Vernicosa

With our pistil soul-bright, our stamen heaven-waste, our corona red from the purpleword we sang over, O over the thorn.

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Cleopatra by Michelangelo, 1533

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

1. Hugh Dancy as Will Graham in Hannibal 2.12, “The Number of the Beast is 666” (2015) dir. Guillermo Navarro

2. Nicolas Régnier (Niccolò Renieri), Saint Sebastian, circa 1620

Regnier (Niccolo Regnieri) was born in France but left for Italy as a young man. In Rome he attached himself to the followers of Caravaggio, and it was during this early period that he produced the Hermitage Saint Sebastian, a subject to which Regnier turned repeatedly. A Roman warrior, Sebastian served in the private guard of the Emperor Diocletian, who sentenced him to be shot with arrows as punishment for his Christian faith (Jacopo da Voragine, The Golden Legend, XXIII). The slender figure of the young martyr is set against a dark, almost black, ground, and whilst being very striking also contains a hint of sentimentality. (via The Heritage Museum)

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

If it doesn’t crush me It’s alright If it doesn’t break me It’s alright All the petty demons trying to break me in two I was born stronger than any of you

The Mountain Goats, ‘Hail Saint Sebastian’ (2012)

[breathofgod]

[vernicosa]

Can’t believe I made it to the stage of life where everyone is bothering me about marriage. Hopefully I survive this.

[sesiondemadrugada]

Caligula (Tinto Brass, 1979).

[leatherandmossprints]

‘Der Astralmensch’ by Sascha Schneider, c. 1903.

[vvargamora]

every single episode she looks like this. I don't know what this fucking conspiracy is even about.

[newlyy]

Not that I think all marriages are doomed but when deciding who to marry you should ask yourself “is this someone I’d want to divorce?” As in, is this someone I believe would be mature and fair, even when they’re upset and don’t particularly like me at the moment. Is this someone I could continue to trust while going through an adversarial process? And if the answer is no, don’t marry them.

[baraphalloplastyclinic]

I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?

Don't become a housewife.

[kosmogrl]

oooh I get it it’s always gonna be because of the environment I grew up in

[finita--la--commedia]

“The Idiot” (1958), directed by Ivan Pyryev, based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky “ … только мне показалось, что в нем много страсти и даже какой-то больной страсти.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Idiot”)

[derring-do]

Opera Streams: Late-Mid May 2026

15th: Bell's Medusa from La Monnaie/De Munt. World premiere. Featuring Claudia Boyle, Paula Murrihy, and Josh Lovell. Free!

17th: Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier from the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Concert presentation. Featuring Julia Kleiter, Emily D'Angelo, and Katharina Konradi. Free!

17th: Strauss's Arabella from the Metropolitan Opera. Geolocked to US IPs. Featuring Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Tomasz Konieczny, Louise Alder, and Pavol Breslik. Will also air on PBS member stations - dates vary. Free!

23rd: Mozart's Così fan tutte from the Hungarian State Opera. Featuring Ildikó Megyimórecz, Zsófia Kálnay, Botond Pál, and Attila Dobák. Free!

28th: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin from Wiener Staatsoper. Featuring Asmik Grigorian, Boris Pinkhasovich, and Bogdan Volkov. Free!

29th: Ponchielli's I Lituani from Lithuanian National Opera & Ballet. Featuring Viktorija Miškūnaitė, Gaston Rivero, and Tadas Girininkas. Free!

29th: Verdi's Nabucco from Teatro alla Scala. Featuring Luca Salsi, Anna Netrebko, and Francesco Meli. Rental.

In cinemas, the Met's premiere production of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego will be broadcast worldwide on the 30th, with encores in some locations. The composer is Gabriela Lena Frank, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for music. Find your local theatre here.

Archive notes: Dallas Opera's summer archive streams are back. Elektra with Marjorie Owens and Angela Meade and La Traviata with Yaritza Véliz and Javier Camarena stream for free through the end of the month. Medici recently added the 2023 Rusalka from the Royal Opera, starring Asmik Grigorian, and on the 21st will add a 2023 Arabella from Deutsche Oper Berlin and a 2009 Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.

Audio highlight: On May 16th, the Met's free Saturday matinee broadcast is the Listeners' Choice pick: a classic recording of Don Carlo from 1950, with Bjorling, Siepi, Merrill, and Rigal. Listen online or on the radio.

[i-know-what-you-diddly-iddly-did]

asia argento by derrick santini, 2013

[vernicosa]

The fact that death doesn’t consider your permission has been haunting me all day.

[allsadnshit]

Half of becoming a functional adult after a traumatized childhood is literally just believing your own emotions judgement and opinions

Otherwise you will be emotionally stuck every time you need to make literally any decision

[0heymoon]

The Hamas view of the Jewish people is not drawn solely from the pages of the Qur’an and hadith.  Its myopia is also the product of Western anti-Semitic [primarily Nazi] influences.  While Hamas, like other modern-day Islamic Jihadists, has developed its argument on the Jewish question by relying on Qur’anic and other Islamic sources, it also… [borrows] from such classical Western anti-Semitic sources as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”[xviii]  What Hamas has in common with Hitler is not merely the desire to exterminate the Jews.  No, it is this: exterminationist Jew hatred forms a definitive, foundational basis for their entire worldview.  Both for Nazis and for Islamic Jihadists, both for Hitler and for Hamas, exterminationist Jew hatred is a first principle defining the very essence of their thinking.

Beverley Milton-Edwards

[chthonic-cassandra]

I was always impressed by an aspect of the ancient Greeks, not their definition of truth, but something in their language, a derivation. Their word for truth was aletheia, which derives from the verb lanthanein, to hide, to conceal, to leave in the dark. A-letheia is therefore the contrary, the revealed, the not-concealed, the thing brought to light. I am struck by the resemblance to photographic processes, to film, to images on celluloid. A light-sensitive layer is exposed, but that doesn't make a picture, only a latent image. In the darkroom it is treated with chemicals, and then gradually a picture emerges. It exerts a strange fascination, the way the image takes shape in the bath of developer, how it darkens and acquires detail. Leave aside for now the question of whether it's real or not. What I find so stirring is the process, the approximation, the emergence. The quest itself, bringing us nearer to the unraveled truth, allows us to participate in something inherently unattainable, which is truth.

Werner Herzog, The Future of Truth (trans Michael Hoffman)