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sakkiichi · 9 months

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MEOW?

them as cat parents.

ft. Kaedehara Kazuha, Scaramouche/Wanderer, Xiao, Shikanoin Heizou, Albedo, Kaveh, Alhaitham, Childe x gn! reader.

cw/genre: fluff, headcanons.

word count: 1.7k.

✧ KAEDEHARA KAZUHA

— All cats adore him and he’s fond of them too, he’s the perfect cat parent.

— Kazuha is soft, warm and gentle, all attributes very appealing to the small felines that tend to follow him around everywhere he goes: from the streets of Inazuma City, to the docks of Ritou, to even during his trips to Liyue.

— Kazuha is a free spirit, wandering from one place to another, a fallen maple leaf, vibrant red in its trajectory across the sky. His desire to see the world makes it difficult for him to linger in one place only, so it is not likely he ends up adopting a cat of his own.

— However, always that he’s in Inazuma, the wandering samurai makes sure to visit his late friend’s gravestone. In those occasions, as much as he keeps his composure, Kazuha’s grip on your hand tightens, a reassurance to himself, that the heavens won’t part in thunderbolts and take you away too.

— These visits are heavy on his heart, but your company and the soft mewls of the white kitten his friend left behind manage to shine a little sunlight in his stormy memories.

— The small cat’s ears perk up when you two show up, its tail swishing as it leaps into Kazuha’s arms, eliciting soft giggles from the wandering poet.

— You could stare forever at the sight of your lover’s smile when the little one paws at his cheeks curiously, playing with the tips of Kazuha’s moonlit hair. You sigh dreamily, gaze soft. If a day comes when you’re too weary and old to travel anymore, you’re so taking in the kitty.

✧ SCARAMOUCHE

— He’s the cat.

— Seriously, now. Cats are drawn to him. And even if he denies it, he has to hold back a smile when the little creatures follow him around.

— The wanderer is secretly very, very soft on the cats.

— Oftentimes, he lets them hide under his hat, carrying them around when he goes for walks around Sumeru. He thinks, that way, his doll won’t be so lonely either (he definitely introduces it to his favorite cats he befriends but shh don’t tell him you saw that.)

— If you point out how the kittens seem to consider him one of them, Scara will blush deeply, frowning and spouting how you’re seeing things and that no, he’s not keeping any of them.

— Oh yeah, he totally went out to feed the kitties some scraps that night, it’s late and he wanted to sleep, you see? and the animals were being loud. (No, it’s definitely not because he feels guilty of saying he’s not keeping them).

— One time, you caught him rescuing a very small black cat on a thunderstorm, and to this day, you still believe that’s the most precious thing you have ever witnessed.

— The smile on your boyfriend’s face and his wide indigo eyes when he felt the warmth of the kitten’s small body against his hollow heart are definitely a treasure you want to keep forever.

✧ XIAO

— He’s the cat, number 2.

— Liyue’s cats have a favorite and that’s definitely none other than the mighty vigilant yaksha, the conqueror of demons, the bane of all evil.

— In truth, he’s just a blushing awkward mess around the kittens.

— One, he’s scared to hurt them. They’re so small and their mewls are so soft… such pure and innocent creatures… What if his karma were to taint them?

— Two, he’s clueless.

— Literally. One time you were playing with the stray cats around the streets of Liyue, Xiao showing up as you were rubbing a tabby one’s belly. When you put the small kitty in the adeptus’ arms, he didn’t know what to do.

— What if he accidentally drops it? Or holds it too tight?

— Please, reassure Xiao :( he really needs it.

— Wrapping your hands around his, your body against his, you petted the cat with Xiao, the small animal nuzzling into your boyfriend. His blushy face when the feline purred in pleasure was too adorable, you’ll have to make him hold cats more often ehe.

✧ SHIKANOIN HEIZOU

— Heizou wants to protect beautiful things, to keep them in the precious light of their safety.

— That, of course, includes cats.

— They’re so adorable, brightening his day when he’s away from you and the small animals follow him around on his way to work in the mornings.

— They look so cute, with their big shiny eyes, observing him curiously, that the detective starts to take them under his wing.

— As unexpected as it was, to hear “meow?” instead of “I’m home, sweetheart!” one day as the front door swung open, you can’t deny it was beyond adorable, the way your boyfriend walked into the living room with a small cat nestled on top of his head.

— Yes, you ended up keeping the little one.

— It now joins the detective gathering clues for the cases he solves; sometimes the small animal leads the way when it’s too dark to see the trails, or it gently scratches Heizou’s legs when it senses danger.

— And rest assured, that Heizou will keep the kitty safe too. No matter what. It reminds him of you, sometimes, when it stares up at him with a starry gaze. Something as precious needs to be cherished.

✧ ALBEDO

— He finds cats to be very interesting creatures.

— Independent, intelligent, able to fit in practically any space… he wonders if they’re actually liquid or if their structure has been alchemically altered to have such fascinating properties.

— When, after exhaustive observation, the chief alchemist finally concludes that cats are indeed just naturally like that, they become his favorite companions (after you, that is).

— Sometimes, when Albedo is around Mondstadt, the kittens there follow him to the alchemy bench, rubbing against his legs when he’s working.

— You and the cats become Albedo’s favorite models as well. He loves your giggles when the little ones paw at your lap, trying to climb on your shoulders.

— They also become his little helpers when he paints, handing him a brush when he needs it, even without him having to ask.

— If you’re lucky, you’ll get to see the chalk prince trying to converse with the kittens too.

— Something along the likes of “Hmm… which color do you think [Y/n] would like best here? This one?” The kreideprinz asks, dipping his brush into it. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?” He coos as the cat, rubbing its chin.

— Now you wish you could sketch, to immortalize the moment. Luckily, you have your kamera with you.

✧ KAVEH

— Oh sweet disney princess Kaveh, cats and pretty much all animals adore him.

— Neither you nor him know when the cats around Port Ormos started following him, but now they just won’t leave.

— No matter how many times he (halfheartedly) scolds the kitties, they are not fazed by the architect’s pouty expression.

— So your home becomes home for the cats milling about Sumeru.

— Your lover goes as far as to design a whole area for the little animals, building small houses for them to stay in with their own bowls of food, color coordinated and decorated, of course.

— You look happy helping him care for the cats too. However, when you offer to buy them food, your boyfriend can’t let you; he’ll take on extra commissions if he has to, but Kaveh just can’t allow you spending money on this little, albeit adorable, “problem.”

— There was one time one of the kitties sneaked inside your house, making it to your room. Let’s just say, the small feline found Kaveh’s face very entertaining and decided to nuzzle against it. The scene was so precious you couldn’t bring yourself to shoo the cat away, deciding to lay down with your partner and his new fan.

✧ ALHAITHAM

— Around the time he had to fill in the position of acting grand sage, the hours your boyfriend could spend with you were helplessly diminished, due to him having to cover overtime.

— You felt a little lonely, so well, can you exactly be blamed for adopting a baby cat from the local shelter?

— Turns out, your decision kind of “backfired” on you. For, in the hours he’s away, not only do you miss Alhaitham, but the latest addition to your household does too.

— The kitty has become very fond of your lover, often curling up beside him while he reads. One hand holding his book and the other caressing the kitten’s grey fur, the sight is rather candid, you think, smiling, as you curl up beside them.

— At your presence, the cat doesn’t hesitate to jump into your lap, swishing its tail and meowing for more petting from the scribe beside you.

— With a tender grin tugging at his lips, Alhaitham leaves a kiss to your temple, resuming his affections on the little one.

— No matter how brief, as long as you can have moments like this, everything will be alright, you muse, closing your eyes, heart warmed by your two boys.

✧ CHILDE

— Repeat after me, Childe: no, you can’t train the cats to fight on the battlefield with you.

— Once you get past that, he’s good at caring for the kittens. Makes sure they always have food and toys, comfy beds and a space to play. Ajax is good at taking care of those he loves, as proved with his family.

— Speaking of which, his siblings would adore playing with the cats you and Childe adopt, especially Teucer! (he totally talks to them about mister cyclops, the animals staring up at him curiously, pawing at his figurine softly).

— As much as you’re against your cats joining your boyfriend in his battles, they love watching him as he practices, their large eyes following the movements of his dual blades or his bow.

— The harbinger always makes extra time for the adorable pets, playing with them after his training, no matter how tired he is.

— Those times, he doesn’t get scolded when he’s late for dinner (you’ve been secretly watching, smiling to yourself at how cute your lover is. Yes, you totally were staring too while he was shirtless, muscles taut as he wielded his hydro conjured spear).

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weirdly-specific-but-ok · 4 months

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thoughts on fanfiction, perfectionism, and being enough

I'm pretty sure I'm ill and half-asleep and the Good Omens fandom has destroyed my last tenuous grasp on reality, but I am making a post anyway not knowing what I'm going to say. Because that's what this site is for, is it not?

*holds out hand* *waits for you to take it* Hey, you know, you're never going to be done. You're never going to look at something you made and think it's perfect. It's never going to be enough. It's okay to stop and it let it be imperfect. The earth didn't just birth life into just the right conditions, it made creatures which evolved and went extinct, ice ages which ended, volcanos that destroyed life and volcanos that preserved cities for millennia. It made jagged rocks that would be smoothened by rivers and stomachs that would hunger, rivers that would flood and rivers that would run dry.

Create imperfect things and give them to the world. Let the world create from it in turn in an endless cycle. Like Milton on the Bible, like BBC with Sherlock Holmes, like anyone writing fanfiction of their favourite show... Let your creation be imperfect, so you can see all the million ways in which people try to perfect it. All the million ways in which perfection can exist. That's the beauty of fandoms and fanworks. It keeps the creation evolving, keeps it breathing and alive. It becomes the work of a million people, and carries their stories with it in a little back pocket.

And maybe we were made to be imperfect too. Our hair tangles just to be brushed, our arm itches just to be scratches, our hand clenches just to be held and unclenched. There are odd shapes that make us up but they fit in with everyone else's, in handshakes, in bridal carries, in a parent lifting a child, a rescue worker lifting a victim, a girl kissing her wife, a child hugging his toy, a person holding their hands in prayer or in pain.

I'm trying to remind myself of that, because it's so easy to keep wanting more, to believe that there will be a point at which I will be satisfied with what I have done. Even in this fandom, I look at my ridiculous summaries I accidentally wound up making, and look at someone's beautiful meta blog and I feel like shrinking a little bit. But in real life, I'm a designer and an artist, a reader and poet and songwriter, and someone who has been a writer the past eight years, if not all my life. Have I done enough to qualify for any of these roles? Who knows? It shouldn't matter to me, and it shouldn't matter to you, whatever you love doing or are doing.

It will never be enough, you will never be enough for yourself. Can we try to make peace with that little gap in ourselves that acts like a vacuum to keep sucking in more and more effort and things? It'll never be filled. That's okay.

*squeezes your hand before letting go* Isn't it amazing how imperfect and fucked up we all are? Isn't it beautiful that we don't have to sit and stare at statues we cannot touch, but we get stone that we can keep carving all we like? That creation starts with imperfection? I don't know if I'm making sense anymore, the medications are kicking in and my eyes are closing. But I love all of you, everyone who is a maggot and everyone reading this post, too.

Take this *holds out a seashell* it's pretty and it's broken and the animal that made it his home changed it, the sea changed it, and I hope you change it, too. That's all.

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tylermileslockett · 13 days

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Atalanta #2 "the Way of the Hunter"

Having been successfully rescued and nourished by the she-bear, one day the child, having been left alone, is come upon by a couple of Hunters tracking prey. Seeing the discovery as the will of their hunting patron god, Artemis, the men take the child and dutifully raise her into a skillful hunter, tracker and archer; ever in the service of Artemis.

Because Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, wilderness, and wild animals, she was popular with hunters. And, although the goddess was associated with childbirth and fertility, she herself was celibate, vowing to forever remain a virgin. The hunters, stalking their prey through the forest, wear shawls like cloaks called a Chlamys.

In the background of my illustration we can see one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the “Temple of Artemis” at the city of Ephesus, (west coast of turkey). Here was a powerful and unique cult, with a more fertility centric Artemis Ephesia, a goddess rooted in Egyptian or Near east great mother goddesses; The site had annual festivals with games and theater performances, where young, single Greeks could seek out marriage partners.

The 2nd century B.C. Greek poet Antipater described it thus; “I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand".

Like this art? It will be in my illustrated book with over 130 other full page illustrations coming in June to kickstarter. to get unseen free hi-hes art subscribe to my email newsletter

Follow my backerkit kickstarter notification page.

Thank you for supporting independent artists! 🤘❤️🏛😁

#greekmythology #greekgods #pjo #mythology #classics #classicscommunity #myths #ancientgreece #ovid #archer #artemis

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redgoldsparks · 4 months

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December 2023 Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Despite how much promise there is in the premise of this novel I was ultimately fairly disappointed by it. I'll start with the positives: it's set in a diverse and creative fantasy world with multiple different countries and cultures. It has several queer characters, including one of the four POV characters. It has dragons, even though I think they were severely under-utilized. It is also far too long, and astonishingly, nearly every scene in the book felt rushed. I think it actually had too much plot; if I had been editing this book I would have suggested the author cut one of the POV characters and use the freed-up space to flesh out the queer love story, which was the emotional heart of the book. This book is marketed as adult fantasy, yet whenever a character is in serious danger they are nearly always rescued by a talking animal with super-speed abilities. Choices like this book made the book read younger than I expected. It also suffered, perhaps unfairly, due to the fact I read a book with a much smarter and more interesting use of dragons, human/dragon cultural tensions, and dragon politics earlier this year: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, which I would recommend over Priory any day of the week.

Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe is a Coast Salish poet and punk who digs deep into the lineage of women in her family searching for connection, strength, and healing. While writing a Master's thesis, LaPointe opened the door to memories of a childhood sexual assault, precarious runaway teen years, and the intergenerational trauma that affected all of her family after the colonization of the Pacific Northwest. The memories that surfaced shattered her life. The path to picking up the pieces was slow, and involved traditional healing ceremonies, friendship, writing, music, and multiple journeys to places where her female ancestors once lived. I found this book very quick and easy to read despite the often heavy subject matter (it also includes a divorce and a miscarriage). Some passages are quite beautiful, but the author was an emotional mess for most of the time period she recounts and behaved in some questionable ways towards many of those around her. It ends on a hopeful note, and I would recommend it, especially to people with connections to the PNW area, while keeping the content warnings in mind.

Golden Fool by Robin Hobb read by Nick Taylor

I hardly even know how to talk about this book because I loved it so much. It's a rich, nuanced, painfully human follow up to the earlier Farseer trilogy. I am amazed at how deftly Hobb wove the narratives of her characters across three decades of their lives and counting. There's Fitz, the royal bastard and reluctant assassin, who we first met at age six. Now in his mid-thirties, he is finally exploring his magical talents, teaching, learning, and taking more and more misfit young people under his wing. There's Chade, who we first met at a mysterious and wise teacher- now he's a royal advisor, and his hunger for power and influence might yet take him down a very dark path. There's Kettricken, who as a teenage princess was engaged to a stranger, now grown into a powerful queen bent on changing her kingdom for the better. There's the Fool, whose multiple identities are threatening to collapse as more and more of his prophesies come true. And Burrich, Fitz's adopted father figure, who in his anger and grief disowns a son who reminds him too much of his past. All of these characters feel so deeply rooted in their own histories, traumas, choices; I care so deeply about their lives and see so clearly how the twists of fate led them to where they are now. This is seriously one of the best fantasy series I have ever read, and I highly recommend anyone who loves long form fantasy to go back and pick up book one, Assassin's Apprentice.

The Well by Jacob Wyatt and Choo

Lizzy lives with her grandfather on one of many small islands in an world plagued by mist and monsters. Her mother, father, and grandmother all died fighting against the leviathan that used to threaten the seas between the islands; Lizzy has heard the stories, but never knew any of them. Her daily concerns are with goats, the market where she sells their cheese and milk, and her crush on a girl who works the island ferry. Magic doesn't regularly touch her life, except when she foolishly steals three coins from a wishing well, and is then tasked with completing the three wishes that are bound to them. This story has much the feel of a fairy tale with it's orphaned protagonist, three wishes, three tasks, and characters who are often more archetype than fleshed out people. But it manages a sweetly emotional ending and simple but lively and effective illustrations.

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles read by Martyn Swain

Set in England during the reign of King George the third, this historical romance delivered a satisfying amount of plot along with the spice. Gareth is the son of a Baronet, but grew up with none of the privilege of that position having been send away from home after the death of his mother during his childhood. He works as a law clerk in London with few connections, no friends, and nothing much to recommend him. He seeks companionship at a tavern that turns a blind eye on the illicit sexual activities of men in the upper rooms. There he meets Kent, a working class man from Romney Marsh, with whom Gareth sparks an intense and intimate connection. Then it falls apart. Gareth is sacked from his job. He fights with Kent. His father dies unexpectedly, and Gareth is summoned to a manor house he hasn't seen in years to take on the responsibilities of a title, including the care of a teenage half-sister and his father's mistress. And by chance, the house Gareth inherits is in Romney Marsh, home of many waterways, pastures, smugglers, and also Kent, his former lover. I enjoyed the dynamic between the two romantic leads, and the crime plot which entangled both of them. If you are interested in R-rated M/M romance with action adventure and danger, I'd definitely recommend this series and also KJ Charles' Will Darling series.

Subtle Blood by KJ Charles read by read by Cornell Collins

A very satisfying installment in the Will Darling adventures! If this is the final book, I am happy with where it's left the characters, but it does also leave the door open for more. If you enjoy spicy M/M romance with a hefty side of action/adventure, this is a great series. It kept me company through a week of holiday cleaning, cooking, and baking, and I think it's my favorite yet from the series.

Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis by Dave Maass & Patrick Lay

This comic is grim, funny, gory, and darkly poetic. It's impossible to read it without an awareness of the history of the script, which is based on a suppressed opera written in 1943 two prisoners at the Terezín concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The authors did not live to see their play performed. Maass and Lay have done an impressive job transferring a story meant for the stage into a comic. The stars of the show are the characters of Life and Death who narrative and frame the story of a paranoid dictator in the fictional nation of Atlantis and his reign of terror against his own citizens.

The Cliff by Manon Debaye

This was beautifully illustrated but too sad and violent for me to enjoy reading. It's the story of a dysfunctional middle school friendship between two unhappy girls who make a suicide pact. This story will really hit for some readers but it wasn't for me.

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

I really enjoyed this book, even thought I think it's more interesting as a collection of ideas than as a novel. The characters in the first third felt somewhat flat, and the dialog is often delivered in hefty paragraphs with minimal dialog tags. But the story picks up in the second half and by the end I was reading it daily in big chunks. The concepts this book explores are what really shine, especially the idea of walking away from capitalist society and living in self-sustaining communities without formal governments or laws. This novel contains some future technology which we don't currently have today including 3D printers which can print food, clothing, and building pieces for vehicles and housing and also internet interfaces implanted into people's bodies which allow them global network access from anywhere almost all the time. The nation state of Canada also seems to have fallen before the start of this novel, as most of the characters end up walking away from the US into northern Canada to find these alternate communities. I liked seeing Doctorow play out the clash between on faction wanting to run a group house as a meritocracy versus another group committed to allowing all members to work as much or little as they want to or can, for example. The book does not shy away from showing the violent crack down of the existing governments on these alternate communities. There are major character deaths. But the other big theme of the book is exploring the digital scanning and uploading of human consciousnesses to the web allowed people to walk away from death.

#maia kobabe #reading #book reviews #reading reviews #queer books

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fate-magical-girls · 4 months

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Comparing fairy tales with their inspirations from legendary sagas produces a weird effect, because you can see where the stories have been simplified and the behavior of the protagonists sanitized.

The Goose Girl whose position was stolen by her handmaiden and was reduced to speaking to her beheaded horse Falada was a club-footed princess who originally agreed to switch places with her maid because she was self-conscious about her feet and feared her prince was short and ugly. She was also mother of Charlemagne.

The Goose Girl at the Well who was exiled for saying she loved her father like meat loves salt was a British queen who led an army to rescue her father who had been driven insane by her abusive sisters.

Sleeping Beauty, who was cursed to sleep for a hundred years, was a Valkyrie who masterminded the death of her prince when he was brainwashed into marrying another woman, and then threw herself onto his pyre so she could die with him.

The youngest brother of the Wild Swans, whose arm remained a swan wing because his sister ran out of thread to make the tunic that would break his curse, became a knight in a swan boat that avenged a noble maiden's honor and had children with her that would give rise to the royal line of Bouillon.

Cinderella was a successful courtesan and a self-made woman, who had no fairy god mother, but did have a fling with fable-teller Aesop as well as an epic rivalry with her sister-in-law, who happened to be one of the greatest poets of their age. Alternatively, she was a queen of Egypt to died before seeing her family enslaved by the mad Persian king Cambyses.

The mystical husbands of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, The Iron Stove, and the Feather of Finist the Falcon were originally the god Eros, and the Beauty that had to find her husband after losing him was his wife Psyche.

Often the animal husband takes the form of a snake. In certain myths among the indigenous Taiwanese, the animal husband is a snake and the ancestor of their people. In Baltic and Slavic stories, the snake husband is never accepted by his wife's family, who kill him through deceit. Meanwhile, a 9th century Chinese story makes the husband into a Yaksha, and the lovers are eventually parted because the wife cannot stay in the realm of the Yaksha.

Related to the animal husband theme, the Beast was a tragic man from Tenerife with hypertrichosis, and Beauty was a noblewoman who was married to him almost as a joke. Though they lived a long and happy life together, four of their seven children were stolen away and sent to live in foreign courts because they shared their father's condition.

The Girl Without Hands was a Mercian queen who ruled her nation with iron fists, and was involved in more than one assassination.

Maid Maleen's original name was Brangaine, the maid of Tristan and Iseult. In most variants of the tale, it is the guilty bride who substitutes her maid in the bridal procession to hide her loss of virginity that is the actual protagonist. When the prince questions her about the children she has born, she is forced to reveal the tokens that her lover left with her, and the prince realizes that he himself is the lover in question, and apologizes and proceeds with the wedding.

The speechless Little Mermaid's beloved prince was a Swedish duke, brother to the king, named Magnus Vasa. He was afflicted with psychotic episodes throughout his life, and had assistants assigned to look after him. He never married but had a longtime affair with a commoner woman who cared for him. During one of his episodes, he jumped into a moat, claiming to have seen a woman there. This became the basis for a class of ballads called Herr Magnus and the Mermaid, which describes how Magnus lost his heart and then his mind to the mermaid after initially rejecting her. This then became stories of the tragic mermaid's rejection and revenge.

#mythology #history #fairy tale #little mermaid #sleeping beauty #cinderella #beauty and the beast #the goose girl #king lear #brothers grimm #hans christian andersen

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katerinaaqu · 1 month

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So since @aaronofithaca05 had asked me about my new tattoo that started one of my favorite headcannons of Odysseus getting a tattoo at war here it is! Done during a small trip I had by the talented artist:

https://www.instagram.com/poporotattoo?igsh=MW1iZThnZGt5NzVrZw==

It is symbol of my homeland, Greece and a promise of me going back there one day one way or another (since I currently live in Sweden). It was inspired by frescoes found in Greece especially in Crete and Santorini

Dolphin: The national animal of Greece and always mentioned as a protective talisman for sailors to a country surrounded by sea. The dolphin comes from the ancient Greek word that means "womb" and was meant to show how Greeks believed that they are mammals. The word Dolphin also sounds similar to the word that means "brother" "sister" or "sibling" in Greek.

The dolphin was an animal linked to many gods and goddesses of Greek mythology with some of the major ones being Poseidon (the dolphin revealed to him the hiding place of his future wife Amphitrite and often seen pulling his chariot), Dionysus (Dionysus transformed the drowning pirates to dolphins) and of course Apollo (linked to the myth of Delphi -giving the name to it- and the rescue of the musician and poet Arion)

Dolphins have been a symbol of freedom, intelligence, playfulness and sexuality by many researchers. It is an animal known to protect the sailors in the long voyages at sea. Their social behavior has also linked them with humans (thus the name "dolphin" also linked to the word "sibling")

To me it is a symbol of greece and my culture in general linked to my language, my land and my family.

Swallow: A little bird linked a lot with spring in Greece for they come to Greece after winter to make their nests and have their babies before flying back to Africa for the winter. A swallow is a beloved bird in Greece and symbol of Greek presidency.

In mythology the swallow was also linked to some gods and goddesses particularly Aphrodite but also Athena (Athena transforms into a swallow and flies away from Telemachus in the Odyssey). Also in the Odyssey it is mentioned that the chord of Odysseus's bow "sang like a swallow" when he used it to kill the suitors symbolizing his homecoming.

Swallow have always been linked to journeys specially to homecoming since they always come back during their migration trips. Their speed and ability when they fly is also linked to their capability of achieving such a dangerous trip despite their size.

To me it is a promise of returning home to my land one way or another and is also linked to my favorite books Iliad and Odyssey that make me feel proud that literature from my land has reached so far in people's hearts 💕

They are also moving in a never ending circle with each other hahaha also unconsciously a symbol of Poseidon vs Athena?! 🤣 dunno maybe hehehehe

#greek mythology #odysseus #the odyssey #greek myth #odyssey #iliad #athena #poseidon #apollo #dionysus #swallow #dolphin #tattoo #symbolism #symbolic #symbolic tattoo #mythology #just a greek being homesick

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Don Quixote in fascist cyberspace. Following Francoist propaganda in the 20th century, fascist politicians of the 21st century continue to co-opt Cervantes and Don Quixote in service of nationalism. The contemporary Vox party calls for a “new Reconquista” of Spain, a “crusade” against feminism and African immigrants, to defeat the “giants” of “climate fundamentalism” and “gender ideology”.

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It’s said that Don Quixote and his faithful squire Sancho Panza were riding their horses in the dark night when they heard the sound of dogs barking. Trying to console the frightened Sancho, Don Quixote uttered what may be the most quoted line attributed to him: “Let the dogs bark, Sancho, it’s a sign that we are on track.” Today, the phrase is used to express the notion that if someone criticises (barks at) you, it’s a sign you are on the rise. Dogs bark at the moon, don’t they? Unfortunately, the quote doesn’t appear anywhere in Miguel de Cervantes’ famous 17th century novel Don Quixote. But that hasn’t stopped it appearing all over the Internet. [...] Anyone who reads the novel will know Cervantes’ hero is first and foremost a parody of a knight. [...] The dreadful and never-imagined (at least, certainly not by Cervantes) portrait of Don Quixote as a crusader is the kind of mistake that sets scholars’ teeth on edge. [...] But that image, sloppily posted on the web, actually comes from somewhere other than mere literary ignorance. From the early 20th century onward, Don Quixote has suffered a paradoxical fate, wrapped in a crusader’s cloak by nationalist propaganda. And this misrepresentation seems to be growing in the 21st century [...].

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The closing of the 19th century saw the gloomy twilight of the Spanish empire. The loss of its last colonial possessions dealt a severe blow to the national spirit. Around this time, the novelist, poet and philosopher Miguel Unamuno wrote an influential essay where he imagined a holy crusade to rescue Don Quixote’s grave.

For Unamuno, Cervantes’ hero was a nostalgic reminder of Spain’s heyday in the 15th to 16th centuries – the days of the “Reconquista”, or Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, and the beginning of Spanish imperial history in America. Tellingly, Unamuno placed Don Quixote alongside Columbus and Magellan – heroes, in his opinion, led by “a generous and big dream: the dream of glory”. Don Quixote thus underwent an odd metamorphosis, from a fallible antihero to an epic ideological hero, from a comic literary character to a national myth. [...]

During the Spanish civil war, the image of crusaders against the “communist and atheist rule” was invoked with ardour by the nationalist cause. After the fall of the republic in 1939, the newly enthroned dictator Francisco Franco flooded the squares with statues of the author of Don Quixote.

With Spain still strewn with war victims, Francoist propaganda recalled the author’s left hand being mutilated from fighting against the Muslims. What better model of Spaniard than the great writer who was crippled in the service of his nation! Thus, Cervantes himself was turned into a crusader knight and a national hero.

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More recently, leaders of the far-right Spanish party Vox have compared its political agenda with Don Quixote’s quest. During a visit to a field of windmills, former party general secretary Javier Ortega Smith declared: “Those are the giants we have to fight against in politics: climate fundamentalism, gender ideology, historical lies, Agenda 2030, absurd animalism […]”

The true Don Quixote was an infamous dreamer, consistently misreading reality and seeing imaginary enemies. That’s probably the only trait he shares with his current nationalist eulogists. But Vox’s identification with Don Quixote is an irony we can’t afford to take too lightly. While reality always defeats Cervantes’ hero, it doesn’t seem to prevent people from tilting at windmills with nationalist rhetoric.

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In its rise to popularity, Vox has encouraged crusades against various “enemies of the nation”, such as the pro-independence campaign in Catalonia and contemporary feminist movements. African immigrants and Muslims are also regular targets.

Santiago Abascal, president of the party, has explicitly called for “a new Reconquista” of Spain to stop the so-called invaders from the south. When asked about it, Abascal said “there was no danger of Islamophobia in Spain: the real danger was Islamophilia.”

Islamophobic and xenophobic views, as well as the use of crusader tropes, are unfortunately familiar among today’s Western nationalisms. Misleading content on the web revolves around the image of medieval Europe as a land populated by white crusaders and nobles. Promoted by white supremacists around the world, this notion of a mythical “West” is even more indefensible in Spanish culture. From the 8th century to the late 15th century, Muslims, Christians and Jews dwelt side by side in Al-Andalus, the Arabic term for medieval Iberia. [...]

There are many wrongs in nationalist appropriations of Don Quixote. To right them is not for the sake of literature alone. [...] Meanwhile, the flamboyant crusader-usurper rides on through cyberspace [...].

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Text by: Roberto Suazo. “From hapless parody to knight crusader -- how far-right nationalism hijacked the real Don Quixote.” The Conversation. 5 January 2023. [Bold emphasis and italicized first paragraph in this post added by me.]

#abolition #imperial #colonial

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gondolindon · 23 days

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15 questions for friends

Thanks for tagging me @realmofautumn and @thebitchkingofangmar <3

Not tagging anyone this time as I feel like most people have done this already but if you see this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged :)

Are you named after someone? Yeah, one of my names comes from my grandma who died before I was born.

When was the last time you cried? Hmm like cried cried? It's been a while, but I wept mildly just yesterday because I hurt my leg and was reminded of how we are fragile little mortals and my loved ones and I will all die and someone has to go first. *insert here that one richard siken quote, you know which one*

Do you have kids? No, except for my dog of course whom I call my son just for the funsies.

What sports do you play/have played? Horseback riding when I was younger, nowadays I mostly do running, yoga, and rock climbing (in the summer).

Do you use sarcasm? Yeah, quite a bit.

What the first thing you notice about people? Probably the overall appearance? Like, if they look friendly or not, do they remind me of anyone I know, stuff like that. And then maybe eyes, height.

What's your eye colour? Brown/hazel, depends on the lighting.

Scary movies or happy endings? I love both but if I have to choose I'm going with happy endings. Sorry but I'm a softie at heart and there's nothing like a good heartwarming ending after some tragic deaths etc.

Any talents? Eh, not really. I'd like to think I'm empathetic and good at seeing beauty in everything, but then again, I don't know if that counts as a talent.

Where were you born? Just a good ol' European hospital, free healthcare babey

What are your hobbies? Hiking, running, reading, writing, dog sports, skiing, yoga, climbing, games... I like to try out new things regularly so my list of hobbies is always updating. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for most of the stuff I pick up tends to last for a few months max, so I'd say the first 5 or so on the list are the more regular ones.

Do you have any pet? Yes! A dog, 6-year-old border collie whom I would die for.

How tall are you? Tall, like 178cm/5'10'' or maybe even more Idk, haven't measured my height in years but something like that.

Favourite subject in school? All of the languages really but maybe English.

Dream job? I'm not sure if I have one. Maybe a poet. I do have a dream of living somewhere near the mountains in a cute house with lots of land where I could build an animal sanctuary and I would live there and take care of my little rescue animals and create art and write poetry and plant trees and host parties for my friends. Does that count?

#tag game

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crazycatsiren · 1 year

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Tarot card of the day from mother witch

King of cups. A gentle, dreamy soul; a poet. Tenderness, softness, and love are his art.

If you have such a person in your life, he may seem too good to be true. But he's not. This king will truly have your best interests at heart. So let him love you. He may seem like a hopeless romantic at times, and he might be that big softie friend in the group, but trust me, this is not a person who will stand back and do nothing in the face of injustice. This king serves and wants to help those in need in every way possible. He will send meals to hungry people, get hotel rooms for homeless people, rescue stray animals from the streets, and volunteer whenever and wherever he can. He may not be at the front of a protest, but you will find him behind the scenes. He probably has a house full of foster animals. He might even be taking in emergency foster children. For all his serenity, this king has a heart full of love and wants to change the world. He has all the love to give, and all the love to share. He's emotionally mature, and he understands that sensitivity and empathy are not weaknesses. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he's so kind. Wherever there's suffering, this king is going to do his best to be there and do something about it. He's a beautiful person in and out, and the world is a better place with him in it.

#tarot card of the day from mother witch

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aboutanancientenquiry · 8 months

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Flourishing with Herodotus

"FLOURISHING WITH HERODOTUS

by royalhistsoc | Jul 13, 2023 | General, Guest Posts, History and Human Flourishing | 0 comments

In this second post of the ‘History and Human Flourishing’ series, Suzanne Marchand explores the contemporary value and relevance of Herodotus in historical teaching and methodology. Though often overlooked in favour of a ‘scientific’ approach advocated by nineteenth-century acolytes of Thucydides, Herodotus and his Histories remain a rich — and much needed — guide to history as the story and study of human behaviours. In this post, Suzanne considers Herodotus’ appeal and lessons for historians today.

This post is the second contribution to the Society’s 3-part ‘History & Human Flourishing’ blog series. The first, by Darrin M. McMahon, explores the often-neglected study of the history of human happiness.

There is, in my view, too much Thucydides in our histories and perhaps in our hearts today. This is partly the fault of the nineteenth century, when he became exemplary of the ‘right’ kind of historian: cynical, disciplined, grimly determined not to waste time on trifling matters. Power, for him — in a way oddly reminiscent of the also still-pervasive work of Michel Foucault — is what drives history and defines all human interactions, regardless of what anyone might say. So much have we accustomed ourselves to this cynical view that even the cultural historians among us struggle to wrest ourselves from its grip.

This is why it might be healthy to recall that Thucydides devised his historical principles to demonstrate his superiority to an already famous predecessor — one who has always, also, had his advocates, even if his reputation suffered a tremendous blow in the age of Leopold von Ranke. Pace the military strategists and the philosophers of international relations, we historians do not have to be eternal Thucydideans. Indeed, in doing so we might find new means of flourishing by embracing some of the richer and weirder methods of writing — and especially of teaching — history and of conceiving human nature that Thucydides renounced.

Herodotus gave us so much broader a picture of the calculated and crazy things we do, how rulers succeed and screw up, how cruel and clever we can be.

The spurned predecessor to whom I refer to is, of course, Herodotus, whose Histories relate, in shaggy dog fashion, the cosmopolitan backstory and then the unfolding of the Persian Wars.

It would wrong to insinuate, as Thucydides does in the famous passage at 1.122, that Herodotus wrote merely for entertainment, and did not care about truth, or to assert, as would Plutarch five centuries later, that Herodotus maliciously skewed his story. There are entertaining and improbable stories in The Histories, such as the rescuing of the poet Arion by a sympathetic dolphin, and plausible but probably exaggerated ones, like the water management projects of Assyrian Queen Nitocris (1.185). But even more, there is with Herodotus a rich variety of life, women as well as men (by one count, only six are mentioned in Thucydides, to 370+ in The Histories). To these we may add animals, gods, rivers, kings, and others, motivated not just by self-interest or the yearning for power, but by dreams, vanity, misunderstanding, passion, stupidity, pride, or simply unknown forces the historian cannot fathom.

In Book 6 (6.129-130), Herodotus tells the story of Hippokleides, set to make an advantageous marriage, who drinks too much at his engagement banquet, resulting in a bout of ribald dancing during which, it is suggested, he reveals his privates. When his prospective father-in-law tells him that he has danced away his good fortune (the original ‘balls up’), the merry-maker’s response — still used as an adage in modern Greek — is ‘Hippokleides doesn’t care!’ Don’t we all recognize a Hippokleides in our lives, perhaps (at least occasionally) in ourselves?

Image 1: Claude Vignon, “Croesus showing Solon his Treasure” (1630s) Wikimedia commons

Cicero termed Herodotus the ‘father of history,’ but in the same breath bracketed him with Theopompus, known for his long-winded digressions and his innumerabilies fabulae. What Cicero didn’t note was that Herodotus’ approach had a purpose: to convey a great deal of information and insight into human behaviour, at home, and abroad. Over the centuries, thousands of Herodotean fact-checkers have attempted to verify his information, sometimes finding him mistaken, but often recognising ways in which he was interestingly (if not perfectly accurately) right — about the Egyptian labyrinth, for example, or Persian horse lore.

But an even better reason for teaching Herodotus, or better teaching like Herodotus rather than, unrelentingly, like Thucydides, is that Herodotus gave us so much broader a picture of the calculated and crazy things we do; how rulers succeed and screw up, how cruel and clever we can be. Of course, his was also a very Greek way of seeing the world, and Herodotus’ stories about the despots of the East must be read with this in mind. But as he says in the very first line of his history, his intent throughout is to record for posterity the great deeds of the Greeks and the Persians, as well as to explain why they fought. I believe that Herodutus meant it, as he meant to show, too, that Egypt was full of wonderous things; that Scythia was home to brave if barbaric tribes; that some Greeks were cowards and tyrants; and others, at least some of the time, ingenious and courageous.

What if we accepted a bit more of the Herodotean worldview, and his approach to engaging with the past?

Herodotus certainly did care about human happiness. One of his most beloved tales, that of Solon and Croesus (1.29-33), goes right to the heart of the issue. As Herodotus relates, during travels he initiated to avoid having to repeal laws he imposed in Athens, Solon visited the extraordinarily wealthy king of the Medes. During his visit, the proud king shows Solon his riches, whereupon Solon launches into a story, the moral of which is that as fortune is ever changeable, one should not count oneself happy until one rests on one’s deathbed, surrounded by adoring family and friends.

The story acts as a prophecy, as Croesus will soon fall prey to an epic form of pride inciting a fall. Croesus will recall Solon’s admonition as he is about to be burnt on a pyre after the conquest of his kingdom (1.86). This is no mundane proverb, and it teaches an important, perhaps better, lesson than most Disney movies: one can and should try to live a good, honourable life. But one might fail, and not necessarily because of a ‘fatal flaw’ — fortune can simply deal a bad hand. Isn’t this a sensible way for us to conceive of our fellow humans and their flaws? Sometimes the flaws get you, sometimes you simply have bad luck (which might be structurally conditioned). If the seventeenth century read the story as a warning against enjoying worldly riches (see image 1 above), we might read it as an admonition not to judge people by their fates, and to take seriously the view that there, but for the grace of God, or fortune, go I.

Image 2: Karl Gottfried von Lück, ‘Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus’, Frankenthal Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1773; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain.

Most especially, I would like to advocate for more Herodotean teaching in the classroom … Environmental history has spurred us to put nature and animals in the picture, as did Herodotus; he would approve of discussing commerce and foodways.

What if we accepted a bit more of the Herodotean worldview, and his approach to engaging with the past? I don’t think scholarly history can do this entirely, but it would be a relief to escape the unrelenting cynicism of the Thucydidean-Foucauldians. But most especially, I would like to advocate for more Herodotean teaching in the classroom. College students have endured all too much ‘high’ political and military history in high school, and find more engaging lectures on ‘everyday life,’ whether in discussions of colonial Salem, or Roman Britain, or Nazi Germany. Environmental history has spurred us to put nature and animals in the picture, as did Herodotus; he would approve of discussing commerce and foodways.

Why not indulge in a few good stories, such as that of Queen Tomyris, who avenged her army’s slaughter at the hands of Cyrus by having him decapitated and his head dipped in a bag of blood? Herodotus told this story (1.212), and it was so memorable that even when his Greek text was lost to the West, medieval and early modern writers (including Shakespeare) knew and repurposed it; eighteenth-century porcelain makers, too, recreated it (see image 2). The story may well be apocryphal, but these too can occasion good teaching moments. Let’s see what we can do to make college history more Herodotean. Even if it won’t save us from the disdain of an increasingly presentist culture, at least, like Hippokleides, we might enjoy a last binge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Suzanne Marchand is Boyd Professor of European Intellectual History at Louisiana State University. Her current research projects include a history of Herodotus’ readers from 1700 to the present, tentatively titled Herodotus and the Instabilities of Western Civilization. Her wide-ranging research interests include classical studies, art history, anthropology, history, and theology in modern Europe, as well as in the history of porcelain and related topics in the history of material culture and consumption in Central Europe.

Suzanne’s publications include the article ‘Herodotus and the Fate of Universal History in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Journal of Modern History (forthcoming, 2023) and the monographs Porcelain. A History from the Heart of Europe (Princeton UP, 2020) and German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship (Cambridge UP, 2009).

Her essay, ‘Flourishing with Herodotus’ appeared in Darrin McMahon’s edited collection, History & Human Flourishing (OUP, 2023)."

#herodotus #the histories #thucydides #suzanne marchand #human flourishing

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kammartinez · 10 months

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By Keziah Weir

Frieda Hughes and I are an hour into our conversation when Wyddfa the snowy owl enters the chat. With some coaxing, he has hopped down the hallway, lined with woven rugs, to perch next to Hughes in her high-ceilinged kitchen. The pair of them, framed by a Zoom square, are in their home in Wales, where they live with 12 other owls, plus “five chinchillas,” Hughes says, “one aging ferret, a python called Shirley, and the two rescue huskies.” By publication of this piece, she has added a fourteenth owl.

Wyddfa, who is so dapper that he immediately elicits very silly comments from this interviewer—Hello, sir! He’s a little gentleman!—joined the household in 2016 after a zoo could no longer care for him because of a damaged wing; another of the owls has “wonky feet.” All of them have an avian forebear, without whom the parliament might never have found their way into Hughes’s care: an orphaned fledgling, now the eponymous subject of her new book, George: A Magpie Memoir (Avid Reader Press). The book chronicles the five months in 2007 during which Hughes hand-raised the magpie after finding it tossed from a nest in her garden. “I had no idea how much I was going to fall in love with that bird,” Hughes tells me. “Oh, dear.”

London-born Hughes, a painter and poet, describes her growing up as peripatetic. “I felt as if the ground on which I stood was constantly changing and shifting,” she writes in the introduction to George, “because, following the suicide of my mother, Sylvia Plath, on 11 February 1963, my father, Ted Hughes, found it difficult to settle.” Her parents play a small role on the memoir’s pages, though the reverberations of their loss are felt throughout; most explicitly, Hughes notes the surreal feeling of strangers knowing, or believing to know, the intimacies of her personal history. (In the early aughts, the filmmakers behind the 2003 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Sylvia requested that Hughes grant them the right to use Plath’s poems. The film, Hughes wrote in her own poem, “My Mother,” would be “for anyone lacking the ability / To imagine the body, head in oven, / Orphaning children.” Needless to say, she did not grant the request.)

As a child, the ability to keep animals became an elusive sign of permanence—“if I had a pet it should mean that I’d have found a home in which to be stationary,” she writes—something she says she has finally found.

During the five months of George, Hughes was grappling with the impending dissolution of a marriage—she and her husband had, three years earlier, moved together from his native Australia to Wales and he longed to return home—and her own chronic fatigue. An incessantly needy and increasingly tricksy young magpie proved to be a consuming diversion for Hughes, though not everyone was as charmed by his penchant for stealing food off plates or landing on heads. “Oh, there’s a magpie on the sofa,” Hughes quotes one visitor saying “with an offhand sort of grimace.” As a reader, it’s hard not to fall a little in love with him, an attachment aided by Hughes’s illustrations of him that run throughout the text.

Hughes has long been attracted to what she describes as “the wounded and the limping.” As a child, she says, “there were lots of little tragedies because I wanted to save everything, and couldn’t”—a theme that continues in her memoir. “If only I could have found it before the cat and the fly eggs,” she writes of another orphaned bird that died in her care, “if only I had a magic wand.” Still, as much as she acknowledges the difficult inevitability of death, she clocks lifeforce all around too. Of the wiggly garden creatures she collects to feed to baby George: “If worms had only a single thought in their little nematode bodies, it was that they wanted to LIVE.”

Before our interview, Hughes had been riding around the countryside on her motorbike when it broke down, stranding her, but she seems unbothered by the hiccup outside of apologizing that it had made her late for the call. There’s a forward momentum to her, a sort of indefatigable sense of thrust. One accepts difficulty, and moves forward. “He’s stuck on the ground,” she says fondly of Wyddfa, before we say goodbye—but “he makes the most of it.”

Here, we discuss George, learning to open up after years of secrecy, and how to love despite the promise of loss.

Vanity Fair: I’m always interested in the why now of memoir. What made you want to revisit this time with George?

Frieda Hughes: Well, actually, I wrote it as George happened. A year later, I turned it into a book and then I tried to get it published. I had a publisher who was interested and then, I'll be perfectly frank, my brother committed suicide, and I thought I can't actually cope with the book and dealing with my brother's death at the same time, and so I put it on the back burner.

When, finally, my brother's affairs were all sorted out, and everything else, I thought, okay, I can revisit the book, I can get back to my art, I can get back to my painting and my poetry. I think I probably rewrote the book over the following years. Then I wrote an article about keeping owls for the Financial Times, and Cecil Gayford, my editor, saw this article and said to my agent, would Frieda consider writing about her love for birds, and she said, well, she already has.

I have a new appreciation for magpies after reading the book—I had always really loved crows and ravens, but I hadn't thought so much about magpies.

Where I live in the country, magpies are not regarded with great affection. They're regarded as pests and killers of baby birds. They get an awful lot of bad press, but in fact, all corvids are more interested in clearing up dead things. Ravens are apparently the supreme intelligence of the corvids; crows are very serious—so smart, so clever, but very, very serious. Magpies are complete imps, absolutely mischievous, curious. Honestly, I swear they have a sense of humor.

I remember a couple of girlfriends coming to visit and one of them was taking loads of photographs, and George was performing for them. He sat on my head, he nibbled my eyelashes, which is a bit unnerving because I could feel his beak against my eyeball, but he was adorable, and afterwards, my friend contacted me and said, "Frieda, I took all these photos and you can hardly see him. He's just a little bird." The thing is, we can't photograph the personality, can we, and that's what's so frustrating. His personality was extraordinary, and one of the things that really hooked its way into my heart was the fact that he related to me. The dogs would come up for a pet or a stroke or a snack, but George would look at what I was doing and play with it. When I was doing sketches of him, he would come and sit on the paper and try and pull the lines off the paper.

He was probably only a couple of days old when you found him. I wondered how you think that played into the attachment that you had to George, that you had rescued him and that he needed you.

Hugely, because the more needy and desperate an animal or bird is, the higher up the priority list they come. George really needed feeding. He had the droopy wing, I didn't even know if he would ever learn to feed himself. It wasn't until I was working in the garden and I would uncover, on more than one occasion, a dead mouse, and George would be watching and suddenly, he appears and grabs the mouse and flies off and I thought, you know what? I think George is going to be fine.

It is such a different project to raise an animal with the hope that they will be able to return to the wild. I think that's something that most people don't experience. Usually, you're raising an animal who you hope will be with you till the very end. In some ways, your experience seems almost much more like child-rearing where the goal is for children to grow up and take care of themselves.

In George's case, I was very, very torn. Part of me wanted him to stay, desperately. But it doesn't matter how much we love people or animals. At some point, we are going to have to let go, if we don't die first. They are going to go off to a new life; children grow up and leave home. Some parents are really happy about that, other parents, less so.

It's the same with partners. Sometimes we die, sometimes we fall out of love. We only borrow people. I believe in making the most of it, but also I believe in not ever keeping anything or anyone prisoner of one's own affectionate imposition. There are people I love, but if they feel that they need to go, I ain't going to be the one to stop them. I would only wish them wings, as it were. Loving people and animals so that you can let them go when you need to, if you ever need to, I think that is the best—difficult, but the best.

In the book, you wrote about your now ex-husband. There was a mirroring going on—him wanting to go back to where he was from, and dealing with that in the relationship as you were also dealing with the fact that your bird was wanting to go back to the wild, where he was from.

Yes, very much. He had said that he wanted to move back when he got old, only he wasn't able to tell me what old meant. He was 14 years older than me, so he was 14 years ahead of where my head was. He, too, ultimately needed his freedom. One might make all the effort one could to make things nice, but if somebody wants to go, they want to go—and also, quite often, by the time they want to go, we are quite glad for them to go.

In George's case, not. But having said that, he was complicated by these bad habits he developed, like the one of jumping on heads, which scared my elderly neighbor to the point where she wouldn't go out of the house if there were magpies in the garden. Hence the aviary, that enormous aviary, now populated by six very large Eurasian eagle owls.

They are alluded to at the very end of the book. I want to hear about who you have right now.

The first owl was Arthur, with the broken wing. Three of the owls that I have were given to me by other people who could no longer look after them; one had an operation on his shoulder, and another one was just incredibly sick and had diabetes, and so I got these owls and they came with two eggs. So I bought an incubator and hatched Charlie and Mac in 2015, and then two years later came Eddie, and they are fabulous. They're very, very handleable. They come in the house for a couple of hours at night just to play around in the kitchen

In the time period of the book you were working on a collection of autobiographical poems, which seemed to take a lot out of you emotionally. Over the years, how have you juggled a desire for a certain amount of privacy, but then also wanting to draw from your life and feelings in your writing?

I'm working on balancing it all the time, because the answer is I'm not sure how to balance it. When I was younger and my father was still alive, the wish to be private on his behalf, not to say... I'll give you an example. The other kids would come back from a weekend and say, we did this and we did that and we did the other. I wasn't ever sure what I could give away or not give away, what would be okay.

In my first book of poems, it became really difficult because that's where we start, with our innermost emotions and feelings. I had all these poems boiling away. For years, I wrote poetry and never told anybody. Ultimately, I worked up to showing my dad my poems. He'd have criticism, and finally one day—I think I must have been about 15, 16, 17—I said, "Daddy, don't you have anything good to say?" He looked at me in complete surprise and he said, "But I thought you knew they were very good. I was only mentioning the bits that need pushing.” From then on, he would say, “Okay, this bit's brilliant and that works really well.” He was a very good teacher, but at the same time, I was trying not to read any of his poetry or my mother's poetry because I didn't want to be influenced.

My first book I wrote while I had chronic fatigue. I wanted to be autobiographical and I didn't dare. I'd trained myself so seriously to be private for the family's sake. So allegory became my best friend. And then in 2007, I set myself certain parameters for the autobiographical poetry book, 45. One was that I could be open about myself. When you say it must have been emotionally taxing or challenging, it was, because it was like stripping my skin off because I wasn't used to it. I hadn't had that practice.

In the end, as I get older, I think, does it matter? I'm getting older. One day, we're going to die. If I was publishing my autobiography at the age of 96, I wouldn't care much about what I put in it. I'd just put everything in it, but I'd have to be 96 because then I know I was probably on the way out. So I don't know. I'm working on it.

You wrote in the book about the strange ways that either people react to you once they realize who your parents are.

It's very odd because until they bring it up, I labor under the illusion that I'm the only person standing where I'm standing. The moment they bring it up, I feel the spot on where I'm standing is now quite crowded with all three of us.

In your poem “Mother,” you’re writing about the strange idea that there are people who are portraying your parents in different ways and dramatizing, or writing biographies or making movies. Is that something that has gotten easier, emotionally, as you have dealt with it over the course of your life?

One of the difficulties is when people make up whole sentences and relationships and ways of speaking and there's nothing to support it. I've been very determined to make a home in which I feel safe, and create my own support and not look at those things because there's no point. I could rant and rave. I'm not going to change anything.

So poetry is where I put things I feel very, very strongly about, and reading a poem like that on stage, you feel as though you're delivering it as a killer blow. It might only be for one moment in the ether, but it's something. When people reinvent my parents, it'd be like anybody reinventing yours or anybody else's parents. It's wounding and it takes them away.

When articles or books have come out that depict negative versions of your parents’ relationship, do you just try to steer clear of that as well?

Well, they're rehashing it. It's been written about a lot. There was the very good recent biography by Heather Clark, Red Comet, very thorough. I had to read that for permissions, and I thought it was a really masterful piece of work. It didn't impose judgment and it didn't guess at anything. Everything was backed by research and reading, and for that reason, I found it really impressive.

You have this rule, you wrote, to live each day the best you can no matter what—having experienced significant and public loss, and then also dealing with chronic health problems, how have you kept that up?

I can't believe I was in such pain when I was looking after George. I still get back pains, I still have problems with it, but I'm so much better. I work out at the gym three times a week, I do the gardening. I'm actually in better nick than I was then, and although they say that we never get rid of chronic fatigue, it's like a little warning sign; if I ever feel that coming, I now know, hey, I'm doing something wrong

A journalist actually asked me after my brother died, "Do you now want to kill yourself?" Part of me wanted to slam the phone down on her, but I thought, I actually think I know where that question's coming from. Because it would be what's in everybody's mind, or certainly a lot of people's mind, she just spoke it, she just put it out there. I'm the only one left in my little family. Somebody has to live life like it matters. My attitude is very much that I need, for my sake and for theirs, to make my life matter.

#writing #frieda hughes #poetry #art

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sacredjoanne · 9 months

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INFP 5w4: Personality Breakdown

The INFP 5w4 is a human dichotomy of scholar and dreamer that creates a fascinating, albeit slightly perplexing, personality cocktail.

They’re the kind who’d lose themselves in a hefty tome of ancient philosophy, and yet can also be found spinning intricate daydreams about rescuing dragons from vile knights.

This type is introspective, creative, and driven by a desire for knowledge on one hand, and a thirst for meaningful connection and self-expression on the other.

As an INFP – the “Mediator” in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – they naturally gravitate towards idealism, creativity, and seeing the best in people.

But hold on, these people are not just about feelings and sunshine. We have a 5w4 in the Enneagram system skulking in the backdrop.

As a 5w4, they’re introspective, love to analyze (probably overanalyze), and have a keen quest for knowledge.

Mingle the INFP’s empathy with the 5w4’s introspection, and voila, you have the INFP 5w4: a Hogwarts Ravenclaw who has a secret stash of heartwarming Hallmark cards.

INFP 5w4 in a Nutshell

Strengths: Empathetic, Analytical, Creative.

Weaknesses: Overthinker, Isolated, Idealistic.

Soulmate: A person who can match their intellectual curiosity while giving them space and nurturing their sensitive side.

Guidance: Don’t forget to pop out of your introspective bubble and join the rest of us in the chaos occasionally. It’s quite fun, I promise.

What Is The INFP 5w4 Like?

You know how INFPs are, right?

The dreamy-eyed eccentrics of the MBTI world who’ve probably written five unpublished novels and have a weird obsession with collecting vintage teacups.

INFPs are introspective, creative, and have an uncanny knack for finding beauty in the bleak.

Now, over to the 5w4 Enneagram type. This is your quintessential “mad scientist” or the brooding poet in a dank attic.

Fives are intensely curious, forever diving into new hobbies – mostly of the nerdy variety – and they’re as private as a hermit crab.

The Four-wing adds a dash of creativity and a heaping spoonful of emotional intensity.

Now, mix the mystical INFP with the quirky 5w4 and you’ve got yourself an ethereal chimera – half dreamy idealist, half reclusive scholar.

An INFP 5w4 is like a fairy living in a library, fluttering between tomes of ancient wisdom and daydreaming about alternate universes.

They’re the ones you’ll find philosophizing at a party instead of playing beer pong.

They’re a pair of contradictory forces, yin and yang of introspection and creativity. Oh, and they’re probably still waiting for their Hogwarts letter.

What Are the Main Traits of the INFP 5w4 Personality?

INFP 5w4 Strengths

Ultra-Creative

Authentic

Abstract-Thinking

Empathetic

Idealistic

INFP 5w4 Struggles

Oversensitive

Can be Disorganized

Overthinking

Unrealistic

Reserved

As an INFP 5w4, you’re a walking talking creativity factory, and that’s fantastic because this world could really use a touch of color.

Plus, with your empathy level cranked up to 11, you’re practically an emotional GPS for your friends – you cry when they cry, and you laugh when they… well, stub their toe.

You’re as authentic as a Gucci purse in a Milanese boutique but your ideals are occasionally more suited to a Disney movie than real life.

And let’s not forget, you’re an introverted party animal who sometimes forgets that socializing doesn’t equal inviting five cats over for a Netflix binge.

Not to mention, your intricate mental world could really use a Marie Kondo session… or ten.

Your tendency to overthink can cause an existential crisis about what brand of cereal to buy and taking action is like running a marathon in flip flops.

So, while your strengths make you the empathetic, idealist, creative powerhouse that you are, your weaknesses can sometimes throw more spanners in the works than a clumsy mechanic.

But hey, nobody’s perfect – and if they were, I’d have nothing to write about.

What Sets INFP 5w4s Apart From Other INFP Types?

The Intellectual Lovechild of Isolation

INFP 5w4s are like the typical INFPs- except they’ve been spending a little too much time in the library.

They’re the nerds on steroids of the MBTI world, solving complex equations in their heads while passionately arguing about the emotional depth of a Nirvana song.

What a weird, thrilling combo, right?

This bunch is drawn towards knowledge and understanding that they are often lost in their little intellectual bubble.

Other INFP types? They’re busy frolicking through the fields of feelings, not as consumed by the endless pursuit of wisdom.

The Loner versus the Social Butterfly

Every INFP likes a bit of alone time, sure. But our INFP 5w4 pals take this whole idea of “me time” to a new level.

They’re the embodiment of “alone but not lonely.”

In fact, they often prefer solitude to social gatherings to recharge and ponder over life’s mysteries.

This differs from other INFPs who still enjoy the occasional boogie on the dance floor or a heart-to-heart with friends.

Your Personal Sherlock Holmes

INFP 5w4s have a unique knack for observation that would totally win them a round of “I spy with my little eye.”

They’re detail-oriented and have an uncanny ability to catch the nuances missed by other INFP types.

These guys could probably deduce your favorite childhood toy from a brief conversation.

It’s all fun and games until they start guessing your passwords.

Unlike other INFPs, who operate more on vibes and feelings, these detective-wannabes tend to base their analysis on the cold, hard facts.

What Are The Major Fears and Desires of the INFP 5w4?

Fears

Being overwhelmed by the world and its demands.

Being seen as incapable or incompetent.

Being too exposed or vulnerable.

Becoming useless, redundant, or irrelevant.

Losing their cherished independence.

Having their thoughts and feelings invalidated.

Being misunderstood or misinterpreted.

Desires

To possess a profound understanding of the world around them.

To be seen as insightful and capable.

To express their unique individuality without fear.

To create lasting, meaningful impact in their chosen arena.

To maintain their independence and personal autonomy.

To communicate their thoughts and feelings accurately.

To be fully understood and accepted.

Now for the juicy part. These fears and desires are like the rudder of the INFP 5w4’s ship, steering them through the stormy seas of life.

Their fear of becoming obsolete, for instance, might make them the Hermione Granger of their friend group, constantly hoarding knowledge like a dragon with gold.

On the flip side, their desire to express their unique individuality might make them the Picasso of their era, creating art that’s as eccentric as their Aunt Edna’s holiday fruitcake.

In essence, these fears and desires push our INFP 5w4 to seek out knowledge and understanding while maintaining their precious autonomy.

How Do I Know If I’m An INFP 5w4?

Here’s how to figure out if you’re an INFP 5w4 or if you’ve just been watching too many moody indie movies lately.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Do I daydream about saving the world, but get anxious at the thought of a group meeting?

If you’re an INFP 5w4, you’ve got big dreams and a little bit of social anxiety. You’re the superhero that’s just too introverted to leave the house.

Am I a philosopher in skinny jeans?

Deep thoughts? Check. Trendy outfits? Check. INFP 5w4s are like the existential hipsters of the personality world.

Do I love humanity but kind of hate people?

This might sound like a contradiction, but INFP 5w4s are the type to dream of world peace while having a ‘no visitors’ sign on their door.

Do I feel misunderstood or am I just listening to too much Billie Eilish?

INFP 5w4 types often feel misunderstood. Or maybe it’s just too many moody tunes.

Do I enjoy solitude or am I just allergic to drama?

For INFP 5w4s, a quiet night with a good book often trumps a night out on the town.

Key Signs and Behavior Patterns

Deep Diver

You’re not afraid to dive deep into your own emotions. You probably know yourself better than you know your Netflix password.

Solo Artist

You prefer a solo stakeout in the corner of a coffee shop rather than a buzzing social event. And let’s face it, your alone time is anything but lonely.

Creative Soul

You’ve got more creativity in your pinky finger than most people have in their whole body. You’re the Da Vinci of daydreams.

Sensitive Sage

Sure, you are sensitive, but also wise beyond your years. You’re like a fortune cookie wrapped in a wool knit sweater.

Idealistic Introvert

You have big dreams for a world you’d rather observe from a distance. You’re basically an introverted superhero.

Philosophy Fanatic

You could be fascinated by everything from Star Wars theories to the meaning of life. It’s all about the big picture for you, even if that picture includes lightsabers.

Drama-Dodger

Despite your emotional depth, you try to avoid drama like it’s the last slice of pizza at a party. You’ve got enough going on in your own head, thank you very much!

What’s The INFP 5w4 Man Like?

Daydreaming Dynamo

Hold on to your hats, because a male INFP 5w4 is about to take you on a 4D roller coaster ride through his imagination.

These guys are like the Lovechild of Picasso and Tolkien, with an imagination that’s so rich, it makes Warren Buffet blush.

They’re also world-class daydreamers, doing anything from fighting intergalactic wars to being the last human savior – all while waiting for their morning coffee to brew.

Emotionally Intense Introverts

Our INFP pals are like adorable little hermit crabs – they retreat into their shells at the slightest hint of conflict.

They’ve got emotions as profound as the Mariana Trench, and they feel everything intensely.

This emotional depth can make them seem a bit moody or aloof, but in reality, they’re just having a heart-to-heart chat with their own feelings.

Seekers of Significance

INFP 5w4 dudes are a bit like Indiana Jones on a relentless quest for significance in their lives.

They want to do something meaningful, not just pay the bills or master the art of microwave cooking.

Don’t be surprised if they change careers or hobbies more often than Taylor Swift drops a new album – they’re not flaky, they’re just constantly looking for their ‘grand purpose’ plot twist.

What’s The INFP 5w4 Woman Like?

The “Who, Me?” Complex

These ladies could seriously win an Oscar for their portrayal of “Innocent Bystander” in any conflict.

They’re peacemakers to the core, so if you ever find yourself in a squabble with an INFP 5w4, there’ll be more shoulder shrugs than at a chiropractic convention.

They’re as non-confrontational as a goldfish in a fishbowl.

Sensitive Nooks and Crannies

Picture an English muffin – they’re all soft with loads of warm, tender insides, right? That’s your INFP 5w4 gal.

They feel feelings on a level that Dante didn’t even get to in “Inferno”.

But hey, at least their emotional depth makes them a hit at poetry slams and indie music festivals.

Curious Cats

They love to learn, research, and probe the depths of whatever interests them.

Whether it’s the mating habits of snails or the life cycle of a star, you bet they’ll have a seven-book series ready to recommend.

They’re like the Hermione Granger of reality – but with less magic and more melancholy.

INFP 5w4s In Relationships & Compatibility

Dating an INFP 5w4? Sweet baby Jesus, you’re in for a ride.

This rare personality combo is an intriguing blend of introspective philosophers and passionate idealists.

Charmingly elusive, they have loads of deep thoughts, feelings, and wow, what a wall of solitude when they need alone time.

MBTI Matches

ENFJ: You know how magnets work, right? The strong, extroverted ENFJ blends beautifully with the introverted, dreamy INFP. Sparks fly, just like a Nicholas Sparks movie, but without the inevitable tragedy.

INFJ: Imagine two psychic unicorns reading each other’s minds. Yeah, that’s the INFP-INFJ combo. Lots of beautiful understandings and bonding over shared idealism.

ENFP: Pair the INFP 5w4 with the slightly more outgoing and extroverted ENFP, and you get “Party in the front, introspection in the back” – kind of a personality mullet.

Enneagram Matches

4w5: The INFP 5w4 and 4w5 are like two peas in a misunderstood, individualistic pod. They understand each other’s need for authenticity and solitude, basically the “you get me” kind of relationship.

9w1: This combo is like a hammock on a lazy afternoon, peaceful yet deeply meaningful. The 9w1’s calm demeanor beautifully balances the intensity of the INFP 5w4.

6w5: The 6w5 brings a level of loyalty and security that the INFP 5w4 deeply appreciates. It’s like having a home security system, but it understands your fears and validates your feelings.

Tips for Interacting with INFP 5w4s

Understand the Space-time Continuum: INFP 5w4s need their solitude like sourdough needs a good rise. Give them their space, and they’ll be all yours when they emerge from their introspective cocoon.

Dig Deep: Skip the weather chat – it’s the intellectual and emotional deep-sea diving they crave. Ask them about their dreams or favorite Russian novel, and boom! You’re on their favorite-people list.

Patience, Young Grasshopper: With an INFP 5w4, relationships are a slow dance, not a rave. Give it time. Remember slow burns create the most enduring heat. It’s like making a good Bolognese.

Best Careers For The INFP 5w4

Key Skills

Communication

Creativity

Problem-Solving

Critical Thinking

Teamwork

Best Jobs

Counseling/Psychology

Writing and Editing

Teaching and Education

Art and Design

Environmental Science

The INFP 5w4 personality type is well-suited to careers that leverage their empathy, creativity, and desire for deep understanding.

Key fields include Counseling/Psychology, where their strong communication and problem-solving skills can help others navigate their emotions.

Writing and Editing, which allows them to express their creativity and critical thinking.

Teaching and Education, where they can influence others positively and satisfy their love for lifelong learning.

Art and Design, which provides an outlet for their creativity and individuality.

Environmental Science, where they can make a difference by preserving the environment.

These careers also benefit from their ability to work well in teams, adapt to new situations, and think critically to solve problems.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it, the elusive INFP 5w4, a rare combo of dreamy introverts and analytical observers.

They’re a medley of sunset gazing from a window while simultaneously dissecting the meaning of life – fascinating, right?

Remember, folks, knowing your personality type isn’t just a party trick.

It’s the key to understanding why you can’t help but ponder existence while everyone else is doing the Macarena.

Boom! Personal growth and healthier relationships, here you come.

Official post by Joanne at Sacred Joanne

https://sacredjoanne.com/infp-5w4-personality/

#astrology #personality types #mbti #enneagram #symbolism

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