Greetings, all, and welcome to my fourteenth
FABULOUS FRIDAY FEATURE
This week, I'm taking a moment to think back on all the pieces I've found in the past few years and featuring my favorites! Yep, that's right, I am attempting to do a survey of my absolute favorite pieces from the past EIGHT YEARS. I know a bunch of these are DDs, and for that I'm sorry, but these are pieces that I find I keep coming back to in order to show people HOW AMAZING they are. Next week, I'll be trying to tackle an immortal theme: DEATH. If you've got someone you think should be featured in next Friday's Feature, send me a note with a link to their gallery and I'll take a peek 
I'd also love to hear about other features, particularly themed ones. I'll list those in the bottom section to help spread the word! The same goes for contests or news articles!
Please favorite this journal and pass it on! And if you liked this feature, be sure to check out the one from last week: [link]
I am ALWAYS seeking donations and nominations for my pay-it-forward project! So far I've been able to donate three premium memberships, and I'm only a few hundred points away from being able to give away another one! I want to be able to donate premium memberships to deserving members, so please check out my journal for info on sending nominations:
Pay-It-Forward ProjectDeviants so far who have received premium memberships as part of this project:
:iconkinachuku::iconhillsofmyst::iconcelestialmemories::iconai-sanura::iconsurrealcachinnation:
Thank you sososososo much to $namenotrequired for helping me to promote this project!
Greetings! I am posting this to let you all know I have decided I want to try to pay the premium membership love forward, and so I am looking for donations to go toward buying premium memberships for other people 
You can find the donation box on my front page. PLEASE DONATE! I'll need lots of help - all contributions are appreciated, no matter how small
That's part one, here's part two:
I'm seeking nominations for extra-special deviants, especially those who are really involved in the community, who don't already have a premium membership. If you'd like to nominate someone (I will accept self-nominations, though I look extra-carefully at those), send me a note with the following information:
~The nominee's
ALSO, my dear friend ~angeljunkie is raising funds to renew #lacoterie's supergroup submission and would be grateful for any donations! Please consider just donating a point or two to help! Please check out the donation box on his front page.
And now, without any further ado: THE FEATURES!
Visual Art
Literature
Tell Her - Border SeriesWill you still persist, axe to your own
throat, standing on the front lines?
I love your body, don't you love your body?
And all the dead rebound off
the ground, and say, "Tell her to
stop, Kyla, tell her to come live
on this side of the line, where there is
sparse shelling and time for tea between.
Tell her the world is made for dirt and water
which take care of their own - they take
care of their own in the end. No holding
the world, tell her, no carrying it on
your shoulders like that's what it means
to be strong." I was on the field, my love,
when they said, "Tell her
it's her that has gravity, she already
calls the earth
Voices from Saginaw, MI: 1952-1974 Dad would ask so many questions I hated interpreting
for him hands stuck on refrain it wasn’t that my parents were deaf
but that other parents could hear I found that strange we had to move
&
don't get tired of elephants yetI've had my crippling moments.
They'd either start in my stomach
with an ache like broken glass
or stab me right in the catharsis,
somewhere near my heart or breath
or maybe my left foot.
I wouldn't know how it feels
to hurt to walk, but I imagine
with a destination like farther,
it's no pilgrimage.
So take the burden off your back.
Life is not a sandstorm
and your lungs are only a mirage
if you expect to see your breath
every time you breathe.
So take a breath
back, just one step
and listen with your smoke signals.
Help is on the way.
I just can't promise
it knows much about this lifetime.
It's the same way I could never promise
elephan
![]()
Lay Bridge 1. TOWARD YOUR NARRATIVE FOR A WAY BACK.
On occasion the road is wolves
and it's make a move at all
for a body in tatters Let's
say there is a way to
retrace steps and
undo a braid For me
it would be under a bridge of some
popularity rife with folklore all that and
maybe I'd take up company with
its pack of wild orphan snake eaters and
its hundred rumored ghosts and
there we all would have
made a barrel fire and
cooked our supper in it and
in it later we'd watch our
authors burn See
you have to hold tight to
a thought a rumor that
in some small wa
Tessa.We laid you in the earth
as the day reached its close.
The afternoon's thunderstorms
passed to the east and in the west
the sun burned brilliant,
its diurnal death a ruddy kiss
upon our swollen cheeks.
That morning you looked at me
from the backseat and suddenly
you knew what we meant by
"it's time." And you let go so quick,
so quiet – your tail thumped, thumped
against the clinic floor, then stopped;
your face was a calm, golden yellow.
The tears did not come then
in the office, transactional and sterile,
but as my bare feet picked up the rain
lingering upon the backyard
If Kronos Drank Milk When I was little, Mama always told me that you couldn't swear by God's name, because then He might expect you to do something for him. So she always swore by milk. I felt very enlightened.
"Milk," she'd mutter whenever I forgot to hang up the laundry, "I've raised a useless child." Or, sometimes it was more like, "Milk! Jessie, get outta that tree, girl!" Things like that.
People would always look at us strangely, and not because Mama and I looked so different. We'd be in the store and Mama would be muttering "milk" at the oddest times, and I'd be standing on the other side of the aisle with my hands hiding in the edges of my coat pocke
A Portrait of AtlasHe had not heard --
of the buffaloes whose quiet lowing
has muted the triumphant raven's crowing,
as they, beast and bird, have run towards the sinking sun;
and of the wild woman, who knows
the earth as her own, following fable, bows
to the sea from her place on the sky-crowned mountains --
he has not heard of earth,
for his vision has been clouded by sky.
But he has heard --
of the waxing moon's wells and water,
which runs down as rain to the sky, to falter,
as they are caught in the sky's mosaic of smoke and cloud;
and of the wild, wild man, who roams
the earth as a dream and sits by the sea foams,
waiting for a star t
Grandma's wild lace
For the little ones
Grandma grew lace
in her backyard,
twining live ivy
up the willows
and the sycamores,
a spider's snowfall.
Stopping to smooth
the curtains from our eyes,
she flicked the sun in
through the fly screens.
We never noticed the dusk
because the house still smelled
of melons and bagels
and matzo ball soup.
![]()
Memories of France, 1918Was it so terrible?
The countryside in spring?
"Oui, ma fille,
it was,
horrifying.
The red
all I can still see
is the red
everywhere
it stuck in their hair,
behind my eyes.
It was terrible, the red."
The red was the blood,
Grandpere? The blood
of the dying soldiers?
"Non, non. The
poppies.
They were crushed
before they could bloom."
metamorphosisHe's caught the green bug
and the shape of him stumbles,
wound up and resounding like a spring;
a tumbling flower, or a man in heat deseated
who's caught the green bug like rain on the tongue.
Now he's coiled tit to thigh, skin twitching like a gadfly
and shaping a rare round amen to the sob of it,
the sheer glorious throb of it: the dirty thumb
pressing on the seeds in spring, the storms
and showers working hour to hour
at the nonsense of being
while down in the garden
his body becomes a boyish stamen
and aiming between the eyes of the sky
he splits himself, spitting aphids and sucking
at the ground, the euclidian sway of his petals
houn
Community News, Features, and Fun(ny) Things
Complaint Challenge Contest!
We got our complaints out in December 2012. Now, 2013 is about doing something productive with them. I am not going to sit and grumble about my pet peeves. Neither should you!
Anyone who knows me should have been suspicious from the start of Phase 1 because complaining is one of my own complaints. (And you saw this trick last year!) That's right. I complain about people complaining. Silly, yes? Well I decided to do something about it with this challenge.
I hope everyone enjoyed sharing their gripes in Phase 1 because it is time for Phase 2! 
And Phase 2 is open to everyone, even if you didn't participate in Phase 1, or decided to change what complaint you'd like to address!
Complaint Challenge – Phase 2
The challenge in a nutshell: Pick one of your dA complaints and do something proactive about it. Work toward a solution or improvement in a positive way.
Now a few of you are probably thinking things like, "I
Pimps and Whoas - January 3, 2013Pimps
Official dA News
Site Update: Literature Thumbs. Sta.sh Submit
Happy Holidays from deviantART
Odyssey Propulsion 6
Commissions on deviantART
Celebratring Deviousness January 2013
Dedication to a New Year
Community Portal: December 30thNews
Love dA Lit: Issue 109
If you'd like to have something added/mentioned in this journal or the article please comment or send me a note!
`IrrevocableFate
About Love dA Lit
Love dA Lit aims to promote volunteer opportunities, various resources, prompts, challenges, and workshops, as well as highlighting various contests, and spotlighting a specific group every week. This is by no means a complete list of all the literature going-ons, merely a tool to help you get involved and stay informed.
Love dA Lit is published every Sunday, by `IrrevocableFate via news article, and the Community portal will be updated in accompaniment with it!
Literature Links!
Community Project: One-Sentence-At-A-Time
^NicSwaner
Fantastic Feature Tuesday #25Happy new year everyone! 
It's still the 31st for me, but I figured I might not have time to post this tomorrow and it must already be Tuesday for someone out there. And so this can remain Fantastic Feature Tuesday, not Monday.
This is a weekly feature of amazing literature that I come by during my
travels across deviantART. This is only a small sample of a vast amount
of wonderful pieces of literature written by absolutely fantastic
writers. Each deviation was carefully selected from a writer's gallery
based on structure, impact and word usage. I will never feature the
same person twice, so check out these wonderful writers now while you can!
Please this news article so it will reach a larger audience!
---
tWR's Specials: New Year Chat Event!Happy New Year, revolutionaries! 
I hope you all have an amazing 2013. We originally planned to have a chat event around Christmas... 
but we are disorganised fishies, so instead we are going to hold two belated New Year's chats (to cater for different timezones) this Sunday, January the 6th!
What's going on?
We are going to be having a critique session, so bring along a piece of literature you want feedback on, and/or your critiquing mindset! There will also be fun (largely thought up by =Sammur-amat) such as a collaborative in-chat story, and a Q&A session with the admins who are present. (No, you may not ask us to reveal our deepest darkest secrets. 
)
Also, if you have a piece you're entering in our contest, bring it to the critique session for other members to offer feedback on!
We'll post a wrap-up article after the event, so even if you can't make it
Love dA Lit: Issue 109Welcome to the one-hundred ninth issue of Love dA Lit! 
Every Sunday this article will aim to promote volunteer opportunities, various resources, prompts, challenges, and workshops, as well as highlighting various contests, and spotlighting a specific group every week. This is by no means a complete list of all the literature going-ons, merely a tool to help you get involved and stay informed.
#LITplease's Community Portal
Navigation
Literature Links | Group Spotlight | Workshops, Prompts and Challenges
Literature Contests | Resources | Open Admin Positions
DEAR TEEN ME CONTEST: The Results are IN!
Whoa. You guys came to play! We got over 200 entries for the DEAR TEEN ME contest, and we are both delighted and shocked and...well, exhausted after reading so many heartfelt entries!
First of all, I want to thank everyone who entered. This is a very personal writing endeavor and I know it's hard to put yourselves out there so I hope you all give yourselves a hug for me!
Secondly, I want to thank my co-judges, $wreckling, =Cassildra, ^neurotype and ~Vocable. I think I would have drowned in letters if it weren't for you guys!
SO. Without further ado, here are your winners!
First place, which wins a prize pack of Zest books including DEAR TEEN ME signed by various authors in the anthology (and ME!); a1 year premium membership, a laptop bag
Creeping Wednesday #13 :iconghostystareplz: 
Welcome in the year 2013! It's the 13th Creeping Wednesday and the air grows chilly as this time we're going to see and read all about ghosts. Thanks to ~JadasArtVision and *SandraHultsved for suggesting some very nice artworks for this issue. The next theme is going to be... pinups! Keep in mind, dear suggesters, that I'm looking for the creeping ones (: done traditionally and relatively not popular.
3 questions to ~RossanaCastellino, a wonderful dark creator!
What is that attracts you to traditional art?
I've always had a passion for traditional techniques. I've been drawing since I was a little girl and I immediately fell in love with color
Art History - Photography Month and CV's
Welcome to Photography Month in the #ArtHistoryProject!
Here is a quick introduction on whats happening and your Photography CV's.
Things going on in the Community this Month!
Monthly Photography Critique thread - ^Kaz-D runs this excellent Forum every month, so make sure you get yourself involved.More involvement from our #communityrelations Team and our Portrait hub @ ~PeopleAndPortraitsPhotography Sign up sheetChat events in #CommunityRelationsShapes Contest in #Abstract-and-Surreal
Urbex #2Urban Exploration is the exploration of man-made structures. Usually these are abandoned ruins, or components that used to be part of everyday life but are no longer seen on a regular basis by the human eye. This series of articles aims to highlight exactly what Urban Exploration is, how it's achieved and the some of the best Urbex Photographers here on deviantART.
The internet has provided Urban explorers with many opportunities to garner news of new locations, the best places to go to 'urban explore' and what to avoid. Additionally social media means that we can share places that others will never see, and never hoped to see until the introduction of the internet and the ease with which we can communicate. So as this series goes on, we're going to look at some of the top Urban Exploration websites, at the current time, online. Contamination Zone is dedicated to Photographing Urban Decay across the United Kingdom. As far as urbex sites go, i
Literature DD Roundup- December 2012Greetings everyone!
Today is New Years Eve, so before we share the roundup for December, on behalf of the Lit CVs, I wish you all a fantastic 2013!
It’s been a year of progression for the literature community, one I hope you will all join us on the continued journey for 2013. The community isn’t just 4 volunteers, it is ALL OF YOU, and I hope you share your ideas and get involved.
December has showcased some fantastic pieces of writing, and because of this we have actually snuck in a few bonus features. On Christmas day, we had 4 Literature DDs and from mid-December onwards we added some extra DDs over the weekend- something which we will now be doing every weekend! 
(ps. Did anyone notice we’d snuck in some extra DDs lately?)
Here is the roundup for December:
:iconbeccalicious:
Features by ^Beccalicious
:thu
Top 20 of 2012As it is the end of the year (in fact, already the 1st in some places) I wanted to do a feature of my top 20 favourite DDs from 2012. I looked after 3 galleries and have been privileged to be shown and able to promote some incredible art and artists. So here are my picks
(It was harder to pick just 20 than I thought it would be! 
)
What are some of your favourite pieces of art from 2012?
New Contest: Mea CulpaMea culpa - the fault is mine. Throughout the history of humankind, we have defined our morality of the day with help from many sources, both extraneous and internal, experiencially and symbolically. Some use religious text. Some use the example and teachings of their parents. Some find heroes in history or in their lives to emulate. Some will determine what is wrong (and right) from what has been criminalized. And still others will find new means, isolated from traditional sources, in a vacuum of their own personal intellect and empathy. It has been postulated that the backbone of societal behavior is guilt, i.e. having a conscience and being influenced by it. And this guilt should keep us in line, keep us good, lest we suffer from our own self-disgrace in the eyes of our internal and external juries. But, does this work? As most everyone would agree, we are not perfect beings. Throughout the centuries, we have displayed every conceivable erro
tWR's Specials: New Year Chat Event!Happy New Year, revolutionaries! I hope you all have an amazing 2013. We originally planned to have a chat event around Christmas... but we are disorganised fishies, so instead we are going to hold two belated New Year's chats (to cater for different timezones) this Sunday, January the 6th!
What's going on?
We are going to be having a critique session, so bring along a piece of literature you want feedback on, and/or your critiquing mindset! There will also be fun (largely thought up by =Sammur-amat) such as a collaborative in-chat story, and a Q&A session with the admins who are present. (No, you may not ask us to reveal our deepest darkest secrets. )
Also, if you have a piece you're entering in our contest, bring it to the critique session for other members to offer feedback on!
We'll post a wrap-up article after the event, so even if you can't make it
Digitally Delicious: Jan 1st.
White Prince by ~NadiavanderDonk
Midgard Master of Demon Mountain by ~Trishkell
Out There Revisited by *Gaius31duke
My Little Friend by ~Elderscroller
Downtown by *PeteAmachree
Free as a bird by `memod
Mistveil Spires by =TitusLunter
C
100 Poem Project Update!
Current progress: 67/100
journal: [link]
blog: [link]
Also note that the terribly sweet ~SayaStarshine took a look at my list and decided she wanted to do it, too! She is using the same topics as me, and you can find the link to her stuff here.
#Good-Intention
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
this feature and these wonderful works of art, thank you!
), =MummyWriter has written me a birthday gift and really, I am beyond humbled and words! Please, check it out below:
6 months premium membership
Cheerful 
Much love to you and every artist here.