Embryo of Philosophy

Okay, I know this interview is a year and a half old. Okay, I know that undoubtedly everyone but me has seen it. How I missed it, I don't know.

Hilarie Burton Interview on White Collar Spoilers and Reasons to Love Sara Ellis

I find the whole interview to be delightful. The interviewer gushes not only about Hilarie but about the friendliness of everyone in the cast and how much they like each other. I love my show. But my favorite part is this:

Now, Burton plays a part that she knows is not exactly beloved by other White Collar fans. But she’s also aware that the character of Sara was not at all written to be cuddly and likable. “I think in the first couple episodes the fan base, particularly the female fan base that loves Neal, is a little put off by Sara. And it wasn’t my job to come in and play somebody likeable right away. Does it still drive me nuts when people are like, ‘aw, she’s the worst. Neal can’t be with her.’ Yes, because, I, Hilarie Burton am a people pleaser and I really want people to like me. But Sara Ellis isn’t. She could give a crap if people like her and so I think over the course of my arc on the show, it’s my job to present this person that is very much her own woman and then give the audience the explanations as to why she is the way she is. So, hopefully over the course of my time on the show all those people that are like Neal can’t love her, it’s impossible, maybe just a couple of them will like me. I don’t know.”

Dear Ms. Burton,

You are awesome and Sara is awesome. I would offer you my first born, but I don't intend to have children. I would offer you my kidney or something, but that seems kind of creepy. So we'll settle for my admiration (for you) and adoration (for your character).

As is the case 99% of the time, don't read the comments. How anyone could read that interview and still come away with so much vitriol I don't know, but it happens.

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H.P. Lovecraft Answers Your Relationship Questions

Finally, relationship advice that's actually relavant to my life. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

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Dear Not Primetime Writer,

(Copy-and-pasting these first few paragraphs straight from my usual Yuletide letter.)

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are wonderful just for signing up.

Everything here is just a suggestion. Take what you want, or nothing at all, and leave the rest.

What do I like? I like romance, action, angst in moderation, humor, and stuff that doesn't quite fit into any one category. I like platonic love and romantic love. I read gen, maleslash, femslash, and het with equal fervor. I love fluff, but I also love explorations of complicated relationships. I love stories with explicit sex, stories with no sex, and everything in between. I also love BDSM sex, but don't worry too much about that. I adore happy endings.

What don't I like? I'm not a big fan of character death and I'll admit to not liking tragic endings. However, I do understand that sometimes these things are called for, so don't feel limited.
( Read more... )

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Title: In the Rough
Fandom: White Collar
Rating: G
Pairing: June/Byron
Word count: 100
Summary: The stone was glass, and the gold paint was already flaking as Byron slipped the ring on June's finger.
A/N: Written for whitecollar100, for the prompt, "glass."

( In the Rough )

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Is there anyone willing to beta this Yami no Matsuei fic I have typed up? It's the Hisoka/Tsuzuki decorating fic I've talked about a few times. It's only about 1400 words, and I'm hoping it's actually worth posting. I mean, it took me months to write those 1400 words. I'd hate to scrap it.

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Now
by Audre Lourde

Woman power
is
Black power
is
Human power
is
alwasy feeling
my heart beats
as my eyes open
as my hands move
as my mouth speaks

I am
are you

Ready

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Toward an Organic Philosophy
By Kenneth Rexroth

( Toward an Organic Philosophy )

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

( Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird )

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Imploring to Be Resigned at Death
by George Moses Morton

( Imploring to Be Resigned at Death )

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A Crazed Girl
by William Butler Yeats

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

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Four poems by Yosano Akiko

You never touch
This soft skin
Surging with hot blood.
Are you not bored,
Expounding the Way?


Spring is short:
Why should it
Be thought immortal?
I grope for
My full breasts with my hands.


The sutra is sour:
This spring evening,
O Twenty-Five Saints*
Of the inner sanctuary,
Accept my songs instead.


No camellia
Nor plum for me,
No flower that is white.
Peach blossom has a colour
That does not ask my sins.


*The Twenty-Five Bodhisattvas of Amitābha's retinue.


Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite

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The Garden by Moonlight
by Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,
Only the cat, padding between the roses,
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.
Then you come,
And you are quiet like the garden,
And white like the alyssum flowers,
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?
They knew my mother,
But who belonging to me will they know
When I am gone.

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The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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I've recently signed up for two fic exchanges, wcpairings and not_primetime. wcpairings is a White Collar exchange focused on character relationships (but doesn't have to feature sex or romance), while not_primetime is a exchange for medium sized fandoms--fandoms that aren't eligible for Yuletide, but aren't mega huge. (Well, I haven't signed up for not_primetime, but I have nominated.)

I encourage people to come play with me in both of these, but especially not_primetime. I've nominated Yami no Matsuei, but I could only nominate six characters. I went with the basics first: Hisoka, Tsuzuki, Tatsumi, Watari, and Muraki. I knew I should have followed up with Oriya, but, uh, I nominated Tsubaki-hime instead. If you know me, this shouldn't come as a surprise. But someone should come along and nominate poor, neglected Oriya. Not only that, there're a whole host of minor characters it would be fun to see. The shikigami (pokes dancing_serpent), the Kurosaki family, Wakaba, Terazuma, Yuma and Saya, I'd love to see all sorts of nominations and requests.

Hurry, signups/nominations end soon!

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The Poets Hang On
by Margaret Atwood

( The Poets Hang On )

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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
by Gwendolyn Brooks

( The Ballad of Rudolph Reed )

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The Dead Man Asks for a Song
by anonymous

Sing me a song of the dead,
That I may take it with me.
A song of the underworld sing me,
That I may take it with me
And travel to the underworld.

The underworld says,
Says the underworld:
It is beautiful in the grave.
Beautiful is the underworld
But there is no wine to drink there.
So I will take it with me
And travel to the underworld
And travel to the underworld.

Sing me a song of the dead,
That I may take it with me.
A song of the underworld sing me,
That I may take it with me And travel to the underworld.


Translated from Ewe by Willard Trask (after Jakob Spieth)

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A Pasture Poem
by Richard Wilbur

This upstart thistle
Is young and touchy; it is
All barb and bristle,

Threatening to wield
Its green, jagged armament
Against the whole field.

Butterflies will dare
Nonetheless to lay their eggs
In that angle where

The leaf meets the stem,
So that ants or browsing cows
Cannot trouble them.

Summer will grow old
As will the thistle, letting
A clenched bloom unfold

To which the small hum
Of bee wings and the flash of
Goldfinch wings will come,

Till its purple crown
Blanches, and the breezes strew
The whole field with down.

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Sonnet 138
by William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

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Scene in a Private Mad-House
by an anonymous woman inmate

( Scene in a Private Mad-House )

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