#kinda proud of the clickbait title

[biggesthalseystanxoxo]

romeo and juliet are hopeless now

"Good artists copy; great artists steal."

Was this quote uttered by Steve Jobs when he declared that he was willing to engage in thermonuclear warfare with Android in 1996? Or Pablo Picasso, who was misquoted as he referred to Igor Stravinsky's iteration, while they both borrowed from T.S Elliot's dictum, "Immature poets imitate, mature artists steal." Well, to be honest, it doesn't matter too much because everyone who uttered almost the same message moulded it to fit their own requirements. Regarding art at face value makes us see it as just stories and paintings to be hung on walls or choreographed into melodies and built into cities when there's so much more behind it.

For example, at a quick glance, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is nothing more than a story of two immature children who disregard their parents wishes to get married. But the tale of loverboy and manic pixie dream girl acts as a cautionary tale, a warning for foolishness, impulse, and rivalry; eliminating the repercussions the characters faced from their actions would remove the deterrent, and the play would lose its significance. And that - is what makes his work timeless. 

So timeless that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has been picked apart and scrutinised hundreds of times; in fact, in terms of movie adaptations alone, this 16th-century story has been staged for the screen over fifty times. But this time, we're having a look at singer/songwriter Halsey's take on iconic literature in the setting of her own discography. Instead of fair Verona, Halsey's entire album released in 2017 titled 'Hopeless Fountain Kingdom' is jam-packed with references as it plays with Shakespeare's original script, and she decides to set the two-hour traffic of her stage in Anorev (wildly creative; I know) - the fictional city housing her modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.

And while you may already be familiar with many of Shakespeare's works after being obligated to tap along to his iambic pentameter and pick apart his prose, Halsey has managed to take the cult classic film (Romeo + Juliet 1996) by Baz Luhrmann and reinvent it for herself. She chose to maintain critical concepts and themes like lust, conflict, the inevitability of fate, the idea of death and love that blinds but adds her own like same-sex love, betrayal, female sexual liberation and modern romance. 

The houses alike in dignity are Aureum as the Montagues and Angelus as the Capulets. Our main characters are now Solis Angelus and Luna Aureum, which mean sun and moon and represent Juliet and Romeo, respectively, making the quote "star-cross'd lovers" literal. Halsey says that Solis was chosen as the name for Juliet since, in Act 2 Scene 2 of the play, Romeo confesses that Juliet is his sun but, contradicting him, is Luna, meaning the moon. Throughout the music videos, we do not see the original Romeo's homie-o's Benvolio and Mercutio. However, we know that Solis's best friend is [SPOILER ALERT] the traitor, but the audience has no other means to identify him or relate him to since all we see is his withering lack of loyalty. To my excitement, we see some Rosa (depicting Rosaline) content in the music video about the song that describes Luna (or, well, Halsey) reflecting on her relationship with Rosa she had been trying to move on from (just like Act 1 Scene 2 in the original but with the same-sex love twist). 

Halsey has chosen not to follow the exact chronological order in Shakespeare's script, but she incorporates key points into each of the five music videos that conclusively create her circular plot. In the 'Strangers' MV, we see Luna and Rosa physically fighting in a boxing ring - symbolising their break up early, and towards the end, Luna meets Solis for the first time. The 'Now or Never' MV depicts Luna and Solis finally getting closer together and realising they love each other. Luna goes to a tarot reader, and he tells her their love is pure, yet there is interference, and before she gets to ask any more questions, she is forced to leave. Shortly after, Solis confesses to his best friend (who is unnamed, thankfully, or else I'd have started using his name to curse), who conveys Solis's secret to the elders of the house of Angelus, and warfare begins and ends as quickly as it started, resulting in bloodshed and civil hands staining with civil blood. This continues directly into the next MV of the song called 'Sorry', which is more of a lamenting ballad where Luna walks through the ruins of the battlefield as she sings apologetically. In the 'Bad At Love' MV, Luna is on the run/banished, much like Romeo after he murders Tybalt. She comes across the same place she took a tarot reading but finds it abandoned.

Meanwhile, back in the comfort of his home Solis quickly sprawls a message onto paper telling Luna he loves her and sends a messenger to deliver it immediately. Again, Mr McTraitorFace (aka Solis's best friend) meddles in other people's business and switches the letters so that it reads as if Solis wants Luna dead and that he hates her (referenced in the lyrics of her sidetrack titled 'Lie' - "I get the message you wish I was dead"). Luna receives this message, and the audience collectively winces as, just like in Shakespeare's original work, another untimely misconception occurs, and the phenomenon of blatant miscommunication strikes once again. Ultimately, the 'Alone' MV shows Luna moving over Solis at a party (which is visually similar to the Masked Capulet house party) and thus, we are back again to the start of the story - where an opportunity may arise for new love to be found. 

Halsey herself quotes her story to be a "celebration of death" because it's the end of their "death-marked love", and she's rejoicing as she's revolved once around the circle, and it's time to spin around another chapter while making way for new art to be created. 

[annetteblog]

Intro & My take on KM

Hi!

I’m new around here so it’s supposed to be (not so short) introduction, since I don’t know how to start a blog heh. I hope to sprinkle my 0.5 cents into the KM conversation and maybe to bring a new perspective from someone, who is not a part of the typical English-speaking West.

Who /the hell/ Am I?  

(please, consider it to be said with NJ’s voice from Intro: Persona :D)

I was born in Siberia (it’s in the Asian part of Russia), currently live in the European part of the country while studying at a Uni (European in terms of geography, not in terms of everything else i’m definitely not shading rn lolllll). English is not my first language, I’ve just kind of learnt it to some extent. Due to this it takes me more time to write a post; and I may (and will) make some grammatical & other mistakes. Plus I’m lazy AND busy with Uni, so I won’t even promise to be consistent in posting smth lol. But I thought I need more practice in terms of writing in English, so here I am, actually scribbling something. This feels weird, because I’ve been around stan Tumblr since 2015, but never ever interacted, just read.

How I ended up around Jikook/Kookmin (and BTS) & My (long&messy) take on this matter

Although I had heard of BTS before, I became an Army only in October 2018. I had kinda avoided them, because you know... boybands.... sing songs about romantic love and how they love girls.......... (+I had been around Twitter when 1D been at their peak and I remember a quite toxic community of fans, whom always had scared me). Shortly, hello stereotypes. Obviously, after I got engaged I felt terribly sorry that I had been sleeping on them, but what is done cannot be undone. 

Someone I knew back then reposted one of their MVs and I, during my sad hours of procrastination, decided to watch it. Then I saw their live performance with the same song. And I thought “wow these guys can sing and dance and the music is kinda cool, i need to check this out maybe??” 

Then a funny thing happened. One of the next videos I watched (the same person had it added to their page) was a 2016 BangtanBomb where JM and JK practiced their Coming of Age dance. 

Do you know this moment with Gina from the 1st episode of Brooklyn 9-9:

Well, that was precisely me after I watched it. I don’t even know how to explain this, it was kind of a gut feeling? Whatever you call it, I started to get suspicious and couldn’t even explain to myself why. /actually now a do have questions to this vid and the main one - why does everyone cringe that much? if it’s a girly choreo than they had done some “girly” moves before. why is there such strong reaction??/

I started to get deeper and went to some ru-shipper communities. Shipping culture among Russian speaking fans is... well, weird to some extent, but I maybe address this topic some time later. You need to consider that (as far as you probably know) Russia is quite homophonic country and sadly is not the greatest place for LGBTQ+ community at the moment. The non-frienly influential attitudes hanging in the society + the general shippers’ weirdness = the result is not that nice honestly. 

I struggled for some time in order to find more mature people (not just in terms of age but in general sanity), failed, ended up with some EXTREMELY toxic ru-fans of TK, which was/is the most popular pairing here, spent among them like 15 minutes and ran away horrified. After that I didn’t even try to engage with shippers or believers or whatever of any pair and just decided to enjoy the music and the content (which is a great idea, highly recommend!)

After a couple of days I discovered that JK makes videos. I love video, films and visual art so I immediately found them on YT, saw the titles with names of different cities from all over the world and was like “Oh that must be so cool, he’s visited so many outstanding places I’ve never been to, so I really need to watch it! I shall enjoy some beautyyy”. Then I clicked on GCFt.

Well, what can I say. I did enjoy some beauty, but not the type I had initially anticipated. The biggest clickbait in my entire life. JK should be proud of himself.

                                       /as I said - the beauty/

I had already known Troy back then and I known the song’s lyrics so it would not be an underestimation to say - the video just blew my mind. I was like - hold on is this real? seriously?? no really really????? he manage to get away with something THAT obvious?????? dude how

As a person who edited videos AND is not a native English speaker, I don’t buy the explanation “oh he mustve didnt get the lyrics lmao”. You just don’t do that. You don’t. DON’T. You google and translate every shit you don’t understand, every word and idiom you’ve never encountered, because otherwise the possibility of an epic failure is very likely. You wouldn’t want to give your mum a video as a birthday present and then discover that you used a song with WAP-ish lyrics, right? (well maybe that would be okay in your family, I don’t judge, but that’s not the case for people I know). So don’t you dare to degrade JK’s intellectual capacities; such assumption is really offensive. He is a smart boii, he knows exactly what he’s doing in terms of his art.

So I was shocked, but decided to look for the context - maybe I missed some previous events regarding this Tokyo thing (another great idea - always check the context). Well, apparently I didn’t, because the whole narrative with the trip for two, lovely selfies etc. made my poor brain lowkey explode. (I still don’t buy the rings theory thing though)

But I didn’t give up lol! I’m a bit stubborn and it’s very hard to convince me in anything, so I decided to search for more context, more of their interactions, moreeee. Remember, the late October 2018, there were no swan lakes, RB, and even MMA18 hadn’t happened yet. 

This time I ended up watching content in more or less consistent way, and when I saw all of these scenes with affectionate JM and a cool badass i-don’t-care-about-anyone-i’m-a-manly-man-with-no-feelings-whatsoever JK, I just hysterically laughed. 

Homophobic Russia, remember? I recognized this. Growing up here being LGBT myself, taught me the same type behaviour during my high school days. When a girl I kinda liked but didn’t what to admit it to myself was nice to me or (oh god) flirted with me, I did something similar. It’s like a huge panic mode. Being an introvert doesn’t help either. The funniest thing is that you may not entirely realise what exactly is going on in terms of your own feelings, especially at that age (16-18ish). In my personal case, I thought I liked her but as a friend, only later to realise that well not as a friend oops :DDD The second thing (already not so funny) is that you actually consciously or unconsciously try to avoid the subject as much as possible, as long as possible and pretend that nothing is going on. We’re just bros. Stop doing this stupid gayish thing and don’t look at me like that, you’re annoying. If you ever do this again I (gently) kick you. I’m straighter than a straight line in my math textbook. IDK, but probably that’s your brain is somehow trying to protect you. Again, in my case&position I knew that the consequences for any non-straight person being outed would be bad (TW not to the point of being killed bad, but to the point of being excluded from a big part of society). So for me it was a mixture of the internalized homophobia + lack of self reflection + just being a bit emotionally slow + very! straight community around. Shit happens, I was a teenager and made my share of mistakes, but that experience helps me to recognize the same pattern of behaviour up to this day.   

So coming back to KM, because the post is already waaay too long and I just ramble. It’s been 2+ years for me being a part of this fandom, and what can I say... Things become more intense and eventful with every year passing by ;) Funny how I felt that vibe from the 2016 dance practice video. Seeing the Black Swan performance a week ago almost had me choked, no joking. They are amazing.

                                                    Pure Art

However, and I would like to emphasize that, I do not incline that KM are 100% romantically involved and/or gay or whatever. I tend to treat people with respect and not to make too much assumptions about their private life. That’s not my business. However, I’m also not a fan of heteronormativity, so I’m just sitting here and observe everything that’s going on putting some distance and not forgetting being generally polite and critical thinking. But if they are just straightest besties please give them an Oscar before Grammy

Anyways, I hope this blog won’t kick the bucket from the very start and I will post something every now and then. You can always ask me questions about some BTS/Jikook related stuff or something about Russia and a Russian view on mass culture topics, since I’m pretty sure some of you have very stereotypical view of what is going on here :) However, do note that I’ve never been to America or Europe, therefore I may not be aware of something verrrry obvious to you or just have a completely different experience. 

P.S.  And yeah, I’m used to say Jikook, since it’s the name which is used much more frequently in Russian.  i like it better and what will u do haha

[kingdomofkitten]

I’m leaving tumblr 4ever..... (very sad) (not clickbait)

You know, I wasn’t exactly anticipating making this sorta post? I just kinda figured I wouldn’t bother, but here we are.

So, to start off, that title is pretty much a joke. You can tell. I’m not completely leaving Tumblr, and it’s not forever. That’s all a joke....but it’s also kinda not a joke.

Essentially, I plan on posting one more story, probably. My very first story with my sona, Jake. It’s been off-and-on development over the course of a year (funnily enough, it wasn’t because it was this big grand story, it was just because life events happened, and whenever I had time to work on it, I would either be tired, or get writer’s block, lol). But once that’s released, I plan on that being the final story I post onto Tumblr. And even then, I will likely just post a link to an AO3 page for the story, or maybe FF.N. After that, my time as a writer in the world of Tumblr will be done. I may reblog stuff, or like stuff, but that will be it.

Now firstly, I’m sure I know what a fair few of you are thinking. “What does this mean for the Ikariverse? Does this mean we will see more of the little bon-bon on actual fanfiction websites, and not some social media site, like some kinda loser who doesn’t know how social media works?! :D”

First off.....wow, dick. Second, I unfortunately have some bad news there. I planned on announcing this later, but with Season 3 now premiered, might as well get it out of the way. As of now, Ikariverse is on a bit of an indefinite hiatus. I have no real concrete ideas for stories, and even for vague ideas, no real desire to get to them right now. And even if I get back to writing more, it will absolutely be no longer as frequent as it once was. Please don’t take this to think I’m abandoning Ikari, or I’m even abandoning Retsuaida! .....although, from what I’ve heard of Season 3, that would be a believable possibility. The truth is, I got really burnt out on making stories after a while. I honestly thought I would never finish The Wedding, and it was because of the sheer panic of Season 2 coming out that drove me to complete it. I’m still somewhat proud of how that turned out, but still. Not exactly the best position to be in. I can’t really do that anymore, I have to work at my own pace, and in my own time. I’m sorry if that upsets some of you, but it just really do be like that tho.

Secondly, if I’m not on Tumblr much anymore, where will you find me? As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have a Twitter, with which you can follow me. I will put a link to it at the end of this post. I also have a Discord, and my own server, though at the moment, I’m keeping it a bit private for now. Will let people know when I’m opening it up.

Oh, and thirdly, will I post Borba’s third part of his epic Zootopia saga? ....no. Fuck no. I will not even fucking acknowledge it. That was one of the stupidest ideas I ever had in my life, and it’s one of the few things on here I genuinely regret doing. To all those who had to suffer through that, I can only apologize. I was a dumbass. Besides, last I heard, he was posting it on his own website. Go to there, if you wanna read it. I stopped caring.

Finally, I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who has joined on my silly adventures for these past few years. In a weird sort of way, Tumblr helped me make new friends I probably wouldn’t meet otherwise. And I don’t regret meeting any of them, even if they absolutely regret meeting me. :3 It’s been wild, it’s been emotional, it’s even been a bit sad. But most of all, it’s been fun. And hey, who doesn’t love fun, right?

Anyway! ONTO MY NEXT STORY! .......jk im probably gonna either sleep or play games lmao Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingdomOfKitten

[edens-garden-of-romance-blog]

Kidnaped geek, brawny bounty hunter and greek mythology in space? Oh My!

Did the shirtless guy get your attention? Or was it my clickbait title? Doesn’t matter, you’re here now!

Edens Three sentence plot: The heroine Juanita, plus a bunch of other women gets kidnapped by Alien slavers because they want to sell her to Aliens who want to eat her. Yikes. Anywho enters Orion, a bounty-hunter who pretends he’s an asshole slaver in order to save the women who were captured. He saves them with help from Juanita and Star Guardians, the protectors of space. 

Edens Review: OMG! I don’t even have words for how much I loved this book. Well I mean I do bc I’m writing this review, but you get my point, right? Back to the book. Let us make a pro and cons list shall we? 

Pros -Badass but still super relatable heroine in Juanita 

-Proud Geek, who is loving being in actual space!

-Hero Orion who is a badass bounty hunter, but also a geek. (He loves a graphic novel based on Hercules)

-Juanita is never just a damsel in distress, in fact, she saves Orion just as much as he saves her! 

-The hero is technically human, but they have a super cool origin story based in Greek mythology that you’re just going to have to read to find out ;)

Cons

-The plot felt both really fast and super slow

-The conflict was wrapped up almost too fast

But that was kinda it for the cons. This was truly the most enjoyable sci-fi romance novel I have read in a while. 

TW: Juanita is almost raped in the first scene, but Orion steps in before anything can happen. The girls are kidnapped to be sold as food to an alien race so there's that. 

This is my first book review, so if you have any tips or comments please let me know! Also if you have read the book, or if you want to read this book please hit me up so I can talk to people about this book!