#this is also a very old drawing like even older than 2020

[darkmajden]

I still watch the fuck outta sonic boom it’s still one of my fav shows im watching it RIGHT NOW even. I love them

[reasonsforhope]

Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds

Article | Paywall free

When lightning ignited fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the blaze spread quickly. Redwoods naturally resist burning, but this time flames shot through the canopies of 100-meter-tall trees, incinerating the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”

Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The charred survivors, despite being defoliated [aka losing all their needles], mobilized long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds that had been lying dormant under the bark for centuries.

“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with catastrophic fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could withstand the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate regime.

Mild fires strike coastal redwood forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark, up to about 30 centimeters thick at the base, which contains tannic acids that retard flames. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames that consume vegetation on the ground. But the fire in 2020 was so intense that even the uppermost branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize went up in smoke along with their pine needles.

Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates, which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Still, scientists weren’t sure these reserves would prove enough for the burned trees of Big Basin.

Visiting the forest a few months after the fire, Peltier and his colleagues found fresh growth emerging from blackened trunks. They knew that shorter lived trees can store sugars for several years. Because redwoods can live for more than 2000 years, the researchers wondered whether the trees were drawing on much older energy reserves to grow the sprouts.

Average age is only part of the story. The mix of carbohydrates also contained some carbon that was much older. The way trees store their sugar is like refueling a car, Peltier says. Most of the gasoline was added recently, but the tank never runs completely dry and so a few molecules from the very first fill-up remain. Based on the age and mass of the trees and their normal rate of photosynthesis, Peltier calculated that the redwoods were calling on carbohydrates photosynthesized nearly 6 decades ago—several hundred kilograms’ worth—to help the sprouts grow. “They allow these trees to be really fire-resilient because they have this big pool of old reserves to draw on,” Peltier says.

It's not just the energy reserves that are old. The sprouts were emerging from buds that began forming centuries ago. Redwoods and other tree species create budlike tissue that remains under the bark. Scientists can trace the paths of these buds, like a worm burrowing outward. In samples taken from a large redwood that had fallen after the fire, Peltier and colleagues found that many of the buds, some of which had sprouted, extended back as much as 1000 years. “That was really surprising for me,” Peltier says. “As far as I know, these are the oldest ones that have been documented.”

... “The fact that the reserves used are so old indicates that they took a long time to build up,” says Susan Trumbore, a radiocarbon expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry. “Redwoods are majestic organisms. One cannot help rooting for those resprouts to keep them alive in decades to come.”

-via Science, December 1, 2023

[bringinghometherain]

I think the whole "I had to drop my phone...and go to Costa Rica for a while" thing is very likely because Rhys has been almost entirely a comedic side character in his work for like, 25 years. He's been earning his living being funny and awkward in front of a camera, which is a different subdivision of Hollywood from being attractive in front of a camera. He probably, as he got older, settled into that identity just fine. He likes being the funny guy, he feels fine about how he looks, he married a lovely woman and therefore didn't need to fixate on his appeal in the way that people who are dating need to (or feel they need to, rather).

Being Funny as an identity (especially for Rhys's generation of comics) often means you have written off the idea of being considered conventionally attractive. Not because you're not attractive! But because you start being funny when you're a kid to get people to like you, because you're kind of weird and awkward and you have bad skin and don't really fit into your body, and nobody will like you unless you have "being funny" to offer to the group.

Being Funny also means you're probably very good at redirecting conversation away from the parts of yourself you don't want people to see, you're very good at self-deprecating jokes, and you probably feel like you need to earn your space in most situations by Being Funny (ask me how I know). And when you're in your late 40s and quite settled into this identity, becoming an overnight sex symbol and having your social media feeds suddenly flooded with incredibly detailed artistic depictions of you as a sex symbol, I would guess that is extremely hard to wrap one's head around!!! It probably feels uncomfortable at first!! If your relationship with your body is "oh that old thing, don't worry it tells jokes," then having dozens of people drawing you as a tasteful nude has gotta be weird! I get it, and I sympathize. If I had something that big happening to my identity I might also go to Costa Rica for a bit (no I would not, I cannot afford that, I would probably go to Lake Michigan for like a day and call it even).

And as for why Taika and Con have been able to embrace the fanart from the start, well. Leslie Jones has already asked the important question of Taika: "Do you know you fine as hell?" And yeah, he absolutely does. And like he says, he knew it in high school too. And I say this because he went into entertainment, he probably wanted this at least a little bit, like come on. He's funny too, obviously, but he's always been hot, and he knows that. He didn't have to fall back on being funny because he was also Fine As Hell. Before OFMD was even an idea he'd already had all these photoshoots of him being a goofball in one shot and a Brooding Romantic Lead type in another. Dude knew his range well before the first sketch of Blackbeard in fishnets dropped. He was always gonna be fine.

And Con! Con has been a romantic interest several times in his tv/film career, from the very start. He's a side character pretty often, but the man has gotten plenty of feedback that he's attractive enough to be a romantic interest on a screen. Hell, just in 2020 he was a romantic lead on a podcast drama (which was a great story, he's great in it, very fun little horror drama). So while he may not have the same Fine As Hell and Knows It energy Taika has, Con probably came into OFMD more sure of his physical attractiveness than of his comedic acting skills. And when the Izzy fanart started dropping, he probably didn't have much trouble getting excited about it after the initial surprise, because he hadn't written off his physical attractiveness in the way Rhys probably had.

[lettheladylead]

Hi! I was looking through Magica De Spell’s Wikipedia page today and it says that Magica has a sister named the Wicked Witch of the West, who has children named Witch Child and Warlock. I couldn’t find any information of them online so I was wondering if you knew anything about them, if they exist at all.

If they don’t, do you think you could instead do a character post on Magica’s cousin Matilda? Your old family tree posts helped me a lot in understanding Duck lore.

Aw I'm glad those posts help!! I'm still down for making them 'cause it's a lot of fun for me to find old comics and do some research.

So before I talk about Witch Child, I wanna clarify some things that are relevant to the character.

This is another case where Americans can't stop themselves from taking "sister" and "aunt" literally. Aunt can be used to refer to any older woman in someone's life. Sister is frequently used in stories about witches (because a coven is like a sisterhood/sorority, it's a whole thing). Neither imply blood relation! Even "cousin" is often used to refer to friends/neighbors. Different cultures and languages treat words like that very differently than Americans do.

Witch Child, Warlock, & Witch of the West are all from a very specific time period of Brazilian duck comics where Magica and Madam Mim (from The Sword and the Stone) were living together/dating/???? and interacted with other Disney movie characters. In this specific timeline, the ducks live amongst regular humans which is very strange but you just gotta accept it. Magica also lives in Duckburg I think? It seems like she and Scrooge just run into each other randomly so I believe she and Mim have a house in Duckburg for whatever reason

"Witch Child" is not her name and I don't know why she's referred to like that on InDucks/other wikias. Her name in Brazil (where she was created) is Magali, in Italian she's Maghetta/Maghina/Streghella (inconsistent names in translations are very common), and in French she's Seraphine. None of her comics have an official English publication so again idk where "Witch Child" comes from! But I'll probably refer to her as Streghella for the remainder of this post 'cause it's easier that way.

OKAY now for details:

In Streghella's first comic, Magica gets a letter from a friend asking her and Madam Mim to babysit her friend's daughter. Streghella is whiny and rude and a troublemaker. She ruins a magical career opportunity for Magica and it's pretty funny

Then there's a whole bunch of comics where she just appears for no reason, making trouble. She's a surprisingly powerful witch but she just loves to piss everyone off, especially Mim.

Another important note about Streghella - she was only really drawn by two comic artists during the height of her appearances (in the 70s, pretty much). The above drawings were all done by an artist named Jim Fletcher. But she had a lot of appearances drawn by an artist named Glenn Schmitz, who drew her completely differently.

I don't know if I would've realized these were even the same character if it wasn't documented lol but y'know they didn't have the same resources in the 70s that we have now so they did what they could.

Anyway, from what I can tell her personality stayed mostly in tact through most of these comics. Whiny, stuck-up, nosy, but also very funny and magically powerful. She would occasionally interact with Scrooge or HDL but mostly her appearances were in Magica and Mim comics.

Oh there's one comic where she looks like this for some reason?

BUT THEN what's interesting is Streghella making a few appearances years after her comics all came out. First there was one comic in 1995, then twice in 2011 and once more in 2016. There's also apparently a 2020 appearance but I couldn't get my hands on it :(

In her 1995 appearance she looks really cute but her personality is, well. Personality-wise she's completely unrecognizable. Now Magica makes comments about Streghella always trying to be good and getting in trouble for being good all the time.

(Ignore the bad english translation I was just popping pages into google translate lol)

She's still a troublemaker in the sense that she tries to trick Magica and Mim into consuming a potion that will make them good, kind people. But then the comic ends with Magica doing something nice by choice and it's cute but yeah the character is nothing like her original self.

Her first 2011 comic is where she...wants to go to a Jonas Brothers concert and chats with April May & June online to try and make it happen. Something like that. It follows along with "Streghella is too kind and Magica tries to teach her to be evil" from the '95 comic, but for some reason the colorist made Streghella a brunette. Idk! They also forgot her iconic hat!

Next 2011 comic has Huey Dewey and Louie accidentally traveling to a magic academy. It's very Harry Potter-y? I guess? Streghella is friendly and does some magic. You can tell it's her 'cause of the pigtails and bows. But still no hat :(

In her 2016 appearance, she's been reading April May and June's blog and wants to help them with some problem. Magica is like no be mean and Streghella's like no I want to help! You get it.

This comic is pretty fun. Magica turns herself into Grandma Duck and puts a truth potion into some cake Streghella bakes for the Duck Family and gets a bunch of secrets out of them.

There's also a joke at the end where Daisy accidentally reveals Brigitta's age to everyone (we don't get to see it) but according to this comic, Brigitta is much older than she looks lol Not that we didn't already know that.

Anyway so that's all there is to know about Witch Child/Streghella. She's cute!

Warlock time!

Warlock is Streghella's brother. He's only in four comics total and they're mostly very early comics - his real name is just whatever Streghella's name was at the time but with an -o at the end. If she's Maghetta, he's Maghetto. If she's Maghina, he's Maghino. You get it. He'd probably be Streghello if he had a named appearance more recently.

His personality is not very distinct from Streghella's. He's also magical and a troublemaker. In his first comic he arrives in the mail, in a, like...little jail cell? Crate? Idk? And then Magica and Mim eventually box both kids up into the crate and ship them away.

(Yes that's supposed to be him, apparently.)

He appears in the magic school comic as well...

And that's it! There's not really anything else to know about him.

Last but not least...the Witch of the West! Actually, that's a lie. Least. She appears just the one time. And I'm gonna be honest. I don't think she's the biological mother of these bird children.

'Cause yeah she's a human witch. Idk if she's from another Disney property or if she's supposed to be the witch from the Wizard of Oz. Idk man. But Streghella calls her "mama" and she refers to Streghella as her daughter so I'll take those ones literally.

There's nothing much to say about her - she doesn't have a name and all she does is drop her kid off with Magica and then reappear when Mim and Magica threaten to lock Streghella inside a bottle.

NOW if you're wondering...how do these characters connect to the previously known characters that are related to Magica De Spell?

They do not! The fact that Streghella has made a few recent appearances means you can decide how you want her to fit in, but trying to blend these different canons will not be seamless. You just gotta take what you like. Streghella frequently refers to herself as Magica's apprentice so you can always take that route, too.

Aaaaaaaaaand since you asked, I'm happy to talk about Matilda! God there are too many Matildas in duck comics. I have never met a woman named Matilda in my life. It's fine.

Matilda De Spell (not an official name but I call her that anyway) - Magica's teenage cousin! Is she actually, biologically, Magica's cousin? Probably not. But it's fiiiiiiine.

I did actually scanlate all three comics that Matilda appears in, so you can read them if you'd like:

There's not really anything to know about her outside of these comics. She's tomboyish, spunky, fun. Really looks up to Magica. I think their dynamic is fun and I always like to see more teen characters lol I think I've portrayed Matilda as Amelia De Spell's younger sister but that's definitely not canon, just me trying to stick the blondes together.

Anyway sorry this ended up being such a long response. I haven't had the opportunity to research random duck characters in a while. I hope this has the answers you wanted :)

[lolbatty]

Old one from 2020 I never posted. I'm going through my art folder, reflecting on how little digital work I've done in the last 4 years.

Now that I live in Chicago I rarely spend time on the computer. I suppose now that it's winter time I may be here more. I'd like to start drawing again but it's taken a backseat for a few years now.

Lately I have been working on myself. I'm a lot less anxious than I was, way more confident. I'm also more emotionally mature, more spiritually attuned and overall doing leaps and bounds better than I ever have been.

I've been working at a pottery place, and helping some older ladies clean and organize in their high rise condominiums. I also work for an abstract artist as an assistant, I'm part of a woman's spirituality group, and I have an amazing group of very talented friends. Chicago is amazing, it's breathed life into my existence like nothing has before. There's limitless opportunities and possibilities here for artists.

I guess I wanted to lay this stuff out just to say..I am still here. I am doing well. Back in 2019-2021 I really wasn't doing great at all. My Dad had just died, I was in some really toxic situationships (friends and romantic). The opportunity came to change my entire life and I took it without a second thought. I knew it was right, even though it was a big scary change. It paid off. Sometimes the risk is worth it in ways you could never have foreseen.

I'm still making art, though I'm not really sure where I stand with commissions right now. I'd like to post more personal stuff here if its not too cringe.

I hope everyone reading this is doing well.

batty

[new-sandrafilter]

Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric

In Chapter Three of our ongoing project, the young actor talks candidly about coming of age over the last few years — a process he calls “adultifying" — during which he turned a professional corner, discovered a cohort of colorful peers, and learned to embrace his spirit of rebellion.

By Daniel Riley

Photography by Cass BirdOctober 17, 2023

“I don’t even know if I want to share this with you because it’s quite intimate,” Timothée Chalamet said, “but as an actor, you sort of live at a dining room table in your head, and you have about 30 personalities at the table, and you’re trying to attend to them, without going crazy.”

Assembled at the table were, yes, the many characters he’d embodied in films. But there were also the versions of himself that had been constructed in public and reflected back at him. There were the versions constructed through truth. The versions constructed through conjecture. The versions constructed through outright fabrication. And then finally—lastly—there was the person that he actually was and is beneath it all.

“And it was when that guy didn’t align with the first ones that things could get very trippy.”

One weeknight this summer, after when I typically go to sleep, Timothée Chalamet—the real one—came by my apartment building in downtown Manhattan. It was steaming hot and he had his hood up and a jean jacket on. Layers. He had a mask, too, a holdover for so many of his kind, even as a mask in public, at night, draws more eyes your way than it diverts. He was walking with pep, with freedom of movement.

He preferred to prowl his hometown at night these days, like Batman, when he can move readily in the shadows. Batman was hungry. “Do you know where I can get a sandwich?” he asked me.

After walking a little, he looked up. “I would just go there, but is there a better place than that?”

It was a grimy bodega that I know to be run by cats.

I persuaded him to get a bowl of pasta from a place that was willing to stay open late. We talked about his forthcoming blockbusters, Wonka and Dune: Part Two, and the transformation that had occurred both professionally and personally since the last time I saw Chalamet, in 2020.

“I bet I’m way calmer than I was talking to you in Woodstock,” he said.

That was the first COVID summer, which he’d spent between New York City and upstate New York, doing his best not to lose his mind. He was 24 years old then and an emerging Hollywood star, with all the opportunities laid out before him that he’d spent his early life fantasizing about. And yet there he was—there we all were—stuck, suspended mid-life, and bursting at the seams to get back to work. “I had spent a lot of time after high school with my head in the clouds, imagining a life as an actor, and totally oblivious to the life I was actually leading,” he said. “I was out of touch with an in-touch life. And during COVID, it flipped, and I was forced to become very in touch with my increasingly out-of-touch life. It was not good for me.”

But when I saw him this summer, he was three years older, three years wiser, and willing to indulge me with measuring the distance between then and now. For those keeping score at home, this is Chalamet’s third GQ cover, and the third story we’ve done in what has become a sort of longer-term project in progress. Six years ago, when I met him in his initial blush of fame from Call Me by Your Name, I saw up close a person in the last moments of their Before life. Three years ago, when we met for Chapter Two, I saw up close a person reckoning in real time with that rocket ship of fame and acclaim. And then this summer, here we were again, doing a version of what we’d done before—just walking around, hiding out, and otherwise taking stock of a moment in time in an early and extraordinary career.

“Even going to my friend Julian’s apartment,” he said, “there’s a Polaroid, ’cause he Polaroids everyone who has lived in the apartment, and there’s one of me from 2015, and when I see my expression there, I’m like: Man, I feel like I’ve lived seven lives since then.”

It was not just the stack-up of time—but the pivot he felt he was riding from one phase of his life and career to another. He brought up the recent bestseller Four Thousand Weeks (thesis: A good life is only 4,000 weeks, so how do you plan to not waste any of them?) and the 27 Club (he was now 27 himself) and the creeping fog that had slowly then suddenly enveloped people his age. “You start going on Instagram, seeing people from your high school getting married, friends having kids, and you start going: This balls-to-the-wall thing, even at this amazing level I’m at that probably couldn’t have gone better—you still start wondering, How long till you have to change?”

Material change was not that simple. This was, after all, one of the most beloved young actors in Hollywood. This was someone who had been told he was plenty good enough precisely as he was. This was a young man who, when he emerged—as though fully formed both onscreen and while promoting films, in both his talent and ebullient charm—went on one late-night show and was implored before a live audience to: Don’t ever change! Please don’t change!

“People are going to roll their eyes that these are actual problems to have,” he said, “but that is an interesting challenge to have to feel like for your life and your work and your art, that these are things where there actually shouldn’t be an evolution.”

“It’s like Bob,” he said, meaning Dylan, whom he’d been preparing to play in the forthcoming James Mangold film, A Complete Unknown, for over three years now. His head was in it, Dylan day and night, and he was attuned, as ever, to echoes between his own life and the stories he was training to tell. “The Dylan metaphor is going electric,” he said, referring to the infamous moment at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan, that era’s one true acoustic god, plugged his guitar into an amp, brought out a band, and started to really rock. “Now, the great thing about going electric is that was in the name of art. That was an act of rebellion and a push in a musical direction that happened to be…. So I don’t want to say….” He wasn’t saying it—but he was straining to maybe connect the metaphor to some other things on his mind, as well. “God, it’d be so ironic to talk so much about acting and the art and the work, and then get caught in a loop about the demands of a public life. But…”

It went like this. The balance of indulging the aching artist’s desire, on the one hand, and navigating the blessing and burden of celebrity on the other. He took deep breaths. He knocked on wood a lot. On more than one occasion he broke into a confession with: “I definitely want to contextualize this with an attitude of gratitude—I heard Denzel say that on Desus & Mero.” He did not want to tread hastily, he did not want to toss any of it to the wind. “Every career is a miracle,” he said, with real gravity. But it might feel good, necessary even, for a little rebellion.

As we strolled through the Village after his midnight snack, every block sparked a memory. Here was the theater where his grandmother, mother, and sister were all part of the same dance piece. Here was where the first party was where kids were drinking “Mike’s Hard.” Here was the bookstore where he first met Ralph Fiennes and proudly declared that he’d just done a movie with Luca Guadagnino. I shared one of my own. Here was where Jennifer Lawrence lives, I said.

“Really?” Chalamet said. “Should we see if she’s home?”

We kept on moving to the place he was staying during his time in town. It was getting very late, and was very possibly the stillest night of the summer. No Taylor Swift concert close by. No film set in production. No playoff game just let out. It was, I will say as a now longtime resident, the absolute last circumstances in which one would expect to spot a movie star. And yet there, out of nothing, came a male cry from down the street, out the window of a passing cab.

“Timothée?!?!”

He looked toward it, head down and shoulders hunched. “Whattup.”

“Oh! My! God!” the voice replied, having been validated with a bull’s-eye.

A few blocks later, it happened again.

“Oh, my God!! Can we…?!”

And he slipped into photo mode, like a robot butler whose switch had been flipped to the On position. “Where are you guys from?”

I apologized for leading him through the heart of NYU.

“These are my people,” he joked.

Despite getting hounded by photographers or stopped or recognized, he still loved walking around New York on his own. It was what he’d done all his life, as everyone else did. It was equalizing, he said, even the idea that an air conditioner can drop on your head at any second.

But in recent years, it was his intense familiarity with those daily rhythms of his in New York City that made him realize it might be time for a major pivot. “After one too many days of doing the same thing, I just got this overwhelming sense that I was still playing the same hand of cards I’d had for a long time—but that I had a better hand to play,” he said. “I was living in this rental place that didn’t feel like home. I was getting the same bacon, egg, and cheese at the same deli. Resisting any lifestyle change.”

All the while his circumstances had changed. He had grown older. The movies were bigger. His profile was immeasurably larger. But he was holding onto something—why? He had seen it up close in Hollywood. The man-child. The people who so loved playing characters that they played characters in their real lives, too, without actually transforming themselves into more mature human beings. He knew the cliché about celebrities staying developmentally the age that they were when they became famous. But how is a beloved movie star meant to change the right way? How is he supposed to grow up? How does he meaningfully evolve his life and art without killing his core? This was only the most important thing there was for Timothée Chalamet. It might be worthwhile to chart the course. “All I knew,” he said, “was it was time to level up.”

After our time in Woodstock in the summer of 2020, Chalamet flew to Budapest for Dune: Part One reshoots and got sick immediately. It was a familiar story after that summer spent locked down: The moment they let us out of our cages, we caught everything else there was to catch. It was another false start for him, every cell crying out to work.

It had been so onerous getting into Europe during COVID that when Dune wrapped he stayed on the continent. He spent some time in the South of France with Hedi Slimane, in Paris with Haider Ackermann, in Rome and Milan with Luca Guadagnino. Guadagnino handed him a script, Bones and All, a cannibal love story, an addiction-parable road film set at the fringes of the American middle. “Luca said: ‘I’ll do it if you do it,’” Chalamet said. This was both a validation of their fruitful creative partnership—but also a statement that seemed literally true. In the few years since Call Me by Your Name, Chalamet had become the sort of Hollywood property whose presence in an otherwise borderline project could get it greenlighted, and made quickly.

Chalamet was staying in an Airbnb in Rome, wandering around the city, just living out “a sort of blank period.” One thing he does recall is that he watched Nomadland, thought it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and wanted to do something like it. Bones and All was maybe that something. He went to Milan to talk things over with Guadagnino and committed on the spot.

In the meantime, he returned to the US, hosted SNL for the first time, and prepped for his brief role in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. He was in Boston for 24 days—14 of which were spent in quarantine and 10 of which were actually working. Chalamet, in his mellowest state, is a threat of energy, and here he was locked in another hotel room. “By the time I got to set I was buzz-ing,” he recalled, seemingly feeling the crazy in his body all over again. “That was the day Jennifer said was the most annoying day of her life, working with me and Leo. I exploded out of my room.”

He started prep on Bones and All right away that spring, still somewhat in the thrall of director Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. Zhao introduced Chalamet to Derek Endres, one of the rootless travelers whom she cast to play themselves in the Oscar-winning film. Chalamet, who was born and raised in New York City and had spent no real time in the Midwest or the South, soaked up several blurry weeks driving around Ohio, Tennessee, and Nebraska with Derek, talking about life on the road and listening to folk music.

It’s difficult to underscore how polar the two ways Timothée Chalamet experiences time are. There are the long stretches during a movie production, during a press cycle, during a fashion campaign, when every minute is scheduled for days or weeks or months at a time. But there are other long stretches, in between the making of movies and promoting them, that are seemingly devoid of time as we experience it, with infinite expanses for developing a film character or developing himself.

Plan B producers Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner, who worked with Chalamet on Beautiful Boy and The King, have a unique, rolling conversation with him about film and music and books, with references that range to the philosophical. “I think there’s a dimension of him that maybe not everybody would know necessarily,” Kleiner said, “where he just has this really wide wingspan in terms of what he’s taking in from the world around him and how that factors into what he feels he should be doing with his time.” These periods between films were historically the intervals that Chalamet said he would sometimes get “existential”—for better or worse. “Restlessness can be a pejorative term, but I mean it in a good way,” Kleiner said. “There’s a searching, a seeking.” Even early in his career, Chalamet seemed to exact total control when he was working on a film and an evolving sense of control when he was not. Those weeks on the road with Derek, those were good, restless weeks of searching, seeking.

“It’s something I think about a lot with Dylan,” Chalamet said, “that life rhythms are different. When you’re raised in the city, going stir-crazy during the pandemic, your life rhythm becomes agitated. And driving through the middle of the country listening to Townes Van Zandt, your life rhythm adjusts in a great way.”

They filmed Bones and All in the spring and summer of 2021, really moving from place to place as the characters do. His life rhythm adapted. “I got my second jab in Cincinnati,” he said, of his COVID vaccine, like it was a long-lost love, or a lyric to a Townes Van Zandt song. Lee, his cannibalistic character, wore the clothes of his victims and dyed red streaks into his hair, an act of what Chalamet called “self-styling” that he could relate to—a guy trying to express himself through his hair and his clothes. Living out of a truck at the American periphery, that took some effort to get in tune with. I saw immediately why it appealed.

Lee is an “eater,” a cannibal by blood, not choice. Chalamet plays him with an appropriate blend of swagger and self-loathing. During preproduction, reports revealed that Chalamet’s Call Me by Your Name costar Armie Hammer had been accused by several women of sharing sexual fantasies in which he represented himself as, yes, a cannibal. (Some DMs allegedly sent to one woman by Hammer read: “I am 100% a cannibal. I want to eat you.”) There were those who wondered if the seemingly ironic choice for a next film by Chalamet and Guadagnino was a little insensitive; there were those who wondered why Chalamet and Guadagnino didn’t lean into the insane confluence even more. “I mean, what were the chances that we’re developing this thing?” Chalamet said, reflecting on that strange period. When false reports suggested the film was inspired by the news, “it made me feel like: Now I’ve really got to do this,” he said. “Because this is actually based on a book.”

Chalamet’s face went stiff when I asked him to describe how he personally experienced the allegations against Hammer. “I don’t know,” he said, reluctantly. “These things end up getting clickbaited so intensely. Disorienting is a good word.”

Lee was the first character Chalamet helped develop in a major way with a screenwriter. It was also the first film he produced from tip to tail. When he introduced Bones and All to the world at the Venice Film Festival, he did so with a backless red jumpsuit from Ackermann. “When you’re promoting a smaller movie, you can stir it up a little,” he said. The role was new, subtle, and strong. There were flavors to it that felt at once different from anything else he’d done, and yet built around a center of intense familiarity. When I asked Dede Gardner how “the industry” regards “Timothée Chalamet the Entity,” whose name and face you can put on a movie poster and get to promote your film, she seemed almost incapable of looking past the pure performer: “I suspect he sits at the top of the totem pole,” she said. “But he is just so good. His gift is ferocious. His ability is just prismatic—in a way that it would by definition take him years for all the sides to show.” Lee, then, had come and gone—never to be seen again. He was already down the road.

The day they wrapped Bones and All, Chalamet cut off his blood-streaked mullet, dyed his hair brown, and flew to Cannes for the premiere of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. At one point, he leaned over to costar Bill Murray and asked him what he’d whispered to Selena Gomez on the Cannes red carpet in 2019. Chalamet laughed, reflecting: “He said, ‘Fame is fleeting!’ ”

Chalamet tried to take some time off, to soak up some vacation, but, he said, “the Wonka factory pipes were calling.” Director Paul King, best known for the beloved Paddington movies, had met Chalamet in London around the 2018 BAFTAs when, like so many, he’d been bowled over and seduced by Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name. When Wonka came King’s way, Chalamet was really the only choice for the role, King said. “It was: This could be great—but it could also be great for him.” Still, King couldn’t help but wonder what this guy, whom he’d met just once, would be like now that he’d become one of the biggest stars in the world. “It’s not always a recipe for ‘charming and focused,’ ” King said. “I’m a neurotic workaholic who will sort of leave no stone unturned—and I really felt he was a kindred spirit.”

This Wonka is also a musical, and Chalamet sings and dances throughout. It is, Chalamet said, “a throwback to LaGuardia,” meaning his performing-arts high school. “We’re telling a story here. This isn’t, like, athletic naturalism. It’s a shot of earnestness and sincerity, without the cynicism or dread or all the stuff we’re exhausted by.”

He trained in New York and London with Tony-winning choreographer Christopher Gattelli. “Sometimes with someone of that caliber, it’s almost like a chore to get them to do things, especially if it’s out of their comfort zone,” Gattelli said. “But he was the exact opposite—he wanted to go and go and go and do it over and over.” Chalamet hadn’t previously studied tap, among the hardest forms of dance to learn, but once he gained his confidence, Gattelli said, he couldn’t get him to stop. “He would Skype with his mom and his grandma, just to show them, because you could tell that he was genuinely proud of himself.” Of what he was picking up, but also of the way he was sort of carrying on this family tradition from his grandmother and mother—both trained Broadway dancers. “He would joke about it—like ‘It’s in my blood!’ And I was like: It is. It literally is.”

In Wonka, Chalamet plays a young Willy, fresh off a literal boat. It is pre-factory, pre–chocolate empire, pre–midlife trauma that curdles the previous film versions of the character, who’ve turned their backs on the world. “It would’ve been so easy to do an impression of Johnny Depp or Gene Wilder,” King said, “and it would’ve been sort of horrible. Because the people who’ve played Wonka before are brilliant and captivating and have done some famously wonderful performances that people have loved. So it’s really putting your head above the parapet.”

Between the choreography boot camp in New York and London, the voice training in LA, and recording songs at the Abbey Road Studios in London, there was considerable work before day one of filming. And then the already sizable shoot doubled in length due to COVID pauses. Every time someone on the crew tested positive, it was a mandated two weeks off. Production crawled, through the fall of 2021, the winter of 2021, and into the spring of 2022, with Chalamet posted up in the UK. It was, he said, a new challenge to keep his intense focus over that interval.

There was, as well, a distraction at home. His grandmother, whom he’d been especially close to all his life, had been sick and dying for some time—and it was becoming more and more evident that he might not make it home in time. “She was always so supportive of my career,” he said, “as she was also the voice in my ear to just live as normal a youth as possible.” Before he left New York for London that summer, Chalamet had her over to the apartment he’d been renting. He set up his laptop to film what he knew might be their final lengthy conversation. They just sat there for hours talking about stuff that she had never shared with him before. “But then when she left,” he said, “I saw that my laptop had died. And that was just a little metaphor for how scattered I was during that period—like, I was present to the conversation, but couldn’t even keep it together enough to chronicle it.”

It was a lot all at once that summer and fall—from Bones and All to promoting The French Dispatch to cohosting the Met Gala to starting on Wonka to promoting Dune. “I tried doing way too much, in retrospect,” he said. It was this awareness that he brought to Paul King when, with one major scene remaining, Chalamet asked to leave to be at his grandmother’s hospital bed. Chalamet had taken pride in the fact that he’d never shut down a production, but this felt like one of those moments in life. I asked King about it. “I think it’s sometimes easy because he’s a movie star and the lead to forget that there’s also a young man at the heart of this going through something,” he said. “And it’s very easy for the film to seem like the most important thing because everyone is turning up to work, but actually there’s something far more important going on.”

When he returned to London to finally wrap Wonka, he wandered the studio lot while they prepared the final scene. He stopped by the set of Barbie to say hi to his sometime collaborator and enduring caretaker Greta Gerwig. He bumped into Jason Momoa, in full Aquaman costume, walking to a soundstage. He looked at his own Wonka overcoat and top hat. “You start to realize you’re just another job on the lot,” he said, grinning. No matter the acclaim, no matter the fame, to the crews in Leavesden in the UK, Timothée Chalamet or anyone is just another guy in funny clothes, like the many who have come before and the many who will come again. It was good medicine. It was also a sign that it was time to go home—but where on earth was that now?

“I don’t naturally feel this way,” he said, “but during the throes of COVID it felt like people that were in LA with a little more privacy had it better figured out than I did.” There were many months on movie sets ahead of him, but for the periods in between, maybe there was something more permanent to return to. So before leaving to shoot Dune: Part Two last year, he bought a house in Los Angeles on a bit of a whim. “I was able to spend 10 days in it before I went to Dune, and just having it as the home base, it psychologically helped.”

Chalamet had never had the ability to just pick right up with the same cast and crew, as he did with Dune—and the result was a uniquely complex enterprise made “remarkably smooth,” he said. “For Part One,” director Denis Villeneuve said, “it was for Timothée his first big studio-movie experience. He had assurance, but I was feeling that he was kind of vulnerable, trying to find his way on a set like that, trying to find his focus and discovering how to protect his own bubble. And on Part Two, he came to set the first day and learned so much between both movies about how to secure his focus and to own his space.”

Something else happened in the run-up to filming related to one of his new costars, Austin Butler. “It started on Zoom,” Chalamet said, “when we did a cast reading.” Was Butler still talking like Elvis? I asked him. “No, here’s the thing, he was already talking like Stellan Skarsgård.” That is, on day one of the first read-through, Butler had already dialed his way all the way into the character, the heir to Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen. “And you could see everyone was, like…”—he laughed a little nervously—“I can’t overstate how inspiring it was to me personally.” It persisted throughout the production. “Because here was someone who’s a little older than me, but generationally we’re similar, and I don’t know how he would put it, but his journey was different than mine.” Butler had come up via Disney Channel and Nickelodeon before breaking out in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood and getting nominated for an Oscar for last year’s Elvis. “But he takes the work incredibly seriously. And I feel like I hadn’t seen that among someone my age, whether it was in drama school or on set, that did take the work that seriously but then after ‘cut’ wasn’t, you know, in some show of how seriously they took it—and instead is this tremendously affable, wonderful man.”

What Chalamet instantly recognized in Butler was someone who would challenge his own commitment—and force him to raise his ceiling. I suggested to Chalamet, a basketball fan, that the dynamic was like a star in the NBA who’d dominated straight out of high school but was suddenly confronted by a rookie who’d maybe cut his teeth in Europe and threatened his perch in the league. “Okay! Exactly!” he said. “I love that metaphor!” This was all just acting, of course. But here was someone who Chalamet felt could push him. Like: Man, I’d better practice harder.

“I think any great actor has a competitiveness to them, and Timmy is no exception,” Dune producer Cale Boyter said. “Whether that’s something they carry on the inside, or just in paying attention to what their peers are doing, a scene only gets better when one actor really brings it and then everyone else elevates.” Boyter described for me the emotional climax of Part Two, an enormous set piece that took weeks to film, and that centers on a showdown between Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and Butler’s Feyd-Rautha. “You’re talking about two of the most talented young actors of our generation facing off. I would say Timmy’s level of preparation going into the scene—well, knowing he was fighting Austin enhanced it.”

When production wrapped, Chalamet’s interest in the Austin Butler Playbook did not end. “You asked me what I’ve been doing in LA this year?” he said at one point. “I’ve basically been working with his entire Elvis team for my Dylan prep. There’s a wonderful dialect coach named Tim Monich. Vocal coach named Eric Vetro. Movement coach named Polly Bennett. I just saw the way he committed to it all—and realized I needed to step it up.”

There was another person who had been in Chalamet’s ear—or at least his inbox—about the greater spectrum of training required for this new phase of leading---man-dom. “After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email,” Chalamet said. It included a Rolodex of sorts of all the experts he might need for stunt training. A motorcycle coach. A helicopter coach. “He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So it’s up to you. The email was really like a war cry.”

While filming Part Two, in the summer and fall of 2022, Chalamet said he saw Top Gun: Maverick eight times. On one occasion, he bought out a movie theater in Budapest for two bucks a seat and took the whole cast and crew. “Top Gun was just hugely inspiring to me last summer when we were making Dune,” he said. “Some of the crew were kind of scoffing at going, but I just thought it was one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.”

Dune: Part Two marked the beginning of a new sense of self and purpose for Chalamet, who clearly embraced the opportunity and the responsibility of standing in the center of the frame in these bigger films. “Action-wise,” Villeneuve said, “I felt that he was much more trained than in Part One, and ready for the fighting sequences. I was impressed by his level of discipline for Part Two. You know, when you are the lead on a movie, there’s a presence, the way you approach your work and your discipline will necessarily have a ripple effect on the rest of the crew. He was the first one on set, always ready. And I was super pleased and impressed with how Timothée really embraced that discipline and became, for me, a real leading actor on this film.”

It always feels rare for an audience to witness a real-life off-screen pivot in a movie—someone growing up, someone breaking down, someone redeeming themselves. Call Me by Your Name was one of those pivots: a true coming of age, a transformation before our eyes. And here now, it seems, was another. “In Part One,” Villeneuve said, “the camera was capturing the performance of a teenager—I’m talking about the character, someone who was learning about the world and experiencing a new reality. But Part Two is really about someone who goes from the boy to the man, and becomes a leader, and even, I will say, a dark charismatic, messianic figure. It was the first time that I witnessed someone growing in front of my camera.”

When Dune wrapped in December, Chalamet returned to his new house in Los Angeles. He spent most days since, he said, “Dylan-ing hard.” He’d been rereading Dylan’s Chronicles, and it felt newly important to him to protect the artists’ imperative Dylan lays out there: “You need your ability to imagine, your ability to observe, and your ability to experience,” Chalamet said. “And if any one of those is compromised, your ability to create is compromised in some way.”

The place in LA provided him new cover to do just that. It was a sanctuary—a key to novel comfort, peace, and freedom. The house used to belong to Kenny G, and Pete Sampras after that. It had a beautiful tennis court, over which Chalamet had rolled in a basketball hoop and a Ping-Pong table, on which he was training most days for a potential new film. He was always toiling on the next thing or things. Preparation for roles that may or may not come to fruition. And some new things outside of acting. It was all top secret, he said, but one of those new projects sparkled, the other got you drunk. This spring and summer, though, it was Dylan in Position A.

Chalamet was very aware that the last time we talked at length, he was also deep in his preparation to play Bob Dylan. He had been, both literally and metaphorically, carrying around his guitar with him for three years now. He teamed up with Butler’s vocal coach, Eric Vetro, first on Wonka and then again for A Complete Unknown prep. Vetro, who’s worked with a number of actors on their high-profile music roles, singled out Chalamet for his balance of anything-is--possible enthusiasm with reverence for the work: “He does everything with such a playful air, but there’s always that core of real seriousness where he is gonna nail it.”

That balance of spirited and sober, of young and old—it was the lightning running through his body and mind at all times. When we’d been talking about celebrities staying forever the age they were when they got famous, he’d joked: “The trouble with me is I had an 81-year-old mind when I was 17.” That duality will probably make a pretty good Dylan. The voice work, Vetro said, was not about creating a perfect copy: “It’s taking on all the characteristics of Dylan’s voice and his mannerisms and his speech patterns, and bringing that into the music—so that when you hear Timothée do the music, what you’re really getting is the essence of Bob Dylan. You’re not getting an impersonation of him. It’s breathing new life into that voice that we know so well.”

Chalamet has not yet met Dylan. “I didn’t want to three years ago, because I just didn’t want to for superstitious reasons,” he said. “Now I would love to.”

The study of Dylan was aiding him in ways large and small. “Bob is like my Fame for Dummies,” he said. “It’s a different thing now because there were so few people who were that well-known then that you could really just dodge everything and be unknown.... But I still try to learn from him.” Do the work. Then disappear. Do the work. Then disappear.

Chalamet spent much of the first half of 2023 keeping a low profile, disappearing. What was most important, for both him and his work, he said, was to protect the piece of his humanity that fuels performance. “You’ve got to have the experiences in your personal life that are usable to you,” he said. “The experiential rush of my career taking off was so new to me that those were the experiences that were feeding my work for a while. But you’ve got to have real experiences. Human experiences. You’ve got to fall in love, you’ve got to be bored. I talked about the crease in the cushion of the couch the last time we talked”—that is, in 2020, his bone-deep desire to get off his rocket ship and reacquaint himself with stillness, with just sitting on the couch for a minute—“but I never found the crease in that time! I never slowed down. I never disappeared from view. But this year, in LA, I feel like I have in a great way.”

On the occasions that he did pop up, the world took notice. The first time, in January, was in an Apple TV+ ad—where he experiences FOMO watching all his contemporaries star in hit Apple shows and films. The ad is charming, knowing, and cuts devilishly close to the old anxiousness I’d encountered earlier in his career.

The second time, in April, was when he was spotted filming a Bleu de Chanel commercial in SoHo with Martin Scorsese. When they first started talking about doing the spot together, Scorsese asked Chalamet if he’d ever seen the 1968 Fellini short Toby Dammit. Recalling it, he laughed (no, he hadn’t), but the first jolt of the 80-year-old director’s energetic vision was exhilarating. It didn’t let down during the shoot: “We were in Queens at four in the morning and he was bounding up the subway stairs,” Chalamet said. “It should’ve occurred to me sooner that I try to find something to work on with him. Yes, it’s a perfume ad, but for me it was an opportunity for an enormous education.” The result is another cunning facsimile of reality in which Chalamet sends up a caricature of himself. “It’s not lost on me that the only things I’ve shot since wrapping Dune,” he said, smiling, “are ads for billion-dollar companies satirizing a version of my life.”

Over the past six years, as Chalamet became famous and then very famous, he sometimes found himself measuring the distance between the real Timothée Chalamet and these varied perceptions of him. The dinner table of Timothée Chalamets. But this was precisely the sort of needle spinning that seemed to have subsided. This summer, it seemed the signal for true north was evident and clear and that the other noise was receding. He couldn’t control how the distortions traveled. He could only control who he was—and he was happy to own it.

Which related to the other time Chalamet popped up in early 2023. This spring, he was spotted on his way to Tito’s Tacos in Culver City. Notable only because the person he was supposedly with was Kylie Jenner, and the photos of each of their SUVs in proximity to the other spun around the world instantly and sparked rumors of a possible pairing.

Chalamet is not naïve about how celebrity culture works. In fact, besides living it every day, he is perhaps the foremost member of the first generation of mega-celebrity who himself was as internet obsessed with his favorite artists as people are with him. Kid Cudi. Leo. Et cetera. He is a product of that fever, in no way above it, and so he understands the desire to get close, to get all the way in. “I can’t say that this stuff doesn’t matter,” he said, “because my intense fandom has led me to where I am.” But he also bristles at the suggestion that he might not be entitled to a wholly private life.

When I told him that this is all a fair and practically inalienable right, but that if he really wanted to be left alone he might not spend time with one of the four most followed people on Instagram, he nodded and chuckled: “This reminds me of that recent South Park episode with the Worldwide Privacy Tour,” he said, referring to a send-up of Harry and Meghan flying around in a private jet and appearing on a talk show to demand: We want privacy! We want privacy! “Sometimes, people are going to be hella confused when you say you’re trying to live a private life.”

After months of dodging rumors, the pair confirmed them by attending a Beyoncé concert together in LA in September, then the US Open men’s singles final together in New York, and otherwise not shying away from being out and about and affectionate together in public. Due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, I couldn’t follow up to ask him what happened to his existential plea for this part of his life to be left offstage, but I imagine he might’ve just protested: “We want privacy! We want privacy!”

That night this summer, roaming around New York, we got back to the place he was staying, and a little before 1 a.m., we really started talking. Chalamet wanted to get into the difference between how he was three years ago versus how he was now—and why.

Three years ago, he said, life was spinning. This was the moment in the cabin in the woods in Woodstock. He felt quite alone with his budding fame; literally isolated, with no one around who could really understand what was happening to him. It was like being the first one to hit puberty. He’d been “pedestaled,” he said. He did not know how he was meant to live. He did not know how a person, a person in his lonely cabin, was meant to be.

On Dune: Part One, he’d attached himself to the older men on set, men who were more like uncles than equals, like Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, and Oscar Isaac. “I feel like for a while there, it was really just older people in the room around me,” he said. “People I love but just, generationally above. And there was a moment when I—I don’t want this to come across wrong, but I felt like I was without peers.” Whereas on Part Two, he was with his contemporaries. Other actors who understood as well as—if not better than—he does, he said, how to balance the improbable fame with the life’s desire to act well. There was Zendaya. Austin Butler. Florence Pugh. And even Tom Holland, who dates Zendaya and would visit the set.

“It was so incredibly valuable to spend so much time with Zendaya and her assistant, Darnell, and when Tom would come to set too,” he said. “They’re level. They’re good Hollywood. They’re good-energy Hollywood. And then Austin and Florence. I feel like I’m creating a community for myself of people who care about the right things.”

“In Part One,” Villeneuve said, “Timothée was a little puppy with big dogs. The younger actor with the older mentors. In Part Two, he was with friends.”

“Look at Zendaya,” Chalamet said. “Just how much she’s able to achieve while also sort of letting everything roll off her back is mega-inspiring. She’s just doing.”

Here now was his class. The people his age who’d joined him in his strange circumstances, but who’d seemingly figured it out, whom he could look up to. It brought him peace. It gave him the comfort, the fellowship, the confidence, the inspiration, and the competitive motivation to do what he needed to hold onto what was worth holding onto and move on from the rest. It was time.

“At 24, I could have been content with the way I was doing things,” he said. “But that period of being stuck or stopped ended up being tremendously beneficial. It wasn’t just being isolated. It was actually a place to sprout from. And to bring more tenacity.”

It came up again and again from those I spoke to who’d come in contact with Chalamet these past three years. Here was this actor who had been elevated in such a way that he might’ve come to believe that his immense talent was enough, that his personhood alone was worth strangers’ obsession, that he inherently deserved the center of the frame. Instead, those people who knew him well said, he insisted on bringing even more effort, as though compulsively resistant to resting on his laurels. Not me—every rehearsal, every take, every interaction seemed to say. Let other people take this for granted.

“It’s this mix of challenging yourself and trying new things and venturing into new terrain—and so there’s that evolution,” producer Jeremy Kleiner said. “But there’s also a center—there’s a moral center, an aesthetic center. Whenever we spend time with him, it’s as it was, but it’s different. And you feel that mix of continuity and evolution—”

Yes, that was it exactly. Precisely the sensation of tracing my time with Chalamet from Chapter One to Chapter Two to Chapter Three. The way in which time passes, change occurs, but the center holds. That’s how you keep your mind, body, career, reputation, and integrity as an artist intact while still welcoming the rest—somehow performing the necessary surgery to shed that which needed shedding, while taking care to preserve it.

The efforts to push higher in his work dovetailed with the efforts to push ahead in his personal life. In both cases, the antagonist was the status quo—even if the status quo was much lauded and much loved. It was all part of growing up, of actively electing to evolve into the next version of himself. Of adding new versions of himself to that dinner table, or perhaps just asking some of those versions to head home for good. “When I was sitting in my grandma’s hospital room at Mount Sinai, and I knew I had two weeks left swimming in a chocolate tank to go back to, I was like, Wow, I’ve really gotta start putting some caissons into the earth or I’m going to be in trouble. I have no real solid footing to land after all this to spring forth from again. This is why people who turn 27 and refuse to start pulling the handbrake end up dying. It’s the last gasps of your youth hitting a wall. Your body is actually adultifying.”

Chalamet had asked me if he seemed calmer than when we were in the woods together three years ago—and the difference this summer was palpable. He had, it seemed, passed through some rough air but found clearer skies. He’d taken his ship higher. Leveled up. Things were simpler there. “Yes,” he said. “It had to become simpler in order for it to become really complicated again. And I hope that when I do this next movie, and you talk to me at the end of it, I’ll be in ruins.”

He had to change something to get out of a temporary storm. As a human and as an artist. He started treating his acting even more seriously. Embracing being a leading man. Training like he’d never trained before. He ditched his apartment in New York. Bought a house in LA. Started spending time with whom he pleased. But what happens when you eschew the things that made your career what it’s become? What happens when you deliberately defy the moves that led you where you’d always wanted to go, and try something altogether different? It was a risk. But it made perfect sense. It happens. Your family members start to die. Your elders get replaced by your peers. You pack up your life and plant roots elsewhere. You put down the instrument that made you known and pick up another one instead. You plug it in. Do you hear that? That’s the buzz of something new. Wait till you hear what it sounds like when you strum.

Daniel Riley is GQ’s global content development director.

A version of this story originally appeared in the November 2023 issue of GQ with the title “Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric”

[alicenpai]

✨ MY STORIES 💫

(page under construction, check this post occasionally since it will be continuously updated! page created Apr 14 2023, last updated Dec 28 2023.)

Art tag of my characters (all)

Lost and Found Children

The Magician’s Protegee

Both of these stories are near and dear to my heart. Due to life obligations like school in the past, work, convention/merch schedules, I unfortunately haven’t progressed in these stories as I would have liked over the years. My dream is to one day create stories that impact people, as other people’s stories have changed me.

⭐

LOST AND FOUND CHILDREN

Synopsis: A search for their missing parents lead twins Flynn and Nate to fall into a deep darkness, unraveling secrets about their family and the country they once trusted.

Lost and Found Children is a story about mystery, overcoming trauma, blood family vs found family, the fear of growing up even in adulthood, the fear that you are not who you wished to grow up to be. The characters explore their identities in a post-war torn society, and witness their love being tested in that wildly changing world.

The story explores the horrors of war, and is also a study on the horrors of child abuse and when child rearing is left in the wrong hands, which can have devastating lifelong consequences. More importantly, it is a story about how love persists despite all odds.

Fun trivia:

The story has changed settings many times, from a tragic Victorian familial drama, to a modern school mystery, a 1920s crime drama, now it’s a historical fantasy.

This is a story I’ve been writing since I was 13 years old. The current iteration is from 2019, and I started revamping it as part of a school project. As it is a very old story that I literally grew up with, revamping it seriously has been a huge task, finding difficulty in deciding whether I should remove, keep, or add things like themes and characters. As of right now, a number of characters are still very much unrefined!

Flynn and Nate are not actually my oldest OCs.

Inspirations:

Growing up, I consumed a lot of Japanese media, and I mix what I learn from real world history with series that have impacted me a lot, like Fullmetal Alchemist, Pandora Hearts, Violet Evergarden. I draw influences from these periods: the industrial revolution in England & the west, late 1800s England, and early 20th century American history, especially the interwar period.

For the character designs, I'm inspired by historical fashion and JRPG aesthetics. My aim is to design them more simply and more humbly (a la Ryoko Kui style), but I still try for a whimsical old world look, bordering on fantastical. I do want a bit more steampunk look to my story moving forward, and that's an aesthetic I need to experiment with and study in my artwork a lot more often.

🌱

THE MAGICIAN’S PROTEGEE

Synopsis: In a distant, idyllic future where robots and humans coexist - a healthcare android lives day to day with his adoptive daughter, patients, and their ragtag android and human friends.

The story is a light-hearted, slow-paced, slice of life series - but it will also deal with complex topics like artificial intelligence, existentialism, and the fear of outliving the people you care about the most. THE MAGICIAN'S PROTEGEE IS UNDER HIATUS. (as of Nov 2023)

Fun trivia:

This story used to be about the Victorian occult (hence the title), also about a doctor who saves people from the ghouls that plagued Victorian society. However, without a greater purpose to the story, and only using the setting as a cool backdrop, it was a "monster of the week" series that I didn’t have any interest in writing. I scrapped the Victorian setting, in favour of writing a fantasy world I could fully have control of. It’s very different from LaFC, but it’s also a story I wish to tell from my heart. LaFC is like, the moody night story, and TMP is the sunny day story.

The current iteration is from 2020, also developed for a school project. As I was much older (than 13 haha) when creating this series, I had a pretty clear image of the story and its themes compared to writing LaFC.

Inspirations:

The inspiration for the world building comes from series like Eureka Seven, Kino's Journey, and Aria (Kozue Amano). I also draw a lot of inspiration for world building and writing from American post WWII/cold war society and culture, especially the boom in science fiction and spy fiction. I also take inspiration from early-mid 20th century Hong Kong, China, and Japan for worldbuilding and setting - their visual motifs, response to western technology and changing attitudes and culture.

[love4hobi]

Hi!! I really like your blog and it’s great to find an active Hobi blog. I just got into BTS this past month and was wondering if you had recommendations or favorite Jhope (and overall BTS) content/videos to check out for a complete beginner! Even though I’ve casually listened to BTS since 2015/2016, I didn’t follow them or even know all their names/faces well... until recently I watched a couple of Jhope’s stages and was like damnnn, I need to know him and the whole group more!! Iconic stages, funny videos, interesting interviews, whatever you enjoy :) Thank you!

thank u so much thats very sweet 🥹<33 im very honored that youve chosen to ask me this because this is a biiig question n i shall do my best🫡 ok well firstly, i think it would be insane to not start off with hobipalooza

his lollapalooza set can be watched in full here, which u might have already seen, but for an added bonus u can listen to his albums hope world + jack in the box, THEN watch his lolla set to really get a feel for how he brings his songs to life while performing them. his music is great but for me his true stardom lies in his performance and stage presence and hobipalooza will tell u everything u need to know about jhope as a performer 🥹🤩

just some of his many iconic solo performances:

more + arson at the 2022 mnet asian music awards (+ future)

the only live performance hes done of on the street 🥲

also the dynamite + butter performance from that same day just cus u can see the pure joy in his face and the love he has for performing 🫂 despite them both being songs that he originally had less than like 10 seconds of lines in each

his performance and interview on iu's palette my beloved

all of his just dance performances are amazing and consistent but heres a good fancam

as for bts group performances i think its best to look at their older songs as he has not had many lines in their recent releases :/ some that i really love:

mic drop is kind of known as his song, heres their snl performance, most recent performance of it, and another favorite of mine hehe

outro: tear specifically his verse at the end (around the 4 minute mark)

chicken noodle soup at the 2021 muster, its jhopes song but they performed it all together

boy meets evil + blood sweat & tears at 2016 mama

idk im drawing a blank but honestly any of their old concerts or fanmeets/musters are really great. you can find a lot of them here

some dance focused videos since hes the main dancer 🫶

any of his old hope on the street videos that i miss so dearly. theyre just videos of him freestyling for a while and he does it so effortlessly and its rly satisfying to watch. 2020, 2021, with jimin, with jungkook

the iconic no more dream dance break 🙇

this random dance performance 3j did i use to watch this on a monthly basis

another 3j dance video of the megan thee stallion butter remix

i feel like its kinda obvious but i also want to recommend his music videos since theyre all rly amazing but some of my favs are more, daydream, chicken noodle soup, and on the street

ok im gonna stop cus this is getting long and i dont want to overwhelm u but im also definitely forgetting stuff,, everyone else feel free to add stuff in the replies!! anyway i hope this helps!

[azzie-tangerine]

📚

OKAY I was really looking forward to doing something with this prompt.

I have a lot, and I mean, A LOT of fic ideas that I just don't ever write. Same applies to drawing. I have a very short attention span and my motivation is like a balance scale. One tip and an idea is likely to be gone for good.

However, I don't wanna pick one that I may end up writing in the future. It's happened before. So I'm gonna talk about a Kirby fic idea I've had since 2020. An idea I really wanted to write at the time, and even hinted towards it in my old One More Week fic. And a fic idea I know I will never NEVER end up writing in the state this idea was in at the time (I will explain why later!)

So, let's talk about my fantasy, Super Kirby Clash-inspired kirfluff au.

It started out as a just insert Prince Fluff into the story au. I did this a lot in 2020. I had a Smash brothers ultimate au with it, a Star Allies one. You get the point. And with Kirby Clash, there's a blue puffball right there. Very easy to just pretend that's Prince Fluff! But slowly I developed it to just be mildly inspired by Clash.

It stars Prince Fluff, who runs away from his kingdom after receiving a prophecy he just can't make out. It's vague, all he knows is that he sees four figures in it. But he can never make out what they look like.

He uses a disguise as a mage to stay on the low, and travels endlessly to figure out what exactly the message means. He hears the Dream Kingdom is well familiar with magic, so he heads there. And runs into Kirby.

Kirby had been raised in the Dream Kingdom all his life, and has been, quite literally, dreaming for an adventure he can experience. So when he hears of Fluff's predicament, he decides to help him! They're later joined by two other characters to fill in the Hammer Lord and Doctor Healmore roles, who I was thinking should be Ribbon and Marx respectively. I love Ribbon as a character and I thought Marx being forced into a healer role when he is very violence driven would be funne.

Bandana Dee and Meta Knight were also big characters! Bandana Dee was actually searching for Fluff, while Meta Knight is the titular mentor character for Kirby and Fluff.

I kinda stopped developing it from there, so I imagine the story just kinda falls back into the clash story. I did imagine a lot of scenarios with Fluff vs King D Mind so it makes sense.

And like I said, I later lost my motivation to continue the story further than the ideas I came up with. I had concepts (that I can't find right now hh), had a whole animatic idea, but I moved on. It happens a lot. I later stopped thinking about a majority of my aus from that time, mostly cause I wanted to be more creative I guess?

But here's where I pull the rug from your guys' feat. Because this story wasn't completely, COMPLETELY forgotten. It was changed heavily, it barley looks like the same idea by now, but I did later use the grounds of this story idea that i was most attached to, and threw it at a different story.

If you know my characters enough, you may have put it together already.

Because I ended up using some bits of this idea to change into my Mirror Prince Fluff character! The mage aesthetic, the runaway plot. A couple of other things. I won't go into complete detail here, mostly because the story I have with Mirror Fluff and Skirby in my head is still very much in the works. I'm hoping to share bits of it some day, if enough people are interested in it.

So uhhh. Moral of the story? Some old ideas can later be used to make something a lot better! I'm a lot more happy with this Mirror Fluff idea than I ever was with the original. While some things had to be dropped (like Ribbon with the massive hammer sadly. And chaotic doctor Marx), I have had a lot more fun developing this one. Story ideas can always be forgotten, but it's okay to look back at those older ideas for inspiration sometimes.

Sorry for the long post anon, I was just really excited to talk about some older fic ideas I've had. Maybe I'll talk about some other ones in the future.

[johaerys-writes]

Hi! I have some questions for the disasters au Patrochilles, if you don't mind!

1. How do they look in 2020s, when they're in their late 30s or early 40s? Have their outer looks changed much? Who is growing a beard, if they do? Any hc would be soooo welcome😆

2. (NSFW) Do you have any hcs on their sex life in 2020s? Like, have they accumulated some naughty toys or do they prefer to go vanilla? To which extent do you think they are sexually active as they get older? Any hcs?

Thank you so much🥰🥰

You can have ALL the hcs my dear anon!!!! 💕🥰😍

1. As far as look are concerned, I honestly think Achilles hasn't changed aaall that much? Like of course he's much older now, he's more muscular than he was at 18, and perhaps he's cut his hair a little shorter, like shoulder length or a bit longer. But he still has that youthful, ageless kind of look about him; I imagine him as one of those people that you can't easily tell how old they are. His sense of style is also as quirky as it was, perhaps even more so, lots of colourful knits, flowy shirts and and skirts and dresses, kimonos, long cardigans, etc. whatever he feels like really lol. Patroclus' style is more understated, but I totally see them as the fashionable couple that draws the eye wherever they go 😍

As for beards, around their late 20s/early 30s Pat decices to let his beard grow on a whim and Achilles likes it so much that he doesn’t let him shave it again ahah. He tries to grow a beard himself as well and is thoroughly unsuccessful 😔

2. (NSFW) When it comes to their sex life, I honestly cannot imagine those two NOT going at it at any opportunity, regardless of their age 🤣 They’re proper horndogs so they're very much active and thriving, thank you very much. I think that most of the time they'd go vanilla, but they will still have some kinky sessions every so often. They have probably accumulated a nice collection of toys like plugs, dildos, vibrators etc but also I have the feeling Achilles developed a fascination/hyperfixation with bondage and shibari at some point and simply had to learn all the knots and weaves, and Patroclus was more than happy to oblige lol. And they definitely started exploring with dom/sub at some point, maybe a little bit of pain play too, and now it's sort of become a staple. Every three to five years or so they discover a new thing they add to the roster, so the fun never ends haha.

Thank you so much for this ask anon!!!!! I had a lot of fun answering 🥰

[the-real-big-man]

Intro to the artist I guess?

Figured I’ve had this account for a while now, so I might as well start posting at the behest of one of my friends HEHAHA /nm

Wasn’t sure what to start it with other than an introduction to the artist, but I don’t have anything like that readily available so why don’t we use some old art over the years?

Let’s start with my oldest drawing of Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club! This drawing was made and posted onto my Deviant Art in 2018, not a super long time ago but still long enough for me to improve a LOT on my artwork. Even now I can see so many errors in my linework, anatomy, folds, etc. For some reason for a lot of these Monika drawings I really wanted to make her out to be evil.

Here’s the first redraw I did back in early 2020, also posted this one to my Deviant Art. Already we can see some improvements from 2018, but there’s a LOT of uncanny valley coming from this one for me. I really wanted to “reject” my cutesy “anime” art style that I had developed for YEARS, so I went on a huge streak this time around to try and make my art style more “realistic”, (spoiler alert, I failed HEHA) and in return I just developed uncanny valley. If I could go back in time I would punch 2020 me square in the face for drawing this, it’s ugly as FUCK compared to my newer work, which I’m super proud of.

Speaking of! This drawing was made in 2021, getting closer in date, but not quite there just yet! Already there’s some anatomy improvements, but in terms of hands and the continued uncanny valley effect with the face, there isn’t much I have to say about this one. I guess the fact that I was still out to make Monika look like a villain? She’s my favorite character in DDLC I swear, I guess I just wanted a villain to back in the story haha.

And now we come to today, even if the drawing is very much so a sketch, I’m still immensely proud of this redraw. I ditched the wine glass (she’s not supposed to be drinking anyways, I think I just made it like,, grape juice later on), gave her a more relaxed pose, and ditched the “evil aura” I kept drawing her with. She’s not evil, she’s just WILDLY MISUNDERSTOOD (/ref). 

I guess with that there’s my introduction to the artist. Hi! Welcome to my page where I may or may not try to post more often than my other very dead socials! We don’t talk about my very dead and neglected socials! 

Not sure what to add after that, I guess go look at my Deviant Art for some somewhat older artworks? (it’s a mega crusty and old account hence the bizarre name lol) Not sure if anyone will recognize me from that one drawing that has 1k views on it though.

[theworldrewritten]

the 'i am the way i am' tiktok trend but i have too many answers so i'm listing them all here

(also some of these would be classified as trauma dumping but only in like, a 2020 discord server imo they're all fine)

i am the way i am because

the biggest butterfly effect in my life started because i found the drawing of a guy on a book cover attractive when i was 10 years old. there is a direct link between this fact and the development of my chronic illnesses

i was raised on black and white musicals from the 1940s-50s

to become exactly like cosmo brown from singing in the rain was my biggest aspiration in life ages 3-7 (tbh still a big goal for me)

i am the only child of two academics (both philosophers)

i am the child of a disabled, far older parent

my mother is 20 years younger than my dad

i was raised in a household with over 8,000 books, some of them from the 1600s, and classical music playing 24/7

that same 'butterfly effect' book was also my first hyperfixation, age 10. i'm still into it, i'm not gonna lie. rangers apprentice how i love you, you changed my life in so many ways

i'm more comfortable around adults than people my own age, and always have been

i grew up sitting in the back of conference rooms around the world for hours, entertaining myself quietly

i'm still really close to my parents and cuddle/take naps with my dad all the time

my mother told me when i was 6 that if i ki//ed myself, she would kill the rest of my family and then herself (i have never forgotten this, and it might be the reason i made it past the age of 15)

i was told to choose a university that would be close to my dad because he's so old i need to spend 'his last good years' with him

i was raised on nature documentaries and frog and toad and a bunch of random shows that nobody in my life grew up with

my maladaptive daydreaming started when i was 8 and hasn't gone away even when i went on medication specifically for it

When I was 15 I sat my parents down and said "I want your support but I'm doing this with or without you" (referring to my gender journey / thoughts of transitioning) and my mom's only response was "I can't help but feel like you've killed my daughter"

(They came about btw and are now very supportive)

[namelessmewmew]

Old Art Archive Part 4.

Original captions under the cut.

First Three:

Title: Yeah this doesn't look the greatest. Tried to animate this a bit, didn't turn out great but didn't want to throw the hours of working on it away so here it is anyway. Need to draw this guy more...

Title: Nya Sticker. Lil Sticker/Pagedoll of Nya.

Title: Nameless the Persona. I have had a bunch of sonas before but always end up losing connection to them and making them ocs. He isn't so appealing as a character design like my previous sonas but feels alot more like me.Also its a more simple design so I can just doodle it easily. Might make the sketchy style I used here be a part of Nameless's design as he is meant to be a stickfigure ish thing.

Next Two:

Title: Bunny guy and Dog guy. Got of a bunch of old characters that I stopped using [or just never uploaded in the first place] because I just keep making alot of species that were just like cats but or so forth but I'm now merging alot of those into one species of [sometimes] vaguely animal guys. Magical girl Mascot type [sometimes] vaguely animal guys. Though they able to change forms so are not always little animal guys [Human, Anthro, Standard like above etc, which is just because I like making shapeshifting/form changing characters] and their species name is just Magiese [literally just Magical in Afrikaans]. This particular Magiese is Peribit [Peridot + Rabbit because I like explaining things and puns] and is a close friend of Nya.  Another Magiese, this one is Woofberry [Pun on Wolfberries which are a real thing, though they are themed after Blueberries Design wise] and is a close friend of Nya.

Geode/Pink Gem Cat:

Old oc I made when I was 13/14, missed her alot so trying to redesign her a bit, took elements from her most recent design before this and a much older one. Like how its coming along so far but might change it a bit. Her old name is Gemey, probably would go for Geode? as a new name.... with Gemey as a nickname. Might do more of this where I show redesigns with their old designs. Old art in the back are vectors, which is what I did solely for the first few years of me doing digital art, I don't do them much anymore. Been drawing drawing digitally since like only 2020, which I if I remember correctly was because my old laptop broke and then the new pc I got couldn't handle my vectoring program after a while. [and well now I'm out of practice and like how I draw stuff from scratch now rather than reusing assets] but I do miss using them for stuff like character references/concepts or simple gifs cause they made that alot easier. or just even one off non-reused vectors. Also miss how I actually drew hands [shit looking hands but still] regularly, or how I drew more varied facial expressions. Maybe I should get more back into vectors just for the sake of making art more interesting? varied? idk for me.

Art Dump 1:

1. Title: Just a pony 

I think this is my fourth ponysona? [fifth if I count a pride ponysona I made], modeled them after Nameless so that it hopefully prevent me from turning him into an oc lol. Alicorn cause my original ponysona was one, he can be the Princess of just being a some guy.

Oh and also my mental and physical heath is still not the greatest right now but better than last time I posted..

2. Title: Edgy cat 2 electric boogaloo idk man

Yeah, redesigned the Nya recolour design from earlier today. Though did keep them looking a bit like Nya cause I want them to be one of Nya's cousins. Though not sure what their theme should be, most of Nya's family have food themed designs so maybe licorice? red velvet? idk

3. Title: Edgy cat

Mental and Physical heath hasn't been doing so great [as well as just starting uni which is exciting but also very stressful] and I have no clue when I may start feeling better so will probs post a bit of rough doodly stuff. Originally was meant to be Nya but with edgy colours but now I want to make them their own character [though change their design at least a bit to not just be a nya recolour]

Put some hearts in bg cause its valentines day

4. Title: Anything looks cool in front of an explosion right?

Like drawing Nya just chilling but want to draw more lore-y related stuff of them so here is them using their main spell that causes a very hot sparkly explosion. Probably would call the spell like Glittering Sunblaze or something.

Rest of Post:

Title: Alien cat? Alien cat. Old character I haven't drawn in years that I have been wanting to redesign, they still have that cool eye on their chest its just under the bow now. [Original/Last drawing of them is what's in the top left corner.

Title: Three for the price of one. Thought I should be doing these old ocs redesigns in batches of three or five or more instead of individually. Though that would just mean I wouldn't upload this as often because redesigning multiple characters at the same time takes longer obvs. Old art/designs shown on the sides because I like comparing how they look now vs. how they used to look. Kara and Bery are sibs, going to do their other siblings and some friends of theirs next. Zephyr is Kara's and Geode's [might change that name] Wife.

Title:  It's a me! Yo! Sorry for the bit of a upload drought. Been very busy with uni plus a big [big for me at least] project that I hopefully will have done at the most in the next two weeks. This may or may not appear in said project :] Also new username! Casanova-mew -> NamelessMewMew.

Not feeling bad, just feeling weird. I don’t know why but when I feel weird I like drawing eyes.

Title: Chibi Robo Cat. Busy with uni, very tired, yada yada not drawing much lately so have a redesign of a very old character of mine. Used a different type of shading than usual [like how shiny it looks], plus a Chibi style [this character doesn’t have this proportions]. Also really like the bg makes me think of seeing lights at night without my glasses.

Title:  [BRIGHT COLOURS] Glowing from within. Redesign of an unsold adopt, also more playing around with shiny/very bright shading. Might make some more ’experimental’ stuff like this.

Title: The Grim Baker. What do you do if you're a Grim Reaper but also have had a life long dream of opening a bakery? You open a bakery with spooky treats to get the spirits [and possibly other forms of the undead] that you are obligated to guide to afterlife to come to you of course! Finished up a week old wip, I'm on a roll I guess [probably won't last long] Originally the ribbons were not going to be transparent but didn't want what I drew under it to go to waste, it actually makes it look more ghostly. Also its jam not blood on their scythe :], as they have separate scythes for baking and you know Grim Reaping.

Title: Lil vector thing in csp. Testing out csp's trial [used a vector tool for this] it seems pretty cool [the comic making tools, its animation tools and a endless amount of user made brushes are very tempting and more robust than what can be done with sai] but has a much more of a steep learning curve than paint tool sai, especially with its interface, which is alot more complicated than paint tool sai's. Hopefully will be able to pick it up when it goes on sale late this year like it usually does.

Title: The sunset's looking for its cat. Fooling around more with csp, originally this had full vector lineart but despite how rough this looks it looks alot better without it. Don't feel like making multi day stuff stuff right now/ Maybe I need to make experimental not so great stuff for a while idk. Maybe also use csp's 3d models and such to practice anatomy stuff as I keep trying to but just end getting to overwhelmed with how much their is to learn I always end up stopping so maybe just looking and models and mapping out shapes and such myself might work [and maybe post them as batches of doodles/rough stuff if said 3d model resource creator is cool with it]

[lunaryhues]

Big Art Dump part three.

The rest is under the read more. Be warned: there's a lot.

^^^ Unfinished drawing of my inkling from Splatoon 2, dated May 24 2021.

Some recent BotW / TotK Links. First one is Dec 14 2023. Second one is much older, Jan 20 2022. thought it was interesting to compare the two. I was trying vastly different things.

unfinished Kasane Teto, heavily based on KIRA's song, "i DO what i WANT." I remember wanting to cover that song with Teto once I got ahold of her SynthV voicebank.

dated April 11 2023

Oh yeah. I drew Wapeach.

dated December 2 2023

My personal redesign of Betilla with her beautiful perfect son.

Dated November 11 2023

We never see Rayman use his hood, other than Laserhawk.

dated November 7 2023

A Barbara I ended up not liking enough to finish. I ended up drawing her with a different style.

More Barbara. I was trying to figure out how I wanted to draw her.

I completely forgot about drawing this. It was saved as a .clip (as well as .psd), so I think I was testing out a trial for CSP. What the hell.

I guess I wanted to see if I could draw in a stereotypical anime style???

Marx doodles

Magolor doodles

I don't ship a lot of things. I don't even know if I ship this specifically. I just thought of this and thought it was funny.

Ramon. Dated Oct 19 2023. I thought he was more funny, if anything. So over-the-top edgy, like a parody.

I reeeaaally didn't wanna draw the guns.

I had this idea for a pumpkin-themed girl that I would come back to every once in a while. 2nd one is Oct 27 2020.

More pumpkin girl. First one is Feb 13 2021.

Cyclops cyborg character named "Illumina" who I've mentioned briefly before. They're kind of like a derivative of a different character, lovingly named Hell Miku.

Ninomae Ina'nis as Agent 4. She streamed Splatoon 2 at some point. Dated January 25 2021

Inugami Korone drawn in two different styles, dated January 29 2022.

Some old OCs who were very precious to me growing up.

I redrew them for fun. Left sword guy is Kris. Right Ponytail girl is Veronica. Girl in the distance is Arrow. Big goddess lady is Soleil.

dated April 23 2022

Another Kris. Dated September 1 2020

Okay, fine. I made two versions of the "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" meme. This was a combination I thought would be funnier, but decided to post the other one instead. but i still also like this one.

And finally...

I have a Splatoon OC named Ray. This has nothing to do with my current hyperfixation on Rayman. It's a coincidence, I swear.

(I'm not changing his name. I just thought of the idea for this comic and thought it was funny.)

[0613magazine]

201123 Esquire

Esquire's BTS Cover: The Selected Transcripts

Read three unedited exchanges between the members of BTS and Esquire's Dave Holmes.

ESQUIRE: Tell me your favorite thing about the person to your left.

Jung Kook to Jin: I like Jin’s persistency. I also like that he is a deep thinker but at the same time is light and casual. He feels like an older brother and also like a younger brother. I really like the flexibility in his thinking.

Jin to RM: RM has got everything. He seems perfect. But if you look closely, you can also see his imperfections, too. And I really like that about him.

RM: You don’t even have to look closely.

RM to SUGA: We have much in common. For BTS, I was the first trainee. SUGA was the second. We’ve spent so much time together. Almost a decade. We were billboard kids. We’ve been listening to ‘90s music, TI. My idols were his idols at the same time. We have different characteristics and hobbies. But when I think of him I feel like my old homie in my hometown. He gives me comfort as an old friend, old housemate.

V: Very touching.

SUGA to j-hope: What I really like about j-hope is his positivity. I’ve never seen him negative. Maybe when he was a trainee. But since he got his name j-hope I haven’t seen him be negative. And I think it’s important to have that kind of high self-esteem. So I learn a lot from him.

j-hope to Jimin: Just like what Jung Kook said about Jin—that he feels like an older brother but also like a younger brother—I feel the same about Jimin, but the other way around: he is younger than I am, but he almost feels like an older brother. There are a lot of things that I learned from him. But at the same time, he has the charms of a younger brother—he’s cute and fun. Also, we all love performing of course, but Jimin has a particular passion for the stage and really thinks about performance. I can feel that he really loves performing, and in that sense, there are many things to learn from him. Despite all the things he has accomplished, he still tries his best and brings something new to the table, and I really want to applaud him for that.

Jimin: Thank you for saying all these things about me.

Jimin to V: V is handsome. And that’s it.

SUGA: That’s the highest praise. Jimin: I’m joking. Jin said about RM that if you look closely you see his imperfections. For V, you don’t have to look too hard, you just can see it. And that’s his special charm. He has this innocence in him that makes him lovable—he is loved by so many. And I think that trait also enabled us to become best friends—that gifted me his friendship.

V to Jung Kook: I’ve never seen anyone who looks better with long hair than him. I also really like his personality. All jokes aside, I think Jung Kook is one of the most persistent people I know. And he has incredible talent so whatever he does, he can do it above average. And he puts everything into his performance to the point that I get worried. He gives his everything on the stage.

ESQUIRE: Congratulations on MAP ON:E ... It was gorgeous.

BTS: Thank you.

ESQ: How did you feel when the concert was over?

Jimin: I think for this concert we really had to draw our own meaning. We weren’t really taking time off, but we had to. So we asked ourselves during this whole period why are we working so hard doing this? What do these performances really mean for us? The biggest thing we got out of this concert was getting the answers to some of those questions and realizing why and for whom we are doing this.

ESQ: What were the answers?

Jimin: We did this in part for us. We were also reminded of the fact that we exist because of our fans. And for almost a year we had forgotten the joy of performing for a live audience, so it was a chance for us again to remind ourselves that we really need for this situation to end and we really want to start performing and meeting our fans in person again.

ESQ: How was it performing without a live audience? Did that throw you at all?

RM: We’re living in 2020, so there was some new technology that we haven’t seen, like connecting to thousands of cams and seeing fans on screen and hearing the live noises. We can’t compare it to the real scene, the real audience, but it was quite close to the real ones. It was quite okay, but we were afraid, like is this some future concert? Should we do this from now on? Forever? We had those fears, but thanks to technology it was okay.

“People who have their own view of life are cool, especially those who are not imprisoned by the past.”

ESQ: How do you come up with a setlist? Who comes up with it?

SUGA: This was a setlist that we had originally developed for the MAP OF THE SOUL TOUR. For this online concert, we discussed the setlist with the stage director about what we can do and we tried to come up with a setlist that is appropriate for this concert at this point in time. If we wanted to put a certain song in a certain place, we made a really strong appeal to the stage director and that would most likely change the setlist. We especially included a lot of our own ideas in this concert in terms of stage directions, so again it was too bad that we unfortunately weren’t able to perform in front of a live audience as planned, but it was still great to perform at least virtually in this situation and I was grateful for that.

ESQ: You know how many people watched worldwide, does that make you more nervous? More confident?

V: It was after the concert that we heard how many people actually tuned in. When we were actually performing, I think we were just focused on doing our best thinking about ARMY watching us.

j-hope: I actually feel less nervous performing live at a stadium. I felt a little bit more nervous knowing that this was being broadcasted live.

Jin: j-hope, born to perform at a stadium.

ESQUIRE: How do you define “cool”?

V: For me, when I shoot or do a performance, and if I am satisfied, then people tend to be satisfied. When I am satisfied, then it usually turns out to be cool.

Jimin: I haven’t put much thought into this, but I think when somebody wears something, says something, and their thoughts are well organized, and they are confident about what they are expressing, I think these types of people are cool. It’s different from stubbornness. People who have their own thoughts, their coolness shows. I think that means cool.

j-hope: Everyone takes things differently, and feels different emotions. When you get different opinions or feelings from what you think, rather than being offended, you accept it, I think that is something that I consider cool. I don’t think there is a correct answer.

SUGA: People who have their own view of life are cool, especially those who are not imprisoned by the past. It's cool to see people who aren't trapped in time.

RM: This is really an interesting question. I have been thinking a lot about this. I'm asking myself: What is cool? I think there are two kinds of cool: First of all, instinct. Sense. When somebody is cool, when he or she comes as an outsider and she or he has an attitude like, “yo, I can do this … why can’t we do this?” Not harming others. Secondly, there is a whole different cool. It’s like seeing the waves inside big trees that are thousands of years old. For example, when I see somebody—he could be an architect or artist or anyone—he has these waves and trees inside, I feel like "yo, that’s really cool”

Jin: I think being “cool” is being “generous,” which means me. Even if I could win, I lose. Even if I can fight, I lose. Isn’t that coolness itself?

Suga: That’s exactly what makes a person not cool.

Jung Kook: As the members have all said, the standards for coolness are very different for each person. I am myself and you are you, but then to know how to respect and understand each other is what I think defines cool.

V: Because I went first, I don't think I was able to give you the best answer. I think a person who can look after the people around them is cool ... but that means I am probably not.

ESQ: Is BTS cool?

BTS: Yes. We are cool. Do you know BTS?!

Source: Esquire

[gingersnappish]

KYLUX RECS 2020-2021

My Kylux Recs in the last year (Aug, 20 2020 - Aug 20 2021)

SO. MUCH. GOOD. FIC!!! We are really lucky in this fandom to have so much good stuff to read!

Fic is part of the lifeblood of fandom, in my opinion-it shares new ideas and AUs and fleshes out the characters and most of all it inspires and entertains us all and engenders all sorts of feels for the characters-it’s part of what keeps us shipping! So a big ‘thank you’ to all the fic authors out there who work so hard at their craft and are generous enough to share it with all of us!

The following list is by no means comprehensive-there are LOTS and lots more very good fics that have been published in the last year that I haven’t read. I just wanted to offer up a few recs from what I know I enjoyed so far! (I also have more than fits on one list to rec-I’ll try and do another list soon!) As always, I rec based on personal taste, and I highly encourage reading all the tags/warnings on any given work to make sure it’ll be to your taste! -

The Flirtation Of Flowers 

DaisyChainz

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771553

Words: 5,917

Rating: Teen

Summary:Kylo runs his farm's stall at the Farmer's Market every weekend. He has a new customer, a gorgeous redhead that is curious about the meanings of his bouquets. Kylo doesn't know anything about that, so he makes stuff up to keep the man coming back every week.

My thoughts on the rec: This is the cutest slice of a modern AU kylux-it really nails Kylo’s personality as a (slightly awkward) flirt who is trying his best and just really likes the redhead who keeps coming to buy flowers. Just a sweet little fic all ‘round!

all i have to do is dream

kyluxtrashcompactor

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18709426/chapters/44373613

Words: 11,456

Rating: Teen

Summary:Armitage Hux has been going to the same bar every Thursday for the last year, nursing a crush on the gorgeous, unobtainable bartender, Kylo Ren. He finally gets up the courage to ask him out, only to find out he has some unusual competition: the memory of a red-haired boy from Kylo's past, who Kylo swears is the soulmate that got away from him.A fill for this SoftKyluxKinks prompt:Anonymous asked: Benarmie with young Ben (around 11 years old) having a huge crush on Armitage (16). Hux finds it adorable but mostly ignores him because he's a kid. Flash forward a few years when Ben is all grown up and Hux is the one with a huge crush.

My thoughts on the rec: This is another really cute young modern AU! I like the idea that Ren has liked Hux forever, but this deals nicely with the age gap and that Hux really wouldn’t notice Ren back until they are both appropriately older. And they make such a cute couple-it’s a great progression from just ‘he’s hot’-like, there is a lot more to them than that in the end!

Homecoming 

sigo 

(really, read anything by sigo, it’s all my favorite)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27150808

Words: 13,450

Rating: Explicit

Summary:“We’re off the next two weeks, you know.”“Yes, I know.” There was emergency construction scheduled to fix cracking asphalt too near a pipe in the center of campus. The buses couldn’t run, and that phenomenon was the only thing that ever cancelled classes. Halloween was dead center in the unplanned time off school, and every bar within a fifteen mile radius would be untenable as the students celebrated. Hux was planning on staying home, catching up on grading. He was rather looking forward to an opportunity to reread his favorite novels. They were already stacked by the couch in preparation.“My family always throws a Halloween party and they got word that I could come this year,” Kylo said, shuffling his feet. He looked almost bashful.“Ren, it’s midnight,” Hux sighed at his infuriating coworker. “Get to it.”“I may have informed my entire family previously that we were dating.”

My thoughts on the rec: One of my all-around fav fics from the last year’s worth of my reading material! It’s got the modern AU vibes down pat without losing their personalities or making them too OOC, it’s got the fake-dating trope done REALLY well, it’s got a wonderful creepy vibe strung delicately throughout for the Halloween haunted setting, it’s got plot and make-outs (and more). Can’t recommend highly enough!

Thaw

thesevioletdelights

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28557180/chapters/69982587

Words: 14,316

Rating: Explicit

Summary:They have managed cooperation - efficient cooperation, even - in these past months, which is more than enough. And already nothing short of a miracle for both of them.Still. Ren was a fool to think he could simply run off and keep Hux in the dark.-----When Ren goes missing on a mysterious planet, Hux sets out to find him. He doesn't yet know that he just might find himself.

My thoughts on the rec: This, like all of violet’s fic, is HOT! Like, scorching vibes between them! It’ll draw you in and not let you go ‘til after the boys are ‘done’! And, like all of violet’s fics, the character voices and personalities are also impeccable!

Rocks Break Gifts

elderbwrry

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25840237/chapters/62777839

Words: 16,706

Rating: Mature

Summary:The Rebellion has been crushed, a coup affected, and Supreme Leader Ren and his Grand Marshall Hux have settled into a domestic routine as the joint rulers of the Galaxy. Kylo wants nothing more, now, than to make his relationship with Hux official, but he can't seem to rise to Hux's challenge of a satisfactory proposal.Or, the five times Kylo proposes, and the one time Hux says yes.

My thoughts on the rec: Ahhhhh, the premise in this one is great! Like, I don’t wanna spoil the plot reveal at the end, so I can’t say too much, but there is a really good reason throughout the thing that this is a Five Times type fic and it works! It works so well and while we spend the fic ‘with’ Kylo, when we find out what Hux’s deal is, it is so satisfying! I Paint My Dreams

Marlon

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26685907/chapters/65090566

Words: 26,122

Rating: General Audiences

Summary:Kylo Ren is struggling to make a name for himself in the art world but as the grandson of the great Anakin Skywalker, a legendary pop artist of the 1950s and 60s, the weight of his famous family and his own expectations is a lot to bear.After he’s rejected from a prestigious exhibition because his installations “don’t fit the theme”, Kylo heads to the pub to drink away his disappointment. Later that night as he stumbles home, he’s set upon by some would-be thieves but before they can take what’s left of his money, he’s saved by a strange man with unbelievable Medusa-like powers. The ethereally beautiful man, Armitage Hux, is a visitor from Oweynagat and he has a simple proposition for Kylo - room and board in exchange for making all Kylo’s artistic dreams come true.Sounds easy - what could possibly go wrong?

My thoughts on the rec: Oh goodness, where to start? The Irish Mythology and Fae aspect of this fic is superbly woven throughout the whole thing and the author makes it work really well! Like, this is such a unique and original take on the kylux pair, I love them, especially Fae!Hux in this! And the plot is solid and you get invested really heavily in how they are gonna wind up-at least I did! There’s some beautiful language in this-descriptions and dialogue! And I have a soft spot for Artist!Kylo!

Dating a Monster

mysticmilks

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26703904/chapters/65139415

Words: 30,401

Rating: Explicit

Summary:Ben Solo was raised to be a demon hunter, as everyone in his family has been before him. He wanted nothing more than to prove that he was worthy to his family. He lied to them and went on an unauthorized mission to catch and kill an elusive incubus. His search led him to Arkanis University, one of the most prestigious schools in the country.He was sure the mission was going to be easy, before he met the cute freshman Armitage Hux. This meeting would change the fate of both of them.

My thoughts on the rec: Add another really good one to the slightly-creepy-kylux subgenre filled with demons and dark powers! This is a great depiction of Kylo as a very determined demon hunter and Hux as a very unique quarry! I love the tension in parts of this too-well crafted! The Green Ribbon

xzombiexkittenx, Lilander (art)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28630845/chapters/70176921

Words: 39,679

Rating: Explicit

Summary:When Ben was fifteen he left the Jedi temple and took extreme measures to prevent the shadowy creature that infiltrated his thoughts from dragging him to the dark side. What he did left him with a great deal of chronic pain and removed his most valuable weapon, but Ben got his stubbornness from every side of the family, even the adopted ones, and he was determined to find and kill the creature.Now Senator Amidala of Naboo, Ben uses his position to make the galaxy a less awful place when he can, but being senator also gave him very useful contacts in his search for the creature. When he met Major Hux of the First Order, Ben thought he could get game-changing information out of him, one way or another, but things rarely go Ben's way and it got complicated much faster than Ben had prepared for. It's never a good idea to mix sex and politics, but Ben takes his fun where he can get it.

My thoughts on the rec: I feel like this is a very original take on ‘Senator Amidala’ Ben, at least from the stuff I’ve read-many props to the author for such a fleshed out universe, filled with likeable, believable OCs, a wonderful plot, great character motivations and voices, and a take on our main man Ben that pulled me in from the get-go! He’s sorta magnetic (in universe and to the reader)! And the sexual tension and sexy bits are very well done! I’m rooting for Ben and Hux in this, on opposites sides though they may be! Comfort Zone

LydiaBSlade

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783797/chapters/65338117

Words: 66,766

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Hux is running away. He meets a tall, dark, and somewhat annoying stranger at the airport.

My thoughts on the rec: Travel writing at its best; also kylux fic at it’s best! Young, modern them trying to find their places in the world and finding each other in the process is so cute and almost tenderly done in this! This is a gentle, friendly version of modern Kylo that I fell in love with, right along with Hux! And by the way, I’m not kidding when I say travel writing-the southeast asian setting is vivid and enchanting in it’s rich detail! Outnumbered, Outgunned, Outmanuevered, and Winning

Coriesocks, Ellalba (art)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28217253/chapters/69144672

Words: 80,372

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Hux’s plans for ridding the First Order of Kylo Ren are ruined when Ren discovers his deception. With no choice but to flee, Hux ends up in the hands of the Resistance. It’s not ideal, but at least he gets a break from Ren. Until he doesn’t.When Ren starts appearing in Hux’s dreams, Hux wonders if the stress of being a spy has taken more of a toll on his sanity than he’d previously thought. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he has to deal with constant pestering from Poe and a mildly inconvenient kidnapping. Of course, it’s Ren who saves him in the end. There’s clearly no getting away from him.

My thoughts on the rec: A really interesting take on something that is both a alternate rewrite of what could have happened instead of TROS and a TROS-fix-it of sorts! Hux is stellar in this, we really get a good look in his head and Coriesocks handles it masterfully! I really liked how their relationship develops gradually in this, it’s Enemies To Lovers at its best! Bloodlines and Brandy

EmperorsVornskr

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22989934/chapters/54963601

Words: 130,785

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Sebastian Hux is a native of the Deep South who loathes his origins, and seeks to pull himself from the stifling quagmire, but his bloodlines call him back to the property that has blessed- and plagued- his family for centuries.Unspoken secrets fill his inheritance, skeletons fill every closet, and a monster lurks in the shadows, tied to two bloodlines joined by fate, greed and hatred that has spanned across generations.As Hux learns about his family’s tainted legacy that has now become his burden, he discovers there is more involved than just having to be the curator of property that the locals shun with hushed whispers, that he has inherited more than an estate- he also has a terrible and loathsome horror tied to his very blood.When curious young locals come calling, and Hux’s past tormentors come out of the woodwork to simper and scrabble for a piece of the newly rich, the body count begins to rise, the smell of blood in the old slaughterhouse is getting harder to hide, and Hux realises that he will need to find a better way to pacify the hulking shadow that perches on his roof every night before his hometown’s tiny population is completely decimated.

My thoughts on the rec: This one is EPIC! Like, in length (which it needs every word of for the story that is going on here) and in the great portrayal of Kylo and Hux and their relationship! It’s super original too-not just the plot but the depiction of Kylo as something ‘other’ and the Southern Gothic vibes, and Hux-this is a wonderful take on Hux! He loses none of his edge, in my opinion and yet the reader is ‘with’ him all the way through, rooting for him! The descriptions are killer too-EmperorsVornskr has a felicity of expression that kept me reading (albeit in more than one sitting). Also worth noting that this is a wonderful and carefully handled depiction of trans!Hux, in my admittedly cis opinion. The theme of finding your tribe/your people/and your special someone in this, albeit in sometimes unexpected places is warming! I enjoyed every moment of this fic! Gravity Well

kyluxtrashcompactor

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062495/chapters/29879001

Words: 176,421

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Snoke is gone, but his death has solved nothing between Hux and Kylo Ren. The First Order's trust in their leaders wanes as they vie for power over one another, and if they cannot learn to work together, they may both lose everything they've worked for.Forging that alliance after years at each other's throats will not be as easy as letting the past die, however—they will face subterfuge, enemies in the shadows, treachery, and being stranded on a hostile planet with creatures out of nightmare, barely escaping constant danger with their lives while having only one another to rely on.And that is just the beginning.

My thoughts on the rec: I realize this one is very well known by now, but I’ll rec it again for good reason! It’s quality long-fic! I love how competent Hux is in this surival-style fic, even without the Force to save him! And Kylo is a badass! kyluxtrashcompactor is a master of the slow burn here and we’re even lucky enough to be getting a sequel (although Gravity Well will also stand perfectly on its own). The writing in this will draw you in and not let you go!

----

That’s all for now! I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did!