#mojo does art

[acrobattack]

this would fix them trust me

[dingoat]

Tamed

[crescentfool]

🌊🌸

[frog4278art]

These are incredibly fun to do (don't worry wenclair fans I'll be posting more of them soon)

[videcoeur]

I replied to 7 threads/ask today!!

[chillinglikeashilling]

I really do recommend that folks check out The Art of the Costume Podcast's episode with Ruth E. Carter that just came out.

She talks about dressing Smoke and Stack, Sammie, Annie, Mary, Remmick and of course the dancers in the Juke scene.

She also talks about the fact there was so much blood and such a short timeline on the movie meaning that they couldn't shoot with any costumes that they didn't have like 20 replicas of because rentals couldn't get blood on them. They made about 90% of what gets worn by the cast in the movie.

My favorite thing she mentioned is that Annie's dress for the Juke scene is Haint Blue. i'm sure folks from the US South are probably familiar with that but for folks like me - the color blue is supposed to ward off Haints ( it's actually a thing that gets mentioned in South of Midnight- which if you liked Sinners please go play SoM it's so beautiful and the story and the music are so good).

I love learning details like that because you can incorporate stuff like that into your headcanons.

Obviously if we want a Doylist explanation for Smoke and Annie both dressing in Blues that comes down to Coogler wanting the twins to be in red and blue and Annie being the love interest for Smoke so her wearing Blue helps indicate their connection to the audience.

Through a Watsonian lens - Blues and Indigo were (more) common colors for the time and setting of the movie (Ruth talked about how it was tougher to naturally incorporate Stacks Reds actually). Additionally Smoke seems to be more closely tied to the heart of his community through his connection/partnership with Annie who is the local Hoodoo practicioner. So not only does he carry a mojo bag but also he wears a color that is meant to ward off evil spirits, even though he doesn't believe in them. The Blues can be read as a reflection of Annie's influence on him rather than the other way around.

[menlove]

"Life After the Bastards: 30 Years On, Macca Tells All"

"Blamed for the break-up for the biggest band in history, Paul McCartney downsized rapidly to cultivate a successful pop smallholding. Yet a bountiful solo career was always dominated by two famous partners, he tells Paul Du Noyer."

i said i'd do this ages ago and then the horrors happened, but this is a written up version of an interview by paul du noyer with paul mccartney from mojo's july 2001 issue.

sidenote: this seems to be the source for the claim that john thought "dear boy" was about him, which is why i bought the magazine because i haven't been able to find a digitized version of the interview and wanted to get the context. but it's a very fascinating interview just in general so it's definitely worth a read!

Wings were a band who seldom felt the feathery end of the critic's quill, but this year we're seeing Paul McCartney's biggest effort so far to rehabilitate the second most popular group he ever belonged to. He's released a double-CD and a documentary, both called Wingspan, that tell the story as he would like it told. And you soon realise that there's more than a muso's pride at stake in this project. "The great thing is," he says, "it vindicates Linda. I know she wanted to do the Wingspan thing. She knew if it was laid out correctly, people would get the idea. With all the slagging off she got, like the famous tape at Knebworth..." (This illicit cassette, from the mixing desk of a live show at the outdoor venue, was for years a dependable source of satirical mirth in music business circles; Linda McCartney's off-key vocals circumnavigate the chorus notes of Hey Jude, while anonymous engineers hoot cruelly.)

"The truth was," her loyal widower continues, "she was doing this (he stands, raises his hands to clap above his head). She was being the big cheerleader: 'Hey Jude, naah-naah-na.' But you don't see the visual, you just here this out-of-tune voice, and I know she always wanted the record put straight. And this does. You see her playing. You hear her singing beautifully. And you see what she was to the group. You see why she had to be in the group. She becomes the ballsiest member of it..."

He settles back on the sofa, here in the Soho office of his MPL company. Around his neck is a slim pink tie of the kind that Elvis used to wear. On his feet are trainers that look less like a gesture to trendiness than a concession to comfort. Just behind him is the Art Deco statuette that appears on a couple of Wings LP sleeves. The other great thing about the Wingspan film, he says,was being interviewed by his daughter Mary. (That's her face you can see, peeping out from Dad's jacket on the cover of the first solo LP, 31 years ago.) "I'd never had such a long natter with her, as doing this. And I used to say to my kids, You're the only ones who never ask me about The Beatles. Their friends would come round and say, 'What was it like being in The Beatles?' I'd go (adopts pompous old git voice), Well, let me tell you... And my kids would all go out the room: 'Oh bloody hell, he's off...' That's how kids are, they don't want to hear about that shit. But their friends would, so I'd chunder on..."

In fact he chunders on about The Beatles a lot more than you might expect. Or about one Beatle in particular, at least. The World's Most Famous Living Liverpudlian is anything but reticent when it comes to the World's Most Famous Dead Liverpudlian. It's quite contrary of him, because for the first 20 years after the group split up, he showed a stubborn reluctance to discuss the subject with his interviewers. They wanted to ask about John Lennon; he wanted to discuss Back To The Egg... Then came a reconciliation with his past that culminated in the Anthology exercise, when the moratorium on Beatle-talk was entirely lifted. And now, in 2001, when the promotional agenda has switched back to Wings, you almost have to coax him off the subject of John Lennon. Is it just force of habit, or maybe the need to exorcise some kind of long-nosed, bespectacled, sharp-tongued ghost inside his head?

Taste restrains Paul from claiming any posthumous victories over John, though it's no secret that he still has some differences with Yoko that are as wide as the Atlantic that normally separates them. But he can't resist smiling at the irony of Lennon spending his last few years championing the sort of domestic cosiness that was once a derided part of the McCartney stereotype.

"Yeah, it's lovely. But you're right to say they were stereotypes. Everyone thought John was the hard, working class hero. As you know, if you look at his house, he was actually the middle class one, from Woolton. We were the scruffs. He had the full Works Of Winston Churchill: nobody any of us knew had that. A set of encyclopedias was the most that anyone in our class had. But he had The Works Of Winston Churchill, and he'd read 'em, I think.

"There were so many stereotypes of John. And I love the fact that in the end- it's one of the great blessings of my life, seeing as he got shot- that during the last year, we made it up. Thank God for that. I would be just so fucked up now, if I'd still been arguing with him and that had happened. I was thinking about it just the other day. It was cool that I'd started ringing him. We'd had a bread strike over here and I rang him and I was saying, What are you doing? He says, 'I'm breaking some bread.' Oh! Me too! Imagine, with the stereotypes, John and Paul talking about baking bread. He'd just had Sean, and he was talking about just padding round the apartment in his dressing gown, putting the cat out and changing the baby.

"And I'd been doing all of that, and as you say, I'd been stereotyped for it. It was really warm to be able to talk to him that ordinarily, finally. It was like we'd got back to where we'd been when we were kids. It was like we could actually talk about stuff that didn't matter, but somehow it did matter..."

Back in 1970 neither John nor Paul, nor George or Ringo, would find The Beatles an easy beast to walk away from. Paul and Ringo seem to be at peace with it now; John would probably have become so; George never has. Besides the legal wranglings and the personal rancour that persisted between them for a while, there was the unique problem of getting used to living in a world that you no longer ruled.

Pop in the 1960s was like a pyramid. At the top obviously, were The Beatles. Around them and just below, were Dylan, the Stones, the deposed King Elvis, and so on down to the broad base of innumerable also-rans. But pop in the 1970s was more like range of mountain peaks, topped by anyone from Elton John to the Sex Pistols. There was also no unified hierarchy any more, and there hasn't been one since. McCartney can't have found the new world order an easy proposition. But he overcame his doubts the same way that he overcame his blacker periods in The Beatles. In other words, he worked.

It's one of those first post-mop top albums that we discuss in detail today. McCartney (1970) and Ram (1971) were curiously anti-climatic in their day. The first was home-grown, small-scale, contentedly modest, like a record made for his private diversion. The second was sprawling and eccentric, full of unfinished tunes and nonsense rhymes. This was an era when former Beatles were still expected to return from the mountain bearing tables of stone (which Lennon and Harrison certainly attempted to do), not these gaudy, giggling indulgences. Three decades later, McCartney and Ram have endured far better than anyone expected.

It's typical of McCartney, though, that he's still insecure about their worth. He has a peculiar, wrong-end-of-the-telescope way of assessing his talent. He tries to talk up McCartney by telling you that "Dave Stewart really likes it", or boasts that a hippy van driver once yelled across the LA traffic, "Ram! Great album dude!" Recently his girlfriend Heather Mills put it this way: "He is a genius but doesn't realise it, which is delightful."

Towards the end of The Beatles you were dying to get back to playing live in a band, weren't you? But your first move is to go the opposite way and do a totally solo album.

Yeah. I couldn't have another band because I wasn't sure The Beatles had actually broken up. It was on the cusp: we hadn't broken up when I started it, so it was just me doing some solo stuff. And then we had broken up, but things hung on. It basically started from John's decision to leave the band, which came when I said I think we should get back together and do some little gigs. And he said, "Well I think you're daft and I wasn't going to tell you until after we signed the Capitol deal but I'm leaving the band." (Mimes an axe falling) That was, like, The Moment The Beatles Broke Up. But it wasn't in the open until a few months later, when I issued the McCartney album and did this press release with it, which virtually had the announcement. I finally blew the whistle on it. And John was annoyed, even though he hadn't said anything. It turns out, he told me later, that he wanted to be the one who announced it. He was jealous that I beat him to it. But I felt that three or four months was enough to wait around. Either we were just going to fuck about for another year, or we had to actually say to people, "You know what? About three or four months ago we actually broke up." So that was how that happened.

So in your head, The Beatles were still together when you were making McCartney. Whereas the outside world heard it as "What Paul did after leaving The Beatles." I think it seemed a strangely low-key record, as a result.

No. It was on the cusp. There were a lot of funny things around at the time. Allen Klein: he was the one I wanted to sue to get out of it all. But everyone said, "He's not party to any of the agreements, he's just an outside guy. So you'll have to sue The Beatles." So I got into this terrifying thing of having to sue them, scared more than anything of the fact that, as you say, people would just see this album come out, hear my announcement and then hear I was suing The Beatles, without knowing any of the context. So I knew I was in for problems. And I tried my best in the press to say, "Oh, blah blah blah, it was Allen Klein, blah blah." So it was a shitty time for me. The only option was to either let him take it all, and the guys just swim along with him, or fight it. He said I was fine, "Don't worry, McCartney loves me" and all of this. And I knew I was hating the bastard. But to get out of him I had to sue the guys. And, as you know, Liverpool, the mates, no matter how much we were arguing, it's one thing you don't ever want to have to do. So I knew the perception of me would, like, be deadened from there on in. And I suppose in many ways I've been fighting that for 20 years. But it was a clear choice: do that and possibly save it all- or even lose it and pay the lawyers' bills, which was not a terrific option- or just let Klein take it all. 'Cos the others were just with him, gung ho. So I took the option of suing him and had to live with that perception, including: "This is what Paul's done as his first move after leaving The Beatles." Which was actually the nicest bit of the perception: I did an album after The Beatles, so what? The worst thing for me was, I sued my best mates. But the thing is, looking back on it, they now say "Thank you, you got us out of it, we wouldn't have Apple, there'd be no Anthology, no I record, it'd all be in someone else's pocket now." It was the right thing to do, but I knew I was walking into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Very scary, but it was one of those moments in your life when you have to do it.

And, of course, we were hearing McCartney just after Abbey Road, which was at the opposite extreme.

Very produced, yeah.

Despite the problems going on around it, McCartney sounds a pretty cheerful affair.

Yeah, it was, because of Linda. I was just starting with Linda and in my mind the album was my escape from it all. I'd get home, new baby, that joy... any readers who've got a new baby, it transforms your life. I hadn't had a baby before, though we had Heather from Linda's first marriage. Home was a great solace for me, and making this record was "Yeah, this is what I love to do." The rest, outside, was shit, but coming inside it was like a little cocoon. So I either made the album all at home or went down to a little studio in Willesden. Lin and the baby in the control room. Young married life is a very special time. And I always liked doing things on my own. I was the kid in Liverpool who sort of went on a bus to the next stop, to Penny Lane, and got off and just looked around: "Who lives there?" I still like that, it's in my personality to just go somewhere and watch people. Last night I took the Tube home. We went to the theatre, couldn't get a taxi anywhere in the West End. I really get a charge off that. George never used to. His dad was a bus driver. I'd say to him, even when we were famous, I love getting on a bus. He'd say (astonished), "The bus? Why? You've got a car!" But you're just looking at people. And now of course, with fame, they're looking at me a bit.

There's one or two on the Tube last night, cracking up laughing. Guy in a baseball cap, decides he's got to cool himself out, pull it together, gets off at the same stop: "All right mate? Good luck!" So that's where the record got its happiness. And when the time came to release it, I finally had to deal with Mammon, which was Apple. Ring them up and say, "Er, can I have a release date?" Neil [Aspinall] gave me a date. I was kind of boycotting Apple, and Suddenly Mammon decided to change my release date for (adopts sarcastic tone) the massive Let It Be album. And I'm, "You fucking bastards! I've got a release date worked out! How can you do this?" I can't remember what happened, but I certainly shouted loud enough. So it was Rage Against The Machine, me against them. That's why it was a good album for me, and it's pretty funky, some of the little pieces like Momma Miss America have a great sound on them. I was like a professor in his laboratory. Very simple, as basic as you can get, a joy to make. (Scans the tracklist) Teddy Boy was good, I'd tried to make that with The Beatles but no one was having much patience with me. Maybe I'm Amazed was about the biggest song on it. And Kreen-Akrore was about an Amazon tribe I'd seen, who were fighting for survival, I went into the studio and recorded the sound of a bow and arrow going past the mike. Even now that album has an interesting sound. Very analogue, very direct.

The next album, Ram, is famous for its supposed attacks on John and Yoko, isn't it?

Well, Too Many People was a bit of a dig at John, because he was digging at me. We were digging at each other in the press. Not harsh, but pissed off with each other, basically.

Have I misheard, or does it really start with the words "Piss off"?

Yeah. Piss off, cake. Like, a piece of cake becomes a piss off cake. And it's nothing, it's so harmless really, just little digs. But the first line is about "too many people preaching practices". I felt John and Yoko were telling everyone what to do. And I felt we didn't need to be told what to do. The whole tenor of the Beatles thing had been, like, each to his own. Freedom. Suddenly it was, "You should do this." It was just a bit the wagging finger, and I was pissed off with it. So that one got to be athing about them. Once you start, the ball starts rolling. There was a picture that we had for Hallowe'en of the two of us in silly masks that we picked up at a kids' shop in New York. I'm Wimpey out of Popeye, and Linda was another character which looked a bit Oriental. We heard later that they thought that was a dig at them, but it actually wasn't. So when John did a piss-take [in a postcard given away with his Imagine LP], he held a pig instead of the ram. This wasn't posed. Me and Linda decided to catalogue all our sheep, so there's a photograph of me holding every bloody sheep in the flock. Over 100 of them. I was supposed to be cropped out.

Is that where the title came from?

I remember driving up to Liverpool at some point and deciding that Ram would be a good title for an album, then the picture came, and you can "ram" a door down, and a "ram" is a male, like a stag. It just seemed like a good word. Monkberry Moon Delight I liked, so much so that it's in my poetry book. "My long-haired lady." Very '70s. Ram On is a cute little thing on a ukelele, 'cos I used to carry one around with me in the back of New York taxis just to always have music with me. They thought I was a freak, those taxi-drivers. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey was an epic thing, a Number 1 in America, surprisingly enough. I like the bit that breaks in: "Admiral Halsey notified me, da-da-da, had a cup of tea and a butter pie." It's a bit surreal, but I was in a very free mood. I like all of that. It must have freaked a few people, 'cos it was quite daft. Back Seat Of My Car is very romantic: "We can make it to Mexico City." That's a really teenage song, with the stereotypical parent who doesn't agree, and the two lovers are going to take on the world: "We believe that we can't be wrong." I always like the underdog.

I think John might have taken Dear Boy as an attack on him.

Dear Boy wasn't getting at John. Dear Boy was actually a song to Linda's ex-husband. "I guess you never knew what you had missed." I never told him that, which was lucky, because he's since committed suicide. And it was a comment about him, 'cos I did think, "Gosh, you know, she's so amazing, I suppose you didn't get it.

The LP sounds like you had more tunes lying around than songs to use them in. A lot of the tracks are like medleys of different ideas.

Yeah, Long Haired Lady goes off a bit, Back Seat Of My Car goes off a bit, Big Barn Bed comes off Ram On, that's right.

No writer's block at that point, then?

No, I've been very lucky about writer's block, touch wood. It occurred to me the other day that me and John never sat down on, what was it, 295 songs me and John wrote? And on those 295 occasions, we never came away without a song, which is fucking phenomenal. The only time we nearly did, was Golden Rings, which became Drive My Car. It was "duh-duh duh-duh golden rings..." Um, this is not gonna compute. Finally, we had a ciggie and a cup of tea and our humour came back and Drive My Car came out of that. Some people analyse songwriting. I've never known about it. It's fingers crossed, every time I sit down to do it. I just dive right in and hope for the best, and it seems to work.

Were you feeling in competition with the other ex-Beatles, now?

Yeah, we were all in competition. Which was a weird thing, trying to avoid each other's release dates, like we'd avoided the Stones' release dates in The Beatles. When John or George released an album, I'd check it out, to see where he was up to. I think the truth, as a lot of people have said, is that we were missing each other. We missed the collaborative thing, of John saying, "Don't do that" or "Do that". Sparking each other off. For a while I was certainly very conscious of it. The only good thing was that I had been writing without John for a while, towards the end of The Beatles, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was still a pretty big shock just not to be hanging out with these guys. 'Cos I'd hung out with them since I was 17.

Even when you were not writing together, on later Beatles records, there must have been a stage in the process where the others listened to your songs, and vetoed them or otherwise.

Exactly. John brought me Glass Onion. I remember him out in the garden in St John's wood saying, "What do you think of this?" We would just run it past each other, like you would run it past a mate or a producer. And he actually asked me, "D'you think I should put in this line about the Walrus was Paul?" I said, Oh yeah! It's brilliant. I just generally tended to agree with his stuff, and he tended to agree with mine- like in Hey Jude, i was going to knock out that line about "The movement you need is on your shoulder." He said, "You're not, that's the best line in it." So, often it wasn't negative but bolstering each other up. I might go through the whole studio experience thinking, This line's not right. But the minute he'd signed off on it, I thought, This line is ace! Similarly with him and Glass Onion. It was the strength of unity.

It's always striking that, of the four solo Beatles, George and Ringo got off to the strongest starts.

Yeah, George's All Things Must Pass. As he said, it was just like a diarrhea, he must have held it in for so long. And he had Phil [Spector] and a lot of really good people. And George was just so pissed off with us. I mean, all that anger just came out. Which is a good thing for an album, the "I'll show you" factor, which I had later in Band On The Run, when two of the members left the night before. So George and Ringo did get off to very good starts. John and I took it a bit hard, but all in all throughout the years we all did pretty well as single acts.

You formed a band for Ram, but it's not yet Wings.

Not yet, no. Denny Seiwell turns out to be in the band. Hugh McCracken who plays on a lot of it, who was nearly in the band. He came to Scotland to rehearse, but he was such a New York guy that he didn't really like to be away from America, and I can see that. New York is such a satisfying town, you can walk one block and get anything, whereas you can't do that in the Mull of Kintyre...

The first official line-up of Wings, which makes Wild Life, includes Denny Laine.

Denny came from The Moody Blues. I'd seen him when were out on tour with The Beatles and we'd played with them. My enduring memory is of one night up in somewhere like Edinburgh on tour, we'd had a few drinks and we decided that The Moody Blues would play The Beatles at snooker on this very beautiful, full-sized snooker table. Instead of being sensible and playing one at a time against each other, in a kind of league, they all got on one end of the table and we all got on the other, and I'm afraid the table got trashed. Oh shit. So I knew Denny, I knew we could get on personally and I liked his voice, particularly from Go Now, which I championed. I remember taking that around the BBC in its early days and saying, "Have you heard Go Now by The Moody Blues? It's my favourite record of the moment." And those producers would take notice of us. I was also used to having another lead voice in the group with me, so Denny became that.

And this time there's a friendlier song for John.

Dear Friend was to do with John, a bit of longing about John. Let's have a glass of wine and forget about it. A making up song.

Finally you do what The Beatles wouldn't agree to do, and get back on the road.

It seemed to me that for a band it's essential. We'd given it up in '67 with Sgt. Pepper when our new decree was, "The record will go on tour and we won't. We'll make a great record and send that out instead." But what happened after that was, we made some good records, but missed the stimulus of going out on tour. We missed seeing the whites of their eyes and getting a reality check: "They liked that one, they didn't like that one." And we hadn't done it for so long that my choice was, Either give up music, or continue to make it. I wanted The Beatles to go out as a live band, therefore I ought to go out as a live band. So we got a band and hatched the plan of going out on the university tour. Didn't want a big supergroup, a Blind Faith-style thing. I wanted to try and learn the whole thing again, hopefully learn some new things, rather than just repeat The Beatles things, which had all been done, and been about as successful as anyone in the world was ever gonna be.

But you took the informality to extremes, not even booking hotels.

No gigs or hotels or anything. Looking back, I can't believe we did that. We had the van, the dogs, the kids, and it was just madness. It was like I'd never been in The Beatles, I couldn't rely on any of that fame as a crutch. We went up to these universities, and fate had it that a lot of them were having exams. We didn't ring them up and ask if they'd be ready for us. And the other thing was we walked into power cuts: it was the time of the Great British Three Day Week. My image now is of trying to find our way around the dark North with a torch. Is anyone in? Like trying to find a gig in a mine. But we found a couple. Nottingham was one. Lancaster we played. Newcastle City Hall. Durham. When we did find places it was really cool. The students had a good time.

And you had the unfamiliar experience of handling money again.

Yeah, it had all been cheques and accounts and stuff, bank statements. And suddenly it was 50p on the door. So we came away with these bags of coins, which reminded me of Peter Sellers in Tom Thumb: One for you, two for me... We just counted them out in the van afterwards. Good experience, going through all those hardships, and it got us together as a band.

But that line-up wasn't to last, and nor did any Wings line-up. Why?

I've never actually thought about it. I know it happened but I've always blanked it. Probably, in my mind, a band is a democratic unit. Everyone has an equal vote, and in The Beatles for 10 years that had been the case. So if Ringo didn't like one of our songs, which wasn't often, Ringo could veto a Lennon & McCartney song. That meant everyone felt good about themselves. But in Wings that wasn't the case. I was the ex-Beatle. So I saw myself as the leader of the group, which I'd never been in The Beatles. There wasn't a leader in The Beatles. People had said that John was, and later people had said that I was, but neither of us ever acknowledged it. It wasn't the deal. People would ask, "Who's the leader of the group?" We'd say there wasn't one. I think once or twice in Hamburg, in the early days, John said, "I am." But we got pissed off, so it became a democracy. But Wings wasn't. It wasn't a dictatorship, but we weren't all equal.

By the '70s there was suddenly lots of other big acts: Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, Bowie, Pink Floyd, even The Osmonds in their way, or Abba. Was it difficult, as a Beatle, to adjust to the new landscape?

I knew it was going to be difficult. There was this thing of Follow The Beatles. You found yourself just one of the acts in the Hit Parade, rather than the undisputed leaders. But I knew by starting the group from scratch that we had to work our way up So anyone like Zeppelin or Bowie who'd been building during the '60s and had now arrived, naturally took precedence. You just had to understand that there are people bigger than you. And it gave us a benchmark. We thought, "We'll be as big as you one day." It was very weird for me, starting all over again. But it wasn't the world's worst thing. It was quite sobering, really. It's good to be knocked off your perch. There was a lot of that with Wings. Not only was I doing things for myself with the band, I was personally doing things for myself, living up in Scotland, mowing the field with my tractor. In The Beatles, the office used to buy your Christmas tree for you. Now I was buying my own Christmas tree. I enjoyed that . It's unhealthy to think you're the big cheese all the time. Within The Beatles, we each reminded each other that we weren't. But I think there is a big risk with stardom. I'd ring up a restaurant and say, Have you got a table? "Sorry sir, we're full booked." It's Paul McCartney here. "Oh! Certainly, Mr McCartney!" I've never been comfortable with it.

It seemed like you were uncomfortable with The Beatles' legacy for most of your time with Wings.

The thing about Wings was we bought into the myth that it could never be as good as The Beatles. I knew it was the world's most difficult thing to bite off. Everything we did was in the shadow of The Beatles, which had recently been this phenomenal band. So we did everything with quite a lot of paranoia. And it's only on looking back, that I think we did a lot of great work. You look at '76, we have this big, big tour, and at first everyone wants to know, "Is this gonna be a Beatles reunion? It's rumored that McCartney blah-blah-blah, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are going to join him on-stage, and John Lennon blah-blah-blah." So it was rumoured The Beatles were going to re-form. Even in our most successful year they were taking our success off us. It was, "Well maybe The Beatles will re-form, that would be good." But the great thing was that three weeks into the tour it was suddenly, "Who cares?" It doesn't matter. This is a great band. And at the end of it we go and set some big world record. So that's good to see. We did this thing that we set out to do. And we needn't have worried.

[olderthannetfic]

I've been back on a Hankcon phase and there's one type of DBH fans that I genuinely don't get: those who insist that Hank and Connor have a father/son dynamic. It's a valid dynamic if that's what you like, but I never felt like that's what happened between them. Like, even if I didn't ship them I would see them more as a "buddy cop" duo or a "mentor/mentee" situation at best (I don't think Hank even teaches Connor anything 😭). Do people have a weirdass view of father/son relationships or am I the one being obtuse here?

--

They're pretending to themselves that it isn't shippy.

Some of it is people assuming a certain trope will be present and then hallucinating that it actually was. Specifically, I've seen plenty of people assume that Hank's kid died long enough ago that he'd be Connor's apparent age if he'd lived. From what I remember, the actual in-game evidence shows that he only died a few years ago. He wouldn't be Connor's apparent age or Connor's actual age or Connor's (in)experience level. Nothing matches.

Part of it is that Hank's vibe is like he's been a washed-up alcoholic for a couple of decades. Sure, he'd have been fired by now, but there are countless vaguely similar films noir where an ex cop character gives off the same air Hank does. What people remember from art is how it made them feel, not what the nitty-gritty text on some object you can examine says. (I just checked a wiki, and Cole died in 2035. The game is set in 2038. He would have been 9.)

Hank fucking up at work for three years or less makes a lot more sense, but it isn't how things feel if you play the game. (Or, well, watch a bunch of playthroughs, which is what I did before reading all the porn.)

I too roll my eyes, but I can see how they got there.

It's a Getting Your Mojo Back plot. They were expecting the replacement goldfish version. I was expecting the gay-as-fuck Caves of Steel version.

[anafricandaydreamer]

Random thoughts about Sinners (2025) part two

• Annie's knowledge and wisdom meeting Sammies gift. Showing us that hoodoo as a way to protect those gifted with abilities to uplift and free our spirits from the confines of the lives we live.

• Smoke and Stacks abandonment issues manifesting differently. Smoke showed a desire to find what he didn't have. But Stack rejecting all Black women.

• Mary's disregard for Sammie until she realized who he was and his proximity to the twins. Now she uses that and her money to distract him from what he said..for her to leave.

• Stack having a love and affection for Annie, because she was capable of providing a safe place for Smoke to be Elijah, something he couldn't do. Something he couldn't be.

• The fact that we got to meet Smoke and Elijah, but only got to see Stack and will never have the opportunity to witness Elias.

• Annie not looking surprised at Smokes arrival, she knew he was coming, just no exact idea of when.

• Sammies father was most likely responsible for alienating the twins from the rest of the community. Talking some bullshit about the twins killing their father is going against God.

• Sammies father trying to shame Sammie into leaving the music behind.

• The song in the church being 'this little light of mine' right before the preacher tries to dim Sammies light.

• Dimming or extinguishing Sammies light would've hurt future generations to come.

• The preacher admitted to bringing the guitar in. He's aware that Sammies got a gift, he wants to control it. Own it, posses it. The church taught him well.

• As much as there was a real visceral love between Annie and Smoke, she still falls into the archetype of the women of the past who had no choice but to accept any and everything from men who did nothing but hurt them.

• MBJ being on screen with a dark skinned, plus sized black woman as a Love Intrest....Lord! thank you Ryan. Leaning into the blackness instead of always trying to soften and contrast it in order to appease white people. I was getting tired of it. I think Ryan could sense it, he knows the industry better than we do and how to go around it.

• Smoke being more of a father to Stack than a brother at times.• While Smoke was protecting Stack, who protected him? Annie obviously, but who before her? When they were kids?

• Stack disrespecting Cornbreads wife the moment he met her.

• Even if Sammie did everything his father wanted, his father would've been unhappy with him.

• Remmick saying the prayer with Sammie. Trauma.

• Am I crazy for thinking Remmick was after the twins in the first place? They robbed the Irish mob, then an Irish vampire comes for them? I don't know, maybe I'm crazy.

• Remmick saying I want your Stories, reminder that everyone wants Black peoples stories, music, art, minds, light but what they really want is something they can't take from us. The undying soul that resides within. Something we can't even locate. We can access, but never locate and extract to give to anyone else. Everyone wants this thing but not the people who have it.

• Sammies parents not caring about his well-being instead focusing on what the churchfolks opinions and viewpoint. Had me yelling at them in front of other people.

• Sammies dad calling him a prodigal son...my guy he left YESTERDAY!🙄 I actually laughed at that shit.

• Smoke saying he never seen the things Annie warned him about...SIR, you never seen those things because of the MOJO BAG. 🤔

• The white people performing at the door to lull everyone into a false sense of security. And all it did was instill fear, because since when do white people try so hard? To be around black people? At night?

• When the haze of the hive mind lifted from Stack, does Smokes voice haunt him? Smoke, his strong, protective other half, begging, pleading, with him not to hurt Annie, not to hurt him. Tell me he hears Smoke everytime he closes his eyes. I need someone to write a fic about this.

• Am I the only one that thought of Cornbreads wife when I saw them getting burnt by the sun? The trauma of not knowing is worse.

• I know the entire community is gonna blame Smoke and Stack for bringing the Devil with them. And whose gonna lead the charge...their trifling uncle.

• I need the whole 'you gonna let her get between us again'• explored...thoroughly. Please Stack tell me more.

• Seeing Smoke stand between Stack,(behind the door) and Annie (directly behind him) made me wonder, did Smoke ever feel torn? Or like he had ro choose? I feel like he was Smoke for Stack and reserved Elijah for Annie.

• Yes I would've loved a triangle between Smoke, Annie and Stack. Simply because black women deserve more. And Annie deserved the world.

• Why, lord why did Stack bite Annie twice? AND why did I kinda enjoy the visual of him on her? Help.

• Capitalism is trash. That's it.

For now. This movie has me losing my mind.

[ostensiblynone]

CLINT BOON (of the Inspiral Carpets): Noel was never a teenager. He's always been thirtysomething.

CB: Towards the end of the 1980s we needed a new singer and Noel presented himself at an audition. We all liked him but didn't feel his voice suited what we were looking for. So we took him on board as a roadie and general cosmic advisor. Noel was always the last person in the Inspiral Carpets' crew to break a sweat. In fact, I can honestly say I've never seen him sweat. He just knew how to pace himself. You'd see him a lot walking around Manchester delivering "Cool As Fuck" T-shirts and sundry cow memorabilia [Inspirals logo was a Cow]. He'd sometimes pretend to be one of us and do phone interviews with Japanese journalists.

Noel was one of the strongest characters I've ever met. On a street-level, he was a very inspiring bloke to hang out with. He was like a latter-day Artful Dodger. Any city in the north is full of guys just like Noel was. He ran a nice line in nicking trainers to order. He could always get you a nice raincoat that's just fallen off the back of a lorry. He wasn't involved in organised crime. It wasn't like Noel was doing the nicking. He just knew the lads who were doing all the ram-raiding. He used to ask, "Does anyone here want a mountain bike?" Stuff like that. I got kitted out by him several times.

Noel always made it very obvious that one day he wanted to front his own band or at least lead his own band. He was always writing songs. Technically, we sacked him. We didn't lose any sleep about it. He had his band. It was up and running. We sent him off with a nice wedge of cash and said "God bless you, brother".

—MOJO - Face to face with Oasis | The story they tried to ban Mojo - December 1997

[dingoat]

OC-tober 5 - Outfit swap! (Part 2)

Yes I'm doubling up on images today, maybe this gives me a free pass later on? But I could not resist an outfit swap for Ahuska and Thirteen either! I'm not sure exactly what Ahuska thinks of wearing one of the first fashion disaster triumphs I ever drew Thirteen in, but I think he looks awfully cute in one of my favourite armour designs I've ever made for my girl >.>

[howldean]

no spill blood

story by @howldean | art by @witchy-worm created for @deancashorrorfest

rated: explicit | warnings/tags: graphic depictions of violence, stanford era, creature!cas, case fic, dean is so sick of witches, identity reveal, werewolves, angst

summary: A witch hunt becomes far more than that when Dean rescues an unassuming, innocent, harmless stranger. But Castiel is more than he seems, and as the lines of their unlikely connection blur, so does the truth.

Revenge, plain and simple. Surviving to see it through, not so simple.

this october, ask yourself: who makes the rules?

teaser below!

Dean had to figure out what to do with this Castiel guy. Sooner or later, he was going to start asking questions– honestly, he was surprised they hadn’t started already, the usual 'what the fuck's and 'what the hell was that's that tended to come with the job.

But he had questions of his own. He hadn’t seen an altar like that before. Nor had he seen that kind of bad mojo propped up on a shitty set-up, either. Maybe she was rushed, assuming the witch that caught him was working alone.

He doubted he was that lucky.

So what the hell kinds of plans did she have? Why go through the trouble of killing this many to begin with? Just what kind of vendetta did she have? And against who. Rifling through his journal and picking apart newspapers, he sought out whatever the hell he was missing. This was the kind of shit that should click, come to him clearly. Sam had a knack for it. Spotting the pattern.

Dean pushed the thought aside, and pushed the clippings off of his lap. That didn’t matter, he wasn’t here, and they hadn’t talked in– they weren’t talking. Dad knew he could get shit done on his own. That’s why he was on his own. So he just had to take care of this, focus. There was something here, a connection between them all, a reason they were targets. They went missing before they were found dead, that was worthwhile.

Glancing up, he hoped Castiel could be the key. He was still alive. Whatever the witch wanted him for, she hadn’t been done with him. Maybe he knew why.

[gatheredfates]

While I work on getting my FFXIV mojo back and coming out (of my cage) hiatus, I thought this drive might be a good transitionary stage for my brain to get back into community projects! So, please consider this another run of Sea's Single-Word (Anything) Drive!

What is a single-word (anything) drive?

I'm glad you asked! The single-word (anything) drive is an extension (and evolution) of my single-word fic drive, where writers would create a small fic based on a word of my choice and post it for the community to read.

These days, I want to give people the opportunity engage in creative mediums beyond writing; aka:

Gpose

Art

Headcanons

Meta Analysis

...and more!

Whatever makes you happy and engaged creatively with Final Fantasy XIV!

By liking/reblogging this post, you consent for me to go into your askbox to send a one-word prompt generated from this website, picked from a selection of five, as a prompt for you do something creative with your oc. I will then queue any and all completed works to my character question tag, which can be found here, as well as posting them to my Tumblr Community over at SEAFLOOR (though you and other members are welcome to reblog them there in my absence, too)! Some members even like to think their work in my project Discord, but that's not mandatory. ✨

There is no word limit or time limit, no barrier for skill, and you are welcome to ask for another prompt if the original one doesn't vibe. This is all about giving you the opportunity to explore a concept or part of your character you might not have considered, or expand upon your artistic/technical ability.

Sea, when does the drive end?

I'm going to be kind to myself and open the drive until next Sunday, April 6, with most of the prompts being send over today and that weekend. So, if you don't get one right away, please expect it next weekend!

[greypistacchio]

something i've come to lose my marbles about is what @thebluespacecow pointed out in the tags when they reblogged one of my destiel posts, which is that dean would love cas no matter the vessel:

but the reason why i'm bringing it up in the light of episode 7.17, "The Born-Again Identity", is because there's a Side B to this. not only will Dean love Cas no matter the vessel - he won't love any of Cas' vessels unless Castiel is inside their body, and you can bet he's able to tell whether his angel is inside Jimmy Novak or not.

just think about Castiel's amnesiac persona, Emanuel, who wore Jimmy Novak's face and had Castiel's angelic powers. he could heal with his touch like Castiel did, he could read people's souls like Cas did, he could see the supernatural like Cas did. he had Castiel's pensive nature, he spoke with Castiel's deep voice, his gaze was Castiel-deep, he remained in awe of life as the ultimate miracle, as a work of art.

Dean sees the body that Castiel has been in for years at this point, and knows that that's not Jimmy Novak. but it only takes an interaction for him to figure out that it's also not Castiel. not quite. right away, Dean is able to carefully introduce himself in a way that doesn't rub Emanuel the wrong way nor pokes at his repressed memories. and although Dean has spent the whole season feeling really pissed at what Castiel did when he opened up Purgatory and released the Leviathans into the world, leaving Sam's mental defence against Lucifer shattered before he fucked off into the river...

he doesn't demand that he remember, nor does he start acting reckless, violent, or out of control. instead he schools his features and does what he knows, right away, is best for his Castiel by not pressuring him into remembering. but he knows that it's Castiel, he fucking knows, because why else would he open up the way he does in the Impala? why would Dean "Repressed Emotions" Winchester lay out his vulnerabilities and deepest pain for Emanuel to know, when he never trusted even Sam or Bobby with the rawest of his hurt??

and then, when Meg suggests telling Castiel about who he is so he can get back his angel mojo and help them save Sam, Dean's brother Sam, Dean's reason to live Sam. Dean refuses. of course, Cas ends up figuring it out himself, but until then Dean refuses to have any part in reminding him of who he is because he knows it won't do Castiel any good to remember what he did. as Castiel gets his memories back, Dean looks distressed. not angry at Cas now that he's back and can be held accountable for his mistakes. not scared of Castiel relapsing back to his turbo-fascist God era.

he looks distressed that Castiel is going to blame himself and go down the self-destructive rabbit hole, and when Castiel starts berating himself out loud, Dean follows him and actively argues back. and the reason he does this is as simple as it is unhinged - the moment everything clicks back into place, he KNOWS that Castiel is back. he just KNOWS it's him - not the vessel Cas favours. not an incomplete version of Cas who's devoid of his moral compass, his memories and the free will he built for himself that Dean has come to know and love him for. it's HIM, it's CASTIEL, and he's back.

fucking hell everyone the destiel of it all

[deepdreamnights]

Vidu and the Quest to Make More Toons

So, a ways back I talked about Minmax, but I've been trying out basically all the video generators looking for the tools I need, and low and behold this week I find out I've been accepted into the Vidu Artists program now, wherein I get credits and access to access their cooler features in in exchange for... talking about the tech and how I use it.

Well twist my arm. I shall endeavor to be objective and informative despite free stuff (a challenge my spirit needs practice withstanding if anyone else wishes to test me)

So let's talk Vidu.

(outside of being converted to gif, no animations in this post have been cut or edited)

Also, everyone say hi to Maureen the Lizard Queen, every hero needs an evil queen that really wants in his pteruges, and she's that for TyrannoMax.

Vidu's got a bit more oomph under the hood than MinMax (no shade to MinMax, they're brand new and very promising) and it's way too early to be picking winners when it comes to video.

Anyhow, basic features that are nice include the options to upload start and end frames, options for a 4 or 8 second duration (more about that later), and a cleanup/upscale. Credits line up more or less with seconds. 4 credits for a 4 second clip, 8 for an 8 second, and again at upscale. It's straightforward in a way a lot of services aren't.

Apetomic Pyle, done on the fast settings. (not to shabby still, and it gave him monkey legs which a lot of systems balk at)

If you're on the $30/mo tier, you can choose to do a double-cost "quality" over "speed" option. Thankfully, the artist program gets me access. Since there's not yet a seed option it's hard to do a direct comparison, but the quality is going to be a must if you're doing anything that looks like cel. Much cleaner, much smoother.

(4 and 8 second quality gens)

One of the nicest features is the character reference feature. Basically it's like Midjourney's --cref, but with a very strict adherence to character details.

The above images used reference shots of Maureen and Dr. Underfang, and it got the stripes on Underfang's tie right in basically every gen. That's a ridiculous level of character model adherence and, for my purposes, all but essential.

It did misinterpret Maureen's undertail coloration for a sort of fin or drape, but the shot I used was oddly cropped, and sometimes stuff like that happens with gen AI. Given my measuring stick for errors is the era of animation I'm emulating, whatever does slip through is only going to make it more authentic.

There is a limitation in that character-reference and text-only prompts default to 16:9 presently with no options to adjust, but some room to pan is always handy and most people are going to be outputting for phone and not outdated CRT televisions, so, it's understandable it'd be a lower priority feature for the devs.

Walk cycles! By Saint Eniac it's a miracle!

On the left we have one prompted with TyrannoMax's control art, and on the right we have one using that art as the starting frame (4 and 8 seconds, respectively).

Way More details under the fold.

Vidu likes a hefty prompt.

A lot of detail and evocative language helps, and older prompting tricks like mojo-jojoing important concepts are back. For the Max walk cycles above I used:

1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon character walk cycle. The orange dinosaur-anthro wearing blue gladiator armor walks toward screen right, the camera tracks him, holding him in center-frame. He completes a full, brisk walk cycles from the side view. He walks boldly, back straight, head high, heroic. His tail sways behind him as he moves. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster. flat chroma-key green screen background

The potential for use with my Filmation-inspired technique is readily apparent. Both versions are on-model as much as any two shots in a 1980s action-figure shilling cartoon would be, some minor blurring to clean up in post but nothing serious. It should be pretty easy to extract the needed frames for looping and compositing.

Some Extra Points

There are the usual issues with hands, though more often than not it corrects my four-fingered anthros to having a human five-fingered hand. Buzby Spurlock animation was known for those kinds of inconsistencies, though. So an opening credits video is much less far off than it was at the last post.

It's also generally impressive how well it does with my dinosaur characters. Non-humanoid dinosaurs are difficult for most image generators, much less anthrosaurs in a vintage aesthetic. Vidu has yet to override the character art to give Underfang or Max the Jurassic Park style t-rex jaw, which is something both MJ and Dall-E 3 have trouble with.

Human characters like Kitty Concolor here, much more stable.

As always, clips are curated. I didn't choose my absolute best ones (gotta have something for the videos), and I'm working on a fun series of jank reels across all the generators.

[blanketfort-motel]

Cas unintentionally Pavlov-Affecting Dean with subtle grace-healing. This became longer than intended.

I've noticed a good amount of fanart with Dean smoking a cigarette, so the train of thought goes: "God he already drinks so much he doesn't need that-- Then again Cas is probably healing him subtly every chance he gets because he so desperately wants Dean to live a long, happy life if he ever gets the chance. He wants Dean to die old, content, and with his brother at his side, even if Cas can't be for whatever possible reason." -- So...

Does Dean notice the subtle healing? Cas doesn't necessarily need to touch him to heal him, so if he's patient/discreet, maybe Dean wouldn't immediately make the connection of him feeling a little better (minor, MINOR chills and then comfortable warmth) to possibly having something to do with Cas being in the room, let alone him using angel mojo on him without flinching. He just feels better when Cas is around, he can't/doesn't/won't explain it to himself or anyone besides Cas until much later in the series. Maybe even in Heaven. Most likely in Heaven. One day they're all domestic, sat on a bench overlooking a beach, and Dean realizes that Cas's entire angelic form--though resembling his earthly vessel, at the moment, for the sake of Dean's sanity--is radiating that exact feeling of hidden grace on earth. Dean has to ask Castiel, cause he really can't tell where his feeling begin and where the grace ends. They had to talk about it cause Dean was questioning and getting somewhat defensive of his feelings, like they might not be his own.

Cas reassures him that his grace is only the chill, cool, washing-over sensation. The warmth came from Dean, which explains why it had always lingered so long after Cas would leave a room. He feels the warmth now. It pushes out from his ribcage straight to his hands and feet.

Dean is safe, happy, and warm, on a beach in Heaven.

______________________________________________________________

Listen guys I wanna make some type of looking-over-the-horizon ending-shot fanart to go with this but unfortunately these thoughts come at 2am and I'm still getting used to having a solid adult job out of college, among a million other resposibilities.

I know not many if anybody is viewing my posts rn since I just remade my account after 8 years but---BUT---hear me out---

I'm so passionate about this y'all. I wanna share it with people that get it. I have other fandoms I care about, my walls are covered in personal artwork for Jinx (arcane), Princess Mononoke, Walter White, Bo Burnham, Wolverine and Deadpool, Avatar (last Airbender), Avatar (James Cameron), My frickin' Little Pony (FIM), and many other scattered interests. also a lot of bears. theyre probably my favorite animal. averaging at least 2 bears per wall. interesting.

Anyway, I'll post a lot of different art and headcanons/drabbles/oneshots depending on the day but this account is my first steps into taking my hobbies seriously, especially art and writing.

Follow or don't, I won't know if you even saw this!

Either way, we hope you enjoyed your stay at Blanket Fort, come again soon!