Lit - Blog Posts
“And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
You can argue that the first modern novel was one of these. 'Ivanhoe' has hella issues, obviously, but when I read through it in grade school you better believe my Robin Hood loving butt was psyched to see my hero show up in the middle and set things straight.
Given the proliferation of the various Herlock Sholmes style expies, that pretty much already exists.
And OCs for various fandoms are just another way of putting your own dolls in someone else's playhouse.
It all comes back around.
A recurring theme in late medieval literature is stories which are ostensibly tales of King Arthur or Robin Hood or some other popular or legendary figure, except in practice the narrative mostly concerns the tribulations of wholly original characters, with the figure the story is purportedly about appearing only briefly, often in a peripheral or supporting role, essentially as an excuse to use that figure's mythos as a framing device for original fiction.
You occasionally bump into a similar conceit in contemporary fan-media, but I have to wonder how widespread the device would be if it weren't for the warping influence of copyright on popular culture. Imagine if there was an entire body of respectable mainstream fiction, spanning a wide range of genres and mediums, unified solely by the fact that somewhere in the middle Batman shows up.
Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Leonard Woolf, featured in The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf
Helen Oyeyemi, from “White Is for Witching”
Another List of "Beautiful" Words
to include in your next poem
Avidulous - somewhat greedy.
Breviloquent - marked by brevity of speech.
Compotation - a drinking or tippling together.
Crimpy - of weather; unpleasant; raw and cold.
Desiderium - an ardent desire or longing; especially, a feeling of loss or grief for something lost.
Dyspathy - lack of sympathy.
Ebriosity - habitual intoxication.
Epitasis - the part of a play developing the main action and leading to the catastrophe.
Fantod - a state of irritability and tension.
Graumangere - a great meal.
Grimoire - a magician's manual for invoking demons and the spirits of the dead.
Hiemal - of or relating to winter.
Illaudable - deserving no praise.
Impluvious - wet with rain.
Innominate - having no name; unnamed; also, “anonymous”.
Juberous - doubtful and hesitating.
Noctilucous - shining at night.
Poetaster - an inferior poet.
Psychrophilic - thriving at a relatively low temperature.
Quiddity - the essential nature or ultimate form of something: what makes something to be the type of thing that it is.
Repullulate - to bud or sprout again.
Retrogradation - a backward movement.
Semiustulate - half burnt or consumed by fire.
Tenebrific - causing gloom or darkness.
Unparadiz’d - brought from joy to miserie.
If any of these words make it into your next poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!
“I want to rest. I want to breathe quietly again.”
— Tennessee Williams
I was born with reds and violets tattooed on my stomach, shards of glass in my eyes and scars on my back. I never really knew how to talk in a velvety voice or hold flowers in my hands without crushing them in the process. The love introduced to me isn't the kind of love that'd wish you sweet dreams. The love I've known brought me nightmares with me crying, laughing at my fallen tooth on the carpet.
So please be patient with me. I'm still learning not to destroy the things I love.
---H.Asteid🍁
You. You showed me the side of love that Disney tried to hide from me when I was a kid. You made me realize that walking this earth with a soft heart can cost me everything. That night when you left me lying naked on the floor, I wept and silently wished I didn't have emotions at all.
-H.Asteid🍁
" I lost myself trying not to lose you."
-H.Asteid
" I was more attracted to him than he was to me.
And it really scared me.
-H.Asteid
" And my biggest mistake was loving you more than I could ever love myself."
-H.Asteid
I'm made of excerpts I personally extracted from the books I read, of songs' lyrics, of blankets and of cups of coffee.
My mind is either a gray cloud or a current of air violently whirling in a spiral.
Every night, my soul howls for the moon; my hands bleed words about tragedy and doom.
These dark brown orbs loathe mirrors but would always tear up at the sight of the sea, maple trees in autumn, of beautiful people.
And my heart only yearns for one thing. . .
To feel things in colour.
-H.Asteid
We will survive!
Oh you better watch us thrive
Yes, you did drown our dreams
But we can dive, we can swim
We'll dragged them back up on the surface
With our famous brand of determination and resilience
We'll pick up all the shattered pieces
You see , the harder the wind blows,
the tighter we hold on
The harder you try to pulverize our hopes,
the more you give us nothing but a choice to be strong
- H.Asteid
" And If I could only keep from death, I would."
-H.Asteid
"Trust me on this. After a millisecond in the middle of the highway or free falling in midair or after kicking the chair or when your lungs are already filled with water, only then will you realize that death isn't what you wanted, that you just want to be genuinely happy again. But it would be too late. It would all be too late."
-H.Asteid
" This may sound crazy to you but...If she were a cliff, I won't even hesitate to take the leap."
- H.Asteid
" You gave me no other choice but to be strong."
-H.Asteid
" She's like a closed book hiding on the farthest part of a shelf, tightly hugging herself , Afraid that someone might ruin her pages again."
- H.Asteid, Ruined Pages
"I'm scared." Looking up at the night sky, trying not to fall apart.
I felt him scoot closer to me.
"Scared of what?"
I hesitated for a moment.
" I... I'm scared of the thought that this might be the last time I'll be making coffee for my Dad, the last time I'll iron and fold his clothes. I'm scared of the thought of his heart breaking when I'm not here anymore.
I'm so scared that I feel like I won't be able to witness the sun shine again, that today might be my last day."
I said looking down at my shaking hands, suddenly ashamed of my revelation.
But his next words gave my heart a sense of something foreign...Hope.
" You're scared.
Isn't that enough reason to stay?"
-H.Asteid
" I would've loved you forever if you had only let me."
-H.Asteid
"Why would you want to be with someone who only love you sometimes?"
-H.Asteid
It's amazing, isn't it?
How a little distance
can change your perception of life
Showing you the whole picture
Not just the pieces with terrible colour
It's amazing, isn't it?
How a little pause in your life
Is exactly what you need
When you've lost
all hopes to win the race
To reflect on your flaws
Or to gain some insights
It's amazing, isn't it?
How a higher altitude
Makes the world seem beautiful
Hiding the ugly cracks
It shows a picturesque wall
I longed with all my heart for a fresh green silence between living water and forests.
Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from “A Woman Appeared To Me,” (via violentwavesofemotion)
“The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.”
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
And later when we got into the car, he took a turn down a street that I was pretty sure was a dead end. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know,’ he said ‘just driving.’ ‘But this road doesn’t go anywhere,’ I told him. ‘That doesn’t matter.’ ‘What does?’ I asked, after a little while. ‘Just that we’re on it, dude.’
Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero (via quotespile)