#i didn't know this magazine would include a poster of the front cover... i want it on my wall ; v ;

[asukachii]

July 2023 || Animage Magazine Cover [cleaned]

(I don’t like putting watermarks so, PLEASE, if you want to post this edit somewhere GIVE CREDITS! Also, don’t use it in graphic edits/videos. Thanks~)

[luminique]

(looking around suspiciously). hey. have u ever thought about. popstar reader on a tour around the outer ring & lighter. (COP SIRENS IN THE DISTANCE) WHY IS SENDING THIS SO SCARY WE'RE LITERALLY MOOTS

HELLO KONNER !! i get it though cuz like sometimes i send in stuff and im like scared about it too. DONT WORRY THOUGH CUZ I WILL TRY MY BEST TO WRITE THEM OUT !!

a song you released becomes the biggest hit in all of new eridu, everyone and their grandma knows of your name. not before long, you're invited to interviews, shootings, magazines, etc. as a guest and one thing led to another, you announced a nationwide tour!

after lots of planning, practicing and perfecting, you decided to start of the first leg of the tour in the outer ring then work your way to the city. initially, you didn't really think there'd be many fans outside of the city but your team decided that it'd be good to get your name out there.

unexpectedly, the tickets sold out FAST. it was your first tour, you and your management didn't want to overestimate your fame. but with this, everyone was begging for more tickets. it was a little hectic but nothing like a little damage control on your social media couldn't help with.

the girls from the sons of calydon were WAITING for those tickets to drop. the moment they found out about your tour, they made sure that they were extra free that day. lucky enough, they got front row tickets for all of them. lighter included because they move as a unit and he wouldn't admit it but they know that he has memorized your songs by heart.

the day of your show finally comes and everyone is buzzing with excitement as they made their way to the venue. the merch lineup was relatively limited but they bought at least one of everything; t-shirts, sweaters, keychains, stickers, posters and two cheering sticks. they decided to let lighter hold the cheering sticks as he was the tallest out of all of them, making him the easiest to be noticed by you.

they screamed their lungs out that night, singing along to every song unapologetically. at some point though, lighter was just waving the sticks around as he watched you, mesmerized by your voice and your looks. he has seen the magazines that lucy asks him to buy, the ones with you on the cover. he has seen those interviews and how everyone would compliment you. however seeing you live, hearing you live, he was starstruck.

you thanked everyone for showing up, it was the perfect way to start your first ever tour. he knew that this was all just you being a popstar but even the way you talked, you seemed so sincere. the girls had to shake him out of this trance-like state that he was in, telling him that it was time to go home. if he wasn't a fan before, he was definitely a loyal fan now.

as they drove back home, the only thing in his mind was your singing, your stage presence. there were times where it seemed like you looked in his direction. did you even notice him in that sea of people? maybe he needs more merchandise. if you ever had a tour again, he'd definitely try to get front row tickets just to see you. just to hear you again.

[famous-aces]

Marilyn Monroe

Who: Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson) 

What: Actress, Model, and Singer

Where: American-Jewish (active largely in US)

When: June 1, 1926 - August 4, 1962

(Image Description: a photo of Marilyn Monroe by Richard Avedon from 1957. It is a black and white image showing Monroe on a sparkly dress from the waist up. It almost feels weird to describe her, her face is so famous. She is a white pale woman with an oval face and heavily lidded eyes with long lashes. She has full lips with a beauty mark beside them. She is wearing makeup and has her trademark short, curly, blonde hair. She has her arms hanging limply at her side. Instead of posing sexily she looks to be lost in thought, looking somewhere off camera. End ID) 

Marilyn Monroe is The Hollywood Beauty. The quintessential sexy starlet. Even if you have never seen a movie with her in it, you know who she was, a bit like possible aces I have covered before Andy Warhol or Sir Isaac Newton, you can picture her in your mind just by existing in Western popular culture. She has become a part of our communal consciousness. Her life was brief and marked by tragedy below the glitz and glamor. Her biggest role was playing Marilyn Monroe.

She was intelligent, warm, and a gifted actress, but she is rarely remembered for that. She is far better remembered for singing Happy Birthday to her sometime beau President Kennedy and for the scene in The Seven Year Itch when wind from a subway grate blows up her skirt. You've seen it. Really her whole persona was often created rather than who she really was. She was an actress in her real life, unfortunately.

Monroe actually came into the spotlight in the Second World War when she posed for photos for the boys on the front. From there her modeling, singing, and acting career skyrocketed. Until her tragic death at the age of 36 she was among the go-to actresses for those sexpot roles especially in comedies. Her death by potentially intentional drug overdose (discovered by her psychologist) is just one piece of the evidence of how much of her life was hidden, like her struggles with substance abuse and mental health.

She was famous for playing Blond Bombshells and Dumb Blonds.  She was all beauty, glamor, and sex appeal and it earned her millions of dollars. She always wanted to be more though, unfortunately she never really got it. "Please don't make me a joke," she told a journalist, "End the interview with what I believe...I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity...I want to grow and develop and play serious dramatic parts. My dramatic coach tells everyone that I have a great soul, but so far nobody's interested in it." 

She is best known for as an icon and emblem of the popular culture of the 1950s and early 1960s, but her most definitive/important roles include All About Eve (1950) (a small role that would lead to her "discovery" and contract with 20th Century Fox), Monkey Business (1952), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Niagara (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Some Like it Hot (1959), The Misfits (1961), and her final film, released posthumously as a short, Something's Gotta Give (1962). She also sang "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and the very sexually charged "Happy Birthday Mr. President" (just the song here). 

(Image Description: the poster for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It shows drawings of Jane Russel and Marilyn Monroe in red costumes the size and shape of one piece bathing suits that are sheer or pink on top. They have on red top hats and long black and white necklaces. They have black canes and are dancing with one leg upraised. Behind them is a busy Paris scene done in a more cartoony/simplified style. There are musical notes around them. Their names are above their heads in blue.  Below them on a black rectangle it says (in white and orange) "in Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [in] Technicolor" below that rectangle but above the studio info in blue it says "co-starring Charles Coburn". End ID) 

Probable Orientation: Mspec Ace

Oh, I am going to get a lot of hate for this one.

And a lot of people are going to show a lot of misogyny and aphobia, be it overt, unintentional, or internalized.  Indeed the first thing the first (allo) person I told these findings to said "but she had a ton of sex!" Yes, that is true, she did, and so do some other aces.

Not to mention that Monroe's relationship with sex was a complicated one. A very complicated one. Monroe had a deeply traumatic childhood (mentally ill mother, tossed between foster homes and orphanages) and married extremely young -- she had turned 16 just two and a half weeks earlier -- to prevent her from becoming homeless and returned to the orphanage after her most recent foster family planned on moving out of state and leaving her behind. Then while working a munitions plant in L.A. she became a model for the troops in World War II, aged 18. From her teen years she was made aware that sex was expected from her, thrust into adulthood and positions she might not have been comfortable with. She was a beautiful woman and people wanted her and she accepted that because it did get her what she wanted.

(Image Description: the 1944 factory photos that launched Monroe's modeling career, taken by David Conover for Yank Magazine at the Radioplane Munitions Factory in which she worked. Interestingly the commanding officer that sent him to take the photos was Ronald Reagan. The photo shows an 18-year-old Monroe. She is holding a small propeller and is beside some kind of red machine. She is wearing a simple green top and gray bottoms with a photo ID badge at her waist. She wears a wedding ring. She has much frizzier brown hair. She is smiling broadly. End ID)  

Over the course of her life she was in love with and had sexual relationships with many different men and women. That doesn't mean she was sexually attracted to them. Indeed throughout her life she had a lot of difficulty with sex. She didn't like it. She thought she must have been doing it "wrong" and stated that a lot of her sex appeal was applied to her rather than something she felt. She was playing to the crowd. Which makes sense, Monroe was a people pleaser. She desired closeness, she romantically loved many people, I have no doubt, and from the time she was a teenager the best appreciated way to show it was by being sexual. The fact that later in life she had a sexual encounter with a literal 16-year-old when she was 30 shows she had a pretty fucked up understanding of what was appropriate sexually. The 16-year-old was the leader of her fan club, she also had an affair with her acting coach, her first husband was her neighbor who was kind to her. She was loving the people who loved her and was showing it the way society told her to. (On her being mspec, there were several women she had affairs with, including the fan and acting coach mentioned above, indeed it has been speculated she was more attracted to women than men).

No matter how she appeared on screen, she voiced fear that she was broken and frigid to her psychologist (who agreed with her) because she didn't really enjoy/want sex.  The desire of wanting to fix herself and wanting to please the people who loved her and who she may have romantically loved in return. She probably romantically loved some of these people but didn't know how to separate that from the sexual aspect or didn't want to lose them if she did. She was giving them what they wanted and expected and what culture told her was essential to normal loving relationships.

Her sexual "failure" was a subject she returned to often in therapy throughout her life. She had only one sexual encounter she actually said she enjoyed and it seemed to be more of a relief because it made her normal than what she got from the sex itself.

She said again and again that she wasn't the sexpot people thought she was, nobody listened.

(Image Description: a series of photos from a photoshoot from Life Magazine. It shows Monroe at home in 1953, a huge year in her career. The photographer is Alfred Eisenstaedt [a photographer of whose work I am extremely fond]. They show Monroe wearing a dark turtleneck and checkered trousers. She is in a bunch of different positions and wearing different expressions. Some of these appear candid and others posed. I am especially fond of one in the middle in which she appears to be trying to stop herself from laughing or sneezing. I like to imagine it is the former. It is very human. End ID)

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn’t see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

-Marilyn Monroe

"I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've got symbols of."

—Monroe in an interview for Life in 1962 (both of these quotes illustrate that her "sex appeal" was manufactured and applied rather than her own natural state. Her audience made it clear what they wanted and she played to it.)

"A man who had kissed me once had said it was very possible that I was a lesbian because apparently I had no response to males - meaning him...I didn't contradict him because I didn't know what I was... Now, having fallen in love, I knew what I was. It wasn't a lesbian."

-Marilyn Monroe in her autobiography My Story (written 1954, published 1974). (Note that she has "no response". She loves a man, this one or another, but she has "no response" to men physically. That is the only response he could comment on, her physical one. Clearly she feels some kind of attraction to someone eventually, but not sexually/physically. It is the difference between romantic and sexual love. It also shows that homosexuality and asexuality have always overlapped.)

"Primary frigidity" 

-the diagnosis from Monroe's therapist Dr. Ralph Greenson, he worked to "cure" her of this "frigidity"

“Maybe I’m a sexless sex goddess.” 

– Marilyn Monroe to Life magazine journalist Richard Meryman, 1961

(Image Description: a photo of Marilyn Monroe behind the scenes on the set of The Misfits in 1960, photographed by Inge Morath.  She is leaning across a table and smiling at someone to the right of the frame. She has tired eyes. End ID) 

[dazstormretro]

Street Fighter 2 & the Mega CD - Oct 1991

Rob and I watched enthralled as player after player battled it out, throwing fire balls, sonic booms and performing dazzling midair flying kicks. We’d never seen anything like this in the arcades. I’d watch as the more skilled players would effortlessly chain together combinations of moves to create a wonderful choreographed routine. A low kick into an uppercut into a flying uppercut, just jaw dropping. So many different special moves and fighting styles. Ken’s cocky attitude, Ryu’s cool persona, Chun Li’s.... legs! Plus there was the thumping soundtracks to each stage including Guile’s theme which I still enjoy listening to in my car today.

Maybe it was the blaring noises from the surrounding arcade machines or maybe it was the overactive imaginations of two teenaged boys but Rob and I could have sworn we heard the characters swear? For some strange reason instead of Ryu screaming “hadouken” when he launched a fireball my teenage brain brain heard “yooouu git” and instead of ��shoryuken” I heard “oh you bitch”. Still to this day I find it hilarious that on the following Monday at school I was telling all my mates about this new fighting game where some of the characters actually swore, what a dick!

After what felt like hours of waiting in line for my turn I finally inserted my fifty pence into the coin slot and proceeded to select my character. I chose Ken after seeing his awesome range of moves from other players. As you can imagine I got my arse well and truly kicked and was unable to perform any of the special moves which I had previously seen but this didn’t stop me from reviling in every second of its gameplay. Street Fighter 2 was now officially my favourite arcade game and this chance encounter started a life long love for the franchise.

After this day Rob and I would return to Grand Central on a regular basis with pockets full of change. Street Fighter 2 became so popular they ended up getting three cabinets just to keep up with the demand. People say this game helped save the declining popularity of the arcade, I’m inclined to agree.

When we weren’t spending all our pocket money in the arcade me and Rob would be constantly playing through Streets of Rage. Rob would choose Axel and I was always Blaze. In many ways better than Final Fight, Streets of Rage was the perfect way to unwind after a long week at school especially during the final level when we got to beat the crap out of one another all over again.

Between us we had built quite an extensive Mega Drive collection and would constantly swap games over the weekend, but this didn’t stop me from pining for more Street Fighter. I was constantly on the lookout for new magazine coverage or posters to stick up on my bedroom wall. This turned out to be rather easy as Street Fighter 2 was huge business so every video game magazine wanted a piece of the action. Stick a picture of Ryu on the front cover and it would fly off the shelves.

This was now the video game magazines heyday. So many new magazines were being published on a monthly basis, so many in fact that the industry would soon be oversaturated. During October and November there were two more new mags hitting the shelves - Game Zone and Sega Pro.

It was flicking through issue one of Game Pro that I first took note of a new upcoming add-on for the Mega Drive, the Mega CD. Sega Pro was great at covering the import scene and would heavily feature what was hot in Japan and the US. I remember seeing this new sexy looking device sat beneath an imported Mega Drive, they looked so right together, so.... complete. The article promised incredible enhanced graphical power and CD quality sound plus huge new games. Lunar: the Silver Star and Ernest Evans quickly caught my attention. This was the first time I’d really taken notice of Japanese anime in gaming magazines. I would sit and draw these amazing pictures over and over.

Obviously seeing this new bit of Sega hardware my mind started turning, could the Mega CD be my next purchase. The imported model was due out in December and some shops were starting to take preorders. It was after reading Robs copy of the November issue of Mean Machines that my mind was made up. A small article in the news section stated that Street Fighter 2 was being developed for the upcoming Mega CD and would be a very close arcade conversion. As you can imagine I was beside myself with this fantastic news, finally I would be able to play Street Fighter 2 at home.

Once again it was time to beg my parents for this years Christmas gift unfortunately this time it wasn’t to be. They certainly weren't about to shell out £250 for a Mega Drive peripheral and unlike the previous time I didn’t have another console to sell. As it turns out it was probably for the best as Street Fighter 2 was sadly never released for the Mega CD and as we now know Sega didn't have the success it was hoping for following the systems release.

So what did I end up getting for Christmas or 1991? Surely it would have made sense to get some brand new Mega Drive titles. I could have asked for Golden Axe 2, Chuck Rock or my own copy of Streets of Rage, instead I asked for an Atari Lynx 2? Now why I asked for this present is still a mystery today. Maybe it was a rushed decision after the knock-back of not being allowed a Mega CD or maybe after seeing my sisters Game Boy I wanted my own handheld device. Either way I would soon regret getting this big, bulky, battery draining monstrosity.

To be fair the second iteration of the Atari Lynx was a well designed and aesthetically pleasing handheld device, it just never did anything for me. To go with the system I received a copy of Gauntlet and Warbirds that Christmas. I have a few memories of playing the Lynx but I think it ended up stashed away in the cupboard of crap and it wasn’t long until I sold it to a friend at school. Unfortunately my parents had no idea about this little arrangement and once they found out I got into a whole lot of trouble.

For some reason I have a very faint memory of Rob finally purchasing a PAL Mega CD of his own but this could be my old age playing tricks on me. Either way both the Mega CD and the Lynx 2 are both systems which I don’t currently own but hoping to one day add them to my retro collection.