#the great correspondence

[nando161mando]

"The killing, um the death, of a Palestinian man..."

A BBC correspondent goes to great lengths to avoid reporting that Israel killed 78 y/o US citizen Omar As'ad.

[velvetjune]

I want control 2 to have even more documents and more reading

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Too old! Are you crazy? You are just starting to live. And life still has all its joys and fruitfulness to give you. Its pains too, of course. But a great and faithful love is the crucible where joys and sorrows melt to become greatness and goodness.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, February 8, 1950 [#178]

[dinosaurwithablog]

Perry Mason and Lt. Tragg take a cigarette break together to discuss the case. I love how dark the early seasons of this show were. Great contrast!!

[sunnys-side-upside-down]

Commission batch for @reversal-mushroom

[esteemed-excellency]

[expatesque]

(second message attempt, not sure first posted) Exquisite taste in interiors! I have a hard to describe issue, but it’s driving me insane so here goes … in my living room I have a gorgeous wall of huge windows with a beautiful view of greenery. However. The wall opposite is a big boring blank white wall. I can’t add shelves or furniture because my dining table is placed pretty close to the wall, but also abhor gallery walls … how can I make it as beautiful and interesting as the wonderful windows?

Ooooh love this!

My first instinct: giant framed wallpaper scene. You can do the whole wall (looks great) but I also really like when you make a border for it out of moulding so that it looks more like a giant piece of art, like this one. If you're renting, you can even do peel and stick.

Other ideas:

Wall of mirrors, either trimmed out or just the whole wall or bunches of rectangles, normal or antiqued (can you tell I'm really into mirrors right now, ever since I saw this article in WoI. Okay one more, how sick is this with the lighting and the picture rail, I'm obsessed with Adam Bray.)

Just trimmed out, either classic style or something more mod.

Okay this is kinda rogue, but what about a whole wall of pleated curtains? Adds a lot of texture, can visually warm up rooms where there's a lot of glass, easy to swap out for different looks for different seasons, v dramatic.

I know you don't like gallery walls, but what about like, two (or three, dimension depending) really big pieces of art? (Note, vintage stores are great for finding these kinds of things)

Perhaps a tapestry / fabric piece? Or if you want just texture, how cool would an antique lace runner look framed? (maybe consider building the frame yourself to keep costs reasonable)

Okay I know you said no shelves but what about like, very narrow shelves? Like, slightly wider than a glass shelves? Like the top of this built in bar width shelves. For styling, I would go thrifting and grab as much crystal and little silver bits as you can find and put it up there, possibly with some cool lighting underneath?

Hope something there gives you an idea! Keep me updated on what you decide to do, and let me know if you have any further thoughts!

[deadpresidents]

Dear Mr. President:

Always there have been men who had contempt for the "word" although words have survived better than any other man-made things. St. John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." When you have finished using a weapon, someone is dead or injured, but the product of the word can be life and hope and survival. All of the greatness of our species rests on words -- Socrates to his judges -- the Sermon on the Mount, the introduction to Wyclif's Bible, later taken by Lincoln for the Gettysburg Address. And all of these great and irretrievable words have the bravery of fear and hope in them. There must have been a fierce but hollow feeling in the members of the Continental Congress when the clerk first read the words, "When in the course of human events --." Lincoln must have dwelt with loneliness when he wrote the order of mobilization.

In our history, there have been not more than five or six moments when the word and the determination mapped the course of the future. Such a moment was your speech, Sir, to the Congress two nights ago. Our people will be living by phrases from that speech when all the concrete and steel have long been displaced or destroyed. It was a time of no turning back, and in my mind as well as in many others, you have placed your name among the great ones of history.

And I take great pride in the fact that you are my President.

Yours in admiration, John Steinbeck

-- Letter from John Steinbeck to President Lyndon B. Johnson on March 17, 1965, two days after LBJ's monumental "We Shall Overcome" speech to a Joint Session of Congress urging the passage of the Voting Rights Act in the wake of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama

[fisheito]

If you tracked my eye activity on that bliss promo pic with the tops it would be something like this

Making a major stop at topper

Before crashing into a ditch (yakuya corner)

[justworthlessreblogs]

do you have any more pikario or yukari (or both) headcanons maybe

i still have a few!

rio:

he's a very trusting person originally but after yukari lies to him in episode 16 that trait slowly disappears and he becomes a lot less gullible

ghost/cryptid disbeliever despite being a literal fucking fairy and living around magic all his life

this one is incredibly random but i was rewatching the avengers for the millionth time last night and it occurred to me that if he was into superhero movies he'd be a black widow fan. like i don't think he'd be into superhero movies all that much (his interests lie elsewhere) but if he was i think he'd connect with her backstory a lot. overall he tends to like characters that go through redemption arcs gee i wonder why. during his julio era he would've been the most insufferable loki stan

yukari:

is a prankster! nothing too big or anything that would hurt anyone but she does like messing with others. stuff like switching out the water with sprite. aoi catches her setting a prank up one day but instead of ratting her out asks to join her. they become an absolutely terrifying duo

also ghost denier. now i want an akiyuka buzzfeed unsolved au because i can hear them saying so many of those quotes

[autumnrory]

watching rory's joy at the beginning of her internship at the stanford eagle gazette and later when she worms her way back in during season 6 (which like hey whatever happened to that lol) is why i simply cannot accept a universe where she doesn't have a career in journalism

[naamahdarling]

.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

It's 2:30, I'm at home, it's sunny outside, I rehearsed this morning. I received your letter from Friday and another from Sunday and I am angry. That, in summary, is my state. My love, you have to relax, you have to let yourself go, but you must not continue to slide down the slope you have taken these last few days. You are thirty-six years old, you live, you are here, in the open sky with love in your heart and a deep sense of beauty. I understand that your state of fatigue takes you away from everything and everyone; I understand your longing for sunshine and health, but you will overcome this illness and the sun will shine often for you. 

The tension in which you have always lived is exhausting, I know, but don't forget that you are one of those who must remain tense until the end, who does not give up, and this idea alone will give you the strength you need to continue. Remember our laughter, often. That's why you have to live, to laugh, to sing in Desdemona, for the peaceful hours of Ermenonville and its park, for thunderstorms, for the sun and the driving rain. I beg you, do not forget happiness. Don't forget that even if we are diminished, mutilated, limited, we are made for happiness, and that it is there, every day, at every moment, waiting for us, if we don't stiffen up, if we consent to it. 

Europe has its mists, it is true, but it also has its sun, which is all the more brilliant because it is, like life, not very long-lasting. And then, there are your eyes, the most beautiful eyes I know, my face of happiness and gratitude. There is your work so full of gratitude when, after days and days of drought and poverty, you feel friends with her. What more can I say to you? What else can I say to you but that you are only thirty-six years old and that I have just left a being who was sixty-five, who was only a breath, a spirit, and who still had more happiness, more joys, more energy and more wealth in him than a young man of twenty? Courage, my love! Perhaps you may not be fully aware of the part that I hold in you. 

The many weeks of absence erase the memory and replace it with a false change of scenery that we don't know at what to attribute. That's what happened to me lately, before Dad's death, when I was writing to you about my boredom. I was called to order, and I am now busy with the essential. You, abandoned a little, alone, you lose your way sometimes. Forgive me for telling you all this. I am perhaps boasting too much, but I don't think I'm completely wrong. On the other hand, the people around you are not very comforting. I don't know your brother. I don't know F[rancine], but your situation is not one that makes her presence radiant, even if she is exultant with life. As for the G[allimard], this is the couple that I would choose if I wanted to die of "disintegration". 

Everything falls on you, everyone cries out for you, everyone asks for you, at the very moment when you should only receive. But you'll see. The days are flying by, and in a very short time I'll be there. Don't come to me with a scowl on your face and the idea that we'll be curled up together in grief, regret, nostalgia and the cult of the past. The latter, it is in every gesture I make and every thought I have, but in a living way. It is expressed in the struggle, in the growing need for cleanliness, for righteousness, greatness. As for the rest, it remains in the depths of my heart, there, in the background, where it mingles with my life to make it richer. It may seem strange to you that I should speak to you in this tone, but you don't know me very well if you expected anything else from me. 

If I am angry today, it is because I have received a letter from my sister who takes on the appearance of Saint Sebastian and indulges in scenes in front of her distraught daughter, scenes that have no real basis, given that she has hardly seen my father in twenty years and that she left on her own as soon as she wanted to. Anyway, let's leave that. No one in the world, I'm sure, misses the presence of Dad more than I do. I miss him every moment, but the crying and complaints are not my doing; like him, I have a disgust for death, like him I have a thirst for life and happiness. I love him infinitely and he helps me to live, and it is for him also that I want to laugh. That's where I am. 

As for the follies I wanted to warn you against, don't worry about it, I wasn't thinking of anything out of the ordinary. Only you were telling me about a trip to make, and I thought that we shouldn't build too many castles in Spain, that it was important first of all to find ourselves, to see where we were with our life and health and to weigh the possibilities that would be granted to us. That was all. I got your "picture". You have cheeks! And a little scoundrel look...! My love, my beautiful love, courage again. Work. Work well, the best you can. 

By the way, I don't know if I told you about your preface. Did I tell you that I had tears in my eyes when I read it? Oh, yes. It is beautiful! After its publication, you'll have to retire to a deserted island, but a beautiful island! Okay, I'm leaving you. I'm going to write to my sister again and write a few more letters. Then I'll go and buy some pretty flowers for Feli. Then I will finish at the theater. See you tomorrow, darling. Angeles asks me to ask your permission to kiss you. Four eyes on your picture. The house, black and yellow, smiles at the thought of seeing you soon. As for me, here I am, in the most patient and impatient wait that one can imagine. In your arms, in your warmth, I will be happy again. I love you.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, February 28, 1950 [#219]  

[ciderbird]

“The court is not a habitation made for me; I suffer each time that I must perform there and it makes my blood boil when I see the baseness almost always committed to acquire some distinction for which I would not have given three pennies. (…) I do not feel myself made for the place that I occupy and that I have sworn to renounce, one way or another. There, my dear friend, is the great secret that I have so long delayed to communicate to you. (…) How can a single man manage to govern [Russia] and even correct its abuses? This would be absolutely impossible not only for a man of ordinary abilities like me, but even for a genius, and I have always had the principle that it is better not to be entrusted with a job than to fulfill it badly; (…) My plan is to settle with my wife on the banks of Rhine, where I will live as a simple individual, making my happiness consist of the company of my friends and the study of nature. I know that you will blame me, but I cannot do otherwise, for a quiet conscience is my first rule, and it will never be quiet if I were to undertake something beyond my strength.”

an excerpt from the letter sent by Grand Duke Alexander to his friend, Viktor Kochubey, upon learning of his grandmother’s plans to make him her direct successor (May, 1896)

[chicago-geniza]

Stefania hated the US and in her later years hated the USSR and disavowed her Jewishness and was enough of a 19th-century bourgeois salonniere to take a period- and milieu-typical stance re: LGBT rights, not unlike my mom's: you're entitled to equality/equity under the law, but don't flaunt your difference so flamingly and conduct yourself properly in polite society. Do whatever you like in private, but be discreet. Etc. So I wonder what she'd make of the fact that the person passionately committed to preserving her legacy, writing her biography, and translating her work into English is a post-Soviet Jewish trans guy from Chicago

[citruscantus]

heyyy hey hey hey hey!!! sorry hai. anyway ^_^ i have some questions abt ur mirakane siren au!!! whyd u choose to make akane a half vampire? also i like the idea of mira making herself look human as she kinda alr does that in canon (her pretending to be neurotypical which could or could not be a metaphor). do u have any more ideas for this au? srry for the random ask i just love this ship and im glad other ppl r making art for it

sure! it'll get longwinded so i'll tuck it under the cut

so i had the idea floating a while ago about a specifically just vampire, more urban fantasy au that shifted into this broader monster period setting one instead. i feel like that original idea might have actually come off a similar post by someone else or maybe a zecret santa prompt but it was so long ago i dont remember so if anyone does lmk... but most of the extent of my thoughts on that were converting sois into a vampire hunter secret society and that it was funny to have them tracking aoi thinking surely this suspicious edgy dude was a vampire. and it turning out they are right he's kidnapping people but he's actually entirely human and doing it to keep his vampire sister alive - i literally dont remember how much of that was my own idea sorry 😿

for me half the appeal of pondering any dramatically different entire setting changed AU like these is seeing what completely different circumstances can be made to still keep the core of the characters intact. and then some of the other half is how it would change them

i think vampire akane works very well as a comparison to her circumstances in 999. undead creature existing in a burdened state between life and death, burns up in the sun, forced to harm others to sustain her own existence... vampire depictions vary wildly but it's fairly common to depict them with some level of psychic or mind control powers too

the vampire idea changed form into a broader monster au when i got to talking about it with a friend and expanding on the ideas a lot the idea with her being a "half vampire" is further mirroring her schrodingers cat state with her having undergone a partial incomplete transformation somehow. so while she's very psychically powerful she's physically frail and sickly trying to sustain being stuck in the middle and can't access her full potential. and probably she can only resolve this and complete the transformation by going on a long revenge quest to complete a succession ritual drinking the blood of Evil Rich Vampire Lord Hongou who originally turned her. (and she should need junpei to achieve that for some reason but uh didn't manage to figure out a reason Some Guy could be essential to that) no matter what though she doesn't have the option to reverse the process and go back to being human. she can only go on by embracing becoming what she feared.