#a smeary boy

[basementdoll]

Wednesday from my magazine, "Garbage Dump" (Winter, 2000)

[holylulusworld]

Cabin at the lake (6)

Summary: You have a much-needed vacation. There’s only one problem…

Pairing: Soldier Boy x Assistant!Reader

Warnings: SB being an ass, tension, arguments, vacation hijacking, sexual themes (talk about), misogynism, groping, slow burn, stoned reader, injured reader

A/N: Another short drabble with these two.

Cabin at the lake (5)

Cabin at the lake masterlist

“I asked you why her hand still hurts,” Soldier Boy growls into the phone. “No, what?” He huffs. “You gave her painkillers to make her compliant.” He curls his upper lip in disgust. “Do you honestly believe I need to drug a woman to get my dick wet? Women throw themselves at me all the time.”

He huffs into the phone as the doctor tells him he didn’t heal your hand, so you’d be helpless and in need of support. Vought believes playing on the dark side to give Soldier Boy what he desires is justified if he keeps on fighting for them.

“You little piece of shit. I don’t want her in pain,” Soldier Boy snarls before flinging the phone against a tree. “What the fuck did they think? That I need a smeary doctor to drug my assistant?”

“So…no healed hand,” you whine because your hand hurts so bad, and you took another dose of the good stuff. “I think it’s getting worse. My hand feels like it’s pulsing.” You slur while stumbling toward Soldier Boy. You rub your nose with your good hand and sigh. “Why doesn’t it work?”

“How about I bring you to a real doctor this time?” He’s unusually silent when you stand next to him, swaying from one side to the other. “You don’t look good.”

“Finally, a good idea,” you grin at him. “Did you find out how to use your brain after years of trying? I hope you don’t get headaches.”

“You’re no fun when high,” he grunts. “Let me get the car keys and we can look for a hospital or doctor nearby. I don’t trust Vought to fix your hand. Next time, they mess you up even more.”

You giggle and snort. Soldier Boy seems to lose his patience, and you can’t wait for him to fuck off. Even in your drug-induced haze you know he’s not the nice guy he pretends to be.

“Come on,” he walks back outside the cabin to grab your arm. Soldier Boy guides you toward his car while muttering under his breath. “I didn’t even get a taste of her cunt and she’s already giving me a run for my money. I hope you’re worth my time.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here and ruin my vacation,” you slur and grin at him. “That’s what happens if you fuck with me. I’ll fuck you over thrice.” You snicker when he calls you a cunt. “You’re the cunt, bastard. Hijacking my vacation.”

“Well, at least I got a glimpse of your ass and to feel you up,” he smirks when you give him the stinky eye. “What? It’s only fair I got to touch you after taking care of you, sweetness.”

“Perverted pervert,” you mutter under your breath. Soldier Boy dragged you toward his car, and you won’t let him get away with it so easily. “I hate your stupid face, and your stupid shield, and that stupid suit.”

He laughs your words off. Soldier Boy is not the kind of man giving up without a fight. If you want to get rid of him, you must try harder.

“Why didn’t you bring your girlfriend here earlier?” The doctor shakes his head. “Sir, she must’ve been in so much pain.”

“Vought’s doctor took care of her. They said her hand will heal soon,” Soldier Boy grunts. He’s not used to people doubting his word. “I believed them.”

He paces the room while the doctor puts a new cast around your broken hand. Soldier Boy crosses his arms over his chest, shaking his head now and then.

“Well, the cast they put around her hand didn’t do any good for her,” the doctor huffs. “I fixed their mistake now. She needs a rest, no stress, and less of the painkillers they prescribed.”

“I’ll take good care of her from now on,” Soldier Boy smirks darkly when you glare at him. “Right, sweetness. You want me to take care of you…”

Part 7

Tags in reblog.

[moonweaver101]

NSFW Lipstick Marks

Please image if you will, Kyle going and buying the most smeary, most messy lipstick he can find in as many colors as possible.

Then he takes them home and ask Price to help him test them to see "if they are any good"

Which leads to Price laid out on their bed, covered in several different shades of lipstick all over his body.

But in particular, Price's dick is a mess of precum and lipstick stains as Gaz blows him

Gaz stopping in the middle to test a new shade or to reapply as Price begs Kyle to stop teasing him and to let him cum.

But Kyle just smirks up at Price as he applies a deep burgundy color to his lips.

"Just a couple more. Can't you be a good boy and wait?"

Price throws his head back with a groan but nods.

"Y-yes, I can be a good boy. Please Kyle... I can be good."

[sea-changed]

"Only once in his career did [General Douglas] MacArthur lead as small a body of men as a company—one somehow feels that the idea of MacArthur, even as a boy, in command of anything less than a division verges on the ludicrous—and this helps explain why his attitude toward the drab brown, smeary side of military life seems so rosy, and why the rare notice he pays to enlisted troops, whether singly or as a lacerated frontline unit, is always so condescending. [...] "For MacArthur, military life may be symbolized by 'beacons flashing across uncharted depths…faint bugles sounding reveille,' but for many if not most of his countrymen it is something else: it is reveille. It is training manuals and twenty-mile hikes, stupefying lectures on platoon tactics and terrain and the use of the Lister bag, mountains of administrative paperwork, compulsive neatness and hideous barracks in Missouri and Texas, sexual deprivation, hot asphalt drillfields and deafening rifle ranges, daily tedium unparalleled in its ferocity, awful food, bad pay, ignorant people, and a ritualistic demand for ass-kissing almost unique in the quality of its humiliation. The world that MacArthur thrills to makes most of his fellow Americans choke with horror."

William Styron, Review of Reminiscences by Douglas MacArthur (1964). Emphasis mine.

[joprompts]

sweeney todd: the demon barber of fleet street lyric starters. act two. starters from the musical. adjust as necessary.

over here, boy, how about some ale?

more hot pies!

and what's your pleasure, dearie?

oops! i beg your pardon! just me hands is smeary—!

god, that's good!

what's my secret? frankly, dear — forgive my candor — family secret.

but we have to prepare!

is that a chair fit for a king?

i have a few minor adjustments to make.

you take your time.

me heart's aflutter!

i am in the dark beside you.

i'd want you beautiful and pale, the way i've dreamed you were.

i think we shall not meet again, my little dove. my sweet.

you're gone and yet you're mine.

city on fire!

i still have reason to rejoice. the way ahead to clear.

it's always morning in my mind.

i knew you'd come for me one day.

you stay the way i've dreamed you are.

oh, look! a star! a shooting star!

and though i'll think of you, i guess, until the day i die, i think i miss you less and less as every day goes by.

if only angels could prevail, we'd be the way we were.

wake up! another bright, red day!

we learn to say goodbye.

i'm so happy.

i could eat you up, i really could!

you know what i'd like to do, what i dream?

don't you want to know?

by the sea, that's the life i covet.

oh, i know you'd love it!

wouldn't that be smashing?

with the sea at our gate, we'll have kippered herring wot have swum to us straight from the straits of bering.

unless we've got better to do.

think how snug it'll be underneath our flannel when it's just you and me and the english channel.

we'll have chums over every friday.

don't you love the weather?

we'll grow old together.

oh, i can see us now — in our bathing dresses — you in a nice navy — and me, stripes perhaps. hmm.

but a seaside wedding could be devised.

you know, mum, there's nothing i wouldn't do for you. 

if there was a monster or an ogre or anything bad like that wot was after you, i'd rip it apart with my bare fists, i would. 

what a sweet child it is.

here, what is this? what are you talking about?

nothing's gonna harm you, not while i'm around.

demons are prowling everywhere nowadays. i'll send them howling. i don't care — i got ways.

others can desert you — not to worry, whistle, i'll be there.

demons'll charm you with a smile for a while.

not to worry, i may not be smart, but i ain't dumb!

i can do it. put me to it. show me something i can overcome.

being close and being cleaver ain't like being true.

i would never hide a thing from you like some.

now, let's stop all this foolish chatter and just sit here, nice and quiet. 

i didn't know you was a music lover, too.

when i saw this dear old song book i couldn't resist.

where are you hiding?

but they are after us still. what if they should trace us here? oh, let me come with you!

my darling, there is no safety for you on the street.

the risk is too great.

soon we'll be gone and sailing the seas.

i'll be back before those lips have time to lose that smile. 

oh, she’s the devil’s wife! oh, beware her, sir. beware of her. she, with no pity in her heart. 

hey, don't i know you?

you're in a merry mood today again.

how seldom it is one meets a fellow spirit.

with a fellow taste in women, at least.

have all the demons in hell been sent to torment me?

why did you scream?

no, i never lied!

i've come home again.

you’re a bloody wonder. eminently practical and yet appropriate as always.

as you've said repeatedly, there's little point in dwelling in the past.

come here, my love. not a thing to fear, my love.

what's dead is dead.

everything i did, i swear it was only for the best.

can we still be married?

the history of the world, my pet, is learn forgiveness and try to forget.

and life is for the alive, my dear. so let's keep living it!

to seek revenge may lead to hell.

to seek revenge may lead to hell, but everyone does it and seldom as well.

[randomfanner]

Quiet Part 2

“AND STAY OUT YOUR DAMN BRAT, DON’T COME BACK!” Enver shut the door of the shop just as an unfinished shoe was flung from across the room. He could hear the hard leather smack against the door. Enver rolled his eyes as he began to walk away from Flymm’s Cobblers, rubbing his arm over a bruise he had obtained.

He would be back by sundown, after all if he wasn’t his mother would come hunting for him and scream at him for not being home before curfew and his father would have forgotten about this entire fight after a few more swigs of that overpriced whiskey he insisted on instead of other things.

Like food, or trying to pay off their apparently ‘crippling’ debt.

Enver wasn’t sure how crippling it was given how much money he wasted. Enver shook his head as he began to walk down the cobblestone streets of the lower city, hands shoved into his pockets. 

It was a short walk to the gates of Bloomburg Park. Standing by the front was a group of older, much larger boys, three of them. 

“Hey Kid,” the biggest and in Enver’s no so humble option, the ugliest called.  His face was covered in pimples and his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a good year. “Interested in going to the park?”

Enver stared at him for a second before he began to try and simply walk past. A rough hand on his shoulder stopped him and dragged him back.

“Didn’tcha  hear me, kid?” the kid asked as he forced Enver to look at his ugly mug once again.

“Yes. And I ignored you, now let me go,” Enver tried to yank away but he was held in place.  Any struggling was quick to prove useless and to ensure that, the boy grabbed his other shoulder.

The boy grinned, showing off all his teeth of which he was missing a couple at the moment. “Hear this one boys? I don’t think he has ever been taught manners! Don’t you know it is rude to ignore someone who is talking to ya?” 

“Sounds like he is gonna need a lesson!” one of the boys examples.

“Hehehehehe oh I do love teaching lessons!!! Hehehehhahahaha”

Great.

Fantastic. 

“This could’ve been easy, just so ya know,” the first boy pulled back a fist. “Though I cannot mind, your face is extremely puncha-” the smeary comment was knocked out of the boy as a pebble collided with his forehead. It was small enough and not thrown hard enough to actually leave a mark. But it captured attention.

“Hey! Pick on someone your own size!” all heads turned to the source of the high pitched, grating voice. 

Anya’s voice.

She stood a bit away, another pebble in her hand ready to throw it at one of the boys. The boy holding Enver shoved him to the ground and stepped over him.

“A hero, how cute,” the biggest boy punched his hand into his fist. “Guess we gotta teach this lil princess a lesson, eh boys?” 

“Only if you can catch me!” Anya yelled as she began to run away, getting about 9 feet in distance before she tripped, and fell face first into the ground.

Enver pushed himself off the ground to watch as she was soon surrounded by the boys. It would be the perfect chance to simply leave, and she likely wouldn’t be bothering him at his spot today if he did.  It isn���t like he asked her to step in for him either. He had no obligation to help her.

He took a few steps away, and he could hear her gasps and cries of pain, the found of  shoes colliding with her. It was loud and impossible for him to miss. He didn’t even have to look. He stared towards the park, if he got further in he was sure he would be greeted by quiet. 

All he had to do was keep walking. 

Enver sucked in a breathe as he shoved a hand into his pocket. He had a piece of leather that was pretty long. His eyes scanned the ground and he found a stick with a v in it.

He picked it up and tied the leather strap to it and began to pick up sharp, medium sized rocks, going back to the gate he slotted one into his makeshift slingshot and pulled it back, launching the first stone.

It collided with the back of the leader’s head, blood beginning to come immediately from where Enver struck. 

“Owwwww!” he exclaimed as he turned to face Enver, who had just loaded and launched another stone. This one hit him directly on the forehead. Another stone, this time at one of the lackeys, and then another, and another. As many stones as Enver had gathered were being launched.

And they finally got the hint.

All three boys began to run away from the scene as Enver kept launching stones. Each place getting hit was cut whether it be skin or clothes. 

Enver let out a huff when they were too far away from him to keep pelting. 

Enver approached the blonde girl and bent down to her. She was curled into a ball and he could see they had at least given her a black eye and her clothes were covered in dirt. He stared down at her.

“Hey,” Enver said. “Are you dead?”

“Nope!” she sat up as soon as the question was asked. “How about you? Are you alright?’ she asked.

“I am fine,” her lips were busted, blood was obvious and the bruises on her arms were obvious. “You look like shit.” 

“Hey!!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes going wide in pure shock. “That is a naughty word!”

“Shit?” Enver asked. Was that seriously her concern right now?

“Don’t say it again!” she said.

Oh gods, it was her concern.

A smirk came to Enver’s face. “Shit, fuck, balls, bastard, ass-”

“No!!! Naughty words!” she exclaimed as she covered her ears. 

“Baby-” Enver said as he crossed his arms. 

“I am not a baby! My uncle said it is bad to use those words,” she said as she stood up. She scooped her up her basket which had not been spared the carnage. She held it up and frowned before she picked inside. “All of the food is safe!”

Well any doubts that Enver had done the right thing were quickly squashed hearing that she had indeed brought more food. “Good,” Enver said. “Let’s go then.”

“Alright!” she exclaimed. “Oh my uncle packed some pasta salad and he managed to sneak in an orange!” 

[drsteggy]

Ask game for teasing WIPs: 🌦️

Share something angsty hmmmmm I don’t really do a lot of angst but let me see

The days after the encounter with Demise are smeary for him. He rarely leaves the room. One day he doesn’t get out of bed. Zelda joins him that day. They wrap around each other, mostly silent. It might be mid afternoon, or midnight when Zelda buries her face in his chest and weeps. He holds her, wordlessly, until she exhausts herself.

He has time to think, but every time he starts, he shies away and thinks about the pony he had as a boy, when the world was simple.

Original asks here

Thanks for the ask @hurricane105

[ioannemos]

and the trees stand

a wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think i too have known autumn too long. e. e. cummings

day one: the universal problem / au

rating: pg

words: 900

───────────────────────────

The wind cries around the corners of the house, rattles the windows, moans in the chimney in the room next to hers, and Lucy stares up at the ceiling. As if falling asleep on threadbare carpet in an abandoned house along a back-country road wasn’t going to be hard enough on its own, the wind had to pick up, and so despite the salt lines she laid down her ears are straining to hear something else.

She scrunches down in her sleeping bag, trying to cover her ears. Her usual method of fortifying the single room she’s in has certainly stretched out her salt supply, but it means her imagination likes to run wild. Currently it’s picturing ghosts drifting into the other rooms and building up against the invisible line, their forms melting into each other as they press against it, trying desperately to find the smallest break they can force themselves through…

Downstairs, the front door bangs open. She sits up and puts her hand on her iron bar, heart beating in her throat. Adrenaline floods her bloodstream as a real voice echoes through the huge front hall, not quite loud enough for her to pick out actual words. She picked this house partially because it was so big: they’re harder to defend. What person on their own would chance it? At least two, she thinks bitterly. Maybe they’ll stay downstairs? Or maybe it’s one crazy person talking to himself.

The door slams shut. The voice continues speaking, a rapid cadence… a frantic one, she thinks after a moment. And a young one. And then she hears, far too clearly: “No, stay awake!” Her heart constricts as her stomach goes sour.

She stays where she is for another moment of frozen indecision, and then she groans and stands. Whatever is happening, she can’t stay here and half-listen. She opens the door, breaking her salt line, and brandishes the bar. No ghosts have built up in the room beyond. The frantic voice ceases abruptly, and then calls out a blustering, “Hello?”

“Flesh and blood,” she calls back, heading down the short hallway to the walkway open to the front hall. No ghosts accost her and she makes it quickly to the walkway. She doesn’t dare put weight on the banister as she looks down.

A tall thin boy in a long black coat is standing a few stairs up raising a faint lantern, illuminating his face better than hers or the house around them. His hollow face is smudged all over with what she can’t tell, making his age hard to pinpoint, but beneath his sunken eyes it’s even more smeary. He’s breathing heavily and holding his own iron bar; it’s raised aggressively, despite his whole arm trembling with the effort. All she can make out of the person on the stairway behind him is curly dark hair on one end and muddy jeans and trainers on the other. A voice too low and uneven for her to guess gender says, “La’wood?”

“It’s all right, George,” says the boy without looking away from her. “I’ll sort it.”

“Is he all right?” Lucy asks.

“He’s-” The boy cuts himself off and swallows hard. “No. He’s-” He blinks rapidly and swallows again, shifting on his feet as if that will hide how he’s swaying in place. “He’ll be fine,” he says, trying to be firm and assured but betrayed by his choked voice and darting dark eyes. “He just-”

“For God’s sake,” Lucy interrupts, starting around the walkway for the stairs. She slides her iron bar into her belt and keeps it there with a loop of twine. “Come on, let’s get him up here. I’ve got a salt line all around a room.”

“He’ll be fine,” the boy repeats. “He wasn’t ghost touched, we had to run and he fell down a ditch and hit his head, but- he’ll be all right.”

Now that Lucy’s come down the stairs she can see the boy a little better. He’s taller than her by more than she thought, and so thin and shaky it looks as though the wind still banging the shutters could blow him over. The ends of his black coat are stiff with mud and his trousers are more mud than fabric; God only knows what color his trainers are under all the drying brown. George’s hair is matted with mud on one side and he has glasses that are currently resting cockeyed on his nose. He mutters something she can’t make out.

“I’m… not,” the boy protests feebly, only now lowering his iron bar. “I’m…” He swallows again and rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s… been a night.” He tries to smile. She forgets for a moment how filthy he is because it’s such a lovely smile. He sets aside his iron bar and offers her his right hand after wiping it on his coat. “I’m Anthony Lockwood.”

“Lucy Carlyle.”

He gestures to the boy behind him, then crouches and takes his left arm. “This is George Karim.” George mumbles something that might be ‘pleased to meet you’ and half-waves a hand in her direction.

“Hello George.” She steps carefully to George’s other side to take his right arm and smiles back at Anthony. “Let’s get him upstairs, shall we?”

He smiles a little wider, making her heart flutter. “Yes, please.”

───────────────────────────

shoutout to my new job for not sapping all my energy, @dangerously-human for getting me into lockwood & co, and @lco-angst-week for setting this thing up 🤍

thoughts on this au that didn't make it into the fic: ghosts multiplied faster than in canon, children and young people are still the only ones who can sense them, and thus society has largely broken down. it's not quite a lord of the flies situation where the kids are on their own, but... it's not not that either. i imagined little pockets of people struggling along in the country and cities being mostly abandoned bc of all the ghosts, small older towns only being better off in terms of smaller graveyards to fence off. where is lucy going? why are lockwood and george out in the middle of nowhere? there i can't help you. they're just. going. and meet up, and team up, and their lives are all changed for the better no more questions please 🧡

[dynamoe]

working out a character design for Billy's crush, the mean clerk from the video store in TOMORROW'S JUST ANOTHER DAY

Drawing any human character next to Billy is hazardous because you can't NOT draw attention to how weird his proportions are. (I even made his head smaller than normal and he still looks like an alien)

That grrrl's got Kim Gordon's shirt from the Sonic Youth video for Bull in the Heather.

I said I wouldn't draw her because I'd rather the reader make up what she looks like in their mind, but... it's been a year, let's give her a face.

First outfit looks too Ruth Bader Ginsburg (she's joins the court in '93 but wasn't famous as "Notorious RGB" yet), maybe if it wasn't black velvet I could use the lace. Other ones are... whatever. The last one is how I dressed in high school (and college, and ten years after and now... shit.) but I'm trying really hard not to make the grrrl into a self-insert or a Mary Sue.

I need to make sure she belongs in their world. Kind of a dick, kind of a failure (in so much you can fail at 18). Representin' that Garafaloid '90s deadpan snark-girl character that was everywhere in the decade. Your Daria. Your Enid Coleslaw. Very hip, crap pop-culture obsessed but also "over it."

The "kinderwhore" (yeah, that's what the style was/is called) style is associated most with Courtney Love (p'too), but you see it in other women fronting rock bands like Kat Bjelland (Babes in Toyland) and Kim Shattuck (The Muffs).

↑ Kim Shattuck and Kat Bjelland (right): Style Icons

The signature look: a "little girl" type of dress (usually thrifted, often an actual child's dress) in velvet with a lace collar and cuffs or a girly floral worn extremely short over ripped tights and big-ass combat boots. Platforms not heels. No make-up or garish "crazy" make up -- blurred red lipstick, smudgy eyes, "bitch" written on your face or your arm with a sharpie.

This is meant to be threatening not sexy. Associate "weak" little girl things (floral dresses, Hello Kitty, pigtails, baby barrettes) with power/aggression. You're calling back to childhood where girls do whatever they want (in an ideal world) not caring what boys think. You're not dressing for men; you stand up for yourself to say "fuck you" to men who want to belittle you.

The sexualization came with the commercialization of the look. You can't have models with smeary make-up and "cunt" written on their tits in marker in the pages of Seventeen magazine. The last gasp further devolves in the 2000s into "punk fetish" shit like Suicide Girls.

Bringing it back to the character design...my character is not in a band. She is not an activist. She's a bored suburban teenager reading about what slightly older girls and women are doing in New York and Portland in zines and thinks it's cool.

She internalizes a lot of the "fuck you" attitude (or has it already and feels validated to express it). She's also a cult movie dork with an obsessive interest that isn't the alt-rock scene, but is similarly niche/all-consuming.

[morvantmortuary]

okay, so, the cool thing I said I had to show you!!

as a very kind xmas gift, my mom paid for a very special commission back in december, who’s been waiting at her house for me for about a month or so.

I got to see her for the first time in person yesterday, and y’all, she’s beautiful 😍

Rora, in the style of @stitchybutton — and good goddamn, did she go above and beyond on this one, I’m in love 🖤🖤🖤

Detail shots below (some of which might be slightly blurry bc my hands are unsteady, but bear with me)!

This version of Rora is based partially on Eva Green and a reference sheet I sent to Stitchy, but mostly on this picrew, which I loved for the white dress:

But I didn’t even realize how many small touches there were Stitchy would be kind enough to take the time to recreate in full!! Not only did she include the smeary eyeliner, but

Look

at these

details!!!

her little shoes!! 🥹

and the HAND BELT!!!!

It’s perfect! It’s adorable!!

But even better than this, is what Stitchy did with Rora’s resurrection scars:

She matched the ones on her face perfectly, capturing the reference to Elsa Lanchester’s makeup on Bride of Frankenstein

and just look at the pearly strands over her Y-incision!!!!

She’s literally perfect, and I’m unspeakably delighted 🥰🥰🥰

here she is with the boys and the tiny versions, all together at last:

(Poor Maxi, you can tell I’ve had him longest bc he looks the most loved 😂)

She’s a little taller than the boys, but that’s bc she’s more detailed (and I can’t help but think at how tickled she would be to be taller than them just once). They make a perfect set, and I’m so thrilled to be able to hug all of them at last when I put them through the Horrors lmao. I’m definitely going to have to work on a specific place of honor for them as a group in my room.

Anyway! Thanks for humoring me and my plush problem yet again — this is the last one I’ve been really wanting, so I’m delighted to be able to hug her after I just turned in my latest diss chapter draft 🖤

And once again, if you have some cash saved and want a beautifully made, handsomely detailed doll of your blorbo or your own OC, definitely look up StitchyButton on etsy! She has sales fairly regularly, you can get a 15% coupon every month through the lowest tier of her Patreon (literally just one dollar USD, and one of the few I kept when I had to cut back this year bc it’s so incredibly worth it), and she always has the most consistent schedule of any plush artist I’ve ever, ever worked with. Anything by her is a work of art, for real.

(The tinies are by another etsy artist called NoizFoxy, and I know she stopped doing small dolls for a minute, but I think she reopened?? Definitely check into her too, if that’s more your speed!)

The three of them are finally together, and I’m unreasonably thrilled about it for being the age I am 💀♥️💚💜

[dustedmagazine]

Home Front — Games of Power (La Vida Es un Mus)

Games Of Power by Home Front

Alberta, Canada, might seem like an odd point of origin for a dance-y, upbeat, hyper-melodic synth-punk band. When this reviewer hears the province’s name, he envisions remote prairie horizons, acres and acres of beet farming, the Athabasca tar sands and petroleum industry sludge. Synth punk evokes different spaces and experiences: dark, urban clubs; smeary tubes of mascara and bumps of whites in bathroom stalls; neon and hot pink and dye-bottle black. But Home Front is very much an Edmonton band — and we might note that the tar sands boom has had the additional consequence of doubling the population of Edmonton’s metro area in about ten years, to something north of 1.4 million people. The city is no longer so isolated. More relevant here, it distorts the range of tonalities on Games of Power to describe Home Front as merely synthy, only upbeat, intrinsically hyper and hyper-melodic. The band can brood and thump and even sort of rock, and Games of Power is an interesting record.

To be certain, the record’s textures and sensibility pay homage to the early 1980s, during which New Wave devolved into more radio-friendly synth pop. Some of that music was wonderful, some of it was completely awful, and some moments and gestures on Games of Power threaten to flatten into pastiche; the record’s title track could be a Kajagoogoo B-side, and bonus track “Come Down” is less a love-letter to Spacemen 3 and more a soulless replication. But most of the record’s recall of the halcyon days of 1980s synth-oriented British pop is more lovingly allusive than cynically imitative. You can catch whispers of Heaven 17 and more sustained nods to New Order — but that’s Heaven 17 at their iciest (“We Live So Fast”) and New Order with most of Joy Division’s gloom still churning in the mix. 

The most effective songs on Games of Power establish some palpable distance from those more familiar cadences. “Nation” stages a contest between the electric snap of its drum machine rhythm and the urgency of its full-throated sing-along choruses. Depeche Mode rides the tour bus with an Oi! Band — and the song is a lot more exciting than that prankish scenario suggests. “Overtime” has a similar tension in its nervy rushes and splashes of guitar and its pellucid, sweet synth notes. Both songs temper the artificiality (and the cool artifice) of synth pop with a bracingly organic human presence. 

Still, for listeners whose memories of the early 1980s are flush with adolescent intensities (yikes), Home Front’s most pleasurable songs dance in place alongside their near-tangible influences. “Contact,” “Face Value” and “Quiet World” are pitch perfect, gorgeously arranged and played. The tunes are imbued with a particular quality of longing, a melancholy ache that sad-eyed boys and girls might collapse into with a delicious shiver. “Quiet World” closes the record, and it’s a good choice. The warbling, wobbling synth lines that lead into the yearning chorus have a distortion that’s just dissonant enough, suggesting 3 am’s exhaustion, or the strange space in which bum-out crosses over into throbbing bliss. It’s a convincing performance, and a very good record. 

Jonathan Shaw

[vicsuragi]

harry du bois for the character ask :)

and now we've done both of my fave fictional men of the moment kjnfrekjn

favorite thing about him - he's just like me! :)

least favorite thing about him - he's just like me! :(

favorite line - harry has too many good lines that i cannot remember right now but i like "pathetic. i need to hustle more and hate less." (and kim's "i have no idea what that means" response - me neither king i just love the vibe)

brotp - harry and cuno babyyyy. yes cuno bullied me to death the first time i met him but he's cool. i think he and harry have matching "too much" energies and they should be pals. buddies. friends :)

otp - it could be harrykim. i'll never tell anyone tho <3

notp - i don't think i really have one for harry either. i'm not as big into harry/jean but i also barely know jean, in the future i could be convinced.

random headcanon - is it random if i just say he's trans??? no i don't think canon confirms this at all but in my head? it tracks <3

unpopular opinion - i got nothing i love this mess of a man.

song i associate with him - pretty much every village people song, but especially "hot cop" and "macho man." if disco had a dance party ending it would be set to a village people song and i just know it.

favorite picture of him - i can't find it but it's the garry's mod one with harry and crash bandicoot. his face is so smeary and creepy when viewed close up he's like a creepypasta monster. i love it <3

[frenchifries]

this one scared me awake straight into a sleep paralysis episode lol

sometimes i get these dreams that play out exactly like lost media creepypastas you'd hear people insisting they saw on some weird VHS they had as a kid but can't find any information about and when they try to talk about it to other people no one knows what they're talking about.

so this one was presented very much like a sort of 'storybook' video, with still images set to narration. the backgrounds looked like watercolor paintings and the characters looked like paper cutouts drawn in a cartoony but overly-detailed style, like the creepy closeup shots you'd see in shows like courage the cowardly dog. the people had small bodies and stubby limbs and bug-eyed blank expressions—very grotesque, somewhat in the vein of jhonen vasqeuz's art style.

it was about this little girl whose parents hated her; she was referred to as "the neglected girl" and the narrator talked about how her parents were happy and she was not. she was always alone and nobody loved her and basically nothing good or interesting happened in her life. then she grew up and met a man and they had two kids together, a boy and a girl. the man loved his kids but he didn't love the woman, but they got married anyway. after they got married, they had a third child, who the man also didn't love, who in turn became the next "neglected girl."

the main thing i remember is that it ended with a shot of everyone sitting on a big bed while the narrator said "and so the man was happy, and the woman was not. there was the oldest son... the favorite daughter... and the neglected girl." and as they're listed off their images appear on the bed one by one; i especially remember the woman sitting and staring into the distance with the most haunted expression on her face, and the "neglected girl" in the back corner of the bed appearing only as a smeary silhouette, sort of twitching and writhing.

and then the narrator says, "but some say, her real name is—" and in that moment, where i was really focused on this twitching silhouette, she leaps forward and jumpscares me, filling my vision with black and an unsettling noise, which of course scared me awake, but not all the way awake, because i was stuck in a sleep paralysis state and could only stare at the shadows in the corner of my room. i started calling for help and, in my half-dreaming hallucinatory state, thought my mom was standing in the corner, with the lights from my AC as the reflection off her glasses, and that she was like, intentionally ignoring me.

i kept yelling for help and eventually my dad came and helped me wake the rest of the way up. this was at like 5 in the morning i guess. i was scared to go back to sleep because i was worried i would have another episode, but thankfully it was all fine. the worst part is never knowing when they're going to happen—they're usually spaced pretty far apart, but having one is also no guarantee that i won't have another soon. it especially makes me worry for times i'll be home by myself overnight, because if nobody comes and wakes me the rest of the way up and helps me start moving my body again, there's no telling how long i'd be stuck like that...

[the-nysh]

Webcomic ch133: Garou’s return

[idrawzstuff]

Eeeey some actual art I made within the last 4 weeks. Here take long hair astronaut boy!

He has grown up... He's no longer little chicken boi... He's astronaut man.

(got long hair? Put it in a bun!! :D)

Other hair I considered

[lanceylancedidoodledance00]

there’s always something i hate about the things i love... except for charcoal pencils, i hate nothing about my charcoal pencils