#i have a distinct idea of what i want to write for my poem for this prompt

[silhouettecrow]

365 Days of Writing Prompts: Day 355

Adjective: Tired

Noun: Winter

Definitions for those who need/want them:

Tired: in need of sleep or rest, or weary; bored with; (of a thing) no longer fresh or in good condition; (especially of a statement or idea) boring or uninteresting because of overfamiliarity

Winter: the coldest season of the year, in the northern hemisphere from December to February and in the southern hemisphere from June to August; (astronomy) the period from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox; (literary) years

[queerprayers]

Hi! This advent I really want to honour my faith rather than just celebrating christmas in a secular sense. I found your post about advent and the liturgical new year inspiring, and I was wondering if you could point me towards some ideas or resources for advent practices or ways to go about worship specifically for this period - everywhere I've looked just talks about lighting candles, which I'm not able to do in my current housing. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for your blog and everything you write here, and I hope you have a wonderful new year <3

Happy Advent, beloved! Candles are great (including fake ones or felt/crafted ones)—or you could recreate a similar weekly/daily thing, like hanging another star in the window. But that's not your only option. Here are some thoughts! (I also said some similar things last year you might find interesting.)

One of the most meaningful things about my Advents growing up was the fact that it was visibly not-quite-Christmas. We put up our tree maybe a few days before but we didn't decorate it until Christmas Eve. We didn't listen to Christmas music till Christmas—we listened to Advent music. We put our nativity set in the window, but gradually—we would set up Mary and Joseph traveling to it, and I remember waiting to unpack the baby Jesus until Christmas Eve. (The wise men were on the bookshelf until Epiphany.) I've put a painting of the Annunciation on my altar, but Christmas stuff will wait. 

It's very important to me to make each season distinct materially. The things around me, the music I listen to, the books I read, the prayers I say, change tangibly—in Advent and Lent especially. My emotions come and go, what I'm thinking about is different every day, but it's Advent because I am doing Advent—and not yet doing Christmas, no matter what the music in the grocery store or the parties I'm invited to tell me. (I don't refuse to find joy in them, I'm just conscious about the fact that I'm in a different season. It's not as big a deal to me as the Lent/Easter divide, though, which I will defend with every part of me.)

I love liturgical colors for this reason, too—my church isn't very extravagant and mostly looks the same throughout the year, but the altar cloth is a different color. I know exactly what season it is just from that. (Our Advent is blue to honor Mary, but most people's is purple like Lent with maybe a pink Gaudete Sunday.) My home altar also changes color, so I have that visual in my room as well.

So do it on purpose, candles or no. Maybe wait on a few Christmas-y things, like ornaments or music (don't worry, Christmas has twelve days and then you can keep doing it all through the Epiphany season if you want). Make it Advent, whenever you start! 

Historically, Advent traditions have been very similar (or identical) to Lenten ones. The Orthodox church calls Advent the Nativity Fast. It's been a penitent preparation. Things we may associate with Lent, like going without things or structured prayer, can find a home in Advent as well.

Secular celebrations and consumerism have affected Advent as well as Christmas, with countless calendars and just in general by filling our lives with Christmas themes that might make us forget Advent has its own themes. (To be clear, I support anyone celebrating Christmas—once a religion evangelizes/colonizes/rules, it has no right to accuse people of appropriating its holidays. I am simply talking about how the cultural practice differs.) Advent has themes of peace and love and hope, but it's got more specific themes than that, scarier stuff than that. It's about Christ's coming in the Incarnation, but it's also about Christ coming all around us every day, and Christ's promised future coming.

Spend some time with Isaiah, spend some time with meditations on Mary (I just read some of Catherine of Siena's words which are here as a reading for March 25.). From the poem I posted, you can tell I spent some time with Joel last year. Here's the Revised Common Lectionary daily readings for these seasons—you could start a habit or do it for a season or explore some passages every once in a while. You can find the Book of Common Prayer's traditional Advent prayers here (The Collects >> choose Traditional or Contemporary language >> Seasons of the Year). The ancient "O Antiphons" accompany the Magnificat starting Dec. 17 (here's a booklet with commentary & Latin chant). Forward Movement has several podcasts, if you want to pray daily while commuting or taking a walk or right before bed.

There are a million Advent devotionals out there—you can find one from an author you like, or search your/a denomination + "advent devotional" or "advent prayers" and you'll probably find something. For some social justice oriented ones, I've found Red Letter Christianity's Reflections from Bethlehem (by Palestinian authors), Justice Unbound's Boundless: An Anti-Colonial Advent Devotional, and the UCC's Abolition Advent Calendar. Cole Arthur Riley (Black Liturgies) is doing an Advent series on her Patreon. Jan Richardson posts art and poetic blessings throughout the year.

In terms of books, I recommend:

Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas

Preparing for Christmas (Richard Rohr)

Celtic Advent (David Cole)

WinterSong (Madeleine L'engle & Luci Shaw)

Advent for Exiles (Caroline Cobb)

If you want poetry: Accompanied by Angels (Luci Shaw). 

I'll tell you a secret—most devotionals are meant to be read every day, but no one will know if you don't do that. You can start them at any time and read as much as you like whenever you like. Don't not start one because you don't think you'll be regular about it. 

And of course, you don't need a book to say "Advent" on the front for it to be an Advent book—or music or anything else. I'm about to start God Hunger: Discovering the Mystic in All of Us (John J. Kirvan) which I picked up at a book sale but it's on the Internet Archive! I'm drawn to poetry and Marian hymns in this season, and things that talk about the end of the world and prophecy. Whatever Advent is to you, surround yourself with it—and anything you're just starting to think about, you can explore.

The beautiful news is? The years spiral on, and Advent returns. Every year we're confronted with it, and every year I never do exactly what I wanted. But I've found some stuff to bring with me, some books to reread, things I know further my practice and things that don't. And when the spiral returns to this distinctive place of waiting for something already in our hearts, of hoping for something we don't understand, of inviting in someone who has already snuck in like a thief in the night, we can try again.

So happy Advent, and may yours be visibly, tangibly, purposefully Advent. May you be the impractical kind of hopeful and the holy kind of scared. Christmas is a miracle slowly being tended (rather than Easter's miracle erupting from the ground)—not that there's no blood, no surprise, but that for nine months Life itself grew quietly. So keep watch. Make your life a womb, make your Advent a narrowing toward the humanity God enters. Tend the darkness and bring in some light—a candle is just a way to do that, but there's so much light in the world. Here's to finding it.

<3 Johanna

[scarlettsabetlondongirl]

GQ magazine

By Jimmy Page and Scarlett Sabet

22 January 2021

Scarlett Sabet: So, a year since Catalyst, what are your thoughts?

Jimmy Page: Well, my thoughts on Catalyst being a living entity a year on: I’m really pleased that we did it and relieved that we did a project that I had in my mind. I had it in my head, at various stages, the characters of the poems. To arrive where we arrived, with something that was really avant-garde, that had not been done before, was really thrilling. It was a “catalyst”, but also a milestone that others hadn’t got to yet.

SS: I think that’s it. You were so passionate and fired up about it and your vision was so clear and distinct, so although before we did it I couldn’t fully comprehend it, I never questioned what you wanted to do. During the recording and production of the album I trusted what you were doing implicitly. We created a new language. Each poem on the album was an important landmark. With the exception of “Rocking Underground”, which I wrote in 2012, you were the first person to hear all the other poems.

JP: Yes, yes, that’s a good point. I was the first person to hear all of those poems. But I also had the pleasure to hear you read on numerous occasions, in a variety of circumstances as well. So I got to feel these poems and to recognise the character of each one and certain cadences you would employ during your readings. I don’t think you ever read one poem exactly the same, because you were breathing new life into it every night. All these things were registering with me. What I didn’t want to do was what people assumed it would be: poems with music behind it. Well, that’s what everyone would think. And I certainly didn’t want to think in the normal sort of way. I wanted to think of it in another way altogether. Let’s do what I know is right and that you know is right, so I presented you with something that, yes, will be musical, it will sound orchestral, but it’s all done with the human voice. And that’s where we arrived at the territory of things that hadn’t been done before.

SS: Yes, that’s really well said.

JP: “Rocking Underground”, I heard you read that at your first poetry reading at World’s End Bookshop in Chelsea and that really got to me. I thought, “Wow, she’s really living this,” and not only that, but that’s a really fine poem. It was a narrative and really interesting. From that point on, having seen your writing and your publications, I thought it was really great you self-published so you didn’t have other people getting in the way of it.

SS: Well, that was thanks to you. I took your advice to self-publish.

JP: “Rocking Underground” was the first poem. I got you to record it on an old Sony cassette player and once you’d done a performance you were happy with, then I got you to track it. Now, this is where the unexplained comes into the equations. I’d used the cassette before, but on this occasion, it played back with this noisy, metallic sound, like an announcement on an underground tube, and, of course, it was written on a train.

SS: Yes, it was written on the Tube in London and I think there is a misnomer that “Rocking” in the title is a reference to rock music. It isn’t. The word “Existing” could replace “Rocking” in the title and the meaning would be the same.

JP: Yes, I’m pleased you said that. And what was played back on the cassette gave an atmosphere that gave an identity to the piece, almost like an invocation. I wanted you to double track it. I knew you’d be able to do that. So there was a metallic-sounding voice, then a more natural sounding voice on top. So that was a great start and you could see that my ideas were a bit wacky. Interestingly enough, when Catalyst was released Phil Alexander played “Rocking Underground” on his Kerrang! Radio show and then he played a Led Zeppelin song afterwards and I thought that was really cool.

SS: It was “Dazed And Confused”.

JP: Well, that’s even better, because that’s the more avant-garde side of what I’ve managed to create in the past, something akin.

SS: You really captured the atmosphere of that and, on a personal note, it was the first poem you saw me read at my first ever poetry reading, so in that way it was a landmark. Also, when I wrote it it was unusual compared to what I had previously written, so that poem was the beginning and you were at the beginning with me, in a way. “Rocking Underground” was also the title of my first book, which I self-published on your advice, to keep creative control. So I think we both knew this poem was going to be opening this album.

JP: The other poem I knew I wanted to try with you was "The Fifth Circle Of Hell”. Every time I witnessed you read that poem, there was such a response, people holding their breath and then a spontaneous applause. I knew how strong it was. So for the recording of it, rather than putting too many textures on it, because of the vocal performance and what was being said and what was being covered in it, I wanted a more locked-in double tracking, not just the power of one voice saying this, but two voices riding all the way through, to make the message even stronger. And you felt at home with these experimental techniques.

SS: I remember so clearly writing it. It had been forming in my mind and then it all came out in one sitting.

JP: Yeah, you did do it in one afternoon. You were channelling, like it was inside you and it had to come out and it did come out. The first time you read it to me I was really impressed, I’ve got to say.

SS: I was really excited to read it to you, because it was so different and really long and it was the narrative of what I wanted to say and I caught it in this rhythm. You were in a meeting in another part of the house and I remember once you had finished saying, “I think I’ve written something.” It was a creative landmark for me.

"To arrive where we arrived, with something that was really avant-garde, that had not been done before, was really thrilling. It was a “catalyst”, but also a milestone that others hadn’t got to yet."

JP: The thing is, it’s as relevant now as it was then.

SS: The tone of the poem on Catalyst is very aggressive. It’s almost demonic.

JP: Yes, it is. It takes on a different character from how you read it. “Cut Up” was the third track we recorded and you came out with a way of reading it that I had never heard before.

SS: I realised that I needed to adapt the performance for the format: we were making a record. It wasn’t a live poetry reading, where that poem becomes very impassioned.

JP: It was a totally different pacing and it was incredible, the whole hypnotic, mantric quality to it, and as you were doing it I knew I wanted to use an effect that I had used way back in the days of Led Zeppelin.

SS: On which track?

JP: Well, I did it on “You Shook Me”, which is at the end of the first album. You can hear it, but I used it differently on Catalyst. With “Cut Up”, I wanted it to be there, faintly in the background, and it to be an entity to creep in and become more and more audible as things go on, until at the end it builds and it’s almost like a conflict. Again, I knew this hadn’t been done before with spoken word.

SS: That had started as a super-long draft of a poem, written by hand, and it got to the point it was almost 20 pages. I couldn’t really stand it and felt I wanted to do something radical, destroy and dismantle what I had written, then rebuild it. So I remember I cut it up with scissors and because there was rhythm in the pre-existing phrases, the rhythm remained and it incorporated its own dark rhythm as well.

JP: It was remarkable and you were really on fire at this point. But this is how it was in the studio between the two of us, sparking off ideas.

SS: The actual recording was amazing and we were lucky to do it at home, being so comfortable, literally at home, and being with you: the trust between us, it made me brave. I wanted to meet you in that moment.

JP: And we did that. We arrived at that. To hear you do it in a different vein and rate and tempo, it was inspiring for me to come up with ideas. It was powerful.

SS: The first tracks are intense and really confront the listener and then “Euphoric Kiss” comes in and in the version on the album you can hear me laugh at the beginning. It was May when we recorded it, so after a long British winter, everything was coming alive again and I was filled with the joy of creating this piece of work together and it’s a poem I wrote as I was falling in love with you. It’s a love poem, but defiant, and a code between us and it felt joyous to record it.

JP: Yeah, that was beautiful. This was one of the tracks where the poem alone would speak volumes. It needed just the naked honesty of it.

SS: Yes. When I'd perform that poem live, sometimes I'd improvise parts of it. The audience wouldn't know, necessarily, but you would.

JP: I think improvisation is the key to live performance, the people that know your work can see that you're not content to just go through the motions, that you're really hitting it every night in such a way that you're creating and changing the inflections of the poem, the song, whatever it is. Certainly within your poetry I could see you were capable of doing this and moulding things as you were performing them.

SS: You've created these phenomenal, electrifying live performances throughout your life. Are there some that stand out more distinctly to you, especially in terms of live performances, whether it be in a huge stadium or smaller venues or a studio?

JP: On occasion I've reviewed some work I've done in my own environment, from the home studio I had in the 1970s, where I had the facility to multitrack and layer guitars and other instruments as well. Whatever fires that off is the initial inspiration to create a piece. I'm sure it's the same as writing a poem. You get the inspiration for it and you build it and it takes shape.

SS: Yeah.

JP: And it's not necessarily a really long process. It's something that's really coming out. So under the circumstances of a live situation, I've heard versions of “Dazed And Confused”, for example, four nights a row on tour and I was surprised just how much improvisation there was each night, which I didn't repeat on any other night. To hear them decades later and hear what the mindset was... It was just allowing things to come through. They're unreleased.

SS: Do you have specific memories of when you've walked off stage after a performance or improvisation and just known, "Wow. That one was really..."

JP: Well, I particularly went on stage to do that sort of thing, so even though there was a set list, just walking up the steps to go on stage I knew what the numbers were going to be and I knew that there were little signs for the improvising sections that meant to the other, "Right this is going to change gear," and it was going to be something new, so they were just going to have to pay attention to these signs that would occur. So these whole passages would come out and then I would change it again into another one and that's really living by the seat of your pants, but I really enjoyed doing it and fortunately I was able to. I've really built my whole reputation on improvisation and spontaneous music. I can appreciate it in somebody else, certainly you. I could see you were breathing new life into poems every night.

SS: “Possession” was very intimate. I also adapted the performance of that piece. I wanted it to be intimate and it’s sensual and spiritual. I guess that’s why it’s just presented as it’s recorded.

JP: Yes. Then it goes into “And My Lungs Fill Ecstatic Song”.

SS: Oh, yes! Well, that was written when I was walking by the River Thames in Sonning. I was inspired by the landscape. I wrote some notes. It wasn’t until we went away that December that I started experimenting with those lines and cut them up, rearranged the structure. In that poem I also wanted to evoke almost the muscle memory of writing the poem, the feeling in my legs and the adrenaline, trying to capture it in lines. In poetry readings, I accelerate in the last verse, but in the production of this track you really accomplished what I wanted to convey. But we didn’t even have a conversation about it. You just knew and you did.

JP: Given the way you read this, it felt quite mantric and, as you say, there’s a pacing to it. I definitely wanted to bring all of that out, and make it quite orchestral in the way that it starts and develops and really pulsates. It has such a dynamic to it. And this is really what I meant when I said the album wouldn’t be with instruments, but it will sound orchestral and going into areas no one has done before.

SS: Ah, and then the next is “For Jack”, which is a love poem or eulogy for Jack Kerouac. I started writing it in the months leading up to The Town And The City Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts, which is Kerouac’s birthplace and where he is buried. So the poem’s inaugural reading was in Kerouac’s birthplace. I’m so moved by his work. He was so sensitive and spiritual. He tapped into something in the zeitgeist, expressed it in this new freeform way and he got huge praise and ridicule for it and he bore the brunt of both. He’s always affected me and I wanted to try to capture him. The word “You” is the opening of each line, addressing Kerouac directly. When I read it at City Lights, Peter Marvelis said that I had really captured [Kerouac] and what had happened to him. I think we knew we had to include this poem as part of Catalyst, because this album is kind of in the spirit of the beat writers.

JP: There was this whole movement going on in the 1950s and 1960s in literature and in music.

SS: What was the first poem that stood out to you as a young person ? I remember at primary school age, under ten, I remember Robert Louis Stevenson poems and then, after that, when I was older, WB Yeats and Coleridge. Then I discovered Bob Dylan, then Allen Ginsberg then Kerouac.

JP: Yes, I was introduced to poetry when I was at school and I realised reading poetry in the class room, en masse, that it went into another dimension and then I appreciated the metre of it, the construction. I was quite taken with the Victorian Romantic poets, Byron, Keats, Shelley. When I was in my mid-teens, I paid a lot of attention to Christopher Logue. He released an EP called Red Bird in 1959. I absolutely adored it. I adored what they were doing. It was actually jazz, with Logue reading his poems, but it wasn't freeform, it was really constructed and really exciting.

SS: I remember when you played me that.

JP: I was really impressed with the way that he read his poems, sometimes really fast and other times in a melancholic way. It meant a lot to me when I heard it. I took it in, because it was someone who had done something new and not only that it was absolutely amazing and not many people knew of it. And, of course, Christopher Logue performed at the International Poetry Incarnation in 1965 at the Royal Albert Hall.

SS: You were there that night.

JP: I was there. Allen Ginsburg performed that night with some of the other San Francisco beat poets. I had come across “Howl” and read it and when many people read that poem it changed their life and I was one of them.

SS: Same.

JP: Burroughs and Gysin experimented with cutup and I know they had done work at the BBC, literally cutting up analogue tapes and putting them together. That’s something I considered to be really moving things in a different direction from what they had been before. That was exactly how I thought about music. And at the same time, you had Krzysztof Penderecki, his ode to Threnody, to the victims of Hiroshima. That texture of the orchestra had such an effect on me, all through my work, in Led Zeppelin and what I was trying to do with the bow and sonic waves and my ideas for what we did on Catalyst. I also liked The New Music – a later album of Penderecki. Also during that time in the late 1950s early 1960s, I discovered electronic music records by John Cage, Luciano Berio, Ilhan Mimaroglu. It all had such an effect, these textures. And what they were doing in musique concrète is what I feel we were doing with Catalyst, an extension of that. The whole adventure of Catalyst was done over a few days and I’m really thrilled we did it in such a compact amount of time. We spent exactly the right time on each thing, nothing was laboured. It was all so enthusiastic and inspirational.

SS: Yes, it really was. We knew where we were coming from with this project and your passion for it was like a suit of armour. I’m so proud of what we created. I always want to do something experimental and the one thing I’ve always tried to do is keep challenging myself, push myself creatively, not keep doing the same thing over and over again. To stay “alive” and connected as an artist I think it’s important to keep being brave and do different things.

JP: Yes, that’s absolutely the way to go about one’s work.

SS: You’ve never played it safe and gone down the commercial route.

JP: I think it’s more satisfying to throw down the gauntlet to yourself, take on the challenge and then come out with something where you’ve really pushed yourself. To actually do something unique and new. Les Paul said to me, “You know what you can do? Same picture, different frame.” So you never lose the main part of your character, that’s recognised, but you adjust the framing of the picture.

SS: Wow. You’ve definitely done that.

[kidstemplatte]

terzo w/ a goth daughter hcs

i don’t know where i got this idea from but i’m obsessed with it. in this fic, the reader is referred to as the other parent. without further ado, this is terzo with a goth teenage daughter. (her name is violetta, she’s mentioned in a previous fic i posted) i hope you enjoy!!🦇🖤

-of course this girl ended up goth. it would be concerning if she didn’t. she was raised in a satanic church. her dad is the lead singer of a devil-worshipping rock band and paints himself like the skull emoji every day for a living.

-violetta was raised on classic rock. of course, she grew up hearing other things, but the importance of rock was preached at her by her papa.

-she’s got super cool taste even without him though.

-sometimes violetta ends up shocking HIM with stuff she listens to.

-she ends up discovering more intense, heavy stuff he didn’t play for her as a kid but still enjoyed privately.

“how- how did you find this band?”

“i’m cooler than you think i am, dad.”

“that’s my girl.”

-i feel like terzo doesn’t like electronic music, but violetta does. stuff like crystal castles. (great music, check it out!)

-so if she gets in the car and starts playing something he doesn’t like, he playfully bullies her for it.

“ay, what is this computer crap?”

“oh, i’m sorry, do you want me to play some of your old man music?” she says with a wicked smirk.

-if they ever get in fights, (which they do, they’re both stubborn as mules, though terzo will swear she got it from you…) violetta goes to her room and will BLAST music. like, BLAST. if she’s really mad, she’ll play something he doesn’t like.

-and if she’s R E A L L Y mad…

-she’ll play worship music. as in jesus worship music.

-you have to run to her room and tell her to stop before her father leaves her as an offering for satan.

-violetta does the coolest tradgoth makeup.

-the first time she wore it outside her room, terzo had many mixed emotions. two voices in his head:

“that’s my daughter!! la mia stellina! she doesn’t need makeup to be beautiful! her precious face is gone!”

and:

“hell yeah, that’s my daughter!”

-lets her practice makeup on him

-sometimes she’ll do his face paint and it’ll look fucking AWESOME, he wears it with pride

-very encouraging of her talents and passions.

-i can totally imagine her being into all kinds of art. music, drawing, painting, photography, design, makeup of course, writing, everything.

-she has a very distinct dark aesthetic she goes for when she makes art

-terzo is so blown away by her creativity. always wants to see what she’s working on, even when she says, “go away, dad!”

“what are you drawing?”

“what’s that song?”

“is that a poem? can i read it?”

-her fashion is totally awesome and terzo will always buy her random goth jewelry or accessories he finds that remind him of her. she is very spoiled.

-if violetta ends up going to goth clubs or events, sneaking out of the house, terzo totally catches on. he was similar as well.

-she’ll carefully close the door on her way in, letting out a small sigh of relief, thinking she made it back safe.

-until she turns around and sees her father nonchalantly sitting in a chair, wine glass in one hand, book in the other.

-“how was the party, violetta?”

-she’s silent.

-“and the one yesterday? and the one last weekend? and the one the weekend before that? there was even one on a tuesday. who goes to the club on a tuesday?”

-this man has TOTALLY been to a club on a tuesday. but he would never say that to his daughter

-no amount of face paint could cover the look on her face in that moment.

-boy, she was in for a stern lecture and a rough night.

[theink-stainedfolk]

Writerblr Interview

Thank you for the tag @drchenquill ♡♡♡

Short stories, novels or poems?

I like reading and writing both Short stories and Novels. Poems are hard for me to write and even harder to understand 😭😭😭😭 all my friends that i made in school/college are great poetess and i always try my best to support them though their poetry is often confusing my braincells.

What genre do you prefer reading?

I prefer reading Crime Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Political Intrigue,YA Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Enemies to Lovers and Magical Realism. Lately I've been scooting towards Adult fantasy or what most people would call "Dark Academia ". Also, i don't really mind if the characters are queer or not. To me, sexuality doesn't define a good story or characters, though it adds a bit of more charm to them.

What genre do you prefer writing?

Same as the above, but with romance.

Are you a planner or a write-as-i-go kind of person?

When i plan things for my wips, they don't go as i plan. So i am the 2nd type. Because i came to believe that in order to write the story, the story must also progress itself.

What music do you listen to while writing the story?

I usually don't but i have this playlist of my favourite songs that i can listen in any situation. Sometimes i try to listen the songs based of the situation happening in my wip but the songs sometimes are super boring.

Fav books/movies

There are so many I'd rather not write it here. I'll just say some of my favourite books are Sorcery of Thorns, The Caraval Series, A Good Girl's Guide To Murder series, Babel, Piranesi and The Will of The Many. Etc..

Any Current WIPs?

Yes... so many... too many...😭😭😭😭 Thorn-Kissed ,

Legacy of Creation , Shades of Erudition, The Masque of Murder, Whispers of Shadow and love, The Veil of Allegiance etc..

If someone were to make a cartoon out of you, what would your standard outfit be?

Very nice question. It would be abaya obviously but beneath it, I imagine my standard outfit would be a stylish yet practical ensemble. I'd likely wear a well-fitted jacket or blazer with a subtle pattern, paired with a comfortable, versatile top underneath. My pants would be sleek, maybe dark jeans or tailored trousers, allowing me to move freely. I'd have a pair of sturdy but fashionable shoes, perhaps ankle boots but i also love me some knee-length boots because it's hot. Accessories would include a distinctive watch and maybe a scarf or a book bag, reflecting my love for stories and creativity. Overall, my outfit would balance sophistication with comfort.😁

Create a character description of yourself

Meet me, a confident writer with a secret: I'm actually a self-conscious mess when it comes to my looks (don't mind my frazzled hair and questionable fashion choices). My brain is a storytelling factory, bursting with ideas and characters begging to be set free. But honestly, I just want to escape my stressful home life and find a peaceful cave where I can write in peace. As an ambivert, I can charm you (or not, depends on my mood) and engage in witty banter, but don't be fooled – I need my alone time to recharge. My sharp tongue and sarcasm might come across as rude, but deep down, I'm a squishy emotional marshmallow. When I'm not writing, you can find me binge-reading, K-pop/J-pop dancing, or obsessing over K/C/J/T dramas (don't judge me). Just be warned: I can talk for hours about my passions, but also respect my need for solo time – it's like refueling my creative tank! Friendships are my jam, but apparently, my friends don't prioritize them as much (ouch, harsh reality check!). Despite that, I remain a loyal and caring friend, always ready to lend a listening ear or a sarcastic quip. In conclusion, I'm a lovable, quirky writer with a heart of gold (i hope so), a dash of sass, and a whole lot of creativity. Just don't mind my insecurities, and we'll get along fabulously!

Do you like incorporating people you actually know into your writing?

No, not really. But i think i did it once or twice.

Are you kill-happy with the characters?

Sometimes i do it for the story and atmosphere (bye Hiram,sorry but Gentian didn't deserve you) i kill antagonists but i don't know honestly. But i do kill if necessary.

Coffee or Tea while writing?

Neither. Just my tears 🥲👍🏻

Slow or Fast writer?

I'm in the middle. Sometimes when the idea strikes, i write in a hour or so. But sometimes I'm just staring at the ceiling.

Where/who/what do you find inspiration from?

Anything anywhere anyone.

If you were put into a fantasy world, what would you be?

A very lethargic peraon with no motivations or anything. I hope it remains that way, but since this is a fantasy world, my peaceful life will come to an end due to some traguc events and someone will provoke me and my sole motivation will ignite.

Most fave book cliche?

👀 [redacted] just kidding. Enemies to lovers, fist/daggers talk instead of pillow talk. Enemies, one sided enemies, rivals. And they were roomates, one bed, fake dating to escape the situation, hidden heir, fake stranger, mysterious stranger,etc.

Least fave book cliche?

Brother's friend.... teacher student romance... insta love, mary sue protagonist, rich guy poor woman, love interest with no personal goals, stereotypical villains, stereotypical diverse characters, unrealistic relationships, cliched character archetypes, rushed endings, etc.

Fave scenes to write?

Anything with heavy feels. Like angst, romantic scene, character death, plot twist reveals, distressing situations etc.

Most productive time of day for writing?

When the inspiration is there, any time is fine but mostly at night.

Reason for writing?

Because i love writing stories and love sharing it to others in hope that they'll also enjoy as much as i do. My reason is simple.

I'll tag @finickyfelix @willtheweaver @leahnardo-da-veggie @illarian-rambling @winglesswriter @paeliae-occasionally @the-golden-comet @graveyardshift111 @thecomfywriter @roarintheheavens

[crmsnmth]

hi , can you write me a poem about a young toxic love that you’ve been no contact with for years. a love that was crazy and horrible and never made you feel safe or worthy but for some reason it’s the most intense thing you’ve felt in regards to someone else. you left went on with your life & after all those years they come back and so do all the feelings but you realize it’ll never ever work how you want it too and they’ll never be what you need because it’s built off all the wrongs things. so you leave again to show him that you know it’s all meaningless even though you don’t want too.

or something like that? ty<3

Hooks

-i played with this for a while, and ran with a few ideas, but this is the one I actually finished. It may not be exactly what you were looking for, but it does follow the themes. Either way, here's an attempt- Hooks You're not supposed to be here I wasn't supposed to have to see you again But your here, deciding on what brand of cereal to get and I can't move my legs anymore

(You had your hooks deep within me at the very second that you and I met I was yours before I even know your name and I could feel it when you'd pull the line tight)

You don't see me yet but you will And I still can't bring myself to move This wasn't part of the deal we made but never spoke No love lost, no love gained

(Our conversation comes in yelling back and forth A repeating fact that we just don't work But god, I want nothing more then to taste your anger around my throat)

You throw the box of cocoa puffs into your cart And you're cart is aimed right for me You turn you head, even slightly, and you'll see me I start to feel those phantom hooks you left in me

(I never said I didn't love you Quite the opposite, I love you too much We can't keep going in circles I take my teeth out one by one for you)

I'm begging that you don't look at me That you will turn the other way My feet still stubbornly refuse to step And then it happens in slow motion

(I still think of you all the time As if our souls were still connected I guess you can say your hooks are gone And I miss the taut and tearing pull)

Your eyes meet mine And I feel foolish for smiling I know I can never let you in again That's the only thing I sill believe

(Now there's a distinct before and after that features you right in the center there's a feeling of emptiness when love just is never enough)

You smile that half-cocked smirk And I can feel your hooks in me again But this time I'll fight to keep my independence and I won't let your hooks get even skin deep

But I'll always remember exactly how they felt.

[nanamissingno]

prose/poem, sad and bitter art thoughts

ive gotten out a piece of bread or two to hold me over for now. potato bread is comforting, subtly sweet, almost like a pastry, while still being gentle enough to handle when my stomach is unsettled. and ive been cherishing that when the amount of energy i have for food amounts to 'get thing out of bag.'

and when i do so, the way its been made, the movement of the yeast has arranged itself into a loose swirl of texture, and for a moment im thinking its beautiful. seemingly effortless, in the way creatures like yeast can do the things weve asked them to do. they just make. its the nature of how they respond to the stimulus we apply to them

the image reminds me of a fingerprint, and, theres something there, something about identity soaked into the structure of our creations, all of them inherently distinct and therefore worth realizing. i can use that. i have the space in my head to draft this out. theres a way to figure out what this idea looks like on canvas and get it across and maybe make it feel more worthwhile for someone else to pick up their own craft, and i want to do that. it really matters to me, to do that.

i cant, ultimately. the reservoir of ability at my disposal has shallowed to the point that im up to my knees, then calves, then ankles, and then i putter out, the will to continue fully evaporated. i lie down to rest, and suddenly the whole thing feels trite. i have exhausted myself, and wont be able to recover for hours. maybe days. i know how the routine works, by now.

'and you should try to make it anyway,' crows the part of me that still pulls these concepts from the dirt. that still holds them out to me and waits expectantly. and thank you, really, i mean it; my hands are full. if i do this again ill have to drop all of the things i need to carry, and its taken me so long to pick it all back up from last time.

i try not to think about how many ideas have died this way. there are messages upon messages in text channels made just to hold them all, more than i can possibly engage with, notes i now lack the context with which to decipher.

i suppose ill write this one down as well. for when i get better.

[subtheory]

Here are my two cents on A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark.

"It baffles me just how uneven this book is. At its best, it is an insightful elucidation of a new type of relationship emerging and thriving within political economy, which is that of the hacker class and vectoralists, and, at its worst, it is an uninspiring rehashing of the philosophies of Marx and Deleuze.

First, the good stuff. The hacker class is never fully demarcated but is cast as a kind of middle-class precariat which works via abstractions. That is, they create new abstractions by writing a piece of code, a poem, or inventing a new concept with which to analyse a current issue. They are not farmers or welders, they deal only circumstantially with tangible objects; instead, they work on the immaterial that at least initially resists easy commodification. Vectoralists, on the other hand, are a new iteration of the bourgeoisie, believes Wark, and they function by capturing vectors and turning them into commodities. They usually do not own the infrastructure giving rise to the vector but they manage to make themselves inevitable due to their ability to highjack its flows. Throughout, this relationship is well-described and nuanced. For example, Wark fleshes out how these two classes are sometimes able to come together and work against similar enemies.

The bad stuff consists mainly of Wark's writing style and the book's insistence on squashing thought into pre-made Marxist and Deleuzian conceptualisations. It is a trick similar to what Wark does in Gamer Theory. Therein, Wark tries to recast the role of the critical theorist through the conceptualisation of video games. It ends up being an example of old wine in a new bottle. Nothing substantial arises from such an act. In this work, however, I believe Wark's argument would have benefitted from not turning the hackers into their own distinctive class of difference, but, rather, to occupy a two-way position of a surplus and a nothing. It might be what Wark is going for but the relationship between the hackers and the vectoralists resembles more closely the one between the Lord and the Bondsman in Hegel's system.

However, I believe this rehashing is deliberate on Wark's part. Oftentimes, Wark will commend the idea of plagiarism, propelled by an underlying idea of the Situationists's "literary communism". The point is to wrest ideas free from becoming private property by avoiding citation. References and citations make out a tax; in order to use a concept, you must first pay the tax of referencing the owner of the concept in your text. Wark's interpretation of literary communism leads her to claim that removing the private property aspect of concepts opens up a space in which ideas may flow freely, in which so-called canonised Master Thinkers have been dethroned, and in which everyone may participate without the presupposition of having read a lot of difficult texts beforehand. The idea is refreshingly egalitarian, and I commend it, but I always wonder what such an influx of new participants might do to the quality standards of the works being created. If we are to avoid gatekeeping editors and publishers, these standards need to embedded within literary communism itself in such a way that people end up recognising the standards as patterns and conforming to them unwittingly.

At the end of the day, Wark's prefigurative literary communism has not worked out yet, I believe. If you want the good parts, just read the following chapters: Abstraction, Hacking, Information, Vector, and World."

[declanowo]

Random Weekly (horror) Films - Week Five - Silent Hill

8/12/23

Silent Hill

In my early teenage years, when I was first getting into the idea of writing full novels, I fell in love with the concept of Dante’s Inferno. Simply put, it is the first part of the Italian writer's epic poem, Divine Comedy. The Inferno depicts Dante’s journey through hell, a nine circled creature. Despite never having read the poem, I became obsessed with the circles, referencing them constantly in my own work, reading about what you must endure within each circle, their relation to sin. All of it was astonishingly interesting to me. While researching for Silent Hill, I came across a few mentions of The Inferno, which brought me back to those moments where I would sit reading about it when I was younger, this in turn even reminded me of my time in sixth form, where the poem would occasionally be mentioned, and I would become infatuated once more. Still to this day, I haven’t read the poem, which illustrates the grasp it has on me. Silent Hill’s exploration into another world, one between life and death, a purgatory of sorts, alongside its heavy religious themes makes it so interesting to me, and is where much of The Inferno influence shines through. While the film starts hopefully bleak, it devolves with time, hope dwindles, and the true, grey light leads us to the realisation that there is no sanctuary lurking inside of the titular town, but only destruction, and treachery. 

I was incredibly excited when I spun Silent Hill on my wheel! Based on the popular game series, the film had always intrigued me; a few months ago, I watched around three hours of the first game, and found myself curious about the story nestled beneath the gameplay which was simply uninteresting to me. However, the games still stood out, given their thick and distinctive style, an aesthetic that is carried across to the film in several ways. 

To discuss my thoughts on the film, I’ve divided aspects of it into sections to discuss, however in short, I enjoyed this film. I wanted to like it more - the first act was my favourite, followed by the third, however, I found myself somewhat bored during the second, which feels too long to me, although it is more complex than this, as I will later discuss. 

One of the key pieces of most narratives are characters. Silent Hill is no exception, the film grows from a small cast, creating an isolated and terrifying feeling with it, before showing that sometimes, being alone can be better, as we meet the cult. However, I feel rather mixed on most of these characters - in my mind, I am in a limbo as to whether or not I enjoy them, or instead find them bland. While watching, I definitely leaned into the latter, especially during the second act, however, upon reflection, this feels unfair, yet I can’t ignore that my brain is certainly blocking out many of the more dull moments of the movie. 

Starting with our protagonist, Rose Da Silva (played by Radha Mitchell) who enters Silent Hill after her sleepwalking adoptive daughter continues whispering of the ghost town. However, after arriving, and passing out (the result of a car crash), she finds her daughter missing. Rose replaces the first game's protagonist, Harry Mason, however I believe the two are fairly similar. In fact, the reason she was written over him was because he was described as not being a very masculine character. Firstly, this is pretty disappointing to find out, writer Christophe Gans, explained that he felt the characters actions of fainting, being dizzy and talking to himself, were too feminine, so instead of altering the character, he changed the protagonist into a woman - I felt the decision could have been more so focused on the relationship between Rose and her husband, who is so against taking their daughter to Silent Hill, it feels like the gender roles here could have been an interesting topic, however, I guess instead this change was made for a pretty silly reason. I will try not to lament on this any further, but I do find it curious that these, very human and regular person traits are connected to femininity here, it feels overtly sexist in the view of femininity correlating to fragility. 

Rose is a difficult character, on one hand she has a single goal, which is helping/ finding her daughter - we don’t get much shading to her character in the first act beyond this, and that worked perfectly for me, however, over time I found this to be a larger problem. Although she does talk to herself, it is often to uncover the mysteries nestled within the town rather than to develop her character, which stays fairly one note throughout - maybe this is a result of the character being based on Harry Mason, an everyman, however, when the film changes from a single person wandering, enamoured with fear and desperation, to a group searching, I feel like it lends itself to a change in dialogue and direction for the character, unveiling more about them rather than just their goals, because all I know about Rose, is that she wants to find her daughter. Once again, I stopped minding as much towards the third act, yet the second act feels so long as a result of this issue I have!

Next is Cybil Bennet, a character ripped straight from the first game. Played by Laurie Holden, the character is a police officer, who chases after Rose suspiciously, before joining her cause as the two fall victim to Silent Hill’s warped world. She acts as a foil to Rose, being far more grounded in reality. I went back and forth on whether or not I liked her, she is so abrasive and initially refuses to listen, and while somewhat annoying to watch when we know Rose isn’t lying, it does make sense, and builds up an interesting character, who grew on me across the duration of the film! Once again, the second act is an issue for her character, although less so than with Rose, however, she was great! She became an enjoyable second voice to Rose!

Finally, I shall discuss Sharon, the missing child. Her story is so interesting, the reveal in the third act brought my attention and enjoyment back to the film, and I found her to be the most interesting puzzle of the film. Her constant appearances around the town as we wander are creepy! I really enjoyed this character! 

Moving onto what might be one of my favourite elements of the movie - its themes. Whenever I write these after watching a film, I am incredibly excited to delve into the themes and meaning behind it - whenever my lust isn’t sated, it can make a somewhat less than stellar review.

Religion is most evident in this film as a result of the church, alongside the cult led by Christabella. This cult is fearful, relying on the ideology of good vs evil. Their fear is the catalyst for the film, with them burning ‘witches’ to prevent any wrong coming to them; the ideal of good and evil is presented as grey when we arrive at the concept of killing (as opposed to murder), is it morally good to kill someone who is evil? Ridding the world of evil is inherently good, but by doing so, they expose themselves to evil. In the end, Alessa, the so-called witch they burnt, is neither entirely bad, nor good, there are pieces to her, good and bad, and they are what persists on. Although her evil shines through, she is still grey, rather than any absence of colour, the concept of good and evil will always overlap, and trying to fit in with a theoretical, omnipotent perception of this is inherently impossible. In the end, the evil burns within those who cannot discern that they harbour both, which is at the heart of Silent Hill - it is two sides of the same coin, neither is all that appealing. 

We can see Silent Hill itself as an allusion to purgatory and hell - here we can see the inspiration from Inferno. The regular world is bleak, a constant search for Rose’s husband that he will never be able to complete, because that which he seeks is elsewhere. Yet, he never is willing enough to take a leap anywhere to escape the purgatory - for him, there is no heaven, nor hell. In contrast, Rose assimilates into hell, as she spirals to the bottom of the Silent Hill dimension, where she can live, frozen in the ice. 

Next, I want to talk about the creatures that reside in Silent Hill. There is an abundance of them, so I will touch on only the most interesting few, however, before that, I want to discuss the effect the gluttony has on this film. While the game similarly uses a large array of creatures, it isn’t entirely comparable to the film, which is far shorter, and doesn’t need such a wide variety of creatures for the protagonist to fight. Regardless, I found many of them to be enjoyable, especially when they were played by professional dancers, in contrast to the CGI creatures that stick out in a way that feels perfectly 2000s. What I find so interesting about the creatures in the game, is they all appear to have purpose and meaning seeped into why they are there - they are born from established fears, Alessa’s memories and foreshadowing. In part this is still retained, which I do appreciate - however I have a specific exception. I also enjoy the fleshy and bug theme that is strung throughout these creatures! 

To start on a positive, the dark nurses are very cool! Their scene is anxiety evoking, as we fear when they will move again - their movements are aided so well by the professional dancers playing them! They are a manifestation of the way Alessa viewed her nurses, which I think works well, as they are adapted from the Bubble Head Nurses from Silent Hill 2, who were not based on this. Although, it does raise the question of why the characters are designed to be so overtly sexual, while it makes sense in the games for the characters they are manifested from, here it does feel like they have simply taken the iconic character and placed them in with some altering, while still neglecting certain aspects that don’t entirely make sense. However, this isn’t too big of a problem for me, given how cool the scene is and how little they appear. 

In contrast, Pyramid Head felt so out of place to me. Despite being a pseudo mascot for the franchise, the characters first appearance was in the second game (which Gan’s initially wanted to adapt, viewing the story as similar to Orpheus and Eurydice, however, the presence of the titular town is what drew him away from working on it, as there it is used as a mere backdrop) and here his working in feels rather flimsy. Although a cool design and garnering one of the most fun kills of the film, he serves no purpose being in the film, and doesn’t do much! It was pretty disappointing to me, given that the character is what I have been seeing so much of in regards to the series. Apparently in the sequel this is wrapped up better, however here his placement feels egregious! 

Moving on to a problem I had with this film, being its length. Although I much prefer a ninety minute film, I won’t refuse to watch, nor find a longer movie to be unenjoyable. However the film must stay engaging for that whole period, which some do struggle to do! The greed of having such a long film is understandable to me, why cut so much that you have written and filmed? Yet, the film feels too long without much payoff for a large portion of it! Mainly, this comes down to the second act I have mentioned a few times - there is a transition from a solo wander through the town, to a group search; the two juxtapose one another, from trying to find clues, to searching downright, from focusing on atmosphere, to focusing on building mystery. This is fine, but not enough happens in the second act, I feel, to warrant it being so long! 

Usually, I find anger towards the use of a grey movie - it’s so bland, and is usually a result of the focus not being on the look of the film! However, much like in Hush, it works so excellently for me here! Mostly because the dark lighting and greys come as a contrast to the natural lighting of the regular world, it makes us feel uncomfortable to be in, and it highlights the dreary tone and foggy atmosphere. Here, there is excellence in the colour grey, which I find pretty rare! The film uses it both for its atmosphere, and its bleak tone!

Maybe the most hypnotising thing about the film is its score. I doubt this is heresy to say, given that it is borrowed from the first four games. However, it fits so perfectly - composer Akira Yamaoka creates such an amazing score that is eerie, catchy and matches exactly the tone of the series. My favourite is Laura Plays the Piano, which has been stuck in my head ever since! While writing, I have been listening to the soundtrack, and I doubt it will ever leave my mind - even in my brief times with the first game, the title music is what stuck with me most. 

I will touch on the film's violence briefly, through its series of kills! A few of them really made an impact - Anna especially, as we see her skin and muscles torn off by Pyramid Head, which is excellently dark and creates a terrifying point of no return! What makes it stand out so much is that we finally have someone who can freely be killed to set the stakes, without having to forfeit our protagonists so early! At this point, we grow fearful, feeling like anyone can die, which isn’t incorrect, and in such a bloody and violent way only adds to this. The other kills I enjoy all entail the barbed wire, a motif in the film! It’s such a visceral image, and it links to the crucifixion we watch begin, as Jesus wore a thorny crown, alluding to a mocking claim of authority. It also matches the gritty, survivalist feel that is laced throughout the film!

Finally, we reach the atmosphere the film builds. It would be fraud, if not to discuss that this film builds up such a dark, gritty and unfamiliar place. Fog rolls across the town, obscuring our view, as well as our protagonists, and it blends nicely with Alessa appearing sometimes! Whenever you see fog in a horror movie, we are conditioned to assume something may be lurking, and here it is no different! 

Particularly, I enjoy the way the film emulates the fixed camera angles of the first game, which creates such a rigid and particular style, it is inescapable, and forces us to try to see more despite knowing we cannot! Touches like this show just how much the film meant to Gan’s, who spent five years simply trying to get the rights. 

To wrap up my thoughts on this film, I enjoyed it a lot! The treachery of the setting itself is so much of what makes this film so fun, and while I found it to be held back by certain aspects, such as some of the character work, and a few somewhat incoherent plot points, I still mostly had fun with it, and it has made me consider engaging with the games! There feels like so much more built into this series than what is shown in the film, which is no criticism of the movie, however I do want to see what that is! 

7/10

[lilliesforya]

Mid September ~

Today I understood something but I don’t know what

I’ve been helping the students prepare for their speech contest for the past week. Sometimes they understand my corrections but usually the teacher translates for them. We all rotate the privilege of understanding someone speak. However, every so often I understand something beyond inferred information and context clues. I’ll understand what’s being said in Japanese but won’t be able to translate it fully. It is just understanding appearing in my head. It reminds me of Spanish class in high school. Some stuff I translated in my head and other phrases and sentences I just understood. It would happen way more in Spanish than in Japanese but the random bits of understanding Japanese help lighten the mental load of never knowing fully what’s going on. I remember when it happened in speech contest practice because it was the first time I noticed it.

9/14 The kids did well in the contest but I wish I could have seen them perform. Some ALTs are allowed to go to the contest but not my city. I did get to see them leave for the contest and I must have scared them a little when I said “good luck!” in English. Some of the material was unfairly hard for some of them so as much as I could help with pronunciation, it may still sound awkward. One kid had a poem and I was like even an American student your age would have trouble performing that effectively, so don't feel bad.

Next week, some of the teachers are taking a group of the older students to their sister city in America. I have never been to that part of America so I'm excited to hear what they think of it. I saw the schedule and it looks very packed, so I hope they can enjoy some free time. I told the class with the students to visit Walmart if they really wanted to experience America and I was only half joking. (I was being sarcastic but mostly talking to myself. I'm sure no one heard.) I wish they were visiting a more diverse area of America, so they could see different people and hear different languages. That sort of synthesis of cultures makes America really distinctive, especially in comparison to Japan. I'm hoping at the very least they encounter Spanish once or see a non-white person. I told them to take many pictures! I’m awful at recording memories with images and I regret it only afterwards. America is thought of as one collective country here because that's what most other countries are but its not easy to generalize. When people ask me questions I'm very quick to specify on the east coast, or in my state, or in my general area.. etc, because I have no idea about the other places in America. I'm from the east coast, and some of the other jets are from the midwest, and west coast. There are few questions you could ask all of us where the answer would be the same. Just today, I told the kids in one class that I liked fall because the weather gets cooler. They were younger so I said America (and nowhere specific) but that statement isn't true for like half the country. It's only half true now for my hometown too with global warming and all.

Articles and Prepositions

I haven't been in school for long. Barely a month at that. But something I have noticed is the absence of articles and prepositions when the students speak or write English. This makes sense- there aren't articles in Japanese and their prepositions (particles) serve a different purpose in the sentence structure. Sometimes two different prepositions are translated the same way/ non distinctive ways in Japanese. While I'm sure there are ways to get specific, because Japanese is so contextual and it just doesn't have the same amount of words English does (to mean basically the same things) it is really hard for students to understand. I don't blame them, if someone told me that one word in my native language had maybe 5 different translatable words depending on the specific sentence in English, I'd be pressed. Also, most English prepositions are like either 1 of 2 particles. There's always 5 ways to say something in English for every 1 way to say it in Japanese. It goes both ways though. Sometimes, I don't know how to say something in Japanese because I'm stuck on a specific word and it ends up that the word I needed is actually a word I knew- I was just thinking too specifically about what I was trying to say. I also tend to express myself with metaphors, similes, and other flowery language that isn't accessible to me in Japanese. And sarcasm. It is like going to war but war is communication and I have no ammo. The gun by itself doesn't do anything.

[lenievi]

one of the thing that is uplifting for me personally in this book is his “write sentence by sentence, revise while composing the sentences” because that’s the way I think I prefer to write

but in 2020, I’m not sure if it was after I finished my first spones fic, or if it was during it, I started to look up tips on writing because I felt inadequate and then I fell into the whole “I shouldn’t use X because a rando on the internet said so” etc. which really hampered me imho then “you gotta write everything down and only then revise” came, then seeing people just writing a one-shot in a day and immediately publishing it came, or seeing people writing 10k of a story in a day or two came, and I started to feel as if I wasn’t good enough since I couldn’t produce a lot of words in one day/in an hour

and since then writing has been frustrating at times. Especially at times when I tried to follow these popular notions - don’t edit, write without thinking, edit and revise later

but here’s a guy who’s like don’t rush the process, think about each sentence, don’t wait with revisions - and better yet, revise in your head before you even write the sentence

I know that these days the above mentioned process is frowned upon, but writing everything down and only then starting the revisions and edits never spoke to me. Like, why should I write 5k and then rewrite it again when only like 10-20% would stay? When I can make changes gradually? Not to mention, I would just end up rethinking the sentences during the revision anyway so…

It just doesn’t speak to me, but spending a relatively long time trying to emulate that process probably hindered me. So hopefully, I can get rid off this “gotta follow what a majority of people does” way of thinking and just start working on and perfecting my own process. Because I do have fun when I write my own way, even though it’s slow.

I started to read Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg, and it really speaks to me, the way he talks about writing. I think many people would find it extremely unhelpful and not true, but because he puts into words a lot of things I’m thinking and feeling, I’m really enjoying it

[harleyacoincidence]

(this is @anulithots btw!)

'Love corrupts fresh lilies' is one of the coolest titles I've ever heard.

My interest has piqued... not forced at all, but I'd love to know what it's about!

*will now proceed to scroll through the tag hehehe*

Hey, welcome to my inbox! Nice to see ya!

Honestly, I'm flattered that you like the working title. I always thought it was too descriptive or too long, but I've gotten pretty positive reception for it, so I might keep it.

So, this work has been floating around in my brain for a little while, not as long as Tales of the Unfortunate Summoner (if you're into demon summoning stuff that desperately needs a rewrite, it might be for you), but it's certainly made its presence known. It started off as a parody of one of those fanfics you might find on Wattled in 2015 regarding One Direction and selling children (if you know, you know). Personally, I could see what the authors were going for, but the concept just wasn't for me (unless I decided to not take it seriously, which I did).

So, I had a basic plot outline with no character ideas. I wanted someone to live their life, find something new, and BAM! PROBLEMS! And romance, if applicable. That one was sitting on the back burner, though. It was not the main course, and still technically isn't. After this, I had a dream in which I had characters, a better plot outline, and pretty much everything I needed. That fuelled my creative process, and I managed to start writing poems about the story, the worldbuilding, and how I wanted it to work. I later decided to turn those poems into a novel once I had more worldbuilding done, and I'm still in the process of doing that.

Warning: this is a very complicated WIP, with a huge cast of characters. While many of them are side characters, that doesn't make any of them unimportant or less vital. Each of them has a distinct role to play within the worlds (yes, worlds plural) that this story takes place in.

Additionally, this WIP is VERY dark. If you are sensitive to topics such as violence, murder, swearing, manipulation, dehumanization, psychological and physical abuse, kidnapping, gore, drowning, bigotry, or even sexual content (I think this one loosely applies), PLEASE do not read any further. This WIP is not for everyone, and if you do not like its content, that is okay. It may just not be your kind of thing, and that is entirely valid. Please, do not violate your boundaries by reading this if you feel like you will be negatively affected by any content you are about to witness. The content present in this WIP does NOT represent my personal beliefs, and was created for entertainment only. Please do not harass me, my followers, my mutuals, people I know, or anyone interested in this WIP due to its content. If you don't like the sound of it, DO NOT READ IT.

Thanks! Now, if you are still willing to read about it, feel free to keep going. If not, you have been warned. I'll see you on another post, friends!

Alright, so now that we've gotten all that out of the way, I suppose I should get into what this WIP really is about. Here's a (semi-detailed) post regarding some general information you should know, as well as some bonus snippets at the end.

Genre

Love Corrupts Fresh Lilies is, at its core, a fantasy-turned-horror novel, with some elements of romance thrown in. It follows common tropes within those three genres, but I've attempted to sew them together to make something original.

Synopsis

Rafflesia Mallory, a young woman who wishes to escape her harsh reality and the people who torment her, finds herself running from the embodiment of time, disappearing into another world, one called Altalias. There, she meets a colourful cast of literal gods, among them being two rivals who want nothing more than to be together, a scammer who everyone likes, and the worst thing that's ever happened to her.

Setting

This WIP has two main settings, one being the world Rafflesia comes from, which is made to represent our real world, and Altalias the place where beings that might as well be gods reside. All other settings mentioned or referenced do not play as large a role.

Characters

The cast of characters here is very large, but here's all of them, plus a little information about them!

Rafflesia Mallory - The protagonist of this story. She often wears red, and was incredibly lonely before coming to Altalias. She also stole something from Time (who you'll learn about soon enough), which she really does not want to give back. She is canonically bisexual.

Jacob Amond - Rafflesia's cousin, and the source of most of her torment. His time in this novel is short, yet you'll be cursing his name once you finish. He's extremely egotistical, and not the nicest to his cousin. He is canonically heterosexual.

Zane Bianco - Rafflesia's ex-boyfriend, and one of Jacob's best friends. He's a decent friend, but a horribly toxic partner, with near impossible demands. He regrets his actions and attitudes towards Rafflesia, but that is not enough to save him. He is canonically pansexual.

Sitara Bauer - One of Jacob's friends, and Rafflesia's friends by association. She has high goals, and often unrealistic expectations, but keeps a positive outlook on life. She has a twin sister named Ebony. She is canonically pansexual.

Ebony Bauer - Another one of Jacob and Rafflesia's friends, and Sitara's twin. She is more cautious than her sister, and isn't as positive, but that doesn't mean she's a pessimist. She's a bit of a hopeless romantic. She is canonically lesbian.

Winifred Gallagher - One of Rafflesia's former friends that she had outside of her cousin's friend group. She's very stubborn, and knows how to get what she wants. She only recently broke off her friendship with Rafflesia. She is canonically bisexual and transfeminine.

Hugh Murphy - Another of Rafflesia's former friends that wasn't in her cousin's friend group. He enjoys mysteries, whether that's reading books in the genre, or watching shows like Scooby-Doo (Scooby-Doo is not canonical to this novel, nor is it associated with it. It is only being used to give you an idea of his taste). He is great with the outdoors, and leaves this WIP alive, which is pretty rare. He is canonically asexual.

That's it for the humans, so let's get into everyone else!

Lawrence - The god of wealth. His title is "King". He let his godly subject get the best of him, and has succumbed to greed. He scams people to get a little wealth out of them, as he attempted to do with Rafflesia once she came to Altalias. He saw a chance to bring more wealth into the system if outsiders could enter their world, and tried to capitalize (get it?) on the opportunity. He was unsuccessful. He is canonically aroace.

Csilla - The god of space and technology. Her title is "Astronomer". She was one of the first five gods to exist when Altalias came into being. She is one of the most important gods, yet prefers to hang in the background. She does not like to attract attention. She is canonically an aromantic lesbian.

Cayden - The god of agility. His title is "Shihan". He works with Griffin to keep Altalias safe and well-defended from any threats. Unsurprisingly, due to its seclusion, there are very few threats to begin with, other than some possible ones from inside. He is canonically gay.

Griffin - The god of strength. His title is "Renshi". He works with Cayden to preserve Altalias' safety. He mentors Cayden, and often keeps his bursts of energy under control. He is the calm to Cayden's storm, and they fit quite well together. He is canonically a homoromantic asexual.

Juliette - The god of theatre. Her title is "Entertainer". She loves to perform (evidently) and often works with some of her fellow gods during festivals. She is best friends with Melody and Cale. She is canonically pansexual.

Melody - The god of music. Her title is "Virtuoso". She does not like the spotlight as much as Juliette, but enjoys the thought of entertaining others with her beautiful music. No festival or event is complete without her touch. She is canonically bisexual.

Clae - The god of visual art and architecture. Her title is "Artisan". Clae loves to share her work with others, and often invites people to her studio for an afternoon of pottery. She is incredibly patient, and willing to help others if needed, whether or not the task at hand is something she is good at. She is canonically lesbian.

Kai - The god of water. His title is "Torrenter". Along with Csilla and a few others, he was one of the first gods to come into existence. He likes to project a calm image when in public, but is quite temperamental. One of his coping mechanisms is changing the weather, such as making the sky cloudy, or having light rain, heavy rain, or even hail. It takes enough energy out of him to calm him down, but does affect everyone in Altalias. He doesn't really have anyone he can talk to other than Bridget and Aura, due to how dangerous he can be. He is canonically aroaceflux.

Bridget - The god of fire and generic insults. Her title is "Roaster". Unlike many of the other gods, who had their titles bestowed upon them, she came up with her title herself. She is closest to Aura and Kai, who also represent elements. She has an awful temper, but is a great person to be around when she's in a good mood. She does tend to lash out at people directly when she's angry, but if you've proven that you will be by her side no matter what, she'll do anything for you. She is canonically bi-curious.

Aura - The god of wind and air. Her title is "Liberator". She is another one of the five original gods. Aura is one of the most mysterious gods, but is highly respected. Despite being rarely seen, her presence is always felt. When she is seen, she either communicates telepathically, or through a type of Altalian sign language. She is canonically demisexual.

Isagani - The god of success. Their title is "Provider". They are the god that others often seek out if they feel that they are going through a rough time in their life and want good luck. They often work closely with Kari, the two of them often being referred to as the Fortune Duo. They used to be very close to Lawrence, before he let his greed overtake him. They are canonically agender and pansexual.

Kari - The god of aid in dark times. Their title is "Server". They are regarded as the bringer of hope, and are visited when one has a problem that Isagani cannot solve or give advice for. Long ago, they helped to defeat a source of evil within Altalias, forcing him to reside within the far forests. This evil is rarely ever seen outside of them, mostly due to the humiliation he faced in his defeat. Kari is canonically agender and demiromantic.

Aadhya - The god of competition. Her title is "Lady". Aadhya often works with Lawrence, Ferphasia, Juliette, Melody, and Clae to put on festivals or competitions within Altalias. She is very competitive, and often wins the most during said contests. She is canonically heterosexual.

Chloe - The god of childbirth and family. Her title is "Accoucheuse". She is one of the first five gods. She is extremely kind, and works with Ferphasia in a sort of store that has a variety of goods one might need (these include food, clothing, and charms). She was also one of the first to properly welcome Rafflesia to Altalias and make sure she felt at home. She is canonically pansexual.

Ferphasia - The god of gifts and hospitality. Her title is "Enchanter". She is kind of the Glinda the Good Witch of Altalias, with her foil being Jade. She has Chloe's kindness, but is more firm than her. She is also madly in love with Jade (who returns the feeling), but refuses to admit it. She is canonically lesbian.

Kenzo - The god of good health. His title is "Curer". If anyone in Altalias finds themselves with a physical ailment that they were not created with, they go to Kenzo. Nine times out of ten, he can either fully cure you or help you heal. However, as you'll see, this is not always the case. He is canonically gay.

Jade - The god of dark magic. Her title is "Witch". Jade is easily one of the most misunderstood in Altalias. She does not mean harm, but enjoys playing odd pranks on people, often involving rocks appearing in strange places. She is very close to Lawrence, as he is one of her only friends. She has a huge crush on Ferphasia, her rival, but refuses to admit it to anyone other than Hemlock, her brother. She is canonically lesbian.

Hemlock - The god of corruption. His title is "Master". He is one of the first five gods that came into existence with Altalias. He is the original source of evil in Altalias, and nobody but Jade gives him a chance to do anything. He mostly remains in the far forests, and is almost never seen in the town square. He hates Lawrence due to how egotistical he is, and Lawrence hates him because everyone else does. He will jump at the chance to leave his mark of evil anywhere, especially on a certain protagonist. He is canonically heterosexual.

Time - The embodiment of time itself. His name is his title, and if he catches you, there is nowhere you can run. He once was kind, just, and empathetic, but after being corrupted by Rafflesia, he is no longer so. She stole the only weapon he had, a sword, which allowed him to slightly mess with the natural order, and end the lives of people and things prematurely. Rafflesia didn't trust him to use it wisely after his drastic change. He has been trying to get it back ever since, unsuccessfully. He has lost a fight to Jade. He is canonically aroace.

Random Lore/Plot Details

Everyone born/created in the other world has powers, and is pretty much a god of some sort

They have a name and a title, but they most often go by their title

Some might have their title precede their name

They are allowed to create their name themselves, but often have their title bestowed upon them by another

It is unknown what would happen if an outsider stayed in the other world for a long period of time, perhaps they would remain the same, perhaps they would change, or die, or slowly gain god-like powers, or become a sort of powerless god themselves

Sacrifices increase the power the gods have, but most would rather avoid having to deal with murder and death

Despite being strong, the gods do not have the ability to leave their world, due to a lack of power

It is not yet known to the gods if sacrifices could remove this weakness, but one god in particular desires to be able to travel back and forth between two interconnected worlds

Gods of concepts have no human form to begin with, often just appearing as pillars of smoke, monsters, or strange inhuman spirits

The majority of them changed into humanoid forms (aside from Lawrence, who prefers his more humanoid form to begin with) upon noticing that Rafflesia had entered their world, in an attempt to make her more comfortable

Rafflesia has frequent nightmares

Lawrence dies

Bonus Snippets

(Final call for trigger warnings!)

I could hear music playing in the distance. As I followed it, I found myself in a village square. The tune was upbeat, inviting, almost like it knew I had just arrived. Why would there be music playing now, of all times? A festival? I thought, What kind of festival would be on now specifically? Do they also celebrate a jazz festival? The music doesn’t sound like jazz. I nearly tripped over a tree root while lost in thought. Definitely not my proudest moment, I’m afraid.

“If you’re looking for something to do here, Dove, we have plenty of shops for you to look through. We accept any currency, and I’m sure you’ll find something that piques your interest!” “Great, thanks, Lawrence, I’ll be sure to check those out…” I muttered, drawing my hand back slowly. “Well, if you’re new here, you’ll definitely need a guide for the time being, and there’s nobody better than myself! So, Dove, got anything on your mind that you’d like to see? If you can think of it, we’ve probably got it!”

“Please, make yourself at home! Try some apple strudel, it’s fresh. I baked some bread rolls this morning, feel free to take as many as you’d like. Also, if you like tarts, there’s some blueberry ones over here and some pecan butter tarts here. Take as many as you’d like, free of charge.” My head spun at all of the offered dishes. I felt like I was in some sort of fairy tale, like if I ate anything I’d surely be trapped in this strange place, or worse. “Uhh, catch?” I asked, shrinking back from the plates full of heavenly sweets. “Hmm?” the woman asked, tilting her head, “Catch? Why would there be a catch?”

“You! You evil, disgusting, potion-brewing, manipulating, unorganized, witchy freak!” “You overly-peppy, cotton-brained, goody-two-shoes pushover!” “They’re in love,” Hemlock whispered to me. “It’s clear as day,” I replied.

I tugged at my blouse’s collar, already sweating. I hadn’t even been called in yet. I fiddled with my folder, praying I wouldn’ suddenly forget my name. Opening my file, I quickly checked the contents. My resume and reference letters were still there, thankfully. “Olivia?” I heard the secretary call. I got up and nervously approached him. I didn’t know why. That wasn’t my name. “They’re waiting for you in room 236, to your right.”

His blood covered the streets. You could see it for what felt like miles. Everyone knew what had happened to him, even if they hadn’t been in the town square that day. Those who had been there in the moment only had more of the spectacle to deal with. I had been there. I knew. The memory stained my mind as beautifully as his remains did against the stone. I hadn’t thought smoke to be so corporeal, but my darling had shown me his power and proved me wrong once again. He’d been slammed against the cobblestone and pinned there. The more he struggled, the tighter the grip became. When he cried out, he was lifted and smashed back down. Everyone had heard something crack and break. It was not enough. Smoky fingers moved from his throat to his chest and stomach. That was where they remained, until every drop of crimson essence had been wrung from his form. He was thrown against the ground once more, splashing in a puddle of blood and innards that had been grotesquely crushed and pulled apart. He wasn’t moving anymore. No part was lively, not even his eyes, which had been rolled back so far into his head that it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen in.

My body was rotting. The only things holding it together were the roots of a tree. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I could barely think. As I creaked my head downward to look at myself, strung up like some sort of ornament, I noticed something funny about my arms. Where my veins of blueish purple once flowed, were strange green tracks. And they were moving. Wriggling. Almost…struggling to get out. And I could feel every bit of it.

An inky black soup. Gently churning, swirling smoothly, yet not bubbling. I dipped my toes in, and observed the gentle ripples. The urge to wade in and swim was too great not to resist. My clothes swirled around me. The feeling of the liquid was similar to water, but was more viscous. It made me a little uneasy, but the calm and whimsical nature of it only drew me in more. The overall experience reminded me of the black accidental keys on a piano. Paired with the right natural notes, the experience could either be in major or minor key. Everything was so visceral. A playful wave splashed over me, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Another splashed over my legs, and I continued. What I didn’t realize early enough was that the water was gradually becoming rougher, too choppy to properly swim in. That thought came far too late to help me. The liquid began to splash over me from all angles. I began to struggle to keep my head at the surface. The further I swam, the larger the waves became. Looking back at a wave half as large as I was tall, I began to swim faster. I needed to get away from it. I needed to stay afloat. Upon looking forward, I was met with a wave twice as large as I was. It crashed over me, and with a scream, I went under. I don��t remember whether or not I came back up.

Hope you enjoyed! Let me know if you have any questions, or want to know more! I tried to keep this as general and spoiler-free as possible.

[thelastonewastaken]

Unsocial Media

The first social media platform I joined was hi5. It was a cute little platform where you could change the skins of your profile page to any colour or template. Most of my friends from high secondary school also joined at the same time (I guess that's why I signed up, peer pressure being what it is) and it was good to view people's profiles and leave funny, little comments.

A year or so later, everyone moved over to Facebook. It was pretty much the same idea, but since I went to university soon after I also started connecting with people that saw in class or in school. The fundamental idea of these platforms was that you could connect with anyone and build a network of people with shared interests. I posted a lot on Facebook then, posts that I see now when I get memory notifications. I even wrote a few poems on Facebook Notes.

Mid-way through university, in late 2010 or early 2011, I joined Twitter. Twitter was really fun. It used to be that you tweeted into the ether and sometimes you got a sign that the ether heard you. I met a lot of people on Twitter, made friends and blocked a lot more. At some point though, I think Twitter became a little mean. People formed cliques and every tweet became some kind of argument. You could say "X makes me feel good" and someone would reply "So you're saying Y is trash?" No sir, those are different points. I started tweeting less and less until Meta released Threads and I mostly moved there.

Instagram is peak social media. If I could give up social media, I think I'll quit Instagram last. Originally, I used it to post photos I thought were funny or photos from trips I went on, but then I started to explore amateur photography more. With Stories, I started to engage with more people and actually gained a lot of friends on the platform (of course, I've blocked people too).

My problem with the current state of social media (and this includes LinkedIn) is that it is now a marketplace. On one side, you have creators of content, who work quite hard at generating (and 'adapting') photo, video, and/or text content for the enjoyment of the other side, the consumers of content. These platforms have developed complex algorithms to make the distinction between both sides appear latent, while encouraging creators to post more content and consumers to scroll more.

As I write this, I realize that I will probably post this online so I'm obviously consumed by this system too.

This system has benefited a lot of people. Creating content now provides sufficient income for many people, and brands employ creators in selling their goods to more people. Consumers now know of brands and influencers that address their needs more directly than they would know using other media platforms. The main negative of this system is that creators have to post engaging content very frequently, which tend to be incendiary and typically post about subjects within their niche.

This might sound weird, but when I follow people on social media I expect to see different sides of them. Like, you talked about a book you read yesterday but you're talking about car exhaust pipes today. That's range, human beings are supposed to have range. Don't talk about personal finance everyday, dawg.

For people who simply want to connect with others, it's become quite hard to do so. I would not have met my wife without social media or the last friend I hung out with in Toronto. And that's quite sad. Now when I follow new people, I take their follower count into consideration because if they have a large following they're less likely to engage with new people.

Where does that leave me? I don't know. I'm just a guy who likes to meet new people without leaving my house.

[marjaystuff]

Interview with Amanda Flower

Because I Could Not Stop for Death and I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died by Amanda Flower has her venturing into historical mysteries.  These books have a unique portrayal of the famous American writer Emily Dickinson.  Emily along with her maid, Willa, become sleuths and help to solve murders. But a bonus is having readers getting glimpses of how Emily thinks and what the culture of mid-19th century was like. 

Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea to use Emily Dickinson?

Amanda Flower: Each book’s title will be the first line from one of her famous poems. In the first book, the poem was about a carriage ride with a horse.  In this novel, a horse is very central to the story. The second book has flies surrounding the found body, which is related to the poem I used. I pay tribute to the poems, but do not follow it verbatim. Her poems are imagery and vague with multiple meanings. She never wrote clearly. 

EC:  Why Emily Dickinson?

AF:  Her poems are mysterious. I have been a huge Emily Dickinson fan since I was 15 years old.  I wanted to write a historical novel with another version, so I decided to write a mystery with her.  Last year it won the Agatha for best historical mystery and a final for one of the Edgar Awards. The real characters beside Emily were the maid Margaret O’ Brian. I added a maid assistant, Willa to tell the story in the same manner that Sherlock Holmes had Watson.  I also chose that period of her life, in 1855, where Emily and her sister came to Washington because her father was a member of the House of Representatives. This time was about six years before she went into hiding for the rest of her life as a recluse. She did not get any acclaims for her writing when she was alive.

EC:  Why the reference to slavery?

AF:  In the 1850s America was in turmoil over slavery. I knew I had to include this issue, or it would be a disservice.  It divided everyone. The Underground Railroad went through many small towns close to where I live in Ohio. One of my jobs was leading Underground Railroad tours through the town that I worked in. I spoke about the people who lived there and those who tried to escape. 

EC:  How would you describe Emily’s personality in your book?

AF:  This is my best interpretation of the real Emily. She likes to investigate, a good judge of character, ignores societal class, and is loyal. She is also bold, caring, curious, confident, and blunt. She was probably her father’s favorite because he gave her special treatment.  She enjoyed wandering around and instead of not telling her to stop bought her a dog for protection. The dog is real and so his name Carlo, a character in Jane Eyre. He lived for seventeen years, which is unusual for a pure bred, Newfoundland.  One of the theories is that Emily became a recluse after he passed away. Her dad would buy contemporary fiction books and leave them around the house for her to just happen to find. The family gave her room to be different, a genius aspect.

EC:  How would you describe the real maid, Margaret?

AF:  Kind, protective, tough, and can be hard-nosed. I made her gruff with Willa.

EC:  How would you describe Willa?

AF:  Nervous for her brother’s safety, compassionate, strong, determined, loyal, and broken. In the first book she is more timid. She is determined to find out what happened to her brother, Henry.  As the series goes on, she is very protective and loyal to Emily. She understands more social standing than Emily. Willa is very aware of the class distinction and sees the servants as being invisible.  Emily tries to treat her as an equal.

EC:  What is the difference between the sisters, Vinnie, and Emily?

AF:  Vinnie acts like an older sister even though Emily is the older sister. At the end of their life, she took care of Emily. Vinnie is more into societal norms. She carries the weight on her shoulders. Vinnie is a cat person, while Emily is a dog person who hated cats. The cats probably annoyed her dog.  Emily did write about disliking cats. 

EC:  What about Henry?

AF:  Henry is an idealist.  He wanted to take from the rich and give to the poor.  He had a happy and carefree personality. He knew Willa’s upmost goal was to protect him.  He is also kind, with a nose for trouble, and caring.

EC:  The second book in the series, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I died, highlights Ralph Waldo Emerson-why?

AF:  Through my research I found he stayed with Emily’s brother at their estate. Plus, I really like his works and wanted to include him in the series. He was the peak of American literature during that time. He encouraged young authors to write in an ‘American voice.’ After a lifetime of acclaim, he felt pretty good about himself. He is very aloof and is distant from others.

EC:  Why the plagiarism angle? AF: It was harder back then to prove.  Many authors self-published back then and it was hard to prove that someone else wrote it so it would have been easy to plagiarize. It is still a problem today.  Writers would think about this problem. Although they do have a certain way of phrasing.  Emerson had a very strong voice, very authoritative and confident. He wrote essays and non-fiction. The victim in the story was a social climber who tried to put his name on other’s works. 

EC:  Louisa May Alcott and Emily contrasted each other as writers?

AF:  I put her in the story because she was about the same age as Emily and lived nearby. It was possible they could have met although no evidence. I also wanted to contrast her with Emily.  Some authors like Emily did it for the sake of art and her own personal thoughts, while others like Alcott did it for the sake of supporting her family and was driven.  Emily feared fame and did not try to get published more. Personally, I write for both reasons. I put in the author’s notes how ‘Emily wrote for the expression of art; Louisa wrote for the money.’ 

EC:  Louisa May Alcott was also in the story-what was her voice?

AF: She is very confident, opinionated, with fun banter.  Anyone who read Little Women would recognize these qualities in her main character, Jo. She is blunt, straight forward, and wrote for the money because she is super pragmatic. Growing up her family did not have money because her dad believed in living simply. She broke barriers by being a female who used her own name and became popular. When she started writing she used pen names. But with Little Women she wrote under her own name and this book changed the life of herself and her family. 

EC:  Next books?

AF:  The third one in the series might be the last one. It is titled I Died for Beauty and will come out in early 2025.  The plot setting has the 1857 blizzard with a deep freeze in New England. A young Irish couple die in a fire at their house. Emily and Willa try to figure out what really happened.

The next book coming out in February is titled Crime and Cherry Pits, a cozy.  In March my first Katherine Wright mystery will be released titled To Slip the Bonds of Earth about a murder.

The Candy Shop mystery will be out in October next year.  The Matchmaker mystery comes out the following year.  Each main character will have a book coming out every other year. 

THANK YOU!!

[pseuddamntired]

I’m oddly glad you didn’t bring up one of my favorites that I learned about in a high school creative writing course (Midwest United States, cannot understand Japanese in any form) because I get to share it hehe

So you can find this blog post about this particular haiku here but the post I’m quoting specifically gives its original text and translation as:

今朝秋や見入る鏡に親の顔 kesa akiya miiru kagamini oyano kao

autumn morning in the mirror I see my father's face —Murakami

(Tr. David LaSpina)

What I remember learning is that

seasonal imagery can heavily influence the tone and context of the poem. So like, in this example, autumn carries the idea of a change in season, a turning to old age, a transition to the end of life (winter)

the “cut” that was explained by OP can often take the form of like… breaking expectation, shifting the meaning. So in this example, there’s the expectation that one would see your own face in the mirror, but the speaker here is seeing his father’s face. That he doesn’t recognize it is indicative of how it is a sudden realization, despite the fact that our bodies change gradually and the day before, he would have looked much the same. Based off OP’s post and another reblog that I’ll put below this bullet point, I think there’s probably a comparison being made between the common feeling of suddenly realizing it’s almost winter--that sudden shift in the seasons that, logically, we know has been happening gradually, but often it surprises us because we aren’t paying attention, or it actually does come up suddenly (literally: sudden weather change, leaves all fall, snow dumps on the ground. metaphorically: health issues, friends having children or friends dying, children leaving home, etc.). Now for the reblog that made me think about the things in this bullet point and made me want to ask more questions about the construction of haiku.

[Image ID: screenshot of a reblog. Tumblr user bigbootykuwabaras ( @bigbootykuwabaras ) reblogged from user sleepnoises ( @sleepnoises ) with the tags "#there's also the element that the symbols used to write the words/sounds can have a secondary meaning #so it's possible for a haiku to have a different secondary reading #not really a replicable form factor in english" /.End ID]

The reblog is talking specifically about multiple meanings for the symbols that Japanese is written in. They're totally right about being much much more difficult to pull off in English in such a syllabically-constrained medium (since I don't think we really have a distinction between "sound" and "syllable" like there apparently is Japanese). I think there can be something similar but not quite the same, not quite as complete of a second meaning, in English, where a word has two meanings that both make sense in the context. But I think that would be very limited by other features of English, like how much a word's position in a sentence and its surrounding words impact meaning. I'm curious if there are any Japanese language poets who play with an intermingling of two secondary meanings, or if that's not really possible in Japanese, or goes too far outside of the conventions of haiku/be too confusing to a reader. I'm also curious if any Japanese speakers can add any insight into the poem that I'm missing, as an English speaker. Or if you have any other examples of haiku that you really like and an explanation.

None Of You Know What Haiku Are

I'm going to preface this by saying that i am not an expert in ANY form of poetry, just an enthusiast. Also, this post is... really long. Too long? Definitely too long. Whoops! I love poetry.

If you ask most English-speaking people (or haiku-bot) what a haiku is, they would probably say that it's a form of poetry that has 3 lines, with 5, and then 7, and then 5 syllables in them. That's certainly what I was taught in school when we did our scant poetry unit, but since... idk elementary school when I learned that, I've learned that that's actually a pretty inaccurate definition of haiku. And I think that inaccurate definition is a big part of why most people (myself included until relatively recently!) think that haiku are kind of... dumb? unimpressive? simple and boring? I mean, if you can just put any words with the right number of syllables into 3 lines, what makes it special?

Well, let me get into why the 5-7-5 understanding of haiku is wrong, and also what makes haiku so special (with examples)!

First of all, Japanese doesn't have syllables! There's a few different names for what phonetic units actually make up the language- In Japanese, they're called "On" (音), which translates to "sound", although English-language linguists often call it a "mora" (μ), which (quoting from Wikipedia here) "is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable." (x) "Oh" is one syllable, and also one mora, whereas "Oi" has one syllable, but two moras. "Ba" has one mora, "Baa" has two moras, etc. In English, we would say that a haiku is made up of three lines, with 5-7-5 syllables in them, 17 syllables total. In Japanese, that would be 17 sounds.

For an example of the difference, the word "haiku", in English, has 2 syllables (hai-ku), but in Japanese, はいく has 3 sounds (ha-i-ku). "Christmas" has 2 syllables, but in Japanese, "クリスマス" (ku-ri-su-ma-su) is 5 sounds! that's a while line on its own! Sometimes the syllables are the same as the sounds ("sushi" is two syllables, and すし is two sounds), but sometimes they're very different.

In addition, words in Japanese are frequently longer than their English equivalents. For example, the word "cuckoo" in Japanese is "ほととぎす" (hototogisu).

Now, I'm sure you're all very impressed at how I can use an English to Japanese dictionary (thank you, my mother is proud), but what does any of this matter? So two languages are different. How does that impact our understanding of haiku?

Well, if you think about the fact that Japanese words are frequently longer than English words, AND that Japanese counts sounds and not syllables, you can see how, "based purely on a 17-syllable counting method, a poet writing in English could easily slip in enough words for two haiku in Japanese” (quote from Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer by Kit Pancoast Nagamura). If you're writing a poem using 17 English syllables, you are writing significantly more content than is in an authentic Japanese haiku.

(Also not all Japanese haiku are 17 sounds at all. It's really more of a guideline.)

Focusing on the 5-7-5 form leads to ignoring other strategies/common conventions of haiku, which personally, I think are more interesting! Two of the big ones are kigo, a season word, and kireji, a cutting word.

Kigo are words/phrases/images associated with a particular season, like snow for winter, or cherry blossoms for spring. In Japan, they actually publish reference books of kigo called saijiki, which is basically like a dictionary or almanac of kigo, describing the meaning, providing a list of related words, and some haiku that use that kigo. Using a a particular kigo both grounds the haiku in a particular time, but also alludes to other haiku that have used the same one.

Kireji is a thing that doesn't easily translate to English, but it's almost like a spoken piece of punctuation, separating the haiku into two parts/images that resonate with and add depth to each other. Some examples of kireji would be "ya", "keri", and "kana." Here's kireji in action in one of the most famous haiku:

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音 (Furu ike ya　kawazu tobikomu　mizu no oto) (The old pond — A frog jumps in The sound of the water.)

You can see the kireji at the end of the first line- 古池や literally translates to "old pond ya". The "ya" doesn't have linguistic meaning, but it denotes the separation between the two focuses of the haiku. First, we are picturing a pond. It's old, mature. The water is still. And then there's a frog! It's spring and he's fresh and new to the world! He jumps into the pond and goes "splash"! Wowie! When I say "cutting word", instead of say, a knife cutting, I like to imagine a film cut. The camera shows the pond, and then it cuts to the frog who jumps in.

English doesn't really have a version of this, at least not one that's spoken, but in English language haiku, people will frequently use a dash or an ellipses to fill the same role.

Format aside, there are also some conventions of the actual content, too. They frequently focus on nature, and are generally use direct language without metaphor. They use concrete images without judgement or analysis, inviting the reader to step into their shoes and imagine how they'd feel in the situation. It's not about describing how you feel, so much as it's about describing what made you feel.

Now, let's put it all together, looking at a haiku written Yosa Buson around 1760 (translated by Harold G. Henderson)

The piercing chill I feel: my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom, under my heel

We've got our kigo with "the piercing chill." We read that, and we imagine it's probably winter. It's cold, and the kind of cold wind that cuts through you. There's our kireji- this translation uses a colon to differentiate our two images: the piercing chill, and the poet stepping on his dead wife's comb. There's no descriptions of what the poet is feeling, but you can imagine stepping into his shoes. You can imagine the pain he's experiencing in that moment on your own.

"But tumblr user corvidcall!" I hear you say, "All the examples you've used so far are Japanese haiku that have been translated! Are you implying that it's impossible for a good haiku to be written in English?" NO!!!!! I love English haiku! Here's a good example, which won first place in the 2000 Henderson haiku contest, sponsored by the Haiku Society of America:

meteor shower . . . a gentle wave wets our sandals

When you read this one, can you imagine being in the poet's place? Do you feel the surprise as the tide comes in? Do you feel the summer-ness of the moment? Haiku are about describing things with the senses, and how you take in the world around you. In a way, it's like the poet is only setting a scene, which you inhabit and fill with meaning based on your own experiences. You and I are imagining different beaches, different waves, different people that make up the "our" it mentioned.

"Do I HAVE to include all these things when I write haiku? If I include all these things, does that mean my haiku will be good?" I mean, I don't know. What colors make up a good painting? What scenes make up a good play? It's a creative medium, and nobody can really tell you you can't experiment with form. Certainly not me! But I think it's important to know what the conventions of the form are, so you can appreciate good examples of it, and so you can know what you're actually experimenting with. And I mean... I'm not the poetry cops. But if you're not interested in engaging with the actual conventions and limitations of the form, then why are you even using that form?

I'll leave you with one more English language haiku, which is probably my favorite haiku ever. It was written by Tom Bierovic, and won first place at the 2021 Haiku Society of America Haiku Awards

a year at most . . . we pretend to watch the hummingbirds

Sources: (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Further reading:

Forms in English Haiku by Keiko Imaoka Haiku: A Whole Lot More Than 5-7-5 by Jack How to Write a Bad Haiku by KrisL Haiku Are Not a Joke: A Plea from a Poet Who Has Had It Up to Here by Sandra Simpson Haiku Checklist by Katherine Raine

[outofwriteoutofmind]

Final Assignment :Manifesto

The behaviors of human beings are greatly influenced by the distinctive encounters that we endure over every moment of our lives. A vital component of this evolution is the individuals and environments surrounding ourselves. Literature, novels, and various types of artwork function as tools for preserving specific moments and elements of our daily lives, allowing us to either grasp their envisioned meanings or interpret them based on our personal understandings. These creative outlets have a significant impact on the individuals we become in many diverse ways.

Belonging from a nation that is a formed by immigrants, The mutual objective continues to remain the same. We anticipate having fulfilling lives, without the struggles and adversities of poverty that our families sought to escape in pursuit of the “American Dream”. Being raised as a first-generation American, there's an inherent responsibility to pave the way for subsequent generations, necessitating the overcoming of obstacles to establish a sturdy foundation. This role extends beyond supporting younger family members, encompassing support for elders and assuming a guiding position. This journey often entails giving up personal identity in search of an improved life.

We honor the traditions, cultures and values passed down from our ancestors and embrace the unique journey that comes with being an American. We work hard to take advantage of the opportunities that are given in this country, along with the ability to gain knowledge from extensive education. There is a melting pot of languages and cultures which enhances the American mosaic.

First-generation Americans face numerous challenges, including the pressure to maintain their native language amidst a society that might not always appreciate this skill. Language, as a vital aspect of identity and culture, was a significant part of my upbringing, blending Spanish at home and English at school. In the movie "The Arrival," language is depicted as a powerful tool, but its misinterpretation leads to danger. Unfortunately, fear of what's different often hampers acceptance, whether it's someone speaking another language or appearing distinct. Despite the obstacles that first-generation Americans overcome, it is important to keep our hopes high to achieve our dreams. Not only does our path in life benefit ourselves, but also future generations that follow us.

As I looked for poems to relate to the topic of my personal background, I came across the poems of Veana Barajas. She is a first generation American and advocate who values writing about her life in the United States, as a daughter of immigrants. There is a great explanation on the discrimination and discrepancy, as well as prejudice against minorities. This sets an amazing example for people that can resonate with her life experiences from growing up with similar upbringings. It inspires young people to contribute their hard work in order to live the life they’ve always wished for

Looking back at my discussions for this course, I came upon my first discussion post on representative work. I reviewed and discussed “The Creation of Adam” and I realize how much I can connect it to my personal life. It teaches us about the divine creation of life, and I believe we should take advantage of our time on earth. We always have ideas on our minds but if we don’t put them out into our reality, then we can run out of time to complete them.

I firmly believe that determination, sacrifice, and passion can guide us through the challenges we face in our lives. Success, in my opinion is a long-term endeavor and not a quick race. My goal in life would be to encourage people younger than me to create their lives into the best thing they want because not even the sky is the limit. Even if you need to move forward one idea at a time, it will always be worth it in the long term. I believe that with hard work and commitment, one day I will reach the end goal for me, in honor of my ancestors who were unable to have dreams that were attainable.