Leaders will ask you to give up your lives for them, I ask only if you’ll give up your Death for me? Nothing that is essentially incorporated into human being – not sex, not Death, not religion, or money – nothing that we are or have been is beyond evaporation as our ontology catches up with our time." 

-Thomas Stanley (biographer in his book The Execution of Sun Ra) (In other words Ra saw sex as inessential to human nature)

"A gimmick."

-Sun Ra on sexual intercourse

“I have never been able to think of sex as a part of my life though I have tried to but just wasn’t interested.”

-Sun Ra (Nuff said)

(Image Description: a photo of Sun Ra at his keyboard. He is wearing a beaded headdress and shiny rainbow robes. He has his eyes shut, he looks calm, and he has his keyboard at a strange angle as he plays.  End ID) 

[xxlostinthedragonxx-blog]

EXO PATHCODE TEASER LOCATIONS

I know I am fucking late but well yeah, SM has me hyped on the theory stuff now. So here goes my two cents on it.

London : Jongin : teleportation The Victorian era has always been fascinated with egypt. They even built teleportation chamber which led to ancient Egypt. We do see jongin in London and his power is teleportation and also him on the Sphinx/ other Egyptian structure in exordium vcr

“An earlier Egyptologist was Joseph Bonomi traded as an archaeological artist but is thought to have been a tomb raider.  He is also generally considered to have been the designer of the Egyptian styled 'Courtoy' tomb in Brompton cemetery which was ostensibly intend to be the final resting place of 'three spinsters'.  An interesting legend has grown up around this mausoleum because it is the only one in the cemetery for which there is no record of construction.  This, together with Bonomi's obsession with the afterlife (reflected in the heiroglyphs on the tomb), have been held by some to be evidence that it is not a tomb at all…..In fact the tomb is one of five 'teleportation' chambers designed by Joseph Bonomi and built by his occult partner the Clerkenwell inventor Samuel Alfred Warner.  “

 Barcelona : Tao : time travel

"The World Brain organisation described in The Shape of Things to Come of 1933, the headquarters for which is located in Barcelona, contains echoes of the index organisation described in A Modern Utopia of 1905. One imagines that the vast centralised database of A Modern Utopia that is needed for the surveillance and disposition of the population would necessarily be part of the new and improved "knowledge apparatus" Wells was latter to describe as a World Brain or World Encyclopedia organisation"

HG wells is known as the father of time travel. His book, the shape of the things to come predicts future history.

Also he is shown to be exiting from Kafka café. In metamorphosis, kafka’s hero wakes up and turned into another creature. In translation it is said to be a beetle, but in the original ne it signifies a butterfly. Butterflies signify loneliness/being alone. Butterfly has been an icon for both Sehun and Tao in MAMA teaser.

 Arizona : Chanyeol : fire/phoenix

 Phoenix is the capital of arizona

"The most mystical and most beautiful of all winged beasts - the Phoenix, the "Bird of Flame", an incarnation of Foiros. "

"Arizona's Wallow Wildfire has consumed more than 733 square miles (1,898 square kilometers) — an area nearly half the size of Rhode Island — in the space of two weeks."

Similar to what we see in yeol's teaser, wildfire spreading

 Berlin : Minseok : ice

We see minseok entering an abandoned building with graffiti on it’s walls. 

“Berliner Eisfabrik. Abandoned ice factory, one of Germany’s oldest, which managed to survive two world wars, several fires and countless parties “

 Edinburgh : sehun : wind

“Given Edinburgh's position between the coast and hills, it is renowned as "the windy city", with the prevailing wind direction coming from the south west, which is often associated with warm, unstable air from the North Atlantic Current that can give rise to rainfall – although considerably less than cities to the west, such as Glasgow. Rainfall is distributed fairly evenly throughout the year.[78] Winds from an easterly direction are usually drier but considerably colder, and may be accompanied by haar, a persistent coastal fog. Vigorous Atlantic depressions, known as European windstorms, can affect the city between October and May.”

 Marseilles : Junmyeon: water

Marseilles has always been connected because of it’s port and canals.

“Historically, the economy of Marseilles was dominated by its role as a port of the French Empire, linking the North African colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia with Metropolitan France. The Old Port was replaced as the main port for trade by the Port de la Joliette during the Second Empire”

In the teaser we see drought is everywhere with the whole forest being dry, but then jun sits in the public bath(I guess?) place and the water flows in signifying his powers are back.

In reality there has been a severe drought in Marseilles in history. Historians have noted there has been some small series of earthquakes(soo’s power) and then the sudden flow of water in abundance to the city. However, this  water again dried up after some time followed by another earthquake.

Almaty : Jongdae : lightning

Jondae was in Almaty which is some mile from Astana. This makes sense because there is an emblematic tree of life and since JD is soo’s counterpart, there is a symbolism of tree of life where he is present.

“Construction of the Bayterek Tower began in 1997, the year the capital was moved from Almaty to Astana. Euronews’ Seamus Kearney reported: “The view of the tower from a distance is stunning enough, but don’t forget to take a lift to the top to get a bird’s-eye view of Astana.”

The tower represents a tree of life visited by a mythical bird of happiness.”

“– The association between lightning and the Tree of Life mirrors the real link between lightning and trees.  Sheltering under trees in a thunderstorm can be dangerous, as that is precisely where lightning is most likely to strike.

- ‘Beware of an oak, it draws the stroke’, or put another way, the tree draws down power from the heavens to the earth.”

Also, the version A cards show them holding colored balls.

[This image of the Tree of Life showing the Path of the Lightning Bolt is the most important image of the tree to understand further theories. The Path of the Lightning Bolt is the creative energy flowing from the Primum Mobile to the most concrete manifestation. It determines the numbering of the Spheres (Sephirot), and as we shall see later, the order of the paths connecting them. Above the first Sephira, you can see Ain Sof Aur, the Limitless Light; beyond which is Ain Sof, Limitlessness (which is invisible); and beyond that, Ain, Nothing. For those who want to skip ahead, the Gemmatria of Ain Sof is 207, and Aur is also 207...together 414, the same as hagooth: meditation. The Sephirot are numbered and named as follows:

1. Keter, the Crown (white) 2. Hokmah, Wisdom (grey) 3. Binah, Understanding (black) Daath, Knowledge (colourless). This is the unnumbered "bridge" over the "abyss" separating the divine from the mundane. A great mystery. 4. Hesed, Mercy (blue) 5. Geburah, Might (red) 6. Tipareth, Beauty (yellow) 7. Netzach, Victory (green) 8. Hod, Glory (orange) 9. Yesod, Foundation (purple) 10. Malkuth, the Kingdom (sky blue or earth brown) ]

Lyon : Baekhyun : light

Lyon is famous for it’s festival of lights, earning the title of Capital of Lights.

“Lyon played a significant role in the history of cinema: it is where Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinematographe. It is also known for its light festival, the Fête des Lumières, which begins every 8 December and lasts for four days, earning Lyon the title of Capital of Lights.”

“8 December each year is marked by the Festival of Lights (la Fête des lumières), a celebration of thanks to the Virgin Mary, who purportedly saved the city from a deadly plague in the Middle Ages. During the event, the local population places candles (lumignons) at their windows and the city of Lyon organises impressive large-scale light shows onto the sides of important Lyonnais monuments, such as the mediaeval Cathédrale St-Jean.”

 Yunnan : Yixing : Healer

We have known from the beginning that yixing is the healer for exo theory. Him arriving at Yunnan was no coincidence, because

“Yunnan Baiyao (or Yunnan Paiyao; simplified Chinese: 云南白药; traditional Chinese: 雲南白藥; pinyin: Yúnnán Báiyào; literally: "Yunnan White Drug") is a hemostatic powdered medicine famous for being carried by the Vietcong to stop bleeding during the Vietnam War.The medicine, developed by Qu Huangzhang in 1902, is designated as one of two Class-1 protected traditional medicines, which gives it 20 years protection. In China, its reputation is equal to that of penicillin in the U.S. It is founded and manufactured by a state-owned enterprise, Yunnan Baiyao Group (SZSE: 000538) in Yunnan, China.”

 Colorado : Soo/ All : earth n tree of life

In the Southwest corner of Colorado, 18 miles at 92 degrees from Egnar, there appears to be a "Tree of Life" and the remains of a Buddha-figure in a Lotus Flower, pair of megalithic-carved/shaped landscapes. gps 37.54.40.66N, 108.36.14.46W

[poorquentyn]

Thanks for the great blog - always a pleasure to read. Was Euron always planning to go to Oldtown? The facts underlying the Eldritch Apocalypse theory (which I love!) would seem to suggest he's had his eye on it for a while, but as recently as taking the Shield Islands, it seemed like his original plan was to sail to Essos. Did the plan significantly change after pushback from the ironborn, or did he simply reshuffle his agenda items and go to Oldtown earlier than he had initially planned?

(TWOW spoilers)

Euron’s initial plan was indeed to approach Dany personally. Perhaps his comment on how the Ironborn’s preference of grapes over dragons altered that plan is meant, like Littlefinger’s aside on how Cersei’s failures have forced him to sacrifice his “four or five quiet years to plant some seeds and allow some fruits to ripen,” as a direct comment from GRRM on how abandoning the five year gap changed the story. Euron might’ve been supposed to return to Essos himself for Dany at some point in the writing process, but the trajectory we’ve got given Sam V AFFC, the visions of Euron that pop up in ADWD, and of course “The Forsaken” works perfectly well on its own. 

Once his followers resisted and he decided to dispatch Victarion and the Iron Fleet to Slaver’s Bay instead, Euron found himself in a position not unlike Aegon’s on the opposite coast: in need of a conquest he could brandish before his men and use as a base of operations while awaiting the silver queen and her dragons. The Griffs went with Storm’s End; at the end of AFFC, it’s revealed that the Crow’s Eye chose Oldtown.

The most perilous part of the voyage was the last. The Redwyne Straits were swarming with longships, as they had been warned in Tyrosh. With the main strength of the Arbor’s fleet on the far side of Westeros, the ironmen had sacked Ryamsport and taken Vinetown and Starfish Harbor for their own, using them as bases to prey on shipping bound for Oldtown.

“Battle here,” said Xhondo. “Not so long.”

“Who would be so mad as to raid this close to Oldtown?”

Xhondo pointed at a half-sunken longship in the shallows. The remnants of a banner drooped from her stern, smoke-stained and ragged. The charge was one Sam had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil, beneath a black iron crown supported by two crows.

“It grieves me that honest men must suffer such discourtesy, but sooner that than ironmen in Oldtown. Only a fortnight ago some of those bloody bastards captured a Tyroshi merchantman in the straits. They killed her crew, donned their clothes, and used the dyes they found to color their whiskers half a hundred colors. Once inside the walls they meant to set the port ablaze and open a gate from within whilst we fought the fire.Might have worked, but they ran afoul of the Lady of the Tower, and her oarsmaster has a Tyroshi wife. When he saw all the green and purple beards he hailed them in the tongue of Tyrosh, and notone of them had the words to hail him back.”

Sam was aghast. “They cannot mean to raid Oldtown.”

The captain of the Huntress gave him a curious look. ��These are no mere reavers. The ironmen have always raided where they could. They would strike sudden from the sea, carry off some gold and girls, and sail away, but there were seldom more than one or two longships, and never more than half a dozen. Hundreds of their ships afflict us now, sailing out of the Shield Islands and some of the rocks around the Arbor. They have taken Stonecrab Cay, the Isle of Pigs, and the Mermaid’s Palace, and there are other nests on Horseshoe Rock and Bastard’s Cradle. Without Lord Redwyne’s fleet, we lack the ships to come to grips with them.”

“What is Lord Hightower doing?” Sam blurted. “My father always said he was as wealthy as the Lannisters, and could command thrice as many swords as any of Highgarden’s other bannermen.”

“More, if he sweeps the cobblestones,” the captain said, “but swords are no good against the ironmen, unless the men who wield them know how to walk on water.” 

“The Hightower must be doing something.”

“To be sure. Lord Leyton’s locked atop his tower with the Mad Maid, consulting books of spells. Might be he’ll raise an army from the deeps. Or not. Baelor’s building galleys, Gunthor has charge of the harbor, Garth is training new recruits, and Humfrey’s gone to Lys to hire sellsails. If he can winkle a proper fleet out of his whore of a sister, we can start paying back the ironmen with some of their own coin. Till then, the best we can do is guard the sound and wait for the bitch queen in King’s Landing to let Lord Paxter off his leash.”

The bitterness of the captain’s final words shocked Sam as much as the things he said. If King’s Landing loses Oldtown and the Arbor, the whole realm will fall to pieces, he thought as he watched the Huntress and her sisters moving off.

Euron and Aegon are parallels in many respects: the most significant new characters introduced in AFFC and ADWD respectively, they’re unexpected claimants who shake up the war by hijacking the story elements of the more well-established characters, particularly Dany. Of course, Euron’s motives are rather different from Aegon’s. The former has no interest in sustainable rule, so the Whispering Sound is less a rallying point for coalition-building like Storm’s End than a staging ground for his “sea of blood.” Moqorro, Melisandre, and Damphair have all seen visions of that unholy tide (Mel’s pointing at the Oldtown area specifically), and indeed it seems from “The Forsaken” that the Redwyne fleet is being set up as the climax to the mass blood sacrifices committed by Euron’s men. Basically, in the wake of his men and perhaps the author’s rewrites changing his plan, Euron’s now out to power up before his dragon arrives. 

And Oldtown, my favorite setting in the world of ice and fire, makes perfect sense as the ground zero for Euron’s apocalypse. Just as his eyepatch covers up the Crow’s Eye, his Pirate King performance shielding his C’thuloid soul, Oldtown’s public face as a prosperous port city home to thriving institutions only just barely covers up what this place really is. It’s a “hinge of the world,” an eldritch city, the closest thing to a Westerosi Asshai; all the lofty monuments to the “overproud,” from the Faith to the Citadel to the Hightowers, are undercut and undergirded by tentacled roots as big as trees. Oldtown is The Death of Dragons and the Faceless Man trying to steal it. Leyton and Malora get it, but they’re thought mad, and have cut themselves off from the city’s defenses at this point. Marwyn the Mage gets it…

“The grey sheep have closed their eyes, but the mastiff sees the truth. Old powers waken. Shadows stir. An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, an age for gods and heroes.”

The Mage was not like other maesters. People said that he kept company with whores and hedge wizards, talked with hairy Ibbenese and pitch-black Summer Islanders in their own tongues, and sacrificed to queer gods at the little sailors’ temples down by the wharves. Men spoke of seeing him down in the undercity, in rat pits and black brothels, consorting with mummers, singers, sellswords, even beggars.

“Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?” He spat. “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.”

…but he skipped town. (And is also widely thought mad.) Alongside dragons and krakens, Damphair saw a sphinx bowing to Big Brother, and such is the face the Citadel shows to the world:

The gates of the Citadel were flanked by a pair of towering green sphinxes with the bodies of lions, the wings of eagles, and the tails of serpents.

So not only is Oldtown the absolute perfect kindling for Euron’s particular fire, but he’s also the payoff for the setup regarding the Citadel. The grey sheep are certain they’ve built a world without magic, but they’re wrong and the Mage and the Mad Maid are right, because the Crow’s Eye is coming. Oldtown is where he finally tears off the mask and jumps:

“Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?” The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. “No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.”

[maneatingbadger]

Its axiomatic famousness is essentially a modern phenomenon. Early commentators enthused, but they did not seem to consider the painting particularly extraordinary or unique. The elevation of the Mona Lisa to iconic status happened in the mid nineteenth century; it was born out of northern Europe’s fascination with the Italian Renaissance in general, and Leonardo in particular, and it was given a particular Gallic, or indeed Parisian, twist by the presence of the painting in the Louvre. Her image became bound up with the morbid Romantic fantasy of the femme fatale: that idea of an ensnaring, exotic belle dame sans merci which so exercised the male imagination at that time. An important figure in the Gioconda’s elevation to fatal status was the novelist, art-critic and hashish-smoker Théophile Gautier. For him she was ‘this sphinx of beauty who smiles so mysteriously’; her ‘divinely ironic’ gaze intimates ‘unknown pleasures’; she ‘seems to pose a yet unsolved riddle to the admiring centuries’; and so on. In a telling aside during one of his rhapsodies, he remarks, ‘She makes you feel like a schoolboy before a duchess.’ Another who quaked in her presence was the historian and Renaissance-enthusiast Jules Michelet. Looking at her, he wrote, ‘you are fascinated and troubled as if by a strange magnetism’; she ‘attracts me, revolts me, consumes me; I go to her in spite of myself, as the bird to the snake’. Similarly, in the Goncourt brothers’ journal for 1860, a famous beauty of the day is described as ‘like a sixteenth-century courtesan’ who wears ‘the smile full of night of the Gioconda’. Thus the Mona Lisa was co-opted into a chorus-line of dangerous beauties alongside such luminaries as Zola’s Nana, Wedekind’s Lulu, and Baudelaire’s Creole belle Jeanne Duval.  The famous description of the painting by the Victorian aesthete Walter Pater, first published in 1869, was certainly influenced by this extended bout of Gallic swooning. Yeats later paid Pater’s flagrantly purple prose the compliment of chopping it up into free verse, in which form it sits more happily:  She is older than the rocks among which she sits; Like the vampire, She has been dead many times, And learned the secrets of the grave; And has been a diver in deep seas, And keeps their fallen day about her… Oscar Wilde comments perceptively on this seductive Pateresque blarney, ‘The picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is, and reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing.’ But the idea of the Mona Lisa’s ‘secret’ continued to reverberate. In E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908), Lucy Honeychurch’s sojourn in Tuscany gives her a touch of the Gioconda mystery – ‘He detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things she will not tell us.’  Others reacted more sceptically, as in Somerset Maugham’s novel Christmas Holiday (1939), where a quartet of art-lovers ‘gazed at the insipid smile of that prim and sex-starved young woman’. Iconoclastic young critics like Roberto Longhi poured scorn on the painting, and even Bernard Berenson – though hardly daring to question ‘a shaman so potent’ as Pater – confessed to his covert dislike of this revered work: ‘She had simply become an incubus.’ When T. S. Eliot called Hamlet ‘the Mona Lisa of literature’ he meant it in a negative sense: that the play was no longer seen for what it was, but had become, like the painting, a receptacle for subjective interpretations and second-rate theories. The other life-changing event in the career of the Mona Lisa was her abduction from the Louvre on the morning of Monday 21 August 1911. The thief was a thirty-year-old Italian painter-decorator and petty criminal, Vincenzo Perugia. Born in the village of Dumenza, near Lake Como, he had been in Paris since 1908, one of thousands of Italian immigrants in the city – the macaroni, as the French dubbed them. He had worked briefly at the Louvre, which was why he was able to get into the building unchallenged – and out again, carrying the Mona Lisa stuffed under his workman’s smock. A police hunt ensued, but despite his criminal record, and despite his having left a large thumb-print on the frame, Perugia’s name never came up. Among those suspected of involvement were Picasso and Apollinaire; the latter was imprisoned briefly, and wrote a poem about it. Perugia kept the painting in his lodgings, hidden under a stove, for more than two years. Then, in late November 1913, he sent a letter to an antique-dealer in Florence, Alfredo Geri, offering to ‘return’ the Mona Lisa to Italy. He demanded 500,000 lire. The letter was signed ‘Leonardo Vincenzo’. On 12 December, Perugia arrived in Florence, by train, with the Mona Lisa in a wooden trunk, ‘a sort of seaman’s locker’; he checked into a low-rent hotel, the Albergo Tripoli-Italia on Via Panzani (still in business, though now called – what else? – the Hotel La Gioconda). Here, in the presence of Alfredo Geri and Giovanni Poggi, the director of the Uffizi, Perugia opened the trunk, revealing some old shoes and woollen underclothes; then – as Geri relates – ‘after taking out these not very appetizing objects [he] lifted up the false bottom of the trunk, under which we saw the picture… We were filled with a strong emotion. Vincenzo looked at us with a kind of fixed stare, smiling complacently, as if he had painted it himself.’ He was arrested later that day. Efforts were made to turn Perugia into a cultural hero, but at his trial he proved a disappointment. He said he had first intended to steal Mantegna’s Mars and Venus, but had decided on the Mona Lisa instead because it was smaller. He was imprisoned for twelve months; he died in 1947.  The theft and recovery of the Mona Lisa were the clinching of her international celebrity. Both unleashed a swarm of newspaper features, commemorative postcards, cartoons, ballads, cabaret-revues and comic silent films. These are the heralds of the painting’s modern existence as global pop-icon. Marcel Duchamp’s defaced Gioconda of 1919, saucily entitled L.H.O.O.Q (i.e. ‘Elle a chaud au cul’, or ‘She’s hot in the arse’) is the most famous of the send-ups, though it is pre-dated by more than twenty years by the pipe-smoking Mona Lisa drawn by the illustrator Sapeck (Eugene Battaile). And so the way was open for Warhol’s multiple Gioconda (Thirty are Better than One); for Terry Gilliam’s animated Gioconda in the Monty Python title sequence; for William Gibson’s ‘sprawl novel’ Mona Lisa Overdrive; for the classic citations in Cole Porter’s ‘You’re the Top’, Nat King Cole’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Vision of Johanna’; for the joint-smoking poster and the novelty mouse-pad. Personally I suspect that I first became aware of the Mona Lisa through the Jimmy Clanton hit of 1962, which began: She’s Venus in blue jeans, Mona Lisa with a pony tail…  I’m not sure the ponytail would suit her, but the song’s wonderful bubble-gum blandness illustrates well enough the fate that has befallen this mysterious and beautiful painting.

Charles Nicholl, Leonardo Da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind

[animusbell]

If I can add on to the other anon's color theory about black and the sphinx thing: black ink is usually actually just a really dark purple. And you sign contracts in black ink.

OOOUH thats so cool...