#falls excerpts

[sakshinarula]

I feel like a galaxy when you look at me. No one has ever looked at my darkness with so much love.

-The Art Of Staying Lost, Sakshi Narula

[russalki]

— Anne Carson, “The Fall of Rome: A Traveller’s Guide”, from Glass, Irony and God

[lucidloving]

Kirsten Robinson // Christine Riccio, Again, But Better // Lori Deschene // Maddison Vernon // Julissa Loaliza // @flowerais-archive

[aaabatteryy]

my friend let me borrow her copy of Journal 3, so I've been working on decoding it and just generally reading through it all day

but one thing I'd like to note is the page about the Gideon-Bot (or the Chubtron Loser-Droid One Thousand) and there's a small segment at the bottom of the page I'm near tears over.

"McGucket built it. I guess he'll invent stuff for anyone who will hang out with him. Still can't tell if he's a good guy or a bad guy."

HE'LL INVENT STUFF FOR ANYONE WHO HANGS OUT WITH HIM??

really brings to light about what exactly Fidds and Ford had, especially knowing what we do from the missing pages in The Book of Bill and the website (more specifically that one picture of them in college after proving Fidds' theory about the universe being a hologram). not only was Fidds sticking with Ford because he'd hang out with him and work along side him, but that they were friends. no wonder Fidds was willing to leave his wife and son (not looking at it from the pov of a fiddauthor shipper)

[fairydrowning]

I love the concept of growing into love more than falling in love at first sight. Like, love grows into your heart just as how a seed grows and bloom into a beautiful flower.

[hedgehog-moss]

In other news, this week a French publisher on his way to the London Book Fair was arrested by British counter-terrorist police to be questioned about his participation in protests in France.

A French publisher has been arrested on terror charges in London after being questioned by UK police about participating in anti-government protests in France.

Moret arrived at St Pancras [...] with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem, the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house, to be confronted by the two officers. [...] He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer. [...] He was transferred to a police station in Islington, north London, where he remained in custody on Tuesday. He was later released on bail.

Éditions la Fabrique is known for publishing radical left authors. Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio and had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair. [...]

[Quoting publishing house’s press release] “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act – a quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make, and which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.” [...] “There’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence, but also in terms of a security clampdown.”

(Guardian link - BBC link) (article in French)

The publishing house (here’s their latest statement in French) and the publisher’s lawyer mention that the British police asked him “Do you support Emmanuel Macron? Did you attend protests against the pension reform?” and he was also asked to name the authors with anti-government views that his employer has published. They add, “Asking the representative of a publishing house, in the framework of counter-terrorism, about the opinions of his authors, is pushing even further the logic of political censorship and repression of dissenting thought. In a context of social protests and authoritarian escalation on the part of the French government, this aspect [of the questioning] is chilling.”

Being an accomplice to thoughtcrime by publishing dissident authors gets you treated like an international terrorist now... The publisher’s lawyer suggests that French authorities asked the UK to help them get their hands on the publisher’s contacts in the radical left sphere. But on the face of it, we’ve got: Exercise your right to protest your government in France -> get arrested by counter-terrorist UK police in London. That’s literally the reason he was given for being greeted by police at the train station...

[skywalkr-nberrie]

Anakin’s love and marriage to Padmé wasn’t the issue of why he fell to the dark side. He was already being groomed by Palpatine in becoming his apprentice, and Padmé not being there wouldn’t have changed that. She just made it easier. Anakin was born a slave, which doesn’t leave him in the right headspace, and ever since Shmi died, Anakin became more unstable. Inevitably, he became more obsessed with control and wanting the power to stop the ones he loves from dying. Had Padmé not been in his life, Anakin still would have fallen due to Palpatine’s manipulations and topped with the Jedi’s mistreatment of Anakin. The Jedi and even OW failed Anakin in a way where Anakin came to a point where he doubts their faith in him, and he in return loses his trust him them. He says so himself in the ROTS novel. None of that had anything to do with Padmé.

But to insinuate that Anakin only cared for gaining “power” and essentially his “greed” is to blame for his actions, is super reductive understanding of his character. Yes, Anakin was greedy for control, and power. But not because he’s power hungry and wants to rule the galaxy. He only ever wanted more power to keep his loved ones safe, to assume control over what happens to him. (and this would’ve happened even if he and Padmé weren’t together.) saying that if Anakin “truly cared about saving his wife”, he would have told OW or any of the masters about his situation but didn’t because he was “greedy” is again, incorrect. Because Anakin DID go to the Jedi for advice. He talked to Yoda. Anakin put his faith into the Jedi but they didn’t exactly lead him down the path he needed.

Doubled with the fact that he knows the Council doesn’t trust him, and him not being sure he can trust them, (yes, including OW.) this led him to seeking answers in other and more dangerous places. Which was Palpatine. Whom Anakin is already vulnerable to and was being groomed by. Anakin’s fall to the darkside was due to his desperation and desire to save his wife, the love of his life. Not because he was greedy for more power and that he didn’t truly care about saving Padmé. That’s just a bad analysis of his character, intentions, and motivations. Anakin only became obsessed with the idea of “gaining power to rule and obtain authority” happened AFTER he fell. And that’s because the darkside plays with your sanity like that, makes you want and do things you normally wouldn’t do or want.

The main point is: Anakin’s fall doesn’t stem from his greed for wanting power because he seeks heroism, status, and authority. It was out of genuine love and desperation for his wife. Then again, his marriage to Padmé also isn’t to blame for his fall, because that was due to Anakin’s own fear of loss and abandonment. He would’ve fallen under any circumstance, with how unstable, vulnerable, and manipulated he was. That was the tragedy. He was always doomed to fall.

[wordedarchive]

A pleasant September Sunday after all. Summer had faded to a distant memory almost beyond recall.

Haruki Murakami via wordedarchive

[19silvermirrors]

Softly 😘

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[eris-eveningstar]

Me, writing chapter 18: hmm, fun but freaky. Let's skip to the good part.

Me, writing the good part: 🌶

⬇⬇⬇

(Here's a tiny excerpt, congrats)

"Oh, God, Tom, please."

"I'll make you see God," he uttered, his voice hoarse, "Just give me the word."

"Please," he cried.

And Tom answered.

[ckret2]

One of the things that came with immortality—mature, cosmic-scale immortality, not baby immortality like you found in vampires with a few measly centuries under their belts—was an expertise at meditation.

And it had nothing to do with being particularly wise, or serene, or enlightened (although Bill would argue he himself happened to be all those things). Even the most rambunctious, cantankerous, petty, spiteful, impatient, silly immortal in the multiverse could drop into a thoughtless trance deeper than the Mariana Trench with nothing but five seconds' notice that he had some time to kill and there was nothing interesting on TV. 

Most mortals struggled with this idea, the same way fish struggled to understand how it was so easy for land mammals to hold their breath underwater. They didn't understand that it was a necessary survival skill.

Some millennia were boring. "You've had every conversation you can imagine with every person you know, you won't see a fresh planet for an eon, you're floating in the void of space, and your only company is the glitter thrown off of dead stars" boring. So boring the only way to get through them was by holding your breath until they were over. And in those times, the only way to endure the soul-crushing mind-shredding suicide-inducing boredom of those long, slow, dull millennia was knowing how to productively dissociate for the next five thousand years without so much as needing a snack break.

Bill was very old. Bill was very good at meditating.

It wasn't doing him a bit of good.

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"The month of half summer, half autumn. Half sophistication, half barbarity."

~ John Lewis-Stempel, Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field, "September"

[fairydrowning]

"You look like you've eaten the sun, like you drank so much sunlight you're drowning in it."

– Yves Olade, from Bloodsport; "When Rome Falls"

[incorrect-primarchs-quotes]

I'm gonna share some excerpts between Abaddon and his adopted daughter.

Warning: SPOILERS for "The fall of Cadia" by Robert Rath, don't read if you hate spoilers. Emotional ending (I cried).

Their meeting:

Chatting:

(Context: she can read minds)

[wordedarchive]

september tastes of ashes. and yet it insists. softly. but it insists.

julia de burgos, autumn psalm