#i'm still debating whether this is worth polishing up

[fictionadventurer]

Beauty and the Beast for the WIP game?

My only real attempt at writing poetry before this year happened during a stretch when I tried to write a Beauty and the Beast retelling in verse. I got about two-thirds of the way through before it fizzled out and languished forever unfinished.

When it comes to my recent novel-in-verse obsession, the simplest option would be to take another look at this work and try to finish it. There's a lot of terrible poetry in there, but there are some that are somewhat better than I remember. I can't claim to be a judge of what's good poetry, but some of these are readable, so I'll share some of them here.

The first set of semi-readable poems covers the first meetings between Beauty and the Beast. (These are all numbered, and I'm leaving the numbers in place to better differentiate between separate poems. I think the speaker in most of these is fairly clear from context, but just in case, I'll put the speaker's name in the title, too.)

VI. beauty and beast

he is every nightmare i’ve ever forgotten he is thunder and darkness and death he is fear with fangs he is beastly

she is every dream i’ve never dared for she is roses and sunlight and life she is hope with jewels she is beauty

*

VIII. beauty

the chair creaks when he sits

my knees quake when he speaks

the master laughs when i ask

when i will die

my ears doubt when i hear

my mind reels when i realize

the master wonders when i began

to think he’d kill me

IX. beast

the rules are these you are mistress of this castle the servants will obey your every whim the rooms and all within are yours including me

you will dine with me at dusk we will not speak if you want silence you will look at me and try not to scream

i will not harm a hair of your head i will not cause a moment’s worry you will do whatever you wish except leave

X. beauty

his mercy shatters my world makes it bigger and at the same time smaller

how can i live in a monster’s cage

my life will be long and lonely with him my friend and at the same time jailer

how can i look at a monster’s face

the castle teems with wonders that all belong to him and at the same time me

what do i do with a monster’s love

*

The next set of poems I feel like sharing starts with Beauty finding a portrait in the castle, and then leads into her sharing a dance with Beast that makes her kind of freak out over the fact that she might be falling in love.

XXII. beast

today you found a painting in a long-forgotten room covered in cobwebs and shrouded in dust

there was a reason it was lost

the portrait showed a man with a face like the dawn and eyes like the sea you thought he looked kind

he was young and a fool

you may keep it if you wish or lock it back in darkness it matters not to me i used to see him daily

i doubt i’ll see his face again

*

XXIV. beauty (and beast)

if rooms have souls the ballroom is wise a radiant beauty long past her prime

she treasures the days when she lived and was loved she keeps them and counts them like pearls on a string

(she is not the only one, my dear)

long past midnight in moonlight and hush this sleepwalking girl can glimpse former days

a flash of a gown and a whisper of waltz what glorious balls must this room have beheld

(they were marvelous indeed, my friend)

it seems a shame she grows old alone with nothing but darkness and dust held within

i would dance for her return the spark of life if only we had music and i had a partner

(i will gladly dance with you, my love)

XXV. beast

my dear beauty don’t you know i learned dancing long ago

one step closer take my hand with a waltz you’ll understand

let the music guide your feet in a dance that’s slow and sweet

hand in hand and heart to heart it’s not love but it’s a start

XXVI. beauty

he is hulking beastly

i am small delicate

i should be stumbling crushed

but

we marvelously miraculously dance

and it feels like flying

XXVII. beauty (to the portrait)

man on the wall i may be mad but i must give voice to the storm in my heart and you are the only one near

the master puzzles me i know his home as well as my own but i know so little about him

(is he beast or man or nightmare or dream or captor or friend)

i saw his face and thought him a beast

(but he grows roses and reads poems and has never killed or even raised his voice)

i heard his voice and thought him a monster

(but he spared my life gave me his home and all he owned offered his heart and never once has been anything but gentle)

i watched him dance and thought him a man

(with grace like an angel or a prince and i think that maybe he was not always so lonely and that his heart aches for things lost)

what am i to think do say be feel about him now

and why do these questions always come at midnight

*

The final poem is one that I had completely forgotten about, so I was shocked to find it lurking in the latter sections of the document and showing signs of using some decent imagery. By polishing up the last couple of lines, I've got something that's not half bad as a standalone poem.

This one occurs during an extended period when Beauty is still trying to process her feelings toward Beast and figure out if this is really love or if her feelings are being warped by isolation and close proximity.

XXX. beauty

if this is love it is a dark and grasping love a child stumbling in the night crying for a candle flame and cherishing the smallest spark of light

if this is love it is a bleak and desolate love a skeleton tree in a barren desert windbeaten and scrubbed to bone and bursting into bloom at the first drop of rain

if this is love it is a smoke and mirrors love a sleight of hand or trick of light that takes my broken heart and fools me into thinking he can make it whole

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/13-14/2023: THIRTEEN WOMEN, SVENGALI

I really loved this. I wonder what the book is like, I might have to read it! Author Tiffany Thayer sounds like a pretty interesting guy as per this collection of provocative reviews on Wikipedia:

I don't know about you, but that makes me want to read everything he wrote. THIRTEEN WOMEN concerns a circle of grownup sorority sisters who are beset by an anomalous series of murders and suicides. It so happens that all of the women recently received damning horoscopes in the mail from a self-styled New York Swami--but the Swami himself is just a pawn in a greater conspiracy masterminded by Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy). The master hypnotist has a bone to pick with these smug society ladies, which I am about to spoil so plug your ears if you'd rather watch the movie first (and you should! It's only an hour long): As a half-Javanese girl "saved" by a missionary who sent her to a western finishing school, Ursula believed the key to her future was to pass for white. Therefore, she's vowed revenge on the racist sorority that rejected her in college, and honestly the revenge she has plotted should have earned her an honorary PhD. It's hard to imagine that either a 1930 novel or a 1932 movie really mean to say "fuck racism" so frankly, but the sharp premise and Myrna Loy's incredible charisma make it hard not to side with the ostensible villain in this picture.

Some people have remarked that THIRTEEN WOMEN is an early iteration of the slasher movie, with its female ensemble (of sorority babes no less) being picked off one by one. To me it was more reminiscent of the cursed media motif familiar to J-horror. Maybe I'm just saying this because I rewatched RINGU this Blogtober and I was encouraged by the documentarians behind THE J-HORROR VIRUS to consider its influence on SMILE, which I also rewatched, and which I'm realizing I love. The victims in THIRTEEN WOMEN have signed a round robin chain letter, for which they each receive a star chart describing their imminent doom; the power of suggestion takes the place of power tools here, with Ursula's sheer force of will acting as a free-floating contagion that rots the guilty and weak from the inside out. I was reminded of movies like RINGU and JU-ON as much as of Jorg Buttgereit's DER TODESKING, an experimental horror film about a chain letter that causes its recipients to self-destruct. It's fun to think that THIRTEEN WOMEN is a progenitor of movies like BLACK CHRISTMAS, but I see reflections of it elsewhere, too.

I wound up pairing this with SVENGALI just because they're both hypnosis movies, but that movie turned out to have its own racial tensions. In George du Maurier's foundational 1894 novel Trilby, the evil hypnotist is explicitly Jewish; in Archie Mayo's 1931 adaptation, Svengali is referred to abstractly as "Polish or something", which seems to be a euphemism for a Semitic Eastern European identity. This might not invite such analysis if it weren't for the styling of John Barrymore as a swarthy, rodent-like embodiment of greed. When I say that, it sounds pretty negative, but I'd still insist that SVENGALI is a great movie well worth seeing for its perverse humor, surprising grimness, expressionistic design (courtesy Anton Grot), and unusual horror elements--in addition to Barrymore's unforgettable performance.

I guess there has been some debate over whether SVENGALI is properly a horror movie, and I refer you to author Tony Burgess who once said that if you have to argue about whether or not something is a horror movie, then it's probably a horror movie. The only causes to argue are if you insist on an extremely narrow definition of horror to guide your personal consumer habits, or if you're squeamish about admitting that you've ever enjoyed or respected anything that falls under the horror umbrella (and I tend to think the latter case is more prevalent). Admittedly, SVENGALI blends comedy, romance, and musical elements such that the viewer is never quite sure how dark things will get until the very end, but I think that anyone should be able to see the horror in the incredible sequence of the eponymous villain sending his disembodied consciousness through the CALIGARI-like city to possess the unwitting Trilby (played by Marian Marsh who must have been the most adorable person alive at the time). A few different visual effects are used to evoke Svengali's power, some of which are still modern-looking and scary, and the film's breezy humor and charm do not promise any particular safety.

On some level, the aura of antisemitism and xenophobia itself lets us know we're in horrific territory. This is the genre of fears, rational and irrational, where we face whatever society perceives as threatening. Today we're in the midst of a lot of arguments about whether or not "separating the art from the artist" is ever appropriate, with full cancellation of the art AND artist positioned as the only alternative, but both of these options suggest that we must never have to face immorality, ambiguity, or ambivalence in art at all; we're forced to either avoid it or ignore it. This denies us the opportunity to understand what these darker emotions consist of, and understanding is the only way to defang them. Personally, I don't think it's any more helpful to condemn e.g. Dracula or the Wicked Witch of the West for their bigoted elements, than it is to simply pretend those things aren't there at all. SVENGALI provides us with a similar opportunity to confront antisocial phobias, with its troublingly caricaturesque villain and the unavoidable fascination one feels when his hypnotic gaze projects itself at us from the screen. Recommended viewing.

[porkcracker]

Au-dventcalendar

"Advent Advent mein Soulmate brennt"

A Transformers Soulmate Adventcalendar

Day 14

Ship: Ultra Magnus x Swerve

AUs: Agestop

One stops aging the moment they meet their soulmate, usually a lack of change that gets noticed quickly. However, in the craziness of their quest neither of them had noticed at first. After the Lost Light disbanded the search now starts.

No one had noticed at first. Not even they themselves. It was only after they had returned to Cybertron and the Lost Light had been dismantled that Ultra Magnus noticed the change—or rather, noticed no change. At first, he hadn't really realized what it meant, but as he brought it up with Ratchet, he suddenly was faced with the knowledge that he had met his soulmate and had no clue who it was.

For several vorns, Ultras Magnus debated with himself about whether he should go search for them or not before coming to the decision to search. Deep inside his soul, he could not deny a slight yearning for someone to share his life with. Once he had decided to search, he began to look for possible candidates.

The first requirement was that they had to have been a member of the Lost Light at some point, which already reduced his list of possible bots to a potential list of 200 bots. The next requirement was that they had survived the quest, which reduces the list to around 150 bots, if not less. The last category were bots who had already found their soulmates or were in relationships. This took a bit of research, but the result made it worth it. From a start list of over 200 bots, there are now around 78 left. Looking at the list of candidates, he prepared himself for more in-person research.

After the Lost Light had been dismantled, Swerve had started a new bar in a semi-popular spot, and while he wasn't particularly successful, it was enough to allow him to live in a little apartment over the bar. To his disappointment, he no longer had contact with most of the once-members of the Lost Light, the other minibots and their conjuxes being the only ones, as well as Whirl and Rung. He wished he would have contact with some others still as well, but alas, he could understand that they just had more important things to do. And for some, he just didn't have the guts to contact them.

Really, the only person that counted towards the latter was Ultra Magnus. Swerve simply assumed the mech had more important things to do and a busy schedule. That, combined with the fact the mech had always seemed to dislike him, or at least the amount of noise and chaos following him, made him wary of contacting the other mech. Ignoring all that, he didn't have his contact anyways.

This, of course, led to a very big shock at the start of the night cycle. Swerve was polishing a glass as he heard the door open and automatically started his standard greeting. "Welcome to Swerves; what can I do- Ultra Magnus, sir? I didn't expect to see you here. How are you? What can I do for you? It's been a while; I really didn't expect to see you in my bar. You never really liked my bar on the Lost Light, so you know. Sorry, I'm rambling again; I didn't get out of the habit and probably never will. I'll stop now." Swerve could feel the energon rush into his faceplate the longer he talked, or rather rambled on.

Ultra Magnus hadn't expected Swerve to have changed much since their departure, but to see him so completely and utterly the same was somehow quite comforting. Then he mentally stopped and ran the thought through his head again. Swerve was indeed exactly like he had been at the start of the quest, but not only personality-wise but appearance-wise. The list, holding only three names not crossed off at this point, sat heavy in his subspace as the realization formed in his processor. "Good evening, Swerve; it is nice to see you're still yourself. I'm actually looking for something very important, and I thought you may be able to help me," he replied as he stepped up towards the bar, stopping in front of it.

Looking at Swerve closer, he noticed the faint blush on the minibot's faceplate, and previously pushed-down and forgotten feelings reared their heads again. The urge to pick the cute minibot up or just cuddle him hit the bigger mech for the first time in a long time again. "Oooh, of course I'll help with whatever I can. What are you looking for? Is it something bar-related?" The questions pulled him from his thoughts and returned his attention to Swerve.

"It isn't. I was actually looking for my soulmate. The blunt statement seemed to throw Swerve off a little, but Ultra Magnus could see his processor at work and the moment Swerve came to the same conclusion as he had. The blue tint of his cheeks darkened, and he opened and closed his mouth several times before pointing at himself and asking faintly, "Me?"

"If you would be willing, I'd like to take you out sometimes."