#setting up the diptych

[occamstfs]

Sticky Fingers

Junpei finds himself drawn to sneak an early peak at Arcadio Carvajal's new exhibition. When the chance to take a piece home presents itslef, he'll find himself a little more than changed from the experience.

My first sequel! Arcadio from Marichismo decides to take the chance to find a new assistant and lover! In other don't forget to vote on my Viral Transformation poll, ends Sunday! Otherwise enjoy this tale of muscle growth and otherwise masculine changes! -Occam

Junpei can’t believe that he somehow hadn’t heard about this art exhibition until just now. Like many a young thirsty gay across the country he does well to keep a tab on the illustrious (Read: Hot) work of Arcadio Carvajal. Many institutions are a little hesitant to host an artist whose name may well be synonymous with sexual provocateur but, with attendance numbers down across the board, even more museums are thrilled at the chance to host a man who almost magically draws in hordes of adoring patrons.

His latest exhibition on homoeroticism in popular culture is setting attendance records at just about every museum it stops at. Junpei was beyond thrilled when his friend Corey leaked that the gallery he works at was going to be hosting an exhibition of Arcadio’s starting tomorrow! Ignoring any concerns as to how odd it is that he’s not heard anything about the opening until the night before, Junpei grabs his backpack and makes for the gallery immediately, almost as if possessed. Something in his chest flutters with anticipation as he wanders the few blocks down to the hall where he’ll hopefully be able to sneak an early peek of some of the works on display. 

Making the trip down a few blocks with haste he finds  there’s surprisingly little activity at all in or around the gallery. Sure it’s after hours but the night before an opening, let alone an opening by an artist as impressive as Arcadio Carvajal? You’d think there would be some last minute prep work to be done. Skulking up to nonchalantly look through the front door, he puts his weight on it just as a little test. Just to see if it's locked, no overt plans as to what he would do with the information, he just wanted to know. Just wanted to see.

When the door gives, he can’t suppress the grin rising on his lips. In for a penny, he decides. Fighting to keep his expression guiltless he surreptitiously looks around to make sure no one’s watching the entrance before he sneaks into the dark hall. He tries to scheme up an alibi as he digs out his phone to use as a flashlight. Probably wouldn’t buy that he thought they were open. Could just say he was supposed to meet his friend here, though he’d hate for Corey to catch blowback. Junpei then rolls his eyes as he figures he could come up with something on the spot, if he’s even caught that is! Adrenaline keeps his conspiratorial mind from noticing he of course already has been, as the gallery’s cameras follow the young student into the exhibition hall holding Arcadio’s exciting exhibit.

The amateur intruder almost has a heart attack as he steps into the gallery proper and the lights flash on. Stumbling into a wall in shock, he ducks behind a display case and nervously scopes out the new space he finds himself in. After quietly ensuring that no one is actively here, Junpei chalks the lights up to be automatic and hastens his pace. Switching off his now unneeded flashlight, he starts scoping out the litany of artwork dedicated to the male form surrounding him.

His excitement eclipses whatever paltry dregs of anxiety or fear remain as he sees the works of incredibly influential artists gathered here. Junpei knew Arcadio was a titan but he could never have expected the prolific art that fills this place. First things first, as he enters he sees a diptych of the artist himself, under his breath he murmurs, “god he’s so fucking hot.” Somewhere out of sight surveillance footage shines onto a man watching him explore the gallery as he mischievously smirks.

On the student’s left are a wall of nudes and more softcore fare from artists across the ages. Mizers and Mapplethorpes hang floor to ceiling alongside more modern work by Arcadio and his own gay contemporaries. Near the far side there seems to be a whole section dedicated to portraiture of St. Sebastian but Junpei is less eager to explore the thorough history of homoerotic photography. Certainly a medium that has brought him endless pleasure, as it were, but they may as well just be prints to him. No, he wants to see the real stuff.

Wandering past some dozen miniature recreations of Michaelangelo’s David made of shining plasticine latex, some clad in leather, others in the buff as the artist intended, Junpei finds what he snuck in for. Spotlights shine down unto the wall opposite the photography, teeming with works from gay trailblazers of the art world. Namely the ones whose primary focus was on nothing but bulging fetishistic muscle and strong-jawed pretty boys. Those who crafted overt unapologetic pornography and others who snuck homoeroticism covertly to the masses. This is to say there is more work by Tom of Finland and Leyendecker than he could possibly appreciate in this brief time alone. 

He spends as long as he thinks he can just staring at the work. Drinking in the graphite scraped bulges and tight leather uniforms of the massive men drawn by the Finn. Reverberations from his work still echo into the art and lusty imaginations of countless gay men today. Indeed upon gracing dear Junpei’s eyes they immediately cause some mobility issues to arise. He struggles with his pants as he struggles to walk forward with a package that only surges harder with each fervent tug of his pants. His rising issue stops not as he moves on to observe the bright colors and hungry eyes of the men in Leyendecker’s advertisements. Masculine forms idealized and gleaming opposed with the raw heightened sex found in the work nearby. Junpei can barely control the desire coursing through him, but knowing he can’t stay forever the young man continues onward, biting his lip as he tries to will his boner away. 

Going through a curtain into a still darkened room, it takes a second for Junpei’s eyes to adjust before he sees a room dedicated to non-western homoeroticism. Finding aged Chinese scrolls of gay eroticism he snaps pictures, quite thankful that they are less visceral arousing than the work he just left behind, though he’s decidedly happy to see some shred of himself in the gallery. Turning around he gasps as he sees something he wasn’t quite expecting. Next to a wall of more deliberately pornographic bara men he sees panels from his favorite mangaka depicting bulging muscled men in provocative poses. But more thrilling than that, it seems the main sketch isn’t in a display case. It’s just sitting there, loose, free.

Junpei doesn’t know what came over him, he wasn’t even planning on coming in illicitly, but staring at the crisp art in front of him he cannot stop himself as he pulls a folder from his backpack. Before he can even issue a command to his body, the sketch is already in his bag and he’s sprinting away. The smirk of the man watching his every move grows wider as he watches Junpei clumsily flee the scene. Fleeing out the door into the dark streets, Junpei pushes past other students thoughtlessly as he races home, delirium setting in as struggles to understand and realize what he just did. Slamming his apartment door behind him he yoinks out the swiped art. He isn’t sure if it’s the image itself or the exhilaration from his crime but his only recently stilled cock begins to harden once more. 

Mind barely present what can he do but obey his rising erection. Junpei begins to masturbate, staring at his stolen artwork, panting as he quickly comes close; free hand moving thoughtlessly he feels it scrape against something taped to the back of the sketch. Eyebrows furrowing as he continues to beat his meat, Junpei turns the picture around and he instantly stops as his blood grows cold. “Evening Junpei. I know what you did. See you Soon. Yours, Arcadio Carvajal.” Junpei drops the drawing and it flutters to the floor, lying face down, leaving the note facing up at him. His mind escapes from whatever haze compelled him to commit larceny as his thoughts race faster than could possibly be productive. 

What do I do? I need to bring it back now. How did that note get there!? It certainly has my name on it, and it’s signed by Arcadio. Fear seizes him as he backs away from the stolen piece, tripping over the pants that had fallen around his ankles. In his scrambling he falls back and hits his head. Before he completely loses himself to unconsciousness he sees the picture purloined face up once more. Groaning as his vision begins to fade, his eyes latch onto his legs as searing pain slowly burns through him. Cresting into a trancelike state he mumbles incoherently as it almost seems like veins are bulging onto his thighs?

Perhaps unsurprising given the prominence of Arcadio in what lead him into this stupor, but as he’s truly overtaken Junpei sees the massive artist himself. The man’s arms are crossed but the expression on his face is not one of judgment or disdain at Junpei’s actions. Rather, to the best of the young man’s judgment, it looks like one of anticipation. Junpei tries to speak but finds his mouth dry up as the man across from him waves a finger, “Ah ah ah mi ladrónito. I believe you have something of mine.” The eponymous little thief pats himself down trying to dream his plunder into existence but produces naught. Arcadio pouts his lips but there is a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.

“Well perrito. For your little transgression I think you owe me, si? Think I could use some more hands on deck to watch out for petty thieves, don’t you?” Arcadio’s expression loses all the performative animosity that remains as he looks at Junpei with glee and his intentions begin to suffuse the young man. Feeling his ability to speak return, Junpei opens his mouth but before he can produce a word he is wracked with burning pain from the artist's stare.

Beginning from his feet, clad in the cheap tennis shoes that he wore to his haphazard heist, heat sears the soles of his feet. At first it’s as if he’s standing on coals before simmering down to the pain of sprinting across a hot beach; finally it shifts to the pleasant warmth of a warm footbath. Pain swiftly gives way to pleasure as Junpei flexes his feet just to ensure he feels every sensation he can, only then does he feel his toes bump against the front of the small shoe, just as the bridge of his foot strains against the tongue. Junpei grunts as he hears stitches begin to give way, toes blasting through the cheap fabric while his soles rear through the sides and spill onto the floor as his feet totally eclipse the remains of his shoe.

Looking down at feet that may as well need clown shoes compared to the petit ones he’s always had, Junpei feels some new instinct in his mind. Almost like an intrusive thought, he feels a need to be brash, to spar with the man he so respects more than anything. Ignoring his usual nature he follows this instinct, it’s just a dream right? Fighting through the pain and pleasure still coursing through him, Junpei speaks up, “Grgh- What are you- Are you giving me a foot fetish or what?” Arcadio’s face lights with a smile as he hears the young man speak up with the slightest amount of acid on his tongue. With no words to betray his emotion at the seed of Junpei’s changing psyche he moves his eyes up to Junpei’s legs.

“Oh what the fu-” he’s unable to even finish the thought as his whole body convulses with the sensation of his legs lengthening before they start to pack on muscle. Shooting almost a foot higher, Junpei falls back on his ass as he clenches at his calves and thighs. His gaze follows Arcadio’s as the man stares at his tight calves, expanding with each pulse of the heart. Just like every other inch of Junpei’s body there’s initially little at all impressive, and then they flex larger, and then there's a bulge that will never leave, and then there is a calf that would inspire jealousy by any lesser men who glimpses it. More than baseballs, muscle bulges enough for even socks large enough for his massive feet would struggle to contain them. This is nothing however compared to the transformation moving upwards into his thighs. 

Veins bulge thick as power seeps upwards, burning warmth sears his hands as they clutch at the hocks of meat that now constitute his thighs. Junpei blushes as he sees new distinct masses bulge out of his once bony thighs. Staring down at his increasingly powerful lower body he is filled with determination to get them even larger. The need for power begins to wash over whatever ideals or needs the young man had before this dream. Seeing the thick veins clearly pump and bulge larger with each beat of his heart, Junpei traces them with his finger and bites his lip as Arcadio can’t help but stare at the growing package that demands attention from the both of them.

Arcadio is more than pleased to stare, each second spent lingering on the cock sends waves of pleasure through Junpei as his mind struggles to parse that his cock and balls are stretching larger by the second. Quickly surging higher and thicker, his dick eclipses the size its been at its most turgid erection before now and it still pushes further with each groping grasp and sweaty breath. Similarly, beneath it his balls hang lower and the few dark hairs that shade his groin grow thicker and curl longer as his heavy balls rapidly increase production of the hormones this increasingly massive body demands. He cannot help but thrust into the air, his thin arms struggling to support the power his thighs summon. Landing back on his ass it too bulges larger with every flexing movement, quickly regaining its position as the largest muscle on the body as it becomes a bubble butt that would entice even the least male-interested eyes.

Moving on, lest Junpei blow his load all over himself, Arcadio's eyes continue upward to begin the most impressive work yet. Junpei groans as he desperately needs a break from the overwhelming pleasure burning in his lower body. He drags his hands across his inner thigh,  feeling callouses scratch his sensitive sweaty skin before palming his cock to a spurt of pre before moving on. His fingers trace towards his torso as veins begin to trail upwards, crossing his abs as they bulge into existence.

His body involuntarily goes into a crunch as every powerful ab cramps, sending stabbing pain and searing pleasure through his mind. Drool flings out of his mouth as he launches forward moaning. Junpei’s rougher hands grab his beefy thighs to prevent himself from falling backwards once again. His eyes almost cross as he seemingly loses control of any unengaged motor function. Across from him Arcadio just smirks and watches as Junpei’s sweat soaked hair changes from the same unintentional look he’s had all his life into something far more deliberate and fashionable. Exactly what he would want in a body man.

Hearing the strained groans and hungrily looking to the ephemeral expression dancing across Junpei’s face, Arcadio hesitates before continuing. Feeling the briefest of pauses from otherworldly bliss, Junpei cries out, his voice rumbling deeper as he finds his neck has thickened, “Mrgh- Don’t stop boss. I want, more.” The artist’s lips twitch as he is more than happy to obey the thief’s desires. After all, it's about time to get to his favorite part. At the same time Junpei’s mind flickers to the massive pecs that he so enjoyed observing at the museum as he begins to feel building pressure, increasing potential, on his chest.

Summoning a laser focus, Arcadio stares at Junpei’s arms and currently non existent pecs. He has trouble ignoring the bulge dawning in his own pants as he sees Junpei’s stick thin arms begin to bulk up. Immediately his arms fly behind him as he rapidly alternates between stretching them and flexing. With each thrust away from his body into the air they lengthen, fingertips shoot longer as his palms widen. With every bulging flex veins are forced to protrude even further through his faultless skin. His biceps may as well be forged of cast iron as they become impossible to ignore, power courses through them as from now on even the smallest movement causes a medley of muscle to dance across his beastly arms.

In between his bulging biceps, above the cobblestone abs, underneath shoulders still widening and taps pushing against a shirt that barely holds on, his pecs finally begin to receive the attention they have always lacked. Junpei’s nipples increase from the dimesize they’ve ever held into half-dollar protrusions that will be impossible to hide under a shirt. Similarly, the measly pecs they stand strong on begin to grow at a rate more prominent than any change so far. 

The sound of Junpei’s shirt giving way to muscle he couldn’t truly fathom before now burgeoning onto his chest overwhelms him more than he could ever know. In the moment of them bursting larger than life, he feels himself let loose of whatever restraining fragments of his past self remain. He wasn’t sure what caused him to take the sketch from the gallery, but Arcadio knew he would. Arcadio Carvajal, his boss, clearly had more planned for him than Junpei ever could imagine. As his pecs bloat beyond reason and he feels his chest pulse with power does he give himself totally over to become the perfect, powerful man that not for a moment in his life he thought he could become. 

His body shines with sweat as he finally loses control, loosing load after load into the white dreamscape around him. He opens his mouth to cry Arcadio’s name but before a sound could release he finds his godly body pressing up against one of the few men he considers an equal. His new burning muscled form grinds against that of Arcadio. Getting his sweat all over his boss, his lover, his best friend, Junpei smirks in between labored breaths and slobbered kisses. Somehow feeling the scratch of Arcadio’s chest through his shirt the new body man can’t help but frot against the artist’s torso.

Shoving his bearded face into Junpei’s neck, which certainly doesn’t help matters, Arcadio moves his scratchy mouth to his lover’s ear and whispers, “Me esperas… See you soon mi amor.” Seeding desire more potent than anything, every bulging muscle clenches and forces itself larger one last time. Every inch of his impossibly large, inhumanly powerful new form sizzles with the capacity for more pleasure than could ever be bestowed upon him before. Junpei will evermore dominate any room he decides to grace. He will do so physically and intangibly with an aura that exudes strength and entices the appetites of all, though perhaps that due to constantly sweating through any clothing or deodorant he throws on within an hour. 

Feeling emptiness fill him as Arcadio disappears from his dream after whispering in his ear, the now massive man has no recourse besides willing himself to wake up. And so he does.

Junpei wakes up on the floor of the apartment he’s been renting with Arcadio in the leadup to their new exhibition, for some reason the back of his head is sore as if he hit it. Though that’s nothing compared to the soreness that absolutely fills every last inch of his body. The giant groans as he wills his titanic upper body to sit up and smirks as he sees the sweat he must have just worked up. Scratching his pits and struggling not to sniff his hand after, his head briefly filled with countless memories of Arcadio chiding his poor hygiene, he hesitates before noticing some expensive paper lying on the ground. 

Tilting his head and grabbing a nearby towel to wipe the sweat almost dripping from his hand, he takes great care to grab whatever this is without getting too much of himself on it. Turning it around he’s floored to see a sketch that’s supposed to be on the museum wall right now, worse than that it’s from an area that Arcadio has left to him! Taking no time at all to question how this possibly ended up here, Junpei puts it in one of Arcadio’s artsafe folders and sprints down the street to the gallery. 

For being the assistant of such a fastidious man, Junpei has a habit of letting things slip through the cracks, but Arcadio never minds. He knows in the end Junpei will always more than make up for it, always aiming to go above and beyond and, somehow, more often than not exceeding what Arcadio even thought was possible. Entering the gallery the behemoth switches into the closest thing to a sneak that he can muster, unfortunately his massive clumsy feet would always betray his presence. His lover smiles as he hears Junpei’s failed covert operation.

Standing in front of the frame that is supposed to hold the piece that Junpei is now overtly returning, he turns with a sly smirk to see the man doing his best impression of a cat burglar. Arcadio rolls his eyes and goes to grab the folder, lest his lover get his streaming sweat onto it and create an awkward situation with the mangaka. After depositing in where it belongs and shutting it into a plastic case that was conspicuously absent earlier Arcadio returns his attention to Junpei who now looks around the gallery in wonder at what they have crafted together.

Arcadio’s grin grows wider with every step towards Junpei, nearing close enough to kiss, he stands tall and the two enjoy each other’s passion for the first time in reality. Though as Junpei’s deific form clearly demonstrates, what is real doesn’t matter all too much at all. Arcadio doesn’t quite understand the whims of the world he exists in and he’s pretty confident given enough time he won’t even remember being the impetus for his lover’s changes. In fact, as he stands in the arms of Junpei, memories already begin filling his mind of their years together that are as real as anything. Looking around he sees a room full of decisions they made together, body man he may be but the two of them are more than equals. Breaking away from the kiss, he sniffs the air and steps back from Junpei.

Arcadio looks at Junpei’s puppy dog eyes and ruffles his short hair, “Now go take a shower, perrito. Opening is in two hours and you stink, mi amor.” Junpei looks down at himself in shock, somehow forgetting the cold sweat covering his clothes and nods fervently before sprinting back out the door. The two lovers remain on each other's minds as they go about preparing for opening day. Ever but a thought away and always eager for the next moment that they will have alone together. 

[roseserpentpress]

An ocean themed hoffstrahm diptych anthology, composed of the series Street Cats (Making Love) by doztoevsky and Rushed like a dreadful wind by bleakwinter, both stories of which I've read over and over again.

Technically the book is pretty much composed of two typesets in one, but I really liked that the two stories were both, in a way, ocean themed. As a result I enjoyed being able to incorporate an oil-tanned Cabezon fish skin I had caught and tanned a few years back (although it makes the spine stiffer than what I would like it to be) and incorporating many sea-themed designs. The text block itself drove me nuts as for the first time I decided to try trimming the edges since PDFs being printed had been giving me grief recently; only for me to completely botch it the first time, but luckily I had a mishap printing so had already half a second text block... But it's finished now :) links to the fics below the read more.

Stray Cats (Making Love) Series by Doztoevsky

Street Cats (making love), (M, 9k)

Hoffman changes the rules of the game. Peter's just trying to catch up.

Nervous from the fall (M, 6k)

The ground beneath them shifts. Peter tries to regain his footing.

The shape it takes (M, 10k)

Peter attends a wedding. It goes as well as things usually do for him.

rushed like a dreadful wind by bleakmidwinter (E, 44.5 k)

Hoffman saves Strahm from getting crushed, but keeps him captive. Hoffman wants Strahm to understand him. Strahm just wants to escape, until he doesn't.

(aka the fic where mark conducts intricate rituals in order to touch the skin of another man by putting he and peter in wireless handcuffs set up to explode if peter walks a specific amount of feet away from him)

[theroyalsandi]

British Royal Family - Prince William take portraits of formerly homeless Jeff Hubbard under the guidance of the photographer Rankin. The two hour photo shoot was set up to create a diptych portrait of both Prince William and Jeff as a means of creating awareness and funds for A Positive View, an organisation that Prince William is a patron. | February 19, 2010

[violoncellobindery]

tuc week 2022 anthology by blanketed_in_stars

I remember reading this series like daily back when tuc week 2022 was ongoing. Before then, I don't think I'd ever considered the ship. Fast forward 3 years later and armed with way too much power, it easily made my to-bind list, and I also really wanted to get into the practice of making author copies. Binderery let me check both of those boxes off.

Thank you so much to @blanketed-in-stars for letting me bind her work, which you can read for yourself on a03 here! It's fantastic and I recommend it to all the hamnet/mareth fans out there. Literally rewired my entire world view of them.

Progress pics and way too long history dive/ramble below the cut:

I really wanted something that looked like it could belong in the Underland, which posed a huge challenge. Their society was mostly reliant on technology from the 1600s, kept records with vellum and parchment scrolls, or in the case of Sandwich, carved them into the walls. But what about books?

Gutenburg's press started printing commercially in around the 1450s, but the first American and English presses started in 1638 and 1476, respectively. It wasn't exactly a new technology, but it certainly may not have been something one could just lug down to the Underland(or take on a ship). So were the lack of books due to never being in Gregor's viewpoint, Regalia being a society that didn't value books, or simply a lack of supplies? How much of the population, especially the Underlanders, could read, anyway? Was that something restricted to the rats, who often went topside to read (eat) library books, and the upper class in Regalia, or was most of the population literate? Could the spinners make a silk paper-like cloth? Could they cast their own type and run sheets through a press? What about handwritten books? (Did the Regalians even have a currency?) Maybe they were simply too focused on military affairs and had no time for books. There were simply too many questions to answer, so I ended up going "well, I want this bound and it doesn't have to be precise down to the letter. let's do this."

I went Coptic binding because it was first used as early as the 2nd century CE, though likely not a popular binding method in England. However, coptic binding/the codex ties back to the Roman diptych, which felt fitting for Regalia, as a very Greek/Roman inspired society. As for the fabric, I picked it simply because it reminded me of the jungle where we first meet Hamnet. The vines were too good.

I set the binding to pamphlet which felt way too thick, so I ended up reprinting it twice: the one you see above, and then the author's copy, which I was able to do in cream because my paper arrived the day after. Only the author copy has thicker boards because I found them after I cut the first ones and didn't want to waste those. It happens lol.

Once again, I'm thrilled with how it turned out :) and one final thank you to blanketed_in_stars for letting me do this and the Renegade Guild for all their help during Binderery!

[chaosherald]

Harding Week Day 2

Inquisition/Veilguard

Thank you @datvcompanionweeks for hosting! (Previous prompts: Day 1)

A diptych. History has a way of repeating itself and scouts often see things other people miss.

(Or Harding gets a front row seat for two emotional break downs caused by the Dread Wolf. ~3,000 words.)

I.

Night watch along the approach to Skyhold was generally a quiet affair. Fire at your back, quiet conversation with the soldiers on patrol, maybe a book or a snack to pass the time.

Harding didn't get assignments like this anymore. She had proven herself invaluable in the field, acting head of the Herald of Andraste’s own vanguard, setting up base camp and collecting reports for Inquisitor Lavellan and her companions as they chased rifts and demons around Ferelden and Orlais.

Tonight, however, Harding had been feeling magnanimous when Derry begged for a favor. His wife and kids had just arrived in Skyhold and he really wanted to be with them as they settled into the fortress. There were worse ways to spend the night, and Derry had thrown in some fancy cheeses in exchange for taking his watch.

Harding was considering how best to enjoy her “thank you for taking my watch” bribe when movement in the distance caught her eye.  A solo rider, coming in fast. Grabbing her spyglass, Harding waved a hand signal at the nearest soldier and tried to make out whatever details she could. The horse wore barding marked with the Inquisition's symbol. The rider was cloaked, but it didn’t take long for Harding to make out who it was. After all, she spent a lot of time watching the Inquisitor come and go when out in the field.

But why was she riding back to Skyhold alone in the middle of the night? 

The soldier Harding signaled had come up to the scout’s side and was squinting towards the rider. This far out and lacking a spyglass, he didn’t seem to recognize who it was. “Trouble?”

“I’m not sure,” Harding said. It didn’t look like anyone was following the Inquisitor. No obvious signs of injury. She considered raising a formal alarm, but if the Inquisitor wanted the troops mustered, there were alchemical and magical signals she could use that would be visible from even further away than she was now.

Something was off, something Harding couldn't put her finger on. Collecting more information before waking up the entire fortress seemed prudent. “Wait here and wait for my signal,” she told the soldier.

Grabbing a torch, Harding jogged down the trail. The Inquisitor had slowed her horse, though she looked agitated, holding her shoulders stiffly as she turned her head to the side. She looked like she was considering galloping off in the opposite direction as Harding approached. “Inquisitor? Is everything alright?”

She didn’t answer, though her grip on the reins tightened.

Yeah, something was definitely weird here. Harding scanned the area, ready to drop the torch and take up her bow if she spotted anything amiss. “Is something chasing you? Are you injured? Do you need…” 

The Inquisitor had finally turned her head in a way that allowed the torchlight to illuminate her face. Her starkly blank face. The light green Dalish tattoos, like tree branches reaching across her cheeks and up her forehead were gone.

Harding trailed off. She tried not to stare. She was absolutely staring. “Your markings, they’re…what happened?”

The Inquisitor, usually so serene, so unflappable, the steadfast leader of their organization, crumpled. Harding watched in horror as she hunched over, sobbing. It was lucky her mount was well trained. As it was, the horse side stepped a bit, tossing his head in reaction to his rider’s distress. The last thing they needed was the only hope Thedas had of closing the breach breaking her neck after being thrown off her horse.

Harding waved her torch towards the soldier she had left behind, signaling he should approach, then moved to get the Inquisitor off her horse. “Umm, Inquisitor? C’mon, let's get you down from there.” Sticking the torch in the ground, Harding awkwardly pulled the Inquisitor out of the saddle. She didn’t resist, didn’t react, and barely seemed aware of Harding’s presence at all as she folded in on herself on the ground, hugging her knees to her chest and continuing to cry.

Harding stood over her. She felt like she should say something, do something. Before she could sort out how to try and comfort her boss when she didn’t really understand what was going on, the soldier reached them, gasping once he took in what he was seeing. “Inquisitor Lavellan?”

He sounded terrified. Which made an awful kind of sense. Harding realized whatever was going on, they needed to minimize how many people saw the Inquisitor in this state. Everyone relied on her, pinned their hopes on her. Seeing her breaking down would do awful things to the morale in the Inquisition. It was doing awful things to Harding right now. She turned to the soldier. “Hey. Look at me, alright? I need you to keep this quiet and I need you to go find someone who can help.”

The soldier didn’t seem capable of taking his eyes off the Inquisitor. His voice was pinched and slightly panicked when he spoke “Um, who? Who should I get?”

“Try to find Solas or…”

“No!” The Inquisitor looked up at that, her eyes wide, her voice shaky. “No, not….he…” 

Harding felt her stomach drop. Solas and the Inquisitor were close. Like, scandalously shared a tent in the field close. If they had fought or something, that would explain why she was so upset. It was also deeply uncomfortable to consider the Herald of Andraste, vessel of the Maker’s will, everyone’s salvation, being reduced to something so mundane as a broken hearted woman crying over a fight with her boyfriend.

They definitely needed to minimize who found out about this.

“Um, so not Solas. Dorian. Varric. Or Cassandra, or Cole? Anyone in the Inquisitor’s inner circle. Take the horse. And seriously, keep this quiet. We don’t want to cause a panic.”

The soldier nodded and saluted and almost tripped over his own feet as he turned to mount the horse and ride back towards Skyhold, leaving Harding alone and still unsure what to do. 

The Inquisitor looked so small. Her sobs had quieted, but her shoulders still shook and she was all curled around herself in a way that looked really uncomfortable on the hard ground of the trail. Harding finally settled on crouching down right next to her, almost but not quite close enough to touch, and kept watch. 

She wasn't sure if she would be able to or was permitted to offer comfort. The Inquisitor was always so professional. But she could make sure she was safe. That was part of her job.

Minutes passed in relative silence. Harding noticed when the Inquisitor stilled then went stiff, lifting her head off her knees and surreptitiously wiping at her face while looking around her like she was seeing where she was for the first time. 

Her expression slowly smoothed and calmed and it was like watching an actor putting on a mask. Harding wondered if this was normal, if every time she had seen Inquisitor Lavellan with her placid perfect persona, if it was just that. An act, a show, covering all the same ugly awful feelings that everyone facing this crisis was struggling with. Just, when you're the person in charge, the symbol everyone else is looking towards, you couldn't really afford to show any of that ugliness, could you?

Harding had figured that out when the soldier had sounded so scared upon seeing their leader falling apart, when she herself had felt so unsettled by what she was seeing. The Inquisitor must have figured it out a long time ago.

That realization made Harding terribly sad. It seemed so unfair, even if she was Andraste’s Herald. People needed to fall apart sometimes, and to have people around who could help them pull back together. She started to reach out, to put her hand on the Inquisitor’s shoulder or something, but stopped. It still felt inappropriate. Too forward and too familiar and what if she just ended up making things worse?

The Inquisitor - Keara, her actual name was Keara - didn’t say anything, but must have caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced at Harding and shot her a small, tight smile, as if Harding were the one in need of comfort and that made it all the sadder and all the worse.

They stayed there in silence until Dorian and Cole arrived. Harding stood up and moved to the side, trying to get out of the way. She was immensely grateful that there were people here now who were better equipped to help. Dorian went to the Inquisitor immediately, helping her to her feet and keeping much better control of his face when he got a good look at her than Harding had. “You were going somewhere with Solas tonight,” he muttered, frowning slightly.

The Inquisitor started tearing up again and Dorian immediately folded her in a hug. “Oh, I am going to kill him.”

Cole hung back, looking between Harding and the Inquisitor. “He hurt her. He didn’t want to. The love was barbed, getting too deep to pull out without pain and the last time someone loved him it changed everything. He doesn’t want her to be another regret.”

He then looked at Harding, smiling. “She knew you were here. Embarrassed, but grateful. So alone but not alone and it was enough.”

“Right,” Harding said, shifting her weight. “Good? I’m going to get back to my post, but I guess let me know if you need help. I’ll catch up with you later, Cole.”

Heading back to the lookout, Harding tried to sort through the uneasy tangle in her chest. She had done what she could. Kept things quiet, kept the Inquisitor safe, sent for people who were actually the Inquisitor's friends and would hopefully be able to help her. She also trusted Cole. If he said just being there helped, then that was something.

She just wondered if she should have - or could have - done more. Particularly after, once the breach was closed and the truth about Solas came out and Harding continued to work with the Inquisitor and her shrinking inner circle. There was a hollowness to her. Cracks in the mask and carefully hidden bleeding scars, and Harding wasn't sure if she could ever have done anything to prevent it, but she knew what taking on the role of “Inquisitor” had cost and she resolved to really get to know anyone else she worked for or with. Good and bad, she would see the people and not the position, no matter how important or untouchable. She hated seeing someone hurting and she hated not being able to help.

She also knew she would never forgive Solas.

II.

Elation. Utter, glorious, relief from the all consuming stress of the past few weeks washed over Harding as they pulled Rook out of the Fade prison. It didn't fix everything. They still had to rescue Bellara. They still had to stop Elgar'nan and Solas. They were still mourning Davrin and Assan, but it was a start.

Rook looked like she was in shock, staggering as Taash and Emmrich steadied her and Neve released the tear in the Fade. Lucanis was teary-eyed, staring at Rook as if he feared she would be whisked away a second time. He stepped forward, reaching for her and whispering her name.

Rook recoiled, jerking back out of Taash and Emmrich’s hands, away from Lucanis. She scrunched her eyes shut and fisted her hands in her hair, shaking her head. “No,’ she muttered. “No, no, no - not again. Not him. Get out of my head. Get out of my head!” 

And then Rook, can-do, anything is possible, always making a joke in the face of minor inconvenience and existential horrors alike Rook stumbled to the ground and started screaming and Harding was a decade in the past, watching another fearless leader falling apart.

Everyone else froze. Of course they did. Nothing prepared you for the stark reality that your leader, your hope, was just as fragile as everyone else.

But this time, it wasn't a distant symbol shattering in front of her, it was her friend, everyone's friend. And Lace Harding was a decade older and a decade wiser, and had been determined from the beginning to do everything she could to keep Rook from ending up like the Inquisitor, lost in her role and dying in pieces without anyone noticing. Ignoring the licks of veilfire that were flaring around Rook, Harding kneeled in front of her. There would be no waiting around for someone else to help this time.

“Rook,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “Amara. You're safe, with your friends. Back in the lighthouse. We need you to talk to us, though. Tell us what’s wrong.”

Rook had frozen when Harding said her name, but was still a ball of tension, breathing way too fast with her eyes screwed shut. At least she had stopped screaming. “This isn't real,” she whispered. “None of this is real.”

The stomach dropping sensation in response to Rook’s words was familiar too. Harding heard Taash cursing behind her and the mages muttering something to each other. Lucanis had followed Harding's example and was also crouched down, but didn't move any closer to Rook. He had probably noticed the same thing Harding did, that reaching for her had set this off and Harding really hoped they weren't going to have a second breakdown to deal with in a moment. 

Harding took a breath and made sure she was calm when she answered. “It’s real. We think you've been stuck in the prison Solas built to trap the Evanuris. I don’t know what you saw there, but this is real.”

Rook didn't move. Didn't reply. The veilfire still flickered around her.

Lucanis shifted next to Harding. “Rook -”

That got a response. Inhaling sharply, Rook opened her eyes and looked from Harding to Lucanis and back. Her face scrunched up, like she was going to cry or start screaming again.

So it wasn't the reaching for her that had been the problem. It was something with Lucanis. Harding caught the devastated look on his face and knew he had picked up on it too. Hoping she was right and this wasn’t about to make things worse, Harding reached over and grabbed Rook's hand, holding it tightly and pulling herself closer, forcing Rook to focus on her face. 

Rook stared at her. There were tears streaking down her face and she opened and closed her mouth a few times before whispering “...Harding?”

Harding kept her grip on Rook’s hand. “Yeah.”

Rook’s hand twitched in hers. The veilfire sputtered and died down. “You’re…this is real.”

“Yeah.”

Rook flung herself forward, almost knocking them both prone. Harding pulled Rook into a tight hug. She could feel her friend shaking, her tears wetting her shoulder, and could see the questioning concerned looks on the others’ faces. Words messily spilled out of Rook, halting and strained. “This is - you’re real. But Varric wasn’t, he died and I didn’t - Solas made me think he was still here and now. I - I can’t do this. He’s still in my head. Now it's Lucanis - I can’t do this, I can’t.”

“Wait,” Harding said, pulling back a bit so she could see Rook’s face. Her eyes were wide, twitchy and manic as she glanced at Lucanis and flinched away. Harding could see him processing everything, though he seemed frozen in place, unable or unwilling to risk upsetting Rook more. They had known Solas was in Rook’s head, but the idea that he had been making her see Varric, making her think he was still alive, that was awful. There was absolutely going to be some messiness to deal with coming out of that. The other part, however, seemed like something they could fix right now.

Harding moved slowly, making sure she kept one of her hands on Rook as she deliberately reached to the side and grabbed Lucanis by the shoulder. “Lucanis is real too, Rook. I don’t - Varric died during the ritual and whatever Solas did after, we’ll figure it out, but Lucanis is right here.”

Rook gaped at Lucanis, eyes going impossibly wider. “I saw you die. I…” she reached out a shaky hand towards Lucanis and he took that as the permission it was and scrambled towards her, pulling her into his arms.

Harding stood up to give them some space. Rook was definitely crying again, but this was different. Tears of relief, of things being put back together, not of things breaking apart. Lucanis was glowing, wings a ghostly cloak curving around him and Rook both as Spite made his presence known too.

Elation. Exhaustion. This wasn’t exactly the reunion they had all hoped for, but Rook was home and seemed to believe it and Harding found herself strangely glad that her friend didn’t feel the need to hide that she was hurting.

“Blood magic,” Neve said, terse and angry, rubbing her forehead as she came to stand next to Harding. “I should have realized something else was there.”

Emmrich still stood on the other side of their small circle, looking at Rook through a field of green light suspended between his hands. “We know Solas is powerful, Neve,” he said, solemn and weary. “If anything, we should expect things to get past us.”

“Solas is an asshole,” Taash muttered, wrapping their arm around Harding. “Hey. You were really good at that. Helping Rook. That scared the shit out of me but you just dealt with it.”

Harding shrugged, smiling. “Just helping a friend,” she said. “I kinda wish I didn’t have any experience with this kind of thing, but…besides, Rook did the same for me, with the Titan stuff.”

“Yeah,” Taash said, tightening their arm around her.

And this didn't fix everything. Rook, still shaky, still clinging to Lucanis, was asking about Bellara and Davrin and Harding knew that would be just the next in a line of awful conversations they needed to have. 

But Harding would see this through and do everything she could to make sure her friends made it to the other side in one piece. 

And maybe before this was over, she'd have a chance to let the Dread Wolf know exactly what she thought of the hurt he had caused.

[theromanticscrooge]

The Marilyn Portfolio, Untitled Bella Goth, and Professor Venomous' Self Portrait

Marilyn Diptych, Andy Warhol, 1962

After Marilyn Monroe's unfortunate death in 1962, Andy Warhol released the Marilyn Diptych. The base portrait is a cropped, zoomed in reference pulled from a promotional shoot Marilyn posed in for her starring role in the movie Niagara. This portrait was screen-printed 50 times in color to black and white with varying degrees of quality/deterioration. Warhol's intention was to marry commercial art and celebrity culture with the kind of worship and devotional imagery found in churches and Christian art.

The Marilyn Diptych takes part of its inspiration from classic triptychs: multi-panel works depicting religious scenes and figures. Where classic triptychs were made to endorse and deepen someone's faith in God, the Marilyn Diptych was commentary on celebrity worship and how celebrities could and were placed on pedestals similarly to religious figures. The portrait repetition mirrored how often Marilyn was typecast as a "dumb blond" in movie roles. Because of how heightened celebrities are, they are the subject of intense public scrutiny. Their personal lives are as much spectacle and centers of intrigue as the fictitious characters they portray.

Her public image was the blonde bombshell and sex symbol; a fantasy that men lusted after and women both envied and admired. When Marilyn was outed as a scandalous subject because of her past pin-up work or the dicey nature of her movie roles, it only strengthened her image and reputation. Though, the fact her past was placed under such scrutiny and everything about her was subject to similar microscope slide treatment shows how much more Marilyn was seen as a character instead of an actual person. Marilyn wanted her celebrity image to exist as a separate, distinct entity from her personal life. Warhol's various Marilyn works are described as a tribute to Marilyn's desire for just this. Works like Marilyn Diptych are part of the library of iconic imagery that draws attention to Marilyn, but the hope is to redirect and keep focus towards Marilyn the immortalized image instead of the person behind the image.

Marilyn Monroe portfolio, Andy Warhol, 1967

The Marilyn Monroe portfolio series is a popular set of images to pull inspiration from for other derivative art and even art assets in games or shows. The intent behind the Diptych is similar to the inspiration for the Marilyn Monroe portfolio series. Though, the biggest difference is that the portfolio works center more on channeling commercial art and playing with varying color theory. Each of the works can stand separately as an individual piece because of how the dramatically different color schemes can change the mood or theming of the portrait. These weren't made as a deliberate, cohesive whole like the Diptych. That said, the varied, careful, and deliberate approach to color theory sets the portfolio as a striking but convenient set to reference or recreate.

In The Sims 2, the in-game Bella Goth pop art piece Untitled draws inspiration from the Marilyn portfolio series. Not only is the in-game art named after one of the Marilyn portraits, Untitled features a magazine posed and smiling series of Bella Goth in 9 different color variations.

Bella Goth has become an unofficial mascot for the Sims series ever since The Sims 2. In the original Sims, Bella, her husband Mortimer, and their daughter Cassandra were inspired by the classic kooky, creepy, and lovable Addams family. They share the Addams' love for Gothic and the macabre; they dress in darker colors and live in a Victorian flavored mansion next to a prominent graveyard. Most people are also familiar with Gomez and Morticia as a pair of hopeless romantics. Gomez peppers Morticia with shameless flirts and kisses. One of the iconic scenes in the 90's theatrical movies features a series of champagne corks popping off as Gomez dips and deeply kisses his wife. To an extent, Mortimer and Bella are supposed to recapture or echo Gomez and Morticia. Player success in recreating this are varied because of the finicky mood and intensive needs micromanaging Sims requires. If players can kick off successful romantic interactions between Sims, one of the kiss options is 'Passionate,' which features a tender embrace and dramatic music swell. This isn't directly related to Mortimer and Bella, but it isn't a stretch that these two might perform these interactions autonomously on a community lot.

After the Sims, Mortimer and Bella's relationship becomes muddied. Where Mortimer and Bella could be seen as a do-not-separate unit before, Bella easily overshadows Mortimer or the other Goths as a notable figure in her own right. In the PSP spin-off for Sims 2, Bella confides in the player that she only married her husband for the money and was in the process of running away from him period. In the mainline Sims 2 for PC, Bella has mysteriously disappeared. In-game bread crumbs point towards alien abduction, potential meddling from Bella's freshly-introduced sister-in-law that has convenient family ties with aliens, and Bella's prominent feature in the art for the paranormal-flavored and Area 51-inspired neighborhood Strangetown.

Game devs wrote an official Q and A with the Bella in Strangetown on the unfortunately-retired Sims 2 site. This Q and A was dropping further breadcrumbs about nefarious actors trying to use her as a means to get to Mortimer's neon green life-extending potion. There's no direct confirmation as to the why behind Bella's abduction, let alone concrete details on what happened after. Everything is a series of vague hints; pieces that the player strings together for their own personal soap opera. Overall, Bella's disappearance is something that has fascinated and enraptured players for years. There's still people writing stories, speculating, and drumming up theories about her 20 years later!

In game, Bella is portrayed as a beloved and highly charismatic socialite. She's a local celebrity. Artists are so enchanted by her that she has several pieces of in-universe art and sculpture modeled after and made in tribute to her specifically. Placing Bella as the subject for an art piece inspired by Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits is a stroke of genius. Bella is an iconic, larger-than-life figure among her in-universe admirers and Sims enthusiasts alike. The mystery around her catapulted her from fun pre-made character to such an established character in Sims canon that players expect some news about her or some hint at her presence in every existing Sims game, past and upcoming. She's beautiful, she's tragic, and she's such a mystery. Because of how few details players have to work with or piece together, Bella captures the imagination and plays with the theater of the mind. Regardless of how effective Simmers may consider Bella's story, it's become a front-and-center example for the storytelling potential a Sims game can have.

Marilyn is described as the postergirl for Hollywood glamour and part of celebrity culture. She has a very iconic look: heavy lidded eyes, sculpted bob, and red lips. Bella is considered fashionable and glamorous. While there has been some variation in her hair color, she's best known for her classic red dress. No matter how Bella's design or fashion is changed to try and keep pace with changing trends, the red dress is a staple. Red is Bella's trademark. In a fitting way, Bella is the immortal icon of the Sims world. She may have an official playable Sim in Sims 4, but her presence as a figure in Sims 2 will always eclipse or influence every following iteration of her in some way, shape, form, or respect.

(I included Boxman's set of Darrell portraits here as a potential nod to the triptych inspiration behind the original Diptych.)

There's also a Marilyn Diptych inspired portrait of Professor Venomous in the cartoon O.K. K.O. This portrait is prominently featured on his wall whether its at his house or in his personal office at Boxmore. Lord Boxman has a repurposed version of Michaelangelo's famous Creation of Adam mural placing himself in the role of God and his robot kids as the 'Adam' or otherwise reaching out towards him. This repurposed art is a cheeky nod towards Boxman expressing sentiments like 'I am your god!' to his first robot Mr. Logic and how much emphasis he places on the power trip he holds as the Boxbots' dad. Given the context of the original Marilyn portfolio, the Professor's variant might be part of his attempt to reconstruct himself and his self-image. The Marilyn portraits depict a very specific version of her; a very careful and highly curated image.

As soon as viewers learn about his alter-ego Shadowy Figure, the Professor tries to present the split as a Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde situation. Professor Venomous is his smooth-talking, level-headed, and reasonable public image. He has moments of being obnoxious or showing some irritation, but he usually tries to school his expressions. There's some level of restraint and control. Shadowy Figure is openly cruel and sadistic. He's the culmination of the more impulsive and desperate things Venomous wants to do: In his previous role as Laserblast, he was publicly reamed for suggesting inventions like a ray that permanently debilitates super powers, shrinks someone to subatomic level, or other obvious harm. He's openly evil as the Professor, but still feels some need to protect his image and reputation. He's still a very private and guarded person. At the very least, the increased secrecy as Shadowy Figure is an extra layer to make it harder to trace anything Venomous-related back to Laserblast and reveal his big secret.

Narrative ties aside, the Professor's portrait is also an interesting parallel to some of the art direction choices around him. Marilyn Monroe was considered a sex symbol. As Laserblast, he was called 'the hot hero' in a newspaper headline for his obituary. Otherwise, the Professor was given an elevator eyes treatment from Lord Boxman. That scene can be argued as a POV camera that's similarly applied to Boxman from Venomous' perspective and again applied in a ship-bait scene between Enid and Red Action. There's also the how-did-this-slip-past-censors scene where the Professor is leaning back in his office chair, legs spread, and slight drool dripping from his mouth. That scene has the same energy as a sex appeal fan service camera in most anime. The camera is full-on ogling Venomous here. This move was as deliberate as Studio Bones turning a Reigen Arataka undress and shower scene into something more dramatic and theatrical than the mundane, candid shot it is in the manga it was adapted from. At least Reigen's scene has a layer of irony to it; it's a Poe's Law situation where viewers aren't 100% sure if the fan service approach is a joke or earnest.

It's not an appropriate one-to-one comparison to Marilyn's sex symbol status, but it's interesting to look at both the cartoon's portrayal of Professor Venomous as well as fan reception. He's part of the ever-growing library of Tumblr sexymen and given draco in leather pants treatment. In a roundabout way, the Professor's pop art portrait is a reflection of the complicated commentary around Marilyn and what dialogue the portfolio and other works have drummed up about her image and celebrity culture in general. Characters like the Professor can drum up interesting conversations about how 'sexy' villains are portrayed, how that might impact the way people interact with the story/media they are from, and what it says about the play between someone's looks vs their actions. In the Professor's case, his looks arguably help drum up more sympathy than he might get otherwise. The bigger part of his particular story is about reputation and public image than physical appearance, though. Even when he has a come-to-Jesus moment with his ex, he has a moment of L'oreal model pout, but that doesn't stop Carol from attacking him or demanding answers.

In a nutshell, it's interesting to pick out a Marilyn-inspired self-portrait as part of the Professor's decor. Looking at the history or commentary around Warhol's Marilyn portraits, there's strong emphasis on her identity as a cultural icon vs who she was in private. The commentary centers on her lack of privacy; she's not allowed to have a separate life outside of being a celebrity. Profesor Venomous' portrait borrows this commentary and applies it to his ongoing struggle with identity. He managed to escape a role that didn't fit his values or personal self-image, but he still felt forced to create and maintain a new identity. There was always some tug of war between his private self and how he wanted to portray his public image. The other example pulled from Sims 2 highlights the difference between Bella Goth as a grand mystery vs the mundane Sim she is when she's actually playable.

Regardless of what someone thinks of the original Warhol Marilyn works, there can be some nugget of intriguing character writing or other commentary when a character is deliberately centered in their own Marilyn-esque portfolio.

[mustelidsinlove]

Sucker Punch by riptey on AO3

Sometimes you want to punch somebody. Other times, you're the one getting hit. After an unfortunate bar fight, Hermione Granger accidentally invites Draco Malfoy to live on her couch indefinitely, but at least she's got his wand. She's struggling to hang onto her sanity and pleasant disposition, despite those nasty thoughts that keep popping into her head, but he's already given up on his. Meanwhile, the rest of the wizarding world is investigating his mysterious disappearance, he's inventing his own whole new reality from the comfort of Hermione's bed (not that she wants him there), the gravity's broken in the kitchen, Harry and Ginny won't stop trying to get her back together with Ron, Ron's sleeping with Lavender, Hermione wants to lay him out, Astoria Greengrass is mourning her not-so-dead fiancé, and everyone's so buried in lies that they might as well just forget about the whole concept of truth.

"They're my plates, and I'll keep a set of three if I want a set of three plates!" "Oh, sure! Like you could be happy with that! Your whole life is a set of three plates, and you never even knew it until I came in and needed the fourth one." // “Nonsense, Granger. I’ve always liked you. I like your ice-cold logic and your unkempt nails and your snotty sense of superiority over the rest of humanity. I like your anger and your control issues and your passion for revenge.” // "Even if you could gather up everything and everybody else in the whole world and bend them to your will, you'd still be trapped in that fleshy cage, and you can never be in complete control of it." // "Regret is just an excuse to wallow in self-pity without feeling selfish." // Anybody could just say that they would never cut off somebody's toe on a couch and use the bone and nail for Dark Magic, but in practice it was much harder to avoid. // "That's my favourite thing about you," he said, pressing flat palms into the table on either side of his bowl. "There are only so many good qualities a person can have, and they're all boring and common. I don't know anybody else whose flaws are as interesting as yours." // "A lot of people want to do a lot of things." Hermione was aware that realising those desires was so rare that adults learned to stop wanting impossible things. // Happy people don't go looking for danger, because they have something to lose. // Didn't they realise how boring and mundane the world would be without him? Didn't they see that without him, all a person would have to think about were rose bushes, lawn flamingos, slip resistance tests, and useless echoes of the past? // He was just a kitten in a free-to-a-good-home box by the side of the road, blinking new eyes at an unfamiliar world, waiting to be picked up by the first available hand. Her home was good, and her hands were empty. // "You don't like me, though." "No, you're projecting," he said. "You're the one who doesn't like you." "I'm the one who doesn't like you." "No, that's me. How'd you get that so backwards?" // She could be angry with Malfoy for failing to keep his mouth shut, or she could be happy that he was thinking about her, but not both. Well, maybe she could do both if she tried extra hard. // When she got him back, she was going to slap him across the face and demand to know why she missed him so much, seeing as he was such a giant idiot.

Art: 

(1) Reverse of the Diptych of Jean de Carondelet, Jan Gossaert, c. 1517

(2) La Corde Sensible (Heartstring), René Magritte, 1960

(3) The Temptation of St. Anthony (detail), Hieronymous Bosch, c. 1501

[justforbooks]

Per Nørgård

Danish composer driven by the concept of musical metamorphosis and a renowned symphonist

“I don’t know where the lyrical element comes from,” the Danish composer Per Nørgård, who has died aged 92, once remarked. “I can’t construct the lyrical element. It is like when you stick your head out of the window on a spring morning and can simply sense the scent of flowers in the air. It can’t be controlled. In a way, the lyrical element is the sensual side of existence, which always comes as a gift.”

One of the most lyrical expressions of that gift among Nørgård’s 400 works was in the finale of his small-orchestral diptych Voyage Into the Golden Screen, composed in 1968. Ironically, its free-flowing melody derived not from chance “scenting of [music] in the air”, but rather the technical dictates of Nørgård’s then newly formulated “infinity series”, where the notes follow mathematically from the proportions of the “golden ratio” and the Fibonacci series: a telling musical counterpart to the prevailing Scandinavian concern, across all the arts at the time, of design-driven expression.

As a young man, taught by the great Danish symphonist Vagn Holmboe at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, Nørgård had become fascinated with the music of Sibelius and the underlying concept of musical metamorphosis, where themes and motifs gradually evolve into new entities.

However, the infinity series became a primary building block of Nørgård’s music, whether laid out straightforwardly, as in the Second Symphony (1970), or as an unlimited thematic reservoir in his operas (including Siddhartha, 1974-79, and The Divine Circus, 1983), symphonies, 13 concertos – including two for percussion, the first, For a Change (1982-83), based on the Chinese “wisdom book” I Ching, the second, Bach to the Future (1997), reworking three Bach preludes – and a large body of vocal and chamber music, including 10 string quartets.

The end results sometimes baffled early audiences; Kalendermusik (1970), written to accompany the test card on Danish television, was broadcast until audience protests prompted its removal after a few months; others proved contentious through their complex, seemingly chaotic inspirations and textures, as with the choral triptych Wie ein Kind (1979-80) and the Fourth Symphony (1981), two of a group of works derived from the ideas of the Swiss artist and psychiatric patient Adolf Wölfli. At other times, the results could be disarmingly spare in texture, for example in his music for the Oscar-winning film Babette’s Feast (1987).

Nørgård was born in Gentofte, on the northern edge of Copenhagen, to the tailor Erhardt Nørgård and his wife, Emmely (nee Christensen), who ran a business specialising in wedding attire. Per loved to draw and with his elder brother, Bent, made up cartoon stories. It was a musical family (Erhardt played the accordion) and both brothers studied the piano, Per from the age of seven.

His innate musical ability showed early and he was admitted as a boy chorister into the Copenhagen Municipal Choral School in 1942 before going to Frederiksberg grammar school. By 17 he had set his mind on becoming a composer, producing his first work, Sonata capricciosa, in 1949.

Holmboe took him on as a private pupil in 1950-51, before becoming one of his teachers at the conservatory in Copenhagen, where Nørgård studied between 1952 and 1955. Following graduation, the conservatory staged a well-received all-Nørgård concert in January 1956.

By the end of that month Nørgård had married, been awarded a Lili Boulanger award, and moved with his young wife, the singer, dancer and ethnomusicologist Anelise Brix Thomsen, to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, whose former pupils included Aaron Copland, Roy Harris and Astor Piazzolla.

Returning to Denmark in 1957, he began teaching at the Funen Academy of Music in Odense (until 1961), writing for the Danish daily newspaper Politiken (1958-62) and, from 1960 to 1965, teaching at the conservatory in Copenhagen, where one of his pupils was Carl Davis. Finding the atmosphere too conservative, he moved – taking his students with him – to the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus. There, he taught some of the most important Nordic composers of the ensuing generations, including Hans Abrahamsen, Hans Gefors and Bent Sørensen.

His own music extended his influence much further, to composers across Europe from Thomas Adès to Wolfgang Rihm to the Finnish composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen conducted the premiere of Nørgård’s Fifth Symphony in 1990 at a concert featuring the Fifth Symphonies of Sibelius and Nielsen, to celebrate their 125th anniversaries.

Nørgård was the recipient of many awards and honours, including the Nordic Council music prize (1974, for his opera Gilgamesh), the Léonie Sonning music prize (1996) and the Wihuri Sibelius prize (2006). In 2005 his glorious, expansive choral-and-orchestral Third Symphony (1972-75) – which was given its UK premiere only at the 2018 BBC Proms – was incorporated into Denmark’s official Culture Canon.

He received the Marie-Josée Kravis prize for new music in 2014; the following year the Vienna Philharmonic’s recording of Symphonies Nos 1 and 8, conducted by Sakari Oramo, won the Gramophone award for contemporary music; and in 2016 he was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music prize for lifelong service to music.

Nørgård’s marriage to Anelise ended in divorce in 1965; he is survived by their children, Jeppe and Ditte. In 1966 he married Helle Rahbæk Hansen; she died in 2022.

🔔 Per Nørgård, composer and teacher, born 13 July 1933; died 28 May 2025

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

[painted-doe]

WIP word search

Tagged by the exceptional @bromcommie! Enjoy a bunch of snippets from some of my WIPs based on the keywords that appear in them. (These are probably longer than they're supposed to be but hey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

My keywords were: space, sharp, sweet, home

space

From “what the water wants”, a horror story about a poltergeist haunting Bucky and Sam (although no horror makes an appearance in this part).

The one and only time he’d ever been invited over to Bucky’s place, Sam had stood in the doorway of the barren apartment and stared. For a moment he’d wondered if the elevator had taken them to the wrong floor — if maybe this apartment was empty and waiting for a tenant to move in. Because this wasn’t a space where someone lived. 

But Bucky had pinned him with a stare that said don’t fucking say it, and had shouldered past him and thrown his keys on the counter with the familiarity and confidence of a person who did, in fact, live here. Anyway, they’d both been bleeding and bruised and covered in toxic slime at the time, so there had been more urgent things on Sam’s mind.

But later that night, once they were both scrubbed and disinfected and bandaged, each wearing a pair of Bucky’s sweatpants and working their way steadily through several white boxes of Szechuan takeout on the floor in front of the TV, Sam had turned to him with purpose. Bucky had stiffened and stared straight ahead like he’d never seen anything more fascinating than the crowds cheering for Hungary’s soccer team.

“Dude,” Sam said, not unkindly, “you know you don't have to live like this?”

sharp

From “Diptych”, a two-part Sambucky fic. Part 1: Sam and Bucky are sucked into Westview and Wanda mashes them together like a couple of action figures kissing. Part 2: The aftermath when they return to real life.

Sam didn’t remember there being any children in Westview, but he must have forgotten somehow. 

Of course there were children; there were children everywhere now that Sam was noticing them. Even Marcus and Jeannie had a son, Jack. Maybe it was odd that he had forgotten about little Jack, since they lived right next door. But it was very easy not to think about that, so he didn’t.

Jack was competing in a junior league baseball game and everyone was invited. Bucky was feeling steady enough to leave the house, and that didn’t happen every day, so they put on sweaters and dusted off their baseball caps and held hands as they walked down to the baseball diamond in the crisp air. They were entering the deepest days of autumn, with Halloween right around the corner, and the low afternoon sunlight dappled the orange-red leaves of the trees that lined their little suburban street. Bucky’s winter-coloured eyes caught and held the amber light, and it softened all his sharp edges to gold; Sam’s heart flipped a little when he met his gaze and smiled.

sweet

From the upcoming second chapter of “A Candle in the Window”:

“Hi, Mr. Barnes!” Peter shouts, waving at him.

Barnes, who has just leapt onto the metal dinosaur’s spiny back and is using a combat knife in each hand to scale it like a mountain climber, looks genuinely horrified to see him. It’s actually kind of sweet.

“Is that you under there?!” he yells. “What the — get outta here, kid!”

“Thanks for coming!” Peter shouts back happily, and promptly gets knocked out of the sky mid-swing as the thing’s big metal tail smacks him. 

Fortunately, he lands in a tree. 

Unfortunately, the tree is about to be set on fire. 

The robo-dino’s mouth opens toward him, its jaws wide enough for him to stand up between them, and those are some very big pointy steel teeth, and he can see the flamethrower powering up at the back of the throat where the tongue ought to be, and all his instincts fail as for one critical second he <em>freezes</em> —

And at that exact moment, a big ball of snarling supersoldier slams fist-first right into the thing’s metal jaw, a vibranium uppercut hard enough to knock it off one of its hinges. The jaw is now dangling by one end, like a car’s bumper after a fender bender. The jet of fire that was about to melt Peter’s face off ends up going cockeyed and blasting a duck pond instead. He hopes there weren’t any ducks paddling around in there, because there definitely aren’t now.

home

from “Lagniappe”, a novel-length TFATWS story about Bucky rescuing a dog from a dogfighting ring and accidentally rehabilitating himself along the way.

The dog didn’t have a name. That was what made him decide.

He hadn’t had a name either. Not for a long time. The electricity and heavy dizzying drugs had scraped even that last dignity out of him. Even now, years later, the person-thing he’d managed to salvage and stuff back into himself was only a messy amalgamation of bits and pieces. Secondhand stories from Steve of who he’d once been; hazy snapshot memories; habits and tastes he didn’t quite remember but had been informed he once had, and so had now re-adopted out of a weird fear of somehow getting it wrong. Getting the business of being Bucky Barnes wrong. 

He was an unabashed mess, but most of the parts HYDRA had ripped out had slowly grown back, little by little. He still lost his words from time to time, but he didn’t have to carry a knife to be able to bear a trip to the grocery store. Sometimes he still woke in distress in the night, keening and shivering from the memories, but now he could look someone in the eye and tell them no if he didn’t want to obey them. Now he could go for a walk on a frosty day without losing his breath and having to call someone to take him home. He was even making amends for the things he had done — or at least was trying to, in his bitter fumbling way.

And all of that had started with his name. His name in Steve Rogers’ mouth. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve had told him desperately on that helicarrier, like wedging his foot into a door that was trying to slam closed — and Bucky had still fought him, had almost killed him, but the words had worked their magic. His name had begun to reawaken him. His name.

The black dog didn’t even have that.

@philtstone, @fixing-the-boat, @possumwoodpie, @clucku, @toxiclxki, @snarkythewoecrow @writethewolvesaway @wishihadatail @shackleton2 I choose you! Your keywords are: ignore, kind, lose, silver (And anyone else who wants to play, consider yourself tagged -- sorry if I missed you!)

[kayspaceprinceart]

I keep forgetting to update here, lol. These are some works I made for a local art show! In order, LORD, HANGED MAN*, and LADY (the theme of the art show is gender feels so I started w a fursona riff on my old fav work I did when I was just figuring out gender stuff and then I just wanted to draw rabbits.)

Fun fact! LORD and LADY are a diptych based off of a real portrait set from the Renaissance and can be placed either facing towards or away from each other and the backgrounds line up :)

[astriiformes]

hello!! this is kit. happy birthday!!! you don't have to answer all of these but

🎞️if you could change one scene from any of the movies, which one would you change and how?

⏲️what time period would you want marty to travel to and what would you want him to do? for fun or for something serious?

💫if you have any bttf related wips, here's the oppurtunity to ramble about them! (<-PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLSEPLSPEL)

Thank you!!

🎞️ - If you could change one scene from any of the movies, which one would you change and how?

Oof, just one scene is difficult, because the thing I'd like to change most would be how Jennifer's plot was handled in the second movie, and that requires a bit more overhauling. I think you could still make it better with a little tweaking though -- maybe she doesn't get knocked out and is simply told to stay watch the DeLorean, which still ends up being a problem when she tries to lure someone away from it, or something like that.

I guess that still modifies more like two scenes, but you get the idea! Anything to make her feel like she's got a little more agency. Because I like her a lot and it bothers me that the BttF movies aren't even that terrible at writing women (Lorraine and Clara are both really interesting characters!), but sidelined her anyways.

⏲️- What time period would you want Marty to travel to and what would you want him to do? For fun or for something serious?

Already answered this one but since there are plenty of time periods to choose from I will simply pick another. As someone who studies the history of science, I think that Doc and Marty could get up to some peak shenanigans in Enlightenment-era America (thinking late 18th and early 19th century here) when everyone was obsessed with the phenomena of electricity. I want to unleash Doc Brown on the people that thought lightning rods defied the will of God.

💫- If you have any BttF related WIPs, here's the opportunity to ramble about them!

OH BOY DO I

So, four years ago I started a diptych of stories I am yet to finish but that are some of the fics nearest and dearest to my heart, surrounding the idea of Marty being transgender. (I once called them my love-letter to transmasculinity, which is a little dramatic, but genuinely a bit how I feel about them)

The first is from Doc's perspective, and deals with the fact that, when Marty was first born, the version of him who'd been visited by 17 year-old Marty back in 1955 must've had an absolute heart attack at first. It features a very confused Doc and (eventually) a younger Marty figuring some important things out about himself, and is probably about half-written at uh. Almost 9k words.

The second, companion piece is from Marty's perspective, and set post-trilogy, dealing with him navigating questions of identity as someone who is trans and who now grew up in a different timeline. It follows his relationships with the important people in his life, his dueling existential crises, and the isolating feeling that maybe there's no one who understands you in the entire world -- and the relief that comes from learning that you're wrong.

I've done a truly monster amount of research for these fics--including having a librarian friend help me track down digitized historical documents during lockdown back in 2020--and am contemplating diving into the historical queer archive where I currently work for a second round, though we'll see what I can find. Regardless, I really want to finally finish these stories now that I've circled back around to having a lot of Back to the Future feelings again.

(Also to show the BttF fandom that I'm a much better writer when I'm not churning out only-mildly-edited 1-2k fics every day for a writing challenge, rip, although I'm honored people have been enjoying those ones, too! Just, you know. I can do better.)

[deadpresidents]

"It's pretty much impossible to go anywhere in Iraq and not be reminded of Saddam. Thousands of portraits of him appear on walls and in glazed mosaic tiles on concrete plaques. In granite, bronze, and gilded statues he holds a sword aloft; he prays; he rides a prancing stallion. Saddam smiles, frowns, fires guns, smokes cigars. He is depicted wearing a black leather greatcoat and matching trilby; in military uniform; in Arab robes, three-piece suits, and even, oddly, trekking gear. He is sometimes thin, sometimes imposingly muscular, occasionally fat, his face pouchy and double-chinned. He wears a judge's robes and holds scales in his hands; dandles small children on his knee; stands with bloodied sword over a mutilated serpent whose tail is in the form of a cruise missile. On one building, eight identical smiling Saddams are set together, creating an effect not unlike that of Warhol's 'Marilyn Diptych.'" -- Jon Lee Anderson, "The Unvanquished", The New Yorker, December 11, 2000

It's almost chilling how similar this sounds to the ridiculous propaganda images on social media used in the present-day United States to build up the MAGA/Trump personality cult. This is happening here.

[hyunjeonglim]

Exhibition view : Hyunjeong Lim Solo Show <Trip West> , Gallery 4Culture, Seattle 2025

Otherworldly Detail: In Trip West, Hyunjeong Lim sets the scene for extraordinary stories

Hyunjeong Lim never imagined she’d live in the United States. But when her husband got a tech job here in 2018, she suddenly found herself in San Francisco, some 5,600 miles from her home in Busan, South Korea. Right away, the couple set about exploring their new home on a series of road trips—and discovered a California landscape that felt very foreign.

“It was really magical—the sunshine and palm trees,” she says. “Outside of San Francisco, it’s so dry and sunny that it’s like an alien environment to me.”

Lim had been painting “realistic, imaginary worlds of the mind” since working on her MFA in London at Central Saint Martins more than a decade ago. But in California, the color and tone of her paintings began to change. “What affects my work most is really the nature and the climate environment around me,” she says.

Then the pandemic hit, and Lim was confined to her apartment. “The depths of my painting, the amount of detail or the time I put in increased a lot,” she says. “I felt like, if I make this painting more realistically or with more abundant details, I could feel like I’m in the outside world, traveling through nature all over again. Foliage, leaves, grasses, trees—I just gave extra, more.”

With her husband able to work remotely, he and Lim decided to seek out a more familiar setting, and wound up in Seattle. “It has four seasons, lots of mountains and forests, so it’s very similar to Korea,” she says.

Again, they hit the road.

In time, Lim had visited many of the most celebrated sites in the Western United States: Yosemite, the Oregon Coast, the Olympic Peninsula, the canyons, Utah, even Hawaii. These experiences became the material for her current Gallery 4Culture exhibition, Trip West, a collection of 31 surrealistic landscape paintings inspired by the places she’s been and the people she’s seen on her travels. Made using oil and acrylic paints, they include individual smaller paintings as well as diptychs, triptychs, and various combinations thereof.

Lim has been exploring this kind of imagery all her life. As a child, she spent a lot of time drawing things like mushroom houses and forest creatures. While in London, she returned to the National Gallery again and again to study the works of Renaissance masters, which she loves.

“The layering of thin, sparkling oil colors to build the landscape with tiny brush strokes—it really gives me a lot of joy to just to look at it,” she says of the Flemish paintings that live large in her mind.

When making one of her paintings, Lim synthesizes Renaissance influences with elements of Chinese or Korean screen painting and the idealized landscapes they present. She composes her works through a combination of compositional sketches and spontaneous, intuitive drawing, using her own photos as references and drawing on her own fragmented memories.

The paintings in Trip West not only contain worlds within worlds individually, their juxtapositions conjure even more imaginary places, which is why Lim labors over the way they’re arranged, using her computer to puzzle them together. Paintings may depict far away locations, but “put together, they make another context,” she says, explaining that she sees herself as the conductor of an orchestra. “Like, this painting makes pop sound and another one makes a bass tone.”

Though there’s a lot going on in each piece, Lim says she doesn’t have a specific narrative in mind for any of them. She leaves that for each viewer to fill in themselves, hoping the imagery will trigger their memories of the places they’ve visited in their own lives. “I really believe that strangers—each of us—could slightly understand each other better because we are looking at the same things,” she says.

“Sleeping in a tent is kind of a luxury to Koreans. We make a pastime of going to a camp site and enjoying nature,” Lim says. In contrast, in cities on the West Coast today, tents can indicate homelessness. “Those simple drawing can tell the different story to each viewer depending on where they’re from.”

For viewers at Gallery 4Culture, the scenes in Trip Westmay be full of familiar locations. But how might audiences elsewhere respond to them? Lim will find out this fall when she shows these works again as part of a solo show in Seoul. She laughs, “When I show my photos of these places to my friends in Korea, they’re like, where have you been?”

photo credit : Joe Freeman (https://www.joefreemanjunior.com)

[shredsandpatches]

fic writer self-recs

@titleleaf tagged me in this and I'm not gonna miss a chance for self-promotion, so here you go.

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favourite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers.

The Kindest Use a Knife (2014, Richard II, Richard/Aumerle, E, 11k words)

This is, to date, still my most popular fic and I'm still proud of it even though I'm a better writer than I was ten years ago (how was this ten years ago? What the fuck, passage of time). It's based specifically on the RSC production with David Tennant and was born out of a general sense of confusion over how the Stabby Aumerle ending seemed to work okay despite it making no sense in the context of the production and the ways the characters were played. I figured Stabby Aumerle in this production would only really make sense if Aumerle were under the impression it was the most loving option under the circumstances, and this was the result. Also, this fic made me realize I love writing the Yorks (the Duchess in particular just kind of charged into this fic). Fun trivia: my depiction of Exton owes a lot to Arthur Darvill's Mephistopheles (because I did love Doctor Faustus even before Hot Faust Summer).

Jesu dulcis memoria (2014, 14th-c RPF, Richard II + family, G, 1k words)

This was a Yuletide treat--one of those instances where someone's request lines up with something you'd been thinking of writing for ages anyway and the prompt makes you get off your butt and do it. It's centered on the creation of the Wilton Diptych from the viewpoint of the painter (who is fictional, since we don't really know much about who actually painted it) and focuses on the idea that the painting is not only a statement about kingship but also a memorial to Richard's (many) dead loved ones. Also there's one simile in there that everyone seems to love and so now I think about it every time I encounter gold leaf (which is a lot. I'm a manuscript librarian, although I wasn't when I wrote this).

Andělíčku rozkochaný (2019, 14th-c RPF, Richard II/Anne of Bohemia, E, 9k words)

Anne of Bohemia is, as you all know, my forever girl, and I'm still proud of this character study of her and her marriage to Richard and their approach to their infertility. I wrote a lot of stuff on this basic theme around the time I was writing this fic; maybe it was because turning 40 was getting to me on a subconscious level. The first scene of the fic is one of those things that came to me pretty much fully formed, while the last scene is another one of those things I'd had in my head for a while and finally had a reason to write down. (This is, therefore, another fic that has part of its genesis in a shiny historical artifact.)

not half so fair as thou (2023, Doctor Faustus, Faustus/Mephistopheles, E, 6k words)

We have arrived at Hot Faust Summer! The premise of this one came out of my pondering a line not from Marlowe's play but from Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, which I was in last May and have not yet shut up about, but long story short, it set me thinking about productions where Faust(us) and his shadow-self Mephistopheles look similar (not unheard-of in Marlowe productions--the 2011 Globe one low-key did it and the 2016 RSC high-key did it--though I can't think of any operatic versions off the top of my head) and eventually I arrived at the premise of this fic. Which was a complete party to write. It was perhaps a little unsettling to realize that Faustus POV came to me extremely naturally but hey. That's academics for you.

none but thou shall be my paramour (2024, Doctor Faustus, Faustus/Mephistopheles, Faustus/Helen of Troy, M, 7.5k words)

It's the Codependent Faustopheles Manifesto! With boring academic dinner parties and sexy contract renewal! This is my most recent work (although it took me kind of forever to write; the tumblr post in which I proclaim my intentions to write it is here) and I'm really proud of it. It's weird, kind of gross, and has some massive tonal shifts in it, but I think it came off all the same. Plus I got to put some of my elaborate headcanons in there and I think I did a really good job with the "sex scene that is not actually sex but is definitely still a sex scene" trope.

Anyway, yeah! Go read my fic. I'm going to tag @skeleton-richard, @oldshrewsburyian, @themalhambird, @misskriemhilds, @heartofstanding, and anyone else who feels like doing this.

[vexversion]

[MA: Cross and Reactor Christmas]

Here's my final event art for the MyriadAnthology comic group

This is part one of a diptych christmas story alongside @\ASP_Ian, the creator of Reactor and Wicky! Cross and Wicky have set up a round-the-world present hunt, and it looks like Reactor is very fond of this gift!