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crepes-suzette-373 · 4 months

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Germa and French references

(Plus bonus Star Wars mention at the end)

Sanji's iron mask in the flashbacks immediately made me think of Dumas's works, but when I saw it I didn't think much about it. It's just like, "Oh I guess it's just part of the Sanji = French thing". Plus in one of the cover arts Sanji was drawn in a classic Musketeer outfit, so I thought it was just for fun.

But Twitter user Marudoro-san made this thread that pointed out a bunch of the same references I'd caught and said "Hey, maybe this is actually important to the plot later", and I think they have a point. So I figured I'd share what I'd already noticed, and I will highlight the input that I got from Marudoro-san in red here in this post.

Iron Mask

The man in the iron mask is a French prisoner whose identity is never truly known in history. In his novel, Alexandre Dumas invented a plot where the iron masked prisoner is the twin brother of King Louis XIV, and the plot involves the famous Musketeers from the previous novels in a conspiracy of switching the king for the twin brother.

At a glance, it might be just a literary Easter egg, but when I look at it again, I do start to have questions. Within the One Piece scenario context, this is unnecessary. In the Dumas novel, the mask seems to be needed to hide the prisoner's identity. But there's no need to hide Sanji's identity, and it's not to prevent him from shouting for help because he can still talk even with the mask. What is it for? Is it a clue that the Man in the Iron Mask novel is relevant to this story?

For one, the fact that the iron masked prisoner being the king's twin is noteworthy. Sanji is one of 4 quadruplets, but still. Marudoro said that maybe this is a sign that Sanji and Ichiji will have a confrontation later. This makes sense, because of the other Vinsmokes, the one most likely to represent a "king" would be Ichiji.

This is something I myself had considered before, that Ichiji specifically might later have a role as "Sanji's opposite". I don't know how yet, but the imagery and themes that I've seen so far seems to point that way.

Marudoro also points out that if you look into the Musketeer novels, Sanji has vibes similar to Aramis, who is described as something of a womaniser. Aramis happens to be the mastermind behind the twin conspiracy in the Iron Mask novel.

The correlation is vague, and it's hard to tell how is this going to be relevant, besides maybe "there might be other French history/literature references in Germa's storyline".

Les Misérables, Revolution, the French Royalty

The only two Germa servants who actually has proper names, head chef Cosette and Sora's personal servant Eponi, seem to be references to the Les Misérables characters Cosette and Eponine. Part of the narrative of Les Mis is the June Rebellion, an uprising of the anti-monarchists.

In the Soul Pocus song that serves as the outro of the WCI arc, the "lyrics" specifically has the exact word "guillotine". For many people, guillotine is very closely linked to the image of the French Revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Speaking of guillotine... Yonji's attack, translated as "Winch Guillotine" in the official translation, is actually called "Winch Danton" in the raw. This is possibly a reference to Georges Danton, and important figure of French Revolution, who is curiously executed by guillotine.

Sensei clearly knows the word guillotine, so why not just flat out call it "Winch Guillotine" like the translation?

For whatever it's worth, Danton was someone who was executed for opposing the new government after the first revolution. The revolutionaries got so bad that it was called the "Reign of Terror", so Danton turned against them and was trying to oppose this cruelty.

Yonji is rather visibly the least "bad" of the brothers and his reactions are almost like a "normal person" in a lot of ways, so maybe this is significant?

Marudoro-san said that the Nyasha/cat carriage the Vinsmokes were riding when they were about to meet Big Mum was incredibly similar to the funerary carriage of King Louis XVIII. While there are some differences, they do have a point.

Again, it's still unclear about what significance all of this stuff will have. Maybe the imagery of "revolution" and "King's funeral" indicate that Germa will be undergoing a lot of changes. Something that's beyond just the formation of Neo MADS.

The Knights Hospitaller... and Napoleon?

Marudoro-san says there's an interesting parallel between Germa and the Knights Hospitaller. This is a chivalric order that has privileges that puts them equal to a sovereign power. They have minimal land holdings, but has the standing almost on par with that of a nation. It's like the landless Germa, who is still recognised as a kingdom by WG up until their privileges were taken away after the mess in WCI.

The Knights has lost a lot of its power and territories in Europe through history, and finally, its headquarters in Malta was sacked by Napoleon. Marudoro-san highlighted that Big Mum's hat and sword was called Napoleon.

Marudoro-san took this analysis elsewhere, but for my part, I'm wondering if Germa almost being destroyed at WCI is a parallel of this attack of the Knights in Malta, with Big Mum being the parallel to Napoleon.

The possible proof of the Napoleon parallel is Law. Law was heavily instrumental in Big Mum's defeat in Wano, and his name are connected to events related to Napoleon's downfall.

Napoleon suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar, and the man who was his jailer to the point of his death was a surgeon's son named Hudson Lowe. Law and Lowe looks different in English, but in Japanese both are spelled the same: ロー.

[Edit: Napoleon was also famously defeated in the Battle of Waterloo. In Japanese, Waterloo is spelled like this: ワーテルロー. It contains the same "ロー" as in Law's name.]

Marudoro-san said that Napoleon's invasion of Malta involved tricking the Knights to letting him dock under false pretences. I don't know how true this is, but at the very least this is a narrative that is accessible to the Japanese. One could argue that this is parallel to the conspiracy in Whole Cake.

If this parallel is really correct, then, this could be a hint of "Good Germa".

The Knights Hospitaller surrendered and survived that Napoleon encounter, with its status being even more diminished. Eventually it restructured as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which still has its sovereign authorities (Wikipedia says they can even issue passports and currency), but is now an organisation whose activities are focused on charity.

Bonus: The Jedi and Clone Wars?? (Star Wars)

Marudoro-san also mentioned that the 66 of Germa reminds them of Order 66 from Star Wars, which ended the Jedi order and enabled the Sith to rise to power.

I only understand Star Wars very minimally myself, but a fan I talked to on Twitter confirmed to me that they think so as well. Especially because there's the specific focus on Germa soldiers being clones, and it's reminiscent of the whole clone plotline in Star Wars.

Order 66 ended the Jedi. The 66 of Germa is in reference to the destruction of the old Germa Empire.

If this parallel is true, then this might confirm the theory that "Germa is not actually evil before". If we read that the "Sith" is World Government, and the old Germa is "Jedi", then maybe it's hinting that all the story about them being evil in the past is a lie? They may be awful now because Judge is so driven by revenge, but maybe they were actually not evil before.

#one piece #vinsmoke family #germa 66 #conspiracy theory #analysis #theory #literary reference

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tieronecrush · 10 months

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HELLO CONGRATS ON YOUR MILESTONE ILY <3

obviously I am sending you a smut prompt 🛍️ this one makes my brain go fuzzy

“can you look at me? please?”

and I would love that with literally any Pedro boy you like but I'm feeling either Dieter (bc this man is observed constantly but rarely ever seen I think) or Frankie (bc he do be beggin)

TYSM HANNY BANANNY ILY TOO BESTIE

the idea of dieter asking to be seen just overcame me when i sat down to write this so it is him <3

dieter bravo x f!reader

18+ ONLY, MDNI - no other warnings on my drabbles

After midnight on this random Saturday night, or technically Sunday morning, you find yourself in the bed of your latest match off of your new dating app — Dieter.

Academy Award-Winning actor Dieter fucking Bravo.

To be fair, you hadn’t seen the film he won for, Hunger Strike, and only saw stuff about his featured role in Cliff Beasts 6 and the documentary that was made out of the behind-the-scenes shitshow that was creating that movie.

To you, it had been a fluke that you’d been accepted onto Raya, the app you’d matched with him through. You garnered a generous amount of Instagram followers for posting your art, and have ended up having an extremely successful career selling your originals and prints. During a wine night with your friends, you’d been drunkenly convinced to apply for an invitation onto the app — one of your friends had been accepted a few months before and had been basically a reference for you. It was all very official, and it had gotten you some pretty good matches: actors, YouTubers, photographers, agents, and more.

This was new for you though — it was normally one dinner or drinks, or heading straight to the hookup. You’d done minimal chatting before all of these meetups, but things were different with Dieter. He’d messaged you first, and you’ve been talking for at least two weeks and FaceTiming while he’s been finishing up filming in Canada.

He was actually kind of…sweet.

There was no pressure in your conversations, and no awkward silences when you FaceTimed. His messages made you laugh, made you smile, even gave you butterflies when he complimented your work or called you “a spectacularly arresting genius.”

And after all of those days and nights spent getting to know each other and exchanging spiraling ideas from your chaotic minds, you have ended up here in his California king with the softest linen sheets you’ve ever felt — currently straddling him after he made you come with his fingers and his mouth.

He fills you up completely when you’re fully seated on his hips, soft whimpers echoing through his massive primary bedroom. His fingertips are gripping tight to your hips, surely leaving bruises under their wake when he moves them to your thighs to give you full mobility of your hips.

“Fuck, babygirl, you’re a fucking vision over me right now.”

He sits up, one arm wrapping around your back as a moan of your name leaves his lips at the feeling of you finally starting to ride him, lifting and grinding your hips around his cock. His mouth latches onto one of your breasts, kissing the velvety skin and sucking at your nipple. The pleasure stutters your movements, a gasp projecting from your lungs when Dieter fucks up into you, his slapdash pace shaking your thighs as his hit against you.

“Oh my god, Dieter…” Your breathy call to him is punctuated with a high-pitched whine, your head rolling back and eyes screwed shut. All you can manage to reciprocate is circling your hips while his cock drives hard against your walls, the tip of him nailing that spongy spot in you with every thrust. A vice grip is taut through your forearms and hands, digging your nails into the skin of his broad shoulders.

“Can you look at me? Please?” The sincerity in his tone snaps your head forward and your eyes blink open, finding him less than a foot away from you. Steamy air spills from both of your ajar mouths, the tenderness — no, the vulnerability in his eyes is palpable. The intensity of his stare glues yours to his, the only exchanges besides flashes of pleasure in irises being sultry exhales that you both swallow from the other.

“Tell me how it feels for you, babygirl. Wanna hear your voice, please.”

You struggle at first to find any words for this moment, finally clearing all the jumbled thoughts about him to give you something to say.

“I feel so…connected to you. Hasn’t ever felt like this before. Like, a whole ‘nother level…”

“I feel it too, babygirl. Can’t even describe it, really. You fit me like a puzzle piece — your sweet pussy, your curves against me, even your fucking wildly brilliant brain. Could do this all day and night with you, baby, if it always feels like this.”

“Fuck, Dieter, ‘m close, I-I—”

“Let go, beautiful girl, come for me. Wanna feel you all over me, squeezing me.”

It’s a fall from grace — if you could call what you were doing graceful. Blinding hot pleasure radiates all over your skin, vibrating at every point he is connected to you. His name falls from your lips over and over, even a soft thank you thrown in the midst of your visions of heaven. Dieter was guiding you through the winding orgasm, his own hips continuing to hit up against your thighs before they stutter, his warm release coating your walls and extending your euphoria while you watch him come undone under you.

Chests rise and fall at an exponentially slower rate while you both float down, coming back into your bodies and locking into that same intense eye contact from before. It’s a silent transfer of energy until Dieter breaks the quiet first, his palms skating up your thighs with a trail of goosebumps.

“Is it too soon to ask to see you again?”

#tieronecrushcandy #dieter #writing #dieter bravo x reader #dieter bravo x f!reader #dieter bravo smut #dieter bravo x female reader

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lelanida · 1 year

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Finally solving Beckoning Ruler (mini theory)

More than a year has passed since the end of the season of the Little Prince and the official confirmation that everything we saw in it is canon. Yes, for a long time we argued with foam at the mouth whether the little prince was really here or it was just a group hallucination. But no, that's it. The Starlight desert is on the map, shards from Eden fall there, there is an wind path there, so this is a real place. And along with the prince and the desert, of course, spirits living in this area became canon too. There was nothing particularly difficult here, places in the general lore had already been designated for the whole gang. The Star Collector is a traveling merchant. Narcissist is the champion from the Colosseum. Soldier - warrior from the Wasteland. Lamplighter - ... lamplighter. Geographer is a monk from the Vault. But there were some problems with Ruler. What place could such a spirit occupy in the kingdom? Where did he get these monarchical habits from? And I decided to make it clear.

Ruler is a rather strange spirit. All other representatives of the season with their outfit or location clearly show belonging to one of the kingdoms ...but not Ruler. His cosmetics and the island are so neutral that by himself he couldn't be attributed anywhere. But by the method of exclusion (and viewing concept art), we establish that the Ruler hails from the Isle of Dawn. Great, there is already something to move from.

Now let's look at his costume. He doesn't have a cape, but he has a hairstyle and a mask. Let's start with the mask. Yes, with the one that absolutely everyone hates. As far as I know, the mask is a reflection of the face of the spirit. So, we will divide the mask into two main parts. A beard and... a frog-shaped upper part? Should I call it that? With a beard, let's say everything is clear, but what the frog is for is a mystery.

Next comes the hairstyle. The ruler wears long curled hair on his head and, logically, a crown. How could a spirit have a crown? After all, he wore it during his lifetime, and wasn't there already a king in this world? And then the realization hit me like a truck. Do we even know how the spirits lived BEFORE the appearance of Alef??? Life didn't start with the king (it ended with them, if we're honest, ahEM-). What if Ruler is really the oldest spirit from the Desert, not by the years he lived, but by the era when he lived?

You can consider this an attempt to justify my favorite character, I don't care, but I really don't see a better place in lore for such character. We know that before the appearance of Alef, the kingdoms were divided.And there was some kind of government, wasn't there? Do you understand where I'm going? What if the Ruler is not just a crazy grandpa who talks to statues, but really a member of the old royalty? I am sure that the unexpected appearance of Alef was a surprise for the previous rulers/senators/chancellors or whatever they had, and not everyone wanted to take off their duties. And not all people, I believe, wanted to turn their lives upside down at once, for the sake of some prophecy. And what happens when the old regime is demolished against the will of the inhabitants? The Civil War. And the memories of the spirits of the season of Remebrance confirm this. The spirits really fought with each other for the unification of the kingdoms. I can't say what exactly happened to the aristocrats who refused to accept Alef's lead. But the proof that the Ruler was overthrown is the fact that his crown is BROKEN.

Take a closer look, it wasn't made like this. And before you tell me that the Ruler made it himself or found somewhere, I will throw a part of the frog from his mask in your face. This thing is also made of stone, but it is perfectly executed and not damaged. So, these attributes were made by a professional craftsman after all, and then the crown was broken. I assume that the Ruler did not die during the revolution, and remained to live out his life without a title. He kept his crown as a reminder of better times and since he was used to living in the past, after his death it was reflected on his island in the Desert.

The fact that he talks to statues can be explained by his prolonged loneliness, I mean, all the spirits in the Desert are strange (I bet Narcissist also talks to his reflection). So that's where I can finish my theory. I hope I raised this character in your eyes at least a little, because, to be honest, no one but me likes Ruler in the fandom. Thanks for reading.

#sky children of the light #thatskygame #sky cotl #beckoning ruler

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dollwrites · 2 months

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Doll did you know u can see the kings dicks?!?! I saw a photo on twitter like it’s real official art and Satan has the prettiest dick!! The attackers cards are just *chefs kiss* mammon and satan’s ver of the attacker cards were released last night. I been playing star rail since I got it I don’t have a main yet sadly I’m all over the place. Ahh I wanted the emo swordsman but I started playing when he had two days left on his banner so sad. Gosh I’m all over the place I rambled again rip

-mammon anon

THE EMO SWORDSMAN YOU MEAN MY MAN BLADE

I have him! And I believe he’s my support so if I give you my user id we can be friends and you can use him :3 I’m still building him and I don’t play that often so he’s not as powerful as he COULD be but I’ll send it in the next answer if you want 💚 not around my laptop atm and I don’t play it on mobile bc my phone would probably just implode

I DID NOT KNOW YOU COULD SEE THE DICKS

I don’t have Twitter but my friends do so I’ll see if they’ll dig around for the art so I can see :3

Satan is objectively the prettiest king so far I said what I said

I know I’m a leviathan girlie, but Satan has the nicest hair and the cutest o face and I think he’s the prettiest so it makes sense.

I KNOW I CHECKED THIS MORNING AHHH I forgot what time the game resets but I was going to buy my measly 30 red keys with my pancakes and it hasn’t reset yet 🥲 but I did get to see the cards AHHH i need to make a BIG purchase of Solomon rings asap !!!

#mammon nonnie !

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everybodyloveshippos · 9 months

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i actually have a kinda weird story about the new drizzt (well, brie) webcomic.

basically i was just on the homeland trilogy back in september last year and i knew very very little about what happens later in the series. so i was at work cleaning and daydreaming, just speculating about what would happen to drizzt after he got to the surface. i assumed he’d find a wife. (though i had a brief fun idea where he found a wizard boyfriend. new drizzt oc just dropped) what kind of person would she be? what if they had a kid? how cool would that be? and i was just train of thought imagining stuff and i thought;

‘what if he had a daughter? would he have some residual trauma from his past about raising a daughter? i bet dudebros would get upset if they made a series about his daughter lol . theyd say it was woke pandering lmao” and literally that day or a day later i saw cool star wars art on instagram so i clicked on the artist and lo and behold they had a recent post saying:

‘hey im illustrating the official webtoon about the daughter of drizzt and catti-brie’,,,,,,,,,, and like. i know maybe it was a natural conclusion to come to but it is weird how it all happened like. at the same time. i was flabbergasted. and then ANOTHER weird thing happened when i was reading the orc king.................. i took a tiny break to read this short story where drizzt meets an enslaved goblin. and then when i went back to the orc king it got referenced in the Next Chapter. do i have very specific clairvoyant powers centralized to the legend of drizzt or something. also readin the pirate king right after tangled webs and rethnor (however u spell it) is a character in both.......hrm

#legend of drizzt

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docrotten · 1 year

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13 Slasher Films Influenced by the SCREAM Franchise and Horror News Roll Call (3/20/2023)

Make Horror News Roll Call your daily stop for headlines from the horror entertainment world. Each day, the Doc, Dave, Crystal, and the Grue-Crew will gather the horror news of the day. Enjoy! Leave your comments below, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Join your host Doc Rotten for HNR, the official GRUESOME MAGAZINE HORROR NEWS podcast. Back with me again are the scariest, goriest, bloodiest co-hosts on the 'Net - Crystal Cleveland, the Livin6dead6irl.

HORROR MOVIE NEWS

Universal sets dates for two Monkeypaw movies from Jordan Peele

Jordan Peele won’t have one but two movies coming out in 2024: an untitled horror thriller on September 27 from his Monkeypaw Productions, and another coming out on Christmas Day that year.

Source: Deadline

It Follows director David Robert Mitchell adds Anne Hathaway to his next film at WB

Anne Hathaway (Eileen) has signed on to star in a mysterious new film that David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake) will direct for Warner Bros. Pictures, Bad Robot and Jackson Pictures.

While the pic is billed as a “thrill-ride” to be shot in IMAX, which will head into production this fall, other details are scarce at present.

Source: Deadline

Slash (G'N'R) partners with Rue Morgue, Raven Banner, and Hangar 18 to form new Genre Film company, BeserkerGang

Comprised of Guns N’ Roses ax man Slash; Rodrigo Gudiño, filmmaker and RUE MORGUE founder; horror genre specialists Michael Paszt, James Fler, and Andrew T. Hunt of distribution house Raven Banner; and Pasha Patriki of Raven Banner’s in-house production wing, Hangar 18 Media, BeserkerGang was born in the wake of Gudiño’s movie The Breach.

Source: Rue Morgue

Corin (The Nun) Hardy to direct LURE for Universal and Platinum Dunes

While plot details are being kept under wraps, the story is based on the haunting of the real-life King’s Tavern, considered to be the most haunted building in all of Mississippi, with one of its tenants being the murdered mistress of one of the tavern’s original owners.

Source: Deadline

TOP 13 Modern Slashers Influenced by SCREAM

The Fisherman (1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer)

Patrick Bateman (2000, American Psycho)

The Creeper (2001, Jeepers Creepers)

Jigsaw / John Kramer (2004, Saw)

Mick Taylor (2005, Wolf Creek)

Victor Crowley (2006, Hatchet)

Leslie Vernon (2006, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon)

The Strangers (2008, The Strangers)

The Orphan (2009, The Orphan)

Lamb Mask, Wolf Mask, Tiger Mask (2011, You're Next)

Art the Clown (2016, Terrifier)

The Grabber (2021, The Black Phone)

Pearl (2022, X and Pearl)

Check out this episode!

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vintagegeekculture · 2 years

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Xicor: the Character Who Didn’t Exist (A Tale of the 90s Internet)

The most important and influential Dragon Ball Z character in recent times is a guy who never existed at all, and was created entirely by Western fans playing a garbled game of telephone in the early internet, where lies and insane rumors could flourish unquestioned. In 1999, everyone had “a friend in Japan” who told them the next great Dragon Ball villain in the upcoming series was going to be a silent, intimidating Ivan Drago-like albino bruiser named Xicor, who is half-Saiyan and half-god.

There is some precedent for this. In the 14th Century, a forged letter spread among the people of Europe. A powerful Asian Christian king, Prester John, who lived beyond the domain of the Turks, offered to aid the Christians of Europe against the Muslims. There obviously was no Prester John, he was a fictional person from a fictional country (and skeptical people probably should have guessed that from the fact his letter mentioned he owned a griffin and the Fountain of Youth), but the search for Prester John changed real world history, even though this guy never existed. If you like this story, read Umberto Eco’s Baudolino, my favorite novel about the beginning of the Renaissance.

To understand where Xicor came from, you have to understand that, in 1999, the great currency of the internet were lies and tall tales about fannish entertainment. Every single website had a “News and Rumors” section that passed on absolute unverified lies that were sometimes pulled from thin air or made up on the spot. There were no official sites releasing news and casting on new release movies and television at all. You often only knew a show existed when you saw a trailer or, at best, if it got a prerelease pictorial in Starlog magazine. And because sites were in competition, a weird unsubstantiated rumor posted in one place was quickly posted everywhere else in no time flat.

To be clear, we were not that stupid. We absolutely took all of this with a grain of salt and an eyeroll. When a Nintendo fan site mentioned someone’s story about how they found a way to play as Luigi in Super Mario 64, the reaction by most was to roll their eyes. Nevertheless, we kept on reading the News and Rumors, because sometimes, once in a blue moon, something would turn out to be true. It was kind of like the technique of cold reading in that people remember the one time someone got a real scoop, and ignored the 12 times they passed on weird, false rumors, like the idea that Episode I was going to have an R-rated version when it was released on home video (I don’t have time to go into it, but ask any Star Wars fan around in the run up to the prequels who SuperShadow is).

In 1999, Dragon Ball was the biggest anime fandom and it wasn’t even particularly close, but the trouble is, the show finished in 1997 and there was no indication more was coming. It’s not clear and probably never will be who started it, but there were rumors that, in Japan, there was a new sequel to Dragon Ball called Dragon Ball AF (After Future). Since then, “AF” is hip slang meaning “extremely” (as in “Frank is strong af”) but nobody used AF that way in 1999, making this extra-funny with the passage of time. A single piece of fan art showing an evil albino Saiyan in Super-Saiyan 4 (his albinism showed this was Xicor, not Goku in some new transformation as was sometimes believed) was passed around as “proof” this series was coming. Nowadays, we know this is just fan art. But the fact that this fan art has an albino Saiyan foe and has the title Dragon Ball AF, tells us that the rumors existed first and this fan art was made later, and in a weird cycle, the fan art was later used as evidence of the rumors, and so on.

These rumors got crazier and crazier because there was no official denial of any of this, because nobody was really on the internet, nobody official kept tabs on fan communities. In 1999, the only people on the internet were nerds talking about Star Trek and anime.

The interesting thing about Dragon Ball AF is that the rumors stayed pretty consistent on what the storyline was going to be. In other words, everyone hallucinated the exact same fake show into existence. I guess everyone had the same “friend in Japan.” The opening of the series was always described like so. Years after GT, a pair of pods arrive on earth, and two beings emerge: one, a beautiful albino woman, and the other is a massive, intimidating silent albino bruiser named Xicor. The woman, we discover is a former Kai, and Xicor’s mother, who works as the brain to Xicor’s muscle.

Now we start to understand exactly who Xicor is. He’s a secret son of Goku and the Western Kai (who faked her own death), making him half Kai and half Saiyan, or a Super Saiyan God. He’s essentially Sloth from the Goonies, in that he is a massively powerful, mostly nonverbal, monstrous and deformed third son, commanded by an evil mother (Mama Fratelli), who can throw everyone around easily when he really gets mad. Goku’s two earlier kids are kind of like the two less effective, squabbling Fratelli kids, I suppose. Instead of tearing off his shirt to become Superman when enraged, Xicor became an albino Super Saiyan 4.

If you’re a long-time DBZ fan, you’ve seen the DB AF hoax image of Xicor so many times that it probably makes you pissed to see it now. Every 5 years, a rumor starts up that someone is going to do Dragon Ball AF “for real” this time, and it’s wrong every time…or is it?

This should be where the story ends, right? A crazy rumor from the wild west days of the fan internet created by wishful thinking. Alone, it would just be a story about how crazy the 90s internet was. But here’s the thing: the story didn’t end here, because that’s the thing about rumors. People wanted Dragon Ball AF to be real so badly they created dozens of fan comics about it. And because there were all these rumors that were weirdly consistent, a true oral tradition right out of pre-writing cultures (or like those filthy rhymes we all learned at summer camp that have no point of origin, like “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man, I live in a garbage can”), the details of Xicor (albino, red eyes, wears green and shoots green lasers, silent, half god, Goku’s third superpowerful evil son, bossed around by an evil mother) stayed the same.

The story of Xicor didn’t end here, because a funny thing happened; the guys who were big fans in the 90s started to run the asylum. That is, fans started to be put in charge of Dragon Ball Z. One person who made DB AF fan comics (and the idea of a “fan comic” of which there is no original is very funny to me) was Toyotarou, a fan comic artist. He was asked to do creative for the video game Dragon Ball Xenoverse. And…who were the villains of Dragon Ball Xenoverse? Mira and Towa, a mother-son pair of evildoers where the mother is the brains, and the son is a silent Ivan Drago-like bruiser who was pure intimidation.

The following is a fan comic done in 2000 by Toyotaro, the guy literally making Dragon Ball Super now:

By the way, in case you’re not convinced Mira and Towa were inspired by Xicor, here’s a look at Mira’s final, albino and beastlike form in Xenoverse 2:

It gets better. Traces of Xicor, a character who never existed in canon, are everywhere all over the DBZ revival, Dragon Ball Super, which is essentially a canon Dragon Ball AF. It’s as if fan desire wished the series into existence. When I first heard the title, Dragon Ball Super: Battle of the Gods, my immediate assumption was that they were making Xicor canon and the villain (side note, but my initial reaction on hearing the premise of Star Trek Nemesis back in the day is that Tasha’s daughter Sela was going to be the villain). And he wasn’t, but they canonized the existence of Super Saiyan God. In other words, the instant fans got the keys to canon, they made Xicor real.

It gets better. In a later DBS arc, there is a villain who is made from both Goku and a Kai, Goku Black, who is tremendously powerful for that reason. I guess the reason they went with Black is because Goku White would have suggested Xicor a bit too much! (Also, I wonder if the humorous viral clip would have been funnier....or less funny....if they said “don’t shoot, he’s not white!”) Personally, I think Goku Black would have been more intimidating if he didn’t speak, like the taciturn and laconic Xicor.

Interestingly, all this is a case of everything coming full circle. As I’ve written before, Dragon Ball was inspired by Chinese martial arts novels and shows, and the most popular martial arts series from China in Japan the year Dragon Ball was created was Bastard Swordsman, which inspired the Super-Saiyan transformation...except it turns you albino-white.

I’m not sure how to end this neatly except to bring up one thing: remember when I said the most annoying and persistent 90s internet rumor was that Luigi was somehow in Super Mario 64? Well...astoundingly, last year, a dump of Nintendo files leaked, revealing that Luigi was designed for Super Mario 64 all along. Xicor became real in every way but name, and Luigi was in SM64. Even SuperShadow’s insane prediction about Star Wars sequels came true. It’s like...the 90s internet rumors were right about everything, you just had to wait a couple decades.

#dragon ball z #90s #internet history #90s nostalgia

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wakandaiscoming · 4 years

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Ryan Coogler’s statement on Chadwick Boseman’s death has gutted me again. “He’s an ancestor now.”

Before sharing my thoughts on the passing of the great Chadwick Boseman, I first offer my condolences to his family who meant so very much to him. To his wife, Simone, especially.

I inherited Marvel and the Russo Brothers’ casting choice of T’Challa. It is something that I will forever be grateful for. The first time I saw Chad’s performance as T’Challa, it was in an unfinished cut of “Captain America: Civil War.” I was deciding whether or not directing “Black Panther” was the right choice for me. I’ll never forget, sitting in an editorial suite on the Disney Lot and watching his scenes. His first with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, then, with the South African cinema titan, John Kani as T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka. It was at that moment I knew I wanted to make this movie. After Scarlett’s character leaves them, Chad and John began conversing in a language I had never heard before. It sounded familiar, full of the same clicks and smacks that young black children would make in the States. The same clicks that we would often be chided for being disrespectful or improper. But, it had a musicality to it that felt ancient, powerful, and African.

I learned later that there was much conversation over how T’Challa would sound in the film. The decision to have Xhosa be the official language of Wakanda was solidified by Chad, a native of South Carolina, because he was able to learn his lines in Xhosa, there on the spot. He also advocated for his character to speak with an African accent, so that he could present T’Challa to audiences as an African king, whose dialect had not been conquered by the West.

I finally met Chad in person in early 2016, once I signed onto the film. He snuck past journalists that were congregated for a press junket I was doing for CREED, and met with me in the green room. We talked about our lives, my time playing football in college, and his time at Howard studying to be a director, about our collective vision for T’Challa and Wakanda. We spoke about the irony of how his former Howard classmate Ta-Nehisi Coates was writing T’Challa’s current arc with Marvel Comics. And how Chad knew Howard student Prince Jones, who’s murder by a police officer inspired Coates’ memoir Between The World and Me.

I noticed then that Chad was an anomaly. He was calm. Assured. Constantly studying. But also kind, comforting, had the warmest laugh in the world, and eyes that seen much beyond his years, but could still sparkle like a child seeing something for the first time.

That was the first of many conversations. He was a special person. We would often speak about heritage and what it means to be African. When preparing for the film, he would ponder every decision, every choice, not just for how it would reflect on himself, but how those choices could reverberate. “They not ready for this, what we are doing…” “This is Star Wars, this is Lord of the Rings, but for us… and bigger!” He would say this to me while we were struggling to finish a dramatic scene, stretching into double overtime. Or while he was covered in body paint, doing his own stunts. Or crashing into frigid water, and foam landing pads. I would nod and smile, but I didn’t believe him. I had no idea if the film would work. I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing. But I look back and realize that Chad knew something we all didn’t. He was playing the long game. All while putting in the work. And work he did.

He would come to auditions for supporting roles, which is not common for lead actors in big budget movies. He was there for several M’Baku auditions. In Winston Duke’s, he turned a chemistry read into a wrestling match. Winston broke his bracelet. In Letitia Wright’s audition for Shuri, she pierced his royal poise with her signature humor, and would bring about a smile to T’Challa’s face that was 100% Chad.

While filming the movie, we would meet at the office or at my rental home in Atlanta, to discuss lines and different ways to add depth to each scene. We talked costumes, military practices. He said to me “Wakandans have to dance during the coronations. If they just stand there with spears, what separates them from Romans?” In early drafts of the script. Eric Killmonger’s character would ask T’Challa to be buried in Wakanda. Chad challenged that and asked, what if Killmonger asked to be buried somewhere else?

Chad deeply valued his privacy, and I wasn’t privy to the details of his illness. After his family released their statement, I realized that he was living with his illness the entire time I knew him. Because he was a caretaker, a leader, and a man of faith, dignity and pride, he shielded his collaborators from his suffering. He lived a beautiful life. And he made great art. Day after day, year after year. That was who he was. He was an epic firework display. I will tell stories about being there for some of the brilliant sparks till the end of my days. What an incredible mark he’s left for us.

I haven’t grieved a loss this acute before. I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see. It leaves me broken knowing that I won’t be able to watch another close-up of him in the monitor again or walk up to him and ask for another take.

It hurts more to know that we can’t have another conversation, or facetime, or text message exchange. He would send vegetarian recipes and eating regimens for my family and me to follow during the pandemic. He would check in on me and my loved ones, even as he dealt with the scourge of cancer.

In African cultures we often refer to loved ones that have passed on as ancestors. Sometimes you are genetically related. Sometimes you are not. I had the privilege of directing scenes of Chad’s character, T’Challa, communicating with the ancestors of Wakanda. We were in Atlanta, in an abandoned warehouse, with bluescreens, and massive movie lights, but Chad’s performance made it feel real. I think it was because from the time that I met him, the ancestors spoke through him. It’s no secret to me now how he was able to skillfully portray some of our most notable ones. I had no doubt that he would live on and continue to bless us with more. But it is with a heavy heart and a sense of deep gratitude to have ever been in his presence, that I have to reckon with the fact that Chad is an ancestor now. And I know that he will watch over us, until we meet again."

#ryan coogler #chadwick bosemen #black panther #marvel #t’Challa #creed #m’baku #winston duke #shuri #letitia wright #xhosa #john kani #prince jones #ta nehisi coates

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londonspirit · 4 years

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“I inherited Marvel and the Russo Brothers’ casting choice of T’Challa. It is something that I will forever be grateful for. The first time I saw Chad’s performance as T’Challa, it was in an unfinished cut of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. I was deciding whether or not directing BLACK PANTHER was the right choice for me. I’ll never forget, sitting in an editorial suite on the Disney Lot and watching his scenes. His first with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, then, with the South African cinema titan, John Kani as T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka. It was at that moment I knew I wanted to make this movie. After Scarlett’s character leaves them, Chad and John began conversing in a language I had never heard before. It sounded familiar, full of the same clicks and smacks that young black children would make in the States. The same clicks that we would often be chided for being disrespectful or improper. But, it had a musicality to it that felt ancient, powerful, and African.

In my meeting after watching the film, I asked Nate Moore, one of the producers of the film, about the language. “Did you guys make it up?” Nate replied, “that’s Xhosa, John Kani’s native language. He and Chad decided to do the scene like that on set, and we rolled with it.” I thought to myself. “He just learned lines in another language, that day?” I couldn’t conceive how difficult that must have been, and even though I hadn’t met Chad, I was already in awe of his capacity as actor.

#chadwick boseman #ryan coogler #and now I'm crying all over again #the impact that man had #and still has #going by the massive amount of love I see all over my social media #a tribute for a king

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giuliadrawsstuff · 2 years

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Hi Giulia! I hope you're doing okay! I just wanna say that you have a very solid art style--I can definitely distinguish it whenever it appears on my dashboard. Do you have artists or references that influence your very own art? I guess I just wanna ask, what's your artistic process? Thanks and take care!

Hi RK! Aww thanks you're so kind 💜💜 it really means a lot 💜

Mmm I think my greatest influence was Disney, the cartoons obviously but also some Italian comics, in particular W.I.T.C.H. (five highschool girls that obtain superpowers and can communicate with the four elements) and Topolino (various stories of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and all their friends) and I used to copy every possible drawing available hahha All the various issues are drawn by different artists, so I got to see a lot of variety of styles and pick the ones I preferred or better even pick the bits of each I liked and make them mine. Topolino in particular has multiple stories in a single issue and comes out weekly, so I had lots and lots of material to look at. I had my subscription until 2 years ago honestly hahah but I stopped for lack of shelves in my room 😂

And then during university so like 4/5 years ago I bought some video tutorials by Disney artist Aaron Blaise (he's the director of Brother Bear but he worked on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and other movies) and those really were a booster because I got to study anatomy and character design and drawing lots of animals. I still buy his stuff whenever he adds something interesting, he's an excellent teacher. And I get to watch them all the times I want so I can review weak spots or more difficult points.

As for the drawing process, well first I try and find a pose, I collect everything available that inspires me from stars Instagram posts or tweets, to drawings of other artists (obviously if the pose I finally make is identical to the original I add the reference to the post) to movie GIFs on Tumblr or official art. Oh and Pinterest too, that’s a goldmine, but I always end up finding new stuff that distracts me and not what I was originally looking for haha

Then I sketch on paper or on Photoshop depending on the mood and time, lately I can't even watch a movie in peace because my hands itch because I need to draw. So in this case I use paper.

Like these new ones look what a mess they are and very unfinished. It mostly to just jot down the idea so I don't forget it.

And since I always make a mess of it, Photoshop is a blessing. I allows me to change stuff how many times I want, for ex if the head is too big I can select it and make it smaller, it allows me to flip the drawing which is one of the most useful things ever because watching your drawing mirrored makes all the horrors pop up, I've lost count of how many wrong eyes or super long arms I had to correct. Plus I can work on different layers so I usually have one layer for the head (even 2 or 3 like for Hange because they have bangs and ponytail that are tough and glasses) then one torso, two for the arms and so on. I only merge all layers into one lineart when I'm sure it's good to go.

And then I add flat colours and logos and stuff if needed (like the wings of freedom patches or blood).

Like this is flat colours (I know you know Bojack from your Diane profile pic, which I've always loved from the first moment I saw it btw 💜 I love that show). This one stays like this because Bojack has a very simple line and pretty much no shadows unless needed. But otherwise I always add them.

But before making the shadows I tend to decide a background if needed or if I hadn't already one in mind. And the shadows colour tends to pair with the BG, but the general one is brownish (I use the same colour I use for Levi's bags under his eyes 😂 but set it to multiply so it gets darker but you can still see what's beneath).

Like this below.

I don't do many backgrounds by hand, i made one for my Secret Santa but usually I use photos or pictures (AOT is perfect for example because being a cartoon it fits with my style, with real photos I have to be more careful because it might collide instead of becoming part of the drawing) unless there's an object in real interaction with the characters.

For example this one below. The tree on which they sit was already in the frame (that's actually what gave me the idea of putting them on the branches) I tried using it like that but there was too much difference so I drew the tree myself. The rest is the real shot but blurred. Helps focusing on the characters.

Puff I think I'm done hahha sorry it came out longer that expected 😂😂 I hope the drawings make it less boring hahhaha

Anyway thanks for asking 💜💜 and if you have suggestions be sure to drop them by 💜

#my art #ask #drawing process #digital art

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evenmoregreener · 3 years

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Questionnaire of Laruku from B-PASS magazine (March. 1995)

Another translation of a translation from Russian. This "interview" was translated for Russian l'arc fan-club in 2018. I haven't found any other English translations on the net, so I decided that it will be interesting for you to read something like this. All credits are down below, big thank you to the original translator, what a great woman!

The original Russian text has some typos plus English isn't my first language, that's why text might seem a bit of strange. About special signs: (translator's note) - notes of an original translator; "*" - my own notes; (?) - neither me nor the original translator understood the context. Please, enjoy!

1. Date of birth Hyde: 13th of Friday Tetsu: 3 of October Ken: 28th of November, Sagittarius Sakura: Secret 2. Blood type Н: Color of the blood - red Т: А or 0 К: АВ S: The hot blood of a man runs in my veins 3. Place of birth Н: Jelsarem's Rod Т: Kansai К: Alaska’s native S: Kingdom of Nerima (Nerima is a ward in Tokyo, where Sakura was born - translator's note) 4. Height, weight, shoe size, visual acuity Н: “?” Т: Small, light, 24,5 – 25 cm К: 178 cm, 56 kg, shoe – 25,5 cm S: 5 feet 8 inches, 120 feet, 10 inches, about 1,0 and 1,0 5. Body size Н: As in the previous Т: I don’t know К: I prefer В 85, W 58 H 88 S: “Nice body” 6. Which musical instruments and how many years do you play? Н: I've been playing guitar for 9 years Т: 11 years on bass К: From about high school S: Secret 7. Where did you work? Н: Mister Donats Т: At the record store К: Jewelry store, tutor S: Secret 8. Skills Н: Shaolin martial arts, second dan Т: Calligraphy К: Youth baseball S: Secret 9. Hobby and special abilities (besides music) Н: Bite Т: Radio controlled models К: Tetris S: To make people do something

10. Philosophy of life Н: Do not stick sticks into the rice Т: I sleep today for tomorrow, tomorrow I sleep for today. (a phrase from manga - translator's note) К: Hurry slowly S: Live today 11. Real name Н: Jiji Т: Teppi К: Jakenosuke S: Sakurajima Samuel Tarot

12. Favorite musicians Н: Depeche mode Т: Me К: The The (an English new wave band — translator's note) S: Ishihara Yūjirō (Japanese actor, singer, film producer - translator's note) 13. Favorite celebrity Н: Takeda Tetsuya (Japanese singer and actor - translator's note) Т: Me К: Isshiki Sae (Japanese actress — translator's note) S: Saburo Ishikura (Japanese actor - translator's note) 14. Respected people Н: Yoshitada Hirai * Т: Me К: Professor Ichinose S: Takakura Ken (Japanese actor - translator's note) 15. Favorite films and films that you’ve recently watched Н: The Omen. Recently watched Jurassic Park. Т: Favorite film – The Outsider, recently watched “Cría cuervos” (Spanish film of 1976 - translator's note) К: Perfect World, cried when watched, although usually I don't cry during films S: Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) 16. Favorite books (including manga) and books that you’ve recently read Н: Stephen King. Recently read compilation that’s called Night Souls (?). Pretty interesting. Т: «Harper’s Bazaar», Vogue Italia, recently read Matsumoto Hitoshi’s “Isho”. К: «Kirin», about motorcycles, novels for men. It’s a bit of awkward, but I buy Young Rose which I love to read for a long time. S: I can't list everything. 17. Alcohol and tobacco Н: Both, about 10 years already. Alcohol – a little, tobacco – one piece. ** Т: I don’t smoke. Alcohol – yes, except sake, I drink rarely though. К: I love Kassis, always have it at home, drink 2-3 times a week. I don’t smoke right now. S: Any alcohol, I can drink a lot. Per day I smoke more than two packs (Seven Star) 18. Do you love animals? Do you have any pets? Н: I do, but I have allergy. Т: I do. I had 5 dogs and one cat, now I don’t. К: I love obedient and loving. S: More than pets I love girls. 19. The concert that left the strongest impression Н: GASTUNK in EGG PLANT (legendary club in Osaka of 80’s - translator's note) Т: Shiki-Yakou (the name of tour Dead End of 1985) К: In Aichi Kinrou Kaikan (concert hall in Nagoya — translator's note) S: Radio concert Anikies (Dankon Anikies – fictional band that was made up by ken, sakura and kyo (Die in Cries), when ken and sakura were guests at kyo’s radio program «kyo MIDNIGHT　ROCK　CITY» on 9th of December, 1994 - translator's note) 20. Three most beloved albums Н: Some Great Reward of Depeche Mode, God’s Own Medicine of The Mission, La Vie En Rose of D'erlanger*** Т: Laruku’s new album, Tierra, Dune К: Black Sabath – Heaven & Hell; Cure - Disintegration; Kisugi Takao (Japanese singer and composer - translator's note) - Best collection S: Secret 21. Recently bought CDs and your impressions of them Н: No Т: Second Coming/The Stone Roses К: Suede (Britpop band - translator's note) S: Secret 22. Concert that you visited recently Н: Haven't been on the concerts for about a year, but sometimes before Shibuya live watched Modern Choki Chokies (a Japanese pop band from the early 1990s - translator's note) Т: Echobelly (a British rock band — translator's note) К: kyo-chan’s solo S: Secret 23. TV shows that you often watch and radio shows that you often listen to Н: Doramas and MIDNIGHT ROCK CITY Т: TV – BEAT UK, I don't listen to radio К: Yoru-ni dakarete (dorama of 1994 - translator's note), though it has already ended. I don’t listen to radio, since I don’t have one S: I’m interested neither in TV nor radio 24. Favorite dish, favorite color and flower Н: Japanese cuisine. Monochrome color. Flowers that grow well in an apartment, even if they are not watered Т: Sushi, tillandsia, cacti, I like all of the colors К: Favorite dish – ice cream, caviar, sushi. Favorite flower – orchid. Favorite color – silver S: Anton rib (dish that was mentioned in Kinnikuman - translator's note), sakura, black 25. Musical instruments that you can play and ones that you want to learn to play Н: Guitar, bass, acoustic guitar, would like to learn to play flute. Т: Several guitars and basses К: Guitar, bass, synthesizer. Would like to learn how to play saxophone S: Variety which you can find in stores 26. Thing that you want the most right now Н: Hot blood of some girl. Т: Sharp Zaurus P1-5000 К: Onsen, pool S: “?” 27. How do you spend your weekend? Н: Sleep Т: Vacantly К: Go back and forth S: Stay under the waterfall 28. What do you do when you are all alone at home? Н: Sleep and writing lyrics Т: Play the guitar, listen to music К: Watch TV… S: Drumming Japanese drums 29. A dream that you have seen lately. Н: Back at night souls of dead sheep were hurrying through the window, I was worried where they are going. I told Sakura: when the sheep will come back, let’s go after them, but they didn’t come back. Т: A dream where I somehow ended up eating sushi in America. К: Relocation S: In loincloth and a bandage on the head I wandered in a stormy sea. And that was awesome! 30. Most attractive feature Н: Compact, compact and compact Т: “?” К: Ankles. Strong side: strong legs. Weak side: often catch cold. S: 31. Role in the band. Н: Probably, bringing everybody together Т: President К: Am-group (?) S: Educator of the head of singing monkeys 32. Describe in one word what Laruku is Н: Cloudy sky after heavy rain Т: Rock band К: Rainbow S: Soul of a man 33. What do you expect from the other band members? Н: I’d like everybody to stay as healthy as they are now Т: Perfection К: Rainbow! S: Soul of a man 34. Where do you want to go abroad? Н: Paris Т: To America К: Any countries where I could live. To drive back and forth S: Country on the shore of the Japanese Sea 35. Where have you been? Where have you recently traveled? Н: During the vacation in September traveled to Nagano to visit Osamu's house four years later, I would like to live calmly in the district of Karuizawa station. Т: To Okinawa. It was beautiful. К: Morocco. It was hot. S: In Morocco I saw the waves of the Atlantic Ocean 36. What do you recommend to see in your hometown? Н: On the roof of Nisshou haitsu Т: A lot of yankees. К: The view on the fast stream S: Secret 37. Enjoyable things that you like during tours (except for concerts) Н: Food Т: Except for concerts, nothing (laughs) К: You can overeat S: Meet different locals with the soul of a man 38. What do you definitely do before the concert, what do you pay special attention to? Н: I am in a deep thought Т: I listen to Metallica at full volume К: Going to a toilet S: Warm up and stretch of the muscles 39. What do you pay special attention to before the interview? Н: I find out the topic Т: So as not to be late К: I try to be serious S: Worried about whether I can express and tell about my masculine soul 40. What do you carry with you all the time? Н: Watch and two bracelets because I like them Т: Nothing К: Bracelet, necklace - I feel uncomfortable without them S: Pants 41. Memorable thing Н: The bracelet that I bought when I first came abroad. I really wanted it, but pretended that I am not interested, and bargained. But since there is no set price, I don’t know if it’s cheap or not. Т: No К: Various guitars, they are associated with different memories. S: Secret 42. Three biggest news in the last six months Н: 1. Motoka’s wedding. 2. The house in front of my window was demolished. 3. Because of the house, which has now been built, the lighting has become worse. Т: Promotion trip; creation of an official fan club; award from the director! К: Couldn't go to the sea. Swam in a pool in Morocco. Was in onsen. S: Secret 43. Plans for the end of the previous year and the beginning of the new Н: Composing music and lyrics Т: Car driving and karaoke К: Continue visiting onsen. S: Polish my masculine soul 44. Your personal plans for 1995 Н: Enjoy work Т: Become an artist № 1 К: Necessarily swim in the sea. Master the butterfly S: Gain a soul of a man 45. Music that you listened to this morning or last night Н: Laruku’s new song T: Morning call from the manager K: Maribeth S: Pink Floyd 46. Dish that turns out well when you are cooking Н: Chinese cuisine Т: I can't cook К: Ikuradon S: Sashimi 47. The image of the ideal woman Н: An optimistic and domestic woman Т: No К: Fujiko-chan S: That looks like Shiraishi Hitomi (Japanese actress - translator's note) 48. Favorite sport Н: No Т: No К: No S: Judo 49. If I were born again... Н: I would like to become an astronaut and fly into space Т: I would like to be genius К: I would like to be a dolphin S: I would like to be a woman, in order to live and not talk nevermore about the "soul of a man" 50. Goals in life Н: Enjoy the rest of the years Т: It’s a secret К: Live a long life S: Soul of a man 51. One word for readers of our magazine Н: If you're not careful, I'll bite you! Т: Nice to meet you К: Hello, this is Ken. I'll continue in answer 52 S: Life in a loincloth and headband 52. Free theme Н: Woof Т: Nowadays Laruku are fully different! К: In 1996 I want to perform a lot at concerts. That is why we definitely will meet, so look forward! S: And this year there will be Anikies!

* Marked in credits to HYDE’s “Roentgen” album as an art director and designer. ** Probably he meant one pack. *** Was covered by HYDE in D’ERLANGER TRIBUTE ALBUM ~Stairway to Heaven~.

Translation from Japanese: Liubov Chachanidze aka Diana_ Translation into English by me (The Green Explosion inc.)

Original: https://diary.ru/~l20arc-en-ciel/p216393417_anketa-iz-zhurnala-b-pass-za-mart-1995-goda.htm

#laruku #l'arc #hyde #hideto takarai #l’arc en ciel #ken kitamura #ken #tetsu #tetsuya ogawa #sakura #yasunori sakurazawa #interview #translation #jrock

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leonardhoee · 3 years

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Ikevamp OC: Sandro Botticelli

Birthday: March 1, 1445

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Height: 173cm (5’8)

Past Occupation: Artist

Vampiric Type: Lesser Vampire

MBTI Personality: ENFJ- A

Build: Lean, but toned. He says his best feature is his ass. Everyone agrees

Fashion Style: Modern day Sandro would wear light academia or cottage core. He would also wear a maid dress or skirt just because he’s proud of his thighs. In Ikevamp’s time period however, his priority is always comfort. He’s wear leather pants with either a white silk or cotton button up. (Tiddies out ofc because he is shameless)

Background: Turned in 1510 by Lorenzo de Medici, Botticelli was initially unaware that he had even died and been resurrected as a vampire. As someone who greatly appreciates life, he was angry at first about being brought back without his permission, and immediately left the Medici court. For several decades he traveled the world and realized there was so much undiscovered beauty just waiting to be discovered and immortalized by him. Since then he made it his goal to seek out that beauty wherever he could, and create a painting so extravagant and ethereal that it would put the sun, moon, and stars to shame.

Personality: He is one of the most outgoing people in the mansion. He is not afraid to speak his mind and often compliments random people he meets in town. He is very genuine, almost to a fault. He always sees the good in others and can be a bit naive at times, only because he choses to believe people at face value. His authenticity and trust in others, inspire the people he cares about to believe in themselves and become more confident. He also tends to have a flair for the dramatic, basically the embodiment of “I’ll get over it, I just need to be dramatic first”. He can be a bit dreamy and carefree, tossing awareness of his surroundings. (One time he went horseback riding with Leonardo and saw a pretty flower. He spaced out, thinking about how he would paint it in the hands of a beautiful person and ended up getting thrown off his horse when he almost rode into a tree. A true himbo). His carefree attitude however, can leave him a bit detached from people. While he’s very empathetic, he doesn’t know what to do when those emotions are coming from him. Finding beauty is his motivation after being brought back, but what happens when he realizes beauty isn’t the only reason he’s so drawn to you?

In Love: At first, he simply thought he was attracted to you for your beauty. After all, that’s the reason he was drawn to people in the past. He understand’s beauty very well, but he doesn't know what true love feels like from his own perspective. A major conflict for him would be realizing that the reason his heart races after time you smile at him, isn't because he simply finds you worthy of his art. He is hopelessly in love with you.

“Oh don’t worry, I’m just holding your hand because its pretty haha...”

He can be oblivious at the beginning and won’t understand why you’re jealousy that he’s admiring other people for their beauty. It’s only because he wants them to be art subjects right?

But once he has come to terms with his feelings, he will be the sweetest lover you can ask for. You are a goddess to him, his one and only muse, and he will make sure you know that he worships every single part of you. (He will definitely ask to paint you nude because “beauty such as yours absolutely must be captured. I only hope I can capture your radiance the way you deserve Amore”)

Hobbies: Painting, Meddling in people’s business, Stargazing

Dislikes: Dishonest and close minded people, Spicy Food

Favorite Food: Crème Brûlée

Hated Food: Banana

Weaknesses: Physical fighting, Math, Situational awareness.

Speciality: Making people smile, Chaos

Extra Things:

-Lorenzo brought him back because he believed it would be a waste for the world to loose such talent so quickly.

- He arrived at the mansion to surprise Leonardo after hearing he was still alive. It was supposed to be a temporary stay but he fell in love with Paris and asked Comte if he could move in with them.

- Sandro is a great singer and dancer and is often asked by Mozart to sing one of his pieces for him. However he only agrees if he is allowed to draw Mozart after. (He can’t help it, Mozart and Jean are so ethereally beautiful, they just have to be drawn.)

- While he is extremely talented artistically, he doesn't know how to cook, wash dishes, or hail a carriage. Sebastian has officially banned him from the kitchen after he set the cupboards on fire trying to make a cake. (Theo nearly had a stroke after taking a bite and realizing he mixed up the salt and sugar)

- He is already very hyper, and he is not allowed to touch coffee. One time Arthur gave him a cup and he was awake all night trying to turned all the residents into the perfect models. He carried their sleeping bodies to the garden and arranged them to resemble the 12 Olympians. Jean woke up the next morning curled up at Comte’s feet and since then he has banned Botticelli from visiting his room or painting him.

- Botticelli originally met Leonardo while they were both studying in Verrocchio’s workshop, and he considers Leo to be like an older brother to him. Being the two college-age dumbasses they are, they decided to move in together and start working as waiters in a nearby restaurant. After most of the staff died from the plague, Leonardo came up with the bright idea of rebranding the restaurant, calling it called "Le tre rane di Sandro e Leonardo" (the Three Frogs of Sandro and Leonardo), and serving gourmet cuisine. It ended up being a failure because most of their customers were not used to the innovative new food being served.

- A threeway with Leonardo is definitely a possibility for you.

- He has a pet peacock named Juno.

- Sometimes he lays down in the garden and watches the clouds imagining different animals based on their shapes.

- Surprising Botticelli is very good friends with Dazai, and his positive outlook on life has helped Dazai appreciate his own existence. None of the other residents understand their conversations but it makes perfect sense between them.

- He cannot handle spicy food. One time Dazai slipped chili powder into his dinner and his face turned red while he teared up. To this day he internally shudders every time he sees the others eating something spicy without flinching.

- He tries to avoid conflicts as much as he can because he tends to get emotional very quickly. Being so empathetic can be draining to him and getting into a fight hurts him more than it will ever hurt the other person.

- He loves making random sketches of you and the other residents, and he will leave them your respective rooms with a small note reminding everyone that they are appreciated.

- His love language is physical touch and he has a habit of kissing everyone on the cheek or forehead.

- Something about Napoleon’s room is so cozy and welcoming that it makes him sleepy. He’s woken up cuddling Napoleon many times. Yes they have kissed each other.

- Though, he doesn’t like taking naps with Leonardo because sleeping on the floor makes all his bones hurt.

- He has a sweet tooth that rivals Theo. Between the two of them, any desserts Sebastian buys, are eating within 2 days.

- Sandro loves shopping with Comte and he constantly asks Leonardo to let him pick out a new wardrobe. He cringes every time he sees those mismatched boots.

- Shakespeare is the only resident that makes him a bit wary. He is very good at figuring out when people are lying and Will’s personality unsettles him.

- Besides Leonardo, Vincent is his favorite resident. Sandro appreciates how kind and welcoming he is, and his favorite pastime is painting with him. If he ever hears people talk bad about Vincent he will not hesitate to give that person a piece of his mind.

- Sandro is a bi king who develops crushes very easily, but most of them are fleeting and superficial. He had a major crush on Leonardo that he quickly got over after they became friends. When they lived together, Leo would often tease him for his habit of falling for people so quickly and moving on within a week.

- Modern Botticelli would be a major Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, and FKA Twigs fan.

- One time he was running to show Dazai a pretty butterfly he found and he was so distracted by it that he didn’t notice the tree branch right in front of him. He ran into it so hard that he knocked himself out for 30 minutes and Napoleon had to carry him back inside the mansion.

Other characters he is similar to: Ranpo Edogawa, Tamaki Suoh, Grell Sutcliff

I’m going to be using Ikevamp Botticelli so you can follow that tag if you want to hear more about him!

#ikemen vampire #ikevamp #ikevamp oc #ikevamp botticelli

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bogkeep · 3 years

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theo’s tarot collection

hi hello i suffer from a terrible ailment called I Keep Acquiring New Tarot Decks Even Though I Am A Tarot Newbie.... so i figured i could do a little writeup about my decks if anyone is interested in that :’) basically i started doing tarot in 2019 because i couldn’t get a hold of a therapist (i was put on a year long waitlist WAHOO) so i basically. self-medicated with tarot readings hahaha. i had a friend who gave me a lot of really good advice and had done some readings for me before who felt immensely comforting. the way i read them is like... it allows you to confront your situation and your emotions through a new angle, but you gotta be brave enough to do it - or ask someone to do it for you. it can be a really intense but also cathartic experience. it’s not for everyone! but i like it. i still consider myself a novice and still learning so i am not in ANY way trying to paint myself as a Knowledgabl Tarot Witch - in a perfect timeline that’s who i wish i was, but i’m ultimately just some guy with a solid appreciation for art and personal growth.

ANYWAY... onto my DECKS (the tumblr post will probably squish the quality outta my photos so i’m gonna link the URLs for Full View)

Children of Litha by Alexandria Huntington

i consider this my main and first deck (i am NOT counting the official homestuck deck i bought as a teen just because i wanted to look at the art. no offense to the homestuck deck i’m just not gonna use fandom decks)! i picked it out but my Tarot Friend gifted it to me... i think it’s a very good starter deck for me personally, and it’s the deck i’ve bonded with and used the most. i even put a fancy sticker on the box as part of the bonding process. i always feel so bad for all of my other decks because i haven’t been able to dedicate as much time for them as i have this one... so it’s definitely the deck i go to for the most accurate readings for myself. Vibes and Thematic Coherence: the art in this is so beautiful and elegant. the symbolism more or less draws on the classic smith-waite deck, but redrawn for its theme. i like that it has a very consistent imagery! out of the major arcana, the fool is the only fully human character - every other character is part animal in some way or other. then the suit of swords depicts birds, winged insects and the air element, coins depict ungulates and equines and earth, wands has felines and canines and fiery imagery, and cups has fish and creatures of and in the sea. the court cards have humans. the suit symbols are always depicted consistently, as white silhouettes. there are also two extra cards: the all and the void. Pamphlet: the reason i think this was a good starter deck is because both because the art feels very intuitive about what it depicts (to me, at least), the descriptions in the pamphlet describe what is happening and why the artist chose this motif for this card. it has honestly helped me remember the meanings a lot, because i’ll be reading the other decks and be like “oh that’s the octopus card i know what the octopus card is about”. there are also little poems next to the main descriptions that work as a pretty solid tl;dr for the core meanings. i also like that the court cards are referred to in the sense of like... a knight is “a young person with masculine energy” rather than “a young man”. it feels more fluid and vibe-y about gender than traditional decks ya feel. on a range from Abstract to Directness this one feels like it sits pretty comfortable in the middle, maybe leaning on Abstractness. it has always given me gentle instructions and advice.

Cardfeel: the cards are very smooth and nice with gold edges. the cards are not NOT solid, but i wish they had been a little thicker because i’m always afraid i’m going to accidentally damage them - but that’s probably a feeling i have about most of my possessions tbh!! i think they’re a good size, too, at least for my small hands. they’re more on the long/slender side so they are good for me to shuffle. i also like the box, it’s a hard flip box with a magnet. i think u can’t go wrong with that. this is the deck i’ve travelled with the most (did u know hotel beds are the best tarot reading spaces. for some reason they just Work). The Spacious Tarot by Annie Ruygt and Carrie Mallon

this is one i really like a lot and want to use more! i absolutely adore the concept of it, but it’s a little harder for me to read than the Litha one. Vibes and Thematic Coherence: this one is like!!! it’s about the open space and the quietness. the vibes are IMMACULATE. the cards aren’t filled to the brim with happenstance and symbolism, but they each feel like a little refuge. very meditative. i also like that the court cards are not gendered at all - there is no page, knight, queen and king, but rather child, explorer, guardian and elder. i am really into that, especially as steps of mastery of their suit. i do think that this deck is probably easier to read if you’re more experienced with tarot meanings and symbolisms, because the illustrations aren’t necessarily that intuitive. Pamphlet: i haven’t read through this one very much, but i think it’s more on the abstract side of the Abstract to Direct scale. it might just feel like that because it describes what the card symbolizes without drawing much on what the card depicts - it is generally a pretty abstract and meditative deck. i like it for what it is! but it’s harder for me to read than my main Litha deck. Cardfeel: there’s something about the cardfeel i wish was different. they’re perfectly ok cards, they’re smooth and not too thin, but i still wish they had had more heft or something. while the cards fit very well into my hands i think maybe they could’ve been Larger to emphasize their motifs of openness and space. or texture. or gilded edges. i really don’t know what i want. the box however is very good and easy to open and use!! never underestimate a good box.

Tarot of the Divine by Yoshi Toshitani

this is a deck i Had To Get because i knew the artist was working on it and i was always Planning To... it is not a deck i use very often but i absolutey adore it. you can also get it with an accompanying fairytale book, i thought i had ordered that but i was Wronge. Vibes and Thematic Coherency: it depicts motifs and characters from stories, myths, and fairytales from a vast variety of cultures. it’s AMAZING. the art is so clean and crisp and i was VERY EXCITED to find a card drawing on a sami story (page of coins)! i don’t have a lot to say except that yoshi yoshitani has done some incredible work on this. Pamphlet: while i do not have the Fairytale Book edition, the pamphlet is really super nice because it shows pictures of the cards, lists what story it depicts and where the story is from, gives a short description for how this scene or character embodies the card. it then lists some of the Card Characteristics beneath. very simple but very nice. i really like pamphlets that explain Why the artist picked the motifs they did - for me personally it really helps me connect to the deck and their symbols. it’s probably more on the Direct side of the scale thanks to this. Cardfeel: these are textured!! they feel like the playing card deck my grandmother has, which feels apt to me. textures make the cards feel solid to me. they’re also a very nice size to hold. the edges are not guilded, but with the white frames it looks good and nice. the box is nice but also Large, possibly to fit with the book? might not be ideal for travel, but there’s nothing stopping you from getting a different box or pouch.

The Star Spinner Tarot by Trung Le Nguyen

my most recent deck... i KNEW about the artist and the deck from before, but wasn’t PLANNING to get it, but then i saw it in the comic book store and i wasn’t able to pass it by. no regrets, it’s a wonderful deck. Vibes and Thematic Coherence: absolutely lovely art and style. it’s another deck drawing on fairytale themed motifs. i’m loving the use of colors and circles. it also has four different cards for the Lovers so you can choose which one(s) speak to you the most, something i think is just wonderful. i think the only thing i found a little... odd? was that the suit of Wands looks kinda same-y, which isn’t a bad thing, but it was the only suit that looked that way to me. they’re still very very nice. ALSO THE BACK OF THE CARDS ARE SHINY. I JUST THINK THAT’S VERY LOVELY. as a Physical Product these are chef’s kiss. Pamphlet: on the Abstract to Directness scale, these are VERY DIRECT. the pamphlet doesn’t say a lot about why the cards depict what they do, but go straight into card meaning, and in a very unambiguous way. i think it can both work very well, leaving you little room to avoid your feelings, but it also has a higher margin to miss completely. for being such a cutesy deck full of fairies the pamphlet is definitely giving you a smack at the side of your head. i haven’t used this deck a lot yet due to its newness, but i definitely want to try it out more to see what it does to me.

Cardfeel: out of all of my decks i think this has the best cardfeel... the cards feel really solid, and have a very good size that feel just right for them. like i sort of fell in love with the deck when i actually started shuffling it and browsing the cards. buying cards - especially on the internet - can be a gamble because you Can’t Know The Cardfeel. with decks like the Spacious Tarot i got a little dissappointed, but this one was a very pleasant surprise. also the box is very good and look like a work of art. The Fyodor Pavlov Tarot

honestly one of my new favourite decks that i ABSOLUTELY am going to use more and become more familiar with. also a deck that i knew the artist was working on, and supported the kickstarter the moment it was announced. my deck also came with two Magician cards and i don’t know why. extra wizard for me??? Vibes and Thematic Coherence: the look and feel of this deck is Immaculate. it looks very classical and traditional (and absolutely gorgeous), it is grounded in the classical smith-waite imagery but Expands Upon It, draws on the diversity of human culture and experiences... also loving the energy of “THIS CARD IS TRANS NOW AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT” many cards have (most famously the Lovers, but i don’t want to post pics of any of the cards depicting nudity or risqué themes on tumblr). i absolutely adore the knight of coins card (THE HORSE IS HIS FRIEND AND SERVICE ANIMAL!!). it’s just Really Very Good. also the backside has pretty Shiny stars and i like it. Pamphlet: i really like this one. it is a deeply personal pamphlet, where fyodor pavlov directly discusses his relationship to the cards and why he chose the motifs he did. it feels really grounded in the world we live in, and also such a vulnerable thing to share with us all. it’s on the Direct side of the scale without necessarily telling you “the card is definitely this one thing”. my only wish is that it was easier to navigate at a glance. Cardfeel: THEY ARE TEXTURED!!! these cards are definitely long and slender and benefit someone with larger hands than mine, but i still like them a lot. i do wish they had been a smidge heavier just so i wouldn’t worry so much about damaging them... but i don’t want to be ungrateful. the deck and the box are wonderfully crafted. The Botanica Tarot by Kevin Jay Stanton

oh boy did i support the kickstarter for this one... i had actually bought the major arcana when it was the only version available, and then the artist decided to make a full deck. it’s an absolute work of art. Vibes and Thematic Coherence: oh boy oh boy does it serve vibes and thematic coherence. it’s Plants all the way down, OBVIOUSLY, but also like... every card in the minor arcana depicts their suit in its own way. like the range of coins/currency from various times and cultures?? AMAZING. looking at the art of this deck is a DELIGHT. every card manages to be beautiful and interesting despite there not being a single living creature depicted on any of them. i WILL say they, same as the spacious tarot, are not the most intuitive to read if you’re not super familiar with either the Plants or the meanings of the cards. Pamphlet: you can fit so much plant knowledge in this one. i got a version of the deck with a beautiful little book, but there’s also a small pamphlet that follows the deck itself (which i admittedly have not looked too closely at yet). there’s descriptions for why this specific plant has been chosen for each card, and then some Card Meaning Keywords. so definitely on the Abstract side of my imaginary tarot pamphlet scale, because you mostly have plant symbolism to go on. i haven’t done a lot of readings with this deck, i’ll be honest - but it’s a beautiful treasure that i adore. Cardfeel: they’re Smoothe and Guilded edges. they can feel a little wide for my hands, but not so much that i cannot shuffle. i think maybe a smidge of texture wouldve been good with this deck since it would fit the look of the painted art. i also did get like... a big kickstarter reward version of this deck. it came in a tin box with extra treasures and a cloth and pins... the actual card box itself is beautiful to look at, but i have to say that the one i got is VERY HARD TO OPEN. i might transfer the cards into a pouch if i want to be reading them more often. IKEA deck

yes this is a meme deck and i don’t really use it but I WANTED TO SHARE... i think the major arcana is very cool and funny, but i was dissappointed to find that the suit cards are just “ikea part but Multiple Times”. it also does not come with a pamphlet. also yes yes it’s funny that the names of the cards are spelled in a “silly ikea word language” BUT IKEA NAMES ARE JUST SWEDISH....... IT’S NOT A SECRET LANGUAGE IT’S JUST SWEDISH............ it’s a funny deck to have and it doesn’t take up much space so eh! shrugs!!! The Lubanko Tarot by Emily Lubanko

another kickstarter deck... it’s gorgeous but there is a chance i might gift it to someone else. not because i regret getting it or don’t like it, but because i already have so many decks that speak to me, while this one gives me vibes of serving someone else better. does that make any sense? i admittedly haven’t looked at the pamplet so much so i think i’m going to skip that description for this one. Vibes and Thematic Coherency: the MOVEMENT and the COLORS... it’s Capturing Feelings in a really good way. i mean. i got it for the vibes and it’s serving vibes. Cardfeel: Smoothe Cards. shiny silver edges, like a slippery fish in a rapid river. it feels good and right for this deck. also good box. i know most of these decks have Good Box, it’s just the botanica one that let me down by being difficult. The Oriens Tarot by AmbiSun

i don’t have this deck anymore, i gifted it to my boyfriend... i found these pics on my twitter. it’s one of the first decks i supported on kickstarter and it’s VERY pretty, and it has HOLOGRAPHIC RAINBOW EDGES HOT DAMN. it’s another one of those instances where i Yearned for it and then found that it didn’t fit me as well as i had hoped. tarot is just one of those things where you have to find what Works for you. at this time the children of litha was working so well for me and i really liked the depiction of animals in it, i wasn’t able to connect to another animal deck in the same way... and it was before my tarot collection snowballed into what i have now. C’EST LA VIE ... i don’t have a smith-waite deck. i’m a fake tarot fan. i am however familiarizing myself by following Jessica Dore on twitter and subscribing to her monthly newsletters. i really love how she talks about these cards and how she interprets them.

#tarot #i have also backed the alleymans tarot on kickstarter because of course i have.#i'll get back to you when i have it.

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ava-candide · 3 years

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Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci

The newly married heart-throb actor learnt to paint left-handed for his new role, and he’s still daubing now, he tells Ed Potton

Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath Leonardo

I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?

“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.

Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says

Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping history

Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.

Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”

And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”

Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming started

The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.

Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”

Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”

What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”

Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.

“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”

We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”

Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”

Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.

“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.

“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”

It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”

Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”

Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.

That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.

#aidanpics

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trashy-mctrash · 3 years

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I know that Rook’s birthday has passed, but I saw a post today asking why Rook speaks French and I did look into this in an Rook Analaysis essay that I wrote for his birthday but didn’t post it here. So that post kinda made me want to post it to explain or hopefully look more into his character.

Rook Hunt is a mysterious and attractive character. Despite his unusual habits, he’s a true gentleman but is often seen as having strange characteristics. Here I will attempt to look into Rook’s character design to celebrate his birthday!!

Rook so far in the game is the only character we see speaking a language from our world, French. Some have found this confusing or unnecessary but actually, Rook speaking French makes perfect sense. Rook comes from Afterglow Savannah, a land based on the movie, the Lion King just like it’s NRC dorm counterpart. The Lion King is said to take place in Africa, specifically Kenya. Inspiration on the landscapes in the movie was from the animators visiting Kenya (Bake, 2019). French is the official language of 11 countries in Africa and the secondary language in 10, making it the 5th most spoken language in the world (Chutel, 2018). Kenya is one of the countries with french as its main language. Since rook comes from Afterglow Savannah, it’s natural that he would have qualities matching the area just like Ruggie and Leona who also come from the same place. But unlike them, Rook resides in the Pomefiore dorm, therefore he holds qualities for both of these. Therefore, Rook does not come from France or represent France, he is based on Africa and most likely comes from the twst version of it which would be Afterglow Savannah.

Although Rook is not French, many white Africans in Africa, especially South Africa originated from France, Germany and the Netherlands in 1652 (jyu.fi). It's common for some twst characters to be a mix of cultures and themes. Rook is one example of this, he’s a blend of Afterglow Savannah and Pomefiore as he comes from Afterglow and is based on the hunter from Snow White. Snow White is said to be based in Germany, specifically Germany during the Holy Roman Empire (esri). Germany is one of the three main countries previously mentioned, that majority of white Africans came from, which suits Rook’s appearance. Rook’s hats also resemble fashion from this time as well as matching his Snow White counterpart. As seen below:

Rook’s hair also appeals to both the hunter from Snow White and the matching time period. These hat styles were worn by those of higher class and by Rook wearing it, reflecting his position as deputy dorm leader of Pomefiore.

The 14th century was a time of vibrant poetry explosion fitting Rook’s personality. An example of a famous poet from this time is Dante, famously known for writing “The Divine Comedy” (Interesting Literature). He chose to write in Italian instead of Latin which was common during these times. French and Italian are both known as “romance” languages that both derived from Latin, which was the language of the Holy Roman Empire during this time (Language TSAR). When it comes to Rook giving out nicknames, these too fit the time period as it was common for people to be named after their place or qualities which is what Rook is seen as doing. An example is Riddle who he calls “Roi de Roses” which means “King of Roses” which fits the style of names of those of the high class (Benicoeur and Gwynek, 2003).

Bows were very common and practical in armies from the 12th to 16th centuries despite barely being recorded in history (Towens, 2019). This reflects perfectly onto Rook due to how little we know about him and the little trace he leaves behind which pairs well with his stealthy personality as a hunter but also shows his side as a “soldier” or a “guard” to Vil, his beliefs of beauty and possible other things we aren’t aware about. The main role of professional archers were for defense but were also used as mercenaries during crusades. Rook fits both of these as he plays the role of Vil’s defense and the protector of beauty wanting to cherish it. He can also be seen as a double edged sword as even though he stands by Vil, many have speculated that he may at some point betray Vil or help Neige doing what he believes to be most advantageous. Archery symbolises “aligning with the target” (Girvin, 2013) which means to give support towards something. Rook is seen as taking more supportive roles throughout the game by helping other students like Epel as seen in Leona’s lab coat story, helping him make a potion for his class (Twisted Wonderland Wiki). It can also mean to become the heart of a community, be truthful, in their times of need to be the voice of their minds to help solve their problems. Rook being honest can also be reflected in his arrows as they symbolise the sharp and accurate truths they contain, this can be seen in Vil’s lab coast story as he blatantly calls Vil “fat” with the intention of helping to increase his beauty, which despite his protests, Vil is seen appreciating (Twisted Wonderland Wiki).The archer is linked with the Centaur and Sagittarius (ironically his birth sign) which represents having insight which can be linked to Rook having knowledge of other students and of other things that normal people would not. Rook is known to freely speak his mind with what we see as with intentions of helping them even if his words or actions may be seen as weird or out of place, but in the end they have the effects he was aiming for or benefit the person in some way. Also “that hearts align in embracing the perfection of that targeting” (Girvin, 2013) which is poetic in Rook being a hunter and calling himself the “Hunter of Love.” An archer remains cool and observes from afar, becoming the symbol of honour, precision and patience.

In the Spanish caves of Cova dels Cavalls, they found etched carvings of archers estimated to be from about 7000 years ago (Stanley, 2020). They were believed to be a form or hunting magic ritual to manifest good hunting, this fits well with Rook being a magic user in the game and makes him wielding a bow make sense as well as again representing his Snow White counterpart. Archery and magic connections as referenced when Rook is in battle as he summons his magic attacks with an arrow releasing maneuver, as seen below:

This can also reference his love for art, arrows bound in one of the first forms of art for centuries and also shows their use and endless help throughout time. A metaphorical and physical weapon just like with Rook, attacking metaphorically with his words and physically with his arrows/magic. Arrows are meant to be simple yet two dimensional (with its pointy and flat ends), Rook too is portrayed as being simple yet ironically he is also not. Two dimensional as in maybe despite all our theorising, he may just be a simple man who loves beauty yet there are still many unanswered questions about him and his past. However this can be said for other characters in the game as well, so perhaps Rook Hunt is just a simple man with weird qualities? That is still to be discovered. “The durability of the arrow metaphor, as with archery in general, looks unlikely to go anywhere soon,” (Stanley, 2020) this is a simple symbol linked with archery which can further be associated with the idea of Rook being simple and not as complicated as we believe. Rook being able to use light and dark magic can reflect this as humans are neither dark or light, they are simple beings with desires and goals that can be either good or bad. Rook too has his desires that some might perceive as odd, his goals are simple to (as seen in the wish upon the stars event) see all the beauty in the world.

In Japan, Zen archery (or Kyudo) where the goal was to “achieve a balance among mind, body, and bow, which gives rise to a unity that links the spirit to the target,” (Encyclopedia.com, 2020). Which again reflects Rook’s ability of using both types of magic, showing his inner peace and balance and ability to use both types of magic. He is a character that we don't see explode or express vivid emotions which could be linked with his hunting too. Bow and arrows have been known as symbols of good luck against evil in Japan since immemorial. We will probably see this in action during Vil’s overblot as that will be the evil to defeat in Chapter 5 alongside the other characters.

The word “rook” has multiple meanings, like crows. Many have associated this and Rook’s poem about Crowley as them being signs of a possible connection between the two. Although this theory is very interesting and I would love for a twist like this, Disney is honestly too stupid to make a story as wonderful as that, but I could be wrong (please prove me wrong Disney). On the other hand it could symbolise Rook’s knowledge of everyone and how he could be aware of some of Crowley’s secrets or the secrets/mysterious of the school. They tend to be watchful creatures with great insight, which can be said the same for Rook as he observes other students and has knowledge of things that others normally do not have. Crows are also associated with transformation and change (Clifford, 2020) which could represent Rook helping Vil and Epel, along with others to bring forth their beauty. There is also a well known nursery rhyme about crows, as seen below:

Although the history behind the rhyme is not that clear, the seventh line does hold some connection to Rook’s wide range of secrets that he knows and holds himself. Rook is also used for loud and sociable people or animals who love to talk, Rook is known for his loud and expressive persona that fits this description. Rook can also mean cheat, which could link to him sabotaging Vil to save Neige. The name is given to those with dark hair which is clearly not Rook (with his blond locks) but could refer to his hunter counterpart instead.

Rook is famous for his golden bob that is quite the debate. However bobs have a deep history. In the 20th century, bobs used to symbolise independent, progessive people encouraging a more daring personality during those times. Movies have been the main reason for the spread and back in style of the bob. Rook embodies a free personality with his odd attire in the dorm that symbolises beauty (hunting boots and hats) showing his more bold side that can also be seen by his freely open speech. Joan of Arc is the main inspiration of the bob that was brought back by Antoine, a celebrity hairdresser, which he showed in his salon in 1909 (V is for Vintage, 2012). Although she wore it for more practical meanings, she still stands for representing the people and doing what she believed in. It’s likely though that the bob was more inspired by the hunter’s hair style for Rook yet it still represents daring and progressive people which Rook is commonly known for with his views and actions.

In conclusion, Rook Hunt is an odd yet interesting character. He is neither complex or simple. We still have much to learn about him which we hopefully will in the coming chapters and his birthday event. Although his character design may seem strange, in the end they make perfect sense when looking at the connections they all have towards the game and it’s details. I hope that this managed to clear up Rook’s character and explain more about him. However, there are a few attributes that are still questionable which if Disney has any concept of storytelling, they will explain...I hope for Rook’s sake. His stalking and obsession could be linked to how he sees himself as nothing much and viewing others as better or more beautiful, in that case he’s got some emotional package. Still does not excuse his actions. These tendencies might also be them expanding on a hunter stalking and keeping track of their prey, in this case for Rook it would be people he finds interesting. In the end he’s one of the many wonderful boys we have to learn more about and love.

References:

Baker, Craig. 2019. 25 Surprising Facts about the Lion King. Mental Floss.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57386/30-facts-about-lion-king

Benicoeur, Arval and Gwynek, Talan. 2003. Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names. S-gabriel.org.

https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/

Chutel, Lynsey. 2018. French is now the fifth most spoken world language and growing—thanks to Africans. QuartzAfrica.

https://qz.com/africa/1428637/french-is-worlds-fifth-spoken-language-thanks-to-africans/#:~:text=French%20remains%20the%20sole%20official,second%20official%20language%20in%2010.

Clifford, C Garth. 2020. Crow Symbolism & Meaning (+Totem, Spirit & Omens). World Birds.

https://www.worldbirds.org/crow-symbolism/

Encyclopedia.com. 2020. Sport and Religion. Encyclopedia.com.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sports-and-religion#:~:text=Throughout%20human%20history%2C%20sports%20and,their%20primary%20means%20of%20communication.

Girvin, Tim. 2013. The Symbolism Of Archery. Girvin.

https://www.girvin.com/the-symbolism-of-archery/

Interesting Literature. The Best Fourteenth-Century Poems Everyone Should Read. Interesting Literature.

https://interestingliterature.com/2019/11/the-best-fourteenth-century-poems-everyone-should-read/#:~:text=The%20fourteenth%20century%20was%2C%20in,vibrant%20language%20for%20vernacular%20poetry.

Jyu.fi. Ethinic Groups. Jyu.fi.

https://www.jyu.fi/viesti/verkkotuotanto/kp/sa/peop_ethnicgrps.shtml

Stanley, John. 2020. Archery HIstory: Arrows of the Imagination, Art and Culture Symbolism. World Archery.

https://worldarchery.org/news/178453/archery-history-arrows-imagination-art-and-cultural-symbolism

Twisted Wonderland Wiki. Leona Kingscholar/Personal Story/SR Lab Coat. Twisted Wonderland Fandom.

https://twisted-wonderland.fandom.com/wiki/Leona_Kingscholar/Personal_Story/SR_Lab_Coat

Twisted Wonderland Wiki. Vil Schoenheit/Personal Story/SR Lab Coat. Twisted Wonderland Fandom.

https://twisted-wonderland.fandom.com/wiki/Vil_Schoenheit/Personal_Story/SR_Lab_Coat

Towens. 2019. Arrows in the Middle Ages. Bow International.

https://www.bow-international.com/features/arrows-in-the-middle-ages/

V is for Vintage. 2012. The Bob: History of a Hairstyle. V is for Vintage.

https://visforvintage.net/2012/04/03/history-of-bob-hairstyle/

#I'm sorry this is soo long #it's 6 pages omg #I included references to the sites I mentioned #sorry if I made any mistakes #this was based on what I found on google so blame google #anyway Rook's deserves to have a week long birthday so it's a pass lol #rook hunt #I actually wonder if there is more i could mention next time muhahahahah #twst rook #I love u roookkkk #twst #twisted wonderland

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