#ocean•grey•art

[ocean--grey]

[ID: fanart of Lister and Rimmer, done as a pencil drawing. Lister is stood to the right and slightly in the foreground, shown from the waist up. He is wearing a t-shirt and his grey jacket and hat from series I. The sleeves of his jacket are rolled up to his shoulders and he is smoking a cigarette. He is looking to his left with a slightly bored expression. Rimmer is stood to the left and slightly in the background. He is wearing his series I uniform, with the plain uniform shirt, tie and hologrammatic “H”. He is looking at Lister, and holding a “No Smoking” sign in front of his face. His eyes are peering over the top of the sign, and there is a slight blush on his face although the rest of his expression is obscured. Above them, the smoke from Lister’s cigarette is twisting into heart shapes. /End ID]

Happy Valentines Day to everyone who celebrates! Have a sketch of early-series Rimster :)

Also, happy 27th anniversary of Blue!

[aqua-regia009]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Illustrated by Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883)

[ed13d1]

come close

Michael Kenna • Kussharo Lake Tree, Study 2, 2005

[allisonchinart]

The Grey Havens sketch | x | Sketchbook

[bluecapsicum]

Cold winter skies illustrations for my daily meteorological fiction project, Reports From Unknown Places About Indescribable Events (Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, archives on my website).

Keep reading for the companion texts.

December 31st: We report: sometimes, we think we know what to expect when it comes to the sky. We go a few days, maybe a couple of weeks without much happening, a rainbow perhaps, a contrail... We think we know the sky. It happens then, that the clouds twist and knit into impossibilities.

January 4th: We report: we went to the planetarium with our expert, once. We spent an hour watching as we got further, and further away from Earth, then the solar system, our galaxy, and then our galaxy group, until there was nowhere to go anymore. We got brought home, to our beating heart.

January 11th: We report: good morning, we would like to draw attention to a lovely and unexpected event occurring at this moment. Would you please look up to the clouds and notice how, though the sky is largely grey, the gulls flying overhead are tinted orange by the sunrise light? Thank you.

January 12th: We report: in the hollow of a valley, sleepy lightning bugs. There is grey little light dragging itself through the air like it does not want to be here, and we are cold with our hands in our pockets and our nose in our scarf and our ears exposed and bright red (nobody sees).

January 22nd: We report: we have missed a train today, but we can only hope that the train dearly missed us in return. We waited at the station for the next one for a long time, watched people get off and on different trains until it got too cold for us to wait outside. Wispy cirrus.

January 27th: We report on a winter morning: there was a robin and a few hares, blending in with the snowy grass. The snowflakes were heavy enough that we could hear them fall around us. We could smell the cold air until our nose started running. Grey sludge on the side of salted roads.

January 28th: We report: it is after nightfall, but there are still many sparrows chattering in the trees. The air is dank out here, and as we walk, we can feel condensation forming on our face, the white puffs of our breath dissolving into the night. Our expert walks a few steps behind us.

January 31st: We report sometime around sunrise (what sun, rising from where, one might ask on this cloudy morning). The light, weak and mournful, does not weigh enough to reach down the deep blue dark of the ocean. The sea, torn by the wind, is busy frothing and making everything capsize.

February 20th: We report: the barometer and the thermometer are both down. It rained a lot last night, and today, the waters are murky, agitated even through the advection fog. We cannot see the horizon. We picked up a nice, pearlescent seashell that glimmered in the sand amidst all the grey.

February 24th: We report: hares in the fields, then a partridge later. The mud is frozen, the clouds are thick. Not much wind. Some colza and daffodils blooming on the roadside. A little bit more of February, its low skies and its half-steps, the transitions in the light and the time.

[thewisestdino]

clear sky; 26

Can't keep up a conversation Can't nobody reach you Why your eyes well up? Did you call me from a seance? You are from my past life

[kiwd]

toniiight were in paradise

[soulsunmoon]

Ocean Oil Painting on Panel, By Me, 2024

The more we focus on the wonders & realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

[talos-stims]

TIDAL MEMORY EXO

🦪|🦪|🦪

🦪|🦪|🦪

🦪|🦪|🦪

[theredghostart]

It's hot out 🥵🥵 Alt Version on my patreon: https://patreon.com/Theredghost

[ocean--grey]

Here's my attempt at Smegtober 2024's Day 3 prompt, "Parents" :)

Word count: ~1300 words

Warnings: brief mention of Lister and Rimmer's canonically terrible childhoods, Lister leaving the twins behind in the Parallel Universe

Edit: now on AO3 :)

Ten months after one of the strangest mistakes of her life, Deb Lister was convinced she’d never get used to the responsibility of looking after her sons.

It was just under a month after Dave had dropped off the twins – Jim and Bexley – and she hadn’t got a full night’s sleep with all the time she spent fretting over them. They’d arrived almost fully grown, physically eighteen, but had seemingly reverted in every way over the past few weeks into children, an apparent compromise between their recent birth and accelerated ageing due to being born in another universe.

In all fairness, she felt like Dave got the short end of the stick, forced to give away his kids just three days after giving birth to them, never able to see them naturally progress into adulthood. She’d seen the regret in his eyes as he handed them over – it wasn’t as though he had a say in the matter though. The universe had decided his kids wouldn’t survive with him, so it wasn’t like he’d chosen to abandon them. If they’d been conceived in Dave’s universe, he’d have been able to raise them, but then Deb would have been the one to let them go.

Just unfortunate luck, really.

The kind of unfortunate luck that also left Deb herself in an awkward situation: trying to teach the kids. She’d be the first to admit academics weren’t her thing – in the few occasional weeks she’d properly tried to go to school regularly, maths and art were the only subjects she did decently in.

She’d ask Kryten, the newest member of the group, for help, but Deb was still busy replacing her wiring after that crash on the asteroid, and could confidently say that the mechanoid would be out of commission for a while longer.

Dog wouldn’t be great with teaching the kids phonics and the like - he communicated mainly through smells rather than words, and thought human books were for decorating the floor of the bunkroom like confetti.

Hilly was no help either. Still hung up on the doppelgänger crew’s computer, he’d changed appearances to mirror the object of his affection and skulked off to the furthest corners of Red Dwarf’s electrical system to read Anthony Christie novels in peace, occasionally turning up to snark and bemoan about his lost love.

This process of elimination left Rimmer. God, Deb didn’t even want to think about what her roommate would consider a good quality education. Probably teach the twins twice-daily mandatory Ionian etiquette lessons, threaten to toss them out an airlock if they didn’t pronounce stuff with that nasally stuck-up accent of hers, stuff like that. Actually, Lister bet the smeghead would probably turn her nose up at stooping so low from her post as to actually help her roommate out with Jim and Bexley.

Which was why, all things considered, when Arlene actually offered to teach the kids the month after they arrived, and was a damn great teacher at that, Lister was gobsmacked.

Somehow, the smeghead managed to command the attention of the twins enough to get them writing full sentences within a few weeks. She’d screech in horror, of course, whenever they got something even slightly wrong (which Lister had been worried about at first) but somehow it seemed a comical kind of screech rather than her usual demeaning one. Mock horror, almost.

Whatever it was that made Rimmer such an great teacher for the boys, it made the lessons entertaining enough that soon Jim kept coming up to Rimmer to show her short stories he’d shakily written, or Bexley would grab her attention with an “Auntie Arlene, look at this new word I can spell!”

Oh yeah, and the “Auntie Arlene” remarks kept coming. It seemed the boys considered their temporary teacher almost as much of a parental figure as Deb herself.

Which, of course, Lister was completely fine with, totally. Didn’t feel threatened at all, actually.

So when Jim asked her one night, when she tucked the twins into bed, “Mum, do you and Auntie Arlene not like each other?”, she swallowed down an immediate scathing retort and instead muttered “We have our differences, but don’t fret about it, ‘kay?”

The next day she’d cornered Rimmer on the main deck.

“Why the smeg do the kids like you so much? What can you offer them that I can’t?”

Rimmer’s lips had curled at this. “Instilling a good sense of hygiene, perhaps? Or maybe a comprehensive understanding of the importance of structure and law-abiding?”

“Rimmer, the only laws you actually follow to a T are the ones you’ve implemented yourself! Besides, stuff like that doesn’t really matter when there’s only us on the ship.” She scrambled to speak again as Rimmer’s nostrils twitched. “Also, it’s not like you can offer them any comfort. Emotionally you’re a wasp’s nest on the best of days, and you’re not even physically here!”

Rimmer’s mouth gaped open like a suffocating fish, before pursing tight. “Thanks for reminding me of my death, you goit! My, you lack so much tact its value’s practically negative. Great example for your kids, aren’t you?”

With that, the hologram stormed off through a wall.

Lister found her a few hours later, after tucking the twins into bed. Rimmer had been slinking around the fuel decks, apparently sulking silently except for a few half-hearted attempts to kick at the pipes along the walls – unsuccessfully, of course. By the time Lister found her, she had slid down a wall, staring down at her lap.

Deb crouched beside her before slouching against the wall too, curling her body in to face Rimmer. Letting out a sigh, she began.

“Listen Rimmer, I went too far back there. Honestly, I feel like I’m not handling this well – any of it actually. I’m so scared I’ll be an awful parent to the twins –”

“You’re not, though.”

Deb’s rant careened off its tracks and exploded, leaving only debris behind.

“… Eh?”

“You’re not. An awful parent, I mean. You’re still learning and, considering the general lack of support around here, you’re doing pretty fine.”

“Thanks. I think?”

Rimmer’s eyes rolled. “That was actually a compliment, directed towards you, from me. Yes I know, it’s impossible!” A grin flickered across her face for a split second, before returning to a careful neutral expression as she resumed studying her lap. “Besides, you’re doing better than I ever could by myself.”

Deb hesitated, then replied “Honestly, I’m not doing it all by myself. You’ve actually been a lot of help. Look,” here she uncurled her body, and Rimmer’s eyes connected with hers, “you’re not half bad either, considering what you’ve told me about your mum. I think all things considered we’re both doing a decent job, eh?”

Rimmer nodded, seemingly only half listening as she kept locking eyes with Lister.

“Listen, I’m sorry I said that smeg earlier. I just… don’t want to feel like I’m failing the boys in any way, and seeing them so excited to talk with you about your lessons and stuff made me think you were…”

Rimmer cut in harshly, “What, trying to steal them away from you?”

“A bit like that, yeah. But not only that? I was expecting you to make parenting into a kind of competition between us, y’know, who can help the kids grow and develop better than the other, the kind of smeg you used to pull all the time.”

“Key phrase there being used to.”

“Well, still do it sometimes, don’t you?” Lister chuckled.

The conversation faded as they listened to the pipes hum for a minute. After a while, Rimmer replied.

“Well, I’m not planning on making this a competition. Not this time. Too much at stake, the kids and all that. Wouldn’t want to mess them up over petty rivalry.”

“Nah, we wouldn’t.”

“So… truce?”

Deb felt the weight on her shoulders loosen, even if only by a tiny bit. “Sure.”

She spat on her hand, and reached out to shake. Rimmer rolled her eyes again and gestured down at her hologrammatic body. Lister paused for a second, then announced to the room “Hilly, can you seal the deal for us?”

She strolled away, chuckling once more, to the sound of her roommate trying to stifle her own guffaws even as she tried to shake the spit off her hand.

[aqua-regia009]

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus Illustrated by Bernie Wrightson (American, 1948-2017)

[rinkje]

Title: Passagem de Humaitá

Artist: Victor Meirelles

Year: 1886

Medium: gouache on paper

Image source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/estudo-para-passagem-de-humaitá-victor-meirelles/OQFEZMiH3O4dZg

[marejadilla]

By StockSnap, "Ocean" (Pixabay photography)

[the-alphaess]

the waves sometimes bring back memories too.

[gyossefka]