#more than i can articulate. you know how it is. read the poetry that's the explanation you get it or you don't | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

0liver-hope · 1 year

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if you love books, save a library!

I hear people on Tumblr talk a lot about the importance of libraries; now’s your chance to help save one!

At Vermont State University is a newly merging Uni in so-called North America, pushing together three previously separate universities: Castleton University, Northern Vermont University, and Vermont Technical College.

Just last week, the new VTSU administration sent out an email to faculty, staff and students announcing that all the libraries at each of the 5 campuses contained within these universities would be moving to an ‘all-digital’ model. Librarians will lose their jobs if this plan goes ahead; in fact, librarians were only informed of this change 11 minutes before the email was sent out.

We have come to understand that this means that all physical material will be removed from the library. They seem to want to do other things with the space, such as set up ‘a coffee or smoothie bar’ and determine ‘what students want’ to do with the space. This plan would go into effect on July 1st, 2023.

The fact is, students want to keep the library as it is. Quiet, and full of stacks and stacks of physical books. The administration cannot claim they are listening to students when we have demonstrated, via hundreds of emails and impassioned testimonies in front of the administration at a forum last week, that we hate this plan and oppose it vehemently. And the faculty and staff are with us, and they too have been speaking out. Not only that, the communities that surround these colleges greatly value having access to a research library, particularly in rural Vermont, and are opposing the plan as well, because, as far as I know, they will completely lose access to these resources if everything goes digital.

The image of the books above are what I just checked out today. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed browsing the stacks, in one case (not pictured above) finding a tiny book of Milton’s poetry inscribed with a reader’s name and the year 1865. So many important and precious books like that one are to be found in our library. Each book I checked out hasn’t been checked out for at least 10 years, and that’s one of the administration’s excuses for taking all our books away: that circulation is down, and that, somehow, it costs money to let books sit on a shelf. As many people have rebutted, though, just because books aren’t being checked out doesn’t mean they aren’t being read within the library and, most importantly, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have value.

Below I will post some links to various local news article on this subject as well as one radio broadcast that will probably be able to articulate this situation better than I can.

I’m just so angry and upset about this. I’ve seen students and faculty alike crying about this situation, and an old lady braver than me telling the administration that maybe they should consider lowering their own salaries before taking away our books. I think everyone here feels powerless, because the administration isn’t backing down, despite all our protests, because ultimately their goal is profit and to make sure that this new ‘equitable’ University makes as much money as possible.

At the Castleton forum, the president of the University said he was ‘deeply humiliated’, by the outrage, by the heckling, the ‘throwing of verbal tomatoes’ as I have taken to calling it, by having his and his fellow’s bullshit exposed and questioned.

Please, please, if you care about books, about libraries, about the problems with big tech and the way it continues to invade all our lives, replacing physical experiences with their more hollow, less engaging counterparts; if you care about the interests of the people triumphing over the interests of capital, about students, about education, then please -- help save our books by spreading the word however and wherever you can, by flooding the inboxes of the capitalists below; tell them how you feel about this decision and its larger implications for books and libraries in general! Not so much to convince them that they’re wrong (they already know that and don’t care), but to make going forward with this plan more of a nuisance and a PR nightmare than cancelling it would be.

I don’t know if anyone will read or see this post, but please if you do and you care, reblog, educate yourself on what’s going on, and take action if you can.

A few disclaimers:

Any specifics I mention pertain primarily to what I, as a student at Castleton University, have either heard via word of mouth or seen with my own eyes. I am not officially speaking on behalf of anyone but myself.

The only exception to all the physical materials being removed from the libraries seem to be the books deemed ‘most used’ and some valuable historical collections. This was not clear from the beginning and not yet fully clear in any further specificity.

please try not to use violent rhetoric - as much as I’m not into policing people’s speech and anger, I don’t want this to backfire and I don’t want them to crackdown harder on us or make a big stink about it if they receive those kinds of messages

Email addresses of administration officials responsible for this decision:

VTSU President Grewal: [email protected]

VTSU Provost Atkins: [email protected]

VSC Chancellor Zdatny [email protected]

VSC Board of Trustees Chair: Eileen “Lynn” Dickinson [email protected]

News articles + broadcast:

https://www.vermontpublic.org/show/vermont-edition/2023-02-10/vermont-state-university-president-on-move-to-all-digital-libraries-changes-in-athletic-programs

https://www.rutlandherald.com/news/local/castleton-community-protests-vtsu-library-cuts/article_100d9539-c6ca-569e-a9b9-ecd6b3cef0ad.html

https://vtdigger.org/2023/02/08/vermont-state-university-to-close-libraries-downgrade-sports-programs/

http://www.castletonspartan.com/2023/02/12/vtsu-library-plan-sparks-outrage-and-emotion/

#signal boost #save libraries #books #total liberation #my post #anarchism #public services #capitalism #fight back #boost #please help #mutual aid #libraries #libraries are the best #support local libraries #academic libraries #school libraries #librarians #workers rights

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zzzzzestforlife · 2 months

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💪 that girl diaries // what doesn't kill you makes you tired 🙃

난 피곤해 와 답답해 하지만 이유는 진짜 몰라요. 내 에너지 그냥 갑자기 없어 그리고 한 것 안 싶어요. 난 계속 생각해, "그냥 시작해야" 근데 오늘 난 이미 다시 많이 여러 번 시작해. (i'm tired and frustrated, but i don't really know why. my energy has just run out and i don't want to do anything. i kept thinking "i just need to start," but i've restarted so many times already today.)

🥰🥰🥰 physiotherapy exercises + warmup + running — i was supposed to do arms and abs today but i've eaten more than usual as one does on days off, so i feel like i need to do cardio 😅

🦋 social hour

📚 read a chapter of Sophie's World

❤️ meditation but it's just laundry and stay by hoshi

✏️ sketching!! (human proportions are so hard and for what 🥴)

❤️ started Year Compass: The Year Ahead section (i already have my new year's resolutions, so i don't know why it's so hard for me to articulate the goals i want to commit to)

📝📝📝 Japanese, Korean, Chinese, lessons

❤️ some spring cleaning + healing poetry reading

🎧🎧 how to keep learning Chinese at an intermediate level + Chinese vlog

💌: 明天会更好。我做了很多的东西因为我想我会觉得更好，但是如果我很高兴，我也想做很多的东西。还是也许我可以只是做够了，对不对？ (tomorrow will be better. i did a lot of things because i think i will feel better, but if i'm happy, i also want to do many things. or maybe i can just do enough, right?)

bonus: ty @winryrockbellwannabe for the tag 😘

i find it so funny that my quiz results say i die and everyone saw it coming BUT WELL SHIT I SURE DIDN'T 😂

also this is possibly the realest picrew i've ever done, like this is legit how i look sitting at my desk "working" 😅

tagging some new moots for a fun break! ❤️ @panda-studiesmed @ilonar0 @perabera @roxysbbg @mortuarymorticia

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ceilidho · 2 months

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What do you see in poetry? Sorry if this is blunt, but sometimes I struggle to figure out what I'm supposed to do with poetry. Which I realize is probably illogical because poetry doesn't have to be interpreted or have meaning, or do anything. But, I don't know? You have such a wonderful collection, and I love listening to people talk about their passions (I am a sponge), so I was wondering if you'd share what you see in poetry?? What draws you to it? What it means to you?? I'm not sure. I'm sure each of these questions will take you somewhere else, but I definitely would not be upset to listen.

Okay, thanks! Love you and your writing (all of it, even the poetry I'm still trying to figure out how to appreciate)

hmmm i think something that puts a lot of people off poetry is that they feel like the language is unnecessarily complicated or obfuscating, like you need a degree or something to understand the poem's "meaning".

and while i do agree to an extent that some poems are more difficult to dig into than others (im sorry, i will never been a john ashbery fan for this exact reason) and developing the skill to appreciate good poetry does take some time and effort, like it's not an easy, instantaneous thing, i think the beauty of poetry is how it's able to use language in a roundabout way to get at and communicate very complex and nuanced parts of life/human culture.

i love reading poetry for the sheer beauty of language and seeing how it can be bent and twisted into new shapes that somehow still clearly communicate an emotion or a moment or an event. poetry is doing stuff with language that is just out of this world, like stuff you just can't get from prose. it's like quicksilver to me. sometimes something is just too hard to articulate in regular words, but you can get at the root of it by talking around it.

the pleasure of reading a really good poem is part trying to grasp the meaning and part just appreciating and enjoying the way the writer has crafted the language. and you don't have to even "get it" to love a poem - you could come back to it again and again and always take something new away from it.

i also don't think you have to force yourself to appreciate it because it doesn't happen instantaneously and sometimes it's just reading the right thing at the right time. it's like how i never got abstract art, used to actually think little of it, and then one day i came across cy twombly and i was like OH. I GET IT NOW!!!

this is my absolute favourite poem ever written like ever and still i come back to it and find something new and fresh and life changing. the first time i read this in university, i felt something in me just shift two inches to the right, like my whole world was just suddenly different.

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 7 months

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re: last reblog i do think people complaining about “predictable” twists/reveals that were well foreshadowed (or straight up clearly communicated but not verbally stated) is silly and annoying but idk if i think it’s like all causally attributable to “bad faith criticism.” a few thoughts, no grand thesis:

(1) i really do believe that sometimes people sense that something didn’t work but can’t really identify or articulate things problems with structure or form or execution, and then just sort of glom on to something that feels like it has explanatory power. an example here in the house of fuck jj abrams is how many people complained (often even as they said they mostly liked it) that the problem with the force awakens was that it was too much a retread of a new hope. the problem with the force awakens as i have articulated many times is that it’s a piece of shit idiot movie made by a guy who literally fundamentally fails to understand how narrative or movies work more than i genuinely think anyone else in hollywood. it does ape a new hope shamelessly, but it also does it stupidly and blindly, with a misapprehension that the important things about that movie are things like “desert planet” and “seedy bar” and not, like, connecting the dots on a functional story populated by characters with recognizable and easily legible motivations and relationships. it felt stale and boring because it’s not a story, it’s an expensively assembled gifset with a soundtrack. you could change every one of the things people complain about being too similar to a new hope and i feel fairly confident most people would not like it any better because the issue is not that it’s familiar, it’s that it sucks. (further evidence for this hypothesis is to be found IMO in the fact that even last jedi’s many haters never seem to accuse it to be too similar to empire strikes back, even though it is in fact deliberately extremely structurally similar to empire - i think you can argue it has more in common with empire than force awakens has with a new hope! starting ofc with how they are both good.)

anyway. so i think probably sometimes a movie/book/show/etc is actually just kinda mid or bad and people feel that but haven’t thought too much about why but, sure, “predictable” works. but i bet there are people who complain movies are predictable but also have liked movies they did in fact successfully predict the twists/reveals of, and they’ve never really thought about why it is that sometimes something being predictable is fine and sometimes it’s annoying. as a personal example i know that one of my complaints about avatar back when i saw it in theaters was that it was predictable. in retrospect i would not say that being predictable is root problem that avatar has, and there are absolutely movies as predictable as avatar i have enjoyed. but predictability stood out then because i’m not trying to be a hipster that was really one of the most excruciating experiences i’ve ever had in theaters and the fact that i could tell what was coming did exacerbate how dull and annoying the movie already was.

what i’m saying in this point is that i don’t think everyone who complains about predictability is someone actually in practice liking things less for being predictable.

(2) someone a while ago told me they mostly don’t like movies because they’re too good at figuring out what’s going to happen, which is about as alien a way of engaging with art as i can imagine, but just take me on my word that i do not think this is a person whose issue is they have read too much bad faith criticism. i think they just don’t get the same kind of emotional and aesthetic experiences i get out of movies and i can’t judge them for that because i am a person incapable of being moved by things like painting or sculpture, incapable of responding emotionally or aesthetically to cartoons by adults, and allergic to almost all poetry. like for some people i think “what surprising thing is gonna happen?” just authentically is the site of their pleasure from movies and i think that’s fine because it literally doesn’t matter. one time a guy told me he liked video games better than novels because with video games you get the story and the craft of the gameplay mechanics and like i cannot imagine that but i also can’t imagine playing a video game for fun period so like whatever. it takes all kinds.

(3) sometimes you have the issue where the movie/show foreshadows heavily (or leaves you without alternate options) and then tries dramatically to play the reveal/twist like a big shock. in this case i think the complaint is more or less fair game although this is also kind of a subset of (1) where the issue is a structural misalignment around the goals here (ie pick a lane).

(4) tbh some shows or franchises have trained their viewers to respond this way and i think in this case the complaint is also fair bc they deserve what they get. play stupid games win stupid prizes.

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mickmundy · 1 year

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a masterpost of some of my sniper headcanons! just some of my personal thoughts on his character and things he'd like, dislike, hobbies, etc!

while he prefers nonfiction, he also enjoys reading fiction and poetry. he used to read all of his mom's old books cover to cover and there would almost always be a book stashed somewhere outside that he could read between chores (or if/when he had a minute to himself).... thrashed paperback books shoved under hay bales or left to fade in the sun in the back of his old man's truckbed etc...

enjoys old movies and does Not shy away from romances, dramas, etc. he has memories of staying up late with his mom and watching them or listening to radio serials with her. they just Hit The Spot for him and while its maybe not something he'd Openly Admit, he's definitely not ashamed of it!

he loves the ocean. loves to surf, is an incredible swimmer. never really sought the ocean out but once he visited he was like Ohhh I Love This. is fascinated by marine life and learning about it! can hold his breath for a really long time too. sniping/shooting breathing control practice, y'know!

very knowledgeable about medicine. my love for medic/sniper aside, i think it only makes practical sense that he'd have a pretty extensive knowledge of herbs, remedies and medicines that he could easily craft/make/use on himself! he'd also know how to suture and dress wounds. he survived on his own for a long time before medic and his medigun came along, after all!

made money in his youth between jobs at being a pretty good taxidermist. big game hunting was an easy and fun hobby to do and his knowledge and appreciation for animals led him to being interested in the preservation of them. still enjoys doing it now too!

has a surprising(?) lack of knowledge about vehicles. knows where to shoot to sabotage them, but little about the upkeep of his own. knows he should just let engineer look at his van and fix her up, but his home is very personal to him so that is not something that comes easy!

doesn't like asking for help. was raised Not to ask for help, "because you're only as capable as you teach yourself to be". if you do help him, he'll thank you and genuinely mean it, but he won't go out of his way to ask you for assistance unless it's something minor or he's Extremely desperate.

would literally you rather see him naked than have an emotionally-compromising conversation with you. you'll see his whole tacklebox before he tells you how he's really feeling!

despite his stoic/silent nature, he is not very... emotionally mature. has trouble articulating his feelings. this does not mean he's devoid of them by any means! just has trouble getting them out there in a way that would make sense to others. lots of repression lots of internalized things he has to work out... hopefully someday!

enjoys classical, jazz, blues, and country (think Outside of the american genre lmao) music. plays the saxophone along to his cassettes when he has a minute! he has rhythm and is quite good!

he has a collection of kitschy mugs/cups and t-shirts that he'd picked up/somehow just Amassed in his travels... he uses the mugs for planters and other purposes besides drinking, mostly to house the herbs, vegetables and fruits he grows in his van!

installed a rack above the sink in his van that he hooks mugs/planters to and grows his own herbs/veggies/fruits. he does canning, keeps preserves and enjoys keeping his hands busy in a way that's practical and, you know, old habits die hard! he doesn't like to be wasteful.

loves being naked. hates underwear and clothes. if he's in his van he's Probably Naked. loves laying on top of his camper and Basking in the sun totally nude if he can get away with it. infinitely prefers the heat to the cold. he hates the colder bases, but you still won't hear him complain!

no matter how much he "tans", he still has Eternal tanlines from his glasses, glove, watch and hat. the right half of him is a bit more tanned than his left* because of the sun blaring on him when he drives. as someone who does a lot of driving this is just a given to me lol

*i reject the notion that his steering wheel would be on the left side lol. no way he got his van in america... i dont believe that for a second.. i dont Care what the canon model says... s;dlkfsd!

is a very clean person. being a survivalist doesn't allow for poor hygiene! getting dirty on the job is just the reality of it; he doesn't mind, but he'll never turn down a hot shower and a fresh change of clothes! wounds, clothes, and body should always be clean when possible.

likes clutter, hates messes. i don't think he's a hoarder but i enjoy the idea of him hanging on to Some stuff. tries to tell himself that everything he owns has Practical Purpose bc he was raised to believe its not worth keeping if it doesn't, but some things he just Enjoys keeping around!

one of the most flattering things you could do for him would be to make him a home-cooked meal. it isn't a gesture he would take lightly! he'd appreciate it a lot, no matter how good or bad it was. personal things like this go a long way with him!

absolutely Not a lightweight. enjoys having drinks after a long shift at work, but his days of getting sloppy are pretty much behind him. enjoys a couple of beers on a quiet night where he can hang out with his owl and decompress.

loves to grill and cook! baking not so much, but he's still decently savvy at it. used to bake with his mom so it's sometimes still a bit of an emotional sore spot. typically makes jams, jellies, sauces, marinades and whatnot with his preserves for meat he cooks.

greatly enjoys birdwatching and knows a myriad of animal calls. has an old worn beat to shit birdwatching/flora/fauna pocket book that he keeps in his back pocket when he goes Out so that he can mark off species he's seen!

adores horses. loves to ride them, take care of them. can stay on one no matter how much it bucks. also has a soft spot for sheep and chickens, too. i think as someone who lives off of the land he just has great appreciation for everything animals can do for people!

can understand quite a few languages from traveling, but doesn't know how to speak them fluently. he did like surprising spy with some... colorful french after letting the other mercenary think he was an illiterate bushman for a couple months, though!

#put this #dutchfoolery #i need a writing/hc tag but idk what yet so for now.... nothing #tomorrow.. Who Knows :)#sniper #tf2 #shyly puts it in the tags..#tf2 sniper #dutchiehcs #idk if i have to like say this but these are okay to rb!! ^v^#mercthreads

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vedurnan · 4 months

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Do you have any recommendations of books or other resources for people to learn more about religion as you describe? It sounds really cool

ok honestly, i would not describe myself as someone who knows much about religion at all, it's kind of just like a hobby to me, but i can tell u what i like to look at and what has informed my own awareness of religion... which i am certain is really amateurish and almost totally focused on western christianity. but this is what i like:

i really like bart ehrman who is this scholar of early christianity and the new testament, he's an atheist but he used to be like a liberal christian and fell out of it bc of the problem of evil. he has a perspective i really enjoy where he seems to be just fascinated by early christianity and to enjoy talking about it. i was introduced to him thru his lecture series "how jesus became god" on the great courses and i love love love his podcast "misquoting jesus" where he talks about a different topic relating to early christianity or the bible every week. just a really pleasing secular scholarly look at some very interesting shit imo! love bart. he also has a bunch of books which i wish to read at some point but have never touched

i also enjoy this youtube channel "ready to harvest" that makes these like lecture videos about various christian denominations and their beliefs and practices and histories. i think the guy who runs it is like a baptist academic of some kind which is wack imo but he seems to really make an effort to represent every denomination on their own terms and i find his videos endlessly fascinating. i think i've learned more about the history of christian denominations in america especially from watching those videos than from anything else

when it comes to actual religious literature i really like thomas merton especially his book "new seeds of contemplation" but there is such a wealth of merton writing i haven't even touched. his writing is the first time i've heard a christian talk about their own experience of god in a way that i found meaningful to my own life. he articulates a lot of things that are almost impossible to discuss in words and i find his writing really beautiful. i've also read like a scattering of much older christian stuff like meister eckhart or the sayings of the desert fathers and a lot of that stuff is cool but a lot is also totally strange or disagreeable to me, i think it's more like poetry to me

i've been loving reading "the heart of the buddha's teaching" by thich nhat hanh, it's such a sweetly written book and such a pleasing introduction to buddhist thought. there are a lot of passages from that book that i think back to on a daily basis when i'm navigating thru life. i think buddhism is the religion that i find most true to the nature of my reality and most relevant to my own human life but i'm way less knowledgeable about it than christianity because i find christianity so vivid and strange and fascinating i can't look away

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the-silli3st-girl-in-the-world · 1 month

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gonna write this down here cause y'all know hating is what i do best, but there's this tiktoker i occasionally see on some moots story, and its no negative feelings on the moot cause they do relate to it, which is fine. I don't rag on anyone eating fast food when they're hungry and it hits their taste buds.

But her poetry is so... Omg like this tiktok poet i saw come on my fyp who i now follow and read her work because i love people with innovative ideas and complex thought and interesting articulation, it helps build your humanity and make you more complex and consider ideas you haven't considered or otherwise dismissed.(i love being the dumb friend in a smart friendgroup because of this, and also we are a mosaic of everyone we have ever directly/inderectly interacted with), but the way she does poetry... is... ok so im gonna name drop ger name is like raegen or whatever and I'm sure her looks (conventionally attractice blue eyed blonde haired yt woman) helps with her engagement since its a very normalized, and not jarring, almost self insert look for most people, they can place themselves in her shoes easier (because if she was unnatractive her poetry would be way more lambasted and mocked than if it wasn't) Introduction aside.

basically I was complaining about her poetry, and here are my thoughts, when the other poet tiktoker that i follow, pointed out the way tiktok/social media aestheticist poets write their poetry I haven't stopped noticing it. I decided out of curiousity to go and find this person's tiktok and it was such a red flag offense. The first thing the tiktoker mention is the repetitive deacription of the subject. Like you're reading a book and the writer keeps describing the character's brown hair in increasing pretentiousness :/ like, thats modern social media poetry, remove the fancy visual structure of the poetry and its literally just that, no narrative movement, no building on the thought, i guess she wanted to build on the thought?? maybe in the way that hebrew poetry structure does? but im not sure because still doesn't move forward. And the subject of the poetry is sooooooo shallow. I'm not saying romance is a shallow genre (if ur straight its incredibly difficult to not make it shallow because heterosexuality is a regime meant to entrap the marginalized so its hard to work with) But its sooo shallow in its yearning, and its self assesments?? like "i like the idea because im really lonely", reckon with this regime please, I'm sure she can make an interesting analysis of this world that can say something different in how we tangle and dance with the subject of yearning and loneliness and a lack of intimacy, BUT it also doesn't have to be that either. Personally its the structure. When you watch her videos it doesn't even feel like poetry, it feels like...a stream of consciousness, like a friend venting to you on face time instead of someone reading you poetry, no intentional pauses, no rhymes, stanzas nothing. She's just talking 😭 to you.

Idk man thats just me tho.

#entry.txt

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smakkabagms · 9 months

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Can you tell me about how you write your poetry? Is there an idea of what you would like to express first and then you search for a kind of scene or symbolical moment and go from there or do you play around with these atmospheres first or... I don't even know the right words in English for these lyrical possible ways of painting such beautiful pictures in the mind.

Hi friend, thank you for the wonderful question! It is... like so many things... hard to articulate. I either begin with an image / symbol (and the emotion that the image elicits, followed by the labyrinth of language to sustain both image and emotion and connection to beyond-the-self) OR the emotion (and then the image the emotion elicits, and the whole process in reverse). What is the popular phrase? What must be articulated is impossible to articulate. I find poetry to be the landscape where we wrestle with the discordance between language and the "unspeakable" internalities of our experience. Sometimes an image can... spark some type of remembrance in us and others. I have read poems that on the surface seem to be about "nothing" and yet leave me feeling more seen and connected to other humans than ever before. After a very difficult time a few years ago, I found myself in a new life completely after a near scrape with death. I had no way to articulate what the experience meant to me but found myself obsessed with images and symbols of teeth or insects or the roadkill I saw on my way to work every day. Looking back on those pieces now, I see them as plainly dealing with the anxiety of change, of my aging body, of my home's loss; grappled with in images of decay and gnawing on bones. It is a process I am still trying to understand myself but one day I woke, and the symbols were tired and my soul felt my own again and I found there new imagery and explorations to sustain me.

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wangsejabin · 1 year

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Chapter 55

Respectfully, they escorted the prince back to his quarters before Jiang Cheng and his father turned to walk outside. "What did you see?"

Jiang Fu rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, "This Crown Prince is more profound than His Majesty's thoughts." Jiang Cheng was the current head of the Jiang family. He did not look impressive, just a dry and thin little old man, but in fact he was a master who shook Yangzhou three times when he stomped his feet.

Jiang Fu is his eldest son and is highly valued by him. At a young age, he has been working with his father to manage the family business. Last time when Emperor Cheng'an was on his southern tour, Jiang Fu served his father, and although he could only stand in the most inconspicuous corner, he had seen the nature of the Prince, and this time when he received the Prince, Jiang Cheng brought him along with him, both to open his eyes and to let his son have a good relationship with the Prince.

After all, the Jiang family's fortune is only possible because of the relationship between their clan and the emperor, and the emperor is no one else.In the eyes of the Jiang family, the crown prince has been sitting on the throne for nearly 20 years, if there is no accident he is the next heir to the throne, before the rest of the Jiang family still have a sense of how good the southern tour, the emperor did not come instead sent the crown prince, Jiang Cheng but think it is a good time.

This was the first time that the Jiang family met the Crown Prince, and the banquet was not so much a reception for the Crown Prince as it was a way for the Jiang family to get a general impression of the Crown Prince's character. The words spoken might seem ordinary, but they all contained deep meaning, which was why Jiang Cheng asked Jiang Fu.

"Since you have seen it, then serve well, and remember that even if you can't get a good impression, the Crown Prince must not be vicious to you. You are not young now, you have been with me, your father for more than ten years, so grasp the measure yourself." Jiang Cheng stroked his beard and said. "Yes, father."

"Our Jiang family can have such a good relationship with the royal family because we think what people think and solve their difficulties. These eight words may seem light and feeble, but in reality it is extremely difficult to do well. I have heard that the Crown Prince has only brought one concubine with him on his tour, a woman named Su, who is said to be extremely favoured and jealous, so it is better to see what happens first, don't lose the chicken and underestimate the pillow talk, if the pillow talk causes disgust, the loss will not be worth the gain, you know the Jiang family can have such good relations with the royal family. We don't have such good relations with the royal family just by sending women." Jiang Fu was in a cold sweat at the comment, for Jiang Cheng had hit on exactly what he was preparing for, and now he was keeping a few of the top lean horses in his other courtyard with this in mind. "Yes, father."

"I see that the Crown Prince is mild-mannered and quite articulate in his speech, and I have heard that he has been well read in poetry since he was a child, and has been praised by several great scholars from the Hanlin Academy, so I think he is also a man of letters, so you should hold a few more elegant gatherings, and also let the Crown Prince know that our Jiang family is not one of those crude salt merchants who only cultivate gardens, raise opera singers and enjoy fine food, and are different from those people. ""Yes, father." At that moment, a servant hurriedly marched in. "Master, young master." Jiang Cheng lifted his hand and said, "What is it?"

The servant bowed his head and reported, "As expected, Master, the Xu family, the Chen family, the Wang family and the Pei family have all come, but they were all stopped outside and didn't let in."The top ten salt merchants in Yangzhou had their own order, and this order was ranked according to the strength and heritage of their families. The servant said this precisely because he had heard what Pei Yongchang had said in the concierge's office. However, this person only thought that Pei Yongchang deliberately wanted to find an excuse, so as to get to see the holy face, such and such things are not unprecedented before, so they did not take it seriously, at this time to say that it is only this incident has left him an impression, subconsciously bring out.

It's a good thing that Jiang Cheng waved his hand and said, "Good job, these people all want to eat ready-made, let them spread the public and private floating fees when they are poor, but now they are here, there is no such thing as a good thing in the world."Jiang Cheng then gave a few more words of explanation to his servants and Jiang Fu, and then dispersed without mentioning them.

Pan'er was in a daze when he felt someone else beside him. When she opened a slit in her eye and looked out, she saw his perfectly shaped jaw. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and although it was still early spring, it was not cold anymore. The Jiang family's gardens were well maintained, and the natural view from the Prince's quarters was the best, and listening to the faint sound of running water and the chirping of birds outside made people feel happy for no reason.

Without speaking, she rubbed her face against his chest in one smooth motion and felt a faint vibration, as if he had smiled.She obediently lifted her head and looked over to see the Prince looking at her with a smile in his eyes, and when he saw that she was willing to open them, he rubbed her long, cascading hair, "Why are you acting like a puppy."

"Not at all!"

She yawned slightly and added, "Has Your Highness finished the banquet? Was the food good and the wine good?" That was interesting. "Are you ready for lunch?" She nodded in his arms, "Yes, I did. In the past, I thought I was a Yangzhou native and had eaten a lot of Huaiyang food, but when I came here today, I realised that I was really a frog in a well."

The prince made a questioning sound. Pan'er continued, "There are eight cold meat dishes, eight vegetarian dishes, eight meat dishes, and six large dishes for me today. I remember there was a colourful dish called "Three Stars of Bliss", which was made with beef in sauce, mountain mushrooms, eggs and spring bamboo shoots, which looked good and tasted good, but the portion was too large. There were also prawns in oil, razor clams, crystal delicacies, dried duck in salt water, roasted suckling pig skin, three shreds of sesame oil, amber walnuts, double diced in honey sauce, etc.

There were so many dishes that I can't remember them all. "You say just listening to the name of the dish is actually quite ordinary, and it's not like you've never eaten it before, but it's done in such an exquisite way. There was a garlic pork ribs, the ribs were fried and wrapped in something, the outside was crispy and the inside was tender, I don't know how to describe it except for the word fragrant. "And that crystal delicacy...

"I asked the maid, who said that the dish was still made from pig's trotters, but that it had to be marinated for three whole days with various secret ingredients, and when it was done, the soup was made from whole chickens and ducks, as well as the bones of the pigs, and the soup had to be simmered for twelve hours, then the pig's trotters were boiled, slowly over a gentle fire until the bones fell off and the skin was crispy, then chilled and frozen. I was so big-headed, but it was delicious. And that roasted suckling pig skin, you have to choose a suckling pig that has only twenty pounds for three months as raw material, too short a month and the skin won't be strong enough, too long a month and the skin will be old ……"

As she spoke, the Prince's eyes darkened, he smiled and said, "I didn't see that you were a glutton for food."Pan'er said justifiably, "It's not that I'm a glutton, it's that it's so delicious. But I'm a small eater and I didn't eat much, so I gave a lot of the leftovers to Xiang Pu and the girls, and they were all quite full."

When she said she had been stuffed, she subconsciously touched her belly.After a good night's sleep, she finally didn't feel bloated, but Pan'er was also a bit surprised at her current ability to restrain herself. In the past, if she ate so much, it would be difficult for her to settle down if she didn't eat for half an hour, but today she fell asleep, maybe because she was too tired?

"The feast I ate today was also sumptuous." It was no worse than the one in the palace. No, to be correct, it was more elaborate than in the palace, and the ingredients used were rarer. The ingredients that Pan'er ate were those that could be found in the ordinary course of cooking, but what the Crown Prince used today was rare, not to say dragon's marrow and phoenix liver. The prince was not a man without knowledge, but he knew that many of the things he ate today were not available in this month.

He had long heard that the salt merchants were so rich that they could not be found anywhere else in the world, but today, when he entered the garden, he had really seen it. "You still want to sleep again? It's better to sleep a little longer."

Pan'er was not really sleepy anymore, but seeing that the Prince had just returned and had not yet rested for the day, he lay with him for a while longer, sleeping for almost half an hour. After getting up and having a cup of tea, Pan'er came in earlier and knew that the garden had a good view, so she dragged the Prince to the garden to enjoy the scenery. The scenery of the garden is really good, simply every step is a scene, Pan'er only thought of a few words 'although man-made, but like the work of heaven', simply the garden of Jiangnan to the extreme.

In his previous life, Pan'er had never left the capital since she entered the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was a majestic structure, but if the scenery was anything to go by, the only one with the most Jiangnan characteristics was the Western Garden, which had been built over several dynasties, but if compared to this place, it was noble and elegant, but the scenery was not as good.Of course there are reasons for Yangzhou's natural location, but one can only imagine how much silver was spent on the garden they saw.

It may look elegant, but in reality, it was all piled up with silver. Pan'er's heart sighed a little, and the Prince was not happy, and a cold colour was visible between his brows. The Jiang family is a bit silly. If you have money, you have money, but why show it to others, especially to the future lord of the world, is it to show the crown prince that you have more money than him, or do you want to give away all your family's assets?

In fact, she knew very well that the reception might look very glamorous, but in fact it was difficult. If the reception was too simple, they might think that the hospitality was inadequate, and if the reception was too extravagant, they were afraid of attracting taboos. It is not the first time that the Jiang family has received a ride, as the Jiang family received the ride for the three southern tours of Emperor Cheng'an, even the time of the previous emperor, so it can only be said that the crown prince, who is a grandson, has a different 'aesthetic' from his own father and grandfather.

Although Pan'er saw the Prince's face was cold, but thought he would not be angry, it seems that the former Emperor Jianping has been thinking about the two Huai salt merchants, maybe and this Jiang family has a relationship.At this time, a man dressed as a servant came over, and before he could get close, he was stopped by a small eunuch under Zhang Laishun's hand.

After a while, the eunuch came to report to Zhang Laishun, who then came up to the prince and said: "Master, that servant said that if you are bored with enjoying the scenery, there is a play arranged at the Hearing Sound Pavilion in front of you. The people of Jiangnan love to listen to theatre, especially the people of Yangzhou, and those who have some money at home will usually keep a theatre troupe at home. This later passage was added by Zhang Laishun himself, generally the servants serving beside the masters have to be proficient in this, not to say that they have to know everything, but also have to know a lot, otherwise the masters ask when the servants are blind, then what else is there to do, replace them. "Then let's go and see."

The servant was leading the way, and it was clear that he was a well-trained one, behaving in the right way, not making people feel over the top, but also not losing their manners. The pavilion was also built in an unusual way, right on a small lake. The lake has lotus flowers on it, and there are koi of all colours swimming happily in the lake. It was built as a water pavilion, with the side facing the lake wide open and surrounded by a wooden fence.

Directly opposite from this side, there was a stone platform on which a theatre building had been erected, which was a beautiful sight to behold. Once seated, tea was served. This tea was also different from the usual, not the same, but several kinds. Pan'er's was a bowl of lotus root powder with rock sugar, melon seeds and walnuts as well as apricot cheese, and another was a bowl of Tie Guanyin with small orange cakes, red dates and cinnamon meat to sweeten the mouthful of tea.

For the Prince, there was a bowl of fine rainforest Longjing and a bowl of Eight Treasures tea. For the Prince, there were four dried fruits, four fresh fruits, four snacks and four preserves, making a total of 16 plates. The prince only drank tea, and did not even touch the sweetness of the Eight Treasures tea. A servant came to ask if he could order a play.

The prince had never watched theatre, and if he did, it was only when the palace hosted a banquet, and he occasionally watched it with Empress Fu for a while. In her previous life, Pan'er had not been a big fan of theatre either, but she suddenly remembered the Peony Pavilion she had listened to before she arrived, so she ordered the one about the Peony Pavilion's frightening dreams. Soon after, the sound of music came from the opposite stage. As the music came, a 'woman' with a very distinguished figure and costume came out from behind the curtain.

#yingchong #mtl

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the-everqueen · 7 months

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Hello! I’m interested in any book recs you have 💕

this is going to be some of my favorites, but if you want specific recs, let me know what things you've enjoyed/are looking for and i can tailor a shortlist (open offer):

fiction

mongrels, stephen graham jones - a coming of age story about an Indigenous teen descended from werewolves. jones is mostly known for the only good indians, which is also very good, but this book touched my monster-loving heart.

the sparrow, mary doria russel - a jesuit missionary is the only survivor of the first crew to travel to an alien planet. i read this book for the first time last year and i haven't stopped thinking about it. the sequel children of god made me even crazier (affectionate).

kindred, octavia butler - a black woman gets pulled back in time where she has to repeatedly save her white ancestor in antebellum maryland. time loops! the past as an actor on our present! what are you willing to do in order to survive! i think if you only read one octavia butler book, it should probably be either this one or dawn.

dead astronauts, jeff vandermeer - a trio from the future is traveling through loopholes in spacetime in an attempt to save the universe from latest-possible-stage capitalism. it's weird and experimental and more like a spoken word poem than a novel.

far sector, nk jemisin - this is a graphic novel about a black femme green lantern trying to prevent social collapse on another planet. gerard way wrote the preface. the art is excellent.

nonfiction

queer times, black futures, kara keeling - each chapter looks at an afrofuturist artist/art work to discuss black queer liberation. i read a lot of academic texts, so take this with a grain of salt, but i think keeling is very readable and if you're unfamiliar with the afrofuturist movement, this book provides a great starting point for artists to look into.

scenes of subjection: terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth century america, saidiya hartman - i'm not gonna lie to you, this book is dense. but hartman articulates how slavery in america shaped discourse around subjectivity and this discourse lives on. who gets to be recognized as a person, and under what conditions?

go ahead in the rain: notes to a tribe called quest, hanif abdurraqib - this is the Most Readable book in this section. it's part memoir, part music criticism, part archive. short but poetic. hanif is such a generous writer, and you feel his love for the subject. i'm so excited for his book on basketball that comes out next year and i have never seen a basketball game in my life.

poetry

postcolonial love poem, natalie diaz - this book aches like a bruise.

time is a mother, ocean vuong - like critical race theory but as poems. time is a flat circle and a spiral and a loop and a trap. (i actually like night sky with exit wounds better, but this one fits whatever theme i have going on here)

soft science, franny choi - robots are people, too. if you liked janelle monae's album dirty computer, you will like this book.

#ask games #ama #this was really hard and i did not let myself put stephen king on this list lmao #the theme was supposed to be like. what books would intro someone to this blog's vibe but actually.#in hindsight this list is I Like Time Fuckery

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girlcatullus · 8 months

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i need to get a bigger more maneuverable notebook for poems. like still something i can carry around in a bag but also something that folds more properly and can weather my mistreatments of it. lmao.

also i feel really vindicated by the poem i wrote and i actually ended up liking the version in english more than the italian one. which is… well… i do think my english writing is a little bit too pop compared to my italian poetry. but i am experimenting and trying to write more. also yes i am currently spilling my poetry beans here on tumblr because… it’s basically thee place to talk about these things?

i have seriously picked up poetry again in 2023 (yay for me) and you know the basic process of catharsis and/or healing through art? yeah that. i think i’ve always been chasing the opposite, that is either complete alienation from my feelings and myself or validation of my pain. i don’t want to validate my pain anymore. i’ve been thinking about that mitski quote about how so not radical hurting yourself is, but we end up thinking it is during the pivotal years of our development.

on a separate note: treating the body as something transient. the disconnect i felt towards my body during adolescence and early adulthood is unparalleled lmao… like only recently i have begun realizing our bodies bear the signs not only of time but also life. scars. discoloration. extenuata vestigia veteris poenae so to speak. and most of it irreversibly. which is why getting a tattoo is such a daunting idea to me but okay.

could i make an effort to make a more serious and better articulated post? yes but where’s the fun in that

i have written several poems in february/march that dealt with my experience with this one guy in germany which is a series i would like to expand on. i mean, i’m mentioning the guy because he was the trigger for a series of thematic reflections, mostly about merit and what being deserved means. there’s a seasonal theme going on also - the poems i’ve written in germany rely heavily on winter imagery, on the ever-going contrast between two opposite viewpoints on winter: forgetting benevolently and lack of forgiveness. and then there’s a poem i’ve written in the summer with the same trigger and i would love to expand on that. also the seasonal summer theme.

then there’s some other poems about anxiety and adjacent themes like. i don’t know. men. and entrails. and i would love to do some stuff about them. also religious poems i would need to read more for :)

sometimes it’s excruciating just to exist and i am so so so annoying towards myself. comes gravissima. kissies to the mutuals reading my rants i love you

#yeah ranting

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djservo · 1 year

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it’s january 31st if you can believe it… scary! kicking off the 2023 reading wrap up, how did your first month of reading go? what did you read, how do you feel about it, and what’s on your horizon for february? 😋🤭

I totally can believe it because january is always such a non-month to me like I feel that 2023 has only Now just started ykwim... no disrespect to january though ofc 🙏 in fact, it was a very fruitful month of reads! I'm really loving theory/criticism-leaning nonfiction that requires more of my time & discipline to mull over - it feels rewarding when I finally fully process something and am able to cross-reference essays/ideas with films I'm watching or just in general conversations with friends but ANYWHO!

Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin

my 2nd Baldwin essay collection but I think I loved it even more than Notes of a Native Son (though maybe it’s just because it’s fresh in my mind) - I’m glad I’m reading his collections chronologically because I feel like I can discern the ways he polishes/sharpens his thought process over time. it’s impossible to pick a favorite essay bc I took notes on practically every single one, but a few standouts: Fifth Avenue, Uptown; A Fly in the Buttermilk; In Search of a Majority; The Northern Protestant; The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy (“it was the dream of love which was ending. I was beginning to realize, most unwillingly, all the things love could not do. It could not make me over, for example. It could not undo the journey which had made of me such a strange man and brought me to such a strange place.”)

The Dylan Dog Case Files by Tiziano Sclavi

FINALLY finished her omg so fun and funny and witty and the illustrations are gorgeous, I’m heartbroken that this is the only (printed) collection in English!! Supposedly James Wan is adapting it into a live-action series but that was announced in 2019 and I haven’t seen anything abt it since </3 will be crossing fingers and toes until further notice

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture by Takashi Murakami

Really amazing + thorough analysis of the aftermath of war and its effects on Japanese art. Loved the dissections of consumerism/commercialization and the western-induced infantilization of tragedy/societal collapse, the framing of Japan’s postwar purgatory as ‘little boy syndrome’, the double-edged sword of grieving and processing through "cute”/”innocent” images only for it be turned into a spectacle gutted of its roots. death to the western empire truly!!! this was like a perfect intersection of my studies in college so I’m surprised I’ve only now just come across this - brb emailing some old professors 👩‍💻 Favorite essays were Beyond the Pleasure Room to a Chaotic Street by Midori Matsui, Introducing Little Boy by Alexandra Munroe, and the Otaku Talk discussion between Toshio Okada and Kaichirō Morikawa (moderated by Murakami)

Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag

I’ve had this collecting dust on my shelf for Years bc the camp met gala made me avoid it out of spite LOL but finally I got over my bitter haggish ways and read it and thank god bc it ruled 🫀 I love a book that acts as a syllabus in a way, leading me down rabbit holes of theorists or media I might not have otherwise gotten to anytime soon. I also just loved how articulate and decisive she is with her opinions/analysis and how effortlessly her contextualizations come across - I feel like when I try to connect themes and ideas from different sources I just come across like Charlie’s Pepe Silvia moment in IASIP 😵‍💫 The On Camp essay was in fact very good (-_-) but I also really enjoyed The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer, Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson, The Imagination of Disaster, and Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition

currently reading Junky by William S. Burroughs, God’s Beauty Parlor by Stephen D. Moore, and I’ve just picked up/started June Jordan’s collected poetry from the library which is 600+ pages so I don’t know that I can anticipate for much more this month but we’ll see 🧘‍♀️

#sry this took a min I needed to collect my thoughts 🧠#asks #cheesehair #reads

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urfrndlynbhdemigirl · 8 months

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On Speaking My Truth (Whatever The Fuck That Means?)

The Kind of Manifesto of a Demigirl

Sometime after midnight at a house-party I found myself tipsy in a tree-house with my friends. Naturally, we did what any slightly intoxicated, red-blooded 20-somethings would do when left alone late at night in a secluded location; discuss gender. “My gender is kind of like whatever was happening in Under the Skin but like, less fucked up, if that makes sense,” I said. Apparently it did. Either that or my companions in the tree house were too intoxicated or too polite to point out the obvious incoherence of my utterance.

This was no isolated incident. Often I find myself attempting to articulate my experience of gender through equally elusive expressions.

“I am a girl but in a camp way.”

“I am a girl but like, ironically?”

“I am a girl in the same way Pepsi is Coke.”

“I’m not a girl, I’m just a girl shaped thing.”

“I am what happens when you order ‘woman’ from Spirit Halloween.”

“Being a demigirl is kind of like how sharkboy is at once both shark and boy but can’t be described as boy or shark alone.”

“You know how Loki is a god and transcends the human limits of gender but like sometimes just takes on the form of a milkmaid or something and for all intent and purpose for that period of time they just are a milkmaid but on a much deeper more fundamental level they remain removed from these quaint notions of gender? Yeah, well that’s what my gender feels like.”

Why do I fall back on flowery metaphors, obtuse analogies and comedic comparisons? Why do I gesture desperately at some existential state, unable to point with precision at something exact and apparent? Why can I not speak plainly? Why can I not make my meaning clear?

Have you heard the myth of the veiled statue of Isis? It’s been reimagined by poetic types more than once or twice and whilst it has been retold many times over, in many different ways, the broad strokes are always similar enough. In Sais, a statue of the Goddess Isis is concealed by a veil. “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised,” reads its inscription. Sometimes, however, a hubristic young man animated by intrigue does indeed succeed in lifting the veil. Yet, happiness rarely comes from seeing the truth of the statue so plainly - so directly. Without the veil’s mediation, the young man is driven to madness having gazed upon that which no mortal is made to comprehend, or is overcome with depression, because where is the beauty and allure of life without mystery?

There is much philosophising that can be done with this story and the richness of its allegorical potential cannot be overstated. Still, there is one question that recently I have kept returning to with each retelling. What if the veil is not hiding anything? What if truth, reality, meaning - or whatever other slightly pretentious and very philosophically loaded noun you wish to employ - exists within the veil, not beyond it?

Let me explain. Some people like to look at poetry, allegory and metaphor as follows: these literary flourishes and flights of fancy obscure meaning - they are pretty but imprecise ways of warping what you are really trying to say. They are veils over the statue of Isis. Maybe they are beautiful veils, soft and silky and made of luminous fabric but they are veils nonetheless and it is what is behind them that really counts. Behind the veil is what you actually mean to say, “Truth” with a capital “T”. So when faced with poetry, allegory and metaphor we try to peek behind the poetry, the allegory, the metaphor. Desperately, we seek for what lay beyond all this mere aesthetic fetishism. We read poetry and try to strip it of the poetic, to figuratively unveil the statue. But, what if there is no statue? What if all we get is the veil? What if the veil conceals nothing, but is revealing to us everything - only we are too arrogant, overzealous, unobservant or distracted to see it? What if my vague, my imprecise, my periphrastic, my emotive, my evocative, my ambiguous, my flowery, my fluid expressions are not opaque and improper articulations that have some more definitive, more tangible truth beneath them? What if I was never speaking unclearly?

Here’s the thing, gender is weird as fuck. It’s messy and multifaceted and experiences of gender are nuanced and idiosyncratic and diverse. I have devoted countless hours to reading paper upon paper on gender as identity, gender as social class, gender as concept, gender as social kind, gender as a conferred property, gender as something socially constructed, gender as internal experience of oneself, gender as real, gender as fake, gender as real in some ways but fake in others, gender as fake in real ways but real in fake ways and whilst maybe I now may be better equipped to construct some well-defined and precise, overarching theory of GenderTM that will be useful in an ameliorative analysis, on a more personal level my experience of my own gender has failed to grow less vague. This is not to say I am confused about my gender. In fact, right now I feel as comfortable in my gender as I have ever been. Rather, I am trying to say that there is nothing I can do to make my experience of gender not nebulous. It will never be neat or simple or clean and so, the only language I have to talk about my gender authentically is language that allows for multiplicity and ambiguity and, above all else, feelings and the phenomenal. When my task is to communicate the unclear, would my message not be less clear if I conveyed it with words that are clinical and precise? Would that not be dishonest in its simplicity? Misleading in its neatness? Near negligent in its reductiveness? I want to find words that are rich with emotions and implications and connotations and hope that I can arrange them in such a way that I can evoke the feeling of certain states of embodiment, of existence, of experience as opposed to culling my utterances of any actual meaning, leaving them sterile and dead because I decided to lie to myself and pretend these are things that can be spoken of plainly. I want to speak about my gender more poetically, not less.

I feel it is those of us who identify with labels that linger in the liminal - the labels that pull on the loose threads of the assumed coupling of assigned sex and gender identity - that are derrided for the inability to offer satisfactory articulations of our own identities, as if this is an easy task, as if the language we have at our disposal was made with us in mind. I wonder if those who scoff at our poetry, our allegories, our metaphors have wondered if we find it so hard to find the right words because we are the ones most attuned to the ways gender is embodied. We have been paying painful attention to every detail of its experience, and so, do not know how to speak about it without leaving something out, or getting something lost in translation because we have become intimately acquainted with all its aspects. Or rather, we have become intimately acquainted enough to know that we will never truly know all its aspects. When it comes to my own gender, perhaps I am at my most Socratic.

This is all also to say nothing of the struggle of trying to articulate queer experiences in a straight tongue. Indeed, the language I have at my disposal is in no small way shaped by cisnormativity. What do I do when I am dislocated from my own mother tongue? Do I reimagine the meanings of words? But then I run the risk of people lamenting I am appropriating that which ought to be left alone, stealing something that is not mine to take - I am destabilising something sacred and that is scary. So then, do I invent new words? Sure, but I will be scorned for my invention. Maybe I will be told I am fabricating something out of thin air, not giving shape to something that has always existed. Maybe I will be told that we have gotten on perfectly fine thus far without my new fangled vocabulary and therefore I am being unduly difficult. I will wonder who this mystical “we” who has gotten along perfectly fine is, and if they are aware they are not the only “we” in existence. In the face of this insufficiency, I choose artistry. I choose to use language playfully, comically, creatively and beautifully because my experience of gender is playful, comical, creative and beautiful. If my rhetoric is condemned to always be imperfect, then at the very least let it be alive.

So then, let’s have it. Let me try my hand at speaking my truth, whatever the fuck that means.

I was a girl - I think? I think I was a girl for a long time, though I’m not sure. I am sure I’m not anymore though.

I don’t know what happened. I grew up, maybe. I learnt more about myself and the world. I cultivated a capacity to see the ways in which external social systems had become internalised and started to feel the outside world creeping into my body, crawling under my skin. I stomached the fact my body had always been acting as a host to alien parasites and felt that I had settled where I was, that I had found a way to make “woman” a workably homey space to occupy. I sighed, “it would do, I suppose”. I accepted the title of “woman” as if I was an item of clothing I had found in an opt shop and, with a shrug, resigned myself to purchasing in spite of its imperfect fit because it was cheap and there and one must temper their expectations when shopping second hand.

Little by little, the life inside and outside of my head became fuller, more colourful. I saw beauty I didn’t have the words to speak about because no one had told me that such beauty existed, let alone was permissible. The epicurean in me itched. I scratched at my skin. I didn’t know how to let myself be happy. Self-determination and sin seemed synonymous. The curse of being in the closest is sometimes you don’t even let yourself see you are trapped within one, instead you shrink down all life’s possibilities to what can fit in that finite, dark space and pretend that, that absence of existence contains the entirety of the universe’s potential. But I learnt to ask better questions of myself from the armchair and I learnt how to leave it. I looked at my reflection taking backwards steps. Almost absent mindedly, mostly accidentally, I started to pick at the knots entangling the interwoven strands of my selfhood until I felt them come loose and realised I could reweave them as I pleased.

The more I reflected on my womanhood, the more I felt dislocated from it. It was as if the clearer I could see it, the more it became an object of study, something outside of myself to be looked at and examined, prodded at and played with, as opposed to a necessary part of my subject. It was as if the ability to see it severed it from me in some important sense, that speculation and observation necessarily involved division or dislocation. An umbilical cord was cut. I had grown out of something, I don’t know exactly what. I only know that Eden cannot be reentered. I only know that one cannot step into the same river twice. I only know that if I believed in souls I would say mine was not that of a woman, but rather that it was quite beyond gender. I would want to say that my soul exists in a space where the language of gender cannot stick.

But I was not disengaged from my femininity, only distanced from it - apart from it whilst still partaking in it, but partaking in it consciously, creatively, constructively. My femininity at once felt more and less authentic. Less authentic because there was nothing organic about it, it was not flowing out of me unthinkingly. I watched myself. More authentic though because I had an agency I did not have before. My gender expression was not simply something instinctual or absorbed from the world around me. My gender expression was not mindless. It had become artful. Each morning I opened up my makeup bag and painted my face like a portrait. I was an artwork and artist, and more than anything I wanted that to be known and I fashioned myself in such a way to make the artifice apparent. Now, I am never womanly without a wink or masculine without a smirk. And no, I do not want to discuss dysphoria - only the euphoria that comes with defying classification.

My dress is drag. I strive for cartoonish caricature. On the days I decide to adorn myself in that which is deemed girly, I do it with the intention of bending the category of “Girl” until it breaks. I want to be so outlandishly femme that I cease to be feminine. I want to exist in the uncanny valley of the dolls, to be something girl adjacent - a woman only if you are squinting. I want it all to be theatrical, overblown and played for the people in the back row. I am not so much a girl as I am a thespian. I want to be camp, to commit to artifice with the most earnest sincerity. I have learnt to adorn myself in the finery of a dollybird and adore all the aspects of girlhood that are deemed the most tacky, the most trite, the most trivial, the most cheap, the most silly and insignificant. And sometimes, I am not girlish at all.

Anxiously, I set the imposter syndrome aside and let myself ask to be called “they,” and I take on “they” as if it is a family name because “they” is decidedly queer - and I know I come from queerness and belonged to queerness. I am only at home with the outsiders. See me as the sexually deviant gender trash I am and leave me or love me in all my perversion because assimilation is a suffocation I will not suffer. The queer are my kin, my kin is the queer. I want to be identified with my gens. Ascribe me to the correct clan and do not call me a girl, it makes my skin itch and sometimes, a strange dissonance arises, and I giggle to myself as if I have gotten away with a trick I never intended to pull. My gender is queer, I cannot tell it to you straight but I have made myself clear.

#demigirl #queer #queer community #queer pride #lgbtq #pride #non binary #nonbinary #lgbtqia #gay #queer joy #gender stuff #queerness #queer things

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rebrandedbard · 1 year

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Alright so, I’m gonna send this as an ask instead of clogging your comment box on ao3. And I’m still laughing at the fact you call these essays when it’s just unedited night ramblings. 🫡

Full disclosure, I have absolutely zero knowledge about music. I’m not even going to pretend like I knew what I was doing with those annotations and I certainly don’t know enough about poetry to articulate how that would work either… But I still very much hold firm to the belief that this would make an excellent recitation. The only other way I can articulate it is by insisting that it is a melodic kind of language. I see what you were going for and you’ve done it so well and I am so excited to see this kind of style and specific diction of language.

My education and experience is more in painting, art history, critical analysis so you know I’m not a complete hackjob and just blowing steam out of my ass! But I really have like no knowledge of music. 💀

I also very much hold firm to the belief that Jaskier is always going to be a choice. That is ultimately at the heart of the found family trope/genre. It’s not about shoehorning people into traditional family roles, but rather and I’m going to borrow from your fic here to support this, it’s about people coming together and the care and love that exists between them regardless of background, experience, and pre-ordained fates.

“Ciri put herself between the stranger and Jaskier, waving a large branch in warning. “Keep away,” she growled. “If you come any closer, I’ll scream.”

This is great. This is important. This is also really funny. A small child protecting a larger child. I know Ciri is more powerful, and perhaps even stronger than Jaskier. But the mental image of her defending Jaskier against a witcher with a branch is hilarious. I bet Lambert was telling everyone about it when they got to Kaer Morhen.

What’s important about this observation is that Jaskier lets her. It cannot be easy for a grown man to suddenly have to rely on a child to take care of him, but he lets her and there isn’t a shred, not an ounce of resentment between them.

Also, I did not originally mean to analyze this against the hero’s journey and the monomyth, but the witcher so often explores the concept of destiny and fate that I find myself falling into it constantly. What this fic does though, as I’ve mentioned before, is refuse the call and subvert the myth which I love.

I’m very interested in that perspective, thank you. I was a little suspicious because Jaskier was clearly picking up on something but I knew from his reaction at the end that he really didn’t know. It’s that thing where as an audience we have more information than the characters which again very much puts me in mind of a play and the fics other artistic qualities. I think I feel more like Ciri in this instance, and also a little like Jaskier. One is kept in the dark because she’s a child and the other because he’s literally blind.

Omg okay last disclosure… I couldn’t remember the word for prose poetry (idk why) and it sent me on a deep-dive. I just really love writing, and fanfiction and all this shit. It’s my goddamn jam, and I’m literally incapable of shutting up. I’m about to vibrate out of my skin.

I never ever ever forever want you to shut up. I love this. I love ALL of this. I want to read this analysis like I'm in an english lit class. I am eating it up with two serving spoons like I've been given the entire tray of sweet potato casserole to kill off at thanksgiving. PLEASE I beg of you, CLOG MY INBOX. I would LOVE to have this in my inbox to keep and to treasure. In fact, I keep my favorite ao3 comment emails in a special folder! Please please PLEASE copy and paste this and put it beside the other half so they are together. Your comments are FAMILY you can't separate them! They need a loving home!

#my asks #I love you i love you i love you hi hi hi

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