#a raymond chandler evening

[ghostoffuturespast]

A Raymond Chandler Evening

[thelivingautomaton]

i started playing max payne 2 and was immediately so put off by how he no longer has sam lake's face that i decided to put together a collection of some of the max payne 1 panels that i really liked. enjoy <3

[preemshots]

[marypsue]

The Big Lebowski is a neo-noir film.

[rad-roche]

Pulp Covers And How To Paint Them

With the rise of cheap printing in the early twentieth century, mass-marked paperbacks swept the world, each offering lurid thrills for obscenely low prices. Sex, sadism, and incredible violence for as little as ten cents. An easy purchase to slot in between fifty cigarettes a day and enough bourbon slugs to kill a small garden.

Pulp fiction is where some of the greats of American literature cut their teeth, including the big three, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Dashiell Hammett. The contents of these stories, both the dizzyingly good and astoundingly terrible, have been absorbed and digested and remixed and regurgitated in nearly every permutation imaginable, fuelling pop culture some one hundred years on. This isn't an essay on that. Nobody likes to open a tutorial and be greeted with a wall of text. The history is for another time.

But it is about how to paint it.

Don't let the pre-amble intimidate you, it's not as hard as it sounds. You will need:

Painting software with some image editing capabilities. You don't need all the bells and whistles of Photoshop, but I wouldn't recommend something like MSPaint, at least not to start with. I'm using Clip Studio Paint.

A really beat-up paper texture. The grungier, the better.

A lightly-textured brush. Here are the specific brushes I use, 99% of which is the well-named rough brush. Try and avoid anything with any impasto elements.

Go to your colour-picking tool and use the 'select from layer' option. Doing all the painting on a single layer is going to make your life easier.

A complete willingness to make mistakes and, instead of erasing, painting over them. It generates much more colour variation and interest! Keep your finger off the E key.

Good reference! That painting is a master copy of Mitchel Hooks' art for Day of the Ram. Find a style you really love and want to learn? Have no clue where to begin? Do direct studies!

Let's not worry about whatever is happening in the background. It's probably fine. Let's get started! Pulp magazine art is a lot more varied than you might first think, so don't agonize over having a style that 'fits' or not. I'm also specifically aiming for something you'd see on the cover after printing, not the initial painting they would use for printing. The stuff I'll show here is a pretty narrow band of it, but here are some general commonalities. This is a painting by Tom Lovell.

Let's dig into this.

The colours are very bright and saturated, but the actual values, the relative lightness and darkness of them, are actually grouped very simply! You can check this by filling a layer full of black, putting it on top and setting its mode to colour. If the value of a painting looks good, you actually get a lot of leeway with colour. But here's what I think is the most important thing to keep in mind.

The darks aren't that dark, and the lights aren't all that light! Covers are paintings reproduced on cheap paper. Anything you wouldn't want to happen in the printing process, you lean into. Value wash-outs, lower contrast, colours getting a weird wash to them, really gritty texturing. So let's get painting! Here's my typical setup.

That bottom folder is the painting itself. The screen layer is the grungy paper texture. To get the effect you want, put it down, invert its colour, then set it to screen. That washes out your painting far, far too much, so to compensate, I put a contrast layer up on top. Fiddle around with the settings, but this is where mine ended up sitting.

Note I'm saying this before even starting the painting: you want to do this as early as possible. This is where the 'select from layer' colour picker comes in handy. You can paint without worrying about the screen or contrast layer. Something not looking right? Enable your value check layer and keep painting. When you turn it off, it'll still be in colour. Here's a timelapse so you can see what that looks like.

And when you check the values...

They're pretty simple! This isn't a be all and end all, but I hope it serves as a decent primer. I want thirty dames on my desk by Monday!

[zahri-melitor]

So I've read the opening story of Tim Drake: Robin.

The opening issue is solid, highlighting a lot of Meghan Fitzmartin's skills as a writer. She picked up threads neatly from her earlier stories, showed her hand to the audience, and did do a fair amount of subtle character work. If I'd picked it up with no background knowledge of the fandom conversation about the title, I'd have been very excited for where it was going.

I liked the links back to how part of what prompted Tim to move out was Bruce being fussy over Tim having been shot in the throat in Batman #125. That felt realistic and a nice little link between titles.

As far as a story goes: I didn't mind it. Parts of it were very obvious, especially when you clued into the themes - if I'd actually been reading it as it came out and had a month between issues for things to soak in, I probably would have been tapping my toes over the reveal of who Moriarty was disguised as.

I would like to specifically dunk on both Meghan Fitzmartin and Moriarty for the detective novel writer selections, because...hmm. Kinda misogynistic there. Fitzmartin uses 6 writers for this, and 6 specific stories/franchises:-

Edgar Allen Poe – Murders in the Rue Morgue

Mark Twain – The Stolen White Elephant

Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes

Raymond Chandler - Goldfish

James Gelsey – Scooby Doo

Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone

What do you notice about this list, that I immediately noticed? They're all men. Who is an immediate name that comes to mind, who even had public domain stories as of 2022, who probably should be on a list like that and who also has incredible influence over the direction of the genre? Oh, I don't know, maybe Agatha Christie? (Also Dorothy L. Sayers is also right there and available, but skipping Christie?)

And once she'd built up this "it's all the detective stories" premise, Fitzmartin then went for a book code (cool!) from non-existent books (not cool). If you've just spent all this time glorying in how this is all related to Specific Classic Detective Stories, why not...use a real book code and refer to their actual stories? You've already done it for the plots! Commit to the bit!

Also I spent a good chunk of issue #4 staring at the page going "Carol Donovan? You mean Deb Donovan's judge daughter who recently appeared in Mariko Tamaki's 'Tec run? Tim, how are you missing something this straightforward? Also she's dead?" and then it never came to anything. Maybe do a quick check if anyone else has been using the name you just invented for the story.

"I even tried making a new costume for myself. It doesn't fit." - I did find it interesting that Fitzmartin was once again playing with the "is it time to move on" themes for Tim that were popping up around here in various conversations. Especially given she had Tim and Dick relitigate their conversation from Urban Legends #10 and similar themes in DC:YJ. It does suggest to me that she was working her way around to getting Tim into a new identity, but cancellation has once again left that in the 'not happening' basket.

In terms of the art: Riley Rossmo was the wrong pick for the title, but I do see the thought process that led into him getting the nod for the opening story, given the whole claymation villain set. It was very 2D animation style. I don't mind Rossmo (and interestingly he's developing a whole line up of detective stories he's done art for, given he's also had a Martian Manhunter book and got Wesley Dodds, he did one of the Batman/The Shadow crossovers...) but his highly malleable art style loses a lot of background detail or makes what is there harder to parse.

I did very much appreciate the way Rossmo drew Tim's detective work, though. I liked the technique for highlighting details and clues, and it actually very much reminded me of how some computer games present clues (including how it's done in Gotham Knights, in fact).

I know everyone has said this, but Bernard needs to develop a personality AND to commit to whether or not he knows Tim is Robin. Because sort of hinting that he knows, while Tim worries about hiding things from him, but not actually confirming either way is only really acceptable if you actually do build up to a big reveal moment where the whole drama has been paid off.

I did appreciate that MegFitz had clearly taken feedback and returned one of Bernard's two pre-existing personality traits (conspiracy theorist who thinks the Bats are urban legend cryptids), because one of the weaknesses of using Bernard, a side character with 6 preboot appearances, is that at lot of his existing personality was sketched in. He was a conspiracy theorist, and he desperately wanted to be popular but wasn't, so he presented himself as having a Cool Guy's Personality (see: 'your step-mom is hot'). Now, Meghan Fitzmartin wants us to read into that second trait as a facade that Bernard was putting up to deal with the fact he was gay and hiding it, probably even from himself, at the time. Which, fine, it's a perfectly reasonable reading of Bernard (and to her credit, MegFitz has Bernard spell it out a little on page in TD:R), but the problem is...you've just lost one of the two identifiable traits of 'Bernard' and it hasn't been replaced with anything else. And while 2004 in comics was still trying to hold onto the Urban Legends reading for the Bats to an extent (though it was failing), 2022 comics has so long since abandoned it that Bernard having kooky theories about Batman's connection to Mothman or whatever is very...why?

And because both of these pre-existing personality traits are under strain from the context, it really is sort of necessary to give Bernard something else about him for people to latch onto for his personality. And it doesn't really seem to be there yet (as of #6). It's the same complaint that people have about Jon/Jay and a whole host of other partners for recently out superheros: they're generically pleasant, supportive and bland, with about the depth of a mirror. Give me some of the toxic drama the 30 year old lesbians are allowed. Where is my breakup over custody fights with an ex and one of the two getting seduced by a vampire.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

quotes from alex turner's favourite authors that make me want to put my face through a wall:

"although i have never been an actor in the strict sense of the word, i have nevertheless, in real life, always carried about with me a small folding theatre" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"there is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts," - albert camus

"there is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself" - raymond chandler

"at eight, he had once told his mother that he wanted to paint air" - vladimir nabokov

"no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge" - joseph conrad

"everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it" - david foster wallace

"we're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. how else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?" - david foster wallace

"i turn over a new leaf every day, but the blots show through" - keith waterhouse

"the truth will set you free. but not until it's finished with you" - david foster wallace

"curiosity is insubordination in its purest form" - vladimir nabokov

"i'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think i am or say i am, that's what i'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me" - alan sillitoe

"we live as we dream; alone” - joseph conrad

"i liked, as i like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unwares" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"whatever you get paid attention to for is never what you think is most important about yourself" - david foster wallace

"i continued to stir my tea long after it had done all it could with the milk” - vladimir nabokov, despair

"i remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind" - edgar allan poe

"all the information i have about myself is from forged documents" - vladimir nabokov, despair

"how odd i can have all this inside me and to you its just words" - david foster wallace

"you will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. you will never live if you're looking for the meaning of life" - albert camus

[ubebebun]

All of Gallagher's Drinks from the Penacony 2.1 Quest!

link to the video here ✨

The decorations don't affect what drink you get so choose whatever you'd like! ✨ People on Twitter pointed out that at least some of the drinks might be references to characters. For example, The Long Goodbye (middle row on the right) is Aventurine's drink.

Also don't worry about major spoilers! Gallagher hints at some lore but that's all.

Lawrence Block references (top row): 

Pika White Grape Soda and Bright Future: A Ticket to the Boneyard

Pika White Grape Soda and High Stakes: Time to Murder and Create

Pika White Grape Soda and Eternal Endurance: Even the Wicked

Raymond Chandler references (middle row):

Classic SoulGlad and High Stakes: Farewell, my Lovely

Classic SoulGlad and Bright Future: The Big Sleep

Classic SouGlad and Eternal Endurance: The Long Goodbye

Edgar Allan Poe references (bottom row):

Dream Syrup and Bright Future: El Dorado

Dream Syrup and Eternal Endurance: The Premature Burial

Dream Syrup and High Stakes: A Dream Within a Dream

[maitressebrie]

About me

Because no one actually reads a profile:

I am a 33 year-old, bisexual, dominant American woman. Generally speaking, I'm interested in women for sex and men for pain - theirs. I'm on Tumblr for casual online fun...and the porn. Love the porn.

Hobbies/Interests:

I'm a runner and enjoy the occasional 5K/10K. Trying to get into obstacle course racing (Tough Mudder/Spartan) if I ever get my butt in gear.

Reading: I love to read! I enjoy history, classic detective fiction (like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet), le Carre spy novels, Albert Camus, Haruki Murakami, Hemingway, and too many others to name.

Yoga/Pilates

Surfing (aspirational at this point)

I've been getting into investing recently, but just casually.

Kinks:

Femdom (duh) - I get off on control...and occasionally your suffering...ok...more than occasionally...

Bimboization - there's nothing better than a soft, dumb, big-titted, fat-booty slut ready to do whatever I tell her. Follow my sideblog (@bimbomenagerie) if you're interested in my taste in women.

Feminization/Sissification - a close second is turning men into soft, obedient, sexy gurls.

Chastity - male or female

Watersports/Bathroom Use Control (giving) - all your bodily functions should belong to me.

Denial/Edging - all my gooners should follow @goonermenagerie. Go ahead and waste your life pump puppies.

Humiliation/Degradation - I know I'm better than you...I just want to drive it home so deep that you can't even escape me in your dreams

SPH - I'll rate your little peepee, but ask politely first. Unsolicited dick pics get you blocked.

ABDL - MDlg preferred.

Hard Limits:

Kids - it's disgusting that I have to even say this. For real - if you're evening thinking about it just go walk yourself down to the police station right now...or into a wood chipper.

Animals - also...fucking ew....

Actual misogyny - I LOVE submissive women, I even love degrading and humiliating them...but that's their choice to make if it makes them happy.

Race play

Sending pics - for any number of reasons this is a non-starter for me.

DMs/Inbox:

I like to chat but my time is not unlimited and I engage based on my interests and availability. Feel free to reach out - for tasks, dick rating, some chat (kinky or not) - but be interesting. Don't just send me a list of your kinks and a picture of your dick...I don't care about either of them. If you reach out I assume you're interested in something in my list, so you should be thinking about how you can satisfy my desires first and foremost.

I'm not here looking for anything IRL. I have other venues for that, so don't even ask.

If you read this far, edge twice for me for being a good little girl or boy - don't even think about cumming of course. And don't forget to say thank you.

[preemshots]

[dirtyriver]

Raymond Chandler - Red Wind, 1946 hardcover collecting five pre-Marlowe P.I. short stories.

"Red Wind", Dime Detective, January 1938, John Dalmas

"Blackmailers Don't Shoot", Black Mask, December 1933, Mallory (Chandler's first published story)

"I'Il Be Waiting", Saturday Evening Post, October 14, 1939, Tony Reseck

"Goldfish", Black Mask, June 1936, Carmady

"Guns at Cyrano's", Black Mask, January 1936, Ted Malvern

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

Heyy! 👋👋 For the choose violence ask thing-y, number 2 and 13 about any fandom of your choosing ^^

i am locking the door we’re talking about philip marlowe the fictional detective

here’s philip marlowe the cat for your trouble

why someone would never top or bottom

raymond chandler The Author has a rudimentary understanding of gay culture of his time (cf The Big Sleep) and marlowe the human detective certainly exhibits some bisexual leanings but i don’t think either Chandler or Marlowe (the human) are aware enough of life’s joys to understand being pegged by a woman. i do think marlowe the human and Anne Riordan the red headed cub reporter in Farewell My Lovely fucked, bc too much Stuff happens to marlowe the human in that novel for him not to get fucked off screen and not go insane, but I don’t think that would fix him? to be perfectly honest I don’t even think a threesome with the other redhead in the book, a large beautiful man with violet eyes, would fix marlowe from all the fucked up shit that happens to him in this book. certainly couldn’t make him worse though.

anyway! anne in canon is not a top. anne is decisive and exacting and would expect to be taken care of but has very specific ideas of how a night should go, i think. she does fling herself at him but in a very soft and fluttery way, to be caught, iirc. not that you can’t be a soft top or dom from the bottom i simply don’t see that for her in canon. unfortunately I don’t have the mental fortitude to reread this extremely whump heavy book anytime soon

worst blorbofication

terry from The Long Goodbye would very much LIKE you to think he is a tsundere white haired anime boy but he’s actually a fucked up little weasel. terry and marlowe the human really do mutually fuck each other up but marlowe the human is really not as responsible as he thinks he is and how much terry lets him think he is

[eschercaine]

Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.” It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it. “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.

Funny that he says this now. He still hasn’t finished the books and he knew very well that the Dumb & Dumber would have no choice but to fill in the void and create their own conclusion.

Didn’t George also give his approval for things to happen this way? Like, for how the dumpster fire Game of Thrones ended the way it did? And for allowing the writers of another dumpster fire House of the Dragon to ignore almost everything from the source material?

Besides, this is the guy who allowed the Velaryons to be black despite it being a massive plot hole. They are Valyrians, for fuck’s sake. He even allowed his “favorite” Targaryen to be treated like shit by the writers, who claimed to be a fan of his books, simply because they hate the guy. And probably the rest of the Blacks too, given how they portray Rhaenyra on screen.

I probably said it before and I’m gonna say it again: House of the Dragon is just another example of walking away from the source material, that’s why I won’t be watching it. If there’s anyone who says I’m smoking copium or something, then read the book.

George is not be wrong on this one, though, but he’s a hypocrite.

[wrenaspun]

HELLO! you're one of my fave lamen writers and fave fic writers EVER and I wanted to ask if you would recommend any books/authors? sending love and deep gratitude for the lamen AGENT au

AW what a lovely ask, thank you anon !!! My face looked like this reading it: 🥰I hope you like the (rest of the) fic!!! And this list of some books I like:

the Lymond series really got its hooks in me this year-- I'm only through book 4 but it's made me LAUGH, it's made me GASP, it made me WEEP UNCONTROLLABLY. Dunnett is an insanely good writer I think even if or perhaps because I am so slow getting through her stuff

Also really enjoying the Peter Wimsey series right now -- I'm up to book 6 and I just love the way Dorothy Sayers writes, her turns of phrase are outstanding, Peter is such a weird little guy, the details of the setting are just incredible... what's not to love

The Locked Tomb series -- enough said. I feel like heaps of people have read or at least heard of this one. I do think it's good and I was completely blown away by book 2. I love HARROW

Random Harvest by James Hilton, sorry. It's even available on archive.org! Read for free with no account! Or read a slightly nicer version for free with an account! If this niche book from 1941 has ten fans I'm one of them, one fan it's me, no fans I'm dead. It's not perfect but I really did find this amnesia story so touching and compelling and the final pages made me cry. Go in unspoiled if possible, read this first, and then watch the 1942 film!!!

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin -- another one whose final pages just knocked me flat. "Cleopatra in space" is a hook that's both compelling and also somehow doesn't capture the expansiveness and creativity of this novel at all. Mark Antony was, as promised on my back cover, the hottest butch girl in space. I'm waiting so so hopefully for the sequel

Jasper Fforde -- a friend once called his work 'English major fever dreams' which I think is accurate. Love his worldbuilding, love his insane worlds. I actually read his Nursery Crimes books first and secretly The Big Over Easy is still my fave, but Thursday Next is probably better known / regarded and they're also such good romps. There are always so many spinning plates and somehow it all gets pulled together

Honourable mention lightning round: The Phillip Marlowe series, twisty hardboiled pulpy fun from Raymond Chandler -- the Trickster duology by Tamora Pierce was, I have to admit it, extremely formative for me -- I'm also 8 books into the Highland Guard series by Monica McCarty and they're ridiculous but very fun if you like romancelandia stuff (and super buff guys; I think every hero thus far has been the biggest meatiest slab of muscle in all Scotland) -- Ion Curtain by Anya Ow, super fun space opera which also has me pining for a sequel -- Between Silk and Cyanide, the memoir of a codemaker during WWII who comes across as a vaguely smug but very funny personification of chaos -- Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier, gorgeous descriptions and I did really enjoy the romance; this one also got made into a film in 1944. With Joan Fontaine! In glorious Technicolor! In period gowns!!!

Thank you for the ask anon!! I hope this was interesting (?) or edifying (?) or satisfactory in some sense. Sending kisses!!

[vechter]

V random ask, but book recs? I trust your thoughts on lots and I loved your fic! Ergo I'd love to hear if you have any

thank you so much anon, i'm glad you loved it!!

it would rlly depend on what genre/settings you're looking for but here's a few:

look back in anger by john osborne (this is a realist play and also where i got the title for my fic from)

the big sleep & farewell, my lovely by raymond chandler (hardboiled detective fiction)

memories that smell like gasoline by david wojnarowicz (short stories interspersed with ink drawings)

play it as it lays by joan didion (listen it's a classic for a reason ok i just rlly enjoyed it)

if i had your face by frances cha (essentially a commentary on south korean beauty standards and patriarchy— can be a hit or miss tho)

trainspotting by irvine welsh (also a classic but kinda tough to get into initially so you rlly have to persevere but god is it rewarding)

bloodsport by yves olade (sorry this is poetry but holy shit does it pack a punch)

the kite runner by khaled hosseini (ok tbh this is a bit of a cop out bc i feel like everyone knows about how good this is but i recently re-read it and it was even more devastating than i remember)

love in the time of cholera & chronicle of a death foretold by gabriel garcía márquez (magical realism has such a chokehold on me ahhhh)

the visit by friedrich dürrenmatt (sorry this one is a play but it's just sooooo good)

also here's a short story/snippet kind of thing by mike young you can read in 10 minutes which'll leave you feeling insane