#they were supposed to be together in one picture but vox looked like a third wheel so i split them apart sorry

[bambitek]

i couldn't resist drawing them even if i tried hhhhh**

vox

[hufflepirate]

Current Vox Machina feelings: Still thinking about Grog and Ioun even though I’m several hours of content past the gang’s convo with her.

But seriously though. She explicitly says that she’s not picking Grog as her champion because he’s so uncomfortable in her realm. She apologizes for that. She says THAT’s why he’s not her champion. Which implies that unlike the others, who are for specific character reasons not appropriate champions, he could have been. Her criteria for keys is that they should be unexpected and look at the world differently than she does. Who’s to say her criteria for a champion couldn’t be related??

What I’m saying is Champion-of-Ioun Grog AU.

What I’m saying is sweet, wonderful, open Grog, who learned painstakingly to read, who constantly embraces new people, places, and situations, who so often listens well even when he pretends he isn’t or when he can’t make sense of what he hears, becoming the champion of the goddess of knowledge and going out into the world that way.

What I’m saying is I meant to write a couple short headcanons and then this ran well away from me, so now it’s under a cut.

Grog faces a different test within the library, tailored to him, and therefore with less singing and magic. His friends work too hard and too frantically, desperate to help him because he’s the dumb one and this is Ioun, only to have him finally, finally find the book when he blocks them out and trusts himself and his instincts. He hands a tiny book with no words in it to Ioun and his friends are screaming behind him as she asks if he’s sure it’s the right one, and he looks her in the eye and says, “Well, yeah! It’s supposed to be a secret, right? So of course it’s blank until you make it tell us.”

Grog doesn’t let Ioun see how much his friends’ reactions are hurting him, because it isn’t polite, and she’s a goddess, and he’s not supposed to be petty and little around her. The moment they step up to Sprigg’s house, his feelings burst out all at once and he won’t let anyone but Pike near him.

It’s not long before he feels something new. Something different. There’s a voice in his head and what feels like a soft touch in the middle of his forehead, where the third eye opened up in Ioun’s presence, and she tells him that there’s lots of ways to know things. The others will see, in time.

His voice is quiet and reverent and sad when he asks Pike about it, and she’s so happy for him that she leaps up to hug him and place a kiss into the center of his forehead, and he pulls her close and lets her calm joy settle him down and make him feel ok again.

His forgiveness comes slowly for some of the group members, but things build back, and in the mansion, he discovers that reading is a little bit easier now, though he’s no better at sitting still for it when the subject matter is boring. It’s lucky that they don’t have a lot of time for reading, just now. Not with Vecna ascended. He’s still much slower than most of the others, and he doesn’t bring up how much frustration still keeps him bored even when things are important.

Puzzles are easier to solve than they used to be, the things that used to come slowly coming faster, chasing his instincts with less of a delay. He says things and the others look surprised, but there’s a faint sense of something in his head that soothes the hurt when they look that way, and he thinks probably that’s Ioun, too. He says things he would have said before, but this time there’s a reason and he can explain it.

The first time he uses her blessing, reaching into his connection to her at the height of the rush that comes with getting his best hit in on an enemy, it’s beautiful and euphoric and the sense of what’s vulnerable to him makes his heart swell with the exultation of battle and he shouts it out to his companions with joy.

After the dust settles, he and Pike are sitting, exhausted, slumped at a table like they used to at Wilhand’s (only better because here the chairs fit him and he’s not on the floor), and he looks over at her, and she’s wearing the Dawnfather’s armor, but doesn’t belong to him, and he’s wearing Kord’s gauntlets, but has been claimed by another, and he wonders again if it was the right thing. He decides that maybe, like the twins, who were black-and-white negatives of each other, in the end, he and his own sister are meant to be different-and-the-same, and maybe it’s alright that the gods are complicated, and maybe it’s even alright that they share.

He doesn’t have the words to say to Vex. He’ll never have the words to say to Vex. He thinks that’s probably not what knowledge is for, or what it does, and the soft, pleasant, comfortable stirring in his head that always means Ioun is there doesn’t have to speak to tell him he’s right. He watches her cry and insist that there’s a way to get Vax back, and he waits for her to realize that there isn’t and come around to blinding, directionless anger. When she does, he takes her out to the forest outside of Vasselheim and they fight the biggest monster he could get a contract on and he gives her all the money from the contract even though it won’t make things better.

Ioun is mostly quiet about it, but he can feel her approval, and he begins to understand what she meant about lots of ways of knowing things. Nothing about his plan was anything like the way Percy or Scanlan knew things, but Vex looks a little better as she wipes tears out of her eyes that might be anger or sadness or pain but are probably all three. He doesn’t say anything as he pulls her into a hug, but her arms are strong around him and the fake smile she pastes on when he lets go is a little less fake than the one she left with, and that’s alright.

Tary is Tary and he’s never really known what to do with Tary, all the way, but he’s been thinking a lot about books lately, and what they’re good for and what they’re not and why so many of them are boring and turn out not to have what he wants to know in them, so he goes to see Tary anyway. He doesn’t want to write a book, but he does some thinking about Tary’s and suggests that maybe Tary’s book tell the truth instead of being like all the other adventures Tary read as a kid that made him keep saying dumb stuff and not know what to expect. He doesn’t know if Tary’s listening or not, but it feels good to say it.

Percy says they might as well set up a temple to Ioun in Whitestone for when Grog visits. And anyway, it’s about time Whitestone had a good temple to her, instead of a corrupted one. He wants to fill it with books. He wants to make it a library. Grog says they’ve got to be careful and the books should be true, and there should be people there to teach you about the things that are written about. Percy doesn’t understand what he means at first. Not until he says you learn blacksmithing by feeling it in your bones, and sometimes you learn the truth by seeing it.

The temple in Whitestone is an odd place. It has many books and many tables, which is only to be expected, but everything else is - different. Half of Percy’s books are about science, so there are machines to play with to make sense of the books, and once he’s gotten Percy thinking about it, there are lenses and prisms and magnifiers for looking at things. There’s an open porch, protected from the elements with a roof and some screening and shelves with doors that close when the rain comes with wind, but the nature books sit outside and Keyleth’s raised up a garden with as many things as she can think of in it, and he didn’t know it would be good for her to build, without Vax here, but it is. There are books about devils and demons and circles of hell, and he’s learning, slowly, how to draw well so that he can tuck better pictures into them, so people can know what they’re looking at. It’s important that books have pictures. It’s important that the pictures be true.

Percy always looks surprised at the people in Ioun’s temple. He always looks surprised when there are farmers there, and children, and housewives, but Grog isn’t, and he gets JB Trickfoot to work there, because she’s been lots of places and seen lots of things, and the next time he visits Whitestone, he’s happy to find that another librarian has shown up who’s terrible at organizing things and very good at baking and has installed a small wood-burning oven in a little alcove to explain cookbooks with, because it’s one thing to write about the details of bread and another to pick the dough up and stretch it and feel it and look at it.

Grog is getting older. Calmer. He goes into the woods and watches things. He draws them. He kills them. He draws them some more. He keeps his drawings in a tidy bundle in the bag of holding and does not call them a book.

The longer he draws, the better he is at seeing the details. The better he is at seeing them, the better he is at drawing. He still reads slowly, and his writing isn’t as steady as his drawing, but his drawings are good, and he remembers the things he drew better and better and when he goes to visit Pike and Scanlan, Pike takes careful, tidy notes about the things he tells her.

Grog and Pike don’t write a book until she gets so pregnant that she can’t leave the house as much and he’s hovering around the house waiting for his new niece or nephew to arrive and they consolidate all his drawings and all her notes, looking for something she can do indoors, and discover they already have.

Percy has to invent entirely new technology because there’s no way drawings as intricate as Grog’s could be reliably copied by hand more than once without losing the details, and the details are important because they’re the truth. Percy and Tary spend months together in Percy’s workshop, covered in ink and smoke and calling him in to forge all the large pieces of a machine he can’t quite picture until they start building it. It starts to take shape, and it takes even better shape once they add the small, delicate pieces they’ve worked on, and it makes sense when Percy calls it an Imprinting Press, but he doesn’t really understand what they’ve made, in its fullness, until a month and a half later when he’s finally allowed in the room again.

The machine stands dormant, piles and piles of plates stacked nearly up to the ceiling behind it, and Percy and Tary hand him a tidy medium-sized volume, bound in nicer leather than most of the books in the library. He opens it up to find words printed with consistent, uniform letters, even more consistent than the best scribes’ work, all the a’s looking exactly like a’s and the b’s looking exactly like b’s. The pictures are breathtaking, printed from engravings that must have taken his friends many, many hours, but they both have an eye for detail, and everything he drew is there.

His book gets its own stand in the center of Ioun’s temple, and as he places it in its spot, he gets the sense of something big happening. Something new.

Ioun’s voice in his head isn’t a voice at all. She’s been with him for years, and it doesn’t have to be a voice, hasn’t had to be a voice for a long time. It’s just a feeling. She’s proud of him. She loves him. Something is happening, and he is a champion of Ioun, and what he has built is going to stand for a long, long time.

There are children in the library and they want to know about fighting dragons again, and he lets them drag him away to the porch to tell the story for the thousandth time, roaring and stomping and acting out the fighting and all. For a moment, he sees a three-eyed figure in the doorway, out of the corner of his eye, who vanishes when he turns to look straight on. He touches her symbol, tattooed on his forearm, and smiles.

[afurrybutthememekind]

Lucas ‘Luke’ Greene

So if Alix is a prick I don’t even want to know what you’d classify Luke as. A douche with anger issues that really wants needs Adam to knock some sense into him perhaps. He’s got the big gay for Adam anyway, no feelings beyond ‘I hope they scowl like that in bed too’ yet but maybe one day.

I vibe the most with Luke and Vox which is concerning because they are the biggest bastards and I am nothing like them at all. I’m more of a socially awkward Cap than anything. 

Lots of yelling. Like too much yelling at Adam like it was his personal decision to lie to the human race. I’d say I can’t wait for Adam to just kick Luke’s ass but Luke would be so into it that Adam would probably die. Luke’s not a masochist per say but he does have a very...strong appreciation for...strong and capable men. Especially if they can kick his ass. 

Lucas-mean, sarcastic, stubborn, standoffish

First meeting:

I groan in frustration and hit my fist against the coffee maker, cracking the plastic. 

“There are other ways to deal with your problems, Lucas.” 

I go completely tense, shrugging off Rebecca’s hand from my shoulder. “What do you want?” 

A pained expression flashes through her eyes before she sighs and nods to herself. “I’m here to talk about your case. It’s bigger than you think.” 

I grunt, storming towards my office. I almost don’t think she’s following me until I hear her gently close the door. 

“The man you’re looking for has killed before. In many places.”

“You’re sure it’s the same guy?” I cross my arms and frown at her. 

“We’ve been tracking him for a while now.” She nods. “I believe he’ll be staying in Wayhaven for some time. Now is our last chance.” 

I scoff and turn my head to look away from her, instead studying the pictures of the victim I have taped to my wall. “So you’re here to take my case from me.” 

“Of course not.” She reaches for my arm but stops short, letting her hand fall to her side. “I have full faith in your abilities. Otherwise the agency would have had me take over the case.” 

I nod, grinding my teeth as she talks. 

“Instead I’m here to offer you something that will make your job easier. Something the mayor is very keen for you to utilize.” 

My jaw tightens further and I’m almost sure I can feel a tooth break. “Great, because I was so concerned with what the mayor wants.” 

“Lucas, please.” Rebecca sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Can you just not be difficult? If you don’t accept my help I will be forced to take over the case.” 

I scoff and shake my head. “So you’re resorting to threats now, Rebecca?” I clench my fists and study the tattoos covering every inch of my arms. “Fine. What are you offering?”

“My team.” 

“Be more specific. I’m not in the mood for games.” 

“The team of agents I command.” 

I frown at her, eyebrows pulling together. 

“I know you aren’t really a team player, Lucas.” Rebecca leans out the door to call for someone. “But can you at least try?” 

“No promises.” I cross my arms back over my chest and straighten my back. I adopt a defensive posture, looking more like I’m in the boxing ring than meeting my new teammates. 

Four men march into the room and I fight to keep the sneer off my face. Fucking feds. 

“Detective Lucas Greene, this is Unit Bravo.” 

No one says anything for a moment so I roll my eyes and step forward, pointedly not offering my hand. “Okay. Things one through four, this is my case and my precinct. So we follow my rules. Understood?” I use the tone Tina ‘lovingly’ refers to as my Drill Sergeant Voice. 

Three of them tense and look towards Rebecca but one, the tallest steps forward. “We understand, Detective. My name is Agent Nathaniel Sewell, though I prefer Nate.” He offers his hand and I stare at it, unable to hold back my sneer. 

I don’t bother schooling my features, just taking his hand and shaking firmly. “It’s not a pleasure. The only reason you’re here is because someone threatened me.” I narrow my eyes at Rebecca. “I’d be perfectly fine without your meddling.” 

“It’s not meddling, Lucas.” Rebecca sounds exhausted and a smile pulls at my lips. 

“I’m sure you would be, but we are happy to help.” Nate continues to smile genuinely at me as he steps back into the group. 

“Felix.” The shortest of the group steps forward and grabs my hand before I can cross my arms again. “Felix Hauville.” He brings my hand towards his mouth and I rip it away so fast he stumbles. 

“You’re pretty, but not that pretty.” I shake my head and cross my arms as tightly as possible.

Felix cocks his head and grins, “You’ll change your mind.” 

“Probably not.” I turn to the third. He’s slightly shorter than me and has a glare that could put mine to shame. “And you are?” 

“Finding this all unnecessary.” 

I bark out a sharp laugh. “Then leave, I genuinely could not give less of a fuck if I was lobotomized.” 

“Lucas,” my mother warns and levels me with a glare. “This is Specialist Agent Mason.” 

“Great, I get the feeling you aren’t going to talk to me. You’re my favorite so far.” I turn away before he can respond, coming face to face with a stern-looking blond. A smirk pulls at the corners of my mouth and I offer my hand, purring out, “If you wanted to kiss my hand that’s totally fine.” 

He arches a brow at me and stares down at my hand. 

“This is Commanding Agent Adam du Mortain,” Rebecca says, no small amount of pride in her voice. 

“Absolutely charmed.” My smirk widens when he takes my hand in a firm, almost painful, grip. 

“I look forward to working with you.” 

My eyes widen and lock onto his. “What the fuck?” 

“Everything all right?” Rebecca looks more to Adam than me. 

I cough and step back, dropping my gaze to the floor. “Everything’s fine. You can go, unless you don’t trust them to babysit me.” 

“That’s not what this is about, Lucas,” Rebecca insists. She steps towards me and I take another step away from her. She frowns for a moment before nodding. “I’ll leave you all to work on the case.” She gives me a smile before pointedly glaring at her team and leaving.

Reveal:

“You’re vampires?” I blink in confusion at the floor for a moment before baring my teeth at everyone. “You fucking lied to me!” 

Rebecca steps forward, raising her hands to try and placate me. “Lucas-” 

“No.” I square my shoulders and narrow my eyes at her. “You’ve been lying to me this whole fucking time. People have died!” My fist flies out before I can stop it, connecting with the hard wall.

“Lucas, calm down,” Rebecca orders. Her voice is firm and gives me slight pause before the anger boils over again. 

“No I will not calm down!” I snarl and spin around to glare at them all. “You and your fucking secrets have killed people!”

“We’ve saved more-” 

“Did you save Garret?” I snap and take a step towards Adam. “People died because you on your fucking high horses decided you’re all the special ones. Only you get to know the truth. Only you get to know how dangerous the world really is.” 

“Humans don’t have a history of reacting well.” Adam meets me glare. 

“How are we supposed to learn to be okay with it if we don’t know?” I take another step so we are almost chest to chest. “You would all rather be the oh so special ones. Oh thank God we have you protecting us.”

“Lucas that’s enough.” Rebecca snaps and grabs my arm, pulling me away from the other man. 

“This is my point exactly. You-”

“I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck that you’re vampires. I wouldn’t care if you were a fucking rock that gained sentience and started talking. News flash, none of you mean anything to me.” I’m almost sure I see Adam flinch at the words but when I face him fully he’s just glaring. “You know what? People fucking suck, Adam. I hate almost every person I have ever met in my life. People can’t always handle things that are different, that’s for sure. I’m a gay man, Adam. I know people can’t handle things that differ from their norm.” I go to step towards him again but Rebecca’s hand around my wrist stops me from getting too close. “But don’t you dare say that humans are the only one with prejudices. You are standing here comparing all humans. Look me in the eyes and tell me there are zero vampires, werewolves, fucking faeries who don’t hate humans solely for the fact that they are human. Should I hate you because Dracula was a dick? Get over yourself.” 

“Lucas, that is enough.” Rebecca firmly pulls me by my wrist. She drags me out into the hall and away from Unit Bravo before anyone can start shouting again.

[nemossubmarine]

Warhammer 40K: Wrath & Glory RP #35

We pick up right where we left off, Gorm chasing Knut into the webways, Gimlet and Saef hot at his heels (although Gimlet falls behind a bit after they get into the webways). Gorm catches up with Knut, who knocks him down with psychic energy. Saef knocks Knut down with his psychic energy in turn, so Gorm has time to get his hands on him, tearing his strange form into pieces. 

Unfortunately, despite his brother’s passing, Gorm is not seeming any less wolfed out, and in fact he rushes back towards where they came from, shouting about needing to make sure all of Knut is destroyed. Only, he can’t find the entrance anyway, so he just takes off in a random direction, Saef and Gimlet shouting at him to stop. Gimlet tries to get people to go to a certain direction, though Gorm is not in much of a listening mood. Finally Saef shouts at him that Gimlet has seen something.

Gorm is still running, on all fours, still very much a wolf, and Saef and Gimlet try their best to keep up. They come upon a walled off castle of sorts, and Gorm jumps the wall and then starts climbing the tower wall. He spots a woman in the window and smashes through it, pinning the woman on the ground. The woman is understandably quite scared. Someone shouts at Gorm to get his hands off their mom, and then Gorm is hit with a chair. It doesn’t do much, and Gorm grabs the offender, a young man and pins him down as well. He shouts at them about getting out of the webways, and they direct him towards the “Lord” upstairs. So Gorm goes there and busts down the door into a study where an older man resides. The man turns out to be an Imperial Navigator by the name of Adelbert Valance, and he doesn’t take kindly to interruptions. Gorm threatens him a bit, but he seems unmoved, asking Gorm to calm down. Gorm lets the Navigator know he needs to get out of here, and Valance starts looking at some maps.

And while all this is happening Saef and Gimlet merely see Gorm smash and jump through the window and then hear a woman screaming. Saef picks the lock on the door of the gate and he and Gimlet rush the tower and find the scared occupants, and then, eventually, Gorm, standing in a doorway, talking with someone on the inside. Gimlet and Saef ask Gorm to please calm down, which he doesn’t seem to be in the habit of doing. Saef tries to intimidate him into calming down, which goes about as well as one might imagine (I mean, Gorm is intimidated, but that only makes him more aggressive). Gimlet says he would like to see the person inside the room Gorm is standing in front of. Gorm says that situation is under control and asks people to move, as he has promised to fix a fucking door. Gimlet refuses to budge and Gorm start to get proper threatening, reaching for his chainsword. Then there's a knock on his shoulder and he turns to face the navigator, gazing right into his third eye which knocks him right out. The navigator returns to his work, advising someone to give Gorm first aid. Gimlet does so and Gorm comes to with the worst hangover of his life, not remembering much anything what happened. Gimlet and Saef clue him in on what happened and where they are, and the trio finally introduces themselves to navigator Valance.

Gorm asks after Uffe and Saef attempts to contact the vox transmitter that was given to the Harlequins with his own. What they hear is… not great. They hear a person shouting, clearly in agony, and recognize the voice belonging to Uffe, they hear metal cutting flesh, and the laughter of the Haemonculus. Saef closes the channel. Gorm is understandably rearing to go, but Valance says it’s not that simple, if the Haemonculus has locked the webway gate from the other side. Easiest way to get there would be getting their hands on few personal webway gate creators made by the Harlequins, so a trip to the Black Library is in order. Unfortunately the webways are near impossible to navigate, which reminds Navigator Valance, how did you guys find here anyway? Gimlet admits that he may have something to do with that, as he, kind of, feels something, relating to this place, more specifically the navigator himself. Valance looks at Gimlet for a long time and then asks “Demetrius?” and Gimlet says yep, that’s his name, any chance Valance might be his dad? “I didn’t recognize you,” Valance says and starts crying. Gorm and Saef quietly exit the scene, leaving Gimlet and his newly-found dad to catch up. 

It is a confusing and emotionally wrought situation all around. Valance asks after Cara, and Gimlet has to let him know that Cara is dead. Valance apparently had lived 20 years in the dark about the fate of his wife and son, about whether they just decided not to come back, or whether they died. The short version of Valance’s and Cara’s story is that Valance was supposed to marry the daughter of Paternova Shaneka Locarno of the Navigators, but instead married her servant, Cara, which is the reason the Paternova declared house Valance renegade. Inquisitor Tanner Valance doesn’t know personally, apparently he was for some reason after Cara who is an abhuman same as Valance (as all Navigators are, he has some extra growths), though she didn’t look like it. The refuge, aka the castle, they are currently in, was originally made for psykers by the Harlequins. Valance made a deal with the Harlequins, so they taught him to navigate the webways, making it possible for the others to go outside (to get food from Pomegranate Blossom’s planet), but making it so that he is unable to leave. Valance shows Gimlet some childhood drawings of his and a picture of the family together (which he lets Gimlet keep). Regarding Gimlet’s strange skills, it was apparently some latent Navigator genes Valance and Cara activated when Gimlet was a baby. Cara was very insistent in getting her hands on Gimlet’s genes, something regarding her own mutations, the nature of which Valance doesn’t know exactly. Originally Gimlet could only locate Valance himself, so he has no idea what the other thing Gimlet feels is, maybe something relating to his mother? Gimlet asks about Valance being stuck here, and how to stay in contact, and Valance can’t really offer much as cell phones won’t work and neither will vox transmitters in and out of webways. Obviously Gimlet could always attempt to renegotiate the terms of Valance’s contract with the Harlequins, though they don’t have much of a leg to stand on in that front.

While this is happening Gorm and Saef go downstairs to meet Jani and her son Yesukai. Jani offers them apple pie, and Gorm a hang-over cure (which Gorm pours down the drain). Yesukai asks if our heroes could take him (and his mother) out of here while they’re at it. Yesukai, a rather pale man, has apparently grown up in the webways, and would very much like to get out. Gorm asks Saef to check in on Uffe. Luckily(?) there seems to be a pause in the torture, as they only hear very labored breathing.

Gimlet is about done with his dad so Gorm and Saef join them upstairs to see what they need to do, which is to say to go to the Black Library of Chaos and loan some Harlequin stuff. Valance teaches Gimlet how to use his inate Navigator-ish skills to navigate the Webways to the Black Library.

And off they go! Gimlet apologizes for taking time. Gorm says that they’re friends, so no need to apologize, and Saef points out that they all have family issues, so it’s fine to take some time to resolve stuff like that. 

As they walk, the conversation turns to what happened to Gorm. Gorm explains that that is something that can happen to Wolves because of their unstable geneseed. Uffe has the same problem, worse than Gorm actually (re: eating that Chaos dude). Gorm apologizes for that happening, and instructs how to help him de-wolf, holding him down might work, but that’s probably best left for Uffe, reminding him of who he is, telling it’s safe, or knocking him out. Saef asks if showing like a picture of Layla would help and Gorm says probably, they agree that Gorm will send a pic of Layla to Saef and Gimlet once they’re out. Gimlet asks if this was night training, and Gorm says yes, Uffe has a bit of a problem, with Chaos nightmares. Saef asks what is night training, and Gimlet says he thought Gorm and Uffe were fucking, but apparently it was just wolfing-out problem. Gimlet also asks if Vivek got the data disk of Kuru, and Gorm says yes, but he was planning on giving the original back to Gorm once he had copied it into himself. Saef is like what? And Gimlet and Gorm apologize and hug him for him being out of the loop (“Vivek probably just didn’t have the time to tell Saef about it”), Saef says is fine.

Saef mentions that he has seen the Webways before, in a dream he had while he was being carried by Uffe. As he explains the dream, Gorm recognizes it as one of Uffe’s nightmares. Saef isn’t sure why or how he got it, but he recognized the demon that he saw in Ivar as being part of it (thing Uffe never saw), and mentions piece of Ivar’s soul that he has. Gorm is excited to see the piece and is keen on keeping it, but Saef warns that the soul has attempted to escape few times, so best let Saef keep it. Gorm agrees, though mocks the soul a bit before handing it back to Saef.

[kalluun-patangaroa]

Now you see them: It's been a long time since there was a pop phenomenon like this - frenzied fans, rhapsodising reviews . . . Suede, it seems, might be the future of rock and roll. Then again, they might not.

The Independent

Sunday, 21 March 1993 

Written by William Leith

A THURSDAY in March 1993, 7.20pm. The Top of The Pops presenter, Mark Franklin, introduces the latest video from Suede; the studio audience gives a youthful cheer. Brett Anderson, Suede's lead singer, appears on the walkway of a nasty tower block. He wears: no shirt, a tight black leather jacket, so short it reveals his midriff, black trousers low on the hips, so you can see his angular hip-bones, a cheap-looking necklace. He looks pale, almost ill, a figure from an early 1970s nightmare. His lank fringe covers his whole face.

The camera rushes down the scummy walkway into a dark room, where a coloured light flashes sickeningly; over the fuzzy guitar noise Anderson sings - or rather, he wails: 'Like his dad, you know that he's had / Animal nitrate in mind / Oh in your council home, he jumped on your bones / Now you're taking it time after time.'

This is 'Animal Nitrate', Suede's third single, a song about - what? Domestic violence, drugs, child abuse? It's thick with filthy undertones - and people are wild about it, just like they were wild about Suede's first two singles, 'The Drowners' and 'Metal Mickey', so wild that a concert-goer told me: 'It's not just girls who pack themselves at the front of the stage and try to rip Brett's clothes off - it's boys, and it's nothing to do with homosexuality . . . it's everybody, it's a mania.'

In his careless, Mick Jagger twang, which he has to a tee, Anderson tells me: 'Yeah, there's been a lot of hysteria at our gigs. But we're quite bored with playing live already. Once you have captivated a couple of thousand people, got them in the palm of your hand, and had them salivating . . . you don't really know where to go from there.'

They're still in their infancy, but Suede have snared the imagination of a certain type of rock fan - the sort of people who latch on to thin, angst-ridden white boys, the caste who worshipped the Smiths in the Eighties and David Bowie in the Seventies. Most important, Suede have become the darlings of the rock press. Melody Maker, the New Musical Express, Select, Q, Vox are wild about Suede, too; Suede have had more hype than anybody since the Smiths, or possibly even the Sex Pistols. The reviews are florid, poetic, half-crazed; they express the almost lascivious delight of journalists hungry for something to pin their hopes on. Suede, says the New Musical Express, are: 'The triumph of decadent aristo-foppery over prole pop.' They are 'Out there, so alone, brilliantly vulnerable' (Melody Maker). Or, as Select magazine put it: 'Never mind the bollocks. Here's Suede.' Needless to say, Suede's publicists, Phill Savidge and John Best, won the Music Week award for the best publicity campaign of 1992. The judges said they 'took Suede from obscurity to accolades to being hailed as the best band of the year'.

In the past year, Suede have been pictured on 19 magazine covers (including six Melody Maker covers, four New Musical Express covers, and, unprecedented for a band who have yet to release an album, the cover of Q magazine, which appeals to older fans). The Christmas edition of the NME, on which Brett Anderson posed as Sid Vicious, was the biggest-selling NME for a decade.

But Suede haven't yet released an album; their first three singles reached, respectively, 49, 17, and 7 in the chart. This is not the big-time yet; it's not U2 or Simply Red or the Cure. In an important sense, Suede haven't happened yet; they are in an interesting limbo. They might not happen. Lots of bands have got this far - or nearly this far - and no further; what happened to the Stone Roses, to Sigue Sigue Sputnik? They seemed like great ideas at the time.

What will Suede's fate be? Nobody knows; the world of rock music is too fickle to predict. When I met Brett Anderson, he said: 'I do want to have a place in history. I really do.'

'And what does it take for a band to have a place in history?'

'I think . . . three great records. Three great albums. But then again . . . the Sex Pistols did it with one, didn't they? I don't know. I don't know.'

BY THE end of 1992, when the height of Suede's chart success was still only a No 17 single, journalists were drooling over Brett Anderson. They practically had him on the couch. They loved his angst, his preoccupa-tion with himself, his ability to verbalise. He was perfect - he was everything they could possibly want.

In a typical exchange, he told Melody Maker: 'When it comes to writing, there's something to be said about being unhappy. I know I've been at my most creative when I've been sexually unsatisfied. When I'm sexually satisfied I write a load of old rubbish.'

Melody Maker: 'Are you sexually satisfied now?'

Anderson: 'Yeah.'

Melody Maker: 'So you're writing a load of old rubbish.'

Anderson: 'Yes, and it's a problem, because we're supposed to be doing our debut album . . .' He even had an exact position on sex, which was: 'I see myself as a bisexual man who's never had a homosexual experience.'

Perfect. As soon as they spotted Suede, the rock press knew they were on to something. The journalist who first wrote about Suede was John Mulvey of the NME. Suede were nobodies, playing third on the bill at the University of London Union. Mulvey says: 'They had charm, aggression, and . . . if not exactly eroticism, then something a little bit dangerous and exciting. Brett was a brilliant frontman. He has a certain edge to him which most people don't have, like Ned's Atomic Dustbin or Kingmaker, who are woefully bereft of that spice.'

'That spice' is something the rock journalist needs to find, if he is to make a living. Week in week out, you trudge to seedy bars and clubs, desperate to find something exciting. When I was a rock journalist in the Eighties, people would come into meetings every week, excited, with their discoveries. This is it! One week it was Stump, another week it was the Soup Dragons. We had the Shrubs, the June Brides, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Half Man Half Biscuit; they were all the talk of the NME office for days, or weeks; sometimes they held out for longer, as long as there was still a chance of starting a cult, of getting people excited enough to rush out and buy the magazine. The strike-rate is very low; mostly, these discoveries fizzle out. So when the music press is faced with something that might go the whole way . . . it explodes.

'Here was a British band it was possible to get excited about,' says Danny Kelly, editor of Q magazine. 'The kids have to wait for the Smashing Pumpkins, or Hole, or Come, to come over from America. Whereas Suede is a very real, very immediate thing - they are around and playing.'

Kelly continues: 'In the last 10 years bands have been very apologetic; they've thrived on the attitude that 'we're the same as the audience'. Suede's attitude is 'we're brilliant; we're the stars, and you're the admirers'.'

Steve Sutherland, editor of the NME, says: 'When I first saw Suede, it was one of the few times I can honestly say I saw a band and I was utterly convinced they were brilliant. Often, you get a band with attitude, or a gimmick, or good songs, but seldom everything together.'

Kelly says: 'Also, Suede allude so knowingly to things that rock journalists are comfortable with - Seventies glam, Cockney Rebel, the Smiths, sexuality, asexuality, male violence. If there is a game to be played, they're playing it very well . . . they are skinny white boys speaking to other skinny white boys about their inadequacies.'

This week's NME cover story is the transcription of a meeting between Brett Anderson and David Bowie, who listened to a tape of Suede's first album sent to him by Steve Sutherland. Bowie told Sutherland: 'Of all the tapes you've ever sent me, this is the only one that I knew instantly was great.' The two singers, the 'Thin White Duke' and the star-in- waiting, chat about sex, drugs, Nazism and the ins and outs of being a pop star. Talking about Bowie's recent, relatively anonymous, period, Anderson says: 'It's funny that, when David started Tin Machine, it was the start of the cult of non-personality . . . maybe you were just feeling the times.' The article is headlined: 'One day, son, all this could be yours.

HE COULD, conceivably, be the next David Bowie, the next Mick Jagger. Or it could all come to nothing. Who knows? Brett Anderson sits with his feet up on the table, talking quietly about his chances. He wears: black corduroy trousers, cut low, a thin jumper with nothing underneath, shoes with holes in the soles, a reaction against his recent, more stylised image, which included an appearence in the NME with an elaborate shirt painted on his body.

'Are you conscious of the way you dress?'

'Yes . . . I'm feeling pressure on how to dress in that I don't like being made into a cartoon. There's a certain element of the music press that deals in comedy and turn you into a two-dimensional thing. The whole foppish thing is getting quite boring really.'

Sitting, as he is, in stardom's waiting-room, Anderson is hyper-aware of the traps he might fall into. Recently, for instance, a tabloid scoured his earlier interviews and found them to be larded with references to drugs. 'They said there was a backlash against Suede because parents were worried for their kids,' he says. 'The whole media's a huge dangerous web.'

'Do you ever think that all this might just be hype? That you might never go the whole way?'

Anderson, his knees drawn up to his chest, his head in his hands, says: 'The British music press are notorious for getting it wrong, for leading people up the garden path, because they just . . . they're too obsessed with the idea of things. But we never really felt it wouldn't happen. We knew we had a bit of substance over the style.'

Anderson believes he's going to be a star. He's happy with Suede's first album, Suede, on the cover of which is depicted a couple kissing - an ambiguous picture, which could be a man kissing a man, a man kissing a woman, or a woman kissing a woman. 'I chose it because of the ambiguity of it, but mostly because of the beauty of it,' he says.

He also says: 'There's an elegance and a beauty to our music that people haven't heard yet, and I want that to come across - the flow of it, the swoon, to a certain extent.'

Anderson comes from Haywards Heath, where he met Mat Osman, Suede's guitarist, at school. 'He's always known he was going to be a pop star. He was very arrogant,' says his childhood friend Alan Fisher.

'I'm quite glad that Haywards Heath was such an ugly place,' says Anderson. 'Being born on the outskirts of London, being able to just peer in but not quite see what's going on, is a really tantalising thing - it makes you hungry and gives you a certain amount of ambition.' He lived in a council house with his father, a taxi-driver, his mother, an artist, and his sister, who 'escaped' at the age of 15. 'I didn't go to any gigs,' he says. 'I didn't like all the bands that were around - Echo and the Bunnymen and all that stuff.' Anderson's taste was more obscure - he liked hard, punky bands - Crass, the Exploited.

After attending Manchester University for two weeks, Anderson moved to London with Osman. 'Before we met Bernard,' he says, 'it was just me and Mat in my bedroom with this rubbish drum machine, writing awful songs.' Then they auditioned for a guitarist, and chose Bernard Butler, who worried Anderson because he was 'too good'. They also auditioned for a drummer, and picked Simon Gilbert, who tells me over the telephone: 'I heard a tape of their early stuff. I said, this sounds really good, but they need a drummer.'

'And then it just . . . took off?'

'Oh, no. We played all the shitty gigs for a year and a half. We played the Amersham Arms in New Cross to one person.'

'Do you remember the moment when the rock press discovered you?'

'Yes. I remember the first few reviews. I'll get it out of my scrapbook if you like.'

BRETT Anderson, sitting precariously on the window-ledge, with his feet balanced on the radiator, talks about Suede's first album. His favourite song is 'So Young', a full-tilt anthem of slashing guitars and pained howling, a great song - which, like so much of Suede's material, recalls the prancing confidence of Marc Bolan, of early Bowie. 'It deals with the knife- edge of being young,' says Anderson, who is 25. 'There's the desperation and all the pitfalls, but then actually turning them into something hopeful and beautiful that looks forward and that isn't negative.

'It's a rejection of the traditional English character,' he goes on. 'A desire to push all the claustrophobia and tat and bits and pieces away, and stride into the future, which isn't the most original thought in the world, but maybe one of the most important.'

'So will success spoil you as a musician then? What if you get comfortable?'

'I don't really feel as though I could ever be comfortable.'

And now, a week before the release of Suede's first album, Anderson must go to a studio to meet Bernard Butler and write songs for the second album, tentatively scheduled for release early in the new year. He has also been thinking about the video for the next single. 'Up to now,' he says, 'we've been playing on the grittiness of it all. But I wanna take it all to a different level; I wanna use nature more. I've got this image in my head of these horses galloping, and then I'd have it superimposed, and make it a lot more beautiful, a lot more floating, a lot more . . . implied.'

Anderson gets down off the window-ledge. By the time the stuff he will write this afternoon is in the shops, he might be just a vague memory. Then again, meeting him is something I might boast about to my grandchildren. Who knows? Nobody, yet.