#fleckers

[dottie-n-stripes]

do you know him???????

[nobeerreviews]

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.

-- James Elroy Flecker

(Malaga, Spain)

[petaltexturedskies]

James Elroy Flecker, from "Don Juan Declaims" in The Collected Poems

[apoemaday]

To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence

by James Elroy Flecker

I who am dead a thousand years, And wrote this sweet archaic song, Send you my words for messengers The way I shall not pass along. I care not if you bridge the seas, Or ride secure the cruel sky, Or build consummate palaces Of metal or of masonry. But have you wine and music still, And statues and a bright-eyed love, And foolish thoughts of good and ill, And prayers to them who sit above? How shall we conquer? Like a wind That falls at eve our fancies blow, And old Maeonides the blind Said it three thousand years ago. O friend unseen, unborn, unknown, Student of our sweet English tongue, Read out my words at night, alone: I was a poet, I was young. Since I can never see your face, And never shake you by the hand, I send my soul through time and space To greet you. You will understand.

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

Yasmin

(A Ghazel Country Song)

How splendid in the morning glows

The lily: with what grace he throws

His supplication to the rose, Yasmin.

But when the silver dove descends

I find the little flower of friends

Whose very name thus sweetly ends: Yasmin.

The morning light is clear and cold:

I dare not in that light behold

A whiter light, a deeper gold, Yasmin.

Shower down thy love, O burning bright!

For one night or the other night

Will come the Gardener in white, Yasmin.

[ispaceizz]

While we're on the topic of Pencil,

(2024 redraw of this meme):

(Original 2021 -> redraw 2022)

[addictedtowords16]

Between the Pedestals of Night and Morning  Between red death and radiant desire  With not one sound of triumph or of warning  Stands the great sentry on the Bridge of Fire.  O transient soul, thy thought with dreams adorning,  Cast down the laurel, and unstring the lyre:  the wheels of Time are turning, turning, turning,  The slow stream channels deep and doth not tire.  Gods on their bridge above  Whispering lies and love Shall mock your passage down the sunless river  Which, rolling all it streams, shall take you, king of dreams, --Unthroned and unapproachable for ever--  To where the kings who dreamed of old  Whiten in habitations monumental cold

James Elroy Flecker

[altariz]

One with my OC’s too okay I’ll stop posting now

Original art

[debsandshit]

Next comic

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[105nt]

Can't settle so am multitasking. Reading Hassan by James Elroy Flecker, re-reading Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers and listening to The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins read by Peter Jeffrey on Audible.

[tritoch]

fuck it. have an enormous oc lore dump. this is the "canon" wol oc i conceived as part of my personal preferred approach in some games to take the game's text as presented, not headcanon away any elements, and, as much as possible, adhere to whatever "definitive" canon as best as can be discerned from what's given as an option. as a comedy bit, I also wanted to make a Warrior of Light who does everything you can do in canon, like an omnijob level 90 did all the raids did all the beast tribes caught every fish did all the relics did every hildi questline kind of WoL. Someone who really does mostly communicate through nods and punch gestures and only says the specific lines you can say in game (except for the scenes, increasingly common in later expacs, where they let you imagine a conversation). I just think it's funny to take an approach to the game that is at once fairly restrained (no elements beyond what is already presented in the lore) and extremely maximalist (yes, he one hundred percent did steal those pants). spoilers through stormblood under the break.

Wolund Anadezhda (not his real name) was born in Bozja in the year 1533 of the Sixth Astral Era to a young gunbreaker in Bozja's army and her husband, a foundling adept of the Verdant Path and fellow soldier. Resolving that their son would not grow up in the shadow of war, the Hrothgar couple resolved to have him sent out of the country shortly after his birth. He grew up instead under the care of his father's adoptive sister, a master of the Verdant Path in her own right, who left Bozja some years prior under uncertain circumstances after a serious injury left her unable to return to the front lines.

The sister (a Sea Wolf Roegadyn) had through various adventures found herself running a Dalmascan caravanserai, a walled inn a day's travel west of the city of Rabanastre. There, she raised Wolund both to run an inn and in the forms of the Verdant Path. Though not a warm woman, she did her best to raise Wolund carefully and lovingly, and honoring her brother and sister-in-law's wishes, tried to shelter him from the horrors of the world. He, in return, idolized her. He received sporadic letters from his parents, at least until Bozja fell. Their ultimate fates are unknown, though Wolund believes that even if they didn't die during the course of the war, they likely died as part of the resistance or in the Bozja Incident.

In the year 1547, 6th AE, Dalmasca is invaded by the IVth Legion. The caravanserai is close enough to the border for the Garlean line to advance past it fairly quickly, and Wolund chooses to remain with his aunt in order to protect her from the occupation as best he could. As Wolund has grown, his aunt has told him stories of the devastation war had wreaked in Bozja, and of the losses she still grieved. She explained to him that students of the Verdant Path such as herself had been targeted by the IVth Legion to be brought in dead or alive in a bid to control their knowledge and break Bozja's ability to resist, and that she had fled the country at her brother's behest to preserve the school's knowledge for future generations. Chafing under Imperial rule, Wolund aspired, at the time, to learn as best he could from her, follow in her footsteps, and do his part to maintain the lineage of the Verdant Path school.

In my conception, the Verdant Path, as a multidisciplinary school that teaches (at least) spear, greatsword, katana, and unarmed combat as part of its tradition, encompasses more of a martial philosophy, conceptual approach to space, and footwork system than a specific set of techniques for various weapons. This is a key element of why Wolund, in order to adhere as closely to the maximum extent of the available canon as possible, can pick up like 19 different martial disciplines, sweet Mary Sue that he is.

As he aged into his late teens and early twenties, Wolund was settling into his role as his aunt's chef, handyman, disciple, and likely future replacement innkeeper, as her war injury made physical labor increasingly difficult. Also around this time, Wolund has a brief engagement with a Keeper of the Moon Mi'qote merchant, part of a tribe of several Keeper families who operated a caravan which plied a route between Rabanastre and Martrvje in Bozja. At her behest, largely as a practical matter on her end though not without some romance, they had a child together, with the intent that, as in most Keeper families, she would raise the child herself, though he would, by grace of the caravan's route, have periodic contact with them both.

Before the child's birth, however, an imperial recruiter looking to fill a quota came through town. And so in the year 1556, 6th AE, at the age of 23, Wolund was conscripted and assigned to the VIth Legion, then a corrupt and disorderly force occupying the relatively peaceful southern coast of Ilsabard. A far cry from Emperor Solus's disciplined armies, the VIth Legion then was scarcely indistinguishable from a private mercenary group answering to local colonial governments.

Wolund struggled after his initial conscription, seething at the prospect of two decades under the Garlean Empire's yoke, fell into despair, and tried to emotionally withdraw. Since he was a quiet, disciplined conscript as well as a young and fairly imposing Hrothgar, his Garlean officers read in him the ready Garleanization that they wished to see. His practiced prowess in the training hall further contrasted his "bestial" appearance in the eyes of the bigoted Garlean officers. In Wolund, they saw a useful tool and status symbol for their occupation.

Consequently, while Wolund's time resembled the expected conscript experience in many respects, it was also marked by unexpected success in the unusual, corrupt environment of the VIth Legion. He spent plenty of time in his first couple of years on hard, undesirable labor, as any conscript would: digging ditches, building infrastructure, policing occupied populations, and, in the singular case of open conflict breaking out, serving on the front lines. However, he stood out from his peers, and he found himself frequently serving as a sort of exotic trophy or bodyguard for increasingly senior officers or local bigwigs. Eventually, he found himself attached to the staff of the legion's 10th Cohort as vexillarius, or standard-bearer, for the cohort's pilus prior. This turned out to be, given his centurion's corruption and close links to the local colonial government, merely a slightly more elevated form of his old work serving as muscle and an imposing presence behind preening dignitaries.

At this point, about six years into his two decades, Wolund's conscription seemed on a steady path to eventual citizenship. For his part, he remained as emotionally disengaged as he could manage, materially secure in his position in the 10th Cohort. The insulated world he built came crashing down in his sixteenth year of service, when crown prince Varis yae Galvus sent his close friend and confidant Regula van Hydrus to reform the corrupt VIth Legion. Many senior officers, including Wolund's centurion, were executed by firing squad for their abuses and indiscretions, with still more clapped in irons and hauled before military tribunals. Efforts to reform the legion's reputedly undisciplined soldiers saw Wolund, like many other conscripts, detached from the VIth in the hopes that reassignment to a more disciplined legion could salvage the conscripts that, in Regula's eyes, the VIth had nearly wrecked. Wolund found himself assigned to the VIIth Legion in 1572, on the eve of Carteneau.

Of Carteneau itself, there is little to say, and what few coherent memories Wolund may have had were taken by Louisoix's magic, along with Eorzea's Warriors of Light. Wolund crawled out of the catastrophe and butchery of the Seventh Umbral Calamity to find himself one of the VIIth's few survivors. Reassigned to the Vth, he served out the rest of his term quietly, though nightmares of Carteneau continued to plague him. While serving in the Vth Legion, he served as a quartermaster and honed his skill in both literacy and sums.

In year 4 of the Seventh Umbral Era, Wolund completed his term of conscription. Engraved and sealed legionary diploma in hand, he made his way to Garlemald itself, where his paperwork was verified and his name added to the citizen's registry. He returned to the caravanserai outside Rabanastre as Wolund pyr Anadezhda. There, he found his aunt, now some 20 years older, and her unexpected apprentice as innkeeper: his own daughter, now a 20-year-old woman and soon to be running the place herself.

For about four months, Wolund tenuously reinserted himself into the daily life of the inn while attempting to form a connection to his daughter and reconnect to his aunt and his daughter's mother. His efforts to begin his life again were cut short when soldiers came sniffing around the caravanserai on the order of a local magistrate, a former officer of the VIth Legion who sought to employ him as a trainer to his household guard. Recognizing that he would not be able to live a life free of the Garlean Empire's boot so long as he remained within their lands, and not wishing to endanger his daughter or aunt by enlisting them in his decision, Wolund simply skipped town one night. He left behind all his possessions except for enough money to see him safely overseas, as well as a letter that stated tersely that he did not wish to be followed. From the caravanserai he made his way by horse to Rabanastre and then to Valnain, where he caught a ride on a merchant ship bound for Hingashi, and from thence to Limsa Lominsa, where he arrived in year 5 of the Seventh Umbral Era.

Upon arriving in Eorzea, Wolund, leaning on his most recent skills in math and reading, as well as his admittedly rusty knowledge of trade goods from his time at the caravanserai, applies to work at the Arcanist's Guild. Everything proceeds as it does in the game from there.

All this is in service of a couple things. First of all, honestly, giving him a big backstory where various bad things happen to him over the course of a long time is primarily in service of dealing with what I think is one of the shakiest scenes in the game: the moment where Fordola accidentally uses the Echo on you and is shocked to her core by the scale of the tragedy you've overcome. I just don't think this makes a lot of sense for the WoL based just on what's depicted in-game, as sad as the events of the Banquet and Haurchefant's and Ysayle's deaths and Minfilia's sacrifice are. Giving him a comparable backstory to Fordola as a legion conscript does a lot, in my book, to smooth out that scene and make its emotional weight land better in my head, as do elements like the death and destruction he witnessed at Carteneau and the stuff about his daughter.

Secondly, in addition to that scene, this is just supposed to help set up a lot of stuff about the WoL I find a little clunky, particularly earlier on. Why does everyone in the Scions immediately glom on to you and decide you're their hero? Well, maybe the WoL is a stoic and outwardly emotionally reassuring older man who's conveniently older than the oldest of the Scions by more than a decade, and he can fill the Louisoix-shaped hole in their hearts that each of them except maybe Y'shtola very obviously has. How are you simultaneously everyone's favorite guy and also a story non-entity? Maybe he's nice and kind to people but very bad at handling and leading them initially (as evidenced by letting Alphinaud sleepwalk you all into a trap at the Banquet), in part because he spent the better part of two decades playing the part of mute imposing muscle for aristocratic officers. And maybe the fact he's consciously silenced himself for 20 years plays into the fact that the Warrior of Light becomes chattier throughout the expansions. Maybe he knows how to wear Garlean conscript armor and operate magitek because he was once a conscript himself. And so on and so forth.

Third, playing by my dumb "canon" rules, the WoL has to come from outside Eorzea. You're arriving by ship or cart and you're clearly unfamiliar with the city-states by the text. However, you also can't come from a lot of known places, since then you're bumping up against the issue that those places will also treat you like a stranger when you arrive in-game. There's no Bozja dialogue for being Hrothgar, but 1) to them it's not weird they'd have no reason to mention it and 2) this is why he isn't culturally Bozjan. Linking the WoL to Dalmasca solves this issue because the only Dalmascans you meet would have no reason to know a random Imperial conscript, you have no real time with them to shoot the shit about culture, we will not go to a functioning Rabanastre ever, and there is no reason you would have wanted to share all this with anyone on board the Prima Vista. Fourth, the WoL is a person of many talents and skills. Chalking up his weapon skills to the Verdant Path and his conscription, and linking his DoH/DoL skills to his upbringing, goes a long way towards helping ground some of that (as much as delightful nonsense can be grounded). Fifth, I think it's really funny to make the Warrior of Light a deadbeat dad. Final Fantasy is so full of bad sad dads already, WoL should get to be one. Lastly, I'm jealous that 1.0 players got to be at Carteneau and I want to bite their style but I refuse to break canon to do so, which means conscript it has to be (since being from a Free or Grand Company would contravene the earlier point about having to be new to Eorzea).

(A note on timelines: ARR begins in the year 5 of the Seventh Umbral Era, which would have been Year 1577 of the Sixth Astral Era. Per the wiki, Bozja is noted to have been invaded some fifty years ago, suggesting a war that begins in 1527 or so, but its conquest is described as happening "over thirty" years ago and multiple places note the campaign as grueling, so I think part of the idea (which gels with the trenches we see in the southern front) is supposed to be that the Bozjan campaign was a brutal and grinding one for the IVth Legion, or that after seizing Bozja proper it still took a long time to stamp out all resistance. Dalmasca was invaded 30 years ago in 1547, also by the IVth Legion, presumably fairly soon after stabilizing their grip on Bozja. I don't think there's any time given for when Regula goes to the VIth and reforms it, but since they only clear their tainted reputation in the succession war following Solus's death, I figure he can't have been there that long and he makes a convenient reason to move Wolund around, so five years approximately concurrent with the 1.0 to 2.0 timeskip seems like a decent timeline for his reform.)

[dottie-n-stripes]

decavitator

[petaltexturedskies]

I send my soul through time and space to greet you. You will understand.

James Elroy Flecker, To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence

[nsantand]

James Elroy Flecker - A um poeta daqui a mil anos

Eu, que há mil anos concluí meu percurso,E escrevi esta doce e arcaica canção,Por arautos te envio este discursoPor estradas que meus pés não trilharão. Não me importa se os mares tu transpões,Ou se galgas em segurança um céu mau,Se eriges exímias fortificaçõesFeitas de alvenaria ou de metal. Mas ainda tens canções e o hidromel,E estátuas e amores de olhos brilhantes,E tolas ideias sobre o bem…

[rustedhills]

Can't speak for 1009 SEA, but about 50ish years earlier, these little dudes were (probably) on their way to Java via a Srivijaya trade port:

hoowwww are so many people satisfied with not knowing how the world works. what do you mean you dont want to undertsand what wind is or how nuclear power is made or why governments act like they do or how electricity turns into music or what was happening in 1009 in southeast asia

[dnickels]

John Irving Poem Playlist

I love the hype around Davechella and wanted to do something a little different- a mixtape of poems, with commentary (desperate self-justification) and bonus poems below the cut

I.

The Lamb, William Blake

The Pilgrim, Sophie Jewett

Self-Dependence, Matthew Arnold

The Light of Stars, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Wanderer, Unknown, trans. Roy M. Liuzza

Up-Hill, Christina Rosetti

Sir Galahad, Alfred Tennyson

II.

They Could Not Tell Me Who Should Be My Lord, Edwin Muir

God gave a Loaf to every Bird, Emily Dickinson

Ancient Text, Louise Glück

I Find no Peace, Thomas Wyatt

A Secret Told, Emily Dickinson

Mary Magdalen, James Elroy Flecker

Because I Liked You Better, AE Housman

III.

A Better Resurrection, Christina Rossetti

The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Leonard Cottrell OR trans. Len Krisak

Batter my heart, three-personed God, John Donne

At Least to Pray, Is Left, Is Left, Emily Dickinson

'Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend", Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, (LXXXIV- LXXXVI) trans. Edward FitzGerald

I Shall Know why- when Time is over, Emily Dickinson

IV.

Sudden Hymn in Winter, Joseph Fasano

Fable and Decade, Louise Glück

Love (III), George Herbert

Of Molluscs, Mary Sarton

Dark Night of Soul, Juan de la Cruz, trans. E Allison Peers

He Touched Me, So I Live to Know, Emily Dickinson

The Finder Found, Edwin Muir

V.

The Plate, Anthony Hecht

Prospice, Robert Browning

Pietà, Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Jessie Lemont

DEATH THE COPPERPLATE PRINTER, Anthony Hecht

The Gold Lily, Louise Glück

Futility, Wilfred Owen

Flock, Billy Collins

"What, no Wild Geese?" spiritually Wild Geese is here, tucked in section IV, which might a well be subtitled "The soft animal gets a treat", same with Song of Songs and so many psalms I couldn't pick one. I wanted to try to play with poems that were either new to me or a little further off the beaten track (although there are still some obvious picks but come on was I not going to get some Donne in there?). Frankly, this entire list could have been Emily Dickinson start to finish, it's not yet accepted historical fact that she was an inexplicable psychic witness to the sufferings of the Franklin Expedition but I am submitting my findings to journals as we speak

(sorry Jirv for all the Catholics and extremely suspect Anglicans!!)

I. SEEKING

Whenever I invoke "The Lamb" please know I am reading it with the same menace and sense of foreboding as Patti Smith. Given the vibe I'm trying to cultivate you'd think there would be more Blake, but I think Jirv has such a profoundly different experience with Church Authority and his own conversion experience that he and Blake hardly seem like they share the same faith. Even in a scenario where he managed to unclench, I can't see him espousing a sentiment like The Garden of Love. Maybe if he survived to reflect on his encounter with Koveyook he might groove more with "[Christ] is the only God ... and so am I and so are you."

The only section that has at least a few poets I think Jirv would actually read, namely Matthew Arnold-- the only poem on here that I think isn't very good, I'm sorry to Mr. Arnold but there we are, they were right to light your ass up in Punch. He's here however because I think his work captures a very clear and immediately accessible sense of the early Victorian man striving to be himself, in the sense that he can flower fully into the model of upstanding sober bourgeois middle-class manhood which isn't always attainable for later birth-order sons in a navy overcrowded with officers. The real life Irving's letters touched me very much in that he is both looking for a deeper connection with God, a better version for himself, and in the material world, a way to make enough money to establish himself as capital-R Respectable in a way that swashbuckling at sea or derring-do in the colonies doesn't really allow him. I actually don't know if the years line up for him to have read Longfellow but this stanza:

O fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know erelong, Know how sublime a thing it is  To suffer and be strong.

Is such a classic mid 19th century "making yourself miserable for ideological reasons" motto. Shades of "Invictus" (which for some reason I don't know if Jirv would vibe with, maybe more of a Crozier poem).

I think you could also call the first section "Voyages", I was struck by how often the real Irving was compelled to relocated to try and make a place for himself in the world in the literal, material sense, and the few letters we have are largely his thoughts on his spiritual seeking-- I was very surprised not to find a settled and secured ticket-to-Heaven holder but someone who still considers himself a student, is still wrestling and grasping and looking for something.

Prithee, Pilgrim, go not hence; Clear thy brow, and white thy hand, What shouldst thou with penitence? Wherefore seek to Holy Land? Stern the whisper on his lip: Sin and shame are in my scrip.

It feels a little much to say 'Jirv is the Galahad of their doomed Grail quest' but frankly, given that no one succeeds, I kind of like the idea of a failed Galahad. It's slightly ahistorical to invoke but once we get into the 1860s and the mid-Victorian chivalric revival Galahad becomes a potent symbol for a kind of chaste imperial knighthood in service to God/Queen/Country. At least one young office who died in WWI was named Galahad, not just a PG Wodehouse joke christening.

II. CRISIS

Obviously there are ten thousand things that could torment the evangelical protestant mind and bedevil one's self-worth and it doesn't have to be "hopelessly in love with your best friend" but I wasn't going to miss a chance for some Housman, was i? Wyatt gives us the money couplet:

I desire to perish, and yet I ask health. I love another, and thus I hate myself.

I had included Flecker's We That Were Friends but felt it was just slightly too self-aware, ditto Rosetti's Winter: My Secret.

III. STRIFE

I think these are all pretty self-explanatory. I could have added ten more Emily Dickinson poems because she is the only one on this earth who gets it (me, the deal, the whole of existence). Hopkins I think is more concerned with the sins of the world than the real life Irving (who, based on the very limited material shared, must be the most laid-back and chill evangelical in human history? Or maybe I spent too long among the Baptists) but I can see Jirv wondering, in the God-proof bunker of his diary, why the wicked are flourishing while he is losing his everloving mind and threatening to lock up ABs for being afraid of ghosts.

Here is the excerpted Khayyam so you don't have to go looking (although you should because its wall to wall bangers) (context: the narrator is standing in a potter's shed, and listening to the vessels talk amongst themselves)

LXXXIV. Said one among them— "Surely not in vain My substance of the common Earth was ta'en And to this Figure molded, to be broke, Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again." LXXXV. Then said a Second—"Ne'er a peevish Boy Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy; And He that with his hand the Vessel made Will surely not in after Wrath destroy." LXXXVI. After a momentary silence spake Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make; "They sneer at me for leaning all awry: What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

"Did you make me just to smash me, God?"

Runners-up for this section included Rossetti's The Three Enemies, which only didn't make the cut because I think its slightly uneven compared to the rest of this work and this list has become pretty Rossetti-heavy. Ditto De Profundis.

IV. ACCEPTANCE

Also pretty self-explanatory. Mystical union with Christ or a very special sergeant of the marines, or both! Is it canon? No! But I like to think that even just one time...

If you read any poem on this list please read 'Love (III)' and 'The Finder Found', the latter of which is my 'Wild Geese'. It seems self-serving to say I cried when I read it but I did. Meanwhile Herbert is goated and his entire work could be listed here but hearing Love (III) read aloud made me understand what poems could do.

I cheated putting two Glück poems for one but given that they were published together in that magazine I think its ok. Here's even more cheating: The Undertaking would be in there if I could squeeze it on the same line. "The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime" PLEASE

Runners-up here were Larkin's First Sight, which just doesn't quite fit but I love for the sense of spring coming to someone who doesn't know there's anything other than winter deprivation, and A Shropshire Lad XI (On your midnight pallet lying) which I LOVE but again doesn't quite jive with the theme, but I do imagine it as a bridge poem between this section and the last...

V. DOOM

A little bit of Browning, who might squeak in under the line of plausibility (though perhaps not this poem) as Jirv sets out on the death march with waning faith that is not, in fact, a death march but then his journey ends in Stabtown, population: YOU. "The Plate" in this case would be that faith and knowledge of being loved that remains even after hardship and the final lost battle, maybe even literally in the meat from his stomach. But misery and death put all the men on the rack and instead of salvation they are essentially tortured to death, often long enough to crush/squeeze out any semblance of humanity and leaving the animal capacity for violence.

"Futility" could encompass the whole sorry venture but in specific the shot of Jirv's body after all the effort to make contact with someone would could help. Was it for this? "Exposure" also a strong contender for "the long slow process of freezing to death for unclear reasons".

"Flock" of course-- God needs martyrs.