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#i have just already seen crossover memes on tumblr and twitter
blade-king-luze · 3 years
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30 Followers!!
OOC: Wow wait for a moment ... 30 followers? AAH Sorry, moments like these give me happy moments kj;asldfkh QQ
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Even if the numbers are small, 30 actually means a lot especially for this character. I have never thought I would reach this many for Luze. He’s SO underrated and literally not well known! And the amount of followers I get for him just makes me a bit gushy. I know, weird ... But I do appreciate it! <3 Thank you all so much for the Asks, too! I never thought I would receive so many!  I will put a border down below just because I also want to say something more to you guys if you don’t mind. But for those who just wanted to see a few words,  I can’t express my gratitiude to you all still active, especially in the Uraboku Community!
I will do my upmost ability to bring you more Luze and some of Luka content!
Notes to Navigate my Page:  Hello, newcomers! 
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I just want to leave a note here just in case people are lost or don’t know where to even look. Next to his icon image, there is a Navigation tool. 
Luze Crosszeria and Gale Spider (Mun) Hey it’s me and Luze Crosszeria! If you want to read more about Luze, here is his page along with my Mun page. Now you know who is behind this blog.
Fortress Gallery (Art by Mun), #Gale Spider As you can tell, the title says it all. This is all the art I have done about Luze only. So feel free to check it out! 
Undocumented Files, #Unheard Words This section is all the stories/fanfiction I typed that involve around Luze Crosszeria or Other’s perspectives that involve Luze. There are also little messages like this one as well. Some characters are present to make his stories more compelling and shows how I think he would react to different settings and events depending on who he is with or what has happen. It makes me bring out his personality more and I still hope that I can convey it properly through these stories!  Terminology for Luze can be seen here
Aesthetics, #In the Mind of the King A fun little section that revolves around looking what’s inside Luze’s mind from what he has seen, or what his thoughts are like. Some may be cherishable to him, some may be traumatic from his experience. Whatever it may be, feel free to look through from his past, present sightings, thoughts, or possessions. 
Fragments, #Fragments of the Past This section involves his actual appearance in both the Anime and Manga.  Kind of a dead section considering I have found most images or GIFs that consists of Luze. There are some I made to bring out more of his appearance. I might just compile more images if I can from what they have. All rights clearly belong to the creators of Uraboku/Betrayal Knows My Name.
Letters from Others, #Answered Letters A page dedicated to the Asks I received from Anons or other bloggers. There are some Character Memes located here too. I am legit surprised from the amount of Asks I got from you all though. I would have thought I would just do little by little, once in a blue moon, but it’s a good amount nonetheless! Thank you all so much for letting me at least bring him out more QQ.  Feel free to drop any Asks or Comments (or written letters in this case) to him!
Hashtags:
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Honestly, this layout took me awhile to get used to. I am not so knowledgeable nor creative with Tumblr at all and still learning as I go!  If you want to look for specific hashtags, click on the ellipsis right above the post.  There are specific Hashtags that follow the links above, or other characters if you want to look at that corresponds with Luze. I will add more if there are more characters.
#Forsaken Twin = Luka Crosszeria #Dearest Leader = Reiga Giou (Kanata Wakamiya) #Precious Light = Yuki Giou (The Light) #Zweilt Guardians (TBA) = The Zweilts #Little Companion = Sodom #Lord of All = Lucifer  #Reiga’s Affiliation = Cadenza, Elegy
#Otherworldly Beings = Crossovers
I wanted to say that I am glad that I had the opportunity to open this blog for him just for the fun of it. But it’s becoming something on the side that I also enjoy doing once in awhile every time I hop on Tumblr.
I used to be into FFXIV content but that crave got waaay too over the top for me as I see everyone I played with kind of is ... Over-the-top-hyped, especially on Twitter. It honestly killed my mood to the point where I had to step away from the “Craziness” by a large margin and enjoy it my own way.  And from Twitter, mind you.
But it wasn’t until Luze Crosszeria came across. He made me realized, I could do my own thing. I don’t need to be caught up with everyone.  Just go on your own pace. Do what you love, and don’t follow the trend but your own different path. Dare to be different rather than be the same.
I felt pressured to be caught up with everyone in FFXIV because I had raid and many artists did so much crossovers with their own characters with other trending games coming out. Honestly, I did that for awhile. But whenever I tried to, I just never feel any opportunity to finish or start it. It’s just something about drawing FFXIV characters that get to me. I don’t know what it is, but I would only draw my Au Ra, Krowell Raggs because he was already based off of another character, Ayanami from 07 Ghost. Maybe I am not original enough.
Maybe I am just a sucker for other existing characters that look compelling or have so many relatable aspects towards my life situations. If they don’t have that much background information, it’s always fun to find hints or other canon/non canon things about them. Maybe even go deeper onto how they will react or progress through situations. It began with Ayanami from 07 Ghost, where I would do so much fanart of him because of that relation and his story was tragic even though it wasn’t strongly brought out. But you can tell from his emotions, how he reacts to other people, and how he became to be. I was conflicted of doing FFXIV and 07 Ghost art at the same time. However, as I said, Luze was introduced in my imaginations/stories and he completely removed my thoughts of raiding, being caught up, and backing away from something I really never put my mind into. 
And I am very grateful for him persuading me to. Even though this seems like an internal thought thing, and he may be a fictional character, but I always look back to where I first discovered him and think, “Man. Luze was the one who started it all: Stop raiding to have my own downtime. Draw what you want and NEVER feel forced to. Focus on your own interests and play other games that you love rather than where everyone is at times.” Trust me on the last bit. I still need to get through Othercide.
Anyway,  I know I have said this many times but I don’t know what else to do to express my gratitude.  Thank you so very much for following this blog!  It truly means a lot that I am able to bring this little known character to life. Would I use different web formats to bring him out more? Who knows! Still considering if I should relocate my stories to different writing sites!
In the mean time, I will try my best to keep up Luze here for you all.  And for those who are Luka fans, I will also try my best to let that happen! Love you all! And remember, to love each other! <3
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dykedteach · 4 years
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003 and Jack Rackham (Black Sails) for the ask meme
003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:
How I feel about this character:
I remember taking a little while to warm up to him, and I remember that the first time I really liked him as a character was when he confronts Anne and Max and does his whole “I only ever wanted you to be happy” bit. From then on, it was easy sailing (ha), and I loved him more and more as I watched more episodes. I think I’m more similar to him than most of the other big players - there’s definitely more Jack in me than Flint, Silver, or Anne, god love them all. I adore the underdog arc he goes through, and christ does he get some fantastic scenes and lines. For all we talk about the many incredible speeches of Black Sails, Jack’s moments seem to fly under the radar. When I wrote Black Sails fanfiction, I never intended to write Jack, not really - I was very focused on Silverflint, which was fine by me. But then he crept in, along with lots of other characters, and suddenly I found he was my favourite person to write, and I was making situations in this Silverflint fic where it became necessary to include Jack more. The inevitable happened, and I wrote a few stories with Jack as a main character. Only one of them made it to AO3, but there’s still plenty on my notes app and tumblr drafts. (It’s here, if you want to read it). 
It’s been a good long while since I last watched Black Sails - I keep meaning to rewatch it, and I know now really is the perfect opportunity, but I keep discovering other things and it’s hard. But the longer I go without watching it, the more fond of Jack I seem to get when I see him float across my dashboard. I really do love him, and it’s so hard to put my Black Sails faves in an order, but he’s definitely in the top five. Sometimes, he’s as high as number two. I love him, and I love the way Schmitz played him (and all the various insights he’s given into Jack since, even years later, god bless him).
Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:
I feel conflicted about it, but I do love him with Anne (but I tend to prefer it early canon/pre-canon). Charles, for sure. Silver, because fuck it. Mark Read, I guess, although it’s never really something I think about?
My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:
Anne. Their relationship is one of my top tier favourites in Black Sails full stop. I love the relationship he has with Max too. 
My unpopular opinion about this character:
I remember the days when this used to be an unpopular opinion, but from the faint flutters of BS content I get on my dash these days it seems like it isn’t as unpopular as it was back in 2017 - I definitely see him as bisexual. Maybe it’s projection, maybe I’m incapable of loving a character unless I can point my finger at them and go “BI”, but I definitely think I have grounds for doing so with Jack. 
OH - also almost nobody gets his modern au fashion right, there’s no way 21st century rackham would be seen with the sideburns, he’d be a skinny jean wearing glam rock instagram asshole and i love him for it
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:
I wish so badly that he’d had more scenes with Flint and Silver, but Silver especially. I also remember thinking up an alternate ending years ago (or, maybe an extended ending? like a season 4.5) where he and anne get caught just like in the real history - anne gets her moment to yell about fighting like dogs, she gets thrown in jail, and we think jack’s about to be hanged. the british hang a man they believe to be jack rackham, they let anne bonny go home to a house they believe belongs to her father once she pleads the belly, and nassau believes jack and anne to be gone forever. but of course, we pan to philadelphia, to a set of apartments where two women fuss over a red haired baby, and a man missing his ridiculous trademark sideburns complains about the cold. 
Favorite friendship for this character:
Aside from the ones already mentioned, I do love a bit of Jack/Featherstone banter. Also his little mentorship with Teach is wonderful.
My crossover ship:
not even as a ship but like. I remember seeing someone post about the parallels between him and fitzjames and whoever it was had their third eye FULLY open, so i’d love to think of them somehow, illogically, crossing paths. also seeing toby and tobias interact on twitter/toby fully fanboy over tobias on multiple occasions has SENT ME and i wish there were more people i could yell at about it #
thanks for sending this, sorry if it got a little long winded!!! <3
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shidiand · 7 years
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how i like to spot reposted pictures
YOU WILL NEED:
Reblog Graphs. You don’t really need this, it just brings up the root post’s tags nice and easy. To turn Graphs on, go to Account > Settings > Labs.
Eyes. Most people on Tumblr are good here
Skepticism. Most people on Tumblr are not good here
Tea. You may encounter circumstances where tea will taste very good
Excellent! Put on your thinking caps, and let’s get sleuthing.
None of these are hard rules, but they should ring some alarm bells:
Tags for literally everything in the picture(s), far beyond the normal first 5 that are actually registered in tumblr tags. Actually, some legitimate artists do tag everything, but like. You’ll know. No tags at all isn’t an absolute free pass, either, but at least the poster isn’t trying to jam this into every tag possible
Minor tip-off: No “art tag” tag like “my art” or “[something to do with their name] art” or “my [art noun]”. Also not a hard rule, many artists don’t have an art tag. Most reposters, however, would never go as far as to claim that art as theirs. That would be stealing! They’re just sharing for awareness. And notes! Haha!
Un-tipoff: Artist name in tags or original comment or source. Good! Ideally the reposter has secured permission from the original artist to repost, too, those folks are the best, but putting down some kind of source or artist name shows the intention of giving credit. We’re not too concerned with these people (permission to repost is a different can of worms), we’re looking for OP impersonators.
Original comment doesn’t quite sound like something an artist would say about their own work. OK, this tip empirically sucks but You’ll know it when you see it. Something immodest like, “This is breath-taking!“ or “I laughed” or “The best __ I’ve ever seen”. It might resemble something attached to something you’d see on your Facebook timeline. It might not. No comment at all doesn’t guarantee genuine or fake, though.
Confirming your suspicions (Actually you can skip to this part directly): Time to look into OP’s blog. I like to use their archive, since it gives me a good look at photo posts and tags pretty easily, but keep in mind that photo posts examined in this manner only show the first photo in a photoset.
By far, the most obvious giveaway will be dramatic inconsistencies in the artstyle of posted works.
 Take, for example, [NSF W blog, click at own risk] this fine photoset-- environment-focused, very colourful, lineless Touhou x Pokemon crossovers, tagged liberally.
Another post on the blog: clean lines, large anime eyes, extremely well-(and differently!) shaded, has @kikugetsu‘s signature at the bottom, tagged liberally. 
Yet another post on the blog: pixel art animation, also doesn’t look quite like the first. Tagged liberally.
 One more: Four panel comic, in English, with yet another colouring, lineart, and shading style. Tagged liberally (”#meme #Funny Memes”).
Sure, some artists are very skilled and can change up their artstyle quite a bit, but this is going a bit far.
Final checking: Reverse image searching. Very easy to do! In Chrome, it can be as easy as right-clicking a picture and selecting “Search Google for Image”; however, Google doesn’t handle pictures from twitter or pixiv very well and sometimes just burps up a buttload of irrelevant photos anyways, so if it’s from an anime fandom (artists tend to post on those sites), I would use saucenao.com. 
In this case, you would right-click the picture and copy the address to the image -> go to saucenao -> advanced options -> paste URL -> get sauce. If you find a definite hit to a picture, you should be able to examine the artist’s profile and websites and make some more judgements. Does the artist already have a completely different tumblr? Do they speak a different language on their websites? Did another image search from the inspected tumblr lead to a different artist? Use your judgement.
Some final thoughts:
Sometimes (especially on twitter), you post a cool picture to share it with your close circle of friends, it gets retweeted/reblogged a couple of times, which becomes a lot of times, and suddenly your nice casual share has turned into a deceptive-looking repost. WHOOPS. I get you, I get you, warn’t in a source posting mood, was chilling or gunning for a laugh. I still believe it’s a very good practice to pay your respects to the good Original Artists with a little source on the side, but I’m not as mad as I could be.
Sometimes you post a cool picture to spread the awareness, so that others can be awash in the greatness of this high quality content just like you. Neat! Consider reblogging from a direct source or repost with permission if you can find one, linking to one if there isn’t one on tumblr, or getting permission yourself (not as hard or scary as you’d think!).
Sometimes you spread your noodly attention-seeking tentacle arms all over the tags and pleasure yourself to sound of misguided notes rolling in. If this is you, please reconsider your life choices and your decision to disrespect artists.
Original artists of pictures used in examples:
@nin086, more active on twitter https://twitter.com/ninten86
@kikugetsu, direct source of image here
@migelhososi, direct source
@yoruny, direct source
If you found this PSA helpful, I recommend (once again) learning about artists and permissions. I have a tag of some useful posts here.
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waldowski89-blog · 7 years
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Two Lazy Weeks in the Making… (somewhere at the beginning of August 2017)
(Edit: Okay, the title sounds more dramatic than the actual bulk of this post but lets get into the ramblings of a madman who talks about nothing whilst trying to make it sound interesting. I’m also going to have to do a lot of writing as I want to catch up with all the post I’ve missed… which is a lot. Off we go into the post then)
(After Edit: Scroll to the credits music at the bottom and you can also listen to some albums/music that I listened to while writing this)
Hello again, I’m back! Not that I really left. I’ve been over on Twitch and Twitter mainly. So I’ve got lots of plans for social media stuff and am keeping myself busy. I know this shouldn’t be a diary type thing. Those can be boring. Especially mine seen as nothing much really happens in my life… honest!
I will be starting an Instagram account this week… yay! Please feel free to follow me on all my different accounts. It sounds like it’s all me me me (meme, har har) but I promise you it will all be entertaining… like a train wreck is entertaining. Tune in to watch a fully grown man go slowly insane. (Edit: That’s a laugh)
I’ve said before that: “Waldowski” is a character of mine and he is. However, my own personality seems to be… “shining” through in his work… or my work I suppose.
(12/8/17 (Edit: English style date)):
Right, so I wrote the top part a few days ago (Thurs 10/8/17 I think) and now I’m coming back to this. I’m going back to my old schedule and goals and adding a few things. When I do Twitch streams, which should be everyday. TWITCH STREAM ERRYDAY *AIRHORNS* I may do longer than an hour. I just bought Assassin’s Creed Origins too so stay tuned for that, exciting stuff! (Edit: I literally just bought it because I forgot to enter the discount code. What a mess!)
I was watching a vid earlier about Michael Jackson’s involvement in creating the music for Sonic 3. It was very interesting and I have heard about this before. The whole thing is pretty much confirmed now but it’s interesting to follow all the theories and research that’s been done into this. I won’t reiterate what’s already been said but I will link the recent vid on the subject. There are links in there too so hopefully I haven’t sent you into a research, insomniac inducing frenzy of a pit of information where you’re just holding a steaming cup of coffee with straggly hair and bloodshot eyes just looking for your next fix on that Michael Jackson/Sega music conspiracy… and breathe. Sorry for that long sentence, I got carried away.
Okay I’m back writing this again on 13/8/17. I’m going to finish this post tonight! I’m watching Key and Peele again. Those guys are funny, anyway, what I’m doing is writing out four pages by hand with my brilliant Parker fountain pen… okay… I think I’ve really lost it. I’m coming back out of retirement (secret link of more Key and Peele I didn’t post on twitter) (Edit: I put it in the Research section below too. Also, thanks to Philip DeFranco for the idea of a secret link. What fun!)
More plans are a: “Let’s Read” YouTube channel called: “Waldowski Reads”. I still have to get a few things to set that up first. It will be much like a let’s play channel but with me trying to read a book… funny, eh?
This kinda reminds me of when I’d do work at University. I’d have to set goals, plan things, etc… I have been doing this but falling behind lately. In any case none of that matters now. I’ve gotta move on and get on with actually doing stuff.
So, everything’s planned out for a little while for me. Anything happening out there? (apart from all the bad news of course. I already know about that stuff) I genuinely mean it too with following me on social media. I try to talk to as many people as I can nowadays.
Blergh, how did I do this before? A few months ago I’d bang out 1,000 words like it was nothing.
Oh my God, I totally forgot, Na Wri Mo (Edit: Almost, but it’s Na NO Wri Mo because it happens in November) is happening soon. Ugh, I’d always wanted to try it for years. What I’m worried about is one whether what I write will be any good, if I stick to it (quitting will feel like a massive failure for me) and if I’ll take it seriously (nothing should, I suppose) (Edit: Kinda gave up on the numbering of reasons, didn’t I ?) but I’ve had a tendency to let things travel into the realm of ridiculousness before… hmn, maybe that’s a good thing? It might turn out silly and fun for once. I’m not putting “The Vague Chronicles” in there either. Maybe the characters can crossover, I dunno.
It’s pretty much 12:00am as I write this. I’m gonna get it finished before I sleep anyway. So it’s four sides of handwritten A4 pages… did I already write that?
In any case, I keep liking vids on YouTube but they don’t stay liked (random I know but what else can I write… look at this shit. How the fuck is my Na Wri Mo (Edit: Pleb) project going to look? I don’t even have a plan Jesus Christ. Also yes I’m swearing… I’ve been drinking a little bit too. I’m not an example of how life should be lived… this is just an account of how I’m living mine)
Shit, I’m supposed to disappear. Well, at least in novel writing I am. Writing is about the characters not me, at least that what I’ve been told. I’ve also been told: “Write what you know”.
Back again. Been distracted by life. In… anyway what I was saying was ugh… it doesn’t matter I’m not supposed to be in the story, my characters are… but why do I become them sometimes? I have to… that’s the point.
So, this is the last page (handwritten anyway)
Damn, look at this, I’m letting myself get distracted at every turn. It’s 4:04 in the morning and I haven’t finished. I’ll have to type all this up tomorrow. Hello me! Weird right? You’re typing this up and I’m talking to you. (Edit: … yes very… I hope I get back to the point, whatever it was)
So, seriously. I dunno. This pen is kinda cool, right? Tired AndwewsiesTM. This will go up on Tumblr. I know I’m irrelevant at the moment. So drunk WHO CARES ABOUT THAT!? Nevermobf.
So, Assassin’s Creed Origins is coming soon… in October. Hopefully I’ll be ready to do a let’s play/stream hey I might even do an unboxing. It’s a collector’s edition with a figure and other stuff too. I’ll do it like the vid I’m showing someone now. Wink wink. (Edit: It was just me reading the handwritten version out… HUSHIES) She gets to see the handwritten stuff. This is her day after all! The best fan/troll anyone could ever hope for.
Gosh my writing is getting bad, so drunk. I’m okay of course. Oh! So there’s like four things I think I have to link in this “blog”. Um, the Michael Jackson Sonic 3 vid, the music from the Jetzons associated with that, the Key and Peele vid, oh and finally the AC Origins pic.
I’m back but for now… goodbye and I will see… MAY see you tomorrow. My name’s Waldowski and thank you to everyone who read this or listened.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ILY UWU!
AW
Research Links:
A Brief History of Michael Jackson's Sonic the Hedgehog 3
The Jetzons - Hard Times(Sonic 3 Ice Cap Zone Act 1 & 2 Remix)
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker - Sega Genesis - Angry Video Game Nerd - Episode 63
I’m Coming out of Retirement One Last Time...
Credits Music:
Thought Beings - Italo Nights
Tommy '86 - Disco Machine - [FULL EP]
Nightcrawler - Strange Shadows - [FULL EP]
VHS Glitch - Halloween Strangers [FULL ALBUM]
Bonus
Off we go...
Into uncharted lands...
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gossipnetwork-blog · 6 years
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Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'
New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/meet-rupi-kaur-queen-of-the-instapoets/
Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'
Rupi Kaur is too sick to get out of bed and wishes she had realized this a few hours earlier. Sitting on a king-size mattress in her Soho Grand hotel room, Kaur tells the story of how she almost lost her brunch all over actress Jennifer Westfeldt. “I knew something was wrong when I was talking to Jennifer and the green haze came over me,” she says in between sips of red Gatorade. “I was like, ‘You’re talking about something so deep right now, but the strawberries are coming back up girl, I gotta go.'”
Trying to keep fruit down isn’t exactly how the 25-year-old imagined she’d be celebrating the release of her second collection of poetry, The Sun and Her Flowers. It’s a celebration which kicked off the night before with a live performance of her work featuring Westfeldt, YouTube star Lilly Singh and fellow poet Chloe Wade. But this story of what was supposed to be a nausea-free victory lap, which she spares me the gross details of finishing, is just the kind of anecdote her 1.9 million Instagram followers would adore.
Since 2013, Kaur has been sharing poems about love, heartbreak and womanhood that perfectly exemplify the self-care movement. Most are bite-size affirmations, accompanied by Kaur’s own delicate line drawings, that go down easy when scrolling through Instagram. Kaur’s most-liked poem, which is just six lines and begins “how is it so easy for you/ to be kind to people, he asked,” earned over 240,000 likes.
Her poetry has gotten her more than likes, though. Her debut, Milk and Honey, has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide since its 2015 re-release by Andrews McMeel Publishing. (Kaur self-published it a year prior.) In its first week of release, Kaur’s follow-up was duking it out for the top spot on Amazon’s best-seller list with Dan Brown’s latest novel. It would win the coveted spot atop The New York Times list for paperback trade fiction where it stayed for nine straight weeks before E.L. James usurped it.
Uncomplicated and concise, Kaur’s poetry has been criticized for being too simplistic. Parody accounts have shown up on Twitter that intend to show how easy it is to write a Rupi Kaur poem – the gist being you take any conversation, format it in all lowercase and insert random line breaks. Milk and Honey officially became a meme earlier this year when people starting taking the text from Vine videos and stylizing them like one of her poems. Now there’s even a book called Milk and Vine that’s quickly become an Amazon bestseller since its October release.
Kaur doesn’t think her poetry is simple. To her, it’s straightforward. “It’s like a peach,” she says. “You have to remove everything and get to the pit of it.” Kaur – who moved from Punjab, India to the suburbs of Ontario, Canada, when she was three and a half years old and now lives in Toronto – doesn’t want readers to agonize over each and every word like she did when learning poetry in school. “I would have to pull out the list of literary devices my teacher gave me and my 10 colorful pens,” she says, her big, almond eyes getting wider. “It was like doing surgery on the damn thing.”
Instead, Kaur wanted to do something more accessable. “I’ve realized, it’s not the exact content that people connect with,” she says. “People will understand and they’ll feel it because it all just goes back to the human emotion. Sadness looks the same across all cultures, races, and communities. So does happiness and joy.”
Though she’s made her name with words, Kaur’s initial Instagram fame had nothing to do with her poetry. Three years ago, Kaur posted a shot of herself lying in a bed with her back to the camera, menstrual blood leaking through her sweatpants. Instagram removed the image – which was for a college assignment in which she was asked to “challenge a taboo” – two separate times for breaking community guidelines. The site eventually apologized and reposted the photo, but not before Kaur wrote a letter reprimanding them for trying to censor her. “Their patriarchy is leaking. Their misogyny is leaking. We will not be censored,” she wrote on Facebook, in a post that’s been shared over 18,000 times.
Kaur’s response went viral and soon she was doing interviews with The Huffington Post and Vice about the need to “demystify the period.” Talking to Kaur now, she says she wishes she never wrote that letter – curious, since that’s how so many people found her Instagram. “I think that day, this anxiety came upon me that’s never left,” she says, recalling how scary it was to get “that much hate literally from every corner of the planet.” While Kaur says she received overwhelming support from the letter – the most memorable, she says, was an email from a war general in Afghanistan – she also never experienced “so many people saying so many mean things and telling me they were going to kill me.” Still, she doesn’t deny that the strongly worded letter benefited her career: “They came for the photo, but they stayed for the poetry.”
Why they stayed is simple, according to Kirsty Melville, the president and publisher of Andrews McMeel Publishing, which had previously been best known for releasing Calvin and Hobbes. “She’s given voice to things that people may not have been able to articulate for themselves,” she says. “In this digital world where content marketing is this sort of buzzword, Rupi is the content and it doesn’t need the marketing.”
Kaur’s popularity on Instagram is part of a trend so prominent in publishing right now that it’s spawned its own genre. “Instapoets” has become the term used to describe a new generation of writers including Lang Leav, Tyler Knott Gregson, Nayyirah Waheed and Robert M. Drake, all of whom have landed book deals thanks to their respective social media presence. “We were told for so long that there isn’t a market for this, and there is,” Kaur says. “I’m seeing so many more poets who are getting published, which I hope isn’t just a trend that goes away.”
Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter have allowed more poets – especially those of color – to share their work with a larger, younger and more diverse audience, but not everyone loves the “Instapoets” nickname. “Personally, I think it is ridiculous that a social media platform is used to define a genre of writing,” says Leav, who has 393, 000 Instagram followers. After all, Leav released her first two bestselling poetry collections – her 2014 self-published debut, Love & Misadventure, which sold 10,000 copies in the first month, and Lullabies, which was published that same year by Andrews McMeel – without ever writing a word on Instagram. (She preferred Tumblr.)
No two Instapoets are exactly alike, but there are similarities between writers that even those in the community find worrisome. Earlier this year, Waheed, who self-published her debut, Salt, a year before Milk and Honey, accused Kaur of “hyper-similarity” after fans on Twitter and Tumblr made those charges. Waheed wrote in a Tumblr post, which has since been taken down, that in 2014 she emailed Kaur, “woc writer to fellow woc writer,” to share her concerns “in the hopes that upon awareness on their part. efforts would be made to cease and desist.” In the post, Waheed, who keeps a low public profile, rarely giving interviews, said that her concerns went ignored.
Kaur declines to comment on Waheed’s specific allegations, but when speaking in her hotel room says she believes some crossover between poets is natural when they have “similar experiences and similar ideas about the world.” She also wonders if some of the accusations of similarity between her work and others are a way of silencing women of color. “It’s like that scarcity complex,” Kaur says. “‘We already have one and it’s enough,’ as if we have to fight each other off now and I think that’s really dangerous.”
Over 900 fans came out to see Kaur read at the Tribeca event. John Halpern
Kaur certainly isn’t spending her time duking it out with other poets. She holds her own unique space in the literary world where her poetry readings are more like pop concerts. To launch The Sun and Her Flowers, she put on a special theatrical performance at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in New York City to a sold-out crowd of over 900 people willing to shell out $75 to $100 to see her.
In a nod to the book’s cover, Kaur’s fans – mostly women in their late teens and early twenties – took photos with gigantic sunflowers. Beyoncé, Rihanna and Drake played over the speakers before the petite poet took the stage in a dress that hit right above the knee. It was something that gave her pause, knowing that her Sikh father was in the audience. “It’s the shortest thing I ever wore in front of him,” Kaur says later. “I was like, ‘My legs! He’s never seen my legs before!'”
When Kaur speaks, her fans, which she says are “60 percent female and 40 percent everything else,” listen. They also whoop and holler when she delivers the climax of her most suggestive poem, Milk and Honey‘s “How We Make Up”: “Sweet baby, this is how we pull language out of one another with the flick of our tongues.” They snap their fingers in solidarity after “What’s stronger than the human heart/ that shatters over and over and still lives,” a line that found its way onto posters at the Women’s March in January.
“Whenever I read her poems, I have the same thought: ‘This is exactly how I feel but never knew how to say it,'” Lilly Singh writes in an email days after sharing the stage with Kaur to read selections from The Sun and Her Flowers. “Rupi’s words make people, especially women, feel safe and understood.”
Kaur has no problem connecting with her audience, but now she’d like the literary world to take her more seriously. She admits that her goal with her new collection was to improve as a writer and show “that just because your work is successful does not make it bad work.”
Kaur started writing Milk and Honey when she was 18. Now 25, Kaur doesn’t deny that she’s outgrown some of her early work, but isn’t ashamed of anything she’s put down on paper. “We grew up in a time with every single one of our moves being recorded and documented forever and in that was this idea that we can’t make mistakes,” she says, “but when that’s not happening you’re also not growing.”
The way she looks back at her life and lets her fans know it gets better is a big part of Kaur’s appeal, but some critics question whether the stories in her work are really hers to tell. Kaur’s been criticized for blurring the lines between her own experiences and the experiences of others when writing about the trauma women face – rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse – most notably in the Buzzfeed piece “The Problem With Rupi Kaur’s Poetry.” The essay makes the case that the poet’s “use of collective trauma in her quest to depict the quintessential South Asian female experience” is a way of forcing universality to reach a larger, more mainstream audience. It’s a dilemma that many writers of color face, knowing that sticking with specifics in regards to their own story could mean alienating readers.
Kaur tells me she writes about the South Asian experience – hers, her friends’, her family’s – because she doesn’t want to see these stories go untold. “I began writing pieces about violence at the age of 16 after seeing what the women around me were enduring and facing,” Kaur says. “It was my way of reflecting on all of these issues.”
With so little South Asian representation in entertainment, Kaur also understands how important it is for her to share these stories even if it may come with some backlash. “This name,” she says, pointing to the “Kaur” that appears on the binding of her latest book, which she pulls out from underneath the white comforter of her hotel bed, as if scripted, “is so important on a bookshelf. That’s the name of every Sikh woman. If I was six years old and I saw this in Barnes and Nobles, I would cry. I would sit there and be like, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.'”
With Sun and Her Flowers, Kaur’s still following her peach-pit philosophy, but she’s also getting at the core of who she is, delving deeper into her South Asian identity in a section of the book fittingly called “Roots.” The eldest of four writes at length about her parents, specifically her mom, whose struggle with being an immigrant is something Kaur admits she’s often taken for granted.
During her Tribeca performance, Kaur tells a story about how, as a kid, she would ignore her mom at the supermarket, too embarrassed by her accent to be seen with her. The anecdote acts as the perfect lead-in to “Broken English,” the standout of her latest collection in which she chastises herself and anyone else who’s ever been ashamed of their immigrant mother. “She split through countries to be here/ so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline,” she writes. “Her accent is thick like honey/ hold it with your life/ it’s the only thing she has left of home.”
The funny thing is, Kaur almost didn’t include this section in her book. “I thought nobody cares about this,” she says. “It’s not cool to talk about your parents.” But it’s the part that’s gotten the most feedback from fans who want to tell Kaur about their own mothers and how far they traveled for a better life. “When you start writing those other poems about your parents and all that, it’s like, how can you write about love and heartache?” Kaur asks. “That just seems so silly.”
For those who want it, there are still plenty of traditional love and heartache poems in The Sun and Her Flowers, but Kaur’s expanding on these topics. She’s now writing more authoritatively about the love and heartache that accompanies her mom and dad’s immigrant story and discovering that her specific experience of being a woman, being Punjabi and being a child of immigrants has universal appeal.
Knowing how far her reach is, Kaur doesn’t just want to write poetry, but prose, too. Back in 2015, she wrote 10 chapters of a novel that she’s still figuring out what to do with. She’s also thinking she might even want to give music a try. “It would be cool to write a song with Adele,” Kaur mentions with a chuckle. “You know, if she calls me up.” 
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