So I’ve been thinking about the AU challenge I posted a day or two ago, and I really like the idea of going back to Paradise Alley and doing something more with it. I’ve had a few vague ideas about where I might go with it, and I read the first story over again to get some sense of what might need adding. And in the comments I found an answer I’d already given:
“There’s a whole lot more that could be done here, including more about Faraday and Vasquez - it was tantalising to leave their relationship so unexplored, but maybe one day… “
He forges on, past a peacock dream-girl fanning her tail enticingly and a looming Synthian priest expounding the heresy of the Embrace of Tides, until he finally comes in sight of his own doorstep. It’s occupied by a tall dark-skinned man in a heavy, many-pocketed coat wearing an octo-familiar in a faded orange around his neck, its spiralling arms waving delicate suckered ends; he’s accompanied by a woman with red hair in a badly-fitting catgirl outfit and shoes she seems to have borrowed from someone else.
Everyone knows the first notes of Elmer Bernstein’s rousing score. In addition, who doesn’t like a picture by John Sturges, that manly maker of man-sized action movies? And this one’s more than man-sized, filling big screens with Charles Lang’s stunning Panavision cinematography. Granted, there’s a generation of folks today who simply will not watch a western, but think of this picture as a fable and it takes on a different texture altogether (it’s based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, after all).
This is also an opportunity to see some major actors such as Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson before they became mega-stars. A shiny-bald Yul Brynner is the man in black, leader of six gunslingers who rescue a poor Mexican village from a vicious band of, well, bandoleros. Eli Wallach is the head bandito, and he pretty much makes this his picture at times, if only because of his wicked sense of humor.
Nonetheless, other players have their moments, specifically Coburn, who can pull a knife from behind his neck and throw it before anyone else can draw a Colt revolver. As for those neat little tricks with a shotgun by which Steve McQueen frequently shows off—he was doing them to upstage Brynner. Robert Vaughn (soon to be Napoleon Solo in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) is the best dressed among the seven (excluding Brynner), with tailored city-slicker duds and accoutrement. Bronson, not surprisingly, is a brooding badass with a heart of gold. Yes, this is a guy film.
I’m fighting everything I try to draw rn because that’s just how it is sometimes but here’s a dancing I drew the other week that I’m still not sure if I like or not.
Killed a man, have you? I recognise the signs – the tremor of your hand as you fill the glass, your gaze distant and unfocused, the bottle clutched like a hand in the dark. Did you watch the light go out in his eyes? Did you see him buried? Did you know his name?
As to that, let me tell you a tale.
Once, there was a hunter, and his quarry was …well, you’ll see.
for fontainebleau22, who shares so many sweet words
Goody would not hold back something as simple as a look. At least not in this town. His playful side was even trying to tempt him to ruffle the neat strands with his beard, though he knew well enough that that would be too far, even between a husband and wife.
He wakes up just past noon on Saturday to a text from Goody, sent at 2am: Sorry for radio silence, feeling better now. You want me to finish that paper?
Billy rolls onto his back and scowls at his phone, texts back no its a group paper we have to finish it as a group and then the whale emoji like maybe thirty times.
What do whales have to do with group projects, Goody texts back ten minutes later.
b/c they r majestic like our group paper will be, Billy texts back, with just three whales this time.
had this stuck in my head until I decided to draw it ╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭
