#i originally started with the second stanza as the first

[decisions-at-3am]

I've been so empty recently. And even after practicing my smile, I can tell it doesn't reach my eyes. Have I ever been happy?

If you cut me open, looked inside. I wonder what you would find, If you'd find anything at all. Or just a chasm instead of a soul.

I find the veins on my inner wrist. A pale blue map up my arm. Reflecting the frigidity I feel. Why isn't my heart warm, but cold?

If I tried hard enough, Could I fill this void, With replicas of things long lost. Or will it devour me first?

[edennill]

Analysis/thoughts on Finrod's Duel with Sauron in the Finrod Rock Opera:

(I take the English translation of the lyrics from here — it's the 11th song)

Sauron, classically makes the first move, and in a very Sauron-typical manner. "How dare you come here — the world is dark and horrible — loyalty doesn't exist — et cetera as nauseum". I just really want to know what has he got against Fëanor specifically ("Into the world has come a curse, whose name is Fëanor!") He's the only person mentioned by name in the fragment too.

(I'm also fascinated by the costuming choices in the version I usually watch — the newest one? — that seemingly have Sauron steal Morgoth's fashion style. The crown specifically, it's even got three jewels. I know Morgoth doesn't really have much focus in this version, so they may have wanted to use the visual, but still. As for the rest, it's a very standard phobso-influenced design, ginger hair and all. Someone has definitely been on Tumblr, or at least very active on Pinterest.)

Finrod's first response starts off frustratingly vague, in my opinion, and at the same time, mixes together too many images in one stanza. As for "The poison of lies is harsh/But in this world there is no poison greater than love" — I don't think Finrod would say that, not the second part at least. Oh, well, Amarië — but Finrod is not a Romantic, and his view of what Love is would be far wider.

Then we get to the good stuff, however. "The crossbow has been twined with ivy/Harpstrings replaced the bowstring/Blossoms will turn the bloody trail white/The sound of a song will replace curses..." There is a definite echo of "swords into plowshares" with this one that feels at least semi-conscious — and thus makes me wonder... the biblical passage where that comes from is a strongly eschatological one, and I wonder if this does not imply Finrod is now singing about his "dream" or vision.

Well, Sauron's only reply to that is to say: It's too late, "the thread has been twisted too far and too terribly" and denounce Finrod's ideas as "a pitful likeness of the Creator's original designs". (By the way, Sauron is one of the characters to reference Eru most often here (that is two times), only he never calls him by that name. I don't know what to make of that)

Finrod's second verse: "Where there is no oblivion/Runes weave over the stone/And the strings of the lyre/Do not speak of the power of time/Behind me, the youth of the unmarred world has risen like the dawn/et cetera" and "But darkness and slander/Have vanished, like a dream/Such is the law/As long as the firmament is full of imperishable light". I'm quoting in full because my thoughts basically boil down to: this is a lot of words, and I'm not sure what they all mean in this arrangement, or what they call back to — although I think you can interpret them in accordance with my vague ideas about his previous lines. Lastly, Finrod seems to invoke the Day of Valinor in an explicit attempt to match powers with Sauron.

(Also, the phrase "i struny liry" is just honey on the tongue when set to music, I don't know why)

Enter Sauron with "Strength in this world belongs only to the one/who will doubtlessly break the shackles of slavery." Given later context, it seems pretty clear this is to refer to a general promise of "freedom", not to Morgoth and Sauron merely. Which — I don't think is far off from how they would like to be seen, but I wonder what gave the writers this intuition. I don't think the theme is particularly outright expressed in the book, is it? Hmm, or could it be an idea from the Black Book of Arda (which I'm pretty sure goes down that path), or a reaction thereto... I'm never sure just how much influence I should assume the 90s/00s Russian fandom madness (wank and wars included) had on local works. Concluded with "I am free to do whatever I want to you."

Finrod: "My choice is made/And fate is in the power of Eru" — direct refutal, great. "Both light and shadows/Are gifts in his hands." — He would not freaking say that, unless it's supposed to translate into "Your power is not innate either", that I can get behind. And the famous "I do not believe in endless losses." — people have written full essays on that so I will remain silent. Of course Finrod speaks of eucatastrophe though 😊.

Then we get to one of my favourite exchanges. Sauron (after an obligatory segue into how he sees in Finrod a fear that befits only cowards and slaves, because he's like that) calls out Finrod for being "guilty before the Creator". And my darling, dearest Finrod (oopsie, this was meant to be a serious post — I'm afraid I've gotten too deep into blorbo territory) immediately has a riposte: "But the greater guilt is on the one, who in a dark hour, and with open eyes, taught us pride."

Which naturally does not really make him innocent of the blood-guilt, but as a "And you're the one asking about it?" it works very well. Sauron's comeback is "That was done to set you free" which is lame and contradictory with his just preceding attempt to guilt Finrod and I love this. I feel like this inconsistency is something that Tolkien would have agreed with very well in terms of "how evil works" — again, I feel like the people behind this are so strongly either hit or miss in terms of themes that I wonder if the text wasn't written by more than one person.

Finrod tells Sauron that he may at most kill him, Sauron is... enraged and, it seems, instigated, and then we have one of Finrod's best moments in the show, in which he genuinely feels like he almost pities his opponent for wasting himself like that, especially with the right intonation on the part of the actor. "First answer me/Why does the dark throne/So draw your eyes, o Sauron?/As if the dead glitter of crowns/Will save one who was not born?" indeed

As for: "If by such is Light defended, Darkness will triumph" — I hate Sauron for that insult; even more since it's "kicking a fallen opponent" — but it works. He would say that.

And of course he finishes off with "—and me with it!" because Dark Lords are nothing if not preoccupied with self. It's childish really, when not sung in a strong voice — but that's the point, or should be.

[mar3ggiata]

professional help, c2. 'The urgency.'

simon riley x original character.

trigger warnings: violence, sexual assault, mentions of rape, trauma, sexual themes, swearing, use of alcohol and drugs, eating disorders, depression.

song to listen to when reading this: The Chain, Fleetwood Mac.

abstract: this is Jude, this is a little bit of information about me since you care so much, I don't even know you… anyway yes, I really like being mysterious, what you gonna do about it, punch me in the face? I'm not even real, grow the fuck up. see ya.

Sometimes, she just fucking hated her life. She supposed it was normal like that, it happened to everyone to absolutely fucking despise their lives, no? She wakes at the same hour everyday, does her makeup. Not too much, not too little to show she was sleep deprived and got high last night. Her identity was concealed under eyeliner and blush. She looks like a doll. She likes her makeup, she's quite good at it. She plays with her hairstyles, sometimes a bun, sometimes braids, sometimes loose with a headband, depending on the mood. She walks her dog and cleans his poop. Jinx, a 5 month old Belgian Malinois she adopted when she moved. She found him at a shelter for abused puppies, he was the last one to get adopted. She decided to take him, she planned to move to the countryside soon anyways. Gaining his trust was one of her biggest accomplishments, now the dog had a bit of an attachment issue, but they were working on getting better together. She drives to work with the same 4 playlists playing in her car. Old rock, Frank Ocean, some Italian songs here and there.

She always comes in dressed in dark colours, dark red, dark blue or black. She has 10 male patients and 8 female soldiers. Some of them are combat medics, some snipers. Demolition experts. She works 'till lunch time, eats alone, sometimes skips lunch just to make her body feel something and indulge in disordered eating, then goes outside to smoke and comes back in. After the afternoon sessions, she sometimes has groups together for some group therapy. Then she usually goes home and smokes weed while she cooks her dinner, she acts like she's in MasterChef, puts on music and pours herself a glass of wine 'Quando sei qui con me' she sings to her dog, 'Questa stanza non ha più pareti, ma alberi'. Jinx doesn't even know Italian. Two times a week, she teaches ballet at a local dance school. 13 year old is not old enough to be on point shoes. It's her favourite time of the week though. She gets to finally have control of a situation, she gets some respect. 13 year olds, a fucking nightmare… She gets to tell them what to do and correct their arms, their feet, their posture and they listen! They do, and they like her, they say thank you Alba, see you next week! They learn her choreographies, they follow her lead when she explains a new variation. They even like the songs she chooses for warm up. Mostly Abba.

Alba is not her real name, but they don't know that. A gift from Laswell, when she started working for her. A sparkly new identity, English ID and nice documents that prove she's an English citizen, born in Southampton. She's not. Kept a little bit of Italian in the fake name. She hasn't been in Italy in close to five years. She went on vacation alone in Tuscany once, just to feel her country again for a second. She is not in contact with her family, last message from her sister was three years ago, it went 'I hope you're alive.' Her mother taught her violence. To be in power. To be beautiful and kind. To never ever trust someone who wouldn't give their life for you. Her mother taught her loyalty, respect. She used to never cry as a child. She loved to know stuff, to read about planets. She would kill lizards in the backyard with her little brother, who died young. She saw her first gun at 13. Now, her name is not Alba and it sure isn't Jude. Or Judy, as some patients call her. They know it's a callsign, a code name, everyone has one, especially in the task forces. Hers is Jude. 'Jude looks like an angel, but her words have thorns'. That's what Billy Lunette had to say about her. Billy had been her favourite patient for the whole of 2021. He had PTSD, he had night terrors and was in a mental hospital for schizophrenia symptoms for a while. He wouldn't take his medication, he would smoke, he was a mess. He listened to her though. She was the only one who visited him in the hospital. She showed him he could trust her and he completely lost himself in her. He would call her at 3 in the morning, drop by her office too many times per day, developed a bit of a codependency, but she was able to help him through his pain. He would do research about the treatments, the medicine, cognitive behavioural therapy. Billy was happy now. He was grateful to have had her and she was grateful that Billy had been a great patient. Big challenge. Billy was her biggest accomplishment, and proof of the fact she wasn't completely useless in the army.

She didn't work for the entirety of 2022. She had an accident with one of the patients, classified information. She survived, but man was it hard to live after that day... Spent time with her dog, visited a friend in San Francisco, taught ballet. Price and Laswell felt so guilty they continued to pay her even if she wasn't working. Why she decided to come back she really didn't know. She thinks the truth is she likes helping people, makes her feel good. She likes the crazy stories and that she had a reputation at the base, she was starting to be respected. She craved that. And it really started to bore her, the routine. Until Arash. Seeing Arash so frighted and tense was new, he was a calm and polite gentlemen. She saw an invisible string tying his story and his damned pilgrimage book to the mission she knew had failed in the Middle East. Now, it was a little bit of a stretch. So she did her little research, put her Sherlock hat on, lit a cigarette and started digging.

She had fun, until things really started clocking. He was missing his doctor appointments on purpose on specific dates, to go do what? Call someone? She couldn't steal his phone. Send letters? She tried the post office but found out nothing. The bank really did give her his statements, which was pure luck. He had set his personal security questions as his birthday and his mother's name, which she knew, because he told her. She knew everything about him, even his social security number. Arash really trusted her and she had an incredible memory for unnecessary details. Also, he left his wallet on the couch in her office countless times, it’s not that she looked, it was just there and she remembered. When she saw him stressed and fidgety she knew he was hiding something. She kept a straight face, 'Arash, we can really talk about whatever you want, you know' and he would interrupt her 'You don't understand. The urgency!', he continued to say. She really didn't want to tell Price herself, she would have preferred for Laswell to do it. She took extra time in the morning to get ready that day. She was going in a separate area she knew very little about, and nobody knew who she was. Sometimes people mistook her for someone's wife, or daughter. She chose her outfit accordingly, she wanted to seem professional. She wore a sports bra. There was nothing to look at anyways. She didn't put on lipstick, not even the nude one. She was used to being underestimated, and being looked down at. She was also used to raising her voice and presenting herself as stoic and cold. She knew perfectly how to be violence. She noticed a familiar face once she opened the door of the briefing room. A familiar face mask. The skull guy, she had seen him before. Was he the guy…

She could't get distracted. Her little mission went smoothly. She always knew Price liked her and feared her at the same time, and when it came to his little soldier boys, she really didn't care what they thought. The guy from the day of her accident even spoke to her. Poor thing. She was really amused no one told him about the reason why she didn't want to go home alone. He did really good that night, she remembers him well. He didn't try to speak too much, he sounded gentle. A gentle giant. Unfortunately for him, no one was gonna tell him about that day. When she left the room, she went straight home. She doubted someone would ever contact her again about the situation, they would handle it themselves, and probably very badly. She was driving to her ballet lesson, still thinking they all looked so confused by her words. They were probably gonna do a stupid interrogation, or rather do nothing and wait for the next mission to be a shit show. Imbecilli.

'Alright girls, one more time please!' At least she had her little ballerinas to cheer her up. She had them warm up, she usually did the warm up routine with them. She walked between the four rows of kids at the barre, delivering her corrections. Jennifer usually had stiff hands, and she was tense in her shoulders. Kyla had a beautiful turnout but she often confused her arms positions. The jetes routine, they always forgot that one. 'It's three in front and switch… guys I'm not gonna repeat myself'. She thought she sounded rude sometimes, but 13 year old American girls were a nightmare to work with. Last month, she even had to deal with poor Gemma being bullied in the changing rooms. 'I'm gonna say this just once, three in the front, switch to the back.' she liked demonstrating, felt like she was taking lessons herself. 'Ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-da. And we're gonna hold here' she lifted herself on her toes and attached her right pointed foot to her knee. She let go of the barre, holding her balance on one foot. 'Passè.' she said. The girls groaned. 'The more you complain the more I'm gonna make you stay like this girls. We're gonna do one minute.' She went to the side of the room, to play the music 'From the top.'

notes: translation of the song: 'Quando sei qui con me' when you're with me, 'Questa stanza non ha più pareti, ma alberi', this room doesn't have walls no more, it has trees.

notes: Alba means something specific!

translation: imbecilli, means imbeciles.

notes: let me know what you think !! <3

love, mare.

taglist:

@ummmmmwat @ghostlythots @sweetfemmefatal @natxpat @chavarriakeren647 @ravenmoore14 @farther-than-pleiades @internallyscreamings @hwromi @atoxicrat @cuti3maddi3 @deafeningkittenblaze @its-celeste @serene-hills @lexidoll12 @poohkie90 @lunatiquess

@warmedbythebody @katzykat @iristhemuse @azkza @keiraslayz @abbyandermine @jennyjencakes @dest-nai @corset-briefs @nutze-kekse @ilytsukiw @b3anspr0ut

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[presidenthades]

Once again, I am doing a series of my behind-the-scenes thoughts for The Golds while I do light edits for formatting, typos, and continuity. Here’s Chapter 7!

My original expected chapter count for this fic was 7 (one stanza of “The Song of the Seven” for each chapter title), but as I started increasing the number, I realized I needed to get creative with chapter titles. For this chapter, I picked the penultimate lyric “close your eyes, you shall not fall” because much of the chapter consists of Aegon helping Jace not “fall” into a further downward spiral, and there’s a certain amount of faith required by all parties that everything is going to be OK in the end.

Originally, Jace’s road to recovery was going to be even rougher than in the final version. She refuses to eat or drink anything, and her family gets pretty desperate to the point of doing stupid things to get her to eat. But I felt like that was unnecessary angst and trauma, and she’s already been through enough, so I dialed it back.

Similarly, she was going to have bad perinatal depression up until and after she gave birth, and there was a sequence where she refused to even hold Cheeseball for some time after he was born. But again, it made me feel like I was whumping on Jace and Aegon for unnecessary pain, so I focused more on the “comfort” rather than the “hurt” part.

This chapter is in Aegon’s POV because it was originally supposed to be the second half of Chapter 6 before I realized it was way too long. After I cut it in half, I debated rewriting it in Jace’s POV, but she’s stuck inside her head a lot this chapter whereas Aegon has a lot more action and growth. We return to Jace in Chapter 8 when she’s feeling more like herself but still recovering.

Orwyle is not a popular character in the fandom, which is understandable. He only gets like one minute of screen time, but that one minute made me think a lot about his character. When he’s a junior maester, he suggests a new poultice to try on Viserys instead of the traditional leeching method, and he shows a bit of doctorly compassion to Rhaenys when Vaemond’s body is being prepared. In the book, Orwyle’s defining trait is that he’s cowardly (he literally rewrites history to make himself look better to the Blacks, and he flees from the ship taking him to the Wall). But I was intrigued by how he ends up working at a mid-level brothel and teaches the girls there to read (how he gets caught later). He didn’t have to teach them how to read, but he chose to anyway (to his own detriment).

Overall I consider Orwyle as someone who’s very talented at his job (healing and teaching), and is actually a pretty empathetic person (good quality in a doctor), but he’s not strong-willed and is willing to cave on his principles to stay alive. Not exactly a villain, definitely not a hero either. So he’s going to do his job and do it well, regardless of his patient (especially in this AU verse where there’s less conflict).

After three years in the Stepstones, I’d be shocked if Aegon didn’t learn first aid (same with Aemond). He’s not necessarily interested in healing and such, but he’s capable of basic combat-adjacent medical tasks. So he knows how to clean and bandage wounds, and he can recognize common healing herbs.

I don’t think I need to explain that Westeros has a pretty poor understanding of mental health and doesn’t know what therapy is 😅. For most people who’ve undergone trauma, they would probably be told “carry on, as you were, etc” and they have to just “get over it.” But Jace is a princess who doesn’t have to worry about earning a living, has an overprotective husband, and is pregnant with a very important baby so her health and comfort are of paramount importance. So she luckily has a supportive environment dedicated to her recovery.

As is stated later in the chapter/fic, Jace fires her remaining LIWs because she’s convinced herself that it’s her fault they were injured/killed, and sending them away from her service will keep them safe. Irrational to be sure, but Jace has always been prone to blaming herself for things. She’s also worried that firing the LIWs will reflect poorly on them, hence her trying to compensate them monetarily. But the offer is insulting to Rhaena, who acts as a LIW primarily out of love. If Jace were more herself, she would’ve realized the implications of her offer equating Rhaena’s love/loyalty with a monetary value.

Initially, Jace’s list of “safe people” is very short: Aegon and Luce. Aegon is self-explanatory. Of all her sisters, only Luce makes the initial list because a) they’ve always been very close and b) Luce was there when they found Jace at the Garden, so there’s an added feeling of security. Although Aemond was also at the Garden, he isn’t on the list because their prior relationship wasn’t nearly as close as the other two.

When Rhaenyra touches Jace’s face while trying to feed her, Jace flips out because the Tyroshi grabbed her face when forcing down the dreamwine and later during his attempt with moon tea.

A little irony in Aegon offering to be Jace’s taste tester, when you think about how he dies in F&B 😢.

During Chapter 7 of the Handbook, Luce picks up three dragonglass daggers from the blacksmith. I mentioned them in the Handbook commentaries, but I’ll reiterate that she intended for Jace, herself, and Joff to each have one, as the three full-blooded daughters of Rhaenyra and Laenor. Jace clearly hasn’t been using her dagger, except to display it on her mantel maybe.

Daemon has decided to develop an emergency protocol in case any of the Targ girls are kidnapped again. I’ve been debating writing a oneshot about it.

Castle kitchens are hot, loud, messy places, and a princess would have no reason to ever go there. In a castle as large as the Red Keep, there are probably multiple kitchens. I imagine the Holdfast has a king’s privy kitchen and queen’s privy kitchen solely for prepping their food, and probably other kitchens too. I imagine the largest kitchens to be in the main part of the Red Keep, and that’s where Aegon puts Gyles and Ronnel. It’s a longer walk to get the pies to Jace and Aegon, but Gyles and Ronnel have a much wider social circle of other servants. It’s also where Aegon has his little office of petitions, and he likes being able to run out and grab pies whenever he wants.

Gyles and Ronnel are used to Aegon, so they’re relatively chummy with him. But they’ve never met Jace before, have only ever seen her at 1000% gorgeousness during her wedding parade, and have heard plenty of Aegon’s stories about how perfect she is. Of course they treat her with more respect and awe than they treat Aegon 😛.

I like to think that Ronnel does become a knight one day, and he wins a tourney in Jace’s name 🥰. And he’d probably take on a house name like Baker to honor his father.

I was trying to figure out how orange juice was made before things like juicers were invented. England had cider presses for apples, but citrus wasn’t really a thing for them back in the Middle Ages. Eventually I stumbled across the citrus reamer, which is definitely something they could’ve carved/created back in the day, but I COULD NOT get over how phallic it looked 😂. Naturally, Aegon finds it hilarious. I’m debating whether Gyles truly is innocent or if he’s messing with Aegon and has a great poker face.

I lingered on the details of how the pies are made because it’s important that Jace sees the process for herself and internalizes that pies are safe foods, they aren’t drugged, Gyles is trustworthy, etc.

I wanted to make sure that Jace wasn’t in a depressed, traumatized torpor all the time, because that isn’t how it works. She can have “good” moments when she’s moving around and seems normal, and then there can be “bad” moments when something triggers her, or she’s having an off day, and she spirals. The important thing is that she’s overall making progress, and it’s OK if she has days when she takes a few steps back.

We got more info in Chapter 8 on what Jace and Luce talk about in the garden. Luce is thinking about her upcoming nameday, which is the earliest date that Rhaenyra will allow her to be betrothed. But then there’s another year until her sixteenth nameday, when Rhaenyra will allow her to get married. Luce is pretty impatient, so she wants to figure out how much canoodling she can get away with during the year in between. So she asks Jace, because she’s positive Aegon didn’t keep his hands entirely to himself before the official wedding 😏.

Aegon is now very loath to ever let Jace out of his sight again, unless he’s 100% sure she’s safe in their room. The Joff incident in Chapter 9 probably doesn’t help.

Luce always haggles, even if it’s about how much distance Aegon has to stay behind her and Jace.

Aegon immediately gets bored of guard duty. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some form of ADHD: Impulsive, restless, moody, hyperfixation (usually on Jace, but he can get really into his sleuthing).

Hypersexuality sometimes occurs after trauma/sexual violence, hence Jace’s uncharacteristic behavior after the garden scene. And knowing Jace, she’s probably (wrongfully) blaming herself somehow for “leading on” the Tyroshi.

Luce heard the Langward knight gossiping about Jace and got upset, then Aemond beat up the knight to make her feel better, as one does.

Court life means people are always going to gossip and run with the most salacious rumor possible, and it reignites Aegon’s desire for a private life, where he and Jace can live according to their own devices without worrying about what other people think. Unless he pulls a Maegor, he can’t do anything to stop the courtiers from acting like courtiers. So he comes up with the Dragonstone solution, but it’s only a temporary solution. As Otto says in Chapter 10, they are inextricably a part of the game, and Aegon and Jace can only hide away in Dragonstone for so long.

When they were kids, Aegon came up with many plans that got them all in trouble, so Luce recognizes the face he makes 😝.

Aegon has a very soldier mindset of “just pack some clothes and leave,” without thinking about how complicated it is to actually pack a princess’ household. Luckily Luce knocks some sense into him!

I don’t know what winter roses are supposed to look like except that they’re blue, but I liked the idea of petals close together huddling for warmth. And I completely made up Valyrian roses. Not sure if they actually came from Valyria or if it’s named just for the appearance.

Despite everything that happened, Jace is STILL WORKING 😭. What else do we expect from a girl who worked on her wedding night, I guess…

KL has a well system (it’s a big deal during Jaehaerys’s reign), but I imagine the public wells and fountains get real dirty real fast, especially in poorer parts of the city. When Jace was at the Garden, I imagine the girls had limited clean water to offer her for drinking and washing because they have to walk pretty far for good water. So Jace is thinking about that as she writes her well cleaning proposal.

I’ve been thinking a while about writing an Otto POV fic, and one of the ideas I jotted down for myself was that Otto is secretly a nerd about public infrastructure and sanitation. Oldtown seems to be a much cleaner and better run city than KL. I like to think about Otto adopting pet projects that make the capital less smelly and dirty. So Otto is naturally a supporter of a well cleaning project, and I’ve mentioned before that he likes Jace. Also he’s very invested in the pregnancy being successful, so he’ll do his part to reduce stressors.

Once again, the key to influencing/manipulating Jace is not by appealing to her own desires, but by appealing to the happiness and well-being of her loved ones. Aegon knows this, and it’s a good thing he adores her too much to use this power for evil.

Aegon’s household is basically just Gyles and Ronnel, so his departure preparations are quick. I’m sure he has personal servants assigned to him who handle his laundry and such, but he probably bribed them years ago to leave him alone so he can have privacy and sneak out. And he became rather self-sufficient in the Stepstones (although as royalty, he would’ve had servants there too for menial stuff), so he doesn’t want anyone helping him dress or shave or bathe or whatnot.

Aemond is such a bro, holding down a knight so Aegon can beat him up 🥲. Aegon knows Jace would disapprove of him breaking someone’s jaw for gossiping so he’s careful not to leave any evidence on his person.

Aegon also knows how to push Aemond’s buttons, so he easily convinces Aemond to join the Dragonstone vacation. Aemond would probably have invited himself anyway once he found out about the guest list.

While Jace has been reducing the governing work she does during pregnancy, Rhaenyra has been doing more of it. In canon, Rhaenyra seems content to isolate herself with her family at Dragonstone, so I carried over that attitude of savoring domestic bliss into this verse. But here, Jace is an overachiever, and I think her example kickstarts Rhaenyra into being more active too. So Rhaenyra has work obligations, and social ones as she’s been ingratiating herself at court again. It would be difficult to pack up her entire household (much larger than Jace and Aegon’s) and disappear to Dragonstone for 2-3 months, so she can’t immediately leave like the kids can.

Like Aegon, Rhaenyra is a bit paranoid now about letting Jace out of her sight. She’s also had a longstanding petty grudge about Jace picking Aegon as her #1, so she strongly disapproves of Aegon’s plan to take Jace away, even though Dragonstone is very close and technically her castle.

Aegon is not what I’d call emotionally mature, and he’s a troublemaker by nature. So he deliberately responds to Rhaenyra with things he knows she’ll hate hearing. And in the end, he forces Rhaenyra’s hand by telling Jace “of course Rhaenyra would love for us to go to Dragonstone” 😇.

Poor Daeron is too pure for Daemon’s Torture 101 class. Meanwhile Joff has an avid clinical interest in human anatomy, and Daemon is having the time of his life. Targ family bonding!

The Tyroshi put a collar on Jace, so Daemon put a collar on him to make things fair.

The Tyroshi knows he’s never going to escape, and he’s already endured an awful amount of torture/mutilation. At this point his goal is to die swiftly, so he tries to provoke Aegon into killing him.

I haven’t 100% decided the Tyroshi’s backstory, but I’m imagining him coming from one of the powerful conclave families in Tyrosh. There was absolutely no need for him to go to Westeros and make money through usury and slavery; he chose to because he thought it’d be fun to “get one over” the Targaryens by conducting a trafficking ring in their own capital (I imagine Tyrosh having an ancestral hatred of Valyrians, even though a lot of their culture was inherited from them as a result of being part of their empire). Just in case it wasn’t clear what kind of sadistic sociopathic person he is.

Joff has been brooding a lot about Laenor’s death ever since they found Old Willow, and now her guilt is carrying over into recent events with Jace.

We will learn more about the wet nurse in Aegon’s memory in future fics 👀. She calls him “Uncrowned One” because in this verse, he’ll be another Aegon the Uncrowned.

“Three children you shall have with your wife, black or green or something in between.” In canon, Aegon has three kids with Helaena. In this verse…well, I feel like I’ve dropped a lot of foreshadowing about him and Jace 😊. “In between” refers to how there isn’t a strong black/green divide in this verse, but there’s a new faction (gold) that includes people on both sides.

“All of them shall break like your legs and wings.” In canon, all of Aegon and Helaena’s children die terribly, and Aegon and Sunfyre end up crippled. In this verse, there is a close call during Cheeseball’s birth; if the maester and midwives had chosen to save Jace, the process for extracting a stuck baby is really gruesome.

“Unless you keep this little shadow close to the sun.” Jace has gotten a lot of sun imagery in this fic, and Joff is kinda obviously the shadow. It’s because of Joff’s intervention that the birth ends well. So there’s a way to avoid the “broken” part of the prophecy, but the condition must be met.

Aegon is a skeptic when it comes to witchcraft and prophecy, but there’s a reason his subconscious brings to the memory at this moment. Don’t leave Joff behind!

Aemond finds it extremely undignified that Vhagar, the largest dragon in the world and a veteran of multiple military conflicts, has been relegated to delivering baggage.

The stained dancing slippers that Jace finds in her room at Dragonstone are the same slippers that someone (Luce) accidentally ruins in Chapter 3 of the Handbook.

Valyria is strongly inspired by Classical Greece and Rome, so I decided to give them Roman-style bathhouses, which were often decorated with mosaics and has a hot room, warm room, and cold room. The Targs (or whoever built the castle) imported this to Dragonstone, and the volcano means they can get hot water very easily. Aegon was in the guest quarters last time he visited so this is his first time seeing the family bathhouse.

Some commenters suggested that Luce and Aemond are probably canoodling during their trips to the Dragonmont. There might be some of that going on, but Aemond is a huge dragon nerd, so I can imagine him geeking out about exploring the Dragonmont while Luce is disgruntled about him being oblivious to her attempts to make out 😂.

Gerardys is hoping that Jace will be OK with him and the midwives helping her by the time it’s time to give birth. But in case she isn’t OK, he decides to put one of the Targ girls on a midwifery fast-track. He picks Baela because she’s the strongest of the bunch, and acting as a midwife can be very physically exhausting.

Meanwhile, the mysterious bangs in the tower are Joff and Daeron trying to figure out ways to light the glass candle. This involves blowing up some stuff along the way.

Hyrkoon the Hero is part of ASOIAF lore, one of the potential alternative names for Azor Ahai. I decided that he’s the main character in quite a few fairy tales/myths, and every hero needs a sidekick. I invented the sidekick Santus the Swine by combining a half-pig character in Chinese folklore and Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza (whose name is supposedly derived from the Latin Sanctus), and it wasn’t until afterwards that I thought about the Pink Dread (which never happened in this universe because Jace stopped Aegon). I guess Aemond really can’t escape the pig references in any universe 🐷.

Anyway, Aegon’s really lucky he didn’t get himself and baby Jace killed when he shoved their wagon down their stairs. And Jace not being cut by the Iron Throne is a sign, maybe??? 👀👀👀 And yes, there is much symbolism in little Aegon helping baby Jace climb up the throne 🥺.

Chapter 8 commentary here

[weirdagnes]

okay okay so i’ve been listening wayyy too much We Don’t Talk About Bruno. I can’t help but listen to all English, Spanish and Filipino version (im so surprised i didn’t cringe at Filipino dub?? they all sounded so close to the original voices and the singing voice is damn impressive)

The differences in mixing is interesting! Here’s what I’ve noticed (focusing only on the final verse):

We Don’t Talk About Bruno

Official audio and the audio in the movie have different mixing.

Official Audio:

There’s no moving pans. Everyone’s on the exact same pan where they began.

Pepa on the right, Felix on left.

Camilo on left-center (-20 or so).

Dolores on far left.

Isabela on right-center (+20 or so).

Movie Audio:

PEPA & FELIX

(“It was my wedding…”) Felix is on the left pan. Pepa comes from right pan then glides over to left pan when she and Isabela held hands and Pepa moved stage right.

(“Bruno walks in…”) Pepa is back on right pan but more center, somewhere +10 probably.

(“Thunder!”) Felix is on far right pan now.

(“You telling this story..”) Pepa is on center now.

(“I’m sorry, mi vida…”) Felix is back on far left.

(“Bruno says it...”) Pepa and Felix comes from far left slowly panning to right, matching their animation moving from stage right to left.

ISABELA

(“The life of my dreams...”) Isabela is all over lmao. She starts on left pan (-30) then pan max left as she exits stage right. Then when she and Pepa switched stage sides, Isabela’s track pans very fast to the right.

(“My power would grow...”) She’s back on left pan (-30).

(“He told me…”) She’s on right pan now.

(“And I’m fine…”) She pans further to the right (+40 or so). But on the last “I’m fine”, she pans fast to the left (-20) as her animation also move stage right.

CAMILO

(Camilo’s 1st Stanza) Camilo is on right pan (+40 maybe)

(Camilo 2nd Stanza) Camilo is on left pan now (-40 or so).

DOLORES

(Dolores rap) Dolores is very hard to hear but she very slowly pans from far left (-40 to -50) to center-right (+20 or so) until her rap ends.

(Dolores Verse 2) Dolores stays on right pan.

Overall:

(“Time for dinner!”) Pepa and Julieta are on left and right on both official and movie audio.

The original version is second best in balancing. Dolores is very hard to hear, took me many replays to hear her clearly. Isabela’s “I’m fine” also went over my ears until I heard the stem tracks. Pepa and Felix’s audio dominates most of the first verse.

No Se Habla De Bruno

Official Audio: Same positions as the English and Filipino version. Doesnt move.

(“A la mesa!”) The voices are on center and right pan.

Everyone is perfectly balanced imo. No one is overpowering one another. Amazing! Better than the original.

Movie Audio: Has the exact same panning as the English and Filipino version.

(“A la mesa!”) The voices are separated far left and far right.

Camilo is noticeably quieter all throughout than in the official audio.

Overall:

imo the Spanish version has the best balancing out of the three. You can hear everyone very clearly, especially Dolores whose track is often too buried under in other versions (even the original).

On the final harmonizing “Don’t talk about Bruno” line, they seem to back up the voice actors with choir and it seems to have more wider acoustics on it in the movie audio but not in the official audio? Unless it was super nerfed in the official audio.

Wag Ikuwento si Bruno

Official Audio:

Same positions as the English and Spanish version. Doesnt move.

(“Hoy ang mesa!”) Pepa and Julieta are both on center and the voices that harmonize are on the far left and far right - which is not good imo bc (1) the harmony is too spread out; (2) there’s not much difference in timbre between Pepa and Julieta and they’re both singing the main melody so the center is overpowering and monotonous.

Camilo and Felix are loudest, Pepa’s track is more quiet than Isabela. Dolores’ track is super muddy but can be heard in the first repeat of the final chorus, but on the second repeat, she is as loud as Camilo and Isabela’s track while Pepa and Felix are subdued.

Movie Audio:

Has the exact same panning as the English and Spanish version.

(“Hoy ang mesa!”) Pepa and Julieta’s voice is separated on left and right, but the left side is louder than the right. But it’s so much better than the official audio because they’re on stereo with the harmonizing voices instead of clashing in center.

Felix, Pepa and Isabela are the loudest all throughout. Dolores can’t be heard at all start-to-finish, and Camilo is quieter than in the original and Spanish version.

Overall:

The worst balancing out of the three imo. Dolores’ track is practically non-existent (except maybe the Official Audio, at least she sounds better there).

However, I like this version’s final harmonizing “Wag Ikuwento si Bruno” better than the English and Spanish. I like that the higher register seems to be heard more, and generally the way it was sung felt more powerful.

I also want to note that in Camilo’s verse, Dolores’ last “We don’t talk about Bruno” is noticeably very quiet; I thought it wasn’t sung until I amped up the volume.

Conclusion!

I assume they have like an official guide or notes for how they did the panning for both the official audio and the movie audio. Maybe because the panning had to follow the character animation on where they move on screen so the audio experience matches the visual.

But they didn’t seem to have an official guide on mixing and balancing, probably because of different recording equipment and studio environments.

My ranking based on balancing and mixing:

Spanish

English

Filipino

My ranking based on best harmony:

Filipino

English

Spanish

These rankings also remains the same for other songs (yeah i listened to them all). If a music student or professional comes across this post, I might’ve used incorrect terminology and analyzed the panning incorrectly, so I don’t mind being corrected!

alr yapping’s over

[bookwyrminspiration]

I think I already commented this but I would really recommend “since feelings is first” by e. e. cummings. It gives me very sweet vibes and is really vibrant and talks about emotions and writing and nature and is lovely so I would recommend. also there’s “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes and “The Lizard” by Federico Garcia Lorca (which I believe was originally written in Spanish so since you like languages I’d recommend the original) oh and while we’re on Langston Hughes there’s “Harlem” of course!

I am getting carried away now but also Walt Whitman has good poetry (we actually had to quote leaves of grass in a play and that’s how I heard of him) and Amy Lowell too (I particularly like “Aliens” and “Strain”) and William Carlos Williams (would recommend “to a poor old women” and “the sadness of the sea” and “the red wheelbarrow” and “the young housewife”)

or you could read the lovely poetic Rosie /hj ;)

anyway good luck Quil! Have fun with poetry!

Thank you! I fear for this poetry unit, but we persist!!

I just read since feelings is first, and I love that ending line. "And death i think is no parenthesis." Death is no parenthesis! there's a few interpretations of that i'm finding. that death never ends unlike parenthesis, that it's crucial (unlike the optional sidebars in parenthesis). My first thought was that death is not the end, but life continues past it. Memories and others survive it--though if you're one to believe in the afterlife, this could also be about the eternity you'll have afterwards.

anyway! regardless of the specific interpretation, I quite like that line. and the word structure in the stanzas--like the first, where it looks like a word or two is missing, but if you read "the syntax" as both the end of the first sentence, and then against as the start of the second, you get two complete phrases! since feeling is first "who pays any attention to the syntax. the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you;" very neat

I feel like maybe I've read a walt whitman work before for a class, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. anyway, haven't heard of the others, but I will look into them! ty for the recs!

[faceimploded]

A certain song that describes (a hypothetical) Ceroba

Edit:

@engisanic pointed out there's literally a line in the pacifist route, right before Ceroba engages in battle:

"I almost wish you never showed up in the Wild East. Maybe then I could've continued to bury my sorrows in the Saloon."

Thanks for the correction! Original post below:

-------

I've been hooked on reading fanmade Undertale Yellow written works (i.e. fanfiction), and I notice there's a sort of headcanon(?) that mostly involve Ceroba getting drunk most of the time as a way to cope with grief.

Incidentally, while reading up on more fics, a certain song started playing, and I realized it does describe this aspect pretty well, so I'll be breaking the song's lyrics down and include some personal interpretations (though if anyone has some insights or info to add, that'd be great!)

------

「思い出酒」

omoide zake

Memories (brought forth from sake)

by Sachiko Kobayashi (小林 幸子)

Feel free to listen to the song linked above in the title first—there's even a translation provided by the channel jpoptranslationsbyalulu, thought there are some nuances from other sources that I don't quite agree with (hence the personal interpretations).

Presuming that Ceroba does drink a lot, this song would make a lot more sense in that context—even more so that it's (modern) enka, a type of sentimental ballad where the song's theme often involves romance and bleak life themes, perhaps like heartbreak or loneliness. A love song of sorts in some ways.

If the underground had a karaoke box, I can imagine Ceroba singing to this.

With that, I'll be breaking down the song into stanzas and analyze each of them as follows:

---

Japanese

Romaji

English (literal translation)

Let's start with the first stanza:

無理して飲んじゃいけないと

muri shite nonja ikenai to

"Do not force [yourself] to drink"

肩をやさしく抱きよせた

kata wo yasashiku dakiyoseta

Gently embraced the shoulder

Putting these two lines together, the nuance is that someone walked up to the singer (or speaker) and is warning her not to drink too much before pulling her into a gentle embrace.

It's interesting though that the second line is left ambiguous since there's nothing to specify who's doing the action (in this case, embracing their shoulder). As a result, some may interpret this as the speaker finding comfort and relief in the drink itself rather than a person.

Then again, the first line already indicates a sort of quote (と), so I think this was more in the literal sense of a stranger talking to the speaker.

You probably see where I'm going with this, but somebody (likely a certain sheriff) caught Ceroba over-drinking, and he's telling her to take it easy as he comforts her.

---

The song heads straight to the chorus (where the first and third lines are repeated, so I'll focus on the second lines in future choruses):

あの人どうしているかしら

ano hito doushiteiru kashira

How is that person faring?

噂をきけばあいたくて

uwasa o kikeba aitakute

[I] want to meet them upon hearing those rumors

おもいで酒に酔うばかり

omoide zake ni you bakari

Only drunk in sake and memories

Being close friends, it's no surprise that your friend's wellbeing will be a constant in your thoughts, but the second line seems to indicate a pretty strong desire, a longing to see them just thinking about them, just hearing a single mention of their name.

If only we knew what Ceroba was really thinking... Hm.

---

The second stanza:

ボトルに別れた日を書いて

botoru ni wakareta hi wo kaite

[I] write about the day I parted from the bottle

そっと涙の小指かむ

sotto namida no yubi kamu

and lightly bite my pinky wet with tears

It took a while for me to understand the 'bottle' part, but the speaker, who had such a strong tendency to lean towards drinking, is now putting a hold on drinking (parting from the bottle). Well, putting the sake bottle away anyway. Because the speaker is now drunk on something else: a certain feeling, a certain longing. A desire strong enough to put them off drinking (for even a day?) and long for this person it pains her.

---

The second chorus is the same except for the middle second line:

あの人どうしているかしら

ano hito doushiteiru kashira

How is that person faring?

出船の汽笛ききながら

defune no kiteki kikinagara

I hear the steam whistle of the ship

おもいで酒に酔うばかり

omoide zake ni you bakari

as [I] get drunk on sake and memories

Perhaps the speaker is still drinking, but at least this one time, she seems to be pouring her heart into a letter.

Really, most of the lines here are self explanatory, but that changed line makes it feel more like a farewell, as if the person the speaker longs for is about to leave her, or go some place far from her reach.

Almost as if the beloved person just... you know.

---

Third and final stanza before the last chorus:

いつかは忘れる人なのに

itsuka wa wasureru hito nanoni

Even if they're someone [I'll] forget one day

飲めば未練がまたつのる

nomeba miren ga mata tsunoru

When I drink, memories [of that person] will surface once again

It seems like the speaker has somehow managed to get over their problem... until they drink again. She's back to drinking. A relapse. Except this time, now there's an extra layer of heartbreak and longing.

Personally speaking, I don't really think about someone unless they're someone I wish I never met, or if it's a loved one who's... fallen. I think people don't really think about others until something bad happens. Either way, that relationship from earlier seems to have crumbled and is now only a memento for life (which the speaker may or may not choose to remember).

---

The final chorus with this line changed to:

あの人どうしているかしら

ano hito doushiteiru kashira

How is that person faring?

くらしも荒れたこのごろは

kurashi mo areta kono goro moNeglecting [my] life these days,

おもいで酒に酔うばかり

omoide zake ni you bakari

[I am] drunk in nothing but sake and memories

Back to square one, but it's reached a point where she just doesn't really care about her life or current state anymore, and the only seeming comfort is her initial solution: to drink and lose herself in long gone days and sake.

--------

Well, all of this is just a what-if analysis so it may not even apply to canon.

Also, I just noticed the beginning of the song just sounds very North Star. Starlo-ish. Hehe.

Time to write a fic involving this song.

Edit 2:

Just realized this song applies to Chujin as well

[weather-cluddy]

The Purge March translation trivia

One thing I noticed is that between the trailer and Purge March's actual release, the chorus got reworded to sound considerably more lofty and literary. Deny vs disavow, "nary a sound", "eyes corrupted", that sort of thing. This goes even further for the rules section, which starts slinging around 'tis and thou.

And the thing is, this is not really the case in the original Japanese. The grammar isn't particularly archaic, nor is the word choice unusually complicated. But there is one line that stands out for something along those lines. Wanna know which one?

It's one of the last lines, translated as "You're sorry? I don't care!". Put literally, it'd be something like "Even if you apologize, bleh!" What's "bleh" supposed to mean, you ask? Well, it's the onomatopeia for the gesture of pulling your eyelid down and sticking your tongue out, sometimes blowing a raspberry for good measure. Not the most dignified behavior, is it?

And, you know, I actually want to focus on the last three lines more, because I think it's an interesting example of how a small change can make for a big shift. As a refresher, this is the official translation of the end of The Purge March:

"After you cry, repent, and kneel, it’s now your turn to say that hopeless 'I’m sorry' You’re sorry? I don’t care! Please, go ahead and die already. Remember MY cries, MY repents, MY words of “I’m sorry” that I said to you?"

Let's start with the first line. Translating it myself, I'd render it as "After you cry, repent and kneel, try and say 'I'm sorry'". As we can see, there's no implication that this happened to Amane first, and the word "hopeless" is not present either.

But this is actually the second time this particular line shows up. The first time time is right after the trailer part. You know, "these scum saying it can't be helped is unforgivable, let's crush their eyes and throat so they'll stop"?

Now this is my interpretation, but talking about how awful "they" (AKA, you) are and how they're going to be punished horribly and following it with a request (okay, order) for an apology… kind of makes it sound like redemption is possible? If it was just about getting rid of a worthless heretic, who cares if they apologize?

And sure, this redemption doesn't sound very pleasant! But then again, it never was for Amane, was it? That's probably part and parcel of "purification", to her. She did said that "they" would forgive our trespasses if we reflected and corrected our behavior, after all. And the lyrics right after this are "If you become a bad girl, monsters will come out. This is the magic that stops that from happening". The first stanza of Magic already told us what the magic word is: "Sorry." Taking all this into account, isn't it possible that this is intended a very, very tough love?

The stanza leading up to the second chorus also goes along similar lines. She says she doesn't need it/you anymore, if you're going to break your promise. She'll tear you apart, as punishment (though that word got skipped in the translation). She'll deal back what you gave her, so that this won't happen again. It's extremely aggresive, but the constant refrain is that this is deserved and will set everything right. Everything, perhaps including you. It seems like there's a small, faint ray of hope peeking through the clouds…

And that's where the twist in last two lines come in. You thought you could maybe worm your way into the light? Nope, she's already decided that you're done for! And this also marks a transition in the lyrics, from Amane as the avenging angel of justice she's been the entire song, to Amane as an imperfect human who, once upon a time, also had to cry, repent and kneel down. But that's not going to save you now.

That contrast doesn't exist if we already know that Amane tried and failed, nor does the implication that forgiveness is possible. Now, you could say that "scum that can't be helped" already foreshadows that they/you are supposed to be beyond salvation, but it gets a lot less focus than the "say you're sorry" line, much easier to gloss over as a simple play on words. So I still think that the last stanza is supposed to be unexpected, especially considering that it happens only fifteen seconds before the end of the song and has Amane dropping the singing for extra emphasis.

That's more or less all I have to say about the song itself, but I'd like to double back on something I glossed over. Now, maybe your ears perked up when I said that the original lyrics include the word "punishment", but I should note that this is not the same word as the tagline "Doubt your punishment", nor the one Kotoko uses (in her voicelines, at least). For that matter, the next sentence doesn't actually say "judgement" either (though it does appear in the intro), so it doesn't seem like this stanza is supposed to be a call-back to Milgram in particular, at least no more so than the rest of the song. It's not the same one as in Amane's T2 VD either, that one's more like "retaliation" or "revenge".

However! You know what word is shaping up to be pretty important? It's right there in the title: purge!

So far we've seen it in three places, not counting voice dramas or app convos: one is of course The Purge March. The other two are Kotoko's second glitch line ("Purge complete. These are your just desserts") and the very first page of the manga, where Es narrates "This is a purge" over a corpse.

I assume Es says the same in the novel, but as I don't have the original text I cannot confirm. Either way, that scene wasn't originally a flash-forward, so isn't it interesting that they chose that line to be the very first thing you see when you open the volume, even putting it above the title? I suspect we'll be seeing it a lot more in the future as we unravel Milgram's mysteries. The word "lost", as well.

[profblahson]

Dies Irae

Eight notes.

Hell, this theme can be identified in fewer, especially when you know what you’re looking for. But eight notes is about all it takes, and you’ve got yourself one of the most iconic themes surrounding death, horror, and the macabre.

Even if you don’t know it by name, you almost certainly know it by sound.

————————————

This is the first post the month of spooky and macabre music for Spooky Season! I wanted to start off with a classic and widely-used piece (or chant in this case). I’m planning a few of these, so keep an eye out throughout the month!

Art by @nynehells , go check them out!

————————————

What is the Dies Irae?

From Latin, “Day of Wrath,” this sequence is dated as far back as the 13th century. While who formally wrote the chant is not entirely known (originally attributed, however, to Thomas of Celano, but that is now debated), the text is clearly based on a Biblical passage, Zep 1:14-16. Below is both the Latin-English translation of the Dies Irae’s opening stanza, and the referenced Bible text.

The poem does in fact end on a more hopeful note, but the opening lines are harrowing, and where a lot of music draws inspiration.

This is the most typical variation of the chant, in d minor. Already off to a great start, as d minor is often called one of the darkest and saddest keys in the circle. The closeness of the starting pitches (Me-Re/F-E is only a half step) adds tension, and the whole step resolution to our home note (Te-Do/C-D) is weak, leaving our ears a bit put off. We don’t travel far - only the distance of a Perfect Fourth, another interval full of tension, with little release. All this combined with such intense lyrics, it’s no wonder the music is so commonly used with death. Sung as a slow chant, and you’ve created a menacing piece of music that has haunted the world over for literal centuries.

Dies Irae in Music

The Dies Irae is ubiquitous in classical music and horror/thriller scores. We’ll take a quick look at some of the more popular uses of the piece! Two classical pieces and two modern pop culture references.

Hilariously, for purposes of this post, the first two examples don’t directly use the Dies Irae chant; instead, they set the text to frenetic, intense music (and I also like them :) )

Requiem - Mozart

The Dies Irae is part of the Ordinary, and so it’s included in Requiems, which is a Mass for the Dead. Mozart’s Requiem was the last piece he worked on before his death (passed before completing it), and it’s a huge choral work.

The Dies Irae appears relatively early on, and it’s a mood changer. Fast, aggressive, chaotic…it truly sounds like impending doom.

The goal of this movement seems to make audiences feel the frantic energy of the text. It SCREAMS Day of Wrath!!

Requiem - Verdi

Another use of the frantic energy depicted in the text. Verdi’s Dies Irae is also loud, bombastic, and quite literally hits you hard right away. Hear that gun-shot bass drum and timpani! The strings absolutely fly by; Intense and fast chromatic lines in the trumpets sound as though they’re heralding in one’s doom. (This one’s my favorite btw)

Common to both of these examples: dynamics are turned up to 11, their tempi are fast and relentless, and both use wicked scalar motion which, combined with the speed, create a blast of sound that simply pummel listeners.

Some more recent uses of the Dies Irae in media up next! For these two, we actually hear the chant proper, not use of the text.

The Shining Theme

I mean, it's quite literally the Dies Irae! This movie even uses the second half of the chant that a lot of pieces and references don't get into. Right off the bat, hearing the Dies Irae, we know this film is going to include a lot of death (which is exactly what occurs). The main theme is played on this funky organ/synth, adding atmosphere, with little room for release.

Sweeney Todd

So, I’m gonna just link Sideways’ video on this musical, because he just does a better job than I ever could. Please watch this video because it’s oh so good.

The TL;DW of the video is: the Dies Irae is used throughout the music of Sweeney Todd. It’s literally baked into (pun intended) the score. Invert notes here, play it backwards there, change the rhythm a bit, or reharmonize it this way, and you can create an entire musical that hints at the themes of death right off the bat! It’s very clever writing.

Closing Thoughts

It’s obviously very difficult to separate the Dies Irae and the concept of Death, since even from its inception the text and music has, uh, been like that! The intense energy of the text lends itself to frantic music, and composers have taken advantage of this for a long time. Even when just hinting at the chant, the music takes on a more sinister, intense mood, and composers can take and morph the primary chant into what they want, while still implying Death.

I actually have two more classical pieces that use the Dies Irae that I’d like to talk about in a bit more depth separate from this post (plus this one is already long as is!). One of them is often cited as one of the first and most known uses of the chant to imply character death in the music; the other uses the theme a bit differently. I’m just excited to write and look at a bit more because they’ve got spooky and macabre elements!

Thanks for listening and your time!

[knife-moth-mc]

Welcome To Haven

(a post-mortem of my Arc 1 poem)

One for the lost Two for the seeker Down in the void Where minds grow yet bleaker Trust for a monster Doubt for a curse A weapon or answer For wanting or worse Fear for a secret Friendship for guilt And for those who try To ease the world's tilt A hope for the future A cry for the past A play for the present Roles still being cast No respite for any With something to ask No choice without harm done For this thankless task No truth and no progress No blessing but doubt No hand to hold onto The hand reaching out This debris gathers No matter the cost Where none are forsaken Nor truly are lost

I told Gawain I would write this something like a year and a half ago now. I'd apologize that it took me so long but honestly I'm just glad it's done at this point.

@gawaininred enjoy!

So, first things first. This poem is clumsy. I don’t think it’s bad, by any means—I’m incredibly proud of what I did here. But this was a new thing for me, so I tried to make it easier by loosening rhythm and syllable constraints, and having relatively short lines. I think in the end this hurt me more than it helped me, which is why the arc 2 poem is so much stricter and more complicated.

One for the lost Two for the seeker Down in the void Where minds grow yet bleaker

I wasn’t at all sure where I was going with my plot at first—it wasn’t until the second stanza that I started to pull the bones of it together—so I gave myself an easy and ambiguous start. You can go pretty much anywhere from “one for the lost”! My original intention was simply to evoke the nursery rhyme that starts with “one for sorrow” (there are multiple versions with different second lines). I realized almost immediately that the poem was going to be a bit long to stick with that faithfully all the way through, but it’s still at the heart of the poem all the way through. Interestingly, I remembered later that I had started another poem with “one for the lost” a few years back. The full first line of that one is “One for the lost who no longer miss home”. Make of that what you will.

The “two” in “two for the seeker” refers to the two surviving cats, Dove and Moira. I knew right away that I was going to work them into lore, but I didn’t know exactly how until much later on. The seeking, of course, refers to the more general search for answers, as well. This is the stream in which everyone immediately goes to the place they were told to avoid, just in case there’s something interesting there, after all. Ending the line with a trochee was intended mainly as a challenge to myself, because I knew I was locking myself into a very limited pool of words to end the final stanza with.

“Down in the void” is ironically a pretty light-hearted stream given the gravity with which the void has come to be treated on Haven. At the time, though, I didn’t put that much thought into it.

The stanza ends with an unnecessarily long line—“where minds grow bleaker” would have worked just as well. But it felt very important to me to stress that the bleakness was not a new state, simply a worsening one. Would I change it now? Maybe. The difference in meaning feels less notable to me now than it did then. But I think it adds a little something—at the very least, the implications that c!Moth’s state of mind is already in some way unstable by this point.

Trust for a monster Doubt for a curse A weapon or answer For wanting or worse

The monster is Moth, obviously, but it’s also c!Sleep. I like to play with ambiguity in my titles, something I’ve leaned harder into during my second arc. Moth and c!Oz trust each other, to some extent. Meanwhile, Moth and Sleep trust each other immediately (Moth more so than Sleep). It’s not a naive trust, though; Moth is well aware that Sleep is a monster. It knew right away that Sleep was like it. It trusts him more freely and deeply because of that, which is a dubious choice, but Moth is at this point so terrified of someone learning its secret that having someone who knows but doesn’t care comes as an incredible relief.

This early in Haven, Moth’s secret hasn’t been explicitly stated on screen. The title referring to it as a curse is a nod toward how it sees itself. As for the doubt… this is when Moth’s spiral starts, I think. C!Gawain has such a strong theme of right vs wrong that Moth, in its aspect as someone desperate for approval, latches onto that simplistic worldview and doesn’t let go.

Both the weapon and the answer refer to Bird. They’re a mercenary, and Beanie has been doing a fantastic job of playing the nuances of that as an identity—how it shapes you, how you grow into it. As far as the answer goes, this is the stream in which c!Moth puts out a hit on its on-and-off tormentor, K. This doesn’t end up being a very good answer to its problems, but it’s very solidly an answer that ends up driving the conflict moving forward.

“For wanting or worse” is the title I’m proudest of as a title. It frames the act of wanting as something negative, and that’s a major theme to this arc. C!Moth has a tendency to put itself to the side, to prioritize the people around it over itself. It knows what it wants, deep down inside, but the struggle to admit that takes… honestly, until arc 2. There’s a specific moment in arc 2 where it finally plainly says what it wants. Until then, desire is something that it can only be scared and ashamed of.

Part of the tragedy of this arc is that as Moth comes to terms with what it wants, and starts trying to set boundaries about that, the people around it read its behavior as another example of it putting others before itself.

Fear for a secret Friendship for guilt And for those who try To ease the world’s tilt

“Fear for a secret” is pretty straightforward. Someone knows its secret, and it’s scared—at this point in the story, it’s pretty sure that Gawain is the only person who can meaningfully kill it. But I’m glad that this line goes to this stream; if fear and secrets are to be associated with any part of this arc, it should be the part full of sick desperation and attempts to curtail the spread of a painful truth.

The next line doesn’t have much thought behind it if I’m being honest. Moth feels guilty. Sleep is its friend. This is followed by “and for those who try,” which I am much more satisfied with. It’s not a plot-heavy stream, but it is full of people trying to be good to each other. What is that worth? Well, things could have gone any way at this point. I just wanted to highlight that the love was there. The final line of this stanza completes the thought with the idea of trying to make things better, make things right.

A hope for the future A cry for the past A play for the present Roles still being cast

Moth meets c!Angel and they hit it off great, but Angel wants to leave Haven and assumes everyone agrees with her. Moth doesn’t. The hope for the future is yet another thing to be afraid of. Conversely, it indulges in its fear of the past, allowing August to convince it to jump into the void where it experiences a memory of the person it’s hurt most. The title is also a bit of a joke, due to the fact that I did cry during this stream.

With future and past explicitly mentioned, I knew I had to do a line about the present, and I chose “play” as a word here because it evokes fun as well as struggle. The fun aspect is important because this is the stream in which Moth meets c!Renn, the living doll; the struggle aspect is a nod to the many Havenites making plays for control around this time if not on this stream.

The meat of “roles still being cast” is Moth confidently telling c!Jackdaw that it’s possible to choose to be a good person, something that it’s still trying to convince itself of. I think that this is the title that most speaks for itself in the context of its stream.

No respite for any With something to ask No choice without harm done For this thankless task

This is the stream in which it’s revealed that Anathema, the person whose body Moth is living inside, is still alive, ever present and aware. There’s no respite for him, and no respite for Moth, who now feels even more pressure to do right by Anathema but still lacks a way forward.

It asks its friends for understanding and support, and is denied. They see it as being self-sacrificing. Absolutely not! Doesn’t it know it’s valued? Doesn’t it know it’s loved? They rush to reaffirm it, and alienate it in the process.

Miserable and alone, it meets Sylph, who tells it that the iron golem walled up in the villager trading hall is hurt by being trapped. Moth, who is deeply uncomfortable with iron, tells Sylph to free the golem, effectively preventing itself from entering the hall itself. If harm has to be done, then Moth will take on that harm itself. Denied a chance to pursue its desires, it hurts itself in a mockery of what it wants.

The thankless task is, honestly, existing. Moth feels more helpless than ever. It doesn’t want to die, but it doesn’t want to keep the status quo, either. It’s treading water. It’s putting unsustainable effort into what others take for granted. The only person to meaningfully reach out to it is August, who gives it hope in the form of a possible timeshare of the body, but in a way that’s a thankless task as well—it knows Anathema won’t want to agree to the timeshare, and it considers him justified in his objections.

No truth and no progress No blessing but doubt No hand to hold onto The hand reaching out

Moth lies to Aster about whether it has potions, a moment that stuck out to me so much I named the stream after it. In the next stream, it meets Lux, the wannabe king of Haven. Moth is disappointed in Lux’s, well, everything, and decides it does not support him in this whatsoever.

The latter half of this stanza involves Moth reaching out for meaningful connection. It… kind of finds that, but not to the degree it really needs.

This debris gathers No matter the cost Where none are forsaken Nor truly are lost

I originally wrote this line as “this detritus gathers” and was promptly informed that I was pronouncing detritus wrong. I’m still upset about this. But debris serves the same purpose, namely labeling the stream in which Moth acquires TNT by participating in blowing up a(n admittedly abandoned) village.

On the other hand, I wrote the rest of this stanza before the streams in question, since we had already pretty tightly plotted what was going to happen, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how well it all fits. “No matter the cost” is the title of a stream in which someone declares that they’re unilaterally instating their vision of society above any objections, for one. I knew that Moth and Sleep were going to argue about their philosophies, but not to that degree!

This is followed by the bitter, ironic “where none are forsaken,” in which both Moth and Anathema are in fact forsaken. Moth begs for help in this stream, to the point of tears, and is only rebuffed. This refusal is completely unrelated to it—Gawain had recently run into problems of their own—but it doesn’t know that. All it knows is that one more person is trying to control what options it has. One more person is deciding against its will to enforce what they think is best for it.

And we come full circle, ending the poem with the same word that helped open it: lost. No one in this stream is truly lost, as the title says. Anathema, who doesn’t even know how long he’s been trapped in this hell, is set loose upon Haven; Moth is forced out of the light in his stead, but that can’t last forever, can it?

[minnow-shelves]

My analysis of "Theology" by Ted Hughes

“Theology” is an abrasive response to the Genesis creation story, in which Hughes challenges the roles of Eve, Adam, the Serpent, God, and even the infamous apple itself. The most well known part of this story is the one he challenges first, calling the idea that the serpent seduced Eve to eat the apple “Corruption of the facts.” There are two key details in this stanza: Hughes capitalizes the word Seduce, and then the word Corruption. It’s unclear whether Hughes intended for this to bring emphasis to the words, as they each start a line in the middle of a sentence, or instead he is just following a pattern throughout his poem of capitalizing the beginning word of each line. If it is for the purpose of emphasis, I see the capitalization of “Seduce” as a purposeful deviation from the word “tempt/tempted/temptation”, which is often used to describe the Serpent’s actions. Seduction is an overtly sensual, even sexual word, which becomes more important to my analysis in the second stanza of the poem. I interpreted the capitalization of “Corruption” as emphasizing the irony of the whole line. Hughes is calling the original story of Eve and the Serpent a “Corruption of the facts”, and the original Genesis is about the corruption of humanity itself. To call a story of corruption a corruption is ironic in nature, even slightly comedic.

In the second stanza, Hughes reveals the truth of his “Theology”.

Adam ate the apple. Eve ate Adam. The serpent ate Eve. This is the dark intestine. What first came to mind in reading this stanza was the image of ouroboros, the serpent that eats

its own tail, representing an eternal cycle. Upon doing some research1, I found that the self-eating snake as a symbol of eternal cycles has a widespread history in theology. Specifically, in Greco-Roman and Biblical mythologies, this eternal cycle is often profoundly sexual in nature, with the snake representing eternal creation through sexual reproduction, and the sexual nature of existence as a human being. Coming back to the second stanza, it seems as though Hughes is describing the sexual coupling of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The apple is a symbol of Eve’s sexuality, the serpent being a phallic symbol of Adam’s sexuality, thus attributing creation of humans not to an act of disobedience to our maker, but our natural desires to be sexual and to reproduce. When Hughes says “This is the dark

1 The Symbology of Serpents in Greco-Roman and Biblical Mythology, The Drover Review Vol. III, 2020. Hixson, Wendell.

intestine”, I believe he means that this is the hidden truth of humanity, buried within the dark underbelly of Theology.

The final stanza diverts our attention from the creation story to the state of the world. Hughes says that the serpent, as we (humans) fret over “the dark intestine” of creation, is sleeping peacefully in Paradise, while smiling at God’s whining. The serpent in this stanza is a symbol of the frank truth of creation- that we are “dirty”, lustful, and “sinful” creatures that naturally must divert from God’s holy cleanliness and have wills of our own. Eve did not betray humanity and curse us to live away from Paradise, she was merely a human being, as was Adam, as are we.

[hilli98215]

Fall Out Boy did a wonderful cover of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" and I love it. The original covered pop culture and news in chronological order from the 1950s to the late 1980s.

Fall Out Boy not only updates the song with 'News Worthy Items from 1989-2023', but does it out of order. Which can be slightly disappointing when first listening/watching it. But what makes their version great is the fact that I know every single reference they are making. I even began tearing up a bit when they mentioned notable school shootings in a row Sandy Hook and Columbine. They even leave the final stanza with "World Trade Second Plane What More Do I Have To Say?" knowing their main audience grew up watching 9/11 on live television.

I highly suggest you take a listen/watch the original from Billy Joel. It's just so well done and a history lesson in itself for a time period most of us probably don't know.

[jeffersonhairpie]

Dream Song Succession

Nobody is ever missing

This is not for tears

All the bells say

If he had a hundred years

The way the titles for the final episodes of each series of Succession form a little poem, complete with their own rhyme is very satisfying to me. And I love how this is a poem vandalised from another poem (Dream Song 29 by John Berryman)

I also love how each successive finale title is pulled from earlier in the poem than the one preceeding it (the first line is from the final stanza, the second two are from the middle and the final is from the first), which I think is interesting when pulling from a poem about a man unable to escape his depression and sinking further into it. It’s like we’re trying to journey back out of the depression that Henry suffers from, but perhaps along the way the lessons Henry learns about how to deal with the sadness are lost. This Dream Song Succession, if you will, cobbled together out of pieces of the original poem, rings more positively to me than the original.

The final stanza of Dream Song 29 describes a confusion Henry is having about whether he has killed someone and whether he has left evidence of this murder. The ways in which Kendall’s vehicular manslaughter and the cruises scandal can be thematically linked back to this are, I would say, pretty obvious when you give the poem a read. The final line of the stanza says ‘Nobody is event missing’ and feels like it is referring as much to Henry as this nameless body he may or may not have produced. It’s this glimpse into an idea at odds with the rest of the poem - that it might be possible to save him from his depression. Because if nobody is ever missing then Henry can’t possibly be missing, and he can’t be too far gone to be found.

In Dream Song Succession, we open on this line, starting with the idea borrowed from Dream Song 29 that all things are countable, all people are countable and so they cannot ever be lost. We start with the most positive, or at least the most hopeful line of Dream Song 29 and maybe this is why I find Dream Song Succession to be a more optimistic poem. We start with the idea that one cannot be so far gone that one is lost and then we work from there. In the show, this idea is applied to Kendall’s feelings of hopelessness having committed vehicular manslaughter, and the small comfort he’s able to take from returning to Logan’s arms. On the one hand. Andrew Dodd’s isn’t missing - his body was found not long after he drowned; but on the other, Kendall has wiped out all his internal pretentions of being a good person by killing a kid, and the fact that his father can know that about him and still welcome him home is monumental to him. He’s not missing, nobudy is ever missing. There isn’t anything he could do that would wipe out this safe harbour. Of course, Logan isn’t only bringing Kendall home because he cares about him, and falling into his father’s arms doesn’t feel like a moment of triumph for Kendall, but it is a moment of relief for him that this doesn’t have to wipe out his future.

Then we have “This is not for tears/All the bells say”, which is an almost perfect inversion of an entire line from Dream Song 29 which reads “All the bells say: too late; This is not for tears”. I think it’s interesting that two finale episode titles were chosen from the same line and then recontextualised like this. The original line reads as someone or something (probably Henry himself) damning Henry to being unable to so much as pity himself in his misery, these bells damning Henry’s depression to being something not worth wasting tears on. In Dream Song Succession, however, ‘This is not for tears’ seems, if anything, to be more related to the line that preceeds it than the other half of the line it was pulled from. ‘Tears’ is the first half of our rhyming couplet, so when reading the poem out loud one comes to a natural stop here, as if ‘Nobody is ever missing/This is not for tears’ is a statement unto itself with the second half of the poem being its own statement. A sort of ‘no one’s too far gone, don’t cry’ sentiment, if I’m boiling this down to the bare essentials. As an episode title, this works to emphasise how all the squabbling over dinner about who should take the fall for the cruises scandal is, ultimately, not worth crying over because Kendall flips the board at the last minute, turning Logan in.

“All the bells say” conjures to mind that most iconic line of  poetry “Ask not for whom the bell tolls,/It tolls for thee” (For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne). For Whom the Bell Tolls is another poem that I think a lot of Succession fans could have fun with, but seeing as the writing team aren’t naming a series of episode titles from it I’ll leave it be for now, I’m only bringing it up because this is my cultural touchstone for the notion of a tolling bell calling a person to action and I don’t think I can seperate my understanding of this line from how I interpret the phrase “All the bells say” as an episode title or fragment of poetry. Here, in both Dream Song 29 and Dream Song Succession, we have not a single bell speaking to a single person but all of the bells speaking to our protagonists. The bells ring out declaratively, to make an announcement, and you don’t bother ringing all the bells to grab everyone’s attention unless you are very certain that the announcement you are about to make is final. I’ve spoken a little already about what this means in Dream Song 29, with the bells sounding out to put a stop to the notion than Henry’s misery is worth crying over, but in Dream Song Succession it has been seperated from the ‘This is not for tears’ fragment by the rhythm created by the rhyming couplet and so it appears to be leading into the final line of the poem first and foremost. The bells signal and ending, or a begining. Something momentous has happened and it needs to be shouted up and down the land. In the show, this thing is the seperation of the Roy children from the future of the company they thought was their birthright and destiny. The bells are ringing for the siblings, but are they listening?

But what is it that the bells are ringing for in our final line? “If he had a hundred years.” The key word here being “If”. Whoever the ‘he’ in this line is referring to in the context of the show (my gut says Logan but it’s not over until it’s over) is not going to get a hundred years, because something is coming to an end. In Dream Song 29 this is a fragment from the first stanza: “if he had a hundred years/& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time/Henry could not make good.” and is very definitely not the open ended suggestion of what could or could not be achieved if given the time. Instead, Dream Song 29 makes it plain that what Henry could not do in a hundred years is to make himself feel any better, or at least this is what Henry believes. To me, the effect of cutting the line in Dream Song Succession so that we don’t get confirmation of what this conditional is referring to is to suggest that the possibilities are limitless. Whether the show will link this back to something as obvious as Logan’s death, with this giant of a man dying in old age but still hungry to do so much more before he goes (and he can’t take it with him - the money, the business. Nothing. His worldly goods only matter if he can get a few more years with them) or if it will refer to the end of Waystar Royco or something else entirely remains to be seen, but for me there is a whistfulness to this line as it appears in Dream Song Succession, the knowing that there could have been co much more but the bells have already tolled on this one. The comfort of knowing that this is the end whilst also knowing that so much more was possible. Unanswered questions remaining at the end of a long trail of found bodies. This sense of finality is added to by ‘years’ being the other half of our rhyming couplet, so even though this wouldn’t read as a full sentence in spoken English, it feels like one due to the weight of the poem’s rhythm.

And that’s how you build a poem about the Roys, I guess. You take pieces of someone else’s work and rebuild them to make them new, but not in a way you can ever entirely seperate them from the original. Neither committing to being a full replica of the thing they’re pulling ideas from nor able to do away with it entirely. I think it’s kind of genius, personally, and even if this was just the writers having a bit of fun and it’s not supposed to be that deep, it’s going to be that deep for me.

[nikofortuna]

Poem: The End

The disaster inspiring this poem is a plague. It’s much less descriptive of the actual event than it is of the feelings of the author, which as I mentioned before is my character. Additionally at this point everybody engaged in the roleplay event has been planning to start a rebellion against the person who has been causing all of the disasters.

The End

Time and time it happens again,

Disaster strikes and locks us in,

Snow and Flame make heads spin,

Tides and Strain seek to win,

As if living was the greatest sin.

At leisure it takes away our kin,

While supplies too are running thin,

We are left to bury the fallen men.

Is it our fate to perish in this plague?

Or is there a cure so that we may endure?

It spread from high up reaching the sky,

But only grasps at the ones that bow far down below.

Stoking fires-

Burning incense-

Stoking fires to purify the bodies,

Burning incense to cleanse the souls.

So it goes ashes to ashes

And dust to dust.

With death we had many clashes,

Now we have to do what we must,

If only to survive at last.

Starting the analysis with the title this time!

So the title alone already reflects how thoroughly done my character is with the current happenings and it has been gradually radicalizing him with this disaster being the last straw in that regard.

Right at the beginning there is a bit of a recounting of the four previous disasters, how often they are occurring and how many lives are cut short every time. The first and last verse lock in every other verse in this stanza between each other through their rhyme scheme, which illustrates the lockdown the people have been experiencing in some way every disaster. Those are also the most important verses as every other verse except those two could be cut and the core meaning of the stanza would still be preserved.

The whole stanza feels a bit less flowery at least to me, which is supposed to showcase how upset my character as the author is that he speaks so directly and clearly.

The next stanza is a lot more flowery in contrast, in part because it has to be in a sense. Verses three and four clearly allude to the illness originating from the palace but only taking the lives of the citizens. It is just vague enough that my character could plausibly deny that the emperor is meant here and just say he means the Heavens instead.

The rhyme scheme in this stanza is a bit different from what I’ve done so far as the rhyming bits are within the same verse each. There are also two parallels to be found here with the subjects standing directly in opposition to each other in both cases. The first two verses set things up with the cure standing against the plague, which then makes it quite clear that the emperor is standing against the people. This verse set up also uplifts the people since structurally they stand in the same position as the cure.

As always we’ve got my favourite poem structure with another double parallel! Two things of fire with one big and the other small and two aspects of a person that are being made clean with those fires being set alight respectively.

In the last stanza the first half is obvious given that those verses are well known and refer to the death that has occurred again. Meanwhile the second half alludes to the citizens of the Crimson Empire rising up against the emperor, who at best is letting them die without interfering and at worst is the direct cause for all of this death. And with it being the only stanza with an uneven number of verses it signals a clear end.

[thetrinitarianmystery]

Guest Submission: The Moon Shining Through My Bedroom Window

The Moon Shining Through My Bedroom Window

The moon shining through my bedroom window Such gentle and consoling light Like liquid silver does it flow Filling the empty black of night It sets the tile floors aglow And makes my darker thoughts now bright

Though I know not what each day will bring There is this which I do not doubt Each night the moon will make my room sing When all the lights have been turned out These books and shoes and everything Made beautiful as they lay strewn about

For who needs light when light abounds? But in the dark it is so rare It shines to say "just look around And see anew your life if you dare" In me are both moon and earth, sky and ground The dark and the light which now shimmers everywhere

A lesson in perspective Is what it's trying to show Everything will be dark until you give It a little glow I am grateful that I might live With the moon shining through my bedroom window ----------------

Today I am honored and overjoyed to feature our first guest submission! My aim is respond to every guest submission with a reflection on the poem, unless the author would prefer that I post it as-is. I’d like to start this first guest submission with a general word about my approach to poetic analysis in this context. There are a couple ways in which I may look at a poem: the first is by considering what it means, and the second is by considering how it means. In pondering what the poem means, it is of course inescapable that I am answering what it means to me. It is my opinion that “meaning” is always “meaning-to,” and that ultimately subjectivity is necessary to grant intentionality (or “about-ness”) to symbols. I don’t believe that there is objective meaning of words in the sense of a deterministic correspondence of symbols to reality. At the same time that I cannot step outside of myself to an “objective” view of the poem, I will endeavor to treat each poem as an encounter with the Other; and I will ask of the poem, “What are you trying to tell me?” This is to say that I enter into the reading with an openness to mutual transformation: as the poem discloses itself to me, I offer my experience to the poem; and together we co-create a response. I will intentionally not ask the author him or herself what they mean by the poem, for that is the beauty of poetry: it is an act of self-transcendence. In speaking a poem into existence, the author transforms into “the speaker,” and every sense of meaning-to proliferates prismatically from the original event of meaning, or intending. In considering how the poem means, I will look more at formal aspects of the poem; and reflect on how they work together to evoke a response in me. Obviously this is not strictly independent from the sense of meaning-to. So let’s begin!

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At first pass, this poem is a beautiful slice of life. The rhyme scheme and nighttime setting create a nursery rhyme-like air, which belies a considerable depth of meaning. Let’s take each stanza in turn.

The moon shining through my bedroom window Such gentle and consoling light Like liquid silver does it flow Filling the empty black of night It sets the tile floors aglow And makes my darker thoughts now bright

Immediately from the first lines I am drawn in. The first line sets the scene, and the second sets the mood: “Such gentle and consoling light.” Such gentle and consoling diction! And with it comes a question: about what is the speaker in need of consolation? What is this emptiness into which the light now pours as “liquid silver”? For the pouring of liquid silver into a mold is an act of creation: an act of harnessing what is raw and unformed and setting it into a functional or beautiful form. And is this not like the very act of writing this poem? The author takes this raw, unformed yearning and the moon’s bare light, and in the mold of his own mind forms this work of beauty.

Though I know not what each day will bring There is this which I do not doubt Each night the moon will make my room sing When all the lights have been turned out These books and shoes and everything Made beautiful as they lay strewn about

Here there is a juxtaposition of uncertainty and disorder with the constancy of the moon’s light. We see in this an answer to our previous question regarding what consolation the speaker needs. The speaker “know[s] not what each day will bring,” and finds himself or herself in a disorderly environment with “books and shoes and everything / …. strewn about.” By contrast, the moon is constant and beautiful, making of this cacophony a quiet chorus each night.

For who needs light when light abounds? But in the dark it is so rare It shines to say "just look around And see anew your life if you dare" In me are both moon and earth, sky and ground The dark and the light which now shimmers everywhere

This stanza is perhaps the philosophical heart of the piece. It begins by making a commentary on duality: the light is only appreciated in terms of the dark. If light were everywhere invariant, then we would not need a notion of lightness at all. But embroiled in one’s “darker thoughts,” the power of light is seen. By the moonbeams’ selectively illuminating some aspects of the disorderly whole, a certain order comes upon the scene. The darkness becomes a frame by which the objects in the scene are put into a place of privilege. From this, we see the potential for order amid chaos: an invitation to “‘see anew your life if you dare’” by adopting new frames of thought. And then the turn: “In me are both moon and earth, sky and ground / The dark and the light which now shimmers everywhere.” We see echoed here a sense of encompassing and transcending seeming opposites, that ancient sense of being a microcosm of and continuous with the whole cosmos. I have written about this myself elsewhere, and I find it especially beautiful when the same feeling appears in others’ writing.

A lesson in perspective Is what it's trying to show Everything will be dark until you give It a little glow I am grateful that I might live With the moon shining through my bedroom window

The assertion, “Everything will be dark until you give / It a little glow” speaks to me about meaning-making: it is to say that meaning and purpose do not “fall out” of life automatically; rather, one must choose meaning and create purpose. The final lines bring the poem to a fitting close: what began with consolation ends with gratitude. And we can infer from the rest of the poem that this gratitude encompasses all that “the moon shining through my bedroom window” entails: both the darkness and the light, which by each other are known; the chaos and the order than can be carved out of it; the emptiness and the filling; the silence and the poem.

That’s all for today’s post! I’m extremely grateful to the author for this wonderful submission. As always, thank you for reading!

[willknightauthor]

To give a brief example of the meaning of the text:

The last stanza summarizes the whole thing in 3 lines. The first line is an allusion to Plato's alegory of the cave, so it's depicting the world as one of illusion--an artistic illusion, but an illusion.

Following from that depiction of debased art ("lowly picture"), "dunya" paints the speaker's back. The painting sounds gentle, but the clear meaning is the lashing of a whip. If "dunya" is an externalized force, this implies enslavement to the world, but if it's abstract, this is talking about self-flagellation, self-inflicted suffering. "Dunya" is specifically the Islamic concept of "the world" in the sense of "worldly," the immediate, illusory aspect of existence--wealth, power, fame, ego, self.

The second line establishes the image of art being imprinted on the speaker, and shifts the allusion from a Greek one to an Islamic one. The last line pivots the 2nd line on its head by switching from the concept of "dunya" to "fitra": the divine nature of the human being, which strives towards righteousness and wisdom, the part that seeks God. It can be confused or corrupted by our experiences in the world (i.e. dunya), but it is originally good, and it always allows for us to turn toward truth.

The lover's lips write on the speaker's fitra, which means either kisses or speech, and what they write is scripture. So unlike dunya, which inflicts suffering and draws us toward illusion, the lover reminds our true self of its divine calling. Both the world and the divine, personified as the lover, shape us, remake us, and in that process we move dialectically between degradation and elevation.

This also relates to the old theological question in Islam of the nature of the Quran--is it created, or uncreated? The consensus for most of history has been uncreated, because the Quran talks about itself being "sent," being "received," never made. But that opened up the question of the relationship between the Quran and the Divine Essence. The resolution to that debate was that the meaning of the Quran, the idea of it, is eternal and part of God, even if the specific instantiation of it in writing or speech is temporal. It also reflects Muhammad's self-reported experience of revelation, that it came from outside himself and then was burned into him--painfully--such that he could never forget it.

Given the divine nature of the fitra, scripture being written onto it places the speaker in the position of prophet, and the lover in the position of Gabriel or God. The lover is placing eternal knowledge/meaning onto the eternal part of the speaker, and since both are eternal really it's an act of reawakening, not creation.

This summarizes the theme of the whole poem: though we're mired in illusion, suffering, and doubt, when we taste divine love through the specific--a person, a place, a moment--it reminds us of who we are and who we're supposed to be, and elevates us to partake in the divine and become conduits for it. We know divine love through our love for each other.

It also continues the confusion of who the lover actually is, who the speaker is speaking to. Sometimes the speaker seems to be speaking to God as though a lover, then asks God as a 3rd party for the lover. Sometimes they speak to the lover in absentia, only to then be speaking directly to the lover present. The speaker's status moves from total abjection to complete exultation just before the last stanza.

That reflects my own confusion when writing it, and I don't think it's meant to be clear. Writing this honestly did feel like something was working through me. (I understand the idea of the Muses now.) I had no idea where it was going, but it felt like it was meant to go there once I reached it. I think the point’s that the distinction between the mortal lover and the divine is non-dual. That feels correct.

So it starts with the lover being more obviously divine, and the speaker grovelling for guidance. Then it moves to the lover being a real person. Then it's speaking to God asking for the lover. And then the poem becomes the speaker being the elevated conduit for the divine that the lover (or all others, potentially) seeks. Then it ends with the speaker and the lover together, seeking God through each other, with less desperation or arrogance, and more tenderness.

BLASPHEMY