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wipethetape · 2 years

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Nice Try

Addison Montgomery x Reader

A/N: pink scrubs supremacy (and i just realized just right before posting this that kate likes pink lol). mentioned a name for reader once.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

Why do I keep receiving this? Addison thought. It has been a month since Addison started receiving pink notes containing poems daily, and it's literally everywhere. She mostly sees it pasted on her locker, or on her desk in her office. Sometimes, she gets some from the nurses, but they wouldn't tell her who this anonymous sender is (she has threatened them a couple of times, actually). During the third week, the interns also tried to give her these notes whenever they "accidentally" met in the hallway. She also tried to threaten each one of them to spill the beans, but she guessed they were close enough not to snitch on that person.

She isn't a fan of poems, but she knows some, and is intrigued by this romanticist or someone. The sender made sure they wouldn't be easily tracked, because the poems sent to her were all printed. However, she mostly ignored the notes, but she cannot deny the spark of excitement and curiosity she feels every time. She doesn't feel young and loved again, really, she doesn't. She also made a mental list of the possible suspects, but paid no attention not until someone unexpectedly gave her one.

Miranda Bailey. Her interest piqued when Miranda gave her one after the surgery she did on a patient. How did they even managed to convince the Nazi on this scheme? It was a sight, Miranda acted disgusted, yet grinning when she handed it to Addison. Now she's eager to know this person.

It's already the third day of her not receiving a poem like she used to, and having absolutely no clue why and who's sending it to her. She hates to admit it but she definitely misses reading one before starting her day. She's upset, and it clearly showed on how she was treating the staff, ten times worse than the usual Satan. While walking to go check on the patient she operated on a few days ago when she already visited them before lunch (she's not killing time to think about the admirer), she didn't notice Derek coming outside his office.

Derek asked if she's okay after they bumped. Addison simply nodded. She immediately walked away from him but he tried to stop her. He gave her a pink sealed envelope, told her he was about to find her and was lucky that they met in the hallway, and winked at her. Only one person would give her something in pink stationery. Last time, it was Miranda, and now, Derek? At this point, she thinks everyone knows who the person is except her.

When she checked the back, it read "Read this somewhere privately, please". It was written neatly, which surprised her. It was the first time the mystery person revealed their handwriting. However, she now knows why they chose not to reveal it until this day.

She had never walked so fast in her entire life after she received the letter. She sure catched some attention when she did. She looked like she wanted to run, but managed to control herself in front of the staff and patients. She plans to read it in her office. No one would dare bother her inside unless it's very important, and she already made sure she's not needed for at least a few hours.

When she reached her office, she immediately went to her desk and did not take much time to rummage through her files to find the medical notes containing both her handwriting and yours. She compared it just to confirm her hunch, and she's right. Your writing was a little bit messy on the notes, but it was surely similar to the one on the envelope. Now, she found you, and the easiest way to talk to you about this whole secret thing.

You were finishing a sandwich together with Meredith and Cristina when your pager beeped. Those two know what you feel about Addison, which is why they helped you with this idea of giving her poems in a pink sticky note. They would also help you paste the printed texts in the small paper and convince almost everyone in the hospital to give it to her when they see her. They said you should also give her one from time to time so she would not raise suspicions.

You didn't want it at first, because that would mean everyone knowing how you feel about your mentor, but they told you it was fine. They would discover it sooner or later so why not reveal it now?

When the plan took place, you felt sad whenever she ignored the notes. You don't see her throw it away, but it kind of feels that she does because you haven't seen her trying to discover who you are. In reality, you just don't want to believe the nurses' and your friends' statements about how Addison is more radiant after receiving them, and more agitated every time she doesn't get any hint about your identity. It's true, Addison tried to ask you about it when you gave her one, but you shrugged it off and shifted the topic to something else.

That's exactly the reason why Cristina took the drastic measure and asked George to convince Miranda to ride on this stunt because she already knew what was going on. Cristina hates your in denial ass so she thought of this idea to convince you that the plan is working.

Miranda instantly refused on the first attempts George made, because of how messy the whole attending-intern thing is. You, of all people, should know that. You're friends with those people, not to mention that the one you like was the ex-wife of the boyfriend of your friend. She later on agreed (because it was for you, plus points that George asked her to do so). You almost did not believe Dr. Bailey when she told you that Addison looked so thrilled when she received the note from her, but one of the nurses who witnessed the whole thing confirmed that it really happened.

You were actually considering that maybe, you should probably reveal yourself to her and make things clear about how you really feel about her. The same night, you started writing a letter where you poured every emotion you feel whenever she's around or not, that you probably cannot say directly to the woman. You spent two days on writing it because you find it hard to express yourself through words. Meredith asked Derek to give Addison the letter for you, and he agreed.

It was an understatement to say you were nervous when you saw it was Addison who paged you. You knew she would immediately recognize it was you, as you always ask for her guidance (and that includes exchanging medical notes), but not this quick.

You assume Derek is just about to give her the letter, so you grab a sandwich because you haven't eaten your lunch yet, and you thought you still have time before she talks to you. You almost dropped the last few bites of the sandwich when you checked your pager. The two noticed this and quickly pushed you out of the room, mouthing some good luck while raising their hands for encouragement.

Taking every step towards her office feels heavier as the distance is getting shorter. Instinctively, you smoothed out your scrubs and fixed your appearance before knocking on the door. You didn't hear her response, so you just turned the knob and entered the den of Satan.

You were greeted with an Addison sitting on her chair, with her arms leaning on the desk, looking and playing with the letter on her both hands. She's wearing the pink scrub suit, which was your favorite and the one where you can't take your eyes off when she wears it.

She raised her head to meet your eyes, and to acknowledge your presence. You were flustered with the sudden eye contact, so you let your gaze wander around her office to avoid the intense stare she was giving you.

She offered the seat in front of her desk, but you were reluctant to accept it and sit. You chose what you think would be appropriate at the time, and that would be sitting on the chair.

"So, would you mind explaining this," motioning the letter on her left hand, "to me?" she asks. She would lie if she says she's not enjoying the view in front of her. You were about to crumble in front of her, with you looking at the ground, face being red, and embarrassed.

"I asked you a question, Nile."

If someone were to ask you to rate this experience on how much you regretted the whole plan you executed just for you to melt in her gaze at her office and how much you wanted to escape now, it would go off scale. This is terrible. You felt like a child being interrogated and was about to get scolded for being a bad girl.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Montgomery," is what you wanted to say, but you chose to feign ignorance and just shrugged your shoulders and sheepishly smiled.

"Oh," she says grinning, "So you're going to act like this?" She stood up from her chair, and began moving away from that spot.

"You know what?" She asked, "This is unnecessary," she noted, throwing away your letter. You were sad because it felt like she disregarded the fact that you like her—and all the papers wasted and the sleep you never had for days after tons of going back and forth with your decision resulting in rewriting that letter a hundred times.

She slowly walks towards you, adding that extra sway on her hips, as if intentionally making your eyes gaze down. You did not notice the smirk she had on her face when you fell into her trap, making you swallow a non-existent bump in your throat.

She leaned her hands on both armrests. She whispers, "You've already stolen my heart from the moment you entered my life," while gradually closing the distance between your faces, almost making your lips touch.

"You could have just told me that right to my face instead of teasing me with your little poems, you cheesy intern," She joked. She continues, "Though I must admit I wasn't that surprised when I found out it was you. This is something you would definitely do to win a girl's heart," giggling at how silly you look. Dumbfounded, wide eyes, and your face down to your neck is like a red canvas. You are about to explode right now that you can't even utter a single word to her.

I mean who can blame you? That was the closest distance you had with Addison. You always keep a fair one from her because you think she only considers you as an intern who would love to be in OB, and you fear she would catch on to your crush on her.

Contented with your reaction, she walked away from you to leave the room to check on her patient, and stopped when she opened the door to turn around. "And you actually did." She vouched, winking before closing the door and leaving you alone in her office.

You were still processing what had just happened, and you don't know if you really heard Addison right. You almost fainted when you realized she already read the letter—worse is she even used a line you've written inside of it.

#grey's anatomy #addison montgomery #addison montgomery x reader #addison montgomery imagine #i love this gif so much how can i tattoo this

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tarasylnin-lavellan · 3 years

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Of Freedom and Falling

Tarasyl'nin stood with her brother on the vast cliffs of the Storm coast, her face was drawn and tired. Great black eagles rode the air currents around them their sleek bodies gliding through the turbulent air with ease. Dorian scowled looking down at Tara, "darling you cannot be serious about this, I know that you have been trying to shapeshift for a while now, but this? this is insane even for us." Tara's brow furrowed in frustration "the spirit that I am bound to...it is unbending if it is to ever allow me to change my shape, it must be life or death. I must give it no choice, this is too important I cannot bend on this." Blue light coiled out from her in a clear protest but she gritted her teeth and it receded into her skin. Dorian sighed in resignation he knew the sound of his sisters stubborn pride, she would not stop. “Must you do this in such a dramatic way darling? I mean leaping from a cliff to win a battle of wills is worthy of the imperium.” Tara turned to him laughing softly, her features relaxing for a moment. Dorian marveled at how truly beautiful she was like that, without the strain of her mask, she seemed a whole different person. Her raven hair swirled around her in gusting wind “if I am to fly Isa’ma’lin I want to fly here in the heart of the storms.” Tara turned her eyes to the sky “I need this brother, I need to know that I am still free, that I am still me. I need one thing that this path cannot take from me.” Her eyes reflected the years of restriction, the strain that the responsibility that had been forced on her had created.

Dorian nodded knowing when he was outplayed, “well then we had best hope that this works, Cullen will kill me too if you dash yourself on the waves and I just watch.” Tara nodded somberly “it will work it has to, I have tried everything else that Lady Morrigan has suggested.” Dorian stepped back and gestured grandly at the edge, “your death or freedom await my lady.” Tara sprinted for the cliff fade stepping to gain speed and launched herself into the air, black curls whipping in the air. Justice bucked in anger and frustration, an old spirit that did not wish to change. Tara had done her duty, she had sealed the breach she had closed every rift, she would not be stopped now. SHIFT she roared in her mind, time slowed as the pair struggled for supremacy. She held on grimly DO IT OR WE BOTH DIE, she could not, would not let this go. She needed the sky she pushed her soul toward the shape of the eagles that soared around her. She demanded that this be her shape, she had asked Morrigan to teach her as a favor for allowing the human to take the well of sorrows. She held her resolve as the pair plummeted toward the crashing waves unbending unbreaking the decision had already been made. She would fly or she would fall, she would be free either way. At last she felt her power change and violet smoke curled around her body the spirit finally accepting the shape that she demanded.

Vast black wings stretched from her and her powerful talons scraped the waves water spraying away from her. She beat her wings in the air climbing straight for the clouds. She heard Dorian cheering in joy beneath her, I will allow this one shape the thought rose in Tara’s mind as she soared. Agreed Haren Tara couldn't care less this was the only thing she had ever truly demanded be given to her. The world beneath her was silenced and the quiet of the air surrounded her. She felt peace in her soul for the first time in memory, the peace of solitude, of freedom. She had struggled toward this goal for years, fighting within herself battling the static nature of the spirit that she was irrevocably bonded to.

But this was her line in the Sand, Tara would not be denied this she would join the sky or die trying. She turned gracefully banking toward the cliffs, she could see Cullen approaching Dorian, creators! her eyes were so keen. "Where is Tara?" Cullen looked around for her, he had decided to accompany them on this particular expedition wishing the break from his duties. Dorian smirked "oh she has a few projects up in the air..." Cullen squinted at him "what are you talking about?" Tara could see her lover looking around for her. A mischievous thought coiled through her, this was going to be fun. She dove down swooping toward Dorian letting out a screech to warn him.

Dorian nonchalantly held a gauntleted hand out, he had been trained to be a falconer in Tevinter. Cullen saw the massive eagle coming toward them and took a step back in alarm. Tara landed on Dorian's gauntlet a little awkwardly but managed to save it, she ruffled her feathers and looked at Dorian. Cullen looked in shock at the bird "MAKER BREATH!" Cullen watch the bird with alarmed eyes "how did you manage to tame a storm eagle Dorian!" Dorian guffawed turning to Tara with a raised eyebrow "you go for the dense ones don't you?" Tara clicked her beak and annoyance and thumped him with one of her wings. "Ouch you are truly a harpy now" Dorian laughed as the eagle glared at him in a very familiar way. Cullen's eyes turn to her, he looked closer the the eagle resting on Dorian's arm. The bird's feathers weren't quite right not the true pitch black of a storm eagle, but a black tinged with violet and her eyes they were pale purple? He felt disbelief flood him there was no way... "Tara?”

He felt foolish even saying it sure that this was one of the Tevinter’s jokes. Dorian turned his gaze at Cullen "ah the Templar gets there in the end I suppose." Tara leapt from Dorian's arm shifting back to her original form Violet smoke pooling around her. She was smiling a delighted grin, laughing out loud "you should have seen your face ma vhenan!" Cullen looked at her in shock he didn't think that she could do any other form of magic! "I thought that you said that the spirit wouldn't let you!" Cullen's words tripped over themselves as he stared at her. She was still grinning when she replied "She didn't at first, I gave her a choice let me shift or die." Dorian rolled his eyes "The lunatic launched herself off a cliff so that the spirit had to change or they would both perish." Cullen rounded on the younger man "and you just watched it!" Dorian scoffed "do you honestly believe that I could stop her, Tarasyl'nin Lavellan if she truly wished this?"

Tara scowled "I didn't ask anyone's permission to do this, I needed this." Cullen's eyes widening an alarm "Tara love you could have died! How could you-" " I did not die” she cut him off briskly “I have played by the rules for years, I have served those who would revile me. I need to know in my heart that I can get away...." Tears formed in her pale eyes and she looked away. "I have given up everything, my home, my people, my very sense of self... I cannot, I will not, lose my freedom, I will not be caged." Dorian went to her wrapping her in his arms, glaring accusingly at Cullen. Cullen swallowed heavily, skyhold and never been a prison to him, but he could see how his lover would see it that way. He strode to her side and Dorian backed away "I will leave you two to your discussion" he said briskly and strode away.

Cullen took her hands in his and breathed out slowly, “forgive me vhenan, you frightened me is all, I couldn't stand to lose you... please...don't do anything like this again.” Tara looked up at him tears in her eyes “I am sorry that I scared you ma’atish but I had run out of options, I couldn’t let this go.” He nodded knowing that she had been fighting for this for years. “Just please be careful my love, I need you, please don't leave me here alone.” Tara rested her head on his chest relaxing against him “I will stay vhenan, for you.”

#tarasylnin #lavellen #tara's backstory #cullavellan #cullen rutherford #dorian pavus #tara shapeshifting #dorian sassing cullen gives me life #dragon age inquisition #dragon age

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maine-writes · 4 years

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27. Slice of Life

"When are Mama and Papa coming home?!" Vonvon whined, their face buried in their schoolwork.

Pearl sighed, setting down the chalk. She understood why the child was being difficult that day, but she still had to teach them the basic principle of Era 3 Singularity Engines.

"Your parents are very busy, Vonvon." She explained. "They have responsibilities, just like you do. Especially now that they're rolling back on Zircon's disastrous Pegasus Colony policies."

"Okay, I get Papa having to be on Homeworld." Vonvon said, scribbling away on their paper. "But what about Mama?"

"She's head of the Rose Guard." Pearl continued. "It wouldn't be proper for your father to be anywhere without her."

"This doesn't have anything to do with the Adamantium Supremacy does it?"

"Where did you hear that?" Pearl panicked, wide-eyed at how the child knew of them.

"Amethyst was talking to Jasper about them."

"Looks like I'm going to have to have a talk with Amethyst." Pearl noted. "We're done for today, Vonvon."

With the abrupt end to their lesson, Vonvon decided it was a good time to visit Garnet and her excavation team at the Sea Spire. It was a great stone tower jutting out of the ocean, an ancient temple built thousands of years ago.

When Vonvon arrived, they found a number of Gems corralling the strange crystal shrimp that call the spire home. Passing by fountains and waterfalls, Vonvon found Sapphire observing a glass orb with an hourglass within it. The room they were in was rather small, circular, water flowed over the stone walls, and it had a domed roof. The orb floated over a stone, diamond-shaped pedestal.

"Hey Sapph!" The child waved.

"Vonvon!" Sapphire turned to hug the child.

"I haven't seen you since Garnet last unfused! Where's Rube?"

"Ruby's off exploring the Desert Temple with the other Rubies." Sapphire explained, "Nephrite said they should find some old Era 2 technology there. Might be in good condition."

Vonvon's attention then turned to the strange artifact. Inside the glass orb, water sloshed around the hourglass, with blue sand flowing inside that. A gold band wrapped around the middle of the orb.

"What's with the Christmas ornament?" Vonvon inquired.

"This is a Time Eye." Sapphire explained. "It is the heart of this room, a Temporal Observatory. It was a sanctuary for Sapphires to focus their future vision and see more of alternate timelines."

"Timelines? Cool!"

"Very cool." Sapphire smiled. "Your father had a run-in with an experimental Time Eye when he was younger. It was quite entertaining."

Sapphire gently poked the glass orb, at ehich point it began to emanate a soft blue light. The room darkened as the orb's light formed floating motes of light, circles, and lines. Soon, intricate webs formed all around them, like rivers flowing through the air.

"These are the myriad timelines that exist." Sapphire said. "We can observe them as if we were there."

Vonvon reached out to one of the strands and plucked a single mote of light from it. The point flew to the orb, scattering into the walls. Their dim surroundings then faded away as the pair found themselves in the temple house.

Seemingly unaware of their arrival, a younger Steven Universe held a Cookie Cat Ice Cream Sandwich, singing the iconic Cookie Cat jingle, surrounded by Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl.

"I remember that day." Sapphire reminisced. "Amethyst stole a bunch of those."

The child approached the younger version of their father. He seemed so different then; shorter, innocent, more concerned about his favorite ice cream than Gem politics.

"What other timelines are there?" Vonvon asked, curious as to the delicate and chaotic nature of time.

"There's a few where your Grandmother was a different person all together." Sapphire said, returning them to the dimly lit room with the timestream. "But if you're asking about more localized timelines. There's one where your father becomes an amnesiac and operatic madman, one where your mother has no bones, one where your father is a seal-thing, and one where you lived alone with your grandparents most of your life until meeting Spinel and Stevonnie and you have an adventure sort of like your father's when he was young."

Vonvon took a moment to process the strange timelines. They took comfort in the fact that they lived in the good timeline.

"Oh, there's also one where you kill your crazed amnesiac warlord father."

"What?"

@artsycooky13

#where all AU's come from #you know how bad I want to feature White Diamond Steven Yellow Diamond Steven and Blue Nora?#VonvonMonth2020

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darksiders-scenarios · 4 years

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Welcome back love, I would love you see your take on yandere horsemen (which honestly sounds like the most terrifying thing ever).

Thank you <3 I tried my best, it was indeed a challenge to write therefore I don’t think they’ve come out as terrifying as should be expected xD Forgive the broken english, as always!

Trigger warning.

Death

His obsession became cemented after his sacrifice. His consciousness broke, shred by shred along with the last vestiges of his sanity crumbling to meld with the churning ragefire of the Well of Souls. Amidst the sea of chaos, souls flaring around and pouring inside him, only yours shone the brightest from afar, like a sacred star. He felt your emotional loss, your pain, your despair, your love for him, unrestrained and pure - like the sweetest wine, like the most refreshing breeze, like the- the- he... he couldn't explain the sheer intensity of his euphoria at that moment. He chased it, seeking it, grasping it by the fingertips until the very end. In his last moments of mortality, he knew then what he had been missing his entire life. And he would not make that same mistake upon his rebirth.

You are revered as the saviour of humanity, a symbol of hope. Monuments are erected in your honour. You are the centre of attention. Attention. Attention. Attention.

Of course, this “misunderstanding” is not your fault. However, you are human, therefore you are not without flaws. You can be stolen from him. Harsh tremors rack Death’s body. You can love another. He forces back the bile that rises in this throat.

He pines for your flesh, for your attention. You always catch him staring at you with something akin to rapture.

Death casts himself as the saviour - reminding you that it is through him that your people are restored. Your survivor's guilt drives you to submit to his directives, which in turn fuels his sense of supremacy.

He makes flattering statements in exaggerated terms, an emotional bribe to win your favours, or he makes subtle veiled hostile jokes at your insecurities to solidify his power over you.

He seals away your memories of your relationships with your loved ones so that you will devote all your attention to him and him alone.

Dust stalks your every move without your notice, monitoring your actions and relaying back to his master; who you've been seen in the company of, who makes you smile, who makes you sad, who looks at you in that way.

Nothing gets past Death’s attention.

His fantasies twist and evolve, and every time they leave him breathless with hope. He dreams of a race cowed into obedience, or a world wiped clean of said race until you are the only one that remains, for him.

For now, he settles on wiping clean of anyone that poses a threat to their sacred relationship. Torturing his victims in ways that transcend human concept; every torture more horrific than its predecessor, never giving his victims an explanation when they wake up horrified, chained in a dungeon.

They know exactly what they are being punished for.

After he’s had his way with them, Death would let his essence skim against the naked vulnerability of their souls, a pseudo-gentle brush, as though a long lost friend reaching to them, ensuring the dimmest flicker of hope is present, before clawing it apart into nothingness. Their agonies are sublime.

Finally, Death impales their naked, dismembered bodies on poles around the city, as though a grotesque art exhibition, but more importantly, as a warning.

Everything gets past your attention.

War

Shackled for a century, isolated from his siblings, powerless when his name was being slandered across creation and helpless when his honour was being brutally tarnished... But you have always stood by his side, unwavering in your loyalty and adamantly professing his innocence at every wake and turn. War found his sanctuary in you, his home and solace. His obsession rose to the fore and he clings to you as his emotional crutch, snarling at anyone who dares show a minute interest in you. You will not be stolen from him. He will not be abandoned anymore, betrayed anymore. You are his saviour, and he will protect you for as long as he lives.

Something stirs within him whenever you look at him, his entire core bristling with excitement; from your smiles, from your touches, from… you.

He stares at you for an unbearably long time when you are sleeping or showering, soaking in the sight of you in undisguised pleasure.

Soon he isolates you from your family and is extremely controlling of your social circle. Whenever he sees you in the company of another, War glares at you in warning, aiming a silent threat in your direction.

He has delusions of your infidelity and he is often questioning and directly accusing you of the act. He becomes highly aggressive and hostile when you challenge him on the validity of his narratives.

Until you become so worn out by the constant attacks and coercion and you attempt to retaliate, to make him see the error of his ways.

This leads War to tripling his attacks in the hopes that intimidation will beat you into submission. Can’t you see that he is trying to protect you? Can’t you see the Creator cares nothing for you, for being the reason for your plight? Can’t you see that you need him? Can’t you see how much he loves you?

War is trembling with rage and he focuses his wrath onto his victims, throwing withering glares at their backs.

War gives into the carnal urge and soon enough the air is saturated in burning flesh, blood and fear.

He feels a surge of adrenaline rush and his palpitating heartbeats as his victims sob in desperation beneath his oppressive bulk, having beaten to the point of worthlessness.

He flays the skins of their faces once he's done with them, adding them to the collection of leathery mementos on his shoulder guards, inwardly smirking as he recalls Strife's quip.

Then he gifts you with the brutalised corpses, to torture at your own leisure as a show of care and affection.

He loves you.

So much.

Can’t you see?

Strife

You... listened. Never once cowering in fear or cringing in disgust. You listened and listened, and listened, never once interrupting him as he poured his heart out through wavering voice and hitched breaths. When he finished, he looked at you. You smiled softly, lovingly. And just like that, the burden that had been crushing Strife all these millennia lifted a great deal in the time it took to blink. He immediately choked on a sob, the irresistible urge to break and cry in front of you. You listened to his confession and you never judged him. A confession that even War will never know, despite Strife's “promise”. He was never a religious being, although, in that moment, Strife swore that he's found his saint in you.

He dwells on your words every moment of his breathing existence, his mind conjuring up elaborate eccentric fantasies about you. You are flawless.

He never stops yearning for your attention, his heart whining for your heady proximity, his mind drowning in delicious ecstasy. He will do everything to keep you. His love. His life.

His.

Excessive hoarding of your "leftovers": the sand in your shoes, your shredded, discarded clothes, the broken tooth that got knocked out during a fight, clumps of your hair, clipped nails, that piece of charred flesh from that time- everything preserved in his miniature portable shrine.

His lips murmuring prayers of gratitude.

He utilises love bombing and makes extravagant displays of affection.

Strife has a deep-seated fear of rejection and ruminates over any perceived slights and is highly sensitive to criticism. If he is challenged, Strife threatens abandonment or… more extremely, suicide.

Nothing pisses him off more than you hanging out with your friends when your attention should be devoted to him. Why can't you understand how selfish you’re being?

He jokingly refers to himself as your stalker to them.

And goes as far as to manipulate your potential interests, drugging and kidnapping them. Brutality and savagery flow in the Nephilim veins, yet Strife prefers the more tactical method. You would prefer that.

It merely takes his practiced flirtatious smiles to get his victims head over heels for him. Humans are stupidly predictable. He'd let things escalate from there until he is pinning them down naked and wanton and utterly vulnerable. He feels nothing but revulsion in its purest form at the sensation of skin against skin. Moments later, he would remove his blood-slicked hand from their throat, staring into their eyes as they stare unblinkingly back at his.

He hates humans because humans have no idea how lucky they are.

He sinks into a deep depression when you withdraw from him, tired of his abuse, and he engages in frequent bouts of self-flagellation.

His mind keeps dwelling on you. On your words. Your smile. Your-

Strife cries out in sheer grief and gratitude, screaming himself hoarse and fatigued, a primal cry of desperation, a plea for your mercy.

Fury

Her attachment to you deepened profoundly after the loss of her beloved Rampage. The onslaught of emotions overwhelmed her, consumed by her desire for revenge until she was barely clinging to sanity by a hair's breadth. She remembers the uncontrollable shiver that ran through her when you brushed loose locks from her wet cheeks with your gentle fingers, the withdrawal making her knees almost give away. Your unique ability to see past the obvious, and patiently supporting her through her grief. You became her light. And she will ensure that you will never be extinguished.

She watches you with barely suppressed adoration and longing. Almost all her waking moments are spent fantasising about you.

She is excessively focused on you and everything that you're doing: who you're talking to, how your day is going, what you need, your reactions to her.

A sliver of your skin is enough to make her head spin and she adopts voyeuristic tendencies; you are unsuspecting when she is spying on you in the shower or when you are undressing. When she is caught, she disguises it as merely accidental.

She jerks into wakefulness, shaking controllably from ecstasy.

She is insanely jealous of potential romantic suitors or competition for you, even if it is imaginary. She is hellbent on getting rid of them out of your life.

The belief that mortals are equally lustful of you stems from the poisonous roots of envy.

A single teardrop is enough for a whole city to burn under Fury’s wrath.

She strategically isolates you from your family, limiting your interactions with your friends and the wider community through weaponising drama by spreading false rumors.

She constantly deploys demagoguery tactics to establish an authoritarian position in your relationship.

Once you tried to escape and Fury reacted in a blind panic; the next thing she knew, you were slumped halfway off the chair, unconscious. She watched you for a very long time, unable to contain the hot desire coiling in her stomach. You were so beautiful.

When you came to, you had a collar grafted directly around your neck – a blatant symbol of Fury's ownership of you.

You gave in. Besides, who could you turn to?

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caltropspress · 4 years

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FEEDBACK LOOP #1: Armand Hammer’s “Flavor Flav”

What are the Black purposes of space travel?

—Amiri Baraka, “Technology & Ethos”

Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix Black futurism is a temporally troubled matrix that thrives on opposites and oppositions, flowing lines and nonlinearity, conflict resolution and asymmetrical warfare. It prefers the mad dash on shifting sands while in pursuit of higher ground and safe havens.

—Greg Tate, “Kalahari Hopscotch, or Notes Toward a 20 Volume History of Black Science and Afrofuturism”

Welcome aboard our spaceship, it’s so nice to have you here. —Newcleus, “Space is the Place”

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all times, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together. —Walt Whitman

I’m so tired of being forced to promote the myth of white supremacy by performing works by old white men like Whitman who said blacks...didn’t have a place in the future of America. —Timothy McNair

Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the future present of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today. —Sun Ra, “Secrets of the Sun”

This highly allusive track from billy woods and ELUCID toys with itself—that is, allusions are a figurative means of collapsing time in and of themselves. Past and present history & culture don’t contend so much as support one another. A set of stilts to do the Dance of Death on, if you will. “Start downhill running.” The Seventh Seal hilltop silhouette danse macabre steez, though. The whooshing, metal-creaking beat—with all its haunted psithurism charm—is the backdrop for this sleeper Shrines track.

The name “Flavor Flav” is used metonymically here to mean time. This isn’t a braggadocio, low-key threat in the spirit of OC’s “Time’s Up.” This isn’t a Grandmaster Flashian “You Know What Time It Is” (though the hands on the clock tower do spin clockwise and counter-). Neither is this a Kool Moe Dee-esque rhetorical “Do You Know What Time It Is?” Armand Hammer are frustrated by time, by the “ideals and dreams that don’t work.” woods laments his “time machine [that] don’t go backwards.” This no-good lemon of a H.G. Wells contraption he’s steering. This isn’t some Christopher Lloyd-cum-El-Producto Delorean. There’s no Great Scotting going on, just stubbornness.

Progress isn’t made. Time stagnates. Like the “list of ill-fated quick licks under ’frigerator magnets.” And that “school trip permission slip”—likely a bus ride to a museum: a carefully curated collection of artifacts, most notable for its colonial muscling. The question remains: What is left out? What is excluded? What is ignored, discarded, or co-opted so as to not withstand the test of time? woods’ short-i assonance speeds the delivery up only to slow it down:

billy woods, son of a revolutionary, redefines Afrofuturism (re-re-re-defines—its brilliance is in how it remakes itself unconditionally). Afrofuturism becomes about birthing the next generation of Black revolutionaries, so he subverts the line and expectations when “big hand captured” refers to the clock, but “little man [not hand] chasin’” refers to a youngin. (Try to keep up.) Put the faith in the youth when our “ideals and dreams” stall out—when the days, months, years are fleeting and forceful (“It do tick faster / The hour coming rough”). The spliff that’s “[skinned] like an onion” turns the cypher into Perrault fairy tale “pumpkin,” Cinderella style.

“Don’t come ’round with that ‘Go slow’” is in conversation with Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” of course. It’s Nina who said “[she] can’t stand the pressure much longer,” who objected to those who “keep on saying ‘Go slow,” who had her band ironically chanting Do it slow. billy woods, like Nina Simone, decries reformism, incrementalism. Don’t do things gradually. We’re at the point where Nina stands up from her piano bench and shouts That’s it!

Forego the telephoto lenses, he insists, this is the “Battle of Algiers with the GoPro.” Urban guerrilla warfare uploaded and disseminated via YouTube. Again, time collapses. The struggle to decolonize continues. Watch for the This video is no longer available dead-end.

billy woods’ Nietzschean “loathing and fear” reverses the hallucinogenic time-warp of Thompson’s (and, in filmic relation, Gilliam’s) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “History is hard to know,” Thompson writes, “because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash.” That flash will reappear in ELUCID’s verse.

If “all roads lead to Rome,” we’re settling into the inevitability of our moves. It’s a fatalistic shrug, but homophonically, all roads lead to roam—that is, the journey is prolonged interminably. It’s nomadic. Much static. So, naturally, you’re going to “[shake] the hourglass like a snowglobe,” distort time, and splurge on the “JC Penny Timex,” which is appropriately “flooded with rhinestones.” Flooded, because no more water: the fire next time. Don’t “lose track” and don’t “get trapped in the future.”

The chorus quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Time is On My Side,” but it ain’t that simple, no. The history is as messy as we’ve come to expect amerikan music to be. “Time is On My Side” was originally penned by Norman Meade (Jerry Ragovoy), and trombonist Kai Winding first recorded it. Jimmy Norman, a Black songwriter, fleshed out the lyrics significantly, and Irma Thomas recorded that version in the same year as the Stones. The song followed a path similar to that of “Strange Fruit”—a composition written by a white Jewish man under a pseudonym (Abel Meeropol as Lewis Allan) but popularized by a Black female jazz singer (Billie Holiday). As author Jess Row has said about jazz—hip-hop applies, too—it is “by its very nature multi-racial, intermingled, and collaborative across color lines.” But this cognizance must always be contextualized with views of Black artists like that of Art Blakey: “the only way the Caucasian musician can swing is from a rope.” Hip-hop has always had its Paul Cs and Rick Rubins, but the racial heterogeneity of a genre, or even a single recording, can’t cloak the power dynamics still in play. The Stones’ version of “Time is On My Side”—undoubtedly the most popular version—is a rip-off of Irma Thomas’ version. Mick Jagger even jacks Thomas’ ad-libs, which is to say, her rawness and spontaneity. Even the band’s shadowed faces on the cover of 12 x 5, the album on which the track appears, suggest the racial problematics, the minstrelsy heist. Armand Hammer mock the British Invasion blues filchers by adding “they” to the chorus line: “They said time is on my side.” They being white institutions (especially within music publishing, production, and recording industries) who promised enough airtime for everyone. They who urged patience. (Go slow!) But, as history shows, the profits only lined certain pockets.

ELUCID begins at the “golden hour,” which is both the photogenic beauty of the sky after sunrise and before sunset—a beauty too good to behold. It’s the sun glare shining in your face on the winter commute from work. It’s your high-speed accident and then the golden hour is the paramedics and doctors trying to salvage your corporeal existence. ELUCID’s verse is a hypnagogic jerk, gasping for breath as he takes a “portal to Orangeburg, ’68.” It’s a reference to the campus shooting of young people in protest—South Carolina State University. Unlike Kent State, which came afterwards, Orangeburg didn’t get the attention keening white women in Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs do, despite “live ammunition,” three dead, 28 injured, and “nine acquitted assassins.” Unnoticed. Black invisibility. Not that H.G. Wells type of invisibility—the Ralph Ellison kind.

We’re told what this is: it’s the aggregate stress (“the load of the allostatic”) of Black life. It’s one’s personal Extinction Agenda, the “post-traumatic” of the gunfire “flashes” that double as flashbacks. The pain, stress, the brain that can’t rest, the pressure on the chest.

“The center won’t hold” lets us know this isn’t all PTSD reverie—it’s a rebel poem: surely some revolution is at hand. ELUCID channels Achebe channeling Yeats. Things might fall apart but not without struggle. The “Flavor Flav clock spins centrifugal,” as a gyre, as an apocalyptic (91…) voice. Turning and returning. The words have an air of insurrection, proclamation.

He misses “watching how a flat circle fold”—it won’t budge, won’t wrinkle. We’ve been here before: on “Hunter,” on Paraffin, when billy woods was on that “time is a flat circle” shit. That Nietzsche eternal recurrence shit:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain…will return to you. […] The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

“Can you find the level of difficulty in this?” suggests game playing, arcades. Calls to mind more Walter Benjamin’s Arcades, though. billy woods and ELUCID are gleaners and magpies of cultural cadavers in Benjamin’s way. Their bars are play and critique both. We’re left with a modicum of optimism at the song’s end. Even “only [moving] the pen six inches” is something, is struggle. The “pale faces beyond the fire” are ever-present, though. The “flinching, panic, [and] confusion” are committed to continue.

Is it the fool or the insurgent who thinks time is on their side? We want the life we live to be “more brilliant than a sunbeam.” That’s to say, we don’t want to wait for the golden hour or the golden years. We want what they say we can’t have. We want what they say we shouldn’t imagine. But Armand Hammer helps us take solace in the “drum skin stretched”—the rhythm, the rebel. The oft-quoted Douglass gem, If there is no struggle, there is no progress, is played out for a reason. The reason is because it needs to be played again, and again. Like a mantra, like a song.

Images:

Sun Ra’s Space is the Place (screenshot) | Flavor Flav (detail), courtesy of archivist Sean Stewart | Grandmaster Flash “You Know What Time It Is” music video (screenshot) | Kool Moe Dee “Do You Know What Time It Is?” single cover | Nina Simone live at Antibes Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival 1965 (screenshot) | The Battle of Algiers (screenshot) | The Rolling Stones 12 x 5 album cover | Flavor Flav, courtesy of Stewart

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informalmajesty · 6 years

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Death and Rebirth in The Last Jedi

“Whomever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back. But...there is someone who still could.” -Maz Kanata, The Force Awakens

After watching The Last Jedi, I believe that this line applies both to Rey and to Kylo, who both experience different variations of metaphorical death and rebirth in The Last Jedi. This is what I found to be the most important theme of the movie and symbols of death and rebirth are shown through-out the film in relation to both personal character arcs, as well as major plot points for the saga at large. All-in-all it sets up some interesting developments for the final installment...

Sunset and Dawn: Death and Rebirth

One of the most brilliant things about this movie is the use of the dawn and the sunset to symbolize the passing of the old and the arrival of the new on both personal levels for the characters, as well as for the Star Wars universe at large.

The following events occur at dawn:

The Force Bond: The force bond is the first thing to occur at dawn. Rey awakes, her hut shrouded in both darkness and the light from the rising sun, and senses Kylo Ren through the now active force bond. During the first “Force Skype” session, Kylo refers to the bond as “something else,” something new, something that he has never seen or heard about before. The force is connecting these two—one dark, one light—and this jump-starts the theme of balance in this film (that will most likely continue into episode 9). It is no coincidence that Rey is taught to feel the balance around her right after the force bond awakens.

The Discovery of the Hole Beneath Ahch-To: Along with discovering the ins and outs of the force (the balance of the island), as well as the force bond, Rey is also introduced to the darkness calling her beneath the island. This is important since it sets up a pivotal moment in her arc that will eventually signal the beginning of her rebirth.

The Burning of the Force Tree: When Luke goes to burn the force tree, you can see the light of the dawn peering out from behind the clouds. In this scene Yoda and Luke burn the force tree—a significant moment in the film as it symbolizes the end of the Jedi. However, while it signifies the end of the Jedi, it also symbolizes the start of something new (and maybe even “something else.”) I will touch on this more when I speak specifically to Rey’s rebirth.

These events occur at sunset:

Luke’s Lie: The conversation between Luke and Rey wherein Luke lies to Rey about Ben’s turn occurs at sunset. This is a conversation that not only represents the past, but also represents a crucial moment that will result in Rey’s disappointment and eventual loss of trust in Luke later on in the film. This is also where Rey pleads to Luke that she needs someone (Luke) to help her “find her place in all this.” However, Luke has nothing to offer Rey. There is nothing for Rey here. Not with Luke. Not at this time. To emphasize this, you can see the sunset on one side of her face, foreshadowing her eventual realization that what she needs is in the dark pit below the island and in the connection she has with Kylo (as stated before both things that are found at dawn).

The Final Face off Between Kylo and Luke: In likely the most beautiful scene of the entire film, the Kylo and Luke face off occurs during sunset wherein Luke finally confronts the nephew he has failed. This scene doesn’t exactly patch up old wounds but it allows both Luke and Ben to address what happened at the temple (granted in their own ways). In the end, however, it concludes with Luke forgiving himself for failing his nephew and with Kylo learning that the past can never die. Remnants will always stay behind. While Kylo doesn’t necessarily find complete solace in this moment, Kylo’s story will carry on. Luke’s, however, is over. His time has come and the guilt and shame he had felt is settled and sealed.

The Death of Luke Skywalker: Of course the most important event at sunset is the death of Luke Skywalker as he stares out at the binary sunset. Like the burning of the force tree, this scene symbolizes the passage of the Jedi—or at least the Jedi as we know them. The burning of the force tree (which occurs at dawn)—however—represents the force and the light. Burn it and the light will not die. As Luke said, however, when the Jedi die, they die. They do not carry the force within them and their death will not have any cosmic impact on the universe other than the personal end to their own journey. Luke Skywalker’s personal journey is done. His hand in Rey’s journey is over. As Yoda says “we are the ones they grow beyond.”

Rey’s Death, Purgatory, and Rebirth

Along with the events of death and rebirth that occur at sunset and dawn, respectively, Rey herself experiences a cycle of metaphorical death and rebirth during The Last Jedi.

Death

Descending into the pit below Ahch-To is the beginning of Rey’s rebirth.

Before Rey kneels before the pit, Rey is facing Kylo again through the force bond. In this instance, Kylo challenges Rey to confront her past, as well as the lie that was told to her by Luke (which happened, as I stated before during sunset) that Ben was solely responsible for the destruction of the Jedi Temple. Rey’s belief in Luke is tested along with her connection to and beliefs about her parents. Kylo pushes her and forces her to speak through thoughts and feelings that have plagued her for decades as he draws her closer and closer to her moment of rebirth.

Since he is the beginning of her “awakening” in this scene, we see Kylo bathed in light and Rey is shrouded in darkness. This deviates from the other force bond scenes. In the first force bond scene, Kylo is shrouded in darkness while Rey stands in the bright light of the dawn. In the second scene, the light is similar with neutral gray cool tones tinting both of their surroundings. The only difference is the falling water in her surroundings and the falling fiery sparks in his.

After her conversation with Kylo, Rey finally succumbs to the darkness under the island. She kneels before it. Eventually, Rey slips through the giant hole in the earth and crashes into a pool of water.

Now. There are many ways to interpret this scene. Right now my interpretation is that the dive through the hole in the ground into the water represents reentrance into the womb. At the bottom of the water there is the skeletal figure of the sea monster, representing death—or the opposite of birth.

Purgatory or “The In-between”

When Rey emerges from the water, she is caught in between--a purgatory that stretches on and on for what seems like forever with only her worst fear laid out before her. This is the fear that she is alone and has always been alone.

Rey narrates over the scene that she feels as if she is trapped, but her strength, determination, and stubbornness lead her forward until she finds the mirror. The mirror, however, only furthers her own personal nightmare, at least to her at this point in time. When all she sees is herself, she feels as if she has found no answers.

Feeling lonely and lost, Rey contacts Kylo for answers.

There is a lot to be said about how Kylo is indeed the figure on the other side of the glass. The most important thing about this, however, is that Rey does not consciously identify him. The mirror scene is a huge meta unto itself so I will not be focusing on why Kylo is on the other side of the mirror. The important thing to note here is that her not consciously identifying Kylo on the other end of the mirror—meaning that her future is clouded to her--signifies that she is still trapped between death (unwillingness to search the darkness for answers) and life (the acceptance of the past and the start of a new beginning). Still clinging to the need to understand and see her parents, she recognizes only herself.

After the fourth force bond scene with Kylo where she makes up her mind to leave the island and find the answers she truly needs, Rey arrives on The Supremacy.

Rebirth

Rey arrives on the Supremacy to meet Kylo in an escape pod that looks very similar to a glass coffin, lying flat on her back, her hands crossed across her chest clutching her lightsaber to her. The Art of The Last Jedi confirms that the escape pod is indeed meant to look like a coffin and Rian explains that it was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra. However, as many have pointed out the scene is hard not to interpret as an allusion to Snow White wherein Rey is the still sleeping princess stuck between life and death, waiting to be awoken. This is made even more apparent when she sees Kylo Ren for the first time and he gazes down at her like a prince, looking the best he has looked the whole film. Unlike every other scene in the film, he doesn’t look like he has just come off crying for 5 hours with no sleep. Even more telling, when the metaphorical sleeping princess’s metaphorical prince opens the “casket” the darkness in the escape pod is eradicated by brilliant light.

Rey eventually finds her rebirth in this “prince.” Although instead of a kiss, the prince bestows upon her the truth, a truth that she has always known. He coaxes it out of her and forces her to finally admit that her parents are indeed nothing, that her parents indeed abandoned her for their own selfish desires, and that her parents were indeed dead the whole time, buried right beneath her feet under the sands of Jakku. She is no longer stuck in a purgatory of unanswered questions and denial, she is free of the burden and the pain and is finally awake; reborn.

In this moment, she is able to at least begin to see her new life. It is a life where she can let go of her past and begin to realize that her ambitions and goals are not tied down by attempting to find a place within the story. She can begin her own story and find her own unique place within it. While I think we’ll see more of this development in 9, her decision to leave Kylo when he refuses to join her signifies this change. She flees The Supremacy, rejoins Chewie on the Falcon, and goes to save the Resistance, feeling that perhaps nobody else can be the hope the galaxy needs but her.

Rey’s moment of rebirth culminates in the levitation of rocks to free the Resistance from being destroyed by the First Order. Traditionally rock formations symbolize the passing of one life into the next and the cycle of death and rebirth. As Luke says “the rebellion is reborn,” as well as the Jedi. They are not going to be quite the same as they were. That time has passed, signified by the burning of the force tree—trees traditionally representing life (or in other words the life that will be reborn in another life, holding onto certain similarities but ultimately forging a new, unmarked path).

Kylo’s Death and Purgatory

I have already established Kylo as the metaphorical prince in this story who helps the heroine find her new path. Of course, the irony with Kylo is that not only is the princess awoken with the help of a dead prince, the princess uses the help of the dead prince to forge a new path away from the ideology he is tied down to.

Death

While Rey travels through a full cycle of death to rebirth, Kylo Ren—while not static—does remain “dead” for the majority of the film. Even when he bests his master, his abuser, his tormenter, he is still unable to break free from his manipulation.

The issue is that Kylo believes he already had his awakening. He believes he has already been reborn when he killed his father.

Kylo is wrong. He sees the past as something not to be understood and accepted as Rey does, but as something to be destroyed. Kylo—in a fit of rage to leave everything in his past unforgiven—wants to destroy it, to crush it, to bury it. He doesn’t face it—he smothers it.

He hopes to bring Rey to this point. However, she is able to move beyond destroying the past and while I am unsure whether or not she has fully accepted it, she is level headed enough to know that destruction will not solve her problems. So when Kylo proposes the galaxy to Rey—ironically and rather tragically in front of his former master’s corpse, the very monster who made him “deceased—”Rey has no choice but to reject him at this moment in time.

After being rejected, Kylo attempts to find another way to channel his new found freedom. Although, burdened with deep emotional scars, likely some very heavy brainwashing, and now the hurt of being left by the only person he ever saw any kind of future with, he tragically becomes exactly what his abuser said he would become: a child in a mask.

The final moments of the film, our “Renperor” is purposefully comical. He leads the First Order with a military strategy so embarrassing I don’t even know how they were able to organize themselves well enough to get on the planet at all. He leads emotionally, looking to destroy everything and anybody. And in doing so screams and orders people around like an angry upset child, hidden behind the mask of his grandfather. This is shown through the various Darth Vader throwbacks including force choking Hux and strutting down the ramp of his command shuttle in a dramatic fashion, his cape billowing in the breeze.

Purgatory or “The In-between”

Kylo does eventually begin to reach that “in between” stage in the last 5 minutes of this film.

Kylo begins to understand—thanks to his failed battle with Luke Skywalker—that he could be wrong. This is triggered by his realization that Luke is correct; that his father and his uncle will always be with him, in some capacity. He can never entirely eliminate the past like he has tried so desperately to do.

Kylo’s realization is solidified to the audience when he finds his father’s dice—an object that he likely knew in another time, in another life before Snoke. The dice symbolize his old life, the life he has parted from, and the life that he has metaphorically materialized from (“death”) and the life that now haunts him in the “in between” (purgatory).

By touching the dice, the bond reignites between Rey and Kylo and we are drawn back into the connection between these two tragic halves of a whole. Here we clearly see Rey’s determined face. As the character who is “reborn” she stands tall above him as he kneels before her. Kylo, on the other hand, looks distraught and tormented. You can see that he realizes he is wrong and that he has to find another way out of the torture and bitterness he has towards his past. He is now where Rey was in the middle of this film after she had descended into the pit on Ahch-To. Just as Rey had knelt before the pit before falling into its abyss and coming up into nothing by visions of her lonely self, Kylo kneels before Rey and the memory of his father. He has moved past the unwillingness to accept any other path but destruction of the past but also—as far as we know-- has not accepted another way out.

Going off of this, my speculation for 9 is that Kylo will experience a similar rebirth as Rey did in The Last Jedi. However, the path will not be the same and the outcome will not be the same. I don’t think Ben Solo will necessarily be “redeemed” in the traditional sense, but I have no doubt that Ben Solo—for once in his life—will find out who he really is and—like Rey—will discover where his place was always meant to be.

#the last jedi #star wars #tlj spoilers #the last jedi spoilers #rey #kylo ren #Luke Skywalker #meta #Kylo #ben solo #reylo #tlj #speculation

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tipsycad147 · 4 years

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Aquarius January Old New Years Customs and Lore

In Madagascar New Year’s is celebrated with much feasting and sacrificial killing of oxen takes place.

Chinese custom requires that every boy who calls on his neighbours or relatives on New Year’s day, should receive a couple of loose-skinned oranges, or he is considered shamefully treated. The name of orange means luck, fortune, and auspiciousness.

On New Year’s eve while the clock is striking twelve, repeat three times: “Good Saint Anne, good Saint Anne, send me a man as fast as you can,” and you will become engaged within a year.

At the beginning of the New Year in Natal, a ceremony is performed by the chief by spurting from his mouth a mixture of the New Year’s fruits in different directions as if upon his enemies. After this ceremony it is lawful for the people to eat the New Year’s fruits. They are only eaten by stealth before.

It was a custom of the Jews to serve up sheep’s head on New Year’s at their chief entertainment, as a mystical representation of the ram offered in sacrifice for Isaac. When a family or company sat down to this repast, each person took a piece of bread and dipping it in honey, said, “May this year be sweet and fruitful.”

In several parts of Belgium it is customary for the people to make waffles on New Year’s day. Around Liege the first waffle is crossformed or cut cross-wise, and placed on the chimney-piece as a New Year’s gift to the crucifix. It is believed that this waffle or cake is blessed; it does not rot and a small piece given to a sick man or beast makes them recover.

An old New Year’s custom which is still observed in some of the northern counties of England, is called “Going about with a vessel cup.” Poor women and girls desirous of obtaining charity take two dolls, representing the Virgin Mother and Infant Jesus, and go about from house to house during the week before New Year’s singing a quaint old carol and at its conclusion presenting for the receipt of alms a small cup, which is known as a “vessel cup.” To turn one of these vessel cup singers unrequited from your door is to forfeit all good health and good fortune for the approaching new year.

In Westmoreland and Cumberland early in the morning of New Year’s the “Taex Populi” assemble carrying stangs (long poles) and baskets. Every inhabitant or stranger who falls into the hands of this ruffian band will be sacrificed to their favourite Saint; a man is mounted on a stang, a woman is basketed, and carried shoulder high to the nearest balance and weighed. None are allowed to follow their accustomed occupations on this day.

In Guria in Asiatic Russia, the New Year is prepared for a month before the time comes; the people pen up poultry, turkeys, ducks and geese; but the chief animal for food is the pig which is fatted up a month before and killed two or three days before New Year’s. The New Year in Guria might almost be called the feast of St. Yicelie the Great, because it is believed by them that the prophet Mahomet had an argument with that saint as to who could work the greater miracle. The saint said that he would strike with an iron rod a rock and out of it water should flow. Mahomet said he would stick his staff into the ground and wine should flow from it. On New Year’s day the miracles were performed. The saint struck the rock, and a spring came out and flowed. When he saw the miracle, Mahomet took the saint to a place where he had put some wine skins under the earth. But when they reached the place where Mahomet intended to stick his staff into the hidden wine-skins, they found some pigs had rooted them up and they were to be seen scattered over the ground. In this way was Mahomet defeated by pigs, and thus the pig is the animal for the New Year’s feast. Mahomet cursed the pigs and ever since his followers will not eat Dig’s meat; but the saint blessed them, and with his foot pressed their tails into the ground and they are killed in his honour in Guria.

The old Romans did not give up New Year’s day wholly to feasting or idleness, as is done in most countries, but everyone wrought a little at his trade for the sake of luck throughout the year.

In England it was customary to give and receive gifts on New Year’s day with the superstitious design of securing good fortune for the year, as well as for affection and to promote good neighbourhood. Even the kings of England accepted presents from their courtiers on this morning.

In France New Year’s day is still distinguished by a universal system of present-giving.

The Romish Church as well as the Church of England celebrated the first of January in honour of the circumcision of Christ.Yorn Kippur, the day of atonement, is the concluding ceremonial in the observances of the Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashanah, which falls in either September or October. While Rosh Hashanah, the day on which the fate of the pious is inscribed in the great book, is given to rejoicing and merry making, Yorn Kippur, the day on which the book is sealed, is observed by fasting, praying, repentance, and reconciliation.

A cock is taken by its legs by the eldest male of the family and swung nine times over the others’ heads, praying God to transfer their sins into the body of the fowl. The bird is then either killed as a sacrifice or given to the poor.

In the basement of the synagogue are placed long boxes with sand. Each worshipper brings with him a candle, sticks it in the sand, lights it, and beseeches God to let the light of his mercy shine upon him and as a sign thereof make the candle burn long and clear, to indicate a long and happy life for the supplicant.

We find that the Walloons (Belgians) have many observances and beliefs in common with their Gaulish neighbours, while the descendants of the Franks by whom the ancient Gauls were dispossessed of the fertile plains and driven into the mountains, have preserved more pagan usages.

The Christian era was not generally used in Flanders until the reign of Charlemagne. The year began on various days according to the different departments of life; but as soon as the Frankish supremacy was established in the southern region, now known by their name, and that had adopted the first of January as the beginning of their civil year its adoption in Belgium followed as a matter of course.

In the Teutonic provinces it is especially honoured and surprise greetings are used, when the person first saluted has to give the other a present.

On twelfth night, festivity is universal in Belgium and a cake with a bean in it is cut for the kingly place. These solemnities are thought to have come down from Roman civilisation and to have been introduced by Gaulish ancestors.

At Mechlin the Sawyer’s Guild have taken the “Three Kings” as patron saints on a punning interpretation of the text, “They saw the Star.”

The Chinese, in this country as well as at home, bid good-bye, annually, to the god of the kitchen, giving him thanks for his protection of the family during the year, after which he is supposed to make his annual journey to heaven to report to the “pearly emperor” the condition of the family and how it has behaved during the year. To avoid unpleasant disclosures, the god is regaled with quantities of candy so sticky that his lips are too full for utterance, being glued too tight to speak. The night before the Chinese New Year, the dusky little god is supposed to return, and gets another supply of sugar and delicacies which he is supposed to like

.In the small hours of New Year’s morning take place the interesting ceremonies of sacrifice to “father heaven” and “mother earth” by the head of the family, who offers fruit, rice, vegetables, and tea to both these divinities, asking blessings on the hour and the New Year. A quantity of gilt paper-money is burnt, which passes in smoke to the heavens above and in ashes to the earth below.

Prostrations and reverence before the household gods, the shrines of the ancestors, and the older living representatives of the family, are all gone through with for luck.

The presents chosen by the Chinese at their New Year are of a significant nature. A kind of orange, called “kat,” is handed around on the supposition that it is a good omen for the year, from the fact that the name has the same sound as the word which means “lucky.” For the same reason, thin-shelled bivalves, called “hien,” are eaten, this word being identical in sound with the word for intelligence. A kind of carp is also in much demand, as its name is the same as “profit.”

Source: Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World

https://shirleytwofeathers.com/The_Blog/pagancalendar/category/january-holidays/page/6/

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jemirrose · 9 months

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Sand seals 🦭🌱

#illustration #drawing #fan art #artists on tumblr #zelda fanart #sandseals #sand seal supremacy #patricia the sand seal #sand seal plushie #riju and patricia #totk riju

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transmogwow · 5 years

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Kakspluskaks - Stormreaver (eu) head: Helm of Reaffirmed Purpose neck: Heart of Azeroth shoulder: Demon-Rend Shoulderblades back: Cape of Second Sight chest: Jerkin of the Aberrant Chimera wrist: Pit Lord's Cuffs hands: Power Handler's Gloves waist: Infernal Firecord Sash legs: Leggings of Sacrifice feet: Treads of Illidari Supremacy finger1: Band of Multi-Sided Strikes finger2: Seal of the Regal Loa trinket1: Kimbul's Razor Claw trinket2: Kul Tiran Cannonball Runner mainHand: Twinblades of the Deceiver offHand: Warglaive of the Sand Queen

#Blood Elf #Demon Hunter #Leather #Horde #WoW #Transmogrification

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newstfionline · 7 years

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The True Story of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond—And Why the British Won’t Give It Back

By Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian.com, August 30, 2017

The diamond came from India’s alluvial mines thousands of years ago, sifted from the sand. According to Hindu belief, it was revered by gods like Krishna--even though it seemed to carry a curse, if the luck of its owners was anything to go by. The gem, which would come to be known as the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, wove its way through Indian court intrigues before eventually ending up in the British Crown Jewels by the mid-1800s. That was when a British amateur geologist interviewed gemologists and historians on the diamond’s origins and wrote the history of the Koh-i-Noor that served as the basis for most future stories of the diamond. But according to historians Anita Anand and William Dalrymple, that geologist got it all wrong.

In their new book Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, Anand and Dalrymple work their way through more than four centuries of Indian history to learn the truth about the diamond, “panning the old research” like the Indians who sieved river sand for diamonds, Anand says. And the true history has its share of drama. For Dalrymple, “It’s a perfectly scripted Game of Thrones-style epic. All the romance, all the blood, all the gore, all the bling.”

But beneath the drama of the diamond is a more serious question that still has no clear answer: How should modern nations deal with a colonial legacy of looting? With numerous countries (including India, Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan) having claimed ownership of the Koh-i-Noor, it’s a topic under vigorous debate.

To understand where the diamond came from--and whether it could ever go back--requires diving into the murky past, when India was ruled by outsiders: the Mughals.

For centuries, India was the world’s only source of diamonds--all the way until 1725, with the discovery of diamond mines in Brazil. Most of the gemstones were alluvial, meaning they could be sifted out of river sands, and rulers of the subcontinent embraced their role as the first diamond connoisseurs.

“In many ancient Indian courts, jewelry rather than clothing was the principal form of adornment and a visible sign of court hierarchy, with strict rules being laid down to establish which rank of courtier could wear which gem in which setting,” Dalrymple and Anand write in their book. The world’s oldest texts on gemology also come from India, and they include sophisticated classification systems for different kinds of stones.

Turco-Mongol leader Zahir-ud-din Babur came from Central Asia through the Kyber Pass (located between modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan) to invade India in 1526, establishing the Islamic Mughal dynasty and a new era of infatuation with gemstones. The Mughals would rule northern India for 330 years, expanding their territory across nearly all of present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and eastern Afghanistan, all the while reveling in the mountains of gemstones they inherited and pillaged.

Although it’s impossible to know exactly where the Koh-i-Noor came from and when it first came into the Mughals’ possession, there is a definite point at which it appears in the written record. In 1628, Mughal ruler Shah Jahan commissioned a magnificent, gemstone-encrusted throne. The bejeweled structure was inspired by the fabled throne of Solomon, the Hebrew king who figures into the histories of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Shah Jahan’s throne took seven years to make, costing four times as much as the Taj Mahal, which was also under construction. As court chronicler Ahmad Shah Lahore writes in his account of the throne:

“The outside of the canopy was to be of enamel work studded with gems, the inside was to be thickly set with rubies, garnets, and other jewels, and it was to be supported by emerald columns. On top of each pillar there were to be two peacocks thick set with gems, and between each of the two peacocks a tree set with rubies and diamonds, emeralds and pearls.”

Among the many precious stones that adorned the throne were two particularly enormous gems that would, in time, become the most valued of all: the Timur Ruby--more highly valued by the Mughals because they preferred colored stones--and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. The diamond was lodged at the very top of the throne, in the head of a glistening gemstone peacock.

For a century after the creation of the Peacock Throne, the Mughal Empire retained its supremacy in India and beyond. It was the wealthiest state in Asia; Delhi, the capital city, was home to 2 million people, more than London and Paris combined. But that prosperity attracted the attention of other rulers in Central Asia, including Persian ruler Nader Shah.

When Nader invaded Delhi in 1739, the ensuing carnage cost tens of thousands of lives and the depletion of the treasury. Nader left the city accompanied by so much gold and so many gems that the looted treasure required 700 elephants, 4,000 camels and 12,000 horses to pull it. Nader took the Peacock Throne as part of his treasure, but removed the Timur Ruby and the Koh-i-Noor diamond to wear on an armband.

The Koh-i-Noor would remain away from India--in a country that would become Afghanistan--for 70 years. It passed between the hands of various rulers in one blood-soaked episode after another. With all the fighting between Central Asian factions, a power vacuum grew in India--and the British soon came to take advantage of it.

At the turn of the 19th century, the British East India Company expanded its territorial control from coastal cities to the interior of the India subcontinent. As Dalrymple and Anand write of the British campaigns, “[they] would ultimately annex more territory than all of Napoleon’s conquests in Europe.” In addition to claiming more natural resources and trading posts, the British also had their eye on a piece of priceless treasure: the Koh-i-Noor.

After decades of fighting, the diamond returned to India and came into the hands of Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh in 1813, whose particular affection for the gem ultimately sealed its aura of prestige and power. “It was not just that Ranjit Singh liked diamonds and respected the stone’s vast monetary value; the gem seems to have held a far greater symbolism for him,” write Anand and Dalrymple. “He had won back from the Afghan Durrani dynasty almost all the Indian lands they had seized since the time of Ahmad Shah [who plundered Delhi in 1761].��

For Anand, Singh’s elevation of the diamond was a major turning point in its history. “The transition is startling when the diamond becomes a symbol of potency rather than beauty,” Anand says. “It becomes this gemstone like the ring in Lord of the Rings, one ring to rule them all.”

For the British, that symbol of prestige and power was irresistible. If they could own the jewel of India as well as the country itself, it would symbolize their power and colonial superiority. It was a diamond worth fighting and killing for, now more than ever. When the British learned of Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, and his plan to give the diamond and other jewels to a sect of Hindu priests, the British press exploded in outrage. “The richest, the most costly gem in the known world, has been committed to the trust of a profane, idolatrous and mercenary priesthood,” wrote one anonymous editorial. Its author urged the British East India Company to do whatever they could to keep track of the Koh-i-Noor, so that it might ultimately be theirs.

But the colonists were first forced to wait out a chaotic period of changing rulers. After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, the Punjabi throne passed between four different rulers over four years. At the end of the violent period, the only people left in line for the throne were a young boy, Duleep Singh, and his mother, Rani Jindan. And in 1849, after imprisoning Jindan, the British forced Duleep to sign a legal document amending the Treaty of Lahore, that required Duleep to give away the Koh-i-Noor and all claim to sovereignty. The boy was only 10 years old.

From there, the diamond became a special possession of Queen Victoria. It was displayed at the 1851 Great Exposition in London, only for the British public to be dismayed at how simple it was. “Many people find a difficulty in bringing themselves to believe, from its external appearance, that it is anything but a piece of common glass,” wrote The Times in June 1851.

Given its disappointing reception, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, had the stone recut and polished--a process that reduced its size by half but made the light refract more brilliantly from its surface.

While Victoria wore the diamond as a brooch, it eventually became part of the Crown Jewels, first in the crown of Queen Alexandra (the wife of Edward VII, Victoria’s oldest son) and then in the crown of Queen Mary (the wife of George V, grandson of Victoria). The diamond came to its current place of honor in 1937, at the front of the crown worn by the Queen Mother, wife of George IV and mother of Elizabeth II. The crown made its last public appearance in 2002, resting atop of the coffin of the Queen Mother for her funeral.

Still shrouded in myth and mystery, one thing is clear when it comes to the Koh-i-Noor: it sparks plenty of controversy.

“If you ask anybody what should happen to Jewish art stolen by the Nazis, everyone would say of course they’ve got to be given back to their owners,” Dalrymple says. “And yet we’ve come to not say the same thing about Indian loot taken hundreds of years earlier, also at the point of a gun. What is the moral distinction between stuff taken by force in colonial times?”

For Anand, the issue is even more personal. Born and raised in the UK, her family is Indian and her relatives regularly visited. When they would tour the Tower of London and see the Koh-i-Noor in the Crown Jewels, Anand remembers them “spending copious amounts of time swearing themselves blue at the glass case with the diamond.”

According to Richard Kurin, Smithsonian’s first Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large as well as the author of Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gem, part of the reason these gemstones came to be perceived as “cursed” is because of how they were gained.

“When the powerful take things from the less powerful, the powerless don’t have much to do except curse the powerful,” Kurin says. Like the Koh-i-Noor, the Hope diamond came from India and was displayed at the London Exposition in 1851. It is now displayed at the National Museum of Natural History, having been donated by Harry Winston, who legally purchased it.

And while Kurin says uncovering the line of ownership of a gemstone like the Koh-i-Noor is best practice when it comes to history, it doesn’t necessarily lead to a legal obligation (though other scholars and lawyers disagree). He and Dalrymple both point out that the rulers who once owned these gemstones headed nations that no longer exist.

That’s one of the biggest differences between objects taken during colonial conquest and art and treasure looted by Nazis--the difficulty in ascertaining who has the first and most legitimate claim to anything.

The Koh-i-Noor isn’t the only contested treasure currently residing in the UK. Perhaps equally controversial are the Elgin Marbles, statues carved 2,500 years ago and taken from the Parthenon in Athens by British Lord Elgin in the early 1800s. So far, the UK has retained ownership of the statues and the diamond, regardless of calls for their return.

Anand thinks one solution that doesn’t require removing the Koh-i-Noor from the UK is to make the history of the diamond clearer. “What I would dearly love is for there to be a really clear sign by the exhibit. People are taught this was a gift from India to Britain. I would like the correct history to be put by the diamond.”

The diamond isn’t likely to leave the Crown Jewels anytime soon. Anand and Dalrymple only hope that their work will do some good by clarifying the true path the infamous gemstone followed--and helping leaders come to their own conclusions about what to do with it next.

#Koh-i-Noor Diamond #India #Britain #British crown jewels

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sitting-on-me-bum · 7 years

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The Austfonna ice cap, Svalbard, is the largest in the Eurasian Arctic at 150 miles long. It has a thousand waterfalls in the summer.

Frozen Planet Episode 3 photo gallery

This photo gallery features highlights from the stunning third episode of Frozen Planet - Summer.

As the pack ice breaks up in summer, polar bears find it harder to hunt their favoured seal prey.

A polar bear swims in front of the Austfonna ice cap, Svalbard. They must swim longer distances in summer to find food.

A snowy owl female guards her chicks whilst her partner hunts. Each chick eats two lemmings a day so the parents are kept very busy.

King penguins congregate in their thousands.

Cubs learn to swim for the first time when the pack ice breaks up in summer – a skill that will become second-nature in adulthood.

An elephant seal flicks wet sand on its back to keep cool, on a beach in South Georgia.

A sunset over the Antarctic Peninsula. This scene, although serene here, is a haunt of killer whales.

A polar bear faces aerial attack from nesting Arctic tern, who draw blood with their beaks. Bears scavenge in the seabird colonies when there is little else to eat.

The fur flies during these bull fur seals' epic battles for supremacy, as they compete for mating rights on Bird Island, South Georgia.

Adélie penguins in Western Antarctica make fishing trips round the clock in summer to feed their growing chicks.

#frozen planet #photograph #gallery #nature #summer #landscape #photography #photographer

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templepunk · 7 years

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The World of Aerde Part 2

Now for the geography of Aerde or rather the main continent, on which I center the history. This time I am providing some visual aid to help tell a fair bit of Aerde’s past. I sketched up a map on my own on my iPad with the ProCreate app (It’s pretty good) and though I have spent a lot of time on it, it’s not very detailed or aesthetically pleasing so have some mercy in the Your Thoughts section. Also it might not necessarily be complete. Maybe someone could draw up a more fantasty-novel-type map.

Many of the individual locations I will cover in later posts but for now I’m giving a list of cursory, and hopefully enticing, descriptions for each one.

The Civil Circuit and Circuit Captials - A long running and even longer lasting road that ensures safe travel across the land and its series of city-states. Both were built by the Alliance of Humans, Dwarves and Elves over two thousand years ago. Supremacies have no tolerance for mortal sovereignty over the land so there are no territories and has city-states instead.

Writhing Glades - Originally the domain of human societies, it was flooded beyond repair by a year long monsoon conjured by the Oceanic Marimer in the midst of a brutal war known known as The Tides of Blood. The term ‘Writhing’ comes from its most infamous inhabitant, The Dire Woods. A living forest that moves throughout the glades with its writhing roots and serves as a home for some of the most vicious predators in the glades.

Shimmering Wastes & Mushur - The only desert within the prime continent of Aerde where once stood an icy, vast mountain range and the lost, Dwarven Capital. It was brought to perfect devastation by, what else, Supremacies. A draconic ancestor unearthed by Dwarves now unmade by their own discovery. Motivated by what could be misconstrued as sympathy, another Dragon came to challenge the primeval scourge and slew it after a year-long conflict. All was turned to sand, and sand to glass, a glass to a glimmering, arid wasteland. The elder dragon had been slain by its descendant. And as another act of what is not necessarily sympathy, the dragon uttered its name, Yaalmae, and brought sentient life unto the land. Yaalmae made them in its image, reptilian with scales of vibrant color, and named them The Sura, a new race with access to draconic secrets. They built their capital, Mushur, out of their most lucrative resource. Glass. It is sought out by lords of luxury all across the continent.

The Woven World - The birthplace and open grave of the Elven civilization. Though there are very few legitimate or detailed accounts of what exactly lead to the End of Elves, all know what caused it. Spiders. About a thousand years ago, on a day like any other, the Giant Spiders of the Sylvan Canopy launched a surprise attack in concert against the Elven Capital. The assault lasted only a few days and the Spiders’ victory was confirmed at the emergence of a new Supremacy. The Weavers. The Godly arachnids utterly claimed the Elven Woods, and all its inhabitants, as their own and thus came to be known as The Woven World. There are no means of observing what happens in there, but all trespassers of any number have been devoured. There was tell of Elven refugees fleeing far north and the Ir-Tse-Bul of the west are known descendants of Elven Exiles. But the Elves, as we knew them with their pointy ears and third eyes, are gone.

The Kissing Isles and The Abrigo Capitals - The home of the last remnants of Orc-kind. Now occupied by the two cultures of a reborn race; the Etched Ateso on the East Isle and the Painted Ateso on the West. One culture has forsaken its ancestor’s nomadic and tribal ways, so they seek to prove their Civilized Unity by etching their written Ateso language into their calloused skin, a gift the orcs never gave. The other wishes to refine the old ways to form a Proud Coalition of unique factions that distinguish each other by painting themselves permanently. The two see each other as sibling races and never come to war but share a competitive urge with the arts, both magical and not More on them later.

Third-Eye Lake and Gwely - Sometimes known as the Wiser Lake, not just because of the namesake, but for the lost Human Archives sealed deep beneath the lake itself. But Gwely is the source of its most prominent visitors and the strangest of races. The Wydwyr. A Race of Changelings. Who knows what, if anything, goes through their ever-shifting heads but they managed to build mock-capital and decided to inhabit it. Not much is known about them but they’re entirely peaceful and so nobody pays much attention to them.

The Marimer Sea and Empodo - After The Tides of Blood, much of the southern waters were claimed by the Oceanic Marimer. It is debated why none of the Supremacies has responded to their act of sovereignty but to no avail. The Barrier Strait serves its namesake by preventing any and all seafaring with a swift response from Marimer Warlords. Though it has not happened in centuries, some diplomatic voyages are escorted through the strait and onto Empodo. The name applies to both the Island and the Marimer Capital built within it. At first it was a Dwarven Military Base but after the war, the marimer have made it theirs to provide economic and political presence for the rest of the world. Beyond that is completely unknown to all dry-land travelers.

That’s all for now. I will continue to describe the geography of Aerde, so just wait a little longer if you please.

#fantasy #writing #map

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lamoille-house · 5 years

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The Don’ts in Maldives

The Maldives is considered as one of the world’s best destinations where dream vacation comes true. The beautiful island of Maldives is considered where magic meets beauty.

The Maldives is a gorgeous getaway to enjoy the sun, sand, and seafood. Though the resorts have has its own identity and lenient rules than the inhabited islands, the nation itself is very conservative.

Your vacation in this piece of paradise will be full of sunbathing, snorkeling, scuba diving, whale shark watching, island hopping, bicycle riding, gorging on delicious food, surfing, and paddleboarding. The Maldives is branded as the “Sunny-side of life” and a place for the sun, sea, and sands these natural factors are the most obvious reasons why it is a popular tourist destination. Maldivians know that foreign visitors follow their customs and different ways of doing things. Therefore, visitors to the Maldives should follow the local customs and practices.

We want to ensure that your holiday goes smoothly without any glitch, hence here’s a simple guide to what not to do in the Maldives to make your trip a memorable one.

Do not take off your tee: it is all about public Local Islands and beaches. This custom certainly sounds absurd to you. It’s an Islamic country there are certain morals and values to uphold. You cannot expect to roam around in a bikini in public places and expect the people there to take it easy. You can do all this in your resort. Nude sunbathing is an absolute no-no in the Maldives.

Don’t buy turtle and black coral since they are endangered not just in the Maldives, but all over the world. While taking a stroll on many atolls in the Maldives, you might come across some shady people who are trying to sell turtle shell and black corals to you. This sale of products have been banned in the Maldives for over two decades, so please don’t partake in this illegal and unethical sale unless you want to face harsh punishments or even jail time.

Don’t bring liquor or alcohol products to the Maldives. The import of alcohol and consumption in the local islands is strictly prohibited. Only permit holders such as resort and safari boats are allowed to import alcohol in the Maldives. However, alcoholic beverages are available for consumption in the tourist resorts.

Sunscreen: the Maldives is known for its serene turquoise waters. But before you dive into the depths of the ocean make sure you apply an adequate amount of good quality sunscreen lotion to avoid getting a dreadful tan that will cause even more excruciating burns and you might have to spend some days of your vacation in your hotel room.

Maldivian island hopping: Tourists are discouraged from visiting Non -resort islands. This is largely in case they want to keep a tight grip on where the tourist dollars are spent and to make sure the Non- resort islands are not corrupted by foreign influences. To visit the Non- resort islands and utter atolls you will need to organize a guide or licensed tour operator to show you around.

Avoid excess display of intimacy in public: the Maldives is considered as a conservative country. Too much display of intimacy on public local places isn’t considered as decent and people might object. Avoid getting into trouble during your short stay there. Let your holiday be a memorable one.

Do not litter the ocean: Marine life and vegetation are an important part of the ecosystem and in the world of rapid climate change the marine habitat has been affected severely. No matter which beaches you visit, please refrain from littering. We have all seen images of seals trapped in plastic sheets, plastic removed out of a whale during autopsy and straws stuck in a poor turtle’s nose. All of these can be hazardous.

Be extra respectful during the holy month of Ramadan. People are likely to be sensitive to anything they perceive during this month. You should take steps to avoid eating, drinking or smoking in the public. Ramadan involves Muslims not eating or drinking from dawn to dusk and it’s rude to ignore these customs.

Use high protection cream: since the Maldives is located so close to the equator, it is possible to get burnt even on a cloudy day. So, you need high factor cream.

Avoid drinking tap water: water undergoes a different process in the Maldives to get rid of all the harmful bacteria and germs. This process is known as reverse osmosis desalination. This process is very successful in eradicating all the germs and bacteria from recycled water. It also gets rid of all the natural minerals in the water that provide several benefits to the human body and ends up not being as nutritious as it should be. It is a better choice to opt for packaged mineral water sold in these stores.

Banned items: the Maldives is a strictly Islamic country. There are specific ban items that you can bring with you to enjoy a hassle-free vacation at the Maldives. Leave at the port items which you have carried and not allowed using like alcohol, tobacco products, and religious texts and enjoy the unplugged holiday.

Don’t wear your shoes while entering a home or mosque. If you are not sure if you should remove your shoes, take a peep at what other people are doing and follow or ask someone.

When meeting someone for the first time, a handshake is common. Accept between men and women of the Muslim faith. Maldivian men may nod or bow to a woman, but if you are unsure, you can extend your hand.

Drug enforcement in the Maldives is strict and you have to pay a heavy penalty. They don’t have the death penalty for drug offenses, but they do have mandatory prison time for anyone caught even with soft drugs. Possession of minor amounts is considered trafficking with a life sentence in prison attached to it.

To make the best out of your trip to the Maldives is to shed off all remains of supremacy from your actions and think as the locals do. To earn respect you should show respect to others too.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you have a problem-free trip to Maldives.

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