#library war love & war

[fanfictiondramione]

In this cold winter, I can see its beautiful flowers blooming in you, darling… You'd never be alone, I'll always be by your side For the scars have become beautiful features.

Scars leave Beautiful Trace – Car the Garden (Alchemy Of Souls | OST)

[comickergirl]

Library Wars: Love & War! This is the last of the batch I have currently drawn so I'll resume this...at some point? XD But anyways this series is great, absolutely recommend it.

[sadiahakim]

We were each other's sun, a Sunrise Arc away.

— Sadia Hakim

[inlovewithquotes]

"You were the one who wanted to save the world," he said, quietly. "I just wanted to save you."

-Children Of Fallen Gods

[planetmaven]

reminder that Cal dropped one of the most romantic lines in YA book history and no one talks about it.

War Storm, "I thought of you in the end. I saw your face in the water."

[rotten-dog-teeth]

I need to say something, as an archivist.

Please look after your books. Please. Don't throw them in the bin, don't tear pages out, don't screw them up. If you don't want them anymore, either sell them, or donate them, whether it be to a charity shop, a library, or a school or university.

I rescue old books and look after them. I've just been sorting through the most recent lot that I've gotten, and there were books in there - that the original owners wanted to just throw away - that had survived over 100 years, and predated the first (1st) world war.

That in itself, is amazing. Because what most people don't know/realise, is that so many books did not survive the world wars, especially the second (2nd) one. Not only were countless libraries destroyed in bombings, but so many books were burned and eradicated under the Nazi regime.

This is still an issue today, with book burnings and bannings still taking place, such as in the USA; as well as countries being bombed and seiged, destroying so many books containing records of those people's history, culture and lives, such as in Palestine.

I've found books that were printed the year the second (2nd) world war ended, first (1st) editions filled with documents from the war, detailing everything that happened, every action that was taken, everywhere they went, every letter that was exchanged, every soldier that was felled. Documents that would have otherwise been destroyed, if not during the war by the opposition, then by the people who wrote it in the first place, to try to hide certain aspects of the war to paint themselves in a better light, or cover up certains tragedies or mistakes. These are pivotal resources for historians, especially books for time periods less written about/well-documented.

So often, I see books that are on their last legs, falling apart, and most people's reactions are to just throw them in the bin. This breaks my heart. Not only are you destroying a record of something so human - whether that be stories told to children to help them sleep at night, records of a huge historical event that meant the world to the people of that time, poems written by someone painfully in love so long ago - but snuffing out the life that book lived.

Every book I rescue, I check for two (2) things: print date, and notes.

The print date is simple - it tells me how old the book is. But the notes are what I mean by the life of the book. So many books I find have hand-written notes in them, and they give you little hints of the life they've lived. Here are some real notes I've found in books:

"Peter, Chemistry department of [X] university" in a german-english dictionary of chemistry terminology. This book was a gift to a university student, he was studying chemistry, and probably either working with a German team, or maybe leaving home after university to go to Germany, or some other german speaking country. These kinds of books are really specific, and at the time of print (roughly the 50s or 60s if I remember correctly), you couldn't just search for it online (something a good portion of us have never known) - you had to find a specialist book shop or find one that could track it down for you. Whoever got this book, cared about the person they gave it to, and went through the effort of finding this specific book for Peter before he left home. I would guess maybe a family member. Maybe they never saw him again.

"For our 50th anniversary - Annie & Frank" in a little homemade books of recipes. This book had been put together over several years, presumeably over the course of this couple's marriage - 50 years. This book was probably an anniversary gift from one of the two (2) partners to the other. So many recipes, lovingly collected and kept over decades. Probably having been cooked for eachother a hundred times over. These people probably had such fond memories of being sat at the dinner table - maybe just the two (2) of them, maybe with family, friends, and other company - eating the warm, homemade meals from these recipes. Making and sharing food with someone is often a very intimate and loving thing to do. I like to think they loved eachother so very much.

[A double-sided A4 love letter] found in a book of poetry. The letter was faded, and most of it was indistinguishable, but there were little bits that I could read, and they were lovely. This was written more recently (it contained more modern dialect), but was still so precious all the same. I wonder what that book lived through. A spark. An anxious confession. A romance. Perhaps a break-up too. Maybe that's why the book ended up in the donations. I imagine that the recipient of the love letter and poetry forgot the letter was even in there. The book was probably a gift from their partner - maybe specially picked, perhaps because the recipient liked poetry, or that specific poet at least - and that's probably why they used the letter as a bookmark in it. I still think about those people sometimes, where they ended up. Where are they now?

Those are just some of them, and I hope you understand why I care so much about these little bundles of paper and ink. They tell a story, not just in what's printed, but in their age, their condition, in the little notes people leave behind. Even simply the fact that some books' pages are so thin and smooth from being flicked through and read by an adoring reader so many times that the page corners have been worn thin by stroking fingers.

You may feel like nobody cares about that one book you have sitting in the corner of your room, and that "there are thousands of those books, this one doesn't matter", or that it's "ruined" because of that little message your mum wrote on the front page when she got it for you, but what you don't realise is that future historians and archivists are begging you to look after it, and make sure it's given to a good home. It may end up being the last surviving copy of that book. That little message could tell them so much that you don't even notice right now.

It breaks my heart finding old books with pages missing, which may never be recovered - the contents lost to time forever. Finding books whose spines are falling apart and pages are moulded from dampness - having been neglected for years. Finding books whose pages are worn and faded, yellowed and bent - just left to rot.

It fustrates me when I find books that have been poorly or just outright incorrectly handled. You can tell if a book's from a school library, because it has tape all over the cover, hiding the face of the book with a permanent dust jacket, because apparently they decided it ought to stay hidden; because it has check-out pages glued over the print date, because the day somebody borrowed it is more important than the book's birthday. I love libraries, and they're so important, but sometimes I wish some of them took better care of their books.

This is my plea to the people, and love letter to the books.

Please. I love you.

[hotwaterandmilk]

Series: Toshokan Sensou Love & War Artist: Yumi Kiiro Publication: LaLa (01/2010) Details: LaLa Kirameki Star Calendar 2010 (July) Source: Scanned from my personal collection

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 08 - Fav. (Side) Job

When she's not running around as Ninja or Summoner , Arsay's next choice is the lance. Being bestowed a source of draconic power by Midgardsormr moments before his slumber, and knowing how to channel the powers of Bahamut with dreadwyrm trance, Arsay's power as a Dragoon rivals that of even the former Azure Dragoon. With that said, she'd much rather use her polearm to hunt monsters.

[yuridovewing]

gotta say though, the way mapleshade kinda (???) tried to hurt crookedstar with oakheart’s affair was pretty lame. yeah your mom had her head bashed against the rocks. your dad died slowly of cancer. your wife and children will die too. and your brother got kinda horny one night and made himself a single father

[rollforjackass]

do y'all remember the slew of headcanons back in 2019 about aziraphale and the library of alexandria and that one heart-rending comic where hastur burns it down and crowley's almost too late to rescue aziraphale? i'm having Strong emotions about it again

like i truly adore the idea of aziraphale getting all involved with the library of alexandria - setting off little bursts of divine inspiration every which way, translating texts that no one else would ever have been able to read - but i ALSO love the idea that it was one of the few projects that he and crowley could actually openly work on together, because crowley gets sent up from hell to immortalize typos, misshelve divine texts, and make the hardest working scholars indolent in their pursuits, what have you.

i like to think that they both finagled their way into the assignment because they both admire the way humans happily threw away their limited lifespans for the good of all future mankind. and maybe they even enjoyed their work for a change, since they really wouldn't have to Do Anything; the typos and fleeting bursts of inspiration and the dedication and burnout would all happen anyway. they could just hang out and read and reminisce and fantasize about future generations absorbing ancient knowledge.

and then the warehouses burn for some stupid war. all that hard work goes up in smoke, and in the end the only true testaments humanity has left to its infancy are aziraphale and crowley, who can do nothing about that.

the way the light would have died in aziraphale's eyes even as the embers reflected in them like sunlight off a blade.

the way rage would have melted the lenses off of crowley's face like scales falling from his eyes.

the way they might have spent drunken evenings tried to recreate the secrets of human innovation from memory, re-capture the inner thoughts of philosophers and alchemists and worshippers long dead. the way they would have always failed.

yeah i have feelings about that.

[winethorn]

mood bc i honest-to-god want to read serials. like imagine reading war & peace or the brothers karamazov in a serial format? whole new experience: forced contemplation on every. single. segment, slow torture— like what? i love pain. sign me up.

[fanfictiondramione]

When I'm standing in the fire I will look him in the eye And I will let the devil know that I was brave enough to die And there's no hell that he can show me That's deeper than my pride 'Cause I will never be forgotten Forever I'll fight

'Cause I don't need this life I just need

Somebody to die for Somebody to cry for When I'm lonely

(Somebody To Die For by Hurts)

All image rights to: Fren

[thebanishedreader]

"I stand there and wonder whether, when I am twenty, I shall have experienced the bewildering emotions of love."

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1929)

[nando161mando]

[inlovewithquotes]

Home. The word caught and settled, deep in my chest. But home wasn't Korvius, or the Towers, or even a cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by flowers. Home was a pair of mismatched eyes, an accented voice, and a heartbeat that followed the same cadence as mine. And I was so, so, homesick.

-Children Of Fallen Gods

[planetmaven]

something in my soul is touched when i reread the scene in war storm where maven goes to mare's stilts home and destroys it

it feels like he was in mourning, you know? because he had lost her. he lost her so so many times, but she was so close to him THIS time and she slipped right between his fingers like cupped water.

and it specifically feels like mourning because maven calore didn't feel love. all he ever felt was loss and the idea of love that was more leaned toward obsession. so instead of mourning in sadness and depression like he did with thomas, he mourned with rage and destruction with mare.