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yourtypicalfangirl23 · 10 months ago

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Youth.

and watching the three of them felt like, the cheap, corner-store shop picture frames expanded into real life. From the stale walls of his bedroom to the reds and oranges of an early autumn sunset where the screams of cicadas echoed through the gold-painted, tar highways. It was desolate, the countryside was dying, and no one except their shadows and them were present.

In his eyes.

Two boys, one girl. Three of them. The end of summer, he recalled, always brought upon a gut-wrenching dread.

It was always two boys, one girl. Three of them. end of summer.

Always the three of them, when they were too young to be heroes, still ridding the innocence of their adolescence, learning life, finding themselves. Tugging at their uniforms, one button always abandoned, shirt untucked in some parts. Far more comfortable in band shirts and ripped jeans, a zip-up hoodie always unzipped, sweats, always the sweats. Instead of the tightly fitted armor of jujitsu high, too young to be in soldiers' uniforms.

Uncleaned chalkboards, wooden floors, and large paneled windows where the curtain slowly drifted with the summer winds. Three chairs, three desks, and space. Barracks disguised as classrooms. It was always, almost normal. Always, almost kids in high school- until they see the phantom red on their hands, on each other. Until they're afraid of death, until they question if their friends will come back.

High school kids shouldn't worry about carrying their friends' corpses back, shouldn't be worrying about the infinite space that will be left from a desk taken away, two would be an awful number.

Sometimes though, when the skies were especially clear, the sun blinding enough that the classrooms felt like saunas and they had no choice but to take their lessons outside, it truly did feel like high school. On the grass, below a mighty tree, ancient with thick roots, winding with mossy branches, and rings of bark carrying the passage of time, they would laugh, too warm to sit still, too warm to listen.

The tree still stands there, to this day, though mightier in size. It holds now, his dearest memories and a neverending ache, as his eyes linger on the the three of them.

“Your eyes remind me of the sky,” he said.

Flat on his back, his head to the side, his eyes showed galaxies as they bore through his own. Two hands behind his head, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, as if he had forgotten the blood that was smeared on his hands just yesterday.

“They aren’t though, Suguru” he had said back.

Suguru. Suguru was the boy who had constellations in the creases of his irises, eyelashes saturated with stars, and long, long hair, silky strands that looked like ink from the poems in kanji, he had read as a child.

Suguru looked back at him. He was beautiful, so very beautiful. Suguru had called his eyes the heavens, the seven seas, the world, and at some point his home.

His eyes were a source of power and hierarchy. His eyes brought fear, he had been born with these eyes as a man, never a boy, never a child. A soldier through-and-through, a born weapon for jujitsu society, the name of the Gojo clan. His eyes were for humanity, as a hero, as a savior, and as a god. His eyes brought him a military routine, always a house, never a home. He had no parents, he belonged to no one but humanity and jujitsu society. His eyes were treacherous storms and lashes of waves, raging tsunamis.

But this boy with the soft voice and planetary systems as eyes had called him his. With Suguru, he would be Satarou, a boy in high school, with eyes that looked like a clear summer’s sky. They would be Suguru and Satarou doing whatever high schoolers would do.

A scoff from Satarous’ side broke the trance and Suguru looked back.

Shoko huffs out a soft chuckle, an unsmoked cigarette hanging from her smirking lips. Her eyes had deep bags under them but they still managed to sparkle as she rolled her eyes at them. One hand under her splayed brown hair, the other fiddling in her pockets certainly reaching for a lighter. After a few moments of rustling and-

“Honestly it's sexist, we can’t wear normal fucking pants with normal fucking pockets, fucking skirts”

She lit her cigarette with one hand, her other, now removed from under her head had reached out to Suguru to offer him one, and as always he would hesitate, and then after a second, the roll would easily slip away from her slim fingers to his. Shoko had tried with Satarou but he was never as easy as Suguru, he could still remember the days when Suguru would snatch the roll away from her lips and offer her a strawberry Chup Chups instead. She had scowled at him but never complained. When days were easy, no caskets and no disappearing friends. Before, their eyes looked darker, before the eyebags, before. Before he took cigarettes so easily.

It would be the three of them then, on the ground, splayed out on the grass until the sky turned golden, the occasional breeze, drifting leaves down on them, the smell of tobacco thick in the air, and laughter. Fits of laughter, uncontrollable and untameable, wheezing and breathless. Until all three of them would be coughing, Shoko clutching her stomach and Suguru on his side, laughter echoing through the desolate land that was Jujitsu high, and Satarou in the middle, smiling the biggest he’s ever smiled. Brimming happiness at a place that was so riddled with blood and tragedy.

They would be messy and noisy as teenagers would be, tangled up together, talking shit about teachers, cursing and complaining. Talking about unresolved crushes as their cheeks bloomed with a rosy blush, kicking their feet and twirling their hair or whatever people in love do. Gossiping about the parties they have and haven't been to, talking about that new cafe that opened downtown or that new clothing shop, the one that's biased about their sizes, they don’t even sell the right color nail polish, black, because they had a personal style under these uniforms they were trapped in.

When they had nothing else to talk about (finally) and the laughter had died down to comforting silences and content sighs with heads on shoulders, fingers intertwined, legs overlapping each others’, eyes slowly beginning to close after a lazy summer's day.

“Up, you dickheads”

Shoko would drag them up, a lazy smile on her face and two outstretched hands, the sky had passed its golden hour and a light purple welcomed dusk. Their cigarettes were finished now, on the grass, giving out the last of its smoke, the lights from the windows were just starting to flicker on, and the three of them would escape, leaving the formidable fortresses of jujitsu high. Leaving the echoes of bloodshed and death into a normal life, just for a second, where they would pretend to have calculus and The Great Gatsby as the biggest worries in life.

The street lamps lit the sidewalk, a few moths dancing along its light, where one lamp, as they proceeded along the path, would never function, it never had. An occasional rumble from an old car or a noisy neighborhood kid with a bicycle would break the silence. Shoko and Satarou would skip, hands held together like preschoolers while Suguru trudged along them, complaining with a smile on his lips. They would take the first right and walk by the few abandoned appliance stores, local grocery stores, and the house with the odd chimney and even weirder garden gnomes. They would pass by the small store that rented all sorts of manga, which would be surely closed by now but still had a myriad of fairy lights at the entrance that looked quite like fireflies this late and into a nook, the only store open this late, at the outskirts of Tokyo, up on the mountains, a lone corner store which sold everything from cigarettes to the most outrageous sodas. Where an old man, as fragile as china, looking as if he would crumble at a mere touch sat on a dainty, rickety, wooden chair. Every single time. He would smile expectedly, never speaking a word, as Shoko brought the cheapest cans of beer to the counter and would wave goodbye every time they left, without fail.

Who knew that such an old face could muster up that bright of a smile?

The three of them would locate the too-small bench at the back of the store, where there would be a mess of weeds and moss, an unkept backyard. They would manage to squeeze together, Shoko in the middle, and put their feet on the circular, metallic, rather rusty, rather large table in front of them. It was too warm for that but they didn’t care as they passed along the cans of beer, awfully bitter and terrible to the taste but good enough for their high school taste buds, until they were all completed and only the metallic cans were left rustling on the ground.

If they were drunk enough Shoko would slowly take off her hair clips and toss them on the metallic table which would land with a loud clang, normally waking Satarou from his drunken daze. Then she would lay her head on either of their shoulders and for a good old while, the three of them would lie there until Suguru would slowly coax the both of them from their slumber into the long way back.

And the times when even alcohol couldn’t lay their minds to rest, squeezed upon the bench, Suguru would bring out his collection of nail polish or Shoko would pull out a small speaker. They would paint their nails and listen to whatever indie music Shoko was into and they would stall because they were still too sober, even after the ten or so cans of beer passed along them.

Either way, they would always end up in Satarou’s room, on his bed, or on the floor, all three of them close together, sticky with sweat and alcohol, still in their uniforms, now horribly disheveled, hair sticking out from all places, soft limbs, looking like a bunch of troubled teenagers, like they should have been.

That would be their summer, their youth.

At present, the area around them has grown quite a lot, changed just like they had. More appliance stores, more grocery stores, though the house had gone now, replaced with a small cozy apartment building, the lamps all functioned, no manga store, that too had been replaced with a modern tourist office. The one thing that did remain though was that lone corner shop, the old man he heard, had died a few years back.

But the store remained where it stood, nothing had changed about it.

Youth, he recalled .

Youth.

#satosugu #gojo satoru #shoko ieiri #geto suguru #fanfiction #jjk fanfic #words #jujitsu kaisen #ao3 #I wrote this at like 1am and finished it at like 5 am #literature

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return-to-twisted-wonderland · 6 months ago

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💚 anon

[Romantic Scavenger Hunt] sorry this is long

*Yuu was working on his homework at his desk—or at least trying to. Suddenly, an arrow with a rolled up piece of paper shattered through his window, sticking on the wall.*

Yuu: AH-! ...huh?

*Yuu got up from his desk, carefully untying the scroll and opening it.*

Yuu, reading off the paper: "Go on a quest and follow these clues, to find the thing you must not lose. 'Cause it would seem that you forgot a precious thing that can't be bought. There's no reason for this poem to feature a mountain, apart from the fact it rhymes with fountain. Brackets—go to the Scarabia fountain."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Scarabia - Fountain]

Yena: Sei~!

Yuu: ... what's going on...?

Jin: You'll find out soon enough.

*Yena placed a flower crown on Yuusei's head. One of harmless vines intertwined with deep purple flowers.*

Yena: Your next clue is at the field!

Yuu, heading out - small chuckle: Ace...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Field]

Onyx, sitting on a broom that was levitating a few inches off the ground: Hop on, Theon.

Yuu, sits behind her: What's going on, Nyx?

Onyx, pulling out a piece of paper: I'll tell you in the form of a poem~

Onyx, reading off the paper while beginning to fly: "Let your heart save some room, 'cause we first spoke on this broom."

*Onyx' flying the broom being a bit unstable as she read the paper.*

Yuu, gripping on tightly: That's sweet and all, but can you please focus on flying?!

Onyx: "When you offered me a seat, twice as fast my heart did beat."

Yuu, pale face: Not as fast as mine's beating right now..!

Onyx: "Your smile filled me with sheer delight, and straight away my heart to flight."

*The broom goes down suddenly.*

Yuu: AGH!!

Onyx: "Most people think I'm a nutty fruitcake, but you dear Yuu, gave me a break."

*The broom about to run into the school.*

Yuu: Brake, BRAKE, BRAKE-!

Onyx, changing directions at the last second: That's what I said. *Continues reading* "Your beauty reduces me to tears, your voice is music to my ears."

*The broom almost crashed into a group of students.*

Yuu: AAAAHHH-!!

Onyx: "I hope you felt as happy as I did, the moment our two worlds collided."

*Onyx eventually lands, leading Yuu to the potions lab.*

Onyx: Your next clue is in here.

Yuu, huffs and calms his pounding heart: Ace...

Onyx, hands him his lab uniform: Wait, safety first.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yuu, reading off another piece of paper - holding two vials of a glowing blue and green liquid: "We had our first assignment together in this class. This experiment will remind you of our special chemistry. Mix the liquids and you will see..."

Yuu, shrugs and pours the two vials into the same beaker:

*As the two liquids mix, it turns into a gray, foamy substance that expands and begins overflowing the beaker.*

Yuu, reading off the paper: "...that chemistry is as unpredictable as we are." ...shit. probably should've finished reading the whole thing first...

*The gray substance bursts out of the beaker, letting out a roar.*

Yuu: AH! *Flames wrapping around his hands appear trying to fight the gray substance-monster.*

*Yuu glances around, his eyes flicking between what is written on the blackboard and the monster.*

Yuu: "Joke—we both know I can't be trusted around potions. Please go to that desert place I love."

*The monster almost successfully bites him.*

Yuu: AH- *blasts it with a small fire ball and runs off*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Savanaclaw] - ik ace doesn't love the place but for plot purposes

Yuu, groaning as he drags himself at the edge of Savanaclaw: ... I'm..so tired....

Yuu, looks down at the ground and sees a message from bones: Eh-? "Sorry, I actually meant the dessert place where we shared our first ice cream. I made a spelling mistake in the potions lab. I probably should've corrected it on the blackboard instead of making you come all the way out here because that would have saved you the journey and stuff. Sorry I'm running out of bones, see ya there."

Yuu, sits on the ground for a moment: Heh..hahaha...*maniacal laughter*

Yuu, suddenly scowls: *growls as he threw a fireball at the bones* Ace..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Mostro Lounge]

Yuu, sits down at a booth and face plants into the table: ...

Jade, places down an ice cream on the table: It's on the house, Yuusei-san.

Yuu: ... *Gives a small smile and begins eating it*

Jade, picks up the plate and starts reading off of it: "This is where we shared our first ice cream. I got you a special flavor to celebrate! It's dark chocolate, like the sweet, introverted person you were when I first realized how much I liked you. Surprise! The second scoop is cherry to remind you of me!"

Yuu, freezes in place and eyes widened:

Jade: "Oh wait. I just remembered that you're allergic to cherries! Why am I still writing this instead of telling Jade-senpai to stop putting cherry in your bowl?! Oh my gosh, what have I done?! Oh- I know, I'll put one of you allergy pills in the toppings on top. That way, it balances it out. Phew."

Yuu: Did the pill work? *Looks at Verde*

Jade, glancing at the bubbles on his lips and hives beginning to form on his face: .... I'll get you another pill and some water...

*He leaves and comes back, watching Yuu swallow his allergy pill.*

Jade: You should be okay now. Here's your next clue. *Hands Yuu an index card*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Empty Rose Garden]

Karina, playing a melody on the cello: Don't be so nervous, Ace.

Ace: I'm not. It's just I've been standing here with a smile on my face for about five hours now—aghk..face cramp-

Karina, sighs: Tell me about it. I've played this tune 278 times now. *Stops playing* When is he coming?

Ace: I don't know. The instructions were pretty clear. *Reciting the clue* "I hope you had fun doing all this. Now come find me where we had our first kiss. You've got this far so you must really care, and the last thing to do is come meet me there."

Karina: Oh, I see. You kissed him after the headbutt.

Ace: Ah, good point. But it wasn't a headbutt, more of a blunt trauma.

Karina: ...So where was your first kiss?

Ace: ...Fuck- the forest—

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Forest Behind the School - Near the mineshaft]

Yuu, being chased by rodents: *panting* ACE! This place was a lot more romantic when we had our first kiss-!

Yuu, stops: Wait a minute, they're smaller than me. I can take them.

*They all run past him*

Yuu: Huh..? What was that all about? *Sees the a wolf (no, it's not Jack) charging at him*

Yuu: AH!! *begins running again*

*Yuu throws a fireball before running into the mineshaft, watching the wolf suddenly whimper and back off.*

Yuu, panting: *victorious smile* That's right. Remember who you're messing with next time.

*Yuu's face paled, hearing a roar behind him. The blot monster.*

Yuu, whimpers: Wait a minute, I have fire powers, I can use it-!

*The blot monster roars in Yuusei's face, making him lose his confidence and begins running again.*

Yuu: ACE!! *Gets cornered by the blot monster*

*Ace runs in front Yuu, about to use wind magic before the blot monster knocks it out of his hand.*

Ace: ...well, fuck. Use your fire powers or something!

Yuu: I can't control it! It depends on how I feel!

Ace: Uh, uhm..one last kiss before it kills us? *Leans in for a kiss*

Yuu, growls and flames appear on his hands for a split second:

Ace, leans back: Okay, sorry-

Yuu: That's it! Make me angry!

Ace: I don't know...I don't think you'll have the time to kick my butt before that thing does.

*The blot monster roars, causing the both to yelp in fear.*

Yuu: Come on!!

Ace: Uhm, uh— your dad is so dense- that when you said your laptop was buggy he sprayed it with insecticide!

Yuu, snickers and laughs into his hand: He is really bad with computers. When I told him my mouse was broken he took it to the vet.

Ace, laughs: Your sister—

Yuu, chuckling into his hand: What about her?

Ace: Your sister is so short she's only allowed to go on kid rides!

*both of them laugh*

Ace: You want to hear something else funny? You know all that stuff I put you through today? It was only because you used one heart emoji instead of the usual three.

Yuu, his third eye appears and all his eyes begin to glow: *fire appears wrapped around his hands* ARE YOU INSANE?!

*The blot monster roars, but Yuu blasts it with his fire, burning it to a crisp.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Heartslabyul Lounge] *a few days later* (Yuu is still pissed at Ace

Yuu, forced by Karina to be here:

Trey, walks out with a small egg tart: From Ace.

Yuu: Why didn't he just give it to me himself?

Trey: Well...

*Riddle walks into the room, dragging a collared Ace who was holding a neatly rolled up paper.*

*Hannah, taking a picture of the defeated looking Ace, alongside Deuce and Karina who were laughing into their hands*

Yuu, raises an eyebrow at the collared ginger: What's the paper? If its another clue for another scavenger hunt I'll roast you alive.

Ace: No, no, it's not.

#twisted wonderland #return home au #💚 anon #yuusei theon crowley #trey clover #ace trappola #karina rosehearts #jade leech #yena singh asim #onyx crowley

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ndpreservation · 4 years ago

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Dante’s Commedia and Gustave Doré

There are few literary works with a presence as prolific as Dante’s Divine Comedy. This three part narrative poem took twelve years to compose and was completed a year before Dante’s death in 1320. This coming fall Notre Dame celebrates Dante’s work with the exhibit Bound up with Love… The extraordinary legacy of Father John Zahm’s Dante Collection. As part of our work to stabilize and mount approximately 30 rare volumes for this exhibit, curator Tracy Bergstrom approached us with a desire to identify the composition of the media comprising the remarkable hand colored images in our 1868 edition of Dante's Commedia in order to better understand the history and production of this volume.

The Divine Comedy narrates the path of the soul after death and follows Dante through the Inferno or Hell, Purgatorio, and Paradisio. The masterful language conjures a robust field of imagery, captivating the reader with scenes so intricate that they can only be described as real or they, at the very least, feel as though they are.

Given its literary imagery, it’s no surprise that The Divine Comedy has been an inspiration to artists since its creation. The Hesburgh Libraries holds thousands of editions of the poem, many of which are illustrated. The 1868 edition of Commedia is one of several copies held by the Hesburgh Libraries of the first printed edition of illustrations by the French artist, Gustave Doré. Doré’s prints for the Comedy are nearly as ubiquitous as the work itself, but our edition is unique in the way it was treated after printing. The prints in this copy are hand colored, but instead of watercolor or similar wet media more commonly used for this purpose, these prints have been colored using dry media including pastel, graphite, and colored pencil. It is more difficult to achieve detailed application of color with dry media than paints. Friction is required to deposit color from a pencil or crayon, whereas only a light stroke or tap of a very fine paint brush is needed to apply watercolor to a surface. Given the extreme detail of Doré’s engraved lines, coloring with this media was an unexpected find, and to date no other copies of this edition are known to have been colored in this manner.

Colored pencil has a waxy surface sheen distinct from other wax based media, which makes it easy to identify. It was first invented in the late 19th century, but was not accepted as an artist's medium until the early 20th, when Faber-Castell (manufacturer) produced an expanded range of colors marketed to artists.1 This Doré Dante was published in 1868-69, but this would suggest the coloring did not occur until much later.

The application of color is interesting as well. Pencil is designed to produce sharp detailed lines, but is less effective for shading large areas with uniform color. We see in this detail of the grass, in the lower portion of the image, how the tone has been built up with a layered application of multiple colors including yellow, green, blue, and orange glazed across the black and white print. The strokes appear loose and vigorous as they intertwine with the lines of the print.

We don’t have any information on who may have hand-colored this work, whether it was a commissioned artist, or possibly an earlier owner with artistic skill, but clearly it was someone with determination who vividly rendered the majority of the illustrations in this work. Visit RBSC to view this Commedia and other works by Dante and his contemporaries during the upcoming fall exhibit.

1 Crist, A. http://29aqcgc1xnh17fykn459grmc-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/anagpic-student-papers/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2020/04/2006ANAGPIC_Crist.pdf

#ndpreservation #Dante #gustavedore #rbsc

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lykaokrios · 4 years ago

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Perfectly Fine - M!De Sardet x Vasco

Fandom: Greedfall

Paring: Captain Vasco x M!De Sardet

Word Count: 1,658

Description: Vasco is battling with feelings he most certainly doesn't have for De Sardet, until it all comes spilling out.

Warnings: Mild swearing

My AO3

Vasco wasn’t a man prone to rash emotion. Usually able to keep his head steady in most situations; else he’d make a poor captain. Annoyed? Yes. Miffed? Of course. But angry? Very rarely.

But anger had seemed to slither into his veins the longer he was on land. It was the land’s doing of course. Being too far from sea. It had nothing to do with the handsome noble he found himself following.

It was never anger AT De Sardet. But anger at situations and people around him. The more he… became friendly with the man the more things that seemed to tick him off.

And it most certainly didn’t have anything to do with the way said man made his heart quicken. With the way he looked at him. With the feelings he refused to acknowledge as anything more than mere attraction. A battle he was sorely losing.

The idea of being in love with a noble seemed crazy. Being in love with the nephew of a Prince however, seemed absolutely insane. Even if he was willing to accept his own feelings, which he wasn’t, there was no way De Sardet would reciprocate. And even if he did, which he wouldn’t, it wasn’t like he was in any position to be with him. He was the Legate of the Congregation, nephew of the prince, cousin of the governor, and he was in line for the fucking throne. As if he could be with a Naut even if he wished to be.

But no. Those thoughts certainly never bothered him. They rarely crossed his mind. And never had he taken that anger out on the next battle they fell into or looked to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey for the answer to this problem.

If he just wasn’t so… caring. If he just didn’t look at him so.. fondly. Vasco concludes that must be it. While the Nauts are a close family, you were set to your own devices to figure things out fairly early. They said that’s how you grow, how you show who you’re going to be. There was no motherly or fatherly roles, just mentors. They cared in their own ways. But never anything outright.

But De Sardet. He often wore his heart on his sleeve. A trait Vasco first saw as a weakness. Caring for too many people. Trying to help too many people, all out of sense of doing the right thing. But over time he found himself enamored with the ideals of the man. The way he tried to maintain peace with everyone. How he wanted to think the best of all parties. The way he took everyone’s voice into account.

The way he easily built friendships as their little crew expanded. How he’d drop everything to help one of them. The day Vasco had asked for his help, he immediately started planning, and had the file to him within 24 hours. It was an odd feeling, having someone in his life that would risk their life and reputation just to make him feel more whole.

The Nauts had long told them that who they were before didn’t matter. To just forget it. But it mattered to Vasco. And because it mattered to him, De Sardet decided it mattered to him as well.

The day Vasco went down in battle, De Sardet was to him in moments, standing over him warding off the attackers with a fierceness he’d never seen. After a pile of corpses lay before them, he swiftly turned to Vasco to check on him. Calloused hands moving impossibly soft across his face, blue-green eyes full of worry staring into his soul.

De Sardet had the eyes of the ocean. Their color reminded Vasco of the waters surrounding the Naut island. The water he grew up splashing in with the other children, swimming in and training in as he grew, and the water he returned to happily each time he made it back. A beautiful blue-green. The storm that seemed to wage in them when he was angry, the calmness in them when he was happy. The captain felt like he could happily get lost in them every time they were trained on his own golden eyes.

Not that his other features were easy to ignore. It would take a blind man to not notice how handsome the legate was. A rugged rough masculine build. Strong jaw, strong frame, a dusting of facial hair. A smile that made him weak in the knees each time it was directed at him. Unfortunately, Vasco wasn’t the only one that noticed.

He knew there would be nothing between himself and the legate, as he continued to remind himself. Others enjoying his features, flirting with him, or attempting to seduce him wasn’t to be of Vasco’s concern. The man could do as he liked.

Not that those people didn’t infuriate the captain to no end. He often just scoffed at their attempts, or focused on maintaining as neutral of an expression as he could manage. A task he didn’t seem to be that good at, if Kurt’s reactions were anything to go by.

“You looked as if you were ready to kill that man,” Kurt states simply as the two of them follow behind the legate as they leave the half Brothel half gambling ring basement of San Matheus.

“No clue what you are on about,” Vasco responds sternly, fighting down the anger still flowing through his veins.

“Either you have a history with that prostitute and you don’t like him, or you don’t like how he talked to De Sardet I’d wager by that reaction,” Kurt pushes.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Vasco still insists, clenching his hands as they walk, his eyes trained on the design on the back of De Sardet’s cape.

“Man was just doin’ his job. Green-blood seemed interested anyway,” Kurt teases.

“He did not!” Vasco hisses, whipping around to face Kurt. His fists clenched and his chest heaving. “The man should be able to see he is an important diplomat doing a job, and fucking watched his mouth. He didn’t immediately need to try to climb him like the fucking mast.”

“Vasco?” De Sardet stops walking to turn back to his companions, his expression confused. “Is everything alright with you two?”

“Perfectly fine,” Vasco responds back through gritted teeth.

Looking unconvinced, the legate’s gaze turns to his old weapons-master, “Kurt?”

Kurt lets out a laugh before reaching out to grab the Naut on the shoulder, a move Vasco refutes, shaking his hand off of him. “I’m just havin’ a bit of fun with him, and he took it seriously.”

Crossing the distance between them, De Sardet approaches Vasco, noticing the obvious tension in his body.

“Kurt, please give us a moment to speak,” he says, placing a hand to Vasco’s chest as he backs the man into an a nearby empty alleyway. “What happened?”

In that moment, the dirt road suddenly got far more interesting for the Naut captain. His eyes trained to one specific boot print in the dirt as he tries to mumble a lame response.

“Vasco.”

“He was just… teasing me a bit, nothing more nothing less,” he insists.

“What did he say that got you that riled up? I’ve never seen you this agitated. Then again… you were agitated before this. What is going on?”

Vasco remains silent, just kicking his own boot in the dirt. His body still tensed, but now he’s not sure if it’s previous anger or how close he now found himself to the other man.

After a few moments of silence, De Sardet grabs ahold of both sides of Vasco’s uniform and shoves him back into the brick wall behind, causing the Naut to immediately look up into his eyes in shock. “Vasco.”

Before he can formulate an answer, he finds himself crashing his lips to the legate’s. De Sardet jumps at the the initial contact, but quickly deepens the kiss between them. Vasco’s arms wrap around him, his hands gripping his cape as a growl escapes his throat.

De Sardet knocks his hat off as his hands go to the Naut’s hair, quickly freeing it from its tie. His hands sink in his long brunette hair as they pull each other impossibly closer.

And seemingly as quick as it began, they’re pulling back gasping for a breath. A chuckle from De Sardet as Vasco’s eyes desperately search his.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for months,” the legate admits softly. “But was that just to distract me from my questions or…?”

“Or,” Vasco responds immediately, cursing himself at the dumb response as he earns another chuckle. He can feel his cheeks flushed, and his mind feels scrambled.

“What were you angry about?”

At this point, Vasco decides it’s time to just answer truthfully. If there was any chance… “He was teasing me about my anger from the interrogation.”

“He was teasing you for being angry in the brothel? You seemed angry, but I assumed you just didn’t like how unhelpful he was being.”

“I was… aggravated… at his advances,” he admits. “At you.”

“You were upset that the worker tried to seduce me?”

“Aye.”

Another chuckle. And with that Vasco can feel his cheeks heating ever further, “Sea and love both share a bitter bite… the sea seizes. Love seizes. Love scalds us, and the seas scalds us. For neither are free from tempest might.”

De Sardet looks back at him curiously, the sea in his eyes calm as he finds himself staring into them.

“A poem?”

“Yes… uh.. a poem I read and which I was trying to remember. It makes me think of you… of us,” he admits. “I- would you… want to spend some time alone together?”

A gentle smile spreads across De Sardet’s face, his hand moving to Vasco’s cheek as he strokes it gently, “I thought you’d never ask.”

#captain vasco #vasco #greedfall #greedfall vasco #de sardet #de sardet x vasco #fanfiction #fanfic #greedfall fanfic

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missnight0wl · 5 years ago

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Unpopular opinion: I wish dating was never introduced to HPHM.

I was always rather open about the fact that I don’t have much interest in dating content in HPHM, so you might say it’s very subjective rambling. But I think I also have some more objective arguments for that statement, so… hear me out (or don’t; I can’t tell you what to do).

Some spoilers for the Festival Fun TLSQ, the Celestial Ball TLSQ, the First Date TLSQ, the Valentine’s Day TLSQ, the All-Wizards Tournament TLSQ, and “Cooking Up Trouble” SQ.

First of all, I want to address the most obvious counterargument for my wish: “but people want dating!”. Yeah, I know. But here’s a thing. A long time ago, almost at the very beginning of the game’s existence, when we were only speculating about any love interests, people were referencing one article. The article where the creators claimed that romance is planned for the future (among other things). And if you ask me, it was their mistake. It was a mistake because it created expectations which they had to react to. The problem is that they were never ready to introduce such type of content. I mean, just look at the past events. Andre mentioned dating when he was first introduced back in Y3 (!), and he said then that most people don’t date until they’re in the fourth year. And yes, the Celestial Ball was eventually placed as Y4 Achievement, but the main story was well into Y5 already! What I take from this is that at best, they had only a rough idea for the ball when they wrote Andre’s comment in Y3 (if it took them so long to actually create the quest). And so, I have to wonder – why they even talked about dating in Y3 if they were not ready? Now, I’m not saying that nobody would ask for dating if Jam City didn’t mention it in that article, or Andre omitted that topic in Y3. There’d definitely be people still wishing for some romance. But there’d be no actual reasons to expect that. Because HPHM was created as a mystery story (even if people don’t remember about it anymore), and a mystery story doesn’t really need romance.

The second thing I’d like to point out for the sake of this discussion is that the dating quests require quite a lot of work from the devs team. Admittedly, the quality of those efforts is sometimes questionable, but still. I’m also no tech or game design expert, but here are some things which I believe make dating quests more time-consuming than most of the others:

Designing outfits. Each of the datable characters is given a new outfit (+ new outfits for MC). I also want to notice that most of those outfits are one-time-use. Well, except maybe for the bundles available to buy for real money…

Creating new locations/characters. To be fair, some of “regular” quests require those too, although the majority uses things already existing and being used in the main story.

Creating new animations: dancing, holding hands, pecks on the cheek, more (new) dancing.

Creating multiple routes for different date options – and even if it’s mostly copy-paste, it takes time nonetheless.

To be clear, creating new things for the game is not bad. My point is that basically every dating adventure required ALL of that invested in one single quest – and pretty much none of that can be reused outside of dating. In fact, they’re not even reusing those animations completely for each new date. The kiss from the Valentine’s Day was different from the recent one, the Festival had new dances added to make it more diverse in comparison to the Celestial Ball etc. And what those unique quests have to offer? One cute moment with your date, which is… kind of meaningless. I’m sorry, but dating stories are basically irrelevant in the bigger picture. I mean, yeah, they’re adorable, but that’s it. And it’s just NOT proportional to all the work put into them. Because look…

The dating quests add very little to nothing to flesh out the characters – and if they do, it has nothing to do with dating.

The Celestial Ball did a pretty great job at adding to Rowan and Ben. People often criticise MC for “forcing” them to come to the party, but the problem was clearly about them feeling not good enough to go (not necessarily about them not wanting to go), and so I really loved working on their self-confidence. Bill also grew a lot in that quest, overcoming his rejection from Emily Tyler. Andre discovered his styling talent, so he was no longer “just” a brilliant Quidditch player. Even Penny had some insecurities to face as she wanted to prove that she’s not only popular but she can also create fantastic decorations. So… couldn’t it just be a quest about FRIENDSHIP and our friends growing? The whole dating subplot felt kind of forced to me, or maybe rather detached. Not to mention that THAT was kind of a dick move to leave Rowan and Ben after using the argument:

The next quests were more oriented on dating itself, but at the same time, they’re focused less on the characters’ individual personalities. Sure, there are some differences between dates, but it’s more about distinction than adding anything new. For instance, in the Festival Fun TLSQ, every character yells out loud that you’re on a date (unless you chose to keep it a secret), MC just points out that it’s unlike them in the case of Talbott, Jae, and Chiara. Next example: I thought it’s pretty amusing that Jae writes dreadful poems with cheap rhymes, but it turns out that the note with Butterbeer could also be left by Barnaby. I know that in MY playthrough, Barnaby didn’t leave it, but I can’t see it as Jae’s characteristic, simply because it wasn’t written for his character – it was written to fit Jae and Barnaby, so it’s kinda meaningless in my eyes.

Another thing is that even if those dates added something individual, it’d be relevant only for a limited audience. Like, I’m really happy for people who wanted to date Badeea, but for me, she barely existed in this quest. It added NOTHING to her character. During the First Date quest, Tulip revealed that girls in her family are being named after flowers (her cousin is called Marigold), which is a pretty neat fact, but I wouldn’t know it if I didn’t put extra effort to see different options. And believe me, there’s a big part of the payers who don’t do it. I’m still seeing on social media people being surprised that Rowan’s gender and House are connected to MC’s.

And speaking of that already: this is why the dating options are being cut off. And honestly, it sucks, but I get it, I really do. The devs have to spend the same amount of time on a character dated by 6% of the players as on a character dated by 36% of the players. Let’s add real money to that, and let’s say that 10% of all players buy gems/energy on TLSQs. Jam City will make more money out of that 36% than out of 6% - it’s as simple as that. At the end of the day, they are a business. Would it be nice to make all players happy? Of course, but it’s easier to keep the majority happy.

The dating quests don’t really matter for the main story – and they won’t matter more in the future.

Why? Because it’d be too complicated at this point. All we’re getting (and what we’ll ever get) are subtle differences in dialogues. And you know what? Even that doesn’t matter much. For example, in Y6, there’s a scene where Talbott calls MC to the Owlery and offers his help in searching through the letters. He talks then about their friendship, and if you took him on a date, he mentions it as well. The thing is that Talbott is pretty heart-warming here in general, how he opens on us being friends:

Sure, that one additional line is pretty cute, but again, is it really a satisfying pay-off from the dating quest, considering how much was put into it? And I don’t think they even can do more because they always have to keep in mind the players who didn’t manage to finish TLSQs in time or just didn’t want to do it.

I don’t want to be only negative about dating because that’s not really my point, so here are some ideas on how to invest all of that time better (and no, it’s not just the lore and in-depth history of the Cursed Vaults because I know I’m in the minority who cares about it):

More outfits for NPCs which could be used for variety. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing characters like Penny, Merula, Ben, or Talbott in their full school robes ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Ideally, I wish every character to have three outfits: full school robes, some variety of a uniform (so something like Tulip and Barnaby) used in the school but outside of classes, and something totally casual used outside of the castle.

More animations between characters like hugs, patting on the arm etc. Anything which could be used almost on a daily basis, and which would make our interactions looks more natural and less stiff. Seriously, I’ll take a supportive hug instead of a peck on the cheek ANY DAY.

More character-centric quests. So many of our friends need their own SQ: Tulip, Badeea, Liz, Diego. The rest could probably also use them to expand their characters – because those SQs do a great job at this. Like, I took Jae to the festival, and it was alright, but to be completely honest, his “Cooking Up Troubles” SQ was SO MUCH BETTER for his character. We learnt new things about Jae, we had some really cute friendship moments (like this and this)… And it was a super simple quest with only seven parts in total! It just needed to be written: no new locations, animations etc. Yet, the pay-off was just… better, more meaningful.

Another thing that could be done in those character-centric quests is more focus on the relationships between our friends because, in my opinion, this is needed as well. I want to talk here a little about the “All-Wizards Tournament” TLSQ, which I think is really underrated. This is probably because of people claiming that Jam City is reaching too much to reference the books events AND because of Rowan’s absence. And don’t get me wrong, those are valid objections. But when it comes to the characters… this TLSQ was pretty great. We saw a lot of our friends' insecurities (Barnaby, Jae, Liz), we saw their more competitive side (Andre, Badeea)… Badeea was especially interesting to me as she showed that she can be quite cunning when she somehow learnt about the first task. She also didn’t reveal that information to Merula and Ismelda because they were occupying the training dummies, but she did share with MC (meaning that you really want to have her on your side…).

It somehow made me think about the situation from Y5 when she admitted that she tricked Jae into thinking that she knows Apparition by using an Invisibility Cloak. It’s nice to know there’s more to her than meets the eye, which was also cohesive with the main story (even if we don’t see it much). The TLSQ also showed some dynamics between our friends, like Jae and Andre (which I mentioned here). And of course, I really enjoyed the ending conclusion: that some tasks can be dealt with only when you work together. Again, I’d love to see this theme being explored more because it creates such a compelling contrast between Jacob and MC. Jacob didn’t have many friends at school. We only know about Duncan and Olivia, and it’s still unclear if Olivia was an actual friend or a colleague they worked with. Not to mention that it was implied that for some time, Jacob was working all alone. Meanwhile, MC has basically the whole army at this point. It’d be interesting to see that this is one of the things which makes MC stronger than their brother.

Now, the reason why the “All-Wizards Tournament” TLSQ could focus on all of that is because we didn’t waste the time on all of “secret admires mystery”, “oh, who should I choose” etc. So, just as a thought experiment, let’s think about how the Festival Fun could improve if we’d eliminate the dating aspect. First of all, more characters could get more screen time, like Badeea, maybe Tulip… Liz? Diego (our dancer!)? Ismelda? Even Talbott didn’t have a big role unless you chose him as a date. The plot could also be more dynamic instead of a whole bunch of stalling. I’d leave the investigation with Andre because I think it’s a great addition to his character, but it’s also fucking sad that any development he’s getting is around dating. Like, the boy deserves so much better. So, let’s change that! Let’s say he asks MC for help because he’s styling some summer outfits for the upcoming festival, but one of his fabrics is missing. Perhaps it’s a bit more expensive material, so they suspect that Jae might’ve “borrowed” it to make some money. Jae, of course, is deeply insulted because he’s a smuggler and an occasional cheater, but not a thief! They argue with Andre, but eventually, they come to understanding. Then, MC remembers that Badeea wanted to experiment with painting methods, so perhaps she decided to incorporate some fabric into that. We find Badeea and Barnaby, they don’t have what we’re looking for, but there’s some action going on there, maybe including Talbott… Long story short, it turns out that Tulip needed it in preparation for Cruppies race or something. I don’t know, I’m coming up with it pretty much as I write. The point is that the time spent on talking about dating could’ve been used on something more specific, individual, which could be more meaningful in the light of the main story. And since there’d be no routes, all of that would be relevant for everyone after completing the quest. Want it to be even better? Make it a regular side quest, not time-limited.

All right, but couldn’t we just have both: characters development and dating? Of course, that’d be ideal. But as I said before, Jam City is a business and rarely any business is ideal. They’ll always prioritise a limited number of things, and since people whine about dating, we’re getting dating. And again, I’m not saying that dating is totally worthless, and I get that people find it cute and whatnot. I just believe that what dating ultimately adds to the game is not proportionate to the time and effort those quests require to be created. That it could’ve been invested better. Dating is basically stopping us from getting better content (at least in some areas). And we’re kind of asking for that…

#long post #hogwarts mystery #hphm #hphm spoilers #hphm mc #jacob's sibling #andre egwu #jae kim #badeea ali #talbott winger #hphm dating #jam city #unpopular opinion #let's talk

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years ago

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Anonymous asked: I love your book reviews under the banner ‘Treat Your S(h)elf’ - nice play on words. You have such a wide and cultured range of interests that I really learn something new. Do you read poetry? What are your favourite poets? What are you currently reading?

I love reading poetry because as the poet Robert Frost put it succinctly, “Poetry is when emotion has found its thought, and thought has found words”.

Poets are before anything else in the words of W.H. Auden, “a person who is madly in love with language” and language is the bedrock of any culture and society and ultimately civilisation. When you truly think about it, poetry is meaningless when it has been left to gather dust on a piece of paper. It is simply a memory of an idea conjured up by a writer with something to say. Poetry must be read, it needs to be experienced because it keeps these ideas burning. These meaningful concepts about the nature of life, death and everything. Every time a person reads a poem, a new bright spark emerges in that person’s head. A new way of thinking, a new way of understanding. That is exactly why poetry must be read because it is the essence of our language.

The reasons I personally read poetry, you ask? Here are some reasons I can think of from the top of my head others are too personal to reveal:

I read poetry because poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn. And I read poetry because it is what happens when my mind stops working , and for a moment, all I do is feel. This is good therapy for me as I’m not the most openly emotional or prone to displays of emotion in public. It’s just not how I was built. Poetry helps one to feel. So some poems remain so close to my heart.

I remember when I was about to go on my first tour to Afghanistan I was quite calm and cold blooded because that was and is my nature. My father - who served with distinction in uniform like his father and grand father, and great-grandfather before him - was always proud and supportive of me being the black sheep of the family as the only girl in our family going through Sandhurst and now I was off to the last embers of a war in Afghanistan that everyone had forgotten about. He was concerned - like the rest of my family - like any loving parent about what might happen. But he didn’t question my professionalism or my abilities so he didn’t give me that lecture instead he thrust in my hand both classical literature (Thucydides and Homer in particular) and the works of selected poets. He told me poetry will save your life. He wasn’t anxious about my physical safety he was thinking about my soul. For what happens during war and what comes after if and when I come home. Long story short: poetry saved my life.

By nature I am restless to an incredible annoying degree. I fear being bored. I find it hard to sit and be idle. Poetry is my balm for boredom.

I am incredibly busy and I work punishing long hours. Time is premium. People make demands on me and my time. Poems are like super-condensed stories, and are therefore usually short enough to be read over your morning tea/coffee. In this fast-paced world we live in, sometimes poems are a better alternative to reading fully-fledged novels, or even short stories and poetry gives you the chance to continue to expand your literary horizons even during the busiest times in your life. And becoming more widely read is an incredible way to ensure you are continuously growing, and learning, while becoming a more cultured individual at the same time. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you and when I read some of those beautiful pieces of poetry by my favourite poets it's like the paper is filled with the breathings of my heart.

The most frightening thing is people I know stop growing culturally after they leave university and get on with the business of life i.e. careers, marriage and family. Once on that treadmill they don’t or can’t stop. They are unable to step off and take a breath. Poetry gives you a breather and helps you to re-centre your priorities. The more you read poetry, the greater your quest for knowledge awakens. Doorways will open inside your mind and unlock your hidden potential for a greater understanding of life. Anyone who reads poetry often can connect with this conclusive sentence formation that defines your very questionable outlook on life.

I also believe poetry allows us to be less rigid in our thinking with an authentic, personal touch. When I read poems, nothing is often straightforward. Every poem has a meaning hiding under it, but it is blocked by a myriad of literary devices such as metaphors and symbolism. It is important to be able to think more figuratively because it allows you to understand ideas and perspectives in a more abstract and possibly more meaningful way. Sometimes I find that having a single page of beautifully crafted words can be enough of a distraction to spark a sudden creative leap in my brain. There have been many times where I've miraculously thought of ways to solve a problem (big or small) purely because reading poetry forced me to think differently from the usual day-to-day thoughts required for general life.

Poetry is best read when you’re hidden from the outside world, in a quiet little spot, somewhere away from all the hustle and bustle. It is increasingly hard to do just that. I have so many demands on my time and limited space but I force myself to carve out the time and space to do this - one must try. As a rule I switch off all social media (not that I have many to begin with but most definitely my phone). The best time for me to carve out time is when I’m traveling as I’m able to shut out everything around me. Usually when I’m waiting for a flight in the business class departure lounge it’s quiet and not too many people to distract me and there is usually a delay to the flight. When I check into a hotel I feel a disconnect to the world around me. I feel like an alien. Poetry helps me to connect again. Poetry calms and focuses the mind. With poetry I can almost reset my day because it’s not just a time zone I have to get used to but also a state of mind - and especially if I find myself being unproductive too!

I often escape Paris and go into the countryside. I love going on walks, hikes, mountaineering, and other outdoor pursuits. It allows me the space and time to read poetry and reflect in peace. And of course I snatch time before I go to sleep to read a poem if I am not too tired.

The point is that I need the head space to absorb the poem and take some time to work out the meaning of the full entity. I try not swallow a whole book in one sitting, instead I read a few poems and leave the book until the next day or a few days depending on my schedule. Sometimes, you can read a poem again and you will find other meanings or pick up on information that you couldn’t see before. That’s poetry, you create the film, journey or picture inside your mind from reading the words on the page.

As for my favourite poets this is of course is a very personal choice. I didn’t read English at university but rather my academic interests were Classics and History, so I profess a very paltry poetic palate. Still, I’m grateful to those friends more versed than I to point me to other poets. So I do my best to keep an open mind and try and read poetry recommended by others or some thing that captures my eye when I browse through book stores or read it as a passing reference in a book I am reading.

Different poets and poems are discovered at one stage of life and where I happened to live in the world and only take on another meaning when re-read them at another stage. So I tend to re-visit poets I used to read as a teen and then see how it resonates now.

The majority of my poetic readings are in my native English and Norwegian languages but because I have varying degrees of fluency in other languages (because I grew up there for instance) I love widening my poetic palate. One of my regrets is not knowing Japanese and Chinese to a sufficient degree to really read poetry in those languages even if I have basic fluency in literature and everyday conversation. So reading Ezra Pound is one way in English to appreciate these Eastern poetic influences. I’m also ashamed to admit that I only know a woeful smattering of words in Scotiish Gaelic - my Anglo-Scots father knows it fairly well but even he struggles - and really I must find time in the future to learn more of it because it’s such a fascinating language (not least because it’s also dying out and that is tragic).

So below is an eclectic and random list from the top of my head and in no real order of preference:

• Homer (Greek) • Sappho (Greek) • Rumi (Farsi) • Mirza Ghalib (Urdu and Farsi) • John Milton • John Donne • William Shakespeare • Dante (Italian) • Robert Burns • William Wordsworth • Samuel Taylor Coleridge • William Blake • John Keats • Emily Dickinson • Christina Rosetti • Gerald Manley Hopkins • Walt Whitman • Oscar Wilde • W.B. Yeats • Rudyard Kipling • Wilfred Owen • Alfred Tennyson • Rainer Maria Rilke (German) • Cavafy (Greek) • T.S. Eliot • Hilda Doolittle • Marianne Moore • Sylvia Plath • W. H. Auden • Olaf H. Hauge (Norwegian) • Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norwegian) • Aslaug Vaa (Norwegian) • Rolf Jacobsen (Norwegian) • Sarojini Naidu (Hindi) • Gulzar (Hindi)

Living in Paris I tend to read more French poetry these days. By osmosis it helps me appreciate the French language and French culture even more.

• Charles Baudelaire. • Paul Verlaine • Jacques Prévert • Arthur Rimbaud • Alphonse de Lamartine • Alfred de Musset • Paul Valéry • Paul Eluard • Jean Genet • Françoise Villon

Poetry is an art that combines the essence of life through the fabrication of reality. Poets challenge and nourish me with their wisdom, philosophy, love and journeys beyond what used to be the limits of my own creative imagination. They push my boundaries ever so more. In doing so they grow my mind for understanding, my heart for empathy, and my soul for wisdom. It would hard to disagree with Robert Frost who sums up what poetry means to me, “a poem begins in delight, and ends in Wisdom”.

Thanks for your question

#ask #question #books #treat your s(h)elf #review #poems #poetry #personal #bio

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made around 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.

With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family and travel.

Early life

Marguerite Annie Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed Marguerite "Maya", derived from "My" or "Mya Sister". When Angelou was three and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage" ended, and their father sent them to Stamps, Arkansas, alone by train, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. In "an astonishing exception" to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II because the general store she owned sold needed basic commodities and because "she made wise and honest investments".

Four years later, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning" and returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. She told her brother, who told the rest of their family. Freeman was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Four days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou's uncles. Angelou became mute for almost five years, believing, as she stated, "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone." According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen and observe the world around her.

Shortly after Freeman's murder, Angelou and her brother were sent back to their grandmother. Angelou credits a teacher and friend of her family, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, with helping her speak again. Flowers introduced her to authors such as Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Douglas Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson, authors who would affect her life and career, as well as black female artists like Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.

When Angelou was 14, she and her brother moved in with their mother once again, who had since moved to Oakland, California. During World War II, Angelou attended the California Labor School. At the age of 16, she became the first black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. She wanted the job badly, admiring the uniforms of the operators—so much so that her mother referred to it as her "dream job." Her mother encouraged her to pursue the position, but warned her that she would need to arrive early and work harder than others. In 2014, Angelou received a lifetime achievement award from the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials as part of a session billed “Women Who Move the Nation.”

Three weeks after completing school, at the age of 17, she gave birth to her son, Clyde (who later changed his name to Guy Johnson).

Career

Adulthood and early career: 1951–61

In 1951, Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician, despite the condemnation of interracial relationships at the time and the disapproval of her mother. She took modern dance classes during this time, and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Ailey and Angelou formed a dance team, calling themselves "Al and Rita", and performed modern dance at fraternal black organizations throughout San Francisco but never became successful. Angelou, her new husband, and her son moved to New York City so she could study African dance with Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus, but they returned to San Francisco a year later.

After Angelou's marriage ended in 1954, she danced professionally in clubs around San Francisco, including the nightclub the Purple Onion, where she sang and danced to calypso music. Up to that point she went by the name of "Marguerite Johnson", or "Rita", but at the strong suggestion of her managers and supporters at the Purple Onion, she changed her professional name to "Maya Angelou" (her nickname and former married surname). It was a "distinctive name" that set her apart and captured the feel of her calypso dance performances. During 1954 and 1955, Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She began her practice of learning the language of every country she visited, and in a few years she gained proficiency in several languages. In 1957, riding on the popularity of calypso, Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD in 1996. She appeared in an off-Broadway review that inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her own compositions.

Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved to New York to concentrate on her writing career. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African-American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the first time. In 1960, after meeting civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized "the legendary" Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and "eminently effective". Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time.

Africa to Caged Bird: 1961–69

In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks, along with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson. Also in 1961, she met South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married. She and her son Guy moved with Make to Cairo, where Angelou worked as an associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer. In 1962, her relationship with Make ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and ended up staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at the University of Ghana, and was active in the African-American expatriate community. She was a feature editor for The African Review, a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Radio Ghana, and worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. She performed in a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.

In Accra, she became close friends with Malcolm X during his visit in the early 1960s. Angelou returned to the U.S. in 1965 to help him build a new civil rights organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward. Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She moved back to Los Angeles to focus on her writing career. Working as a market researcher in Watts, Angelou witnessed the riots in the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays, and returned to New York in 1967. She met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her friendship with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris in the 1950s and called "my brother", during this time. Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to support her writing.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to organize a march. She agreed, but "postpones again", and in what Gillespie calls "a macabre twist of fate", he was assassinated on her 40th birthday (April 4). Devastated again, she was encouraged out of her depression by her friend James Baldwin. As Gillespie states, "If 1968 was a year of great pain, loss, and sadness, it was also the year when America first witnessed the breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius". Despite having almost no experience, she wrote, produced, and narrated Blacks, Blues, Black!, a ten-part series of documentaries about the connection between blues music and black Americans' African heritage, and what Angelou called the "Africanisms still current in the U.S." for National Educational Television, the precursor of PBS. Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969. This brought her international recognition and acclaim.

Later career

Released in 1972, Angelou's Georgia, Georgia, produced by a Swedish film company and filmed in Sweden, was the first screenplay written by a black woman. She also wrote the film's soundtrack, despite having very little additional input in the filming of the movie. Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco in 1973. Over the next ten years, as Gillespie has stated, "She [Angelou] had accomplished more than many artists hope to achieve in a lifetime." Angelou worked as a composer, writing for singer Roberta Flack, and composing movie scores. She wrote articles, short stories, TV scripts, documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry. She produced plays and was named visiting professor at several colleges and universities. She was "a reluctant actor", and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for her role in Look Away. As a theater director, in 1988 she undertook a revival of Errol John's play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at the Almeida Theatre in London.

In 1977, Angelou appeared in a supporting role in the television mini-series Roots. She was given a multitude of awards during this period, including over thirty honorary degrees from colleges and universities from all over the world. In the late 1970s, Angelou met Oprah Winfrey when Winfrey was a TV anchor in Baltimore, Maryland; Angelou would later become Winfrey's close friend and mentor. In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced.

She returned to the southern United States in 1981 because she felt she had to come to terms with her past there and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a few full-time African-American professors. From that point on, she considered herself "a teacher who writes". Angelou taught a variety of subjects that reflected her interests, including philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater, and writing. The Winston-Salem Journal reported that even though she made many friends on campus, "she never quite lived down all of the criticism from people who thought she was more of a celebrity than an intellect...[and] an overpaid figurehead". The last course she taught at Wake Forest was in 2011, but she was planning to teach another course in late 2014. Her final speaking engagement at the university was in late 2013. Beginning in the 1990s, Angelou actively participated in the lecture circuit in a customized tour bus, something she continued into her eighties.

In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. Her recitation resulted in more fame and recognition for her previous works, and broadened her appeal "across racial, economic, and educational boundaries". The recording of the poem won a Grammy Award. In June 1995, she delivered what Richard Long called her "second 'public' poem", titled "A Brave and Startling Truth", which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

Angelou achieved her goal of directing a feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes. Also in 1996, she collaborated with R&B artists Ashford & Simpson on seven of the eleven tracks of their album Been Found. The album was responsible for three of Angelou's only Billboard chart appearances. In 2000, she created a successful collection of products for Hallmark, including greeting cards and decorative household items. She responded to critics who charged her with being too commercial by stating that "the enterprise was perfectly in keeping with her role as 'the people's poet'". More than thirty years after Angelou began writing her life story, she completed her sixth autobiography A Song Flung Up to Heaven, in 2002.

Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support to Hillary Clinton. In the run-up to the January Democratic primary in South Carolina, the Clinton campaign ran ads featuring Angelou's endorsement. The ads were part of the campaign's efforts to rally support in the Black community; but Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, finishing 29 points ahead of Clinton and taking 80% of the Black vote. When Clinton's campaign ended, Angelou put her support behind Obama, who went on to win the presidential election and became the first African-American president of the United States. After Obama's inauguration, she stated, "We are growing up beyond the idiocies of racism and sexism."

In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, and personal and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis. In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to a paraphrase of a quotation by King that appeared on the memorial, saying, "The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit", and demanded that it be changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.

In 2013, at the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of autobiography in her series, titled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with her mother.

Personal life

Evidence suggests that Angelou was partially descended from the Mende people of West Africa. In 2008, a DNA test revealed that among all of her African ancestors, 45 percent were from the Congo-Angola region and 55 percent were from West Africa. A 2008 PBS documentary found that Angelou's maternal great-grandmother Mary Lee, who had been emancipated after the Civil War, became pregnant by her white former owner, John Savin. Savin forced Lee to sign a false statement accusing another man of being the father of her child. After Savin was indicted for forcing Lee to commit perjury, and despite the discovery that Savin was the father, a jury found him not guilty. Lee was sent to the Clinton County poorhouse in Missouri with her daughter, Marguerite Baxter, who became Angelou's grandmother. Angelou described Lee as "that poor little Black girl, physically and mentally bruised".

The details of Angelou's life described in her seven autobiographies and in numerous interviews, speeches, and articles tended to be inconsistent. Critic Mary Jane Lupton has explained that when Angelou spoke about her life, she did so eloquently but informally and "with no time chart in front of her". For example, she was married at least twice, but never clarified the number of times she had been married, "for fear of sounding frivolous"; according to her autobiographies and to Gillespie, she married Tosh Angelos in 1951 and Paul du Feu in 1974, and began her relationship with Vusumzi Make in 1961, but never formally married him. Angelou held many jobs, including some in the sex trade, working as a prostitute and madame for lesbians, as she described in her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name. In a 1995 interview, Angelou said,

"I wrote about my experiences because I thought too many people tell young folks, 'I never did anything wrong. Who, Moi? – never I. I have no skeletons in my closet. In fact, I have no closet.' They lie like that and then young people find themselves in situations and they think, 'Damn I must be a pretty bad guy. My mom or dad never did anything wrong.' They can't forgive themselves and go on with their lives."

Angelou had one son, Guy, whose birth she described in her first autobiography; one grandson, two great-grandchildren, and, according to Gillespie, a large group of friends and extended family. Angelou's mother Vivian Baxter died in 1991 and her brother Bailey Johnson Jr., died in 2000 after a series of strokes; both were important figures in her life and her books. In 1981, the mother of her grandson disappeared with him; finding him took four years.

In 2009, the gossip website TMZ erroneously reported that Angelou had been hospitalized in Los Angeles when she was alive and well in St. Louis, which resulted in rumors of her death and, according to Angelou, concern among her friends and family worldwide. In 2013, Angelou told her friend Oprah Winfrey that she had studied courses offered by the Unity Church, which were spiritually significant to her. She did not earn a university degree, but according to Gillespie it was Angelou's preference to be called "Dr. Angelou" by people outside of her family and close friends. She owned two homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone" in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004 and was full of her "growing library" of books she collected throughout her life, artwork collected over the span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens. Guardian writer Gary Younge reported that in Angelou's Harlem home were several African wall hangings and her collection of paintings, including ones of several jazz trumpeters, a watercolor of Rosa Parks, and a Faith Ringgold work titled "Maya's Quilt Of Life".

According to Gillespie, she hosted several celebrations per year at her main residence in Winston-Salem; "her skill in the kitchen is the stuff of legend—from haute cuisine to down-home comfort food". The Winston-Salem Journal stated: "Securing an invitation to one of Angelou's Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas tree decorating parties or birthday parties was among the most coveted invitations in town." The New York Times, describing Angelou's residence history in New York City, stated that she regularly hosted elaborate New Year's Day parties. She combined her cooking and writing skills in her 2004 book Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, which featured 73 recipes, many of which she learned from her grandmother and mother, accompanied by 28 vignettes. She followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight loss and portion control.

Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual" for many years. She would wake early in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early afternoon. She would average 10–12 pages of written material a day, which she edited down to three or four pages in the evening. She went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang". She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences such as her rape in Caged Bird, in order to "tell the human truth" about her life. Angelou stated that she played cards in order to get to that place of enchantment and in order to access her memories more effectively. She said, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it—ha! It's so delicious!" She did not find the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling the truth".

Death

Angelou died on the morning of May 28, 2014 at the age 86. She was found by her nurse. Although Angelou had reportedly been in poor health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography about her experiences with national and world leaders. During her memorial service at Wake Forest University, her son Guy Johnson stated that despite being in constant pain due to her dancing career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the last ten years of her life. He said, "She left this mortal plane with no loss of acuity and no loss in comprehension."

Tributes to Angelou and condolences were paid by artists, entertainers, and world leaders, including Obama, whose sister was named after Angelou, and Bill Clinton. Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, said that Angelou's "legacy is one that all writers and readers across the world can admire and aspire to." The week after Angelou's death, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings rose to number 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list.

On May 29, 2014, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Angelou was a member for 30 years, held a public memorial service to honor her. On June 7, a private memorial service was held at Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. The memorial was shown live on local stations in the Winston-Salem/Triad area and streamed live on the university web site with speeches from her son, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Bill Clinton. On June 15, a memorial was held at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, where Angelou was a member for many years. Rev. Cecil Williams, Mayor Ed Lee, and former mayor Willie Brown spoke.

Works

Angelou wrote a total of seven autobiographies. According to scholar Mary Jane Lupton, Angelou's third autobiography Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas marked the first time a well-known African-American autobiographer had written a third volume about her life. Her books "stretch over time and place", from Arkansas to Africa and back to the U.S., and take place from the beginnings of World War II to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In her fifth autobiography “All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes” (1986) Angelou tells about her return to Ghana searching for the past of her tribe. She published her seventh autobiography Mom & Me & Mom in 2013, at the age of 85. Critics have tended to judge Angelou's subsequent autobiographies "in light of the first", with Caged Bird receiving the highest praise. Angelou wrote five collections of essays, which writer Hilton Als called her "wisdom books" and "homilies strung together with autobiographical texts". Angelou used the same editor throughout her writing career, Robert Loomis, an executive editor at Random House; he retired in 2011 and has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors." Angelou said regarding Loomis: "We have a relationship that's kind of famous among publishers."

Angelou's long and extensive career also included poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, directing, acting, and public speaking. She was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by US President Bill Clinton to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" during his inauguration in 1993.

Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, including her appearance in the television mini-series Roots in 1977. Her screenplay, Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script by a black woman to be produced, and she was the first African-American woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.

Chronology of autobiographies

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969): Up to 1944 (age 17)

Gather Together in My Name (1974): 1944–48

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976): 1949–55

The Heart of a Woman (1981): 1957–62

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986): 1962–65

A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002): 1965–68

Mom & Me & Mom (2013): overview

#04/04 #05/28

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eazyeez · 5 years ago

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Introduction: Reading 1 (Authorship, Designers as Authors) by Talvikki 21.9.2020

The chapter called Authority, Ownership and Originality established a connection between the author and originality. The question of whether authors are only authors if they are the inventors or first to bring up an idea, was argued through numerous examples, such as poems, songs, and other forms of speech. It seemed that authorship emerges from originality; something new and yet unseen or unheard of. Therefore, citations or references to earlier work, whether literature or music would be considered not authentic or original and thus, not carry with them the title of ‘author’. A distinction was made between written and oral speech, which shed light onto what is original and thus could be considered the trace of an author. Whilst an author’s written speech is (or back in the times of the examples mentioned in the text) unique and only once documented, oral speech can be reiterated by multiple performers. The following question was posed: Is only the first performer of an oral speech the author or will the author be re-defined with each performance? Or does perhaps each performance enable its own author?

Individuals considered authors, as was discussed, have had to be geniuses, culturally and perhaps politically marginalized and in touch with higher, non-human wisdom to be able to come up with authentic and original work. Whereas their circumstances enabled them to see things from a different perspective, there was the risk of them crossing the boundaries of morality and social norms and thus, even be considered irresponsible.

Authorship, as said underwent a re-definition when technologies emerged that enabled printing and copying. When i.e. texts started to be mass-printed they themselves became standardized and uniformed. Industrialization then increased the desire to stand out as an individual and gain authenticity and therefore, the necessity to re-define what makes an author.

The article called Designer as Author discussed the role of designers as authors. In here, authorship was not considered a position only from which to create content, but rather a ‘tool’ that designers should use in rethinking their process and to expand their methods.

Authorship was discussed by drawing onto what the previous text called originality. In this text it was a form of ‘truth’ that was referred to. Comparing the fields of science and literature it was made clear in how far their ‘practitioner’ could embody authorship. Whilst scientist would re-iterate scientific findings and test them through experiments, in literature writers would invent new content such as through ideas. Therefore, in the 18th century literature gained pre-dominantly the right to authorship. Citing Foucault, “literature was authored, and science became the product of anonymous objectivity.”

This article drew onto the notion of designers as authors. It was said that designers should consider themselves authors. However, as multifaceted and complex the role of the designer is, the more difficult it seems to state whether a designer is an author or has the capabilities to deserve authorship. In many circumstances, designers, I would claim are a combination of authors and facilitators. Often, employed and working in multidisciplinary teams, designers have a clear framework within which they can operate. Designers, whether graphic, service or product oriented, are wished to be creative and innovative and ideally disrupt the industry with revolutionary ideas, yet all their action should conform to the given environment. The environment would most often be considered the office or the target audience. Referencing to the article called Authority, Ownership and Originality, as long as designers are ‘only’ recognized as value-adders, no originality can be expected nor delivered. In reverse, this way designers are exempt from the responsibility of their actions as they are not fully in charge of their contribution. Whether that is a relief, or a constraint is up to the reader, however from the perspective of designers it is a question of power, and thus, a constraint.

It is evident that designers often stay superficial and float from one subject to the next, “scattering fragments of quotations across the surface of their “authored” posters and book covers” (Designer as Author), as their skills are considered exactly and only that: problem solving. With a generic job title and skill set called ‘problem solving’, designers do not distinguish themselves from other professions. Because how many professions do not solve problems? In other words, designers are in a way neutral until they are assigned a task to untangle. Whether a designer is employed or runs their own office, they tackle issues based on the demand. Therefore, more often than not the client determines the tasks of the designer and above all the necessity and essence of a designer’s significance.

It needs to be the wish and determination of the designer to want authority, until they can work towards achieving that goal. This gives freedom to experiment and lead oneself, and if successful the chance to disrupt the field and contribute with authentic ideas and yet it makes the designer responsible for their actions.

#authorship #designdiscourse #designtheory #author

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missstormcaller · 6 years ago

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BLEACH JET Artbook Talk Vol 5 - Translation (Q50-51)

ABOUT BURN THE WITCH

Published in Weekly Shōnen Jump's 2018 issue 33, the "BURN THE WITCH" One-shot drew a grand response. The sequence of events which lead to its composition and the inside story are revealed for the first time.

—— J: Now we move to the final subject matter, these are questions regarding "BURN THE WITCH" contained in the booklet.

Q.50: Around when does the setting of "BURN THE WITCH" occur in relation to "BLEACH"?

Kubo: "BURN THE WITCH" is a tale that takes place 12 years after the final battle of "BLEACH", and 2 years after the concluding chapter.

Q.51: The West Branch [of Soul Society] was revealed in "BURN THE WITCH", but what kind of world is the North and South Branch?

Kubo: From the start it was a manga I had drawn solely for the purpose of declaring that "hey there's also a branch in the West." I drew it in order to get the readers to expand their imagination by asking "if there's one in the West, could there not be more in other places too?"

—— J: Is "BURN THE WITCH" an idea that had been kneaded out during the serialisation of "BLEACH"?

Kubo: That's right. The "East Branch" appears in only a single mention within bleach, although the concept had been established at the time, I felt that the main plot would be unable to progress if I proceeded to draw as far as both East and West. I tried not to dwell on it because otherwise I'd grow worried thinking "when will 'BLEACH' come to a conclusion!?" So I thought perhaps there is no longer any need to depict the subject of East and West.

Then, the current editor-in-chief Nakano-san came with a request saying that he wants me to draw a one-shot composition on this occasion; when he asked me, "do you want a continuation of 'BLEACH', or would you prefer a new work that's entirely separate", I said "naturally, I want to try my hand at a new work as well, but there's a live-action movie adaptation too so I also want it to be 'BLEACH'. In that case may I draw two pieces?" (Laughs)

So I composed it after saying "well then I'll draw something that can be read like a new work, but it will develop into 'BLEACH'." Though, I think I had no idea what I was even talking about until I was finished.

—— J: The space in the title at the end of the manga has been shaded in so that it can be read as "BLEACH", I didn't notice it at first.

Kubo: Seems like there's quite a number of people who aren't aware of it. However, I think it would be nice if those who haven't noticed go "no way!?" after hearing this information from somebody else. It started with devising the title of "BURN THE WITCH" first, I reached a result after wondering whether or not I could somehow connect this to "BLEACH", I thought it would be cool to scratch the letter "W" here. It was a good idea to create this using the typeface design, but after thinking that the way it's revealed during the action is what leaves an impression, I incorporated it into the story.

—— J: There are many cute designs for the accessories too. Their guns for example are especially cute.

Kubo: They were originally horns rather than guns. I decided that "the rearing of dragons would make a good story'', I thought "speaking of 'rearing', isn't that kind of like a shepherd?" and that's when I had them carry horns. Then, I was struck with an idea thinking "if I turn the horn upside down, it ends up looking like a gun", which is how it evolved to this current form. Incidentally, I was thinking about their outfits at the same time too, so the pattern on their capes became a shepherd's plaid.

—— J: Is the title "BURN THE WITCH" from a Radiohead song?

Kubo: That's right. After hearing the original title, I thought it had a nice ring to it. The contents of the story is completely unrelated to the contents of the song though.

—— J: Some points of similarity between Hollows and dragons have also been vaguely depicted, right?

Kubo: Upon reading it back, I was pretty much like "oh, come to think of it, these things remind me of Hollows." I thought, if anything, the dragons should have a design that didn't overlap with Hollows, the mere fact that they 'have horns' was made into a distinct characteristic of dragons. The scene where all those dragons appear was composed after I hoped to achieve a game-like feel, or the atmosphere of a game similar to "Monster Hunter" or "Dragon Quest Builders". That was a lot of fun for me because it was a concept introduction page, something I didn't get to do much of in the original story of "BLEACH".

—— J: I did get the impression that the more enjoyable aspects are portrayed in the worldbuilding rather than the battles.

Kubo: Yes, that's true. I tried to keep battles to a minimum. Although I sensed that I started with some reluctance after receiving this task, it was more enjoyable than I expected once I began drawing. I suppose this is because I was able to put forward concepts that could not be made to appear with regard to the flow of the story in "BLEACH".

—— J: So did it feel like you had wrapped things up in one go?

Kubo: As a matter of fact, only the opening monologue had been drawn instantaneously. Before deciding on the characters that I would have enter the stage, the words "I like uniforms" sprang to mind, when you hear the line "I like uniforms", it sounds like a lewd remark, however I wondered whether or not there could be some different justification behind it. Like asserting that "one likes uniforms" with a distinct set of values. Noel was born as the character who possesses that set of values. After sketching this scene on one or two pages, I left it to the side, as is, for a long time…. Then, I pretty much began drawing when the deadline eventually got too close for comfort (laughs).

—— J: This applies to the logic you mentioned earlier, 'after observing the incident, after giving it careful consideration, if this individual was not the culprit, then in what way will the situation come to develop?' [1]

Kubo: 'Even though everyone is saying it's like this, what if it's the case that it's nothing like that?', there's a fair few things that come to mind from considering this side of the equation.

—— J: After reading a few pages, I immediately got the impression that "Kubo sensei has returned!"

Kubo: I think people who like my manga, will likely be touched by the monologue here. Even if one tries to interpret the word "uniforms" alone, the feeling that "there's various ways of considering this huh", I want the audience to experience that when they read my manga. The same goes for the lyrics of a musical composition. And it's also true of Shakespeare's poem which I talked about at the start. "They have o'erlooked me and divided me" is what everyone regards as the main point, but from "one half is yours" to "the other half also yours", these lines present one with new findings. [2]

—— J: And so we conclude by showing our appreciation to Kubo sensei for answering everyone's questions which were received in various languages from around the world. Allow me to express my gratitude one more time.

Kubo: I am very grateful to have received so many questions!

Translator’s notes:

1. See Q.41

2. Quotes from “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare see Q.1

#BLEACH JET #BLEACH #JET ARTBOOK #mytranslationtag #BURN THE WITCH #BTW #Noel Niihashi #Nīhashi Noeru #Spangle Ninii #Tite Kubo #TITE KUBO INTERVIEW

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mtdgngn · 5 years ago

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[Translation] 20200513 - anan (cover:Travis Japan)❹

***My English is not very good, so it maybe difficult to read. But I'll try my best!***

***

Kaito Miyachika→ Chaka

Kaito Nakamura→ Umi

Noel Kawashima→ Noel

Shizuya Yoshizawa→ Shizu

Genta Matsuda→ Genta

Ryuya Shimekake→ Shime

Kaito Matsukura→ Kura

***

Kaito Miyachika x Kaito Matsukura

Chaka: The good point about Matsukura's body is its wide shoulders. Seeing from behind, it looks like the battle uniform "Vegeta" wearing (lol).

Kura: And it's like Asian sheepshead wrasse (lol). When it comes to Chaka’s body, the mole on the chest and around the eyes. You have big eyes and long eyelashes. I think you have chiseled face, so you are pretty and cute.

Chaka: I'm embarrassed (lol). By the way, I have a lot of things to realize from the Matsukura’s performance. It's interesting how you feel sounds and express lyrics. For example, I am surprised at how you receive and express the sound like "boom!". Such small parts pile up and become a dance. Then, I think that each of these parts has your thoughts, which leads to the focus being on Matsukura.

Kura: Oh, I'm glad to hear that. But what's perfect for all skills entertainers should have is Chaka. You have not only talk, dance, singing, and acting skills, but also compositional skills. It's cool that you have the will to brush up all of those. On the contrary, it's also nice that you have a little mischievous side.

Chaka: Mischievous (lol). Matsukura is good at singing. Matsukura's voice is prolonged. In addition, you can write songs, so you are in charge of music of the group.

Kura: Chaka-chan is in charge of rap-music. You love rap-music and you are very good at singing the rap. I like the rap Chaka singing. You have been studying how to make voices a lot, right?

Chaka: I'm honestly glad to hear that. I'm embarrassed. Matsukura has both cool sides and cute sides, so I would like to see your sexy sides in the future. I want you to perform the lines like "Sexy Rose" and the poems.

Kura: That's good! What I want you to do is soccer performance. For example, you do a rap appealing to your audience about your soul while juggling a soccer ball. Doesn't it sounds interesting?

Chaka: Then I write the word "soul" on the ball. We'll do it with our duo song!

Kaito Nakamura x Genta Matsuda x Noel Kawashima

Genta: Noel Kawashima can do amazing acrobatics.

Umi: To put it much better, he is the second Mr.Higashiyama (Noriyuki).

Noel: I'm very glad to hear that.

Umi: Mr.Higashiyama's performance can only be done by Mr.Higashiyama, right? Noel is often said to be similar to that by choreographers, etc.

Genta: Yes, no one can imitate you. After all, is it related to the difference in growing up? Already, it's a brand.

Noel: From my perspective, all members are the same.

Genta: Noel lives in a gym, right?

Noel: I don't live there (lol).

Genta: Your pectoral and abdominal muscles are also amazing.

Umi: Also, Noel can expand someone's idea from 1 to 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Genta: Noel doesn't deny others, so it's easy to say our opinion.

Noel: Kaito is just an idea man. Exactly, you generate ideas from 0 to 1. When I looked at the notepad in your phone, there were so many ideas written.

Genta: And your sense is amazing! You understand how to attract yourself.

Noel: The fact that you perform while using everything you have, such as the length of your limbs and the shape of your eight-head figure, is similar to the condition of Kaito’s wallet.

Umi: Yeah, I can't save (lol).

Noel: Kaito runs out of everything (lol).

Umi: The good thing about Genta is ... nothing particularly.

Genta: I thought you would say that! (lol)

Umi: I'm kidding (lol). Your performance is sexy. You actively show your stomach a little.

Noel: You want to be erotic as the conditioned reflex action. The most suitable "anan" among us is Genta. I think we got this job thanks to Genta. And you often tell us crazy things that we can't think of.

Umi: Yeah. And those are often good spice. Genta’s ideas are always adopted because those have Genta's desire to do so very much. But his irresponsible ideas are rejected (lol).

Genta: Hahahaha!

Noel: I'm really blessed to have the members.

Ryuya Shimekake×Shizuya Yoshizawa

Shizu: I have the impression that Shime stretches well before our rehearsal. It is amazing that it leads to the result that the range of motion expands.

Shime: Thank you. Shizu doesn’t stretch, but you always do voluntary practice. About an hour before our rehearsal.

Shizu: I don’t!

Shime: No, you do that. I often see you seriously dancing while wearing earphones. I think you do your best.

Shizu: I don’t know. However, I often dance as I wish to motivate myself. As I am motivated, I can learn choreography faster and feel like I can dance well.

Shime: I know it too! Motivation help to learn the choreography faster. In my case, practice outfits motivate me.

Shizu: (lol) Yeah, those have changed recently. Usually, practice outfits are either jerseys or sweatshirts, but you're the only person wearing very nice plain-clothes. You also wear the hats, etc.

Shime: The nice practice outfits help me learn choreography faster. Nowadays, when I buy new clothes, I wear the clothes I used to wear as practice outfits. The practice outfits Shizu wear are yellow, which is your member color.

Shizu: I think that the fact I wear yellow clothes might make my fans happy.

Shime: Shizu has that kind of character. We can smile because of yours.

Shizu: Don't speak with making a half smile (lol).

Shime: (lol). I speak from my heart. During our rehearsals, you act funny and cheer us up. You do that also at dinner. You are full of kindness.

Shizu: (Be shy) ... I do my best. Shime is a character that is allowed by others no matter what. On the contrary, I am treated strictly by others, so I’m jealous.

Shime: Thanks to me, I can behave as I am. However, it is the expression of love that the members treated Shizu strictly.

Shizu: I'm envious of you. I want to be spoiled by others like you once in a while.

Shime: You say that, but you often tell us, "Come on strongly!" (lol).

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snarkystarkybby · 6 years ago

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not even a little bit. Bucky Barnes x Reader

hi, this is my first ever bucky piece so I hope you enjoy. also, this is heavily based on the poem in 10 things o hate about you.

send me in any and all requests.

xo,

isabella

You hated James Buchanan Barnes.

You hated his cocky teasing and arrogant comments during training or the way he would always talk to you like you were a naive child. You hated how he always sounded much too confident, and sure of himself as he corrected your technique no matter how well you did.

You hated his stupid long hair, which fell in perfect waves he didn’t deserve and shined in the morning sunlight in its scruffy half-bun. You hated how he would eat breakfast with it dripping wetlands over the kite he tiles every morning, as he playfully shook it as you poured your coffee- flicking freezing drops of water all over you.

You hated how he drove like a maniac- weaving through traffic with his insufferably loud music blasting through the windows to any cars nearby. You hated when he sat next to you on the jets before a mission poking at your sides and stealing the weapons strapped across your body.

You hated how he would watch you train, like every move you made he was silently criticising as he watched each muscle through your body contract and expand. You hated when he would come and explain his criticism, placing his hands on yours and proving his point-over and over. Like you didn’t already know.

You hated how he wore the same black boots consistently- no matter the rest of his outfit- the obnoxiously loud stomping echoing through the compound’s corridors day and night. You hated his overly tight uniform which you were sure was uncomfortable but also provided a perfect distraction any time your eyes lingered too long.

You hated how he always seemed to know exactly what you were thinking, your mother always said you were an open book and Bucky just so happened to be an avid reader. You would scowl at his comments and act as if you didn’t care- but deep down you knew you did and so did he.

You hated how your stomach turned to knots when he whispered in your ear, or when he flustered over you after getting hurt on a mission. Suddenly the pain ceased to exist, because you were completely absorbed in his ocean blue eyes and conflicting feel of his arms wrapped around you.

You hated how he somehow simultaneously knew so much and so little at the same time. You hated how he would send shivers down your spine when he called you doll as he whispered sweet nothings in your ear to the tune of the slow-moving song you swayed to. You hated how then only days later he couldn’t see how perfect he was, how he would treat himself like he was worth anything less than anyone else on the team- like his past was any different to your own.

You hated how he would leave little notes around your room complementing you and filling you with false confidence and warm cheeked every time. You hated the lies- even if they left butterflies in your stomach every time you saw the scruffy blue paper folded carefully on your desk each morning.

You hated how he would sit next to you, arm around your shoulders during movie nights, making stupid little comments throughout the films – no matter the genre- all of which made you laugh and giggle at the childishness of it. You hated it even more when you watched horror films-which you’ve never liked- and he would keep a hand on you the entire time, silently protecting you from the fabricated monsters on the screen.

You hated when he left you alone, tear stained cheeks and sniffling mess after one rainy night tangled together under his baby blue sheets. You hated the memory of the kisses which tasted like vodka and popcorn, and touches that felt like fire and ice covered your bodies. You hated the feeling of the Feather-light bruises which shadowed across your hips and thighs, faded all too quickly but you knew they were there.

You hated how after that night he left; a three-week mission earned you radio silence. Each second your heart broke a little more and when he finally returned the expressionless look as he didn’t even acknowledge your presence shattered the remaining pieces.

You hated that your heart stopped every time you heard his name, or when you saw a dark-haired stranger. You hated the smell of his cologne as you walked through the compound or the sound of his favourite film on movie nights. You hated the colour blue, no matter what it was- you hated the dress you wore that night you danced with him and the shirt you picked back up off his floor. You hated rainy nights and the smell of popcorn.

But most of all you hated how you couldn’t even hate him, not even with a single cell in your body did you hate James Buchannan Barnes, not even a little bit, not even at all.

#masterlist #marvel imagines #avengers imagine s #avengers imagines #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes imagines #bucky barnes #the winter soilder

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haloud · 6 years ago

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“Not as Lost, Violent Souls:” Alex Manes and T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” -- part 3 (fin.)

- intro - part 1 - part 2 -

- posted in final edited format on ao3 -

Previously on:

(gif by bisexualalienblast, used with permission)

This is not a happy poem. Nor do I believe that analyzing it in this way will reveal any more hopeful, happier meaning for Eliot’s hollow men or for Alex Manes. The existence of the hollow men is a bleak one, and at the very beginning of Roswell, New Mexico—the inciting events that build upon each other until Alex references the poem—Alex is in a fairly bleak place himself. However. I, unlike Eliot, do not believe in unhappy endings, so I didn’t want to close out this section just with a whimper. So while this essay concerns itself primarily with bleakness, I still want to remind everyone that “the world ends with a whimper” in episode nine of thirteen (and yet to come). Alex has already punched through the end of the world and is in the process of pulling himself through that hole and out the other side, retaking agency, rediscovering himself, relearning what he wants and how he is going to achieve those desires. The hollow men may have only empty hopes, but Alex’s hope is very real, and his character’s journey, as is the case with all characters in Roswell’s first season, has only just begun.

Part three of this essay will reexamine Alex’s character, his relationship to “The Hollow Men” at various points in his life, and his decision to quote the poem in context from a Watsonian perspective.

Part VI: Alien nation

In order to examine the place of “The Hollow Men” in Alex’s life, we should start at the earliest point for which we have any context for his character. In episode 1x05, Alex references himself as a child before high school and says his father knew he was gay before he did. This mention is brief and barely expanded, but it does provide a point of reference for Alex as a child and the alienation he experienced beginning from such a young age. The audience is given much more context for his character as a teenager on the cusp of becoming a young man, in his last year of high school and about to enter adulthood. It is likely in high school that Alex would have encountered the works of T.S. Eliot—that’s when I did, personally, through both class assignments and a deeply teenage draw towards angsty modernist poets. Eliot’s work is—and I’m drawing on the evidence of my eyes, here, rather than the scholarly—moody and depressing and vague, full of literary references and snippets of myriad different languages, and all those things are intensely appealing to the emo teen.

There are aspects of Eliot’s work that would have come through for Alex as a representation of his personal experience. Eliot himself was not a soldier; he remained at Oxford through the duration of the first World War, and nor did he involve himself in World War II. However, “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men” are poems about war all the same, written in the post-war landscape of 1920’s London and among all the accompanying—appropriately dichotomous—depression and euphoria of victory, survival, guilt, and the Treaty of Versailles. The tension between Eliot’s civilian status and the unavoidable nature of writing about war creates a compellingly fitting—or compellingly antithetical—profile of an author in the life of Alex Manes, who was a soldier long before he officially became an airman. As he states, “My father was my war.”. Unlike war poets both canonized and lost to history, Eliot could not write about the realities of the battlefield. However, the emotions felt, and communicated in “The Hollow Men,” are still intensely resonant with the feelings of soldiers. The struggle with hope and loss of hope, the religious imagery, the over-hanging, vague menace of the Shadow, all call to difficulties of returning soldiers and the transition back into a “normal” life, which may never be “normal” again. Therefore, while Eliot’s body of work in general appeals to a person with Alex’s personality, his taste in fashion and music, and in his stage of life at eighteen, “The Hollow Men” as a specific instance of Eliot’s work would have called to Alex more personally.

The religious themes contained in “The Hollow Men” would have had a particular resonance for Alex as a gay young man trapped in a restrictive, though not outright religiously based, household. Again, I draw from personal experience. Because of the opinion of queerness held by conservative religion, which is at best a sort of compassionate condemnation, young queer people often have an instinct toward rebellion and reclamation of the cultural narratives of salvation and damnation. The hollow men in the poem are a group of people condemned to an eternal purgatory, outside of paradise, outside of hell, and this denial of the spiritual right to judgment hits on some aspects of that rebellious feeling. The religious imagery in “The Hollow Men” is indicative of Eliot’s despair at the failings of love, which he attempts to ameliorate with a turn towards God and Christianity, but this is not a path that holds any sort of sanctuary for Alex, even as he struggles with heartbreak and despair. While I can’t say with certainty how Alex feels about religion, I can say that religious alienation is both another type of alienation keenly felt by many queer youth as well as a key feature in understanding “The Hollow Men.”

This understanding of the poem’s religious themes as well as aspects of the poem I earlier established regarding Alex’s relationship with his father provide understanding as to how Alex might have experienced the poem as a young man. I can imagine a scenario in which he was exposed to Eliot’s writing through school and how that writing might have stuck with him through the ensuing decade. Time passed, he grew up, but the feeling of alienation only grew more severe as he compartmentalized his personal identity and his identity as an airman—and lived more completely in the latter. Until, that is, the audience first meets him in the pilot episode of Roswell, New Mexico.

We first meet Alex as an airman, not as a civilian, but the connection he has with Michael is immediately established. It first comes off as antagonistic, but over the course of the episode it unspools itself until the final romantic confrontation at the very end of the episode. Though the viewer is unsure how adversarial Alex may be at this point, no doubt remains that he is a person leading an intensely complicated life. In subsequent episodes, we see Alex shed the uniform more and more, even as he struggles to overthrow his father’s influence and does not always succeed. Finally, in episode 1x08, he learns that Isobel, Max, and, most importantly, Michael are in fact aliens; and not only that, but Michael has been identified as a high-level threat. Though this information is filtered through the lens of his father’s manipulation, and he rightly rejects that worldview, Alex is still left with a choice to make. Does he follow his heart, which tells him that his father must be wrong and that the man he loves couldn’t possibly be the evil Project Shepherd says he is, or does he follow his head, which tells him that he needs to have all the information before he can make any sort of decision, and that he has to do so alone, not trusting anyone else, not simply going up to Michael and asking?

This is the choice Alex struggles to make in the days and weeks leading up to the confrontation with Michael in the Wild Pony at the beginning of episode 1x09. It is a choice with an explicit emotional link to his identity as an airman, as shown in the later conversation between Alex and Kyle:

Alex: “I just…I can’t go in blind.” Kyle: “I’m talking about a conversation, Manes. Not a war.”

But even when he’s faced with Michael demanding the answer to a question he doesn’t even know Alex is asking, Alex hasn’t yet decided. That decision comes at the end of the episode, when he declares “I’m tired of walking away” and asks Michael to tell him everything. During that moment in the Wild Pony, Alex is still caught, one could say, between the idea and the reality, the motion and the act, the emotion and the response. And he doesn’t say “we’re done;” he doesn’t say “not now;” he doesn’t say “let’s talk.” He quotes “The Hollow Men.”

Part VII: Conclusion

By invoking “The Hollow Men,” Alex calls upon this entire body of bleak imagery, of hopelessness, and of futility. Even what potential for salvation exists within the poem is “the hope only / of empty men.” “Sometimes the world ends with a whimper” is a gut punch of a line to begin with, but the statement he makes is even more deliberate and definite than it first appears. First, it’s a tacit admission that this thing between himself and Michael that he’s ending has or does constitute a “world” of its own. Second, if Alex identifies with the speaker of the poem, it’s an admission that not only does the world end with a whimper, but that it does so because of failings within himself, the same failings of the hollow men. It’s an apology as much as it is a rejection.

Alex’s journey, as previously stated, does not end when he references the end of the world itself. His character, despite the massive strides taken throughout season one, has not completed its arc. He has not struggled for the last time against the influence of his father or the consequences of a lifetime of trauma. There will always be a part of him that identifies with the scarecrow and the effigy. With this explication of “The Hollow Men,” I strive to identify the imagery and themes within the poem that are illustrative of Alex’s character, some of his internal struggles, and his choice to reference the poem at such a subtly key moment. Episode 1x09, both the confrontation in the Wild Pony and the reconnection in the junkyard, is a pivotal moment for both Alex’s character and his relationship with Michael. Understanding the potential weight behind his choice of words aids understanding of him in totality, where he is coming from, and where he may go from here.

References

Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, 9th ed., 2013, pp. 2728.

Howard, Jeffrey G. “T.S. Eliot’s THE HOLLOW MEN.” The Explicator, vol. 70, no. 1, 2012, pp. 8-12, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2012.656736. Accessed 2 Sept. 2019.

“Poets of Reality; Six Twentieth-Century Writers.” Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965.

Smith, Grover. T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1956. Print.

“Watsonian vs. Doylist.” TvTropes.org. Accessed 27 Aug. 2019.

Worthen, John. T.S. Eliot : A Short Biography. London: Haus Pub., 2011. Print.

#roswell new mexico #alex manes #this took forever to finish and now it's done! and about as many pages as any term paper i ever wrote lolololol

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brooklynmuseum · 6 years ago

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Upcoming Shows Through January 2020

We’re pleased to announce our advance schedule of exhibitions through January 2020, including a retrospective featuring the futurist fashion of Pierre Cardin; a solo presentation of work by internationally recognized artist JR; and the reinstallation of the Museum's Arts of Japan and China collections. In addition, and in collaboration with the Château de Malmaiso, France, in January 2020 the iconic Kehinde Wiley painting from the Brooklyn Museum's collection—Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps (2005)—will be on view in dialogue with its early nineteenth-century source painting, Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800-1801).

Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion

July 20, 2019-January 5, 2020 Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantory Gallery, 5th Floor

The retrospective exhibition Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion traces the legendary career of one of the fashion world's most innovative designers, one whose futuristic designs and trailblazing efforts to democratize high fashion for the masses pushed the boundaries of the industry for more than seven decades. Featuring over 170 objects that date from the 1950s to the present, the exhibition includes haute couture and ready-to-wear garments, accessories, photographs, film, and other materials drawn primarily from the Pierre Cardin archive. Highlights range across rare designs in luxury fabrics from the 1950s; a large grouping from the landmark 1964 "Cosmocorps" collection; creations that incorporate vinyls, plastics, and the self-named "Cardine" synthetic fabric; signature unisex ensembles featuring full knit bodysuits with layered skirts, vests, bibs, and jewelry; iconic broad-shouldered jackets from the 1980s based on Japanese origami, Chinese architecture, and American football uniforms; "illuminated" jumpsuits and dresses; and an extensive overview of Cardin's recently designed couture menswear and eveningwear. The exhibition reveals how the designer's bold, futuristic aesthetic had a pervasive influence not only on fashion, but on other forms of design that extended beyond clothing to furniture, industrial design, and more.

Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion is curated and designed by Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum. Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by Chargeurs.

Terry O'Neill (British, born 1938). Raquel Welch in a Pierre Cardin outfit featuring a miniskirt and necklace in blue vinyl, worn with a Plexiglas visor, 1970. Image courtesy of Iconic Images. © Terry O'Neill / Iconic Images

JR: Chronicles October 4, 2019-May 3, 2020 Great Hall, 1st Floor

We’re pleased to present JR: Chronicles, the French artist's largest solo museum exhibition to date. The presentation covers nearly 20,000 square feet of our Great Hall and traces JR's artistic evolution since 2001, focusing on his commitment to community and civic discourse through the use of large-scale media such as news and advertising as well as architectural interventions. Working at the intersections of photography, social practice, and street art, JR's participatory projects have fostered collaborations and conversations around the globe. The exhibition centers on The Chronicles of New York City, a new monumental mural incorporating the portraits and stories of over one thousand New Yorkers. The immersive installation also features JR's most well-known works across photography, installation, film, and video from the past fifteen years, including his first major collaborative project, Portrait of a Generation (2004-6); Face 2 Face (2007), which features giant portrait diptychs of Israelis and Palestinians, face to face, in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities; Women Are Heroes (2008-9), featuring images of the eyes of women gazing back at their communities in numerous countries, including Brazil, India, and Kenya; the global participatory art project Inside Out (2011-ongoing); and The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America (2018), a video mural that gives a face to the full and complex spectrum of views on guns in the United States.

JR: Chronicles is curated by Sharon Matt Atkins, Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator, Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

JR (French, born 1983). The Chronicles of New York City (detail), 2018-19. Dimensions variable. © JR-ART.NET

Arts of China Opens October 25, 2019 Arts of Asia and the Middle East, 2nd Floor

Our comprehensive collection of Chinese art spans more than five thousand years of Chinese artistic accomplishment, and boasts a diversity of art forms including jades, bronzes, lacquer, sculpture, painting, and calligraphy. This fall, we open our newly reinstalled galleries for our renowned Arts of China collection, featuring recent acquisitions, new commissions, and rarely seen historical treasures. Our large collection of cloisonné enamels, many from the Chinese imperial collection, are featured, along with masterpieces of bronze such as a Shang dynasty ritual vessel (gong) and a Han dynasty goose. Also on view are a selection of ceramics, including our world-famous Yuan dynasty Wine Jar with Fish and Aquatic Plants, widely acknowledged to be one of the finest blue-and-white porcelains in the Western hemisphere. Since 2014, we have worked to expand our holdings of contemporary painting and sculpture by Chinese artists, culminating in the acquisition of over fifty works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including new commissions that spark dialogue with objects from our historical collection. Highlights include experimental ink painting by Sun Xun, Zheng Chongbin, Tai Xiangzhou, Zhang Jian-Jun, Bingyi, Peng Wei, and others.

Arts of China is curated by Susan L. Beningson, Assistant Curator, Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Wine Jar with Fish and Aquatic Plants. China. Yuan dynasty, 1279-1368. Porcelain with underglaze cobalt blue decoration, 111 5/16 x 13 3/4 in. (30.3 x 34.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, The William E. Hutchins Collection, Bequest of Augustus S. Hutchins, 52.87.1. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Arts of Japan Opens October 25, 2019 Arts of Asia and the Middle East, 2nd Floor

This fall, we unveil a new gallery for our Arts of Japan collection following a multiyear renovation. In this inaugural installation, seventy objects from our collection illustrate the sophistication of Japanese art-making technologies and explore the dialogue between tradition and innovation in Japan. Featuring masterworks of Buddhist sculpture, vivid Ukiyo-e prints, exquisite screen paintings, and cutting-edge contemporary ceramics, the gallery highlights two thousand years of artistic achievement. In acknowledgement of the cultural diversity within the region, the installation also includes highlights from our important collection of artifacts from the Ainu people of northern Japan, material that is rarely shown in an art museum setting

Arts of Japan is curated by Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator, Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Head of Guardian. Japan. Kamakura period (1185-1333), 13th century. Hinoki wood with polychrome, inlaid rock crystal eyes, filigree metal crown, 22 1/16 x 10 1/4 x 13 15/16 in. (56 x 26 x 35.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection, 86.21. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

One: Xu Bing October 25, 2019-April 26, 2020 Focus Gallery, 2nd Floor

Focusing on a major new gift to our world-renowned collection of Chinese art, One: Xu Bing highlights the painting Square Word Calligraphy: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman (2018). Created specifically for the Brooklyn Museum in consultation with curator Susan L. Beningson, this painting by one of China's most important living artists celebrates Xu Bing's close relationship with Brooklyn, where he lived in the 1990s and still has a studio today. Square Word Calligraphy: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman pays homage to Walt Whitman, the famous American poet, who served as an early librarian at the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library Association (our predecessor). His now-iconic poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is part of his collection Leaves of Grass and celebrates the idea that all of us are united in our shared human experience. 2019 marks Whitman's 200th birthday, and this exhibition includes material from our Archives to celebrate his relationship to the Museum.

Xu Bing (b. 1955) developed Square Word Calligraphy as a new way of rendering the English language after he came to New York in the early 1990s. The hybrid calligraphy incorporates English words in rectangular arrangements that resemble Chinese characters. This interplay between form and language reflects Xu Bing's experience in New York, where he lived between two cultures.

One: Xu Bing is curated by Susan L. Beningson, Assistant Curator, Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Xu Bing (Chinese, born 1955). Square Word Calligraphy: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Walt Whitman, 2018. Ink on paper, 89 3/8 x 48 13/16 in. (227 x 124 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Xu Bing to the Brooklyn Museum in honor of his father, 2018.24a-b. (Photo: Courtesy of the artist)

Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley January 24-May 10, 2020 Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor

Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley brings an iconic painting from our collection—Kehinde Wiley's Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps (2005)—into dialogue with its early nineteenth-century source painting, Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800-1801). The two paintings, displayed together for the very first time, are on view in consecutive exhibitions at the Château de Malmaison from October 9, 2019 to January 6, 2020, and at the Brooklyn Museum from January 24 to May 10, 2020. The exhibition questions how ideas of race, masculinity, representation, power, heroics, and agency play out within the realm of portraiture. The Brooklyn presentation marks the first display of David's painting in New York, and Wiley helps highlight this momentous occasion by consulting on the exhibition design. Video also accompanies the project, incorporating Wiley's perspectives on how the Western canon, French portrait tradition, and legacies of colonialism influence his own practice. The exhibition represents an intimate conversation between two key artists of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries and illuminates how images construct history, convey notions of power and leadership, and monumentalize figures in the form of aggrandizing icons.

The exhibition is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison and Bois-Préau. The Brooklyn presentation is curated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art, and Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977). Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005. Oil on canvas, 108 x 108 in. (274.3 x 274.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Partial gift of Suzi and Andrew Booke Cohen in memory of Ilene R. Booke and in honor of Arnold L. Lehman, Mary Smith Dorward Fund, and William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund, 2015.53. © Kehinde Wiley. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825). Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Bonaparte franchissant le Grand-Saint-Bernard), 1801. Oil on canvas, 102 1/3 x 87 in. (261 x 221 cm). Collection of Château de Malmaison. (Photo: Courtesy RMN-GP)

#PierreCardinBKM #Pierre Cardin #jr #chineseart #japaneseart #onexubing #xubing #kehindewiley #davidxwiley #jacques louis david #brooklyn #exhibitions #nyc #art #bkmcontemporary #bkmeuropeanart #artsofjapan #artsofchina

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ilikeoldchangke · 6 years ago

Text

My boss is an influencer

This is a work of fiction.

..................................................

I met Ning when we were both doing temp jobs at a pharmacy.

She’s doing it as a temp job during her school holidays whereas I’m doing it because I need to make a living.

Armed with only a ‘O’ Level cert with mostly ‘F’ grades, there’s not much for someone like me in Singapore.

The only ‘B’ I got is for English.

At 16, I started working, hoping from temp jobs to temp jobs, I wanted something permanent too but no one wanted me.

Most companies stopped using me after the initial trial period.

The pharmacy job was the one that lasted the longest, 6 months.

So for 6 months, I worked with Ning in the same shop, arranging items, attending to customers, her sweet demeanour made her the customer’s darling.

Everyone wanted to be served by Ning instead of me.

It’s not a gender thing, it’s because I’m stupid.

Yes it’s true.

I’m stupid and clumsy, I make mistakes all the time and despite repeated reminders, I would still make the same mistakes.

I can’t help it. I know I’m stupid, low IQ , I don’t know. Something is wrong with me.

Ning on the other hand, is so much smarter. Let’s not forget she is smoking hot as well.

Her long legs looked so good when she turned up in shorts. I always imagined I was hiding in the store where she changes into her long pants for work. That way I would be able tot steal a glimpse at her panty.

Ning scolds me sometimes when I mess things up but it’s ok with me.

She will always remain the sweet helpful girl in my heart.

You can probably imagine by now I’m that loner hiding in a corner of the room with a book in hand.

The one with no friends.

It’s true, I feel more comfortable spending my time with books that with other people.

Ning knows this, and she gives me quite a few books she no longer wants. I took them all. It didn’t matter if the covers were pink and the titles were girly.

I treasured everyone of them, arranging them neatly in my shelf.

I would even smell the books and imagine I was smelling Ning’s hand.

I masturbated to Ning regularly, I want her but she would never want someone as stupid as me.

She’s a smart university undergraduate, whereas I’m just a lowly stupid guy working in a retail store. It wasn’t long before I started writing poems and love notes to Ning.

She read each one and laughed. She thinks it’s a joke.

I don’t blame her.

It’s like a toad lusting after a swan.

We kept in touch after she went on to study full time in university while I enlisted in the army.

Kept in touch meant sending each other a merry Christmas, or New year message once a year, usually one of those meaningless animated stuff other people forward.

I followed her social media feed, I stalked her postings.

Everytime there is something new for me to masturbate to, I will download and keep it in my computer.

We may be apart but my infatuation with her grows ever stronger.

After my service in the military, I started doing work as a security guard in a condominium.

It was simple work, recording vehicle numbers, and patrolling the grounds and scanning the various checkpoints. I still get scolded though, some residents can be pretty mean, expecting me to do everything from catching a lizard from their unit to changing a light bulb or helping them bring their trash to the recycle bin.

3 months into my work at the condominium, I got a shock when I saw Ning walking towards me at the pool.

Ning : JAMES !!! oh my god !!! what are you doing here !!!

James : Oh…. Ning…. You stay here ??

Ning : are you a security guard ?? hahahaha….

James : Yes…. It’s…. the only thing I can find … after I finish my army….

Ning : It’s been so long since I last saw you !!! my god… years… !!

It may be years since she last saw me but it was only last night when I saw Ning, not in person though.

On a screen, with my hand wrapped around my cock.

We caught up a little and Ning told me she is starting her own branding company slash online ecommerce slash marketing company.

James : wow… that’s impressive….. you’re so smart… I’m sure you will do very well….

Ning laughed as she looked at me in the ill fitting security uniform.

Ning : James…. Cannot la… you… you don’t look like a security guard… hahaha….

I smiled and immediately was a bit conscious of how I look.

I was about to excuse myself to save me the embarrassment when Ning held me on my shoulder.

Ning : JAMES!! James !!! look… I have an idea….there is no future…. In doing this… I mean… come on… security… ??

James : i…. I’m not exactly flooded with choices…. You… you know how I am…with work and all…

Ning patted her chest and gave me that sweet cock sure smile.

Ning : work for me James….

James : what ?

Ning : I have so many engagements, I have no time to edit my articles…. And write my reviews…. This is perfect….. remember you used to write those notes and peoms…. You write so well !!! what do you think ??

James : huh ?? .. i….

Ning : ok… look… I’ll pay you…. There’s CPF, there’s medical benefits…. I have a proper office….. you have your own desk, computer… a real office job….you deserve better….

This is like a fucking dream come true man.

Working for the girl you are masturbating to regularly.

Even if I’m stupid, I will not say no.

I nodded my head and Ning punched a fist in the air.

Ning : You are my first employee James !!! yes !!!... hahaha

She added that together, we will grow the company to great heights.

It all happened so fast, within a month, I was out of my uniform and i find myself standing in front of Ning at her so call office.

It’s a industrial unit in Paya lebar, it’s big, about the side of a 3 room flat.

It’s stacked full of sponsored clothing and samples. There are shoes and heels piled on top of each other on the metal shelves.

Clothes were strewn all over the place like it’s a war zone.

My own table was a cold metal desk and the computer I was given is Ning’s old laptop with 3 hello Kitty stickers.

It’s ok, I don’t mind.

Beggars can’t be choosers right.

I start work at 9 and I usually leave at 7pm.

There is so much to do.

Besides editing Ning’s work, I need to take photos, I need to drive her to engagements and events, I need to buy her meals, I need to wash her clothes.

I’m being worked like a slave.

Within a couple of months, Ning’s true colours started to show.

In front of the customers, the clients, she is the sweet darling of the influencer world. In front of me, she is at her absolute worst.

“ JAMES !!! OH GOD!!! FUCK…. WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID !!!! “

“JAMES !!! DON’T WASH THE COLOURS WITH THE WHITES !!! “

“ JAMES !! DAMM IT… FUCK…..!! WHERE IS THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS SOCK !! “

“ JAMES !!! WHERE ARE THE SCISSORS !! “

“ JAMES ….MY GOD.. CAN YOU FUCKING DON’T BE SO STUPID !!! “

Abuses like this fly on a daily basis.

Ning gets especially angry when the photos I take are not satisfactory.

“ MY LEGS ARE LOOKING FAT YOU STUPID !!.. NOT THIS ANGLE… !! “

“ AGAIN… NOT NICE !”

“ THIS VIEW CANNOT !!! ARE YOU DUMB ?? YOU’VE SHOT ANGLES LIKE THIS BEFORE SO MANY TIMES !!! “

“ NO… NO… NO…. TAKE AGAIN….!!! “

“ I SMILE UNTIL MY JAWS HURT ALREADY… YOU STUPID….FUCK…”

“ CAN YOU DO IT PROPERLY…? USE YOUR BRAIN FOR ONCE !! “

I continued working quietly and I took the abuse, because I like Ning.

She looks so good in the photos. Especially in her sports attire. She’s pretty big in the sporting scene, doing active style type of clothing and endorsements.

The smile, the slim and tone body, that pair of sexy legs.

In photo, everything is perfect.

What about my pay ? Well, I’m being paid 1200 a month. The same rate I get for being a security guard. At least I get to work with Ning, a pretty and hot babe.

How do I handle the stress then ?

I masturbate of course. Almost on a daily basis.

Ning’s clothes, her worn shoes, socks. Everything her sponsor gives her, she wears them for the shoot then chugs them in the office.

I was tasked to wash and hang all of them up nicely. Before I do, I would indulge in them.

Sports bra ? Yoga tights ? those are my favourite.

Sometimes I wonder myself if I deliberately made the shoot more difficult to see Ning sweat and get all worked up, or maybe for her to stay in the clothes longer.

The longer she wears the clothes, the more of her smell accumulates on them. The greater the satisfaction when I use it to masturbate.

She usually leaves office around 5pm, leaving me with enough time to jerk off with the day’s offerings before heading home.

It’s a good thing for me, I get to see Ning, masturbate to her clothes.

Ning did not know that I have secretly taken pictures of her undressing.

I also have video of her peeing in the toilet.

Yes, I also have plenty of her upskirt.

At the days turn to months, and the months to years, Ning got more popular.

She started to get more busy but I remained her only staff.

My pay went up to 1.4k and I spent many night in the office.

Our office expanded to include a small studio and with 2 sections converted into 2 small bedrooms.

One for me and one for Ning.

There are nights when we are simply too tired to go on and we would just sleep over in the office.

I would touch myself under the blanket, thinking of Ning sleeping next door from me.

I thought maybe one day the shouting, the scolding and the verbal abuse would stop but it never did.

It’s ok.

It’s ok because I like Ning. She is my angel.

Until one day everything changed.

It was a Sunday.

I felt this throbbing need to jerk off and I did not want to do it at home.

I want to do it in the office, surrounding by Ning’s belongings and clothes.

I want to smell the clothes she has worn that week that is still lying in the laundry basket.

I made my way to the office and I was in the midst of picking out a bikini she modelled a few days ago when I heard commotion at the door.

I could hear Ning but she was not alone.

I panicked and I tried to find a place to hide.

I dashed into a large full height wardrobe with held all her long dresses and gowns and I held my breath.

Seconds later, I saw Ning come into office with a guy.

Another man.

They were smiling and giggling, they were holding hands.

I felt the anger rising in my heart but I felt that familiar rise in my cock.

Ning’s giggling stopped when the guy took her in his arms.

My erection throbbed when I watch them kiss and the guys hand started roaming downwards to Ning’s breast.

I find myself shaking and trembling in the wardrobe.

I was angry.

So angry that I felt like charging out and pulling them apart.

I watch Ning pull her own top off as she smiled at the guy.

That slut.

That fucking slut.

She has never smiled in that manner at me before.

I watched her remove her skirt, revealing a cream pair of lacy panty I’ve masturbated to before and before I realised it, I was smiling.

I was smiling as I look at Ning.

I smile not because I’m watching her undress.

I smile not because I know I’m going to get to see Ning have sex.

I smile, because my mind started to get flooded.

Flooded with images of the things I’m going to do to her.

She’s so proud of her body.

She like to show of her flesh and tone abs and humble brag about it.

I should grant her that wish of sharing her body with the world.

And before I do that, I’m going to enjoy her body.

Every

Single

Inch

………………………………………………………..

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ralph-n-fiennes · 6 years ago

Text

RALPH FIENNES LOOSENS UP - GQ MAGAZINE

Well, loose for Ralph Fiennes, anyway. The actor and director lives a life of high culture like practically no one else alive. Lately, he's been making us laugh, too.

Ralph Fiennes seems both parodically English and consummately European, the way classical music isn't bound by borders, either. In addition to all measure of British, he has played, to my count: Austrian, Irish, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, and unspecified Balkan—as well as American (both WASP and serial-killer varieties), and Snake. He appears to carry with him, among many other charms, a cache of words, phrases, and proper pronunciations of non-English languages, like a deep pocketful of pre-Eurozone coins. It is very fun to listen to him talk in movies—and in person in London, as I did, for a few hours in late January.

I say all this to help explain why Fiennes registers to many interested in his life and career as one of our ultimate cosmopolitans. He is, just to list some of his culture bona fides, one of the living actors most associated with Shakespeare. He has said that he and his six siblings grew up listening to vinyl recordings of poetry recitations. He has often acted in films based on the acclaimed novels of major-prize-winning authors. He has said the talent he would most like to have is playing the violin. He has said that when he travels for a film, he always does so with the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, a “talisman” and “safety net for when one is feeling a bit bruised or battered.” He has described the greatest love of his life as “having a transforming encounter with a Work of Art, either as a listener, viewer, reader, spectator, or participant.” He is fluent in painting styles and the names of museum directors and the great theaters of both the East and the West. He is fluent in ballet now, too, since he's just directed a movie about the Soviet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. He enjoys hopping on the Eurostar to Paris from his home in London. He enjoys short flights to European capitals. He enjoys picking up his rental car in Umbria so that he may drive—the only time he drives—to his “tiny farmhouse” in the Italian countryside, where he goes “to read.” He has said his idea of perfect happiness is “swimming naked in the sea.” He has said that when and where he was happiest in his life was “swimming in Voidokilia Bay in the southern Peloponnese.” While we were together, he sounded most like Ralph Fiennes when he said European-sounding nouns, like “Peugeot” and “Tchaikovsky” and “salade niçoise.” He pronounced the little tail thing on the c, and, as a Fiennes character might direct him to, he pronounced it trippingly.

This cosmopolitanism seems to have sort of become the point about Ralph Fiennes in recent years. Wes Anderson may have been the first to recognize a new use for this caricature: that in the post-heartthrob Fiennes, a filmmaker could mine middle-life pathos, as well as levity and humor; that if a character were to possess an arch knowingness about the fact that he was being played by Ralph Fiennes, it might be really, really fun to watch.

Actually, maybe credit belongs to Martin McDonagh and In Bruges. The joke there was that Fiennes—the very high culture of his cells—could play the antithesis of so many counts and kings: an irritable East End gangster with a Shakespearean facility with fucking fuck fucks. Maybe that was the pivot?

Or, scratch that, too—perhaps it started earlier, with his first nose-less “Avada Kedavra!” in a Harry Potter movie. Maybe that was when we felt the options expand.

Regardless, there's been a slow shift, iterative at first, and then all at once wholly present, in a new series of roles for Fiennes over the past decade or so. There would always be the bedrock of English/European-set drama (Schindler's List, The English Patient, The Constant Gardener, The End of the Affair, Sunshine, just to name some acclaimed heavies), but there was space now for a fresh kind of on-screen presence. You get the Oscar-nominated talent and the self-awareness, too.

Take Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, for example, where Fiennes plays a motor-mouthing cocktail of taste and devil-may-care that could be reduced to something like: Ralph Fiennes type—but with all of the shirt buttons unbuttoned. Ralph Fiennes type—but with a Jagger falsetto and breezy linen. There's a scene in which Fiennes's Harry Hawkes leads his compatriots to a no-tourists dinner spot on a secluded hillside on an Italian island, doling out por favores and grazies as he gracefully inserts himself into the hospitable hands of the locals. I remember thinking in the theater, or on the plane, or wherever: This. This is what you get when you strip off the uniform of haughty propriety, but still have all the knowingness—all the language and command and wisdom amassed from a lifetime of moving fluidly across European borders. The result is very funny and very cool.

When we met in January, Fiennes had just finished a 76-show run of Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre in London. He'd spent the previous day—his one and only day off between the play and a new film shoot—reading books and responding to e-mails. (He'd been journaling when I first approached our table.) Fiennes still had his beard from the play, but it would be gone by that evening. He made reference to “what little hair I have left” on top, a style that changes often. The fixtures of his face were plenty there, though. The prominent nose and brow. The sticky-outy canines. The sensitive pale eyes, ticklish to the light—ever-present in the heroes and the villains alike, the same pair on Count Almásy as on Voldemort. The eyes were so familiar. As was the voice. His voice sounded exactly like Ralph Fiennes.

Sometimes actors make choices to pivot their careers. Other times those choices—those theories about their work, the sort of I've just laid out above—are more arbitrary, connecting unrelated opportunities in an effort to make sense of them, the way we trace weird animals out of the stars. Fiennes has said that, at times in his career, he felt people presuming that he only did a certain kind of dramatic role. I asked him if the run of films including In Bruges and The Grand Budapest Hotel and A Bigger Splash felt like a pivot.

“It did feel like that,” he said. “I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when Wes asked me to be in the film. And when Martin McDonagh approached me to be a kind of London gang boss. Which is not my obvious casting bracket.… And then Luca came to me with that great part, and it felt exciting to me, that ‘Oh, great, I'm not being seen as, I don't know, English intellectual or sort of cool, crisp bad guy.…’ The thing that people were responding to was the comedic, or the humorous, that was clearly in Wes's script, and Martin's, and in A Bigger Splash, and also the wonderful scene I was asked to do in the Coen brothers' film [Hail, Caesar!].” (Would that i' t'were so simple...)

I told him I'd been wondering how active he was in the pursuit of that pivot, since it's difficult to know how much an actor's hands are on the wheel.

“I think it's a very valid question. And I think sometimes actors are absolutely going: I want to do this and this.And other times it comes to you. All the stuff I've loved doing most has come to me. Sent to me.”

In the case of A Bigger Splash, Luca Guadagnino, who'd made it “an aim” of his to work with Fiennes ever since seeing Schindler's List and Quiz Show, told me he knew the actor for Harry “had to be somebody who could carry a complete buffoonish, clownish character combined with melancholy—and there was no doubt Ralph was the right person for that.” At the time, Fiennes had done The Grand Budapest Hotel, Guadagnino continued, and a trailer had just come out: “And I saw him briefly in a pink tie, being suave and swarthy in that little clip, and it was, ‘See, he's perfect.’ He's not only a master of shades of brooding-ness and melancholy, but he can also bring a levity and a capacity of likability that is really unique.” That well-worn heavy, and the new light. Perfect.

Fiennes is a voracious reader, and many of the films he's best known for have been adapted from the works of renowned authors. Michael Ondaatje. Graham Greene. Peter Carey. Shakespeare and Dickens. Even with the more genre-y, it's the best of the genre: Ian Fleming, John le Carré. I asked him if there was any intentionality to those clusters, to working with material from notable novelists.

“I know, I've been asked that before,” he said, seeming to consider it fresh. “But I think I'm responding to the film. And I've been happy to do things that are not based on a book, like In Bruges or The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

I asked if “his people” know what he's going to go for at this stage.

“I believe they know what I respond to,” he said. “But I'm actually not a good reader of film scripts. I'd rather read… I mean, I think I try the patience of the people who represent me.” He laughed knowingly. “If there's a book to read, and they're both sitting there…I'll go to the book, I'll read the script later.… If a certain amount of pressure is put on me, I'll go, Sorry, sorry, I'm doing it.”

I asked Tony Revolori, who played Fiennes's teenage co-lead in The Grand Budapest Hotel, if he remembered what Fiennes was reading on set. “A book of Shakespeare's sonnets,” naturally. Revolori said that Fiennes taught him “the proper way” to read those sonnets and then presented him with a “beautifully designed book” of those poems at the end of the shoot. On set, there were discussions of diction with director Wes Anderson. Tongue twisters were introduced. She stood upon the balustraded balcony inimicably mimicking him hiccuping while amicably welcoming him in. “Tongue-twister battles” ensued. (I would be disingenuous if I described any of this as being shocking.)

From a distance, it is hard to see Fiennes's life as anything but full and packed wall-to-wall with high culture. I asked if he, as a Known Culture Person with a love of things like theater and opera and classical music and art, worried there was something “slipping” in culture?

“I think, 'cause the National is fresh, I can talk about that with a bit more—I can know my thoughts more about the National more than…”

“Than all of culture, like I'm asking you?” I said.

He laughed. “It may be nostalgia, it may be how I'm choosing to remember, but you felt that within the National Theatre—and certainly at Stratford it is the case—they have to function as the company. I think it's probably impossible to do that now because of the way the entertainment business works, and the way actors need to be a part of—the pay is not high—so you have to make money on television or doing voice-overs. But maybe I have a romantic sense of the company.”

Fiennes's first big break came in 1988, in Stratford, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the company of companies. “I wanted to be an actor because I was excited by Shakespeare. It was thrilling and moving. I don't know, I had a quite naive infatuation with Shakespeare. I thought, What a wonderful thing to be in the Royal Shakespeare Company, or the National—and I didn't really think about films, because that seemed like another world.”

Shakespeare led to his first films, which led to a meeting with Spielberg and a role as an Austrian Nazi. In 1993, he was nominated for his first Oscar and embarked on the 25-year movie career that's followed. “If he picks the right roles and doesn't forget the theater,” Spielberg said of Fiennes at the time, unwittingly providing a useful blueprint, “I think he can eventually be Alec Guinness or Laurence Olivier.”

Fiennes didn't forget the theater, and he returns to Shakespeare frequently. The plays were his first love. And despite all forces pushing younger actors toward other kinds of work, he finds that that same infatuation endures with a new generation. “Even just walking back from our last-night Saturday, across the bridge to a party we were having [to celebrate the end of the production], one of the younger female members of the cast, a tiny part, but a lovely presence…she was saying, ‘I just wanted to do Shakespeare. I just love it. I just…’ And she expressed what I had felt. I was so touched, actually, because she said it with such ‘I just love Shakespeare.’ ”

“I know the film asks questions; I don't know that it answers them. I don't know that a film should answer. I like films that provoke me to think.”

Walking back across the bridge. I love that. Every actor, unknown and galactically famous, leveled out, in it together, the intimacy with one another, and with the city where they performed each night. It was fun to get a glimpse of Fiennes in London. It'd almost be a shame to encounter him anywhere else. We walked around Covent Garden for a bit, and he pointed out the grand theaters of the West End. That's where Eliza Doolittle sells flowers in the beginning of Pygmalion. That was Dickens's office. Fantastic. He delineated the precise border of the City of London, pointing at “that church-y thing over there,” a critical marker. We ended up facing the National Theatre—across the very bridge he'd mentioned—and it was sort of like being Ouija-ed by a drunk back to his favorite bar. The theater felt like home position, like all wanderings might wind up back there. Fiennes has lived and worked mostly in London all his career. I asked him if he ever thinks about elsewhere.

“I love London. I think London is a great city. I think it's got fantastic things. I don't know, I guess I've thought about elsewhere but haven't done it, because if it's working, why fix it?” he said. “I'm at a funny time, and I keep wanting to make a shift in the way I, where I live or how I live. I live in London, I've lived in London all my adult life, I live in the East End Shoreditch area, before it became über-hip, I bought a place in 2000. I've got a very lovely place in New York, which I love going to. But most of the work I get tends to be based out of here. And the theater work… I keep going back, because I miss it, I miss that thing.”

Fiennes has the rest of the year “chalked up” already. Five new films: a Kingsman prequel, a new Bond (“I'm waiting to get a Bond script; I'm hoping for a sexy location”), and three-ish other interesting-sounding dramas. Plus the release of The White Crow—Fiennes's third film as director—about a young Rudolf Nureyev, the famed Soviet dancer, and his defection from the USSR to France in 1961.

The White Crow features several scenes that capture those “transforming encounters with a Work of Art” Fiennes has described as the loves of his life. In one flashback, a young Nureyev—born on a trans-Siberian train to poor parents—is taken by his mother to the theater. We don't see what's transpiring onstage, only what's transpiring across his face. We see it happen again when Nureyev, older now and in training in Leningrad, stands before the Rembrandts at the Hermitage Museum. And then, once again, when he wakes up early one morning, to make sure he's the first person at the Louvre, so he can have Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa all to himself.

Again and again and again—“transforming encounters with a Work of Art.”

I read Fiennes's words back to him.

He laughed in recognition. “Yeah, okay. I'd forgotten that.”

I asked him about those scenes in the film.

“Those scenes,” he said, “the one in the Louvre and the one in the Hermitage, with the Rembrandt, those were the scenes that really moved me. Because the engagement with the Rembrandt… I thought The Prodigal Son, looking at it, when we shot that, I was so emotional, I wasn't crying, but on the inside… Those were holy days for me.”

I told Fiennes I knew he'd answered this question after directing his first two films, but I wondered if the answer had evolved during his third: Among the directors he'd worked with, had he cobbled together bits from one or another to help inform him, or was he standing on his own now?

“I don't know that I'm consciously taking from the films I've been in, in terms of visuals, in terms of cinematography,” he said. “But I certainly, in terms of ways of working…I'm often interested in Spielberg, whose energy, vocal… He's not a quiet sort of monosyllabic, quiet-voiced director. He's just direct. ‘Just go here.’ ‘Just put this lens on.’ ‘Come sit down.’ ‘Do it quickly.’ Very clever. Totally positive. And you can feel it. I remember the set, people loved it, because there was a sense of momentum. I think generally actors and crew love it when they feel this forward momentum and, along with it, good work.”

“Deliberate intention,” I said.

“Deliberate intention,” he said. “Wavering, wavering on the set is…” He chuckled darkly. “Too much wavering is worrying. And, like, Anthony Minghella [during The English Patient] was brilliant with actors. A gentle provocation towards looking for something other… It was in my lack of experience that I thought he was wanting me to ‘hit it,’ to ‘nail it.’ But I think actually, quite rightly, he's looking for ‘What else is there that I can get that this actor can own so that they're not contriving something to satisfy me?’ ”

“The pleasure is that I see a French film and meditate on what it, being an Englishman, what it says to me...it offers up new provocations, and also confirms common identity of being a human being.”

After lunch, we walked a short distance to the Royal Opera House, where Nureyev had danced and where a large black-and-white portrait of him hangs in the wings, hovering above the dancers as they step onto the stage. The Royal Opera House is also where Fiennes took ballet lessons of his own—eight or nine, he says—with a dancer in the Royal Ballet named Bennet Gartside, in preparation to play the legendary Soviet ballet teacher Alexander Pushkin. Once, and only once, in my presence, Fiennes did that incredibly weird thing where an actor transforms his head and face and body into another human being in a flash, a total magic trick, while showing me the way Pushkin did something or other.

The White Crow centers on the 1961 trip to Paris by the Kirov—the famed Leningrad ballet company. Nureyev is played by the Russian dancer Oleg Ivenko, who leaps and spins throughout as tightly as the threads of a screw. The film builds to a masterfully suspenseful climax at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, where Nureyev has to choose between defecting to the West or being sent back to the Soviet Union to face some unknown—but likely terrible—fate.

“It's not an easy decision as he sits there in the room. We've seen the love of the mother, we've seen the support of Pushkin, and we've seen those friends—it's not just the oppressive evil empire, it wasn't stifling,” Fiennes said. “When we shot Leningrad, the Soviet scenes, I wanted it quite classically framed, and ever so slightly, we bring the color up. We don't want to confirm the cliché of the gray Soviet world. And when I tried to look at color stills of the Soviet era, they're quite hard to find, but when you find them—bang!—I mean everyone, the women, the red, red being the political color, but red is everywhere. But it pops! And we see so many black-and-whites, it's so weird what this very basic visual thing does. Yeah, I just…it's complicated.… I know the film asks questions; I don't know that it answers them. I don't know that a film should answer. I like films that provoke me to think.”

When I met Fiennes in London in late January, politics was on the surface. Theresa May's Brexit plan had just been rejected by Parliament. And Fiennes had recently given a little-seen speech at the European Film Awards, in which he had spoken about film's role in Europe, and Europe's present relationship to Britain. The speech was economically rendered, but urgent and unequivocal in its diagnosis of political crisis in Europe and the U.K., and of film's role as a remedy:

In anticipation of this occasion…I couldn't help but reflect on what it is to consider oneself European. Is it an instinct? A feeling of belonging? Can I be English and European? Emphatically: Yes. That is my feeling in my gut.

There is arguably a crisis in Europe, and our feeling of family, of connection, of shared history, shared wounds, this feeling is being threatened by a discourse of division. A tribal and reactionary vocabulary is among us. It is depressing and distressing to witness the debate in my own country about who we are in relation to Europe. In England now, there is only the noise of division.

But film, filmmaking, the expression within a film, can be a window for us to see another human being, another human experience, and we can celebrate our differences of language, culture, custom, and our common humanity at the same time. But the act of seeing, seeing another, seeing through the lens, carries in it, I believe, the vital act of bearing witness. Perhaps if we truly bear witness, there can be a true connection, and a better understanding.… Our films can be songs, crossing borders and languages with melodies and harmonies in the form of light and sound and narrative patterns.

We discussed the speech, and his intentions with it. I asked him how much some of the ideas in The White Crow—the way ballet could move across borders, like the films he describes—were on his mind when he delivered the speech.

“I just had an instinct, that I wanted to say how much, how important I felt the community of filmmakers are, and given what this was, I would really be meaning European filmmakers, at the time when my own country is divided about what it means to be linked to Europe,” he said. “Not that countries have to make films that express [exclusively] their culture.… The pleasure is that I see a French film and meditate on what it, being an Englishman, what it says to me…it offers up new provocations, and also confirms common identity of being a human being. And I do feel, I suppose it links what I hope is identifiable in the film: [that he is] being moved and therefore changed by exposure to a work of art. It's a dialogue.”

There are the works of art in The White Crow, I said, and also the cities themselves. Before Nureyev sees the performances or the paintings, he's walking about first Leningrad and then Paris, experiencing that new feeling of somewhere else, letting it in. Fiennes doesn't shy away from his comparable feelings for Russia. The feelings you discover when a place becomes for you the people who live there and not just the political systems that dominate headlines.

“I've formed over the years a handful of friendships in Russia, a handful who are very important to me, and I love going there. And I'm aware of the… I mean the authoritarian nature of their regime that's in control of mostly all the press, and the creep of censorship and control, is very disturbing. But when I'm there, I sort of: There's life going on. I see amazing theater plays, and I have friendships with people.… What interested me was the common humanity underneath the ideological, political fisticuffs.”

I said that hearing about his friends in Russia reminded me of the same dynamic in the United States, the dissonance between the noise of American politics and the lives of most Americans, how most people have nothing to do with the political headlines, how most people are trying to do their best, to generally be kind to their neighbors.

“That's it. Exactly. Exactly. I'm sure that, you know… I mean, nothing that I read about Republican politics makes me think I would ever be sympathetic…but I'm sure that I could go to a Republican community in America and be welcomed, and looked after, and treated with extraordinary generosity and decency and kindness, and those people might go support a Republican candidate the next day.”

That continued exchange between human beings, whether ultimately fruitless or not, seems critical to Fiennes. And art continues to be one of the pre-eminent currencies of at least the exchange of culture.

“Ballet, not being connected to any spoken language, is an extraordinary communicator.… And as an audience member, whether it's a film, or a ballet, or a play, it feels so important to me that we have the privilege of being exposed to these things.... This is the one area, cultural interaction…where we can talk to each other. So when that's impacted, it seems serious.”

We discussed performers and companies struggling to get visas.

“I'm not saying that they're not coming anymore, but it is a challenge that you have to get a visa to go to Russia. And it's funny, isn't it, that I think the cultural interchange, interaction, exhibitions, theater, ballet, coming, that is where we can be like—”

Fiennes threaded his fingers together, hopefully, like hands in prayer.

Daniel Riley is GQ's features editor.

A version of this story originally appeared in the April 2019 issue with the title "Ralph Fiennes Loosens Up."

PRODUCTION CREDITS: Photographs by Scandebergs Styled by Jon Tietz Grooming by Ciona Johnson-King Set design by Zach Apo-Tsang at Magnet Agency Produced by Samira Anderson/Mai Productions

Huge thanks to the amazing @tessa-quayle for helping me out with this impossible-to-open article

#ralph fiennes #interview

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