in the dunes, alexander blok (1 of 2)

*using college here as a broader term but any kind of post high school studies you did counts, as long as it's friends who studied there with you

so somehow it’s the first time I’ve seen your Dogs illustration from May. it’s very very cool and strongly reminds me of AI-generated art — did you use AI to inspire the shapes? or otherwise influence the piece somehow? interested in your process! very cool.

yes! some more directly reference ai images id generated than others lol

Inspired by @pistachi0art ‘s infection au :0!

What if mushrooms??

homura (after a whole movie dedicated to the mechanisms of her inner psyche and set in a world that is literally her subconscious, populated by little dolls that are the manifestation of her emotions and self-hatred, after a whole movie where we get to see that she loves and cares for her friends and above all she deeply loves madoka, after the most heartbreaking scene in the history of anime where she realises madoka never wanted to sacrifice herself, after sacrificing herself to try and keep madoka’s wish alive anyway and keep her safe from the incubators, after being saved by madoka and feeling undeserving of it yet again, after finally giving up on trying to preserve madoka’s wish and creating a universe in which madoka can be happy and her friends too and the incubators eat shit, after showing how much she hates herself for it): i’m evil! i’m a demon! i’m evil incarnate!

people: yeah that checks out, homura is evil.

A very normal scientist doing very normal gene splicing experiments (Patreon)

love like you / maternal pang

bonus under cut:

the first stephanie + the maternal pang tone destroyer i couldn't include bc it's a serious comic

something something hwei lore

Sometimes, I gotta tell ya, I actually am not fully sold, like sometimes when people are like wearing fake noses or whatever, I’m like, I know it’s you. You know? I’m not fully fooled. The question is, that sort of subtlety that you see with like Gene Hackman where it’s like, I know it’s always him but somehow he’s enough of himself that I also believe he’s these other people completely. So I think about that a lot in terms of what that subtlety is. Or like Peter Falk has that. [...] I always believe that he’s telling me the truth. So I really aspire to that kind of organic thing.

NATASHA LYONNE at the LA Times Comedy Roundtable Tyler James Williams continued laughing bonus:

🤫

The Story Behind The Song: Arctic Monkeys’ early ambitions on ‘A Certain Romance’

Lucy Harbron – Far Out Magazine | January 17, 2024

It was 2006. Mortgages were crashing, and businesses were going bust. Tony Blair was on his last legs in office as the longest-serving prime minister since Margaret Thatcher, and the hangover of ‘Cool Brittania’ was beginning to set in with an unexpected ferocity. Things were bleak when a young Alex Turner sang, “There ain’t no romance around there” through the public’s speakers. Arctic Monkeys were about to write themselves into musical history as the voice of a new generation.

The final song on their debut album, there has always been something special about ‘A Certain Romance’. In 2022, after the release of their seventh album, The Car, Turner seemed to find himself reflecting back on that 2006 track. To the musician, that early cut holds a clue to everything that was to come as he said the piece “showed that we did actually have these ambitions beyond what we once thought we were capable of”.

Coming in at over the five-minute mark, ‘A Certain Romance’ almost feels like the Arctic Monkeys’ version of a rock opera, summarising all the themes, feelings and energy that came before it on their seminal album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. It has the cheekiness of ‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco’ and the catchy instrumentals of hits like ‘Dancing Shoes’ or ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’. Utilising the northern charm of ‘Mardy Bum’, it stands as a final, neatly summarising point on the social commentary found in their early tracks like ‘From The Ritz To The Rubble’ or ‘Riot Van’. Really, it could be argued that ‘A Certain Romance’ is the ultimate example of Arctic Monkeys’ original sound, perfectly encapsulating all the things that made the world listen up and pay attention.

It’s like they seemed to know that, too, always allowing the song a special place. In fact, it was really the band’s opening remark. Years before the offer of a debut album came around, the group were a well-oiled machine with their own local hits. They had the northern live music scene in their hands as their homemade demo CD was passed around like everyone’s worst-kept secret. Beneath the Boardwalk features eight out of the 13 songs that would be on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, albeit in a slightly different, lower-quality version. But the opening number, ‘A Certain Romance’, sounds just the same.

It’s all there, from the rolling opening drums to that final guitar solo. Recorded and produced in a rented studio at only age 17, the existence of ‘A Certain Romance’, one of the band’s most explorative and energetic numbers, in this form this early in their career feels like a diamond sitting in a mine. It proves that they were always onto something special.

They never needed any help. In fact, their producer, Jim Abbiss, noted that they even seemed nervous about the help. “I think they were probably a bit weary, like ‘who’s this guy? And is he gonna make our sound this or that.’”

They didn’t want anything to change too much, as the group already had the songs figured out. Turner certainly did, as the track’s meandering narrative about hometown lads, fights, and local boredom is already there. Talking on a podcast, original member Andy Nicholson revealed the story behind the song. “We had a practice room with a pool table in, and we had a party in there, and we invited another band who were friends of ours, and we all had some drinks,” he said. “Then something happened, someone throws a pool cue, someone throws a pool ball, and everyone ends up fighting,” he added, explaining the lyrics, “there’s boys in bands / And kids who like to scrap with pool cues in their hands.”

But the magic of Arctic Monkeys lies in their nuance. What begins as a snooty analysis of his local landscape is a genuinely affectionate take. “Well, over there, there’s friends of mine / What can I say? I’ve known ’em for a long long time / And, yeah, they might overstep the line / But you just cannot get angry in the same way,” Turner sings, looking around at his bandmates and lifelong friends. ‘A Certain Romance’ is not only a time capsule for the group’s beginnings but is an ode to all the people who were there with them. It’s an ode to the hometown that made them and all its various characters.

But as the last guitar solo roars to life, there is an unspoken statement that they’re going to be bigger than what they came from. “I remember when we were recording ‘A Certain Romance’ and having a conversation with the producer about the final guitar solo,” Turner told NME, recalling the moment these songs were reworked for their debut. But they wouldn’t let anyone mess with ‘A Certain Romance’, knowing exactly what they were doing and trying to say with that one. In the 2003 demo version, all the feeling is already there, and Turner wouldn’t risk it.

“There’s something that happens at the end of that track where we break some rules in a single moment,” he continued. What happens at the end of the piece feels even more special, considering how the album was recorded. “These are the songs we wanna do, and I think this is the order we wanna do them in,” Alex Turner told their producer, recounting the conversation in 2007 to RadioX, “And he goes, ‘alright, we’ll try to record them in that order as well.’” As the final song, that last guitar solo is the last thing recorded for the album, standing as a cathartic outlet and a chance for the band to prove themselves.

“We focused on the [emotional] effect of the instrumentals over the words,” Turner reflected on the track, concluding, “and I feel like we’ve been trying to do that again and again since then.”

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Found these old graphics I made, still like ‘em so I thought I’d post them here! 

save me old flipnote studio MVs.......

Old Gay VS New Gay discourse is so interesting to me as a “new gay” (milennial) growing up around “old gays” (boomers)

Old gays refuse to adapt to new nuanced gender and sexuality labels, feeling they’re superfluous and not “real issues.” New gays refuse to understand the point of view of a community not that long ago that was ravaged by AIDS and was (and is) straight-up illegal in public to be in most parts of the world

It’s a microcosm of the boomer/milennial dichotomy and imo shouldn’t even exist. There’s always been gay men VS lesbian VS bisexual disagreements and schisms and even proto-trans discourse about drag and androgynous presentation, but I’d like to think with a larger, more vocal community than ever, we’d come to an understanding that we don’t need to be fighting! We’re on the same side even with very strong disagreements!

Tl;dr if Boomer gays and Milennial gays could just rest thinking the other was cringe instead of completely disregarding and getting hostile towards the other we’d be in a much better place inter-community wise. But, to be honest, mostly I just see milennial gays completely disregarding the feelings of the people who made it possible for us to go outside idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯