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the-stars-in-your-eyes-if · 3 months

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☀︎NO DEMO YET☀︎

☀︎SYNOPSIS☀︎

Your childhood friend has always dreamed of the big scene, of the crowd singing your lyrics, of a world tour. Max always wanted for your bands to succeed together. Until...

Well, it is was all a big stupid joke.

The real world caught up to you: you are no longer the naive child you once were. Writing a Grammy worthy album isn’t as easy as it seems and the big scene is nowhere to be seen. You navigate through life as you can, you party with your friends every Saturday and write music all week. You enjoy each one of your gigs – big and small. Your burning love for music doesn’t seem to fade. Your band brought together a solid community that crosses borders. You have fun with your band and it’s all that matter.

But you can’t help but fantasize that, someday, you’ll be at the top of the world…

Big stupid joke, right?

✮BATTLE OF THE BANDS IS BACK!✮

You thought 2020 was the end of us, uh?

You couldn’t be more wrong!

The worldwide known music contest is finally back!

We carefully chose the mentors of our beloved participants. This year will be all pink…

Make way for Pink Riot!!!

Application open to foreigners (check our website)

RATED +18

TW: explicit language, (occasional) violence, transphobia (one character is misgendered but just in one scene), use of alcohol and drugs, (soft) sexual content, parental abuse (flashback), depression, self-harm (warning will be in the "next" button), mention of suicide (same as self-harm)

☀︎FEATURES☀︎

– Customize your MC’s appearance and personality. You decide of their public image and persona.

– Your choices will define your band’s public image and popularity. Are they loved? Do they make underground or mainstream music? Are they the parents’ worst nightmare? The reference of rebellious kids?

– Decide your band’s aesthetic. Do they have one to begin with? Or do they each dress in their own style?

– Write your own lyrics!

– Engage in romantic affairs…

– ...or don’t, your choice!

– Are you going to help the people that cross your path or do you only care about yourself?

☀︎A BIT OF CONTEXT☀︎

Of course, this story is set on Earth.

But.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism and fatphobia will get you in court.

You are not very well seen if you do one of those things and, if you’re a celebrity/politician/public figure, it can (and will) ruin your career.

I know that this isn’t realistic at all but I need to believe that, one day, this will be real. My characters have and will go through enough trauma and bad moments, I want to give them some peace.

And it feels really good to make a world where those things will ruin the oppressor and not the oppressed.

☀︎ROs☀︎

THE HERMIT — Diesel Di Angelo (they/them)

Diesel is the soul of the band, they bring a sort of osmosis. Their calm energy somehow has a place on stage and is liked by everyone.

Diesel took their first steps in the music world with Max and MC. It was just the three of them before the band grew bigger. Diesel is a talented guitarist, they worked hard to get where they are and they don’t stop improving. They are quite reserved and don’t talk about their feelings… Who knows what lies beneath their shell?

THE MISCHIEVOUS DRUMMER — Roman Lupin (he/him)

If MC is the backbone of the band, Roman is its beating heart. He has no problem to make the public jump from the back of the stage. He’s a spark that will light a bonfire.

Roman learned to play drum from his mother. He went to the conservatory but he didn’t stuck with it. Since a young age, Roman wants to have a band and to perform all around the world. Roman is full of life and he’s the human version of a sunshine. Is there something behind that smile or is he genuinely happy?

THE LITTLE MERMAID — Isra Wafa (she/they)

Isra brings magic to the band. Her mermaid low voice is unique and enchants the public. If you think you’ve heard good bass players, just wait until you see Isra on stage.

When Isra was a child, their parents let them chose an instrument to learn and to their surprise, she chose the bass. They fell in love with this low instrument. They navigated from band to band before settling for this band her boyfriend was part of. Isra keeps ignoring their responsibilities toward her family. For how long can they pretend it doesn’t exist?

THE REBEL ANGEL — Archibald “Archie” de Beaumont (they/he)

Even with a classical training, Archie managed to switch to their band’s genre without too much troubles. All the members affirm it: Archie is a gift from the universe.

Archie popped out of nowhere to audition to be the band’s keyboardist. He was the most talented person they saw all day and the chemistry was very much here. The band doesn’t know much about Archie, but it doesn’t matter. They are a good person and a dear friend. It wouldn’t change anything to learn about their life before the band. Right?

THE MANAGER — Cal Bremont (he/him)

Cal works in the shadow to make the band shines under the spotlight of the biggest stages. The band claims it, he is the best manager you could hope for.

Cal takes his job very seriously, he has a perfect work ethic. Maybe he is a bit too close to his clients and they may not just be clients… But, well, no one is complaining. Cal is very secretive about his personal life, he never mentioned his family or anything else. Can he maintain his relationship with his friends and still keep his life a mystery?

THE RISING STAR — Max Larash (she/her or they/them)

Max moved their band to the other side of the world and they managed to impose themselves on the west coast scene. We’ll keep an eye on them as they’ll compete against their former friends…

Because of artistic divergences, Max decided to leave the band when Isra and Roman joined them and they created their own band with high school friends. Max had big dreams for Sleep Walking and their friends in MC’s band, but it didn’t turn out as Max has hoped. Sleep Walking left the country for the USA without their friends and they intentionally lost all contacts with them…

THE MUSE — Olivia “Ollie” Madden (she/her)

You may have never see her face but, as a comics fan, Ollie Madden is a name far from unknown. None other than the comics artist and writer of the most followed comics, Ollie is still a mystery to her fans.

Olivia works for Blue Pegasus, a major comics book publisher, since years. She was the comics artist on a lot of books, it took her a lot of hard work to finally publish her own series. Olivia isn’t only a famous artist, she also is a single mother. She’s taking care of a lot by herself and it often leads to forget about herself. There is nobody to remind her she’s human and not a superhero…

THE PRINCESS — Katharina "Kat" Deluca (she/her)

We don’t need to present Katharina Deluca anymore. Success and awards seem to follow every movies our Lady K touched. She confessed that her break from the cameras and greens screens was to be present for her best friend… Athena Pierce.

Also known as the Princess, Katharina is one of the biggest actresses of her generation. Between two roles worthy of an Oscar, she is also a model and the face of the infamous designer brand: Beaumont-Griffin. She is in the industry since she was 12. But, behind closed doors, Kat doesn’t seem to have a joyful life… What is she hiding from the world?

GODDESS OF MUSIC — Athena Pierce (she/her)

Athena is a legend in the industry. Everybody wants to work with her and Pink Riot. Her voice will shatter your world, there is a before and an after Athena Pierce.

Athena is the lead singer and front woman of Pink Riot. She was a star child and charmed America with her angelic voice. But, with the creation of Pink Riot, Athena is no longer the little angel of the USA. She’s now known as a freaking rebel and she is quite provocative. She flirts with the limits all the time. Her persona is loved all around the world, but who is the real Athena?

☀︎CANON EVENTS☀︎

You can customize a lot of things regarding your MC and your band. But there are a few things that are canon.

— MC is born and lives in France. Where exactly is up to you. The only place MC can’t have grow up in is Paris. (I headcanon them growing up in Perpignan or Montpellier)

— The names of MC parents can’t be choose. I tried to make them as common as possible so you can choose their origins. MC is French but their parents can be from wherever you want!

— MC's age can’t be choose.

— MC is friends with Max and Diesel since they are 6. They were in school together.

— MC’s first band is with Max and Diesel.

— During high school, MC met Roman and Isra. They joined MC’s band but Max didn’t like the kind of music their band was into so they formed their own band with other high school friends (Sleep Walking).

— The OG band (MC-Max-Diesel) exist until the fateful break up.

— MC’s band and Sleep Walking always were there for each other and gave mutual support. They also create songs and musics together, some are only instrumental and other are with vocal.

— MC speaks French and English. Feel free to add a third and even a fourth language.

— MC lives with Isra and Roman since they finished high school.

#the stars in your eyes if #interactive fiction #interactive story #choice of games #if #if: intro #dashingdon

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shirkers2018dirsanditan · 7 months

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Israel was openly critical of apartheid through the 1950s and 60s as it built alliances with post-colonial African governments. But most African states broke ties after the 1973 Yom Kippur war and the government in Jerusalem began to take a more benign view of the isolated regime in Pretoria. The relationship changed so profoundly that, in 1976, Israel invited the South African prime minister, John Vorster - a former Nazi sympathiser and a commander of the fascist Ossewabrandwag that sided with Hitler - to make a state visit.

Leaving unmentioned Vorster's wartime internment for supporting Germany, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed the South African premier as a force for freedom and made no mention of Vorster's past as he toured the Jerusalem memorial to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. At a state banquet, Rabin toasted "the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence". Both countries, he said, faced "foreign-inspired instability and recklessness".

Vorster, whose army was then overrunning Angola, told his hosts that South Africa and Israel were victims of the enemies of western civilisation. A few months later, the South African government's yearbook characterised the two countries as confronting a single problem: "Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."

Vorster's visit laid the ground for a collaboration that transformed the Israel-South Africa axis into a leading weapons developer and a force in the international arms trade. [Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria] who headed the Israeli foreign ministry's South Africa desk in the 80s, says that the Israeli security establishment came to believe that the Jewish state may not have survived without the relationship with the Afrikaners.

"We created the South African arms industry," says Liel. "They assisted us to develop all kinds of technology because they had a lot of money. When we were developing things together we usually gave the know-how and they gave the money. After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies.

"We were involved in Angola as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate."

Alongside the state-owned factories turning out materiel for South Africa was Kibbutz Beit Alfa, which developed a profitable industry selling anti-riot vehicles for use against protesters in the black townships.

—

By the 1980s, Israel and South Africa echoed each other in justifying the domination of other peoples. Both said that their own peoples faced annihilation from external forces - in South Africa by black African governments and communism; in Israel, by Arab states and Islam. But each eventually faced popular uprisings - Soweto in 1976, the Palestinian intifada in 1987 - that were internal, spontaneous and radically altered the nature of the conflicts.

"There are things we South Africans recognise in the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination and human rights," says [Ronnie Kasrils, former South African Intelligence Minister]. "The repressed are demonised as terrorists to justify ever-greater violations of their rights. We have the absurdity that the victims are blamed for the violence meted out against them. Both apartheid and Israel are prime examples of terrorist states blaming the victims."

There are important differences. Israel faced three wars of survival, and the armed struggle in South Africa never evolved to the murderous tactics or scale of killing adopted by Palestinian groups over recent years. But, from the 1980s, the overwhelming superiority of Israeli military power, the diminishing threat from its neighbours and the shift of the conflict to Palestinian streets eroded the sympathy that Israel once commanded abroad.

White South Africa and Israel painted themselves as enclaves of democratic civilisation on the front line in defending western values, yet both governments often demanded to be judged by the standards of the neighbours they claimed to be protecting the free world from.

"The whites [in South Africa] always saw their fate in a way related to the fate of the Israelis because the Israelis were a white minority surrounded by 200 million fanatic Muslims assisted by communism," says Liel. "Also, there was this analysis that said Israel is a civilised western island in the midst of these 200 million barbaric Arabs and it's the same as the Afrikaners; five million Afrikaners surrounded by hundreds of millions of blacks who are also assisted by communism."

When Israel finally began to back away from the apartheid regime as international pressure on the Afrikaner government grew, Liel says Israel's security establishment balked. "When we came to the crossroads in '86-'87, in which the foreign ministry said we have to switch from white to black, the security establishment said, 'You're crazy, it's suicidal.' They were saying we wouldn't have military and aviation industries unless we had had South Africa as our main client from the mid-1970s; they saved Israel. By the way, it's probably true," he says.

emphasis mine. this article is from 2006 and is a part of a two-part series investigating whether israel subjects palestinians to apartheid. the first part is here. since this article was published, amnesty international, human rights watch, and the united nations office of the high commissioner on human rights, among other organizations, have declared israel’s occupation of and blockade on palestine (the west bank and gaza strip, respectively) a form of apartheid.

#israel #south africa #apartheid #long post #going to post more highlights from this piece #it is absolutely worth a close read

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cinnamonnangel · 1 year

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ASTRO 101 - THE HOUSES (PART I)

FIRST HOUSE - I AM

(The First House is ruled by Aries and Mars.)

The first moment you open your eyes to the world, first breath, first sight, first intention and first experience

General appearance, form and shape, physical body, general health, vitality and energy, action

Character, identity, self image, personality, mask, self interest, how others perceive you, self expression, independence, behavior, name, attitude, fame

How you see the world, how the world sees you

Spirit, life, ego, soul body

First impressions, beginnings

Head, face, eyes, blood, brain, muscular system

The moment of birth and people around you, place of birth and atmosphere, birth experiences, mother’s health and experiences during childbirth

SECOND HOUSE - I HAVE

(The Second House is ruled by Taurus and Venus.)

Material and non-material resources, attitude toward possessions,

How you make money or meet obligations, self worth

Personal finances, money matters, sense of value, stocks and share, trade, jewelry, documents, cash money, valuables, wealth, possessions, trade, material possessions, luxuries, banking activities, loans, economic situation, wares, rank, guarantee, financial security, artworks

Talents, comfort zone, security, self esteem, valuables, sense of values, resourcefulness, nutrition

Face, neck, throat, vocal cords, thyroid, metabolic system, voice and vocal talents

Economy, sovereign debt, colonies, fees, trade, banks, internal debts, artistic approaches of a country

THIRD HOUSE - I THINK

(The Third House is ruled by Gemini and Mercury.)

Conscious mind, memory, mental confusion, communication, intellect, mentation, thinking

Skillfulness, study, ability, writing, speaking, researching, learning, reading, perceiving, adaptability, ability to learn foreign languages

Depthless thoughts and informations, smattering

Elementary and primary education, puberty

Siblings, brothers, sisters, cousins, close relatives and neighbors

Short trips, tour, daily travel, neighborhood, public transports, vehicles, motorbike, cars, train, bus, boats, urban roads

TV, radio, telephone, computer, mails, messages, text, communication network and channels, short correspondence on social media, weather forecast

Shoulders, collar bone, arms, hands, fingers, lungs, nerves, the nervous system

Bookstore, library, school, post office, educational institution, streets, telephone kiosk

FOURTH HOUSE - I FEEL

(The Fourth House is ruled by Cancer and Moon.)

The place where we live with the family, home atmosphere, home life, house, mother, family, lineage, family matters, ancestry, custom, femininity

Subconscious, things we hide about ourselves, emotional problems, early childhood, depression, personal commitment, the deepest and the darkest point of the chart

Old age, the end of the life, diseases, grave

Land, realty, genetic heritage, underground sources

Chest, breaths, stomach, uterus, diaphragm, upper alimentary system

Agricultural enterprise, historical values, mining site, real estate, refuge facilities, farmers, cemeteries

FIFTH HOUSE - I WILL

(The Fifth House is ruled by Leo and Sun.)

Actions and activities we do for ourselves, things we like to do, hobbies, how do we spend our free time, creativity, activities we enjoy, pleasure, self expression, risk taking, leisure time, artistic talents,

Love, romance, dating, courtship, love affairs, the way we flirt

Children, birthing and creation, the character of our children

Acting, drama, dance, music, sports, artists, celebrities, stage

Games, cards, puzzles, fun, amusement, games of chance, gambling, speculative investment

Chest, upper back, heart, spine, cardiac system

Hotels, entertainment centers, casino, beauty shops, coiffeur, resort, amusement park, cinema, theatre, sports center, park, art exhibition

SIXTH HOUSE - I ANALYZE

(The Sixth House is ruled by Virgo and Mercury.)

What we do to survive, daily work, everyday routine, details, skills

Work routines, where we specialize our skills, workers, competition, employment, workmates

House of sickness, exhaustion, disease, allergies, health, physical body, physical condition

Issues that tire us and weaken us, drugs and addictions

Pets and animals

Abdomen, intestines, lower liver, alimentary canal, spleen, digestive nerves

Hospitals, health care providers, employees, service sector, trade unions, state employees, restaurants, food and beverage services, enemies, soldiers, police, military, army, security guard, navy, animal clinic

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yeolsaintlaurent · 3 months

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Crimson Veins, Midnight Flames ch.1 [BBH]

pairing - baekhyun x fem reader

genre - mature, smut, thriller

themes - Social Divide, Ambition and Privilege, Dark Desires, Identity and Self-Discovery, Love triangle, Sex, Mystery and Gothic Elements

Synopsis - Explore the intricate world of Oxford University, where Baekhyun, a scholarship student, intertwines with the wealthy elite led by Sehun Oh and Y/N Van der Bilt. Against the backdrop of seductive parties and concealed love, the tale unfolds at the grand Ivy Crest Estate in the picturesque town of Willowbrook. Here, secrets and power plays unravel, revealing a collision between societal expectations and personal truths, with gothic nuances weaving through the rich tapestry of privilege and deceit. This is where the heart of the story beats, echoing with the footsteps of characters entwined in a dance of love, betrayal, and hidden mysteries.

A/N - Hi my lovelies~ I am so so so excited to be sharing this new series with you guys. Ever since I watched Saltburn at the cinema, I had wanted to write a fic inspired by it. As always, let me know what you guys think about my new series. <3

Chapter 1: Freshman Impressions

The air at Oxford University was alive with anticipation as freshmen flooded the campus, eager faces filled with excitement and trepidation. Banners fluttered in the crisp autumn breeze, welcoming the newcomers to a journey of knowledge and self-discovery. The courtyards were abuzz with freshmen finding their way, guided by the hopeful energy that marked the beginning of their academic adventure.

Baekhyun, clad in his drab attire, navigated through the sea of unfamiliar faces with wide-eyed wonder. His jet-black hair, styled in an old-fashioned way, hinted at his reserved personality. The banners overhead welcomed the freshmen, but Baekhyun felt like a stranger in a foreign land, an outcast amidst the throngs of students who seemed to effortlessly find their place.

As he lugged his bags, Baekhyun's gaze wandered, taking in the vibrant atmosphere. He saw students with smiles that mirrored the banners' enthusiasm, groups forming friendships that would last a lifetime, and laughter that echoed through the courtyards. His introverted nature left him feeling like an observer on the fringe of a world that he yearned to belong to.

The first day unfolded like a whirlwind, a cascade of introductions, campus tours, and the overwhelming realization that the journey ahead was as daunting as it was promising. Baekhyun, however, found himself struggling to connect with anyone. Ignored and brushed off when seeking directions to his dormitory, he felt the weight of his scholarship status more acutely than ever.

Upon reaching his dorm room, Baekhyun peered out of the window overlooking the courtyard, a view that would become a daily spectacle. It was there, amidst the crowd, that he saw Y/N for the first time. Her uber fashionable outfit, designer bag and shoes, and captivating beauty drew his attention like a moth to a flame. She stood with her friends chatting away, a cigarette in hand, an embodiment of the privilege that seemed so distant from his own reality.

Despite the magnetic pull he felt toward Y/N, Baekhyun remained introverted and nervous. He watched her from a distance, his silent admiration painting a picture of unspoken desire. The window-sill overlooking the courtyard became his silent refuge, and Y/N's presence, a beacon of aspiration in his mundane world.

The University's welcome reception dinner, a grand affair filled with chatter and clinking cutlery, brought Baekhyun face-to-face with the stark realities of his social standing. Most seats were occupied, and the few attempts to find a place were met with dismissive glances. Eventually settling into a solitary spot, Baekhyun's solitude was interrupted by Chanyeol.

"Hey mate, mind if I sit here?" Chanyeol asked, already pulling out a chair opposite to him.

Baekhyun, surprised by the friendly gesture, nodded. "Uh, sure. Go ahead."

Chanyeol flashed a friendly grin as he settled into the chair. "I'm Chanyeol, Chanyeol Park. What's your major?"

"Baekhyun Byun," he replied, still adjusting to the social interaction. "Psychology."

"Sound choice!" Chanyeol exclaimed. "I'm going for Business Administration. Got big shoes to fill as the family heir and all that."

The grand hall echoed with the chatter of students, and the vibrant atmosphere contrasted with Baekhyun's more reserved demeanor. As Chanyeol animatedly shared stories, the world around Baekhyun seemed to fade into the background, and his undecipherable expressions spoke volumes.

Chanyeol, with his outgoing personality, remained oblivious to the intricacies playing out in Baekhyun's mind. The topic veered towards Y/N as Baekhyun's gaze occasionally flickered toward her table, a subtle yet persistent attraction that Chanyeol noticed with a knowing smirk.

"I see where your interests lie," Chanyeol teased, nudging Baekhyun with a playful grin. Baekhyun responded with a nonchalant shrug, but his expressions betrayed a depth of emotion that went beyond mere acknowledgment.

Leaning in conspiratorially, Chanyeol continued his narrative. "That one there, whispering sweet nothings in her ear? That's Sehun Oh. Summered in Spain together after sixth form, so they're practically inseparable now."

Chanyeol, always eager to share insights, revealed another layer to the story. "Sehun and I are good mates. Our fathers are business partners, and I've been a frequent guest at the Van der Bilt family galas at their estate," he confided in Baekhyun, unaware of the internal turmoil brewing within the quieter companion.

With each word, Chanyeol's extroverted energy almost felt like an intrusion for Baekhyun, who continued to listen to the endless stream of information about Sehun and Y/N. The dynamics between the trio unfolded in the narratives Chanyeol wove, and Baekhyun's expressions served as a silent canvas for emotions that ran deeper than the surface suggested.

Two weeks later :

The day of the first assessments arrived, and Baekhyun, armed with a sharp mind and a focused determination, emerged from the exam hall. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows across the bustling courtyard. As the other students dispersed, Baekhyun, oblivious to the world around him, made his way to the nearest notice board. The anticipation of upcoming exams lingered, and he scrutinized the posted details for any schedule changes or possible rearrangements of exam halls.

Lost in the sea of information, Baekhyun suddenly became aware of a commotion nearby. A voice, soft but urgent, reached his ears, seeking a graphing calculator amidst the departing students. He hesitated, not wanting to be drawn into the social currents that flowed around him. The solitary pursuit of knowledge called to him, urging him to retreat to the quiet confines of his dorm room for a session of solitary reading.

A tap on his shoulder shattered his reverie, and Baekhyun turned, finding himself face-to-face with the very object of his admiration—Y/N. Time seemed to freeze, and he felt a strange mixture of elation and nervousness as she stood before him. Her flustered demeanor and earnest expression captivated him, momentarily blurring the lines between his introverted world and the vibrant social tapestry around him.

Y/N, with a hint of desperation in her voice, asked if he had a spare graphing calculator. She explained that she needed it for her upcoming exam and had forgotten her own. Baekhyun, still in the grip of surprise, felt his hands instinctively reaching into his corduroy messenger bag. Without uttering a word, he handed her the calculator, a simple yet profound act of kindness.

The transformation in Y/N's expression was instantaneous. Gratitude and happiness radiated from her as she clutched the calculator in her hands. In a burst of genuine emotion, she planted a quick but heartfelt kiss on Baekhyun's cheek, catching him completely off guard. Before he could fully comprehend the moment, she enveloped him in a warm hug, expressing her thanks.

"I'll get it back to you! Thank you so much!!" her voice echoed behind her as she sprinted towards her exam hall. Baekhyun stood there, frozen for a moment longer, the weight of the unexpected encounter lingering in the air. The courtyard resumed its rhythm, but for Baekhyun, a simple act of generosity had set in motion a chain of events of social dynamics and hidden desires.

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blackswaneuroparedux · 11 months

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Anonymous asked: Of all the many languages you speak which is your weakest one? Do you use those languages?

It’s privilege to learn any language that isn’t your mother tongue. As Ludwig Wittgenstein correctly observed, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world”. If English is our native tongue we put ourselves at a disadvantage because we expect every other nationality to take the trouble to speak it. There seems no incentive to learn a foreign language. We become lazy not just in language but also in other ways including our cultural enrichment, our imagination, and a misplaced sense of our self-importance in the world.

Of the European languages I know, I probably think German would be my weakest. When I was in school in Switzerland you’re brought up in three languages: French, Italian, and German (even if the Swiss speak Swiss German). When I say weakest I mean I can converse fluently, but I don’t have time to read German literature in the same immersive way I would say with French literature or take any special interest in German affairs.

I would say I’m fairly fluent in French now but still prone to silly mistakes. I’ve been told that I can speak without an accent and that is heart warming to know, because that was always the goal once I moved here to France. I don’t really use French in my work as it’s a multi-national entity and so English is the default language of corporate world, but I’m speaking French pretty much the rest of the time outside of work.

I was extremely fortunate to be born into a multi-lingual family where Norwegian and English were spoken from birth. All my siblings were being versed in Latin (not Greek which came years later after doing Classics at university) by the time I was 8 or 9 years old because my father was a classicist and he felt Latin was the building blocks to mastering other languages.

All this occurring whilst we moved lived and moved around a lot in the world such as China, Japan, India, and the Middle East. When I was initially sent to one of the first of my English girls boarding schools I was horrified that most of the girls only spoke English. I thought I was the stupid one for only knowing 6. Boarding school, if nothing else, gave me a great privilege to hone in on the languages I did know and start to learn others.

My parents didn’t take the easy way out and put us children in international schools like all the other expat children. That would have been too easy given how tight knit the British expatriate community was out there. Instead we were left to sink or swim in local schools in places like Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan or Shanghai in China or in Delhi, India. It was a struggle but you soon find your feet and you stumble towards some basic level of fluency.

I’m fortunate that before Covid my corporate work took me often to the Far East and it was a great opportunity to hone what I already knew. The result is I can converse and take business meetings in Chinese and Japanese (though English gets thrown into the mix too).

I would say Chinese is more of a struggle for me these days because I’ve not been back since before the Covid lockdown in 2020. Chinese is one of those languages that can easily melt away if you don’t get the chance to converse in it on a regular basis. Japanese less so, probably because the culture had more profound impact on me than Chinese culture.

Hindi is less of an issue because I have close Indian friends and also I watch Bollywood movies as well as converse with Indian immigrants here in Paris who have local stores. Urdu I learned through the backdoor because Urdu has a spoken affinity with Hindi (if you know Hindi then you know spoken Urdu, more or less, especially in Northern India and cities like Delhi where Urdu was born in the burnt ashes of Mughal India). Reading is another matter because they each use different scripts - Sanskrit for Hindi and Arabic and Persian script for Urdu.

Strangely enough when I was doing my tour in Afghanistan years ago with the British army, I would speak Urdu with local Afghans who served as official translators or were selling goods on the base. These Afghans knew Urdu because an entire generation of Afghan boys and girls grew up in refugee camps on the Pakistani border during the different phases of the Afghan war. I have very fond memories of their friendship and hospitality, but less so of the war itself.

With Arabic, it had lapsed woefully until I did a posting in Dubai in the past year (as catalogued in my blog) and I found myself suddenly remembering a lot and asking Arab friends. Soon I was able to hold my own amongst my colleagues and corporate clients. In these cultures it’s really hard to stay focused because so many of them speak very good English. So it’s hard to get them to stick with their own language because you want to learn from them - but they want to show off their English proficiency - and so you have to be polite but persistent to stick with Arabic.

If you’re learning a new language then I hope you stick with it. There’s almost nothing more rewarding in your life than the disocovery a rich culture through language. The key is to find a way to make it fun rather than a trip to the dentist chair for a root canal operation.

Thanks for your question.

#ask #question #languages #german #chinese #hindi #arabic #immersion #learning #education

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justforbooks · 11 months

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When Tina Turner, who has died aged 83, walked out on her abusive husband Ike in Dallas, Texas, she feared it would spell the end of her showbusiness career. It was 1976, and she had been performing with Ike for two decades, since she had first jumped onstage and sang with his band at the Manhattan club in East St Louis, Missouri. Yet, although she was desperate and had only 36 cents in her pocket, she was on her way to a renaissance as one of the most successful performers in popular music during the 1980s and 90s.

She had to endure several lean years, but a turning point came in 1983, when David Bowie told Capitol Records that she was his favourite singer. A version of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together followed. Produced by the electro-poppers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh from Heaven 17, the track went to No 6 in the UK, then cracked the US Top 30 the following year.

Turner cemented the upturn in her fortunes with the album Private Dancer (1984). Driven by the huge hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? (her first American No 1), the album became a phenomenon, lodging itself in the American Top 10 for nine months and going on to sell more than 10m copies. Suddenly Turner was one of the biggest acts in an era of stadium superstars such as Michael Jackson, Dire Straits and Phil Collins.

In 1985 she was recruited to play Aunt Entity in the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, for which she recorded another international chartbuster, We Don’t Need Another Hero. A second Thunderdome single, One of the Living, won her a Grammy award, and she was an automatic choice to join the Live Aid benefit concert in that year, as well as to participate in its American theme song, We Are the World.

Her follow-up album, Break Every Rule (1986), launched Turner on a global touring campaign, during which a crowd of 184,000 watched her in Rio de Janeiro. The tour spun off a double album, Tina Live in Europe (1988).

The album Foreign Affair (1989) sold 6m copies and generated another trademark anthem, The Best, which was subsequently used to add oomph to numerous TV commercials and adopted both by the tennis ace Martina Navratilova and the racing driver Ayrton Senna. The subsequent Foreign Affair tour ended in Rotterdam in 1990, after which she duetted with Rod Stewart on the old Tammi Terrell/Marvin Gaye hit It Takes Two. Designed as the theme for a Pepsi advert, the track was a chart hit across Europe.

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to Zelma Currie, a factory worker, and her husband, Floyd Bullock, a Baptist deacon. Abandoned by their father and temporarily by their mother, in 1956 Annie and her elder sister, Alline, moved to St Louis, Missouri, where they encountered Ike Turner and his band the Rhythm Kings. After Annie had talked the initially reluctant Ike into letting her sing with the band, he recruited her as one of his backing singers.

It was in 1960 that Tina – who had by then changed her name because it reminded Ike of the cartoon character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle – first sang a lead vocal with Ike’s band. A session singer failed to turn up, and Tina’s stand-in performance of A Fool in Love was a hit on both the pop and R&B charts. Ike immediately rebuilt his act around Tina, and christened it the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. They married in 1962.

Featuring nine musicians and a trio of skimpily dressed backing singers, the Ikettes, the Revue took the R&B circuit by storm. Tina rapidly developed into a mesmerising performer, radiating raw sexuality and bludgeoning audiences with the unvarnished force of her voice. They began to pepper the charts with hits, including I Idolise You, Poor Fool and Tra La La La La, and even if they only intermittently crossed over from the R&B charts to the pop mainstream, the band’s performing reputation was second to none. Evidence of their stage prowess was preserved on the 1965 album Live! The Ike and Tina Turner Show, recorded on tour in Texas.

However, the seeds of the couple’s destruction were being sown in their successful but intense lifestyle. Ike was a habitual womaniser, and also developed a destructive cocaine habit. This provoked violent outbursts against Tina, who, as she later revealed in her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, was beaten, burned with cigarettes and scalded with hot coffee. She gained a glimpse of what life beyond Ike’s intimidating orbit might be like when she worked with the “Wall of Sound” producer Phil Spector in 1966. To Ike’s frustration, Spector refused to allow him in the studio while he worked on the single River Deep, Mountain High, which subsequently became regarded as a high point of both Spector’s and Turner’s careers.

The Turners’ work won them the admiration of many of their peers, not least the Rolling Stones, who invited them to open a UK tour for them in 1966, then to join them on their American tour in 1969. Mick Jagger was regularly spotted at the side of the stage during Tina’s performances, fascinated by her stage presence and dance routines. One of the high points of Live Aid in 1985 was Tina and Jagger performing together at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

Working with the Stones prompted the Turners to import a rock-orientated edge into their work, a ploy that worked most successfully when they recorded John Fogerty’s Proud Mary in 1971. It was their first million-selling single and a Top five hit on the American pop charts. In 1973 they notched up another landmark with Tina’s feisty composition Nutbush City Limits, inspired by her Tennessee origins. She took the role of the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy (1975): her performance was one of its few critically acclaimed moments, though her spin-off solo album, The Acid Queen, made little impression on the charts.

After her split from Ike, Tina stayed with friends and was forced to survive on food stamps. When their divorce was finalised in 1978, she preferred to take no money or property from the settlement, to establish a complete break from her husband. She earned cash from TV guest appearances on the Donny & Marie and the Sonny & Cher shows, but her late-70s albums Rough and Love Explosion sold poorly.

In 1980 she signed a management deal with Roger Davies, an Australian promoter working in the US, who secured some lucrative engagements in Las Vegas. The following year the Rolling Stones galloped to the rescue once again by booking her as the opening act on their Tattoo You tour of the US, and she also appeared with Stewart in a California concert broadcast internationally by satellite.

By the time she was inducted (with Ike, though he was then in jail) into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, Turner had little left to prove. She was able to spend more time at the homes in Switzerland and the Cote d’Azur that she now shared with the German record executive Erwin Bach. A singles collection, Simply the Best (1991), reeled in more platinum discs as Turner entered the senior stateswoman phase of her career.

In 1993, as she launched her first US tour in six years, her film biography, What’s Love Got to Do With It, based on I, Tina, was released, starring Angela Bassett as Turner. The film brought forth a bestselling soundtrack album and another hit single with its opening track, I Don’t Wanna Fight.

A three-disc anthology, The Collected Recordings – Sixties to Nineties, appeared in 1994, and the following year came Turner’s recording of GoldenEye, the theme tune of the eponymous James Bond movie. The tour that accompanied her eighth studio album, Wildest Dreams (1996), became another record-breaker, grossing more than $100m in Europe alone. Twenty Four Seven (1999) teed up what Turner announced would be her last major arena and stadium tour. She had intended to tour with Elton John, but the idea was scrapped after she argued with him about the piano arrangement for Proud Mary during rehearsals for a TV special, Divas Live ’99. Her subsequent solo dates became the top-grossing tour of 2000.

A quiet period ensued, during which Turner confined herself to hand-picked events, such as a 2005 performance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She contributed a version of Edith and the Kingpin to River: The Joni Letters (2007), a tribute album produced by Herbie Hancock. She performed alongside Beyoncé at the Grammy awards in 2008.

That October she went back on the road with the Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour, synchronised with the compilation album Tina: The Platinum Collection. In 2010 she became the first female artist to score top 40 hits in the UK in six consecutive decades (1960s-2010s) when The Best bounced back into the UK Top 10. Her Love Songs compilation appeared in 2014, and her remix of What’s Love Got to Do With It with the Norwegian DJ Kygo in 2020 made for a seventh decade containing UK hits.

Between 2009 and 2014 Turner appeared on four albums by Beyond, an all-woman group formed with her neighbours in Küsnacht, near Zürich. The music reflected the spiritual and religious beliefs of the participants, with Turner considering herself a Baptist-Buddhist (she was raised as a Baptist, but began practising Nichiren Buddhism in 1973).

In 2013 she married Bach and gave up her American citizenship to become a Swiss citizen. Three weeks after the marriage she suffered a stroke, and in 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, then suffered kidney failure when “the toxins in my body had started taking over”, as she put it in her second autobiography, Tina Turner: My Love Story (2018). Her husband volunteered to give her one of his kidneys and a transplant operation was carried out successfully in 2017.

The following year, the biographical stage musical Tina opened at Aldwych theatre in London, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Adrienne Warren in the title role. Turner received a Grammy lifetime achievement award, to go with her existing tally of eight Grammy awards and three Grammy Hall of Fame awards. Among her vast collection of honours, Turner also had five American Music awards, two World Music awards and three MTV Video Music awards.

In 2021 she joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an outright solo performer and sold the rights to her music catalogue to the publishing company BMG for an estimated $50m. Ready to retire fully, she bade farewell to her fans with the two-part HBO documentary Tina.

Alline died in 2010. Tina’s eldest son, Craig, from a relationship with the saxophonist Raymond Hill, took his own life in 2018. Ronnie, her son with Ike, died in 2022.

She is survived by Erwin and two sons, Ike Jr and Michael, from Ike’s first marriage.

🔔 Tina Turner (Anna Mae Bullock), singer and songwriter, born 26 November 1939; died 24 May 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Tina Turner #Anna Mae Bullock #in memoriam

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averagejoesolomon · 4 months

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Gang, I could not be more delighted to share this chapter with you. I know I always tell you to buckle in, but for this one, you ought to buckle in. I'm so serious. You don't have any idea what you're in for. And if you're new here and want to get in on this madness, you can read Full Circle from the beginning on Ao3. Enjoy!

Chapter Five

The most prominent religion in Russia is Orthodox Christianity, but the national church is the Bolshoi Theatre, where crowds worship week after week, night after night, among gods by the name of Ramanov, Stalin, and Gorbachev. Built less than a mile away from the heart of Moscow's governing epicenter, the Bolshoi weaves ballet into the political pulse of the country. It announces a national pride on stages across the world. It is an institution. It is a sacred arthouse. It is the venue of choice for Russian chairmen and it is the top item on the visitation itinerary for any and all foreign dignitaries.

It's also a spy's worst nightmare, crawling with the sort of people Matt's made a career out of avoiding.

He can think of at least two-dozen different ways to spend this evening that don't include revealing his face to the better part of the Soviet parliament. A single misstep—one unlucky run-in, introduction, or incident—could spell serious trouble for Matt someday down the line. When he brought this concern to Rachel, she had suggested he wear a disguise.

"I can't do my job wearing a disguise," he had told her, and when she inquired as to why, he had said, "Disguises, by design, draw the eye. If you want me to be your guy in the crowd, you can't paint a three-inch scar on my face or put me in some God-awful gaudy wig."

This must have been a convincing enough argument, because she didn't have a counterpoint to match it. Instead, she calmly pointed out that he could either show his face anonymously at the ballet, or he could wait until the Soviets found it next to his name, age, place of birth, and designated passport number. The choice, she had said, would be up to him.

So now he stands at the base of the Bolshoi foyer, an exposed American nerve in a hostile crowd. "All good, Ace?"

It had been Rachel's idea to travel separately, all four of them staggering their arrivals across the past six hours. Grace has been onsite for ages, posing as a photographer for a famous Russian newspaper that took a bribe from Langley five weeks back. Abe followed close behind, masterfully playing the role of low-ranking British royalty and receiving all of the VIP tours and introductions that come with his faux dukedom. He'll join Matt and Rachel for the performance later on, watching from the elite visiting dignitaries box while the two of them slum it in twelfth-row center.

Matt, for his part, has already slipped in through the maintenance corridors under the guise of a furnace inspection that's been scheduled for seven months. He's shed himself free of the branded navy coveralls to reveal the perfectly tailored Versace below. As he fusses with his ivory cufflinks, he wonders how Rachel managed to pin down his exact measurements, but knows a fella shouldn’t ask questions he doesn’t want answers to. "Patience, Nebraska," she says, voice crackling in his ear. “Good things come to those who wait."

Last, but certainly not least to arrive is Rachel, who carries enough natural poise to breeze through the Bolshoi's front doors without a second glance from anyone in sight. From his place at the bottom of the Bolshoi's elegant double staircase, Matt spots her through the crowds above, clocking the familiarity in her movements before anything else—the stubborn set of her shoulders, a graceful glide of her hand along the banister, confident steps as she begins her descent in his direction.

And by God, she is a sight to see.

Her dress is the classy sort of affair that suits her perfectly, a solid black number sewn from silk and cut into a simple silhouette. The neckline settles along her collarbone and swoops from shoulder to shoulder, paired with soft loops of fabric that drape listlessly along either arm. This weighty, sophisticated feel curves down to her hips, where the dress drops off into an inky sheath that pools at her feet, as though she's been poured straight over the steps. She lifts her hem with a gloved hand, the motion effortless and practiced, and she never looks more like herself than when there's a string of pearls around her neck. With each step, Matt notices her anew, taking in the sheen of the silk, the red of her lips, the soft, subtle bounce of a relaxed updo pinned in place by Swarovski crystals.

Just when he thinks the sight can't get any better, she looks up at him and smiles. "There you are, darling."

Her Russian is technically perfect, the same way her shots always land dead center, and her punches always strike in exactly the right spot. "Are you ready, my love?" he responds, his own contrasting Russian forged in the streets of Leningrad. "I was beginning to grow worried."

He meets her at the final stair and passes along a sleek glass of bubbling Champagne to match his own. Neither of them will drink tonight, but the glass had given Matt a reason to look busy while he waited for her arrival. Somehow, she makes it look like the perfect golden accessory to her ensemble and, after a demure sip that doesn’t make it past her lips, he holds out an arm to her. When her sleek glove slips through his elbow, he can’t hide the warm, tingling shiver that buzzes straight down his spine.

"You will never truly understand the woes of the women's restroom," she replies, and he senses some truth in this predetermined conversation point, despite it being scripted to subdue wandering ears. "Do you have the tickets?"

With his free hand, Matt reaches into his inner pocket and produces two strips of cardstock placed by Rachel before leaving the safe house. This sparks a subtle satisfaction in her, as she mentally checks another box in her fifty-point plan for the evening. Change into her dress, check. Meet on the lower level, check. Pretend to be married, and dating, and in love—check, check, check.

Etiquette dictates that he lead them inside, for the sake of chivalry. Handily, the mission brief also dictates that he lead them inside, for the sake of discretion. Guided by the two complimentary motives, Matt greets the usher with a perfectly neutral hello, and the usher tears their stubs with a hospitable smile. They both receive a program and make their way into the low hum of chatter inside the theatre doors.

Matt has only seen the inside of the Bolshoi once before, when the agency first sent him overseas to train and take in the culture. It's just as striking as he remembers, six balconies carved from intricate gold and dressed in heavy, burgundy velvet. In those early days, a more senior agent had suggested that this place was designed to highlight its visitors just as much as its on-stage talent, because if one could afford an extravagant evening at a Bolshoi performance, then they were certainly the type of person worth noticing. This is especially apparent with the presidents’ box, which takes up two full stories at the center of the balconies and is accented by all the usual curtains and trimmings one might expect to adorn the stage.

Matt and Rachel’s seats are less auspicious, which is entirely by design. The carpet sinks beneath their shoes as he guides her toward a stout velvet seat tucked beneath the first balcony. They offset one another, Rachel’s sharp vigilance balanced by Matt’s casual covertness. As they walk, Matt spots Abe three stories up, chatting to a gentleman with a round gut and a distinguished mustache. Grace is out of sight and, if all goes according to plan, she will be all night. The ambassador to Turkey is ten yards away, the Minister of Justice is sharing a drink with the Minister of Transport, and Matt’s fairly certain that the young lady seated two tiers above them is a descendant of the long dethroned royal family—at least, she’s surrounded by enough armed goons to make people think she is.

If they get out of here without incident, it’ll be a miracle. "After you," he says, gesturing toward their seats. He wraps a possessive hand around to the small of her back, intending to let his lady lead the way like his pops taught him, but something in his brain snaps when he feels her bare skin at his fingertips, a warm and golden flood now washing every thought downstream.

So caught up in surveilling the crowd, he’s neglected to notice one key element about his partner—she seems to be missing half her dress.

The modest neckline sweeps into a wholly immodest back, a deep black V dipping low along alabaster skin. The silk hugs the outer edges of her rib cage, narrowing until meets at a single point that cradles the base of her spine in a gentle, swooping ripple. She's surprisingly soft for someone so fit, carved from demure muscle perfectly suited to the deception of spycraft. The smooth slope of her traps. The rounded angles of her shoulder blades. Matt's eyes trail along her exposed vertebrae, connecting the dots down, down, down her back until he's thinking the sort of thoughts that would have his mama clutching at her pearls. It ain't hard to imagine—except, no, he ain’t going to imagine. It ain’t right. It ain’t gentlemanly, to picture his fingertips brushing down her backbone. To hope she’d melt beneath his touch. To crave the feel of his hand at her back, reeling her in close, holding her right up against his—

"Darling?"

And it just ain’t fair, the way she puts on that alluring tone. The way she glances over her shoulder with a pout that sends his pulse plummeting. The way her dark eyes flicker over her dark dress and the way he could tear that damn thing off her, here and now—

God almighty, he has got to get a grip.

"Uh-huh." He feels his cheeks flushing, not with the sight of her, but with the images running through his own head. He blinks them away, silently scolds himself, and clears his throat with the hope that this one action will clear everything else, too. "Coming."

When they sit, Rachel makes a show of reading the program, expertly delving into the sort of bored small talk that belongs to socialites who have spent their entire lives in gorgeous theaters. But beneath the surface, she’s taking stock of every last detail around them and Matt knows he ought to join her. He knows he ought to note the exits, count the security officers, spot every diplomat that might be spotting him. Except the part of Matt that’s trained to notice everything can’t stop noticing her, all of his good sense getting tangled up in the sight, the smell, the presence of Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

Three cameras cover his closest exit. Rachel’s lips form thrilling new shapes around her Russian. There’s a plainclothes guard sitting two rows ahead. Rachel has a birthmark below her chin. The director of ballet walks in the east entrance. Rachel’s breath hitches on the rise and fall of her chest.

The house lights dim, and Matt uses his Champagne to wash down all the want.

He takes on his own private mission of reigning in his rampant thoughts, but she doesn’t make it easy on him. She smells like wildflower fields and Nebraskan sunlight. She looks the way rock and roll feels on US-20, when all the windows are rolled down. She sounds like a good idea he can’t quite shake. And that dress, that dress. It turns his insides into a mid-April storm, and he’s not sure how he's supposed to sit beside her for the rest of the night, especially not when his brain insists on identifying and cataloging every latch he'd need to unhook in order to unwrap the rest of her.

The orchestra hums to life and the glow of the stage fades into the crowd. The low, blue light seems to catch Rachel in all the right places. The curve of her nose. The pout of her lip. The sharp edge of her jaw, the tender lines in her neck, the elegant curve of her collar bone. The Bolshoi is known internationally for its magnificent mastery of the ballet. It is, in the eyes of many, the most beautiful expression of the most beautiful art form in the world. And yet, as music fills the hall and dancers fill the stage, Matt just can't bring himself to look away from Rachel.

One day, he’s going to kiss her right there, and there, and there.

He will never kiss Rachel Cameron.

One day, he’s going to hold her close, and closer, and closest.

He will never hold Rachel Cameron.

Matt sits through five full movements of Tchaikovsky’s finest, wrestling with back-and-forth thoughts, before Rachel reaches through the darkness and effortlessly laces her fingers in between his. Her hand is cold. Her hands are always cold. It’s one of those things he already knows about her, and the familiarity is enough to send a pang of longing straight up his arm, filling all the empty spaces in his chest until he’s about ready to burst. She’s playing a dangerous game, dancing on the edge of something Matt’s barely managed to restrain. He remembers with a start that she’s wearing a wedding ring—a diamond-studded gold band made to look old and worn, courtesy of Langley’s top jeweler—and he reckons this might be it. This might be the final crack in a dam that’s already on its way out.

That is until Rachel leans in close, her words a whisper rolling over his shoulder, and he realizes that this, actually, is the thing that ends him.

Her breath raises goosebumps along his neck, his shoulders, his back. It’s all twisted up in the raspberries and walnuts they shared in the afternoon, a sweet and earthy scent in equal measure. There’s nothing between them now, except the single inch of her mouth from his ear as she leans in with all the casual belonging of his supposed wife, and he gets so caught up in the feel of her that it takes too long to realize she’s back to speaking English. “Fifth balcony,” she whispers. “Ten o’clock. What do you make of her?”

On instinct, his eyes flick up to her target. He spots it too, a young woman rapt with the dancers below, leaning along the railing just to get a better look. To the untrained eye, she looks like anyone else in the crowd, but as someone who spends plenty of time trying to blend in, Matt notices all of the ways she stands out. Her hair is tied in a low, unglamorous ponytail. Her dress isn’t couture, like so many others here. She wears modest jewelry made from mixed metals—a cardinal sin among polite society. And he’s seen that bag before, in a shop window somewhere in Manhattan.

His attention falls back to Rachel with every intention of crafting an intelligent response, but he gets caught on her eyes before he can get anything out. The way they wait for him. The way they dance between each of his. The way they drop to his lips. The way he can’t help but drop his own gaze to match.

He will never kiss Rachel Cameron.

“The bag,” he mutters instead, and he can’t tell if he’s still looking at her lips or not. He thinks he might be. He probably is. Is he speaking in Russian or in English? “I think its…”

He’s never noticed the low point of her cupid’s bow. The downward draw in each corner of her mouth. The way her cheeks divot ever so subtly, as though she was supposed to have dimples but never found the time for them. Red lips curve around the unsaid end of his sentence. “American made,” she confirms.

The flood is back, biblical and mighty, and his insides warm with the rushing current. Every nerve in his body seems to have found a way to his front, and the shift in weight sends him forward, forward, forward, heavy in her direction. She’s looking up at him—not the stage, not the ballet, but him—with eager eyes, chin raised high, just as it always is.

Except the orchestra trills to a stop. Applause surrounds them. The house lights come up.

Intermission.

The lights break through whatever feelings were fostered under cover of shadow, and the only thing remaining are Matt and Rachel, far too close to something neither one of them can explain. “I should—” he starts at the same time she says, “You need to—”

He waits for her. She waits for him. Finally, when the space between them grows too tight, she reaches through it, hands landing on his bow tie. She straightens each end, then brushes lint from his shoulder. “That’s your cue,” she tries again. “Don’t lose your head.”

It is entirely too late for that, but he swallows this thought down, and opts for a simple, “Yes ma’am.”

It takes more effort than it should to stand from his seat. Somehow, she now sits at the gravitational center of the room, and he has to strain against the pull, one step at a time. Eventually, he manages to join the dozens of other attendees who rush toward the bathrooms and the bars, and the further he walks, the weaker her pull.

When he finally makes it to the lobby, his head clears just enough to wonder what in the Hell just happened.

The events come to him like a mission outline, as though he’s about to debrief with a superior and desperately needs the notes for reference. It’s the only way he can wrap his head around the moment, working through it one step at a time. Except no matter how many times he runs through it, he comes back to the same two steps.

He leaned in.

Then she leaned in.

And he reckons he can understand the first part easily enough, but it’s the second part he keeps getting stuck on, because there’s not a room on this Earth they’ve shared without a fight. On the relational spectrum of people likely to kiss and people likely to brawl they’ve always leaned more toward the latter, and now seems like a Hell of a time to make a leap in the other direction. This is the same woman who tore him apart in Baltimore. The same woman who told him to get lost for two years straight. The same woman who, when they first met, took one glance at him and vowed to make his life harder than it had ever been before.

A lady like that doesn’t lean in. She fights, and yells, and holds grudges. She tells him where to be, when to be there, and what to wear. She gives orders. She makes plans. Rachel Cameron does not lean in—and she certainly doesn’t do so on a whim, in the middle of a mission.

And it occurs to him that this is just another check mark on Rachel’s list. Another scripted moment in her perfect strategy. Of course it is. A wife kisses her husband before he leaves. It’s a cover. It’s a legend. She’s always been one step ahead of him with this sort of thing.

At least, that’s what Matt tells himself as he meanders through the crowds, and it helps his racing heart slow to his resting rate. Mind clearing, he brings his mission objective into focus and works his way toward the fifth balcony using one of the paths Rachel mapped out for him weeks ago. He stops in bathrooms, refreshes his Champagne, and swipes a bite-sized chocolate desert from a passing cart, partly because it’s his best bet at cover, and partly because he’s a sucker for a chocolate mousse. One staircase at a time, he climbs that magnificent Bolshoi Theatre and works his way onto a balcony that isn’t his.

In Rachel’s grand Moscow plan, Matt has six pre-approved options for approaching a potential target. Since the first requires their target to be a man and the second requires there to be a gun pointed at his head, Matt settles for option number three—the confused tourist gambit or, as he prefers to call it, the National Lampoon. “Excuse me, miss?” he says, in the best lost American voice he can muster. “Do you know the way to the—?”

She turns, and any commitment Matt had to his cover immediately shrivels when he realizes he knows the young lady perched in the fifth balcony. He used to have dreams about her. Spent the better part of a year trying to remember every detail about her, from the red hair, to the ring on her finger, to the way she threw a baseball in the basement of Wrigley field. He last saw her skipping down a stoop in Georgetown and if she’s here now, he knows in his gut that something has gone horribly, staggeringly wrong.

“You?” he says, abandoning all pretense as he bolts toward her. “What are you doing here?”

The redhead moves quick, snatching her leather messenger bag and pulling it in close as she scans the balcony for an escape route. Every instinct Matt’s got tells him that she can’t leave with that bag, so he makes himself big and impassable, barely hooking the leather strap as she tries to slip past him. “Let go of me,” she hisses. “What are you doing? Let go.”

“Drop the bag.”

“We’re on the same side.”

“Drop. The. Bag.”

She’s slippery, in that same way Joe can be slippery when he wants to be, and Matt wonders if everyone in the Circle of Cavan learns to run before they fight. She wriggles against his grip, bright eyes wide with panic, but Matt pins her down easy. He’s got plenty of experience keeping runners in one place. “What are you doing here?” he asks again. “Who’s your buyer? What are you—?”

“On the ground!”

When a third voice interrupts, Matt mistakes the accent for Abe and says a quick prayer of thanks for the backup. This relief is quickly doused when he looks up to find a tall, slender stranger holding a gun to the girl’s head. “Whoa, hey,” he says, holding out his free hand. “Easy with that thing.”

“Get on the ground,” says the stranger, and Matt realizes that the gun is actually being pointed at him. “Now.”

Thirty seconds too late, Matt suddenly understands that he hasn’t intercepted a trade. He’s walked right into the middle of it. What’s more, he’s gone and done the exact thing Joe’s always warning him about—he’s backed himself into a corner, stuck between the buyer and the seller with no good way out. “I’ve got company,” Matt tells the team in his ear. “What’s my way out?”

Grace’s voice is absolute, ready with an instant reply. “Through,” she tells him. “There’s a stairwell to the right, but you’ll have to get off that balcony first.”

“I’m coming up,” says Rachel.

Matt shakes his head, even though she can’t see him. “No time.”

“I’m coming up,” says Abe.

“Better make it quick.”

“I won’t tell you again,” the stranger says, adjusting his grip on the gun. “Get on the ground.”

He holds his pistol like law enforcement, all rigid shouldered and stiff stanced. The sight makes Matt sick to his stomach. “You don’t want to do this,” Matt tells him. “You’re putting real lives at risk, doing this.”

The stranger huffs, like he knows everything and Matt knows nothing at all. “That’s rich, coming from you,” he says. “Give up the passports and no one gets hurt.”

“A lot of people get hurt,” Matt argues still pulling at the bag. “Let’s figure something out. Let’s—”

“We are well beyond figuring something out,” says the stranger. “That ship has sailed, and you’re going to jail for a long time.”

“I’m—” Matt’s already started rolling into his next argument before this sentence has time to land. When it does, it stops him in his tracks. “Hold on, I’m what? What are you—?”

In this profession, there are plenty of people Matt never wants to cross. He spend his days with spies, con men, assassins, and rogues, all of whom know how to make his life miserable in horrible and exhausting ways. Right then, Matt adds another name to the list as he watches Abe Baxter sneak up behind the stranger, grab hold of his weakest joints, and bend them in ways that bring the man straight to his knees.

And when Abe looks down at the man’s face, it’s clear that he isn’t truly a stranger after all. “Townsend,” he groans. “You absolute twit.”

Over comms, Grace says, “What the bloody hell is he doing here?”

“I fully intend to find out,” Abe answers. With a glance up at Matt, he gives a nod. “You got the passports? Good on you.”

Matt doesn’t have the passports, so much as he still wrestling for them, but when he goes to point this out, he realizes that his sparring partner is nowhere to be found. In the time it took for Matt to talk his assailant into Abe’s hold, the mysterious redhead has completely vanished. In her place, the strap of the messenger bag is looped around a small golden gargoyle, and Matt’s been wrestling with a ghost.

“Get up, Townsend,” Abe says, and even though the not-so-stranger Townsend has an extra foot of height on Abe, there’s no questions about who’s in charge. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

Matt unloops the strap and digs inside the messenger bag. Sure enough, he finds a pile of little leather covers. He looks over his shoulder, toward the audience below. Toward Rachel, who knows better than to meet his gaze, but does it anyway. He nods, and so does she.

For a single moment, Matt lets himself fall into his own relief. Mission accomplished. Lives are saved. He won’t have to worry about agents arriving at the ranch, or an assassin knocking on the door of the M street apartment. At least, not for now.

But there’s something scratching at his instincts, like he’s being watched, and not just by Rachel. There are eyes everywhere in Moscow, and there are eyes on him now. When Matt scans the crowd below, he spots a gentleman looking back at him. Wide face. Bushy eyebrows. Armed. Matt's short-lived relief fades in a flash as he remembers where he is, and remembers how deadly it can be to be spotted in a place like this.

The house lights flash once, twice, three times, and Matt steps back from the edge of the balcony. Intermission, he thinks, is over.

#Full Circle #I TOLD YOU #I TOLD YOU YOUD LOVE IT #thanks for trusting me with these kids #its a long ride but we are in payoff central

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simsroyallegacy · 10 months

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The Crown Jewel Edition: Queen Consort Ana

From State affairs to private soirées; this is an inside look into Queen Ana's favorite pieces within the Lunarian Royal Collection.

The Fleur-de-lys Tiara (Above)

This particular piece was featured at many a State Banquet and in several of Her Majesty's official portraits. Originally crafted in Pierreland by Maison de Lumeniere, the tiara was commissioned by Crown Prince Jean Charles Valois in 1874 to commemorate diplomatic relations with Lunaria. It had been worn by Queen Consort Katrina and her daughters before falling out of favor in the early 1900s, when kokoshniks became the trend for the Royal Family. Queen Ana first brought it out of obscurity in the 1970s while attending a State Banquet in Rivenia as a part of her Marriage Tour.

The Ely Meander Tiara

Gifted to Queen Clarisse in the late 1950s by the 10th Duke of Ely, this tiara was personal gift to Ana when her engagement to then-Crown Prince Vincent was announced. She most notably wore the piece during both her husband's Silver and Golden Jubilees. Her Majesty gifted the tiara to her only daughter – and now the Queen of Windsor – Ashli, who wears it frequently for official portraits.

Queen Ana's Engagement Ring

Designed personally by then-Crown Prince Vincent using a large, 12-carat aquamarine surrounded by thirty-six diamonds on a split-shank design, Queen Ana's engagement ring was a stunning piece that many ladies in Lunaria were jealous of. The ring was returned to the Royal Vault upon her death twenty years ago, where it will remain alongside other Royal engagement rings.

The Brindleton Sapphire Kokoshnik Tiara

This piece was bought during a private auction of the Brindleton Empire's Royal tiaras. The auction was rumored to have occurred because of Emperor Alaric's overspending of the National Treasury. Although the rumors were never confirmed, several high profile pieces from the Imperial Family's collection were sold to other families around the world, shaming Emperor Alaric, whom also sold several of his wife, Empress Amira's, personal jewelry inherited from her family. The purchase of the kokoshnik and other pieces apparently soured his relationship with King Vincent and Queen Ana in the coming years.

Adding insult to injury, Her Majesty wore the kokoshnik to a banquet celebrating Brindleton's surrender to the combined military forces of Windsor and Lunaria during Windsor's War for Independence. The Brindleton Empire has remained a military and political rival of Lunaria ever since.

The Belvedere Palm-Heart Tiara

This piece was a gift to Queen Consort Lilith–then the Duchess of Belvedere–in 1793 as a wedding gift from the province her husband ruled over. It features nine emeralds sourced from the area and was designed to look like the palm-heart flowers native to the land.

The Honeysuckle Loop Tiara

A diamond and platinum piece which originally belonged to the Brindleton Imperial Family like the Sapphire Kokoshnik listed above. Her Majesty often wore the tiara for foreign formal events.

Queen Katrina's Pearl Wedding Earrings

Originally worn by Queen Consort Katrina in 1841 on her wedding to then-Crown Prince Edward (soon-to-be known as the Mad King Edward IV), these earrings were originally part of a lovely parure. The necklace, bracelet, and tiara were unfortunately lost in a fire at Windenburg Palace in the early 1920s.

Queen Ana's Emerald Laurel Earrings

These earrings were bought by the Queen before she married into the Royal Family. They were designed by court jeweler Simtier from their Mythic collection and were purchased privately by Her Majesty for §30,000. They remain within the Quinn family's private collection and are being kept by King Arden currently.

Queen Ana's Birthday Earrings

A gift to the Queen Consort from her three children, these earrings were her most beloved pieces of jewelry. The earrings are another Simtier piece, personally designed for her, and were passed down to her eldest son's wife after her death.

The earrings were most recently worn by Princess Annaliese, who wore them for her eighteenth birthday celebration.

The Piraeus Pearl Set

This pearl necklace and earrings set are a Harold family heirloom. Upon her father's death she was able to inherit a few key pieces after his Earldom was dissolved back into the Crown. Her Majesty only wore the set for intimate private events.

Bordeauxian Pearl Wedding Necklace

This necklace is one of the oldest pieces within the Royal Collection, dating back almost six hundred years, and is a wedding gift from King Francois of Bordeaux to Queen Consort Marylene.

The Celestri Diamond Alliance Necklace

This necklace, which consists of millions of simoleons worth of Celestri Diamonds, was once one of the Celestre Imperial Family's prized jewelry pieces.

The necklace was given over as a part of peace negotiations twenty years after Lunaria split from the Empire of Celestre. The Emperor at the time, Nikolas II, was the half-brother of the first King of Lunaria, Rhysander I, and regretted the War of Secession that occurred between the two nations after a personal dispute between the two.

Queen Ana wore the necklace most famously during the funeral of her in-laws, the former King Richter and Queen Clarisse, but was often depicted wearing it during official portraits. The necklace has also been continuously worn during official visits to Celestre.

#Queen Ana #Lady Ana Harold #ts4 crown jewels #Lunarian Royal Vault #sims 4 legacy #sims 4 royalty

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sbrown82 · 11 months

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Tina Turner (November 26, 1939 - May 24, 2023)

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destinyc1020 · 4 months

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yes i did post that long ass message to other people's ask to see diff opinions. i dont know why its so shocking, i am not saying he should dominate, u know when u see someone who has great potential in something and they're not using even minimally. u know what i mean? is it such a CRIME that i wish for success in his career. yesss i love that he took time off and wants to balance things between his work and personal life as he should. i am not saying take all the roles under the sun, i was just stating that theres so much he can do is all.

is it such a CRIME that i wish for success in his career.

But see, HERE'S the problem right here. You're the one implying that Tom isn't successful in his career! All we're saying is that Tom is ALREADY successful in his career.

When "fans" make statements like this, it gives off the impression that you feel as though Tom is not successful, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Now, if you said, "I just want Tom to be even MORE successful in his career than he already is...", or, "I just wasn't Tom to work with xyz Director or Actor....", or, "I just want Tom to get recognized for his work and to win an acting award!", then THOSE statements would be very different, and much more understandable.

But when fans come in here complaining that he's "not doing anything" 🙄, or implying that he's "not successful" just because he's not nominated for "prestigious awards", it comes off as very off-putting, and almost like you want Tom to be going those things just to get fandom bragging rights on Twitter so that he can win some arbitrary and silly "fandom war". 🙄

yesss i love that he took time off and wants to balance things between his work and personal life as he should. i am not saying take all the roles under the sun, i was just stating that theres so much he can do is all.

Well yea, we all want Tom to be the best that he can be, and to work to his full potential.

But the dude is ONLY 27 YEARS OLD....

He has over 40 years to still be acting in this business. Unlike women, men don't really get an "expiration date" in Hollywood. Especially white men...

AND he's foreign too? You know Hollywood has a love affair with foreign-born actors rofl 🤣 😂 Tom is doing just fine! He's doing what HE wants to do.

He might even have some plans for his career and his life that we know nothing about.

I just think fans need to TRUST Tom more.

He's been working non-stop for 6 years with Marvel. The man deserved a BREAK. Let him get his break! While other actors were still working in smaller films or TV, Tom was traveling around the world, doing press tours, doing meet and greets at various ComicCon events, doing interviews, etc.

Like seriously, give the man a break. Please...🙏🏾

Tom already has one project announced for this year, and we may get another announcement for smthg else that he's working on later on this year.

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spanishroyals · 2 years

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The Queen turns 50

by Jesús Rodríguez for El País Semanal

When the battered Airbus 310, registration plate T.22-2 of the Air Force, finally closes its door and begins to roll down the runway of the Nouakchott airport (capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania), invisible under a violent sandstorm that stains the sky, the sigh of relief from the Queen's team is heard on board the plane. It's over. It is June 2. It has been three frenetic days touring one of the least favored territories on the planet. A Spanish Cooperation trip to give visibility to its development projects in this strategic country: hinge between the Maghreb and the Sahel; a containment dam for human trafficking and jihadist terrorism. And also to express the solidarity of Spain in aspects such as education, health, nutrition or equality. For five months, this visit by the Queen has been carefully designed on three sides: La Moncloa (the Government), La Zarzuela (Royal Household) and Foreign Affairs. And nothing has failed.

The police escorts, haggard and covered in dust, take off their bulletproof vests and earpieces. The head of the operation, the commander of the Civil Guard S. R. V., smiles and blurts out: "What, have you sweated?" And he hugs each component, a score of guards including a couple of female agents; one of them, barely 24 years old, has a noticeable limp. The plane takes height. The Queen jumps out of her seat and greets her security detail one by one: they are her inevitable second family. She makes jokes; she practices the Asturian humor, whose accent comes out when she dominates the situation; she speaks loud, clear and fast; she gestures; asks questions; she addresses them by their first name and claps them vigorously. She doesn't miss a single one. She squats down to massage the injured guard's ankle. The guard blushes.

Until landing at the Torrejón air base four hours later, the consort will not sit down for a moment. She doesn't look tired even though she's exhausted. That is the ritual of her office. She walks the aisles of the plane: she chats with her secretary, the hieratic General of Cavalry José Zuleta; with the head of Protocol of the House, the also militar man Curro Zufiaur; with the Communication and Transmissions staff and with S. C., one of the doctors at La Zarzuela, with whom she has a close relationship. And also with the staff of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, which has organized and accompanied her on this journey, headed by the Secretary of State herself, the veteran socialist expert in matters of equality, Pilar Cancela. She is linked in a hug with Letizia and exclaims: "The Queen is our first aid worker." Later, in private, she confides to the journalist: “I thought she was cold and distant and it turned out that she is professional, normal and even funny. She has studied the issues. This trip is in tune with her social interests, from food security to child labor or sexist violence. We met with her in her office at La Zarzuela and she had conscientiously brooded over our dossier, which was full of post-its. She knows what we come to do and her role is key in making our solidarity projects known to the world. And now we will meet with her to make a critical judgment and see the lessons learned for next year's trip, which is planned to Latin America. The Queen is not an ornament.

In generic jeans, a T-shirt and walking boots, the Queen turns out to be a small, wiry and very thin woman; with small hands, short and clear nails, without rings (not even a wedding ring); her washed face and her hair, dark and streaked with gray, gathered in a ponytail. She's fit, but she doesn't have a bodybuilders arms. She discreetly wears glasses and always has a mint candy on hand. She is telegenic; a theater addict who dominates the stage (like the great politicians, without going any further than her admired Macron couple), but one could pass her in the street in flat espadrilles and a cap and not notice her presence. The face mask has been for her (and her two daughters, Leonor and Sofía) a valuable instrument of anonymity during the pandemic (for example, at Rosalía's last concert in Madrid). Taking walks, going to buy books or to the market are her ways of experimenting a regular life from which she does not want to be left out.

Because Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, about to turn 50 this September 15, does not officiate as queen 24 hours a day as Felipe does, committed to being a head of state full time. He is constitutionally the first authority of the State. She is not. Everything affects him, from a sports victory to a forest fire. When the family gets tickets to the movies or a concert (something that happens often), there is always the question of whether he will be able to attend or something unexpected will come up. With an added problem: the reprehensible behavior of his father, Juan Carlos de Borbón, has deprived him of the slightest possibility of failure; he lacks the smallest margin of error. Felipe and Letizia can't screw up. They will never be able to contritely whisper: “I am very sorry. I have made a mistake. It will not happen again".

The one obvious slip of Letizia in her almost 19 years in the royal business (after more than 3,000 public events without noticeable mistakes) took place under the gothic nave of the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca on Easter Sunday 2018, with a run-in with her mother-in-law immortalized by cameras. Someone who was there explains: “Queen Letizia's error was to tell Queen Sofía, in a questionable way, that the photos with the girls were to be taken at home, not in the church; that this was neither the time nor the place. And Sofia's, who has a stubborn and nagging character, was not realizing that she is no longer the queen. The Queen is her daughter-in-law. And Sofía insisted until the other one lost her temper”. The protocol flew through the air that day. From The British Times to The New York Times, the international press echoed the incident, which hid something deeper: the relationship between the two has always been difficult. And the support of the emeritus queen towards Letizia, scarce. Sofía is the great-granddaughter of the Kaiser and Letizia is the granddaughter of a taxi driver. Their educations, backgrounds and generations are different. Sofía is a professional of the 20th century. And Letizia, from the XXI. And as such they behave.

Letizia wasn't even born a princess (like her husband and her daughters and her sisters-in-law and her parents-in-law); she lacks constitutional functions (beyond a possible regency if she were to become a widow with a minor Leonor), a statute (which is enjoyed, for example, by the spouse of the French president), an instruction manual and her own team. In fact, she attends a limited number of institutional events, unlike Sofía, who, for example, co-chaired the oath of the government's presidents (Aznar, Zapatero and Rajoy) and their ministers before a Bible and a crucifix that have gone down in history with the current monarchs. Like the tedeum mass after the proclamation or the Easter celebration. This Queen is neither an agnostic nor a believer. She is, like the 1978 Constitution, non-denominational. In fact, the anachronistic "His Majesty the King, may God keep" has disappeared from the Royal House's invitations.

They are small clues that point to a new direction. The couple's determination is to build a more useful and relatable Monarchy. A renovation plan that Felipe began in 2014 by drafting a code of conduct for his House and his Royal Family, and which eight years later made his personal assets public: 2.5 million euros. At the same time he has tried to defend himself from his own lineage. Especially, the so-called in the Royal Household "Abu Dhabi environment", which, for example, on the 16th of April, during the Easter holidays, counterprogrammed with a photograph of the emeritus King with his daughters and grandchildren the same day the current King, Queen and their daughters, visited a Ukrainian refugee center in Madrid. Letizia knelt down to speak to the children as they recounted their dramatic departure from the country. She was one of the images of the day. The other, the one that was sent from Abu Dhabi to a press agency, created an earthquake in social networks, since in the first photograph the legs of one of the children of the Infanta Cristina were not seen, giving rise to question if it had been retouched.

The magnification of the cathedral incident shows that Letizia (willingly or not, that is the great question) provides constant entertainment content to a society eager for icons. Her image and her presence; her outfits and the legends that surround her (distant, tyrannical, unpleasant), are an asset monetized in the television or digital show business. She is always in the spotlight. Should she be more distant or more open? Should she be more modern or more traditional? Should she be more regal or more common? That is the debate. And there are sides. But she is simply the partner of the head of state. She tries to be happy with her work, to be in her place, to help the King, to give visibility to the causes she believes in, to be a transmission belt between those above and those below, to open doors, to connect with the values and feelings of the citizenship. And be useful to organized civil society. What value does that job have? As Lady Di demonstrated hugging a terminally ill AIDS patient or visiting a landmine field in Angola, a royal can also shine a spotlight on the world's inequalities.

But in addition, Letizia has a life. She stands by that. Not everyone agrees that she can be both a queen and a citizen who enjoys private vacations. Those think that the sovereign costume is not made for her. But almost two decades after arriving at La Zarzuela, Letizia does believe it. In her eight years as queen she has become empowered. She knows the business. And she has instinct. She is a contemporary queen looking for balance; respectful of rituals and protocol (something that cost her to assume), but also convinced of the need to fine-tune a wounded institution —questioned by part of Spanish society and subject of political controversy among the political parties—, which Felipe VI intends to turn into "a renewed Monarchy for a new time". The Queen herself believes more in evolution than in revolution. Her future and that of her family depend on it. She gets lost in Madrid with a very discreet security team. Her friends are lifelong friends. Fridays are for the movies (sometimes on her own), and Saturdays, to go out with friends. She shares with her husband and daughters a long early breakfast and, whenever possible, dinners, in which Felipe's stories abound. Her circle are middle-class professionals. And her daughters, already teenagers, have not had nannies, maids or tutors. When they were little, their parents were the ones who got up at night if they cried. If Letizia traveled, her mother, Paloma Rocasolano, a nurse, would lend a hand.

They have tried to be a normal family with a (apparently) co-responsible father. Although the rest of us have never seen them as such. To begin with, because they live in a mansion lost on a 16,000-hectare estate. But for the Queen, fact or fiction, behind closed doors, the Borbón Ortiz are an ordinary family where their daughters have been educated in a strict sense of the value of things and where expensive jeans or premium sneakers do not enter; a home where feminism is evident, there is strict control over screen time (she is obsessive over their impact on young people) and Leonor and Sofía have been inoculated with culture in their veins by a mother who presumes of being a "cultureta". Queen Letizia would rather have a beer with Scorsese or dinner with Woody Allen, a chat with Graça Machel, the Obamas or her beloved Penélope Cruz, a lunch with Angela Merkel (who told her about her Sunday bike rides with Joachim, her husband) or a reflection on abortion with Jill Biden or on nutrition with Brigitte Macron, than skiing on the slopes of fashionable ski resorts, going to regattas, hunts, the front row of Paris or a mid-afternoon drink at the Real Club de la Puerta de Hierro, bastion of the Madrid aristocracy.

The Queen wins in person. She is a professional communicator. She knows that she only has two minutes to win over each interlocutor and influence the idea that is going to be made and transmitted about her. Whether with a CEO or a person with a disability. She is quick and direct. She arrives, takes a look at the situation and acts; trying to be normal, polite, nice. She tries to address everyone by name, which implies a previous process of documentation and memorization.

Her b-side, that of her strong, incisive and non-conformist character, worried about the image she projects and who receives a thick dossier every morning with comments made about her in the media and social networks (which she sometimes reads and sometimes does not), rarely comes out. One of her few biographers, Leonardo Faccio, who published in 2020 "Letizia. The impatient queen" described her between "the paradox and the contradiction". That is, caught between her origins and her choice. The journalist José Antonio Zarzalejos, former director of the Abc newspaper and author of "Felipe VI. A king in adversity", succinctly defines her: "The Queen is a woman with a complex personality and an indomitable temperament."

She walks upright and with her chin up (perhaps more like the classical dancer of her Asturian childhood than with the supposed prosopopeia of royalty), determined, despite suffering continuous pain in one foot due to chronic metatarsalgia, the result of excessive use of high-heeled shoes, which she hates. In her team they say that she is critical by default and is not satisfied with mediocrity or half measures; that you can't lie to her or keep information from her because she immediately catches you; that she looks for alternatives and new paths; that she is not a doll that officials carry on a litter to hundreds of public events without meaning or content. She gives her opinion. She jumps the chain of command and pesters people. Her style is that of solidarity, not fundriser booths or photo opportunities. She would like to go further, to the Marconi industrial park, on the outskirts of Madrid, to try to rescue the women forced into prostitution in that suburban territory of sexual exploitation; or travel to troubled states such as Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso to give visibility to Spanish cooperation. She would have been even harsher in the legislative and family reproach of the emeritus king (with some investigations in the Supreme Court closed because the immunity while he was head of state shielded him from any accusation and a case opened in London by his ex-lover Corinna Larsen). Common sense and the system prevent her from doing those things. Sometimes she has to settle for the Post Office issuing a stamp with her profile for her 50th birthday. But she does not give up.

They say that one morning, in the Carrefour's greengrocer near her home, her neighbor in the queue looked at her sideways and blurted out: "And what are you doing here?" To which the Queen replied sarcastically: "Well, same as you, buying tomatoes." Letizia does not back down. She answers back. To the Royal Household team and to their fish supplier, from whom she demands fatter sardines because they are in season. But she is aware that being a woman is a disadvantage in a society where the press gives more attention to whether she repeats her dress, the length of her skirt or her tan than to her status as ambassador of the FAO for Nutrition or as UNICEF Mental Health Advocate for Children and Adolescents (she will speak soon on the subject at the United Nations headquarters in New York). Something that bothers her deeply. But for the media, for any mobile recording device, the target is her. No matter what she does. A close source says: “she is aware that women are judged by their appearance much more than men. And that pisses her off. She has, for example, a great relationship with Begoña Gómez, the wife of President Sánchez, who is from her generation and a valuable professional. They could do a lot of interesting things together, but they would start comparing them. Disagreements would be invented. For this reason, it is better that they are not seen hand in hand, because they would become the target of rumours, like when President Biden visited Spain".

Around Letizia, form always prevails over substance. In June, during the Madrid Retiro Book Fair, the Queen went hoarse recommending a large group of ladies to read; they, meanwhile, advised her to dye her gray hair because it made her look older. "Get some highlights, beautiful," said one. "Yes, ma'am, but you read," the consort concluded.

She does not grant interviews, but she would be a bad interviewee: she asks more questions than she answers. She looks straight ahead with her green eyes and shoots. She is hyperactive, inquisitive, curious, even harsh in her judgments. A member of her team assures me: "She is for real." She landed for love almost 19 years ago in the heart of one of the oldest monarchies in the world. Perhaps she was not aware of what she was getting herself into. She thought she could handle anything. A bookworm and a nerd, precocious and know-it-all; daughter of divorced parents, college graduate and independent; hardly meek; civilly married at the age of 25 to her former high school teacher; divorcee; ambitious, professionally successful, perhaps her high self-esteem betrayed her. Or maybe love kept her from seeing reality. She walked into the lion's den. Her entrance to royalty in 2004 gave her such a shock that it took her a decade to recover.

She entered a dysfunctional family where she was never in tune with the other members. First, with Juan Carlos de Borbón (who repeatedly belittled the couple), and then with the infantas Elena and Cristina. And even less with the latter's husband, Iñaki Urdangarin —who one day blurted out in public to Letizia: “You, what do you have to complain about”—, and to whose Barcelona mansion the Borbón Ortiz couple decided not to return after seeing the flashiness of the property.

Letizia has never really connected with Madrid's plutocracy, although one of her slips came precisely because of a text she sent to a prominent member of that ruling class, Javier López Madrid, an old friend of her husband and implicated in the court case summaries of Caja Madrid's opaque cards, the attack on Dr. Elisa Pinto or the Punic Operation, and whom she affectionately called "yogi friend" in a private text that was leaked. But long before that she had already been labelled as the person who was going to destroy the Monarchy by herself (something like Camilla Parker Bowles, who is today one of the great assets of the British Monarchy). In the end, those who have been close to bringing down the Crown have been others with a royal surname.

Her almost two decades of life in La Zarzuela could be titled like Pedro Sánchez's biography: "Manual of endurance". She reached the physical and emotional limit after much loneliness and bitterness, two bad pregnancies with cesarean sections included and, above all, when Erika, her little sister, took her own life in 2007. Without forgetting the book written by her first cousin David Rocasolano, "Goodbye , princess" which she considered a betrayal for money, and which entered into very private chapters of her past life, such as an alleged pregnancy termination. Only her discipline has carried her forward. She has managed to adapt and survive. And, above all, accept the consequences of her choice. Today she is rigorous and strict in her physical exercise, diet and mental health regime. And she works hard so that other people's opinions do not weigh as much on her state of mind. She has gained in flexibility (of character). Although to win an arm wrestling match against her you still have to break her arm.

The instruction in the Household of His Majesty the King when Letizia Ortiz arrived at Monte del Pardo in 2004 was, according to one former official, "to bridle her". Or, as they prefer to say now in La Zarzuela with courtly language: “To carry out a process of adaptation to the House”. Which translated into keeping her quiet for three years, without an agenda, without office space or staff; without attending events on her own, a passive companion of the then Prince of Asturias and without overshadowing Queen Sofía, who filled every gap, from the fight against drug addiction to the pandas at the Madrid Zoo. She spent those summers in Mallorca withering in Marivent, with her little daughters, between her mother-in-law and the exquisite Jaime de Marichalar, while the rest of the family sailed.

In 2007, after hitting rock bottom, the Household finally decided to provide her with an agenda and assign her a secretary. The post fell to José Zuleta, Duke of Abrantes, a civil servant who has spent his entire career at La Zarzuela. No one asked Letizia for her opinion. What at first seemed a risky choice, has been a good team for 15 years. Especially because Zuleta is a tough guy who doesn't tolerate nonsense and perfectly acts as the Queen's introducer and shield. From that moment on, it was necessary to make sense of an agenda as pompous in its name as it was empty of content. This meant reaching an agreement with the Government (through the General Secretariat of the Presidency), not bothering Doña Sofía (nor the infantas, who continued under the umbrella of La Zarzuela) and managing that Letizia's interests coincided with those of the Household. In short, that they were harmless. Letizia chose to focus on two nebulous issues that she had worked on as an editor for Televisión Española: health and education. In these years, 77% of her activities have gone in that direction. Doña Sofía had not said a word in 40 years of official events (her first language is English), so, accordingly, Letizia's speeches would be few, brief and supervised by the Household. At most, three minutes. Today she writes all her public words, but the review of La Zarzuela (and in certain cases of La Moncloa) is unavoidable. Those of the King are always endorsed by the Presidency of the Government.

She had to earn the crown every day. Where to start? According to sources from La Zarzuela, “her first activities were in the fight against cancer, but she didn't stop at the ceremonial aspect, which would be an affront to her, and she became involved in cancer research. And then, the rhythm itself starting contributing new activities. There is a word-of-mouth effect, because her presence generates an interest in those social sectors”. That happened in 2008, when she brought the ignored rare diseases and the sidelined professional training into relevance. Her range of interests would expand with issues such as disability, sexist violence, sexual exploitation of women (she works actively with APRAMP, the Association for the Prevention, Reintegration and Care of Prostituted Women) and, above all, nutrition, which she has studied with the zeal of a student preparing the hardest exam you can think of (there is no possible translation from the original Spanish). Today, she can talk non-stop about molecular biology and metabolic pathologies, the neurotoxicity of alcohol, childhood obesity, diabetes, hypertension or dysbiosis. At the first opportunity, she asks her interlocutor what they eat.

On June 19, 2014, the same day that Felipe VI was proclaimed King, Sofía de Grecia collected her things from her office in La Zarzuela, decorated in shades of green and full of memories, and closed the door. Letizia took her time before moving into it, removed the carpet and the fabrics, and had it painted white. And she began to leave her mark. Today, after 10 years as Princess of Asturias and eight as Queen consort, she is, with all her contradictions, a professional of the Monarchy. She is satisfied with her work. For which she gets paid 142,402 euros per year. And she finds fulfilment in it. She has even reconciled with fashion after hiring stylist Eva Fernández in 2015, who has given her assurance and the opportunity to send signs with her clothes: from garments from Spanish brands, some sustainable or reclaiming artisan and traditional ways, to showing support to Ukraine or La Palma, to recognition to the Adlib style, or a collection made by women rescued from prostitution.

Now, her concern is the education and future of her daughters. It was Leonor, the heiress to the Crown, the one who decided to spend two years at the UWC Atlantic College, in Wales; two years of freedom prior to her entering the three military academies (beginning in the fall of 2023 and ending on the training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano) and university studies, with Law as the backbone. Leonor and Sofía have lived their unique position since they were children with apparent naturalness. “For Leonor it wasn't like pulling Excalibur out of a rock and suddenly becoming a princess; Her parents didn't summon her one day to tell her out of the blue that she was going to be queen. Everything has been easier. They are normal girls, ”says a person close to them. Despite this some in the media have accused Letizia of separating them from the lives of young girls their age and having them cloistered.

It is surprising that a person as visceral as Letizia manages to contain her feelings so much. She has rarely gone off script. Perhaps the most palpable moment was when she returned to her College of Information Sciences on September 14, 2021. There she was just Ortiz. Smart, funny, intense; imitating teachers' voices, reminiscing and reverting to that 18-year-old girl who wanted to be a journalist. At the end of the event, she put her hands to her heart and nailed it: "Fifty years is a nice number to keep trying to do things well in the place where each one belongs."

#spanish royal family #queen letizia #queen letizia at 50 (1972-2022)#text #long post #El País as usual writing the worthwhile stuff #Pity they didn't focus on the avalanche of bad press #aided and abetted by old Zarzuela #that wrapped her reputation and turned her into a different person in public #Letizia shouting into the void please read while the public yells dye your hair #could be any royal forum too

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victorysp · 11 months

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State visit to Belgium – programme

His Majesty King Willem-Alexander and Her Majesty Queen Máxima will be paying a state visit to Belgium at the invitation of His Majesty the King of the Belgians. The visit will start in Brussels on the morning of Tuesday 20 June and end in Antwerp on the evening of Thursday 22 June. The King and Queen will be accompanied by Minister of Foreign Affairs Wopke Hoekstra on the first and third days of their visit. Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robbert Dijkgraaf will accompany them on the second day. Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Liesje Schreinemacher, Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality Piet Adema, Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Mark Harbers, Minister of Defence Kajsa Ollongren, Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Karien van Gennip and Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy Micky Adriaansens will each be attending separate parts of the programme.

The state visit will reaffirm the excellent ties between the two neighbouring countries, which have strong historical, social and economic links. Key common themes during the visit will be improving social and physical liveability, combating climate change, maintaining and promoting a safe society and working towards a sustainable future in which energy is green and affordable. The visit will further deepen the close collaboration between the Netherlands and Belgium, as they both work towards a safer, cleaner and more sustainable future.

Tuesday 20 June – Brussels

Morning

Arrival at Brussels Midi train station

The state visit will begin in Brussels, with the King and Queen arriving by royal train at Brussel Midi station where they will be welcomed by the Belgian foreign minister.

Welcome ceremony

King Philippe and Queen Mathilde will receive King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima at a welcome ceremony at the Royal Palace.

Afternoon

Wreath-laying ceremony

Following the welcome ceremony at the palace, the King and Queen of the Netherlands will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This monument commemorates all unidentified Belgian soldiers who fell during the First World War.

Federal Parliament

Following a lunch at the Royal Palace, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will visit the Federal Parliament of Belgium. They will speak with members of the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate before being given a tour of the building.

Meeting with the Prime Minister

The King and Queen will then meet with Prime Minister Alexander de Croo at Lambermont, his official residence.

Meeting with the mayor of Brussels and walkabout in Grand-Place

Later that afternoon both royal couples will be received by the mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close, at the town hall. During a walkabout in Grand-Place square the royal party will then have the opportunity to meet inhabitants of Brussels and tourists.

Evening

State banquet

In the evening King Philippe will host a state banquet at the Castle of Laeken, at which both heads of state will give a speech.

Wednesday 21 June – Brussels, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Waterloo and Charleroi

Morning

Climate Tech Forum

The second day of the visit will begin at the Climate Tech Forum, part of the parallel economic mission headed by foreign trade minister Liesje Schreinemacher. The event will be attended by some 500 representatives of Belgian and Dutch knowledge institutions, businesses and public sector bodies. They will be exchanging knowledge and exploring opportunities for cooperation on green hydrogen, climate neutral construction, future-proof agriculture and horticulture, and smart, sustainable mobility. The royal party will also visit an innovation market highlighting Belgian-Dutch collaborations and attend part of the plenary programme. King Philippe and King Willem-Alexander will each give a short speech.

Aerospacelab

King Philippe and King Willem-Alexander will visit Aerospacelab in Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve which specialises in satellite data, and in designing, testing and producing satellites. They will be given a tour, visit the cleanroom and meet members of staff.

Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel

Queen Mathilde and Queen Máxima will visit the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo. Each year the institution hosts approximately 70 international young musicians, who follow a programme of lessons, concerts and recitals, work with orchestras and participate in festivals. Queen Mathilde and Queen Máxima will meet several of the musicians, attend performances and be given a tour.

Afternoon

Lunch meeting on water management

The royal party will attend a lunch in the orangery at the Castle of Seneffe, at which Belgian and Dutch experts will give presentations on addressing the risks of drought and flooding.

BioPark Charleroi

In the afternoon the party will visit BioPark Charleroi, a biotech ecosystem where businesses and knowledge institutions conduct research on life sciences and develop solutions to challenges in healthcare.

Unveiling of comic mural and comic strip workshop

On arrival in Charleroi the royal party will walk to the Institut Saint-André school, while greeting the public. Outside the school they, and a number of pupils, will unveil a mural designed by the Dutch comic book artist Dido Drachman and Belgian graphic novel artist Christian Durieux. They will then participate in a comic strip workshop together with pupils from the school. The unveiling of the mural and the comic strip workshop will mark the end of a cultural festival involving Belgian and Dutch artists.

Evening

Concert

In the evening King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will host a concert by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta string orchestra at the Flagey culture house in Brussels to thank their hosts for their hospitality.

Thursday 22 June – Leuven and Antwerp

Morning

Imec

The third day of the state visit will begin in Leuven, where King Philippe, Queen Mathilde, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will visit Imec, a research centre specialising in chip technology that supports companies developing digital applications. The royal party will attend a roundtable meeting with the CEOs of Imec’s Belgian and Dutch partners.

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp

King Philippe, Queen Mathilde, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima will start their visit to Antwerp with a walk to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA). They will have the opportunity to meet the people of Antwerp along the way. The royal party will be given a tour of the museum, which boasts a collection representing seven centuries of art. The museum’s recent renovation was overseen by Dutch architect Dikkie Scipio. Its collection includes highlights of Flemish Baroque as well as examples of primitivism and expressionism, and features works by Peter Paul Rubens, James Ensor and Rik Wouters.

Afternoon

Lunch meeting on early school leavers and youth unemployment

After the museum tour the royal party will attend a lunch meeting on the theme of tackling youth unemployment. Many young people in Antwerp leave school without a qualification, while at the same time there are a large number of unfilled job vacancies at secondary vocational level. At the lunch young people will be sharing their experiences and speaking with researchers about the role of educational institutions and employers in guiding vulnerable young people and their development.

Port Authority Building

After the lunch meeting the royal party will be given a short tour of the Port Authority Building and will speak with CEOs and participants of the Belgian-Dutch Port Open Day being held in the Port of Antwerp. They will look at how ports and their industrial clusters can work together to achieve shared ambitions relating to the energy transition, and the infrastructure this requires.

Belgian and Dutch frigates

In the Port of Antwerp King Philippe and King Willem-Alexander will visit the Belgian frigate Louise-Marie, while Queen Mathilde and Queen Máxima visit the Dutch frigate HNLMS De Ruyter. There will be various demonstrations on board and on shore. This part of the programme will focus on the partnership between the Belgian and Dutch navies. The Royal Netherlands Navy and the Belgian Navy operate the same types of ships and helicopters, cooperate on maintenance and carry out joint exercises. Following the visit to the frigates, a farewell ceremony will be held on shore.

Reception for the Dutch community

At the end of the afternoon a reception for the Dutch community in Belgium will be held in the historic Handelsbeurs, Antwerp’s former stock exchange.

Government Information Service, no. 145

#dutch royal family #dutch state visit #belgian royal family

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