#marlow + folly

[swarmishstrangers]

Everything about us, each other, feels off. Gazes familiar but more twisted, the silence deafening yet screaming in our ears of words left unspoken, events and conversations not touched. You're not the same as I knew you now..are you?

(Featuring my regretevatorsona, refs under the cut!)

[blackkatmagic]

You've mentioned several times that you like to write in the style of bodice ripper romance novels. Do you have any recommendations (of that style of novel or short story to read) ? 👀 For research purposes of course.

Solely for research purposes, totally, I understand! But also like. fair warning if you're not used to the romance/bodice ripper genre that Problematic Tropes can pop up, though the genre's gotten a lot better over the years. Sometimes consent is a little wonky, and sometimes things are just weird, and it's one of the genre conventions that can turn people off.

That said, it's super fun when you find some authors you like - bodice rippers are like soap operas, sometimes with more smut, and I truly adore them with all my heart.

The Bewildered Bride by Vanessa Riley Lessons from a Scandalous Bride by Sophie Jordan Wicked in Your Arms by Sophie Jordan Midnight by Beverly Jenkins All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue by Sophie Jordan The Duke Starts a Scandal by Sophie Jordan The Bittersweet Bride by Vanessa Riley The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare My Killer Vacation by Tessa Bailey My Sweet Folly by Laura Kinsale The Bachelor Bargain by Maddison Michaels A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole The Duke Goes Down by Sophie Jordan The Scoundrel Falls Hard by Sophie Jordan The Rake Gets Ravished by Sophie Jordan Heartbreaker by Sarah MacLean Breathless by Beverly Jenkins Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai A Knight's Blood by Gwendolyn Blackthorne The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa Plaid to the Bone by Mia Marlowe The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley How to Find a Princess by Alyssa Cole In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae The Daring Exploits of a Runaway Heiress by Victoria Alexander The Trouble with Hating You by Sajni Patel

That is. probably a good place to start? I have more recs if you aren't scared off by the end of this list. xD

[silent-words]

Did anyone else think about Faust when they heard Gale's story of his folly? The whole fandom compares him to Icarus, to some other mythical characters, but it seems very few people see the obvious.

Gale is Faust. While Karsus was Marlowe's Faust, who wanted only power for himself, Gale is Goethe's Faust, who wants to help people, who pursues power "for the greater good".

[poem-today]

A poem by Sir Walter Raleigh 

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. Time drives the flocks from field to fold When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold, And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complains of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten: In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love. But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love.

Sir Walter Raleigh  (1552–1618)

Raleigh's poem is a response to a poem by Christopher Marlowe entitled The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.

[exiled-eyes]

Cecco couldn't help but chuckle inwardly as they imagined the scene unfolding from a distant vantage point – the moon casting its silvery glow upon the churning waves, the dark silhouette of the rowboat bobbing precariously against the backdrop of the night sky. From the shore, or the deck of the Jolly Roger, it must have looked like a death sentence, a daring gamble against insurmountable odds. After all, these were Pan's waters, the merfolk were just more tools under the bambino demone's blood stained thumbs. To venture into these depths was to court disaster, to tempt fate in the most reckless of ways. And yet, for Cecco and their ilk, it was just another day in the life.

To be called a pirate in Neverland was to be forever pitted against the entire island, a constant target for the whims of fate and the machinations of those who sought to control its destiny. Decorated with signs illegibly written, the shores of Neverland mocked them, taunting them with their own folly and foolishness. Pirates were branded as fools, condemned to a life of perpetual struggle and strife. And yet, despite the odds stacked against them, they persisted, their defiance a testament to the indomitable spirit of the human heart.

They couldn't even strike at one soul on the island without being the cause of a new war. A cruel thing it was, to be called a pirate and yet forced to live like some common sailor in a blasphemous naval force. More rules than they could count and far more repercussions to be thought of before each and every action. What should have been a carefree life, what once was a carefree life to pillage, murder and maim as they so desired, had become a twisted strategic game that held no room for intermissions.

As the otherworldly man came to rest more of his arm against the side of the rowboat, one of Cecco's hands came to rest lazily by their boot, calloused fingertips grazing the cool leather texture of their knife. Not a threat, nor a warning, simply an instinct. The other, disfigured hand rested on the oar by their side, should it be needed, it could prove a useful tool in putting some distance between the two.

"Ah, I have not come for any sort of snack- though, it seems the same cannot be said for you, bello." Cecco quipped, their voice dripping with sarcasm as they met Marlowe's gaze with a playful glint in their eye. It was a dangerous game they played, this dance of words and wits on the unforgiving sea, but Cecco wouldn't have it any other way. For in the heart of Neverland, where danger lurked around every corner and secrets lay buried beneath the surface, there was a certain thrill in flirting with danger (quite literally).

"Would you believe me if I said I was looking to see something beautiful in the moonlight?" Arching a brow, hazelnut hues slowly trailed over the details of Marlowe's arm. From the muscle that formed as he held himself up, down to the pointed claws that they could almost feel upon their skin. "And here you are-"

[yourtrashcollector]

Joyce ha scritto tre romanzi, - disse Tom. - Balzac novanta. Che differenza fa adesso noi?

-Kafka ha scritto il suo primo racconto in una notte.

Stendhal ha scritto La certosa di Parma in quarantanove giorni.

Melville ha scritto Moby Dick in sedici mesi. Flaubert è rimasto cinque anni su Madame Bovary. Musil ha lavorato diciotto anni all'Uomo senza qualità, ed è morto prima di riuscire a finirlo. Ci importa qualche cosa di tutto questo, ora?

La domanda sembrava non chiedere risposta. Milton era cieco. Cervantes aveva un solo braccio. Christopher Marlowe fu ucciso a coltellate in una rissa da bettola prima di compiere trent'anni. Sembra che il coltello gli abbia trapassato un occhio. Cosa dovremmo pensarne, noialtri?

-Non lo so, Tom. Dimmelo tu. -Niente. Un bel cavolo di niente. - Penso di essere d'accordo con te.

- Thomas Wentworth Higginson «corresse- le poesie di Emily Dickinson. Un trombone ignorante che definiva Foglie d'erba un libro immorale osò toccare l'opera della divina Emily. E il povero Poe, che mori pazzo e alcolizzato in un buco di Baltimora, ebbe la sventura di scegliere come curatore postumo della sua opera Rufus Griswold. Senza sapere che Griswold lo disprezzava, che quella sottospecie di amico e paladino avrebbe passato anni a tentare di distruggere la sua reputazione. Povero Poe.

- Eddie non era fortunato. Non lo era da vivo, e non lo è stato neanche dopo morto. Lo seppellirono nel 1849 in un cimitero di Baltimora, ma ci vollero ventisei anni prima che mettessero una lapide sopra la sua tomba. Un suo parente ne aveva ordinata una subito dopo la sua morte, ma fini in uno di quei macabri casini per cui ti chiedi chi ha le redini del mondo. A proposito di follia umana, Nathan. Il laboratorio del marmista, tu pensa, si trovava sotto un tratto di ferrovia sopraelevato. Proprio mentre stavano finendo di tagliare il marmo, un treno deragliò, si abbatté nel cortile del marmista e distrusse la lapide; e dato che il parente non era abbastanza ricco per ordinarne un'altra, Poe giacque il quarto di secolo successivo in una tomba senza nome. -Come conosci tutte queste cose, Tom? Sono note.

-A me no.

-Perché non hai fatto il dottorato. All'età in cui tu eri in giro a salvare la democrazia nel mondo, io me ne stavo seduto in una biblioteca a farcirmi il cervello nozioni superflue. Ma alla fine... chi pagò la lapide? - Un gruppo di insegnanti locali costitui un comitato per raccogliere i fondi. Che tu lo creda o no, ci misero sei anni. Quando ebbero finito il monumento, i resti di Poe furono esumati, trasportati su un carro attraverso la città e tumulati in un cimitero di Baltimora. La mattina dell'inaugurazione si tenne una speciale cerimonia in un posto chiamato Western Female High School. Un nome strepitoso, vero? La Scuola Superiore Femminile dell'Ovest. Invitarono tutti i maggiori pocti americani, ma sia Whittier sia Longfellow sia Oliver Wendell Holmes trovarono scuse per non intervenire. Solo Walt Whitman si sobbarcò il viaggio. E dato che la sua opera da sola vale più di quelle di tutti gli altri messi insieme, lo considero un atto di sublime giustizia poetica. L'interessante è che quel mattino era presente anche Stéphane Mallarmé. Non in carne e ossa... ma il suo famoso sonetto Le tombeau d'Edgar Poe fu composto per l'occasione, e anche se non riusci a finirlo in tempo per la cerimonia, fu presente in spirito. Mi piace molto, Nathan... Whitman e Mallarmé, padri gemelli della poesia moderna, in piedi alla Western Female High School per rendere omaggio insieme al loro avo comune, il disonorato e infamato Edgar Allan Poe, il primo vero scrittore che l'America abbia dato al mondo.

Paul Auster, Follie di Brooklyn

[octaviasdread]

(Image)

✒️ 𝓛𝓲𝓽. 𝓟𝓸𝓼𝓽𝓼

Pride & Prejudice (2005) vs My Photos of the Statue Gallery at Chatsworth House (2018) & Chatsworth House (2024)

John Milton’s Cottage: Museum Photographs & the William Blake Illustrated Edition of Paradise Lost

Wordsworth Museum: W.Wordsworth Letter (1790) & Dorothy’s Grasmere Journal (1800) & The Wordsworth Family Bible

Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey: John Keats & Percy Shelley, William Shakespeare, The Brontë Sisters and Jane Austen & William Wordsworth

The Victoria & Albert Museum: Early 19th Century Clothing - Classical Sculpture Gallery - Architecture Details - More Details

London Museums/Galleries: John Soanes Museum - The Wallace Collection - The Charles Dickens Museum - Strawberry Hill House - Kenwood House - The Tower of London - The Tate Rossetti Exhibition & Ophelia - Bletchley Park

Other: Royal Pavilion Brighton - University of Cambridge & Cambridge City - Wells Cathedral one & two - Kirkstall Abbey Leeds one & two - Roundhay Folly Leeds- Edinburg

Original Artwork for Virginia Woolf’s Books

British Library:

• Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Husband Manuscript

• Jane Austen’s Writing Desk

• Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623)

• Princess Jahanara

• Suffragette Docs X and X

• Gawain & The Green Knight

✒️ General Posts:

Middlemarch Talk at the Literary Festival 2022

The Precision In Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems

Fleabag & Jean Rhys Fourth Wall Breaks

Iced Coffee Gays in Brideshead Revisited

Modern Phrases in Classic Lit - The Vampyre, Frankenstein, Howard's End

Bridgerton's 'reformed rakes' is from Anne Brontë!?

Who Said Academic Writing is Dull? Bewell on Early Australian Nature Writing & Outlaws Writing Botanical Dreams in Blood

Why didn't I know about William Blake's Death Mask?

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge with Matching Covers: Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Sibling Dynamics in Middlemarch

Furniture Auction Scene in Middlemarch

No one warned me Middlemarch is funny

Caleb Williams: Falkland meme

Antique Books Ask

The Romantics Antics:

Polidori’s crush on Mary Shelley - Mary Shelley Books & Green Tea Letter - Byron & Mary Shelley’s Friendship - Mary & Percy Shelley’s Marlow House - We Need to Talk About Byron’s Grandson

Quotations:

If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, Italo Calvino: Readers in Bookshops

The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen: Talk of Books & History is For Lovers…

Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay: History & the Spirit

Miranda Seymour on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Lot No.249, Arthur Conan Doyle: Flow of Life & Forgotten Death

Jean Rhys on Writing One & Two

✒️ 𝓐𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓶𝓲𝓪

The Most Chaotic Academia Lit Student Thing My Friends & I Did

Sometimes Annotations are Academic but Other Times…

Literature Degrees Are…

Literary Criticism is Just…

Margery a Renaissance Karen (Shakespeare)

Chaotic Academia is the St. Trinians School Challenge

Your child puts Achilles Come Down on every playlist

Physically I'm here but mentally I'm...

No poem messes with me like fugue

The fact that i’m not currently lounging…

Antiques Roadshow is free therapy

Transmasc Kinning Tweet

Not to Romanticise Student Roads…

Recs: Girls! Dark Academia Movies , Free Academic Lit Resources

✒️ 𝓑𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓮𝓾𝓶

The Brontë Parsonage and Graveyard

Dining/Writing Room

Branwell’s Studio

Emily Brontë’'s Writing Desk

Fragments of Emily Brontë’s Poetry

Fragment of Emily & Anne’s Childhood Writing

Letter from Emily Brontë to Ellen Nussey

Manuscript of Anne Brontë’s Severed and Gone

Charlotte Brontë’s Writing Desk

A Word to the Quarterly by Charlotte Brontë

Signatures of the Brontë sisters as the ‘Brothers Bell’

St Michael and All Angels' Church

Haworth Village Hill Top Street View

Brontë Asks: Is Haworth grey and depressing?

[jupiaria]

Jack Parsons' Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword

Chapter Four

The Woman Girt With the Sword

It is to you woman, beautiful redeemer of the race, whom I address this chapter. That which stirs in you now is not madness, not sin, not folly – but Life! This new life is the joy and the fire that will beget a new race; create a new heaven and new earth. When you were a child, did not the wind and the sun speak to you? Did you not hear the mountain’s voice; the voice of the river and of the storm? Have you not heard the whisper of the stars and the ineffable voice in silence? Have you not gone naked in the forest with the wind on your body and felt the caress of Pan? Your heart has swollen with Spring, blossomed with Summer and saddened with Winter. These things are the covenant and in them is the truth that is forever.

You have sought companions as high-hearted as yourself and found them not save in the elusive memories of dream and song. For you found a blight over the world; a blight of silence and sorrow. Your companions walked in guilt and shame, in fear, in hate, in sin and in the sorrow of sin. There was only nervous laughter and furtive pleasure; unsatisfying and shameful – But be no longer sad, my beloved. Be joyous and unafraid for within you is the song that shall shatter the silence, the flame that will burn away the dross.

It is you who are the redeemer from sing and sorrow, from guilt and shame. WOMAN; oh splendour incarnate! How long have you served in chains, a slave to the lust and guilt of pigs? How long have you writhed under the degradation of your Holy Name, “Whore”, or suffered silently under the degradation called, “virtue”? How well you have known the stake, the rack, the whip, the chains of imprisonment and even entombment in the service of your master.

And was the bond fear, was it weakness, was it cowardice and inferiority? Oh shame of man, it was none of these; it was love. A man was once crucified in a redemption that failed, yet if ten times ten million men were crucified, this infamy could not be redeemed. Husband, father, priest, jailer, judge, executioner, exploiter, seducer, destroyer – so has your lover mastered and defiled you. Yet pity him for he sought love… But finally there is an end and then the beginning and all the future will be with you. For you are the mother of a new race, the redeemer and lover of the new men; the men who shall be free.

I shall speak to you of men. Men desire three things of a woman: a mother greater than themselves, a wife less than themselves and a lover equal with themselves. Against the mother they are in revolt, the wife they hold in contempt and the lover ever eludes them. Consider the husband; how he throws his clothes about, eschews dirty dishes and housework and asserts himself in a loud voice. Consider the homosexual; how he hates woman and flees himself, fearing that he will slay her. Consider the great lover; how he grasps for love and his hands close on nothingness. These are bewildered, frightened children playing games against the dark. And those who wear brass and swords, who strut and slay, are they not the most frightened of all? Therefore pity them and forgive them.

In the ancient world there were men for a season, before cities arose and they turned to gilded popinjays, gracefully accepting futility. Then came Christianity, an anodyne for slaves, an enteric for barbarians whose deeds gave them indigestion – and ultimately, a whip for slave masters.

Faust was the prototype of the Middle Ages, but not the Faustus of whom Kit Marlowe tells. It was a darker Faust; Gilles de Rais, who betrays the Maid in his lust for power, then, after his fall and the failure of his prayers, he descends to horror in his cellars. This theme lasted an age until man, appalled by his nightmares, turned finally to a dream of liberty.

It is the voice of Voltaire, jaded, cynical, weary of folly, that sounds the opening bar of a tremendous, mocking prelude. Tom Paine, one real man, broken and at last betrayed by all the wooden champions, Cagliostro, plotting the revenge of the Templars with a woman and a necklace, Will Blake, speaking uncomprehended with the tongue of angels, Shelley and his beautiful gesture; Swinburne, who almost recreated Helas before he too was broken – Byron, Pushkin, Gautier; all instruments in a prelude to a symphony that was never played. And Science – how it was to save us! That “Brave New World” of Huxley, Darwin and H.G. Wells with only the voice of Spengler in dissent.

Science remaking the world; an international language, a universal brotherhood beyond nationality, prejudice or creed… A beautiful vision fallen like a house of cards. You creators of the “New Age” who dare not speak, think or move without permission from the military, you unfettered titans who will hang for speaking across one border – where is your ‘New World’? Champions, where is freedom? What treasure have we lost? We must turn to women for that answer.

The key lies back ten thousand years ago in the Age of Isis that is mistakenly called “The Matriarchy”. It was not a Matriarchy as we conceive it; a rule of club-women, of frustrated chickens, in fact it was not a rule at all; it was an equality.

The Woman was and is the Priestess. In Her reposes the Mystery. She is the Mother, brooding yet tender, the lover, at once passionate and aloof, the wife, revered and cherished. She is the witch woman. She stands co-equal with her mate who is the chieftain, the hunter, the thinker and the doer. The woman is the Priestess, guardian of the mystery, syble of the unconscious and prophetess of dreams. Together they balanced each other until the catastrophe of the Patriarchal Age, arch-typified by the monosexual monster, Jehova.

Then, under the rule of Priests, woman became an inferior animal while man became isolated in his imagined superiority and found himself at the mercy of his own merciless intelligence. It was total war between the emotions that must and the intellect that will not. Every patriarchal religion is a self-contradictory monstrosity. They are dogmatic creeds that shift like straws in the wind of the intellect. Upon this shifting structure man has failed. He knows the futility of such artificial systems but he fights for them with all the sick fury his frustration can generate. In the process he has lost his mother, his wife has failed him and his lover eludes him. The Mystery has gone out of the Temple, banished by a senile and self-sufficient council of beards.

Woman, Woman – where are you? Come back to us again. Forgive even if you cannot forget and serve once more in our Temples. Take us by the hand. Kiss us on the lips and tell us we are not alone. Witch-Woman, out of the ashes of the stake, rise again! It was in the Dianic Cult that the old way continued. Those splendid and terrible women; Messilina, Toffana, La Voisin and DeBrinvillies raised revenge to a high art. Others sought the forbidden mystery in secret rites and purchased a brief reunion at an awful price. This was the ope in the Maid of Orleans, the dream of hopeless millions that the woman who was to redeem them had come at last. Her failure and her fate teach us that innocence is no protection. Be cunning, oh woman, be wise, be subtle, be merciless. I have asked you to understand and forgive – but forget not overmuch. Trust nothing but yourself.

Now I have spoken of those great poisoners but there is a worse revenge. Know that all revenge is revenge on self and the most terrible is that taken by the frigid woman. Count her in the tens of millions. The curse lies in the failure of her mate to be a man and her failure to be true to herself but the cause is the dark guilt with which parents poison their children. There is also suppressed incestuous love and the fear of unwanted children – yet those who have known of these things should have no shame there-from. Strength is not born, it is gained by understanding and overcoming. Go free; sing the old, wild song:

EVOE IO, EVOE IACCHUS IO PAN, PAN! EVOE BABALON!

Go to the mountains and the forest; go naked in the Summer that you may regain the old joy. Love gladly and freely under the stars. But you say your body is not beautiful? Here is a secret: the body is molded by the mind. If you have embraced fear, repression, hate – then you may find your body repulsive. But go free, love joyously and without restraint. Run naked then watch the cheeks flush, the breasts well and the supple contours develop from the flowing rhythms of life. Disease and deformity are bred in fear and hate, therefore be fearless lovers and ever beautiful.

The woman is the Priestess of the Irrational World! Irrational - but how enormously important, and how dangerous because it is unadmitted or denied, we do not want to be drunken, murderous, frustrated, poverty-stricken and miserable without cause. These conditions are not reasonable or 'scientific’ and yet they do exist. We say we do not want war but war seems a psychological necessity. Wars will continue until that need is otherwise fulfilled. We do not love or hate a person because it is “reasonable”. We are moved willy-nilly, despite our reason and our will, by forces from the unconscious, irrational world. These forces speak to us in dreams, in symbols and in our own incomprehensible actions. These passions can only be redeemed by intuitive understanding in the feminine province. Only after such understanding can will and intelligence be truly effective for otherwise they are blind and powerless against the tides of emotion.

Somewhere in the world today there is a woman for whom the Sword is forged. Somewhere there is one who has heard the trumpets of the New Age and who will respond. She will respond, this new woman, to the high clamor of those sar-trumpets; she will come as a perilous flame and a devious song, a voice in the judgment halls, a banner before armies. She will come girt with the Sword of Freedom. Before her, kings and priests will tremble, cities and empires will fall, and she will be called BABALON, The Scarlet Woman.

She will be lustful and proud, subtle and deadly forthright and invincible as a naked blade. Women will respond to her war cry, throwing off their chains, men will respond to her challenge, forsaking foolish ways. She will shine as the ruddy Evening Star in the lurid sunset of Gotterdamerung. She will shine again as a Morning Star when the night has passed and a new dawn breaks over the garden of Pan.

To you, oh unknown woman, is The Sword of Freedom pledged.

[ammonitetestpatterns]

“Methinks I see kings kneeling at his feet, And he, with frowning brows and fiery looks, Spurning their crowns from off their captive heads.” tamburlaine the great, part one.

“His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crownes.” revelation 19:12.

the apocalyptic revolution (with which derrida grew so closely intimate; it is from that referential pivot, and marlowe’s stance toward the biblical, that i invoke the image of thought) to be both foretold and satirically lived in writing and gesturing out tragedy in the failure of the scythian ruler to expound (in the expansion of) empire beyond the bounding meridians of the elizabethan world map, the flaming abandon, always refurnishing its frame in wrested origin’s looking glass, of taxonomy that scorches the earth in scourges of renaming, folly to consider it clean or touchless in its accompaniment to the palpable violence of (even envisioning, setting sites on) conquest. tamburlaine’s apperception of the world as a phantasiac plaything of his thought to be made real in nullifying the world map as it were authored to him, ends with his death and carries the gravitas of the world ending alongside him.

[spicchiodarancia]

Consigli di scrittura

Scrivere di personaggi appassionati di letteratura

Solitamente, chi è lettore è anche scrittore. Non per forza un buon scrittore, comunque. E nemmeno uno scrittore poliedrico.

Mi pongo di nuovo come esempio di vita reale: sono una discreta scrittrice di romanzi, una modesta scrittrice di analisi del testo, una pessima scrittrice di poesie, una vomitevole scrittrice di saggi e racconti brevi.

Al liceo, tra il saggio, la traccia libera e l’analisi poetica, mi gettavo sempre e comunque sull’analisi poetica.

Quindi, ripetiamo, la scrittura non è nelle corde di tutti e, soprattutto, non può essere sempre intinta in tutte le salse.

Ma torniamo alla letteratura.

Non basta che il vostro personaggio porti con sè sempre un libro da leggere per renderlo un appassionato.

Non basta che dica di esserlo.

Non basta che chi entra in camera sua trovi di tanto in tanto un libro aperto sul letto, abbandonato durante la fase di lettura.

E non basta nemmeno che l’appassionato in questione faccia uscite iperboliche sulla vita di Shakespeare e Scott alla florida età di sedici anni.

Ricordiamoci, anzitutto, che essere appassionati non vuol dire essere esperti, soprattutto a sedici anni.

Tutte le passioni partono da una fase germinale, in cui non si sa assolutamente niente di niente, si è letto a stento un libro di un autore famoso a caso perché aveva la copertina scintillante. Poi si giunge ad una fase di conoscenza discreta: si leggono parecchi libri, si fanno ricerche, si conosce la vita di qualche autore. Man mano la sapienza aumenta, a seconda del ritmo di apprendimento.

Spetta a voi decidere in quale fase si trovi il personaggio.

Inoltre, si può essere assoluti conoscitori di testi teatrali (Molière, Ibsen, Goldoni, Marlowe, per citarne qualcuno) e ignoranti in letteratura scientifica (Galilei, Darwin).

Folli ammiratori del realismo inglese (Clarissa e Pamela di Richardson) e capre senza pastore se si parla di gotico (cito autori come Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Lord Byron).

Oppure si può essere esperti in tutto. Anche questo è a discrezione dello scrittore.

Come si comporta un amante della letteratura?

Non è detto che abbia sempre il naso sprofondato tra i libri - seppelliamo lo stereotipo del topo di biblioteca, dell’intellettuale timido e con gli occhiali.

Le ragazze appassionate di letteratura possono indossare la minigonna e andare in discoteca, i ragazzi essere tatuati e guidare le Harley.

Oppure nessuna di queste cose. Il punto è, non sprofondate negli stereotipi.

E sappiate sempre che leggere tanto non rende una persona necessariamente sensibile e virtuosa.

Proseguiamo.

Chi ama la letteratura non deve necessariamente spiattellarlo ai quattro venti.

Potete creare un personaggio super entusiasta, che ne parli liberamente con chiunque incontri, che posti foto su foto dei libri che sta leggendo, delle passeggiate in biblioteca, che abbia addirittura un blog dedicato alle recensioni.

Oppure potete creare un personaggio che tiene questa cosa per sè e lo rivela solo a pochi eletti. Che legge quando è da solo, che viva in un clima in cui la passione per materie umanistiche non è bene accetta - “devi diventare dottore”, “sei un futuro ingegnere”, “scrivere poesie è da femminucce”, “la letteratura non serve a niente”, queste sono solo alcune delle frasi che credo abbiamo sentito tutti almeno una volta nella vita.

C’è chi si lascia condizionare al punto da vergognarsi di ciò che fa e tenerlo nascosto, chi se ne infischia e se la gode.

Spetta a voi scrittori scegliere dove far pendere l’ago della bilancia.

Per un appassionato di letteratura, trovare un altro appassionato di letteratura è il Paradiso.

Ma non devono per forza andare d’accordo su tutto - possono avere pareri discordanti, teorie differenti. Possono anche aver letto libri totalmente diversi e consigliarseli a vicenda.

Poi ci sono gli amici che li stanno a sentire anche se di letteratura non capiscono nulla: per un appassionato può essere un po’ frustrante dover spiegare la trama di un romanzo dall’inizio per farsi capire, ma può sicuramente apprezzare l’attenzione disinteressata che gli viene offerta, soprattutto se non ha nessun altro con cui parlarne.

Se la storia è ambientata in un mondo “social”, l’appassionato può anche mettere giù il libro, di tanto in tanto, e scrivere al suo migliore amico/a: “Darcy ha appena fatto una cavolata”, e poi mandare un audio su quanto ciò che ha detto ad Elizabeth sia stato assurdo e perché.

Ricordiamo, inoltre, che esistono anche personaggi poveri, che hanno difficoltà a pagare le bollette e l’affitto, e sicuramente non si possono permettere una spesa per un kindle o per l’edizione fresca di stampa di un libro. Scrivete di personaggi che prelevano una tonnellata di libri dalla biblioteca, che sono clienti fissi al punto che i dipendenti li chiamano per nome e li avvertono se arriva qualcosa che può interessargli. Scrivete di personaggi che scaricano illegalmente libri in pdf e leggono sul telefono di notte perché durante il giorno non hanno tempo di farlo.

Scrivete di personaggi che sono felici come Pasque se gli viene regalato un segnalibro, che hanno le notifiche attivate per il blog del loro scrittore preferito e abbandonano qualsiasi cosa stiano facendo per andare a leggere il nuovo post. Scrivete di personaggi che rispondano ai commenti di quelli che chiedono “in che capitolo succede questa cosa?” perché ricordano il libro a memoria. Scrivete di personaggi che dal nulla dicano “Questa è proprio una cosa da *nome di un personaggio qualsiasi*”, senza essere capiti da chi li circonda. Scrivete di personaggi che facciano citazioni, che seguano pagine di meme su Shakespeare e ridano come matti, perché la letteratura è anche qualcosa su cui ridere. Scrivete di personaggi che si lamentino della vita squattrinata e poco ortodossa di un autore in fila al supermercato con il loro compagno, come se stessero parlando di qualcuno che conoscono davvero. Scrivete di personaggi che telefonano alla loro migliore amica solo per dire che stanno leggendo Profumo di Suskind dopo anni di attesa e lo stanno trovando tremendo al punto che lo abbandoneranno da un momento all’altro. E scrivete di personaggi che non riescono ad abbandonare un libro, devono portarlo a termine a tutti i costi, non importa quanto faccia schifo.

Infine, non siate scontati nella scelta dei libri che i vostri appassionati stanno leggendo.

Non ricadete nel solito “Romeo e Giulietta”, “Cime tempestose”, “Orgoglio e Pregiudizio”, “Jane Eyre”.

Esiste un mondo di libri là fuori e questi li hanno letti tutti ormai, anche chi non è appassionato, perché vengono addirittura assegnati e studiati a scuola.

Fate leggere ai vostri personaggi qualche raccolta di Rimbaud o di Verlaine, fateli appassionare alla storia d’amore di questi due autori, allo scandalo che fu la loro vita privata, al tentato omicidio commesso dall’ultimo ai danni del primo.

Fategli leggere Neruda, Coleridge, Swinburne, Flaubert, Hugo, Zola, Balzac, Lorca.

Fate leggere agli italiani di scrittori italiani, una volta tanto - cos’è questa tendenza verso l’estero? E fate leggere agli stranieri la letteratura italiana.

Cimentatevi in Machiavelli, Alfieri, Tasso, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Calvino, Pasolini, Pavese, Cavalli, Eco, Fo, Arminio, Scotellaro, Saba, Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Merini, Maraini.

E vogliamo dimenticare i greci e i latini?

Davvero, la letteratura è vastissima: non limitatevi ai soliti tre o quattro autori, e ricordate che anche quelli definiti “minori” possono sorprendere per bravura, e piacere anche più dei maestri.

Ora, la domanda sorge spontanea: è davvero necessario, se voglio scrivere un personaggio appassionato di letteratura (o di qualsiasi altra cosa, questi consigli valgono per tutto) che io conosca tutti questi autori e le loro vite, morti, miracoli?

No.

Il consiglio più ovvio è quello di dare al personaggio un’attitudine su cui siete ben ferrati anche voi. Vi garantisco, inoltre, che spesso ciò che imparate a scuola (soprattutto al liceo) - se spiegato e studiato per bene - è già sufficiente, e va solo approfondito.

Ma, se volete scrivere di personaggi con passioni di cui non sapete nulla, fate ricerche. Non fate ricerche su tutto, ma solo su quel che è utile alla storia.

Non c’è bisogno che sappiate a che ora Kant prendeva il caffè per far citare al vostro personaggio una frase qualsiasi presa dalla Critica della ragion pura.

Internet è un luogo magico: vi fornirà tutte le informazioni necessarie e anche quelle meno necessarie. Spetta a voi scegliere cosa vi serve e cosa no.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Rewatching the Monsterverse part 1 - Kong: Skull Island

So I’m doing these in timeline order. Just makes sense. Plus, Kong: Skull Island has a different feeling to it compared to the other two with it being set in a different era and the characters being generally disconnected from the rest of the Monsterverse. Prior to the monsterverse, the only Kong movie I saw was Peter Jackson’s King Kong which I liked but didn’t love. It was a bit too long. But I was curious about this movie because it had a pretty decent cast with Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly.

In all honesty, I quite enjoy this movie. There’s not much to critically think about. This movie seems to know what it is. Its a big dumb monster action movie. One of the pleasant parts about this film is the monster fights happen all in broad daylight. So the action is visible and clear. And therefore the CGI work is all the more impressive. Kong vs the helicopters was my favorite action sequence. You see Kong in his full monstrous glory. There’s also enough in terms of monsters. We get Kong, the Skullcrawlers, the giant Spider, the giant Squid, the wood looking monster, the weird birds with the blue blood etc... They managed to create a unique environment. The choice of setting is also interesting. The film presents an allegory for Vietnam and a similar type of jungle setting and it definitely plays a lot into the role of General Packard. The film’s brisk speed is it strength. It clocks in under two hours so there’s no bloat. There are a very brief scenes where it gets boring but overall it keeps you entertained. Its obviously a much more fun experience in the theater.

The characters are not deep. Its folly to expect that in this type of movie. The two characters that work the best are John C. Reilly’s Marlow and Jackson’s Packard. Both seem very in tune with the type of movie they are in. Reilly brings a lot of humor and a surprising amount of heart. He’s my MVP from the cast. Jackson enjoys himself chewing scenery as a guy losing his grip with vengeance. Initially you do sympathize with his loss but you do slowly sees that he enjoys being in the battle at the expense of his men. John Goodman is also good as the the monarch scientist. Most of the supporting cast seem to know the type of film they are in and they seem to be in tune. Ironically, the two leads, Tom and Brie are both playing is surprisingly straight. They really are given nothing in terms of character. Essentially blank slates. They are supposed to develop some type of connection with Kong in a couple of scenes, but it really doesn’t work because the film doesn’t devote much time to it. So they are kind of the least impressive aspect of the film. The film also ends on a very on the nose tag sequence for KOTM. Its odd that this movie has the most high profile of the leads but doesn’t do much with them, and with the film set in the 70′s and the other two set in modern era, there’s no reason they would be back. 

Anyways, despite all that, still a fun movie. As someone who has never seen any other work of  Jordan Vogt-Roberts, I think he did an impressive job helming a movie like this. 7.5/10

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

reading list for 2020 2019 reading list literature recommendations last updated 7.1.2020

crossed = finished bolded = currently reading plain = to read * = reread + = priority

ask if you want PDFs!

currently reading: The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson Inferno by Dante Aligheri

novels (unsorted) The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang +Justine by Lawrence Durrell Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy +Death in Venice by Thomas Mann* The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco* The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille +Nightwood by Djuna Barnes +Malina by Ingeborg Bachman A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride Monsieur Venus by Rachilde +The Marquise de Sade by Rachilde +A King Alone by Jean Giono +The Scarab by Manuel Mujica Lainez +The Invitation by Beatrice Guido Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh She Who Was No More by Boileau-Narcejac Mascaro, the American Hunter by Haroldo Conti European Travels for the Monstrous Gentlewomen by Theodora Goss Kiss Me, Judas by Christopher Baer Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt The Grip of It by Jac Jemc Celestine by Olga Ravn The Girl Who Ate Birds by Paul Nougé The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop Possessions by Julia Kristeva

classics The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio* Purgatio by Dante Aligheri Paradiso by Dante Aligheri

short story collections The Wilds: Stories by Julia Elliot The Dark Dark: Stories by Samantha Hunt Severance by Robert Olen Butler Enfermario by Gabriela Torres Olivares Sirens and Demon Lovers: 22 Stories of Desire edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling The Beastly Bride edited by Ellen Datlow  +Vampire In Love by Enrique Vila-Matas Collected works of Leonora Carrington Collected works of Silvina Ocampo Collected works of Everil Worrel Collected works of Luisa Valenzuela

theatre +Faust by Goethe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Phaedra’s Love by Sarah Kane

nonfiction (unsorted) Countess Dracula by Tony Thorne +The Bloody Countess by Valentine Penrose Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsebet Bathory by Kimberly L. Craft Blake by Peter Akroyd Lives of the Necromancers by William Godwin A History of the Heart by Ole M. Høystad On Monsters by Stephen T. Asma +Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination by Avery Gordon +Consoling Ghosts : Stories of Medicine and Mourning from Southeast Asians in Exile by Jean M. Langford essays (unsorted) When the Sick Rule the World: Essays by Dodie Bellamy Academonia: Essays by Dodie Bellamy ‘On the Devil, and Devils’ by Percy Shelley +An Erotic Beyond: Sade by Octavio Paz

poetry +100 Notes on Violence by Julia Carr

academia (unsorted) Essays on the Art of Angela Carter: Flesh and the Mirror edited by Lorna Sage The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food edited by Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Donna Lee Brien Cupid’s Knife: Women's Anger and Agency in Violent Relationships by Abby Stein Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film: Locating the Cinematic Unconscious by Fabio Vighi The Severed Flesh: Capital Visions by Julia Kristeva Feast and Folly: Cuisine, Intoxication, and the Poetics of the Sublime by Allen S. Weiss

on horrror Terrors in Cinema edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews by Robin Wood Monster Theory: Reading Culture by Jeffrey Cohen The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart by Noël Caroll Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century by Charles Derry Monsters of Our Own Making by Marina Warner Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader edited by by Marina Levina and Diem My Bui

the gothic Woman and Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth by Nina Auerbach Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by J. Halberstam +Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic by Eugenia C. Delamotte Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic by Anne Williams Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror Film by Xavier Aldana Reyes On the Supernatural in Poetry by Ann Radcliffe The Gothic Flame by Devendra P. Varma Gothic Versus Romantic: A Reevaluation of the Gothic Novel by Robert D. Hume A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Edmund Burke Over Her Dead Body by Elisabeth Bronfen The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology by Kate Ellis Gothic Documents: A Sourcebook, 1700-1820 by E. Clery Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic edited by Fred Botting The History of Gothic Fiction by Markman Ellis The Routledge Companion to the Gothic edited by Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy Gothic and Gender edited by Donna Heiland Romanticism and the Gothic Tradition by G.R. Thompson Cryptomimesis : The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing by Jodie Castricano

bluebeard Bluebeard’s legacy: death and secrets from Bartók to Hitchcock edited by Griselda Pollock and Victoria Anderson The tale of Bluebeard in German literature: from the eighteenth century to the present Mererid Puw Davies Bluebeard: a reader’s guide to the English tradition by Casie E. Hermansson Bluebeard gothic : Jane Eyre and its progeny Heta Pyrhönen Bluebeard Tales from Around the World by Heidi Ann Heiner

religion The Incorruptible Flesh: Bodily Mutation and Mortification in Religion and Folklore by Piero Camporesi Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middles Ages by Nancy Caciola Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages by Nancy Caciola “He Has a God in Him”: Human and Divine in the Modern Perception of Dionysus by Albert Henrichs The Ordinary Business of Occultism by Gauri Viswanathan The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity by Peter Brown

cannibalism Eat What You Kill: Or, a Strange and Gothic Tale of Cannibalism by Consent Charles J. Reid Jr. Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe by Merrall Llewelyn Price Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature by Heather Blurton +Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity edited by Kristen Guest Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind’s Oldest Taboo by Carole A. Travis-Henikoff

crime Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe In Cold Blood by Truman Capote The Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglass

theory/philosophy Life Everlasting: the animal way of death by Bernd Heinrich The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays by René Girard Interviews with Hélène Cixous Symposium by Plato Phaedra by Plato Becoming-Rhythm: A Rhizomatics of the Girl by Leisha Jones The Abject of Desire: The Aestheticization of the Unaesthetic in Contemporary Literature and Culture edited by Konstanze Kutzbach, Monika Mueller The Severed Head: Capital Visions by Julia Kristeva

perfume & alchemy Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent by Jean-Claude Ellena The Perfume Lover: A Personal Story of Scent by Denyse Beaulieu Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell by Jonathan Reinarz Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent by Mandy Aftel Das Parfum by Patrick Süskind* Scents and Sensibility: Perfume in Victorian Literary Culture by Catherine Maxwell The Foul and the Fragrant by Alain Corbin +throughsmoke by Jehanne Dubrow “The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume” by Katy Kelleher

medicine The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

Finished (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film by Jalal Toufic

[elcinelateleymickyandonie]

Joan Woodbury.

Filmografía

- Ocho chicas en un barco (1934) como School Girl (sin acreditar)

- El Conde de Montecristo (1934) como Dancing Girl (sin acreditar)

- Una emocionante aventura (1934) como Girl

- Folies Bergère de Paris (1935) como Girl in Bar (sin acreditar)

- Bride of Frankenstein (1935) como Reina (sin acreditar)

- La llamada de lo salvaje (1935) como Show Girl (sin acreditar)

- Harmony Lane (1935) como cantante francesa - 'Oh Susannah' (sin acreditar)

- The Eagle's Brood (1935) como Dolores (anunciada como Nana Martinez)

- El cobarde que lucha (1935) como Marie Russell

- Bulldog Courage (1935) como Helen Brennan

- Aguas peligrosas (1936) como Valparaiso Bar Girl - Facing Wall (sin acreditar)

- La taberna de los pícaros (1936) como Gloria Robloff

- Anthony Adverse (1936) como Half-Caste Dancing Girl (sin acreditar)

- Canción del gringo (1936) como Lolita Valle

- La guarida del león (1936) como Ann Mervin

- Charlie Chan en la ópera (1936) como bailarín en la ópera (sin acreditar)

- El país de Dios y la mujer (1937) como mujer francesa en ascensor (sin acreditar)

- Corte de medianoche (1937) como Chiquita

- Nobody's Baby (1937) como reemplazo de bailarina (sin acreditar)

- Le dieron una pistola (1937) como Toto French Girl (sin acreditar)

- Ahí va mi chica (1937) como Margot Whitney

- Super-detective (1937) como Doris Duane

- Cuarenta chicas traviesas (1937) como Rita Marlowe

- Charlie Chan en Broadway (1937) como Marie Collins

- Viviendo del amor (1937) como Edith Crumwell

- Crashing Hollywood (1938) como Barbara Lang

- Night Spot (1938) como Marge Dexter

- Argel (1938) como Aicha

- Passport Husband (1938) como Conchita Montez

- Cipher Bureau (1938) como Therese Brahm

- Siempre en problemas (1938) como Pearl Mussendorfer

- Mientras duerme Nueva York (1938) como Nora Parker

- Persiguiendo el peligro (1939) como Hazila

- Misterio de la habitación blanca (1939)

- Barnyard Follies (1940) como Dolly

- Go West (1940) como Melody (sin acreditar)

- En Old Cheyenne (1941) como Della Casey alias Dolores Casino

- Ride on Vaquero (1941) como Dolores

- Rey de los zombis (1941) como Barbara Winslow

- Bala de papel (1941) como Rita Adams

- Dos latinos de Manhattan (1941).

-Maté a ese hombre (1941) como Geri Reynolds

- Confesiones de Boston Blackie (1941) como Mona

- Dr. Broadway (1942) como Margie Dove

- Un yanqui en Libia (1942) como Nancy Brooks-Graham

- Sunset Serenade (1942) como Vera Martin

- Asesino fantasma (1942) como Barbara Mason

- El fantasma viviente (1942) como Vera Martin

- Cierra mi boca grande (1942 como Maria

- The Hard Way (1943) como Maria (sin acreditar)

- No se puede vencer la ley (1943) como Amy Duncan

- Los desesperados (1943) como Sundown

- Aquí viene Kelly (1943) como Margie Burke

- The Whistler (1944) como Antoinette 'Toni' Vigran (sin acreditar)

- El gato chino (1944) como Leah Manning

- Brenda Starr, reportera (1945) como Brenda Starr

- Bring on the Girls (1945) como Gloria

Diez centavos por baile (1945) como Babe

- Sendero del noroeste (1945) como Katherine Owens

- Blue Skies (1946) como Flo (sin acreditar)

- El asunto Arnelo (1947) como Claire Lorrison

- Yankee Fakir (1947) como Mary Mason

- Aquí viene el problema (1948) como Bubbles LaRue

- La empresa china de Boston Blackie (1949) como Red, the Bar-Girl

- Come Next Spring (1956) como Melinda Little (sin acreditar)

- Los Diez Mandamientos (1956) como la esposa de Coré

- Los viajeros del tiempo (1964) como Gadra (papel final de la película).

Créditos: Tomado de Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Woodbury

#HONDURASQUEDATEENCASA

#ELCINELATELEYMICKYANDONIE

[the-belows-128375]

The Portal and the Hunt

Earth Father --

I write to you in rage and horror. Not at you, Father, but the opening of the Portal was informed to us by the churning of the Arcane sea-mountains, and while my father and his team are willing fighters, we do not understand why this has taken place.

We have been open in my distaste for the works of the Lightweaver, and it is with a heavy heart that I must include the Arcanist in that count. Twice he has tried to destroy our world, and now he has done it a third time. Even the Great Mother of our kind is not so destructive, and I am loathe to say even that, as you well know. I suspect the only reason that the Arcanist has opened up the Portal is because of the knowledge the Wyverns carry. Is he such a fool as to think they will break their seal of silence for him?

The Belows fears for Sornieth, Father. We are all afraid of what has come.

And yet...I am curious, Father. Of the Foolish Prince, of the Sanguine Multimist. Are the latter like Emperors? After all, they were formed on the battefield. The Foolish Prince, what was his folly? If this is knowledge to be hidden, however, I will not press further.

Marlowe

@the-true-earthshaker

[thenightling]

Hi there, I’ve been enjoying your blog and your posts on Faust in particular (I’m starting to read it). I wondered if you ever read the manga Death Note, which I think is closely inspired by Faust, even some of the dialogue. A shinigami named Ryuk is a dead ringer for Mephisto, and the protagonist Light Yagami is quite similar to Faust. Would be very interested to hear your thoughts if you’d ever read it. Cheers!

Hello and thank you.   I am familiar with Death Note though some of it’s fandom can be a bit unpleasant.  An anime that is also directly inspired by Faust is Black Butler but that one is more heavily Christopher Marlowe’s Faust.   The last time someone came to me wanting to discuss Goethe’s Faust, it turned out he had a university professor who had the completely wrong idea of what the moral was, simply because the professor had never actually read part 2 so he assumed the moral was one of anti-knowledge and the folly of questioning things.  It was very frustrating.   

Another decent adaptation (that I actually really love) is two albums by the power metal band, Kamelot.   Epica (Faust Part 1) and The Black Halo (Faust Part 2).  If you play the albums back to back they tell Faust parts 1 and 2.  Mephisto’s name is left alone but Faust’s name is changed from Heinrich to Ariel and Gretchen’s name is changed to Helena.  

Here’s a fun synopsis of Faust.

Faust Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIY6xO7A7Qw

Faust Part 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kepOLEsESso

[starswornoaths]

Of the Sea...

Hello! Hi! This is a bit of Hanvesh’s backstory! I decided to do a lil mini series of these for Serella and Uthengentle’s parents, to chronicle how they wound up retiring in Gridania, and this is the first part of what (I think) will be four parts! I hope you enjoy!

Word count: 2,002

All things considered, Hanvesh had a pretty damn good life, he’d reasoned.

There were so few things more satisfying than feeling free on the high seas, bellowing shanties amidst cannonfire, the whistle of his arrows finding their marks on the occupants of enemy ships, the celebration of a hard won bounty and the taste of good mead on his tongue as he cheered with his shipmates after a good haul. He had not truly lived until he first felt the sway of the ocean on a ship deck, the wind on his face and a song on his lips.

For he had been recruited specifically for the fact that his songs were nothing short of magical, in every literal sense of the word — and Hanvesh made sure everyone knew about it. When their ship sailed into battle, his lyrics inspired and bolstered their men to accomplish astonishing feats they would have otherwise never achieved, and more often than not, was what had made the difference in many a decisive battle out in the briney blue. The ship’s reputation — and their coffers — grew to astronomical heights over the years; there was nary a pirate in all of Vylbrand that didn’t know what they were capable of, what they had already taken for themselves. Their galleon’s name — The Serpent’s Sting — was carved in the annals of history and lined with all the gold they had amassed. Hanvesh felt like he had, after years of struggle and dedication to his craft, at long last caught a northerly wind, and was soaring on sails filled with the sweet air of success. 

Until that self same wind dashed them all against the rocks.

It had been foolish to engage in battle with another ship in the eye of a storm, and they had all known it — but the captain had grown too cocksure, too arrogant with their string of good fortune. ‘The Navigator always steers us through, boys!’ The captain had cheered as he ordered them to sail head on into the oncoming storm in conquest for more loot. 

As Hanvesh looked down at what was left of the captain, he bitterly noted that he wasn’t saying much of anything anymore.

None of them were — save for him. He stood in shallow water, his clothes tattered, his bow broken and his spirit dead, alongside the rest of his crew. Their bodies all scattered around the remains of their beloved ship, their seafaring home, eerily still even in the rocking of the water. The waves — gentled now that the storm had passed — lapped at his ankles lazily, their froth ticking his skin. He stared and stared and stared out to the horizon, waiting, praying for a sign from Llymlaen showing him where to go.

Though, he mused sourly, surveying the destruction of everything that he had known for the better part of a decade, he wondered if, perhaps, the Navigator already had.

Somehow, astonishingly, Hanvesh had managed to make it ashore with only a few gashes and bruises to speak of — nothing short of a miracle, given that he was the only one to have made it at all. He was in shock, he realized with a manic chuckle, barely wheezed out of lungs that struggled to gulp in air even as he stumbled toward the wreckage, stepping into the gaping maw that the rocks had carved into the bilge. 

Looters would be along shortly — he would know more than most, and he didn’t want to walk away with nothing; even amongst the tattered remains of a life well lived, surely there was something to aid him? Much as it didn’t feel right to take anything from around the bodies of his fallen shipmates, if he was to even have a shot at living — for them, for himself — he would need all he could get. 

His faithful pack, a lovely hardleather thing stained a crimson almost as deep as its pockets had survived with him, blessedly, and he slung it on his back as he continued to fumble around the ship’s corpse — and the corpses of those that littered it — for anything that might be of use. He found a dagger that was still in good condition — Gilpin’s, he realized — and though he remembered the way the boatswain would often twirl it as he went about his business in mourning, he still slipped it into his belt and moved on, trying to remember the man as the lively quartermaster that he had been, and not the graying body with its head nearly severed that he ended up as.

Sure, they’d been pirates, but they had all deserved better, Hanvesh thought. And I should’ve died with ‘em. 

They had hardly kept all of their treasure aboard their ship — they had far too much of it — but there was more than enough gil kept on hand for trade that he could easily purchase arms and armor for himself — provided he made it back to a town. He hoarded every coin he found in his pack — he’d count it later. Scrambling up the remains of the companionway, he made it to the captain’s quarters, brushed past the barely there door that clung to the doorway by a bent hinge, and staggered inside.

Miraculously, the cabin was largely dry — and intact, save for the bits and baubles strewn about the floor, in pieces. Hanvesh stepped over them, pulling the maps and charts down from the wall and folding them carefully into his pack; he knew he would need them desperately. Amidst the broken trinkets on the floor, he found the captain’s compass, its weighted brass casing, while scuffed, had protected the compass from the wreck, and he pocketed it for use later. As his eyes wandered around the cabin for anything lightweight that he could put to use, he felt an anger swell in his chest the likes of which he had never felt before; they all wound up like this because of Captain Marlow — their captain, the man they had trusted to know what was best for the crew! And his folly had led them all here! For a few long moments, he stood there, letting the reality of the end of this chapter of his life — and how it all ended — sink in. 

Too long, he realized with a curse when he began to hear distant shouting. Looters had already found their wreckage — or local authorities had beaten them to it, for once — but either way, he needed to leave — now. He turned to leave when he caught sight of a small flag of theirs — with their colors — still intact on the wall. His hand, still trembling and clammy, gripped at the fabric and ripped it off the wall, stuffing it into his pack and clamoring out, climbing above the cabin and up onto the afterdeck, creeping along toward the upturned stern of the ship, he peered over the railing just in time to see who was approaching. 

They weren’t looters — couldn’t have been; their weapons were too nice, too standard issue, to say nothing of the uniforms. No, these were Knights of the Barracuda. A blessing, then — provided he slipped past them undetected; if he could spot which squadron they were, he would have a better understanding of where he was. 

Hanvesh flattened himself against the deck as much as he could, still watching them through the railings as the woman he presumed to be the squadron leader barked orders to search for survivors. His elongated ears pricked up at the sound of boots thumping against the remains of the deck wood, and cursed — he was trapped.

Unless, of course, the leader of the squadron moved. Clenching his hands into fists, he silently willed the woman to just move toward the ship bilge, the same way he had come up, so that he could slip over the railing and disappear into the trees just beyond the beach. If she didn’t…he unclenched a hand and gripped the hilt of Gilpin’s dagger. His hands might feel shaky, and he absolutely wasn’t at his full strength, but if it meant making it out alive… 

Still. Best to avoid confrontation, he decided.

Blessedly, Llymlaen had decided to grant him pity, as the woman stepped up to the bilge to inspect some of his fallen shipmates. Taking the opportunity for what it was, he shimmied between the railings, his long, narrow body easily slipping between two posts and allowing him to hang from the other side. 

As Hanvesh righted himself and just before he lowered himself to hang, he caught sight of one of the Barracudas who had climbed atop the afterdeck, though had not yet spotted him in the dark. He spied the crest on the shoulder of the armor — the 9th Squadron. So, he thought, glancing back into the thicket of trees. They had crashed in the Sea of Jade somewhere? He rather hoped it was farther in toward the Rothlyt Sound; he could slip into Gridania or Gyr Abania better that way. If he was on an island just off the shore…well. He’d stolen ships before.

Bracing himself— because he could hear the Knight on the afterdeck drawing closer— Hanvesh let go of the floorboard. 

His already uneasy legs buckled underneath him in the wet sand, and though he sunk to his knees he scrabbled to stand under himself and the added weight of his pack. Though he teetered on falling on his side like a baby turtle he managed to right himself despite his muscles, his very skin protesting his movements, and sprinted into the treeline.

There came a shout from one of the Knights that he heard someone take off into the trees, and Hanvesh spat a curse, even as he begged his body to obey him and move faster. He couldn’t hope to out maneuver them with stealth; though his wounds were not grievous, they still bled, and hounds that the Knights of the Barracuda were, they’d sniff him out afore he had even gotten his bearings. In the thicket of trees that he now dashed and stumbled through, however, they were slower than he, and he used that to his advantage. 

The trunk of a mighty tree splintered near his shoulder— a bullet! Hanvesh realized with alarm when his ears rang with the crack of ignited gunpowder— they were opening fire on him! Did they think him a bandit, or worse, did they not want survivors to cry foul for them taking the Devil’s cut of his ship’s hard won plunder?

Doesn’t matter, have to keep moving, Hanvesh decided, beginning to duck and weave in odd patterns to avoid making his path a straight line: if these bastards wanted a shot at him, they’d have to work for it.

So Hanvesh ran. He ran and ran until his ears could no longer pick up on the sounds of his pursuers shouting commands at one another. He ran until the whistle of stray bullets faded away until there was only the rhythmic thumping of his feet on the hard earthen ground. He ran until he saw the trees thin out and give way to walking trails and silence reigned in the forests. He ran until he all but collapsed against a guidepost panting, flushed, and trembling like the leaves that fluttered in his wake. 

Still, his eyes yet availed him, and he looked up at the sign— Northeast up the path to Gridania, forty malms. His poor fortune had lifted, somewhat: at least he knew he was close to civilization. He need only make it there without dying in the process.

His spirits still heavy and his limbs like lead, Hanvesh Arcbane moved onward and upward, to what he could only hope were better prospects than the rubble of the life he left behind.