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snowieluna · 9 months

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The Discord I'm most active in decided to add a poetry channel. So that got me looking back through some old posts on my main. Poems and stream of consciousness and things tagged "love" that are old and even from before I married my ex.

In response to the last reblog: I probably reblogged it in anger. Because how dare he not choose me. And I guess I kind of touched on this recently, that I was most mad that I lost him as a friend. That "husband" was kind of label that I felt "might as well" about. "This might as well happen. It's expected."

And yeah the wedding was exciting, but to me, it almost felt more like a celebration of the time we had spent as friends. Like that slideshow I made. It had so many photos involving (our) (old) group of friends, (our) families. Because I had appreciation for all of them, and the memories we had made as a group.

But weddings are supposed to be ultimately about the couple, right? We had photos and cute stuff, but I barely remember anything we said in the vows. They felt almost like an afterthought. And that's what I'd do with cards, right? I'd say what I thought I was supposed to, and I thought I believed it enough. I cared, but I had to make it more "romantic" or it wouldn't be enough.

And getting back to the reblog. I thought I was choosing him. He was a good friend who I ended up in a relationship with, and I made all these other friendships through. I was content enough until he'd bring up what he needed more of. More talking, more effort, more care. And I didn't get it because I didn't care enough about what he wanted because my needs were mostly met. That sucks. I sucked. He wanted me to choose him as my most important person, but I never understood how I could ever do that. Because I cared about loads of people a lot and he had the shiny special label. Didn't that count?

It doesn't. It didn't. Because we didn't match like puzzle pieces from the clay. Because it was fun being friends and experimenting and hanging out, but I couldn't love him how he needed. I was choosing him as a friend, but I still wasn't even that great of a friend for him. (And I guess to her, too.)

You can have good intentions, but if you still hurt the other person, you still messed up. And I didn't always have good intentions. Sometimes I played around with him because it was interesting to see what would happen. I would do something I knew he didn't like. I'd say something I knew would hurt. See how much you can fuck around until they break, then cry because oops I didn't mean to go that far.

I know sometimes I intentionally did that shit. And sometimes it just happened. Like looking back, I really was manipulative at times without even realizing it. (This is what I wonder about, with possible diagnoses.) I would push enough almost as a test to see if that would be the thing to make him leave. Because I was always thinking I wasn't good enough, and "You deserve better than me," and "I'm so fucked up. How do you even like me?" But be terrified of losing everything. Losing him as a friend I thought meant losing everyone else, too.

I guess that's sort of happening? And I'm processing, but relieved since overall, it's a learning experience.

I'm realizing and accepting that I'm not a perfect friend. There's that weird back and forth between "depression me" that would think I'm completely horrible and "semi-arrogant me" that goes "You're fine. It's everyone else that's the problem." And then there's the me that's trying to be realistic. People are flawed and that includes me, and it isn't world ending. I can't bounce completely to the "You're shit and don't deserve anyone" side when I get criticism because that just puts the focus back on me. Oh hey, narcissism.

I don't keep in touch as much as I should, but I get mad at others for doing the same thing. I'm not always great at focusing on what others are saying. Whether it's because of external distractions (sounds, movement) or internal (what do I say next?, I'm hungry, this is boring but I should be polite, is that person over there thinking badly of us?, do I smell?, I'm so tired, oh wait that's interesting, ooo I want to hold onto this info, hey I have something to add, is it relevant still?, look for a pause in the conversation and check.) I'm forgetful. I get overly self-conscious, or just stop caring. (Is that what masking is? Worrying so much about if I'm doing the right thing?)

(Is that why it feels so comfortable with you? Because I really don't feel like I have to overthink when we're together, and when I do, you help ground me. It's like that YOI line: You meet me where I am. To me, it feels like the kind of love we each have is enough both ways. I think you agree? But if I'm wrong, tell me.)

Folks in my old group who still want to interact, cool. I'm fine with surface level fun, but I kind of have a guard up. Because at the end of the day, I am The Bad Guy to some of them now, and that's something I've gotta just accept and stop trying to make myself the victim, now that I'm more aware of that tendency. I wasn't great to him or her at times, and neither were they to me. He isn't the AH, she isn't the AH, and I'm not the AH. ESH in the grand scheme of things. But if she's got to make me the AH in her story, so be it, I guess. I don't know where I am with him. I'm hoping it's accepting we both were kind of shitty together.

Going through all this, I guess I worry about making the same mistakes again. I know I'm selfish. ...and my brain started spiraling for sec. Stop that. Trying to be a flawed but "good" leaning person is hard.

Okay done dwelling on this. I've been rambling for a while.

#text

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mcrmadness · 2 years

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About that controversial music opinions post. What is it about rap that makes you write it off as a genre entirely and not even classify it as music. Like i get not liking it,but no one can really solidly define what is and isnt music. Like whats your criteria for "real music"? (not being argumentative just wondering because i see people say that a lot)

Hi and sorry for the delay, executive dysfunction got out of hands again lol

My answer to this is probably very boring one: I just grew up in a house where my dad did and still does actively hate rap, and always has kept saying that it is not music. So I kinda picked that up from him.

Then to my own thoughts: I said so because the post was about controversial music opinions, and sometimes I still think that way but I try not to shout it too much because I know I have loads of people to disagree with me :D But it's again just opinions, not facts.

But yeah, mainly it's just my dislike towards the rap "singing", which I again wouldn't call singing when it's more like. Talking. I'm just all about melodies, and I cannot enjoy something when it lacks the melody. Sometimes rap for me is like... why don't they go to stages to read poems out loud, why do they have to have some very repetitive annoying beat at the background to go together with it? That's also another reason why I don't like rap, because the so-called music there is often very very repetitive and often computer generated. I have no idea how much work they maybe put in the songs, maybe some actually work really hard and I just don't know it. But most of what I have heard, it all just sounds the same to me. And annoying.

(A little bit) more under the cut if you're interested in hearing more of my thoughts:

Still, I'm not someone to hate on others just because, so sometimes there are artists (not just rap, but of just any genre) whose music just is not my cup of tea, but I still notice their skills and have respect for them. As a kid, I often hung out with my cousin who got into rap and still is a fan of some artists/groups, and we often listened to certain rap artists with her. Somehow I still never got into rap despite all this... but anyway, that was the early 2000s and Eminem was a huge name back then. I've never liked his songs either because, simply, I just don't like rap, but he's one of those people I mentioned in this part of text: I might not like nor listen to his music, but I've heard enough of him (thanks to my cousin who's still a fan) to respect him and his work.

This same goes to all music actually. I'm so picky with music that I could write the same thing about e.g. pop music too. Just no my cup of tea and so many aspects that annoy me, but some artists have talent and skills and it's unfortunate that they just happen to like the kind of music what I don't like :D

#krankes-gehirn #answered asks

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bismuth-209 · 2 years

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SO. you might have heard about the itch.io bundle for ukraine! which you can find here. the offer ends on the 18th (of march, 2022) i believe.

The proceeds for this bundle will go to two charities that work to help Ukraine, a very good reason to support it for just $10 already. but for that 10 dollars you'll also receive 992 games/a couple other miscellaneous things.

this post is me convincing you to buy it based on the exciting things in the bundle!

there are 573 'games', that is to say, digital games to be played on a device like a computer or phone (531 are compatible with windows, 291 compatible with macOS, 234 with linux, 30 with android and 20 are played in the browser)

now, since buying this bundle 4 days ago i've mostly looked at the other major category, 'physical games', physical here meaning you get a pdf or something of the sort and you use that to play the game. most of these are ttrpgs or can be used to enhance your ttrpg gaming experience. (ttrpg = games in the same category as dnd)

SO NOW I'LL GET TO THE MEAT OF THIS POST. the recommendations.

thirsty sword lesbians

this game i've actually wanted for a little while, and seeing it in this bundle kind of solidified that i wanted to buy it. it's based on the powered by the apocalypse game rule thingies, which is a much easier system to learn than dnd, if my experience with monster of the week, which is based on the same system, is anything to go by. i've read the guidebook a little bit and it is very explicitly queer and anti-fascist and includes instructions for ensuring the mental safety of the players of the game.

link to the game page

can androids pray: red

this game is the only non-ttrpg/ttrpg-adjacent game on here. i have already played the blue variation, which is exactly the same as the red variation only. blue. (the blue variation was included in a previous charity bundle)

it is a beautiful story that gave me a similar feeling to reading a really good poem.

link to the game page

planedawn orphans

Planedawn Orphans is a system-neutral ttrpg campaign kit. system-neutral means that you could play this in dnd, aforementioned thirsty sword lesbians system, or any other that you feel fits the vibe. campaign kit means here that it's the bare bones of a campaign that you can shape however you want. It's a very interesting story, and i'm really thinking about trying to run it with a couple friends. i think it's also very possible to combine this campaign story with various one-shots sourced elsewhere, to lighten the load on the dm.

another thing that lightens the load on the dm is that it's designed to work with rotating dms, as well as missing players. most people who have played ttrpgs know the struggles of getting 3-6 people with lives together every week, or even every month, this campaign includes a mechanic that allows absences to not be wasted entirely with of-screen activities for your character.

link to the game page

elf genders

This is not a ttrpg but a worldbuilding tool. specifically a society-building tool, specifically a tool to develop a fantasy gender system (for elves or otherwise). i am always very into making gender systems in my worldbuilding that are divorced from this world's common male/female based system. (ofc nonbinary people Exist (hi i exist), but the gender binary as based on reproductive systems is still very prevalent and such. i am not giving a crash course in gender studies to whoever is reading a tumblr post about a couple games why am i still typing this). but yeah, i have for example played with giving my fantasy society gender based on their magical powers, and i'm excited to see in what ways this tool will inspire me to create more gender systems.

link to the game page

so yeah. buy the bundle, support a good cause and get these cool things and many more!

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amarriageoftrueminds · 3 years

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Now now, we all know how Bucky's been in love with Steve (and known about his feelings) his whole life, but what about Steve? I've always swayed towards the theory 'Steve's been in love with Bucky his whole life as well, he only realised after Bucky fell from the train', but what if Steve's known he's in love with Bucky since their Brooklyn days? That would shed an entirely different light on his interactions with Miss Nazis Hirer and the whole 'right partner' talk

Going by canon, I think there must've been either: a declaration of mutual feelings, or; the first foray into a sexual relationship in their late teens, because one of Bucky's trigger words was 'seventeen', and Steve said he felt like a 16 year old again when he heard Bucky's name.

What's interesting is, at that time, and especially in that place*, there wasn't the idea that gay sex acts made you gay, because there were loads of 'straight' men around (eg. sailors.) going with other men just for sex. This was pre pill, pre sex-before-marriage for most, especially for Catholics like Steve.

So it might be that Bucky and Steve were doing the do with each other looong before either of them came to the realisation that they were also, coincidentally, in love.

I agree that Bucky, simply because he's exposed to dating women more than Steve is, has more of an opportunity to Realise before Steve. He'd have the benefit of being able to contrast his experience of feelings with Steve, with his experience of feelings for others, leading him to a lightbulb moment.

And he'd cover this up (and keep up the pretense of believing both he and Steve are really straight) by going out with girls in the meantime; in a period-appropriate gentlemanly way, not bedding them. Also to protect him and Steve from any potentially dangerous accusations.

I don't see Steve as not knowing precisely that he is in love with Bucky; I think he knew before the events of CATFA started, and it was a big part of his motivation for wanting to go to war.

But I do think it hadn't occurred to Steve that he might only be attracted to Bucky / men until after he got serum -- because, before then, his health would've been a limiting factor.

Before then, I can see him thinking 'well it's no wonder I have no libido like Bucky does around women, I'm just too unwell!' and not connecting the dots.

This would explain why he seems so panicked when sexual situations arise with women, after the serum; because he's realising 'oh shit! actually, I don't even like this when I have Perfect Health!' and hastily trying to backpedal himself out of an unwanted situation.

My HC is both of them thinking they're the only male-attracted one in the relationship and they're just engaging in sex acts together for convenience' sake but the other one's only going to keep doing it until he can get a girl.

So when Steve shows up all heterosexual-passing, looking like he can get any girl he wants, Bucky looks devastated because he thinks that signals the end of his physical (in his head unrequited romantic) relationship with Steve.

(But then between Peggy showing up and he and Steve going to the Continent together with the Howlies, Bucky mysteriously seems to perk up!)

By which point Steve, with his strong moral instincts and anti-Fascism, has come to the conclusion that if he's a physically perfect man, and he's still in love with and attracted to Bucky, then there must by definition be nothing wrong with feeling physically attracted to Bucky.

IDK if it makes it better or worse to imagine that they finally confessed to each other before the fall?

Maybe it'd be nice if they saved that for Post-WS, especially since Bucky might be then in even more doubt as to Steve's feelings for him. It's a common choice in fic for a reason!

There are two ways to read the 'right partner' talk Steve has with Peggy.

One is:

Steve's a straight man acting like an incel and attempting to pull pick-up artist tricks on Peggy which don't work, because she's not interested in him, and so doesn't take the bait (we only don't notice he's being a creep because Cevans and HA play it as benign, and because the writers, being themselves douchebags, don't realise what they've written; and probably wouldn't care even if they did.)

Two is: (particularly egregious if you flip the genders and imagine a woman saying this to a man)

Steve going out of his way to make it clear that he doesn't want to date, isn't interested in dating right now, while there's a war on, and finds women terrifying.

And yet as soon as he's fuckable, Peggy pulls a 180 and starts claiming she always liked him as he was, despite the fact that her actions directly disprove this; she didn’t ask him out when she had the chance and the encouragement.

Naturally, her arrogance leads her to the immediate assumption that if Steve is waiting for The One, then she must be the One to whom he was referring.

The fact that his wording either means he’s already found the One and is waiting for them, OR that he hasn’t met them yet, both exclude her from the running (since he’s known her a week) is... immaterial. She never asks if he has his eye on someone, does she? Would Steve being already married stop her?

(You don’t say ‘I don’t want to date because I’m waiting for the One’ to the person who IS the One, or whom you suspect may be the One. This ain’t rocket science!)

And hey, did you notice, that Peggy is just so important and special and perfect that her sudden interest in Steve means that Steve's stated wishes are now irrelevant?

The staggering hubris of waltzing up to him to go ‘hey, by the way, one day... when all this is over... I will allow you to date me.’ 😘😌

Too bad he didn’t ask!

The fact that Steve explicitly told her he isn't interested in dating and didn’t specify he’d be interested in her is invalidated by his new looks and her desire.

Sheesh. These Carter girls sure are rapey as hell.

(Also, in characteristic NOT-A-FEMINIST Peggy Style, the first thing she does upon seeing Big Steve is yank a t shirt out of the hands of a waiting nurse, because Saint Poppins is apparently so good at everything without training or experience that she can do nursing better than an actual nurse, too? (Could be she's also being characteristically territorial, pissing a circle round her chosen prey.) While simultaneously, out of nowhere, affecting a dumb ‘oh I’m so soft-and-feminine’ voice she didn’t have before?? Does that sounds like someone Steve ‘son of a nurse’ Rogers would admire? UGH.)

The irony of all this is ^ you can read Steve as 100% gay and not have to change a single piece of his characterisation or interactions with women at any point.

I've touched on this in other asks, but:

He never asks Peggy out when he has the opportunity; only when he knows it's too late and he won't be expected to follow through (due to him being dead.)

He never makes a move on any of the chorus girls or his female fans (no matter what those creeps M&M claim). Or Private Lorraine. Or Nat. He has to be nagged to make one on Sharon (while Peggy's body's barely had time to cool, and looks fine about never seeing her again lol!) But he goes out of his way to befriend Sam, and waay out of his way to get Bucky back.

Throughout all his films he's consistently assaulted by women, even friends, and never looks happy about it; he also never looks upset when he's rejected or cut off from women love interests, or when he's able to dodge flirting (by, eg. jumping out of a frickin' plane!?)

It's 'his choice', in his own words.

He seems his happiest with women in platonic situations, and only sad about them when it's a question of a shirked duty, a bereavement, or him feeling he's let them down; eg. when Nat dies, when his mother dies, when he's unable to deliver a promised dance to Peggy, etc.

(But it makes people uncomfortable to address this since many of his fans are female.)

But even marrying a woman (albeit the most OOC choice it's physically possible for a Captain America to make, not to mention that it involves abandoning our-Bucky alone in the future). It doesn't preclude Steve from being gay, since lavender marriages were hella common (doubly so for famous gay men).

He could be gay and still in a relationship with Bucky, and married to Peggy. I mean, he's guaranteed a wife who'll spend most of the time away at work, able to use her connections to squash any inconvenient press; and unable to out him or Bucky without ruining her own prestige. Perfect!

Still makes EG Steve a douchebag tho. 😒

*we know they frequented north Brooklyn, because Steve said 'I know this neighborhood!' while the Brooklyn Bridge was in sight behind him; but, they got the street angle wrong, cuz they made it look like the BKB has a street which looks right at it, when in fact the street with that famous view is of the Manhattan Bridge. The places Steve describes being beat up; a parking lot, alleyway, and diner, are also all places you'd go while you're Out, rather than where you live. So IMO Steve and Bucky lived somewhere near DUMBO, but not so far east that their view was of the Manhattan Bridge; either Brooklyn Heights or Downtown. So that puts them right in the heart of Gay Brooklyn (as in, Truman Capote had a house there, because Walt Whitman wrote a famous poem about there; that level of gay), next to the Navy Yard and Sands Street (gay cruising central) and they also frequented gay cruising mecca Coney Island (big burlesque hot spot).

#mcu meta #antipeggy #toAyourQ #hey nonny #steve meta #bucky meta #p*ggy meta #anti st*ggy #endgame steve is a skrull #antiendgame #dat's me #bucky barnes #meta #mcu #yet each man queues the thing he loves

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scotianostra · 3 years

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On or around May 23rd 1308 The Battle of Inverurie took place.

This is a little known battle, but for anyone interested in our history, and in particular Robert the Bruce, should really read about it.........

Please note that the John Comyn I refer to during the post is John Comyn, Earl of Buchan and not to be confused with John “The Red” Comyn, who, of course had been slain by The Bruce two years before at Dumfries. The Comyns were a large family and the two were cousins. Confusion between the two men has affected the study of this period when researching information

Also called The Battle of Barra, (not the Island, a hill in the area)this was a very significant event for Robert The Bruce because it effectively ended any coordinated opposition to his reign within Scotland, it was the English he had to deal with mainly after this.

The Comyn’s had been Bruce’s most notable Scottish adversary up to this point, and with the destruction of their power base, both in the battle and the subsequent ravaging of Comyn lands in Buchan, they were no longer able to resist the King. With their demise, Bruce was able to turn his full attention to English garrisons, embarking upon his ‘scorched earth’ campaign against their castles and leading to the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Accounts of the battle are sparse and offer little detail about the fighting. Following the death of Edward I in 1307, Bruce took the opportunity presented by a lack of attention from the new English King, Edward II, to reduce internal opposition to his rule and take full control of the kingdom. In the autumn and winter of 1307, Bruce attacked the strongholds of the Comyns and their supporters in the north-east, but he fell ill at Christmas 1307.

By May, he was still unwell and made camp outside Inverurie, with John Comyn, mustering at Oldmeldrum. The first hostile action was said to have been in the early morning of 23rd May (the more probable date of the battle), when Sir David de Brechin attacked a detachment of Bruce’s men that were in Inverurie, although most of Bruce’s men were outside the town.

Bruce’s army formed up and marched towards Oldmeldrum, where Comyn and Sir John Mowbray were drawn up below Barra Hill on the road between Inverurie and Oldmeldrum. Comyn and his men were aware of Bruce’s illness and seem to have assumed that he would not be present in the fighting. However, as Bruce’s army arrived, they could see Bruce on horseback in the midst of his army.

According to the sources, this unexpected appearance of Bruce unsettled Comyn and his supporters that they started to edge back; this small movement was enough to cause the levies to break and they scattered. Bruce’s army charged what was left of Comyn’s line, and the fighting very rapidly became a complete rout. Comyn fled towards Fyvie and then Turriff, finally making his way to England where he subsequently died.

Numbers of participants are hard to judge, but John Barbour’s nearly contemporary account gave Bruce 700 men against Comyn with 1,000 men. There is no record of the casualty figures, but the fact the battle quickly degenerated into a rout would suggest that there were numerous fatalities amongst Comyn’s men and few on Bruce’s side.

In common with most of the fighting in this period of Bruce’s career, there are few historical records of the events, and what remains is sketchy but that’s not to say it wasn’t mentioned in Chronicles, such as according John of Fordun, who, writing in the 1360s to 1380’s said that Bruce heard that Comyn and Mowbray were at Inverurie, he commanded his men to arm him and put him on his horse, even though he was still sick. He rode out to the battle ground, although “'by reason of his great weakness, he could not go upright, but with the help of two men to prop him up.” It would seem just the sight of The Bruce was enough to put fear into the enemy. Or as Fordun wrote his very presence, ready for battle, made his opponents 'sore afraid’ and they fled, being pursued as far as Fyvie, twelve leagues away.

The Battle is also mentioned in John Barbours epic poem The Brus, Barbour had previously noted that Bruce was recovered before reaching Inverurie), on hearing of this attack, although not completely recovered, Bruce called for his horse and ordered his men to prepare for battle. Barbour’s poem has Bruce saying to his attendants “ without doubt their insolence has made me more hail and sound, for no medicine could have made me recover as quickly as they have done.” Barbour goes on to write “ There was never so miserable an outcome after such a sturdy display for when the King’s company saw that they fled so disorderly, they chased them with all their might and, took some and killed others. The rest kept on fleeing- (the man) with the good horse got away best” The man being John Comyn.

The victory at Barra, and the manner in which the Comyns broke and ran, ended effective resistance in the north-east to Bruce. As a centre of Comyn power, Bruce used his victory to ensure his control over this Comyn heartland. According to Barbour, Bruce proceeded to ravage Buchan: 'He harried them in such a way that a good fifty years afterwards people bemoaned the devastation of Buchan’, in what came to be known as the 'Herschip [hardship] of Buchan’. The King then took control of the north 'so that north of the Mounth there were none who were not his subjects, one and all’ . Fordun says that when the rout was over 'King Robert ravaged the earldom of Buchan with fire; and, of the people, he killed those whom he would, and, to those whom he would have live, he granted life and peace’.

Bruce’s control of the north, combined with successes later that year in Argyll and Galloway against his remaining opponents, meant that he now had control over all of Scotland apart from a few castles and towns still in English hands. Although Balliol was still alive, the St Andrews parliament in 1309 upheld Bruce’s right to the throne, despite the continued opposition of many who did not attend, and in the same year he was recognised as King of Scotland by the King of France.

John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, was the leading Comyn after the death of his namesake the Red Comyn, so the combination of his death in England in 1308 and the dividing up of Comyn lands amongst Bruce’s supporters effectively meant the end of the Comyns as a political force in Scotland.

The threat from south of the border remained, however, and hostilities continued for many years, even after Bannockburn in 1314, until the First Scottish War of Independence was finally concluded by the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328.

The pic shows The Battle of Barra Memorial which was unveiled in 2008. There is a great blog you can read up on the Memorial and loads of stuff on The Bruce, here http://barra1308.blogspot.com/2007/

#Scotland #scottish #battle #medieval history #history #robert the bruce

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duesternis · 3 years

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@elyksina asked me to answer all the questions in the “hi, I’m not from the US” ask game, and who am I to deny them that pleasure?

find the original post here

1. favourite place in your country? → the north sea coast

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? → sadly I haven’t travelled much so far, but there are many places I want to see, both abroad and in my country.

3. does your country have access to sea? → YES, god bless. one and a half seas even (the baltic bathtub is barely a sea, fellas, I’m sorry to say)

4. favourite dish specific for your country? → öhmmmmmm.... Mettbrötchen? strikes me as very german (tm)

5. favourite song in your native language? → Ich will brennen - ASP [listen here]

6. most hated song in your native language? → too many to list, but i really don’t like anything by adel tawil and zweiraumwohnung. also like schlager... pls miss me with that. xavier naidoo get wrekt

7. three words from your native language that you like the most? → Sehnsucht, Vorfreude, Traum (these were chosen very randomly off the top of my head, but they are all gorgeous)

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? → people at work often believe I have a eastern european heritage, and funnily its most often people from eastern europe themselves who believe that. But I’m as kartoffelig as they come.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? → France, I think.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? → Wixer is one i use very often. Hurensohn also.

11. favourite native writer/poet? → my favourite writers are Juli Zeh and Wolfgang Herrndorf. i can’t say that i have a favourite poet.

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? → I actually don’t partake in stuff like that, cause I’m afraid of it being bad lol. But when I see sth on my dash by chance (most often rilke, somehow, the americans seem to like him a lot) i’m like :/, cause it doesn’t seem as ~profound~ in english as it does in german. I’m a bit pretentious like that and enjoy things in their original language where i can.

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders? → probably? but nothing specific comes to mind? fellow kartoffelpeople help me out here lol

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? → No ♥

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? → Jetzt mal Butter bei die Fische? also like MAHLZEIT!!

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? → hate it when people say german is an ugly language. it’s a gorgeous piece of work. Have to say I kind of agree with the stereotype that germans are standoffish. We take some time to warm up to people.

17. are you interested in your country’s history?→ a decent amount i’d say, but I’m no historybuff

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? → thanks to moving around a lot as a kid, not really? bits and pieces of flavour in my manner of speaking, but all of it is kind of affected.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? → they are okay? Bundesgeier my beloved.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? → fußball

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be? → Nazis? Weizenbier.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? → I’m german, I’m not proud about my country. I’m german, I’m ashamed about all the shit the people have pulled and still pull.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?→ BIER ♥ (although wiezenbier can go die in a ditch)

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? → Poland, I think? But france gets it’s fair share too

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? → Not really? there are many upsides to being born and raised in germany. (healthcare ftw)

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? → yes, and I’m not too happy about it mostly. not everyone needs to be an evil scientist (often shown loaded with antisemitic propaganda) or a nazi. Or a Bavarian for that matter. It’s very old stereotypes that Hollywood operates with and there are very seldom portrayals that seem untouched by them. I have my hopes on the future though. Younger and more liberal filmmakers shall do better by all nations, I hope.

27. favourite national celebrity? → I don’t know that many national celebrities, actually? I’m not hip with the kids and all that goes on lol

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? → all of the above, yup. And I don’t have a favourite, not really. I’m an ocean person through and through.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? → I live in a city that’s divided by a river, you can imagine the rest. But since I wasn’t born here I don’t give a shit.

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? → Not that I know off

#azzy gets asks #sort of at least #THERE YOU GO ELENORA I HOPE YOUR CURIOSITY IS SATISFIED!!!#this was fun hehe #copy and pasted one answer and translated another one from when keeks asked me some qs

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booksbookssomemoviesandbooks · 3 years

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Book Recs

Hello! so for my first post, I'll recommend some books, so y'all can have a closer look at some fandoms I'll post about! enjoy!!

Harry Potter By J.K. Rowling is definitely an interesting, well-written series! there are 7 books however, and the books get bigger as the series progresses. It's sometimes difficult to know the exact order, so I'll list it below:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Although the movies are great, they don't include all the amazing details, as with all movies. A short summary:

Harry Potter, a young boy who’s being constantly abused by his uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia, gets a peculiar letter from the magical school of Hogwarts, where he spends most of his time, becoming his home.

Quotes:

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." ― Albus Dumbledore

“You’re just as sane as I am" - Luna Lovegood

“Mischief managed" - Fred and George Weasley

It is Important to know that j*r is a huge transphobe, along with other things, and is currently being erased by the fandom itself.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, along with the other series by Rick Riordan, is a definite must-read. With each book, you can really notice the character developments and a lot more! There is loads of representation in this one, with lgbtqia+ characters, black characters, Muslim characters and more. It's very action-packed and addicting, sucking you into the magnificent world of Half-Bloods and Demigods within the first page. The first series consists of 5 books, in the following order:

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters

Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse

Percy Jackson and the Battle of The Labyrinth

Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian

THE MOVIES ARE TRASH SO I DEFINITELY DO NOT RECOMMEND WATCHING THEM BEFORE READING THE BOOKS!!! There were many changes and the movies aren't nearly as good as the books. A short summary:

Percy Jackson, a 12 year-old who lives with his mother, Sally, and step-father, Gabe, attends the private boarding school Yancy Academy. While on a school trip, his teacher, Mrs. Dodds, turns into a fury and attacks him. This, in turn, triggers a series of other problems and adventures.

Quotes:

“If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.” - Percy Jackson

“With great power, comes great need to nap. Wake me up later." - Nico Di Angelo

“Even strength has to bow down to wisdom sometimes." - Annabeth Chase

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is one of my most recommended series! With everything it deals with, from the Capitol to the districts to the champions, the books are amazing!

Order:

The Hunger Games

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

Starring the movies is the amazing Jennifer Lawrence, but with all books, the movies have slight differences, although I definitely recommend watching them when you're done with the books.

A Short Summary:

In what was once North America, the Capitol of Panem maintains its hold on its 12 districts by forcing them each to select a boy and a girl, called Tributes, to compete in a nationally televised event called the Hunger Games. Every citizen must watch as the youths fight to the death until only one remains. District 12 Tribute Katniss Everdeen has little to rely on, other than her hunting skills and sharp instincts, in an arena where she must weigh survival against love.

(FILM SYNOPSIS)

Quotes:

"May the odds be ever in your favor." - Effie Trinket

"Fire is catching, and if we burn, you burn with us!" - Katniss Everdeen

“Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.” - President Snow

Divergent is another book with a huge fandom, and rightfully so. This book is amazing, and you honestly can't live without having read it!

Order:

Divergent

Insurgent

Allegiant

Surprisingly, I haven't watched the movies yet, but I hear that they aren’t that bad, so you should give them a go!

Summary:

In a world run by fictional classes known as factions, children who reach the age of 16 begin to choose which factions they wish to call home for the rest of their lives. Each faction comes with its own ups and downs, so it's definitely a hard choice, especially for someone as unique as Beatrice.

Quotes:

“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it“ - Four

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” - Dauntless Motto

"We are not the same. But we are, somehow, one." - Tris

You might have heard of this series, and it's really addictive, trust me! The Mortal Instruments is one of the most astonishing books I've ever read, and it's most definitely my go-to when recommending a book series!

Order:

City of Bones

City of Ashes

City of Glass

City of Fallen Angels

City of Lost Souls

City of Heavenly Fire

Again, (I know this is rather disappointing) I haven't watched the movies, but do check them out!

Summary:

Clary Fray's search for her missing mother leads her into an alternate New York called Downworld, filled with mysterious faeries, hard-partying warlocks, not-what-they-seem vampires, an army of werewolves, and the demons who want to destroy it all.

via: https://shadowhunters.com/shadowhunters-novels/the-mortal-instruments/#:~:text=Clary%20Fray's%20search%20for%20her,want%20to%20destroy%20it%20all.

Quotes:

“Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes.” - Clary Fairchild

“If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise Hell.” - Sebastion Morgenstern

“The descent into Hell is easy.” - Motto of the Nephilim

Gay. What more needs to be said?

SADLY, there isn't a movie yet, but I think they're working on one, or sure though

Summary:

Set in a world in which a female Democrat from Texas wins the presidency in 2016, Red, White & Royal Blue chronicles the illicit romance between the president's son, Georgetown senior Alex Claremont-Diaz (Dad is a Mexican-American senator), and Prince Henry of Wales, his childhood nemesis.

Via: https://www.wsj.com/articles/red-white-royal-blue-book-summer-beach-read-11565285001#:~:text=Set%20in%20a%20world%20in,of%20Wales%2C%20his%20childhood%20nemesis.

Also, classic enemies-friends-lovers arc and honestly it's amazing

Quotes:

“As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.” - Ellen Claremont

" 'that’s because you can’t hear all the menacing gobbling.' 'Yes, famously the most sinister of all animal sounds, the gobble.' " - Harry and Alex

"History, huh? Bet we could make some." - Alex

I’m sure you've heard at least a little bit about this book. While not nearly as famous as ones mentioned above, it's still just as good, of not better. I'd say this book is one of my favorites, to be honest. It speaks about a lot of topics people usually find disturbing, and it makes me so happy that it's there, it's written, it's amazing. PTSD, coming out issues, abusive relationships and more, this book is truly awesome.

TRIGGER WARNING

Summary:

A young boy named Charlie usually dissociates, and pushes other people away. He’s afraid of beginning high school, until he meets two other students who show him how bizarre and amazing the world is.

Quotes:

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite” - Charlie

“We accept the love we think we deserve” - Mr. Anderson

“You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love" - Sam

This book is honestly pro-feminist and I think that's much more than enough

Summary:

Kaur explores the true impact of sexual abuse and harassment, as well as the difficulties of immigrating, being a female, and depression.

It's also a poem

TRIGGER WARNING

Quotes:

“what is stronger

than the human heart

which shatters over and over

and still lives”

“you do not just wake up and become the butterfly

- growth is a process”

“on the last day of love

my heart cracked inside my body"

This book isn't very well-known, which really sucks because I really love how it speaks about the consequences of WWII from the German point of view. And about the Germans who did not believe in Hitler's ways. It's also based on a real story, and it's so cool

Summary:

A nurse working in a nursing home meets a peculiar old lady who decides to tell her her story when she meets the nurse's younger son, Karl, who reminded her of her brother. Lizzie (the old lady) speaks about life in Dresden before the war, and even after it. She also tells them the story about the strange, magnificent elephant in her garden.

Quotes:

“That was the only way of keeping our hopes alive, by looking beyond all we were seeing around us, and the shadow of disaster that hung over us.” -

“I think I have always had a strong sense of justice, of fair play, of what is right and what is wrong.” -

“Our home should be an oasis of peace and harmony for us in a troubled world.” - Lizzie (Quoting Papi)

10.

This book is pro-blm and it's ahead of its time (by like 2 years but still).

Summary:

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. via: https://socialjusticebooks.org/the-hate-u-give/#:~:text=Sixteen%2Dyear%2Dold%20Starr%20Carter,hands%20of%20a%20police%20officer.

Quotes:

“Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.” - Lisa

“Daddy once told me there’s a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn’t stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there’s nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.” - Starr

“Everybody wants to talk about how Khalil died,” I say. “But this isn’t about how Khalil died. It’s about the fact that he lived. His life mattered. Khalil lived!” I look at the cops again. “You hear me? Khalil lived!” - Starr

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procrastynol · 3 years

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I wasn’t tagged, but I’ll take the invitation from @theghostcaptain and just hop on the train to answer some questions about my writing. So, I guess thanks are in order? 😉❤️

AO3: @Procrastynol

Fandoms

Currently I’m trapped in the MDZS hell (focusing on songxiao, but pretty much everything else is also go, wangxian, 3zun, anything) with a side of SVSSS and FF7 (mainly tsengru and/or turks centric). I’m still working my way through the huge load of danmei, so maybe things like TGCF, 2HA or SPL will soon join the list.

Other things I can’t seem to let go of include FF15, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and a hint of Marvel and Star Wars. If you want to go really far back, you can add LotR and Hobbit to the pile.

Where You Post

You can find all of my fics on AO3 @Procrastynol

I rarely use tumblr anymore, mostly for keeping all the links to my fics organised in one place - and to read meta that will shred my poor heart. My main social media is Twitter, so if you want to yell at me, please go over there and feel free to do so.

Most Popular Multichap

None (so far). But I have something brewing for my songxiao gang, so I’ll just be a little tease and tell you to stay tuned for more until Summer 2021. 😉

Favourite Story You’ve Written So Far

Untethered (MDZS, songxiao, character study xxc)

That is my November/December/Christmas-procrastination baby, which started out as a midnight word vomit I wrote in a desperate attempt to find sleep. It only grew from there, and it has become my first deep dive into the character of Xiao Xingchen and the canon setting of MDZS. To this day, it just blows me away how well this story is received despite its length and the rather limited songxiao bubble. I’m really proud of what I did here, and it has been a while since I could say that about anything I have written.

Fic You Were Nervous to Post

Frostbloom Flowers (MDZS, modern songxiao, flowershop AU)

This was my absolute first fic for the fandom, and my second fic in total after the unexpected “success” of Conflict of Interest. I was so scared to get the characters or the setting wrong, even more so since this was a prompt fill for the songxiao Secret Santa event. It has done surprisingly well, so well actually, that I have turned this into a series that I will continue this February.

How You Choose Your Titles

They either come to me or the don’t. Really, there is almost nothing in between. Sometimes a poem, a line, a lyric, an image, SOMETHING sparks my imagination and the title is the first thing I have.

If it is the other way around, the idea usually revolves around a certain dialogue, scene, setting, etc. that I want to explore and I really struggle finding a title for it once the fic is finished. There are rare instances where a title comes to me simply while working on a fic, but mostly it’s hit or miss. If it is the latter, I usually sit in my room and decide to name stories after the first thing my eyes land on 5 minutes before posting them. 😅

Do You Outline

90% of times I do. Especially larger works or multichaps need an outline. I sometimes try to write non-chronologically, and I have a really hard time doing it, so the outline becomes my LIFELINE. It allows me to skip over parts I find hard and just put the famous [get there] in certain spaces, knowing I can come back later to flesh them out because the outline guides through this process.

For oneshots, I sometimes freestyle, but even then I usually write down a few lines for the scenes/dialogues I really want to include and put them in the corresponding order, so I have a goal to work towards to and don’t start meandering around.

I hate doing them, though, even though I largely depend on outlines.

Complete

All of my fics are complete at the moment, but I have two on-going series that I’m feeding with new entries in irregular intervals.

In Progress

I have some WIPS, but none of them are in the process of being published right now. But there are a few things I’m working on, so follow me to the next paragraph if you want more details on that. 😁

Coming Soon / Not Yet Started

Curiosity killed the Cat [WT] - which is a MDZS multichapter fic I have started working on last December. I really wanted to try writing a case fic for once, something more than just drama and romance (although drama and romance will still be very much part of this). Plotting a murder mystery is really new to me and sometimes exhausting, but so far I’m having a lot of fun doing it. I don’t want to spoil the details, but it will definitely focus on pre-canon songxiao and a mysterious haunting/murder they encounter during their travels.

Another thing would be the continuation of the Egret Flower series. Currently I’m finalising the second part, writing on part three and four has already begun. Part two will feature songxiao going on the date that has been teased in the first part, Frostbloom Flowers, and part three is currently giving me a hard time because I decided to include some wangxian - we’ll see how it goes.

I’m also trying to feed the Shinra fandom a bit, since it got me back into writing literally days before I got swept away by MDZS and danmei hell. But tsengru still holds a place in my heart, has done so for years, and so Conflict of Interest has now also been turned into a series, It’s me or the Dog, and the second part for this series is also outlined already and just waiting for me to flesh it out.

Upcoming Work You’re Most Excited About

Curiosity killed the Cat [WT], definitely. I have only ever finished one other multichap in my life, and I plan to complete this one before I start posting it, to feed my lovely songxiaoists in regular intervals (and to make sure this entire case fic works and does not go up in smoke halfway down). But since this involves so many new things for me at the same time, I’m equally excited and anxious to finish it and start posting it.

Tagging

Since I’m pretty much inactive on this platform I find it a bit hard to tag someone. I think @wangji-string might have something to offer, at least if they haven’t participated already (although if you don’t feel like doing this, please feel free to ignore me). I’ll just leave it open to the rest of you whoever read this and may find it interesting - if you want to do this, please, feel free to do it! 😉

#my writing #procrastynol speaks

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fwoopersongs · 3 years

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何必诗债换酒钱 - Notes

youtube

Clean version here and thoughts under the cut.

I saw the song translation notes made by @shelterfromrain a while back and thought, wow! what a fantastic idea it is to share the results of the rabbit holing (that you inevitably end up engaging in when doing this) and leave a record for your future self while at it too! Currently some of the song and poetry translations on fwoopersongs do have little notes, but those were casually written on the fly and after so long, the thought process behind certain choices often get forgotten, which is such a waste... Long story short - I’m doing it this way from now on!

This song was requested by @peerlesssqq on twitter - which may or may not have bumped it up by like a year on my list (yes, I’ve been sitting on it since 2018 and you’ll see why) - and I had WAY more fun than expected, so 谢啦 ~ It was a delight to receive your DM request. I was happy for days!

Some background: 《何必诗债换酒钱》 is the theme song of 【文定乾坤】- a collection of musical works that feature notable contributors to Chinese literature in ancient times, poets and the like. Oh, and I did notice that the MV on bilibili looks like it could be a promo for a webtoon or game. Who knows? I’ll be checking out the rest of the songs, that’s for sure!

The following part of this post will be my thoughts for first the title, then each section - the intro, verse 1 & 2 and the chorus, ending off with some final comments.

Disclaimer first though (otherwise later you read already then feel like beating me up): Everything in this post is only my interpretation of the song. I have quite limited familiarity with mainland literature and culture, so of course don’t expect much xD Here you’ll only find a story-loving banana who jiak-ed kantang too much in her youth and now regrets it a whole lot. 说好了哈 I’m pants at analysis, worse at Chinese, and am not at all good with words ok?

Title

So《何必诗债换酒钱》, let’s start off with the word here that’s unfamiliar to most of us:

诗债 | shī zhài or a debt of poems/poetry debt is a legit thing! - All you authors and artists out there might be familiar with it - It’s what you call the resulting debt when a poet promises to write something for another person but hasn’t done it yet. Procrastination has apparently always been the curse of content creators.

In fact, in the Bai Juyi’s poem that came up on the 诗债 baidu page《晚春欲携酒寻沉四著作先以六韵寄之》- possibly addressed to a friend he owes - he was complaining of illness, old age and writer’s block. But then oh, he goes on and then I passed by a party where they had drinks, and was quite up to my gills & totally out of it for some time, and THAT’S why I’ve done you dirty and owe you ever so many poems. I don’t really understand the last two lines but apparently he then offers to bring a drink for this person he’s talking to, mentions a wish to meet a winter goddess (????? pretty girl? or the snow? idk which), and starts reminiscing the times that were like a precious string of pearls they had singing at Yang Pass. Most likely farewells, but without context I just don’t get it. Anyway bribery and misdirection huh? I see what you did there bro, and I’m sure the person you attempted to distract saw it coming too...

何必 | hé bì, is a rhetorical question of Must you really? In the case of this word, 何 functions as roughly ‘is it that’ and 必 as ‘it must be so’.

换酒钱 | huàn jiǔ qián is of course, exchange for money to purchase wine.

‘Must you really promise poems in exchange for money to buy wine?’ then is the literal translation of 何必诗债换酒钱.

So here is the question: Is alcohol worth a poetry debt? Onwards to the answer!

Intro

生就诗骨算来三百篇 Born and already a poet to the bones, (with) three hundred works counting up to now.

浪掷秦淮长安风流李杜王白 Spending lavishly in Qinhuai and Chang’an, free/unrestrained as Li and Du, Wang and Bai;

余下十分便随意肩上担 whatever left is divided in ten parts, casually thrown over a shoulder

权作金玉铜板相谢好人间 and taken for jade, gold and coin, a big thank you to this good world!

I interpreted the 生 in the first line as 天生 i.e. innate, natural born talent, so this first line describes someone born with a gift for poetry with ‘three hundred’ works to their name. Although... that three hundred should not be taken too literally, it’s more likely to be an allusion to collected works like the 16th century anthology of poems, Three Hundred Tang Poems. After all, Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi are the most famous Tang Dynasty poets… and they were all name-dropped in the next line!

浪掷 | làng zhì was a new phrase for me, and means something like spending freely and lavishly or willfully wasted. Of course Chang’an was the capital during the Tang Dynasty and it was the world's most populous city at the time. One can only imagine how prosperous it must have been… and what fun things were there to spend your money on! The banks of Qinhuai river and that general area was once a gathering place for noble/wealthy families, scholars looking for a good time (and some say, the red light district xD). Though by Sui/Tang, that area was no longer doing as well due to political shifts. So the mental image I got from 浪掷秦淮长安 is of someone gallivanting through places of interest, from the bustling and prosperous to the dilapidated.

风流 | fēng liú is as always, hard to translate with no full equivalent in english. The feel it gives me ranges from, ‘cool, dashing bloke on a galloping horse with their cloak/robes/hair flowing elegantly in the wind’ to ‘pleasure seeking dandy who totally knows how to enjoy life, all the courtesans know him by courtesy name!’.

The third line started with 余下十分, which will not make any sense - why leftover? Divide what by ten? - until its put in context with the following:

Three hundred poems 算来三百篇 + 权作金玉铜板 pretend they are gold/jade/money (权作 | quán zuò just means to take one thing for another temporarily.)

The load thrown over the shoulder 肩上担

Spendthrift behaviour on tour 浪掷秦淮长安

The TITLE: bro so u wanna promise poetry in exchange for money to drink? why.

Let’s take those precious poems that can be exchanged for gold - a whole bagful of scrolls, and now I’m so rich I can scatter my money down the streets of entertainment districts and the capital! The very image of a 风流 poet, reckless and free spirited.

// Folks, please learn from this silly girl and do not read songs (or poems) line by line. They need to be appreciated at a distance, not one inch from your eyeballs.

Verse 1

两分与月劳烦身前打点 Two parts to the moon, (may I) trouble you to take care of me while I’m alive.

哪处巍峨峰峦当借我悬来观 Wherever there are majestic peaks and ranges, do lend me (your light) to hang and see by.

三分典高楼好与长风赴宴 Three parts pawned for the tall building, good for attending the banquet alongside the wind,

遍寻可爱星子唾手一把玩 searching for charming little stars, easily caught to play with.

Now we get to see how the poet is spending his ‘wealth’. This verse is a lot more literal as compared to the introduction, so there’s not much to say.

打点 used here is so interesting! Because it’s what you call bribing someone in a superior position to smoothen your path ahead (so to speak). Thanks to a childhood of tvb drama, I vaguely associate the type of people who would 打点 with rich merchant or minor noble fathers who want to give their sons an easier time at court. Either that or lower ranked officials with less moral scruples. Anyway, what’s being said in the song is something like: here is 20% dear moon, I’ll have to trouble you to bless me for the rest of this lifetime, and also please lend me your light to see by when I have need of it at scenic spots *for art*. The moon is a muse for many poets in all its forms after all… 明月, 圆月, 孤月, 残月, 冷月, 江月, 秋月 and so on.

Actually that whole sentence 劳烦身前打点 is so playful and fun that I put it in quotation marks to emphasize it. We’ve only just begun. Is the speaker already drunk?

And with the third line, 30% has been spent. Just noting here that 典 | diǎn can be read as pawn or mortgage. Another interesting thing to note would be that this imagery of ascending a tall building 高楼 and reaching out for stars 星子 in the last two lines of Verse 1 brings to mind one particular poem, famously attributed to Li Bai. Following translation by yours truly.

《夜宿山寺》- Overnight at the Mountain Temple 危楼高百尺 | dangerously towering a hundred feet high 手可摘星辰 | the stars are within reach 不敢高声语 | one dares not raise their voice 恐惊天上人 | for fear of disturbing the deities

Though the two probably have nothing to do with each other, doesn’t the reverence in the tone of this one bring out the playful irreverence of the other? So. Much. Fun. I adore the whole feel of 遍寻可爱星子唾手一把玩 SO MUCH.

Verse 2

两分与桥歇脚南北行船 Two parts to the bridge where travellers on foot and by boat from the north and south can rest,

欣然八方风物闲话半日茶碗 delighted by the scenery all around, idly chatting half the day away over bowls of tea.

三分典流水润色枯瘦石山 Three parts for the running water, moistening the gaunt stone mountains

又将天地一展伸手试浓淡 and again spreading heaven and earth wide, reaching out to test the viscosity (of the water).

It took a few listens, but in the end I really enjoyed the aesthetics here. And again, this verse is quite straight to the point albeit with two things I cannot understand.

The first point of confusion for me is why the lyricist chose to use 桥 | qiáo, a bridge as the place for people to rest on their journeys. I assumed here that this in reference to a pier or dock, assumed also that he is donating funds for this structure to be built or repaired. However, if that were the case 坞 | wù would have been enough - 船坞 was supposedly invented only in the Song Dynasty though, so maybe that’s why another word was chosen. But it’s not like there is any incidence of 桥 being used to mean ‘dock’ either!

The second thing that confuses me is the use of 典 for 流水. In verse one, that 典 was referring to the poetry works sold to reserve the venue for a banquet. That usage was apt. Here I suspect it might be for parallel structure, because there is no alternative reading for 典 that might allow one to use their 30% 三分 to do anything to flowing water 流水. That’s the literal reading, of course.

If we’re taking this a little less literally, it can be interpreted as borrowing the scenery (figuratively, since the place would not belong to anyone in the way you might own a property) to admire. It also expands on the second line’s mention of the surrounding view 欣然八方风物; there is running water which completes 润色 and brings the appearance of the gaunt and rocky mountains 枯瘦石山 closer to perfection.

润色 | rùn sè means to polish, to bring to greater heights. When you say something has been 润色 it is made more brilliant and closer to perfection by that addition. It can also mean moisten.

We always hear ‘rivers and mountains like a painting’ 江山如画 - originating from Su Dongpo’s《念奴娇·赤壁怀古》- used when the scenery is wonderful, because how often is real life as ideal as what we can imagine and depict? And that is exactly what is described here. The feeling out if the ‘water’ is concentrated or diluted 试浓淡 is used in answer to 一展 unfurling. 浓淡 of ink to 一展 of painting scroll. The land and sky seem like an ink wash painting, so beautiful that the viewer cannot help but reach out to run their hand through the water.

Chorus

Chorus Part 1

若趁游兴直到酣 If we take advantage of our wanderlust and go roaming till it is sated,

千字文章不值钱 classics and essays shan’t be worth a coin.

诗换花词换雪 A poem for a flower! A song for snow!

再作檄文斗天官 Another denunciation for those heavenly officials!

Starting off with three new terms for me: 游兴 | yóu xìng means enthusiasm for travel. 酣 | hān can mean having a great time drinking, or being very satisfied and satiated. 檄文 | xí wén is a type of official document written for important announcements, declaration of war, or denunciation and condemnation of certain people or actions.

While I still feel this need to go out to see the world, I shall keep on the road until I am satisfied. Who cares about writing, who cares for study, it’s all worthless to me. I do what I want. And what I want is to write a little poem in exchange for a flower, some lyrics for a flake of snow. I’ll even write a denunciation against those officials in heaven (immortals). Fight me!!!!

I point again at Verse 1 with climbing the tower to play with stars. It’s no longer just playing nearby, now he wants a go at the gods.

Among the four parts of the chorus, this one is the simplest for sure. The lines mean exactly what is said. It also feels the most chaotic and mischievous. Is the speaker drunk? Is he high on something? One thing’s for sure. He’s out of money.

Chorus Part 2

何愁不得一样我 Why feel troubled that (I) cannot have another just like me?

知交尽向话中添 for one who understands you and is understood, look entirely towards stories to fill that place

唐解元嵇中散 people like Tang Bohu (first in provincial examinations) and proud, upright and stubborn Ji Kang

且驰大梦任疯癫 Just chase that great dream, allow yourself to go mad.

I feel like the first two lines are quite straightforward, though they might not appear so on first reading: How could there be a need to feel sad or troubled that I have no like-minded equal. To find a true friend who understands you without need for words, and whom you understand in return, all you need to do is turn to those tales and stories 话中 for people to fill 添 that place.

唐解元 - People like Tang Yin, courtesy name: Bohu 唐寅, 字伯虎 (1470–1524 AD), noted painter, calligrapher and poet of the Ming Dynasty. Tang Yin led a life full of ups and downs that really cannot be covered in a paragraph’s worth of song translation notes. You can check out his wiki page if you’re curious though! There’s a little more on him where I cover the last line of this section. He is addressed as 解元 | jiè yuán here which is the term for the top scorer of the provincial examinations (second stage in the Imperial examination ladder). It is also an honorific for scholars. Tang Bohu is both.

嵇中散 - People like Ji Kang, courtesy name: Shuye 嵇康, 字叔夜, (223–262 AD), one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove - a group of friends who wisely kept themselves aloof from the dangerous politics of the Court, and devoted themselves to art, refinement and debate, of the Three Kingdoms period. He was a Daoist philosopher, musician, writer and poet.

An accomplished musician, the qin composition 廣凌散 | guǎnglíng sàn is attributed to Ji Kang, though some versions of the story claim he learned it from a ghost while stopping at a pavillion on his way home. 嵇中散 was one of the names he was known by because of his appointment to the position of Attendant Counsellor, 中散大夫 | zhōng sàn dàfū, a civil official unspecified duties in the court of Cao Wei.

When Ji Kang was sentenced to death for his attempt to testify for a wrongly accused friend, three thousand scholars petitioned for his pardon to no avail. It’s said that at the execution ground, while they waited for the appointed hour, he had his favourite qin brought out and played a brilliant interpretation of Guanglin San that is now forever lost.

Do go read about them both if you have the time!

I would like to point out for the last line that 任 is to allow, to indulge, and it’s just such a heady sensation to say 任疯癫 - indulge in the madness! throw yourself in and don’t look back!

There is an easter egg here too. A nod to a poem by Tang Yin which can be read as his stance on his lifestyle choice after the alleged accusations of bribery in the final step of the Imperial examinations left him disgraced, and unable to pursue a civil career. Thematically the line does not call back to the poem at all, similarities end with the choice of words: chasing the dream 驰大梦 and indulging madness 任疯癫. I leave an excerpt below. Translation again by me.

《桃花庵歌》- Song of a Plum Blossom Cottage // 若将花酒比车马 | if tawdriness and wine were compared against fine carriage and steed 他得驱驰我得闲 | he would have to drive and work hard for speed whilst I have my idle rest 别人笑我太疯癫 | others mock me for my madness 我笑他人看不穿 | i am amused for they do not perceive 不见五陵豪杰墓 | can’t you see that at the Emperors’ mausoleums and heroes’ graves 无花无酒锄做田 | there are no flowers, no wine, only land ploughed for farming

The second part of the chorus isn’t related to the first, but it has the same theme of showcasing the untamable (unhinged xD) spirit of the speaker. This time, the people he admires ‘intellectual equals’ and kindred spirits are featured, the 任性 feeling here has been pushed to greater heights.

Chorus Part 3

敢夸洒落何须酒 If one dares to boast of carefreeness, why, they hardly need wine.

不煮黄粱也称仙 Even without brewing millet they would still be called Immortal.

镜湖桌白梅盏 The tables in the mirror-like lake, white plum blossoms in the cups,

等来春风恰开宴 await the spring breeze which arrives just in time for the feast to start!

Li Bai is regarded as both the god of poetry 诗仙 and god of drunkards wine 酒仙 because he wrote some of his greatest poems while drinking. The first two lines seem to be gently poking fun at that. Like hey, if you dare to claim to be all groovy, surely you have no need for alcohol? Just like how an immortal would still be an immortal without wine, your writing talent should not need any stimulants. This would be the time to mention that 黄粱 | huáng liáng is also known as millet, a type of grain that can be used to brew wine.

洒落 | sǎ luò has a few meanings, like shower down or blame, but the relevant one here would be 洒脱 generous, uninhibited and open. For me it feels similar to 风流 in that there is that ‘free, and exhilaratingly unrestrained’ element. 洒落 is in the most positive sense, being always open to having a good time, but without that dissolute or vaguely whirlwind-romance like connotation of 风流.

It feels like the intensity is letting up a little here - this is a light-hearted and frivolous song all the way through, but the words 洒落, 称仙 and imagery of a clear lake, white plum blossoms and the crisp spring breeze are grounding and sweet. Spirited in a different way from before.

Chorus Part 4

四角天地也醺然 The four corners and heaven and earth are also tipsy,

醉极自有桃李搀 when I’ve overindulged, my students will be there to help.

快意只笔下讨 Gratification can only be claimed from beneath the brush;

何必诗债换酒钱 is falling into poetry debt worth that money for drink?

New words: 醺然 | xūn rán just means drunk. A new word for me though! 桃李 | táo lǐ is literally peach 桃 and plum 李 (李花, also known as 玉梅) flowers, and is a metaphor for students. The term originates from a story in 《韩诗外传》which was set in the Wei Kingdom of the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476 BCE). There was once a highly ranked official who was sacked from his post and left for the north. He met another gentleman and remarked that the people he helped before did not lift a finger when he was in need. This person replied that, if someone were to plant peach and plum trees in spring, he could relax under their shade in the Summer and taste their fruit in the Autumn. But if that person were to plant weeds, nothing can be done with their leaves in Spring and there would only be burrs to hurt himself on in Autumn. Clearly the people the unfortunate gentlemen had helped before were not worth his effort. Students ought to be carefully selected and carefully cultivated as one would a tree.

Reading the four corners and heaven and earth 四角天地 are also tipsy 也醺然, I imagine the world sort of spinning around the speaker because he is drunk. But that’s okay, because his students (or the trees xD) will be there to support him.

快意 | kuài yì is the feeling of sudden relaxation, and then lightheartedness and joy. In this line, I felt like the intention would be closer to 畅快，爽快 and so chose gratification, because really writing is like scratching an itch isn’t it? Pleasure from satisfaction of a desire. Phrasing it as 笔下讨 is so very fitting though, because 讨 can be interpreted - somewhat contradicting - as either to demand or to beg. What could be more gratifying than having squeezed out the perfect sentence or word under your figurative pen?

So so so after all that, 何必诗债换酒钱? What do you think, is alcohol worth the poetry debt? Is Mr. Poet actually drunk and about to dig himself a deeper hole of owed poems to get even MORE drunk, or has he just been thinking about it all along? :)

Thoughts

This has been such a fun adventure following our madcap big spender from the shining Chang’an to the inviting Qinhuai, shadow of great poets in tow and all. We’ve done everything from talking to the moon and seeing the sights by her light, to boating down a river, dragging fingers through the water. It was sort of like being on a backpacking tour, except with with someone contemplating opening (or perhaps regretting opening this can of worms?) poetry commissions instead of singing in the streets?

Dear reader, if you’ve reached this point of my post, thank you. I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do now!

#何必诗债换酒钱 #translation notes #i made a new years resolution and this is step one #i had so many more things to say lol but it's like 1 am and i need to go to bed #this took way longer than i thought it might

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stephen-narain · 3 years

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The Work of Art in the Age of Virtual Reproduction

By Stephen Narain

This essay received the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing.

We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves.

—Jay-Z, Decoded

I, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.

—T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

“Cut” by Kara Walker (1998)

1. The Disintegrating Sugar Sphinx

This essay is about not seeing the physical exhibit of Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety.” This essay is about seeing hundreds of its virtual reproductions online.

I first encountered Walker’s work in 2007 at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. At the time, I was an undergraduate preparing to tell my parents—Guyanese immigrants to the United States—that, no, I would not be applying to law school. I wanted to become a writer. Still, my family’s pragmatism shaped the vision of the writer I wished to become. Socially conscious. Committed to a community’s particular experiences. Unafraid of upsetting that community’s standards if necessary. I had big ideas about the novel and about what the novel could do. Yet, I was also aware that the bridge between aesthetics and politics was a difficult one to build. Add to this the sophomore’s struggle with interpretation. A discerning professor during a course on the American counterculture of the 1960s encouraged me to constantly examine the assumptions guiding my claims about the political uses of art. Such proclamations might best be made after a more nuanced study, she suggested more than once in red ink on my C- papers. My response in the months to follow was to run in the opposite direction of grandeur: to read so minutely that I could never be charged of falling prey to the affective fallacy. The ideal criticism, W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley wrote in 1949, “will not talk of tears, prickles, or other physiological symptoms, of feeling angry, joyful, hot, cold, or intense, or of vaguer states of emotional disturbance, but of shades of distinction and relation between objects and emotion.” I might as well have tattooed that quotation on my arm. I don’t think I laughed or cried my entire senior year.

Viewing Walker’s exhibit, which included silhouettes of slaves superimposed on lithographic renderings of Civil War battle scenes, I tried to remain as “objective” as possible. But a slave’s decapitated head was floating in a cloudy sky. Blobs that could either be blood or feces were nestled in a valley. Entire appendages were flung into the lithograph’s white borders, beyond the image entirely. I tried to be subtle when what I felt was disgust. What was the nature of this disgust?, I wondered. And how do I ensure my response to it became neither parade nor parody? How do I neither scream the near-platitudes of Amiri Baraka nor dwell in the ignorance of those people privileged enough to proclaim “art for art’s sake?”

Writing on her visceral response to E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View, Zadie Smith suggests: “We are aware that there is an emotive response for which the novel explicitly applies that is not properly requested by an atom or a rock formation or a chemical compound. Sensing the anomalous nature of this emotive quality within the university, we have resolved not to speak of it much.” My gut emotive response upon seeing Walker’s modified lithographs was a sense that they were gesturing toward the stories that remained hidden within my family, within my country, within the region I choose to call home. Walker’s pieces were the most brilliant evocations of historical revisionism I had ever encountered. The vital differences between American and Caribbean slavery aside, I wondered how my particular experiences as a West Indian person related to those “objective” criticisms I was tasked to make in the classroom. Was I supposed to suppress these experiences? Channel them in some measured, productive—and ultimately palatable—way? What, in the name of “nuance,” might I elide? And those basic facts of biography—a Bahamian childhood, a father who grew up on a Corentyne farm, Indian ancestors who crossed the kala pani many generations ago—what became of them?

Seven years later, I still have not answered these questions. (I might spend a lifetime as a writer trying to do so.) I follow Walker chiefly because her work encourages me to not only examine my assumptions about the political uses of art as Sullivan instructed—but to constantly examine the professor’s assumptions as well. I was sad when I arrived in New York a week too late to see Walker’s thirty-five-foot-tall sugar sphinx, but I was grateful that I could experience her work the way most young people living in the world experience things these days. I scrolled through hundreds of photographs posted on the Instagram and Twitter and Facebook pages of people I did not know. Things got complicated, however, whenever I clicked the hashtag #karawalkerdomino. Disturbing images loaded on my screen—the skinny boy sitting next to me at the coffeehouse might have assumed I was interested in some strange pornography. “Sowapowa” angles her camera to make it look as if she were squeezing the sphinx’s impressive areolas. “Bulzeye”—in an unfortunate accident of nomenclature—inserts his tongue into the sphinx’s vagina. “Nealmaffei” smirks beneath the sphinx’s derrière.

The virtual fourth wall demolished, I wonder how Wimsatt and Beardsley might react to the Brechtian theater that art-viewing has become on social media. I wonder what they might make of the constant bombardment of images we encounter where individuals have inserted themselves into the text. I wonder what they might make of Kara Walker.

This essay poses—and refuses to answer—questions about the nature, production, and consumption of art in this current age of virtual reproduction. It is written by a Guyanese-Bahamian-American person three days after he faced the Domino Sugar Factory for the first time, holding a fancy camera his great-grandfather could never afford, preoccupied not by the onus of history, but by all the aggressive facial hair to be found in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A photograph is stored in his imagination. In it, a forty-year-old hipster with a handlebar moustache stands in front of an artisanal cheese shop. A young orthodox Jew—hat black, locks brushing against his ears—holds his son’s hand.

They are all waiting for the light to turn green.

2. Good Selfies/Bad Selfies

“The photograph,” Roland Barthes writes in Camera Lucida, “represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter.” With each social media post, we experience the ghosts of our previous selves. For a Caribbean community that has had its identity reduced for centuries, this layering of character can provide a powerful tool for cultural change. Frequently, the region’s social evolution has been framed in postcolonial language, and I wonder if changes in media consumption might serve as a viable alternative—or complement—to these critical constructions.

In his 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon paints a portrait of a balkanized metropolis. “It have people living in London,” Selvon writes in the inimitable voice of Moses Aloetta, “who don’t know what happening in the room next to them, far more the street, or how other people living. London is a place like that. It divide up in little worlds, and you stay in the world you belong to and you don’t know anything about what happening to the other ones except what you read in the papers.” Newspapers, in the past quarter century, however, have radically evolved in their platform: when was the last time you sat down with a hardcopy of The New York Times or the Trinidad Guardian or the Stabroek News? Moses’ nostalgia in Londoners is fed by his physical distance from Port of Spain—but in a visual sense, his nostalgia is fed by his distance from real images of the city. If nostalgia is built from a triangular interaction between memory, desire, and sensation, the Internet has radically transformed how we remember, want, and feel.

The post-independence generation of artists emerging from the Caribbean and its diaspora are hyperaware in narrative effect—if not in poetic intent—of this cultural tide change. Christian Campbell, in his poem “Lightskinned Id,” takes a joy in the simultaneity of his skin’s multiple shades—and in what effect such a coexistence might have on the evolution of his perceptions. In “Disappearing Houses,” a collaborative project published in the Summer 2013 issue of Wasafiri, Andre Bagoo and Vahni Capildeo employ photometric techniques to disrupt our often vision of Trinidad’s economic progress. They create otherworldly images of working-class detritus in tension with the vision of glass and steel development promoted by tourist boards and self-fulfilling prophecies. The works of Shivanee Ramlochan, a journalist, poet, and editor, and Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, a painter and poet, are preoccupied with the spiritual shape-shifting we might trace back to Hindu mythology.

Boodoo-Fortuné, influenced by Frida Kahlo, works in watercolor and ink. Her exhibit “Criatura”—Spanish for “creature”—ran last summer at the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago. The forty-four pieces, the artist writes, were intended to “prompt reflections on the alchemy that governs a mixing of selves, straddling life and death, their natures fed by forces of both fruition and decay.” The title piece portrays a woman, part human, part tree. Wildflowers grow from her hair. Her elongated neck is composed of skin and bark. Her eyes are exaggerated like an anime temptress, yet sadness resides behind seduction. This balance of boldness and vulnerability marks Boodoo-Fortuné’s representations of the feminine spirit. Each of the painting’s women can be interpreted as conversing with one another. But this observer wonders if the piece “Separate and Same” provides a key to understanding the exhibit as a whole. Might all the women in Boodoo-Fortuné’s collection reside in a single body, the way Parvati and Durga and Kali belong to one entity? Is Boodoo-Fortuné’s collection a yoga of sorts? And if so, is a walk through the gallery akin to clicking through a friend’s Facebook album—that peculiarly twenty-first-century mythopoesis—titled “2013 was a great year!”? Image one: a kiss on a mountaintop. Followed by a stare behind a glass of Cabernet. Wisps of hear behind a commencement cap. A contemplative look into nowhere. Then a click. A true nowhere. A white space. Until we choose to close the page, to log off, and to get on with our ordinary lives.

3. A Brief Note on Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné’s Tumblr Page

The title of Boodoo-Fortuné’s Tumblr page, “Wings & Fire,” further signals the artist’s fascination with flight and destruction, with hubris and humility, with Icarus and Daedalus. My interpretation of Boodoo-Fortuné’s work fundamentally changes because I follow her on Tumblr. Below one of “Criatura’s” paintings, “Mother of the Hummingbirds,” is a quote by Sandra Cisneros: “I am obsessed with becoming a woman comfortable in her skin (via radicalheart82), 16,625 notes.” On June 20, Boodoo-Fortuné posted an animation of a turtle with a Band-Aid on its shell. The caption: “Don’t knock my shell. It hurts a lot.” Two weeks prior, Boodoo-Fortuné posts a picture of puppy prints in her studio floor. A week before, a statue of a lady grasping wilted flowers. The same day: what looks like mortar and pestle and ferns on a woodblock. That same day again: a GIF of a woman like a 1960s Elizabeth Taylor with a halo over her crown, an image of the sun eclipsing the moon, and moving constellations, dippers—big and small—Orion, Hercules, all these stars I cannot name.

4. Anatomizing Self Construction

If Boodoo-Fortuné’s gallery exhibition represents an endpoint—and epiphany—her Tumblr page provides a glimpse into the rough work behind the artist’s elegant proofs. This is a very modernist sensibility, something I can only now articulate in this manner, in this moment because of the discerning professor allergic to bullshit. A scholar of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, the professor helped me realize that the works—The Waste Land, The Cantos, Ulysses—I romanticized as spontaneous acts of genius experienced passionate revisions by their respective their editors. These works were not created in isolation. They were the product of many hands.

“What happens when a new work of art is created,” Eliot writes in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.” In our current age of virtual reproduction, Caribbean artists frequently—and subconsciously—shuffle inherited sequences. The texture of old ideals is constantly impacted by the Caribbean artist’s engagement with, or negation of, those ideals and by her reifications of historically marginalized forms, be they of griot storytelling traditions or of the aesthetics of creolization or of the Walcottian mythology-mixing created within the region’s social web.

Through Tumblr’s interface—consisting of patterned visual displays, a dated archive, and a dynamic social network—we can glimpse, in unprecedented ways, the versions of the Caribbean artist’s self she wishes to represent to the world. Boodoo-Fortuné’s Tumblr page reveals a deep interest in gender roles, in spirituality, in the factors that facilitate—and hinder—empathy with fellow human beings and with nature. We see the influences she wishes us to see. Insodoing, we also see the content of each influence differently. We see Cisneros in relation to Boodoo-Fortuné’s “Mother of Hummingbirds.” We see bruised turtles in relation to Boodoo-Fortuné’s “Mother of Hummingbirds.” We see the stars in relation to Boodoo-Fortuné’s “Mother of Humingbirds.” And somewhere along the way, our perceptions are altered, our foci shift. The life of a hummingbird’s mother becomes foregrounded in our minds. What might that life entail? And I think back to Walker’s Civil War lithographs. I think of Toni Morrison’s Sethe.

“Every negro walk in a circle,” Marlon James writes in The Book of Night Women. “Take that and make of it what you will.”

5. Bridging the Uncanny Valley

Right eyebrow arched against social media, Smith writes in her essay “Generation Why?”: “When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way, it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.” Yet, the impulse to acquire multivalent information is precisely what drives many Caribbean users to social media in the first place. It’s difficult to deny that Facebook inspires narcissism (it’s called “Facebook”) or Instagram, idiocy (young man licking the vulva of a sugar sphinx). But this generation’s online capacity to curate their visual representation—individuals actively insert themselves into dominant images, if they wish—facilitates a freedom denied to many individuals in the colonized Caribbean.

I won’t risk grandeur by arguing that Facebook feeds political independence, but I wonder how the Arab Spring might have turned out if millions of people took Smith’s skeptical route. She is correct on this point, however: the Internet user loses himself in the social network’s vast garden of forking paths. The pornography addict, the terrorist recruiter, the pro-democracy activist: all of them transcend their physical selves online, becoming the “set of data” points they wish to project to the world.

Two of the most promising voices in Bahamian culture—the novelist A.L. Major and the academic Angelique Nixon—both engage with the ways in which the expectations of the tourism industry have impacted, for good and for ill, the prism through which Bahamian people view their history and themselves. “When colonialists discovered the islands,” Major writes in a Michigan Quarterly Review blog post “Going to Watch Junkanoo,” “they found a way to instantly categorize those areas, a way to describe and recognize the islands easily. Tropical birds, exotic fruits become the recognizable features of a tropical landscape, and not, for example, poorly maintained roads or overburdened garbage collection sites. It’s this brochure self-knowledge, an ability to see the world as tourists might, that stifles creativity.”

Uncovering the garbage, for Major and for other post-independence Caribbean thinkers becomes a call to action, even as—for the sake of propriety and tourism advertisements—many Bahamian citizens might want to keep these images concealed. Yet one can’t help but feel that figures such as Major and Nixon take an end-justifies-the-means approach to criticism: in their ethical cost/benefit analysis, their people’s self-understanding far outweighs a Norwegian tourist’s ability to enjoy her suntan.

If Major uses a literary magazine’s blog to interrogate the images coming in and out of the region, the Barbadian photographer Risée Chaderton uses a TED talk to interrogate how such images, in real ways, impact the Caribbean body politic. In “Shaping Who We Are,” Chaderton discusses the rise of eating disorders amongst Caribbean men and women. She studies the “uncanny valley”—a perceptual space where non-human images appear to be human. Near the cusp of this valley might be robots or Disney characters—as well as many of the models on the covers of style magazines that make their way into Caribbean dental offices and public libraries and teenage bedrooms. Chaderton’s photographs, committed to celebrating healthy Caribbean body images, necessarily oppose the images that fall within the uncanny valley, just as Major’s blog opens a space for Bahamians—and non-Bahamians—to interrogate the assumptions guiding the country’s history-writing.

youtube

What artists like Chaderton—and Walker and Boodoo-Fortuné—encourage is a radical reconception of the Caribbean female body, a site that has been abused, distorted, and commodified for much of the region’s history. Understandably, these artists’ work is in constant battle with the sheer force of incoming images from international media. However, the intimacy of these artists’ visions allows us to anatomize self-construction—physically and spiritually—in the tradition of Janine Antoni, Paule Marshall, and Jamaica Kincaid, three of the most innovative Caribbean artists of the twentieth century. As Walker’s giant sugar sphinx appears lower and lower on the public’s collective Instagram feed, I wonder how these artists’ work will evolve in the years to come. I wonder what their art (and their tweets) might teach us about who they are individually becoming—and about what the Caribbean, as both a region and a sensibility, seeks to represent down all its plural avenues.

#Alice Yard #Caribbean #Art

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thespeedyreader · 5 years

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The Oxbridge application process

Hey, stxdywarrior here! I’ve recently just applied to Cambridge University to study English, and I wanted to share my tips and experiences to help you if you’re interested in applying. First of all, if you’re applying to Oxford or Cambridge, that’s great! They’re both amazing universities, and applying is going to be challenging but so rewarding. I have no doubt that you’ll excel, whatever you want to do.

Please share this and add to it if you wish to!

A quick note: While this masterpost is general, I have to stress that lots of these tips may only apply to humanities subjects. I don’t have much to say about the sciences, I’m afraid. If you are applying for a science, however, I still hope you can find some great content in here for you.

UCAS application

Okay, first thing’s first: the application itself. Applying to Oxbridge is different because you have to have your UCAS form sent by October 15th (while everyone else has the luxury of waiting until January), and while that sounds stressful, it’s a great feeling to get it done early, trust me. And this means having applied to ALL your chosen universities, not just Oxford or Cambridge.

Another thing that’s different about Oxbridge is that they’re collegiate universities, so you’ll have to choose a college. Or, you can choose to make an open application, meaning you’ll be assigned a college later by the university. Don’t stress too much about this stage - people choose certain colleges for all sorts of reasons, and they’re all good anyway. I chose my college because it was small and had good student wellbeing services.

Because the deadline is so early, I would recommend you start thinking about your personal statement by Summer, so that when you get back in September, you can hit the ground running. Here are a few tips I have for your personal statement:

Get all the help you can. And by this I mean: ask everyone you know who might be helpful to have a look over it. This means teachers, family members, classmates, and anyone you know who’s recently been through the same process you are going through.

That being said, make sure all of the opinions don’t leave you at see. I found it really hard when one person was telling me one thing and another was telling me the opposite, but I learned to balance my OWN judgements with other peoples’.

Don’t worry about the character count until your last drafts. Make sure you nail the content first.

It doesn’t matter how many drafts you have to get through, as long as you save all the drafts. I think I got through like 14 drafts?

Don’t JUST write it for Oxbridge. What I mean is, the other universities on your list matter too. So even though Oxbridge don’t care much about your extracurriculars, that doesn’t mean you should ignore them.

It isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. Even if you’ve only done a few things, if you write about them well, then they’re still just as impressive.

A tip not everyone hears is that the universities want to hear about your personal response to things. Don’t just say you read a book; say how it made you feel, and why you were interested in it. Use phrases like ‘I was fascinated by’ and ‘this intrigued me’. I’m serious.

Remember that your personal statement is literally the hardest piece of writing you have to do. It’s easy to feel daunted by it, but there are plenty of resources out there to help.

Supplementary Application Questionnaire (Cambridge only)

If you’ve applied to Cambridge, you’ll soon get ask to do the SAQ. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s quite a long form to fill out, so it’s best to do it carefully and start early. You’ll be asked things like what modules you’ve studied in your a levels, and you have to include a profile photo of yourself. At the end, you can also write an additional personal statement. This is optional, but just for reference, my one included some things I’d done that I hadn’t included on my personal statement, and I related them to some of the specific modules on the Cambridge course.

Entrance exams

Depending on which subject you’re applying for, you may be asked to sit an exam. This will be typically registered through your school or college, and it’s important to make sure you sign up before the deadline (which will be set by your school). The exams happen around late October.

As I was applying for English, I took the ELAT (English Literature Admissions Test). In the ELAT I was given six texts (poems or novel excerpts), all linked by a theme, and I had to pick two to ‘compare and contrast’. So there was no set structure, and I couldn’t strictly revise for it. In terms of preparation, you can find past papers, and it also helps to do language analysis of some unseen poetry just so you’re used to it. You will NEVER be tested on things you don’t know; they’re more looking for the way you form and present an argument.

Essay submission

Depending on which subject you’re applying for (mainly humanities), you may be asked by email to submit essays to your chosen college. I was asked to send in two essays that I’d done in a school setting (I got to choose, whew), and I needed to print four copies of each (no idea why) and get my teachers to sign it to prove it was my work. The essays can’t be edited.

One thing to note is that, while Oxford usually let you email them, Cambridge are still in the Dark Ages and will only receive them by post. So if you’re applying to Cambridge and are a confused millennial like me, who literally never uses post, I’d get the essays in early.

Another thing is that my college constantly emailed me reminders about the essay deadline, so unless you live under a rock you can’t miss it.

The interview

As the final stage of the application process, you will (hopefully!) be invited to interview. They’ll let you know by email in late November. Cambridge typically invite about 80% of applicants, whereas Oxford invite less, which I think is about 50%. So if you get an interview, congratulations! And don’t panic. People say it’s the biggest factor in the process, when in reality the universities treat each part of your application equally.

Interviews are done differently by each university. In Oxford, you’ll be asked to stay at your college for a few days, because not only do your college interview you, but your application is sent around other colleges, so you could be invited to interview at another college at any time. (Sorry I can’t shed more light on this, as I didn’t apply to Ox.) In Cambridge, you only get interviewed by one college, and you have the option of staying overnight or just going for the day.

How to prepare:

While you don’t need to go overboard with this one, do read a lot around your subject in the few weeks beforehand, so that if they ask, “so, what have you been reading lately?”, you’ve got a lot to say.

If you have the opportunity to do a practise interview, take it. My school organised one for me, but even if your school doesn’t, find someone - like a teacher - who can do it for you. Even if it’s them just grilling you on your personal statement, at least you’ll be used to articulating your arguments in an interview setting.

If you sent in essays, make sure you read over those essays beforehand. They asked me about one of mine.

Map out some generic questions that they might ask you. For English, for example, I researched questions like, “is it better to read a play or see it in production?” and “what’s the difference between literacy and literature?” and even “what is literature?”

You’ll be notified by email the professors who will be interviewing you. I’d recommend looking them up (they’ll be on your college website) and finding out what they specialise in.

Read over your personal statement as many times as you have to. They’re very likely to ask you about something on there.

This sounds cliche, but PLEASE look after yourself before the interview. It always takes place right at the end of a really busy term, so watch out for colds and things (I’m telling you this because I was recovering from a chest infection when I interviewed, and had only just got my voice back RIP)

The interview itself

If you’re doing a humanities subject, you might be given a source or written extract to look at before one of the interviews, and then they’ll discuss it with you. I’d bring lots of highlighters for you to annotate. (I was expected to just be given a poem for English, but I actually got a poem AND part of a critical essay. Go figure.)

No one cares what you’re wearing. I mean, wear sensible stuff, but there’s no need to try to hard.

This is a bit random, but my teacher told me to make a list of all the things I love about my second choice university the night before, to remind myself that Oxbridge isn’t everything. Believe it or not, it worked.

You have to expect to be put on the spot, and this means on-your-feet thinking. I heard they can smell a rehearsed answer from a mile away.

When you’re waiting to interview, you’ll probably meet loads of other applicant like you. It’s up to you whether you chat with them or not - I know some people like to keep themselves to themselves to keep their focus, while I personally loved getting to know people, as chatting helped me stay calm. Either way, everyone’s in the same boat, so don’t worry.

If you’re like me, and easily get distracted by social media, I’d recommend staying off it for the whole day if you can. I did this, and it helped me protect my mental space and keep out negative thoughts.

Some of your interviewers might come across as a bit scary. They might also disagree with everything you say, which can be off-putting. Try not to worry too much if this happens - stand your ground.

When you make an argument, be prepared to justify it, but also, if you want to change your mind, do it. The interviewers are looking for a teachable mind, not someone who’s right all the time and knows everything, so show you have an open mind.

Once the interview’s over, all you have to do is get some well-deserved rest and wait! Try not to overthink how it went, because in reality you have no idea. Some people think they did awfully, but end up getting an offer, so.

The decision

Okay, here’s the truth: Oxbridge is not the be-all and end-all. It just isn’t. Your worth and intelligence cannot be defined by an institution.

For when you’re waiting for a decision: think of Oxbridge as a bonus. This is what I did: I had another university as my ‘first choice’, so that Cambridge was just an extra.

If you don’t get an offer: You will be so happy at wherever you decide to go instead. Think of it as Oxford or Cambridge’s loss, not yours - hundreds of applicants who are very much smart enough to get a place don’t, and that isn’t because they aren’t good enough.

While it’s okay to feel disappointed, it’s best to focus on the amazing learning experience that applying has been. You’ve shown yourself that you can handle all that while still maintaining your priorities and sense of self. So you should STILL be proud.

If you do get an offer: Congratulations! Party time. Except it’s not time to party just yet, because you’ve still got to get the a level grades to secure your spot.

I hope this helped! Don’t hesitate to ask me anything else you want to know.

Just tagging a few people who have been through the same process/have asked about it: @rebeccaravenclaw @littlebitofstudy @lesbianlondongrammar @sectumsempracurse

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

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Writing Report March 29, 2020

This will come as a shock and surprise to many of you, I know, but the coronavirus is wreaking havoc with my writing schedule.

I’m fine (as of this writing), my wife is fine, all our family members are fine. For that we’re truly glad and grateful.

But between social distancing and family obligations (nothing serious, just time consuming) my daily output has dropped dramatically.

I’ve also seen several markets I’d submitted to either implode or suddenly close or just va_n__i__s____h without a trace.

Which sets me to thinking about the future of (a) freelance fiction writing in general and (b) my own creative strategies as well.

I occasionally think I spend more time and effort trying to place my short stories than I do writing them.

Certainly with various market restrictions, I spend an inordinate amount of time researching the markets.

One certainly can’t make a living off of short fiction (I think Harlan Ellison was the last person to support themselves solely through freelance short fiction and that was 1955-57). Freelance fiction writers can survive, obviously, but they range much further afield than the confines of the short fiction market. Without longform fiction, television, comics / graphic novels, video games, and other venues, none of us could support ourselves off freelance short fiction.

So the huge hiccup we’re going through right now will visit far ranging change on us, much of which already started prior to the appearance of the coronavirus but now accelerated upon its arrival.

The old model for short fiction / essays / poems was for a publisher to arrange financing, assemble a publication (magazine or original anthology), delivery said publication to a distributor, and live off the proceeds. (I’m leaving out a lot of steps and variables, of course, but those are the basics).

The financing could come in many forms, either an advance from a larger publisher / distributor / investor or a loan based on contracts and letters of commitment. One of the best bits of advice I received when I was trying to decide whether to do the Serenity Christian manga project as either original graphic novels or a monthly came in the form of a question: Do you want to spend all your time creating, or do you want to spend all your time chasing down advertisers?

I preferred the former to the later, yet even then I spent an enormous amount of time and effort into tracking down a suitable publishing partner.

So I commiserate with all those publishers and editors out there trying to make a go of it on shoestring budgets with minimum or non-existent staffs: I feel for you. Truly.

But I also recognize the light at the end of that particular tunnel is a train.

Already alternatives to traditional publishing let writers find a loyal audience and get paid for it.

I’m aware of sites like Wattpad and Medium and Smashwords but frankly haven’t investigated them in depth.

To my old(er) eyes, I see the danger of clouded rights issues, reliability in accounting, and frankly just seeming desperate.

Yet those same eyes can’t deny thousands of writers use them and attract tens of thousands of readers and in more instances than one would expect, money flows ///towards/// the writer.

(Siderbar: Don’t never EVER enter a creative contest that requires an entry fee or submit to a market that charges a submission fee. If you won’t listen to me, listen to Uncle Harlie.)

So clearly a sea change is already underway and the coronavirus is the tsunami wave that finishes the job.

Look, I’m fortunate insofar that between our Social Security and Soon-ok’s pension, we have enough to live comfortably on for the rest of our lives. Holy shamolley, do I ever realize how fortunate and privileged we are in that aspect.

But the short fiction market already is barely cost effective. My genre fiction goes first to the biggest / most prestigious markets. Originally I planned to limit each submission to the top five markets, then post them online here if I couldn’t place them.

The drawbacks with that are the aforementioned market restrictions (many markets today will only accept one submission at a time from a writer) and the ever continuing ebb and flow of specialty markets where one might have a chance (indeed, I’ve sold several stories because an original market opens for stories specifically about left-handed truck drivers and by chance I happen to have a left-handed truck driver story [or the equivalent thereof] in the trunk].

Those of you visit here frequently know I’ve been writing fictoids (a.k.a. flash fiction or short-short stories).

While I’d written fictoids before, this current crop got their start from a Christmas gift I received from a grandson.

I really enjoy these, and when I can find a chance to sit down and writer them (their first draft is always by hand) I can crank out two to six an evening after my more formal writing.

These are shared freely on my blog because at 350-400 words, they’re not really cost effective for market submission.

If I could place a 400 word fictoid at the highest paying market for that sort of fiction, I’d net 40-cents a word for $160.

That’s a lot for a little, to be sure, but rates drop precipitously after that (not to mention that market publishes only three or four times a year).

$32 for a fictoid? Not great, but okay.

$4 for a fictoid? Uhh, no…

Let them publish it for free?

Why should they benefit off my work but not me?

No, fictoids are cost effectively only as loss leaders to attract eyeballs here and possibly interest people in my longer work.

My longer short fiction (i.e., everything from 1,000 to 9,999 words; there’s a variety of opinion on what the boundaries of short story and novelette / novella lengths should be but for our purposes I’m limiting short fiction to that range) tends to be more satisfying, but those markets are drying up.

Sc-fi / fantasy / horror are much more viable markets than mystery / crime. Other markets are so scarce I can’t find reliable information on them (this would include general and mainstream humor fiction). The literary markets all offer their own particular shoals to navigate, and while they can pay well, again, those markets are far and few between.

So I’m thinking of steering away from conventional short fiction (i.e., 1,000 to 9,999) and focus exclusively on long form (i.e., novels and novellas I can offer via Kindle), using the fictoids on this blog to attract readers to the longer works.

(Speaking of which, I’m about a year ahead on my fictoids; they’re loaded up and set to appear one a week from now into 2021 with more to come after that. So if I keel over in the near future, you’re still going to be seeing new fictoids into early 2021 at the least.)

None of this will preclude me from writing short stories that fall between fictoid and novella lengths, but that’s going to require perfect happenstances (good idea + time to write).

The other thing to consider is that with the old model publishing market being so badly shaken up, new opportunities in new formats will be opening up.

Which one of those will be viable in turns of adequate readership, etc.? How many prose based venues will be open as opposed to drama and media based?

We are in, as the Chinese would say, for interesting times.

#writing #writing report #coronavirus

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sisterofiris · 5 years

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Hello! Christian follower here. Reading some of your posts, I was wondering about your devotion considering mine. How do your beliefs shape your life and viewing the world? Also, another thing I've seen come up in some posts was the issue worshipers having an evolving view of their deities over time and having difficultly knowing how they were "originally" viewed. Given that, how do you "know" who you're worshiping (I hope that makes sense)? Thanks for your great content on ancient cultures!

Hi there! That’s a very interesting question. I will do my best to answer it from my own perspective, bearing in mind that other Hellenic polytheists may view things differently.

First, how do my beliefs shape my life and worldview? At their bare bones, they inspire me to be a good person, in the same way as Christians and people of other religions. The Delphic Maxims, attributed to the God Apollon, list a number of values which many (though not all) Hellenic polytheists seek to follow. Some of my favourites are: worship the Gods (#3), think as a mortal (#11), have respect for suppliants (#42), give back what you receive (#55), restrain the tongue (#82), deal kindly with everyone (#93), be grateful (#106), and share the load of the unfortunate (#135). I personally believe that by living in arete (virtue), as laid out in the Maxims (or most of them - some are outdated, like the infamous #95, rule your wife), I am pleasing the Gods and expressing my devotion to them. That said, these values are pretty universal and I would still follow quite a few of them if I belonged to a different religion, or none at all. Rather than the be-all and end-all of my religion, they’re more of a general foundation for my specific practise.

A concept that I consider more specific to Hellenic polytheism is eusebeia, literally “good worship”. It refers to the respect worshippers should have towards the Gods, but also towards the divine laws that regulate society. With eusebeia, everything becomes a kind of ritual: welcoming my guests, being helpful to travellers, and being respectful in someone else’s home or homeland is xenia (hospitality); keeping a clean house, washing my body regularly, and binding my hair are katharmos (ritual purity); and so on. The fact that these acts are religiously important to me has helped me practise them better, and see value in things I might not have otherwise.

Ritual itself is obviously also important. While my “big” rituals are rare, small ones are a constant in my daily life: before bed, I light a candle and say a prayer to Hypnos (Sleep); in the evening, I sometimes offer a piece of my meal to Demeter and Hestia; before a major trip, I libate to Hermes; when I experience a death, I offer to Hades, Persephone and Hermes Psychopompos; and so on. Being a polytheist, I see deities everywhere, and every place, every moment is sacred and deserves respect because of it. This also inspires me to be kind towards my environment - because a forest is not just a forest, the ocean is not just the ocean, a snake is not just a snake, and a beggar is not just a beggar.

As for “knowing” who I worship, if I understand you correctly, you’re asking how I can be sure which depiction of the Gods is correct, considering they change depending on time period, author, and geographical location. This has never been a big problem for me; mine is a religion of plurality, and as a result, I don’t believe in an absolute truth for all times, places and people. I believe Gods can appear differently depending on circumstances. An 8th century BC man, a 4th century AD woman, and me will naturally have different views and experiences of the same deity.

That said, there are always constants in the Gods’ nature - Zeus is kind to suppliants, Artemis cares for the wilderness, Hermes is a trickster, and so on. I think these can be taken as “knowledge” of their essence. I can also confirm it through my personal experience, both spiritual (ex: “feeling” Artemis’ presence as wild) and practical (ex: seeing how wild the mountains, one of Artemis’ domains, are).

In the end, though, since Hellenic polytheism focuses more on orthopraxy (worshipping properly) than orthodoxy (believing properly), I consider my devotion and offerings to be more important than the details of the Gods’ nature. What matters is that they are greater than me, and they deserve my respect. This excerpt from a poem I once wrote expresses how I feel about the question:

The sea is both many and one. This is not strange.The god of the blue sea is other to here -the coral-crowned, sun-kissed lordof coves like mirrors is more foreign thanthe language I speak. This sea is pebbles,hissing waves and pebbles, brown and black algae.He rumbles, restless. He longs to take back the land.I wonder when one sea becomes another,one god another.I stare at the incoming tide and I feellittle.

#hellenic polytheism #Hellenismos #christianity

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annemareads97 · 6 years

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Short story! Pls read <3

Since I got quite a few positive responses, I’ve decided to go ahead and post some of my past assignments - although I won’t do any editing before posting them, meaning what I post is the same as what I handed in.

This first one is a roughly 2200 word short story which I did for my Fictional Writing module. Enjoy!

To Die For

Getting a degree hadn’t really been something Jonathan specifically wanted, rather, it was what was expected of him. He’d always done well in school, so when the time came for his classmates to apply for universities, he found himself doing the same. His mum had been so proud when he got his first unconditional offer back, and his dad had mumbled something that almost sounded encouraging. They had been ever so disappointed in his older sister when she decided to go off to London to “try to make it” as an actress. He still spoke to her, and so far, all she really did was work three part-time jobs.

Jonathan’s family had always had money. Growing up, he had everything he could ever want, to the point where his classmates kept looking at him as “that spoiled rich kid”, despite the fact that he never shoved his wealth in their faces. It didn’t really matter in the long run, though. Sure, he might not have had loads of friends, but they weren’t really worth his time anyway. They were all so stupid and, well... childish.

Now, here he was, starting his first year at a university he didn’t really like, studying something he wasn’t really interested in. But again, that didn’t matter. Nothing really did. As long as his parents didn’t throw him out, everything would be fine. He was sure of it.

“Hey, Jonny-boy, you gonna join us tonight or what?”

“Jonny-boy” rolled his eyes at his flat-mate. Imbeciles, the lot of them. “What’s tonight?”

“Well, it’s the Full Moon Party, innit?” Gregg grinned.

Jonathan sighed. “That’s just stupid - the full moon was two nights ago”, he muttered.

“What was that?”

“I said: you have fun with that. I, however, have better things to spend my time on than fraternising with a bunch of drunk teenagers making decisions they’ll regret in the morning.”

Gregg stared at him for a bit with that empty stare of his, until Jonathan took pity on the other boy. “That means thanks, but no thanks. Oh, and try not to get too smashed, will you? I am not cleaning up the kitchen floor one more time.”

They’d been here for three days, and Jonathan was already regretting living in halls. He considered calling up his dad and telling him that he couldn’t possibly be expected to study in such an environment - maybe his parents would get him a flat down in town - but, no. He wasn’t really on speaking-terms with his father at the moment, still angry that he had cut off any funding for Elizabeth.

“Yeah, no worries, mate”, Gregg smiled. How was he always so happy? “You really oughta come with us some time, though. Fresher’s Week is only once in your life.”

“Sure thing, Gregg.”

His first week of classes was soon coming to an end, and Jonathan had still to meet anyone intelligent enough to befriend. As had really been a problem his entire life... Maybe he ought to lower his standards a bit?

Just as he was contemplating whether or not he might be the problem, the chair beside him was pulled out, and a girl sat down.

“...can I help you?”

The girl turned to look at him, surprised. “What, this seat’s not taken, is it?”

“Noo...” Jonathan trailed off. No one had willingly sat with him yet, and there were still loads of free seats in the classroom. He supposed he shouldn’t question it, though. Perhaps this girl was his chance.

“Great”, she smiled at him - a smile that made something stir deep in his stomach. “Then I’m gonna sit here.”

“Okay...”

Now that he was really looking at her, he could see that was actually really pretty - in an understated way. She wasn’t one of those typical “popular” girls, but he thought she could have been, if she had dressed the part. Instead, she wore a simple pinstriped button-up shirt tucked into a pair of black jeans. Her mousy-brown hair was bunched up into a messy bun, and she wore a pair of old-fashioned, squared glasses, the kind that was popular these days. She looked professional, much more so than any other student he had met so far, and he had to admit he was slightly impressed at her style.

“I’m Hannah, by the way. Hannah Brown”, she interrupted his musings, sticking out a hand to him.

He took it automatically, hoping she didn’t notice that his hands had gone clammy. “I’m uhm... Jonathan”, he stuttered. Her hand was really soft. “Jonathan Campbell.”

“Nice to meet you, Jonathan Campbell.”

There was a sparkle in her eyes, he noticed then, just before he realized that he’d been staring at her. He hastily looked away, just in time for the tutor to enter the room.

Throughout the class, he kept sneaking glances at this girl, at Hannah. Never before had he noticed someone in this way. He’d never really connected with anyone, except for his sister who had all but raised him. But this was different. He understood, all of a sudden. All those songs and poems and stories, everyone going on about racing hearts and butterflies in your stomach.

He glanced over at the girl beside him once more, and this time she was already looking at him. He blushed, looking away quickly, but not before seeing the smile she gave him.

Yeah. He got it now.

They didn’t really speak after class. Hannah seemed to be an attentive student, which, of course, just made her all the worthier of Jonathan’s attention. But Jonathan wasn’t really used to this weird need to impress, so he did what anyone would do in his situation.

He packed up his things and fled the room.

Upon returning to halls, Gregg was the only of his flat-mates there, as per usual. Jonathan considered simply turning around and heading to his room, but decided he’d generally been a bit mean towards Gregg - and he still kept trying to be nice to him for some reason.

“Yo, Jonny! My man!”

Jonathan closed his eyes, let out a heavy sigh, and silently counted to three. “Hi Gregg. How are you?”

“Mate, why you always so proper-like?” Gregg asked, chuckling.

Jonathan shot his flat-mate a tight smile. “Just the way I was raised, I suppose. We can’t all be chavs, can we?”

He regretted the words as soon as they were uttered, and Gregg gasped loudly. “You calling me a chav?”

“Well, I-”

“Mate! And here I thought you were no fun!” the other boy guffawed, clearly taking the comment in stride, which made Jonathan wonder briefly if the boy tried to act like a chav. “Hey, what you studying again? I keep forgetting.”

It shouldn’t be too hard to remember what your five flat-mates were studying, but Jonathan opted not to voice that thought. “I’m doing law”, he answered simply. “You’re sports coaching, right? How you finding your classes?”

Gregg laughed again. “Nah, mate, I haven’t even been to any yet!”

Jonathan blinked in silence. Gregg may be nice enough, but he must have been one of the dumbest people on campus.

All throughout the following week, Jonathan found himself looking forward to his Friday-afternoon lecture. He couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah - there was just something about her. If she sat by him again, he decided, he was going to talk to her. Only, when he entered the classroom five minutes before the lecture was set to start, Hannah was already there, deep in conversation with another girl. He tried not to feel disappointed - after all, it wasn’t like they were friends. Instead, he found himself a seat in the back of the classroom and sullenly got his books out.

He didn’t pay any attention to the tutor. For three hours, he sat there, staring at the back of Hannah’s head. He barely even noticed that class was finished - and the only reason he did notice was because Hannah started packing up her things. He hurriedly got his own things together and stood to leave just as Hannah turned his was.

“Jonathan Campbell!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t see you there! Why didn’t you come say hi?”

Jonathan sputtered out an attempt at a response. Is that what he should have done? Just gone up to her and said something?

“Oh, well. At least you’re here now”, Hannah smiled widely. “I was wondering - have you started your essay yet? You see, I was thinking we could work on it together. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Yes. No. I mean, yes, I have started, but I still have quite a bit left, so- well, we could work together, I suppose. I’m not really used to working with anybody, though, and I don’t really see how it would benefit either of us. It’s not like I can do it for you. I mean, I could, but I won’t. That is, you should do your own essay... But I suppose it wouldn’t- wouldn’t hurt to do it together. Or, you know, not together together, but in the same room, at the same time... Working... So... yes. My answer is yes. I- I think I’d like that...”

Jonathan blinked stupidly. Had he just said all of that? He never rambled. Never. God, what was this girl doing to him?

A giggle broke him out of his trance. “Okay then”, Hannah laughed. “Give me your number, and I’ll text you when I’m free. Sound good?”

He nodded - a bit too eager, perhaps, but what the hell. If he hadn’t scared her off with that monologue, he doubted he could do worse.

Three days passed before he heard anything from Hannah, but on Monday, he finally got a text from an unknown number.

Hey! You free this afternoon? Around 4-ish? xx Hannah

His heart skipped a beat as he read the message, grinning to himself. She added kisses. Was that a thing she did to everyone, or was he special? Jonathan had never really texted a girl before, so he wasn’t sure how much he should read into it. He quickly shook himself from that train of thought. She’s just a girl, he silently chided himself.

Sure, he texted back. Meet at the library?

The reply came quickly.

See you there! xx

When Jonathan arrived at the library, Hannah was already sat at a table with her laptop and two lidded paper-cups. The girl seemed to brighten as soon as she saw him approaching.

“Hiya, Jonathan Campbell!”

He smiled shyly at her as he took a seat. ��How come you always call me by my full name?” he asked. It was a detail he had noted the first time it happened, but he hadn’t felt like he could ask before now.

Hannah shot him a secretive smile - a smile that, for some reason, made him feel a bit uneasy. “I just want to remember your name, is all. Jonathan Campbell.”

He nodded slowly at her nonsensical answer. And the way she had said his name right then sounded almost... ominous.

“Right”, he muttered. “Should we get started then? How far have you gotten on your essay?”

The girl hummed softly as she opened up her laptop. “Oh, not far.”

She left it at that, and they both started to work in silence. Jonathan tried his best to read the situation. Hannah seemed different somehow. Well, he didn’t really know her yet, he supposed, but there was just... something.

“That other coffee is for you, by the way”, her voice sounded after a few minutes, and he looked up to meet her vigorous gaze.

“Oh. I- Well, that’s nice of you, but I don’t really... drink coffee”, he answered apologetically.

“You don’t... Oh. Well”, she trailed off, seeming rather put off by this statement. “I could get us tea instead!” she suddenly exclaimed.

What?

“You don’t have to-”

“No, no, it’s really not a problem”, she brushed him off, starting to make her way to the hot drink machine before he could get another word in. She came back with another two cups and handed him one. He smiled tightly at her, thanking her, but she just stood there for a bit, staring expectantly. Hesitantly, he put the cup to his lips, pretending to take a sip. She finally sat back down, seeming pleased with this action.

Well. That was... not a good thing, was it? A pity, he supposed. It had seemed like she had such potential. His infatuation with her, however, was gone as soon as it had come.

The pair got back to work, only talking a few times to bounce ideas off each other. Eventually, Hannah excused herself to go to the bathroom, and that’s when Jonathan made his move, switching their cups. Hannah had only taken a sip or two, so she would hardly notice the difference.

When she returned once more, Jonathan made a show of taking a sip of his - her? - cup. “It’s good tea”, he said, and Hannah’s answering grin sent a shiver up his spine.

“Oh, absolutely”, the girl replied enthusiastically, lifting her own cup to take a drink. “It’s simply to die for.”

You didn’t say anything about whether or not you wanted to be tagged when I did post, but thanks for the support guys! @moonbow-ink @robin-sidereus @moved-my-blog @aeniith @parttimewriter-fulltimefangirl @delerious-wordsmith @runningoutofbooks @serpencina @ajtorres0

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