#alfred-st-john

[bl00dline]

tagged by @alfred-st-john to share my lockscreen, last song listened to, last photo taken and last photo saved! thank you 🖤

wallpaper picture taken by ardea <3

tagging @themimegirl, @madame-karenina, @leftenantjopson, and @nefarious-nightjar! 🖤🖤🖤

[diioonysus]

vintage illustrations + my tattoo list

[thelastofthebookworms]

@all-you-had-to-do-was-neigh

Others parts in my 'narrative poems' tag.

The second poll is almost ready but I take suggestions for the third !

Other poems in my 'poetry' tags (Frost, Angelou, British Romanticism so far, French poetry next).

Good luck making a pick. There are quite a few of my favorites here.

Aurora Leigh

The Ballad of the Harp Weaver

The Highwayman

Metamorphoses

Goblin Market

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Iliad

Beowulf

The Epic of Gilgamesh

[fictionalfoodpolls]

Fire & water sandwich - Webkinz

[nofatclips]

A sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound showcasing Miklós Rózsa's score

[allweknewisdead]

Baby Face (1933) - Alfred E. Green

Look, here, Nietzsche says, "All life, no matter how we idealize it, is nothing more nor less than exploitation." That's what I'm telling you! Exploit yourself! Go to some big city where you will find opportunities. Use men! Be strong! Defiant! Use men! To get the t'ings you want.

[murderballadeer]

tagged by @bone-collector-cryptid to make a little fishbowl of my blog with this picrew. ty!!

i'll tag: @kneadingwater @norashelley @leftenantjopson @carmichaelthepolarbear @absolute-nonsense-scribblings @nelson-riddle-me-this @budcortfancam @tennesseewillams and @alfred-st-john

[humunanunga]

So I looked it up, because of course the Holmes books aren't alone to enter the public domain this year, and Metropolis has too. So here's the list I found of creative works that are now public domain:

Books

— The Gangs of New York, by Herbert Asbury (original publication)

— Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather

— The Big Four, by Agatha Christie

— The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys mystery by the pseudonymous Franklin W. Dixon

— The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

— Copper Sun, by Countee Cullen

— Mosquitoes, by William Faulkner

— Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway

— Der Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse (in German)

— Amerika, by Franz Kafka (in German)

— Now We Are Six, by A.A. Milne with illustrations from E.H. Shepard

— Le Temps retrouvé, by Marcel Proust (in French)

— Twilight Sleep, by Edith Wharton

— The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder

— To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

Movies

— "7th Heaven," directed by Frank Borzage

— "The Battle of the Century," a Laurel and Hardy film directed by Clyde Bruckman

— "The Kid Brother," directed by Ted Wilde

— "The Jazz Singer," directed by Alan Crosland

— "The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog," directed by Alfred Hitchcock

— "Metropolis," directed by Fritz Lang

— "Sunrise," directed by F.W. Murnau

— "Upstream," directed by John Ford

— "Wings," directed by William A. Wellman

Musical compositions

— "Back Water Blues," "Preaching the Blues" and "Foolish Man Blues" (Bessie Smith)

— "The Best Things in Life Are Free," from the musical "Good News" (George Gard "Buddy" De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson)

— "Billy Goat Stomp," "Hyena Stomp" and "Jungle Blues" (Ferdinand Joseph Morton)

— "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "East St. Louis Toodle-O" (Bub Miley, Duke Ellington)

— "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Ol' Man River," from the musical "Show Boat" (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern)

— "Diane" (Erno Rapee, Lew Pollack)

— "Funny Face" and "'S Wonderful," from the musical "Funny Face" (Ira and George Gershwin)

— "(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream" (Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King)

— "Mississippi Mud" (Harry Barris, James Cavanaugh)

— "My Blue Heaven" (George Whiting, Walter Donaldson)

— "Potato Head Blues" and "Gully Low Blues" (Louis Armstrong)

— "Puttin' on the Ritz" (Irving Berlin)

— "Rusty Pail Blues," "Sloppy Water Blues" and "Soothin' Syrup Stomp" (Thomas Waller)

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/public-domain-debuts-include-last-sherlock-holmes-work-/6898309.html

[normally0]

A little bit of indefatigable punk spirit from the 80’s on St John Street, by the architects Munkenbeck & Marshall I think. Good one Alfred. Looks beautiful in the rain!

[princesssarisa]

Yesterday I shared links to complete filmed performances available free on YouTube of the top 10 most frequently performed operas. While I'm at it, here are links to performances of the next top 10 most popular operas, all with English subtitles.

Cosí Fan Tutte

Théâtre du Châtelet, 1992 (Amanda Roocroft, Rosa Mannion, Rainer Trost, Rodney Gilfry, Eiran James, Claudio Nicolai; staged and conducted by John Eliot Gardiner)

L'Elisir d'Amore

Vienna State Opera, 2005 (Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, Leo Nucci, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo; staged by Otto Schenk; conducted by Alfred Eschwé)

Aida

San Francisco Opera, 2010 (Micaela Carosi, Marcello Giordani, Dolora Zajick, Marco Vratogna, Hao Jiang Tian; staged by Jo Davies; conducted by Nicola Lusotti)

Hänsel & Gretel

Studio film, 1981 (Brigitte Fassbaender, Edita Gruberova, Sena Jurinac, Hermann Prey; directed by August Everding; conducted by Georg Solti)

Turandot

Opera Hong Kong, 2018 (Oksana Dyka, Alfred Kim, Valeria Sepe; staged by Warren Mok; conducted by Paolo Olmi)

Die Fledermaus

Bavarian State Opera, 1987 (Eberhard Wächter, Pamela Coburn, Wolfgang Brendel, Janet Perry, Brigitte Fassbaender; staged by Otto Schenk; conducted by Carlos Kleiber)

Nabucco

St. Margarethen Opera Festival, 2007 (Igor Morosow, Gabriella Morigi, Elizabeth Kulman, Bruno Riberio, Simon Yang; staged by Robert Herzl; conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer)

Eugene Onegin

Kirov Opera, 1984 (Sergei Leiferkus, Tatiana Novikova, Yuri Marusin, Larissa Diadkova; staged and conducted by Yuri Temirkanov)

Lucia di Lammermoor

Studio film, 1971 (Anna Moffo, Lajos Kozma, Giulio Fioravanti, Paolo Washington; directed by Mario Lanfranchi; conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario)

Paglacci

Lirica Italiana at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, 1961; Mario del Monaco, Gabriella Tucci, Aldo Protti, Attilio D'Orazzi; conducted by Giuseppe Morelli)

[bl00dline]

👶📣🎥

thank you henry!

👶 The first song you remember enjoying

this is the sort of situation where you’re not sure if you genuinely remember it or you only remember it because you’ve been told about it, but when i was really little i LOVED mess around by ray charles!

📣 A lyric that feels like it is specifically calling you out

and when i’m lying in my bed

i think about life and i think about death

and neither one particularly appeals to me

-nowhere fast by the smiths

🎥 A song that gives you a really specific mental image

probably marian by the sisters of mercy. i envision a ship descending in really dark whirlpool. pretty much what the song is singing about but yeah

thank you so much, this was fun

[ginandoldlace]

Nowhere says “the Establishment” quite like St James's Square. Built by Henry Jermyn after the 1660 Restoration, rebuilt by the Georgians and periodically hacked at ever since, St Jim’s (as Eliza Doolittle might have put it) was home to peers, prime ministers and panjandrums of every stripe; today though, the square is 100% commercial/institutional, with the usual deadening effect.

No. 4 is a survivor from 1725; once home to the Waldorf Astors, it was the headquarters of de Gaulle’s Free French during WW2, and was taken over by the old In and Out club when they vacated their Piccadilly mansion.

No. 3 was owned by the Devonshires and the Palmerstons, and remodelled in 1818 by Sir John Soane. And demolished in 1930, the heyday for smashing up Soane. The replacement, a neo-Georgian office block by Alfred & David Ospalek, has some pleasing stone relief panels by Newbury A Trent depicting cries of London. They hardly make up for the loss though.

And if you think that was vandalism, Nos. 1-2 on the corner of Charles II Street was Ossulton House, from 1753. Until the Westminster Bank acquired the site and, in 1950, demolished it and built themselves an office block. Which in turn has gone, to be replaced by the current gem, which is as pure an example of the City of Westminster’s preferred contextual building style as to make you want to scream…

Scream away. No. 8 follows the same recipe. Look how discreetly it blends its modern credentials with these Georgians. The original no. 8 was Josiah Wedgwood’s showroom in the C18, but you can’t stop the tide of change. Indeed, for most of the C20, no one bothered trying, it seems…

[contremineur]

Always these memories, barely submerged.

Emily St. John Mandel, from Station Eleven (Alfred A. Knopf 2014)

[kostantina]

HWS Female Holy Rome X England (Medieval Empire X Modern Empire)

AESTHETIC MOOD BOARD

❝Many German and English writers were fond of expressing a common Anglo-Saxon-Germanic heritage prior to 1914, but in fact this largely disappeared after the Saxon migrations of late antiquity. Important contacts remained, especially with the renewed missionary activity promoted by the Carolingians, who often relied on qualified monks from the British Isles, like St Boniface, but otherwise England and the Empire evolved separately. While a sense of Saxon heritage may have played a part, both countries were sufficiently distant not to be immediate competitors. Ironically, this opened possibilities for royal marriages which, like Byzantine-imperial matches, were intended mainly to impress a domestic audience and avoid antagonizing a king’s nobles by tying him to one local family. Otto I married Alfred the Great’s granddaughter, Edith of Wessex, while Henry III married Gunhild, daughter of Knut of Denmark-England. Edith’s and Knut’s deaths ended any chances of a lasting alliance in both cases.

❝By contrast, connections in the high Middle Ages were more significant, if less celebrated in the nineteenth century. Emperor Henry V married Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, in 1114 as a deliberate attempt to forge an alliance with the Anglo-Norman dynasty ruling much of Britain since 1066. It was hoped this would outflank a Franco-papal alliance threatening the Empire towards the end of the Investiture Dispute.❞

-  Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire

❝On his mother's advice, Richard resigned the kingdom of England to Henry VI in order to receive it back as a fief of the empire. He was to pay his overlord £5,000 a year. Richard was now a vassal of Philip for his continental lands and a vassal of Henry VI for his island kingdom, but it seems that in England few, if any, were willing to acknowledge this, and that this part of the agreement was hushed up. At Henry's court, of course, it was regarded as the jewel in the crown.

❝On the day of his release, Henry VI and the princes of the empire had sent Philip and John a letter telling them that they would do all they could to help Richard if everything that had been taken while Richard was in captivity was not restored at once.❞

- John Gillingham, Richard I

❝On the morning of 6 August an imperial herald in full regalia rode through Vienna to the Jesuit church of the Nine Choirs of Angels. After climbing to the balcony, he summoned the inhabitants with a silver fanfare to announce the end of the Empire.

❝The Empire was certainly not dead by the late eighteenth century, and if it was sick, as Zedler and others suggested, it was not yet on life support. If revolutionary France had not intervened, the most likely prognosis was that the Empire’s socio-political order would have persisted further into the nineteenth century, but it is unlikely that this could have been sustained against the levelling and homogenizing forces unleashed by capitalism and industrialization around 1830.

❝By 1806, some leading intellectuals expressed the sense that the Empire had been sick for a long time and that its doctors had long given up hope. Goethe’s mother wrote two weeks after Francis II’s abdication that the news was not unexpected, ‘as when an old friend is very ill’. Later historians have expressed similar views that the Empire died ‘a “natural” death’ from old age, rather than having been murdered by Napoleon.❞

-  Peter H. Wilson, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire

❞By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, French imperialism had been curbed in North America, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia, but soon much of North and West Africa would be brought under French political and cultural influence. Spain was no longer a major power, but after the demise of its empire in the 1830’s its cultural dominance in the countries of South America remained: their economies urban, their governments strictly centralized, and their peoples devoutly Catholic in the Spanish style (Fernandez-Armesto, 2003). The Dutch and Portuguese empires were also in decline, and yet survived, resistant to radical change because of the commercial benefits derived from their overseas possessions. However, none of these four imperial orders came close to matching the size and power and wealth of the British Empire.

❝Encompassing nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land mass and a quarter of its population, the British Empire in the 19th century grew into the most extensive empire the world has ever seen.❞

- Douglas M. Johnston, In The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena

[amethystandemma]

Because my pookie @jnephrite did this for her OC Morgan, I’m trying to do this for my OC Aqua!

Timeline of Aqua Charming!

year -2 — Aqua (11) meets Donna Troy (12) for the first time. The two become close friends and visit each other on their respective home islands.

Meanwhile, Dick Grayson’s (11) parents die and he is left with his Aunt Harriet (53) as his only surviving family member. He is adopted by Bruce Wayne (27).

year -1 — Aqua (12) starts “dating” Johnny Alto (12).

Dick Grayson (12) becomes Robin and meets Donna Troy (13).

year 0 — Aqua (13) and Johnny (13) sneak into the woods at night where Johnny gets turned into a vampire and aged to a 20 year old man. Aqua breaks up with him and he is thrown in prison after terrorizing Brooklinia and Aqua.

Dick Grayson (13) becomes best friends with Donna Troy (14) and Wally West (13).

year 1 — Aqua (14) travels to Gotham where she stays with Bruce Wayne (30), Harriet Cooper (56), Alfred Pennyworth (60), and Dick Grayson (14). She becomes Blue Comet the same year.

Later in the year, she has her first awakening of new powers. She goes back to Brooklinia after her parents catch the culprit trying to murder them. Before leaving, Dick Grayson kisses her on the cheek. The two exchange identities and promise to stay in touch.

year 2 — Aqua (15) returns to Gotham to ask for Dick’s (15) help in finding a friend of her’s named Garth (14). Dick recruits Wally (15) and Aqua recruits Donna (15) to help find him. Along the way, they meet Speedy (14) who helps their search.

When they find Garth, the group of six fight Orm (his captor). They would have been killed if Aqua didn’t have her second awakening while saving Dick Grayson, unlocking a new set of powers. They realize how well they work together, and Donna suggests they call themselves the Teen Titans.

Dick Grayson invites Aqua Charming to his school’s spring cotillion and the two exchange their first kiss.

year 3 — Aqua (16) and Dick (16) become an official couple. The Teen Titans move into Titans Tower and recruit more members. They go on many adventures together, and recruit more members.

Dick Grayson starts to think he should strike out as his own hero. Bruce Wayne and Silver St. Cloud have a son named Arian.

year 4 — Bruce Wayne (34) adopts Jason Todd (13). He becomes the new Robin. Dick Grayson (17) becomes Nightwing.

Bruce Wayne marries Silver St. Cloud (33). Silver is murdered at the alter.

Aqua Charming (17) takes the Titans to Brooklinia where they all witness the murder of her parents. Overcome with grief, Aqua unlocks her third set of powers.

year 5 — Dick Grayson (18) proposes to Aqua Charming (18). The two become engaged and take a leave of absence from the Team, leaving Wonder Girl (19) in charge.

Jason Todd (14) is murdered by the Joker, but is brought back to life rather quickly by his girlfriend Macy Cobblepot (13), who took him to Ra’s al Ghul. In exchange, the two work for him in the League of Shadows.

year 6 — Aqua Charming (19) and Dick Grayson (19) are married. Aqua gets pregnant during their honeymoon. Aqua is crowned Queen of Brooklinia the same year.

year 7 — Aqua Charming (20) gives birth to Richard John “Rickey” Grayson II on Dick Grayson’s (21) birthday. Rickey is born as a stillborn. Overcome with grief, Dick brings his son to the Lazarus Pit in Gotham where he finds Jason Todd (15), alive. Rickey is brought back with a white streak in his hair.

Tim Drake (13) becomes Robin. Bruce Wayne (37) has a relationship with Talia al Ghul (35) before breaking it off.

year 8 — Aqua Grayson (21) unlocks a new, and final, set of powers when Johnny Alto (20) nearly kills Dick Grayson (22). She later gives birth to Caroline and Conner Grayson.

Talia al Ghul (36) gives birth to Damian Wayne.

[maibluemen]

ok while i'm working on which meta stuff i want to have on this blog, i do want to make a somewhat? detailed post on some name headcanons i have. so. some countries whose names i either tweak or change from the ones suggested by himaruya (arguably, there are no canon names. alfred is really the only one you could argue for lol)

🇷🇺 - ivan ivanovich morozov

hima doesn't give patronymics to the countries that would use them. ivanovich comes from ivan being very young and asked what his full name is, and the only male name he could think of was his own lol so he just stuck with it. and yes both sisters have teased him for this. morozov is derived from the russian word for "frost," which i find fitting; i wanted to find a non-jewish surname for him because i don't headcanon him as jewish and. of all the non-jewish countries to have a jewish surname.....well. no judgement on people who use braginsky and i doubt himaruya meant any harm or anything but yeah that's why i use a different surname for him lol

🇱🇹 - tolvydas jonas laurinaitis

shoutout to @hinotorihime who i believe was one of the first, if not the first person in the fandom to suggest tolys being a more accurate translation of トーリス (since japanese doesn’t distinguish between R/L sounds like indo-european languages do, and english doesn’t distinguish between I/Y the way lithuanian does, and tolys being an EXCEEDINGLY uncommon name, i don’t think “toris” is an unreasonable translation to have made after the game of language telephone from lithuanian->japanese-> english lol. トーリス would be directly transliterated like “to risu” for those unfamiliar with katakana. it’s worth noting that pixiv translates his character tag as “tolys”). uhh the source he gave me is a website that no longer exists and wasn't archived unfortunately, but "tolvydas" means something like "far seer" and tolys is a shortened form of it jonas is the name he added when he was finally baptized, and it's in reference to john the baptist anyway, here is an old post where she explains some name meanings!

🇪🇪 - eduard tamm

look i know eduard isn't really used in estonia but the guy simply gives off eduard vibes to me, sorry tamm, aside from being the most common surname, means "oak"

🇱🇻 - raivis bērziņš

bērziņš is, again, the most common surname and means "birch"

ed and raivis having the most common surnames in their countries i swear isn't me being lazy, i like the idea of all 3 baltics having tree names (laurinaitis referring to "laurel")

🇵🇱 - feliks mieczysław kazimierz łukasiewicz

who let the poles be catholic so. feliks has only been a name used in poland since around the 1800s? iirc, it was specifically brought over because of a fascination with french names but i might be wrong lol (and ultimately the origins of the name are latin, so variants of it are pretty old anyway). anyway. i've decided that his first name used to be mieczysław and he changed it around the time of the napoleonic wars to feliks, but kept the old name. kazimierz was chosen at his baptism and refers to st casimir, one of the many patron saints of poland (there's literally a wikipedia article dedicated to them all lol)

🐥 - gilbert maria beilschmidt

mary was just a hugely important aspect of gil's history as a knight (and the specific orders he represented also). he hasn't been catholic in centuries but he keeps maria in his legal name because that's his mom, guys

N. 🇮🇹 - felice luca veneziano

veneziano and romano being surnames (meaning "venetian" and "roman" respectively) i decided to just...assign the italy bros their uh. titles? as surnames. apparently siblings having separate surnames isn't unheard of for the nations lol, anyway. i thought it would be more fitting as i also headcanon that there's at least 20 italies (corresponding with each modern-day region though the actual history gets a bit messier, like my tuscany oc is more properly my florence oc.....that's another post, tho) and vene and romano represent. well. veneto (but originally venice) and lazio (but originally the city of rome...though i have yet to decide when he started representing rome because he's not an Ancient....anyway.....) felice being the italian variant of "felix" luca is a baptismal name referring to st luke, who is a patron of (amongst other things) artists

S. 🇮🇹 - lovino francesco romano

heh so lovino is in the category of not really a real name but i like it and have never really felt drawn to another name instead francesco refers to st francis of assisi who is hugely popular. well, in general. and is a patron of italy. i need to workshop some more headcanons about romano and religion because of....reasons lol, but this is definitely a name he took on relatively recently.