#so many. scraps of poems. some decent and some that will never see the light of day.

[pendraegon]

looking at ur notes app after an episode...literally horrific.

[shanastoryteller]

Saw your post mentioning reading your favorite poems and I was wondering what they were? I've never really liked poems but I really liked that one by Emily Dickson you put in the front of that teen wolf fic so you probably have really good taste in poems, and I've been trying to find some to like.

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.Life is short, and I’ve shortened minein a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,a thousand deliciously ill-advised waysI’ll keep from my children. The world is at leastfifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservativeestimate, though I keep this from my children.For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,sunk in a lake. Life is short and the worldis at least half terrible, and for every kindstranger, there is one who would break you,though I keep this from my children. I am tryingto sell them the world. Any decent realtor,walking you through a real shithole, chirps onabout good bones: This place could be beautiful,right? You could make this place beautiful.

~

Because I could not stop for Death (479)

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no hasteAnd I had put awayMy labor and my leisure too,For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children stroveAt Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us – The Dews drew quivering and chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemedA Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yetFeels shorter than the DayI first surmised the Horses’ HeadsWere toward Eternity –

~

this one is an old nursery rhyme:

One bright day in the middle of the night, Two dead boys got up to fight. They turned their backs and faced each other, Drew their swords and shot the other. One was blind and the other couldn’t see, So they chose a fool for their referee. A mute eyewitness screamed with fright.A cripple danced to see the sight. A deaf policeman heard the noise.He came and shot the two dead boys.A paralyzed donkey passing by,Kicked the copper in the eye, And knocked him through a rubber wall, Into a ditch and drowned them all.If you don’t believe this lie is true,Ask the blind man. He saw it too.

~

She swearsshe will nevergive birthto a daughter.Won’t evenplant a garden.— Adira Bennett

~

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~

My mouth is a fire escape.The words coming outdon’t care that they are naked.There is something burning in here.

— Andrea Gibson

~

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

By Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weepI am not there; I do not sleep.I am a thousand winds that blow,I am the diamond glints on snow,I am the sun on ripened grain,I am the gentle autumn rain.When you awaken in the morning’s hushI am the swift uplifting rushOf quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there; I did not die.

~

Never regret thy fall,O Icarus of the fearless flightFor the greatest tragedy of them allIs never to feel the burning light

— Oscar Wilde

~

Annabel Lee BY EDGAR ALLAN POEIt was many and many a year ago,   In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know   By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought   Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child,   In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love—   I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven   Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago,   In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling   My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came   And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre   In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,   Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,   In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night,   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love   Of those who were older than we—   Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above   Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,   In her sepulchre there by the sea—   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

~

self-parodies & psalms for shit-scared twenty-somethings by gyzm

is perhaps my favorite poem and just gut punches me whenever i read it but they are a tumblr person who’s poem deserves more attention so please reblog/comment on their poem directly :)

1.

most of what i’ve learned in the first half of my twenties is to embrace statistics i’m not smart enough to verify; theones about black holes and how much of the universe is justempty space: between atoms and from one planet to another.it makes it easier, to stare at my overcrowded sink and thinkthat to get from the floor of this filthy kitchen to the neareststar would take more lifetimes than i could borrow or steal.maybe there is a single withered raspberry molding beneath every single plate i own but in the scheme of things that’s insignificant, a non-event in the life of a non-event, and so canwait until tomorrow, when this hangover is gone.

2.

please, god, don’t let me die before i turn thirty. i’ve heardthat that’s when it all comes together, and i know those’re allfish stories, probably, the lies of those who need to pretend justlike me, but hell, i choose to believe. because the thing is, god, if idie tomorrow, a few years from now, i can pretty much guarantee it’ll be in torn underpants, on a bad hair day, in a bra that doesn’t fitthe way i’d like it to; please, god, don’t let me die before i work outhow to drag myself out of bed in time to dry my hair every morning. i’vebeen promising myself for years i’d learn to get off the couch on monday nights and do laundry, god, okay, i don’t mind living in dirty jeans but i don’t want to die in them, i’m begging, i thank you, i’m sorry, amen.

3.

there should be a page at the back of every baby book thatsays “baby’s first moment of cold realization that they are an gigantic shitheaded asshole.” it’s important, as milestones go. iknow it’s not as glamorous as a first word or a graduation but i’dargue that developmentally, it means at least as much — god knows i put more thought into the bleak portrait of myself at two a.m., staring haggard out from the filmy surface of my mirror, than i did in my ham-fisted infant attempts to say my father’s name. it would benice, is all, to have a warning, to flip through pages of childhood accomplishments and see that placeholder, at the end; to know that the future was coming, inevitably, to make dipshits of us all.

4.

don’t put liquid soap in the dishwasher. don’t put your vibrator in the dishwasher. don’t forget that your mother is coming over until fifteen minutes before she shows up and put every scrap ofevidence that you are a disaster zone living underneath a veneerof overdone eye makeup and slapdash dreams of better tomorrowsin the dishwasher. don’t put your grandmother’s china, that vase you bought at the flea market, a bowl half-full of aged guacamole,in the dishwasher. on the mornings that will keep coming — when the shower does not seem like enough, when you can feel your long history of mistakes pockmarking your face and oozing out from beneath your armpits — don’t put yourself in the dishwasher.

5.

the human body replaces skin cells so quickly that two weeks from now, every part of me will be brand new, and i will still feel as though i have spent my first quarter-century on this planet touching both too much and not enough. that feels profound atthis moment but the human body replaces humiliations fastereven than skin; two weeks from now i will remember saying this,stare at the ceiling above my bed and think: no one has ever been as big of an asshole as you are. there are billions of stars in our galaxy and billions of galaxies in our universe and my ceiling is the only clean part of my apartment. i know it’s a fish story, but c’mon, god, okay — i’m just asking to believe i’ll make it to thirty better dressed; less selfish.

[ninja-muse]

My Decade in Books

The rules: respond to the prompt “my decade in books” however you want, & then tag some ppl! I chose a book or series to define each year of the decade, some w/a little description. You can do that, or make up your own response

Tagged by @brightbeautifulthings, @lizziethereader, and @magnetarmaddaboutbooks. Thank you!

2009 - My first full year of bookstore work! My second year of having very little self-control about book purchases! And yet somehow I don’t seem to have very many books logged as having been read this year, which I can kind of put down to not having much of a commute and spending more down-time writing, but I suspect I just plain forgot to log stuff too. In any case, this is the year I first read Austen (because P&P&Zombies had just come out and it looked horrible-awesome but I had to read the original first), and the year I discovered Seanan McGuire, and wow, it’s been 10 years since I read Ender’s Game, I could’ve sworn…. Apart from that, it doesn’t look like it was a great reading year. Lots of bad books on the list. (32 books for the year.)

2010 - The year of Jane Eyre and The Book Thief and Jonathan Strange (also, wow, that long?), so a good reading year overall even though I also had a lot of “this was fine” reads. This was also the first year I read a Connie Willis novel. I’m also fairly sure this is the year a coworker moved and sold me his bookcase for $20. (60 books for the year.)

2011 - Read this year: Ben Aaronovitch for the first time, Cloud Atlas. This was clearly near the height of my urban fantasy phase and also the year I was “nearly finished” The Trunk Novel because I was also reading lots of superhero stuff for comparisons. (60 books for the year.)

2012 - The year I seriously ODed on British settings/steampunk and resolved never to read so much of the same stuff back to back again. (Fifteen books.) I also burned through Blackout/All Clear and the Hunger Games novels (movie out!) and Amanda Hocking’s Trylle books, and reread LOTR, and went to England which did not help my OD problem whatsoever. This is the year of Howl’s Moving Castle and The Iliad and the year I really got into graphic novels, and also the year where the store I was working at closed and I moved locations, which means I obviously had to buy all the discount books I’d stashed in the staff room. I still hadn’t read a lot of those. Also I scored two bookcases for $20 during the store close. (68 books for the year.)

2013 - Read: The Years of Rice and Salt, A Canticle for Leibowitz, London Falling, Vanished KIngdoms, Saga Vol. 1, Fangirl, Sandman Vol. 1, my first cozy mystery. Nothing else really stands out as a highlight of the year, though by now I know I’d pretty much scrapped The Trunk Novel. Might be the year I gave my writing-brain a rest? I think this was the last year I was involved in book-Twitter and it was seriously getting me down. (71 books for the year.)

2014 - Hild, The Girl with All the Gifts, binged the Daughter of Smoke and Bone books, and ooh, yep, this is the year I got inspired for The Novel and started reading folklore and stuff for research. Also the year where I was going off urban fantasy in a big way, which is somewhat related to why I got inspired for writing again. (Also the year I said, “no more Thursday Next boos, they’re annoying you, stop.”) I went back to England for a longer visit, got an email from work about a David Mitchell meet-and-greet, and bought a copy of The Bone Clocks at a Waterstones in order to get it signed back in Canada. Mark Oshiro started his read-through of Discworld and I joined in, sort of, by counting his live readings as rereads. (80 books for the year.)

2015 - Lots of high ratings this year! The Martian! The Watchmaker of Filigree Street! A Darker Shade of Magic! The Golem and the Jinni! Leviathan Wakes! All the Light We Cannot See! Uprooted! Ms. Marvel! I waded through The Travels of Marco Polo for research purposes, and read a good handful of books that looked great but wound up disappointing. I joined Tumblr/booklr in November. (101 books for the year.)

2016 - Read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English and fell in love with it all over again! Also The Dark Lord of Derkholm and A Time of Gifts on my dad’s recommendation and POSSESSION and Yiddish for Pirates and The Untold Tale, which I discovered here on booklr. I also seem to have binged on a reread of the Vorkosigan Saga. And I found, bought, and read Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats because I hadn’t read it since I was a kid and had a plot bunny related to it. Also had a lot of disappointing reads, by the looks of it. (88 books for the year; wrap-up post.)

2017 - Discovered Curtis Craddock and Alice Oseman and Bob Proehl and S.A. Chakraborty and Eden Robinson, who I read as a possible comp-title. Read A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and If We Were Villains (both from Tumblr.) Lots of rereads and a decent reading year all round, because I have a lot of 3-stars and higher. Some major disappointments too, though, like The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (96 books for the year; wrap-up post.)

2018 - Discovered my local library no longer seems to have the complete Chaucer that I’d borrowed for The Canterbury Tales read, because I really wanted to finish all his lesser poems and prose. I discovered Vivian Shaw and R.E. Stearns and Shaun Bythell and Rebecca Roanhorse, and true crime in the form of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. This was the year of ace rep and YA! Had to do some major library rearranging and bought three IKEA bookcases which a friend helped me assemble. (91 books for the year; wrap-up post)

2019 - Alyssa Cole! Ruth Goodman! Sarah Waters! The Wolf in the Whale! Middlegame! A good chunk of which I read waiting for a Mumford and Sons concert to start. Reread Gulliver’s Travels and The Secret Garden and Good Omens (and then watched the show and got a bit back into the fandom). Also reread a bunch of Seanan McGuire and Ben Aaronovitch stuff. This was clearly a year of rereads and light reading in general, but that balanced out the true crime (5) and some really heavy, dense books. (96 books for the year; wrap-up post)

No idea who’s done this and who hasn’t, so if you want to do it, you’re tagged!

[hopefulbagelboi]

Poem Adaptation Update

Mark suggested ideas for producing the required style that I was having trouble with. One of them was cut out animation (via stop motion) that included printing out drawn character from Photoshop and simply hand animating them. The other option was also cut out style but in 2D software (so making the character designs in Photoshop, importing them into ToonBoom, adding pegs to the various body parts and animating those pegs). The second option would save me plenty of time on animating the characters and it would also look pretty good considering I don’t have to re-draw as many frames. The first option also saves me in the sense that I won’t have to draw anything other than the characters and a few key poses.

In short, the less I draw the better the final production will be.

Found issues with each idea: Stop motion: - Lighting the stop motion set will be difficult, - Camera set up at the given angle.

2D Cut out: - Computer power, animating on a laptop will be difficult though there are no other available options during the holidays.

I attempted to follow closely to the style of one of the reference images, adding similar patterns or creating my own. The body looks ok, if not a little tacky, but the head I can’t seem to get right. It looks completely out of place and I’m not sure how to fix it.

On a more positive note, the back leg looks better than any previous attempt I’ve ever made so maybe I’m getting better at those.

With my complete inability to draw anything decent looking I am concerned about how I’m going to get this animation completed. My plan is to study wolves form all angles and take some tutorials on drawing them, that way stylising them should be a lot easier.

Though I’m almost certain I won’t actually get that plan done, I’ll most likely mope around over the holidays and then feel bad about it when I’m submitting sub-par work as usual.

Suggested changes for the wolf design: Longer legs Thicker neck Smaller head/ less round Eyes (V Look into Balto model sheets V)

(^ A few examples from the film ‘Balto’. The turnaround boards help me to understand how they built the characters and how they measured proportions. Can clearly see longer legs and much thicker necks to give them a distinct dog/ wolf appearance.)

Reflection: The entire poem went to crap because of my lack of skill for even the simplest things. I found that, despite having reference images, turnaround boards and the like I was completely incapable of drawing a wolf - let alone a patterned one. I kept trying, over and over, for weeks but in the end I gave up and decided to go with an ok-ish drawing and rig it.

(^Look at this god awful thing, I clearly cannot draw)

(^ Even with guide lines I can’t do it)

I rigged an entire wolf model in ToonBoom after my tutor had shown me how, but when I actually tried to animate it it didn’t work at all. The joints bend awkwardly and animating it was more effort than it was worth, so I scrapped the entire thing. It had taken a long time to rig and I now only had a few weeks left to finish this project, I knew I wouldn’t be able to draw anything nice to look at and animate it in that time.

(^ As is clear here I got the rig working, just not very well)

My solution, since I was so done with failing to draw and knowing I would never be able to make it look nice anyway, was to scribble my way through this. By this point I had lost all motivation, I was doing terribly even when trying my best, so why try?

(^ This is my scribbled wolf head. You can’t tell because even when I’m scribbling I still can’t draw well)

Overall I’m beyond disappointed with how my poem animation turned out. I wanted to have a lot of fun with it but yet again my lack of skills held me back. Even after practising drawing dogs and wolves for ages I still couldn’t do it.

One thing I will take from this is that I should stop drawing, because after over a year of practise it’s clear I’m not any better.