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#a morbid longing
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The thing that many do not understand about The Secret History is that it's so different on the inside in terms of the aesthetic (morbid longing for the picturesque).
On the outside (looking in) it's all dark academia, a murderous dead poets society, if you will.
And then, on the inside, it's Richard doing cocaine in a burger king car park. It's 80s New England, and everyone is dressed as a cross between a Pilates instructor and a rainbow.
Which is hilarious because so many get elitist about it, and make moodboards on their Pinterest about it. Everyone who loves the aesthetic of TSH is simply chasing an unrealistic inference in a book they probably didn't pay that much attention to whilst reading.
That being said, this is not a criticism. The main character himself struggles with the same - he names it as his fatal flaw, his 'morbid longing for the picturesque'. But The Secret History was in part demonstrating the dangers of pursuing these aesthetics.
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kobalent · 1 year
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Twitter is like actually collapsing at the moment
i don't mean as in the general doomed state it has been for the last couple months, but rather that it is losing functionality as i write this.
a bit of context:
in the morning of december 15th, the Twitter account ElonJet —which posted the publicly available flight records of Elon's private jet— was banned under the excuse of "doxxing".
he then proceded to run a very rudimentary text block in the site for the link to the ElonJet instagram account, but it was only applied to the exact link "https://instagram.com/elonmusksjet", to which many people found a plethora of easy workarounds.
then, he proceeded to ban journalists. specifically those who had criticized him before.
THEN, accounts who were reporting on the sudden bans started getting banned themselves, followed by bans of Mastodon and links to Mastodon in general, possibly due to links to the ElonJet Mastodon account.
and as this was unfolding, people were discovering they could still join Twitter Spaces from banned accounts, so all the banned journalists created a mega Space, which i am only vaguely informed of what was being discussed (like blatant censorship) but i'm sure recordings surface in the coming days.
one recording we DO have access to right now is of elon joining the 4,000 (i need to review this number) people including several banned accounts, in which he was asked around 3 questions, didn't answer any, and left after once again making a fool of himself.
a few moments later, the Twitter Space closes out of nowhere, and the recording "mysteriously" disappears. seems like elon finally found a way to shut it down after several hours.
however, spaces are now broken for a large amount of users.
then, a few people start to mention they can't like or retweet posts specifically from the timeline.
i see one of two options: 1) musk purposefully broke all these functions, or 2) he broke Spaces on purpose, which caused a cascade of problems.
oh, btw! did you know since elon took over, Twitter developers started working directly on the live website? that might complicate doing something like idk, reverting to a previous build after some site-breaking update?
anyways, sorry for the rant. i'm not sure it makes much sense i'm very sleepy, but i just thought i needed to document this somewhere. i might come back and edit to add supporting screenshots and videos
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Finished putting together a book-nook for my bookshelf! It’s called Sunshine Town :D
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nekohrine · 9 months
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my fatal flaw is that I can’t stop thinking about rereading the secret history
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listenerofpodcasts · 10 months
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[ID: Mistholme Museum fanart of the Guide's handheld audio device lying on a surface with the earbuds curled beside it. The small screen says "Oh god oh f*ck," and an electronic speech bubble colored with the nonbinary flag says "Shit, dude." End ID]
^^thanks for letting me know about putting an image description for accessability purposes, ya’ll are cool
appalled and distraught by the lack of Mistholme Museum content on the internet. so here, i’m giving you some. along with some nice colors.
grammarly is nuking my silly misspellings out of existence help
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How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?
Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake.  He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life.  This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.
Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...
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Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis
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“I could tell the truth.  But I don’t.” - Robin 66
...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.
And I think that’s great.
Below the cut:
Shorter version - key points about Jack
Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)
Final thoughts
Shorter version - key points about Jack:
He’s a bad parent.  He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.
But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way.  He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters.  Jack’s not a monster!  He just...kinda sucks.
He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset.  He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.
And Tim loves him, a lot.  Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!). 
...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in.  Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.
The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)
Very long version:
(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)
Okay!  So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation.  You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in!  I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.
My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area.  Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away.  He's just...not great.  Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.
I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD
My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)
Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values.  Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.
This is a great setup for an ongoing comic.  It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:
Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play; 
Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance; 
Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...); 
Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);
etc. etc.  
The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism.  Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.
And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.
I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever.  Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot.  And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...
...but also he ends up lying more and more.
(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)
Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation
(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)
Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do.  When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.
And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV.  If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really.  So what do you do?  Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around?  Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?  
Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy.  Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out.  How would you react?  Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts.  You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him.  You’re upset with his dad.  But also... what should you do, exactly?
Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.
My Harsher Take
Jack never hits his son.  But his temper is a big deal.
In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it.  When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.  
This is bad behavior!  It is Not Good!  
And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.
Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.
More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake
Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either.  Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust.  When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified.  When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem.  Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious.  And so on.
This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person.  So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.
The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.
Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations.  When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies).  When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him.  So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!).  It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.
Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.
For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy).  Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.
I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.
If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).
#tim drake#jack drake#ask tag#i wrote this ages ago and now i can't remember what i was going to add to it so oh well draft amnesty? sorry for the long wait anon!! <333#anyway i kept this carefully on topic and virtuously did not derail into talking about the other blorbo but tags are for disorganization SO#for me this kinda half-in half-out place where tim is with the batfamily is SUCH an interesting part of his relationship with dick#and i never stop turning it over in my head#he's kiiiinda replaced dick in that he's robin - but in a very real way he *hasn't* - he's NOT bruce's new son the way jason was#and early!tim makes a BIG POINT of how bruce is not his dad#and i think this relative distance from bruce is a huge factor in why dick is able to build a close relationship with tim at all#(because dick's still pretty estranged from bruce!)#and there's such interesting tension there when dick starts jokingly calling tim ''little brother'' or when villains call them brothers#because they're NOT. increasingly they would both LIKE to be brothers! but dick has zero official standing in tim's life#if tim got hit by a car in his civilian identity bruce and dick wouldn't even be able to visit him without his dad's permission#which jack would be pretty unlikely to give! jack doesn't like or trust bruce!#or like. this is morbid. but if tim died. dick wouldn't even be invited to the funeral you know?#and there's such interesting tension there for me in the contrast between this vigilante relationship that's very very close#but in their civilian lives no one would assume they're anything in particular to each other#anyway the 1st half of tim's robin solo has this thread of tension between tim's family life vs. his vigilante life (plus his mom's death)#and then the second half + red robin has the thread of struggling with grief in a world that's not fair + feeling lost/alone#and these two threads are a big part of my interest in tim as a character! jack's the backdrop that makes a lot of stories possible
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snehadarkacademia · 2 years
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Petition to stop calling it ' Aesthetic ' and start calling it ' the morbid longing for picturesque '
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autistic-af · 2 months
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The Diseases and Casualties this year being 1632
Abortive and stillborn - 445
Affrighted - 1
Aged - 628
Ague - 41
Apoplex and Meagrom - 17
Bit with a mad dog - 1
Bleeding - 3
Bloody flux, scowring, and flux - 348
Brused, issues, fores and ulcers - 18
Burnt and scalded - 5
Burst and rupture - 9
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Cancer, and Wolf - 10
Canker - 1
Childbed - 171
Chisomes and infants - 2268
Cold, and cough - 55
Colick, Stone and Strangury - 56
Consumption - 1797
Convulsion - 241
Cut of the stone - 5
Dead in the street, and starved - 6
Dropsie and swelling - 267
Drowned - 34
Executed and prest to death - 18
Falling sickness - 7
Fever - 1108
Fistula - 13
Flocks, and small pox - 531
French pox - 12
Gangrene - 5
Gout - 4
Grief - 11
Jaundies - 43
Jawsaln - 8
Impostume - 74
Kil'd by several accidents - 46
King's Evil - 38
Lethargie - 2
Livergrown - 87
Lunatique - 5
Made away themselves - 15
Measles - 80
Murthered - 7
Over-laid, and starved at nurse - 7
Palsie - 25
Piles - 1
Plague - 8
Planet - 13
Pleurisie and spleen - 36
Purples, and spotted fever - 38
Quinsie - 7
Rising of the Lights - 98
Sciatica - 1
Scurvy, and itch - 9
Suddenly - 62
Surset - 86
Swine pox - 6
Teeth - 470
Thrush and sore mouths - 40
Tympany - 13
Tissick - 34
Vomiting - 1
Wormes - 17
Christened:
Males - 4994
Females - 4590
In all - 9584
Buried:
Males - 4932
Females - 4603
In all - 9535
Whereof, of the plague - 8
Increased in the Burials in the 122 Parishes , and at the Pesthouse this year - 993
Decreased in the Plague in the 122 Parishes, and at the Pesthouse this year - 266
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abundantbutch · 17 days
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I've barely been gaining the last couple of months mostly due to forgetting to eat and being pretty unmotivated but I want to be so much fatter
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miggiisdumb · 4 months
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Haha maybe all this time I’ve romanticized the idea of love and relationships than actually being open to the real experience (I wrote a whole bible in the tags read if you dare…)
#tw vent#delete later#my god this got way too long#not maybe I know I did I heavily feed into my delulus about what I want in a partner#they’re either fill all the boxes or I don’t want them#but usually the type I want have no interest in me and are generally really unhealthy people emotionally aishsnsksu#and the ones that do like me are not what I’m into#like the person I’m talking to who is very sweet and showers me in praises and compliments#gets to know my personal interests#(clearly wants to get into a relationship if the ‘I love you’ bomb right on the second date…)#I just don’t feel the same way no matter how much time I spend with them#I keep nitpicking stupid things like how they’re too mellow and soft (I don’t like being the intimidating/assertive one)#it’s literally so shallow of me and I hate myself for if sometimes#because I come off as unapproachable most times to be viewed romantically#(plus they only like goths when goths aren’t into morbid and odd things aren’t nerds and don’t fall into depressive episodes)#so beggars def can’t be choosers in this case#but I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone I’m not physically attracted to#I refuse to settle for one trait or the other#because last time I went for looks I got my heart shredded by someone who didn’t care if I lived or died#and last time I went for personality they called me the love of their life fhe first month then left 3 months later#when I decided to focus on myself rather than babying their severe mommy issues#anyways#I have to break things off with this person I’m just bad at words and taking initiative#and start to accept that I really just want a relationship because I fantasized too much about it rather than wanting something real#I’ll just drown myself in new hobbies and friends instead of trying to rush my next 4 month relationship aidhsnsksudh#a very deep im sorry for whoever read all of this I love you and I hope you’re doing better than me
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fandom-geek17 · 1 year
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Wednesday: ”I’d do it again”
Tyler: ”I knew there was a reason I liked you”
Wednesday: Proceeds to dance like a peacock to attract her man
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papenathys · 1 year
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a trend i’ve noticed with booktok recently is their tendency to reference already published popular works as similar to their original work which i can not even begin to express how badly that concerns me
also how many “dark demonic evil brooding enemies to lovers” white men love interests can we keep having in books before ppl get sick of it i really want to know
"morally grey" at this point we all know it's just a euphemism for abuse and sexual coercion glossed over by the fact that he has high cheekbones and his mom might be dead
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august-taylors-version · 10 months
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“and i think mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
there's something so excellent about the idea of disappearing to some abandoned lighthouse placed on a misty cliff, roiling ocean waves crashing against jagged rocks metres below, evergreen trees slowly fading into slippery boulders and greyish sand, a tiny rowboat rocking back and forth on a stormy, wild, unrelenting sea. an oil lantern in a weathered hand, isolation and solitude giving way to a pleasant state of mind that, while utterly bizarre, is still wonderful in its own way. humming sea shanties you heard from some mad old sailor years ago under your breath, the lyrics long forgotten but the tune still wandering in circles around in the back of your mind, your voice hoarse from disuse. homoerotic internal monologues playing out dramatically in your thoughts, for you have spent far too long in your loneliness and now you have come to romanticise your life just a tad too much, though there really isn't much wrong with that at all. it would be a life of warm herbal tea, of thunderstorms and folk music, of cosy knit sweaters, of everlasting nights and gloomy days, of faded photographs of those lost at sea, of crying and laughing and smiling and breathing in the salty air, filling your lungs with life. i long for a life of solitude.
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carnivalcarrion · 8 months
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damn... kinda mad i didn't die in my dream last night... could've added another method to the list
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acheronist · 10 months
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i'm working on a zine about a historic cold case from my hometown to sell at an artist's market next month but i'm really proud of these pages ahhh....
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marsdeathdefiances · 2 months
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Going to force my mom to watch Troy later. I will share her thoughts with the class.
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