Blackbird (SR-71) jet plane sketch for my dad's birthday card.
10/17-18/2023. Pencil sketch on cream colored cardstock. Colored with Copic markers, Copic Multiliner Brush-M, Zig Clean Color Real Brush, Daler Rowney FW acrylic ink "White" (with dip pen), and Daiso Water Colors (with a paintbrush). Because my scanner makes images too light and drab, I did some adjustments in Krita, to better match my sketch in real life.
did tamsyn muir ever read the immortals by martin amis? it's a short story about an immortal man (he claims he landed in africa before it was africa, that is, before it was separate from the rest of the continents because pangea was a thing) who survives (among other things) a nuclear bomb and reflects on the idea that he may well survive humanity and be the only one to remember shakespeare and so on. it's eerily reminiscent of john gaius. stories about immortals obviously aren't a totally original concept, but he says that sometimes, he has the "weird idea that (he is) just a second-rate new zealand schoolmaster who never did anything or went anywhere and is now painfully and noisily dying along with everyone else." plenty of the description calls to mind the locked tomb's writing style, especially the paragraph describing the explosion and the last couple of paragraphs. idk if it's available to read online but I strongly recommend locked tomb fans who are interested in literature read it.
can you describe the first time u saw the vday vid?
oof. yeah b, i can- i'm not sure what level of detail u were looking for with this ask but i might have both more and less than you were hoping for? i have a very weirdly strong memory for things that have happened in my life - less so for things that happened during 10th grade & half of 11th grade bc i was dissociating so hard then - but my memories go back into first person around halfway thru 11th grade, which is when i found dnp, so. i remember watching the vday vid for the first time pretty damn well.Ā
(under the cut because i do not know how to not make essays)
i was 16, it was late november/early december of 2012, and i'd first watched a dnp vid in mid/early november. less than a month after the vday leak. so. it was just over six years ago and it was late at night and i was on my computer after i was supposed to be asleep, iām sure of that. it was dark out; nighttime during alaska winters is something thatās hard to describe to people who havenāt experienced it before. itās an omnipresent lack of light.Ā
so it was nighttime and i was almost certainly the last person awake in my house. my mom and sister always were asleep before me, and my parents had separated the summer before my 10th grade year so it was just the three of us at home. i wouldāve been in the bedroom iād had since i was seven.Ā
(replying to this ask feels weird, because even though i moved out when i was 18, i moved back in with my dad almost two years ago now and my bed is in the exact same place in the exact same room as it was when i was in highschool? it doesnāt feel the same as it did then, everything is better than it was when i was younger, but itās still so weird to be revisiting this so many years later).Ā
my bedframe had drawers and storage built in, and i would tuck my computer away in the second drawer down and pull it out once everyone else was asleep so i could go back on the internet. i definitely did that, the night i saw the vday vid. i didnāt have a tumblr yet, then; i just would regularly check a handful of peopleās blogs (the only person whose blog i remember looking at specifically isĀ @thelionandthellama ! finding them again in the phandom this year was so wild and incredible for me).Ā
and like, it was november of 2012.Ā
the vday video was still on tumblr like.. i watched the vday video on tumblr. it was a different time it was a messyĀ time. i probably saw something mentioning it, maybe this gifset? and i remember it.. didnāt take me long to find the video. the tumblr it was on wasnāt even password protected. i tried watching it again a little bit later, though, and the entire blog was gone.Ā
anyways. not to sidetrack right when i get to the part where iām actually talking about the vday vid itself, but you know how thereās a difference between knowing something rationally and knowing something in your bones or in your gut? like, how sometimes you feelĀ the things you know.Ā
i used to know in my bones that love wasnāt real, romance was 100% of the time inevitably doomed/not real/a lie, and that when people didnāt get divorced it was just because once they stopped being in love they still were friends enough to like, coexist in the same house and life. i knewĀ love wasnāt real iĀ knewĀ it and i knew i was never going to find love and that there was no point.Ā
i was very sad. my parentsā divorce hit me pretty hard but i knew so many other adults who divorced like i didnāt have a reason in my life to believe that love was real or possible! i knew it was fake.
and then i saw the vday video and i remember sitting against my wall and the world just going still when i watched it. because i was anticipating something big, and i already believed that dnp would be good together-i think thatās the only time in my life i would call myself a shipper? before i knew anything. now i just consider myself a supporter of their relationship and someone whoāsĀ inspired by/a fan of their love.
back to the video, though. i watched it alone in the dark and i didnāt beleive in love and iām certain i watched it more than once in a row, that first time. i donāt think it was the moral question that it is now. i know thereās people who morally donāt feel like they can watch it or that they want to? and thatās so valid, and things have gotten awfully convoluted at this point in time around the vday video. but back then i was just a kid in the dark looking for something to believe in and i found it.
i think i cried? i probably cried. because like. i watched it and love was real again. love is everything to me the entire world is love itās the thing i believe in more than anything else and the vday video made love real again. i watched it and then i watched videos of the halloween gatheringĀ and i just. i knew love was real again. i knew theyād said it was a prank. i knew that. but i watched the video and i knewĀ it was real. i knew it. and love existed again.Ā
so, yeah . not to be soppy but dnp literally put my life on the trajectory that lead to me meeting or getting close with everyone i love and consider family and were the start of me figuring out my mental and physical health and what i want to do with my life and i remember sitting in the dark watching the vday video and now iām in a world filled with light and love and iām so fucking thankful every single day. this is soppy and long and perhaps not at all what you were looking for but like.
when i watched the vday video i knewĀ it was real and iām still certain of that and i still cry watching it sometimes. i canāt make eye contact with phil in the video i think watching the vday video is what made me realize how rare it is for phil to actually make eye contact with the camera and it fucks me up .Ā
ok im done. ty for the ask b it was nice looking back down memory lane <3
#project hail mary
#wlw
#lana del rey
