#blotched-poetry

[sinligh]

You seek approval,

my subconscious implemented in my dreams. you build up illusions of yourself

and like a bridge thread of a spider web you give them to others

silky, sticky yet somehow,

you’re smooth enough to lure them to wrap you in all that you desire,

even if it’s their own pleasure.

you’re not stuck you’re waiting, for an ending or a beginning

an unsolicited death, an indefinite life

you fear your own madness but the edge of it is what you live for.

you wait, and wait and wait for love to visit the fragile home you made for yourself in this temporary world

but it’s not what you want, is it ?

because the moment it knocks on your door you rush to the arms of another,

paranoia or melancholy? It doesn’t matter.

you writhe and hiss until you shed a skin of a past life that you held on

For acceptance alone, if nothing else…

what is it that you truly desire?

•••

• Quotes: Susan Sontag/ Edgar Allan Poe/ Emily Dickinson/ Halsey/ Sylvia Plath/ Christa Wolf.

• Original context: Sinligh

• Art reference:

1. Art by Edward Burne-Jones. 2. Art from Sedmikrasky (Daisies). 3. Dave McKean, "Sandman" graphic novel. 4. Art by Roberto Ferri. 5. Painting by William Oxer. 6. Craww's "Woven".

[learningto-write]

it can't quite explain this feeling

I've heard so much about mending broken hearts, with time, with love, with the right person

but I never hear about the hearts that are so shattered they can never fit back together

I never hear about the hearts that have been betrayed and tormented countless times

I never hear about how guarded and closed off our hearts become, and how truly nothing feels as though it can break through

I never hear about how deep, whirl wind, soul tied love feels impossible - is my heart even capable anymore ?

I never hear, about hearts like mine

[clandestine-sadboy]

You can’t force someone to love you. You can’t force someone to stay. You can’t have that love anymore. They never wanted it anyway.

When will I feel like my love isn’t suicide?

Trey K.

[deer-daughterx]

It is a strangely treacherous feeling, to see you here in front of me when I’ve been staring at after images of you in places you haven’t been in years.

-Forgotten places

[cosmicmote]

The Study of People as Lovers

same painting used as previous Chill Day piece, but with slightly different editing.

does the sun repeat itself?

does the rocket to the moon?

I feel like the poem should be expanded on, in longer form

graphic and words ©spacetree 2023

[followcb]

Like a lovable friend, this poem has come back around life's bend..... and how it's tale continues to transcend. ❤️ 😍 💖.

Her Favorite Chair

she unlocks secrets

parlays rainy days

plays hide and seek

with clouds and sun

perhaps an unexpected, overcast past

taught her how to interpret

shadows and storms

and how moods intersect

today, she now finds

a sense of contentedness

inner bliss and happiness

home peering out her windows

watching gray skies arrive

she grabs a book, pops open a beer

excited about inclement weather

reclined and relaxed, she's ready

to watch tv and watch it rain

as she settles into her favorite chair

(c) @followcb | October 26, 2019

[unuskvloo]

-/ batim oc /-

Name: Bonnie “Bella” Clarke

Age: Thirty-Four

Pronouns: She/Her

Gender(optional): Trans Female

Species: Formerly Human. Now transformed into an Ink Humanoid

Job/Role in the studio: Voice Actress for “Bella”

Likes: Watching artists draw and the animation process, Jazz/Swing Music, Socializing with others, The “Boris the Wolf” character, Poetry, Reading Thriller Novels, Tap-Dancing

Dislikes: Mistakes of any kind (heavily judges her self-worth and integrity), Flaws and Failure, Messy Food, Closed/Narrow Areas, Sammy Lawrence, Susie Campbell, Sitting Within the Quiet

Relationships: TBA (Open for any kind of connections/relationships)

Backstory: (More or less a very simplified version)

- To perform as an antagonist, artists eventually created concepts and the final product of their most mischievous character: Batty Bella. The one to cause most antics that are meant to tempt the demon to continue his devilish activities. A contrast to Alice Angel; one that is there to “throw a wrench into his schemes”. The little devil on one shoulder as the angel stands on another.

- Bonnie was assigned the role after being hired through a friend of the company. Despite the major risks that came for being “different”, through tons of back-and-forths, Bonnie secured the role once she “fit the description”. While there weren’t the best intentions made in mind when assigning her Batty Bella. Nonetheless, she was ecstatic to be able to voice act within a toon that would be watched by many.

- However, in one moment- she could recall her vocal chords straining and vibrating to hit certain high notes of a particular song. And in the next, she would feel something impale her stomach. There are numerous blotches within her memories, unable to recall the moment before or during the ink machine debacle. But, nonetheless, the ink machine recreated the woman into something that felt more comfortable than her own skin. Even if her new form is not ideal for outsiders.

Extra Info:

- Voice Claim is Belle Baker (Song - If I Had a Talking Picture of You (1929)

- Feels as though the character was made for her in some instances when reading the synopsis of Batty Bella. Bonnie always had interest in ballerinas and other hobbies/activities considered feminine.

- Always feels at least suspicious or wary of other angels due to a part of her sensing (or assuming) one of them stabbed her.

- Ring and pinky fingers are melted together.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

How do you think the M6 would react to a lying MC? Whether it’s to them or some one else is up to you or how extreme the lie is. Thank you, Arcana Headcannon Jesus <3

The Arcana HCs: M6 and the lies MC tries to tell them

~ oh boy, i did not expect being called Arcana Headcannon Jesus to hit my religious trauma like that, that was a vibe check lol

considering how in the stories MC tends to omit the truth at worst and be painfully blunt at best, i'm going to write them as a terrible liar just as a personal design choice. and also because it makes me laugh. thanks for the prompt, anon, i hope it makes you smile! - brainrot ~

Julian

You can totally read his handwriting

You love it when he writes you love letters, they warm your heart, but truthfully you can only make out maybe a quarter of the words on the page

But you can't tell him that because you don't want him to feel like all that beautiful poetry went to waste

At least you think it was poetry

You're running some errands, does he need anything?

Ah, a list of obscure medical devices. Which may or may not be available. And he wrote it down for you, how sweet!

You're so busy trying to decipher the ink blotches that you don't notice his smirk

He totally believes you can read his writing, and all the words on the paper are totally not made up medical jargon

He never says anything because he lives for the moment he can bend over your shoulder and murmur the words he wrote into your quickly reddening ear

Asra

You don't mind the questionable objects they bring into the shop without warning at all

Nope, not the bidet-shaped flamethrower

Or the screeching rattle he replaced the shop's front door bell with that makes every incoming customer jump

Or their favorite painting containing colors that the human eye was not intended to see, prominently hung on your kitchen wall

Or the jar of kool-aid pickled garlic, which he still can't open even though it's been slowly emitting a toxic stench for the last month, and which he refuses to part with because he hasn't been able to try it yet

They love you, but they love pranking you too, and seeing your reactions makes them giggle

He would never cause you any harm though

Which is why their collection of poison spitting cacti stays in a pocket realm, next to the void that wouldn't stop teaching the stove salamander explosive curse words

Nadia

You know royal etiquette like it's second nature

You know all the titles there are, you never get things like pontifex and praetor and procurator mixed up

The table place settings make total sense, who wouldn't use a slightly different type of fork to eat every kind of dish?

And nothing entertains you more than petty politics, nothing at all

In fact, you don't even find Nadia's highly accomplished family remotely intimidating

They're perfectly normal people, just like you, and you are just like them, every move is graceful and your clothes are always pristine

Nadia adores your spirited approach and will happily move purposefully slowly at the dinner table so you know which fork to grab and how to eat the complicated dishes that get served

According to her, you know what you're doing better than anyone else does

Muriel

You can reach and lift anything he can, no problem

You just need a little more time, but you'll get it

You can get the fallen tree split up for firewood and carted into storage, no biggie

Okay so the sun is setting now and you started before lunch and it never takes him longer than half an hour, but you took a lot of breaks okay

But if he wants to spend time with you that badly, he can help a little

Now you just need to lift those bowls down to eat, you've got this, you're a good climber

You never develop any suspicions around why daily necessities always end up on the top shelves, or why Muriel is so open to you helping with outside chores

He likes being needed

The face you make when you're frustrated is adorable

And he loves that you will never admit it

Portia

Please, you can absolutely keep up with her energy levels

Walking to the palace to get a shopping list

And trekking down into the city and through the floating market, the center marketplace, and the south end market to get everything

All to climb back up countless stairs with all your purchases

And walk through all the hallways to give everything to the multitude of requesters

And then back to the cottage for the evening

So you can cook the big evening meal and sweep and mop the floors and spend a few hours weeding the garden

And then all the way back out to the Rowdy Raven for a night of drinking and dancing

And then all the way back home so you can go to bed

She never pressures you to join her, but she always invites you

Hey, she likes spending time with you and you're cute when you're flushed

Lucio

You believe all his tall tales, they're so realistic

Dove to the depths of the ocean and defeated a giant minnow? Totally

Took out a thousand trained killers with one swipe of his mighty gauntlet? Mmmhm

Climbed to the top of the highest mountain to pluck some stars from the sky, which is how he got these diamonds? Of course

He can go days without eating or drinking and never crave sustenance? That tracks, he doesn't have a gluttonous bone in his body

He knows he can be narcissistic sometimes, but he's not *that* delusional

But he likes seeing your little smile as you indulge his fantasies, because you do it out of love and not mockery

And maybe he likes pretending just for a minute that what he's saying is true

[grandhotelabyss]

Have you read any of the Sagas or other old Scandinavian stuff? If not, I think you’d like Egil’s Saga, and have some interesting points to make about Njal’s Saga.

Egil's Saga is the only one I read, but that was a long time ago, and I couldn't do more than repeat commonplaces about it. I definitely want to read Njal's Saga—they say it's the best one—and the Vinland Sagas for the American connection. I loved the starkness of the landscapes and the outbreaks of violence and terror, while sometimes getting tangled up in the genealogies and social relations. I am attracted to Seamus Heaney's idea that these texts are the Northern rivals to the Mediterranean epic tradition and to David Mitchell's idea, laundered through his Martin Amis-like fictional writer Crispin Hershey in The Bone Clocks, that they are at the origins of all later narrative poetry and fiction, which I will quote here since I don't have a more personal answer for you:

“If you’re writing fiction or poetry in a European language, that pen in your hand was, once upon a time, a goose quill held by an Icelander. Like it or not, know it or not, it doesn’t matter. If you seek to represent the beauty, truth, and pain of the world in prose, if you seek to deepen character via dialogue and action, if you seek to unite the personal, the past, and the political in fiction, then you’re in pursuit of the same aims sought by the authors of the Icelandic sagas, right here, seven, eight, nine hundred years ago. I assert that the author of Njal’s Saga deploys the very same narrative tricks used later by Dante and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Molière, Victor Hugo and Dickens, Halldór Laxness and Virginia Woolf, Alice Munro and Ewan Rice [another fictional writer in Mitchell’s novel]. What tricks? Psychological complexity, character development, the killer line to end a scene, villains blotched with virtue, heroic characters speckled with villainy, foreshadow and backflash, artful misdirection. Now, I’m not saying that writers in antiquity were ignorant of all of these tricks but,” here I put my balls and Auden’s on the block, “in the sagas of Iceland, for the first time in Western culture, we find proto-novelists at work. Half a millennium avant le parole, the sagas are the world’s first novels.”

[outofangband]

Butterflies and moths of Doriath

Flora, fauna, geography and environment Masterlist

As always I included world building notes at the bottom so it’s not just a list of species

There are hundreds of species of butterflies found throughout the region of Doriath. Though Tolkien abandoned the idea that butterflies, all originated in the Nan Tathren, which was written in the book of lost tales, I do like to headcanon that this remained a legend or folktale in universe

Note: there are so many species of insects, this unfortunately cannot be a complete list

Primarily Neldoreth: orange tip (outskirts), elm autumn moth, Aglia tau, silver washed fritillary, dotted border moth, brown tail moth, comma butterfly

Primarily Nivrim: Checkered skipper, purple hairstreak (found in Region too), green hair streak, large copper, white prominent moth, purple emperor, large tortoiseshell

Primarily Region: Holly blue, northern blue, oak lantern moth, bird cherry ermine moth, blotched emerald moth

Throughout Doriath: ghost moth, wood white, cranberry blue, green longhorn moth, Luna moth, peacock butterfly, ghost moth, lilac leafminer moth, paper moth, white Pearl moth, red admiral, Heath fritillary, light emerald moth

Forest edges and clearings: short tailed blue, pea blue, purple edged copper, small copper, speckled wood, green hairstreak, wal brown, scarce swallowtail, clouded Apollo, blue spot hairstreak, twin spot fritillary, Julia,

World building notes

-Butterflies and moths, as a whole are associated among the Sindar with transformation and cycles of life as they are in many cultures. They are also symbols of abundance, color and precision/agility. Different species and varieties will have more specific connotations, however

-Arthórien has rare, even rainforest butterflies due to the difference in temperature and rainfall. I will make a separate post for its butterflies!

-The gardens of Menengroth also have several species of rare butterflies not found elsewhere in Doriath. These are nurtured by Melian’s power.

-ghost moths are associated with spring and summer for their bright colors and emergence in warmer weather. Insects and flora have had a large influence on color and pigmentation in Sindarin practices, both as inspiration and material.

There are even practices of safely collecting the dust and pollen that collect on the wings and legs of insects; it is immensely time consuming and precise.

-Orange tips can be found on the sigils of certain Doriath nobles. Their image is sometimes used in Doriathrim fashion, especially in jewel and hair pieces made from wood or metal. Alder bark is typically used to create the orange color

It was from these species among others that pollination was originally studied by the Sindar of Doriath.

-The purple hairstreak is associated with twilight and the darker reaches of the forest. This is primarily for its color as like most species of its family, they tend to emerge mainly on sunny days. They feed mostly on oak trees. The name for this species in Ilkorin translates to butterfly of twilight.

Their almost shadow like appearance in flight makes them a favorite for artists who make prints and illustrate naturalist work!

-Wood whites are often associated with niphredil both for their color and their habitat.

Note: I always imagine Niënor wearing a hair piece or embroidery with this species during her time in Doriath

-Luna moths are highly associated with Melian and with Lórien. They symbolize night, dream, and desire and appear as motifs in a lot of later Sindar poetry and art

[sinligh]

It’s early summer,

the hopeless romantic in me found her way to the surface when the heat melted couple of my overprotective layers.

so here i am, allowing her a moment of spotlight and myself some vulnerability.

it’s past midnight, I’m sitting in floor of my kitchen eating fruits with a knife

wondering, if it’s really safe to romanticize life?

I indulge myself anyway, and think about how fruits can be considered a love language if you’re starved enough to taste love that’s throughly stained with muted apologies. 

I trust, that when the sun rises tomorrow all my attempts to romanticize life will sublimate and create a thick fog of melancholy that I’ll have no other option but to get lost into.

even so, tonight I’m tired enough to let it be and so i write this, my own report of pathology

officially it’s untitled, but I’m thinking: the pathology of love.

i start by resecting pieces of all the habits that i define my existence based on along with some of the heartache that i held onto for too long

deep down, i know some of it belongs to my mother

At least its mature flavor says so, that, balanced with the sweet essence of an overly ripe fruit that never belonged

Young and brash and an acquired taste.

it’s a poorly fixed microscopic tissue, preserved in a high percentage of feminine rage

Low expectations stained with love and paranoia alike and the question that asks itself:

is it benign or malignant?

is it infiltrating my soul, taking away from my potential to grow ?

It stays unanswered, an unforced error

because i always carry those little versions of me that vary in the percentage of their belief in my own bone marrow

a core biopsy will always show that i still believe.

•••

•Quotes: Anaïs Nin/ Sylvia Plath/ Virgina Woolf/ Franz Kafka/Marcel Proust/ Simone de Beauvoir/Anne Carson/ Andrea Gibson/Anaïs Nin

•Original context:

•Art reference:

1. British School - Head of a girl, c. 1850. 2. Painting ( details) by Richard E. Miller. 3. Paintings by Jen Mazza. 4. Neil Carroll Original Oil Painting Realism Impressionism. 5. The Gross Clinic (details), by Thomas Eakins 6. Wounds of the Earth by xis.lanyx. 7.painting by Herbert James Draper.

[learningto-write]

And as I knelt next to her, my heart on fire

I whispered

Whatever your soul is made of my darling - mine is made of the same stuff

- on truely being in love

[clandestine-sadboy]

You came over to see me.. all I could think of was “finally” we have been missing each other… or at least I’ve been missing you. I was confused on your sudden need to leave in such a hurry. But I couldn’t stay mad at you because well just look at you, you’re everything. Your eyes alone are enough to make me melt where I stand.

Today I was told you were coming by to do our friends nails- I couldn’t help myself but to think it was just an excuse to be around me for the day.

I sit at the table and I can’t take my eyes off of you as you sing seasons in the sun and it’s the most beautiful feeling I’ve known to this very day. 

-Trey.K

[deer-daughterx]

The way straggling stars bite through the sky’s milky haze-

The way you looked at me and I wondered how anyone thought the sky could be purely black in the murky graveyard above.

The way that something falls and doesn’t know how to go back.

When things are gone, I like to think they got lost in the recollection of what they used to be.

[gaunt-and-hungry]

Dreamt last night that Francis Crozier kept trying to write a short litany of love poetry. It looked something like this: "You are beautiful the way th' ocean is beautiful. Crest'n foam bout the waves. Tides'n rough wrought'n blades. Stingin a'bite thorough hayze. Fresh lick o salt to m'tongue, dewlike down m'bowsprit an I fret it tears far fore our paces met macushla. I pace bout the top beastin' bray an think of you, if you were, if you c'have me and I have ye, m' beour. Impermissible t'weould be. An in me thinks yer of my Iseult and I Tristan. 'an I'd make ye happy. Likes of a sailor on thar sea happy. For yer as much I nautical an t'gethar we come an go tides and all. If y'd have me. an if y'd have me." There was a pile of them on his desk in his bedcabin and most were crumpled and all soaked with some blotches of ink and it looked as if he were incredibly frustrated with it.

[cycas]

Could you talk about the ‘Subtle Work : Inks and Writings in Eregion’ wip?

This is basically a story about how the Doors of Moria ended up with moon-writing on them... The best place to get ink in all of Ost-in-Edhil was the House of Saramor. It was a small place with a low wooden door and a fine glass window full of glinting bottles in every possible colour. 

Inside, there were more bottles: stacked three deep on wooden shelves, and piles of ink-sticks, pens and brushes of many kinds. 

Beside the door there was a table filled with pressed linen paper, birch-bark strung on fine strings, reed-paper, and a few precious offcuts of fine vellum, on which visitors had written lines of poetry, names,  jokes and songs. 

It was Celebrían’s favorite shop. She could spend hours there, choosing inks and writing a line in this shade of emerald green, another in a rust-red or the gold of chestnut-leaves in early autumn, and emerge with blotched fingers and a mind full of colours and curving letter-shapes that almost seemed to fly across the page, like birds in flight. 

******

“I think we should have a design inscribed on the doors,”  Celebrimbor said to Narvi, frowning at the plan laid out on the table before him. “The symbols of Eregion and of the House of Durin together.  Hammer, and crown, for the Dwarves, the Two Trees, for Galadriel, and... my star.”

“You can’t do that.” Narvi held up a hand to halt Celebrimbor before he could begin sketching. “Our doors are always hidden when they are closed. Tradition, see? And a wise one.  If anyone could see the closed doors, they’d know just where to dig.”

“But these doors aren’t going to be shut,” Celebrimbor argued. “They’re practically ceremonial. That’s why we widened the entrance-way and put in the steps after all, so that Ost-in-Edhil and the City Under Mountain can be connected forever. The gates will be standing open, with an honour guard just to keep an eye on them. Stop sheep from wandering in and getting lost, that sort of thing.  They don’t need to be secret.”