#the thought of being able to be born in such a country where the produce all looking so big and healthy is such a blessing to me

[vague-humanoid]

@midians-world @dirhwangdaseul

Missing pronouns and double-entendres

Historians have traced the roots of country music at least to the 17th century, but the “big bang” moment for the industry didn’t happen until the 1920s.

In 1927, record producer Ralph Peer traveled from New York City to Bristol, Tennessee to hold recording sessions with “hillbilly” artists from the surrounding areas. The Bristol Sessions, as they came to be known, introduced the world to artists like Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, foundational figures in what we now call country music.

That same year, in New York, an artist named Ewen Hail recorded “Lavender Cowboy,” a story-song about a boyish figure “with only two hairs on his chest” who takes on a group of outlaws and dies a hero’s death. Adapted from a 1923 poem by pulp writer Harold Hersey, “Lavender Cowboy” appeared in the 1930 film Oklahoma Cyclone and has since been covered many times, most notably by Vernon Dalhart in 1939. 

A couple years later, the Prairie Ramblers recorded “I Love My Fruit,” a Western swing-style novelty song so ripe with double-entendres that the group recorded it using a pseudonym. Attributed to the Sweet Violet Boys, “I Love My Fruit” is gloriously homoerotic, with lyrics that extol the virtues of (among other things) chewing on banana skin.

The 1960s saw the emergence of Wilma Burgess, a mainstream star who wasn’t able to be out but also never hid her identity. A protege of prolific producer Owen Bradley — who saw her as a potential successor to Patsy Cline — Burgess insisted on recording songs where the love interest was not referred to by gendered pronouns. When she did occasionally record songs addressed to male lovers, she did so under the agreement with Bradley that her next recording would be a song of her choice. Her songs “Baby” and “Misty Blue” both cracked the top 10, and she still holds the record for the most charted singles by a gay country artist.'

Burgess left the country music industry in the late 70s, but she remained active in Nashville’s queer scene, opening one of the city’s first lesbian bars in the early 80s. 

Queer country music’s “lost pioneer”

No queer country history would be complete without the story of Patrick Haggerty, the man responsible for what’s widely considered the first openly gay country album, Lavender Country. 

Haggerty grew up on a dairy farm in rural Washington, the sixth of ten children born to hard-working parents. Despite growing up in the repressive climate of the 50s, Haggerty has said his father was accepting of his sexuality, which was evident from a young age.

After getting kicked out of the Peace Corps for being gay in 1966, Haggerty decided to devote his life to activism, becoming involved with the Gay Liberation Front. His anger over the injustices of the era became the basis for Lavender Country, the 1973 album that would define his legacy.

The album, which Haggerty recorded with his band of the same name, is scathing and often funny, featuring would-be classics like “Back in the Closet Again” and “Cryin’ These C**ksucking Tears” delivered in a loose, folky style. 

With the support of the Gay Community Services of Seattle, 1000 copies of Lavender Country were created, advertised in gay periodicals, and sold at gay bookstores. Despite the limited number of copies, the album attracted a fair amount of attention in the gay underground. “Lavender Country” played at Seattle Pride and other gay events in the region.

The band disbanded in 1976, and Haggerty thought his music career was behind him. A self-described “screaming Marxist b***h,” he became further involved in activist circles, later co-founding the Seattle chapter of ACT UP and running for Seattle City Council and the state House of Representatives as an independent. 

the article goes into more, like Lang's Shadowland

#Youtube

[pea-brain]

first draft at some lore for kairi, full text below the cut. drawings same as the other post so i didnt bother to include close-ups

kairi was born to a village that, many, many generations ago steadily sent all their men to war. because of how isolated they were, the rest of the country forgot about them, neglecting to mention that the war had ended. none of their men returned (they were quite weak comparatively). years passed. the women (and children) left behind were made to survive a cold, harsh winter that lasted unseasonably long. they had lost a lot of their field workers and hunters, as it was a typical patriarchal set-up village. at one point, the villages priest-in-training was lost due to the village shrines giving nature, she had given all her provisions away. the people mourned greatly, and, eventually, consumed her to survive. with the loss of patriarchal figures the village turned to the priest as the sole leader. growing increasingly paranoid at the thought of her passing and all of them were still waiting for their men to return. this was compounded as the heir had been lost and the new children in training were still too young. they would be left with no one (this was, once again, a fiercely patriarchal society, and the women victim to it were unable to imagine themselves to be safe without direction). they turned to experimental medicine, as many had had the luxury of study with husbands who worked the fields. they dabbled in dark, retired things, and some things never before tried. eventually, using some pieces of the priest-in-training that had been preserved despite the starving (horns, some dried flesh, bones) they produced something that allowed the priest to live near twice as long as expected, giving enough time to train a new heir. 

this was not without consequences, bodies cannot survive that long, but as she slowly petrified she was still able to watch over the village, offering advice, and comfort, and, upon her passing, her body was used the same as her previous heir.

since then, recipes have been perfected, some women living for hundreds of years, and retaining bodily use into more than half way through careful care. there are some philosophers who argue that the careful care of the village is what allows the priest to live for so long, not what she is given from the previous priest, but this has gone untested. the village grew to observe a family-less society, where children had no parents and were raised by everyone. priests were able to provide great insight into issues as they had witnessed so many seasons and seen the same conflict over and over, like a living book. what ‘god’ the village originally worshipped was long lost, their ‘religion’ was the wisdom of cumulative knowledge and respect. patriarchy slowly fizzled down, remaining in labor division but only in a 2/3 to 1/3 split. the village does observe more than two gendered roles, and these are unattached to their job prospects. the only exception is a priest is always a woman. this has been questioned by men in the past, but ultimately respected. it is not an envied roll, its understood to be more of a curse. you do not get to live a life, you are the village. 

the village has observed some changes in features, tusks and horns have grown in length through generations, faces flatter, taller overall. the latter being a puzzling change for scholars of the village.

when a priest finally dies, her body is carefully consumed by all members of the village together, the horns saved for the new priest to continue the lineage. typically, if she is not yet of age, they will be saved until maturity (which has slowly increased over the years). occasionally, if a beloved member passes their body will too be consumed, beloved individuals bones are permissible to be made into jewellery or protective talasmans, decorations, hair woven into things. priests remains are kept at the temple, the first priest-in-training and her priest are displayed carefully for anyone to visit, and touch, if they feel moved to do so. priests are to stay at the temple as they are understood to be different to regular people, they are a part of the ‘spirit’ of the village and not to be hoarded. they are eaten together.

priests are still handy, aiding in catching and preparing of food until unable to do so. they are kept on smaller food rations than the rest of the village, restriction believing to elongate their lifespan due to cumulation of food over a lifetime. they often meditate to slow heart-rates / breathing and go without water for the same reason.

this continued until some crusaders found their way up the mountain. the village had managed to remained untouched for so long as it was a very snowy mountain top, with thin air (members of the village were more than accustomed to the cold and air), past an almost impossibly rocky area. upon discovering the village it was swiftly conquered. the people were ‘inbred’, their traditions were ‘barbaric and disgusting’, evidence of them (bones, paintings, books) were seized, smashed, burned, and many were killed, possibly including the current priest, but the priest-in-training was able to escape, kairi.

priest is a role saved exclusively for a woman chosen by the village adults unanimously, it is not a birthright, and is typically found from a younger age towards early teens. it is a role a woman can reject, but not many have. kairi is the first on record to have been chosen despite having a disparate birth sex. (there was possibly one many generations ago, scholars debate, but it is hard to discern from texts left behind (they wrote down very little at the time)) she was made to leave before her current priest was able to pass on naturally, and was thus unable to engage in her own ceremony. she is left half-trained and unsure of how long she will live.

priests are to pull their tusks from their time of being chosen until their death (they continuously re-grow, when they become immobile members of the village pull them on the priests behalf) and to keep their hair long, both are used to make talismans. kairi cut her own hair and horns in an attempt to be less conspicuous after escaping, she is in hiding but next to no one knows of her. this place was not widely reported on despite its ‘weird rituals’. she continues to pull her tusks. 

she wants to find her priest and living members of the village, but doesn’t know if anyone exists still.

#sketch #kairi #character design

[exoticalmonde]

Part I. Phantom and Crimson Solitaire but the part where Dr. Eve is reading where the mission is situated + history + collectibles

Instead of Dr. Pinkie being the actual loremaster that I expected given their superiority in everything that ever happens with the game, I have reclaimed the role (at least when it comes to IS2) and that includes all my assumptions about whatever has happened and is happening in it.

First of all, while re-reading the previous post I made about Shalem and Phantom, I realized that, wait a minute, where the hell is this even situated?

Apparently, Gaul. Which I have been able to understand is basically France, but gone because they were too sassy. Something of that sort. My understanding before versus now.

Second of all, it's not Gaul itself, the place we stumble into is a castle in Calais-Blason. That is a part of Gaul formally, now it is a part of Northwestern Victoria. After the war nothing was left of it because of devastation and because all the people either fled or died.

Phantom was told by the Crimson Troupe that he was born in Calais-Blason and was taken by the Troupe after a flood Catastrophe swept through the area.

We don't really know if that's true or not though.

Then there is a description as we enter the loading screen of the castle that states:

A castle hidden within the woods constructed under the auspices of a Gaulish noble who perished in the war a few years after its completion, leaving it derelict. But a mysterious group has been calling it home recently...

I'm about to eventually figure out who the noble is and we know that the mysterious group is The Troupe. Their 'Blood Diamond' is Phantom and during some investigating of his memories, he was attracted my goodness knows what machinations to re-visit his old home. Our job is to, you won't believe it,

Gaul's story in general is as straightfoward as it can be based on the Wiki. It was an empire ruled by a family of Liberi located between Victoria, Ursus, and Leithanien. Gaul was so influential that its grand nomadic capital, Lingones, was nicknamed the "Capital of Terra".

Gaul was primarily known for its expansionism, and it reached its peak during the reign of its last Emperor, Corsica I, following the implementation of the "Second Economic Reform Act," a new codex that drastically strengthened Gaul's military.

No surprise there, since Corsica I came to lord over the country because of his military prowess and the rewards he's gained over the years of serving. He was putting all of his military power into expansionism when demand had grown more than what the land's riches could produce. Like any time in history, he thought that it's time to knock on their neighbours' doors and tell them their time is up.

Big mistake. What kind of professional, a military veteran looks at this man and in return says 'I can take him'. Like any monarch, outraged by the Gaul's proposition to become a vassal state, the Witch King refuted by turning all Gallic envoys in Leithanien into lifeless statues. That's how we ended up with the Gallo-Leithanian War.

---

Pinkie: "I'm starting to believe you didn't read the story of Lingering Echoes." Me: "Which... I didn't." Pinkie: "There you go!" Me: *Appalled* Pinkie: "We will pick up the pieces left during Zwillingstürme Herbst."

---

That wasn't enough. Gaul also attempted to invade Victoria – which almost resulted in a complete defeat and annihilation of the latter, forcing Victoria to give up its northwestern colony that would later become Columbia.

In 1053, Victoria, under the leadership of King Frederick III, formed a coalition with Leithanien and Ursus to oppose Gaul, leading to the Battle of the Four Emperors. The war ends with Gaul's total annihilation, Lingones (the Capital) is wiped off the map, and the victors taking over Gaul's former territory.

The fall of Gaul is often considered the most tragic event in Terra's history. During its time, Gaulish culture was considered influential, but are now slowly fading to obscurity. Some collectors sought to preserve Galic relics while bakers and wineries tried to replicate the original Gaulish formula, but the latter are unable to match the original. With their homeland lost, many Gauls were scattered across Terra, and their nobilities were forced to serve the victors. Still, there are some Gallic restorationists who attempted to steal Gallic relics on display in museums in order to rally the surviving Gauls and bring the empire back to life.

Which leaves a lot of questions for where the current Victorian storyline is going to go, because I think most of the land and the people now consider themselves victorians. Granted, their descent remains marked, so here's a list of Gaulish people.

... Clément.............

To note before I go reading the collectables, here's the most metal thing I have ever seen being done in Arknights so far.

The Last Empress-Consort of Gaul: The wife of Corsica I, also known as the Natator. She chose to stay in the Gaulish imperial palace upon hearing the news of Corsica I's death and killed the invading enemies in a suicide attack by plunging an Originium shard into her body.

---

Pinkie: "So can we assume all catboys are Victorian?" Me: "Uh-- Well, I think so?" Pinkie: "Because, we already know all Perro are from Bolívar, and Ursus is a thing." Me: "Yeah, sounds the part actually. Officially, all Felines are Victorian."

---

Collectables I found cool, so i want you to know.

Banshee's Kiss

Outsiders make extraordinary displays of bravery that far surpass their normal abilities. However, as one of the few male Banshees out there, this has become a far too common sight to Logos.

You could lie to me and tell me that belongs to Logos and I will believe you. I don't understand a lick of what this signifies though. Maybe it is connected to death, maybe it is connected to music, or to the fact this is a relic of the Death Cult (The Troupe).

---

Actor's Jewelery Box

A box containing all kinds of shattered jewelries. The young lead actress wore these jewelries and stepped onto the stage, in the end falling from its highest point.

Absolutely terrible, actually. Nobody will understand the reference but this reminds me of how Lumine fell off the stage in Off-Script by Jules and Amarettiii. Great scene, wonderful timing in what is happening before that. Genshin brainworms shall always swarm me when Arknightsing and vice versa.

---

Fissured Restraints

It seems this sturdy band was once used to restrain something terrifying… Help…

????????????????????????????????????????

---

Godmother's Token

A laurel of bones, the token of a Sicilian noblewoman. This symbol of order will smooth the turbulence of all desires, for conflict is not allowed. Genuine or counterfeit, it still demands you to kneel.

Laurel. Of. Bones.

Dude...

---

Worn-out Group Photo

Do you know someone in the photo?

These are Gopnik and Hellagur as far as I can see.

---

Writer's Tongue

The playwright penned his creations with a quill and his own blood, and for himself he devised an ending in which he perishes in a sea of flames.

Something something it has to do with the ending but I have not gotten to any ever thus... I will be reading that later.

---

'The Whisperer in Darknight'

A black vinyl. DO. NOT. TOUCH. IT.

I played Darknights memoirs, you have no excuse to keep me away from it. Unless it's... who collected Vynil out of the Penguin Logistics? Was it Emperor himself? Croissant? I don't remember but my hands are up, you can see them.

---

Gold-Plated Dice

The gold-plated die has one side representing life. As for the other nineteen sides…

---

Emperor's Favor

A very sharp letter opener. It was one of the favorite possessions of the last Ursus emperor, and as such it was very rarely used to actually open letters.

---

Silver Forks

One for dealing with actors who botch their performances, one for dealing with incompetent playwrights, and one for anyone who needs it. The Chief will not tolerate any mistakes on the table.

The more I learn about the Troupe the worse it just gets.

---

Damaged Revolver Cyllinder

She never capitulated, even after enduring countless trials and tribulations. Her muzzle belched tongues of flame that burned like an angry sun, and the glow above her head was brighter than the daylight itself. Buried here is Outcast, our friend.

Outcast? Who is Outcast? *Googles*

Oh.

---

Kryo: "She is past tense." Me: "She is a 'was'."

---

Rusted Razor

If you cut yourself with this, you know what will happen.

Is this allowed? Is... Is this allowed? What do you mean- Yes we all know what happens with a-- goodness me.

---

'Brilliant Lament'

His blood yet flows. He has never left this place.

Whose...? Whose???

---

White Flower Crown

A floral veil used in Vampire rituals. Its once vibrant redness has been sucked empty, leaving nothing only a pale white color.

Oh, pretty!

---

Dancer's Bracelets

The audience breaks into applause as the well-trained dancers waltz around the traps on stage. None of them are aware of the brushes with death the performers have just been through.

The trauma just continues. Thematic.

---

This is just a set of pastries without context, I love the food in Arknights.

---

Broke Mask

He’s wearing the mask. Is he the one who’s speaking or is it the mask?

Oooo it's Phantom. We Phantom enjoyers know when we see the mask.

#arknights #doctor of ri shenanigans #arknights event #Arknights IS2 #Arknights Crimson Solitaire #phantom and crimson solitaire #Arknights Doctor #Phantom Arknights #Arknights Lore #Arknights Art #arknights operators #lore and stories #Arknights Victoria #Eve's Exploring #Dr. Eve is also terrified

[kaisacobra]

Thank you for saying that it really means a lot, I actually used to write fan-fiction a couple years back and I’ve recently tried to start again but I’m very critical of what I write and how I write it so I’m incapable of producing a single chapter.

Keep it mysterious, I’ll be eagerly awaiting whatever you gift us ✨

Now that you mention it, yes I completely understand what you mean about R not being able to be extremely cold to Tara. R seems like the type of person who’d be hurt and disappointed, someone who wouldn’t necessarily be cold to Tara but would definitely hide from her. For R I’d imagine it’d be an internal battle of what she wants versus what she deserves, we already get a feel for that in the first chapter but it was easier for her to choose what she wants- which is to provide whatever comfort and happiness Tara wants because she loves her so much over what she deserves- someone who cares about her in a consistent manner and not only when it’s convenient (boo Tara😡). After Tara’s outburst I think R would have to force herself in every way possible to really process that she can’t put Tara’s needs above her own anymore, as much as she loves Tara doing that would reinforce the notion that everything Tara said is true. We know she always runs back but now that’s she’s been ridiculed for it she can’t.

The way she’s always there for Tara makes me wonder about her background. Maybe this is TMI, but I personally have experienced many relationships like this in the past. My father abandoned my sister and I at a very young age, so part of the reason I would always be there for them and never left first even when I should’ve but wouldn’t- was because I never wanted them to feel as unloved and unworthy as I did when my father left me. By the time I was a teenager I’d already forgiven him for all the abuse my family endured because of him, in my heart nobody could ever hurt me the way he hurt me- so I’d forgive them even though the people around me would expressively tell me not to, you know? But im older now and I stand my ground, i can leave when if its what’s best for me and not get too caught up in what’s best for them.

I’m from California by the way! It’s 10:30PM right now, you’re from Brazil though? That’s so cool! Did you grow up there? My parents were born in Mexico but they moved to USA in the late 1980’s, I wanna move to Mexico and live there for a couple years because my mother loves and talks about her hometown so much, the idea of seeing where she grew up in person and picturing her as a little girl warms my heart.

- ☘️ (I’m gonna use this as my anon tag from now on)

I feel like everyone is gonna be critical when it comes to their own stuff, like, I'm not kidding when I said i thought second best wasn't that good, specially because I used to be an essay tutor/monitor at school and my writing had to be more than perfect. Just remember that usually you're gonna be more critical of your work than other people and it doesn't mean that what you write is actually bad.

I'm so sorry that happened to you and I'm glad that you can stand your ground now!💪 I know this will sound oddly ironic but all the background information I have on R is about... Tara. In my head, R is divided by past (beginning of friendship, woodsboro), present (the current mess) and future (what's gonna happen) so, in a way, maybe her life is all about Tara😔

I don't think R's family are gonna make an appearance so I'll leave it up for you guys to hc whatever you want as R's reason for being so attached to Tara.

California seems so nice! And yeah, i grew up here and i wouldn't have it any other way🤭 Maybe this happens to everyone in their own home country but i just love my culture and history so much, I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Mexico sounds super cool! I've been wanting to go there, specially in 2026 because of the world cup (really wanted to see it live) but i dont think it's gonna happen😔 Either way it's a beautiful country i wanna visit someday and i definitely have to start improving my spanish.

#✦: 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑠𝑘𝑠

[norel-ravenclaw]

Ok so this doesn’t need to be 100% like the request but similar

Can you do a Princess in the Mirror fanfic where MC is tired of people telling her to “act more like a princess?” So she decides “fuck it” and starts to act as much as a princess as she possibly can and pretty much does what Faris does and fakes her entire personality in public. Then when people start commenting on how she isn’t acting herself she’s like “I’m just doing what everyone has been telling me to do 😊”

Heck, even the king is slightly unsettled by this change

You can make this go however you want

Please and thank you ♡

Just What You Wanted

Fandom: Princess In The Mirror (Otome)

Featured Characters: Most of the major characters but focused on the Princess

Genre: Semi-angsty psychology

Rating: occasional language and thematic elements

Description: The Princess is finally ready to admit that being in this new world isn’t a dream - and she’s ready to become the monarch everyone is pushing her to be… And more.

A/N: Ohhh anon, this is so deeply satisfying~ 😈👿 It’s how I had to frame my mc to be able to read through the story. Hopefully the tone conveys the overall feeling of, well, satisfaction. (Also fuck the king very much)

Warnings: | angst | political slavery | mentions of abuse culture |

I lay in bed, exhausted and sobbing at the end of another horrible day from the longest week of my life. The voices of so many people trying to make me do what they want go through my head.

‘Straighten up! You look like a gnarled, hunchbacked old woman.’

‘Come now, Princess, don’t I deserve a smile?’

‘You are expected to produce an heir as soon as possible to prevent the people from being more unsettled.’

‘Don’t look away from the duke like that! You refuse to engage with people now, but you’re going to have to.’

So many voices trying to make me accept that this isn’t a dream, a coma. That this is real.

So many faces in the palace and on the streets looking up to me with fear and hope.

So many people that I desperately disagree with.

…So many ways I can imagine changing things.

My daydreams have turned away from tv shows and hoping for someone at work to ask me out. My every thought has been consumed by politics and psycho-analyzation of strangers in a strange world.

A country that they are forcing me to take care of.

I sit up, all of my rage coalescing into a crystalline-sharp form.

And something snaps inside me.

Looking around this room, the moonlight gently illuminating the space, I take in every detail. Every fold of the fabric, every carved niche in the bedframe, the chill in the air.

I can’t run anymore. I know the truth. This is real.

And the people here are real. Their pain, their fears, their hopes and loves - they are real.

And they are not being properly protected by the people in this god forsaken building.

The emotions of fear and self-pity melt away all at once. I get up and go to the letter writing desk, lighting a candle and pulling out the neglected diary in its drawer.

I’m amazed by how quickly it fills - not with pouting, self centred emotions, but with ideas for action, borne of rage as much as hope.

~~~

When the knock at the door sounds, it is accompanied by a horrible scraping sound.

“Um, Princess? What’s going on?” Simeon calls out.

I rise and walk to the door, moving the chair away from under the handles.

“Ah, there is our lovely Princess’s face…” He trails off when he sees my expression. Behind him, Flora and Mary peek around to meet my eye.

“Things are going to change,” I announce firmly. “Starting today.”

Stepping aside to open the door wider, I begin with the new orders.

“No one is to open my chamber door without explicit, verbal permission. Mr. Simeon, I want to see other quarters that may have a more appropriate layout - namely a reception room before the actual bedroom. Captain Zell, come in as well.”

The four people file into my room, looking apprehensive.

“Captain Zell, security is far too lax. I require a full escort at all times. We will discuss the details later. Simeon, I need to know what my personal budget is, and who do I speak with about it. Flora and Mary, bring me whoever is making all of these clothes. Production stops immediately until I have made my own arrangements with them. I will not have so much work and money go into more dresses that make me feel like a haunted baby doll. I also require self defence lessons and a map of the castle.”

All of them stare at me with shock. It is Zell who finally speaks up.

“Princess… What has come over you?”

I put on a smile - one of the first that I actually mean. “I tried to ignore reality. But no more. Starting now, I make the rules.”

My expression softens into something more remorseful. “I have failed to even ask you about yourselves. I intend to correct the mistakes of my selfishness immediately. But in the meantime, you all have your orders. While I get dressed, please repeat them back to me so I know there have been no miscommunications.”

After a moment of stunned silence, they jump into action. While they list their instructions, a knock comes to the open door.

“You idiot. A note on my door isn’t enough to excuse…” Vincent finally registers all of the people in my room. “What’s going on here?”

I throw a smile his way as Mary hastily finishes my hairdo.

“Ah, master Vincent. We need to talk. Everyone else except Flora and Zell are excused.”

They exchange looks as the crowd thins, and I turn to my tutor. “Mr. Vincent. Starting now, I want every word of communication you make to me to be purposeful, specific, and useful. Together we will learn how to set aside emotion in favour of developing strategy and working to solve problems, rather than just complaining about them.” His eyes are wide as he stares at me. “Have I left any room for misunderstanding?”

“…No, Princess.”

This is actually kind of fun. “Good. Thank you. I spent some time prioritising what I need to learn. We will focus more on those topics for now. I am certain you will agree; there is no reason to delay learning the most critical information and skills. I must attend breakfast, so let us get going.”

“Oh, but first.” I turn to Flora and hold out my notebook. “Ms Flora, are you able to write?”

She nods, looking at me like I’ve been replaced by an alien. “Yes, Princess.”

I offer her a genuine smile. “Excellent! May I ask you to be my note taker? My mind has been going a mile a minute and I can not permit forgetting anything at all.”

“A-as you wish.”

“Thank you so much.”

As we parade out of my quarters, already something comes to mind. “Ah, Flora. Starting a list on page twenty six, add ��labour laws’ and below it ‘military and essential service labour laws’.”

Beside our footsteps and the scratch of a pencil on paper, my entourage is absolutely silent.

Once out into a grander hall, I remember something. “Say, Mr Vincent, what is this kind of roof called? This rounding at what would be the corners of the walls?”

“I… actually don’t know. I am less versed in architecture.”

“Ah. I remember seeing a t- I mean, a program where they said that shape helps with temperature regulation throughout a space. I’ve always enjoyed architecture, and would like to study it. Can you arrange such lessons in another month or two?”

I hear footsteps coming towards us, and as we found the corner, the four noble sons cross our path.

“A woman wanting to study architecture? Absurd,” Luca scoffs.

I offer him a smile filled with venom. “I disagree. Lord Savini, I will ask of you what I asked of another this morning - You waste your own mental and emotional energy as well as mine with your senseless complaining. Either propose a way to fix the problem and be useful, or be silent. This is an order.”

The men stare at me in the same utter shock as the group before.

He furrows his brow and practically snarls at me. “What do you think you’re doing? You are in no place to scold me when there is so much you can’t do, pajama broad.”

Falco tries to step between us, but I hold up a finger to stop him.

I remain calm, clasping my hands behind my back. “You are trying to deflect by showing aggressive physical behaviour meant to make me submit in fear. I condemn this learned instinct.” His eyes grow wide, and I can see the slightest tilt of his head in confusion.

“Now, there is at least as much that I am ignorant of as you are. I cannot claim omnipotence any more than you can. So, Luca Savini, let us learn and rise up together.”

I smile at him, and the tension in the air snaps when Simeon sighs.

“Look at our Princess! I wonder if it is her red undergarments that have given her such courage today.”

I turn on him, my smile falling. He swallows hard. I let the silence stretch for moment to make him and everyone else focus on this moment.

Just as he takes a breath to speak, I raise a hand to stop him.

“Mr Simeon. You need to understand that your joking enables and reinforces a culture of rampant abuse, violence, and murder.” The blood drains from his face. “You, intentionally or not, embolden people to accept objectification and you subjugate unwilling women to appease your selfish whims. You make it harder for women to say no because ‘it’s just a joke’.”

I take a deep breath. “From this moment onward, you are forbidden from contributing to a culture of fear and selfishness. Do you understand?”

The man looks like he’s about to be sick. He drops to his knees. “…I never thought about it that way. I cannot begin to apologise enough, Princess. Please forgive me.”

I meet his eye. “It is not for me to forgive. Flora? ‘Survivor’s bill of rights. Witness protection program. Safe houses. Prison reform.’”

With a sigh, I turn back to the stunned noblemen. “Let’s get to breakfast, shall we?”

When Farris asks, “What happened to you?” I reply simply this time.

“I woke up.”

We file into the dining hall, and I wait in the doorway until the room turns to look at me. Joseph is the first to catch on. He stands at his place, gesturing to the others to do the same. Slowly, all of the noblemen and the two women in the room slowly get to their feet.

Satisfied, I offer them a smile and incline my head before going to take my place at the king’s side.

“Good morning, uncle.”

He stares at me with surprise and suspicion. “What’s gotten into you this morning?”

I smile at him, hoping it doesn’t come across as menacing. “I know what I need to do to serve this country. No more wasting time.”

As soon as our plates have been brought in, I look down the table and address the Minister of Foodstuffs. I ask for his tutelage, followed by the Minister of Defence and Trade.

The king huffs a quiet sound of approval. “I’m glad to see you taking things seriously.”

This smile I don’t bother to edit much of the sheer loathing from. “You inspired me, uncle.”

His eyes widen at first. “Mm. Well, I’d like to discuss with you then how your search for a husband is going.”

“Oh? Good. There is much to discuss.”

After the room and table have cleared, the king holds me back.

“We will talk here.”

“Very well.” Clasping my hands behind my back again, I stand tall and summon an aura of authority. “Shall I relay to you my current assessment of the four noblemen in question?”

“Yes. Do.”

I smile and go through the list quickly.

“Lord Luca is a dangerously ignorant narcissist. I would not trust him to feed my cat, let alone with a country’s military.

“Lord Farris is unwell. His trauma, whatever it may be, has manifested classic symptoms of self preservation that make me uncertain whether he would ever be trustworthy.

“Lord Falco seems to be, and I say this with full acknowledgement of my own lacking, less intelligent than me. Which is a critical requirement for my co-ruler to possess.

“Lord Joseph is nice, but he lacks persuasion skills, command, and drive. Again, it is a matter of them having the skills that I do not.

“And so, I cannot in good conscience allow control of the country to belong to any of them.”

The king blinks a few times before scowling mightily. “They are all the options you have.”

I reply quickly. “Then we need a greater saturation of people who have the education and skills so that the people are not trapped being governed by someone unsuitable. Do you disagree that they deserve the best?”

He slams his hands on the table. “You don’t know what you are talking about! That is not the way things are!”

I shoot him the most professional death glare possible.

“That is not what I asked.”

This makes him pause, his breath catching visibly. His face is turning red. “You will do what is necessary to follow my orders.”

A smile naturally finds its way to my lips. “I will do what is necessary for the protection of the people’s lives and futures. Please understand, uncle. I am not some bitch on a chain for you to order and tug about - to breed as you please.”

I say the next part slowly.

“You trap me here, offering me a crown and a country. I accept. Know that it is a woman prepared to become a Queen that you are dealing with.”

He stares at me in utter shock, for once speechless.

I put on another smile. “Are you not pleased? You wanted me to accept this life of slavery you forced me into. So I accept a life of service - to the people of Kristein.

I’ve never felt so powerful as I lay down the law for this bastard.

“I accept the responsibility of holding corruption accountable. I accept the responsibility of securing a safe and reliable future - and that is not guaranteed through a system that relies on sexual and child slavery to function. I accept the responsibility to choose a trustworthy and competent co-ruler. Your options are insufficient. Another will have to be chosen. Such is my responsibility.”

He looks at me like I’m some sort of demon. And I chuckle, sighing contentedly.

“Isn’t this just what you wanted?”

#norel writes #princess in the mirror #voltage otome #ikepri #ikemen prince

[indvcible]

don't mind me...coming to class late and unprepared. 😳 you can find more about rie under the cut while i work on eventually getting her pages up probably later than sooner soz. still going through everyone's intros, but pls hit that heart button down below and i'll slide into your ims to plot if you don't beat me to it!! xoxo, always super late girl 😘

tw: mention of death

originally born as nakamoto yukiko (mom used to call her yuki before she gave her up to her bosses lol)

her mom was (and actually still is) the secretary of an up and coming cosmetics company who were on track of becoming super super big throughout japan!!!

(tw: mention of death) at their peak, the company heads lost their daughter (tw end) who was coincidentally around the same age as yuki

after a few years had passed, they asked her mom to take yukiko in as their own as they were in need of an heir and unable to produce more of their own (for timeline purposes, yuki was prob about 12-13 years old at the time)

to this day, she still has no idea what conspired between the adults involved in the discussion, but she's sure as hell bitter that her mom had given her up so easily on top of the fact that she was a "replacement daughter" and her "parents" never let her forget it

to say she was an angsty teen would be an understatement, but she never reacted outwardly or rashly. rather, she just acted as a lifeless doll, never really reacting much to anyone around her or showing much emotion around her "dear family"

this was beginning to raise questions throughout high society as the sato daughter, who had hardly (if ever) made any appearances when she was younger, had always been said to have been clingy but endearing towards her parents. but now that she was a frequent event attendee, the daughter was now the complete opposite

in order to hide the truth and keep others from digging too deeply for the dirty details, yukiko (now rie) was shipped off to study abroad in south korea, where she couldn't harm the company's prestige

there, she was forced to play the role of the perfect daughter or risk being cut off financially

for a while, she remained quiet in the background, allowing others to assume whatever they wanted to about her. at the time, she could barely make out anything they said anyway — she simply wanted her time in the country to pass

but then they appeared [subplot 7/muse l + m!!!] and changed her life around. now that she had friends that she found dear and could (sort of) open up to, rie was a bit brighter and expressed herself a bit more. their company also made a rapid difference in how quickly she was able to advance her korean language skills

when the whole "seduction" plan was brought up, she'd honestly thought it to be a dumb little game that she didn't care for whatsoever, but she went along with it anyway bc they wanted to do it

the one time she decided to act on her feelings and do something of her own volition to make herself happy, it ruins her entire friendship and rie is suddenly back to being on her own all thanks to someone she doesn't even end up with in the end

this incident makes her shut down once more and now she's beginning to understand that maybe her "parents" were right in insisting that doing what she was told and looking pretty was for the best. so she does just that and quietly makes it to graduation

the same thought process continues in the present day; she's become the face of her "mother's" cosmetic brand and is currently a grad student majoring in operations management, ready to step in and take over the company whenever the time comes

she does still see her birth mother every now and then, but chooses to ignore her whenever possible

plot bunnies 🐇

the only person she's ever come close to revealing her secret to; that her entire identity is a sham. but something always came up that kept rie from doing so

someone she considers a true friend. though she remains closed off around all others, you break down those walls. she's always ready to drop what she's doing to be at your side if you ever needed her to be

you were enemies in high school and you're still enemies now. despite doing everything in her power to avoid you, somehow you always end up appearing before her, proving to be a constant thorn in her side

a colleague begged rie to go on a blind date in her place, and there she met/reunited with you. can you two hit it off or will this be a horrible disaster?

she gets a little homesick every now and then, but your presence reminds her that she's not alone (req. muse must be from or have lived in japan)

current fellow snu grad students

one night stand turned regular fling

fellow models/industry workers

#revintro #[ ✶ ] ── * 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐈𝐄 { intro } #tw: mention of death #it's a v brief mention but tagging just in case xx

[randomvarious]

Haddaway - "What Is Love" 1992 Eurodance / Eurohouse / Dance-Pop

It's another big one, folks. Today I'm gonna tell you the story about how this indispensable early 90s club classic that went on to largely define the Eurodance era as a whole originally came to be, and how it also ended up unexpectedly launching the career of a Trinidadian-born renaissance man by the name of Nestor Haddaway, who would go on to become an international pop superstar, largely away from American eyes.

So, the truth of the matter is that, before he'd end up moving tens of millions of units with his debut record, "What Is Love," Nestor Haddaway wasn't even really much of a singer in the first place. He had lived in America, joined the navy for a handful of years, earned a PhD in political science, and then decided to move out to Europe, where he thought he could have a chance at making it as a musician. Nestor was fond of German-made music, like Kraftwerk, and knew the country had served as a launching pad for a whole bunch of successful acts, including Donna Summer. And he also knew that, as a black man, the industry wouldn't be so quick to try to pigeonhole him into either R&B or hip hop, either, like the US had a tendency to do, because the German music industry just seemed to be more open-minded about things like that.

So, Nestor would end up in Frankfurt, in a crew with none other than Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti, a pair of guys who had previously made music with techno legend Sven Väth as the trio OFF, and then found much wider success as the producers behind Snap!, who would give the world songs like "The Power" and "Rhythm is a Dancer" in the late 80s and early 90s. You won't find Haddaway's name attached to any of their records, and if you do a Discogs search, it'll show that his first credits were as his own solo act, but he did do production and remix work with Münzing and Anzilotti, and he made good money from it too.

But while he wanted to be a successful producer on his own—and not a singing solo act—Nestor was also a lot of other things too: he was a dancer, a choreographer, an American football player in one of Europe's top leagues, and a business owner who organized fashion shows and photoshoots. And all of that seemed to keep him from being a desperate artist who'd be eager to sign a contract with anyone that'd be willing to take him on, only to be, most likely, taken advantage of later. And with that security of having his fingers in many other pies, he was able to turn down a bunch of offers he didn't like at first, before very unexpectedly starting to really find his way in Cologne, in 1992.

That was when Nestor decided to do a favor for his music partner, Alex Strasser, who, at the time, had a job at a label called Coconut Records, and was struggling to make ends meet. But a way that Nestor could help him out would be to come down to the studio and record some music. Nestor would do some stuff that he had been working on himself, and then to help out Alex, he would also record something for Coconut too. No big deal; just being a good friend, really.

But as you could probably guess, this little session turned out to be a huge deal. Coconut's co-owner, Tony Hendrik, decided to come down to the studio too, and brought with him a rough draft of a song that he and his wife, Karin van Haaren, had worked on. In fact, the two of them had already had the song in Coconut's publishing company and were just waiting for the right person to come along and sing over it. And that song was an early version of "What Is Love," and their latest candidate to front it was now none other than Nestor Haddaway.

But Hendrik had a vision for the song that he and Nestor didn't share. He wanted Nestor to sing the song in the style of Joe Cocker, who, I'd say, is pretty dang inimitable himself. So, while Nestor acknowledged that he was definitely a fan of Cocker's work, he also told Hendrik that there was no way that he was going to sing like him. Nestor had loved the work that he had done with the guys from Snap! and brought back something that was more in their vein. Hendrik wasn't too thrilled with it, telling Nestor and Strasser that what he really had wanted was a ballad, but his wife ended up convincing him to just roll with it. So, he relented.

And here's what appears to be an early iteration of what they had come up with, which was made available on YouTube only a few years ago, and seems to have one key ingredient missing from the finished product:

And this version probably would've sufficed as a solid, radio-friendly dance hit, but you'll notice that in this iteration, the organ stabs aren't nearly as full or fluid. And to get the final version, Hendrik took the song, locked himself in the studio for a full week or so, and then was able to turn that organ into something harder that the listener could happily glide on during the instrumental portions between Haddaway's verses. It was a terrific enhancement. Plus, Nestor had also supplied vocals that sounded less tender and more anguished too.

And when Nestor heard this updated version, he knew he had something unique on his hands that also had mass appeal as both a dance and pop record. Coconut offered to buy the track from him for 5,000 Deutsche marks, but he outright refused. And yet, unbelievably, when they first tried to shop it, no other label or radio station actually wanted anything to do with it at first! But a new station in Cologne was willing to implement it as a jingle, which was enough to get the ball rolling, and after getting a positive response from about a thousand DJs that they had sent it to, "What Is Love" then proceeded to catch complete fire on a global scale.

The song went to #1 in 13 countries, #2 in the UK, and almost broke the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, while hitting #9 on its corresponding dance chart too. And despite its slightly lesser showing Stateside, Saturday Night Live's Butabi brothers, who would then feature as the main characters in 1998's A Night at the Roxbury, would extend its relevance for a whole lot more years, by using it as their own theme song, which even encouraged yours truly and a friend of theirs to dress up as them for Halloween one year, which I assure you, there are no pictures of 🤫.

(I was the Will Ferrell one, btw)

Now, maybe one thing you're wondering is, "yes, the plonking organ definitely proved essential, but so did that mysterious and intermittent female vocal too! Who was that?" Well, I have absolutely no idea, but what I can tell you is where it came from, because Haddaway lifted it from a 1991 sample pack CD called Datafile One that was made for producers, DJs, programmers, and artists to use. Have a listen to track 64 and you'll hear the pair or samples that were used:

And that's pretty much it. Haddaway, who originally had no intention of being a pop star himself, had actually managed to become one on a bit of a lark, by giving the world a super catchy and versatile club banger with the first song that he'd ever apparently recorded professionally as a singer. And it was also on the heels of Germany's last massive Eurodance triumph, "Rhythm Is a Dancer," which happened to be by his friends in Snap! And while Haddaway would pretty much flame out as a one-hit wonder in the US after that, he'd still string together a bunch more singles that would resonate well in other markets, ultimately allowing him to have a long and fruitful career that he's been able to sustain to this very day. Plus, Just Blaze's sampling of "What Is Love" for Eminem and Lil Wayne's own "No Love," which ended up doing over 5 million in sales and streaming, couldn't have hurt, either, so, good thing he didn't end up selling it to Coconut for the relative pittance that they had originally offered him!

Welcome to Haddaway week.

#eurodance #euro dance #eurohouse #euro house #house #house music #dance pop #dance #dance music #electronic #electronic music #music #90s #90s music #90's #90's music #Youtube

[dariamalek]

What I Never Knew As The Daughter of Iranian Immigrant Parents

I am an only child, born in Canada, to two parents who immigrated from Iran in their early 20's.

My parents came to Canada in 1994, not knowing a word of English, and quickly learned that, if you want to get anywhere in life, they must learn to adapt to this Western ideology.

My mum went to school to fulfill her dream of being a nurse and my father, who must be the most resourceful man I know, had gone through multiple career changes before building his successful business.

I was born a few years later, in 1997, and I was immediately labelled a "Canadian."

In school, we were taught that we were "Canadians," and we learnt the history of Canada and celebrated "Canadian" Thanksgiving and learnt about Victoria Day, which is a "Canadian" holiday. All proper practice; we need to learn about the country that some of us migrated to, others born in, however I grew up celebrating things like Iranian New Year (Nowruz), the Winter Solstice (Shabe-Yalda) and Nature's Day (13-Be Dar) and I always wondered why I had to celebrate these things and other kids didn't.

As a child, it was quite annoying how my family insisted that we celebrate these Iranian traditions and take them seriously. I probably just saw it as another day to get off school.

Quickly after that, I realized that this diminishing of culture had turned children into dense, shallow young adults - and after the devastating events of September 2001, the mentality of these uneducated, uncultured young adults turned into racism.

Although, I use the word "racism" because I couldn't find a better word that defined lazy, uncultured inertia.

Because the truth is, children are not racist, but they've been taught that this bland, Westernized ideology is the norm and anything outside of that is odd or strange - this includes the colour of someones skin, the religious dressings, the languages they speak, the food they eat, the events they celebrate.

When I opened up to my mother about this, she said:

"How will you ever know who you are if you don't know where you came from."

I responded:

"What do you mean? I was born in Canada - that makes me Canadian!"

Then, my mother said something to me that stuck for life. She said:

"Each egg inside a woman's body goes back three generations-"

She's referring to the idea that that "prenatal exposure has the potential to directly impact three generations," as explained by epidemiologist Barbara Cohn, principal investigator of the CHDS. "Unlike males, who make sperm throughout life, females are thought to be born with all the eggs they will ever produce. They include the mother (known as the F0 generation), the fetus (F1 generation), and, if the fetus is a girl, all her immature egg cells—any of which may one day become the F2 generation." To put it in simpler terms, you were created inside your mother while your mother was still inside your grandmother.

She continued:

"Your grandmother wasn't born in Canada and neither was I. You were in a different country well before you were in Canada."

And that's when it hit me: the most heartbreaking thing for an immigrant parent is watching a part of them, they should have indented in their children, fade out into a foreign ideology.

How are your parents supposed to guide, teach and raise you in a language they don't know how to speak?

I realized why my parents spent so much time, put so much effort and worked so hard to learn a language that was foreign to them but, also made sure I learnt Farsi fluently: they knew that one day, growing up in an English speaking country, I wouldn't be able to understand their guidance in Farsi because all I spoke, all I learnt, was English.

Do you know how difficult it must be to translate everything that you are into something that is so foreign?

There are children in school being bullied for knowing another language! They are being bullied for being able to adapt another culture into their lives; for having the ability to appreciate another culture.

There are parents, who themselves, forget where they came from!

There are parents who no longer appreciate the guidance of their elders because they do not fit into their Western norms!

And most importantly, there are children who disregard their parents and their background to fit in to a society that diminishes everything that's "different."

My parents love for their country made me want to explore my heritage and fall in love with where I came from. And once I fell in love with my own culture and my own roots, I found the ability to actively fall in love with other cultures, languages, literature, music - because my parents taught me that there is beauty in every culture, despite was the media and other people say about it.

Imagine how much of a deeper love you can have for another person if you know about their roots, their cultural values, communicate with them in their own language, celebrate their holidays; you are celebrating such a larger part of them. You are celebrating the first aspect that made them who they are.

Everyone asks me why I speak so many languages and I never had a confident answer until today.

I wanted to learn as many languages as I possibly could so I could communicate with the hearts of the people who escaped their own country to give their children a better life.

I wanted to learn as many languages as I possibly could so I could help that immigrant at the store who was having a hard time communicating with the cashier.

I wanted to learn as many languages so I could understand what they are truly trying to say rather than a rough translation because there are so many beautiful, poetic words and phrases that you just can't translate.

I watched my parents struggle to make sure they keep me connected to my culture in a world where they try to rip it apart from you. When my parents said they wanted me to fall in love with myself, they wanted me to fall in love with all of me; generations in the past. They wanted me to love myself as that little egg that was inside my grandmother travelling from village to village in Iran because my grandfather was high up in the Air Force command and fought in the war.

And if you think about it, the mixed children of this generation have the advantage of learning about two cultures rather than one.

And you know what the hardest part about this is?

In order for us to learn all this once we're in our twenties, our families had to give up a part of what makes them them. They had to leave their family, their soil, to give us the life they couldn't have.

And for my Iranians: our families need to sit back and watch, all the way from another country, while their entire identity is stripped from them, their families and their soil. They have to watch the Iranian youth take to the streets and sacrifice themselves for their soil.

Where is our honour as a generation?

You learn so much about yourselves when you learn about the culture you were brought into. I promise, everything will start making sense and you will learn to love a part of you goes so deep, it can never be reversed.

And that love is so unconditional.

Mom, dad...thank you. Thank you for teaching me who I really am. I am sorry for all the hardships you have gone through. I am so proud of you guys and I promise that I will make you proud and I will make all of your hardships worth it. I love you.

The Green Ney. 10/2025.

#mahsa amini #life lessons #motivation #author #books #writer #essay #culture #travel #iranian protests #life advice #lifestyle

[ofswordandcrowns]

Here ye, here ye, for (BANE) of HOUSE (COLASSO), the (LORD COMMANDER) of (ONDERA) has just arrived. They are (FIFTY-FOUR), and look a great deal like (DWAYNE JOHNSON). Their vassals have described them as (DEPENDABLE & PROTECTIVE) but they also claim that they can be a bit (STOIC & UNFORGIVING).

basic info

full name — Bane Kyros Colasso

nickname - Big Bane, Bane The Beastslayer, Ser Bane, Lord Commander

age — Fifty-Four

kingdom — Ondera

gender — cis male, (he/ him/ his pronouns)

religion —not particularly religious, but if he had to chose someone to pray to, it would be Aznas

occupation — Knight of Ondera, Lord Commander of the Onderan Army, Protector of Queen Tanio

living arrangements — The Lord Commander's tower at Castille Flores

physical info

face claim — Dwayne Johnson

hair — dark brown / eyes — brown

height — six foot & eleven inches

clothing style — despite coming from a colder climate, Bane tends to wear light leather armor as he finds it makes it easier for him to move and fight in the way that he excels at. Now that he's Lord Commander and thus is now considered a noble, however, he knows that he needs to start to take more thought into his outfits if he wants to impress. He always, though, tends to wear his prized trophy of the Smilodon pelt as a cloak.

sexual preference — versatile with a top lean; though he prefers to top, he will bottom - but no matter what he does, he is very dominant.

The name Colasso is a name that is synonymous with “warriors”. Though they were not a noble house, instead a knightly one that tended to produce the toughest knights and warriors for the kingdom of Ondera, they were still one that commanded a lot of respect among the higher houses. Born into this knightly house, it was expected that Bane would become a knight and eventually serve the Onderan royal family - and it was something he absolutely thrived at. A master in athletics, being taught all manners of combat - including those from foreign countries, as his mother had hailed from beyond Aladonian lands and was able to teach him the way that her people fought in addition to the traditional Colasso fighting standards - many knights clamored at the chance to have him squire for them and he managed to squire for none other than the Lord Commander of the Onderan royal court.

By the time he had finished with his squireship, he had stood at a massive height of nearly seven feet tall and was nearly as wide as a child was tall, all muscle and brawn. But his final test to prove that he was a knight worthy of House Colasso was to venture out into the Neetry Ice Plains to fight a Smilodon on his own. It took him a week to track one down, to find out where it lived and its sleeping patterns, but even then he couldn’t get the jump on it - it managed to tackle him in the middle of the night and left him with scars he still carries to this day, but that was not the end of his story. No, using his sheer strength he managed to break the beasts neck as he fought them off and when he returned home, it was with a trophy of the Smilodon’s fur for him to wear as a cloak and a title - Bane the Beastslayer.

With his new nickname and his knighthood, he devoted his life to serving the crown of Ondera and joined the Queensguard. From there, he grew to admire Queen Tanio from afar as he traveled by her side and protected her from any harm, loving just how poised and polished she was and her general beauty and generosity was enough to have him growing deep feelings for her. It was wrong, he knew, for a man of her Queensguard to feel that way about her, especially when she was married and set to give her husband children, but he couldn’t help but develop a deep love for her. He kept his feelings quiet, however, and instead continued to protect her.

It wasn’t until a visit to a Northern nobleman’s keep that things changed. With a party of Queensguard and the Queen, they traveled to the lands of the Northern most Onderan lord but had become attacked by a massive Mammoth in their wake. The Mammoth’s mate had just given birth and they had ventured too close to its babies and mate, so the beast was ready and willing to protect them at all costs. The mammoth killed all of the Queensguard but one - Bane - and using his mighty hammer, he used his strength and skill to cave the Mammoth’s head in. And when the Queen and Bane returned to Castille Flores, the King named him the Lord Commander in thanks for protecting his queen and the future of Ondera.

The new position that was given to him was one that had elevated House Colasso from just a knightly house to a Noble one, and while Bane had always yearned for the opportunity to become Lord Commander - as he had learned a bit when he had squired for the previous one when he had been a boy - he never thought it would happen. But, with the new position comes a new pressure to find someone to marry and have children with - not only to ensure the future of House Colasso, but to ensure that future generations would learn the unique fighting style that comes with his House, too.

#(about bane)

[ts1989fanatic]

Comparing Taylor Swift to William Shakespeare

What do Taylor Swift and William Shakespeare have in common? More than you might think, it turns out.

There's even a Buzzfeed quiz comparing her lyrics with lines from Shakespeare's poems.

Eminent Shakespeare scholar and former Oxford professor Sir Jonathan Bate, who is quite the Swiftie himself, got them all right.

So, who better to speak on the matter.

In a bookstore, 25 minutes south of where the Beatles were born Bate had an unexpected encounter with a modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.

The lyrics of Taylor Swift's Love Story, about a girl on a balcony and a boy who comes to rescue him, had captured his attention.

"I went up to the counter and said to the girl behind it, oh that's a great song, who's it by, and she said... this country and western artist Taylor Swift... so I bought the CD - those were the days of CDs - and gave it to my daughter who was nine I think and she gave it to all her friends," Bate told RNZ Afternoons.

"They sort of became lifelong Swifties so I kind of followed along."

Bate argues Swift is more than just a best selling pop star - she has a literary sensibility worthy of some of history's great writers.

"A lot of my work over the years... has been about how Shakespeare stays alive by being reinvented on all sorts of different cultural media."

The poet John Keats - also a big Shakespeare fan but who lived in the wrong century to test his loyalty to Swift - says poetry is "a wording of our highest thoughts, almost a remembrance".

"In other words, what a great poet does is they put into words feelings that we've all had but that we've not quite been able to articulate," Bate says.

"That's what Shakespeare did for his generation and it seems to me that is what Taylor swift is doing for a whole generation of young people."

"There's no doubt she has a very literary sensibility" - Eminent Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate duration 19′ :50″ Playlist Download

"There's no doubt she has a very literary sensibility" - Eminent Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate

There are of course areas where the pair differ.

"There's no doubt that Shakespeare was very very discrete about his own feelings and his own ideas."

Every feeling expressed belongs to a character, not to Shakespeare himself, Bate says.

Even when he wrote seemingly more autobiographically in his sonnets, he doesn't let on who he is talking about, he says.

"Maybe that is because he was bisexual because the majority of those sonnets do seem to be addressed to a beautiful young man."

It is a far cry from Taylor Swift, who has used her own life and successive heart breaks as sources for her work.

"My Taylor Swift journey took a bit of a pause when she started rocking and rapping, which isn't really my thing."

It was reignited, Bate says, when Folklore and Evermore were released.

"I started listening to the lyrics particularly of one of the songs in which she goes to the Lake District in the north west of England and actually mentions William Wordsworth, the great English romantic poet.

"That got me looking more closely at her lyrics and seeing that there's a whole set of references in her work to that romantic poetic tradition.

"There's no doubt she has a very literary sensibility."

True Swifties would have picked up on an easter egg too, Bate says - Evermore was announced on 10 Dec, the birthday of the romantic poet Emily Dickinson.

Bate says there's a famous Emily Dickinson poem about a love triangle, with the following lines:

I spilt the dew -

But took the morn, -

I chose this single star

From out the wide night's numbers -

Sue - forevermore!

"I'm pretty sure that's what inspired her to write the title song of Evermore."

The domination of visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube means in some ways, we are losing the sense of the power of words, Bate says.

"So I think when you have a popular artist like Taylor Swift who chooses words so carefully, who genuinely produces poetry in her lyrics, that's an enormously powerful, reassuring positive thing."

[sinceileftyoublog]

Grant-Lee Phillips Interview: A Great Deal of Shared Experience

Photo by Denise Siegel-Phillips

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips was one of many artists who released an album during the pandemic that ended up being prescient. No, it’s not an obvious foreshadowing. His 10th studio album wasn’t titled anything having to do with masks or distancing or viruses. But the idea of his daughter screaming, “Come on lightning, show us your stuff” and the words resonating with Phillips enough to name an album after it is strangely consistent with that increased rediscovery of “the small things” many of us experienced over a time where we needed to stay separate from other people. It’s the immediate surroundings of nature that grounded Phillips when, after being forced to promote Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff via livestream only, he decided to give up dreams of touring any time soon and sit and write new material. Used to writing on the road with what he calls “a proper balance of stimulation and boredom,” Phillips opted for daily drives to the Tennessee countryside with his family to generate that previously missing sense of motion. They also gave him solace in the face of what was happening globally--a pandemic--and nationally, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and the January 6th, 2021 Insurrection.

Phillips slowly got used to writing from home and ended up churning out the songs that would eventually make up his 11th studio album All That You Can Dream, released last month via Yep Roc. Obviously, at the time of writing, the events of January 6th were top of mind and ended up inspiring songs like “Rats in a Barrel” and “Peace Is a Delicate Thing”. On the latter, Phillips compares peace to “snow on the ground,” as if the very concept that we take for granted is seasonal, dependent on who’s in power at the time. The general horrors of the Trump administration and its role as the beginning of the end rather than a blip inspire “Cut to the Ending” and “My Eyes Have Seen”, the latter specifically referring to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. The overall trauma of the past few years manifested in “Cannot Trust The Ground”, whose title refers to the modes of thought of someone who has lived through earthquakes but makes the case that our collective societal turmoil is somewhat of a quake itself. Phillips also wrote songs for the people he spent most of his time with--himself and his family--in the form of “You Can’t Hide” and “Remember This”, the latter dedicated to his teenage daughter.

Once he had the songs written, Phillips reached out to many of his usual collaborators--drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Jennifer Condos, keyboardist Jamie Edwards, pedal steel guitarist Eric Heywood, and cellist Richard Dodd--to add more sonic elements to the songs. (Phillips produced, recorded, engineered, and mixed the record at his Nashville home.) The pump organ of “Peace Is a Delicate Thing” gives it a nostalgic quality, as if Phillips is nostalgic for a bygone era where the entirety of American society wasn’t constantly under threat of violence. The subtle drum rumbles below the gentle acoustic guitar picking on “Cannot Trust the Ground” perfectly mirror the song’s sentiment. But as usual, the basis of the songs are as solo arrangements on acoustic guitar, and that’s why now, when Phillips is able to finally tour again, he’s still playing solo. “It’s something I’m at ease with,” he told me over the phone last month. “I can go to musical places--emotional places--on my own. That’s kind of where this material is formed. The moment conception takes place on a couch at home, or changing my strings in a hotel room in a foreign country. To carry that straight through to the final performance makes sense when you think about it.”

Phillips plays Friday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: The songs on All That You Can Dream are born out of such a specific time and place, written in somewhat of an isolation. Is it sort of weird to play them to an audience?

Grant-Lee Phillips: No, I wouldn’t say so. I feel like this is a situation where we’ve had a lot of shared experiences, be it isolation or anxiety. All of these things that have driven us inward back into our homes and minds. Even beyond language [barriers], there’s a great deal of shared experience. And it’s not as though we’re out of the woods. I’d love to believe we were. But I think the residue and trauma of what we went through is something we’ll be working through for some time, as well as the reality that we live in a time where we could see another rise of variants or you name it. It’s an unsettling era we’re existing in.

SILY: You’re used to turning back songs that have layers and elements into the solo performance they were born out of. But were there any unique challenges in doing that with this particular batch of songs?

GLP: Not especially. I have a different relationship to them. It’s like bringing them up as children, as seedlings of ideas or sketches. There are so many points in time where they could have gone a different way that only I’m privy to. The listener knows the composition as a layered, sonic experience, but it doesn’t really throw me to play a song like “All That You Can Dream” even though the album version is based in the piano and the production I apply to the arrangement. I guess I’m always kind of aware of that. Even with Grant Lee Buffalo, we had to be aware of who we were on an album and who we were on stage. In hindsight, I’ve come to realize the distinction wasn’t so different. You can go back and get it right on a record, I guess, but sometimes, you would chase your tail trying to find what would happen spontaneously when you stepped on a stage and plugged in. All of these musicians are chasing after that perfect way to get the song and the track.

SILY: There are a few songs here about Jan 6, 2021. You talk about history and our ideas and awareness (or lack thereof) of history repeating itself. On “Rats in a Barrel”, you sing, “I’m done with mercy / I’m all tapped out.” Do you find you have empathy fatigue for certain groups of people that participated in such activities?

GLP: I have to think about that. My feeling is that there are lots of people who have, for their own reasons, believed in things that were untrue and not to their benefit. The values of those who thought they were doing the patriotic thing of that day. I don’t have an omnipotent view of everyone who was there and who played a role in that. I think we’re only beginning to get a sense of those at the core and the planning and who would gain the most from retaining power. That is yet to be revealed, which is a very frustrating place to be for a lot of us in this country. The feeling that justice is delayed if absent for those who should be held accountable. Meanwhile, down here on the ground, where all of us live and do our work, justice comes quite rapidly, for the person with a broken taillight or outdated registration. Some of that frustration is the kind of thing that actually fuels such resentment, but where does that resentment go? It festers, and tragically, that very resentment--which is real and grounded in reality at times--is used to wrangle the mob against their own interests and certainly against the interests of a democratic society, a country that should be lifting one another up. But I’m very concerned. I lose a lot of sleep over it.

SILY: I was struck on “Cut To The Ending” when you sing, “History is told by an old man / Who survived the wars / Little talk of spineless enablers / Ones who held the door.” Why do you think we tend to forget the enablers of bad history?

GLP: Oh, gosh. There’s a point in time where the generations that experienced the atrocity no longer walk the earth. We live in a time where it’s almost criminal to impart or teach history, in [worlds] of strongmen and despots. You can see the way a society turns to a person who seems to have all the answers and like a steamroller plows over everyone who comes in their way and challenges their power. There was a story that I read how in the shadow of Mussolini, [Italy] looked towards him as a symbol of strength and masculinity, and many young men carried a picture of him in their pocket. Whether they did literally or not, that was the image of who a person they [thought they] should be. Might was always right. When it came to Hitler, the tragic mantra was always, “We can control him. We can use this guy and the numbers he has behind him and the impetus to exploit him.” What a tragic mantra. Those who hold the door and hang on to their little slipper of power, they too will come to realize they made decisions that weren’t in their best interest in the long term. That’s what that song is about. “Cut To The Ending” as if we’re watching another horror film where we know what’s gonna happen. You know what’s gonna happen when you mix certain chemicals.

SILY: When you sing, “A fool won’t listen to reason / Till he’s gone too far,” I thought of all the stories of unvaccinated folks in the hospital, previously adamant about not getting vaccinated, dying from COVID and begging nurses to give them the shot and the nurses saying, “Sorry, I can’t give it to you.” 

GLP: The thought that there are so many who might have survived this period, the first, second, third waves of this pandemic had it not become so tribal: That’s beyond tragic. I’m not one to leap into every opportunity to get a vaccination. I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but even the flu shot, I think, “What is it? Do I have to get it?” I understand apprehension, especially when it comes to a situation they’re not used to. But the Trump administration did us no favors in how it was dealt with. I feel like the health officials were very slow to act. On one hand, it’s a miracle we have been able to develop vaccines, but we were told by officials, “Don’t wear a mask.” We were condescended to in that fashion. Though she defends her position, [former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator] Dr. [Deborah] Birx was quick to pat Trump on the back about his head for details and not her own head as he blathered onward about bleach and lightbulbs and whatever else he was on about. I think that was a real low moment. I think people died because of it. What can you say? I don’t judge people who make those decisions--I have compassion for anyone who is being ripped off or hoodwinked. I feel like there’s been a lot of that.

SILY: On “My Eyes Have Seen”, you talk about the horrors of WWII and the border during the Trump administration. But I can’t help but think that the irony of that song is there’s still so much our eyes haven’t seen.

GLP: That’s true. That’s a good observation. My inspiration was pretty firmly planted in the border crisis. I hadn’t thought of the other implications you hit upon. But I think you can most certainly see parallels anywhere where people are targeted and become refugees of their own country, as is the case in Ukraine, or wherever. But the things that we don’t see is such a good point. We lived through the war in Iraq, and so much of that was really hidden from us as well. You don’t want to even entertain those thoughts--you want to believe the government is doing the right thing and that, “We’re the good guys.” But it hasn’t always been the case.

SILY: This record’s certainly not all political. A few tracks are strictly personal to you. Take the sentiment of “You Can Hide”, for instance, “You can’t hide no more than the sun or moon can hide.” Is that an oddly comforting message to yourself, or more of a warning?

GLP: That is very much a song to myself. I share it hoping it will strike a chord for someone else. But there is sort of a double meaning. We can’t hide from all of the things we’ve previously discussed. That is the world we live in. But we can’t hide from our nature to find joy and to laugh and be communal, [either]. All of these impulses to protect ourselves to be on guard against threat, but to socialize and pull together is in us, too. Sometimes, those very beautiful human impulses are exploited. The desire to respond as a group and marshal such power when we truly need to. That song is about those things, and also about trying to pull myself out of my dark place. It’s easy to go there and not want to come out.

SILY: You have a song for your daughter on here where you reference disagreements. You talk a lot politically about not thinking the same way as someone else, but the way you talk about it with your daughter, it’s more loving. How do you balance these different perspectives?

GLP: As a teenager, you’re trying to establish your independence. That’s that tug of war. It was nice to spend time off the road with my daughter, helping her with her homework, brushing up on the things I didn’t pay attention to the first time around. That’s one of the lyrics in that song: “We don’t always think the same / Not a crime to disagree.” And that is true, especially in that context. We have to find ourselves and make our own mistakes and come to our own conclusions, perform our own experiments. She’s preoccupied with traipsing through the woods and setting traps for lizards, and I’m the one saying, “Watch out for ticks!” That’s a different context than the political disagreements we [all] have. In the arena of social media, it’s difficult to have the kinds of conversations that would produce meaningful understanding. It’s kind of like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots on Twitter, trying to get the last word in. You just follow the people that seem fairly balanced and insightful. There’s plenty to disagree with. I open up Twitter in the morning, and it’s like sticking my head in a furnace. The fire singes my eyebrows off, and I begin another day.

SILY: These songs were written a couple years ago. What else is next for you? Are you currently working on anything?

GLP: Someone from [Yep Roc] brought it to my attention that it was 20 months ago that I released my last record. These days, the thing that takes the longest is the packaging and manufacturing, especially vinyl. In the case of this record, that took many, many months. We finished it 9 months in advance to get everything lined up. I’ve been a prolific writer. I began writing this album a few months after the last one came out. I worked on it through the winter and spring, and by early summer, I handed it into the record company. We began figuring out how long it would take. It was a long time. So at this point, I anticipate more touring. Hopefully I’ll be back in Europe in December, possibly on the West Coast in the fall. I have some intriguing concerts in the coming year in France and the UK. I think in some ways I’m at the point where I want to savor touring and performing and playing all the songs I’ve recorded lately.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

GLP: I’ve been really taken with Angel Olsen. I’ve got a couple different biographies to read. I’m also reading a [Geoffrey R. Stone’s] Sex and the Constitution, which is about sexuality and how it was dealt with going back to the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Middle Ages, and the influence of Saint Augustine onward. How we got to this point in time where Supreme Court judges cite witch-burning jurors from 300 years ago to make the judgements of the day. [laughs] Good light reading.

#interviews #live picks #grant-lee phillips #yep roc #old town school of folk music #all that you can dream #denise siegel-phillips #lightning show us your stuff #jay bellerose #jennifer condos #jamie edwards #eric heywood #richard dodd #grant lee buffalo #angel olsen #geoffrey r. stone #sex and the constitution

[eveliina186]

Society's losers. Suicidal losers. Bullied losers. Drug losers. And losers in love.

What is a loser for you?

A loser is someone who doesn't fit into the social canons and sees himself outside of society and society also shuts him/her out because of that.

A Loser is a person who has reached a point where he can't stand his life and has to do things that he has to do to escape from his reality. This society is set up so that you end up being a loser, no matter how hard they try to say otherwise (The American dream). Are we losers? Yes, we are. Proud? Of course we are.

Today the psychologist told me that I am angry with the world. What could have happened? I want to kill myself. It's something that happened when you were 5 years old. Why don't we get over it? Because we're fucking losers.

What makes a loser be a loser, his circumstance or his self? Maybe it's clinical derpession.

It's also situational that makes you a loser. It's not fitting into a system, into a mold, so whatever surrounds you and discriminates you makes you a loser. Because there is a false idea of winners and losers. It is an illusion that capitalism has created, to separate the people who are worth and those who are not worth, those who are useful and those who are not. It is to be productive for the system and for the microsystem that is the family. Do you know why we fight so hard to spread the importance of public mental health and achieve almost nothing? Because the powerful are not interested in people starting to be well in the head and heal their traumas, because people who have depression are worthless, do not produce and bring problems. They are not interested in keeping us alive. There are thousands of suicides a year (in any nation) Are they doing anything about it? Other than putting up a useless phone number. An outsider doesn't produce in the same way that a person who doesn't rethink their life produces. People who are outsiders reveal themselves in some way and see the seams in the system. Not wanting to be part of the norm. One fucking phone number for a country of millions of people, do they think they are saving the world with that? It's putting a wet band-aid on a huge wound. They can put public psychologists and they have the money for that project, but they don't want to spend it on that because it doesn't suit them and they are going to let us slit our wrists (message to anyone who has any kind of command or important position in the government). If they want us dead, be honest and say so, that is better than giving false hopes.

“The system is going to protect us, keep us alive and happy, I trust it fully” said no one ever.

Maybe you are saying that blaming the system all the time is too easy. No, you must think that there are people who are born with a looser tendency to struggle. That may happen that there are people who generate their own misery and their own undoing.

But most psychopathic losers are not born, they are created by the system. Do you know what is one of the reasons why people are terribly bad, depressed and suicidal? Fucking money. And that's the system's fault. Your father can work 16 hours a day, barely have any time left to interact with you and still not have enough money to make ends meet and you'll still be short of food at home and you'll have a father you can barely know because he's working all day and so your childhood sucks. Is it the kid's fault?

Hit rock bottom to stay alive. Something as necessary as the air we breathe.

Is a message from the movie “Fight Club”: when you lose everything you are free to act.

And not being able to see beyond, a typical symptom of depression that is not often talked about. How do you explain to someone who has never had depression what “not being able to see beyond” is? It is something very specific. It's being anywhere and saying “I can't imagine myself living another second and I can't bear the thought of continuing this life”. It's the most horrible feeling in life. When you are in that tunnel of not seeing beyond (you don't know it's a tunnel, in those moments you only see a wall) the only thing you can see is the ceiling. You can play games, watch a movie, many things. But you don't even have the motivation to get up and go pee. And it all builds up inside you.

Let's see, it's not good to hit rock bottom because it's dangerous and you may not get out. But if you see that you can't stop going down to hell, don't worry so much about hitting bottom. There will come a time when you will get fed up with yourself and you will say: this is it, you have to get out of the pit. There is no other way out of depression. No matter how much you go to the loony bin, if you never get to say “I hate myself, I'm sick of myself”, there are two solutions: I shoot myself or I try to live. You can't live locked up in a room, however tempting it may be, because otherwise you fall into the apathy of depression. And emptiness is far worse than any physical pain. The emptiness of depression is nothingness. You can be blank, staring at the wall, and you can spend hours dissociating. But underneath that apathy is the pain that brings you out of it.

If there is no rebellion that comes from pain and nonconformity, there is no hope.

Sadness is rebellion.

You have to hit rock bottom before you can start living. And when you hit rock bottom you learn many things, like the priorities of life, what really matters.

And when you come out of the depression (if you come out), or when you relapse, you have the learning you have acquired from the depression and that serves you for your whole life and you become a much more assertive person and much more empathetic and a fucking decent person. Not like shallow people who go through life without empathy thinking that others are their pawns in a game of checkers and they think they can go through life doing whatever they want to do in life. *A person who has depression does not go around playing with people's feelings because they are terrified of making someone else feel the suffering they have already experienced. Basic people are the meanest.

Fictional loser characters, our own: The characters in the movie Little Miss Sunshine.

Dwayne, a teenager who has made a promise to himself: to be an aviator, to escape “flying” from that family he detests, and he has imposed selective mutism on himself until he achieves that goal. Frank, the uncle who tried to commit suicide. He is gay, his boyfriend has left him and he has lost his job.

 Olive, the little girl who dreams of being a beauty queen, but is the furthest thing from hegemony.

 Sheryl, Olive and Dwayne's mother, who never makes ends meet.

 The grandfather who has been kicked out of the nursing home for using cocaine and is a burden on the family (one of the best characters). Poverty is very present in this story.

But, the biggest loser of that family and the only really pathetic one is the one who doesn't fit in society but wants to fit in at all costs: Richard, Sheryl's husband, father of the girl. He believes in the American dream. As much as he tries to fit in (and pursue financial success as his mecca and pretend his daughter is a deluded beauty queen), he doesn't see that it will never happen, he doesn't see reality. Society sells us on being happy rock stars. But if you don't fit in, if your social status doesn't reach or if they don't like your looks, stop trying, those are NOT your people. He thinks that if he has the perfect family, society will accept him.

Society will never accept you, because it is an illusion.

But when you are told that the dream of your life can never be fulfilled and the illusion of your life is shattered it is like a grenade exploding inside your chest, something that not many can survive. The uncle experiences that shattering from the beginning of the movie. Dwayne experiences it when he learns that because of a problem with his vision he won't be able to be a pilot. But both emerge. Can the father, the “perfect” one, emerge when his turn comes? The only one who manages to motivate Dwayne to get out of the pit is his little sister Olive, because she is the only innocent one. If you still have innocence left, are you a loser? No, because innocence is hope. The girl wasn't a loser at all, she hadn't burned bridges like the others.

And the uncle's words of encouragement to Dwayne: Life is like fucking high school. Make the most of school because that's when you're going to suffer the most in your life, but it's the time that's going to shape you into a decent person in this life. Save some innocence. That pain, from possible bullying, will give you strength. Once you get over being a loser in school, you've got the heaven won. If you get over that, everything after that will be shit compared to that.

Then people wonder why high schools have shootings? That's the true face of the American Dream.

Bullying in school is objectively hell on Earth. It's a place where you're going to suffer every day and you can't tell anyone, because if you tell it's worse. You have to endure that pain, you have to make it to the end alive, I beg you, because it will mean a rebirth. You're better than those people. You know what Sweet Revenge is after that? Seeing on Facebook or Instagram the pictures of your ruined bullies, seeing that your bullie cut his life short by getting his girlfriend pregnant too young, and that the peak of glory in his life was when he called you a “loser” in high school, and that he will never be able to get higher than that, than being the soccer star and that his life and youth is prematurely over.

We, the losers, may even commit suicide. But even if it comes to that, we will NEVER have our peak of glory in high school. Our time in high school was a survival and we didn't think we were the kings of the jungle. Our life will go on much better than before and better than theirs. This is what Dwayne and his uncle's talk in Little Miss Sunshine refers to. They recognize reality, they know they are losers and they accept it. And Little Miss Sunshine's grandfather, another great character. He is granddaughter's coach in her beauty queen career, and didn't want to set a bar or give her an impossible goal to aspire to, like her father. He let her be and created a dance routine according to her, for her to have fun. Grandpa knows that she, despite not being a loser per se, has the curse of poverty and being in a family of “losers”. And knowing one's limitations is the right thing to do. He created a show for her. A “Super freak” show. Grandpa knew how to do terrorism: he put a bomb, which is the girl, in that beauty contest. A critique of beauty contest.  The ending of Little Miss sunshine is the victory of the freaks and the losers. It is incredible, the best ending. Victory must be personal and not fit into a social system. This movie teaches us that, we as losers, our duty is to do the rebellion, is to do the terrorism at the winners' table.

Another undeniable side of the loser's world: drug addiction.

Drugs can be a great lifesaver, it abstracts you from the society that pushes you to the margins. How do you manage your chemistry when your chemistry is very worn out? Sometimes you miss feeling something in your heart too much. It's one more escape from life. But it's an escape that screws up your life. It is a very recurrent theme in depressive people, something that must be approached with less prejudice. You have to talk without taboos, because the truth will set you free.

If you are like Renton from the movie Transpotting, who is addicted to heroin, it is a very clear theme to represent, because heroin is a drug that makes you give a shit about everything, it is an opiate that destroys your life. As Renton says, heroin makes the only thing you care about in life is the next shot you're going to take. And that takes away a lot of your worries. It's an attractive thing to fall into. Opiates are for people who can't handle their reality, and it's something that very intelligent (and the most intelligent and aware) people can fall into. Being increasingly aware of the bitter reality and not being able to handle what you discover. It's not always just junkies, depression is a major factor in the descent into drugs. And drug addicts are society losers, and the most marginalized. Imagine a perfect American family, what do they do with a drug addict member? they marginalize them, they hide them. Film where a previously depressed person falls into drugs: My own private Idaho.

The drug changes the person and turns him into an addict. And society only sees that last phase of that depression. It sees only an addict. Have you asked him before you judge him why he became addicted?

Life is sometimes unbearable. Sometimes it is not possible to live another second in a vacuum.

Also don't judge the person who uses a straw and accuse him of polluting the ocean with it. When there are thousands of companies polluting the air. Look at the fucking enemy above. Stop judging the one who is just as fucked up as either us or the one who is more fucked up than you. It's a bigger problem than you think. The enemy is not your neighbor struggling to pay rent like you, the enemy is the owner of the building.

Drugs is an escape candy. The people upstairs are also bored with their perfect lives and looking for escape.

Another important pillar: losers in love.

The protagonist of the film Nowhere by director Gregg Araki. He knows that the world is absurd and the world is going to end, and he wants to find something true. Love. He wants to find someone pure with whom he wants to share experiences. He wants to experience something real, something that will save him from the daily doldrums. Director Gregg Araki, despite dealing a lot with sex, HIV and drugs in his films, is a director who focuses on the search for idealized love. The search for love in a world where you feel alone because it is a mess. Hopelessness reigns and the search for love as faith.

If we are losers in everything, we are also losers in love. And what is the most loser thing that can happen to you in love? Here we bare souls: the worst thing is that you have many tender feelings for a person and that you believe that person has the same kind of feelings, and that it fills your soul to think of that person, and suddenly you find out that you mean nothing to that person. Finding out that for her/him you are just another contact in her/his address book to call when she/he gets bored. The curse of the loser in love.

When you have been a loser and have suffered, you naturally avoid playing with other people's feelings. And you take love seriously. We are also aware that people with depression often have abandonment issues. You see everything as a blur and you are an observer. You observe everything from a distance, like the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye.

And you just want to share your observations, from love.

There's a moment in the “Daria” series where she talks to Trent, the one she likes, her best friend's older brother. The cool guy talks to the nerdy girl. She thinks they've had a very deep conversation. And they have had it. But then another girl shows up, attractive, the one Trent likes, and he leaves with her. And Daria's like “what I thought happened was a lie?” It's heartbreaking. But it was real. It's ALWAYS real. Get it through your heads, you know what happens? He probably did like you. But the fucking system scares popular people, the people at the top, the system scares them because of the possibility of falling down. There was curiosity and connection. But to be with the nerd is to fall down. But they always end up going back to the losers, because the losers are real people. They are the real ones. The ones who truly have the street.

Enough of using people like they're your fucking toys and enough of this absurd competition of “if I fuck more people, I win. If you fuck less, you're a loser.” Some people are smart. WTF. Sexual freedom is fine. What we support is you using people to fill gaps, to gain external validation and to fill her with false fantasies. We don't support using her for her body and expecting her (to listen to your conversations and care about you) if you can't give the same. It's wrong to believe that love is like that in modernity, and if you believe it you're a shit. Freedom is one thing, debauchery is another. Sex addiction gives cringe. If you're not in a repressive country, don't think you're cool for fucking more and more people. Sexual liberation should involve not pressuring anyone, not even yourself.

Doing it for the sake of doing it to fill gaps, because I'm sad... it's cringe. It's not organic, it doesn't flow that way.

The system imposes having sex. It wants to convince you that not having sex is a shame that you should get rid of as soon as possible. And it shouldn't be that way. And you end up copying what you see in porn and not feeling anything.

Being losers, being an outsider is good, because it gives you freedom. You live life more or less as you want, with those you want, with those you consciously choose, (if you know other losers, you can create your own little sect of losers) and you live more comfortably, without the pressure of perfection before society.

Having a perfect relationship is not the only way to find love. “Only fools have good relationships” Seymour, Ghost World, 2001.

When society sets a very high goal (business models, seduction courses, beauty standards), the powerful know that the majority will never get there, even if you pull out your fingernails you will never get there. This is the basis of advertising and pyramid scams. The system just throws you a bone to bite on. But not everything that oppresses you is real.

There is one thing that fills my soul, and that is: terminal illness. No matter how much money you have, you eat cancer and I eat it. And there we are all the same.

If capitalism were to fall, everyone would be scared to death and looking for a team. When the seeds of the false society fall, the liberation you feel is to realize that in reality there are more possibilities, the truth is what you find with your intelligence. When a seed falls, you feel a relief. If you have done things right, if you have been observant, empathetic and attentive, you can see your learning process. That's where you see who survives. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Movies about losers: Submarine. Little Miss Sunshine. Ghost World. Transpotting. Nowhere. Wellcome to the dollhouse. My own private Idaho. Daria (series). Gummo. The idiots, by Lars Von Trier. Trash humpers. Kids. Manolito gafotas.

And the manga Koe no katachi, personal recommendation about bullyng ins school.

This text in not mine, is my almost completely accurate transcription of a podcast in Spanish from the youtube channel “Soy una pringada”. Podcast titled “Club de fans de Shrek #15: Perdedores”.

#loser #paul dano #little miss sunshine #soy una pringada #esty #esty quesada #club de fans de shrek #suicide #depressing shit #depression #gregg araki #daria mtv #harmony korine #todd solodz

[hongkongartman-mlee]

CY Leo Is Too Good To Be True: A Good Music Skill, A Good Look, A Good Family, A Good Academic Qualification And A Good Girlfriend: Being The World-renowned Harmonica Artist, What Can Be His Fears Of The Unknown?

In the mystery of music lie the secrets that a talent will spend his whole life to uncover. He likes to feel un-settled and has huge inventories of worries of the unknown. When trials of life, one after another, come to test his faith in art, doubt will be removed one day if he sets his ultimate hope in that he loves—art.

CY Leo (何卓彥) was born in 1994 and has never been tired of harmonica since the age of 6 when he started to learn the tunes from his father who is a well-known harmonica player in Hong Kong. The harmonica, also known as a mouth harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument in many genres, notably in blues, country and classical music. It was adapted from an old Chinese instrument called Sheng (笙) more than 1000 years ago.

We are only the stars and, of course, jealous of the moon: Leo, already possessing the talent of music, has a good look with the similar charm of Timothée Chalamet. He also has a great height, an impressive academic qualification (occupational therapy), an enviable family background in which both parents are medical professionals and his younger brother is a teacher, and finally a sweet girlfriend and they fly in pairs to wherever he performs.

Leo is a beautiful butterfly that is also a busy bee. He practises harmonica more than 3 hours a day. He makes online video lectures to teach people how to play harmonica. He produces harmonica concerts and CDs. He takes part in activities which promote community support for harmonica. The award given by Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2020 is just a diamond Koh-i-Noor which glitters among many crown jewels that are already his other international awards. CY Leo is a supper for many female sharks. This is a figurative speech but you can know the degree of his popularity that I am referring to. Leo was not mad at my joke and responded politely, “I am simply a lucky man!”

I asked Leo, “Are you too good to be true? I just attended your concert. Your music is totally stylistic! The audience was respectful of your work.” He faltered, “Currently, things for me are too good to be true. But, fears of the unknown have the power to trouble my heart, over and over again.” I was puzzled and raised the question, “What kind of fear?” He replied seriously, “I am a family man. I love to be as closely as possible with my family. After I get married and have kids, I guess my wife and children cannot fly with me to do worldwide performances. The hotel room empty of them will be the saddest place.”

He continued, “What is at a peak is sure to go down. If I lose my popularity one day and earn substantially less, shall I be able to survive and have enough money to be a breadwinner? Where can I get bacon to bring home?” I asked, “So?” He said, “I think I need to be a music teacher at the same time so that I can add another string to my bow.” I remarked, “Always remember: as a top musician, your focus will determine your success. I am a lawyer and writer. I sometimes do think I am neither here nor there.”  

Leo thought about it for a while, “Stable income matters but I shall definitely not treat pop music as my career. I do play pop music from time to time so as to bridge serious music and popular taste. I want to remain a fine art musician. I love harmonica. It is light, easy, handy and affordable. It should be music for everyone especially youngsters. They can talk to the music when they are happy or moody—anywhere, just getting a harmonica out of the pocket. The sound quality of harmonica is close to that of a human voice. When you play harmonica, it seems like someone singing side by side with you! I disagree to the suggestion that harmonica is not a serious music and it is just great for busking only.”

Maurice Lee

Chinese Version 中文版: https://www.patreon.com/posts/wai-biao-cai-hua-101156253?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

CY Leo Jazz Quintet at Montreux Jazz Festival China https://youtu.be/o9gj5lVn0BA?si=y3vaxi7ycEiuEqpY Acknowledgement – Cy Leo

CY Leo & The Guardians of Groovin' Underworld《Wolala》Official Live Performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfjWssdEdW0 Acknowledgement – COLLAB HK

CY Leo Solo Harmonica https://youtu.be/JjRZI-MUgag?si=ErAlGh_bDIaISbjM Acknowledgement-Cy Leo

Harmonica Talk by CY Leo https://youtu.be/mxZbKmViwks?si=VtmnaP5TX6UJXK4v Acknowledgement – HK Arts Festival

《青春舞曲》Harmonica https://youtu.be/W4YTbaoABhM?si=MU5Yz8UyhtZWnnOp Acknowledgement - 中華口琴會

#Adam Osborne #Koh-i-Noor #Sheng 笙 #Female Sharks #Trials Of Life #No Free Lunch #Hong Kong Arts Development Council #Timothée Chalamet

[redwoodwv-hq]

Name: Amsale Bashir Age: 30 Town Occupation: Physical Rehabilitation / Gardener Previous Occupation: Physical Rehabilitation Redwood Resident Length: Newly Arrived Faceclaim: Ashley Moore

Bullet Points:

Amsale was raised in a Muslim household, she did her best to hold on to her religion even after fleeing the city, but after her mother's passing, she's lost her faith. She keeps her mother's  Qu'ran in her memory and will sometimes read it for comfort.

She is very straight to the point and isn't known to mince words. Her mother always told her she had more of her father's personality, something she didn't understand

She's fluent in English and Arabic and knows a bit of Somali but has lost most of it over time.

She has a slight idea of what her dad looks like, her mother used to show her pictures of him in their photo album, she thought she had more of his jawline than her mother's. She's not sure how long David and her mother knew each other before she was born.

She's very much the type that doesn't have time for drama and will call people out on it when they're annoying her with it.

She's pretty stubborn, she has a hard time seeing things from another person's perspective and will hold on pretty strongly to her viewpoint

Biography:

Born in Boston to her single mother, Beydaan, Amsale learned the power of independence from a young age, ingrained in her from her mother who was a tour de force all her own. Her mom was an immigrant from Somalia and had to work her ass off to get where she was, she taught Amsale that nothing was just given, everything must be earned through hard work as well as the importance of community and offering what you can for the greater good. 

Growing up, her childhood was pretty standard except for some cultural differences which when she was younger used to embarrass her but as she got older she took more pride in, encouraging friends to try the traditional foods they used to call weird or gross and being happy that they now asked for a serving themselves. She did well in school, not daring to bring anything back that was below a B. She wasn't popular in any sense of the word, but those that knew her liked her and knew they could rely on her when they were in a pinch. In high school she took on a bunch of extra-curriculars and as many AP classes as she could to get her college career started early and save her mom some money for pre-requisites . One of the projects she was most proud of was starting a community garden shared amongst the different schools. She found a lot of satisfaction in helping things grow and problem solving to improve the crops as well as donating the food that was produced to the local food banks and shelters. 

Once she went to Boston University she decided to follow the career path to become a physical therapist while researching alternative medicines on her own. Thanks to her finishing up most of her pre-requisites early in high school, she was able to finish the bachelors program at 21 and started her master's program finishing that at 23. She decided to take a few years and dip her feet into the professional world, getting some experience and some more insight. She found success in a private clinic and was able to get good results for her patients, though did get criticism for her blunt-ness and her poor "bedside manner". Fluffing around issues was never something she found much ease in, finding it a waste of time.

She was just in the process o applying into the doctorate program when the world began falling apart. Her mother heard about it over the news first, she wasn't the type to wait around and find out, so she convinced Amsale to join her in leaving the city and moving with some old family friends out in the country side. A decision she was sure was unnecessary, this would all blow over after all, just a few people got sick, they could catch it in time. Of course that wasn't the case and a short stay turned into a struggle to survive. The first few months were okay, but after food ran out, she, her mother, and their friends had to adventure out for supplies meeting with another small group and joining each other. They did surprisingly well for how small they were, Amsale went back to gardening and was able to use her medical history to help with any injuries, a few others hunted, and others worked as security while the remaining had their own roles to keep the group sustained. A few years passed before a raider group attacked taking their supplies, killing some of their group, and sending them scattered to the wind. 

Amsale and her mother were luckily able to find each other again, after a few days of living on their own they were taken in by another larger group and stayed with them for some time. Unfortunately a year in, Beydaan became ill, something with her lungs that Amsale suspected was aggressive lung cancer but was unable to be sure. It took her mother 6 agonizing months to succumb to the disease, leaving Amsale with the responsibility of sending her off so she wouldn't turn. Losing her mother tore her up, she was the one constant in her life, the one thing that grounded her in the insanity the world had become, and in just a flash, she was gone. After her mother's passing, she tried to keep to as normal of a schedule as possible, continuing her work, but there had been whispers of the plans of the new leader of the group talks of raiding other groups, of becoming more aggressive. As the rumors became more frequent, more detailed, Amsale decided enough was enough and left before she suspected things would turn south. Only with whatever she could carry on her back, she made it out on her own, just before winter began to hit. She realized a little too late that she wasn't the survive on your own type but had hopes she would find a new group she could join. Finding an abandoned small house in the woods, she set up camp and waited out the winter. 

A week ago, she overheard gunshots in the distance, some sort of fight, it only lasted a few hours before things got quiet again. Uncomfortably low on food, she decided to check it out, maybe if another community was ransacked, they might have left something. Heading towards where she heard the noise, she came across some trapped hares, and took the opportunity to help herself, that's when she was discovered by David, the father she never knew.

#redwood.characters

[realhankmccoy]

Stupid, inflexible ignorance -- when you push up against it as a queer and realise it's not changing -- deffo changes you. That's a good thing, as change is vital for growth. It's like flexing your muscles up against a stale Stay Puft marshmallow -- the marshmallow is proud of how stale and unaffected it is, so no growth occurs there. But you change... your muscles got a workout. Your mind realised how dead Stay Puft things are -- just babbling about childhood video games 15 years past expiration dates, for example.

The mere thought of giving my brother a gift, or sucking the dick of a Bruce or Christina makes me almost physically sick to my stomach... just the grotesque nature of who they are as people, and how they're not smart or flexible enough to listen to reason or emotion.

It's not just that, though. It's kind of like everything they do or are interested in is generally suspect, and for good reason. People who roll around in dumb video games and killing animals and fiddling with rituals to fictional gods and goddesses are deeply unserious people, bent on shirking a man's duties and sort of just making a McPlayplace out of life rather than facing up to anything adult.

I just can't live like that... it's not just from having a child for a father, as I did. I think it's just an ability to listen to reason and to know that there's a certain social shame involved in so many people working hard to produce an adult member of society and failing to live up to that role because you can't stop with the candy pops and lollipop consumerism that American empire tells ya is ok, the commercials telling ya just purchase it, big kid toys, being produced like a dumb animal...

It's just so fucking... revolting, you know? Only dumb and weak people could let that happen to them. When they're dumb and weak enough to bleat on about freedom when they chose captivity or strength when they chose weakness, it's just such a... like, like a mind-blowing lie that America can be this bad and this typical on the scales of multimillions ... but such is the USA.

It's certainly not normal. Some countries scarcely have these problems at all, or they're more localised.

Anyhow, as sickening as a bunch of fundamentally racist and wilfully hurtful cucks of Trump's American empire are, the sort of hope in Trumpdora's Box is the hope of having as little in common with those people as possible -- even as they try to copy me, you know, as Bro tries to copy my brains and Christina tries to copy my body -- the core of what is 'them' is nothing to me except a guide as to precisely what I don't want to be, because I just wouldn't be able to live with that much narcissism and hatred of minorities and fondness for Proud Boys in my heart... I can't be captive to the white man's belt... it's just so... fucking... it's a captivity for privileged people who are scared of the world and who refuse to crack open a history book and understand why America has unfolded in the ways it has. Trying to mansplain it up through a bunch of bullshit isn't even what the Trump 5 do... they boysplain it, or sissysplain it at times, full of lies and childish manipulations that are as transparent as the Zip-Lock Bags their brains might as well be in, vacuum-sealed to match the Empire they were born into perfectly and totally out of place if transported to a different form of Nationalism and Nationalist Identity, where they'd be just the babble of a wacko in comparison... there's no understanding among these people of what it is to be human and what it is to love other humans. It's not like Oprah who lacked love so she learned to love. It's sort of the opposite... they were from white resources and white love, so they learned to lash out at minority groups and treat everything like a conquest and a competition and a hateful sitcom laugh track or a cartoon.

Pretty grody, eh? That's what the American empire produces en masse, and that's a great reason to reject all this American crapola and construct your own view of what the nation should be and how much better it could be rather than trying to boosterism and uphold some lines you can parrot that the founding racists wrote down.

If you can't even manage to take control of your own life and your own creativity though, how are you gonna better the country?

The Trump 5 absolutely cannot and should shut up and just play their video games, kill their deer, babble about their tv shows and so forth. Step aside and at least let grown men and women put to rights the whole mess rather than you dumbfucks fat-fingering it with a child's notion of what's going on as you fight for control of the national remote control. I mean Jesus fucking Christ...

This country, lemme tell ya kids, one hell of a disgusting mess.

#usa #america #mommie dearest #mommie queerest

[marjaystuff]

Guest Review:  Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn

Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn explores the Lebensborn project, a Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race. This historical novel goes inside the Lebensborn Society, where thousands of "racially fit" babies were bred and taken from their mothers to be raised as part of Nazi Germany.

“There was a top-secret breeding program that operated for ten years. The nurses were brain washed at best and complicit.  Women were like incubators.  The Nazis had a goal of 2 million racially pure babies for the Reich.  Only 20,000 babies were produced but 200,000 babies were stolen from occupied countries. After the war the women who participated and the children born were shunned. Only 20% of these babies knew about their roots.”

At the Heim Hochland maternity home in Bavaria, three women's lives intersect as they find themselves there under very different circumstances. The Heim Hochland Estate is a country house in Bavaria. The German’s use it as a maternity home during the Second World War as part of the Lebensborn Society. Here pregnant Aryan women stay in luxury, they receive the best medical care, and their babies are adopted by high-ranking German officer’s families. 

In 1939 Gundi Schiller was unmarried and pregnant, a university student from Berlin. As a member of the Edelweiss Pirates, a resistance group, she met and fell in love with Leo Solomon, a Jewish man, who was now missing. Because she is considered an “Aryan beauty,” she is told that she needs to enter the Lebensborn program at Heim Hochland.  Gundi needs to find a way to hide the identity of her child's father and protect her baby who will be killed.

“Gundi is everything the Nazis consider perfect: blonde, blue-eyed, and tall.  But she is secretly a member of the resistance and carrying the child of a Jewish man. She is the resistor, the moral conscious of the story, and the heroine of the story.” 

Hilde Kramer is a high school student who eagerly supported Hitler’s policies. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. She believed in the cause, where maternity homes had children bred for a superior race for the German future. 

“She is pathetic and cruel.  She is unloved, neglected, and a second-class citizen.  She is brain-washed, delusional, and went along with the crowd.  She wanted to be the best “Hitler girl.” She enjoyed the power that came with her contacts. She is only eighteen and a little bit naïve and narcissistic. She became a vessel literally. She is based on a real person.  In an interview the real Hilde said that her time in the Lebensborn Society was the best time of her life. She noted she was well fed, well cared for, with a lot of leisure time.  The real Hilde Trutz told of her sexual experience with an SS officer, had a child, and handed it over for adoption, without thinking twice about it.  Till the day she died she thought she had done a great think for her country.” 

Irma Binz, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. She will be the one encouraging the unwed mothers to stay healthy, so they deliver these perfect children. Irma just wants to do her job and stay out of trouble, looking the other way. But her closeness with the women in the home has her conflicted about her loyalty to Germany, especially when it comes to the danger faced by Gundi and her baby.

“She is a typical bystander who wants to keep her head down. She does not do much questioning of the Nazis and goes whichever way the wind blows until the end. She changes the most over time.  She starts out one thing and ends up the opposite.” 

Jennifer Coburn has an incredible knack for being able to entertain while at the same time educate her readers on this important piece of horrific history.  Her characters come alive and are very relatable.