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kit-williams · 8 months

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Love Letters

Male Lead: Leman Russ Universe/Au: Warhammer 40k/D&D au Canon Status: Yes

So some angst like feelings? It's fluffy for the most part but like Leman is painfully aware of him probably outliving his wife so I guess the whole point of why he's writing a Ballad is kinda sad?

How can one not love you? How low you've brought me to bear... There's a fire in your eyes my sweet...

Leman frowned as he was hardly good at these sorts of things. As another page is tossed across the room and his mind just wanders. He wants to leave an epic of his love... a prose that even if it is all of the mark he leaves upon this land is what is his lasting impression. He is not seeking to replace the kingdom of the Russ he left back home... this is new and different.

How can he put into stupid ill-fitting words the feelings he feels for this mortal woman. He can't help but bark out a laugh at how the Emperor would probably look at his Executioner being in such a tizzy over a mortal. But she was his mortal.

He tried again and again to put into words how his Ylva was so smart... how she was funny... how she didn't flinch away from him when he came out of the woods like a wild man to help save her people. How she gave him respect when he told her I am the last great Jarl of the people of the Russ when others had guffawed at the fact he still called himself the Jarl or the High King of a people that were no longer there.

The way she told him... You'll just have to find more people willing to call themselves Russ.

His blundering tongue just growling out affectionately, How about you?

Only to be met with a laugh and a warning to not push his luck. Once more Leman found himself adopted into a clan but he was unwilling to shed his name of Russ but Leman was always one willing to push his luck and push her buttons.

He ran his tongue over an old scar on his bottom lip as he stared into the fire trying to think of words to tell her. Why was this so hard? Wooing her felt easier then him trying to figure out words to tell her... to capture her essence in prose. How anything he carved for her or plundered for her was just pretty on her.

How her hair is decorated with carved bone beads and other such things made by his hands all little things to show how he felt. How alive he feels when he makes love to her... both sober and drunkenly. She fit a piece that he never knew he was missing or was this just part of Magnus' magic that made them crave things that mortals desire.

His ear twitches as the door opens up and a tired and swollen looking Ylva enters. "I can hear you pacing across the village." She teases glancing at the papers strewn about. "What's gotten you in a tizzy?"

"Bah nonsense really." Leman tries to deflect as he can hear her pick up some papers and before he can chide her for bending over.

"Didn't get very far..." She says looking over as all Leman can ever put to paper are only a few lines of prose.

"No..." He rubs the back of his neck, "I'm not very good at that. Boisterous song and calls and tales of deeds are something I'm better at."

"Always a knack of talking about yourself." Ylva says with a smile sitting down and then just laying back as like with her past babes... always so big.

Leman chuckles sitting on the bed besides her, "Aye." A pregnant pause filled between them as Ylva could tell he was thinking. "I wanted to write about you. Like a love letter I've heard about mortals doing." He looks down at his hands pushing back the cuticle of a nail as he feels silly saying it aloud. "I want to put to word..." He starts slowly and thoughtfully, "How much I love you. What you mean to me and yet I can hardly think of the words... they all feel like shallow descriptions of how I feel. Even putting it into the tongues I know can't fit the way I feel. The way I look at you even at your lowest point... I want my love for you to live as a poem... I want my love for you to outlive us... to have people use it as a tale or song to tell their loved ones their feelings." Leman looks down at her as he pulls his pregnant wife into his lap and rests her head against his chest. Thankful of the ring Magnus gave him to not utterly dwarf his wife though he was still seven feet tall and some change it was still a normal height here.

"Leman..." She whispers softly looking up at him surprised.

"Now don't you start saying that it made sense to you or that it only felt natural to love me. Nothing about me is natural. I want to preserve my love for you because I don't know how long I might live... and I don't want to forget you." Leman says mournfully but he was always one to know how tightly death holds life's hand. Fenris was the picture of that.

"Oh you big loveable oaf." Ylva says pulling him into a hug. "How many times do I have to tell you not to think like that? I know it's hard being a demi god or whatever you are but if you live I won't really truly die."

"I hope not... a wonderful ghost to haunt me. One of these days I will write a ballad of my love for you!" He boasts his mood swelling back.

"Mhmm exactly. See just like this line right here saying how smart and wonderful I am is very much true." She grins as she flips through pages as the two of them cuddle close as they go over the dozens of drafts for this eventual ballad.

For as long as the kingdom of the Russ will exist... the ballad of Ylva never truly dies.

taglist @bispecsual @the-californicationist @egrets-not-regrets @libraryshadow @bleedingichorhearts @liar-anubiass-blog

#fluffuary2024 #fluffuary #warhammer 40k #d&d au #warhammer 40k au #Leman Russ #primarch #primarch x oc #oc: Ylva Russ

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hannahssimblr · 10 months

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Chapter Two (Part 3)

We sit in the window of a vegan restaurant and we pick at our sweet potato and quinoa bowls while she goes on about some poetry night she was at last week. She always goes to poetry nights, she insists that she’s moved by the prose, which to me seems like endless spoken word performances about the Ballymun flats, soliloquies about the gentrification of the working class postcodes, references to things that Dubliners love, like the Poolbeg chimneys, which are… just chimneys.

Marnie is one of those people who loves pretending that she isn’t posh. She can lament about the flats, but she’s never been in or near them. She buys bags of tobacco, skins and filters for five euros when she could easily afford to buy her cigarettes pre-rolled, and does her best to uphold the most neutral of neutral accents, so ambiguous that nobody could ever guess where she’s from. It’s only on rare occasions when she lets her guard down that her plummy, south side accent peeks through and she can’t disguise affiliation with the fee paying school she attended in Blackrock. For both primary and secondary, no less.

I’ve been to poetry nights with her, but only once or twice, because I hate them. She likes to sit there and make outraged sounds in the right places, pretending to be furious at the bankers, even though her dad is one and he definitely benefited directly from the housing market crash. The whole reason she’s there though, really, although she’d never admit to such shallowness, is so that she can meet weird, literary boys who go to Trinity. They seem to love her, and I can only ever sit in amazement as she brings me to their tables and watch as she wraps them around her little finger using nothing but clever words and conspiratorial little smiles. None of them are that handsome, they’re all a bit gawky, and usually after a couple of weeks of knowing her they’ll do something earnest like write a poem about her which she’ll read to me mockingly, pretending that she isn’t privately delighted by it.

She’s not like anybody else I’ve ever met, which drives my fascination with her. She’s very interesting. She reads books about feminism, and always has high-brow, intelligent opinions about things like the patriarchy, which I am only now hearing about for the first time. And she’s very cool, and I know that she tries very hard to be cool, but it works, and when I’m around her I kind of feel like I’m cool by association. She’s got attitudes towards things that I know someone like my mam would say were “very modern”. She told me before that she used to be in an open relationship with a boy called Peter, and insists that humans were never supposed to be monogamous. But the open relationship arrangement only seemed to apply to her, as evidently Peter never went on a date with another person for the entire relationship, and they eventually split because he was jealous. Except she hadn’t said “jealous”. She’d said “Unevolved”.

“Come on, Evie.” She pesters me over our salads after my less than enthusiastic response to her invitation to yet another slam-poetry-spoken-word-whatever night. “It’s always a good laugh. I know that you have a good time, even just a small bit.”

I sigh. “I really don’t, Marnie. I’m just not that bothered about the poetry.”

“Well, if you don’t like poetry, at least come with me to flirt with a few cute guys. It would be good for you.”

I look at her doubtfully, knowing that there are never any cute boys there, only exceptionally odd looking ones wearing doc martens boots laced all the way up to their knees. “I’m not that bothered about the boys there either.” I say. “None of them are… really my type.”

She puts her hand on my wrist and looks at me worriedly. “I was actually wondering.” She says in a low voice. “Like, I’ve known you for over a month now, and we’ve been out in town so many times and met so many people and yet I’ve never seen you even flirt with a single person.”

“So what?” I say defensively.

“So do you like boys? Girls? Neither?”

“I’m shy.” I huff.

“I used to be shy.” She comments, and I don’t say anything to that, because I know that her definition of what shy looks like is extremely different to the kind of shy I’m living with. “I was a very quiet child, then my parents sent me to a therapist and I was alright after that.”

“You think I should go to therapy because I’m shy.”

“Oh, everyone should be in therapy, it’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and actually, this country’s relationship with mental health has historically been shameful, so we have to make extra effort to challenge our prejudices about it.” She goes off on a tangent, all while gently stroking her thumb over my wrist, and I zone out for a few moments so I can look out the window onto the windy city street.

“So like, when’s the last time you got with someone?” She says suddenly.

I pull my hand away from her so I can rest it on my hot cheeks. She’s very good at asking direct questions in a very conversational way that are very difficult to twist your way out of, and I don’t know what to say so I grumble something incoherent. Then she pokes me in the arm. “Hey. It’s no big deal, just a simple question. How long has it been?”

I sigh. “A while.”

“What’s a while?”

I take my fork and start stabbing at my chunks of sweet potato, my hand fisted at my cheek. “Never.” I finally admit. “You got me, okay? I still have my… virginity.”

I know as soon as the words leave my mouth that she’s going to have something grandiose to say, and she does. “Virginity doesn’t exist.” She announces. “It’s made up by men to control the sex that we do or don’t have, completely based on the obsessive patriarchal ideological rhetoric that leads to the idea that daughters belong to their fathers before they belong to their husbands.”

“Okay.” I say.

“So go out and have it.”

“It’s not that simple.” I say half-heartedly, already tired from years of having this exact conversation with first Kelly, then Claire, neither of whom have ever understood me, or tried to. “Everyone else already has experience, and will expect me to have experience too. Because I should have some experience by now. And when I finally do… it with someone, I’m going to disappoint them.”

“Because you’re not immediately a porn star?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there is that, and men will always have unrealistic expectations of what is physically possible…” she says unhelpfully, then stops when she sees my forlorn expression. “But you’re too in your head about it. The best way to get over it is to just do it.”

“Yeah. Great. With who though?”

“Someone, any lad will do.”

“It’s supposed to be special.” I say weakly. “Everyone says you don’t forget your first time, and if I’m going to remember it forever then I want it to be perfect.”

“People have sex sometimes, Evie. It’s not a big deal. Can you imagine the pressure of having to live up to the kinds of expectations that you have?”

I never considered the effect of my expectations. Maybe she’s right, maybe I am piling the pressure on too high for everyone involved, but I have no idea how I’m going to even begin to untangle the web that is my intimacy issues. I groan and rub my eyes with the heels of my hands in resignation. “I know I have to try. It’s not like I want to be like this, but I just feel so stuck.”

“We have to unstick you.”

“We?”

“Yes I’ve decided to help you.”

“Marnie…”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun. Think about it, you and I out on the pull together, chatting to men. I could definitely hook you up with someone.”

I fix her with my best warning look. “I don’t ever want you to try and set me up with anybody. I want free will and choice.”

“I have great taste.”

She doesn’t. The last guy she hooked up with had an infected eyebrow piercing and curly mohawk in this queasy, seasick colour where it used to be blue.

“Fine, next time we’re out, I’ll give you complete agency.” She relents. “I won’t bring anybody over to you, even if he’s an absolute babe who’s exactly your type.” Then she reaches out and touches my wrist again. “But I think this is good, Evie. It’s time to push past your anxiety, and just see who’s out there.”

“I suppose.” I say grimly, and go back to stabbing my salad. “But I’m not ready to sleep with anybody. I just want to talk, and maybe kiss someone. Maybe.”

“That’s so secondary school.” She teases. “But look, I get it. It’s probably been ages since you even kissed someone.” A pause. “If ever?”

“I’m not Drew Barrymore, I’ve been kissed.” I scoff. “Just not in a while.”

“What’s a while?”

“My debs date tried to kiss me.” I say elusively.

“Tried to? Or actually did?”

“Tried to.” I admit, and then shudder with the memory of Bootsy’s dead eyed face looming toward me on the dancefloor, mouth already open. He didn’t even have the decency to look disappointed when I rejected him either, and ten minutes later I saw him devouring Cristina the Horse Girl by the bar.

“Okay so you objectively did not have your last kiss at your debs.”

“I suppose not.”

“So it was when?”

I feel too embarrassed to answer. Since the dawn of my love life, since my very first kiss at thirteen, I’ve never gone more than a few weeks or months without it happening. It used to be something I did just to get it out of the way, so that I could say that I’d done it, but now something has switched. I’ve had an intense aversion to it, to anybody showing interest in me. It all just seems too much, too overwhelming, something so gross and unappealing to me now that the idea of it makes me feel a little sick.

“A while ago.” I say, feeling flustered at the old memory. “It was back during the summer after fifth year.”

“So like, a good year and a half?”

“Yeah when you put it like that it sounds so sad.”

She doesn’t need to tell me that yes, in fact, she does think it’s sad, she just shakes her head in dismay. “You’re getting back on the kiss train, firstly. Let’s start there. Once you’ve broken the seal it’ll be easy. It’s just about pushing through fear.” She says it like she really knows what she’s talking about, with absolute conviction, and I kind of believe that she does. Marnie gets all the boys, all the time, even if they’re not handsome boys, she still gets them, so surely she knows a thing or two that I don’t. I find myself nodding along to what she’s saying.

“Alright.” I say. “I’ll get back on the kissing train.”

“Amazing.” She grins. “Let’s go out tonight.”

I take a shaky breath. “Wow, that’s soon.”

“Come on, Evie, it’s never too early, just push through it.”

“Alright. But can we go to a normal bar? Not one of those Trinity pubs, please, I don’t fancy any of those academic types.”

“I feel as though you’re just making excuses.”

“I’m really not, just, please, can we go somewhere normal.”

She sighs. “You know I like the Trinity students.”

“Can you compromise?”

She rolls her eyes theatrically. “Fine. We’ll go to a bar. A boring bar full of boring people.”

“That’s more like it.”

“But as a pay off you have to kiss someone.”

“I have to?”

“Okay, like, obviously it’s really bad-out for me to pressure you, I know, but you have to try some light flirtation with at least one boy.”

“Okay.” I say to her, “I’ll try.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. I promise. One boy.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

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#sims #sims 4 #ts4 #simlit #sims 4 story #sims story #writing #fiction #romance #sims 4 storytelling #sims4 storytelling #sims storytelling #lucky girl part 2

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bookie-the-reading-junkie · 4 months

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To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods review

1.5 stars

Oh boy. This book is a mess. I feel that it’s important to preface this by saying that I am a white American and my knowledge of Asian and Chinese culture/history is very limited (I’m a little more familiar with Japanese culture/history because of my love of anime). It is not my intent to criticize this book in ways that I shouldn’t and I don’t know enough about certain things to say if my assessment is correct or not.

I had heard of this book a while ago when the author of Iron Widow (I love both the author and the book) promoted it, then when the whole thing with the white author review bombing POC debut authors, and then again when it was being called a colonizer romance. I did get spoiled with several things, but I feel like that didn’t matter too much. A lot of people said this book was a slog to get through, but I had just read “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” and this felt almost like a breeze in comparison because that one is 500 pages long and the prose is very similar; incredibly flowery and kind of repetitive. I finished this book in four days a few days ago and I’m already starting to forget what happened.

I’m going to start off with the worldbuilding: it was a bit all over the place. I wasn’t quite as confused with the multiverse thing that was going on as a lot of people were, but I had many questions regarding the Romans that didn't get answered. Why was Rome/romans chosen to be the colonizers at all? Unit 731 was part of the Japanese occupation and the opium wars were spurred by the British. My guess is that the author felt that basing the colonizers on the Japanese would be too controversial, and wanted to go for a more fantasy/mythological vibe. Like a clash between western and Chinese mythology, which would have been really cool and actually what I expected when I first heard of this book, but wasn’t the case.

Is Rome a reimagining of our world if Rome didn’t fall? That seems to be the case even though it’s not made clear. I wish that Rome/Roman culture/whatever appeared more because it’s so undescribed; we don’t have a clue as to what it’s like, especially when her own culture is given so much focus. The Romans are a blank slate, you could so easily swap out the Romans with like. Any modern western country, because the only difference between the two cultures is that the Romans are brutal and that they have “overwhelming science.”

That was something that bothered me a lot throughout the book, the constant “our magic can not measure up to their powerful science.” I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a critique of racist portrayals of “primitive people” or if it unintentionally comes off that way. Because to me, it’s the latter. Especially when so often science was technology like planes and guns, instead of what people generally think of when they hear science like chemistry or labs. I feel like if “technology” had been swapped with “science” that connotation I mentioned earlier wouldn’t be as strong. There were so many times Ruying would be like “science is so evil but magic is powerless against it” and it honestly made me a bit uncomfortable. Stuff like “one [world] was rich with magic, one was rife with science (p4)” and “these bracelets of science around my wrists (p114),” which is referring to her magic repressors/shock collar. There were a lot more (some worse) but I didn’t mark where they were.

The writing was. Incomprehensibly flowery. I’ll be honest, this is a good example of why I don’t like flowery, poetic prose. It’s repetitive and the metaphors and similes start to end up not making sense for the sake of every. Single. Sentence. Sounding like it’s part of a poem or trying to be quotable. I disengage quickly from the story, glaze over, and miss stuff. Though in this case, it’d be pretty hard to miss stuff since it’s very repetitive. And with the gods thing. Look. I get it. It’s in the title. The Romans compare themselves to gods (or did the Panglings do that first? It’s unclear). But Ruying constantly talks about how they are false gods, how they pretend to be gods, how the real gods abandoned them, and false gods rule, and WE GET IT. YOU ONLY MENTIONED IT 20 TIMES IN THIS CHAPTER. I was in all honesty a bit baffled as to why she would compare them to gods so much, doing so only gives them so much more power over them. Some examples of the writing:

P17. Too cautious of his wrath, too aware of my sister's mortal vessel with its mortal needs for opian [magic version of opium]. P155. Our shared moment, beautiful as the embroideries grandma used to sew, came apart, snarled into halves, barely held together by tangled threads. P221. In the meantime, I will let you in on a little secret if you promise not to tell anyone. History is a melody sung by the victors. Truths and lies are what I make of these chords. Stay loyal to me, and I promise the world will remember you as a hero, forged in this war of magic and science. Because, come fire or storm, I’m going to win this game of power, and I can give you a legacy that will outlive you. A name to be whispered for thousands of years.

The whole book is like this. I have read so many books with this sort of flowery prose in the past few years, especially debut novels and I’m starting to think that young authors need a gentle reminder that not every sentence has to be outstanding and quotable. I get it, I’m a writer myself and so often I feel like if I have a couple sentences that aren’t filled with imagery, then it’s flat and boring. But come on.

The book is technically NA (though in the UK it’s YA for some reason idk), and while I haven’t read a ton of adult novels, there were times where it felt so painfully YA. The narrative was honestly a bit confusing sometimes; there were times where I couldn’t tell if Ruying was being an unreliable narrator or if the narrative was saying something straight. It definitely fell into the pitfall I notice a lot of bad slow-burn romances do when the love interest where they are treated like we already know them and should root for them rather than them being strangers. Also, the eyes thing, oh my godddddddd I’m so sick of books going on and on about people’s eyes. Right after she stole money from the love interest, she notices his eyes at the end of an alley:

P39. “I caught a splash of green at the other end of the darkened alley” [note: please tell me he’s wearing green and she didn’t see only his captivating viridian eyes. (Edit: god dammit he wasn’t he’s wearing midnight blue)]

My personal explanation is that his eyes fucking glow or something.

For as much as gods were talked about, Ruying’s gods were only very vaguely discussed aside from that they left about a thousand years (I think?) ago according to myth. Death is a great example of this, constantly referred to but never explained. At some point I realized she was referring to Death as “he” which was jarring because I’m pretty sure no pronouns were used for Death in the first half of the book, which I preferred because it made Death feel separate from the living world. The only time any gods are talked about is when Ruying tells Antony a story about the goddess Nüwa (which is a real myth, slightly adjusted for the book), but it doesn’t really serve any purpose nor does it really shed light on further worldbuilding. The emperors are said to be descendants of dragons, but that also doesn’t get a lot of explanation. There were a few times I wondered if things like that were referencing Chinese mythology or culture that I wouldn’t get or if there were just things that weren’t explained well enough.

Moving on to the characters. There was a pretty small cast: the MC, Ruying; her twin, Meiya; their grandmother; love interest/childhood friend, Baihu; her childhood friend, Taohua; Prince Jade Orbs, Antony; and a few other side characters. But we see very little of them besides Ruying and Antony, even if she’s being isolated from them. Ruying constantly talks about what she would do for her family, but we see her interact with her grandma exactly once and every interaction with her sister (which is like. three) is a fight involving both of their views on the colonization and oppression of their people. Meiya wants to fight with the resistance and would rather die than kneel forever at the Roman’s feet. She tells Ruying off and that she’s deluded when she explains that she’s the Prince’s personal assassin in order to protect her family and peace. This book does so much telling instead of showing and it’s very clear when it comes to the characters and the relationships between them. Ruying as a character has a lot of potential, someone who is afraid of their own power and the high that it gives them, both hating and loving their ability, desperate to save their family. I think that if the romance was completely cut out, then she could have been a cool character. But this girl is as delulu as it gets.

When she met Antony, I thought I might enjoy their relationship, not in a “omg I ship it, I don’t care if it’s toxic” way but in a “this dynamic is so fucked up and I can’t stop reading” way. The few times I’ve run across ships (used in the loosest manner) like that, I’ve been able to enjoy it because even if the narrator is unreliable, it’s clear that it’s not romantic. I backtracked so quickly because the narrative did not want to depict it as abusive and toxic, it wanted to depict it as romantic. My notes went from “okay so far, kind of into this, because it’s so clearly toxic” to “oh god this is becoming romantic FAR too fast.”

I spent so much of the book intensely irritated at Ruying because she is constantly making him sympathetic and excusing him. This starts from the very beginning, not even when they actually spend time together:

P111. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and my heart beat a little too fast when he said my name, so gentle, so benevolent [he is meeting her in a cell in the dungeon and about to propose that she become his personal assassin or die.] P141. there was a quiet fear in his voice. A softness. As if he were a man confessing something he didn’t want to be heard. In this moment, I wanted to believe his words, see him as someone other than a prince monstrous in his greed. [less than an hour ago he put a loaded gun to her head and said that he would kill her, her family, and everyone she loves if she attempted to kill him again.] Pp 151-152. before I knew it, someone had drawn me into their embrace. A safe place of tenderness to hide from the cold of everything else. In silence, Antony Augustus held me tight, as if doing so could hold all of my broken pieces together, keep me whole against the cascading gray waves of hate striking me like an ocean striking at crumbling cliffs. Deep in my bones I knew everything about this moment was wrong. Leaning into his touch was wrong, wrapping my arms around his and clinging to him for life was wrong. But I did it anyway. [He just made her kill a person. This one of the very few times that she feels something is wrong or that he’s being manipulative until much later and several people tell her to snap out of it.]

If I remember correctly, this was all in one day. He is a little nice to her and she so quickly forgets that he is the enemy. This is the same person who spent the first few chapters talking about how much she despised the Romans and how all Romans were evil. Right after the last segment, Antony tells her his sob story that as a child he lived in poverty and he had robbed his adoptive father, the Roman emperor’s son. His soon-to-be adoptive father came to his house and told Antony to either kill his biological parents, or all three of them would die; he chose the first option. What the actual fuck. And then she says “He was a prince of Rome. He had no reason to lie to me (p158).” I fucking stopped dead in my tracks and stared at these sentences. HE HAS EVERY FUCKING REASON TO LIE TO YOU???? TO MANIPULATE YOU???? YOU CLEARLY DIDN’T THAT HIGHLY OF ANY ROMAN EARLIER

His whole thing is that because he grew up poor, he knows what it’s like be in her shoes, and he also doesn’t want to commit mass genocide like his grandfather or brothers do (or so he claims; we don’t get a lot of insight as to what his grandfather and brother do want to do, though I suppose that’s book two). He doesn’t want a war/genocide and wants her to assassinate key people that would bring war quicker. He gives her very little evidence (though to be fair, also very little choice) to show how this would actually do anything. He says he wants her to kill both Romans and Pangulings, but as far as the reader is aware, she only kills Pangulings. There’s a six month time skip after the deal, and she has killed 48 people and she’s in love with him. This is unfortunate because while I understand the reason for that time skip, those six months would have been crucial in both their character development and the development of their relationship. Ruying is so utterly convinced that Antony is a good person and wants peace and it takes her twin sister and her childhood friend/other love interest telling her to wake up and realize that he’s just using her before she starts to think “maybe? He’s a bad guy?” How did the girl that hates the Romans so much get to this point? We didn’t get to see that.

It’s not super clear if Antony is manipulating her. I mean, he is to an extent, but how far it goes isn’t clear. Because it would make sense if he was manipulating her into thinking that he is in love with her. But we get one chapter in his POV where we find out he is in love with her and is like “if only we were different people, we could be together :(“ and drops this line:

P293. He had starved himself of love, laughed at the Romeos and Juilets of his world, the love songs that echoed on the radios. Now, in this bed with Ruying beside him, Antony finally understood what his grandfather meant when he said love was a weakness.

*rolls my eyes in aroace* god, poor baby that must have been so hard. I bet you were pushing away women right and left because who isn’t into someone that experiments on humans and threatens their lives and loved ones. Though you never know with straight people. Oh yeah, he has done/is doing experiments on her people, especially those who have magic. That’s the big leadup for the story, which wasn’t a big surprise to me because I was spoiled by that, but he actually mentions that his people have done experiments on hers and she doesn’t even take note of it?????

Here’s the thing: there’s an author note saying that she was partially inspired for this book by the Russian and Japanese occupation of Manchuria China. Her own grandfather lived during that time and told her fictionalized versions of real horror stories of the Japanese occupation and of unit 731 as a kid, though she didn’t realize this until 2020. She asks the reader to understand that Ruying isn’t a hero, just a girl who wants to protect her family. I have no problems with an author tackling difficult subjects like this, in fact, I think it’s great because it’s a form of catharsis and can inspire readers (especially ones that are less familiar with the subject) to look further into it and educate themselves.

However, I feel like the author didn’t really do what she wanted justice. Because of that author’s note and attention brought to Unit 731 specifically, I expected the book to focus heavily on that. The actual part that is similar to unit 731 is so short, so glossed over, so contained, that it does not feel respectful or handled well in any manner. What happens is that Baihu takes Ruying into the labs and they see her childhood best friend experimented on (draining her blood? Her life energy? It’s a little unclear even when Antony explains what the experiments are for) and then die. One of Ruying’s requests before becoming Antony’s personal assassin was that he released Taohua and he agreed. So while she’s obviously distraught about her friend dying, most of her focus is that Antony lied to her; not the actual experimentation or any of that. (The reason for the experimentation also feels weirdly out of place; Antony’s world is dying because of climate change, which is why they want to colonize and move to hers; why more people haven’t moved yet isn’t clear. Antony and his adoptive father wanted to find out if people with magic could be, in essence, be used for more sustainable energy because their magic has the potential to be super energy efficient. In theory, an interesting and horrifying concept; in practice, badly executed.)

I watched a couple reviews of this book on youtube who had also mentioned unit 731 and I decided to look into myself because I had heard of it, but nothing more than it was one of the most horrific historical events and that it involved human experimentation. I only looked at wikipedia and I had to stop when I got to the section on experiments involving frostbite (which was not very far in), and I have a pretty strong stomach. The experiments were done pretty much purely for the sake of sick curiosity. Biological warfare was committed on surrounding cities to observe the results. It is truly so sicking, and I can not comprehend how someone can learn about this and have family who was personally affected by it and go “yeah, I’ll put that into my enemies-to-lovers romance where the main love interest is the one involved in this sort of thing.”

At first, I was kind of apathetic to this book. I’m glad that I read a bit about unit 731 (and I should probably look more into it) afterward because it puts it in a completely different light. Now I’m just a bit disgusted. No hate to the author, but I really wish that she had put more thought into this. It also just feels weird because while there is a love triangle going on, the way she marketed it made it very clear that the main romance is between Ruying and Antony, with calling it dark romance enemies-to-lovers, Zutara on steroids, etc. Not to mention in her author’s note, she says that she thinks that grandfather would be proud of this book, which, I don’t know, felt a little weird to me the way that it was phrased.

I want to go on a bit of a tangent about the whole thing about Zutara and this book relating to fanfiction. I checked out her tiktok page, and 99% of it is basically the same three slideshows promoting the book, and almost every single one is about Zutara on steroids/the tropes in the book. I think it’s very bad practice to promote traditional books based almost solely on tropes and popular ships. It makes sense with fanfiction, there’s an established setting and cast of characters who people are already emotionally attached to. I think that it shows weakness in your writing if you rely on things like “only one bed,” “touch them and you die,” “enemies to lovers,” “morally gray characters,” “knife to throat” to set the foundations of your book on. These can be incorporated into your book and be done very well, but so often now (not necessarily just in this book) it feels like books are being built on tropes. It’s becoming the cake rather than the icing. Anywho.

I didn’t see how it was supposed to be like Zutara at first besides the broadest strokes of “he’s a prince and his people bad and committing war crimes against hers.” To be honest, I’m not really a fan of Zutara, I just don’t vibe with it and I find that a lot of fans of it are kind of intense. I do like Zukka (mostly it’s like “hey what if dumbass one and two got together?”) and have read a shit ton of it, so I feel like many of the same things about Zutara can apply to Zukka. Anywho, I was more focused on whether or not the personalities match (Ruying a little, Antony NO), but I started to see some similarities. I guess. Someone said “yeah it’s zutara if Zuko was Ozai” which I think really hits it on the nail. Zuko, while he made lots of bad decisions and yeah, I suppose you could call him a morally gray character, is fundamentally a good person. Antony is not, despite whatever the author was doing to what, humanize him? Make him a sympathetic villain? Am I supposed to be sad for this guy that 1) killed his parents 2) threatened to kill the MC and everyone she loves and 3) of his own will, did experiments on people? Yeah, no. Not to mention that he doesn’t really try to understand her/her culture or what she’s gone through being under occupation of his people; he doesn’t care and thinks that spouting proverbs in her own language every other sentence gets him brownie points.

I won’t say that fanfiction has perfectly delved into these issues nor can I say much about colonization and its lasting impact on people, but I guarantee you that I have read fanfiction barely beta-ed that handled these topics more tactfully than this book, and included romance between someone who is a part of the oppressed population and someone whose family is directly responsible for that oppression. A few people have said it feels like fanfiction just in general, which I don’t 100% agree with, but it does in the way that we are sort of expected to understand the world and know who the love interest is and the development between the two. There is almost zero buildup and explanation when it comes to Antony, you’re expected to root for him and love him because he gave her a hug after making her murder a person. I think that is the biggest pitfall for authors who started writing via fanfiction or convert their fanfiction into novels; any time a character shows up, it feels a lot like when a celebrity appears in a disney show and the laugh track cheers and you have no clue who they are.

Yeah in short, it started off fine, went downhill and then crashed into a wall. I may read the next book simply out of curiosity, but I’m not sure I could handle it.

#to gaze upon wicked gods #book review #review #random but someone on goodreads said it had queer rep because two minor characters are alluded to not being straight and that kind of pisse #me off #this book was. something #analysis

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 1 year

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i often see your posts next to the screenshots of Geocities homepages captured by @oneterabyteofkilobyteage, and that made wonder: if you were on Geocities, somewhere back in the 1990s, instead of 2020s Tumblr, what would your personal site look like? What would you talk about? Would it be loaded with gifs, personal poems, low-resolution scans of photos of you? Would you join a thematic webring? MIDI files? ASCII art?

The answer to this question is kind of funny because I had actually made a fake Geocities page for a project back in college, but I never actually hosted it anywhere!

(The project was based on something I'd read about Alexanderwohl, a community in Kansas populated by Russian immigrants. Among other things, it featured a "Russian tourist attraction" called "Valentine Village," which was a little frontage town on the main highway, done up in a cheesy attempt to recreate Russian culture. There was a huge sign which said "Универсальный магазин" and went on like that, but no one could read Cyrillic, so no one knew what it meant. The frontage town was very small and was all you could really see when you drove by, so a lot of people saw it as a joke, as silly cheesiness, or just as bizarre.)

So I had this idea for an experimental webcomic in which a guy is driving through Kansas and in the middle of nowhere he sees this frontage town out of nowhere and then he just sees it. He knows he's been there before, but doesn't know how or why, and then . . . it's all gone. And he has a panic attack and turns on the radio and hears about the whole Valentine Village thing and the mysterious Russian tourist attraction, and he starts having a nervous breakdown.

Well, it had a prose version (which was eventually published in a lit mag) but I also drew a fake Geocities page for it. My idea was to have it be a realistic "mirror image" of the prose excerpt, i.e. write the page as though I were really the guy, except I know he's fictional, and make it pretty true to life as a Geocities page from 2002 might have been. It'd be kind of "eerie" in a very conventional way, I guess.

It's a shame I never actually put it up. I think I still have the image files somewhere . . . I should track them down and post them.

#ah ouroboros #yhanblr

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priestess-of-the-north-west · 1 year

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Vegtamr means not 'The Wanderer', I think, but something like 'he that unwilds the way'

Vegtramr is the name Óðinn himself chose to hide his identity in the poem Baldrs draumar (in later editions called Vegtamskviða).

This is the only poem in the Poetic Edda where this name can be found. It is not mentioned in the Prose Edda.

The original poem was found in the Arnamagnæan Codex and copied later. This is a fragment of the only currently existing copy of the poem (in Manuscript AM 748 I 4to, dated 14th century).

The subject and style of Baldrs draumar link it to the Vǫluspǫ́: four lines of stanza 11 are nearly identical to Vǫluspǫ́ 32-33.

It has, therefore, been suggested that the same author may have written Baldrs Draumar and the Vǫluspǫ́ in the first half of the tenth century.

In Stanza 6:

(Óðinn kvað) Vegtamr ek heiti sonr em ek Valtams segðu mér ór helju ek mun ór heimi

Henry Adams Bellows, in 1936, translated it like this:

(Odin said) Vegtam my name I am Valtam's son Speak thou of hell for of heaven I know

Benjamin Thorpe, in 1865:

Vegtam is my name, Valtam's son I am Tell me of Hel From Earth I call on you

James Allen Chisholm, 2005:

I am called Vegtam and am the son of Valtam Tell me about Hel I am a man from Midgard (PotNW: I find this weird; translating 'mun' into man.)

Edward Pettit, 2023:

I am called Vegtamr I am the son of Valtamr tell me news from Hel I remember [things] from home

or, more literally translated by Dr. Marion Ingham:

I am called Vegtamr I am Valtam's son Tell me from Hel I will [tell you] from the world

From this stanza, the poem itself ("I want to ask", "I want to know"), and the many other stories about Óðinn that paint a picture of someone always seeking wisdom or knowledge, I see no good reason to translate Vegtamr into 'The Wanderer'.

Wandering has a sense of 'randomly walking about', and is translated as 'someone that travels aimlessly', which makes little sense to me.

Time to pull out the dictionaries and go on a little adventure!

Photo by Bluewater Sweden on Unsplash.

VEG

Old Norse Vegr - way, path, road, distance, side, direction, route, mode, manner, direction, to go, proceed (Lexicon Poeticum, Zoega and Claesby/Vig)

Proto Germanic *wegaz - way, path

Proto-West Germanic *weg Descendants: Old Frisian: wei West Frisian: wei Old Saxon: weg Old Dutch: weg Middle Dutch: wech Dutch: weg

TAM

Old Norse Tamr - tame, familiar, ready Tamiðr - made tame, familiar, ready (Dutch: timide) Tamning - taming, breaking in (Dutch: temmen) Descendant Icelandic: Tamur - tame, which one is accustomed to, that one readily uses (is willing). And an amusing one: Tams-vöndr (Tamsvendi) - a taming-wand, in Skírnismál 26. (Zoega)

Proto Germanic *tamaz - tame Antonym: *wilþijaz - wild

Proto-West Germanic *tam Descendants: Old Frisian: tam, tom (tom when in compounds) West Frisian: tam Old Saxon: tam Old Dutch: *tam Middle Dutch: tam Dutch: tam

Meanings of Tame (source):

Not or no longer wild, domesticated.

(of animals) Mild and well-behaved; accustomed to human contact.

(figurative, of a person) Well-behaved; not radical or extreme.

Boring, not exciting, bland, dull, flat.

Crushed, subdued, depressed, spiritless.

So...

He 'tames the road', or a little more abstract (since 'veg' kan also mean 'manner' or 'mode') 'he tames the way'. It's no longer wild, but he is in control of it.

We may also decrypt this as 'he learns the way' 'he figures out the directions' 'he is accustomed to the road' 'he knows the path' 'he is familiar with the route' 'the road is ready for him' 'he knows how to use the road' 'he is willing to use the road' And a few rougher guesses: 'he leads the way' (?) 'he knows where to go' (?) 'he knows how to proceed' (?)

A fast thought leap, since he seems to know the way to Niflhel and back and travels there on Sleipnir (as we can read in this poem), we could even think of him as 'Traveller between the worlds', a common term in esoteric schools. (Thinking out loud here, nothing final.)

Finally, here's one for my fellow-Dutchies: Wegtemmer (It made me smile; I hope it does the same for you.)

Photo by Monty Allen on Unsplash.

#vegtamr #vegtamskviða #Vǫluspǫ́#10th century #viking age #old norse #oudfries #oudnederlands #Noordzee-germaans #oudsaksisch #Óðinn #hel #my research #poetic edda #14th century

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vizthedatum · 1 year

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Thoughts on names OR Pri was verbose, and so is Rose (2023)

I loved who Pri wanted to be.

I really loved that bub!

Pri decided to be me.

Let me be Pri when I grow up?

—

I loved how spiteful I became,

when my friends told me in the 3rd grade

that Pri could not be my nickname.

A girl a year ahead of us already had Pri claimed.

I became Tika instead.

I laughed in grudging acceptance.

It didn’t sound right in my head.

I went along with it with reluctance.

—

When Pri was little,

She dreamed of being a mathematician and an esoteric writer!

Pri was also very superficial.

She wanted to wear pretty dresses with sweatpants underneath instead of a petticoat liner.

Math and words were not really my joys.

It was just what I was good at.

Mostly I wanted to kiss girls and wrestle boys.

I always loved how Pri dared herself to do that.

Wait, hold on,

Maybe wrestle girls and have boys worship her?

Why did it all feel like a con?

Why did being a “she/her Pri” feel like a slur?

—

Pri was super weird.

She called herself “intense” and “chaotic.”

Wanting to be the girl that she appeared,

A cis-woman with a touch of the homoerotic.

—

“I’m Pri,” I insisted when I started college.

“Oh, I get that my name is hard to say - call me Pri.”

People did not question this knowledge.

Besides, it was nice to feel a little free.

I longed for people to learn my whole name.

Don’t you respect me enough to learn??

Most people’s efforts were highly lame.

Causing me to be in endless yearn.

It wasn’t enough to be just Pritika,

It felt foreign as if I were playing out a fantasy.

Feeling worse than my former sciatica.

Being Pritika was just a convenient chastity.

—

Pri would make jokes, you know.

Laugh when she/they wanted to die.

Kept pushing through to continue the show.

Becoming prime fodder for narcissistic supply.

I think Pri could have fallen in love with anyone.

Better than loving myself, I thought.

Who cares if she/they was a horrible daughter and not a son?

I was really good at being a respectable thot.

—

I cried whenever I felt something so strongly.

Like at lavender graduations or when I suddenly announced I was non-binary.

I wanted to be a creepy old man (jokingly).

Or maybe be monogamishly gay with Bill Nye, despite society.

And even though I loved how babies would yell my chosen nickname,

And how lovers who didn’t know me would whisper “Pri” in my ear,

I wished someone would have interrogated my game,

And ask me, “Well, what do you want to hear?”

—

It’s not part of my culture or even that “masc”

I resisted in my head.

Was it me or was it just Pri’s whimsical mask?

Maybe it was better left unsaid.

—

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose,

By any other word would smell as sweet.”

I am lovable and me; a Rose writing their prose.

Of course, I have every right to label my meat.

My name deserves a thousand and eight poems.

And even that would not be enough.

I chose it, and my name is the least of my problems.

Being a feminine man who isn’t a woman/man is far more rough.

Wild roses can often be hosts for disease and pests,

So, they must be protected with treatment and care.

Separately, I can be Rose with or without breasts,

A topic with which I have much despair.

—

I guess my mind is currently a happy scramble, with so many threads of thought,

I am so many things, and being called “Rose” barely scratches the surface.

There is no need to justify my name to anyone or any lot.

I finally have a name now, and it fulfills its purpose. :)

- Rose the artist formerly known as she her Pri

~ গোলাপ্রী

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rustbeltjessie · 1 year

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Rust Belt Jessie’s NaPoWriMo 2023 Prompts: #10

dream on

Way back in 2004, I wrote a short story (which was supposed to turn into a full graphic novel, but never did, for reasons) about Sebastian Fatelli—a character who stood on the wet streetcorners of Baltimore, handing out dreams to passerby.

Nowadays, the poet Mathias Svalina runs a Dream Delivery Service, where he writes dreams (and nightmares; thought they cost more) and delivers them to people—by bike, if they’re nearby; by mail, if they’re not.

Here’s one of my favorites of his dream-poems, from his chapbook Some Dream Holidays:

(You may notice that Mathias’s dream holiday is a prose poem. Some people hate prose poems, or claim they’re not even really poetry.* So this is where I reiterate that I don’t make hard & fast distinctions between poetry and prose. I have written both short and long-form works that look like prose to the untrained eye, but are, conceptually, poems.)

So.

You could use this prompt to write a poem from a dream you’ve had, but I’m hoping you’ll do something more in the vein of Sebastian or Mathias. Dream of a dream. Write a (new) dream, or nightmare. Or you could take the seed of the idea from a dream you have had, then flesh it out with imagined details. Combine a real dream with a fake dream. Though, since both were created in your mind, which one’s more real is impossible to truly say. I guess it might be more accurate to phrase it as: Combine elements of a night dream, which came to you unbidden, with elements of a purposeful daydream.

Whichever way you go with this—whether writing about a dream you’ve had, making up a new dream (said I got new dreams!**), or combining the two—try to dive deep into that weird dream logic. You know, where things that you know to be not just false but completely ridiculous in waking life are accepted without question in the dream world. Like, you’re in San Francisco, and the geography looks right, but the buildings are ones that, in waking life, are located in Chicago. Or like, you’re lost in some random small town, and you have a map which shows you the path you need to follow to find your way out, but part of the path runs right through this random family’s house, and they see you walking through their house and aren’t mad but are like why are you in our house? and you’re like this is where the map told me to go! And then you make it through their house and get back outside and an unmellow yellow*** bird builds a nest in your hair. Or like, the heating vent under your grandmother’s bathroom sink is also a portal to hell. Or, as @MNateShyamalan put it in this tweet:

You can write it as a prose poem or a more traditionally structured poem, whichever feels right to you.

Bonus points if, after writing it, you give/send a copy to a friend or stranger.

—

*I once had someone tell me “they’re just badly written, extra-short fiction.” That guy thought all his opinions/thoughts on poetry were fact, and liked to argue with me about why all my opinions/thoughts on poetry were wrong. One time I got so mad about it, I nearly punched him in the middle of a crowded bar. I still think Barfights About Poetry would make a great name for a chapbook or zine or something.

**Got new dreams and I’m gonna make ‘em real! —Naked Raygun

***TIL: There is an actual Crayola color called “Unmellow Yellow.”

#jessie lynn mcmains #napowrimo #poetry #writing prompts #dreams #glopowrimo #napowrimo 2023 #will try to add text ID at some point

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the-saloon-2069 · 2 years

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A Very Merry Thank You

my friend had a shitty weekend. happens to the best of us. if you keep reading, i’ll happily tell you why this friend lands so squarely in the “best of us” category. but first i want to talk about words. for the last decade or so, i’ve struggled to imagine calling myself a writer. i love writing. i think in prose, in poems, or in scripts. it’s a constant in my life and the longest relationship i’ve ever had. but to call myself a writer feels too official, like i should have a badge of some sort before i introduce myself as such. did i mention i’m a couple weeks away from publishing my first book?

the thing’s beautiful. it’s capable of breaking a reader’s heart, then rebuilding it even stronger. and it’s my story. my experiences will be held in the hands of my loved ones who have so patiently waited for launch day. thirty-five thousand words. and for some reason one of the things that has struck me the most is that it has cost me nothing.

paints are expensive. studio space and stages carry hefty rents. equipment and software will max out a credit card before the doubt even has time to catch up. i have had the miraculous privilege of creating, and then giving my art a physical form, for free. mostly from my kitchen table where i can watch squirrels and deer roam my backyard.

this all started about half a year ago with an “i wonder what would happen if…” and the second i told a handful of people what i was thinking of attempting, i had a handful of cheerleaders and fans. now this process didn’t cost me dollars, but it was brutal when it comes to time, and energy, and overcoming frustration, and outrunning my doubt. these cheerleaders and friends carried me right on through the dark and the challenging. and while i could never repay them the extraordinary gift they’ve given me, their words were also free.

i mean… how dare we ever feel completely powerless in this world if we have our words and a willing reader? my book exists because a handful of people said that they thought i could do it, that they liked the tiny samples i shared, and that they were excited to buy a copy. words that only cost a minute of time every few days, changed my life. why the hell wouldn’t we choose to use this magic incessantly?

now back to the friend who had a shitty weekend. the weekend was shit, yes, but what turned out to be even shittier? someone who could have shown her love, instead chose to weaponize some words and cause even more pain. why? your guess is as good as mine. i ain’t repeating any of the bullshit, but i’m gonna tell you why it’s bullshit.

c has a warmth and a light so contagious, people spend their entire lives trying to curate even a fraction of it. she’ll make you feel like a beloved friend before she knows anything about you but a screen name. she’s relentlessly helpful. i shit you not, she willingly troubleshoots technology issues for people simply because she can. who the hell does that? and she’s level-headed under pressure with some god-tier frustration tolerance. one of those people who will go to her wit’s end to help other people be successful. there’s a reason that the first rule in performing arts is to always thank your crew. and we don’t even know half of what c does behind the scenes. if things suddenly go to shit, you want this girl on your team. she’s said she’s gonna fight my other loved ones to be my first book purchase, and i believe her. she’s determined and works unbelievably hard. if she says she’s gonna get something done— just watch, because she’s gonna.

thank you, my friend.

these words were also free and took approximately fifteen minutes of my evening. just for the hell of it... how bout you go see whose world you can improve with fifteen, or even two, minutes? i dare ya.

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 2 years

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Hey!! One one of ur posts u wrote that u were trained by you government to write poetry?? Sorry if u have posted about this before, but how did u get there and stuff? Hope u have a nice day!!

Well, so, it was a government initiative in the mid 90s because... idk because it was Wales and that was what they wanted to spend their money on I guess. They wanted to establish what they called Writing Squads, I think as a sort of non-sport alternative for nerds like me, which is funny because I also played rugby. But, the pilot one was in my home county, Gwent.

So they had teachers in every primary school keep an eye out, basically, for any kids who showed natural aptitude for writing. Of any kind - they actually did do prose and scriptwriting and that as well, but the main focus ended up being on poetry, I believe for convenience and politics. But yeah, any child that wrote something good, that piece of work got submitted and the kid became a candidate.

SO, cut to me, seven years old, MASSIVE fucking dweeb, no friends because my teacher was a sour old crone who hated children in general and teachers' children in particular a truly abnormal amount, and that amount was ALL OF THE HATE SHE HAD IN HER HEART. My Mam was a teacher, so in the personal rankings of Mrs Thomas, suffering my existence fell somewhere between breaking a fingernail six minutes after you just got them done in an expensive and fully booked salon, and stepping in runny dog shit. To relieve her rage and disgust at my presence in her class, she spent the year directly bullying me heavily and encouraging the other children to join in, and they were, you know, seven, so they took up that challenge with gusto.

What I'm saying is, I was therefore prone to sitting by myself and making my own fun sometimes during the occasional bout of Free Time we used to get (sometimes we'd get a Free Time period, during which the Teachers would hastily catch up on paperwork I think, or possibly sit there mired in a miasma of bile and fury as they thought about other teachers' kids being in their class idk, but the point was that us kids could do whatever we wanted in that time: arts and crafts, mechano, recreational maths, creative writing, etc). Now, my sister was in high school at the time, and the night before we'd gone to... some sort of academic event of hers, maybe a school play? Parents Evening? Dunno. But I'd been wandering the corridors of the high school, bored, when I'd found the displays. One of them was a load of poetry from the English department.

And one of those poems had a horse on, so I was in.

I can't remember it by now. I know it didn't rhyme, which my seven year old ass thought was bullshit. I know it featured the line "The horse of the valleys/ has come out to dance", too, because of the whole thing, that lodged itself in my brain. I thought that was the best thing I'd ever heard. I thought that was magnificent. I thought that was magical wordsmithing, sheer genius, so lyrical and beautiful you could glimpse the divine in the cracks between the letters...

Except, thought I, it's a missed trick, isn't it?

Because it was in a shitty non-rhyming wall of drabness, and also the scansion of that second line is not quite right, not quite rhythmic, not stressed in the right places. So clearly I could do better.

So, that next day, there I am in Free Time. I decide I want to do some creative writing, i.e. shamelessly steal a line and a half from someone else's work and Improve It.

(I did not Improve It.)

So I write out this poem. I don't remember all of what I wrote, either, but happily for all of you, Tumblrs (unhappily for my ego) I actually can remember the first stanza, so...

Sigh.

Trees drift in the darkness

Like white spirits of light,

The horse of the valleys

Is dancing in the night

LITERARY GOLD I'M SURE WE CAN ALL AGREE

There were four or five stanzas, every other one finished with that same couplet about that horse, dancing away like it was in a fucking disco, but the rest are lost to history. Uh, one rhymed sight with night. And I think one was fight? I'm pretty sure. I know one of the even numbered stanzas rhymed green and seen. "Can be plainly seen." And "through leaves of emerald green." That was it. And I drew a rearing horse under a moon to go with it. I was committed to my Shakespearean genius.

Anyway, that done I went up to Mrs Thomas where she sat seething behind her desk, cannibalising her own soul with her loathing for all the children in her class. And I put my creative writing book down for her to check, and then went to draw another horse.

Normally, the process was, she'd vaguely tick the work, then make you take it away again.

But this time, she actually called my back up to her desk.

"Did you write this?" she asked me suspiciously.

"Yes miss," I said, and then consumed with guilt for my plagiarism, I said, "it's based on one I saw yesterday."

"Explain," she said.

And I said, "It was about a horse and it didn't rhyme and I Improved It."

(I did not Improve It.)

"Hmm," she said, and then didn't give the book back.

Half an hour later, the deputy head came in, and read it, and gathered about Mrs Thomas' desk. Ten minutes after THAT, the head master came in (he was later fired for having so much porn on his school computer that it almost caught fire but that's another story).

And that night, my parents told me I was being invited to join the Gwent Writing Squad, and bought me a special pen as a reward.

And that's how it went, pretty much. Mrs Thomas was a vicious and grotesque possum but in that one sense, on that one day, she actually Done Me Well. I went to training once a month until the summer after I turned sixteen, and I now use those skills to write queer Welsh werewolf erotica and also lengthy Tumblr posts about walruses.

#tedious personal details #writing

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scapegrace74-blog · 3 years

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New Ways of Turning into Stone, Chapter 5

A/N Sorry for the long break between chapters. As some of you might have seen from my Tumblr blog, I’ve been off on vacation these past two weeks. Plus, when I felt the urge to write, it was my new Vaquero AU that kept calling to me (21,000 words and counting!), rather than this fic. Which is probably a good argument for why I don’t like to post WIPs. In any event, here is the next chapter some of you have been asking for, entitled Third Appointment. Be careful what you wish for. Angst ahead, plus a trigger warning for infertility trauma, miscarriage.

The first four chapters are available on my AO3 page.

The Thursday after her impromptu encounter with Jamie and his niece at the Royal Hospital for Children, Claire woke with a strange twisting pain in her gut. Skipping breakfast, she was halfway to her office before she diagnosed herself with an acute case of nerves, the kind that sprouted between her lungs and ribcage like a vestigial organ whose sole purpose was to unsettle her.

She wasn’t in the habit of meeting patients outside of the clinical confines of her practice, but it was more than that. Jamie had caught her in a moment of weakness, with both her personal and professional armour missing. What he might have seen and how he could have interpreted it had occupied her thoughts ever since.

Eating lunch was out of the question. By the time two o’clock approached, her insides were a buzzing hornets’ nest of anxiety, her palms clammy with sweat. A half-empty bottle of Xanax called to her from the bottom of her purse. Before she could weigh the implications of taking one at work on an empty stomach, Jamie’s familiar knock intervened.

She could tell as soon as he entered that Maggie hadn’t needed a transfusion that week. His russet curls shone like garnets in the midday sun and his uncanny eyes glittered like sapphires. Still, he avoided looking directly her way as he settled into his usual chair, and she wondered if the overlap of their personal and professional lives had left him feeling unnerved as well.

“No wheat grass smoothie,” he commented, his gaze running over her desk.

“No, I didn’t have time for lunch today.” It was a blatant falsehood, since she’d spent her lunch hour picking her cuticles until they bled, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Ye should eat more, Sassen..., Doctor Beauchamp. Ye canna help anyone else if ye’re no’ properly nourished.” She caught the slip, and for some reason it angered her.

“Is this your attempt to negotiate a reduction in your fees, Jamie? Dietary advice in return for counselling? Because if so, I’m afraid I don’t bill on the barter system,” she snapped, despising her churlish tone.

Jamie’s eyes narrowed, then dimmed. Message received, he sat up straighter in the armchair and crossed a foot over his knee, assuming a position of poised and detached calm that had no doubt served him well during business negotiations. She regrouped by pretending to glance at her journal for the notes from their previous session, although the space next to his name was accusingly blank.

Boundaries thus defined, the session went surprising well. Jamie spoke of his relief that Maggie’s latest round of chemotherapy was over, allowing her to return home and to some semblance of a regular life for a child of six. Claire coaxed him gently towards the topic of his overwhelming guilt for abandoning his family when he was most needed. Jamie processed pain through the recounting of stories, coming to terms with his self-decreed transgression by weaving together the tale of those he loved and pointing to the holes his absence had caused.

As his resonant voice spun its web of words, Claire became aware of an underlying hum. At first it was subtle, like the mumble of traffic from a far-off motorway. But as their hour together ticked by, it grew in strength until she could no longer ignore the buzz that pressed against her from all directions.

“... saw that it was really Jenny and Ian who I was... Claire? Doctor Beauchamp, are ye well?” Jamie was watching her with concern, and she realized she’d been shaking her head, trying to dislodge the omnipresent hum.

“Yes, I’m... yes. Sorry. Just a funny noise that’s... Please, continue.” When Jamie didn’t immediately pick up the thread of his narrative, she tried again. “You were saying something about Jenny and Ian?”

Instead of continuing his previous thought, Jamie picked that moment to broach the topic she’d desperately hoped he would avoid.

“I hope ye’re no’ upset about the other day, at the hospital. I didna mean tae impose or tae... o’erstep the bounds of our relationship. No’ that we have a relationship, mind,” he hastened to add. “Only a professional one. But when I saw ye, I couldna resist introducing ye tae wee Maggie. I hadna told ye about her yet, and I thought...”

“Jamie, it’s fine,” she cut in, halting his rambling explanation. “She’s a lovely girl. They all are. It’s only that, I’m sort of...”

“Ye’re verra good with them. Children, that is. Ye’ll make a fine mother one day.”

All the oxygen left the room at once. Her heart beat so hard there was a bruised feeling behind her sternum. Launching to her feet, Claire stumbled blindly away from her desk. She wanted to run, to scream, but her vision was a narrow chasm and a now-deafening throb filled her ears. She only made it a few steps before her knees buckled and the carpet floated upwards to meet her.

“Ifrinn!” Jamie leapt to her side, catching her by the shoulders before her head could hit the floor. He lowered them both carefully to the ground, resting her body against his lap. “Sassenach? Claire? Can ye hear me? Do I need tae call an ambulance?” The words reached her from very far away, but the threat of medical intervention acted like a dose of smelling salts.

“No,” she groaned, the room spinning around her like a kaleidoscope. “No hospital. I just... need to eat,” she grasped at the most innocuous explanation for her current state.

Without dislodging her, Jamie stretched his long arm and brought back the small basket of miniature muffins that were the day’s offering from Geillis. With surprising dexterity, he peeled away the paper one-handed and broke apart a bite-sized morsel, holding it gently against her lips. Realizing that her dignity couldn’t get any more battered, Claire opened her mouth and allowed Jamie to feed her. After only a few bites, the buzzing disappeared and she was able to sit up on her own.

“Thank you,” she murmured, afraid to look into his eyes for fear of the pity she knew she’d see there. “You were right. I should have eaten lunch, I guess.”

“Claire.” Jamie made a prose poem of the single syllable of her name. She looked up at him through her lashes, stunned to find him looking back, not with pity, but with something akin to adoration. “Mo nighean donn,” he ran a tender hand through her loosened curls. “Ye need tae care more for yerself.”

“I will. I’ll try.” And when she said it to him, she really meant it. Jamie made the impossible seem probable.

They stared at one another, shoulder to shoulder on the floor of her office. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, but nor did she move. Her gaze flitted over his face, noticing a vestige of boyish freckles across the bridge of his nose, a mole hidden in the harvest stubble on his cheek. Jamie was performing a parallel inventory, eyes finally coming to rest at the level of her mouth.

“Ye’ve got a wee crumb, jus’ there.” Unconscious, her tongue swept out, triggering a predatory response, twin blue laser beams narrowing on the target she had just painted on her lower lip.

“I... I’d verra much like tae kiss ye, Claire. May I?”

An amputated moan was all she could manage in response, but Jamie must have understood its meaning. He bent his head until only a whisper separated them. The air crackled, sending that extra organ plummeting towards her hollow womb. Clenching her eyes shut in defeat, she closed the infinitesimal gap until they met in an effervescent caress of lip and tongue.

Cold washed over her skin, bathing her in gooseflesh. Jamie tasted like he looked; a banquet of fresh, volatile flavours that called to mind a picnic in a meadow, a spray of sea foam, the warmth of hearth and home. She could feel him trembling against her, his moist breath rushing against her cheek in shallow pants. For a score of heartbeats, Claire was the happiest she had ever been. Then, reality crashed down around her.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, pulling away. “I... this can’t... I’m sorry.”

Jamie leaned back with a mixture of longing and resignation. She hated adding herself to his list of regrets, but it was for the best.

“I’m your doctor, Jamie. This isn’t right.”

“Aye, I ken. I should apologize, but I canna seem tae find it in me tae repent.”

Jamie stood, reaching down to help Claire up as well. As soon as it was apparent she was able to stand on her own, he dropped her hand as though it burned. The line between his brows deepened, and she could see the question forming before he gave it voice.

“What if ye werena my doctor? Would it be right then?”

“That’s neither here nor there, because I am, Jamie. A relationship between patient and doctor of a romantic nature is ethically off-limits.”

Jamie nodded, apparently accepting her explanation at face value. Her heartbeat calmed. He moved slowly, gathering his coat and starting to leave.

“But what if ye weren’t?” he said, facing the door. “If we’d met at the hospital, or out on the town?”

“I...” she stammered, searching desperately for any answer except for the truth. “No, Jamie,” she said at last, watching as she destroyed his last bastion of hope. “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel that way about you.”

Nodding abruptly, Jamie let himself out of the office. She listened to his low murmuring voice through the door as he spoke to Geillis, heard him make an appointment for the following week, then the loud snap of the main door closing. Only then did she allow herself to collapse once more to the floor, angry sobs overtaking her.

***

“Are ye out of yer fuckin’ mind?” Geillis inquired with her usual brutal eloquence.

With the help of a Xanax, Claire had managed to see her last two patients of the day, and only needed to navigate the shoals of her office manager’s ire before she could go home and fully medicate herself into a dreamless sleep.

“Jes so we’re clear, ye want me tae write a letter terminating your services as a doctor an’ suggesting suitable alternative providers? An’ ye want me tae send this letter, over email, tae Jamie Fraser?”

“That’s right.” She had determined that icy calm was the best antidote to this conversation, which was fortuitous, since she felt numb all over.

“An’ what reason am I tae give fer this abrupt conclusion tae yer association wi’ Mr. Fraser?”

“I don’t owe him an explanation. Only sufficient notice and an opportunity to seek counselling elsewhere,” she said, feigning reasonableness.

Pushed past her limits, Geillis rose from behind her desk, a tiny tempest of moral indignation.

“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp, ye are a good friend, a fine doctor an’ a fair employer. But I swear by the Almighty that if ye dinna drop the façade and tell me wha’ is going on I am going tae smack ye until yer ears ring!”

There was a certain relief in knowing that Geillis wouldn’t take no for an answer. And unlike Jamie, she knew where Claire lived and would not let her rest until the truth came out.

“He kissed me. Or rather, I kissed him. And I liked it! That’s why, Geillis.”

Her friend’s shoulders sagged, all righteousness gone in an instant. She reached around Claire’s frame and held her in a bone-crushing one-sided hug.

“Och, hen. An’ ye figured ye could deal wi’ those pesky feelings by jes, what? firing him as yer patient?”

“I can’t deal with this right now, Geillis. I can’t feel the way he makes me feel. And this practice is all that I have left. There’s no way I can risk losing it just for an affair that won’t even last the summer.”

She didn’t need to elaborate on her reasons for that dire prediction. Geillis knew them as well as anyone.

“He’s an intelligent man, Claire. He’s gonna ken something is up. Moreover, he’s a good man. He deserves tae hear the truth.”

Shaking her head sadly, Claire walked towards the door. Just before exiting, she called back softly to her friend.

“Geillis? Make sure to include Dr. Rafferty’s name on the list of referrals. I think they’d be a good match.

***

Monday morning dawned with little promise for the fledgling week. Moving robotically through her weekend routine, Claire thought frequently of chickens. How their bodies kept moving once their heads were lopped off, nerves and muscle and bone continuing to function for a time despite the fatal blow.

The elevator chimed its arrival on her floor. As the doors slide open, Jamie was the first thing she saw. He loomed by her still-locked office, a sun-topped thundercloud gripping a sheet of printer paper.

She’d worn her best black suit and a pair of chunky heels that brought her closer to his height. Perhaps, on some subconscious level, she’d anticipated this confrontation. Perversely, she relished it. Vitriol and deceit didn’t suit her, but it was preferable to feeling absolutely nothing.

“Do ye mind tellin’ me,” Jamie began before she’d even set foot in the hallway, “jus’ what this is about, Claire?” He brandished the paper like a wanted poster.

“I would think it was self-explanatory, actually. I’m terminating our professional relationship,” she huffed, golden eyes coming to life for the first time since Thursday.

“Via email. Sent tae me by Miss Duncan, because ye dinna have the guts tae do it yerself. Christ, Sassenach, even my ninth grade sweetheart didna dump me so cruelly!”

“I’m not your sweetheart!” she burst out, a flood of emotion cresting with her rising anger. “Don’t call me that! I was your doctor, Jamie, and now I’m nothing to you. Nothing. Just go. Please. Just go,” she finished weakly and without any hope that he’d listen.

“All this jus’ because I kissed you?” Jamie persevered. At her stubborn silence, he continued, “Nah, I dinna think so. Ye’re many things, Claire, but a coward isna one of them.”

She found this hysterically funny, since a coward was the only role she played to perfection. She didn’t have time to laugh, however, because Jamie was suddenly standing much closer, forcing her to lift her chin to meet his stormy eyes.

“Nah,” he continued smoothly, a big cat alerted to the smell of its prey. “If ye’d objected tae the kiss, ye would have told me so. Read me the riot act or kneed me in the bawls. I think ye’re scared, Doctor Beauchamp. I think that kiss terrified ye, because ye realized ye liked it. Somethin’ ye couldna plan for in yer wee journal, right there under yer nose. Bet it made yer heart beat so fast. So fast, jus’ like it is now.”

Jamie’s hand rested gently over the placket of her suit jacket, where he could surely feel the trip hammering of her pulse.

“Please,” she begged. “Don’t. I can’t...”

“Can’t what, Sassenach?” he whispered back, goading her.

The truth hung on her lips, and the toll of the past few days meant that she no longer had the strength to stop it from spilling forth.

“Can’t have children. Ever. I tried, for years. Fourteen miscarriages, fourteen lost chances. And seeing you with those children last week. I know it’s presumptive, but I could never deny you that chance, Jamie. That’s why I can’t see you anymore.”

She was looking down, watching the buttons of his shirt rise and fall with his agitated breath, but as she finished speaking, their movement ceased. Chancing a glance upward, she was stunned by the fury that had overtaken his expression.

Jamie opened and closed his mouth several times before he managed to speak in a gritty growl.

“Mutation of the RUNX1 gene tha’ causes leukemia. I was tested, along wi’ Jenny an’ Ian, after Maggie was diagnosed. I have a fifty percent chance of passing it along tae my children. An’ since I canna stand the thought of ano’er bairn havin’ tae suffer as Maggie has, as soon as I got the test results, I went out an’ had a vasectomy.”

Claire recoiled as though she’d been slapped, a high pitched whine in her ears.

“Ye’re no’ the only one who’s hurting, Claire!” Jamie continued, voice dashing against the rocks of her name. “We’re no’ meant tae suffer alone. Ye, of all people, should ken that.”

Stunned in the silence following the thunderclap of his revelation, she couldn’t find the words to express her sorrow, her outrage, and her crippling shame. By the time the power of speech returned, Jamie was gone.

#my writing #outlander

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allmimsyweretheborogroves · 2 years

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II. Write a prose poem about the body. Include an encounter between two people, some spoken dialogue, and at least one crisp visual image.

Sometimes life grabs you by the eyeball and drags you, kicking and screaming, into a new state of being. And then you learn: what you know about yourself is wrong and it can always be wrong and life is nothing but a series of state changes. And there is nothing to be done about that. So I sit in another doctor’s office and ponder the creaking of the plastic chairs, the dusty smell of grandmothers waiting, rubbing alcohol on my tongue, and the crinkle of my intake papers. Change is waiting and waiting and waiting and eventually they will call my name and “Here!” I will say and I will drop all my things on the floor and the nurse will look at me with something very like pity. In the dark, closed space, the doctor will look at me and I will flinch and ask, “What is wrong? What is the problem?” “Oh,” he will say. “You have ———.“ “What is that?” I will say. “I guess you do not understand,” he will say. And then he will say no more because I do not understand and there is no way I could ever understand. Because I did not go to medical school and I do not know all the ways that my body could betray me. And it is not a matter of language, it is a matter of being me: this fragile flesh inhabiting a space that is not the one it inhabited yesterday. Today I am sublimated into something new and in the making, the me that was is lost. Perhaps forever.

#napowrimo #there is no crisp visual image #that's it #that's the joke #if there wasn't a joke #it would just be depressing #poetry #prose poetry

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lov3nerdstuff · 3 years

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Hi Kay!

I just wanted to take a moment and say how deeply moving (and overall comforting) I find your writing to be! I've gone through almost the entirety of your masterlist twice in the past month alone and have found myself returning more often to the pieces of literature/poems your reference sometimes. (Especially that one poem by Benedict Smith! I've read a few more by him because of you and they're just wonderfully lovely 💛 so I'm eternally thankful to you for including it.)

I may be wrong in assuming, but I believe you may have studied/are currently studying a degree involving literature. I hope this isn't too foreward of me but I was wandering if you have any other works of literature that you'd recommend? (I'd love to read anything you recommend from poems to plays 💛) I'm slightly embaressed to say but the works I've read are quite limited to a highschool level and since I'm currently studying Pharmacy, there are very few people who can recommend me such moving works. :)

I also feel like I should apologise for writing such a large ask, so please accept this apology as well hehe 💕🥺

Sincerely,

Bek 🌻

Hey there Bek 💚💕✨

First of all... I'm incredibly sorry for how long it took me to reply to this ask, I know you sent it weeks ago and I'm honestly just ashamed of myself for only replying now! I've been taking a bit of a Tumblr break again, or rather a break from literally everything, and I guess not having written anything in a while made me feel guilty whenever I opened Tumblr, so... All I can say for myself really is that I'm sorry you had to wait so long! Again, I never ever ignore anyone, I promise! It just sometimes takes a while for me to reply 😅🙈

Now, I'm so happy to hear that you've been enjoying my writing! 🥺🥰 Hearing that it's comforting and inspiring to you is honestly such a relief and indeed does make me happy more than I can say 💚 It's so cool that you're checking up on all the references I make aaahhh 🥺🥺🥺 I love it 😁 You're always more than welcome, love! I don't think I could stop including references to literature, culture, history and the science around it even if I tried 😅☺️

And yeah, I did study classics and newer literature as a minor for my undergrad degree 😄 But tbh I still work with literally a lot even now (I'm in grad school for media and cultural studies) even though it's technically not something I've been properly taught ☺️ I'm just a nerd who likes to learn on her own, and with media and culture you can pretty much delve into almost anything you want 😂😅🤷🏻‍♀️

Now, it's not forward at all to ask me for literature recommendations! 😁😃 I truly love recommending stuff!!! I have a few up my sleeve, even though you've probably heard of a few already, for obvious reasons: A lot of what I truly enjoyed reading was something Tom Hiddleston has worked on in one way or another! It's truly a magnificent guideline for picking new literature... Just look up the literary origins of his films/shows/plays and you will be in for quality literature most of the time! I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here, but me reading High-Rise (JG Ballard) because I heard Tom would be partaking in the film adaptation was actually what sparked my love and passion for literature!!! Yep, it's that good. Now on to the recommendations though 😁(This... got rather long):

Plays

Anything by Harold Pinter really, but for obvious reasons you'll find a lot of additionally fun stuff for Betrayal, which is lovely and truly funny if you're in on the kind of humour btw

Medea by Euripides (a classic, but I love it nonetheless... You can find translations in almost every language) ((and pls stay away from Seneca's Medea, because ugh... Euripides is far better AND the og story, as much as anyone can say that for Greek mythology)

La Bohème by Puccini (I know, this is technically an opera, but if you read the libretto it's honestly just like a play... And if you're up for it, the og story is in prose and written by Henri Murger... It's better than the opera, but oftentimes more difficult to find) ((this one is hilarious and basically explains an entire cultural subgroup in the 19th century)

Faust by Goethe (many people hate it, but I LOVE this one!!! It's also been translated into any and every language, and it's so interesting philosophically!!! It's also referenced SO freaking often literally everywhere, and the operas and ballets based on it are always my fave) ((there's technically Faust I and Faust II, but you're good to go just reading the first one)

Anything by Shakespeare, obviously... Though I do love me my Hamlet like every other literature enthusiast (Yes, I can do that one famous soliloquy in act 3 scene 1 by heart as well...)

Poetry

Again, anything Shakespeare for the win, but I LOVE the sonnets and keep a copy of them with me most of the time (Yes, I own multiple copies of the sonnets...) ((My faves are 116 and 91, but there's always so much truth to be found in there!!!))

A lot of the stuff William Blake wrote is amazing, though you have to pick carefully with him if certain religious motives aren't your thing... I love The Tyger, which is an individual poem, and the collection of works called Tyger, Tyger which does have many good ones and a few ones that are a little more on the mediocre side

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas (I know this one by heart as well... It's beautiful, and there's a version of Hiddleston reading it on YouTube, which gives you even more goosebumps than the poem does anyway)

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (same for this one, also read by the one and only) ((I love to read this when I'm feeling down or powerless))

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (This is another wow piece with many quotable lines and truths... I love it a lot and keep coming back to it! It's also a great example of how literary modernism tried to condense the complexity and passing of time and history into a single frame that had to be intrinsically poetical in nature... As in, this poem could've been a short story in any other period, but modernists loved to make everything a poem so here you go)

Der Zauberlehrling by Goethe (This one sucks in all English translations I’ve found, poetically speaking, but in German it’s such a fun piece! If you’ve ever seen the Disney ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ with Mickey Mouse or listened to the orchestral piece by Paul Dukas, then this poem proves very useful in truly understanding either! But again, the English translation should only be taken for informational value... The German one is also worded hilariously)

Prose

Short edited by Alan Ziegler (This is a collection of short prose forms that honestly is a must for me... I love this book to pieces and have had it for years now! It’s an international anthology, so you’ll find more and less famous authors from all around the world represented with short stories, prose poems, short essays and just curious and interesting snippets of writing! I draw a lot of inspiration from this book)

High-Rise by JG Ballard (As mentioned above, I owe this book part of my personality... I don’t think I would be the same person without having read it. It’s not necessarily full of wisdom, but if you’re interested in a different kind of portrayal of the human condition, then this is the read you need to take a look at)

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (This is another piece that changed my perception of literature, even though this is a more ordinary and ‘fun’-value read... It’s one of my favourite books and it’s endlessly entertaining! So if the classics are a bit heavy for you, this one is perfect for casual readers as well! Its value really does lie more in the realisation of how fun literature can be, and the freedom you have as an author... So really, I could recommend everything by Moers, his style is amazing both in the German original and in the English translation. Yes, I’ve read both.)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (This is comedic gold, stylistic gold and generally a bloody perfect book. Also a ‘fun’-value read, but it also does a magnificent job at showing you what you can do with literature, and how well-developed characters are supposed to be written)

The Penguin Book of the Undead (Penguin Classics) edited by Scott G. Bruce (This book is basically an education on fifteen hundred years of supernatural encounters and how culture wrote, used and perceived them. You get introductory texts for different periods and social groups, explaining how and why ghost stories were written and used, followed by passages of the prime source texts (eg. ancient necromancy shown on The Odyssey). Really, this book is just for cultural history nerds)

The Earthquake in Chile by Kleist (This isn’t necessarily one of my faves, but it has helped me understand what studying literature and culture can do for you. In case anyone remembers my insistence in Wicked Game that you gotta know what a pomegranate symbolises... this novella is such an instance where this knowledge would prove useful. Generally, it gives many opportunities to think about privilege and circumstance)

The Symposium by Plato (You’ll probably not want to read the entire collection of speeches tbh... But the concepts introduced mainly here and in some of Plato’s other work are well worth looking into! For example, the ‘double being’ introduces a concept that in modern fiction is called soulmates... Just sayin’)

#literature #lit rec #recommendation #literature recommendation

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spicynamericano · 3 years

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Perception. - mk lee

sypnosis: you meet a stranger in the park, who helps you prepare for your interview with renowned author, mark lee.

word count: 2.1k

genre: fluff, strangers to friends!au, author!mark x reporter!reader

a/n: i impulsively wrote this in the wee hours of the morning because i can't stop thinking about mark lee and his poems! btw, this is my first time posting an au on this platform, but i do have ongoing twitter fics (written in eng/fil)!

I had just finished my late night shift at the office and was on my way home from work. Being a field reporter is not an easy job. I have to work my butt off to always stay up to date on the latest news and make sure to grab even the rarest exclusives.

I have to travel to basically anywhere, just to gather the most accurate information for the daily primetime news. And even if work is done for the day, I would usually go overtime to make sure no single detail is left out for tomorrow’s reports.

My workplace isn’t that far from home, or what I call home now. Moving into my elder sister’s old apartment was not a hassle. It was actually quite a blessing since I always used to stay over whenever we visited the city. I really thank the heavens that her place was near my workplace. Imagine the struggle of moving in and out from scratch. Actually, I wouldn’t even dare to imagine.

I would usually ride my bike to and from the office, but since I was running a bit late earlier in the morning, I decided to take the bus. Convenience at its finest. But it’s late now. A fifteen minute walk back home won’t hurt, right? Besides, I needed a breather. A walk in the nearby park would suffice.

It’s midnight and of course, the park is empty. Although Seoul is alive 24/7, I really like how some areas still have that laid-back vibe. I walk to the swings and place my bag on the ground. I do wish someone would push me right now. I just wanna be free from all the hectic stuff I’ve been doing lately.

But no, the quick rest I thought of didn’t stop me from going over tomorrow’s duties. I scan my little, brown notepad and check the work I have yet to accomplish. I mostly finished them before I got off work, but there is one more that I needed to do for tomorrow: interview Mr. Mark Lee, the author of the best-selling Late Night Scribbles.

It’s a collection of poems and prose he’s written over the course of five years during his travels to different cities as a renowned travel writer. His travel reviews and recommendations were something I always looked forward to reading. Maybe someday I could go on a stress-free holiday trip thanks to his advice.

I have read his book. For someone who’s trained into more technical writing like me, I could still clearly resonate with most of the poems he’s written. Not too shallow, not too deep. Though you do need to have a sense of literature in order to understand more of his deeper works. He isn’t famous for nothing.

What appalled me though is that he never showed his face to anyone, not even once. Some say he’s actually the main rapper of the world-renowned boy group NCT, since they bear the same name. I think otherwise. Well, it could be, though. Rappers do make their own lines and tell their own stories.

But I don’t think that Mark Lee would be the same person I’d be interviewing tomorrow. It’s weird because I won’t be actually meeting him face to face. He said he’d rather converse through email. Works for me since I don’t have to travel tomorrow. Thank God.

Well, let me tell you a secret. The reason I don’t think author Mark Lee is singer Mark Lee is because singer Mark Lee is actually my childhood best friend. Crazy, huh? I used to live in Vancouver when I was young until my family and I moved back to Korea during my teen years.

I don’t think he remembers me, though. But I do remember him. Our moms were practically best friends. I couldn’t say the same to us, only if he still actually remembers me.

I stretch my arms up high and bend it side to side. God, I need a massage asap. I was about to pick up my bag when a basketball rolled over and hit the tip of my loafers. A man dressed in black waves from the court, signaling to toss the ball to his direction.

I would toss it if I could but I walk over instead. Blame my poor strength and reflexes. And I obviously do not want to embarrass myself. A rough day’s a rough day. I don’t want an addition.

“Uhm, are you looking for this?” I ask the guy, tossing the ball mid-air.

“Yes, thank you…” he pauses. “uh…”

“Oh, it’s (y/n).” I introduced myself, “And you are?”

“Minhyung.”

“Well, you’re welcome, Minhyung. Good luck with your basketball practice!” I gave him a nod before finally turning back to go home.

“Wait!” he calls out. “Do you maybe wanna have a cup of coffee? There’s a nearby convenience store still open. I figured you might need it.”

Was it that obvious? I can’t imagine how stressed I look right now! He has probably seen the dark circles under my eyes. Gross.

I finally turn around and give him a smile, “You know, maybe I do need it. Let’s go?”

This man and I walk to the nearby convenience store just a few meters away from the court. It’s midnight and not many people are here. Well, just exactly like how I want it. The park can actually become full, even until 10 pm. But I guess these people also need some shut-eye. I’m actually surprised this man right here still has some energy left.

I wait outside and sit at the nearest gazebo while he buys instant coffee for the both of us. He arrives with three in hand. Does he like coffee that much?

“You’re really gonna drink two?” I ask him curiously.

“It’s actually for you,” he says as he hands me one of the cups. “I feel like you’re going to be staying up late tonight.”

Well, he’s right. I am gonna be staying up late. I still need to prepare questions for tomorrow’s, or later, rather, interview. I really won’t be getting some sleep tonight. I also need to do research on him too.

“Well, I do have an interview for tomorrow. I still need to prepare as it’s a very important one.”

“With whom, may I ask?”

“Mark Lee, the author. Not the singer.”

“Oh,” he lets out a soft sigh that can be heard, even through his mask. Is he offended that I don’t think author Mark Lee and singer Mark Lee are the same?

“Why do you sound so disappointed?”

“Uh, nothing. I just remembered the book he recently released. Have you read it?”

“Late Night Scribbles?”

“Yes, that!” he answered enthusiastically. Wow, I guess I found a fan right here. He might actually help me with my interview later. I need to grab this chance.

“Do you mind helping me? I’m actually going to interview him about it tomorrow.” I gave him the widest smile, hoping he’d say yes. I normally wouldn’t do this to strangers, especially at night. But I really just need to get this over with.

“Well, as someone who’s a fan of his works. I’d like to give it a try and interpret it,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Just imagine I’m Mark Lee. Shoot your questions.”

“Hmm, I can’t be answering personal questions since you’re not Mark Lee.” I scratch my head. Damn, I can’t think of anything. My brain is not working right now! “But if you were Mark Lee, what would you want to be asked?”

“If I were Mark Lee? Well, rather than asking what my inspiration was behind the works I’ve made, I’d rather be asked on how I tried to convey my thoughts and feelings to this piece of work,” he explained, staring at the night sky.

I followed the direction of his gaze, and he’s looking at Orion, one of the brightest constellations out there. I gaze at it too while waiting for him to continue explaining.

“But isn’t it basically the same as drawing inspiration from something?” I ask profoundly.

“Not really. You can draw inspiration from anything. And you can come up with different outputs based on one inspiration. What’s important is how you’re able to connect the context of what you’re writing to the feelings you want to draw out,” he continues.

“With a single inspiration, I can come up with two completely different works based on how it’s written. The idea may be the same but the context is not.”

“Hmm, care to explain a little further?” I ask politely.

“We can use Black Socks as an example.”

Black socks are underrated

The way they connect the bottom sleeves of

my black sweatpants to my black sneakers

is just perfect

Pleasure from perfect alignment

That also goes for the ability to be parallel

with my thoughts and actions

I try to live out what’s in my mind, and keep

it consistent even when forgotten like a

working habit

A moment to think twice about what

seemed unimportant

Black socks have been making my day

these days and I knew I had to return the

favor by acknowledging them

I throw you in the bin only so that you can

be renewed again

“Black socks, literally an ordinary object that is tossed to the bin right after use. But what caught my eye is his appreciation for this mundane thing.”

“Through his words, you can tell black socks gave him comfort. He used a simple subject to convey his inner thoughts of how every little thing we don’t really recognize can actually be part of our routine, our life,” he said, looking me in the eye seriously.

“He found comfort in the most ordinary things no ordinary person would take notice of.”

Minhyung stands up and stretches his arms. He then continues, “It’s actually cool he shared this piece with us. If I were him, I’d go on and ramble how black socks could ruin my laundry.”

We both chuckle at the thought. It’s true. I hate how some of my black socks actually ruin my laundry. I dread the thought.

“It’s only a matter of perception, (y/n). Sometimes, you have to open your eyes and see, not look. Listen, not hear. Savor, not taste. Feel, not touch.”

“You know, you could actually be Mark Lee himself,” I tease him, “You do know your literature.”

I know he smiled at my remark. I can see his cheekbones rise from the edges of his mask.

“Sometimes, you just have to ask the right questions in order to get the answers you want,” he said teasingly. “You can’t get what you want if you don’t know what you want.”

For a stranger, he’s indeed a good talker. I actually learned so much from our talk tonight.

“Thanks for tonight, Minhyung. I really learned a lot.” I thank him before gulping down the last cup of coffee he bought me. “And thanks for the coffee, by the way! I now have energy to prepare for my interview later.”

“No problem. I’m just glad that I was able to help.”

I stood up from my seat and we both started walking away from the park.

“It’s 1 am. How are you gonna get home, (y/n)?” Minhyung asks worriedly. Yeah, it is pretty late. It’s a good thing I just live near.

“My apartment’s just two blocks away. I can manage,” I say with a smile, a genuine one at that. “How about you?”

“I’ll just grab a cab. Do you mind if I walk you home?” I don’t know why but I felt flustered for a moment. Surprisingly though, I just nodded my head, giving him permission to accompany me home.

We both arrive at the entrance of my apartment building and we say our last goodbyes.

“For a stranger, you really do know how to make people comfy,” I say, crossing my arms and giving him a stare, brows furrowed to tease him.

“Well, that’s just how I am,” he says while giving me a wink. Okay, now he’s flirting. Someone stop him, please. Just kidding.

“By the way, you haven’t taken your mask off the entire time except when drinking coffee. I couldn’t get a good glimpse at you since it was dark,” I explain. It’s true. Add the fact that I’m barely keeping myself awake the whole time. “I might’ve actually thought you’re an idol of some sort. Perhaps, maybe you are Mark Lee.”

“What?” he asks, puzzled and clearly taken aback. “Why’d you think so?”

“Because you share the same name with him.”

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