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bohemianfashioncorner-blog · 6 years

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Bohemian Style and Fashion History

If you are wondering what is Bohemian Style, this article could help you. Bohemian Style was popular few decades ago, and it looks like it was never gone.

This Article about Bohemian Clothing can be also very interesting for you.

Boho - Fashion History and Bohemian Style

The Bohemian Style Type is the most casual and carefree of the style types. They mostly stick to an earth tone palette. Bohemian style types love a classic paisley or animal print - especially in the form of a blouse or a flowing dress. Bohemian ladies are known for favoring long, sweeping silhouettes. Furs are also a favorite, as are leathers and suede's.

Chloe, Gucci, and Isabel Marant show beautiful Bohemian collections year after year. Some of the most well-known Bohemian muses include Kate Moss, Erin Wasson, and Ali McGraw. We’ve got a ton of inspiration for you with some of our favorite Bohemian looks.

200 Years of Boho

Bohemian style has, for over 200 years, being an exotic alternative to the accepted fashions of a given period. Generally associated with artists, writers, and intellectuals, bohemian culture incorporates various ethic clothing styles, as well as historical costume.

Bohemian style consists of loose, colorful clothing and has been known as boho chic, hippie style, and Aesthetic dress. With their long flowing hair and rich, though threadbare fabrics, bohemians stand out in a crowd representing a colorful counterculture based on creativity, poverty, and an indifference to social structures and traditions.

Origin of the Bohemians

The Bohemians, as a counterculture, appeared in France after the French Revolution. Deprived of the former system of patronage, where wealthy clients supported the arts, artists were plunged into poverty. Many took up a nomadic lifestyle, lived cheaply, and wore worn out and unfashionable or used clothing.

Formerly, an artist was seen as a skilled and talented crafts person. But the Romantic Movement of the late 18th century rejected the confines of bourgeois life and the former importance placed on reason, to embrace the imagination.

A new cult of personality emerged with the artist as hero and individual style expressed in the way one dressed. An artist became a special type of person, not merely a crafts person, but a kind of eccentric genius whose creativity was displayed in the way they lived and looked. The artist himself (or herself) were a piece of art.

People compared the new artistic types to wandering Gypsies and believed that Gypsies originated in Bohemia, an area of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. So, they came to refer to artists and intellectuals as the Bohemians. Gypsy was a European term for the Romani people, an ethnic group with Indian origins who had migrated north. The word Gypsy, derived from the word Egyptian, which many thought the actual home of the nomadic people who were often social outcasts that lived outside the mainstream. Today, the word "Gypsy" is seen as derisive and offensive to the Roman people.

Bohemian Life Becomes Its Own Kind of Establishment

By the 1830's, the French Bohemian art crowd and the Romantics embraced medieval and oriental clothing styles. With their colorful fabrics, long flowing hair, and wide brimmed hats, the artistic culture did come to resemble the classic view of the Romani people.

The novelist Henri Murger wrote tales about the people that he called Bohemians, centering on a group of artists and intellectuals in threadbare coats, old shoes, and a general look of dishevelment. The stories inspired Puccinni's famous opera, La Boheme.

Bohemian style evolved into a cult of the individual, a person whose very appearance became a work of art with carefully planned outfits and accessories. The word bohemian suggested a sense of arcane enlightenment, sexual freedom, and poor personal hygiene.

Bohemian life rejects materialism, private property, and centers on creativity and communal living. Often associated with the use of drugs and alcohol, bohemians ignore social convention, centering their lives on art.

Bohemians in the 19th Century - The Aesthetic Movement

In the 19th century, the Aesthetic Movement became a type of bohemian lifestyle. The Aesthetics rebelled against the rigid social constraints of the Victorian era and embraced a style based on the clothing of the past, particularly medieval dress and oriental designs.

Believing that the mass production of the Industrial Revolution was dehumanizing, the Aesthetics strove to encourage the old techniques of the Middle Ages with individually crafted goods. Clothing was loose and soft, using fabrics, colored with organic dyes and decorated with hand embroidery. The Pre-Raphaelite artists of the day rejected corsets, crinolines, and the stiff bodices and restrictive clothing of Victorian fashion.

Elements of Bohemian Style

Bohemian style, now referred to as boho chic, has come down through history, reappearing as beatnik style and in the hippie culture of the 1960s. For 200 years, bohemian style has consisted of several fashion elements.

Loose, flowing clothing made of natural fabrics.

Less restrictive garments worn without corsets, bras or other restrictive elements.

Loose, flowing hair.

Colorful scarves worn at the neck, on the head, or instead of a belt

Peasant style clothing including tunics, loose trousers, boots, and sandals

Used or worn clothing

Oriental elements including robes, kimonos, and the ethnic designs of Persia, India, Turkey, and China

Mixing historical elements of medieval clothing with ethnic styles

Layering

Matching of garments in a nontraditional manner, such as mixing prints, or unusual color combinations

Multi strands of beads, several bangle bracelets, and the wearing of unusual, hand crafted, or unmatched jewelry

Large dangle or large hoop earrings

Broad brimmed hats

Patched clothing

Paisley, flowered fabrics, ruffles, lace edged sleeves

A general disregard for tidiness and uniformity of dress

A look of contrived dishevelment

Page 5

If you are wondering what is Bohemian Style, this article could help you. Besides that, Bohemian Style was popular few decades ago, and, most importantly, it looks like it was never gone.

Boho - Fashion History and Bohemian Style

The Bohemian Style Type is the most casual and carefree of the style types. They mostly stick to an earth tone palette. Because of that bohemian style types love a classic paisley or animal print, especially in the form of a blouse or a flowing dress. Besides that, Bohemian ladies are known for favoring long, sweeping silhouettes. Therefore, furs are also a favorite, as are leathers and suede's.

200 Years of Boho

Bohemian style has, for over 200 years, being an exotic alternative to the accepted fashions of a given period.

Bohemian style consists of loose, colorful clothing. With their long flowing hair and rich, though threadbare fabrics, bohemians stand out in a crowd.

Origin of the Bohemians

The Bohemians, as a counterculture, appeared in France after the French Revolution. Artists were plunged into poverty. Because of that, many took up a nomadic lifestyle. They lived cheaply, and wore worn out and unfashionable or used clothing.

Formerly, an artist was seen as a skilled and talented person.

A new cult of personality emerged with the artist as hero and individual style expressed in the way one dressed. An artist became a special type of person. The artist himself (or herself) were a piece of art.

People compared the new artistic types to wandering Gypsies and believed that Gypsies originated in Bohemia.

Bohemian Life

Most importantly, Bohemian style evolved into a cult of the individual. It was a person whose very appearance became a work of art with carefully planned outfits and accessories. The word bohemian suggested a sense of arcane enlightenment, sexual freedom, and poor personal hygiene.

Therefore, bohemian life rejects materialism, private property, and centers on creativity and communal living.

Bohemians in the 19th Century - The Aesthetic Movement

In the 19th century, the Aesthetic Movement became a type of bohemian lifestyle.

Elements of Bohemian Style

Bohemian style, now referred to as boho chic, has come down through history. It is reappearing as beatnik style and in the hippie culture of the 1960s. For 200 years, bohemian style has consisted of several, most important fashion elements.

· Loose, flowing clothing made of natural fabrics.

· Less restrictive garments worn without corsets.

· Loose, flowing hair.

· Colorful scarves worn at the neck, on the head, or instead of a belt.

· Peasant style clothing including tunics, loose trousers, boots, and sandals.

· Used or worn clothing.

· Oriental elements.

· Mixing historical elements of medieval clothing with ethnic styles.

· Layering

· Matching of garments in a nontraditional manner, such as mixing prints, or unusual color combinations

· Multi strands of beads, several bangle bracelets, and the wearing of unusual, hand crafted, or unmatched jewelry

· Large dangle or large hoop earrings.

· Broad brimmed hats

· Patched clothing

· Paisley, flowered fabrics, ruffles, lace edged sleeves

· A general disregard for tidiness and uniformity of dress

· A look of contrived dishevelment

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ruminativerabbi · 3 years

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Feeling Hopeful

Several different people have asked in the last few days what I’m hoping Pesach will bring us all this year. It’s an interesting question, more so than I thought at first blush. Passover, of course, is a highlight of the year for us all. Families come together. The weather is usually dramatically improved over what it had been just weeks earlier. As a result, the whole effort to clean out our kitchens takes on a barely-hidden second level of meaning: yes, we are acting in accordance with tradition and law to rid our homes of even the last consequential crumbs of bread or any other leavened product, but we are also—and at the very same time—cleaning out the past year and its musty, fusty residue and preparing ourselves for a new year. Like I suppose it must also be for other Jewish Americans, the lead-up to Pesach is also a time of reflection for me personally: as I slowly pack away my snow boots and start trying to remember where I stored my walking shorts last fall when it was finally too cold to wear them, I feel a year falling away and something new dawning on the horizon. What will it bring us? That, pace Hamlet, is the question!

It’s always the question. But how much the more so this year with its pandemical accouterments, with its facemasks and endless CDC guidelines, with the scramble for vaccination in full swing as the age-limit drops and more and more of us get in line for our shots. Although we are obviously not through the viral woods just quite yet, things are feeling hopeful in a way they weren’t just a couple of months back. And so, as Pesach dawns, I find myself—and here I answer the question I led off with—I feel myself suffused with a sense of hopefulness and unanticipated optimism. I suppose readers all know the joke about the difference between a Jewish optimist and a Jewish pessimist—the pessimist says, “Things couldn’t get any worse,” while the optimist responds, “Of course, they can!”—but even so, even despite our ethnic proclivity to expect disaster around every corner (which trait some would say we have elevated to an actual art form), I find myself hoping for the best, feeling buoyed by my hopeful sense that the worst really is behind us and normalcy will soon return to our beleaguered land.

The first Pesach had something of the same feel to it.

There’s more to that thought than you might at first think. Scripture—and this is particularly true of the Torah—is a literary work intended to present the story of Israel’s origins to an audience eager to learn the backstory to the great covenant that Jews in later centuries understood to bind them to God. As such, the laws that are the stuff of the covenant are interspersed with the narrative to create a kind of patchwork feel to the whole. To shul-Jews who hear the Torah read aloud weekly, this aspect of the text is so familiar as to be both unremarkable and almost unnoticeable. And yet it is also the case, at least here and there, that the juxtaposition of law and narrative creates a slightly misleading impression for those reading or listening only casually. And a good example of that has to do precisely with the first Pesach, the experience in Egypt of which all subsequent Passovers have been the echo in history.

Set into the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt are all the rules that govern the paschal offering, the zevach pesach. The rules are somehow both complicated and simple: the Israelites are to procure a lamb or a kid on the tenth of the month, keep it safe it four days and then, on the fourteenth of the month they are to slaughter it, paint their doorposts and lintels with its blood, and eat it roasted with matzah and some bitter foodstuff. Scripture then quickly, almost imperceptibly, shifts into the future: this is not a one-time thing, it turns out, but the harbinger of a future holiday, one the observance of which will constitute a memorial, a festival, and a chukkat olam (i.e., a permanent statute). Furthermore, Passover—the holiday being heralded by this, its earlier iteration—is to be not simply “a” festival, but “the” festival of the Jewish year, the one that will, among other things, frame permanently the relationship of Israelites to their non-Israelite neighbors, to the citizenry of other nations, to the world itself: liberation from bondage will henceforth be the platform upon which the Israelite nation will stand for all time as the citizenry looks out at the world, the foundational story of which the rest of the nation’s history will be at least in some way derivative.

It’s a stirring passage, one known to most. But it obscures, at least slightly, the predicament of the actual Israelites to whom Moses is speaking. These are slaves who are being told to put their hiking boots on and get ready their walking sticks: departure, Moses tells them unambiguously, is imminent. Left undiscussed is how this must have played itself out among the Israelites themselves. Again and again, God has—speaking from their perspective—failed to get Pharaoh to grant them their freedom even for just a few days, let alone actually to free them from bondage. And this failure has repeated itself not once or twice, but on nine separate occasions. (The ancient Israelites had no reason to expect specifically ten plagues: they experienced them one by one—and each one was a failure: the wonders and signs may have been impressive, but they were still slaves, still not free to go, still being told to trust in the future without actually having been made free.)

What Moses tells them is, at best, unlikely: that God will bring yet another plague against the Egyptians and this one actually will work. And yet they do what Moses tells them to do: unsure as they must have been that this is going to work, having every reason to be suspicious, knowing they’ve been told before that Pharaoh will collapse under the weight of God’s imposing presence, they still do what they are told, painting their doorposts with blood, readying their walking sticks and their hiking boots, eating the meat according to their instructions…and waiting.

And then, finally, the midnight hour came. The tenth plague was the most awful imaginable and the nation and its hard-hearted leader could finally bear no more. The Israelites went free…but they must have been more surprised than impressed. For us, Pesach is the festival of freedom. But for the actual Israelites whose story rests just behind the narrative, Pesach—the first Pesach, the one undertaken in the shadow of all those many failed attempts to get Pharaoh to let the people go—for those people, it must have been a festival of hope, of faith, and of courage. They had every reason not to go along with the plan—they had, after all, been down that path nine times in the past—but they felt themselves able to hope, to dream, to look into the future and see freedom from the oppressive circumstances of the only life they had ever known.

I would like to suggest we adopt that line of thinking for this year’s celebration. I too am looking into the future this year, thinking carefully about what may yet come in the course of the next months. The numbers are going in the right direction. Although we are still reeling from the loss of well over half a million of our co-citizens to this horrific virus, including more than 3000 in Nassau County alone, the latest numbers seem encouraging. The vaccination program, despite its chaotic start, is working: as of this week more than a quarter of all American adults have been vaccinated at least one time and 14% of our co-citizens have been fully vaccinated. It’s tempting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, even though the flip side of those statistics—that 75% of Americans have yet to get their first shot and a full 86% have yet to receive both—is beyond sobering.

Still, Pesach is our festival of hope in the future, of national willingness to ignore the failures of the past and feel sanguine and optimistic about the future, of readiness to trust the leadership of our leaders and feel secure that, at least eventually, we will leave this state of viral bondage and become the fully free citizens of a fully immunized nation. Hopefulness is what’s called for…and Pesach is just the right context for the cultivation of hope. Therefore, I’m allowing myself to feel positive and hopeful…and I invite you all to join me in embracing both those emotions.

Joan and I wish you all a very happy holiday, a chag kasheir v’sameiach, and all the best. We’re not out of the woods yet. But we’re moving in the right direction…and that will have to suffice, at least for the time being.

#Passover #Pesach #Hopefulness

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sherlocklaura1992 · 4 years

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teddy-bear07 · 5 years

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The New Kid

I stepped into my closet and looked around.

I grabbed a white shirt, light blue skinny jeans, black Adidas, and my red, black and white varsity jacket. I walked into my bathroom and brushed my black hair back.

Since I was little people have always told me that I won the lottery when it comes to the gene pool. My mother is Egyptian and my Father is Korean, leaving my sister and I pretty well off. We both have wavy black hair, mine an undercut and hers long, and we both have jade colored eyes. Our skin is a golden olive-brown and tans in just the right way. We both have barely any acne, which is awesome! I'm 6'4, with a lean yet muscular build. My face is almost perfectly proportioned. My jawline is one of the many things of mine that I'm proud of, along with my cheekbones. My nose isn't to large or to small, my ears either.

People say that my accent helps. My sister and I were born in Australia, and we spent 5 years of our life there. We purposely kept the accent. People say it's hot. So.

I quickly brush my teeth and run downstairs to my kitchen where my mom is drinking coffee at the table and my dad is reading the paper.

I grab my school books from the kitchen island.

"Well good morning to you to," my dad says, looking up over the newspaper.

"Sorry dad," I say, grabbing an apple from the fridge and kissing mom on the forehead. "Lylith! Hurry up!" I call upstairs to my younger sister.

"I'm coming Zeke!" she answers.

"Ezekiel," my mom says as I head towards the foyer, "Can you stop my the grocery store and get me some stuff on your way home?"

"Sure mom," I tell her, as I look in the mirror on the foyer wall, messing up my hair a bit.

"I'll text you the list!" she yells as I head outside.

Once I'm out the door I stop and close my eyes. It's so beautiful here. I breath in the sent of the salty sea. The wind caresses my face and ruffles my hair, whispering to me. I look out at the sea for a moment before jumping into my truck. Lylith runs outside as soon as I start the engine.

"Jeez, in a hurry much?" she says with a smile.

"Sorry, but if i didn't make you hurry then we'd both be late for the first day of school."

Lylith and i go to Virginia Beach Academy, home of the Trojans. The school has three levels and tons of windows. There's a roof garden for seniors to eat lunch on, and the grounds are open and beautiful.

Virginia Beach is a city on the coast of virginia. Palm trees line sidewalks and sand that feels like cotton is everywhere. It's constantly humid here, but makes up for the humidity by almost every building being air conditioned. The school has four separate buildings. One building is used for the kids involved in art, workshop, photography, film, etc. It's one level and the room are very large and spacious. Another building is used for the sports. It's two levels and holds a basketball court, a swimming pool, a workout room, 4 batting cages, a soccer simulator, a golf simulator, and several supply rooms. The last two buildings are the main buildings. They're three stories tall and used for classes and staff offices.

Lyl is a sophomore this year and me a senior. We're both athletic and are in several after school activities and clubs. I'm in cross country and basketball and Lyl is in cheerleading and soccer.

As I pull into the school parking lot I see some of my cross country buddies. They see me getting out and all shout in unison, "ESSA IS HERE!"

"I'm gonna run before you friends rub their idiocy off on me," Lyl says, walking away, already heading towards her soccer friends.

I chuckle and head towards the guys, Brandon, Ian, and Thomas.

"Ezekiel Ivan Essa, who said it was okay for you to fall off the face of the earth this summer?" Brandon asks, slappin me on the back.

"Sorry man, between my job and my parents signing me up for all the church activities I was crammed," I answer him.

"Aw man, more church stuff? I get that you're parents are big time Christians, but that doesn't mean they should drag you into a bunch of activities!" Ian says.

"It's not that bad," I say. Ian is right. All the church activities do get tiring after a while, but i also enjoy the majority of the stuff we do. The church does VBS, which is always fun, they do meal packing, singing in different towns, mission trips, (we went to Haiti this year), and a variety of other things.

"Anyway, what's you're guys' first class?" Tom asks,

It turns out that Ian and I have first period; advanced math; together, and that Brandon and I have fifth period; music; together. All varsity players, no matter which sport, male or female, have lunch together.

Soon the boys and I head inside to get ready for class.

I walk to my locker, which is on the second floor, and grab my advanced maths book along with my AP English Literature and Composition book and Spanish book.

"Mr. Ezekiel Essa, Mr. Roy Jansen, and Miss Keirsten, please come to the main office before class." I hear over the intercom system.

I put my books in my bag, close my locker, and head to the offices.

When I get there I see Keirsten and Roy standing with Principal Leah Norstrom and three other people, two girls; blonde and auburn hair; and one boy; black hair.

"Ah, Ezekiel. These are our new students. These two girls are Clarrise and Monica," she points to the blonde first and then the auburn. "And this is Jeremiel." she points to the boy. "You all will be showing them around the school this next week. Clarisse and Roy, since they both have first class together, will be pairing up, Monica and Keirsten, because they have art together, and Zeke and Jeremiel, you both are in cross country and music together."

"When will we start showing them around?" Keirsten asks.

"Right now," Mrs. Norstrom says. "You are excused from you first two classes today. And you will be eating lunch with them."

The whole time Mrs. Norstrom is talking i've been studying Jeremiel. He's a few inches shorter than me, so that would make him about 5'11, he's lean like me. His ethnicity has to be something Asian. His face is soft but defined. His cheekbones are just noticeable and his jaw is soft and smooth. His hair is a slightly overgrown undercut and is wavy and his eyelashes are thick and dark. He must have heterochromia, because one eye is a dark, deep brown and the other is a piercing light blue. He's wearing a baggy red Supreme sweatshirt, blue jeans, a silver cross necklace, and black work boots.

"You all are excused," the principal says.

I walk out to the hallway and stop. "I'm Ezekiel Essa," I say, holding out my hand.

"The principal already told me," he says.

I raise one eyebrow, waiting for him to shake my hand.

He sighs, and shakes me hand. "Lee Park Jeremiel."

"The Angel of Visions and Dreams," I say, starting to walk down the hall.

"What?" he asks. He looks confused.

"Oh, sorry," I say, rubbing my neck. "I just, um, after the archangel? You know, the angels by God's side? I'm sorry, that was weird. It's jus-"

"It's ok," He says. I look at him and he has a small smile on his face. "Ezekiel, the Angel of Death and Transformation."

I smile. "You go to church?"

"Yeah, Grace Bible Church as of next Sunday. You?"

"Well, I hope I didn't make too bad of an impression already, because I guess ill be seeing you every Sunday.

"Oof," he says, a teasing note in his voice. "I guess I'm gonna have to talk to my parents about moving churches."

"Aw, damn it. I scared of another member! Stupid Zeke. God why do i have to ruin everything?" I say, laughing at the end.

He smiles fully and my breath catches. His name isn't the only angelic thing. His smile lights up his whole face and i swear i hear a choir. His eyes hold a heavenly light and i feel as if i'm looking at the gate of Heaven.

I whip my head away from him, so he doesn't see the red appearing on my cheeks.

"Hey, you okay?" He asks.

"Um, yeah. Yeah. got something in my eye. Don't want you to think I'm crying," I say, rubbing my eye, acting. Once my cheeks have cooled down i look at him again. "So, I'm guessing you're Korean?"

He nods. "What about you? Your eyes and face shape are similar to a Korean’s, but..., not?"

"My mom is Korean. My dad is Egyptian. That's where I got my last name, Essa. It means 'Gift of Isis', and Isis is the Goddess of wisdom. Not like the group Isis. Anyway, they met in Australia, got married, had me and my sister, and then moved to the U.S. when I was five."

"Cool. And you can call me Jere or Park. Jeremiel isn't the best name to repeat over and over."

"Well, you can call me Zeke or Essa. Can i see your schedule?"

He pulls his schedule out of his bag and hands it to me.

"This is great!" I say. "We have shop, lunch, gym, and cross country together!"

He smiles again, this time a small smile. "Thats nice."

"Lets go! We only have two periods to walk around so we better start now!"

"Are you always this peppy?" he asks me.

"No, I'm just really happy that I got to the awesome new kid before anyone else!"

He chuckles and smiles. And then his face falls.

"What's wrong?" I ask and stop walking.

"It's just, not many people would like to be my friend."

"Why not?" I'm so confused.

He mumbles something under his breath that I can't hear. He's staring at the floor, and his hair is slightly covering his eyes.

"What was that?" I ask, bending towards him a bit to hear him better.

He mumbles again. I place my hand on his shoulder.

He looks me in the eye and says, "I'm gay! Okay? So go on and make fun of me already!" he looks back down at the floor. How the hell am i so lucky?

"Look at me," I say.

He doesnt look up. I see a drop of water hit the floor. I squat down and look up at him. Another tear runs down his face. He looks surprised to see me on the floor looking at him.

"Lee Park Jeremiel, I couldn't give two shits if you were gay. Your sexuality doesn't matter to me. Hell it couldn't matter less. I will protect you at all costs, okay?"

His brows furrow and he wipes the tear from his cheek. "Are you sure? If others find out tht you're friends with a faggot then-"

"Shut up. Never call yourself a faggot. You sexuality doesn't make you inferior to anyone. You are worthy. Of God, of friends, of everything. OK?"

He smiles. "OK."

#gay #love.#lgbtq

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sindrias-vizier · 7 years

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Modern AU - Excerpt - Visit to Istanbul, not Constantinople (Don’t kill me for that please.)

THIS IS A PART OF MY NANOWRIMO PROJECT FOR NOVEMBER. I needed to get back into the swing of writing and this will be added in at some point!

Please note: I put a lot of research and checked like a million times with my aunt who’s from Turkey (she’s a very dear friend of my mothers who I consider an aunt) about how well written this is to Turkish life, and I fact checked that as well. This is as close as possible as I could get to the real thing!

Word Count: 3,208 words

Waking up to a view of the Golden Horn was quite an experience to Sinbad.

After a twelve hour flight from Portland to London, and then another three and a half hour flight from London to Istanbul, he was blissful when he and Ja’far arrived to the hotel they were staying at while visiting the fabled city.

He had taken a shower and promptly fell asleep on the large, luxurious bed, completely out even before his head hit the pillow.

Ja’far had forgotten to close the curtains over the large, crystal pained windows the night before. When the sun had started coming over the horizon, it had woken Sin up. Amber irises lazily opened, and the first thing that caught his eye was the sun lighting the Golden Horn up, mists gauzy over the blue-gold waters.

Now Sinbad understood why generations of Turks,Greeks and other peoples wanted this city of hills and seas. A view like this, along with the city itself, was completely enchanting.

His thoughts were cut out by the sound of the muezzins call to prayer from the Blue Mosque, and he felt Ja’far shift next to him in their bed.

“Mmm,is it dawn already…?” he sat up,stretching. In the light of the morning, his green eyes were hazy with tiredness. Sin couldn’t help it. Tousled with sleep,lips formed in a pout, he thought that Ja’far was the cutest thing he had ever seen.

“Unfortunately. Did you wake up because of the call to prayer?” Sinbad reached out and wrapped his arms around his husband, pulling his slim body close. Sin kissed Ja’far’s forehead, and the smaller man made a contented and warm sound.

“Mhm. I always do when I come to visit my grandmother. It’s a soothing sound.” Ja’far’s father was Turkish and raised in Istanbul. His mother, and Ja’far’s grandmother, was Nilüfer. His only surviving grandparent on his (long deceased) father’s side, Ja’far had been close to her even after he was adopted by Rurumu and Hinahoho after his biological parents had died. (He had been adopted by them since they and his biological parents were such good friends.)

“But I hope Allah doesn’t mind me not bowing in prayer today, I am too tired and jet lagged.” Ja’far curled up in Sinbad’s embrace, enjoying the feeling of sleeping past dawn for once on a Monday. Sinbad ran a trading partnership with a friend of theirs, Rashid, and consequently they were both awake before the sun was up most days.

This year, on the second to last day of Ramadan – their holy month – Sinbad and Ja’far had left for a vacation for their third wedding anniversary, which fell on the last day of Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the end of fasting. (Better known as Kurban Bayramı in Turkey.)

And it would be nice to spend it with Ja’far’s extended family in Istanbul.

“I’m glad fasting is almost over. It was chaos being at work at lunch time when we couldn’t eat. It was nice Rashid could join in on us working though – we got more work done in this last month than I thought possible.” Rashid, like his two friends, was also Muslim, though a little more lax than most. His son Alibaba was taught to choose his own religion, since he didn’t want to force anything on him.

Sinbad grinned. “Taking a vacation and you talk about work, how romantic.”

Ja’far rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, Ramadan isn’t over yet. Maybe we can spend the day sleeping until sunset -” Sinbad was cut off by the ringing of Ja’far’s cellphone.

“Grandmother?” Ja’far switched to Turkish, the sound lovely to Sinbad’s ears. He enjoyed hearing his husband talk in the language Ja’far loved so much. “Ah, yes we’re in Istanbul. We’re at the hotel right now and thinking of sleeping the day away until before the celebration starts at sunset. And yes, we brought Aladdin.”

Aladdin was their adopted son, and sleeping in the room next to theirs. At seventeen years old, they felt him too old to sleep in the same room as them while they were visiting in Turkey. He was adopted shortly after they were married when they were twenty one and Aladdin fourteen.

“We will be at the house around… seven or so? We’ll get ready around six and drive over.” Ja’far smiled at the excited tone his grandmother used. At seventy four she was extremely youthful, and he adored her.

“Yes yes, I love you too.Can’t wait to see you.” he hung up. Ja’far was just putting the phone back on the nightstand when Aladdin peeked in. The sleepy teenager was almost as tall as Sinbad, and taller than Ja’far was now (a sore point since he had known Aladdin since he was very very small).

“Breakfast?” Aladdin was raised in the Jewish faith by his biological parents before them and, as a rule, Sinbad and Ja’far didn’t force him to adhere to their religious month of fasting.

“There’s a restaurant down in the lobby that opens in half an hour – hold on.” Ja’far reached over and rummaged around in the jeans he wore the night before. He took out forty Turkish lira.

“It’s relatively inexpensive, so that should be enough for breakfast and lunch – and remember, your grandmother will have a huge spread for the celebrations later so don’t eat too much at lunch.” He reached over and gave his son an affectionate kiss on the cheek.

“We will be sleeping until four or so and leaving at five. So don’t bother us until around then.” Ja’far smiled at him. “Do some of the summer work your teacher assigned you, yes? I know you have your laptop with you. Try and do as much as you can, since we plan on going to the Asian side of Istanbul tomorrow to visit other family, and we still have a few weeks ahead of us for exploring around here.”

Aladdin nodded and smiled. “Sleep well~”

Ja’far fell back onto the bed after the door shut. He was thankful Sinbad had drawn the heavy curtains shut, darkening the once sun-bright room, and promptly joined him back in bed.

After that, they slept the hours between the first dawn to four PM in relative comfort, only awakened by the sound of a beeping alarm. Refreshed, Ja’far rose from the bed to shower himself before Sinbad was able to snatch the bathroom for himself. He heard his husband grumbling about it on the others ide of the door and Ja’far resisted the urge to giggle.

“I’m faster than you.” Ja’far said, coming from the bathroom just ten minutes after entering the shower. “Besides, why do you need one? You took one last night -”

“I just want to look nice, that a crime?” he laughed, and stole the shower back for himself. Ja’far turned the TV on to the news, and got dressed. He thanked goodness that his hair was short and just needed minor brushing, and he was good to go. Wearing a loose fitting traditional Turkish shirt of soft green linen, embroidered in gold thread; and a yelek, a vest made of bright yellow and embroidered with silver. These were only for the special occasion, since he generally dressed in a more relaxed fashion away from work.

“You look amazing, as usual.” Sinbad popped his head out and grinned. His long dark purple hair was saturated with water, and the distinct smell of his sandalwood soap smacked Ja’far in the face when he opened the door.

“Flatterer! You have ten minutes to get ready.” he laughed when Sin stuck his tongue out at him, and popped back in the bathroom, presumably to start the process of getting dressed. Ja’far decided to go over and check on Aladdin and see if he was dressed and ready to go.

Aladdin didn’t disappoint. Even if he was dressed as a normal teenager – a graphic tshirt, jeans and boots – Ja’far knew that would be alright. His grandmother would still hug him close and smother him with kisses, formal attire or not.

“Pops ready to go?” Aladdin called Ja’far dad and Sinbad pops – for some reason it irritated Sin to no end, and made him feel old even though he was only twenty four years old.

“Ready as he will ever be. That man lives to rush places, I swear to – you know what I mean.” Aladdin laughed at Ja’far’s exasperated response. He knew they loved each other even if they did argue quite a bit.

“Grandma is excited to see us all, I can feel it.” Aladdin said on the way to their (rented) car. Sinbad had finally been ready to go at exactly two fifty (much to Ja’far’s annoyance) and they were in the car by six PM.

Traversing the streets of Istanbul was interesting, with twists and turns, on their way to the quarter of the city the family home was in.

Nilüfer Aga lived in a house that had belonged to her husband’s family for generations; Ja’far was named for his grandfather, who was Egyptian and Turkish in ethnicity.

The name Aga came from the word for ‘leader’ in Ottoman Turkish, since his family going back generations were apart of the old Ottoman Empire’s government and one of his ancestors was married to a sister of Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver (called the Magnificent in the west) himself.

Ja’far rarely talked about this, considering it was something in the past. Though part of him, frankly, was somewhat proud to know that on his father’s side he was related to a just and good ruler. He held an affection for the city of his father’s birth, since he had come there every other summer (the other summers spent with his mother’s parents in their home in Dublin,Ireland.) and as a result knew the city by heart.

“Sin, you’re going the wrong way-”

“It’s the long way, and much prettier. Besides we have time before the sun goes down anyways.” he flashed a charming smile at his husband, who rolled his eyes.

“The sun sets earlier here than back home, doesn’t it?” Aladdin said in the backseat. Growing up in the pacific northwest, he was used to the sun setting anywhere from nine thirty to ten PM. Long summer twilights meant lots of playing for him, even at this age.

“Well we’re farther north than here.” Ja’far smiled. “But it’s just as bright with all the lights here in the city. I forget this is your first trip here.”

“Remember when Grandma came all the way from Turkey for your wedding and walked away with a great grandson too?” Aladdin grinned. Even though the events surrounding his adoption was painful, he was happy it was Sheba’s dear friend that gained custody of him. He had already taken to calling Ja’far his second mother (as a joke of course) from a super young age, spending days sitting at his table from elementary school.

Aladdin had come into their home a year before Sinbad and Ja’far had married, originally Ja’far as Aladdin’s legal guardian after his parent’s disappearance. (No one had known what happened, since their car was found outside of town, no valuables taken, even Solomon and Sheba’s phones still in the console of the car.)

Ja’far and Sinbad had been married the year after they disappeared, saddened by the absence of their friends, but still glad in the fact that Aladdin had been kept in their circle. Four years after their disappearance he still missed his parents, but he was happy he had his adoptive parents.

“I told you this was too long-”

“Nothing is happening yet, Ja’far, calm yourself. You’re worse than flighty hen.” “‘Flighty hen’? Who are you calling a ‘flighty hen’?” Ja’far was tempted to give his husband what for but realized he was driving out of the city and to quarter his grandmother lived in, named Yeniköy. It was located on the very sea line of the Bosphorus strait. The only reason they weren’t staying there instead of a hotel was the fact that Ja’far liked his privacy, and did not relish his nosy family learning all of his and Sinbad’s habits.

(Also its extremely distressing when your husband gets handsy in the house one considered their childhood home. No thank you, he liked to think his grandfather still resided in the home spiritually and that wouldn’t be fun for him to see, would it?)

Unlike most of the homes in the quarter, it was spaced evenly away from its neighbors. Lawns of emerald green surrounded the home, up until it came to the marble quay that had only the one caïque his grandmother preferred to use over a car.

The sun was just starting to set over the city when they pulled in through the gates of Nilüfer’s home. Already there were the cars of the various aunts, uncles and cousins on both her side and her husbands side; she was considered the Matriarch of their family, and thusly many people gathered in her home for holidays, birthdays and even weddings.

“Ready?” Ja’far asked Aladdin as the teen got out of the car. His eyes darted around, nervous about the amount of cars and the probable amount of people that were gathered there.

“Little bit. Everyone here I don’t think I’ve met...” he trailed off.

“Well you know Grandmother, Aunt Nermin, Uncle Ibrahim and their children -”

“That’s about it.” Aladdin was still following behind his parents, however, even if he was nervous. The double doors, made of a sweet smelling cedar wood, opened with a heavy creaking sound.

“Hadji! You’re still here!” Ja’far couldn’t help but smile at the small, wizened man smiling at him at the door. From some of his earliest memories of his grandmothers house, this man has long been her companion and her butler. He remembered a rumor saying after his grandfather died before he was even born, he had been her lover. He dismissed the accusation, since Hadji had nothing but respect for his best friend.

“As long as Lady Nilüfer is here, I shall ever be here, young master.” with his formal speech came a twinkle in his eye. Ja’far adored him, and he was like a grandfather to him and all the grandchildren and great grandchildren that peopled the family.

“Ah! I’m rude. Hadji, this is Aladdin. You’ve already met Sinbad.” Ja’far was more than grateful that his family accepted him – he knew that Nilüfer would no matter what, since he was her favorite grandchild – but it was Hadji’s acceptance of his husband that made it all the better.

“Still looks like a rascal, even in those nice clothes.” he smiled, ushering them in. The smell of cooking food hit the pair hard, since the hadn’t eaten since coming into Istanbul the night before.

“I smell so much good food – If I don’t eat soon, I’ll perish.” Sinbad muttered.

“Today is the last day, so you’ll be fine. Besides, we got a lot of work done this month!” Ja’far said brightly. Sinbad sent him a dirty look.

“Stop bringing work up on vacation -”

“Can’t stop, won’t stop~” Ja’far grinned mischievously at his husband. It was the last day of fasting, and it was time to celebrate. True, the true partying would happen tomorrow, but his family always started the night before since they could sleep the day away next morning.

He could hear the sounds of laughing people from the largest chamber in the house, and he followed the noises, familiar sounds of old and new Turkish mixed together, songs being sung, and even a joke or two.

“Ah! You’re here!” he felt his grandmother’s arms wrap instantly around him, and he held the small, delicate looking woman close. Nilüfer didn’t look a day over sixty, despite her years. Her hair was the same shade of blond as her grandson’s, albeit with more silvery strands. However, where his eyes were a leafy, emerald green, hers blazed a green-gold color that was lively as a young woman’s. There were faint lines here and there, but all around she was still just as beautiful as any woman in the world.

“Grandmother.” Ja’far felt himself tear up, realizing just then how much he actually missed this elegant, imperious woman. She was the person he adored above all people in his family.

“My lion, how I missed you so.” she patted his cheek. “You’ve grown even more handsome since the last time I saw you. I don’t miss that elated, happy look in your eyes, Ja’far. I’m glad for it.” There was a small silence between them, him just hugging her close, like any grandchild would do after not seeing their grandparent after years of separation. She set him back, looking him up and down.

“You look more like your mother with every passing year. The only thing of my family in you is the coloring of your hair, but its not bad. She was a beautiful woman and I miss her as much as I miss your father.” she sighed. He patted her shoulder.

“We brought Aladdin with us. We know how much you adore him.” Ja’far pulled him close to his grandmother, and smiled when he got the hugging and kissing treatment, much to the teens embarassment.

“Ja’far!” came the call from his favorite aunt, Nermin. One of the first people to accept his marriage to Sinbad, she was a bright ray of sunshine, and eased his way into coming out to his extended family. While some grumbled, the overwhelming vote was happy for him and for Sinbad.

“Hello Au-” he was cut off by being smothered with kisses, and he felt more like a small boy than an adult man.

“Aunt!” he sounded so embarrassed when he finally escaped her embrace, realizing he was smiling about the same thing happening to Aladdin. He laughed.

“Still beautiful as ever! Do you ever age?”

“Ask yourself that, you still look like a teenager!” Nermin grinned. “We all seem to age slowly, don’t we? One asks if we have found the fountain of youth! Keh keh!” It was a running family joke that all of the Aga family line had been given a sip from the fabled fountain of youth at birth, thus securing a slow aging process.

“Oh yes, I do don’t I?” he smiled.

Sinbad had sat back and watched for a little while, letting Ja’far interact with any and all family members, and couldn’t help but smile. He was happy, even energetic, despite his lack of food and still suffering from jet lag.

Ja’far wouldn’t own up to it, but he thrived when surrounded by family. He would always brighten when there were gatherings, even if they were at their friends houses. Then again, friends were family, weren’t they?

The sun and finally sunk below the horizon line before anyone knew it; and everyone spilled out into the warm, Anatolian night for dinner.

Everything from roasted lamb to rice and vegetables drenched in olive oil covered the tables; Turkish tea and coffee scented the air. Laughter was swept up into the night as the rest of Istanbul celebrated the night that preceded the end of the fast.

#mun writes #well #thats a thing #☽ IN ANOTHER TIME || verse; modern ☾

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thesundowncrew · 7 years

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REALLY LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. repost, don’t reblog ! tag 10 ! good luck ! TAGGED. @skeletonwithabowtie ((WOWEE THANKS!)) TAGGING. Not tagging anyone but feel free to do this! Seems like a good character dev. practice!

BASICS. FULL NAME : Nightshade / Humanverse: Natalie Shadestone NICKNAME : Nightie, kitty / Nat, kid, kiddo AGE : 200+ years / depends on thread but default usually teens to early 20′s BIRTHDAY : February 10th ETHNIC GROUP : Black cat / Caucasian NATIONALITY : Humanverse: American LANGUAGE / S : English / Humanverse: A little bit of French and Spanish thanks to school SEXUAL ORIENTATION : Asexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : Demiromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS : (Thread dependent but by default) Single CLASS : Humanverse: Upper middle-class HOME TOWN / AREA : Samhain picked her up somewhere in 1800′s England / Humanverse: Some American suburbs CURRENT HOME : Sundown / Humanverse: Some American suburbs PROFESSION : Witchy familiar to the spirit Samhain, Potions expert / Humanverse: (Thread dependent) Veterinarian, Toxicologist, Forensics

PHYSICAL. HAIR : Black and medium length, just below her shoulder EYES : Green, always round and wide-eyed with excitement and curiosity NOSE : Cute as a button FACE : Petite, not as round and not as squarish. Somewhere in the middle LIPS : Upper and lower lip are both equal in shape and ‘fullness’. Often wears dark lipstick COMPLEXION : Fair but slightly on the pink side BLEMISHES : Humanverse: Used to be very pimply as a teenager but cleared up once she knew how to take care of herself SCARS : She had a very old scar which is like a ring that goes around her neck; a chafe wound from when she was still a cat and her previous owner put on a makeshift rope collar too tight and almost choked her. Others are miscellaneous, collected from on the job / Humanverse: Lots of small scars on arms and knees thanks to being a hyperactive little kid who couldn’t stop climbing everywhere TATTOOS : She has a spiderweb on the left side of her neck, which doesn’t symbolize much besides her liking spooky insects / (Depending on the thread, she may have others) HEIGHT : 4′11″ WEIGHT : 95 lbs BUILD : Small, petite, lean FEATURES : Despite her dark fashion sense, most of the time has a huge smile on her face. Her eyes light up when really happy ALLERGIES : N/A USUAL HAIR STYLE : Almost always wears her hair in two ponytails or pigtails. Rarely is she seen with a single, big ponytail or with her hair down, which she only wears when she goes to sleep USUAL FACE LOOK : Pink/Purple eyeshadow and dark lips, either shades of red or purple, never black. Doesn’t wear power unless to conceal something USUAL CLOTHING : Simple tops like vests, T-shirts, crop tops, paired with skirts. Sometimes with/out colorful or black and white patterned leggings. Shoes are usually platformed boots, rarely sneakers.

PSYCHOLOGY. FEAR / S : Deep waters. Despite liking all kinds of other poisonous creatures, snakes aren’t so much of a fear but they make her slightly uncomfortable ASPIRATION / S : To be the best witchy familiar she can be / Humanverse: To work her dream jobs which would be any of the professions mentioned beforehand ^^^ POSITIVE TRAITS : Excitable, Good-hearted, Optimistic, Friendly, Hyperactive, Chatty, Passionate, Determined NEGATIVE TRAITS : Impulsive, Childish (to the point of irresponsibility), Scatter-brained, Intrusive, Self-indulging, Impish MBTI : Campaigner (ENFP-A) “.. a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party… Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate..” ZODIAC : Humanverse: Aquarius TEMPERAMENT : Jolly SOUL TYPE / S : Performer “…outgoing, charming people with a strong sense of fun” ANIMALS : Baboon VICE HABIT / S : She talks waaaay too much and waaaay too fast, sometimes forgetting that not everyone can keep up with her pace or train of thought which often times is disconcerting if you’re trying to keep a conversation. She can jump from one topic to another pretty quick. She is often blunt with her observations, but is quick to apologize if she hurts anyone’s feelings. FAITH : Agnostic GHOSTS ? : Yes AFTERLIFE ? : She believes there are different ‘realms’ considered to be the afterlife, depending on what you believe REINCARNATION ? : Yes / Humanverse: She has yet to find compelling evidence to prove that it as a process exists ALIENS ? : Yes / Humanverse: She leaves the possibility for other life forms other than humans open POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : Supports whoever isn’t hateful or a bigot who spreads hate to serve selfish agendas, who’d rather spend on themselves than spend on the people’s welfare ECONOMIC PREFERENCE : Doesn’t have a preference. Prefers comfort over extensive luxury SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION : As a member of the mythos society, she is regarded as a highly skilled and strong spirit and is respected for her expertise with potions and for being Samhain’s trusted familiar / Humanverse: A well-liked character and active member of society. Popular to the point where almost everyone knows her, have a vague idea of her or at least heard of her in some form. EDUCATION LEVEL : Everything she knows was taught to her by Samhain, but has learned to improvise due to experience and thinking on her feet. / Humanverse: Above average, honor’s student.

FAMILY. FATHER : N/A / Humanverse: (Adoptive) Harvey Shadestone MOTHER : N/A / Humanverse: (Adoptive) Kelly Shadestone SIBLINGS : N/A EXTENDED FAMILY : N/A / Humanverse: Considers Sam and Axel to be her big brothers, and Granda Hallahan as her grandfather NAME MEANING / S : ‘Nightshade’ was given by Samhain due to her near-death experience of being poisoned. But her sharing Samhain’s ghoulish essence gave her the ability to resist any toxin/posion known to man HISTORICAL CONNECTION ? : N/A

FAVOURITES. BOOK : Doesn’t really have one MOVIE : Too many favorites, keeps changing with time 5 SONGS : Same as movies but one of her favorite bands is Owl City DEITY : She adores the Egyptian goddess Bast for obvious reasons HOLIDAY : Halloween!!! MONTH : Can’t choose one month out of the twelve SEASON : Spring PLACE : Home WEATHER : Cold, sunny mornings SOUND : Trees and grass rustling in the wind SCENT / S : Butter TASTE / S : Anything sweet FEEL / S : Warm hugs, snuggling up to a warm body like lying atop of Samhain’s chest when falling asleep ANIMAL / S : All the animals NUMBER : All the numbers COLOUR : All the colors (But mostly black, pink and purple)

EXTRA. TALENTS : Cooking BAD AT : Drawing and writing cursive TURN ONS : TURN OFFS : HOBBIES : Eating, cooking, dancing, photography, more eating TROPES : PERKY GOTH IS PERFECT BECAUSE THE PAGE EVEN HAS HER FC ON IT, Genki Girl, Sweet Tooth, Bunny-Ears Lawyer, The Power of Friendship. Perky Female Minion and Villainous Harlequin work only in her Criminal verses. AESTHETIC TAGS : N/A GPOY QUOTES : ????

FC INFO. MAIN FC / S : Pauley Perrette ALT FC / S : None OLDER FC / S : None YOUNGER FC / S : None VOICE CLAIM / S : Can’t place anyone besides the voice I gave her xD GENDERBENT FC / S : If I had to pick, Logan Lerman

MUN QUESTIONS. Q1 : if you could write your character your way in their own movie, what would it be called , what style would it be filmed in , and what would it be about ? A1 : I would loooove it to be a Laika-style stop-motion animation. The first movie that came to mind would be Coraline, and I think it kind of suits her! Spooky but still a little colorful, whimsical and most importantly hopeful. If there was ever a movie starring Nightshade as the main character, I would use the Epilogue AU where it shows her being the guardian of the Veil after Samhain passes on. Samhain would be in the movie but only in flashbacks and to serve preface for the story. And Barty her familiar would be there, and maybe Axel comes into the picture later on. Q2 : what would their soundtrack / score sound like ? A2 : Again something along Coraline’s soundtrack. Some parts are whimsical and upbeat, and some parts can transition to downright eerie for the more intense parts. Q3 : why did you start writing this character ? A3 : Nightshade the black cat was actually the first character I started roleplaying with, though I didn’t have an official RP blog then. I was sending asks to this Jack Frost character and then I decided to make my own blog and OCs and Nightshade was fleshed out into the muse you see today! I know she’s Samhain’s familiar but I don’t want people to think that she’s just an extension of his character and story when she’s her totally own person. Q4 : what first attracted you to this character ? A4 : Her endless optimism and ability to be intimidating and childish at the same time.

Q5 : describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse. A5 : If she were a real live person, I’d probably be annoyed with her inability to grasp personal space REAL fast. I’m okay with her being cuddly, but too much too long might grind my gears. And (though I haven’t seen it happen yet) I don’t like the way people might assume that just because she’s childish or easily trusting means she’s naively stupid. She makes rash decisions, sure, but experience has taught her to always have backup plan and to think on your feet.

Q6 : what do you have in common with your muse ? A6 : We both try to be as positive as possibly, for ourselves as well as for the people around us. We want to make the world a better place, even though we are small and we might not ever be enough. But we try, even in our small ways. Q7 : how does your muse feel about you ? A7 : “Mun is totally sweet and kind and gentle and maybe sometimes says violent things but isn’t really a violent person deep down~ It’s funny how she can be so silly and scatterbrained sometimes, kinda reminds me of me! She can be a bit of a know-it-all sometimes and it’s annoying but I think she’s gettin’ better at that.. Mmmmm It bums me out when she gets real sad sometimes and I don’t know how to cheer her up, but when she gets back to smiling, it makes me feel a whole lot better cus she has a nice smile!” -Nightshade

Q8 : what characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ? A8 : I can’t narrow them down because there are way too many but they’re all so very unique and interesting to me! Q9 : what gives you inspiration to write your muse ? A9 : Writing for Nightshade is the easiest when I’m in a good mood. Sometimes Harlequin inspires the mischief in her and I get tons of ideas, and not just for her Criminal verses. Q10 : how long did this take you to complete ? A10 : To be honest I started this late last night, like around 11:30PM, but then I got too tired, saved it in my drafts, and only got back to it this morning :D

#;headcanon (nightshade)#;everybody wants to be a cat (nightshade)#tagged #god this took forever #definitely not gonna do this for the other two lol

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Vegas as a Literary Hub? You Bet.

LAS VEGAS — On a recent very warm Saturday afternoon, just a few blocks northeast of a string of ramshackle chapels offering Elvis-themed weddings on Las Vegas Boulevard, the novelist Tommy Orange was discussing the critical reception given to “There There,” his polyphonic novel about contemporary Native Americans.

Orange was speaking at the third annual Believer Festival, three days of performances, panels and parties that are part of a burgeoning literary scene here. As high-low splits go, it is a tough scene to beat.

With irregular regularity, various places in the United States that are not the Big Obvious Centers start throwing off a more concentrated number of cultural sparks: Austin, Tex.; Seattle; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Atlanta. Las Vegas might not seem the most obvious place to join this list. The Strip is still, and ever shall be, as Joan Didion described it, “bizarre and beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification.” But a recent infusion of money, people and The Believer, a literary magazine, have kindled an already present bookish community into a steadier flame.

The hub of this resurgence (or, to coin a term, surgence) is the Black Mountain Institute, a literary center that operates out of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. When Joshua Wolf Shenk was named the executive and artistic director of the institute in 2015 — after the retirement of Carol Harter, who founded B.M.I. in 2006 — he was not planning to also become the editor in chief of a magazine. But soon after beginning his tenure, Shenk talked to The Believer, then published by McSweeney’s and based in San Francisco, about cooperating on a live event in Vegas.

Those talks grew into discussions about B.M.I. buying the magazine, which was in a dormant phase as it tried to find a viable long-term financial model. A deal was finalized in early 2017.

Shenk said that defying what outsiders expect from Vegas was no longer what interested him most, but he and others continually admit that the juxtapositions can be hard to ignore. And one person’s very conscious fight against stereotypes has done much to fund the growth.

Beverly Rogers, a patron saint of the arts in Vegas, moved to the area from outside Philadelphia when she was 12. Now 68, and a serious book collector, she remains motivated by the view others have of her longtime home.

“Since I was a kid, I had been sick of going back to my family and friends and have them make some snide remarks about living in Las Vegas, how there’s nothing intellectual going on here,” Rogers said. “I can’t tell you how many insults I suffered over the years. So I’ve always had what I call a desire to raise the cultural barometer of Las Vegas.”

The Rogers Foundation, which focuses on arts and education, pledged $10 million to B.M.I. in 2013. Not long after Rogers’s husband, Jim, an attorney and television station owner, died in 2014, the foundation pledged another $20 million to the institute, which now officially bears Rogers’s and Harter’s names.

“Everyone’s head is so full with the stereotype that I don’t think there’s any room for anything else,” Shenk said of Vegas. “There’s no substitute for coming here. You have to move through the environment to get a sense of what it’s actually like.”

The festival heavily emphasizes environment, staging its events against backdrops that are away from the Strip but still quintessentially Vegas — in both artificial and natural senses. The opening night, with readings by Kiese Laymon, Hanif Abdurraqib, Natalie Diaz and others, was held at the Neon Museum’s Ne10 Studio, a dark warehouse space strewn with classic signs. Near the entrance, a larger-than-life reclining cowgirl kicked her blazing boot into the air. On Friday night, just outside the city, readers performed in Red Rock Canyon at sunset, holding their own in a contest for attention with the glowing mountains.

Both the lineup of talent and the crowds at the festival reflected a city that, it is often said, is what 21st-century America looks like.

“The stereotype of Vegas is all white dudes swinging into the Strip and treating the city as a plaything for their imaginations,” Shenk said. “But the real city is incredibly diverse.”

Talk to a dozen people in Vegas, and 13 of them will tell you that U.N.L.V. is the most ethnically diverse campus in the country, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. (Some will quickly acknowledge that, technically, the school is tied with Rutgers.)

The journalist Amanda Fortini has spent the better part of four years in Vegas, as a visiting lecturer at U.N.L.V. and, for the past few months, a B.M.I. fellow.

“There’s one misperception that Las Vegas is the Strip, that they’re an equivalent thing,” Fortini said. “But another misperception is that there’s this organic, local community wholly separate from the Strip — that there’s no cross-pollination between the two.”

For Justin Favela, a Vegas-born artist who appeared at this year’s festival, the city’s outsize dimensions help to spur his vision. “Most of my work is inspired by Las Vegas,” he said. “The colors that I use; the scale. I’m not afraid to make giant, obnoxious things that take up space and draw attention.”

The Believer is not an outsize magazine — its average issue sells 6,000 copies, including paid subscribers and in bookstores — but it is an influential and well-branded one. Sara Ortiz, the program manager for the magazine and B.M.I., moved to Vegas not long after she had returned to her hometown, Austin, from New York. Certain she was back in Texas for good, she said she was lured away in large part by the “name recognition” of the magazine.

Now, in addition to planning the festival, Ortiz coordinates about 50 events year-round for B.M.I. and oversees the institute’s many fellowships, including its City of Asylum program, which hosts writers who face censorship, and sometimes violence directed at them, in their home countries. The Egyptian journalist and novelist Ahmed Naji recently began his term as the City of Asylum fellow, and will be in Vegas for at least two years.

The final day of this year’s festival featured a series of signings and talks, including the interview with Orange, at The Lucy, a recently opened mixed-use complex owned by the Rogers Foundation that serves as a home for the B.M.I. crowd.

On ground level at the complex is The Writer’s Block, a store that bumped its stock from about 5,000 books at a previous location to about 20,000 in the current one. On the upper floors are apartments for B.M.I. fellows and any Believer editors who live outside Vegas full-time but spend stretches there to work on the magazine.

When Scott Seeley and his husband, Drew Cohen, who own and run The Writer’s Block, were first thinking of where to relocate from New York in 2013, Vegas “was not even on the radar,” Seeley said.

Seeley is an artist who designed two visually distinctive stores for McSweeney’s in Park Slope. For 10 years, he also ran 826NYC, the nonprofit founded by Dave Eggers that offers free creative-writing programs to children. In Vegas, Seeley has started his own program, Codex, for students from ages 5 to 18.

It is an irony not lost on him that, having been at ground zero of the McSweeney’s-flavored Brooklyn moment at the start of this century, he moved to the desert for a change of pace — only to have The Believer move in upstairs.

But he is happy to have the magazine around, and the scene finding him again has helped his business in more ways than one. “Publishers had been reticent to send authors to Vegas because books never sold,” Seeley said. “The Believer coming here legitimized this city in the eyes of the machine out there.”

So far, any new attention from the machine has not changed the fundamental tone of the place.

When the comedian and musician Reggie Watts closed the Red Rock Canyon event with a riotous set that included him adopting the persona of a pretentious poet, there was a ripple of surprise and almost relief that someone was having such unabashed fun. The local participants and audience members at the festival betrayed few pretensions, but there was an unquestionably sincere vibe throughout the weekend.

“My theory is that everything attracts its shadow,” Shenk said, “and that quite unconsciously, people who live in Las Vegas have developed a way of being that is in 180-degree contrast to the stereotypes of their city. It’s a relentlessly earnest, authentic, sometimes painfully earnest place. It’s not an ironic place. People are not commenting on the comment.”

In this way, the city is a perfect match for The Believer. In a long essay, much talked about at the time, that anchored its debut issue in 2003, Heidi Julavits wrote: “Snark is a reflexive disorder, whether those who employ it realize it or not,” and that the real questions we need to ask are: “What do you believe in? What do you care about?” These are questions that permeated this year’s festival, which had the theme of “La Frontera,” or the border, and featured several readings and conversations revolving around issues of social justice and the history of oppressed peoples.

“Thank you, believers,” the author Lolita Hernandez said as she took the stage at Red Rock Canyon, “for keeping believing.”

So, how to keep on keeping the faith? “We’re in many ways still a baby festival,” Ortiz said. “We’ve learned that we really do well with an intimate crowd. I don’t ever want us to get on the scale of something crazy-large.”

Shenk said the festival was thinking about “how to expand without losing the thing that people want us to expand.”

The long-term future of the whole scene depends on not just artists, but on much more fundamental things — like water. “If Lake Mead holds up, we can all be here long term,” Fortini said, with a dark laugh.

Some of the parched city’s other potential drawbacks are less apocalyptic in scale. The author Lesley Nneka Arimah, a fellow at B.M.I. this spring, said she was trying to figure out where she would live next. And while she has enjoyed her time in Vegas, there are features she could do without. “Tarantula season is July,” she said. “I’ve been foolishly soliciting tarantula stories from people.”

But the overall sense is of a creative community with plenty of room left in its growth spurt. More than one person compared Vegas to the Wild West, not for its zaniness or licentiousness, but because its culture’s clay is still wet.

“The first Believer Festival, at the first activity, I started to cry,” Rogers said. “I realized it was because I didn’t know anyone. Everyone there was young. I’m in this crowd, I see the same people all the time. These were people who were really interested in what was going on, and I didn’t know them.”

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lindyhunt · 6 years

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The Female Comedians Taking Canada by Storm Right Now

Thousands of T-shirts can’t be wrong: The future really is female. Especially when it comes to comedy. Funniness, like feminism, is best when it’s intersectional. Meet Canada’s newest comedic stars.

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Courtney Gilmour is wearing KAT VON D Everlasting liquid lipSTICK ($24) in “LOVECRAFT,” available at Sephora.

Courtney Gilmour

Canadian comedy fans see more of Courtney Gilmour than they do of their own friends. Did you take in shows at the JFL42 comedy festival? For two years running, Gilmour has been one of the only Canadian women included in the 42 acts. Making the pilgrimage to Just for Laughs in Montreal? Last year, she was the first woman in the competition’s 19-year history to win the Homegrown Comic Competition, and this year she did a Comedy Network taping at the fest. She has also opened for Chris Gethard and Sasheer Zamata. Gilmour, 33, is everywhere. Zaniest of all? This is only the Waterloo, Ont., native’s first year doing standup full-time.

Gilmour, who was born without a left leg or forearms, delves into her experiences with disability in her act. She talks about how some people seem let down by her origin story—so she makes up new ones. Her favourite? Abortion survivor. “I fought back!” she crows. “I had someone describe my comedy as ‘a tiny woman screaming vulnerabilities at you,’” says Gilmour. “And I loved that.” She skewers people’s reactions to what she affectionately refers to as her “nubs,” describing a cab driver who equated her lack of limbs with his wife’s occasional back problems.

Hearing what Gilmour has to endure is jaw-dropping at times, but in an entertainment world populated almost entirely by able-bodied folks, it’s a narrative we don’t hear enough. “I’m annoyed when people ask if I feel obligated to talk about being an amputee or ‘How do you balance writing that material with regular material?’” she says. “If I wanted to tell [amputee] jokes just to get it out of the way, I’d write hacky puns about hand jobs or whatever. Being an amputee is my life, and I need to talk about it. It’s funny how people think of it as a novelty act and then a guy goes up and does 15 minutes on how crazy his girlfriend is and no one’s like ‘Oh, it’s the Crazy Girlfriend guy!’”

Photography by Carlyle Routh. Hoodo Hersi is wearing fenty Beauty mattemoiselle plush matte lipstick ($23) in “PMS,” available at sephora.

Hoodo Hersi

Most people know that there is some small element of risk in choosing a front-row seat at a comedy show. There’s always a chance that the comic might tease you a little. At a Hoodo Hersi show, however, no one is safe. The Toronto-based comedian, 27, keeps up a running commentary on the audience’s reactions to her work. Hersi, for example, will launch into her bit about the Muslim ban. “I’m fine with it,” she says. “Like, I want to ban white guys who go to Thailand.” The laughter crescendoes and then Hersi pauses, a mischievous smile on her face. “There’s always one white girl in the audience who’s like, ‘My dad’s been to Thailand, like, four times, so this joke is not for me.’”

Hersi fearlessly tackles race, religion and gender. Or, as she puts it, “all the fun stuff!” Audiences are wild for it. This year alone, she was named a Homegrown Talent at Just for Laughs and taped a performance that will air on the Comedy Network. She has done CBC tapings at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and the BBC World Service Montreal comedy show and was selected as an Audible New Voice at SF Sketchfest. She has also opened for Gina Yashere, Moshe Kasher and Eric Andre. Once a month, she co-hosts The Ebony Tide, a showcase for comedians of colour. “One of the goals is for people to understand why terms like ‘black comedy’ and ‘ethnic humour’ just don’t make sense,” she explains.

In a comedy scene often dominated by white men, it is refreshing to see a black Muslim woman performing in a hijab. Hersi takes the occasional cringe-inducing comment and incorporates it into her act. She remembers when a woman told her she was so brave for doing what she does, clad in her “Muslim garb.” “This is from Forever 21!” cries Hersi. “I’m culturally appropriating my own culture! I’m part of the problem!” The room erupts into laughter, but Hersi is already moving on to the next bit: no hesitation, no apologies. “No segues!” she announces. “Next joke!”

Photography by Carlyle Routh. anasimone George is wearing Giorgio ARMANI Beauty rouge d’armani matte lipstick ($46) in “400,” available at Sephora.

Anasimone George

Day after day, Anasimone George went off to her interior design classes. And day after day, she hated her life a little bit more. She detested design school but felt obligated—to her family, to her Egyptian-Canadian community—to get a degree. Then she flunked out. She got a job working at Starbucks as a supervisor. Loathed that, too. Finally, George says, she knew it was time to turn to her true love: comedy. “I had already failed so much, I literally had nothing to lose.”

Her first few months onstage were rocky. “A lot of my old stuff came from a place of trying to fit in, and a lot of my work reflected a ton of internalized misogyny and racism. And if I ever tried [to discuss these issues], I was deemed ‘the girl who talks about race too much.’ But once I grew out of caring what the white gaze wanted, I figured out my voice.”

There was just one problem: Now that she had something to say, there weren’t many places to say it. Sick of waiting around for bookers to give a queer WOC more stage time, she took matters into her own hands and started a monthly comedy night, SHADE, to showcase people of colour, LGBTQ+ folks and woman-identified and non-binary people. “I wanted to create a home for marginalized performers—and make money and actually pay people,” she says. SHADE sells out every month. George—who hails from Scarborough, Ont., and is just 25—is a raucous, engaging host with a big head of curls, her curves barely contained in hot pants, knee-high boots, mesh bodysuits and plunging tops that offer a peek at her ornate breastplate tattoo. Pump-up jams blare from the speakers and make it feel less like a standup show and more like a party. George’s confidence is awe-inspiring—and infectious. She remembers one show where a young woman of colour came up to her afterwards and told her that she was so happy to see someone like herself on a stage. “That shit really melts my heart and makes me tear up every time I think about it,” she says.

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samjbatty · 7 years

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Why Does Hollywood Whitewash The Bible and Does Anyone Care?

An alarming number of ‘biblically inspired’ movies are being released with one major deviation: The lack of ethnic diversity.

It has happened again; yet another ‘biblical’ epic has been released which features an all-white main cast. This time, the movie is critically acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.

The film, itself, has been criticized for many reasons, including its inaccuracies that do not match the Bible’s story such as CGI rock monsters and the absurd, almost insulting, omission of God’s name. These frustrations came to a head with the release of the documentary Noah and the Last Days created by Young Earth Creationist Ray Comfort, and led National Religious Broadcaster’s president, Jerry Johnson to condemn the movie’s “extremist environmental agenda.”

However, there is a glaring oversight in all of these criticisms: no one seems to realize that the story has been sacrilized further. The story of Noah’s Ark can be found in the book of Genesis, Chapters 6-8. It is from the Old Testament and would consequently feature Middle Eastern characters. So when the whitewashed cast of Aronofsky’s movie was announced, one would expect uproar from true Christian believers who do not wish to see our beloved tales hijacked and cheapened for a quick buck.

The movie features Russell Crowe in the titular role, with Jennifer Connelly playing his wife, Naameh, Ray Winstone as Tubal-Cain, Douglas Booth as Shem, Noah’s son, Emma Watson as Ila, Shem’s wife, Logan Lerman as Ham, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather and Leo McHugh Carroll as Japeth, Noah’s youngest son.

This is not the first time the characters of biblical stories have been twisted by Hollywood, with our ideals and culture being tossed out in favour of white actors. The most famous, The Passion of the Christ, had Jim Caviezel playing Jesus, a role which clearly required an actor of Middle Eastern descent, The Last Temptation of Christ which suffered the same problem, having white actor Willem Dafoe playing Christ and 1956’s The Ten Commandments, which had an all white cast. This racial miscasting is perhaps most obvious in the blasphemous Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which featured the white, British comedy troupe as the main cast and DreamWorks’s Prince of Egypt, which featured no actors of Middle Eastern descent and few black actors.

This problem is set to occur yet again this year with the release of Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings: a film, which features Christian Bale as the Egyptian Jew Moses, as well as a fully white cast of Egyptian royalty and black actors cast as slaves.

This racial erasure is rendered pointless as over the past few years actors from many different ethnic backgrounds and cultures have been chosen to play roles in successful major motion pictures, such as Will Smith in iRobot, Antonio Banderas in Puss in Boots or Morgan Freeman, who played God in the 2003 comedy Bruce Almighty.

Journalist Ryan Herring also wrote how his excitement for Noah had been lost once he discovered “not a single one of the leading roles… was given to a person of Middle Eastern descent.” Efrem Smith, president of Los Angeles-based World Impact, a Christian nonprofit, and author of The Post-Black and Post-White Church, has said: "The Bible is the most multicultural piece of literature that most people will ever read. So a film about the Bible should reflect that diversity." Episcopal Reverend Wil Gafney described the movie as a “throwback” to the Hollywood era of all white casts, which is unacceptable in our modern, multi-cultural society. Gafney believes the movie simply erases people of color from the story in order to avoid the controversial confrontation between Ham and Noah, which has been used in the past as a means to justify slavery. This confrontation is left out from the final cut of Noah, missing a fantastic opportunity to address and dispel one of the most misinterpreted stories of The Bible, in which Noah curses Ham and his descendants.

The Co-Screenwriter of Noah, Ari Handel has been quoted saying the white cast is supposed to be representative of the whole human race, which begs the question; if the characters are symbolic of all people then wouldn't it make sense to have a cast that did actually represent all of mankind, in every color and hue. He defends himself saying artistic license has been taken, in order to craft a 138-minute long story, but can this excuse stretch to cover this very basic casting flaw?

It isn’t hard to see why many believe the whitewashing of biblical stories such as Noah is damaging. It is a type of indoctrination, suggesting to the audience that all holy beings are white; creating an idea of white superiority that goes directly against God’s teachings.

The literal meaning of the Noah’s Ark story is that God renews the human race by saving Noah and his family from the sinful world in which they live, leading them to a new, peaceful life. Surely if this story is going to be adapted, all creeds must have some representation within the story, in order to prevent implications of white supremacy over all people.

Something must be done to combat this problem, we must begin to boycott this film and all others that do not have real life representation of either the society of the country they were made in or the time and place in which the story occurs. The only way to stop the inequality, perpetuated by film producers and studio executives, is to prevent their product from making the gross margins required for a successful and profitable movie. Without a consumer led protest of such clearly misrepresentative films, I cannot see Hollywood moving away from basing the success of their films on the casting of well known, white actors and actresses.

We need to make the people in charge realize that they need to start relying on the script of their films being strong and historically accurate rather than papering over weak storylines and inconsistent characters with A-list, white actors. It has been proven that a movie can achieve a desirable amount of critical and financial success if more care is taken in crafting an engaging story, for example, 12 Years A Slave.

It is upsetting and worrisome that in a country as proud of their freedom and equality as America, boasting themselves as the land of the free and open minded enough to be run by the first black president, there is still not equal representation in media, specifically in our bible stories and religious teachings in which diversity is already abundant. The seemingly purposeful purging of any ethnicity other than white is obviously a regressive step backwards for society as a whole, highlighted as particularly disgusting after such a long period of people of colour being oppressed by white Americans. We are at a point in time where we should be celebrating our differences at every opportunity we receive, living life in Jesus’ footsteps and loving our neighbors. We, as the consumers, have the power to right the injustice present in Hollywood, which tarnishes the way in which we view the bible, replacing the racially diverse figures with white characters, damaging not only our own beliefs but the world in which we live.

Hopefully now you can see the whitewashing problem we face and will choose to join the crusade to make a change by showing that we care about proper representation in modern media.

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