#verse; adrift among open stars

[ambitionforged]

@afraidofchange​      /      ❤’d for a starter!     //     tali’zorah  >  commander shepard.

🢖  ⸻      ❝    oh!   shepard!   you startled me.   i was trying to—   well...   with everything going on,  i was hoping to try and figure out this tech we found on our last mission.   it must be very important,  because with every try i make,  it just seems to lock itself down more.   but if it was geth tech,  it would’ve initiated a self-destruct sequence by now.    ❞

tali’s hand waves over the supposed tech in question with her omni tool   —   it doesn’t look like much,  metal humming with a low frequency and single line of light aglow,  brightening briefly when the young quarian types something into her tool only to go dimmer than before.   fingers twitch over glowing orange,  eyes narrow behind mask,  shoulders tense;   after a few moments of staring it down,  she sends her drone out.

❝    chatika,  see if you can do anything about this.    ❞   head turns to the commander,  head tilted low after a moment.   ❝    i’ll crack it eventually,    ❞   is said with a sheepish tone,  ❝    but i wanted it to be a surprise.   but now that you know—   uh,  did you want to look at it?    ❞

[bxtonpxss]

Thor Tags

Thor || [threads] ||  thunderbolt

Thor || [open] || attract

Thor || [starter] || wild encounter

Thor || [verse] || surge protector

Thor || [verse] || sparking beacon

Thor || [verse] || adrift on the open seas

Thor || [verse] || metal fight pocket monster 

Thor || [verse] || village hidden in the leaves

Thor || [verse] || magical pokemon

Thor || [verse] || mushrooms and warp pipes

thor || [verse] || monsters among men: lightning materia not needed

thor || [verse] || mystery dungeon

thor || [verse] || bolt charm

Thor || [musing] || a night beneath the stars

Thor || [headcanon] || nasty plot

Thor || [ask] || present

Thor || [visage] || reflect

Thor || [aesthetics] || spark

Thor || [crossover] || off the beaten path

Thor || [party] || Glitch

Thor || [party] || Pikachu

Thor || [party] || Elysia

Thor || [party] || Izzy

Thor || [party] || Nicole

Thor || [party] || Sanji

Thor || [party] || Kai

Thor || [party] || Makoto

Thor || [party] || Luigi

Thor || [makoto] || lightning always strikes twice

Thor || [elysia] || never knew I needed

Thor || [kai] || me and you against the world

Thor || [glitch] || together forever

Thor || [dash commentary]

[westmoor]

the fox

(the hare -»)

(1.4k, shifter jaskier, plotless and geraskier adjacent, no particular warnings except for excessive language)

The world is so much louder when it’s dark.

So it is for everyone, Jaskier tells himself, and curls up tighter in his bed, swaddling in a barrier of softness and warmth to keep it at bay.

But they press ever closer, the sounds. Rustles and mumbles and whispers seeping in between the blankets, crawling along his skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Most nights he ignores them, eyes forced shut and clutching a pillow until he falls asleep, restless and dreaming. 

He doesn’t know why, or how, or when any of it started.

But he knows the scurry of mice from the rustle of wind, can pick a rabbit’s tracks through the bushes, sees the great horned owls where they perch high upon their branches, hooting loud and yearning while their large and luminous eyes sweep this way and that.

And some nights they become too much to ignore. They take hold of his mind and light a fire in his veins, and he wants nothing more than to answer them, to fill his lungs with whiffs of larkspur and thyme and test his speed against the wandering moon, until the stars grow weary and a chorus of songbirds herald the dawn.

On those nights he steals from his bed and his blankets, leaving his cloak and his shoes behind. And he rushes out into the great big nothing, past walls meant to hold him and men meant to guard him, through hedgerows and bramble on quick black paws, nose skimming the grass. 

--

He keeps it quiet, just to himself. If they notice him gone they call it sneaking about, like young boys do, and he does, only not as a boy. 

If he dared, he’d tell his mother. Tell her about the family of mockingbirds nesting in the lilacs, about the gap in the hayloft wall where the stablemaster’s mouser has hidden her kittens, or the fields of berries growing sweet beyond their garden gates. 

He tells no one.

The streets of Oxenfurt are a treasure trove of secrets, all laid out in a perfect cobblestone maze for him to hunt and uncover. 

Along with fellow students he shimmies out of windows and scales ivy-clad trestles, learns of hidden alcoves in libraries and which side streets lead to the dodgiest downtown drinkeries, breaks into the law professor’s office to steal sips of his finest liqueur, filling the bottles with water to cover up the loss. He learns the ways of love through heartbreak and finds his voice through song and verse, grinding his wit against the sharpest minds on the Continent.

But what his peers know is just a painted facade, gaudy and vivid but built for display. The city is a whole new world when seen from below. He skitters past its brocade drapes and  whole-hearted and quick-witted, no quest too daring or escape too narrow. 

Later, when cobbled streets are replaced by dirt roads and trampled paths under his feet, when he is further from home than he has ever been before with nothing to him but a lute and a name, he tucks his legs close to the soft fur of his underbelly and covers his snout with the bush of his tail and sleeps soundly. 

--

He has never met another. He’d like to, he thinks. If only for someone with whom to sit in the audience to a curlews’ ecstatic performance, composing her song to the bullfrogs’ steadfast percussion, joining in concert with moorhens’ trills among lily-pads and reeds. To know the thrill of the hare’s escape or musky divots in tall grass and glens where the mighty elk has dwelled, without false claims of metaphor and allegory.

Donning his fur coat to run the woods four-legged, now quick, now clever, he is no less himself than when he strides down paved roads, lute in hand. This is not a voice made for singing, jaws too narrow and teeth too sharp to make the shapes of words or vowels. Yet when he tilts his head at the sky and fills the night with the call of his kin, it’s completely and utterly his own.

It’s a blessing, he knows. How dreadfully boring it must be to live an entire life on just one page, and never turn it.

But everyone he meets on his path smells distinctly human, or dwarvish, or half-elf, and he starts to believe there are none like him. The truth of his nature stays lodged in his chest, curled tight somewhere under his breath. Whether it’s true fear born from bearing witness to the cruelty of men, or if it’s the fickle instincts of the wild, he doesn’t know. 

Gradually, like the miniature vessels of tree bark and leaves he’d set to sail on the duck pond as a child, he finds himself drifting downstream, unmoored and rudderless.

Until the day he finds a Witcher in Posada.

It’s the smell that snares him, but once he pinpoints its source, he can’t look away. Even then it takes a moment to figure it out, too enraptured at first by peeling back the scent of human and road dust and smoke to find the tug underneath. That of animal and hunt and prowl, that of the great grey beasts that sing with their brethren in distant ragged mountains. 

The man has the eyes of a predator, and Jaskier falls to his gaze like a fox to the hounds. 

Geralt is not like him, but he is the least unlike him that Jaskier has ever met, and that alone is enough to start pulling back the tide of silence that has pooled in his lungs. 

Beneath an iron hull of huffs and scowls and grumbles there is a grudging sort of leniency, however, and something else - something that makes Geralt flinch away like pressure to a festering wound. 

In every story Jaskier has heard, the Witcher travels alone. 

But he doesn’t urge his mare to trot too fast to follow. And when the cold draws close in the wake of the setting sun and the hollow ache in his stomach competes with that in his legs, there is warmth to be found by a smoldering fire, bread and roasted meat split between roughened hands.

Jaskier knows he is trailing after him like a puppy, knows he is pushing and pushing and pushing but he must. He needs this. And he has to make time, make sure he gets to stay long enough to find words, good ones, for how it is that he can close his eyes in one head and open them in another. Answers for questions he gave up asking long ago. 

With each burst and proposition that spills from his lips on their way through the valley, all a breath short of keep me, please keep me, confessions boil higher in his chest until they simmer just under his tongue. It takes all of his will to keep them from pouring, filling the silence with shallow chatter, desperate to stay their flow until his respite from loneliness can grant Geralt’s, too.

It doesn’t come to that.

Geralt sees his form as a cage, he learns, and himself as the beast trapped within. Where strangeness has given Jaskier an endless realm to chase and cherish, Geralt has only known suffering.

And if Geralt is monstrous, then what is Jaskier? A coward? A thief? Another fickle creature, neither animal nor man? Would he loathe him like he loathes himself? Or would he pity him, look at his duality and see a sickness?

He is many things, Geralt, beyond both wolf and man and Witcher, but he is not cruel. He would be kind, more likely than not, might even offer a hand in breaking the curse or condition that splits his soul between two bodies.

Jaskier couldn’t bear it.

The burning on his tongue quells with time. Soon, all secrets drain back down his throat unspoken. But alone is not akin to lonely, he decides, and Destiny may yet show her hand. 

Unmoored, but no longer adrift, he lets the dead weight of hope drag him under. 

And when the night grows loud in his mind, calling his name with a faint breeze through the hemlocks - when he slips from their camp and his makeshift bed to run the fields on little blackened feet, he makes it quiet, quick and clever.

--

Tag list: @llamasdumpsterfire @stinastar​ @elliestormfound​ @justjess94​ @fontegagrilledcheese​ @dani-dandelino​ @honeysuckletook​ @underwaterattribute @ahhhhhhdonna @biitumen @cinary @saphiramalbec @lilbanili @sulkyshengshou

[rokovoya]

011.

VIOLENT MEME┇ accepting011. — Shoot my muse.

SOMETHING ABOUT this job had felt wrong from the start. and yet, nat had let her guard down. the sound of approaching footsteps that should have signaled that she was caught reach her ears too late, and when she turns from the console, one hand moving to her weapon, there’s already one pointed in her direction. the black widow is stuck in her own web, and she lifts her other arm, palm out to signal stop. 

‘ woah, hold on a sec, we’re on the same--- ’ side turns into a groan as white hot pain sears through her and she vaguely wonders if they actually are. a quick mental assessment reveals that her opponent has missed anything major ( though she assumes that was intentional ), and since a second shot hasn’t come, she presses her hand to the wound, the other still wrapped around her gun, waiting. 

          ‘ guess you’re one of those shoot-first-ask-questions-later types, huh ? ’

[quasaris-blog]

@thestevieststeve continued from ask

“No, there’s more,” Jasper lied, rather smoothly and efficiently. An apt skill from centuries of being beneath her rampant superior. Whatever saved her hide. She drizzled her gaze down his form, taking in his appearance, the odd energy that seemed to radiate from him, tingling the surface of her skin. She stuck her hip out and pointed to a small square communicator.

“I call them with this. No personnel allowed here. Certainly not of your caliber. What do you need? Directions?” She near groaned, wholly internal. No human should have any right to request directions. Were her communicator actually effective, she would have called for support, but she could just hear the laughter. Needing back up for a human. But there was something rawly unsettling about the stranger, and it made his quick departure a more important priority than pride.

“I can show you the way back out. Don’t know how you got here, don’t want to know. Turn around.”

[magnetar1]

The Phantasmal City

Bodies gone to die in sinking sands of Ersetsu . . . Passage through its towering basalt, last of empires, Silent impression of noctuary; Scribes, biliously misgiven, among the colonnades, Describing books of the dead – Sallow mystics of the open dirge, Ruminating beards chronicling with precision, Star seed foaming from their mouths when sleeping, Awakened in a spasm of guttural verse.

With these poems, these plans, a city is constructed, Architects, exploiting the generosity of soothsayers, Rectifying imbalance with divisions of the heart, Pantheon of spectral judges, each to guard a chamber.

Rivers of light, all leading to Abzu, Darkness welling in the unheralded, who drown in it.

City dredges labyrinths: mortar grist, calcified tissues, Some to build walls, others to be revived even dead – Hardship in the desert leads them in . . . Solace beats down, wraith-like; caravan on a bent path, Coarse stone, barren sea, grim valley of an ashen grave, Along a spinal column of hills, leads to the giant’s skull.

To find shelter here, among the flora of its rotted brain, Dreaming plague of psychopomps, awakening undone.

Not all make it to that city; shifting ruined disguise, Forms of filth & pageantry – Groveling tumor, invoking Oriax with bleeding tongues, Oaths fornicating with stars, neglectful of their warning: That the key will not turn for those unborn here.

Larval surge in the host-mind, up from its humid forge, To feast on heedless acolytes: Arrived with good intent, adrift with blank confession, Cannibal harvest of mute origins . . .

Ghostlands, uncharted zones, transmits to the Dog Star, Still-birth of a prayer, prostrate to some herald’s return: Who can lead them?  Pilgrimage of visitants, howling fire, World burning as they rise! – Destined to enter that city,   Revenant passage to the outskirts of its singular memory; Sands shift, but this much is true, no escaping once inside, Where all the blood of stars runs, yet the tributes are few, Writ simply, in silence, coordinates of negation & mutiny.

[meetmeatthestart]

Skye Rocket lyric collection

A selection of lyrics from Skye Rocket songs, including ones from their time as Rocket Ship Resort. Perfect to use for thread titles, ship tags, verse names, blog quotes, etc. Feel free to get creative.

A better place I'd never find

A cool breeze sweeps through the silver dust

A dance of misfits

A date with a time trial showdown

A different air waits for us

A ferris wheel tune

A fighter with a nature of gold

A glimmer on a winding trail

A glimpse of the night

A handful of fire

A lighthouse of love

A lonely flare in the dark 

A lullaby along the moon

A map to get back home

A smile among the storm

A snowball deep in hell

A window straight to the deep

Across all that reaches land

Adrift in the sighs

Ain't a chance we go outta style

Air that presses my lungs to paper

All the salty wit of an old drunk

All the ships eclipsing the ocean

Alone through the dark part of life

Among every storm and spark

An old wish, a dusty sign

And it cuts like a knife 

And the wound's getting bigger 

And when the sun goes down

And when you see its colors

Astray in the sky

At least we're adventure

Autumn blaze

Ballrooms and bridges

Bandanas and black boots

Be the might to my light shows

Bet I'll make ya light up like July

Boiled with blood pent

Born of the sunlight's dust

Bound down to a life on the free way

Break apart old cautions retold

Break the glass of every old impasse

Break us into the sky

Breathe deep into me

Breathing electric starlight

Burdened with gorgeous nature

Buried, wounded to the core

Burn as bright as you can

But you won't turn me

C'mon out to the edge of the world

Can we have a home everlasting

Cause there's vodka in the water

Chasin' disaster

Chasin' disaster; goin' faster

Chemicals of catastrophe

Come and stay with me

Come with me to race all the crumbling walls

Comfort within her chaos

Could you go if you had to?

Cry out to silence

Deep through beauty, treachery, and howling hail

Determined to be deflaters

Devoid of the morning daybreaks

Did a glow catch your heart?

Distant days of crescent moons

Do you find your way worthwhile?

Do you wanna run far away?

Do you want to run away?

Dogma's yearly tradition

Dream something new

Dressing up with dyed roots

Drifting on a cloud blanket

Escaping my tired mind

Every chip is a chilling climb

Eyes of ice in the sunshine

Fall white for another night

Falling through the snow

Far beyond the tallest trees

Fighting what the kings say 

Follow the trails in the air 

For life, for naught

Free your aurora

From atop the trees, reaching out so free

From high off the flowers

From the venom here

Fuck your war, I'm here for the starlight 

Ghost pepper voodoo

Give me a taste of oxygen

Give me all your pieces

Greetings, my glider

Growing up so fast

Hanging on the dawn

Hard times have you now, but you'll be alright

Harness it, make your mark

Heaven knows where we will go

Her gust is givin' you your flight

Hidden beneath the worries

Hits like a rocket

Home is where fires unite

Homesick for vistas new

I bet I'll make it light up like your eyes

I can taste the race in your heartbeat

I don't know how long this road goes out

I feel each step so slow

I held those words as law

I know the way, let's head there

I lack the blood to suck tonight

I lost you at the bay

I will save you every night

I wish I could take you sailing

I wouldn't hold your breath

I'd never believed in slowing down

I'd rather sweep a breeze under those old ashes

I'll be chasing the moon

I'll be rage on all fours

I'll be unleashed

I'll hold onto you as long as you hold onto me

I'll see you over the moon

I'll take a shot of what she's havin'

I'll take the heart break

I'll take the heart break before I slow

I'll wake up real soon

I'm fading fast

I'm seein' stars, the way you're flashin'

I've been here before

I've got a lot in my view but no one else that I can see

Ice upon the river

If summer had a daughter

If you chase the same chill in your weathered bones

If you're still awake by chance

In a dash we'll crash down the party

In a love story, where beauty is might

In the air we'll dance like we used to

In the grass like a landmine

In the july heat

In time the smoke will leave here

Invisible to the stars

It matters not what's outside

It's time to bring it all out now

Just lift your head aloft and wave

Just to cut me down to you

Just what this world needs

Kicked to the frost

Kicking rocks on a turnpike

Kiss the earth, let's disappear

Left here with life

Lend me the sight giants behold

Let me lead your breath home

Let me see your eyes 

Let your heartache down with your hair

Let's be lost, let's be heroes

Let's carve out our open view

Light a thousand streets

Like a backdrop for the moon

Like a lantern in the dark

Like a lightning strike in your heart

Like a phone hardwired

Like a secret in the dark

Like a whisper in a glance 

Like an earthy rust

Like the heaven's snow

Like you woke in the ocean

Listen close, my rogue

Lunar endeavors

Made of fireflies

May the guiding wind adorn us

Mistress magic

Movin' with mischief

My words are with you

Numbness is living on a loss

Of the demons in my thoughts

Oh will our hearts endure

On blankets of rockets and trees

One last ride up above the night 

Our wind in the sails

Out in search of truth

Out on the great wide blue

Please come down from your window

Please just give me one last dance

Poets long for words like your dreams

Princess Red Rum

Problem number one

Racing meteors

Rain on the river

Rainfall resistance

Reachin' up to the moonlight

Relentless, your scars open up wide

Remember how it sounds

Reminiscent of wings, you went

Ride on, shooting star

Ring your light through the dark

Rogues among the stars

Run like the rain

Running circles

Rushing like Niagara Falls

Scars that are far and gone

Scrapbooks and reflections

Seas and passions

Seashore at the door

See the sun surround you

Shadows shaped by gryphon stars

Shining soul, in the shade

Shooting for the stars

Show the way through the wild miles

Silver relics on the shore

Singing like a lonely ghost

Sky blue: it suits you!

Smile, you're wild inside

Snow dives by so quietly

Souls fade white

Specter on the bay

Standing in the night

Stars that look like you

Starstruck, a deep blue

Stay aloft for me

Stay awake, I plea

Still standing here years later 

Storm like the sea

Submerged neck deep

Sunrays and lattes

Swept along with a grip so sure

Tempest route

The air here is of your soul

The blood runs like a river 

The buildings glow

The clouds made their own way

The dance of the wind and waves

The ghost had a bouquet

The hope that you'd been saving

The horizon, it runs forever

The howling crowd's alive

The last time I felt alive

The meltdown ain't gonna thaw

The midnight streets

The midnight streets are empty without you

The night covers the earth

The night in front of you

The prettiest cold air

The rustic gears of establishment

The silent sky

The unruly, truly quite bizzare

The walls are your protection

The yell of a young punk

Theme park in the dark

There's magic in disguise

There's no need for frights, it's a show of lights

These gloves play love like guitar

Throttle it out

Through all the heartaches

Through nights into dreams

Through that disguise

Through the ballroom hall 

Through the land and night

Through the lights and heights of the compass caches

Through the time each night recalls

Through thunder's embrace

Till I stop the show

To the lands out somewhere far

Tonight we are aloft

Too heavy for words

Trace my touch all through here

Treasure maps and shaky floorboards

Triumph, scandal, all her name lends

Try to stay a little while

Trying to escape a whirlwind 

Tumbling sunbeams

Turn all the lights down

Under the moon and snow

Under the show of chaos

Up late, darin' fate, just to know

Waiting on a faint light

Wanted for love crimes

Watch the rockets reply

Watch the sands blow to wherever you are

Watch the sinking silver

Watch the stars swim through this ocean of air

Wave to the stars

We are like fire

We are momentum

We are the doomed ones

We are the stars hangin' up free

We can ride a road everwinding

We still share the same moon

We'll be the backbone

We're blowing the hurricanes down

We're pioneers

We're tearin' down mountain sides

We're the heat, we're the guns

We've been marked

When are ya waving my way, baby?

When the gates make way

When the leaves leave us

When the riots meet

When the sea grabbed me ahold

When the wind came a-knockin' 

When time just won't wait 

When your heart has been so bold

While the sparks danced up

While the sun follows you

Wield your wings for your own rhythm

Wisdom and a smile with a saber

With a touch of grace 

With the tidal burst

With the wrath of the red

Wolves among the shadow

Years and years of fighting here

You and me and the seven seas

You are a renegade

You can find me where the clouds part

You can plunge in anxiety so grim

You can survive on caution and foresight

You don't have a single flaw

You lived on with them, now they live on with you

You sing with the sounds of the seas sincere

You swore to win the war? I withdraw

You think you're a king

You think you're justice

You think you're the light

You're a bottle of lightning

You're dissolvin' the last straw

You're givin' me a little mania

You're not your demons

You've got a story 

You've got a window

You've got a window of time and air

Your heart beats so rhythmic and pure

Your leap won't lend you much leeway

Your lonely cell is waiting

Your silhouette sings profanity

Your soul is a bird

[aion-rsa]

Denzel Washington Leads First Great Tragedy of Macbeth Movie

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth has proven to be one of the Bard’s most elusive tragedies for filmmakers. Despite being among his best known plays and full of visceral imagery like witches and war, murders and revenge, this allegedly cursed title has appeared genuinely damned on-screen. It thwarted masters like Roman Polanski and defeated would-be revisionists, such as Justin Kurzel only six years ago. But with Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, a haunting and meditative work from one-half of the Coen Brothers, the Scottish play finally gets its due. How much more marvelous then that it does so with two astonishing performances from Americans: Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.

Shrouded in stark blacks and whites, shadows and deceiving halos of light, there is a chilling unnaturalness to The Tragedy of Macbeth, which runs counter to most Shakespearean cinematic adaptations. Rather than reach for the naturalistic sweep of epic filmmakers like David Lean or Franco Zeffierelli—as has been the popular method of translating Shakespeare to screen since Kenneth Branagh’s run in the ‘80s and ‘90s, not to mention Zefferelli’s own contributions—Coen favors a claustrophobic and oppressive color palette. His and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel’s compositions echo F.W. Murnau, Carl Dreyer, and other German Expressionists, matching the artifice of the stage with cinema at its most beautifully artificial. The director even shoots in the classic Academy aspect ratio of 4:3 and in literal black and white.

The result is a movie that prefers to quietly brood instead of scream—and to execute its heavy deeds in the dead of night rather than on battlefields. They’re unorthodox choices, but like the lead performances, they prove to be convincing ones.

When The Tragedy of Macbeth begins, those main characters appear strikingly different from how we’re accustomed. Aged and at a point in life where their future prospects should seem dimmed, Washington and McDormand’s Macbeths embody a wiser and more calculating personification of ambition. We meet Washington’s Macbeth on the outskirts of a medieval field where he’s already stewing. Elsewhere and closer to the seat of power, old King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) has signaled that he will bestow his greatest glories on the presumed heir to his throne, Malcolm (Harry Melling). Bitter and left behind, Lord Macbeth (Washington) looks adrift in the wilderness when he comes across three Weird Sisters, played all by Kathryn Hunter. Emerging from the mist like three Grim Reapers who’re intent on playing a game of chess, the witches promise Macbeth the crown if he’ll do just one thing… kill his king.

Washington’s Macbeth doesn’t take much pushing from either the witches or his equally Machiavellian wife, Lady Macbeth (McDormand). And on the following night, Macbeth steals into the king’s bedchamber as he slumbers. There’s no hesitation to Washington’s iteration. He even pauses to take a quiet moment of satisfaction when Duncan awakens, realizing what is about to occur. The treason is coolly executed.  Even so, loose ends soon multiply as Malcolm flees and the barely crowned Macbeth must fend off suspicions of tyranny, including by the ever watchful Macduff (Corey Hawkins).

At the New York Film Festival press screening for The Tragedy of Macbeth, McDormand revealed she and Coen, who she produced the film with, only ever considered Washington for the title character because “you don’t make lists for a generation’s Macbeth. One’s born and then he plays it.” Having seen the finished film, her argument is persuasive. Older and grayer than your typical Scottish usurper, the formidable stage and film actor eschews a Macbeth who rants in favor of one with the cynical patience of old age. There is a ruthless efficiency to his every gesture and pause, at least in the character’s early scenes before the crown wears heavy.

As an actor who’s done Shakespeare before on stage and screen, the latter of which in what I’d argue is still the most enjoyable Bard film, Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Washington commands complete authority over the film’s brisk 105 minutes. Thus when things inevitably go to seed, it gives the actor that much more to chew as he lets a tyrant’s hair down.

McDormand is similarly excellent as the Lady of the House who discovers her eyes are bigger than her stomach. Like her on-screen husband, McDormand makes no effort to hide her American accent, nor does she feel the need to commit either entirely to the rhythm of iambic pentameter dialogue or the more naturalistic readings that modern screen versions of Shakespeare employ. She comfortably alternates between the two, switching to whichever the very scene, or specific inflection, demands.

In Coen’s hands, both characters are unmistakably tragic, if rarely sympathetic. There has been much speculation in the press about Joel Coen helming this picture on his own and without his brother Ethan for the first time in both men’s careers. While I cannot speak as to why Joel flew solo on this production, The Tragedy of Macbeth only sparingly features any of the hallmarks associated with traditional “Coen Brothers” fare. Select scraps of verse, and passing character beats, reveal an occasional sense of gallows humor. But by and large, the film is as ruminative and apocalyptic as its title would suggest. There is no humor or irony to the flashes of brutal violence here. Similarly, the fates of side characters are mournfully lingered upon.

Given the film’s A24 pedigree, it’s likely some younger viewers will be drawn toward comparing the movie to the indie distributor’s recent efforts. However, with Coen balancing between long deep focus compositions and extreme closeups of his actors at their most pained, The Tragedy of Macbeth is clearly drawing from older traditions. I was particularly taken with how the three witches’ presence is hinted at even when they’re off-screen, with vultures drifting across fields and Dunsinane Castle like vampire bats.

In direct contrast to even the most recent Macbeth movie starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, Coen and his troupe look inward. They preserve much of the original text, and ultimately reveal that in a visual medium, Macbeth has been a horror movie all along. And like certain damned spots, once you see that, it’s impossible to forget.

The Tragedy of Macbeth had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 24. It opens in theaters on Dec. 25, and on Apple TV+ on Jan. 14, 2022.

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[lightwisps]

( @operativegaley​ ) liked for a starter!

*･ﾟ✧ ❁ ✧*･ﾟThere was someone new, someone different.

It didn’t take long for news to spread here in the base considering how small it was and how isolated they were to the rest of... everything. In terms of population, it was only them and whoever visited the site - whatever their reasons would be.

Poppy was curious and wanted to meet the new person herself, always eager to learn more of the world outside of the data given to her. After she made sure her hologram was on, she tentatively approached the new face when she was sure no one was looking for her or trying to keep tabs on the little droid.

     “… Hi there.” She fidgeted where she stood, giving a nervous smile and a tentative wave. “Though I should, um, make myself known. Never seen you here. You must be new then.”

One day, she’ll learn how to interact with strangers better. One day.

[ambitionforged]

finally getting to more tags, starting with my fav girl tali

[quasaris-blog]

@brutalsoldcier

“Commander.” Her access credentials accepted, the soldier stepped inside, urgency in her voice. She snapped straight, provided the Diamond salute, and then offered a lazy smirk.

“Enemy presence on the scanner. Third quadrant. Unable to tell how many. Stealthmode, or do we meet them in battle?”

[magnetar1]

The Phantasmal City

Bodies gone to die in sinking sands of Ersetsu . . . Passage through its towering basalt, last of empires, Silent impression of noctuary; Scribes, biliously misgiven, among the colonnades, Describing books of the dead – Sallow mystics of the open dirge, Ruminating beards chronicling with precision, Star seed foaming from their mouths when sleeping, Awakened in a spasm of guttural verse.

With these poems, these plans, a city is constructed, Architects, exploiting the generosity of soothsayers, Rectifying imbalance with divisions of the heart, Pantheon of spectral judges, each to guard a chamber.

Rivers of light, all leading to Abzu, Darkness welling in the unheralded, who drown in it.

City dredges labyrinths: mortar grist, calcified tissues, Some to build walls, others to be revived even dead – Hardship in the desert leads them in . . . Solace beats down, wraith-like; caravan on a bent path, Coarse stone, barren sea, grim valley of an ashen grave, Along a spinal column of hills, leads to the giant’s skull.

To find shelter here, among the flora of its rotted brain, Dreaming plague of psychopomps, awakening undone.

Not all make it to that city; shifting ruined disguise, Forms of filth & pageantry – Groveling tumor, invoking Oriax with bleeding tongues, Oaths fornicating with stars, neglectful of their warning: That the key will not turn for those unborn here.

Larval surge in the host-mind, up from its humid forge, To feast on heedless acolytes: Arrived with good intent, adrift with blank confession, Cannibal harvest of mute origins . . .

Ghostlands, uncharted zones, transmits to the Dog Star, Still-birth of a prayer, prostrate to some herald’s return: Who can lead them?  Pilgrimage of visitants, howling fire, World burning as they rise! – Destined to enter that city,   Revenant passage to the outskirts of its singular memory; Sands shift, but this much is true, no escaping once inside, Where all the blood of stars runs, yet the tributes are few, Writ simply, in silence, coordinates of negation & mutiny.