#inconsistently (imo) good poet —>

[elskanellis]

Daddy: 1933

Geoffrey Brock

If one takes a walk on a clear sunny day in middle April,

when the first willows are in bloom, one may often see

young bumblebee queens eagerly sipping nectar from the catkins—

thus begins the one book written by Otto Emil Plath.

It is a delightful thing to pause and watch these queens, clad

in their costumes of rich velvet, their wings not yet torn—

he wrote it the year after Sylvia was born— by the long foraging

flights which they will be obliged to take later.

[tigerdrop]

LMAO well okay. i think that my interpretation of his behavior will probably bug some people judging by a lot of posts i see flying around lately but yall asked, so

so like right from the jump, tommy reads as a, like, naive and good-mannered person. and, you know, he is a little naive! he gets bought out with fucking beyblades. but hes also very insistent that he knows what hes doing a lot of the time, even when gordon is being condescending as all shit and implying that hes a child. (see: the line where hes like “im not playing in the water! im testing the viscosity!”) and im inclined to take that at face value - presumably you dont get hired at black mesa without at least being on the level of, you know, a 27 yr old fresh out of MIT, like gordon freeman

and in that light, i think its really easy to read a lot of tommys behavior as straight up passive-aggressive/condescending towards gordon. gordons like, a decade younger than him, and hes going around cracking jokes about how tommys basically two kids in a trenchcoat. like, some examples:

whether or not tommy calls him “mr freeman” or “dr freeman” is a little inconsistent, but a lot of times tommy will be calling him “dr” right up until gordon makes some condescending comment toward him, at which point he switches to “mr”. it was probably not intentional at all, but its really funny and kind of demeaning

theres a moment where theres like, a laser/electricity/whatever, and tommy says “it cant hurt you if youre smart!” when gordon worries about it hurting him. it would hurt gordon, tho. this reads as a fantastically backhanded burn to me LMAO

theres another bit where theyre all just straight up calling gordon stupid. (he is a little stupid for being such a puffed-up MIT boy.) tommy will also sometimes just completely ignore gordon when gordon says something demeaning to him, like hes just turning away and thinking “i am not getting paid enough to deal with this guy”

tommys clearly spiteful at times: when they get fucked with the the military, tommy immediately jumps to suggesting they take one of the soldiers hostage, and when theyre robbing the casino in the payday stream, hes like “ive already lost 20$, let’s rob this place”. its not much of a stretch to interpret him as being spitefully condescending to gordon, too

anyway the point i am getting at here is that its not like wildly inaccurate to read him as just wanting some fucking respect. gordons really, really bossy and talks down to them a lot and sometimes literally talks to tommy like hes a dog. id think that just about anybody would get fed up with that

in that vein, please consider: tommy finally getting stern and reminding gordon that he is a 37 year old with a goddamn doctorate (maybe even multiple!) and that its dr coolatta, thank you. sure, he might like gordon, and they might be friendly towards each other, but gordon ought to show some fuckin respect for once instead of being so demeaning all the time. and, you know, gordon having a really embarrassing reaction to being put in his place for once

some other tidbits that dont really go along with this but that i feel compelled to point out anyway

tommy swears! he says “fucking” almost right away! and he doesnt stutter very much if at all. i think that, like the “gordon feetman” thing, the whole schtick of him never swearing and stuttering a lot is like a fanon thing that got latched onto really hard fsr

hes, like, really fast, and one of my friends headcanons him as having been a track runner at one point, which fits really well IMO

tommys probably an excellent researcher if he makes a point to reference how many OSHA codes and wikipedia articles hes memorized, which makes it even more funny/painful how much gordon lays into him for being childlike

tommy makes the sweet voice colors rhyme what they actively do some of the time, but definitely not all of the time. i know it can be fun to try to come up with clever rhymes for sweet voice, but the pedantic and obnoxious poet in my brain is begging ppl to just not force it if it sounds awkward. if youre gonna do it, you oughta make sure it actually rhymes, and that it scans correctly, too. sorry this is insanely nitpicky but it drives me Nuts and ive had people wonder why i would make one of benreys sweet voices orange when it doesnt rhyme with anything. it doesnt have to! dont worry about it!

[the-busy-ghost]

Thoughts on Margaret this time round:

- She’s apparently back on completely friendly terms with Katherine again. Which I think would have been fair in a historical context, because I don’t subscribe to theories about Margaret “naturally” hating Katherine for Flodden, but given this tv show’s stance in the last episode it feels very inconsistent.

- Henry’s wee line about her sons thriving- why do I feel like they’re going to be completely unsubtle and have the “moral” of the whole tv show be that Margaret somehow Secretly Won because, idk, her kids actually survived and had kids and then 90 years later, the Union of the Crowns?

- How are all of these kids still kids and how is Margaret responsible for them??? Are there more of them somehow??? Was James somehow making more from beyond the grave? (Historically, one of them is literally a dead twenty year old archbishop at this point, seriously)

- WHAT is the Earl of Angus’ characterisation. I mean historically he was a complex figure like any other, but how exactly are they going to pull off the shift from Unique and Sensitive Soul to Chaotic Ex-Husband in a way that will justify both his and Margaret’s actions

- He is also NOT a subtle Anglophile. “Everything good comes out of England” was a line and a half, even for a man who did have a very complex relationship with England (in the future! Not in 1513!). What’s more bizarre to me is he’s waxing lyrical about Thomas More (??) but two episodes ago this same tv show portrayed Angus’ uncle Gavin Douglas, a great poet and a man who we know did appreciate some English cultural output, as a raging Anglophobe. If anyone was going to be the one quoting Thomas More in 1513, I’d be more inclined to put my money on Gavin than Archibald- though that’s not to say the latter would be uneducated or uncultured. Maybe Angus has #BetterTogether anachronistically emblazoned all over his instagram but if England was the ultimate goal and best place you could possibly be, why did he try so hard to recover his lands in Scotland? Why was exile such a hard experience for the Douglases to resign themselves to? It’s a complex situation and although opinions were varied on the subject in the sixteenth century, it felt more like the scriptwriters were putting their own politics in the mouth of the character rather than showing him come to that conclusion himself naturally. Apparently there are two brands of Scot in this show- Evil and Bad Anglophobe (90% of the characters) and Pure and Good Anglophile. Not only did actual sixteenth century (and modern) Scots have much more complex motivations and feelings towards England, but it’s almost as if the scriptwriters can’t grasp the concept, that, sometimes, it’s not actually always about England.

- Margaret apparently learning how to ‘win the hearts of the people’ by... giving out money to the poor? A very common thing that royals were expected to do, even if they usually had an almoner to do some of it for them? Also the implication that royals in Scotland (or any sixteenth century country) habitually spent their time shut away in palaces and never set eyes on their subjects is very anachronistic. Especially since Margaret used to be married to James IV who was not known for shutting himself away from the folk. Idk I’m not necessarily criticising this approach (from Margaret’s point of view I suppose, you could make the argument that as a royal woman she would be less mobile and less likely to know the lie of the land than her husband), but it felt like another lazy understanding of politics. 

- Fabulous cloak though.

- Impromptu Fringe performance in a nineteenth century Welsh castle. I suppose it was at least built by a Stewart?

- Wow that looks like such an intense riot. Not.

- IDK. I’ve actually been kind of enjoying this show in an “it’s awful but I like being able to talk about it” way. But this was a genuinely dull plotline imo.

[tessiete]

Hello there! :) How did you come up with the idea of just so, and no clearer and which of your written poems is your personal favorite? (I absolutely adore all of them!)

Oh, um, hi how did you know I was just stalking your blog.......anyway, THANK YOU for this ask. I’m actually really fond of Just So, and No Clearer and it’s the fic that made me fall in love with Obitine, so I’m SO gratified to know you like it, too!

The idea...it’s a little convoluted, so bear with me, but! (//Get ready for an unnecessarily long analysis - SORRY!)

@duchess-of-mandalore posts a monthly prompt for Obitine creators, and this was written for the inaugural one. I accidentally suggested the idea, and then when Jess went above and beyond with it, I felt compelled to contribute.

I’m not good at following directions, and I had only a passing interest in Obitine. But by the end, I LOVED them. I loved her! 

The prompt was: GIFT

So, essentially I thought about the kinds of gifts that Obi-Wan might give Satine. My first thought was KORKIE MY BOY LIGHT OF MY LIFE, but then I thought that would be too easy for me to cop out on because beyond the idea of Korkie as a gift, there wasn’t like, a conflict that immediately came to mind.

But Obi-Wan is also a public servant. The Jedi don’t have things. He doesn’t have money to spend on her. He can’t send her flowers, or chocolates, or jewels, and he wouldn’t want to because those things are unimportant to him. 

So, in trying to come up with something that Obi-Wan could give Satine, and something that he doesn’t give to anyone else, I thought of poetry. There’s a throwaway line in a Legends book, I think, about him liking literature, and he’s a very introverted person. He isn’t easy to read. My reasoning was that he feels a lot but can only speak a very little, but poetry? Poetry is a secret language that lets him say everything his heart is thinking.

And Satine, who speaks the language of his heart, can read in his poetry all the secret meanings and things he can’t say out loud. So the gift is ultimately himself. He’s giving her little pieces of himself. And it’s something that nobody else gets, in a very specific way (and it was important that this be distinct because I also feel VERY strongly about his relationship with Anakin, and basically consider them soulmates, so this had to be something that exists simultaneously with Anakin, yet neither diminishes or is diminished by that relationship, you know?)

At the same time, I realised that he wouldn’t be writing these on paper. These would be comm messages. Essentially texts. He’s texting her sad poems.

And that struck me as really funny. That yes, he’s sincere, and deeply in love, and it’s important because it’s honest and he means it, and Satine knows that, but......at the same time, what he’s doing is not much different than being woken at 2am by a text from you ex saying “sup?” YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY’RE WANTING. 

Once I’d settled on this, I knew I needed to find a structure I could hang the whole thing from (I don’t write well without one). I don’t know why I picked the number five, but it seemed a good storytelling baseline (five act structure and all). Then, I decided I wanted each poem to be in a different language, from a different planet all having some meaning that would be felt by both Obi-Wan and Satine. I went with Qui-Gon’s home planet, Mandalore, Coruscant, Stewjon, and Naboo. Why did I do this? I don’t know. To make life difficult for myself. Because then, not only did I have to write each poem, I then had to translate them into a different language, and keep the metre and usually the rhyme as well. 

Then, with those foundations done, the plot fell in place around it. The whole idea of him coming to her after Kadavo just happened because the timeline said that it was logical. Happy, happy accident!

As for my fave...

I...I love the ode.

I spent DAYS researching historical slang for sex/genitals. DAYS.

And then ages on the ode itself. I wanted that form because I wanted to associate Coruscant with Rome, its fall, and the idea of a Republic. BUT ALSO because the particular form I chose to sort of emulate (though MUCH truncated) was a Pindaric Ode - which, due to Romantic British poets, is not at ALL the way that Pindar actually wrote his odes. So Coruscant has essentially become so divorced from its history that its poetry is only an echo of a traditional form.

No one told me that odes SUCK TO WRITE. 

The metre is inconsistent - but in a consistent way.

The rhymes are also consistently inconsistent.

You have to begin with a praise to the gods - which don’t exist in Obi-Wan’s Coruscant, so NATURE as a form of the Force it is!

Like...it’s such a complicated and precise form, and I don’t think I nailed it, but I think I aped it well enough.

And for me? Personally???? I’m so, so, so pleased at how filthy it is. Because I think that’s exactly the kind of smut Obi-Wan would engage in. It’s very civil. Anyone could read the poem, and just understand it to be talking about a pretty flower.

But Satine is the Lily of Mandalore, and like...anyone who knows that? Anyone who speaks the language Obi-Wan is writing in? Yeah, he’s written her a sext.

But I’m just pleased that, imo, I walked that line between filth and ART pretty dang well for a SW poem!

Thank you for letting me talk about this fiiiiiiiiiiic. ILU. I owe you so many grateful replies and returns. <3

[omophagias]

What makes the 14th century alliterative revival interesting to you? If I can ask?

(i’m going to do the best i can to answer this while every piece of premodern lit i own is taped up in a box somewhere. this post is also going to be very long because it’s my blog and i do what i want.)

first of all i just like alliteration in any form of poetry—i think it makes it more fun to read out loud and helps to accentuate and drive along the meter. it’s also the primary ornamental device in old english poetry—i think the ruin provides a pretty good ongoing example although the translation they’re using on wikipedia is a bit lackluster imo. the ruin is also interesting in itself for a variety of reasons but i’m personally a fan of the way the alliteration seems to ebb and flow in intensity throughout the poem as the poet moves between the city as it once was and the ruins that it is now. it’s also got a bit of internal rhyme near the start with the repetition of -orene words—gehrorene, scorene, gedrorene, forweorone, geleorene (undereotone if you squint)—that i love. this is largely beside the point. anyway it looks like this—

glædmod ond goldbeorht  ||  gleoma gefrætwed, wlonc ond wingal  ||  wighyrstum scan; seah on sinc, on sylfor,  ||  on searogimmas, on ead, on æht,  ||  on eorcanstan, on þas beorhtan burg  ||  bradan rices. (the ruin, lines 33-37) 

broadly, the rule is: four stresses per line, at least three of which alliterate (wlonc ond wingal  ||  wighyrstum scan; or, more widely known and a bit looser, hwæt! we gar-dena  ||  in gear-dagum...)

anyway post-conquest a lot of things change; partially because english isn’t the prestige language for a couple-three centuries afterwards so prestige poetry is in latin or norman french (or anglo-norman), partially because english itself is obviously changing through absorbing a lot of norman & otherwise-french influence, partially it is the nature of poetic form to adapt. i’ve seen some arguments that end-rhyme was introduced into french-etc. poetry through diffusion of arabic poetry out of al-andalus; i’m not qualified to comment but it sounds plausible. either way, at and after the time of conquest, french verse was generally octosyllabic, and rhyming or at least assonant—

Bels fut li vespres e li soleilz fut clers. Les dis mulez fait Carles establer. El’ grant vergier fait li reis tendre un tref; Les dis messages ad fait enz hosteler; Duze serjant les unt bien cunreez. (la chanson de roland, att. turold, c. 1040–1115, lines 157-161; assonant)

Quant des lais faire m’entremet, ne vueil ubliër Bisclavret. Bisclavret a nun en Bretan, Garulf l’apelent li Norman. (bisclavret, marie de france, c. 1160–1215, lines 1-4; aabb rhyming)

alliterative verse didn’t entirely disappear, probably, but we don’t have evidence for it after the composition of layamon’s brut in 1190. the verse compositions in identifiable english that we have, like of arthour and of merlin or richard coer de lyon, tend to take after anglo-norman and french antecedents—

Merlin seyd to þe king “Al y knowe þi glosing, Y wot þou louest par amour Ygerne þat swete flour. What wiltow ȝeue me, ar tomorwe Y schal þe lese out of þi sorwe?” (of arthour and of merlin, c. 1250–1300, lines 2477-2482)

He answeryd wiþ herte ffree, “Þeron j moot avyse me. Ȝe weten weel, it is no lawe, A kynge to hange and to drawe…” (richard coer de lyon, c. 1300, lines 997-1000)

the above two are fairly representative of earlier (like, pre-chaucerian) middle english poetic literature. speaking broadly: short, metrical rhymed couplets. i should also mention, probably, that people at the time were fairly inconsistent about the scribal difference between u and v or y/i/j, that þ goes “th”, and that ȝ makes a variety of “g” or “g”-“y” cusp or “gh” or “ch” sounds and can also stand in scribally for a z or hard s.

anyway, the 14th century alliterative revival is what it sounds like: around 1350, primarily in the north and west of england, a lot of alliterative verse began to be written down. it’s…very different from the examples given above:

And þat þe myriest in his muckel þat myȝt ride; For of bak and of brest al were his bodi sturne, Both his wombe and his wast were worthily smale, And alle his fetures folȝande, in forme þat he hade, ful clene;      For wonder of his hwe men hade,      Set in his semblaunt sene;      He ferde as freke were fade,      And oueral enker-grene. (sir gawain and the green knight, “gawain poet”, c. 1370–1390, lines 142-150)

middle english alliterative verse by and large rejects end-rhyming (however, the exceptions to that rule are absolutely my favorites—more later), and brings back the four-stress line (both his wombe and his wast  ||  were worthily smale) although in a longer and looser form than was common in old english, probably because of linguistic shifts and because of evolution of the medium. it is so fun to read out loud. sir gawain and the alliterative morte arthure are probably your most accessible examples—they’re both available in facing-page translation by simon armitage, who isn’t my favorite translator of sir gawain but does a good job of retaining the stresses. piers plowman is also representative, but reading it, to me, is a little like being trapped in the donut shop my grandpa hangs out at with a bunch of other old guys, except without donuts—it’s very old-man-yells-at-cloud. but really my interest with them is less with translation than with the way that the language sits in my mouth, and the way that i think alliterative verse sort of pulls the lines forward in a way that end-rhyme doesn’t necessarily—it feels more propulsive, more churning. it’s like a water-wheel, if that makes sense? it plays off the natural stresses of the english language in a really engaging way, and differently from iambic pentameter, which tends to get most of the spotlight when it comes to naturalistic rhythm in english poetry. and there’s a playfulness to a lot of it (especially the rhymed poems), or at least a sense of the ability to play with language, that i love and that i think a lot of people don’t really realize existed in medieval literature (or think only chaucer was capable of it.)

however! the works from the alliterative revival that combine alliteration and end-rhyme are some of my favorite poems in the english language (for a permissive definition of “english”), because they tend to develop these incredible complex, elaborate structures of rhyme and meter. so there are two poems in this category that i’m going to talk about, and i can go for…a long time on the second one. i’m not really going to bring up sir gawain on its own much more because, no room, but it’s really one of my favorite arthurian works, in part because of the alliterative verse, in part because i just love the figure of the green knight and the awful castle hautdesert threesome setup; it’s also one of the more accessible examples of the core of the genre (at least to me—i bounced really hard off of malory, the mabinogion is fun but deeply weird in a way that might put off beginners, and i think chrétien de troyes really depends on how you’re introduced—english translations of french arthuriana tend to be prose translations, which is a whole different post but suffice it to say i don’t think they work.)

first is the three dead kings, which is an expansion on the “as you are so i once was / as i am so shall you be” type of memento mori motif that was pretty common at the time; three kings on a boar hunt run into three corpses who identify themselves as their ancestors and tell them to stop fucking around and take death seriously. so, thematically—i think memento mori art and literature is a lot of fun, in general; the combination of the focus on life’s transience with macabre and often enthusiastically ghoulish imagery—

Lo, here the wormus in my wome — thai wallon and wyndon! Lo, here the wrase of the wede || that I was in wondon! (the three dead kings, att. john audelay, c. 1426, lines 98–99)

—and the vision of life still continuing after death and among the dead, not necessarily solely in the sense of the resurrection but in a community of the dead on earth who speak to and concern themselves with the living, it’s just very fun. (afterlives by nancy mandeville caciola is an absolute blast on that front, by the way.) the three dead kings is also structurally complex in a really enjoyable way: it’s not bob-and-wheel (which you see very famously in sir gawain, the little two-word bob and four-line abab wheel at the end of each verse), but the five-line cdccd bit that i’d call a sort of wheel; and then the main body of each stanza has this very fun abababab scheme where the a- and b-words still half-rhyme with each other. from the stanza i quoted above, you get “fynden — fondon — lynden — Londen — byndon — bondon — wyndon — wondon”. i think it plays very well with the meter.

aside from that, i love the imagery of it; it ranges from, like i said, almost comically grotesque—the dead king whose legs are like leeks wrapped in linen, the worms wallowing and winding in the womb (interesting word choice, also)—to this very sere, wintry atmosphere; the last stanza has a half-line about the “red rowys of the day,” the red daylight, that i just love. and i’m a big fan of the way that, kind of like sir gawain in miniature, the three dead kings opens with this celebration of chivalric performance that’s suddenly pulled askew by the intrusion of supernatural—or, like, really, the most natural; what’s more normal than death, or than cyclical renewal?—forces.

the second poem is pearl. (the linked translation is not my favorite; simon armitage has a facing-page one that’s pretty good, but my favorite overall is marie borroff’s (rip), who also did my favorite sir gawain.) i’m going to do my best not to just go on and on about pearl for ages, because this post is already very long, but it’s also, i think, one of my favorite poems, period. its structure is very hard to talk about briefly, because the way that it’s built is integral to its subject. in brief: 101 stanzas, each of 12 lines in abababab-bcbc rhyme, divided into 20 cantos (the 14th canto has 6 stanzas, the rest 5), for a total of 1212 lines. within each canto, the first and last line of each stanza repeat these linking words and phrases (except the first line of each canto, which does so to the final line of the canto preceding, and the final line of the poem, which paraphrases the opening line.) this is all because pearl is in part about heavenly geometry, the square/cube of the heavenly city (12 furlongs on a side, filled with 144,000 maidens) and the circle/sphere of the pearl, and the way that those two shapes are interposed on each other—there’s a lot of structural/behind-the-scenes numerology and geometry to talk about, but like…i won’t right now. it’s also, in the poem itself, something that can’t fully be talked about—

An-under mone so great merwayle No fleschly hert ne myȝt endeure, As quen I blusched upon þat bayle, So ferly þerof watȝ þe fasure. I stod as stylle as dased quayle For ferly of þat frelich fygure, Þat felde I nawþer reste ne trauayle, So watȝ I rauyste wyth glymme pure. For I dar say wyth conciens sure, Hade bodyly burne abiden þat bone, Þaȝ alle clerkeȝ hym hade in cure, His lyf were loste an-under mone. (pearl, “gawain poet,” c. 1370–1390, lines 1081–1092)

briefly—the narrator sees the heavenly city and nearly dies on the spot, only protected by the fact that this is all taking place in a dream-vision. borroff translates a bit of that as:

As a quail that couches, dumb and dazed, I stared on that great symmetry Nor rest nor travail my soul could taste, Pure radiance so had ravished me.

like…i love that. so much of pearl is about mortal and divine perception, about the unknowability of death and the depth of grief and the final breakdown of the consolatio as a literary-philosophical genre, and about the way that the dead who have transcended death and come out the other side are residing because of that transcendence in a fundamentally alien sphere of cognition, marked out by the impossible-to-withstand radiance of the heavenly city.

but what pearl is about-about, it’s generally agreed, is the death of the narrator’s young daughter. she is the pearl who he lost; grieving her, he falls asleep in a garden and has a dream. in this dream, he wakes up in a fantastical garden or forest, divided by a river, and on the other side of that river is a beautiful young woman who identifies herself, and who the narrator identifies, as the “pearl”. the rest of the poem is a back-and-forth between the narrator and the pearl-maiden, which is largely him asking questions and her explaining biblical parables to him. but describing the conversation as that really does it an incalculable disservice, because what it is is, on the one hand, a grieving parent asking these very human, tender questions of his lost child—are you really her? why did you have to go? where are you? are you happy where you are?—while the child offers only these very stern, cold rebukes—þou most abyde þat He schal deme—and abstruse explanations of the parable of the vineyard; and on the other hand, someone who has been made greedy and grasping and willfully uncomprehending in his grief, refusing to understand that the child he lost is happier where she is now, and that she can be happier there, and that he cannot join her before his decreed time. and he’s not at fault for being that way, but he’s thinking in ways that are fundamentally limited by the mortal realm that he can’t yet exit and she’s thinking in ways that are incomprehensible to people who haven’t also undergone the same apocalyptic, in the word’s sense of “unveiling” (but also, i mean, she’s in the heavenly city), reorientation of thought and being. it’s a very tender poem that i think also manages to prefigure some of the staples of eldritch horror.

and i love how the structure plays into that; the alliteration is looser than the three dead kings—there’s basically no caesura (the || that shows up sometimes in three dead kings and is more or less mandatory in old english verse), and sometimes there’s only 2 alliterations to a line, because the lines are shorter, or none at all—but it’s still got these wonderful repetitions of sound across the stanzas, tied into the repetition of the key words at the beginning and end. the whole thing builds up and up and then collapses back onto the beginning, as the narrator gradually believes he’s understanding more and more and then, in his attempt to ford the river before his time, is thrown back into the mortal world; the poem’s like an impossible staircase. it’s this massive crystalline structure enclosing a deeply human core. there is, to my knowledge, nothing else like it. it—and the other works, including sir gawain, attributed to the “gawain poet” on the basis of stylistic similarities—survives in a single manuscript, cotton nero a.x, which fortunately survived the ashburnham house fire in 1731.

to close off on the alliterative revival at large, it fell out of fashion over the 1400s; in england, the chaucerian tradition—end-rhymed iambic pentameter—dominated, and while alliterative-meter poetry still had some currency in the scottish court that ended with james vi/i stuart’s ascent to the english throne and transfer of his court to london. in modern usage, alliteration as its own technique does crop up in poetry—and i’m always happy to see it—but alliterative meter (as in, four-stress lines, or even the looser form of sir gawain or the three dead kings) is much less common and most people encounter it either through translations of beowulf or through some of the poetry in the lord of the rings (from dark dunharrow  ||  in the dim of morning…)

[knightotoc]

I drew the Knights of Ren without their helmets 🖤

Only after I finished did I actually look up what the actors look like 😅 imo they could each pull off these looks tho!

Here are the ridiculous headcanons I came up with based on the research of my sister @waiting-for-ciena-ree​ and our excessive love for the boys (please forgive any inconsistencies with the new Kylo comics):

Trudgen was Kylo's best friend at Luke's school; he is a Zabrak who pulled out his own horns and one of his hearts (according to "Maul: Lockdown" Zabraks have 2 hearts) to get into the KoR; he's the Treasurer and sometime VP.

Ushar is a really scary but really sexy new species of alien; he was Kylo's old rival from Luke's school, so Kylo had to win him over and they have a lot of gay tension (I mean, they all do); he's usually the VP but always the Bad Boy.

Kuruk is an Anakin clone that Kylo cooked up in his room (I accept full responsibility for this truly stupid headcanon); he is the Quiet One and the pilot (of course). He has a lot to think about.

Cardo is a Viidaav who just appeared one day with the monkey, Albrekh. IMPORTANT NOTE: Every knight would die for the monkey. Cardo is the Loud One, the only one with an ounce of responsibility, and the Dungeon Master.

Ap'Lek is the zombie of a mysterious Sith Lord (?) that the other boys accidentally resurrected. He's a chill hang and a magnetic personality, and he can lurk and brood with the best of them. (He may or may not actually be our Dark Side Jedi Exile from KotOR II; he is definitely our favorite.)

And Vicrul is just here for a good time 😎 He's a poet, but not a very good one; he's been burned by love before, and led the charge in trying to convince Kylo to get over Rey (it's a musical number).

[dosashaan-blog]

Ive been rping a long time and haven't gotten any better. I really like your blog so I was wondering if you had any tips

hi !  i’m not sure if you’re looking for tips on writing or on rping or both,  so i’ll try to talk abt both writing  &  abt making your chara  ( canon or oc )  more interesting.

so if your writing isn’t getting any better,  it’s probably because you’re not practicing effectively.  what i mean is,  if you sit in a room and write 24/7 365 days a year i promise you you’ll never get any better,  ever.

i know that sounds weird.  but writing isn’t a motor skill or something that gets better with physically doing it;  the only way to improve your writing is to improve your taste.  by taste,  i mean your ability to read a sentence  &  think  “this sentence could be better if i did X”  &  the only,  ONLY  way to improve your taste is to read.  expose yourself to other writers.  read poetry  (  &  make sure you’re reading actual published poets,  not tumblr  “poetry” )  &  try to imitate their style.  imitation will force you think about the choices that go into writing which is what will ultimately improve your own writing.  i promise this works.  you’ll learn more from doing this than from any class or workshop,  &  i say that as a current creative writing student  ( if you have a good prof they’ll make you do this anyway ).  for example,  my writing is directly influenced by poets like Jeannine Hall Gailey,  Natalie Diaz,  &  Louise Glück,  to name a few.

this  is an excellent site for finding good poets  &  their work.  a lot of literary journals are available online for free as well  &  usually have themes/aesthetics that will help you find what you like. 

[  also,  if you’re in a rut,  PLEASE  don’t ever  force  yourself to write.  it will make you hate writing.  read something instead,  something you like;  eventually you’ll find something that will inspire you to write again.  ]

when it comes to characterization  &  character development,  it’s all about subtly.  you’ve probably heard of  “show,  don’t tell”  which is imo bullshit;  i prefer  “tell me,  but show me too.”  one of the best ways to do this is utilizing something called the  language well.  every character has a language well,  or place that they draw their imagery/metaphors/similes from.  

for example,  a character who is a soldier will have a vastly different language well than a character who’s an artist.  for the soldier,  you should try to use images that reflect that; comparing their voice to the grit of gunpowder,  or their eyes to a scope.  i do this a lot for evfra.  the artist,  then,  would have a lot of art imagery;  comparing their voice to the thickness of acrylic,  or their eyes to wet clay.  i recommend writing up a list of all the different things in your character’s language well.  sort of like an  aesthetics  list.  anything you think relates to your character,  even abstract things.  i have one for both evfra  &  akksul  &  they’re vastly different lists.

also,  contrary to popular belief,  your character  should  be hypocritical.  a lot of the times in the fandom i see people complaining about the writers being  “inconsistent”  with characters,  &  while,  yeah,  you can take it  too far  ( again, it’s all about subtlety ),  most of the time  it’s what makes characters interesting  &  believable !

to use evfra as an example again:  i have a hc that evfra openly doesn’t like politics.  he sees himself as a soldier,  not a diplomat,  &  will happily verbalize his aversion.  in reality, though, he’s already deeply ingrained in politics  &  would not give up his voice within the angaran political sphere for anything;  he’s pretty arrogant about the resistance having more control  &  influence than aya’s government,  &  he wants to keep it that way.

compare that to:  evfra doesn’t like politics.  the former is a lot more interesting,  right ?

that’s all i’ve got !  i hope it helps.  feel free to send me another message if i misinterpreted your question or if you have more.