#the trashy trinity

[m1m1darl1ngx]

the holy trinity

[thatleobitchxoxo]

[xx-key-xx]

Y’all see it, YALL SEE IT OMG IM ABOUT TO FREAK OUT🤭

Guys I’m actually about to do the most diabolical thing, I can’t show you yet but just know that I’m laughing like scooby doo.

[shizukateal]

Miraculous Ladybug Magical Girl Fashion Review -Part 1

Preamble

Ok, so. What do you people generally think of as a "superhero outfit"? Spandex, right? Tight-skinned, uninterrupted spandex covering almost all the body, or at least not straying away from the body line if you're a girl and only get a swimsuit. Maybe a cape (hood optional) depending on how dramatic you are to add some flow or, if you're a woman, your hairstyle will do that job. Otherwise you can have some form of helmet or headpiece to distinguish yourself, and that's it. That's the extent of options you have. If you're extremely lucky, they might allow you to wear a jacket.

While this description might be a bit of an exaggeration (not by much, though) I think we can all agree that this is a very restrictive set of rules to work with. It's very hard to make something that completely contours to the body visually compelling. It's hard to distribute colors and shapes and patterns in a neat way that makes you stand out when you have to compete with thousands of millions of characters with the same 3 allowed bodytypes (lean, broad, or Woman™️). Which is why we should clap even more at designs like the DC holy trinity and especially Spiderman, who not only has a fantastic design in spite of how alienating it should be, but whose look is also currently inspiring thousands of artists to make their own variations, technically also including today's very own Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

This is all a very lengthy way to say that some of the MLB people wear their fursuits better than the rest. Skin-tight onesies with fur patterns are not something everyone can pull off. Doubly so with how inconsistent the art direction in the show is, with everyone in the cast reaching different levels of uncanny valley and swagless drip. I personally think that many of them would do better if they thought a bit outside that box of "standard superhero fashion" and went for something more specific to the personalities of the characters, but there are some winners amongst the rabble. Much like the writing of the show itself, the show's design averages into a trashy sludge pile that still manages to look tempting thanks to some unexpected moments of competence. Let's sort through the pile *cracks knuckles*

Ladybug (standard and ultimate version)

You'd think it would be easy for me to just say "yeah, the bland, near fully uninterrupted polkadot bodypaint onesie is both boring and silly and the other more balanced version is a LOT better by comparison" and leave it at that, but unfortunately I also have to talk about the hairstyle. And the hairstyle is wrong in a very specific way which I don't have concise terms for, so I need you to pay attention and stay with me here.

The pigtails work well for Marinette. They are distinct, practical, realistic enough while bordering just slightly on the fantastic, and their mild childishness enhances Mari's romantic nature. In theory they also match the polka-dot theme and they are not impractical considering the function of Ladybug's suit, but they still go against what it's trying to do. There's probably a concrete term in shape and action line theory that better educated people than me know about, but to give you the gist of what I mean I'm gonna do another Shitty Paint Edit™️ so I don't go in too many circles explaining myself:

Ok, you get what I'm trying to say here now? The pigtails match the balance of this specific pose, but the suit is too skin-tight and it highlights Marinette's neck, so they interrupt the buildup. They don't even work well as pieces of flow for contrast, because the hair is so stiff and the ribbons are barely noticeable. Compare to itsanarkee's cosplay and how much better she looks because she has an updo. The worst part of it all is that, usually, matching a body-paint suit with a hairstyle to provide contrast in a female superhero is, like, babyshit, the bread and butter of superheroine costumes, but Astruc managed to find the one hairstyle in the world to make it work wrong because he was to proud about Marinette's design to change anything. Just give her the fucking buns already.

Chat Noir

He serves cunt. Pops pussy, if you will. The only very mild itch it gives me is that I can't see what his ears are attached to and it bothers me, although he's not the only one with that feature and I understand why they would want to hide a hair band especially in his design. I can forgive that when everything else in this design is genius. The belt tail. The way his mask sharpens his features alongside the hair and ears. The flaps on his boots and gloves that highlight how his movements put more weight in his joints. The acrylic claws, the paws on his boots. The lines that highlight his figure in just the right way. The fucking bell. Chat is easily the best design amongst the heroes.

And while this my purely subjective interpretation, I truly do think it's understated how much this outfit manages to sell Adrien's clark kenting. It makes complete and perfect sense to me at least that Marinette wouldn't recognize him like this. Adrien is just slightly generically pretty enough that you wouldn't assume they are the same person just because they're both blonde bishies, and the contrast between the two personas is high enough that it could be realistic that some people wouldn't put them together if they are not looking for that connection. Doubly so for Marinette, who is way too enamored with Adrien's personality of generic un-disruptive niceness with a touch of rich boy angst to fully reconcile it with Chat's outright spicier demeanor lightened with Pathetic Wet Beast Energy for potability.

Rena Rogue vs Volpina

Yeah, this one merits a comparison. It's a perfect example to elaborate on my first rule. Lila already stands out as another of the best human designs amongst the cast, and the sleaze she exudes lends itself a lot better to this slick body-paint tightness and form-highlighting curves. The tail-sash around her waist is also brilliant. She'd probably look even better in something more grounded, but the fact that she's already pulling the outfit off like this is still an accomplishment.

Rena Rogue on the other hand... well, everything around her head is very good and cute, and I especially appreciate the eyebrows on her mask. On paper I also like the top with its longtail, but overall Alya looks a lot blander than Volpina, because her outfit doesn't reflect her personality the way it does Lila's. It's not ugly, even if the patch of white starts to bother me because it has no interruptions as it goes down. In fact it succeeds in making Rena look kind of adorable, really, but Alya is not a cutesy girl, and tbh the overall general texture of the outfit is a lot more body spray-painting-ish than Volpina's, which also makes it look cheaper in a bad way.

The Fox miraculous may be summarized as the power of Illusion, but both girls represent two facets elaborating on that concept: where Lila is the Fox as Deceit, Alya is the Fox as Cleverness. So Lila may be... smart manipulative -Ok, sincerely speaking Lila Rossi is the single most blatant Villain Sue I have ever seen put onscreen, but what I'm trying to get at is that while she -supposedly- has some cunning, her pettiness and eagerness to speak on the fly is -or rather should be- a contrast to Alya, who goes around sniffing for the truth and thus always has a fuller picture. Because remember: the best liars tell the truth. So Rena's outfit should reflect that. It should be less slick and more street-savvy, something that the pendant with its long chain is especially well suited to.

Speaking of all these thematic parallels, am I the only one in the fandom who is extremely weirded out that Lila isn't a rival to Alya? Like, aren't they extremely obvious foils beyond both of them being fox-themed? The girl who bases her clout on lies vs the one who searches for the truth? The girl who pretends to be friends with Ladybug while bullying her civilian identity vs the girl who is friends with both? Have the writers ever exploited this ever since I stopped watching?

Carapace

Nino is almost perfect. I am genuinely impressed at how well they chose the angle of this costume. It's so easy for me to imagine a much shittier version with an ugly cowl/spiderman wannabe facemask -because other characters in this series take that approach-, but taking a page out of spider-gwen's book instead paid amazing dividends. He looks great as teenage not-mutant ninja turtle.

He only has two significant faults. One is that I feel his goggles should be tinted opaque orange, and he should wear a mask over his mouth and nose. You know, make the clark kenting a little easier, the stealth more pointed, maybe he can have a cool graffiti of a turtle beak over the mask for a sprinkle of his actual personality. The second is that the partition he chose for his crotch area is a bit iffy and yes, I am very sorry to talk about this. The shape of the partition itself is not bad but it's the same color, so it doesn't actually help the transition all that much and instead, sadly, it only brings more attention to the middle. My suggestion is that he should take a page out of Rise of the TMNT's book and make the plastron into actual armor that goes from his chest to his navel, instead of just a logo on the front. Then he can either wear black shorts or he can go the Rise!Casey Jones route and wear pants that are slightly baggy but still cinch to his ankles.

Then there's only one last thing he needs to be completely perfect and that is having an actual relationship with Master Fu since he is the direct successor of his miraculous and one of the first characters to be akumatized on account of his resentment towards adults, so I feel like there's a whole bunch of narrative foiling potential not being explored there, you get me?

Queen Bee vs Vesperia

Zoe's face is more interesting and I appreciate that, as well as the design team giving her a braid, but Chloe still wins this one. Vesperia's outfit is reasonably cool on its own, but it does very little aesthetically for her. Perhaps if the colors of her top and pants were inverted it could work, but there's something about the aggressive sharpness of its lines that Zoe's bubbly face is not matching, made worse by the black being at the forefront. That might not be a problem in civilian outfit, but only because that look is balanced with other colors. Or rather, I think she also needs a more casual fit to pull it off instead of a skin-tight jacket. I also get what they're trying to do with her bangs and I would love it were it not for the fact that it doesn't look good in this artstyle. Chloe also has that problem with her hair, but Queen Bee's style fits her a lot better in a much obvious way, and for added points I think Queen Bee wears the cord as a belt better too., so congrats to Chloe on her one win, I do hope the writing allows her to have proper character development later instead of constantly resetting her to square one for conflict.

[einsteinsugly]

Least Favorite Names, a Name Game.

Girls:

Destiny, Trinity, Genesis, Nevaeh, Heaven, Haven, Serenity, etc.

I hate trashy virtue names, can't you tell?

Everly: A butchering of the English language.

Kendall: Sounds like candle.

Sloan/Sloane: Rhymes with moan (Joan does, too).

Paisley: This is a pattern, not a name.

Leia: I love the names Leah, Leila, Lena, and Freya, but Leia will always remind me of Star Wars. Han does, too. I remember feeling bad for a contestant on What Not To Wear for having this name, and I was a teenager, so this is nothing new.

Calliope: It looks like the word cantaloupe.

Crystal: Crystal meth.

Boys:

Maverick: I hate this name with every fiber of my being. It's cool for a dog or a cat, but not for a human being.

Ryker/Riker: Riker's Island.

Ryder: Ride her.

Tucker: Rhymes with fucker.

Holden: Sorry, @tht70sblog. This name opens a kid up to so many lewd jokes.

Camden: Camden, New Jersey. It's like naming your kid Detroit.

Rayden/Zayden/Kayden/Jayden etc: Aidan, the classic one, is the only one I like. And maybe Aiden.

Rufus: The doofus.

Casper: The ghost. I like the name Jasper, though.

Bentley: Need I explain?

*****

I hereby tag @nikkisgwens, @tht70sblog, @kissandships, @winnie-the-monster, @zenmasterlover, and anyone else who wants to join!

[apoptoses]

Been thinking about how Daniel becomes a permanent resident of Trinity Gate, and how often he probably falls asleep early after Armand has worn him out, only to wake up and find one of Armand’s other loves (both romantic and platonic) on the other side of the bed. Like-

•Louis, who abhors being cold and hogs the blankets in his sleep. More than once Daniel has woken up in the middle of the day and had to wrestle the comforter back to his side. Other times it’s Louis with a book, reading aloud to Armand while he drags his fingers through his hair that stirs him. He never minds being disturbed by Louis though because Louis is a late sleeper like him, and that means with their powers combined they can convince Armand to stay in bed and cuddle the evening away.

• Lestat, who has developed the very modern problem of not being able to fall asleep without the tv on. Daniel always knows he’s shown up by the quiet sound of trashy reality tv, turned down low so Armand can sleep, and the absolutely insane amount of heat Lestat’s body with its ancient blood throws off when he’s fed.

• (but there’s also the other times when Daniel is woken up by Lestat’s elbow in his ribs as he engages Armand in some good morning making out. Daniel doesn’t care, he’s given all of them his permission to do whatever, and honestly half the time he gets his arms around Armand and joins in. But some nights he grumbles about Lestat being too fucking boney for his own good and rolls over for a few more minutes of sleep)

• And then once in a blue moon there’s Bianca, who he knows by the smell of her floral perfume. Daniel wakes up to them gossiping like schoolgirls late into the night, and to Bianca calling Armand ‘Amadeo’ (and she is the only one allowed to use that name, because in her heart he’ll forever be the sweet young man she adored)

• There’s even one time that it’s Riccardo, which is bizarre because do ghosts even need to sleep? But this is just Daniel’s life now, and Armand has told him the secret that when he was mortal sometimes he would sneak Riccardo in Marius’s room after he left. Mind racing from the blood, he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and Riccardo was more than happy to sit on the giant velvet bed and play cards with him until he passed out. (and just like old times, he finds a deck of cards tossed on the nightstand beside Armand)

• It’s not long before it being just the two of them actually feels weird, but on those nights they relive the good times at Night Island and put on a cheesy 80s movie. And finally Daniel gets to live out one of his greatest mortal fantasies, falling asleep in Armand’s arms and not waking up alone.

[burningknucklecraftworks]

Griffin and Sword Targe for Fergus O'Dae

This is a build log for a late period Scottish targe for Fergus O'Dae, a border reaver and rising star of the Northshield Army. The Griffin and Sword is our Award of Arms-level award for excellency in armored combat.

Before starting the design, I layed out my idea using Heraldicon, a free website built to be even more powerful than Drawshield for assembling coats of arms. I thought it would be very fetching to have the Northshield populace badge outlined in the brass studs characteristic to targes, with the griffin and sword represented with different colored metals.

Laying out the carving and the tacks. A missed step in this album is cutting the wooden core. I actually already had a 20" round of plywood lying around. It wasn't actually a shield blank; it was the center cutout of a wooden ring I made to hold the 3.5' long bolts on our giant electrical wire spool in a specific pattern so I could reassemble the whole thing.

The griffin layout. Many thanks go to Heraldic Traceable Art and Heraldicon as well as the /r/heraldry community for maintaining so many Creative Commons vector assets. I've used this griffin asset by Gunnvôr (Viking Answer Lady) so many times.

With the leather dried it's much easier to see the layout lines. Here's a spot I can make some big improvements on next time: I attached the leather before trimming it to a proper round, and then I didn't fully tack down the back before beginning the layout process. The wood I used was pretty trashy plywood so my drawing and carving surface is also extremely bumpy underneath the leather.

At this stage I began to carve the central award badge with my swivel knife. I need to see if there's swivel knives for children with arthritis because my bog standard Tandy knife gives me hella hand cramps and extreme inflammation on my thumb-palm muscles.

Your eyes do not deceive you: I did in fact have a crisis of attention span and pivoted from carving the badge to outlining the compass rose in brass tacks. The majority of the tacks used for this project are 7/16" low dome brass tacks from Crazy Crow Trading Post down in Texas. I also used 1/2" high dome and 1/4" dome tacks from the same shop.

Lining up the 1/4" tacks. I actually hadn't planned to do these lines initially, but I had to emergency order more tacks and tossed these in for greater variety. I love the end result of this decision. If you tuckered out your arm hammering in 2/3 of the outline tacks with a ball peen, a drill press can take over in a pinch. I really need to get a stool for the drill press.

Tacks complete! We can carve again now.

Added some obligatory trinity knots. It's not Scottish if it doesn't have a triskelion or a trinity knot, dontcha know?

(Sarcasm aside, check out the targe used by Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the Cameron Clan Chief who was a prominent Jacobite commander throughout the 1745 campaign. Post period for the SCA but who's counting? Photo from Paul Macdonald of Macdonald Armories in Scotland.)

All trinity knots cut, one carved, and I began to add a braid motif too.

...Aaaaand here's improvement opportunity number 2. I was low on time and hand strength so I decided to dye the leather before I carved the braids, but after I cut them. I also picked Fibbings Medium Brown for my dye without doing test patches, and used the standard daubers to apply it. That is three Big Mistakes in a row, and only one is actually justifiable in any way. The result is an extremely uneven dye job that completely washes out the uncarved braids. If I'd given myself one more week to do this scroll, I would've had more rest time for my hands and I think I wouldn't have made these mistakes, but in a way I'm grateful I did because now I know to schedule more time for working on scrolls for the next assignment. Plus, I try to remember what Samii of SunCat Designs says about art: "the mistakes are what make it human".

Because this is an SCA award, I chose to swap the traditional deerhide backing for glued muslin and paint. I then taped off my handle locations and handed it off to my spouse @dustycymbre for the award scroll text. They used their default uncial hand, which is my favorite of their script hands.

Traditional targes have a small brass center boss. When I originally conceived of this award, I had imagined the griffin in brass with a tinned sword, but I haven't actually tried chase and repousse yet and struck upon a different method of making the center griffin allude visually to the center bosses: carve it directly into the leather and then gild it. This particular stage is sealing the carving with Ecoflow Cova Color leather paint, to provide a smooth surface for the glue (also know as gild size).

Cova Color white shouldn't be directly applied to damp dyed leather like this because it soaks up the brown like a sponge. My brightest white application is my H-shield, which dried for about a week before I painted it.

Another ADHD swing of focus: needed to have a long phone conversation with my spouse and bro in law and stitching is a far less active hand activity for me than The Thing I've Never Done Before, so I stitched up the strap and handle. Here the handle is inside out in a jar of water to get nice and soft for turning. 

I stitched a rabbit hide into the interior of the arm strap. It's soft and a little padded, and I think it looks quite fetching. To figure out the right strap length for the recipient's ridiculously beefy arm that helped him earn this award, I asked my former football player bro in law for his arm circumference and then rooted around the house for a pickel jar of the same diameter. Stitch width awls are your friend. One of the top ten tools I own for sure. 

Turning out the handle. This took a lot of hand strength and chopstick finagling. I'm genuinely looking forward to making Kat the Herald's purple shoes because they'll be easier to turn than this fucker. 

Fit check. Look at that beautiful wet shaping on the handle! At this point I felt a level of actual mastery of my craft. I think I can really call myself a leatherworker now. I still have so much to learn and improve, but I feel comfortable. It feels good. 

With the handles done, it's back to gilding. According to the Pinterest mommy blogs, you can skip the professional artist size and use watered down mod podge for the gilding process. I gambled on them being right, whipped out my pack of silver, copper and gold foils, and got down to business. I used a tiny but cheap paint brush to apply the thinned glue to the sword, let it dry a little, and then applied the silver foil. I tapped at it with a napkin through a flour sack towel, let it dry a little and brushed off the excess with a second and much fluffier brush. 

The Pinterest pinnsters aren't entirely wrong about mod podge, but they aren't entirely right either. I had to add more glue and gilding foil like eight times. This is after one of the last additions, but before I brushed away the excess. Mod podge doesn't want to work on the irregular curves of carved leather. The dry time to tackiness was also imprecise and very very short, which made applying the delicate foil correctly very difficult. 

I finally had to give up. There were just too many spots that would not take foil at all. I grabbed my Stewart Semple Heavy Metals box set, pulled out the Goldest Gold, and painted over the bare spots. At this angle, the difference in reflection angles and quality is obvious. The paint is so much more yellow. But deadlines are deadlines, and imperfections make it human. 

This angle is much more favorable. I find myself in love with the effect of the gilding over the carving on the feathers. I need to get good at gilding. 

And here she is signed by Their Majesties Northshield, in the warm lights of the Sioux Falls Coliseum stage. Fergus loves it and it got a lot of ooos and ahs from the populace. I had a lot of fun in spite of some of the frustrations of this build, and I'm excited to try another targe with even more accuracy at some point.

[robin-is-around]

I’ve been struggling a while with labelling myself and defining who I am and I think it’s because I’m trying so hard to fit into one group.

I’m gyaru but at the same time I’m cottage core but I’m also a trashy mall goth but I’m also vampire goth but I’m also bohemian and hippie but I’m also a therian but I’m also a dungeon master but I’m also an ao3 writer but I’m also an anime lover but I’m also cute core but I’m also cute gore but I’m also goblin core but I’m also dark academia.

I’m a Hannibal fan but I also love Sanrio but I’m also a wannabe tattoo artist but I’m also a wannabe taxidermist and I collect bones and feathers and I’m also a pagan but I’m also an oldschool hip hop and rap fan but I’m also an indie fan but I’m also a hyper pop fan but I’m also a heavy metal fan but I’m also a classical music fan.

I love big musicals like Hamilton and be more chill and I love mean girls and broadway in general. But I also love small musicals like Seeds and Hannibal the musical and Adamandi.

I love Hello Charlotte and Ib and Mad father and Misao and Yandere simulator and Pom Gets WiFi and the witch’s house and Yume Nikki and Ao Oni and pizza tower and Faith the unholy trinity and papers please and Please, don’t touch anything and this is not a game and at dead of night and resident evil and we happy few and Doki Doki literature club and slay the princess and west of loathing and little nightmares and riddle school and fire watch.

I love cooking and I love animals and I love sunsets and my friends and my boyfriend. I love having a cluttered room but I’m always moving it around and changing things. I love photography and I love holding onto memories. I love Fnaf and I love Undertale. I love anime like my neighbour totoro and little witch academia but I also love corpse party and higurashi when they cry. I love making my own characters and drawing them again and again. I love horror movies but I also love comedy shows. I love warrior cats and I love roleplaying. I love reading to others and talking for hours about the things I enjoy. I love commentary YouTubers and I love documentaries. I like crime shows and I love analysing music videos.

I love I love I love!!

And that’s all that matters. I don’t need to fit into a group because I just am.

I am a being made up of everything I have ever witnessed and interacted with.

I take the quirks and habits of the people I have met and they become part of me. I adopt new superstitions from characters in tv shows so I can admit that yes — I am easily influenced.

I don’t need to fit into a group because I am simply me.

[chronostachyon]

From a YouTube comment I just wrote

Link (cw: reaction video)

Star Wars and Indiana Jones are both cut from the same cloth: pulp fiction. The magazine format, not the Tarantino film. Pulp comics were cheap, trashy stories built around broad character archetypes and thrilling good-vs-evil violence; I fully get why they're fun and nostalgic, but they push a British colonialist viewpoint of noble men in savage lands that's very much descended from Rudyard Kipling. Takeaway, pulp fiction is a fun storytelling genre but it's best not to let it shape your world-view.

Regarding the changes to the film over the years: I'm sure many other commenters (online or meatspace) have mentioned that the CGI was added after-the-fact, as were the "Episode 4" and "A New Hope" parts of the title... but the title change happened much much earlier than the CGI change. In the time of Episode 5 (1980), it suddenly went from a standalone movie to first in a trilogy, so they updated the title of the first film. That change was a lot less controversial compared to Lucas's digital remasters just before Episode 1 (1999). Nobody grew up on "Episode ∅: The Unsubtitled" VHS tapes: in 1977-1980 home video releases weren't yet a thing, and taping things at home off of broadcast TV was incredibly rare (the tech was immature and outrageously expensive then). Nope, people grew up on the "Episode 4: A New Hope" name that you actually saw here, and they always knew it as first in a trilogy. There wasn't a real opportunity for a widespread "they changed it now it sucks" outcry, because the only crowd who knew the difference were people who watched it during that three year gap and were old enough to remember the old version.

A brief rant:

IMO, the "they changed it now it sucks" folks have a good point here and there, but I also see Lucas's thinking in 1999 about how a new generation was going to grow up with a Star Wars trilogy, and he wanted the original trilogy to look less jarring to people born in 1990-1994 even if people born in 1967-1972 hated the remaster changes... especially how a lot of cutesy squeaky animals were added in the Tatooine establishing shots and, yes, Greedo shooting at Han and missing. A lot of it boils down to kids my age screaming that ThunderCats the children's cartoon about teamwork was cool when we grew up, but the new ThunderCats is a children's cartoon about teamwork and that's earnest and cringe and I can't believe we're exposing younger generations to it, because ThunderCats the children's cartoon of the 1980s was gritty and dark and sarcastic like the stuff I'm into now as a teenager. Neo and Trinity and Morpheus just really get me, mom.

All that said: it's awful that we don't have a Blu-ray that has both VHS-era and remaster on them, though.

[hellish-heart-ships]

I no longer exist. My life is permanently brainrot for my holy trinity

The trashy dilf Syobai, the (dilf) darling Kazumi, and the himbo Ken

[grandhotelabyss]

What (if you have any) are your favorite trashy/airport/'pure' genre books?

The last one I read, and it was pretty good, was Gone Girl. Or maybe the now-disgraced Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But both of those are pretty "literary" compared to the competition. Trashy airport books tend to be roundabout movie pitches. Some great films have been made from trashy airport books—I've cited before the '70s trinity of The Godfather, The Exorcist, and Jaws—so you can usually skip the artless prose and wait for the movie, from Jurassic Park to Twilight to It Ends with Us. (I skim-read the latter after finding it in a Little Free Library; nothing doing.) The level of literary talent and seriousness of intent among authors I've named above varies: Puzo lowered himself to sell out, as he acknowledged; Blatty actually wanted to convert the reader to Catholicism; Crichton had compelling if heterodox ideas about science and society and a knack for a plotting. But the bottom line—to use a relevant cliché, relevantly as a cliché—is their desire to push words out of the way and present the plot or the thesis or both to the reader unadorned. Whereas, in proper literature, as the formalists long ago taught us, language is paradoxically an impediment to understanding. This modernist standard of value raises bygone bestsellers in our increasingly illiterate estimation, since in the past even hacks were reared on Shakespeare and the King James Bible. I think of Woolf railing against Wells and Bennett for their excess simplicity, whereas today even a college graduate can't get through Wells or Bennett. But to answer your question straightforwardly, my favorites are two books I've already mentioned, which I read around the age of 10 or 11 as part of a Catholic schoolboy's unwholesome canon of inappropriate books, and which I will always remember fondly if not reread: The Godfather and The Exorcist.

[a-hell-of-a-time-archive]

🚢 [ For Andre, of course! ]

Ship Sheet: Accepting!

do i ship our characters together?: yes | no | not yet but maybe soon

would i like to ship with you?: yes | maybe, i'm willing to try | no

type of relationship i could see: childhood or high school sweethearts (prior to Stolas's marriage) | exes | engaged | married | long-term relationship (eventually) | crushes | unrequited love (temporarily) | fling (before Stolas's marriage) | long distance | online relationship | just dating | new relationship | toxic lovers | friends with benefits

tropes i'd enjoy writing for them: friends to lovers | enemies to lovers | exes to lovers | fake relationship / dating | forbidden love | grumpy and sunshine | star-crossed lovers | surprise pregnancy | second chance | soulmates | amnesia / mistaken identity | forced proximity | secret relationship | slow burn relationship l Mutual pining because why is this not on here?

would i rather plot first or jump right in and see where it goes?: develop their relationship first | jump right in | something in between (They already have a base for a relationship, but I still want to develop things while having spontaneous jump right in moments.)

what now?: let's plot something | send me shippy memes | i'll send you shippy memes | write me a random starter | i'll write you a random starter

anything else i want you to know about me / my character / my shipping habits: SnowyOwl, especially pre Stolas/Stella marriage and post divorce is my damn weakness, along with Andre still pining for Stolas while he is married but refusing to act on it because he is married to his sister and he is not that trashy. Bonus points if Vassago is thrown in there somewhere because unholy twink trinity.

I am also a ship whore and I love the dynamic/ship potential between Andre and Stolas.

[mrmikeyd-blog]

Hightower jumped

Recently, there was a fire at the largest multi-story apartment building in Florence, Alabama. It was on the 4th floor. One person died and one was seriously injured. The reason given was someone was smoking a cigarette too close to an auction tank and it exploded.

It was the largest thing that I can remember happening to the building since Hightower jumped. And he DID jump, or fell but contrary to whatever Lulu was telling at the time; I did not push him. Well, not that I remember. I have to admit though, things were kind of hazy that night. Let's get this story started.

Around 1982, Lucille Lowery moved to the top floor, the 14th, of Courtview Towers. It was new, maybe 3 years old then and was considered THE cosmopolitan place to live. The ONLY high rise in Florence! At the time I was making good money managing my daddy's rental and real estate business so I moved on the 12th floor. We were the queer version of the Jeffersons(Me) "Beans don't burn in the skillet" and Green Acres(Lucille) "I just adore a penthouse view". Of course, Lucille was on the top floor and considered socially over me but I viewed the east and her the west. I got sunrise, she got sunset. I overlooked the river and Wilson Dam so it was considered that I had the better view. My mother was impressed and went out and bought me new living room furniture and I had found a king-size platform waterbed. I was all set.

The queens were impressed. Sybil started coming by immediately after I moved in and even introduced me to one of her trashiest boyfriends, Terry Balentine. He was from what would be considered state line royalty. The Balentine name came from a long line of beer joint owners on the state line, bootleggers, car thieves, bank robbers and general outlaws. Terry's branch on the family tree was not as "prestigious" Mainly, drugs, drinking, fighting, breaking and entering and crimes of passion. What "trashy" outlaws do. Sybil had met him at the park and brought him up one night to show him off. He was rough trade gorgeous. He was 19years old with coal black hair and eyes, high cheekbones and a muscular body. Not lifting weight muscles, real country boy lifting cows muscles. Butch jobs: carrying loads of roofing shingles on his back and mixing cement MUSCLES! OHHH, I swoon just thinking about him! When we met, I threw everything I could think of at him. I bragged about my job and my new car (did he like Mustangs?) but knew to be careful around Sybil. "God help the sister who comes between me and my mister" was words the bitch lived by. I had a new set of radials on my car and truly did not want them slashed!

As I recall, the short time I lived there I really like living in "The Towers". I loved being able to run up to Lucille's to visit or drink or smoke. It was always yelled out at the door "Hon, got a cup of sugar?" We started calling each other Lucy and Ethel. Of course, I was Ethel. Her saying "Every Lucy needs an Ethel" has stuck with me all my life. And in my sitcom tv show life I have followed the pattern. I have always had a running sister. EXCEPT, I am LUCY!

Miss Lowery had already had several soiree's. These were the Van Pelts, the Tippers, Christine Collier, the artsy crowd, half of Trinity Episcopal church choir. The "upper crust" where only liquor was served but other novelties were available for the most daring. No trashy tricks invited along with no park cruisers. Queens allowed but they must be debutantes of the highest caliber. I had always been invited to all her party's but mainly filled the room just as furniture would and carried on very simple meaningless conversation until it was time to go. I was strictly filler. She was giving one the night in question.

This particular party was actually kind of dull. There was a quee call LuLu in attendance who was supposedly some third cousin or something of Miss Lowery. Her family came from the Leighton money same as Lucille's so she was one of the few younger queens allowed at the affairs. I had known her for awhile. We were not close but for some reason when I said goodnight at Lucille's she came with me down one floor to my apartment. Standing in the hall was Terry Balentine and some short boy I did not know. Yes, it had been a few weeks and of course I was getting with Terry on the side. He didn't care who he tricked with as long as the money was good you spent on him. A true hustler. Not a crackhead, or druggie a real bisexual who knew his craft and expected to be paid well for his services. Well, by Florence standards anyway. We didn't really have any rich old queens then, just closeted tricks who would pay as much as $100 to suck the right dick. I was never in that league but Terry didn't care. He liked me! My apartment was full of liquor and LULU had pot and poppers. As I recall, someone came over with some coke or maybe it was quaaludes. Anyway we all proceeded to get royally drunk and fucked up.

LULU knew better than to go for Terry so I told her in the kitchen to go for his friend. He had gone down the hall to the bathroom and I went into the living room with a drink for Terry and the next thing I know I hear the bedroom door close and lock. I went to the door and said "Look, whore this ain't a video booth, leave a quarter and make it quick" or some cute saying like that. We cut on MTV and started doing coke and smoking pot and snorting poppers and drinking and drinking and drinking and evidently we had sex because some time in the middle of the night, I got up off the floor, my pants were off and Terry was laying butt naked on the sofa. My mouth felt like the lower 40 acres so I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water,

The layout in these apartments is the kitchen is on the back wall next to the hallway. There is a large opening to a small dining room then on the far wall sliding glass doors to a small balcony with a high concrete wall. You can see all the way through from the kitchen. I looked out and there was the guy (LuLu's date or HIGHTOWER) as he would be nicknamed, sitting up on the ledge. I went to the sliding door and told him to get down he would fall. I walked back into the living room and woke up Terry to tell him to get his friend off the wall and when he went into the dining room there was nobody on the wall or balcony. I walked out on the balcony and looked down. The guy was laying on top of a roof used as a drive through. It was later determined that what saved him was this roof was constructed of steel beams with some kind of foam and tar in the middle of each square the medal beams form. He had landed perfectly in the middle!

Of course, all hell broke loose. Terry split, he had warrants. I woke up LuLu and we called 911. She kept asking me if I pushed him and I said no but it did seem like he wouldn't come down and I took his arm and told him not to fall. I went to the police station and told them what my muddled brain could remember. After all, I was still drunk and high! I think he broke an ankle or something, it was not serious, and when questioned it must have somehow got out that he was at a "queer" party so he made a statement that he did not know anyone at the party and the only reason he was there was because he was looking for a place to commit suicide and the door was open. He saw the ledge. It worked! It turned out he was about to go to state prison under the 3 strike rule but due to his mental state he got locked up in the local place for mentally ill patients, Riverbend. On a side note, as soon as he got out the state wanted to try him again so this time he climbed O'Neal bridge and threatened to jump: Sybil gave him the name "Hightower"

I moved out of Courtview probably the next month. I did keep slipping around with Terry Balentine until he went to Texas with one of his brothers and killed a guy in a gas station robbery. He was sentenced to the electric chair. Sybil called me up and said "Eva we are going to be prison widows" She knew all along.

There was a running joke about LuLu that nobody as far as I know would ever tell her to her face. "LuLu's got a killer booty, it drives her tricks to suicide"

This incident took place in probably 1982 or 1983 and is for the most part forgotten. Of the main characters alive, only me and Lu's killer ass remain!

[thekingjojo100]

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[class-wizard]

Someone call the garbage patrol, there's too much trash in this picture

[notoricty]

(   𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝   )    ⧸   *   based on   ┊   @fslsegod   .

“ holding everything in DOESN’T help, you know, ” she’s growing frustrated as the conversation continues, mind boggled as to why the other just doesn’t s p i t it out, “ you CAN talk to me. ”