#‘this is an anaphor’ no it’s not thanks though!

[pureheroine2013]

MY toxic trait is that I think I know better than my Latin teachers so I just completely ignore their annotations etc if I disagree ❤️

[flowercrown-bard]

Poems for the Poet (1/ 5)

Pairing: Eskel/Jaskier

Summary: Unbeknownst to Jaskier, he inspires Eskel to try his hand at writing poetry. Eskel posts his poems anonymously to notice boards, not thinking that anyone would read them. Until he hears Jaskier's songs unmistakably referencing Eskel's poetry. (Eskel’s pov of The Way to a Poet’s heart)

Word count: ~2k

AO3

next

Content warnings: self-consciousness, self-doubt

Eskel could have been many things. He could have been handsome. At least he remembered his mother calling him such when he had still been a boy with a wide and toothy grin that he didn’t need to hide. He could have become a mage – his hill-folk blood had practically guaranteed him a place at Ban-Ard.

And maybe, as slim a chance as there had been, he could have become a poet. He remembered his mother singing to him about hens. It had been a silly song, but when he had undergone the Trials of the Grasses, the verses had been the last thing on his lips before the melody had turned into cries as fire raced through his blood.

That day, all dreams disappeared and turned into could-have-been’s that twisted Eskel’s stomach if he ever thought about them.

They didn’t matter anymore. Eskel was a witcher. One exceptionally skilled in magic, but a witcher nonetheless.

Perhaps he had even been handsome for a little while longer, but now there was not a hint of attractiveness left on him. It didn’t bother him. Couldn’t bother him.

At the very least he still had his poetry. No, not his. He had never written a verse in his life. If he had gone to Oxenfurt instead of being dragged to Kaer Morhen, he might have learned about metre and clever word-play. Now, he didn’t dare put a pen to paper. Too certain was the chance that his words would only be yet another disappointment. He’d rather keep the wish to write a might-be instead of a dreaded could-have-been. As long as he didn’t try and fail, he could still imagine that he might be able to become a poet one day. Until then, he would study his poetry collection and listen to the bards he came across in taverns, praying that their songs wouldn’t break off once they laid eyes on him.

It happened more often than Eskel would like to admit. Many times, he found himself lingering outside a tavern, just to get the chance of listening to the songs a little longer before they inevitably faded in discomfort when the bards noticed the witcher staring at them through the windows.

He would have done so today as well, if it weren’t for the long gash in his leg. It didn’t hurt too badly and it was already close to being healed, but he yearned to sit down and close his eyes for a little while, to eat and maybe, if he was lucky, to listen to some songs.

Even from outside the tavern he could hear that the bard singing a soaring ballad was talented.

So he pulled his hood up and pushed the door open. As he shuffled to a table at the corner, he tried to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

He knew he should have kept his eyes cast down. He knew he should have kept to himself.

Yet there was something in the bard’s verses that made Eskel’s insides sing. He didn’t know the words for what he heard. Perhaps it was alliteration or anaphor? Whatever the bard had done to give his words life, it stirred something in Eskel.

He looked up before he could think better of it; before he could remember all the reasons why he shouldn’t do such a thing.

For a blessed heartbeat he was allowed to just look at the bard. There was no denying his beauty. Clearly, many people in this room looked at the bard’s blue eyes or long fingers with adoration.

Eskel noticed those things merely as an afterthought. He was too distracted by the almost wistful expression on the bard’s face, the way he subtly swayed with his music as if he was a part of it and the meaning he put into every word as it fell from his lips.

Eskel’s chest clenched at the sight. Without meaning to, he leaned forward to see better. It must have been that movement that caught the singer’s attention, for his eyes wandered over to Eskel.

And his voice broke. Blue eyes widened and fingers had to strain not to fumble.

Abruptly, Eskel looked away, pulling his hood deeper into his face to hide his eyes and turning his scarred side towards the wall for good measure.

It was already too late. All hope that the bard might not have realised exactly what Eskel was burst when the song came to an overly hurried end.

A handful of patrons muttered disapprovingly and one even gave a shout, demanding his coin back if the bard wasn’t going to play a full set.

Out of all the people, Eskel knew he was the one most disappointed in the abrupt yet not unexpected end of the performance. He would have loved to hear more of this bard’s art, to listen for long enough to figure out just how he crafted his verses.

Yet another could-have-been.

Eskel should probably leave. Maybe if he did, the bard would pick up his song again and Eskel would be able to listen to it while he put distance between himself and the tavern. His leg ached at the thought of having to get up already, but if it meant getting to hear a little more of the bard, it would have been worth it. Eskel was just about to stand up when someone pulled out the chair opposite of him and let themselves fall onto it with little grace, but palpable excitement.

Long fingers drummed onto the table as if the person’s energy couldn’t be contained. Or as if they were waiting impatiently for Eskel to leave.

“Apologies,” Eskel said, doing his best to make his voice sound smoother than it was. “I’ll leave the table to you.”

Unexpectedly, a hand shot out and grabbed Eskel’s wrist, lightly enough to make clear this person wasn’t out for a fight, but insistent enough to make Eskel tense.

“That would be defeating the purpose of me coming here, wouldn’t it?” That voice. It was the bard’s voice. Unwillingly, Eskel’s eyes snapped up and his breath hitched when they met blue. The bard’s easy smile didn’t leave him, even as he took in Eskel’s inhuman eyes and mangled face. “After all, I came here specifically to talk to you.”

“Oh.” Eskel relaxed slightly. This he could do. “Do you have a contract for me?”

The bard let out a pearling laugh that crinkled the skin around his eyes. Eskel’s chest clenched. It was rare a human laughed in his presence. No, that wasn’t quite true. People laughed constantly, though mostly at him. They would snicker blatantly when they saw his face or snort cruelly when he said something that had been meant to sound gentle and diplomatic but evidently came out as a pitiful attempt of an oafish mutant to fit in where there was no place for him.  

But never before had someone other than his family laughed in a way that made him think that perhaps he wasn’t the one being laughed at.

“Well, no. Not exactly.” The bard leaned forward with an eagerness that almost made Eskel draw back. No one leaned towards a witcher. Least of all Eskel with his disfigured face and hulking frame. “I was wondering if you were willing to let a humble bard accompany you on a hunt?”

Eskel blinked at him. “I- no. I just come from a hunt.” Absentmindedly, he shifted his leg beneath the table. “And it would be too-“

“Oh, don’t tell me it would be too dangerous.” The bard let go of Eskel’s wrist and waved it through the air dismissively. “Geralt tells me that all the time and I’m not dead yet, am I?”

Eskel’s brows would have drawn together, if he hadn’t trained himself to keep frowns off his face to stop it from becoming even more fearsome.

For a heartbeat he could only stare at the bard, trying desperately to connect the few things Geralt had told him about his bard to the man sitting in front of him now. A lot of the details – annoyingly talkative, a petty menace, dangerously ready to fall in love with anyone he met – weren’t things Eskel could ascertain from such a short time of talking to the man. But what had was most important was the way Geralt had talked about his bard. There had been a fondness to even his most exasperated words. A fondness that Eskel could imagine only too well being directed at someone like this bard. In fact, as the bard’s smile grew wider with every second that Eskel studied him and something warm and fuzzy spread through Eskel’s insides, he found himself feeling some of that fondness already.

He swallowed and tried to clear his throat as inconspicuously as possible. “Are you Jaskier?”

Jaskier’s eyes lit up with delight. “Geralt mentioned me? Didn’t think he would.”

“He had little choice in the matter.” Eskel’s lips would have twitched if he hadn’t feared that would make Jaskier recoil. “Lambert and I kept teasing him about the fact that there was a song about him.”

As soon as the words left him, he froze. His eyes widened and he scrambled for words to fix his mistake. “I don’t mean that as a bad thing, of course. It’s an honour to have you sing about witchers and the way you weave stories is incredible.”

A hint of red crept into Jaskier’s face that must have been a trick of the light. “Thank you,” he said almost sheepishly, but then his face brightened into something radiant and beautiful. “Wait, you are Eskel!”

Jaskier practically bounced in his chair in his eagerness to drag it even closer to the table. “Geralt told me so much about you!”

Eskel felt his throat grow tight. Far too often had Geralt found him in the library, leaning over a book of poetry and songs written by the very same man that sat before him now. How many times had Eskel drunk a little too much White Gull and told Geralt that he admired his bard?

“He did?” He asked hoarsely.

“Of course!” Jaskier let out a carefree laugh. “He always jokes that one day he would hand me over to you because you are the only witcher that wouldn’t go insane if he had to listen to me sing all day.”

Eskel’s lips twitched, though he turned his head just quickly enough to hide his smile. “I can imagine worse things than listening to your songs.”

Jaskier tilted his head to the side and gave Eskel a look of unashamed curiosity. “Why, my dear Eskel, is that a compliment?”

Eskel shook his head and hunched his shoulders. Before he could stop himself, his hand came up to paw at his scars uncomfortably.

“It…It was supposed to be teasing. I don’t- I’m sorry, I’m not good with that.” His eyes darted away and then quickly back to Jaskier. Putting as much sincerity as he could into his voice, he added, “I would enjoy listening to you sing some more. You have a beautiful voice and your song made me feel like I could almost see the images you were conjuring up.”

For a moment Jaskier only gaped at him and Eskel cursed himself. Of course he had messed this up again already. He shouldn’t have tried to fix his own mistakes. By now he should know that nothing good would ever come out of that. A poet such as Jaskier didn’t want a witcher’s clumsy attempts at complimenting his art, not when he undoubtedly was used to scholars’ and nobles’ praises.

But then Jaskier’s expression shifted and his eyes lit up with something almost like awe.

“That was one of the kindest things I’ve heard about my singing in years.” He ducked his head almost shyly. “Most people tend to criticise me. Rather coldly, might I add.”

“Nothing to criticise as far as I could see.” Eskel shrugged sheepishly. “As I said, I would love to hear more of your art.”

Jaskier contemplated him for a moment that made the warm feeling in Eskel’s chest burn brighter. For some reason he didn’t mind the staring when it was Jaskier’s eyes he could feel on him.

“Does that mean you wouldn’t mind if I wrote a song about you?”

Coming from anyone else, Eskel would have thought that those were just empty words. Eskel wasn’t song-worthy.

And yet, when Jaskier eventually invited him to share the room with him to save some coin, the bard was already humming a melody to a new song.

Neither of them slept much that night. The both of them stayed up until almost the early hours of the morning, discussing rhyme schemes and talking about how writing poetry helped putting meaning into bad experiences and immortalising beautiful ones. Softly, they recited their favourite poetry to each other.

Eskel was embarrassed to admit that he had memorised some of Jaskier’s poetry but the confession made Jaskier smile brighter than any human should smile in the presence of a witcher. And when Jaskier lamented that most of his favourite lines of poetry were merely fragments lost to time, Eskel perked up and filled in the gaps for him, promising to show him his collection of ancient poetry at Kaer Morhen one day.

It wasn’t something to be taken seriously; merely a suggestion made in the spur of the moment, but Jaskier looked at him as if he had hung the stars and the moon for him and Eskel found himself hoping that maybe someday he would know Jaskier well enough to be allowed to give him such gifts.

Eskel fully expected Jaskier to be gone in the morning, and his heart skipped a beat when instead Jaskier announced that he would stick around at least until he would get to see Eskel fight.

When Jaskier finally went his own way to meet up with Geralt again two weeks later, he left Eskel with a strange yearning in his chest and verses that had been written for no one but him.

And beneath it all, Jaskier left him with an itch in his fingers that urged him to buy a quill and ink. He didn’t put anything to paper just yet. But the might-be that had haunted him for decades got just a little closer to a could-be. Perhaps Eskel could become what he had always wanted to be after all.

Perhaps next time he saw Jaskier, he would be able to share his own verses with the poet.

[her-culture]

Nina Simone: A Retrospective of a Brilliant and Committed Artistic Journey

The first time I heard about Nina Simone was, believe it or not, in a French novel (one of my favorite books by the way) called En attendant Bojangles, the title deriving from Nina Simone’s beautiful song “Mr Bojangles.” It throws me right into Simone’s unique and intemporal universe. Watching What Happened Miss Simone? (which I recommend) allowed me to discover the dark backstage of her success and of her civil rights engagement. In addition to my passion for this artist, my desire to cover Nina Simone’s career will echo the resurgence of the Afro-American Civil Rights Movement in the US thanks to the Black Lives Matter Movement. 

A Musical Genius

Nina Simone’s grandeur can only be fully appreciated by looking back at her talent as a musician. Before starting off as a singer, Simone aspired to become a classical pianist. Indeed, music was a part of her life from her birth and until her last breath. She learned the piano at a very young age and sang in her church’s choir. She dreamed of becoming the first Black classical pianist but did not get the chance to obtain a scholarship to join the Curtis Institute, most likely because of her skin color. This significant failure did not stop her, though, and even gave her the impetus she needed to become one of the greatest jazz singers of the 20th century. Her career as a singer began in Atlanta’s night clubs and bars where her talent was recognized by Bethlehem Records, who recorded her first song. From thereon, her career kicked off and shed light on the peculiarity of her bewitching low-tone voice, her charismatic way of performing, the richness of her texts, and her varied style that straddles jazz, blues, and soul. Among her biggest successes are her versions of “Feeling Good” and “I Put a Spell on You,” which are two pure-jazz jewels. 

A Political Activist 

Listening to Nina Simone is not only a marvelous musical trip but also a poignant entry into the reality of racial injustice in the United States in the 1960s. Her powerful texts notably testify for her engagement in favor of civil rights for Black people. Three of her songs, which range amongst my favorites, are worth presenting.

“I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free” 

This song was written in 1967 and denounces racism while particularly emphasizing freedom as a key human right claimed by the Afro-American community. Although the title and the whole text of this song are rather hard and serious, its musicality does not follow the same trend. The melody is rather catchy, joyful, and full of life and hope. It is indeed punctuated by finger snaps, a rather jazzy and dynamic piano, and trumpets. It conveys a strong message but tinged with positivity, which in my opinion is the strength of this song.

“Ain’t Got No (I Got Life)” 

This song was written in 1968 and is one of the songs that purely embodies her fight against racism. Through an extensive use of the anaphor “Ain’t got no,” she denounces the dehumanization of the African-American community rooted in the United-States’ past. The low-key music accompanying the first part of this song contributes to the severity of the subject in question and contributes to its denunciation. Progressively, though, the song evolves towards some form of hope and when she starts using “Got” instead of “Ain’t got no” to remind listeners that she is, indeed, a human being who deserves respect and freedom. 

“Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”

This song was also written in 1968, as a tribute to Dr Martin Luther King’s death. This text embodies, to me, the sadness and despair of the entire Black community at that moment. The simplicity of the accompaniment and the stillness of her voice make it truly powerful. It may be the most poignant and touching song she ever performed. 

Reflection on Artistic Genius 

That being said, it is worth highlighting that Nina Simone was an artistic genius by the paradox she embodied. Simone was just as much a tormented, rebellious, tortured, unhappy personality as a soothing, bewitching, sensitive artistic soul who was endowed with a form of delicacy. When thinking about it, it may finally be this paradox, this ability to communicate emotions that are not hers and to give birth to heartwarming emotions from suffering, that could be the source of artistic genius. 

Nina Simone was and will remain hope, perseverance, immoderation, non-conventionalism, and perhaps what best defines jazz.

Louise is currently a Second Year interdisciplinary student enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BASc) at University College of London, and is highly interested in current affairs, politics, and law, and is passionate about music and cinema.

[escyn]

I just found you and I love love love your oc art (you probably know who this is lol) and I was just wondering if you felt like talking a little bit about them- I'd love to know their stories !

Hey thank you so much for the likes and reblogs!!! and for the love for my OCs!!!

I can give a bit of a story for all of my OCs but for the sake of not making a very long post I will kind of give you some backstory for the 4 that I draw the most…so ilmarinen/ask, igne, kemuri, and nyx/the goddess of wheat (it is also earlier because they all live within the same cannon which is dnd-ish)

For the most part this has never been formalized but this is kind of what I have come up with over the years:

ask/ilmarinen: He was born to a middle class family but his family all died under mysterious circumstances, a fire, so he was taken in by the Cult of Haventhor. Basically the Cult of Haventhor is a church like institution that currently props up the current monarch, it is controlled by the Arcane who basically has the greatest influence over the monarch/has more power than the monarch. He has suffered from chronic migraines and something akin to voices speaking to him his entire life and because of this spent a lot of time in isolation. He attracted the interest of the assistant to the arcane and then the attention of the arcane theirselves and rose quickly though the ranks of the cult. During his rise he sought to silence the voices in his head and despite never being allowed to go outside of the cult he has ventured outside to seek treatment for his condition. At the age of 28 the arcane has become deathly ill and he is favored to be the next arcane despite his youth. He is named Ask (andthoushaltreceive) because he was his family’s blessing, but was renamed ilmarinen by the arcane.

Inge: He is kind of a spoilt child who is chaotic good. Born into a rich family with ties to the monarchy he was trained as a guard to the monarchy but has kind of ended up as the guard to higher level members of the cult of Haventhor. Kind of had never been exposed to the outside world until he caught Ask sneaking out and followed him. Eventually when he found Ask purchasing drugs he cornered ask, and to his supprise ask was able to disarm him with ease. They have been friends ever since. The type of boy who sees the world with very few shades of gray and has a very straight moral compass. Since his joining the guard his family has been elevated to being close advisor to the monarchy and as such he is seeing more and more of how the empire is run. He is five years younger than Ask and Ask always teases him about it.

kemuri: An interesting being, also known as their high worship, my gender fluid child. Basically they are one of two sacred diviners, and the one that is stationed in the capital with the Cult of Haventhor. They are probably not entirely human as they have kind of been around forever. They are never seen by anyone in the outside world, really a shadowy figure–the type they write legends about. even Inge has not ever seen him in person, though ask has. A good friend of Asks, they have an antagonistic relationship that works. He is kind of a very smart asshole with a mouth that can kill who maybe has lived for hundreds of years.

nyx: My badass goddess; a usurper in the isles who is said to claim divinity to the Cult of Anaphor–a second tier fringe cult–and people believe it. She is affectionately called the goddess of wheat and is basically a fucking badass warrior who would kill for her family. She has surrounded herself with an elite guard of women spy’s/guards who report to her only. Additionally, she has raised her providence to a higher standing and the central powers that be are afraid of her growning influence. She loves a good laugh and is an incredible tactician and warrior. If she and Inge ever met that would either get along really well or hate each other.

But yeah if you have any more specific questions about any of my oc please ask!!