ArchivedLogs:Gradients

Gradients
Dramatis Personae Jax, Tag	2015-10-19 "We're all *legitimate* now."
Location <NYC> Greenwich Village
A rather bohemian neighborhood and the East Coast birthplace of the Beat movement, Greenwich is the residential counterpart to its more punk east sibling. The Village has been a historical center for the important political movements-- landmarks such as the Stonewall Inn on Christopher street were here during the GLBT rights movement, and the Weather Underground had safehouses here during the radical anti-war movement as well. Historically a place for artists and hippies to flock, gentrification has driven up prices in the locale, causing Greenwich to now trend less bohemian and more yuppie, though the stereotype remains. It's late afternoon, crisp and clear and bright: a perfect autumn day. A cool breeze whispers through the well-manicured trees, stirring a few leaves loose from a grand oak whose boughs reach ought over the brick wall that encloses it in a small, neat yard behind a townhouse. Tag catches one of the leaves out of the air and turns it over in his hand. His hair, where it hangs loose, reaches his shoulder blades in a hypnotic rainbow cascade, though he has made one slender braids at each temple to keep it out of his eyes. He wears a large black hoody completely covered with a labyrinthine network of many-colored lines that looks like a classical maze in some places, fractals in others, and circuitry in yet others. Colorful vines designs emerge from the cuffs of his jeans and climb the legs in bright organic curls. His boots are neon pink with glittery black laces. Though he has, for the moment, taken his eyes off of the wall before him, the colors on the brickface continue to shift. The blue ombre backdrop and the subtle wavelets near the top establish it as an underwater scene, and the shadow reefs in the distance suggests ocean. Right now, shafts of watery sunlight are materializing here and there, sometimes fading away and reappearing elsewhere to better use of space. The sea life and plants already populating this ocean all sport scintillating colors with metallic and iridescent highlights. Jax's hair suits the season, brilliant in a shaggy flame-hued ombre spill of reds and yellows and oranges. He isn't nearly so rainbowy as Tag, largely duochrome -- thick warm thigh-high socks, one side red, one side black; a black cargo miniskirt with hanging straps attached by D rings, layered tank tops (red under black mesh), diamond-checked red and black armwarmers, a red jacket full of many buckles and laced corset-like up its arms in black stitching. Glittery black makeup. Huge mirrored sunglasses. Chunky velcro black and grey and red sneakers. He doesn't actually have any paints in hand at the moment, standing back near the curb to look at the wall as a whole. One hand crosses over his chest, the other lifted to rub fingers against his (also flame-coloued) goatee. In front of him, things are shifting, too. Sharp-toothed huge-eyed sea-creatures with long fanlike fins, tentacles like kelp, long ribbon-bodies full of elaborately coloured patterns, dart and swim and hunt and fight as he tries to settle on an interesting configuration. "So temptin'," he says with a crooked grin, "T'have Malachite lurkin' in the background somewhere." Tag flashes a quicksilver grin over his shoulder he works the stem of the fallen oak leaf into the elastic band that secures one of his braids. Before he even turns back to their canvas, one of the distant reefs grows an additional silhouette: a monstrous form with a nominally humanoid torso, walking on four additional arms sprouting from what one might term its abdomen. There is a certain threatening lean to its posture, and its size must surely be immense, given the perspective. "Too far back? Too subtle?" He bounces up and down on his toes. "Ooh, I like that one," he's looking at one of Jax's fantastical predators now as it glides across the foreground. "Maybe some chompy *plants*, too? Do we have any yet?" "Ummm --" Jax eyes the ocean-scape they have made, teeth wiggling at his lip ring. He throws Tag a grin as he waggles fingers towards it, a dust-mote flutter of glowing sparkles drifting from hs hand to highlight one many-limbed spiny-tailed organism, long wispy kelp-arms and a mouthful of razor teeth. "I ain't real sure if that'n's plant or not. Didn't decide." His expression lights with delight at the silhouette in the background. "No no, she's /perfect/. Sera'll notice. She notices /everything/." Here --" His latest monstrous additions settle into configuration. He eyes them a moment longer; very subtly, there are a few shifts of colour and shading before they freeze. "I think those is good to go can you ink 'em." Tag rocks back onto the thick heels of his boots. "Yeah, taxonomy of this ocean is *kinda* wonky. Though..." He tilts his head pensively. "...I guess taxonomy is kinduva a wonky art in general." Watching Jax's monsters settle into their places, he cracks his knuckles. Quite needlessly, since he isn't actually using his hands at all. To to unassisted human eye, nothing has actually changed on the wall before them despite the artist's intent concentration. Those with broad-spectrum vision, however, can detect the shift in the reflectivity of the wall beneath Jax's illusions: in wide strokes and fine ones, in long fluid lines and short staccato ones, the creatures cross over from the realm of light into that of brick and mortar. "Are we keeping it all uh...'natural'?" He brackets the last word in finger quotes. "No sunken ships or submarines or all that?' The dusting of sparkle fades from the air. Jax bounces, up onto his toes a few restless times as Tag works, nodding in satisfaction as his illusions take permanence. "Welllll. Do you got a preference? Though," he adds with a bright smile, "ain't like havin' only-creatures an' sunken ships is mutually exlusive, right?" A much larger shape drifts into the painting, wide head with one thick and two narrow tails curving in towards each other, long row of huge dark eyes -- or windows? -- across the front, long slit of mouth on the underside with thin needle teeth; it looks, though red and black in hue, rather like if Farscape's Moya had turned monstrous and sunk into the ocean. The creature drifts downward, thuds into the ocean floor, where they rapidly decompose into -- half-a-creature (thick leathery skin tattering and peeling off), half-bones with their inside corridors and rooms partially exposed. "Best'a both worlds." For some value of 'best'. "Ohno!" That exclamation notwithstanding, Tag rises up onto the balls of his feet, eyes wide with delight. "I mean yes! Yesyesyes." He actually does stride up the wall now as he applies color to the latest addition, running slender fingers over the sleek outline of the Leviathan hulk. "Maybe a creepy eel-thing peeking out here..." His pinky finger swings out and leaves in its wake a strand of deep green aquatic vegetation that twists into the shape of a long neck and head. Then, checking his trace against Jax's original, he scrubs the rainbow subble on his chin with the palm of one hand. "Oh! And a glowing crystal garden! There maybe." He sketches out a few massive, jagged stones illuminating the water around them. "Or here?" They vanish and reappear on the opposite side of the wall, not with quite the alacrity of Jax's creations. His eyes skip between the various shafts of sun angling into the water. "Don't want to put all the light on one side." "Oh I /like/ that." Another bounce-bounce-/bounce/ at the eel addition to the leviathan-shipwreck, before Jax's lips purse. "Hmm. You sure? It could be interestin' composition-wise if there's kinda a -- gradient'a the light an' dark elements --" He sounds pensive more than certain, here. There's a very slight brightening of some of the shafts of sun on one side, an added gleam to the iridescence of some of the fish, the shadows lengthening on the other -- the monsters on that side, too, growing toothier, more twisted, their tangled fighting growing a touch more savage. His arms curl in around his chest, then unfold, hands rubbing together briskly. "Should do this more often." "Could be." Tag tilts his head one way, then the other. "Then how about...all the way over on the dark side?" The crystals shift yet again, into the shadowy regions, their violet glow reflecting off the scales, fins, and fangs of chimerical sea monsters in battle. "Where it's kinda the only light?" He looks back over his shoulder again, a kind of guileless wonder in his smile. "You're on! Bet we'll be doing it whole lot more once we get the art collective off the ground, too." Jax's hands clap together -- at the mention of the art collective, maybe, or maybe at the shift of art. "We can /do/ that now! Oh, gosh, oh /gosh/ there's so many things we can do now. We should go sign for it /tomorrow/ 'fore someone realizes we ain't Magneto. Oh gosh oh gosh. How exciting /is/ this?" Tag's magenta eyes widen. "Oh oh oh, you're right! We're all *legitimate* now." He nods jerkily, braids bouncing and shifting colors right down to the oak leaf. "Tomorrow, definitely!" The new arrangement of light and darkness passes from Jax's illusions onto the wall. "We're going to make it happen."