Fabulous Friday Feature 15: Death

_{Gorgeous skin by OrchidsInRuin: fav.me/d47ql50}
:thumb140631001:

Greetings, all, and welcome to my fifteenth

FABULOUS FRIDAY FEATURE

This week, I'm taking a peek at the immortal theme of DEATH. Next week, I'll be trying to capture my love for my home state of North Carolina. 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: azizriandaoxrak.deviantart.com…

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 ProjectUpdate: Unfortunately, due to a number of factors, I will not be continuing this project. However, I strongly encourage you all to pay it forward yourselves!



Deviants 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 membersh

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

:thumb347426349::thumb347565453::thumb347939797:

Literature

Nascent DeathDeath borders upon our birth
Such a barren wasteland embraced
within the Empress' nurturing bassinet
She envelops me in the ice-clad evergreens
And ivy baby-blanket; snaring, strangling -
The veins that bind. She is life;
Mother nature, Queen of repose
and fair Demeter. My eye
fixates upon the hollow, never-ending
sunlight. Where time has become a dazed,
gentle creek. This bizarre entrapment
shrouds itself in serenity. Seemingly endless
as I traverse to Styx
                                    Yet now our cradle
                 Stands in upon this weary grave
        Where, unbeknownst, smirking Hades knocks
     A debonair Death; divining precious cards
  A Not So Funeral DirgeDrops of diamonds flow,
falling from faces full of
dips and curves—crags of
dark skin.
The song dripped from faltering lips—
her voice failing, sobs
wracking her frame.
A man's voice filled her space,
deep, rumbling alto carrying
the rhythm; another voice
joins the tune—
resonating, tinged with power
and grief unmatched.
As one…
the entire church joins,
gliding over the surface of a cream
coffin—accentuated with golden brush.
"His e-y-e is on the spa-rr-ow." Funeral DayBlack is an entirely
impractical colour, it soaks
            up
all this sunshine, this
July heat. It burns us -
                        stains us –
a gold that refuses
to glitter.
we undergo
a small, shrivelled
transformation. We wilt,
scatter pollen in the dust
where rivulets of tears
evaporate.
halos form around our
faces, we glow with
sweat.
it is hard to believe in
a cool, trickling
Heaven when we are no more
than dried husks of corn...
when a tire sits rotting
among the lifeless grass.
So we try to close our eyes
and imagine little green shoots
             sprouting
on the grave. The snows of
next January melting, waking
tiny white flowers. Little buds
among the ashes.
but then we remember:
it never snows in Texas. ShivaI am a haven for shiva
because there has been no funeral after.
Of the dead under my cad hands, hers
are still soft flesh leaving us,
me. While others have at her
I am a haven for amoebas.
And I remember she was:
a culture, a scavenger, a laissez passer—
of the dead under my padded hands, hers
are still vulture's lungs breathing us,
in. I am not inhaling her, rather
I am a haven for keeping dust.
There was never a moment of eureka!
and epiphany. But the harasser
of the dead are under my bandages: her.
I'll leave her…
I have to have her…
I am a haven for the diva
de los muertos under my cadaver. mobile spiritsthe first things i notice every time i get into my
father's 2003 ford SUV is the smell of my mother's
lingering cigarette smoke, a cupholder filled with
dirty change that my father has counted out precisely,
gum in the center console, and my grandfather's spirit.
i can see my grandfather sitting in the front seat
saying "don't complain about the AC not working.
think of a time you felt so embarrassed, maybe in
front of that boy you're so fond of, that you
literally wanted to crawl into a hole and die. now
the lack of AC doesn't seem so bad, does it?"
my grandfather was always saying witty, insightful things
like that. one time i told him that he should write a book
with all his little catch phrases - "you could be a millionaire,
granddad" - and he said, "tell you what. if i publish a book
like that and make millions, you and i will move to a secret
paradise and spend all the money we want."
it sounded like a good plan to me.
when he sat up front, my grandfather would jingle the coins i:thumb349080043:


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 17, 2013Pimps
Official dA News
 Holiday Card Project 2012 Wrap Up
Introducing Commissions on deviantART
Seniority Announcements January 2013
Site Update Commissions, deviantART Muro brushes
Apparel Collection Monster Talk
Official Contests
All "official" contests will Community Portal: January 13thNews
Love dA Lit: Issue 111
If you'd like to have something added/mentioned in this journal or the article please comment or send me a note!
HugQueen
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 HugQueen via news article, and the Community portal will be updated in accompaniment with it!
Literature Links!
Fanfiction, Fiction, and Nonfiction

Fantastic Feature Tuesday #27This 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!




catharsis. by scripturiency
---:thumb345216633: Love dA Lit: Issue 111Welcome to the one-hundred eleventh 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.
Note: Go give some hugs to all our new seniors! Extra love to our litters: raspil. spoems, vespera, dreamsinstatic, OfOneSoul, FuzzyHoser, MagicalJoey, inknalcohol, and mirz333!
LITplease's Community Portal

Navigation
Open Letter to Julie Burchill(In response to the article Transsexuals should cut it out; my original post can be found on my blog. Please share indiscriminately.)
I am a twenty-nine year old university student, writer and editor, and I am transgendered. There are a number of situations that fall under that category, but in my case it means that I am male, but happened to be born physically female. There was never a moment when it “occurred” to me that I was male; I always knew it. I was confused for a long time about why I wasn’t treated like the:thumb348428732: Colors ContestCOLORS CONTEST RESULTS


Update:  The Colors Contest Results are Finally In!!!
OK, yes, it has been quite awhile since this contest ended.  There have complications outside the current DLD administration's control which lead to some of the delay - the rest of the time: procrastination.   In any case, better late than never, right?
Anyway, here are the winners:
1st Place: 

The color of betrayal by TheBrassGlass

2nd Place:

Barracuda by Sigma-Echo-Seven
3rd Place:


Artisan Crafts Features #19Don't forget to let me know if you want me to advertise anything for you!
News
It will soon be Artisan Crafts Week over at projecteducate, so please send me and maytel your suggestions for what you want to see! Tell us who would you like to see interviewed, what kind of articles you would like to read, anything that you think would be good!
We had a fantastic time at ArtHistoryProject for Artisan Crafts month! You can see the articles that were posted here.This week in projecteducate: Community Week.This month in ArtHistoryProject: Photography Month.
ArtisanCraft published the new installment of their weekly newsletter, an interview with nimuae and a beautiful feature with the best of 2012.Here's the latest:thumb347395817: Somewhere Over the RainbowListen up, weirdos. This is your friendly neighbourhood asshole getting ready to mess things up. Wanna know why they've let me out of the cage to bring you another blog like this? That's right, losers, we've lost another longstanding member of the admin team, and I'm going to write 500 words of pure, throbbing love and respect for this bitch. Y'all ready for this? Tough, get ready to cry your eyes out, meatbags.
IndigoSkyes founded this thing alongside cherrichan13 and jonathoncomfortreed back when it was just a baby (LIKE YOU ARE NOW). Without her this world would probably be speaking GERMAN by now, so you owe her pretty much every piece of critique you've ever gotten from this establishment to your lady sovereign this dearest of alumni.
How you'll feel when this blog is finished with.
I'm beginning to get upset about this. We've lost so much of the old crowd (you new guys are great, don't get me wrong) but this one? This weirdo? She was special. I mean she meant



100 Poem Project Update!
Current progress: 68/100
journal: azizriandaoxrak.deviantart.com…
blog: 100-poem-project.blogspot.com/
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.