#poetry will save the world

[ananke-xiii]

In November

by Lisel Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling

and the trees are creaking horribly.

This is an old story

with its old beginning,

as I lay me down to sleep.

But when I wake up, sunlight

has taken over the room.

You have already made the coffee

and the radio brings us music

from a confident age. In the paper

bad news is set in distant places.

Whatever was bound to happen

in my story did not happen.

But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.

Perhaps a name was changed.

A small mistake. Perhaps

a woman I do not know

is facing the day with the heavy heart

that, by all rights, should have been mine.

[artharakka]

Beautiful, But Broken

[firstfullmoon]

Mary Ruefle, “Voyager”

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Movie!Tails 🤝 Nine

Getting all 😳😊 when Sonic says that he considers them a friend

[faaun]

Jack Marsh (2005), Friendship Otherwise - Toward a Levinasian Description of Personal Friendship

[fictionadventurer]

Potential December Reads

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Volume 8 by Beth Brower

Prudence and the Romantic Poet by Nina Clare

A Christmas-related book

The Cricket on the Hearth and/or The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens

The Christmas Blossoms by Priscilla Smith McCaffrey

One of the American Girl books

A religious book

Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine by Pope Benedict XVI

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers Even I Can Pray by Leah Libresco

A middle-grade book

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling

The Happy Prince and Other Stories Oscar Wilde

The Wanderer by Sharon Creech

Mandy by Julie Andrews

[warlenys]

grab your hat and fetch a camera, film the world before it happens

[lifeinpoetry]

why does she keep singing, her voice climbs out of my mouth like a reason to live, why does she keep playing the grand piano of my grief, why doesn’t she just go for a walk inside me and find the other girls lost in other wings, doesn’t she know a woman can die from hearing her own hurt, please—if somebody, anybody out there can hear me—save her.

— Saeed Jones, from "Aretha Franklin Hears an Echo While Singing “Save Me”" Alive at the End of the World

[notenoughdragons]

i just got to the big backstory dump (aka the ~dread wolf's~ regrets/memories) in veilguard and. uh.

obvious caveat, i'm not done yet with the game, but anyways

h o w is this so neat (solas Was a spirit! origin of first elves! reason for the war with the titans! concrete blight origin!) and yet ALSO THE MESSIEST FUCKING SHIT

i canNOT imagine they had this whole blighted-gods-will-break-the-prison thing planned during trespasser/da:i like. the disconnect??? yes, solas obvs knows SOMETHING about the blight in da:i, but EVERYTHING he says is about the veil, about the mistake he made and what it cost the elves/spirits

LIKE CAN WE BE CLEAR HERE!!! "the blighted evanuris are going to break out of their prison so i need to put them in a different one" is an UTTERLY different argument to "i (ACCIDENTALLY, APPARENTLY) made the veil Too Big and it fucked up everything so i need to fix it"

like even ignoring all the ways this doesn't gel with trespasser/tevinter nights/etc, and how apparently nothing the inq did wrt solas mattered EVEN A LITTLE BIT it's fine i'm fine i just have to play cognitive dissonance any time either of them opens their fucking mouth

this is fucking messy as hell in veilguard alone??

how does this not come up in ANY of the arguments prior to this. like solas Tells Rook that he wanted to transfer the evanuris bc more secure prison and 'YOU COULD'VE SAID THAT' is? not? one of the dialogue options??

but also varric keeps harping how solas wants someone to sell him a better option, solas himself sounds bitter as fuck that no one actually managed that during the ritual convo

it's like 2 separate arguments trying to happen in tandem and NEITHER OF THEM actually works

like i legit don't know anymore what they're trying to do here? 1st they completely sidestep the core (emotional) conflict set up by da:i and trespasser (can you convince solas otherwise, and if not, How on earth do you stop him? => lol nevermind you can't, and stopping him is super easy actually), then they… bring it back in? kind of?? (varric, lace, inq, and now morrigan all making points re: maybe you can talk him around somehow/influence his fate) With A Character Who Has 0 Emotional Connection To Him, it's fiiiine but then also the whole blighted-evanuris-will-break-free angle is. There. and it's just, what are we actually arguing about now???

also i'm just gonna say it. absolutely not a fan of the implication that the veil in its current form was Fully an accident. like can we stop absolving this man of responsibility (the veil was an accident! mythal made him do all of it!) and at the same time heaping more blame on him in the weirdest fucking ways (still the veil! the blight! dwarves not dreaming!)

i Liked that the veil was smth he created knowingly, bc it was the least horrible, but still Horrible option, and he still underestimated how bad it would be. that's good drama! good tragedy! you thought you could live with the consequences but you can't! and bc you Knowingly and Deliberately made that choice, now you are convinced to the nonexistent marrow of your bones that you specifically HAVE to undo it!

instead it's like. welp the evanuris are gonna break out soon so i gotta put them in a different, Better prison (which is somehow real easy this time around????), and i Might As Well pull down the veil too and get that mistake sorted out

fucking christ.

AND WE'RE STILL NOT TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT SOLAS CAN CLEANSE THE GODDAMN BLIGHT

also they nerfed mythal. both in the backstory character-wise, and narratively in the present, bc welp! she's just here to drop some vague lore and info! and then they fucking pulled a mystra on the fragment of her that you Do actually get to meet. where is my horrific dragon all-mother goddess

(not even joking, they should've just gotten flemeth's va for her, this one has like. 0 presence in comparison.)

like. stay with me here. yes i know the point is that the evanuris weren't Actually gods. but also they're 1. literally a diff type of being than modern people. 2. for someone to be seen AS A GOD, even falsely, in a world that is as infused with magic and buckwild shit that we know ancient arlathan to be? i'm expecting more than the most milquetoast glowing elf lady you've ever seen

dumping the sentinel designs from da:i was a Mistake, and okay Now i can climb off my soapbox, tyvm everyone

[megatraven]

the trolls movie is truly one of the movies of all time.. branch and poppy's dynamic never ceases to amaze me

[ananke-xiii]

Paradoxe du monde des humains

by Gao Xingjian

le possible n'est pas forcément réalisable

l'irréalisable en revanche est croyable

le croyable est irréalisable

voilà le paradoxe du monde des humains

[thestarrymusic]

a poem for Palestine

i put on my headphones to listen to music,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i have food on my plate to eat,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i have water running from my tap to drink,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i have medicine for a cough,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i have a bed to sleep in,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i scroll tiktok to see people complain about boycotts,

and i don’t enjoy it. 

i see Palestinian business being burned down in my neighbourhood,

and i don’t enjoy it.

i see people complaining of protests,

and i don't enjoy it.

how can i, a person who lives in such luxury, enjoy my life, when citizens of Gaza are being tortured and murdered, in plain daylight, for the world to see. 

how can i turn on the lights in my house, sleep in my bed, eat the abundance of food and enjoy it, when citizens of Gaza are not afforded this right. 

how can i sit by as hate crimes are being carried out across continents towards innocent people. 

how can i stand by a genocide when i’ve said countless times that i would never see this happen again. 

how can we as a world stand by a genocide when we have collectively made a promise that this would never happen again. 

how can we as a world not only stand by but aid in the genocide of innocent people when we promised this would never happen again, when we put structures in place to ensure that this would not happen again.

one is too many, two is too many, but eighteen thousand seven hundred is certainly too many. it is not too late and it will not be too late until we call it a history that we are ashamed of. 

how can we as a world look back and be ashamed of actions we took but not be more ashamed when the actions are repeated in front of our eyes. 

[pathetic-gamer]

WAIT WAIT WAIT CONSIDER THIS: TOM AND BARBARA AS ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE, ALAN AND ALICE AS A DOOMED RETELLING

[fish-eyes-png]

Oh to befriend Finn Wolfhard. To date Finn Wolfhard. To be Finn Wolfhard

[semicolonsoliloquy]

When I’m dead I’ll miss

sleeping in my own sweat

for twelve hours. I’ll miss popping pimples

and crying in front of you

and pretending that nothing is wrong

in front of you

and knowing that nothing is wrong

but crying alone and anyway.

I’ll miss the weight of tears

and the weight of loving.

[mokeonn]

I started an honor mode playthrough with probably the cutest tiefling in bg3 and I fuckn got killed during the Phase Spider Matriarch, so I decided to continue my save with dishonor because my character was just so damn cute. Well for some reason or another the game didn't?? Switch it to custom mode?? It's still honor mode??

So I'm either going to get those golden dice in the most dishonorable way possible or the game is just pulling on my leg and It's just honor mode without the reward.