Rossetti: You know what's next, right? Shiny peacoat Norman!

Wax: Prada!

Otherwise known as MODEL!NORMAN

He's even wearing a turtleneck under it.

I know. It's such a great look for him. Amazingly good.

So, I read that Prada saw... a promo? for Six Ways To Sunday and said to himself, "I must have him!"

I'd believe that, too.

Because he's v/ pretty in Six Ways.

He really captured the angular aspects, here. He also looks quite young for his age. He was fresh meat, baby.

And here... he's got a bit of that prettiness, but also the edginess, the strangeness. And he also looks very haughty, very aloof.

He looks like he be a quiet, pretty person who lives nearby.

Rich.

You admire him whenever you see him. But you never get close.

Although wearing Prada, I guess anyone looks rich. This look, actually, rather makes me think of The Talented Mr Ripley.

Oooh, good point. There's something timeless about this.

There's something rather stern or austere about it, an edge of something... Not an approachable person.

Not at all. But a person you want to gaze at.

Of course, it goes with the angle. I mean, this is an admiring angle. The camera is all, 'wow, man, lookit him!'

And, somehow, through a bizarre twist of fate, you want to meet him, and learn about his life, and be a part of it.

Seeing as the photographer must be, like, lying on the ground in front of him or something. Maybe the stern face is because Norman is trying not to laugh.

Oohh! Backstory! I'd definitely believe that, especially knowing his history of not liking photography sessions.

Okay, now I'm having an image of Austin Powers as the photog. "Yeah, baby, yeah!"

This is Norman, faced with such a catastrophe, trying not to laugh his head off. He's got a little smirk-that-could-lead-to-a-smile going on.

And that comes off as forbidding and mysterious. He's got his eyes on the craft services table at the other end of the studio. (I'm obsessed with the idea of him thinking about lunch)

That's good, that's good. Y'know, in other fandoms we would have been obsessed with him looking at, y'know, some other guy. But here we obsess about him smoking, and drinking. And eating.

But anyway, this picture is a good example of him cleaning up well. He looks very rich, very classy. When we know his default state is 'skank.'

He does classy very well. Which proves that he doesn't HAVE to 'do' classy. Which means people can stop calling him nothing but a skanky greaser, thank you very much.

He also, equally misleadingly, looks tall.

That's definitely just the camera angle.

Ok - I have this thing with hands. I always look at the hands. And, honestly, I didn't like Norman's hands at first. Well, when I wasn't distracted by a cigarette.

They're quite nice hands, I'd say.

But his hands here. I love.

See, I prefer them, like, *doing* something.

When they're doing something, I always like them. The true test is always when they're just hanging, because there's so much potential to NOT look good.

But he has good hands, as a rule, I say. Manly without being, like, paws. Not delicate, but not... whatever the opposite of delicate is when you talk about hands.

But he has these knuckles I love, and the default curl to his left hand just kills me.

This is such a Paris look. or, well, to me, being utterly clueless about fashion, it says 'Paris'

Oh my God - maybe artiste norman is actually independently wealthy! And this is him going to talk to his... attorney or something! It combines TWO Normans!

Which is why he's looking so determined. His grandfather is marrying Anna Nicole Smith and he's going to talk to the lawyers.

He likes being an artiste! He likes the partying and the boozing and the women and men and dance and song and food and the lot. He wouldn't give it up. But he has this side of life he has to deal with. And he does want the money. Because he wants to continue to do nothing but paint and fuck and drink and smoke. And we want him to be able to do that.

Hmmm. maybe there's some sort of... proviso in the will. Something he must do. And he's the family black sheep, the one they don't invite to the summer house in Tuscany. His mother has had three nervous breakdowns.

And he's gotten the blame.

His father refuses to speak to him, sends his lawyers instead.

He doesn't want to go to Tuscany. But sekritly he does. He wants approval! But, instead, he will look classy and determined, and prove that he needs no one. He will make them all respect him.

Sometimes, when he's been into the absinthe, he writes letters to his father and sends along with a rolled-up painting. And then in the hangover of thenext day he's like, 'd'oh!' but it's too late. but his father ignores it, and he ignores it too.

He smokes too much and he's friends with German guerilla filmmakers and some Basque separatists he met in Biarritz when he lost his money and tried to hitchhike back up along the bay.

Maybe there will be something in his father's will. That his father couldn't say, in life.

He always has pastels with him, no matter what.

He has an attic flat somewhere that was fashionable in the seventies.

But he owns the building.

It's disgustingly hot in the summers, and freezing in the winters, and the neighbours underneath are drug dealers and once there was a shooting.

He's letting the building go to rot, because he's angry with his father.

He keeps anything that has a color on it he likes. So there are pieces of paper and shards of pottery and scraps of clothing pinned to every surface. He constantly buys plants, thinking he can make them grow. But they die in the smoke, without sunlight, being watered with tonic.

He keeps the dead ones like a macabre museum on the windowsills.

A full shelf of them.

His visitors bring him mini national flags, and he sticks them in the pots.

He puts them in the paintings. The dead plants with the flags.

And no one understands. They think it's symbolic.

But it's just what's there when he's trying to think of some good background texture. He's quite pleased that people mistake this for something deep. It amuses him.

He's prone to letting his hair grow out farther than he expected

Then he'll suddenly notice that it's hanging in his eyes and chop it off.

The first time was an accident, but his father was so shocked that he lets it happen sometimes.

There have been a string of women who want to take care of him. Mostly, they're the ones he hasn't fucked. The ones he's fucked tend to leave right away.

He doesn't fuck anyone twice.

It's an unstated rule.

He's not interested in having any strings attached anywhere. one family was enough, thank you.

But sometimes he dreams that he actually has a child. He never dreams about the mother. And sometimes childrens toys appear in his paintings. Once again, everyone thinks it's symbolic.

His siblings insist that their parents were quite all right, really, and that it was he who was difficult. but he's of the opinion that it takes two to tango. He doesn't have much in common with his sister, who is a housewife in another part of Paris entirely, and his brother who works for an American company, although they get along, when they actually meet.

Norman tends to stay drunk for a week, though, after family get togethers.

To 'purge the system,' he tells his friends, the german guerilla filmmakers.

He knows a group of travelling australians who flit through paris whenever they can afford it.

They do extreme sports. Any and all.

They want the filmmakers to do a short on them, make them famous.

So they're usually on the way to bicycle up the Kilimanjaro or base jump off cliff walls in Norway.

But they're happy with any adrenaline rush

One of them scaled the backyard face of Norman's building and came in through the kitchen window, the one with the broken latch, in the middle of the night.

Norman gave him a beer and invited the others up. He has quite a few australian flags. He went with them, once. He was talked into bungee jumping one afternoon. But he doesn't feel the need to leave paris, and his apartment, and his painting. Though he fucked the tallest, blondest one that night.

He doesn't chase thrills, other than in bed and with some recreational drug use, although not as much as when he was a teen.

He has a collection of berets given to him by his family but he only wears the ratty black one when he's near them.