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mejomonster · 2 years ago

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Silent Reading. So, last time I read around half. This time I'm starting from beginning. Justice in the Dark indicates Pei Su is doing a side investigation (likely about his mom, or who hit his dad in the car accident, or who's trying to kill him now). To a degree, i wonder if in retrospect in the novel if Fei Du partially (or totally but I'm inclined to believe his general warmth for Tao Ran is real) starts "seriously pursuing" Tao Ran because it's an in to the police.

It's also, on a personal relationship level, an olive branch to get closer to Luo Wenzhou by proxy of social connections. It gives him an excuse to reunite "the whole family" instead of just him and Tao Ran, since Luos relationship with him is indicated to have been strained for a While when the novel starts. If Tao Ran is "with" Fei Du, then Fei Du can see Luo as a "brother in law" and run into him. If he IS still concerned about Luos well being he can disguise it with caring about Tao Ran and by extension Tao Rans loved ones. He can see if Luo is in a state to make any kind of amends or if he's still a stubborn asshole who abandoned Fei Du and didn't believe him/didn't do what Fei Du needed him to as a child.

In the show Justice in the Dark, Pei Su is absolutely using the Tao Ze crush at least partly to compete with Luo. Whether it's revenge (I fuck up your life for leaving me), proof he's an adult At Luos level now (I can do anything you can have anything you want you NEED to take me seriously and you stopping me from my investigation and doubting my suspicions cause I was "younger" is bullshit), an attempt to get his attention again (on some level wanting one of the other people besides Tao Ze who he views as warm family to make amends), and/or simply copying Luo as he attempts his act of being a normal ordinary charming guy instead of just the monster he's scared he is (he mirrors and copies Luo so much it wouldn't surprise me he'd make the jump that a warm sincere relationship is more Normal and he wants to be and feel Normal and LUO crushes on Tao Ze and takes X actions, and Tao Ze is the safest person Pei Su knows to emotionally open up to now that Luos cold with him so why not just copy Luo and try to date Tao Ze? Why not flirt the same while he's at it, to show off how much better he is at it - how he's their equal now instead of their 'kid' - by showering Tao Ze lavishly with the same caretaking and I'm So Hot Cool that Luo attempts with Tao but cranked up to 11).

Well in the book. Fei Du does seem to be pursuing Tao Ran with at least some emotional intent (at least I think it's not all motivated by trying to get police info - Tao Ran IS his last safe family like person to be open to besides his therapist who he can trust but not love, he does love Tao Ran, and Luo IS gone with their falling out, so Tao Ran as an object of pursuit makes sense). But I do think there's a level of planning to it that indicates to me maybe, just maybe. He did have additional motives.

Quote:

I’m solemnly and earnestly pursuing a wife,” Fei Du said carelessly. “Is it suitable to play around while I pursue? It doesn’t show quality.”

Zhang Donglai looked at his shirt and long hair blowing in the night wind. Aside from dissipation, he really couldn’t think what other quality Fei Du might have. He quickly went after him and said, “You’re crazy. Ignoring the whole lush forest to go after one old, poor…”

Fei Du suddenly turned his head and looked coldly at Zhang Donglai.

There was something peculiarly contradictory about his manner. Smiling, he was full of flirtation, but as soon as his face turned serious, this keen, solemn feeling would seamlessly take over. His gaze was almost menacing.

Given that he's a playboy entirely before he starts pursuing Tao Ran sincerely. And the poem he sends Tao Ran in the first flirt scene IS sweet, but? It sort of sounds like a depth of emotional vulnerability I don't think Fei Du actually feels comfortable showing anyone. It's pretty words, but if pushed? If Tao Ran wasn't a "safe" crush that was straight and unlikely to flirt back or escalate the relationship.

If Tao Ran wasn't a nice "potential" where Fei Du can fantasize about intimacy and enjoy the chase and dream of being with this man who's his found family forever? It wouldn't work. Fei Du wouldn't know what to do if Tao Ran said "i like men. I like you. Can I kiss you?" At the end of a date. It would mean their stable Safe relationship would change to romantic, and dating is unstable, people break up all the time and can't become emotionally close the same again, and people during dating are challenged to open up emotionally more than they did before getting romantic (sometimes) and Fei Du has never shared the darker parts of himself with Tao Ran like he did with Luo. And he "lost" Luo when Luo saw those parts of him. And Fei Du would be terrified to lose Tao Ran too.

So it's very VERY convenient it's a crush on a totally straight man unswayed by Fei Du being one of the hottest people in town, a straight man who Luo Wenzhou already is "more equal to" in terms of age and profession and if he Was gay Tao Ran would Probably consider dating Luo first. And Luos so aggressively territorial OVER Tao Ran that the competitive aspect makes Tao Ran less likely to give Fei Du even a one serious consideration shot, because Luo rarely would give Tao Ran the chance, because Tao Ran would be hounded by Luo to give Luo a chance too. Basically it's a crush on an unavailable man. A safe potential, not a person he'd actually be able to handle deeply being with romantically.

Quote:

"The wind is strong, my hands and feet are frozen through, yet my heart is warm. But I don’t know why, there is always a softness in my heart. I want to be beside you, just on the point of sadness.”

“It’s signed ‘Fei,’” said Lang Qiao. “Fei who?”

Tao Ran snatched it back. “Don’t fool around. Give that to me.”

“After all that fuss, it’s just from your girlfriend. Here I was thinking Chief Luo was publicly confessing his feelings for you.”

You know, to be fair to Fei Du. 1. Who knows how much he is self aware he's crushing on Tao Ran partly because is IS unavailable and not a real option. Lots of people crush on tons of unavailable people because people who will leave you are predictable, "safe" and to actually date someone who loves you back can be scary cause it's new and you can't control if they hurt you or are safe until you find out. At least thats what the psychology articles I read say about it. I certainly find it to be true with some people. 2. The poem does fit his emotions well, I'm just not sure it's "my Husband Tao Ran" hes really wanting. His environment is cold (correct), his heart is warm (there is kindness in fei du we see it in him helping friends, helping He Zongyis mom, his care about Tao Ran is genuine, there IS a warmth in Fei Du fighting desperately to be good and make a safe warm life for himself different than the growing up with his father he had and the pain of the grief hes still carrying and the fear he has desires to be cruel and may act on them). "I don't know why, there is always a softness in my heart" a weakness to be not like my dad or open up and I'm afraid but it's a kind soft fear. "I want to be beside you" he does Desperately want Tao Ran to remain in his life, thats true. Tao Ran (especially with the Luo fall out) is the only true family like person he has in his life, he does very much fear Tao Ran leaving him for a wife and kids and new "family" Fei Du isn't potentially part of (another reason that's not romantic love to pursue dating Tao - it may scare off pursuers of Tao and keep their little family unit the same for a little while longer). "Just on the point of sadness." Sadness of what? Could be many things. Sadness he fears if he is with Tao Ran romantically completely, that Tao Ran would leave him (see the monster and grieving and cruelty and pain and break up, see the refusal to open up and the more negative traits Luo has seen but Tao Ran is largely shielded from since Fei Du tries to be his best self around Tao). Then his family would be gone. Sadness that he wants to be beside Tao Ran for life but knows it won't be forever, and that's frightening that he may lose Tao Ran again to another family or lover someday. To the point of sadness could be... generally his fear that he wants Tao Ran so badly in his life, to remain in it forever, but he thinks Tao Ran won't. He's afraid of losing him. Losing him just by nature of being his whole self as Fei Du and that eventually being rejected, or losing him to Tao Rans own life changing.

#rant #silent reading #justice in the dark #lb #meta

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thesporkidentity · 8 months ago

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Two poems today. Partly because I have far, far too many favorites to ever hope to fit them into a single month, but mostly because the one always makes me think of the other despite their differences, almost like a conversation despite how long apart they were published, and by different people. Don’t worry, they’re not too long lol

In Blackwater Woods

By Mary Oliver (1935-2019), Published 1983

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,

the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders

of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is

nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world

you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Instructions on Not Giving Up

By Ada Limón (1976- ), Published 2017

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

#poetry

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smkkbert · 4 years ago

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Time for a story - Elseworlds

Felicity glanced at her watch before she looked down the street once more. Since Oliver’s car was still nowhere to be found, she pulled her phone from the pocket of her coat. Oliver hadn’t left her a message either, so she hoped that was a good sign. He should have been here fifteen minutes ago already.

Oliver was just still incredibly overworked, he had been since the earthquake really. It almost felt like the more time passed and the calmer everything got, the more Oliver had to do. As the mayor, there were just too many things to take care of, but Felicity refused to believe that he was skipping this appointment she had personally added to every schedule he was keeping.

Being the mayor was a job that Oliver took very thoroughly. He loved his job, and he knew the responsibility that had come with running for mayor. So far, Oliver had never forgotten that being a father had brought its own responsibilities to his life. With all the pressure that had been put on him in the last weeks, maybe he needed a reminder though. Felicity knew that, if he was too late to see Tommy reciting a poem, he had written himself.

Just when Felicity had decided to call him, she felt a familiar prickling in the back of her neck. She pushed her phone away even before she turned away. She wasn’t at all surprised to find Oliver hurrying towards her with an already apologetic expression on his face.

“Hi,” he said and pecked her lips briefly, “sorry for being late. Since the earthquake, it feels like hell has been breaking loose at City Hall.”

“I know,” Felicity told him, putting her hands on his chest and rubbing them up and down soothingly, “don’t worry about it. You are here now and that is still completely in time which, as we both know, is not too rarely different.”

Oliver hummed in agreement. He looked a little tired, but it was far from as bad as it had looked a couple of days ago when she had picked him up from work in the middle of the night. He was still working a lot, but he wasn’t as emotionally exhausted as he had been at first.

“Did you get some things done at least?” Felicity asked him, grabbing his tie and loosening it, so she could pull it over his head and push it into her purse. “Yesterday you said it felt like the more you work, the more new piles of papers are being dropped on your desk. Still that bad?”

“Kind of,” Oliver replied with a sigh that soon turned into a chuckle, “but I have increased the number of members on the crisis committee to ease the work load for me a little bit.”

“Sounds like a smart idea.” Felicity smiled innocently, unbuttoning the topmost button of Oliver’s shirt and moving her hand beneath the fabric. “Yours?”

Oliver wrapped his arms around Felicity’s waist and leaned closer to her. His eyes were sparkling with amusement. He knew as well as she did that she had been the one to push him towards this idea. She had recommended an article about baseball to him, but had – absolutely by accident of course – dropped the newspaper into his lap with the wrong page on top. Hence, he had read an article about professionally organizing worksharing instead.

“A lucky coincidence made happened by my wife did,” Oliver replied and nuzzled her nose with his playfully, “luckily.”

Felicity chuckled. She had done her best to play innocent, but of course Oliver had looked right through her from the start. He had known that Felicity wouldn’t have recommended an article about baseball to him. She wouldn’t have read it in the first place. It had been a sure sign to know that she was trying to give him a sign for something. Oliver had accepted it gladly.

Still smiling, Oliver leaned in. He closed the distance between his lips and Felicity’s, kissing her gently. Felicity sighed against his lips. He hands moved into his short hair, scratching the back of his neck slightly. The feeling made Oliver hum and deepen the kiss for a moment.

Soon, Felicity angled her head back to break the kiss though. She scrunched up her nose, not exactly happy about her actions, but she had had her reasons.

“We should go inside,” she suggested, nodding towards the entrance, “or we will be too late after all.”

Oliver nodded his head in agreement. With their fingers laced, they walked towards the entrance. Oliver payed for the tickets, giving them an extra eighteen dollar to the two dollar they had to pay.

“How was your day?” he asked while they were walking to the auditorium and lifted her hand to his lips to kiss the back of it. “Today was the first day that Ms. Ngata has worked for you, right?”

“Yes,” Felicity replied, not at all surprised that Oliver even remembered the name of the woman she had hired last week, “and she is even better than what I have thought. If there have been any doubts before – and there really haven’t been any to be honest – there are non left now. The few hours she spent at QI today just proved that she is exactly where she is supposed to be.”

“Sounds great.”

“It absolutely is.” Felicity smiled. “You know how picky I can be when it comes to new employees, but she is so great and-“

Felicity fell silent when they entered the auditorium. With the way Oliver’s fingers tightened around her, she knew that he was getting the same impression from the sight they were met with. Given that the performances of Tommy’s class were starting in barely some minutes, there were little to no parents around. Felicity counted quickly. Aside from her and Oliver, there were only seven parents more there. Tommy’s class counted 22 students though.

“Sad,” Oliver whispered, “really, really sad.”

Felicity nodded her head. “Indeed.”

Hand in hand, Oliver walked down the aisle between the seats and took some seats in the front row. Since the spots were free and they weren’t likely to be taken within the next minutes, Oliver and Felicity guessed it was okay. Usually, they avoided the front row because they were convinced that those seats belonged to the parents that either didn’t get a chance to see their kids to often or the parents whose kids just needed to see their parents to feel safe while talking in front of an audience.

Once they were seated, Oliver leaned a little closer to her. Felicity got what he was trying to do and leaned closer towards him too.

“It’s terrible for the kids,” Oliver whispered, “to be here and present something, but not have any parent around.”

“We will be extra attentive today.”

“And we will applaud for twenty people.”

Felicity nodded her head once more, shooting a look around. A lot of kids didn’t even have one parent around tonight. She almost felt guilty that she and Oliver had both come. Tommy had both of his parents here, while others didn’t even have a single one here.

“I guess some parents didn’t have a chance to come,” Oliver whispered, “long hours of work, the wrong shift or no money left to even pay the two dollars to attend.”

Again, Felicity just nodded her head. She felt her heart skipping a beat. It was partly from empathy and partly from memory. With how much time she had to be a mother, she sometimes forgot how little time her mother had had to be a mother. She knew that her kids missed her sometimes because she did allow herself to work a lot, but they were more than privileged compared to other kids, including Felicity herself.

With a low sigh, Felicity rested her head against Oliver’s shoulder. He could feel that she was going to say something personal. He rested his lips against the crown of her head and tightened his hold on her fingers. It was his wordless way of telling her that she could share everything with him. He was there to listen, and he would understand. There had to be no secrets between them.

“My mom had to work a lot when I was a kid,” Felicity started, knowing that this was not new to Oliver at all, “so she could barely ever make it to any school events.”

Felicity remembered how often she had been disappointed when she had asked her mother to come to some event, and she hadn’t been able to because her shift hadn’t allowed it. Eventually, she had grown older, and for some reason she had become ashamed of what her mother had been doing and what she had looked like. Felicity couldn’t remember when that had started, but it had eventually caused her to feel relieved when her mother hadn’t been able to attend any events at school.

“When she couldn’t make it,” Felicity continued, pushing all other thoughts away, “she always made sure that someone came, so that I had at least one familiar face around. Sometimes it was a neighbor, other times one of her colleagues. The barkeeper was there a lot of times.”

As a kid, Felicity hadn’t been able to understand that her mother had only been doing what she had needed to do. She had felt betrayed and left alone when her mother hadn’t come. She had thought that she didn’t love her like so many other parents had loved their kids. They had come together, as a couple, and her mother, who she had felt had chased her dad away, hadn’t come.

Once more Felicity realized how hard she must have been on her mother. She had done her best to bring the family through after Noah had left. She had taken all the blame Felicity had put on her, and she hadn’t held it against her once.

“She did her best, so I wouldn’t feel alone.”

“That is because she is a good mother,” Oliver whispered, “and I am sure that you got that from her.”

Felicity smiled at him and leaned over. Her lips brushed against his briefly. When she pulled back, she cocked her head at him.

“And you?” she asked. “What was it like for you when there were any school events?”

Oliver shrugged his shoulders, but he lowered his gaze. As indifferent as he wanted to appear, Felicity could look like through it. He knew that because he knew how well she knew him.

“My parents were often busy too,” Oliver replied with a sigh, “my dad was at the company, and my mom was either home with Thea or spending time on one of her charity things. They usually tried to make sure that one of them could be there, but sometimes, when neither of them could make it, Raisa came.”

Unlike most kids, Oliver didn’t seem at all disappointed. He had always loved Raisa, and she had always been like a second mother to him. She had been the one to be there when he had fallen in the garden and hurt his knees. She had been the one to bake cookies for him to comfort him. She had been the one to see right through his pubertal nonsense and given advice.

“We had good parents,” Felicity whispered, “at least when it came to that.”

Oliver nodded his head. He lifted her hand to his lip once more and brushed them against the back of her hand. When he turned his head towards her, he had his eyes narrowed at her slightly. His lips were spread to a slight smile though.

“Have you taken part in any school plays?” He narrowed his eyes even more. “You never told me that.”

“I have been singing a couple of times,” Felicity admitted, quickly looking away, “but it hasn’t been exactly often, and I only did so because some others told me to. It stopped in puberty when I was years longer than everyone else in my class.”

Oliver puckered his lips. “Are there any videos of that?”

Although he tried to look very casual, Felicity could see right through him. She knew that he didn’t really mean it. He had some seconds thoughts about this, and Felicity already got an idea what exactly it was that was on his mind.

“None that you will find,” she told him, making quite sure that he knew how serious she was about that although she was only whispering, “and you know how great I am at hiding things that I don’t want you to see.”

Oliver chuckled. “Oh, yes, I know about that.”

Looking at him, Felicity could see that he really meant it. He knew how well she was at hiding things that should be possible to be found online or through any other computer possibilities. Oliver, no matter how skilled he was at the computer – he liked to hide it, but he was quite great at it – would never be able to find it.

“And you?” Felicity asked. “What did you do?”

“Whatever I liked to do,” Oliver replied easily, shrugging his shoulders like it wasn’t a big thing at all, “I mean I did get to play the Romeo when I was six for example.”

Felicity perked up a single eyebrow. “And what did you pay for playing that role?”

“Not much.” Oliver cleared his throat slightly. “I promised Christina McLordy, who played the Juliet, to be with her for the two months that followed. It was a small price to pay. She was actually kind of pretty.”

Felicity looked at Oliver incredulously, but he just shrugged his shoulders and grinned to himself. It was his usual way of dealing with things that he didn’t really want to deal with or things he was at least slightly embarrassed about.

Snorting, Felicity just shook her head. “Oliver Queen, prostituting himself since he has been six years old. Why am I not surprised?”

Oliver just chuckled. He took her hand and squeezed it. When Felicity looked at him, she found his eyes on her already. She could see the silent question in his eyes, the question whether he had finally told her something about himself that was too much to take or that angered her or hurt her. Of course, after everything Felicity knew about Oliver, there was nothing she could think of that could possibly be too much for her or something she wouldn’t be able to understand. Hence, she squeezed his hand right back and smiled at him.

With a sigh that held a little bit of relief, Oliver turned his eyes back towards the different rows of seats. A few more parents had come, maybe three more. It was still a sad picture, but at least it was better than nothing Felicity guessed.

“I guess in a perfect world it would be different.”

Felicity nodded her head. “Elseworlds, parents are always able to attend an occasion like this.”

“And they love to do it.”

“Because they love their children, and they get paid leave for the rare hours.”

“That would certainly make for a better world.”

“And a more peaceful generation of kids growing up,” Felicity added with a low sigh, “because kids that grow up feeling loved and appreciated often don’t feel the need to go around and bully others or hurt them. I think the number of crimes would decrease.”

“I could be put out of both of my jobs and be a stay-at-home dad again.”

Felicity cocked her head, a little bit surprised about the way Oliver’s voice sounded so nostalgic. She knew how much he had enjoyed to stay home with the kids, taking care of them every minute of the day. After the long time he had spent far away from home, thinking he’d never make it home and would never have a family of his own, he had wanted nothing more than to be the best parent he could be.

Maybe he missed that now that he didn’t have that much time with his kids because of all the work that had been pushed onto him lately.

Putting her hand to Oliver’s thigh, she made him look at her and said, “I might have to talk to the mayor about making Starling City a part of Elseworld.”

Oliver chuckled. “I doubt that I have that much power.”

With a low sigh, Oliver gave away that he really didn’t like to admit that. He was doing so much, but he always wanted to do more. For him, it was never enough. He wanted the world to be the fairest and safest place possible. He hadn’t gotten to know it like that, and even their kids weren’t getting to know their home like that. The world continued to be a dangerous place.

Felicity lifted a hand to the side of his face and pulled his face a little closer to her. Straightening up in her seat, she brushed her lips against his jaw then.

“You are doing a lot already.”

Oliver smiled sadly. He didn’t have to say it for her to know what he was thinking. It just wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

There was no time to further discuss this though. The lights in the auditorium went out. A single spotlight was directed at the stage. A young girl with long Rastas was stepping to the microphone. Felicity could see her eyes skimming the few people in the audience, and her eyes lost a little bit of their light when she didn’t find the person she had hoped for and saw some other parents play on their phones.

When her eyes met Felicity’s, Felicity flashed her a wide smile. She lifted a hand and waved at her, trying to give her the feeling that she was here just for her right now. The girl smiled, waved back and took in a deep breath.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” she said, “welcome to the show tonight. You can expect dramatic drama presentations, poetic poem recitations and musical music contents.”

Felicity chuckled softly, and the girl’s smile brightened even more. It was incredible to see how a little attention and a warm smile could achieve so much.

“All money that will be earned today is going to be given to charitable societies to support the people in need after the earthquake.”

Felicity shot Oliver a meaningful gaze. Neither of them said a word, but they still agreed on donating some more money today. They kids had put so much effort to this. They shouldn’t be disappointed.

“Now, your first treat of the evening is going to be Thomas Robert Merlyn, and he is going to present a poem to you that he has written himself. Applause for Tommy!”

Tommy, who was usually all shy and hesitant when it came to strangers, stepped onto the stage with a wide smile. When his eyes met Felicity’s, his shoulders straightened even more. Felicity lifter her hand to wave at him, but Tommy rolled his eyes.

“Guess who is starting to get embarrassed at the public showing of affection?”

“Stop that,” Felicity mumbled, “he is nowhere old enough for that.”

Oliver chuckled quietly, so Felicity bumped her elbow into his ribs. Chuckling some more, Oliver grabbed her hand and held it between both of his. It was a wordless offer of peace, and Felicity accepted it willingly.

“My poem’s title is Robin Hood.”

Oliver’s fingers tightened around Felicity’s. She shot him a brief glance, and she could just see how emotional he was about the fact that his son had written a poem that was without any doubt an allusion to him. He had been compared to Robin Hood more often than not, and it was the very reason why the kids loved Robin Hood so much.

“In the dark times of Starling City, / crimes increased in popularity. / To save the people from the crimes / a lot have tried their best at times. / The best has never been enough / and what people learned there of? / Even the best gave up on safety and peace / to everyone’s misery, even the police.”

Tommy had visibly fun although barely anyone listened as attentive as they should. Since Tommy had always been a kid that had liked to be for himself – or alone with his mommy – the lack of audience didn’t seem to bother him much.

“Until finally in the darkest night, / someone took on the fight. / An archer in green leathers / came along with bow and arrows. / He sought the bad ones that failed the city / and with the same energy as Goldberg’s Whoopie, / he took them down to protect the ones in need / taking the crime lords off their feet.”

Oliver leaned a little closer.

“Did you help him with that?”

“Not at all,” Felicity whispered back, shaking her head, “he did this all by himself, maybe with the help of his teacher or his siblings.”

“Not everyone was happy though / even the good wanted the hero to go / because they feared that the hero’s actions / could cause the city to grow even more fractions. / They didn’t want to thank him, / didn’t celebrate his actions as a win. / Still, the hero never stopped to fight, / he always came back in the twilight.”

Once more, Oliver’s hand tightened around Felicity’s hand.

“So the hero continues to save the city and everyone in it, / the feeling of good his only benefit. / He builds a team long the way, / and chases the criminals away – hurray! / He wears a thousand names, / the setting sun his arrival proclaims. / He is known as the Green Arrow now, / a hero he really is – wow.”

Felicity would have loved to applaud for her son, but Oliver was still holding her hand between his fingers. She had to squeeze his fingers tightly for him to realize that he was holding onto her. He let go of her hand quickly and applauded too.

Tommy, who bowed down like he was met with a hurricane of applause rather than the low clapping of hands he really got, met Oliver’s eyes. Oliver didn’t have to say a word for Tommy to know that he was touched by the poem. He knew that it was much appreciated, and that Tommy had to recite it at home a few times too.

“You know, if this is part of Elseworlds too,” Oliver whispered to Felicity when Tommy left the stage, “I think a lot of parents would benefit from it too.”

Felicity nodded her head. “Absolutely.”

And in Elseworlds, Felicity realized as the show went on, all parents stayed until the last child had performed on stage instead of leaving once their own child had performed. Elseworlds, children and their parents were happier. Maybe someday, elseworlds would come to Starling City too.

* * *

@fannaz @promiseyoullbepatientwithme @bytemegeekette @felicity-said-just-in-case @phanseptiic @orangeisorange @mspotatohead14 @whentheheavenfades @emmaamelia95 @smoakingskye @seaolicity @ourwritinginvein @1022bridgetp @felicityqueenforever @leagueofolicity17 @yryssss @myhauntedblacksoul @sherlock44 @sinceriouslybea @olivyflavescentdeer @olicitys-castle @ofnothingcharming @vaelisamaza @smoakedandcharmed @alexisa1206 @florence-bubbles @addictiontelly @queens-of-arrows @memcjo @hysterical-for-joshifer @oswinelevenforever @olicitylovemaking @bandanab310 @mymusiclove101 @lynslogic @scarletqueen23 @olicityshipper19 @alex-wesley @arrows-4ever @unabashedlynerdypatrol @louehmysoul @ligiapimenta @chattyyana @charlie-leau @coal000 @samcrowleys @ishippolivia @julianegomesqueen @malafle @miriam1779 @charlinert @melaux @ontheolicityship @myshipperlife @wrightainsley @lexi9515 @ladygreenwood @multi-fandom-crazy-fangirl @morinamel @mje-thomas @kebarry @canadianheartgirl @nannett2307 @almondblossomme @kathrynelizabeth89 @imdfabulous @mrt2501 @arsipaci14 @salasvia @brandis91 @cainc3 @morganmiguess @pr0fessi0nal-fangurl @iamisalima @nessafrancis-blog @jonhdiggle @niki-is-amazing @universed-posts @hopeful-warrior @senoritaswiftie @bellemmie @green-arrows-of-karamel @iheartarrow @olicityovereverything @oliverfel4 @olicity-in-the-heart @fullychippedcreation @geemarie @everything-but-normal-cat @myarroworld @tjmartinez @pleasantfanandstudent @j69confessional2 @scentedcolorpirate @icanica74 @tjmartinez98 @certainmentalityface @tatianadamaceno @ryelew @wildwillowzepplin @missafairy @letsplaymurde-r @lipizette @positivepiper @nuttymilkshakehologram @laksagirl-blog @turnupthemusicandscream @pumpernickle93 @onceuponanolicity @1106angel @jaspertown @fadinglands @morganashimi83 @mochababychristy @omglovechrissie @mariejr88-blog @thetaufactor @onceuponanolicity @speakandseethetruth @bri206 @aglasgo @geemarie @pineprincess @nerdgirljen @eternal-olicity14 @allyouhadtodowas-stay-stay-stay @lovelycssefan @tsseract @flowerandsunshine @dcnmarvelgamergeek @blondeeoneexox @monetsmark @bb-olicity @mashamarty @rulerofsilence @erika-amber @nothingmorethanmyotps @kayleenyc @tonto16 @olicityfluv @olicitea1990 @haahaaa2408 @pattid1 @faegal04 @24karatgem @wrldtravler @readerkas @olicity-beliver @greencoffeecups @snorlaxishere @sonothappening118

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#arrow #olicity #olicity fic #olicity fanfic #time for a story

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whileiamdying · 4 years ago

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The Heroism of Disobedience and Deceit: Where Is the Friend’s Home?

By Robin Wood

Introduction

Kiarostami’s development has been remarkably swift, each stage marked by radical change. Essentially, he has moved from a traditional ‘realist’ narrative cinema, strongly influenced by Italian neo-realism. through various intermediate stages, to an experimental formalism. The shifts are by no means arbitrary: all his work, of whatever period, exhibits similar basic characteristics of commitment, humanism, integrity, a complex awareness of major issues (social, aesthetic, moral, metaphysical). Understandably, today, it is the recent formalism that is getting most of the attention, and one finds few references to the earlier work. I regard his early films (and especially the ‘Koker’ trilogy) as work of at least equal distinction to anything he has given us since. This essay is an attempt to do justice to one of them, examining it in detail.

One can make a broad distinction between film/novel and film/poem, while remembering that very few films are entirely one or the other. By film/novel I mean a film driven by narrative, the structure of the film being the structure of the story it tells; by film/poem I mean a film in which the image is dominant, a film (one might say) structured upon images, their recurrence, rhythms, their development. Un Chien Andalou, or a film by Brakhage, is a film/poem (though both have affinities with narrative); a film by Howard Hawks is essentially a film/novel, though if one examined it in great detail it might reveal ‘poetic’ elements (repeated motifs, for example, structuring it both narratively or formally). Where Is the Friend’s Home? is essentially a film/novel, but with striking ‘poetic’ motifs adding to its complex structure. Ten, consisting of ten long takes filmed in the interior of an automobile, is with its rigorous structure, a film/poem, though many seem ready to treat it as essentially a formal exercise. Yet it has a clear, and very important, narrative structure: each shot represents the woman driver’s progress towards complete independence. The film is both a formal exercise and a political feminist statement. Perhaps one might claim, in Kiarostami’s work to date, that The Wind Will Carry Us achieves the perfect balance (with no sense of contradiction) between film/novel and film/poem: it is structured both upon a narrative and upon certain recurring motifs and rhythms.

Through the Olive Trees

In case there are readers only partly familiar with Kiarostami’s work, let me explain that the three films of the ‘Koker’ trilogy (‘Koker’ being the name of the village in which the films are set), of which Where Is the Friend’s Home? is the first, move progressively from the dominance of narrative fiction, through quasi-documentary (And Life Goes On…) to the intricate self-reflexivity of Through the Olive Trees (a film about the making of a documentary about the making of And Life Goes On…, but also finding space for a love story with a triumphant happy ending). All three films of the trilogy culminate, at the last minute, in a moment of transcendence, a Kiarostamian celebration: in Where Is the Friend’s Home? a pressed flower is found in a notebook; in And Life Goes On…, a car, after several attempts, succeeds in surmounting a steep hill; in Through the Olive Trees, the young woman (in a longshot so extreme we can barely make her out) apparently accepts at last her devoted suitor’s proposal.

The White Balloon

An earlier film, The White Balloon, directed by Jafar Panahi (now famous for The Circle and Crimson Gold) but scripted by Kiarostami, has clear links with Where Is the Friend’s Home? Both are constructed on a child’s search (for first a goldfish, then for lost money in Panahi’s film, for, obviously, the friend’s home in Kiarostami’s); in both, the child has to survive within an adult world that is at best indifferent, at worst hostile (though the boy of Where Is the Friend’s Home? is much more appealing than the little girl of The White Balloon, who is something of a spoilt brat); both films cover, basically, one day or a few hours in a child’s life (the action of The White Balloon is continuous, Friend’s Home has a coda taking place the next morning); both are constructed on a series of encounters en route. Finally, the white balloon itself is clearly a Kiarostami fingerprint, paralleling the celebratory endings of the three ‘Koker’ films: as with the flower in Where Is the Friend’s Home?, the children are barely aware of it and it means nothing to them – it is simply one balloon in the wares of an itinerant balloon seller – but it is also the center point of the film’s last image, suggesting the film makers’ benediction.

Why were so many films about children made by progressive directors at this stage of Iranian history? It seems plausible that, for many filmmakers, the oppression of children stood in for the oppression of women, any protest against which was tabu within the regime of that period. Panahi, with The Circle,became the leader in defiance of that tabu; Kiarostami (whose films are generally male-centred), held back until Ten, some years later.

Journeys

It has been often noted that Kiarostami’s films almost always take the form of a journey; one might add that the journey also takes the form of a search: in And Life Goes On…, the journey to find the two boys, continuing past the film’s conclusion; in A Taste of Cherry, the journey to find someone who will help the protagonist commit suicide; in Ten, the women’s (perhaps unconscious) search for her social and spiritual freedom. Where Is the Friend’s Home? shares with The Wind Will Carry Us a series of journeys: from Koker to Poshteh on foot (twice there and back, though we are not shown the final journey), the repeated journey by car up and down a hill. The two films also have in common that the journey does not end the search, which is resolved only after the journey has been completed.. Friend’s Home, indeed, appears unique in Kiarostami’s work to date in that the search appears quite fruitless and ends in seemingly hopeless despair. Yet the despair leads to a decision and a culminating miracle (or act of nature), a celebration of moral integrity.

I want to examine the first and third scenes of Where Is the Friend’s Home? in detail, then suggest more succinctly from the rest of the film how the use of recurring imagery and motifs gives it its character of film/poem as well as film/novel. In certain respects the film brings to mind a naturalistic Alice in Wonderland: the celebration of the child’s resilience as he/she wanders from encounter to encounter within a world generally indifferent or overtly hostile.

The credit shot and opening scene

The film’s first shot, over which the credits appear, introduces at once one of the film’s two dominant and pervasive motifs, doors (the other is windows). The film’s poetic structure is built upon the opening and closing of doors and windows, the motifs recurring (separately or in conjunction) in every sequence. Sometimes (as Freud might say) a door is just a door, but in the majority of cases, through the repetition/development of the motif, the doors and windows take on overtones of entrapment/escape, imprisonment/freedom. Perfect, then, that the first thing Kiarostami shows us, in closeup, is a door which is neither open nor quite shut: it is moving slightly on its hinges, its near-closure suggesting imprisonment, its slight movement the possibility of escape. It is the door of the schoolroom, as we gather at once from the noise of children’s voices. Introducing the credits is a statement: ‘The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children presents…’ The irony of this is not at first obvious but becomes so as the opening scene progresses: the schoolroom in which, for the entire opening sequence, we are claustrophobically imprisoned (along with the children) is clearly dedicated to the repression of the children’s intellectual development. A shadow falls over the door: the teacher has arrived.

The interior. The teacher enters the classroom, leaving the door (for a moment) slightly open as he reprimands the class (‘Why all this noise?’). He’s only ‘a few minutes late’ – a fault for which children, only a minute or so later, get severely criticized. He closes the somewhat recalcitrant door, then slams it when it fails to shut. His voice is tense, at once dominating and anxious, his job may be at stake (‘The Principal’s going to complain again’). He closes the window, completing the sense of imprisonment. When a child reports the absence of a pupil he is told not to speak unless spoken to. We are then introduced to Ahmadpour (Ahmad) and the friend, Nehmatzadeh, whose home he will spend most of the film searching for, and to the crux from which the whole of the narrative will develop: Nehmatzadeh has committed the crime of not using his notebook for his homework. The teacher tears up, unread, the pages on which he has done it: the homework may be perfect but it is in the wrong book. Ahmad, in the film’s first closeup, looks worried and sad, Nematzadeh sobs, wiping then hiding his face; the teacher continues to harangue him, never pausing for an answer. A late child arrives from Poshteh (which we learn later is where Nematzadeh lives) and is promptly ordered to close the door, which immediately swings open again. The teacher slams it shut and tells the assembly ‘Boys who come from Poshteh should remember to get up ten minutes earlier and go to bed thirty minutes earlier so as not to fall asleep in class’. He then returns to the interrogation of Nematzadeh, who says that he left the notebook at his cousin’s house. Another boy says that he has the notebook, and the teacher instantly assumes that Nematzadeh was lying. ‘He is my cousin’ says Nematzadeh, at which point the teacher immediately changes the subject: `First you must learn that there are rules for everything’. Ahmad (to his embarrassment) is held up as a model (his notebook is impeccable), and Nehmatzadeh is told he will be expelled if it ever happens again.

I have described this opening scene in what may seem unnecessary detail because it establishes so thoroughly the entire basis of the film: its narrative, its atmosphere, its imagery, but also its continuing relevance, which seems to extend beyond Iran. Does it exaggerate the oppressiveness of what we call education? I would like to think that our educational system today is somewhat more humane and intelligent. On the other hand, I can parallel everything in this scene, and worse, from my own school days, admittedly sixty years ago, and another, more recent, film set in an Arab country (the magnificent Moroccan Mille Mois) also offers close parallels. One wonders how these children learn anything at all beyond How to get the hell out. Our schools today seem reluctant to teach essential values (tolerance and understanding, for example). Just a few years ago, here in Toronto where I live, a schoolboy in a class with an enterprising teacher in which every pupil had been asked to give a presentation on a topical subject invited me to visit the class and talk about gay liberation. I wore a Gay Rights T-shirt for the great occasion, and found I had to be led through the dining area at lunch hour, where I was subjected to everything but a custard pie (perhaps none was available). I don’t think we oh-so-progressive people in the supposedly enlightened West should be too complacent. In an ideal civilization (remote from our own) children would learn at their own speed what they want to learn. This would necessitate a cultured and humane home/family environment (as well as non-oppressive schools and teachers) that is currently unthinkable in a world where everything (including education) hinges on the making of money.

The brief second sequence requires brief comment. We see the boys dash riotously out of school as classes end, their violence and unruliness the product of the constant tension and constraint to which they have been subjected. The moment from which all the remainder of the film develops is given us, characteristically, in long-shot, with no explanatory ‘Look-at-this-it’s-important’ cut-ins: in the rush, Nemadzadeh falls, drops his schoolbag, his books and papers fall out, Ahmad helps pick them up, stuffs them in his own bag, preoccupied with his friend’s injured and bleeding knee. The scene also develops our awareness of the two boys’ sensitivity, setting them somewhat apart from their fellows: they stroke the stabled donkey, another boy teases it. Again, the moment is not underlined, we are left to notice it or not. It helps explain why these two boys are special friends, what attracts them to each other. At the end of the scene the white horse provides a neat visual link to the next sequence: its size and position in the frame closely anticipate the white shirt on the clothesline central to the first shot in Ahmad’s yard. Which leads me to a brief consideration of Kiarostami’s aesthetic sensibility…

Ahmad’s Home

The visual pleasure offered by the lengthy sequence in the family yard counterpoints, but by no means softens, the painfulness and tension of the action. If anything it intensifies it through the contrast. The spacious yard, the pots of flowering plants that line the balcony of the age- and weather-softened house, the perfect whiteness of the sheets hanging on the line to which Kiarostami repeatedly returns, are juxtaposed with the emphasis on constant work, continuous pressure, the impossibility of relaxation.

Throughout the sequence of approximately sixty shots, during which Ahmad (who has discovered that he has brought his friend’s notebook home in his satchel) attempts to explain what has happened and what the issues are to his mother and to persuade her to let him take the notebook to Poshteh, the mother is associated with blue and white, Ahmad with a rusty red (his pullover) and the brown of the house’s architecture, its doors and supports. The mother wears a white apron over a light blue dress; there is a bright blue tub in the background behind the pump where she washes and wrings out clothes (especially the baby’s white diapers). When she moves to the washing line it is covered with blue clothing and white sheets and shirt, and she hangs on it a dark blue sheet; the wet garment she throws at Ahmad at the height of their quarrel is dark blue; when she finally picks up the baby it is dressed in blue, and there is another blue tub in the area behind the baby’s hammock. With the cross-cutting, and the characters crossing each other as they argue, there is a continuous play of blue and the rust red of Ahmad’s pullover, but in general the colors are kept separate, the woman’s space, the boy’s space. The effect is not just aesthetically pleasing, it also underlines their separateness: Ahmad’s mother never really listens to what he is saying, his increasingly desperate efforts to make her understand are wasted.

The soundtrack is brilliantly conceived to intensify the discord. Kiarostami resorts to non-diegetic sound only at the end of the sequence, underlining the moment when Ahmad makes up his mind to defy his mother and escape with the notebook: a drumbeat. Otherwise there are two offscreen sounds, the cries of the baby, the crowing of a cock, creating a continuous and increasing unease and irritation.

The father is only referred to once in the film, and we see him only very briefly at the end; he never speaks. Presumably in the opening sequences he is still at work. Similarly, the aged grandfather, introduced in an early scene in the village, near the beginning of Ahmad’s first journey, is seen again only in the penultimate sequence, sitting propped against a wall, silent. The mother, constantly harassed by the baby’s cries, struggles throughout to get the work done, the diapers washed, the clothes and sheets hung on the line. The aged grandmother offers no assistance and is never asked for it. The family hierarchy is clearly and swiftly established: Ali, the elder son, is privileged, left to do his homework in peace in a quiet upstairs room then sent out to play. Ahmad, as mere second son, is accorded no such respect. Repeatedly told to get on with his homework, he is just as repeatedly interrupted before he can even begin by other orders, chiefly the reiterated order to feed or rock the baby, fetch clean diapers, his homework regarded as of no importance. His heroic status is firmly established in this sequence, the rock on which it is founded his friendship with Nematzadeh, the positive center of his life. His attempts to stand up to his mother and make her listen are already heroic and result only in her telling him to go and buy bread and throwing a wet diaper at him. It is surely refreshing, in our generally (and I’m afraid understandably) cynical and desperate age, to find a filmmaker reaffirming a belief in fundamental human goodness and the power of commitment.

Door and window images, two of each, punctuate this sequence symmetrically. It opens with Ahmad arriving home through the courtyard door, and ends with him rushing out, leaving the door, in his haste, slightly ajar. The two window shots occur roughly equidistantly from the beginning and end of the sequence and are connected both stylistically and thematically: both are static shots (within a sequence containing a considerable amount of camera movement); in both, the window is in the background of the image but central; in both it is shut. In the first (downstairs, when Ahmad is sent indoors for a clean diaper), children outside call to him to come out and play; the second is in his brother’s room, the older boy is finishing his homework, and asks Ahmad to come out and play with him. In both cases Ahmad of course has to refuse.

From closed doors to open windows

I shall not attempt the laborious (and surely tedious) feat of detailing every door and window image in the entire film (sometimes a door really is just a door!), but single out some of those that carry thematic resonance. I’ll take the film’s (and Ahmad’s) four journeys (two from Koker to Poshteh, two back) in order. In general, my argument is that a door ajar suggests the possibility (that may be deceitful) of success, an open door a stronger possibility, a closed door failure or blockage.

Journey 1: Koker to Poshteh. In Poshteh Ahmad encounters Morteza, a boy from the same class, helping his father carry milk containers in through an open door. No, he doesn’t know where Nematzadeh lives, but he knows his cousin Ali Hemmati’s house: ‘There’s a staircase in front and a blue door’. En route, Ahmad finds an old man clearing out broken masonry through his open door, who points him the way to Khanevar (the neighborhood where Nematzadeh lives). There, he finds a door ajar, goes in, leaving the door open behind him (it is visible in the background throughout the ensuing shot), and finds a pair of trousers identical to his friend’s hanging on a washing line. (The abrasive noise of a cat mewing recalls the use of cockcrows in the earlier scene at Ahmad’s home, the discord here perhaps anticipating failure). No one seems to be at home. He knocks repeatedly on a neighboring closed door, opened finally by a sick old woman with her mouth covered. Despite her protests he makes her come with him to help him. A woman has returned, is taking the trousers into the house: she doesn’t know Nematzadeh. She goes in, closing the door behind her.

Ahmad at last finds Hemmati’s house. The door is closed. A neighbor tells Ahmad he’s gone to Koker – left five minutes ago. Abandoning the search for Nematzadeh, Ahmad dashes back the way he came. The journeys and the way they are shot play an important role in the film’s rhythms: for each Kiarostami uses the same stretches of ground, shot from the same angle and camera distance; in each, Ahmad remains in longshot, a tiny figure struggling up a hill or dashing through a small wood.

Journey 2: Poshteh to Koker. Back in Koker Ahmad has the great misfortune to find his grandfather, the film’s most actively unpleasant character (the schoolmaster at least has his anxiety about his position to explain, if not justify, his meanmindedness). The sequence as a whole introduces a whole new thematic dimension, the question of whether or not things were better in the past, and Kiarostami’s treatment of this is remarkably complex. On the one hand the old man represents a grotesquely cruel and immoral past (all in the interests of morality!): he boasts to his pal that he used to beat his son regularly each fortnight whether he’d done anything wrong or not, and he now exploits Ahmad cruelly and irrationally, ordering him to go and buy cigarettes he doesn’t need (he already has plenty), just to make him obey (‘I want the kid to be brought up properly’). However, this is followed by his argument with a clearly exploitive door salesman, who is cajoling people (including the grandfather) to invest in his iron doors (far superior to the old wooden ones). Kiarostami presents him as a modern capitalist entrepreneur, anxious to make a quick buck with inferior (if more permanent) goods.

Just as he is leaving (on horseback), it is revealed that his name is Nematzadeh. Ahmad (understandably) assumes he is his friend’s father, and pursues him (on foot) back to Poshteh, where, when he discovers the rashness of the assumption, a boy tells him ‘There are lots of Nematzadehs around here’).

Journey 3: Koker to Poshteh. By the time Ahmad gets back to Poshteh night has fallen. In the street a window opens – the window of an aged window-maker who knows everyone in the area, including Nematzadeh’s father who ‘…just left, with his son.’ But they will have reached their home now, and he can take Ahmad there. He also knows Ahmad’s father: he made the door for his house… But today, he tells Ahmad, the doors he used to make are being replaced with iron ones. Here Kiarostami develops the past/present theme, with the sense that though something has been gained (Ahmad’s parents don’t beat him, just have no interest in listening to him!), much has been lost in the rush into capitalist exploitation. The old man shows Ahmad the beautiful stained glass windows of his home (‘I built them with my brother’). The next sequence, as they slowly walk the streets (the old window maker cannot walk fast) to Nematzadeh’s home, is punctuated by the beautiful windows of the houses they pass, further instances of the old man’s artistry and craftsmanship. They are (the old man tells Ahmad) rapidly disappearing, replaced by plain modern ones. Old and discouraged, he no longer makes them.

Rising wind, increasing darkness. The old man suddenly finds a flower growing in the gutter, picks it, puts it between the pages of the notebook Ahmad is carrying, though Ahmad, intent on finding the house, seems barely to notice. Rising storm, deep darkness. The old man points out the closed door of Nematzadeh’s home, low down below street level. A horse is pawing violently at the ground. At the last moment Ahmad, really frightened for the first time in the film, draws back, returns to the old man, remembering that he has to buy bread. But of course it is too late. Ahmad goes home.

But, for the only brief scene in the film from which Ahmad is absent, Kiarostami remains behind (so to speak) with the old man. We see him go back into his house, up the stairs, among piles of clothes, building materials. Cut to exterior. The old man comes to the window, closes it, shuts himself in… We are left here with a sense of irremediable loss. The past (as embodied in the film by the grandfather) was even more oppressive and Kiarostami does not sentimentalize it, yet it had room and time for a sense of beauty, craftsmanship, grace: the qualities that the relentless advance, now world-wide, of corporate capitalism is annihilating.

The last two scenes

Ahmad is back at home, a failure. His father, tired and preoccupied after a day’s labor, is fiddling with a transistor radio, paying no attention to whatever else is going on. His grandfather is on a chair propped up against the wall, staring ahead at nothing. Ahmad’s mother tries to get him to eat (her first act of concern for him in the film), but he can’t. He goes to his bedroom, squats on the floor with his schoolbooks open before him. He seems to be copying from one to the other. Suddenly the wooden shutters over the window burst open in the storm, the sheets are blowing wildly on the clothes line, his mother is out struggling to gather them in: the culmination of the film’s door/window imagery. To me, this is among cinema’s great moments. Ahmad is committing a revolutionary act (though this is not entirely clear until the final scene), and nature erupts against corrupted human meanmindedness, celebrating friendship, fidelity, commitment, independence, generosity.

Hence the final scene, where the film comes full circle. We are back in the classroom. The teacher enters, and opens the window. Ahmad is reported absent, Nematzadeh is in despair, head on desk. A boy gets into trouble for helping his father on his farm (should have been doing his homework!). Enter Ahmad. Just in time, he sits down by Nematzadeh, hands over a homework book. It’s the wrong one, but the exchange is swift. The teacher looks at his book (‘Good’), then at Nematzadeh’s (also ‘Good’). And in Nematzadeh’s book is the flower the old window maker put there…

What exactly do we make of this ending? Nothing essential has changed. Ahmad has committed a revolutionary act, but it may not even have been necessary (it seems very unlikely that a mere class teacher would have the power to expel a boy for writing his homework in the wrong book!). The last shot, the flower (clearly a Kiarostami ‘epiphany’) can easily be misconstrued. Kiarostami makes it clear that Ahmad did not put the flower there and, though he may have noticed it, there is no reason to suppose he attached meaning to it or was more than vaguely conscious of it. Nor are we shown Nematzadeh reacting to it: it appears to mean nothing to either boy. I read the flower as a gift from Kiarostami: his blessing on the two boys and on their friendship in a hostile or indifferent world, his celebration of an act which, by conventional moral standards, is ‘cheating’ and dishonesty. It is a moment (not the only one in the film) where I burst into tears whenever I see it. Once, indeed, more embarrassingly, this happened when I lectured on it, after a screening. But I think my students understood…

Robin Wood was a groundbreaking critic and historian of cinema.

#Abbas Kiarostami #عباس کیارستمی #Koker Trilogy #سه‌گانه کوکر #The Criterion Collection #Where is my Friend's house?

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ofmermaidstories · 4 years ago

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Hi! I was wondering, would you have any ideas on how to find a favorite flower? I love flowers but don't actually have a favorite one. My mom's is lily of the valley so I consider that one off limits. I used to say Sakura partly because of it's presence in Japan/anime, but like other flowers, I find it pretty but don't feel like I'm... in love with it. I try looking at flowers, and yea, they're pretty, but I don't feel a connection to any of them that would make it my favorite. I suppose I don't need a favorite flower, but it would be nice to have one 😔

There’s an opening line from Mary Oliver’s poem, Moccasin Flowers, that goes like this:

All my life,

so far,

I have loved

more than one thing,

and your ask made me think of it, lmao, in a tangential way — you are, quite simply, Momo, allowed to like something simply because it is pretty. :’) you don’t need to have meaning attached it, or sentimentality — those things are nice, yes, but sometimes it is easier just to like something because it is lovely; because you like looking at it. my favourite flower are roses; and i like them because they are pretty LMAO. that’s it. :’)) they’re shaped nice and i like the colours they come in sjkdflsdkjfkldjfklsdf (they’re also ridiculously overpriced and a lot of the ones on the market here come from overseas but we won’t get into that in this post!!). it also helps to know, i think, that you are fluid as a person — and ever changing. and the things you love will change too. so, maybe right now you don’t have a favourite flower — that’s okay! One day, maybe, someone random and drunk will give you one; or you’ll pick one, walking home; or you’ll study one for class, and paint a picture you really love it — and then that will be a favourite flower, for a while. The things we love - and the reasons we love them, frivolous and meaningful - just happen! 🍊🌷🌿

#ofmermaidstories-asks #mer plays florist #mer really does know nothing about flowers though LMAO #peachie-talks

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taurusjaehyun · 6 years ago

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best birthday ever // j.jh

♦Pairing: jaehyun x fem reader

♦Other Members/ Characters: Johnny, Taeyong, Yuta, Hendery and Lucas [mentioned]

♦Genre: smut, roommate Jaehyun

♦Warnings: breast and nipple play?, fingering, sex toys, dildo fucking, filming

♦Word count: 6,528

♦Story: Valentine’s meant birthday and a holiday for you and your roommate-slash-good friend, Jaehyun. Usually, if you guys weren’t dating other people, you’d be going out but this year, the snow piled up that you couldn’t leave your shared apartment so you decided to let your precious roommate have his gift at home, which was mainly anything he wanted to do. And it was no secret Jung Jaehyun had always wanted to fuck you.

Note: This was totally spontaneous?? Sorry if its bad sksksk also I suck at summaries. Its almost 4am so this isn’t proofread as always so ignore my mistakes or tell me about it so I can edit sksks. I know this is about Jaehyun’s b-day and it’s sooo late already but whatever!! Better late than never!! I hope yall like it and enjoy!!!!

“So, what do you want for your birthday? It can be anything.” You spoke, eyes stuck to your phone as you texted your friend from work, “It can be cash, a favor, something personal….” You trailed as you peeked at your roommate Jaehyun, who was resting his head on your lap, watching a compilation of funny babies on youtube. You both were in your bed because Jaehyun liked the smell of your room better than his, or so he says. “I can also cook you something. The snow is literally piling up outside so I don’t know if we’ll be able to go out.”

Jaehyun paused his texting and looked up at you, pondering. “Hmmm...”

“You can’t have sex with me, though.” You laughed. It was a joke running joke between the two of your for years now. It was no secret that Jaehyun had always wanted to fuck you but you always denied him, because you loved him—as a friend, of course but you couldn’t deny you’ve wanted to have sex with him at least once.

You met Jaehyun back in university, at freshman orientation. But the two of you had gotten close after you officially met each other in your universities Poetry Club and bonded over poetry—naturally. The two of you would read the poems you wrote to each other, much to the other girls’ jealousy and not just in the Poetry Club. But to be honest, it was just the two of you asking each other for advice and it quickly developed to a friendship that lasted.

After university, you and Jaehyun had applied to the same company and also got accepted together, however the two of you had been assigned in different departments and only a floor apart. You decided to move in together to save money. Your co-workers had always assumed that you were together but you’ve always denied it even 3 years later, you were still telling the new interns that you weren’t dating THE Jung Jaehyun but people never believed you anyways. It was partly Lucas and Hendery’s fault why interns think you’re dating because the two were your biggest shippers.

“I have an idea!” Jaehyun suddenly sat up and moved to face you, on his knees. “Since you said we can’t go out because of the snow, can my request be valid from tonight until the end of my birthday? Please?”

You hummed, slowly nodding. “Yeah, sure. What do you wanna do anyways?”

Jaehyun grinned, “Well, technically, it’s a lot of things but it all comes down to one thing.”

“What?” Jaehyun could get pretty weird so you couldn’t help but feel curious and nervous at the same time.

Jaehyun licked his lips, hesitating. You furrow your brows at him, urging him on. He usually wasn’t hesitant with you. “Can you stay topless the whole day?”

You burst out laughing at his request, “topless like… No shirt, no bra?” Jaehyun nodded and you laughed even more. It was no big deal. You had seen each other naked countless of times—sober and shitfaced drunk. You sat up, put down your phone to your side and took off your night gown, leaving you in your cotton panties that you loved wearing to sleep in comfort. “No biggie. Is that all?”

“Can I touch them and play with them anytime I want?” Jaehyun asked straight up. Of course he’d wanted to do this for the longest time. He’d take the chance given, of course. “I mean your boobs?”

You pause. It wouldn’t hurt to let him, right? “Sure. That’s easy.”

“Can I suck them too? Like, your nipples?”

“What are you planning to do?” You asked, slapping his arm.

“It’s just for a day? I mean, after this, I can’t do this anymore.” Jaehyun reasoned out. He wasn’t sure that he’d get another chance like this again ever.

You and Jaehyun knew each other inside and out since you were so close. And back in uni, in between bottles of red bull and hard liquor, the two of you had talked about sex. The two of you had talked to each other about your kinks and eventually, Jaehyun had confessed that he wanted to sleep with you. You denied him and told him that as much as you’d like to, you just didn’t want to.

But just because the two of you hadn’t slept together doesn’t mean the two of you hadn’t done anything sexual. The two of you had made out “platonically” a few times during uni and after, specifically a few hours earlier. Sometimes at the break room, you’d make out when you were bored or needed a stress relief. Occasionally grinding “platonically” too. But the two of you had never touched each other under your clothes.

You pursed your lips and pondered, it was Jaehyun’s birthday and Jaehyun knew you liked having your nipples sucked so it would also be for your benefit. Besides, Jaehyun had always raved about his ‘skills’ and you knew about his fixation on tits too. “Ok. Sure. You can do whatever you want with my boobs but only from tonight until the end of your birthday, ok?” It was only 9pm. Still early. “Don’t hurt me!”

Jaehyun ended up laughing, his big thunderous laugh resounding in your room. Somehow it made you feel offended for some reason. “When have I ever hurt you, y/n? I’ll never ever hurt you!” You didn’t get the double meaning in his words so you were quite confused by his laughter. “So can I start now?”

You sighed, fluffing your pillow before leaning back on it, getting comfortable in your spot. “Ok, you can.” You grab your phone from your side and start to text your friends from work again, talking about the next cases you guys had to work on again.

Jaehyun settled between your legs and got on top of you, with his face on your chest. He was eye level with your nipples that you found it a funny cause it was like he was having a stare down with your nipples. He started slowly by touching your breasts lightly as if he was shy. Well, it was the first time he’d do this to you so he wanted to take it slow first before he got too crazy. He couldn’t deny he wanted to feel how the metal bar in your nipples would feel in his mouth and he could only imagine the things he’d do to play with it.

“I can’t believe you have both your nipples pierced. It’s so sexy.” Jaehyun spoke excitedly, biting his lips as he took in the sight of your bare tits. He’d seen it a lot of times but he loved it so much. And the image of your pierced nipples always got him excited. “I’ve never been with a girl with pierced nipples.”

Jaehyun watches as your breasts jiggle with the movement of your chest while you laughed. “It hurt like a mother fucker, too.”

You had gotten them pierced when you turned 21, as an act of liberation from your strict and conservative upbringing. Actually, Jaehyun was there when you had it put on, laughing at your painful screams while he caught it all on tape, much to your annoyance. Despite the pain you felt from having it done and the time it took for it to heal, it was the best decision of your life. Guys love it and it increased sensitivity on your nipples so it’s a win-win for you.

“What cup are you, by the way?”

“36C, usually. It depends on the brand.”

“Wow.” Jaehyun looked so amazed whenever your tits would jiggle whenever he gave it a nudge. And the fact that your breasts spilled over the grasp of his rather big hands. “It’s so big.” Soon, he started squeezing but avoiding your nipples.

Jaehyun leaned in, licking on the undersides of your breasts as he pinched the generous fat of your tits. He smiled as he blew hot and cold air on your nipples, making you gasp and tremble as your nipples slowly turned hard with every gust of air he blew.

She put away your phone away and set it on the nightstand after you plugged it in then looked at Jaehyun, grimacing. “Perv.”

Jaehyun leaned forward, properly getting on his knees in between your legs but never letting go of your breasts. He only grinned before fully hovering over you and leaned in to kiss you on the mouth. You returned his open mouthed kisses, loving how he easily took your breath away.

He pulls away from you, pressing his forehead against yours as you both breathed in deeply. He locked his eyes with you as he continued massaging your tits.

“Who told you you could kiss me like that?” You scoffed, cupping his face and squishing his cheeks. He only gave you a sly smile before pecking your lips again, then eventually going down your jaw and neck.

You tilt your head back, giving him more access to your neck and Jaehyun doesn’t disappoint, immediately finding your sensitive spot and making you whine as he nipped and sucked on your skin. Jaehyun went down again to kiss at your chest again, but avoiding your nipples that were already begging to be sucked, even if you tried to hide that fact. You licked your lips as you watch him pepper your chest with kisses, occasionally marking you.

“You know, you have the prettiest nipples I’ve ever seen.” Jaehyun spoke as he hovered over you and leaned in again until your foreheads were touching again. He never really found nipples pretty but yours were in a pretty shade that contrasted your olive skin and to top that, your nipples were a bit puffy, making it look cute. And the thrill of seeing pierced nipples in real life was incredibly sexy and so, so arousing for him. You had on metal bars that had small, dainty flower designs at the end that makes it look very pretty.

You lifted your head up and caught his lips in a short kiss. “Thank you, Jae.” You laughed then resumed your lip lock.

Jaehyun licked at your lower lips, asking for entrance but you stood her ground, not letting him in. You reached over and cupped his face as you slanted your face making kissing him easier. You were trying to take lead and it was working.

He kept trying to ask for entrance but you would shut him down again and again, making him laugh as you kissed. “Let me in, come on.” Jaehyun grinned against your lips, kissing you again.

You smiled as you kissed him back, then somehow ended up biting his bottom lip which made Jaehyun a bit turned on. “No.”

“I’ll just have to make you give in,” he smirked before catching your mouth into a deep kiss again. You didn’t want to lose so you fought for dominance until you were the one leading the kiss again. Jaehyun started to knead at your breasts again, almost painfully but it was delicious pain for you.

You reached over and wrapped your arms around his back, pulling him closer. Simultaneously, Jaehyun rubbed both your nipples with the pad of his thumbs, making you moan out. Jaehyun took this chance and immediately let himself in your mouth, rubbing his tongue against yours.

You gasp and push him away in surprise. Your nipples had been begging to be touched since earlier and the way he did it by surprise caught you. Before you had gotten your nipples pierced, they were already very sensitive but now that they’re pierced, the sensitivity increased tenfold.

“I told you I’d make you give in,” Jaehyun smirked before he leaned in again to kiss you, but this time you both were kissing with tongues. He loved your earlier reaction to his ministration so Jaehyun had teased you a few times, gently rubbing his thumb against your sensitive nipples, surprising you every time even if you saw it coming which made you a slight mess under him.

Jaehyun pulled away, hands never ceasing to massage her tits and playing with your nipples, flicking your buds with his fingertips. He loved how flushed you looked, out of breath with your lips a bit swollen from your earlier bouts of kissing. You looked so sexy to him that he couldn’t help but be excited for when he’d be finally be able to fuck you with his cock.

“God, you’re so sexy.” He breathed as he kissed your jaw, fingers still flicking your sensitive nubs that made you tremble in pleasure. Your nipples and fingertips were dry so the constant teasing was a bit rough and a little painful for you but it was too good.

His kisses slowly made its way to the tops of your chest, and eventually on your breasts. You watched as he tongued the space between your breasts, slowly licking and nipping as his big hands held your breasts, gently massaging and squeezing the fat. He pressed your breasts together and buried his face in between, sighing comfortably. It made you laugh as your watched his blissed reaction in between your tits. With your tits still pushed together, he started to fuck your cleavage with his tongue and licking into it as if he was eating pussy.

“You’re dirty. And really good at teasing.” You breathed out as you covered your eyes with your arm, not wanting to see his reaction to your flushed face.

Jaehyun chuckled letting go of your tits and watching them bounce at the drop. He leans his head to the side, kissing the sides of you breasts, nipping on the skin. He watched your reaction as he did everything which was entertaining to him. He could see you were getting turned on and he hasn’t even done anything more than touch your nipples. He was also starting to smell your arousal which was for sure really wet but since you said no penetration, he’d have to make do of what he had right now.

He watched as you kept your eyes closed, resting both your arms on your sides and gulp as Jaehyun kissed your chest. You haven let out a moan since when he first touched your nipples and he could tell that you were clearly trying to hold back as you would bite your lips.

Feeling the excitement himself, Jaehyun turned his attention to your right breast and dragged the tip of his tongue on your areola, making you gasp. He looked up at you then flicked the tip of his tongue on to your hardened bed, making you moan and jerk your hips at the motion. Smirking, he enveloped your nipple with his mouth and started sucking, using his tongue to flick her nipple and sucking like a baby thirsty for milk.

Jaehyun pulled away and pressed your breasts together again, making sure to push your nipples closer until your areolas were touching each other. He started to lick at both nipples at the same time, flattening his tongue and moving his head side to side. Looking up, he saw your were trying hard to contain you pleasure.

The next thing you knew was it was morning, topless and being spooned by Jaehyun who was only in his sweatpants. You could feel his erection against your ass and the way his hand was holding onto one of your tits. You were still very wet from last night and your nipples felt sore but it was nothing bad, in fact, it felt great as you knew your nipples would be more sensitive than last night.

You got up after you had seen it was 6AM and took a bath, rubbing your clit to orgasm in the shower in the process before deciding to make breakfast. You had fallen asleep last night while Jaehyun was having the time of his life with your tits because you were lacking sleep because of your work so breakfast was a great way to say sorry and a great start to his birthday. You wore a tank top with snaps at the front so you could take them off easily and your old shorts from uni.

You cooked some rice and waited a bit before deciding to cook Jaehyun’s favorite breakfast and your famous tomato scrambled eggs and the soy sauce soft pork that your mom taught you before you moved out before you started uni years ago where you met Jaehyun. You started to check your social media while the pork was cooking since it would take a while before it cooked.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Jaeyun called out loudly to you, surprising you and making you drop your phone. It landed on the potholder on the counter and not on the marble, thankfully.

“Hey, asshat. Morning to you, too!” You laughed as you turned off her phone and walked over to the stove where the pork was cooking. You turned away from the stove again only to find Jaehyun walking towards you. It was obvious he had just showered and again, and he was wearing nothing but one of his many red sweatpants. “Happy birthday, Jaehyun.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Jaehyun smiled, hugging you from behind and kissing your temple before getting the coffee machine started. You loved drinking coffee but you couldn’t make it for shit. “I thought I told you that you had to stay topless the whole day?” Jaehyun smirked as he crossed his arms over his, clearly enjoying teasing you.

You rolled her eyes and scoffed, turning to look at him. “Are you serious?” You gave the pork a few last stirs before deciding it was ready.

“Yes, Ms. y/n. I’m always serious when it comes to you, you know?” Jaehyun watched as you turned off the stove and plated the pork. You then headed to the table and sat down in your designated seat. The table was already prepared and the coffee was the only thing missing. “Also, a promise is a promise. And it’s my birthday today!”

Of course you couldn’t deny him. You liked it anyways. “Ok, fine. As long as you do the dishes.”

Jaehyun smirked at your comment as he made two cups of coffee then brought it over to the table, settling in his seat in front of you. Your dining table was only fit for four people since it was only the two of you in the apartment and you barely had friends over. You always hung at Johnny, Taeyong and Yuta’s shared apartment which was much bigger. “I always do the dishes, woman!” He laughed.

You smiled and took a sip of your coffee before opening the snaps of your shirt then pulling the material to the side, exposing your breasts to him. Jaehyun didn’t really think you’d so it so he ended up being surprised by your act. “Eat up, birthday boy.” You grin at him as he stared at you with a surprised expression.

After the two of you had breakfast, Jaehyun had cleared the table and started washing the dishes while you worked on your cases with your laptop on your lap as you sat on the comfy couch you both bough together a while back. You were a junior researcher for a firm so you had to do reports besides the cases so you didn’t hesitate to do exactly that. And you were a little behind on it too.

After Jaehyun had wiped the dishes dry and stacked them back to the shelf, he went to the living room, sitting beside you on the couch. He watched you typing away on your computer, focused on your job and not ignoring the fact you had left your tank top unclasped for him. He knew he had to make the best of this one day deal so he reached out his hands, grasping the fatty globes in his hands, shaking, squeezing and whatever he could do. You didn’t mind and continued on with your work, letting him do whatever he wanted.

“Y/n, will you be mad if I took a picture of your boobs?” Jaehyun suddenly asked as he started tracing the flower details of your nipple bar with his finger.

Unable to hear his words due to the music you were listening to, you took off your ear buds. “What did you say?”

Jaehyun smiled, shaking his head. “I was saying that I’d like to take advantage of my one day so can you please put your computer away so I can do what I do?” He was joking but of course, he meant it.

You nodded, chuckling. “Fine. This is the only time I’ll let you do this, though.” You saved your document and turned off your laptop before you set it on the coffee table in front of you.

“Can I eat something off your boobs?” Jaehyun chuckled as he pushed you down on the sofa, fragging your body down so you were flat on the sofa. You laughed and shrugged as he hovered over you. “I can play with your nipples, right? Can I?” You nodded, covering your face with your forearms now that Jaehyun was already working on your breasts with his hands. “Can I bite?” He asked before he gently bit on your right nipple, keeping a tight hold on it as he pulled it up then letting go of it. You gasped loudly as he started sucking onto the nipple to ease the pain, making you arch your back. “Last night you fell asleep on me but I took advantage of it, you know.

You nod at his words. You knew he was still sucking on your nipples when you were drifting between sleep and consciousness. “Not too hard, okay?” Because of last night, your nipples were crazy sensitive. You found yourself squeezing your thighs together even though he hasn’t done anything much. Honestly, just the thought of being topless around Jaehyun, knowing he was watching you made you wet already and now that he was lapping up up your nipples as if he was waiting for milk to come out, it made you even wetter.

“Noted.” He mumbles against your nipple, kissing the marks he had left on your breasts the night before. “I can’t think of anymore I wanna do specifically but can I get your permission?”

“You know what, you don’t have to ask. Do what you want to do. I’ll deal with you after your birthday.” You spoke with a tone of annoyance but you just wanted him to do anything he wanted with your tits at this point. No need to ask.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jaehyun grinned. He was a kinky motherfucker and he knew it. However, he couldn’t exactly do everything he wanted, specifically fucking you but he would do anything he could with your perfect tits. “I’m so glad we did this because your boobs are probably my favorite in the whole world.”

You ended up laughing and he watched in glee is as your tits shook when you laughed. It was also amazing how he could keep his cool despite the forming tent in his pants. “Well, my favorite is your face.” You spoke sincerely, behind the light laughter. It was your honesty but you knew how you hid it as a joke that made Jaehyun laugh.

You took a sharp breath as his hot, wet tongue circled your areola before he took the soft tit into his mouth, sucking the fat until your nipple was at the back of his throat. He let your tit go with a loud, wet smack before doing the same to the other tit as he used his free hand to play with the abandoned tit

“God,” You breathed out, as you unfolded your arms from over your face and looked down at Jaehyun who was now holding both of your tits in his hands. Your breasts were both very wet with his spit, as he sucked on both nipples by alternating on both tits.

Jaehyun looked up at you as soon as you spoke, eyes mischievous and his wet mouth in a teasing smirk. Your eyes were hooded and your mouth agape and he could see you were licking your lips every so often. He leans forward and kisses you until you’re out of breath, hands never leaving your amazing tits.

“Sit down.” He whispers as he pulls you up, kissing your neck, to your shoulder and back to your sweet mouth as he held you by the nape, not letting you go. He locked you in his arms so you couldn’t pull away from his engulfing, passionate kisses.

You held onto him tight as you kissed deeply than ever, teeth clashing, nose bumping and tongue probing. You cupped his face and eventually wrapping your arms around his neck. Somehow along the way, Jaehyun had gotten your top off, leaving you bare except for your shorts.

He pulls away, shoving you closer to the arm rest so you could comfortably lean. “Watch me.” He spoke, the rasp in his voice seemingly hypnotizing you. You lean back on your elbows and rest your head on the arm rest, giving you a view of his amazing body and his straining erection. He forced your legs open and got in between before leaning down, hands capturing your breasts and mouth sucking fervently on your nipples.

You hissed, leaning your head back as your eyes closed in delicious pain when Jaehyun bit on your right nipple, the most sensitive one. “Fuck, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun watched your swollen mouth part before your hooded eyes met his as he continued his assault on your nipples. “Watch me.” You yelp and gasp when he gave your right tit a hard slap, making you close your eyes at the impact. “Keep your eyes open!” He growled as he slapped your right tit again, while he sucked heavily on your left tit.

Bottom lip caught in your teeth, you struggled to keep your eyes open as Jaehyun gave you full blows of pleasure time after time. You were so wet that you could feel the back of shorts wet with your pussy juice. In reality it had only been a few minutes but it felt like he had been doing it forever.

“Can I tell you something?” Jaehyun speaks, planting pecks on your chest, hands never stopping at groping and squeezing. “Fucking hell, your tits are perfect.”

You swallowed and nodded, “I know,” your voice was low and your throat was dry. It wasn’t even a coherent reply to his words.

Jaehyun pulled back, sitting up, grinding his erection against your crotch in the process. “Wait,” With your hooded eyes, you watched as Jaehyun leaned to the side to grab his phone, turning on the camera to video mode and setting it against the vase on the coffee table to capture the two of you in the frame with a good angle. He turned back at you with a wicked smirk. “Let me keep this as a memory.”

You frowned, a bit uncomfortable but once Jaehyun was back on licking and sucking, you were also back in your amazing world of pleasure. He continued his ministrations, making you feel so good that you eventually forgot about the camera filming you.

Jaehyun started grinding his erection against you, specifically rubbing his tip against your sensitive clit, making you gasp and push against him. You were feeling too damn sensitive that this was the death of you. You hadn’t fucked in so long that you were considering really having sex with Jaehyun at this point. Jaehyun knew your kinks and what ticked you off and the fact that you loved having your nipples sucked and that it was your weakness and what more if you’re being stimulated or fucked through it, orgasm isn’t long out of reach.

“Oh, god, baby,” You moaned, arching your back to push your tits closer to Jaehyun’s mouth. You licked your dried lips as you breathed hard. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Seeing that your tits were already raw, and sore he decided to halt. He had slapped your tits a little too much that the skin was a bit red, and the severe hickeys marring your skin. Your nipples were a bit red and bite marks circled the skin around your nipples. It was such a beautiful sight that Jaehyun had to get his phone to get a good view of his art on her. He grinded on you as he filmed you, the front of his sweatpants wet with his pre cum and your juices.

“I didn’t think you’d get this wet,” Jaehyun chuckles as he holds on to your hips with his free hand, grinding harder but keeping the same pace.

“I wanna cum,” you moan, “but we can’t fuck.” It was more of a warning and Jaehyun knew to respect you.

“Cute.” He grins, putting away his phone and grinding onto you with his hands gipping on both sides of your hips, keeping you in place. “I’ll let you cum tonight myself, ok? But not right now.” He smiles as he leans down and kisses you on the mouth in which you hungrily reciprocate, wrapping your legs around his waist and grinding your hips up to his.

Jaehyun pulls away, mouth wet with spit from your hungry kiss. Your eyes were still hooded, mouth agape as you gasped for air and your beautiful chest heaving up and down. For the last time, he gave each nipples a suck and a kiss as he unwrapped your legs around him the stood up, pulling you up with him.

“I fucking hate you, Jaehyun.” You groaned as you hung onto Jaaehyun’s neck who as he carried you into your bedroom.

“I know, baby.” He laughs as he set you down on your bed, “now, show me what I can use to help you cum later.” You had instructed him to go into your closet and grab your pink box that had a passcode on it. He took it back and you told him the passcode which was the day the two of you moved in together.

The box opened, revealing a surprising collection of sex toys that surprised Jaehyun. You had said you liked exploring and you had dated a lot more women than men but he didn’t expect you to have these toys as possessions. The products looked high quality and he guesses she must have spent and invested in these a lot.

Upon opening the box, the first thing that caught Jaehyun’s attention was 3 dildos that varied in size, the biggest and most realistic one reminded him of his own cock which made him smirk. The other two was a few inches smaller and were those unrealistic typical dildos. You also had a collection of butt plugs that varied in size and material but the biggest and the prettiest one was the metal one with the ruby red jewel at the end. Jaehyun could just imagine you, stuffed and pretty wearing the princess plug.

Jaehyun looked deeper and found a few benwa balls, external and internal vibrators and a big Hitachi magic wand that he’d only ever seen in the Japanese porn he loved watching. “Wow. I never imagined you’d have these.” He smirked as he looked at you, now a bit calmed but still looking very much hot and bothered.

You had your forearms over your eyes once again because it felt like Jaehyun was peeking at the deeper side of you, specifically the kinkier side of you and not just what you’d told him. “Shut up,” you whine quietly.

Eager to search this box from top to bottom, Jaehyun lifts the corner and is surprised to see that the top part of the box is removable and under the first layer is where the other toys were hidden.

In the bottom compartment were silk ropes that Jaehyun could see using in the near future, bottles of lube, nipple clamps, handcuffs, eye covers and other more he’s usually seen in porn. He already has a few ideas he wants to try out but of course, he knows you didn’t want him to have sex with you, it was a bit of a letdown.

“Since you say we can’t fuck, would you let me use that dildo on you?” Jaehyun asks, a big smirk on his face as he takes the dildo from the box and gauges the size and girth with his own hand, lightly jerking it off and sucking on the tip.

You looked at Jaehyun and swallowed as you watched him suck on the dildo, making your pussy throb. It was amazing how soft and cute he was usually but he turns into this dominant in these times. How lucky were the people that got to experience it full circle.

He then walks over to you, getting on the bed until he was kneeling once again in between your legs. “What do you say? I can make you feel good.” He traced your nipples with his fingertips, “and I bet you’d like me to suck your nipples while you’re getting fucked with this dildo.” The look in his eyes was dangerous that you wanted to say yes instead of the safe no but it was like you was being hypnotized so she nodded in affirmation, making Jaehyun chuckle darkly.

You lick your lips and nod. “Fuck me with that dildo first and you’ll find out.” You lift your hips up and pull off your underwear, throwing it wherever in the room. Jaehyun was completely in awe as you spread your legs for him, showing him your bare and sopping pussy.

Jaehyun hisses, letting go of the dildo and diving face first to your crotch but not quite touching. He groans as he takes a deep breath, taking in the smell of your arousal and you found it dirty but sex at the same time that you pussy throbs. “God, you smell so fucking delicious. I can’t wait to know if you taste as good as you smell.” He wraps his left arm around your leg and pulls you closer to him as he breaths you in.

“Fuck me now, come on.” You whine as you squeeze your tits, rolling your nipples with your own fingers. You try to grind your hips but his strong hold on you leaves you immobile so you groan in annoyance. “If you don’t fuck me with that dildo, I’ll never let you do this to me again.”

Jaehyun chuckles as he sits up, grabbing the dildo by his side, eyes still at your pussy. “Your pussy is fucking amazing.” He smiles, as he drags the head of the large cock against your wet slit but rubbing harder against your clit, making you arch your back at the contact. “I bet your pussy’s gonna swallow up all of this big cock, huh? You’re just begging up to be filled with cock. I can tell.” He smiles, trailing kisses down your belly then eventually going face to face with your pussy.

He lined the head of the dildo against your wet slit, pressing the thick head, watching as your hole stretched to make way for the head to enter you. You moan, feeling the burn of the stretch. You’ve been so busy that you barely even had time to relieve yourself so it had definitely been a while since something had penetrated you.

You were waiting for the burn to last, as you expected him to push the dildo further inside you but you feel the dildo pulled out of you, and instead, he had dipped two of his fingers inside you, slowly fucking into you, curling his fingers and immediately rubbing your spot. “Fuck, Jaehyun!”

“You’re taking in my fingers so fucking well, y/n.” Jaehyun spoke against your skin, licking and kissing on every expanse of skin that he could reach from his position as he starts scissoring his fingers inside of you. “You’re so fucking wet.” He fucked his fingers deeper into you, faster and faster until you were arching your back.

Jaehyun pulls out of you, making you whine as you could feel your orgasm nuilding up before he pulled out. “Sorry, babe. Be patient.” He grabs the dildo from his side, moving up and laying down beside you then lines up the dildo against your wet and now stretched hole. He pushes the dildo deep inside you with one fast motion that has you arching your back at the motion. He doesn’t wait for you to get used to size and immediately pumps the dildo his hand gripping on the base.

“Jaehyun! Fuck!” You moan as you grasp on the hand pumping the dildo inside of you, the feelings getting too much for you. He leans down to kiss at your breasts, licking anywhere he could reach, hypnotized with how you took the big dildo inside your pussy. He sticks out his tongue against your sensitive nipple, letting it rub against his tongue as your tits shake from the force of him fucking you hard with the dildo.

The pace he fucks you in is fast, hard and almost brutal that it just hits you so deep that you couldn’t help rolling your eyes back every time the tip hit that spot deep inside you. Jaehyun is strong and definitely really used to doing things with his hands as his pace and aim never faltered, even when he was moving, reaching over to suck at your other nipple. Every push of the dildo inside you was fast and hard that you could feel the familiar heat of your body and that feeling of lightheadedness that had you gripping at whatever you could.

You put your arm around his head and pulled him closer as he started to suck on your nipples, biting and licking. “I’m cumming!” Jaehyun had started rubbing your clit with his thumb, rubbing and circling it. Your stomach tightens and you feel the overwhelming pleasure starting to wash over you. “Fuck!” You scream as your orgasm comes full circle that has you writhing and your hips jerking.

Jaehyun fucks you through your orgasm, trapping your nipple in his mouth so it doesn’t slip out of his mouth as your body shakes and trashes. “Your pussy is so fucking tight and I can’t imagine what it feels like to fuck you with my cock.” He whispers against you neck, eventually slowing the pace of his dildo and eventually pulls it out of you, letting you calm down form your high. He takes this chance to kiss you, deep. He pulls you to your side, making you face him. He watches you smile, still in the aftereffects of your orgasm. It was definitely a while since you came and definitely a while since you got a good one too.

“Fuck me with your real cock now?” You smirk at him, palming his hard cock straining to escape the confines of his sweatpants that had a big wet spot already.

“Best birthday ever.” He grins.

#jaehyun smut #jaehyun fluff #jung jaehyun #jaehyun #jung yoonoh #jaehyun nct #nct smut #nct fanfic #nct fluff #jaehyun scenario

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purplesurveys · 5 years ago

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734

How was your Halloween? It was a lot of fun - Rita’s sister Torta invited us to her school’s college Halloween party so my orgmates and I planned a whole day/overnight stay at their place. I was Dora, Rita was Kuzco, Tina was Waldo, Blanch was Velma, Jum was Wednesday Addams, but I’ve forgotten what Laurice went as and I still can’t remember even when I’m looking at our old photos rn. The idea of going to Rita’s super exclusive super rich super old money village seemed a bit scary in the beginning skfkfhfg but she made us feel right at home immediately. When was the last time you skipped school? The one time I had to skip class because I was too late to enter anyway was for my PE class lasssst March, I’m guessing? It was either late Feb or early March. What color was the first pet you had? Orange. Have you ever had fake nails? No but I’ve lowkey been fascinated with them lately because of Kylie Jenner loooooool and want to try going to a nail salon to get fake nails. Like at least just for a day or two, just to get a verdict on them. How many vacations have you been on? We’ve had too many to count. I can try counting them but I’ll most likely miss several vacations... I’d say it’s in the 20-30 range, considering when my family started vacationing regularly and the fact that we travel 2-3 times a year.

Have you ever fallen asleep on the phone with the person you like? Yeah, until recently when I stopped having load to call her this is how I’d usually fall asleep. The white noise is soothing. Do you own/want a snuggie? Again, nope. When was the last time you went to a concert? August 2018. The show was actually scheduled for February 2018, but Hayley Williams got like a throat infection and it had to be moved. Which thankfully it was, because we only would have gotten older songs if the Feb show pushed through. Paramore didn’t release After Laughter till May that year. What did you do today? I consoled my girlfriend after she received some bad news, had a big brunch to celebrate my parents’ 23rd wedding anniversary, played Duolingo for a couple of hours, and now I’m helping Gab make a script in Tagalog heh. Do you know anyone who is a total health freak? I dunno anyone who’s an absolute health freak but I have a couple of friends who will order salads and smoothies from time to time. Who was the last person you met? The last new person I met was the eye doctor I had for my appointment. Would you rather save your best friend or your mother from dying? Hate these questions. What color is your mousepad? I haven’t used a mouse since high school. What was your favorite year of high school? Junior year was a lot of fun. It was the first time my circle of friends started to really grow and I finally felt like I belonged somewhere and I was just generally happier that school year. Current favorite song? Don’t have one at the moment. I’m super detached from music these days. Ever had a teacher call on you when they know you're not paying attention? Yeah just once, in Grade 4. I was in the middle of telling a joke and Katreen and I were snickering pretty distractingly at the back, so we rightfully got called out on it. After that I never wanted to not pay attention in class. Would you be more afraid of drowning or being buried alive? Buried alive. You have people thinking you’re dead, you’re locked in a coffin, in total darkness, and surrounded by worms and other creepy crawlies that live underground. I can’t think of a scarier, more claustrophobic scenario lol. Do you wear makeup every day? The complete opposite. Tell me about your boyfriend/girlfriend? :) She writes very well and I love her poems the most; she has an amazing radar for excellent TV series and films and is always accurate about which ones are bound for the Emmys/Oscars; she has random hobbies that pop up from time to time, including mastering the balisong and crocheting; she really loves Italian and Spanish food; and she can sometimes have an explosive temper. Have you ever gone to the ER for something that could have killed you? I didn’t have to be rushed to the ER for it but a low number of platelets isn’t absolutely fatal, as far as I know. All I remember is that I had a 40ºC fever but weirdly enough I felt very well, like I was able to walk myself to the school clinic and make jokes to my mom about going to the mall instead of resting. Should you really be doing something more productive right now? Yes, but shush. I really don’t feel like working on my thesis anytime soon. Do you like pulling all nighters just because? I don’t pull all nighters exactly but yeah, ‘just because’ is pretty much my reason for wanting to stay up till 3 or 4 AM most nights. Have you ever lived out of your car? No but I’ve done something that reminds me of it. In my first and second years of college when I didn’t have friends to see or places to hang at yet, I would stay in my car for all my naps, lunch breaks, class breaks, crying sessions, etc. How many closets are in your house? We have one in every bedroom, so that makes it four. Does your family own more than two houses? I wouldn’t say that. We have this house, and even though my mom still helps my grandma in paying for our old house, it’s wrong to claim it as ours. Have you ever eaten at Olive Garden? No...I don’t think I would be interested if given the chance either. Does your family vote on a lot of things? Not really. My dad has worked abroad for 20 years so he’s incredibly detached from national politics; my siblings are still too young for voter’s registration; and my mom only started voting again recently because I encouraged her to. Before the 2016 elections the last time she voted was back in 1992 if I remember right. Would you marry someone who could never have sex, for medical reasons? I’d be like 23% bummed but I imagine getting over it quickly and easily, so yes. I don’t really actively seek sex and I’m demi anyway, which is under the ace umbrella. What about someone who was guaranteed to die in five years? It’s gonna feel like the Hang the DJ episode of Black Mirror lmao but if our relationship proved to be very strong, then I would. Did you see Paranormal Activity? Yesssssss that was so much fun haha. I’m terrible with jump scares though so I haven’t seen the ending where she [spoiler alert] lunges towards the camera. Who was the last person you texted? I texted a promo code for my service provider hah. I don’t text anyone these days. Do you have a protective father/older brother? Yeah, my dad. Do you go out every weekend? Nope, I don’t really prefer to. My weekdays are usually very busy that I just want to do nothing by the time the weekend comes. Do you drink alcohol or do drugs? I drink sometimes and I guess you could say I take lighter drugs like caffeine, but that’s it. Does it snow a lot in the winter where you live? It does not snow here at all. Where do you go/want to go to college? I had always wanted to go to UP Diliman and fortunately I passed. Do you have any step parents? Nope. Does your cell phone have a full keyboard? It has a full touchscreen keyboard if that counts, lmao. Have you ever had a friend come over when you're sick? No but that’s also partly because I never get sick. Do you like cornbread? It’s okay, but I find it too dry. I’ll have it if it’s like a free appetizer or side dish, but I would never crave it. Do you know what year your mother was born in? 49 years ago. Have you ever been in an airplane? Sure. Is it really late at night right now? Not at all. It’s mid-afternoon.

#survey #surveys

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immortalcockroach · 5 years ago

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21 + 15 + 8!

asdfghjkl rose thank you for asking ♥️ this ended up coming out incredibly long, so i apologize in advance!

8) where do you take your inspiration from?

surprising! mostly from visual media, actually. graphics, art, moodboards, films, tv series, that kind of stuff. occasionally, music, and even more rarely, written media (fics, books, poems, similar). that’s for when i’m starting to get ideas. when i already have something written or ideas developed a bit more, then i have a moodboard on pinterest and a playlist on spotify, or i watch something that has the same mood/theme as the thing i’m writing.

15) if you write oc’s, how do you decide on their names?

i don’t usually write oc’s for fics, but i do them for my original stuff. the names depend on the characters’ background and location, but they all have a name that either sounds specific to their character or who they’re supposed to be, or the meaning is very connected.

in other cases, most of the time, i just go ‘woah this sounds cool’ or sometimes i build a whole character because of their name and subsequently the whole story.

21 tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? what is it about them that you admire?

i love this question!! let me give my favourite fic writers a shoutout, even though i’m probably missing some too!! it’s really long but honestly these people worked hard and they really deserve it

@grumpybell‘s ideas are absolutely brilliant. i’m a huge fan. the stories themselves, the plots would be enough for me to have a whole paragraph about, but for me, the characters are where it’s at. well-developed, very true to the canon but also to the universe the fic is set in, but also very well-rounded and overall realistic. the fics just flow really nice, honestly, and i could read them for eternity.

fic shoutout: oh darling, here’s hoping god i remember reading this red riding hood au and just... falling in love. i did. i fell in love with bellamy as the wolf and clarke’s desperation to save him, and the new take on the fairy tale, it was just absolute perfection. i keep coming to it every once in a while, honestly. it’s just magic.

@asroarke is one of those people who are just integrated into a fandom’s fanfiction. imagining t100 fanfiction with asroarke is like... imagining the sky without the stars. i think those fics were the first ones i read when i joined the fandom, and i remember one of the things i thought was how easy it was to read. everything flowed as if there was no effort needed, as if the words have always been there, just plucked and placed on a blank document. and the consistency, honestly, damn. these fics are better than probably more than half of published stuff i’ve read.

fic shoutout: drag me down. look there’s a pattern here and it’s the mythical/legends/fairy tale aus. i present you with a retelling of little mermaid in the most beautiful, soul-wrenching way. i waited every single chapter for when i came out. i read it as soon as i saw it came out, even if i was in the middle of grabbing coffee with a friend. honestly everything by asroarke is absolutely fantastic.

@blvke-bellamy okay look. when i saw may is just 15 i nearly fell off my chair. i’d kill to have that talent at 15. i would. look, i keep saying look, because i’m shook. but honestly, may’s characterization is brilliant. she took my faves from the 100 and managed to insert them into a different universe, and they feel so much like the original characters and not at all. the dynamics between them are so raw and so pure and so believable i cried at one particular scene in her fic. or it might be two scenes. and look, this is impressive on its own, and then knowing she’s just 15...god.

fic shoutout: step into the sun is a bellarke tangled au and honestly. i’m a slut for tangled. it’s so damn good. and this fic?? inspired by tangled?? absolutely brilliant. marvelous. 11/10. brought my fish to life. and honestly murphy is my favourite in the fic, literally one of my favourite portrayals of him in every fic i’ve ever read. i binged this. i lost sleep over this. no ragrets.

@pawprinterfanfic (i’m biased but. in top 3 fic writers ever. and i’ve been in a lot of popular fandoms.) paw manages to take a universe and make it hers. paw manages to create a universe out of nothing and make it feel more realistic than my own life. and honestly, i am reading her hunger games au right now and it’s amazing, but the best part is that i’m also reading the harry potter au which is even better and although both are masterpieces, i can see the improvement. the development of the characters, the amount of effort in planning and mapping things out, it’s marvellous. her fics just speak to me on a different level, it feels as if i’m experiencing them myself rather than reading them, and what i’m mostly in awe of is how immersed i am in those fics, especially the newer ones. i feel like it’s a rare skill to have.

fic shoutout: starry eyes and galaxy minds (we’ll be dancing on the clouds at night) which is a spider-man au, and honestly, i cried. it’s beautiful. it’s a masterpiece. but so is literally every single one of paw’s stories, so it was a really difficult choice. the harry potter one? j k rowling wishes she wrote it.

skai_heda (i don’t know their tumblr please someone help me find it). where do i begin. honestly. when i started reading the fic i put below, i was mesmerised by the writing style. it was partly in second pov which i’d usually refuse to read, but this writing style is something that belongs to gods. the characterization is amazing, it manages to fix some of the stuff in canon without actually changing it. everything just comes together naturally, and i always feel so satisfied when reading their fics. plus, the writing style again, especially in the fic below, is flawless. some people can create magic with their words, and i’m convinced i’ve just found one.

fic shoutout: everything that comes after deserves so much!! more!! attention!!! i remember reading the first two chapters and just being like...wooow. i was starstruck. i left a long ass comment. it’s so unique and so beautiful. it’s the only fic on this list written in the canon universe, and it’s one of my favourites i’ve ever read about the canon universe. it hurts. it makes you cry, and ache, and understand, and smack your head because you just want people to be happy. if i could pocket the way this fic made me feel, i would always keep it with me. (a little frustration, but a whole lotta love.)

give me a number and i’ll answer questions about writing fanfiction

just in case you’d like to see the same questions answered for non-fanfiction/non-fanfiction influence, see below!

15) if you write oc’s, how do you decide on their names?

specific example of mentioned above - a wip about teenagers who come from a rich side of town and a poor side. there’s posh names, like cedric, declan, byron and gregory, for people who are supposed to represent the posh, stuck-up class; hadley, tessa, abigail, kate for privileged people who are the ‘good guys’; and luca, oliver, han, freddie, who are from the poor side. it’s very classist so it was very important that the names represent the characters. usually, i go for the “vibe” of the name over the meaning, to be honest.

21 tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? what is it about them that you admire?

i love this question!!

fiction: maggie stiefvater, because her raven cycle series genuinely feels like magic when i read it. the characters are brilliant. erin morgenstern, who wrote the night circus, because that novel also feels like magic. donna tart’s the secret history feels as if you’re reading a secret and the storytelling sort of reminds me of f. scott fitzgerald’s the great gatsby in a way i can’t really describe. she creates a beautiful, magnificent atmosphere and you know what the characters are doing is wrong, but you completely understand them and it makes me, as a reader, question my own moral standards. madeline miller’s the song of achilles is a beautifully written masterpiece that made me fall in love with mythology, legends and history all over again. the way she develops the characters and retells the story i’ve heard a million times is so poetic and beautiful it just resonates with me on a different level. and finally, leigh bardugo with her six of crows series that again, makes me question my morals, but shows the friendship and loyalty between people in a beautiful way. it also shows a romance that i think is one of best written i’ve read, up there for me romances from the novels/series i’ve already mentioned.

there’s a pattern - storytelling and character-building that feels almost otherworldly, very focused on emotions and character development. basically, stories that you feel like as if they were made into films without proper, detailed development, wouldn’t translate well enough to bring the world to the screen. and romances incredibly well-developed over time, that go beyond just being romances and actually show a beautiful connection.

special mention of these directors, as they have a huge influence on my writing: christopher nolan, john krasinski, quentin tarantino, m night shyamalan, steven knight, guillermo del toro, alfred hitchcock, for their storytelling and character building. also, some of these are for the suspense that seems to come naturally. i know most of these are very popular directors, but they’re popular for a reason. i could literally write an essay on each of these people, honestly. my writing is very inspired by motion pictures, i most often look up to how these directors approached some things that i have in my writing, especially themes. (this could literally be a whole essay on its own)

#zoyanasyalenzky #god this took me ages #fic rec #the 100 #bellarke #these are all bellarke fics #i should probably say this #also #fic talk #rose #i had so much fun though #and there's so many people i haven't put in here #mostly because i'm exhausted #i just really love reading these people's fics #ask me questions if you want horribly long answers #i'll always deliver #also i might do a fic rec soon #probably should ah

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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A Virus Variant by Any Other Name … Please 20H/501Y.V2. VOC 202012/02. B.1.351. Those were the charming names scientists proposed for a new variant of the coronavirus that was identified in South Africa. The convoluted strings of letters, numbers and dots are deeply meaningful for the scientists who devised them, but how was anyone else supposed to keep them straight? Even the easiest to remember, B.1.351, refers to an entirely different lineage of the virus if a single dot is missed or misplaced. The naming conventions for viruses were fine as long as variants remained esoteric topics of research. But they are now the source of anxiety for billions of people. They need names that roll off the tongue, without stigmatizing the people or places associated with them. “What’s challenging is coming up with names that are distinct, that are informative, that don’t involve geographic references and that are kind of pronounceable and memorable,” said Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. “It sounds kind of simple, but it’s actually a really big ask to try and convey all of this information.” The solution, she and other experts said, is to come up with a single system for everyone to use but to link it to the more technical ones scientists rely on. The World Health Organization has convened a working group of a few dozen experts to devise a straightforward and scalable way to do this. “This new system will assign variants of concern a name that is easy to pronounce and recall and will also minimize unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people,” the W.H.O. said in a statement. “The proposal for this mechanism is currently undergoing internal and external partner review before finalization.” The W.H.O.’s leading candidate so far, according to two members of the working group, is disarmingly simple: numbering the variants in the order in which they were identified — V1, V2, V3 and so on. “There are thousands and thousands of variants that exist, and we need some way to label them,” said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a member of the working group. Naming diseases was not always so complicated. Syphilis, for example, is drawn from a 1530 poem in which a shepherd, Syphilus, is cursed by the god Apollo. But the compound microscope, invented around 1600, opened up a hidden world of microbes, allowing scientists to start naming them after their shapes, said Richard Barnett, a historian of science in Britain. Still, racism and imperialism infiltrated disease names. In the 1800s, as cholera spread from the Indian subcontinent to Europe, British newspapers began calling it “Indian cholera,” depicting the disease as a figure in a turban and robes. “Naming can very often reflect and extend a stigma,” Dr. Barnett said. In 2015, the W.H.O. issued best practices for naming diseases: avoiding geographic locations or people’s names, species of animal or food, and terms that incite undue fear, like “fatal” and “epidemic.” Scientists rely on at least three competing systems of nomenclature — Gisaid, Pango and Nextstrain — each of which makes sense in its own world. Updated March 2, 2021, 10:34 a.m. ET “You can’t track something you can’t name,” said Oliver Pybus, an Oxford evolutionary biologist who helped design the Pango system. Scientists name variants when changes in the genome coincide with new outbreaks, but they draw attention to them only if there is a change in their behavior — if they transmit more easily, for instance (B.1.1.7, the variant first seen in Britain), or if they at least partly sidestep the immune response (B.1.351, the variant detected in South Africa). Encoded in the jumbled letters and digits are clues about the variant’s ancestry: The “B.1,” for instance, denotes that those variants are related to the outbreak in Italy last spring. (Once the hierarchy of variants becomes too deep to accommodate another number and dot, newer ones are given the next letter available alphabetically.) But when scientists announced that a variant called B.1.315 — two digits removed from the variant first seen in South Africa — was spreading in the United States, South Africa’s health minister “got quite confused” between that and B.1.351, said Tulio de Oliveira, a geneticist at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban and a member of the W.H.O.’s working group. “We have to come up with a system that not only evolutionary biologists can understand,” he said. With no easy alternatives at hand, people have resorted to calling B.1.351 “the South African variant.” But Dr. de Oliveira pleaded with his colleagues to avoid the term. (Look no further than the origins of this very virus: Calling it the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus” fed into xenophobia and aggression against people of East Asian origin all over the world.) The potential harms are grave enough to have dissuaded some countries from coming forward when a new pathogen is detected within their borders. Geographical names also quickly become obsolete: B.1.351 is in 48 countries now, so calling it the South African variant is absurd, Dr. de Oliveira added. And the practice could distort science. It is not entirely clear that the variant arose in South Africa: It was identified there in large part thanks to the diligence of South African scientists, but branding it as that country’s variant could mislead other researchers into overlooking its possible path into South Africa from another country that was sequencing fewer coronavirus genomes. Over the past few weeks, proposing a new system has become something of a spectator sport. A few of the suggestions for name inspiration: hurricanes, Greek letters, birds, other animal names like red squirrel or aardvark, and local monsters. Áine O’Toole, a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh who is part of the Pango team, suggested colors to indicate how different constellations of mutations were related. “You could end up with dusty pink or magenta or fuchsia,” she said. Sometimes, identifying a new variant by its characteristic mutation can be enough, especially when the mutations gain whimsical names. Last spring, Ms. O’Toole and her collaborators began calling D614G, one of the earliest known mutations, “Doug.” “We’d sort of not had a huge amount of human interaction,” she said. “This was our idea of humor in lockdown No. 1.” Other nicknames followed: “Nelly” for N501Y, a common thread in many new variants of concern, and “Eeek” for E484K, a mutation thought to make the virus less susceptible to vaccines. But Eeek has emerged in multiple variants worldwide simultaneously, underscoring the need for variants to have distinct names. The numbering system the W.H.O. is considering is straightforward. But any new names will have to overcome the ease and simplicity of geographic labels for the general public. And scientists will need to strike a balance between labeling a variant quickly enough to forestall geographical names and cautiously enough that they do not wind up giving names to insignificant variants. “What I don’t want is a system where we have this long list of variants that all have W.H.O. names, but really only three of them are important and the other 17 are not important,” Dr. Bedford said. Whatever the final system is, it also will need to be accepted by different groups of scientists as well as the general public. “Unless one really does become the kind of lingua franca, that will make things more confusing,” Dr. Hodcroft said. “If you don’t come up with something that people can say and type easily, and remember easily, they will just go back to using the geographic name.” Source link Orbem News #Variant #Virus

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threehundredsixtyfivestories · 5 years ago

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8 - Olives and Poetry

I believe that with anything in life, nobody can make you like something. The things have to come to you, on your own terms, in your own time.

Two examples that come to mind right now, that represent this thought perfectly in my life, are olives and poetry.

With poems, I never cared much for them when I was younger. They were always that type of writing that wasn’t fun to read, kind of boring and honestly a bit hard to understand. I tried a couple of times to get into it, and once a while I maybe found a poem that sounded nice or there was something funny about it. But I forgot about my interest for poems rather quickly after that. It wasn’t until I sort of accidentally started writing poetry myself that I realized how amazing it can be. Not to say that my poetry is great or even good, but it made me realize the beauty of expressing something through poetry.

Olives I have always hated with a passion, but I wasn’t much of a picky eater. After about age 12 or so, the only thing left I didn’t like were olives (this was before I had ever tasted capers and before I became vegan). But at some point, maybe I was 19-20, I had this epiphany, that I might like olives one day. At the time I still didn’t enjoy eating them whatsoever, but somehow I knew, that this would be part of me becoming an adult: liking olives. I think this realization was partly sparked by Mirella of Mirellativegal who had a similar thought: That to her, becoming an adult meant starting to like olives. And it certainly is the case for me.

I am starting to read and write more poetry, and have ordered just olives at a restaurant yesterday (admittedly, they were the only vegan thing on the menu).

I like the person I am becoming.

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blackkudos · 8 years ago

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Ma Rainey

"Ma" Rainey (born Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett, September 1882 or April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was one of the earliest African American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of blues singers to record. She was billed as the Mother of the Blues.

She began performing as a young teenager and became known as Ma Rainey after her marriage to Will Rainey, in 1904. They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group, Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. Her first recording was made in 1923. In the next five years, she made over 100 recordings, including "Bo-Weevil Blues" (1923), "Moonshine Blues" (1923), "See See Rider Blues" (1924), "Black Bottom" (1927), and "Soon This Morning" (1927).

Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. Her powerful voice was never adequately captured on her records, because she recorded exclusively for Paramount, which was known for its below-average recording techniques and poor shellac quality. However, her other qualities are present and most evident in her early recordings "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues".

Rainey recorded with Louis Armstrong, and she toured and recorded with the Georgia Jazz Band. She continued to tour until 1935, when she retired and went to live in her hometown.

Life and career

Gertrude Pridgett claimed to have been born on April 26, 1886 (beginning with the 1910 census, taken April 25, 1910), in Columbus, Georgia. However, the 1900 census indicates she was born in September 1882 in Alabama, and researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest her birthplace as being in Russell County. She was the second of five children of Thomas and Ella (née Allen) Pridgett, from Alabama. She had at least two brothers and a sister, Malissa, with whom Gertrude was later confused by some writers.

She began her career as a performer at a talent show in Columbus, Georgia, when she was about 12 to 14 years old. A member of the First African Baptist Church, she began performing in black minstrel shows. She later claimed that she was first exposed to blues music around 1902. She formed the Alabama Fun Makers Company with her husband, Will Rainey, but in 1906 they both joined Pat Chappelle's much larger and more popular Rabbit's Foot Company, in which they were billed together as "Black Face Song and Dance Comedians, Jubilee Singers [and] Cake Walkers". In 1910, she was described as "Mrs. Gertrude Rainey, our coon shouter". She continued with the Rabbit's Foot Company after it was taken over by a new owner, F. S. Wolcott, in 1912.

Beginning in 1914, the Raineys were billed as Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. Wintering in New Orleans, she met numerous musicians, including Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Pops Foster. As the popularity of blues music increased, she became well known. Around this time, she met Bessie Smith, a young blues singer who was also making a name for herself. A story later developed that Rainey kidnapped Smith, forced her join the Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, and taught her to sing the blues; the story was disputed by Smith's sister-in-law Maud Smith.

From the late 1910s, there was an increasing demand for recordings by black musicians. In 1920, Mamie Smith was the first black woman to be recorded. In 1923, Rainey was discovered by Paramount Records producer J. Mayo Williams. She signed a recording contract with Paramount, and in December she made her first eight recordings in Chicago, including "Bad Luck Blues", "Bo-Weevil Blues" and "Moonshine Blues". She made more than 100 other recordings over the next five years, which brought her fame beyond the South. Paramount marketed her extensively, calling her the "Mother of the Blues", the "Songbird of the South", the "Gold-Neck Woman of the Blues" and the "Paramount Wildcat".

In 1924 she made some recordings with Louis Armstrong, including "Jelly Bean Blues", "Countin' the Blues" and "See, See Rider". In the same year she embarked on a tour of the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA) in the South and Midwest of the United States, singing for black and white audiences. She was accompanied by the bandleader and pianist Thomas Dorsey and the band he assembled, the Wildcats Jazz Band. They began their tour with an appearance in Chicago in April 1924 and continued, on and off, until 1928. Dorsey left the group in 1926 because of ill health and was replaced as pianist by Lillian Hardaway Henderson, the wife of Rainey's cornetist Fuller Henderson, who became the band's leader.

Some of Rainey's lyrics contain references to lesbianism or bisexuality, such as the 1928 song "Prove It on Me":

They said I do it, ain't nobody caught me. Sure got to prove it on me. Went out last night with a crowd of my friends. They must've been women, cause I don't like no men.

According to the website queerculturalcenter.org, the lyrics refer to an incident in 1925 in which Rainey was "arrested for taking part in an orgy at [her] home involving women in her chorus." "Prove It on Me" further alludes to presumed lesbian behavior: "It's true I wear a collar and a tie... Talk to the gals just like any old man."

The political activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis noted that "'Prove It on Me' is a cultural precursor to the lesbian cultural movement of the 1970s, which began to crystallize around the performance and recording of lesbian-affirming songs." Towards the end of the 1920s, live vaudeville went into decline, being replaced by radio and recordings. Rainey's career was not immediately affected; she continued recording for Paramount and earned enough money from touring to buy a bus with her name on it. In 1928, she worked with Dorsey again and recorded 20 songs, before Paramount terminated her contract. Her style of blues was no longer considered fashionable by the label.

Death

In 1935, Rainey returned to her hometown, Columbus, Georgia, where she ran three theatres, the Lyric the Airdrome, and The Liberty Theatre until her death. She died of a heart attack in 1939, at the age of 53, in Rome, Georgia.

Legacy

Rainey was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Bob Dylan referred to Rainey in the song "Tombstone Blues" on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, pairing her with Beethoven, perhaps as symbols of great art, a compliment to Rainey's stature as an artist ("where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedroll").

In 1981 Sandra Lieb wrote the first full-length book about Rainey, Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a 1982 play by August Wilson, is a fictionalized account of the recording of her song of the same title in December 1927.

Sterling A. Brown wrote a poem, "Ma Rainey", in 1932, about how "When Ma Rainey / comes to town" people everywhere would hear her sing.

In 1994, the U.S. Post Office issued a 29-cent commemorative postage stamp honoring her.

In 2004, "See See Rider Blues" (written in 1925) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and was added to the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.

Academy Award winner Mo'Nique played Rainey in the 2015 film Bessie.

The first annual Ma Rainey Blues Festival will be held in April 2016 in Columbus, Georgia, near the home that Rainey owned and lived in at the time of her death.

Recordings

This sortable table presents all 94 titles recorded by Rainey.

The recording dates are approximate.

The classification by Sandra Lieb is almost entirely by form. Blues songs which are only partly of twelve-bar structure are classified as mixtures of blues and popular song forms. Blues songs without any twelve-bar or eight-bar structure are classified as non-blues.

The JSP and DOCD columns refer to the two complete CD reissues.

Click any label to sort. To return to chronological order, click #.

Wikipedia

#Ma Rainey #04-26 #12-22

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viviendoenvelvet-madrid17 · 8 years ago

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A Weekend Down South

So southern Spain is really neat.

This was the first full weekend trip I took with my program and despite having to get up before the sun had risen to get to the bus on the first day, it was a blast. There was a lot of downtime on the drives to the several cities we visited, so I was able to catch up on a lot of podcasts - which if you know me, you know I was a happy camper. Oh, and plenty of nap time on the bus rides too, so I couldn't have been happier.

Day 1: Consuegra & Córdoba

On our way out, we stopped by a town in Toledo called Consuegra. It was reminiscent of the countryside - full of farmland and Don Quijote windmills! We went up into one of the old windmills and saw how the grain grounder used to work and they took us to this canteen-turned-café where Miguel de Cervantes penned a couple chapters of the infamous Quijote. Though the coffee and pastries weren't exactly the yummiest things in the world, it was really neat to sit there and think about how hundreds of years ago, such a famous and important novel for Spain (and the world, really) was written in that very place. It's like standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and thinking about the March of Washington and how many important people stood on those very same steps and changed the course of history.

My pal Don Quijote, who was such a drag to read about in high school, but I can’t not love how prolific of a character he is here

On we went to Córdoba, to visit the Mosque-Cathedral. As with all the religious buildings we visit (I'm picking up a common theme here…) it was first the site of a Christian temple in the times of the Visigoths, which when the Muslims took over was then converted to a beautiful mosque, which was then split and partly flipped to be a Catholic Cathedral during the Reconquista. I was awestruck walking from one side of the building to the other, thinking that if someone had brought me in to see the mosque, blindfolded me and walked me over the to Cathedral side, I would swear I was in a completely different building. It is incredible to see the 1000+ columns used to construct the inside of the building, the intricacies of the Muslim design, alongside a beautiful altarpiece and gothic arches.

These arches were built using with bricks and limestone, held together by a middle keystone piece

Thousands and thousands of columns

The mihrab, the holy space, within a mosque

The detail work in the Christian part of the Cathedral is just as beautiful

The Street of Flowers

Day 2: Granada

Since I was in my high school Spanish literature class, the number one place I was always fascinated by and had always wanted to visit was the Alhambra. In our little classroom at CCHS, we read Jorge Luis Borges' poem, analyzed it, discussed the historical context, looked at photos, essentially did everything short of visiting the place itself. Forever engrained in me was the romantic idea of "the last Alhambra", the last standing Muslim palace before the Catholics took it all back during the Reconquista. The Catholic Kings Isabel and Ferdinand fell in love with the Alhambra and decided to keep it, making it their royal palace and the Generalife gardens their summer home. The palace and the gardens did not disappoint.

Generalife Gardens

The gardens of the Alhambra

Muslim palaces are all about gardens, courtyards, and fountains. Note to future self - have a small fountain/waterway in the backyard

There really isn't much I can write about the visit except for the fact that I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Everything was beautiful, I wanted to take it all in and stay longer. I was sad the weather was gloomy all weekend, but its beauty still came across through the overcast. My neck hurt by the end of the day from spending so much time staring up at the walls and god, the ceilings! The detail and handywork was incredible - I've never seen anything like it. After visiting the church where Isabel and Ferdinand, and their daughter Juana (La Loca) and her husband Felipe (The Handsome), were buried, we skedaddled onto Sevilla where we would stay the for the next two and a half days.

La Alhambra

The details are stunning

Just wow

Day 3 and 4: Sevilla & Lopera

Sevilla was the city I knew the least about, but the one that had so much to do! We visited the Real Alcazar, the royal palace, that definitely solidified my love for Muslim architecture and design. Room after room, garden after garden, there's just so much to look at and fall in love with. And THEY FILMED GAME OF THRONES THERE! If you're familiar with the show, scenes from the land of Dorne were filmed in the gardens of the Real Alcazar. It was such a treat to see it with my own eyes!

Again, gardens and fountains

Real Alcazar in real life (above) Dorne on the show (below)

I’m just astounded by the ceilings

We then visited the Cathedral of Sevilla which was of course, beautiful. Weirdly surprising, it's where Christopher Columbus is buried. As an American, someone who has been taught and retaught the history behind Columbus, there was definitely an element of mixed emotions as I looked at his tomb. As a kid, I learned the song that will forever pop in my head whenever I hear the year 1492 ("in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue…"). Going from a romanticized childish version of the discovery of the new world to being educated about the reality of genocide and the horrors of colonialism, it was a very weird sensation to be in front of such a historic character who I've come to dislike greatly. I don't think Columbus Day should be celebrated, or at least not be taught about in the way our school systems do. But it is very much a part of the world's history, MY history, so yes, deep down, it was kind of cool to see.

So many gothic arches!

Christopher Columbus’ tomb

But, my favorite part of the Cathedral was the Muslim structure (surprise, surprise!) of the minaret. It’s called La Giralda, and it's a tall tower equivalent to a church's bell tower, except for in a mosque, it's where they call the different prayer times throughout the day. Yes, this structure of 30+ floors was something someone climbed up five times A DAY to inform the town it was time to pray. Ingenious as they were though, instead of stairs, they made the way up a ramp - so instead of walking up five times a day, they would just ride a horse up the ramp! Easy-peasy! Except, we did not have horses, so the climb was a little brutal… the views were totally worth it though. And since it felt more like a full on supported building, I wasn't afraid of the height!

La Giralda in the daytime

Views from the top of the Giralda

La Giralda at night

After the Cathedral, we had time to just explore around Sevilla. We saw the Plaza de España which was so cool! THE FILMED STAR WARS THERE! From Game of Thrones to Star Wars, clearly Andalucia is the place to go for Hollywood productions. We ended the night with another flamenco show, which of course, was awesome to see.

La Plaza del España in real life (above) and Star Wars (below)

All around the plaza, every province had its own little section of the wall decorated with images of important battles and maps of the area

Flamenco at the Casa de la Memoria

On the trip back to Madrid, we stopped by Basilippoo, an olive oil factory. I am not a fan of olives, but I sure do love olive oil and it was really neat to learn about how it's made. We got walked through the process, from looking at the hundreds of olive trees in their fields, to the pressing rooms, and bottling and packaging. We even got to do a tasting! Now, I never imagined tasting straight olive oil would be enjoyable, but we were taught how to tell what good virgin olive oil tastes like (grassy and spicy!) and what good pairings for different types of oil are (orange infused olive oil and chocolate ice cream is DELICIOUS). After a little trip to the gift shop, we were on our way to Lopera, a town in the region of Jaén where Paco's family is from, for lunch. It was neat seeing what a smaller, working class town looked like. It felt a lot more like where my family is from in Mexico and Colombia. I loved the change of scenery and the good food.

All in all, Andalucia is certainly going to be a highlight of my semester here and I hope to one day have the chance to come back!

#madrid 2017 #andalucia #granada #cordoba #sevilla #au madrid #au abroad #study abroad #american u #american university

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twentysomethingbrain · 5 years ago

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“But sometimes I wonder how you think about it now, and I see your face in every crowd. But darling it was good, never looking down, and right there where we stood, was Holy Ground”

Always gets stuck in my head when I find myself thinking about us and how we were. That song resonates so well with me with how we were.

“Back when you fit my poems like a perfect rhyme”

“I left a note on the door with a joke we made”

“Spinning like a dress in a brand new dress we had this big wide city all to ourselves”

“And for the first time I had something to lose”

“And I get we fell apart in the usual way and the story’s got dust on every page”

We won’t go to “All too well” because that is an actual sad song about love, Holy Ground is at least upbeat, more of a nostalgic look back than a heartbreaking “Why?”.

Because I’m trying to make these moments more of a nostalgic look back than a heartbreaking “Why?”. Because as they say time heals all wounds but healing is a funny thing, one minute you feel like you’ve got it all out of your system and the other you feel like you’re back on square one.

It doesn’t help it’s Christmas.

The lights on the ceiling, you put them on wonky, you were distracted. They’re not more uniform and I spent about three hours putting them up partly with Olive’s help.

I think about your family Christmas get together, the Christmas lights in that one town near Woburn, or in Woburn, I don’t remember, but they were cool white lights, you preferred cool white lights and I prefer warm white lights. The pub we had dinner in, twirling me, the Christmas jumpers, the fake fireplace on your TV, the ladder for me to help you with your decorations, the numerous Christmas markets, the present opening, your tiara and glittery box, the stupd socks, the handmade snow globe, the bauble I gifted you from Lithuania.

I wonder if you put that bauble up this year. I wonder who helped you with the decorations this year.

I wonder if you’re seeing someone else.

I can’t decide if that would make things better or worse for me. Because, as they say, your heart doesn’t know logic, because my heart still holds on hope that maybe you’ve finally realised your mistake.

That you’ll remember the New Year’s eve dinner, the moment in my room as I finished getting ready, how we ended 2018 and started 2019.

I wonder if you think about it now.

My hopeless romantic heart that believes in the movies imagines you somehow gatecrashing our party and being right there at the stroke of midnight. But that’s ridiculous.

My heart is still a little broken. It just wants to pause for a minute. Not to worry about anything, not to seem okay. I just want to cruise for a little while without people wondering if anything’s wrong. It’s been a long year.

I don’t want you to be another person I struggle to show that I’m okay. In that sense I wish I never said yes to you.

It’s hard when the reason someone doesn’t want you is because they just don’t love you as much as you love them. Nothing was wrong, just for some reason it just wasn’t meant to be. Nine months together and he just couldn’t love you enough. It’s not your fault, and it’s not his fault but you’re left feeling like none of it is worth it. Not for you.

It sucks.

You’re never gonna find someone.

Your expectations are too high.

But why is it so wrong of me to want someone to dance with? Someone who, for no reason at all, turns on the music and waltz with me in the kitchen? Who thinks about the little details, who might remember to pick me up a flower or two because he knows I love them. Who worries about me the same amount as I do them and when we’re poorly we sit in each other’s company feeling sorry for ourselves. Someone who gets along with my best friends because he understands how much they mean to me.

I wish it was you, a part of me still hopes for you, it’s a bigger part than I care to admit, but I’d really like for it to stop.

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limejuicer1862 · 5 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Sarah Westcott

Sarah Westcott’s first poetry collection Slant Light was published by Pavilion Poetry, an imprint of Liverpool University Press, in 2016. A poem from the book was Highly Commended in the 2017 Forward Prizes. Her debut pamphlet Inklings, published by Flipped Eye, was a winner of the Venture Poetry Award and the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice for Winter 2013.

Sarah’s poems have appeared in magazines including Poetry Review, POEM, Magma and Butcher’s Dog, on beermats, billboards and the side of buses, and in anthologies including Best British Poetry and The Forward Book of Poetry.

She was a poet-in-residence at the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in London in 2015 and Manchester Cathedral poet of the year in 2016. She won first place in The London Magazine poetry prize in 2017 and the Poets and Players competition in 2018. Sarah grew up on the edge of Exmoor, lives on the London/Kent borders with her family and works as a freelance writer after twenty years as a Fleet Street news reporter. She has a science degree and an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Sarah has run poetry workshops at schools and for the Second Light Network for women poets, and in 2019 starts work as a poetry tutor for City Lit in Covent Garden. She is an experienced and sensitive editor and offers a professional manuscript critique service for writers ranging from their first pamphlet to a full collection.

Website: https://www.sarahwestcott.co.uk

The Interview

When and why did you start writing poetry?

I had always written and doodled in notebooks and in my head as a child and teenager but I didn’t start taking any notice of it until my children were young and I was in my early thirties. I felt like something was ‘missing’ but I couldn’t put my finger on it. ~then I realised it was, without sounding pretentious, my creativity. I needed to access that part of myself. I only studied English up to GCSE level (although I kept on reading). I took an introductory OU course in poetry and another on short fiction – they were only about three months long. It was one of those light-bulb moments – you could say poetry ‘found me’. I remember going to see Jackie Kay read aloud in a church in London and I was in awe of seeing a real poet in the flesh, reading their work. She was captivating. That was the beginning of my poetry journey

1.1. What was it about Jackie Kay’s performance that had you “in awe”?

I think I had thought, maybe subconsciously, that all poets were old white men, and often dead, and almost not real. But here was a real woman with a beautiful voice speaking her poems to a packed church and suddenly poetry was accessible to someone like me.. I think I was in awe because she was able to captivate the entire audience through her voice and her words – no special equipment or anything – just her living voice and that was the first time I had heard a real poet reach people like that.

2. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I was aware of a canon of mostly dead white men and I knew I was ignorant when it came to understanding their poetry because I stopped studying English after GCSE. It felt like these poems were full of riddles or literary allusions that I had no chance of ‘getting’. I still feel a little like that now. I think it is partly to do with the type of education you have and mine was at a comprehensive school where my abiding memories of English were marking each others’ spelling tests. I had read a little Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin and some of the war poets at school but not really any women apart from Sylvia Plath. I used to dip into an anthology called Palgrave’s Golden Treasury when I was bored at work in my twenties and I loved Gerard Manley Hopkins. But I didn’t really know any modern women poets and once I began reading them – Gillian Clark for example, a whole world opened up. I loved it that she wrote about domesticity, for example – I remember reading her poem The Sundial in which she starts by writing about a sick child and it was so heartening that women were writing about this sort of thing. These revelations were only about 12 years ago which shows how quickly things have changed.

3. What is your daily writing routine?

I don’t have one as I have a lot of caring responsibilities at the moment and I’m learning on the job as poetry tutor as well. But what I do try and do is find the time to read a little bit every day. I make sure I write into my notebook at least once a week when my three-year-old is asleep or at nursery. I often start with a free write or I might even just take my notebook out with me when I walk the dog and treat it like a ‘field trip’. I love doing this. I try and make the most of any time I have by getting something down – it doesn’t matter if it is rubbish or not. Sometimes 20 mins is enough, especially if it something I have ben thinking about for a while. Then I have something to work with. If I don’t read and write I start to feel restless and sad. I actually find having very little time very helpful in that I dont waste it procrastinating – I just sit down and write. Likewise, train journeys are a blessing as long as I have a seat and something to write with!

5. What motivates you to write?

I am motivated by being alive – to capture something of the extraordinary quality of being a sentient being and then to connect with others – I am also motivated by observing and being curious. I love the euphoric feeling of making or creating something new from words, something that is both idea and music, that has not been made before and which reaches to other humans. If someone responds to a poem you have written it is a wonderful feeling. I am also motivated, perhaps weirdly, to leave something behind of me when I am gone. I am increasingly driven to write about the climate crisis too. I feel you cannot write without writing of it, somehow – it is a grave backdrop to everything.

6. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I think it is more a subconscious influence – a lot of the stories I read when young seeped in and helped form me. I loved Judy Blume – her stories had a lot of darkness and humanity in them. Likewise the Chronicles of Narnia. I think they all go towards making up your psyche and also the richness of the place you draw from when you write. My dad used to read me Robert Louis Stevenson verses when I was young and their imaginative flight definitely stayed with me – that sense of possibility and play.

Maggie Smith said she was given the advice ‘write what scares you’ very early on. I spent a lot of time being terrified by what I read – I remember being terrified of witches and also reading the end of 1984 and understanding that Winston had figuratively died – I remember his gin-soaked tears. I think that writing and reading is a way of facing that existential terror within yourself because there is no where to hide – you are facing hard truths.

7. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

SO much extraordinary and powerful and important work is being made at the moment. I keep a tally of the books I read each year and put a heart by the ones that affected me most. In the last few months for me, Max Porter for his hybridity and linguistic verve, Ilya Kaminsky, Fiona Benson (her fierce and tender poems) . I also loved Sean Hewitt’s Lantern and I love the way Alice Oswald listens in to the natural world..

8. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

How do you become a writer? I love Mary Oliver’s dictum “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” I think we are all writers – stay curious, observe and read. When you are ready, come to a blank page with all your senses open and do not be afraid to just write. Like running, one foot in front of another. One word after another. I find free writing really helpful. Or writing letters. Anything that connects the subconscious mind with the hand on the page, or whatever works for you. Editing uses a different part of the brain. Do not worry about getting an audience or being published. Just write with your heart open.

9. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I am working towards my second collection with Pavilion poetry – there seem to be some poems exploring our relationship with trees and flowers and trying to have a conversation with the natural world. I feel like I am in the realm of Keat’s negative capability – that is, not knowing or being capable of mysteries. It’s quite exciting – the book is quietly forming and re-forming. There’s a sense of ripping up my old way of writing and beginning again, also of taking as long as it will take. I’m lucky to be part of a workshop group called Nevada Street Poets and we are celebrating our tenth anniversary this year and putting together a collection of essays . Mine is on looking .

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Sarah Westcott Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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