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lifeofresulullah · 3 years ago

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): Before His Birth, His Birth and His Childhood

The Prophet is Under the Care of Abdulmuttalib, his Grandfather

When our Holy Prophet (PBUH) lost his mother at the age of six, his elderly grandfather took him under his care.

Abdulmuttalib, the leader of the Quraysh, had his share of the light of Ahmad. That light (noor) caused him to earn high merits and attributes. Excellent traits like a bright face, kind words, shyness, gentleness, and a superior code of conduct were added to his height, large head, and grandiose appearance. He was patient, clever, thoughtful, chivalrous and generous. Even animals were not exempted from his charity and generosity. He would even think about the hungry animals and birds on the mountains.

That light (noor) caused him to earn high merits and attributes. Excellent traits like a bright face, kind words, shyness, gentleness, and a superior code of conduct were added to his height, large head, and grandiose appearance. Even animals were not exempted from his charity and generosity. He always thought and was concerned about the ones that roamed with hunger and thirst on the mountain tops.

He was one of the fortunate people who had not separated from the path of light that was in between the vast darkness of the age of ignorance. He was very devoted to Allah and believed in the hereafter. Thus, he did not hesitate to place his most beloved son underneath a knife so that he could fulfill the promise that he had made to Allah. He would have sacrificed his son if the Qurayshis had not intervened. He would distance himself from the ugly rituals of the Age of Ignorance and would also prevent others from participating. At the same time, he would prevent others from the horrible practice of burying infant girls alive. He would always abstain from alcohol and adultery and would try to avert the occurring torture and injustice in Mecca with all his might.

He deeply enjoyed entertaining guests. He would pay close attention to his relatives and would show them compassion and loving kindness. Because of this wonderful quality, the Qurayshis would refer to him as “Ibrahim the Second”.

When Ramadan entered, he would retreat to the cave of Hira and would be preoccupied with worshipping; he was the first to have started this practice.

At the same time, this elderly grandfather knew what loving a child and grandchild was like. It was a great pleasure to love a grandchild as sweet and immaculate as the Master of the Universe (PBUH).

Abdulmuttalib truly loved his grandson who disseminated light everywhere. He sheltered our Holy Prophet (PBUH) like a delicate nestling in between his affectionate wings. He did not want to go anywhere without him. Even at this age, our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) behavior was no different than that of an enlightened person. Immediately, everyone would notice this extraordinary circumstance wherever he went. In fact, from time to time, Abdulmuttalib would first consult with his grandson before he provided any answers to the questions asked during meetings and conversations.

At that age, the Prophet was like a sincere friend of his old grandfather, a sympathetic ear and a trustable consultant. However, he always acted respectfully toward his grandfather.

Only he was allowed to sit on the seat of his grandfather!

A mat would almost always be laid out for Abdulmuttalib upon the shadow of the Kaaba’s wall. None of the children would get on top of this mat. Instead, they would sit around it and wait until their fathers came.

Abdulmuttalib would not take any of his children on this mat except for his grandson whom he would hug and place alongside himself. Our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) uncles would always want to separate him from this mat; however, their father would hinder them and say:

“Release my son. By Allah, in the future, his reputation and glory are going to be great”.

He would then indicate his everlasting love for his venerable grandson by placing him alongside himself once more while gently rubbing his back. Nobody other than our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) had the courage to wake Abdulmuttalib up while he was sleeping. And nobody was able to enter Abdulmuttalib’s personal room without permission except for our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

The elderly grandfather would have his radiant-faced grandson sit next to him or on his lap at the dining table. He would feed him the most delicious portion of the meal and would not allow the meal to begin until he came.

When the Prophet was a bit late!

One day, the Master of the Universe’s grandfather sent him to go look for his missing camel. When our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was running slightly late, his grandfather was overcome with worry that he was lost. His sadness could easily be read on his face. He immediately ran to the Kaaba and opened his hands to pray to the Supreme Creator. He begged, “My Lord, please return my Muhammad back to me!”

A little while later, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) suddenly appeared with the camel right next to him. His grandfather happily hugged him and said “my unique grandson, dear, I was so sad and worried about you. I bawled so much that I will never have you leave my side and send you somewhere on your own from now on”. Indeed, Abdulmuttalib did not refrain from following his grandson like a shadow until his death.

What did the Yemeni ruler, Saif bin dhi Yazan, say to Abdulmuttalib

Abdulmuttalib, who loved our Holy Prophet (PBUH) wholeheartedly, was away from him for a short period of time only once during his life.

The Yemeni monarch, Saif bin Dhiyazan, recaptured his father’s country from the Habashis and occupied the throne in the city of Gumdan. Tribal chieftains were coming from all four sides of Arabia to congratulate him.

A committee representing Mecca that was headed by Abdulmuttalib was supposed to go to Gundam. For this reason, by leaving Mecca, Abdulmuttalib was going to be far away from our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

Following their long journey, Saif bin Dhiyazan accepted the Meccan committee upon their arrival to Gundam. Abdulmuttalib received permission from the Emperor to mention his high merits and his father who had been an auspicious ruler. He made the following connection to specify and distinguish his committee:

“We are the people of this nation that Allah has made inviolable. We are the ministrants of the Baytullah (the Kaaba)”.

This statement grabbed the monarch’s attention, therefore he asked, “Oh smooth-spoken person, who are you?”

Abdulmuttalib answered, “I am Hashim’s son, Abdulmuttalib”.

Saif was interested in more. He said joyfully and excitedly, “So, you are my sister’s son”.

Abdulmuttalib said, “Yes.”

Upon hearing this, Saif took a greater interest in Abdulmuttalib and wanted him to come closer. He then said, “I learned that we are related. I am very happy with your visit. You are worthy of being treated very hospitably and of being conversed with day and night. You are a very honorable and esteemed people”.

Saif did not settle on those complimentary words. He proved that what he was sincere by entertaining Abdulmuttalib as a guest in his palace for a month.

The days in the palace were always spent by conversing. Saif had learned about the attributes of the forthcoming Prophet from the Holy Books and was finding some clues from his conversations. One day, he discreetly called Abdulmuttalib during a break so that no one would notice. He wanted to speak with him. When Abdulmuttalib arrived next to him, he said, “Oh Abdulmuttalib, “I am going to entrust a secret to you and I believe that this secret is related to you. We have been hiding this very great and important news that I have found in a book”.

Abdulmuttalib asked, “What is it?”

Saif then unveiled his secret: “It is probable that he is a living child. He is going to be or has been born in the region of Tihama, which is on your side of the country. He has a mole in between his shoulder blades. His grandfather and uncle will take him under their care when both of his parents die. He will show hospitality to both his friends and helpers and will cause his enemies to suffer from contempt. He is going to conquer the most prosperous places and be the people’s guide and leader until Armageddon. He will remove false religions, eliminate idol worship, and worship the Compassionate Lord. His words will solve impasses and his work will be based upon foresight and justice. He will always order for goodness to be done, will do good deeds, and will prevent others from committing misdeeds”.

Abdulmuttalib was overcome with curiosity and excitement and wanted the Ruler to further explain and to further open this secret. He said, “Oh, Emperor! May your life be long, your reign continuous, and your glory be great. Could you further describe this child?”

After the Emperor listed the other signs and proofs he said, “Oh, Abdulmuttalib. It means that when all these signs are considered, that you are probably the grandfather”. Abdulmuttalib immediately prostrated from happiness.

This time, it was the Emperor’s turn to be curious and puzzled. He asked, “Oh Abdulmuttalib! Did you sense anything from what I have told you?”

Saif was happy that he had not been mistaken and said, “Protect your grandchild very carefully. The Jews are enemy to him. Protect him so that they will not harm him. Nevertheless, Allah is not going to give his enemies the chance or the possibility to do so. According to what I have found and learned in the ancient books, Yathrib (Medina) is going to be his place of emigration and he is going to receive much help there”.

Both the Emperor and Abdulmuttalib were relieved for having solved a great impasse.

Saif bin Dhiyazan was heralding our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) advent as a Prophet.

A while later, the Emperor saw off the Qurayshi committee to Mecca by treating them with immense respect and honor and giving them generous gifts. Abdulmuttalib’s gifts were far more in number than everyone else’s. After he bid them farewell, the Emperor said, “I would like to you inform me of the changes that are seen in the child’s condition every year”.

However, in less than one year after this conversation, Saif bin Dhiyazan passed away without being able to receive any further news from the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) grandfather.

On their journey back, Abdulmuttalib’s companions asked him why the Emperor had given him more gifts and showed him more respect and kindness. He comforted them by saying, “Do not be jealous. There is a certain reason for this”.

When Abdulmuttalib arrived in Mecca after a month of separation, he hugged his radiant grandson with longing and tried to rid his pain of separation with the sweetness of having been reunited.

The Prophet, a means of “Mercy”

Our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) was still under his grandfather, Abdulmuttalib’s care.

Mecca and its surroundings were suffering from terrible hardship and famine due to the drought.

Abdulmuttalib, who understood his grandson’s degree of importance, took him and his son, Abu Talib, to the Abu Qubays Mountain. The Qurayshis were coming right behind them.

Abdulmuttalib turned his face towards the Kaaba and lifted our Holy Prophet (PBUH) towards the sky three times and begged, “My Lord! Gladden us by sending rain for the sake of this child”.

The supplication that was done out of respect for the Master of the Universe (PBUH) was accepted. Raindrops instantly mixed with the people’s and the gentry’s teardrops of happiness.

All of these occurrences further increased the love and attachment the grandfather had towards his grandson and strengthened his conviction that his grandson would become an exalted person in the future. And it was for this reason that he showed the utmost care to this radiant grandchild.

DEATH OF ABDULMUTTALİB

Abdulmuttalib, who had become considerably old, fell ill one day. And his illness was gradually increasing its level of intensity.

He understood that his emigration to the afterlife was near. However, he had one necessary duty left to fulfill: To choose a dependable person that he could entrust our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) to.

For this reason, he called all of his sons. Abu Lahab came into his mind. However Abu Lahab was a coldhearted and merciless individual, therefore Abdulmuttalib said “no” to himself.

How about Abbas? No, he could not be, either. He had so many children and could only find time for them.

How about Hamza? He could not accept him either. Hamza was young and interested in hunting. He would not be able to to show due attention and care to our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

Very well. Then how about Abu Talib? He had found his radiant grandson’s guardian! Although Abu Talib’s assets were little, his compassion and mercy were ample. Only he deserved taking our Holy Prophet (PBUH) under his care.

Abdulmuttalib did not neglect asking our Holy Prophet (PBUH) for his opinion. He asked, “Which of your uncles’ custody would you like to be under?” Upon hearing his grandfather’s question, our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) got up from his spot and went to embrace his Uncle Abu Talib. And it was in this manner that he expressed whom he would like as his guardian.

Abdulmuttalib was happy that he had preferred the best candidate. Afterwards, he turned to Abu Talib and said, “I am entrusting him to you. He is a Divine trust. Promise me that you will protect him inspite of everything, even if it is at the cost of your own life so that I will not have to worry and my heart can be content”.

Abu Talib, who was deeply touched that our Master (PBUH) had favored him, responded to his father with teary eyes:

“Do not worry, my dear father. You can be assured that I will prefer him over my own children and my life. I promise that I will not allow anyone to harm him as long as I live”.

Abdulmuttalib was pleased a lot by his son’s statement and his eyes were filled with tears of happiness.

...And Muhammad (pbuh) was delivered by Abdulmuttalib to Abu Talib, his uncle.

Abdulmuttalib, who was unable to be saved from his afflicted illness, passed away from this world as an elderly man having exceeded 80 years and who was not yet full of his grandson’s happiness, love, and affection

The date was 578 AD, eight years after the Year of the Elephant (Elephant Year).

The Meccan market was closed for days on account of Abdulmuttalib’s death. The Qurayshis and all those who loved and respected him mourned for days. His corpse was passed from one hand to the next in the highest esteem upon its burial. They then buried him in the Hajun cemetery next to his grandfather, Qusai.

Tears of the Prophet

Beloved Prophet (PBUH) felt deep sorrow for having lost his grandfather. This incident reminded him of his parents’ emigration to the hereafter.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) could not contain his teardrops during his grandfather’s funeral and burial; sometimes he would sob and other times he would cry silently without making a single sound.

Many years later, they asked our Holy Prophet (PBUH) whether or not he remembered his grandfather’s death. He responded by saying, “Yes, I remember. I was eight years old at that time”.

The first eight years of Our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) blissful life were filled with pain, sadness, and sorrow. From that age onwards, his great soul and compassionate heart were molded with anguish and tribulations so that he could endure the hardships and catastrophes that he would have to face in his future.

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themousefromfantasyland · 4 years ago

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The Creatures of Yuletide: Santa Claus

Well, this is the end. I finish my series talking about Holiday creatures and traditions with the most popular gift-giver of all time, Mr. Kris Kringle, Santa Claus.

First of all we need to disperse some myths: He wasn't created by Coca-Cola, and although they immortalized the red and white look, they didn't invent it, the same with his image as jolly old man.

The Coca-Cola ads are from 1930's. This Puck cover is from 1902

Santa Claus started his life as the dutch gift-giver, Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas was a cartoonish version of St. Nicholas that delivered gifts to children on December 5th, Eve of St. Nicholas Day. The name Sinterklaas is an abbreviation of Sint Nikolaas, St. Nicholas. At this point he didn't had reindeers or sleighs. He travelled by horse and was accompanied by Zwarte Piet (the Black Piet) a stereotypical caricature of a black servant.

In his Dutch form he was imagined to carry a staff, ride above the rooftops on a huge white horse and have mischievous helpers who listened at chimneys to find out whether children were being bad or good. These features all link him to the legend of Odin, a god who was worshipped among the Germanic peoples in North and Western Europe prior to Christianization.

Dutch immigrants brought the character to America, more specifically to New Amsterdam, now New York City, along with the custom of giving gifts and sweets to children on his feast day.

Following the Revolutionary War the already heavily Dutch influenced New York City saw a new surge of interest in Dutch customs. In 1804 John Pintard, an influential patriot and antiquarian, founded the New York Historical Society and promoted St. Nicholas as patron saint of both the society and city. On December 6th 1810 the society hosted its first St. Nicholas anniversary dinner and Pintard commissioned the artist Alexander Anderson to draw an image of the saint to be handed out at the dinner. In Anderson's portrayal he was still shown as a religious figure, but now he was also clearly depositing gifts in fireside stockings and is associated with rewarding the goodness of children. While "St. Nicholas day" never quite took off in the way Pintard wanted, Anderson's image of "Sancte Claus" most certainly did.

A year before New York Historical Society's feast, american writer and historian Washington Irving wrote a very untraditional portrayal of St. Nicholas in his satirical fiction Knickerbocker's History of New York.

"At this early period was instituted that pious ceremony, still religiously observed in all our ancient families of the right breed, of hanging up a stocking in the chimney on St. Nicholas Eve; which stocking is always found in the morning miraculously filled; for the good St. Nicholas has ever been a great giver of gifts, particularly to children."

He described a jolly St. Nicholas character who flew in a reindeer pulled sleigh and delivered presents down chimneys.

In 1822, Clement Moore wrote the poem that would cement the image of St. Nicholas as a fat jolly gift-giver, "A Visit from St. Nick", today "The Night Before Christmas". In his poem St. Nicholas no longer visited children on the eve of his feast, but in Christmas Eve, and he travelled in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeers, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, with Rudolph as a later addition.

Moore drew upon Irving's description and Pintard's New Amsterdam tradition and added some more Odin-like elements from German and Norse legends to create the all-winking, sleigh-riding Saint and also the names for his flying reindeer.

It's important to note that at this point St. Nicholas wasn't a saint anymore, but he still wasn't Santa, he was almost a elf, and everything about him, including his sleigh and reindeers were described as tiny. That's how Santa can come down chimneys without a problem.

Nicholas started to become Santa when cartoonist Thomas Nast did an initial illustration in an 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly, as part of a large illustration titled "A Christmas Furlough".

In a way Thomas Nast can be considered the true inventor of Santa Claus, who becsme in his drawings and illustrations a normal-heigh jolly fat man who travelled in a flying sleigh. In later Nast drawings a home at the North Pole was added, as was the workshop for building toys and a large book filled with the names of children who had been naughty or nice.

In his later 1881 illustration named "Merry Old Santa" the modern Santa character really begins to take shape.

Now we need to talk about the English Father Christmas.

In early medieval England, the pagan Saxons honoured the Frost or Winter King, who had a lot in common with Odin. But, as Christianity became dominant, this figure became more closely associated with the festival celebrating the birth of Jesus.

That was the birth of old bearded figures who personification the feast. This also can be traced back to Odin, which was also used to personify the Yule season.

By the 1400s, he was thought of as a chivalric knight called Sir Christmas, and by the Tudor era he had been charmingly renamed Captain Christmas. He wasn't a gift-giver to children, but a figure who incited people to celebrate the Yuletide feasts.

This made him an enemy of Oliver Cromwell’s righteous government, which outlawed Christmas, fearing that it had become an excuse for unholy drunkenness. In response, the defenders of the tradition renamed the figure Old Father Christmas to make him sound more venerable.

When the monarchy was restored and Charles II took the throne, Father Christmas kept his new name.

When Christmas became popular again in the 19th century, so did Father Christmas, appearing as the Ghost of Christmas Present in Dickens's A Christmas Carol, greeting cards and advertisments.

In the early 16th century, Martin Luther – the German founder of Protestantism – considered Sinterklaas, St. Nicholas, too similar to pagan Odin. Instead he decreed that it was the Christkind who brought gifts.

The Christkind was a magic version of Baby Jesus, and he visited children on the Christmas Eve instead of the Eve of St. Nicholas Day. Later he became a golden haired female angel. Her visits on Christmas Eve may what inspired Santa's visits on this day instead of the traditional December 5th. Her name also became associated with Santa, but been anglicaized as Kris Kringle.

Resuming, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas, Christkind, with a little bit of Odin inspiration, became a single gift-giver figure in the US and North America, and that's how we got Santa Claus.

Now it's important to note that since the 19th century, Santa and Father Christmas became HUGE sources of inspiration for advertisers and department stores. Using a "living Santa" in your store to draw children and their parents goes back to this period. Some use this as to why Santa means nothing more than just the commercialization of Christmas.

However, the sources of Santa are way older, and the character was used for everything, from advertisments to army propaganda.

I'm personally very fond of Santa as a character and to me he means much more than a department store mascot. He's an personification of the jolliness of the holiday, of the children innocent belief in the fantastical and of the transformative power of charity.

I think it's impossible to look at Santa and say, he's just a mascot, considering the number of life's he affected.

Santa is without a doubt a symbol of magic and goodwill, and on this Christmas Eve I hope he brings much more than just toys to you and your family.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy Yuletide to all, my friends!

#christmas #holiday season #The Creatures of Yuletide #santa #santa claus #odin #yule

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royalstraykids · 4 years ago

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Royal Chat Bot

Disclaimers: This Chat Bot is a Royalty Chat Bot. It contains extreme elements. Please do not interact if you are younger then 18. This also is no way or form represents stray kids, or Ateez personalities.

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Everything is happy in the Kingdom. You are the princess in a beautiful kingdom, and you have kind, gentle ruling parents, but everything is ripped away from you when your kingdom is overthrown and your parents are murdered right in front of you. You stare right into the eyes of death until the kings son, the prince, decides that he’ll keep you for himself.

Your Mother has always had her mind made up on your own life. What you would wear, how you would act, and even more so when and to who you would get married. Your father always wanted you to be able to make up your mind and defend yourself and being the younger sister of many brothers, you knew that you had to write your own story, but when your mother throws you a royal ball for your birthday you seemed to be pulled towards the prince of your kingdoms rival who is handsome, chivalrous, and to your happiness, the last person your mom would want you to marry.

You knew the prince. You knew him better than any other girl in the town square screaming his name, and he knew you. Ever since that fateful day you met him as children, wandering in the woods, he never fails to visit you regularly, and maybe you were falling in love with him, so when it is announced that he is engaged, your heart is shattered into a million pieces, that is until he shows up at your back door asking you to run away with him.

You have been engaged since you were born. You never got the chance to look for true love and to make things worse, you couldn’t stand your fiance. Every summer you would spend together and you swear every summer you hate him more. One faithful night changes that all when there is an attack on your country back home, and you’re stuck with the prince inevitably. Will you let him comfort you and open up to him, or will you learn to despise him even more?

You were nothing more than a servant in the castle, trying to escape the wrath of the angry king. After your family died due to disease, the only choice you had was to work in the castle for just enough to feed yourself. You followed the rules, you kept your head down, never said no, and did as you were told, but somehow you caught the attention of the cruel prince.

[NSFW ONLY] When your country and it’s allies are all destroyed by a large empire, you are captured by the emperor as his personal sex slave.

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#chatbot #stray kids #skz #ateez #atz #kqfellas #jyp #jyp chatbot #kq #kqchatbot #royal #royal au #royal chatbot #stray kids royal #ateez royal

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georgeavillart · 6 years ago

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Glossary

Contemporary-

Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in the twenty-first century. Contemporary art provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary society and the issues relevant to ourselves, and the world around us.

Critical thinking-

Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.

Diaspora-

The term diaspora comes from an ancient Greek word meaning to scatter about.

Pedagogical purposes-

Pedagogical, pedagogy, and pedagogue all come from the Greek paidagōgos, originally the word for a slave who brought children to school. But while pedagogical and pedagogy have meanings simply related to teaching or teachers (with no implied judgment), pedagogue has taken on a negative tone, often referring to a dull or overly formal teacher

Periodization-

Periodization is the process or study of categorizing the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time. This is usually done in order to facilitate the study and analysis of history, understanding current and historical processes, and causality that might have linked those events.

Biopolitics-

Biopolitics is an intersectional field between biology and politics. It is a political wisdom taking into consideration the administration of life and a locality's populations as its subject.

Antinomies-

A fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction.

Asynchronies-

The quality or state of being asynchronous : absence or lack of concurrence in time.

Atomization-

Atomization refers to separating something into fine particles. It is the process of breaking up bulk liquids into droplets or to divide, fragment an atomized society also : to deprive of meaningful ties to others atomized individuals.

Quixotic-

It is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, especially those ideals manifested by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality.

Plutocracy-

Plutocracy is a government controlled exclusively by the wealthy either directly or indirectly. A plutocracy allows, either openly or by circumstance, only the wealthy to rule.

Postmodernism-

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern. There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of text prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture.

Modernism-

Modernism, in the arts, a radical break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

Semiotics-

Is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation

Symbolic annihilation-

Symbolic annihilation is a term first used by George Gerbner in 1976 to describe the absence of representation, or underrepresentation, of some group of people in the media, understood in the social sciences to be a means of maintaining social inequality.

Topology-

The study of geometrical properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures.

Vicissitude-

The alternation between opposite or contrasting things.

Illusionism-

The principle or technique by which artistic representations are made to resemble real objects or to give an appearance of space by the use of perspective.

Intermedia-

Intermedia was a term used in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe various inter-disciplinary art activities that occurred between genres in the 1960s.

Marxist theory-

Marxist aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics based on, or derived from, the theories of Karl Marx. It involves a dialectical and materialist, or dialectical materialist, approach to the application of Marxism to the cultural sphere, specifically areas related to taste such as art, beauty, etc.

Dialectical Materialist-

The Marxist theory that maintains the material basis of a reality constantly changing in a conversational process and the priority of matter over mind.

Mediated culture-

The moods and attitudes of our society are influenced by messages delivered through mass media channels. Mass media and advertising affect our actions, thoughts, and values. We are at the point where mass media creates and reflects our culture–a mediated culture.

Cultural capital-

Cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society.

Habitus-

Habitus is one of Bourdieu's most influential yet ambiguous concepts. It refers to the physical embodiment of cultural capital, to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our life experiences. ... Habitus also extends to our “taste” for cultural objects such as art, food, and clothing.

Dogma –

A specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down.

Futurism-

Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city.

Hypertexture-

A realistic simulated surface texture produced by adding small distortions across the surface of an object.

Avant garde-

The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer.

Collectivism-

Collectivism is a political theory associated with communism. More broadly, it is the idea that people should prioritize the good of society over the welfare of the individual.

Constructivism-

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin. This was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. He wanted 'to construct' art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes.

Consumer choice-

The range of competing products and services from which a consumer can choose. The way to bring down prices is to increase consumer choice.

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brexodus · 6 years ago

Photo

Cremona Cathedral, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, squats in the tiny Piazza del Comune like a malevolent toad, the brutal combinations of romanesque and baroque architecture on its facade overbearing the inadequate humanity in the space below. It wants to fall on you and gobble you up. The sky-piercing Torrazzo bell tower leavens this somewhat, but for the observer in the square this is small comfort. The tower too recalls Philip Pullman's description of the sinister Torre degli Angeli in the spectre-haunted Cittàgazze: all Italian names, mind. After overcoming the shock of the place, one may begin to think critically. I myself am trying to find out why I find the place so fascinatingly ugly, like that big guy in McDonald's who just seems all the wrong proportions, or the face that should be attractive but isn't. I am drawn and repelled to it, like monster from childhood. The facade has romanesque arches at the base in a style reminiscent of old St Peter's in Rome, and one can see the subsequent layers built up over the years 1107 (when it was another grand red-brick church, like Basilica in Piacenza) to 1491 (when the Renaissance was beginning to kick-off). The portal also dates from the same period as the original brick, which you can see through the many arches. I do wonder at what point they overlaid the original brickwork with the current pink and white sandstone. The statues are mostly from the earlier period and must have originally crowned red brick. Cistercian and proto-gothic influences are apparent in the lower portions (with some bits plain and others verging on the classic Cluniac decor of Moissac cathedral in France), extending up to the multiple arches above, which are definitely more pointy-gothic. The top portion seems Renaissance in it's proportions, and the flourishes either side seem a foreshadowing of the baroque style. It is a mishmash, or perhaps my northern-european eye is unaccustomed to buildings of this scale in the romanesque style. Other, similar, Italian churches I have seen have been much smaller and less imposing. And they have been brick which lends a friendly tint to the spectacle. All the same. The place is one that I am glad to have seen, and hope one day to find out why I have such a reaction to it. The Torrazzo is from the same period, with the top octagonal sections added in the early 1300s. It is the tallest surviving brick tower from the period. Perhaps it seems so alien because the whole thing dates from a time quite different to our own: the very hight and epicentre of the ancient regime; but, unlike in France or Northern Europe where the feudal regime was centralised and Gothic was the vogue with soaring towers and flying buttresses reaching up to the pure chivalric heaven (think Mt St Michel), here the power was with the local oligarchy and so, while the Torrazzo may touch the sky, it glowers down like skinflint disapproving aunt, while the facade of the cathedral menaces like an aggressive uncle. *sigh* One day I will work all this out. I must visit again. And so must you: pictures do not do this justice. It is the emplacement that gives it it's impact. NB, the octagonal baptistery can also be seen, it is a much more graceful building.

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athyrabunlord · 7 years ago

Text

LLSHP 9 - Christmas Banquet

Arc1: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7]

Arc2: [Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13] [Chapter 14]

Arc3: [Chapter 15 - Under The Black Lake (TBD)]

Interlude: [Carbonado (1)] [Carbonado (2)] [Of Feathers and Wind] [Delphinus (teaser blip)]

[Brief note about School Term] [other LLSHP AU stuff] [YohaMaRuby concept arts] [ChikaYouRiko concept arts] [KanaDiaMari concept arts] [Hogwarts Staff]

[FFN link] (finished the interludes!) [Pixiv Link]

A/N: (ง •̀_•́)ง Yup still keeping up this update schedule of 1 chapter every two weeks! Still slowly editing previous chapters though XD; Anyway, this feels more like a long filler chapter tbh, but it’s full of fun stuff! I enjoyed writing it, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading it too! Words: 8,073

Yoshiko grins at her reflection in the mirror.

How can anyone look so flawless? So utterly bewitching? How can such a perfect human being exist? Ah, no mere mortal could be this beautiful, that is the truth. She, the great Yohane, is a fallen angel after all!

For the umpteenth time, she smoothes the non-existent crinkles of her raven-black velvet dress, her silk gloves brushing over the grey ribbons and white frills. The dark magenta rose imprint along the hem only accentuates how majestic the wearer is.

She is so, so ready for the Christmas Banquet!

Chuckling huskily, she takes one step towards the grand ornate mirror and lightly touches its shiny surface. The last time she used a full-body mirror, the Mirror of Erised, she was filled with unpleasant sense of inferiority and downright confusion of her own identity. But now, this ordinary mirror shows her who she truly is, and she is pleased with herself.

Why desire to be a pristine angel, when her current self is even better?

All the challenges she's faced and the possibility of her soul being damaged only make her stronger.

That incident with the colony of Acromantula caused her to become wary of even the tiniest spiders for days, but since then she has been faring better in those practice duels against the older witches. Her improvement was the only reason why Dia lifted the tickling Jinx she set on Mari. Still, the blonde is banned from coffee and lemon pie until further notice, much to her horror. Taking pity on her, the rest of the group manages to convince Dia to disregard this rule just for tonight's feast.

The Christmas Banquet is an end of the first term celebration where esteemed guests from outside the school would attend as well. The astounding feast, prepared by House Elves and staff members together, is actually not the main attraction of this event.

The spotlight is the Yule Ball, which was originally part of the famed Tri-Wizard Tournament that used to take place between three magical schools. Nowadays, it is a ballroom dance competition that was started by some of the professors back when they were still students. Considering Hogwarts' long history, this is a fairly recent tradition that's been gaining popularity over the decades. The dancing pair not only have to be the best in their waltz, tango or other types, but also boost the flair of their performance with magic. Yoshiko heard rumors of explosive fireworks, dancing leprechauns and even actual storms in the past.

Chaotic, yet incredibly thrilling. What better way to end a term with a blast?

Of course, she did consider entering the competition and enrapture everyone in her fallen angel charm, but there is one teensy bitsy setback she just can't seem to overcome.

She's horrible at ballroom dancing.

And also, she has no partner.

Alright, not one but two setbacks in total. Her confident grin slips into a scowl. Before Hogwarts, she's been an avid follower of Muggle hip-pop, rock and rap, and she knows all the various choreography by heart.

However, ballroom dance is a whole different matter. Riko had been kind enough to try teaching her, but she's stepped on the older girl's feet one too many times. After she fled the Room of Requirement in mortification, it took Hanamaru and Ruby a lot of convincing for her to even attend the Banquet at all.

Yoshiko shakes her head. Her two best friends are correct - all she has to do is look pretty and enjoy herself. There's no need to force herself to waltz or whatever!

Now that her confidence has returned, she steps out of her room to join the rest of her Slytherin housemates so they can head down to the Great Hall together. Whispers of praises and even friendly greetings make her tilt her chin high. While she isn't particularly close to any of them, they've all been civil to her and respect her wish for privacy.

"Nice dress, Tsushima-san!"

"Ku ku ku, I made it myself! I hand-picked all the materials and accessories~"

"That is fascinating! And the ribbon in your hair matches everything so well."

"Oh and your earrings..."

Truth be told, Yoshiko is rather taken aback by all the attention she's been given. Is it because she's dressed all fancy and could probably pass for a noble Pureblood? Or, perhaps, they have truly acknowledged her as a true Slytherin seeing how her grades have improved leaps and bounds under Dia's tutelage? Yoshiko hasn't really paid much attention to her housemates the past few months, so focused on her training and spending time with her friends.

She makes a mental note to be nicer to them. It doesn't hurt to make more allies, especially amongst those who share the same House as her. She searches a crowd for a familiar face, and quietly asks a wizard nearby.

"Erm, does anyone know where Dia-san is?"

The Slytherin prefect, whose aristocratic features imply he must be from an ancient Pureblood family, informs her that Dia is currently with the staff and guests, as the Kurosawa's representative.

Yoshiko pouts. Since she does not have a 'date' or partner, so to speak, she is hoping that she could stick to Dia's side until they reach the Hall at least. Alas, it looks like she'll have to make it there on her own. The rest of her Housemates look like they have partners already, and she isn't comfortable with the idea of accompanying someone she isn't close with anyway.

She quietly trails after the other Slytherins, glad to be distracted from her thoughts by their praises and curious questions about her fashion. Hushed murmurs then reach her ears after they step out of the Dormitory, and she blinks in surprise when the people in front of her part ways to allow a familiar girl to get through.

Yoshiko can't help but whistle in wonder. "I almost didn't recognize you! I thought I'm supposed to meet up with you and Zuramaru just outside the Hall?"

Ruby smiles shyly, clearly uncomfortable at how every pair of eyes seem to be on her. The shorter girl is clad in a dress robe of ebony and ivory hue, though the cape is adorned with the Hufflepuff bronze. With her hair tied in a ponytail, she looks rather dashing yet retains her characteristic cute aura.

"Um, Hanamaru-chan said she'll meet up with us later… she's having some trouble with her outfit, but when I tried to stay and help, she asked me to pick you up," Ruby twitters. "Hehe, you look so pretty, Yoshiko-chan!"

"Hnff, of course, it's Yohane-sama you're speaking with." As someone who enjoys the spotlight, Yoshiko is starting to find all those whispered conversations around them disconcerting. "Let's go then?"

As if understanding her intention, Ruby nods and holds out her gloved hand in a chivalrous manner. It is at such moment that Yoshiko has to remind herself that, no matter how harmless and critter-like Ruby is, she is still a Kurosawa Pureblood who has a different upbringing than her. Either way, the gesture endears the shorter girl to her even more.

"Heh, it's like you're a knight in shiny armor-," Yoshiko's grin twitches. "Well, I probably shouldn't use the word 'shiny', ugh. But really, why the dress robe? You look really good in it but I'd expected you to wear a dress?"

"Oh, that was my plan but last night, I received a parcel from m-my family. This is the formal attire I used to wear back then during important events. See? These colors represent the Kurosawa family," Ruby's smile softens, prompting Yoshiko to gently squeeze her friend's hand in comfort. "It's the first mail I've received from them since the night we got Sorted. I see they're trying to reconcile with me, so of course I'm more than happy to try as well."

"That's good. I mean, they should've long accepted you but at least this is better than nothing. Although, the Hufflepuff color-?"

There's a mischievous twinkle in Ruby's green eyes. "Hehe, I modified it myself. I'm proud to be a Puff and I'll always be."

Yoshiko chuckles fondly at her friend. "And I'm proud of you, Ruby. How about Zuramaru though? Please don't tell me she's also in dress robes or some… high-class samurai outfit or something."

It may sound ridiculous though she has no problem imagining the brunette wearing that. Hanamaru does love literature, especially romance fiction set in certain historical periods. Or, she could be draped in fancy ribbons and flowy dresses, not knowing how to put it on, while murmuring 'mirai zura' in admiration.

Ah, Hanamaru will probably smack her if she says that to her face. She can try, Yoshiko smirks, tonight, the great Yohane shall not be tamed by a mere little demon's whims!

"You'll have to wait and see, Yoshiko-chan. I promised Hanamaru-chan not to say anything to you because she wants to see your reaction," Ruby's steps gain a bit of a bounce as they walk down the hallways.

Yoshiko doesn't get a chance to protest because a pair of familiar orange and silver pounce on Ruby the moment they round the corner. Unlike her, the Gryffindor duo is quite vocal about their adoration of the handsome little Hufflepuff.

"Piki!"

"As expected of our Ruby-chan!"

"A real noble! A real prince!"

"Look at the fabric, look at the design! It's the real deal! Ahhh do you mind if I borrow it tomorrow? For research?"

"Hehe, you and your costume obsession, You-chan~ Still, both of you look so ikemen~! Kya, aren't we lucky, Riko-chan?"

Yoshiko allows her gaze to sweep over the three Third-Years, amazed by their respective appearances. Riko has chosen a conservative gown of amaranth and wine hue that's decorated with sakura petals along the hem, a perfect outfit that matches the pretty wearer's personality. Simple and elegant, the Ravenclaw chuckles daintily at her friends' antics. No doubt the voted campus beauty will be surrounded by suitors vying for her hand in a dance.

Chika is as cheerful as always, though there is now an inexplicable grace added to her charisma. Her hair is straightened with the signature braid adorned with a white rose. As opposed to her usual bright colored clothes, she is wearing a dark indigo cocktail dress embellished with white satin belt. Admittedly, if it weren't for her familiar laughter and fawning over Ruby, Yoshiko would have thought she is a refined guest from some upper-class family!

"Ehehe~ You-chan styled my hair!" Chika twirls around and winks at Yoshiko, who grins back in spite of herself. Yup, that's still the spirited Beater alright. "Can't thank you enough, Captain Watanabe!"

"Ha ha, 'twas my honor, First Mate Takami!" You salutes back, this characteristic gesture now rather suave given her outfit. Unlike her buddy, the Seeker is dressed in a formal suit that is probably made from pricey material, judging from the way it gleams at just the right angle. The popular witch, combined with her attractive smile, will most likely be chased by her fanclub the whole night.

Noticing Yoshiko's questioning gaze, You chuckles heartily. "I was going to wear a dress too, but ahaha our Housemates kinda bullied Kanan-chan and I into wearing a suit… they prepared this outfit for me, and I can't resist! I'm so going to research the fabric and its origins later! I mean, look at this tie! The gradient color is so pretty!"

"Well, you both look quite nice. Are you each other's dates?" Yoshiko smirks. Even after witnessing the duo's impressive teamwork and display of powerful magic, her opinion of them as dunderheads hasn't changed. Nowadays though, it's more of an affectionate nickname than having any derisive connotation behind it.

"Nope," they reply simultaneously. "We're Sakurauchi-hime's escorts tonight!"

Riko, who is standing several paces behind them, squeaks in surprise when she's promptly sandwiched between the two. It looks comical really, if Yoshiko doesn't know the history behind the three. While the self-proclaimed bodyguards playfully tease their flustered friend and Ruby, two more witches join their gathering.

"My my, everyone looks so gorgeous~!"

Mari, for some reason, is also wearing a tailored suit, her usually wavy golden hair straightened for the occasion and styled at the back with a few emerald clips. Combined with the azure bowtie, dark jacket with peaked lapels, turquoise waistcoat and more, she is fully decked for the Ball. She would have passed for an European gentleman if it weren't for her generous chest area, which just couldn't seem to be hidden.

As if reading her thoughts as always, the blonde smirks at her and puffs out her bosom even more. Yoshiko despairingly glances down at her own and grumbles. "Hmnnff, don't you look excited for the feast."

"You bet I am! I'm dying for my precious lemons," Mari purrs sweetly as she tugs on her date's arm. Yoshiko is pretty sure the implication has flown over the others' heads, and she groans inwardly at the realization that she is corrupted enough to know the Ravenclaw's double meaning.

Mari's lovely date appears just as exasperated. The tall witch has long cascading indigo tresses as dark and flowing as the ocean itself. The gradient plum and purple color of her silken mermaid dress complements her hair and eyes, while the translucent violet shawl gives her an overall mystic quality. Although, she looks familiar for some reason.

"Kanan-chan! How could you! You were supposed to wear a suit with me!" You puffs up her cheeks in dismay.

Yoshiko's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets. Come again?

"Ahaha sorry You," that laidback tone of laughter definitely belongs to the Gryffindor Lions' Captain. "We flipped a coin and I lost, so I had to wear the dress."

Yoshiko could only stare.

"Oh oh oh~ You've ensnared the lil'kitty here in your charms, Kanan~" Giggling, Mari rests her chin on her partner's shoulder.

"What!? No! It's just that, I've never seen her without that whip of a ponytail!"

"She hisses~ Maybe she'll scratch too~"

Yoshiko indignantly snarls at the blonde, almost blurting out that she's the cat Animagus, not her, but manages to remember last minute that You and Chika are present too. Her irritation subsides a bit when the others also agree that they've never seen Kanan with her hair down either.

"Anyways, Kanan and I will so win the Ball this year! We've had four years of practice, it's our turn to finally shine!" Fire blazes in Mari's eyes, though her expression couldn't remain serious for long as a Cheshire grin breaks through.

"But how about your arm?" Yoshiko squints at Kanan's supposedly injured arm, which looks unblemished.

"Mari cast a glamor Charm on it, and for the duration of the dance, I can do this," the older witch taps her bracelet and momentarily reveals strings of magic that blend in with her hair. "This enables me to move my arm as per my thoughts."

"Remember not to overuse it." Riko clearly doesn't seem too happy that Kanan isn't letting her injured arm rest.

"Don't worry, Rikocchi~! That's why I'm the lead, yes?" Mari winks at her junior. "I'm wondering though, none of you are entering the competition?"

Chika waves her hand. "Welp, I'm interested, but not with you two as rivals! Besides, we're keeping Riko-chan away from nasty suitors! Also, protecting our Ruby-chan."

At this, the Gryffindor duo smothers the startled Hufflepuff in a hug. Yoshiko rolls her eyes. "How about this one? I still remember how scary your fanclub is, You-san."

You points to herself, blinking naively. "But I'm with Chika-chan and Riko-chan?"

"So? They'll still try to get to you. Since you don't have a partner, many will try to make you dance with them," Yoshiko explains as patiently as she could. Could this dummy be more dense?

"But Chika-chan and Riko-chan are my partners-?"

Yoshiko groans and facepalms.

"Did you hear that, Rikocchi? Just enjoy yourself tonight," Mari's voice is light and teasing, though Yoshiko could understand the underlying meaning. Riko does appear tense from all the affection You and Chika have been showering her with.

"But I-"

"No buts! Fallo e basta~ That means no Disillusion Charm either." Tutting, Mari holds up her finger like an older sister chiding an unreasonable sibling. "It's a banquet, a feast, a celebration! Come on, Dia must be dying to see our lovely faces inside the Hall already."

"It'll take a while before we can rescue her from those guests though," Kanan smiles as her partner leads her inside, followed by the playfully bickering You and Chika who take Riko by the arm on each side.

"We're gonna wait here for Zuramaru," Yoshiko calls out after them, determined to ignore her growling tummy at all the delicious aroma wafting towards her nose.

She glances at Ruby, whose hair is a tad disheveled from all the hugs she received earlier. She helpfully holds up a pouch mirror as the shorter girl fixes her bangs. "So? Who're you gonna dance with later? Chika-san? You-san?"

"E-Eh? But you said you're not going to dance right? Then I can't just leave you alone," Ruby says firmly.

"Oh I just assumed you gotta dance as a Kurosawa. I overheard from my Housemates that many of them are expected to dance, to present their family or something. Then again, you don't have to, since you're here as Ruby, simple as that."

Ruby returns her grin. "Well, I do want to dance with Hanamaru-chan and you, if you don't mind, Yoshiko-chan."

"... you saw how I stepped on Lily's foot didn't you? She was nice enough not to say anything but I'm sure she had to use potions to make the bruises go away."

"That's because you were under pressure. It'll just be us three, so you'll be fine!"

Yoshiko finds Ruby's smile infectious. "I just gotta do my Rubesty huh?"

"Yup! Starting right now!" Suddenly, the shorter girl turns her around and pushes with strength unexpected of her.

Yoshiko feels her breath caught in her throat at the sight of Hanamaru, who gives her a bashful little wave. The brunette is wearing a traditional kimono of amber and gold shades, extravagant in its floral motif and intricate designs fitting for festive occasions. Even then, the whole attire somehow emphasizes Hanamaru's unique aura of humility and serenity.

She is beautiful.

"Sorry to keep you two waiting zura… it's been a while, so it took me some time to on the obi," the brunette sticks out her tongue sheepishly, gesturing at the elaborate sienna sash around her midriff.

Yoshiko is still zoned out while the two Hufflepuffs giggle and fawn over each other's attire. She only snaps back to her senses when Hanamaru reaches up and prods her forehead.

"Ow! What did you think you were doing, you disrespectful little demon!"

"Because you weren't paying attention zura!"

"No, I'm over-paying attention, Bakamaru," Yoshiko mumbles in embarrassment, hoping her cheeks aren't red.

"Zura?"

"Nothing, and stop giggling already Ruby! Geez, what's with the little demons tonight. It's mutiny, I say!"

"Yoshiko-chan is easier to rile up tonight, ne, Ruby-chan?"

"Mari-san called her a kitty cat earlier, Hanamaru-chan~"

"Oooh, that fits her zura~"

"Grrrr, shorties don't get to talk." Miffed, Yoshiko ruffles their hair using her slightly-superior height, grinning in satisfaction at their protests. "Why the kimono though? You're gonna stand out since everyone's wearing western-style clothing."

"Not true zura. Professor Koizumi is wearing a kimono, so is Professor Sonoda," Hanamaru pouts, "Besides, I don't have any dresses zura, and it's what my grandma sent me when I Owled her that we're having a banquet."

Thank you thank you, may Satan bless your soul, Grandma Kunikida. Yoshiko chants in her head while outwardly appearing as nonchalant as possible. "Whatever. At least you're wearing contacts and not wearing those granny glasses. Let's go in already. I'm starving!"

"Me too," Hanamaru attaches herself to Ruby's offered arm, giggling. "Hehe, we're like your dates ne, Ruby-chan?"

In response, the dashing Hufflepuff bows to Yoshiko like a gentleman and holds out her other hand. The Slytherin rolls her eyes at their expectant gaze and curtsies before accepting it.

Though flustered, Yoshiko finds herself giggling with her friends as they enter the Great Hall together.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

"Again, that's Miss Ohara and Miss Matsuura with their spectacular performance. Please give them a round of applause!"

The Charms Professor has already used the Sonorous Charm to do announcements, but even then her voice is drowned by the student body's thunderous cheers. Yoshiko finds herself clapping just as hard as everyone else, amazed by what she has witnessed.

Magic really brings a simple ballroom dance to a whole new level, doesn't it?

The waltz started normally like ones Yoshiko had seen in older Muggle movies, with the two witches moving in tandem and in sync. Never would she imagine the jokester Mari and jockey Kanan to twirl and sway so gracefully along with classy music. They were obviously well-rehearsed, but their years of friendship probably enabled them to read each other's movement to make everything flow.

Then their pace picked up, morphing seamlessly to a tango while the sparks and whirls of fire lit up the center stage. With a mixture of levitation charms, aguamenti and most likely some advanced magic Yoshiko knew nothing of, a screen of water enveloped the pair like a dome. Mari and Kanan seemed to be competing, fervently swimming around the arena as conjured marine creatures, the seal and dolphin Patronus Charms, and Transfigured creatures joined their acrobatic dance.

Needless to say, they finished with a literal bang, glitters and all, skating down the icy slope which dissipated into cottony snow flakes.

Yoshiko has to admit, that is one shiny performance.

"Yup, I'm glad I didn't try to enter the competition, at least not this year!" Chika's eyes are practically sparkling. "I'd rather watch the performances! Hehe, and watch Riko-chan playing the piano of course."

The Ravenclaw is seen smiling behind her grand piano, surrounded by Elves and other student members of the orchestra. In a way, Riko is shielded from possible suitors and the majority of the audience's attention during the Yule Ball, which is probably why she accepted the position in the first place.

Yoshiko sips at her strawberry punch, thoroughly enjoying the banquet so far. After the mouth-watering Christmas feast, the long tables in the Great Hall were then rearranged to make space for the Yule Ball in the center. High tables full of desserts and drinks were lined up against the walls while attendees mingled and simply enjoyed the show. The translucent ceiling was charmed to show snowflakes gently drifting in the evening sky, even though it didn't snow at all today.

At the front, the usual staff tables have been replaced by round ones for the various guests. Ruby had discreetly pointed out to her two Muggleborn friends some of the important figures, such as Heads of certain Departments from the Ministry, representatives from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, and even the illustrious wandmaker from Diagon Alley.

The Professors appear to be familiar with many of these guests, judging from the friendly and relaxed manner of their conversations. This encourages the older witches and wizards to introduce themselves and network among these influential people. Yoshiko notices many of her Slytherin Housemates already making impressions with the Ministry employees.

The most distinguished one is the Head Girl. As the Kurosawa heiress, Dia is dressed in full regalia of ebony and ivory, with the Slytherin cloak charmingly donned over her left shoulder. Various medals and trinkets decorate her garment, while her lustrous long hair, pulled in a fishtail braid, is draped elegantly over her right shoulder. With her austere demeanor and confident smile, she blends in well with the other adults. Yoshiko has almost mistaken her as a guest, a royalty even, and once again she is struck by the weight of being a Pureblood.

Dia isn't here just as herself, but as representative of her family.

Ruby appears antsy as well, unable to go help her older sister since they have to maintain the image of estranged sisters in public. They have no idea who the enemies are, and there is a possibility that they could be among the attendees right here in this very Hall.

Yoshiko downs her beverage and reaches for a different drink. Ruby's anxiousness is rubbing off of her, so she is relieved to see Mari and Kanan heading for the front. Surely, the two would rescue their friend as they had declared earlier. Oh, the pair has stopped to greet a bearded blond man. Judging from the familiar way they act and his uncanny Cheshire grin, he must be Mari's father. It's easy to forget that the quirky Ravenclaw came from a prestigious family too, since she doesn't act like one.

"Aren't you drinking too much zura?"

Yoshiko shakes her fingers at the frowning Hanamaru and takes another sip of her candy cane cocoa. She furrows her brows and puts the drink away before reaching for another one on the table, this time an eggnog coffee.

"Not this one either?" Ruby asks with an exasperated smile.

"Nope. At least, I don't feel any different," Yoshiko glares at the mug. "Just where could it be?"

Earlier, right before the Yule Ball, the Deputy Headmistress had announced that the Potion Professor prepared a surprise - the Felixis Felicis potion was randomly added to one of the many drinks. Yoshiko is determined to find that Liquid Luck. Being plagued by misfortune all her life, she wants to experience how it feels to not be unlucky for once, no matter how temporarily.

So far, no success.

"Maybe I should just go for those-"

"No," Hanamaru pulls at her arm before she could head for the cocktails and wine glasses on the other side. "You're still underage zura! Professor Sonoda stressed that it is for everyone, so they wouldn't have mixed the potion with drinks that aren't accessible to the younger students zura."

"Hnff, what would a mere Zuramaru know-"

"Oh, the next performance is starting!" Peacemaker as always, Ruby gestures at the center where another pair strolls through the floor just as confidently as Mari and Kanan did earlier. Since Yoshiko's feeling quite bloated, she decides to take her friend's advice to give up and enjoy the rest of the Yule Ball.

By the end, Yoshiko finds herself agreeing with Chika, that the competition is quite fierce. Mari and Kanan were good, but so were the others. It would probably be down to technicalities and the popular vote to determine which pair gets to be winners.

"Ok, so what now?" Yoshiko looks around the Hall, puzzled by how no one seems to be leaving. "Isn't the Banquet over?"

"Pfff, this is where the fun starts!" As if on cue, different sort of music starts playing and many students flood into the center stage to dance. Chika opens her arms dramatically. "Come on, who wants to start? Heh heh, Ruby-chan, how about you?"

"E-Eh? I-" The younger witch is gently but firmly pushed towards a confused Hanamaru, who is also nudged by a grinning You.

"Go on, enjoy yourselves!" The Gryffindors say in unison, which seems to give Ruby the courage she needs to ask the brunette for a dance. Both giggling, the Hufflepuffs enter the dance floor with their postures relaxed. This isn't like a performance where practically everyone is watching you, so the two girls are able to dance normally without such pressure.

Admittedly, they look adorable, and Ruby is a good lead! Chivalrously, she twirls the brunette around and her steps are unhurried for the latter to follow. Hanamaru's kimono sleeves twirl with her movements, the ribbon in her hair fluttering a bit as she try to match Ruby's pace. If only there's a camera!

An annoying prod to her side jostles her out of her observation. "What do you want?!"

"Don't you wanna dance too?" Chika pouts, one arm draped around her buddy You. "Come on, ya gotta save You-chan from her fangirls~"

Yoshiko peers over their shoulders and flinches at the sight of many witches staring their way, their bodies tense as if ready to spring into action the moment You steps away from the safety zone of expensive champagne glasses nearby. "And throw myself into a pack of rabid beasts? I think not!"

And besides, these dunderheads are quite transparent. They keep glancing at Riko's direction every few minutes, obviously waiting for the right moment to ask her for a dance. The Ravenclaw is currently occupied at the front, conversing with some of the Elven musicians.

"Yoshiko-chan, would you like to dance with me?"

"Ruby? You've finished dancing with Zuramaru?" Relieved to get away from the Gryffindors just for a while, Yoshiko hurriedly takes Ruby's offered hand.

"Oh, she's dancing with Kanan-san right now-"

"What?!"

Miffed, Yoshiko searches the crowd for the ridiculously tall-and-short pair. Indeed, the two are smiling brightly as Kanan attentively complements her movements with the younger girl. At least, the pair looks more like siblings than a couple, unlike the others around them. Gah, why is Bakamaru giggling so much? Is it really that fun!? What's with the blush?

Yoshiko takes a deep breath. Nope, she is so not jealous. The older Gryffindor has done a lot for them, and she's grateful for her help. Nuh-uh. Not jealous. Zen mode.

"I thought Kanan's supposed to be retrieving your sister from those guests?"

"Yup, Onee-chan's not trapped at the front anymore," Yoshiko follows Ruby's finger and sees Dia and Mari conversing on the side, surrounded by various prefects and students. It would be awhile before they could make their way to where Chika and You are. "Fine, whatever, let's get this started!"

"Okay, so first you- piki?!" Before Ruby could position them in the standard waltz stance, Yoshiko drags her friend around and twirls rather aggressively.

"Ku ku ku, I ain't gonna abide by silly ballroom rules! This is a free for all, Ruby! The music is kinda upbeat too, so I'm gonna do it my style!"

As much as she could in this dress anyway. It is really too bad she can't breakdance, or she's certain that she could impress many fellow students with her awesome techniques. Some of the Muggleborns are familiar with her moves and even cheer her on, while the Purebloods just stare at them blankly. There's curiosity in their eyes though, so Yoshiko happily pulls the squeaking Ruby along with her flow.

"That's pretty wicked, Yoshiko-chan, didn't know you could dance!" You is grinning while Chika welcomes an exhausted Ruby back to their midst. Yoshiko poses proudly, adrenaline rushing in her veins while a brilliant idea occurs to her.

Maybe she should ask Hanamaru for a dance?

She isn't given the opportunity to ask, for You excitedly pulls her onto the dance floor before she could react. Cold sweat trickles down Yoshiko's neck when she hears furious murmurs and disappointed grumbles from the pack of hungry wolves... no, fangirls.

You-san, you dense idiot! You're too close! Yoshiko couldn't help but blush when the older witch pulls her close, so close that their cheeks are practically touching. There are some screams or maybe cheers around them, she couldn't tell the difference, but out of instinct she clings to her partner as if this could save her from fangirls' wrath.

"Eheh, hang on~ Yousorou!"

"Wha- yeeeek!" Suddenly, You picks her up and throws her into the air!

She automatically tries to cover her fluttering dress, but she discovers that she doesn't have to. You must have conjured dancing feathers that hover around her, to block any viewers from seeing her underwear while she is airborne. Several brooms appear out of nowhere, and You tap-dances her way into the air, laughing and bowing as she approaches the slowly descending Yoshiko.

Strong arms easily catches her when You frog-leaps over the assembled tower of brooms. The athletic Gryffindor spins her around for several more paces before gently setting her back on her feet. The spectators' deafening applause overcomes the fangirls' protests as You rubs the back of her hair and hesitantly waves.

Yoshiko breathes raggedly, trying to comprehend what just happened as she leans against the older witch's shoulder.

"That was pretty good! Maybe we could refine it and enter the Ball next year- ow!"

Yoshiko scowls ferociously and smacks You's arm hard.

Again.

And again.

And once more.

"C-Chika-chan! She's punching me!"

"That's just a form of affection zura~"

"What-! Watch what you say, Bakamaru!"

Her ears feel like they are burning when she notices the rest of their group chuckling at their antics. At least, Hanamaru has returned from her dance with Kanan and is now stuffing her face with various desserts. Good, that's the Zuramaru she's used to. Be good and stay there. Keep feeding.

"That was amazing! What about it? Like You-chan said, you should form a duo, maybe called 'You & Angel?" Chika's previously tamed ahoge has sprung back up, swaying eagerly as the girl gives them a hug.

"No! And g-get off! I'm sweaty," Yoshiko pries the exuberant Gryffindors off of her person. Is this what Ruby feels all the time, being crowded by the baka duo? Although, it doesn't feel that bad, it's nice actually, because she can sense that the two witches are sincere in their hugs- no! The great Yohane shall not fall for their charm so easily!

She retreats to the side, huffing and puffing, and rummages through the tables for a drink she hasn't tried before. She glares at a glass of mikan juice, filled with pulp, for a good full minute. Taking a deep breath, she grabs the beverage and gulps down the content in noisy slurps.

Tearfully, she sticks out her tongue and waits for something to happen. Nope, other than a disagreeing tummy, she doesn't feel any special. Still no luck in finding that Felix Felicis potion. She glances back at her friends, noting that Chika and Hanamaru are now busy examining some sort of mikan dessert while Ruby happily eats a cup of pudding. Riko has finally joined them and is nibbling at a sandwich that You brought for her from another table. Kanan and Dia are several paces away, surrounded by admirers and younger students who must be taken by their respective outfits.

Hmn, where's that shiny cat Animagus?

She finds her answer a moment later when something reels her back onto the dance floor. Her vision is momentarily obscured by a top hat, which she scrambles to pull off. Half filled with annoyance and resignation, she blinks at the blonde witch holding out her gloved hand.

"Shall we dance~?"

Her lilting tone is a pitch lower than Yoshiko is used to, compelling her to accept the offer. Grinning, Mari begins to lead her around the other dancers, spinning her away and pulling her back at the right moment. Due to their height difference, Yoshiko is forced to peer up at the smirking witch, whose endowed bosom are rather distracting in an irritating way.

"Why do you want to dance with me anyway? Go back to your partner already." And keep that said partner away from Zuramaru, cheh.

"Why not? It's fun to dance with my cute little kouhai~ Besides, everyone's dancing, no?"

Yoshiko dares to glance around, noticing that Chika and Ruby have entered the center stage as well. You has somehow retrieved Kanan from Dia, who waves off her friend and is still occupied by the other students. It looks like the Gryffindor duo have failed or haven't tried asking Riko for a dance. Hanamaru is keeping Riko company as the two girls exchange accessories. True to her name, the sakura hairpin looks good on Hanamaru, while the saffron ribbon seems to make the hue of Riko's hair richer.

"Worried about Rikocchi, are we?"

"Well, yeah. Since that day with the Acromantulas, I've been watching her and the other two. It doesn't seem like Lily knows about the rumors, but those two bakas should be less obvious!"

"Hmm? Like how obvious you are towards Hanamaru-chan?"

"Yeah, exactly that! Wait what?! No! W-W-What are you talking about!"

Snickering, Mari tugs Yoshiko close and muffles her indignant shrieks against her coat. "Calm down~ Rikocchi is smart. She probably knows already, but doesn't want to believe it, understandably so."

"I see… what do we do then?"

"Now now, don't you worry about her. Just leave it to Kanan and I! We've got it worked out. You just focus on getting your girl~"

Mari smothers Yoshiko against her chest again before she could protest. "You'll see soon enough. It took a lot of convincing earlier, but Kanan and I cracked her down. There's no way Rikocchi would say no, teehee~"

Yoshiko scowls in the embrace and reluctantly relaxes. The hug does feel nice and comforting. While a part of her still doubts Mari due to her wacky ideas, she does agree that the senior is dependable whenever the occasion calls for it.

By the time they return to Riko and Hanamaru, the other pairs have finished their dance as well, while Dia has finally extracted herself from admirers. Yoshiko looks at every single one of her friends, pleased at this little bubble of nine. Her eyes meet Hanamaru's, and she freezes in self-consciousness. Puzzled, the brunette tilts her head and smiles adorably. A small splash of whipped cream is stuck to her puffed up cheek, which Yoshiko exasperatedly wipes away with a napkin.

"Aren't you eating too much, Butamaru?"

Frowning at the teasing nickname, Hanamaru punches Yoshiko's arm.

"Ow, that hurts!"

"Hnff, it'd better hurt zura!"

Yoshiko rolls her eyes. "Whatever, like you said, that's just a form of affection, ku ku ku~"

To her surprise, Hanamaru appears flustered and scoots away, placing a bewildered Ruby between them. Huh, that didn't go well. Time from Plan B.

"Okay, Yoshiko-chan, wish us luck," Chika and You suddenly whisper near her.

She hastily grabs hold of their arms before they could head towards Riko. "Wait, you're gonna go for it-?"

"Well, you're the only one we've told our little secret to, Yoshiko-chan," Chika fiddles with her fingers while You lets out a forceful chuckle. "Yeah, Chika-chan and I figure, it's now or never. We'll see which one of us Riko-chan picks, and we can move on."

"But-" Yoshiko helplessly glances at Mari, whose fiery eyes are focused elsewhere. Likewise, Kanan seems to be holding her breath, her expression intense as she stares in the same direction. Curious, Yoshiko and the two Gryffindors turn to look for what's holding their attention captive.

"Riko-san, may I have the pleasure of dancing with you?"

Dia's posture is slightly tense as she extends her hand towards the dazed girl. Riko's lips are parted in soundless surprise, her eyes wide as she glances between the gloved hand and Dia's earnest gaze. A pretty blush crawls up Riko's neck and cheeks as she daintily accepts the offer. Both smiling, one pleased and one coy, the pair slowly makes their way towards the dance floor. Many pairs of eyes are focused on them, most likely just as taken aback as Yoshiko is. She hasn't expected Dia to ask, or Riko to say yes.

Yet, looking at the two witches swaying to the gentle ballad, it somehow makes sense. They look like a match made in heaven, the way they seem absorbed in each other's presence. There's no need to concern themselves with unwanted attention, for they are already in their own world.

Yoshiko sighs quietly. In a way, she is envious. That's the kind of perfect scene she wants to appear to onlookers, with…

She glances at her friends, seeing how Hanamaru is just as mesmerized while Ruby looks happy for her older sister. Kanan and Mari exchange a quiet high-five, both grinning at how it turns out. Now, all that's left are the two possibly heartbroken duo.

Though disappointed, there is also something else in Chika and You's calm expressions. "Well, it's not like we have a chance against Dia-san anyway." "Yeah, it's not surprising that Riko-chan would accept."

Yoshiko scoffs and roughly pulls at Chika's arm, looping it around You's. The two witches blink at her innocently.

"Go on, go dance already. Don't mope here. Didn't you tell me to enjoy myself earlier? Now, it's your turn, both of you."

"Huh? With Chika-chan?" "With You-chan? Eeeh?"

"Shoo, off you go!" Their disbelief is actually heartrending to see, knowing what they used to be, so Yoshiko assertively pushes the two towards the dance floor. You nervously brushes through her hair while Chika awkwardly plays with her braid. After a few moments, their fingers finally interlace as characteristic smiles blossom upon their visage.

"Welp, just as she said, let's just enjoy ourselves, You-chan!"

"Yeah, wanna try an even more difficult stunt, Chika-chan?"

"Oho, you mean with more brooms and possible aquatic additions too, captain?"

"I knew you can read my mind, partner~ Let's consider this a prep for next year's Yule Ball!"

Like a proud parent, Yoshiko folds her arms and gazes after the pair until they blend in with the crowd. Matchmaking success! Whatever happens after is up to the two, but Yoshiko is confident that something good would bloom from this night.

"Hehe, they look cute together, don't they?" Ruby appears just as happy.

"All thanks to Yohane-sama!" Grinning, Yoshiko grabs a glass of water and pretends it's champagne. "Cheers, everyone!"

As they toast to many things, the clinks of glasses and laughter have re-ignited the rush of adrenaline she felt earlier. If the others could pair off so smoothly, surely it isn't that difficult to ask a certain brunette out for a simple dance?

Alas, as decreed by a fallen angel's misfortune, she misses her chance yet again. Hanamaru suddenly grimaces and excuses herself. "I-I need to go to the washroom zura-!"

Kanan blinks. "Oh, I'll go with y-"

"We need to stay to hear the announcement, for the winning pair of Yule Ball," Mari lightly taps on Yoshiko's shoulder. "If I recall correctly, you've drank a lot tonight, haven't you?"

"Y-Yeah, I did. I'll go with Zuramaru then. Ruby, you coming?" Though a little confused, she does agree it's better to go with company instead of alone. For some reason, Ruby shakes her head and makes a Rubesty pose.

"Huh? But-"

"Just go already, Yoshiko-chan!"

Still not understanding Ruby's encouraging smile, Yoshiko shrugs and hurries after Hanamaru. In contrast to the boisterous Great Hall and its glamorous decor, the corridors appears rather desolate and even sinister. Candles valiantly light up the path as she walks past some of the straggler students and into the courtyard. Her heels crunch quietly on the thin layer of frozen snow, leftover from days before, and her breath comes out in fleeting white puffs.

Hanamaru is standing in the middle of the garden, seemingly entranced by the bright quarter-moon and the glittering stars in the night canvas above.

"Hey, are you okay? I thought you're going to the washroom?" Yoshiko hesitantly approaches her friend.

"Hmm? Yoshiko-chan?" The brunette glances at her before returning her gaze towards the scenery. "I was… I felt quite dizzy earlier, so I thought it was something I ate zura."

"Pff, you did eat a lot…"

Hanamaru furrows her brows, though her expression relaxes a moment later. "Anyway, as it turns out, I just need some fresh air. I feel a lot better now zura."

"That's good at least. With the way you ran out earlier, I thought you were gonna hurl, heh," Yoshiko then slaps herself inwardly. She needs to stop making fun of the brunette or else she'll never be able to get that dance she wants!

Thankfully, Hanamaru seems to be too engrossed in this tranquil atmosphere to get upset. "What do you think, Yoshiko-chan? This feels like an illustration from storybooks zura. Isn't it beautiful?"

Yoshiko has always found nature to be otherworldly, an abstract concept to be admired and nothing more. The most she can do is immerse herself in the peace that nature offers. Yes, the icy snow appears to blanket the ground and any vegetation in an artistic manner. Yes, the cloudless sky allows the viewer to search among the constellations for possible shooting stars. Yes, the night breeze, while frigid, is also fresh and cleansing.

She glances at the smiling brunette by her side, savoring how the moonlight gently envelopes her form. "Yeah, beautiful."

"Right?" Hanamaru remains oblivious of her companion's gaze as she spreads her arms. "Sometimes I still can't believe it, being here in the world of magic and being able to use magic."

"Uh-huh, I'm with you on that. Hogwarts is… amazing." Yoshiko reaches out and gingerly takes hold of Hanamaru's hands, turning the shorter girl towards her.

Hogwarts never fails to take her breath away even though she has been here half a year already. From time to time, she would find herself admiring her surroundings, whether it is the Aviary, the towers, the forest, or even her own Dormitory. The ancient and austere magical presence makes her humble, makes her feel so incredibly tiny and insignificant.

But that was the same back in the Muggle world, wasn't it? She was just one of the many faces that passed by the shops, walked down the streets, and simply trudged through each day. She was unable to accomplish anything meaningful, and that had depressed her even though she carefully buried such feeling.

And so, this is the one difference between here and the Muggle world. Here at Hogwarts, she is given the ability to make a difference in people's lives and even her own, no matter how little it seems at first.

The adrenaline from before has calmed down to something soothing, like whispers of encouragement from Lady Luck herself.

"Well then, allow me to make this special scene even more fairytale-like."

"Zura?!"

Yoshiko gallantly tugs her companion against her, slipping her arm around the latter's waist. Due to the proximity, the shorter girl could only nestle her head against the crook of Yoshiko's neck.

"Dance with me, Hanamaru."

The brunette makes an incoherent mumble, her ears reddening. Yoshiko could feel Hanamaru's heartbeat against her, so she's certain that the latter could feel hers as well. Though embarrassed, she's also elated to have finally taken this step. Furthermore, unlike her previous experiences, she has not stepped on her partner's foot, has not lost her wits from unexpected movements, and has not carelessly taken control of the dance with her own style.

No, this is a simple slide and glide dance where the pair sways along the melody. The courtyard may be silent, but Yoshiko can clearly hear the music in her pounding heart.

"Y-Yoshiko-chan, you know how to waltz zura-?"

"Heh, the great Yohane learns fast. You're not bad yourself either."

"... I-I'm just following your lead," Hanamaru mutters shyly, leaning into their semi-embrace even more. Yoshiko stiffens and inadvertently stops the dance, with both of her arms wrapped around Hanamaru's waist to steady her.

Neither move from their position, enthralled by this mysterious ambience that encompassed them.

"So, pretty good year so far I'd say. We got to come here, learn magic-"

"- and I got reunited with you, and we've gained so many good friends zura."

"Right. Fantastic banquet, isn't it?"

"It is. Everything about today is… well, it's been magical zura."

Yoshiko nervously pulls away just a little so she could look at Hanamaru. The brunette's flushed cheeks probably mirror her own, encouraging her to do what her heart yearns.

"The perfect way to end the perfect night."

She leans down and smooches Hanamaru's cheek before backing away. The warmth and softness of the brunette's skin lingers on her lips, so tantalizing that she is tempted to kiss her again.

Should she push her luck? Is this too much?

Blushing, Hanamaru appears shell-shocked, staring at Yoshiko with wide, innocent eyes. Though mortified, Yoshiko returns the gaze earnestly to show that she isn't fooling around.

Hanamaru swallows hard, glancing to the right and then to the left while her arms remain loosely wrapped around Yoshiko's waist. As if making up her mind, she places one hand on the taller girl's shoulder and tiptoes.

Their lips meet chastely, once and again.

"Merry Christmas."

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academiablogs · 7 years ago

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Interview with David Gowey - on Science Fiction and Fantasy Tropes, Aesthetics, and World Building

(Image source) This week on Academia we discussed the trope of the “hero of prophecy” so common in fantasy and even science fiction literature, and whether or not it still has currency in the genre. To discuss this and related issues, we now invite David Gowey, author of fantasy and science-fiction novels such as Kaschar’s Quarter, Jire, and First Instance, and a regular contributor to our Academia community. As a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, David’s world building skills draw from many lands and cultures, and always examine what makes his characters—and their respective societies—tick. The wide-ranging conversation that follows will give you a hint as to why his books are so rich and easy to get lost in.

Joshua: Welcome, David! You write both science fiction and fantasy, so for you, what is the biggest difference between the two genres besides one is set in a hypothetical past and the other in a could-be future? What unique challenges does each genre offer you as a writer?

David: I’d say the biggest challenge is that the distinction between the two isn’t very clearcut, at least when it comes to the types of messages each type of story can send. While there’s certainly an element of prediction in sci-fi because verisimilitude goes a long way in deepening the reader’s immersion, the author ultimately has to construct the world of the story around the message they want to send rather than purely what is scientifically possible or even plausible. Predicting a dystopian nightmare future of government oppression can play out as a fictional case study for authoritarianism and why it should be defeated, but that’s not the only story sci-fi can tell. More utopian visions like Star Trek’s Federation also exist to show us what humanity could accomplish if it truly embraced the idea that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. But again, utopias aren’t the only story to tell and they’re inherently constructed as unrealistic literary teaching moments (to paraphrase a past Academia post).

Personally, the most interesting stories come in between these two extremes because they contain a mixture of recognizability, utopian aspiration, and dystopian warning. Something like The Expanse comes to mind, where government increasingly falls behind human progress in space exploration, leaving corporations and tribalism to fill in the blanks. This is what I try to approach in my sci-fi stories, with one human corporation (a joint Chinese-German venture called Interplanetery Resources Incorporated) appearing in many of them as a sort of Easter egg and also prediction about the future of space exploration. Interestingly enough, I’m 1-for-2 in my future predictions so far: Brexit happened and put a kink in my worldbuilding about its role in a joint EU space fleet, while Germany and China have taken what they perceive to be a US withdrawal from global leadership to signal a brighter future as partners. That’s not a bad track record.

As for fantasy, the problem is that the hypothetical past is mired in an awful lot of assumptions that then get turned into an awful lot of lazy worldbuilding. Here’s one example that’s stood out to me recently. I think we’ve all heard plenty about controversial casting decisions regarding characters whose presence in a given story is considered anachronistic based on ethnicity, whether it’s Matt Damon in The Great Wall (which I never saw so maybe it’s internally justified but I really can’t say) or black characters in media depicting medieval Europe. The problem for fantasy is that when we internalize assumptions about who was where in which time periods on Earth, we miss out on opportunities to reflect on diversity that was already there as opposed to merely going with the status quo or else insisting that our creation is entirely unique for its diversity. In reality, history is full of migrations and the concept of pure ethnicity divided into neat little ethnostates starts to collapse once it’s analyzed in those terms. Persian coins found their way to Britain; Africans and Native Americans lived in Western Europe; Japanese ronin fought in Mexico; Indian stories were indigenized in the Philippines; the predominant language in Madagascar is originally from Taiwan; and Polynesians ate South American sweet potatoes with mainland SE Asian chickens. The point is that relying on tired old reconstructions of our past and perpetuating them in fantasy is still a case of the author showing readers the world they want to see, whether that’s subconscious influence or conscious selection of the history they want to tell. Granted, I’m sure the vast majority of authors aren’t malicious about this at all but it’s something else to look out for if we want to conceive of fantasy as a reconstruction of the real world.

Joshua: Speaking of what authors do consciously or subconsciously, many fantasy novels tend to be variations on the “hero’s journey,” where a young, naive hero or heroine learns of an epic quest which they must undertake with the help of a wiser guide, who leads them through numerous perils, all to the tune of an ancient prophecy that foretells his or her triumph or doom, etc. How do you avoid re-writing the same story over and over again while staying true to the elements most readers appreciate from the genre?

David: My first book started about seven years ago as part of a character monologue that didn’t even have a name or a setting, but began with the words “I never wanted to be king”. As I continued to flesh it out, I kept making notes of things that this character could do that eventually turned into a sort of Candide or Guliver’s Travels scenario, where the “hero” found himself in a series of episodes that were basically glorified morality plays and then escaped them through a mixture of cunning and dumb luck. Later research clarified that the form I wanted was the picaresque novel, which the two books I mentioned were satirizing. Another earlier example would be Don Quixote and its deconstruction of medieval chivalric tales. While my inner editor killed off a lot of the more obviously moralizing episodes over time, the core of the story remained: I wanted my main character to be the sole point-of-view and to use those episodes as catalysts for him to change over time.

There’s no prophecy hanging over his head, but he does continually ask himself why he’s still alive. Is it God and if so, why? If not, is he surviving because of any particular skill or just because he’s lucky? He makes a number of choices along the way, many of which are purely for survival, but even that isn’t enough to answer why he manages to live through wars and other events that have killed so many others. In the end, it’s about him finding his agency and living with the consequences of exercising it on increasingly larger stages, from the ruins of his home city after an attack by religious extremists to eventually the capital city of a great empire. That last part isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the prologue but you’ll have to read the books to find out how he gets there.

Joshua: Yes, perhaps the important thing is that the character has to seem to have his or her own agency, or as you say, “is he surviving because of any particularly skill or just because he’s lucky.” That’s a great point. How else, as a writer, are you able to establish a sense of reality (or believability) when writing novels that take place in worlds that have never existed? What does it mean to make the fantastic sound feasible?

David: One of the big things I’ve come away with from reading sci-fi and reading about sci-fi is that a lot of that sense of reality lies in what the characters take for granted. For instance, the FTL drive may have a very convoluted but plausible way of working but it still gets you from point A to point B, at least until the plot demands that it break down for reasons to be explained later. That isn’t to say that everything complex should simply be handwaved away if readers ask too many questions, since that would defeat the purpose of shooting for believability in the first place. What it does mean for me is that I try to write the characters as if they don’t know they’re in a story (as opposed to Deadpool, who knows that he’s in a comic book). Organizations, people, events, and locations that exist in the character’s world will be just as obviously real (again, until the plot demands them to be otherwise) to them as anything in our world is to us. These characters will make pop culture references to things they know: the classic holo movie that everyone can quote, how the Mets in the year 2145 lack bullpen depth, or the famous composers whose music will be heard in the new opera house.

And speaking of opera houses, one thing I’ve noticed in a lot of fantasy is that all the buildings are ancient. Where’s the scaffolding on that “new” cathedral that was begun a hundred years ago but could take thirty more years to complete using only wooden construction equipment and hand tools? When does the king of this stereotypical Western European fantasy kingdom knock down the old castle and build a star fort, or even a new palace out in the country where he can house all the rowdy nobles in an effort to further centralize his power, as was done with Versailles? And for some ultra history nitpicking, why are medieval knights running around in full plate armor from the 17th century but cannons, handgonnes, and arquebuses from the 15th century are nowhere to be found? Making the fantastic sound feasible can and should include research that extends beyond our assumptions of what the past was like or what the future might be, all seen through the lens of characters who’ve lived their entire lives as themselves in that particular setting. When it works, we see a fully formed world through their eyes in much the same way as we see our world through our eyes. It also bears mentioning that this is really, really difficult and always subject to a learning process on my part.

Joshua: That’s a great and hilarious point—where are all the new cathedrals in fantasy? Everything can’t be old, after all, particularly in the ancient world. This relates to science fiction as well, since we can’t just be in a world with warp drives and parallel universes—we sometimes need to see where these come from and who discovered them. So I wonder, how much science should be in science fiction? Or is the emphasis on fiction, meaning that it can stretch scientific possibility to serve the story? How do you approach this balance in your own writing?

David: To paraphrase Asimov’s submission guidelines, I generally shoot for stories that use science to facilitate human experiences. Technology provides either the premise or the background for the premise but is very rarely a character in its own right. Even a recent story I did about a sentient AI tasked with carrying out a terraforming operation on a planet to make it suitable for human habitation is ultimately a human story, since this AI is specifically programmed to act as a mother for her future children. While it could be productive to argue the pros and cons of engineering gendered AI consciousness or the morality of terraforming alien planets, often destroying any chance for native life to survive on the surface, these concerns are secondary to making a main character that the reader can approach as if they’re reading about not just a person, but an authentic one.

Personally, aiming for hard sci-fi is all well and good, but if the story ends up reading like a lecture acted out by cardboard cut-outs instead of human beings, like Asimov himself was sometimes accused of doing, then I’m willing to flub a little science for the sake of a better story. Are humanoid robots fighting in space highly impractical and more likely to end with the pilot reduced to a puddle of goo by gee-forces than appear in a real battlefield of the future? Probably, but I want humanoid robots in my story because they’re cool and I may as well put interesting people in the cockpit while I’m at it.

Joshua: We’re getting a great sense of your personal philosophy and aesthetics as a writer. Of course, not everyone can appreciate the result of our craft. Related to this, what is the most painful feedback you’ve received from a reader? How did you deal with it?

David: Oh boy. The most painful is also one of the most recent, wherein an anonymous user on reddit gave my latest chapter draft for an unpublished story a little over a paragraph before finally quitting in anger and leaving a lot of negative comments all over it. Now I’m naturally biased toward my own work and while I do try to take criticism for what it is, a lot of their comments came off as nitpicking for nitpicking’s sake, as if they thought they could take my chapter through the Cinema Sins or Nostalgia Critic treatment and call it a constructive review. The complaint that stuck out the most was “don’t mention God in your story unless there really is one” and my first thought was that the objective existence of God in the story was irrelevant because that particular POV character believed that there was one. Admittedly, I didn’t respond in the best way and got a little snarky with them because of how angry they got without giving my work what I thought to be a fair reading.

This was not the ideal response on my part. What I should’ve done was shrugged it off instead of getting snarky, no matter how tempting it was (and it was very tempting). Instead, I learned some lessons about how to take critiques that can hopefully be of some use to other writers as they were to me.

Joshua: Perhaps, but I’m just as guilty of the same responses—and the same wounded ego. Readers can’t always be our validation, of course, and ultimately a writer has to decide whether or not his or her work “works” as an artistic whole. So how do you know if a work is successful when you’ve finished it? What are the signs you look for during the writing process and afterward? Is external validation the only true way to measure a book’s success?

David: Personally, the sign that a story is successful isn’t just when it has a clear beginning, middle, and end (though this is also important for obvious reasons) but rather when I no longer think about it. What this means for the novel and novelette I’ve published (Kaschar’s Quarter and Jire respectively) is that I don’t sit around anymore with lingering doubts about whether that story accomplished what I wanted it to or if it could’ve used something more. The same goes for many of my short stories. In all honesty, I can’t quite say the same for my novella First Instance; my lone Amazon review for that one was a roundabout way of asking for that “something more” and after further reflection and distance between the narrative and myself, I’ve come to agree. I wouldn’t use that to deter someone from reading it but the fact that I think the story has more to say leads me to believe that it’s not quite finished yet. I wouldn’t consider this a defect, though. Composers often rearranged arlier pieces later in their careers because they felt the music had more to say (or simply because they wanted to extend their copyright, like Stravinsky did with The Firebird). Not to say I’m Stravinsky or anything. Of course, other people liking my stories and/or giving me money for them is always appreciated.

Joshua: Ha…though Stravinsky is a great example, since he continually tinkered with his works, as much as to extend copyright as to discover new possibilities in them—often new orchestrations (and the original Firebird of 1910 had an enormous orchestra—not financially feasible for most modern orchestras to pull off!). Speaking of the classics, one final question to round out a fascinating discussion: if you could write the Preface to one classic novel of science fiction or fantasy, what would it be? In general, what would you want people to appreciate about this book that you would single out in your Preface?

David: I’d have to go with Frank Herbert’s Dune. Picking a single topic to focus on would be pretty difficult, given that there are so many sequels (and spin-offs if you’re inclined to count those) and even the first book has so many threads that it’s hard to keep track of what’s really going on the first time through. On the surface, it hits many of the same notes as other sci-fi/adventure stories: retaking a throne, acts of vengeance and betrayal, a love interest, and the white newcomer saving the brown indigenes from their oppressors but really from themselves. We’ve seen variations on these themes in John Carter of Mars, Avatar (the James Cameron movie), Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, etc. What Dune does that’s special, especially considering it predates all but one of those aforementioned stories, is that it flips the entire familiar narrative on its head, all while telling you exactly what it’s doing and why. The chosen one prophecy was nothing but cynical propaganda, prescience is a very double-edged sword, and the cost of achieving his final goal leaves Paul an emotional and physical wreck.

Ultimately, the entire series is one big deconstruction of the societal craving for messianic leaders that produces the chosen one narrative in the first place. It’s definitely the single most influential thing I’ve read in terms of how I try to write; constructing setting and characters with compelling, individual motivations.

Joshua: Wonderful response…you write the Preface, I’ll write the Epilogue! :) Thanks so much for exploring these topics with me, and as usual, offering so much passionate insight into what makes these genres exciting for modern readers. For more information on David’s novels, check out his Amazon author page, where you can buy copies of all his novels and story collections here . He can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and his blog!

#amwriting #interview #author #fantasy #scifi #David gowey #jire #reading #booklr

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margridarnauds · 8 years ago

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Berenice, Bianca, Elektra

(Finally getting around to this, woohoo!)

Full Name: Berenice. Gotta love the Greeks for keeping it simple. I have a vague idea that her name might have been something else at some point, but it’s always just “Berenice” or “Berenice of Alexandria” when I’m talking about her. (Funny story, though: The inspiration for her character came from my first Webkinz named Beatrice, so you could count that as an alternative name, I guess. Now read the rest of this entry with that knowledge. Go on, imagine a Webkinz doing all of this.)Gender and Sexuality: Female/Possibly straight (All her love interests have been men, but I also take a Sims approach to sexuality with my OCs so…)Pronouns:She/Her. Ethnicity/Species: About a quarter Persian, three quarters Macedonian. She’d probably be white passing by modern standards, but, considering the way things worked in her time, I’m not sold on her being considered fully “white” by ancient ones. Birthplace and Birthdate: Alexandria, sometime around 38 BCE. Guilty Pleasures: She’s a full blown Epicurean; she doesn’t have guilty pleasures. The closest thing I can think of is her affair with Bran, but that’s because (1) He’s a barbarian, (2) She was married at the time, and (3) He has *history* with her people, so it was more worry than guilt. She was perfectly happy to tap that; she just wasn’t sure about the fallout. Phobias: Deathly afraid of heights. Is also paranoid over assassination attempts, though, considering her track record, I’d say it’s not so much paranoia as taking the right precautionary procedures. What They Would Be Famous For: She’s one of the most influential, intelligent, and glamorous women of her time, and that makes her both famous and infamous. To her allies, she’s The High Queen and so is held onto this kind of pedestal as the daughter of a respected king who’s kept them from further civil wars since her accession and, later, as a symbol for their cultural continuity even after defeat, as well as a noted patron of the arts and natural philosophy. To her enemies, well… They put every single negative stereotype of women, particularly “Eastern women” onto her, making her into some oversexualized, decadent, vain sociopath who regularly twirls her mustache as she gleefully celebrates the downfall of civilization. (I lean more towards her being a little of both.) Either way, she’s an absolute icon as a ruler, for better or worse. What They Would Get Arrested For: Multiple counts of murder, including murder of at least one minor, treason, and, considering the time period, adultery. That one would actually probably be more likely to have serious consequences than the other two. OC You Ship Them With: Bran. I also lowkey ship her with Eleanor, and if Marcus weren’t so aggressively ace, I’d probably go with it. OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Well, Elektra and Theron certainly gave it their best try, with John Hawtrey and Emma continuing the grand tradition of father-daughter pairs trying to kill her. In the present, Diane is probably her biggest threat, but I don’t think she would really kill her because, on some level, she admires her too much and doesn’t see how much of a threat Berenice is even when she’s been stripped of most of her power. Favorite Movie/Book Genre: She loves tragedies with her favorite, naturally, being Agamemnon. (She’s particularly fond of the ending and might or might not have commissioned at least one writer to write fix-it fic for Clytemnestra’s fate.) I also like to think that, in the modern AU, she has a soft spot for the Sword and Sandal films, the more cringe inducing the better. Yes, including (especially?) “Alexander.” Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Hates black and white morality, especially when it comes to female rulers and how they’re perceived. Like, she knows she’s a monster, she owns up to it, but she’s tired of insipidly sweet princesses triumphing over evil queens. Her take on power struggles like that is that, while they’re inevitable (she killed most of her father’s and her husband’s concubines and children to keep her own power,) they involve the princess transforming into the evil queen, not defeating her. “Virtue rewarded” narratives just don’t appeal. Talents and/or Powers: Very intelligent, witty, and manipulative. She can effortlessly go from one mode to another, adapting her mannerisms to each one. Like all of her people, she has an expanded lifespan, as well as the ability to switch between her animal form and her human one. (Though the animal form is little used by her considering it’s also very conspicuous.) Oh, and she knows, like nine languages. Why Someone Might Love Them: In a time when women aren’t expected to rule in their own rights, she managed to seize power. She has a policy of religious and cultural tolerance, appointing the best people for a given position instead of strictly keeping to Macedonian or even Hellenistic in general citizens. Despite her claims that she’s gone cold over the years, she still obviously has a spot spot for her old childhood companions, showing more of her true self in their presence than she does around almost anyone else. Why Someone Might Hate Them: She’s absolutely ruthless in the measures she takes to keep her power. She’s literally killed babies and betrayed the love of her life to the tender mercies of their enemies. Like, come on. If you’re not ready for that kind of darkness in a character, particularly one who, at least as of this moment, has had no serious repercussions (ie death) for it , that could be jarring. I do think she’s troubled by it in her own way, especially the latter one which completely broke her for a while, but, at the same time…the girl’s dark. I’ve tried to not tone down what royal women of this time did to survive, for better or worse. I’d understand hating her 100%. How They Change: The first half of her character arc (losing her father and brother, taking her revenge out on Theron for their murders, the civil wars that resulted from not having a clear line of succession, marrying her uncle to ensure that she wasn’t swept away by the power struggles, participating in the murder of her half-siblings, having to marry Theron’s nephew, saying goodbye to her childhood friend and protector, throwing Bran to the wolves, and then orchestrating the murders of her husband, his other wives and concubines, and his children by them) is about her essentially having to lose touch with her human connections in order to survive. The second half of it (saving her old childhood friend, helping Eleanor in her rebellion against her brother, devoting a considerable amount of time to Bran’s recovery even when she thinks that he’s never going to forgive her for it, offering Ada a place at her court so that Atria will be happy and then protecting her when her past comes to haunt her, deciding against taking power from Eleanor despite it potentially playing to her advantage) is showing a possible restoration of those connections and the possibility of changing how things are done. I don’t think she’ll ever get a full redemption, because I’m not sure there can be a full redemption for all she’s done, but she gets the closest thing to it that I can imagine. Why You Love Them: She’s basically my love letter to the great Hellenistic queens, specifically Olympias and Cleopatra VII, with traces of the others threading their way throughout her backstory and characterization. It’s an absolute thrill bringing the best and worst of that time to the fray and getting to write someone as complex as her from the beginning of her character development to the end. She’s the kind of female character I’ve always latched myself onto, the ones who have grand schemes and ambitions and who manipulate and scheme their way into fulfilling them (I’ll give you a hint: The first female character I can remember loving was Anck-su-Namun from “The Mummy,” the second was Cleopatra, the third was probably Morgan le Fay) and I finally have the chance to have her run free and do her own thing without having to tragically die at the end. She also makes such a fantastic foil to Eleanor, with Eleanor ultimately deciding not to go down the path Berenice went down despite being exposed to similar traumas, though I don’t think I ever want to see them set up in a traditional protagonist-antagonist way. I prefer the two of them bouncing off each other, one the older, more Machiavellian queen, the other the more humanistic queen, with both kind of drawing closer to each other by the end.

I just…really love Ber as a character, okay? She’s probably one of my all-time favorites.

Full Name: Bianca CostaGender and Sexuality: Female, demisexual. Pronouns: She/Her. Ethnicity/Species: White/HumanBirthplace and Birthdate: Since they’ve been magicked off to another world by the Fae, time and dates don’t work the same, but going off of the 1580 starting point, she was born sometime around May 1, 1616 in the New Papal States. (Essentially, where all the Catholic colonists clustered together to get away from the Protestant colonists and the new pope was selected, according to them, by divine revelation.)Guilty Pleasures: SweetsPhobias: ThunderWhat They Would Be Famous For: She’d probably be right up there with Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette on the list of popular tragic queens, though, considering she didn’t die, she’d probably be best remembered as Eleanor’s mother. What They Would Get Arrested For: Adultery and treason. OC You Ship Them With: Duncan, happiness. OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Diane. Like with the Ber/Elektra example, she’s certainly tried enough times. Favorite Movie/Book Genre: The old Chivalric Romances are her jam, especially Amadis of Gaul and Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. She’s not particularly fond of Tristan and Iseult, though. Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Romanticized abuse in any form, especially when it’s claimed by the writers to be “just part of the times.” I can see her viewing session of a *certain* time traveling romance being put on hold shortly after beginning, with her needing Dunc to hold her and reassure her for an hour or so afterwards (at least) that she’s safe with him and he’d never treat her like that. Talents and/or Powers: No real powers that I know of; I’ve toyed with giving her an interest in alchemy, but that comes a little too close to Atria’s whole “natural philosophy” shtick and even though I’m all for more female characters in STEM-like (okay, as close as you can get in Early Modern England) concentrations and even though historically, there were a number of women involved in alchemy, I just don’t feel it as much. I still like the idea of her as an expert horsewoman and hawker, so there is that. I especially like the hawking, as then you have the whole symbolism angle + historical accuracy and that makes me feel good about myself so yeah. In some ways, I think I’m still waiting for her to “click” with me as a character. Why Someone Might Love Them: Like her daughter, she has a great amount of spirit, though, also like her daughter, she’s very subdued in showing it. Years with Giles have only made it worse, but she still keeps fighting for her daughter, despite everything. I often tie a lot of Eleanor into her more distant ancestors, with that whole “Heroic Lineage” thing often coming up, but I think that a good portion of her strength comes directly from her mother. Why Someone Might Hate Them: I can see people hating her for having an affair, despite Giles being explicitly abusive, especially since that affair brought a child into that kind of situation. She and her husband’s illegitimate daughter, Cat, do not get along, and sometimes she can be overly sharp with her as a sort of revenge by proxy. We’re not looking at Snape levels of spite here, but she is supposed to be the adult despite the horrible circumstances both of them find themselves in. How They Change: She started off as this very spirited young woman, optimistic, innocent, and absolutely sure that people were as they appeared. She fully believed Giles when he presented the image of the perfect prince to her, only for him to turn on her after their marriage. Now, that spirit’s mostly gone; she’s more or less sedate. Her faith in humanity is certainly gone, her faith in society even more so as she’s watched them turn a blind eye to what their king’s been doing for the better part of two decades. Duncan, who had helped sustain her in the early years of her marriage, is distant out of fear of the consequences for her if Giles found out. She’s basically become lost from herself after all this time and, with Diane’s treatment of her daughter, it only gets worse from there as her anxiety and guilt preys on her. Like with Ber, I would like to build her up from this point, I would like to see her start to recover and learn to trust again, I’d like to see her relationship with her daughter grow after Eleanor learns the truth of her parentage, I’d like her to forgive herself, I’d like to see her start a new family with Duncan. I’m not sure how much of that I can do, considering I’m feeling a strong tug towards a bittersweet ending for them, probably in the vein of the old Chivalric Romances since so much of their relationship’s already been inspired by them, but I also have a hard time giving any of my ships a bad ending, particularly not the ones like this where both parties have already been through Hell to be together. Why You Love Them: I like that she’s not a perfect mother or a perfect person, that she makes mistakes, that she snaps at her husband’s daughter at times, that she’s catty with his mistress. I don’t like writing paragons, I don’t like writing models of ideal femininity, and she’s certainly not. Writing an abuse victim from a historical angle is very complicated and it’s something that I try to be sensitive about,and it’s one that I’ve tried to take in as realistic a direction as I can, so that is interesting to take on as a challenge. Sobering, depressing, but also interesting, especially dealing with her after Giles’s death when she’s nominally free and trying to rebuild. She’s also a religious minority (Catholic) in a very Protestant country, and seeing how she deals with that is interesting to deal with.

THANK YOU for asking about Elektra. When I first put her up there, I wasn’t sure about much besides maybe 1-2 traits. She was a dead backstory character, a little roadblock in Ber’s character development. Now, it looks like we’re together for the long haul. That being said, I kept in all my old remarks + added in some new ones in parentheses as my way of marking the character development.

Full Name: Elektra (See above about the Greeks and naming and how convenient it makes my life.)Gender and Sexuality: Straight, though, like with Ber, the Sims Rule of Sexual Orientation applies. (HaHahahahaHAA no. Girl’s either bi, pan, or lesbian, with her marriages being a way of keeping power. That was so cute that I used to think she was an evil straight girl.)Pronouns: She/HerEthnicity/Species: White/Shapeshifter. Birthplace and Birthdate: Athens, September 12, sometime around 37-39 BCE. Guilty Pleasures: I like to think that, for all the crap she gives Berenice about drinking unmixed wine *like a barbarian*, she indulges from time to time herself. Berenice knows, of course, and is endlessly entertained by it. Phobias: Honestly, I wasn’t sure about this one, but I think she’s afraid of being abandoned. Like, her father was never a particularly good parent to her, though he sometimes threw her a gift or two, her mother didn’t care for her, and then her father abandoned her mother for a girl her own age. Which is far from the worst thing he did. And I think she takes a lot of that with her in her revenge quest; it’s like she feels that if she can avenge his death, she’ll have the love she’s always wanted and she’ll be able to move on. What They Would Be Famous For: She is, unfortunately, the Cleopatra Eurydice to Berenice’s Olympias, so she is going to remembered either as (a) one of the poor, innocent victims of The Bad Queen or (b) as a necessary roadblock, the “other woman” that got in the way of Ber being happy and who had to be removed. None of these stereotypes are true, she wasn’t innocent but Ber and Arion would never have been happy together even in an Elektra-less world. Her marriage to Arion just sealed Ber’s disgust for him, as she considered it to be a personal betrayal that he married the daughter of the man who killed her father. What They Would Get Arrested For: I mean, attempted murder? She and Ber would probably have to share a cell. OC You Ship Them With: I don’t know, she’s only with Arion, who’s the closest thing she has to a love interest, for the power and to hurt Ber. (Don’t worry, I figured it out.) I suppose I could ship her and Ber in the right AU. (Incidentally, I’m still down for this.)

Her and Khensa would be an interesting enemies-to-lovers ship, with Khensa being so absolutely devoted to Ber’s success as a queen, Elektra being devoted to tearing Ber down, and both of them having unresolved issues with their fathers’ murders. (Yes, there is a theme here and I’m aware of it. Some people work out their daddy issues by long talks and a lot of therapy, I work it out by inflicting a bunch of dead and/or useless fathers on my characters so they can suffer too.) There could be a lot of great opportunities for hatesex there, and, in a fluffier AU, the possibility for them to work out their issues. When Ber finds out, she’s completely speechless, at first thinking that this is a prank Khensa’s pulling on her and, after Khensa assures her that she’s 100% serious, she probably faints. It takes her an additional three days to process the information, even longer to accept it, and she never fully trusts Elektra, but she realizes the value of having her as a potential partner in Khensa’s spying operations, especially given her own relationship with Bran. (And because Khensa’s too valuable to alienate by ordering the relationship terminated or by having Elektra assassinated, especially since her usual hitwoman’s the one with hearteyes.) The two of them then proceed to pretend to hate each other’s guts during the day so that potential rebels would be drawn to Elektra while making out behind every pillar they can find at night.

Ah, if only things had been different.

(Note:This is actually what made me change my mind about her, but it’s so hilarious in hindsight that I’m keeping it all as-is. Khensa x Elektra [Khelektra? Elensa?] is 100% canon. And still angsty because why not.)

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Ber murdering her is (Not!) canon at this point. Alas, poor Elektra. I didn’t know you well and I didn’t particularly like you until having to fill out this meme, but that was a harsh one. (Well, safe to say that’s been scrambled, though Ber’s still the most likely. I mean, it wasn’t for lack of trying.)Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Like Ber, Tragedies. Unfortunately, unlike Ber, who recognizes her role and adapts and learns from it, she refuses to see herself as anything other than the hero in her given story. (Which is why we have characteeeeeeer develoooooopment. And necromancy.)Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: I think “If you kill him you’ll be just like him” has to be near the top. From her point of view, she could never sink as low as Ber has and would bristle at the suggestion that she already has. (Still agree with this.)Talents and/or Powers: She’s a very accomplished witch, having taken up the dark arts recently. As such, she has command over a vast array of powers with the proper ritual, including raising ghosts to do her will. (Believe me, this comes in handy. And is also part of the New!Elektra, in case anyone cares about chronology here.) Why Someone Might Love Them: In another story, she could have been the heroine looking for revenge for her father’s death against an evil queen who puts on a facade to fool those around her and kills her enemies mercilessly. Unfortunately for her, she wound up in the wrong story, the evil queen was just as much a victim as she was, and her father was the reason she started off on that path to begin with. The fact that she was (not!) murdered while she was pregnant only adds to the tragedy, as well as the fact that, unlike with her father, there’s no one left to avenge her. There’s something tragic about it, really. Why Someone Might Hate Them: I never intended for Elektra to be a sympathetic character, so I’d actually be more surprised by people liking her than not. She absolutely refused to listen to the evidence of her father’s guilt, even when it was absolutely conclusive. After she finally accepts that he was a serial killer, she defaults to saying that “It was just whores,” denying his role in the deaths of Ber’s father and brothers and refusing to believe that her father was completely, utterly evil. I actually understand her on this one to some extent (no one wants to believe the man they loved and trusted is a monster + cultural norms regarding prostitutes and their status coming into play,) but I can still see her being labelled “the stupid bitch,” especially given that she made the vital mistake in her final scene of gloating to Ber over her pregnancy. In her defense on that one, she had no way of knowing that Ber’d had an abortion a short while before and the whole situation with Bran (I mean, she knew about it, but she didn’t realize the extent of the mushy feelings involved) and so Ber being unstable enough to just stab her right there wasn’t something she’d calculated in. As I mentioned above, I can also see people misblaming her for the failed marriage between Ber and Arion, with people probably labeling her a homewrecker or a whore (while probably ignoring that Bran is also a homewrecker by those standards), when the crux of the conflict between the two women isn’t over Arion; it’s over power and the cycle of revenge. (Elektra’s father murdered Ber’s father, Ber killed her father, and so now the two of them aren’t going to be happy until all traces of the other are wiped off the face of the Earth.) The fact that they also happened to share a a husband and that he happened to prefer Elektra was just a bonus.

(Now, with me deciding to have her survive Ber’s little stabbing spree and get a redemption arc, there’s a new set of problems developing, as in any case of redemption. Like, both Ber and Elektra have a casualty count at this point, and any talk of “redemption” is always going to be a polarizing thing.)

How They Change: I think that Elektra’s development is running counter to Ber’s, so that while Ber’s slowly gaining her humanity back, Elektra’s slowly losing it. The measures she takes to get rid of Ber become even more desperate, until she’d probably be willing to kill herself if it could hurt Ber in any way. (Surprise, surprise, now I have her isolating herself from society/separating herself from the figures in her past as being her victory while Ber’s is re-integrating herself/reconciling with the figures in her past, so good call Past!Me)Why You Love Them: There are very few characters who I can say were decent adversaries for Ber and, even though Elektra ultimately lost, she at least gave Ber a run for her money. On some level, I think she more or less becomes the standard that Ber compares later enemies to (”Elektra wouldn’t have done this”). As much as I love Ber, I also love anyone who’s capable of slapping her into the next stage of character development.

(Also, in the present, the fact that she grows and learns and is able to somewhat reconcile with Ber after everything both of them have done to each other (and team up together to defeat the loser on Ber’s throne) is really cool to see, especially since this is all on her. It’s not really on me; I’d been happy to leave her lying in a puddle of her own blood in a marble room. So, props to her for making me realize what I was missing out on.

Oh, and she’s a witch. Like, writing a historically accurate Greek witch is everything I ever wanted but didn’t know I needed.)

#long post #and i do mean long #oc shenanigans #ajax-daughter-of-telamon #i bet you forgot you ever asked me this #which is cool considering it gave me time to think #miscarriage tw #abortion tw #abuse tw #berenice #elektra #bianca

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mingmagazine-blog · 8 years ago

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The History of Manhood and Masculinity

Hello, viewers! My name’s Shaina and I graduated with a B.A. in Professional Writing, Creative Writing, and World History from York College of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. I am currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (with a concentration in Fiction and Film Studies) at National University. We present to you the idea of manliness and all things considered in making someone a “man,” historically and socially speaking. I plan to give you a woman and man’s view of masculinity as well as the history of manhood and what makes a man masculine. Here we go!

Masculinity In A Nutshell

When it comes to manhood there’s not much debate on what makes a man…well, a man. Women typically see a “real man” as a guy who is buff, eye-candy appealing, may or may not have a scruffy beard, has the ability to drink excessive amounts of beer and/ or whiskey, and has a pretty big “appendage.” Over time though the definition of manhood has changed, as well as women’s tastes in men. Masculinity is defined socially as traits that include assertiveness, courage, and independence. Men are typically seen as the breadwinner of the family. They do the heavy labor and work while the women stay home. In today’s society, though, that has changed greatly. This fact doesn’t make a man any less of a human being. We strong, independent women just like to do things ourselves, honestly.

Centurion

Manhood Through The Ages

Throughout history, the idea of masculinity has differed depending on culture. In Ancient Greece, the prime specimen of a man was someone like Zeus or Hercules. Men who were brave and strong warriors. During the Viking Age, men had beards and died valiantly in battle. If he didn’t, he was not considered a man. During the Middle Ages and Victorian Era, a man was a guy who was Christian and chivalric. They saw warriors and the military class as the best men have to offer, the cream of the crop in manhood and masculinity. Men showed off how masculine they were by contests of strength like wrestling. During the Roman Empire, a masculine man was a gladiator who competed in the Coliseum in a fight to the death against an animal or another gladiator. There are also religious aspects and rites of passage to becoming a man, such as Bar Mitzvahs.

In Conclusion…

There are of course other traits to truly being a man. Those traits not just based on masculinity but an essential part of manhood. Traits that go back to the ideals of the Middle Ages and Victorian time period. A man must be chivalric, respectful, courteous, and know when to admit he was wrong and apologize for his actions and assumptions. He must step up to the plate to take care of his children and his woman. They, in turn, will provide for him. True men don’t need just brute strength and warrior skills but also need a kind heart and intelligence.

So, do you have what it takes to be a man historically speaking?

If you want to know more about manhood and what it means to be a man, stick around.

#Beer #Chivalry #Greek Mythology #Hercules #History #Man #Manhood #Masculinity #Middle Ages #military #Romans #Victorian Era #Vikings #Whiskey #Zeus

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lifeofresulullah · 5 years ago

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad: Before His Birth, His Birth and His Childhood

The Prophet is Under the Care of Abdulmuttalib, his Grandfather

When our Holy Prophet (PBUH) lost his mother at the age of six, his elderly grandfather took him under his care.

He deeply enjoyed entertaining guests. He would pay close attention to his relatives and would show them compassion and loving-kindness. Because of this wonderful quality, the Qurayshis would refer to him as “Ibrahim the Second”.

When Ramadan entered, he would retreat to the cave of Hira and would be preoccupied with worshipping; he was the first to have started this practice.

At the same time, this elderly grandfather knew what loving a child and grandchild was like. It was a great pleasure to love a grandchild as sweet and immaculate as the Master of the Universe (PBUH).

At that age, the Prophet was like a sincere friend of his old grandfather, a sympathetic ear and a trustable consultant. However, he always acted respectfully toward his grandfather.

Only he was allowed to sit on the seat of his grandfather!

“Release my son. By Allah, in the future, his reputation and glory are going to be great”.

When the Prophet was a bit late!

What did the Yemeni ruler, Saif bin dhi Yazan, say to Abdulmuttalib

Abdulmuttalib, who loved our Holy Prophet (PBUH) wholeheartedly, was away from him for a short period of time only once during his life.

A committee representing Mecca that was headed by Abdulmuttalib was supposed to go to Gundam. For this reason, by leaving Mecca, Abdulmuttalib was going to be far away from our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

“We are the people of this nation that Allah has made inviolable. We are the ministrants of the Baitullah (the Kaaba)”.

This statement grabbed the monarch’s attention, therefore he asked, “Oh smooth-spoken person, who are you?”

Abdulmuttalib answered, “I am Hashim’s son, Abdulmuttalib”.

Saif was interested in more. He said joyfully and excitedly, “So, you are my sister’s son”.

Abdulmuttalib said, “Yes.”

Saif did not settle on those complimentary words. He proved that he was sincere by entertaining Abdulmuttalib as a guest in his palace for a month.

The days in the palace were always spent by conversing. Saif had learned about the attributes of the forthcoming Prophet from the Holy Books and was finding some clues from his conversations. One day, he discreetly called Abdulmuttalib during a break so that no one would notice. He wanted to speak to him. When Abdulmuttalib arrived next to him, he said, “Oh Abdulmuttalib, “I am going to entrust a secret to you and I believe that this secret is related to you. We have been hiding this very great and important news that I have found in a book”.

Abdulmuttalib asked, “What is it?”

Abdulmuttalib was overcome with curiosity and excitement and wanted the Ruler to further explain and to further open this secret. He said, “Oh, Emperor! May your life be long, your reign continuous, and your glory is great. Could you further describe this child?”

This time, it was the Emperor’s turn to be curious and puzzled. He asked, “Oh Abdulmuttalib! Did you sense anything from what I have told you?”

Saif was happy that he had not been mistaken and said, “Protect your grandchild very carefully. The Jews are enemies to him. Protect him so that they will not harm him. Nevertheless, Allah is not going to give his enemies the chance or the possibility to do so. According to what I have found and learned in the ancient books, Yathrib (Medina) is going to be his place of emigration and he is going to receive much help there”.

Both the Emperor and Abdulmuttalib were relieved for having solved a great impasse.

Saif bin Dhiyazan was heralding our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) advent as a Prophet.

However, in less than one year after this conversation, Saif bin Dhiyazan passed away without being able to receive any further news from the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) grandfather.

When Abdulmuttalib arrived in Mecca after a month of separation, he hugged his radiant grandson with longing and tried to rid his pain of separation with the sweetness of having been reunited.

The Prophet, a means of “Mercy”

Our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) was still under his grandfather, Abdulmuttalib’s care.

Mecca and its surroundings were suffering from terrible hardship and famine due to the drought.

Abdulmuttalib, who understood his grandson’s degree of importance, took him and his son, Abu Talib, to the Abu Qubays Mountain. The Qurayshis were coming right behind them.

Abdulmuttalib turned his face towards the Kaaba and lifted our Holy Prophet (PBUH) towards the sky three times and begged, “My Lord! Gladden us by sending rain for the sake of this child”.

The supplication that was done out of respect for the Master of the Universe (PBUH) was accepted. Raindrops instantly mixed with the people’s and the gentry’s teardrops of happiness.

DEATH OF ABDULMUTTALİB

Abdulmuttalib, who had become considerably old, fell ill one day. And his illness was gradually increasing its level of intensity.

He understood that his emigration to the afterlife was near. However, he had one necessary duty left to fulfill: To choose a dependable person that he could entrust our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) to.

For this reason, he called all of his sons. Abu Lahab came into his mind. However Abu Lahab was a coldhearted and merciless individual, therefore Abdulmuttalib said “no” to himself.

How about Abbas? No, he could not be, either. He had so many children and could only find time for them.

How about Hamza? He could not accept him either. Hamza was young and interested in hunting. He would not be able to show due attention and care to our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

Abdulmuttalib did not neglect to ask our Holy Prophet (PBUH) for his opinion. He asked, “Which of your uncles’ custody would you like to be under?” Upon hearing his grandfather’s question, our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) got up from his spot and went to embrace his Uncle Abu Talib. And it was in this manner that he expressed who he would like as his guardian.

Abdulmuttalib was happy that he had preferred the best candidate. Afterward, he turned to Abu Talib and said, “I am entrusting him to you. He is a Divine trust. Promise me that you will protect him in spite of everything, even if it is at the cost of your own life so that I will not have to worry and my heart can be content”.

Abu Talib, who was deeply touched that our Master (PBUH) had favored him, responded to his father with teary eyes:

“Do not worry, my dear father. You can be assured that I will prefer him over my own children and my life. I promise that I will not allow anyone to harm him as long as I live”.

Abdulmuttalib was pleased a lot by his son’s statement and his eyes were filled with tears of happiness.

...And Muhammad (pbuh) was delivered by Abdulmuttalib to Abu Talib, his uncle.

The date was 578 AD, eight years after the Year of the Elephant (Elephant Year).

Tears of the Prophet

Beloved Prophet (PBUH) felt deep sorrow for having lost his grandfather. This incident reminded him of his parents’ emigration to the hereafter.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) could not contain his teardrops during his grandfather’s funeral and burial; sometimes he would sob and other times he would cry silently without making a single sound.

Many years later, they asked our Holy Prophet (PBUH) whether or not he remembered his grandfather’s death. He responded by saying, “Yes, I remember. I was eight years old at that time”.

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minervacasterly · 8 years ago

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Queen Elizabeth I's education & the Women who influenced her: "Elizabeth's last stepmother, Katherine Parr, could not have been more different from poor, flighty Katherine Howard ... Like many elite, educated ladies, Katherine had a deep interest in religious progressiveness, composing her own prayers and meditations, and, as queen, holding a regular theological salon in her chamber. She was alsoconsiderably more interested than her predecessor in her stepchildren. Elizabeth's "towardness" was remarked on by many who knew her; now Katherine saw to it that from 1544, Elizabeth was able to share the lessons of her brother, Edward, under the tutelage of John Cheke, the humanist -and reformist- professor of Greek at Cambridge, who had gathered about him an intellectual circle which was to include some of the key figures of Elizabeth's reign. Elizabeth's tutors were both members of St. John's Cheke's college. William Grindal held the post until his death in 1548, after which he was replaced until 1550 by Roger Ascham, who left a detailed record of his studies with the future queen in a tract on education, The Schoolmaster, published in 1570. Ascham's book, which combines a perhaps surprisingly modern emphasis on a gentle and encouraging pedagogic method with an extraordinary depth and rigor, delineates the aims of a humanist education. For Ascham, Latin was the fulcrum of learning, and the purpose of its study, above all, is to achieve a command of expression which in turn will produce a polished clarity of reasoned thought. The student who began with Cicero's De Oratore: '...would not only take wholly away this butcherly fear in making of Latin but would also with ease and pleasure ... work a true choice and placing of words, a right ordering of sentences, and easy understanding of the tongue, a readiness to speak, a facility to write, a true judgment both of his own and other's doings.' Ascham was building on a tradition of reformed education which had begun in Italy in the mid-fifteenth century. There, the auctores octo, medieval tracts on education, had been replaced by classical texts to introduce children to the works of ancient writers, to the extent that, in 1443, the University of Ferrara ordained that only those who could prove their credentials in bonae litterae -humanist studies- might be admitted to teach. Ascham believed that an ideal education consisted of three interdepending strands: the Latin of Tully, the Greek of Plato and Aristotle, and the Holy Bible: "I never knew yet scholar that gave himself to like and love and follow chiefly [these] authors, but he proved both learned, wise and also an honest man." Or herself, maybe, for Elizabeth also profited from an advancement in ideas about women's learning which in England had found its most celebrated exemplar in the "school" established by Thomas More for his daughters and household, and which was known throughout Europe during the 1520s. More founded his system on the thorough method of double translation also adopted by Ashcam, whereby the student would translate from Latin or Greek to English and then retranslate their own rendering of the text. The curriculum followed in More's household was similar to that followed by Elizabeth, who, like More's daughters, read Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, Italian, and German, and studied mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, music, and geography, while the study of grammar, rhetoric, and logic was utilized in practice by debate and "disputation." Crucially, More's practice supported his vied that women's intellectual capacity was in no way inferior to that of men ... Another important precedent in terms of Elizabeth's education was that of her older sister, Mary, whose studies were supervised by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives. Mary studied the writings of contemporary humanists such as Erasmus and More himself, as well as Plato and Aristotle, and she too was an accomplished linguist. When Mary was seven, Vives produced a precursor to The Schoolmaster entitled On a Plan of Study for Children, directed towards the education of a future monarch. Mary's accomplishments are less well known than those of her sister (not least because she boasted them less), but in her speeches as queen, it is possible to discern many of the rhetorical elements derived from her education, which Elizabeth herself was to imitate. An education equivalent to that received by the More girls or the Tudor princesses was obviously reserved for a very small number of women. But what made such an education extraordinary for those few was that, for the first time in England, women were possessed of an intellectual parity with men. Women's learning was not entirely unknown -indeed, during the early medieval period, convents such as Wilton had been the focus of education for elite women- but Latin culture had generally been reserved for men. One positive consequence for this was the promotion by royal and aristocratic women of vernacular culture, but Latin had always been the language of power, diplomacy, and the law. Joined by her knowledge of Greek, considered essential by humanists for a true understanding of the Bible, Elizabeth's intellectual weapons were thus as finely honed as those of any of her male contemporaries. Like her brother, Edward, with whom she shared her reading of Livy, Sophocles, and Demosthenes, Elizabeth was educated as a prince. As teh children's household progressed from one nursery palace to another in between visits to court, Elizabeth and Edward apparently devoured the tasks set for them (and, since they were royal children, they were presumably never lazy or bored). One account captures the peaceful industry of this time: "So pregnant ingenius were [Elizabeth and Edward] that they desired to look upon books as soon as they day began to break. Their morning hours were so welcome that they seemed to prevent teh night's sleeping for the entertainment of the morrow's schooling." Elizabeth was, however, excluded from the physical aspects of her brother's education. When Edward was called away to the "knightly" training which formed part of his own, but not his sister's, education, Elizabeth "in her private chamber betook herself to her Lute or Viol, and [wearied with that] to practice her needle." ... Elizabeth proudly displayed that education in her first extant letter, written in Italian to Katherine Parr in July 1544, The two had not seen one another for a year, Elizabeth being occupied with her studies and Katherine at court, where she was serving as regent while her ulcerous, lumbering husband was making his last stab at playing the chivalric hero on a vainglorious campaign in France ... She soon had her wish, being received by the king along with her sister Mary at Leeds Castle on his reeturn fromF rance, after which she returned to the schoolroom with Edward and began work on a project more ambitious than the Italian letter, a translation from the French of Le Miroir de l'ame pecheresse (The Mirror of the Sinful Soul) by Marguerite of Navarre, planned as a New Year's gift for Katherine. Twenty-seven pages of theological translation is an extraordinary achievement for an eleven-year-old, though the child Elizabeth is still visible in the obvious rush she made to complete her present, the spelling errors increasing as she hurried along. Elizabeth embroidered a beautiful cover for her work (which still exists), of silver thread on blue cloth, with "KP" in the center of four pansies. The charm of the presentation sits somewhat uneasily with the text itself, not least as it contains observations such as "Thou hast made separation of my bed and did put thy false lovers in my place and committed fornication with them." Elizabeth may have been a dab hand with a needle but there was never anything meek or ladylike about her mind. The pleasure and the terrors of the flesh were not then considered unsuitable material for princesses ... Elizabeth's translation of Marguerite of Navarre's work can be used as evidence of her own conversion to the reformed faith, which, for her, was always to be filtered through the pious prism of royal supremacy over the Church. During the Boulogne campaign in 1544, Elizabeth had been able to observe Katherine Parr in the role of regent, as a woman competently governing powerful men. It is also considered likely that she and Katherine were reading Le Mirori de l'ame pecheresse together. A letter from Katherine to Henry in which she explains her increasing adherence to the doctrine of justification by faith alone -one of the principal tenets of reformed religion- is linguistically and thematically similar to Marguerite of Navarre's work. Katherine's letter equates royal grace with divine grace -"I make like account with Your Majesty as I do with God." ... Like Katherine, Elizabeth would come to see the royal supremacy -the leadership of her father's Church- as a melding of sacred and worldly monarchy ... Elizabeth's next venture in translation was also a tribute to Katherine, a collection of the queen's own Prayers and Meditations into French, Latin, and Italian, this time as a gift to her father." Furthermore, in the first years of her reign, Queen Elizabeth I surrounded herself with some of the best learned women in England, the wives of his councilors, which included William Cecil's second wife, Mildred Cooke. During her last years she came to correspond regularly with Safiye Sultan who was one of the most powerful women in the Muslim world and had briefly reigned in her son's name when she had been his regent. At the time of England's alliance with the Muslim world, Mehmed was of age to rule on his own but he still relied on his councilors which included his mother. When Elizabeth I or her ambassador couldn't get through to him, she used his mother, knowing that she would put enough pressure on him to agree to her demands, or at the very least consider them. The two women expressed mutual admiration for each other. While Safiye wasn't queen regnant like her English counterpart, she still wielded a lot of power and like all the women in her life, Elizabeth I admired a woman as educated and highly accomplished as Safiye. Here is a letter of Safiye to Elizabeth I, thanking her for her gifts and praising her intellect: "I have received your letter...God-willing, I will take action in accordance with what you have written. Be of good heart in this respect. I constantly admonish my son, the Padishah, to act according to the treaty. I do not neglect to speak to him in this manner. God-willing, may you not suffer grief in this respect. May you too always be firm in friendship. God-willing, may [our friendship] never die. You have sent me a carriage and it has been delivered. I accept it with pleasure. And I have sent you a robe, a sash, two large gold-embroidered bath towels, three handkerchiefs, and a ruby and pearl tiara. May you excuse [the unworthiness of the gifts]." Elizabeth clearly benefited from her male tutors and the men who advocated for women's education, but she benefited from the women that came before and set the precedent for her to rule in her own right, and this includes (despite Elizabeth's strain relationship with her during her last years) her sister, Mary I of England. Source quoted: Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton Additional Sources: Henry VIII and his Court by Alison Weir Elizabeth: Forgotten Years by John Guy The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman The Sultan and the Queen by Jerry Brotton

#Tudor History #Elizabeth I of England

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lifeofresulullah · 5 years ago

Text

The Life of The Prophet Muhammad: Before His Birth, His Birth and His Childhood

The Prophet is Under the Care of Abdulmuttalib, his Grandfather

When our Holy Prophet (PBUH) lost his mother at the age of six, his elderly grandfather took him under his care.

When Ramadan entered, he would retreat to the cave of Hira and would be preoccupied with worshipping; he was the first to have started this practice.

At the same time, this elderly grandfather knew what loving a child and grandchild was like. It was a great pleasure to love a grandchild as sweet and immaculate as the Master of the Universe (PBUH).

At that age, the Prophet was like a sincere friend of his old grandfather, a sympathetic ear and a trustable consultant. However, he always acted respectfully toward his grandfather.

Only he was allowed to sit on the seat of his grandfather!

“Release my son. By Allah, in the future, his reputation and glory are going to be great”.

When the Prophet was a bit late!

What did the Yemeni ruler, Saif bin dhi Yazan, say to Abdulmuttalib

Abdulmuttalib, who loved our Holy Prophet (PBUH) wholeheartedly, was away from him for a short period of time only once during his life.

A committee representing Mecca that was headed by Abdulmuttalib was supposed to go to Gundam. For this reason, by leaving Mecca, Abdulmuttalib was going to be far away from our Holy Prophet (PBUH).

“We are the people of this nation that Allah has made inviolable. We are the ministrants of the Baytullah (the Kaaba)”.

This statement grabbed the monarch’s attention, therefore he asked, “Oh smooth-spoken person, who are you?”

Abdulmuttalib answered, “I am Hashim’s son, Abdulmuttalib”.

Saif was interested in more. He said joyfully and excitedly, “So, you are my sister’s son”.

Abdulmuttalib said, “Yes.”

Saif did not settle on those complimentary words. He proved that what he was sincere by entertaining Abdulmuttalib as a guest in his palace for a month.

The days in the palace were always spent by conversing. Saif had learned about the attributes of the forthcoming Prophet from the Holy Books and was finding some clues from his conversations. One day, he discreetly called Abdulmuttalib during a break so that no one would notice. He wanted to speak to him. When Abdulmuttalib arrived next to him, he said, “Oh Abdulmuttalib, “I am going to entrust a secret to you and I believe that this secret is related to you. We have been hiding this very great and important news that I have found in a book”.

Abdulmuttalib asked, “What is it?”

Abdulmuttalib was overcome with curiosity and excitement and wanted the Ruler to further explain and to further open this secret. He said, “Oh, Emperor! May your life be long, your reign continuous, and your glory is great. Could you further describe this child?”

This time, it was the Emperor’s turn to be curious and puzzled. He asked, “Oh Abdulmuttalib! Did you sense anything from what I have told you?”

Both the Emperor and Abdulmuttalib were relieved for having solved a great impasse.

Saif bin Dhiyazan was heralding our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) advent as a Prophet.

However, in less than one year after this conversation, Saif bin Dhiyazan passed away without being able to receive any further news from the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) grandfather.

When Abdulmuttalib arrived in Mecca after a month of separation, he hugged his radiant grandson with longing and tried to rid his pain of separation with the sweetness of having been reunited.

The Prophet, a means of “Mercy”

Our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) was still under his grandfather, Abdulmuttalib’s care.

Mecca and its surroundings were suffering from terrible hardship and famine due to the drought.

Abdulmuttalib, who understood his grandson’s degree of importance, took him and his son, Abu Talib, to the Abu Qubays Mountain. The Qurayshis were coming right behind them.

Abdulmuttalib turned his face towards the Kaaba and lifted our Holy Prophet (PBUH) towards the sky three times and begged, “My Lord! Gladden us by sending rain for the sake of this child”.

The supplication that was done out of respect for the Master of the Universe (PBUH) was accepted. Raindrops instantly mixed with the people’s and the gentry’s teardrops of happiness.

DEATH OF ABDULMUTTALIB