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geometragic · 4 years

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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 & 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄; 𝘔𝘶𝘯 & 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘦 - 𝘔𝘦𝘮𝘦.

Fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OCs still can make it somehow work with their own lore and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multimuses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

Tagged by: The amazing @illdivine ! Thanks a bunch for tagging me ! ^^ Tagging: @extravachance @grandordergirl @kimintsugi @royaltywritten @daitoku @pragmarage @teniras @deviilscry @foolslaugh @wrathlead and anyone else who’d like to do this meme ! ^^

My muse is: canon / OC / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated? YES / NO / IDK

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG (( He was one of the poster boys for Sengoku Basara 4, so...that counts for something, right ? XD I don’t think that Sengoku Basara really has a protagonist, though. Just a bunch of different characters. ))

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO (( I’m putting ‘yes’ if only because Mitsunari, who never remembers anyone, remembers who Katsuie is. XD I think that, in general, some characters know Katsuie and others don’t ? ))

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL (( Bad in-universe, somewhere in between neutral and bad in the fandom. ))

How strictly do you follow ‘canon’? — I’d say that I follow canon pretty strictly ! Though I do add my own headcanons. ^^ I need to update some of my pages so that they’re more in line with canon, though. Especially Katsuie’s modern verse, now that the Basara Academy anime has been out for over a year... XD

Sell your muse! Try to list everything that makes your muse interesting (in your opinion) to make them spicy for your mutuals. — Katsuie comes off as really normal and very chill at first, which lets him easily have a first meeting interaction with most muses without angering them / fighting them / killing them / etc. But the more you delve into his thoughts and the things he does, you can see how warped his mindset is when it comes to certain subjects / people. ^^ And he’s a depressed emo kid, so I'd imagine that a lot of people on Tumblr would connect with him over that. XD

Now the opposite. List every reason why your muse might not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom think?). — Back when SB4 first came out, Katsuie got a lot of flak for his creepy obsession with Oichi, which is admittedly pretty bad. Since she’s, you know, married, and Katsuie’s willing to go so far as to kill Nagamasa, her husband, for a chance (?) to be with her. Not to mention Katsuie’s anime route, where he gets himself kicked out of the Oda clan, destroys his own hopes and dreams in the process by killing everyone in the Azai clan (Nagamasa, Oichi, and Maria), and finally gets mercy-killed by the former shogun. Yikes. ^^; I’m honestly surprised that, in my five years roleplaying Katsuie, no one’s sent in anon hate to me because of Katsuie’s behavior. (Unfortunately, a former rp partner of mine once got anon hate years ago for shipping Katsuie and Oichi. ;u;)

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐓𝐎 𝐑𝐏 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄? — Katsuie’s actually my very first muse ! ^^ I started writing him at the end of my senior year of high school. I think I’d been into Sengoku Basara for a year or two at that point, and I’d been reading translations that people were making for SB4. I’d also been following Sengoku Basara roleplayers / ask blogs (there were several active ones around back then), and I really enjoyed reading their interactions, so I wanted to pick a Sengoku Basara character so that I could roleplay with them, too ! I tried writing for a couple of potential muses in private to test them out, but it felt most natural to write for Katsuie, so I went with him as my first muse ! I probably chose him because I’d gone through a bunch of not-so-fun stuff in high school, so I saw Katsuie going through a bunch of not-so-fun stuff in the Oda clan and sympathized with that.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐆𝐎𝐈𝐍𝐆? — To my knowledge, I’ve been the only one roleplaying Katsuie semi-consistently over the past five years ? He’s just such an interesting character to me —– it’d be too sad to close this blog and not see anyone’s Katsuie interact with other people’s muses anymore. ;u; It’s something I’ve been a little worried about recently because I know I’m going to be more busy in the future, since I’m (hopefully) going to finish up my research this year, get my master’s degree next year, and then go straight into a serious full-time job. I don’t want to give up rolepaying, but if I get too busy next year... >.<

Also, playing the mobile game Sengoku Basara: Battle Party every day helps ! And my rp partners are awesome. ^^

𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could help them get more comfortable with you.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES / NO / IDK

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO

Are you good at accepting criticism about your portrayal? — Yeah, I’d say I’m pretty good at accepting criticism !

Do you like questions which help you explore your character? — Yeah ! I’m happy to answer whatever questions everyone has about Katsuie ! ^^

If someone disagrees with a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — Yeah, because it’s interesting to see how other people view Katsuie ! From my point of view, if someone disagrees with one of my headcanons on Katsuie, it means that they’re interested enough in him and have thought about him enough to have their own opinions on him. It’s so so so so difficult to get anyone interested in muses from a series as niche and JP-only as Sengoku Basara, so I’d honestly be happy if someone cared enough about Sengoku Basara and Katsuie to disagree with me on my headcanons for Katsuie, as strange as that sounds. XD

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — I think my answer to this question would be basically the same as the last one. I probably wouldn’t change my portrayal at this point, though ? I’ve had it for a long time and I’m actually really happy with it. ^^ Probably the only reason why I’d change my portrayal is if someone found / made more translations of the games that Katsuie is in (SB4, Sumeragi, Sanada Yukimura-den, Batopa, etc.) and I found canon details in the new translations that really clashed with details in my portrayal. In that case, I’d change my portrayal to match with canon.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — That’s fair, honestly, especially when it comes to things Past!Katsuie / Kaioh has said and done, and even just things Default!Katsuie has done. Katsuie’s a really messed-up dude, and his views on things can be really twisted sometimes. And hey, if someone hates Katsuie, at least that means that they care about him on some level, right ? XD Apathy is the one thing that really kills my muse.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — Sure ! If they can find them. XD I edit my drafts A LOT before I actually publish them, so usually I manage to catch all my mistakes, although the occasional mistake slips through every so often. Hemingway Editor is honestly a lifesaver when it comes to finding simple spelling errors and helping me write my sentences so that they’re a reasonable length and don’t have too many adverbs / phrases written in passive voice / etc.

Do you think you are easygoing as a mun? — I think so ! ^^ I just want to roleplay my muses and have a good time watching them grow and form relationships with other muses, that’s all. If there’s something I don’t like, I know to mute / unfollow / block / etc. and move on. Life’s too short to get involved in drama.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵, 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵!

#█₪➤ Out of Reflection ( ᵒᵘᵗ ᵒᶠ ᶜʰᵃʳᵃᶜᵗᵉʳ )#█₪➤ All Eternity is in the Moment ( ᵐᵉᵐᵉˢ )#long post

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gnostix1 · 4 years

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in our time

by ernest hemingway

chapter 1

Everybody was drunk. The whole battery was drunk going along the road in the dark. We were going to the Champagne. The lieutenant kept riding his horse out into the fields and saying to him, “I’m drunk, I tell you, mon vieux. Oh, I am so soused.” We went along the road all night in the dark and the adjutant kept riding up alongside my kitchen and saying, “You must put it out. It is dangerous. It will be observed.” We were fifty kilometers from the front but the adjutant worried about the fire in my kitchen. It was funny going along that road. That was when I was a kitchen corporal.

chapter 2

The first matador got the horn through his sword hand and the crowd hooted him out. The second matador slipped and the bull caught him through the belly and he hung on to the horn with one hand and held the other tight against the place, and the bull rammed him wham against the wall and the horn came out, and he lay in the sand, and then got up like crazy drunk and tried to slug the men carrying him away and yelled for his sword but he fainted. The kid came out and had to kill five bulls because you can’t have more than three matadors, and the last bull he was so tired he couldn’t get the sword in. He couldn’t hardly lift his arm. He tried five times and the crowd was quiet because it was a good bull and it looked like him or the bull and then he finally made it. He sat down in the sand and puked and they held a cape over him while the crowd hollered and threw things down into the bull ring.

chapter 3

Minarets stuck up in the rain out of Adrianople across the mud flats. The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagatch road. Water buffalo and cattle were hauling carts through the mud. No end and no beginning. Just carts loaded with everything they owned. The old men and women, soaked through, walked along keeping the cattle moving. The Maritza was running yellow almost up to the bridge. Carts were jammed solid on the bridge with camels bobbing along through them. Greek cavalry herded along the procession. Women and kids were in the carts crouched with mattresses, mirrors, sewing machines, bundles. There was a woman having a kid with a young girl holding a blanket over her and crying. Scared sick looking at it. It rained all through the evacuation.

chapter 4

We were in a garden at Mons. Young Buckley came in with his patrol from across the river. The first German I saw climbed up over the garden wall. We waited till he got one leg over and then potted him. He had so much equipment on and looked awfully surprised and fell down into the garden. Then three more came over further down the wall. We shot them. They all came just like that.

chapter 5

It was a frightfully hot day. We’d jammed an absolutely perfect barricade across the bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought iron grating from the front of a house. Too heavy to lift and you could shoot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very fine. We were frightfully put out when we heard the flank had gone, and we had to fall back.

chapter 6

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

chapter 7

Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house opposite had fallen out from the roof, and an iron bedstead hung twisted toward the street. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the shade of the house. Up the street were other dead. Things were getting forward in the town. It was going well. Stretcher bearers would be along any time now. Nick turned his head carefully and looked down at Rinaldi. “Senta Rinaldi. Senta. You and me we’ve made a separate peace.” Rinaldi lay still in the sun breathing with difficulty. “Not patriots.” Nick turned his head carefully away smiling sweatily. Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.

chapter 8

While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you’ll only keep me from getting killed I’ll do anything you say. I believe in you and I’ll tell everyone in the world that you are the only thing that matters. Please please dear jesus. The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.

chapter 9

At two o’clock in the morning two Hungarians got into a cigar store at Fifteenth Street and Grand Avenue. Drevitts and Boyle drove up from the Fifteenth Street police station in a Ford. The Hungarians were backing their wagon out of an alley. Boyle shot one off the seat of the wagon and one out of the wagon box. Drevetts got frightened when he found they were both dead. Hell Jimmy, he said, you oughtn’t to have done it. There’s liable to be a hell of a lot of trouble.

—They’re crooks ain’t they? said Boyle. They’re wops ain’t they? Who the hell is going to make any trouble?

—That’s all right maybe this time, said Drevitts, but how did you know they were wops when you bumped them?

Wops, said Boyle, I can tell wops a mile off.

chapter 10

One hot evening in Milan they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Ag could hear them below on the balcony. Ag sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night.

Ag stayed on night duty for three months. They were glad to let her. When they operated on him she prepared him for the operating table, and they had a joke about friend or enema. He went under the anæsthetic holding tight on to himself so that he would not blab about anything during the silly, talky time. After he got on crutches he used to take the temperature so Ag would not have to get up from the bed. There were only a few patients, and they all knew about it. They all liked Ag. As he walked back along the halls he thought of Ag in his bed.

Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet, and there were other people praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not enough time for the banns, and neither of them had birth certificates. They felt as though they were married, but they wanted everyone to knew about it, and to make it so they could not lose it.

Ag wrote him many letters that he never got until after the armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They were about the hospital, and how much she loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night.

After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so they might be married. Ag would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to meet her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not want to see his friends or anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padova to Milan they quarrelled about her not being willing to come home at once. When they had to say good-bye in the station at Padova they kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that.

He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Ag went back to Torre di Mosta to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there, and there was a battalion of arditi quartered in the town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter the major of the battalion made love to Ag, and she had never known Italians before, and finally wrote a letter to the States that theirs had been only a boy and girl affair. She was sorry, and she knew he would probably not be able to understand, but might some day forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected, absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always, but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career, and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best.

The Major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Ag never got an answer to her letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl from The Fair riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.

chapter 11

In 1919 he was travelling on the railroads in Italy carrying a square of oilcloth from the headquarters of the party written in indelible pencil and saying here was a comrade who had suffered very much under the whites in Budapest and requesting comrades to aid him in any way. He used this instead of a ticket. He was very shy and quite young and the train men passed him on from one crew to another. He had no money, and they fed him behind the counter in railway eating houses.

He was delighted with Italy. It was a beautiful country he said. The people were all kind. He had been in many towns, walked much and seen many pictures. Giotto, Masaccio, and Piero della Francesca he bought reproductions of and carried them wrapped in a copy of Avanti. Mantegna he did not like.

He reported at Bologna, and I took him with me up into the Romagna where it was necessary I go to see a man. We had a good trip together. It was early September and the country was pleasant. He was a Magyar, a very nice boy and very shy. Horthy’s men had done some bad things to him. He talked about it a little. In spite of Italy, he believed altogether in the world revolution.

—But how is the movement going in Italy? he asked.

—Very badly, I said.

—But it will go better, he said. You have everything here. It is the one country that everyone is sure of. It will be the starting point of everything.

At Bologna he said good-bye to us to go on the train to Milano and then to Aosta to walk over the pass into Switzerland. I spoke to him about the Mantegnas in Milano. No, he said, very shyly, he did not like Mantegna. I wrote out for him where to eat in Milano and the addresses of comrades. He thanked me very much, but his mind was already looking forward to walking over the pass. He was very eager to walk over the pass while the weather held good. The last I heard of him the Swiss had him in jail near Sion.

chapter 12

They whack whacked the white horse on the legs and he knee-ed himself up. The picador twisted the stirrups straight and pulled and hauled up into the saddle. The horse’s entrails hung down in a blue bunch and swung backward and forward as he began to canter, the monos whacking him on the back of his legs with the rods. He cantered jerkily along the barrera. He stopped stiff and one of the monos held his bridle and walked him forward. The picador kicked in his spurs, leaned forward and shook his lance at the bull. Blood pumped regularly from between the horse’s front legs. He was nervously wobbly. The bull could not make up his mind to charge.

chapter 13

The crowd shouted all the time and threw pieces of bread down into the ring, then cushions and leather wine bottles, keeping up whistling and yelling. Finally the bull was too tired from so much bad sticking and folded his knees and lay down and one of the cuadrilla leaned out over his neck and killed him with the puntillo. The crowd came over the barrera and around the torero and two men grabbed him and held him and some one cut off his pigtail and was waving it and a kid grabbed it and ran away with it. Afterwards I saw him at the café. He was very short with a brown face and quite drunk and he said after all it has happened before like that. I am not really a good bull fighter.

chapter 14

If it happened right down close in front of you, you could see Villalta snarl at the bull and curse him, and when the bull charged he swung back firmly like an oak when the wind hits it, his legs tight together, the muleta trailing and the sword following the curve behind. Then he cursed the bull, flopped the muleta at him, and swung back from the charge his feet firm, the muleta curving and each swing the crowd roaring.

When he started to kill it was all in the same rush. The bull looking at him straight in front, hating. He drew out the sword from the folds of the muleta and sighted with the same movement and called to the bull, Toro! Toro! and the bull charged and Villalta charged and just for a moment they became one. Villalta became one with the bull and then it was over. Villalta standing straight and the red kilt of the sword sticking out dully between the bull’s shoulders. Villalta, his hand up at the crowd and the bull roaring blood, looking straight at Villalta and his legs caving.

chapter 15

I heard the drums coming down the street and then the fifes and the pipes and then they came around the corner, all dancing. The street full of them. Maera saw him and then I saw him. When they stopped the music for the crouch he hunched down in the street with them all and when they started it again he jumped up and went dancing down the street with them. He was drunk all right.

You go down after him, said Maera, he hates me.

So I went down and caught up with them and grabbed him while he was crouched down waiting for the music to break loose and said, Come on Luis. For Christ sake you’ve got bulls this afternoon. He didn’t listen to me, he was listening so hard for the music to start.

I said, Don’t be a damn fool Luis. Come on back to the hotel.

Then the music started up again and he jumped up and twisted away from me and started dancing. I grabbed his arm and he pulled loose and said, Oh leave me alone. You’re not my father.

I went back to the hotel and Maera was on the balcony looking out to see if I’d be bringing him back. He went inside when he saw me and came downstairs disgusted.

Well, I said, after all he’s just an ignorant Mexican savage.

Yes, Maera said, and who will kill his bulls after he gets a cogida?

We, I suppose, I said.

Yes, we, said Maera. We kills the savages’ bulls, and the drunkards’ bulls, and the riau-riau dancers’ bulls. Yes. We kill them. We kill them all right. Yes. Yes. Yes.

chapter 16

Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes the bull only bumped him with his head. Once the horn went all the way through him and he felt it go into the sand. Someone had the bull by the tail. They were swearing at him and flopping the cape in his face. Then the bull was gone. Some men picked Maera up and started to run with him toward the barriers through the gate out the passage way around under the grand stand to the infirmary. They laid Maera down on a cot and one of the men went out for the doctor. The others stood around. The doctor came running from the corral where he had been sewing up picador horses. He had to stop and wash his hands. There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera wanted to say something and found he could not talk. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead.

chapter 17

They hanged Sam Cardinella at six o’clock in the morning in the corridor of the county jail. The corridor was high and narrow with tiers of cells on either side. All the cells were occupied. The men had been brought in for the hanging. Five men sentenced to be hanged were in the five top cells. Three of the men to be hanged were negroes. They were very frightened. One of the white men sat on his cot with his head in his hands. The other lay flat on his cot with a blanket wrapped around his head.

They came out onto the gallows through a door in the wall. There were six or seven of them including two priests. They were carrying Sam Cardinella. He had been like that since about four o’clock in the morning.

While they were strapping his legs together two guards held him up and the two priests were whispering to him. “Be a man, my son,” said one priest. When they came toward him with the cap to go over his head Sam Cardinella lost control of his sphincter muscle. The guards who had been holding him up dropped him. They were both disgusted. “How about a chair, Will?” asked one of the guards, “Better get one,” said a man in a derby hat.

When they all stepped back on the scaffolding back of the drop, which was very heavy, built of oak and steel and swung on ball bearings, Sam Cardinella was left sitting there strapped tight, the younger of the two priests kneeling beside the chair. The priest skipped back onto the scaffolding just before the drop fell.

chapter 18

The king was working in the garden. He seemed very glad to see me. We walked through the garden. This is the queen, he said. She was clipping a rose bush. Oh how do you do, she said. We sat down at a table under a big tree and the king ordered whiskey and soda. We have good whiskey anyway, he said. The revolutionary committee, he told me, would not allow him to go outside the palace grounds. Plastiras is a very good man I believe, he said, but frightfully difficult. I think he did right though shooting those chaps. If Kerensky had shot a few men things might have been altogether different. Of course the great thing in this sort of an affair is not to be shot oneself!

It was very jolly. We talked for a long time. Like all Greeks he wanted to go to America.

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indomitablemegnolia · 7 years

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Where does this passion come from?”

I sighed, gripping the edge of the table in a stranglehold, possibly it was the only thing holding me upright, “You know I heard something about a bottle of something or other, this is not a conversation that should be had sober.”

He laughed walking to the little refrigerator, extracting two bottles, inspecting both labels, he laughed nodding, taking the necks of both bottles in one hand, as he passed the low dresser with four glasses on it. He takes two glasses, flipping them, adding ice to both, then in his extended fingers walks back to the table.

The grace is amazing, I shook my head. “How are you able to be so graceful, is it just something that comes along with good luck and great looks?” I giggled, “God, listen to me, maybe liquor isn’t a good idea.”

He put one of the glasses before me, “Oh, darlin, on the contrary, I think it’s a wonderful idea, it will keep me on my best behavior. Now pick your poison. There’s a scotch and a vodka.” I tilted my head thoughtfully. “If you need, there is an orange juice and a cranberry juice in the mini bar.”

I licked my lips, “I’ll have what you are having.” That laugh echoed in the large room, “you suppose there might be some music?”

He poured about two fingers of scotch in both glasses, turning grabbing a Canada Dry from the minibar he slid it across the table to me; grabbing the can and fidgeting with it I watched his motions. Spinning on that heel again he placed his phone in a glass in the middle of the table, softly oh so softly Marvin Gaye started playing; the soft purple of the standby screen was marvelous mood lighting. With “Trouble Man” playing he walked back to the little table, sliding a glass in front of me, the frost from the ice streaked where his fingers just pulled away. He held his glass aloft, I shook my head at my own self when I literally placed my fingers exactly where his were, and clinked my glass lightly against his. He smiled tipping his head taking a sip. My eyes lingered on him, watching his eyes close softly, his Adams apple bobbing lightly as he swallowed. His long lashes swept up and his eyes were on me; like a child caught stealing a cookie I jumped, taking a very long drink, draining the glass. Catching the lightly honeyed flavour on my tongue, I held it. Tilting my head back and forth, closing my eyes, deliberately enjoying the flavour, it burned and tingled on my tongue. Swallowing the deliciously fiery elixir; letting the sweeping tendrils of the alcohol do its work, licking at my senses dulling them, but not quite silencing them. A smile pulling gently at my lips I open my eyes, but now the lids were heavier, not quite opening all the way; there waiting were those lipid pools dancing in the purple light.

The easy delicate rumble of his voice danced, my eyes closed for just a moment to appreciate the sound sex of his words, “Ok now, the thing that grabs at the heart is your passion… Where does this passion come from?” He looked at my now empty glass, “Don’t tell me you are a Hemingway, that your passion comes from the drink.”

Laughing, I held my glass out, “No, actually, generally, I don’t mix drink with thought, but this is so far out of my sphere…”

He poured just a little more into my glass, “Ok then where does that passion come from?”

I shrugged, “Really, I don’t know.” He gave me a galled look, “Seriously, its not like I have all that much experience with anything.”

A soft scoff, he sat back pushing his chair, taking another small sip, pressing his lovely tongue out to clean the tiny errant drop, “You can’t tell me that.” He breathed in stretching his arms above his head, “you can’t tell me you have never been kissed, never made love, been…loved.”

I laugh so hard I snort, “Oh, there was this one time that I had boyfriend; god, I hate that word, it really seemed less friendly and more… a parasitic infection. Though I have had some kisses, I loved kisses;” I shrug my shoulders pulling my legs under me on the chair. “I suppose made love, but not really ever been loved… and no never felt love… you know, the drawing hearts on your binder and wanting hours of phone calls.” I drained my glass again, “God that sounds so horribly pathetic.” My head dropped heavily into my crossed arms on the table. “Honestly, I…” I breathed in a sigh. “I have given up on the idea of a great love,” I breathed out a huff, my tongue suddenly thick but still loving the words, though not the ideas. “Now I am focused on doing great things with the time I have, I have spent 37 years dying...” I shook myself, “I suppose its safe to say that my styles, my ideas, have come from reading, believing. Sometimes just being able to eat a steak is an act not simply to be reveled in, but an act of sheer will.” I toyed with my ice, swirling it around. “As with all things to be believed, one does it without having any proof nor having felt it before, but I believe in a kind of love that doesn’t demand me to prove my worth, that accepts me as I am, that doesn’t make me sit in abject misery full of horrible anxiety. I crave a natural connection where my soul can recognize a feeling of home with another. A freedom, a simple moment out of time, that is all I need. There is no such thing as always, there never was a forever, there just is…” I finally look up at him.

Suddenly my hands literally itch to run over his lovely soft skin, I let my eyes roam and wander as they will and they decide to run over you, head to toe; I lean heavily onto the table top, softly the lights through the window, soft and wobbly with the ice and snow falling lent to a beautiful aura around him; his head haloed with loving light purple light, his shoulders hugged by the darkness. I had not noticed that he had taken off his coat, his shoulders stressing the seams of that thin cotton shirt, watching the kiss of that ambient light stream across your shoulder and cheek; finding myself jealous of every ray of libidinous light. You pour sweet elixir into my glass, I take a deep drought of lush sweet liquor and drop my hand holding the glass to the table, rubbing my fingertip along the lip not feeling the glass at all, but your soft skin.

We sat quiet for a moment, the music the only thing playing on that soft hum that quieted the universe. I watch him breathe soft, slow, relaxed, it was like we were sitting side by side, dipping our toes into the cosmos. He smiled, bashful, his soft blush dusting his cheeks; oh, me, oh, my, maybe he had just read my thoughts. I poured my longing into this moment; oh, Gods those lips, you have such an awfully kissable mouth, soft rounded shaped lips, delicious. Your lips alone are enough to drive me to distant distraction. Your delicious face almost perfectly symmetric, but seemingly split between your mercurial sides. Almost a perfect Jekyll and Hyde, one side deliciously dashingly handsome and sinister, oh the other, sweetly smiling. If I were the moon herself I would make a break in the clouds just to bend sliding my sweet fingers, tendrils, rays over the luscious plane of your cheek.

I snickered to my self dropping my face to the crook of my elbow; so, odd, around him I am my own mercurial dichotomy. My usual easy going nature becoming sorely tested. I smile at how you have been able to put a bee in my bonnet without effort. As we talked half of me was filled to bursting with words, the other painfully shy; wanting to be bell of the ball, but still craving solitude; and then again hungering for communion and human contact.

His eyes watching, searching, seeing, then his sensual tone piercing the veil of this quiet, yet painfully honest, anonymity “If the world were round and actually right and fair, which we know it is not, no person should feel the need to prove anything, to anyone. Someone like you should always be you without any questions or qualifications.” His eyes for the first time were guarded, he leans over with the bottle and pours a small amount over my ice. “Please, don’t take this badly, but I heard the words from your own mouth, I have watched the gentle winces cross your face. I don’t need details, just a confirmation, you are dying?”

I felt a door close on my face, it slammed harder than watching him walk away; I let my eyes roll shut and drain my glass, lord, thank you it was beautiful while it lasted, but will I actually survive… oh, but never mind, “Gratitude is not expressed due solely to the length of the journey, but the views from the window.” I whispered to my glass, wincing feeling that delicious burn, those long delicious licks of alcohol dulling my senses, but not enough; willing my eyes not to mist I let my lashes flutter up, there he was as beautiful and earnest a human as could be hoped for. So, I pulled from my mind a character, unflinching, “Honey, ain’t we all dying from the day we are born?” I said in my booziest floozy sass. That tongue of his slipped between his lips moistening them, slow and tenderly, a caress I envied; envied with a wanting so hard the only time I remember it before was that Tiara my cousin had for her Birthday. I remember the hot sucking feeling in my stomach when I saw it on her head, and yes it was her birthday so I let her keep it, and the next week when it was my birthday I wanted nothing to do with it; god that would not be the case this time.

He let out a small breathy chuckle, ticking his head to the side, raising an eyebrow, “Tsk, Possibly the first time I have seen you bunt this game. I will take it…”

It hung on the air, that soft dare, he poured some ginger ale into my glass, “Well, honey, how honest were you hoping for?” I swallowed the ginger ale.

God his smile, it was something I knew was basically a wish, his lips the kind of lips that kisses dream about, “I told you I was not adding pressure, no details just confirmation, I think I heard it. So, now its up to you how Honest you wish to be.”

I shook my head, at myself mostly, “I would really love to regale you with the tale of how I have a blood curse and I am being tailed by 1472 ninja from a rival ninja clan who have sworn a blood oath that they would not rest in this life or the hereafter until I no longer draw a breath. The ones who would cut me down in a minute if left to my own devices, but now I have to protect you, someone like you soft not used to the life on the run, they would enjoy peeling that soft, supple, seductive skin from your bones.” I laughed, a dry unfunny laugh, he smirked but looked doubting, I blushed down to my soul.

His laugh shot an arrow directly through my heart, “You don’t have to say anything that you are uncomfortable with, Plus I think I can hold my own against a puny ninja.”

His eyes looked sad, and that glorious colour turned a darker blue. I sighed, “Do you know the word interstitial?” He nodded, the curiosity pulling his face beautifully. “Well, I took a long hard look, well before this year began, at those spaces between; those things you can only really think about when staring down the hallway at Terminus; the place that it all meets…and ends.” Watching his mind soak in all of my words, and their implications. “The space between things all become so relative; the rings in a tree, representing years, decades, existence continued, counted in tiny increments. The little dash between birth and death; yes, agonizingly long years, the happy flashes in seconds; quick uncountable moments all living in that dash; that mad dash, like riding a psychotic horse toward a burning stable, amazing, thrilling, horrifying and ultimately deadly. The space between thought and action; lifetimes lived in between breaths and heartbeats. Moments counted in milliseconds, I decided to forgo any further treatments, letting whatever may come, come. Hopefully living more in the countable seconds of time and space, the motion of the world, ebbing of the tide.” He pulled his hand to his face, as was his habit he rubbed his thumb across his two first fingers, caressed those soft lovely lips. “The space between those fingers,” I nodded to his digits. “the millions of miles across this table.”

He let loose a laugh so sonorous that I nearly melted, melted like an ice cube that met a welding torch, “You know darlin, I could listen to you forever; though, I do have to contest your “giving up on great love” that right there was living with more passion than most people encounter just once in a lifetime.” He leaned foreword in his chair, brushing his soft knuckles over my cheek; he caught my eyes and kept them. his delicate tongue licking lightly at his bottom lip then hovering, hovering as if there was an idea just on the tip of it that tasted like heaven. “You must actually great love is like in those movies, a tormented longing and a nearly lost boredom that calls itself togetherness.” He breathed as my cheek nestled into his palm my lashes cuddling my cheeks. “mmm, the space between… the breadth and expansion of this 22 inches of table top, you are right suddenly these 22 inches” his hand circled around the back of my neck as his other hand motioned to the faux green marble between us. “It might as well be millions of miles. Love, great or no, is more fire and sudden outbursts of thunder and lightening,” he leaned just a little further, his frame starting to dwarf mine, “it is really a hurricane of feelings that falls out of nowhere, revolutionizing everything.” He breathed lightly caressing my ear, pushing my hair behind. “My turn to and I will offer up a confession, I have watched these lips of yours talk all night, they caress the words holding them lovingly before you lick the air letting them free.” His thumb reached over lightly caressing my bottom lip, “I have sat as you have ravished me with words, words so very alive, words that cut, that dance and breathe, their gorgeous tumescence of their weight until I could not breathe.”

He leaned even further, his breath caressing my cheek, my eyes fluttered closed, “Without knowledge, forethought, without reason I began to crave one thing; I have tried to hammer it down into my soul, not wanting to be too fast, too bold. I have read though, and I know this to be true; we are punished by the universe for our refusals, refusal of our impulses our longings. Every single impulse that we strangle broods in the mind, the heart, and it poisons us. The body sins but once and it is done with its sin, for the action itself is a mode of purification; leaving nothing but a sweet recollection of the pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. Although I do not believe that this temptation would result in any regret.”

I gazed as deeply into his eyes as possible, reading those sweet possibilities. “What pray tell would that temptation be?” My voice sounding foreign, my tongue sticking to my teeth, my breath simpering.

He smiled, his breath light over my soul, “Well, obviously, your kiss.” I know I stopped breathing my mouth dropped open. “I ache for the arch of your perfectly shaped lips pressing against mine. I thirst for your sweet flavour on my tongue, inundating my soul like dark chocolate. I am ravenous for your delicious scent to fill my lungs.”

I dropped my eyes for a moment to his beautiful lips. “Well, to finish your Oscar Wilde paraphrase; the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”

His hand swooped to the base of my neck, not pulling me, just holding me still, tipping my head back, he moved swift his lips covering mine. He kissed me like ice cream; he kissed me like a stanza of poetry, like a slow summer waltz; rough, but in a gentle way, like the receding tide, the waves only rushing lightly, licking at my ankles, washing soft sand from my skin on the very last day of fall; and the whole time there was that little laugh between us, sweet and silly. We kissed for an eternity, maybe just a minute, that laugh grew and we parted for just a moment to smile and kissed again, longer deeper, there is nothing possibly more beautiful than the look he gave me as we kissed again... and again and again and again... @peonies-and-poppies @pedeka or not @writernotwaiting

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thecosydragon · 7 years

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My latest blog post from the cosy dragon: Interview with E. A. Barker

An Interview with E. A. Barker, author of Ms. Creant: The Wrong Doers!

E. A. Barker believes he is an average guy in mid-life who has led a mostly average life. His readers may not agree with his assessment. The single biggest difference between him and most other people is his pursuit of knowledge. Throughout his life he never stopped asking the simplest question: Why? E. A. describes himself as a collector of ideas and a purveyor of dot connections. He attempts to present his findings in an entertaining fashion in an effort to encourage people to read—especially men who are reading far too little these days. E. A is an advocate of education for its ability to affect social reform and actively promotes the idea that a global conscience is possible.

COZY DRAGON INTERVIEW

Everyone has a ‘first novel’, even if many of them are a rough draft relegated to the bottom and back of your desk drawer (or your external hard-drive!). Have you been able to reshape yours, or have you abandoned it for good?

(E. A. laughs.) It’s crap! I write narrative non-fiction partially because my ability to write quality dialog is so lacking in my opinion. I am reasonably certain I am at least decent at what I do. Ms. Creant ‘s mission was to challenge the beliefs of the reader so that we might change and grow as humans. This is a niche which I believe best suits my abilities.

Some authors are able to pump out a novel a year and still be filled with inspiration. Is this the case for you, or do you like to let an idea percolate for a couple of years in order to produce a quality book?

I admire prolific writers who can produce quality works time and time again. For me, it does not come so easily. I suppose my percolation happens during the extensive research phase, which in the case of this book, represented a one year period.

I have heard of writers that could only write in one place – then that cafe closed down and they could no longer write! Where do you find yourself writing most often, and on what medium (pen/paper or digital)?

Wow. Your first sentence supports my working theory that we writers are merely scribes channeling the thoughts of some other entity. This is probably not the place to get all weirdly metaphysical so I will move on to the question at hand. I can write wherever I can make my body comfortable and where there is little distraction or noise. Paper notes always litter my workspace, if not the entire room, until such time as they are compiled by section into my trusty old HP laptop.

Before going on to hire an editor, most authors use beta-readers. How do you recruit your beta-readers, and choose an editor? Are you lucky enough to have loving family members who can read and comment on your novel?

I have never been clear on how the literary world uses some terminology. My scientific background tells me to speak of alpha readers first. To me, the process is as follows: 1) I produce a very rough draft which is then read by alpha readers whose sole job it is to blow sunshine up my butt so that I can find the courage to continue. In my case, it was my hairdresser. 2) I then read, revised, re-read, revised . . . until I realized I was stuck in an endless loop and had to seek professional help. 3) Enter my editor—who I picture in my head as Ilsa of the SS—she is what I believe to be my beta-reader. Laura had no trouble telling me how I had gone off course (content editing); nor did she lose any sleep over pointing out my embarrassing grammatical errors; and I believe she rejoiced in highlighting the literally thousands of typos and punctuation errors. This is what makes her good. Her ability to completely devastate any ego the writer in you had developed, will either force you to be better, or quit. Badly shaken, I chose the former. I made massive revisions which fleshed out ideas, supplied answers, and ultimately resulted in three additional chapters. The most observant of readers might see where I ended the book on three separate occasions. She was recruited by writing a cheque. 4) The gamma reader was my proof-reader who line edited (a.k.a. copy edited) the manuscript prior to publication. She only found another five hundred or so mistakes in punctuation as well as missing words I just could not see when I read those sentences. She was recruited through a negotiated exchange of services and the promise of a signed hardcover.

I walk past bookshops and am drawn in by the smell of the books – ebooks simply don’t have the same attraction for me. Does this happen to you, and do you have a favourite bookshop? Or perhaps you are an e-reader fan… where do you source most of your material from?

I LOVE PAPER BOOKS! It is easy to understand people who like digital books though; they can buy books for far less money and could carry their entire library with them at all times. There is a danger that we should be discussing in the digital revolution we are in the midst of. I USE LIBRARIES to source most information. Libraries have always been the keepers and conservators of knowledge. Budget cutbacks combined with limited shelf space are leading many libraries into e-book information technology systems where the librarian will no longer be the curator. Whosoever controls “the cloud” will then control all knowledge. We must continue to encourage a balance between paper and digital books or we risk quickening our fall into a dystopian nightmare.

Oh my! Asking an author if they have a favorite bookstore is leading them to potential career suicide. ANY bookstore that carries or recommends Ms. Creant: The Wrong Doers! is a favorite of mine. I do however frequent a local used bookshop in the Beaches area of Toronto near my home.

I used to find myself buying books in only one genre (fantasy) before I started writing this blog. What is your favourite genre, and do you have a favourite author who sticks in your mind from:

childhood? Jules Verne

adolescence? Frank Herbert

young adult? Robert Heinlein

adult? Hemingway? I am now trying to read the greats across previously unexplored genres including poetry—something I would never have done when I was younger.

Social media is a big thing, much to my disgust! I never have enough time myself to do what I feel is a good job. What do you do?

Social media is a massive time suck that keeps us from writing. I would like a PA to take it over but I have yet to have a quality unpaid one offer to do so.

This is my approach:

Facebook is number one in terms of users. If you are willing to track people down and stay engaged with them, it can be powerful. Therein lies the time suck factor—engagement. Facebook goes out of their way to minimize your reach. Only 3 to 7% of your friends and followers will see some of your posts regularly.

Twitter is second in terms of users; limited in terms of post length, but UNLIMITED in terms of reach—all your followers and all selected hash-tags receive your posts, you can tweet @ anyone on twitter and they do not put you in jail for over engagement.

I tweet daily and send the tweet to both my facebook profile and my author page. In theory you could do this in 30 minutes per day but you would not have the all important needed engagement with other people.

Not long ago, I found statistics which clearly showed you really only need to be engaging on Fridays and Saturdays. This opens the door to time suck savings by posting (a.k.a. updating status) each day, but engaging just on those two days.

Understanding the value of any marketing effort is often difficult to measure in immediate sales—social media is epitome of this. After two years of working social media an average of three hours per day, seven days a week, 360ish days per year, I will tell you its value cannot be measured monetarily. When I attempt to do this, the numbers make me feel foolish.

$0.03 is what I have been paid per hour.

30 minutes is invested in each follower.

Followers rarely buy your book but about 1% will.

You will get 0.1% response from a twitter campaign.

My RATIONALIZATION for continuing at all is I committed to this for two years–one year leading up to this release (the building phase), and one year of promoting the book after release. I assure you there will be a massive scaling down of social media work once the book has its first birthday.

So what are the positives?

You gain a handful of digital pen pals from around the world—priceless.

A good percentage of initial sales and reviews will come from people you meet on facebook.

It is the digital equivalent of flyer distribution and it is free, if you do not count your time.

About 50% of blogger interest came through social media channels.

The best alternative to social media marketing is REAL WORLD marketing but you must be an extroverted salesperson to do this, and many writers are not. Some will have costs which can quickly add up.

E-mail campaigns have netted the greatest amount of interest thus far with about a 10% response rate. This is literally 100 times better than social media and introverts can do it.

Direct mail promotion to independent bookshops and libraries seems to generate interest.

Attend book fairs and sell signed copies.

Public speaking is always an opportunity to sell books.

Pitch indie bookstores and other merchants on buying or displaying consignment copies of your book.

Send out review copies to literary critics. Most will not give you the time of day, but just one published positive review from these people can make a career.

Links to: Twitter Facebook

Answering interview questions can often take a long time! Tell me, are you ever tempted to recycle your answers from one to the next?

Your questions were thought provoking and multifaceted so I could not cheat. We are faced with some stock questions which cause us to reiterate answers. I have yet to copy and paste an answer, but who knows what the future may bring.

Ms. Creant: The Wrong Doers!

This book was created for everyone from young adults to seniors. It was written from a male’s point of view, speaking to men who are endlessly struggling to understand the opposite sex. For women, this is a fascinating journey inside the male psyche. The book gives a young reader a glimpse of the future, with a recommended time-line for key life events. Mature readers, who have already experienced much of what is discussed in the book, should come away with a new found understanding and perhaps even closure. Ms. Creant is a controversial, entertaining, yet informative look at everything which influences human behaviour including: relationships, life, health, biology, philosophy, sociology, theology, politics, genetics—even physics. E. A. Barker shares twenty-four “inappropriate” stories of life with women. The author based these stories of women behaving badly on his real life experiences, spanning four decades of his search for an ideal partner. The lessons taken away from the book will serve to help readers make better choices, become more aware, grow and change—at any stage of life.

Get this novel from a range of places:

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years

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Tragic, fascinating, bright- living for’ wild infant’ Zelda Fitzgerald revisited

Two movies and a Tv line out soon portray living conditions of the jazz-age novelist and partner of F Scott Fitzgerald

She is thought of as the original wild infant, a pearl-twirling party girl who died at persons under the age of 47 after a flaming broke out in the North Carolina sanatorium where she was a patient. Now Zelda Fitzgerald, the southern belle passed jazz-age protagonist, dubbed the first American flapper by her husband and partner-in-drink Scott, is to have her own Hollywood make-over two cinemas are in the pipeline and a television series will air on Amazon Prime early next year.

All three projections have starry names appended: Jennifer Lawrence will take the lead in Zelda , a biopic directed against Ron Howard and based on Nancy Milfords best-selling biography; Scarlett Johansson will bob her “hairs-breadth” for The Beautiful and The Damned ; and Christina Ricci will play young persons and impetuous Zelda in the Amazon series Z: The Beginning of Everything. The entitlement of the TV sequence comes from Scotts awestruck provide comments on meet Zelda: I adoration her, and thats the beginning and end of everything.

So what is it about Zelda that fascinates virtually 70 times after her regrettable extremity? In persona it is that the agitations the couple lived through find an resemble in our own hectic times.

Interest in the Fitzgeralds will no doubt been on the increase is not simply since Baz Luhrmanns film of The Great Gatsby in 2013 but also from the many latitudes between their lives and wield and the period were living through right now, speaks Sarah Churchwell, author of the critically acclaimed Careless Parties: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of the Great Gatsby .

Its a storey of thunder and failure and it reverberates as we are grappling with our own boom and bust, our own worries about the costs of our extravagances and our own social failures. Human life and lucks of Scott and Zelda peculiarly simulated their epoches: in the 1920 s they were roaring for all they were value, but with the gate-crash in 1929, everything descended apart.

It helps, too, that Zelda was so vibrant a person. It begins with her attractivenes, says Churchwell. But likewise with the stories told in the 1920 s about the high jinks and recreation she and Scott seemed to have. People really liked her: she was surprising, smart, cunning, funny and adored a good party. She too liked to be the centre of attention, and so had her detractors very. These events combined to manufacture her a legend.

Scott repeatedly returned to their relationship in his story, most notably in his second romance, The Beautiful and Damned , which items the exhilarating early days of their union; and his pensive fourth, Tender Is The Night , in which the gilded fantasy has faded into a more tawdry world. Zeldas only novel, Save Me The Waltz , presented the relationship from her side.

They were arguably Americas first personality pairing: a carefree golden duet who wrote their practice into the spotlight, forming their own myth of gin-soaked dates and fun-filled darkness, merely to remain too long once the light-headed had started to dim. Their recklessness prepares the legend exciting and drastic, speaks Churchwell. But they paid a the highest price.

After a few giddy years, all the youth predict disintegrated away, leaving Scott a stupefied and drunk jobbing hack in Hollywood and making Zelda to breakdown at the age of 30, a diagnosis of schizophrenia , now widely thought to be a bipolar illness, and their own lives in and out of sanatoriums.

Her story is both fascinating and shockings, tells Therese Anne Fowler, on whose novel Z the Amazon series is based. Here we have a woman whose talents and force and ability “shouldve been” represented her a brilliant success, who was determined to be an accomplished creator, columnist and ballet dancer in an period where married maidens were supposed to be partners and babies, season. Her devotion to Scott was, in many ways, her undoing[ although] he was just as imprisoned as she was. Had they adoration one another less, they might both have come to better ends.

The idea of Zelda as a brilliant maiden captured by her meter has gained traction in recent years, with a number of labours re-evaluating her through the prism of feminism although it is not always the easiest of fits. As early as 1974, the couples daughter Scottie withstood such assertions, writing that attempts to vistum her mom as a classic put-down partner, whose efforts to express her sort were frustrated by a often male chauvinist spouse were no longer accurate.

Writing in the New Yorker in 2013, Molly Fischer concurred , noting: Saving Zelda Fitzgerald is no easy proposition …[ she] does not want to be anyones baby, and theres something mortifying about the literary readiness to domesticate her, to change an enraging dame into an appealing heroine.

The new films may well further Hollywoodise Zelda, sanding away her bumpy lines and reinventing her as a relatable heroine for our modern times. The molding of Lawrence so often described as Americas Sweetheart in the Howard biopic is no accident.

A report about the upcoming Johansson film in the Hollywood Reporter recommended it would draw on previously unreleased cloth to indicate that her husband embezzled his wifes ideas as his own.

Mark Gill, chairwoman of Millennium Films, the creation fellowship behind The Beautiful and The Damned , concurs : She was massively ahead of her epoch and she took a lash for it. He embezzled her new ideas and gave them in his volumes. The wedlock was a codependency from hell with a jazz-age soundtrack. The film has, however, procured the co-operation of the Fitzgerald estate.

Fowler agrees that there is a flourishing partiality to exercise our own concerns to Zelda. We do anoint her as a kind of proto-feminist heroine, even though she didnt read herself as a feminist and didnt fully attain at anything, she enunciates. But her original honour is based on conventional paternalistic the terms and conditions of what a woman, father and spouse ought to be and do. Her passions and her insistence on prosecuting them were considered inappropriate and undesirable; after her psychopathic breaking she was literally told that this insistence had created her separate knowledge and that the path to a medicine lay in giving up all ambitions that didnt conform to the paternalistic ideal.

Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence and Christina Ricci are all set to play Zelda Fitzgerald in the forthcoming creations The Beautiful and the Damned, Zelda and Z: The Beginning of Everything. Composite: Getty Images

The backlash against this image is intelligible considering the fact that popular opinion of Zelda was initially driven by Ernest Hemingways notoriously caustic descriptions in A Moveable Feast , produced posthumously in 1964, in which he rejected her as insane and accused Scotts originating dependence on alcohol on his wife.

Our perception has very much changed, enunciates Churchwell. We have come to sympathise with her resentment, to recognise her offerings and to be more fair-minded about her selections. That remarked, she carefuls against attempts to create a Team Scott/ Team Zelda fraction, as is so often the speciman in famous literary partnerships. Its important to say that they always affection each other and wouldnt have appreciated people taking surfaces Fitzgerald wrote a few years before he was dead that it was a moral obligation that their friends understood the latter are a duo, a part and would stay that mode, even if her illness mean they couldnt live together.

Churchwell is also scathing about attempts to suggest Zelda had a larger role in her husbands labour than previously presumed. There are people who want to credit Zelda with Scotts work, which is just silly and doesnt do maidens any promotions, she answers. Its not a zero-sum play: we are in a position recognise both of them for who they were.

Zelda had many talents, but where writing was concerned she was probably more ill when she started to sharpen her endows, and while it is true that Scott didnt particularly want her to write partly out of territoriality but partly because medical doctors told him it was bad for her its also true-life that her work isnt in the same class as his. Her individual sentences are often lovely, and she can create a humor and has clever rotates of word but her wreaks tend to be sketches rather than full floors. If they had constructed different selections, maybe she could have been an important scribe, but the reality is that she wasnt.

Perhaps, then, the true key to Zeldas continued pull on our curiosity lies not in her work but in her modernity. I dont want to live I want to adoration first and live incidentally, she extol and it is that verve and gluttony for all of lifes knowledge, both good and bad, that strains down over the decades, letting each generation to see something new.

Z: The Beginning of Everything will air on Amazon Prime early next year

THEY SAID

I have rarely known the status of women who showed herself so delightfully and freshly: she had no ready-made words on the one side and no striving for impression on the other. Critic Edmund Wilson

I fell in love with her courage, her honesty and her blaze self-respect, and its these happens I would believe in even if the world indulged in wild impressions that she wasnt all that she should be.

F Scott Fitzgerald

I did not have a single apprehension of insignificance, or shyness, or incredulity, and no moral principles.

All I require is to be very young always and very irresponsible, and to feel that my life is my own to live and be happy and succumb in my own space to satisfy myself.

Other publics ideas of us are dependent primarily on what theyve hoped for.