#bowie was just a little bit more sparkly

[invisibleraven]

Me furthering my willie&furby agenda by asking for It’s my emotional support Furby for Willie/anyone please and thank you

When Willie and Alex first started dating, Willie was a bit nervous to have Alex in his room. What if he made fun of the glow in the dark stars still stuck to the ceiling? What if he thought the fact that Lancelot stayed in the bed with him made him childish? What if he found all Willie’s weird art off putting and dumped him?

Alex of course, did none of those things. He thought the glow in the dark stars were wicked, even more so when he noticed that they were arranged in constellations and not just randomly strewn everyone. He praised Willie’s art, claiming he wanted the abstract sunset one when it was finished.

“It’s yours,” he promised.

Plus he loved Lancelot, hugging the plush dragon tight, wishing he had an awesome childhood stuffy, all he ever had was lame bears and his parents made him give those up once he got double digits.

“You got anything else huggable?” Alex asked. “Otherwise I might end up borrowing Lancelot here.”

“Only Wilbur,” Willie replied, pointing to the tuft of hair sticking up behind some pillows in his little nook.

Alex gleefully reached over and grabbed Wilbur out, then stared at it. “What the fuck is this?”

“That’s Wilbur,” Willie replied, as if that explained everything. “He’s my emotional support Furby.”

“He’s huge!” Alex exclaimed.

“Well I longified him,” Willie said with a shrug, but Alex still look confused. So Willie got to launch into an explanation of long Furbies, showing him the Pinterest board of ones he had saved. “Caleb gave me Wilbur when I was younger, but then his speaker broke, and we fixed him together. Made him long and freaky. Now he serves as emotional support when I need him.”

“That’s pretty cool actually,” Alex said, finally holding Wilbur closer to admire the details they had added to him, like the sparkly sequins now adorning the inside of his ears and the rainbow patterned hair for his tail. “Can you make me one?”

“How about we make one together?” Willie suggested. “Might be fun.”

“I’d like that,” Alex admitted.

In the end, they made Alex his own colourful little friend named Bowie, who became best friends with Wilbur, and they two of them lived a long and happy life together, proudly on display in Alex and Willie’s first house.

And when they adopted Isla, they made her one too.

[nigelolsson]

Look at his hair!! 🎧

—————

[theshiniest]

How would you describe the best humanization of Tamatoa?

it’s mostly about his essence for me, i can overlook facial/bodily features just for the sake of seeing that man who has transformed himself completely into the best (according to his worldview) version of himself. a walking masterpiece. he’s bright, sparkly, bold, dramatic - eye-catching in general. give me a boy that gets ALL the looks when he walks in/by because of how flashy and over the top he is.

as for the physical features there’s already plenty of human-like things in his canon look, so just… add a nose to that, give him a more human skintone(or don’t! purple man! stunning!), slap on some hair and that’s pretty much it?

things ive personally been able to catch after looking at him for four years

obvious: those big round bulging eyes. i’m seeing so many humanizations who opt for that deepset narrow “hot boy” look… please don’t. his eyes are wonderful as they are.

big mouth. big, uneven, yellow teeth. people have a tendency to just draw this perfect hollywood smile, add a little gap and move on. like c’mon.

also teeth decorations. his barnacles have so much potential: switch them up for anything. gems, crystals, grillz, tooth piercings

his underbite aka the reason why he smiles with both rows of teeth showing

dark fluffy lashes. listen. if they decide to give a CRAB lashes - those lashes are important

the chub. his chin almost blending in with his neck. his full soft cheeks. man is fat

also goes for his body

note: with that, we kind of do have the canon reference for his body build - early concept art

and you can see that it’s not just fat, it’s muscle+fat. that good solid tummy. those arms.

his bioluminescent markings:

i did a rendition of them for a human face (+ added something to the eyes).

and by the way, the human face in question is my early artbreeder human!tamatoa attempt

artbreeder doesn’t really allow you to go into extremes with jewelry or makeup (as well as change the skintone without changing hair and eye color, so this is about as dark as I could possibly get him to be). and no underbite here as well :(

but i was really going for that ugly pretty feeling. like… he’s attractive to the point of being repulsive with his big blue eyes and everything, but he’s also repulsive to the point of being attractive. i feel like this constant confusion from the beholder’s point of view is what would make human!him captivating. the “hold on something isn’t right” or “hold on something in him is so cute”

also my next point

androgyny. tamatoa is androgynous on some level. even in canon form he’s got this combination of “strong/masculine” (physical size, deep voice, dominant presence, big heavy chin, his little barnacle beard) and “feminine” (big eyes, soft features, flamboyance). he’s based off david bowie, the androgynous icon, and HEAVILY queercoded.

adding to the queercoding bit. we kinda established the “flamboyant mlm”, but there’s another aspect to him that the fandom seems to miss

“story of shifting shape”.

his whole “i changed myself completely to fit what i thought of myself and now despise who i used to be”… this feels like SUCH a trans metaphor to me.

he never goes into detail about his “drab little crab” life and i’m pretty sure we figured out “l’histoire” is just a story moana made up to tell the kids - there’s no way she could know any of that.

considering this, i would really love to see some transmasculine human!tamatoas with their wonderful barnacle beards and inexplainable gender envy towards a certain demigod

his missing leg would be a WAY bigger deal in human form. ripping off a human(oid)’s leg would mean that maui makes him fall to the ground, which is pretty much a certain win. why didn’t he kill tamatoa? even if maui couldn’t for some reason/decided to be merciful, why didn’t tamatoa die from excessive bleeding/pain shock? in modern aus with both of them fully human, how does one man even cut/rip off another man’s limb physically? this requires sitting there and carefully cutting through flesh, muscle, bone (with no magic fishhook that could potentially slice it off in one hit) - let’s be real, maui can’t do that even to the worst person in the world. so, option 1: tamatoa’s missing a leg in general, not because of maui (or INDIRECTLY because of maui). born without one. car accident. any accident. bonus points if he believes maui’s at FAULT for that. pretty much the canon way. or, option 2: missing finger. 10 fingers of a human. 10 legs of a coconut crab. see the parallel? a finger can potentially be lost in a physical fight. not having a finger is a relatively small injury, but it interferes with your daily life just enough to absolutely bloody hate the person who did this to you. the leg missing is better character design potential though. just imagine how intricate and stunning his prosthetics would be.

and remember! tamatoa’s the best no matter which form he chooses to take on, guiding the hand of an artist 😌

[nade2308]

"Bargain" for Robin...

It’s finally here. Took me a while to come up with the full story, but in a surprise bout of inspiration I had it written in a few hours last night. 

John wakes up in the dark cell. He can feel the fever racking his body, the shakes are worse than they were last night and sweat has glued his hair to his forehead. 

It's the infection running through his system, he knows that, he knew it the moment they drove his own bowie knife in his stomach. If John had to guess, the blade nicked his kidney, or at least some other organ close to it. He took a first aid course and has some training in field medicine, but he ain't a doctor. Even with that he knows that if they stay here for longer than what they have already been kept for, he won't make it. 

It makes John sad, because he doesn't want to croak on the kid just now. They had just begun to build their relationship and he feels like he's starting to earn Robin's trust and love and that's more than John could ask for. 

He dreamed of Arion last night. It felt so vivid he woke up screaming. He woke up to an empty cell. If John had to guess it was close after 6am. The cell was still empty. 

The first time John suspected the guys who had them weren't keeping them just for information was when Robin disappeared and the next time he returned he brought fresh bandages and antibiotics. And the good kind. 

The second time, John was too out of it to question it. There was food and water along with the meds, and if John was healthier than this he would notice something was wrong, but be as it was, he wasn't. 

It felt wrong to have Robin take care of him. John was supposed to be the one to protect him and not the other way around. He was supposed to be the one to hold on, take the blows. 

Instead, it was Robin who was probably being tortured and asked questions. 

John wondered why they didn't kill him already. He was becoming a deadweight and slowing everyone down, most of all Robin. He knew the kid was never going to attempt an escape if John was to stay back, and he knew that because he wouldn't have done that, leaving Robin alone. Even if it was just to get help. 

They had to get out of here. John was starting to feel better despite the fever and his injuries. He could talk to Robin, get him to think of a plan, something. The longer they have been held captive, the more leverage whoever held them had over Chimera. If they tried to make an exchange or to blackmail their agency… John didn't even want to imagine what would happen if someone didn't just outright come and rescue them. It looked like they were stuck here for the foreseeable future the way things progressed. 

He wished for the kid's magic to, you know, magically return so they were able to burn this place from the ground up. But that wasn't an option. It wasn't an option before, and now with such a distress thrown over the kid's shoulders. 

Where are you, Robin? 

…

The next time John opened his eyes, Robin was in the cell with him. He looked worse for wear, his clothes were dirty and torn in some places. The smudges under his eyes were more pronounced. If John wasn't so worried and hurting he'd make a joke how Robin's bags under his eyes needed their own baggage tags.  

The kid looked sad and resigned, but when he realized that John was watching him his eyes suddenly changed color. 

He's trying to be forcefully happy for me, the voice inside John's head supplied him helpfully, and his heart ached. 

"Hey, you are awake." 

John stared a little bit more at his partner, there was definitely something off with Robin. He couldn't tell what it was, but it wasn't a good thing. 

"Hey…" John rasped out and he was in a need of water. They haven't given him any since yesterday. 

"Here, drink this. There's more meds." 

John eyed the pills and the bottle of water warily, but he trusted Robin so he took them dutifully. 

Lying back against the tattered mattress, the wound on his stomach pulled and John groaned. 

"Lay still, you don't need to make it bleed again. Last night you moved in your dreams… and they didn't like that you started bleeding again." 

It was the first real talk they had in days, and John could see the worry in Robin's eyes now. They were sparkly in the dim light of the cell, and John realized that the kid was holding back tears. 

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to worry you." 

"It's okay. Now you are okay. It's fixed." 

It felt wrong to hear words that were meant to soothe him sounds so mechanically said. John had a hard time focusing and there was a thought that eluded him every time he tried to ask Robin… something. 

The way Robin was huddled in the corner of the cell, close to where John was spread out, yet so far, made John think hard about what that reminded him of. 

But why was it so hard to reach and hold his thoughts? 

"Do you have any idea who has us?" John asked, aware that he needed more water. 

Robin shook his head and it was only now that John realized Robin was shivering. 

It wasn't a good idea probably because they were both grimy, and John was feverish at that, but maybe if he could hug Robin and warm him up…

It took a lot of work for him to let John even touch him in the aftermath of what happened with Arion. 

"Hey, kid… c'mere. Come closer." 

John watched as Robin frantically searched his surroundings with his eyes, like someone was hiding there with them. The kid was jumpy and scared as it was, but it was unsettling to see him that much rattled. 

"I ain't gonna hurt you. Jus' want to check if you are hurt somewhere, and maybe you could humor this old man and give him a hug?" 

Robin physically recoiled at John's words. It told John that his hunch was right. 

"Robin?" 

"I… I can't." 

"Why… why not? Kid?" 

"Please, I can't." 

It was alarming to see Robin teary eyed, pleading with him. It was right as if John was caught in one of his nightmares. 

The Robin that he was seeing before him felt so much like Robin at the start of their partnership. Wary, distrusting, recoiling at any touch that might have been too much or too- 

Oh. 

Oh no. 

It couldn't be. 

No. 

Not again. 

"Robin?" 

There were steps closing in on their cell and Robin recoiled again, but this time the look of fear got replaced by the one of resignation. 

Robin didn't move to fight off what was to come. Like he knew what was going to happen. 

They both looked up in surprise when it wasn't the people holding them, but a Chimera TAc team approaching the doors to the cell. 

The relief was too big when John realized that their agency somehow located them. John closed his eyes, sighing when Robin wrapped his hand around the one of John's he extended. 

…

The next time he woke up, John was in the infirmary and there was something warm wrapped around his wrist. 

He opened his gritty eyes and took a look around. Taking a stock of his injuries, he looked at the source of warmth. He smiled when he realized it was Robin's head propped on John's hand, his face smushed half in it, and half in the mattress. It was cute and John wanted to run his hand through the blond mop of hair. But he didn't want to disturb Robin in his sleep. Even though the kid was contorted in an uncomfortable position, they were both beyond tired so John didn't say anything. Instead he closed his eyes and went back to sleep himself. 

…

John awoke several times after that and every time Robin was around, also sleeping. They were both exhausted and it was normal for them to need to replenish their lost energy. And in John's case to battle the infection away. 

Robin was sleeping in a bed next to John's and John was starting to worry about the kid. There wasn't anyone around, but John could see several get well soon cards on the nightstand which meant that their team visited them while John was asleep. 

Robin stirred on the bed next to his and John tried to get himself upright. He woke up and just like John, scanned his surroundings and when he saw John on the bed, Robin exhaled in relief. 

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty." 

John knew that would get a reaction out of Robin and as predicted Robin groaned and buried his face in his hands. 

"How are you feelin'?" 

"Pretty sure I should be asking you that." Robin's voice sounded off, tired and exhausted. 

"I think that since we are in the infirmary and I'm up and talking that I'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about." 

John waited for a reaction, for something to tell him that he was wrong. He remembered everything that happened when they were still held captive and his realization right before they were saved. 

"I'm fine. You should be worrying about yourself and your stab wound." 

"I will. Look, Robin, I…" 

John didn't know what to say. How was he going to ask his partner if he exchanged sexual favors to keep John alive? And how did John ask that in a way that did not sound like he was blaming the kid or judging him? The memory of what happened at Rowan house, shortly before Arion took Robin was still fresh and John did not want to make the same mistake twice. 

He could feel Robin's eyes on him and John was ready to drop the topic when he heard Robin's breath hitch. 

"I'm sorry. I know what you are thinking, and I'm sorry. But I had to… I had to keep you alive. It was the only way I knew how- What are you doing? John, don't move." 

John realized too late that he should have listened to Robin, but he wasn't going to just lay there while Robin blamed himself for something he had little to no control over. 

"John…" 

"I won't let you put yourself down like that. It's not… It was never your fault. I'm sorry I reacted the way I did back when I learned what happened to you. You did not deserve any of it. And it hurts me to think that you did that again to save me, but not for the reasons you think." 

"I… I let them do what they wanted to me because I… I was selfish, John. I wanted you to live. I know that no one lives forever, not even the fae, even though we are known for the longevity of our lives. But I want you, I need you to live. I can't… I can't lose you, too." 

John realized where Robin came from and his heart was hurting at the prospect of the kid losing someone else too. John wanted to promise Robin that he wasn't going to die anytime soon or ever, but it wasn't realistic to do that to the kid. 

"I know. I don't want you to lose me either. It doesn't make what happened any less… hurtful. I don't want to put you in a position where you are forced to do that to keep me alive. Or to save me." 

"They were hellbent on killing you. For what we did. Or rather what I did, and what you didn't. You didn't let him to… not like Michaels." 

The lightbulb went off in John's head. 

"Lewis." 

Robin nodded.

John had to bite on his hand so as to not scream. He was afraid that something like this would happen one day. 

"John… are you mad at me?" 

"What… no, of course I'm not mad at you. I… I know that my past actions are still present in mind, yours as well as mine, and chances are we won't ever forget what I did and how I acted, but I want you to know that no matter what happens, I won't ever get mad at you. I'm mad at myself." 

"Why?" 

"Because I… I wasn't strong enough kiddo. I let them ambush us and take us. They did this to you because you had no other choice and I was useless." 

"Don't say that. You were hurt. With your own knife, John." 

John didn't say anything, too caught up in the memories of that night and the hurt that followed. Which was nothing compared to what Robin had to do to keep him alive. 

"I know this situation wasn't ideal. But I want you to know that if that's the only way to save you, or anyone else, I'd do it again." 

"Exactly what I want to prevent. I'm sorry I failed you, kiddo." 

"You didn't. You held on. You were practically half-dead. After two days the meds stopped working, I could see that. But, I managed to bargain more." 

"I felt better towards the end… before they found us." 

"It always feels that way before you crash hard from dehydration, blood loss and improper treatment of the wound." 

John knew that Robin was speaking from experience. He has seen the scars. 

"I'm really glad you are alive, kid." 

"Me too." 

John extended his hand and Robin slowly came and sat on John's bed, taking his hand. John knew that it would be awhile before Robin felt comfortable enough for a hug or even a closer contact than this. But John was going to wait him out. 

They had time. 

They were safe. 

They are home. 

[passivenovember]

The Skull on the Shelf that Bares My Name

This is my first time posting a fic on tumblr, so. Here goes nothing

__

Billy was like an oil painting that had been around for a thousand years. Pretty in the right lighting, hideous in the swell of nightfall. All rough edges and smeared color, full of broken things inside that cut through the air and rattled around like shattered glass whenever anyone got too close, bristling and blowing with the 75mph wind that tumbled through his soul.

Billy thought it was breathtaking.

Thought he was breathtaking with split knuckles and broken ribs. Matted hair tangled with dried blood. Busted lips painted red, color spilling down his chin when he smiled too wide at his reflection.

He liked it messy and hideous.

Did everything he could to destroy the precious image, the golden boy.

He had always been pretty. Like a girl; sparkly eyes and curly hair. Neil had always old him someone would come along and color outside the lines, scribble over the image his mother had left behind and Billy had always been so breakable in the face of adversity.

Flinching against hurt and agony until it became commonplace. Until he grew tired of gluing himself back together every night under the light of the moon.

His face was beautiful like a sculpture carved from stone, or a window into the face of his mother and her mother, but.

Billy himself was like a cardboard box full of glass.

The Billy on the inside was sharp.

And crude.

And violent, when the mood struck him. Ask anyone and they'd tell you; guy's like a train barreling through an apartment building.

And he was.

A glorious, terrible, beautiful, ravenous storm brewing in the open sea.

Billy hadn't known girls could be hazardous.

He knew they were soft. Pretty, delicate and sometimes tough when they had to be. His mother had been like that--brazen. Flighty and aggressive in a different way, like when the sun emerges from the clouds and shines too brightly.

She was warm and loving.

Perfect in her femininity. Billy looked nothing like his mother because she dressed like a wood nymph, all sheer fabric and dresses that defied gravity. Her hair was blonde and curly, always pinned back with clips and beautiful scarves and Billy wanted desperately to look like her.

Film star beauty.

Painted lips, soft hands. When she threw herself off the bridge he brushed his fingertips over the fabric in her closet and tried to imagine what it would feel like to have the world at your feet.

She was so beautiful it felt like swallowing tar.

Hot and boiling on a summer's day.

Billy pulled something from the rack, ran his fingers around the liquid soft fabric of his mother's favorite dress; the white one with the pearl neckline that felt like water settling around his shoulders. They said she was going to be buried in this one and Billy hated it.

Hated that something so beautiful, so delicate would rot away in the cool, damp earth.

He sat in front of her vanity and watched the light twinkle against the jewels that littered the countertop; rubies, emeralds, opal stone cut into neat shapes. When he was a child Billy's mother would let him play with her rings because they made good skipping stones in the pond out back.

We'll always find more, his mother would say, and it was true. Neil spared no expense in making her shine like a million stars as if she didn't already steal the air from every room.

Pocket it in her velvet handbags for safekeeping.

Billy put a ring on each finger and studied his reflection in the pristine vintage mirror.

He looked like a rat.

A rat in a pretty dress, playing pretend for a day.

The front door slammed open and Billy put the dress back on the hanger.

The girl on the T.V. wasn't like his mother at all.

Not soft or feminine, but smoldering. Alight with power and freedom as she strutted around the stage. She looked like her eyes were swimming in water; thick black makeup smudged around green orbs, hair messy and tangled, legs littered bruises that peaked through the holes in her stockings as the lights threw her into disarray.

Slut kiss girls won't you promise her smack

is she ugly on the inside

is she ugly from the back...

The woman was a disaster packaged in something almost pretty but not quite. Like a beauty queen moments after winning the crown fair and square, tear stained makeup and fleeting promises of eternal beauty. She flung herself around the stage, dress ripped to shreds as the hands of the audience tried to tear away pieces of her flesh.

Her fingers were bruised and bloody as she wailed away on the guitar. Nails cracked and worn with the weight of her vengeance. With each press of her lips against the microphone the color oozed outside the lines of her mouth until she looked like a living dead girl and Billy.

He had never seen someone so beautiful.

The first time he put on a dress for real it had been an homage to his silver screen queen.

Black shift dress. Baby doll sleeves. Torn stockings and barrettes in his hair.

Kinderwhore they called it.

Billy stood awkwardly in front of the mirror in the bathroom and tried to make sense of the princess seam that came to an unsteady rest just above the line of his ribs. The clinging fabric felt nothing like the one his mother had been buried in it felt.

Dirty.

Sinful. Instantly cloaked in assumptions; he does heroin. He's a a bum and a loser in search of something the music can't give him so he searches for it in the sting of a needle. Billy bit down on his lips until they bled.

The color ran thick like maple syrup over the skin of his face, bringing out the blue in his eyes as it ran down his chin. As it caught in the stubble-rough landing of his jawline.

Billy looked like a mess.

Instantly, he was addicted. The first time Billy saw her he knew; that was his own image reflected back at him from the fifteen inch screen.

He began looking for inspiration wherever he could find it.

Debbie Harry, Freddie Mercury, Joan Jett, David Bowie. Women and men. Gods. His heroes. Feminine and masculine and dirty.

Courtney Love was always his favorite.

Filthy. Absolutely gut wrenching. Every time he saw her perform it was like his spleen was being ripped out and Billy couldn't escape the way he saw so much of himself reflected in her. All his rage and discomfort, his fury amplified by a million.

So he tried to emulate it.

Billy shopped around local thrift stores to find leopard print jackets and peasant tops. Dresses that hung wide or snuggled against the swell of his hips, kitten heels that brought much needed length to his hamburger legs and when he brought them home, always through the backdoor and stuffed carefully into a trash bag, Neil would raise an eyebrow.

Playing dress up?

Billy would grimace. Max is lookin' to be a Debbie Harry for Halloween. 'M helpin' her find the prefect dress.

And Neil drank like the answers sawm in a bottle of gin, so.

He would raise a fist at that. Never fully convinced but satiated, content with Billy playing the perfect older brother. His nose would bleed on the nights when Neil couldn't shake the impression that his son was a faggot but that was as far as it went.

Max never asked questions and Billy never told her the truth; that he felt more like himself when Courtney Love stared back at him in the mirror.

She sat with him sometimes.

Watched him apply his mother's lipstick, carefully at first and then all at once when the music carried him down.

Black lung coat and your little crown That's the crown that you get for falling down Hey baby, let me look in your eyes I see you standing in a weird red light...

"Why do you listen to this shit?" Max wrinkled her nose. Like a freckled bunny rabbit, it was kind of ridiculous. "She screams so fuckin' loud, you can't even understand what she's--"

"Mascara."

"Why? I know girls who would kill for your eyelashes."

Billy snapped his fingers. Max handed over the little black tube with a trademark eye roll, resting her chin in her hands as Billy repeated the process of careful application and then careless destruction of his hard work.

"Look prettier when you keep it nice," She snapped.

And Billy just chuckled. "I don't wanna look nice."

Max stared at him, popping a jaw breaker into her mouth. "Why not? Isn't that the whole point of makeup, to look pretty?"

Billy scrubbed at his eyes, warmth flooding his stomach again at the way the blue stood out against the black ring around his eyes. Like carefully crafted bruises, nothing like the ones Neil gave him. He shrugged his shoulders.

"That's so fuckin' predictable." He sat on the bed, pushing the hem of his skirt to roll the nylon against his legs.

"Using makeup and clothes to look worse, fuckin' idiotic." Max grumbled, but she watched with glowing eyes as Billy began scraping his nails down the length, creating runs in the delicate fabric.

"You gonna sit there yapping or are you gonna help?" He bitched.

Max slid to her knees in front of him, getting to work tearing holes into the stockings the way she knew Billy liked.

It was therapeutic, almost, having the help.

"I like when you do Blondie." She said after a while. "Fuck ton less work and Courtney makes you aggressive. She's got the energy of a horny dude, it's fucked up."

Billy smirked.

It was always more fun to play pretend with Max and her bitchy voice tethering him to the ground. He feared that, without it, he'd get lost in the feeling of freedom. Fly too close to the sun or something, catch on fire when he inevitably missed the tell-tale creek of the floorboards that meant Neil was listening in.

Max annoyed the hell out of him, but.

She kept him safe. Why, he didn't know.

Maybe she really was interested in the whole thing, electing to believe that every boy wanted to be a girl because the alternative meant her brother was sick in a way that couldn't be cured.

Billy stood, slipping on the kitten heels while Max held his hand.

He admired his handiwork.

"Gotta hand it you," Max whistled, low like a wolf. "Gets shittier every time we do it."

"Shut up, brat." But Billy was grinning.

For Max, that was a compliment.

Don't blush when I rip you open Hey baby, let me look in your eyes As you go off into your weird red light...

He ran his hands down the soft fabric, relishing the way the hem tickled the sensitive skin of his thighs.

He was pretty.

Not like his mother, not like Courtney Love, but.

Uniquely himself.

Max cocked her head to the side. "Don't you get tired of getting all dressed up with nowhere to go?"

Billy bristled. "Oh yeah? And where could I go in San Fran that wouldn't skin me on the spot for dressing like a bitch?"

"Castro." The gay area.

Billy felt his cheeks darken. He thought about it for a second; the lights, the thralls of people just letting the light in. Being themselves.

He shook his head, turning back to the mirror with a glare. "Yeah, okay. I'll get right on that."

"Cool, I'll just fetch my coat." Max turned to leave, chucking when Billy trapped her with an iron grip. "Relax, spaz. Neil would kill us both if he saw you looking like that."

And.

She was right. Billy had thought about it countless times before, what would happen if he threw a jacket over his baby doll dress and slipped out the back door one night. How the cool air would feel on the bare skin of his thighs, but. That's all it ever was. Just speculation.

Only dreams.

Knowing his luck he'd catch Neil in the hallway after his midnight piss and that'd be it. They'd never get the blood out of the wallpaper.

"Looks like we're stuck playing pretend." Billy patted absently at his spring of messy curls, refusing to let the sadness seep through but Max noticed immediately. Perceptive little shit.

She held up a finger, disappearing through the crack in the door. A second later she was back with her polaroid camera.

"Smile."

"No fuckin' way," Billy snarled. He could already imagine it; Neil digging through his sock drawer to find the pot he was always accusing Billy of smoking, only to stumble across something else.

Something worse.

Billy's ribs began to ache with the phantom memory of those fists planting like flower bulbs in fresh soil. He bruised easily, like an overripe peach.

Not everyone knew that about him, but. He did.

Max frowned. "Come on, we could send them to Courtney's P.O. box, I'm sure she'd be flattered."

Billy shook his head, tears swamping his vision as Max lifted the camera. The flash was blinding. Billy lunged for it, swearing as Max slipped past his grip. She took another picture.

And another.

And then another, until polaroid's littered the floor like fallen leaves on the dirty ground. Billy had tears rolling down his cheeks, ruining his makeup by the time she finally stopped. He held out his hand. "Max, just. Give that fuckin' thing to me. Now, we gotta burn this shit, alright? We gotta--"

But she wasn't listening, she was staring at the first image she had taken, when Billy was caught off guard. Max was absorbed in it, eyes glittering with something Billy had never seen before.

He snatched the picture from her hands and lifted it up to his face, brow wrinkled in disgust until--

This wasn't anything like staring in the mirror.

It felt more immediate, more real as Billy examined the image of a flawless stranger. Of a woman.

Of Courtney Love.

"Pretty," Max said.

And.

Yeah. He was.

They started taking pictures every time Billy got dressed up.

Max would help him get ready and then they'd do little photoshoots in his bedroom. He was a reluctant subject at first, awkward in his own skin until she suggested they smoke a joint before each session.

"To loosen you up a little, dick wad."

"What kinda brother would I be if I let my kid sister smoke pot?" Billy shook his head. "Absolutely not, Max."

She shrugged. "Then you do it."

So, he did.

And it helped. They switched up the music, finding it easiest to shoot to The Smashing Pumpkins, played with lighting and mood until she was satisfied with the "vibe," made immortal on film.

The images Max captured were like moments in time, archived in the shoebox under his bed. Billy looked like a rock star in every one--Debbie Harry on some days, Courtney on others; hair messy, cigarette trapped between his fingers, stockings ripped to shreds.

Max admitted that Courtney was her favorite, after a while, so that's the one that stuck.

And Billy loved every picture she took. Loved her artistic eye, obvious in the way she moved his lamp around the room to capture his features just so. Every session was serious like she was the photographer at Rolling Stone and he was her subject for the week.

It was addictive.

They had been taking pictures every night for a month when Neil caught them in the act.

The first punch felt like a bomb had gone off in his head, and Billy hit the floor without so much as a fight.

He remembers blood on the carpet.

Blood in his hair. On the walls. A splitting pain in his ribs and between his legs.

Keep digging your own grave, William.

Max patched him up after Neil's car tore out of the driveway.

"I'm sorry Billy." He hadn't realised she was crying. He ran his fingers over her cheek. "It's all my fault, I didn't mean--"

"I felt pretty." He said.

They stopped taking pictures after that.

Moving to Hawkins, Indiana was like stepping off the Earth and floating through space.

Billy felt weightless.

Every mistake, every hidden secret cloaked in baby doll dresses and leopard print coats had been left in San Francisco where they belonged. Stuffed in the back of his closet with the polaroid's they were able to tape back together.

He tried to forget the way it made him feel.

"You're the prettiest boy I've ever seen."

It wasn't meant to be a compliment. Billy could tell that from the way Steve's lips curled into a snarl.

He pushed his way into Billy's space, clearly drunk and high off something that made his pupils swallow the milky brown of his eyes.

Steve looked like he was swimming.

There were track marks in his arm. "You're like a vision," He reached out to touch, to feel, flinching back when Billy slapped his hand away.

"I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, Harrington--"

"I think I'm in love with you."

And Billy had thought the same thing, the first time they ran into each other at the gay bar in Indianapolis, but. People talked.

Hawkins talked, like the city itself was an entity with a pulse and conscience that had been shot to shit in the eighties. Billy did his best to glare. "You don't love me, pretty boy."

"No, I." Steve grinned. He was high as a fucking kite. "I do. You're my guardian angel." He laughed hysterically, in a way that made Billy's skin crawl.

"What, your dealer tell you that?" He huffed.

And it was mean.

So fucking mean. If Steve was a junkie his skin wouldn't be so clear, so smooth. Like black cherries in milk, goddammit. Billy wanted to lap at the skin on his neck, taste the salt of his skin.

He wondered distantly if he'd be able to get high from it.

Probably. Steve smiled anyway. "Let me take you home."

"Such a fuckin' line," Billy said.

But he was already tugging pretty boy through the crowd.

Billy kept his dresses in the back of his closet where he kept his mother's suicide letters.

She had written more than one, consumed by her sadness in a way Billy had never understood until he had taken the fairy light inside him and smothered it.

Every once in a while, when Neil was out of the house and Max was at school or something, He'd take one out just to feel the weightlessness of the fabric settle against his skin.

Like little paper angels.

Like the whisper of something like hope but not quite, just out of reach.

He never did the full look anymore. Never put his heart and soul into it the way he had before, when Max was there to keep him from floating away, but.

Gradually he felt himself catch fire.

They had been together for three months when Steve peeled back the layers.

Neil was away on business, so Steve was sleeping over. Needed a shirt or sweats or to sleep in, catching sight of something bright red and shiny as he shifted the leather jackets at Greatful Dead t-shirts to the side to expose a stash of beautiful gowns that shone like an open sore against the soft light in Billy's bedroom.

Billy came through the open door, words dying on his lips as the bong in his hand shattered on the floor.

Steve held the dress up against the light, tongue poking out of his mouth in consideration.

"Max wants to be Debbie Harry for Halloween," Billy fished for his old excuse, eyes welling up with tears when Steve's jaw set in a firm line. "I'm helping her find the perfect dress, I--"

"Bill's--"

"That's not mine, Steve, I swear." Billy dropped to the floor.

Got on his fucking knees, hands level with his face in a silent prayer as he tripped over himself to rebuild the walls that had kept him safe. He was talking, spewing bullshit as Steve stood motionless against the closet door. Billy flung his arms around Steve's legs. Buried his face in his thighs, because.

He couldn't go through it again.

Wouldn't survive it.

"I never even seen that before, Stevie, please."

"Get up." Pretty boy commanded.

And.

Billy blinked teary, soulful eyes at him. "Huh?"

Steve shook his head. "I said stand up, baby. Get off the fucking floor."

Billy did. Steve watched him for a moment, expression unreadable. Billy prepared himself for the gut punch, the harsh word, the look of disgust in those eyes that had never shown anything but reverence for Billy, but it never came. In a single, syrupy slow motion Steve held the dress to Billy's throat, scanning him up and down in a way that left Bill naked and squirming.

He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think, as Steve smiled softly.

"Wanna see you." He said.

And. "What?"

"Can you put it on for me?" Steve asked. "Bet you look gorgeous. Like an angel, or a model or something--"

Billy let out a thick, wet sound. "I look like a beast, I'm--"

"No." Billy jumped when Steve nuzzled against his neck, the dress trapped like a gossamer curtain between them. "Bet you look like a deity. A goddess of rock n' roll. Like Courtney Love, right?"

And Billy had done a lot of things in his life. He was a builder of fortresses, a hider, an adventurer when the mood struck him. Billy protected himself and Max and his mother for as long as he could remember, carrying things that were too heavy for those with weaker shoulders, but.

He had never shown himself to someone he loved. No sugar, no cream, just.

Completely himself.

Billy took the dress and opened the safe in the corner. Pulled out his mother's makeup and painted himself into a masterpiece as Steve watched, motionless on the bed.

When he was done Billy was afraid to look in the mirror.

Terrified of what he'd see but Steve took him in his arms, peppering gentle kisses all along his face until Billy had built up enough courage.

"Ready? Steve whispered.

Billy let himself be turned around. Situated under the heavy sling of Steve's arm, until--

"Pretty."

Steve nodded. "Beautiful."

[ineloqueent]

Starstruck: Part 5

Brian May x Fem!Reader

This is Part 5 of a multi-part fic. Click the links below to read the Masterpost, the previous part, or the next part of the fic :)

Masterpost / Part 4 / Part 6

Summary: When studying at Imperial College in the 1970s, your path is crossed by a beautiful boy as much in love with the stars as you.  

Warnings: swearing

Historical Inaccuracies:

I have no idea whether Deacy and/or anyone else of the Queen entourage ever frequented or even visited The Speakeasy Club (also known as the Speak) in Oxford Circus, but the place was popular amongst the likes of David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix. The history of the place is incredibly fascinating, though, so let me know if you’d like some resources to learn more about it!!

Word Count: 3k

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

Despite the fact that the universe seemed rather intent on having you and Brian repeatedly encounter one another in random places, you didn’t see him again until the arranged Thursday.

You found yourself missing talking of stars and actually having someone understand what it was you were saying, and you missed silly banter.

You were not the only one missing a curly-haired astrophysics major, however, because Freddie, John, and Roger embodied being only three-quarters-full without Brian. There was no one to mother them, no one to shout the loudest in the apparently frequent arguments of the Queen family, no one to tease for an absurd attachment to a red guitar.

The week and four days about to pass would seem to you a very vast expanse of time to be without someone, especially when that someone had been a regular presence in your life for the past three days.

But for now, only a week and two days had passed. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday again; it was now Tuesday night once more.

“He’s gone for a week and the world stops turning,” sighed Roger, tapping a sparkly-shoe adorned foot to the corner of the carpet beneath Deacy and Veronica’s dining table.

“A week and two days,” you corrected Roger.

“Hm, you’re starting to sound rather in love with him, darling,” Freddie clucked his tongue at Roger, who scowled.

“Yes, do be quiet, Roger,” John put in. “I can hardly think here, and writing songs is difficult enough for me as it is.” He scratched at his head with the tip of his pen.

“Yes, if ‘Misfire’ was any indication,” grumbled Roger.

“Roger!” you and Freddie cried in unison. Deacy just looked affronted.

“You know how sensitive he is about his song writing,” Freddie berated Roger.

You were sitting next to Deacy, across from the other two, and wrapped him in a hug. You could see that he’d already gotten over Roger’s remark, because while it had held a grain of truth concerning Deacy’s lack of confidence, it had not held any real malice. You hugged John all the same, and he cuddled you back, pouting in Roger’s direction. Deacy was simply precious by nature, so no one could resist babying him just a little. But Roger was in a bad mood. For the time being, it appeared he had taken up Brian’s torch.

“We could easily have made room for another song on the album if we hadn’t had to have that on there,” Roger said.

Freddie immediately cuffed him on the back of the head. “Roger, really, enough!”

“Hey!” Roger batted at Freddie and a small cat fight ensued.

You patted John’s soft head of hair. “How are you today?” you asked him, as though Roger and Freddie were not tooth and claw before you.

Deacy smiled. “Quite alright, you know, quite alright. How are you, Y/N, dear?”

You sighed. “Forever tired and worrying about things I shouldn’t, but holding up well nonetheless.”

Deacy chuckled. “Worry-wart,” he jabbed your side and you finally jerked away from him.

“Oi!”

“At least you forgot your worries, just then,” he said.

“Fair enough,” you acquiesced.

“NOT MY HAIR!” Roger vaulted up from his chair and it fell to the ground with a clatter. “Not my hair,” he repeated more quietly, and pointing at Freddie warningly, he seemed rather unhinged.

Freddie leaned back in his own chair and folded his arms, languid as one of his cats. “I didn’t touch your peroxide-green hair, dearie.”

“You tried to,” Roger bit out. “And it’s not green.”

“Not today.”

“Freddie, I swear I’m going to maul you—”

“Okay!” Deacy stood up, raising his hands in the pursuit of peace. “Since Brian’s not here, I’m going to have to be the responsible one. Even though you’re both other than me and I should not be parenting you,” he rolled his eyes.

Freddie and Roger remained unmoving.

“I think we’ve all been cooped up in here for too long, too many rounds of Death Scrabble and whatnot, so I suggest we get out. Maybe do something fun.”

You nodded in agreement with Deacy. “What a good idea. What do you suggest?”

Roger whistled through his teeth. “Not a good idea, Y/N. Never ask what he suggests.”

“Says the bloke who’s lost each and every girlfriend because he talked too much about cars,” you said, and Roger made a face in your direction.  

“I was thinking,” Deacy began.

“Here we go,” said Roger.

“Shut up and sit down,” Freddie pulled Roger down to sit on his knee. Roger stuck his tongue out at Freddie, but shared his chair all the same.

“I was thinking disco!”

“Strangle me with my own jacket,” Roger muttered.

Freddie sniffed, “So long as you don’t try to sell my jacket again.”

“Disco,” you said thoughtfully. “What’s so bad about disco?”

“Nothing at all. Excellent pastime,” Deacy responded.

“Everything,” said Roger at the same time. “Have you ever gone to a disco, Y/N?”

“No,” you replied slowly.

Roger threw up his hands. “There’s the sense.”

Deacy looked at you in something like concern. “We’re five years into this decade and you’ve never been to a disco, Y/N?”

“And you shouldn’t go to one either,” said Roger. Deacy raised an eyebrow at him.

You decided to consult Freddie. “What’s your opinion, Fred?”

Freddie shrugged. “Deacy’s a precious darling whom I love and who could do no wrong.”

Roger faced you with his hands on his hips. “Brian doesn’t like disco.”

You felt laughter bubble up in your throat. “We’re not the same person, Rog.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Where the hell is he, anyway?” you asked the three of them. “I can’t believe he’s called just the once, and only to assure you that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere.”

None of them had any answers. The last you’d seen of Bri was over a week ago, and the last you’d heard of him was when he’d called Freddie over the weekend to apologise for his absence from Queen’s most recent rehearsal.

“At least we know as much,” Freddie sighed.

“Would it have killed him to give me a call?” you said, running your fingers through your hair and feeling generally restless.

“Maybe he tried,” Roger hypothesised. “Maybe that’s why he’s not here now.”

“What?”

“It literally killed him to call you,” Roger sniggered, and Freddie cackled.

“Okay, and now I am going to literally kill both of you,” you stood up.

Poor Deacy was looking quite overwhelmed at this point. In John’s eyes, you might as well have covered your face in warpaint and charged at Freddie and Roger.

“Disco time!” he said, putting a hand on your arm.

You turned to Deacy. “Now?”

“Now.”

“But surely she can’t go dressed like this?” Freddie gestured to your well-worn corduroys and button-up shirt.

“No, Cinderella cannot,” said Deacy. “But I’ll give Veronica a call. She should be going home in just a bit, so she can play fairy-godmother to her.”

“Let’s stop talking about me in third-person,” you said, then stood up. “I’m going to get a glass of water. Anyone else want anything?” You knew your friends’ houses as well as you knew your own, so the offer came naturally.

You received ‘no’s and ‘no thank you’s in response, so you went for your glass of water while the other three remained at the table, staring at a full Scrabble board.

“Freddie,” you heard Roger say through gritted teeth, “I thought you said I was Cinderella.”

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

Ronnie came home on time, as her husband had said she would, and was dragging with her a stubborn-looking Heather. The two of them worked part time at the same corner cafe, and so when Deacy had called the cafe’s phone to see if Ronnie would be finished soon, Ronnie had taken initiative and invited Heather with her.

“She didn’t like it when I said disco,” Ronnie whispered the word as though it were taboo. Sure enough, Heather groaned.

“That’s my girl!” cried Roger, happy to have someone to complain to about the night’s turn of events.

Heather waggled her fingers at you in greeting, then flung her arms around Roger. “Hello babe,” she said, and kissed him.

John reached for Veronica, so Freddie grabbed your arm.

“Quick,” he said, “while they’re distracted, let’s raid Ronnie’s wardrobe!”

You giggled together like school girls and snuck up the stairs before Deacy or Ronnie could stop you.

In the upstairs bedroom, Freddie flung open the wardrobe with all the flair and drama of a film noir actor.

“Ah, what’ve we got…” He began rifling through the contents of the wardrobe. You watched over his shoulder.

“Where’s Mary, anyway?” you asked him conversationally, leaning against a bedpost. But at the mention of Mary, Freddie went rigid. “Freddie? Is everything okay?”

Just then, Veronica entered the room.

Freddie glanced at Ronnie, then smiled at you, albeit uneasily. “Everything’s just rosy,” he said. “Now, I’ll let you two ladies decide the outfit, so long as I get to do the make up, yes?”

He slipped out of the room without waiting for an answer, in an unusual hurry.

You and Veronica exchanged a glance.

“Odd,” she said.

“I’ll talk to him later.”

“Or else I’ll get John to. Freddie, like most people, can’t resist my husband’s charms,” Veronica winked at you. “Now, what can we get you, from my admittedly humbly-sized selection…”

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

Half an hour later, having taken the tube to Oxford Circus, the six of you stepped into the bright lights of The Speakeasy Club.

Before you went inside, you glanced up at the sky, because you had remembered that there was a full moon tonight. You spotted the moon easily, dazzlingly bright in her ephemerally whole beauty, round as infinity and promising more.

Heather had to tug you away. You could’ve stood on by the kerbside forever, entranced by the world above you.

John led you all down the stairs of 48 Margaret Street and into its basement, where the club was situated. Despite its modest location, music pounded heavily from the Speak, and everything was awash with light, light in every colour imaginable.

Everyone inside of the club was as colourful as the lights, the hues of skin and hair and lips and eyes dying away to be replaced with rainbows and sparkles.

Deacy turned around, and in spite of his reputation for being often smiley, you’d never seen him beam like this before.

He spread his hands, “Isn’t it wonderful?!”

Roger muttered, “Fucking kill me.”

John frowned at Roger. “I never complain when you talk about cars,” he said.

“Well, obviously, I should talk about them more often,” Roger sniffed.

Deacy ignored Roger and took Ronnie’s hand, spinning her around and making her giggle.

“Oh, but I have to agree with Deac,” you told Roger, looking around at the people who smiled as they danced, dressed in glitz and glamour and everything in between. Every person you regarded was equally as radiant as Deacy in this environment, and the energy of the club was thus made infectious. You wondered honestly why Roger hated this— he himself was rather high energy.

“You can forget about your little friendship with Brian,” Roger told you. “This is not his scene.”

“Well, said Freddie, “he’s not here right now, is he, darling? So speak for yourself,”

You shook your head at Roger. “You are having a bad day, Rog. Lighten up a bit,” you ruffled his fluffy blonde hair before he could stop you.

“Yes, come on, Rog,” said Heather, “one dance can’t hurt, can it?”

Roger sighed. “Suppose not.” He glanced at you. “Sorry, that was a bit mean of me, Y/N.”

You let it go. “I like your shoes,” you winked.

Roger pointed his toes in his sparkly pink shoe. “I do have quite the fashion sense.” He scampered away with Heather who was pulling him onto the dance floor.

Deacy and Ronnie followed after them, and in your platform heels and curled hair and sequined boots, you stood at a bit of a loss, until Freddie nudged your shoulder.

“We’re here to dance, darling!”

You smiled and let Freddie lead you out onto the dance floor.

After about twenty minutes of dancing, you were beginning to have fun, to forget yourself a little while, to forget to miss the presence of Brian May.

Roger and Heather spun wildly, tapping toes and dancing basically attached at the hip.

Deacy and Ronnie were more family-friendly in public company, and had shown you a few moves. Deacy was in his element, and unlike Roger, his dancing was tight and controlled. It was obvious that he danced not to be seen, but for the wealth of his soul. He loved to dance, and his wife did too, and it was clear that their love was made in heaven.

Freddie however, did dance to be seen. Which was peculiar, really, given he was already going out with the classy Miss Mary Austin. But his eyes followed other people entirely. And soon enough, he winked at you and disappeared off to dance with some pretty boy.

You’d never pegged Freddie for completely heterosexual, but then again, this was the seventies, and it was hard to tell. Not that you cared who he chose to partner with for romantic encounters, but you were worried. From Brian comforting a crying Freddie on a bathroom floor the other night, to the brawl, to Freddie freezing at the mention of Mary, it was clear that something wasn’t right. And you’d be damned if you let one of your best friends suffer in silence.

You continued to dance alongside the others, but throughout the night, you kept a watchful eye out for Freddie. Thankfully, he never disappeared for more than a couple of minutes at a time, so your nerves relaxed a little.

You’d corner him someday soon and find out what it was that was bothering him. For now, though, you were dancing on your own, wondering if a certain curly-haired guitarist might have wanted to dance with you.

Wondering if he’d gazed up at the full moon in the same way that you had.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

The phone rang Wednesday evening, and you hoped it wasn’t your mother calling.

She worried even more than you did, and though it didn’t greatly show, you could see it, in the twitch of her mouth, in her fingers that tapped an armrest or tabletop, hear it in the way her pauses became more frequent between sentences, hesitations hovering like bumblebees.

You couldn’t face her right now, because she’d ask if you were okay, if you were managing your stress, and presently, you were growing increasingly concerned about the whereabouts and well-being of Brian Harold May.

You really hoped it wasn’t your mother calling.

“Hello, Y/N Andrews speaking.”

“Brian May,” said a tired voice on the other end of the line.

You hurtled forward, gripping the phone with both hands.

“Bri!”

You could almost see his soft smile. “Hi, Y/N.”

You sputtered, “But where have you been? Where are you? Is everything okay?”

There was a sigh and another noise that sounded like Brian shifting the phone from one ear to the other. “How many times must you ask before you realise that I can’t give you the answer you want?”

There was no bite to his tone, just a rawness that suggested he didn’t want to worry you by not telling you what was going on, but also thought that details would weigh you down with problems that shouldn’t be yours. You understood the nature of his tone so well because it was one you were guilty of on a regular basis.

“I’m just worried about my friend,” you responded quietly. You didn’t want to pressure him, but nor did you want him to feel that he was alone in the world with his troubles.

Another sigh. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“What’ve I said about apologising, Brimi,” you muttered. “Why are you calling me?” You meant why was he calling you now specifically, though you also wondered why he was calling you. As far as you were aware, he hadn’t contacted Freddie again, and he hadn’t spoken to Roger or John at all.

“To tell you that I’ll be there tomorrow night.”

Tomorrow night, Thursday. For guitar lessons and derivation help.

“Brian, surely, if things are so bad that you disappear for a week, you know I’d understand if you didn’t turn up tomorrow.”

“No questions asked?” he said.

You didn’t hesitate. You didn’t have to, for there was no doubt in your mind. “No questions asked.”

He laughed that gentle half-laugh of his, the one that expressed a resignation, a sadness, rather than mirth. It shattered you a little bit.

“I did say you were a wonderful friend. But I’ll be there tomorrow. Eight in the evening, if that’s alright?”

“Yeah,” you said, feeling a little dazed. “I live on Camden High Street. The rickety green house behind the Plaza Cinema.”

“I’ll try not to get lost,” he replied, a touch of his usual humour resurfacing. But good god did he sound tired, worn down and worn out. “Tell the others not to worry. I’ll be home soon.” He had the air of a man who had travelled the cosmos in their entirety, walked the sky and the path of the stars for eons, lonely but unafraid.

He breathed quietly, “Good night, Y/N.”

It was odd, you thought, how you were always saying good night to each other. Perhaps some kind of magic existed in the night that brought you together.

Oh, but it did exist— the magic was the stars.

“Good night, Bri. Safe travels.”

You put down the phone, and only then did it occur to you: he had not called the others.

He had called you.

⁺˚*·༓☾ ☽༓･*˚⁺

A/N: bit of a short one today, m’dears. sorry about that. maybe i’ll have to do a cheeky mid-week update... 🥰

taglist: @melting-obelisks @hgmercury39 @stardust-killer-queen

Masterpost / Part 4 / Part 6

[new-sandrafilter]

True Romance: Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet on reuniting for Little Women

They may be posing in an airy lower Manhattan studio, but Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan have a way of making you feel right at home. “I made a little playlist this morning,” Chalamet announces to the room. He syncs up his cell phone to the sound system, his boyish grin widening as Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” starts blaring. He returns to the camera, which snaps him and Ronan at a furious pace.

It’s their first joint cover shoot. He’s wearing a shimmery striped shirt with high-waist trousers; she’s rocking a shirtdress, fishnet stockings, and clear stilettos. He keeps cracking her up; she musses his hair with doting affection. During a break that follows, he wanders, gripping a paper bag stuffed with assorted bagels — from Tompkins Square Bagels, which Chalamet, a lifelong New Yorker, insists are the best in the city — and offering one to anyone in his path. He sings and dances — very Elio-in-the-town-square-like — to Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues.” He creeps behind a distracted Ronan before spooking her with a yelp. “I didn’t even know you were there!” she exclaims, reddening from the fright but with a smile so lovingly at ease, you sense she’s used to the prank.

They’ve known each other, after all, for some time. About three years ago, Ronan, now 25, and Chalamet, 23, met filming Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, in which Ronan’s irrepressible heroine (briefly) romances Chalamet’s douchey amateur musician. They reunited with Gerwig last year, on the heels of Lady Bird’s Oscar-nominated success, for a bigger undertaking: a remake of the oft-remade Little Women (Dec. 25). Ronan and Chalamet slipped into the roles of tomboyish Jo March and buoyant Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, best friends who ultimately break each other’s hearts. Their courtship ranks among American culture’s oldest tales of unrequited love — made indelible by Katharine Hepburn and Douglass Montgomery, Winona Ryder and Christian Bale, and so many others — yet finds, in the hands of two of the most compelling actors of their generation, galvanizing new life.

That goes, in fact, for the whole of Gerwig’s Little Women. Her version certainly contains the snow-globe coziness of treasured adaptations past, but also carries a fizzy emotional authenticity and attention to detail. The film is remarkably lived-in, too: This take on Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, which follows Jo and her three sisters pre– and post–American Civil War, feels plucked straight from the text in the best way, with siblings fighting like siblings, love and loss and hope and pain vividly experienced on screen.

Ronan and Chalamet’s charming big sister–little brother dynamic is not unlike the one that Jo and Laurie share in Little Women. Watch the actors play off one another, and the film’s tender realism clarifies itself: Their on-camera intimacy is just as palpable behind the scenes. Indeed, after shooting Lady Bird for a few weeks, the pair hung out regularly over the next year, making the awards-circuit rounds and scoring lead-acting Oscar nominations — Ronan for Lady Bird, Chalamet for Call Me by Your Name — before swiftly signing on to Little Women. In advance of filming in Concord, Mass. (the actual setting of the book), Gerwig and producer Amy Pascal gathered the large production’s cast and crew for rehearsals at a house just outside the town. For Ronan and Chalamet, the contrast between this and their early Lady Bird days was immense. “I felt very prideful… about how big it had gotten, how many people were there,” Chalamet recounts. “On Lady Bird it was, like, 25 people hanging out in a house!”

They fell back into each other’s rhythms instantly. “He keeps me on my toes — I’m never quite sure what he’s going to do next,” Ronan says. “That only progressed more and grew more. It helped that we do have a very natural rapport with each other…. These two characters physically need to be very comfortable with one another. They’re literally intertwined for half the film.” Chalamet adds: “In the least clichéd way possible, it really doesn’t feel like [I’m] acting sometimes [with her].”

Chalamet credits Gerwig, too, for establishing a playful, comfortable atmosphere. He thinks back to his first day of rehearsal: He reunited with Ronan. He introduced himself to Emma Watson (who plays the eldest March sister, Meg). He was guided into a third-floor conference room of a “random building” where, “all of a sudden, there was a full dance class going on.” He recalls fondly: “Everyone breaks down and becomes a little kid. This job is so trippy in that regard — you want to be serious, you want to be professional, and then it’s almost best when you’re able to be 12 years old. When it’s someone you’re actually friends with, it makes it easier.”

Ronan smirks, gearing up for a jab: “We’re not friends!” Delighted, Chalamet keeps the bit going. “We’re not friends,” he says, solemnly. For once, they’re not very convincing.

Greta Gerwig doesn’t remember a time before she knew Jo March. “[Little Women] was very much part of who I always was,” the writer-director, 36, says. “It was something my mother read to me when I was growing up. It’s been with me for a very long time.”

She joined Sony Pictures’ new Little Women adaptation when she was hired to write the script in 2016. Once Lady Bird bowed the next year, she emerged as a candidate to direct the film. “Greta had a very specific, energized, kind of punk-rock, Shakespearean take on this story,” Pascal says. “She came in and had a meeting with all of us and said, ‘I know this has been done before, but nobody can do it but me.’” She got the gig.

In her approach, Gerwig drew on her lifelong relationship with Little Women; beyond childhood, she discovered new, complex layers to the novel, and in turn to Alcott’s legacy. “As a girl, my heroine was Jo March, and as a grown lady, my heroine is Louisa May Alcott,” she says. It’s perhaps why Gerwig’s Little Women feels like the most adult — and modern — version of the story that’s reached the screen to date. The movie begins with the March sisters in adulthood — typically where the narrative’s second half begins — and unfolds like a memory play, shifting back and forth between that present-day frame and extended flashbacks to the childhood scenes etched in the American literary canon.

In that, Gerwig finds fascinating, fresh areas of exploration regarding women’s lives: the choices society forces them to make, the beauty and struggles of artistic pursuit, the consequences of rebellion. Jo’s journey as a writer anchors Gerwig’s direction; tempestuous Amy (Florence Pugh) gets more of a spotlight as she matures as a painter (and Laurie’s eventual wife); and Meg is realized with newfound nuance: “We felt it was important to show Meg juggling all her roles — a mother, a wife, a sister — whilst also celebrating her dreams, despite them being different to those of her sisters,” says Watson. But Gerwig doesn’t see herself as reinventing the wheel. “A lot of the lines in the film are taken right from the book,” she explains. “When Amy says, ‘I want to be great or nothing’ — she says that in the book! I don’t think we remember that, but she does say it.” Gerwig also loves one line spoken by the sisters’ mother, Marmee (Laura Dern), also revived in this version: “I’m angry almost every single day.”

Gerwig compiled a “bible” filled with cultural references: to Whistler tableaux of family life, to David Bowie–Jean Seberg hairdos that inspire the look of Jo’s mid-film cut, to Alcott family letters. “I wanted it to be footnote-able,” Gerwig says. “I wanted to point to it and say, ‘This is where this is from.’” She considers Alcott’s text sacred: “I wanted to treat the text as something that could be made fresh by great acting.”

Beyond those charged but less quoted Little Women lines are its famous ones — throw-pillow staples like Jo’s “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” that no adaptation is complete without. The actors rehearsed these “almost like a song,” pushing to move through them with a rapid musicality. “We [read] the book out loud,” says Dern. Gerwig expected the script’s words to be memorized precisely. “I knew I wanted them to get this cadence that felt sparkly and slightly irreverent,” she says. “I wanted to make them move at the speed of light.”

She poured the same love into iconic scenes, like Jo and Laurie’s ebullient dance that follows their first meeting. Here it goes on longer — and more vibrantly — than in any previous iteration. (Ronan says they filmed it at 3 a.m., to boot, adding, “We must have done it, like, 30 times.”) Then there’s the devastating moment when Laurie asks Jo to marry him and she rejects his proposal. Gerwig tasked the two actors to unleash here. “Emotions just bubble over,” Ronan says. “[Greta] just let us go with it, wherever it went, from take to take. What I loved about that scene is that every take would be different emotionally. It didn’t have the same trajectory.

“The two of us, it’s a relationship I have with no other director,” Ronan continues. “She makes me feel like I can try anything.”

As Ronan and Chalamet emerge from their photo-studio dressing area in impossibly chic new ensembles — she donning a form-fitting knit sweater, he a silky, ruffled top — their creative energy fills the space. They try out different poses, debating concepts and ideas with each other on the fly; at one point he wraps his arms around her waist, and she quips to no one in particular, “We’re expecting our first.” Camera snap.

They’re modeling a new brand of movie stardom — pursuing projects with a point of view, adamantly being themselves in the public eye, subverting gender norms. Their androgynous fashion performance here reflects their wardrobe shake-ups in Little Women: Gerwig and Oscar-winning costumer Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina) had the two actors swapping clothes throughout filming, to reinforce the masculine-feminine fluidity between Jo and Laurie. “They are two halves,” as Pascal puts it. “These are really bold characters that are really different than you’ve seen them before.”

And just as Gerwig expressed a need to direct Little Women, Ronan knew in her bones she needed to play Jo. She’d first encountered the story via the 1994 film when she was 11, and later read the book, feeling an immediate kinship with the young woman she’d come to portray. “When Louisa describes Jo, it felt like someone describing me physically: sort of gangly and stubborn and very straightforward, and went for what she wanted.” At an event for Lady Bird, she — in a very Jo kind of way — just “went at it” by approaching Gerwig. “I said, ‘So I want to be in Little Women, but only if I’m playing Jo.’” (Chalamet, for his part, was asked by Gerwig, “Hey, want to do another movie?” He responded: “Yes. Yes, please.”)

Over months of living in Concord with her castmates, Ronan discovered new depths within herself: “Jo’s ethos is ‘Everything everyone else is doing, I’m going to do the opposite.’ [I had] to try things that I’d never tried before. Be a bit messier with a performance.” Gerwig set up etiquette lessons for the cast; whatever the instructor said (“Don’t shake hands! Don’t gesticulate with your arms!”), Ronan made sure to ignore it. She speaks now of this as freeing, even transformative. “I felt like I had tapped into something I’d never gotten the opportunity to tap into before, or I just didn’t have the guts to tap into myself,” she says. “Finding that was just amazing.”

Shortly after wrapping Little Women, she filmed Wes Anderson’s next film, The French Dispatch — marking her third time costarring with Chalamet, who plays a central role. As for now? Ronan is taking a little break. “I’ll wait for the right thing to come along,” she says. “It’s lovely to be in a position at this moment where I can wait for the absolute right thing.” Same goes for Chalamet — he shot Netflix’s The King (out Oct. 11) right before Little Women and just completed production on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation. “It’s the first time in almost two years I’ve gotten a breath, so I’m savoring it.”

It’s been a long day. They’re back in comfy clothes; Ronan is taking a late lunch. It feels like both actors — as another whirlwind of acclaim and press and romance-shipping awaits — are at a kind of peace, exhausted but satisfyingly so. Little Women is the biggest movie either has done to date; more attention, as they inhabit such revered characters, is sure to follow. “I just haven’t thought about it that way,” Ronan admits. “Maybe because it’s just Greta — even though it’s on a much bigger scale, she wanted it to feel like Lady Bird.”

Ronan understands the timeless power of Little Women, of course: “It’s as important to tell Little Women right now as it would be at any point in our lifetime.” She points to this pop culture climate of “celebrating female friendships and sisterhood,” and continues, “It’s a story that’s full of love. That will always be relevant.”

She turns toward Chalamet, and you realize the love they brought to Alcott’s classic is what first blossomed between them on Lady Bird. “I love that in Lady Bird, you broke my heart,” she says to him softly. “In Little Women, I got to break your heart.” (Chalamet, ever the goofball, finds an obvious opening: “Yes, that’s true. Then I married your sister. Ha, ha, ha!”)

If this all sounds a little idyllic, well, neither actor — nor Gerwig, nor Pascal, nor the rest of the cast — can do much to convince you otherwise. Shifting back to Little Women’s timelessness, and reflecting on Ronan’s comments about it, Chalamet says, “I don’t know how to add to that.” Instead he turns back to his costar, his expression suddenly sincere, filled with gratitude. “But if I can add one little dose of information,” he says with a nervous laugh. “And not just because she’s sitting next to me.” He credits Ronan with bringing that “timeless energy.” He says “thank God” they were able to make the movie. “It’s so rare with Saoirse — I’m so f—ing grateful to get to work with her,” he says. “Whatever book I write for myself when I’m older, to look back on —” He stops himself. “Well, this is a bigger conversation.”

But Ronan, chuckling, doesn’t let him off the hook. “Will I have, like, a chapter?” And Chalamet laughs — another opening, another chance to act with his greatest scene partner, to see what journey of creation and discovery they’ll go on next. “A chapter of Saoirse,” he says.

At this rate, one chapter won’t suffice.

[hlupdate]

Harry Styles sumptuous new video for Lights Up took the world by storm last week. Exclusively for GQ, the young, half-American, half-British designer Harris Reed shares the inner workings of how Styles’ killer blue outfit for the brand-new solo song came together...

If you know about Harris Reed, you know. And if you don't? Well, keep up at the back. Reed is one of fashion's most exciting new talents, his designs lauded for their sparkly romance, their craft and unbridled otherworldliness. Reed came to GQ's attention a couple of years ago while he was still at Central Saint Martins, his designs already imbued with a silhouette that was both modern and nostalgic, all washed with an achingly cool, non-binary LA energy: his aesthetic has darkness, light, glamour and a non-threatening sense of their own sexiness. His designs aren't just gender-fluid, they're like wearing liquid gold.

Fashion's worst-kept secret is the fact that Reed has been working with Harry Styles for a couple of years now, making one-off outfits for the singer's spectacular stage shows and offering the musician looks that seem in harmony with his renewed sense of self and megawatt style. Last week, when Styles' lascivious, wonton, sweaty and damn good new song, "Lights Up", was blasted out into the world, we noticed it was one of Reed's bespoke designs that the artist had decided to wear for his second solo jaunt. As the video caught fire and went global, we called the ever-charming Reed to talk to him about working with Styles, how the outfit for "Lights Up" came about exactly and just how far he thinks Styles is willing to go with his new covetable gender-blurring aesthetic...

GQ: Hey Harris, nice talking to you again. How's it going?

Harris Reed: "Well, I have a stinking cold, which is the worst. Especially when you are supposed to be working and selling a collection, it can seem like it's ruining your life. But it's OK, I will get through it."

Congratulations on your design for Harry Styles' outfit for "Lights Up". You must be thrilled?

"Thank you, I am really happy. And it's cute as well that Harry made his little icon photo on Instagram an image of the outfit from the video. Quite pleased to say the least."

When did you first start working with Harry Styles?

"My big connect with Harry goes back to Harry Lambert, his stylist, who was the first person I ever worked with and the first person who pulled in any of my clothes years ago. I had that relationship with him starting about two years ago and after a while [Lambert] told me, 'I think you're ready, even though you're right at the beginning of your career, to meet this person...' I pulled some designs together – I didn't really know who it was at this point – but I put together some references. Jimi Hendrick and [David] Bowie and Mick Jagger – you know, just classic rock’n’roll iconic frontmen whom I could see in the designs. Then that's when I heard that it was actually for Harry Styles."

When did you first meet Harry?

"It was November 2017 at one of his shows, at the Hammersmith Arena, and I got a text message from Harry Lambert saying, 'OK, just meet us at the stage door.' It was insane – a sea of screaming girls, men and women were fainting and being taken away in ambulances... I was like, 'What the fuck?' It was insane. And so I found the stage door and went up to this woman who was wearing this huge red coat and I went, 'Hi, I am here to see Harry Styles.' Obviously she laughed in in my face, saying something like, 'Who the fuck are you?' I replied, 'I am going to be Harry Styles' designer.' Like that, I'm not sure where the bravado came from! She goes, 'Of course, come with me.' I was led me through the crowd and right then and there I met Harry and the rest is history, I guess."

How much steer did Harry give you initially for the clothing?

"Honestly, Harry [Styles] was truly the way I envisioned. I think it was Harry Lambert who originally gave me some references for the first work I did for him. It was never a strict brief, but initially I only had about a day to put something together, like, the day before. It was so late to the process. It was more how I could see my designs adapting for him. And then when I went into the meeting I was like, 'Let's do ruffles!' I went a bit crazy, and that's when [Styles] got a lot more involved and was steering me in the direction he wanted. But Harry [Styles] was so open to what I saw for him and what I wanted was an old-world elegance rather than seeing some hot guy in skinny jeans and a T-shirt jumping around on stage – which can work and is amazing - but I wanted to make this aesthetic far more romantic. Watching him as he performs on stage, he is so explosive and amazing at dancing and moving around... Listen, I have so much respect for Gucci and what they do for him, but because of that relationship he was wearing so many suits, so I felt like what I could offer was more fluid, a flounciness or a different silhouette, billowy sleeves and so on. Even the outfit I did for the 'Lights Up' video was sleeveless and the trousers had a slight flare, so he could dance and do his pelvic thrusting, which he loves to do."

The outfit for Lights Up, when did you start working on this particular style moment for him?

"I was coming back from my week-long hiatus in LA during the summer after finishing at Gucci, so I was exhausted. I was in New York and Harry [Lambert] got in contact to say, 'Hey, I don't know if you're up for this but Harry would love you to do something for the next video.' All top secret, of course. All he sent me were two Pantone colours of blue with a note: 'It needs to be in this shade of blue; I can't tell you too much else.' And I was like, well, OK. And at the time I wasn't drunk... But let's say I was enjoying myself in NYC and it was really late at night and Harry [Styles] was actually there shooting his Rolling Stone cover and, as a coincidence, his stylist was like, 'Can you get some ideas to me really quickly. He needs to be able to move in it and it needs to look like he's about to go on stage and take the world.' So I kind I thought, 'movement', 'take the world' and 'stage' and got to work..."

Did you design it straight away?

"Yeah, I was in a bar, [The Bowery Hotel] so I asked the barman for a napkin and he handed me this piece of paper and I did a chicken scratch drawing and sent it back to Harry right away. He was like, 'This is perfect.' I did so many more sketches at the time, but he liked this one, it was so easy and clean and it reminds me a bit of David Bowie's 'Dog Days' but more sparkly and upbeat and less linen and long hair."

Did you have time for fittings and so on?

"Erm, no! We made the piece literally in three days. I got back from NYC with that sketch and they were leaving on a plane to do the video imminently. So I landed in London, went to all my favourite fabric shops in Soho, running around like a crazy madman with all these Pantone swatches of fabric. I have dozens of photos of all these different hues of blue. We ended up using a blue silk moire as it needed to be water resistant, or not water resistant, just be able to work with water, so reflective and shiny without being too heavy and not too hot, as the video was being filmed in South America. And we didn't have any time to do a fitting, so I had to fit the whole outfit on myself. Harry and I have very different body proportions so we were just very lucky. I remember they flew to South America to shoot the video and Harry [Styles] texted me, 'It fits! It works!' And I was in fucking heaven. I didn't sleep for a solid three days doing that outfit so I was thrilled."

This isn't the first outfit you've made for Harry Styles. Where are all those incredible one-off designs stored? Surely this archive must be preserved somewhere?

"I can't say where it is located, but everything goes to an archive. It's basically like a giant refrigerator – a frozen vault – somewhere in London where I am not going to disclose. But the clothes all have 24 hours surveillance, which you can look at via an iPad, specifically done for his outfits, and they have all been cryogenically frozen in time to preserve them. That's also what is more surreal for me. After his first solo tour that I produced 14-15 looks for – he wore about six or seven – I was wondering where the others were and he was like, 'Don't worry, they are all under surveillance.' I was like, 'Oh, that's chic.'"

Can you tell us what is next in the pipeline for you and Mr Styles?

"Hmm... Let me see what can I say. I think people can expect some pretty crazy, fabulous things coming. I can't say too much. I think with Harry I am hoping this is really just the beginning and as he evolves with his own music, and I evolve as a young designer, I hope we can work on more possible projects and clothes and... things!"

Do you hear the music before you make the outfits for him?

"I think the way he speaks about the music, the way he speaks about the process is a real influence on me as a designer. I was lucky enough to go an see him in the studio this summer, and just seeing the passion and the ideas... I am someone who talks a lot with my hands and he's the same, like he's really orchestrating his whole universe. Even the way the 'Lights Up' video was teased, it's never just music with him as for me it's never just clothes – it's the message too. That is what inspires me. I hope I get to hear little teasers of new music along the way, although I always have his stuff sort of on a loop in the studio anyway... Old school rock’n’roll and dashes of Harry Styles along the way."

Do you ever get intimidated by the fact these designs will make up part of his musical legacy?

"Honestly, from a design perspective, I don't worry, because when he tells me he loves something nothing else really matters. And because I'm not just designing a black T-shirt or a simple pair of trousers, I am making a statement, so it actually takes the pressure off me. I don't worry about it if he doesn't. I worry more about a seam splitting open. I remember he wore a few outfits for his big tour of Asia and I made all those outfits on my £50 sewing machine while eating chicken nuggets at five in the morning. I was still studying, and I don't have a proper atelier, so its those technical worries that are the things that stress me out. People don't know this but there's a picture in Rolling Stone where he is near naked holding a ping pong bat and the caption is something like, 'Harry waiting for a garment to be fixed' and it was my garment and the zipper had ripped right off. But he sort of says, 'Let's take this fashion risk together', so nothing else matters. As I said, if he loves it, I am happy."

Ever feel like you're pushing him too far with your designs?

"[Laughs.] He is so lovely and I don't think he ever wants to tell someone 'no' but there's definitely been a time when I laid out the designs from the most timid to the craziest, and when we got the craziest, he does this thing with his lips where he smiles, but he he's like, 'OK, we're not going to go this far.' But it probably involved an outfit with his ass hanging out or some huge Liberace cape... So he's always open, but sometimes I can see in his eyes that he's not quite there with me. I try to read those little mannerisms."

[ancientbooshartifacts]

Do Not Touch On Pain Of Death (This Especially Means You, Vince)

Author: Thieving_Gypsy

Year: 2008

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Howince

It’s been a slow morning in the shop, not even a single customer, so when Howard hears the clomp of Vince’s platforms on the stairs he can’t even be annoyed at how stupidly late he is. He’s too bored to be annoyed. He gets his pencil and notebook ready and waits to be entertained. “Well?” Vince is grinning like the village idiot. “Well what?” “Let’s have it. What happened this time, you Goth Juiced yourself to the wall and had to wait for it to wear off? "No, I was reading.” “…are you ill?” “I ain’t as thick as you think I am.” Howard hears the words first, then he realises Vince is reading them off the stack of paper he’s holding, then he realises what the stack of paper is, and then he wants to die. Casual, he thinks desperately, stay casual, some of those words have more than one syllable, surely he’s not managed to read much… “What’s that you’ve got there?” he asks, as nonchalantly as he can manage, all the while edging down behind the counter towards Vince, to grab the manuscript away and burn it or eat it or anything, but Vince is far too quick, even on his ridiculous shoes. He dances away easily, hooting giggles and shuffling through the pages to find something else. “Je vais lecher ton foutre. What’s that even mean? Oh no, wait, this bit’s well good, where is it… oh yeah, this: ‘In seconds he’s got the kid thrown onto his front, his hands bound to the bars on the headboard with a couple of Moon’s ties. He fucks him roughly until the kid’s in tears, he bites his shoulder and his fingers stab bruises into his hips and he scrapes a harsh red line down his spine with the barrel of his gun and imagines how it’d feel to shoot him in the small of the back’… Yeah, I know I said you’re meant to express yourself and get all your anger out, but I didn’t mean you should write a novel where you basically tie me to beds and rape me at gunpoint.” He doesn’t sound freaked out or pissed off, he’s just laughing hysterically. Somehow, that’s worse. “It’s not you, is it? It’s only a draft, that’s why it’s under my bed in a triple-padlocked box that’s bound with chains and marked Do Not Touch On Pain Of Death (This Especially Means You, Vince). I just borrowed your name until I thought up a better one.” “Yeah right! What do you mean it’s not me? A Cockney ragamuffin who likes Bowie? I’m telling you something, Bryan Ferry’s not gonna be happy when he hears you’ve made him into a child abuser. And Bollo, you know he hates being called a monkey, he’s gonna rip your face off.” They’re on the floor before Howard’s even realised he’s vaulted the counter, fighting like schoolboys, twisted sheets of paper flying everywhere. Vince won’t stop laughing, even as Howard digs his fingers between Vince’s skinny ribs, bruisingly hard, just the final warning before he thumps him square in the middle of his precious face. “You have no idea what makes good literature, you sparkly little tit. If we spelunked the cave of your knowledge it would be a very short expedition indeed, sir, 'cause you’re not even a halfwit, you’d have to go to evening classes to study to be a halfwit - ow, ow!” Vince seems to have too many elbows and knees, jabbing Howard all over like he’s being trampled into the floor by a swarm of women in stiletto heels. He struggles for the upper hand, rolling them over and knocking thngs off shelves, eventually resorting to tickling Vince under the arms to make him let go of the pages, which only makes the laughter even worse. “If you ever read anything with more intellectual content than Heat maybe you’d understand-” “What’s to understand? You fancy me, you wrote dirty stories where I fancy you back, the end.” He’s so ticklish he’s laughing in little screams now, thrashing around on the shop floor like a fish trying to get away from Howard’s merciless fingers, but what he lacks in basic intelligence he makes up for with his vice-grip, honed carefully through years of training himself to make the most of Topshop sales - when he sees something he wants, he grabs it and there’s nothing and nobody in the world that can make him let go. Not even tickling. “Get off, you old freak, you’re creasing my cape, I wanna finish reading.” “You get off, don’t touch me, and don’t touch my things! I never said you could read that!” “You mentioned that gay phase in Spain but I never knew you write pornos, 'specially not about me and you.” He’s weak and sweaty from laughing and fighting. Howard fixes all his attention on getting the last papers out of his hand, but Vince folds them and flings the hem of his cape out the way so he can shove them down the back of his jeans - then he knees Howard gently in the balls, and Howard collapses like it was a sledgehammer, the fight suddenly flooding out of him like liquid from a dropped bottle. He lets Vince grab his wrists and pin them on the floor above his head, because Vince is sitting astride his thigh like he’s riding a horse and his knee is still there at the fork of his legs like a warning and if he moves at all - at all - then the rigid little problem in his pants is going to make itself unmistakably known. Vince has stopped laughing, finally, but he’s still kind of smirking. His hair’s falling into his eyes. He shakes his head to get rid of it, but it falls back in a soft little black swoop, like always. Howard can’t help it, he moves as if to push it back for him and tuck it behind his ear, but Vince’s fingers are still tight around his wrists, putting just enough pressure on for the pointy protrusions on his wristbones to start feeling sore. “As if you’d ever get all dommie like that, anyway! You’re my bitch, it’s the worst-kept secret in the world.” “How dare you, sir?” “See? You even call me sir.” “I call everybody sir.” “Then you’re everybody’s bitch.” “Shut your mouth.” “Go on, then.” He stands up suddenly, whips his cape off, carefully removes the folded pages, and stretches out over the counter, sinuous like an eel, which makes Howard the wrong kind of uncomfortable as well as the right kind. The lights turn him all green under the chin like an underripe buttercup, and he’s smirking like the devil. Howard gets to his feet too, slow and shaking, and he doesn’t quite meet Vince’s eyes but he looks everywhere else, his stupid grinning mouth and the rough choppy ends of his hair and he notices the way his bare elbows and forearms are pressing on the surface and starting to tinge red - anything except how tight his stupid polka-dotted jeans must look on his arse when he’s bent over like this. “What?” “Go on. Let’s have it. Get it out your system. Sir,” he adds, looking back over his shoulder in a calculated mockery of coy. Howard could quite happily wring his neck, never mind anything else, but then Vince wiggles impatiently and it’s out of his system before he can really think about it. * Twenty seconds later Vince is holding a bag of frozen peas to Howard’s sprained wrist and, not unkindly, he says, “Maybe you should keep your dirty bender fantasies in biro and leave the practical stuff to people who know what they’re doing, yeah?”

[robinrunsfiction]

Weapons of Clairvoyance - Chapter 15

Chapter 14

Author’s Note: There are some violent moments in this chapter Song recommendations for this chapter: Heroes by David Bowie, Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back by MCR, and The End. by MCR

A couple of nights later you and Gerard pulled up a few blocks back from your destination. High heels in hand, you crept behind him down the back alley to your destination, Brendon already waiting for you.

"Well don't you kids clean up nice?" He commented. "Gerard would you do us the honors of letting us in?"

"With pleasure," he replied. In a blink he had disappeared and a faint buzzing was heard as a fly went into the exhaust vent on the side of the building.

You started to shiver as you put on your shoes and waited for Gerard to open the door.

"So, you and Death, or Sarah, or whatever. What's the deal with you two?" You asked.

"We have a mutual appreciation for the macabre and what the other can do. And she's fucking gorgeous."

You nodded in agreement. "But is it like you see in the movies where you touch her, you die?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Brendon replied wiggling his eyebrows and you burst out laughing.

Gerard opened the back entrance and saw you under the dim streetlight, head tossed back laughing. He wanted nothing more than to kiss you and tell you a thousand times how beautiful you were. He wanted to finally tell you he loved you, to take away from this mess, back to the cabin where you were finally alone. But tonight you had to risk your lives again.

You glanced over then and spotted him staring and smiled. "Ready?"

He nodded and you and Brendon snuck through the open door, bags in tow.

“Are they really so arrogant as to think no one could possibly try to get in the back way and not have any security there?” You asked in a hushed tone.

“The bastards here believe they’re completely untouchable. There have been indictments, federal investigations, blackmail, and at least one assassination attempt, but these fucks have managed to come out not only unscathed, but ahead,” Brendon explained. “it’s so much more than what they’re doing to the Wonder Way twins and the rest of your gang.”

“We aren't twins,” Gerard muttered as you arrived just outside the main ballroom. Brendon stashed the bags and turned back to you both.

"Board meeting starts in an hour, take advantage of their hospitality and I'll signal you when it's time," Brendon instructed before he slipped off.

You and Gerard stood at the edge of the room as people filled in. You felt appropriately dressed in your sparkly navy blue gown. How Brendon had procured it, you weren't sure you wanted to know, but you were even more willing to commit to his plan when you saw it involved that dress.

Gerard had been awestruck when you came out of the bedroom all done up for the evening. His jaw had dropped as he took your hand and twirled you around before catching you in a kiss. You were equally struck by the black on black suit he was wearing. It looked like it was made just for him.

"These pricks get rich off other people getting sick and suffering, and they throw a party to celebrate the profits, fucking disgusting," Gerard muttered, his mood sour.

"They're about to get what's coming to them," you replied. You tried to remain optimistic, but it was difficult given the nature of the situation.

After a few minutes the music changed, the familiar notes of Heroes by David Bowie began causing you and Gerard to look at each other.

"How dare they play this song?" You asked indignantly. “Now I’m even less remorseful for what we're going to do.”

"Its still our song, it's always gonna be ours," he said turning to you, offering you his hand. You took it and he pulled you close. You danced like you did in the living room of his house. You rested your head against his shoulder and sighed. Why couldn't it all be moments like this? Quiet, sweet moments, not loud violent scenes. But these people were killing innocent people, or allowing them to suffer at a profit. They had to be stopped and you had the ability to do just that.

When the song ended you looked up at Gerard and he kissed you one last time. "I think it's time to go,” he said.

~

Gerard and you found Brendon in a back hallway.

"The CEO is coming in shortly, (YN) you know what to do," Brendon said. You nodded in response. You hurried to your position near the women's restroom.

The CEO of Restoricom was a toad of a human. Old, balding, with a disgusting habit of smoking smelly cigars where ever he went, regardless of regulations. You saw him approaching and he was luckily by himself. From halfway down the hall, you caught his eye.

"Excuse me sir, can I bother you for a moment?" You asked in your best seductive voice, but you felt disgusting.

"As many moments as you need," he replied and you could feel your skin crawl.

"My friend is in the bathroom and her dress is caught. I can't seem to fix it, can you try with your strong hands?"

He hummed and looked you up and down. "What kind of fun you two having in there?"

"Come find out," you purred.

He followed you into the bathroom and you could see Sarah had appeared, as a pair of high heels was visible under the far stall of the bathroom.

"She's waiting for you in the last stall," you said and he sauntered up. You wondered how this vile old bastard didn't see this coming.

"Hello gorgeous," he said as he walked into the stall. Sarah didn't respond, the only sound was the large body hitting the floor.

You pulled your phone out of your purse and texted Gerard that the coast was clear. He came in quickly.

"Are you ok?" He asked as soon as he saw you.

"Yea, he didn't lay a hand on me. If you don't mind, I think I'll skip watching you make this transformation."

He laughed and you turned your back. "Ok, I'm going in there," he said in the same sleazy voice of the CEO and you heard the door shut behind him, then Brendon came in.

"Nicely done, ladies," he said looking at the figure on the floor.

"I know he's a disgusting old fuck, but I still feel... not bad, but, I don't know," you struggled.

"Don't feel bad," Sarah said sweetly. "His time was almost up anyway. Special priority for gross pigs."

Brendon pulled a baggie of a white substance and placed a bit near his nose and on the toilet seat.

"Heart attack brought on by an OD, right love?"

"Even the best coroner will believe it."

"You're the best," he said with a wink at Sarah. You smiled and rolled your eyes, feeling like quite the third wheel suddenly. "Ok, time for phase two. Let's see if those bastards can take the last chance they're being offered."

Gerard was in the room being used for the board meeting. He looked at the faces of the men who looked just like the man he was pretending to be.

"Gentlemen, I've had an epiphany. Our image is in need of a revitalization. I propose in the next fiscal year, we start focusing on more charitable efforts." He could barely get the words out before the roar of laughter erupted from the men at the table.

"Jesus man, what kind of hippie shit is that little mistress of yours slipping you?" One man near the front asked.

"It will be better for the bottom line in the long term-" Gerard started before he was interrupted again.

"Who gives a fuck? What matters is now," said another.

Gerard looked over the room. "Well gentlemen, so be it." And he began to transform into the most fearsome, demonic creature he could imagine. Looming over the table, the men began cowering in fear at the creature with bat like wings, horns, and red glowing eyes gnashing its teeth at them.

Suddenly the doors swung open, and you and Brendon strode in, gas masks covering both of your faces. Brendon pulled his mask up and looked at the scene in front of him.

"Ok baby, they're ready for you," he shouted. The men all looked at him dumbfounded. While they were distracted, Gerard changed into a small fly and flew out into the hall. You stepped back outside the door as Brendon pulled his gas mask back on and flipped the switch in his pocket, which began the flow of toxin into the room. Where Gerard had been standing, Sarah appeared, smiling sweetly at the men at first, but then her face turned dark and furious.

"You have played with death at your own profit for too long. Now it is my turn to restore balance!" She roared.

Brendon blew her a kiss as he backed out the door. You heard the lock turn from the inside as you and Brendon took off running for the exit.

Once outside you pulled the gas mask off and took a big gulp of fresh air. The majority of the party goers, lower level employees of Restoricom, would learn soon enough of the fate of the leadership of the company. Sarah would make it appear to be a carbon monoxide leak and no one should suspect a thing of the three strangers no one could remember seeing before that night.

A press release was issued the next morning indicating that the direction the CEO, who was found "near" the women's bathroom dead of a “heart attack”, wanted to take the company in a new, more charitable direction, instituting a free immunization program for children and exponentially growing their research department for new and experimental cures for many varieties of diseases.

In the chaos of the evening, Pete was able to get in and completely wiped the system of the division that was trying to eliminate magic and utilize seers. That portion of the CEOs notes did not make the external press release, but you were finally free to stop running, to stop looking over your shoulder at every turn.

~

The ride back to Gerard's house was quiet. Gerard had given you his suit jacket to keep warm, and you wrapped your arms tightly around yourself. It didn't sit quite right to you that the greedy bastards had paid with their lives for their crimes, but no one truly knew what they did. You had forced a lot of positive changes, but people who didn't deserve the credit would be remembered for more than the slime that they were. You let the side of your head hit the glass. You wanted to do more, somehow, but what more could be done.

"You ok, Sugar?" Gerard asked from the driver’s seat with a worried tone.

"It’s over, but it doesn’t feel done," you replied. "We aren't going to be chased, but it's been weeks, it's all the life I know now. Do I try to go get a regular job again? Do I go back to my place? What will everyone else think of what we’ve done?" All of the thoughts and worries come tumbling out of your mouth as the tears well up and you choked out a sob.

Gerard pulled over to the side of the country road and reached over to hold you close as you sobbed into his shoulder.

"It’s ok Sugar, it’s ok. We'll figure it out," he replied quietly, rubbing your back.

After a few minutes your sobs calmed down and he pulled back.

"Come on, let's go home," he said and you nodded and he placed a kiss on your lips. The conflicted emotions you felt were matched in Gerard, but he only felt guilt for putting you through this. He wished there was any other way this could have happened. He pulled back onto the road home and hoped there was any way you could love him after all this.

Thank you for reading this babes! The Spaces That Divide Us will begin posting Saturday June 22nd.

Tag List: @deadlovers

[cyclogenesis]

Cheating as a fic prompt because I already wrote this exact sentence in an ask weeks ago but tbh I have never stopped wanting it 'Ashton and Luke subvert gender stereotypes in a series of escalating dares!!!'

Influencer. Ashton/Luke. 968 words, also on AO3. 

Ashton acts like he’s the one who invented the concept of men wearing makeup, but Luke’s completely secure in the knowledge that this one started with him, at least in the band. None of them have ever minded a bit of nail polish but Luke was the one who upped the ante and went for rose gold. Suddenly now Ashton’s all roses and glitter as if Luke didn’t go glam rock first and get the new aesthetic going. Call him an influencer, it’s fine. 

“I’m really glad you’re wearing makeup too, Luke,” Ashton says. He leans in closer to the dressing room mirror, hogging it. Luke gracefully allows it. “It looks good on you. I think it’s a nice new visual direction for us as a band.” He carefully dips his finger into a pot of microfine gold glitter, then swipes it under his lower eyelashes. It catches in the light, sparkling like tears. 

“I’m going to put glitter on my eyelids,” Luke decides. Ashton gives him a skeptical look, as if wearing makeup like you’re supposed to is somehow controversial. At the last second Luke quails and pretends he wasn’t going for the black glitter shadow; it feels too easy to fuck up. What he puts on instead is sheer, a silvery blue that shifts in the light. “What do you think?” he asks Ashton, who’s pretending to do his hair but mostly looking at Luke out of the corner of his eye. 

“You look like an angel,” Ashton says. “A hungover angel.” 

Luke shrugs, pleased. He’ll take it. 

*

The YSL mascara isn’t cheap, but it is gold and sparkly. Also not as easy to put on as Luke had expected it would be, but whatever, he’s not some beauty guru, okay? Yet. 

“Mascara?” squawks Ashton. “Isn’t that a bit, you know?”

Luke waits for him to go on, serene. He has all day. He has all day, sparkly golden eyelashes, and a bitchin’ cat eye. 

“It’s just less Bowie and more Joan Jett at this point,” Ashton says finally, looking troubled. Looking also ethereal, with gold glitter fading to pink on his cheeks, and what looks like a light eye gloss as well. Luke’s fairly certainly he’s still winning this one, but it’s nice that Ashton’s willing to play. 

“Would you say you’re jealous that I can pull off Joan Jett better than you?” Luke asks. He bats his beautiful golden eyelashes.

“I think androgyny is sexy,” Michael says, passing by with a bottle of water from the fridge while also Facetiming his girlfriend. “Luke, you look really hot.” He aims his phone at Luke. 

“Wow, you do look really hot,” Crystal says. 

Luke preens.  

“I could do a Joan Jett thing!” Ashton says. “I look hot in eyeliner!”

From the dressing room couch Calum says, “You look hot in anything. Come do my glitter.” He doesn’t move from his position, lying down on his back with his eyes closed. 

Huffily, Ashton goes over and glitters up Calum’s cheekbones. 

“Do you think I’d look good in lipstick?” Luke asks Crystal and Michael. 

“100%,” Michael and Crystal agree. 

*

“You are such a fuck,” Ashton says, three days later, cornering Luke before their set as Luke expected he would, hoped he would. “Is this some weird competition we’re in? Are we one-upping each other with makeup, is that what’s happening? Some kind of femme-off?”

“So you admit you enjoy looking femme,” Luke says. Ashton’s leaned into it tonight, brought out the big guns: full on Fenty Trophy Wife highlighter on his cheekbones, glitter in his hair, skillfully applied gold eyeliner on a shimmering lid. His lips are bare, but Luke’s aren’t; it took some time at the local Sephora, but Luke’s got the perfect red flush on his lips courtesy Pat McGrath. He looks kissed, and roughly. He’s pretty sure the bratty thrill of one-upping Ashton - or something - is making him blush. He’s working it, anyway. “It’s okay, man. You can look pretty. You do look pretty.” 

“Masculine pretty though,” Ashton says, a little desperately. “Isn’t lipstick a bit too far?” He keeps staring at Luke’s mouth like he doesn’t understand it, like he wants to.

“It’s hot,” Luke says, taking care to approach gently, his fingertips light on Ashton’s jaw, tilting his face up a little closer. “Don’t you think it looks hot?” It’s a reckless, thrilling feeling to toy with Ashton like this - or not to toy with him, not when he looks so torn, not when Luke could help him understand. “Don’t you wanna try it?”

“Yeah,” Ashton says finally, licking his lips, his hands warm on Luke’s shoulders, so Luke leans in. Ashton closes his eyes, and Luke kisses him firmly, careful with a closed mouth that makes him want more, harder, to see what Ashton would let him do, what Ashton would want to do to him - but after not enough time Ashton’s pushing back, breaking away with a gasp of breath and a red, kissed mouth. Luke reaches out automatically to fix a little smear at the corner of Ashton’s mouth where his kiss grew clumsy, too eager, and Ashton lets him, his eyelids fluttering closed, centering himself. 

“You look beautiful,” Luke tells him, his voice breaking a little in the middle of it, something else in him breaking at the thought of more than this, Ashton looking after him, telling him he’s lovely and being good to him. Glitter-smeared bedsheets and breakfast in the morning with someone who really loves him. Attention from someone who actually knows him and loves him anyway. Ashton, just Ashton. 

Ashton giggles a bit, his cheeks flushing red under gold, and says, “We both do.” He holds out his hand for Luke to take, his grip warm and sure, and leads them both to the stage. 

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

categorized and generalized all the types of tumblr aesthetics i have come across.

I have been going through archives for the last five years on tumblr now, and i can’t help but notice that a lot of blogs are the same. There seems to be a pattern in the sorts of aesthetics i run up against. So, in my exhaustion, i tried coming up with all the different aesthetics, and i tried to put them into certain categories. Obviously, some of these categories are mixed with others.

PORN TUMBLR

-general porn

-lesbian/gay general

-kinky stuff

-daddy dom stuff - tied up boobies

-bears

-just unrealistic nudes

-just realistic nudes

-vintage porn, and occasionally porn that is so old that it was drawn by someone in the 1800′s

- hentai and erotic animal people cartoon characters going at it

-person who took about five pictures of themselves naked five years ago who has not come back

RICH KID TUMBLR

-super modelesque kids in their super rich cool kid clothes and fashion in Starbucks taking pictures of their food and their trips to Europe in 1st class

- incredibly expensive looking sunglasses

-rich kid travel blogs with hundreds of thousands of notes of pictures from rich people buildings

-quotes that say 'be happy' or stuff about saying anyone can just travel anywhere at any time, just the general advice you might get from someone who doesn't know how the other half lives

- cats

VINTAGE TUMBLR

-the greatest generation stuff, forgotten early hollywood actors/actresses, very old movie gifs, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Carol Lombard, early Joan Crawford, Gone with the Wind ect..

-50's, 60's and 70's, Nancy Sinatra, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn – generally a lot of Audrey Hepburn

-Posts old advertisements and old cars, sometimes old toys, a few pinups, vintage comics, kinda weird

- vintage toy blogs - just toys, named and dated

-sometimes retrospace stuff

-sometimes just old comic book stuff

FEMINIST/ GENDER STUDIES TUMBLR

-intersectional feminists who post mostly text and back and forth writings, sometimes they fight 

-radfems and turfs, unpopular minority of angry at the intersectional feminists

- Fat Acceptance movement, chubby bunnies

-other girl's selfies, lots of girl power related drawings of gender symbols and the like, Grimes, being a witch, Courtney Love, sailor moon, and so forth, sometimes bleeds into soft grunge

-topics on transgender, gender fluid and others that have informative 

- asexual community

BLACK LIVES MATTER TUMBLR

-black lives matter awareness, police brutality, pointing out flaws in legal system

-lovely stylish selfies

-call outs of racism, lots of dialogue, and the extension of twitter

80's + 90's GIF TUMBLR

-like gifs of scratched up VCR obscure film openings, and repetitious obscure 80's gifs in general, everything is fuzzy and looks like it came from an 80' infomercial, kinda makes you feel scared

-90's gifs of Pee Wee Herman, Catdog, Clarissa Explains it All, Chucky Cheese, Fruit by the Foot, Beavus and Butthead, Bart Simpson, and so on

HIPPIE TUMBLR

-just like the rich kidz, only they have white kid dreads and post a lot of vanlife stuff, lots of festivals

-mostly psychedelic gifs, with occasional trippy art, Foster the People is their favorite band

-real hippies, who post pictures of communes and people making tyed dye things, nonsexual nudes with hairy women, Grateful Dead stuff

-Buddhist and Hindu quotes, sometimes lilies

SOFT GRUNGE TUMBLR

purple and pink skies, water, windows with lace

girls with pale skin and perfect make up, and chokers, bruises, sparkly skin

mermaid texture, mermaid hair colors

Lana Del Rey

kind of like 90's only more melty and pink

quotes about good vibes

Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless mind reference

moon print

dream pop bands from the early 90's

GROWN UP SOFT GRUNGE TUMBLR

picture of Uma Thurman overdosing in Pulp Fiction

lots and lots of flowers

lots of sensual pictures of pale skin under certain lighting

albino people

albino animals

pictures of sunrises

Reykjavic

kind of like the Soft Grunge, but just a little bit more subtle and film tumblry

ART BLOG TUMBLR

old roman art

chinese, japanese and korean art from long ago

renaissance and medieval art with religious context

just like medieval art of specifically torture

18th and 19th century portrait paintings

Scenic paintings of hills, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet

Dada, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Adolph Wolfie

Modern art that is squiggly, slimy, and bizzare, breaks art rules but looks good, David Shrigley

Modern Surrealists

ARTIST BLOG TUMBLR

posts really great homemade gifs that nobody knows about infrequently

blogs that only have the artwork of the blog owner – generally post infrequently and not given enough credit ever, except maybe one of there works has a whole bunch of notes

person who keeps painting the same thing over and over again and does it a lot for years at a time, 0 notes usually – who are you??

collage artists that mix 50's scenes with hyperspace backdrops

FILM BLOG TUMBLR

-Stanley Kubrick, Jean Cocteau, lots of black and white french films

-that movie where the two people are sitting on the ledge of a building and the other one jumps off

Clockwork Orange

-Paris, Texas

David Lynch

Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks (gets stolen by other kinds of blogs frequently)

Wim Wenders,

Rare film art from Poland in the 70's

Jans Svankmajer

Man Ray, Max Ernst,

cool quotes by philosopher, artist, psychologist, or film director

Amelie

sometimes Wes Anderson

PHOTOGRAPHY TUMBLR

abandoned places, gas stations, archaic cafes, falling apart amusement parks

uses too much dark fade out in the background pictures of fields and stuff, overused filtering – posted a ton three years ago and then left

just photostock

girl who takes pictures of herself in costume

Nature pictures, animal pictures ect..

person who just takes pictures of textures and minimalist buildings – usually colorful

person who's personal Instagram picture just automatically post to tumblr also, probably never checks up, usually pictures of them with friends as a pub

Indigenous pictures from around the world, some of them from books, some from National Geographic, some from other places

Super old pictures from old newspapers, the great depression, WW2 – generally black and white

MUSIC TUMBLR

Really likes Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Who, sometimes mixed with other vintage, often posts the same pictures and songs for years – you feel bad because no new music will be coming out from these artists

super cheesy Van Halen, Kiss, Styx, Ozzy person, Big Hair, likes 80's pin ups and skulls, sometimes into martial arts

super cheesy death metal fan, lots of pinups, corny black and white pictures of skulls and such

REALLY likes British Invasion, The Zombies, The Kinks, The Hollies, The Animals, will occasionally post Detroit girl groups from the 60's, some Velvet Underground, pictures of the Beatles girlfriends

Just David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. Maybe some New York Dolls

Old Blues and Jazz, Etta James, Son House, Nina Simone, pictures of Leadbelly and Howlin' Wolf and especially Miles Davis

really into post punk, Nick Cave, Siouxsie, Bauhaus, The Cure, Einsturzende Neubauten, Lydia Lunch, PJ Harvey and Rowland S. Howard, sometimes Morrissey. also generally mixes film and art blog stuff in with occasional feminist things

Just Morrissey, they call him Moz.

Fan clubs for specific bands that are newer and popular like Arctic Monkeys or Fallout Boy, but also ones blogs that really like emo lyrics from early 2000's and such – scene kids that are still scenin' it up

loves Jens Lekman, Belle and Sebastian, The Magnetic Fields and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Cigarettes After Sex. Usually posts really cute modern art, and uses tumblr mostly for writing, has the cutest hair cut and can pull off overalls, never posts too little or too much, extremely twee

HISTORY TUMBLR

ancient mesopotamia, greek and Egyptian history and relics

Blogs that are specifically about one place in one era - Ancient Russia, Ireland before it was taken over, precolonial India and so on

Samurai, Geisha, and scrolls

Swords, knights, castles, kings of Europe in general

Specific Wars, examples: 7 Years War, Revolutionary War, WW1 + 2

France from before the revolution – pictures of wigged men, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette

Jane Austen time era anything 18th and 19th century, slight excuse to post lots of Pride and Prejudice gifs with Keira Knightly and that Mr. Darcy in the rain

Outfits – just outfits that are really old

person who is obsessed with the Nazis and seems to like Hitler

Flappers and earlier 20th – often an excuse to post gifs of Downton Abbey

Vintage books, often children books, but sometimes others

DESIGN TUMBLR

really fucked up pictures of the Simpsons melting and stuff

gradient graphic art with symbols or words meant to convey a product that I don't understand for an obscure magazine subscription

graphic squiggles without form, minimalist graphic pictures of beach balls, tennis bats, and sneakers

bizarre smiley faces made from smaller smiley faces

80's inspired design

odd looking models with undercuts and no eyebrows

cartoon dogs and cats

just static and glitches. Nothing more, nothing less

either they make their own graphic designs and they rarely post, or they compile reblogs of everyone else's and they post all the time

WEIRDO TUMBLR

insane family pictures of family who all has mullet dressed as bumble bees

Lots of Robert Crumb, some vintage stuff, but nothing remotely main stream

Some of the modern art, but only the weirdest of it

claymation masks

Comix

Moebius

art from early Power Point

100 piece sculptures with melted toys

paintings of monsters

Steve Brule

children's fan art of Smokey the Bear – looks disturbing

Items that are too kitschy to be accepted by your average vintage indie blog

sometimes a specific blog centered around some kind of crazy event where everyone dresses completely insane

POLITICAL TUMBLR

the communists and Marxists

a mixture of BLM and LGBTQ stuff

the libertarians, anarchocapitalists, Ayn rand folk

the left wing anarchists, freegans, graffiti punks, garden punks, possums

informative left wing news that explains to us everyday how the GOP is fucking us

alt. right creeps who are simply here to be trolls and upset everyone else – anti SJW, that stupid frog, nationalists, trump supporters and such – irrelevant poorly thought memes

I miss Obama memes

Bernie Sanders forever and always folk

RAINBOW TUMBLR

pictures of rainbow candies, toys, designs, clothing and so forth all of it rainbow

people who post one color at a time, so when you go through their archive it's all gradient and neat looking – usually the pictures are a little stock photoish though

HALLOWEEN TUMBLR

Betty Page

The Cramps. Reverend Horton Heat

Psychobilly pin ups, old cars, burning skulls, vintage B horror movies, The Swamp Thing

Legitimately obsessed with the activities of Halloween – posts witches, devils, trick or treat candy, Bella Lugosi, The Monster Mash, Halloween decoration - and doesn't ever forget how many days away Halloween is

Jack the Skeleton

Freddy Krueger

FANCLUB TUMBLR

Superwholock

Hannigram

American Horror Story

K Pop and J Pop + Korean Drama

boy bands in general

Hamilton

My Little Ponies

Ghibli Studios

Various anime shows

fat Disney princesses

Super heroes

Pokemon

Big Bang Theory

Mighty Boosh

Monty Python

Phantom of the Opera

Labyrinth

Vampire Chronicles

Orange is the New Black

Breaking Bad

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter

Star Wars

Steven Universe

Adventure Time

Game of Thrones and Walking Dead

any television show really

Furry cartoons

lots of spacy quick anime chibi versions of characters who are hooking up and wouldn't normally in the show

scenes from movies with subtext that comes from a different movie or show

probably countless others i am not thinking of.

SPECIALTY TUMBLR

serial killer blogs

unexplained mysteries, ghosts, ufo's

pictures of galaxies with information (not sparkly silly ones with no context)

sewing and yarn

precious stones

cars

just gardening

just cats

religious blogs, either Islam, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist

specific animal blogs, snake, spiders, wild cats and such

science blogs about technology and stuff

NATURE TUMBLR

stock photoish pictures of camp grounds and misty mountains – often taken by the hippies

angelic looking deer, and occasional animal burials with flowers'

person who takes pictures of flowers all the time

granola type fellow who loves juicing and backpacking – doesn't get on tumblr much

BLACK AND WHITE GOTH TUMBLR

slenderman fan art, actually just about anything creepypasta related

you have to turn off the music when you visit their page because it's just too much

fan art of black eyed children

slit wrists

pictures that were turned into Gifs because they shake

taxidermy

screamo lyrics

Alice in wonderland with X's for eyes

gothic models

occasional serial killer

skulls and references to Edgar Allan Poe

GIF MEME TUMBLR

just a sea of Gifs and memes relating to anything about life ever – almost shitposting but not quite

eventually one of the gifs got 100,000 notes for it's relatability so they get a lot of traffic

lots of pictures and circumstances from The Office, Parks and Rec, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Nihilist memes

SOFTY TUMBLR

kind of a little girl dom thing going on

Kawai and lots of Japanese girls

cute colorful make up

plushies and toys

references to fantasy cartoons from the 80's, the last unicorn, or that one with the girls in that band

Polly Pockets, Furbies, trolls

gifs of stars and hearts

Sailor Moon

pink bedroom

baby animals

occasionally more on the vintage kitschy side

WICCA TUMBLR

ravens, bats, candles

pentacles and other symbols

crystals

sometimes there is dreads

occasionally, it is a serious practicing Wicca who posts spells and gives witch advice

lots of personal reflections

boobs

GROSS TUMBLR

Tim and Eric, Steve Brule centered blog that are mostly in the act to make you feel queezy

like, people eating cheerios with ketchup and people wearing shoes with the soles cut out, people putting their feet in spagetti, bad tattoos on foreheads

snails, beetles, bird doing mean things to people

mostly moldy things, moss, strange dolls

things that look like they came from the dark crystal,

delapitating bedrooms that once belonged to a little girl, torn wall paper, old porcelain dolls that are slightly upsetting

Clowns

occasionally a blog so gross you will be ruined for having seen it – Two Girls one Cup sort of thing

NERD TUMBLR

old video game start up pages

Super Mario Bros.

Other video game characters

chibis of video game characters interacting with one another

Final Fantasy references

randomly doesn't post for a year

SELF HELP TUMBLR

blog that gives dumb advice that only works if you were already happy anyway

either semi fake or oversimplified 'psyche facts'

blogs from people who suffer from addiction or mental illness and want help and use their blog to vent

blogs ran by people who enjoy crystal meth and don’t give a fuck.

worthy of mentioning, blogs that nobody ever posted a single thing or just one thing, like, really cryptic blogs that nobody could ever understand, blogs that were taken over by some kind of virus and they are trying to sell you male pattern baldness remedies, or they are now call absurdly pornographic things because the virus took over and now they are like blonde cumfuck creampie or something of that nature, and blogs were the person was basically saying they have found a girlfriend/boyfriend now and don’t need tumblr anymore so goodbye

and in my experience ...

anybody can post pictures of jiggly boobs

anybody can post Grace Jones

anybody can post a Bjork song

these seem to be universal truths that defy limitations

[briefboutsofmadness-blog]

My Top 5 Alternative Comedies

Hi guys!

A big passion for me has always been alternative comedy, through no fault of my own really. I was brought up watching shows like The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd, with my parents encouraging me to watch things that were a little “outside of the box”. I’m incredibly grateful of that, and now I wish to share with you my top five alternative comedies in the hope that you too may find a new show that you love! 

* A little disclaimer: these are British alternative comedies, simply due to the fact that I’m British, and because I haven’t yet stumbled across American/otherwise comedies with the same surrealism/cynicism that I enjoy. The closest thing I have found is Maria Bamford’s Netflix special Old Baby (which is excellent, by the way) in terms of surrealist American humour. But please, if you do have any suggestions for me to watch, I would love to give them a try!

#5: Snuff Box

 If you haven’t heard of this, don’t be surprised. To be quite honest, I only knew of it through my parents. To my knowledge, it was the result of a rejected first pitch (after which the writers just stopped caring so much), and aired only once late at night. Perhaps understandably so: the premise of the show is perhaps a little controversial. It follows the lives of two executioners, played by Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, and the episodes are interspersed with various sketches. The humour is rarely obvious, and certainly not laugh-out-loud. Really, I would recommend coming to the show with an open mind (as with most of these shows, actually!), as it’s certainly not for everyone. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and so it makes it onto the list!

 #4: Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace

 The premise of Darkplace is an interesting one. It is based around a fictional 70s hospital drama, with commentary from the “actors”, played by such comedy geniuses as Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry. What makes this show good though, in my eyes, is how bad it actually is. The show is made out to be some kind of legendary cult classic, when in fact there’s poor acting, shoddy sets and downright terrible directing. Once again, it’s not laugh-out-loud, but the solemn way in which they make a fool of themselves is what makes it so funny. If you enjoy mockumentary type shows, then I would definitely check this out.

 #3: The League of Gentlemen

 You may have already watched this show, or at least heard of it; it’s a bit less “cult” than some others on the list. My first experience with The League of Gentlemen was not exactly positive, due to my vivid recurring nightmares of Edward and Tubbs, the brother-sister/husband-wife duo. As I got older and actually watched the show, that nightmare then took the form of Herr Lipp, perhaps the creepiest character I’ve ever come across, along with a particularly unforgettable episode involving erotic asphyxiation. Creepy, unpleasant, downright disgusting. These all can be used to describe the show, so why would I be recommending it? Why, it’s all part of the charm of course! It’s funny, compelling, and entirely original. Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss both wrote and starred in the show, and it’s just entirely insane. If you’re easily offended/disturbed/disgusted, I would give it a miss. But for everyone else, I recommend it highly.

 #2: The Mighty Boosh

 Now, the only reason this is not at the top of the list is that I believe the next show deserves way more recognition than it gets, and The Mighty Boosh is already fairly popular (but we’ll get onto that in a second). The Boosh is hands-down my favourite show ever, and really I cannot recommend it highly enough. Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, two of my favourite comedy actors, wrote and fronted the show as unlikely pair Howard Moon and Vince Noir, a depressed jazz enthusiast and a sparkly egotistical culmination of goth/punk/whatever respectively. The episodes are original and highly entertaining (a man-fish mutation with female parts and an obsession with Baileys is a personal favourite of mine), it has incredibly catchy music (its lack of release still being a sore point for yours truly), and it’s genuinely so funny. The humour is very surreal, but not overly so that it becomes more abstract than funny. It’s hugely enjoyable, and I cannot recommend it enough.

 #1: This Is Jinsy

 And so we come to my final choice for alternative comedies, the cult (should-be) classic This Is Jinsy, and boy is it a good one. Set on the fictional island of Jinsy, the show follows the lives of the head of the island Arbiter Maven and his assistant Sporall, as well as the quirky antics of the other islanders. If ever there was a show epitomising “quirky”, this would be it. Everything about it, from its yearly traditions to the ritual in which names are chosen is so utterly unique. And perhaps one of the most stand-out elements of the show, bearing in mind how little it is actually known, is how many famous people have guest starred, David Tennant, Derek Jacobi and Olivia Coleman being the first that spring to mind. Every episode has an acclaimed actor dressed in varying shade of beige being as eccentric as they possibly can be, and it’s truly wonderful. It makes me sad that very few people know about this show, as it genuinely is incredibly entertaining, from its hilariously stupid music (a parody of Bowie and Jagger’s ‘Dancing in the Street’ in which they sing about clothing made of fruit always springs to mind) to its incredible array of weird and wacky characters. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and would encourage everyone to seek it out (at the time of writing, the episodes are on Youtube).

Well that’s it for this post, if you liked it, disagreed with my top five or would like to suggest any others, please let me know, and look out for my next post coming soon!

-P

[hannewk]

The (not very concise) story of our sparkly Arcade Fire adventures (Chapter 15: London Baby!!!!)

So it’s taken me a long time to be ready to blog our last two gig experiences. It’s not like I’ve even been consciously processing things, I just haven’t felt ready, almost like the memories need to ‘settle in’. They’ve been too raw and precious to share. I think it’s also partly because in all honesty it has all felt like one incredible, surreal dream and at some point I’m going to wake up and find it didn’t happen. I think I’ve finally realised it did happen and I need to get writing before the memories become more hazy.

So between Dublin and London I had a few lovely days at home, in the ‘real world’, being Mum and having fun with my boys. Then it was Wednesday night and Jules was here again and we realised it was all beginning again. This felt a bit surreal as our Dublin processing was not complete. We spend an evening listening to music and having a giggle (as is the norm). We also watch the set list reports coming in from Wembley with envy - it is their first night of three; it is surreal thinking that we will soon be there with them!

The next morning we hit the road and have a leisurely drive up to London. We listen to the Dublin setlist followed by a playlist Jules has created featuring the tracks that play in the arena prior to a show (Bowie, Talking Heads, Prince, Michael Jackson to name a few). Butterflies are going seriously crazy; it’s happening again! As we approach London, Arcade Fire are on Radio 6 music and this makes the drive even more surreal. We listen live to a beautiful rendition of Put Your Money on Me and I drive completely the wrong way. After an excitable stop off at a service station we head in the right direction listening to the rest of the performance and feeling thoroughly smug and a teeny bit weepy (no change there then). We find the hotel fairly easily and are checked in before 2pm. We then spend our afternoon carrying out reconnaissance on the venue (a stones throw from our hotel). We see the people sat waiting for the Thursday night show and picture the band inside rehearsing. We force down some food and I buy a sparkly hairband for gig night. We also take some selfies in front of the venue posters (oh shit, there’s those butterflies again) 🦋🦋🦋.

The evening at the hotel is super surreal! The band are performing a stones throw away and I can hear the bass when I press my ear to the gap in the window (Jules is reluctant to do this herself). We watch the setlist coming in once again with envy, particularly when Jarvis Cocker appears. We drink a bottle of wine each, have a giggle and eventually crash once it’s all over. We need our energy for gig day tomorrow. Little do we know it’s going to be so much more incredible than we could ever have imagined!!

[brulermag]

The SMASHBY Interview

Tell me a little bit about your childhood.

My childhood was at times pretty rough but also full of magical moments. I’m a glass half full kinda guy so I always try and find the best in a bad situation. When I was younger I was bullied a lot throughout my entire school life but that made me a stronger person and gave me some real inspiration with my music. So yeah I was pretty much the outcast in school, I really just didn't fit in but as I got older I found the beauty in that and embraced my weirdness.

What are five things people would be pleasantly surprised to know about you?

I’m really down to earth, I love animals, I’m really spiritual, I’m pretty clumsy and embarrassing. I’m also a hopeless romantic.

What is the biggest misconception people have about you?

I think because of my confidence people see me as kinda arrogant and big headed because I like to walk around in colorful shades and sparkly jackets but that couldn't be further from the truth.

What are your hobbies?

I love going out to eat... like I eat a lot!! I also really enjoy Zumba fitness classes and just being lazy when I get the chance.

Tell me about your music and how you broke into it?

I started writing songs when I was like 12/13. I was going through a hard time in school and it was the only way I could express myself. Once I left school I just began working my ass off, getting in the studio when I could, contacting managers, getting vocal coaching... literally hustling my way to where I am now.

Being Gay in the world has not been the easiest. Can you tell me about your journey?

I’ve always known that I’ve been attracted to guys...like even when I was a kid but for some reason I never thought that made me gay. It wasn’t till I got older and started thinking whether I could actually be sexually attracted to a girl and it was a definite no-no. Then I started actually falling for guys and I was like "okay time to wake up!" My family were super supportive and some close friends I had at the time really made me comfortable with it. Once I came out, I felt like a weight had been lifted and I finally felt like I could learn to love myself.

You have a very edgy flair that is really catching on. What inspires your style?

Thank you! I’ve always been really inspired by artists that push the boundaries. The legends like Michael Jackson, Prince, Freddie Mercury, George Michael, David Bowie all really inspire my style.

Tell me a bit about your activism?

I love being an activist and raising awareness any way that I can. I’ve done a bunch of anti- bullying performances/talks in schools & colleges across the country and relate it to struggles we face in the LGBT community. I think it’s really important to show the younger generation that there’s no need for hate and discrimination, hopefully they can pass on the message of love and we can strive towards a more equal world.

What does 2018 have in store for Smashby?

2018 is a huge year for me and my screwballs! I have a brand new EP coming out full of original material, lots of pride festivals and performances in the summer and some surprises…

If you were in a room with audience of young gay children, what would your message be to them?

My message would be to not be afraid of being different, to accept everyone for who they are and to always follow your dreams.

What are five songs currently on heavy rotation in your playlist?

Never Be the Same – Camila Cabello

My My My – Troye Sivan

Beautiful Trauma – Pink

Sinner – Trevor Moran

This Is Me – Kesha

How did your name "Smashby" come about? (Which I love)*

It just came to me one day and people started calling me by it... sort of like a nickname. It kinda stuck I guess, I felt by becoming Smashby I left behind all the troubles I'd been through in my personal life. It was like I shed my skin and had become this phoenix from the ashes.

The world is currently undergoing some nasty changes with a bunch of shitty leaders taking Trump's lead. What are your thoughts on that?

Honestly, this does scare me and it definitely shows we have a lot of work to do as far as equality is involved. But I’m hopeful that these changes will not affect the progress we have made so far.

When was the last time you cried into a pillow and why?

I cry at movies a lot! Especially Disney movies like Tarzan or Lilo & Stitch so probably when I last watched one of those.

When you're writing a song, what inspires you to write it?

It depends really, it might be something I’m going through at that time or something that someone close to me is going through. I sometimes like to imagine a story in my head and write a song about that. There’s really no limits when it comes to my songwriting.

What's your favorite pair of underwear and why?

I have a pair of tight black boxers that ripped on my hip and I actually love them even more now cause it makes me feel like I have a fat ass.

As a young gay in the world, what is your goal you want to accomplish in regards to OUR LGBT Movement?

I want to unite the world through music and be a part of the movement any way that I can. If I can just inspire even one person to be more open minded towards our community then that is making a change in my eyes.

Lastly, What makes you happiest in life?

Music, food and my fans!

INTERVIEW BY: XAVII MATISSE @XaviiMatisse

You Can Follow SMASHBY:

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/smashbyofficial/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/smashbyofficial

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/smashbyofficial/

Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/smashbyofficial

Snapchat:

smashbyashby

Website:

smashbyofficial.com

[how2to18]

JANELLE MONÁE has called the 44-minute film accompanying the release of her latest album, Dirty Computer, an “emotion picture,” which is a telling description in a number of ways. Because the genre of the visual album is so totally dominated by Beyoncé at the moment given her two world-stopping (her term) contributions to this format, it is a daunting task for any artist to inhabit this form, let alone a black woman intimately tied to the Knowles-Carter complex. The only artist since Beyoncé to take up this challenge has been Fergie with her 2017 comeback record, Double Dutchess. That project’s failure to find either commercial or aesthetic success might have caused any number of artists to have second thoughts before stepping into those big, sparkly boots.

But whereas Fergie explicitly claimed Beyoncé as an inspiration for her video album, Monáe’s nomenclature of the “emotion picture” signals Dirty Computer’s distinct media genealogy. In some ways, the term evokes the cinematic tradition with which Monáe’s persona has long been entwined. Her debut 2007 EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), openly paid homage to Fritz Lang’s 1927 film of the same name, an influence that continued to frame Monáe’s work up through her 2013 release, The Electric Lady. While her android alter ego Cindi Mayweather was deeply indebted to Lang’s visual universe, Monáe’s other favorite early persona was her pompadoured, bespoke homage to James Brown. Although these roles might seem to represent distinct cultural milieus, Monáe’s dual embodiment of them reminds us that the history of the moving image is largely unthinkable without the black bodies who so often animate the visual imaginary.

If Monáe’s work in the past has been heavy on the images, though, it has been somewhat light on the emotion. The braininess of her visual referential field has sometimes gotten in the way of her capacity to make us feel her ideas. Her previous concept albums could groove you and excite you while failing to fully move you. Thus in referring to Dirty Computer as an “emotion picture” we might hear Monáe both announcing an affective turn in her work while also carving out some discrete space within the overdetermined sphere of the visual album. Dirty Computer bears out both of these desires not only by demonstrating that there’s more than enough black girl magic to go around in the visual pop universe but by also insisting that there is no singular or reducible black girl magic in the first place. This multiplicity, in fact, is one of the film’s explicit themes.

Dirty Computer brings together Monáe’s longstanding interests in race, sexuality, technology, and speculative worlds while simplifying its packaging for maximum impact. Monáe’s previous Metropolis concept has always been a bit convoluted in its execution. Dirty Computer, by contrast, offers viewers a relatively simple story from the “love conquers all” playbook: a girl, played by Janelle Monáe, and a girl, played by Tessa Thompson, along with a mostly ancillary boy, meet and fall in lust and then love. Living in a repressive society that considers humans to be “computers” subject to state control, the trio are eventually hunted down in order to have their brains forcibly wiped clean, their outlaw memories extracted, viewed, and erased. But even as their minds are wiped, their love for one another is never fully destroyed. The three ultimately escape their mind-eraser prison, embracing their status as dirty computers as they flee into the sunlight.

The revolutionary power of love has long been the stuff of movies, but few films have depicted a love quite like this. Placing two black women and a black man at its center, the film turns this age-old theme into something more revelatory. Popular culture has given us few representations of black love, let alone black queer love, let alone black pansexual gender-fluid love yoked to a broader ethos of total liberation (!). Despite its futuristic setting, the film embeds the relationship between its starring trio within a matrix of social and cultural milieus that they either have to disrupt or remake in order to just “live my life,” as Monáe implores on the song “Crazy, Classic, Life.”

Monáe has always been an astute student of motion and pictures, but the multitude of homages and personas that have fueled her image-making in the past have also worked to protect Monáe from having to ground her allegorical representations of suppression in any personal reality of her own. As Monáe herself has insisted in recent interviews, Dirty Computer finds her stepping out a bit from behind (if not entirely eschewing) the brilliant robots and stars she has masterfully conjured in the past. The line between her filmic protagonist Jane and Janelle is fast and loose — especially given Tessa Thompson’s ambiguous status as Monáe’s real-life partner. We still find Monáe in the film paying canny homage to a dizzying number of sources and inspirations, but these nods are anchored by Dirty Computer’s foundational and unmistakable investment in a vision of black freedom rarely captured by mass movements for either racial justice or gay liberation.

While the erasure of Jane’s outlaw consciousness is the frame for Dirty Computer’s plot, the music videos comprising most of the film foreground the memories forged primarily between her and Tessa Thompson’s Zen before their capture. The first few video-memories find Monáe clearing some countercultural space for her own vision of black women’s communion. The first video-memory wiped from Jane’s dirty computer is set to the album’s second track, “Crazy, Classic, Life.” The song and its visuals address a vision of youthful rebellion that has rarely included blacks as more than props helping white people along their journey to transcendence. The video features Monáe’s band of black afro-punks crashing a party of markedly counter-cultural figures, most strongly punctuated by bored and boring white Bowie-lookalikes. One can’t help but imagine Miley Cyrus of the Bangerz era as an underlying referent here given Cyrus’s love affair with twerking if not the black women who gave birth to this way of moving. Monáe’s rap on the track crystallizes the video’s visual message, insisting that while whites are celebrated for pushing boundaries, blacks are often harshly punished for the same transgressions. “Me and you was friends, but to them, we the opposite,” she raps, noting that for “the same mistake, I’m in jail, you on top of the shit.” “All I wanted was to break the rules like you,” Monáe laments as the police ultimately swarm the party. Even in the future, it is the black partygoers who become the fiercest targets of state violence. “Crazy, Classic, Life” asks us to think about the racialized limitations often placed on the abstract notion of living your truth.

But Monáe is not done reclaiming spaces that have been set up to exclude her, next turning her attention in Dirty Computer to reimagining masculinist visions of black revolutionary power. “I’m tired of hoteps trying to tell me how to feel,” Monáe announces in the video for “Screwed” before transitioning into the world of “Django Jane,” where Monáe puts her own stamp on black power iconography. Huey Newton’s trademark wicker chair is transposed into a white floral throne, while Monáe wears tailored suits that evoke the Nation of Islam, now paired with white leather stiletto boots. The video essentially fuses the Nation of Islam with Rhythm Nation, as Monáe both attends to and exceeds the contours of the masculinist fantasia that is commonly taken as the black revolutionary imagination in popular culture. Across Dirty Computer, we occasionally hear the words of an unpictured black orator who speaks in the cadences of Martin Luther King Jr. if to ultimately give voice to a broader vision of justice or equality than he or Malcolm X or Obama for that matter could actually articulate: equal pay for equal work, queer liberation, mobility for poor whites, and an end to police brutality and the criminalization of Latinos and Latinas.

If the first half of the film finds Monáe establishing herself in the cultural zones that have been reluctant to have her as a full-throated member, the second half of the film finds Monáe inhabiting aesthetic landscapes all her own. When I first saw the video for “Pynk,” released separately in advance of Dirty Computer’s premiere, I audibly gasped (and maybe squealed a little) at its playful audacity. While the celebration of pussy power is a long-running theme for female hip-hop and R&B artists, Monáe’s representation of black women embodying a tender and playful intimacy with one another reorients this trope. By now, the “girls doing it for themselves” turn is a staple of pop female stardom — a moment typically circumscribed by men who turn out to be the true audience for all this sisterhood. But Monáe’s vision of black female intimacy is like little we’ve seen. Surrounded around a group of joyful black women, Monáe coos to us that she’s “got the pink.” While the song’s lyrics coyly refer to pink as “the lips around your, maybe” and “the skin that’s under, baby,” the video is filled with much more explicit referents including pants legs outfitted to look like pretty fluttery vaginas and black female asses rising and falling in choreographed perfection.

Even as Monáe insists that “we’re all pink inside” and the song is a collaboration with the white electropop artist Grimes (who never appears on screen), the video foregrounds black women celebrating their own intimacies with and among one another. The video is explicitly sexual while making room for the range of intimacies that can exist between black women. In this video’s tonal range from sexy to goofy (see Monáe’s merkin), the term “emotion picture” gets yet another meaning — revealing Monae’s commitment to depicting a spectrum of black and queer intimacies. Homages to early TLC appear across Dirty Computer, and with “Pynk” we seem to get a visual nod to TLC’s “Baby-Baby-Baby” video, which featured collegiate black women lounging together in dorms. And yet, even as TLC dared to put black women’s relationships with one another at the visual center of their music videos, the lyrics of “Baby-Baby-Baby” nonetheless appeal to a longed-for man. Not so here.

With Lemonade, Beyoncé too drew from a large literary-cinematic vocabulary to depict black female intimacy; but the specter of Jay-Z’s infidelity and Beyoncé’s ultimate reclamation of her devotion to him perpetually haunted and occasionally tempered the power of this vision. It’s one thing to be inspired by the look of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust — borrowing its beautiful costumes while writing out the queer relationship at its center. It’s another to take up that film’s message of black feminist collectivity in order to decentralize conventions of love, family, and respectability that, as Monáe insists, have left her and those like her stranded outside of both mainstream queer communities and black communities. It is when Dirty Computer stops being homage and starts inventing that its power is most felt.

By the film’s conclusion, you realize it’s not Beyoncé as much as Kendrick Lamar with whom Monáe is in conversation here. Dirty Computer represents Monáe’s claim to be the most radical black musician on the pop culture scene. Just as Lamar pays homage to a black masculinist radical tradition stretching from the Black Panthers to 2Pac, Monáe, too, tips her hats to similar precedents. But she also never lets us forget that these past revolutionary visions of freedom often did not make room for someone like her, allowing Monáe to take what strength she needs from the past and leave what she doesn’t need behind to forge another vision. Whereas Christianity provides the framework for Lamar’s ultimate vision of salvation, on “Americans,” Monáe portrays the black church as a constrictive institution for those like Jane and Zen who are forced to find other routes to emancipation.

Dirty Computer’s visuals actually help the record to transcend what I take to be the one influence that threatens to overshadow the record’s sound — its overwhelming indebtedness to Prince. Monáe is so good at imitating the anointed black male performers of yore (and dare I say often beating them at their own game), but sometimes this sonic kinship can be a bit too absorptive. In the wake of Dirty Computer’s visual interest in the communion of black women, the album’s sonic indebtedness to Prince feels a bit smothering at times. As much as “Make Me Feel” is a banger, it is so much in Prince’s imprint that I have a hard time finding where Monáe ends and Prince begins. But Monáe’s “emotion picture,” thankfully, manages to nod to Purple Rain while carving out its own visual universe that is productively compared to Prince, Beyoncé, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Fritz Lang, while being none of them.

It is on the track “I Like That” where Monáe most successfully inhabits a distinctive sound, one that still operates within a nostalgic sonic framework — here it’s doo-wop — but gives it a futuristic and sultry spin. It is fitting, then, that this song most pronouncedly articulates the film’s broader ethos. The song begins by invoking Rita Dove’s poem for Billie Holiday, “Canary,” which ends with the following three lines: “Fact is, the invention of women under siege / has been to sharpen love in the service of myth. / If you can’t be free, be a mystery.” Dirty Computer seemingly takes these first two lines as its organizing philosophy as Monáe wields both myth and love as weapons for confronting repressive regimes seeking to sublimate her. But the first lyrics of “I Like That” revise Dove’s concluding line with Monáe declaring that, “sometimes a mystery, sometimes I’m free.” This revision underscores her newfound freedom to be Janelle and Jane, android and computer and pop star, rapper and songstress, and most importantly here, confessional and mythic as it suits.

“I Like That” finds Monáe at her most sonically resplendent, particularly during the song’s rap interlude where she insists that despite having been bullied as a kid, she nonetheless tells us that she “always knew I was the shit” while looking dead at the camera and challenging the viewer to tell her elsewise. (In fact, all of Monáe’s raps on Dirty Computer are stellar — something she does not get enough credit for in ways that recall Lauryn Hill’s reception a generation prior.) Although the film’s most beautiful moments feature Monáe in communion with her lovers or her bad-ass dancers, here a chorus of Janelle Monáes back up her claim that “I don’t really give a fuck if I was just the only one who likes that.” While such a boast might feel solipsistic coming from others, from Monáe it becomes a declaration of her commitment to occupying inbetweeness come what may. Fluid reinvention is an old pop maneuver, and Monáe doesn’t fully reorient this trope. But she does make us feel her urgency when defining freedom in her own terms.

The closing lines of the Combahee River Collective Statement read as follows: “As Black feminists and Lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.” Even as Dirty Computer mythologizes its revolutionary task, few films, let alone pop music ones, are so committed to the spirit of these lines. Whereas Beyoncé commands us to get in formation, Monáe pushes us to think about the multiple types of formations we might discover in the groove, in the sheets, and on the streets while also blurring the line between these contexts. With her “emotion picture,” Monáe asserts her debts to genres of feeling and film, of sound and movement, and of black radical imaginaries that precede her while also willfully scrambling, suturing, and signifying on these antecedents. Dirty Computer finds Monáe not only inserting herself into traditions that can’t fully contain her but also resculpting them in her likeness. Janelle Monáe might not care what we think, but she gives us many compelling reasons to keep doing so.

¤

Adrienne Brown is associate professor of English Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago and the recent author of The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race.

The post New Formation: Janelle Monáe’s Radical Emotion Pictures appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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