#only read the angelico one for now

[rimanne]

THE SHORT STORIES HAVE TRASLATION NOW!!

This blessed soul on twitter has translated some of the short stories!! Check them out:

Wainting for Angelico (takes place after cocoon, before trump)

A world covered in ash (takes place before everything, about the origins of the vamps)

In the deep sea (also before everything? i'm not sure)

Donatello's reminiscence (takes place before cocoon)

The snow melts, spring arrives (takes place before grand guignol)

Simon doesn't have any motives (takes place before specter)

The bandit dies in the moolit night (takes place after trump)

Hoffman and the twin's chrysalis (takes place before lilium)

Pendulum

Donatello's reminescence -cocoon period illusion- (takes place after cocoon, before trump)

Diego on the horizon (takes place after cocoon)

Of course all credits go to @/fufufuyu__ on twitter and i'm only here sharing the links :)

[lavandulawrites]

This is my first request and I'm not sure how to do it but ever since Delico's Nursery came out I've been begging for someone to write about them and I've been wanting to read something about Gerhard and Angelico, maybe one where the reader is Angelico's mom and She tries to make Gerhard's attitude a little softer with Angelico, or where the reader spends a day with Angelico, anyway, if you read this, I appreciate it and you don't need to take the ideas here into account as long as you do something about them. I'm happy. Hahaha I don't know how to end that so I hope you're okay :)))

A Good Father

Gerhard Fra x reader

It’s kinda sad how I’m the only one who has written Delico’s Nursery fanfic here on Tumblr:,) we desperately need more fics!! (Let me know if anyone wanna be apart of my taglist).

Masterlist

Synopsis: you (Gerhard’s wife) try to change Gerhard’s behaviour towards his son.

Your husband was a busy man who was as prideful as a lion. He prioritised his duties before his own son. You understood very well that his duties were important, but you saw yourself sick of his negligence of his three year old.

“Gerhard! Come here” you called out to your husband.

It didn’t take long before you heard his boots against the hardwood floors. A blond head picked in the door way. “What is it, [Name]?” his deep voice soft. He had always been so kind to you. It had surprised you at first how soft he was deep down.

“How was it at Dali’s? Did Angelico have fun?” you ask as you take a sip of your apple cinnamon tea.

The tall vampire huffed. “It was exhausting. I still don’t get why he thinks raising our children together why working on that case is a good idea”. He took a seat at the table. “I suppose he had fun… He behaved rather well.”

“That’s good. I trust that you spent some time with him and didn’t leave all the responsibility to Dali?” you rose your brow at him in a stern manner.

Gerhard swallowed as he leaned slightly back in his chair. “I played a little bit with him. But that is fitting for a nobleman.”

You sighed and rolled your eyes which earned a glare from the blond man. “Your role as a father is to spend time with your son.”

“He needs his father to be there for him. You will regret it when you’re older, you know. He is three years old for gods sake!” you raised your voice in frustration.

Gerhard remained silent after you finished your reprimand. He rubbed his forehead. “I get what you mean but-”

“No. You don’t get what I mean do you? If you did, you would already be spending time with Angelico” you were getting tired of his attitude and stubbornness.

His eyes found yours before he looked away. After staying silent for a moment he opened his mouth. “Okay fine, I will from now on out spend more time with Angelico.”

You pulled the corner of your lips up into a smile. “Good! I can promise you, it won’t take long before you find playing with him fun” you rose to your feet and rounded the table. You leaned down and kissed Gerhard softly on the lips. “You will turn out to be a wonderful dad. I’m sure of it.”

[insomniasymphony]

Delico's Nursery And A Touch Of Forgiveness

Little one-shot because ... why not? You can give this story a read or a Kudos on AO3 as well!

.

Rating: General Audience Pair: Dali Delico/Gerhard Fra No warnings needed.

.

Screams filled the room. Lamentable, bitter wailing not meant for the ears of a man of his status. Crying of a child he usually shoved into the arms of the nanny before attending to the important matters of life. The really important ones.

The ones that had got him into all this in the first place.

Gerhard narrowed his eyes briefly before raising his voice. “Now shut up already! Don’t you realise you’re a nuisance?”

And as expected, the crying subsided for a breath before it tripled in volume and ripped through his marrow and bones. Ever since Raphael had taken away his toy, Angelico had been unable to calm down and whenever Gerhard raised his voice, his son’s wailing grew in volume and strength.

.

“What do I have to do to make you stop fussing?” Raising his arms, he stared down at Angelico’s blond mop of hair, but only heard the usual muddled sounds. It was unbelievable that this child was his and, above all, of noble birth.

Then again, he had never bothered with his son until now. After all, he had work to do and children were for the bloodline, not to spend the last of his mental resources. The others’ children were already packing up, ready to go home, and he was the only one still standing in the same spot, unable to get his son out of this terrible wailing.

With shaking fingers, Gerhard ran a hand over his face. If he could, he would rewind time and wipe Dali’s rejection of the mission away faster – long before he would drive them all into this hell of a mess. Better yet, he’d rewind to the day before and come up with a war plan against this idiot at breakfast.

“Daddy...”

Angelico’s drawn-out whimper snapped him out of his thoughts, so he opened his mouth again, ready to issue more orders as he looked into the red, watery eyes staring at him like he was the only help in this room. Just like back then. Just like the day he’d thought the only solution was to go solo against suspected TRUMP-members just to kill Dali’s wife.

He gently placed a hand on his son’s soft mop of hair. Angelico’s crying stopped immediately, bringing with it a silence that dragged Gerhard into the abyss.

He remembered what had happened as if it had occurred only yesterday. It was one of those endless dreams haunting him on some nights. In a matter of seconds, he relived it all. The moment he had broken into the house and seen this woman, beautiful as ever, ready to taste his blade without offering resistance. Somewhere in between, he thought he remembered fire. And bloodstained floors. And the numb feeling in his entire body, knowing he’d lose Dali for good that way.

Had he felt relief then? Had the knowledge he might no longer be working so closely with Delico made him happy?

He pressed his lips together. Back then, when he had turned to Dali, who had appeared and stormed over to his wife, he had only watched out of the corner of his eye – his posture upright and unwavering, hoping Dali would recognise him as an enemy. Just for a moment, so that the shallow feeling of affection would burst before it grew. But Dali hadn’t looked at him that day. His gaze had wandered to his children, then back to his wife, and before Gerhard knew it, the incident had ended and Dali hadn’t exchanged a single word with him.

In all that time, not a single thing had been said about the incident between them and yet he had brought it up today, out of heat from a stupid argument he had lost. Somehow. Dali’s rejection had been clear and yet his warm breath had sent tingles all over Gerhard’s body.

A sigh escaped him. “Let’s go, Angelico.”

“But... my toy...” Round cheeks puffed out, his son’s gaze pierced him unyieldingly. But looking for a child’s toy was anything but fitting for a nobleman. Or a man in general.

“I’ll buy you a new one on the way home.”

“But I want this one!”

“What difference does it make?” His voice rose. “It’s just a piece of wood.”

He should have seen it coming. He should have known better after all the other defeats between him and his son. But as the tears welled up again and Angelico drew in his breath, Gerhard felt a desperate twitching in his bones. Should he raise his hands and press them to his ears to at least muffle the screeching that was about to follow?

His body succumbed to indecision and just as he was thinking about offering Angelico something else, Dali appeared behind him. His shoulder pressed against Gerhard’s and the shudder running through his body made him swallow. Simultaneously, he heard Dali’s voice much too close to his ear. “Look what I’ve got!”

Before Angelico could burst into tears again, Dali brought a gleam to his eyes with his toy, which even Gerhard found strangely warming. Affection settled in his chest and didn’t disappear even when he looked into his friend’s endlessly dark eyes.

Part of Gerhard opened his mouth silently, unable to find words. The way Dali treated the children, the way he stopped them from screaming and how much warmth and amusement there was in his actions – was it wrong to want all that for himself? The rest of him knew better, feeling the hot pinpricks in his chest and flooding the inner torment with angry behaviour and a raised nose.

“I hope you’ll fulfil the mission properly!” Gerhard stubbornly tried to look down at him – to no avail. “We can’t afford to half-ass things!”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem.” Elated, Dali took a step forward, handed Angelico his toy and took a quick look at the baby in his arms. “It’s just another challenge for me to master. I’m much more interested in whether you and the others are up to the task.” A grin formed on his thin lips. “Child raising is a fascinating field once you get the chance to get into it.”

Dali hated him. He certainly did. After everything that had happened, it seemed impossible to believe otherwise. It had been Gerhard who had put him in this position. It had been he who had deprived this family of a mother. The certainty turned his stomach.

“You loathe me, don’t you?” Clenching his hands into fists, Gerhard addressed the subject again. If they were going to work together on this mission, they needed to have a clear conversation. A few words that would bury any feelings of attraction in him so they could get on with their lives. So he could go on with his life.

“I already told you that you did me a favour. Now I get to take care of my kids-“

“Stop with that crap!” His voice grew louder as his gaze fixed on Dali. “You loathe me for what happened. For killing your wife. Go ahead and say it!”

“You seem to like dwelling on old things.”

“It was just a few months ago!”

The sudden tug on Gerhard’s trouser leg barely reached his awareness, but the whimper drew his gaze to Angelico. “Daddy ... don’t be angry...”

“Well said, Angelico!” Cheerfully, Dali gave the child a wink. “Your son already seems to be smarter than you.”

“Wha-“

“Be quiet.” In defence, Dali raised his free hand. “Sure, I could say I loathe you for what you did, but if I’m honest ... I’m over it. I know this day has been as hard on you as it has been on me, and instead of obsessing over my loss, it’s better to look at the positives of it all.”

“The ... positives?” The knot in Gerhard’s stomach tightened further. If Dali didn’t hate him, if he didn’t get a chance to carry this guilt heavily on his shoulders, he would succumb to this warmth in his chest. “What nonsensical talk.”

“Certainly, if you get hung up on ancient mannerisms and define your pride by your raised nose ... you’re undoubtedly right up there.” A confident nod came over Dali and Gerhard couldn’t deny the temptation of a hug was as strong as the desire to put his hands around this weirdo’s neck. “But I mean what I said. What happened ... it was hard ... for both of us. But it’s also given me something good. I get the chance here and now to experience my children completely differently than many other families do. I feel like I can be a real father, where I’m always there for them and don’t send them away just because their crying sometimes makes my head explode.”

“And you think I buy that?” Gerhard’s voice shook, wavering between anger and despair. Emotions he wasn’t allowed to indulge in. One of them would make Angelico cry. The other would make Dali laugh. Perhaps. Probably.

“You can do that, or you can not.” With a shrug, Dali let out a sigh. Then he smiled, almost mockingly, before grabbing a strand of Gerhard’s hair and bringing it to his lips. The shallow kiss he pressed on the blonde hair flashed through his whole body. “I’m sure you’ll realise that yourself one day, Goldilocks.”

Without further ado, Dali took two steps back as Gerhard’s hair ran through his fingers and the world stopped for a moment. Saliva pooled in the blond’s mouth, running dry down his throat as his heart pounded violently against his ribs. Heat built up in his body, but didn’t reach his face. His every fibre seemed stiff, clinging to an unimpressed expression, hoping his friend wouldn’t notice.

Not the gentle trembling of his hands, nor the convulsive posture, which no longer seemed aristocratic, but childish and awkward. Gerhard could imagine how he must have looked in Dali’s eyes in those breaths and yet, when his friend turned away from him – were they even friends? – he dared to raise a hand. Only briefly, before he lowered it again and glanced at Angelico, who was still hanging on to his trousers.

Maybe, for one day, this feeling was okay. If he believed Dali’s words just a little, just this once, then he would sleep better this night – lulled by the warmth in his heart. Surely, somewhere between here and his own home, he would realise that all this was nothing more than an illusion. A fragile concept that would fade when he looked into his wife’s face – as he did every day – and realised she wasn’t Dali.

And then, at the latest, he would come to his senses, get upset about this idiot, have dinner and go to bed, only to return the next day, believing he wouldn’t succumb to his heart again.

He knew how it would end.

The result was always the same.

[d3caynluv]

ཐ🪦 ᜴ ִ ׂ 𓂂 ॱ ְ ੲׂི͜Ɩׂྀ͜ਓ  … BASICS !

STAGE NAME :: Nakyung

BIRTH NAME :: Ava Nam

KOREAN NAME :: Nam Nakyung

BIRTHDAY :: August 18, 1999

ZODIAC :: Leo

BIRTHPLACE :: Louisiana, United States

HOMETOWN :: New Orleans, Louisiana

ETHNICITY :: Korean + Russian

NATIONALITY :: American

ཐ🪦 ᜴ ִ ׂ 𓂂 ॱ ְ ੲׂི͜Ɩׂྀ͜ਓ … CAREER !

PROFESSION :: Idol

YEARS TRAINED :: 5 Years

YEARS ACTIVE :: 2018 - Present

LABEL :: ANGELICO ENTERTAINMENT

FORMER GROUP :: VENUS ( 2018 - 2020 )

GROUP :: PUSHING DAISES

GROUP POSITION :: Lead Dancer, Lead Vocalist, Visual

ཐ🪦 ᜴ ִ ׂ 𓂂 ॱ ְ ੲׂི͜Ɩׂྀ͜ਓ  … PHYSICAL !

FACECLAIM :: AleXa

HEIGHT :: 160 cm || 5′3

BLOOD TYPE :: B+

ཐ🪦 ᜴ ִ ׂ 𓂂 ॱ ְ ੲׂི͜Ɩׂྀ͜ਓ … HISTORY !

Molly Nam was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 18, 1999. She is the youngest of two brothers. Her childhood was a rough one due to her family’s struggles with poverty. Her parents often couldn’t find stable work, leaving them to move around a bit before settling down in a mobile home in New Orleans, Louisiana where the family resided for the rest of Molly’s time in America.

Molly wasn’t registered for school until she was ten years old, being home schooled by her aunt until her parents learned she could barely read or write. Because to this set back, Molly always struggled with learning and making friends as the only people she talked to were her cousins or brothers.

Though academically not the strongest, Molly had a passion for singing and dancing. At fourteen, she made co-captian on her school’s cheer squad and often ranked high at their competitions. Her cheer coach was actually the one to tell her about the Angelico audition and offered to take her and a few other girls on the squad to the audition.

Molly and one other girl made the cut and were asked to join Angelico as trainees at just 15 years old.

Molly, now going by her Korean name Nakyung, then moved into the trainee dorm and began training. Nakyung was a highly anticipated member due to her wit and humor. 

She was the second member of VENUS to be revealed.

Her time in VENUS is often described as a “rollercoaster” by her fans. Many say she was mistreated and treated as “just a pretty face” by her company. It’s also heavily speculated there were tensions between Nakyung and the members, resulting in many bullying rumors. Nakyung left VENUS in 2020 for unspecified reasons.

Shortly after her departure, she was added to the Pushing Daises line up where many of her fans note she looks a lot happier. 

[little-red-hunk]

Pliability - When Emily met Chuck, Trent and Orange for this first time.

Wrote this little thing up a few days ago. It’s silly and short. Now, back to working on Chapter 14. Enjoy!

If you haven’t seen or read the main thing, its here. Check it out if you wanna read a Orange/Original Female Character (that could be reader insert if you want) with some slow burn, some fluff, some comedy and a whole lot of smut. 

Dr. Sampson had led Emily to catering where several crew were hanging around. He explained that this was the most popular spot in regards to mingling with coworkers and just resting. Taking in the scene, she recognized several people from her research watching the show. She spotted a man with long, dark hair pulled back with a hair tie, wearing a bandana around his forehead and black tank top and knew that was Trent. Her stomach dropped when she noticed the man in a light denim jacket with blond hair sitting across from him. She barely even registered that the doctor had continued to talk. 

“...And honestly, Emily, if you can’t find someone, nine times out of ten they are gonna be near catering,” he said. “Obviously, it’ll look different every week depending on the arena but the set up is basically the same.”

Emily just nodded and jotted it down on her clipboard. 

He introduced her to two wrestlers who she vaguely remembered seeing in her research: Jack Evans and his tag partner Angelico. They both smiled and said hello and Emily was a little surprised to hear an accent from Angelico. Sampson explained what her role was and that if he or Doc Chris weren’t available to reach out to her. A production assistant popped up next to them, apologized for interrupting and asked the two men if they had a minute to go over a match. They stood up and Emily automatically took a step back, looking up at Angelico, who was at least a foot taller than her. His partner was not quite as tall, but still taller than her. Which wasn’t saying much, as the nurse was only 5’1. 

She met another referee and two more producers before Sampson finally started to walk toward the table she had been watching from the corner of her eye. They stopped at the end of it and all three men turned their attention to them. The one she knew to be Chuck, was grinning at her, the apples of his cheeks light pink and Emily immediately focused on his cute, prominent dimples. Trent, the one with the bandana, was also smiling but much more subdued. And then there was Orange. Much like every minute of footage she watched during her research, his expression was neutral, his eyes hidden behind his trademark sunglasses and she wondered if he looked like this even when he wasn’t at work. 

“Hey guys! I want to introduce you to Emily Harris, Nurse Practitioner.  She’s going to be with us full time and will act as a backup in case of any emergencies where myself or Doc Chris aren’t available,” Sampson explained. 

Emily cleared her throat and switched into professional mode. “It’s nice to meet you!” she said happily while sticking her hand out for a shake. To her surprise, Orange stood up straight, slipped his glasses off and grasped her hand firmly. 

“Nice to meet you, too. I’m Jim.”

“Pfft, of course you suck up to medical staff,” Chuck stood up with a roll of his eyes but without any real malice. “Dustin. Nice to meet you,” he said, taking her hand. She panicked for a split second at the size difference, irrationally worried he might accidentally break it, but he just gave a nice easy squeeze and released. 

Trent also stood and Emily shook his hand as well. “Greg. Sup.”

Radio chatter got her attention and Doc Sampson answered it. “Be right back,” he said, stepping several feet away to answer the call. Which left her standing a little awkwardly while all three men sat back down. Orange slid his glasses back on, sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. 

“So…” she started, unsure what to say. “Uh- Chuck Taylor, Trent and Orange Cassidy, right?”

“Uh oh. We got a nurse mark over here,” Chuck laughed. 

Emily looked confused. “...no? My name is Emily.”

Chuck laughed again and even Orange cracked a smile. Trent shook his head and asked “How much do you know about the business?”

Emily wasn’t expecting any questions about her qualifications but she was happy to answer them. “Well, I did my undergrad at University of Michigan. Finished my doctorate there before moving to Chicago for med school…”

“No, not-I meant wrestling,” Trent interrupted.

Emily froze, immediately forgetting everything she had researched. “Oh my god. I’ve forgotten everything I’ve learned this month.” She confessed. She then said the first thing that she could remember that had anything to do with wrestling. “Oh! Uh-well-um, I know the Rock was a wrestler?” 

Orange snorted suddenly and all three men were laughing and Emily’s cheeks burned.

Chuck kicked out the chair across from him, next to Orange.  “Have a seat, nurse. Let’s chat.”

She sat down, folded her hands on the table and started bouncing her legs. “Am I in trouble?” she asked with a nervous chuckle. “Have mercy, please. It’s my first day.”

“No, no. You said everything you learned ‘this month.’ Did you know anything before that?” Chuck asked. Emily shook her head no. “How did you even get this job?” Chuck asked. 

She shrugged. “I was qualified and I applied? I mean, it seemed like a great opportunity. Getting to travel. Work on a TV show. Sounded exciting, ya know?” Emily cleared her throat. “I got hired two weeks ago, so I’ve been doing some research. I’ve watched every AEW show that’s aired. So that I could recognize a lot of the talent. That’s how I knew your stage names.”

“You learn anything else?” Orange asked softly and Emily’s heart thumped in her chest. 

“I know that everything is predetermined. And that you should never, ever call it fake,” she said matter-of-factly. “I spent a whole night reading the history of professional wrestling. Started with Wikipedia of course. Then a couple dozen academic articles over the next few days. Oh and I put a few books on my kindle. I got the first book by-shit what is his name? Nick Foley? His auto-biography.”

“Mick,” Chuck corrected. 

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Mick Foley. But I haven’t had a chance to read that yet.”

“Wait. Did you say ‘a couple dozen’ articles?” Trent asked. 

“Yeah. I mean I know that’s not much, but I couldn’t find any reputable ones. A lot of the content out there seems to be written by, uh, enthusiastic…fans? And not experts.”

“That sounds about right,” Chuck nodded. “We call those people marks.”

Emily added the note to her clipboard.

“What are you writing?” Orange asked.

“Notes. Just whatever I’ve been told that I think is important,” she said. “I wrote ‘enthusiastic fans are marks’. Right?”

Chuck guffawed. “I mean basically, yeah.”

Doc Sampson called Emily’s name and motioned for her to join him. She nodded and went to join him but remembered one more thing they needed to know. “So, I’m also going to be helping the PT staff. I have a doctorate in physical therapy and it was what I did before I decided to go back for nursing. So feel free to reach out if you need anything. Advice, spotting. Sports massage. I’ll be filling in with all of that if for some reason we don’t have any PT’s available on show days.”

“You got it, nurse,” Chuck said with a wink. Emily blushed and looked away from Chuck to Orange, who was smiling slightly, which just made her flush harder. She had to get control of herself before they branded her the shy, easily embarrassed new girl. 

Not wanting to come on too heavy, she wet her lips before looking between Chuck and Trent. “It was nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll see you guys around later.” She turned her attention to Orange, looked him up and down quickly and despite the fact he had his glasses on, she just knew he was watching her. “I look forward to working with you,” she said before walking away. 

[khtblogging]

11, 19 :)

Because I forgot to mention on the last one :

11) What is a dream storyline you have?

Okay, so we are going to avoid discussing the JB going batsh*t one since .you can read that here. I think I'd really just want to see some closure between Jurassic Express and FTR, and definitely closure between Jungle Boy and MJF, but we've already seen them feud.

There is also the deep desire to see a mentorship/rivalry go down between Thunder Rosa and Tay Conti. It's not only a moment where Tay grows and Rosa displays her expertise, but it's still a race for the next match against Britt that will grow competitive down the line, but will ultimately lead to an amicable aftermath. Hell, I would love to see Rosa beat Tay, Rosa wins the belt (she's All Elite now, so it can happen as soon as Full Gear), and Tay wins it in the ultimate "blowoff" in 6-8 months to show her growth. PUT THAT SH*T ON DYNAMITE, TONY! It can be a very strong storyline that shows the women's division not soley relying on Britt to make sure it exists.

19) Any gags that I particularly like?

You see, I made this question for those who might watch more shows than I do (this ties into Q1, what shows do I watch, I watch AEW on the reg, but then sometimes a little mix of Joshi, DDT, and GCW). I think it's when people mock each other's taunts and sh*t, for example :

MJF vs Jungle Boy had a load of those.

Eddie dancing to mock Angelico.

PAC and Fenix mocking the Bucks' pose, Rey joking with it and then PAC just taking the time to flex.

[artdaily7]

The Incomprehensibility by Nick Flynn

The newly dead hung on to the ceiling last night

like moths, wanting to tell us what they hadn’t

found words for yet, their bodies still

warm on their mattresses below—they did not look

comfortable, passing themselves on the way

out . . . . Only mystery allows us

to live—Lorca wrote this on the back of one of his many

drawings of a sailor, or of many sailors. Only

mystery & yet or so

I pull myself back again to a place wherein I can com-

prehend, if only a glimmer, the moment my mother

will press a bullet into the chamber of her .38—

think of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation—nothing has happened,

not yet, Mary’s back is to the Angel, his hand

hovers over her shoulder, not touching her, not

yet. It’s still not too late to turn back—a Sunday morning,

we can hear the ocean, we can smell it, if we could get up

we could even see it. Junkies

can go to a clinic in downtown Vancouver now to shoot up

in safety—We can help them find

the vein, the pretty nurse says,

but we cannot depress the plunger . . . As I write this a Boeing 777

along with all two hundred & thirty-nine souls onboard

vanishes from the sky—

no distress call, no black box, no wreckage. By the time you

read this we will all know what happened (wormhole?

drunk pilot?) but right now it is simply

gone. Let’s look again at the Annunciation, let’s think of

the angel as a pretty nurse, let’s think of her wings as

possibility, her silence

as a syringe. Let’s put my mother in that airplane now, let’s

let her circle forever, let’s imagine she too is unable to

land. She glances out the window, sometimes

at the tops of the clouds, sometimes at someone’s sad house

below. I know you’re still in there, she whispers, raising one

finger. Poke a hole through the heavy curtains, she

mouths—you’ll see they are not even real.

Fra Angelico 1437-1446 The Annunciation (Gabriel and Mary), fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence, Italy

[wewerecore]

Yatco Presents

CORE Pro #102

They Shoot, We Score

04/11/21

American Postal Workers Union Hall - Tampa, Florida

Attendance: 103

- The show opened with all the wrestlers making their way to the ring where they were joined by new CORE owner Jawad Yatim and head matchmaker Sad Badd. Jawad thanked the fans for their support and praised the card Sad Badd had assembled on short notice. Jawad told the crowd that while he has no interest in being an on-screen character, he will be working diligently behind the scenes to make CORE the most successful independent booking office in North America.

Match #1

The Vulture Squad (Jigsaw and Jack Evans) with Julius Smokes vs. Los Golpeadores (Dragon Bane and El Hijo de Canis Lupus)

Winners: The Vulture Squad

Match #2

JD Drake vs. Shane Taylor

Winner: Shane Taylor

- Wrestling legend Sgt. Slaughter entered the ring before the next match. Slaughter began to read a statement from some note cards, but tossed them aside and demanded to know why this live event didn’t open with a performance of “America The Beautiful.” Sgt. Slaughter called for the fans to get on their feet and he would perform a rousing rendition of the song for them now. Slaughter’s microphone was cut and security escorted him from the ring as he ranted about a typo on his hotel reservation that called him Sgt. Laughter.

Match #3

The End (Odinson and Parrow) vs. The New Jersey All-Stars (Dan Champion and Lucky)

Winners: The End

- CORE matchmaker Sad Badd appeared at ringside and apologized for Sgt. Slaughter’s earlier appearance. She said that Slaughter had been in the sun all day and was likely suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. Sad Badd explained that Slaughter was supposed to announce the creation of an innovative new division in CORE. In association with the Medicare Coverage Helpline, CORE will be launching the Medicare Coverage Helpline Senior Division. The division will be open only to wrestlers 50+, and to limit the risk of prolonged physical exertion all matches can be won by a two count. Sad Badd brought out Chavo Guerrero Jr. and announced that he will be facing Ricky Morton on April 23rd in Archbald, PA in the very first Medicare Coverage Helpline Senior Division match. She also announced that Japanese wrestling star Konosuke Takeshita will be returning to CORE for the first time since Trios Kingdom 2014 to go one on one with Davey Richards.

Match #4

Laredo Kid vs. A Very Good Professional Wrestler

Winner: A Very Good Professional Wrestler

Match #5

The Doom Patrol (Chris Dickinson and Jaka) vs. FinJuice (David Finlay and Juice Robinson)

- Chris Dickinson had David Finlay up for a death valley driver off the top rope when he was temporarily blinded by a camera flash from the crowd. Finlay slipped off Dickinson's shoulders and hit a superplex. Juice Robinson came from the opposite corner with a frog splash for the pinfall.

Winners: FinJuice

Match #6

Lio Rush vs. Rich Swann

Winner: Lio Rush

Upcoming Shows:

CORE Pro #103

...and then a whole year passed

04/23/21

Sugarman's Marketplace - Archbald, Pennsylvania

01. Dan Champion vs. JD Drake

02. Shane Taylor Promotions (Shane Taylor, Kaun, and Moses) vs. Jigsaw, Jack Evans, and Angelico

03. Thunder Rosa vs. Deonna Purrazzo

04. Medicare Coverage Helpline Senior Division: Ricky Morton vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr.

05. Davey Richards vs. Konosuke Takeshita

06. Lio Rush vs. A Very Good Professional Wrestler

[agarthanguide]

i'm obsessed with klimt!jester and byzantine!molly, my gosh. what wonderful ideas you had for all of them! how long did it take you to settle on each inspiration, and what other ideas did you almost go with?

This is a fun question.  Here’s how it went (behind the cut because this got so very long)-

Caleb happened first, and without any intention of doing a whole set. I wanted to try to do Van Gogh’s coloring thing, and Caleb seemed like a really good target.  It was deeply fun.

Beau- Hey, I like this Caleb piece!  What if I do art stuff for all of the M9? I wanna try those long inky LIchtenstein lines!  And what could go wrong?  Surely this won’t extend to two months of extensive research and work!

Molly- As soon as I decided to draw Beau, I knew I wanted Molly to be some highly iconographic thing with glorioles and gold leaf and things.  I have a longstanding fascination with Catholic and Orthodox iconography and gosh do I love messing with gold leaf.  Early concepts included some Fra Angelico action (he does this thing where you texture the gold leaf to create patterns in the frame, which i find absolutely stunning.  This is also a Big Look in 17th Century Spanish polychrome sculpture, which I obviously couldn’t pastiche directly, but wanted to reference, if the opportunity came up)-

I also considered going a bit Russian.  Russian iconography has probably the most opportunities for adding layers of symbolism (it just occurred to me that I probably would have needed to find someone who understood cyrillic to make it work)-

In the end, I was paging through a book of decorative motifs and was reminded of the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, which are probably the most iconic of the form outside of the Hagia Sophia. I decided that I’d probably have lots of other opportunities to paint, and I wanted to try my hand at a realistic tile look.

Caduceus- I thought of Mucha straight away, but I really didn’t want to do it, because I had already seen it done several times, and I thought those other artists had done really well, and that the concept was a closed book.  The other big concept was Picasso’s Old Guitarist-

It’s got the lankiness and the stylization and I love the pose, but in the end I just really thought that Caduceus was more Art Nouveau than expressionist.  Also my brother was really voting against any pose that included a profile, because I had never drawn Cad in anything other than profile.  So that cinched it.

Jester- I never considered anything else but Klimt. I tried hard to think of something else, because my last two brain cells have just enough self awareness to know that Klimt is way, way above me in terms of pattern and texture and motif, and I was pretty sure it was gonna be too difficult for me.  It was, by the way.  I stopped long before I wanted to and didn’t include a lot of what I had dreamed of adding.

Matt- Following my fascination with iconography, I still wanted to do the heavily painted, loaded with symbolism and rich color portrait that Molly wasn’t.  I looked at artists like Ghirlandaio, Castagno, and Jan van Eyck (I never considered Da Vinci, his sensitivity is way outside my orbit), but in the end I kept coming back to Holbein, who really raises the bar on color choice and symbolism. I love that all his portraits seem to be set in plain or dark spaces, but are somehow glowing and mysterious. I didn’t have the guts to put in a deep, perspective-y background, but omg I wish- 

I mean I’m not a fucking wizard.  But holy shit look at that.  The notes and crap hanging off the wall all look like clues.  Like Sherlock Holmes would be able to write the whole life story of this guy.  It’s almost trompe l’oeil.

Yasha- First concept for Yasha was a Minoan fresco from Knossos-

If I was designing Yasha’s tribe, I think I’d go for a melange of Mongolian and Minoan, throwing in some Tibetan textile patterns.  I just think this looks so much like her, and also some other Minoan frescoes include insane levels of ritualized badassery, like Bull Leaping and young girls offering saffron to incarnate goddesses.  I just love it. In the end, I was worried that the relative clean-ness and simplicity of the lines in the Minoan style would make it look like I was giving Yasha short shrift.  This feels a little ridiculous to me now, but I had just come off three in a row that took more than ten hours. My next thought was the Book of Hours of Joanna of Castile.  The thought here was that some of the pages actually look like Yasha’s book of pressed flowers-

This felt like a totally winning direction to me.  As I researched illuminated books more, though, my concept started to broaden and get more stylized, and I just went with it.  I think it turned out okay.

Fjord- Fjord is handsome and iconic, so the ideas flowed easily for him.  The first and most obvious was a Fabio-era (read- 80s to early 90s) romance novel cover-

I didn’t go with it because the Tusk Love thing meant that a lot of other artists had tried it already, and many of them had done a damn fine job, and I didn’t think that I had anything to add. The next concept was David’s Napoleon-

Very solid concept, but two issues- 1. Most portraits of Napoleon are pretty standard, in the mold of, say, Holbein, which I had already done.  2. The horse portrait is awesome, but I think Fjord had only been on horses circumstantially.  I couldn’t picture him on a horse. He’s not iconically horsey, he’s iconically sailor-y.  I can’t confirm whether or not he had a moorbounde when I painted this, but I know I hadn’t seen any of those episodes, yet.  So. All of this dithering kept going until the DAY I STARTED PAINTING.  And suddenly pulp cover fell out. I love pulp art.  This is the second fandom I’ve done pulp art covers for.

Nott- Full credit to @essayofthoughts, who came up with the playing card thing right at the get go.  I wasn’t sold, though, and floated two other concepts. First was a Mughal Miniature-

The thing about these is that they are very often like little comics.  On one side of the painting, you can have the main character at a lake, picking daisies or being drowned or whatever, and then on the other side that same character can be picking pockets in a crowded bar.  There’s loads of opportunity for detail and symbols and fun stuff like that.  On the other hand- I’m not a goddam genius.  I could not have taken in the style and substance of Mughal storytelling and then just spit it out in a few short weeks and done it any justice. Nope, that concept was just too difficult and too far above me.My other concept was Millais’ Ophelia-

This one might have been amazing, but the second half of the 19th century was getting very crowded indeed, with Caleb, Caduceus, and Jester all having concepts from that era.  That and I wanted something more graphic artsy than painty to round out the series.  Beau was starting to feel like an outlier and I wanted to loop her in closer to the bunch, if you know what I mean.

Okay that was a lot, but I apparently had a lot to share.  I hope you found the unused concepts interesting, at least.  What would you have done, were you me? I would love to hear outtakes from alternative universes.

[hazyheel]

AEW All Out Predictions

The sequel to All In is happening on Saturday, and it is a stacked show. I cannot describe how excited I am to watch, and as bummed as I am about the Moxley injury, his replacement still lends itself to an interesting match. The card has a lot of interesting stories from top to bottom, and those that don’t have much of a story should be pretty good matches anyway. I’m really excited, but who will get the wins? Here are my predictions for All Out.

21 Woman Casino Battle Royal for #1 contendership to the AEW Women’s Championship: This is the first of two pre-show matches. The rules are the same as last time. Five Women will start in the ring, and then every few minutes, five more will enter. The twenty first competitor will enter the match last and alone, giving them a distinct advantage. Lots of names have been announced already, such as: Nyla Rose, Britt Baker, Allie, Brandi Rhodes, Teal Piper, Ivelisse, Jazz, Big Swole, Sadie Gibbs, Awesome Kong, and Shazza McKenzie. This is pretty exciting, lots of new names and big names on this show. I’m thinking that Britt Baker will get the win, considering how much she has been pushed recently, and how much the Bucks and Cody seem to like her. She won the first official women’s match in AEW, while also participating in the Women’s match at All In, and Fight for the Fallen. While it may seem pretty obvious to pick her, I don’t think AEW will shy away from an obvious choice if it is the right one. Personally though, I will be rooting for Ivelisse. Should be fun, but I’m always skeptical of Battle Royals. 

Angelico & Jack Evans vs. Private Party: The next pre show match pits two up and coming tag teams in AEW. Both teams have impressed me in the past, but I think Private Party will get the win here. The Bucks seem really big on them, and they will need to impress in a big way to get over on the event. Angelico and Jack Evans are also without wins, but I don’t know how prominent their roles in AEW will be early on. Private Party will be big, because the Bucks love them. So they will probably win here, but I expect a good match. 

SoCal Uncensored vs. Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Marko Stunt: This is just sorta a thrown together match, but I’m still looking forward to it. I think that Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Marko Stunt will win, really just to establish them as a strong team. They need to make some names, and for how popular they were at fight for the fallen, none of them have won a match. So they need to look strong. I’m actually looking forward to this match, because SoCal uncensored is great, Jungle Boy is goddamned awesome, Luchasaurus is great, and Marko Stunt is... probably good? I haven’t watched him much. But I’m excited for this. I think it will be really good to great. 

Darby Allin vs. Joey Janela vs. Jimmy Havoc in a Cracker Barrel Clash: I genuinely had no idea that this match had a stipulation on it until I read the wikipedia. it’s a funny way to incorporate product placement. Anyway, this match stems from Fight for the Fallen. These three teamed together in a six man tag against Shawn Spears, MJF and Sammy Guevara. They didn’t work together very well at all, and when they lost, they each blamed each other for the loss and brawled a bunch. So the three way was booked for All Out, and they added the stipulation randomly some other time. I assume it’s a hardcore stipulation considering the people in it. I am thinking that Darby Allin will get the win here, because they have been pushing him in a subtle way. He went to a time limit draw with Cody at Fyter Fest, and then ate the pin in the 6-man tag from Shawn Spears. Considering that he was a catalyst for the feud, I imagine that he will be important in the company. Although I can see any of these guys winning, because none of them have a win under their belt. Should be a fun hardcore match, but I cringe to think about what they will do to each other. 

Kenny Omega vs. Pac: this is simultaneously the most disappointing and possibly most exciting match on the card. It was supposed to by Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley, but Moxley went out with a staph infection last week. So that is disappointing. But then AEW resolved their issues with Pac, so he is coming in instead, which is so exciting. And although there is no story to this, it could easily be the best match of the night. I think Omega is going to win, because even though this is Pac’s debut, Omega has been building up to this match for three months. But this is an exciting match and I think it will be great. 

Cody vs. Shawn Spears: a personal feud that has developed superbly. These two have been friends for years, going back to OVW. However, at Fyter Fest, Spears walloped Cody in the head with a chair shot following his draw against Darby Allin. The story unfolded a bit after that match, with Spears saying that Cody referred to him as a “good hand” after his signing, which irked him. He wants to be remembered as a great wrestler, not just some guy who Cody hired to fill out the roster. At Fight for the Fallen, Shawn Spears pinned Darby Allin in a six man tag, which was a good booking decision. So that match was signed for All Out, with an interesting stipulation. It is a normal singles match, but each guy can only have one person in his corner. Tully Blanchard, Spears’ new manager, is in Spears’ corner, mainly because Blanchard had a lot of success against Dusty Rhodes. We still don’t know who will stay in Cody’s corner, so there is a bit of intrigue going into it. I love this story to death, but I’m a bit skeptical of the match. I think both these guys are really good, but I don’t know if they can pull out a great match. I think good is the best they can do, but I will happily be wrong about that. I think Cody will win this so that he can look strong, and be a trumphant babyface, but I would be perfectly happy to see Spears get the win and go on a tear as a heel. 

Best Friends vs. The Dark Order for a BYE in the AEW World Tag Team Championship tournament: simple booking got us here. At Double or Nothing, Best Friends, Trent Beretta and Chuck Taylor, beat Angelico and Jack Evans. After the match, the Dark Order, Evil Uno and Stu Grayson made their debut and attacked everyone. They made a particular show of beating down Best Friends, as they hate them for some reason. At Fyter Fest, Best Friends beat Private Party and SoCal Uncensored (Scorpio Sky and Frankie Kazarian) in a triple threat tag match to qualify for a BYE match at All Out. The Dark Order beat A Boy and His Dinosaur and Angelico & Jack Evans at Fight for the Fallen to also qualify, and here we are. I think that the Dark Order will win here, because they are creepy, dominant heels. I think they win here and maybe even make it to the finals of the tournament, or win. If anyone is going to beat them, it’ll be the Young Bucks. But this should be a good match. Best Friends are great, and the Dark Order seem pretty good too.

Hikaru Shida vs. Riho for #1 contendership to the AEW Women’s Championship: This was a bit thrown together, but should be a good match. I have limitted experience with both of them, but I think Riho will win. Omega really likes her, and I think that she would be a great wrestler to have in the #1 contenders slot opposite Britt Baker, but I don’t think she will win. I wish I knew more about these gals, but I don’t, so I will just move on. 

The Lucha Bros vs. The Young Bucks in a ladder match for the AAA World Tag Team Championships: Ah yes, an eternal rivalry. I don’t think these two teams will ever stop feuding. This all started back in PWG where they constantly fought over those tag belts, but the current story started at the second AEW press conference. The Lucha Bros attacked the Young Bucks, and challenged them for Double or Nothing. The Bucks accepted, and later ambushed them at AAA’s Rey de Reyes, challenging and defeating the Lucha Bros in a match for the AAA World Tag Team Championships. Those belts were put on the line at Double or Nothing, and the Bucks retained. They fought again for the belts at AAA’s Verano de Escándalo, with the Lucha Bros winning the belts back. The teams then clashed in six man tags at both AEW’s Fyter Ffest and AAA’s Triplemania, with Kenny Omega on the Young Bucks’ team and Laredo Kid on the Lucha Bros team, with the Elite winning at the AEW event and the luchadores winning in AAA. After defeating Frankie Kazarian and Scorpio Sky at Fight for the Fallen, the Lucha Bros challenged The Young Bucks to a ladder match at All Out. Later that night, after The Young Bucks defeated The Brotherhood (Cody and Dustin Rhodes), they accepted. The AAA World Tag Team Championships were put on the line once again later on. This has feud ender written all over it. I mean seriously, these teams have fought each other in some way, shape or form at five events this year. We don’t need this many rematches. The stipulation will keep things fresh, but this has to be the end, at least for a while. I think that the Lucha Bros will get the win here, because this is the kind of strong victory they need to cement themselves in AEW, whereas the Bucks have yet to lose. And the Bucks will be protected by the ladder stipulation, they don’t need to eat a pin. However, that doesn’t take away from how goddamn scary this will be. These two teams are gonna kill themselves in this ladder match. I am both worried out of my mind, and incredibly excited for this match. It is the one I’m most excited for, I think it will be great, but I hope no one gets hurt. 

Adam Page vs. Chris Jericho for the inaugural AEW World Championship: This is history in the making folks. The first crowning of a world champion in what is now considered the #2 wrestling company in the world. Big stuff. The story started out simple. Adam Page was the surprise last entrant in the first Casino Battle Royal, last eliminating MJF to win the match at Double or Nothing and qualify for this match. In the main event of the same show, Chris Jericho defeated Kenny Omega, debuting the Judas effect in the process, to qualify as well. From there, Page won two matches: a four way against MJF, Jimmy Havoc and Jungle Boy at Fyter Fest, and a singles match against Kip Sabian at Fight for the Fallen. In contrast, Jericho lost against Kazuchika Okada in New Japan in a match for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at Dominion, albeit unconvincingly. After Page’s win over Sabian, Jericho attacked Page. Later on, he said that he had to win this World Championship match, because if he lost it would mean the end of the wrestling god known as Chris Jericho. Page then attacked him to return the favor, and was shown to be the underdog. Both guys want this more than anything, but I think that Jericho should win it. He may not be in his prime, but he is still a legend, and if they have a legend holding that belt on their first TV show, then people will be interested. Page is world championship material, this feud has shown that, but just not yet. He will win the belt eventually, but he won’t be the first. I just don’t think he can compete with Jericho’s name value, even if that value is from WWE and WWE affiliates. However, Page could still win considering that he is close with the EVP’s. And it would be a feel good way to end the show, so I could be wrong. This match should be really good if not great, but either way it’ll be a visceral sight to see the first champion crowned. 

[wrestlingisfake]

All Out preview

Chris Jericho vs. Hangman Page - This match is to determine the first AEW men’s world champion.  Page qualified for this match by winning a 21-man battle royale at Double or Nothing on May 25; Jericho qualified by defeating Kenny Omega later in the same show.  Jericho has held six world heavyweight titles; this would be his first outside of WWE.  Page has never held a singles championship of any kind in a major-league promotion, although he’s been talking about being the first to hold this title since the original AEW press conference in January.

AEW is trying to position this as a true main event, mainly on the strength of the title and Jericho, even though the ladder match and (at one point) Omega-Moxley were clearly bigger draws.  I expect that this match will go on last just to establish the primacy of the world championship.  That’s a lot of pressure on Page, who was barely even a midcarder 18 months ago.  Of all the talent getting pushes to elevate them to the Kenny Omega’s star power, he’s the one with a rocket strapped to his back.  There’s a sense that this match is his Rocky moment, and he’s carried that idea well in interviews.

Jericho has handled the story convincingly, pushing the notion that Page is ready for this level of competition, while still asserting that he’s the favorite going into the match.  Page is great...but he won’t be good enough on this particular night.  Jericho has also stressed that he needs to beat Page, because a loss would set up talk about him passing the torch in the twilight of his career, and he’s not willing to be treated like a used-to-be.  It’s an interesting approach for the 48-year-old Jericho, because the tipping point between “veteran superstar” and “old timer doing jobs on the way to retirement” is precarious.  It makes sense that he would fight tooth-and-nail to keep from going over that tipping point, and direct that fury towards his 28-year-old opponent.

Assuming this really will close the show, it needs to be a great match.  I don’t think it will be, or needs to be, the best match of the night.  But it needs to be great enough that we leave thinking they were right to put it on last, and that Page has what it takes to close the show.  More critically, we need to come away thinking AEW title matches are epic conflicts, so the promotion can credibly use the championships as box office attractions in their own right.

I would be fine with Page as champion, but I think the best move is to have him deliver a star-making performance and then suffer a heartbreaking loss to Jericho.  That’s not to say Page shouldn’t eventually win the title.  But Jericho has both the clout and the heel heat to sustain a very long chase from multiple contenders, which will make the first men’s world title change as important as the first men’s world title match.

Rey Fenix & Pentagon, Jr. vs. Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson - The Lucha Bros, Penta and Fenix, are defending the AAA tag team championship.  The Young Bucks, Matt and Nick, are defending an AEW undefeated streak.  This is a ladder match, so the title belts will be suspended above the ring; to reach them ladders will be provided at ringside for the wrestlers to climb.  The first person to retrieve the belts will win the match, and the championship, for his team.  Since that’s the only way the match can end, there are effectively no count-outs, disqualifications, pinfalls, or submissions.

The feud between the Lucha Bros and the Young Bucks in February, when Penta and Fenix took exception to the Bucks claiming to be the best tag team and attacked them at their own press conference.  On March 16 the Lucha Bros headlined AAA’s Rey de Reyes and won the tag team title, but the Bucks showed up for an impromptu title match and took the belts back to AEW.   The Bucks successfully defended the title in a rematch at AEW’s Double or Nothing on May 25, but the Lucha Bros finally won it back at AAA’s Verano de Escandalo on June 16.  The Bucks teamed with Kenny Omega against the Lucha Bros and Laredo Kid at AEW Fyter Fest on June 29 and AAA Triplemania on August 3.  Penta and Fenix issued the challenge for this match at Fight for the Fallen on July 13.

Fenix suffered some sort of leg injury in the past week.  From what I’ve read, it might not be anything, but he was worried he tore something and had to get it checked out.  The fact I haven’t heard an actual diagnosis suggests that they couldn’t find anything wrong with him.  That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything wrong, but I’m hoping it turned out to be nothing and Fenix just needed to rest it up.  Either way, I expect the possible injury to be worked into the story of the match, and for the Bucks to do a bunch of moves and stuff onto the leg.

I kinda think the Mexican team should walk out with the Mexican championship, but it is the Bucks’ show and they’ve talked up how legendary their ladder matches are.  They can easily win here and then drop the belts at a AAA show, without any apparent impact on the AEW win-loss stats.  I gotta pick the Bucks to win (at least all the way up to the finals of the AEW tag title tournament).

Kenny Omega vs. PAC - Pac, formerly Adrian Neville in WWE, is a substitution for Jon Moxley, who had to pull out of this match last week due to a staph infection.  Ironically, the substitution pays off on plans that were canceled a while back.

Pac’s involvement in AEW was announced at the company’s original press conference, while he held Dragon Gate’s top title (the Open the Dream Gate championship).  He was set to feud with Hangman Page, and the storyline played up the idea that Page wanted to be a champion, implying the match would figure into the AEW world title picture.  Then on May 18 Page beat Pac by disqualification at a British indy show, setting up an angle where Pac refused to face Page at their scheduled AEW match on May 25. 

It turned out Pac would not agree to lose any matches during his title run, and AEW had decided never to do DQ finishes to get out of booking clean finishes.  There was talk that Pac wasn’t even supposed to lose to Page, but he would be feuding with Omega later.  I seem to remember speculating that Omega and Pac were meant to win their matches on May 25 and meet for the AEW title here.  Obviously that didn’t happen.  But Pac has since lost the Dream Gate belt on July 21, which puts him back in play at AEW.  And just in the nick of time, it seems.

I was expecting Moxley to be the slight favorite in the originally scheduled match, but now that Pac is in the mix anything is possible.  The outcome is totally up in the air, and it’s just as well since I expect the focus is on delivering a killer match to make up for failing to deliver the advertised match.  Even though Omega was playing a dick by mocking Mox’s “boo-boo,” Pac is an even bigger dick, so I’m lowkey pulling for Kenny.

Cody Rhodes vs. Shawn Spears - Spears will be seconded by Tully Blanchard, playing on the legendary rivalry between Blanchard and Cody’s father Dusty.  Cody brought an entire entourage to the ring a year ago at All In, but for this match he is contractually limited to a single person in his corner.  We haven’t been outright told this person will be a big surprise who will make a big difference in the match, but it’s been set up to let us think that, so I hope Cody doesn’t just bring out Dustin Rhodes or Dallas Page.

Rhodes and Spears were friends in OVW when they were coming up through WWE developmental.  Cody hit it big in WWE, while Spears (as Tye Dillinger) languished for most of his thirties.  When Spears jumped to AEW, fans generally considered it a positive move for both parties, although Cody made an offhand remark about Spears being a “player-coach” and a “good hand,” curiously implying that he was dismissing his friend as a journeyman.  Spears took offense and blasted Cody with a chair on June 29, leaving Cody a bloody mess.

This is easily the biggest match of Spears’s career, and it’s probably one of his last chances to escape the stigma of being a never-was.  A win would give him momentum as a key figure in the early weeks of AEW’s TV show, as Cody would need to chase him for a few more months to seek vengeance.  A loss would simply validate WWE’s lack of interest in Tye Dillinger--and worse, affirm Cody’s kayfabe dismissiveness on AEW’s own programming.  Cody hasn’t actually been pinned yet in AEW, so I assume they’re saving that for something; I hope this is it.

Evil Uno & Stu Grayson vs. Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta - The team that wins this match earns a bye in the AEW tag team championship tournament.  So basically you have to win this one match in order to skip one tournament match.  That’s kinda screwy.  Both of these teams won three-ways to qualify for this match.  The Best Friends (Taylor/Beretta) qualified on June 28, while the Dark Order (Uno/Grayson) qualified on July 13.

I think the plan was for the Dark Order to be super-over as a hot team with a spooky gimmick and a cult following on the indies.  It hasn’t been working out.  Honestly, Chuck Taylor manages to come off as creepier than the Dark Order’s gimmick just by being a really weird dude who is oddly devoted to hugs.  Hopefully the popularity of the Best Friends will override disinterest in the Dark Order to heat the match up.  Logically, the bad guys should get the bye, so I think the Dark Order better cheat a lot.

Riho vs. Hikaru Shida - I’ve heard talk that the winner of this match will qualify for the first women’s world championship match on October 2, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.  It wouldn’t make a ton of sense anyway, considering Riho is 2-1 in AEW and coming off of a loss, while Shida is 1-0 but hasn’t appeared in the company since May.  I don’t have stats in front of me, but I would think at least one other woman in the company would have more credibility in this spot.  Then again, Britt Baker was sidelined with a concussion for much of August, so maybe she was originally slated for this spot and they decided they couldn’t wait to see if she’d be cleared.  I guess I’ll go with Riho to win, even though I’m still not sure what’s at stake.

Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky vs. Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus & Marko Stunt - The Daniels team is SCU.  Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus are “A Boy and His Dinosaur,” so I guess with Marko they’re “A Boy and A Boy and His Dinosaur” or something like that.  This could be a good chance to put over the Luchasaurus team, but their gimmick is going to be over either way, so maybe they should keep up momentum on SCU.

Darby Allin vs. Joey Janella vs. Jimmy Havoc - This is a three-way match, so the first man to score a fall on either of his opponents wins.  These guys were on the losing end of a six-man tag match on July 13.  At the time I believe I observed that nobody in that six-man had yet won a match, so now the losers of the Weenie Hut Jr.’s Bowl are having a Super Weenie Hut Jr.’s Bowl.  I guess the guy who scores the winning fall gets to escape into the midcard, while the other two open the next show, and the loser of that match gets to hang out with Brandon Cutler backstage or something.  Of the three, Allin is the biggest project with perhaps the least indy scene cred, so he’ll probably be the Super Weenie Hut Jr.’s champion.

21-Woman Casino Battle Royale - This is set for the free pre-show.  It’s a gauntlet battle royale with timed entrances and over-the-top-rope eliminations, but with the same special rules as the one AEW did on May 25.  Five women start the match, and every three  minutes another group of women enter; the 21st woman enters alone.  Eliminations can occur at any time by exiting the ring over the top rope and placing both feet on the floor before re-entering.  The last woman left after everyone else is eliminated wins the match, and qualifies to wrestle...uh, someone (maybe the winner of Riho vs. Shida?) for the women’s championship on October 2.

As soon as AEW announced the match, they admitted they didn’t have 21 women on the roster, so we can expect a lot of new faces.  Confirmed so far:

Allie

Awesome Kong

Big Swole

Brandi Rhodes

Britt Baker

Ivelisse

Jazz

Nyla Rose

Sadie Gibbs

Shazza McKenzie

Teal Piper

I heard AEW and Impact Wrestling were in talks to put Tenille Dashwood in this match, but even if that’s true they might not get the i’s dotted in time.  Taya Valkyrie was on Being the Elite the other day, but I don’t know if that means anything.  Obviously Chicago is wondering if CM Punk will be at this show, but I never see anyone wondering if his wife, AJ Mendez, might show up.  Apparently something is up with Kylie Rae but nobody’s talking about it, which is troubling.  I don’t even know what continent Bea Priestly will be on during this show, so she may not be available.

It feels like AEW’s biggest plans in this division are for Baker, although that could be just to have her put over someone else when the moment comes.  The safest bet is Britt, though, until someone else emerges from the pack.

Jack Evans & Angelico vs. Isiah Kassidy & Marq Quen - Another match for the pre-show.  Kassidy and Quen are Private Party, and everyone likes them but the big issue I’m always hearing is that they’re green and need to be protected by veterans until they’re ready.  Evans and Angelico are veterans, so there you go.  My guess is that AEW won’t book Private Party to actually win a match until they’ve decided the team is truly ready, but since we don’t know when that’ll happen we have something to look forward to every time they wrestle.  For now, I gotta pick Evangelico (is anybody calling them that?) to win.

[minervaslegacy-blog]

A trip to... Firenze!

Hi everyone! Welcome to the first column of A trip to…! I’m very excited to start this column because I think traveling is one of the richest things we can enjoy in life. Getting involved in someone else’s culture and language, getting to know other ways of living that are different from ours is the highest form of knowledge.

And to start things off, and keeping with the theme of the rest of the articles I’ve written for this week, today we make a small journey to Firenze, or Florence, as most people know her. I’ve never been to Florence, sadly enough, at least physically. In my dreams, I’ve been there quite a lot, or maybe I just went once and never left. But since I hope to one day finally go there, I have a few things that I’m dying to see and I want to share them with you. So, let’s go to Firenze!

I can only imagine what an experience it is to visit Florence and wonder at all the magnificent works of art build all over the city. A city that in itself is a work of art. Her real name is Firenze, and it's the capital of the Tuscan region (as you know, Italy is divided into twenty regions, and every single one of the as a sort of capital).

As most of you know, Florece has a very strong connection to art since the italian Rinascimentobut in the medieval had already a reputation for being an important center for finance and commercial trade. One of the most important banks of the medieval and Rinascimento times was born here, the Medici Bank ran by the Medici Family, one of the most important florentine mecenes patrons in history (I actually did the experience of researching “patrons” on google and Cosimo di Medici popped up).

I had to read a lot of old traveling journals, all of them to some city in Italy, to do a paper for one of my master’s courses. And I was amazed how every single author was amazed by this amazing city. Some of them called it the City of Flowers, some others called it the Italian Athens and it looks like a city frozen in time, in that period where you could see the importance of culture, art, philosophy. So, since I hope to one day to live there and never leave, I have a list of all the places I want to visit. Get ready!

Piazza del Duomo: Florence's Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, with the Duomo engineered by Bruneleschi, Crypta of Santa Reparata, Campanile di Giotto, Battistero di San Giovanni, Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore.

Galleria degli Uffizi, one of the most important italian museums with amazing works of art, mainly connected to the Renaissance

Galleria dell'Accademia, that houses the magnificent word of Michelangelo, the sculpture of David, but it also houses and incredible collection of paintings

Ponte Vecchio, an historical landmark where today you can find jewelry stores, art dealers, etc.

Piazza della Signoria, the place where the florentine republic was born and 'till this day is stll seen has a political center for the city. Here, I'm really excited to city the Palazzo Vecchio (also known as Palazzo della Signoria) e La logia dei Lanzi.

I also want to visit Piazza Santo Spirito, where there's the Basilica di Santo Spirito, also designed by Bruneleschi (I'm a big Bruneleschi fan!)

Now, this one is very important! I did my thesis on some painting of Beato Angelico, so of course I have to visit the Museo Nacionale di San Marco, so I can fianlly see those beautiful frescos right in front of me.

Basilica di San Lorenzo and the Medici Chapel, I'm not sure but I think it's one of the biggest churchs in all of Florence. Another commision offered to Bruneleschi, but he couldn't finish it before he died.

Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella, the first basilica and the main dominican church of the city.

Palazzo Medici, also known as Palazzo Medici Riccardi, was the former home of the Medici Family before they moved to the imponent Palazzo Pitti. Now it's a museum, and I really want to see it!

Another basilica of this amazing city, is Chiesa di San Miniato al Monte, designed by Michelozzo. It holds the magnificent Cappella del Cardinale del Portogallo, a gorgous funeral monument holded in memory of Jaime de Portugal.

Palazzo Pitti, a rennaissance palace that became the official residence for the Medici Family in 1549, when it was sold to the wife of Cosimo I de Medici. Other than the amazing works of art, it also holds the Boboli Gardens, a master piece in itself.

Museo Casa di Dante, na via Santa Margherita. Needs no explanation! As a fan of Dante, I'm dying to see the place where he lived before he was exiled.

Piazza Santa Trinita, another very important point of the city. In the middle, you can find the Colonna della Giustizia, an ancient-roman column, given by Pope Pius IV to Cosimo I de Medici.

As you can see, it's quite a list and I don't think it's all there. For an art historian, especialized in the italian rennaissance, Florence is the very definition of heaven. And that's why I think the moment I set foot on florentine floor, I'll never leave.

Have you ever been to Florence? What did you visit? Have any recommendations? Please use the ask box and let me know!

[beingallelite]

Even from the most basic standpoints of their look and their wrestling styles, the two teams who will compete at “All Out” for a bye in the AEW Tag Title Tournament could not be more different.

Take The Dark Order first: in Evil Uno, you have a masked monster who is perpetually surrounded by an army of...devotees...that use their bodies to create a human throne upon which Uno sits as they congregate around him.  In Stu Grayson, you have a shredded engine of destruction, a man who seemingly exists for no reason other than to inflict pain upon his opponents.  These two men have operated as partners since 2006, where they united on the independent scene in Quebec, and have been tag team champions across multiple companies, including Pro Wrestling Guerrilla.  

After making their presence felt on the first two AEW events, including attacking The Best Friends and Jack Evans/Angelico at “Double or Nothing” and sending a video threat to The Best Friends at “Fyter Fest” (Watch Here) after their victory, Uno & Grayson stepped into competition for the first time at “Fight For The Fallen. The duo proved dominant that night over Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus as well as Jack & Angelico, and now they roll towards Chicago and “All Out”...

As For The Best Friends, Chuck Taylor and Trent, there may be six years of partnership, a partnership that saw its birth during PWG's 2013 “Battle of Los Angeles” event by the way, but there is a distinct lack of championship titles in their mutual history.  They have battled across the world together prior to stepping in the AEW ring, and faced off against the best competition the world has to offer, including members of  The Elite, but a championship reign has eluded them thus far.

One thing that has not eluded The Best Friends since their AEW debut though is success; in their two outings as a team, they have scored victory on both occasions. First at “DoN” where they defeated Jack Evans & Angelico, and then at “Fyter Fest” where Chuck and Trent beat both Private Party and SCU, as represented by Kazarian and Sky (Watch Here).  That victory mind you, put them in the position they are now in for “All Out”...

On July 26th though, as part of the PWG “Sixteen” event, it should be acknowledged that The Dark Order did technically defeat The Best Friends after Trent was caught using a low blow, albeit only after he and his partner were on the receiving end of several of the same from Evil Uno & Grayson.  The Dark Order also scored a recent victory over The Strong Hearts duo of El Lindaman & T-Hawk at the OWE Toronto event on August 7th. So suffice it to say, both teams are heading towards the match at “All Out” with considerable momentum behind them and, thanks to the events of “Sixteen” and what came before, a definite grudge to be resolved.

Just listen to the words of The Best Friends from “The Road To AEW All Out – Episode 5” here (Watch Here), and you'll get all you need to know about their mentality going into the “All Out” pay-per-view event: “We don't need a bye...” screams the level of confidence Trent and Chuck feel about this entire Tag Team Title Tournament.

Regardless of if they want it, a bye in that tournament will be the prize at stake when The Best Friends meet The Dark Order on August 31st at “All Out”, live on Pay-per-view! It starts at 8pm EST and you can read all the details on how to order right here on B/R Live!

[caveartfair]

The 11 Most Nightmarish Depictions of Hell in Art History

Detail view of Jan Van Eyck, The Last Judgment, ca. 1440–1441. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The famed medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri had a mesmerizingly grotesque imagination, especially when it came to conceiving the horrors of hell. Ravenous monsters hungry for sinners fill the pages of Inferno, the first section of his epic poem The Divine Comedy, penned in the early 1300s. In one canto, the crimson-eyed, three-headed beast Cerberus, who guards the gates of the underworld, “tears the spirits, flays them,” with “claw’d hands” and “ravenous maw.”

While the writer’s frighteningly vivid depiction of hell’s nine circles might be literature’s most famous, artists have also composed visions of the underworld that are just as harrowing—if not more so. Western art history teems with hellscapes—compositions showing all manner of physical, psychological, and spiritual torment. Many build directly on Dante’s writings, while others draw from descriptions of damnation in Christian scripture, meant to intimidate believers into virtuousness. Later artists responded to the infernal realities of war or their own emotional turmoil, or “personal hell.” Below, we take a tour of the most chilling interpretations of hell from Dante’s time to today. Some are macabre, others delightfully absurd—but all explore a heady mix of human fear, guilt, and suffering.

Giotto, The Last Judgment (ca. 1307)

Scanned image of Giotto di Bondone, The Last Judgment at the Cappella Scrovegni, ca. 1307, from Giotto and the Arena Chapel: Art, Architecture & Experience. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Detail view of Giotto di Bondone, The Last Judgment , ca.1306. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Detail view of Giotto di Bondone, The Last Judgment, 1306. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Florentine painter Giotto had a flair for the dramatic. Like most artists working at the dawn of the 14th century, he primarily painted frescoes for the private chapels of wealthy families. Yet his paintings are utterly unique: The biblical characters that fill his compositions aren’t flat and stylized like those of his Byzantine forebears. Instead, they writhe with red-blooded energy and fierce human emotion.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. At the back of the chapel lies one of art history’s most impressive paintings of the Last Judgment, the momentous event described in the New Testament when, at the end of the world, God either shepherds the dead to heaven or banishes them to the fiery underworld. The religious text doesn’t leave many clues as to what hell might look like, so Giotto built on past artistic interpretations, as well as his own fertile imagination.

In the lower right-hand corner of the fresco, a gluttonous, horned monster (likely Satan) stands at the gates of hell, devouring sinners, then unceremoniously excreting them. Such cruel and unusual punishments abound: Naked men and women are dragged down to hell by fearsome black demons, where they are spit-roasted and speared or stuffed into deep pits. Dante himself likely visited the fresco as Giotto painted it; according to historian Giorgio Vasari, the two were “dear friends.” Dante began writing his Divine Comedy around the time Giotto was painting the Arena Chapel.

Jan van Eyck, The Last Judgment (1440–41)

The Crucifixion; The Last Judgment, ca. 1440–1441. Jan van Eyck The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Working in the Netherlands over 100 years after Giotto, the pioneering oil painter Jan van Eyck created his own Last Judgment scene on the right half of a diptych that also includes a depiction of the Crucifixion. While measuring only about 22 by 7 inches, the Last Judgment panel packs a bone-chilling punch thanks to Van Eyck’s garish depiction of hell, which Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Maryan W. Ainsworth has described as a “diabolical invention.”

Beneath the outstretched arms of a giant and menacing skeleton tumbles a cascade of damned souls, each subjected to a different form of punishment. In one corner, a man screams in pain as he’s disemboweled by a serpent. Elsewhere, a demon—part skull, part sharp-toothed jaguar—gnaws on a fleshy rump. The anguish here is so evocative that Ainsworth has characterized the scene as cacophonous—viewers can almost hear the sounds of torture: “The cracking and breaking of bones, the gnashing of teeth of the monsters relentless in their pursuit.”

Fra Angelico, The Pains of Hell, from The Last Judgment (ca. 1431)

Fra Angelico, The Last Judgment, ca. 1431. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Detail view of Fra Angelico, The Last Judgment, ca. 1431. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Posthumously nicknamed the “Angelic Painter” by his acolytes, the Dominican friar Fra Angelico—known as Fra Giovanni during his lifetime—is somewhat ironically renowned for several of his visceral hellscapes. Perhaps his most horrifying scene comes from a fresco depicting the Last Judgment, originally created for the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome (it now hangs in Florence’s Museo di San Marco).

Here, the artist takes a cue from Dante, visualizing hell as a tenebrous cave where the damned are grouped by their sins; each of them has its own tailored brand of torture. For instance, those guilty of greed have melted gold coins poured down their throats, while those guilty of wrath are forced to incessantly fight each other. At the base of the fiery pit, Lucifer chomps on human bodies as he simultaneously bathes in a soup of melting souls, dutifully stirred by a cohort of demons.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1500)

The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490-1500. Hieronymus Bosch Museo del Prado, Madrid

There can’t be a discussion of hellscapes without Hieronymus Bosch, whose spellbinding masterwork The Garden of Earthly Delights rivals the fame of Dante’s Inferno. The Dutch painter came of age in the mid-1400s during the Protestant Reformation, when Christians began to interpret the word of God for themselves, rather than rely on the Church as an intermediary. Bosch incorporated this approach in his painting, depicting heaven and hell through rollicking, chaotic scenes set against a contemporary Dutch backdrop.

Rather than the fiery pits mentioned in the Bible or explored in depth in Inferno, Bosch shows hell as a raucous battlefield teeming with horrifying, surrealistic creatures who take pleasure in torturing their human opponents. The painting’s fame may be largely due to the proliferation of mesmerizingly odd details: A dismembered foot hangs like a prize from the helmet of a spiny bird-monster; other sinners are stretched taut across giant instruments and played by beady-eyed demons, or eaten and then pooped out by their aggressors.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Dulle Griet (Mad Meg) (1561)

Pieter Bruegel, Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), 1561. Courtesy of Museum Mayer Van den Bergh.

Detail view of Pieter Bruegel, Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), 1561. Courtesy of Museum Mayer Van den Bergh.

Detail view of Pieter Bruegel, Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), 1561. Courtesy of Museum Mayer Van den Bergh.

While he’s best known for homely peasant scenes, Dutch master Pieter Bruegel the Elder also had a knack for shocking his audience. “Like a director of horror films, the painter tried to appeal to all the senses in order to arouse fear and create pleasure at the same time,” Bruegel biographer Leen Huet has written. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his 1561 canvas Dulle Griet (Mad Meg), which takes a cue from Bosch and explores hell through the lens of contemporary Flemish culture.

This painting depicts the folkloric character of Dulle Griet, the leader of an all-female army on a quest to pillage hell. Her strength is underlined by her massive scale; she dwarfs both her compatriots and her opponents, a multitude of fantastical demons that dot the otherwise familiar Dutch landscape. Bruegel has depicted the underworld as an eerie fusion of fantasy and reality. Griet seems to run toward a literal gaping “mouth of hell,” its scaly skin resembling bricks in the surrounding architecture. Instead of devouring the dead, the monsters of this hell battle flesh-and-blood warriors.

Some scholars have also read the painting as an exploration of 16th-century Netherlandish gender dynamics. A 1568 book of proverbs provides context: “One woman makes a din, two women a lot of trouble, three an annual market, four a quarrel, five an army, and against six the Devil himself has no weapon.” In this way, the painting can be read as a study of female power. Is Griet a greedy agent of chaos or a heroic victor who isn’t afraid to go head-to-head with the Devil?

William Blake, The Punishment of the Thieves (1824–27)

William Blake, The Punishment of the Thieves from the Divine Comedy, 1824–27. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

While the soft hues and undulating lines of this watercolor by British artist William Blake might not immediately scream “inferno,” a closer look reveals a particularly garish manner of suffering. The scene comes from a series of works Blake produced to illustrate an edition of The Divine Comedy. Blake took the commission, according to writer Maria Popova, because “Dante’s contempt for materialism and the way power warps morality” resonated with the eccentric 19th-century artist, who believed that the political and social climate in England was defined by greed. Here, Blake depicts a scene from cantos 24 and 25, where it is explained that snakes steal and manipulate the bodies of thieves, who must then search in vain for a home for their soul. Here, monstrous serpents strangle, penetrate, and rope around the thieves’ Rubenesque bodies as they are dragged underwater.

John Martin, Pandemonium (1841)

John Martin, Le Pandemonium, 1841. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

It could be said that 19th-century British painter John Martin’s favorite subject was doom. Over the course of his career, he painted copious depictions of hell, as well as other fiery, end-of-world scenes—and he did it with dramatic panache. Martin based this hellscape on English poet John Milton’s 1667 masterwork Paradise Lost, in which hell is dubbed Pandemonium. Martin’s version of Pandemonium is a deserted, red-hot world of torment helmed by an armored Satan. In the foreground, the devil raises his arms in as he calls unseen rebel angels to action.

This version of hell might have looked sinisterly familiar to Martin’s London contemporaries. In fact, the massive, intimidating building that Satan faces borrows architectural elements from some of the city’s most famous edifices, including the towering gates of Somerset House and the arcade of Carlton House Terrace.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Dante and Virgil (1850)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Dante and Virgil , 1850. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The two sinners duking it out in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s depiction of hell appeal to the vampire-obsessed among us. The French painter concocted this Dante-inspired scene in hopes of winning the coveted Prix de Rome. Dante enjoyed renewed popularity during this time: Fellow Romantic painters were similarly enthralled; the poet provided deliciously dramatic fodder for their theatrical canvases.

Bouguereau chose to zoom in on two damned souls from the epic poem in order to emphasize their physical pain. Surrounded by writhing sinners, Dante and Virgil look on as Gianni Schicchi, a character guilty of committing fraud, viciously bites the neck of Capocchio, a heretic and alchemist. (Inferno describes constant fighting as one of hell’s many punishments.) The painter pays particular attention to his subjects’ nude bodies; dramatically lit, their muscles and expressions strain in utter agony. Writing at the time, critic Théophile Gautier described the duo’s “strange fury,” rendered “magnificently through muscles, nerves, tendons, and teeth.” Only the bald, bat-winged demon hovering over them seems to take any pleasure in the scene.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait in Hell (1903)

Selvportrett i helvete (Self-Portrait in Hell), 1903. Edvard Munch "Mapplethorpe + Munch" at Munch Museum, Oslo

Nordic Symbolist Edvard Munch’s oeuvre is defined by very convincing representations of psychological anguish, many of which are self-portraits. In this work, he uses the concept of hell to underline his own suffering by placing his sickly, nude body within a blackish-red environment, the color of stoked flames. Even as a child, Munch remembered being plagued by melancholy and promises of a hellish afterlife: “Disease and insanity were the black angels on guard at my cradle,” he wrote of his youth. “I felt always that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with threatened punishment in hell hanging over my head.”

Franz von Stuck, Inferno (1908)

Inferno, 1908. Franz von Stuck The Metropolitan Museum of Art

When Franz von Stuck first exhibited Inferno at the Met in 1909, the New York Times praised the work’s “sovereign brutality.” Indeed, the piece shocked and awed audiences with its raw depiction of eternal damnation, cementing the German Symbolist’s “reputation as a visionary artist unafraid to explore the dark side of the psyche,” according to the museum.

Stuck’s work frequently emphasizes both the physical and psychological pain of his subjects. Across this canvas, the artist shows only the wrenching bodies and contorted faces of several sinners—rather than a nightmarish overview of hell—in order to emphasize their personal suffering, with a dissonant color scheme that punctuates their distress. Perhaps the most striking manifestation of mental torment comes from a female figure, whose wide eyes glow unnervingly from the background, communicating pure fear in the face of her terrible fate.

Jake & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell (2008)

Jack & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell, 2008. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artist and Blain Southern.

Jack & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell, 2008. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artist and Blain Southern.

Jack & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell, 2008. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artist and Blain Southern.

Jack & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell, 2008. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artist and Blain Southern.

Jack & Dinos Chapman, Fucking Hell, 2008. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artist and Blain Southern.

British artists Jake & Dinos Chapman have made a career of shocking viewers by fusing dark humor and the grotesque. Some pieces completely dispense with comedy, though, in favor of emphasizing history’s atrocities. This is the case with Fucking Hell, an adaptation of the duo’s 1999 piece Hell, which ironically went up in flames in a warehouse fire.

The massive installation contains nine vitrines filled with 60,000 toy soldiers. Despite being forged from miniature toys, a closer look inside reveals unimaginable carnage. In the monumental, chaotic battle scene that unfolds, an army of skeletons, mutants, and aliens battle Nazis. While it’s unclear which side is winning, the swastika-bearing soldiers are certainly getting their due: in this tableau, they have become the massacred.

“The Nazis practised genocide on everyone they thought was inferior,” Jake Chapman said of the work. “What we’ve done is to mirror that: the Nazis are being recycled within their own mechanism.” For the Chapman brothers, hell is on earth, engendered by the long history of human violence.

from Artsy News

[elisaenglish]

Everything starts at the beginning. Linear narratives, cause and effect, temporal practice – at least, as far as we know. Birth. Death. Cycles, perhaps. But we move. Eventually to shuffle out of existence or, more optimistically, transmute into other matters entirely.

Origin and endpoint so connected, it would be easy to subscribe to a similarly simplistic interpretation of art. That, and its synecdochical soul. However, as Anaïs Nin writes:

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

Tethered to complex phenomenology and – paradoxically – freed by it, human experience, by this measure, defies strict categorisation. We are as we are in the moment, and flooded through the successive days, generation by generation, we choose. Even in this world increasingly predicated on the synthetic machinations of algorithmic “thinking”, we enter the fray as we will, immerse ourselves for a time in the passions – and disappointments – of our daily theatre.

Such, you could argue, is life – distinct from metaphor, unscripted.

But what, then, of literature? Of sources? Of lessons? Or at least, the didactic appropriation of canonical legacies as pertaining to us in the present. Then and now, and bridging. Elegantly executed in some cases, tragic by virtue of the misreading in others.

And yes, there are right and wrong answers in English. Just because the author dies, so to speak, it doesn’t mean you can shoehorn anything in there to replace them. After all, possibility doesn’t have to be palatable, but it does have to be true.

True as in plausible, robustly evidenced, debated with integrity of intent – even on an amateur level.

Take, for example, Jane Eyre. In chapter 7, Jane is punished by Mr Brocklehurst via a targeted humiliation that requires her to be “exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy” as he brands her a “liar.” So condemned, he orders that she do penance upon the stool for “half an hour longer” and “let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.” A fate that Brontë presents as making her burn with shame.

Pictured above in a rendering of the infamous scene, the artist depicts the stool as a column upon which Jane becomes a stylite fashioned in conceptual terms after Fra Angelico’s fifteenth-century fresco, The Mocking of Christ. The scourges of Lowood hover in ubiquitous threat, tools not unlike those of the biblical Passion: the bundle of twigs used as an instrument of flagellation, the scissors symbolic of the girls’ censored reduction to silence, starvation, capitulation – each at the behest of a man defined, in bleak refrain, as a “rigid” pillar ominously coloured black.

Religiosity framed in such cruel and unforgiving terms is not unfamiliar territory, especially in post-Enlightenment novels that aim, at least in part, to challenge historic social customs. The imagery here, for instance, foreshadows the allegorical overlap with the scaffold on which Hester Prynne is paraded in service of denouncing her sexual malfeasance in The Scarlet Letter. Except the meaning here is heightened not by primacy of self or the aesthetics of authenticity Hawthorne navigates as the feminine sphere triumphs over the masculine deficit embodied by the feeble Dimmesdale, but through, instead, the pure communion between Jane and unfailingly stoic Helen Burns.

Contrasted in the starkest terms with Brocklehurst, Helen represents a mode of Christianity that stresses endurance and the ascetic devotion to faith. Partially conveyed via her interest in Rasselas – an apologue that illustrates how one’s surrender and self-control is the means by which one may bear any mortal difficulty – and, perhaps more so, through her subsequent death, Helen is a paragon of nineteenth-century piety, able to withstand any trial when the pains of this life are immaterial compared to the joys she anticipates experiencing in the next.

So the scene shifts, vibrates with a shared belief that cannot be dislodged by the precepts of oppressive hypocrisy or the moral narcissism keenly observed in men like Brocklehurst. Brontë writes:

“What my sensations were, no language can describe; but, just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted my head, and took a firm stand on the stool.”

Thus Jane contains her emotions and resists the cognitive conditioning meted out as “learning” in this environment cast as little better than her abusive “home” at Gateshead. Read in context, we see the impact of a quiet response – not naively consigned as weakness by a feminist lens, nor bowed to patriarchy in any conventional sense, but as an imperative of human dignity and self-respect regardless of ideological norms or, indeed, their injustices.

To circle back to the beginning once more, it should be stated that literature, and its intersection with the arts as a whole, is much like history and the study thereof – it must be approached with an evaluative eye lest we compromise intellectual credibility and kowtow to destructively unbalanced readings – readings that deny reasoned critique and mould themselves to agenda-driven politics.

Stories are our defining essence as a species; we must have the fortitude and discipline to both dissect and protect them. The skill to excavate the sometimes inconvenient truth, the conviction to challenge the uninterrogated assumptions.

Just as Jane comes to understand that happiness is a matter of degree, the significance of literary study is only truly captured in its nuances. Its plurality of perspectives, if you will. To return to Nin, she writes:

“If one’s lens is too small to fit the mysteries of one complex life, if that life must be condemned, what in the critic’s own complex psyche do they condemn and attempt to destroy?”

Therein lies the truth. Therein lies the question. And still, we push. Part as air to fire, part as air to breathing.

[raissassampaio]

11 questions

@beks21 tagged me and I will attempt to answer these questions, cause she chose some damn hard ones for me haha.

1. What is your favorite memory of you and your best friend?

Is it too cheesy if I say that my boyfriend is my best friend? 

I'll share a recent one - just this week, I had a pretty wretched day; and when he called me for our daily chat on FaceTime, he was completely drunk, managed to make me laugh until I was pink and said goodbye to me by saying "give me a 5 star review on uber!"

2. Ocean, mountain, forest, or desert?

I'm unable to answer this. I don't think I have the life experience. And if I tried to answer anything it would turn into an essay.

3. morning person or night owl?

Night owl. Night owl. Def night owl.

4. What is your favorite Olympic event to watch? I’ll make it easy and you can answer one for summer and one for winter.

Hmm, I don't really watch the Olympics... But I like the gymnastics and the figure skating, if it's on, I'll stay and watch. ( I don't mind soccer either, cause at least I know what's going on). 

5. If you weren’t on tumblr right now, what would you be doing?

I just took a break from reading The Age of Innocence, so I guess I'd be doing that right now. But in general, at this time, probably Netflixing or sleeping.

6. What’s your favorite non-fiction book that you’ve read?

Women who run with the wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estés (I almost never read non-fiction, so that was an easy one).

7. Tell me your favorite memory of sassing someone or putting someone in their place when they deserve it. I know you’ve got one. I’ve got at least three right now.

8. If you could adopt a wild animal and keep it tame {obvs this is a fantasy and not a green light to go do something stupid}, what animal would you adopt?

A large feline, like a tiger? Or maybe an elephant? I require @petalstofish advice about animals.

9. If you could take a class on any subject {no homework required!}, what would you want to study?

Art history. I technically took a class in it, but it was in French - I understood almost nothing and my professor only talked about Frau Angelico.

10. If you were an Animagus, what would your form be?

Oh god, probably a koala, cause they sleep all the time?! Or maybe a cat, cause they can be pretty chill and independent and stuff, but also be like "pet me".

11. What song is your JAM {and you fucking know what I mean by that}?

Ugh, I know what you mean by that, but who can chose ONE jam among millions of awesome songs?!?! I can make a playlist of my jams if you give me an specific mood, ok? 

okay, I'm gonna go with my questions now :)

1. If your house was on fire and you had time to grab one object before running out, what would that be?

2. What is your favorite tv series of all time and the last one you binge-watched?

3. Did you like school or were you dying for it to end?

4. What's your favorite place on Earth?

5. If you could travel to anywhere right now, where would you go?

6. If you could buy one thing, regardless of its price, what would it be?

7. What movie made you cry the most?

8. What is something really popular that you don't like?

9. Dress to impress or Comfort above everything?

10. If you could resurrect a famous person from the dead, who would you chose?

11. Would you say it's believable that Jude Law's Dumbledore would fall in love with Johnny Depp's Grindewald? ( I clearly didn't have anything else to ask hahaha)

I'm just tagging the same people, sorry, don't hate me - @beks21 , @youreyesinstarsabove, @levins18, @petalstofish, @scaredofrobots, @elanev91, @tevescomoungirasol.