Rei Hino 🔥⛩🖤

Because DreamWorks was concerned about theological accuracy, Jeffrey Katzenberg (former Disney chairman) decided to call in Biblical scholars, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, and Arab American leaders to help his film be more accurate and faithful to the original story. After previewing the developing film, all these leaders noted that the studio executives listened and responded to their ideas, and praised the studio for reaching out for comment from outside sources.

The animation team for The Prince of Egypt included 350 artists from 34 different nations. Careful consideration was given to depicting the ethnicities of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nubians properly.

Both character design and art direction worked to set a definite distinction between the symmetrical, more angular look of the Egyptians versus the more organic, natural look of the Hebrews and their related environments. The backgrounds department, headed by supervisors Paul Lasaine and Ron Lukas, oversaw a team of artists who were responsible for painting the sets/backdrops from the layouts. Within the film, approximately 934 hand-painted backgrounds were created.

THE PRINCE OF EGYPT (1998)

manga appreciation

SAILOR MOON 🌙  (1992-1997)

wait. this is the radio station outfit. OH MY GOD IS USAGI LITERALLY THIRSTING AFTER JADEITE @kanadka @chuplayswithfire

what the body knows

A gift of smut and angst for the wonderful, magical @coppercrane2, one of the mods over at @ssminibang, and also? Very much one of my favorite people. I hope you enjoy this, Charlie!

title: what the body knows fandom: Sailor Moon characters/ships: Rei/Mars x reincarnated!Jadeite rating: R for explicit sexual content below the cut, along with canon and non-canon character death

“You just a little hungry, or,” he wonders, warm breath shivering across her breastbone, “you starving?”

Reblogging just to add the AO3 link!

 https://archiveofourown.org/works/29290782

I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don’t say, shhh. I don’t say, it's okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes.

-- Callista Buchen, from Taking Care

I feel like there’s this whole subgenre of fic that just really, aggravatingly, doesn’t get bickery banter couples, which means that a lot of the content for them just ends up reading like emotional abuse.

Like! The thing about couples that bicker for fun, the thing that makes it romantic, is not ‘I hate this and I’m sad and hurt and uncomfortable, but I’ll put up with it because I love you and at some point you’ll start being nice to me’. That’s not fun bantering! That is, at best, a serious miscommunication!

The thing that makes it fun and (potentially) romantic is ‘We know each other so well that we can be rude and gross and weird together, we can transgress the rules of polite society with each other without actually causing any real hurt, because we know where the real lines are and don’t have to guess at them or use the rules from a game that neither of us wants to play.’

It’s fundamentally about intimacy, not about treating your SO like they don’t have feelings that matter.

for chinese new year they get all these famous actors and comedians together and they do a lil show and one of the comedians was like “i was in a hotel in america once and there was a mouse in my room so i called reception except i forgot the english word for mouse so instead i said ‘you know tom and jerry? jerry is here’

jerry is here

my chinese teacher once shared this story in class about someone who went to the grocery to buy chicken, but they forgot the english word for it, so they grabbed an egg, went to the nearest sales lady and said “where’s the mother”

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I was done for the day.

This makes me feel better about every conversation I had in both Rome and Ghent.

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

Of course. A fucking sack. And so I did get a sack.

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

Which is LITERALLY Sleeping sac … The German word is a basically a one on one translation of the English word and I just… I failed it. At my mother tongue. BIG

My former boss is Italian and she ended up working in a lab where the common language was English. She once saw an insect running through the lab and she went to tell her colleagues. She remembered it was the name of a famous English band so she barged in the office yelling there was a rolling stone in the lab…

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

Best thing is, everyone understood what I meant.

I love those stories so much…

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

Bus Driver: שתי זוזים. (”Two zuzim” – a currency that’s been out of circulation for millenia)

that’s hilarious

I am officially screamlaughing at my desk from that last one OH MY 

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

The minister was making a speech while a candidate, bemoning the state of the world. “The Soviet Union is fucking Egypt. Germany is fucking Syria. The Americans are fucking everyone. But who is fucking us? When I am prime minister, I will ensure we are fucked!”

What the hell Biblical Hebrew.

Just guessing: The path from something like “give someone a blade” to “give someone a blade, if you know what I mean ;)” is probably not that difficult or unlikely.

^Given that the Latin word for sheath (like, for a sword) is literally “vagina”, I can verify that this metaphor is a time-honored one. 

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.

She laughed her head off, but she gave him the extra night.  

All of these *chef’s kiss* but the Medea one is hands down the best

s/o to my classics professor who managed to get a tire changed on his rental car while doing research in Greece by telling them his chariot had broken down

Cruel choices #137: you must consume one - and only one - of the following pieces of media.

1. Sailor Moon retold in the style of a 19th Century Russian philosophical novel.

2. The Brothers Karamazov retold in the style of a magical girl anime.

“Our very existence proves there is a peak,” Mars spat, the wind-swept snow no deterrent to her clad in naught but the Sailor uniform as she was. “Man need not concern itself with matters of godhood. We are gods given flesh.”

“It is precisely because of what we are that they cannot rest.” Mercury replied. “One cannot and must not embrace egoism. If we fall, who then will they turn to? Who then will care for what mankind has wrought? Only mankind itself.”

Then from two alleys over there came not so much a cry but a sound, a resolute plea to the skies above not for help, but for guarantee of vengeance. The earnest note struck chords within Mars and Mercury, as if it had been an answer to both of their sides; and yet, it was distinctly not.

“Corrupting the minds of the people with false nationalism where there should be nothing but love of all man, exemplifying godhood as nothing more than superiority to others instead of preaching it as empathy and spilling my borscht… For that, I cannot forgive you! In the name of the moon, I will punish you!”

“Scandal in Staraya: Dmitri’s Secret Plan! Grushenka is an Evil Temptress!?“ Next week: Karamazov no Kyodai: Demons, Season 1 Episode 6! Otanoshimini!

For @apsaraqueen

This was written as cheerupemofic for BAMF a few weeks-ish ago, I think? Never got around to posting it but here it goes. Somewhat experimental R/J. Some angst but… it’s, uh, for BAMF? So. Yeah.

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” - Pablo Neruda

I.

The Moon is beautiful and stately, all marble palaces and graceful domes, but leached of colour in an eerie wash of silvery white. Jikokuten takes a knee in the throne room and looks askance at the royals, for even they blend into this ghostly dream-world with their pearlescent gowns and platinum locks. The weather and grounds are flawless, not a single leaf or stone out of place. It’s almost too perfect– ominously so– and to one whose kingdom only dons white for mourning, it’s jarring. 

And then he sees the High Queen’s court file in, the warrior princesses of legend, flanking the throne two by two, and there she is, a spot of scarlet in the sea of white. Ebony hair and auspicious red skirts, eyes like the twilight sky before it turns full dark. He blinks, and his heart stutters. 

II.

The sheep are languishing in the heat, and getting leaner by the day with nothing but dry brush to eat, and Jochi coaxes some of his own water onto the littlest and weakest of the lambs. It’s foolish, and more than likely the little animal would die anyway, too malnourished to survive the drought which had blighted the steppes this summer. His father had always railed at him for being too soft-hearted, too foolish and un-Mongolian, but a part of Jochi always had perhaps too much sympathy for the foundlings and the weaker ones. There is a nebulous memory, perhaps not his own, of standing up for a boy with eyes like the open sky and a shock of black hair from– what? He doesn’t quite know.

He hears the sound of hoofbeats– it is a grand procession, the entourage of one of the Khans, and that is both blessing and curse, for they would surely bring much-needed supplies and victuals if returning from a successful raid, but just as surely would bring death and doom against any interlopers or opposing factions. Jochi’s yellow hair would stand out like a beacon, and so he pulls up his hood despite the summer heat and draws back into the shadows to watch the group. The warriors are fearsome indeed astride their ponies, bows and sabers at the ready. There is an iron-haired Chieftain at the forefront, proud and indomitable with eyes as fierce as a falcon’s. And then right behind him, dwarfed by the stalwarts flanking her, must be the clan’s princess, wearing a fine red dress and ornaments of silver and amber around her neck and atop her raven hair. She’s beautiful, with eyes as fearless as her Sire’s, but more so, something about her face strikes such a pang in Jochi that he forgets himself, and steps forward, right into the path of the procession. He’s knocked senseless not a moment later under the marauding hooves, but he only has eyes for the desert-mirage loveliness of the princess’ face.

III.

Jun doesn’t meet Ru-Yi until the wedding. She’s brought over to his familial estate in a lavish palanquin, amidst loud, raucous music and the rapid pops of firecrackers, and escorted to the altar by the servants to kneel next to his older brother Kai. As the heir apparent, it is imperative that Kai make a good marriage to a wife who would not shame him and brings all the right assets to the match, and Ru-Yi’s father is a very wealthy, powerful man. The newlyweds courtesy to their parents and each other, and then someone lifts the bride’s red veil away from her face, and Jun almost drops his goblet of wine. It is a stunningly elegant face, all cherry lips and willowy brows, but what’s more, though he’s certain he has never met her before, it’s somehow familiar. She, too, seems to feel it, because her eyes linger on his for a moment too long, a thin line of confusion drawing between those brows, before she turns away with a bland smile for the procession of well-wishers. 

Despite the many presents of dates and lotus seeds on the wedding day, and, months and years later, the foul-smelling tonics and powders, she never bears Kai any sons, and Jun watches, heart heavy, as Kai takes on one concubine after another, carouses in the brothels night after night, as the lines between Ru-Yi’s brows grow deeper and deeper with cheated joy and thwarted wishes. He doesn’t care if she doesn’t bear any sons, but she’s not his concern– will never be his concern. There are flowers left on her doorstep in the mornings, still wet with dew and with neither name nor note. It’s poor consolation for both of them, but she’s not his to love.

IV.

The air is arid and far too hot, almost tinged the same turmeric-yellow as the hot sun blazing down overhead. Captain Geoffrey Lindhurst with Her Majesty’s navy had been in India for all of four months, and is still getting accustomed to the local climate, so different from the ever-present London fog. The local food, too, is a far departure from the starchy Sunday roasts and meat pies and puddings of his boyhood, with its exotic spices and bountiful portions. The servants at his bungalow are politely quiet and do their tasks without complaint, but he has the sense that there is far more to their lives and customs than the scant glimpses that he sees now and then.

He’s out taking a walk on a balmy evening, and passes by one of the temples. He knows nothing of the religious beliefs of the locals, with their somewhat-fearsome-looking, animalistic gods with their fiery eyes and six hands and elephant heads, but many of the locals seem quite devout in their faith, praying several times a day and eschewing certain foods in their diets. Even at this late hour, the temple is open for worshippers, its air smoky with incense, and he sees a young woman emerge, clad in the flowing, traditional garments with a gauzy scarf over her dark hair. His gaze meets hers for only a split-second– light blue to orchid– but it jolts his system harder than a glass of raw gin. He has no idea who she is, and moreover, everything in his training and upbringing tells him that he has no business dallying with any of the locals. Geoffrey opens his mouth to speak, against everything that he’s known all his life, but she vanishes down one of the narrow paths and disappears into the night before he can say anything, or be quite sure that she wasn’t just an illusion, a trick of the light. 

He visits the temple enough in his years stationed here that he gets to learn the local traditions and customs, and indeed become quite familiar with their rituals. But he never sees her again.

V. 

The dame walks into his dilapidated hole-in-the-wall of an office on stiletto heels the red of fresh blood. Jack knows trouble when he sees it, and she’s all but radiating it like smoke surrounding a wildfire. “Help you, ma’am?” He keeps his voice brusque and businesslike even as she shrugs off a lustrous black mink stole to reveal crimson silk and fiery diamonds, curves in all the right places. “What brings you to this side of town?”

“I need a private investigator, and they say you’re the best. My driver’s outside, and he’s bigger and meaner than you,” she adds in a snide tone to match the diamond earrings. “My name is Rowena Warrington. Henry Warrington’s daughter.”

The Governor’s daughter has as much business in the seedy part of downtown as he would rubbing shoulders with millionaires in a fancy ballroom. “Don’t you have security, or lawyers, or whatever, to deal with whatever you’re dealing with, Ms. Warrington? This is a bad neighbourhood.”

“And no one’s been able to figure out the truth behind my mother’s death, so here I am.” Presumptuously, she makes herself at home, sitting down in a battered folding metal chair like it’s a throne as she lights a cigarette. “Price is no object, of course.”

“No.”

He won’t be swayed, because this is exactly the type of trouble that he doesn’t want, even though she turns on the wheedle, and later, the tears. He lets her leave in high dudgeon, and shuts the door behind her, and tells himself that his instinct– one that tells him in no uncertain terms that he’d narrowly escaped a terrible fate– was spot-on. And he busies himself with the usual mundane work which flows in every day like water through a leaky pot– fraud cases. Stolen heirlooms. Prisoners on the lam. Cheating spouses.

He reads about the huge, tragic scandal some months later in the paper– the cover-ups, the blood money, the extortion, the beautiful young woman whose life is tragically cut short because she’d had the audacity to poke her flawless nose where it definitely didn’t belong and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and is shocked at the grief which hits him. He owed her nothing, he tells himself as he broods into his second whiskey. She said herself that her driver was bigger and meaner than him. She should’ve been safe. Should’ve been careful. 

Should’ve been protected, with one’s very life. 

He throws the newspaper into the fire and watches it curl up into ash as he pours himself another one.

VI.

The busful of unconscious mortals is just where he wants them, of course, and Jadeite goes about the business of collecting their energy, siphoning it for Queen Metallia’s use. It’s rote and routine, but then a flash of scarlet catches his eye, and it’s the miko from the temple at the last bus-stop. Black and white and red all over, and he pauses, kneels down to move a strand of her lustrous black hair out of her face. 

“So beautiful. Ever since I’ve seen this girl, there’s something about her…” Something haunting, like a hint of incense smoke that clings to the air or a raven’s feather, black against white pavement, a memory that is-and-isn’t his. With a gentleness that he’s not had cause to employ in a very long time, he carefully shifts her into a more comfortable position, one more like natural sleep than the unconsciousness of a sinister spell, and lingers, unable to tear his eyes away from her exquisite, weirdly familiar face, until the all-too-unfortunate shouts of angry feminine voices tells him that he is not alone, and the Sailor senshi have arrived.

The miko opens her eyes and everything snaps into place a split-second before she transforms and a rage of fire heads for him, and he has but a moment to mouth the word ‘Sorry’, unheard and unacknowledged, before the flame hits in a wall of agony and heat. It’s no more or less than he deserves.

VII

The world is lustrous, glistening crystal, but unlike the Silver Millennium and the Moon Kingdom, the diamond brilliance of the towers bring colours into sharp relief, turning white sunlight into countless prismatic rainbows and reflecting the pale blue of the sky as rich sapphire. Jadeite takes a knee with his compatriots in the throne room and bows his head before the royals– his King and Queen, united at last. Countless lives had been lived to lead to this– an entry to a paradise hard-earned. 

There she is, still, raven hair and red skirts, and after, when everyone has broken off into their groups, he seeks her out. He has no reason to expect a positive reception, but the words are long overdue, and she has a right to them. 

“Lady Mars.” He makes an elaborate leg, as one might have done in a decadent court in the era of gilt and Rococo. She raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t storm away or glare, and that’s something.

“No need to stand on ceremony, Lord Jadeite. We’ve met before. More than once, I daresay.”

“And I’ve loved you every time.” The words are baldly spoken and perhaps too blunt, in poor form, but they’ve been buried for far too many years and lifetimes already. She halts, and he notices that her breath isn’t quite steady, and that gives him the courage to remain where he is instead of making a hasty escape.

Finally, a queer sort of half-smile crosses her face as she tilts it back up to his. “You’ve been terrible about showing it up to now, haven’t you?”

“Up to now,” he agrees. “It doesn’t have to remain so. Unless you wish it.”

“Hmm.” She glances away, but stays standing where she is, within reach. “I suppose we’ll have to see.”