#I self critique my journal style. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

i-have-dots-in-my-brain · 1 year ago

Text

ayup mates, its me (that one fucking guy that shows up in your fever dreams to offer you garlic bread then fucks off into the void) (i think you need to get a therapist btw)

Call me dots or dot (not correct but when saying something belongs to me you use "dot's". idk why don't ask me)

My cara page (for art): https://cara.app/ihavedotsinmybrain

They/them she/her it/its ( welcome to the mad lab we do experiments with the funny goofy hjinks with the genders here)

TAG GUIDE : my art (self explanatory), dot's thoughts (mad ramblings) (extra note, there are two versions of dot's thoughts, the other one is with the phone version of ' so you can go look for that if you wanna see me posting from outside the comfort of my room and computer), dot’s travel journal (me on holiday), my persona (obviously just my persona) *prone to updates

dumbass who likes to draw ocs and shit. (posts like there is no tomorrow but also like i have all the time in the world) (oc x canon stuff also) (some fanart ig)

if you wanna find my (mostly serious) art, check out @dots-in-my-head (send me asks and dms on this blog) also i have started putting fandom stuff there too so if you want to get my fandom doodles you can look to there as well

still questioning sexuality but currently aro/ace? (idk i'm not in a rush lol) (i WILL dabble in the arts of questioning me sexuality on internet if you got problems with that shoo)

my loveley husband (@octoxxt, pls ignore this blog dude its embarrassing)

why do you need to know my age, ‘you a cop?

will not draw smut or NSFW bcs i will start howling with racous laughter and melt. (i don;t even read smut in fic dude what do expect me to be able to draw im a cartoonish obviously anime style inspired semi-realism but not really shitty doodle artist you put your hopes too high if you think i can draw a dick without making it look like a piece of middle school desk graffiti)

i've got a bit of a dirty mouth but everything is pretty vanilla . (i make edgy dumb jokes sometimes, but it's not my actual personality peace 'n love on planet earth okay) (any time i say i wanna kms IT IS A JOKE) (most of my posts are /srs i will mark it if its a joke i know the pain of not knowing if it was a funny joke or not i gotchu other autistic peeps)

please talk to me god i am lonely (i am serious about this i love it when people rb and scream in the tags it genuinely makes my day) (send me asks send measkssendmeaskssendmeasks—)

Absolute art machine(whether the art is good or not is a big question that i am not ready to answer) makes shitty animations sometimes idk.

Uses lol too much. Chinese, knows mandarin (translate the random messages for maximum brain damage) i don't know simplified but i do know traditional (please talk to me i need to practice my chinese reading skills) am i a furry? idk but if you're mad about it you can fuck right off (i have a couple ocs and my darling fursona)

am currently inbetween fandoms, fandoms i am (kind of) active in are hetalia, scp, dnd, genshin, pjo, bg3, apothecary diaries, jrwi riptide and csm (list is prone to updating because fandom is my support system) (you wont see my art for most of them but the brainworms are there and sometimes i let them take over)

old fandoms or the fandoms i lurk in (i visit them often): eddsworld, demon slayer, pokemon, vocaloid and wof. (also prone to updates as i remember stuff)

note : i am still in school and have a life outside the internet so stuff will be delayed (which is why i am only kind of active) (i go missing sometimes i am not dead life is just lifing for me)

Do not say anything about how cringe I am I know trust me (it’s a coping mechanism lol)

if you're concerned, you're very right to be. I am very incoherent (most of my life updates have actually devolved into cries for help, please talk to me)

also if you don't like my art or ships just leave(any critique about anything i make shoots a bazooka straight into my heart and behind the screen i crumble into a cartoonish pile of ashes and bones as i stare at the screen blurred by tears) (unless I ask for critique then i brought this on myself and i’ll walk it off don't worry)

(Both of my personas)

My flags (might be updated)

#art #oc #intro #artist intro #introduction #intro post #blog intro #artists on tumblr

63 notes · View notes

surrealisticduvet · 3 months ago

Text

Album Review: Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash (1973)

I’d like to start this review with another excerpt from liner notes - please indulge me. It will become relevant in a few paragraphs.

“Mine has been built on logic, which is probably one of the subtlest traps going... that whole 2+2 trip... the logical development that leads to fear of anything outside itself... ... Music was always the gum in those works... All that thinking went to hell when the music came. I'd be sitting around, immersed in this bubble-bath serenity of having figured something out... put right into its nice little orderly spot, and then - WHAMO - I've got to deal with music... no reason... no basis other than just its purest expression…”

Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash (the one where he’s doing the George Harrison wink on the cover, next to the words “Buy This Record / Compact Disc”) was the last album for Michael’s RCA contract, and it did about as well as the first five did (guess the subliminal messaging didn't work...) What makes this record stand out from the others is that it was recorded with a group of artists from his own Countryside label - which was somewhat by chance in terms of the timing - as opposed to with a dedicated band, or in a duo.

(pretty much your standard rambly review... below the cut!)

Favorite parts of the album:

I think recording with the Countryside group was a great call and very fortunate - the musicality of this record is really iconic, and if you weren’t familiar with the track listing, you could still instantly pick out these songs as parts of the Ranch Stash sound. It’s made up of a rather simple but effective steely guitar strum, in uncomplicated keys, and it suits the songs on this record perfectly. This is not his most technically complicated, his most ambitious, or his most poetic album – but it does have a fantastic, self-sufficient sound, and if I wanted to put on something of his to listen to casually without having to worry about lyrics or themes, I might reach for this one. Another quote from the liner notes:

“The music was just the music. Not really earthshattering, mind- blowing, brilliant... none of that. Just music. This whole album was one of those conversations me and the music had. Don't get fooled by the lyrics... Lyrics aren't really the communicative part... Lyrics are just the logical part for people who are into that…”

The lyrics on this album are good, albeit a little simple at times. There’s nothing really experimental here, except for “The Back Porch and a Fruit Jar Full of Iced Tea” and the words (a medley of a poem and a song written by someone else) are not what makes it a fantastic song – it is the music and presentation.

Other hits from the record (well, to me – not to the charts) include “Some of Shelly’s Blues," a well-deserved staple for live performances, and “Prairie Lullaby,” where he sweetly yodels a loved one to sleep. There’s an alternate version of “Marie’s Theme” on the extended release as well, which is pretty good if you’re not up for the cinematically trailing original edition on The Prison. “Born to Love You” is perennial, albeit simple, and “Winonah” is apparently hailed by critics as one of his most true-to-form country-style songs, although it’s rather low on my own personal favorites list.

Critiques:

Only three and a half of the seven songs were written by Michael (he co-wrote “Winonah”), although I suppose at exactly 50% that’s not bad, but it feels less substantial than usual. His line about the lyrics being set by the wayside for this one does kind of ring true.

Conclusion:

Can I first of all just say, it is amazing that his records so far are so highly rated – rateyourmusic is certainly NOT the end-all-be-all of music journalism, and the ratings are highly subjective (but it's where I'm at, lol) -- but for a secondary-career solo artist’s first six albums to average at over 3.5/5 stars is very impressive, in my opinion. I really can’t say enough how good and inspired I think his music is. That being said-

With Ranch Stash, I think he was really nearing a point where he needed to try something new and invigorating, and he certainly achieved that (spoiler) on his next record-slash-project. He was branching out into many directions, struggling with some personal things, and not doing great financially – I don’t want to say that this album suffered because of any of this, but it makes sense why it didn’t try to be more ambitious. It “kept it simple, stupid” in a very modest and effective way, and it’s still great to listen to. In fact I’m very glad that he had a set of studio musicians who could support him in this way, which is something he always longed for. He seemed self-aware of these external influences and, once again with those liner notes, sort of sums up the philosophy behind the album with this:

“And if I come to a fork in the road, I don't panic anymore, I just assume that one is the road and the other is a road off to the side.”

#michael nesmith #pretty much your standard ranch stash #mike nesmith #album reviews

6 notes · View notes

violet-moonstone · 8 months ago

Text

Help me choose an opening

I'm trying to decide how I want to begin a httyd fic

i posted one version of the opening here

and the other version (rough draft) will be below the cut. the version on this post will lead into a scene pretty similar to how the other one starts. I couldn't tell if I wanted it to begin with an action scene like the movies or a more domestic scene

I feel like the one i posted before is more fun and dynamic and sets up the kids as characters well, but this one establishes hiccup and astrids relationship more - and again i am planning to connect the nuffink and zephyr scene to hiccup and astrid's...i just dont know if it's as engaging that way.

This is Berk, a cold, rocky island surrounded by sea stacks and crashing waves, full of cliffs and towering evergreens through which the wind howls eerily at night and sings in the early hours of the dawn. Our island is dotted with wooden houses and mead halls, earthen huts and stone arenas, farms with turnips and cabbage, yak and sheep. Among these structures live our people: proud, strong Vikings in wool and leather, armed with iron and steel and of course…dragons.

On an average day in Berk, you can see Terrible Terrors delivering mail, Gronckles and Hotburples in forges, Changewings playing hide and seek with local children, Timberjacks ferrying people and goods to and from nearby islands. Our isle is home to all sorts.

Here, You will find an image of Vikings and dragons living in harmony, living and growing in a connection that has lasted for 20 years and will last many more. We defend each other, loyal to the end, integral part of each others’ lives. But the peace between the Vikings of Berk and dragons is not universal. Every so often, we face a new foe, whether it be dragon hunters, poachers, or even those who want to train dragons for nefarious means. They claw at the edges of Berk’s influence of our allies and the settlements we’ve built to house the many who flock to Berk, who see it as a beacon of light in the darkness.

These conflicts leave many in need of a place to go, and so our borders extend past Berk, to the islands around us, to new ones we’ve had to find. It has not been easy to keep everyone safe, to ensure fair treatment of humans and dragons alike in a community extending so far, but we must, for the alternative to extending our light is allowing the darkness to devour us all.

And what bearer of light is more formidable than a dragon?

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III rubbed his eyes, surprised by the pale light shining through the slats of his study’s window. He hadn’t even noticed when his candle had burnt out.

When did the sun rise?

“Really, This is Berk? Again?”

The chieftain jumped at the sound of a voice over his shoulder, then relaxed when he heard his wife’s laugh. He’d been so wrapped up in writing that he hadn’t heard her come into his study. He sat at his table, hunched over a large tome, his shoulders covered by a blanket and his hands dusted with charcoal.

It took a moment for him to realize that she had been teasing him. At last, he gave a lopsided grin. “What, too much?”

Astrid shrugged. “Eh, it’s a bit self-indulgent.”

“Self-indulgent?”

His wife held up her hands in surrender. “I’m just saying!”

“Where-where exactly are these critiques coming from, anyhow?” Hiccup asked. His lips twisted as he tried to maintain an impression of offense. “You’ve never had a discerning eye for my writing style before.”

Astrid sighed and shook her head. “Hiccup—”

“And you wound me like this now?” He threw his head back dramatically only to be met with kisses to his forehead.

His wife’s upside-down face met him with a begrudgingly affectionate expression. “Muttonhead,” she muttered.

“Anyway,” Hiccup continued, returning to his latest entry, “I’m sure the readers will love it.”

Astrid scoffed. “What readers? The only people who read those things are you and Fishlegs—and only as references for writing more journals.”

“Well, no one’s in a rush to read them just yet,” Hiccup admitted, “but there’s value in recording the events of our lives in writing. It’ll make it easier for future generations to look back on what we’ve done and aspire to continue Berk’s accomplishments.”

“Okay, okay,” Astrid said. “I can’t argue with that starry-eyed look so early in the morning.” She kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “Alright, let’s get going. We have a lot to do today.”

Hiccup pushed himself to his feet and felt nearly every joint in his body pop and crack in protest.

“Agghhh,” He groaned, making the distinctive noise of a father rising from a sitting position. His legs cramped. Hiccup wobbled and then lurched, nearly knocking over one of Toothless’ many prosthetic tail prototypes that rested on a nearby table. He reached out for Astrid’s support and was met with the sturdy aid of thick, strong arms.

With age, Astrid had gained more muscle and fat, while Hiccup grew thinner, even gaunt. Though his beard somewhat hid the hollowness of his cheeks. The one thing both the Haddocks had in common was an abundance of freckles and scars. Hiccup felt that Astrid grew more and more beautiful with each day. He loved her smile lines and the newly-arrived wisps of gray hair interspersed with the blonde. He smiled, heart warmed as he reflected on his wife’s beauty. And so naturally, he was nonplussed to hear her next words.

“Gods, you look awful.”

“Ah, just what every man wants to hear from his wife.”

“I mean you look tired. How late did you stay up? And how early did you get up to write?”

“Uhh...” Hiccup scratched the back of his head. He mumbled something about meaning to go to bed eventually and how he only meant to write half a page more, but how half a page always turned into a full page and then another, and how the words kept coming, and how by the time he’d looked up, the sun had risen. All in all, he’d probably gotten an hour or two of rest when he’d dozed off partway through the night.

Astrid’s eyes widened. Their startling blue colour almost looked like lightning. “Hiccup...”

Hiccup winced. “I know, I know!”

“How are you supposed to get anything done running on no sleep?”

“I mean...It’s not no sleep...”

Astrid crossed her arms. “Hiccup, I’m serious! You have to stop doing this. Especially with The Thing coming up.”

Hiccup sighed. “Oh, right. The Thing. Can’t wait.” In a way, he really couldn’t wait. He wanted to see all his friends and allies from different islands, of course—but the honour of hosting the gathering of chieftains also came along with a great deal of pressure and tedium—even more so than he’d grown to expect as chief of Berk.

“Come on, muttonhead,” Astrid said. She patted his face gently. “Let’s get going.”

Hiccup nodded glumly and went through the motions of preparing for the day. He combed his hair, changed his clothes, and put on a woolen cloak, as the autumn wind had been picking up recently. Astrid was already dressed in a tunic, short apron dress, leggings, and cloak. She wore her axe by her side along with a knife at her belt. The brooches and beads of her apron dress weren’t quite as ornate as a woman of her position was expected to wear, and her attire was shorter and more modestly embroidered than was considered fitting a chieftainess of an increasingly powerful tribe. Though what she lacked in theatrics, she more than made up for in presence. No one they met ever questioned that she as Astrid, Warrior of Berk.

Hiccup on the other hand, never felt quite as grand as his reputation. Not only did he prefer to dress simply whenever possible, but he knew he didn’t physically looklike the great dragon trainer people often imagined him to be. As a child, he’d alway supposed that one day he’d grow, tall, burly, and broad-shouldered like his father Stoick had been. The gods may have given Hiccup height, but after five and thirty years, it seemed like the rest was not to be.

In the kitchen, Hiccup make some mint tea and porridge while Astrid went upstairs to wake the children. From below, Hiccup heard Astrid’s quickened steps followed by cursing. When she returned down the stairs, she wore an expression of confusion with anger just beneath the surface.

Oh no, Hiccup thought, already anticipating trouble. Please, not today. Oh, Odin at least let it be on a day when I’ve gotten some sleep.

“The Twins didn’t start training early this morning, did they?”

Hiccup sighed. “Not that I know of.”

“And Eret and Gobber didn’t call Nuffink to the forge before the usual time?”

“No? Are they...?” Hiccup winced, afraid to ask.

“Not in their rooms? Nope.” Astrid checked the fastenings of her clothes. She looked ready to head out.

“Well, hey honey, you don’t know if it’s cause for worry yet. They might just have gotten up early for some fresh air.”

Astrid gave him a look. “You know what our kids are like. Unsupervised fresh air means chaos.”

Hiccup cast a mournful look at the nearly-cooked porridge as his stomach let out a vicious growl.

“It’s fine,” Astrid said. “You finish breakfast, I’ll just go make sure nothing’s broken or on fire or exploded, or—”

Hiccup and Astrid froze as a wild shriek pierced the air, followed by the sound crashing and a dragon’s roar.

“Or all of the above,” Astrid finished, before heading for the door.

Hiccup took a hasty sip of porridge that burned his tongue before shoving a chunk of leftover bread into his satchel and throwing the bag over his shoulder. That would have to do for breakfast for now.

#httyd fanfiction #httyd #thw rewrite #httyd 3 rewrite #wings of war

5 notes · View notes

kammartinez · 1 year ago

Text

By E. Tammy Kim

Last fall, when I was living in South Korea, a woman in Seoul was killed by her stalker, a co-worker, in the bathroom of a subway station. A friend and I went to see an informal memorial dedicated to the victim. We read piles of notes left by strangers: “Stop femicide.” “Your death is my death.” “The government, the courts, our culture of discrimination are guilty of murder.” The scene of the crime and the shape of the commemoration recalled another murder, from 2016, which had sparked Korea’s version of the #MeToo movement. Whatever remained of that feminist upsurge now felt eclipsed by widespread backlash; in 2022, a new President had been elected on a platform of unreserved misogyny. I went from the memorial to a bookstore and bought Kim Hyesoon’s most recent poetry collection, “After Earth Dies, Who Will Moon Orbit?,” which was inspired by her mother’s passing. “Mom, don’t read this book. It’s all sand,” the dedication says. The poems include bloody dramas, familial and cosmic, set in the space of the kitchen. It felt appropriate to read Kim in that moment, not as a manual for processing grief but as an extended fantasia of feminine rage.

Kim is sixty-seven years old and going on her fifth decade as a poet in the public eye. She has published more than a dozen books—of poetry and of unclassifiable texts, with titles such as “I Do Woman Animal Asia”—and won every major literary award in South Korea. Since her début, in 1979, in Literature & Intellect, a journal founded during the country’s authoritarian period, she has been at the frothy crest of many artistic and political waves. In her first career, as an editor under the dictator Park Chung-hee, she had to tell a Marxist economist, on his deathbed, that his book had not survived the censors’ redactions and would not be published. (She later wrote, “Behind his thin, wrinkly glasses, his tears flowed down to his ears.”) In the mid-eighties, she joined Another Culture, a pioneering feminist group that convened educational camps for kids, critiqued patriarchal norms in books such as “Equal Parents, Free Children,” and translated women from other countries, including the Indonesian poet Sugiarti Siswadi. “We were finding a Korean language for feminism,” Kim told me. In her second career, as a professor at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, she helped revive an interest in shamanism and other gynocentric folk traditions. Once, she followed an anthropologist friend to Mt. Halla, on Jeju Island, to commemorate a shaman’s death in a days-long kut ritual of singing and ecstatic dancing.

Poetry in Korea has been a vaunted form—and traditionally left to men. Kim broke away from the masculine styles that came before her, which tended to be either self-consciously political or “pure” and detached from the world. She smashed words together and savagely enjambed her lines. She ripped apart syllable blocks and turned the letters of Hangul into raw material for typographic play: “Mrsdustingarmselephantgod. Salivadropexplodeslikefreongas. / . . . Do you know all the dearest gods that are hanging onto our limbs?” She wrote about women’s bodies, in all their guts and gore. “Women poets start out writing like men,” Kim told me. “Feminism isn’t something you’re born believing. Feminism is going through life and changing yourself.” In “To Write as a Woman: Lover, Patient, Poet, and You,” a book of essays, Kim connects the experience of the woman poet to Princess Bari, a Korean folk heroine who remains loyal to her parents even after they’ve abandoned her. To be lost or left behind, or to disappear, is at the core of being a female artist, Kim argues. In Korea, the book became something like Hélène Cixous’s “The Laugh of the Medusa” or a less practical version of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own.” It was reissued last year, on its twentieth anniversary, and is being translated into English.

Kim has pursued a vernacular that’s intensely Korean yet open to the world. She reads widely in translation, and hosts obscure Catholic nuns, the Tibetan sages, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, and Agnès Varda in the back of her head. About fifteen years ago, when her own work began to be translated, she attracted a following across North America and Europe. She grew especially close to her English translator, the MacArthur-award-winning poet Don Mee Choi. In 2019, the English version of Kim’s “Autobiography of Death” won the international Griffin Poetry Prize. The book is structured as a forty-nine-day Buddhist mourning ceremony for hundreds of teen-agers who drowned when a Korean ferry capsized five years earlier: “perhaps a doll, perhaps a human, perhaps you, perhaps me,” she writes on day forty-four. Kim’s latest translated work, “Phantom Pain Wings,” came out in May. These two volumes are the first and second of what Kim calls her “death trilogy.” (The book I bought in Seoul, “After Earth Dies, Who Will Moon Orbit?,” is the final installment.) “I don’t think I’ve ever comforted anyone with my writing,” Kim notes in an afterword to “Phantom Pain Wings.” “Perhaps literature crosses into a zone where consolation can’t intervene.”

What zone does Kim occupy? She has modelled an approach to language, and the writing life, for dozens of poets and other artists in Korea and in the diaspora. In 2019, her writing on Princess Bari inspired “Community of Parting,” a video installation by Jane Jin Kaisen, a Danish Korean adoptee who represented the Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale. (A suite of poems titled “Community of Parting” is the centerpiece of “Phantom Pain Wings.”) A former student of Kim’s, Yoo Heekyoung, runs a poetry bookshop called Wit N Cynical, in Seoul’s Hyehwa district, which became a center of the #MeToo protests. When that movement got started, Yoo told a reporter that Kim’s “Autobiography of Death” was a top seller.

Since retiring from her job as a professor, in early 2021, Kim has kept mostly to her apartment, in Seoul’s Daehakro neighborhood, beset by undiagnosed nerve pain—which she interprets as a chronic female ailment—and insomnia. At night, she goes between her bedroom and her study, lying down and failing to sleep. She reads old novels all the way through (recently, she was back on Clarice Lispector, a favorite) and new fiction until it bores her (“It isn’t very good”). She watches competitive-singing shows on television, answers e-mails from three continents, and drafts stanzas longhand.

Several times last year, I caught up with her in periods of good health. One afternoon, she intercepted me at a subway stop near her home. She lives with her husband, the avant-garde playwright Lee Kang-baek, and their daughter, Fi Jae Lee, whose raucous line drawings and sculptures adorn many of Kim’s books. Kim was unmistakable, even in a face mask: jet-black, bowl-cut hair, architectural glasses, scarf, billowy pants, and platform sneakers. We were repeat patrons of Gupo Noodle, an old-fashioned restaurant that specializes in batter-fried squid and rice noodles in anchovy broth. We ordered makgeolli rice wine, which she barely touched and I ended up drinking alone. Kim speaks at an unhurried pace, and in a soft rasp. She told a tragicomic story about travelling with an incurable melancholic, a Debbie Downer-type who saw only pebbles, never pearls. Laughing and eating with Kim, I felt an alien-like attentiveness to my own body. I considered the peristalsis working noodles down my throat and the purple-blue blood racing back to my heart. “My bones are hollow like a flute / so every one of them can sing and whistle.” “The achy root has spread between the intestines like lightning.” I suspected that she noticed all this somatic activity in herself and, possibly, in me.

For Kim, poetry is “dancing,” “being a nameless animal,” “crossing the river of the grotesque,” “making a revolution in the realm of language,” and “a verb.” She has long concerned herself with animals, human and nonhuman. The collection “Poor Love Machine” is filled with rats and felines. “Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream” contains a gray bear, fire ants, roe deer, an ostrich, a rabbit, and a duck. Her pig poems are among her most famous, and controversial:

This poem, “I’m OK, I’m Pig!” appeared in her 2016 collection, “Bloom, Pig!” The following year, the book won the 5.18 Literature Award, named after the Gwangju uprising of May, 1980, when South Korean soldiers, commanded by President Chun Doo-hwan and backed by the U.S., killed democracy activists. On Facebook, male critics slammed Kim as undeserving of the honor: her use of “surrealism” and visceral animal metaphors were an insult to the democracy movement, they said. It seemed like a clear case of jealousy, or gendered territoriality—but Kim was forced to turn down the prize and a much-needed cash award. Her brute-force poetry—what one critic called “the female grotesque”—was at once career-making and costly. To my ears, in English, it recalls the work of Lyn Hejinian (“The baby is scrubbed everywhere, he is an apple.”) and Dawn Lundy Martin (“Awareness of being in a female body is a tinge of regret.”).

Kim’s new translated work, “Phantom Pain Wings,” is heavy with birds and verbs. “It’s an I-do-bird sequence,” Kim writes. As the second book in her death trilogy, it responds to the loss of her father and the traumas of his generation: colonization, war, and economic development at all costs. “Daddy, in the room where you died / I become bird,” she writes. The address sounds tame in English; in the hierarchical ordering of Korean, it’s a crass impossibility. “In Korea, you can’t call your father ‘you’ or ‘other,’ but, in this book, I call my father ‘daddy’ and ‘you,’ ” she told me. “It’s my way of bringing myself and other women to an equal level with the father as an institution, mechanism, and authority.” Kim envisions this rebellion as a bird flapping its wings in flight.

Translation has a peculiar capacity to reframe an artist’s œuvre: an old work becomes new in another language and time. “Phantom Pain Wings” was published in Korea, in 2019; its English version took shape during the pandemic. I visited Kim’s translator, Choi, in 2021, at her home in north Seattle. Her desk was taken up by a large computer monitor (for working in two languages, side by side) and thick Korean and English dictionaries. I pictured her sitting there, bird-watching through the window, as she mastered Kim’s ornithology. Choi kept a diary, which serves as a translator’s note at the back of the finished book:

Choi told me, “Not only was this book difficult to translate but I felt a great deal of grief myself while translating. It’s not only about her father. In that long poem, ‘Community of Parting,’ she’s also addressing the source of her sorrow, and it goes all the way back to the Korean War.” A twentieth-century war, a twenty-first-century pandemic—overlapping eras of mass death. There’s also a poem eerily relevant to post-Roe America called “Abortion Boat.” It features Varda’s film “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” from 1977, about two friends in France who must travel abroad—one to Switzerland, and one to Amsterdam—to get abortions. The speaker of the poem is in, or next to, a tunnel—the Dutch canals, the birth canal, and the tubular branches of a tree:

As I run, the tunnel runs beside me like a dog The tunnel cries and follows me, becoming very long The woman who just had an abortion but still has a baby runs When she exits the tunnel, her baby comes out but when she enters the tunnel her baby sticks to her again

Kim has described her process with Choi as one of exchange. “I don’t edit her translations,” Kim told me. “I answer her questions. Translating poetry is the hardest thing in the world.” For “Phantom Pain Wings,” Choi asked more than usual about subjects and objects. The syntax of Hangul leaves much unsaid: subjects are implied; pronouns are rare. (Verbs, though, especially in Kim, are abundant.) Choi’s inferences weren’t enough. Who was doing the thing, and to whom was the thing being done?

Kim did not always have an answer to Choi’s probing questions. She had to think, and decide, before writing back. The English version became more than an update of the Korean original: it was its own, new thing.

Kim’s responses sometimes created new problems. How to lasso multiple perspectives, and subjectivities, into a single term? In Korean, she could get away with ambiguity, but, in English, the doer had to be named. For a couple of poems, Choi told me, the fix was an equation. In “Girl, Your Body Has So Many Holes for Straws,” the subject is “I + bird + music”; its actions include speaking, vomiting, and lying “prostrate like a corpse, hiding at the bottom of a lake.” In “Straitjacket,” parentheses achieve the same clarification. “Why does apple (I) need to apologize to apple (you)? / Apple (you) and apple (I) are apologies (for what)?” These markings echo the playful, mathematical vocabulary of the Korean modernist poet Yi Sang, also known as Kim Haekyeong, whom Kim adores and pays tribute to in the book. One poem is titled “Again, I Need to Ask Poor Yi Sang.” In another, Yi’s pathbreaking “Crow’s Eye View” becomes “Crow’s Eye View 31”:

13 birds keep flying up till they can’t be seen from below . . . I want to keep writing ruthlessly about all 13 birds but that wouldn’t be polite, for they’ve been endlessly patient and it wouldn’t be polite to Kim Haekyeong either who wrote the same line— . . .

I don’t understand what these phrases specifically mean. (It’s reassuring that Kim occasionally had to mull her own intentions.) But they have an additive effect.

There is no thematic break or stylistic rupture in Kim’s poetry, despite the length of her career. The kitchen remains bloody and agonistic, demanding the preparation of yet another family meal. Knives and carcasses and dark orifices exist in otherworldly spaces. “Moon is shining like the lens of the patient’s eyeball / and I’m sitting on the white of his eye / examining his sadness,” she writes. Objects are extruded and sheathed. “A pair of fish-bone-shoes you can slip onto bare feet.” “Spiky sprouts burrow through your teary eyes.” Animals, real and mythological, fit inside one another, like turducken: “A rat / devours a sleeping white rabbit . . . . A rat devours a piglet that has fallen into a pot of porridge.” She captures the anger I detected in Seoul, which every woman has learned to gulp down. We are better off than we were when Kim started to write, no doubt. Yet we are still that rabbit, that punctured foot, that floating object compelled to reproduce.

One day, Kim and I rode a “village bus” (the rickety public equivalent of a hyper-local dollar van) up a steep incline to Gilsangsa, a Buddhist temple in Seoul. Gilsangsa is small and new and used to be a barbecue restaurant before coming to house an order of robed vegetarians. Kim and I walked the verdant grounds. We admired the low walls of ceramic tile and clay and circled a seven-tiered stone pagoda. Rain arrived, first in droplets, then in blocks, overwhelming our umbrellas. As we scampered downhill in muddy shoes, we were splashed by luxury S.U.V.s pulling up to gated houses. (The area has long been home to chaebol executives and retired authoritarians.) My Korean became more tentative in the din of the storm. “I like your accent and the mistakes you make. You sometimes use the wrong word,” she once told me. I was mortified, but convinced myself that it was actually a compliment—a poet taking pleasure in the jagged accidents of language.

We last hung out in late September, when she and Choi did a reading at the Seoul International Writers’ Festival. Kim spoke into a microphone as Choi’s translations were blown up on a pink-tinted screen behind her. The poet Kim Haengsook and several friends from the publishing world were there, as were Kim Hyesoon’s daughter and Choi’s husband. All but two of us were women. During Korea’s #MeToo movement, “there were so many accusations made and so many men who disappeared,” Kim had told me, that “when you open a literary magazine today, everyone’s a woman. Even the novelists.” This felt very true. The writers winning awards, getting buzz, and getting translated were mostly women, and often quite young—a second generation influenced by Kim. I thought of Lee Soho, whose raw début, “Catcalling,” was published in English, in 2021. I could imagine Kim dispensing the advice that appears in one of Lee’s poems: “You know I read a lot of debut collections these days. Listen, being a poet means going crazy. . . . Kill all your literary heroes and jump over our dead bodies. . . . hang on the edge of poetry. Then take another step forward from there.”

Our post-festival group walked to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. We sat at a row of tables along a linguistic gradient: the native Korean speakers on one end, then Kim’s daughter and Choi and me, then those who were English-only. We clinked tiny cups of sake and shared donburi bowls of silken eggs, braised meat, and seafood over rice. Kim was the doyenne of the festival, the mother of our feminine chatter. I remembered an old poem of hers, “The Story in Which I Appear as All the Characters 3.” The speaker of the poem is a forty-year-old woman, a child not yet born, and an old woman—all of them Kim. The poem ends:

We are stacked like three spoons On top of a pillow we turn our faces together The forty-year-old-me in the middle grinds her teeth saying, I’m scared I’m scared

#poetry #writing #kim hyesoon

1 note · View note

darinnabilah · 2 months ago

Text

Week 14 - Journal

Question 2

My artistic vision centers on exploring self-identity, using digital art and photography to create pieces that evoke femininity and sensitivity. However, art is also a powerful medium that transcends boundaries and speaks to human experience. It invites us to explore complex emotions, challenge norms and reflect on our shared humanity. Through creativity, we can communicate ideas and feelings that words alone cannot express, fostering understanding and connection among diverse audiences. In a world often divided, art has a unique ability to unite us, inspire change and spark dialogue.

An artistic vision inspiration that I love is the artist named Banksy. His vision focuses on social political commentary. His street art combines humor and irony to critique consumerism, war and authority. Works like "Girl with Balloon" highlight the tension between hope and despair, provoking thought about societal issues in a way that is accessible to the public. One key takeaway from Banksy's work is the importance of embracing our unique artistic styles to engage audiences on multiple levels. His approach demonstrates that we can use artistic expression to explore and explain controversial topics, encouraging open dialogue and deeper understanding. By inviting viewers to reflect on complex themes through relatable visuals, Banksy fosters a space for conversation that transcends traditional boundaries of art. This ability to connect with diverse audiences amplifies the impact of his messages, making them resonate on a personal level.

In week 5, we visited the National Gallery Singapore to explore the diverse range of artworks on display. I was particularly intrigued by the variety of mediums by artists. It was fascinating to see how each each piece reflected the personal ideas and experiences of its creators. This observation highlights the unique perspectives that each artist brings their work, making art a reflection of individual narratives and emotions. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the context behind each piece to fully appreciate its meaning and significance. This reminds me that every piece of art has a story behind it, and I want to explore and share my own narrative through art.

Personally, my favourite artworks from the museum are the oil paintings. i was captivated by how they did the paintings in ways that looks bright like the daytime. The use of this medium is striking and really draws you in, sparking curiousity about the techniques used to create such vibrant effects.

393 words/Used Chatgpt

0 notes

serndestsart · 1 year ago

Text

2024-01-07 Jenny holding leg in intense worry 😢

Art Timelapse

Thumbnail Timelapse

Art, plus a shadowed version & two thumbnails.(imo, I like the un-shadowed version better, but the shadowed one's starting to grow on me.🙂)

Based off a spur-of-the-moment thumbnail. In the middle of making it, I interpreted it as she’s not feeling “pain” per se (since she doesn’t have nerves); more like slight pressure that she’s cautious could burst.😔

*So sorry!🙇‍♀️Between getting ‘rona again & readjusting, I took a longer break than I intended. Guess this drawing of worry is kinda subconscious😳…Now that I've ruminated on it, it's okay🙂. This was a work-life balance lesson in managing forced breaks (like sickness).

MINI JOURNAL

This was another piece I was exhausted with. Another was the “Jenny slightly pulling back” one. While this “Jenny tending to leg” was over a week, it almost didn't feel any less concentrated with exhaustion.😔Anyways, in both cases, I didn't have too clear of an idea of what the final piece would look like (less so with this new one, as I knew I wanted to keep most of the lines red-orange & color Jenny aqua-green).

Social Media Strategy Tweak

Maybe next time, when in doubt, just keep it a sketch, with no colors or tones??? Tbh, I didnt go that route bc I didn’t want a piece that was too harsh on the eyes from being over a bright white background, but at least a softer white. …Now that I've written it out, it sounds like a dumb reason.😥

Or, was afraid that wasn’t finished enough for IG/social media? Maybe, especially since I wanted to have a red-orange pencil-sketch style in there. Maybe be a little more elaborate & have black cleaner ink lines & grey base tones (like your ‘quick traditionally-styled storyboard’ art style)?

Wait, I just remembered: could do sketches, but do that Natalie Nourigat “draw the pose 5 times” exercise.

The exception will be the Jenny Injured diptych (to still be colored but not further pushes gesture-wise (tbh, I again want to try to get done as quickly as possible)...plus, I'll just say, “something different.” 😉

Personal Preferences & Little Backburner

Imo, I like the shadow-less version. Jenny's legs contrast better with the background, and the colors are closer to what I ended up having in mind.

Yes, even the unconventional red-orange linework with cyan base colors😄. I’d actually been meaning to try that out on a piece; tbh, I just like red-orange/vermilion-colored pencil sketches.😊 I was doing another red-orange pencil, Krita sketch in October that I wanted to try that color scheme on, but the perspective needed retooling.😵‍💫

BTS

I actually had this, along with a thumbnail for a completely different piece, on the backburner. While I wanted to do the other one, I went with this more unclear-looking one. That way, I could finish it before I forgot what I had in mind.

After I was well into the finalized sketch, I found a 2nd, more pushed-gesture version of one of the thumbnails. That’s when I decided to try not to spend too much time on this piece; I wanted to re-do it with this pushed gesture.

Also, after a while of using one of my go-to Krita watercolor brushes from last time (WaterC Flat Decay TIlt), I got really mentally exhausted. Played around with doing the painting stage in Adobe Fresco, but despite Fresco’s watercolor brushes feeling far more comfortable, I wanted to keep this artwork quick. Therefore, I just continued the painting in Krita.

Oh, and instead of erasing the extra pencil lines, I covered most of them up with white.

Plus, that monitor profile changing fixed my colors after all!😊 I’ve gotten my solution written down somewhere. I’ll try to post it sometime.

SELF CRITIQUE

(-) Iffy depth on the navy-blue block of color

(-) Mouth kinda looks like she’s smiling???

(+) Good foreshortening on Jenny & the chair

(+) Great gesture/line-of-action into the hurt leg; decently faithful to thumbnail’s gesture. Improvement from that in “A Place of a Contemplating Robot”

Shadow-less version

(-) L hand [our POV] gets lost in the sticking-out leg

Shadow-ed version

(-) Sticking-out leg disappears into the ground

(-) L arm should have harder edges on the shadow

(+) L hand has hard-edged shadows

(-) Bent leg’s foot also has too soft of shadows

ART SUPPLIES

Hardware: Alienware x14, Huion Inspiroy H610PRO V2 pen tablet, & IMAGE Light Pad Stand A3

Software: Krita (art & timelapse), Autodesk Sketchbook (thumbnail & its timelapse)

Brushes:

(v 1.1) Krita Redux- Pencil (AFresco) - linework & white cover-ups. Less-aliased version of my custom brush

j) WaterC Flat Decay TIlt - hair, ”clothes”, belly button base colors, BG block, ground

(Dig.) Clean-Up Lines (Aliased) - Jenny white matte & chair base color

#fanart #mlaatr #artprocess #thumbnails #learningexperience #krita sketch #krita painting

1 note · View note

kamreadsandrecs · 1 year ago

Text

By E. Tammy Kim

I don’t understand what these phrases specifically mean. (It’s reassuring that Kim occasionally had to mull her own intentions.) But they have an additive effect.

We are stacked like three spoons On top of a pillow we turn our faces together The forty-year-old-me in the middle grinds her teeth saying, I’m scared I’m scared

#poetry #writing #kim hyesoon

0 notes

minefield-of-a-ninja · 3 years ago

Text

Summary: A hot tip turns into a hot night.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

Characters: William Butcher x unnamed female x Soldier Boy

Tags/warnings: explicit, mfm threesome, Dom/sub, rough sex, slapping, name calling, sex with murderous misogynists

Words: 1700

Author's notes: for @glassjacket and @brrose-apothecary Thanks for the read-through and green light, Bri. <3

Gonzo journalism is an energetic first-person participatory writing style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story using the first-person narrative, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire. The word gonzo is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article about the Kentucky Derby by Hunter S. Thompson, who popularized the style.

Three days ago, I received a tip that former British special forces member, CIA agent, and now, vigilante, William Butcher, traveled to Russia to obtain a secret weapon to take down the megalomaniac superhero Homelander. Within an hour, I was on a plane to JFK. Just as the A320 touched the ground, an explosion rocked Midtown, killing 19 people. My source wasted no time looping me in with video footage of the cause of the explosion.

...and I didn’t believe my eyes.

“Holy-” I breathed, weaving through the other passengers to quicken my steps toward ground transportation. I ordered an Uber then watched the footage on a loop until it arrived. As my driver pulled up, I received a text message from my source.

“Weapon’s not so much a what but a who, love.”

“So I see.”

“You here?”

“On my way to ground zero, got anything else for me?”

“Will have after tonight.”

“What’s tonight?”

“I’ll let you know when I do.”

He kept his word — called me mere moments after America’s first hero incinerated the woman he claimed to have once loved in a flash of radioactivity.

Now, these two hypermasculine assholes are half in the bag and toe-to-toe in the middle of a cheap ass motel room, arguing about who can make me come faster/harder/longer. How I got into this particular situation is simple; waiting for intel in a non-air-conditioned room, got bored, hair up, whiskey, poker, sweat, partial nudity.

What’re you gonna do?

“Show me, then, you limey cock. She’s right fucking there.” Soldier Boy motions to me before pausing his challenge to an x-rated duel long enough to drag his hot gaze across my damp, salty skin and down over my semi-clothed form. “Or do you need me to show you what a real man can do.”

Each of their gazes are dark in their own way. Butcher’s is nothing but devilish chaos backed by a dramatic, velvet curtain hiding the truth, and Soldier Boy’s is full of secrets, barely repressed rage, and hunger.

“She already knows I’m good fer it. Don’tcha, love?” Butcher smirks.

I draw a deep breath then casually shrug my shoulders. I happen to know from experience that Butcher is very good for it and judging by the non-V-generated power rolling off the superhero, I could be making this much harder on myself than I need to.

That said, I have an unfortunate weakness for big, shit-talking, beautiful men. It’s even better when they’re absolute pricks and no danger of taking them home to mama.

Butcher looks slightly crestfallen until I toss him a mock-pout and a wink. This is always what we do, anyway. We stay on the outside and keep our distance. Come to think of it, I probably have an equally dramatic curtain behind my own eyes. I suppose I should examine that sometime. After the mind-blowing fuck session I’m about to have.

The supe chuckles as he turns to saunter toward me. “We can take turns, give her a little score card,” he says, coming to a stop in front of me.

I’m sitting on the foot of the bed, leaning back on my elbows, legs crossed like I’m fucking demure. He smirks down at me with hard, dark eyes as he slides a hand between his legs to cup himself over the stiff material of his suit pants.

“You look a little mean,” I tell him, and his smirk spreads to a grin that doesn’t meet his eyes.

“You like that.” He licks his teeth before pulling his bottom lip between them. “Wet as a whore on payday sittin’ in this filthy motel room with me and him, huh.”

Butcher appears behind him, looming, his thin, damp beater clings to his skin in a pleasing way.

I suppose I should be concerned for my well-being, but mostly, I’m wet just like Soldier Boy said. So I let myself go until I’m on my back, uncross my legs and drop my bare feet to either side of his boots.

When Butcher moves from beyond him, Soldier Boy extends an arm to halt him. “Rules,” he grunts. “I’m in charge. Anything goes unless someone safewords. Crimson is the word.”

Butcher chuckles at that. “We’re not looking to be deep-fried in here if that name sets you off.”

“Fuck you. Get her panties off.” The supe crosses the room, removing his undershirt and boots.

Butcher kneels at my feet and lifts them to the mattress, so I follow his lead and cant my hips to give him access to my underwear. He looks up at me. “Y’sure ‘bout this?” he asks warily, as he drags the ruined cotton over my hips and knees, and I nod.

Butcher can actually be thoughtful on occasion. But we had an agreement.

“Safeword. Did you not hear that part?” Soldier Boy struts back to the bed, stroking his already hard cock.

“Jesus,” I breathe, and the fucker smirks again.

America’s first hero, for all his terribly deep and disturbing flaws, is easily the most gorgeous man I have ever seen naked. My mouth waters at the sight of his thick, heavy-looking cock, slipping through his meaty hand.

“USDA prime, sugar, and you got the best seat in the house.” He nudges Butcher out of the way much more gently than I would have expected. “So sit up and open your fucking mouth.”

Butcher peels his shirt off and shucks his pants to the floor before moving onto the bed as I obey the soldier’s uncompromising order. “She does like suckin’ cock, mouth like a fucken whirlpool.” Butcher settles behind me and brushes his lips across my exposed neck.

I swallow the drool in my mouth and reach for the beautiful bounty in front of me, and Soldier Boy shakes his head.

“Get her arms,” he tells Butcher, holding my eyes with his.

Butcher obliges, looping one forearm through my elbows behind my back and pressing me forward as his free hand works its way between my legs. “So wet already, love.”

“You know how long it’s been since I’ve had access to a warm, wet mouth?” The recently escaped man’s brow is furrowed, and his eyes lose their sharp focus as he slides his fingers into the twisted mess of a bun at the back of my head, angling my face the way he wants it. “And this mouth.”

He grips my chin with his other hand, and I let my jaw drop open. “This fucking mouth,” he mutters.

I close my eyes as his hot, salty cock slides over my tongue. He slides his hand from my chin to the other side of my head to mirror his other, holding me in place as he sets a rhythm.

“Good?” Butcher whispers, and I hum an affirmation. He’s sliding one long, thick finger around my clit so gently and thoroughly that I’m right at the edge of falling.

“Relax,” Soldier Boy grunts, swiping his thumbs over my hollowed cheeks. “I don’t need you choking out so soon.”

It’s hard to relax when I’ve got the fat cock of a superhero bumping against my uvula, and the thick knuckles of a thug slipping around my cunt. I’m hot and overstimulated and I’m about to come undone.

“‘Member that night in Chelsea? At your sister’s flat?” Butcher murmurs in my ear, sliding his slippery hand up under my tank top as he looks up at the other man. “Let’s get ‘er on ‘er back, mate.”

“Making it easy on her,” Soldier Boy scoffs as he pulls out of my mouth to spin and drag me to the side of the bed. He dips in for a punishing kiss with teeth and tongue before pushing me down to hang my head over the side of the bed. “She doesn’t get to come ‘til I do, and neither do you.”

Butcher nods with that edged grin as he slowly works his way between my thighs. “Well, ain’t that shite, sweetheart?” He settles his bare chest to the bed and shoves my legs open wide. “We got us a multiple-orgasmer ‘ere, wif little to no self-control.”

Soldier Boy chuckles as he straddles my face and reaches to tear my top in half.

“Fucker,” I swear at Butcher.

“Well, you better get some control quick because I don’t like to be disappointed.” He grips one of my breasts tight and mouths at the other, mumbling orders around my flesh. “Put me back in your mouth.”

I relax my throat and take a deep breath as I wrap one hand around his hard cock. My heart pounds in my chest and I moan, tasting him again. He’s so heavy and smooth. Did he get waxed between international imprisonment and mass murder?

Whatever.

He doesn’t waste a second working his way down my open throat. Butcher’s doing that thing he does with his tongue that makes me come every time within seconds. It takes me three deep inhales through my nose and concentrating on the feel of the gorgeous dick snaking my esophagus to realize that Butcher, a classic switch, wants to see how a man like Soldier Boy handles being defied.

Butcher also knows that I love being punished.

So I let go. I throw my arms wide and arch into Soldier Boy’s teeth and rough fingers on my nipples. I grind into Butcher’s face and feel his chuckle rumbling in my core.

Butcher grips my hips and bears down.

“You son of a bitch...” the supe breathes a lush sneer, his breath over my wet flesh making me shiver as his fucking into my throat makes me gag. “You want her to come, don’t you? Want the slut to get what she deserves?”

I cup his balls and push my face up into his groin, making him rasp and pin both my wrists to the bed. He takes one nipple between his plump lips again and tongues the tip as he slows his drive into my mouth and swirls his tongue around that nipple then the other.

“Hmm, changed my mind,” he says thoughtfully as he stands and pulls out of my mouth. “Let’s make her come. Over and over. Make her come ‘til she’s fucking unconscious.”

His grin is dark and cruel as he strokes himself with one hand and reaches for my already sensitive breasts with the other.

Butcher lifts his face from between my legs, his beard shiny with my slick, and grins wide as he hooks two fingers up inside me and drops a heavy hand over my mound. “Sounds like a deal, mate.”

Part II

More Soldier Boy and/or Butcher

IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU'VE READ, PLEASE REBLOG AND TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!

#butcher x reader x soldier boy #soldier boy x reader #butcher x reader #soldier boy smut #ButcherBoy smut

242 notes · View notes

1kook · 4 years ago

Text

Hi Everyone, please read

tw// racism

First of all, I just wanna say I’m so grateful for all the nice anons and interactions I get to have with people here everyday. I live in a densely populated city so quarantine regulations were super tough when this all started in March and remain strict even all the way into October. I haven’t been able to see my friends a lot or anyone outside of my family and job, which really sucked, but it was fine because I had my blog! The beginning of September I had two fics that did so amazing and of which I am so thankful for their response, because with that came a lot of new anon friends!

I have been on tumblr since 2012, but I have never received the same amount of interaction as I do now. I’m so happy I can interact with people on here be it anonymous or not. I enjoy hearing ideas and doing my best to fulfill them, hearing about someone’s day, and laughing about stupid jokes. It’s gotten to the point where some have picked names and further fleshed out our friendships because of how close we’ve gotten!! I have had so much fun everyday asking stupid questions and getting equally as silly answers and it’s all because I was able to make people feel comfortable on my blog.

However, people are not always nice. That’s fine! It’s the internet, this will always happen. Rarely do I get hateful anons and rarely do I post the few I do get. Sometimes they’re funny and I laugh and go about my day. Most anons have been about my style as an author, the types of fics I put out, and for the most part, the similarity in all my fics. I’ll address this now. if you feel my fics are all the same then consider this.

1. I write fics FOR MYSELF about ideas I have and want to see, and post them FOR MYSELF. I don’t mean to sound cocky but at the end of the day every fic i have ever posted is just me filling my own imagination in a self indulgent way. They’re all the same because they’re all things I like??? Things I want to read??? No offense, but unless I am filling a requests, you’re GONNA SEE jk college au. jk boyfriend. jk dom/sub. jk this and this. Why? Because it’s my blog and I post what I like.

2. If you don’t like my fics.... don’t read them? I am not holding you at gunpoint to read these fics nor is anyone else. If you appear on my blog to complain about my fics ... okay?? I’m not gonna change them lmao. You’re not the target audience, so move along.

But truthfully speaking, this is not the main reason I am making this post. Do I care what people online think about my fics? Mmm not really. Writing fics is something I do in my free time as a hobby. I’ve never wanted to do this professionally lmao. I do it for fun when I’m bored or procrastinating. I have other hobbies I do too. I journal i paint i play soccer I listen to music. I frankly am not offended when people critique my work, especially not when they chose to do it through an anonymous message.

What DOES offend me is when people abuse the anonymous option to be spiteful and hateful, and use my ethnic background against me... OVER KPOP. OVER FAN FIC ABOUT KPOP.

Am I offended about the first part of the ask? No I don’t care. What I am disgusted and disturbed by is that you have been blatantly racist and ignorant not only to ME but to ALL OTHER POCS with the second half of your message. Being a POC writing for BTS is bad?? What do you prefer I write about? Shawn Mendes? Niall Horan? I’d rather choke. What do you even mean??? Am I supposed to write Can fic for completely unproblematic people?? Give me an example?? Furthermore, I am not black so for you to come in here and disrespect black people with your last comment is immature, disgusting, and racist. Go to hell.

I deleted the message. I always delete excessively rude messages. I was hoping it was a one time occurrence but nope. A few hours later.

My status as an undocumented immigrant is something I have shared on tumblr because it is my safe space and somewhere where no one in real life knows me. Did you think this was funny? Did you think I actually laughed? I didn’t. I won’t lie. This ask terrified me. You’re threatening to call ICE on me.... OVER KPOP? OVER FAN FICS OF KPOP? How old are you. How immature do you have to be to take it this far.

I deleted this message and turned off anon. I am not gonna let some anonymous grey sunglasses orb abuse the anonymous option like this. Honestly, I knew another message was bound to follow up and it did 🤗

thanks for showing me your face, doll. I reported your account and so did a bunch of friends of mine. It’s funny that you mention writing better content but your blog is only ten posts? 9 of which are reblogs of fan fics? What do you write babe? What do you do? Where do you post? As I’ve said before I frankly don’t care for writing advice, this is just a hobby. But if you’re going to claim you’re some modern day Shakespeare maybe have the proof to back it up. Also your first posts says you’re a black woman, but your first ask to me says POC shouldn’t enjoy BTS.... honey all your posts are about BTS. So what’s the truth? Do we enjoy them or not? Next time you feel some type of way towards me as a Mexican woman, don’t start off by hiding behind anon until I force you off, don’t disrespect me or other POCs, and don’t use a burner account like you did. And for the record. I barely believe you’re black, and honestly speaking, everything about your asks have racist undertones only a white person could carry out.

Anyway. I am posting this because I want to highlight just how difficult it is to be a POC in this fandom. Army preach about being this or being that. We love each other. We look out for each other. ARMY is family blah blah blah.

No we’re not.

I have been an ARMY since 2015. The only places I have ever found comfort within this fandom are with other POCs, and even then it is only a few people here and there. This random ass hoe that I have NEVER interacted with before decided to take the fact I am a POC and taunt me, attack me, harass me, whatever you want to call it, and didn’t come off anon until I forced them off.

I am so beyond tired of being a POC in this fandom. When will you all recognize that one “I stand by” post is never enough to support us. “I can’t be racist I support BTS’s message💜” shut the hell up. You kiss these men’s feet for being your woke kings but then turn around and say things like this. Was it fun? Was it cool parading around in your ‘I do whatever BTS does’ cloak? You guys pick and choose when you want to be a model ARMY, and then turn around do things like this. Over kpop. Your allyship means nothing when there are still people like this in fandom who try to bully me OVER KPOP. OVER JUNGKOOK. OVER A MAN WE DONT KNOW AND NEVER WILL KNOW.

Please don’t interact with this person. Please just block and report them.

Anon’s gonna be off for a while, thanks for reading.

#please read #negative

399 notes · View notes

thegardenofbae · 4 years ago

Note

Hello, I have just started my black femininity and hypergamous journey this year, and so far it's been exciting! I've had a lingering feeling about embracing my femininity for myself inside + out. And now that there is blogs on Tumblr and discovering your blog, I'm liking it a lot. What advice do you have for me in the beginning of my journey of a feminine and hypergamous lifestyle that are affordable and things I can do for free everyday, even from home?

Hello my angel ✨

I’m so excited for you, embarking on embracing your femininity will help you discover a part of yourself you may have suppressed. Getting back in touch with yourself will give you this renewed feeling that is indescribable. It's truly something phenomenal!

When starting on your femininity journey, I have to emphasize to you dedicate time to working on yourself and getting to know who you truly are. I recommend journaling heavily in the beginning. I don't have any prompts or scripts to give, but I do suggest writing on topics like relationships (past and present), goals, desires, traumas, etc...

Similarly, journal how you feel as you break new habits and replace them with better, more efficient ones. Journal new things you discover about yourself as you rediscover hobbies and passions. Documentation is so important, especially for the days when you start to question why you're investing all this effort, energy, and time into this process.

In the beginning, I dove heavily into self-development. I was reading constantly and I expanded my library. I’ve written a couple of posts with books that one read over the past year. You can click on the links to be taken to those posts to check them out. I've also included some of my favorite YouTubers who have taught me so much about femininity and leveling up. It's not required, but learn a new language! It is so fun (to me) and broadens your horizons. Find something, whatever, that interests you and learn more about it. Never stop learning!

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Something else I'd recommend is developing a mentality built for the unsolicited critiques you'll inevitably get. People you have known for years, friends, and family, even randoms on social media will have a mouth full to say about your wanting to embrace your femininity and to date/marry up. If your skin is thin, these comments will derail you and possibly knock you off your journey. Be prepared to deal with the comments and criticism. For example, last Christmas, a childhood friend of mine flew me out to Chicago to be his date for his gala. I pulled up to the gala with a fresh blowout, makeup was done flawlessly, a custom made dress and a fur coat. All eyes were on me. My friend made sure I was taken care of the whole night and at the end when I went to get my coat, the girl working coat check had so much to say about how much better I must’ve thought I was and how bougie I was (all of this was a ”joke” according to her). Something like that would've bothered the old me to no end, but I just shrugged my shoulders smiled, and left the event. People’s opinions mean nothing, especially the negative ones.

Aside from that, I'd reevaluate some of your current relationships. Make sure they're truly beneficial to your goal. Friends who call you fake for wanting better for yourself have no place in your circle. Limit people’s access to you. Not everyone has your best interest in mind.

I’m also going to recommend you start taking time to improve your grooming routines. If you don't already do your nails, eyebrows, things like that, it's high time you start. If you think to invest in grooming is to be superficial, you're going to need to lose that mindset, especially when you're trying to get a hypergamous man.

Obviously, your inside needs to be cultivated and refined, but in order for people to be interested in what's going on inside, they have to like what they see outside. You can do many beauty treatments to elevate your looks at home. For instance, I do my hair, hair removal, nails, eyebrows, and lashes all ag home. You don't have to do anything extreme, but just make it a habit to care for yourself consistently. I've written so many posts about how I care for myself, here are some you can check out but most of my Tumblr is one big how I care for myself essentially.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

I would also get an idea of how you want to redefine your style. Find inspiration and start saving to redo your wardrobe.

I really hope this was helpful angel 💕 I wanted to be as detailed as possible and provide you with the information I wish I had when I started my femininity journey.

#the feminine hostess #💌#femininity journey

136 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 5 years ago

Note

Could you expand a bit on the "death of expertise"? It's something I think about A LOT as an artist, because there are so many problems with people who think it isn't a real job, and the severe undercutting of prices that happens because people think hobbyists and professionals are the same. At the same time, I also really want people to feel free to be able to make art if they want, with no gatekeeping or elitism, and I usually spin myself in circles mentally thinking about it. So.

I have been secretly hoping someone would ask this question, nonny. Bless you. I have a lot (a LOT) of thoughts on this topic, which I will try to keep somewhat concise and presented in a semi-organized fashion, but yes.

I can mostly speak about this in regard to academia, especially the bad, bad, BAD takes in my field (history) that have dominated the news in recent weeks and which constitute most of the recent posts on my blog. (I know, I know, Old Man Yells At Cloud when attempting to educate the internet on actual history, but I gotta do SOMETHING.) But this isn’t a new phenemenon, and is linked to the avalanche of “fake news” that we’ve all heard about and experienced in the last few years, especially in the run-up and then after the election of You Know Who, who has made fake news his personal brand (if not in the way he thinks). It also has to do with the way Americans persistently misunderstand the concept of free speech as “I should be able to say whatever I want and nobody can correct or criticize me,” which ties into the poisonous extreme-libertarian ethos of “I can do what I want with no regard for others and nobody can correct me,” which has seeped its way into the American mainstream and is basically the center of the modern Republican party. (Basically: all for me, all the time, and caring about others is a weak liberal pussy thing to do.)

This, however, is not just an issue of partisan politics, because the left is just as guilty, even if its efforts take a different shape. One of the reason I got so utterly exasperated with strident online leftists, especially around primary season and the hardcore breed of Bernie Bros, is just that they don’t do anything except shout loud and incorrect information on the internet (and then transmogrify that into a twisted ideology of moral purity which makes a sin out of actually voting for a flawed candidate, even if the alternative is Donald Goddamn Trump). I can’t count how many people from both sides of the right/left divide get their political information from like-minded people on social media, and never bother to experience or verify or venture outside their comforting bubbles that will only provide them with “facts” that they already know. Social media has done a lot of good things, sure, but it’s also made it unprecedently easy to just say whatever insane bullshit you want, have it go viral, and then have you treated as an authority on the topic or someone whose voice “has to be included” out of some absurd principle of both-siderism. This is also a tenet of the mainstream corporate media: “both sides” have to be included, to create the illusion of “objectivity,” and to keep the largest number of paying subscribers happy. (Yes, of course this has deep, deep roots in the collapse of late-stage capitalism.) Even if one side is absolutely batshit crazy, the rules of this distorted social contract stipulate that their proposals and their flaws have to be treated as equal with the others, and if you point out that they are batshit crazy, you have to qualify with some criticism of the other side.

This is where you get white people posting “Neo-Nazis and Black Lives Matter are the same!!!1” on facebook. They are a) often racist, let’s be real, and b) have been force-fed a constant narrative where Both Sides Are Equally Bad. Even if one is a historical system of violent oppression that has made a good go at total racial and ethnic genocide and rests on hatred, and the other is the response to not just that but the centuries of systemic and small-scale racism that has been built up every day, the white people of the world insist on treating them as morally equivalent (related to a superior notion that Violence is Always Bad, which.... uh... have you even seen constant and overwhelming state-sponsored violence the West dishes out? But it’s only bad when the other side does it. Especially if those people can be at all labeled “fanatics.”)

I have complained many, many times, and will probably complain many times more, about how hard it is to deconstruct people’s absolutely ingrained ideas of history and the past. History is a very fragile thing; it’s really only equivalent to the length of a human lifespan, and sometimes not even that. It’s what people want to remember and what is convenient for them to remember, which is why we still have some living Holocaust survivors and yet a growing movement of Holocaust denial, among other extremist conspiracy theories (9/11, Sandy Hook, chemtrails, flat-earthing, etc etc). There is likewise no organized effort to teach honest history in Western public schools, not least since the West likes its self-appointed role as guardians of freedom and liberty and democracy in the world and doesn’t really want anyone digging into all that messy slavery and genocide and imperialism and colonialism business. As a result, you have deliberately under- or un-educated citizens, who have had a couple of courses on American/British/etc history in grade school focusing on the greatest-hit reel, and all from an overwhelmingly triumphalist white perspective. You have to like history, from what you get out of it in public school, to want to go on to study it as a career, while knowing that there are few jobs available, universities are cutting or shuttering humanities departments, and you’ll never make much money. There is... not a whole lot of outside incentive there.

I’ve written before about how the humanities are always the first targeted, and the first defunded, and the first to be labeled as “worthless degrees,” because a) they are less valuable to late-stage capitalism and its emphasis on Material Production, and b) they often focus on teaching students the critical thinking skills that critique and challenge that dominant system. There’s a reason that there is a stereotype of artists as social revolutionaries: they have often taken a look around, gone, “Hey, what the hell is this?” and tried to do something about it, because the creative and free-thinking impulse helps to cultivate the tools necessary to question what has become received and dominant wisdom. Of course, that can then be taken too far into the “I’ll create my own reality and reject absolutely everything that doesn’t fit that narrative,” and we end up at something like the current death of expertise.

This year is particularly fertile for these kinds of misinformation efforts: a plague without a vaccine or a known cure, an election year in a turbulently polarized country, race unrest in a deeply racist country spreading to other racist countries around the world and the challenging of a particularly important system (white supremacy), etc etc. People are scared and defensive and reactive, and in that case, they’re especially less motivated to challenge or want to encounter information that scares them. They need their pre-set beliefs to comfort them or provide steadiness in a rocky and uncertain world, and (thanks once again to social media) it’s easy to launch blistering ad hominem attacks on people who disagree with you, who are categorized as a faceless evil mass and who you will never have to meet or negotiate with in real life. This is the environment in which all the world’s distinguished scientists, who have spent decades studying infectious diseases, have to fight for airtime and authority (and often lose) over random conspiracy theorists who make a YouTube video. The public has been trained to see them as “both the same” and then accept which side they like the best, regardless of actual factual or real-world qualifications. They just assume the maniac on YouTube is just as trustworthy as the scientists with PhDs from real universities.

Obviously, academia is racist, elitist, classist, sexist, on and on. Most human institutions are. But training people to see all academics as the enemy is not the answer. You’ve seen the Online Left (tm) also do this constantly, where they attack “the establishment” for never talking about anything, or academics for supposedly erasing and covering up all of non-white history, while apparently never bothering to open a book or familiarize themselves with a single piece of research that actual historians are working on. You may have noticed that historians have been leading the charge against the “don’t erase history!!!1″ defenders of racist monuments, and explaining in stinging detail exactly why this is neither preserving history or being truthful about it. Tumblr likes to confuse the mechanism that has created the history and the people who are studying and analyzing that history, and lump them together as one mass of Evil And Lying To You. Academics are here because we want to critically examine the world and tell you things about it that our nonsense system has required years and years of effort, thousands of dollars in tuition, and other gatekeeping barriers to learn. You can just ask one of us. We’re here, we usually love to talk, and we’re a lot cheaper. I think that’s pretty cool.

As a historian, I have been trained in a certain skill set: finding, reading, analyzing, using, and criticizing primary sources, ditto for secondary sources, academic form and style, technical skills like languages, paleography, presentation, familiarity with the professional mechanisms for reviewing and sharing work (journals, conferences, peer review, etc), and how to assemble this all into an extended piece of work and to use it in conversation with other historians. That means my expertise in history outweighs some rando who rolls up with an unsourced or misleading Twitter thread. If a professor has been handed a carefully crafted essay and then a piece of paper scribbled with crayon, she is not obliged to treat them as essentially the same or having the same critical weight, even if the essay has flaws. One has made an effort to follow the rules of the game, and the other is... well, I did read a few like that when teaching undergraduates. They did not get the same grade.

This also means that my expertise is not universal. I might know something about adjacent subjects that I’ve also studied, like political science or English or whatever, but someone who is a career academic with a degree directly in that field will know more than me. I should listen to them, even if I should retain my independent ability and critical thinking skillset. And I definitely should not be listened to over people whose field of expertise is in a completely different realm. Take the recent rocket launch, for example. I’m guessing that nobody thought some bum who walked in off the street to Kennedy Space Center should be listened to in preference of the actual scientists with degrees and experience at NASA and knowledge of math and orbital mechanics and whatever else you need to get a rocket into orbit. I definitely can’t speak on that and I wouldn’t do it anyway, so it’s frustrating to see it happen with history. Everybody “knows” things about history that inevitably turn out to be wildly wrong, and seem to assume that they can do the same kind of job or state their conclusions with just as much authority. (Nobody seems to listen to the scientists on global warming or coronavirus either, because their information is actively inconvenient for our entrenched way of life and people don’t want to change.) Once again, my point here is not to be a snobbish elitist looking down at The Little People, but to remark that if there’s someone in a field who has, you know, actually studied that subject and is speaking from that place of authority, maybe we can do better than “well, I saw a YouTube video and liked it better, so there.” (Americans hate authority and don’t trust smart people, which is a related problem and goes back far beyond Trump, but there you are.)

As for art: it’s funny how people devalue it constantly until they need it to survive. Ask anyone how they spent their time in lockdown. Did they listen to music? Did they watch movies or TV? Did they read a book? Did they look at photography or pictures? Did they try to learn a skill, like drawing or writing or painting, and realize it was hard? Did they have a preference for the art that was better, more professionally produced, had more awareness of the rules of its craft, and therefore was more enjoyable to consume? If anyone wants to tell anyone that art is worthless, I invite you to challenge them on the spot to go without all of the above items during the (inevitable, at this rate) second coronavirus lockdown. No music. No films. No books. Not even a video or a meme or anything else that has been made for fun, for creativity, or anything outside the basic demands of Compensated Economic Production. It’s then that you’ll discover that, just as with the underpaid essential workers who suffered the most, we know these jobs need to get done. We just still don’t want to pay anyone fairly for doing them, due to our twisted late-capitalist idea of “value.”

Anyway, since this has gotten long enough and I should probably wrap up: as you say, the difference between “professional” and “hobbyist” has been almost completely erased, so that people think the opinion of one is as good as the other, or in your case, that the hobbyist should present their work for free or refuse to be seen as a professional entitled to fair compensation for their skill. That has larger and more insidious effects in a global marketplace of ideas that has been almost entirely reduced to who can say their opinion the loudest to the largest group of people. I don’t know how to solve this problem, but at least I can try to point it out and to avoid being part of it, and to recognize where I need to speak and where I need to shut up. My job, and that of every single white person in America right now, is to shut up and let black people (and Native people, and Latinx people, and Muslim people, and etc...) tell me what it’s really like to live here with that identity. I have obviously done a ton of research on the subject and consider myself reasonably educated, but here’s the thing: my expertise still doesn’t outweigh theirs, no matter what degrees they have or don’t have. I then am required to boost their ideas, views, experiences, and needs, rather than writing them over or erasing them, and to try to explain to people how the roots of these ideas interlock and interact where I can. That is -- hopefully -- putting my history expertise to use in a good way to support what they’re saying, rather than silence it. I try, at any rate, and I am constantly conscious of learning to do better.

I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for letting me talk about it.

#history #long post #anonymous #ask

76 notes · View notes

femmesfollesnebraska · 4 years ago

Text

Artist feature: Helena Baka

Artist Helena Baka shares with LFF about her inspiration as an artist through trauma, experiences, identity, femininity and more. All images and text (c) Helena Baka, helenabaka.com.

Where are you from and how did you get into art?

I’m from Elmwood Park, Illinois, but I’m currently living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both of my parents were born and raised in Albania and immigrated from there before I was born, a few years after the collapse of communism. I’ve loved art since I was a child – I used to draw princesses, my favorite television show characters, Sanrio characters, and self-portraits. This was probably because both of my parents were artists - my father is a painter, and my mom used to make little angel Christmas ornaments and draw mermaids for my sister and me (although she stopped doing that very early on once she became a paralegal). All my life I had been surrounded by my dad’s oil painting landscapes of Albania hanging on the walls of our home, so I think I wanted to be just as good as him.

It’s been hard to be upfront about this, but my mom committed suicide when I was only 16 years old, and that was really the beginning of my painting practice because I started to draw inspiration from my traumas, dreams and experiences after that. Now, my work is motivated by my cultural identity and the distance I’ve experienced with my Albanian culture while growing up American. Lots of my current work shines on aspects of my identity, both relating to culture and femininity. I also have been exploring the relationship between sculpture and painting in my work because I’m fascinated with how bending the rules of traditional sculpture and/or painting can possibly make either of those fall into either category.

I have a few impetuses for creating; much of it derives from the need to tell my story, to use my practice as a form of therapy, to take risks and experiment with both familiar and unfamiliar mediums, and to educate my audience on whatever topic evokes strong emotions from me.

Tell me about your most recent exhibit.

4th Midwest Open at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago is the upcoming show I’m featured in, and I’m really excited for it because it’s going to be filled with so many different types of work featuring many artists of diverse backgrounds. It’s a chance to showcase the voices of women and nonbinary people in a space that is not male-dominated, which I think is so important because spaces like these are rare to find in the art world.

I hope when people see my work, it can spark some curiosity and self-education of what and where Albania is, and that it’s not just some impoverished Eastern European country that never made it into the footnotes of western history textbooks. My work touches on themes of loss, displacement, and frustration with one’s identity, as well as learning to accept and embrace who you are; that it’s okay not to fit into the mold of who or what you’re “supposed” to be. So, I hope at the end of the day, anyone who views my work can see a little bit of themselves in it, too. Most importantly, I want to be the Albanian woman artist role model that I never got to see growing up.

Does collaboration play a role in your work?

Although I have always worked independently in the studio, I’ve found collaboration beneficial to my practice through exposure of others’ ideas and methods of production. Being in my last year of art school toward my BFA, I have grown used to surrounding myself in an environment of plenty of working artists, and that alone inspires me to create, too. I think the act of critiques and even showing in-progress work has been a collaboration between me and whoever is critiquing my work, because most of the time I’ll come out of it with fresh ideas handed to me by another person. It works the same way vice-versa.

I once had my first ceramic sculpture fall apart in the kiln, and through a collaborative effort of mending it with my friend who was very familiar with working with plaster, my sculpture was repaired and I gained new insight toward this specific material and potential future uses in my practice. My work could never have progressed the way it has without the exposure of different ideas, methods and materials that other artists use.

What do you think about making work right now with the current political climate?

The political climate we’re living in right now has brought on so much outstanding work that has been made by BIPOC creators. Through the darkness of the pandemic, a corrupt, unfitting president in office, systemic racism, police brutality, and all of the tragic deaths we’ve experienced in 2020 from these events, one of the few instances of light the world gained out of these tragedies was the art made by black folx and BIPOC. From music to writing to visual art, BIPOC’s voices have been uplifted and encouraged on every accessible platform, and I continue to see more and more spaces made exclusively for these communities in the art world. Art really makes a difference in impacting our ways of thinking and beliefs, and I believe that if we continue to make BIPOC creators and voices a priority after Black Lives Matter is no longer a trending topic, there could be huge changes in the art world that provide even bigger opportunities for BIPOC creators, such as solo/group exhibitions, publications, grants and rewards, and leadership positions, if not more.

Is feminism relevant to your work?

Absolutely! I would categorize much of my work as feminist pieces because it discuss the contrasting distance and pride not only between myself and my cultural identity, but with my female identity as well that has been challenged and taken advantage of throughout all my life by others. Sexism, misogyny perpetuated by both men and women, double standards, and body image dysphoria as a consequence of these things have all been themes I’ve had to work through in my life and practice.

I can’t speak for every womxn or nonbinary person, but most who are or have once been feminine presenting in their lives have experienced a hypersexualization of themselves and their bodies through the media, culture, and the overall tainted perspective of the patriarchy we’ve been trained to look through. Instead, my work inevitably sees through the lens of the female gaze, where there is no objectification or negativity associated with the female/feminine body or experience, and instead the viewer is presented with this sort of chaotic, distortion of the faces and bodies of my characters, who are often abstract depictions of self-portraits.

What’s the best advice you have received about being an artist?

Strive to make work better than the last and only compete with yourself. Never measure your talents and successes to someone else's.

helenabaka.com

instagram: @artbug666.

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Brown Deskins. LFF Books is a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017). Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Submissions always open! - Check out the 10th anniversary call here:

https://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/callforart-writing

#feminsitart #contemporaryart #womenartists #womanmadegallery

5 notes · View notes

whaq · 4 years ago

Text

Fuck You, Animu (1/4)

A dumbass’ war of heart and mind A few months ago, I hit a creative block. Despite considering myself a jack of many mediums, I couldn’t for the life of me bring myself to make--well... anything. While I do have a Google Keep of creative ideas I’ve come up with over the years, I was unable to find the drive (pun shoehorned) to get started on any of them. This sent me into a bit of a spiral. A lot of creatives probably empathize: you find yourself lacking the motivation to create so it starts to negatively affect your self-worth, which is tied to your ability to make things, and this lack of confidence compels you to just succumb to melancholy, finding yourself the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy to become a slacker because you think you already ARE one.

I was a couple months into this when a buddy of mine hit me up asking if I heard about a call for local anime reviewers. At that moment, it almost felt like divine intervention from God, who I only ever felt in the burning sensation radiating through me whenever I was within 10 feet of a church. An anime news site, let’s call em Animu, with a relatively large following, was searching for writers who would join their staff to review anime being released in the winter season with a salary to boot. As an avid anime fan myself, who just so happened to have honed his critiquing skills over years of media consumption {that has since ruined my viewing experience for the foreseeable future (I legitimately suck the joy out of every piece of media I consume now)}, I saw this as my opportunity to be able to use my skills for some form of monetary gain; which was always a concern of mine throughout my life. Growing up, I was never really good at anything that could easily become a profession later in life. I was too awful at biology to become a doctor, not smart enough at maths to be the next Pythagoras, nor was I athletic enough to shoot a basketball, let alone make it in the NBA. I was good at talking in, and understanding, English... and that was it. At the time, I didn’t realize I had a knack for writing and oration, but even once I did, I found that the trajectory towards being a professional for either of those fields wasn’t so simple. Most people still have the childish idea that “Oh, writers write books and speakers do… speaking things!” but it waters down such a wide yet closed off section of the professional world. Writing alone has so many different specializations: journalism, screenwriting, book authoring, all such niches that don’t have as established a path as scoring high on the Bar exam or being scouted on varsity; it’s difficult to find a place in this world with that skill set, a fear that a majority of creatives have. So I needed some form of validation, an instance of acceptance that’ll allow me to finally believe that my work is worth something and, most importantly, enjoyed by someone. So I started working on my application for Animu by selecting three different series that I was interested in tackling: Re:Zero, Cells at Work, and Kaguya-Sama: Love is War. Starting from zero The posts after this contain these reviews in the state I submitted to Animu. I spent about a month working on these. Re:Zero’s review was close to my usual style of critique, which focuses on the technical aspects and their execution as well as commentary on any relevant subtext, minus the subtext. I wanted to seem as professional as possible with the first one and tried to keep to the proposed 1200 word word limit. With Cells At Work, however, I tried to have a bit of fun. There were many rumblings around the community about the series’ cancer episode which I was eager to capitalize on. That said, upon rewatching the episode, I came across some potentially problematic scenarios that could’ve been blown out of proportion by some headline-chasing media outlet; so that’s exactly what I did. No, I wouldn’t in my right mind compare chibified blood cells to Nazi sympathizers (then again, I’m never in my right mind). Lastly, was Kaguya-Sama, which became my favorite anime of the past couple years. This series was the first anime that got me to actively follow the source material as it hit two of my most identifying traits, being a cinephile and humor academic, as well as a side I’m slightly embarrassed by, my interest in romantic comedies. I wanted to attempt a review that was just hype-hype-hype as it was what the series sparked within me. Oh, and you SHOULD read Kaguya-Sama. Bleeding out After a modicum of proofreading, as well as some peer review from my closest confidants, I sent over my application and I waited. As my heart raced on the day of the announcement, my name was nowhere to be found. To add insult to injury, I was informed that I scored absolutely horribly by Animu’s criteria, my highest grade being one that’d flunk in the most forgiving of schools. While you’d expect me to be crestfallen, I was actually ecstatic to know that the community I’ve been a part of, a local one no less, had people with an even larger passion and greater skills than even I. As someone who went through childhood being made fun of for my interests that have somehow developed into geek chic and gone mainstream (something that, contrary to most of the community, I’m happy to see), I was glad to see how much people like me had developed from waifu worshipping weaboos to outstandingly ornate otaku. Hell, I was content to have made some content. I was looking forward to seeing the fruits of labor from those who were more deserving than me. So imagine my surprise when what I found posted a month later was absolute garbage. I’m not going to get into detail, seeing as said details could lead to someone getting doxxed just because they didn’t meet MY oh so high standards (/s), but what I will say was that the quality of the content indicated something more telling about the whole ordeal. I have taken part in two completely different student publications in my time, and I can say with utmost certainty that THE GRADE SCHOOLERS I MENTORED WROTE BETTER, AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN PAID. Still, it was nice to know I still had it in me to make something of substance. And on this commemorative day, I open up my blog by making public my entries for all to ridicule. As much as I talked down the winning entries, I don’t believe mine were perfect. Like most of my work, it’s rushed and rambly, full of tangents and misnomers. But, it’s very me, and I’m quite happy to see something from me see the light of day.

I hope you find some amusement in my bemusement.

p.s. Yes, the headers are attempts at relating to the three shows p.p.s.s. Yes, they’re BAD attempts at relating to the three shows

#anime #manga #review #anime review #rant #petty #spite #critic #critique #nerd

2 notes · View notes

nightbloomsresorthotel · 4 years ago

Text

A Controversial, but Fair Essay on Gabbie Hanna’s Poetry That Doesn’t Completely Shit on Her Writing

So I just finished listening to her youtube video where she addresses this topic. When I first saw her poems, I could see what everyone was talking about: her poems are simple, full of puns that seem to masquerade as a function of “depth”, with simple, easy to understand language juxtaposed with themes of growing up and trauma. She says that her influences include Shel Silverstein, Bo Burnham and William Williams, including his famous poem This is Just to Say.

(prepare thyself reader, this is a quick 2k analysis. I’ve included GOOD poetry recs at the end!)

She goes on to say that what drew her to these poems was there charm- Shel Silverstein’s works were meant for children, and they are easy to interpret- and could be read from the perspective of both an adult and child. As a child reading Where the Sidewalk Ends, I enjoyed the illustrations and the rhyming nature of these poems. I’m sure Gabbie Hanna did as well. Hearing her talk about these inspirations and what she wanted to do with her own poems, it’s clear that she was aiming for each piece to harken back to the whimsy and innocence of childhood, while addressing more adult topics.

I think that Gabbie Hanna missed the mark. She admits that some of the poems in her book were rushed and this makes me question if and where she ever got any peer feedback from her pieces. I also wonder if Gabbie has ever taken any writing classes or poetry workshops, but I am doubtful. The big difference between This is Just to Say and, lets say, her poem Chivalry is clear. Here is This is Just to Say:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold.

So much has already been said about this poem. But the biggest thing to take away here, is that Williams clearly put thought into syntax, imagery, rhythm and rhyme. You will notice that this piece doesn’t exactly rhyme, but it slant rhymes. Rhyming has become less of a marker for poetry recently, mostly because I think it makes people think of nursery rhymes or songs and traditional, older forms of poetry, and some poets don’t want that connotation. This may surprise some, but poetry is an ever evolving art form; poets are always playing with experimentation in their work. Here, imagery and the five senses make This is Just to Say great. Up until the last stanza, we don’t really get anything that makes us feel a physical sensation until we get to “so sweet/ and so cold”. This is where the impact of the poem lies. This is the climax of this poem. Every word before it is intentionally abstract, while sweet and cold are in comparison, concrete images and sensual images. This is why we can almost taste the plums the author is talking about at the end of the poem.

Let’s look at a poem I picked at random from Gabbie Hanna’s book, CHIVALRY:

I’m not some no-brained bimbo

and i’m not some helpless girl

i am fucking remarkable

and i deserve the world.

i don’t need you to open my door,

but the gesture would be nice.

i don’t need you to buy my meal;

the offer would suffice.

i don’t need to be taken care of,

but it’d be cool to know you care.

i’m a holographic charizard

highly desired and rare.

yo, i even drop pokemon references

‘cause i’m fuckin dope as shit.

i’m good with just me, i don’t need you

not even a tiny bit.

Let me address what I like about this poem first. Gabbie knows what she wants to do- she utilizes rhyming and repetition to make this an easy flowing read. She knows that a lower-case “i” shows that despite what she may be claiming in the poem “i don’t need you/ not even a tiny bit”, the narrator does not think highly of themselves— perhaps the narrator desperately needs the “you” addressed, but is not confidant enough to ask for their friendship/ relationship. The narrator is contradicting themselves, showing a low self-esteem, and maybe crying for help. This juxtaposed with the fun rhyming tone of the piece and the mention of pokémon succesfully gets this point across.

However, this poem seems to focus on utilizing these elements of craft only. Gabbie could enhance the reader experience by adding more concrete imagery: why type of meal? How helpless of a girl? These are instances where Gabbie could help the reader connect to the speaker, and she doesn’t do so. We could also argue that she’s emulating This is Just to Say by only including one concrete and colorful image, but I will address this further down.

Additionally, this narrator could be anyone. I could imagine anybody saying this, of any gender. Perhaps Gabbie did this intentionally- the more vague a narrator is, the more it could apply to anyone— the average teen/adult could connect to this poem. However, this gives the poem a generic quality. Perhaps others would like to connect to this narrator more, and get a better sense of who the narrator is. Also let me address why I keep using “narrator” instead of “Gabbie”. It’s a force of habit for me (that I got from poetry courses in college) to assume that the narrator of the poem and the author of the poem may not always be the same person. I think in this situation, these poems are undoubtedly from Gabbi’s perspective, but to remain neutral just in case, I will continue to use “narrator”.

Something I’d also like to address is the matter of rhyming in the current poetry world. Many journals have gone so far as to say “we do not accept rhyming poems” in their submission guidelines. Not all, but some. People who just start out writing poetry believe that poems must rhyme to be considered poetry at all, but when you take your first poetry class in high school or college, you quickly realize that this is not the case. Here, Gabbie uses a simple end rhyme scheme to evoke poetry like Silverstein and childhood memories of reading poetry, nursery rhymes, etc. But I think to those who have been reading poetry for a long time, teaching it, or reading submissions for their journal, the mark of a novice poet is that everything rhymes, sometimes at the sake of using a better word in its place that doesn’t rhyme. I think rhyme has its place in poetry, but it can be overused. Since most of Gabbie Hanna’s poems do rhyme, it’s easy to see someone getting “rhyme fatigue” while reading. Another negative effect of rhyming is that the reader will begin to anticipate the rhyme- this can cause the reader to skip lines entirely, and focus solely on the rhyme scheme, rather than focusing on the meaning of the poem. A piece that harkens back to childhood and uses rhyme well, in my opinion, is This Be the Verse by Phillip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself.

I think the big difference between this and Gabbie Hanna’s poem is that it starts off strong right away with “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”. The condescending tone is always there right from the start, and the rhyming is more of a surprise than an expectation throughout- the line “it deepens like a coastal shelf” brings new imagery and meaning to the poem by veering off into another subject. This enhances the surprise.

I’d also like to address cliche’s. The cliche’s present in CHIVALRY are “I deserve the world” and “I don’t need you to open my door”. These are easy to understand from a readers point of view, but often, cliche’s offer nothing new and exciting to the reader. They are easy to skip over and ignore. These add to the poems generic atmosphere.

Let’s talk about the pieces title itself: CHIVALRY. When we read this poem with the title in context, we get a strange disconnect. The poem is clearly about a girl who says she doesn’t need chivalrous acts from a friend or partner, and doesn’t need someone because they are “good with just me”. But the subtext of the piece is less about chivalry and more about self-esteem or a willingness to be loved. The piece has changed meaning two thirds of the way down. I think the title is too obvious and misleading, and gives the reader the wrong idea about what the poem is trying to say. In essence, the piece is named after a facet of the relationship between the narrator and other person, rather than the root of what the poem is trying to convey.

The pokémon references add color to this piece, and it is the only place this piece has any kind of concrete imagery. In the This is Just to Say the sweet and cold plum imagery is the very last line, heightening them. In CHIVALRY, they’re near the middle of the piece. Thus, the longer ending reduces the color and lasting effect of “holographic charizard”.

Overall, I think Gabbie Hanna could benefit from workshopping her poems and getting peer feedback from other poets, in addition to reading poetry that isn’t thirty plus years old. I don’t know if she already does this, but judging from her poems, I can only assume that she hasn’t. At the very least, she should avoid rushing to get poems out before they are due.

Gabbie Hanna is a novice poet who put her poems out into the world and got a greater amount of backlash than any novice poet usually does in a workshop or classroom setting. When in the classroom, there is such a thing as Critique Etiquette. Critique for poems are give honestly and gently, never in a harsh or mean way. Fellow poets point out possible interpretations of work, or possible unwanted connotations of sometimes, even a simple word at the end of the line. In addition, poets in the classroom are exposed to modern poets that are creating new and exciting work that is often published in highly esteemed magazines- reading the best of todays poetry. Gabbi Hanna’s work seemingly got published without peer review, and the quality of it was clear to those who read it. That being said, I do think that people who read and love Gabbie Hanna’s work do connect with it— no doubt because these poems are designed to be as generic as possible, so that others may see themselves in the words.This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I believe her work appeals best to newcomers to poetry, people who maybe have only ever read works from Shel Silverstein or Edgar Allen Poe. This can be a blessing and a shame. There are many good poets out there, that aren’t getting published because they don’t have youtube channels or brand collaborations, and they are just plain hard to find. However, Gabbie Hanna has opened the door for many would-be poetry readers, and has sparked a love for the art of poetry in them. Hopefully, this love leads them to become wider read, and to seek out more poetry from a multiple of authors to read.

I decided that I’d also like to include some published poetry from poets that are from a range of different backgrounds. Go forth and read!

POETRY THAT DOESN'T SUCK: Sonya Vatomsky's Salt is for Curing- poems by a non-binary poet that focus on themes of femininity, Russian food, Russian folklore and identity. Review Purchase

Danez Smith- A black, queer, non-binary and HIV positive writer. A poem I really like of theirs is "Dinosaurs in the Hood" is a great poem that I personally love.

Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. This book contains poems that focus on the Black experience in America. Excerpt from the book here

Khadijah Queen's I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men and What I Had On. This collection features conversational poems that focus on the narrators encounters with famous men in relation to what the narrator was wearing at the time. A piece that centers around the question "Well, what were you wearing?". Read two poems from the book Here.

Fatimah Ashgar's IF THEY COME FOR US. Poems by a Pakistani-Kashmiri-American. These poems focus on race and identity. One of my favorites takes the form of a bingo card, titled Microagression Bingo (read here and two other poems from the book). As a poc myself, I was nodding along to every line, thinking "Yup. I've been through that too."

Tommy Pico is an indiginous poet, and Junk is a book length poem of couplets that uses modern, fast, text style language. From the Tin House website: "The third book in Tommy Pico’s Teebs trilogy, Junk is a breakup poem in couplets: ice floe and hot lava, a tribute to Janet Jackson and nacho cheese. In the static that follows the loss of a job or an apartment or a boyfriend, what can you grab onto for orientation?" Read an excerpt Here.

I can assure you that none of these read like Rupi Kaur, Gabbie Hanna, or Atticus. These are serious poets that have spent years honing their form, submitting to journals-- they did the work. And it shows in the quality of their writing.

While I'm not a fan of Atticus and Rupi Kaur and Gabbie Hanna, I can appreciate that they've appealed to people who may have never read a poem before. Now those people have a newfound love for poetry, and a hunger for more. Hopefully, those people will seek out other poets and expand their knowledge and repertoire of current poets, maybe lesser known poets that do amazing work.

8 notes · View notes