To be totally fair to Willy Wonka, at least a couple of those candy factory casualties involved kids deliberately circumventing reasonable safeguards, sometimes aided and abetted by the parents who were supposed to be supervising them. What happened is at most 60% his fault.
Wynonna Earp. Waverly/Nicole with a big side of Wynonna/Nicole. 21k.
Nicole takes a step forward, and then another, and then Waverly is in her arms, her head tucked under Nicole’s chin and her hands pressed tightly to Nicole’s back.
For the first time since she got off the bus, she feels like she’s actually come home.
They stay there a long time, clinging to each other in the middle of the street. Nicole’s hand is soft on the back of her head, and her hands press against the rough fabric of Nicole’s jacket trying to pull her closer.
Nicole’s the first one to step back.
all the thanks to @iamthegaysmurf for the comma wrangling, amongst other things. more thanks than i can say to @doctoruth, who remains, quite simply, the best. i should also thank my professional union for going on strike for two weeks so i had time to make the edits i wanted to this, and my girlfriend for putting a roof over my head during that time and encouraging me to write, mainly by giving me the best place to it: in her bed.
“She drives out to the homestead after dinner and lets herself in.
Wynonna grins when she sees her. “The boys just left. There’s leftovers in the kitchen if you want them.”
Nicole shakes her head as she falls onto the couch next to her. “I might never need food again. The Nedleys can eat.”
Wynonna huffs out a laugh, and kicks her feet up onto the coffee table. “That’s the Christmas spirit.”
Neither of them mention the Waverly-sized space between them on the couch when Wynonna flicks through TV channels until she finds a Christmas movie and leaves it on.”
omggggg, flannel!anon. this is amazing, i’m so sorry i’ve only just seen it. thank you so much for drawing art for my fic yet again. i’m just so humbled every time you do. i love it!
i hope you enjoy the second part as much as the first :)
Wynonna Earp. Waverly/Nicole with a big side of Wynonna/Nicole. 21k.
Nicole takes a step forward, and then another, and then Waverly is in her arms, her head tucked under Nicole’s chin and her hands pressed tightly to Nicole’s back.
For the first time since she got off the bus, she feels like she’s actually come home.
They stay there a long time, clinging to each other in the middle of the street. Nicole’s hand is soft on the back of her head, and her hands press against the rough fabric of Nicole’s jacket trying to pull her closer.
Nicole’s the first one to step back.
all the thanks to @iamthegaysmurf for the comma wrangling, amongst other things. more thanks than i can say to @doctoruth, who remains, quite simply, the best. i should also thank my professional union for going on strike for two weeks so i had time to make the edits i wanted to this, and my girlfriend for putting a roof over my head during that time and encouraging me to write, mainly by giving me the best place to it: in her bed.
I saw a sad facebook post from the gay bookstore back in Ann Arbor where I used to live about how they hadn’t sold any books that day so I went on their online store and bought a couple, and while you don’t get #deals like elsewhere online, I’d love it if y’all would consider buying your next gay book from them instead of like, Amazon.
Common Language is a great bookstore and while I’ve only been there once, I follow it on Instagram and really want to see it succeed!
Their most recent Facebook post (~9:30 PM, April 18):
A little update:
At last count we had 211 online orders over the last couple of days. We generally have a handful of online orders PER MONTH. And many days our in store sales are 3-5 books. In other words, this deluge is significantly more than we sell in a month. We are literally brought to tears by this outpouring.
About 80% of them have already been fulfilled and are on their way to you.
The other 20% require special attention (out of print book, book temporarily out of stock, etc.) or we need to pull together books from various sources. Some of you will be getting emails from me!
Our staff is three people and one dog. And while the dog is, perhaps, the world’s sweetest dog, he’s not much help in this task. The lack of opposable thumbs is a big hindrance to many bookstore tasks.
Mind you, we are not complaining. Having a surge which overwhelms our current resources is a great problem to have. Heartfelt thanks.
As I take a short break from fulfilling orders I wanted to share a few thoughts.
This is transformative.
We will be able to pay some bills which will steady the ship for a longer voyage. In our wildest dreams this surge would continue, we’d hire more people to handle the load, and the world would have a thriving honest-to-god queer bookstore.
But even if it doesn’t continue at this truly astonishing rate, having a regular flow on online orders would give the store a level of security we haven’t seen in a long time.
All of you did this. You made it happen. And you can be a part of making that dream come true. In fact, you can be the most important part of making that dream come true. You can be an ambassador.
It was, after all, an ambassador who made this happen.
When a friend talks about getting a book, steer them to us. Our mission is to create a safe space for LGBT people, a resource for a community, a place of equality for women, a place where black lives truly matter, a place where your gender is what you say it is, not what anyone else says it is.
If this is your mission as well, join us.
so my roommate, the person I live with, my memeing friend MADE THIS POST
Tausig’s crossword is a so-called Schrödinger puzzle, named for the physicist’s hypothetical cat that is at once both alive and dead. In a Schrödinger puzzle, select squares have more than one correct letter answer: They exist in two states at once. “Black Halloween animal,” for example, could be both BAT or CAT, yielding two different but perfectly correct puzzles. Only 10 such puzzles have now been published in Times history.
It’s the theme of Tausig’s puzzle, though, that makes it special. Four entries in Thursday’s crossword can include either an “F” or an “M.” Both are correct; neither is wrong. For example, “Part of a house” can be either ROOF or ROOM. The long “revealer” answer, tying those select entries together and spanning 11 squares smack-dab in the middle of the puzzle, is GENDER FLUID.
This puzzle, with “M”s and “F”s that aren’t fixed, is a masterful blend of subject and structure. “It potentially really evokes what gender fluidity is, which is not moving back and forth between two poles, but actually not being committed to either pole, and potentially existing in many states at different times,” Tausig said.
This is … really cool.
i never really thought of crossword puzzles as an art form, but like… this is art.
a crossword puzzle based on schrodingers’ cat??? a phYSICS CONCEPT??? sign me tf up i love everything about this
A remarkable Jacobean re-emergence after 200 years of yellowing varnish Courtesy Philip Mould
PAINT RESTORATION OF MESMERIZING
I saw this on Twitter. He’s using acetone, but a cellulose ether has been added to make it into a gel (probably Klucel—this entire gel mixture is sometimes just called Klucel by restorers, but Klucel is specifically the stuff that makes the gel).
Normally, acetone is too volatile for restoration, but when it’s a gel, it becomes very stable and a) stays on top of the porous surface of the painting, and b) won’t evaporate. So it can eat up the varnish.
It looks scary, but acetone has no effect on oils, and jelly acetone is even less interactive with the surface of the paint or canvas.
Will someone PLEASE clean the mona lisa
For those who are wondering, they cleaned a copy of the Mona Lisa made by one of Da Vinchi’s students, and here’s a side by side comparison:
CLEAN THE FUCKING MONA LISA.
A couple problems with cleaning the Mona Lisa:
The Mona Lisa is a glazed painting.
A Direct Painting is one in which the artist mixes a large amount of paint of the correct value and shade the first time, and applies it to the painting. A Glazed Paintingis a painting in which an underpainting is painted, generally in shades of gray or brown, and a allowed to dry, before layers of very thin glaze - a mixture of a tiny bit of pigment and a lot of oil - is applied to the surface. Some artists, such as Leonardo, choose to work this way because it provides an incredible sense of light and illumination (look at how the real Mona Lisa seems to glow).
The Mona Lisa is an incredible work of glazed painting, but that makes it fragile, so fragile that many conservators don’t want to work on it because it’s extremely difficult and a conservation effort go wrong for many many reasons. One of the reasons it could go wrong is that the glazes and the varnish layers are actually a very similar chemical composition, and a conservator could accidentally strip off layers of glaze while removing the varnish.
In fact, in 1809 during its first restoration when they stripped off the varnish, they also stripped off some of the top paint layers, which has caused the painting to look more washed out than Leonardo painted it.
The Mona Lisa also has a frankly ridiculous amount of glaze layers on it, as Leonardo considered it incomplete up until he died, He actually took it with him when he left Italy (fleeing charges of homosexuality), meaning it never even got to the family who had commissioned it, and instead constantly altered it, trying to get it just a touch more perfect every time. That makes it really fragile, with countless layers of very thin paint, many of which have cracked, warped, flaked, or discolored. It’s not just the top layer, its layers and layers of glazing throughout the painting that have slowly discolored or been damaged over time.
Speaking of damage, look at the cracking. That’s called craquelure; it happens with many painting’s (even ones that aren’t painted with this technique) because the paint shrinks as it dries, or the surface it’s painted on warps. Notice that the other painting has very little of it, even though it’s almost the same age.
The reason the Mona Lisa has so much craquelure is because Leonardo was highly experimental, almost to the point of it being his biggest flaw. There were established painting techniques, and then there were Leonardo’s painting techniques. The established painting techniques were created in order to insure longevity and quality, but Leonardo didn’t stick to any of them. This has made his work a ticking time bomb of deterioration.
Don’t believe me, check it out:
This is how most people think The Last Supper looks
But this is actually a copy done by Andrea Solari in 1520.
The actual Last Supper looks like this:
The Last Supper has been painstakingly and teadiously restored, with conservators sometimes working on sections as small as 4 cm a day. To get to it you’ve got to walk through a series of airlocks (AIRLOCKS!?!?!) and they only allow 15 people at a time because the moisture from your breath and your skin particles will damage it. Despite all of the precautions and restoration, it still looks like that.
This is because Leonardo painted the last supper using highly experimental methods. He didn’t use the traditional wet-into-wet method that fresco painters used, and insead painted onto the dry plaster on the wall, meaning the paint did not chemically adhere. Before he even died the painting had already begun to flake. It’s a miracle it’s still there at all.
They’ve done what restoration they can on The Last Supper because the painting will absolutely disappear if they don’t. The Mona Lisa, which is delicate, but much more stable, doesn’t need the same kind of attention. And, like many of his works, is just too delicate to touch, and the risk of doing irreparable damage to it is far too high. The Mona Lisa is insured for something like 800 million dollars, and that’s a lot of money to be ruined by one wrong brush stroke. (fun fact: the most expensive painting ever sold was also a Leonardo, the Salvator Mundi, and it went for 450 million dollars.)
Furthermore, there are probably only 20 or so authenticated Leonardo paintings in the whole world. If you look through the list, most of them aren’t even fully done by him, are disputed, or aren’t even finished. It’s simply too difficult and too risky to restore the Mona Lisa, one of Leonardo’s only finished and mostly intact works, when there’s hardly any more of his paintings to fall back on.
Now the painting you see in the video above is 200 years old, not 600 years old, and I assure you, the conservators decided the risk to restore it was minimal (after extensive research, paint testing, x-raying, gamma radiation, etc.) and that the work they were doing was worth the risk based on the painting’s value.
Conservators make the decision all the time about how much they can do for a painting, because really, they have the ability to completely strip a painting of all varnish and glazes and just repaint the whole thing (which happens to a lot of badly damaged paintings, especially when there’s no way to save them - one of the very small museums in my area recently deaccessioned a Monet because it was barely original, and no one wants to look at a Monet that’s only 20% Monet’s work) - but doing that to the Mona Lisa, removing the artist’s hand from the most famous piece of artwork in history? Hell No.
(also, I’m not a conservator but I’ll be applying to a conservation grad program sometime next year, so sorry if any of my info is at all inaccurate)
I found this really interesting, thanks for sharing.
The girl’s hair is a darkness unravelled. She’s slight. There’s a look in her eyes like she’s haunted and leaving everything behind. She fights at school for unknown reasons and she’s quiet at home. She won’t listen to her father and she skips class to walk in the woods and sit alone in some unfound place. Where she will stare at a photograph showing her likeness. A dark-haired woman with sad eyes and a brave smile. A man with his face in shadow, hat pulled forward in a mysterious slant. A pistol at his hip. Face long gone and grave.
—
The Sum Total of Living is a loose interpretation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, by way of Wynonna Earp and The Good Place. Set in the established universe of The Good Place, it imagines the crossover between Wynonna Earp’s reality and the existence of a good place; a bad place; and a really very bad place—revenant hell. Although the setting is based on The Good Place, the cast of characters is almost entirely that of Wynonna Earp, and the narrative centers around two strands: Nicole Haught, trying to understand the afterlife; and Waverly Earp, trying to get back to her.
Nicole rolls her eyes, and takes a final look to either end of the alley before pulling herself over and into the dumpster. She leans over to brush off her pants and straightens up to meet Wynonna’s eyes. Wynonna raises an eyebrow, her voice a quiet, teasing tone. “This is a crime. We’ve made a criminal of you.”
“Stop it.”
Wynonna laughs quietly. “This is the ultimate rule-breaking, Nicole. You’ve joined the rebellion.”
Nicole huffs, crossing her arms. “This is not rule-breaking, or a crime.” She pauses, glaring at Wynonna. “There’s no law here. There’s no rules we have to obey. This isn’t life.” She lets her frown break into a grin. “Actually, this is the opposite of crime, Wynonna. You’re back to doing what you do so well. Following rules of ethics rather than rules of law.” She laughs at Wynonna’s widening eyes. “That’s right. You’re the good guy. You’re not a criminal, at all.”
Wynonna frowns. “Fine. Whatever. This is still totally a scene from The Wire, though. We’re in a freaking dumpster, hooking up with our gun supplier, Nicole.”
—
The Sum Total of Living is a loose interpretation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, by way of Wynonna Earp and The Good Place. Set in the established universe of The Good Place, it imagines the crossover between Wynonna Earp’s reality and the existence of a good place; a bad place; and a really very bad place—revenant hell. Although the setting is based on The Good Place, the cast of characters is almost entirely that of Wynonna Earp, and the narrative centers around two strands: Nicole Haught, trying to understand the afterlife; and Waverly Earp, trying to get back to her.
This is the final main chapter of this story, and a (very short) epilogue will be posted tomorrow. I appreciate so much all the comments that have been posted on ao3, and I will be endeavouring to reply to every single one of them. Thank you for reading.
As always, Han (socallmedaisy) and Smurf (iamthegaysmurf) have been the most wonderful betas for this story. Smurf gave me particular help for this chapter in using police codes accurately, and also gave me the idea for Nicole’s most annoying memory. Han delivered an especially intensified version of cheerleading for this chapter and the epilogue. In thanks, the entirety of the subplot involving Wynonna and Nicole, a dumpster, and semantics about criminality is for her, the biggest Wynhaught fan out there.
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