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kth1 · 4 years

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Crosscurrents [Hoseok x Reader] Part 1

Crosscurrents - Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Genre: The Little Mermaid AU | Fantasy AU | Series Pairing: Mermaid!Hoseok x Princess!Reader Featuring: BTS Princes Warnings: Angst, fluff, rated G, sorry no smut, mentions of pain, eventual character death, it’s just a fantasy story. W/C: 6k Summary: Hoseok is a carefree middle child among seven princes, each running one of the seven seas. With a curious nature to study the world above, he makes several routine visits to the surface, once even saving an alluring princess who he grows very smitten by. With a strong determination to meet his lovely princess, Hoseok makes a risky deal with the ocean’s enchantress to become human. Author’s Note: This fic is something I was utterly happy and exited to write. Mermaids and fantasy stories, yippee. Thank you all who support me. Portions of the fic is unedited. 🐚🧜‍♂️

Credits: Story includes strong elements from Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’; Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’; and Michiko Yokote’s manga ‘Mermaid Melody’. Beta Reader: @shadowsremedy has helped me with a handful of passages throughout the course of this story, thank you so much.

☀ CROSSCURRENT MASTERLIST ☀

Miles away under the sun-kissed surface of the ocean, where the water is clear as crystal and blue as the contrasting sky above – resided populations of beautiful mythical creatures. Down in the lowest depths, the most scarce of areas that no human would ever dare to scavenge, lived the Mer-people.

Underwater forestry, plants, organisms of wondrous visions illuminating the deepest pits of the oceans. Fishes of all sizes and shapes occupied the area, weaving through the stems and leaves of charted trees along the motion of the currents. Just as birds fly among the surface. Gorgeous sands decorated the floor along with seven separate kingdoms enriched with enchanting palaces, each declaring a claim to their own sea.

Each palace, unique in their own way. Accommodating their surrounding habitats. Each of the seven districts ruled under the marvelous Mer-King, and each sea acquainted a heavenly, handsome prince. Kingdoms decorated with coral walls, sculpted sandstone slates and amber pointed windows. Roofs made from the finest and largest of mussel-shells, clams and hidden glittering pearls and jewels. Stones of riches, easily the most expensive gems that belonged in the pits of the hidden worlds.

The Mer-King seeded the realms with seven little princes who were all very beautiful children in their own distinctive ways. For each Prince, were given a household to look after, to grow up with, and study in practice to control their provinces.

Within the Arctic Ocean, where merfolk varied in shades of murky indigo and dotted with black spots was inhabited by the eldest of sons, Prince Seokjin. The Indian Ocean decorating the waves with scales of vibrant oranges complimented with a singular stripe of white down the backside, consisted Prince Yoongi. The cold of the Antarctic rested Prince Namjoon, along with his kingdom of deep purple-to-silver tailed scaly family. Tails irradiated a glow just like the moon reflecting on water.

Creatures in the North and South Pacific diverse in tropical colors, salmon pink beings belonging to Prince Jimin in the north, and bright crisp yellow folks ruled under the south’s youngest, Prince Jungkook. The last two kingdoms lay in the Atlantic Ocean. Beautiful deep green tails of the north, quipped with touches of holographic shine belonged to Prince Taehyung. Lastly, the region in the South Atlantic was full of rays of aqua blue and speckled with gold – is where Prince Hoseok lives.

Throughout their childhoods, given brief age gaps and the stretch of locations between another, the brothers all grew up together. Frequent visits, family gatherings being a constant presence with the young boys. All merfolk belonged to another, they took after another and populated the sea floor. Fishes would swim up, gently being held, feeding out of the hands of mermaids and mermen. Eventually within a mer-person’s life, they will be acquainted with a creature of any species. A forever buddy that becomes their pet, their friend, and family.

The beauty of the South Atlantic Ocean kingdom with a magnificent palace that had astounding flowers growing between the cracks of the walls in each apartment and room, was decorated with a large garden in the front. Full of dark and iridescent baby-blue trees with fruits that glittered like gold. Matching the specs of gold that embellished the tails of the locals. Flowers blazed with hues of butterscotch yellows, resembling the bright and burning sun from the surface above. Bushes and smaller shrubs matched the color of sulfur.

Hoseok was certainly a singular child, one who was quiet and thoughtful in group settings, but was the loudest and most careless when it came to freedom. His skin was soft and delicate, like the touch of a sunflower leaf. His eyes sparked a deep blue, twisted with an almond mix of brown. His tail was no doubt the most stunning in his sector, outshining others around him, a tell-tailed sign that he was of royalty. But the most notable of signs that screams royalty was the unique earring that never left Hoseok’s lobe.

Each handsome prince was given a dedicated pearl at their coming of age ceremonies, each identifying with their tail color. To which they must protect and kept safe for the sake of their empires. For the fact that these pearls harness great mystical powers, such power compacted within one tiny jewel. But this power could completely destroy a nation if given to the wrong hands, and if their owners neglect their duties.

Nothing pleased Prince Hoseok more than hearing about the unreachable world from above. Human beings who lived on land, not within the sea. Stories fascinated the curious mind of Hoseok, constantly being riddled with tales of these notorious humans. Over time, with the help of Nannies and families, Hoseok’s knowledge grew when it came to the world that was simply out of reach. Ships, towns, land animals, you name it.

Over the course of his younger days, he ventured out into the sea, accompanied by his trusty companion, Kiko – a leafy sea dragon. Together they collected a handful of unknown knick knacks, thingamajigs, and doohickeys that they forged for from shipwrecks. To this day – Hoseok still makes these trips, ventured out further into the sea without supervision, even breaking the surface of the water to catch a glimpse of the amazing world.

Nights where he could sneak away, rise to the surface and lay under the moonlight in the clefts of the rocks. Watching lights from the shoreline flicker dimly, the casted stars sparkling the sky in beautiful constellations.

“It’s so beautiful up here, isn’t it Kiko?” Hoseok spoke towards the leafy sea dragon that circled around his fins which remained dipped in the water. He sighed, breathing in the foreign air, the dryness cutting into his lungs. The wind played with his shaggy hair, his earring dangling along. His eyes set firmly on the coast, waves easing in and out at the ridge of the bay. Everything up here was so unfamiliar to Hoseok, so tempting and entertaining.

“There’s beautiful places all over. And under.” Kiko mused back. Skeptical and cautious as she grew accustomed to Hoseok’s nightly adventures. There was no way she could talk the Prince out of his plans, ever.

“But up here is so – is so,” he pauses. Noticing a small child holding an elder woman’s hand, probably enjoying a nightly walk on the beach. “… Amazing.”

The high church-towers were in view within the town that lined the coast. Carriages and music playing in the distance, even the chime of bells ringing. The simple fact that he could not go there himself caused him to yearn for it more, wish for it to happen in his dreams. This Prince was indeed passionate about the land before him, stretching his hands towards the air.

“Careful yourself, Hoseok.” Kiko warned. “It’s late, shouldn’t we be heading back before someone notices your disappearance?”

He nodded, with his eyes still trained on the silhouettes of the strolling humans. Watching them turn up a set of stairs and disappearing behind the curve of the walkway. He was fascinated, the kinship between humans wasn’t much different from his to his folks. Humans were so distant, but they seemed so similar to him.

A small tug on his fin caught his attention, seeing his little buddy pulling him. “Let’s go, you have a busy day tomorrow.”

On the swim back, descending down into the dept of the sea, Hoseok reminisced his favorite times above water. The early mornings, the midday views of seagulls flying high above in flocks, the sunsets were clouds scattered the sky and painted in violets, reds, and oranges. Watching the Sun extinguish into the horizons plane as the cool of the night sky took over.

Hoseok loved the upper world and all its inhabitants so very much.

Daybreak tickled the waters, reflections of lights bouncing and refracting off another in the clear-cut liquids. It shined through Hoseok’s large amber window, casting a ray on his slumbering face causing him to wince. His body curled tighter in his clam-based bed; a thicket of woven blankets made of the finest kelp keeping him comfortable. Bio-luminescent decorations that drifted within his quarters losing their dim glows.

Shortly, his door would be knocked upon. Guards prepared to assist him along his daily routines, breakfast, taking a swim through the gardens, fitting for dresswear. Today, his brothers were due for a visit – since his kingdom was hosting the annual Festival of the Arts this year, as the event rotated between each realm every year.

It was always a delight to seek comfort from his siblings, to talk among another with similar thoughts and feelings as each and every single one of them were in the same shoes – in this case, fins. They were close to another regardless of the actual distance of their homes. And he was more than happy to celebrate the festivities and provide his best hosting service.

Prince Jungkook was the first to have arrived along with his party, very atypical of the youngest who outshines the mer-world quite frankly with his beaming yellow tail and natural abilities. His excitement to see his older brother urgently was overwhelming as he searched throughout the Aqua realm’s palace for Hoseok. Wittingly enough, he knew Hoseok’s patterns, the layout of the entire home.

“Hyung!” Rang through the water – not sounding quick enough for Hoseok to process before the bulldozing clash of his body into another’s. Tough arms circled Hoseok, tightening in a rush just in time for him to tilt his head to catch the sight of jet-black hair and a flash of canary yellow.

“Ah, Jungkook. You nearly gave me a heart attack!” Hoseok hollers. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Jungkook laughs, holding his brother tight and against his will, “I’m sorry Hobi – it won’t happen again.” The scrunch of Jungkook’s nose and the teasing smile made his quick apology sound completely fake.

“You’ve filled out more I see.” He notes the stature of Jungkook from the last time he’s seen him. Chest expanding further, his hair longer and pulled in a half bun with loose ends spilling out around his fringe. The twinkle of Jungkook’s yellow pearl lays just between his clavicles on a threaded necklace. But his youngest brother still adorned his childlike smile, large eyes popping out with animation.

“Indeed, I have.” Said the yellow tailed man.

“Have you prepared well for the ceremony tonight?” Hoseok questioned while shifting out of the other man’s clutch, fluttering his fingers through his case of human books. Careful not to tear the thinned papers that were not made for the water.

They were in the secondary study – dedicated to Hoseok’s cherished collectibles of human items that drifted down to the sea floor. It was a private area, filled with wonder and intertwining plants. So many new and beautiful objects decorated the interior of the room along with the drifting innocent fishes that floated around like fruit flies.

Jungkook grabbed hold of his brothers’ hand, tearing him past the seaweed curtains and out of the room. “I need help with a part of the choreography – I’m not sure what to do.”

Each of the seven princes were a part of the annual festival, performing their own pieces of art. Music surrounded their lives, and each prince specialized in one of the three professions: Singer. Dancer. Composer.

In tune with another – they create a perfect melody, a rhythm they cast into the waters. And all together they grow stronger with the help of their pearls.

“Let’s not head to the ballroom – I’m sure they are still setting up.”

“Jungkook! Sir!! Prince!” A peep of a scream came from the corner, a frantic Moorish Idol fish bee-lining towards the two still Princes. “Don’t you bolt off like that again! I can’t catch up with your speed!” it pants as it swarms around Jungkook’s face.

“Gotta be quicker, Pip!” Jungkook giggled, using his fingers to brush against his tuckered-out buddy.

Pip eyed Hoseok, recognizing the older Prince and jumped in embarrassment. “Prince, I apologize! I didn’t greet you properly, please I am so dearly sorry!”

“No need for formalities.” A wave of Hoseok’s hand hushed Pip’s words. “It’s nice to see you again. Now – about that choreography…”

The rooms were lit to the high-nine. Capacity of several variations of flourished colored tails decorated Hoseok’s palace – events like these are his favorite. Not only is he surrounded by his school, he’s encircled by his glorious brothers. The only thing that stressed out the aqua tailed prince, wasn’t the planning of events, fitting for costumes, dresswear, or deciding the best dishes to cater. The performance he practiced for day in and day out alike his brothers – what stressed Hoseok out was the company of his father, the Mer-King himself who only showed his presence for special occasions.

Each Prince were presented in front of the crowd of hundreds, their titles in all. Dolled up to accommodate the affair with engaging chains that wrapped around their waists and wrists, extra clam and shell accessories added to decorate around their loose arms and tail. Designed capes, hip skirts, and sheer fabrics that moved with the waves as they would do with the wind from above. Crowns made from wreaths of white lilies with bejeweled opal white pearls dangling down the band.

One by one they presented their acts along the stage, an entertaining uproar surpassed through the crowds from the Royal’s concert. The dancers who weaved like fluid coil to the cords of music were nonother than the feisty topaz yellow Jungkook, the carefree aquamarine dazzled Hoseok, and the flirtatious yet ditzy salmon pink royal, Prince Jimin.

Contrasting the dancers were the stunning vocalists of the group, Seokjin and Taehyung. Together they crafted a harmonious aura with their lyrics and tones. Entreating voices far sweeter than any human or mer-folk around.

Princes Namjoon and Yoongi of the Antarctic and Indian Oceans were strong composers, masters in a range of musical instruments. Their wits, knowledge, and pure love for the magical symphonies poured out of their bodies through devices and tools. Drafting tunes for songs every breathing moment.

It was late once again as Hoseok frustratedly swam up to his usual cove. Hoisting his body up on a smooth rocky islet that broke through the surface. Up here, Hoseok felt light and at ease. Repressing the tensions that bellowed below in the pit of his realm. The breeze was steady and refreshing, toying with the stands of his dampened hair and drying off the droplets of water that trickled down his skin.

He shed the tokens that deemed his high rank prior to wondering off from the palace, only keeping his stationary earpiece securely in. The clouds floating are coated in golden and rosy shades, evening stars piercing the sky in the dimming east. The nearing night looked extraordinary in Hoseok’s eyes.

A large ship with three white masts settled still on the water with only one sail unraveled. People littered the deck, music and song resounded from the vessels, and soon after when the night casted over the sky, the light of hundreds of lamps burst into view.

It was odd for a ship to be sailed far out during this time, even more peculiar to have a scatter of lights beaming from floating lamps that hovered into the air.

He swam close to the captain’s cabin being cautious to stay low in the water, and with every rock of the waves Hoseok was able to look through the clear windowpanes. Kiko stayed close to Hoseok, wiggling herself into his hand for security as they drawn near the scary object that rested on the water.

There were many richly dressed humans within, gowns and suits decorating each member in a fashion. The most bewitching of them, a person who stood out of the crowd and stared into the far distance of the water was a young princess with flowing thick hair. No doubt in Hoseok’s mind that this beauty was no younger than him, and he felt completely captivated by her looks.

A festival was being celebrated on the same day Hoseok’s home celebrated his. In honor of this princess’s birthday the crew were dancing and singing on the upper deck, similar to how Hoseok’s family just partook on a stage deep below. It was fascinating his wondering eyes, activities so alike to his own. And the moment the princess appeared among the lively bunch, rockets shot up into the air, turning the night into day.

The loud boom of cracks sizzling into the air scared Hoseok and Kiko, forcing him to dip his head back under the surface.

“Let’s go back! This isn’t safe!” Kiko chimed in, shaking her frail leafy body.

Hoseok looked up through the plane of water, eyes wide with shock. Not once has he ever seen this lightshow before. These weren’t cracks of blue zigzags that dressed the sky like lightning, theses were bright loud bangs of noise that sparked fire.

Through his perception, he watched the glows vanish. Until another boom ripped through the air along with another flash of light. “Hold on.” He says.

The curious merman raised his head above water again to witness a scene of falling stars upon him. A fiery shower he surely has never seen before tonight. It was like large suns revolved around his head, the brightest of fishes swam in the air that reflected on the clear glass-slate of water of the sea. Who knew humans could have such power.

The princess could be seen distinctly throughout the sailors that laughed and jested with glee. Her face adorned with a wide smile, one that shined so bright. “Oh – she’s so beautiful, isn’t she?”

It was later now, but Hoseok couldn’t take himself away from the ship and the beautiful young princess. She remained looking through that cabin window, rocking to and fro by the motion of the sea. He was enchanted by her, charmed by this unique being. There was something about her.

“Would you look at her?” Hoseok examined, smiling to himself. “She’s breathtaking.”

Kiko fluttered around Hoseok, a nervous wreck of a fish as she sensed an unnerving suspicion. “Please, we must go back. We’ve overstayed too long.”

“Oh poppycock. The palace is in perfect condition. Nobody will notice me missing.”

“Sir – “

There was foaming and fermentation in the depths beneath causing the ship to tilt faster. Waves rose high and violent in a span of minutes. Sails were spread, a commotion coming from the desk resounded. A distant thunder was heard, rumbling through the space above.

“Ah – father…” Hoseok snapped his head, “He’s angry.”

“I told you we must go!”

Hoseok and Kiko both swam a few meters down after once last glance at the ship that furled their sails once more. Until a sudden pound echoed through the waves. The great vessel tossed and turned on the volatile waters like a rowboat as the waves rose to an extreme height. It towered over the ship, clashing forcefully into the deck and submerging the manmade object. Water filled the cavities of the deck, the stout masts bent under the swirling billows.

“Hoseok!” Kiko shouted at the stunned merman who watched with wide eyes. An internal struggle inside him to tell him to go back to the Mer-King or to help the sinking ship. “We need to go!”

“I can’t! It’s going to turn over into the sea!”

Just as he guessed, the crew among the vessel was in terrible danger; since he himself had to beware the shattered beams that tore away from the vessel and splashed down above him. Wreckage both floating and sinking, causing hazards to think twice about.

“Get him to stop Kiko, tell him I’m fine! Just stop the storm!” Hoseok shooed his seahorse away, heading himself to the surface and ignoring the pleading screams.

It was pitch dark above, so dark that he could not distinguish anything until a flash of lightning disclosed to him the whole of wreck. Burning flames above the water. Hoseok only felt urgent for his wondrous princess as he sought her out the instant the ship kissed the bottom of the seafloor.

Hoseok knows no human can breathe underwater, he knows the only times he’s seen a human up close were the bodies of corpses that drifted down into the depths. He did not want that fate for the princess.

He dove himself through the shards and fragments that sprinkled within the water regardless of the danger he was inducing but with his steady swim he found the princess having difficulty holding her head high. Her eyes already closed while clutching her frame around a piece of driftwood, inevitably would have drowned completely if it wasn’t for the aqua blue merman who came to the rescue. Bearing the force of the heavy current, holding the princess above the water’s surface.

The sun rose in the horizon towards morning, by then the ongoing storm had seized and there weren’t any traces of remains from the shipwreck. Rays of lights restored color to the princess’s cheeks, though her eyes remained closed. Her dampened dress riddled with sand and stray leaves of seaweed.

They lay off in a secluded cove far from the casually populated beach. Surrounding cliffs hiding them away. Hoseok laid gazing up at the arresting princess, stroking the strand of wet hair away from her face. Her skin was soft like a rose petal, and a slight pink undertone hid beneath its expanse. “Please wake.” He whispered as he studied her features.

This was the first time Hoseok laid about the land, just shy of the waters reach. He could see the dry green wood that extended along the coast, cliffs and mountains drawn clearer. Firm quartz sand which he now occupied along with his new companion. He turned her face towards the rising sun that was illuminating the world.

A quiet sound escaped the mouth of the princess, surprising the merman suddenly. He leaned back, head blocking the sun from direct view of her face while she sleepily opened them. The haze of her eyes coated her sight, looking at the figure that was in view. She grumbled, blinking rapidly to readjust the image before her. A stranger hovered over her, a concerned look across their handsome face as they looked down at her in curiosity. Golden brown hair flowed around; a glint of blue entrapped into his brown almond eyes.

“Hello,” Hoseok whispered, lifting the corner of his lips up.

“Who-“

Hoseok shifted the moment he heard of loud barking noise coming from the side of a cliff. His movement caused the piercing rays of light to shine into the princess’s eyes, blinding her some more.

The merman jolted away from the shore in a panic, hiding behind some stones further into the sea. Hoseok watched from afar with unyielding attention, a black four-legged being running towards the reviving princess. A small group of men followed suit to the black figure who alerted the humans of its findings.

“Oh Princess!” one shouted as they ran over. They smiled kindly down at her, assisting her off the sands and into a blanket. “Princess Y/n, are you hurt?”

She was dazed and confused, checking her surroundings for the other person she just saw. Did she see someone or was it her imagination? Who had saved her from the previous night? “Where’s the man? The one who saved me?”

The surrounding men gave another a questioning look, looking quite confused when they eyed the area around them. “Miss, nobody is here besides us? You must have swallowed too much seawater – it’s a miracle you survived.”

The black hairy creature spotted Hoseok out, yapping towards him and trying to get the humans attention. The animal saw him, no doubt, and Hoseok ducked for cover under the waves as they passed, waiting for his moment to come back up.

The princess was taken back onto the land with the assistance of the furry creature and humans, leaving Hoseok distraught behind the stones of the bay. But he was relieved that she survived, her beauty could live on longer, and he couldn’t wait to share his story about how he saved a human. Immediately, when the princess was finally out of view, he plunged beneath the water to return back to his palace.

“Y/n…” He hummed, repeating the sweet name that rang his ears. “Her name is Y/n.”

“Where did you go last night?” The Mer-King shouted in the dining hall. Hoseok floated in front of his father, eyes trained to the seabed below their fins. The six other brothers hovered off to the side in a stationary line, motionless as they watched the scolding unfold. Each accompanied by their personal pets who too drifted in the silence of the water.

“Answer me, Hoseok!” the King’s voice resembled the same boom of the magical fire show from last night.

“I – I was… I went...”

“Don’t you dare tell me you escaped up to the surface.”

Hoseok fell silent. His words lost in his throat when he made eye contact with his father. The King stood still with the length of his graying hair exceeding past his shoulder blades, a crown sat atop his head made out of coral and angulate wentletrap shells. Spikes of eelgrass flowing from the tips of the multicolored crown. His slimy tail was ombre from a berry red into a sandy brown – dorsal fins displayed wide and drifted just how a beta fish would, flared up just how a beta fish would. His steel gray eyes stared down at Hoseok with intensity, waiting for a response.

Voiceless silence. Hoseok could not speak another word without distressing his father any further. In defeat he hung his head down to the floor, sinking his shoulders.

“You are not to leave the palace.” The King’s voice broke through. “You are not to enter the surface of the water. Do I make myself clear?”

“But Fath –“

“Am I clear!?” He shouted. Voice echoing through the quiet halls of the palace – hand clutching his beloved trident tight.

“Yes, Sir.” Hoseok grimaced. Kiko fleeing into the middle of Hoseok’s back.

The Mer-King departed the dining hall, leaving the seven brothers to themselves. It was when Hoseok looked up seeing the concerning looks crossing each of his brothers, did he feel guilty for his actions.

“What are you doing? You know you shouldn’t meddle around up above. What if someone saw you?!” Namjoon spoke, the cool tone of his voice chilled through the water. The purple scaled man swam closer to Hoseok, the slate of silver shining through his hair and the tip of his fins. His purple pearl shimmered in the arm cuff on his right of his crossed arms, his crab responding in the same gesture. “Hoseok, think of the dangers.”

“I know. But hear me out – I did something so amazing last night!”

“Namjoon’s right, you know this.” Seokjin stepped in with a pointing finger embellished with his pearl, “And to pull that stunt, especially when father is visiting, you’re asking to be yelled at.” His small, very animated manta ray wiggled around Seokjin’s mannerisms, copying the same movements as he did.

Hoseok’s mouth formed a triangle frown. Resentment settling in the pit of his stomach along with a mix of emotions. “Can you just listen to me?”

“Then speak.” Heads turned over to the aloof green merman who seated himself on top of the turquoise sea-glass table. The side of his hair clipped back with a white barbed clam, allowing the rest of his deep brown wavy hair to flow naturally. Under his ear shined the dark pine colored pearl, just how Hoseok’s did. Taehyung’s fingers twirled around his pale jellyfishes’ ruffled tentacles, staring off into the distance in deep thought. “What was amazing?”

Hoseok scanned the eyes around him, taking in a strong breath before telling his otherworldly experience. The merfolk knew of legends, myths and facts about the land above. Artifacts that fallen down into their domains created curiosity but there were fears of the stories about merfolk traveling far too close to the coastline. Humans may be mystical to mer-people, but it was never wise to breach the surface to study them.

“And the lights started falling down after the loud bang! Fire burning and sizzling out in beautiful streams! It was so bright!” He exclaimed with his audience listening in. “But then the storm demolished the ship! It happened so fast!” Hoseok continued his dramatic story with such immense passion, comparing how humans and merfolk celebrated in similar ways.

It infatuated the listening ears, well, some more than others. “And then I saved her from the wreck! I saved her guys! I brought her to the shore and – “

“You what?”

Yoongi, with a tail of vibrant marmalade orange cut his younger brothers train of thought. His narrow coal cut eyes shot angry towards Hoseok. A menacing stare emitting from the shaggy dirty blonde-haired male, questioning his brother’s reckless behavior. “You went on land?!” His pet lionfish flared its fins at the tone of his owner’s voice, grumbling something about idiocy.

“She lived because of me!” Hoseok retorted, leveling up to the stinging tension that was rising quickly.

“You’re troublesome, really.” Yoongi chided. “She would have been fine if you were here in your palace! That storm wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for you!”

“You’re setting a bad example for the younger ones.” Seokjin nodded towards the wafting men who innocently drifted in the background of the conversation.

Hoseok fumbled over his words, mouth gaping open looking for words to fill into it. He knows his brothers aren’t wrong, they were just being cautious. But Hoseok felt like they looked down upon his widened spectrum, his drive to expand the knowledge about the world above. It wasn’t fair with all the limitations merfolk had, and even more restrictions for a Prince.

Hoseok grew quiet and reflective as days passed by. Obeying the tolls and jobs of his prince duties, being kind to other fish folk and leaning a helping hand for many in need. He stabilized his environment, praised the coral reefs that skirted his territory, even assisted with gathering the ripened fruits that sprouted from the gardens’ trees.

Though each and every day Hoseok pondered about the princess who lived above. Questioning to himself about her whereabouts, how she was doing and what she was doing. He dared to stare at the new statue that became his favorite décor in his luxurious field of flowers. A beautiful stone chiseled and sculpted to look like the princess, partially broken from the wreck of the ship, now stood in the middle of his oyster paddock.

When Hoseok wanted to be a daredevil, he succeeded in slipping away from the eyes of his staff and even his personal buddy. Rushing himself back to the surface where he loved so dearly to catch the linger of the air that dried his face and scales. Many times, he rose to the place where he had last seen Princess Y/n, where he left her on the sands before scurrying away. He always returned to his subterranean abode with a bit of sadness when he never saw her.

It was dawn when the first light creeped through the panels of Hoseok’s second study where he was toying around with one of his thingamajigs, trying to understand the use of it. He had an unexpected visitor in the middle of the night, a slither of a reflective shine catching his eye. An oily slick tinted film in the moonlight when he angled his tail in the right way.

“Taehyung.” Hoseok breathed, “You should have told me you were heading here; I would have arranged a genuine greeting for you when you entered the gates.”

He seemed cheerier during the night hours, maybe it was the relaxation of the disphotic zone or the cool temperament of fishes relaxing. Whichever excuse it may be, Taehyung always glowed better during the evening. “I’m sorry hyung – I wanted to check in on you. I was worried.”

They spent the entire night in deep thoughts, conversing to another about their worries and provinces. A few discussions about trades between regions, assembling plans and arrangements for brotherly gatherings. Taehyung found a fascination with a particular utensil from Hoseok’s study, a metal tool that had spikes at one end and a smooth handle on the other.

Throughout the night Hoseok confessed his sorrows to his younger brother, revealing his secret about the princess he had saved. How her beauty enchanted him, imprinting on his mind, how her statue now lays in the greens of his garden. The embarrassment crept up to him, distracting himself from his feelings as he showed Taehyung around his collection of human things.

“If my memory is correct, I believe I might know who your princess may be, because I have seen a castle above the waters.” Taehyung twirls the man-made gizmo around his fingers as he speaks. “When you mentioned her before in your story, I grew curious.”

Hoseok was caught off-guard from Taehyung’s words, stunned even. “Y – You know where she lives? You need to show me!” The aqua tailed man fluttered around with a sense of emergency, he held Taehyung’s hand pleading to him. “Please brother, show me what you know. It’s a wonderful morning already, the current is leveled, and the waters are clear!”

Embracing their arms together, Taehyung and Hoseok swam out past the palace walls into the blue of the ocean. Together they rose out of the water after miles of swimming, just in front of a tall bend in a cliff. They remained far off from the cost, deep enough to be unnoticed from the naked eye. But from their point of view they were able to see a castle with bright yellow stones, a flight of marble steps that led straight into the sea. Statues topped the pillars that outlined the walls, the building crowned with a Caspian blue. A great bay window faced toward the sea, the windows expanding long and wide.

The area was farther out from Hoseok’s natural comfort spot, he would pass this sector many times when he would visit up north to Taehyung’s realm.

From a closer look the two mermen can see silken curtains that hugged the frames of large bay windows, the walls inside decorated from top to bottom with magnificent paintings. Blurred bodies of servants walking across the tiled floors and expensive rugs. Deep within one of the larger rooms there was a fountain glittering with dancing water which sprouted from several areas surrounded by long stems and tendrils of plants.

“It’s so beautiful.” Hoseok whispered, creeping himself closer towards the castle that was built on the edge of the cliff. It was a real delight for the royal mermen to witness an abode so lovely, so riveting.

“This is the only castle I know of. I’m hoping this could be her palace.” Taehyung swam down, toying around with his small jellyfish in a fit of giggles. Dangling strands of seaweed around as if he’s forging the same motion as his buddy’s tentacles.

Hoseok dipped his head under, meeting up with the green tailed strides. “Thank you, Taehyung!” Hoseok’s arms entangled around Taehyung’s waist, spinning the two mermen in circles.

“It’s not far from the area where I saved her. Oh, I do hope this is her home!”

Taehyung beamed back a boxy smile, noticing the wild spirit of Hoseok shine. He was aware of the consequences of going to the surface, aware how enraged father could get when the sons acted up. But he was very happy to help out his brother – he saw something in Hoseok that he didn’t see in the others.

“Please, whatever you may do. Just be safe.” He petted the side of his brother’s hair, flicking his finger over Hoseok’s pearl earring.

#ficswithluv #btsbookclub #bangtanarmynet #armysource #bangtanhq #magicshopnet #crosscurrents #crosscurrents part 1 #hoseok x reader #mermaid AU #mermaid hoseok #bts fanfic #series #jung hoseok #hoseok #jhope #hobi #bts

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letterboxd · 3 years

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Sculpting in Time.

As the world inches into the future, we invited Justine Smith, author of the ‘100 Films to Watch to Expand your Horizons’ list, to look to the cinematic past to help us process the present.

It is said that the essential quality of cinema that distinguishes it from other arts is time. Music can be played at different tempos, and standing in a museum, we choose how many seconds or hours we stand before a great painting. A novel can be savored or sped through. Cinema, on the other hand, exists on a fixed timeline. While it can theoretically be experienced at double or half speeds, it is never intended to be seen as such. Cinema’s fundamental quality is experiencing time on someone else’s terms. As the great Andrei Tarkovsky said in describing his work as a filmmaker, he was “sculpting in time”.

The perception of time, however, is not universal. Our moods, our emotions, and our ideologies shape our relationship to it. Most Western audiences are further acclimated to Western cinema’s ebbs and flows, which similarly favor efficiency and invisibility. When we see a Hollywood film, we don’t want the story to stop. We want to be swept away and forget that we are all moving towards a mortal endpoint. Cinema, though, in its infinite possibilities, exists far beyond these parameters. It can challenge and enrich our vision of the world. If we open ourselves up, we can transfigure and transform our relationship to time itself.

When I first put together my 100 Films to Watch to Expand your Horizons list, I did it quite haphazardly. I imagined countries, filmmakers and experiences that I felt went under-appreciated in discussions of cinema’s potential. Intuitively, I went searching for corners of experience that expanded my own cinematic horizon. Some of these films are well-loved and seen by wide audiences; others are virtually unknown. It was often only after the fact that the myriad of intimate connections between the films came to light.

Manuel de Oliveira’s ‘Visit, or Memories and Confessions’ (2015).

“The only eternal moment is the present.” —Manoel de Oliveira

Released in 2015 but made in 1982, Visit, or Memories and Confessions is a reflection on life, cinema and oppression by Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira. If we were to reflect on cinema’s history, few filmmakers have the breadth of experience and foresight as Oliveira. His first film was made in the silent era using a hand-cranked camera. By the time of his death at 106 years of age, he had made dozens of movies, including many in a digital format.

He made Visit, or Memories and Confessions in the shadow of the Portuguese dictatorship. While filming, he imagined he was in the twilight of his life. It revisited essential incidents in his history but also that of his country. It’s a film of reconciliation, violence and oppression, told tenderly in a home lost as a consequence of a vindictive dictatorship. Oliveira’s film, like his life, spanned time in a way that stretches perceptions. It’s a film without significant incident, about the peaceful pleasures and tragedies of daily life.

Elia Suleiman’s ‘The Time that Remains’ (2009).

What worlds have changed over the past one hundred years? The same breadth of perception, which often feels too seismic to tackle in traditional narrative cinema, was also explored in The Time that Remains. In a retelling of his family’s history, Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman also tells Israel’s story. It is a film of wry comparisons and Keatonesque comic patterns. As borders change and time passes, few things fundamentally change, except on a spiritual plane. What happens to people without an identity or a country? What damage does it do to their souls?

The question of time looms heavily in both Oliveira’s and Suleiman’s films. They are movies that contemplate centuries of experiences and explore how those stories are guarded, twisted and erased by the powerful.

Alanis Obomsawin’s ‘Incident at Restigouche’ (1984).

The echoes of history and attempts to break with old patterns often emerge in other anti-colonial and anti-imperialist films. They can be seen in Alanis Obomsawin’s vital and angry Incident at Restigouche, about an explosive, centuries-in-the-making 1981 conflict between Quebec provincial police and the First Nations people of the Restigouche reserve; In Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, villagers must win a cricket match to free themselves from involuntary servitude; and in Daughters of the Dust, the languid pace of the Gullah culture is challenged by the promise and violence of the American mainland.

Time, more than just a tool for chronology, becomes in itself a tool for oppression. Those who control time maintain power. If we are to break with dominant histories, the rhythms of oppression must be broken and challenged.

Forugh Farrokhzad’s ‘The House is Black’ (1963).

“The universe is pregnant with inertia and has given birth to time.” —Forugh Farrokhzad, The House is Black

Persian filmmaker and poet Forugh Farrokhzad made just one film before her untimely death in a car accident when she was 32. The House is Black is a short documentary about a Leper colony, which utilizes essay-esque prose taken from the Quaran, and Farrokhzad’s poetry. It is a film about people who are seen as invisible by society at large, cast away and hidden. The film reflects on beauty, sickness and reconciliation. How does one experience time when you’ve been ostracized and cut off from the larger world?

Barbara Loden’s landmark independent film Wanda asks a similar question. A solo mother who cycles from one abusive situation to the next exists outside of time and space. She is invisible. If we look at most American cinema, it might as well be propelled by people who take control over their destiny, but what of the people who are (un)willingly passive to the whims of society and other human beings? In her powerlessness, Wanda stands in for the invisible labor and sacrifices of so many other women. The ordinariness of Wanda’s life, the dusty and dirty environments she inhabits, rebound with significance. It is, however, not a victorious film. Instead, it is a profound portrait of loss and beauty. It’s the only film Barbara Loden ever made.

"If you don't want anything you won't have anything, and if you don't have anything, you're as good as dead." —Norman Dennis in Wanda

Barbara Loden’s ‘Wanda’ (1970).

In 2020, it seemed all we had was time. What seemed like an opportunity quickly became horrific. Time became a burden. We were reminded of our finite time on this Earth and all the hours spent commuting, working and surviving. The pandemic has had a seismic impact on our perceptions. In processing the ongoing crisis, we’ve transformed our relationship to the passage of time. We’ve altered the state of our reality.

This new pandemic gaze offers us new perspectives on time and history. The oldest film on the list is Erich Von Stroheim’s Blind Husbands, released in 1919 during the grips of the Spanish flu. The film does not reference the event, but its sensuality and class conflicts speak to a world on the brink of seismic change. It is a movie about an Austrian military officer who seduces a surgeon’s wife. The men grapple with jealousy and violence on a literal mountaintop, fighting for survival in an increasingly mechanized society.

Poster for Erich Von Stroheim’s ‘Blind Husbands’ (1919).

To this day, Blind Husbands is shocking. It’s profoundly fetishistic and loaded with heavy sexual imagery. It’s a movie about touch and desire absent of love and affection. It speaks to aspects of current life that feel lost and impenetrable. It speaks to growing and changing social disparities as well. Surviving the modern world is more than just surviving the plague; it has to do with value compromises and shifting power dynamics.

But, a pandemic is also about loss. Gregg Araki’s 1992 film The Living End explores the AIDS crisis from the inside out. Rebellious and angry, the film is about a gay hustler and a movie critic, both of whom have been diagnosed with the HIV virus. With characters who are cast out from society at large, gripped with a deadly and unknown fate, The Living End is apocalyptic—much like other Araki works from the 90s, such as The Doom Generation and Totally Fucked Up. It captures the deep sense of hopelessness of experiencing a pandemic while also belonging to a marginalized group. What is so radical about Araki’s cinema, though, is that it is also fun. It is a film that transcends mourning and becomes a lavish punk celebration. It is a film about survival, out of step with dominant ideology and histories.

Gregg Araki's ‘The Living End’ (1992).

The connections between Blind Husbands and The Living End bridge together to form common passions and changing perceptions. Both films are products of their time, at once part of distant histories but also uncomfortably prescient. More than films about a specific time and place, they are transformed by the time we live in now. To watch and connect with these movies in a pandemic means looking and living beyond the current moment.

While it seems like cinema might be facing an especially precarious future, it feels like the ideal art form to process what is happening right now. Caught in the vicious patterns of our own creation, giving ourselves up to the rhythms of someone else’s will might be a necessary form of healing, as well as an ongoing project in compassion. Time does not have to be a prison; it can be an agent for liberation.

Related content

100 Films to Watch to Expand Your Horizons

The Oxford History of World Cinema

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

The Great Unknown: High Rated Movies with Few Views

Follow Justine on Letterboxd

#justine smith #justine peres smith #world cinema #expand your horizons #gregg araki #manoel de oliveira #elia suleiman #julie dash #alanis obomsawin #Forugh Farrokhzad #barbara loden #erich von stroheim #mubi #criterion #criterion collection #letterboxd

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mendelpalace · 4 years

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GamePro’s SNES Criterion Collection

Back in 2011, the now-defunct GamePro published a piece including Criterion Collection-style covers for a handful of SNES titles, along with descriptions of the hypothetical bonus materials that would come with such deluxe rereleases. Though the cover images are still floating around online, a bunch of the descriptions are probably lost, including those for games like Street Fighter II, Donkey Kong Country, U.N. Squadron, Desert Strike, and Chrono Trigger.

A few can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine though, so I decided to repost the ones I can still get to:

An old enemy brings bounty hunter Samus Aran back to Zebes, where she discovers that the Space Pirate threat is greater than ever -- and thus begins one of the most evocative games ever made. Thanks to its simple but powerful storytelling; outstanding soundtrack; and massive, lonely world, Super Metroid, created by Nintendo's well-known R&D1; team, is a masterpiece of design that has come to represent the Super Nintendo at its pinnacle.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

All-new 16:9 transfer optimized for high-definition televisions

Video introduction by writer/director Yoshio Sakamoto

Two Interactive Audio Commentaries: one by Yoshio Sakamoto, Satoru Iwata, and Shigeru Miyamoto; and one by producer Makoto Kano

New Leaderboards: Test your sequence-breaking skills against the best speedrunners in the world

DISC TWO

Return to Zebes (2011): A 90-minute feature documentary on the making of the game

From Zebes to the Bottle Ship (2011): A 30 minute documentary about the history of the Metroid franchise

Deep Red: Scenes from the film that helped to inspire Super Metroid

Sequence Breaking: Noted speedrunners offer a guided tour of sequence breaking in Super Metroid

Into Tourian Base: An interactive map of Zebes with developer commentary and notes

Play the complete, original Metroid for the NES

Illustrated production history with rare behind-the-scenes photos, original press kit, and the U.S., European, and Japanese trailers

PLUS: Complete OST featuring original and remastered tracks from Super Metroid

A party of four child prodigies must band together to fend off a mysterious, malevolent alien force in this cult-classic role-playing game, scripted by influential Japanese copywriter and author, Shigesato Itoi. Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo embark on a fantastic adventure that spans a quirky, contemporary world, with a charming sense of lighthearted humor that shines through to the engrossing story’s awe-inspiring ending.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Fully animated opening and ending cinematics from Studio Ghibli.

In-game commentary from director/producer/writer Shigesato Itoi, designer Akihiko Miura, and composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka.

Live recording of the “Earthbound Orchestral Experience.”

Excerpts from the new translation of Saori Kumi’s Earthbound novelization, read by the author.

DISC TWO

The Man that Fell to Earthbound – Retrospective Q&A; with Shigesato Itoi about Earthbound’s critical and commercial reception.

It Hurts -- documentary feature chronicling the troubled production of Earthbound 64.

Outgrowing Onett - A short film from director Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars) that bridges the gap between Earthbound and Mother 3.

Brand new trailer of “Mother 3DS,” the highly anticipated, “definitive” edition of Mother 3.

All-new localization effort overseen by acclaimed director and screenwriter Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant).

Complete HD reimagining of the original Mother.

PLUS: Concept art gallery, and interviews with the game’s development staff.

In a galaxy far, far away, join Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and even Wicket the Ewok as they wage intergalactic war against the evil Empire and the sinister Sith lord, Darth Vader. In this ultimate HD edition of Super Star Wars trilogy, you’ll experience the entire saga, including racing a landspeeder through Tatooine’s wastelands in A New Hope, battling colossal AT-ATs storming Hoth’s rebel base in The Empire Strikes Back, flying the Millennium Falcon through the Death Star’s core in Return of the Jedi, and many more memorable adventures from the classic sci-fi trilogy.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES DISC ONE

All three Super Nintendo classics in their original form: Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

Remastered 16-bit visuals and crystal clear audio optimized for high-definition televisions.

New inventory management menu allows you to hang on to your weapons and powerups through all three games.

Save system lets you save your progress at any time.

New beginner-friendly “Apprentice Mode” eases newcomers into some of the most challenging Super NES games ever mad

DISC TWO

Deleted Levels: Two new playable missions previously cut from the games including R2-D2’s battle through Jabba’s palace.

A History of Sculpted Software: A 15-minute documentary chronicling the developer’s daunting task of reenvisioning George Lucas’ epic science-fiction series for the Super Nintendo.

From Giant Scorpions to Frog Dogs: An all-new 10 minute documentary examining the genesis of Super Star Wars trilogy’s most bizarre enemies.

Digital Strategy Guides: Digital versions of the original strategy guides to help you master what are considered some of the toughest video games on the Super NES.

Ladies and gentlemen: Start your engines, and prepare to challenge some of Nintendo’s most famous gaming characters in a high-speed battle of skill, wits...and luck! A huge critical and commercial success, Super Mario Kart is a seminal race-combat game from the 16-bit heyday of the early 90s that is so well loved, it continues to rank highly on “Best Game Ever” lists almost 20 years since its first release. Its key to success is its finely tuned, beautifully balanced multiplayer battle system that feels as fresh and fun as it did nearly two decades ago. Now’s your chance to rediscover the multiplayer magic of one of the best Super Nintendo games in three different forms, including an all-new Director's Cut!

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Director’s Cut: Featuring all-new polygonal graphics, the characters and courses are completely reimagined for a stunning, cutting-edge visual experience.

Enhanced Edition: A digitally remastered 16-bit version, with 1080p sprite-graphics taken from the original release, and authentic original gameplay

The First Cut: The completely untouched original version of the 1992 Super Nintendo release

Battle On!: Watch as the game’s original creators challenge one another in multiplayer combat and talk about their favorite weapons and characters

The Kart Legacy: A documentary on the legacy of Super Mario Kart, its numerous sequels and ports through the generations, and how it spawned an entirely new genre of racing games.

DISC TWO

Beyond F-Zero. The Making of a Two-player Racer: An in-depth interview with creator Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Kart’s multiplayer design philosophies.

Unlocking Mode 7: Tadashi Sugiyama and Hideki Konno talk about the technical aspects of using Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 to deliver a great gaming experience.

Digitally remastered music by composer Soyo Oka

Bios and gameography of each Super Mario Kart character: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, Donkey Kong Jr., Koopa Troopa, and Toad.

Cities are living, breathing things -- just as much as the inhabitants that walk their streets -- and nowhere is this more apparent than in Will Wright's masterpiece. Providing one of the earliest examples of free-form emergent gameplay, Sim City for the Super Nintendo is a seminal work, grounded in reality but limited only by the player's imagination.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

Two editions of the game: The original Super NES classic and SimCity+, a specially optimized widescreen edition for modern high-definition televisions.

Social Play: Connect your cities to those of your friends around the world.

Video introduction by Will Wright and Jeff Braun.

Fully voiced tutorial and advice featuring Nolan North as the voice of Dr. Wright.

DISC TWO

Af Wubbas Do (2011): A 60-minute feature documentary chronicling the history of the entire Sim series, from City through Copter to The Sims.

Urban Canvas (2011): A 30-minute exposé of the radical computer artists who use the SimCity series' landscaping and planning tools to produce works of visual art.

The Full, Uncut Raid on Bungeling Bay for Commodore 64: The game that inspired SimCity's creation.

Interactive gallery of real-life cities modeled in the game.

Original press materials and trailers.

Digital copy of "Street Music," an album featuring music from and inspired by the series.

Years ahead of its time, Actraiser was one of the most loved games released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Genre-bending civilization-building simulation with side-scrolling action, the game didn’t continue as a decades-long franchise like some of its other contemporaries, but it was never forgotten. Stepping into the omnipotent shoes of “The Master” to save the land and its people from the evil Tanzra and his six lieutenants is not only many gamers’ first memory of playing a “god game,” for some it is also their fondest memory from the entire 16-bit era.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

DISC ONE

All-new 16:9 remastered transfer optimized for high-definition televisions

Switch between the original 2D art assets and the all-new polygonal art with the push of a button.

Video introduction by director Masaya Hashimoto and writer Tomoyoshi Miyazaki.

Audio commentary track with the game’s designers.

DISC TWO

“The Creation Story” (2011), a forty-minute short documentary on the development of the game.

“Lightning in a Bottle” (2011), a roundtable discussion with Masaya Hashimoto, Tomoyoshi Miyazaki and Peter Molyneux about ActRaiser’s influence on game development and the “god games” genre.

The complete Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

An interactive gallery of over 100 never before seen sketches, concept art, and other design documents.

All that stands between a world’s freedom and its conquest by a ruthless tyrant is the intrepid pilot Fox McCloud and his dauntless friends of the Star Fox Team. Featuring the groundbreaking technology of the Super FX chip, Star Fox brought Nintendo into the world of 3D computer graphics. And flying through the sky and in space in the Arwing starship is perhaps the best way for Nintendo to bring polygons to its consoles.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES DISC ONE

Remastered audio and visuals, featuring Dolby Digital EX surround sound and a 16:7, HD presentation. Game’s original 1992 audio and visuals are also on the disc.

Two audio commentaries: One from the game’s executive producer, Hiroshi Yamauchi, and producer, Shigeru Miyamoto, and another with commentary from the point of view of Andross, the game’s villain.

Updated motion-comic version of the original Star Fox comic that ran in Nintendo Power from February 1993 to December 1993.

DISC TWO

“Defenders of Corneria”: a 90-minute documentary on the making of the original Star Fox.

“Fox Through the Ages”: A look at how Fox McCloud and the series has changed since their 1992 inception.

“Arwing Declassified”: A collection of other designs considered and rejected for the iconic Arwing starship.

“The Art of Star Fox”: Images of Fox McCloud, the Star Fox Team, and the memorable worlds from the franchise.

Original promotional ads from Japan, Europe, and North America.

PLUS: The Complete Original soundtrack.

#Video Games #Criterion Collection #SNES #GamePro

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theblackshit · 4 years

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Omsk Social Club / Unrealism 1) 58 days live work Part of the exhibition “Journey in a living Being” curated by Tilman Baumgärtel 2) Web: https://unrealism.live/ 3) Secret Location 18th May - 16th August 2020 Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien Mariannenpl.2, 10997 Berlin

Unrealism - A Concept Every second of the day, every day, billions of users log on and never before, has there been so much talk about the effect of culture on civilization. Not on one civilization but all civilizations because we live in an era of bleed. Even those unconnected feel the effects of connectivity. Be it from the physical electromagnetic waves or the trickle-down political heat stoked online and other clickbaitable lifestyles that become rogue and inevitably vogue. The latter examples are the latest public revelation in digital connectivity, the passionate transfusion of matter into mind, but can we state this as new, not really our minds have always been a hotbed of collectivity. Voluntarily or not, we are made up of others. Yet we declare ourselves singular souls in the west at least. “Unrealism” is the latest immersive project by Omsk Social Club to unpack the unique ontology of the digital being in relation to collective identity.

THE IDENTITY Today the carving of a digital identity becomes the foundational tool of knowing oneself, true or otherwise. Eastyn Agrippa - an unknown author became driven by this phenomenon and decided to begin to sculpt identities that could survive only online. This became an obsession for them and after a year of living multiple identities over 3 different time zones. Agrippa decided to live 58 days online, only using physical space for existing but never leaving that realm bodily. This would be their first book - their memoir of an online paradise. Agrippa, as a personality was by no means on the brink of hikikomori . Agrippa was, in 1 fact, a character who devoured experiences, this has been the latest in a long list of extreme behavioural patterns they had developed in the name of art. Agrippa was not shy of their experiments and one night started pitching this new line of inquiry to a friend who convinced Agrippa to take the piece to the next level - “let the collective hive mind help you live this, do this on Twitch”, an online video streaming platform that is mostly used for Esports, video game competitions. This new direction drove Agrippa further into a frenzy of gamifiying and tokenizing the life they were about to embark on. Agrippa then sent a telegram message to a curator they knew, asking if they might be interested in presenting it, naturally one needs an audience base beyond their own social circle for this experiment to really be interestingly Lived. 1 Hikikomori is a psychological condition which makes people shut themselves off from society, often staying in their houses for months on end. Its is estimated there are at least half a million of them in Japan. It was once thought of as a young person's condition, but sufferers are getting older and staying locked away for longer reports say in 2019. BACKEND Over the years many postmodernist theorists and thinkers have argued against an authentic self arguing that the self is a variable. A social construct created by cultural components and historical narratives. This has lead to a crisis of being rather than a celebration of self-flux. Digital technology has become an active test-bed potentially unknowingly for both sides of the argument. The traditional solid-state self, the authentic you was proposed as the foundations for such social networking platforms like Facebook, Myspace etc, you could build the true you, what’s on your mind so your “friends” could see your life unfurled in real-time rather than waiting to meet you IRL. This belief of the “true self” was so effective online through such nodes that the user on the other end rarely asked, “How do I know you’re the sentient being I wish to connect to and not just a simulacrum?” In recent years we have begun to acknowledge the use of simulacrum farms and individual imitation beings aka catfishing. Yet it is more likely we believe the other node to be of a sentient nature first and foremost. On the other side of the spectrum, the internet also gave birth to the avatar, a shadow being that the user or multiple users in the case of gaming could inhabit the skin of. The rise in the culture of avatars seems to declare human identity as a creative occasion for a long-overdue investigation into the notion of the self. Since the early days of online role-playing - stemming from the swollen world of the Dungeon and Dragons that took on a digital formation, the intensification of othering seems to have reached a new precedent. One 2 where the users do not only explore with the phantasms they create but they, in fact, become them inside this fresh layer of Maya3, the online world. One extreme example of becoming other is in the rise of the influencer a much-explored topic in both arts and theory. But a slightly less trodden path of investigation in this realm is the collective body behind the influencer or in fact any avatar. We can realistically argue that every influencer is shaped from an unseen backend of users, the likes and interactions create the architecture of the avatar. Types of behaviours are accentuated in order to gain attention and therefore interaction - after all, there is little fun in playing by oneself in a lonely chasm of your own making. Each character that is birthed is colonized by the actions of others. Attention is what is shaping these identities, even if it is a one-on-one case of interaction, a love story or catfishing fraud. These social spaces give way to virtual theatres and the avatar becomes the performer apart from rules differ from a traditional theatre because the audience can try to author the play as it is been played out and it can be dubbed as non-fiction to the viewer and by the viewer. This method of collective active narration is the root of our artistic practice, we call this technique Real Game Play4 (RGP) and it informs our practice wholly. Yet up until now we have worked with physical incarnations of our own world scenarios - Unrealism is the first time we will become written in real-time vulnerability. 2 The use of Othering is in response to Hegel who stated in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) that the concept of the Self requires the existence of the Other as the counterpart entity required for defining the Self. He introduced the concept of the Other as a constituent part of self-consciousness (preoccupation with the Self), which complements the propositions about self-awareness (capacity for introspection). The use of othering in this case is a radical othering of oneself by oneself. 3 Traditionally in Hindu culture and New Age Spirituality, devotees would seek to free themselves from maya, which references the deluding power of Nature. This is directed at the illusionary world that we are ultimately embedded inside due to the clutter of humanity. Such devotees aim to free themselves through sacred rituals such as meditation. 4 A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role playing game (rpg) where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. Real Game Play (RGP) *mutation of rpg see above, is a combination of Larp and your own identity/lived experience – think of it like a meta-structure of you and the character given to you to act out. Source: A subjective rationale for LARP and RGP by Omsk Social Club 2017

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hanayuki23 · 5 years

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Sunkissed

There wasn’t a single person on that island that had not heard of Roxas and his statues.

Despite his young age, the boy was an established sculptor and was respected by all the inhabitants of his village. Many of them visited his household to admire the marvelous sculptures exposed by the artist in his own garden: there were dogs, cats, birds on the verge of spreading their wings, so neat and detailed that they were able to convey life through their hollow eyes, girls dressed with such light and delicate dresses that the bystanders, delighted, had to touch the folds over and over again to be sure that they had really been carved in marble. People found it hard to tell fact from fiction, and they often stood perfectly still by the works, eyes widened, as if they were the true statues, avoiding to blink and hoping to be able to grasp the slightest movement of the sculptures.

It was actually rumored, indeed, that the statues could come to life, and there was even someone willing to swear to all the gods of Olympus that they saw them moving and changing expressions. The most sceptical assumed that it might had been just a trick of light and shadows that were constantly moving according to the position of the sun, while the most devoted claimed that Apollo was so in love with the boy’s art that he moved the sun itself just to animate it.

It was undeniable that the young sculptor had a talent never seen before, and the islanders were firmly convinced that such a talent had been bestowed to him directly by Apollo himself, of which the boy was a fervent devout, and it only took a look to the boy’s features to confirm this theory. Roxas was without a doubt the most beautiful boy on the island, with unruly hair golden like the weath, eyes blue like the sea, sunkissed skin covered with freckles that created a smooth contrast with the candid robe he used to wear. He wore a crown made of golden leaflets on his head, and golden bracelets with little suns carved on them on his arms, to honor his guardian, and to the inhabitants it looked like the young man could radiate his own light. A true blessing.

And it was almost a shame that the boy didn’t seem to like showing his face in public if not to attend the religious services related to Apollo, since he’d rather stay hidden in his house to refine his art and bring new sculptures to life, through which he could almost establish, unknowingly, a sort of connection with the islanders, that could easily guess the feelings which the artist poured in his works as he was carving them.

Needless to say, the young man didn’t have friends, but he had plenty of admirers. The lucky ones who were able to catch a glimpse of him during the services were so bewitched that tried to talk to him or to draw his attention by all means, and sent him long letters where they professed their love and manifested the desire to get to know him better, but Roxas, that had always tried to avoid making contact with other people, was totally indifferent to them. He wasn’t ever interested in love or other people, and he thought that it was foolish for total strangers to claim with such lightness having this kind of feelings for someone they barely knew.

Roxas only had eyes for his art and his sculptures, but Aphrodite’s ways to reach someone’s heart were insidious – and that’s when his first love came to life.

He didn’t remember how or when he had bought it, but he ended up with a huge block of marble sitting in a corner of his studio. He immediately felt a stupid to not have noticed sooner such a huge unused block, and the artist came closer to feel its texture. As soon as the tip of his fingers brushed the cold surface, Roxas felt suddenly permeated by a strong inspiration. He took hammer and chisel without even thinking, and let his instinct lead him. For the first time, he felt like his mind had left his body, and let his hands run free on the figure that was desperately trying to emerge from the marble. First came the torso, and then the legs, and as time passed, the body of a human being took shape under the skilled hands of an artist who was becoming more and more curious and eager, like an avid reader that can’t wait to know how the story is going to end.

When Roxas finished, he took a step back to have a better look of his latest work, and hammer and chisel fell from his hands, reverberating in the silence of the room.

He had never seen anything, or rather anyone, more beautiful, and he couldn’t believe that his hands could have created something so stunning. There was a boy carved in marble – judging from his aspect, he was about Roxas’ age – sitting on a tree trunk with the head slightly facing downward. His features were very delicate, and so was his build, lean and firm. A thin branch covered with leaves and little jasmines climbed up his right leg and left forearm, wrapping them in light twirles, and a flower crown was barely sticking out from his unruly and messy hair.

The boy’s body was dressed in a light robe, similar to his own, while his hands were both placed on the sides of the trunk, as if they were supporting the boy’s weight. And his face. Roxas couldn’t find the words to describe the other’s face. He had a peaceful expression of a unique sweetness, the lips were full and curved in a gentle smile, and he had such an intense look to pierce right through the artist’s heart, who felt defenseless and stolen at the same time, and Roxas cursed with his all his might what had caught the boy’s attention and that was keeping him to lay his eyes on him.

He had sculptured so many nymphs in his short life, but if they would have been real as people rumored, he was sure that they would have turned pale and run away from the shame at the sight of a so perfect creature.

How could they state with such lightness to feel strong feelings for someone they barely knew? And inanimate, no less? Roxas had now found the answer.

Since the mysterious boy had been freed from the marble and had entered his life, mind and heart, Roxas couldn’t sculpt no more. The young man sat on a chair and contemplated the sculpture all day long, imagining a possible life, a possible voice and a possible name.

“What’s your name?” he asked him at first, right after he got over the bewilderment and was able to connect the brain to the mouth. The statue, of course, kept quiet, and Roxas had to remind himself that if it didn’t answer was because it couldn’t, and not because it didn’t want to talk to him. But he could swear on all of Apollo’s arrows that when he averted his eyes from the work, the mysterious boy smiled to him, and when he drew closer to the other’s chest, he could hear a heart beating, and no, it wasn’t his own that he could feel thundering in his ears that was confusing him. That sculpture was alive, and Roxas wouldn’t have let the truth of the matter crush him.

That’s how the young artist started talking to the sculpture. He told him stories (“You’ll never guess what Aesop has come up with this time! A hare and a turtle, can you believe it?”), he played the lyre for him, he talked about his art and how he didn’t feel like such a great genius, because he was just sort of doing what he liked, people were probably overestimating his skills and that was why he couldn’t understand all that interest towards him. His parents were always busy in long travels, with the aim of selling and making his works known all over the world – as much as he was grateful to them and perfectly understood their good intentions to make of his passion a living, his art was keeping him away from both his parents and the others. He felt so frail and unsure, and since he couldn’t establish relationships with people, he started to surround himself with statues to prevent loneliness somehow.

“Talking to you is so easy, I can be myself. To you I’m not ‘the great sculptor’, ‘Apollo’s favorite’ or ‘the one that shines like the sun’. You don’t know how much it means to me” he told the statue, flashing out a big smile. But the statue didn’t reply, it would never do that. Realization assaulted him vehemently, and the boy broke down and cried with his head in the hands.

Although it looked like he wanted to make fun of him with that sweet smile, the mysterious boy made him feel so vulnerable – and yet, Roxas couldn’t help but fall madly in love with him.

“I love you. Please, say something, anything.”

Days passed and Roxas slowly stopped eating, speaking, doing anything else that wasn’t sitting on that chair and stare at the statue by day, and by night he couldn’t sleep at all. The pain of an impossible love and the hope that his love could start talking to him were keeping him awake, numbing him. But if there was something that had actually changed on the expression of the sculpture, it was the smile, that was gradually fading. Or maybe not. Roxas didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure about anything anymore.

The islanders started worrying. It had been so long, too long that they didn’t see his new works, and Roxas didn’t show up during Apollo’s celebration days. The boldest of them had knocked on his door to make sure that nothing serious had happened to him, but Roxas never opened.

One day, tired of begging the statue, he started praying his god. He prayed every minute, every moment, Roxas constantly prayed Apollo to do something. The artist asked him to rip his heart out, to take back his talent to not suffer any longer, to turn him into a statue if he couldn’t give life to the other, or to end that torture, because he couldn’t live like that anymore.

It was after the umpteenth prayer that Roxas got up from the chair and got closer to the statue. He bent down a little and caressed his face tenderly. He whispered “I beg you, don’t make me give up on you”, and kissed it.

Despite the love he felt for the sculpture, Roxas had never kissed it. It was just a statue, after all, and as far as he knew the truth in his heart, having any kind of contact with that cold stone would have been a further and useless confirmation of what he was stubbornly denying. But he was now desperate, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, the harsh reality was getting the best of him. At that point, what else could he lose?

But, for who knows what absurd reason, the marble wasn’t as cold as he had expected it to be. He probably had gone mad (and this time for good), or maybe the warmth of his lips was warming the stone, but the other’s lips felt like they were getting warmer and even softer. He started to think that Apollo had listened to his prayers and was having him dead, and Roxas couldn’t have been more grateful to his god – He was granting him death in the sweetest way possible.

The artist kissed him a second time, then a third, and he felt the lips of the statues getting warmer and warmer, more real. His breath was starting to die in his throat, the legs couldn’t hold his weight anymore and the eyes stayed perfectly sealed, as he was scared of breaking who knows what spell if he had opened them.

He realized he was dead the moment he felt hands holding his face and lips moving and kissing him back with the same passion and heat, if not greater.

“Roxas, please open your eyes” a voice begged him in a whisper, the loveliest he had ever heard. From the tone he noticed that his owner was making a great effort, as if he didn’t want to break the kiss. Those lips now so familiar actually got back kissing him desperately, while the hands moved from the face to bury themselves in his blond hair.

Roxas, as he took a breath, felt the intense smell of jasmines invade his senses, and the other’s taste was making its way on his lips and his tongue.

“Roxas” he called again, but as much as the boy was begging him, the sculptor wouldn’t have let himself being deceived. He knew far too well what happened to Orpheus when he had turned back to look at his wife one step away from the exit of the Underworld, and he wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake.

“If I open my eyes you’ll disappear, won’t you?” he asked, pressing his lips against the other’s to make sure he was still there with him.

“Now that I can be with you? I don’t think so” the boy answered, kissing him back once again, “please look at me, open your eyes.”

And Roxas did. His eyes met immediately the other’s, now empty no more, but deep and blue like the sky, and his look moved on the boy’s features, on his sunkissed skin and the freckles that graciously decorated his face, shoulders and arms, on the red and slightly moist lips and on a raw white straight teeth exposed by a huge grin.

The hair was brown and messy, and Roxas reached out to caress it and feel its softness. He moved his hand on the other’s face, to feel the warmth of those ligthly flushed cheeks, as the other one, that was holding the boy’s hand, let go and slowly slid on his left forearm, touching gently the thin branch covered with white jasmines and bright green leaves that was wrapping it, reminding of the entwined crown hidden by his hair.

“You are beautiful, you know that?”

“Me? Well, thanks, but you’re the one that made me like this. You, instead! You are so beautiful that you look like a god, you’re literally the light of my eyes.”

The boy chuckled, a bit embarrassed, and Roxas found him adorable. But the smile faded from his lips and he gave the artist a look full of sorrow.

“I’m sorry. For everything. You don’t know how much I suffered watching you like that, how much I wanted to tell you that you weren’t alone. But I was just a statue, I didn’t know what to do…”

“I love you.”

The other was taken aback, astonished.

“You can’t interrupt someone’s apologies by declaring your love like this, that’s not fair! But I love you too.”

The two of them laughed and he took advantage of that to place another tender kiss on the sculptor’s lips.

“I still don’t know your name. Can you tell me?” Roxas asked, smiling.

“I don’t have one, but you could give me a name! Something that reminds of yours, though, maybe mixing the letters a little and taking out some of them, what do you think? It may sound stupid, I know that, but…”

“What about Sora?”

“Sora?” the boy thought about it for a moment, “Yes! Yes, I like it, you can call me that” Sora decided, showing off a smile so bright that Roxas was nearly blinded by it.

He really was his light. Sora had found him when he needed him the most, had took down the wall of statues that he had created and was able to expose all of his vulnerability. And he was there, with him, and Roxas couldn’t wait to show him the real world, to teach him everything he didn’t know, to figure out new things together and live with him out of that block of marble, out of that house.

As they were intensely looking in the eyes, madly in love, Roxas’ look was suddenly drawn to a mark imprinted under Sora’s right lobe. A little sun painted in red, the same one that was engraved on the bracelets that the artist used to wear to honor Apollo, and the boy smiled. He really was the god’s favorite.

Not so much time had passed, and the islanders were finally back to admire Roxas’ marvelous works of art. His garden was now full of statues even more beautiful, more real than before, and they noticed with peculiar interest and curiosity that the subjects were all paired, now. There were pairs of dogs, cats, birds on the verge of spreading their wings. Pairs of boys and girls so real that they radiated all the happiness and love they felt for each other, and people often stood perfectly still by the works, eyes widened, as if they were the true statues, avoiding to blink and hoping to be able to grasp the slightest of kisses.

Thank you for reading this fic, let me know if you liked it! That would make me so happy

Here’s the link to ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18149819

#kingdom hearts #soroku #roxas #sora #ancient greece au #pygmalion and galatea au #roxas is a talented sculptor #sora is the statue #kissing #otp #fan fiction #my writing

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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10 Best Dragon Books and Series

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From the obscure to the well-known, we break down the 10 best dragon books and series of all time.

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Dragons in fantasy can be many things. Predatory shapes in the sky. Warships. Animal companions. People: rulers, refugees, friends. With so many books and so many types of dragons to choose from, it can nevertheless be difficult to find a book about unique dragons. For this list I’ve pointedly ignored Game of Thrones, because Daenerys’ brood are the default mold of today’s fantasy dragons. Rare, powerful fire-breathing animals, they’re intelligent but not quite people. You probably know already whether you like them or not.

This is a list about dragon books that do something different. Whether that’s a change in physiology or behavior, or a particularly detailed look at day-to-day life with giant reptiles, you’ll find a variety here.

(Another notable exception: I haven’t included many shapeshifters who are basically human but have a dragon form. This is a whole subgenre, and one I’m not knowledgeable enough about to include.)

read more: An Evolution of Dragon Stories

This list stretches from middle grade readers to adult-marketed books, with a lot in between. Books like the Pern series in the 80s and 90s were marketed to adults but widely read by teens. So expect most but not all of the crossovers here to be enjoyable for both adults and teens.

Dragon Pearl (2019)

By Yoon Ha Lee

Dragon Pearl’s dragons are shapeshifters, as are many of the characters in this charming middle grade book. Inspired by Korean mythology, the solar systems of Dragon Pearl are inhabited by both humans and magical creatures. The main character, Min, is a fox spirit, and one of her friends, Hanuel, is a dragon. While the book doesn’t go into detail on how dragons live at home, there are hints at interesting world-building in the form of a powerful dragon council.

read more: Best Space Operas of 2019

Wings of Fire (2012)

By Tui Sutherland

Humans exist in the world of Wings of Fire, but the story isn’t about them. Instead, it’s entirely concerned with intelligent dragons, who have their own societies and consequently their own wars. Although this is a middle grade series, it’s surprisingly violent and tense. Because it’s a middle grade series, the plot flashes along at an impressive speed that nevertheless doesn’t feel rushed.

These are beach reads for me, with their clearly-drawn characters and adventurous stories. These dragons differentiate themselves from others by existing in several different subspecies or kingdoms, such as ice-breathing dragons or magical dragons patterned in blue-purple and silver like a night sky.

The Rain Wild Chronicles (2009)

By Robin Hobb

While the Rain Wild trilogy is part of another sprawling series, these three volumes focus primarily on dragons and the people who travel with them. Robin Hobb’s dragons have several unique traits: they are born as sea serpents and spin cocoons before emerging as what most people think of as dragons. They can create a psychic bond with humans, but dragons use it to coerce people as much as to befriend them. The dragons in this series are unique individuals, sometimes standoffish and particular. They can also sculpt humans into new shapes: it’s a major revelation in the book to discover just how much humans change when a dragon decides to metaphorically take them under their wing.

Temeraire (2006)

By Naomi Novik

The nine books in this series take the idea of dragons as weapons of war literally. In an alternate Napoleonic War, sailors ride dragons instead of ships. One dragon can carry a crew of dozens of men. These dragons are intelligent enough to speak, and treated differently by different human societies. In Britain they are functionally animals or warships, almost all utilized by humans, while in China and other countries, they are treated as citizens. The size of these dragons and their presence in a historical time period rather than a completely fantastical world set them apart.

Joust (2003)

By Mercedes Lackey

Mercedes Lackey is a powerhouse of fantasy books of varying quality. Joust is an odd beast: brightly colored dragons that act like real animals are used as war horses in a non-specific, quasi Ancient Egyptian fantasy setting. As a visual concept it’s beautiful (look at that cover!), and the dragons are convincingly ferocious, unpredictable, and half-domesticated. The main problem is that the beginning of this story is slow—a war in the background stays in the background for a while—and the setting depends on your tolerance for “special enslaved teen makes his escape” tropes. But for readers who are just getting a taste for dragon stories, it’s a colorful start.

Dragonriders of Pern (1967)

By Anne McCaffrey

This sprawling series featuring “alien” dragons is a staple of science fiction. With dozens of novels in Anne McCaffery’s series and almost a dozen more co-authored by McCaffery and her children, there are plenty of books to choose from.

For me as a teen, they combined the wonder of fantasy dragons with the classification systems and lore of science fiction or Pokemon. These genetically-modified dragons live in specialized fortresses on an alien planet and bond psychically with their human riders.

For all their wonder, the books tend to be over-long and dry, and the human characters never shine as much as the dragons do. But its genre-bending world-building, its confidence in portraying the giant fighting dragons and small, gregarious fire-lizards, and the pure longevity of the series earn it a place on this list.

Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (1991)

By Bruce Coville

Part of the "boy and his dragon" genre, this is a particularly charming children’s book. Prolific children's author Bruce Coville brings humor and a touch of realism to the story of young Jeremy buying a dragon’s egg and raising the hatchling. His father is a veterinarian, so he has some idea about how to treat a dragon as if it’s an animal. While it is probably best for younger children, the book’s portrayal of Jeremy’s perspective and the dragon’s magic makes it a charming story that helped create my love for fantasy adventure stories.

Guards! Guards! (1989)

By Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett’s humorous and politically astute fantasy novels are famous for a reason. This is his first “City Watch” story, following Sam Vimes and the rough-around-the-edges police of the fantasy metropolis Ankh-Morpork. The dragon starts as a classic fantasy creature, but its motivations and the presence of the comical little swamp dragons make this a particularly fun read. If you haven’t read the Discworld series, it’s a good place to start. Sam Vimes’ growth throughout the series is one of Pratchett’s many master works… even if not all of the books feature this many dragons.

read more: Everything to Know About BBC America's Discworld Series

The Pit Dragon trilogy (1982)

By Jane Yolen

Dragons are bred to fight in gambling dens in this story of an alien planet. Yolen’s trilogy is rather obscure, perhaps because it was published before the YA boom with which is shares some similarities.

The main character is Jakken, an enslaved boy on a former prison planet. These dragons are bloody and messy, and taking care of them is a chore. As a kid I was delighted by the details of the planet’s plant life and the horse-like behavior of the dragons. While the plot isn’t unique, the amount of detail Yolen brings to the idea of living with dragons was immersive.

The Hobbit (1937)

By J. R. R. Tolkien

The ur-dragon, Smaug, may seem even more over-hyped than the Game of Thrones brood. Smaug hordes gold and punishes thieves with deadly fire. But I include Tolkein's dragns on the list partially because Tolkein popularized so much of how dragons are portrayed in fantasy today.

Some of the similarities haven't carried over to other works, too. In the Silmarrillion and other published world-building material, Tolkein establishes that ice-breathing dragons also existed in Middle-Earth. Both kinds were creations of Morgoth, Middle Earth’s original villain, and hate the other species because they are an evil inverse of their good qualities. This moral underpinning that cannot be seperated from Middle Earth's lore is one of the many ways in which Tolkiein’s world building shows its author's Christian worldview.

Megan Crouse writes about Star Wars and pop culture for StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider, and Den of Geek. Read more of her work here. Find her on Twitter @blogfullofwords.

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The Lists

Books

Megan Crouse

Sep 17, 2019

Fantasy Books

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hollowworldentertainment · 5 years

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The Seven Sea Sisters

I forget what day it is, I have lost track of time attempting to create life. My creations still do not surpass my first, as for them to surpass my first I would have to have a first. I am eons in and my hands still fail to summon intelligent life, I can give birth to plants of nearly sentient nature, but I still fail to create my own humans.

I have spent decades sculpting the land just to lay it to waste in fits of rage as my abilities as a deity see their limits. Upon an island I lay, no room for anyone else, not that I could create anyone to enjoy my spec of land with me. At Least that is what I thought, now while it was not life I created I was visited by a deity from Earth. Earth was where my mortal lives lived, it was bizarre seeing one of the gods that crafted my origin planet. They saw me lonely and emotion filled, crafting just to destroy due to fits of anger, sadness, hopelessness, and soul crushing loneliness. The deity was gracious and offered me asylum in their universe where I may rest and watch how they created life. I spent a few lifetimes watching my old lives go by, remembering past events long forgotten. Years went by as I watched their creations grow and develop, I ventured to and from Earth trying to figure out the secret to craft life.

I fail to recall how many times Earths deity started their world over, each time learning how to better appease the people of Earth, learning how to lead Humans down a path which leads them to happiness. I want my chance to create a world where I restart over and over making the perfect life for my inhabitants. I will be patient as this deity is and one day I hope to be rewarded with the gift to create life.

Time, I fear I am running out of it, even I have lost count of all the iterations of Earth. I am tired of waiting, living in the shadow of this pretentious deity, they claim to be for the people but even now after all I have seen each Earth has been as bile as the last. Mistake after mistake, key humans ruining the world and this so called deity does nothing but wipe the slate clean and try again, letting their people suffer once more. I visit Earth through different time eras in different versions seeking to help but unable to do any good before the world resets and my efforts were for nothing. Every version of Earth that arrived I would wait for one time where I could visit one orphanage, there I would bring pets and tell stories to a small group of girls and make them happy before the cold could take them.

I would tell them fantasies of sailing in ships all over the world where they got to see all the wonders Earth could holds, the whole time running from pirates and creepy sea monsters. They loved the excitement of monsters and bad men, I tried my hardest to make sure I was not too scary. No matter how well I prepared them the Deity of Earth had wrote they were to die of the cold, poor, alone, and hungry in their little book of destiny carried on their person.

This deity was no idiot, they could sense my hatred and in return said they decided to let me vent, let me change one thing in their world. Without hesitation I ran as fast as I could to the Orphanage where I greeted the seven girls once again, I offered them freedom and a chance to survive in my world. They were elated, they jumped and grabbed what little they had; hand in hand I took them to my world. Entire eons had passed in my world as I left it neglected to watch Earth, I had nothing but a small island and oceans to cover the rest, I could see the disappointment in their eyes. Had I done wrong, was this fate worse than what the other Deity had done, had I lived too long and simply forgotten what humans need? No, I was going to give them a life worthy of all they had been stripped of, so I told them with words of the mind, I gave them visions of all the lives they lived and what their Deity had written of them in the book of fate. I flooded their minds with the memories of all the lives they had lived.

Never had I felt hate this strong, I saw pain and anguish that dwarfed the pain I felt through the eons I sat alone, theirs was true pain. I asked them what they wanted, all seven stared at me with hate burning in their eyes, one word uttered between them in perfect unison “REVENGE.”

As this word was uttered I felt my body overwhelmed with emotions, I was incapable of crafting my own thoughts. My mind was filled with raw emotions, I could feel the girls in my mind screaming. Although there was only seven I saw every iteration of them that ever existed, all of them demanding revenge.

I could not deny them, I had seen suffering of innocent’s time after time and this time, the innocent would claim what was owed, a life for a life, and they are owed more lives than I could count. I told them to wait, they trusted ma as I jumped back to Earth, they awaited my return. I could feel them, their thoughts, the once sweets thoughts of seven little girls turned sour by the visions of lives gone by.

Their deity did not seem to notice me this time, they were busy re doing what was already re done. I could feel their cravings, each time I walked pass a human I could feel their rage burn inside my brain. I was incapable of controlling myself, I could feel the emotions of all the inhabitants of my planet, and all of them were full of rage. I was unaware that I had released every soul of every version of those seven girls into my world. My young mind was unprepared for the minds of so many, even though I had lived for eons it was nothing compared to the amount of times those girls had existed. If I counted the versions of Earth where they existed it would surpass my age by a number I have yet to name

Every Time I drew close to one of the humans I would collapse, as the rage from the seven brought me to my knees, I could not handle the emotions they were capable of, if I were to handle taking more I would need a way to harness their emotions a conduit to channel my emotions through. Although I know what needed be done I could not as I laid crippled by a stew of negative emotions, I flickered in and out of Earth’s physical plain, eventually I found myself stable in the physical plain curled in a ball next to a carnival, weeping and writhing like a babe out of mother’s arms. I had no hope as I laid there incapable of moving. But then a man in a strange outfit laid his hand upon me, asking me if I needed help, I saw my chance and acted. I grasped his head knocking off his hat, I funneled all my emotions and those of the girls through this man. His head burned as he was removed from his own body so he could be filled with what he did not know. At that point I could see everything I needed, I did not need to create life I was going to harvest it. I gleamed into the man’s mind, the circus conductor now the conductor of my emotions, he had dreams and nightmares and these are what I will harvest to give birth to life in my world. My emotions had been drained but essences of the girl’s emotions still remained, I was now nothing but empty husk filled with pain.

I returned to my girls all sitting patiently with eager grins, they asked if he was their first pray, I turned to see my conduit standing behind me, he explained he is now a part of me so where I go, he follows. I told the girls they would have to wait for this man was mine, a necessity if we were to burn the lives of others. I told them they would have eternity to roam my world in a boat like the stories, a group of deadly pirates ready to plunder the lands of all humans I steal to my world. With that I brought forward seven mighty vessels with each a crew for them to control, not of my creation but harvested from the nightmares of those on earth. I tell them that I will give birth to a new world, one with wide oceans for them to rule and lands for them to plunder filled with the humans I steal from earth, tormented by the very nightmares they have each night. I was going to ensure that these girls got what they craved, to show all others from Earth the true meaning of pain. Together we would rule my world, a world named after the condition of my soul.

To anyone who likes my stories, you can find the full catalog on my website, additionally you can find me on a variety of other social media.

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#writeblr #writing #writer #hollowworldentertainment #thesevenseasisters #chapter9 #horror #short stories #horror stories #short horror stories #horror writing #scifi #scifi writing #scifi stories #fantasy #fantasy writing #dark #fantasy stories

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positivepsychologyinterventions · 5 years

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Do You Have the Curiosity & Courage to Increase Your Empathy?

I can’t remember living in less friendly, more divisive times. Vast population sectors hate each other on sight, by suggestion, by the slightest clothing choice, or even word suggesting what one loves or how one votes.

Has humanity ever more urgently needed empathy?

We need never agree with those who differ from us. We need never hug or love them. But gaining even the tiniest spark of insight into how they think and feel, into what might have led them here and why, can help us see each other not as cutout-paper saints and monsters or spare parts but as whole, complex, 3D individuals with histories and, hard as it might be to see this at first, hearts.

Empathy will not heal the hurt world overnight, but can at least make life more interesting. Try these strategies:

Imagine the Whole Person.

Not just the unpleasant side of them you’re encountering now. The rude sales-clerk, the reckless driver, the loud partier—surely has a range of other, better faces and moods. And maybe is acting this way now only because they’ve had a really bad day: they’re feeling ill, they’re depressed, they’ve heard terrible news. Maybe some past trauma left this person struggling to cope. He or she was once an innocent infant, and almost surely has been—and might still be—loved by others. What might they see in this person that we can’t see right now?

Take Breaks from Social Media.

Even though it’s social, social media annihilates as much compassion as it sparks. Its friendships are sculpted by artificial algorithms more conniving than even the vilest human mastermind. These platforms are corporate entities designed to sell products by coaxing us to divulge personal details—rapidly, irretrievably. Half-knowing this, we construct social-media editions of ourselves: part confessional, part contrived. In this fellowship of façades, fun as it can be, we miss crucial cues and energies and instead judge each other on likes, memes and emojis alone.

Stepping away from social media returns us to that edgy, messy realm of eye contact and vocal tone, as actual responses to actual situations help us know who those around us are and how they feel. (Click here for more tips on being a mindful consumer of news.)

Ask Questions.

Is dialogue a dying art? I’ve noticed lately after spending hours with people, even certain friends, that they’ve asked me no questions—although I have asked them many, because back-and-forth polite inquiry has always seemed to me the basic mode of human synergy.

But more and more encounters involve no questions at all. I think life lived mainly online, despite the access to knowledge and each other it offers, atrophies our interactive skills. It even kills our curiosity, if we browse only our familiar topics, people and amusements. Can we rekindle our rapport by remembering to ask: Do you prefer sunshine or rain? Why is a starfish tattooed on your hand?

Practice with Fiction.

Read a novel, play or story slowly, pausing now and then to “be” each character. Eyes shut, imagine the plot as if it was happening around you in real time. What would you think, see, want, wear, fear and do right now if you were Draco Malfoy, say, or Lisbeth Salander?

Don’t limit this practice to heroes and/or characters to whom you most relate. Do it even with creepy clowns. Fiction gives us this gift: Inviting us to safely, feelingly and temporarily inhabit not just characters we love or wish we were but also those we hate and cannot—at least, at first—comprehend. It lets us immerse ourselves in their contexts and try their backstories on for size.

Life without empathy is easy, in a sense. It boosts false confidence. But it flattens our presence in a crowded world. Empathy is an act of curiosity and courage that can help us find unlikely friends.

This post courtesy of Spirituality & Health.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-black-culture-appropriation.html

I'd encourage all of you to read -- actually read -- the reported essays in the #1619project. If these ideas or facts are new to you, if they upset you or make you uncomfortable, if they challenge your idea of America, ask yourself: why?

For centuries, black music, forged in bondage, has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it.

By Wesley Morris | August 14, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 18, 2019 7:52 PM ET |

I’ve got a friend who’s an incurable Pandora guy, and one Saturday while we were making dinner, he found a station called Yacht Rock. “A tongue-in-cheek name for the breezy sounds of late ’70s/early ’80s soft rock” is Pandora’s definition, accompanied by an exhortation to “put on your Dockers, pull up a deck chair and relax.” With a single exception, the passengers aboard the yacht were all dudes. With two exceptions, they were all white. But as the hours passed and dozens of songs accrued, the sound gravitated toward a familiar quality that I couldn’t give language to but could practically taste: an earnest Christian yearning that would reach, for a moment, into Baptist rawness, into a known warmth. I had to laugh — not because as a category Yacht Rock is absurd, but because what I tasted in that absurdity was black.

I started putting each track under investigation. Which artists would saunter up to the racial border? And which could do their sauntering without violating it? I could hear degrees of blackness in the choir-loft certitude of Doobie Brothers-era Michael McDonald on “What a Fool Believes”; in the rubber-band soul of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”; in the malt-liquor misery of Ace’s “How Long” and the toy-boat wistfulness of Little River Band’s “Reminiscing.”

Then Kenny Loggins’s “This Is It”arrived and took things far beyond the line. “This Is It” was a hit in 1979 and has the requisite smoothness to keep the yacht rocking. But Loggins delivers the lyrics in a desperate stage whisper, like someone determined to make the kind of love that doesn’t wake the baby. What bowls you over is the intensity of his yearning — teary in the verses, snarling during the chorus. He sounds as if he’s baring it all yet begging to wring himself out even more.

Playing black-music detective that day, I laughed out of bafflement and embarrassment and exhilaration. It’s the conflation of pride and chagrin I’ve always felt anytime a white person inhabits blackness with gusto. It’s: You have to hand it to her. It’s: Go, white boy. Go, white boy. Go. But it’s also: Here we go again. The problem is rich. If blackness can draw all of this ornate literariness out of Steely Dan and all this psychotic origami out of Eminem; if it can make Teena Marie sing everything — “Square Biz,” “Revolution,”“Portuguese Love,” “Lovergirl” — like she knows her way around a pack of Newports; if it can turn the chorus of Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me” into a gospel hymn; if it can animate the swagger in the sardonic vulnerabilities of Amy Winehouse; if it can surface as unexpectedly as it does in the angelic angst of a singer as seemingly green as Ben Platt; if it’s the reason Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait”remains the whitest jam at the blackest parties, then it’s proof of how deeply it matters to the music of being alive in America, alive to America.

It’s proof, too, that American music has been fated to thrive in an elaborate tangle almost from the beginning. Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either “white” or “black” in character when aspects of many are at least both. The purity that separation struggles to maintain? This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of “amalgamation” and “miscegenation” as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.

“White,” “Western,” “classical” music is the overarching basis for lots of American pop songs. Chromatic-chord harmony, clean timbre of voice and instrument: These are the ingredients for some of the hugely singable harmonies of the Beatles, the Eagles, Simon and Fleetwood Mac, something choral, “pure,” largely ungrained. Black music is a completely different story. It brims with call and response, layers of syncopation and this rougher element called “noise,” unique sounds that arise from the particular hue and timbre of an instrument — Little Richard’s woos and knuckled keyboard zooms. The dusky heat of Miles Davis’s trumpeting. Patti LaBelle’s emotional police siren. DMX’s scorched-earth bark. The visceral stank of Etta James, Aretha Franklin, live-in-concert Whitney Houston and Prince on electric guitar.

But there’s something even more fundamental, too. My friend Delvyn Case, a musician who teaches at Wheaton College, explained in an email that improvisation is one of the most crucial elements in what we think of as black music: “The raising of individual creativity/expression to the highest place within the aesthetic world of a song.” Without improvisation, a listener is seduced into the composition of the song itself and not the distorting or deviating elements that noise creates. Particular to black American music is the architecture to create a means by which singers and musicians can be completely free, free in the only way that would have been possible on a plantation: through art, through music — music no one “composed” (because enslaved people were denied literacy), music born of feeling, of play, of exhaustion, of hope.

What you’re hearing in black music is a miracle of sound, an experience that can really happen only once — not just melisma, glissandi, the rasp of a sax, breakbeats or sampling but the mood or inspiration from which those moments arise. The attempt to rerecord it seems, if you think about it, like a fool’s errand. You’re not capturing the arrangement of notes, per se. You’re catching the spirit.

And the spirit travels from host to host, racially indiscriminate about where it settles, selective only about who can withstand being possessed by it. The rockin’ backwoods blues so bewitched Elvis Presley that he believed he’d been called by blackness. Chuck Berry sculpted rock ’n’ roll with uproarious guitar riffs and lascivious winks at whiteness. Mick Jagger and Robert Plant and Steve Winwood and Janis Joplin and the Beatles jumped, jived and wailed the black blues. Tina Turner wrested it all back, tripling the octane in some of their songs. Since the 1830s, the historian Ann Douglas writes in “Terrible Honesty,” her history of popular culture in the 1920s, “American entertainment, whatever the state of American society, has always been integrated, if only by theft and parody.” What we’ve been dealing with ever since is more than a catchall word like “appropriation” can approximate. The truth is more bounteous and more spiritual than that, more confused. That confusion is the DNA of the American sound.

It’s in the wink-wink costume funk of Beck’s “Midnite Vultures” from 1999, an album whose kicky nonsense deprecations circle back to the popular culture of 150 years earlier. It’s in the dead-serious, nostalgic dance-floor schmaltz of Bruno Mars. It’s in what we once called “blue-eyed soul,” a term I’ve never known what to do with, because its most convincing practitioners — the Bee-Gees, Michael McDonald, Hall & Oates, Simply Red, George Michael, Taylor Dayne, Lisa Stansfield, Adele — never winked at black people, so black people rarely batted an eyelash. Flaws and all, these are homeowners as opposed to renters. No matter what, though, a kind of gentrification tends to set in, underscoring that black people have often been rendered unnecessary to attempt blackness. Take Billboard’s Top 10 songs of 2013: It’s mostly nonblack artists strongly identified with black music, for real and for kicks: Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the dude who made “The Harlem Shake.”

Sometimes all the inexorable mixing leaves me longing for something with roots that no one can rip all the way out. This is to say that when we’re talking about black music, we’re talking about horns, drums, keyboards and guitars doing the unthinkable together. We’re also talking about what the borrowers and collaborators don’t want to or can’t lift — centuries of weight, of atrocity we’ve never sufficiently worked through, the blackness you know is beyond theft because it’s too real, too rich, too heavy to steal.

Blackness was on the move before my ancestors were legally free to be. It was on the move before my ancestors even knew what they had. It was on the move because white people were moving it. And the white person most frequently identified as its prime mover is Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a New Yorker who performed as T.D. Rice and, in acclaim, was lusted after as “Daddy” Rice, “the negro par excellence.” Rice was a minstrel, which by the 1830s, when his stardom was at its most refulgent, meant he painted his face with burned cork to approximate those of the enslaved black people he was imitating.

In 1830, Rice was a nobody actor in his early 20s, touring with a theater company in Cincinnati (or Louisville; historians don’t know for sure), when, the story goes, he saw a decrepit, possibly disfigured old black man singing while grooming a horse on the property of a white man whose last name was Crow. On went the light bulb. Rice took in the tune and the movements but failed, it seems, to take down the old man’s name. So in his song based on the horse groomer, he renamed him: “Weel about and turn about jus so/Ebery time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow.” And just like that, Rice had invented the fellow who would become the mascot for two centuries of legalized racism.

That night, Rice made himself up to look like the old black man — or something like him, because Rice’s get-up most likely concocted skin blacker than any actual black person’s and a gibberish dialect meant to imply black speech. Rice had turned the old man’s melody and hobbled movements into a song-and-dance routine that no white audience had ever experienced before. What they saw caused a permanent sensation. He reportedly won 20 encores.

Rice repeated the act again, night after night, for audiences so profoundly rocked that he was frequently mobbed duringperformances. Across the Ohio River, not an arduous distance from all that adulation, was Boone County, Ky., whose population would have been largely enslaved Africans. As they were being worked, sometimes to death, white people, desperate with anticipation, were paying to see them depicted at play.

[To get updates on The 1619 Project, and for more on race from The New York Times, sign up for our weekly Race/Related newsletter.]

Other performers came and conquered, particularly the Virginia Minstrels, who exploded in 1843, burned brightly then burned out after only months. In their wake, P.T. Barnum made a habit of booking other troupes for his American Museum; when he was short on performers, he blacked up himself. By the 1840s, minstrel acts were taking over concert halls, doing wildly clamored-for residencies in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

A blackface minstrel would sing, dance, play music, give speeches and cut up for white audiences, almost exclusively in the North, at least initially. Blackface was used for mock operas and political monologues (they called them stump speeches), skits, gender parodies and dances. Before the minstrel show gave it a reliable home, blackface was the entertainment between acts of conventional plays. Its stars were the Elvis, the Beatles, the ’NSync of the 19th century. The performers were beloved and so, especially, were their songs.

During minstrelsy’s heyday, white songwriters like Stephen Foster wrote the tunes that minstrels sang, tunes we continue to sing. Edwin Pearce Christy’s group the Christy Minstrels formed a band — banjo, fiddle, bone castanets, tambourine — that would lay the groundwork for American popular music, from bluegrass to Motown. Some of these instruments had come from Africa; on a plantation, the banjo’s body would have been a desiccated gourd. In “Doo-Dah!” his book on Foster’s work and life, Ken Emerson writes that the fiddle and banjo were paired for the melody, while the bones “chattered” and the tambourine “thumped and jingled a beat that is still heard ’round the world.”

But the sounds made with these instruments could be only imagined as black, because the first wave of minstrels were Northerners who’d never been meaningfully South. They played Irish melodies and used Western choral harmonies, not the proto-gospel call-and-response music that would make life on a plantation that much more bearable. Black artists were on the scene, like the pioneer bandleader Frank Johnsonand the borderline-mythical Old Corn Meal, who started as a street vendor and wound up the first black man to perform, as himself, on a white New Orleans stage. His stuff was copied by George Nichols, who took up blackface after a start in plain-old clowning. Yet as often as not, blackface minstrelsy tethered black people and black life to white musical structures, like the polka, which was having a moment in 1848. The mixing was already well underway: Europe plus slavery plus the circus, times harmony, comedy and drama, equals Americana.

And the muses for so many of the songs were enslaved Americans, people the songwriters had never met, whose enslavement they rarely opposed and instead sentimentalized. Foster’s minstrel-show staple “Old Uncle Ned,” for instance, warmly if disrespectfully eulogizes the enslaved the way you might a salaried worker or an uncle:

Den lay down de shubble and de hoe,

Hang up de fiddle and de bow:

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go,

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go.

Such an affectionate showcase for poor old (enslaved, soon-to-be-dead) Uncle Ned was as essential as “air,” in the white critic Bayard Taylor’s 1850 assessment; songs like this were the “true expressions of the more popular side of the national character,” a force that follows “the American in all its emigrations, colonizations and conquests, as certainly as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day.” He’s not wrong. Minstrelsy’s peak stretched from the 1840s to the 1870s, years when the country was as its most violently and legislatively ambivalent about slavery and Negroes; years that included the Civil War and Reconstruction, the ferocious rhetorical ascent of Frederick Douglass, John Brown’s botched instigation of a black insurrection at Harpers Ferry and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Minstrelsy’s ascent also coincided with the publication, in 1852, of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” a polarizing landmark that minstrels adapted for the stage, arguing for and, in simply remaining faithful to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, against slavery. These adaptations, known as U.T.C.s, took over the art form until the end of the Civil War. Perhaps minstrelsy’s popularity could be (generously) read as the urge to escape a reckoning. But a good time predicated upon the presentation of other humans as stupid, docile, dangerous with lust and enamored of their bondage? It was an escape into slavery’s fun house.

What blackface minstrelsy gave the country during this period was an entertainment of skill, ribaldry and polemics. But it also lent racism a stage upon which existential fear could become jubilation, contempt could become fantasy. Paradoxically, its dehumanizing bent let white audiences feel more human. They could experience loathing as desire, contempt as adoration, repulsion as lust. They could weep for overworked Uncle Ned as surely as they could ignore his lashed back or his body as it swung from a tree.

But where did this leave a black performer? If blackface was the country’s cultural juggernaut, who would pay Negroes money to perform as themselves? When they were hired, it was only in a pinch. Once, P.T. Barnum needed a replacement for John Diamond, his star white minstrel. In a New York City dance hall, Barnum found a boy, who, it was reported at the time, could outdo Diamond (and Diamond was good). The boy, of course, was genuinely black. And his being actually black would have rendered him an outrageous blight on a white consumer’s narrow presumptions. As Thomas Low Nichols would write in his 1864 compendium, “Forty Years of American Life,” “There was not an audience in America that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the dancing of a real negro.” So Barnum “greased the little ‘nigger’s’ face and rubbed it over with a new blacking of burned cork, painted his thick lips vermilion, put on a woolly wig over his tight curled locks and brought him out as ‘the champion nigger-dancer of the world.’ ” This child might have been William Henry Lane, whose stage name was Juba. And, as Juba, Lane was persuasive enough that Barnum could pass him off as a white person in blackface. He ceased being a real black boy in order to become Barnum’s minstrel Pinocchio.

After the Civil War, black performers had taken up minstrelsy, too, corking themselves, for both white and black audiences — with a straight face or a wink, depending on who was looking. Black troupes invented important new dances with blue-ribbon names (the buck-and-wing, the Virginia essence, the stop-time). But these were unhappy innovations. Custom obligated black performers to fulfill an audience’s expectations, expectations that white performers had established. A black minstrel was impersonating the impersonation of himself. Think, for a moment, about the talent required to pull that off. According to Henry T. Sampson’s book, “Blacks in Blackface,” there were no sets or effects, so the black blackface minstrel show was “a developer of ability because the artist was placed on his own.” How’s that for being twice as good? Yet that no-frills excellence could curdle into an entirely other, utterly degrading double consciousness, one that predates, predicts and probably informs W.E.B. DuBois’s more self-consciously dignified rendering.

American popular culture was doomed to cycles not only of questioned ownership, challenged authenticity, dubious propriety and legitimate cultural self-preservation but also to the prison of black respectability, which, with brutal irony, could itself entail a kind of appropriation. It meant comportment in a manner that seemed less black and more white. It meant the appearance of refinement and polish. It meant the cognitive dissonance of, say, Nat King Cole’s being very black and sounding — to white America, anyway, with his frictionless baritone and diction as crisp as a hospital corner — suitably white. He was perfect for radio, yet when he got a TV show of his own, it was abruptly canceled, his brown skin being too much for even the black and white of a 1955 television set. There was, perhaps, not a white audience in America, particularly in the South, that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the majestic singing of a real Negro.

The modern conundrum of the black performer’s seeming respectable, among black people, began, in part, as a problem of white blackface minstrels’ disrespectful blackness. Frederick Douglass wrote that they were “the filthy scum of white society.” It’s that scum that’s given us pause over everybody from Bert Williams and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Flavor Flav and Kanye West. Is their blackness an act? Is the act under white control? Just this year, Harold E. Doley Jr., an affluent black Republican in his 70s, was quoted in The Times lamenting West and his alignment with Donald Trump as a “bad and embarrassing minstrel show” that “served to only drive black people away from the G.O.P.”

But it’s from that scum that a robust, post-minstrel black American theater sprung as a new, black audience hungered for actual, uncorked black people. Without that scum, I’m not sure we get an event as shatteringly epochal as the reign of Motown Records. Motown was a full-scale integration of Western, classical orchestral ideas (strings, horns, woodwinds) with the instincts of both the black church (rhythm sections, gospel harmonies, hand claps) and juke joint Saturday nights (rhythm sections, guitars, vigor). Pure yet “noisy.” Black men in Armani. Black women in ball gowns. Stables of black writers, producers and musicians. Backup singers solving social equations with geometric choreography. And just in time for the hegemony of the American teenager.

Even now it feels like an assault on the music made a hundred years before it. Motown specialized in love songs. But its stars, those songs and their performance of them were declarations of war on the insults of the past and present. The scratchy piccolo at the start of a Four Tops hitwas, in its way, a raised fist. Respectability wasn’t a problem with Motown; respectability was its point. How radically optimistic a feat of antiminstrelsy, for it’s as glamorous a blackness as this country has ever mass-produced and devoured.

The proliferation of black music across the planet — the proliferation, in so many senses, of being black — constitutes a magnificent joke on American racism. It also confirms the attraction that someone like Rice had to that black man grooming the horse. But something about that desire warps and perverts its source, lampoons and cheapens it even in adoration. Loving black culture has never meant loving black people, too. Loving black culture risks loving the life out of it.

And yet doesn’t that attraction make sense? This is the music of a people who have survived, who not only won't stop but also can’t be stopped. Music by a people whose major innovations — jazz, funk, hip-hop — have been about progress, about the future, about getting as far away from nostalgia as time will allow, music that’s thought deeply about the allure of outer space and robotics, music whose promise and possibility, whose rawness, humor and carnality call out to everybody — to other black people, to kids in working class England and middle-class Indonesia. If freedom's ringing, who on Earth wouldn't also want to rock the bell?

In 1845, J.K. Kennard, a critic for the newspaper The Knickerbocker, hyperventilated about the blackening of America. Except he was talking about blackface minstrels doing the blackening. Nonetheless, Kennard could see things for what they were:

“Who are our true rulers? The negro poets, to be sure! Do they not set the fashion, and give laws to the public taste? Let one of them, in the swamps of Carolina, compose a new song, and it no sooner reaches the ear of a white amateur, than it is written down, amended, (that is, almost spoilt,) printed, and then put upon a course of rapid dissemination, to cease only with the utmost bounds of Anglo-Saxondom, perhaps of the world.”

What a panicked clairvoyant! The fear of black culture — or “black culture” — was more than a fear of black people themselves. It was an anxiety over white obsolescence. Kennard’s anxiety over black influence sounds as ambivalent as Lorde’s, when, all the way from her native New Zealand, she tsk-ed rap culture’s extravagance on “Royals,”her hit from 2013, while recognizing, both in the song’s hip-hop production and its appetite for a particular sort of blackness, that maybe she’s too far gone:

Every song’s like gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom

Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room

We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash

We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

Beneath Kennard’s warnings must have lurked an awareness that his white brethren had already fallen under this spell of blackness, that nothing would stop its spread to teenage girls in 21st-century Auckland, that the men who “infest our promenades and our concert halls like a colony of beetles” (as a contemporary of Kennard’s put it) weren’t black people at all but white people just like him — beetles and, eventually, Beatles. Our first most original art form arose from our original sin, and some white people have always been worried that the primacy of black music would be a kind of karmic punishment for that sin. The work has been to free this country from paranoia’s bondage, to truly embrace the amplitude of integration. I don’t know how we’re doing.

Last spring, “Old Town Road,” a silly, drowsy ditty by the Atlanta songwriter Lil Nas X, was essentially banished from country radio. Lil Nas sounds black, as does the trap beat he’s droning over. But there’s definitely a twang to him that goes with the opening bars of faint banjo and Lil Nas’s lil’ cowboy fantasy. The song snowballed into a phenomenon. All kinds of people — cops, soldiers, dozens of dapper black promgoers — posted dances to it on YouTube and TikTok. Then a crazy thing happened. It charted — not just on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, either. In April, it showed up on both its Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and its Hot Country Songs chart. A first. And, for now at least, a last.

The gatekeepers of country radio refused to play the song; they didn’t explain why. Then, Billboard determined that the song failed to “embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” This doesn’t warrant translation, but let’s be thorough, anyway: The song is too black for certain white people.

But by that point it had already captured the nation’s imagination and tapped into the confused thrill of integrated culture. A black kid hadn’t really merged white music with black, he’d just taken up the American birthright of cultural synthesis. The mixing feels historical. Here, for instance, in the song’s sample of a Nine Inch Nails track is a banjo, the musical spine of the minstrel era. Perhaps Lil Nas was too American. Other country artists of the genre seemed to sense this. White singers recorded pretty tributes in support, and one, Billy Ray Cyrus, performed his on a remix with Lil Nas X himself.

The newer version lays Cyrus’s casual grit alongside Lil Nas’s lackadaisical wonder. It’s been No.1 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart since April, setting a record. And the bottomless glee over the whole thing makes me laugh, too — not in a surprised, yacht-rock way but as proof of what a fine mess this place is. One person's sign of progress remains another’s symbol of encroachment. Screw the history. Get off my land.

Four hundred years ago, more than 20 kidnapped Africans arrived in Virginia. They were put to work and put through hell. Twenty became millions, and some of those people found — somehow — deliverance in the power of music. Lil Nas X has descended from those millions and appears to be a believer in deliverance. The verses of his song flirt with Western kitsch, what young black internetters branded, with adorable idiosyncrasy and a deep sense of history, the “yee-haw agenda.” But once the song reaches its chorus (“I’m gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road, and ride til I can’t no more”), I don’t hear a kid in an outfit. I hear a cry of ancestry. He’s a westward-bound refugee; he’s an Exoduster. And Cyrus is down for the ride. Musically, they both know: This land is their land.

Wesley Morris is a staff writer for the magazine, a critic at large for The New York Times and a co-host of the podcast “Still Processing.” He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Source photograph of Beyoncé: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images; Holiday: Paul Hoeffler/Redferns, via Getty Images; Turner: Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty Images; Richards: Chris Walter/WireImage, via Getty Images; Lamar: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

#archives #music #must reads #african american history #american history #history #arts and entertainment #entertainment #entertainers #news #latest news #trending news #hip hop news source #1619 #1619project

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cbk1000 · 5 years

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Jenn Recommends: Historical Fiction II

Welcome to another blog post in which I tell you what to read, and you just sit and passively do it because I have excellent taste in literature and also I’m kind of a bully. Check this tag for more recommendations.

Today we revisit historical fiction, because it’s one of my favourite genres and I have lots of suggestions, all of which you should definitely take to heart. My first list of historical fiction recs (which can be found here if you’re curious) was all gay, all the time; this list is slightly more heterosexual, although not much, because here be lesbians.

If You Like: Dickensian lesbians (and really, who doesn’t?)

Read: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

I’m going to lift the summary from Goodreads, because it’s faster, and I’m lazy: Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home. One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum. With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

This novel really hearkens back to ye old days of sensation fiction when literary thrillers were a bit slower, a little more cumbersome; they wanted more patience from the reader, who watches all the little threads get teased out bit by excruciating bit. There’s a sinister undercurrent you feel pulling at you till about the halfway point of the novel, when everything is suddenly upended and you sit up in bed screaming, “BRUH!!” because your stupid ass did NOT SEE THAT COMING EVEN A LITTLE BIT.

Waters is really good at this; her evocation of Victorian England is excellent, and transports you in a way that only the best historical fiction can manage. The narrative unfolds slowly in the first half, building upon itself with a sense of heightening doom that a faster pace could never achieve. As the reader, you’re in on the con (or are you?), and you know what’s going to happen, how it’s all going to end, where the burgeoning relationship between the two girls is painfully trundling along to--except you don’t. Waters pulls the rug out from under your feet, and she doesn’t just do it once, which is why I’m reluctant to say too much about the plot. AND--she does it all in really lovely prose that’s reminiscent of the time period she’s working in; I never really felt a modern hand guiding me. I could have been reading any piece of 19th century literature; the seams between the 21st century and the 19th are never visible, never jarring. If you, like me, are a slut for ornate Gothic literature, and/or you want your historical lesbians and you want them now, give this a try.

If You Like: Watching an oblivious pre-WWI Edwardian society hurtling to its inevitable doom through the eyes of a fucked-up family whose matriarch loses herself in the magic of her own fairytales instead of actually paying attention to the flesh and blood children they are based upon

Read: The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt

From Goodreads: When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends. But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.

It actually took me about a month or so to read this book--not because I kept putting it down and then begrudgingly picking it back up again, but rather because I purposefully wanted to draw it out. The language, the atmosphere--it was all just something I needed to savour. This is a slow, thoughtful book that focuses rather minutely on the dramas of one family and the people who become entangled with it; it will not be for everyone (which is a caveat attached to every book, but I feel this one in particular requires the warning). This is a book about the creative process and the myriad escape hatches it offers us from the real world, sometimes to our own detriment. It is a book about WWI even though the actual war inhabits only the last quarter of the book. It is a book about the options of women in a time when society was still debating whether or not they should be considered full-fledged people.

This is one of those books that sort of just crawled inside me and stayed; I didn’t want to leave it. I think part of my reluctance came in not wanting to reach the end, knowing WWI was bearing down on these characters, knowing many of them wouldn’t make it, because that’s what the war did to an entire generation: it erased it. I knew it was going to erase whole swathes of the story I had spent hours devoting myself to. I knew for so many of the characters there wasn’t going to be a tidy ending, and there wasn’t; they just stopped, abruptly. You follow generations of the family and in the end feel cheated, not through any failing of the author, but through the cruel and arbitrary machinations of history and the things it has perpetuated against the human race through our own blind stupidity (I’m still upset about WWI, ok??? please don’t touch me).

There was magic in this book, in Olive’s fairytales, in the puppet shows of a family friend: but it’s magic that the matriarch in particular is using to encapsulate herself. It’s not a childlike reverence for things we forget about as we age; it’s a hiding. It’s a sort of disappearance into ourselves and our storytelling because we can’t bring ourselves to look at the material world in all its varying shades of shit and wonder.

Anyway, I had feelings, ok?

If You Like: Italian people, anatomically impressive statues, and erotic descriptions of marble (seriously, I think my dude Michelangelo might have put his penis in a block or two of it)

Read: The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

This is a biographical novel of Michelangelo which begins when he is thirteen and still in the very beginning throes of his artistic talents. Stone apparently read through Michelangelo’s entire personal correspondence (and patiently waited years for it all to be translated) and also moved to Italy to write this, so that’s dedication, and the least you can do to repay it is sit through the sometimes vaguely uncomfortable descriptions of Michelangelo’s artwork and his sexual tension with it.

While this doesn’t have the literary merits of the previous recommendations, it’s meticulous historical fiction; Stone painstakingly recreated Michelangelo and his work. It’s an interesting peek into a niche section of art history and also covers part of the turbulent Renaissance period and the powerful politics at play which snare the hapless Michelangelo when all he wants to do is sculpt (and probably wank to) realistic marble people, goddammit. It’s entirely believable as a biography (though it is, in fact, fiction).

Bonus: Michelangelo’s poetry, which was not a thing I even knew about prior to reading this book.

#books #reading #jenn recommends

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ryukyuan-sunflower · 6 years

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Edit: So amazingtoysha asked me advice for writing in a message which I posted a little while ago...and responding to the question gave me limited space apparently. So here is the full post of all the advice I wanted to give!

“Hiya! Thank you very much for reading Finding the Four Eyed Samurai. I am glad you enjoyed it thus far. Oh! Well...I’m far from a professional. My fanfiction, if it were a story unaffiliated with Samurai Champloo, would still break so many guidelines of professional published work. Perspective switching between Mugen and Fuu, purple prose, grammar, info dumping... My sins are extensive. This story is more like spewing out my heart onto the internet for fans that enjoy it :) You probably have seen the improvement over my 6 year period on fanfiction. I too am learning. However, if you are talking about just creatively writing for fun, practice, to send a message or even to just fulfill an inner fan, maybe I can give some advice. Some of the things I write will most definitely be things you already know but I’ll list them anyway. Since you mentioned you have trouble putting things into words, rather than plot points or characters, I’ll focus on that. 1. Start with small details and build up slowly. My writing process is actually very disjointed. I can not for the life of me write a story in order. I write all character dialogue first and fill in around it. When I first write a scene, I will simply start with something like: “She walked through the marketplace.” That’s it. Boring right? I will leave it for a bit if I’m stuck and move along to continue the scene in simple terms. When i come back, I start to imagine more if I were in that environment. This is where I think of the five senses. What would she smell, see, hear, touch or even...taste(?) lol. But when writing a scene, I also try to think about the mood it sets. If the character is feeling happy, the crowds will be rambunctious, the lights bright and the sights they see are fascinating. If they are hungry, it would be the smell of food that would command their attention. If the character is tired, the clamor and loud voices would grate on their nerves and the lights would be blinding. In the chapter I’m currently writing, Kyoto is much like Edo in that it is crowded and always lively. But because of the last chapter’s events...she can’t take notice of this energy. Without Mugen beside her, the crowds only make her feel more alone. So not only does the atmosphere set the mood, but a character’s mood can help you pinpoint what you should be describing in the environment. 2. Study! Read and read and read some more. This is advice I should listen to... Published novels, and sometimes even fanfiction can help you get a grasp on the flow of a story. You’ll also pick up words or descriptions that you wouldn’t have used otherwise. You’ll start to notice how the sound of a word in English can hold great weight. Think of how it comes off in the sentence: She scratched off the wallpaper until she could see the wood beneath it. She clawed at the wallpaper until she could see the wood beneath it. “Scratched” can be used in so many contexts. Is she redecorating? Is she curious what is underneath? “Clawed at” makes it feel frantic, like she is searching for something in a frenzy or perhaps is furious and clawed it off out of anger. It applies an uneasy feeling without stating it outright. There is a common phrase among writers. “Show, don’t tell.” Show the character is upset through the clenching of their fists, the quiver of their lips. Dont just say “She was upset.” Personally, I am a HUGE HUGE breaker of this >.< But it is a very important rule if you wish to get better at describing. 3. More studying!!! As much as every writer will tell you to read, I think it is good to look at visual forms of entertainment too. For example, if I had only watched Samurai Champloo as my basis for Tokugawa culture, my view would’ve been severely limited. If you want to write a samurai drama: watch black and white chanbara films, watch modern day shows about Japan, documentaries, look at photographs or paintings, read comics, and even play video games like Tenchu or Onimusha that will give that vibe of the time period. Reading is good for molding thoughts into words. But if you’re writing about an environment you are unfamiliar with, you need to SEE it before you can describe something believable. I had watched a lot of Japanese movies and played a lot of Japanese videogames before writing my fanfic. It helped so much. 4. Take notes. A lot of friggin’ notes.

Sometimes the right wording just won’t come to you when you put time aside to sit in front of your laptop or a notebook trying to write it all in one go. Like I said before, I don’t write in order at all. Some people can. And some can’t. I keep a notebook and pencil by my bed in case I have any dreams. I even carry one in my purse wherever I go. Sometimes a sentence or a really good word will just hit you all of a sudden. If you are writing a very long story, you will make tons of notes and will find you won’t even use half of them until you’re in way later chapters. An example for me was in the last posted chapter. I was writing chapter 28 or so when parts of this line popped into my head out of nowhere: “To him, she smelled of fresh rain and sweet spring flowers. To her, he reeked of sake and the cheap perfume from the whore he’d bought.”

At the time, I had gotten caught in rainstorm. And I always liked the scent of rain a lot. This made me think of how much I hate the scent of perfume since it makes my nose hurt. This contrast unveils both of their feelings. Intoxicated Mugen adores her while Fuu is disgusted by his recent behavior. One little thought and bam! Jotted it on paper and then put it into Chapter 34. An idea can come from literally anywhere. So write it down and save it for later! 5. Keep an open mind. It is good to know where your story is going by the end or you’ll wind up lost halfway through. Despite that, don’t reject new ideas that come to you. My story was originally going to be 26 chapters. If I had pushed out all the crazy side stories my mind concocted, then it would’ve lost so much of what readers enjoy about it. Don’t be afraid to make your characters go through and overcome struggle. If there is a sweet scene that will help further a relationship, put it in. Build up ideas and cut out extraneous things later. 6. Know that it will not be perfect. It will be far from perfect. Story might be decent. Description might even be bad. Maybe it’s the reverse. But that is okay. If you’re a beginner writer, Fanfiction is a great way to start, in my opinion. While you are writing preexisting characters, it is like a studying exercise. You can build around them, and try to understand why the characters are the way that they are or what drives them. This can help in the future when designing your own characters and world in which they inhabit. 7. Share your story! Don’t hide it! Some will compliment you and others will criticize you. Sure, almost everyone on fanfiction isn’t some paid professional. But the feedback will really help. It will push you. A nice compliment will make your day. A bad one will push you to do better. When publishing a book, you have to write a whole manuscript and pay for editors. And if you’re beginning, you probably won’t even want to start that process. That’s why writing fanfiction as a form of practice can allow you to share what you put your heart into instead of locking away your story to a forgotten file on your computer. 8. All that matters is that you are trying, learning and will gradually get better. Almost everything in life does not come easy. The idea you have for a story is 10% of the work, while sculpting that idea through words is 90% of it. My Samcham fanfic when I started was...god...ughhhhhhh. Sometimes I still cringe XD However, I know that it helped me learn so much, not just about vocabulary, storytelling and history, but also about myself. 9. Don’t stop writing. You will get days, weeks, maybe months where you might not feel like continuing it. You might even drop the story altogether. But if you stop, so does your journey in learning. Press forward. If you post the beginning chapter and get only a few comments or barely any views, and it feels like not enough, know that people will only come to read the story you put so much effort into if you continue writing it! 10. Be proud when you look back on your previous work. As you discover your own voice and your storytelling evolves, it might be painful to look back at your earlier writing. Instead of punching yourself, laugh it off and realize how far you have come. All it takes is one step. Don’t give up :) Hope at least one thing I said can help you a little on your journey of creative writing ^^ ~RyukyuanxSunflower AKA Fenrir’s Lockhart P.S: If you need help with description or plot points, there are many beta readers on fanfiction willing to help. And although I tend to disappear often, shoot me a message on fanfiction about your story or something you’re stuck on and I’ll try my best to help!

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maddieforrest · 6 years

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What Do I Want To Do?

I don’t know why at this point in my life I’m feeling a bit baffled. What will make me longterm happy? I feel like recently my brain has been stuck in this weird loop, thinking of all the things I could want to do and trying to figure out with one of them will make me the happiest, because to succeed at any of them, It seems like I have to either choose one to be really good at and get greater and greater at it and also post about it constantly.

I love indie comics! I love reading them and they feel like such a unique infinite artform where you can use so many beautiful techniques to make them and i love designing within the format of the comic, pushign panels into each other and having monsters lumber through one to another and talk to you and each other through this portal. I feel like I can create a world within them that my monsters inhabit and it could make me happy.

I love Jewelry, I looked at it as my true love and the medium was infinite and that I could design within the sculpted format and think three dimentionally, and my days, when I focused on that completely were so fruitful and fullfilling and I dreamed up such a life for myself and saw the end of the road as a famous jewelry maker and thought oh my what a thing to dress people up in costumes and let them see themselves as extravagant and otherworldly in my jewelry, it is the perfect life mission and one that I like all the steps of conducting. The mold making is such a fun puzzle and makes me feel like im really hands-on working, like i like. I love seeing each piece as it came out and seeing how the glitter concoctions i made came out. I loved buying all the materials and just surrounding myself with weird tactile beauty that never existed before i made it. I love the feeling of resin in my hands and making the organic shapes I did felt so rewarding to touch, like magical artifacts from a world that never existed inside my heart. Sappy I know, but I’m in a sappy mood right now, I’m trying to determine my stupid destiny, let me have this!!!!

I could see making beautiful illustrations and strange sculpted gallery-hanging things my real art and something even more precious. This used to be my main main longterm goal and I was so set on it for a long time but i don’t know how much i like the gallery world and focusing so much on one piece that goes away. plus the people that buy it are all rich and i don’t know how lovely that life would be, selling my stuff to rich people who life a life i don’t. who knows maybe i will be rich then. that seems unlikely but also i know im speaking completely about a world and people i don’t know.

why did i stop singing? Why am i afraid of that? I see people around me follow their singing dreams and i envy them but also see how there’s nothign in their way and there’s nothing in mine. Even if i don’t win the game and get followers and find people who want to pay me for what I’m making, even then. I think it would be fine because I would be doing it. Making songs is hard though. But i don’t even know if that’s really true, songmaking is just more nebulous, all the information is being made in my mind and i have to look at it in my mind and remember it and sculpt an invisible thing in my mind and that has frustrated me but maybe i just have to let myself play. That was my first dream, to sing for a living.

I heard about polymaths, who are people who are pulled toward many different avenues and collect those skills and just ARE many things. Many great people of history were polymaths, like Childish Gambino!!

I can do that, I’m already doing that with working as a hand model, which i like very much and it makes me feel important and necessary, and also doing stop motion which also makes me feel important and necessary and makes use of my visual eye and ability to make good art choices! I think as I take jobs and do things i learn more about mysefl and what I can do and all I can ask is to have fun along the ride of experiencing me. I want to just do that, have fun experiencing me and seeing what that’s like. Who am I? what can I do? What things define me, I don’t like being defined as one thing, but also my life is too short to be all the things I see, so i just have to work really really hard, but aslo have a life of leisure would be nice too how to do it all, I imagine if i work really hard now the future can be a little leisure but also i see so many people later in life where that never happens to them. Is the point just to ponder this into infinity till we die not knowing anything? I’m not happy just sitting and watching a movie, i have to be acomplishing something. building towards something all the time or taking a break from doign that for an afternoon or day but never does it leave my mind. i dont know. im figureing it out.

I love stop motion fabrication. It is the smartest option of all the art futures i can see for myself. I get to be around loving and beautifully creative people with weird perspectives and dreams and the same attitude towards life as i do, and i can see it being lucrative, no rich maddie future, but thriving maddie future. I am feeling more positive towards it and i am starting to get jobs in it and i am thrilled and nervous and frightened and in love but cautious. This next month of my life, starting the 20th, im going to be on my biggest stop motion job yet! It’s going to be hard work that I feel i can accomplish but that I know i have to really focus for because it could really jumpstart my career i think. it’s 18 days total and 5 days per week at $250 per day and i don’t know what’s going on. I was asked to do a stoopid buddy job and had to turn it down because i was already booked on a hand modeling job and I kindof feel crazed about that but i only remembered that that was true right now recalling it. Gosh. A while back, i got to talk to Jessica Dalva about her career, very briefly. I was thinking about this so much, as i seem to do once in a while, and she has a similar path that I have had i think. She was in stop motion and then went to just making what she really wanted to make, figures on a wall in the most elegant and haunting of poses. She explored beautiful emotions and surreal artifacts, but not full stories.

I suppose, if you think about it. I don’t need to lead the whole lifepath to appreciate the end goal, the object. When I look at some comics, i know i could never even get near making the majesty that they are, so I’m so glad someone else dedicated their lives to showing me how great a thing could be if you went all the way with it and learned everything about it and sought such perfection with the path. I know then that I shoudln’t try to go down every path maybe or I wont get to the end. but is the purpose in the end to have an end that is great or to have enjoyed the journey to your full ability to enjoy it, and the monotony of one thing is too boring even if it could give many people the feeling of complete awe for a very small duration of their lives.

in my research of this world and what it has to offer, i feel like im coming to a thought recently, that the best way to explain whats great in the world is through stories, those get to the heart of things, not object making but story weaving. Maybe? But i also feel like stories need support roles. the depiction of good emotions and the correct deep emotion weaving is part of good depictions of stories. What would a pixar movie be without every little part that one person added to the big puzzle. Individually, did each person feel the same amount of fulfillment from doing one of the more menial parts? I need missions. I need things to feel a part of, even if those things are things I just make up but also things that already exist. Like with mattel, i feel like im part of making something that affects children and tells them what’s good and lovely that they could play with and make believe with. toys are so magical and i really believe that. I puppet the dolls really well, i think and I take pride in my work, and it feels good that it pays a lot for such a task, it feels like they’re saying what I’m doign is so worthwhile. It just has increased my confidence a lot. which is so weird because i got the job accidentally kind of and had never thought of such a field as a way i would identify in any way and for a while i rejected it so much, but i think everyone is just themselves and who they are isn’t defined by the things that society has already made me feel they are defined by. It’s so hard to shirk that internal feeling that i am what I do. I am how nice i can be, how witty i am, how i feel about music, how i feel about other people’s beauty, and how i want to know you.

to be continued, i just typed until i was less confused and down, and now I shall continue to figure it out and shit.

#diary #art #artist #whatamidoing

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othermagic · 6 years

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Othermagic Prompts Challenge

In an ongoing effort to encourage community participation and provoke thought in regards to nonhumanity and other related topics we cover here, we’ve decided to make a prompts challenge in a similar style to other 30-day challenges floating around the community.

What makes this one so special? For one, you don’t need to do all of them. Ever. No pressure on 30 consecutive days of answering or doing things if you start it, you can pick it up and use absolutely any of the prompts for inspiration in any way you like! Do them all at once, do them whenever inspiration is low, do them all multiple times over.

Secondly, this is broken up into question prompts and activity prompts. The question prompts follow the same general lines as a lot of other community challenges go, but rather than asking about your identity and how you figured it out, they’re specifically tailored to the idea behind this blog: learning more about yourself as “other” and applying it to magic and daily life. The activity prompts, on the other hand, are ideas to try out, things to do and make and research and generally allow you to become a more active participant in your own self-discovery. Of course, there may be some overlap between the two types of prompts, but otherwise they’ve been categorized as best as possible. It’s also worth noting that any mentions of kintypes can be replaced with hearttypes, soulbonds, etc. if you so choose.

If you take up any of these prompts or ideas and post them on Tumblr or another website, please notify us or use the tag #othermagicpromptschallenge so we can see what you’ve done! We’d love to know and see what you guys do with this.

Question Prompts:

What part of your identity has had the most influence on your craft or things you’d like to work with?

Do you work with any deities or entities from another life? If so, who (so long as you’re comfortable mentioning it)? If not, is there anyone or anything you’d like to reach out to again?

Have you remembered anything that can be used for magic in this world? If not, do you know of anything from related sources (books and folklore related to kintypes, your source/canon or things similar to it) that you’d like to try out in this world or on the astral?

Have any other books, movies, pop culture sources, or mythological sources influenced the way you practice?

Do you know if you spoke another language? If so, have you attempted to recreate or relearn it in this life? If not, have you attempted to make a conlang (constructed language) or conscript (constructed script) that fits the feeling of your species/culture?

Have you made any crafts or recipes related to your kintype or constructed from memories? If so, what are they? Share pictures or details if you’d like!

Have you picked up any hobbies, skills or talents because of your kintype (e.g. sports, musical instruments, etc.)? What are they? If not, what would you like to pick up?

Do you remember anything about other inhabitants of your world/plane/planet/dimension/timeline/etc.? What sorts of relationships did you have with them, personally/individually or as a group/species? Would you ever want to work with them in any capacity again if you don’t already?

Was there a specific form of artistic expression (visual art techniques such as specific methods of sculpting or painting, musical instruments, song, dance, types of poetry, architecture, etc.) that doesn’t seem to have an equivalent here to your knowledge? If so, have you been able to replicate it to any degree?

If you remember there being magic in your world/plane/planet/dimension/timeline/etc., could you use it? If so, do you remember how it worked or how it felt, and have you attempted to recreate it?

Have parts of your practice changed after you found out about your otherness? Have any parts stayed the same?

Is there some part of your practice or your understanding of self that you’re having difficulty with? If so, what is it, and how can you make changes to it so you can continue to grow and explore? Are there things you haven’t given much thought to that you should consider? (For example, if you find yourself thinking mostly about people you used to know or the way you interact with your deities/other spirits and beings but not much about how your kintype affects you on a day-to-day basis or what sort of society, if any, you used to live in. Or vice versa.)

Has anything you questioned that turned out not to be a thing stayed with you in some ways? Has it influenced your craft or lifestyle or hobbies? If so, what and how?

Activity Prompts:

Make a conlang or conscript for your species or culture. If you already have one, make a variation or make one based on another species, culture, or group you remember.

Make sigils using your conlang/conscript and test them out.

Make sigils to represent your kintypes as you experience them and use them as meditation aids for self-reflection and deeper understanding of yourself.

Create a spell, ritual, potion, bath bomb, etc. intended to help you connect to the energy and qualities a being, creature, character, etc. that is NOT a kintype in any way so you can incorporate their positive traits into your life. (Note that this will in no way make you that thing, just more like them.)

Make sigils of your home world/plane/planet/dimension/timeline/etc. and use them to carry the energy of “home” with you, or use them as focus tools while astral traveling or projecting.

Use any aesthetic posts or moodboards you might have saved up around your blog/desktop/phone storage and use them as active meditation tools.

Make a list of positive traits of your kintype that you’d like to embody more as well as negative traits you’d like to diminish and work on.

Put together a set of clothing or accessories that remind you of your kintype, and enchant them to serve as a glamour/shadow shift inducer when worn all together.

Find, modify, or make a recipe of a type of food or drink you used to have or a substitution if there’s no equivalent here (such as souls or animals that don’t exist here) or if you have specific dietary needs that don’t match that of your past self.

Make a list of magical correspondences for your kintype(s). Add things like crystals, herbs, colors, household objects, animals or mythical creatures (if you aren’t one or making correspondences for one), weather phenomena, etc. that you associate with yourself.

Find historical/folkloric accounts, stories, fictional works (including fanfiction for fictionkind if you’re comfortable with it) and compare and contrast your experiences and memories with the author/creator’s portrayal. PLEASE do not directly involve the author/creator in any way (such as direct tagging or saying these things in the comments if applicable) and don’t attack anyone over differences in experience or perception.

Find home decor ideas, items, and/or DIY that will help you feel more at home (this includes things like pillow dens, blanket caves or nests and similar). Make a Pinterest board, a post with links and/or images, a bookmarks folder, or even a physical collage/idea board of things you’re most likely to be able to do or buy in your current living situation.

Look into stories, movies, or other media about shapeshifting or not quite fitting into a human world that aren’t directly related to your kintype(s) and compare and contrast your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Make a playlist of songs that you associate with your kintype(s) and use it for a shapeshifting ritual or experience.

#othermagicpromptschallenge #otherkin #fictionkin #therianthropy #othermagic originals

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