Me getting ready to try get a second free sample.

We’re holding space for the Drophead.

Dragon Me Down

This week was the big TV Show Industry Challenge as the MUAs were taken to the Warner Brothers Studio in Watford which is unfortunately still bragging about Harry Potter in the year of Our Lord, Hunter Schafer, 2025

I’m choosing to believe that Glow Up only mentioned this because it probably causes JK Rowing immense psychic damage to be mentioned on a show that displays a person’s pronouns. Especially that nefarious singular they.

However, we’re not here for Hatsune’s Miku’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the MUAs were instead working on House of the Dragon under the supervision of BAFTA winning makeup artist, Amanda Knight, who is the third of The Fates alongside Val Garland herself and Ve Neill from the INCREDIBLY UNDERRATED Face Off

this is just the same woman in different fonts: Courier, Harlow Solid Italic and Copperplate Gothic Bold.

Thus began Leomie’s little voiceover spiel about the conceit of House of the Dragon which I enjoyed immensely because it was very obvious she had not idea what a Westeros, Winter Wolf Warrior or Targaryen were. She was just saying words and demanding a premium per syllable.

For their challenge the MUAs were having to prepare a cast of Supporting Artists for their screentests as Winter Wolf Warriors which involved applying 2 prosthetics: a fresh wound and an older scar as well as a £1000 false beard

just in case you were wondering how much Tyra Banks was paying to have this doormat glued to Denzel’s face during that particularly cursed cycle of ANTM

“But Ariadne, this is HBO, not the financially flailing CW. Surely the false beards look like real beards and not a piece of off-cut carpeting?” YOU’D THINK!

which does explain this collective reaction to finding out the price of the beard

tag yourself: I’m Mia’s rapid on-set disassociation. I feel you girl, I was handed a camera to operate at uni and informed it cost £50,000 only after I had switched it on.

I can’t help but feel that Mia and Jamie were a little bit stitched up because I’m not sure this beard could ever be made to look truly congruous with this model

but I also don’t blame them for doing it, it is your obligation as a reality TV entity to invoke The Ritual of Hubris when a contestant, bless your naive little socks Jamie, keeps saying things like this

that’s not clairvoyance Jamie, it’s rickets. DRINK SOME MILK.

So while Jamie and Mia committed to Kenneth Branagh levels of hubris by listing off their SFX qualifications like Lyle Lanley selling a Monorail to Springfield while applying a beard with edges to make Seneca Crane jealous

Rahual decided that in order to make their similarly incongruous beard fit slightly better, he was going to start Operation Eyebrow Weave

very much a solo mission as there was no way on God’s green earth that Jade was going to allow this Macaroni Penguin playing the role of Tom hanks in Castaway go in front of a BAFTA winning makeup artist. ARE. YOU. INSANE. RAHUAL?

and props to Rahual for not getting too precious about his homegrown eyebrows and very willingly taking the feedback. God rest the soul of the person who ever does argue with Jade on the topic of eyebrows

she practically originated the concept. They’re good brows. I could never.

The clear standouts were Josh and Kat who did do a really great job of making the look seem cohesive and realistic but I think it does also help when the beard looks like facial hair your model would actually grow and not a tumbleweed chia pet glued to your chin

what impressed Amanda most of all was that Josh had thought to make sure to apply weathering and grime under the beard too because it just guarantees that the look looks more pulled together and complete if you can show it from any angle and in lots of motion

what impressed me most of all was Kat’s restraint when it came to the fake blood because you KNOW she wanted to paint this man in a metric Samara Weaving of fake blood

but she had the sensibility to step back and remember this was a makeup for the famously subtle House of the Dragon. Jamie and Mia however had no chill

and in that moment, Amanda Knight had made up her mind

Mia, I am so sorry, you had to be collateral damage. Don’t worry, you’ll get a free hour on the couch of the on-set therapist as compensation. Yes, the on-set therapist is just Leomie Anderson wearing a £1000 beard. That’s ✨safeguarding✨ on a BBC3 budget, baby!

Lastly we have Jake and Cherise – who had a slight advantage because what is Jake but the pre-evolution of Daemon Targaryen?

however, there is only so much confidence a peroxide blonde mullet can instill you with, and they and Cherise wasted no time in giving in to their rising blood pressure

We didn’t get to see much of their process because a significant portion of this challenge was of course dedicated to Amanda glaring at Jamie. But despite the rapid on-set hereditary Dragon Madness that allegedly threatened to consume the two of them at any one given time, they didn’t do too badly!

again, I’m not sure how much of the beard styling was on their part or if they were given a pre-braided beard but if they decided to braid it themselves, I think that’s really neat! It gives the character a lot more personality! And it distracts you from whatever the hell is going on with the moustache.

A Winter Wolf Warrior Screentest Ranking:
1. Josh’ and Kat’s Grubby-necked Warrior
2. The Eyebrows That Weren’t
3. An Inherently Anxious Beard
4. Jamie’s Osseous Sabotage

The Long Arm of the Lore

The Creative Brief this week was testing the MUAs prosthetic application skills with the task of creating a look inspired by a piece of folklore or mythology. With the very special guest judge being the cuntiest cryptid this side of the Jersey Devil: Ashnikko

and nobody was more thrilled to see her than Jake

except maybe Josh who immediately clocked the archival Vivienne Westwood Vargas platforms and began plotting an elaborate heist involving 2 tubes of Kryolan TV Paint Stick (Shade 070 White), the fake teeth Kat left on the floor and half a £1000 chin wig

given that Josh was busy plotting Mission Implausible, his final makeup, inspired by a siren, didn’t quite get the necessary depth it needed with the whole thing just being a bit too grey and monotone

I don’t know if I hate the monotone of it though? I think it has a very deep-sea feel to it, but it may have popped a little more if he’d brought a little more of the pink he’d run on the waterline into the prosthetics to define them a little more

I do also think the slightly baggy 3 for £5 Primark boob tube kind of harshes the vibe a little bit and maybe a little thought could have been put into disguising that a little bit? She kind of looks like a frilled shark that’s worried about tanlines

BUT! That does mean we’re getting an aquatic vibe! However, on the other end of the Inhabitants of the Deep-sea spectrum, Jade was also doing a siren and was very much going for the evolutionary mistakes that got banished to the Dad Drawer of the Ocean we call The Mariana Trench

she really captured that look of nothing making sense when you look at whatever you find at the bottom of the ocean, like what even IS the Red Lipped Batfish?

you cannot tell me she doesn’t have really toxic views about gender identity and makes it her life mission to ruin the life of any barista with a septum piercing and dyed hair. She’s a TERF: Trans Exclusionary Radical Fish.

In order to achieve the gill effect on her model’s jawline, Jade had used a set of ears and if there’s one thing this show loves more than destroying the confidence of someone who specialises in bridal beauty make-up, it’s an alternative use of an ear prosthetic

however, Jade was not the only one to get a Ding Dong, as Val prematurely dinged her dong for Kat as she began to jab fake teeth onto her model’s face

TAKE IT AND RUN, KAT! IT STILL COUNTS!

Kat’s makeup was inspired by the Tooth Fairy and it’ll be hard to beat the set up of having Val predicting Kat will do a black and white look with a tone of severe annoyance right before Kat tells Leomie her look is a black and white look for shadiest editing decision of the series

I fear she’s going to be in the trenches for the next two episodes. But at least it was a strikingly black and white look!?

I don’t fully understand the very mechanical claws and I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she had them from a previous project she’d worked on. I really love the way she’s even worked in the clothing into the overall design though. I do think she may have run out of time when it came to the tooth application because her moodboard had rather grand plans (and a very carefully cut out toothbrush for good measure)

and then all we kind of got were a smattering of teeth that weren’t selling the story as much as she could have

However, time management isn’t the storyline we’re giving Kat. She has to escape her comfort zone of black and white. DID WE ALL SUDDENLY FORGET THE CLOWN WHO SHE THREW EVERYTHING AT?

and speaking of throwing everything at, here’s Rahual’s Bastet look which looks a bit like he stuck an MRI machine in the middle of a B&Q hardware aisle and switched it on (Yes, I did just watch Final Destination: Bloodlines, please discuss it with me. I have strong weather vane based opinions)

there is far too much going on, however, I do think leaning into a very maximalist aesthetic kind of suits a look based on Ancient Egyptian mythology – they were not a people famed for minimalism or subtlety

and as he was critiqued for doing too much, you could see the fear that perhaps the gold paisley bandana was an accessory too far beginning to set in

it’s not – I truly don’t think anyone on this show has looked more strikingly beautiful than Rahual – he has a face that you could put in a museum. And if he’s not careful, the British Museum will steal it.

This week’s Obligatory Time Waster was Cherise who had trouble with her prosthetic applications and brows

however, Josh was on-hand to serve as the emergency brow consultant and On-set Unqualified Therapist

because Leomie was busy explaining the world’s worst acronyms to Mia

Dialectal Behaviour Therapy saved my life, but good lord if significant portions of it aren’t incredibly dumb.

Cherise ended up having to focus so much on her model’s face, which did look really cool and interesting

but the body did look a little bit rushed

however, my compliments on a Not Insane Wigline! It’s honestly worth a gold medal on this show.

The last of the MUAs that didn’t start in a red chair was Jake who was really struggling not to freak out every time Ashnikko came within 15 feet of them

the attempt to play it cool and act as if they hadn’t noticed and heard Ashnikko and the shoe on her head trotting over to them 10 seconds before she actually got there <3.

Jake’s mythological figure of choice was a Succubus and I really loved the direction they went with this. The stereotypical angle would be to go for a really sultry, sexy demon – a quick google image search results in the most Not BBC-safe Microsoft Paint Art that DeviantArt has ever seen. So I kind of love that Jake went for the most off-putting demon twink you could imagine

however, still sexy enough for the monster-fuckers amongst us who saw Nosferatu (2024) for very different reasons. But really, the makeup was a supporting actor in Jake’s main story arc of getting to hold hands with Ashnikko which had a very “holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity” energy to it

queer media strikes again!

Lastly we have Jamie and Mia who were starting off the in red chairs, which Mia had a very real and visceral reaction to, having to leave the set in order to compose herself at a pace I can only describe as “an anxiety hit and run”

and I really appreciated the way this was framed and handled, both by the show and Mia herself. They never made it a negative thing about “not having what it takes” and Mia never apologised for having a perfectly valid reaction, or it wasn’t shown. Instead, Leomie collected her extra paycheck as the Unqualified On-set Therapist

lightened the mood a little

and everything proceeded as normal without making a huge deal of the whole thing. I would like to see the unseen footage of Ashnikko having to wait in the wings for 15 minutes as they paused the filming <3

Mia then went on to slap 6 prosthetics onto her model seemingly in the same time it took Cherise to apply her nose prosthetic at the wrong angle twice

the only problem with Mia’s makeup was the gloop

girly pop, why? Explain.
Even her model tried to warn her that it was too much and very quickly died inside as she refused to clean him up so he had to come to terms with looking like a reptile that refuses to swallow on national television

they’re called spitting cobras for a reason.

some of you didn’t spend enough time on DeviantArt in your teens AND IT SHOWS.

Lastly we have Jamie who was also going for a Salamander, famed for having the fire come from inside of it as opposed to dragons with that famously external fire breathing

I know what he means, but I do think he was mostly trying to Thesaurus his way out of being compared too much to Mia and her dragon and potentially suffer the same fate as Josh, even if Jade tried to spare him mercy by calling her creature an Ank

the show would not grant the same mercy and only ever referred to it as a Siren </3

Jamie’s look was significantly different to Mia’s though – going for a much more reptilian face

and really big and bold body painting work with the great big volcanic vulva smack in the middle

Sauron’s Saurussy, if you will.

after 732 recaps, I’ve pretty much written “dead dove – do not open” on them, you’re the ones still reading them.

Jamie’s make-up went down a storm, with Ashnikko finally having concept art for her D&D campaign

and I now have “Play D&D with Ashnikko” on my bucket list and I fully believe we can manifest this if we try hard enough. She can have as many sexy, sexy lizards as she wants. I don’t care.

A Folklore Inspired Makeup Challenge Ranking:
1. The Second Sexiest Merperson In The Atlantic Ocean
2. Jake’s Demon Twink, The Sucubussy
3. Jamie’s Red Hot Salamander
4. Mia’s Dribbly Dragon
5. Kat’s Tooth Decay Fairy
6. Cherise Wonky-nosed Forest Spirit
7. Josh’s Minimalist Mermaid
8. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Lash to Lash

Both Mia and Jamie managed to save themselves from the Face Off Challenge – a relief for the show’s accountant because they can’t afford two Leomie counselling sessions in one episode. Finding themselves in the bottom were Josh and Rahual for two polar opposite reasons – Josh for over simplifying his siren and Rahual for throwing the entire contents of the Tomb of Tutankhamun at his model’s face.

For their Face Off Challenge, the two of them were having to create a “Baddie Eye” and usually I’d put the demo look that Dom created here. HOWEVER, I’m holding off on that for reasons that will become very salient in about 15 seconds depending on your reading level. But by all means it’s a smokey eye with falsies attached that’s been rebranded with a snappy name for Social Media. Both Josh and Rahual did pretty ok

Josh’s is far more even and balanced with Rahual’s, especially the left one, looking quite tangled and a little loose. HOWEVER, it is nothing compared to the absolute disaster that Dom put out as a demo

WHY? WHY WOULD THEY CLOSE UP ON THE ONE EYE WITH THE WONKY DISCONNECTED EYELASH? He doesn’t even have the excuse of having a 10 minute time limit! If one of the MUAs delivered that eyelash, Val and Dom would shish kebab and devour their flesh in a heartbeat. So by all means, the MUA that should have been eliminated was Dom because MY. GOD. I’m mad, I’m so mad about that bloody eyelash! SPITTING MAD, even. Sadly, we’re losing Rahual instead

I’ll get justice or you eventually, you beautiful, beautiful man!

And now we’re down to 7