I'm sure this has been posted repeatedly, but I did not have th heart to check a hundred page for it. It seems to me that the tabs for viewing stories on the front page are somewhat lacking.
Obviously, "Latest", "Popular" and "Most views" are necessary, but I think it lacks a "Trending" element, based on a Reddit-like algorythm. (That is, stories get "deflated" by time and bad votes and "inflated" by good votes in the order of appearance. That's made to keep an influx of quality yet recent stories. A new story will have its chance appearing near the top, but descend slowly if it doesn't get many good votes. A super-popular old story will stay up because of many good votes, but not monopolize the top, like in the "Popular" category.)
So obvious I could not think of anything else.
Sinnerman - Nina Simone
Invitation, by John Coltrane.
Makes for a peaceful evening.
Well, there are a ton of these going out every year, so I'm simply going by recent memory.
-Leviathan by Andrey Zvyagintsev. It's unlike me, but this one took me completely by surprise. It's absolutely brilliant, from a director I had never heard of until then.
-Son of Saul. by Lazlo Nemes. Okay. That one was always going to be good, but it's flown a LOT under the radar. It's gut-wrenching and brilliantly designed, if utterly depressing.
-Mommy by Xavier Dolan. I'm really not going into a happy place with this list, am I? Anyway, Xavier Dolan is an unrecognized but extremely talented director, and Mommy is probably his best movie.
These were maybe not the "best" movies of the last two years, but they certainly flew under the radar and deserve some more attention. I will add: The Assassin, Birdman and Citizenfour for consideration. Although none of these qualify as "unexpected" successes given the directors history. Then there's Whiplash, excellent and unexpected, but it got its fair share of hype as well.
I've had terrible experience re-reading my own work. It always seems rash and unfinished. Knowing every word, I can only see the mistakes, mostly because I rewrite so much that I have to force myself to submit most of the times - one of the reasons why I haven't submitted a story in the past few months.
First, the foreplay part has always been sort of obvious to me. I've never - yes, never - had a "quickie". Even with one-time partners, there was at least a sense of shared time - however short or long - and desire, so there's always foreplay and discovery. There's an idea according to which because men have an erection, they're completely ready for sex and foreplay is only for women's pleasure. I disagree, I simply can't enjoy my own time without foreplay (and don't want to, this explains that).
But beside that, "playing" is what I love the most in a sexual relation. It happens for one evening, of course, you try something, a caress, a limit maybe. That's simply part of having fun.
But mostly and most importantly, it happens on the long-term. In another word, it's about curiosity with your partner. Not only finding things you and they are capable of, but also discovering that there is often something else. Deepening trust and desire. It's exploring really, because you couldn't simply have decided to do "that" had you not walked that path with them before. Obviously, it's also true of things other than sex. Call it romantism, maybe?
If memory serves, on the MBTI test, the most common types hover between 10 and 15% of the population, the rarest are between 1 and 3%. So there is no "dominant" types of personnality. Although on aggregate you can distinguish tendencies. Most notably of "Sensation" being clearly dominant over Intuition (About 75% - 25% of the pop) and "Feeling" againt "Thinking" (60% - 40%) of the pop. Extroverts/Introverts and Judgment/Perception are basically equivalent in repartition.
I passed a more complex version of the MBTI test when I was a kid, then as a teenager, appearing as a very clear "INTP" (Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceptive - the "Researcher" type). It's quite rare (between 2 and 4%), and more frequent in men.
I've mostly been reading non-fiction recently. Found an interesting "History of walls" by Claude Quétel, although I don't believe it has been translated in english. Also, "Sexonomics" by Paul Seabright, a very good work about gender relations.
As background, long-term reading, I've been trying to get into Ibn Khaldun, although that has proven quite a challenge as I need to constantly go to more modern works for full understanding. It is however absolutley brilliant, and some of the best work I've ever read in social sciences so far.
Ironically...Second person, at least in writing short-stories.
It's been my favorite narrative mode for quite a while. In an ideal piece, the narration will build around the readers, who will have to fill the link between themselves and the character they're forced into. It's a process similar to a dream where narration instead of your subconscious intrudes to bring new elements, or a video-game, which outcome is written while "you" as a participant are not aware of it yet.
On the long run, it requires tremendous feats of writing that I'm incapable of to keep the illusion alive. But on short bursts, it can absorb and puppet the reader around, giving them deep -if somewhat self-generated- understanding of the character with minimal exposition.
On longer work, I tend to prefer non-omniscient third, which keeps the disparity of information you often need, without forcing you into a one and only character perspective.
I might go a bit against the flow here, but I guess it makes sense that stories be rated by lush standards. Moderation here is amazing, as I've been able to see writing just two stories, so every single text that is going to make it is already good. That leaves readers with the option of just rating 4 or 5, as seems to be the case around.
In that case, I guess we could suppose that 1 is "good" grading to 5 "editor's pick worthy". I know this is not how it works, but it doesn't shock me that someone would rate "low" as long as it's carefully explained in the comments. Leaving a commentless 1 would be especially rude though...
France is the world's leading consumer of Nutella per capita.
Arabia - Art Blakley and the Jazz Messengers
French of course is my native language, and I speak, write and work in english as well. I also speak spanish proficiently.
For the rest, my italian is decent and improving, I can get by in occitan and I am getting into arabic (but that's a looong way away.)
Rewatched Whiplash for the fifth time since it came out. Still brilliant.
Mad Max's next.
Until just a few weeks ago, Iceland had a law that allowed the murder on sight of any Basque people, dating back from 1615.
Mine means "The Black Swan" in french. I picked the pseudonym long before the movie came out - though it was an awesome movie, as my signature demonstrates clearly.
The black swan is an allegory of discovery and mind opening. In that for centuries, mankind believed that swans were white and could only be white. Until we got to Australia, where black swans originate and discovered that reality was wider than we previously thought. This an accurate picture of what I wish to do as a person and a journalist, pushing discoveries and challenging set ideas.
I've already seen Transmetropolitan (people know Transmetropolitan in this place, I'm never leaving!) and Maus on this topic, so I'm going in another direction.
I feel like Joe Sacco's work really has to be mentionned. If Transmetropolitan made a journalist a fictionnal hero, he actually made journalism in graphic novels. Gaza 1956 or The Fixer are some of the foremost works of out time in both graphic novels and journalism. They are must-reads.
Also, in french: Sasmira, by Vicomte. Probably my favorite, but Vicomte is a painfully slow author. Almost 15 years between the first and second album.
Universal War One by Denis Bajram. Brilliant piece of science-fiction.
I do not know if translations are available.
In spanish: Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido. Incredible in the noir genre. (Almost certain that one has been translated in english)
And I couldn't leave without mentionning Corto Maltese, by Pratt.
I did just write a story on this, so I'm going to share an experience as well. I have photographed almost every girl I've been with in the past 5 to 6 years. The nature and spontaneity of the shoot greatly depended on the girl, of course, ranging from only suggestively posing in full clothing to masturbating and playing with toys.
But some elements always remained constant. For example, it was always spontaneous in some form. We always talked about it before, but there was never any actual plan as for the when or where. That way, no frame was ever there to organize and standardize what we were going to shoot.
But the aspect that impressed me most is that in every shooting, it systematically became about something other than just having a fun times and pictures. The camera has a fantastic presence between two people, it kinds of pushed boundaries by the mere desire for a better picture. It is an awesome and overwhelming sensation.
It is also why I always deleted everything just after watching them back. The pictures themselves always seemed irrelevant next to that.
Mostly red, though I'll probably start to switch to white as the temperatures get higher. Though I very recently discovered a very unique red called lacrima di morro d'Alba that every wine lover should try at least twice.
Mostly because the first taste is extremely surprising, very pungent, overwhelming even and you're going to hate it. It's a very particular type of grabes only growing around Alba. Anyway, it's too powerful to suit any food well - except maybe if you cook boar and venison and want a true medieval experience - but it's my reading wine now.
Although it is part of the canon law, celibacy of the catholic priests was not enforced until the XIIth century.
The main reason I started writing erotica was...To get myself to stop watching porn. I wasn't not a massive consumer, but even then it had effect on my libido, sex life, and fantaisies that I didn't like. So because I was writing about everyting anyway, I started writing erotica, pushing desire and sexual tension into words. Turns out that I enjoy it a lot more.
And after a few months pornless and full of stories, I wanted to finally share it with an audience so...Here I am.
Raven
