#mother iconoclasts

[decibelcoatl]

Despite only getting back into the Iconoclasts fandom after so long, one personal headcanon still persists in my mind...that Mina - a pirate girl from another culture - acts as more of an authentic older sister figure to Robin than Elro - who is Robin's actual biological brother. And I'm sure there are other people who think that way as well.

But in all honesty, Elro...isn't actually a "real" brother. At least, not to me, in a sense. Not in a way that matters, anyway.

As far as relationships go, Iconoclasts does its best at showing off relationship dynamics, and how they affect other people. Grey went out of their way to court Black for a whopping 187 years, breaking down her barriers with utmost love, care and patience (up until Elro killed them, that is, and that's something I will never forgive him for). Royal met someone who also held an appreciation for flowers, which he loves the most (especially since Robin's nickname is "Sunflower"). Mina decides to stop running away, and turns over a new leaf to become a better person and secure a future that she can share with Samba.

The same can be held true for familial relationships, especially in instances where blood doesn't always make a family or even siblings. It's especially true when you compare how Elro acts around Robin to the way Mina treats Robin, or even how Mother treats Royal, her adopted "son".

With Robin and Elro, there is little warmth in how they interact, especially after the deaths of Henetta and Ella. I'd argue that there is very little love between them, either. Elro claims that he cares about Robin, but that "care" is relegated to how she should stay home where he thinks she'll be safe, even despite the fact that she's practically an outlaw and staying home will result in guaranteed Penance for her. Before he died, Polro wasn't much better off, either, insisting that Robin live a safer life as a farmer, like her mother and maternal grandfather. Robin literally finds more comfort in the machines she makes, and that's heartbreaking! And it is only after Robin kills God himself and restores the planet that Elro finally gives in and tells her that he won't tell her what to do anymore.

Robin and Elro may be siblings, but Elro sure as hell doesn't present himself as a kind and loving brother in a way that all older siblings are meant to. At least, not after Polro's death. Even Black sees Elro as a piece of garbage, though that's only due to him being responsible for the death of the first person she came to love.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Mina. Robin just met Mina, and the two don't know very much about each other. And they only end up getting together when the One Concern attacks Isilugar, and then when Black kidnaps Samba after White dies.

And yet, within the short timespan...you can tell that Mina and Robin's relationship is far more genuine compared to that between Robin and Elro. There is love, care, respect, and protectiveness. Mina encourages Robin to go out and make her mark on the world, instead of sitting at home doing nothing. Like Elro, Mina worries for Robin's well-being; however, unlike Elro, Mina also acknowledges that Robin is her own person, and that she perfectly capable of handling herself, especially after Robin solos Black in the detritus sand pit. They may not share the same blood, but the feelings they exhibit are so real despite Mina not necessarily having the purest intentions at heart compared to Robin. Not to mention the way they work together during boss fights, with Robin incapacitating the opponent and leaving them wide open for Mina to make the killing blow (the Inti boss fight is a perfect example of their teamwork, especially when they high-five one another). Mina is able to establish a warm place that Robin can call home, and acts like a "real" older sister.

I might be looking a little too deep into this, given that I'm a huge sucker for the "found family" trope, and I like seeing how two unrelated people can develop familial or sibling bonds compared to "official" or "real" families/siblings. Kinda makes me want to write a thesis paper about it, lol.

[dbcoatl-art]

I've wanted to make a few Iconoclasts comics for a long time, but never got around to making them...until now.

And of course I had to start this off with the "Blows Up Pancakes" meme, but with Royal and Mother. Poor Royal just can't seem to catch a break, can he?

I'll probably draw a few more comics if anyone's interested. Additionally, I'm also currently scripting a longform Iconoclasts comic, starring my favourite character in the game, ever.

[incorrecticonoclastsquotes]

I got bored and decided to boot up Cassette Beasts just to mess around with the character customization and replicate the four main characters, including Black.

Note that they’re not exactly 1:1, only the closest I could get to the original character designs. Elro definitely got the closest, though.

- Mod dBCoatl

[lconoclasts]

Shout out to this robin pony I made back in the day

Please excuse her human skintone nobody on Pony Town will fucking talk to you unless ur a human horse

[bombcollar]

there’s virtually nothing out there exploring the dynamic Royal and Mother must have so I took it upon myself to create the content I want to see. there’s an awkward dinner party!

[hirokiyuu]

hello my beloved friend. consider the following: mina/samba. the quiet moment that comes after yet another serious talk you'll learn nothing from

"I mean, this one's a really promising lead!" says Mina, and she's already got her head tilted towards the ladder, the promise of somewhere else one Samba's starting to feel she can't quite compete with. "Like--"

"I know," interrupts Samba, who's already heard the spiel a time too many, and doesn't have it in her to hear it again, "but... I'm gonna miss you while you're gone, y'know?"

"I..." Mina starts, eyes dragged back towards Samba for once, and as she says, "I know," the but, at the end is a silent addition they can still both hear.

[ghnbear]

Indie rpg games (/--)/

hey!today i brought some of my favorites games!!! mostly (or all of them) are rpg and have an pixel design. those are my favorite kind of game, but they aren't very famous....... I would appreciate some recommendations as well. (´ﾟωﾟ｀)

1. Limbo

Sensible... and have a lot of puzzles, but it's fun.

2. Heartbound

this one isn't complete yet, but the uncompleted version have a lot to offer already. I love the history and the characters, also the universe its very beautiful. I love the office part and the character in the office (ToT) I love this one, and I am very excited to play the complete version

3. Iconoclast

this is a very long game. you can spend like days playing, and really put a effort to it. I love the characters as well. if it was a book, it would be my favorite. the history is very good as well. IT not requires a high processor, so you can install in every computer. (　・３・)

4. Papers, please

this one isn't a rpg. It acctualy have a very interesting context, so, briefly, you are a employee working in a border of a country. there a lot of politics issues going on, so if you made a mistake and allow an entrance of a danger person, you gonna die or have drastically consequencs. Also, your family suffers with you choices. I love this one so much! it's fun, and take a lot of effort to do the right choices. your actions have real consequences, and you can achieve different ends as well. ( *´・ω)/(；д； ).

5. undertale

undertale is pretty famous. It's an rpg where a child falls in to the underground, where lives "dangerous monsters" but when you start exploring and understanding that place, you figure a lot of things. there's 3 possible endings (I guess) and it's also a game of "actions have consequences" I played this one so many times. (*´；ェ；｀*)

6. Shovel Knight

Love this one! it's the most simple of this list, but is also pretty long. rpg, and in pixel, the proposal of this game is explore, fight and win against some enemies. you can play with different characters, and the world is very big, so exploring it its fun. Takes time to finishing it, and it's very comfortable to play. (゜o゜)＼(-_-)

7. Hotline miami

violent and have a awesome soundtrack. there are two volumes, both are great, but the first one hits different. It's nice to play when you got a frustrating day, to overcome you anger and.... you know... (-.-)ノ⌒-~

8. one shot

I love thiissss, but the last time I played was several years ago, so I don't remember very well. bur I do remember that it felt great. ( °∇^)］

mother 3 or earthbound

the last of the list... the first of my heart.

this is a nitendo game, so you can play on your phone if you install a emulator to snes. The room is easy to find online ＼(^-^)／ love the characters and it have a great history. I played more then one hundred times, and I always cry (even though it's not a sad game)

this is it!!! thanks for reading ＼(^_^)／

(;_;)/~~~

[vspin]

Eva Von Valancius...finally picked a first name

I am making her a Noble Officer from an Imperial World.

Darkest Hour: You are a bastard, an illegitimate member of a family that immediately turned its back on you. Triumph: Your strong presence and persuasiveness stopped a feudal war between neighbouring systems.

This is one of my first OCs I'm not giving some traumatic background. She was born a bastard noble. She was shunned by the family and her father. She was still given education and a life of luxury. Raised by her mother who worked in intelligence for the noble family (which is why she still grew up on the estate). Her mother's occupation did play into her upbringing as well.

She got an education, had a stint at the Adeptus Administratum (never again). Constantly overlooked and demeaned by her family despite her brilliance. As she is extremely ambitious and recognized her family would never give her the station she deserved, she ended up leaving to work and eventually become mentored by a Planetary Governor. There she made a name for herself as an outstanding diplomat, stopping a feudal war between neighboring systems.

She is someone who has worked extremely hard to make up for the circumstances of her birth. The irony that she became Rogue Trader because of her bloodline is not lost on her (and a bit annoying because in the end her hard work ended up not being what elevated her status). There is some shame and some insecurity about her new role, she hides this and never shows it...well maybe to a certain someone...

This is a pretty good description of who she is:

Iconoclastic. She likes people who go against the mold and aren't satisfied with where they are in life.

[saintvainglorious]

Fics I Enjoyed in January

I was putting together a list of the best fics I read last year and was reminded of two incredible ATLA fics I read in February 2023 ((Never) Forget Who You Are by mindbending and up in the city (until the stars lost the war) by Madseason). Those two fics are absolute perfection and sent me down an Avatar: The Last Airbender rabbit hole this month.

I read an insane amount, for me, even more than I did last year in September/October, when I was chowing down Drarry longfics like a starving dog. There's approximately 993k words of fic in this rec list - if you assume the average novel is 90k, that's about 11 books!

half in the shadows, half burned in flames by r_astra Avatar: the Last Airbender | Gen | 4k | Not Rated

“They say you tried to kill the Firelord,” Hakoda says. "Why?" Zuko doesn’t know how to answer. Because I hate him. Because I love him. Because he wants to see the world burn. Because he knotted one hand in my hair and cupped flames against my face with the other. Because my mother is dead. Because my uncle is dead. Instead, he shrugs tiredly and says: “Someone has to.”

i am through finding blame by sokkaesque/@sokkagatekeeper Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 6k | Teen & Up

Sokka was fourteen the first time he realized people didn’t apologize to him very often. Or, Sokka during The Southern Raiders.

a nation, held by snowdarkred/@snowdarkred Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 6k | General Audiences

It doesn’t take long for the rumors to start. The Fire Nation prides itself on its civilization. It isn’t like the other, lesser, nations who throw their children away by sending them into war. They are to be protected, because children are the future glory of the nation. The crown prince is thirteen when his father burns his face in front of an audience of hundreds.

The Iconoclast by ranilla_bean/@ranilla-bean Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Suki/Zuko | 21k (WIP) | Explicit

After a protracted civil war, the victorious new Fire Lord sends a call for a new bodyguard across the four nations. A Southern Water Tribesman and a warrior from Kyoshi Island respond.

Life in Eden by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Gen | 14k | Not Rated

In which Ursa tries to be a better parent to Azula, and it doesn’t change very much. And then, quite abruptly, it changes everything.

While Mighty Oaks Do Fall by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 181k (WIP) | Teen & Up

The newly-crowned Fire Lord Ozai offers his firstborn son to service in the temple. This turns out to be a catastrophic mistake.

where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor/@a-witch-in-endor Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 60k | Not Rated

When Azula is nine, she becomes an only child. She hears the Fire Lord call for Zuko's life, and in the morning, her mother and brother are gone. Azula may be young, but she isn't naive. She knows what happened to them. Which makes it all the more surprising when Azula tracks the Avatar down and fights his group of peasant friends, only to find herself staring into an eerily familiar face.

War Crimes by Lovely_Elbow_Leech/@lovelyelbowleech Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 90k | Mature | Part 1 of All's Fair

Book one ends with two major differences: 1. Sokka went on the mission with Hahn (it did not go well) 2. Zhao survives the North Pole and that proves unfortunate for everybody (except Zhao, obviously). Imprisoned on Zhao’s war ship, Sokka and Zuko have to work together to survive. They are not very enthusiastic about this prospect. And they argue. A lot.

War Games by Lovely_Elbow_Leech/@lovelyelbowleech Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 443k (WIP) | Mature | Part 2 of All's Fair

Sokka is aware that being friends with the enemy is going to bring complications, but he probably should have guessed that being friends with Zuko in particular, was going to be a bit like dunking your head repeatedly into a bucket of angry Fire Ferrets.

Below the Sun by CSHfic and VSfic Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 25k | Teen & Up

Sokka is washed overboard while working on the fisherman's boat during the storm. He wakes on a deserted island. Or... mostly deserted.

Will We Last the Night by CSHfic and VSfic Avatar: The Last Airbender | Sokka/Zuko | 143k | Teen & Up

Chief Arnook never assigns Sokka to protect Princess Yue, so he goes to fight the Fire Nation with the other men. When the moon dies, and the ocean spirit takes its revenge, Sokka is caught standing on the deck of a Fire Nation ship. Sokka should have drowned… and he would have drowned, if not for a certain Fire Nation raft fleeing the North Pole. [An enemies-to-lovers season 2 rewrite, where Sokka is separated from the gaang during the Siege of the North, and travels the Earth Kingdom with Zuko instead].

[justforbooks]

Donald Sutherland

Commanding and versatile actor known for his roles in MAS*H, Don’t Look Now and The Hunger Games

Donald Sutherland, who has died aged 88, brought his disturbing and unconventional presence to bear in scores of films after his breakthrough role of Hawkeye Pierce, the army surgeon in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), one of the key American films of its period. It marked Sutherland out as an iconoclastic figure of the 60s generation, but he matured into an actor who made a speciality of portraying taciturn, self-doubting characters. This was best illustrated in his portrayal of the tormented parent of a drowned girl, seeking solace in a wintry Venice, in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), and of the weak, nervous, concerned father of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Timothy Hutton) in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980).

Although Sutherland appeared in the statutory number of stinkers that are many a film actor’s lot, he was always watchable. His career resembled a man walking a tightrope between undemanding parts in potboilers and those in which he was able to take risks, such as the title role in Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976).

Curiously, it was Sutherland’s ears that first got him noticed, in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967). During the shoot, according to Sutherland, “Clint Walker sticks up his hand and says, ‘Mr Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American people, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this stupid scene where I have to pretend to be a general.’ Aldrich turns and points to me and says, ‘You with the big ears. You do it’ … It changed my life.” In other words, it led to M*A*S*H and stardom.

Sutherland and his M*A*S*H co-star Elliott Gould tried to get Altman fired from the film because they did not think the director knew what he was doing due to his unorthodox methods. In the early days, Sutherland was known to have confrontations with his directors. “What I was trying to do all the time was to impose my thinking,” he remarked some years later. “Now I contribute. I offer. I don’t put my foot down.”

Sutherland, who was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was a sickly child who battled rheumatic fever, hepatitis and polio. He spent most of his teenage years in Nova Scotia where his father, Frederick, ran a local gas, electricity and bus company; his mother, Dorothy (nee McNichol), was a maths teacher. He attended Bridgewater high school, then graduated from Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, with a double major in engineering and drama. As a result of a highly praised performance in a college production of James Thurber’s and Elliott Nugent’s The Male Animal, he dropped the idea of becoming an engineer and decided to pursue acting.

With this in mind, he left Canada for the UK in 1957 to study at Lamda (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), where he was considered too tall and ungainly to get anywhere. However, he gained a year’s work as a stage actor with the Perth repertory company, and appeared in TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He was Fortinbras in a 1964 BBC production of Hamlet, shot at Elsinore castle and starring Christopher Plummer. He also appeared at the Criterion theatre in the West End in The Gimmick in 1962.

In 1959 he married Lois Hardwick; they divorced in 1966. Then he married the film producer Shirley Douglas, with whom he had twins, Kiefer and Rachel; they divorced in 1971. Kiefer, who grew up to become a celebrated actor, was named after the producer-writer Warren Kiefer, who put Sutherland in an Italian-made Gothic horror film, The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Christopher Lee played a necrophile count, while Sutherland doubled as a dim-witted police sergeant and, in drag and heavy makeup, as a witch.

In an earlier era, the gawky Sutherland might not have achieved the stardom that followed the anarchic M*A*S*H, but Hollywood at the time was open for stars with unconventional looks, and Sutherland was much in demand for eccentric roles throughout the 70s.

He was impressive as a moviemaker with “director’s block” in Paul Mazursky’s messy but interesting Alex in Wonderland (1970), which contains a prescient dream sequence in which his titular character meets Fellini. In the same year, Sutherland played a Catholic priest and the object of Geneviève Bujold’s erotic gaze in Act of the Heart; he was the appropriately named Sergeant Oddball, an anachronistic hippy tank commander, in the second world war action-comedy Kelly’s Heroes; and he and Gene Wilder were two pairs of twins in 18th-century France in the broad comedy Start the Revolution Without Me.

Sutherland was at his most laconic, sometimes verging on the soporific, in the title role of Alan J Pakula’s Klute (1971), as a voyeuristic ex-policeman investigating the disappearance of a friend and getting deeply involved with a prostitute, played by Jane Fonda.

Sutherland and Fonda were teamed up again as a couple of misfits in the caper comedy Steelyard Blues (1973). It initially had a limited distribution due mainly to their participation together in the anti-Vietnam war troop show FTA (Fuck the Army), which Sutherland co-directed, co-scripted and co-produced.

Sutherland always made his political views known, although they surfaced only occasionally in his films. In among the many mainstream comedies and thrillers was Roeg’s supernatural drama Don’t Look Now, in which Sutherland and Julie Christie are superb as a couple grieving their dead daughter. Despite the dark subject matter, the film was notable for containing “one of the sexiest love scenes in film history”, according to Scott Tobias in the Guardian, the frank depiction of their love-making coming “like a desert flower poking through concrete”. The actor so admired Roeg that he named another son after him, one of his three sons with the French-Canadian actor Francine Racette, whom he married in 1972.

John Schlesinger’s rambling version of The Day of the Locust (1975) saw Sutherland as a sexually repressed character – called Homer Simpson – who tramples a woman to death in an act of uncontrolled rage. Perhaps Bernardo Bertolucci had that in mind when he cast Sutherland in 1900 (Novecento, 1976), in which he is a broadly caricatured fascist thug who shows his sadism by smashing a cat’s head against a post and bashing a young boy’s brains out. “And I turned down Deliverance and Straw Dogs because of the violence!” Sutherland recalled.

In Fellini’s Casanova, the second of his two bizarre Italian excursions in 1976, Sutherland coldly calculates seduction under his heavily made-up features. The performance, as remarkably stylised as it is, still reveals the suffering soul within the sex machine.

In 1978 he appeared in Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives, a made-in-Canada murder mystery with Sutherland playing a Montreal cop investigating the murder of a young woman. More commercial was The Eagle Has Landed (1976), with Sutherland, attempting an Irish accent, as an IRA member supporting the Germans during the second world war, and as a chilling Nazi in Eye of the Needle (1981). Meanwhile, he was the hero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), who resists the insidious alien menace until the film’s devastating final shot.

In 1981 Sutherland returned to the stage, as Humbert Humbert in a highly anticipated version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, adapted by Edward Albee. It turned out to be a huge flop, running only 12 performances on Broadway. Both Sutherland and Albee played the blame game. “The second act is flawed,” Sutherland said. “Albee was supposed to have rethought it, but he never did.” Albee told reporters that he had scuttled some of his best scenes because they were “too difficult” for Sutherland because “he hasn’t been on stage for 17 years”.

Continuing his film career, Sutherland played a complex and sadistic British officer in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1985), and in A Dry White Season (1989) he took the role of an Afrikaner schoolteacher beginning to understand the brutal realities of apartheid. In Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), he held the screen with an extended monologue as he spilled the conspiracy beans to Kevin Costner’s district attorney hero Jim Garrison.

After having made contact with young audiences in the 70s with offbeat appearances in gross-out pictures The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), the latter as a pot-smoking professor, he was cast as an unconvincing bearded stranger in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

On a more adult level were Six Degrees of Separation (1993), in which he played an unfulfilled art dealer; A Time to Kill (1996), as an alcoholic, disbarred lawyer (alongside Kiefer); Without Limits (1998), as an enthusiastic athletics coach; and Space Cowboys (2000), as an elderly pilot. By this time, he was gradually moving into grey-haired character roles, one of the best being his amiable Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The Jane Austen novel was also featured in the television series Great Books (1993-2000), to which Sutherland lent his soothing voice as narrator. Other series in which he shone as quasi baddies were Commander in Chief (2005) – as the sexist Republican speaker of the house opposed to the new president (Geena Davis) – and Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09), in which he played a powerful patriarch of a wealthy family.

Sutherland continued to be active well into his 80s, his long grey hair and beard signifying sagacity, whether as a contract killer in The Mechanic, a Roman hero in The Eagle, a nutty retired poetry professor in Man on the Train (all 2011), or a quirky bounty hunter in the western Dawn Rider (2012), bringing more depth to the characters than they deserved. As President Coriolanus Snow, the autocratic ruler of the dystopian country of Panem in The Hunger Games (2012), Sutherland was discovered by a new generation; he went on to reprise the role in three further films in that franchise, beginning with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

He played artists in two art-world thrillers by Italian directors: in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Deception, AKA The Best Offer (2013), he was a would-be painter helping to execute multimillion-dollar scams, while in Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) he was on the other side of the heist as a reclusive genius targeted by a wealthy and unscrupulous dealer (Mick Jagger).

Aside from James Gray’s science-fiction drama Ad Astra (also 2019), in which he co-starred with Brad Pitt, Sutherland’s best late work was all for television. In Danny Boyle’s mini-series Trust (2018), which covered the same real-life events as Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, he played J Paul Getty, the oil tycoon whose grandson is kidnapped; while in The Undoing (2020), he was the father of a psychologist (Nicole Kidman), reluctantly putting up bail when her husband (Hugh Grant) is arrested for murder.

For the latter role Sutherland was in the running for a Golden Globe, having already received an honorary Oscar in 2017.

He is survived by Francine and his children, Kiefer, Rachel, Rossif, Angus and Roeg, and by four grandchildren.

🔔 Donald McNichol Sutherland, actor; born 17 July 1935; died 20 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[nyantry]

The Great Escape?

[ @iconoclast-infidels from X ]

Nova confirmed she could see, and therefore also hear, both Nico and Dmitry, and then after Dmitry's suggestion of an escape, she'd become a fighter. She was so much like Nico it was stunning to Dmitry. All that time, he knew Nico felt all sorts of complicated feelings regarding her, but one thing was always clear - the halfling missed his mother, and seemed to idolize her to some extent. It was only fitting that he took after her, too. That fighting spirit was something striking.

Dmitry held back a grin at the nickname Nova called Nico by.

That was a new one. He'd have to ask about it later, for sure, especially with Nico's reaction. "I'm Dmitry," he answered, helping Nico support Nova so they could get out of there. At least through the veil no one could see them or stop them from breaking out.

But Nico was right. Getting out of there had to be done. Dmitry didn't like it there either, not after his own experiences in such places. Were there good things to remember? Sure, maybe a mere handful. Black construction paper for origami cranes was something he suddenly decided he needed again. But for the most part, the time there had sucked and he wanted to forget. Forgetting was not easy.

"Let's go home," he said to Nico quietly.

[austinkleon]

Adolph Dehn, The Great God Pan (1940)

Over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art site you can see the multiple layers of this screen print by Adolph Dehn of some nuns painting the god Pan. Pretty great.

This lithograph is also great:

I'd never heard of Dehn's work before — he was a friend of the great Wanda Gág, whose book Millions of Cats I read to my kids “millions and billions and trillions” of times.

He did a lot of nun pieces:

Here's a biography of Dehn from The Smithsonian:

Dehn's satirical prints of European and New York scenes were the product of an unconventional Minnesota upbringing and an iconoclastic eye. The son of a feminist, socialist mother and an atheist, anarchist father, he was not destined for a quiet life. He studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York, after which he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War I. On his release Dehn took odd jobs and made his way to Europe, where his work as a magazine illustrator supported him and his Russian immigrant wife in their travels. While in Europe Dehn was a critical observer of the social scene, especially in Vienna and Berlin, and a light-hearted painter of park scenes and landscapes. In 1930, after his return from Europe, his work, on both European and New York subjects, was shown at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. The critical response was good, but sales were only moderate. In the mid-1930s, Dehn began to paint watercolor landscapes, which proved immensely popular. As a result, new commercial opportunities opened, including travels through the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela. His fame led to offers to teach and then to work for the Navy during World War II. Throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties, Dehn and his wife traveled around the world, doing commercial work and lithography. His work became less satirical and more fanciful, and he experimented with new graphic techniques. He died of a heart attack in 1968 while planning new trips, beginning a book, and organizing a retrospective.

See more of his (non-nun) work here.

[velvetvexations]

Blue Conrad is Not a Good Man

I thought I'd post the first ever story I wrote for what would eventually become my setting. This was originally a backstory piece for a character I was playing in a Trophy Dark game GM'd by the amazing and lovely tricksterkisses. It's no longer what I'd consider "canon" and I've retired from submitting it, but it still has some importance to me.

This is a historical horror piece. Reference is made to slavery and Native American genocide, but are not the focus. CW for gore, ableism, suicide, and implied sexual assault.

You are no doubt aware, dearest readers, of the assertion that Blue Conrad is not a good man. Even in the United States of America, the land I don’t think it controversial to say is the most favored by our divine Father, contrarians and iconoclasts bandy about whispers undermining the hope, unity, and strength that Conrad, the most spectacular of frontier heroes, inspires in all of us. However, knowing the high regards with which our readership adores him, we may shock you by unreservedly agreeing with that statement, for Blue Conrad is not a good man. He is the very definition of a great man! Anything less is a slander that must be stamped out, and for that purpose we have put together a short overview of a life larger than legend.

Of course, Blue Conrad shares this present century with several men of great renown, whom we all owe so much. James Bowie, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson – and yet they all pale in comparison to the truth of Blue Conrad’s life. We believe that by the end of this tale, you will understand why we rate Conrad above them all.

We will start by saying it is naught but fanciful imagination that began the rumor Conrad was hatched from a rattlesnake egg boiled in wolf’s blood. Alistair “Blue” Conrad was actually born in a small cabin in Arkansas six miles from the nearest town. His father, John Conrad, was a veteran of the US Army while his mother, Anwen Reese, was a Welsh immigrant. Shortly after Alistair’s birth, he was blessed with a sister whom they called Blodwen, and in the short time they had together they were a happy family.

Though his father had survived more close shaves with the reaper’s scythe than can be counted, the man tragically caught his death one winter when his family needed him the most. This led to Alistair, at fourteen summers, being sent off quite a ways to work as a hired hand on the estate of Ezekiel Scabbard, cousin to the local preacher. Scabbard was an unruly, ugly old cuss who had no patience for a child shipped to him by a relative he forgot existed, but workers were in short supply and with Conrad’s family days of travel away, the miser saw a situation he would be able to exploit. In this way Conrad would support his mother and sister, though he would never see them again after waving goodbye.

The farm work was hard, and Scabbard cruel, but young Alistair persevered as his he imagined his father did in battle. Shortly after his arrival, Scabbard fired the rancher to which Alistair was apprenticed, placing all the responsibilities upon the young boy. Though technically he was no pitiful slave like those who toiled in Scabbard’s fields, Conrad personally received none of his pay. It would be three years until Conrad discovered his family had perished the winter after his arrival to the ranch. Scabbard seemed to have forgotten the matter entirely. Indeed, it has been attested by a credible witness that at one point before his villainy was revealed to Conrad, Scabbard had been asked by the sweat-soaked, sun-baked youth about his family, and Scabbard seemed to truly not remember any such arrangement ever existed.

After the truth came out, one would expect Conrad to have burnt the place down, striking down those who stood in his way until at last he arrived at the heart of the mansion to put a bullet straight through the head of the ghastly old devil, if you’ll forgive my expression. But he did not. Conrad simply took the man’s finest horse and vanished into the night. Scabbard was outraged, of course, but with the hostilities between the North and South on the verge of spilling over, he had bigger things to worry about up until his shockingly brutal death in a slave rebellion.

Some say the horse’s name was Starchaser, Lightning Legs, or if the teller is particularly ostentatious, Swift King. Actually, Conrad himself cannot remember, for rather than the lifelong companion depicted in the dime novels, he had it sold under the table to a business rival of Scabbard’s almost immediately upon arriving in the next town over. As soon as the sale was complete, he took the next train as far away as possible and has never endeared himself to any beast enough to give it a name in the years since.

Taking up any odd job he could, Conrad continued to grow big and strong, and in his free time honed his instincts to become a hunter-trapper hat would have made the great Artemis swoon. His reputation would stay contained to those he worked alongside and the wives he was occasionally accused of having seduced if not for the night four men cornered him in a back alley.

With the war hot and burning, men who did not join either cause were seen as cowards, despite the need for work for which women could not substitute. Conrad, somewhat absurdly, seemed to have had no interest in the killing of men! The young ladies of in the town of Jewel, where Conrad worked as a logger for a time, couldn’t help but find this powerful young man, with such a sweet and sensitive soul, to be a welcome reprieve from the boorish drunks. Conrad had even less interest in romance than he did war, but the longing he left in every girl’s eyes was enough to rile the town into a frenzy.

That frenzy would come to a thrilling climax when four other loggers cornered him at the end of one work day as they all made their way back to the beds with itchy blankets and stiff pillows. One carried a gun, two others an ax, and the last a hammer that could crack a man’s skull open like a chocolate treat filled with cherry syrup. The men were furious with Conrad, who outshone them in every way one could imagine, taking his solitary and quiet nature as further insult.

Were he literate, he might have been a writer of great novels, or been a journalist to rival Mark Twain, but the specific nature of Conrad’s talents kept him a big fish in a small pond. Now the little fish were growing restless. The tellers of tales do not include that the men were had each drained quite a large amount of liquor, but this omission we will not blame the gossips for, as we have a monopoly on access to the only first-hand accounts other than Conrad himself.

You’re no doubt well-aware of what happened. Most tellings are more or less accurate. He tried to ignore them. He was shoved backwards. They charged. He cleared leather faster than a hummingbird could flap it’s wings. What mattered was the change it stirred in him, subtle but important. Conrad had not been shy to violence before, but it was only then that he understood it for all that it was and wasn’t. Before, he would occasionally brawl as young men often do, but no more. Drunken fools or not, they had almost killed him. From now on, when violence came to Alistair Conrad, it ended as soon as it had begun.

After that, Conrad put on the blue uniform and guarded gold shipments heading east to support the Union’s war effort. It was here that he was to gain his next brush with fame. On one cold night as they lay at camp, one of the other two men escorting the cart was shot clean through the head, spraying a splatter of brain and bone onto the freezing grass. Conrad was quickest to react, diving behind cover with his gun. The other remaining guard, Marion Lord, was right behind him, but a musket ball smashed into Lord’s kneecap and sent him face first into the ground just short of the cover Conrad had taken.

“I will never forget the sight,” Lord would write after the war, his injury having made him pathetically useless to do anything other than reminisce for profit, “of Alistair popping out from behind that rock with his rifle and firing shots one after another. From my position I could see him reloading, and the speed with which he did so took my breath away. Yet, watching him move so quickly, I knew it must be impossible for him to be hitting anything, and even had he all the time in the world, we were surrounded by darkness blacker than could be believed. It was hypnotizing to watch and briefly took my mind from the pain in my knee, but I stayed mired in fear until he stopped, calmly stepped out from behind the boulder, and after making sure no one had survived his one-man counter-battery, began to treat my wounds without worry of enemy fire.”

Conrad killed no less than nine men that day. What amazing acts of carnage he could have performed had the war lasted longer we can only imagine, for alas, it was over all too soon. Having nowhere to return to, Conrad soon took an assignment to Fort Poe in Christland, California where he was, to his immense confusion, considered a war hero by all he met. As you are reading this humble publication, we’re sure the first ‘Poe’ to come to your mind is the author of delightful tales that one can’t help but be tingled with joy by. In fact, the fort was named for Edgar Allen’s grandfather, a quartermaster who was of great value during the Revolutionary War. What an astounding coincidence! There could not have been a greater foreshadowing of fate.

This would lead to Alistair’s more well-known moniker, as Fort Poe sat next to Lake Pantheon, which is known far and wide as the California Cerulean for it’s famous blue hue. Although Conrad never sough to capitalize on his deeds, his fame spread quickly when a gift from the wealthy Lord family arrived with a letter to the local newspaper. The letter declared that Alistair Conrad had been Marion’s ‘angel in blue’, and that when he heard of his friend’s latest posting he made up his mind to include with five-hundred dollars a revolver whose steel had been created and beautifully blued by the famous Von Herder, a blind German rightly considered one of the greatest gunsmith to have lived thanks to the thousands of dead men to his credit. All at once the name “Blue” came as though it sprung up from the ground, and his fame was sealed.

Although he ever really wanted was to continue breathing another day, gossip and commercial fiction has worked hard to convince the world he was an adventurer who sought out women to seduce and buried treasure to give to the needy. Alistair Conrad was but a man of flesh and bone, but Blue Conrad was one of blood and thunder. Children everywhere read chronicles of his life unaware his name was the only non-fictional element, with the exception of some that state 'Blue' as the one given at birth. Boys wanted to be just like him. Girls, meanwhile, promised themselves they’d never settle for a man lesser than the one described in those cheap and occasionally borderline pornographic booklets.

One fact that has never before been recorded in print is that Blue Conrad was married, for a short while, to a young Native woman who had taken the Christian name Sarah. She’d lived nearby, and after Blue left the army, he moved her to the nearby settlement that sat next to the lake and they were married. We have not, unfortunately, been able to interview her ourselves, as she was put beyond our reach long ago when she died in a raid by Natives that took with it the lives of both Fort Poe and the neighboring settlement in their entirety.

Only Conrad was spared that faithful day, for he had been out hunting. When he discovered what had happen, he went positively mad with sorrow, guilt, and most of all, a burning anger. I can only lament the misfortune that none of this publication’s handsomely talented artists were there to capture the scene in all it’s details. Conrad surely knew he hadn’t the slightest hope of finding his wife alive the second he saw the bodies left to rot in the street, but it was only upon finding Sarah’s still corpse that his mind truly snapped in two. With but the pull of a switch, Blue Conrad transformed into an inhuman machine of a man, for what shreds of his heart had survived the long years since his father’s death had been skewered by the same arrow that caught his wife.

When he arrived at a nearby logging camp, they considered retribution to be common sense, the kind of rage they all had for the senseless slaying of their kin, but they could not know the depths of fury that whirled in Blue Conrad like a twister of hellfire. Despite their miming of indignation, they treated the violence they visited on a quite helpless and completely unrelated tribe to be little more than a fun diversion, an afternoon spent gladly balancing the scales of life and death as Manifest Destiny commanded.

It was not so for Blue Conrad, who always killed dispassionately in the past simply to end a threat. From a distance that would have seemed as true as ever, for he crossed the bloodied ground like a man built from clockwork. To look him in the eyes, however, would reveal to you the tempest in his soul that drove him to perform such obscenely gorgeous violence. It didn’t matter that they were not the Natives the revenge had been intended for. Blue himself suspected something was amiss with the identification of their targets, but he let the suspicion die under the weight of his wrath.

That tempest did not leave him for quite some time, the sun rising and setting on a man who felt half-alive, doing the bare minimum to continue his heart’s beating. No words were spared for anyone, especially not those who came seeking a frontier celebrity. The most that could be gotten out of the great Blue Conrad was a stare that never failed to communicate the sincere warning that he would blow their brains into a puddle of pink soup if they didn’t leave him be.

That changed at last when a man by the name of Marcus Pike came to the house Conrad built next to Lake Pantheon, where he spent his years as the only living human for miles. The man was begging for help. Pike’s bride had been taken by outlaws on the day of their wedding, and the ransom was ruinous. He knew that only Blue Conrad could save her.

Indeed, it seemed so much like the plot of one of those grotesque little novels that it feels strange to call it the truth, and yet it really happened, and the situation had a quite curious effect on Conrad. Color came rushing back to his face as he heard Pike’s story. The tempest was gone, or at least finally beginning to die. Now there was once again a twinkle in his eye that had vanished the day he lost his wife. Conrad always despised the fame that hounded him, the lies, the romantic words written by men who had never seen a man die.

Now it gave him purpose.

The journey was effortless, for he knew the area well enough to have a good idea of where a gang of outlaws would wish to hide, and the details given by Pike narrowed it down to a gulch only a day’s ride away. With genuine interest, he pressed the groom to tell him of his bride, and the man joked that if Conrad wanted her for himself, it would not be difficult for such a hero to steal his love away from him.

“I swear, I wouldn’t!” Conrad laughed. “But we might die, and I’d like to know what I was dying for. Now that ain’t so much to ask, is it?”

“No, I suppose not!” Marcus Pike laughed in turn, and he told Conrad of her golden hair, her pale skin, her bright blue eyes. So much of her was unlike Sarah, and yet the love between her and her husband-to-be was so familiar that it brought tears to his eyes. You may not believe it, but it’s true. Blue Conrad was crying. Not weeping like a woman or wailing like an infant, but at last he could feel his spirit returning to a fraction of warmth he believed forever lost to him.

The next morning, Conrad and Pike made their move. There was only five outlaws. One was killed as he slept on sentry duty, two more were struck down in the gunfight that followed, and with the odds evened out and hearing it who it was they exchanged bullets with, the last two put down their guns and consented to being tied with rope. It was a trivial exercise.

Despite the quick and thorough victory, however, spoils were not as they had hoped. Inside one of the tents, they found the man’s wife, cold and dead, chained by the ankles. Her clothes were torn to shreds, she was covered in bruises, and a knife was buried in her chest

The next thing Conrad knew, Marcus Pike was pulling him from the badly beaten outlaws, still tied up and unable to resist the savage assault he had been delivering to the now almost unrecognizable men.

“Look man, my God! She plunged the knife into her own heart!” Pike shouted. “She killed herself! The faithless whore ended her own life, in shame for her sins with these criminals! Were we married she would have ruined my name!”

There was a sickening crack then. A few, actually, as Pike’s jaw had come unhinged, and teeth could be seen streaking through the air trailing a cloud of blood and saliva. Those two remaining outlaws had given up for fear of Blue Conrad. Neither could help but think they had not known what true fear was, let alone true fear of Blue Conrad, until they watched the dashing hero put his fist nearly clean through his friend’s face and with the new target of his fury laid out on his back delivered blows that could be compared to an elephant’s stomping foot.

Soon Pike’s eyes were pounded to uselessness, and the pain was too overwhelming to think coherently, but the very air he breathed was thick with hatred that spoke to him of his immanent and very painful demise. He could do nothing as he was bound the same as the criminals, and all three could only watch in horror as Conrad went to acquire firewood.

Oh, readers, how I wish I could have seen it. Just as Conrad drew his matches, the sky filled with dark clouds thick with rain. It was as if He Who Cast Our Father Out were pleading for Conrad to reconsider and show mercy, but Conrad simply waited out that grotesque bastard they call 'God' and sat staring at them until the rain had cleared, the men falling into deeper panic as his gaze bored into them.

After the deed was done, Conrad bade his horse to run in any direction it wished, and it did, into oblivion for all he cared. We do not know where he will end up in the short term, but we can only hope, friends, fellows, and Lords of Hell, that the pain and misery follows. As for where he will end up at the end of it all? Well, I would suggest you begin sharpening your knives now. We have quite the feast to look forward to, far exceeding the pitiful spirits he’s fed to us with every blackguard who died at his hand.

In conclusion, if you do not think Blue Conrad is a great man, rich with sin to wet our beaks, simply think back to all that I’ve written here, and the growling of your stomach will surely change your mind.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blue Conrad was heavily based on the real life Kit Carson, who really did lead the massacre of a tribe unrelated to the crime that instigated it. On another occasion, he set out to rescue a woman, only to find her captors had already killed her, and that she carried with her a dime novel of his fictionalized adventures when she died.

[incorrecticonoclastsquotes]

Royal: Y-you said I could trust you, Mother! You said you were a GAMER! Mother: Royal... I only play mobile games. Royal: NOOOOOOOOO!

[lconoclasts]

Can't add the exact timestamp (it's at the end) but they just??? Jump off screen???? Do they not die???

My general consensus with this fight is that it's just extra content and... in-between canonicity. They don't show up in the credits (in a scene) regardless if you kill them or not, and the pupils are alive(?) or possibly some other ones are alive as they could just look similar/be reused sprites

long speculation under the cut

Fitzroy is lore for sure which contradicts some of the implications about trancending that we get but like. Royal is kind of a dumbass AND is being told all of this from mother/one concern. There's multiple implications of the "ancestors" (both isi and Him followers) coming from somewhere else/resetting the planet and leaving instructions/tech for their respective people to use. Fitzroy seems to fit in the between stage before the concern has studied the tech, but AFTER the Ancestors arrived/reset the planet. In The Tower and the Bastion there are images of famous earth landmarks (taj mahal, new York, pyramids I think) implying that some sort of Earth was destroyed/minerals drained (more connections to the themes about environmentalism) and that humanity was "reset". RIGHT BUT CANONICITY. Fitzroy is more lore... If u want him to be. The true past of humanity is still foggy ESPECIALLY with conflicting views from Him followers and the Isi. The concern claims to have longer records of history, and has aforementioned images, but they shape it to their beliefs and leave out certain parts intentionally as well as only educate people deemed more faithful (concern staff) and censor/mysticize parts for the common folk and ESPECIALLY city one residents. Cough cough 'merica haha but not really I doubt he was thinking about Americans specifically. This is more likely a commentary on religion specifically they larger ones and how they shape societies views and history! (Remember when we used B.C?) I'm not going to say this is an effective commentary or a scathing remark on Christianity (I believe that Christianity is used as a reference as it's the poster child to westerners for what "religion" is. He probably intended for this to be about religion as a whole but like. Come on. It's definitely Christianity with a few changes to make it a "generic religion" especially with the focus on punishment and ascension to a "good place". They also use sin/sinners a few times but that may be for familiarity especially since he had a whole npc for explaining terminology) that aside. Canonicity. Again. The history behind the Starworm followers vs the Isi is intentionally left a mystery! Fitzroy and Leticia are real as fuck (if u think they're canon) and provide some ideas for what actually happened in history but who knows! I should get back to my conversation I got distracted haha.

[disasterbiwriter]

Okay, so first, if you're not reading @sarabethsilver's Everglow, you absolutely should be.

Additionally, a hat tip to her because her Mo Willems name drop in the latest chapter inspired this goofy little headcannon that I just came up with: namely, Jess Mariano is anti Mo Willems.

Setting the scene: Rory is pregnant, Jess is supportive. No plot, just vibes!

Enjoy!

“Overrated.”

Rory’s jaw falls open. “Get out.”

“I’m just saying.” Jess gently lays There is a Bird on Your Head! in the pile to his left.

Rory snatches it up again and presses it to her chest. “Iconoclast. Contrarian. Meanie!”

“Excuse me, did you call me here to ask you to sort Cletus’s library or not?”

She pouts up at him from her spot on the floor. “I did. I think I also threatened you with violence if you didn’t stop calling my unborn child Cletus.”

“Did you? I must’ve missed that.”

“Jess,” Rory whines. “Mo Willems. He wrote for Sesame Street. You watched Sesame Street four times a day when you were little!”

Jess leans forward in the chintzy glider Luke and Lorelai brought over earlier that week and flutters his fingers towards the low modular bookshelves lining one wall of the nursery. “And you have two other Mo Willems titles on the shelf already. I let you convince me on Knufflebunny—”

“This is the new version, with the updated dedication to Trix!”

“—and begrudgingly accepted that We Are in a Book is a solid introduction to metaliterature—”

“Begrudgingly?!”

“—but I’m putting my foot down here. Do not let the weed of Elephant Gerald choke out the rest of your literary garden, Mother Gilmore.”

“Oh, okay, let’s just add a threat of violence for using the phrase Mother Gilmore to your account.”

He laughs and shudders. “Yeah, I kinda squicked myself out on that one too.”

“So, should we consider the rest of your argument moot then? I think we should.”

“Rory, you have no more space. Are you telling me with a straight face that you’re not buying any more books between now and when the kid finally makes an appearance?”

She starts to answer him, but gives a funny little strangled yelp instead.

Immediately Jess is kneeling next to her. “What?!”

But Rory’s laughing. “Nothing, nothing. They just kicked. Hard, too.”

She doesn’t wait for permission, rather grabs his wrist and presses his hand to the lower right side of her stomach. They mutually ignore the jump of their pulses.

They wait a beat, and then:

“Oh shit!”

“Right?!”

“Mia Hamm in there.”

She smiles. “Hand me the little notebook off the nightstand? There should be a pen too.”

He unfolds himself from the floor and crosses to the other side of the room. “Counting kicks?” he asks her as he hands her both items. “Isn’t it a little early?”

Rory squints up at him and flips open the cover. “And how would you know?”

He feigns offense. “Hey, I have known upwards of two pregnant people.”

“Soooo, your mom and… me?”

“Among others.”

She laughs and makes a note on the page. “Twenty-eight weeks is when they suggest you start, so I’m right on schedule.”

“What are you supposed to record?”

(In eight months, on the phone during one of her late-night feedings when she can’t sleep and he’s the only other one awake, he’ll confess he had been reading baby books for the duration of her pregnancy. But that’s eight months away.)

“Oh, you know. Number of kicks, time since the last movement. I’m also trying to track down what the stimuli might be.”

Jess nods. “Very complete.”

She waggles the notebook at him and grins. “It’s not every day you get to record baby’s first objection to a bad take on a book.”

“Oh for…” Jess rolls his eyes and grins. “So you’re just going to, what? Buy another bookshelf for this tiny room?”

She beams at him and holds out her hands. He hauls her to her feet. “See, that’s the kind of outside the box thinking I keep you around for, Mariano.”