#she's just sublime she's art she's beautiful

[takethelx3]

Mafia AU: Gala

[1dcommunityficrecs]

Exes To Lovers Rec List!

It is no longer Gonna Be May, it in fact is May, and with it another community-recommended theme list. We have, for your perusal and pleasure, 11 exes-to-lovers fics. We've got short and sweet, we've got long and complicated, we've got angsty working through their problems and we've got comfortably rediscovering the new versions each other years later.

I am so excited to dig into these, and I hope you are too! As always, show your love to these awesome authors by dropping a kudos, leaving a comment, and reblogging the fic posts. I'll be announcing the next category as soon as I decide what it is!

Empty Skies by Green_feelings (134048, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

Harry and Louis fell in love as teenagers. Then Louis left and became a pop star...

Reccer says: Greenfeelings has a golden pen. She knows how to handle pining and emotions... And she always comes up with sublime stories...

And What If I Were You by jacaranda_bloom (109959, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

For Louis, will losing his sight give him the clarity to realise what is right in front of him? For Harry, will losing the love of his life give him the strength to finally open his heart?

Reccer says: This fic had moments of such devastation that I cried, and moments of humor that had me laughing. So much emotion packed into this fic! An all time favorite and a must read!

Bitter Ends Turn Sweet by allwaswell16 (30000, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

It had been four years since Harry first heard the song his ex wrote about him and far longer since they broke up. He forgave Louis long ago, and now his life was focused on his career, his family, and especially his son, Max. But Louis was back in Chicago, after all this time, and he’s not an easy man to ignore.

Reccer says: Every time I hear the song Chicago I think of this fic. They are inextricably linked forever for me. The fic is that memorable.

Pathema Proteleia by persephoneflouwers (53399, Mature, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post Warnings: Graphic Despictions of Violence

A few years ago, Omega Prince Harry left his husband and mate Alpha Louis without any apparent reason. When enemies of the Royalty make an attempt on his life and threaten to hurt Omegas, Louis has to ask the Prince for help.

Reccer says: I love the author's writing, their rather baroque style, the way they set the scene for their story and build their characters.

Halfway Home by Itsmotivatingcara (100000, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) Warnings: Blood, murder, violence, animal death, violence

Harry and Louis were childhood friends.They used to hang out at Louis' grandpa's ranch in South Dakota every summer. As they got older, their friendship turned into something more. But life happened, and they went their separate ways. Fast forward ten years, Louis now runs a wildlife refuge, and Harry comes back since louis’ grand dad included him in his will. ButThere's a mysterious hunter lurking around, making things way more intense than just old flames reigniting.

Reccer says: Not only it is basically enemies to friends to exes to lovers while it has mystery, thriller and crime theme as well. Literally everything a good fic should have

Mine Would Be You by crinkle-eyed-boo (KimmieRocks) (114698, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

Louis returns to New York City 5 years after leaving the love of his life behind.

Reccer says: The flashback scenes showing how their relationship originally dissolved are absolutely gut-wrenching. Beautiful writing, made me cry like twice?? There’s also art in each chapter!

i was yours (i wish you were mine) by staybeautiful (56000, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post Warnings: alcohol/recreational drug use, implied/referenced underage sex

Ten years ago Harry dropped his best friend and high school boyfriend off at the train station and never saw him again. A chance meeting outside a bar has them tumbling head first into a summer of music, milkshakes, and maybe each other.

Reccer says: It’s precious, so well written!!! Heartbreaking, heartwarming, heart-mending. I loved how easily they fall back into love, their past closeness is so potent upon running into each other again. it’s so clear how well they knew each other.

I Still Think About You All the Time by NoLogicOnlyStyles (47000, Explicit, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson ) – fic post

Eight months after their devastating breakup, a series of unfortunate events force Harry and Louis back into each other's orbit again. But can you be just friends with someone you've never not loved?

I Can Build Your Heart A Home by LiveLaughLoveLarry (10252, Teen, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

Two years after (kinda) breaking up, Harry and Louis are both back in town for Christmas. Niall meddles a little, there's some awkwardness and a lot of Christmas fluff.

Reccer says: I loved the dynamic between Harry and Louis and how the context of their past relationship was explained. Also I love a good Exes to Lovers fic and a good Christmas fic and this was both combined.

Finally, You and I (Collide) by lululawrence (14455, Not Rated, Zayn Malik/Louis Tomlinson) – fic post

Funny how Louis could sum up everything he’d had with Zayn so easily. Ex. Or the five times Louis was accidentally wooed by cookies and the one time he was purposefully wooed by brownies.

Reccer says: It is completely self indulgent as Sus wrote it for me, but it's perfectly angsty and gooey at the same time because of all the cookie recipes

The Falling Series by we_are_the_same (4053, Teen, Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson)

Louis and Harry divide their belongings after their breakup

Reccer says: It's very angsty but hopeful at the same time

[sgiandubh]

So in other words, you agree, Sam and Cait are not very good actors as exemplified by the scene being them and not Beauchamp and Fraser. On that, agreed. She might be a C actor, he's definitely a D

Dear Beauchamp and Fraser Anon,

I suspect you might be a returning one, by the way, hoping to catch me unprepared with a very cheap sophism. Check this concept on Wikipedia if you wish, but I will give you my definition: manipulated or derailed logic, i.e. formally sustainable, but in reality just a fallacy; or, if you prefer, a bunch of crap, just for the sake of it. Also, it would be wise not to try these cheap tricks on someone trained to work with words and doing so every single day: you might find no satisfaction, ultimately.

Fun fact: I don't agree with any single word you just wrote. Sam and Cait are very good and gifted actors. Both of them. They did wonders with a very inconsistent script and under barbaric public pressure. What dragged you in here, Anon? Mrs. Gabaldon's florid, even luxuriant prose? What kept you in here, Anon? Blood and sperm and rape galore? I should wish you were honest, at least for once in your life, and let your answer be 'not really'.

What I meant by that phrase was something very simple: the actors' life experience deeply informing and sublimating their performance. If you think real and creative lives are strictly separate affairs in any intellectual endeavor, then you are probably completely unfamiliar with anything remotely related to writing, singing, playing (an instrument), acting, composing or painting. All these are akin to magic and all of the above are a summoning of sorts: ask any 'content creator', you will probably get a very similar answer. In Cait and Sam's case, their real life story nurtures and elevates their acting, despite people like you.

I am not an actor myself, but a long time ago it was acting that liberated me and taught me to not be afraid of anything. I did not make a living out of it, but I will always have the tools making me able to access that very special energy, any time I should need it. So, I can only offer you an educated opinion of These Two:

C is a very, very good actress. She is classy, sophisticated and knows instinctively how to occupy a stage or a set. She worked and progressed a LOT since Season 1, when it took me a good while to warm up to her. Add to this what I think is arresting beauty. Not really a C-level, in my book.

S is a wonderfully gifted actor who, unlike C, does not have any idea of this potential and, to be honest, gives the impression to even not care about it. He singlehandedly dominated some of the most difficult moments of the series (that unwatchable Wentworth episode comes to mind). His mastery of the Stanislavski and Lecoq methods and techniques is excellent. He is likeable, personable and has an innate emotional intelligence, helping him navigate and compensate the weaknesses of (yes, I insist!) an often insufficient script. I have already written about it, with arguments, when I found some very interesting parallels between The Fiery Cross episode and Laurence Olivier's performance in Shakespeare's Henry V. I will say it again: this guy has been grossly miscast, spare for JAMMF.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the whole preparation and rehearsal process when producing a movie or a series or a theatre show. These people don't just learn their lines by heart and turn up for readings and rehearsals. They also read and watch a lot of things that could help them build better, more credible characters. But what makes the sometimes very subtle difference between a decent performance and a stellar one is the amount of themselves they allow inside their acting. And in this respect, I think Sam and Cait have been very lucky, in what is a very clear case of Art (instinctively) imitating Life.

I doubt this answered your question and to be honest, I don't care.

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Round 3 Match 5

propaganda below the cut! (huge wall of text warning)

Courtney Love:

"i want courtney to push me around and throw me on the floor SHE'S SO HOT AND HER MESSINESS MAKES HER EVEN HOTTER !!!!!"

"She's beautiful and gorgeous and the definition of 90s fashion. I'm convinced she could pull off any outfit ever she's so stunning"

"that one photo of her in red lipstick and a black dress smoking a cigarette… your honour i rest my case"

"I don't care what conspiracy theories you tell me. no one rocks the grungy makeup look like her."

"gonna be her for halloween"

Mike Patton:

"Mike didn't consistently wear BDSM masks matched with boiler suits and lick Trevor Dunn on stage just to lose this bracket. Also, if you don't think he's hot in every which way, you clearly haven't seen this: https://youtu.be/gjEbHBafvm0 or this: https://youtu.be/i9_hCjcFNO0 or this: https://youtu.be/Kfq7wHJu21c"

"Mike Patton collaborated with basically everyone who's anyone in music, and he speaks Italian too. He's great in a live show. And Mr. Bungle is unmatched and unparalleled, full stop."

"HEE HEE HOO HOO HA HA FUNNY WHITE MAN SCREAMS IN MY EAR AND BUSTS IT DOWN SEXUAL STYLE"

"I'm a lesbian but I find him insanely attractive which I think says a lot"

"whenever mike arches his back and screams a part of my soul leaves my body and is shattered by the soundwaves."

"all you need to do to love mike is watch this: https://youtu.be/0gq_Jn41iMM&t=1375 the fact that he blurts that out and then super casually goes into the song leaves me crying with rage and hormones every time I see it"

Jonny Greenwood:

"Every art girl's (and boy's) wet dream"

"He wrote the tourist. That's all you need."

"Repeat from my Thom propaganda but he was a part of it so anyways. I had a dream once where I met him and Thom on the street and asked them to sign my Pablo Honey CD, so Thom pushed me into open traffic and I got hit by a car and died and Jonny laughed his ass off. 10/10, my last sight before death was his beautiful face laughing."

"I could probably snap him like a twig but I want to marry him and have 3 children with him before I do that"

"Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose 1/5 of Radiohead. Choose 1/5 of In Rainbows. Choose the man who wrote weird fishes, both Greenwood sisters ,the man in South Park, his telecaster and the stickers on it. Choose the bug Jacqueline Kennedy, his love for literature and poetry, and his lovely lisp. Choose his sublime score for Phantom Thread and his husband Paul Thomas Anderson. Choose the weird amount of straight men who thirst over him in the YouTube comment section. Choose his jawbone. Choose the most pretentious, unpretentious member of the band. Choose his silky hair and his (probably) Dove shampoo. Choose his great knowledge of music theory and how he often disregards it. Choose Astroboy's biggest fanboy (minus maybe Thom. Choose a very hot Alex James who eloped with a fish. Choose Jonny Greenwood. Choose your future. Choose life… Involuntary Trainspotting reference but please vote Jonny over Wario. Oh, and( even though Jonny lives in Italy at the moment), I live in Oxford and if I meet him, I'll tell him that he won."

"He keeps chickens guys, CHICKENS"

"I'm a straight guy but no joke Jonny is hot tbh maybe it's cuz he looks like a chick but like damnnnn"

"He's so gorgeous....kinda like an ant 😍😍😍😍"

[ladyloveandjustice]

My Favorite New Manga and Graphic Novels I Read in 2023

It's time to take a look at the comics and manga I read this year! I read  a whopping 78 manga and graphic novels in all. Here's a link to my Goodreads year in books (the manga is at the beginning, the novels start with Siren Queen) and my storygraph wrap up.

I also read 36 novels! If you want to see my favorites, check out my reviews here!

And finally, I've got the continuing manga series I've enjoyed this year here, so check that post out too!

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

This is a tale about a first-generation Vietnamese-American boy struggling with coming out to his mother. He connects with his mother through fairytales-- she uses them to express her journey as an immigrant, and he uses them to explore his queerness and identity as a Vietnamese kid growing up in America. It's an absolutely gorgeous book full of Trung Le Nguyen's signature stunning art. The fantastical, ethereal fairy tales are weaved beautifully into the lives of the characters. The book explores how fairy tales can form connection, can express culture, can tap deeply into something real and true, and can offer tragedy and catharsis. The protagonist uses fairy tales to write his own story, and the ending is lovely and moving.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan

You may know Mark Russell from his darker, socially aware re-imagining of the Flintstones, which made quite a splash on Tumblr with this post. Well, I had pleasure of meeting him at a local convention, and I finally got his comic re-imagining of Snagglepuss, also of Hanna-Barbera. He re-imagines the titular pink puma as a closeted gay playwright in the 50's dealing with McCarthyism. It's as wild as it sounds,but also really digs into the politics of the time, the struggle of standing against oppression and how art fights through suppression and censorship. It's tragic, hopeful, poignant and full of historical references. I enjoyed it ! Definitely be cautious if you're deeply disturbed by homophobia and suicide.

The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

A story about a teenage boy, Yoshiki, who realizes that his best friend and crush Hikaru has died and been replaced by a strange eldritch being who is imitating him. But, missing his loved one and desperate to cling to any piece of him, Yoshiki decides to keep on having a relationship with this mysterious entity. This book's horror is visceral and sublime, especially the bizarre, creepy, beautiful body horror involving the being who replaced Hikaru. It's an exploration of anxieties involving grief, relationships, and sexuality that hits just right, and the atmosphere layered with dread is top notch. I love me some messed up relationships and unknowable queer monsters, and this book delivers.

Chainsaw Man, Look Back and Goodbye Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto

Chainsaw Man needs no introduction, but I did end up really enjoying the story of the doggy-devil boy hunting other devils. It got so tragic and intense at the end, with lots of great surreal horror imagery and darkly funny moments. I'm impressed it went so hard, though the random powers that kept piling up made what was happening hard to follow at times, especially in fights. I'm also enjoying the current weird arc starring a class-A disaster girl and the demon sharing her body.

Look Back

I really do enjoy how Fuijimoto writes messy pre-teen/teenage girls. They ring so true. The manga follows the fraught friendship between two girls as they create manga, exploring the struggle of art mixing with real relationships, and how someone keeps creating after tragedy. It's a little hard to follow at times (especially since I have to differentiate the leads based on hairstyle), but it's a good read.

Goodbye Eri

Probably my least favorite of the three, but it's a fun read- a weird ride that examines the thin line between fiction and reality in art and makes good use of Fujimoto's cinephile background and signature gaslight gatekeep girlboss characters.

Is Love the Answer? by Uta Isaki

The story follows a teenage girl, Chika, who has always struggled with not being attracted to anyone. When Chika enters college, she meets queer people all across the spectrum of asexuality, and starts exploring her own identity. As an ace, this is the best story about asexuality that I've read. It was a nuanced look at asexuality and queerness and all the variations. Chika's journey and how she found her community was moving and poignant. It's a honest, moving look at relationships and identity, and how complicated and hard to define both of those things can be. I loved the moments of Chika imagining herself as an alien to explore and cope, and how she bonded with people through magical girl shows and other geekery. My favorite new manga of the year, it really connected with me!

The Girl that Can’t Get a Girlfriend by Mieri Hiranishi

Oh girl, I've been there. This is a fun autobiographical comic about a butch4butch lesbian's struggles finding a partner in a word that favors butch/femme, and it's just an honest look at the messiness of loneliness and relationships. I also appreciate that crushing on Haruka in Sailor Moon and becoming a HaruMichi stan was the beginning the author's queer awakening because uh...same! She has taste, and is truly relatable.

Qualia the Purple: The Complete Manga Collection by Hisamitsu Ueo and Shirou Tsunashima

See my review of the light novel here for my general thoughts on the story, since it's adapted pretty faithfully. I do think the manga is overall the best experience though, because the illustrations break up the detailed explanations of quantum mechanics a bit, and it includes a bit of extra content that fleshes things out, especially withthe ending.

The Single Life: 60 year old lesbian who is single and living alone by Akiko Morishima

Just like it says on the tin, this focuses on a 60-year-old single lesbian. And definitely the shortest thing on here, since only one 30 page chapter is out.  It's a grounded story about a woman looking back on her journey to finding her identity, touching on sexism in the workplace and other challenges. It paints a portrait of a proudly gay elder who's still perfectly content being single and feels fulfilled by the life she had rather than regretting past relationships. I definitely want to see more.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm by Hiromu Arakawa

Arakawa's latest, the story is about a boy who lives in a small village with his little sister is imprisoned and has to carry out a mysterious duty...but then the village is attacked, supernatural daemons awaken, and everything he knows might be wrong. I'm enjoying this fun romp so far! It delivers an really nice plot twist right out the gate (and an excellent subversion of the usual shonen "must-protect-my-saintly-sister" narratives). It boasts Arakawa's usual fun cast and interesting world (and cool ladies). There's some slight tone and pacing issues in the first part- there's so much time spent explaining mechanics the lead doesn't really get to react to his life turning upside down. But it starts smoothing out by the second volume. I'm excited to see what's next!

Superman: Space Age by Mark Russell and Michael Allred

This is a retelling of Superman set throughout the late fifties to early eighties that has Superman interact with the political and social upheaval of the time and question his own role in things. It explored the Superman mythos through a lot of cool new angles, and has a good Lois (why yes she would break Watergate) which is how I always measure a Superman adaptation. My one complaint is, while I liked some of the things it did with Batman, the ending with the Joker was pretty weak. The ending of the overall comic will also be bizarre for anyone not uses to how weird comics can get, but I think I dug it.

#DRCL by Shin'ichi Sakamoto

A manga retelling of Dracula that focuses on Mina as the protagonist and imagines the characters at an English prep school. It adds a lot of  diversity to the characters  and has exquisite, evocative art. I'm curious where it will go and what it  intends to do with all it's changes (especially Lucy), because right now it's mostly vibes and creepiness and the direction isn't clear.

[artsandculture]

Lake George Reflection (1921–1922) 🎨 Georgia O'Keeffe 🏛️ Private Collection 📍 Somewhere

Painted circa 1921-22, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George Reflection embodies the contradictions inherent in the artist’s best work which came to define her career and cement her legacy as one of the most enduring and intriguing figures in 20th-century American Art. Lake George Reflection, the most ambitious in scale of her works from the 1920s, is a meditation on the sublime, building upon the tradition of the 19th century Hudson River School artists who sought to capture the drama and beauty of the unspoiled landscape surrounding Lake George. Presented alternatively as both a vertical and horizontal composition, the work is an expression of the artist’s experimental thought process as she considered what it meant to be representational in an age of burgeoning abstraction in American Art. Horizontally, the painting exemplifies the boldly colorful landscapes which have become a hallmark of O’Keeffe’s career, foreshadowing the abstracted paintings of the New Mexico hills from her later years. When viewed vertically, as Lake George Reflection was first exhibited in 1923 at the Anderson Galleries, the infinite horizon shifts to a powerful vertical thrust, with the formerly symmetrical reflections of the landscape morphing into the interior folds of a magnified flower or echoing the bold and daring heights of a New York City skyscraper. This ambiguity of orientation results in a painting that is at once highly representational and wholly abstract, carefully constructed and malleable, and which defines the subtle power of O’Keeffe’s most dramatic and admired works. O’Keeffe signified the importance of certain works by including a hand-drawn star on the reverse or backing board; she noted this distinction on the verso of Lake George Reflection.

On June 10th, 1918, Georgia O’Keeffe moved to New York City. That August, she visited Lake George in the Hudson River Valley with Alfred Stieglitz, the influential photographer and art dealer twenty years her senior whom she would marry in 1924. On this first extended trip to the area, the Stieglitz family’s 36-acre retreat provided a welcome respite from the city, and one that afforded creative inspiration and freedom. “Stieglitz, like many urbanites then and now, also had a rural base, at Lake George in upstate New York, and every year he joined other members of the large family at his mother's home there. In August 1918, he was accompanied by O'Keeffe, who was warmly received by the mater familias and the sundry siblings, in-laws, and offspring of the Stieglitz tribe." (Georgia O'Keeffe, New York, 1991, p. 39) Over the next decade, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz frequently visited Lake George, spending most of every summer and early fall on the family compound, first at ‘Oaklawn’ and later at ‘The Hill.’ The landscape and its environs seemed to stimulate her creatively and she often referred to it as ‘perfect.’ The flora and fauna, and the relationship she developed with botanist Donald Davidson, a Stieglitz family cousin, provided veritable fertile ground for artistic discovery.

Just as Lake George exhilarated O’Keeffe, it also ushered in a period of creativity and artistic exploration for Stieglitz, allowing him to view the landscape through new eyes. “Although in earlier summers he had all but overlooked the landscape at his family’s home in Lake George, New York, he now began to photograph it, stimulated both by O’Keeffe’s infectious enthusiasm for the natural world and her own paintings of the area. Citing her ability to put ‘her experiences in paint,’ Stieglitz wrote that he too endeavored to ‘put his feelings into form’ in his photographs of the trees, barns, and buildings, as well as the landscape and clouds that surrounded him.” (B.B. Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe, 2001, pp. 26-27) Whether sparked by lively competition or simply that O’Keeffe’s admiration of the landscape invigorated Stieglitz, both artists created some of their most bold, dynamic and experimental imagery during this time. Barbara Buhler Lynes notes, “Stieglitz’s investigation of equivalence began in the early 1920s at Lake George. O’Keeffe was involved with a parallel effort, working with color as Stieglitz had worked with light. Both his photograph and her painting suggest grand panoramas and infinite distances, while at the same time that vastness is overridden by patterns of flat, undulating shapes.” (Georgia O’Keeffe, 2001, p. 38)

In addition to the myriad of visual delights that the great view from the property afforded, it would not have been lost on O’Keeffe that she was on hallowed artistic ground. “As any visitor to Lake George, then or now, she would have been more aware of its role as a popular tourist destination reaching back to the early 1800s. In the wake of the French and Indian War (1754-63) and the American Revolution (1775-83), it captivated the hearts and minds of Americans, who were increasingly nostalgic about their history. The 1826 publication of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans sealed Lake George’s fate as an American icon.” (Modern Nature: Georgia O’Keeffe and Lake George, p. 23). Many 19th century predecessors captured the autumnal foliage, verdant hills and crystalline lakes, putting forth a vision of the landscape as untouched and unspoiled. These Hudson River School depictions, often dramatized with sunrises and sunsets, emphasized the sublime in nature, a concept that would have no doubt interested O’Keeffe. “Over the past two centuries, the concept of the sublime—with its immediate sensation of awe inspiring infinite space and evocative color and light directly internalized to moments experienced in our own lives—has been substantially redefined by a small number of artists, writers, and critics, for whom it has become a vital source of spiritual values at times of increased secularism.” (Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of the Sublime, 2004, London, p. vii)

Seen as a landscape, Lake George Reflection is a meditation on the awesomeness of the open countryside of upstate New York found only a short distance from the hectic metropolis. Incorporating the groundbreaking experimentations from her early career, the rolling hills and water are depicted in the undulating forms so prevalent in O’Keeffe’s early abstractions of the previous decade. Similarly, the bulbous forms that line the foreground recall her abstract ‘Special’ series, also executed at Lake George a few years earlier. Taking these elements one step further, all is reflected, creating a virtual mirror image bifurcated by a dramatic horizontal cross-section. With its monumental scale, the resulting image echoes the images of sublimity in 19th-century art, which captured the grandeur of the landscape, an untouched splendor and a vastness seemingly born from the imagination. Lake George Reflection similarly suggests a landscape of infinite scale, confined by but not limited to the expanse of the canvas.

For the exhibition at Anderson Galleries in 1923, the first time Lake George Reflection was exhibited, O’Keeffe dictated that the painting be hung vertically. While the title suggests a certain formal interpretation to her work, the adjustment of orientation altered the viewer’s understanding of it, particularly when viewed in context with other work from the period. The change solely in orientation of Lake George Reflection, not to the painting, forces the viewer to understand the forms in a different manner. Marjorie Balge-Crozier describes this phenomenon in O’Keeffe’s works from this period, writing, “Manipulation of scale, depictions of fragments, precise lines and blurred edges, bold colors—all of these devices are used to create works that are emotional equivalents for her experiences. These are devices that can also elicit feelings of uncertainty, awe, and even terror in the spectator, whether one is looking at a close-up view of a flower or the splitting darkness of the Black Place. Paintings that are extremely minimal can appear at first as objects for calming meditation, then dissolve into uneasy questions of identity, with hills resembling body parts. In the end, the spectator is left with an equivalent sublime experience.” (Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of the Sublime, p. 103)

Particularly when understood vertically, Lake George Reflection encourages anthropomorphic comparisons. Sharyn Udall explains, “Some of her landscapes do contain forms that—perhaps without any conscious intention on her part—insist on some relationship to the body. At Lake George in 1919 O’Keeffe produced several paintings of bifurcated glowing forms that begin as landscape but become increasingly abstract.” (Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of the Sublime, p. 118) As a vertical work, the painting most closely relates to her magnified flower imagery, which she was simultaneously exploring. In works such as Flower Abstraction (1924, Whitney Museum of American Art), undulating lines and soft coral tones are quite clearly evocative of the delicate petals of a flower but the cragged vertical white line serves to bisect the image, echoing the compositional format of Lake George Reflection. Other more abstract works from the period, including Music—Pink and Blue No. 1 (1918, Seattle Art Museum) which was also in the Anderson Galleries show of 1923 and Grey Line with Lavender and Yellow (1923, Metropolitan Museum of Art), are similarly suggestive.

While O’Keeffe’s works, such as Lake George Reflection and her iconic flower paintings, seem to inherently suggest comparisons with the human form, something she patently rejected, the evolution of O’Keeffe from daring female Modernist to a sexualized media sensation was undoubtedly fostered, if not masterminded by Stieglitz. Beginning in 1918, he created a series of photographs which depicted O’Keeffe in the nude. “As art critic Henry McBride put it: ‘It made a stir. Mona Lisa got one portrait of herself worth talking about. O’Keeffe got a hundred. It put her on the map. Everybody knew the name. She became what is known as a newspaper personality.’ Moreover these photographs forged the first public image of O’Keeffe. She was seen as a sexually liberated, modern woman, and this idea of her became a visual equivalent of Stieglitz’s ardent and ongoing promotion of O’Keeffe’s art as a direct manifestation of her sexuality.” (B.B. Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe, 2001)

Regardless of the source of these intimate connotations attributed to her most admired artwork, Lake George Reflection reflects the pictorial strategies that O'Keeffe developed as an avant-garde American Modernist: interest in a type of heightened realism that pushes an image to the edge of abstraction. It is this near abstraction that evokes the mystical and spiritual qualities that O'Keeffe associated with her organic subjects and which are the source of their strength. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp emphasizes the role of Lake George Reflection in pioneering this element of O’Keeffe’s best work, explaining, "In the spring of 1923, O'Keeffe incorporated Stieglitz's cloud motif into a pair of abstractions redolent of her earlier interest in Art Nouveau, Pink Moon and Blue Lines and Red Lines. Pink Moon and Blue Lines returns to a palette of magenta, lemon, and aqua arrayed in vertical waves on either side of a pink moon on a deep blue ground. She knew she was breaking down aesthetic barriers. Later, she said, 'When I entered the art world…you weren't supposed to paint yellow…and pink pictures.' Red Lines shows vertical waves of pale blue and buttressing columns of deep red divided by a think pink line. Both compositions derive from O'Keeffe's bisected canvases of the Lake George horizon, but upended. This technique began in her show with the vertical display of Lake George Reflection, a predictable landscape except that the horizon line runs up and down and is enlivened with pastel bubbles. Collector Peggy Guggenheim admitted that she could not decide which way to hang it. Studying photographs taken from various perspectives was enhancing O'Keeffe's ability to paint pictures that could be interpreted in multiple ways--paintings that could be hung vertically or horizontally." (Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, New York, 2004, p. 219) Painted at the height of O’Keeffe’s most courageous and innovative creative output, Lake George Reflection confirms her prowess as a master colorist, daring modernist, avant-garde thinker and provocateur.

[mulberry1104]

2023 Books/Series/Author of the year

1. Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books. Very fun space opera, very good if you like space politics. Refreshingly minimal combat, even in the book where the main character is a professional soldier whose stated end goal is “kill the ruler of the largest interstellar civilisation in the known galaxy.” Also, the aesthetics and vibes of it is very unique in a very wonderful way, it doesn’t feel like any sci-fi I’ve seen or read, perhaps apart from a very small amount of Dune. Also, the presentation of gender identity in the books is very interesting, and the contrast between Hwaean and Radchaai gender identities is deeply interesting to me.

2. Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb books. This books put my brain through the wringer. Beautiful prose, beautiful story, compelling characters. Incredibly complex worldbuilding. Just. Mwah. Also they are gay and they are so gay and it’s just so gay, I love it. And women with swords.

3. Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries. Honestly, the only reason why these books are in third place is because the entries above are so damn good (this applies to all of them). The queer rep? Sublime. The autistic rep? Phenomenal. Even though I do sound insane when I say I relate with the character called “Murderbot”. Also ART and Murderbot have an amazing dynamic and, honestly, I just love them. Another thing! Books are nice and short, so you don’t have to fret too hard about reading them.

4. The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman. Some of the most immersive worldbuilding I’ve read since Discworld, and it is surprisingly deep without being presented in a way that’s overblown on the exposition. Additionally, the magic system, especially the tattoos, is something I’ve not seen really done before, and the world’s politics are fascinating. Also, one of the main characters is confirmed gay and she has a sword and cool ravens, need I say more?

5. Megan E. O’Keefe’s Bound Worlds. Good duology so far, maybe a bit too fast paced at times. The romance is sweet, but very fast, but I didn’t find myself really that put off by it. She doesn’t waste words. The queer rep is good as well, and is delightfully understated. They don’t make a big thing about some of the characters being non binary, it’s just, a thing that’s part of the world and no one cares.

[ladyjuquia]

❝I fear I have been Isolted now for the second time.❞ - Tristan, Gottfried von Straßburg

Art by @leletosu

Here are my Takes on both Isoldes! I felt like sooner or later it’s gonna happen that I will create a Design for all the major Characters from the Tristan Legend, haha.

Unlike my Gottfried Tristan whose appearance is only based on Gottfried von Straßburgs „Tristan“ the two Isoldes are a fusion of many different depictions combined with my own interpretation and take of them!

While it is said that Isolde Weißhand has dark hair there is also a mention that she looks very similar (in some points) to Isolde from Ireland/La Belle Isolde. So I just decided to go with dark blonde hair in contrast to La Belles Strawberry Blonde!

I also used more story telling on Weißhand with the two roses. It is said that blue roses stand for unrequited love and yellow roses for envy or jealousy. Green is also often associated with Jealousy or Envy, so this is just to summarise her Character Arc in most Myths!

La Belle Isolde was a real obstacle to find a expression that fits her strongwilled personality and her calculating and yet very sublime Aura. So there was more work on her overall than Isolde Weißhand. Especially to capture her natural Beauty but yet let her appear like a Queen. Both Isoldes are royal but Isolde from Ireland seems way more powerful in appearance as a whole, haha.

[disco-elysium-via-polls]

🎵 The Insulindian Miracle

BACKYARD WALL - Just an ordinary wall. Nothing to see here.

[Conceptualization - Impossible 18] Why am I looking at this wall?

+2 In the dimming light, some things become clearer. +1 You have a keen aesthetic sensibility. +2 Cindy's artistic impulses are infectious. +1 Dresscode: Pseudo-SKULL.

This is the most bonuses we can get on this check.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Impossible: Success] - Because -- you see it, finally -- this wall is *sublime*! LOOK AT IT! The shadows, the colours...

(Let the conceptual joy flow into your pupils and blossom into thoughts in your brain.)

CONCEPTUALIZATION - All the other walls on all the other houses must make a pilgrimage in adoration of this, the uncontested pinnacle of wall-craft. Colour peeled from the very face of god.

More!

CONCEPTUALIZATION - O WALLFATHER!

+1 Morale

"Kim! I *must* paint this wall, add even MORE beauty to it."

No. There is nothing to add to perfection. (Back off.)

KIM KITSURAGI - "Huh?"

EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] - He sounds tired of it all.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - You already have the heavy fuel oil to use as paint -- it's red! -- and Cindy the SKULL has a paintbrush. This is on.

"First, I know you're tired, Kim, but take another look at this wall. Draw *nourishment* from its beauty."

"I already have the paint. Just need to get a paintbrush from Cindy the SKULL."

KIM KITSURAGI - "Mhm, sure." The lieutenant looks up at the wall reluctantly, then back at you.

"I already have the paint. Just need to get a paintbrush from Cindy the SKULL."

KIM KITSURAGI - He sighs, then adds in a resigned tone: "If you must."

New task: Add even more beauty to the wall

[Leave.]

Hey, Cindy?

CINDY THE SKULL - "Hello again, officers. Have you come to admire my mural?"

6. "Cindy, I'm going to need your paintbrush.""

CINDY THE SKULL - "What for?"

"I'm doing renovation. It's boring, but necessary."

"For my motor carriage. We're going undercover."

"The apocalypse is coming. I need to warn people."

"For art. It's for art, okay?"

CINDY THE SKULL - "But boring. You're not using my lovely brush to spread boredom."

2. "For my motor carriage. We're going undercover."

CINDY THE SKULL - "I ain't helping no pigs fool honest, upstanding citizens. I'm not an *antisocial element*."

3. "The apocalypse is coming. I need to warn people."

+1 Apocalypse Cop

CINDY THE SKULL - "What do you think I'm trying to paint here -- a mural for a better tomorrow? Why do you really need it?"

4. "For art. It's for art, okay?"

CINDY THE SKULL - "Well, if it's for *art*... But..." Her eyes narrow to slits. "What kind of art are we talking about?"

"To be honest, I haven't really thought of anything yet… But I'm sure I will."

"Everything is sad and shit and we need art to make it okay. Just give me the brush."

"*Grand* art. Art DeLuxe. The artsy-est, the most ground breaking, the..."

+1 Sorry Cop

CINDY THE SKULL - "Sounds like you're just about to live out your self pity, not make a statement. I can't have shit art on my conscience."

"Cool. No brush then. Not a problem."

"You'll see. You will *all* see and tremble."

"To crush a man's dreams like that… I hope you're happy."

CINDY THE SKULL - "Yeah... Not gonna hold my breath, piggy. You look like you'd suck. At... everything really," she quickly adds.

This check has a -2 *penalty* for the SKULL-fit. Better change.

HALF LIGHT- Tremble. THE TIME IS NOW. τὰ ὅλα.

What time?

Yeah... I don't think the time is *now*. Later maybe. [Leave.]

HALF LIGHT- Time for THE SHOW. For τὰ ὅλα. The hallowed time of fear and disintegration. A countdown has begun. All will collapse on itself. The world will disappear into a single grain of blackness. All sound will be muted. All life will scream.

What time?

τὰ ὅλα? What's that?

Wait, wait -- when did this *countdown* begin?

This is because of the insane world-ending I've been saying isn't it? (Proceed.)

Yeah... I don't think the time is *now*. Later maybe. [Leave.]

HALF LIGHT- οῦ λόγου δ' ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν.

3. Wait, wait -- when did this *countdown* begin?

HALF LIGHT- Monday morning. The moment you arrived in this reality. You are the first crack in the sheer face of god. From you it will spread.

5. Yeah... I don't think the time is *now*. Later maybe. [Leave.]

HALF LIGHT - No. You cannot *leave*. The countdown has not yet reached XERO.

4. This is because of the insane world-ending I've been saying isn't it? (Proceed.)

HALF LIGHT - Yes. You spoke the words of the παλίντροπος, and the houses of Perikarnassis. Items, people, even WORDS will tumble, all will lose its meaning in the coming years. That is why you marked yourself.

Am I sure it's not just a joke, or some kind of coping mechanism?

I'm... a little afraid.

I *do* think the world might end soon. (Opt in.)

Uhm… yeah, I'm going to opt out of the 'παλίντροπος' whatever it is. This was a mistake. (Opt out.)

HALF LIGHT - It's *totally* also a coping mechanism.

2. I'm... a little afraid.

HALF LIGHT - So you should be. The world island crumbles at your feet and in the far plain -- παλίντροπος.

VOLITION [Trivial: Success] - Perhaps -- just a thought -- this has something to do with the hangover?

3. I *do* think the world might end soon. (Opt in.)

HALF LIGHT - The face of the woman fractures. There will be herd killing. We all become vapour.

Thought gained: Cop of the Apocalypse

COP OF THE APOCALYPSE

Temporary research bonus: -1 Rhetoric: Rambling madness Research time: 6h 55 m

You woke up in a hotel room and started rambling about the end of the world. It's not your normal everyday doom-crying, either. Something truly colossal is approaching -- the Gloaming. The Culling. The Bloodletting of Unimaginable Proportions. Until now you've been *pleasantly* vague about the precise nature of this cataclysm. No more! Put the Bloodletting on the burner and *really* figure out what's threatening the fragile physical reality you just found yourself in.

6. [Conceptualization - Impossible 18] Attempt to explain your artistic intentions.

+1 You're aware of Cindy's living conditions.

This... still doesn't seem very doable, but I guess there's nothing for it but to try.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Impossible: Failure] - They do say the painter always paints his own portrait.

"I'm going to paint a self-portrait, but sort of, you know, *from the inside*, to show people what it's like."

Man, that's lame...

CONCEPTUALIZATION - No-no. It's great.

"I'm going to paint a self-portrait, but sort of, you know, *from the inside*, to show people what it's like."

CINDY THE SKULL - "That's pretty fucked up, even for you, piggo."

"Stop belittling me, Cindy!"

"What if I add some interpretive dance?"

"Okay, I won't do that. Please just give me some paint and a brush. I need to do some art."

CINDY THE SKULL - "Stop quivering like jello, then you won't get fucked."

-1 Morale

VOLITION [Easy: Success] - But that would mean he *doesn't* say every pathetic thing that pops in his head.

2. "What if I add some interpretive dance?"

CINDY THE SKULL - She looks you up and down. "I think everyone would rather you didn't."

3. "Okay, I won't do that. Please just give me some paint and a brush. I need to do some art."

CINDY THE SKULL - "You're a real sad sack, you know that? Go ahead, then." She drops the paintbrush at your feet. "Art it up. Just try not to hurt yourself. And *no self portraits*."

"Thanks, Cindy." (Pick up the brush.)

Item gained: Cindy's brush

CINDY THE SKULL - "Sure, any time. Us *shit* artists have to help one another." She looks down at the wall and frowns. "Besides, I was out of fuel oil anyway."

AUTHORITY [Easy: Success] - She only gave it to you because she doesn't see you as competition.

As implied here, Cindy will actually *not* give us the brush if we succeed in impressing her here.

CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Success] - The right idea is not coming to her. It's excruciating.

You know what you've got in that fuel canister you scavenged from your Kineema? Red-dyed heavy fuel oil. Paint and a brush -- you're ready to do this.

6. "Catch you later, Cindy." [Leave.]

CINDY'S BRUSH

A paintbrush belonging to Cindy the Skull, an aspiring artist. Its bristles smell nauseatingly of heavy fuel oil. Specks of red, orange, and green paint cover the aluminium ferrule.

We won't paint the wall right now, but we're also going to very quickly talk to Joyce while we're out here.

JOYCE MESSIER - "You're back. Good." She takes a sip from her silvery thermal cup. "What can I help you with?"

2. "So I've been dealing with Evrart again..."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Hmh," she nods with well-contained curiosity.

VOLITION [Trivial: Success] - She's not even asking you anything. It's so easy to just say...

4. "He asked me to open a door."

JOYCE MESSIER - "A referral, you mean? I take it this was for someone in the RCM..." She waves her hand. "Don't answer that."

DRAMA [Challenging: Success] - My liege, this woman has half-convinced herself already. All it would take is a little nudge...

"Yes, a referral."

"No, I mean like a real door. To someone's house."

JOYCE MESSIER - She nods, carefully, as though handling a match near a powder keg. "Such referrals may sometimes get you information from a man like Evrart," she says, raising an eyebrow. "Did it?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "Detective, I advise you to be *very* selective with what information you choose to share. This may have consequences beyond our line-of-sight."

"The Union's militant wing organized the lynching."

"Evrart says the Wild Pines sent mercenaries after the Union -- and now one's dead."

"Evrart asked the Union's militant wing to fully cooperate with the investigation."

"I told him about the mercenary tribunal -- he didn't seem too worried."

"That's all I've got to say."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Yes," she leans slightly closer: "That's the talk about town. The *Hardie boys* they're called..." A crooked smile returns to her face. "I find the name rather amusing, honestly."

2. "Evrart says the Wild Pines sent mercenaries after the Union -- and now one's dead."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Misinformation..." She shakes her head vigorously. "This is all because we haven't shared information on the lynching yet. See, already the adversary uses it to their advantage. Don't let him."

"Hurry up on that probe. The moment you tell me you're finished at the traffic jam, I will *gladly* tell you the company's side of the story."

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - She must really want you to look into the drugs -- otherwise she'd tell you.

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - She was *worried* for a moment. That she's overplayed her hand by not sharing info sooner. Then she settles down, curious to hear more.

Didn't we already do that? This may have been the wrong dialogue.

3. "Evrart asked the Union's militant wing to fully cooperate with the investigation."

JOYCE MESSIER - "How benevolent," she thinks for a second. "Hopefully they'll help you sort this whole business out... if they haven't already?"

KIM KITSURAGI - "While we appreciate your assistance, ma'am, I'm afraid we can't discuss the specifics of an ongoing investigation with you."

JOYCE MESSIER - She nods. "That is only fair."

"I have reason to believe the lynching was a cover-up."

"I've said all I can."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Oh my... *very* interesting. So the militant wing is protecting one of their own..."

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - Her mind races to the conclusion that most benefits her interests. That doesn't mean she's wrong, though.

JOYCE MESSIER - "It looks like you may untie this knot yet!" Her eyes smile and a tingle runs down your spine.

+5 XP

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] - There's something in you that really likes the way she's looking at you just now.

+1 Morale

4. "I told him about the mercenary tribunal -- he didn't seem too worried."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Brinkmanship -- or sabre-rattling... Was he surrounded by *Union men* he wanted to impress?"

LOGIC [Medium: Success] - No. It was more like he wanted things to get *worse* -- in secret of course.

"We were alone. And he seems very sure of his ability to keep things in control."

"He wasn't trying to impress anyone. I think he *wants* things to escalate."

"You're right. He was probably just showing off to me."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Or he wants you and me to *believe* he wants to go to war."

DRAMA [Challenging: Success] - Of course. Brinkmanship takes showmanship. We should have seen it before, in his office. He might well have been performing for us.

KIM KITSURAGI - "There's always that risk, ma'am. But if I may offer my opinion..."

"He means it."

"I think he may have just been messing with us."

"Kim's right. I'm pretty sure he meant it."

JOYCE MESSIER - "I'll think it over, detective. Thank you for relaying this information to me."

+5 XP

VOLITION [Medium: Success] - She tries to hide it, but some *great doubt* is spreading within her. There is a crown slowly cracking above her head.

What's this *great doubt* you're talking about?

"Ma'am? Is everything alright?"

VOLITION - You can't say. Only that she's hiding the magnitude of it from you.

"Ma'am? Is everything alright?"

JOYCE MESSIER - "What? Yes, of course. Everything's fine. Perhaps there's more gossip you'd like to share?"

5. "That's all I've got to say."

JOYCE MESSIER - "What you've said is quite enough. You have given me a lot to consider -- and may have helped me prevent this conflict from escalating."

SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] - Hear that, hero? Feels good, doesn't it? You should relay confidential information more often.

5. "He asked me to deliver an envelope."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Sounds like he has you running errands, detective. A well-established dominance ritual..." She thinks. "Where did he have you deliver it?"

"To a nameless settlement, down the coast. Nearby."

"Nowhere. Let's change the topic."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Ah yes, I've been meaning to go there..." She looks over the bay.

EMPATHY [Trivial: Success] - With longing... clear and simple longing. Strange. Why does she want to go there?

"He wants to build a youth centre here. For the children of Martinaise."

"You're quite fond of this village, aren't you?"

"So you're sad you can't buy the place?" (Conclude.)

JOYCE MESSIER - "A youth centre with Edgar Claire's statue on top of it..." Her eyes run across the water, remorsefully.

"Go ahead, help him. Make it so. I have no power to stop him."

2. "You're quite fond of this village, aren't you?"

JOYCE MESSIER - "I should be." She nods -- there's that crooked smile again. "In my youth I had a brief dalliance here in Martinaise. He was an older man, with impossibly broad shoulders..."

"He's probably dead by now -- even his shack is long gone… not that it matters. These buildings are all carbon copies of one another."

"When you were a teen? *Slumming* it, like you told me before?"

"You've been to Martinaise before?"

JOYCE MESSIER - "I'm glad to see your *short-term* memory appears intact. In any case, I wasn't a *teen* anymore, I would have been in my early twenties. I remember a distinctly *vile* disco track..."

"Disco isn't vile."

"Disco *is* vile."

"Sounds like you miss those times."

JOYCE MESSIER - "It is -- but not as vile as me..." She looks over the bay, her green eyes shining.

"Sounds like you miss those times."

JOYCE MESSIER - "Not overly so. It's not like this was the only place we visited -- me and my girlfriends from Ozonne with our shiny boats, like reavers..."

"We told ourselves we were the worst thing to happen to the coast since the Coalition landed in '08. Imagine!" She tosses her head.

EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - Oh no -- she's sentimental all right.

"If you say so."

JOYCE MESSIER - "I'm over-radiated, Harry," she sprouts. "I do silly things sometimes -- out of pale-related illness. Like take this job. The moral of the story is..." she lists:

RHETORIC [Medium: Success] - So it was a factor in her coming to Martinaise in the first place? Interesting.

JOYCE MESSIER - "Do not spend 22 days a year in pale transit, don't waste your twenties slumming it with your stupid friends, and don't deliver Evrart Claire's mail." Her bony finger is pointed like an arrow at your chest...

"Are you satisfied, detective? What else can you tell me about your *mail delivery quest* for Evrart? Do you think it will *improve* the place?"

+5 XP

3. "So you're sad you can't buy the place?" (Conclude.)

JOYCE MESSIER - "Yes. I'm sad I will never have the time, detective -- I've always wanted a dilapidating fishing village."

RHETORIC [Easy: Success] - She is more defensive about it than usual.

JOYCE MESSIER - "Full of ghosts and ancient memories." She smiles. "Has this errand yielded you any... information?"

6. "I'd rather talk about something else for now, if you don't mind." (Conclude.)

JOYCE MESSIER - "Of course, detective," she simmers down. "You can always drop by later, should something come up -- now, what else can I do you for?"

8. "Thank you. That's all for now." [Leave.]

THOUGHT COMPLETE: MOTORWAY SOUTH

BONUSES: All Intellect White checks unlocked +1 Inland Empire: The swallowing motion

SOLUTION: The lone vector stretches in your mind’s eye into the wild pale yonder. For an unimaginable distance, forgetting, forgetting... Until you can no longer remember anything – no cities, no mountains, no oceans. And finally – no vector. Nothing remains. A blank space with no point of reference, where only one type of motion is possible. The motion of a human throat, swallowing. And then it comes to you: to reach the end of the Motorway South is to be *unborn*. You've had this thought before while aimlessly wandering the streets of Jamrock. A lost piece of the man you were. A dark hope.

This unlocked the checks to open the Cargo Container Door, get Gaston's sandwich, and identify the source of the Expression.

Ok, let's do the thing we actually *voted* on.

🎵 Whirling-in-Rags, 8PM

We have reasons to talk to basically everyone here. But first, there's someone we *weren't* expecting...

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Hi, gendarme. Another rendezvous." There he is again -- the smoker on the balcony! Right here in the Whirling-in-Rags.

+5 XP

"Hi."

"Hello."

"You're here!"

[Leave.]

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "I see you've found yourself a little something from my wardrobe." He scans you. "Not bad, not bad at all. What brings you here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Tell me again about that *muscular type* who came to investigate the crime."

"I met your Sunday friend."

[Composure - Legendary 14] What is it about the way he carries himself?

"About the hat and the robe I'm wearing..."

[Leave.]

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Admiring the atmosphere..." He smiles. "What about you, officer?"

"I live here, my room is right upstairs."

"I'm here to kick some ass and solve the case I'm working on."

"I don't know what I'm doing here. I just go wherever life takes me."

Unfortunately we cannot tell him we're here for *karaoke*, because we have already done that.

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Well, here's to you!" He raises a glass, before taking a sip of his drink, froth grazing his mouth.

2. "Tell me again about that *muscular type* who came to investigate the crime."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Oh, yes... let's see. He knocked on my door a few days after the lynching. I think he was going through the entire building, asking questions."

"What did you tell him?"

"What did he look like?"

"Was he alone?"

"Besides *muscular*, did he have any other identifying traits?"

"Thanks for the information."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Nothing. That I didn't see anything."

"And he believed you?"

"Did you tell him about your friend?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Why shouldn't he?"

"Did you tell him about your friend?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - He takes another drag of his cigarette before knitting his brows. "What friend?"

"Your Sunday friend, the witness."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "No, I don't think it came up."

2. "What did he look like?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Muscular. Handsome." He shrugs nonchalantly. "Strong. Like one of those military types."

3. "Was he alone?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Yes, but he was speaking to someone on his earpiece."

"His earpiece?"

"What was he saying?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Yes, you know those tiny speaker-microphones that fancy security guards sometimes wear."

"What was he saying?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Just reporting back whatever I was telling him."

4. "Besides *muscular*, did he have any other identifying traits?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Oh, let me think..." He turns his eyes upward in recollection. "He had an accent. He sounded like one of those mercenaries."

"He sounded vaguely Oranjese." He closes his eyes. "No, not vaguely, scratch that. He sounded *definitely* Oranjese."

5. "Thanks for the information."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Sure. Anything else on your mind?" His lazy eyes stroll over your face.

3. "I met your Sunday friend."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "You did?" A small smile adorns his face. "And how did you like him?"

"You were right, he was magical. Magically bureaucratic."

"I didn't like him as much as I like you."

"I didn't. He's a government official. I don't trust governments."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Aw, shoot." He bursts out laughing. "Why not?"

"Who is he?"

"What are you, you two?"

"Why was he staying at your place in the middle of night?"

"I don't want to talk about other people, I want to talk about you."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "A visitor from the first world. He's not like you and me, gendarme." He smiles and his smile seems melancholic. "He can always return."

"Return where?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "To his opportunities in Occident, Sur-la-Clef. Still..." He breathes in and keeps his lungs filled for a moment, before letting it out. "His coming and going brings some life to the village."

"Or is it just money, I don't know..." He stares at the bar.

2. "What are you, you two?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Friends, I told you. Sunday friends. Friends who like to get together from time to time."

"What does it mean -- a Sunday friend?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - He sighs: "That he won't be there when times get tough, I guess."

"Is that even a friend?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "It is -- on Sundays." He smiles.

3. "Why was he staying at your place in the middle of night?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "He has keys. And he likes the view..." He waves gently with his cigarette-holding hand. "To the sea, I mean."

4. "I don't want to talk about other people, I want to talk about you."

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Hmm?" He hums. "What about me, gendarme?"

5. "About the hat and the robe I'm wearing…"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "You can keep it, I don't mind. I can appreciate beauty when I see it."

"I wasn't really planning on giving it back anyway."

"Thanks. It's like carrying a piece of you with me at all times."

"I took it to blend in. I'm undercover, you see?"

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Is it now?" He starts laughing. "Well, enjoy it."

4. [Composure - Legendary 14] What is it about the way he carries himself?

+1 He's so different.

COMPOSURE [Legendary: Failure] - It's the sports, he's a sports guy, all about that physical prowess and athletic skill... Nothing else here.

6. [Leave.]

SMOKER ON THE BALCONY - "Bye-bye, gendarme."

A woman's hand wrote yesterday's menu. Today's starts in a man's writing.

GARTE, THE CAFETERIA MANAGER - "Ah, 'Smallest Church in Saint-Saëns,' right?" The cafeteria manager is waiting for you to acknowledge that he recognized the song.

[santoschristos]

Sun and Moon She was the sun that in her light scattered through each corner with the force of her love, she was fire, embers of a campfire burning in desires, in pleasure, in delusions, in madness... A volcano that in its stride melted my skin, my desire, my need.

I was the moon that at nights bathed his body in the reflections of my inspiration, I spent long hours keeping him company with my letters, with the flow of ink of my feather unleashed the chains of my hands to fly to his chest, to his belly, up to the warmth of its nest.

She was the sun, her beauty was breathtaking, exquisite and sublime, consuming all the air of my lungs in just a few minutes, disarmed the rigidity of my veins in the ceaseless impulses of her movements until reaching the peace of my agitated tremors and fluttering between her fingers each one of the drops of my sweat.

I was the moon, hid its secret, its mysteries in my silence for days, I moved away and returned in a different face, did not want to give in and sometimes escaped as if I were a thief of its encounter, because whenever I could love her, she in her magnitude of star achieved the best beats of my heart. --When Flames of Love Become Ashes

The sun and the moon art by David Shannon

[titles-for-tangents]

Listen

I think Chappell Roan kickstarted an artistic movement overnight. I mean this performance straight up struck a chord. Of course any good artist will inspire more art, but the sheer flood of illustrative art of her I’ve seen on Twitter earlier this afternoon and how so few of it appears to be on tumblr - there are SO many artists out there all finding inspiration in Roan’s MTV performance from last night and all of them are capturing her gaze and stance differently and extremely well. She is making people feel things, and process much, much more.

I haven’t seen a musician this artistically precise with her costume choices since Lady Gaga, and Roan is being even more precise about it, I would say. In Lady Gaga’s earlier years especially, she dressed just slightly veering off the “cute, blonde, young, female musician,” path to keep everyone on their toes, guessing, and at a proper distance, and all the while she was thematically exploring the concept of fame at a time when it had for so many years been so goddamn commercialized and processed. *chef’s kiss* The timing was genius and couldn’t have been more perfect. While I’ve not been paying attention to what most celebrities have been up to as of late, I get a strong impression Chappell Roan just reintroduced the medieval fashion craze from the past year/year and half-ish(?) to the larger pop public mindset. We’ve seen it at one of the recent Met galas where the theme was basically Medieval Western European Catholicism, and this is keeping in perfect theme with Roan’s album art for her single “Good Luck, Babe!” And while it’s easy to say she’s always been this precise with her appearance, Chappell Roan came, slapped, slayed, and pretty much obliterated everyone else as a musician and an artist. The biggest difference I noticed is that while overall everyone else looked fine and more or less how you can expect (Sabrina Carpenter in particular looked stunning!) Chappell Roan and her team captured what it was like to appear beautiful.

Roan’s outfits captured something timeless, ethereal, and sublime, and all the photos and portraits that were taken of her featured her facial expressions ranging anywhere from the kind of tragic, somber beauty captured in a pre-Raphaelite painting to a strong, stern look devoted to slicing everything and everyone in her path. She and her makeup and costume team had these looks honed like a knife. I’ve seen tags for both “Roan of Arc” and “Julie D’Aubigny” and used them myself; the key here is that instead of simply evoking Catholic oppression and suffering, Roan is evoking themes of queer liberation. Liberation from the way of life that other people choose for you and expect of you is possible, even amongst an oppressive, medieval, Catholic aesthetic.

But let us not forget what “Good Luck, Babe!” is actually about. Chappell Roan’s knightly costume on stage invites us to think about the tale of Julie d’Aubrigny, but the actions she takes on stage and the background set design present us with a very different ending for what would otherwise be a rescue mission. Instead of burning down a convent where her lover is trapped, Roan sets aflame what is presumably the castle of an upperclass nobleman - the golden birdcage her lover has chosen over her, the safe option, the far less satisfying option, instead of the passionate relationship they had together. Roan as the narrator approaches the audience with an army of men - noticeably all men - and shoots an arrow tipped with fire brimming with flames as hurt and furious as her heart is right into the very heart of the castle. We can presume her lover is inside but whether or not she is, the effect is still the same. Roan drops to her knees and comes to grips with loss. What they had was real and they both knew it, but without her lover’s devotion true, their love could never blossom. More specifically and historically typical to the queer experience, her lover was uncomfortable and wishy-washy about being in a relationship with our narrator in general, but like a shitty partner didn’t quite want to break up with her either and so strung her along and delayed taking any action at all, until she left her behind entirely in the most cutting way possible.

The message Roan sends is blatantly clear: “Your ‘safe’ option isn’t nearly as safe as you think it is.” And yet many of the song’s lyrics can be applied to our narrator herself here: she literally shoots her shot - a flaming arrow - into a symbol of patriarchal, feudalistic society’s top prize - her lover’s husband’s castle and all the social standing that comes with it - but one arrow is all it takes for our narrator to halt her crusade (for the time being anyway) and watch as her lover’s new world burns down. Her men and the knights of her lover fall dead from bloody battle behind her, and she is the only one left upright with her broken heart, spurned, abandoned, and scorned, but now utterly alone.

This entire, powerful tale is told in about four minutes or less. The male dancers behind Roan skillfully leap and swing their swords with surprisingly no audible clanging. The iron bars catch fire in perfect symmetry, and massive, projected explosions burst upwards from behind the castle walls. Smoke machines capture the hazy, burning atmosphere by the false night’s end. The entire audience just witnessed the climax to a play on par with anything written by Shakespeare, and those privileged enough to be in the front seat stretch out their hands hoping to be touched by her. Roan stays in character and doesn’t oblige, her character staring out into a future without her lover. The entire theater is shrieking with delight.

Finally, some good, fucking entertainment. I haven’t seen anything quite this compelling since Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” performance in the 90’s. I would be surprised if a massive amount of fanfiction wasn’t written about this in the coming months - I certainly will be on the happy lookout for more artists’ interpretations of her costumes. Much like Roan’s narrator suggests to her lover, this is going to be one hard act to follow without true devotion to one’s craft, and given she focused her performance around a single that was released after her main album was, I think we can safely agree the next coming acts are going to be nothing short of enthralling.

[kikuism]

mariam! how's the goldfinch so far, are you liking it? is it interesting? ( or well, guess you could always answer once you've done with it ) i had started reading it but then put it on hold ( for fall 🍂 lol )

hi res! i just finished it about an hour ago, been collecting my thoughts...it was very good. donna tartt has such beautiful prose, there were so many bits i highlighted, she really has a way of capturing such specific feelings/sensations so well. her writing's just sublime, this was a true master at work. esp after the previous four books i'd read, which were total duds, this was a breath of crisp mountain air for me (not surprising, since i devoured the secret history). i really enjoyed the large colorful cast of characters and meditations on art and art history, which i'm a huge fan of. i think the first two chapters are just. Excellent. there's a slow, meandering feeling as you're reading, along with a sense of paranoia pulsing just underneath the surface that's just. so good. and makes you keep reading on and on and on. i loved how it was part suspense novel, part coming of age story. however, i will say not all of it was as equally engaging; some bits i felt my interest wane just a bit. i personally enjoyed the first half more than the second half, but i really loved the overall message of the book, as someone who's deeply entranced with old paintings and any old piece of art, whether it's a painting or a play or a novel. i love that we can read something or look at something that was created so long ago and like...all that distance and time just vanishes, you become a part of its immortality, along with all the others who came before you hundreds of years ago. it's so beautiful to me, that humanity is connected to each other like that. i loved that a lot.

this is the longest book i've read this year at nearly 800 pages, and i took my slow, sweet time reading it (12 days), which is something i've never done before...usually i get through a book relatively quickly, but for this one, it just made sense. it was 12 chapters, and they were very long chapters. i'd read when i woke up and before going to sleep, and i feel like that was the best way to do it ... i really felt like i was going on a journey through theo's life. like it was just a totally different reading experience for me, i can't quite explain it, there was no....pressure. like it was really just me and donna tartt’s exquisite writing. it felt like going through a box of fancy chocolates, having one piece a day. i knew i had to savor this experience. it felt quite lavish and like i was spoiling myself, going so slowly. maybe it was the sheer length i just gave in to, buckled myself in for the long ride. it made me realize it's actually quite fun to read a long book and i shouldn't be intimidated of them. so for me, half the fun of reading the goldfinch was not just the beautiful prose and entertaining story but also the experience of reading itself. now that i'm done with it, i feel like i've woken from a deep slumber, like what now? i'll definitely let this one steep for a while before starting my next read.

so out of the two donna tartt books i've read, i will say, overall, i prefer the secret history! for its overall cohesion and atmosphere. but i'm very glad i read this, it'd been on my tbr for years and i finally got to it at the right time.

[mythicamagic]

Bellissima - Ikevamp - a Leonardo oneshot

Leonardo/MC fluff. (I went with using MC's canon name) For you! @ochrosia

Word count: 1,000. Rated T. Implied post-coital bliss.

Summary: He wakes early to enjoy her.

---

Warmth. That's how he'd describe waking every morning since she'd come into his life. The full circumference of whiskey hues and sun-washed surfaces of his chaotic room met his sleepy gaze. He'd forgotten to close the curtains last night, and dawn greeted him as a consequence. Leonardo awoke slowly, squinting against the glare. There was no need to rush when time meant nothing to him- but he turned all the same- fully relaxing when a fall of autumnal-coloured hair met his nose, confirming the warmth on his chest to be real.

His beloved slept on soundly, curled around him endearingly- a leg haphazardly slung over his bare waist. Leo took to combing idle fingers through her hair, marvelling at the soft texture and noting its dishevelled state. Hm, maybe he'd gone too hard on her last night. She sure seemed exhausted. 

His lips twitched upwards. 

Sympathy won out over ego, however, and with a kiss to her bare shoulder, Leonardo carefully manoeuvred her off him, grabbing his heavy coat to tug it over her. He made it as far as sitting up before those deceptively innocent arms wrapped around his waist again.

Mizuki nuzzled into his ribs, half asleep. 

"Mn…no moving."

"Heh, can't stay here forever, cara mia."

She giggled, eyes remaining shut. "You could."

Yes, he could. The antique gold of his eyes softened. 

"Alright. Wait a sec…"

He stretched awkwardly in her hold, reaching out for a bowl of apples sitting amongst a hoarder's paradise of books, notes and worldly nicknacks. Picking out a knife from a nearby draw, Leo cut an apple into segments. 

"It's not much of a breakfast in bed but I'd feel guilty if you skipped out on meals just because of me. Scusa, open up." He pushed one to her tempting lips, heat stirring in his gut as they parted without question.

Mizuki finally opened her eyes as he fed her, chewing and shooting a playful look at the other apple segments he'd cut into 'bunny ears', something silly he knew she liked.

"They're cute. It's perfect."

Leonardo immediately thought something sappy like 'you're perfect' but mercifully kept it to himself. He wasn’t a wordsmith like Arthur but he'd become so ridiculously enamoured with her that lately, his mouth ran away from him. Yesterday he'd called her the most beautiful thing he'd ever held in his hands. She'd blushed so attractively, noting all the sculptures, paintings and sublime things he'd created in his many lifetimes, accusing him of exaggerating. As if she couldn't compare to trivial works of art. How wrong she was.

"So…why is the bed all the way over there?" Almond eyes flicked to his bed against the opposite wall, noting their position on the floor. They'd slept on nothing but open books and scattered blankets. Books that were very old…and now likely soiled. Woops.

"We didn't make it that far," Leonardo shot her a smirk. He didn't care one wit about the state of his things. How could he?- when resting with her nude, sprawled in the collapsed mess of his room- brought him more joy than anything the dusty pages might have given?

Her mouth formed a silent 'o' shape in understanding, rouge painting her cheeks in a happy flush. She obediently opened her mouth for seconds and thirds- before catching his wrist and taking his fingers inside her mouth alongside the fruit.

Leonardo inhaled sharply, desire striking hard anew as her tongue worked its magic. 

"Cara mia…you play such dangerous games. Don't think I won't keep you here for the rest of the day- one night isn't enough to sate me," he purred.

"I don't mind," she smiled impishly, causing him to wonder where her appetite had come from. Perhaps she was becoming a little more like him the more time they spent together. Adjusting his coat to fall over her shoulders, she boldly stood, allowing him an eyeful of her ass as she carefully stepped around fallen books to climb onto the window seat, drawing her knees up and gazing out at the scenery. “Let me catch the sunrise first though- we usually sleep in. I don’t want to miss it today.”

Leonardo stretched languidly. “Why am I not surprised to hear you like sunrises?” he chuckled.

“Who doesn't like sunrises?!” she grinned, watching as the sun ever so slowly ascended over the distant treetops. “I suppose you do strike me as a ‘sunsets’ kind of man, though.”

He paused, a hollowness beating through his chest just for a moment. A reminder, as always, that he was a man meant for ‘goodbyes.’

Mizuki noticed his expression in the window's reflection, turning to him. “Leo?” she called softly, questioningly, the sound beguiling him as ever to come closer. Touch her. Reaffirm himself. 

Leonardo was at her side in an instant, capturing her lips with his own and stroking her jaw with a charcoal-smudged thumb. He’d been working when she’d found him yesterday. He’d abandoned the smooth shapes on paper for the canvas of her perfect body without a second thought. 

He touched her again, claiming the column of her throat with a light grip that stroked down to her shoulder, sliding to cup her breast and rolling a rose-petal nipple between talented fingers. Mizuki was moaning already, and Leo pressed closer, until she was trapped between himself and the window. “Bellissima,” he breathed against her mouth, pulling back to look at her properly, the sun drowning that fluffy fall of hair he so adored in radiance. “You’re free to think of yourself as my eternal sunrise, cara mia. It’s only fitting.”

His world would grow incredibly dark without her, after all. 

She shot him a questioning look, not quite as lulled by his distracting kisses as he anticipated. She drew him closer, nonetheless, holding him- and somehow that inspired more love to fill his chest than he thought possible. Leonardo calmed as she stroked his hair- as if in reassurance- returning her embrace and pressing their bare forms together to become one in the golden light of dawn. 

End

[duhragonball]

Your recent NaNo post made me wonder: what would Luffa think of pro wrestling?

Always grateful for Luffa questions on this blog. Thank you kindly.

So there was this episode of Dragon Ball Super where they made a Great Saiyaman vs. Mr. Satan movie, and Goku fell asleep in the theater because he was bored. According to the script, he preferred being in fights over watching them in a movie.

[Above: One sleepy, sleepy grandpa.]

This has always annoyed me, because Goku's always loved watching other people fight. Every time there's a tournament he's fascinated by the action. I think the only time he passed on viewing a match was Pikkon vs. Torbie, because Goku already knew Pikkon would win easily. Maybe staged, fictional battles aren't Goku's style, but he got a kick out of the ZTV re-enactment of the Cell Games.

In Goku's defense, I will acknowledge that he and I are about the same age, and naps are pretty awesome, but I've never fallen asleep in a theater, and I've seen some stinkers in my time. You'd think Goku would enjoy watching Gohan and Mr. Satan horse around on the the big screen, especially when he can get free popcorn refills and make out with his hot wife during the boring parts.

What I'm getting at is that I've always felt like the Saiyans' love of fighting must be deeply ingrained in their culture, to the point where they enjoy combat on many levels. It becomes part of their art, their storytelling, their courtship, and so on. In that context, professional wrestling looks a lot like a night at the opera to a Saiyan. Maybe Goku can't appreciate that, but Luffa can.

"Aw, but it's all fake--"

"THE PUNCHES THAT DON'T CONNECT TELL A STORY OF THE VIOLENCE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN, YOU UNCULTURED BOOB!"

I suppose that is the main difference between these two goofy goobers. Goku's a simple man who enjoys fighting for the elemental beauty of it, but Luffa's a sucker for a good story. She needs the storytelling, the drama, the intrigue, to give all of it meaning. Without it, they're all just a bunch of glowy jocks punching each other for no reason. There has to be all this emotional weight behind it all, a sense of glory and pride and destiny. Otherwise, what's the point?

And perhaps Goku could find himself appreciating that sort of thing as well, but he isn't usually conscious of it. There was that episode of DBS where he recreated all the moves from his match with Grandpa Gohan, decades after the fact. That re-enactment wasn't real, but Goku still did it just because he enjoyed the story of it so much. Same thing.

There's also the fact that Luffa has had to spend a lot of her time learning to hold back. She appreciates sparring with people much, much weaker than herself, because it's still a kind of combat, even if it's just practice for the real thing. So I think if you sat her down and showed her Earthling style professional wrestling, she'd appreciate the theatrical skill of performers simulating a fight without actually fighting. They're using their bodies to tell the story of a battle, but without the battle. For her, that's sublime.

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

At the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, two colossal pavilions faced each other down. One was Hitler’s Germany, crowned with a Nazi eagle. The other was Stalin’s Soviet Union, crowned with a statue of a worker and a peasant holding hands. It was a symbolic clash at a moment when right and left were fighting to the death in Spain. But somewhere inside the Soviet pavilion, among all the socialist realism, were drawings of fabulous beasts and flowers filled with a raw folkloric magic. They subverted the age of the dictators with nothing less than a triumph of the human imagination over terror and mass death.

These sublime creations were the work of a Ukrainian artist, Maria Prymachenko, who has once again become a symbol of survival in the midst of a dictator’s war. Prymachenko, who died in 1997, is the best-loved artist of the besieged country, a national symbol whose work has appeared on its postage stamps, and her likeness on its money. Ukrainian astronomer Klim Churyumov even named a planet after her.

When the Museum of Local History in Ivankiv caught fire under Russian bombardment, a Ukrainian man risked his life to rescue 25 works by her. But Prymachenko’s entire life’s work is now under much greater threat. As Kyiv endures heavy attacks, 650 paintings and drawings by the artist held in the National Folk Decorative Art Museum are at risk, along with everything and everyone in the capital.

‘A murderous intruder in Eden’ … another of Prymachenko’s grotesque creatures. Photograph: Prymachenko Foundation

It’s said that, when some of Prymachenko’s paintings were shown in Paris in 1937, her brilliance was hailed by Picasso, who said: “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.” It would make artistic sense. For this young peasant, who never had a lesson in her life, was unleashing monsters and collating fables that chimed with the work of Picasso, and his friends the surrealists. While the dictatorships duked it out architecturally at that International Exhibition, Picasso unveiled Guernica at the Spanish pavilion, using the imagery of the bullfight to capture war’s horrors. Prymachenko, too, dredged up primal myths to tackle the terrifying experiences of Ukrainians.

Her pictures from the 1930s are savage slices of farmyard vitality. In one of them, a beautiful peacock-like bird with yellow body and blue wings perches on the back of a brown, crawling creature and regurgitates food into its mouth. Why is the glorious bird feeding this flightless monster? Is it an act of mercy – or a product of grotesque delusion? In another drawing, an equally colourful bird appears to have its own young in its mouth. Carrying it tenderly, you might think, but only if you know nothing of the history of Ukraine.

At first sight, Prymachenko might seem just colourful, decorative and “naive”, a folkloric artist with a strong sense of pattern. Certainly, her later post-1945 works are brighter, more formal and relaxing. But there is a much darker undertow to her earlier creations. For Prymachenko became an artist in the decade when Stalin set out to destroy Ukraine’s peasants. Rural people starved to death in their millions in the famine he consciously inflicted on Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933.

Had she been an ‘intellectual’, she could have ended up in a gulag or worse …Prymachenko.

Initially, food supplies failed because of the sudden, ruthless attempt to “collectivise” agriculture. Peasants were no longer allowed to farm for themselves but were made to join collectives in a draconian policy that was meant to provide food for a new urban proletariat. Ukraine was, and is, a great grain-growing country but the shock of collectivisation threw agriculture into chaos. The Holodomor, as this terror-famine is now called, is widely seen as genocide: Stalin knew what was happening and yet doubled down, denying relief, having peasants arrested or worse if they begged in cities or sought state aid. In a chilling presage of Putin’s own logic and arguments, this cruelty was driven by the ludicrous notion that the hungry were in fact Ukrainian nationalists trying to undermine Soviet rule.

“It seems reasonable,” writes historian Timothy Snyder in his indispensable book Bloodlands, “to propose a figure of approximately 3.3 million deaths by starvation and hunger-related disease in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933”. These were not pretty deaths and they took place all around Prymachenko in her village of Bolotnya. Some people were driven to cannibalism before they died. The corpses of the starved in turn became food.

Born in 1908, Prymachenko was in her early 20s when she witnessed this vision of hell on Earth – and survived it to become an artist. But the fear did not end when the famine did. Just as her work was sent to Paris in 1937, Stalin’s Great Terror was raging. It is often pictured as a butchery of urban intellectuals and politicians – but it came to the Ukrainian countryside, too.

So it would take a very complacent eye not to see the disturbing side of Prymachenko’s early art. The bird in its parent’s mouth, the peacock feeding a brute. Maybe there is also survivor guilt, and a feeling of alienation from a destroyed habitat, in such images of strange misbegotten creatures lost in a nature they can’t work and don’t comprehend. One of her fantastic beasts appears blind, its toothy mouth open in a sad lamentation, as it stumbles through a garden on four numbed clodhopping feet. A serpent and a many-headed hydra also appear among the flowers, like deceptively beautiful, yet murderous intruders in Eden. In another of these mid-1930s works, a glorious bird rears back in fear as a smaller one perches on its breast, beak open.

There’s nothing decorative or reassuring about the images that got this brave artist noticed. Far from innocently reviving traditional folk art, her lonely or murderous monsters exist in a nature poisoned by violence. Yet she got away with it – and was even officially promoted right in the middle of Stalin’s Terror, when millions were being killed on the merest suspicion of independent thought. Perhaps this was because even paranoid Stalinists didn’t think a peasant woman posed a threat.

Her spirit survives … a rally for peace in San Francisco, recreating a work by Prymachenko called A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA

Prymachenko remembered that, as a child, she was one day tending animals when she “began to draw real and imaginary flowers with a stick on the sand”. It’s an image that recurs in folk art – this was also how the great medieval painter Giotto started. But it was Prymachenko’s embroidery, a skill passed on by her mother, that first got her noticed and invited to participate in an art workshop in Kyiv. Such origins would inevitably have meant being patronisingly classed by the Soviet system as a peasant artist. An “intellectual” who produced such work could have ended up in the gulag or worse.

Yet, to see the sheer miracle of her achievement, you must also set Prymachenko in her time as well as her place. The Soviet Union in the 1930s was relentlessly crushing imagination as Stalin imposed absolute conformity. The Ukrainian writer Mikhail Bulgakov couldn’t get his surreal fantasies published, even though, in a tyrannical whim, Stalin read them himself and spared the writer’s life. But the apparent rustic naivety of Prymackenko’s work let her create mysterious, insidiously macabre art that had more in common with surrealism than socialist realism.

Then, incredibly, life in Ukraine got worse. Prymachenko had found images to answer famine but she fell silent in the second world war, when Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union made Ukraine one of the first places Jews were murdered en masse. In September 1941, 33,771 Kyiv Jews were shot and their bodies tossed into a ravine outside their city. Prymachenko was working on a collective farm and had no colours to paint.

In the 1960s, she was the subject of a liberating revival, her folk designs helping to seed a new Ukrainian consciousness. There’s an almost hippy quality to her 60s art. You can see how it appealed to a younger audience, keen to reconnect with their Ukrainian identity.

The country has other artists to be proud of, not least Kazimir Malevich, a titan of the avant garde famous for Black Square, the first time a painting wasn’t a painting of something. Yet you can see why Prymachenko is so loved. Her art, with its rustic roots, expresses the hope and pride of a nation. But the past she evokes is no innocent age of happy rural harmony. What she would make of Putin’s terror one can only guess and fear.

[mediaevalmusereads]

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. By Kate Beaton. Drawn and Quarterly, 2022.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: graphic memoir

Series: N/A

Summary: Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

***Full review below***

CONTENT WARNINGS: sexual harassment, rape

I was familiar with Kate Beaton's series Hark! A Vagrant before reading this book. I didn't know much about her or her life, but I was charmed by her comics, so I decided to pick up this memoir to see what she could do with a related genre (through still graphic in nature).

The first thing I was struck by was Beaton's masterful depiction of identity and community. Where a person is from in Canada matters more than I realized and is integral to one's sense of self, and I admire the way Beaton reflects that on the page through things like accent, music, etc.

Another thing that struck me was Beaton's sense of empathy. The camps, as she describes, are liminal spaces that wreak havoc on mental health, and I think Beaton portrayed that deftly without sensationalizing it. I was also touched by the way she portrayed trauma and how she portrays herself grappling with the after effects of her assaults, highlighting how people's lives can be changed in an instant.

I'm also glad that Beaton took the time to acknowledge the harm oil sands do to Indigenous communities. In her afterward, Beaton talks about how her experience was overwhelmingly male and white, and that it is just one way white supremacy/settler colonialism manifests.

Lastly, I think Beaton did a wonderful job integrating her personal art style with a structured narrative. I like the way Beaton's simple style delivers a lot of pathos through expressive body language, and the almost monochrome color palette creates a kind of hazy mood. Beaton also has a good sense of pacing and how to set up a scene, so the reading experience is fluid and easy to follow.

TL;DR: Ducks is a graphic memoir that takes a hard look at the effects capitalism has on the working class, noting how oil companies exploit itinerant workers and create both environmental and mental health problems.