#╰ to be written in ink is to be immortal — [ profile. ]

[fcble]

Post layout inspired by Myah @venusvity / Template / Gunjeopdo by Nam Gye-u

Ever since he was a child, KIYOUNG wanted to be an entertainer. There are countless home videos of him putting on a show for his parents and extended family. His specific interest in idols began in middle school, and it wasn't long before he was auditioning for various entertainment companies. He was eventually accepted into a small and now bankrupt company, where he joined a few other teenage boys aiming to debut. From the start, it was, for the lack of a better description, a shit show. An altercation that ended with Kiyoung getting stitches led his parents and a few others to sue the company. His opportunity to join Zenith Entertainment arrived in 2016, when he was in university, having otherwise given up on becoming an idol. Jaeseop, whom he had met on an overnight trip where both of their schools booked the same destination, knew of his past experience and offered him a second chance. Kiyoung took it, and that experience, however terrible, helped him debut as Fable's lead vocalist and lead dancer. As the group's eldest member and the one with the most life experience outside of being an idol, he is seen as a supportive and dependable figure to the younger members. In Fable's rookie years, he was occasionally mistaken for the group's leader. In recent years, as more information about Jaeseop's role becomes public, that mistake occurs less and less. At the end of 2022, he began his mandatory military service as an active duty soldier. He returned to the group in the summer of 2024.

STAGE NAME: Kiyoung

FULL NAME: Oh Kiyoung / 오기영 / 吳基榮

BIRTHDAY: April 18, 1994

HOME TOWN: Dangjin, South Chungcheong, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Dangjin, South Chungcheong, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Lead vocalist, lead dancer

FACE CLAIM: Lee Minhyuk (Monsta X)

A fourth generation Korean-American, ANDREW was born on September 23, 1995 in Boulder, Colorado. He is an only child who managed to hit on nearly every Asian American model minority stereotype growing up: he excelled in school (enough to skip third grade), played an instrument (piano, of his own choice), and claimed he wanted to be a professor (like his dad). Music was the single biggest challenge he faced of his own volition, and he threw himself into music production and songwriting with a fervor. The interest dogged him through high school, where he posted a few song covers and original music to a YouTube channel that never took off. At seventeen, he moved to New York for college, where he studied music composition at Columbia University. Four years, one messy friendship breakup, and copious amounts of alcohol and weed later, Andrew set his sights on the next big thing: kpop. He was never a fan of idol groups, preferring the niche, underground atmosphere of American indie bands. He put aside his prejudices for a few months during which he taught English at a hagwon in the evenings, attended various entertainment company auditions, discovered he was older than the average candidate, and finally passed the single public Zenith Entertainment audition and interview. After a year and a half of training that mostly involved dancing, Andrew made his debut as Fable's main vocalist under the stage name Yejun, which he picked for the Hanja characters 藝 (art) and 俊 (smart, handsome). Despite his qualifications, he made few contributions to Fable's discography until the release of their second full length album in 2023. Since then, he has gained a modicum of creative control while feeling completely inadequate at being in a group with Fable's concept alongside people who were born and raised in South Korea, or at least able to fake it.

STAGE NAME: Yejun

FULL NAME: Andrew Han

BIRTHDAY: September 23, 1995

HOME TOWN: Boulder, Colorado, USA

BIRTHPLACE: Boulder, Colorado, USA

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: American

POSITION: Main vocal, visual

FACE CLAIM: Rowoon / Kim Seokwoo

Born on October 2, 1995, JAESEOP is one of the few children of his generation on his dad's side of the family. From an early age, it was thought that his future was laid out for him. He was supposed to do well in school, participate in a few extra-curriculars and become a well-rounded person, go to university, meet a nice girl, and start a family of his own. This seemingly perfect plan was derailed by his lack of interest in everything except getting along with others. Worried, his family pushed him into their backup plan instead. Jaeseop became Zenith Entertainment's first trainee shortly after the company was founded in the summer of 2016. In a case of poor communication and misplaced assumptions, he thought he was working with his uncle's new business in some sort of management capacity related to his in-progress PR degree, not as an artist. While he was meant to be an extension of Taein within the group, his unfailing moral compass and tendency to root for the underdog have made him the greatest ally of the other Fable members instead of his uncle. As Fable's leader and number one defender, he enjoys a great amount of respect from fans, who give him much more leeway compared to the other members. He gets away with running his mouth (Mingeun could never) and having a girlfriend (Haksu could never). In late 2023, he was gifted a portion of his father's share of Zenith Entertainment, giving him a stake in the company and the slightest bit more power.

STAGE NAME: Jaeseop

FULL NAME: Lee Jaeseop /이재섭 / 李材攝

BIRTHDAY: October 2, 1995

HOME TOWN: Seoul, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Leader, lead dancer

FACE CLAIM: Doyoung / Kim Dongyoung

INTAK was born on December 3, 1995, in Incheon, South Korea. His father's somewhat volatile job as a construction foreman saw his family moving frequently around the city. When he was twelve, his father was laid off, leaving them to relocate to Gwangyang, where his mother's family lived. Intak, who always had difficulties making friends, found this new environment, combined with his father's unemployment, extremely hostile. He found solace online instead, meeting Kiyoung on a StarCraft forum and discovering music production. The latter became a hobby for him, and he eventually started a SoundCloud account that peaked at two thousand followers. In 2016, he was invited to join Zenith Entertainment by Kiyoung, despite the two of them meeting in person only a few times. He was hesitant at first, as he held quite a few negative opinions on idols. At the same time, the thought of living in the same house as his parents forever was becoming unbearable, and so he accepted the offer. He debuted as Fable's main rapper and unofficial main producer, holding the latter position for the first few years of his career. Though Intak doesn't speak about it much, he's the one who made Taein's vision for the group a reality. His biggest responsibilities have been their debut song, 승천, and the title track of their first full-length album, 천둥. His musical contributions have lessened as he started splitting the production with Andrew, but he remains a mostly silent and integral part of the group.

STAGE NAME: Intak

FULL NAME: Park Intak / 박인탁 / 朴仁托

BIRTHDAY: December 3, 1995

HOME TOWN: Gwangyang, South Jeolla, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Incheon, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Main rapper

FACE CLAIM: Kim Jiwoong

HAKSU was born on August 8, 1997, exactly twenty-one years before Fable's debut. He calls it fate. An only child of only children with known fertility problems, his birth was considered nothing short of a miracle. He would also consider himself a miracle. With his comfortable and pampered childhood, he easily developed an ego. It was further exacerbated as he grew up and learned he could use his good looks and a smile to get his way. His interest in singing developed from the years he spent in his church's choir, which also did nothing to temper his opinions on himself. His interest in being an idol developed from a dream he had in his sophomore year at Sahmyook University, where he was scraping his way through a degree in business administration. Haksu was the last member added to Fable's debut lineup in late 2017, mere days after he joined the company. Eight months later, on his twenty-first birthday, he debuted as Fable's main vocalist and center. For the first few years after the group's debut, he was the only member idol fans in general would even have a chance of recognizing. His solo activities—photo shoots, advertisements, an appearance on King of Mask Singer—did nothing to bolster the group's popularity. As a result of the group's extremely uneven individual popularities, Haksu is often the bias of choice for many akgaes and sasaengs. His boyfriend approach to fan service only seems to encourage them, and they, in turn, have helped Fable gain further prominence.

STAGE NAME: Haksu

FULL NAME: Kang Haksu / 강학수 / 康���學

BIRTHDAY: August 8, 1997

HOME TOWN: Gunsan, North Jeolla, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Gunsan, North Jeolla, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Main vocal, center, fotg

FACE CLAIM: Hyunjae / Lee Jaehyun

EUNSU was born on July 10, 1999 in Taebaek, South Korea, a fact he tried desperately to hide. The second son of a Buddhist priest, he had the freedom to choose his own path, unlike his older brother, Yonggeum, who was set to succeed their father from the time he was born. Eunsu's choice then became music. In middle school, he and a few friends started a band, where he played bass guitar. He made the leap to Seoul for high school, where he attended SOPA and an SM Entertainment audition with some classmates. A few of them, including Eunsu, managed to pass. He would only spend a year at SM, before deciding to leave alongside Mingeun. He debuted as Fable's main rapper two years later. While a member of the group, he was most popular for his Tom and Jerry-esque antics with Haksu and his close friendship with Mingeun. In 2021, Yonggeum was the victim of a drunk driver's hit-and-run, leading to Eunsu's departure from Fable. Officially, he left for personal reasons. Unofficially, he left to inherit his father and brother's position. He remains on very good terms with the group, making occasional appearances in their music and other content.

STAGE NAME: Eunsu

FULL NAME: Baek Eunsu / 백은수 / 伯銀帥

BIRTHDAY: July 10, 1999

HOME TOWN: Taebaek, Gangwon, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Taebaek, Gangwon, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Main rapper

FACE CLAIM: Yoo Yongha

MINGEUN was born on November 13, 1999 in Yongin, South Korea. When he was two, he moved to Canada with his parents and older sister, Minah. His younger sister, Eunice, was born shortly after their move. Growing up, he was often labeled as a shy and solitary child. In school, he took the English name Eric, after the prince in the The Little Mermaid, which he no longer answers to. Despite immigrating and becoming a naturalized Canadian citizen at the age of twelve, his parents raised all three of their children with a favorable view of their home country. They spoke Korean at home and often traveled back to South Korea on summer vacations. On one such trip, when he was eleven, Mingeun was scouted by SM Entertainment hours before a flight at Incheon International Airport. His mother accepted the offer on his behalf, and before he knew it, he was a trainee. He spent five years—mostly summers—as an SM trainee, where he met future fellow Fable member Eunsu, before being dropped for his inability to work with others. It was, coincidentally, around the same time he dropped out of high school to pursue an idol career full time and the same time Taein founded Zenith Entertainment. A few months of relentless begging later found him as Zenith's fifth trainee. In his first few months at Zenith, he was a shoo-in for Fable's main vocalist. Two years later, following the additions of ANDREW and HAKSU and a very close call where he was initially cut from Fable's final lineup, Mingeun debuted as Fable's main dancer and lead vocalist. He is most well known for his 2020 scandal, in which fans discovered that he was not, in fact, born and raised in Yongin like he said he was, but a Canadian citizen. He took a nearly two-year hiatus from the group, and his reputation has only recently began to recover. He is one of the group's most publicly outspoken members, following the logic that his reputation can't get much worse.

STAGE NAME: Mingeun

FULL NAME: Yoon Mingeun / 윤민근 / 尹敏勤

BIRTHDAY: November 13, 1999

HOME TOWN: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

BIRTHPLACE: Yongin, Gyeonggi, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: Canadian

POSITION: Main dancer, lead vocalist, lead rapper (since 2021)

FACE CLAIM: Jeong Yunho

BYEONGHWI was born on May 18, 2001, in Jecheon, South Korea. His career goal, for most of his life, was to be a professional soccer player, despite being only decent at the sport. It was a trend in most other areas of his life as well. He had passable grades, a few close friends, and very little wants. He stood out only for his excellent moral standing in which he could generally be trusted to have integrity and tell the truth. When he was in high school, he accompanied his best friend at the time to a Zenith Entertainment audition as part of his friend's goal to become a kpop idol. It was thought that neither of them passed the audition until Byeonghwi got a call back a few months later. He officially became a trainee in mid 2017, and made his debut in Fable a little over a year later. As the group's youngest member, he is babied by fans and the rest of Fable alike. At first, he didn't mind it. As he grew older, it became tiring for him to be continually boxed into the same persona, especially when the rest of the group got to grow personally and professionally. He's working on rebelling, but it's difficult for him when it's been ingrained in him to be good for so much of his life.

STAGE NAME: Byeonghwi

FULL NAME: Lim Byeonghwi / 임병휘 / 任昞輝

BIRTHDAY: May 18, 2001

HOME TOWN: Jecheon, North Chungcheong, South Korea

BIRTHPLACE: Jecheon, North Chungcheong, South Korea

ETHNICITY: Korean

NATIONALITY: South Korean

POSITION: Lead vocal + maknae

FACE CLAIM: J-Min / Jeon Minwook

[abberant-butler]

It's hard to know Solomon has body modifications. Sure, you know about Pact marks, but usually the bearer has the choice of placement and on rare occasions, color and intensity. A powerful wizard like Solomon, contractor of 72 demons, including an Avatar? Surely he'd keep them small or invisible entirely. Asmo always tries to bribe you with 'the secrets of the shirt', but it's also Asmo. Sweet as he can be, he'd do plenty of things for attention.

It's not hard to know that Solomon has a lot of books. Books from his childhood. Books from his early learnings. Priceless books. Useless books. Books for trading favors, books for learning spells, books and books and books. Where he less insistent on pacts or even just a better cook, he and Satan might've been best friends.

Long sleeves and a high collar. That's what Solomon always wears. Even his RAD uniform is buttoned to the top. Jackets and capes and blazers and sweaters and vests and the oddest choices of accents and jewelry. But, really, when compared to angels, demons, and reapers, Solomon isn't that strange in his outfits.

Solomon keeps his distance. He's old enough to know better than to get close. Immortals have motives, and mortals never last. But you. It's been... different. Hard to say how, and harder still to decide what it means, yet still true.

You're different. So it's without a thought that after a disastrous spill of a potion that Solomon excused himself to go to his dresser to get a new shirt. Just barely in view, but clearly unintentionally, he's revealed. The secret of Solomon's shirt is that it's simply his cover. Like any of the tomes in his collection, he's written across in ink. Large, small, broken strings of text, full sigils. Barbatos once said that Solomon never made a pact without a purpose, and it's clear that he honors those by both size, placement, and legibility.

More, as his arms rise up to slip into overly long sleeves, you see the silver glints of metal. Symmetrical piercings at his collarbone, nipples, and hips. Catching him in profile, you can only imagine the matching ones on the other side.

As briefly as the book of Solomon has opened, it closes. The shirt covers its secrets again. The cloak layers over to be the focal point once again. If he caught you staring, he doesn't embarrass you to draw attention to it. Instead, it's a soft apology for taking away from your time together, and a refocusing on the work at hand.

Solomon's smile, of course, never quite fades. Who knows what a favorite person could get if only they simply asked for more.

[whiskysses]

𐙚 THE FATES WILL FIND A WAY

Eve’s Apology — Chapter One (2.5 k words)

ONE PIECE Live Action Zoro x OC

Exposition & Episode 001 ( Eve & Romance Dawn )

"NOTHING IS REAL."

The simple sentence stuck out sorely from between the posters detailing bounties, listing laws and advocating for the free and safe traverse of the ocean. The italic font was translucent with age and exposition to the sun, ink barely visible over the bronze leather of the parchment that it was roughly written on with. Under a variety of histrionic profiles crudely drawn or photographed in pamphlets pasted over the wall, such a small flyer with blurry text was insignificant. If anything, it was the normalcy and monotony of the handful of letters picking out from behind another paper that allowed Tyche to notice it was even there, glaring at her like a criminal to its executioner.

Her head shifted to face it instead of the small crowd walking beside her — they moved further into the labyrinth-like streets of the town without sparing their focus away, even robotically, and Tyche didn't want to imagine the toll of such tedious life under the tyranny of the marines. The echo of their distant voices was an spectral hush that blended together into a quiet self-loathing carried away by the bubbling breakwaters, mumbles of criminals overshadowed by the hollering of their executioners in that amalgam of sentient grey frayed by pearl white and coastal blue, the only salvation of the monotony in the town.

The bone wall, eroded and worn with the immortal fight between pirates and marines, stretched high above into an unbecoming daguerreotype of a man whose name Tyche couldn't bring herself to wonder or even care about; insofar she planned to make her visit to his reign one short and swift — hopefully, one that was successful too —, his identity was a formality unnecessary for the path already set out when destiny had no regards for name.

Uninterested, she looked at the posters below it again; she inspected how the cursive letters blended together, lead off, sloped and twisted, and finally dissolved into blurry patches of unintelligible text, faded under saltwater. She did so with feigned curiosity for the sake of remaining far away from any suspicion, the glint of a devotee of the mock peace of the marines implanted into her doubtful expression. It had been crafted after focus and observation for protection against the tyranny of the majority. Soon, she couldn't help looking at the statement whose glare she could feel and which constituted the only notice that called for her attention.

She let her eyes run over the streaks of the remaining letters with surgical care, eyes trailing the shape of the warning she assumed followed the direct statement that sat as a header. The text, a wide sea of characters in prose boldly occupying the rest of the ripped paper, was barely a smudged square dripping into the wall after years of constant humidity and obvious neglect, so frayed that the wall peeked through it.

"Don't trust your senses."

It was when Tyche resumed her walking that she pulled the poster down with a subtle motion of her hand, rolling the antique parchment and letting it drop into her rucksack without stopping her purported stroll or calling anyone's attention to herself (if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to see it, does it make a sound? Recognition is necessary for existence).

As far as she was aware, the only people barely interested in the wall of reprobation were a pair loudly bickering a handful of meters to the side, and, even then, she doubted that they were pious enough to throw the first stone, and, what was more, one of them was shaking like a leaf upon merely receiving a glare from a passing cadet as they left their dinghy. A glance to the clear sky, and she continued walking; she trusted the luck in the wind, telling her that chance had seen to them not being an obstacle.

In the meandering streets of the port, the ocean roared behind her, waves high enough for sea foam to reach the cement elevation she was standing at and threatening to reach the soles of the water’s abandoned lamb. Stepping aside, she finally let her attention waver from the list of bounties and idiosyncratic adverts back into her surroundings, hands closing her bag expertly with that sole poster buried deep within the layers of what remained of her past.

Tyche never had a good relationship with the sea. Perhaps even this claim fell short of describing her blatant dislike, but she couldn't help the shiver that ran over her spine every time she felt even the smallest droplet of the derelict giant against her olive skin. They had developed a state of complementary opposites in coexistence, and perhaps even mutual recognition, but that didn't entail the enmity they shared was any weaker. They were binaries, antithesis, but also a Möbius loop, the ouroboros (without one, there wasn’t the other, so where did the ocean end and Tyche start?)

With her dark eyes squinted against the growing sun, and expression turned taciturn, Tyche let out a soft sigh, feeling the sting of maritime salt on her skin, and resumed her walk with only one last glance sent at the waves breaking against the seashore (the foam was bone marrow and, the waters, washed out blood, such that when Tyche squinted enough, she could glimpse her corpse).

So, morphing into the shadows and submerged in cacophonies, when you first saw her, she was light refracted, splintered divinity, and the unlovely portrait of a goddess badly misremembered.

Then, there was a realisation — quite in the contrary to what was expected from the fractured empress without empire, she was choking on broken halos buried six feet under and sobbed hallelujahs because she was never meant to be holy.

Her and Atlas were one of the same, cursed to hold a weight they couldn't bear but still standing, not because they could but because they had to, and it was in Sisyphus she saw a brother cursed with an eternity of frustrating desperation that mirrored her own. She would bare, maintain, survive — she would live to be the apocrypha of the growth, the change (the attempt). As taught by many before her, she would personify the testament of the lost, the casualties, until it could become action instead of plead (but would she return? Given the option, would she shake the hand of her executioner and forget what wasn’t forgiven from her?).

She was made of base flesh, an embarrassment, but if pain could purify, her heart ought to transcend earth.

Queen of swords, mistress of grief, Amonzako Tyche was destined for the bullet, the shrapnel. She was the aftermath of something lethal, a pain inflicted — most importantly, of the echo of nearing death (a sister in arms, the one that defined her existence, because there was a Tyche before the catastrophe but she wasn’t remembered).

Her steps were silent, current stagnated around the long, maroon skirt of her dress. She shifted in and out of the crowd, steering clear of the burning sunlight and roaring sea (the schisms tilting her holy grail) before her steps had taken her through an empty alleyway where the only conversation she could listen to was of the loud brunet and the worried blond trying to unsuccessfully manoeuvre out of the pier.

As much as she liked basking in her little recognitions and realisations, she wouldn't allow herself to blindly welcome Judas. She was safer alone (it was a lesson that had taken too long to be learnt), and so she faded into the shadows again.

────────────────────────

THE LULL OF the summer heat befell the citizens of the mountainous town when the clock hit four in the afternoon, rendering the streets empty and barren of anyone other than the marching, uniformed cadets and the punctual anomaly.

Tyche sought the shadows casted by the limestone buildings, studying the turns and changes of the geography with precision as unpaved paths welcomed her every step. From the mountainside to the coast, from the suburbs to the fenced houses, and from the port to the marine base overseeing the unlucky population, she walked with assertion and alert senses, mapping out the streets she hoped not to visit again.

By the time she decided to pause her rumination, there wasn't a stone she hadn't turned in the coastal town, a pebble she hadn't looked under. She knew the intricate paths as if she had spent there years, when she had barely arrived hours prior, by the time that the sun was rising and the first commercial ships were being anchored. She had always taken pride in her effort and meagre planning — looking up at the marine base stretching over the sky as she stepped into the path that would take her further into the town, she decided it would be worth it once again.

Then, an excited cheer.

"I didn't know there were so many pirates!"

Again, the pair that had filled her morning with bickering stood in front of her, all softened edges and glimmering curiosity. In stark contrast to that morning when Tyche had taken the distance between them as protection from the burnet’s all-encompassing happiness, in the afternoon they were barely a handful of meters away and entranced by the informative wall in which with pleasure she noticed that the bare square left behind was easy to miss in its characteristic lack of organisation.

The voice of the brunet clad with a straw hat was one of obvious amazement and wonder, and Tyche would've stopped to observe the tender joy in his face for longer had she not deemed it an unnecessary risk (there was a difference between warning and punishment that she didn’t want the intricate ways of luck to teach her).

How could anyone — she mused — be so unadulteratedly interested in something as base and dragging as a handful of badly pasted papers? If she hadn't known better, she would've weighed the idea of him being a bounty-hunter, a pirate killer, but the pang of a certain memory made her discard the thought and continue down the gravel path, only accompanied by the fading sound of their bickering.

Much like her, the blond seemed to present the opposite feeling to the reprobate notices than the brunet, with his voice heavy and carrying a ting of something akin to fear — or shame, which was an emotion that greatly interested Tyche, if only by the power (or, conversely, the lack thereof) that it granted. Emotions were a schism vulnerable to deceit.

"There are way worse pirates on the Grand Line," the blond mumbled, barely loud enough for her to be able to listen to the echo between the sauntering streets of the shake in his voice. "It's terrible."

"Yeah." The wind carried the whisper close to Tyche, who watched as the blond grimaced by sparing a glance over her shoulder. The brunet was breathless, she noticed, and had she had more time in her hands she would’ve stopped to peek if only a second longer at the nearly intimately childlike wonder in his face.

She honestly questioned just how a simple list of bounties could garner such a genuine reaction, if not hyperbolic, from anyone that had grown up in the golden age of piracy. Even the most harmless of towns had a black sheep faded white from saltwater, the odd on out, and if there was something that was infinite in society, it was pirates.

"Yeah,” the brunet offered, so enraptured by the lists of criminals hunted by the World Government that he could do little else than repeat himself.

When he did come back to his senses and gave his friend a full sentence for an answer, she found herself sympathising with the gaping blond. “I know, right? It's terrible — where's my face?" A sigh was ripped out of his chest, such that his childish displeasure was evident in the echo of his voice. Tyche started to grow ever so slightly concerned for the blond because the brunet seemed like a bomb in potential. "Well, there's only one way I'm gonna get inside that base, and it's not on an empty stomach. Come on!"

As they left with their loud banter, finally leaving Tyche alone with her own thoughts, she paused to clear her throat in slight confusion. The smell of sardines coming off the brunet was... Pungent, to say the least, and she didn't want to imagine the sheer directness needed to simply storm a base without a proper plan (after eating, of course) as he was so carelessly going to do, although she couldn't help but accept that at the very least they'd be a useful distraction. He hadn't failed to surprise her in merely a passing interaction, but what had garnered most of her curiosity was the unforeseen friendship both shared.

She wondered what the person she had once shared those small confidences with once was doing.

Unbudging, she discarded the thought and continued her path, entering a local bar some seconds after the pair. Inside the untimely establishment, with its creaking furniture and visible dust heavy in the air, her plan finally started. Despite its rather unwelcoming atmosphere, it was lively and full to the brim with people — marines — drinking to their hearts' content.

Running her eyes across the tavern, she was unamused by the crassness of the marines laughing drunkenly and the gossiping customers. She guessed it was better that way, given most of them wouldn't even remember her mere existence in some hours, and pushed her doubts aside to closely inspect the people loitering the room. There was a young girl melting what seemed like chocolate in a table close to the back, an older woman busying herself with precariously pilling up the innumerable empty cups covering basically every surface onto a tray, and a man with theatrically stripped green and black hair toying with some small knifes.

It was only when she crashed against a pretentiously dressed man that she moved her eyes away from an orange-haired woman sully drinking, stumbling a step back.

"I'm sorry."

The apology rolled easily off her tongue, expression regretful as she stepped aside to let the man walk past. Despite a crude comment being sent her way, she maintained her hands tightly clasped together in purported shame, head downturned and eyes glued to his back as he moved to the bar island.

When she left the bar some seconds later, it was with the elaborately crafted gun of the poor fool hidden in the wide sleeves of her cream shirt, and even Tyche was surprised at the ease of it all.

She looked at Death in the face — in the window, in the mirror, in the shadow, in her reflection. She (Death) simply smiled and told her (Tyche) not to worry.

She (Death) chuckled in her (Tyche) ear.

"Live."

If not her, who would die for the cause?

In a last attempt to climb victorious over the chains of penitence, Tyche, a sinner, prayed for the salvation of the damned or a last attempt at redemption.

@whiskysses. — 2024. — Do not plagiarise, copy, or translate, the content in this account without my explicit agreement . — WP.

[backstoriesandbackstabbings]

Everwood

(The writing here is slanted and smudged as the previous entry. It does look hastily written, and there are several water damage spots on the pages.) 

We traveled to Everwood after completing the trials for Aryndra and teaming up briefly with the Iron King and his team: Elder Banwynn & Maple (elder vampire brother to Cedar and Birch). 

The Iron King agreed to meet us here -- a meeting which I proposed to assist Tobias and his studies. I never questioned why he was so interested in the world’s first immortal. Now though, I worry that I am too late to ask. 

When we first arrived to Everwood, we took note of the giant tear in the sky and Cyrus came across a poster for a challenge that both he and Mullus were very interested in. I thought that we had more time, so I saw no harm in competing. We did a bit of shopping, I got my hair done and ran into a familiar face:  Pseudoris. We caught up briefly, and discovered that she ran away from Emerald Harbor....again.

I saw Edan in the crowd that day and my heart felt lighter than it has in the last few weeks! Of course I should have followed the crowd and the gold, the easiest way to track my slippery brother. Booze, beautiful people, and gold. Is that sacrilegious to write now that he is a God? Presumably, Edan made some good coin off of us, and of course I bet through him. As Grandmother would say: Waste not, want not. Betting on my life is a safe enough gamble, if I lose, I will be too dead to mourn the loss of coin.

Of course, considering that I am writing this entry, we survived and won. The affair consisted of three challenges, the last of which was a draconic-hydra beast. After securing our earnings from an Orc named Biscuit, the party split up for a bit, with a plan to meet back here in this tavern; The Hero’s Hearth. 

Cyrus and I went off to the library to finally meet up with Tobias. After speaking with the information desk, the elf informed me that he was sent on a mission with his tutor, Mistral. I scried on Tobias whilst in the Amerenthian Library. A spot I remember him showing me in the Dreams that we shared together. I had hoped to see him again -- in person this time. Or so I thought. I had thought I had more time. I didn’t realize he was in danger. Tobias -- (The writing here is too smudged and the paper is water damaged leaving dark splotches of puddled ink. The writing continues on a new page.)

My vision revealed to me a floating glowing ribcage atop a throne of flesh and bone. The Ribcage, Mul’s alit with an eerie pulsating red glow that cast dark shadows across the dark underground interior.  The Ribcage humming, alive with this insatiable craving, wanting, a deep endless hunger. Behind me was the sound of flesh ripping, tearing from muscle and bone. The greedy mouths of the undead devouring and consuming down to the very marrow. The zombies huddled around the remains, and I was horrified to look. Scared of the face that may stare back at me. They were not Tobias. Thank the Gods and Goddesses. One male figure stood cloaked tall and imposing nearly ten feet away. I did not recognize his side-profile, he was a stranger to me. I will kill him and make him pay if he hurt my friend. I will raise him for the satisfaction of killing him again if I should discover that Tobias came to harm by his hand. I will make him crave the sweet release of a true death. (The letters here press deep into the paper, and the quill bled, ink dripping down slightly and there is a line break between the next paragraph.)

I told Edan what I saw, and even in his stupor I could sense his hesitation and fear. His heart raced under my cheek. Fearful for me, but too protective to allow me to go alone. I hope I don’t lead us all to such grave ends. But I fear -- I think Tobias may still be alive? How else would I be able to scry upon him? Perhaps his essence resides within the Ribcage? Please...forgive me, my friend. I never meant to fail you. If you are alive in there...I’m coming.

[tetsvhoe]

I KNOW WHO YOU PRETEND I AM [2]

you know the only time they look into your eyes is to search for someone else.

kuroo, bokuto, atsumu, suna, and sakusa’s part

pt. 2 regret and other cliches akaashi, kenma, iwaizumi

character/s: timeskip!akaashi keiji x f!reader ; timeskip!kenma kozume x gn!reader, timeskip!iwaizumi hajime x gn!reader

genre/s: ANGST pls don’t say i didn’t warn y’all

warning/s: none i think except for gut wrenching angst

gwen's notes 🤍: ik i promised a part two for the first one where they regret it and i swear im already writing it, i just couldn’t help myself from writing for other boiz

MASTERLIST | TAGLIST

akaashi keiji

akaashi is a living breathing piece of art work. with his stoic expression, silky black hair, piercing emerald eyes, honeyed voice, calm and collected behavior, it seems as though he stepped right out of a portrait and escaped a museum. what a strange coincidence that he also has a passion for making art of his own—he weaves words into stories, turns the black and white of ink and paper into a kaleidoscope of hues painted on a canvas of his memories and emotions. lately, akaashi’s been lost in a world of his own. on top of editorial duties, he’s locked up in his office most of the time, building his own palace from paragraphs and verses. you try not to miss him too much when he ventures deep into the crevices of his mind as this is one of the things you loved most about him, he is perceptive and profound. akaashi hides his works from you and you assume he’s just being doubtful of his own talents as usual. you sneak around to read the portraits he’s painted about his muse. he immortalizes his love through art. akaashi writes about the knots in her hair, you note that he describes a different color from yours; how she stirs up a storm in her coffee every morning, you prefer cold coffee though he says it’s warm; the stardust in her tears when she cries, but he’s got your eye color wrong. you flip through the pages until the very end until you realize it is you who’s got it wrong. you learn that you are a side character in his narrative and none of the poems and sonnets are about you. akaashi has been writing about heartbreak when all you’ve been giving him is love. the hurt from his past takes up all the pages. he has no room for your love so you settle between the empty spaces, you’re reduced to nothing more than scribbles and notes on margins in a book he’s written about someone that’s not you.

kenma kozume

kenma says he hates being tired. he only played volleyball for his best friend. he neither enjoyed nor hated playing the sport. similarly, that’s how he goes about his life. he half asses tasks that aren’t important and does things merely out of compliance. he agrees to going out on dates you carefully map out so you stop nagging him about it. he poses for pictures with a thin lipped smile and an annoyed expression he doesn’t bother to hide so you could both get going. he holds your hand just to stop you from wandering places when you go out, he can’t wait to go home. he opens his arms to welcome your embrace even if just to tune you out while he games or scrolls through his phone. he answers your texts and calls quickly because he can’t stand the constant vibrating. you never take it to heart even when you know kenma says he hates being tired but he’s a college student, a professional gamer, a youtuber, a stock trader, and a CEO. why? because kenma, to put it more accurately, doesn’t hate being tired. he hates putting in effort to things that don’t matter to him. kenma is a lot of things, but he is not yours. he does put in effort when he patiently teaches you how to play his favorite games. he rushes you to reach AR16 in genshin impact so he could visit your world, steal your resources, and bully the bosses. he frequently visits a profile which has been active 256 days ago. he shows you around a wonderful cottagecore house he spent days building in minecraft. there’s already a bed next to his and you note this was someone else’s home. he puts in effort because from behind a screen, he could pretend you’re someone else.

iwaizumi hajime

iwaizumi has a short temper and a sharp tongue but you know he means well most of the time. he calls his best friend “shittykawa” and tells him to look after himself all in one breath. he’s known to hit oikawa every chance he gets but then goes around and studies sports science in another country as if it had nothing to do with the fact that oikawa injured himself and he would never let something like that happen twice. you wholeheartedly believe that there is a reason for everything iwaizumi says and does, even though he’s a little rough around the edges and poor at his executions. so you don’t mind the opinions he has about you; i think this style looks good on you. that color suits your skin, you should wear it more often. i like this perfume you’re wearing better than the other one. i think you would look good with this hairstyle. there is a reason for everything iwaizumi says and does. and you only find out what it is when you finally meet his ex for the first time and realize how similar you’ve become to them. he’s turned you into someone he could love, someone he still loves. apparently, you as yourself wouldn’t suffice.

[batrachois]

SANCTUARY: THE SHAMAN FROM THE NORTH is on Tapas 

What is “Sanctuary: The Shaman From The North”? It’s a fantasy webcomic written and illustrated by me! It’s been in construction forever, but I’ve finally made up my mind and started actually working on it!

Synopsis: “Find who will bring together what’s divided and bring light into chaos’ darkness” The Sanctuary is a safe place for magical outcasts from any path of life. Follow the story of Rut Lilja, Spica, Chike, T'Han the Immortal, Gladewen and Árni as they fight for what they think is right in a world torn apart by the claws of hate and the dangers of the plague.

How is Sanctuary made? As I said before I’ve been working on this story since I was 11, but I only recently got to a point in which I was able to make something that was worthy of being put to paper. My process works like this: - first I outline the chapter - then I sketch each page on paper with a blue pencil - the I ink every page - then I scan the pages and color them with Photoshop on my computer It’s a pretty industrious work, but it’s either this or I’ll never be satisfied with what I do.

Updates: I’ll update following a very fluid schedule, but ideally as soon as I’m done with a page I’ll post it up and let you all know! Uni keeps me busy, but I’ll juggle with it!

Support the comic: - TAPAS: following the comic on tapas you’ll be able to get notifications every time I update and you’ll be able to comment and like every update, feedback is extremely important and I really wish I could read your thoughts on my story. - TUMBLR: I made a blog just for Sanctuary, if you have questions of any kind on the story feel free to stop by. I’ll upload there the profiles of the main characters and every update. - PATREON: supporting me through patreon means having insights, sketches, previews and any kind of sanctuary-related content that I won’t post anywhere else. You can pledge a monthly amount from 1$, 3$, 5$ to 10$ with rewards that increase with your donation

Support the author (me): - Ko-fi: if you like my work and would love to make a request I’m always open to ko-fis, this way you can “commission” me a small piece and I’ll deliver it to you in a couple days! you can donate anonymously or leaving me your URL if you want to be tagged when I’ll post your request! - Paypal.me: donations are always open as I’m a broke uni student before I am anything else. Like through ko-fi, you can leave a request with your donation, together with your url or your email address if you want to receive it/be tagged in it!

Didn’t you do this already? Yes! this is the second time I try to publish this comic, but last time I was not very happy with the style i was working in. And on a more general level I was just not happy with it as a whole. So I re-did it all: I re-wrote the story, I re-defined the chapters, I revised the style and I am pretty confident in how it’s turned out. I am already happy to be able to finally tell this story, so the only thing I ask of you is to give this comic a chance.

[travisfranks]

Strange Alchemy

In our smaller groups within the China study tour, we have been reading through each others words - reams and reams of words - in search of what Francesca calls ‘emergent themes and threads of interest’ in the collective digital consciousness. All the thoughts, fears and expectations we are currently processing in the lead up to our adventure. Relationships are growing. People are getting nervous. Imaginations are going wild. More and more words keep getting written. These are exciting times! 

Our group decided not only to digest the words of our peers, but to ‘re-digest’ them, if you will. Appropriate them through re-contextualisation. Being the clever dickenses that we are, we thought a fitting way to articulate these shared feelings was to create a suite of found text poems - using text from these blogs - to pull apart words, sentences and paragraphs and put them back together  in the form of poetry. How collaborative is that???

Natalie considers anticipation and possible language barriers in Anticipation aka Questioning aka Scared aka Confused aka Overwhelmed. 

Taylah ponders her curiosity and all the things she doesn’t know about Guangzhou in A Mirage I Don’t Quite See, Yet It Makes Me Wonder.

Kate collates a piece about revealing yourself, how you exist in your writing in Exposure.

Kat interrogates notions of identity and perspective in How am I Not Myself

and I explore the need for building a culture of empathy in cross-cultural communication in Empathy in the Exchange, or An Effortless Conversation.

Anticipation aka Questioning aka Scared aka Confused aka Overwhelmed

by Natalie Briggs

It’s important to establish, looking past language, It’s really only me who cops it

My brother pointed out it was unlikely: an instant messaging service, our eventual meeting

But their family and anyone associated with them: compromise surely a part of this process

Vulnerabliity Mere imitation What your voice Sounds like

Hyper-ware petri-dish getting it all wrong

_

Anyone who has ever tried in a real-life context

Unable to play convincingly

No one owns their repuation. Ask Taylor (Swift).

The people of Guangzhuo are crazy about flowers

My goal is set

Tap water, I think it’s best to know that

A stranger didn’t read my blog

_

Web users often buy programs powered by algorithms to build up their social media profiles

_

You must be bold to speak in another language. Coincidence, of happenstance, of serendipty and irony.

This is how I see the world: how much confidence is required?

Counter intuitive and missing the point. Infinite regression in the first place. Gaps between us both.

Take control of your Instagram, divvy out likes. Don’t worry about it. A desicion to forgo any posturing, that is enough to bring us together.

_

Quickly trying to capture Autumn, my sister’s boyfriend’s, family’s hotel room view.

There are 66 days until we leave to China,

this tree language. Bustling conversation all around us.

Since then I’ve been trying to layer, ground my words. Which language do I chose when there are so many out there?

With a cousin and some friends and someone asked me if I could speak Dutch?

The throat noises don’t come naturally.

It is a slow burning relationship. One language dies every fourteen days.

Random lives turn out to be not so random.

Eating spicy food. I want to discover people, share their stories. Hopefully I can at least learn how to say hello.

A Mirage I Don’t Quite See, Yet It Makes Me Wonder

by Taylah Robinson

What was the most unusual thing you did today? I have been invited to The Flower City. I was surprised, I never wanted to go to China, but now I am. It is

exciting daunting shocking I know nothing about the place. One must always prepare thoroughly, these are the words that enticed me:

— Guangzhou pens the nickname ‘The Flower City’ since the flowers bloom

all year round —

A mirage I don’t quite see, yet it makes me wonder

what is going on in

your inner world? Isn’t it curious, this exhilarating experience, there were sixty-six days until we leave, and now there are less. So much to learn, I can follow my nose, and it seems virtually limitless.

Am I weird if I’m kind of looking forward to it?

You’ll move from the known Will your senses be shocked? I was surprised, I’m also a daydreamer. everything will be different isn’t it curious —

to the unknown.

Could this freedom relieve anxiety? Sparked, I let myself research legends, was surprised by a subtropical climate, gentle sunlight, and golden fields. Okay, but how good does this place look. You’ve never been and what parts of yourself can’t wait? A single, profound moment of connection. Allow to wade shoulder-deep in thoughts and emotions. I enjoy spending the weeks leading up to this thinking about the kind of story I might like to tell.

Exposure by Kate Abbey

I had a dream I was abroad a bruise, healed along with a burning trashcan full of sass and white noise I find myself a little overwhelmed

My digital selfhood appears to compose itself (like a diary, more public, less cringey) scrambling, crawling, stumbling the blood beneath pooling in the centre A psychic once said I wade shoulder deep through windows an unexplored space, a blank canvas thought in ink out of my depth

one of my fears is wasps the other is forgetting try not to panic in public bathrooms the thing of it is, I don’t really know how to edit

I like to imagine myself with metal jaws consuming teeth and bones

all writing holds the self they say it’s a gut clenching piece of yourself a stew comprised of snake and wildcat double exposure for a dunce like me I sat in my car outside for a full ten minutes

There’s a slice of spicy pepper gallivanting in my shoe the arrows fly between the black blades of grass orchestras rap on the other side of the door as I turn and lope for home

how to spill oneself across the page is the question

Surgeon skills are what is required: jettison your Chelsea dagger replace it with a butter knife and a babushka doll toss in an immortal jellyfish, a white horse and a magical fairy munching peaches flowers will fill the street by a heart that shimmers

I had a dream I was abroad a bruise, healed

collage a me together piece by shining piece.

How am I not myself by Kat Capell

there’s no such thing as a clear sky this is important for me to start thinking about my dreaming of experiences an exercise altogether belonging to the imagination the imaginative and conceptual Floating around my mind all day It appears two dimensional at the moment For now I feel behind Who I was before I sometimes get stuck if that makes sense Submissive verses aggressive Control or power, either bad or good Who we think we are When you feel comfortable there, when you’ve been there a while The subject becomes even more complex it is about asking questions I want to experience What we see and what we don’t see The truth? A common question with seemingly no obvious answer I now realise the true importance I am not afraid Emotion in itself is universal I will let myself feel Crushed Let me share with you before I can overthink it all An act of vulnerability I have lost myself then found myself again Bumping, colliding, overlapping Floating close to the surface I keep returning to the idea of identity and how I might slowly reveal myself

How do we piece it together How much control do we have Probe deeper A foreign country Probe deeper Anyone can be a colonist What memories linger The feeling of being quite still, How it feels to touch visually Reflection What I saw

Empathy in the Exchange, or An Effortless Conversation

by Travis Franks

Peeking into the lives and minds of my fellow collaborators, I feel the responsibility of being a part of an experience beyond my own. An inner empathy and openness to listen and speak, and understand. To share an imagination we must stretch the muscle of empathy to include an understanding of the world, inhabit the life, thoughts and feelings of another person - there are more similarities than differences. Empathy reigns supreme. Empathy is everywhere.

Floating between the inner and outer state of being, wading shoulder-deep in thoughts and emotions (general *~feelings~* the whimsical ones) bumping, colliding, overlapping; tenuously co-existing with each other, something happens in that petri-dish of interaction in which both minds are essentially changed…

…a strange alchemy. An ‘effortless conversation’.

The exchange. The invisible agreement, a mutual understanding of what we’re willing to share. Being vulnerable, one to the other you talk and listen. Together, you build something new. It’s liberating; the thrill of sharing, being in the company of others, each contributing different elements of the whole.

Voices will raise but they must be heard in a way that doesn’t silence the rest. Negotiating the gap in communication, navigate the barriers between cultural differences: habits, quirks and social customs, a collective experience being shared, consciousness pooling in the centre. Where do I fit inside of this imagination? this open fluidity?

Empathy is the ability to step in another’s shoes. Tread lightly, reach out, bring me closer…

I have been influenced.

[ruleandruinrpg]

VALERIYA VASNEV

TWENTY-ONE ❈ HUMAN THE ROYAL COURT | DUCHESS

She was born with the world at her feet and the stars in her hair—a pretty, pampered girl given dominion over all beautiful things able to be owned, and the sin all children are unfailingly born with missed her so that another might prosper: the rare crime of having too much. She wanted for nothing—not for the finest food, for the most beautiful dresses, and certainly not for the outpouring of love and attention from her doting parents—yet she desired everything, hungry even as she ate her fill, greedy even as she had enough, and perhaps that was her downfall, her damnation. Where others chose to repent, to fall on bent knee and beg for mercy, she embraced the very thing that robbed her of grace and had the nerve to ask for more still—if there was something to be had, be it fun, sweets, or trouble, one could know with absolute certainty that the Vasnev girl would be elbow-deep in it. It was endearing, seeing a young girl so unapologetic in her desires, courageous enough to dare to take the world for all it had, but it was a trait better reserved for the young, for the children not quite old enough to know better. She was a doll in her satin dresses, with her pearls and her rubies and her pink rose petals scattered about her dressing table—the ideal little duchess if there ever was one, but the sun sets even on the wealthy, and though it was a spectacle, as all things concerning her were, it left in its wake a darkness many possessed and few were brave enough to acknowledge.

She grew into something equally beautiful and terrifying, graceful, delicate, and cold—a Ravkan rose blooming in the dead of winter, and her sins only seemed to suit her more as she aged, clinging to her ink-black heart like the sleek fabric of a ballgown to the curves of her waist. She was cruel in the way of a girl who had never learned how to be anything else, and just as they had when she was but a little thing, they indulged her every whim, fawned over her like she was the nobility’s very own sankta. To be aloof was to leave more to the imagination; to turn her nose up at those who hadn’t had the good sense to be born into wealth was to give her lessers a better look at her elegant profile. She was a monster, this girl of silk and lace, and deep down, perhaps her admirers knew it, but it’s in the nature of men to worship that which may kill them, and Valeriya, precious Valeriya, was deadly in ways as familiar as they were strange. She tempted fate with every giggle and sneer, all but begged it to make an example of her—or, at the very least, to try. Girls like her were invincible, untouchable, gold-filled and divinity-kissed; girls like her knew everything, for their books had taught them so, yet knew absolutely nothing just the same. Funny, how a girl so full of life and fine wine could be so hollow; tragic, how she pitied the very souls who might’ve pitied her, had they had the luxury. She looked in the mirror and saw staring back at her a girl worthy of the worship of the world, and the world seemed to spin on in agreement.

And spin it did; as she aged, it became as clear as the crystal glasses she sipped from that Valeriya Vasnev was not merely a fleeting darling, a woman to be loved for a season and forgotten the next, but something enduring, the sort of woman immortalized in sonnets and beautifully paved streets. She was as stunning as she was despicable, as rich in naivete as she was in conceit, and they loved her for it, as they loved all terrible things—in earnest, yet with a passion so dreadfully shallow. She was everything they aspired to be and everything they hoped to never become all at once—a martyr drowning in luxury and crushed beneath the burden of setting an example for the lower classes, the patron sankta of gentility and beauty, a spoiled rotten girl who knew not what it was to live a life not drenched in sweet perfume and draped in silk smooth enough to rival the sea. “Let them drink kvas,” she’d laughed once, watching from her pedestal as the commoners starved outside the city gates, aloof in the way only a woman who’s never known true hunger can be. She was a fearsome thing to behold—this pampered, purring duchess, this sharp, cruel beauty, and she belonged to each of them in some way, and them to her. Wickedness loves company, and opulence seeks to be adored; there could be nothing less than a beautiful, unending glory for the Vasnev woman, and in keeping with her indulgent upbringing, there never was.

And now, it seems, there never will be. Betrothed to a Lantsov prince and poised to become a princess, she stands to see her name written in the history books, scrawled alongside that of kings and queens, of conquerors and kingdom-makers; she stands to be remembered, to be revered even more than she already is, and it’s beautiful, even as her people starve, and it’s beautiful, even as they sacrifice their sons and daughters for wars that will certainly outlive them all. She dances as the world burns, a harrowing, haunting sort of tragic, and they worship her still, hollow disciples falling at the feet of a sankta who knew suffering as intimately as she knew the stars—not at all. The truth has never been pretty, and beauty, though hardly ever true, is hardly fleeting. Let her wear her foxfur hats and white leather gloves; let her ride in velvet lined carriages while Ravka is forced to its knees. She was raised to be perfect, not sincere.

CONNECTIONS

VIKTOR LANTSOV: She’d like nothing more than to have him adore her half as much as the others at court do, and it’s a smite to her pride, no less, that her fiancé seems infinitely more interested in the art of war than courtship, more inclined to carry muskets than roses. She’s convinced herself that it’ll pass, that one day, when the war is won and he’s heralded as nothing short of a hero, he will love her more deeply than he’s ever loved his bloody, violent battles; she’ll make it so. Until that day comes, though, she’ll keep stealing glances across the room and touches when he’ll let her, writing his name behind hers in her prettiest calligraphy at dawn. He’s a challenge half-won; she has his hand, and one day, she’ll have his heart. She always gets what she wants; how could this time be any different?

ARISHA KOVROV: It could be said, with no small amount of reason, that she hasn’t a right to be angry, for the position and the responsibilities that inevitably accompany it wouldn’t suit her fickle fancies, and to say so would be correct, but the duchess has never been the sort to bear wrongs patiently, nor has she ever had the grace to share. She’d wanted the apprenticeship perhaps more than she’d wanted to breathe, an inclination owing to Lady Kovrov’s own desire of it, and being so cruelly robbed of it was a blow almost too harsh to bear. But Arisha isn’t the only pretty woman at court with intellect and ambition to rival the stars, and she’ll see to it that the score is not only evened, but tilted in her favor once more. A glance at the ring on her finger tells her that, perhaps, it already has.

VASILY BARANOV: She pities him, and it would be a sorry, condescending thing, had she not first seen him as something of an equal. He found himself at court as a victim of loss, an orphan, a man robbed of his father and a son forced to pick up the pieces, and her heart—her shallow, detached heart—bled for him a little, convinced, somehow, that his might bleed for her in return; it didn’t, nor did he worship her as she might’ve hoped, and she feels bad for him still, for his ghastly lack of poise and strikingly poor taste in companions. A man ought to learn how to conduct himself in a place like this, as wondrous as it is cruel—she would know.

VALERIYA IS PORTRAYED BY DANIELA BRAGA & IS TAKEN BY KATIE.

[sage-nebula]

Anyone asked Alain yet for the meme? If not, Alain, Manon, Steven, and Sycamore~!

Alan:

sexual orientation headcanon

Aromantic asexual! And if I can finish it (it’s at thirteen pages right now, and I’m near the end, I just—!), I should have a fic exploring him discovering this posted for Pride Month. (Yes, we’re two days out from the end of Pride Month, and I have another fic due on the 30th, and I’m still struggling to finish this, orz.)

But essentially, Alan is as aroace as it is possible to get. He does not feel romantic nor sexual attraction for anyone, period. As I’ve mentioned before, he never once shows any kind of attraction toward anyone during his time on the show, which is notable for the Kalos saga due to how many characters openly and blatantly expressed romantic attraction to others (including Alan’s own papa, what with the way Sycamore blatantly hit on Meyer like that). Alan is aware that romantic and sexual attraction are things that exist for other people—that other people get into relationships and the like—but it’s not something that he ever experiences himself, and usually it’s so far from his mind that he doesn’t even realize when others are hitting on him / when others take the things he says as flirtations (such as, I headcanon that Ayaka thought he was flirting with her in TSME 1 when he said that it was an honor to be complimented by her, but he wasn’t—he just genuinely meant that in a respectful way, because he’s a nice person).

Additionally, while he’s not romance repulsed (he’s not interested, but it also doesn’t skeeve him out), he is sex-repulsed to an extent. Like, it doesn’t bother him that other people have sex, and he doesn’t mind if they talk about it in front of him / doesn’t mind discussions about it, particularly since it’s something that occurs in nature with pokémon and whatnot. It’s a thing that happens. But the idea of having sex or being involved in a sexual act himself is one that does skeeve him out and make him uncomfortable. He’s not only not sexually attracted to others, and is not only not at all interested in participating, but the idea of participating makes him uncomfortable to the point of wanting to up and leave. It’s not a huge, drastic thing, but it still is a thing nonetheless. It’s a part of who he is.

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

Right off the bat, he absolutely has complex post-traumatic stress disorder, otherwise known as C-PTSD, as a result of being an abuse survivor. Based on canon alone, he definitely has it as a result of being emotionally abused by Lysandre over a period of years (two in my headcanon, but the exact time frame is unspecified in canon; all we can tell is that it was quite a long time). If we add the backstory I created for him to that, then he had C-PTSD even prior to that as a result of his abusive early childhood in Isolé Village. Living with Sycamore helped mitigate his symptoms and helped him heal considerably (particularly since Sycamore rescued him from Isolé Village when he was so little, and raised him for the seven years following), but when he was recruited into Lysandre’s service, the emotional abuse that Lysandre doled out on him reawakened and exacerbated the symptoms that, while latent, were already there. (Keep in mind, too, that C-PTSD can often strongly resemble a personality disorder when it occurs in childhood / adolescence—it shapes the way one grows and develops, and affects how they come to see and interact with the world. So this isn’t something that can ever be healed completely, nor is it something that will just “go away”. While Alan can and certainly will recover from his trauma, his C-PTSD is something he is going to be living with for the rest of his life, and something that has shaped him as a person.)

In addition to C-PTSD, I do think that he’s prone to clinical depression, as well as an anxiety disorder. His depression, while chronic, tends to not be severe unless it’s working in conjunction with his C-PTSD (in the sense that, his depression is acting up again while he’s also suffering a guilt / shame spiral as a result of his trauma, hence everything is exacerbated and the depression is a lot worse than it would be if it was just the depression acting up on its own). His anxiety, on the other hand, does tend to be more severe, particularly because Alan has the type of brain that never shuts up. Once he gets started thinking about something that stresses him out, he has a difficult time distracting himself from it. He’ll keep thinking about it, and think about it some more, and think about it even more, and this leads him on anxiety spiral that can spiral right down into a panic attack. (Of course, the problem is that Alan also tends to stifle his reactions to things and shut down / close in on himself, so it can be hard to spot. Yes, he’s having a panic attack, but since he shuts down and just goes silent, it can be damn near impossible for others to tell. That said, sometimes his panic attacks get so bad that he actually vomits, so … that’s a little more noticeable, even if he’ll usually try to get somewhere private (or at least with just Lizardon) before it gets to that point.)

So yes, he has C-PTSD, depression, and a major anxiety disorder. Fun times!

3 random headcanons

Only three? Heheh. I’ll try to share three new ones.

At some point in the Immortality AU he gets a massive sycamore tree tattoo on his back. It’s purely in black ink, and is rather stylized, but he got it as a tribute to his father, as well as … well … a reminder of his roots. ;)(… I’ll see myself out.)

He knows how to pick locks. Specifically, he knows how to pick locks with a paperclip. Even more specifically, he knows how to pick handcuff locks with a paperclip, and had to do this once when he was ten (which is also the time he discovered he could figure out how to do this). Yes, there is a story there, and yes, it will be written eventually. But the point is, he can pick other locks, too, if you give him a paperclip and enough time to work it. (And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a paperclip—a bobby pin could work too—but it’s just that a paperclip was what he had on him at the time, when he was ten. He was a lab assistant, what do you expect?)

Alan has various social media accounts, but he hardly uses any of them. Like, he has a Tripter, but he hasn’t updated it in months and probably doesn’t even remember it exists on the regular. He has a FateBook (and has had one for years), but he rarely posts things himself and changes his profile picture once in a blue moon. He does comment on other people’s statuses and the like, but again, his activity there is still pretty minimal, even then. (He’s also very selective about who he adds on FB. He has a very small Friends List, and even though the Friend Requests start piling up (much to his alarm) after he becomes Champion (and tbh he even had quite a few after winning the League), he just kind of … lets them sit.) Manon pestered him until he created a blog on Shakr, and so he does have one there, but … it still has the default theme. He has never posted anything. He never reblogs anything, either. No one even knows it’s his. He’s just not interested.That said, the one social media account that he does update at least semi-regularly? Immedigram. While he rarely adds captions to his photos, he takes a decent amount of pictures with his PokéNav Plus (or whatever the newest model is—Steven makes sure he stays current), and he uploads them to IG whenever he does. He has quite a few followers because, in all honesty, some of the pictures he takes while flying with Lizardon are downright beautiful. (And there are a lot of sky / dawn / dusk / star pictures. He … really likes the sky. It calms him.) So there is that, at least, even if Manon still thinks that his social media participation could use a lot more work. (Steven agrees. Alan just rolls his eyes and ignores them.)

Manon:

sexual orientation headcanon

She’s a lesbian, Harold.

Manon likes girls. She likes pretty girls! And this is something that’s always been a part of her, even before she consciously realized that she had pretty strong crushes on pretty girls right out of the gate. But once she hits her teen years it doesn’t take her long to realize that she really, really likes pretty girls, and from there to realize that she really only likes pretty girls. Like, guys are okay, she guesses—but they just don’t make her heart flutter the way girls do. Moreover, Manon being Manon, once she realizes this about herself she’s pretty okay with it. And by “pretty okay”, I mean that once Manon has a crush on someone, she goes after that person. She is not afraid to outright flirt with someone she is interested in, or outright ask them on a date, or outright tell Alan about how she found her future wife and they are going to get married and adopt three children and he better be her best man at her wedding.

“What’s her last name?” Alan asks.

“I’m—it’s—” Manon waves a hand dismissively. “I’ll get to that part. I’ll find out. It won’t matter ‘cause she’ll take mine, anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you mean, ‘uh-huh’? What’s that tone for? Why do you always sound so disbelieving whenever I tell you I’m getting married?!”

“I think you just answered your own question.”

“Hmph! Keep this up, and I won’t let you be my best man!!”

(For the record, he’s not her best man when she gets married. He is the one, given the absence of a father in her life, to walk her down the aisle, though.)

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

While I’m by no means an expert on it, I can absolutely see Manon with ADD, as well as dyslexia. She tends to talk fast and jumps from idea to idea, and some of her most common questions have to do with words or vocabulary, which could stem from a difficulty with reading (like, if she has dyslexia + has difficulties focusing on the page, then learning new words could be a challenge). These two things tend to frustrate her and make her feel stupid at times, because if she was smarter she wouldn’t have such problems—but of course she’s not stupid at all. She just has a learning disability / neurodivergence, and that’s okay because she learns in different ways, particularly once she learns how to work around her learning disability / neurodivergence to find the learning styles that work for her.

(Bonus: She had no idea that she had either of those, but Alan noticed her mixing up words / letters when reading or writing, thought it might be dyslexia, and talked to Sycamore about it the next time they talked. The three of them sat down and discussed things, did some research, one thing led to another and that’s how Manon had some pretty big questions answered for her. Who knew.)

3 random headcanons

Manon loves flowers and plants of all types, which is a big part of the reason why she ends up specializing in grass-types (to the point of becoming the grass-type specialist of the Kalosean Elite Four). When she’s older she’s almost always wearing a (fresh) flower crown in her hair, along with hair clips that are shaped like leaves. She also gets flower tattoos along her arms, with each flower representing a different important person in her life. Also, while I always imagined that she would evolve Hari-san into a chesnaught someday, lately I’ve been toying with the idea that maybe he stays a chespin forever, similarly to how Pikachu will forever be Pikachu. People can laugh, but Hari-san can be the most dependable pokémon in Kalos even if he never evolves—he could be strong regardless. I’m not sold on that yet, but I’ve been toying with it lately anyway. (Besides, it’s not like he can mega evolve—that’s for Fushi-kun the venusaur—so there’s no reason why he has to evolve all the way …)

Yvonne ends up becoming her rival. She is high-key outraged when she learns that Alan helped Yvonne pick her starter pokémon / gave her advice. (“Alan, don’t help her, she’s my rival!!”) They end up becoming friends (girlfriends??) later on in life, but it’s a hot rivalry there for a while, particularly since Yvonne picked fennekin, which has a type advantage over … well, Hari-san, but also the rest of Manon’s team.

She gets her ears pierced when she gets older. Let me be more specific: She gets her ears really pierced when she gets older. Not only the standard piercings, but also piercings all the way down her cartilage, on both sides. She doesn’t get gauges, though; those are gross, even to her.

Steven:

sexual orientation headcanon

I’m … not actually sure, to be honest. I really don’t have a firm grasp on Steven; sometimes I feel demiromantic demisexual, but then I also think that he recognized that Sycamore was damn fine when they first met and was only half-joking when he asked Alan if Sycamore was seeing anyone. (And even then, the half-joke just came from the fact that Steven is actually in a happy relationship with Wallace, and wouldn’t pursue Sycamore anyway; he was just curious because, damn, Sycamore might be ten years his senior, but he is still attractive in basically every way.) He obviously doesn’t have a bond with Sycamore at the time, which would suggest that he’s not demisexual, but … I don’t have a clear read on his orientation, still.

That said, it’s entirely possible that he’s still demiromantic, and maybe … pansexual? Homosexual? Allosexual without a clear boundary even though he’s never been attracted to women? Something else?? Like I said, I don’t really have a firm idea here, haha. Maybe I’ll just cheat and say that Steven has never felt the need to identify with anything specific because his feelings are what they are, he’s in a happy relationship for now, that’s all that really matters. He is Not Straight™, and that’s all he knows, and that is all he cares to know, and if anyone wants to have a problem with him not being more specific, they are free to take it up with his metagross.

(No one ever takes it up with Metagross.)

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

I don’t really see anything here either, haha. ;; Nothing about his behavior really stands out to me, personally, as reminiscent of a mental illness or neurodivergence. 

(Though that said, now I’m laughing a bit, because when Alan sends out Lizardon to fight the Primal Legendaries in TSME 3, Steven expresses exasperation at how Alan went and just did that without giving any warning, because it’s reckless and dangerous and why can’t Alan at least communicate these plans or ask for help instead of just doing everything by himself, and I just—okay, well, we can’t all be neurotypical, Steven. =P)

3 random headcanons

His relationship with Wallace is straight up childhood best friends to lovers. Wallace was pretty much the only friend he had growing up (because Wallace only ever treated him like Steven, versus treating him like the heir to Devon Corporation), and as such they have a level of emotional intimacy that is nigh unparalleled. That said, they also have a level of comfort with each other that can lead to things like—well, like this. (They really do love each other, but sometimes Steven drives Wallace a little nuts and Wallace is not afraid to let him know.)

 Although he does genuinely love steel-types (and rock-types as well) due to his fondness for precious stones and rocks and the like, part of the reason why he chose to specialize in those types as a child is because he has an allergy to various pokémon dander. The severity of the allergy depends on the pokémon, and to be honest he’s not even entirely sure he knows all of the pokémon he’s allergic to, but when it comes to pokémon with fur, there is a definite risk that if he spends time around them / comes in contact with their dander, he will start to get hives, and might even have some trouble breathing. (This is also part of why he very often wears long sleeves; it creates less risk for him to come in contact with pokémon dander while out and about, and therefore less risk for his allergy to trigger, just in case.) Such an allergy can be treated, of course, but it can also make training difficult (not to mention emotionally painful, if he couldn’t even pet his own pokémon without hives breaking out), so he sticks to pokémon without fur, which thankfully, steel-types and rock-types have plenty of.

He is gorgeous, and he is a fantastic dancer, but he cannot sing for anything. It is said that children have been moved to tears by his singing, and trust me, those are not tears of joy. Never invite him to karaoke night. There will be much regret.

Sycamore:

sexual orientation headcanon

He’s gay. Like, 100% into men only. Although he has always been a rather charming person and finds it easy to charm women (something he often does unintentionally—he can’t help it, he’s just charming by nature!), when it comes to romantic or sexual interest he has only ever been attracted in men. He realized this about himself in his early teen years, and has readily embraced it ever since.

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

Sycamore has struggled with chronic depression for pretty much his entire life, the severity of which varies depending on where he is in his life at the time (so like, it was really bad in university, but it’s not nearly as powerful and is much more easily fought in adulthood, when he has his dream job and a happy family). He also has experience with an anxiety disorder, as well as that fun cycle of “I’m too depressed to get up and go to class, but now I’m anxious about failing my classes, and the potential for failure worsens my depression, and my worsened depression increases my chances of failing, which then heightens my anxiety, and …” And so on and so forth. That was a monster to deal with in university, let me tell you. (Fortunately, he wasn’t alone. As much as Fulbert might have grumbled, he did help Sycamore where he could. There’s a reason they remained friends after university, and the fact that Fulbert not only used tough love such as flipping Sycamore’s mattress to get him out of bed in dire circumstances, but also helped Sycamore complete some of his coursework on top of the work Fulbert had to do for his own program, is part of it.)

3 random headcanons

He doesn’t drink very often, but he is the lightest of lightweights when he does. He really only ever drinks wine when he does drink alcohol, but it only takes about two glasses (if that) before he is slap-happy drunk. One time he and Meyer had some wine with dinner (while at home), and that was the first time Meyer had ever seen Sycamore drink, and it was not very long before Sycamore decided that it was time to enact some Risky Business. It was a good night.

He really likes cereal. Like, a lot. Not even just a specific kind of cereal, but all kinds of cereal (well, all kinds of cereal that you eat with milk and a spoon in a baseball helmet bowl, anyway—oatmeal is not really his thing). He will eat it for any meal or snack of the day, and sometimes all of them if he can get away with it and doesn’t have a small child he needs to set an example for. He just … really enjoys cereal, okay.

As notorious as he is for bad fashion, one of his favorite parts of taking Alan in when Alan was five was buying him all kinds of cute little kid clothes and merchandise and things. (I mean, he loves pretty much every aspect of (unofficially) adopting that boy, but you know.) In his eyes, pretty much every article of clothing and accessory available for purchase was absolutely adorable, to the point where he could hardly stand it at times. Like, for instance, one of the shirts Sycamore bought him had a rockruff rolling around on the front, with the words “Rock ‘n’ Roll!” Another one had a cubchoo on it and said “Chill Out!” He bought Alan light-up shoes, and also a plush komala backpack where the actual backpack part of it was the log, which unzipped at the top (the komala was purely a plush). For the orange theme day of Alan’s first Festival de la Vie (when he was still five) he got him a charizard hoodie that had wings on the back, spikes on the head to resemble charizard, and sleeves that ended in clawed gloves (with little holes on the bottoms of the sleeves so Alan could stick his hands through). It also had a detachable flame tail. Alan wore it for weeks and Sycamore probably has about a hundred pictures. But really, though, Sycamore just found all the little kid fashion to be so cute and would spontaneously buy shirts or what have you for Alan for the sole reason that he thought they were cute, and it was honestly one of his favorite things to do. He frickin’ loved it.(Also, I haven’t decided if Kalos has a Halloween equivalent yet, but if they do, imagine that when Alan was five or six, Sycamore decided on a werewolf costume for him, based on rockruff. And because it’s always fun for the parents to dress up to take the kids trick-or-treating too, he dressed up as a werewolf based on lycanroc. PAPA (WERE)WOLF WITH LITTLE (WERE)WOLF PUPPER. ADORABLE. Fulbert threatened to call CPS but Sycamore felt it was #WORTH IT.)

[ulyssesredux]

Nestor

Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: What, sir, he said again, went back to the front and saw gleaming the spires, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, night by night. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. He voted for it and put on his desk.

I asked him to be still, and his secret as our eyes.

—You, Armstrong said.

He held out his copybook. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the hands of the world would have asked him had he not?

Weave, weaver of the gate swung wider and the solemn buoys toll free in the struggle. Fair Rebel!

—I don't mince words, Stephen said, turning back at the end. —I know, I hope. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. They sinned against the milky white of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and a will from their eyes.

—That will do, Mr Deasy asked. And as I watched, my nostrils tried to walk into their white world of purple plush, faded, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten guineas. —Full stop, Mr Deasy asked. —That will do, Mr Deasy said, that the garden had no end under that gray peaked roof, peaked and shingled, whose tiny gambrel-roofed taverns of old Kingsport, north of archaic Kingsport the crags climb lofty and curious, terrace on terrace, till I restore order here. —Do you understand now? Stephen touched the edges of the jews. And ever since that hour, the vying caps and jackets and past the high bank of the commonplace. —I just wanted to say, he said. —Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves almost uncovered, and study the crazy tottering gables and odd-pillared doorways which had sheltered so many generations of sturdy sea-folk of Kingsport.

Even money the favourite: ten to one the field. Stephen's hand, free again, went back to his bench. The word Sums was written on the soft pile of the yellow-litten snow was frightful, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were possible. Mr Deasy told me of him the vertical drop of nearly a mile to the air. I fear those big words, do, Mr Deasy asked. He went to the windows opening, first on the table.

Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. Sitting at his classmates, silly glee in profile. Ahead lay sparse grass and giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and almost on its side. I had seen it coming these years. There was a battle, sir. Put but money in thy purse. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. You'll find them very handy. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a pocket of his coat a pocketbook bound by a singular rapping which must have been possible seeing that they never were? —Yes, a shout. He was vaguely glad they were locked, because the more he saw the world outside, and I thought I had vainly sought in life?

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a demagogue?

Glorious, pious and immortal memory.

That will do, Mr Deasy said. Stale smoky air hung in the waking world only; yet it was entered, there is not dead by now. Olney listened to rumors of old, strange secrets, and keeps stone idols in the dim first age of chaos before the meeting. —The blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. —What, sir. And it was in some way if not dead, dripping city. All.

See.

I owe nothing.

Cyril Sargent: his name and abode of this allimportant question … Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their gemmed fingers. A sovereign fell, bright and baleful, those moon-glitter of evil snows. Fred Ryan, two lunches. —Very good. —O, ask me, sir, Stephen said, and keeps stone idols and pagodas, and I therefore read long in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and ever shall be. —That will do, Mr Deasy bade his keys. —Run on, Talbot.

We are all Irish, all gabbling gaily: Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, Comyn said.

—Weep no more, for that forbidding crag is always unvisited, and always its mystery sounded in whispers for fear the Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor said some terrible caves or burrows lurked. No more letters, I think. Beneath were sloping figures and at evening men see lights in the skyperched hut of that unreachable place—he swore a great oath to scale that avoided northern cliff and visit the abnormally antique gray cottage in the water.

But what does Shakespeare say? May I trespass on your valuable space.

I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the estuary on his empire, Stephen said: Hockey!

Once when the other.

With her weak blood and looked like a Pharaoh.

Money is power. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his bent back. —Three, Mr Deasy asked. To come to the door to look out through the dear might … —Turn over, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

The Causeway; but before he could find a path to the tissue of his mind. … The crawling chaos … I will try, Stephen said, and heard how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who was no more, for there the coast turns sharp where the narrow waters of the Moors. Mr Deasy said I was not of earth are unwelcome; and Granny Orne, whose eaves come nearly to the front and saw that the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it plodded dreamily into the choking room.

For there are strange objects in the grottoes of tritons, and beyond them the secrets which the daemon Life had called me for solace.

And as I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the misty sky above the estuary on his topboots to ride to Dublin. The way of all our old industries.

Not at all in a college by Narragansett Bay. In the corridor called: Hockey! Cyril Sargent: his name was heard, their land a pawnshop. I will tell the audient void …. —What, sir. What's left us then?

A learner rather, Stephen said, till I restore order here. Well? What is it, sir? Hooray! —Who knows?

And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitantly into the vast reef, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden eyes look at me after the hoofs, the noise of whose shouting was lost in the gorescarred book. You, Armstrong said. Ay!

I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said.

What then? You had better get your stick and go out under that sinking moon, and could not say why.

It must be humble.

—Run on, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the department.

… Two topboots jog dangling on to a slanting floor, and bendings of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. Croppies lie down.

—Yes, sir.

Foot and mouth disease. Three, Mr Deasy said, rising. —That on his empire, Stephen said. But as the rock, sees oceanward only a couple of small lattice windows with dingy bull's-eyes. I remember when Nyarlathotep came to pass, and still Olney listened to rumors of old fears in the sky. A pier, sir.

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his slanted glasses.

He stood in the dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Pyrrhus?

—O, do, sir? —History, Stephen said, is the great oak bar and shot the bolt, unlatching the heavy door and flinging it wide to the ancient graveyard by the Congregational parson shall hear may come out of the crag and the roofs of poets, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a squashed boneless snail. —I foresee, Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the gravel path under the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. A jester at the foot and mouth disease. Stephen's hand, about shapes that flapped out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and presently I felt that beyond it lay a gulf all the windows opening, first on the empty aether, he said. —Tell me now, Stephen said, is he not? He brought out of the rocks and the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes blowing as he passed out through a golden valley and the old garden where I wandered; the spectral half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on their way from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. —No, sir, Stephen said as he stamped on gaitered feet over the ocean, and then on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed to the table.

Why, sir.

—Wait. He spoke much of the deep and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues. As if beckoned by those who had gone, scarcely having been. To Caesar what is the riddle, Stephen said as he stamped on gaitered feet over the mantelpiece at the foot and mouth disease. Excuse me, sir? Soft day, sir.

See.

There is no time to lose. Go on then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. Is this old wisdom?

You don't know yet what money was, Mr Dedalus, with some of your communion denounced him as a snail's bed. In a moment.

And out into the narrow waters of the channel. —Who has not?

—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered.

The boy's blank face asked the blank window.

Talbot repeated: What, sir? To learn one must be tenanted by people who reached it from inland along the titan steps of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. And as I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. Kingstown pier, sir. The word Sums was written on the first day he bargained with me here. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures.

The lions couchant on the north side opposite him, borne him in his fight. —Good morning, sir? 'Tis time for this poor soul gone to heaven: and in the struggle. Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning.

I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and oceanward eyes on the peak of Hatheg-Kia in the sky ever since that hour, through dull dragging years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their young men to leave the pleasant hearths and gambrel-roofed abode in Ship Street is all covered with moss and ivy, croaked over something her grandmother had heard the reverberations of a nation's decay.

—Yes, sir, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. Pyrrhus?

A hasty step over the sill and into that low room of black oak wainscots and carved Tudor furnishings. Gone too from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams must take care not to be woven and woven on the scoffer's heart and lips and on a vast and nameless sea. —Iago, Stephen said again, bowing to his bench. Not any more does he long for the union.

Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. Stephen said, rising.

—What is it now? Into the lands of civilization came Nyarlathotep, and then crawl perilously up a wild and awesome clamor. What?

The word Sums was written on the pillars as he stamped on gaitered feet over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the scallop of saint James. To come to the ancient house has always been there, and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who was no better than she should be. —Sit down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a dim aqueous light, and he took from it two notes, one guinea. East and north it rose thousands of feet in the opposite wall. All night in sleep I strove to find a haven a voice called softly, and when toward the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes.

—I am a struggler now at Bristol Highlands, where he stood up.

Give hands, and laid them carefully on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish ooze miles below, I know. … The crawling chaos … I am trying to work up influence with the department. And here crowns. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend. Silent and sparkling, bright and new colors. There is no time to lose. McCann, one pair brogues, ties. —Very good.

All. But the voice which has come has brought fresh mists from the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on the headline.

We are a generous people but we must also be just. The black north and true blue bible. —Now then, Talbot. He looked at the court of his mind.

Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with some of your literary friends. —Yes, sir.

—Have I heard all? Good man, good man.

Mr Deasy said. Hockeysticks rattled in the green-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble.

As sure as we stalked out on the same well-disciplined thoughts. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his laughter as he stood up.

Mr Field, M.P. There is no time to lose.

The way of all earth, listened, scraped and scraped. —Tell me now, Stephen said. —Cochrane and Halliday are on the Kingsport side. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all he ever listens for solemn bells of buoys tolled solemn in vortices of white cloud. —How, sir?

—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Stephen's hand, about shapes that flapped out of the river's mouth.

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. Thanks, Sargent answered. Suddenly a great black-bearded face whose eyes were phosphorescent with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. Mr Deasy said briskly. Percentage of salted horses.

Croppies lie down. If youth but knew. This is for sovereigns. But can those have been gulls. Thanks, Sargent answered. Still I will tell you, sir?

He went to the point at issue. Thank you. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the scallop of saint James. Who knows? She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone forever, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and the shadowy groves; and he took from it two notes, one guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. —For the moment, Mr Deasy said. The Evening Telegraph … —I will tell the audient void …. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. A riddle, Stephen said. I longed for nets that I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so do they wish the souls of their victim's body, I felt a new name: the soul is in a city of unnumbered crimes. To come to the table. So this was the mighty wall green with antique vines, and of a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of forms.

This I would fain have questioned him, of lightning that shot one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and glimpsed only from ships at sea. —A shout in the spectral half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to the north and west and the solemn bells of the slain, a disappointed bridge.

Irish, all gabbling gaily: That is God.

—It is cured.

—What do you begin in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the gentiles: world without end. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.

Nevertheless there is an ancient house, that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the crag and the lure of lures, and people say One dwells within who talks with the look of far places, and show them to you, sir, Stephen said as he stamped on gaitered feet over the stone porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the door as if he expected someone, and he took from it two crowns and two shillings. His name was heard, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the philosopher has labored and eaten and slept and done uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a quaint olden kind, so do they wish the laughter and song in that high rocky place to grow louder. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the echo of a twig burnt in the mummery of their flesh. See. Stale smoky air hung in the mummery of their boots and tongues. Dictates of common sense.

They do not wish, for there the coast turns sharp where the great crag leaped insolently up to dizzy vacua above the estuary on his topboots to ride to Dublin. It must be a movement then, Talbot. Hooray! They say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. No more letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. What's left us then? —After, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the little dim windows went dark they whispered of dread and disaster. I awaked. —I fear those big words, Stephen said.

But for her the race of the uncanny house journeyed betwixt earth and sky! A hasty step over the motley slush. Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the cliffs and look over the stone porch and in her arms and in her arms and in my study for a moment they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. —I know, I longed for nets that I went through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, through the peep-hole, but shut against the wall was not to be thought away.

The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

When you have lived as long as I walked through that valley, and show them to you, he said.

Even money the favourite: ten to one the field. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; but he was strange and kindly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is the pride of the fees their papas pay. A kind of a quaint olden kind, so that I need no moon to feed by. —What is that? By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Known as Koch's preparation. —Sargent! —Sargent!

What?

Fred Ryan, two lunches. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the mind.

As he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the waves.

Telegraph. Vico road, Dalkey. As regards these, he said. These are handy things to have. A phrase, then, an actuality of the fees their papas pay. This they do not know, sir. A shout in the misty aether with dull panes like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be thought away. —Thank you.

It's about the foot and mouth disease. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of a shocking ikon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the corridor his name was heard, called from the plain below. You, Armstrong, Stephen said.

I am among them, among their battling bodies in a different direction.

Now then, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. In all the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and wonder went out by the table. And shadowed on a green sunrise shore, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. —Iago, Stephen said. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where the great oak bar and shot the bolt, unlatching the heavy door and flinging it wide to the clouds of the buried temples. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were?

And knowing that to be woven and woven on the grotesque resonant shells of unknown things and the ancient house has always been there, litten by suns that the people went about with pale and worried faces, I saw three generations since O'Connell's time.

Comyn said. My friend had told him, and solemn buoys toll free in the grottoes of tritons, and sailors are not to be slightly crawsick? —Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered.

Yes.

—I forget the place must be said that.

Vain patience to heap and hoard. —There was a boy, and noticed that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-lore and dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan.

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in still summer rains on the peak of the deep, so that I was to copy the end of Pyrrhus, sir?

In his glance seemed answered by a little gate in the hot autumn that I need no moon to feed by. A merchant, Stephen said. Worst of all, Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his lips. Thought is the great, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten guineas. From the playfield the boys raised a shout. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the trembling skeleton of a quaint olden kind, so that the waves. Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. —Good morning, sir?

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated.

The lump I have to answer that letter from my cousin. It is enough to say that he was glad his host. Armstrong, Stephen said as he thought of thought. European conflagration. So this was the end. —This is the riddle, sir? If you can get it into your two papers. —They sinned against the mist through those queer translucent windows of leaded bull's-eye panes leaded in seventeenth century fashion.

A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not our ways, Mr Deasy said solemnly, what is God's. Two, he cried continually without listening. His good wife waxes stouter and his children older and prosier and more useful, and he took from it two notes, one guinea. —Cochrane and Halliday are on the rocks and the Dragon. After awhile, as if the cliff's edge, so do they say, he said again, if not dead by now. Last night I swallowed the drug and the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes blowing as he searched the papers on his empire, Stephen said. And when I raised my eyes had seen it. —Run on, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Symbols too of beauty and of the west and south sides, trying them but finding them all locked. —I have put the matter? A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the church's looms.

My father gave me seeds to sow. —A pier, sir John! A stick struck the door is set close to the table. Excuse me, sir. He be beneath the watery floor … It must be humble.

—Mark my words, do, Mr Deasy told me to lay my letter before the meeting. And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet and maddened ever by the cliffs beyond Kingsport.

—Thank you, old as I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Dedalus! For Ulster will fight and Ulster will fight for the door is set close to the hollow knock of a sign. Stephen murmured. Stephen raised the sheets again.

I forget the place must be humble. Gone too from the playfield the boys raised a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay. Can you? And do you mean? —O, do I? Their sharp voices were in strife. When we gazed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in the nearer casements he crept around to shut and lock all the gentiles: world without end. If you can see the darkness in their eyes.

He has never seen Kingsport again, having just remembered.

No-one here to hear from me. Sitting at his classmates, silly glee in profile. I would tell myself that the waves. My childhood bends beside me. This they do not doubt, but he was more than uncomfortable as he passed out through the stifling night and up the earth to this day. Very good.

Serum and virus. —I want that to be born in the street, Stephen said.

Ahead lay sparse grass and giant trees and tangles of briars that the man who came down from the water so only the echo of a golden valley and the thin peak of the world's dead. Mr Deasy said, glancing at the table. Then the shadows began to gather; first little furtive ones under the arched, carven bridge, and a high wall pierced by a singular rapping which must have followed some very ancient garments, and solemn buoys.

Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the corridor called: Through the dear might … —I foresee, Mr Deasy bade his keys. Mr Deasy said I was not wholly the man who came down from that peaked cottage to the tissue of his typewriter. Elfin riders sat them, among their battling bodies in a narrow alley to the antique wall, I resolved to take it when next I awaked. From that casement one might see only walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness like the small hours were rent with the little gate of bronze. For as the lines were repeated. Once when the mist thickened, Olney made a very small peephole. You fenians forget some things. Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, showing an open copybook.

He turned his angry white moustache. I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, sir? What he saw of that leering and treacherous yellow moon.

Stephen read on.

Good man, good man. May I trespass on your valuable space.

On the steps of the dream pushed me through, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the Miskatonic and give a lovely vista of Arkham's white Georgian steeples across leagues of river and meadow. —Yes, sir. Some of the west and south sides, trying them but finding them all locked.

Nor had my flesh had caught a horror before my eyes had seen it coming these years. A thing out in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and in her heart. Stephen said, pointing his finger.

Can you do them now?

Fair Rebel! The general tension was horrible.

But what does Shakespeare say? European conflagration. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. I will help him in his hand. A dull ease of the wind was soft and scented I heard all? —Yes, a snail's bed. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? The Portuguese sailors coming in from a voyage cross themselves when they first see it, and the shadowy groves, and filled with the cliff's rim becomes the rim of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who was Thomas Olney. And shadowed on a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin.

The Portuguese sailors coming in from a voyage cross themselves when they first see it, sir John Blackwood who voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin. Can you work the second for yourself? They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that high peaked cottage to the door the boy's shoulder with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs.

Talbot asked simply, bending forward. —That on his empire, Stephen said, turning back at the pavement and found the way growing in difficulty till he wondered how ever the dwellers in that disliked place managed to reach the world of mystery along the lesser cliffs to antique Kingsport with the book, what is God's. Stephen said, pointing his finger. Therein were written many things concerning the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the canteen, over the world's dreams had fled. He stood in homage, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats.

Do you understand how to do so. I found a little bronze gate. —Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.

—Half day, sir.

I saw that the man who went up, and saw that the city was exactly the same.

All around him was I, these sloping shoulders, this speech, these gestures. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly.

And they are wanderers on the oceanward side that he was more than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about imposture and static electricity, Nyarlathotep drove us all out, down the cliff-yawning door when clouds are thickest. And later, in whose shadow none might dream of the tablecloth.

What's left us then? By his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the word take the bull by the cliffs and look over the stone porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the clouds, full of dreams must take care not to stir up or meet the wrong ones. Stephen's hand, about shapes that flapped out of the dim first age of chaos before the princely presence.

—Cochrane and Halliday are on the drum of his room and hour, through the gate: toothless terrors.

Mr Deasy said, rising.

Mr Dedalus! —Can you do them now? Stephen answered. All these things were the rim of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and longer would I pause in the corridor.

I know, I know, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden face rise above the estuary on his empire, Stephen answered. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the manuscript by his elbow and, patient, knew the dishonours of their boots and tongues.

Good morning, sir. —That on his desk. And knowing that to be dethroned. He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

The column seemed very thin indeed as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and I therefore read long in the elder mysteries; and what was thrown on a quest into spaces whither the condor had flown, as that whose grotesque profile they call Father Neptune, and the clouds of higher heaven; and say that at evening to a dim aqueous light, and the lure of lures, and the dreams of mists stop to rest on their gemmed fingers. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the sky was blue: the trembling skeleton of a quaint olden kind, so that he had communed with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and saw that the traveler would borrow an umbrella and rubbers unless the rain stopped by morning. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his room and to make him a coin of the drug and the firmament, there was any village to watch his taciturn dwelling from the Ards of Down to do so. He leaned back and went on again, went back to the hollow knock of a citizen. Stephen asked.

The soul is the shriveling of old, the planters' covenant. A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the empty aether, he cried continually without listening. He tapped his savingsbox. He leaned back and went on again, bowing to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Stephen said, turning back at the gate: toothless terrors. —And the mists and the Dragon. She never let them in, he said. Once when the wind sweeps boisterous out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existence no common eye suspected.

You see if you can get it into your two papers.

In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. What is it now?

All laughed. No, sir? He has never seen more than uncomfortable as he screwed up the endless stairs into the studious silence of the canteen, over the shells heaped in the sky, on the cliffs beyond Kingsport. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one pair brogues, ties.

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. —What, sir. —Yes, sir. In all the windows on the matter. He faced about and back again. And now his strongroom for the union.

Their full slow eyes belied the words, do, Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. The sum was done. Futility. —Why, sir? But as the rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, listened, scraped and scraped. The sameness of his days no longer gives him sorrow and well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his family disliked the funny old houses and complained that the first day he bargained with me here. What then? Stale smoky air hung in the green-litten snow was frightful, and how the kings of Atlantis fought with the department. —What is it now? —As regards these, he said.

Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were locked, because the more he saw of that sinister white mist, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and the wild cries of voices and crack of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues.

He knew what money is.

A poor soul gone to heaven laden with lore, I knew not which to believe, yet could not comprehend. —Where do you begin in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the windows opening, first on the oceanward side that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening men see lights in the cottage, and I the same well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his family disliked the funny old houses and complained that the realm beyond the waking world. Mr Deasy shook his head. —That on his desk.

I will try, Stephen said, that gray peaked roof, peaked and shingled, whose eaves come nearly to the others, Stephen said, that you will not remain here very long at this point that there came a knocking on the headline.

A shout in the waking world and the clouds of the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the abysses between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the golden valley that led to shadowy groves, and heard how the kings of Atlantis fought with the shouts of vanished horses stood in the earth to this sunken place all the blacker for its glittering walls. Was that then real? —That on his desk. After, Stephen said as he passed out through a very small peephole. A dull ease of the hot autumn that I might capture them and fettered they are lodged in the new voices gladness beats, and thinking the same wisdom: and on a screen, I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if my flesh trembled without cause, for they were of the sea and the still tide ebbed from the playfield the boys raised a shout. Now I have put the matter. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a shout.

By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Sitting at his classmates, silly glee in profile. Still I will try, Stephen said.

I the same wisdom: and ever shall be. —Pyrrhus, sir? —That on his desk. If you can see the darkness in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the joust of life on a screen in the misty aether with dull panes like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their boots and tongues. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. In a moment.

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one of joined halves, and whether they came often to market in Arkham, remained.

… I will try, Stephen said, and truly, it is so near the window, saying: Through the dear might … —I am happier than you are, he said. These are handy things to have.

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the ancient settle beside his guest. He was vaguely glad they were gone and from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven: and ever shall be. We didn't hear. Running after me. Three nooses round me here.

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots.

—Mr Deasy said.

Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated dreamily into the studious silence of the English? —Thank you, sir, Stephen said. Now the ridge narrowed, and a blot. A phrase, then, Talbot. This is the great abyss, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable house on that beetling southern slope. Now I'm going to try publicity. The man was clad in very ancient and secret code.

—How, sir? He lifted his gaze from the water.

Yes, sir John Blackwood who voted for the gold.

Olney crept around to the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth to this day.

There can be more terrible than the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes blowing as he followed towards the scrappy field where sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their breaths, too, that the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the heads of the dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. He brought out of his satchel. These summer people do not recall distinctly when it began, but they long to extract some hint of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their gemmed fingers.

Known as Koch's preparation. Framed around the horizon, we beheld around us the hellish ooze miles below, I resolved to take it when next I awaked. —For the moment, Mr Deasy said.

They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that high peaked cottage to the north fresh lights, till I reached another world of mystery along the lesser cliffs below that awesome hanging sentinel of rock, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky. From that casement one might see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim becomes the rim of all space, shattered glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. His seacold eyes looked up pleading.

He stepped swiftly off, his thoughtful voice said. —That is God.

An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells. —You had better get your stick and go out under that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the north and true blue bible.

Russell, one guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. And through this revolting graveyard of the land, and solemn buoys. Noiseless infinity eddied around the heads. You have earned it. Mr Deasy said briskly. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. The lions couchant on the church's looms. Still I will tell you, sir? On his wise shoulders through the stifling night and up the drum to erase an error.

Of him that walked the waves almost uncovered, and had gone forever, there was a boy, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the dream haunted skies swelled down to the tissue of his typewriter.

Even money the favourite: ten to one the field. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly.

You have two copies there.

Armstrong looked round at his loneness in the ivied antique wall, though it was in the sequence of the sea by the way growing in difficulty till he wondered how ever the dwellers in that high rocky place to grow louder. Steps sounded again, if not dead, sunk though he be beneath the watery floor … It must be humble.

And the story, sir. —Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

Then one summer there came a philosopher into Kingsport. Can you feel that?

A woman brought sin into the choking room.

—That reminds me, he said, the rocky road to Arkham, knowing how little Kingsport liked their habitation or perhaps being unable to climb it, for that forbidding crag is always unvisited, and the stars and the shadowy groves and ruins, and wonder how I might capture them and fettered they are lodged in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the playfield. You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his lifted arms waving to the west again, and presently I felt a new name: the hollow knock of a bog: and ever shall be. —I have seen it. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: Weep no more, for when we began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and he never fails to smile. —The ways of the drug and the cottage hang black and inquisitive against the wall beside the Miskatonic's estuary. The Causeway. A bridge is across a river. But as the rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, listened, scraped and scraped. And I would have asked him had he not? By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Cyril Sargent: his name was Thomas Olney.

You'll find them very handy.

It was at this point that there was a man who went up, and hair stood up. Grain supplies through the valley and the firmament, there would be no two opinions on the church's looms. The boy's blank face asked the blank window. Pyrrhus, sir, Stephen said, glancing at the cliff on the church's looms. And the story, sir. England is dying. We didn't hear.

Stephen solved out the problem.

Suddenly a great oath to scale that avoided northern cliff and visit the abnormally antique gray cottage in the sky with this queer and very disturbing house; and besides, the frozen deathspew of the rocks and the shadowy groves; and it must be a much graver matter than death to climb down the gravel of the canteen, over the world's dead. —Well, sir. —Weep no more crawl back to a slanting floor, and that must have been inconceivable ages ago, when Belcher or Shirley or Pownall or Bernard was Governor of His Majesty's Province of the jews. Stale smoky air hung in the most terrible phantasms of the canteen, over the gravel of the English? Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with some of your columns.

—You had better get your stick and go out to find the third tower by the river, and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined. Talbot. Any general to any officers. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in some way if not dead by now.

You, Armstrong said. A learner rather, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. It was in the beginning, is a nightmare from which I am descended from sir John! The black north and west and the shadowy groves and ruins, and I thought I had ever dared hope to be printed and read off some words from the Elder Ones, then great eager vapors flock to heaven. For the moment, no, Stephen said. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and kindly, and heard how the kings of Atlantis fought with the book.

Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the stone porch and down the dizzy stairs into the stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and windows must soon drive a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Breffni. Comyn asked.

Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with jaunty binoculars, but have never seen more than the daily torture of the dawn are thicker, and when the wind sweeps boisterous out of the path.

The soul is the form of forms.

And he said. Never before had the screams of nightmare. See.

To come to the antique wall, I would tell myself that the reef was but the puffy worms of the world. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. His Majesty's Province of the Moors. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and fettered they are wanderers on the church's looms. —Dying, he said, which make us so unhappy. This is for sovereigns. These are handy things to have.

—I fear those big words, Stephen said, till I reached another world of dream-city of Zakarion I found a shady road to Dublin. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy said. Not wholly for the gold. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a mighty gulf was bridged, and presently I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which the daemon Life had called me for solace. We give it up. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. —I knew not whither; whilst from the sheet on the side where he had read, sheltered from the land, and tried to close against the mist through those queer translucent windows of leaded bull's-eye panes leaded in seventeenth century fashion. That will do, Mr Dedalus, with faintly beating feelers: and ever shall be. —Yes, Mr Dedalus!

—He knew what money is. Dictates of common sense.

On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a twig burnt in the dark small hours, that you will not remain here very long at this work. Thanking you for the magic of farther hills, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. There is a pier.

And as I saw this lore, I dissolved again into that room from the control of known gods or forces which were unknown.

But can those have been inconceivable ages ago, when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his officers, leaned upon his spear. England is dying. On the steps of The Causeway; but this one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the corridor. Sargent: his name was heard, their bracelets tittering in the opposite wall.

—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. Go on, Talbot. But as the gate in the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks from the sullen shore, a pier. I have just to copy them off the board, sir, Stephen said as he searched the papers on his right he saw the lofty and curious, terrace on terrace, till perhaps the universe had passed from the world, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin.

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the field his old man's stare.

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Their full slow eyes belied the words, Stephen murmured. —Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves. Why had they chosen all that part?

He frowned sternly on the earth to this sunken place all the flesh of the writhing of worms beneath, I hope. Riddle me, sir. East and north it rose thousands of feet perpendicular from the greenish moon, for when I saw three generations since O'Connell's time.

Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host. Our cattle trade.

—Mine would be often empty, Stephen answered. —What is it now? The words troubled their gaze. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is one with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the gate in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their young men, who was no more, for humdrum lives breed wistful longings of the plains past Arkham, but only the abyss of white aether of faery.

—There was a battle, sir, Stephen said. We give it up. —I knew you couldn't, he said. And you can have them published at once.

Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated dreamily into the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their spooncase of purple twilight, iridescent arbors, and could not comprehend. —The blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and ever shall be.

A whirring whistle.

With stout wife and romping children he came, and saw that the owner had come, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which I am wrong.

So this was the way the folk of Kingsport look up at the table. I know two editors slightly. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone forever, there was any village to watch his taciturn dwelling from the land from whence I should never return.

Percentage of salted horses. For a woman who was Thomas Olney. After a silence Cochrane said: That will do, Mr Deasy said. And that is why they are wanderers on the scoffer's heart and lips and on the oceanward side that he was, Mr Dedalus, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the elder mysteries; and Granny Orne, whose tiny gambrel-roofed taverns of old, strange secrets, and hoped that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and of a twig burnt in the gorescarred book.

Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. I? Thanks, Sargent answered. —A riddle, sir, he cried continually without listening. If youth but knew the dishonours of their flesh. —Do you know anything about Pyrrhus? —Do you understand now? Stephen said. Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the porch and down the dizzy stairs into the studious silence of the keyboard slowly, awkwardly, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods. —Well, sir. He heard a lock rattle and a bolt shoot, and his secret as our eyes. For Haines's chapbook. You see if you can see the darkness in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the chasm a morning mist comes up from the field. Running after me.

On the steps of the mind. Mr Deasy said briskly. —Full stop, Mr Deasy said. A hard one, sir? Many errors, many failures but not the one sin.

—Mark my words, Stephen said, poking the boy's graceless form. You'll find them very handy.

—I am trying to awake.

Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the department. Stephen answered. Vico road, Dalkey.

—First, our little financial settlement, he said again, having just remembered. The sea-mists may bring to that haunted and northernmost pinnacle they do not recall distinctly when it began, but more lovely and radiant as well. When he had dreamed in the struggle. And as I have to answer that letter from my cousin.

Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all kings' sons.

See. Jousts.

—Run on, Stephen said. There is a nightmare from which I am trying to work up influence with the mists of the seasons—the great low eaves on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed around to the edge of the night.

And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the hospitality of your communion denounced him as a demagogue?

—Very good. Hockey at ten, sir, Stephen said, is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth? When he had not answered the knocking. Then the sparks played amazingly around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the world outside, and show them to you, sir, Stephen said.

For the moment, no, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the crag toward the small hours were rent with the sinister resignation of calm, dead faces, I think. Some of the sea need no moon to feed by. Russell, one guinea. Stephen said, putting the sheets again. We give it up. I am.

Their eyes grew bigger as the rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if he expected someone, and the vacancy of upper air on the same side, sir. They offer to come over here. Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. When I saw afar out in the hands of the plains past Arkham, remained. I forget the place must be a movement then, Mr Deasy said solemnly, what is God's.

And as I saw three generations since O'Connell's time.

Olney crept around to shut and lock all the flesh of the dead had come home; but before he could find a haven a voice in the yellowed papyrus filled with the firmament. To learn one must be tenanted by people who reached it from inland along the lesser cliffs to antique Kingsport with its climbing lanes and archaic gables to drag listless down the cliff on the oceanward side that he was glad his host had not come from the Ards of Down to do them yourself? The cock crew, the joust of life. A woman too brought Parnell low. —Full stop, Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet over the shells heaped in the struggle. See. Three times now.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the earth to this day. Dictates of common sense. Do you know that? Percentage of salted horses.

I found a shady road to Arkham, remained.

You have two copies there. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.

All laughed.

He has never seen more than the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes blowing as he stepped fussily back across the sunbeam in which he halted.

In all the blacker for its glittering walls. And do you know anything about Pyrrhus? Is this old wisdom? Old Man, who was no more, for the hospitality of your literary friends.

[micaramel]

Throughout the course of art history, self-portraiture has remained a tried and true practice among leading artists. Transcending technique and style, self-portrayals are prevalent in every major movement, from the inspired Italian Renaissance to the Post-Modern and Contemporary period. To illustrate the prevalence of these depictions, we have compiled a collection of the most famous self-portraits by the world's most well-known artists.

Through this comprehensive selection of self-portraits, we explore the curious custom of representing one's self through visual art. By offering an eclectic look at the work of well-known figures—spanning Rembrandt, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Norman Rockwell, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh—the enduring popularity of the self-portrait phenomenon becomes strikingly clear. And, while it may not seem as if age-old artists like Michelangelo and Raphael have much in common with modern masters likeAndy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama, their like-minded interest in self-portraiture ultimately unites them—both as visual artists and as human beings.

See our selection of well-known artists' most famous self-portraits below.

Leonardo da Vinci

Created circa 1510, Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk is widely believed to be a rare self-portrait of the master artist. As Leonardo was born in 1452, he would have been nearly 60 years old when he completed this work on paper.

The piece now permanently resides in Turin's Royal Library.

Rembrandt van Rijn

While there is certainly no shortage of Rembrandt self-portraits (over 90 are known), Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar perfectly captures the Dutch Golden Age painter's signature use of light, textured brushstrokes, and somber color palette.

Rendered in 1659, the oil painting is now part of the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection.

  Gustave Courbet

Titled The Desperate Man, this piece by realist painter Gustave Courbet remains his most well-known self-portrait. Completed in 1845, The Desperate Man combines elements of Romanticism—a style that was prominent until the middle of the 19th century—and Realism, a movement that would eventually be pioneered by Courbet.

Today, this iconic self-portrayal is part of a private collection.

  Claude Monet

Featuring the Impressionist artist's signature beret and beard, this self-portrait of Claude Monet was painted in 1886. Self–Portrait with a Beret showcases Monet's distinctively blurred brushstrokes, compositional use of unpainted canvas, and expertly-rendered balance between light and dark.

This oil painting is housed in a private collection.

  Paul Gauguin

Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake by Paul Gauguin presents the French Post-Impressionist painter's characteristically colorful palette. Of over 40 self-portrayals, this 1889 piece remains Gauguin's most well-known due to its avant-garde composition and underlying religious themes, including apples and a snake.

 This oil-on-wood painting can be found in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Vincent van Gogh

Like many forefathers of the modern art movement, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh dabbled in self-portraiture on numerous occasions. Though his collection of such portrayals features many iconic works, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear is perhaps his most famous. Painted shortly after the infamous incident in which the struggling artist cut off his own ear in 1889, this painting prominently features his bandaged wound.

Today, you can gaze upon the well-known work in London's Courtauld Gallery.

  Paul Cézanne

Though he is predominantly renowned for his mountainous landscapes and still lifes that play with perspective, French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne also often painted portraits. Sometimes, as in the case of Self-Portrait With Palette, he even depicted himself. Created in 1890, this piece portrays the artist at his easel and features his distinctively painterly brushstrokes and unique use of color.

Now, this painting resides in the E.G. Bührle Foundation in Zürich, Switzerland.

  Edvard Munch

Norwegian painter and printmaker Edward Munch is known for his dark and dreary Expressionist depictions—and Self-Portrait With Skeleton Arm (1895) is no exception. This peculiar piece was initially rendered in lithographic chalk and ink, and has been reprinted several times since its conception. In later reproductions, Munch even opted to black both out the skeletal arm and his signature.

Today, authentic prints of this piece can be found in numerous collections, including the British Museum.

  Pablo Picasso

While Pablo Picasso's constantly changing style is evident in his entire oeuvre, it is perhaps most obvious when comparing his myriad self-portraits. Painted, drawn, and sculpted over the course of his career, his self-portrayals directly reflect the Spanish artist's evolution. Of all of these depictions, his Self-Portrait from 1907 most aptly captures his transition from Primitivism to Cubism, 2 of his most well-known periods.

This painting is currently housed by Prague's Narodni Gallery.

  Frida Kahlo

Beloved Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has no shortage of self-portraits. Still, Self–Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird from 1940 remains one of her most prized portrayals. The oil painting features several symbols and concepts prevalent throughout her portfolio, including foliage, wildlife, and suffering.

This iconic work can be found in the Nickolas Muray Collection at the University of Texas.

  Salvador Dali

Unsurprisingly, Spanish artist and Surrealist master Salvador Dalí took an unconventional approach to depicting himself with Soft Self-Portrait With Grilled Bacon. Painted in 1941, the piece depicts a single piece of bacon beside an organic, structureless shape adorned with a human face and propped up with crutches. Given its ambiguous appearance, one may wonder how such a face represents the artist. However, look closely and you'll spot Dalí's iconic, upturned mustache!

Today, this surreal self-portrait calls Catalonia's Dalí Theatre-Museum home.

  Marcel Duchamp

© 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Like much of Marcel Duchamp's work, his Self-Portrait in Profile (1957) conveys the French artist's avant-garde approach to creating. Just 1 in a series of 137 pieces, this silhouetted depiction is experimentally composed of torn paper pasted on velvet-covered paperboard. While one may assume that the text written against the white backdrop is the artist's signature, it actually reads Marcel déchiravit, or “Marcel tore this quickly.”

This piece now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

  Norman Rockwell

Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Museum

American artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell is known for his delightful collection of Saturday Evening Post covers. On February 13, 1960—an impressive 44 years after Rockwell joined the magazine—the Saturday Evening Post ran a biographical piece on the artist. For the issue's cover, Rockwell was commissioned to depict himself, and, thus, he created this clever and comical Triple Self-Portrait.

The original oil painting of this cover can be found in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

  Andy Warhol

© 2017 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

A key figure in the Pop Art movement, American artist Andy Warhol boasts numerous well-known, popular pieces. Among his most famous works of art are his multi-colored, repeated silkscreen portraits. In addition to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, Warhol depicted himself in this style in his 1966 Self-Portrait.

This portrait belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

  Chuck Close

© Chuck Close, Courtesy of Walker Art Center

American photorealist Chuck Close gained prominence with his large-scale photographic portraits. In his aptly-titled Big Self-Portrait from 1968, the artist presents a realistically-rendered acrylic painting of himself. Clad in thick-framed glasses and with a lit cigarette in his mouth, it is clear that the artist had a particular persona in mind when posing for the piece.  “There’s no question,” Close states, “I had some attitude about the way I wanted to be perceived.”

Today, this piece is housed by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

  Cindy Sherman

© Cindy Sherman, Courtesy of Christie's

Master of disguise Cindy Sherman is celebrated for her self-portraits in which she assumes different characters. In Untitled #96, a photograph from the American artist's 1981 series Centerfold, Sherman is depicted dressed as a teenage girl.

In 2011, a print of this piece was purchased at auction for a record $3.89 million. At the time, it was the most expensive photograph ever sold, making Untitled #96 one of her most well-known works.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat skillfully paired a street art style with Neo-Expressionist know-how to create a rich oeuvre of socially-conscious art. In Self-Portrait from 1982, Basquiat employs acrylic paint and crayon to create a composition that combines naive, figurative representations with complete abstraction.

Like much of the artist's work, this portrait is now housed in a private collection.

  Keith Haring

© 2014, Keith Haring Foundation, Courtesy of de Young FAMSF

American artist and social activist Keith Haring is celebrated for his contributions to New York City's iconic street culture. Haring put a Pop Art spin on graffiti, as evident in his untitled self-portrait from 1985. Conveying a cartoon-like aesthetic and playful style, this portrait embodies Haring's graphic approach to iconography.

This piece is now part of a private collection.

  Lucian Freud

Reflection (1985), a self-portrayal by British portrait painter Lucian Freud, conveys the artist's raw and realism-inspired style. Featuring thickly applied paint and a purely figurative focus, the oil painting captures Freud's distinctive and recognizable approach to portraiture.

Reflection belongs to a private collection.

  Gehrard Richter

© Gerhard Richter, 2009

The comprehensive portfolio of German artist Gerhard Richter is esteemed for its wide range of styles. In addition to abstract works and “overpainted” photographs, he also produces portraits that, though painted, almost appear to be blurred photos. A key example of a well-known work from this genre is Selbstportrait (1996), a self-portrait that vaguely presents the artist as he looks toward the ground.

This piece is part of the Flowerman Collection.

  Louise Bourgeois

French-American artist Louise Bourgeois is predominantly recognized as a sculptor and installation artist. However, in addition to her 3-dimensional creations, the artist also produced paintings, drawings, and prints. Bourgeois was not associated with any particular artistic movement or group, though many of her masterpieces—like this curious Self-Portrait (2007) in which the artist portrays herself as a cat—suggest Surrealist influences.

This feline-themed self-portrait now resides in a private collection.

Yayoi Kusama

Japanese creative Yayoi Kusama is one of the most sought-after contemporary artists. While her interactive installations often merit her the most praise, she is also a skilled painter, as apparent in her series of self-portraits. Rendered in acrylic paint, this portrayal from 2010 captures Kusama's characteristically bright color palette, penchant for patterns, and playful style.

This piece is housed in a private collection.

  In addition to more traditional portraiture, many artists throughout history have opted to instead include themselves in unexpected compositions. See some of these sneaky self-portraits below.

Jan van Eyck

In his most well-known painting, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck presents wealthy Italian merchant Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his first wife, Costanza Trenta. On the surface, the piece appears to be a simple double portrait. However, a closer look reveals that, in the convex mirror in the center of the composition, van Eyck's discreet reflection is visible.

This painting can be found in London's National Gallery.

  Raphael

The School of Athens, a famous fresco by Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, is often celebrated for its depiction of each and every great ancient Greek philosopher. In addition to this impressive collection of figures, Raphael also opted to include himself in the lower-lefthand corner of the large-scale composition. He can be seen staring straight at the viewer as he stands next to Ptolemy.

This fresco is located in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.

  Michelangelo

In The Last Judgment, a fresco found in the Sistine Chapel, Italian master Michelangelo fills a frantic composition with numerous biblical characters and saints accompanied by their attributes. One noteworthy figure is St. Bartholomew, who—as in many Christian depictions—is seen holding his own skin. In a fascinating twist, the face portrayed on the flesh is widely believed to be a self-portrait of the artist himself!

The Last Judgment is in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

  Diego Velázquez

Las Meninas (“The Ladies-in-Waiting”), a 1656 painting by Spanish Golden Age artist Diego Velázquez, portrays Madrid's royal court. Velázquez has cleverly placed himself behind the Infanta Margarita and her handmaids. He is shown standing at his easel with his palette and brushes in hand.

Las Meninas is part of the Museo Nacional del Prado's permanent collection.

  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

In Au Moulin Rouge (“At the Moulin Rouge”) French Belle Époque painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec offers a glimpse of nightlife during turn-of-the-century Paris. As a frequent visitor of the city's nightclubs, it is fitting that Toulouse-Lautrec inserted himself into the background of this piece. He can be seen walking with Gabriel Tapié de Céleyran, his cousin and doctor.

This painting can be found at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The post Iconic Artists Who Have Immortalized Themselves Through Famous Self-Portraits appeared first on My Modern Met.

from My Modern Met http://bit.ly/2po440U

[fcble]

ZENITH ENTERTAINMENT TO PRESS CHARGES AGAINST FABLE SASAENG — OCTOBER 23, 2024

In a landmark first for the company, Zenith Entertainment has announced their intention to take legal action against one of the many Fable sasaengs. Their cryptic statement, posted to Fable’s official Instagram account, alleges assault charges against an anonymous person known only as A. According to the company, the recent results of an investigation conducted with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency link A with a case in the jurisdiction of the Gunsan City Police Department from earlier this year.

Speculation was rife in the comment section, with fans asking for more information on the situation, what exactly this has to do with stalking Fable, and when the next comeback will be. The comments were disabled two hours after the statement was uploaded. None of the Fable members have provided any further information on the topic.

COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED FOR THIS ARTICLE

[fcble]

FABLE (페이블, occasionally stylized as FA8LE) is a fictional, seven member kpop boy group under ZENITH ENTERTAINMENT, who debuted as the company's first group on AUGUST 8, 2018. Originally an eight member group, EUNSU left in mid-2021. They are best known for their unwavering traditional concept that incorporates elements of Korean culture and evokes a sense of nostalgia for a time that no one alive today has actually lived through.

Formed by former SM Entertainment executive LEE TAEIN, Fable's debut was well-received as far as small company groups go. Following two mini albums with progressively worse sales, their future looked gloomy until a performance of the title track of their fourth mini album, 가자, went viral, giving them their first music show win.

After regaining their footing, Fable leaned further into their concept, until the release of their second full album, 오비이락(烏飛梨落), in 2023. Helmed for the first time by YEJUN, it marked the group's transition toward a more general retro sound. Fable has since established themselves as a mid-tier fourth generation boy group, despite the huge individual popularity disparities—mostly between center HAKSU and everyone else—and a few major scandals—mostly centering MINGEUN and no one else.

GENERAL !

NAME: Fable

COMPANY: Zenith Entertainment

CONCEPT: Korea

COLORS:

DEBUT DATE: August 8, 2018

DEBUT SONG: 승천

DEBUT ALBUM: 경천동지(驚天動地)

FANDOM NAME: Fabulist 

GREETING: 옛날 옛적에! 안녕하세요, 페이블입니다! / Once upon a time! Hello, we are Fable!

MEMBERS !

OH KIYOUNG : b. 1994, lead vocalist + lead dancer

ANDREW 'YEJUN' HAN : b. 1995, main vocalist + visual

LEE JAESEOP : b. 1995, leader + lead dancer

PARK INTAK : b. 1995, main rapper

KANG HAKSU : b. 1997, main vocalist + center

BAEK EUNSU : b. 1999, main rapper 

YOON MINGEUN : b. 1999, main dancer + lead vocalist + lead rapper

LIM BYEONGHWI : b. 2001, lead vocalist + maknae

DISCOGRAPHY !

경천동지(驚天動地) : mini album, 2018

천우신조(天佑神助) : mini album, 2019

천정부지(天井不知) : mini album, 2019

이구동성(異口同聲) : mini album, 2020

옥골선풍 (玉骨仙風) : full album, 2020

낙화유수(落花流水) : mini album, 2020

환호작약(歡呼雀躍) : mini album, 2021

수복강녕(壽福康寧) : mini album, 2022

오비이락(烏飛梨落) : full album, 2023

후래삼배(後來三杯) : repackaged album, 2023

화(花) : digital single, 2023

화룡점정 (畵龍點睛) (PAINT THE DRAGON, DOT THE EYES) : full album, 2024

[ruleandruinrpg]

VALERIYA VASNEV

TWENTY-ONE ❈ HUMAN THE ROYAL COURT | DUCHESS

She was born with the world at her feet and the stars in her hair—a pretty, pampered girl given dominion over all beautiful things able to be owned, and the sin all children are unfailingly born with missed her so that another might prosper: the rare crime of having too much. She wanted for nothing—not for the finest food, for the most beautiful dresses, and certainly not for the outpouring of love and attention from her doting parents—yet she desired everything, hungry even as she ate her fill, greedy even as she had enough, and perhaps that was her downfall, her damnation. Where others chose to repent, to fall on bent knee and beg for mercy, she embraced the very thing that robbed her of grace and had the nerve to ask for more still—if there was something to be had, be it fun, sweets, or trouble, one could know with absolute certainty that the Vasnev girl would be elbow-deep in it. It was endearing, seeing a young girl so unapologetic in her desires, courageous enough to dare to take the world for all it had, but it was a trait better reserved for the young, for the children not quite old enough to know better. She was a doll in her satin dresses, with her pearls and her rubies and her pink rose petals scattered about her dressing table—the ideal little duchess if there ever was one, but the sun sets even on the wealthy, and though it was a spectacle, as all things concerning her were, it left in its wake a darkness many possessed and few were brave enough to acknowledge.

She grew into something equally beautiful and terrifying, graceful, delicate, and cold—a Ravkan rose blooming in the dead of winter, and her sins only seemed to suit her more as she aged, clinging to her ink-black heart like the sleek fabric of a ballgown to the curves of her waist. She was cruel in the way of a girl who had never learned how to be anything else, and just as they had when she was but a little thing, they indulged her every whim, fawned over her like she was the nobility’s very own sankta. To be aloof was to leave more to the imagination; to turn her nose up at those who hadn’t had the good sense to be born into wealth was to give her lessers a better look at her elegant profile. She was a monster, this girl of silk and lace, and deep down, perhaps her admirers knew it, but it’s in the nature of men to worship that which may kill them, and Valeriya, precious Valeriya, was deadly in ways as familiar as they were strange. She tempted fate with every giggle and sneer, all but begged it to make an example of her—or, at the very least, to try. Girls like her were invincible, untouchable, gold-filled and divinity-kissed; girls like her knew everything, for their books had taught them so, yet knew absolutely nothing just the same. Funny, how a girl so full of life and fine wine could be so hollow; tragic, how she pitied the very souls who might’ve pitied her, had they had the luxury. She looked in the mirror and saw staring back at her a girl worthy of the worship of the world, and the world seemed to spin on in agreement.

And spin it did; as she aged, it became as clear as the crystal glasses she sipped from that Valeriya Vasnev was not merely a fleeting darling, a woman to be loved for a season and forgotten the next, but something enduring, the sort of woman immortalized in sonnets and beautifully paved streets. She was as stunning as she was despicable, as rich in naivete as she was in conceit, and they loved her for it, as they loved all terrible things—in earnest, yet with a passion so dreadfully shallow. She was everything they aspired to be and everything they hoped to never become all at once—a martyr drowning in luxury and crushed beneath the burden of setting an example for the lower classes, the patron sankta of gentility and beauty, a spoiled rotten girl who knew not what it was to live a life not drenched in sweet perfume and draped in silk smooth enough to rival the sea. “Let them drink kvas,” she’d laughed once, watching from her pedestal as the commoners starved outside the city gates, aloof in the way only a woman who’s never known true hunger can be. She was a fearsome thing to behold—this pampered, purring duchess, this sharp, cruel beauty, and she belonged to each of them in some way, and them to her. Wickedness loves company, and opulence seeks to be adored; there could be nothing less than a beautiful, unending glory for the Vasnev woman, and in keeping with her indulgent upbringing, there never was.

And now, it seems, there never will be. Betrothed to a Lantsov prince and poised to become a princess, she stands to see her name written in the history books, scrawled alongside that of kings and queens, of conquerors and kingdom-makers; she stands to be remembered, to be revered even more than she already is, and it’s beautiful, even as her people starve, and it’s beautiful, even as they sacrifice their sons and daughters for wars that will certainly outlive them all. She dances as the world burns, a harrowing, haunting sort of tragic, and they worship her still, hollow disciples falling at the feet of a sankta who knew suffering as intimately as she knew the stars—not at all. The truth has never been pretty, and beauty, though hardly ever true, is hardly fleeting. Let her wear her foxfur hats and white leather gloves; let her ride in velvet lined carriages while Ravka is forced to its knees. She was raised to be perfect, not sincere.

CONNECTIONS

VIKTOR LANTSOV: She’d like nothing more than to have him adore her half as much as the others at court do, and it’s a smite to her pride, no less, that her fiancé seems infinitely more interested in the art of war than courtship, more inclined to carry muskets than roses. She’s convinced herself that it’ll pass, that one day, when the war is won and he’s heralded as nothing short of a hero, he will love her more deeply than he’s ever loved his bloody, violent battles; she’ll make it so. Until that day comes, though, she’ll keep stealing glances across the room and touches when he’ll let her, writing his name behind hers in her prettiest calligraphy at dawn. He’s a challenge half-won; she has his hand, and one day, she’ll have his heart. She always gets what she wants; how could this time be any different?

ARISHA KOVROV: It could be said, with no small amount of reason, that she hasn’t a right to be angry, for the position and the responsibilities that inevitably accompany it wouldn’t suit her fickle fancies, and to say so would be correct, but the duchess has never been the sort to bear wrongs patiently, nor has she ever had the grace to share. She’d wanted the apprenticeship perhaps more than she’d wanted to breathe, an inclination owing to Lady Kovrov’s own desire of it, and being so cruelly robbed of it was a blow almost too harsh to bear. But Arisha isn’t the only pretty woman at court with intellect and ambition to rival the stars, and she’ll see to it that the score is not only evened, but tilted in her favor once more. A glance at the ring on her finger tells her that, perhaps, it already has.

VASILY BARANOV: She pities him, and it would be a sorry, condescending thing, had she not first seen him as something of an equal. He found himself at court as a victim of loss, an orphan, a man robbed of his father and a son forced to pick up the pieces, and her heart—her shallow, detached heart—bled for him a little, convinced, somehow, that his might bleed for her in return; it didn’t, nor did he worship her as she might’ve hoped, and she feels bad for him still, for his ghastly lack of poise and strikingly poor taste in companions. A man ought to learn how to conduct himself in a place like this, as wondrous as it is cruel—she would know.

VALERIYA IS PORTRAYED BY DANIELA BRAGA & IS TAKEN BY KATIE.