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shangchiswife · 1 year

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joel miller- the babysitter part 2

hi everyone thank you so much for all of the love on my previous post on here and on tik tok. i appreciate it so much <3 now here is the long-awaited second part. hope you enjoy!

asiya

....

summary: joel lets you have a turn at your pleasure

joel miller x fem!reader

warnings: smut, language

word count: 2448

link to part 1: part 1

....

You woke up early, the thrill of yesterday’s events with Joel filling your head. The ghost of his lips lingered on your lips as it sent electricity down your spine.

You immediately sprung out of bed and went to the bathroom, changing into your laciest, sexiest bra and matching panties. You covered your lingerie with an innocent-looking dress with flowers, an ode to Sarah who always used to give you flowers when you babysat her.

Before going to Sarah’s party, you had driven to the local bakery to buy her her favorite dessert: strawberry cheesecake cupcakes.

After buying the sweet dessert, you drove over to Joel’s house, buzzing with excitement at the thought of seeing both Sarah and Joel.

The moment he opened the door, his breath caught in his throat at how beautiful you looked.

He put his hand out, brushing a stray hair from your cheeks.

“You look so pretty, sweetheart,” his eyes were soft as he caressed your cheek with one hand.

You whimpered at how close the two of you were, making his lips turn up in a smirk.

“Y/N!”

Sarah’s voice made Joel promptly drop his hand from your cheek as the young girl jumped into your arms.

“Thank you so much for coming!” she squealed.

You laughed at her excitement.

“Careful, I’m gonna drop these,” you said as she untangled herself from your arms and stared at the delicacies in your hand.

“Are those-no way! Strawberry cheesecake cupcakes? You’re the best Y/N!” she yelled, taking the cupcake box from your hands and sprinting to the kitchen to put them away.

Joel smiled fondly at you as he watched the interaction between his daughter and you.

You stared at him, your cheeks heating up.

His wet hair was slicked back and his body was adorned with one of his classic plaid shirts.

How did he always look so fucking amazing?

“See somethin’ you like?” he chuckled as his brown eyes bored into yours.

You opened your mouth to speak but no words came out. You were embarrassed that you had been caught staring.

He laughed once more.

“So damn cute, I can’t wait to ruin you,” his voice was deep, as he stared you down, watching your every movement.

Your whole body jittered with excitement.

“C’mon, let’s go see what Sarah’s up to,” he said, his Southern accent slipping into his words.

He put a hand on the small of your back sending shockwaves through your entire body as he led you to the kitchen.

You looked up at him as his lips curled up more.

He knew exactly what kind of effect he had on you and he was doing it on purpose. His mind was filled with what he planned to do to you.

Sarah was slumped over a purple colored bag as she poured contents into it.

“What’s that?” you asked, plopping next to her.

“A goody bag,” she said matter-of-factly before tying the purple bag and placing it at the edge of the table with the rest of the completed bags.

“Need some help?” you questioned, arching a brow.

“Yes please,” Sarah turned to you with worried eyes.

“Alright,” you shrugged your shoulders and started placing the small tubes of mascara and butterfly clips into the bag.

“Dad, don't just stand there help us out!” Sarah ordered as Joel placed his hands up in surrender and took a seat beside you. He carefully brushed one of his hands over your thighs, making you suck in a breath.

“Somethin’ wrong Y/N?” he questioned, obviously trying to get a reaction out of you.

You glared daggers at him as Sarah looked up with concern.

“Everything’s great,” you mumbled.

“That’s good,” Joel said happily before starting to tie the bags together.

This man is going to be the death of me, you thought before you continued assembling the bags.

Once you had finished the goody bags, Sarah’s friends started piling into the house and Joel had taken that as his cue to go upstairs in solitude. Joel had always been on the quieter side and was careful about who he got close to.

You would’ve joined him if it weren’t for Sarah looping you into a game of Musical Chairs and Never Have I Ever. You didn’t mind though, you loved Sarah.

After hours of playing games, watching a movie, snarfing on pizza, and eating birthday cake, it was time for Sarah and her friends to leave as her friend Lily’s mom was picking the girls up to go to the mall.

Joel came downstairs to say goodbye to the girls and converse with Lily’s mom about what time Sarah was going to be dropped off.

Lily’s mom was twirling a strand of her bleach-blonde hair while she checked Joel out. You felt your blood boil at the sight as you clenched your jaw at the sight.

Joel looked completely oblivious to her actions which made you angrier.

“Oh don’t worry, Joel she’ll be back before dinner. Now come on kids let’s get you all to the mall,” the woman chirped, sending him a quick wink before she herded all of the children out of the house.

“Bye dad, bye Y/N!” Sarah waved before she entered Lily’s mother’s large minivan.

Once the car cleared out of the driveway, Joel shut the door.

A mixture of silence and tension filled the room as Joel took a deep breath and turned around to face you.

Your heart pounded fast as he approached you and your breath caught in your throat as he looked you up and down once more.

You tapped your foot impatiently.

“Are you going to kiss me or not?” you crossed your arms as you saw Joel’s eyes flash.

In one moment you were on the wall with Joel’s lips on yours.

It was a messy kiss filled with passion and need.

You moaned into the kiss as you pushed his head closer to get better access to his lips.

You opened your mouth for a brief moment and he took the opportunity to thrust his tongue into your mouth, tongues battling for dominance. A battle that he easily won unsurprisingly.

With his win, Joel pushed you deeper into the wall and let his lips trail down to your neck, his teeth gently grazing your collarbone, making your panties wet.

“Joel,” you sighed with pleasure as he continued to kiss your neck softly. You could feel him smiling on your skin.

Cocky bastard, you thought.

He nudged your closed thighs together with his knee and you immediately started to grind on it, your dress riding up over your thighs giving him a peek at your racy panties.

“Such a needy girl,” he chuckled darkly before he started to suck harshly on your neck. Surely there would be bright marks the next morning.

You whimpered as you straddled his clothed thigh trying to relieve the ache you felt in your core.

“I saw you getting a little jealous with Lily’s mom over there, so fuckin’ cute,” his hot breath fanned over your ear as you closed your eyes with bliss.

Joel bounced his thigh, making your mouth contort into an o shape as you continued to grind on him, holding his shoulders for support.

“Yeah, you like that huh? Such a dirty girl getting off on an older man’s thigh,”

Your pussy clenched around nothing at his filthy words.

His thigh wasn’t enough for you. You wanted more.

“I want…I want your cock,” you panted as you continued to go up and down on his jeans, his rough texture scratching your thighs.

Joel smiled.

“You need to get prepped first, honey,” he said as he lifted you up and went to his bedroom, placing you gently on the bed as if you were royalty.

He made a movement to take off your dress but stopped.

“This feel okay?” his eyebrows furrowed with concern, putting two fingers under your chin as he watched your face.

You nodded.

“I couldn’t hear you,” he declared, his voice laced with lust.

“I want you,” you blurted out.

He growled at your admission before he lifted the dress off your body, exposing your black matching lingerie set.

“Holy fuck, so damn pretty,” he muttered as he took in your beautiful form as you smiled brightly at his compliment.

The older man placed a gentle kiss on the valley of your breasts before trailing kisses down your stomach.

Meanwhile, his hands groped your clothed breasts, squeezing them tightly.

You sighed breathlessly as he continued to kiss you until he was at your panties.

“I’m gonna take these off for you ok, baby?” he said as he used his teeth to skillfully pull down your panties and then used his hands to take them off your feet.

You moaned as the cool air hit your bare pussy.

Joel growled at the sight of it.

“So wet, I hope this is for me,” he teased, dipping one of his fingers into your folds, testing the waters.

“Only for you, Joel,” you sighed your fist clenching around the covers.

“Good,” he said as he dropped his head so that he was face to face with your pussy.

Oh, this was the game he wanted to play, you thought.

He started with gentle kitten licks that made you whimper with delight.

Then he licked large stripes and swirled his tongue around your pussy driving you insane.

“Stop fucking teasing, Joel,” you said before he thrust one of his digits in your pussy while his tongue flicked it simultaneously.

Your hands immediately grabbed his hair, grasping it tightly, causing him to let out a moan while he ate you out like a starved man.

“So fuckin’ sweet,” he groaned.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head as Joel added another finger, plunging them both in and out of your folds while his tongue skillfully glided across your slickness.

Once Joel started sucking on your clit, you knew you’d be done in a matter of moments.

“Joel I’m gonna-” you moaned loudly, your eyes blurring from the intensity and your thighs crushing his head.

“Cum for me, sweetheart,” his vibrations urging your orgasm as you cummed all over his beard.

You panted, staring at Joel with blown-out pupils as he climbed on top of you.

You unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on the floor while he started unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his jeans and slid them off.

He was so fucking beautiful with his scarred olive skin and toned upper body. How did you even get so lucky?

The moment his cock sprung out of his boxers, you knew it was over for you.

His length was average but he was just so thick and girthy.

Your mouth watered at the sight as he watched you.

You reached over to pump it as Joel sighed at your touch.

“You keep doin’ that and I’m gonna cum and I don't think you want that to happen just yet,” he said, kissing your warm cheek before he lined himself with your entrance.

You braced yourself for the stretch as he pushed the tip of his throbbing cock through you.

You whined at the slight pain you felt from his thickness as he shushed you and placed a hand on your cheek.

“You’ll be alright, sweetheart, you can handle it,” his voice was soft as he bottomed out.

The pain of the stretch quickly subsided and was replaced with pleasure as you needed friction of some kind.

“Move,” you breathed out as he wasted no time, grabbing your hips and thrusting in and out.

You panted. The feeling of his cock sliding in and out of your cunt was delicious.

One of your hands moved to play with your clothed breasts as you squeezed it for additional pressure.

“Holy shit,” Joel moaned as he watched you toy with your bouncing boobs.

He brought one of his own hands down to your pussy and circled your clit with his thumb, putting more pressure each time he circled.

“Oh,” you sighed as he started to piston into you at a rougher pace, slamming into you fast. The sounds of your slickness and both of your panting filled the air.

“You keep making those pretty noises, honey,” he pressed his forehead against yours as his cock twitched inside of you making you gasp. You clenched around him as you dragged your fingernails along his spine.

“Such a good fucking girl, taking my cock so well,” Joel gritted his teeth as his thrusts started to falter.

His words sent electricity to your pussy making you see stars because the stimulation is just too much.

“I’m gonna-”

“Me too,” he admitted, continuing his fast thrusts as you squeezed your eyes together with pleasure as your climax hit you hard, your thighs shaking.

“Where,” Joel asked breathlessly.

“Inside,” you panted.

“Fuck,” Joel threw his head back in pleasure before he spilled his seed inside of you, painting your womb white.

He slipped out of you and then rolled beside you on the large king-sized bed.

“Holy shit, that was better than what I had dreamed of,” you said.

“Yeah,” he admitted before standing up and going to his bathroom and instantly returning with a cloth.

He started cleaning you and you just let him, shocked by this gentle action.

“I never took it, you were an aftercare guy,” you stated as he chuckled.

“Are you kidding me? I’m from the South, we have to have our Southern hospitality,” he said, dragging the piece of cloth on your pussy.

“True,” you laughed as you laid back against his mattress.

“You’re gettin’ quite comfy over there,” Joel said, disposing the cloth and moving to lay beside you.

“I can’t help it that my orgasms were too strong and your bed is too cozy,” you said, grabbing his pillow and nuzzling against it.

Joel let out a hearty chuckle.

“C’mere,” you took his hand and pulled him next to you.

“So damn strong,” he whistled as you placed your head on his chest.

“Oh shut up,” you rolled your eyes before wrapping an arm around him.

In response, he rested a hand on your waist.

Joel’s body felt like a warm blanket around you making your eyes droop from the amount of comfort you felt.

“You gettin’ sleepy, baby girl?” he laughed.

“Mhm,” you smiled into his chest, heart singing from his nickname.

“Alright then, go to sleep, baby,” he cooed, raking a hand through your hair.

You shut your eyes at his words and immediately fell asleep instantly.

Joel pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“Goodnight, princess,”

#joel miller x reader smut #joel miller x reader #joel miller smut #the last of us smut #the last of us x reader #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal smut

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yume4evere · 2 months

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It's just another theory, well we still don't know if Yuki will come back or not. We know that Kaname is looking for a way to wake her up and talk to her.

Since Yuki lived her life with Zero and after living for centuries, everything about her has changed. This is a natural thing. No person will remain with the same personality, feelings, and thoughts. Whenever time passes, a person changes, especially since there are people around you that will change everything about you.

Since Yuki had her daughters around her and Zero changed her,

Especially from Kaname's side, of course she loves him and still wants to bring him back to life, but she definitely will not leave Zero for him, she will choose him this time.

I've accepted it even though I hate it.

Because this means that Kaname himself, his love, his sacrifice, and his actions for her had no meaning in the story and her life.

This is truly heartbreaking 💔

This means that Yuki will not return to life in the future. There will be a conversation between them and they will talk about their feelings and the reasons for their actions, but they will separate this time as well. Because this is what I see and this is what I expect.

Because Hino's thinking is Expected and inappropriate to the story and to us.

Yuki's return would make no sense to the current story and Zero's centuries-old love.

But there is another hope, but it may also take centuries for Yuki and Kaname to return to each other, but as strangers with a new life and a new love, but with different personalities and memories.

Maybe Kaname will find another woman, love her, marry her, and have children with her.( I DON't WANT THAT TO HAPPENED 😭)

His bloodline will last and will give birth to other children. Until they are born again. Just like what happened to Taro's similarities, Asiya's wife, and Yuri, a grandson who looks like her was born.

Yuki and Kaname might also have the same thing happen to them. They will be from the same bloodline, perhaps cousins this time. They will meet again and live a peaceful life together, fall in love and get married.

This would fit the story I think.

Although I want the current Kaname and Yuki, who I've loved as a couple for over a decade.

It will be painful to move forward with your favorites that are strange and have a different personality and story.

#just theory #vampire knight #vampire knight memories #kaname kuran #yuuki kuran #yume #eternal yume

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aspiringfictionwriter · 11 months

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Vermillion Flower

So for my end of the school year assignment, I had to write a fractured fairytale, and I was given the original fairytale of Beauty of the Beast called the Scarlet Flower. I thought I'd share it with you!

Not many would think much of a somewhat wealthy merchant family in a large city–a small fish in a big pond, if you will–especially when said family lacked the presence of a mother, and instead had a godmother of the highest degree of wisdom and wit, along with three sisters; Gerlinde, Asiya, and Arabella. They all lived with their dearest father, who worked as a merchant in the city of which they took up residence, and they were well renowned for their reliable wares and reasonable prices, a touching thing to be known as at that time, even more so when said family had been through much sorrow.

Gerlinde, the eldest of the three, was vain and plump, thin blond hair billowing down from her head like thin strands of unwoven thread, the only thing making up for such a thing being her quite attractive facial shape, such as her large cheeks and strong build. Asiya, the child between her two other sisters, was much skinnier, her face more square instead of round as her elder sister’s was, and she had long since been engaged, and was soon to be married off, for she was quite attractive in her own right, although her own black hair remained rather thin, something she and Gerlinde shared with their father. And the youngest daughter, Arabella, was a gem in hiding, her reserved nature almost deceiving to some, for she talked much in certain company, and little in others, her long and voluminous blond hair gentle and kind, matching with green eyes with a sheen of wonder about them.

One particular day, the girl’s father, Edvard, a large man with a well-trimmed and graying beard, and unarguably one of the most merry men in the neighborhood was set to begin a journey in a caravan to go to an adjacent city in the north, and he simply asked his daughters of whom he loved ever so dearly a simple question. “What would you all want me to find before I return?”

Gerlinde had replied first, very readily at that, exclaiming in a loud voice, no doubt spoiled by her father before the birth of her other two siblings, “Father, I wish for the finest jewelry you can find!” For she reveled in such extravagance, for she had something to adorn her thick neck, both in a metaphorical and literal sense. She had been ten when their mother had passed, and, along with her father, had raised her younger sisters, although her presence was the most common, save for the help Ingrid, the girl’s godmother, offered when she wasn’t off teaching the young schoolchildren.

Asiya had been admiring her engagement band, made of a string of lovely sapphires cradled by well-polished silver. There hadn’t been a day that she had forgotten to clean the ring, for she admired it more than she did her betrothed, but all was well with their relationship, save for the fact that he would sooner be bankrupt than they would have to bear children. She, however, cried, “Father, I wish for a garment made of the most delicate silk in the whole country!” This was, of course, in reference to her wedding gown, for, vain as she was, she knew her father would allow her day of merriment in matrimony to be the most splendid day of her life.

Arabella, young with an unwavering wit, and probably the hardest worker of the three, for she was only aged nineteen, and had yet to find a man of whom she truly loved and admired, and her father allowed her this much. She was quite modest and humble, sweet and kind, and therefore she asked but a simple thing, for she uttered to her father, “I would like a flower of the most pronounced vermillion, and nothing more.”

Her father, surprised by her simple request, looked at her, taken aback. “Are you certain, Arabella? I can afford you a fine bracelet. Perhaps even a gown of the finest velvet?”

However, the maiden simply shook her head, a gentle smile on her face as her sisters looked at her with expressions of befuddlement upon their features, “No, no father, a scarlet flower will do. I wish not to entertain myself with meaningless bobbles.”

It had not even been a fortnight since the girl’s father had left for the neighboring city, and it had been the day when they seldom had things to do, or rather Arabella had very little things to do, for she was responsible enough to do her work in time for the midday meal, and instead spent her time fixing it up with the help of her aging godmother, Ingrid, who offered kindness where there was none, and therefore she cared much for the elderly woman.

She had taught Arabella to be a modest young woman, humble and gentle, with an undeniable force about her, and then she would find her place in the world, and for that time it would have been a good husband or even, although unlikely, a well-paying job. Again, one would call it one of the most unlikely outcomes, but the young woman was hopeful, even eager for a taste of that power that she could never fathom.

“Arabella darling,” she had always said, “remember that you should keep your emotions true. Never hesitate to sing them from the rooftops, for your voice is too beautiful to be silenced by the force of fear. If you find yourself a man that watches in admiration as you let your heart out, it shall be a good day.”

Although, today Ingrid sang with a voice quite stunning despite her waning vocal ability, for she could barely sing a high note, although many heard that she had once been able to sing as high as a songbird once could, and many men had tried to take her hand in matrimony, but none of those souls succeeded in doing so, as no one had stolen her heart. Many figured that she wished her dearest goddaughters to have their own husbands because it was far too late for her to walk down the aisle herself, and wished only for the little girls that she raised to be happy with children of their own.

Her song, however, was soon interrupted by a sudden slam of the door, so loud and panicked that it disturbed even the moss hanging upon the roof of the small home, the disheveled, unshaven, face of the girl’s father panting as he fell to the ground on the doormat of the home, the door behind him shutting with quite force. All in the house were silent for a moment, eerily still, before Edvard had screamed in a voice of the highest degree of fright, “I have been threatened to die!”

And it was almost as if his voice had echoed throughout the whole of the home, for Gerlinde, who had been lazily stroking one of her many silk dresses absentmindedly had jumped from her bed and ran as fast as wildfire against the wind, reaching her father’s side and helping him up onto the couch, a pitiful sob coming from the man as he was lifted by his strongest daughter. Arabella and Ingrid followed soon after, although the old woman rushed for Asiya, who had been in the garden spying on the neighbors.

As they all sat in their respective chairs, Ingrid looked at her friend with quite a curious look on her face, although it was almost always curious, for it was weighed down by sagging aged skin lined with articularly placed wrinkles, almost as if she had chosen them to be there for the beauty of it. “Now, now, Edvard, tell us what you are going on about?” It was then that everyone in the room noticed that her expression was that of pure amused bewilderment.

The father, deathly pale, cleared his throat loudly, his voice coming out hoarse from the screaming he had incurred upon the passersby. “Well, you see, I was on my wagon directing the horses when we were attacked by brigands!” He exclaimed, sobbing again before continuing, “But that’s not the worst part of it, Ingrid, oh dear me, no!” He began to talk very fast, as if he felt threatened by whatever had haunted him even as he spoke. “I retreated into what looked like the ruins of a palace not touched in a very long time, and decided to peruse the gardens to collect myself. I saw the flower of scarlet that Arabella had asked quite nicely for, against my better judgment,” he muttered indignantly, “and I leaned down to pick it. But there was a beast! I beast, I tell you! But it walked on two legs and not four, and it screamed at me, saying that I would die for touching his delicate flower! He gave me enough mercy to say my biddings to you, but I fear for my life!” Edvard sobbed again, “I don’t want to die!”

He continued to mutter it on like a mantra, over and over and over again, and this disturbed Arabella greatly, enough for her to end the stressed silence, standing up from her chair with quiet force, “Father, I will go in your stead. You are far more important than I, anyhow.”

And, although her dear father told her not to, he, in his fear, still allowed her to go, watching her shut the door behind her after receiving instructions to the castle itself, riding on an old horse that the family had not used since Edvard’s wife’s death. As such, Arabella’s journey began, for she rode slowly, but fast enough for it to only be a day’s journey from her own home, that was, of course, adding into the factor of convincing the city guard that she was leaving on good business. This, quite obviously, would have been an upright lie that the young woman would be forced to tell, for they were quite daft.

And when she entered the grounds of the castle itself, Arabella was almost shocked by the beauty it could have once had, and even still pertained in parts of the grand palace. Her father had told her that the Beast would be waiting for her inside of the castle’s confines, and, nervously, she had entered, not expecting what would come next. But how would she?

For she was swept up dutifully by an unknown force and placed delicately in a chair, only to hear a voice from somewhere she had yet to see, a deep voice with a mighty amount of volume, and as she heard it, she felt her heart quiver. Although, Arabella wasn’t quite sure if she felt fear or attraction, but such was the way of things. “Pray tell, where is the merchant that I bade to return? His life will soon become obsolete unless you bring me a good reason not to end his life.”

Arabella’s heart sank to the very bottom of her bowels, swallowing down a clump of saliva so slowly that she felt as if she could choke, but this was all due to the pressure. Even still, she spoke eloquently despite her failing courage, “Master of the Castle,” she appeased, “I am his daughter, and the one who will take his punishment as my own.”

There was silence for a moment before it was broken by a gruff grunt of approval before continuing on, “And what would be your name, merchant’s daughter?”

“I am Arabella. What might I call you?”

It seemed as if whatever the voice had been, and there was no doubt in Arabella’s mind that it was the Beast in hiding, brushed off the question readily, instead answering with his sentence of her fate. “You will live here until I see fit for you to leave.”

Arabella lived in the Beast’s palace for quite some time, but she had yet to see him, but from her father’s description, she was not quite sure she wished to. Although, she did still wish to thank him for his hospitality, for he had ordered his almost mystically invisible servants to feed her the most lavish meals, dress her in the finest silks, give her baths that smelled distinctly of daffodils against the wind, and keep her company. It was kind company as well, for they did not speak ill of her, but instead they asked her every day about her own doings and life, and they were almost over dramatic at times, but it brought the girl joy she had not felt for quite a long while.

In other news, and it was quite strange, was that the Beast chose to speak to her every day, and therefore she talked to him more than she did even the servants, who were around her almost every second of every single day. As she had gotten used to his gruff voice and demeanor, Arabella had learned to love his voice and his kind words, and in time, had grown to find an admiration towards him that words could not comprehend, no matter how eloquent both she and the man spoke. Eventually, she had learned that this man with an unknown face had felt the same.

And it had been then when she saw his face when their relationship seemed to flourish. He looked terrifying, just as her father had said, but she had learned from the softness in his voice to see the softness in his wide and innocent blue eyes, surrounded by dark brown fur that grew all over his body creating the illusion of a giant boar standing on two legs with hair. He had said he once had a name, but he had forgotten it, and when Arabella had asked him what he would want his name to be, he simply said that what he was called then would be fine enough for him.

It had been not too long after when Arabella had felt the longing of home once more, and asked her partner if he would permit her to leave the grounds of the palace, and he gave her one condition, and that was that she had to return within three days lest he die of a broken heart. Promising her love that she would return, she held his hands, or rather paws, between both of hers, pressing a gentle kiss against his forehead before wishing him well and ensuring that she would in fact return.

So off she rode, knocking upon her family’s door and embracing her disheveled father, who, despite his acceptance of her leaving, had been feeling quite the guilt for wishing possible death upon his most beloved daughter; the one who had looked the most like his dearest wife. He had said it was like losing his own beloved all over again.

She began to tell her family about the wonders of her own stay in the Beast’s palace, Ingrid remarking in absolute joy after she heard of her darling Arabella finding someone she truly cared for, it was almost if her wrinkles would smoothen with the young and merry laugh she emitted as well as the strong hug that she managed to throw around the blond.

“How long will you be here for, darling?” Ingrid had inquired.

Arabella smiled, crossing her legs against each other, “Three days. He said that should I not return then that he might parish from a broken heart.”

This was where the beauty did not realize her dire mistake, for both Gerlinde and Asiya had been listening in, their own vanity blinding them of happiness for their own kin, envy filling them faster than the water in the ocean would be filled with rain, devised a plot. This was to set the clocks back so that their dear sister would return home with a heart just as broken as her new partner’s would be, as well as keep her inside so as to not allow her to watch the change in day and night. Their plan was to preoccupy her on things such as jewelry, hair, makeup, and even fashion to, “continue to pique the interest of the Beast.”

Arabella, despite her cunning, fell for this trick, beginning to ride back to the castle unbeknownst of her partner’s fate. For the garden did seem eerily still and without life as it had been before, and she had not been greeted by a gust of happy wind as she entered the ruin of a palace, and instead was greeted with an almost sorrowful and weak gale. The halls were dimly lit, almost as if the chambersticks on the walls had not been tended to for at least two days, and it had only been when she entered the dining hall that she saw the reason why all felt as if it was still.

For she saw the dead body of her beloved upon the ground, and rushing to his side grabbed onto his soft and delicate fur, throwing herself over him after attempting to shake him awake, to no avail. Tears trickled down her face prior to the downpour that occurred not too soon after, rain beginning to slam against the window panes.

“No!” Arabella cried desperately, “You were my only true love! You cannot be dead now!”

And almost as if the world had heard her, as she finished her last word the booming sound of thunder and lightning, the flash invading her eyesight, only for it to clear with a different body beneath her. It was the body of a man, tall and strong, with thick and curly brown hair and fair skin, dressed in fair clothing, a crown atop his head, his blue eyes slowly opening, meeting Arabella’s own eyes. With this focus, however, she barely noticed that the room around her was no longer in ruin, but looked as if it was perfectly pampered, the carpet a pure scarlet once more, the plates no longer cracked, the chandelier intact.

The man, who rose from his incapacitated state, looked at her with the same eyes as the Beast’s, holding her in a tight embrace, “Welcome home.”

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chxrry-kisses · 1 year

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❥ you thought about Jin-Ae.

JIN-AE the student council vice president

AFFECTION: ??? ENVY: ??? LUST: ??? LOVE: ???

Just like her superior, not a lot of information is known about Jin-Ae, but it's still more than Asiya. You remember that some other students call her the "President's bitch" with how much Jin-Ae seems to borderline worship Asiya. Now that you think about it, a lot of things about Jin-Ae are connected to the President. Strange.

-> go back

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starry-skies-116 · 2 years

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Fire Emblem Profiles I think the Afton Kids would somewhat have, runs not specified!:

Elizabeth:

Overall thoughts: Healer/Support that can also major disrespect when invested in, flier got range +warp to win

Proficient at Faith Magic (Light Magic- includes healing), Flying and Lances, deficient at Axes, Brawl, Authority and Heavy Armor (exp. Multiplied by 1.2 for Cavalier)

Best-in-slot weapons: Arrow of Indra, Javelin, Seraphim, Warp, Fortify, Abraxas

Personal Skill: Unfettered Servitude- uses automatic rally to grant Str +4 and Spd +4 to all adjacent allies within one tile range on all sides of unit whenever unit makes a move.

Character Exclusive Weapon: Astra Goetia: After attacking, stuns all foes adjacent to attacked foe- stunned foes suffer Magic Bind and Def/Avd -6 for that same one turn.

Additional Skills: White Magic +5, White Tomefaire, Steelbreaker (reduces foe Def -4 and increases Str +4), Lance Crit +8, Vantage+ (allows unit to attack first even if foe initiates combat), Shove (shoves adjacent ally one tile in indicated direction), Canto (allows unit to move again after attacking), Counterattack, Magic Bind, Miracle (nullifies instakill attacks), Terrain Resistance (decreases damage taken from types of harmful terrain), Pavise (chance to reduce sword/axe/brawling damage by half. Trigger % = Dex stat), White Magic Heal +5, White Magic Heal +10, Mag. Null, Mag. Null+.

Voicelines when selected for battle: “Let’s do this!” “Here we go!” “Ooh, ooh, pick me!” “We’ve got this~!” “Where to next?”

Low Health Voicelines when selected for battle: “Feeling woozy…” “Hmm.” “Oh, gosh…” “Careful, please…!”

Michael:

Overall thoughts: Phys dmg tank and dealer, also major disrespect unit lmao

Proficient at Lances, Axes, Authority and Swords, deficient at Reason Magic (Black Magic- includes warp), Faith Magic, Flying and Cavalier (exp. Multiplied by 1.2 for Heavy Armor and Brawl)

Best-in-slot weapon: Dragon Claws, Brave Lance, Venin Lance, Lance of Zoltan, Cross-Spear, Killer Axe, Hauteclere, Armorslayer, Aegis, Gladiator’s Dagger (Dmg reduction by half, increases weapon durability by two and has a chance to negate expiration), Asiya Blade (Enables the basically instakill ability ‘Calamitous Wrath’ that stuns enemies for 1 turn if skill deals Dmg)

Character Exclusive Weapon: Ragnsalir: After attacking, triggers the effect ‘Dragonskin’- heals half of damage dealt to enemy, increases based on Str. and Atk. dealt.

Personal Skill: Tempered Instinct- if ally is adjacent or if in formation with a battalion, unit deals 2 extra damage and takes 2 less damage while in combat.

Additional Skills: Guardian’s Fury(adjacent allies gain Def. +10 when HP is below 80%, instant ultra-disrespect basically), Astra, Hexblade+, Monster Piercer, Knightkneeler, Unarmed Combat, Lance Crit +10, Lancefaire, Axe Crit +10, Axefaire, Armored Strike, Helmsplitter, Taunt (aggros enemy and draws targets away from all allies, decreases adj. enemy Def -10), Healing Focus, Fighting Spirit (decreases enemy Avd. -10), Steal, Budding Charm (adj. Allies deal 3 extra dmg. During combat), Fistfaire, Sword Crit +10, Commander+, Death Blow, Phys. Null, Phys. Null+.

Voicelines when selected for battle: “Who, me?” “At the ready.” “What now?” “Okay, fine.” “Yes, I suppose.”

Low Health Voicelines when selected for battle: “Just a bit more…” “Don’t get careless…” “You sure…?” “Not good…!”

Evan:

Overall thoughts: Mag dmg tank and raw mag dmg dealer, looks weak and squishy at first but mother of god run away from this dude if you don’t know what res is lol- mega ultra disrespect

Proficient at Reason Magic, Lances, Bows and Brawl, deficient at Axes, Heavy Armor and Swords (exp. Multiplied by 1.2 for Lances and Authority because we all need gambits)

Best-in-slot weapons: GRADIVUS, Nidavelir Gauntlets (Steel Gauntlets but amplify that shit’s stats), Arrow of Indra, Lance of Zoltan, Parthia, Sacred Moonbow (allows counterattack to adj. Foes and nullifies dmg taken from them), Venin Bow, Aura Knuckles, Ragnarok, Thoron, Bolting, Bolagnone, Cutting Gale, Excalibur, Fimbulvetr, Sagittae, Agnea’s Arrow, Dark Spikes T, Bohr, Quake.

Character Exclusive Weapon: Promethean Grimoire: An ancient grimoire forged from advanced primordial technology lost to time- this tome grants the wielder the ability to use the Combat Art ‘Sweltering Lodestar’ (Sweltering Lodestar: Has a chance to nullify/halve magical enemy dmg, increases Avd. +3)

Personal Skill: Heartsworn Duty- if unit damages foe, foe suffers Str and Def -6 for one turn after combat.

Additional Skills: Vigilant Eye (Grants Hit +25), Canto, Decisive Strike (increases accuracy upon attacking foe), Mastermind, Strategic Blow (Decisive Strike upgraded), Budding Charm, Flickering Heart (adj. Allies take 6 less dmg during combat), Golden Heart (Flickering Heart upgraded), Poison Strike, Starfall (grants Str/Mag +3 every other turn, as well as Def/Res +3 for all adjacent allies), Venomstrike (Poison Strike upgraded), Aegis, Avd. +10, Black Tomefaire, Bowfaire, Lance Crit +10, Bowrange +2, Magic Bind, Counterattack, Anti-Magic Armor, Mag. Null, Mag. Null+, Black Magic Avo +20.

Voicelines when selected for battle: “Keep your guard up.” “What’s the strategy?” “Stay focused.” “Onward.” “I stand ready.”

Low Health Voicelines when selected for battle: “Tread carefully.” “I’m nearing my limit!” “I can’t fall…!” “Guide me well…”

***

#Evan Afton (CC/BV)#Elizabeth Afton #Michael Afton #Afton children #FE3H #Fire Emblem #FNAF x Fire Emblem stats #Crack crossover lol #crying child #crying child fnaf #gregevan/gregbot/gregvessel #vanbeth #glammike #FNAF Project Samsara AU #My AU

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unknownmuslimah1984 · 2 years

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Random Piece No.2: Part 3 - Asiya's POV

She stared out the window, looking at the darkening sky. Stormy clouds gathered together, forming a protective layer in front of the bright, innocent sun. Birds rushed to their homes of sticks and leaves as the wind hummed an angry tune. Then the first drop fell slowly, as if the clouds could not bear to shed a single tear. Likewise, a teardrop rolled down her face, falling in her lap, submerging with her clothes. Then the rain fell faster and faster, the clouds grew darker, the wind started its high pitched wail - and she, she felt her eyes begging her to release its tears. And so she did - the tears streaming down her face, matching the pace of the rain falling outside. Heavy sobs racked her body as she curled into a ball, thinking of her father. Hospitalized after having a fatal car accident, the chances of him living were slim, her family was informed two days ago. Now, all they could do was make dua to Allah to allow him to live. "Asiya!" her mother called. "We are going to the hospital to see your father! The nurses called me a few minutes ago saying that he has opened his eyes..." Asiya immediately jumped up and ran downstairs. "Is it true Mum?" she said, her voice catching in her throat after crying for so long. "Yes!", her mother asserted tearfully, "Get ready, we are going now..."

15 minutes later

FIRST PERSON POV

I tapped my foot anxiously on the tiled hospital floor. We were told to stay in the waiting room for about 10 minutes. 20 minutes passed by, my brother becoming restless by the second. "Hakeem!" my mother wearily scolded my elder brother. "Sit down and make dua, by the will of Allah your father will survive..." My mother's voice caught in her throat. "Yes mother, I'm sorry.." My brother murmured and sat down, exhausted after staying up last night finishing his university assignment. "Ms Hameed?" A nurse called out. "Yes?" my mother answered with a hopeful tone. "Please come this way," the nurse said with a grim tone. My heart dropped. I looked at my brother, who had a fearful expression on his face. My mother exhaled softly and followed the nurse. We trailed behind her, steeling ourselves for what we would see.

◈ ━━━━━ ★ ━━━━━━ ◈

We entered the room, and two things caught my eyes immediately. First was that I saw my dad sitting upright in the bed, wearing a cast on his left arm and leg and a bandage around his head. The second thing was...him...standing there, taking my dad's vitals. I stood still, shocked beyond my core. "What is he doing here??" I whispered to Hakeem. "He works here sis," he said equally quiet and walked to my father. While I was standing trying to gather my thoughts, I heard a small cry and saw my mum run to the bedside and grab my dad's right hand. He smiled warmly. "Alright I will leave you to your family reunion," he said pleasantly. "Jazakallahu Khayran Ali, without you I would probably not be in this state right now," my dad replied. "Astagfirullah Uncle Abbas!" he chuckled, "We have the means, only Allah grants health," he said. Hakeem smiled. "May Allah bless you bro, we owe you a lot," "It's nothing," Ali replied, with a shake of his head. "I will go now, Assalamu Alaykum," "Walaykum as Salam," my family chorused. He turned to the door. He saw me standing there and immediately lowered his gaze. I moved over. "Sorry," I murmured. "It's okay," he said, his tone changing slightly, and walked out.

#writeblr #female writers #writing #muslim #islamic #writers on tumblr #fiction

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firstfullmoon · 4 years

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Wish you are happy and safe. I was thinking if there are some writings or/and quotes on "water has memory" , that water never forgets.. it takes in everything. Thank you🖤

“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places to make room for houses & livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”

— Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory”

“I depend on the Nile, he said. The Nile is faithful. I said: The Nile has a memory of steel, and is not as shallow as we thought.”

— Mahmoud Darwish, from “As Fate Would Have It”

“In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words are separated only by letters: ’iimat for body,* ’amat* for land. In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-. Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You might not know which has been injured, which is remembering, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care, which has vanished.

If I say, My river is disappearing, do I also mean, My people are disappearing?”

“A river is a body of water. It has a foot, an elbow, a mouth. It runs. It lies in a bed. It can make you good. It remembers everything.”

“Will we soon remember from where we’ve come? The water.

And once remembered, will we return to that first water, and in doing so return to ourselves, to each other, better and cleaner?

Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?”

— Natalie Diaz, from “The First Water Is The Body”

“I spent my days staring into the eye of the Baltic it’s because I am also a body of water it’s not that onerous I’ve built a muscle memory it’s not that heavy”

— Asiya Wadud, “attention as a form of ethics”

“I should have known but the water never told me. It sealed its blue lips after swallowing you, it licked my ankles like a dog. I won’t lie and say the ocean begged for forgiveness; it gleams unchanged in the sun. Some things are so big they take and take and remain exactly the same size.”

— Leila Chatti, from “Upon Realizing There Are Ghosts in the Water”

“Today I drank the oldest lake so that I could recover the parts of myself that are lost to a time before I was ever here on this earth full of lakes. A man poured the oldest lake out of a bottle and into a small metal cup and I touched the cold rim of the cup to my mouth and it smelled deep. When I meet people now, I have the oldest lake inside of me and I feel bad for them because they don’t. They probably don’t have any lakes inside of them, which is hard because it means that whatever is deepest in them is longing to return to the lake it came from, the lake that forgot it, the lake it couldn’t ever forget. Sometimes you don’t know that something inside you is longing for a lake that forgot you until you come face to face with that lake and everything in you asks for a drowning.

The oldest lake had so many children whose children had so many children. You can drink the oldest lake, like I did, and it will feel cold and whole but it’s not like you get to just carry possibility inside of you like that simply because you drank the oldest lake. People thought I drank the oldest lake to remember, but I drank the oldest lake so I could for a moment forget what it is like to be outside of something I can’t comprehend.”

— Ali Rachel Pearl, from “Aphanizomenon Flos-Aquae”

#w #compilation #leila chatti #toni morrison #mahmoud darwish #natalie diaz

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abigailzimmer · 3 years

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Favorite Reads of 2020

In this year of slowness, thank god for books to make the world a little larger again. I read several classics for the first time—Shelley’s Frankenstein and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day—all of which felt important to return to the source material, to see how these books shaped those that came after them. And I delved into new books from favorite authors whose words I will always seek out—like Kelly Schirmann’s The New World and Heather Christle’s The Crying Book—and I branched out into mystery and romance books because they kept pages turning and tidied everything up so neatly at the end, which if not my usual fare, was sorely needed in this strange year. But since I do love a list, here are the books that sung to me / inspired me / shaped me:

1. Exquisitely told and inventive in form, Women Talking by Miriam Toews centers on a group of Mennonite women in South America who discover they're being drugged and raped during the night by the men in their community. While the men are away, the women meet to decide whether they will stay and forgive their attackers, as their community’s religious leaders ask them to, or leave the colony and start anew. Their conversation over the course of two days questions the role of women, what freedom and forgiveness really mean, how to fulfill one’s calling as a woman, mother, and believer, whether one must choose one thing over another, and whether staying or leaving carries the greater risk. It’s a thoughtful and creative approach to hard questions and the complicated reasons why there’s never a right answer.

2. Ilya Kaminsky's collection, Dancing in Odessa, was one of the first books of contemporary poetry I ever read, lent to me by a friend in college, and I remember being stunned at what poetry could be and do. Deaf Republic stuns in the same way. The poems are incredibly cinematic, telling the story of an occupied town and its people and a couple who fall in love. When a young, deaf boy is shot by the soldiers, the entire town pretends deafness in rebellion, finding excuses to not understand the soldiers. They bear witness to the boy’s death and honor his life. Though a fictional town, the call to political action, to really see those who are being oppressed and stand for justice with them, is resonant for any time and place. Plus, Ilya writes the most beautiful love poems.

3. Another cinematically-inclined poetry book is GennaRose Nethercott’s The Lumberjack’s Dove. In this long poem/myth/fable, a lumberjack accidentally cuts off his hand, which turns into a dove, and then a story parts ways. The lumberjack is not just a lumberjack and the hand-turned-dove is not just a hand-turned-dove, and the story visits both an operating room and a witch, and the story, of course, is one you've heard before and one that brings surprise and wonder to the telling. I simply adored it.

"Living creatures believe they own something as soon as they love it. They refuse to believe otherwise, no matter how many times a beloved vanishes."

4. I fell in love—hard—with The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and her exquisite, queer love story between Achilles and Patroclus. Miller’s writing is wonderful and after reading her novel Circe as well—another fantastic retelling of Greek myths—I spent the remainder of the year searching for a novel that compared.

5. Some books meet you in the right moment. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a slow and attentive book on small things, which in 2020’s period of waiting and uprootedness was a gift. Due to chronic illness, Bailey finds herself confined to a bed with little to do. Her friend brings her a potted plant and a snail whose pace of life, matching her own, becomes a comfort and lessons her loneliness. As she watches, she learns intimately the snail's eating and sleeping habits, its daily adventures, and the conditions it best thrives in. Later she delves into the literature and science of gastropods and weaves her notes in with her own observations and stories of the snail. Her writing is light and funny and holds such tenderness for this very small creature.

"In the History of Animals, Aristotle noted that snail teeth are 'sharp, and small, and delicate.' My snail possessed around 2,640 teeth, so I'd add the word plentiful to Aristotle's description....With only thirty-two adult teeth, which had to last the rest of my life, I found myself experiencing tooth envy toward my gastropod companion. It seemed far more sensible to belong to a species that had evolved natural tooth replacement than to belong to one that had developed the dental profession. Nonetheless, dental appointments were one of my favorite adventures, as I could count on being recumbent. I could see myself settling into the dental chair, opening my mouth for my dentist, and surprising him with a human-sized radula."

6. Insecurity System by Sara Wainscott was one of my favorite books published in 2020. The poems in it make up four crowns—a series of sonnets in which the last line of each poem becomes the first line (or an echo of it) of the next. The playfulness of the form as well as the topics give the book an energy: Sara muses on time travel, levitation, memory, flowers ("people who read poems know a rose / is how the poet drags in genitalia"), motherhood, Mars, and mythical transformations (children tell their mothers they have turned to seals “and it is true”). Sara is funny and wry, and yet she also captures some difficult emotions of grief and depression, a struggle with complacency amid daily obligations “Sentences become drawn out affairs / but I am doing what I can / to answer one word each day.” The poems move from the mundane to a hard feeling and then onward to wonder and a bit of the fantastical, which I guess is just how life goes—I love how these emotions are all rolled together and always shifting.

7. Asiya Wadud’s powerful long poem Syncope is one I’ve returned to often throughout the year. She tells the story of 72 refugees who fled Tripoli in an inflatable boat in 2011 and were stranded for 14 days, despite the presence of 38 maritime vessels who could have rescued them, but didn’t. Instead, only 11 passengers survived. Syncope is both an indictment against those who did not act and a eulogy for the dead, returning humanity to people who were deemed not worth saving but who were “luminous in that / we were each born under the / fabled light of some star.”

“We began as 72 ascendants by that I mean we were a collective many each bound for greatness merely in the fact that we were each still living”

8. Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had is a thoughtful and exploratory conversation about capitalism and its effects on what we do and how we think. In a series of short vignettes, Eula picks apart what consumption, work, accounting, and investment mean on a personal and everyday level (albeit a white, middle class level). Who defines value among boys trading Pokemon cards and how did Monopoly's origins in economic injustice shift to pride in bankrupting players and if one of Eula's favorite things about being a new house owner is easy access to a laundry machine, is her house merely a $400,000 container for one washer and dryer? Her essays bounce from work that is valued, unseen or shamed; the perceptions and realities of being poor or rich; our approach to gift-giving and art-making and pleasure—weaving together research, observations, and conversations with friends.

9. In Grief Sequence, poet Prageeta Sharma’s grieves the loss of her husband in a kind of journal, tracing the memories of his diagnosis, the hard and normal days, the days before diagnosis, and the days after he is gone during which she tries to make sense of her new reality: “How gauche it is to be in this body being unseen by you now,” she writes. “You are not you anymore and I am trying to understand how a human with feelings has disappeared.” Her writing is excellent but it is hard to sit with and next to her pain, and it makes me wonder: when does one read such a book? When you’ve also lost a beloved to cancer? To be in conversation with someone who has, with Prageeta? Do you read for the sake of the living or to honor a body who was once here? Prageeta writes, “Poetry and grief are the same: you are taught to care about it when it happens to you.” I don’t know who to recommend this book to, but it spoke to me, and I’m glad she wrote it, as a monument, of sorts, to a specific togetherness and to a person.

10. The Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis is a strange and sweet book about a race of genetically-engineered dogs, created initially to be soldiers, who move to New York in the ‘90s while still holding onto the customs and dress of nineteenth-century Prussia, which is to say: I don't know if I ever would have picked this book up had a friend not recommended it. Told through news clippings, letters, journal entries, an opera(!), and the first-person account of a human who befriends them, their story has echoes of Frankenstein as the monster dogs reflect on their creator and what it is to be human, to have purpose and hope, to wrestle with a clouded past and an uncertain future. "It's a terrible thing to be a dog and know it," writes one monster dog scholar after some of the dogs begin to revert back to their primal state. I loved the varied forms, the piecing together of the dog’s history, and the surreal mark they left in the book’s world and my world.

For more books throughout the year, follow along on Instagram at book.wreck.

#books #2020books #endofyearlists #favorite books

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red-will · 3 years

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attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]

Asiya Wadud

We are mired in matter until we are not — Ralph Lemon

I thought we were an archipelago each felt under our own finessed and gilded wing let’s make an assumption let’s make an assumption that the lake has a bottom let’s make an assumption that everyone will mourn let’s sack a hundred greenbacks for the sake of acknowledging they mean something what does it mean to have worth? who would dream to drain a lake? I spent my days staring into the eye of the Baltic it’s because I am also a body of water it’s not that onerous I’ve built a muscle memory it’s not that heavy let’s talk about erasure I mean that’s easy start with a word that you don’t like start with a people you didn’t know start with a neighborhood, rank start with any miasma dispersed let’s talk about burden let’s talk about burden for the weight it lends us let’s talk about supplication about my palms — uplift, patience let’s celebrate our substance subsistence in amber rivulets of stilllife constellations how you molded me country how we became it the longitude is a contested border my longest muscle I named familiar

About This Poem

“I wrote this poem while listening to a talk Simone White gave in the spring of 2018 at Savvy Contemporary called ‘Erotic Power/ Erotic Punishment.’ I'd also been listening to a performance-lecture that Ralph Lemon gave at UC Berkeley in 2012, and make a conversation of them because they both are filled with stillness and quiet electricity. Okwui Okpokwasili's ‘Poor People's TV Room’ was also rattling around my head, somewhere (everywhere). I often think about what it means to give any act undivided attention, and what emerges in the space where we enact this kind of seeing. I like to think in threes and thirds and triptychs and trilogies and I try to translate the extension and duration of performance onto the page.” —Asiya Wadud

#asiya wadud #poem #poetry #attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]#attention as a form of ethics #words

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mudpuddling-moved · 4 years

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All we carefully assemble becomes our own archipelago: the time that waned when we thought it stood still, the burden and the blessing of an able constitution. Light becomes luminous when you name it light. The most liminal light shirks a dereliction. All light is a desire line. All light begets better light. And assuredly it ekes out its keenest knowledge. Anything is light when it bears it heavy. Anything can be light when you call it light.

— Asiya Wadud, from “remember: we, too, are but the fold / a struggle to reach the Astral,” Crosslight for Youngbird

#fav #god this is PERFECT #poetry #asiya wadud

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mothfishing · 5 years

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the reason muslims get upset when muhammad SA is drawn is not because he is too holy or too sacred to draw - it is, in fact, the opposite. the ban in islam of depicting prophets - yes, all prophets, musa AS, isa AS, ibrahim AS, and so on included, as well as numerous other non-prophet figures, like asiya RA and maryam RA - is to prevent them from being worshiped.

you aren’t supposed to draw muhammad SA because in doing so you may forget that he was an ordinary man...that all major human figures in islam are just ordinary people. art can mythologize people, make them seem bigger and grander than they were, and you are supposed to remember that muhammad SA, while great, was a great human. he was not a god or a spirit or so on.

so, you may ask, if art of muhammad SA is not sacrilegious, why do you muslims care so much if non-muslims want to draw him?

because it is not about drawing him. when islamophobes organize “draw muhammad parties”, the express purpose is to make muslims feel unhappy and unsafe. if someone thought you really hated the smell of fried chicken, and as a result made sure to eat as much of it as possible around you because they hate you and want to make you unhappy in any way they can, would it matter that it turns out the smell of fried chicken is totally neutral to you? of course not - you would be unhappy because, through this action, you can feel their hatred for you. your true feelings about fried chicken smell are irrelevant.

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qforqazaq · 5 years

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youtube

Ninety One – Men Emes

Okaaaay, people, here comes a long-awaited comeback from Ninety One that screamed, no, shouted so much culturally significant meta at me I could barely handle it. Ironically, when I was watching reactions to this MV, most people were so bloody oblivious to anything that was happening on the screen that I was painfully restraining myself not to slam my head on the table, but then remembered "oh, right, that's why I'm running this blog in the first place."

Okay, let's start with the video, shall we?

The opening scene is obviously with Alem because if 91's song doesn't start with Alem there's something definitely wrong with it.

Anyway, we have Alem looking like a mo-fo mafia boss, a Kazakh Don, if you like, in an office that's practically littered with KZ references. First, your eyes might catch those weird looking symbols on the desk, which are actually Orkhon-Yenisei runes - a script of Old Turkic tribes aka one of the direct ancestors of Kazakhs - that I was going to talk about for ages, but didn't have a good excuse to. So thank you Ninety One for bringing that up, I can unleash my inner linguistics nerd upon people regarding the subject in a separate post. The runes are actually read from right-to-left (because that's how it works) as "l" and "r", although I'm not sure of their implied meaning here. My theory that means just that: "left" and "right", for whatever deep reason.

So, while you're admiring Alem's outfit and hairstyle as he's showing off his results of perfecting The Stare™ (I had a theory his stares are so intent because his contact lenses keep drying up and it's his attempts not to blink much when cameras are on), you notice not only that Samsung is the main sponsor of this production (is it surprising?), but also that there's a picture of random people on the background, and a funny-looking statue next to the window. Except for that is not a picture of random people, that is actually a photo of the leaders of the Kazakh national movement/autonomy against Communists in the 1910s - Alash Orda, which I'm probably going to elaborate on in another post. For now, I'll just say that these were the writers, poets, social and political activists, the Kazakh Intelligentsia™, who were later prosecuted and repressed by the Soviet regime. Very important addition to the set if you ask me, and very deliberately chosen.

As for the funny-looking statue, that is a miniature "Balbal" of Kültegin or Kül Tigin, who was the General of the Second Turkic Khanate of the same Old Turkic people who used to write in the aforementioned Orkhon-Yenisei runic script. We can talk about it later on, for now, I can only say that 10 seconds into the video and my inner history nerd was screaming very much delightedly at these references. Didn't expect that much meta in such a short amount of time, eh? And we didn't even mention how cigars are allowed now, along with the whiskey-looking tea in a tumbler.

Anyway, then we are abruptly cut to AZ and, shortly after, ZAQ with an eagle. And no, it's not just a "lol, look, a bird", that's the Golden Eagle, a species that was trained and used for eagle hunting by the Kazakh nomads for centuries. Which is why we have it on our flag too. Btw, extra kudos to ZAQ for delivering his lines while having an eagle on his arm without its hood. I would have been more than slightly concerned if I were him.

If you don't know much about that aspect of nomadic life in Central Asia, I recommend watching the critically acclaimed documentary film The Eagle Huntress about Aisholpan - a 13 y.o. Kazakh girl from Mongolia being the first female mastering the art. FYI, it is narrated by Daisey Ridley aka Rey from Star Wars. Watch it.

The scene is black and white, and AZ and ZAQ are wearing suits which look very agreeable.

Then, we have the bridge that is delivered by very blond Bala, which isn't the best look on him in my opinion, but he's wearing a suit too, which is always a good idea. Bala, you must know, has perfected his camera acting and now successfully flirting with it without so much as breaking a sweat. Good job Juz, you know what you're doing.

Now, when we're done sharing niceties, can we, please, focus on the background - which is, of course, all lofty and fiery - specifically, on those symbols carved on the wall? And what are they? Yes, you guessed right: the Orkhon-Yenisei runes, yay. FYI, it says "QAZAQ", in its very palindromic fashion - the meaning here, I assume, is quite self-explanatory.

In one of the cuts we see that Bala is actually there with a dog. And, guess what, it's not just a dog, it's actually a Tazy - the Kazakh national hunting breed, of which, quite frankly, I did not know anything before researching for this MV. See, even I'm being educated here, I feel so enlightened.

After that, we have the chorus, and all five of them are first standing and then walking like a bloody band of gangsters, all suited and effortlessly cool, as if towards an important tét-a-tét with a competing band. My immediate association was Crows: Zero (I'm sure, my fellow Japanese weeboos get what I mean) - lots of shonen swag and badassery. I approve.

In the meanwhile, Bala is showing off his moves, again, very at ease, chill and relaxed.

Chorus moves to the second part of the song with another rap verse from ZAQ. Do you remember that set in the previous black-and-white scene with the rappers? This one is that same set i.e. a carcass and insides of a Yurt - a traditional nomadic portable house used by Kazakhs for centuries. We see ZAQ sitting in what looks like a Khan's throne with battle spears and fur skins of wild animals. And no, nobody is trying to offend animal rights activists and humanists, just trying to showcase the culture here, alright? As you've noticed hunting has always had cultural significance for Kazakhs, and, well, it's survival in the bloody Eurasian steppes we're talking about here, with windy -50°C in the winters you've got to wear something to protect from freezing over, you know.

ZAQ delivers his lines in his usual very efficient fashion, and we cut to Ace walking over to the race track, very stylishly so that it might as well be a car commercial, to a parked Ford Mustang (and, yay, we've got a budget for a nice car now!) that's drifting its tires out in the shots in-between. Did I mention Ace's wearing a suit? I'm telling you, a car commercial.

I have a feeling that a Mustang was chosen deliberately, a subtle shoutout to horses as another culturally significant symbol and animal for Kazakhs. They could've gone for a Ferrari for the sheer visual effect of it, but I suppose Samsung is generous, but not that much.

And then, we have a chorus with a dance break. Interestingly, despite the numerous cuts and camera angles, and even blinding background lights that obscure the view, I did not mind how the dance was shot. The choreography itself is nothing short of cool: very laid-back, effortless, with easy open moves and a masterfully feigned nonchalance. I know I'm using cool and effortless a lot, but what can I do, they are the keywords for this MV. I like those claps btw, remind me of hilarious dances in Kazakh weddings lol. Very ironic. In either case, my compliments to Asiya for her work, bravo.

While you're still getting over the choreography, you're introduced to AZ casually lying among many ladies in night gowns, and yes, we now are allowing this too along with cigars and whiskey-looking teas in tumblers. Don't get me wrong, AZ is wearing a modest pair of black silk shirt with black trousers (can't say the same about his wild tricoloured mess of hair), and evidently still can't take his hands off his nose (he does keep rubbing it), but the whole scene, the wide shot of it, looks so unapologetically hedonistic that it might as well be a Gucci Guilty commercial. Well, Ninety One definitely went all Gucci in this MV, so associations are unsurprising. Scrumptious.

The only cultural reference we've got here is the neon rune "r" on the background when AZ is sitting up.

Then, it goes back to the chorus with the guys standing with more fire in the background. There are other cuts from previous scene including the one with Alem throwing off 10000 Tenge bills with that photo on the back while staring into the camera.

Conclusion? A+ to the production team, especially set designers, Bibotta for the styling, and Yerbolat for knowing what looks good and what doesn't.

All and all, it was a good MV, a good break from artificially colourful secluded studio sets.

Now let's move to the music.

The song starts with, what I thought, those weird sounds from some Japanese instruments, but upon hearing the chorus my immediate reaction was "wait, is it a hip-hop beat from the early 2000s?"

Honestly, it isn't a very pop song. It screams hip-hop, and I dare say, this song was meant to be performed by the rappers only, which was somewhat proven true given that AZ and ZAQ were both writers and composers of Men Emes. Its hip-hop nature shows even in the structure: there are no vocal verses, only a bridge and a chorus performed by the vocalists, and everything else is just rap. And oh my, that's some rap, indeed.

First, can we just address, that once again the rappers of 91 managed to sneak up another controversial line bordering with vulgarity? I am talking about the first two lines of AZ's rap here, those who don't know what I am talking about, ask me about it later. The audacity though, huh. In either case, that got an incredulous chuckle out of me upon realisation. Congratulations, boys, mischief's managed.

AZ was his extravagant self in general, wouldn't say he brought a lot of literary value in this track, to be honest. Well, especially compared to ZAQ (and it is always difficult to compete with ZAQ's lyrics), who's just unleashed the study of "how many words and rhymes with "u" and "ü" sounds I can shove into one rap verse while making it sound intelligible and meaningful." And did so successfully, I must say. Personally was always astonished how masterfully he manages to use the vowel harmony - one of the linguistic traits of the Kazakh language - weaving syllables to the whole other level of wordplay. Lyrically, all cultural references in the MV seem justified, given how ZAQ is lamenting over how "his nation is moving with a snail speed" and such. With this, he is brushing the socio-political problems in the country, it seems. And it is very promising, as in this country high profile artists don't risk doing that.

(Btw, a mention of Surtur was another delightful nod to my inner nerd who loves Norse Mythology, and a reference to Cthulhu was rather amusing. Lovecraft wouldn't've minded.)

I had many problems with voices in this track. For some reason, I couldn't recognise half of them. I only clearly heard Bala, Ace's voice became obvious only when he moved to an octave higher, and I didn't even realise it was Alem singing in the beginning. Was very shocked to know that it was ZAQ, not AZ, rapping with that higher voice in the second part before switching to his usual old school style. We're trying different things, I see, though I wouldn't mind them toning down their tuner game a bit. I know who's singing what now only thanks to the MV.

To sum up, it's a very different 91 song. Not that it's very astounding in its originality with blending different genres in one as you'd expect, but it's probably refreshing to hear something bold, audacious, yet simple, very hip-hopesque circa 2001 from them. It seems they're deliberately trying to diversify their audience throwing a track like that. Which isn't bad at all, I rather enjoyed it. (By the way, those drums in the bridge section sounded almost tribal. Just saying.)

Despite the MV and song screaming "WEALTH", "SWAG", "COOL" and "SUAVE", I do not actually think it was only about showing off. Well, of course, a part of the message was a la "look what I've got in the end, despite all your judgement" with "you're not me" and all that. However, I think it was also targeting and mocking the spoiled kids of corrupt government officials or just corrupt rich "bosses" in general who always act as if rules and law are not made for them. "Yeah, you're cool, but not the coolest, might be rich, but not the richest, and even good-looking but not really. Don't be so full of yourself, you're not the centre of the universe" kind of message. And that imagery of Alem as a mafia boss in his office is juxtaposed with all those cultural artifacts hinting on what is actually more important and valuable, especially with the Kazakh cultural leaders of the 20th century watching from the picture on the wall. And Alem throws those bills as if saying "yes, I'm doing that, but it's just money, so what." Even AZ looks somewhat lost and empty-eyed lying there among girls when he's not trying to convince you how envious you should be right now.

Probably it's me reading too much into this, I don't know, but the MV only amplified the feeling that you've got to read between the lines, it isn't all about bragging.

For now I'll give the MV 9 out of 10, and the song is a solid 7.

Peace out ✌️

#qazaq #qazaqstan #kazakh #kazakhstan #q-pop #qazaq pop #ninety one #mv #kazakh language #ace #alem #bala #kazakh music #zaq #az #juz entertainment #91 ninety one #91 #men emes

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islamicrays · 5 years

Text

Many people today struggle with the issue of “identity” and specifically with finding their identity, discovering their identity, embracing/accepting their identity, defining their identity, individuating their identity from others, defending their identity, etc.

But what is identity and whose definition of it are we going with? Who gets to tell us who we are or who we should be?

Our culture? Society? Our parents? Our spouse? Our friends? Our colleagues? Or all of the above?!

Is it any wonder why everyone is so confused?

God, in His Infinite Wisdom and Mercy, has left us a treasure trove of lessons and cautionary tales to learn from and to teach us that the ONLY identity we need to worry about is our faithfulness to Him.

Through the examples of prophets, saints, and scholars, we can learn so much about who we are and who we’re definitely NOT.

1. Through the story of Adam and Hawa (peace be upon them) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our temptations and weaknesses, but rather our sincere repentance and remorse.

2. Through the story of Nuh (peace be upon him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by the abandonment and betrayals we suffer from family and loved ones, but rather our conviction and fortitude.

3. Through the story of Maryam (peace be upon her) we learn that we’re NOT defined by the slander and ill thoughts of others, but by the purity of our hearts and our complete and total submission to God’s will.

4. Through the story of Asiya (peace be upon her) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our toxic marriages, but by our absolute and resolute belief in God and His mercy.

5. Through the story of Yusuf (peace be upon him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our external beauty or the covetousness of others, but by our internal beauty and magnanimity.

6. Through the story of Ayyub (peace be upon him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our fortunes and material possessions, but rather by our patience enduring great misfortune and loss.

7. Through the story of Moses (peace be upon him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our eloquence of speech or breadth of knowledge, but by our courage, humility, and strength.

8. Through the story of Yunus (peace be upon him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our costly mistakes, but by our remorse and desire to redress our wrongs.

9. Through the story of Umar (may God be pleased with him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by our brute strength and the fear we instill in others, but by our softness and tenderness.

10. Through the story of Imam al-Ghazali (may God be pleased with him) we learn that we’re NOT defined by the superiority of our intellect over others, but by our utter humility, awareness of our spiritual diseases and shortcomings, and our complete reverence to God.

11. And through the story of our Beloved ﷺ

and his beautiful teachings, we learn that we’re NOT defined by

—the color of our skin

—the shape or size of our bodies

—our physical beauty or lack thereof

—our lineage

—our education

—our family background

—our knowledge

—our gender

—our marital status

—our mental health or physical health

—our homes

—our clothing

—our sins, quantity or quality (remember the story of the man who killed 99?)

—etc.,

His entire mission was to remind us of who we REALLY are and that our true IDENTITY is directly and solely linked to our belief in God; and that everything else, in the grand scheme of things, is immaterial and irrelevant, and in the end will mean nothing. The greater and stronger our belief in Him, the more self-actualized and closer we are to who God intended us to be.

May God help strengthen our faith and our belief in who we are so that no one can ever make us question our own worth or value apart from God. Amin.

Ustadha Hosai Mojaddidi

#islamic quotes #islam #quote #muslim #allah

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