According to his new book, Serj Tankian from System of a Down almost signed Muse to his own record label back in 2003. He'd been a fan of theirs since the OOS days, having shared festival bills with Muse in Europe, and he really loved Absolution when it came out and noticed that Maverick hadn't even released it in the US, and wanted to try and buy Muse out from Maverick's control. Maverick asked for half a million dollars to transfer Muse (which is something I fucking HATE about labels and deals: they refuse to release your work and also won't let you leave, and this is still happening), which Serj couldn't cough up on his own, so he tried to convince Sony, who signed SOAD, to sign Muse instead. Sony hemmed and hawed and said they wanted to wait to hear Muse's next release before squaring up the money, but by the next year, all of Maverick's artist had been bought out by various record labels, including Warner Bros. proper, who picked up Muse and finally released Absolution, a year late in the US (2004, which I realised later is why you see some sources list its release date as 2004. The US release date). Interestingly enough to me, Maverick was a Warner subsidiary to begin with.

Serj regrets losing out on signing Muse, not so much from a financial standpoint, but because they were a cool band he liked, but I wonder how things may have panned out for Muse had they stayed indie for another few years? I imagine Warner worked out quite well for them: they sold out their first US tour in a long time in the autumn of 2004, headlined Glastonbury, were invited to play a Live 8 show, and of course, when Black Holes and Revelations came out in 2006 (Sony's loss), they exploded all over the alternative 'mainstream'. It doesn't seem like they've had much, if any, creative interference from Warner either, except maybe them suggesting the greatest hits thing that instigated Muse writing Will Of The People instead. Overall, fairly harmonious.

Things turned out alright for them!

Babies Muse 🤗

(RP Canon: Gentaro's Dimension Hopping)

(Early on in my RPing career, I wanted Gentaro to meet people from other fandoms. So I created a story where he fought the "Infinity" Dopant. Infinity created time and space portals, and when these portals interacted with the warp portal Gentaro created through Cosmic States, it created a celestial explosion.

Infinity did not survive this cosmic interaction. His Gaia Memory was shattered, and the man inside the monster was left to float in space.

Gentaro's armor, however, shielded him from this force and instead he was flung across time and space.

He first awoke in the timeline of Mass Effect, in the lead up to the Reaper War. He spent nine months there, befriending the Alliance, and even became connected to the Geth Collective Consciousness and the song of the Rachni Queen.

After nine months, Gentaro bounced again, and wound up in the worlds of Star Trek. First he arrived in Deep Space Nine after the war. This is where he became the blood brother to two formerly warring houses of Klingons by giving a moving speech about misguided honor that completely changed the Klingon's minds. However, Gentaro had had so much blood wine given to him during the night that even if he watches a recording of that speech. he can't remember giving it. This made Gentaro swear off "social" drinking for life.

His time in the Star Trek multiverse wasn't done, as he soon bounced through to the time of TOS, and wound up as an non-commissioned officer on Kirk's Enterprise.

This drew the attention of Section 31. The temporal affairs bureau found that his time traveling was not intentional, and he was actively working to keep from changing things too much. Due to more temporal shenanigans, Gentaro encountered Sisko again while Sisko was dealing with his own temporal jaunt in Trials and Tribble-ations. He couldn't speak to Sisko at the time, or risk a paradox.

The next time Gentaro bounced, he found himself in the timeline of @aceparagon's Hikaru. Several more months were spent here, helping the legendary Protector Vita in combat. He earned a great friend in her, and finally bounced again. Once more, he wound up in the Mass Effect timeline, with just enough time to see how things had changed with the destruction of the reapers. Then, a door in time opened, and a tall woman, that he later learned was Sailor Pluto, ushered him through back to his home timeline.

When he arrived, despite being gone for over two years, only a weekend has passed in his home timeline. He quite rightly slept through homeroom the next day as the temporal jetlag caught up with him.

Because of this traveling, Gentaro can actually use the Gate Switch that connects the Earth to the Moon to travel to other realities. He can bring someone along, but they need to stay close to him the whole time, or risk getting stuck there.)

Émilie Lévy & Louis Français

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 24 VIII 2023

I kind of love the fact that classical Athens a) very much didn't want anything like a king, but b) still very much followed a religion where a sacral kingship was an absolutely necessary intermediary between populace and divine.

So their solution was to have an elected office of archon basileus, an entirely politically powerless position whose role was 'be king specifically and only for the purposes of religious ritual, sacrifice, and augury'.

Underrated worldbuilding concept tbh.

affectionate details have my whole heart

Rooftops in the Snow (Snow Effect), Gustave Caillebotte, 1878

The nine muses of Ancient Greece discovered in the ancient Greek city of Zeugma, now in modern-day Turkey. The mosaics have been almost perfectly preserved for over 2,000 years

A pair of elaborate puffed and slashed Arm Harnesses, Germany, ca. 1520, housed at the Musée de l'Armée.

“I’ve got my eye on you, Sixer.”

A little bit of menacing Bill and troubled Ford for Forduary! :)))

Edited the pencil drawing to fix some features, add detail and highlights, and push the contrast a little.

The unedited version! :))

Goofy thumbnail:

Muse performing in HMV in Plymouth in 1999 on New George Street.

This was part of many acoustic in-store signing sessions to promote Showbiz. Only two songs were played: Muscle Museum and Sunburn.

Quand Muse, encore peu connu, faisait la promo de l'album Showbiz en magasin...

Thomas Couture (1815-1879) "The Romans in their Decadence" (1847) Oil on canvas Located in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

🤍 Dynamic Duo. 🖤

Is there a pithy one-word term for the chauvinism of literate/urban/agrarian elites toward nomadic pastoralists and hunter-gatherers? Like as far as bigotries go it's pretty much literally as old as civilization (that is, since those elites have existed to record/feel their chauvinism), but I can't think of a specific term for it.

affectionate paintings