blamebrampton | Why Rai wins at bluffing!

To open with an aside: I bought a gel eye mask today, for those days when the heat is just too much. On the back of the packaging it has this immortal line:
BEAUTY TIP Avoid stress as much as possible.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. That's where we have all been going wrong!

Now to the point of this entry, which is to rave some more about this entry at hd_holidays, raitala's series Thaw.

About eight weeks ago, I was sitting in an attic hotel room in Florence, gleeful at being there with

raitala and

pingrid , when Rai pulled out her most recent works.

She passed them over, and I just wanted to run downstairs and put them in my bag and say ‘Sorry? Paintings? No, you were going to show some but then you were distracted.’ when she asked for them back. Alas, I am ethical and slow, and was not smart enough to get her drunk first.

What she showed me were the first two images of these four. I sat and looked at them for as long as I could before it started to look a bit weird and stalkery. What I said at the time was something along the lines of ‘Oh god, Rai, these are brilliant! Look at their coats, and their expressions, and the underarm hair, and Draco’s little smile, and the sweat! These are just bloody brilliant!’

What I thought was ‘In this first one, Ron is so crankypants, and Harry is so curious, and Draco is counting to 10,000 in his head and planning to come first in every single exam if it kills him. And in the second one, there’s the moment when Draco’s smile moves from “I can’t believe I beat him!” to “Did his cock just twitch? It DID!” and Harry is thinking “Bugger” and “Bugger!” and last week he stayed back after their martial arts lessons and told Draco that the reason he could never beat him in that throw wasn’t because he was smaller and lighter, but because he drops his shoulder, which of course leads to an ironic edge to the first bugger. His word choice may not be ironic, BTW.’

She seemed pleased that Pin and I liked them so much, and did her standard modest hand wave thingy when we began to rave enthusiastically. She told me that they were for her recipient for hd_holidays, and I immediately developed an unreasonable hatred for said person, since they would ‘have’ these images, which wasn’t fair, because they were talking to me!

There was a reason for that.

Raitala is the TRICKIEST and KINDEST and NAUGHTIEST and CLEVEREST woman, and I really cannot say thank you enough! Though I am never, ever playing poker with her, because she managed to completely convince me they were for someone vague and annoying (oh, hang on ... no, it was acting! I am sure!) and I had not an iota of suspicion!

Though it is ENTIRELY my fault they were posted so late due to the fact that my own work was submitted appallingly late. However, what a brilliant addition to the final week!

My partner, who refers to fandom as ‘that odd thing you do, no, the other one’, describes Rai’s work as ‘kind of Aubrey Beardsley, it’s someone who is using human forms to make artistic points about the figure or the environment they’re placed in, rather than just representing a body’. Quite so. (He can be quite clever, that J.)

If you somehow managed to miss them, trot over to her lj and view the series here, and leave her some thanks for sharing her artistic and storytelling skills with us.

You know, with

raitala ,

leochi ,

red_rahl ,

oldenuf2nb ,

lillithium , and the many other brilliant artists out there all providing their diverse, insightful art for free, as a fandom we are ludicrously lucky!

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY

tnumfive ! All the best for your day!