#Scheharazade

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.

Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller’s art, and then a way of traveling from here to there. What is it like to be the old man silenced by a stroke, the young man facing the executioner, the woman walking across the border, the child on the rollercoaster, the person you’ve only read about or the one next to you in bed?

We tell ourselves stories in order to live, or to justify taking lives, even our own, by violence or by numbness and the failure to live, tell ourselves stories that save us and stories that are the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown, stories of justification, of accursedness, of luck and star-crossed love, or versions clad in the cynicism that is at times a very elegant garment. Sometimes the story collapses, and it demands that we recognize we’ve been lost, or terrible, or ridiculous, or just stuck; sometimes change arrives like an ambulance or a supply drop. Not a few stories are sinking ships, and many of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us.

In The Thousand and One Nights, known in English as The Arabian Nights, Scheharazade tells stories in order to keep the sultan in suspense from night to night so he will not kill her. The premise of the vast thicket of stories is that the sultan caught his queen in the embrace of a slave and decided to sleep with a virgin every night and slay her every morning so that he could not be cuckolded again. Scheherazade volunteered to try to end the massacre and did so by telling him stories that carried over from one night to the next for nights that stretched into years.

She spun stories around him that kept him in a cocoon of anticipation from which he eventually emerged a less murderous man. In the course of all this telling she bore three sons and delivered a labyrinth of stories within stories, stories of desire and deception and magic, of tranformation and testing, stories in which the action in one freezes as another storyteller opens his mouth, pregnant stories, stories to stop death.

Do you tell your story or does it tell you? Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them and then to become the storyteller. Those ex-virgins who died were inside the sultan’s story; Scheharazade, like a working-class hero, seized control of the means of production, and talked her way out.

--The Faraway Nearby (2012)

[Rebecca Solnit]

[bezuss]

Scheharazade by Richard Siken x Undertow by Son Lux | Hannibal

[daenystheedreamer]

wips but theyre just random threads i go insane over for a couple days and then let them languish forever

rhaenicent vamp one shot: yeah its another lesbian vampire thing. but its targs who are weird vamp creatures and alicent doesnt know and there's all these weird rules about not leaving her chambers at night and how the new fashion is high collars (to protect one's neck from the cold). otto is viserys' blood bank but otto is like dried out and is planning to swap out with alicent. alicent FREAKS and runs out and rhaenyra. well. Heh. a predator chases her prey 😈

jae era uzumaki: this one ive actually written like 50% its What if a huge black hole spiral appeared in the red keep. opens up on the night of alyssa and baelon's wedding im sure that means nothing.

apocalypsoiaf: this one is a series so:

roadside picnic type au where after the long night hits, the castles all become fucked up anomalous Zones that have weird gravity and creatures and ooze etc. but theyre filled with food and tapestries and gold to loot so some people (not called stalkers) go in on bounty hunts funded by the remnants of the citadel/fot7

so there's this tidbit that people of the faith will be buried with a crystal so there's this new wave of gravediggers hoping to find crystals and gold they can sell. but the corpses are no longer dead so its zombies :)

small village is overrun by insane apocalypse cult for the stranger except the actual apocalypse does happen. its the interpersonaldrama between the village locals and the stranger zealots. village is on the red fork. inspired by little english village cresswood dale being invaded by sovcit weirdos

daemyra 1001 arabian nights scheharazade: wot it sounds like. rhaenyra telling daemon a long story and its like weird and fucked up and horny and she keeps edging him with plot points. DAEMYRA NEUTRAL its honestly more rhaenicent if anything

barbcat parent teach conference + cheating: wot it says on the tin. they were uni roommates back in the day when cat was experimenting with her demons(bisexuality)

jrt: the jeyne robb theon teen pregnancy fic i used to think i might actuallyfinish 💀 i still think about it i just hate writing and i hate not writing but then i write and i hate it. etcetera ad nauseum

untitled danelle x fem!oc: my oc jeyne whent who has a employee/boss relationship with her lady danelle. a little bit totally causes her downfall

wiggles daensa: i was nostalgic about the wiggles for a couple days and went insane thinking about children's entertainer dany + sansa who got parentified and babysits rickon and robin and theyre obsessed with dany from the tv

various theon threads:

living in a share house with some other northern kids. theon isnt even on the lease he's the asshole dipshit boyfriend even though he's essentially another roommate who showers too long and doesnt wash his dishes

a high school au (i know) but its mostly theon trying to convince robb to fuck in his parents' bed for

asha as theon's legal guardian :)

lovecraftian au where robb is a 1930s noir detective (recently divorced by his ex-wife jeyne for being Too Dedicated To His Job) and he's contacted by asha after theon goes missing. turns out theon is a lovecraftian monster and is being used by euron/ramsay for evil deeds

mafia au but instead of being sexy bdsm its robb accidentlly visiting a greyjoy money laundering restaurant where theon is the only employee and even though theon is the WORST server robb keeps coming. and the food is all just frozen lasagne that theon heats up in the microwave btw and the coffee tastes like ass

this is actually so hard to compile cos i have horrific paranoia and cant stand labelling my docs anything incriminating like "lesbian fanfiction" so i have to decipher what the fuck i meant by

and the body of the doc is two paragraphs of dialogue my brain was tormenting me with and the ages of the characters. do you know how hard it is to figure out what the fuck i was trying to write when the mock up draft is entirely this:

^ this and also more penis puns. but i think ditlo is day in the life and cat is cat but idfk what the sta is for. it could be fucking anything. i think i was gonna queerbait barbcat in this so it cant even be a ship????

[kiss2012]

i love the scheharazade job forever and ever it’s one of my top episodes but i will ALWAYS ignore that stupid twist at the end and nate u will die for being mean to hardison

[arkholt]

Milt Caniff on cliffhangers

From The Comics Journal 108, May 1986:

SABA: I noticed one of the new developments in comics: some people are trying to take an aspect of what you do, but to push it the other way. And I think the primary thing that makes vote the top of your field is your ability to tell a story. People are taking that kind of narration that you helped to make possible, through your techniques, and they want to do graphic novels now--start with a beginning, a middle, and an end, as opposed to a strip that goes on and on and on. Would you have ever wanted to do that? CANIFF: Oh, I do it every day. I do six novels a year. The difference is that there's a carefully contrived umbilical between the end of one of my stories and the next, so that the audience doesn't get turned away. When you say "The End," then lots of people take you to your word, and that's the end of it and you. And, my trick is to hold you from the end of one story to the beginning of another. It's a trick, a technique, that's as old as Scheharazade again, because that's exactly what she did. Just before the end of the story, she would say, "Oh, well, tomorrow...," and so on.

...

CANIFF: ...when I first started in this whole thing, the New York News people suggested that I write to Harold Gray and to Chet Gould, who at that point had just ascended. They had become widely read. I was supposed to ask if they could offer me any advice. I wouldn't have done this on my own, by the way. Not that didn't highly respect them, but I didn't want them to feel obligated, and I didn't want to feel obligated to them. But I did because the editor suggested it. Harold Gray said something that was so pertinent: he said that each day you tell a little of what happened yesterday, and tell something of what's going on now, and then tease them into reading tomorrow's strip. But always a little new, a little old, and a little maybe. Very good advice. And he used this, because nothing in his drawing ever gave him the chance that I have of shooting all around the character with the telephone and so on. It was always the same drawing, more or less. But his storytelling was so skilled that he was able to hold you to Orphan Annie. If you became an addict, you were hooked.

https://notes.arkholt.com/pubs/thecomicsjournal/tcj-108-may-1986/milt-caniff-cliffhangers

[fiddles-ifs]

hi lovely, i’ve played through a couple times lately and i noticed that the scene where nazeri stitches up the tracker’s back has disappeared, but the later comment that they should know about tracker’s injuries when checking them over after the night in the forest is still there. not sure if that’s helpful at all! am loving greenwarden so far 💖

Weird!! It should still be an option to have Nazeri patch you picked certain weapons/methods of dispatch. I’ll check it out and hopefully fix whatever’s causing the issue!

[cerberus-writes]

hello cer, i hope this isn’t a terribly silly question. i was wondering how you pronounce cer, so that we may all say it correctly. is it like “sir/ser” or like the new zealand term “chur” or is the c a hard c or is it something different again to that? i want to make sure i’m saying it right in my head. i hope you’re having a good evening 🤠

hdjHFJDG god the combination of these two rly made me laugh

It is indeed short for cerberus !! I tend to pronounce it with the soft C, so more similar to sir/ser.

[thedreadvampy]

I've got UDAD and @lifetheuniverseandnothing I believe has both UDAD and OATIS (which he was looking to sell a while back but I don't think he did)

I don't think the band made one for HNOC because after Jonny spent a whole Fringe run frantically bookbinding for UDAD it was clear it wasn't tenable for the size of the audience. But they're cute, they collate lyrics and fiction in the universe (the OUATIS one also republishes, with permission, a story I wrote about Scheharazade, which made me a bit happy)

This question might be a bit difficult to find the answer to, but do the mods know what the book mentioned as the ₤100 reward on the OUAT(IS) indiegogo looked/was like?

Huh! I actually don't! This has never occurred to me...!

Assuming you mean this....!

The only people I could imagine know this would be @wickedace, (sorry for the ping) or similarly old fans

Anyway! Going to maintag this, in case someone who would know (and has access to said book, perhaps, for photos) will see

[diarygirls]

7, 17, 27, 57 💌

7 - punisher - phoebe bridgers

17 - hard feelings/loveless - lorde

27 - graceland too - phoebe bridgers

57 - lover’s spit - broken social scene 

💗💖 ty!!

[nickandros]

11, 19 ❣️

11. something you want to do again next year: there's the obvious stuff like crate day and christmas dinner but i'd also really liked the one time we had an "old hollywood movie club" night and would love to do that again and more regularly next year

19. what is something you are excited for next year: weirdly, going back to uni. on a more normal note, i'm very excited to start my swimming membership at the pool by my work, because that's one of my favourite ways to exercise.

[beholdingslut]

you just discovered you can queue an album on spotify... incredible......... i’m technologically illiterate and i can’t believe this is a new discovery for you... love you, what the fuck

society has evolved past the need for claire to come into my ask box and mock me every second day

[medeae]

17, 24, 46 ❣️

17. What’s your favourite thing about academia?

learning at things from a new perspective. it’s one thing to read a text and appreciate it for what it is but another to look it from a specific lens or with a context in mind... i think i like learning and exploring.

24. Best book you’ve had to read for a course?

Naguib Mahfouz, Midaq Alley! That book really made me feel a lot of intangible things... and got me thinking about space and liminality. I think it started my interest in academia.

46. How do you study?

i sort my texts out by theme and re-read them with the themes in mind! throughout the semester I try to review my notes weekly and sort them with lots of bullet points in onenote, it really helps me.

[fieldsofbone]

scheharazade replied to your post: people are always surprised when i tell them my...

i wanna see ur nonstraightened hair om f g

omg it’s a MESS; it’s been tamed over the years because i think the constant straightening has caused it to straighten over time but here’s a pic where i look terrible but my hair was relatively decent so i wanted to document it before i ironed it lol

[santapescadora]

☼ xxxxxxxxxxxxx

(if you don’t know yet, claire is the love of my life and her poetry is wonderful.)

gold rimmed eyes provoking the sunshe drinks river water and dinesripe oranges she stole. her rings,her cards, her fresh incenseand her favorite flower seeds bornein an ivory box locked with a kiss.she travels the world through sunsetssings to births and howlswhen facing death, promises the windto keep all these so very tragic, so very human stories alive.

(send me a  ☼ & i’ll write a poem line based on your blog)CLOSED FOR NOW

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Hear me

Follow this calling

I know you see me, fear me

But try to believe me

Hid away, your longing will only grow

And you'll only grow older

[alby-rei]

Oh my heart 🥺🥺💕💕 how soft snd sweet this is!!

The Tyger

Pairings: Nobunaga x Reader

Words: 990+

Comments: Eeeeeeeek SECRET SANTA TIMEEEEE and my sweet victim this time around was @mineko811!!!! ❤☺heheeh love you lots lil mineko! ❤☺You are such a kind sweetheart and I am honoured to be your secret Santa! I hope you enjoy this cutie! 😳😳😳😳

Note: The poem in the story is called The Tyger by William Blake

.*:・’ﾟ:｡.*:ﾟ･’ﾟﾟ:。’ .*:・’ﾟ:｡.*:ﾟ･’ﾟﾟ:。’･ﾟ｡.*:・’ﾟ: ｡.*:・’ﾟ:｡.*:ﾟ･’ﾟﾟ:。’

You called for me?" You sighed out in exasperation as you slipped open the paper doors of the tenshu without so much of a knock.

Crossing the threshold of the door, you smiled and shook your head, remembering the first time the man had called for you. Back then, back when you were new, back when you were still very much sceptical as to whether you had truly slipped through the cracks of time. Truly, it felt like yesterday that you were summoned from your new room moments after the incident with the one-eyed, lead feet trudging up the stairs while hands squeezed tightly. How different you were now to the past that called out meekly, if not with a tinge of irritation to the unknown. That night had not been particularly eventful; however, you did manage to learn two critical pieces of information. One: the great Nobunaga had trouble sleeping and had absolutely no shame about waking the entire castle staff for his entertainment, and two: he was similar to a child when it came to bedtimes.

Lazing on his futon, blood eyes watched you with amusement as you entered, moving around the room with graceful purpose. He waited patiently for you, knowing the little routine the two of you fell into, off by heart.

First, you would quietly heat some milk— green tea for yourself, because only the power of caffeine would keep you from smacking him for robbing you of your slumber.

Next, you'd crack open the windows and the balcony door— the first time you did this, mistrustful eyes watched but dared not disrupt, as the dagger beneath his pillow was kept close.

Scour the massive book collection the man kept in the corner of his room, only to sigh out and finally make your way to his bedside was next— honestly, you still didn't know why you even looked. Perhaps it was the same reason people would visit their fridge multiple times a day, even though the contents remained unchanged.

While Nobunaga would never admit it, he loved the next part of your ritual. There was just something about the simple act of being tucked into bed. The way you gently secured the heavy blankets around him; it made him feel safe and warm, like nothing in the world would be able to get near him.

What entertaining story shall my fireball bestow upon me tonight?" Glimmering eyes peeked out from the blanket that had been pulled up to his chin.

You had to admit, after month three of storytelling, you were starting to run on empty with your mental archive. Pounding for a moment, your eyes drifted around the room for some much-needed inspiration, that is when you saw it— or rather didn't. The glowing pearl in the endless sea of black was missing. The night was darker than usual, bringing about a whole new train of thought as the breeze caressed your cheek. A new moon, and by your estimation, the first new moon of the new year— that could only mean one thing.

"No story tonight, sorry," you said curtly, although betrayed by the wrinkles of your mouth as your gaze remained on the night sky.

A huff of air could be heard coming from the lump beside you. You didn't even need to turn to know that his brows had pulled together and eyes had narrowed while his mouth remained in a razor-thin line, "well there are other ways to tire-"

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" you recited softly, cutting off whatever ridiculous suggestion he was about to propose.

Seemingly satisfied, Nobunaga hushed and settled back down with a childlike smile.

"In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?"

He hung on to your every word, absorbing it as he held his breath with every beat of the poem. His eyes never left your glowing silhouette. While you, on the other hand, were far, far, far away, drifting off in the empty space.

"When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

Once the poem was done, the room fell into silence once more. After a moment or two, your eyes finally turned from the infinite space, pulled back down to the earth, back to your whole world, back to Nobunaga.

Threading your long boney fingers through his raven trusses— careful to avoid his ears— cause heaven only knows the kind of trouble you would be in if you enacted the declaration of war. Last it ended with a floor full of feathers and an earful from brother mother— Nobunaga, for making a mess, and you, for striking his lord with a pillow.

Nobunaga's eyes had long since fluttered closed, allowing himself to enjoy the soft movements of your fingers against his scalp. Truly he enjoyed these small intimate moments far more than he ever cared to admit. It was still beyond him how a simple woman could break down every wall he had spent since childhood constructing and become such an intricate part of his life.

"Sleep now, and may the year of the tiger be filled with an abundance of blessings," you whispered against his forehead, leaving him with a kiss from lady luck before making your own way to the land of slumber.