#Lisa sallows

[pinkiepiebones]

may i ask for all the Renfield details from the Fangoria article you mentioned

Sorry for replying late, I think you sent this just as I was going to sleep

FANGORIA TIDBITS!!!!

-They did multiple takes and variations of scenes. Director Chris McKay said every take with Cage was "so fucking watchable" and that having those dozens of takes to choose from was "the hardest thing about cutting* the movie" (*I think that means editing)

-Hoult once told Cage, between takes, that he had been trying to do the Dwight Frye laugh in the scene they were filming, and on the next take Cage "suddenly threw that laugh back at me and started mocking me with it."

-In one version of the apartment confrontation scene, Cage's Dracula uses the eyeball garnishing his bloody martini like a little puppet, "talking to it before slurping it up."

-This quote from the director: "Much like Lego Batman, where I posited that our Batman is every version of Batman, I wanted to put Cage in the Frank Langella movie and the Christopher Lee movies and everything else. If I'd had the money and time, there would've been a snippet of him in every decade there was a Dracula movie." (fwiw the budget of Renfield was reportedly around $65mil and they shot and edited it in less than a year's time)

-Cage is only the seventh actor to play Dracula for Universal studios. More men have walked on the Moon. Said Cage: "I'm proud to be a member of that club."

-Cage said his Dracula was primarily inspired in part by his father - "My dad was someone who wanted to speak with distinction. He didn't have a full-on British accent but he did have a mid-Atlantic accent because he was a professor... Dracula's an articulate, elegant and eloquent character, and my dad had all those elements" - and Ann Bancroft's character Mrs. Robinson from the movie The Graduate - "The way she was abusing Dustin Hoffman's character, and the fact that she was an alcoholic... All that, to me, worked, because this take on Dracula is really about his relationship with Renfield, a toxic relationship. And it's this master/servant crap that so many people deal with, whether it's at work or an unfortunate romantic relationship..."

-Hoult worked with Cage before- he played Cage's son in 2005's The Weather Man

-Costume designer Lisa Lovaas on working with Cage again: "I knew from my experience (on Superman Lives) that Nic was totally game. I could present him with an elaborate Dracula, and he would be 100% on board. He walked out of the fitting saying 'This is it, we've done it.'"

-Dracula has monogrammed Dolce & Gabbana shoes

-The writer of the article doesn't say much more about the costuming but wrote "Dracula shares a shirtmaker with Frank Sinatra, I'm told," and I'm not entirely sure what that means?

-Director McKay on the blood in the movie: "I wanted the blood to be a certain colour of red, more like the Tom Savini Dawn of the Dead blood."

-SFX designer Christien Tinsley studied up on corpses to get Dracula's varying skintones right. "Is Dracula just pale, or does he have an undertone of colour? Is that colour more sallow and corpse-like, or is it more blue and cool tones? ... Hundreds of years ago, hospitals and morgues would bring in artisans to recreate the corpse in wax as it was being dissected. And they would do this in beautiful colours, yellows and blues, copying what they were seeing, but giving them these beautiful colour palettes..." Tinsley used those corpse palettes as the basis for Dracula's skin.

-Tinsely also had a tough makeup challenge with Hoult's Renfield: "He's not seeing much daylight, not really taking care of himself. However, 100 years ago he was a respectable lawyer... So we scrapped the idea of making him look unkempt; he has traditions. But now his skin is the same cool tones as Dracula; they're family. And we see a transition in his appearance as he becomes stronger and healthier, emotionally and mentally."

-Hoult on his Renfield: "The version of Renfield that we are seeing is ninety years after the original. The madness has been beaten out of him. He's been under the thumb of this powerful man, taking care of him... for so long."

#renfield #renfield movie #renfield 2023 #robbie don't look

[marketfreshfics]

OC: Paisley Gallos

Basics:

Full name: Paisley November Gallos Nickname: Pais Gender: Female Species: Witch / Vampire Date of birth: December 14th, 1874 Nationality: Spanish-French, born in the Americas Blood status: Muggleborn Wand: Walnut, dragon heartstring, 11”, unyielding

Appearance

Hair colour: Dark brown / mahogany Hairstyle: Short, wavy Eye colour: Hazel Skin tone: Medium Height: 5’2” Body type: Average, slight muscle definition

Clothing style: Functionality takes priority; light-medium, but durable fabrics such as cotton and leather for ease of movement. Prefers more fitted clothing, especially when travelling or exploring outside the castle walls. Fond of worn denim; often wears her brother’s hand-me-down pairs when out of class.

Accessories:

Often carries a harmonica in her back pocket

Her father’s wristwatch, despite it always running a few minutes ahead

Other distinguishing features:

Three diagonal scars on the left side of her jaw (obtained while trying to escape from a vampire)

Two small birthmarks below her bottom lip

Personality

Traits: Intelligent, resourceful, clever, determined, crass, blunt, intuitive, curious, decisive, quick to anger, observant, goal-oriented, remorseful Likes: Early morning hikes, writing in a new notebook, solving problems, the ocean, strong coffee (with two sugar cubes), stargazing, foraging for minerals/rocks Dislikes: Perfume, wet socks, the afternoon sun, formal attire, dishonesty Hobbies: Fishing, metalsmithing (when out of school) Fears: The unknown, her own thirst (once she becomes a vampire)

MBTI: INFJ-A Zodiac: Sagittarius sun, Aquarius moon, Libra rising Temperament: Choleric Archetype: The Rebel Similar characters: Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore, Sam Winchester, Harry Callahan, Lisa Simpson, Han Solo, Max Mayfield, Jon Snow

Family/Friends

Father: Pierre - Muggle, Fisherman Mother: Rosalyn - Muggle, Teacher (Died in 1882 from scarlet fever) Sibling(s): Mathieu (age 19) Pet(s): Barred Owl, “Crispen” Friends: Sebastian Sallow, Ominis Gaunt, Garreth Weasley, Amit Thakkar, Natsai Onai

Magic

Boggart: Extremely thick fog, accompanied by a foghorn Patronus: Colossal squid Polyjuice: Turns crimson, tastes like spring water and copper Amortentia: Smoke, bergamot and clean, starched cotton Special abilities:

Fire-based offensive spells and charms

Non-verbal magical spells

(Once transformed into a vampire) can sometimes "absorb" a person's abilities after consuming their blood

Backstory

Born in Nova Scotia, Canada to immigrant muggle parents, Paisley grew up in a small fishing village just on the outskirts of a port city. Because of this, she spent many days on fishing vessels with her father and older brother, while her mother worked as a teacher at the schoolhouse in town. When she was eight, her mother fell gravely ill and unfortunately passed away from complications of scarlet fever. Her father, Pierre, often struggled to balance work obligations with raising Paisley and Mathieu, and more often than not her older brother was left responsible, which caused her to develop a great deal of independence.

Being from a non-magical family, Paisley's magic was a startling discovery. It revealed itself when, while arguing with her brother, she made a milk bottle spontaneously explode in frustration. The following morning, two members from the Ministry for Magic arrived, explained magical abilities to her and her family, and promptly enrolled her in the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

She was sorted into the Horned Serpent house, based on her high level of intelligence and ambitious, goal-oriented mindset.

Paisley excelled in her studies, her hunger for knowledge consistent, and while graduating from her fifth year she was recognized for her advanced magical comprehension. She was hand-selected by the Minster for Magic himself to take part in an accelerated graduate program at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, and with great excitement she transferred at the start of her sixth year. Having researched the Hogwarts houses before her arrival, she anticipated being sorted into Ravenclaw... however the mysterious rumours about the Slytherin house fostering several dark wizards in history captivated her curiosity, and thus the sorting hat placed her there instead.

Soon after arriving at Hogwarts, she was captured by a well-known criminal, who subsequently bit her and changed her into a vampire against her will. The details around this, and why she was selected specifically, are still unknown...

Academics

Best subject: DADA Favourite subject: Astrology Favourite teachers: Professor Fig, Professor Sharp Worst subject: History of Magic Least favourite subject: Divination, Theory of Magic Least favourite teacher: Binns Quidditch: N/A

As a student:

Prioritizes her studies as much as possible; she is aware of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study at Hogwarts and does not take it for granted.

Sometimes misses classes without explanation, particularly on sunny days.

She is always happy to help fellow classmates, however, she is wary of many. This only increases once she has been turned.

Mostly keeps to herself; has few, close friends, with whom she places a great deal of trust.

Future

Career: Researcher or Archivist Naturally, Paisley is drawn to a career path that allows her the opportunity to further her education and learn something new. Her ambitions focus on filling her brain with as much information as possible, so taking up a job as a Researcher or Archivist for the Ministry is very much in her wheelhouse.

Spouse: TBD Children: TBD

Special thanks to @hazyange1s for letting me follow their OC layout 🤍

#hogwarts legacy oc #hogwarts oc #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy mc #hogwarts legacy fanfic #ominis gaunt #amit thakkar #sebastian sallow #garreth weasley #natsai onai #the stratagem strain #oc profile #paisley gallos

[venuslore]

𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐑

the name's vee!

mid-twenties. she/her/hers. bi. infp-t. libra. australian. hufflepuff. losercore gamer girl. hopeless romantic. lover of all things watermelon flavoured. people pleaser. proactive procrastinator. anxious lil bug. obsessor of fictional characters with daddy issues and calling middle-aged men babygirl.

spotify. wattpad. pinterest. rec blog. nsfw blog.

current objects of my desires ; steve harrington (always) , coriolanus snow , conrad fisher , peeta mellark , joel miller , sebastian sallow.

previously known as ; faeology , solarluvs , ahoymayfield , runawaymunson , euthoricspidey , wanturvideo .

some things i love

movies/tv shows ; stranger things , the hunger games , the summer i turned pretty , cyberpunk: edgerunners , outer banks , yellowjackets , marvel cinematic universe , the artful dodger , the wizarding world , star wars , heartstopper , the witcher , bridgerton , disenchantment , scott pilgrim vs the world , avatar , scream , twilight , free guy , lisa frankenstein , marmalade .

video games ; the sims 4 , cyberpunk 2077 , animal crossing , life is strange , baldur’s gate 3 , dreamlight valley , resident evil , the last of us , grand theft auto , the dark pictures , detroit: become human , star wars jedi , bully , alice: madness returns , house party , fnaf , fortnite .

music ; djo , may-a , paramore , lany , wallows , emei , boygenius , dominic fike , between friends , spacey jane , catfish and the bottlemen , robinson , bad suns , sabrina carpenter , driver era , angus & julia stone , gorillaz , tate mcrae , jade lemac , dua lipa , lizzy mcalpine , halsey , gracie abrams , royel otis , benson boone .

ᰔ some mutuals you should check out ᰔ

@amorchai , @lovebugcody , @bruisedboys , @corrodedcorpses , @bcyhoods , @moremaybank , @tinyluvs , @inkluvs , @thyme-in-a-bubble , @fxllfaiiry , @oncasette , @ghostlyfleur , @arctvrvs , @inklore , @websterss , @midniteluv , @anqeliclust , @rafesmuse , @bradshawed , @cosmicanakin !

[beezlub]

Requests Information; ♡ requests will be done on a first come, first serve basis! ♡ i do have a right to refuse any requests that i personally do not feel comfortable doing ♡ i can write OCs if commissioned, but any requests sent through my inbox will be X Reader to make them more applicable to readers alike

what i write; ♡ X Reader primarily ♡ romance, fluff, angst, friends-to-lovers, smut*. basically anything under the sun tbh ♡ *smut is a rare thing i will write for a request. i will write it for characters i know are canonically of-age. i will though, write nsfw headcanons of under 18 characters, but not the actual act itself (if that makes sense) ♡ AUs & canon ♡ M/M, M/F, F/F ♡ feel free to add in any details you'd want!! (ex; hogwarts legacy; fem reader, hufflepuff, song 'yellow' by coldplay, sebastian and reader go on their first date to hogsmeade and they end up dancing in the snow under the fairy lights in the plaza). make it as detailed as you want, or give me free reign lolol

what i will NOT write; ♡ heavy gore ♡ furry related stuff ♡ fandoms i am not currently in ♡ school papers

fandom list; ♡ Hogwarts Legacy - Sebastian Sallow, Ominis Gaunt, Garreth Weasley, Poppy Sweeting, Anne Sallow, Imelda Reyes, Amit Thakkar, Aesop Sharp ♡ Attack on Titan - Levi Ackerman, Eren Yeager, Armin Arlert, Mikasa Ackerman, Jean Kirschtein, Reiner Braun, Annie Leonhart, Hanji Zoe, Connie Springer, Pieck Finger, Sasha Braus, Erwin Smith ♡ My Hero Academia - Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku Midoriya, Shoto Todoroki, Hitoshi Shinsho, Ejiro Kirishima, Tamaki Amajiki ♡ Genshin Impact - Albedo, Alhaitham, Beidou, Cyno, Diluc, Zhongli, Jean, Kazuha, Ayaka, Ayato, Kaveh, Keqing, Lisa, Neuvillette, Ningguang, Ei, Childe, Tighnari, Traveler, Xiao, Yae ♡ Honkai Star Rail - Asta, Blade, Bronya, Dan Heng, March 7th, Gepard, Himeko, Jing Yuan, Kafka, Luka, Luocha, Natasha, Sampo, Seele, Trailblazer, Welt ♡ Stranger Things - Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Johnathan Byers ♡ Haikyuu!! - Daichi, Suga, Asahi, Nishinoya, Kageyama, Hinata, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, Kuroo, Kenma, Oikawa, Issei, Iwazumi, Bokuto, Ushijima, Satori, Atsumu, Osamu ♡ Baulder's Gate 3 - Astarion, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Gale, Halsin ♡ Stardew Valley - Abigale, Alex, Elliot, Emily, Haley, Leah, Maru, Penny, Sam, Sebastian, Shane ♡ Yellow shaded fandoms are the ones i'm active the most in at the moment! ♡ Listed are the characters I'd write anytime! If there isn't a character listed that you want, feel free to ask in your request! There is a minimal amount of characters from these fandoms that I won't write for lolol.

thank you for reading all of this! if you wanna request something, please do! i love writing for all of you and including all the little details you guys ask for. if you're interested, just go to my little asks/reqs box and type away to your heart's content!

#bee’s writing #request #writing #x reader #hogwarts legacy #attack on titan #stardew valley #fanfiction #my hero academia #genshin impact #honkai star rail #stranger things #haikyuu #baulders gate 3 #reader insert #requests sheet #sebastian sallow #ominis gaunt #garreth weasley #poppy sweeting #anne sallow #imelda reyes #amit thakkar #aesop sharp #levi ackerman #eren jeager #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #jean kirschtien #reiner braun

[fattest-disney-characters]

Disney Princensses/Queen Muse

1:Snow White

2;Cinderella

3:Aurora

4:Belle

5:Jasmine

6:Pocahontas

7:Mulan

8:Ariel

9:Tiana

10:Rapuzel

11:Merida

12:Moana

13:Anna

14:Melody (18 yo)

15:Elsa

16:Queen of Spades

Turning Red Characters

1:Ming Lee

2:Mei Lee (18 yo)

3:Priya (18 yo)

4:Miriam (18 yo)

5:Abby (18yo)

6:Chen

7:Ping

8:Helen

9:Lily

10:Grandma Wu

11. Vivian(Lily daughter that was cut from the movie)

12. Jin Lee

Lion King Characters

1:Nala

2:Kiara

3:Sarabi

4:Sarafina

5:Zira

6:Vitani

Pokémon characters

1.Gloria from pokémon sword and shield (18 years old)

2.Marnie from pokémon sword and shield(18 years old)

3. Irida from pokémon legends arceus (18 years old)

4.Akari from pokemon legends arceus (18 years old)

5. Cogita from pokémon legends arceus

6. Serena from pokémon x and y(20 years old)

7. Misty(but in mighthyena form) from pokémon (25 years)

8. Nurse Joy, weight: 780lbs

Harry Potter Characters (games included)

Petunia Drusley

Aunt Marge

Prunela Drusley

Hermione Granger

Merula

Luna Lovewood

Fleru

Aludra Malfoy

Anne Sallow (starting weight: 120 lbs)

Mha

Inko age 41 years old (Inko Midoriya is a jumbo-sized blob of a Housewife

who weighs 3496 lbs)

Mitsuki 39 years old (Mitsuki Bakugo is a spectacularly hefty blob of a Housewife who weighs 3835 lbs)

Ochako 18years old

Toga 18 years old

Momo 18 years old

Mina 18 years old

Tsu 18 years old

Toru 18 years old

Mandalay

Pixie-Bob

Ragdoll

Demon Slayer

Nezuko Kamado 18 years old

Mitsuri 18 years old

Shinobu 19 years old

Kanao 18 years old

Lady Tamayo

Lady Kana 80 years old

Susamaru

Makomo

One Piece Characters

Nami;

Vivi;

Nico Robin

Boa Hancock

Yamato(Daughter of Kaido)

Charlotte Linlin aka Big Mom: 1323lbs

Bloodborne

Vicar Amelia: 500lbs

Goddess of Yharnam Vicar Amelia

Lady Maria

Lady Maria Beast of Astral ClockTower

Doll

Eileen

Iosefka

Impostor Iosefka

Irl SSBBW Ladies( tv shows, movies, etc)

Lisa Fleming

Kelly Mason

Coliesa McMillian

Renee Biran

Guna Krasley

Ashley Randall

Laura Ann Perez

Angela Gutierrez

Dragoness

Ludmilla

Malifecent

Rick and Morty ladies

Beth

Summer

Clarence World Lady

Mary Wendell

Show of courage the scared dog fat lady

Muriel

Hazbin Hotel/ Helluva Boss

Charlie

Vaggie

Loona

Octavia

Millie

Loona

Kim of 666 news

Vaggie

Kung Fu Panda ladies

Viper

Mei Mei

Master Tigress

My Little Pony

Princess Celestia

Princess Luna

Princess Cadence

Princess Twillight

Rarity

Pinkie Pie

Apple Jack

Rainbow Dash

Fluttershy

Star wars ladies

Padme

Ahsoka

Rei

Leia

Fat Bleach Ladies

Orihime

Rukia

Hikifune

Rangiku

Isane

Momo

Soi Fon

Rurichyo

Yachiru

Kiyone

Nemu

Karin Kurosaki

Masaki Kurosaki

Yuzu Kurosaki

Fat Naruto/Boruto ladies

Sakura

Hinata

Tsunade

Shizune

Mito Uzumaki

Kushina uzumaki

Anko

Family guy fat ladies

Meg Griffin

Lois Griffin

The Simpsons

Marge

Lisa

Maggie

Dia-Betty

Marge sisters

Maude Fladders

Louanne Van Houten

Mindy Simmons

Miss Hoover

Edna Krabapple

Fat Sonic ladies

Vanilla

Cream

Amy Rose

Rouge

Blaze

Fat Fnaf

Chica

Toy Chica

Funtime Chica

Glamrock Chica

Mangle

Nightmare Mangle

Roxanne Wolf

Circus Baby

Ballora

Vanny

Officer Vanessa

Beastars ladies

Leano(Legoshi mom)

Juno

Liza(my oc)

Sheila

Haru

Melon Mum

Legoshi (Because of a episode he dressed as a lady)

Toki (Leano mom and Legoshi grandma)

Undertale/ Deltarune

Toriel

Frisk

Chara

Alphys

Catty

Catti

Fixala beautiful girls

Pebbles and Becky

Ashley

Rosie (Ashley vixen pet)

Georgette

Magna

Delphine

Victoria and her sisters younger Kelly and Kylie

Ricky

Morgana:pig

Hissy:pet snake

Odette

Victoria

Loky

Janet

Jasper

Nina

Stacey

Magna

Caramel

Valerie

Lesley

Morana

Zala

Nina:glaceon

Madelyn 'Maddie': vaporeon

Momo

Sanurah

Kylie

Vanessa

Witch of waste

Carol

Sarah

Karen

Kinks: Weight gain, Immobility, Slob, Gas, Blob, Pregnancy, Drool, Feet, Inflation( Water, Air, Blueberry and Lard), Panting/Heavy breathing, Health Issues, Uneven body parts, Squashing/ Crushing( Food, Toys), Clothes Ripping, Dom/Sub feeding, Milking and Animal transformation

[obscure-nexus]

People of Pigeonfield

Margret Martinez (98)

Xenia kobzar (97)

Ezekiel "Old man hicks" Hickens (93)

Ruth Nate (89)

Mark Kaleb (89)

Murphy Albert (88)

Patricia Albert (86)

Samantha Hebert (82)

Coffy Foster (82)

Madonna Michelle (78)

Katherine Mai (75) (Isabel calvin)

Andrew Wisteria (72)

Lisa-Susan Wisteria (69)

Harper Henry (67)

Daniel Jeanine (66)

Mary Cane (66)

Jackson Cane (65)

Felix Holler (65)

Lilinnia Holler (63)

Josh Windsor (63)

Walter Merry (62)

Harry Campbell (62)

Aurora Windsor (60)

Tyler Rane (60)

Nick Leens (60)

Ruth Campbell (59)

Henry Howard (59)

Donna Ward (58)

Father Aaron Katt (58)

Ashley Leens (58)

Nancy Howard (57)

Belle Rane (56)

Hattie Sallow (56)

Robert "Dick" Ward (55)

William Ian (55)

Leonardo "lion" Macke (55)

Phonia Jeanine (54)

Robert Brown (52)

Honey Katt (52)

Natalie Cawell (52)

Linda Martin (51)

Illya "Mother" Macke (49)

Hecktor Newman (49)

Hershel Monroe (48)

Karen Morris (48)

Hope Foster (46)

Benjamin Jones (46)

Ruby Newman (46)

William Peterson (45)

Willmar Faber (45)

Lily Faber (44)

Jason Kaleb (44)

Abigail Jones (44)

Elizabeth Peterson (43)

Daniel Kaleb (43)

Betty Watts (43)

Bella Hart (42)

Jeremy Hatfield (42)

Markus Ryan (42)

James Johnson (42)

Birdie Diaz (41)

Venus Edwards (41)

Ryan Campbell (41)

James Calvin (41)

Pamela Balck (40)

Betty Campbell (40)

Nancy Scott (40)

James Edwards (40)

Katie Johnson (39)

Brendan Fran (39)

Ruby Nate (39)

Sandra Morris (39)

Kevin Black (38)

Heinz Evans (38)

Elliot Henry (38)

Wilson Henry (38)

Nicky Novak (38)

Joy Fran (37)

Kaleb Micheal (37)

Hobbs Brown (37)

Susan Green (37)

Viktor Novak (37)

Alex Boshin (36)

Hart Evans (36)

Elijah Green (36)

Fitzgerald Wisteria (36)

Isabel Calvin (36)

Mabel Jackson (35)

James Jackson (35)

Addy "Sunshine" White (35)

Gracie Wisteria (35)

Penelope Russell (34)

John Cane (34)

Aiden Faith (34)

Nicholas Ridner (34)

Nora Jeanine (33)

Aiden Samuels (33)

Ethan Samuels (33)

Cloe Emery (33)

May Hill (33)

Jeremy Schmidt (32)

Sofia Michelle (32)

Emma Ridner (32)

Melody "Doll" Boshin (32)

John Carter (32)

David Brown (32)

Olivia Carter (31)

Rhonda Alexander (30)

Judith Gray (30)

Tiffany Sallow (30)

Joseph Gray (30)

Christopher Alexander (29)

Chelsea Wilson (29)

Zackary Harlow (29)

Liam Lopez (29)

Haven Beech (29)

Jimmy Lee (29)

Christenia Slaven (29)

Victoria "Vicky" Thomas (28)

Joyce Radley (28)

Faye Graham (28)

Cynthia Ward (28)

Ava Lopez (28)

Astia Larmann (would be 27 in '87)

Adien Radley (27)

Terra Parker (27)

Taffy Hart (27)

Derek De Leon (26)

Jax Macke (26)

Marilyn Leens (26)

Brandon Heathers (26)

Arthur Harrison (26)

Cherry Rodrigo (26)

Nadia Harlow (26)

Charlie "Apple" Nate (26)

Michelle "Lyra" Jones (25)

Sarah Jeanine (25)

Bryce Heathers (25)

Mabel Wilson (25)

Russell "Rat" Nate (25)

Tobias Mayo (25)

Ken Kaleb (25)

Paige Brown (25)

Kaylynn moss (25)

Vincent Bishop Devela-Bishop (24)

Cassie "Delight" Garner (24)

Katherine Johnson (24)

Kayla Dallas (24)

Lorlei Mayo (24)

Ruth Campbell (23)

Conner Kaleb (23)

William Jr Peterson (23)

Alex Merry (23)

Henrietta Watson (Newman) (23)

Herman Watson

Chuck Reed (22)

Emerald Reed (Edwards) (22)

Daisy Trembly (22)

Elizabeth Kaleb (22)

Alex Peterson (22)

Kaitlyn Ryan (21)

James Jr Johnson (21)

Lisa Howard (21)

Oliver Green (21)

Serendipity (Sara Belle) (20)

Jack Kaleb (20)

Shirley Scott (20)

Montang Faber (20)

Patience Johnson (19)

Brandy Hart (19)

Bailey Hart (19)

Evelynn Ross (18)

Carol Gray (18)

Noah Green (18)

Gracie Faith (17)

Ernest Henry (17)

Jackie Wisteria (17)

Rose Brown (17)

Wendy Novak (17)

Thomas Alexander (16)

Samuel Edwards (16)

Willima Hart (16)

Christopher Slaven (15)

Tina Calvin (15) [slaven]

Gabriel Jacobs (14)

Nathaniel Jacobs (14)

Theodore Harlow (14)

Wendal Novak (13)

Amethyst Edwards (13)

Tawny Hart (13)

Emma Faith (12)

Arthur Alexander (12)

Harley "Hailey" Brown (12)

Jacklyn Ryan (11)

Sally Wilson (10)

Clover Fran (10)

Penny Novak (9)

Lexi Dallas (8)

Miya Hailey (8)

Harmony Herman/Wilson (8)

Annacia Harlow (8)

Astrid Fran (8)

Kenneth Campbell (7)

Ricky Parker (7)

Rachelle Moss (7)

Jennifer Anderson (7)

May Heathers (6)

Ginger Harlow (6)

Herman Jr Watson (6)

Logan Ridner (5)

Donald Peterson (4)

Jean Watson (4)

Charlotte Dallas (3)

Emma Fayler (3)

Madison Carter (3)

Fig katt (2)

Heart Mayo (2)

Mia Wisteria (1)

Zita Reed (1)

Lynn Watson (6 months)

Aleigha Slaven (2 months)

#characters #tba #221/347

[chaeyeon25]

About Me

Nickname: Alex

Age: 23 years old

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Languages: German(first) and English(second)

Pets: a Syrian Hamster called Gimli (inspired by Lord of the Rings)

Hobbies: writing stories, reading, listening to K-Pop and watching YouTube

Favourite Franchises:

Harry Potter /Hogwarts Legacy

Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit

Pirates of the Caribbean

The Chronicles of Narnia

Xena: The Warriorprincess

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

Shadow Hunters

Current Fictional Crushes:

Ominis Gaunt & Sebastian Sallow (HL)

Draco Malfoy(HP)

K-Pop

Ultimate Biases:

Haechan

Taeyong

Seonghwa

Ten

Joohoney

Ultimate Groups:

ATEEZ

NCT

Monsta X

Dreamcatcher

Groups & Biases:

ATEEZ (Wooyoung/San/Yeosang)

Monsta X (Kihyun/Changkyun)

NCT Dream (Jaemin/Jeno/Renjun/Jisung)

NCT 127 (Jaehyun/Jungwoo/Doyoung)

WayV (Xiaojun/YangYang)

Dreamcatcher (SuA/Siyeon/Gahyeon)

EXO (Baekhyun/Chanyeol/Xiumin/Kai)

GOT7 (Jackson/Mark/Yugyeom)

Blackpink (Lisa/Rosé)

MAVE (no bias yet)

ONEUS (Seoho/Leedo)

Purple Kiss (Dosie)

TXT (Huening Kai)

#introduction #aboutme #kpop #writing

[decennia]

HOGWARTS YEARBOOK: GRADUATING CLASS OF '98

↳ GRYFFINDOR

Lavender Brown, Enoch Cresswell, Fay Dunbar, Seamus Finnigan*, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Parvati Patil, Allison Potter (@juliaswickcrs), Harry Potter, Wilbur Prewett, Dean Thomas, Ronald Weasley.

↳ SLYTHERIN

Millicent Bulstrode, Vincent Crabbe, Tracey Davis, Alena Foster (@reggiemantleholdmyhand-tle), Gregory Goyle, Daphne Greengrass, Draco Malfoy, Elspeth Meadowes, Deimos Mulciber, Theodore Nott, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini.

↳ HUFFLEPUFF

Althea Abbott, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Tallula Clary (@hughstheforcelou), Leanne Driscoll, Julien Fawley (@moirei), Justin Finch-Fletchley, Bobbie Fortescue (@randomestfandoms-ocs), Wayne Hopkins, Megan Jones, Zacharias Smith.

↳ RAVENCLAW

Terry Boot*, Mandy Brocklehurst, Michael Corner*, Konstantinova Craft (@fragilestorm), Anthony Goldstein, Isobel MacDougal, Morag MacDougal, Padma Patil, Cassiopeia Rosier (@lupinblack), Archelaus Sallow, Lisa Turpin.

italicized: original characters.

*fancast: (insp.) (insp.)

TAG LIST: @perfectlystiles @sgtbuckyybarnes @anna-phora @lost-in-the-shelves @raith-way @lizziesxltzmxn @akabluekat @chlobenet @phoebestarks @zeleniafic @a-song-of-quill-and-feather @honeyandsunflowers @dandyylions @hiddenqveendom @jewelswrites-ish @lokitrasho @lukespatterson @stanshollaand @richitozier @ocfairygodmother @claryxjackson @luucypevensie @noratilney @foxesandmagic @jayneladybright

HP TAG: @nickfcwler @poruchik-logy

ALTHEA TAG: @dreamerwithapen1

#fyeahharrypotterocs #crossover for the win thoughhhh #oc: enoch cresswell #oc: allison potter #oc: wilbur prewett #oc: alena foster #oc: elspeth meadowes #oc: deimos mulciber #oc: tallula clary #oc: julien fawley #oc: bobbie fortescue #oc: konstantinova craft #oc: cassiopeia rosier #oc: klaus sallow #era: golden trio #this took so long sorry to everyone i couldn't fit in #i had to drop it to twelve because i couldn't fill spots #and there was also fc overlap in same houses #where some stuff also didn't make narrative sense to also split up siblings #and i also decided to do just one oc per person

[sallowhillshq]

           𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐇𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬. 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲

i see we have a new member to our town.  welcome, welcome ISABELLA SWAN.  we truly hope you enjoy your stay.  please feel free to head over to bevin & cecil’s until your settled, and don’t forget to stop by shady glen housing for your welcome package.  i know it might be difficult right now and you might be missing your home. Alice Cullen & Edward Cullen may be arriving shortly, so you won’t have to be alone.

i see we have a new member to our town.  welcome, welcome ZUKO.  we truly hope you enjoy your stay.  please feel free to head over to bevin & cecil’s until your settled, and don’t forget to stop by shady glen housing for your welcome package.  i know it might be difficult right now and you might be missing your home.  Katara is already here, so you won’t have to be alone.

kelli, welcome to sallow hills hq! check the source for the welcome package & make sure to send us your account within 12 hours

i think i just saw ISABELLA SWAN (she+her, cis woman)!  don’t you know them? they’re a canon character from twilight.  have you heard that they remember some things from their previous life?  apparently they appeared here in december 2020 just after edward left.  crazy, isn’t it?  now they’re 23 years old and working as a NURSING STUDENT.  still, they do have that wuthering heights left on a window sill, cactus everywhere and hazel eyes with high cheek bones vibe about them. (lisa (blackpink).  kelli, she+her, 25, est) 

i think i just saw WANG ZUKO (he+him, cis man)!  don’t you know them? they’re a canon character from avatar: the last airbender.  have you heard that they remember all things from their previous life?  apparently they appeared here in janurary 2020 just after aang saved the world.  crazy, isn’t it? now they’re 22 years old and working as a LAW STUDENT/HEIR TO HIS FATHER’S COMPANY.  still, they do have that volcanic temper, a deep failure feeling within their chest + pale and perfect skin against a red shirt vibe about them. (cai xukun.  kelli, she+her, 25, est) 

#sallow hills (accepted) #atla rp #avatar the last airbender rp #avatar rp #twilight rp #submission

[feyleviathan]

On the North Wall

The Brooklyn skyline peeks from under a curtained window. A 1997 flip calendar is set to August, each day leading up to the current date—the twenty-first—ironically adorned with a single Lisa Frank sticker. Pale white walls serve as a tapestry for iridescent band and movie posters, long-forgotten relics of a nonextant Golden Age. The same evergreen plaid pattern splays across the curtains, the bed fabric, and the countless flannel shirts collecting dust on the pinewood floor. The north wall is noticeably blank, pale white but for several conspicuously light rectangles. A neon trashbin near the door contains a high stack of rolled-up posters and played-out 45s, all from the same band: The Honeyfuckles.

Reposing on a beanbag chair opposite the north wall is a seventeen-year-old boy with puffy eyes and a reddened complexion. A heap of newly wet tissues lay on the floor beside him, a shoddy mockery of his furniture choice. A red cord, winding from a MacBook Pro, ends in the Dr Dre headphones that rest on his ears, blaring Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell loud enough to scarcely reach the next room. The laptop, sprinkled with fresh tears, shakes from anxious legs as the boy viciously deletes all traces of The Honeyfuckles’ discography from his laptop. The year is evidently not 1997, as the calendar indicates, but some millennial year of which this boy denies the existence, as surely as he has begun to deny the existence of The Honeyfuckles.

Their affair began in a deep recess of the Internet when he was just starting to develop his musical tastes. He had requested bands similar to another favourite of his (which, oddly enough, he only listened to for ironic value), and received a single recommendation for The Honeyfuckles.

He fell in love instantly. After listening to them online, he went to his favourite record shop and custom ordered The Honeyfuckles’ entire discography on vinyl. The boy soon became sure that he was one of the only people in the world who listened to the band, as even the record shop owner—usually familiar with such obscure bands—gave him a questioning look when the boy made his order. A smile developed on the boy’s face, widening as the realisation became clearer: he was The Honeyfuckles’ sole audience.

He felt closer to them knowing he was one of the esoteric few Honeyfuckles fans. Each lyric, each melody, spoke to him privately. It was as if every track were recorded for him personally, rather than for a world of potential listeners. The Honeyfuckles seduced his ears from their musical virginity, showed him shades of melody never before experienced. They were the first band he didn’t have to listen to ironically.

They became his daydreams and his lullabies. He covered his walls with their posters; lived, breathed, and worshipped The Honeyfuckles. His bedroom, wardrobe, and electronics—indeed, his existence—became a shrine to the band. He decorated the north wall with as many posters and images of the band he could find, though there were so few that he had to fill in the gaps with self-made fan-art and handwritten lyrics. A single backstage ticket for the band’s upcoming tour sat framed on his desk, an idol to his passion. Having never seen them perform, he anticipated the gig like none other—that is, until yesterday, when he had received the vinyl of their tenth studio record, From the Ground Up.

As with all their other work, the boy had excitedly pre-ordered a vinyl copy of From the Ground Up months in advance. The shipping was late by several days, and given the band’s obscurity, he couldn’t listen online yet—his experience of the album was limited by the arrival of the 45s.

When the record finally appeared at his doorstep, clothed in bubble-wrap and a cardboard sheath, he anticipated a record comparable to all the others. He wanted his ears to be seduced again by his familiar, yet fresh, lover. He delicately eased the side A 45 out of its cover and placed it on his gramophone.

Instead of The Honeyfuckles, however, his ears were met with a strange, confounding sound—synthetic, superficial, contemporary. It was undeniably their work, but there was an eeriness about it, as if it lurked in the musical equivalent of uncanny valley. The boy found himself denying this dissonance, and listened to half of the album until he began to go mad from the cacophony. He snatched the record from the gramophone and repeatedly perused the label to ensure that the work was genuinely from The Honeyfuckles. The trademark, insignia, and production labels were all there—it had to be theirs.

He began to hyperventilate in indecision, curling up in his bed. In hopes of curing his disillusion, he stuck an earlier album of theirs onto the gramophone, but his efforts were counterproductive. He could now identify the style and tones of the new record in all their old work. With increasingly irregular breaths, he replaced the records on the gramophone, one by one, but all became indistinguishable from the newest record. They were the same album.

Horrified, he rushed out the door and rode his Dutch bicycle to the nearest Starbucks. Sipping on a tall mocha, he heard the DJ of the café’s radio station proclaim that the next tune would be from the newest up-and-coming band in America, a hit chosen by a local record shop owner. The voice was followed by a familiar tune: the first track from The Honeyfuckles’ new record. Abandoning his drink, the boy fled to his bicycle, pedalling home in wide-eyed, aching exasperation.

Once he reached his room, he began tearfully ripping down poster after poster of The Honeyfuckles. The north wall became more and more stripped until it was finally naked, left only with shadowy remnants of the torn posters. Lastly, the boy reached for the framed Honeyfuckles ticket. After a wild movement of the arms and a crash, he snatched the ticket from the broken glass, nicking himself as he did so. His hands, now bleeding, tore the ticket repeatedly until it became a shower of flakes. Exhausted, he fell to the floor and drifted into dreamless sleep. The next evening, he was sitting in his beanbag chair, blaring Bat Out of Hell, choking back tears and furiously deleting all things Honeyfuckle from his MacBook.

By winter, From the Ground Up had become the number one album in America. The Honeyfuckles’ fanbase was no longer just the boy and a few random Internet users from around the globe—its fanbase was the world. He could no longer enter Starbucks, for they’d inevitably be playing or otherwise promoting The Honeyfuckles. His other haunts, the underground record shop and radio station, had become renowned as starting points for The Honeyfuckles’ fame. They, too, had become overtaken by the band.

The Honeyfuckles were the object of every musical discussion; their discography was praised in retroactive Pitchfork reviews, they’d been on the cover and centrefold of Rolling Stone, and they even had a multi-section Wikipedia article, all signs of mainstream popularity they never had before. Whereas the members were previously anonymous, the boy now saw their faces everywhere. They viscerally repulsed him, and yet there was a curious quality to them all that the boy recognised in himself. Every image he saw of them was like gazing at a photograph of himself as a child: familiar, yet remarkably distant.

Now the boy spends his every day caged in his room, futilely searching for a band whose music can provoke the feelings once inspired in him by The Honeyfuckles. He maintains a backup disc on which he shamefully stores their discography, keeping it under the excuse that he’s too lazy to delete the songs. And yet, on lonely days, in bouts of tired sadness, he will sometimes slide the disc into his laptop and listen to a few songs until embarrassment brings him to delete the contents of the disc—which yearning emptiness causes him to resurrect just minutes later.

After one such episode, the boy decides to venture about the city in hopes of finding a lieu free from The Honeyfuckles’ fame. Boarding his Dutch bicycle yet again, he pedals until, in a previously unnoticed corner of an otherwise empty block, he sees a sign bearing the symbol of a record. He rides towards it, hope in his heart, and enters the shop nervously. Though small, he gasps in delight at detecting no signs of Honeyfuckle influence and begins to sift through the shop’s selection. He spots a tattered cassette tape from a band he’d never heard of before, The Rustic Eels, and brings it to the shop’s counter. As soon as the sallow-faced owner appears, the station changes to a song from The Honeyfuckles’ very first album.

The boy’s expression freezes as his hands drop his find onto the counter. All the feelings of the past few months flood into his mind as the song plays at an achingly slow pace, magnified by the shock of his experiences. He recalls his distraught rage of that night when the radio station first revealed his possession to the world. As images of the tattered ticket and the disposed records and the freshly bare walls pass through his memory, he becomes increasingly aware of the gap in his heart from where The Honeyfuckles were torn in those tragic few moments. Zombie-like, he pays for the Rustic Eels tape; by the time the transaction is complete, the emptiness has overtaken his soul.

Rushing out of the store, he haphazardly slips the cassette from its sheath and shoves it into his boombox, turning the volume up to eleven. He jumps on his bike and rides all through the streets, playing The Rustic Eels for everyone to hear. He needs the distraction, but the new band is so painful to listen to that it only forces his mind towards The Honeyfuckles. Tears mottle the street as he contemplates the end of their music, relegated among the masses to forgotten iTunes purchases and middle-school romance mixtapes. For all the countless mp3 players The Honeyfuckles are featured on now, for all the current magazine coverage and contemporary fame, it will all disappear in a month when they fall out of favour. The current fans will all go on to cherish another unsuspecting band until they throw it, too, into the graveyard of discarded musicians, all deflowered into fame.

The boy sobs even louder, overlaying The Rustic Eels with his tears. The Honeyfuckles were not just a placeholder on some transient pop playlist of his. They were not just another hit to him, or even another band to listen to ironically and pretentiously brag about to imagined music connoisseurs. They were an intimate part of his soul, a fundamental part of his identity. And now? Now they had been taken away from him, stripped of their value by ignorant conformists. It was as if the secret grounding his soul were presented to the universe, and now he was nothing, nothing but another consumer who had taken part in the short-lived Honeyfuckle fad.

Disillusioned a second time, the boy pedals home in a passionate frenzy. In his room, he pants wildly, filled with rage and anguish. Although he has the instinct to tear down posters and rip up his ticket—to relive that fervent ecstasy of destruction yet again—none of these artifacts are to be found. Nothing is left for him to destroy but that last CD, which he listens to only in his most desperate times. He rushes to his MacBook and ejects it, and, gripping it tightly, flings his arm towards the ground... yet he cannot let go of the CD. His hand is locked in its position, as if the CD had welded itself to it. He screams and tries releasing his grip, yet his fingers do not move from the disc. He is interlocked with this relic of his tastes, with the culture of the masses and the music of the world.

Hoping that gravity might separate him from the monstrous thing, he wildly heaves his arm every which way. Yet the more he struggles, the stronger the CD’s fusion with his skin. After much fruitless effort, he settles down, breathing heavily, and looks to his hand as he momentarily glimpses a shard of opalescence dissolving into his skin. Before he can register the illusion, however, it is gone.

Sitting on his beanbag chair, he tries moving his fingers and is finally successful. Exhaling in relief, he decides that he must have released the CD somewhere into the depths of his room. For a moment he contemplates searching for it, but then decides that it’s perhaps just as well if he lost it. Either way, he’ll never encounter The Honeyfuckles again—at least, not in the privacy of his bedroom.

And yet, strangely, he does see The Honeyfuckles again. Not a day after his curious brush with the disc, he has the urge to go to his favourite old record shop—the one overtaken by The Honeyfuckles—and re-purchase all their albums, perhaps on vinyl, and even a poster or two. Stranger still, while he does precisely this at the record shop, he also feels the desire to purchase products from other contemporary musicians. A song playing on the shop’s radio catches his attention, and he ends up purchasing that band’s entire discography too, as well as a few posters.

* * *

Springtime. The bedroom is recognizable, and yet different from how it used to be. While the same tartan fabric still enshrouds the fabrics, the walls have been coated with pop poster after pop poster. Due to the temporary nature of each band’s popularity, the posters have been plastered over so that images of the latest musicians overlay the discarded ones. Such is this cycle of popularity and decay that the posters now form an inch-thick film over the boy’s walls which slowly closes in on him. The north wall, once barren, is a renewed shrine to The Honeyfuckles’ extended period of popularity due to the success of an album following From the Ground Up.

A day ago, a song had leaked from the newly developing Honeyfuckles album. The world over agreed that it was simply not equivalent to their previous work, and journalists unanimously predicted that The Honeyfuckles’ fame was to end with the release of this next album. The boy, too, had listened to the song, and shared the public consensus: The Honeyfuckles were on their way out. In response, he had bought some posters of a new band that, according to these same journalists, was gaining wild popularity.

Today, he is reworking his Honeyfuckles shrine to support the likeness of this new band. With a deft hand and copious tape and glue, he mechanically covers up each outdated Honeyfuckles poster, symbolically denying their existence—current as well as past—in the musical world.

In a few minutes, he is finished. Satisfied with his piece, he backs up to view the north wall in full, covered with image after image of The Rustic Eels.

#fiction #hipsterism #irony #postmodern #surreal #2014

[studiesinconnoisseurship]

Leonardo - A Radical Suggestion

1  :   INTRODUCTION

For those of us who operate in the Arts and not the Sciences, what is the difference, I wonder, between a hypothesis and a thesis? If both are based on research, is it mostly a degree of conviction? What begins as one can turn into the other. For my part, as I will set out in this essay, what began as an inkling regarding certain pictures ‘by Leonardo’ is now a genuine conviction which has become nailed to a Lutheran door, as it were, as an article of faith. There is something risky about it, it is provocative, radical in fact and will doubtless be considered heretical by those with a settled opposing view. My proposal is this: I believe that four paintings which currently bear the ‘Leonardo’ attribution are not by Leonardo, but the works of two other artists: three by Ambrogio de Predis and a fourth by an unknown hand. I will demonstrate how, using methods of connoisseurship, it is possible to discern the techniques of these other artists in the paintings whilst also offering comparisons to genuine works by Leonardo. I will be looking at the following paintings (left to right): The Virgin of the Rocks (National Gallery London), Ginevra de Benci (National Gallery Washington), Portrait of a Musician (Ambrosiana, Milan) and Lady with the Ermine (presently at Wawel Museum Krakow)

Opinions such as these are likely to provoke outrage quickly turning to contemptuous dismissal, especially among the curators of the galleries concerned. The National Gallery in London, for example, despite already owning the genuine Leonardo Cartoon of the Virgin and Child with St Anne – a drawing, albeit a large one – has placed a great deal of significance in its claim to owning an important painting by the same. Similarly, the National Gallery in Washington has accepted its Ginevra de’ Benci as authentic Leonardo for so long, it has appeared in so many books on him and been seen as his by so many gallery visitors, that any suggestion to the contrary is likely to be dismissed as weird or ridiculous. The portrait of the Lady with the Ermine at Krakow is so confidently ascribed to Leonardo that she even became the poster-girl for the 2011 Leonardo exhibition in London.

In view of this expected hostility I feel it prudent to revert to the more tentative position of having a hypothesis or hunch, a voice that says ‘Suppose that this is the case, what are the arguments for it, what is the visual evidence?’ Hence the title of this Study: a supposition or ‘radical suggestion’.

Before looking in detail at pictures and drawings it is helpful to reconsider what kind of a man Leonardo was. What impression do we gain from all his drawings and notebooks, the records of his thinking? Surely it is of a person of immense curiosity. Mentally he was always moving on, investigating the forms and mechanisms of life, inventing solutions to problems, addicted to exploring the variety, complexity and sheer beauty of anything he encountered. There was, however, a synthetic aspect to his imagination as well as the analytic one, and every now and again he turned to painting and through it gave expression to that poetic rather than scientific side of his nature. This switch occurred at intervals in a life otherwise devoted to description, analysis and problem-solving. Hardly a day passed, one imagines, without him drawing and making notes, but months, even years may have passed in which he was not painting, though a painting awaited his return to it. Even without the subtractions I would make, what has survived of his painted oeuvre is small relative to that of any other major artist one can think of. Painting was not a constant preoccupation of his life, though he took its practice seriously and was interested in its status vis-a-vis other arts.

I :  LONDON  AND  PARIS

The Virgin among the Rocks - National Gallery London

Given all this, what are we to make of the proposition that Leonardo made a large-scale copy of one of his own works? How likely is it that such a restless mind would allow itself to be detained for as long as it would take to paint a huge version of a composition which he had earlier completed and from which he had mentally moved on? Even if some circumstance had forced this on him, would he not have taken the opportunity to make revisions of the composition far more radical than we see? Beethoven at the piano was inspired and inventive: when he took his hands off the keyboard and a lady exclaimed that she would never hear such a thing again, he replied, so the story goes, ‘oh yes you can, madam’ and started off again, yet not repeating himself but inventing along the way because he could not help doing so. The same is surely true of Leonardo, witness the profusion of compositional ideas scattered through his drawings.

The Virgin among the Rocks - Musée du Louvre Paris

The Louvre Virgin among the Rocks is authentic Leonardo, I have no doubt. The forms of the figures, the shape of their faces, the drawing-related observation of plants and rocks, the suggestiveness of the cavernous environment, and the warmth of the palette, are all entirely characteristic of him.

The Virgin among the Rocks - London (left) and Paris (right)

It is the status of the London version that one has to question. The composition is broadly the same, but the colour scheme is colder and bluer, the handling of paint heavier and more prosaic, the atmosphere sepulchrally chilly.

Detail of the Virgin’s head in both paintings

One of the differences between the Paris and London pictures is the lighting which affects, of course, the colouring. In Paris we have a light reminiscent of evening, the western sun to our left; faces, hands and naked bodies glow with a golden warmth. The arm of the infant Saint John, pressing for balance  on a ledge of rock, is like an arm in Caravaggio, lit dramatically with warm shadow. Despite the cold, damp, uncomfortable setting, there is the residual warmth of a day, embers of a fire that the angel’s red cloak under the greenish-grey mantle keeps alive. In London we have a lighting closer to moonlight, colder, whiter and bluer; the faces and bodies are illuminated more emphatically but less subtly. This relative heaviness and simplification does not suggest Leonardo but is characteristic of Ambrogio.

Colder blues in London, warmer lights cast in Paris

The circuitry - like a cat’s cradle - of hand gestures and eye focus that depends, in the Paris picture, on the Virgin’s left hand being poised above the angel’s pointing one, is broken in London by the latter’s omission; it is earthed instead by the long diagonal of the Christ-child’s cross. Something important is being left out and the resulting void is a central darkness that engulfs the raised hand of Saint John. Similarly, the beautiful iris and fern at lower left in Paris are replaced by less complicated flora not based, as Leonardo’s are, on drawn observation.

Top row - simplified plants featured in London painting; Centre - Leonardo’s studies of plants; Either side - more accurately observed plants featured in Paris painting

In London the rocks seem heavier and more depressive on the figures because they continue to the top and omit the arching of rock against sky which in Paris reinforces the Virgin’s ‘misericordia’ gesture as she puts her right arm round the head of her Son. The highlight in the gold mantle under her blue robe has a more complicated and spirited calligraphy in Paris and is omitted altogether where it appears in the Paris angel’s shoulder-wrap.

Leonardo’s eye for capturing the highlights and shadows of draped fabrics, clockwise from top left: Three drapery studies; Angel’s robe in Paris ‘Rocks’; Virgin’s hem in Paris ‘Rocks’; Madonna of the Carnation (Alte Pinakothek); detail from Mona Lisa (Musée du Louvre)

A theme in these Studies, and one of the insights that connoisseurship constantly throws up, is that how an artist draws will often if not always be reflected in how that artist paints; pencil and brush are used in similar ways. If, as I suggested earlier, Leonardo drew every day, it is very likely that when he painted, especially when he used a fine brush for more detailed final delineations, of plant stems or the highlights on sleeve-folds for example, we will see a resemblance between his mark-making with a brush and his mark-making with pen or pencil, chalk or silverpoint. And so it is, as these examples show.

Material details - fabric folds in Paris (left) and London (right) paintings

In the London version these final touches are absent because Ambrogio did not have Leonardo’s curiosity about natural forms, and his representations of them are inevitably more generalised and emblematic. Were I a supporter of the Leonardo attribution for the London picture, this omission would worry me greatly. Turn to drawings by Ambrogio, on the other hand, and one sees at once the coarser grain that is evident in the London Rocks.

Facial types in works by Ambrogio show wide eyes like those in London 'Rocks’

One begins to think that some of the challenges of making a replica of the Paris picture were just too demanding for the copyist, hence his omissions and the substitution of linear props like the cruciform staff, the haloes, and the vertical hemline of Mary’s robe. The major difference, however, remains the chromatic one: doing away with the angel’s red robe, combined with the loss of a quintessentially Leonardesque relationship between that red and the green, blue and yellow-gold in Paris, seems the surest sign of all that we are not looking at Leonardo’s work in London but at that of an artist who is happiest working with a palette of cold blues and browns.

2 :   WASHINGTON

Cold blues and browns: that is what we find, among other signs, in the Ginevra de’ Benci at Washington (above) - the brown in the bodice, the blue-brown landscape beyond a sallow moon-face. particularly noticeable in that face are the high temple above eyes far apart, and cheekbones even farther apart with shadow under them level with nostrils, making mouth and chin seem disproportionately small. This is not a Leonardo construction of a face, but if one turns back to the London Virgin among the Rocks, it is there in the angel’s  face and the Christchild’s though to a less exaggerated degree.

Noticeable, too, are the heavy upper and lower lids to rather long eyes. Here are some drawings, plausibly by Ambrogio de Predis, which reinforce these features as typical of his style.

Recurrent in them is a certain heaviness, an overemphatic modelling and lighting, the strange eyes, the long, broad nose, and a scale that seems to enlarge as one ascends from the chin.

There is a further feature to remark on in the Ginevra and that is the treatment of hair strands and hair curls: they look metallic, as if made from fine picture wire, and the curls are tightly coiled as we see in several drawings. This is Leonardesque in general - it reminds one of his deluge drawings and water studies - but Leonardo the painter does not apply the curling tongs in such a steely manner, there is more poetic sfumato blending the ringlets into shadow, exposing here, losing there. They should not assume more importance than the facial features.

Ginevra de Benci’s tight curls as compared with those from works by Ambrogio - there is a further connection between the painting (bottom left) of St John the Baptist and the inscription on the reverse of Ginevra’s portrait

If I seem to denigrate Ambrogio de Predis vis-a-vis Leonardo it is because the distinction to be made is not just of style but of quality. His way of painting, as of drawing, is heavier, colder, cruder and far less poetically evocative. To make a version of a Leonardo on the scale of the London Virgin among the Rocks is undoubtedly impressive and Ambrogio is a very accomplished artist, but when attribution is at stake it should be recognised, after due consideration and comparison, that his painting in London is nothing like as good as the Paris original. On every measure the Louvre picture is superior. As for the Ginevra, just put it beside La Belle Ferroniere or Mona Lisa, (below) and see how it fails on both connoisseurship counts, likeness and quality.

3   :MILAN

There is another ‘Leonardo’ that fits well with these attributions, and that is the unfinished Portrait of a Musician at the Ambrosiana in Milan (above), a painting which Giovanni Morelli long ago assigned to Ambrogio, I think correctly. We are presented here with a memorable face and a convincing portrait of an individual, but once again the exaggerated lighting, the shape of the eyes and lids, the mouth, the wire-like curls and the low-slung cheekbone that is level with the nostril and far from the eye, betray, when taken together, the style of Ambrogio, not Leonardo.

The Portrait of a Musician and three works by Ambrogio all displaying similarly wide eyes and facial types - Head of Francesco Melzi; Portrait of a Young Man; Head of Bacchus

It is a style that produces an impression of forceful character, but just because it errs on the side of being over-determined it lacks the subtler sfumato, the more reticent but mysterious presence that is the ‘poesia’ of Leonardo. This is more assertively a portrait, but Leonardo, who was no more interested than Michelangelo was in the individual - and therefore not at heart a portraitist at all -aspires to a more universal and depersonalised image, the sublimated type of Mona Lisa. The contrast between the two men is admittedly disguised somewhat by the assimilation to Leonardo’s manner - Ambrogio was, after all, his close associate and admirer and his work is more nearly Leonardesque than most of the master’s followers - but the differences are there to be discerned and if we do not discern them I fear that our conception of Leonardo the painter will remain blurred by inconsistencies that distort our proper understanding of his development. He did develop, but credibly, not by suddenly adopting a new palette or a new way of constructing a face.

4 :  KRAKOW

The focus of this Study being on what is, and is not, by Leonardo, I can leave Ambrogio now and turn to a work not by him but not, I believe, by Leonardo either, accepted though it usually is as an important example of his art: the Lady with the Ermine portrait of Cecilia Gallerani at Krakow. Whatever one’s theory about its authorship, few would disagree that it is a work of high quality, beauty and sophistication, almost certainly from the best years of its maker.

With that tribute to the work I shall cut to the quick of the connoisseurship argument by setting it between three other items (clockwise from top right): a painted Portrait of a Lady from the Musée Jacquemard André in Paris, a very impressive portrait drawing of a Woman, from the Uffizi Gabinetto and a profile Portrait of a Woman from the Kress Collection at Washington.

The salient features linking them are the smooth Bronzino-ish modelling, the profiles, the flesh colour, the treatment of folds in sleeves, and the form of the long-fingered hands. That curious pose of Cecilia’s right hand with its long and separated digits is not to be found, I think, in genuine Leonardo, but we shall see that it recurs in this master’s work.

With these initial comparisons in mind one can go on to other drawings and paintings bearing similar characteristics. The very soft muzzy shading within fine linear contours and hairline comes again in a drawing from the Pembroke collection at Wilton House; the woman’s profile repeats that of the Lady in the Kress painting.

Profile of a Woman - Wilton House

At Windsor, in the Leonardo corpus, are three studies of feet, one a child’s, that are clearly in the style of the drawing of the Lady in the Uffizi and the Pembroke drawing. A further drawing, from the Ambrosiana in Milan,  not only belongs with it in drawing style but also makes a link with the Krakow painting of Cecilia Gallerani.

One sees the fastidiously neat, centrally-parted coiffure, relatively slight eyebrows, long nose, similar mouth, pointed chin. Some of these items might even be of the same woman; however, it is similarity of type and style, not identity of sitter, that is relevant for attribution, and as a group these drawings and paintings already suggest a common style and a common authorship that is distinct from what we recognise as ‘Leonardo’, and distinct also from Ambrogio de Predis. An artistic personality begins to emerge that makes the attribution of the Krakow picture to Leonardo seem increasingly unsafe and improbable.

The improbability is only confirmed when one moves to a painting of the Virgin and Child with an Angel and Saint John at a museum in Budapest. Here is the Krakow hand; here the marmoreal smoothness and delicate blush to the cheek; here a deep wine-red under blue mantle (and over a black-striped white silk undergarment); here the brown colour (in Cecilia’s right forearm; the wooden border of the angel’s lute); here the precise coiffure, pointy chins, delicately defined finger and toe nails.

Painting of the Virgin and Child with St John shows near identical hand posture to Lady with the Ermine, as well as similarities to unattributed studies of a child’s head (Musée des Beaux Arts Caen) and an engraving of an Old Man (Metropolitan Museum New York)

Relevant to this work in Budapest is a drawing in the British Museum (below) where the Child’s hand raised in benediction is much the same, and the Virgin’s hands around Him similarly arthritic but almost claw-like. 

Enhanced close-up of the hand from the drawing showing a similarly “double-jointed” hand to that of the Lady with the Ermine

A much annotated drawing in the Uffizi, purporting to be of Beatrice d’Este, shows the Krakow Master’s refined line, but adding eyelashes which Cecilia Gallerani lacks. There are similarities between this Uffizi drawing and a supposed self-portrait drawing of Melzi at Bayonne: the same smooth modelling and combed hairlines (below).

Mention should be made at this point of an earlier, very charming work, a reliquary from the Sanctuary at Crea which has a portrait on one side of the Marchese di Monferrato and on the other his wife, Anna d’Alencon.

The portrait of the Marchesa is particularly close to the Krakow portrait, not in date but in profile, shape of face and facial features, treatment of hair, black necklace, juxtaposition of brown and slate blue.

More paintings and drawings, some in pen and ink, could be introduced to flesh out the career of this artist and take it back to its beginnings or forwards, to the Sforza Altarpiece; but for present purposes enough, I hope, has been garnered to make the case that the picture, fine though it is, is not by Leonardo but by another artist working at or near the height of his powers.

5 :   CANON

Between the subtractions from the current Leonardo canon that I have proposed above and some additions to it that I would like to put forward for consideration, we can usefully mention what remains that is generally undisputed. With regard to early work there is room for dispute. I would argue, pace Vasari, against his having painted an angel in Verrocchio’s Baptism, on the ground that I see no difference between the two angels in the way they are painted, and that that way was Verrocchio’s way, as a drawing by him makes clear.

Verrocchio’s Baptism of the Christ and drawings of the Head of an Angel (Uffizi) and the Head of a Woman (Christchurch)

On another occasion I would at least cast doubt on Leonardo’s hand in the painting of the Virgin’s and angel’s heads in the Uffizi Annunciation while not denying that he contributed to other parts of both that picture and the Verrocchio Baptism. There is also an argument to be made about the authenticity of the much repainted Benois Madonna in the Hermitage.

The Benois Madonna (left, attributed to Leonardo) bears similarities in style with the Virgin from Verrocchio’s Annunciation (right)

Apart from numerous drawings, the London Cartoon among them, we are left with the five pictures in the Louvre (Madonna of the Rocks,Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Mona Lisa, La Belle Ferroniere, and Saint John the Baptist);  the Madonna with the Carnation at Munich; the Last Supper fresco at Milan, the unfinished Adoration of the Kings in the Uffizi; and the unfinished Saint Jerome in the Vatican. What, if anything, can be added?

Leonardos at the Louvre

Leonardos around the world

5 :   ADDENDA

I have not seen, nor do I know the location of, this probably small painting - perhaps a fragment, perhaps of the head of the Virgin (below). It was once in a private collection in  Lugano, but is known to me only from a small but fortunately colour reproduction in an obscure catalogue of an exhibition of ‘Masterpieces of European art’ compiled by Amadore and Tony Porcella, at Tally Ho, Las Vegas, in 1963.

The book is a curious miscellany with some questionable attributions, but this one image has stuck in my mind and I remain as strangely confident now as I was when I first saw it that the original, if one knew where it was, would turn out to be a genuine early work by Leonardo, as the Porcellas claimed.

Place this image next to the renowned drawing at Turin of a woman’s head, and it is fairly easy to turn that head around a little and down a little to get the same or a very similar physiognomic type that is classic Leonardo. Place it against the Angel’s head in the Louvre Virgin among the Rocks and much the same match is achieved, with also, significantly, the same combination of red and green from a palette that is decidedly warm - the necessary warmth of an umber ground for anything to be by Leonardo.

Faces in drawings by Leonardo compared with Porcella image

Colours in both Porcella image and Louvre Virgin of the Rocks

My other proposal on the credit side is a painting at Wilton House near Salisbury, one of a number of extant pictures on the theme of Leda and the Swan, a subject known from his drawings to have occupied Leonardo’s attention. This Wilton Leda is ascribed to Cesare da Sesto.

Leda and the Swan attrib. Cesare da Sesto - Wilton House

When I saw this Leda in the National Gallery’s 2011 Leonardo exhibition I remarked to my companion ‘Isn’t this good enough to be Leonardo’s?’ and added, to myself, ‘but I suppose the experts know something we don’t’. Now, after further consideration - seeing how faithful all aspects of the picture are to the pictorial language and practice of Leonardo, and finding in the language and practice of Cesare da Sesto nothing that convinces me that he could mimic Leonardo’s so perfectly - I simply ask of those experts: if I am missing something on the visible surface of that picture that clearly demonstrates that it must be by Cesare da Sesto and cannot be by Leonardo, please provide an equally visual argument to explain that case. To my eye the head of Leda is nowhere near the characteristic female head in Cesare’s work, but is extremely close to well-known drawings by Leonardo.

Examples of Faces in works by Cesare da Sesto - details from Madonna and Child with the Lamb; Study of a Man’s Head; detail from Madonna and Child with Sts John and George

Studies for Leda and the Swan by Leonardo at Chatsworth (Top Left) and the Royal Collection at Windsor

The warm palette and all the background and foreground of the composition are likewise relatable to Leonardo and to studies by him of mountains, children and plants.

The children in the painting are reminiscent of sketches by Leonardo

Landscape details can also be compared to studies by Leonardo, like those at the Royal Collection

Of course artists make copies of work by other artists, but in doing so they cannot help unconsciously introducing traces of their own habitual styles of figuration, physiognomy and palette. We know that even an artist with a conscious desire to deceive people (who therefore studies what he copies very carefully) betrays these personal idiosyncrasies. The Wilton picture, I suggest, merits consideration as authentic Leonardo. It is a work of remarkable quality, better, surely, than anything Cesare da Sesto ever achieved, and I would be quite happy to see it slipped into the oeuvre of Leonardo pittore, somewhere, at a guess, before Mona Lisa, because of the less veiled and mysterious landscape. I would add that what could be an autograph study for, rather than after, the head of the Wilton Leda is a beautiful grisaille (11 by 8in) sold by Christie in New York on 7 Dec 1977.

6  :   CONCLUDING

I hope that this Study and its predecessors helps to demonstrate to anyone sceptical of the value of connoisseurship that, in common with any form of criticism, it is not a science but definitely a discipline, and one moreover that, properly practised, with plenty of close visual comparison can lead to a reappraisal, sometimes, as here, quite radical, of some of the leading lights in our pictorial heritage.The word ‘close’, however, is to be emphasised. There is no point in having a juxtaposition like this one (below) from a recent National Gallery exhibition catalogue, where the drawing is insufficiently similar to the detail in the painting and bears no resemblance to any drawing by Leonardo. Comparison must be accurate enough to advance an argument rather than spread confusion.

There is no lack of attention paid to Leonardo, but it is too often of a kind that produces claims of authenticity such as the Salvator Mundi of current fame, which connoisseurship, if applied, could show to be misplaced.

Alternatively, attention is of the kind that is not radical enough and tends to re-present the same items from one monograph or exhibition to the next, simply because it would look strange to omit them. The accumulated weight of past opinion confirms the rightful place of, say, the Ginevra de’ Benci in any presentation of Leonardo the artist. If it becomes unthinkable to leave her out, it becomes ever more eccentric to question her inclusion; so she is re-displayed or re-produced ‘on the nod’, with no questions asked.

There are, sad to say, vested interests at work here. The Ginevra, like so many famous images, belongs in, and to, a famous museum. Its curators, and curators everywhere, develop a quasi-proprietorial relationship with ‘their’ collections that is not so very different from that of private collectors. Naturally they do not want to risk asking, or inviting, questions that could undermine the prestigious status of a work in their care, lest doubts should lead to a less prestigious one. The reputation of connoisseurship itself has unfortunately been tainted by practitioners having these or other sorts of vested interest. Unattached to any institution I am powerless but lucky in this respect at least: being a private researcher I have no vested interest at all. Whether a picture is by Leonardo da Vinci or by Ambrogio de Predis is of no concern to me beyond my desire to ascribe it correctly, no matter who owns it or what its market value may be.

For all sorts of unquantifiable reasons I value Leonardo. I hope that the questions I raise here may lead to a more coherent, less inconsistent picture of his enduringly beautiful art.

[erunapendleton]

AU of non-serial killer!Kira meeting Shinobu as college freshmen and he obsesses over how soft and lovely her hands are and just wants to... kiss them every night...

I just wanted to say i’m extremely giddy that this was sent to me i follow a lot of other fic writers that get prompts sent to them and for one to be sent to me is exciting! thank you!

“Pathetic…” the words were grounded out from his teeth. “Absolutely pathetic.”

Yoshikage Kira laid there in his singlet bed under the darkness of a Friday evening. He was thinking of her again. Shinobu Kondo, the gorgeous girl with even more gorgeous hands who lived just two doors down from his own dorm room.  

If she could just hold my face. Caress my cheek with the back of her hand, he thought as he palmed the thin layer of his pajama pants. Or if I could just hold her hand. Once… He could imagine how they would look if they were wrapped around him right now. Skin milky, fingers thin and nails manicured a deep, flirty red.

Fuck, she’s just my type.

He’s stroking himself now furiously, too. The sound of her voice whispers in his ear and she asks sweetly like a kiss, “Yoshikage, do I really make you feel this way?”

And with that he finishes into his own imperfect hand.

He sits up and slaps the on switch of his desk light. The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” still plays softly as he looks at what he’s spilled into his palm.

“And we could be married,” the song plays on. “And we could be happy.”

Kira wipes his hand with a tissue. “It would be nice.”

LAST WEEK

“Leave it to Shinobu to be late as usual,” Ayane mumbled. She rolled her pencil under her hand as if she were thinning out pizza dough on the library table.

“She’ll be here,” Tsurugi said while making notes in her planner. “I told her 12 at the library.”

“You sure she knows you meant 12 in the afternoon? Maybe the dummy thought you meant midnight.”

“Ayane,” Tsurugi said with a fleeting laugh.

“Or maybe she’s stuck making out with her too cool for school boyfriend she’s always dangling in front of her faces.”

“You know she doesn’t do that.”

Ayane scoffed. “Whatever, sympathizer. You can say whatever you want, but we both know he’s out of her league.”

In the table adjacent to theirs, Yoshikage Kira glanced over. The girl with the loud mouth ranted on as she wagged her hand.

Broken and uneven nails. Green acrylics at that, he thought. The frailty of her nails were obvious. Ugly nails for an ugly-hearted girl.

He shut his book and left the table. This only drew more whispers from girls from the table over. As he opened the double doors, a girl slammed directly into his chest knocking the book he was carrying out of his hands as well the ones she held. Like snow fall, papers floated down to floor around them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said from the floor. She appeared dazed with her hand over her forehead. “I didn’t even see you…”

“It’s fine,” he huffed. The daily irritations kept mounting. He knelt down to her with a hand extended. “Can you stand?”

She looked up at him. The fatigue covered her sallow face like makeup, but she still smiled at him. “I should help you pick up your stuff before I get up, though. Right?”

“Sure,” he said.

She shifted to her knees and the two began gathering and scooping their flittering papers together. Her hand landed on his as he reached for his textbook. The florescence of the lights above made the red of her nails dazzle him, nearly putting stars in his eyes. Plush, silk, even velour none of these words could bring any semblance of justice to describing what exactly her hands felt like.

He was struck by what he could only discern was Cupid’s proverbial arrow.

“Do you study art history?”

What?

“Art history?” she asked again.

“Oh, no, I just admire Da Vinci’s works,” he muttered and took the book into his hands. They both stood.

“So, you study him for fun?”

“Yes, it’s a bit of a hobby of mine, I suppose.” He thought that was one way of putting it. A lot simpler than explaining his affections toward the hands of the Mona Lisa.

“That’s pretty cool,” she beamed. “Wait,” she squinted at him. “I know you! You live in my dorm, don’t you? Yoshihiro Kira?”

“Yoshikage,” he corrected her. “That’s actually my father’s name.”

“Oh, oops.” She saw around him her friends waving to her and then peered back to him. “Oh, well, my name’s Shinobu. It was nice to meet you, Yoshikage.”

“Likewise, Shinobu…”  He watched as her pastel orange hair fluttered from her ponytail like a ribbon as she left him.

“Made us wait long enough,” Ayane said as Shinobu takes her seat.

“Ah, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with my body,” Shinobu said. “My head was pounding when I got up and when I made it to the bathroom it was over. I blew chunks everywhere.”

“You’re sick?” Tsurugi asked.

“I guess? I’ve been waking up nauseous for days now,” Shinobu said.

“Maybe you gotta lay off the booze, party girl,” Ayane teased.

Shinobu rolled her eyes. “Keep calling me that and I’ll puke on you next.”

Giggles broke out among the girls only for them to be shushed by the nearby librarian.

FRIDAY

“You Still Believe in Me” starts to play as Kira is bathed in darkness. He feels almost stupid being this consumed by the idea of a girl and even stupider at the idea of her surrounded in perfumed hearts.

“She’s normal, average and most of all human like every other girl—”

And as he utters lies about his unrequited darling, he hears the sound of muffled, but unmistakable crying beyond the door from the hallway. Possessed by a force with inhibitions abandoned, Kira opens the door and he sees her, the girl with the lovely hands.

But, she’s the source of the crying and she’s fumbling with her keys in front of her room. He shuts the door behind him as he approaches her, seemingly running on auto-pilot himself.

“Shinobu,” he says softly, but still manages to scare her as she drops her keys.

“Oh, it’s you, Yoshikage,” she sniffs and then flashes him a quick smile. “You caught me off guard there.” He ducks down to pick up her keys.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I apologize,” he says before placing the keys in her hand and linger there for a little too long. But she doesn’t say anything and he’s thankful to God or whoever for that.

“I know you didn’t. Don’t be silly,” she says. “Did you, um, need something by the way?”

Her heart begins to settle as well as her breathing and she is just about relieved to have stopped crying. She looks up at him to see him intently watching her. A look of interest in her. A rare occurrence she didn’t care to admit. Something about those purple eyes of his are catlike and glow lightly toward her.

“I heard something. Crying, I thought,” he says. “But, it seems I imagined it. I should leave you be. It’s late—”

“No!” She lunges, grabbing his arm. “I… I really don’t want to be alone right now…”

He follows in behind her and she plugs in a lamp that only gives off a dim candescence. The room is mostly organized save for her bed that has a tangled blanket strewn across it. She joins him on the cot after she hands him a soda from the mini fridge.

“How are you feeling?” he asks after she takes a long uninterrupted chug of ginger ale.

“Fine… why wouldn’t I be?”

“Shinobu,” he said, giving her a look baked in concern.

“I thought I’d be able to escape my problems talking to you, Yoshi,” she says after blowing a raspberry. She sets her drink down on her desk and then lays her head in his lap. This action nearly sets him on fire, but he tries to extinguish himself with the idea of dying children. It’s not working.

He places his free hand on her cheek. “What would you like to talk about then?”

“Um… what do you want out of life?” she asks and then places her hands over her stomach.

Kira rests his head onto the wall. He can see their shadows blurred together and inseparable. “I’ve only ever dreamed to live a life of quiet. Nothing too grand, but just quiet and peaceful until I die.”

Shinobu lips slip open. “Nothing too grand?”

“I have no desire of being rich or famous… it seems that’s important to a lot of people our age. Life can be so simple.”

“Where would you live? The countryside?”

“A beachside town more like,” he says as he curls his fingers in her hair. “Somewhere I can have a picnic during the days and evenings.”

“That sounds lovely…” she closes her eyes and suddenly she can see the waves crashing near a lighthouse’s cliff and a yellow sky.

“Yes, it would be,” he says and drifts his hand down to over hers on her stomach.

“What would our house look like?”

“Our?” he asks.

Shinobu flushes. “I meant your house.”

Kira frowns. “Shinobu, don’t you… have a boyfriend?”

“No, not anymore,” she practically mouths and instead of vocalizing as her eyes become flooded by tears again. She shrivels like a flower in winter and he holds her when she sits up in his lap.

“What happened tonight?” he asks after a long while of just holding her.

“I figured out what’s been making me sick.” Her voice wobbled, but she spoke anyway. “I’m pregnant.”

His heart rockets down into his feet, but he holds her closely. “And?”

“And… Kosaku told me to handle it. I’m nearly a month along and he wants me to handle it,” she says with a voice laced in horror. “I went in there and I couldn’t take it. H-he broke up with me on the spot because I couldn’t do it.”

“Terrible…”

“I-I never thought I’d have a baby this way, but I’ve accepted it… and I’m,” she smiles bittersweetly. “Excited.”

“You are?”

“In another life, I might have been angry at my circumstances… forced to put my life on hold or never achieve any of my dreams of grandeur, but,” she pauses to cup his face in her hands nearly making him burst. “You opened my eyes. I’m going to have a baby that I can love unconditionally. I don’t need anything more than that. Just a quiet little life.”

She kisses his cheek and it almost feels like a goodbye.

“Shinobu,” he says. The twin jars of honey in her eyes can be seen again glittering like stardust. “Would there be any space for me in your little life?”

“I think there is,” she murmurs against his lips.

#ask #answered #anonymous #kirashino #yoshikage kira #shinobu kawajiri #this started so differently and then ended up being almost sad wtf i dont know how to balance tones fml

[xmarisolx]

Heartwarming story about Beto

Since O’Rourke entered Congress, in January 2013, he’s held at least one town hall per month, and while the events are well organized, they’re appealingly scruffy for anyone whose sole experience of a politician responding to everyday Americans comes from quadrennial presidential TV spectacles. Constituents line up to tell the congressman about their problems at work and the aspirations of their children. They ask him arcane, rambling questions. Sometimes they rise simply to rant. The production values are low: at Del Valle, O’Rourke was bathed in sallow light and stood in front of a set for the school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, a “Scrivello DDS” sign framing one side of the stage. 

O’Rourke is a Gen Xer who seems engineered to appeal to young voters.but he’s also a congressman whose district includes the headquarters of Fort Bliss. Veterans’ issues have become his bread and butter, an area where, even as a member of the minority in a do-nothing Congress, he can actually get something done. And as O’Rourke finished summarizing his recent Washington business to his constituents at the town hall, it was mostly veterans who rushed to the front of the aisles for their chance to speak with their congressman. One of the veterans was a grandmother of four named Lisa Turner, and once she’d inched her wheelchair to the microphone, she wasted little time before picking a fight. 

She was a Second Amendment absolutist and a proud NRA supporter, and she decried the “hullabaloo” around armor-piercing bullets and marveled at the fact that people would blame gun violence on guns themselves, not the “idiots” who pulled the trigger. 

“All I can say is stay away from my constitutional rights,” she told O’Rourke. “I put my life on the line for this country for that.” 

O’Rourke listened patiently, thanked her, and then pushed back. “We don’t have a greater proportion of idiots in this country than they do in other countries, and yet our rate of gun violence and gun deaths and gun suicide is far greater than any other country in the world.” Then he told her he needed to move on to the next question 

Turner wasn’t satisfied. “There is somewhere between 80 and 100 million gun owners, 300 million guns ... If guns were the problem , you would have known about it by now,” she called out. “It’s not the guns—” “You’re not hearing me,” O’Rourke said. Turner was not.  “We do not outlaw cars because somebody gets drunk and drives!”

Turner seemed eager to continue the discussion, but the congressman cut her off and called on a woman waiting at the mic in the other aisle. Turner turned and moved toward the back of the auditorium.

At the end of the event, I found Turner near the stage, talking with O’Rourke staffer Cynthia Cano. Turner told me that she’d been to most of O’Rourke’s town halls. “He’ll tell you I’m a royal pain in the butt,” she said. But she had come to respect him.

“We have issues that we disagree on,” she said, smiling, “but I hope he beats Cruz. I think he can go all the way.” She meant the presidency

#beto #beto o'rourke #daddy o'rourke #blue wave #texas senate race #beto 2020 #midterms #midterm elections #texas monthly #january 2018

[creepyonabudget-blog]

About Us

☆☆☆ Howdy my fellow goths ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°) ☆☆☆

After both of us watched The Addams Family (1991) together on rabbit at 2 in the morning, we both simultaneously thought, “god diddly damn would i give my right tit to live in a place like that!” Unfortunately not all of us can turn into a goth Warren Buffet over night, so why not work with what you got? From there, Creepy on a Budget™ was born. With the knowledge we have, we hope to help every spooky lil caterpillar, within their budget, emerge into an elegant, gothic butterfly (or bat I guess, whatever sinks yer boat)

☆Meet the Mods☆

☆Mod Lily☆

age: 17

she/her

favorite color: baby pink

favorite band(s): The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Sleigh Bells, Switchblade Symphony

Favorite song: Strawberry Gashes - Jack Off Jill (currently, this changes a lot.)

favorite movie: The Shape of Water

aesthetic type: sallow, sullen, melancholic. the night sky. dead flowers. bones. bruises. teeth. candles. oddities. cute yet unsettling. Mark Ryden. Alternatively; rainbow glitter gel pens, lisa frank stickers, sanrio surprise store. safety pins.

skills: super shitty DIY anything, sticker-making, doodling, hoard-I mean collecting, theatre, and obnoxious dancing.

when I was a baby, my very first album was Disintegration. my parents used to take me to goth clubs. Now I’m a teenager with 2,000 pinterest followers....yeah I used to be a lot cooler. but I do have two dogs named Wednesday and Pugsley.

☆Mod Morticia☆

age: 18

she/her

favorite color: cobalt blue

favorite band(s): Smashing Pumpkins, Dead Kennedys, Mr. Bungle, Journey, Styx

Favorite song: She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby

favorite movie: Night of the Hunter

aesthetic type: Trip to the Moon (colorized), Eight Arms to Hold You/Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album covers, art deco, scarab beetles, the first Blade Runner, neon lights, film noir, opossums, black eyes, an appropriate amount of blood, long furby, overall trash goblin vibes

skills: sewing, drawing + painting, set design, battle jackets, yelling

I’m more of a punk gal but I try my best

☆☆☆Follow for more DIYs in the future!☆☆☆

#first post #creepyonabudget #about us #mod lily #mod morticia #goth #gothic #the munsters #the addams family #creepy #spooky #diy