#Hayden Sterling

[achillestheartist]

It’s the last episode of

Protagonist Portrait

And we are meeting three characters!

Meet Hayden, Adrian, and Thalia

Hayden

Pronouns: (She/Her)

Story: Hayden

Bio:

It’s not easy being friends with the best hero in the city, if not the world. Don’t get her wrong, Hayden loves Dan. The hero’s basically a giant golden retriever. It’s the villains constantly trying to use her as leverage that she’s not too fond of.

Adrian

Pronouns: (She/Her)

Story: Blue Jay

Bio:

Adrian hasn’t been a hero for very long. It’s only been about a year and she’s already starting to take on more serious threats. Right before she’s about to move in at college, she gains her first ever villain, a man who can control storms named Hurricane. Then, as college starts up, she starts to fall for one of her classmates, a guy named Marcus. But how can she keep her hero life a secret from Marcus? And how will she react when she finds out that Marcus has a secret of his own?

Thalia

Pronouns: (She/Her)

Story: The Curious Case of the Sapphire Spirit

Bio:

Thalia couldn’t care less about her murder. The guy failed and she got some cool powers out of her new half dead state. What she does care about is that the guy did succeed in killing her sister. So, what else is Thalia supposed to do other than become a vigilante and bring her sister’s killer to justice? Luckily, her new roommate is a journalistic major. Maybe she can help.

Author/Artist Commentary:

Hayden’s story was made to answer one question I had during middle school, “What if a Superman story focused on Lois Lane?”

Adrian’s story is a silly romance between two oblivious rivals.

And Thalia’s story is three for three on the “used to be from another fandom” character. But she is also a “used to be a shitty self insert” character. So I took this Danny Phantom knock off, made her a theatre kid, nerfed her power set, and put her in college with a podcaster obsessed with cryptids.

While these three don’t share a story, I image they exist in the same universe and are friends.

But that’s it! The last of the characters done! There’s only thing left to do.

[doomanddead]

Glacial Drone Doom from The Grey Men

I’ll let you in on my little secret. I’ve been enraptured with a live stream of Mauna Loa erupting. I leave it on all day. While I’m making coffee in the morning, steam puffs from a volcanic vent in roiling waves. In the afternoon, as I proofread a script, lava splatters against the same craggy outcrop again and again and again. I chop onions in the evening as a molten river of fire slides down the mountainside and disappears into a sea of clouds. For hours at a time the view is obscured by volcanic fog. Occasionally, my spouse wanders in and suggests I change the channel because “nothing is happening.” But something is happening. The land is being re-molded bit by bit. Geology happens at its own gait. And so does LP01 Cascade. The latest offering from The Grey Men is sparse, majestic drone doom that unfolds at a glacial pace. The LP’s slow and repetitive nature can fool you into thinking that nothing is happening, but these tracks reward the patient.

LP01 Cascade by The Grey Men

The LP’s title track, Cascade, clocks in at over 57 minutes. It’s an imposing structure— sometimes as opalescent and wondrous as petrified wood, sometimes stark and desolate as winter on the north face of a snowy peak. The sheer magnitude of the track is humbling. Tone and weight take on enormous importance when every strum is left to reverberate… yet the band’s sound comes across as effortless. The drone is a seismic undercurrent that evolves incrementally, expanding and contracting over time. The song is aptly named; “Cascade” evokes images of the staggeringly large mountain range here in the western US, and also a constant flow of something dropping from a great height. The imagery is as harsh as it is grand. Cascade is a barren and craggy composition facing down the eons with granite resolve. 

Compared to the previous track’s immovable stillness, Ariadne’s Thread is almost active. We slowly twist our way through the labyrinth, following a pattern of strumming that manages to elude any kind of predictability. The string is pulled taught. The mood is anxious and grim. The minotaur’s hot rancid breath huffs in the frigid air around the next corner, just out of sight. 

Cascade [radio edit] will be a delight for those of you who are into the whole brevity thing. If you don’t have an hour to spend listening to the original, this reimagining of the song paints sweeping vistas and looming megaliths in a mere 18 minutes and 40 seconds. It’s a concentrated version of a monumental song. 

If roof-rattling ambient doom is your jam, then check out the other releases in The Grey Men’s skull series, EP9 Sun Death, and EP10 Unto The Sunn. Although I rarely recommend splits, I have to admit that the band’s offering with Alterac is well worth a listen. In the span of two years, The Grey Men have explored everything from lo-fi blues to indie rock to drone doom. I can’t wait to see what kind of boulders they drop in 2023. 

[normasshearer]

Tell me something nice. - Sure, what do you want to hear?

JOAN CRAWFORD & STERLING HAYDEN in JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) dir. Nicholas Ray

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

A Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

[citizenscreen]

Francis Ford Coppola directing Sterling Hayden, Al Lettieri, and Al Pacino in the restaurant scene in THE GODFATHER (1972)

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[duusheen]

💕

[chronophotographic-gun]

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

[vintage-every-day]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑲𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 (1956) Sterling Hayden and Marie Windsor for Stanley Kubrick’s film noir.

[davidhudson]

Sterling Hayden, March 26, 1916 – May 23, 1986.

With Peter Sellers and Stanley Kubrick during the making of Dr. Strangelove (1964).

[claustrophobicandexcatholic]

i think i hauve covid

[filthydelinquent]

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1964

[mtonino]

Francis Ford Coppola, Sterling Hayden, Al Pancino and Al Lettieri on the set of The Godfather (1972)

[nihillist-blog]

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

A Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

[citizenscreen]

Sailing with Veronica Lake, Sterling Hayden, and Patricia Morison c. 1941