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#Famous Romanian authors
tragedygf · 5 months
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found a new favorite poem but its lowkey embarrassing 😕
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zarzava · 2 years
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three romanian authors to read with ur dracula daily
dracula is an orientalist text conceived at the height of british empire, grounded in distortions of a region that stoker never visited. sadly (and unsurprisingly) i found very few romanian authors who have been translated into english online, so here’s a meagre list of recs:
1. luminița cioabă
romanian roma author, famous in romania as the daughter of bulibasha (the king of the roma nation), she forged her own path as a writer of short stories in the oral roma tradition which portray in vivid detail the history of the roma people of romania 
the birch grove
queen of the night and stone flower 
meralda
from her book, the lost country 
2. marin sorescu
from humble rural romanian roots, he wrote under the oppressive ceausescu government. in a national ironic tradition he very famously said: "Just as I can't give up smoking because I don't smoke, I can't give up writing because I have no talent." some of my favorite poems:
the sea shell (1983)
carbon paper (1980)
creation (1992)
3. paul celan
jewish poet from bucovina. i recommend this beautiful essay by ilya kaminsky, who like celan was forced to flee eastern europe due to antisemitism, deconstructing various translators’ attempts to adapt celan’s texts and experience of the holocaust. these are all poems from a 1971 poetry collection
all souls
leap-centuries 
language mesh and night
homecoming
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sgiandubh · 4 months
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National personification
The UK has Britannia. France has Marianne. The US have Uncle Sam. National personifications, summing up supposed collective qualities and passing on a message, both to citizens and foreigners alike. Instantly recognizable by just about anyone. To be found everywhere, from city halls (busts, frescoes, tapestries) to subway walls (Army conscription posters - of course it rings a bell!).
Romania has this:
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This is Revolutionary Romania, as seen by C.D. Rosenthal, an Austrian painter who found both friendship and an avid clientele among the Romanian young rebels who tried and failed to overthrow the corrupted Ottoman rule, in 1848. Following them in exile and probably also spying on their behalf, Rosenthal was finally arrested in Budapest and tortured to death by the Imperial authorities: a normal occurrence in troubled times. His memory went on and on and on, because the same friends were soon to come back home and become ministers, bankers, newspaper owners: a modern democracy slowly emerged.
This is his most famous portrait and it quickly became our Britannia of sorts. Ceaușescu had it placed in his office, for inspiration - it did not help much, though.
The woman painted by Rosenthal holds the red, yellow and blue flag and is dressed in a Southern peasant costume, as it was worn at the time. She gazes with strength, determination and confidence towards a future that spells free press, parliamentary elections, industrialization and capitalist speculation. In real life, she is Maria Rosetti, a personal friend and sponsor of his. The wife of C.A. Rosetti, an authentic Prince of Genoese and Greek stock, one of the leaders of both the rebellion and the future Liberal Party. Also a many times removed relative of this blogger - but let's not insist. 😉
There is a catch, however, in all this fine and dandy story. Our national personification, the woman I just mentioned, is Scottish. Her life begins in Guernsey in 1819, as Marie Grant, the daughter of Captain Edward Grant, a ship-owner businessman and member of the Clan Grant of Carron and Spey and Marie La Lacheur, a French Huguenot woman.
These people, who fought as Jacobites at Prestonpans and Culloden and whose motto was 'Stand Fast':
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Marie came to Wallachia, or what is now the Southern part of Romania, around 1837, following her younger brother, Effingham Grant, who just managed to find a lucrative job as the private secretary of another Scot (Glaswegian, even), Robert Gilmour Colquhoun, the newly appointed British Consul-General. At the time, these were long term postings, not unlike a long sojourn on a space station of sorts: Colquhoun remained in Bucharest from 1835 to 1854, when he eventually was posted to Bosnia.
Because she needed to support herself, Marie found a well paid live-in job as a governess for the family of Ion Odobescu, a high ranking Police honcho (also a far removed relative, this time on my maternal grandmother's side - the world is really, really small). The rest was easy enough: having met Rosetti through her brother, they fell in love, eloped to Plymouth and got married there, for what was to become a life long equal political and business partnership. Because they owned several newspapers, she is our first female journalist. A truly remarkable woman, a philanthropist and an indispensable voice advocating for the dispossessed. Effingham went on to establish the biggest foundry in the country, along with a real estate company, a tobacco manufacture, an orchid greenhouse and a bread factory - all prospered beyond any expectations. A heavy traffic steel bridge in Bucharest still bears his name. Enduring legacies.
For those brave enough or bored enough to look for more, here is the best detailed account on her I could find, based on Guernsey sources (but not only): https://www.priaulxlibrary.co.uk/node/386 .
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classicalshorts · 1 year
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Paint it NERO!
No, nothing to do with the emperor who fiddled while Rome burnt. This is the final entry in the Cool Colours series on words that English derived from Latin and Greek colour words. So, tonight, you guessed it, we are going to PAINT IT BLACK! (yes, I am a Stones fan!).
Okay, we start with Latin. I am going to take a slightly different approach tonight and look at how the Latin for black (niger, nigra, nirgum) evolved into different modern European languages. These are all called the 'Romance' languages, but nothing to with love. It is because they derive from the language of the Romans. The most similar to the Latin original are the Poruguese, Spanish, and Romanian:
Spanish: negro, negra Portuguese: negro, negra Romanian: negru
The main change is that the 'i' in the Latin has changed to an 'e'. Note how Spanish and Portuguese have retained the masculine and feminine endings -o, and -a. The neuter (the '-um' in Latin) has disappeared.
Now, French and Italian represent interesting and slightly different example of linguistic evolution.
French: noir, noire Italian: nero, nera
Once again, we see the masculine and feminine endings remain, but slightly different. The 'g' of the Latin has disappeared. This is not unheard of ease of pronunciation or pleasure of sound may explain this; the harder sound is dropped over time to leave the more pleasant, gentler nero, for example. In French, nigro (Latin ablative) became noir, a word still visibly connected to it Latin roots, just altered.
However, there may be something a little more complicated, but very, very interesting. Now, Latin is not the only ancient Italian language. Some of its own words come from these, or have combined as language evolves. And there are even examples where these non-Latin Italian languages have bequeathed us fascinating derivatives in their own right.
One of these languages was Umbrian, spoken by the central Italian peoples and closely connected to Oscan (more about these in a later post). In Umbrian, the word for black or dark seems to have been niru, very similar to modern French and Italian. This leaves us with questions. Was the Umbrian word the principal parent word of the French and Latin for black? Or did it combine with Latin as it evolved? Latin and Umbrian were likely connected either by Umbrian bequesting to Latin or via a connection to a mutual parent.
Isn't language amazing? Such a rich legacy from a famous ancient language, and one that has almost been forgotten.
So, now to Greek. Are you feeling a little down or sad? If so, you may be said to be feeling melancholy, in other words (and rather less poetically), you have a touch of black bile. The word comes from Greek as follows:
μελας, μελαινα, μελαν - black, dark
χολή - bile
So how do we get from black bile to a feeling of sadness? This goes back to ancient Greek medical theory. The theory of the four humours, an early holistic approach to understanding the funcitoning of the body and disease, often attributed to medical writer and thinker Hippocrates (yep, author of the oath which doctors still pledge allegiance to). The 'humours' corresponded to the four fluids of the body, of which black bile was one, accounting for certain diseases, but also feeling low. What a rich cultural history finding its origins in the early days of science?
And so, this article brings my series on Cool Colours, modern words from ancient Latin and Greek (primarily) for colour. I hope you have enjoyed it.
If you would like more content like this (language related) or would like more stuff generally about the ancient world and how it relates to our own, please DM me.
See you in my next series, whatever that may be!
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adarkrainbow · 10 months
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The Yaga journal: The Romanian baba Yaga
Next article on our journal is: “Baba Cloantza, the toothless Yaga of Romanian folklore”, by Simona Ferent
This articles studies another incarnation of the famous Russian baba, “Baba Cloantza”, a recurring character of Romanian fairytales, an old witch of the Carpathian folklore. One of the main sfeatures of Baba Cloantza is a lack of teeth - the word “cloantza” means “an old, ugly, toothless woman”. In the world of fairytales, it is a perfect recap of what a wicked witch is. The same word is also a pejorative designation for mouth - so she would be the “baba Big-Mouth” so to speak. We have here an ancient figure of old age, which denotes a “sinister wisdom”, and a character carrying words - a speech even more important given that the witch cannot bite, and thus her mouth is merely for speaking. To this first symbolism, a second is grafted: the image of the old woman living on the border of the village, often in the woods, a scary-looking crone practicing magic rituals. The term “baba” designates in general the old wise woman, or a witch to which the villages people will attribute all the classical powers - love spells, divination, healing powers, controlling the weather... 
The article itself proposes to study the two dimensions of the character. On one side, the ambiguous baba, at the same time an archaic, demonic creature and a spiritual guide who uses her power to help the protagonists. On the other side, the richess and diversity of the artistic depictions of the baba Cloantza. The article notably proposes a typology of the different depictions of the baba Cloantza. As for the corpus used by the article, it contains the works of several authors who took from the old folklore to “give a second life” to the myths. We have Vasile Alecsandri, a great man of literature whose poems and plays are studied by all Romanian students, and who also collected ballads and folktales (and rewrote those folktales as poems) - in his works Baba Cloantza is a witch acting as a prophet, a healer, and a demon. Alongside him we found George Cosbuc, Tuor Arghezi and Gelu Vlasin (who offered a modern and caricatural version of baba Cloantza - even though the character of the witch as a buffoon could already be found in a small Romanian opera of 1848, Baba Hârca). And finally, the corpus is completed by the works of the folklorist Petre Ispirecu, and of Ion Creanga, where Baba Cloantza is a needed initiation rite for the legendary hero.
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Baba Yaga, as depicted in the Pathfinder games
1) Baba Cloantza: village oracle
In Romanian folk myths, the Sburator embodies the malevolent seduction of a fantastical creatures who haunts at night the sleep of women. When in 1843 Vasile Alecsandri wrote in verse this vampire myth, in the poem “Kraiu-Nou”, Baba Cloantza appears in an “idyllic peasant setting dominated by a lunar symbolism”. The folk calendar associates the manifestation of the moon, her first appearance in the sky, with the time to make wishes (especially love wishes). Among these youths that send magical pleas to the moon, the poet describes Zamfira, the “romantic prototype of the virginal beauty in Romanian peasantry”, and who, due to first erotic pulsions, ignores the warnings of Baba Cloantza. The baba uses a divination rite involving forty-one corn seeds, and she advises her with a fearful tone to “flee away from the beautiful stranger with a caressing voice”. The baba first appears sitting on a mound, and the reader will later understand that it is the grave of a vampire-like being. In the poem, the prophecy of Baba Cloantza follows right after verses describing how the elders of the village predicted a happy life for the maiden - but Zamfira will end up falling for the charms of a mysterious lover born of the shadows, and who will slowly devour her lfe-force. Located on the margin of the community, baba Cloantza plays here fully her double role: she warns of but also causes the danger. Her role as an oracle creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: in her words are both fear and seduction, as she describes a “stranger”, a man from another world, both celestial and malevolent. The voice of the baba, which can be heard through the night wind, warning the girls who “trust the secret of their souls to the crescent of the moon” to flee nightfall and the beautiful stranger lurking in it, reminds of the belief that during the first crescent of the moon ghostly beings and malevolent beings appear, and brings an archaic morality warning young girls against sexuality. 
2) The healing baba
In the folk-poem “Burueana de leac” (The bad herb that heals), the baba is seen answering to a man plunged into despair by his love. We see here how a peasant’s prayers are answered by the village’s baba: overtaken by a mad passion that looks a lot like a malevolent possession, the peasant man recites verse asking the magical help of “mama Ileana”, the only one able to put down the fire of his heart. V. Alecsandri notes in his edition of the poem that “mother Ileana” is merely one of the avatars of the baba - mother Ileana is the healer of the Romanian villages, who uses plants and magical words according to the folk-calendar (mixing Christian and pagan traditions) to cure ailments. In this ambiguity of folklore, the healing baba invokes at the same time religious object (such as icons), sacred places (the village’s church), Biblical characters (she sings to the Holy Mary, mother of Jesus, and she sings to God), while clearly enacting a pagan ritual (use of flowers, herbs, of a magical water, with three hazel-tree wands and “witch words”). 
3) Baba Cloantza and her caricatures
Digging in the old myths, Romanian poets reinvent the character of the healer. In a book of poems for children, published in 1948, Tudor Arghezi imagined a baba that did all sorts of miracles for a village: she knew all the love spells, she could unite or separate lovers, she had remedies to all pains, ranging from tooth-ache to heart-break. The poet described a caricature of the witch, as a hunchback hag who, with “two coals and three lies” could heal everybody - except the poor, because “for poverty, there is no remedy”. In Romanian, the irony of the poem is even more relevant by the rhyming of two key terms, “minuni” (miracle) with “minciuni” (lies). The character of the baba Cloantza also appears in the contemporary poet Gelu Vlasin, where she manifests a phantasm. The poet, half-drunk and half-mad, wanders through the streets looking for a bordello, and in this reality deformed by the alcohol, filled with numerous psychological symbols (there is a dwarf, a circus, a “pub with whores”, spiders...), the poet says “Like in a fairytale for stupids / I look for the baba cloantza / so that she can cast me spells / of money”. 
Another avatar of the Cloantza, Baba Hârca, appears in fairytales under the shape of an old witch living alone in the caverns at the end of the woods. She hides there due to fearing humans, and she uses skulls (human or animal skulls) in her magical rituals. Hârca, which means “an old, ugly, wicked woman” in Romanian, also means “skull”. In many fairytales collected by folklorists and writers, we have quite a free use of both terms, as Baba Cloantza and Baba Hârca become quasi-synonymous, one same fairytale sometimes using both terms at the same time. It is under the name Baba Hârca that the witch plays her role in the small Romanian opera mentionned above, created by Matei Millo and Alexandru Flechtenmacher in 1848, and then carried over to Serbia by Davorin Jenko. “Baba Hârca, small opera of witch-craft in two acts and three tableaux”, where Matei Millo himself interprets the role of the Hârca, which is a comical caricature of a Gypsy woman. 
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4) The witch and the magic ritual
The author of the article insists on the fact that the character about which they write is merely a “legendary character somewhere between the nostalgy of childhood and the literary memory of a pastoral space recently lost”. She is but a being of fiction - however the author also highlights that when the writer and folklorist V. Alecsandri collected folktales such as “Cucul si Turturica” (The Cuckoo and the Dove), he always added to them careful explicative notes about superstitions they might be tied in. For many Romanian peasants, the power of the baba is real. To take back the story mentionned above, through the dialogue between the dove (symbol of angelic love) and the cuckoo (a mysterious, even dangerous bird, son of an evil witch), we find an allegory of rural witchcraft. We see, though the enormous amount of proverbs associating the witch to the demonic, that the baba is, for the village, a truly supernatural being. Baba Cloantza is a being who is accepted as and integrated by the community as different. She is an intermediary between the world of the living and a fantastical afterlife: the witch is a needed catalyst for the magic ritual. A talented healer, the baba “takes the ill on her”, she is a literal mouth that sucks away the troubles of others to then expel it in a symbolic form. One must insist on the performative nature of the baba’s words - again, “cloantza” is the metaphor of the toothless mouth, and so the magic rite of the witch is like a digestion process: she is fed by the anguishes and fear of the peasants, and from this digestion results the words, the magic substance. Mixing hedonism and animism, the rites and words of the baba cause fear and a form of fatalism. The cuckoo, embodying a lively and playful spirit, sings his desire and his determination to use unusual means, processes he can access thanks to his mother, and that he will use to seduce and mate. The malevolent influence of baba Cloantza in the conquest of love is here perceived as a game. And so, to symbolize the danger laying in the games of seduction, the magical objects chosen by the babas for their spells reflect a burlesque dimension: when the witches need to bewitch “careless” young men, they do so with the bones of a bat caught on Christmas’ Eve, and buried alive in an anthill. What is left of the skeleton of the bat will be then turned into a hook and a little shovel : with the hook the Cloantza will “hook” the being one desires, while the shovel will push away all those you dislike.
The imagination of the peasants is extremely rich when it comes to the powers of the babas, with a main constant being the element of water. Water has numerous powers under its various shapes: witches use river-water, they know how to control the rain, they can cast spell with holy water, or on the contrary by using an enchanted water, called “virgin water”. One of the classical spell of the witch is the spell of the jug, the ulcica. The other items regularly used for spells (the hazel-wand, the corn seeds, the traditional batic - which is the scarf worn by peasant women) all are part of the “peasant world” in which, through magic, everyday objects come to life, or become enchanted objects. There is a complete communion with nature - an animated nature. The peasant sings his doïna (a popular prayer with melancholic tones) to his brother-spirit, which might be a tree, a flower, a bird, an animal, or even an entire forest. Fabulous creatures inhabit the mountains and the hills, such as the ielele (forest sirens). Folk belief claims that a young man can end up wandering on the plains, following the voice of a Cloantza, if his walking stiff is bewitched. The folklorist recorded numerous testimonies of peasants who saw those unfortunate souls shooting through the sky like arrows - and only a knife planted on the earth can stop their endless wandering. Another important part of the magic ritual is the recitation, the magic formula: the baba does both physical gestures and an oral invocation, called descântec in Romanian, which is a word with a double meaning. It is the word, the sung or recited word, that can either bewitch or break a spell. These invocations are numerous and can answer a whole spectrum of situations, ranging from the biting of the snake to the fear of loneliness. This latter situation is manifested in the fear of the “urât” - urât is a word that can be translated as the adjective “ugly”, but which also designates an untranstable anguish, mixing the feeling of abandonment with the fear of the other - the closest equivalent would be the image of someone finding themselves alone in a haunted house. In conclusion, Baba Cloantza takes back all of the attributes of the old village witch, whose main role is to offer numerous magical solutions and answers to the real needs of the peasants. 
5) A proteiform feminine archetype
Starting out of the figure of the old priestress initiated to the secrets of nature, taking from the original mythological energy that all witches take from (Gaia, Maya, Circe, Demeter, Isis, Lilith), the baba also offers the archetype of the Dreadful Mother-Witch. With her, the principle of the “eternal female” becomes disquieting and frightening. A regular element of her myths is her ability to give birth to humans with unnatural abilities - in a magical formula, the baba is described as the mother of the brave young man who “grew up in one year as much as others did in ten”. This “magico-religious” alchemy gave birth to numerous figures of the “endless feminine” around the area: the baba Dochia (a Dacian cousin of baba Cloantza), the Mama-Noptii (Mother of Night, surrounded by vampiric beings) and the female Saint Tuesday, Saint Friday, Saint Wednesday and Saint Thursday, who are pagan metamorphosis of the old Greco-Roman deities, Mars, Zeus, Venus, Mercury. When the baba appears in fairytales, it is also often as an uncontrollable elemental force. In “The tale of the pig” (Povestea porcului), the writer Ion Creanga describes the baba under three forms: at first she is a very old peasant woman who, despairing of her sterility, adopts a pig that she raises as her son (and will turn out to be the Prince charming under a spell). Then, she becomes the Three Saints - Saint Wednesday, Saint Friday and Saint Sunday - a trio of witches that guide the female protagonist in her quest for her husband (the pig/prince). And in a third time, she appears as “The Toothless baba Cloantza”, who is guarding the metamorphosed prince under her malevolent spell. By breaking the plans of the Cloantza and finding back his beloved, the male hero removes from her a course that prevented her from giving birth to her child for four years now. Beyond an uncanny nature, the tale of the pig is haunted by the idea of a cursed procreation, manifested three times: the sterility of the old woman, the spell that prevents the wife from giving birth, and the topic of giving birth to a demon. When the pregnant protagonsit travels, she discovers a world populated by dragons, by terrifying creatures, by otters with 24 heads, a world defined as being the one on which rules cupidity, cunning and wickedness. The image of the evil witch is built in opposition to the naive young princess. The tale calls the witch the Hârca (thus insisting on her old age, her ugliness and her cunning), but also Talpa Iadului (The Mole of the Devil). The Mole of the Devil is one of the most evil characters of Romanian folk-myths, due to the belief that she is the mother of all demons - she is renowned as a very intelligent but very treacherous being. The punishment of this wicked witch at the end of the tale, dragged by the tail of a horse, brings back a comical tone that was the one of the opening of the fairytale. 
The initiation of this youngest daughter of a king can be found in numerous other Romanian fairytales. Peter Ispirescu, a great fan of Romanian folklore, published in 1876 “The Enchanted Pig” (Porcul cel Fermecat), a tale that his mother had told him and takes back the opposition of the previous fairytales: on one side Baba Cloantza, here the mother of dragons, and on the other side the young girl who discovers the magical powers and the tricks of the evil witch. The story describes the adventures of the youngest daughter of a kind who, following the example of her two oldest sisters, enters in the only room of their castle that their father had forbidden them to open. The princesses find there a book-oracle that predicts to the sisters weddings with princes... at least for the oldest sisters, while the youngest is predicted to marry a pig. Seeing the unhappiness on his daughter’s face, the king understands he was disobeyed. The prophecy unfolds, and the princess ends up leaving her father’s castle to follow a pig with the most beautiful human voice. The princess learns to love her strange husband who, every night, removes his pig skin to become a man. But as the young bride is getting accustomed to her new life (and even falls pregnant), the witch baba Cloantza encounters her, and tells her what to do to break her husband’s spell. Trusting fully the witch, the young girl uses the enchanted rope the baba gave her to tie her husband’s left foot to the bed. But the rope breaks and the prince reveals to her that, if she hadn’t done that, the spell would have faded away on its own three days later. The bewitched prince disappears, and the bride goes looking for him, with her child in her arms. Crossing hostile countries, she finds rest, advice and magical items in the house of three celestial sisters: the Moon, the mother of the Sun, and the mother of the Wind. Finally reaching the strange house of the cused prince, the young woman proves her intelligence and determination: she creates a ladder with the magical items she received (bones of chicken) and even cuts her little finger to create the last step. When she finds back her husband, the mystery of the story is revealed: the reason the Cloantza cast the curse was because she was the mother of a dragon that the prince killed during a previous war. Before a final feast and a happy ending, the young girl has to cross a desert to return to the normal world. In this tale, the breaking of the father’s law begins the initiation process of the young girls, while baba Cloantza embodies the Evil that needs to be expiated. 
The same idea of the crime against the father is the start of the famous Russian fairytale collected by Alexander Afanassiev, The Feather of Finist-Proud-Falcon, translated in Romanian as “Pana lui Finist Soimanul”. We follow the save process of a youngest daughter who hides to her father the existence of a magical lover that visits her each night. Their romance will be broken by the jealousy of her sisters, and the maiden will have to leave her father’s house to undergo several trials and find back her lover. During her travels, she meets the baba Cloantza three times, under three different forms, each one being both her guide and ally, offering her needed artefacts for her quest - and these items, gifted by the small, the middle-sizes, and the great baba, evoke both the myth of the Parcae and the one of Ariadne. The folklorist Petre Ispirescu also describes the baba Cloantza as the mother of a dragon that a young prince must kill to free an enslaved princess: in the tale “A peasant story” (Poveste Taraneasca), the character of the Cloantza lives in a demonic, with a line of impaled heads all around her courtyard. In this tale, the reader finds in the Cloantza features similar to the sorcerer of the vodoo: she takes her strength and her immortality from the spirits that she keeps locked up in a barrel. And the main threat hovering over the kingdom is the one of vampiric creatures trying to steal away the soul of the old king.
6) Baba Cloantza, the devilish witch
An old Romanian sayng goes: Baba-i calul dracului, the Baba is the horse of the devil. This line opens the poem of V. Alecsandri, “Baba Cloanta”, written in 1842 and of folkloric inspiration. In this text, the words are specifically used to diplace the baba from an ambiguous figure to a Shakespearian witch. Here, the Cloantza herself is possessed by an uncontrollable desire for “the most beautiful of young men”, a desire that takes over her in a loud and visceral convulsion: “She spins the thread, the toothless hag, the spins while chattering her jaws and slamming her fingers, the spindle turns so fast it buzzes in the air”. The poem takes the reader to a rural, but nocturnal and infernal setting: in the night-sky, evil ghosts fill the clouds, the pond is bewitched as snakes slither in tis flowers, while on the tallest banch of a tree two hostile eyes shine. In this perverse Eden, under the “pale and blond moon”, the Cloantza invokes several demons (Fiara-Verde, Sange-Rosu, Hraconit) while threatening the young boy if he ever tries to resist her spell.  “May his eyes roll in his sockets, may his langue be taken away, may Satan remove his heart from his chest with a burning iron to throw it in the endless flames. May the green monster hunt him down, as long as there is earth for him to run and light for him to see. May the terrible spirits of the night, Hraconit and Red-Blood, torture him until dawn!”. When the demonic beings she called forth (including a vârcolac, a vampiric being said to “eat the sun and the moon”) fail at their task, the witch wail and cry, and stops spinning. The old Cloantza then invokes Satan, offering him the ultimate deal, offering him her soul in exchange for a wish. The deal with the devil causes a swirl of manifestations evoking madness or possession: the old woman runs madly, jumps, fly, screams exorcisms. The “mad and disheveled” Kloantza, surrounded by thousands of infernal spirits, doesn’t enter the “long laugh” from the woods - as she is arriving near her beloved, her dream turns into a nightmare. The song of the rooster, wakes up the village, and all the ghosts of the night disappear. Satan throws himself in the depths of the pond, and takes with him his prey, the baba. Nature returns to calm and quietness, but the danger is not fully gone, as the whispers of a sad voice can still be heard coming from the pond: “Come to me, my brave darling, come, I will sing for you the sweetest song, and I will heal you like a flower, and I will protect you with exorcisms from cruel fates and the biting of snakes.”
The work has two different interpretations. For half of the critics, this folk-ballad depicts in an epic tone a perverse love, unfit for a woman so old given how young the man is, to take back fairytale language it is the wicked witch lusting after Prince Charming. For the other half of the critics, it is much more of a humoristic tale, about silly fights, bothering demands, annoying whims and petty feuds - reminding the dual nature of the baba as both a devilish character, and a playful spirit. 
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  7) The Cloantza, an avatar of Death
In a very ancient folk-song, called Holera (The Cholera, collected by V. Alecsandri in 1853), the Cloantza is described in the light of the Roman “Furies”, with snake in her hair. The metamorphosis of the witch, now with wild hair, dry skin and a venomous body, reveals a new syncretism between Christianity and paganism: wielding humans and diabolical weapons, the Cloantza reminds the depictions of Rome showing angels holding in their right hand a sword of fire, symbol of a natural disaster to come. Here the Cloantza is none other than Death - the deadly disease of the cholera, who appears on the road of the careless and lively Vâlcu. This time, no negotiation is possible: the Cloantza is the Grim Reaper, and the term “baba” disappears, as it to remove from her all human dimension.  
In conclusion, we saw in the world of the Romanian fairytale a Baba Cloantza with numerous aspects and numerous voices - voices that heal, voices that mutilate, voices that make one laugh or cry, voices of the oracles. When the storyteller describes the adventures of this old toothless woman whose powers manifest all the fears of those that seek her, we can almost see in her a double of the storyteller itself. Without a real power, also “toothless”, the storyteller however holds the magic of the illusions - illusions that feed and nurse, or illusions that poison and harm. So when the storyteller describes the baba, he describes himself, in all of the roles he held - from the quasi-mystical and therapeuthic storyteller of the ancient times, to the subversive, ironic but harmless modern storyteller.
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beardedmrbean · 4 months
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Nov. 29 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 1877, Thomas Edison demonstrated a hand-cranked phonograph that recorded sound on grooved metal cylinders. Edison shouted verses of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into the machine, which played back his voice.
In 1890, the first Army-Navy football game was played. Navy won 24-0.
In 1929, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard Byrd and three crewmen became the first people to fly over the South Pole.
In 1935, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment dubbed "Schrödinger's cat," to illustrate a paradox of quantum mechanics.
In 1947, despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations voted for the partition of Palestine and the creation of the independent Jewish state of Israel.
In 1963, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John Kennedy.
In 1981, actor Natalie Wood drowned while on a boat trip to Santa Catalina Island, Calif.
In 1986, movie icon Cary Grant died of a stroke at the age of 82.
In 1989, Romanian Olympic gymnastic hero Nadia Comaneci fled to Hungary. She eventually reached the United States.
In 1990, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary means," including military force, against Iraq if it didn't withdraw from Kuwait by Jan. 15, 1991.
In 1991, a dust storm in Coalinga, Calif., triggered a massive pileup by more than 250 vehicles on Interstate 5, killing 15 people and injuring more than 100.
In 1994, voters in Norway rejected a proposal to join the European Union.
In 2001, George Harrison, lead guitarist of the Beatles, died of cancer. He was 58.
In 2011, Dr. Conrad Murray was sentenced to four years in prison for an involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of Michael Jackson. He was released on parole Oct. 28, 2013.
In 2012, the United Nations voted 138-9, with 31 abstentions, to give Palestinians non-member observer status.
In 2021, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced his resignation as CEO of the social media platform He was replaced by Parag Agrawal, who was ousted in October 2022 upon Elon Musk's purchase of the company.
In 2022, 46% of people in England and Wales described themselves as Christian in a census survey, the first time that figure represented less than half the populations of the two countries.
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asterhaze · 7 months
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Author Ask Tag Game
Thank you @doublegoblin for the tag here! And also @gummybugg for tagging me here!
(1) What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?
That we are what we make of ourselves, despite our traumas, despite our gifts, and despite our faults. That there are things that people do that are unforgivable, even if they are forced. Also, that true love is patient, kind, and understanding despite its awesome fragility.
I chose these themes because I think they're realistic, they're lessons that are easy to swallow, and that don't need to be pushed in people's faces to be understood. I don't want to spell things out but I also just want to tell a story, so if this ends up not being the real main lesson then I hope you all still like it.
(2) What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?
I studied Romanian and European fashion from the 1850's to the 1870's. Then I studied American (United States) fashion from then on until I was familiar. I studied history, slang, folklore, LGBT history, etc. As far as what my world looks like, its a cross between where I grew up in a state somewhere along the Missipiipii-fuck Mississippi river and living in Florida but make it gloomy.
(3) What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?
Glen is trying to become himself again after visiting the horrific and disgusting Tiletsu Clan. There he is confronted with a question that someone asked him long ago: If vampires are just more powerful humans, aren't they more dangerous? And conversely, if humans are just weak vampires, are they worth keeping safe?
As a writer, I want to tell a good story where all of the characters (except the Tiletsu and friends) are morally grey, make bad decisions that they thought were good ones, and have to grow up despite having plenty of time to do so. While trauma causes many reactions, I read a lot where the reaction is to forget everything. My experience is that I can't forget anything at all and I wanted to explore that in my writing.
(4) How many chapters is your story going to have?
About thirty chapters. The outline of Masterpiece is 70 pages long, granted it is an okay-detailed outline, with 33 parts currently. So please expect 33-40 chapters.
(5) Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?
Original Content 100%. There isn't anything wrong with fanfiction at all, but I love my original characters and the worlds I build, and I'm not a big enough or cool enough fan of anything to write fanfiction.
I plan to post the first 5 chapters of Masterpiece here on Tumblr, over at Wattpad, and Ao3. Smaller novellas and the entire story will be published with a limited print run at first and the eBook somewhere that I haven't decided yet for purchasing. Starry Skies and Like Minds will follow this same process, but Henrietta and Apocalyptic Cat Lady (Working Title) are web series!
You'll be able to find more information after my website is up and running!
(6) When and why did you start writing?
I started writing when I was 11 and did collaborative writing roleplays with other people my age. Eventually, I became a big enough fan of Star Trek (Kelvin Universe) that I did a massive fanfiction with my friend that lasted years. I made many OCs, had whole stories, had lots of adventures, and then when I went to college it died. One of those OCs will be reborn into Starry Skies and Like Minds whenever I decide to write it and share it here!
(7) Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?
My blog is under a year old and I have less than 100 followers, it's just the name of the game. When I posted my first piece of writing, absolutely no one found it for a while despite ABCDEFG. What helped me the most when it comes to finding mutuals that actually interact with you is to find "Looking for Writeblr" posts and go through the replies. Check every blog. Start interacting, that's why my intro post has a "Please, I promise I'm just an idiot and really like you blog" disclaimer because I do, genuinely, like a lot of stuff on other people's blogs. That is how I found the great and powerful @doublegoblin @mthollowell-writes @pinkchaosstories and @gummybugg who tag me and make my life great.
Thank you all for tagging me in everything, you make my life a joy.
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tzarina-alexandra · 1 year
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How can anybody say that LOTR is not a Christian book? Yeah, it is basically a "rewriting of English mythology" as Tolkien himself intended, but it's clearly a retelling from a Christian worldview.
Actual pagans myths are extremely fatalistic and thus often very tragic. It's not necessarily that the good guys win as much as whoever "gets lucky wins" or whoever catches Zeus or whomever in a good mood. I know because we live in a culturally Christian society, we see stories where good wins over evil, or tragedies in which there is some sort of hope (afterlife or otherwise in it) as standard but they really are a characteristic or Christian storytelling.
The fairytales we have now are not sanitised because of Disney or whatever (although ofc the Disney version are intentionally made as child friendly as possible), but because the more obviously pagan elements have been removed over time.
I can't say much about Western European fairytales because when it comes to these, I indeed saw the Disney movie much earlier than I read the thing (if I ever did), but take as an example Eastern European fairytales and myths. One of the "foundational myths" of Romania involves a Dacian woman (depending on version, the daughter of chieftain Decebal or not) flees from the Romans (depending on the version, either Trajan trying to court her or just Roman troops in general) and reaches the peak of the mountain, where, feeling she is still pursued, she cries out to her god Zalmolxes to turn her into stone. This is of course one of the oldest myths. Compare that to "newer" (for example 11th century instead of 2nd century) Romanian fairy tales. Many such stories also involve girls transforming into something else to run away from a suitor, but this time it's more akin to shape-shifting: her ability to become a crow or whatever is more of a skill rather than a plea to whatever deity, and her changing form is an effective form of flight rather than a sort of suicide. And at the end of the day it turns out that the suitor isn't that much of a threat either, and she was just "testing" him.
The motif of resurrection is very common in this "generation" of fairytales too. Take "Prâslea cel voinic și merele de aur" (Prâslea the brave and the golden apples, roughly translated). He fails one of his quests and gets killed (decapitated) by one of the enemy kings. His love interest has to glue his head back on using a potion called "dead water" and bring him back to life using "living water". This, by the way, appears exactly in this form in Ivan the Prince and the Gray Wolf, a Russian fairy tale (possibly that's where we got that motif from, idk which came first and neither does it matter).
Let's take another as-old-as-time Romanian myth and its modern (20th century) adaptation. Miorița is a ballad in which a shepherd gets killed by his two neighbours so that they can steal his massive wealth, and he says his last words to his beloved sheep, who had predicted the murder. In this famous verse, he tells her to announce his mother that he had gotten married to the Queen of stars and that fir trees were his guests etc, all symbolism which would've clearly communicated to his mother that he was "one with nature now" aka dead. Author Mihail Sadoveanu wrote an adaptation (of sorts) called Baltagul (The Axe), with a similar murder plot, except the main character is the victim's wife, who goes on a sort of revenge quest, except she cleverly exposes the murder. At the very end, the criminals are very shocked and torn that she exposed them in front of everybody (judge, priest, the rest of the village). They do get their comeuppance in the end, one being killed with an axe by the victim's son (more or less in self defense), and the other confessing immediately and getting caught by the authorities etc.
I'm not saying that either this novel or Romanian fairytales are particularly Christian, but it's impossible not to notice how 1. Some hope does exist, despite death etc 2. Some justice gets enacted 3. Characters don't just resign to fate passively and await death
I'm not saying recent fairytales cannot be tragic without hope etc but then that's less a form of neopaganism but more the general spleen of our modern times (I avoid using the word nihilism outright). Such is, in my opinion, The Little Mermaid. Sure, it uses Christian adjacent language of "she's got a soul now etc" but it's ultimately a very hopeless tale of "you can never overcome your lowly condition, you either resign or die". But maybe I'm influenced by my current reading of Lithuanian folk tale Eglė the Queen of serpents, which, despite the name, is not as much about snakes (or the bad connotation) of snakes, as much as it is about her marriage to this guy who is some sort of merman/ water demigod, and how her "hubris" is her missing her family, because visiting them causes them to murder her husband (and then she essentially kills herself, as I mentioned above regarding that motif, by transforming into a tree). But you could say it's like Hades and Persephone but with a sad ending (except is the original myth a "happy ending"??? Either she loves her husband now and has to only spend half the year with him, or she still hates him and gets only half a year to spend with her mother). Or rather I see the similarities with modern Romanian fairytale "Tinerețe fără bătrânețe și viața fără moarte" (Youth without old age and life without death) by Petre Ispirescu, in which the hero's hubris is, again, overcoming his condition as mortal, but also just plain old missing his family. He leaves his immortal fae wife (?) and gets home but surprise it's 400 years in the future and he ages and dies of old age instantly. But I'll discuss that later.
The main point is: LOTR is very mythological, yeah, but its main themes are the triumph of good over evil, hope amidst darkness, hope despite death, hope despite the literal end of the world, hope, hope and hope again. And the actual gods of their world barely even appear. Even demigods like Gandalf are functionally just angels. Characters never resign themselves to fate and death, but they fight and fight and do the right thing to the very end. Power is not praised, but seen as everybody's downfall. No "missing your parents too much is your hubris" type of message! No "you dared hope for a better life so you get killed off, what a cruel fate" type of undertones.
I'll maybe continue the conversation later because it's that expansive.
Tagging @scarvenartist because shape-shifting mention plus Ivan Tsarevich
@molochka-studies because of Romanian lore
@wherela because I would love some insight into Polish lore in relation to this
@tocopherole because I'd love a Western European perspective on this
And basically the entire Christian tumblr for LOTR mention
If you'd like to interact feel free to do so
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cartograffiti · 2 years
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Thank you Claire from Schuler Books: some data for Queen's Thief fans
The tl;dr of this post is that QT is having an unprecedented surge of interest right now, and I used GoodReads to deliver some facts and figures to the Discord (The Geninsula), and now to Tumblr!
Under the cut: sources of the uptick, beautiful numbers, and a couple fun excerpts from recent reviews.
Part 1: selling out is good
We can actually track the start of the surge back to 2020's publication of Return of the Thief, because the series being complete got it a lot of positive press, but the activity of the past couple months (especially February-now, I'm writing on May 31 2022), has been another thing entirely.
RotT, and Disney+ optioning The Thief, has meant we're getting a lot of new international editions. The UK is getting a beautiful release of new editions in paperback and audiobook. The series is being translated into Spanish and Italian for the first time, and we know in The Geninsula of translations underway into Hebrew and Bangla. (Parts of the series have previously been released in at least 15 languages, but until now only Romanian had kept up with the whole set.) MWT is currently on a tour of Italy and the UK to promote these new editions, and a number of giveaways and influencer spotlights were arranged by publishers to get The Thief | Il ladro in readers' hands.
In March, the independent bookstore Schuler Books (not, as it has often been misreported, a library or Barnes & Noble) *posted a TikTok* of some of their staff showing off books they wish they could read for the first time, again. (It's adorable, click the link if you haven't seen it.) This TikTok went viral, now with 17.5 million views, and it opens with Claire talking about The Thief.
Only two weeks later, The Thief was sold out in US paperback. I'm talking gone. Even Amazon cannot get you a new copy of either the 2017 (Joel Tippie) or 2005 (Vince Natale) covers anymore, previously readily available, let alone older ones. They have to reprint it! In the meantime, the Steve West audiobook seems to be doing very well, and the hardcover unremarkably. Several Geninsula members who are members of large library systems have reported long waitlists typical of bestsellers. I wholly attribute this attention to Claire. Claire is the best, our hero!
Lots of recent reviews (see below) also said Laini Taylor suggested it, but if there's a specific recent source for that (she's a known fan of long standing), I can't find it. Let me know if you know!
Part 2: GoodReads is useful sometimes
So GoodReads *has this nice feature* where they rank the top 200 books from each publishing year, with #1 being the one their users have most interacted with, and refresh it monthly [Edit: this was a mistype, it’s weekly]--so you can see which books of the same age have remained or become popular as of this month [Edit: week]. This does not mean it only accounts for what was interacted with within that month [Edit: week], just that it's that up to date.
Right now, The Thief is number 14 out of all of 1996. The books that beat it are all truly famous things like Bridget Jones's Diary, Angela's Ashes, Fight Club, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (The only book ranked above it that hasn't been adapted for film is Neverwhere, which has received a radio play with a high-profile cast. [Edit: ...And is itself a novelization of a TV series.] [Edit: Infinite Jest has been a play, but not filmed.] I am making direct eye contact with Mickey Mouse.) Some of the other series marketed as fantasy it beats out include entries from Tortall, Discworld, The Witcher, and Redwall.
The Queen of Attolia is the only other one that is currently on the top 200 list for its year, but it's 77, above more Tamora Pierce, a boxset of A Song of Ice and Fire, and buzzy authors like Julia Quinn and Junji Ito.
The fact that a second book is ranking this high tells us people are currently working their way through the series in honestly what has to be large numbers. I won't be surprised if later books start ranking in the coming months.
It also tells us people really are actively reading them, not just marking the first one as possibly interesting--lots of users don't mark sequels as to-read until they've read the first, or the preceding one, etc.
Now, with the books ranked this high, how much interaction does that represent? Well, The Thief has 77,921 ratings, and 236,000+ shelvings, and considering that finishing without rating is somewhat uncommon…that's about 150,000 users who are planning to read, or currently reading, this book. The same math for QoA is less dramatic--about 20k people have it on the agenda--but when 20k is 50% of its all-time ratings, that's...still an explosion.
This of course only represents the people who a) use GoodReads and b) keep up with their to-be-read list there, so this is only a fraction of readers in general who are likely to read it in the near future.
Part 3: The reviews are in
Giveaways of advance reader copies in the UK led to a burst of reviews in February, which were a bit puzzling to read through, as a number of them seemed to me to have come from people who did not know the genre or even the age market for the book when they entered for it, and hadn't actually been drawn to the story therefore.
A much more striking wave of reviews came later, as the UK, Spanish, and Italian readers began to interact with it organically, and a large burst of people who specifically said they'd picked it up because of Claire from Schuler Books. (Or, more often, "A TikTok with a cute librarian [sic].") These reviews have the usual range of reactions, but an overall level of enthusiasm I feel is high.
Laini Taylor was the second-most successful recommender. Many people compared The Thief favorably to Rick Riordan, Leigh Bardugo, GRR Martin, and Sarah J. Maas. (This was the first time I'd seen the series pitched to SJM's fans! I haven't read her work, but hadn't thought it was in a similar niche.) I was delighted to see several people calling it the best fantasy of travel and landscape they've read since JRR Tolkien!
The apparent age range of reviewers is quite wide, which reflects my experience of the fandom, where I've regularly chatted with people from 13 to their 60s, and likely older. There were some very cute reactions from reviewing tweens and teenagers who said that they were surprised such an OLD book from the nineties held up.
Some other book trend remarks I found interesting: lots of surprise there was no romance, including some people who, looking for a potential romance among the traveling party, proposed both Gen/Sophos (fine) and Gen/the magus (insane, thank you so much, I have questions.) A number of people who remarked that they were pleased to find a fantasy that wasn't "too fantastical," lots of positivity about feeling it had a "timeless" style, and one person who said they have found it difficult to find engaging recent YA books with boy protagonists.
Delightful excerpts from reviews of TT:
a novel that is a credit to the English language.
I loved the world MWT created, had it been an artwork it would perhaps have been more Claude Monet than Michelangelo
[Original review in Spanish, from Argentina] Gen is the best thing that has ever happened to me
The Thief also pairs very nicely with cheese and dried fruit.
The importance of narrators:
I'm giving this a 5 star rating because I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator sounds like Henry Cavill and I have a crush on him. So, 5 stars.
And my favorite reaction to The Queen of Attolia:
This is shockingly...kinky???
Okay, thanks for reading! I'm really excited, since it looks like the fandom is in the process of...tripling? Something like that. If you have news about how the book is being promoted, or new translations/re-releases, I'd love to hear!
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sisididis · 1 year
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Brâncuși vs. the United States by Arnaud Nebbache
On January 6, French illustrator Arnaud Nebbache published a comic book about one of the 20th century’s most famous art lawsuits. 
It's the 1920s and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși is preparing for an art exhibition in the US. Upon arrival, one of the American customs officials thinks that Bird in Space isn’t art, but an industrial product. He demands that customs duties must be paid. Offended, Brâncuși sues the American state in a lawsuit that drags on for one year. 
In November 1928, Justice Waite delivers his verdict:
“The object now under consideration is shown to be for purely ornamental purposes, its use being the same as that of any piece of sculpture of the old masters.” 
“It is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental.”
“And as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is a fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry under paragraph 1704, supra.”
The comic strip also captures the sculptor’s life, starting with his "escape" from Auguste Rodin's studio and ending with him waiting for the court's decision in Étretat on the beach. When asked why he’d left Rodin’s studio, Brâncuși replied: "In the shade of such an imposing tree, it is hard to grow anything else."
You can read a free sample of the book here. Photos are from here. 
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thenightling · 1 year
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Reasons I think Coach Vlad in Wednesday is Count Dracula
Okay, maybe I’m a little hyperfixated right now because I’m still relatively fresh from watching The Invitation where Walter Deville was very blatantly Count Dracula in disguise.  But I’m convinced Coach Vlad on Wednesday (Netflix series) is actually Count Dracula.  Here are the clues... 1..  His name is Vlad, credited as Coach Vlad.  See how close that is to “Count Vlad” as in “Count Vlad Dracula.”  Coach is even the same amount of letters as Count besides both starting with C and O.   There’s also the gag in Rick and Morty of Coach Feratu (Nosferatu) poking fun of how bad vampire aliases are.  Dracula and Carmilla are infamous for having terrible aliases in movies. 
Dracula has been Alucard (Dracula backward), Drake (meaning little dragon.  Dracula means Little Dragon or Son of the Dragon).  Deville (a play on ”Devil” as Dracula can also mean “Son of The Devil.”)  The only time I felt Dracula had a clever alias was in Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula novels where he eventually takes on the alias Matthew Maule, a name he stole from the novel House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  He liked it because the character’s last words are “God will give you blood to drink!” Carmilla usually just scrambles her name.  Marcilla, Mircalla, Millarca, and in The House that dripped Blood Carla (removing some letters instead of re-arranging them). Vampires are lazy with aliases...   2.  The character and actor is Romanian.  Not only that but he plays the character with his natural Romanian accent.  In most American-made shows Romanians tend to try to adopt an American accent.  See Sebastian Stan in the TV series Once Upon a Time and later the films of the MCU.
3.  Coach Vlad was perfecting fine with letting two students duel until first blood drawn.  Blood...          
4.  Vampires are definitely real in this continuity. In fact the school is about 1/4 vampires with Vampires being one of the biggest species cliques in the school along with Werewolves, Gorgons and sirens.  Though there are also varying psychic abilities like seers and telekinetics, and the principal was a shapeshifter.  If you have a fiction with vampires and there’s a Romanian man named Vlad, he’s usually Dracula if not a Dracula knock-off.   5.   Characters of folklore or characters of the nebulous and murky “was once a real person and is now more heavily associated with a fantasy figure” have appeared in Addams Family canon. Dracula, in the fiction, was Vlad the Impaler (historic figure) when he was alive and he became the famous vampire after his death.  Saint Nicholas, who was a real person, became the fantastical Santa Claus, who, according to L. Frank. Baum (author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) was granted immortality.  Why do I bring up Santa Claus?  Because in the 1960s Addams Family TV series Santa Claus is real.  In a universe where Santa Claus exists, chances are Dracula is also real.  Both were once real people who upon their death became famous immortals (but in very different ways).   Note: There is a comic book Santa vs. Dracula.  
6.  Hyde monsters are real, suggesting that the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were also real and likely was the first Hyde monster.  If this is a world where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were real, that increases the odds that the Romanian man named Vlad might be Count Dracula, himself. 7.  We see the vampire students (the ones in sunglasses) walking about by day.  That means they follow “Dracula rules.”  In the novels Carmilla and Dracula vampires could walk around in daylight. They were just weaker by day and it’s their natural time of rest.  They won’t burn in the sun. Vampires didn’t actually burn in the sun until the silent film Nosferatu where it was originally intended to be symbolic as it was a German expressionist film.   Even the first Universal studios Dracula (1931) didn’t have Dracula burn in the sun, it’s just it was his time of rest.  It was only in the sequels that sun became a weakness.       
 8.  Shapeshifters exist in this universe and Dracula was supposed to be a shapeshifter too in that he could turn into a wolf, bat, or mist at will (usually unable to transform during daylight hours). And he could change his apparent age dependent upon how much he had fed. (Average appearance being around age forty-five to forty-nine but could look much older).
9.  Edgar Allan Poe and his Raven, Hyde Monsters...  It seems Gothic literature and literary monsters are a theme here.  And each season may focus on another classic monster.  We already have had Hyde. 
10.    This is more of an Easter Egg.  Tim Burton is a fan of Hammer Horror (old British monster movies made by the Hammer film studio).  In Sleepy Hollow Tim Burton uses “Kensington Gore” AKA Hammer Horror Blood.  It’s a bright red, edible, stage blood that is usually flavored to taste like mint. The recipe can be found on TV Tropes website.  Also up until Christopher Lee’s death, Tim Burton liked to work with Hammer Horror actor Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in film more times than any other actor. Christopher Lee appeared in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, and Dark Shadows.  I bring this up because Tim couldn’t resist making reference to a Hammer Horror Dracula movie where Christopher Lee was Dracula.  When Crackstone is raised from the dead, the first thing he does is he holds out his hand so that his disciple might kiss his ring. This is a direct nod to the Hammer Horror film Dracula ‘72 AD as that is what Dracula does right after Johnny Alucard (Yes, Dracula spelt backward) raises him from the dead.
 These are all reasons why I think Coach Vlad is actually Dracula.. Unless this is a redherring and Principle Weems is actually Dracula.  I only say that because I read a script for the pilot of a never completed show for ABC called Gothica (I think they filmed a pilot episode) that had a surprise twist at the end that a certain cunning woman character turned out be Dracula (able to shift gender besides animal form and mist) at will.   
But it’s more likely Coach Vlad is Dracula.  Count Dracula is never that clever with his disguises.   
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Birthday Girl
Y/N Hates Her Birthday With A Passion. Will whoever sent her roses with a card saying: Does your Birthday Wishlist include “Sex”? Because that’s what I got you. Happy Birthday. I know that you like me, so why not act on it. Change the situation?
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Birthday Girl
 Warnings: Adult Situations with a Fucking Hot Romanian Actor, Smutty Birthday Sex, Sexy Times, Mentions Of Fingering and Oral Sex. May Have Sebastian saying somethings in Romanian.
 Author's Note: April 14th is really my birthday. Kind of the inspiration behind the story. I wrote this around my 39th birthday last year. It's a long story behind how come I hate my birthday. I'd be happy to give an explanation and write a part two if it's requested, I get some feedback. Enjoy!
It was April 14th which meant one thing; other than Black Friday it was one of the other days’ dread and hated with a passion which was her birthday. She hoped no one at her work would remember what today was since she did not need a reminder of the fact she was a year older and a step closer to gulp 40. One short year anyway. Y/N had hated her birthdays after her seventeenth when everything bad seems to want to occur on that date. God must have seriously planned for her entry into the world and had a sick sense of humor about it. Y/N sure as hell did not find it the least bit funny.
 Knowing her luck, someone would remember her birthday. Hope they were ready to be decked because that is the first thing she would do. Ok, might not be such a good idea considering half of the majority of the clients were celebrities. Seriously, when was the last time someone famous even remembered the receptionist’s birthday?
Y/N walked into her place of employment which was the  Brookside Artist Management talent agency but one in a particular client had her fancy, and seemed to star in her dreams. God would she love to have that for her birthday, but it was not meant to happen. Ok so far so good, no one had approached her to mention her birthday. No way to bring or draw attention to herself that was until she neared her desk when she saw a large bouquet of Salmon-colored roses. That just screamed it was someone’s birthday or anniversary. Whoever sent her the roses would be in deep, deep trouble. It only made Y/N speed walk over to the Receptionist's desk.
She slowly lowered her bag off to the side while she slipped into her chair to notice a card attached to the roses, good a clue as to who was on her hit list as of now for making it a bit obvious to her co-workers it was a day she would like to completely forget. She took a quick look around to make sure the coast was clear before she slipped the card off the roses to read.
 Does your Birthday Wishlist include “Sex”? Because that’s what I got you. Happy Birthday. I know that you like me, so why not act on it.
                                                                                         Love,
                                                                                         Your secret admirer.
A secret admirer? Y/N blinked while she re-read the card to make sure her eyes were not playing tricks on her. Who could possibly have a crush on her? Who could possibly have a crush on her let alone known she had one on him? The only two people who knew about her crush were a few of her co-workers and friends who were in a different department. They obviously were behind the roses. Y/N quickly booted up her computer since she needed to know some answers here. She glanced at the roses from the corner of her eye while her computer continued to boot to life at the same time, she flipped open the schedule book for that day’s appointments.
 She at least could be prepared and do her job while she plotted how to murder the person behind the roses and get away with it. Y/N quickly scanned the book while she now multi-tasked signing into the computer. Y/N continued to think while she signed into her Samsung S9 group friend chat that she had going on with a few of her friends. She saw her two main suspects were already in there perfect she began to type.
 Y/N: Alright, which one of you two decided to send me roses?
 ANGIE: Roses? Now who would want to send you roses on your birthday? Oh my God is that today?
 Y/N: Please don’t even remind me. I know one of you two sent them.
 KATHRYN: Hey, you’re the one who told us not to make a freaking deal out of your birthday. I didn’t send you roses.
 ANGIE: I didn’t don’t look at me. Did they come with a note?
 Y/N: Of course, it came with a note. You twit.
 “Good morning, Y/N,” a male sexy American Romanian accent-filled voice she began knowing well said which only startled her out of her focus on her phone. She nearly jumped and fell out of her seat at the realization that Sebastian Stan had been standing there watching her make a fool out of herself while she ranted to her friends via a text message chat. Slowly, Y/N turned her body still in the chair to face the direction of Sebastian’s voice. Sebastian seemed a bit amused by her behavior and demure. Not the least bit annoyed. She almost came on the sight of him as she saw this morning, he had on a pair of jeans, with a white short sleeve fitted t-shirt and a black leather jacket. It looked like Sebastian had not shaved for a few days which made him have a few days’ worth of growth and stubble.
 It was like an image that had come to life from one of her daily or nightly fantasies she had about this guy. The man had no idea how he would be the death of her or what he was doing to her inside. “Good morning, Seb, what can I do for you this morning?” Y/N calmly asked while inside of her head she was screaming something entirely different and very inappropriate. Ok screaming something entirely different, very inappropriate, and mentally undressing him in her mind in her own bed. Something that Sebastian let alone any other staff member that was around likely really did not or should not ever know let alone hear.
 “I have an appointment with Emily first thing this morning . . . I’m sure it’s right there in the book,” Sebastian slowly trailed while his stare never left Y/N. Right the appointment book that is lying flat open. Y/N’s eyes quickly darted down in the direction of the book to flip to page two where Sebastian’s name was printed in a big, large black font. An audible buzz from the text message from the phone sounded which startled her again. “Are you going to answer whoever that is who is anxious for you to respond?” Sebastian chuckled.
“I uh-yeah of course. I’ll- I’ll call Emily and tell her you’re here,” Y/N stuttered while her hand shook to reach out to grasp the office desk phone next to her computer. Oh God how freaking embarrassing God take me now. Y/N quickly punched in the number her finger nearly fumbling anxiously waiting for the phone on the other end to be answered while the shrill of the ring grew louder and louder each time in her panicky-filled ear.
 KATHRYN & ANGIE: Y/N you still there?
 ANGIE: What does the note say?
 Y/N took a quick glance at her phone’s screen to read the messages while she turned to look back at the ringing office phone in her hand. C’mon Emily answer already before your freaking, hot Romanian client drive me to an early death by orgasm. Y/N squeaked and jumped startled when finally, Emily answered. “Hi Emily, I just thought I tell you that you’re 8:30 appointment is here. Sebastian is standing right here waiting to be sent it,” Y/N nearly squeaked in a rushed tone. “I’ll tell him to come in then,” Y/N answered after Emily had given her an answer after a quick laugh. Still, with a shaky hand, she dropped the phone back into the cradle before she looked back over at Sebastian. “You can go in now. She’s ready for you.”
Sebastian chuckled his trademark laugh which only made Y/N blush. “Thanks, who sent you the roses is it like your birthday or something?”
Lie Y/N, say something other than... “Yes, it’s my birthday. Some secret admirer sent them to me. Kind of funny not sure how this person even knew, roses were my favorite type of flower,” Y/N admitted.
“They’re beautiful, just not as beautiful as you. Oh, Happy Birthday to,” Sebastian answered still with a smile for her before he walked off in the direction of Emily’s office. Y/N could only stare before her trans was broken by another annoying beep from the text message.
 ANGIE: Y/N! What does the fucking card say already?!
 Y/N: Does your Birthday Wishlist include “Sex”? Because that’s what I got you. Happy Birthday. I know that you like me, so why not act on it. Love, Your secret admirer. You two are the only ones who know who I like. There is no way in hell he even knows I like him.
 KATHRYN: Ha, ha Y/N I think he does know. Especially how the way you act and react while he graces you with his hot Romanian presence. You have a point though; I seriously doubt he would send you roses.
 ANGIE: Hey, isn’t he supposed to come in today?
 Y/N: Yes, they just did, thus the reason I was deadpanned on sending a response. I was talking to him, he saw the roses and wished me Happy Birthday aaah my day has gone to hell.
 Y/N texted while a frustrated filled sigh escaped from her lips. God, now she could not wait for this day to end and to be able to go home to take a long relaxing bubble bath before she curled up into bed to fall into a deep sleep.
 ANGIE: Where’s the sexy Romanian now? Is it clear to even talk? He didn’t see what your screen saver on your computer and phone lock screen, wallpaper was did he?
 Y/N: Yeah, they just went into Emily’s office leaving me and given me time to do nothing, since I already have everything done for them both. No, I had it hidden with an open word document and the text messenger screen.
 KATHRYN: So did you make an idiot out of yourself in front of your walking birthday wish? You gotta think that we know you better and know that if you could have anything for your birthday and one birthday wish it would be to have that Romanian Actor in your bedroom.
Y/N only softly laughed while she nodded since they had a point, she remembered how one night they all were talking over drinks about fantasies that involved men. Something she wished she would be able to experience if God had planned to let her. God just let that intimate experience be with Sebastian Stan.
 Y/N: I guess we will be killing time by talking about ways we want to screw Sebastian if we had him in the position in our bedrooms.
 Y/N typed while she looked down in the direction of Emily’s office where Sebastian sat. This was pathetic she just saw him a few minutes ago and was already anxiously waiting for his walk back past her desk. God, I need to get a freaking life.
 KATHRYN: What was he wearing? You did catch what he had on long enough before you turned into a puddle of Jell-O?
 Y/N: Oh God, I think he tapped into one of my daily fantasies and picked out that outfit a pair of jeans. Had on a black leather jacket. Has on a white fitted t-shirt, has not shaved for a few days. Oh God, I need to have an orgasm badly!
 ...
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The day only seemed to drag on after Sebastian’s appointment time slot had come and gone. She got to enjoy her sexy Romanian eye candy and made a freaking moron out of herself to entertain him long enough for his next appointment to see Emily. Sebastian seemed to be the only client of Emily’s who was able to make her act like she was still a teen in high school and end up falling into moronic-like behavior around the hottest guy at school. For Christ's Sake, she just turned 39 less than 12 hours ago, and the guy was 89 days away of turning 39 and he could turn and make her act like that? It just seemed so freaking wrong. It Also felt so wrong, that she was older than him. Even if it were by 4 months and a day. It just made her feel dirty, was a slight insecurity that would stop her from ever making a move or hitting on him.
 For some reason, Sebastian seemed to enjoy the walk back past her desk since he decided to tease her with a sexy smile, which only made it worse for her. She could not breathe the moment he seemed to be or was around, almost stopped breathing when he decided to take the leisure upon himself to stop at her desk. She sat in her driveway still behind the wheel of her car as she recalled every minute.
 …
 “So, Y/N how old are you today?”
 “Well, let’s just say still within the fucking thirties. Mid- fucking thirties,” Y/N answered while she forced her brain to operate. Just let him keep guessing what her real age was. He only smiled since the game she had started to play between them seems to become interesting.
 “Mid-fucking thirties huh? So does this mean in order to find out how old you are I’d have to go find your driver’s license or I could go ask Emily?” Sebastian joked which only made her lightly smile.
 “If you did that, I’d have to sleep with you then kill ya,” Y/N joked back with a soft laugh. She stopped in mid-laugh when she saw his reaction to that suggestion which was a sexy, wicked smirk.
 “Oh, I wouldn’t mind that, I happen to like older, crazy women. Is that an invitation to join you in your bed to celebrate one of your mid- fucking thirties age birthdays?”
 He had to be shitting her right? Yeah, that is it, Sebastian did love to joke and kid. “I uh- don’t you have like a girlfriend or someone you’re seeing?” Y/N stuttered while she fought hard not to sink down low in her chair.
 “I’m pretty much not taken at the current moment,” he casually responded. “Your birthday is only one day a year. You got something crazy planned for tonight with some friends?” Sebastian smirked, he enjoyed watching her try to not come apart right in front of him.
 God she would love to have him included in her birthday plans if they were not self-deluded thoughts of being alone in her room to ponder what the hell was wrong with her life where it was heading or going as she neared the fourth decade of her life. Like a distraction of sex with him would do much help or wonders. She would kick herself for what she was about to tell the man of her sexual dreams and fantasies. “No, I was just going to go home, take a bubble bath then fall asleep. I really don’t have any plans or had any with friends since self-wallowing doesn’t need the assistance of anyone else but myself.”
 “You’re too beautiful to even be alone on your birthday. You do not even look like someone in their mid- fucking thirties. If you change your mind, you can always call me and I can take you out get you drunk, have you revealing what your real age is. Then like you said you can fuck me then kill me afterward.”
 …
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 It was a hell of a way to end her workday having Sebastian Stan try to pick her up. She grabbed the vase of roses at the same time she shook her keys around to find the house key to unlock the front door. That is when she noticed a shirt-sized wrapped box propped up against the door. She normally would have been a bit pissed off, but after what had gone down today, she would make exceptions. Someone clearly wanted her to know they knew it was her birthday and they gave some type of damn.
 Just who seem to give a damn was what she wanted to know. Y/N bent down grabbed the box while she shifted the vase into the other free arm to turn open the doorknob open the door to a half-dark-like house. It was a few minutes after dusk and was getting dark. It was one of those moments where she wished she had someone that she could come, too. A man or a dog either one it would have not mattered.
 Y/N closed her front door behind herself while she locked and secured the door’s lock. She did not bother with the lights while she walked straight down the entry hall made a right turn ending up in her kitchen. She placed the roses in the middle of the kitchen counter right before she turned her attention towards the wrapped gift box in her hand. Now, who sent her this gift? She quickly ripped into the box to come across the Victoria's Secret logo. Her interest now fully perked as to who would be sending her lingerie.
There had to be a card somewhere maybe, buried within the contents of the box, she hoped while slipping off the lid to unfold the Victoria Secret logo tissue paper. Her curiosity now seemed very piped and very intrigued maybe to the point where she worried if she may have a stalker on her hand. Oh, that would have made a hell of a life script ending the day she turns 39 she learns she has a deadly stalker who murders her in her sleep. Oh, how fabulous.
 The tissue paper moved out of the way she saw silky white material. How the heck did this person even know what color she should wear? There sat a Birthday Card on top of the neatly folded lingerie. She started to notice that whoever the “Secret Admirer” was seemed greatly determined to gift her with “Birthday Sex”. It could not be more subtle when the front of the card design was a “Birthday Checklist” and the checklist items consisted of “You, Me, Birthday Cake, Sparkling Cider, Birthday Sex”. Without hesitation, Y/N unfolded the card to read.
 Y/N,
I hope I picked out the right color and size. I want you to wear this tonight after you take a bath or get ready for bed. Just do as I ask and you’ll see why and will greatly enjoy what you get rewarded for following and listening to rules.
                                                                                                                  Love,
                                                                                                Your secret admirer.
“Ok what the hell is this person watching me or something?” Y/N asked out loud while she looked around the kitchen to see and get a vibe to feel if anyone was secretly watching her. She did not feel as if someone was watching her, but the note sent a bit of a chill down her spine. “I better not die at 11:20 tonight by a serial killer or some psychotic stalker,” Y/N muttered while she placed the card down on the counter while she grabbed the box taking it upstairs with her up to her room.
 She questioned herself again rather or not if she should follow the directions of the note or what the heck her reward would be if she followed directions while she slipped her purse, she still had dangle off her shoulder near her dresser. She should just follow the damn directions and see what happens what did she have to lose nothing really oh what the hell just follow the damn rules. The first thing she had to do was to take a bath before heading to bed. She seriously needed some time to shave since she had seriously neglected her legs and other areas of her body.
 Without hesitation, she quickly stripped out of her clothes while she turned on the water for her bath and allowed the temperature to adjust to the heat she liked. She grabbed her can of shaving cream along with her fresh razor while she slipped into the warm bath while she froze in her spot for a minute. It suddenly felt like she was not exactly alone, but just knowing she was only being a bit too paranoid. She locked all the doors and windows, no one could easily break into the house or gain entry.
 Y/N shook her head while she just fully decided to just stick to the note and shave her legs and whatever else she needed to remove hair from. She continued to shake her head while she grabbed the shaving cream to shake the can a few times. She squeezed a good amount in her palm for her first leg which was the right one she had rested on the rim of the tub. The large tub she now occupied seems to be one of the main reasons she had even bought this house since she loved big bathtubs. She mainly spent a lot of time in there rather it be reading and getting lost in a good book or doing something seriously naughty that involved thoughts about Sebastian.
 That suddenly made Y/N rethink about giving Sebastian a call. Was he serious about coming over to fuck her or was he seriously just kidding? Her cell phone sat nearby since she always placed her Galaxy S9 nearby. Maybe it was not such a good idea to call him while in the bathtub since his voice would likely get her into some serious naughty filled trouble. Just shave your legs and whatever Y/N then just put some lotion on and slip on the lingerie. Once again, the feeling of being watched washed over her while she carefully slipped the razor upward from the start of her ankle to not cut herself with it.
 Ok, it started to seriously feel weird as if one of her fantasies she had that involved Sebastian was not about to remain only in her head or thoughts. In the same fantasy, it had started out with her in the tub alone getting ready for bed, shaving while some lingerie waited off to the side to be slipped on. He would be in the other room in her bed anxiously waiting for her to get out of the sexy garments. Oh, how she would love for that to come true. The thought made her quickly finish off the leg and shave the other one before she worked on her underarms then in the area in between her legs.
 She may not have anyone in her life, but it did not stop her from wanting to feel sexy for herself. She was not a prude or some sexual naïve who locked herself in a closet or denied herself life’s simple pleasures that one’s hand may bring. Y/N was done shaving before she knew it and quickly discarded the razor into the nearby garbage can while she reached off to the ledge to grab a towel to dry herself off. The feeling of still being watched by a voyeur still would not leave while she dabbed herself dry with the towel before she stopped in front of her sink to grab a bottle of lotion to put on. The Vanilla scent, she had chosen to put on was by an organic company called Loma, which she carefully rubbed onto her arms, legs, and her stomach.
 The scent was strong and sensual enough, but not so strong to overrule the senses and to knock out oneself or someone else. Y/N had allowed the lotion to dry on her semi, warm, damp skin before she went over to the toilet seat where she had dropped the box that held the lingerie to take out of the box. She nearly gasped when she pulled out the first piece which was a beautiful, cream-white sensual-looking chemise that fell a few inches above her knees. The straps were spaghetti thin. She had worn the same thing in her dreams she had to wonder how this person even knew this.
 There was a matching pair of white silky, sexy panties in the box just enough to leave to the imagination yet enough to look virginally sexy. The pair of panties was cut low enough to be low hip style just what she liked. She had no trouble whatsoever to slip into the panties and slip on the chemise before she quickly focused on styling her hair. Y/N grabbed a large claw clip twisted up her hair into a simple styled French twist which allowed a few strands of her medium mocha balayage color hair to fall loosely around her face. Ok, she liked the finished look and product she just hoped that she followed the directions of the note.
Y/N stared at herself in the mirror she felt confident and sexy, sexy enough to enter her bedroom. She snapped off the lights in the bathroom while she headed into the other room. Odd, she thought was not her bedroom dark when she entered the bathroom nearly thirty minutes ago? The room was practically lit up by Vanilla Scented candlelight. The flames were scattered around the room each flickering in sync. She had to blink to wonder very confused was this even her room or she even belonged in this house. Her reaction while she slowly scanned around the room was to lightly bite at her lower lip which received a soft male sounding type chuckle from the middle of the room.
 That laugh sounded so familiar, which sounded American Romanian only could belong to one person. There was no way in hell, he was in her room watching her from the darkness or direction of where the hidden chuckle came from, her bed. I seriously must be dreaming or am too tired. She continued to bite at her lower lip while she looked down at the floor to see a trail of soft pink and peach-colored rose petals led a trail to the foot of her bed. She silently gulped while she took a few steps toward the darkness that still hid her bed from the view of the flickering candles.
 Her bare feet brushed against the surface of her carpeted floor at the same time the sides of her feet brushed against the silky petals which released the sweet perfume the roses contained. The sweet scent softly assaulted her nostrils. A few more steps toward the foot of her bed and she was able to see or make out an bare foot. From the size of the foot, it clearly was attached to the leg and belonged to that of a man. The leg was clad in a pair of jeans. Slowly, Y/N allowed her eyes to work their way up the length of the denim-clad leg that led upward to a toned bare chest. His toned belly that was on display showed a trail that led down which wickedly hinted what was contained in those jeans belonged to her tonight.
 A good hint if the set of blue eyes did not give away that contained a sexy glint to show some of their intent for the evening along with his sexy, fuckable smirk of his. His white teeth gleamed in the dark. His other hand rested flat on his side while he was half propped up by the help of the dozen pillows half lying down. The fucking sexy few days’ worth of stubble made her lower regions just swoon in a thousand orgasms.
 The breath caught in her throat while trying to find her voice while she stopped in front of her bed. “Seb?” Y/N’s voice squeaked out while she found her voice which only received another soft chuckle. “How did you get into my room? I-I mean how long have you been in my bed and house? I mean not that I don’t mind,” she stuttered out with a slight blush.
 He smirked mostly in relief to himself that she didn’t seem to be to upset with the idea of how she found him in her room. It was a good time where he could be honest how in the first place he got into her room and her house. “With some help and isn’t it a bit obvious why I’m in your bed? I’m your secret admirer,” he answered while he looked over what stood before him. Fuck, she was beautiful, breathtaking, and seemed crazy about him. Her reaction to the word “admirer” made him amused since she appeared a bit tongue-tied.
“You- you were watching me the entire time I was taken a bath?” she asked while she tried to find her voice again let alone her train of thought.
“Was so tempted to just barge in and take you in the bath, but it appears good things come to those who wait,” he replied while never taken his eyes off her. “You know I’m getting kind of lonely in your bed alone. Are you going to join me or just stand there all night?” he teased.
 He is right, but this is my room and no dream. I can jump him in my own bed, Y/N gleefully thought while she made her feet move off to the side of the bed. She slowly slipped onto the bed while she tried her hardest to make sure the chemise did not inch up her thighs. She had him where she would always want him but had no clue exactly where to start.
 She could not move while she froze in her spot sitting on her knees while she looked him over. She took in every inch and detail of what he looked like. “I’m your birthday gift, so unwrap me Birthday Girl.” Oh yes, that is right there had to be a good reason as to why Sebastian Stan lied under her half-naked. He smirked while he observed her slowly crawl forward nervously while she licked her lips.
“Say that again,” Y/N said while she shifted her stance to be able to straddle Sebastian’s lap at the same time, she faced him.
Sebastian smirked while he felt Y/N settle in his lap. Already, he could smell her arousal and feel her wetness. She barely was around him and already she was sexually aroused. He leaned forward while he placed his hands against her shoulders, close enough so he could smell the delicious taste of her lotion. “Birthday Girl,” Sebastian murmured right before he made his move to kiss her.
 Fuck I think I just cum! Y/N’s eyes softly fluttered close at the contact of his lips against hers. She softly moaned while she felt his stubble scrape against the sensitive area of her chin. She would never think of the word “Birthday Girl” the same again without the urge to orgasm. Suddenly the room felt hot to her, or maybe it was the fact Sebastian’s kiss turned out to be scorching hot. Hot damn he knew how to kiss.
 The only sound Y/N could hear besides Sebastian’s soft chuckle was the sound of her heart loudly beat and pound in her ears. “It’s all about you tonight, let me grant your deepest, darkest fantasy,” Sebastian continued to murmur while he placed soft kisses against her lips.
 “Mmm. That could take all night.”
 “I got the time,” he softly said while he shifted his kisses place along the side of her cheek. She could only moan while she shifted her head noticed a long stem pink colored rose rested on the table. Was he about to plan what she thought he would do with the rose? “Fuck. You smell delicious.” She shuttered at his words while she felt his hands and fingers shift to grasp the thin fabric straps of the chemise. “Can I have a taste over and over?” he purred seductively in her ear.
 Y/N whimpered; she could not even speak while he worked the straps down her arms past her shoulders the touch and feel of his callused fingers while they caressed her skin made her tremble. Her heart beat faster pounded harder against her chest. The nervousness of not hidden behind a piece of clothing or behind her desk increased the anxiety she had that started to build the moment she saw him in her bed. His fingers followed the same path as the chemise had only to stop right at her breasts.
 He stared her straight in her eyes while he allowed his hands to stroke and caress her breasts. His thumbs made slow circles against her nipples while he used his thumbs and forefingers to row them into hardening peaks. It was clear she had reached the stage where she would burst and explode into a flame underneath his touch. “You like that Birthday Girl?” he huskily asked while he continued to look Y/N straight in her eyes. “Want me to go on?”
 Of course, she wanted him to go on. Her first response other than the fact she showed Sebastian he had her completely tongue-tied. Without any hesitation, Y/N arched her back forward and slightly back to allow Sebastian’s hands to be able to grasp her breasts get a bit more of a handful. The movement of how she shifted caused her to brush against him a slight reminder to himself that he was hard. The roughness of the denim rubbed against him. He hissed through his teeth.
 He caught the look she gave him while she looked back at him with a look of concern as she continued to arch her back to press into him. The last thing she wanted was for him to be in agony. Her arm inched and moved in between them to rest at the button of Sebastian’s jeans. A soft gasp escaped from her lips when she felt one of his hands softly grasp around her wrist, she used to try to undo his jeans. He shook his head while he bought that hand up to his lips. “No, dragă (sweetheart) tonight is all about you,” Sebastian softly said while he placed a soft kiss there.
 “B-but,” Y/N softly replied right before he used the same hand with one of his fingers to place it against her lips to silence her.
 “Let’s take care of you first, then focus on me,” he responded now as it became his turn to shift while he laid back to rest and prop against the pillows behind him to have her sit on top of him her back still arched with her offering him her breasts like an offering type sacrifice.
 She did not protest this time while she silently took his answer while she felt one of his hands rest and softly wrap around her left breast while he placed his other hand below her breastbone to slowly move down her stomach. “Doamne ești atât de frumos (God you are so beautiful),”Sebastian murmured while the hand that paid attention to her breast softly caressed her flesh. Goosebumps started to form and pucker from the mixed reaction to the cold air and the touch and feel of his fingers.
She loved his accent she softly continued to shutter underneath his touch and contact of his hands. She loved the slow pace and control he used now to go slowly with her. Did he seem to know she still happened to be a virgin? Is that why he wanted to go slow? Not that she complained or had anything against guys who still wanted to be civilized with chivalry.
 She pushed the issue to the back of her mind the moment she felt his other hand continue to inch down her stomach stop at the hem of the pair of panties she wore while she felt the warmness of his breath against her skin.
 Slowly, he flicked out his tongue to lick and lap at her nipple that started to harden from the foreplay he had used with his hands the few previous minutes before. He enjoyed her reactions to his touch which made him anticipate the next reaction she would give the moment his lips slowly closed around that hard rosy little peak. “Ooh,” Y/N moaned the moment she felt his mouth seal around her nipple. The feeling of his mouth and stubble against her sensitive skin caused her hands to move to the back of his head press and tangle her fingers into his messy hair. She only seemed to encourage him to go on while she felt his other hand slowly start inch down the front of the silky material.
 A soft gasp escaped from her lips as his fingers had made their way down further below the hem of the panties and brushed against her damp skin. She almost jumped out of her skin while his thumb lightly brushed against her clit. His fingers could feel how wet she really had become which only increased the amount of pressure and pace of his mouth. The wetness made it easy for him to allow two of his fingers to enter her allow him to feel how tight Y/N was. Her hips slightly lifted to respond to buck against his two fingers with a low moan that had escaped from the back of her throat. What he did next almost took her over the first edge of the night as he used his teeth to lightly nip and pluck at her nipple.
 He adverted his eyes up admired her face in awe which only turned him on more while his thumb continued to massage against her clit the fingers only increased their pace while they slipped in and out of her unexplored and unclaimed territory. The material of his jeans started to feel tight and restricted while the rough material cut into his skin to the point of chaffing. He quickly kissed his way over to the other breast to pay the same amount of attention as he did to the first one right before. Her heart really increased in speed while pounding harder and harder against her chest. The faster her heart seemed to beat the faster Sebastian’s fingers move in and out of her with the same great speed.
 He could feel her walls tighten around his fingers which only made the perfect time to quickly remove them from inside of her. Y/N whimpered at the loss of his fingers buried deep inside of her while she felt Sebastian’s hair lightly tickle against her sweaty, damp skin while the same time his lips brushed underneath the swell of her breast. He slowly slipped his drenched-covered fingers from her panties while the one that paid attention to her breasts slowly moved up her chest, up her neck to stop at the nape of her neck.
He slowly bought one of the drenched fingers up to his mouth slip into his mouth to taste her. The other finger, he slowly moved up to her lips. She could smell how strong her feminine scent was while his fingers lightly brushed against the swell of her mouth right before her tongue lightly slipped out escape licking along the length of his finger to taste herself. She received a groan while his hand found the grasp of her hair clip unclipped her hair. His finger still rested against her lips while she slowly parted them open slid his finger into suck with a soft moan.
She had never really tasted herself before nor really had thought she would be sucking on one of Sebastian’s fingers that had been slipped inside of her body a few moments before. This was so freaking hot even for her while she watched his face as she continued to suck and lick his finger. Sebastian softly moaned while he finished the task at hand to unclip her hair. She watched as her hair fell around to frame her face and to settle a few inches below her shoulders. He used that same hand to lightly run his fingers through her hair while he dropped the clip off onto the side. What she was doing with her tongue just made him wish she were sucking on his tongue instead of his finger. She slowly released his finger from her mouth the moment Sebastian had a lust-filled look fill his blue eyes. Should she be scared at what he was thinking or planned to do next?
 Sebastian felt her breath catch in her chest while he started to kiss down her rib cage, down her stomach. Her fingers tightened and grasped within his hair while she softly moaned. “Seb, you’re gonna be the early death of me.” Y/N softly moaned while he softly chuckled as his mouth stopped at her navel.
 “Might as well die happy right?” Sebastian softly murmured while he placed a soft kiss on her stomach.
��“Mmm-hmm,” Y/N softly answered while she watched his hands move down her sides until they settled on the waistline of her panties. He looked up at her silently ask if it was all right for him to still go on with what he had originally planned for next. She silently nodded which she watched him begin slowly slip the panties off her and down her legs. His fingers softly caressed her legs while they made the path down her legs. His mouth remained right there at her navel his stubble continued to tickle at her skin while he snaked his tongue out softly thrust in and out of her navel. “Ooh God baby,” Y/N softly moaned she felt him smirk against her belly while the panties had reached her ankles which allowed him to quickly yank them off. Sebastian quickly flicked the discarded panties over his shoulder right before he moved his hands again to the top of her thighs.
 She sat naked in his lap as she finally realized that little factor. He sat there for a minute to admire her. His mouth still hovered above her navel. “I want to taste you, Sebastian murmured while he placed a few soft kisses on her stomach. She had no idea what to say or think while he quickly shifted to sit up lay her flat down on the bed. His hands were resting right there on top of her thighs. Sebastian slowly inched his fingers down lower on her thighs slowly part them open. He deliberately had this all planned out while he continued to kiss his path down lower on her body until he reached the junction in between her legs.
 Seriously, she was dripping wet for him already, and had been for most of the evening they both were in her bed. She shivered as she felt his warm breath against her skin her fingers only tightened and tangled deeper into his hair. She did not want him to stop he had gone way too far to just stop. Y/N silently watched while Sebastian slowly snaked out his tongue lapped at her clit while with his other arm, he reached out grabbed the long stem rose. She softly moaned her first reaction at the first time someone ever went down on her. He started to lick and lap at her clit at a slow pace while the hand that held the rose rested up the top of her breasts.
 He continued with the slow pace of his tongue while the other hand slowly moved the rose in between her breasts the softness of the rose petals felt incredibly sexy against her nipples. They harden against the touch as the petals felt as if Sebastian’s tongue were moving in between before the path turned to move down her stomach. He could tell he was driving her crazy which only made him continue to move the flower up and down her stomach while he added his nose into the mix and action of oral. “Mmm, yes,” Y/N softly moaned at the feeling of his stubble against her sensitive folds with the roughness of his tongue. Her back slightly arched up while Sebastian slipped in a few of his fingers into her once again. “Sebastian ooh my God!”
 Sebastian smirked while he continued hungrily lapping at her clit like a dog, he felt her walls start to tighten around his fingers once again. He felt he had given her enough foreplay with the use of the rose, his fingers, mouth, and tongue. This may have been round one, but he defiantly had a few follow-up rounds on his mind. He slowly sat up which left her gasping from the shock since her body neared orgasm and screamed for him to finish what his seductive, wicked touch had started. Now it was time to get down to full business he thought while he slowly slipped off the bed to stand at the side.
Y/N did not say a word while she seemed to enjoy the view then who would not if they were about to see a form of sexual heaven. Sebastian still had the rose in his hand, her favorite flower she would never look twice at the same again without thinking about the sensual, sexual act he had just performed on her. He noticed her eyes advert toward his hand with the rose which only made him smirk. The smirk never left his face while he slipped the stem of the rose in between his teeth. She only could softly laugh while she watched both of his hands now free to be able to undo the button of his jeans. She snapped a mental picture in her head while she sensually used the tip of her tongue to lick her lower lip slightly while she sat up a bit against the pillows.
She stopped licking at her lower lip long enough where her breath caught in her throat for another moment that night while Sebastian slowly unzipped his jeans. Just like she had thought, he had let his inner sexual, freakish, kinky side take charge of the night and had gone commando. She could not help but squeal while she turned her head away in embarrassment. A second later, she slowly turned her head back in Sebastian’s direction as she heard his jeans hit her bedroom floor with a soft thud. It was the “You can both look and touch the Romanian Stud” moment she had dreamed about doing so ever since she became a fan over 18 years ago.
He softly smiled at the squeal of delight reaction while he slowly slipped back into bed wrapped his arms around her waist which pressed her closer against him. She clearly could feel his hardness press against her and feel what she had caused him to feel and want. One hand found its way like before to the back of his head while the other slowly started to touch and caress up and down his spine and back before her fingers found their way up his broad shoulder blades to do the same thing. Her fingers felt so erotic as they touched and caressed at his skin. Would, being inside of her feel this good? “Do you want to be on the top or the bottom?” Sebastian softly asked right before he bent his head down to softly kiss and to softly pull and tug at her bottom lip with his teeth.
 “Mmm,” Y/N started her response while her head tilted up to return his semi, sensual, erotic type kiss by a slow slip of her tongue lightly trace his top lip. “I like you on top of me. I enjoy having your eyes look into mine,” she answered while her right leg shifted to rest and brush up against his bare hip to rest.
 She seriously had put in some serious thought about this special night and how she planned to lose her virginity, and he had to admit to himself that he felt a little damn special that she wanted to give a little piece of herself and her soul to him. Could that what made her have this very sexy allure he could not exactly explain? He just slightly nodded while he returned her kiss. “Whatever the Birthday Girl wishes. Are you ready?” Sebastian softly asked while he looked into her eyes to give her a chance to back away if she chose so.
 “Yes,” she softly replied while she watched his arm stretch out across to the table again grabbed a squared foil package. He came prepared from the looks of it, which only tugged at her heart. Sebastian had sat back up while he carefully ripped open the foil slipped out the rolled-up latex. He looked over his shoulder to catch her eye while she watched him. She tried so hard not to blush and he knew why. This really had to be the first time she ever saw the opposite naked let alone sexually aroused. She did not seem so very sexually naïve. Her reactions just made her twice as desirable. She clearly did adore him.
He slowly inched toward her so that he would not overwhelm her. He fought so hard not just to take and bang her, this time was meant to be savored for her to enjoy. He slowly lowered his weight back on top of her while he grasped her thigh rest and wrapped her leg around his hip. He slowly inched her up a bit up the pillows and looked down at her. “Hey domniţă (Princess), you probably have already figured out that I know that you are still in possession of your V-Card Status. It has been how come, I have been going slow, not to scare you. This may hurt a little. I’m sorry in advance,” Sebastian apologized while he bent down so that he could softly kiss her. She silently nodded while she watched him raise his hips while he got ready for entry.
 Y/N braced herself for the sharp pain as what was left of what could be considered her barrier was about to be broken. She stared straight into his eyes as he slowly pushed his way into her doing his best where he did not hurt her. She nearly sat up about ready to scream as his mouth came crashing down on hers. He held still which allowed her to get used and adjusted to this new foreign item that had entered her body. He continued kissing her while he slowly began moving in and out of her. Her hands had resumed their lively activity of touching him. She continued to touch him if she did not cling onto him as the tempo of his hips slightly increased.
 Sebastian had become slightly brazen while his pace had picked up. Seductively he had slipped his tongue into her mouth. Their tongues slowly started to mate and dual as any last forms of Y/N's restraint had melted away. God, she was tight, Sebastian softly groaned while he went faster and faster. He pulled himself away from their kiss while he looked down at her. Her lips appeared swollen from the steamy kiss, her eyes close to misty blue. She was so close.
 She softly whimpered as she felt his hand slip in between them to pay some very intimate attention to her clit while his mouth began an attack at the side of her neck to kiss, nip, and bite. “Sebastian,” Y/N whimpered while her hips nearly bucked off the mattress. So close, so damn close. Her nails quickly reacted and responded by digging into his shoulder blades to the point of drawing blood. Sebastian grunted in response the speed of his on her hand increased the same time his hips had. They both were not going to last much longer.
 Her vaginal walls quickly started to close around him as the reaction to his hand and thrusts triggered her orgasm. “I oh God!” Y/N shouted as the feeling of complete sexual bliss washed over her body. She shuttered while she clung to Sebastian. He continued to piston himself in and out of her before, her walls had snapped close around him.
“Oh Y/N, la naiba (oh fuck)!” Sebastian grunted while he grasped her by the hips rode out the intense feeling. He grunted again right before he exploded inside of the condom while he collapsed on top of her. Sebastian felt as if his lungs were about to explode while he gasped for air. His head had landed on Y/N’s chest which heaved up and down in protest from the lack of oxygen. He looked up at her when he felt her fingers lightly run through his hair. He slowly sat up still breathless while he leaned forward to kiss her.
 “Thank you,” Y/N softly said which took him by surprise.
 “Thank you for what?” Sebastian asked her a bit confused.
 “For tonight, it was one of the best birthday gifts I ever had,” Y/N answered receiving a smile from him.
“You’re welcome. Can I tell you something?” Sebastian asked while he moved up to her ear. “You don’t look 30 fucking 9,” he softly said with a soft chuckle.
 Y/N gasped while she sat up to lightly push him away. “How- how the hell did you know?”
 “Simple, I asked Emily, plus your friends told me your age when they told me about your fantasy that involved me,” he answered back now with a smirk.
 “Oh, you!” She grabbed one of her nearby pillows and whacked him with a soft laugh as she thought she owed a few people a large thank you tomorrow morning.
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hiddenromania · 2 years
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The CEC Palace is one of those architectural symbols of the Little Paris, as Bucharest was once known, that has remained today a landmark for the identity of Bucharest.
Beyond the impressive building, there is a paradoxical place story: it was one of the oldest and most sought after prayer places in the Romanian Country, the Church of the "Saint John the Great" Monastery erected since the time of Mihai Viteazul, 16th century. A small dwelling, made of wood like most of the time, but after a century begins to deteriorate. In 1703 the church is restored by Constantin Brancoveanu.
More than for its beauty, the church was famous for the wonders that happened to the sick persons who stepped inside. Later, because the lack of money, lack of interest and lack of love for the past, the church was left to deteriorate. In 1875 it reaches the point where authorities asked for its demolition.
So, the former monastery became the headquarters of the Deposit House - Romania's first bank institution, founded in 1864, 16 years before the National Bank, and then the headquarter of the CEC, the current CEC Bank.
Returning to this iconic building, an authentic French Baroque style, it is important to mention that the architect was Paul Gattereau and its cornerstone was laid by King Carol I of Romania. Its construction lasted between 1896 and 1900. For the construction, there were used Romanian materials: massive Dobrogea stone for the facade and for the entrance, and Dobrogea marble for the mosaic in the central hall and for the stairs.
Source: visitbucharest.today
Photo source: pinterest.com, reddit.com
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rosenstorm · 2 years
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Visiting Transylvania and more specifically its city of residence Cluj which the Hungarians know as Kolozsvár and the Austrians as Klausenburg for this was then once one of the most important cities of old Austria-Hungary and not least for the Hungarian nobility whose many palaces almost overwhelm the historic inner city.
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Today, Cluj is Romania's second or third largest city, depending on whether one includes all students for the city then houses the country's most reputable university. During the time of the Habsburg dual monarchy, 80% of the inhabitants were Hungarians, but today the opposite is true - 80% of the inhabitants are now Romanians.
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However, the university teaches both Romanian, Hungarian and German and I myself have heard all three of these languages ​​spoken "in town" by Cluj citizens.
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I have today followed in the footsteps of the Transylvanian author Count Miklós Bánffy and visited Bánffy's old city palace and tribal castles which are today in ruins as well as several of the addresses that appear in his famous Transylvanian novel trilogy published between 1934-40 and which are widely regarded as the equivalent of Hungarian literature to Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and takes place during the last decade of Austria-Hungary.
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As in most of old Austria-Hungary, it is noticeable that a certain Habsburg nostalgia also prevails in Cluj - here there are cafés of the Vienna style as well as, of course, the ever-present Julius Meinl coffee.
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burlveneer-music · 1 year
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Nenad Jelić i Laza Ristovski - Opera - an obscure Fourth World gem from Serbia, 1985, reissued on vinyl (only) by Soundway Records. Here is a full album playlist from Youtube:
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Soundway Records reissues a limited 1000 copy run of Nenad Jelić and Laza Ristovski's seminal experimental Serbian album Opera originally released on the former Yugoslavian state record label PGB / RTB in 1986. Combining Balkan and South American percussion and rhythms with synthesisers, vocal samples, and at times unexpected acoustic instruments (zither and harmonica), the album has slowly become a cult classic amongst fans of fourth world and avant garde music and is a kaleidoscope of contrasting moods and inspirations. The recordings were the brainchild of Nenad Jelić: one of the most original artists to appear on the Serbian music scene in the late 1970s onwards. Jelić played in a wide variety of former-Yugoslavian contemporary jazz, modern classical and rock / pop outfits throughout the 80s until the present day, including the two, classic early 1980s LPs recorded by the Lala Kovačev Group: Balkan Impressions Volumes 1&2. A percussionist obsessed with melody and silence, and a multi-disciplinary instrumentalist, Jelić teamed up with the famous Serbian keyboard player Laza Ristovski in 1985 to help him arrange and realise his vision for the record. The year before its conception, Jelić had moved to Portugal and it's evident in the compositions that the musical waves that blow back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean had melded with the various Eastern European, Mediterranean and Balkan traditions that he had grown up with. "This is where I completely immersed myself in the atmosphere of the Saudades, which helped me articulate my own personal vocation as an author, enabling me to focus on melancholy, melodiousness, the fluidity of the pulse". The Lisbon setting of the fado bars gave rise to the first impulses which would become Opera. However, becoming "just another fado artist" wasn't enough. "My temperament, my previous experience, my sensibility, they all clearly pointed toward a fusion of ambient, jazz and pop music laced with elements of the various Balkan musical traditions as well as the universe of the Latin American sound." "I saw Portugal as an exceptionally emotional country with its trademark nascent sorrow, ever present in all those swaying voices and guitars," he explains. "I felt it very familiar with my own sentiment and it affected my style enormously." These are the exact same elements which he finds moving in any music, be it of Portuguese, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Hungarian or Spanish origins. "If we try and seek the connection between all these worlds, we will inevitably stumble across the Romani people who left their mark pretty much everywhere." Jelić's approach is intuitive: "for me, music has always been a sort of a prayer, or a rite of sorts. It doesn't matter if it's the voices or the percussion instruments." Re-mastered from the original tapes this newly reissued Soundway Records version on vinyl sounds far better than the original pressing which unfortunately had pressing flaws and surface noise throughout.
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A more concise progression with a lot more to still be desired:
This map is far simpler than the first, with key names being attributed to key subjects just to simply my first map’s ideas way better, it’s alot of the same really, not much to mention here other than naming certain figures and maybe giving a little context to terms that I feel I haven’t written about enough before now. 
The names featured here being listed in relation to their key subject:
Martin Heidegger - Nihilism, existentialism, and hermeneutics are all his key subjects, especially on subjects of orientation and relation to space etc in relation to nothingness. A common character in the works of Eugene Thacker in particular. 
Keiji Nishitani - From the Kyoto school of philosophy, a student of Heidegger and profoundly fascinated by the sunyata, a groundless nothingness, the natural progression of considering decadence against the force of the unknown and the will as first argued by Arthur Schopenhauer. 
Thomas Ligotti - Horror fiction and pessimist philosophy writer, none best for being one of the many authors who came after H.P. Lovecraft and continued his dark mystical legacy by writing quasi-philosophical works that are philosophically based in the works of Peter Wessel Zapffe (A fundamental iconoclast of Arthur Schopenhauer's teachings) and based on the fiction works of such horror writers as Robert W. Chamber (Famous for The King in Yellow) and Algernon Blackwood (Famous for naturalist horror stories like the willows, the wendigo and the Man whom the Trees Loved). 
Anton Szandor LaVey - Gets a mention here due to my religious connection to him and LaVeyan Satanism, a huge source of occult inspiration, a religion based on the works of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley and Charles Darwin. 
Emil Cioran - Romanian Philosopher who again deals in representing the legacy of pessimism found in the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, in particular arguing against such things as natalism and fighting the will of the universe, a common thread among pessimists. 
Nick Land - Contemporary controversial philosopher, who writes prophetic works about accelerationism and the future of a techno-capitalistic world based in factionalism and a dystopia climate for socioeconomic issues, wherein we become our own doom through our own eventual and drawn out cannibalistic ways, something science fiction writers and horror artists quite like writing about and debating, especially on the concepts of mutually assured destruction and the Anthropocene’s eventual collapse, as written by Harlan Ellison in his short story, I have no mouth and I must scream (1967)
Jean Paul Sartre - Not too dissimilar to the works of Heidegger, yet instead of speaking explicitly on orientation and being in relation to the other and space, Sartre instead focused on the human connotations of existentialism, interpersonal relations and existentialism as humanism in particular (as lectured in 1946, Existentialism is a humanism), often writing plays and scripts for stories which discuss the absurdity of human relations and how our consciousnesses intersect and interpret each other in relation to our own experience phenom- logically speaking, such a notable example would be No Exit (1944). 
Now the last name (I won’t write more after this considering I have already said written about Agrippa and Thacker, Schopenhaur less so but more of him will come out soon and this map is just a simple summary of the last map, plus alot of the terms are quite obvious here if you’ve been reading the research closely):
Georges Bataille - A famous critic of Sartre for his discussions on the importance of literature as a media which has the ability to influence and encourage action in the people compared to the more contemporary liberal mind of Sartre, especially considering Bataille had more sympathy for fascism in history more than most other french philosophers at the time, but it’s still tricky to represent that part of his history well so I won’t go too much into detail here. Georges Bataille was a prolific written on the taboo, sadean media and psychology, the difference between animal and man, ritualism, mysticism and deconstructionism as a post-nietzschean writer. He often wrote about the values of philosophy in discourse while arguing it is still divorced from reality, he like say Thomas Aquinas, would often write in paradoxes and open contradiction to fully unpack a taboo subject such as death or incest to cover all side of the provocative and questionable, often playing devil’s advocate like Sigmund Freud and arguing that the nature of man is one loose cannon that is only now tied and bound by sociality from acting up and causing chaos, a common thread in psychology and the works of Bataille being to argue in objectively brutal terms that humanity is not some greater image of a god or superior power, but more chaotic than any other species in the animal kingdom, yet repressive of it’s nature to save the horrors that humanity’s consciousness creates when truly confronting the taboo and disquieting internally.  Bataille will be written about more in this project, as his work in Eroticism, as featured in my reading list, is all about confronting challenging subjects and why humanity has fear of the taboo, an important motif within the horror genre of course, in particular the subjects of death, discontinuity and nothingness in the universal. 
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