Hey all, here are my creativity test results. Think there's some work to be done! Here are some design preferences and prejudices too:

Design Preferences: 

Subversive Film - I am absolutely crazy about movies. I won’t sit here and try to argue that there’s one kind I love more than any other, because I’ve seen so many that I can find one from any genre that I absolutely adore. Still, I have extra respect for movies that push the boundaries of what can/should be done in film. I love any film that goes out of its way to defy the medium and any established rules of filmmaking. Within these terms, I’ll mention a few favorites: Mulholland Drive (2001), Pierrot Le Fou (1965), Persona (1966), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and Gummo (1997) stand out above many others to me. If I had to pick a favorite genre, it’d probably be horror, but if it ever comes down to movies I’m ready to talk all day about them. 

Sample Heavy Music - I adore the art of sampling. Few things give me as much of a genuine rush as when I’m listening to an album and I recognize the origin of a sample used in a song. My favorite album of all time is “Since I Left You” by The Avalanches, an album under the Plunderphonics subgenre that is made up of between 900 to 3,500 different samples, depending on who you ask. It is an album full of lively, danceable tunes that I cannot recommend enough. Other artists I love for their sampling abilities are Daft Punk, DJ Shadow, the Beastie Boys, MF DOOM, Madlib, Earl Sweatshirt, and Boards of Canada. 

Varying Kinds of Literature - I would hesitate to call myself well read, but I do try my best to read as much as I can. I think the novel is one of the most powerful mediums, since it can be formed in any way the author sees fit. It is truly a playground for creativity and I’ve found great pleasure in many kinds of literature, so I’ll name a few writers and works I love: Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, All The Pretty Horses), Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People), David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, Good Old Neon), Thomas Pynchon (Inherent Vice, Gravity’s Rainbow), and Toni Morrison (Beloved). I think what I love most about these writers/works is how much they all utilize the flexibility of the novelistic form to create worlds and characters that could not be rendered in any other medium, or at least would be very difficult to. 

Design Prejudices: 

Minimalistic or Overly Plain Branding: I know many people generally despise the concept of branding as a whole, but I think I’ve pretty much come to terms with its universality. I often find that I grow attached to some kinds of branding, particularly logos, which upsets me even more whenever companies go out of their way to “rebrand” to some minimalistic junk. I understand the need (or perceived need) to appear modern/sleek/cool but to me there is nothing cool about something that looks like it can belong to any old brand. Some entities who I believed have changed their branding for the worse over the years: Pringles, Snapple, La Liga, Firefox, and Google. God forbid they do anything to the Coca-Cola logo. 

Clothing With the Brand Name on It: This one is real specific. I won’t pretend that I have a clue when it comes to fashion; my method for getting dressed every day is to wear whatever happens to be at the top of my drawer. Still, I find that I simply refuse to buy any clothing where the brand’s or store’s name is just blasted onto the front of it. The worst for this are places like Hollister, Aeropostale, even some of the hype-beast luxury brands, but special mention to Gap because I didn’t think I could hate 3 plain letters on a hoodie so much. 

Sitcoms About Nice/Overly Dumb People: Full disclosure, I have a dark sense of humor (within reason, obviously). I find that what makes me laugh in comedy is people acting completely awful. Think shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Veep. It works best because it shows the absurdity of life and the situations that arise from it. That’s why so many other comedies simply don’t work for me; they’re too focused on being nice that they just end up feeling toothless and milquetoast. I won’t name the shows I don’t like out of respect (it’s hard to write and direct!) but it’s something that always gets on my nerves. 

Bravo!

The $5 trench coat that became an icon

With a strong focus on quality, innovation, and exclusivity, Rose Marie Bravo was able to turn Burberry around and establish it as a leader in the accessible luxury fashion market.

PRODUCT LINES

One of the smartest moves Bravo made was updating Burberry's product lines. By reducing the number of outdated designs, Burberry was able to streamline its offerings and create a more cohesive image. This helped reinforce the brand's position as an accessible luxury lifestyle brand that was aspirational, stylish, and innovative.

Burberry also divided its products into two categories: continuity and fashion-oriented. This allowed the brand to appeal to both its core customer base and a younger demographic, while still maintaining its cachet.

Their most iconic item, the trench coat, has endured the test of time. I was surprised to learn that the coat was originally used for British soldiers and adventurers, because I associate it with British socialites and sleek professionals. I did some digging, and the price of the Burberry trench coat has increased significantly over the years. In the early 1900s, the coat cost around $5. The case mentioned that in the 2000s, it was $900. Today, the price for a classic Burberry trench coat ranges from $1,700 to $2,500, depending on the style and material. Definitely outpacing inflation!

ADVERTISING

Investing in advertising was also key for Burberry's success. They hired a famous team including photographer Mario Testino and creative director Fabien Baron. The 1998 advertising campaign helped to reinforce the brand's British heritage and sense of tradition. The introduction of Kate Moss as a spokesperson also helped to make the brand more accessible to a younger demographic.

DESIGN ELEMENTS

The most impressive thing about Burberry's transformation is how they managed to maintain their iconic design elements while still updating their image and appeal. Their iconic check pattern became even more popular with the introduction of new designs and materials, while still retaining the durability and quality that made them so popular in the first place.

QUESTIONS

One question I have is around the proliferation of Burberry brands. To me, the wide array of Burberry offerings dilutes the strength of the brand. A few years ago, I purchased a Burberry trench coat on a consignment website, but when it arrived, the tag said “Burberry’s.” I was not aware that pre-1997, the brand name was actually Burberry’s, and I was afraid it may have been a knockoff and returned it. I also often see Burberry’s offshoot brands like Burberry Brit at discount stores like TJ Maxx, which feels like a step down from how they would aspire to position themselves.

I am also curious whether the brand will resonate with Gen Z (see Romeo Beckham ad below). On one hand, their generation appreciates vintage fashion, so they could find a love for the classic trench and other timeless styles. On the other hand, they seem to be fascinated with creative, bright, nontraditional designs that feel opposite of Burberry's posh image.

A Sanctuary of Air

a/n: An introduction to four of my main original characters. Yes, I'll be willing to take requests to write more about a specific one and/or all four of them. I can also write reader inserts :)

c/w: A bit of a rushed ending.

w/c: 900

┊ ┊

Whispers echo through the forest, the giggling of faeries, and the creaks of ents that still to be sat upon by weary travelers--offering their slow guidance to those in need... A breeze passes through the forest; a constant, never-ending occurrence. Brush and thicket cover the land between trees while a romantic dirt path runs through the forest. The sun peeks through leaves to stain the dirt path in a light, summery glow throughout the year's seasons. There is a fork in the path closer to the center of the green, yet strikingly iridescent woodland. To the left, the path continued on, leading away from the direct center of the forest, leaving the rest to travelers' imaginations. There is a large white arbor standing over the opening of the path leading to the right, the path leads to another white structure: A gazebo, proudly standing in the direct center of the forest. The path bringing travelers to the gazebo was visually underused, plants reclaimed the path towards the gazebo, almost hiding it from view. However, the clearing the gazebo stands in remains clear of plants growing towards it. It is as if the plants themselves respect the meaning behind the structure at the center of their trees.

If the path to the gazebo were to be stepped upon, the plants would react accordingly.

If it is someone of poor morals and unruly stature, the plants grow slowly, thickening the path to the sacred area. Menacingly, fog rolls into the path, obscuring vision to the beautiful sight just out of a traveler's reach. To those travelers, they can feel how close they are to a sanctuary not meant for them, knowing grace and light are just out of reach is a kind of torture almost none deserve to feel. Those travelers either find themselves stuck in the brush and are unable to escape their wretched minds, or they find it in themselves to understand the gazebo would not accept their presence and they leave.

To others, the path is not so wretched and torturous.

If the traveler is of good intentions and a pure heart--no matter how wounded that heart is--the plants open. The sun shines only slightly brighter to allow a heavenly glow to be cast upon the scene before them. The grass around the gazebo sways slightly with the breeze, encouraging travelers to forget their worries and strife. An encouraging, yet light, gush of wind pushes good-hearted travelers to find their way into the gazebo. The rustling of leaves quiets, but not to a stop, while travelers sit down in the white wooden gazebo. The seats, floor, and roof are covered in a darker stained wood. A sense of peace and calm surrounds the sacred center of the forest. It seems as if the nature around the travelers who are blessed with this area wants to encourage the traveler to stay on the correct path. And if the traveler wishes, but only if they know how, they can call on the element who reigns over this sacred temple.

If that traveler finds their way to this gazebo and wishes upon the guidance of the air, the element would reveal themselves.

Starting with the youngest and going up to the oldest, Aither appears. The wind rushes past his figure, almost too fast to see how his feet and legs arrive first, climbing up to his hips and waist, his arms appearing with his torso and chest. Finally, his head, accompanied with his long white hair, comes into view. A small smile, which can be mistaken for a flirtatious smirk, rests on the expression of the blindfolded man.

In similar fashions, Aiths arrives, then comes Aithen, followed by the oldest: Aithi. Aiths expression remains a wide, child-like smile. Aithen, remaining as bothered as usual by the calling on him, lets his face fall into his usual glare, deep orange eyes scanning the figure who calls upon the siblings. Lastly, Aithi, the only female, remains stoic.

The siblings all had one thing in common: their striking and free white hair.

The traveler is able to choose who they get guidance from, or simply who they wish to talk with. The presence of the materialized elements can be overwhelming, so when the four come into view, they sit a respectable distance away from the traveler while they choose. In the circumstance that the traveler wishes to speak with the four in their entirety, they all remain, wanting only to make the life of the traveler happier and easier.

Though, each season of air has their own personality, traits they wish to share with some but not others, and they all have their own views. To become close to one season does not mean becoming close to each one. Lastly, it's noticeable that each respective season wears two rings on their fingers. One golden, pure and enchanting. One onyx, dark and alluring. Both of those rings rest on the air's left ring fingers. Perhaps, it's a choice, perhaps there's a reason.

When the traveler has finished their time in the sanctuary of air, the beings of the sanctuary let themselves dissipate, glad to have been helpful.

Leaving the gazebo, the sense of peace and calm can linger, though the path as the traveler leaves becomes reclaimed by the plants. They're a welcoming force, but they serve to protect the dedicated and holy land.

Alright time for a depressing rant that I feel I need to type out to feel better

I'm fucked. I can't find a job and I have negative money in my bank account. Rent is nearly 900 dollars. I have two bills still needing to be paid. There's barely any food in the house. If I can't get a job or find some money somehow, then what? My parents will let me stay with them, but that's not in the city I live in. It's in a rural town away from all of my friends and all opportunities to go out and have fun or do anything. There's less jobs out there. If that happens I've fucked over my best friend and roommate, who can't afford this pace all on her own, and I don't know what might happen with her if I leave. Oh, and I'd have to abandon my cat, which makes me feel like a literal monster, because my Dad is allergic to cats and not very healthy. A cat in the house could actually kill him, so I don't want to do that either. So what can I do? Just go back to my parents and... Do nothing until I die? I always think about trying to stream, but I don't even have a computer. I doubt I could gain an audience by just streaming from the twitch app on my Xbox and using my mic to talk. I also just... Don't think I actually like streaming. Or anything I "want" to do for a career. Streaming. Drag. Singing. There's a few things I "love" and "wish I could be doing" but the thought of actually doing them... I don't think I'd enjoy it. Streaming for months on end with no viewers. Trying to do drag with no make-up skills, no fashion sense, and no idea on how to move my body. Everyone says I have a nice voice but, honestly, so what? I love to sing but I'd never be a good artist. I can't write songs, I have no actually knowledge of making music like my sister does, and she's barely getting anything from being in a band. Nothing seems to be worth it. None of my "passions" seem like they should be pursued, because what's the fucking point? I'm never going to succeed in them. Not fat fuck me from fucking nowhere, knows no one, no fucking drive to do anything. I'm just so tired of this struggle. I've been "lucky" that I could stay in the city for this long while unemployed, but that's only because my fucking grandmother died and I got my portion of the inheritance. But I miss her so fucking much. It's not fucking fair, none of this is fucking fair. The way the world is, the way I am, the way I'm going to ruin my best friends life because I'm a fucking failure at everything. And my cat. My fucking cat. I don't want to live without him, I can't fucking abandon him like this, he's already been abandoned by those he's loved before. I'm fucking cruel for putting him through this again. And also passing the burden to someone else. Probably my best friend. "Hey I know you're minus half of rent but could you also cover the expenses for my cat now? Thanks." Fuck. God I'm so bad with money too. This is mostly my fault for being in this position. I'm so so so so so fucking bad with money. It all goes away on fucking Uber eats or door dash and fucking weed. And the occasional video game. I don't know when to fucking stop. And now that everything is so fucking expensive it goes even quicker. Ten years in this city is all I'll get I guess. Ten years that were filled with mostly me crying about how stressful living is. Some fun, some good times and memories, but... It's been nothin but shit for a long time. And it won't get better. I'm fucked. I wish I had the balls to kill myself.

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n7): Catherine

Rating: 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: My mutual @nuingiliath​ had pretty strong opinions about this book but she had also provided me with an excerpt saying that the prose was, nonetheless, pretty great. I must absolutely agree with the latter point. I think that listening to the audible version would make the experience even more pleasurable as you get the RADA-trained Diane Bishop as your narrator, and her performance alone made me decide to give audio books a try (perhaps when the eye problems that have plagued me this week return). I don’t need to have read a bodice ripper to affirmatively tell you that this is not, in fact, that. This is a book which I would call ‘of quality’ , not only because of its prose but also because of its treatment of issues such as the peasants’ revolt, life as a minor gentry and piety. However, if your tastes are strictly post-modern I don’t think you’d be as open to this book as I have because it is very heteronormative, and romantic in the old fashioned sense.

Plot: We follow Catherine Swynford from her departure from Sheppy (?) Priory aged 15 to the first years of her marriage to Gaunt. It is told in omniscient third person and at times I found myself surprised by how intimately we got to know Catherine, yet how the author managed to not tie herself down to her POV. As this book’s title suggests this book is ABOUT Catherine and Anya Seton shows as much interest in her years without Gaunt as with her years spent knowing him. All romance must contain a degree of tragedy and something must be said about an author that manages to invoke high stakes and the sense of loss even when, we the readers, know there will be a happy ending. Unlike The Sunne in Splendour, this book did not feel long at all and yet when I got to the end and the author was trying to bring the reader back to reflect on how the world was much changed for our character since the beginning, I was successfully drawn into that dreaded feeling you get when you reach the end of a saga-like book. But this book was only like 500 pages whereas Sunne is like 900! I am not an expert in this era so I cannot say how accurate the plot was or what the deviations were and if they were necessary but I felt at home in the medieval ages just as I felt with Crown in Candlelight. One thing I would say is that I would have wanted to have spent a bit longer with Blanche of Lancaster, although, perhaps not at the expense of the other sections (basically I would just elongate the book) because I felt they all were compelling. I would have wanted to have also seen more of Nicola and Gibbon because they razed my heart and, honestly, I was really here for the gothic portion of the book in the first quarter. I will say that, after, I got a tad bit upset by the fact that we do not get enough of a build up to Gaunt and Catherine’s relationship. The scene where she approached him while he is weeping in the Avalon Chamber was a bit abrupt. Especially since earlier scenes established that Gaunt wasn't quite as taken with her at first sight as she with him. To be honest, people’s comments about how this book is melodramatic have made me expect much more romance than I got. 

I wasn’t really disappointed by that to be honest because I got to spend time with Catherine and the revolutions of the soul (so to speak) that she experienced. Nevertheless, by the book’s close their relationship was made to appear quite pragmatic and companionly (which I mean I understand because they were middle-aged by then) and I couldn’t help but, all that time, feel like that Catherine got the short end of the stick out of all of Gaunt’s wives because they weren't together together during the best years of their lives where there was passion and love between them and in their young bodies. After Catherine fled the Savoy and made penance for her daughter’s disappearance I took in the scenes with great pleasure but all the while I was waiting, waiting with her and feeling her trepidation to be reunited with Gaunt and then *poof* 30 pages left and they are old by that time. It was just so harrowing. I think it is a testament to the author’s craft that I felt so tense and engaged throughout this whole will he return, wont he? The best sections were nonetheless Catherine’s penance and the Savoy’s Palace’s burning. OOOH boy was my heart beating throughout, my hair stood on end when the ‘when Adam delved and eve spun who then was the gentleman’ chant ominously appeared just before that happened. Also the whole description of the escape and the priest’s murder were something else. I really felt like I was there. 

Characterisation: It is always great to see an author who has the sufficient range to make the audience feel the character’s ageing, even from omniscient third person. Catherine as the young girl felt a bit insipid to me and also a bit like a parody of an old-fashioned historical romance heroine, but I suppose it made sense given that she was meant to be sheltered. However, older C Swynford had lots more depth to her character than many reviewers concede here and her actions had consequences and effects on her development. It was especially interesting to see her struggle with her own identity as a yeoman’s daughter when the peasant’s revolt broke out. You could see how confused she was (which gave her complexity as not just another know-it-all female character) When conversing with her mendicant priest about why she thinks serfdom would be beneficial to everyone because of the order it provides, not understanding how freedom’s importance to the serfs was so visceral that it overrode concerns such as stability. Because having spent so much time in royal circles where she was regularly overawed by those of higher ranks, she had become too preoccupied in looking up and not enough in looking down. Her relationship with her serf (whose name now escapes me as its been a week) was such a lovely insight into the motivations of the range of classes which were a part of this and what I appreciated the most is that the book wasn’t gospelly in blaming any one ‘estate’ and had done well showing how the situation had become difficult because of the destabilising effects of the Black Death. I really think that a good work of fiction must always let the reader make up their mind instead of shoving your views down their throats and I really felt like I was given space to think. 

Another part of her character that I found very realistic was how she felt during her pilgrimage. Having not so long gone on one myself, I can attest to the absolute guilt that is felt when certain relics and churches do not move you the way you thought they would. The way she envies Blanche’s positive experience at My Lady of Walsingham because the latter had a pure conscience whereas the former was full of guilt was harrowing and it reflects how many christians even today do not have the privilege to take in every aspect of the faith they would wish and sometimes just do not feel the things that others have told them they are supposed to feel. I think this aspect of christian life that needs more representation generally. God seems unconcerned with her and its just as that that no miracle comes to her and her daughter doesn’t appear until she had made peace with herself (of which Julian of Norwich was no small part) and even then she sort of loses her because her daughter becomes an Anchoress. The whole time it felt like things were happening to Catherine as they do to everyone else. There were, however, a couple of characters which I felt I would have wanted more development - Gaunt for one was pretty elusive the whole novel, but not too little that he did not hold any appeal or attraction to the reader (and me). His stubborn personality and temper came through very well and I felt that through it all, his feelings for Catherine were genuine and pure. I realised I rooted for Gaunt when I felt sad for him when Catherine left all of a sudden. It really was an impossible situation. Geoffrey Chaucer was charming and I loved how he had those witty observations and Blanche held this lovely distant aura and it made one aware that there was more to see of her than people’s perception of her as a marble statue would allow them to. That’s why I felt like I wanted more time with her. Hugh Swynford I also found quite tragic especially a bit after he died when Catherine returned to Kettlethorpe and there was this whole reminder of him and retrospective of their turbulent life together. He really was a scared terce man. Richard II was comical by the end but I agree with those who say his characterisation was offensive and queer-coded. I think they could have done with ‘whimsical Peter-pan boy’ without that bit where he pretty much goes on a killing spree against the members of the peasant’s revolt. The flower of the characterisation in this book were certainly the secondary characters such as Cob (the serf! - I now remember his name), (Catherine’s lady whose name I forgot) and Gaunt’s French servant (to name a few) who were all allowed character arcs without her. I felt for them all and their lives were of interest to me on their own merits as well as how they intertwined with Catherine. I loved the amount of attention put on gentry life and how it constantly dances between serfdom and nobility, all together with the ins and outs of running an estate, collecting rent and I am so glad that Catherine wasn’t spending the whole book just whirling around the royal court for this reason. I generally find such stories with their all about ‘oh look it’s this famous lady’ and ‘wow this is her family’ and female characters just get stuck having inconsequential conversations while there are grittier tales to be told.

Prose: As with all good prose there is not much to say. Long paragraphs on this topic are usually for books with middling or bad prose. It was purple prose at its finest (as in it will go on my goodreads shelf with that same name). It was however not as fluent, lyrical and stream-of-consciousnessy as say ‘We Speak No Treason’, nor was the vocabulary or sentence structure as original as another third person omniscient novel: ‘The Last of the Barons’. I can sort of respects that fact because, in contrast to TWOTR novels of which there are plenty, there is really really no need for barely any exposition or great clarity for them to make sense in the year of our lord 2022. However, this was written in the 1950s and as far as I know it was among the first books of its time period, and certainly, the first Gaunt and Catherine novel. It would compare this book’s prose to that of a well-written fairy tale. Engaging and well-paced but still a book that consistently takes a break and focuses on the moment and the characters and does not let the reader move-on until we have taken in every sight, smell, sound and feeling of certain scenes. I suppose this is what the youths of today call ‘character-driven’ as opposed to ‘plot-driven’. As always, I feel like I need to put this disclaimer: No I do not think it is a work of art surpassing the grit of Dostoevsky or whatever. But I am allowed to say it is a good book nonetheless.

In Conclusion, I would recommend this to everyone. Especially those looking to write a historical novel. I would especially recommend you purchase it on audible because it offers an interesting insight into how long sentences appear in the reader’s mind. It certainly helped me reconsider the ‘tempo’ of my own work’s sentences if you know what I mean. It was called a ‘feminist’ novel during its time and I must insist that it still be called so. This is one of the only novels I have ever read where a woman is given a redemption arc. Many ‘feminist’ novels still have women’s personalities revolve around men in the hidden guise of ‘family’. By all means let them love their husbands and their kids but if there is no trace of an interior life or of a conscience that is not result-driven and personal, then they are characters who exist only in relation to others. Granted the status-based medieval ages makes it hard for an author to evoke this through, however, people back then also had their personal relationship with god. Personhood was a concept that existed back then and I think that this book makes a good job at showing how Catherine’s life is beholden with many more gross and complex issues besides feeling ‘restricted’ by her gender or struggling to conceive a child or romantic issues or such. In this tale she struggles with faith, her own conscience, fulfilling unwanted duties as lady of the manor even after Hugh dies and the changing fabric of 1380 society. In other words, stuff that is not gendered. She exists beyond a romantic heroine as the author never seems to tire of her, and continues following her life even when she is not with gaunt. 

since I love your headcanons/meta (if you're up to it) can I have your thoughts on the guard + fashion

andy

Andy probably has a pretty complicated relationship with fashion, like i think she does with most things in the modern world given the fact that it’s only a tiny spec of her lifetime

She’s spent her life watching thousands upon thousands of fashion trends come and go and was alive during the creation of many fabrics themselves

She’s been a warrior her entire life, we may not know the manner of her first death (or at least not from the movies) but we know she’s spent most of her life as an immortal fighting, both before and after she met quynh

Fashion for her was always at the very least comfortable and flexible, something she could travel and fight in without a moment’s notice

But to some extent how she looks, her image is a very important aspect of her, especially in the earlier part of her life

She was a famed fighter for so long, earning her name “fighter of man”, there were probably stories told of her and quynh, warrior women who no one can defeat, her clothing at that time at least semi reflected that, she wanted to be seen as “unbreakable” as she says in the movie

She had probably minimal armor, after all she doesn’t need it technically and would only prefer it to have less healing time if she took on less damage, but her clothing showed exactly who she was, every bit the warrior

As practical as she is, who she appears to be is still probably very much still tied to her identity, she may not be known anymore and doesn’t even want to be for the sake of their safety but her clothes are not just strictly practical, rather than be the warrior of myth she has now become a warrior of the modern age, a warrior of the shadows

Her clothes still reflect her younger self, the famed warrior, just scaled back and modernized. She wears calf-high boots, arm braces and fitted clothing in all black  she cuts quite and imposing figure and that’s what i think she wants. She doesn’t necessarily use it to intimidate others, as her younger self may have done, this time her clothing is now to make her still feel powerful, a reflection of who she is now: skilled and deadly, ready at a moments notice to protect those she loves

While jeans and a tank top is a perfectly normal outfit, with the boots and braces you’d do a double take, wondering who she was, but it’s meant to blend in just enough but if you look closely enough at how tight the boots are laced and her posture, tank top carefully tucked in you’d start to wonder

I think she does actually like fashion, she’s seen so much of it and she probably sees things that remind her of something she saw hundreds of years ago, like seeing trends pop up again and it fills her with nostalgia. It reminds her of when she was in love with humanity, loved seeing what people created and invented and when she truly believed in their cause

But things definitely changed after quynh was thrown in the ocean, just had a less of desire and the clothes probably reminded her of quynh, what’d she’d wear and what she’d get for andy to wear and as modern times came around she stuck to stuff that was more practical, still a little fashionable, but stuff that could be worn doing anything from sleeping to fighting

I think her clothing in the movie, mostly black, reflects who she is as this time: a powerful and strong warrior who’s also afraid, she’s afraid that she spent her life fighting for something that doesn’t matter but also (pre-nile) afraid of what she’s going to do now that she said the world could burn - what does a 6,000+ immortal warrior do then?

booker

Booker is not unfashionable, and while his relatively apathetic and cynical nature might make you think fashion isn’t something he would care about, i think he does

He isn’t like joe who would go the extra step to make an outfit more aesthetically pleasing, but also he isn’t as super practical as nicky (he keeps his gun in his pants for fuck’s sake)

Booker is tired and wants to feel normal, to feel his humanity that he feels is slipping away from him even though it’s already been 200 years - he’s still adjusting and that’s because he never wanted this and still doesn’t completely accept this is his life now (hence at least a partial reason for his betrayal)

But i don’t booker is one to make too much of a fuss about what he’s wearing, he wants simple clothing that won’t make him look out of place, especially since he was the one who met with copley for that previous mission maybe he is the one who scouts missions as their seemingly resident computer person

So he goes for what a lot of people do: classic pieces of clothing in selection of relatively neutral colors that all work together. In their life it’s important to have clothes at the ready, both in their bags and at their safehouses and i’d bet at least most of his stuff would work together with no issues

Aside from the tac outfit of course, he mainly wears an assortment of jeans, boots, button downs and leather jackets in mostly blacks and grays with a couple faded blues and greens - any of these can be thrown on without an issue, it looks like a complete outfit and nothing about how he’s dressed is any way going to attrract attention

Plus this man doesn’t care enough about himself to make him look good rather than just being fine with what he has, he wants to die and doesn’t allow himself to feel the love he has from his family, dressing up to him isn’t going to add anything or make anything better

So in the sequel i’d love to see him deal with his pain and his betrayal head on and who knows maybe joe will buy him some zipper pants too and maybe booker will actually like them

nicky

Nicky is the other more practical one other than andy, but he lacks her attempt at keeping at appearances/empowerment

The majority of movies he’s wearing plain t-shirts and regular jeans with dad jackets, the only slightly impractical fashion choice being his hoodie from the tac outfit, which it does cover him up completely and allows him to cover his face more if needed but also it’s hot (i also like that post comparing the hoodie to the crusader’s chainmail helmet)

But nicky in essence is practical, he’s the protector of the group, always watching and always on the edges, he doesn’t care much i think for what he wears as long as it allows him to do his job

Yes of course he participated in fashions over the years, and will wear things joe picks out for him and occasionally what he picks out for himself, but that stuff is not for when there is a mission, not when people need help

But i think he usually gravitates towards simple like andy, something to run and fight in but he lacks andy’s past of fame, reverence, and notoriety (at least in the way she had it - he did fight in the crusades after all) so his clothing isn’t to do anything for him but to act as clothing, it holds no mental power over him, he has no image to project - he’s done so much that he wants to help people and protect his family and that’s it

I don’t think growing up in genoa before the crusades lent itself to that many fashion opportunities and while we aren’t sure of his exact status, i don’t think any of the guard were particularly wealthy (except possibly yusuf as the son of merchants) and being a priest at the time i’m sure didn’t make him wealthy in his adulthood either

And while he’s lived 900+ years, the way you grew up doesn’t just leave you, he was at least catholic, and i still think he holds his faith close, just in a different way now

Plus look at his tac outfit, the most comfortable looking (it is a hoodie after all) and he has half a dozen guns strapped to himself along with sword, he wants the ability to carry his things comfortably without impeding him in any way, he wants to be totally and completely prepared and is very much the typical dad in this sense, everything must be on hand so he can protect those he loves

Also you know this man owns cargo pants much to joe’s dismay

joe

we all know joe is the fashionable male among the guard, i mean the backwards baseball cap and the zipper pants? yeah

in his tac outfit, the hat really adds nothing to it besides aesthetic, it’s not shielding his eyes from the sun because he’s wearing sunglasses and it doesn’t aid him in any way during a fight unless he had decided to pull a booker and do “whatever works” and just like hit someone with it - it’s a purely aesthetic choice

but joe was the child of merchants and lived in an area with a rich history of colorful and beautiful fashion, the region was known for the lightweight fabrics and light silks that during the crusades, many were brought back to europe and astounded the europeans

i think that has stayed with joe, that complete appreciation and awe at the craft of making clothing and using clothing to show yourself and personality 

joe is also a man of the arts, there was so much poetry and arts in the maghreb region, and while that existed in italy as well, nicky was a priest and probably wasn’t exposed to it much outside a religious context

joe is also an artist himself, he has such a grand appreciation for aesthetics and while clothing purely for aesthetics isn’t practical for the life they live unless they are on a break, he manages to infuse his clothing with his personality nonetheless

the backwards hat was fun, unnecessary but it also didn’t get in the way of his fighting. he probably just enjoyed the look (and i know we all did too) and the leather jacket with the hoodie and zippered pants at the end scene was just such an effortless cool look that was still practical but had a lot more personality and an attempted look™ than say nicky and his dad jacket

nile

most of what nile is wearing in the movie isn’t her choice of clothing, not that i don’t think she’d absolutely pick out that green bomber jacket but in the movie she wasn’t the one who picked it, it was packed for her

but the outfit she wears in the end is just like her, trendy and young and refreshing given that the rest of the guard sticks to their own styles they’ve been in the whole movie

but nile is the one who is most likely to branch out, she’s only in her late 20s and by her last scene in the movie it’s only been maybe a week or so since she became immortal, she hasn’t evolved a ‘be ready to fight’ kind of fashion and doesn’t have the hundreds of years of experience telling her to buy things that she can fight in as well as sleep in - now she was in the marines so to some extent but not with her own personal clothing choices

despite her chaotic introduction to being immortal, it won’t set in for a while that their lives are running from one danger to the next, taking breaks when they can, especially with andy’s renewed commitment to the job she and the others set out to accomplish, her clothing style will probably change as she settles into this new life

but we can see in her last scene, she is wearing comfortable clothing, a fitted shirt with a stylish yet somewhat more loose fitting jacket and looser pants (they look like joggers and i can’t completely remember if they are or not)

so while her clothes are comfortable, they are more fashionable than any of the others, and while this probably has lots to do with her age i think it’s very important to her current state of mind

she’s had the most insane weeks of her life, found out she’s not going to die for a very long time, found out there are others like her, and had to say goodbye to her family without seeing them again because she’s decided to stick with her new life

and this is a massive change for her, after being in the military for quite a few years, assuming she joined when she around 18-20 which i think she did enlist then especially given the fact that her dad passed when she was younger

life in the military is very controlled, so her having this sudden new gift but also this vast wide open future is probably terrifying to her, so much has changed so quickly, she hasn’t had the time to properly sort through how she’s feeling and truly realizing what this life means

her clothes are a reflection of one thing in her life she can currently control because she can’t control what’s going to happen in the world and where copley will find them a job or where they will be at any one time but she has control over herself so she dresses herself how she wants, how she’d dress if she was home

it’s some semblance of normality, some piece of herself that hasn’t changed and that she wants to express

quynh

while we don’t see quynh much besides in flashbacks and then in the final scene i think fashion is going to be something important to her

she spent 500 years drowning, unable to do anything, unable to save herself

nile said she was feeling insane and angry, quynh spent 500 years without an ounce of control over what was happening to her and regaining her life is something she is not going to take for granted

she’s going to live her life to the fullest, which includes wearing whatever she likes and wearing the colors she loves and the clothing that makes her feel beautiful and badass and powerful - a little like andy and a little like nile

it’s a huge part of her life she’s regained, clothing is something the whole world sees and part of how we perceive people and in a world that she doesn’t know at all she’ll want to craft herself an image because clothing is still one thing she can understand - the styles are all different but i have no doubts it’s something she took to quite quickly, having something she can control completely

What are some of your headcannons for Finny?

The Facts:

Name: Republic of Finland! (goes by 'Finny' or 'Fin', but will love you forever if you call him Suomi)

If he needs to use a human name he switches between Timo and Teemu.

Height: Too short to reach the top shelf in the grocery store - that's all you need know.

Age: about 900, give or take a century. He's lost count.

'Birthday': December 6th! Don't you forget!

Relationship: eeehhhh ?? He's been intimate with and/or dated each Nordic (apart from Iceland) at some point, and had a weird fling with Estonia about 100 years ago but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ nothing is super exclusive. If you've lived as long as the Nations have, anything goes really.

The Man himself:

- As well as Finnish, Swedish, traces of Danish and Norwegian, Finny also knows Finnish Sign language and British Sign language.

- He really likes Madonna? He would die to meet her.

- Thinks ABBA are overrated but will never admit it.

- He's type 1 diabetic! He's very open about it too, and happy to educate people if they’re curious.

- And yes, he's fat. We’re not afraid of that word on this blog, and Fin is perfectly aware of his body size, thank you. While he's not bothered by it, insecure or self conscious, he will get mad if you assume that he's diabetic because he's fat, or vice versa. He also doesn't like being referred to as 'chubby'.

- Has a surprising good singing voice. Like, he can really belt it out. R.i.p your ears.

- He competes in rally car races.

- When it comes to TV shows and books, political dramas are his favourite genre.

- He's incredibly hard working and has never taken a sick day for at least 350 years.

- Not very good with modern technology, and is kinda old fashioned in some of his ways. (He still uses a rotary telephone in his house and boils his coffee and hot water on the stove)

- Fin finds comfort in going to church. He won't go to any public services, but if he ever needs to think about anything or needs some alone time he'll sit in the church for a while by himself deep in thought.

- Probably has the largest collection of Muumi memorabilia in the whole of Finland. He is Finland after all.

- Before she died, Fin arranged to meet Tove Jansson. Apparently she's the only human that he has ever told who he really is.

- On that note, Fin doesn't really like interacting with his people or any humans that form his government unless he absolutely has to. He just gets very sad about the fact that he will outlive them all, and unlike some of the Nordics, he will only exclusively hang out with other Nations.

- All in all he's just a bit odd. He gets drunk quickly, has no fashion sense, is kinda eccentric, but is also one of the most warm hearted people you'll ever meet.

- Basically the embodiment of the word 'sisu'.

// Well that’s it from me! I just thought I’d use this ask to introduce my Finland, but it’s over to him now! - Mun lumassen

Breakdown Extortion Proof 8/24/2020

-        Richie’s wife said KB did not know people at Weichert just paid them to manage his property.

-        So, NB lied when she stated that she “knew the owners and that they were easy going and would pay me cash to work on their property or I could put it towards my rent”.

+ When I met her later that day at the property, she had no clue, utterly no clue what she wanted repaired. I had to make suggestions and NB did just agree with whatever I suggested. The property in my estimation at that time really was not inhabitable.

+ NB gave me her credit card to purchase materials. I saved all receipts and I still have the card.

+ I also saved all texts, and emails from NB and Weichert.

+ When leaving the property NB said strangely, “that she would be in Miami for a few days and would not be able to receive calls; this comment made no sense and she seemed uneasy and I felt a little uncomfortable with this.

+ I did not hear from NB for two weeks. She would not respond to my texts or calls. I got an email or text simply saying hi, after two weeks.

+ I got another email two weeks later she asked about my working further, I said after I am paid for what I had done. She never responded.

-        I submitted my invoice at this time. It took Weichert 2.5 months to honor my bill.

-        During this 2.5 month I began receiving emails from Weichert stating my rent was not paid and that late fees were being assessed and I responded that you have my invoice and you are refusing to honor it.

-        I am still receiving emails from Weichert claiming that I owe them for about $900 in late fees.

-        Someone did finally honor my bill, either Weichert or the property owner, I do not know which.

+ I suspect Weichert as they never intended to pay me, didn’t want to involve the property owner and thought I might call the Health Department.

-        My invoice, although submitted to Weichert well before the rent was due, was not honored by Weichert in an untimely fashion, and I owe no late fees to Weichert.

-        I did point out to Weichert that the property had a septic leak and that everyone knew about it and had seen Weichert workers digging at the leak for years and likely they could be sued by all the tenets, especially those who had children exposed to it who had lived there for years. This may be why Weichert finally paid me. I did not call the DH, but they did appear at the property about a week after I mentioned the possible septic system suit. Which was about two months after I submitted a report to Weichert detailing all the problems with this property including the septic system.

-        I propose that NB and TD and Weichert intentionally hired me with no intent to pay me, a statement which without investigation appears rather silly as it would be counterproductive to steal from your own tenet as I might not be able to pay the rent, but in mind of the fact that my previous landlord/owner of this same property was threatened by Lee County Code Enforcement officer Vincent Berta if he did not evict me, I feel it is plausible that Weichert is acting in concert with VB and attempted to put me out of my home and on the street. More about Stephanie E

-        Weichert’s deceit and dishonesty continues in the form of tenet harassment, causing tenet duress and attempted extortion by repeatedly placing 3-day notices of eviction upon my door, about 6 in the last 9 months threatening me with eviction if I do not pay them monies, I do not owe them.

-        Weichert’s association with the Lee county Code Enforcement if actual is criminal and litigable.

in future tense

part 3 of: atelier heart

ikemen vampire: temptation in the dark theodorus van gogh / mc | gen | 2565 | [ao3 in bio]

She and Theo were born and lived in times a hundred years apart. In the weeks they're together, she and Theo attempt to understand their time-separated worlds through a back and forth of trivia. But Theo learns much more than just what it's like to be in the 21st century.

spoiler warning: a conversation between MC and Theo in chapter 4 of his route is referenced.

What does it mean to be born in the 21st century?

Theo tries his best to imagine what it would be like, in a world more than a hundred years from his now; his “now” which is already ten years ahead of his “then”, before vampires, before Comte. And yet even in his wildest imaginations he can’t seem to grasp what it would mean to live in the future; time is instead a looping spiral instead of straight arrow, the kind he used to imagine it was.

When he takes her out into the city the day after she arrived, it’s her first time out of the mansion, into the world that is late 19th century Paris, France. To Theo, nothing really strikes him as different or interesting in this time period; sure, the fashion has changed a little from when before he was turned, and maybe there were a few different landmarks here and there, but nothing that was enough to warrant the look on her face, that was, in two words: entirely wonderstruck.

Eyes as wide as saucers like an excited child, an unashamed smile on her face. At the most mundane things too: the architecture, the cobblestone streets, turns her head at carriages like she had never seen one in her entire life before this point. She observes the ladies passing by, her eyes roaming over their clothes, and then turning back towards her own rather simple set—le Comte hadn’t had a chance to have clothes tailored for her yet, but soon he will. For now, she tugs at her sleeves and runs her hands over her dress like trying her best not to seem like she’s trying too hard to fit in, like these clothes aren’t hers to begin with, like this isn’t the world she belongs to.

And yet, instead, she does the opposite: carries the aura of being someone otherworldly, not entirely alien but at the same time—so strikingly unfamiliar.

At that moment, the image of a recognizable painting fills Theo’s mind, one he’d seen at an auction once, and he wonders if it is rather too on-brand of him as an art dealer to think of such a parallel like that.

Meisje met tulband, painted in the 17th century by Johannes Vermeer, during the Dutch Golden Age. An obviously European woman in what seems like clothes borrowed from worldly trips far from the embrace of home. During this time, what was exotic was valuable. It illuminated experience, knowledge of a bigger world beyond the borders of the mountains and seas. On her head, a turban from an Eastern country, on her frame, clothes that do not suit the style of European garb. But most importantly: a pearl earring, large and glimmering, treasure of the faraway seas, hovering just underneath her ear like hesitating if it actually hangs from it or if it is only an illusion of grandiosity.

So attractive, in all her exoticism, pulled back from the gray of European normal, that is known and familiar and comfortable, standing above all others.

And yet so remarkably out of place.

So on the first week, she and Theo make a deal.

For every thing about the 19th century that Theo explains to her, she would tell him something about the 21st century in exchange. A fair deal, Theo thinks. This is what he can give her. Just a trade of information: nothing too personal to be shared, nothing too involved. This guarantees that both of their curiosities are satisfied, and—well, Theo will never say it out loud, but—this is also his way of getting to know each other in tiny, unobtrusive ways.

Not enough to make a difference, of course, he thinks. He doesn’t want there to be a difference. If he’s keeping her by his side at all times to monitor her, he’ll just have to do his fair share of understanding who he’s working with. That’s about it.

Except there was one thing Theo did not get to add onto his assumptions: that the woman never runs out of questions.

Sure, she has the hindsight of having been born in the time when this has all technically already happened, already a time long past her—time is a spiral, or something, Theo reminds himself—but the reality of having to live all this is still way beyond her. So she doesn’t stop asking. Even about the most trivial of things.

It drives Theo insane.

Like what kinds of clothes people find fashionable. (“You could see it on the street.” “Well, yeah, but I wanted to know what you found fashionable.” “I don’t really care.” “You’re boring.”)

Or if ankles are still scandalous things. (A squint of eyebrows. “Dresses are often supposed to touch the floor.” “Not where I’m from. You’ll see much more than just ankles.” “…Knees?” “…Thighs. Or more.” “…Why.” “Why not?”)

And what kind of things people enjoy. (“Séances? Sounds scary.” “Others talk in flower codes.” “Oh! We still have that in the future! Kinda.”)

Also, if Kings and Queens are still “a thing” (her words)—and she can’t seem to believe him when he says they do, still, in fact, exist, and reign over nations. (“So instead, you have, democracy, you call it?” “Well, we’re trying.”)

But even if she always seems so awed by the workings of this era, somehow it is Theo who is left much more bewildered with the stories she tells. While she listens to him with this kind of avid wonder, the kind a child would have to a storytelling adult, Theo sits next to her like a skeptic, incredulous, mind unable to process what she is saying.

Like, what is an internet? The inter-, he figures out, but a net? Of what?

“It’s a network! That’s what the net stands for. So it’s kind of like a group of people, who get to talk, but digital.”

“Digital? What do fingers have to do with his?”

“Fingers? …oh, because digits. Um. No, it’s kind of like… a space that… you can’t touch? It’s sort of… mental?”

Theo doesn’t have a follow-up question because he doesn’t know how to follow-up to that. He just kind of looks like her like she grew a second head. Can this much change really happen in a hundred years or so? Why is her world so foreign from his?

But it doesn’t deter him. He listens intently to her stories about art in a hundred years. Cameras so small, they can fit in your pocket, so fast they can take a photo in a second. Artworks made not of canvas and paint, but of, again, this “digital” medium, which is accessible to nearly the entire world. And because of this “internet”, everyone who has it can both make and see art so easily—and they can fit these in their “cell phones”, hand-held telephones that can connect to nearly anyone… without wires!

And with each and every one of her attempts to explain the overwhelming time she used to come from, something inside Theo grows, a feeling he does not understand yet. It’s dizzying—but he cannot stop listening.

So he doesn’t stop answering either.

By the second week, whenever their schedule allows, he takes her to museums, introduces her to art movements that have flourished, are only beginning to flourish. Occasionally, she will point at one and say, “Oh, that one’s pretty famous in the future!” and Theo feels a sense of pride. The appreciation for art and beauty is one of the many things that transcends time—if the world allows it to.

He’s far from Comte’s level of elite, but he takes her to shops anyway, to see what things are in stores. The feeling that sits in Theo’s chest only grows as she points at things and says, “That’s a classic vintage piece. I’ve seen those a lot in museums,” and sooner than Theo would like, every mention of time gives him that feeling of distance, pulls her away from him.

So far away.

The fact keeps pressing itself into Theo’s brain, that she doesn’t belong here, she is only a tourist, she is only here for a short while.

The world is a gentler place in that time she is from. He doesn’t want to selfishly keep her here.

(But if he could, if she would, maybe, he wouldn’t be opposed to it.)

Shortly after a conversation about traveling from her home country to Paris in the 21st century—“You can get halfway across the world in half a day?” “Yeah, non-stop flights do that. 900 people in a single ride.” “…I find it hard to believe you.” “You don’t have to, it won’t change the fact.”—that last remark pushes Theo to finally, finally ask the question that he has held hesitantly in his mouth for the longest time.

“What’s it like, sitting here in the 19th century, knowing the future?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment, her eyes shifting off to one side, away from Theo, as she ponders on his question. Theo takes this time to observe her instead—the way she holds herself up now, so comfortable, rather confident in her 19th century clothing, the little ways she’s learned the mannerisms apt for the time. She’s so different from the girl he’d seen that first night, trembling, afraid of a (well-meaning) nightmare.

Ah, yes, yet another reminder that she does not belong here.

Not with him. Not like this.

Theo snaps back into focus once she speaks. “It’s a little conflicting to me,” she begins. “I don’t know how time works, so somehow it both feels like much of it is already set in stone, but also there are so many more things that can change.” She turns to him, meeting his gaze. “But what I’m sure of is that everything you’re doing now is going to have an impact on the future—I guess I’ll see it when I get back.”

(Theo withers ever so slightly, but not enough for her to notice.)

She continues. “It’s a little scary too, because historically—well, I guess it’s not history yet, but, there are still a lot of bad things that will happen, in the next hundred years. So many.” She cringes. “But after that? There are also so many good things that will happen. Things that—well, I haven’t stayed long enough here to say for sure, but—I think many of the good things that will happen by then still seem unthinkable now. The same way you don’t believe me sometimes. But they will happen.”

And she’s so sure of it: tells him that millions of people of all ages, classes, and nationalities go to museums to enjoy art—even Vincent’s!—in the future. That some of them even get to go for free, that the world’s governments actually want people to be in any degree appreciative of art. She tells him how she could just look up a painting on her “cell phone” and she would already be able to experience it, in a way. She tells him that so much of the world revolves around art being accessible, that people don’t even think about it too much anymore. It’s just normal.

“You won’t believe it, Theo,” she says. “Art is everywhere.”

She reminds him of the sunrise.

The sunrise he’s long dreamt of—the dawn of the new era of Art, in a better world where artists are free to make what they want to make, to showcase their work, to continuously push the barriers of the human understanding of beauty and creation. The fact that she’s come from that time doesn’t only make her a reminder of it—but also an assurance, that all of this will pay off, that he is making a difference.

He may not have been one of the chosen ones, the gifted ones, who had extraordinary talents, who could, with a wave of their hand, change the turning of the world, influence society, but—he has something he can do.

And she believes in him.

Why does it make him feel so much steadier just knowing she believes in him?

He is no one. He is nobody important. They can give him names now, call him the Phantom of Goupil, but in the long stretch of time after this, in a hundred years, in a thousand—he will be no one. History will eventually forget his name—and Theo has long accepted this truth. And if he doesn’t have much to offer to time, he has much less for her. The 19th century is no match to the 21st century’s innovations and astonishing development. He is just a plain man from a backwards time.

But at some point in the past few weeks with her, that feeling he’s once again started to ask if he could reclaim has grown in him. The desire to be remembered.

Not by the world, not by history—just by her.

Even a hundred years into the future.

There are a lot of things Theo doesn’t know yet about what’s to come. But if there is one thing about art that he knows is consistent across time, it’s that a single piece of art has the power to change something fundamental in people: the way they see life, the way they see art, the way they think about the world, the way they feel. A fateful encounter not only with the piece of art itself, but with the moment in which one meets it. The feeling that rushes, that consumes, the recognition: that one’s life has now been altered, irrevocably, by that one piece of art.

It is falling in love, but greater.

Theo really thought he would never find the capacity to ever feel that way again. That that moment, with that painting, is the pinnacle of what his heart can take.

But now he knows he isn’t.

Now he knows it isn’t, so he prays.

He doesn’t have much to give, but he prays.

That maybe she will give him the taste of it. Carve the shape of it in his mouth.

Down his throat. Chase it down into the pit of his belly where the acid of his self-resentment remains. Let it echo in his veins.

And if she does—his voice will scramble will to make sense of the sound, and he will settle for other ways to let himself be heard, the strained vocal cords of his heart, calling her hondje, knabbeltje, the only way he knows how. To say “this is for you.” To tell her how good she’s been to him, so obedient. To scoff at her rebuttals. To join in her laughter. To tell her things only the hollow in the center of his chest he’d long shouted at have ever heard.

Oh, she doesn’t even need to ask.

The fact dissolves like something bitter turning sweet, sweet, impossibly sweet on his tongue.

She doesn’t need to do much of anything: she just needs to stay.

To forgive his grumbling, his shaking footsteps, his frequent step-backs into a past that has long left him behind. To look back over her shoulder, call out his name in the star-like lilt of her voice, Theo?

And he will give her everything.

---

in the atelier: The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Johannes Vermeer, 1665.

this is just a fun trivia thing, but the title "the Girl with the Pearl Earring" (Meisje met de parel in Dutch) was apparently only given to the painting in 1995. i didn't find what it was called much earlier (it was auctioned somewhere in the Hague in 1881, bought by a private collector), but after it was transferred to the Mauritshuis (also in the Hague) in 1902, it was called "Girl with a Turban" (Meisje met tulband). that's kind of why i decided to go for the more obscure / older name.

The Italian publisher, editor and collector Franco Maria Ricci has died at the age of 82.

In sumptuously produced art books, and as editor of the bi-monthly art magazine FMR, Ricci published writing by Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes and many others over the course of his long and distinguished career. In 2019, Susan Moore visited his estate at Fontanellato, near Parma, where in recent years Ricci had constructed the largest labyrinth in the world out of bamboo; they discussed Ricci’s notable collection of largely 18th- and 19th-century sculpture and paintings, as well as his library of books published by the great typographer Giambattista Bodoni, whose works Ricci had reprinted in his first foray into publishing. The interview is published in full below.

Collecting may be read as a form of autobiography written with works of art rather than words. In the case of Franco Maria Ricci, his is a life composed of both words and pictures. He has not only published the most lavishly produced art magazine – FMR – and art books in the world, but also spent the last 50 years amassing a peerless collection of volumes produced by the great Italian typographer, compositor and publisher Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) and a rich, eclectic collection of some 500 largely neoclassical and baroque paintings and sculptures. Both collections are at the heart of his most recent and extraordinary venture, the creation of the immense, star-shaped Labirinto della Masone, near Parma, the largest labyrinth in the world – and surely one of the few planted with bamboo.

There is something surreal, and slightly disturbing, about turning off the autostrada and suddenly encountering this majestic bamboo structure rising 10m or more above the plains of the Po valley. For all its elegant calligraphic stems and angular leaves, this is not the sparse specimen bamboo of Chinese ink-painting, but a forest. Here, more than 200,000 of these fast-growing bamboos arch upward in their quest for light. Once I turn into the drive of what was originally Ricci’s grandfather’s estate at Fontanellato, the brilliant azure June sky all but disappears. By the end of my two-day visit, it seems that the contrasts of light and dark are an apt metaphor for the book and art collections – and for the entire complex of maze, museum, archive and chapel, the latter built in the form of a pyramid. Ricci has always been part rationalist, part visionary.

Ricci’s story begins with the book. ‘I grew up surrounded by my father’s books. Reading Shakespeare, Homer, Joyce and Dante saved me from bad taste,’ he once said. ‘It made beauty simple, familiar and immediate in my eyes.’ It was a book, too, that transformed his life and launched a long and successful career: Bodoni’s Manuale tipografico, first published in 1818. Before his discovery of Bodoni’s works in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma in the 1960s, a career in publishing seemed unlikely. The stylish Ricci, a racing driver and a dandy with dark cherubic curls, was best known for patterning the snow in the piazza around Parma Cathedral with the wheels of his E-type Jaguar. Even Bernardo Bertolucci remembered that car.

As a young man, Ricci had wanted to study archaeology, but an uncle in the oil world persuaded him to sign up for geology instead. After three months in Turkey spent looking for oil that was not there, he realised the oil business was not for him. Yet his education proved critical in unlikely ways. He spent weekends exploring the mysterious, labyrinthine underground tunnels and caves that are a feature of the Romagna region of Italy. He also designed posters for Parma University’s theatre festival that caught the attention of an American curator preparing a show of Italian design in New York. He became, inadvertently, a graphic artist, and went on to create striking graphics for everything from Poste Italiane to Alitalia.

Ricci has long insisted that ‘Bodoni was not only a typographer. He achieved modernity and elegance through graphic art. He was, like Canova, a champion of neoclassicism but in two dimensions. I immediately fell in love with the proportions, the concept of beauty.’ Bodoni’s genius was not simply the freshness, rigour and precision of the typefaces, with their dramatic contrasts between thick and thin line, but also his sense of how to lay out a page. Texts are set with extravagantly wide margins and with little or no decoration.

Ricci decided to reproduce the master’s Manuale tipografico, although everyone told him he was mad to do it. He bought two early offset typography machines which, he noted, were ‘as expensive as a Ferrari, which I wanted to buy but never did’, and had the highest-quality paper made exclusively for the project by Fabriano. It took a year to publish the three volumes in 900 numbered copies (1964–65). ‘So I became a publisher. It became a bestseller.’

Much to his mother’s horror, Ricci decided to continue to publish very expensive books – art books printed in Bodonian style – and later, literary editions, several series of which were edited by Jorge Luis Borges, whose presence looms large in library and labyrinth. At a time when Arte Povera dominated the Italian avant-garde, Ricci chose opulent black silk covers embossed with gold, and printed on costly pale blue Fabriano paper with handmade plates. He wanted his books to be rare – printing small editions – but also surprising. He gave Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino and Borges free rein to write accompanying texts.

His wife Laura Casalis remembers having been struck by the originality of Ricci’s 1970 book on the then little-appreciated Erté – text by Barthes – before she met the publisher himself in 1975, and soon found herself working on a book on red paper-cut portraits of Mao, accompanied by 39 of the Chairman’s own poems printed in Chinese characters. ‘Little by little I slipped into publishing with him – Franco was a workaholic and I realised that was the only way I would see him. Those Mao paper-cuts were typical of the practically unknown subjects that he would seek out all his life, and we sometimes show them between loan exhibitions in the museum. Franco has l’occhio lungo – he can see beauty in something which may take others a long time to recognise.’

It is in the library I find Ricci and, indeed, where he is to be found most mornings and afternoons. It is part of a cluster of picturesque 19th-century stone buildings surrounded by lush and increasingly exotic gardens. He had begun renovating the dilapidated stables behind his grandfather’s long-abandoned villa as a summerhouse and library in the 1970s, and its enormous hayloft still serves as an idyllic open-air dining room and entertaining space, even though the couple have now moved into the main house. Inside this romantic half-ruined folly, Ricci created the unexpected: two neoclassical library rooms lined with bookshelves and marble busts, their domed and coffered ceilings reminiscent of those in the Biblioteca Palatina.

As soon as we arrive in the inner sanctum, the Bodoni library with its more than 1,200 volumes – missing a tantalising three or four tomes but otherwise complete – Ricci is immediately up on his feet and pulling down and opening cherished volumes, eyes blazing. Despite the heat, he wears an elegant embroidered linen waistcoat but not its jacket, which hangs nearby, bearing the synthetic red flower that became in effect his iconographical device. (Tai Missoni gave him a cardigan as a present: Ricci declined the gift – he does not wear cardigans – but declared that he would always wear the red flower from its packaging thereafter, which he did. Once, when he had forgotten the flower, an officer at the Alitalia desk at Milan airport said: ‘I see you are travelling incognito today Mr Ricci.’)

Now Ricci deftly presents Bodoni’s Essai de caractères russes… of 1782, and his 1789 edition of Torquato Tasso’s pastoral play Aminta, exquisitely illuminated for the Prince of Essling. These are dear friends and the joy as he handles these pages is self-evident. This is the only significant part of the collection not to have been moved down to the museum and archive complex, a short bamboo-lined drive away. It is clear that he could never bear to live apart from these books.

The impetus to create the long-imagined labyrinth, and a museum and library to house his collections and publishing archive, was a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. The couple sold the publishing house in 1982, and their house in Milan, and moved to Fontanellato. There is a fierce pride in Laura Casalis’s voice as she explains: ‘Franco wanted to do it, he imagined it, and he found the right team of people to help him realise it.’ We are sitting over coffee in the Labirinto courtyard surveying the sharp-edged geometries of its rose-pink brick buildings, a place that already has the air of a lost ancient city discovered in a jungle. Laura describes the evolution of the museum collections within, and recalls the words of the late Italian publisher Valentino Bompiani, who described Ricci as a man of courage and fantasy.

‘Whenever he fell for some subject or artist, Franco would try to buy.’ Laura continues. ‘He was never concerned with what was or was not fashionable, and never bought to decorate a house. He collected pieces that he liked that were strange or unconventional.’ He began with Art Deco, first buying inexpensive little bronze and chryselephantine dancers by the likes of Demétre Chiparus (1886–1947), as well as Guiraud-Rivière’s dramatic figure of Isadora Duncan with two bears, which dominates the central space of the 20th-century gallery in the museum.

Here, too, are three paintings by the outsider artist Antonio Ligabue (1899–1965), a tormented soul who had led a tragic life, painting and wandering around the Po valley when he was not confined to a psychiatric hospital. Ricci published the first monograph on the artist in 1967, two years after his death, a work that helped catapult the artist from provincial to national and then international fame. Two years later, he bought two of the artist’s bold, visceral close-up heads of roaring tigers, painted in the 1950s, including the key work that had been selected for the book cover. A no less bright and richly impasted self-portrait in the guise of Vincent Van Gogh followed a year later.

Ricci also championed – and collected – the work of the third dominant presence in this space, Adolfo Wildt (1868–1931), often described as the last Symbolist but one whose reputation was, as Laura puts it, ‘tarnished by Fascist association’. Ricci published a monograph in 1988, the same year that he acquired the strange masterpiece that is Vir temporis acti of 1913, a virtuoso marble bust of a Greek or Roman soldier reimagined through the combined lenses of Michelangelo and the Secessionists. The expressive anguish of this head may be seen as a symbol of the nobility and redemption of sacrifice, but it is the refined and gleaming silken surface that led to Brancusi.

Ricci has a penchant not only for sculpture but also portraits, and portrait busts in particular. ‘I have hunted portraits all my life. I never get tired of looking at them,’ he confesses, ‘and in turn, I feel observed by them.’ In the 1990s, he began following the art market and collecting in earnest. Ricci had an office, bookshop and apartment in Paris and there and in Monaco he was to acquire many of his largely French 18th-century terracottas, some of the most compelling by less familiar names. A superb example is the bust of an intense, low-browed individual, signed by one A. Riffard and given the Revolutionary date of ‘9. Fructidor an 3e’, from 1794–95.

Another naturalistic tour de force is one of very few known terracottas by Francesco Orso, also known as François Orsy, a Piedmontese sculptor also active in Paris. Orso is responsible for the rarest sculptures here: the disconcerting life-size polychrome wax portrait busts of Vittorio Amadeo III of Savoy and his wife Maria Antonia Ferdinanda di Borbone, complete with painted papier-mâché clothes. The revolution destroyed the sculptor’s courtly patronage in Paris, and he diversified into the more overtly commercial world of the waxwork with a show featuring an effigy of the aristocratic revolutionary leader the Comte de Mirabeau and popular tableaux on themes such as Marat’s assassination by Charlotte Corday.

Unsurprisingly, given Ricci’s passion for Bodoni, the neoclassical looms large. At the centre of the Napoleonic gallery, lined with marble busts – Italian, English and Danish – is a model of Canova’s ideal head of Dante’s muse Beatrice, first conceived as an idealised portrait of Mme Récamier. The display offers a witty face-off between Wellington and Napoleon on opposing pedestals, but the emperor prevails with a sequence of classicising family portraits. Above hangs the second version of Francesco Hayez’s The Penitent Magdalene (1825). Here the Romantic artist has transposed the chilly perfection of Canova’s marble surfaces into pigment.

An unusual and endearing mid 18th-century Italian group portrait presents the family of Antonio Ghidini, a cloth merchant to the Bourbon court in Parma, painted by his friend, the court artist Pietro Melchiorre Ferrari (1734/5–87). In this Zoffany-style conversation piece there is no doubting Ghidini’s business, as he points to documents mentioning his association with his trading partners in Manchester and his wife sits stiffly under her salmon-pink stomacher in sprigged and striped silk finery.

Yet it would be misleading to suggest that Ricci’s ever-curious eye never ranged beyond the 18th and 19th centuries. He owns a number of 17th-century marbles, including that of the all-powerful prelate Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri degli Albertoni, who effectively ran the papacy under Clement X – irresistible in profile. In the 2000s Ricci also added, for example, Ludovico Carracci’s handsome three-quarter length Portrait of Lucrezia Bentivoglio Leoni (1589), executed two years before the sitter’s death. Flanking the same door is Philippe de Champaigne’s Portrait of the Duchesse d’Aiguillon (c. 1650), and viewed beyond is an unusual sensual and erotically charged work by Luca Cambiaso (1527–85), Venus Blindfolding Cupid.

Yet Ricci has also always been attracted to what he describes as the art of visionary madness, by the surreal, and by what is prosaic and popular. The museum’s cabinet of curiosities includes a narwhal horn, once thought to have belonged to the unicorn. Its walls are lined with particularly gruesome vanitas paintings and sculptures. Centre stage among the skulls is a decomposing head by Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627), its flesh and rotten teeth seething with maggots and flies.

Only superficially more benign are the drawings of the Codex Seraphinianus, first published in two volumes in 1981 – Ricci’s most extraordinary publication. These meticulously detailed explications of the bizarre and the fantastical illustrate an encyclopaedia of an imaginary world conceived by the artist Luigi Serafini in the 1970s and written in a language still understood only by its creator. Certainly its pages are at home in the Labirinto della Masone complex – another visionary creation, in effect a Gesamtkunstwerk, an all-embracing art work expressing the life and taste of one man.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

I am VERY excited about this week’s funny question friday since I missed it last week 😖 I’m gonna go with 7 for Yixing, 33 for Anwei, and 39 for Ciaran!

happy funny question friday to you, orion! i hope i do not disappoint you with these answers lol

7. Which of their relationships have impacted them most positively?

I assume this means relationships of all kinds and not just like. romantic relationships lol

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Uhh without sounding like a lunatic and saying his horse Songbird (who he's had for twelve years when we first meet him lol), I would say probably his neighbor Mari. She's kind of like. the parental figure he never had lol She's a near and dear friend who met him when he had absolutely nobody else and was in a particularly uhhh self-destructive point in his life.

The only reason they even started talking was because she came downstairs to hang some laundry and he was completely shitfaced passed out face down in a pile of his own like. barf-covered towels and she thought he was DEAD bc he didn't move once the entire time she was out there. and when she finally got the nerve to check on him, he woke up and immediately started SOBBING like white girl wasted bawling and she was like "oh fuck this dude has Problems" and proceeded to keep an eye out for him because she didn't know if he was just fucking crazy or if he might be in some kind of financial or legal trouble or something. Turns out he just liked to get too turnt too often and when he sobered up a couple days later he apologized by making dinner for her and they've been friends ever since lmao!! They keep each other company like curmudgeonly old people and they sit on the porch and trade gossip over dinner and drinks every few nights. And he goes and buys her groceries on occasion or does her laundry for her if she isn't feeling well, and she gives him life advice and tries to help keep his head on straight. She also teases him for being such a slut lmao

33. Do they own any objects of significant personal importance?

Anwei doesn't consider herself a very sentimental person but she keeps a few things that remind her of old times. Like she still has her ID from uhh 900 years ago and the corners have broken off because it's so brittle and the photo and text is so faded through time that it's virtually unreadable but she refuses to ever get rid of it because it reminds her of. not exactly simpler times but maybe... times when she didn't have to be so responsible I guess?? She takes godhood very seriously (unlike some of the other people she knows lol) and sometimes finds herself wishing for the old days when life was simple and she was just some woman with an infinite amount of student debt and a cellphone with too many phone charms on it. She also has a collection of old polaroids of her with Ciaran and their mom on a trip they took when they were still teenagers, and they’ve basically faded to the point that they hardly count as photos anymore, but she holds onto them because she can still make out the outline of her mom’s features, and she knows that as long as she has that that she’ll never really forget what things used to be like and who her mother was. Really she's only sentimental about her mom because the three of them were all super close :c

She also keeps tiny trinkets from people that were once very near to her, so she has random things from old friendships and relationships (including things from Sihla, who even after like 300 years she has complicated lesbian feelings for lol)

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39. Tell us about one of the times they got injured.

Ciaran gets hurt a lot in stupid ways because he knows he can't die and therefore has no sense of self preservation lol though back when he was still human (lol) and in his early 20s he broke his ankle and in true melodramatic fashion thought his career as a dancer was over but it was a teeny weeny stress fracture and he was totally fine in like two months anyway.

But a specific instance of him getting a serious injury that is exceptionally memorable is probably like. the very first time he died when he took a 1500 foot fall into a canyon that formed when the world kind of um ended and he woke up shortly after with a piece of rebar sticking out of his eye and also like half a dozen other places in his body and had to sit there alone in the rubble and piles of dead bodies and pull them out himself. Obviously he was physically fine after it all but it was traumatizing for a whole host of reasons, one of which being that like. he didn't know at that point that uhh he couldn't die, so he definitely had some moments in falling through the air where he was like "I survived the end of the world and maybe made a pact with a dying god only to die in a stupid way like this???? how fucking embarrassing"

TESSA VIRTUE ON LIFE IN A NEW ARENA + HER MAC MAKER LIPSTICK

One of the most decorated Olympic figure skaters of all time chats with Beautygeeks about adjusting to a less structured life, finding a new "safe space," and navigating her beauty journey.

April 28, 2020

Tessa Virtue is one of only two best-ever ice-dancing athletes on the planet. Scott Moir, her on-ice partner of 22 years, is the other one. Together the duo shattered multiple world records and racked up an unprecedented number of awards, national and world championships, and five Olympic medals, including gold in 2010 and again in 2018, after which ESPN called Tessa one of the most famous female athletes in the world. Since retiring from competition, Tessa's been busy with a number of projects and contracts with brands including Mattel, Nivea Canada, Colgate, Sick Kids Hospital, Adidas and more. Last month, she celebrated the launch of her first lipstick with MAC Cosmetics, which gave us an excuse to have a good chat about how her life has changed since stepping away from the ice...

BEAUTYGEEKS  Makeup and skincare must have started early for you; you've been skating since you were quite small. (Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became ice-dancing partners in 1997, when she was seven and he was nine.) TESSA  I remember having conversations at a really young age with coaches and advisors, trying to figure out what was age-appropriate for a Latin-style program and how we do makeup and costuming and everything that works for 10-year-olds. One of my coaches, Rebecca Babb, used to do my makeup for competitions. That was always something that I really looked forward to. I think there was an awareness early on about how I presented myself in the skating world, simply because it's judged and it's such an aesthetic sport. It's part of the entire package of telling a story. As I evolved and grew as both an athlete and a performer, I really came to enjoy and appreciate that element of it because it's really what sets figure skating apart from most, especially winter, sports. That balance between art and athleticism – and part of that was the costuming, the hair, the makeup, the ability to take the ice and get into character, and make someone feel something. The makeup routine became part of my mental preparation, too – meditative. I would get into the zone as I was applying makeup, and also have fun expressing myself in different ways.

Tessa Virtue in Barbie form; at Toys R Us

BG  Now that you're into another life chapter, what's your beauty routine? TESSA  You know, it's funny, I'm at both extremes, and I used to say this about my wardrobe. I was fully athletic wear or black tie. There was very little in between. Friends would ask me to go for coffee and I would rock a power suit or something because I just didn't have that sort of casual in-between mode. Maybe that's part of being an athlete: you compartmentalize and you're a bit of an extremist. And now with makeup, I'm either working with some of Canada's best glam teams or I'm wearing nothing as I travel or do my own. Mascara, blush and lipstick is sort of my go-to every day. Stepping away from skating and having fun in the beauty industry and in fashion world in a different way has been really liberating because I've tried to take some risks, explore different looks and aesthetics. I think like most of us, when I'm doing my own makeup, I'm so tempted do the same routine. Picking up tips and tricks from others along the way has been really great. I've also learned that the getting-ready process is actually the most fun part of any event.

BG  When you're sitting down for hair and makeup, do you have photos to say "let's try this" or do you consult with your team? Has the process changed now that you're in a different arena? TESSA  Often I'm getting ready to do something work related. In some way I'm always focusing on what my task is and what I have to offer in the upcoming event, strategizing on how I can maximize that for whoever has hired me or whatever I'm representing, whatever charity I'm trying to help. I use that time to talk with my team about that. So when I sit down in the chair, I completely put my trust in the people around me. I've worked so closely with those artists, and I've realized that they become your family; they're some of my closest friends. I value their expertise. And I think there's fun for them with that too, because they're empowered to try anything and everything.

BG  Those are good friends to have. And your time with them is so intimate. TESSA  I feel so lucky. Sometimes we're on set and there'll be a hundred people who all have an agenda of their own, who all have someone to answer to and are all trying to accomplish something in their own right. It's nice to have the security of a glam team or a stylist or someone to come back to – that's your safe place, where you can sort of recharge, get energy and then put yourself out there again. There's a vulnerability that comes with stepping into a spotlight, so to speak. I think that's taken on greater meaning as I put myself in different work positions too.

BG  So in some respects, members of your beauty team are touchstones as well. TESSA  Exactly, yes exactly.

BG  I love that. Let's hit skincare: has yours evolved since leaving the ice or was it particularly involved beforehand? TESSA  I realize now just what harsh conditions I put my skin under when I was training. And that was partly because of the cold and the dry arenas, but also the sweat and, in my case at least at competition, having to sweat with makeup on. I'm still conscious of hydrating, but I find less and less need for that. Although I suppose I'm on airplanes and traveling quite a bit, so that sort of replaced the arena. I've always been of the less-is-more mindset when it comes to skincare. That's thanks to my mom. She always told me to touch my face as little as possible. So I'm pretty simple with micellar water and moisturizer. I make sure that I get all my makeup off at night so my skin can breathe, and if I'm traveling, I don't really put anything on my face.

BG  It's also a good thing that your skin was at its peak when you were training and performing – you had so much natural hyaluronic acid, collagen and resilience because you were so young. You're still really young. (Tessa turns 31 in May.) TESSA  Well, thank you. But you know, there's also stress, hormonal changes and everything that goes along with competing and performing. That's not easy. Sometimes when you're battling stress, hormones, not feeling confident, and then to continue to put yourself out there... But yes, thank you. I do feel pretty fortunate. I know a lot comes down to genes, so I can thank my parents for that.

BG  How important is sleep to you? Do you need a specific number of hours? TESSA  I'm still stuck in that athlete mindset of needing eight hours a night, at least. What I miss are those mandatory naps that were part of our daily disciplined routine! I'm probably sleeping much less now because I'm on the go – and every day is different. That more than anything has contributed to a sense of, depending on the day, either unease or complete liberation. There was a time when I was training that I could have told you that eight years from now, on March 1st at 2:30 PM, this is what I'll be doing. That sense of structure is so incredibly important as an athlete. And now every day is different, and I'm really trying to embrace that. I think it makes it a little bit harder. Things like sleep, fitness, easy nutrition – it's harder to find a routine in that realm. But I do feel pretty lucky that every time I leave the house I get to do something I love to do.

BG  You've had 22 years of an incredibly goal-oriented lifestyle. How have things changed for you now that that goal has been not only met, but surpassed? TESSA  That was a hard transition. But I found it was harder to go from being a competitive athlete to a performer. I was so focused for decades, saw everything through the lens of "how can this make me a champion?" Whether that was a meal, an event, a sponsor, a friend – everything was filtered through this very simple mandate of "how can I be my best?" and "will this assist or prohibit me from becoming my best?" That was a singular focus, and then suddenly I was thrust into this place where I was wearing a hundred different hats, and I felt like maybe I wasn't doing anything all that well. At the same time, that support network – the sports psychologists, the trainers, the therapists, everything, this whole safety net that we had built – on February 21st, 2018 was gone. And I felt so alone. At a time when everyone expected me to feel a certain way, I just really struggled. There's an inherent low that comes after any kind of high. Whether it's a competition, a wedding, a degree, any monumental occasion is often followed by a bit of a crash, and so I just had to live that at a time when everyone thought I was living out this fairytale. It was an interesting thing to reconcile. You started the question with something about goals. I think that's been a saving grace for me: I've set new goals. If you give me a task, I can figure out a way to work towards it. That's when I feel confident and competent and more settled.

BG  So you can recognize yourself again in that particular mini structure. TESSA  Exactly, yes.

BG  I can't imagine the change. I mean it's 900% more complex than transitioning from working in an office for several years to going freelance, for instance. TESSA  I think a transition of any kind is difficult. I was feeling a little bit ostracized, so on my own for a little bit. And then I realized that no, everyone is going through that in some capacity. I mean even Kaylee [MAC's PR director in Canada] coming back from having a baby and getting back to work, like any kind of life transition, takes its toll and, and it's all relative. Right? So don't diminish that change for yourself, that would've been huge.

BG  You mentioned it's harder to slot regular fitness into your schedule these days, but do you manage any kind of routine somehow? TESSA  I don't have a routine, which is kind of strange, but also necessary at the moment and I'm learning to exercise when I can, because I do need that dopamine hit. I need to sweat, I need to move my body. But I'm also learning to be kind to myself. So if that means taking a day or two off, or having an extended period of time when I'm focusing my energy elsewhere, I try to be gentle and not get too caught up in that. And when I'm working out, it's so interesting. There was a very specific cycling class I did last year and I felt – I'm pretty sure I wrote a note in my phone about the feeling – a tangible weight being lifted off my shoulders. I realized I'm just doing this for me. I'm not trying to be a better ice dancer, I'm not trying to do this so that I can represent Canada. This isn't functional. It's really just so that I feel good, and suddenly I felt a hundred pounds lighter because that mindset had shifted. And I think right now as I explore boxing and spar classes and spinning and peloton and yoga, I'm just trying to figure out what makes my body feel good in the moment, and take the pressure out of needing to do something. Instead it feels like it's a privilege to be able to work out.

BG  It sounds like you're having an adventure there, too. TESSA  Yeah, I am and I think that's just the nature of my lifestyle at the moment when I'm traveling so much. And also I have to admit that I'm still not in that place where I just go to a hotel gym and motivate myself. For someone whose job for two decades was to work out, I would wander around quite aimlessly. So it's been fun to explore different avenues and try new things that I wouldn't have been able to do when everything needed to be, as I say, so functional.

BG  Do you actually have any more leisure time than you did before? Because it sounds like you're incredibly busy. TESSA  I'm trying to build that into my schedule now and I think I'm doing that somewhat successfully. But the difference is that being an athlete and having downtime, I mean that's part of the job, that recovery and it was also part of our job to sort of block out the rest of the world and really insulate ourselves in this bubble. And I was very cognizant at the time that there would be no other opportunity, so I really had to do that. But now, I'm planning on getting my MBA starting next Fall, and I know I won't be able to isolate myself fully and immerse myself into that world because that's just not life. People rely on you, people depend on you. You have to carry on. And yet as an athlete, it's quite a selfish pursuit and endeavour. That's been the biggest change as far as downtime. I'm trying to work it in now – self-care is just such a buzz phrase. But we're also in the midst of this busy culture where everyone is busy and that seems like a status thing, or it seems like somehow we're more important if we're busy. I think I got wrapped up in that a little bit and ended up wanting to work, work, work, feeling like it was a kind of validation. Now instead I'm trying to focus more on the things that matter to me work-wise, and also fit in time to be fully present with friends and family. I haven't really had the tendency to do that over the years; they've had to accommodate me so much.

tessa virtue's mac maker lipstick

BG  Let's talk about your new MAC lipstick. How did you decide on the shade? TESSA  Well, I started with a mood board, unsurprisingly, and just kind of curated this aesthetic, which ended up being actually really beautiful. Just a bunch of different kind of pink tones and shades that I was drawn to. I have to be totally honest: there are three or four lipsticks that have been on my rotation for many, many years and they're all MAC shades. There's Syrup and Mehr, Soar and Brave, and they're all sort of in that shade family.

Next the MAC chemists took my inspiration and did their thing. They came back with about three different testers and from there we made some tweaks and some adjustments. But it was pretty clear from the moment I saw this particular one, which I affectionately nicknamed Tutu, that it's exactly what I wanted in a lipstick. I'm not lying when I say that I've worn it every single day since. It's been a struggle because people ask me what shade it is and I've not been able to tell them! It was important for me to have it be an everyday lipstick, one that works for a coffee run and also for an event, and a shade everyone can wear. That's very MAC too, to be inclusive and welcoming and accessible to as many people as possible. I wanted it to be hydrating, as well, so we chose a satin finish for extra comfort as opposed to matte.

BG  Where did the inspiration for the packaging itself come from? TESSA  I had instantly thought pale pink – it's my favourite colour – and polka dots. And I'm hesitant to even say this because it seems like an incredibly egotistical thing, but I kind of loved that the polka dots were reminiscent of medals. It just came about really, really, really organically. And it just felt right as soon as I saw the final draft.

BG Good move – if there hadn't been a nod to gold medals, I bet we'd all want to know why not. Do you think you might get involved in more beauty collaborations in the future? TESSA  I don't know. I feel, so fortunate. This is something that I never thought that I would have the chance to explore and I'm been able to really dive in and learn about the company and the industry in a different way. And that's been really refreshing. I think what MAC has done, with both the Canadian Originals campaign and with this MAC Makers, has been really inspiring. It's getting back to the roots of an originally Canadian brand and our values that we can all be proud of. It's such a privilege and a joy to participate.

Tessa Virtue's MAC Maker Lipstick is a limited edition; find it at maccosmetics.com.

—beautygeeks

Is Western Civilization in Decline? I think nearly everyone in the manosphere would agree that it is.

There is a lot of discussion these days about America and the other nations comprising Western Civilization being in decline, and there is certainly a lot of evidence to support this claim. Whether it be dying populations among the Caucasian races that created the civilization, unchecked immigration rapidly replacing native populations in Europe and the United States, evidence that America is currently and has been behaving as an imperialistic empire but is now slowly losing its power around the world, a culture that seems to completely disregard the importance of family, the building block of civilization, or a loss of religiousness and sense of purpose, signs that something is wrong are everywhere.

You may be surprised to learn that many of the things that have been happening to Western Civilization were written down in a predictive model of history written by German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler nearly 100 years ago.

Oswald Spengler, Prophet of Western Decline

That said, Spengler has his critics, as do many misunderstood geniuses. Right or wrong, most of the attacks on his civilization model are made by those who cannot see the forest for the trees. Because of this, his genius work has largely gone unrecognized in modern times. As with many truths, “… in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed collectively, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so,” as stated by researcher Peter Dale Scott. A lot of people seem to be turned off by a predictive model of history since the psychological cost of admitting that humans are subject to the same cycles in nature as other animals is quite high.

Whether you agree with his ideas or not, they’re intellectually fascinating, and worth a look. This article only scratches the surface of Spengler’s epic civilization model.

The Four Seasons

Spengler equated the four cycles in human civilizations to the seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. In compiling his work, he studied the 8 High Cultures thought to have existed: Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Mayan/Aztec, Greek/Roman or Classical, Arab and, finally, Faustian, or what we call Western civilization. He believed each of the eight civilizations went through phases, just like the seasons. While some of those cultures are still with us, they have not been dominant cultural forces since their Winter. For example, China was referred to as a Sleeping Giant until it picked up on some of the vitality of the West.

In Spengler’s model, each culture goes through a formative Culture Stage, followed by a decadent period known as Civilization. The culture period makes up the “organic” Spring and Summer of a civilization, and is when the civilization is inspired by its own art and religion. Autumn and Winter make up the Civilization phase, in which the society becomes inorganic and is based only on the organization created during the Culture phase. The creativity seen in the Culture period slowly fades away. The civilization stiffens, and becomes overpopulated, metropolitan, and uninspired. For the purpose of this article, we will focus mainly on Western Civilization and its expression of the four seasons.

Roughly speaking, each season makes up about 250 years. This procession of “seasons” happened to all civilizations Spengler studied. Spengler said that by using his civilization model he could make predictions so accurate they would astonish people. Indeed, since 1918 through the present day, his predictions for Faustian/Western Civilization have been spot on.

The full civilization model is available here.

The Culture Phase: Spring and Summer

Spengler wrote Western civilization entered its Pre-Culture stage before 1000 AD. During that time, there is what he calls, “Chaos of primitive expression forms. Mystical symbolism and naive imitation.” As with other civilizations coming into being, in Faustian civilization there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery in this period and a fascination with death. Architecturally, the Romanesque cathedrals constructed around this time mark the beginning of the new Faustian culture form. In literature, collective epics like Beowulf and works such as The Song of Roland are published. Politically, there are “tribes and their chiefs. As yet no Politics and no State.”

Moving into Spring, there is a “powerful cultural creation from awakening souls, unity and [cultural] abundance. Great creations of the newly-awakened dream-heavy soul. Super-personal unity and fullness.” Some of Faustian Civilization’s expressions of this idea were as follows: The Holy Grail romances such as Perceval, the Story of the Grail are written. Architectural style shifts from Romanesque to Gothic Cathedrals. Gregorian Chant evolves as a musical form and we hear polyphony becoming the great Western musical form. (While we are discussing polyphony, an important note is that Spengler considered infinity to be the central, motivating idea behind Faustian/Western civilization. It is expressed in its music as polyphony, in its mathematics as infinitesimal calculus, and finally through Manifest Destiny/boundless exploration conducted by Western civilization which ultimately led it to the ultimate infinity – space.)

Politically, there is the formation of “national groups of definite style and particular world-feeling: ‘nations.’ Working of an immanent state-idea.” This is sub-divided into “The two prime classes (noble and priests). Feudal economics; purely agrarian values,” transitioning into “Actualizing of the matured State-idea. Town versus countryside. Rise of Third Estate (Bourgeoisie). Victory of money over landed property.”

Moving into Summer, we see these developments in the Culture: “Ripening consciousness. Earliest urban and critical stirrings.” In Faustian civilization, the dominant literature shifts from Grail romances to novels such as Don Quixote and Shakespearean plays. Architectural forms once again shift from Gothic Cathedrals to princely palaces and polyphonic musical forms evolve into Baroque, which is the period of the birth of Classical music. In politics we see “conflicts between aristocracy and monarchy. The political center shifts from castles and estates to the cities.”

Political Epochs in Spring and Summer

1. Feudalism. Spirit of countryside and countryman. The “City” only a market or stronghold. Chivalric-religious ideals. Struggles of vassals amongst themselves and against overlord. 900-1500 AD.

2. Crisis and dissolution of patriarchal forms. From feudalism to aristocratic State. 900-1500 AD.

3. Fashioning of a world of States of strict form. 1500-1800 AD.

4. Climax of the State-form (“Absolutism”) Unity of town and country (“State” and “Society.” The “three estates”) 1500-1800 AD.

5. Break-up of the State-form (Revolution and Napoleonism). Victory of the city over the countryside (of the “people” over the privileged, of the intelligentsia over tradition, of money over policy.) 1800-2000 AD.

The Civilization Phase: Autumn and Winter

“The body of the people, now essentially urban in constitution, dissolves into formless mass. Megalopolis and Provinces. The Fourth Estate (“Masses”), inorganic, cosmopolitan.”

We have now entered the Civilization phase as Summer transitions into Autumn. The intellect of the civilization, fully developed, begins to sterilize away the culture’s early organic nature. Spengler calls it, “Intelligence of the City. Peak of strict Intellectual creativeness.” In the West, the Enlightenment occurs during this time. Classical music peaks and then declines as an art form, further marking the shift into the Civilization phase.

The civilization becomes metropolitan, first overpopulating its cities, only to eventually begin dying out once Winter arrives. In Autumn, true art dies out in favor of metropolitan “art for the masses.” Politically, there are “struggles between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, Revolutions, and Napoleonism.” The American Revolution occurs during Autumn. Also in autumn we see “urban rise; peak of disciplined organizational strength.” This is the peak of the civilization, which is then followed by a “fissure in the world-urban civilization; exhaustion of mental organization strength; and irreligiousness rising.”

According to Spengler, Western world has entered Winter and its civilization is ending. He describes Winter as the “dawn of Megalopolitan Civilization. Extinction of spiritual creative force. Life itself becomes problematical. Ethical-practical tendencies of an irreligious and unmetaphysical cosmopolitanism.”

Over the coming decades, Spengler expects the intellect of our civilization to fade, people to stop reading and thinking as the civilization as a whole loses interest in thought, and the government to become autocratic/tyrannical. Art will further devolve into “meaningless subjects of fashion.” The population comprising the civilization will continue dying off as it loses touch with the myths and culture it was founded upon. We are also experiencing the “spread of the Final World Sentiment” of our civilization as the spread of Socialism around the world. As government becomes autocratic we can expect “primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living.” Our great works and most of our technology will fade and lie in ruins as the population comprising our civilization fades away. First the countryside and then the cities will depopulate (as seen in the Rust Belt and now cities like Detroit.) Spengler says we should also expect conquests of our now-exhausted civilization by “young peoples eager for spoil, or [foreign] conquerors” as the imperial machinery of the State falls apart.

Keep in mind – this was all predicted in 1918 by Spengler even though it sounds as if it was written today!

Political Epochs in Autumn and Winter

1. Domination of Money (“Democracy”). Economic powers permeating the political forms and authorities. 1800-2000 AD.

2. Victory of force-politics over money. Increasing primitiveness of political forms. Inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and constitution thereof as an Imperium of gradually-increasing crudity of despotism. 2000-2200 AD.

3. Private and family policies of individual leaders. The world as spoil. Egypticism, Mandarinism, Byzantinism. Historyless stiffening and enfeeblement even of the imperial machinery, against young peoples eager for spoil, or alien conquerors. Primitive human conditions slowly thrust up into the highly-civilized mode of living. After 2200 AD.

The Future, Echoing Roman Civilization

In the Winter of Roman politics there was a shift from the Roman Republic to Caesarism, or government led by a charismatic strongman. Eventually, the idea of representation broke down and there was a shift to bloody “force politics.”

Of course, our current government is modeled on the Roman system. There are even similarities between the two dominant parties. In Rome, the two dominant parties were the Optimates and Populares, the Republicans and Democrats of their day. This form of representative government eventually stops working because the system of checks and balances interfere with each other, causing gridlock. Force politics (killing people) eventually comes along to break the gridlock. (As an aside, some historians say it’s possible we entered this era in 1963 with the assassination of JFK by the military-industrial complex.) Arguably, this predictive model is spot-on with the current situation in the Western world. So, if Spengler’s model is correct, we are awaiting the rise of a dictator to come along and smash the rotten edifice of democracy sometime this century.

Spengler thought Democracy was the form of government of a civilization in decline

Spengler on Democracy

Spengler did not have a very high opinion of democracy. He believed it was the form of government of a civilization in decline, and interestingly the idea of mass democracy arrived in the Winter of Faustian/Western Civilization. Spengler viewed democracy as a weapon of moneyed interests, who use the media to create the illusion that there is consent from the governed. To him, the notion of democracy is really no different than living under a plutocracy (government by a wealthy elite.) Using the media’s propaganda, money is turned into force and controls people’s lives.

The leftist causes that have dominated the last century, such as equalism, feminism, and Socialism, to Spengler, were only tools used to assist the moneyed powers to be more effective.

The decline is also marked by increasingly authoritarian leaders as the democracy breaks down. Monetary powers permeate the government, eventually destroying it. This is where we currently are on Spengler’s timeline, which leads to what Spengler expects will happen in the West: The rise of a a Caesar as democracy, dominated by money, crumbles under its own corruption. People will cease to participate in elections, and the best candidates will remove themselves from politics. Spengler thinks blood is the only force that can conquer the force of money.

A New Spring After the Winter?

Spengler’s predictions of decline, as prescient as they have been over the last century, may leave you feeling a sense of hopelessness after studying his work. However, as one culture and civilization fades away, it’s very likely another will arise as part of this organic cycle.

John David Gebser later studied Spengler’s work, and believes a new consciousness will emerge from the ashes of the old civilization. Just as Western civilization was built upon the ashes of Ancient Greece and Rome, a new civilization may well be built on the ashes of our own.

The Decline of the West, published in 1918 and largely unknown today, is work that very well could be among the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind. It smashes the linear model of history (always moving upward) presented in the public school system, and instead presents the idea that throughout history man and his civilizations go through periods of birth, growth, decline, and death.

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/embed?linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_wvUPwb08JCKM1&asin=B008I6GW28&tag=rok0f-20&amazonDeviceType=A2CLFWBIMVSE9N&from=Bookcard&preview=inline

Strawberry Wine

This is the first story I have written in years. I’m super nervous about it.  I would appreciate any feed back. I love Supernatural. These are my boys and I will do my best to serve them justice. (the gif is not mine)

Military!Mechanic!Dean x Reader, Sam x Reader friendship

900+words 

Warnings: talks of underage drinking, swearing

Chapter One

"I still remember when thirty was old. My biggest fear was September, when he had to go.   (Deana Carter)

    You had known the Winchester brothers your whole life.  You had grown up right next door to them.  You and Sam Winchester (the youngest) were the same age and were graduating together this year.  You were about to turn 18 and were excited about going off to college.  You had always dreamed of going to The Juilliard School in New York.  You loved to sing and had taken choir along with any talent shows you could enter. You had taken lessons and worked hard and it had paid off.  You had landed a full ride.       Your parents were so proud.  It was also their dream to see you become a big success.  You had never wanted anything as much as you wanted to go to Juilliard.  Well, that wasn't completely true.  You had wanted something more and that something was... Dean Winchester.  The cool older, bad boy, brother to Sam.  You had been in love with him since you were 5 years old.  He was your hero, your friend, your confidant, your everything... and he was leaving. As you sat there and thought about all of the changes coming this year you couldn't help but feel sad.  Dean had been working as a mechanic at his dads garage since high school.  He was always under the hood of some classic car growing up.  His dad was a former marine and kind of a hard ass.  He was tough on his boys but he was Dean's hero.  He looked up to his dad more than anyone else.  Their love of cars and classic rock bonded them.  Along with their sense of duty.     Dean had been talking about enlisting since he was a kid.  He waited though because of Sam.  He wanted to see his brother through high school first.  Dean was close to Same and wanted to be there for him.  Sam and John fought a lot and Dean and his mom Mary were kind of the buffers.  So now at 22 Dean had finally enlisted in the marines wanting to be as aircraft mechanic.  He would be leaving in September the same time you and Sam would be going off to college.      You to Juilliard and Sam to Stanford.  You were all gonna be world apart.  You would all go off and Dean would never know how you felt about him.  You sighed, maybe that was for the best.  Dean would never see you as anything but his friend and a kid.     "(Y/N/N)", you heard someone yell as you sat on your front porch.  You look up from the book you are reading to see Sam running across the two lawns to your house with a huge grin on his face.     "What's up Sammy", you question closing the book and grinning back.     " Do you have any plans for your birthday", he asks as he sits on the porch swing beside you.     "No, not that I know of.  Just a quiet dinner at home.  Why do you ask", you questioned gently swinging with him beside you with his arm slung around your shoulders.     "Well you have plans now.  You and me are going to celebrate your birthday in a truly juvenile fashion", he replies with a huge grin on his face.     "Oh yeah?  What's that", you ask laughing lightly.     "We are going to crash the big party down at the Singer Place.  Which just so happens to fall on your birthday.  I figure we go.  Get super drunk on cheap booze and give ourselves one stupid, high school moment before it is all over.  We got into our dream schools. We busted our asses now I say we party", he said as the breeze blew his floppy hair around his face.  Sam was your best friend.  You wished you felt more for him than just friendship, but it just wasn't like that with you two.  You were buds, pals, and most importantly accomplices.     "Sam, as fun as that doesn't sound, how about we pass and you can take me somewhere nice.  Like... LASER TAG!  We can shoot each other and pretend that we don't have to be grown ups just yet", you said with a giggle.     "Come on (Y/N/N)!  One night!  We will be safe.  Dean will be there.  He wouldn't let anything happen to us.  Let's get crazy one time before college.  Please... For me", he asked giving you his best puppy dog eyes.  You hated that fucking look.     "Fine!  But I just want to go on record saying this is a really bad idea", you stated as Sam pulled you in for a hug.       "We will have fun.  You'll see", he said pulling away.  "One night to be stupid teenagers.  And like I said Dean will be there so we will be good.     "Oh yeah.  I'm sure Dean wants to baby sit our drunk asses on my birthday", you scoffed.     "As many times as we've baby say his drunk ass and covered for him he owes us", Sam glared at your laughing face.  You threw your head back laughing.     "Fair enough", you said still laughing.  "You're on.  One night to be stupid teenagers.  With your big bro on watchdog duty.  Should be fun."     "That's my girl!  I'll pick you up Friday at 8", he said jumping up.     "You got it.  Hey!  What should I wear", you yelled at his retreating back.     "Something nice but comfortable.  It is your birthday", he yelled back jogging across the yard.  You smiled softly.  What could go wrong?

OTP TWENTY QUESTIONS - TRISS MADDOX / AVA DU MORTAIN

i was tagged by @goblin-deity​​ and @pillarsofeternity​​ thank u both !!! tagging @trvelyans​ @arlathen​ @solasan​ @lvllns​ @abelas​ @noonvvraith​ @lavelans​ @rosebarsoap​ and anybody else who wants to!

who can out drink the other?

who CAN but chooses not to? ava. who WILL but absolutely SHOULDN’T? triss 100%. neither one of them are big drinkers but put triss in a social setting and watch her instantly lose any and all ability to self discipline lmao

who says “i love you” more?

hmm okay so they both have their own individual and specific Issues around relationships, so neither of them rly say it all that much except during intense/intimate moments when it rly matters. but i think after a while (as in like a year or so into the rel when ava is used to it and comfortable) i think ava might say it slightly more than triss does, just in priavte together whilst Doting on her u know.....

who has trouble sleeping alone?

triss ! i mean even before they got together her nightmares were real bad :( but being w ava thru the night helps, to the point where theyre basically a non issue for her anymore. plus she’s a very cuddly person in private just in general and likes BEING cuddled fdjdjfkjf so not having bae w her during the long, cold nights is..... a tragedy luv 

who swears more?

oh triss djdjkffdkjfdk tho shes doesnt swear THAT much and never around ppl she doesnt know. usually just when shes distracted or with fwends having a goof...

who does more of the housework?

probably ava.................. triss is lowkey a messy bitch lol. not DIRTY or anything like her house isnt gross or whatever but she definitely just leaves shit lying around and never tidies lmao. when ava comes around she always ends up cleaning jsut bc shes Like that. as for things like dishes/vaccuuming/etc, mostly triss does that stuff bc its her apartment lmao,, tho ava will always end up helping her anyway bc, again, shes just like that

who forgets their anniversary?

triss :’’’’(((( shes RLY independent and before ava she took a very modern approach to dating so she rly doesnt.... consider those things too much. i like to think ava WOULD remember bc her memory is like. impeccable lol and she’d want to know these things bc shes somewhat old fashioned - but i also dont think she’d care enough to be upset by it. like she IS old fashioned in some ways but like ava of all ppl would probably agree that its not a big deal. regardless triss always wants to do smth together when she does remember lmao

who steals the duvet in their sleep?

TRISS AND SHES SO BAD ABT IT AS WELL. shes the MOST restless sleeper u will ever meet, absolutely throws herself all over ava during the night and if ava was as fuck-off-strong as she is, i have no doubt triss would succeed in pushing her out of their bed on multiple occasions

who keeps the other awake at night with their snoring?

neither, fortunately ! tho on the odd occasion when ava sleeps, she is sometimes woken up by triss sleeptalking during nightmares

who finds stray animals and begs the other to let them keep them?

honestly neither again, mostly bc triss is so busy and her apartment is too small for anything other than her bird. triss is definitely the type to pick out the ugliest/most feral stray animal she can find and gush abt how cute it is tho!

who usually makes dinner?

triss! she likes cooking even tho she’s not very good at it. she sometimes asks ava to help her in making recipes that ava likes or is more comfortable eating, bc of the whole sensory thing

who plays their music out loud?

triss again ! i have a hc that there is ALWAYS music playing at triss’s apartment, she always has her radio or her speakers playing smth bc she is uncomfy with silence, and also just bc she likes to dance around the house kfdjkdkf

who hogs the bathroom?

okay.........i HONESTLY think ava. idk why but i feel like ava takes rly good care of herself. whereas triss is a rat who will brush her hair and teeth and maybe put a moisurizer on if shes feeling it that day lol. ava at the VERY least spends a lot of time on her hair imo, washing it as well as making it look so damn Iconic

who gives the most compliments?

triss ! shes a very sweet bby and u cant rly get thru a convo with her without being complimented at least once lol

who usually starts/causes arguments between them?

definitely ava, tho i would argue - at least in the context of their relationship - that its actually a good thing, or at least a healthy thing. triss HATES conflict that involves voicing her own issues w something, and much prefers to just bury it down or pretend it doesnt exist. which isnt healthy at all ! so a lot of their arguments usually have to do with ava trying to get triss to have meaningful dialogue with her and not hold back so much.

who isn’t afraid to embarrass the other in public?

triss.................i feel so damn sorry for ava actually lmao

who gives the other cringe worthy pet names?

hmmmm, ava gives them unironically (like. triss’s cousin once overheard ava call triss “my love” or “my heart” once and NEVER lets triss forget it) but triss absolutely goes out of her way to come up w some truly creative ones. 

who fusses over the other when they get sick?

ava !!!!! i feel like after 900 years she would be Extra worried abt that kind of stuff, and severely catastrophises abt how absurdly fragile/vulnerable she thinks humans are. like triss will get a cold and ava will still partially act like its 1183 or whatever and her gf is literally at deaths door lmao.

who finds it impossible to stay angry at the other for long

hm both ! ava tends to get frustrated a lot at everybody in general, but triss has an annoying way of cutting thru all of that lol. whereas on the other hand, like i said, triss just doesnt get angry, and even if she does she tends to just move past it as quickly as she can because she doesnt want to argue

who clings to the other for comfort when they’re sad or scared?

i think both, but in slightly different ways ! triss always wants comfort from ava, whether shes happy or sad or whatever lol, but i do rly love the idea of ava relying on triss a little more for emotional support once they have been in a relationship for a while, and once and ava feels safe w that kind of thing............like just letting her be vulnerable with someone whom she trusts, just for a little while.... 

who is more ‘physically passionate’? (hugs, kisses, or maybe more…)

again i would say both in different ways ! it rly depends on what the q means by passionate. like triss is very handsy and quite physical w her affection, and ava is more into the subtler stuff. but in saying that, when ava does get physical its WAY more intense and ‘passionate’ in that sense!

d’Artagan (Saber) Character Concept

(d’Artagan servant outfit. Art by @angelicvangaart​ Thank so much for this amazing work! Please go give them your support)

One of the central characters of Alexdre Dumas’s classic ‘The Three Musketeers’. d’Artagan was a young woman, who dreamt of being a musketeer and traveled to Paris. There, she met the titular Three Musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four would go on many adventures together, and d’artagan would come into her own as a great sword fighter. 

d’Artagan takes the form of a woman in her mid twenties, with flowing locks of brown hair. Her usual attire is the leather armor and cape of her musketeer uniform. She wields a basket hilt rapier, a parrying dagger and flintlock pistol with deadly accuracy.

d’Artagan has an easygoing and ‘rougeish’ personality. She is ‘romantic’ in the classical sense of the word, having a deep sense of honor and manners. Her tongue, and wit are sharp, offering witty quips and jibes in and out of battle. However, she knows when the time for such things is over.

As a servant, d’Artagan is a master of the blade. She was more than likely one of the greatest swordmasters of her era. She strikes with precision, and finesse over brute force. Using diversion, positioning and superior skill to win over her opponents.

(Casual d’Artagan)

Parameters

Strength:C+

Endurance:B

Agility: A

Magic Power:C

Luck A+

Noble Phantasm:A

Skills

Charisma C+:Despite not being a leader, d’artagnan has a decently high charisma stat. Her personality is infectious and she has a way with words.

Riding B+: Like most musketeers d’Artagan was trained in the art of horsemanship. She even has some knowledge about sailing thanks to her travels

Magic Resistance B: Being a saber class servant, d’Artagan is granted a high level of magic resistance. 

Noble Phantasms

Tous Pour Un: Musketeer’s Bond Rank B

A secondary noble phantasm to d’Artagan’s main one. Using this power, she can call on a phantom of one of the other musketeers. They infuse her with power, each one granting a different boon. Calling upon the power of Porthos, her Strength and Endurance stat increase, allowing her to clash with opponents physically stronger than herself. Calling upon Aramis grants her keen vision, and agility. It also summons Aramis’s trusty musket, which is a low ranked noble phantasm in and of itself. Finally, by calling upon Athos, the phantom of Athos will strike alongside d’Artagan, mirroring her moves, or defending her from harm. Allowing her incredible versatility in combat. As well as the ability to stand toe to toe with servants whose skill exceeded normal humans in life.

Un Pour Tous, Tous Pour Un: Oath Of The Musketeers Rank A

The full power and form of d’Artagan’s noble phantasm. It is a crystallization of her oath, and friendship with the other musketeers. A representation of their intertwined legend. By speaking the famous oath of the musketeers, d’Artagan creates a reality marble that is an image of the Palace Of Fontainebleau. Inside of the bounds of the reality marble, she summons the full forms of her three companions Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. All three of them are full servants in their own right and their parameters are on par with d’Artagan herself. As long as the reality marble is maintained, the four will fight together to defeat their enemy. It is here that the full power of the musketeers is seen. Within the space of the reality marble, things such as authority and divinity do not matter. All are equal within. Which allows the musketeers to harm divine beings despite not having divine weapons or divinity themselves.  

FGO version

4* Saber

Deck

Passive Skills

Riding Rank B+:Increase Quick performance by 9%

Magic Resistance B: Increases own debuff resistance by 17.5%.

Active Skills

Charisma C+ : Increase attack party attack  for 3 turns. from 8.5 to 17%

Un Pour Tous: Porthos: Increase own attack for 3 turns from 10-20% Apply Debuff Immune for 3 turns

Un Pour Tous:Aramis: Apply evade to self for two attacks. And apply sure hit to self and gain 10-15 crit stars. 

Noble Phantasm

Un Pour Tous, Tous Pour Un: Oath Of The Musketeers Rank A, Type:Arts, Anti Unit

Deals 900-1500% damage to a single enemy that ignores defense. Overcharge Increase NP gain for 3 turns from 20-40% (activates first)

Dialogue

Summon

“I have answered your call, I d’Artagan shall be your sword and your shield. Hehe, sorry that was far too formal. Let me try again. I am d’Artagan, Saber class. *leans down to kiss your hand* “Enchante, My Lord/Lady. I hope my companions and I can serve you well.”

Level Up

“ Ah je me sens déjà plus fort!” (Translation:Ah.  I feel stronger already)

Battle Start

En garde!  Prêts? Allez!  (Translation: On guard! Ready! Lets begin!)

Battle Start 2

All For One, And One For All! (Randomly said in French or English)

Attack 1

“Advance! Hah!”

Attack 2

“Attaque au Fer!”

Attack 3

“Doublé!”

Extra Attack

“Parry! Then...thrust!”

Hit By Noble Phantasm

“Gahhh I must...endure!”

Defeat

Ah! Tou...che.

First Skill Used

Transmettre mes amis! (Translation: Onward, my friends!)

Second Skill Used

Porthos! I need your strength!

Third Skill Used

Aramis! Grant me your speed!

Noble Phantasm Selected

“It is time, my friends!”

Noble Phantasm Used

“Let me show you, the strength of our bond, of our oath. The dream of our legend! All For One, And One For All! Athos! Porthos! Aramis! Fight by my side once more!”

My Room Lines

(If you have Jeanne d’Arc Ruler/Archer) “Mon dieu! Is that Jeanne d’Arc?! I was told stories of her as a child. It is such an honor to meet her in the flesh! She is truly as beautiful and radiant as I imagined.”

(If you have Chevalier d’Eon) “A fellow knight of France! It is a pleasure to meet someone who served the country as I did! To think that there would be future knights as lovely and cute as yourself! Hahaha! No need to blush!”

(if you have Marie Antoinette) *quickly bows* “I can tell just from your beauty and countenance that you are of royal blood. A future queen of France you say? So, I was right! I do seem to have a talent for reading resplendent beauties.”

(if you have Edmon Dantes) “That man... He has a dark aura about him. I feel the pain in his eyes. What must he have suffered to have such eyes?”

(if you have Astolfo) “I’ve been spending some time with Astolfo lately. They are quite the character. On the surface they seem quite strange and lack common sense. However, deep within they truly are worthy of being a paladin of the great Charlemagne”

During an Event

“It seems something exciting is happening out there, master. A festival perhaps? Let us go and see.”

Likes

“Things that I like? Hmmm. Wine, roses, books, and poetry. But the thing I love most, are women. Eh? That last one was obvious?”

Dislikes

“Dishonorable types. Backstabbers, traitors and the like. The worst types like that however, are the ones who make women cry.”

About the other musketeers.

“You want to hear about Porthos? Porthos was a boisterous man, always smiling. He had a hearty loud laugh. He was also a bit of a dandy. Always wanting to wear the latest fashions and look his best. I never knew a man who shined his boots more.”

“Aramis was a ladies man, through and through. Despite being highly religious he always seemed to find time for women. *sighs* More than once I caught him knocking boots with the nuns of various churches. But, despite all that, he was a good and stalwart friend, and he always respected when a woman was not interested in him.”

“Athos... Athos was... He was like a father to me. He was the one who taught me how to fight with a blade. I looked up to him, and loved him dearly. But, he was also a haunted man. I often found him drinking away his sorrows. Curse that Lady de Winter...”

Bond 1 “Good day to you my lord/lady. I hope you are doing well. I’m still trying to get used to this modern place. Its a lot to take in.”

Bond 2 “Walking among these halls of heroes, I feel like I’m back at the musketeer barracks again. Just without all the drills, haha!”

Bond 3: “I was not born a noble like the other musketeers. I was a simple farmer’s daughter. But I dreamed of being one despite all that. I remember arriving in Paris, my eyes wide with wonder, and head full of dreams. Ah, sorry, I’m rambling.”

Bond 4:”Hmm? You want to know more about my childhood? Well, there’s not much to tell. I was a farmer’s daughter, as I said. I grew up in the fields of France, milking cows, collecting eggs, milling grain and so on. It was a simple life. But I don’t think it was for me in the end.”

Bond 5(if male mc): “Master, I wish to offer my fealty again. You are my king, and I your loyal musketeer. You are truly a great and kind leader. I could not ask for a better lord to serve.”

Bond 5(if female mc): “Good day, my lady. I hope you’re well. I have something special planned for us today. I’ve arranged a rayshift to the rolling fields of France. A perfect place for a romantic picnic, oui?~ Shall we, my lady? There’s no need to be shy. Take my hand, ma petite fleur~”

Bond CE: “Note From The King”

Effect: “Party Quick, and Arts up by 10% “

“I remember that day. It was many years after my friends and I had drifted apart. I had been recognized for my accomplishments, despite my common birth. I was leading France’s forces against the United Provinces. During the  Siege of Maastricht, I was reading a letter signed with the royal seal. I was to be made into ‘The Marshal Of France’ the highest honor I could ever hope to achieve. I can hear the ringing of the sudden gunshot that followed. The feeling of the musket ball piercing my chest... Blood leaked from lips and I felt my life ebbing.  ‘Athos, Porthos, Aramis, adieu forever....’ “