I thought of trying internal rhyme across adjacent lines as well as trying syllabic verse again. The impetus for this particular exercise was the news of Republican politicians in Tennessee expelling Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for so-called insurrection. I’ve visited the Smokies before. My parents and I still plan on travelling there again in the fall, and I hope for another meaningful spiritual encounter, but it really does seem that Christian-nationalist authoritarianism has spoiled the land. I must confess that many of the lines seem long-winded, but perhaps that does sometimes happen with slightly lengthened lines trying to say a lot. I also must confess to making multiple edits during the last phase of revision before posting, but that’s surely a good thing.
See the trees on the slopes of the hills on the
Great Smoky Mountains, changing from green to gold
To bare and back, and see the beasts and birds,
From elk to bobcat to woodpecker to owl.
See how free and diverse and spontaneous
They are when making a soundscape in concert.
Maybe elves and gnomes really did move there to
Share a home with Tlanuawa, great mythic hawks.
So why, then, do fair-skinned hands muzzle Black mouths?
Surely Black voices offer meaningful words.
Did Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, whose name
Is spoken out loud, force people to comply
And install him as absolute Emperor?
Pointed white hoods put down roots among the hills.
An emptied white culture defaced the mountains.
Elves, Gnomes, and Tlanuwa would see a disgrace.
For the sake of the diverse voices on the
Great Smoky Mountains, we need to make hard choices
I know my verse is superficial;
I write with speed that’s prejudicial
To any depth or sense of art
And rarely touch the mind or heart.
It may be funny here and there
But nothing that requires care
Or exploration of the soul
Or diligence of craft; I scroll
The dash until I find a phrase
To versify in witty ways.
Because it’s such an easy feat
I tend to do it on repeat
And never really go beyond
These little tricks of which I’m fond:
Arranging words with quick facility
And that’s it really. My ability
Has nothing special or mysterious
In fact I’m scared of writing serious
Verse in case my efforts pall
And show I’ve no real skill at all.
Are you ready to inhabit your new grown-up sensuality?
Old enough since your body’s grown enough to embrace this new-fangled sexuality.
Yet young enough and wide-eyed to be desired for your purity
all the naiveté blinds the fact that this lesson is cursory.
One day you’ll wake up to find that the good strangers desire you in their minds
and your innocence and youthful smile does not turn them kind.
Body hair stripped, untouched and undone
this carousel ride around the world of grown-up dealings isn’t any fun.
They know that you’re young and they like the way that sounds
welcome to the adult’s playground.
I never uploaded these concept doodles I did of ocs of mine. I'm sure some of them are obvious as to what barcodes I scrubbed off for them, but regardless we got some non-fandom characters that I'm still really endeared to - you'll see them crop up in my animations a lot! And the animations are why these sketches exist so I had a decent enough reference for drawing? Decent. Not perfect since my first Celes one was way off model, but regardless
(under the cut because theres a Lot)
Diana Wrenreth (she/her) - she's been one of my oldest ocs and one I've had for a long while now. She and her twin, Hestia, are mixed kids - with Diana taking after their Moirai father, and Hestia taking after their Dulla mother. So, half elves to a degree but also not. Their father came from one of the few draconic Moirai lines left so Diana's a bit of a raptor/wyvern, but has that Dulla knack for wrangling and befriending fiends and as such is a horse girl but...yeah the horse is a six legged carnivorous hellhorse. She's like...I think 5'6", mostly uses darkness and ice, is bisexual, and has two girlfriends - Andrea, and Anastasia
Hestia Wrenreth (she/her) - Diana's twin sister (so also 5'6") who leans more Dulla than Moirai. She's a lesbian who's a bit haughty, but I don't really do much with her than have her stand in contrast to Diana. Mostly because Diana gets into trouble a lot while Hestia tries to keep her head down. Like the name implies, she's fire aspected and whatnot, and she has a girlfriend in this oc of mine named Rose (shut up), but otherwise just keeps her head down.
Andrea Hunt (she/her) - so this is my huge werewolf butch. Her family is the head of her hometown and they want her to follow suit, but she really doesn't vibe with that. So she's constantly skipping town to hang out with her girlfriends. Really obnoxious jock type, 6'3" or so, and a lot of fun. Like I said, butch lesbian and her girlfriends are Diana and Anastasia
Anastasia Spiros (she/her) - it's gonna be really obvious what she used to be in a second, but Anastasia is another mixed kid. She's a 6'1" Moirai and Einhenjar, but was raised by her Einhen father since her Moirai mother (one from an equine line) abandoned her. Her dad did what he could, but she was self raised and self taught for most of her life regardless. Still loves her dads (yes, dads! he now has a half-elf botanist husband), but she'd rather focus on herself since it's all she's done. Due to her mother being an equine Moirai, Ana inherited those traits but...She got stuck with warped, permanent horse hoof legs. Her wings are retractable, but the hooves are permanent (okay yeah she used to be an aasimar/tiefling). She's a femme lesbian and is with Andrea and Diana
Rhombi Nerodi (he/him exclus) - another mixed kid, this time an Einhenjar and a Changling. Rhombi's got a very devil may care attitude and kinda lives each day like it's his last. Einhenjar don't really take too well other Einhenjar they can't control - be them banished, or mixed kids like Rhombi and Anastasia - so they often don't let them stay unaffiliated with the Barracks for very long and this ends up with them hunting Einhen rogues down. It's in part to keep their actual nature in check since they project a noble Men Only thing, but they're really these fucked up eldritch monstrosities - and Rhombi? With his mother being a Changling? Yeah, his form is very fluid and he likes to reflect that when possible. Beyond, he's also living proof that Einhenjar aren't all cis men only (with daughters tending to be near 100% like the moms, a direct opposite to Valkyrie): Rhombi's a trans man. So him being a Changling's kid wound up being the biggest boon to him. He's bisexual and polyamorous, and in an open relationship with his loving girlfriend, Celes.
Celestrias Stratos (she/her) - Celes is fun, I love her. She's 5'8", a Moirai from a sea snake line, and a roboticist and makes her own prosthetics. Unlike the rest of the cast, she's not from the main area (Daedrus), and instead from a really different content called Essios. All Moirai that live there are of aquatic or avian lines, like Celes' sea snake line, and they coexist with peoples not seen in Daedrus like various centaurs or true elves (elfin rather than elven - the elfin are split into two groups and both are winged, while the elven were originally called Seelie and are split into two groups with four subgroups in each). This content also doesn't ban technology the way Daedrus does, which is why Celes is Like This. She got quickly adopted into the main group, and wound up dating Rhombi. She's a demi-bisexual in an open relationship with her boyfriend, and yes it is something they both use
Pricus Marinus (he/they) - 6'1" quiet guy. He's a Dulla from where Diana and Hestia grew up and is very good friends with them and Rhombi, the latter of whom he does a lot of work with. Don't let the soft boi stuff fool you, this guy is built underneath the heavy clothes. He's a farmboy who's good with both animals and fiends and just way prefers to be by himself? Nerd, soft spoken, yet can and will kick your ass if it comes down to it. I haven't really figured out much for him besides being just the Quiet One of the group, but I do know that he's bisexual because that's mandatory
Neilos Metaxas (he/him) - okay so this douche. 6'3", I'm not sure how I'm gonna do his color scheme but it needs to scream douchebag and sleezy but uh. Yeah he's another Moirai from Essios, but he's not apart of the group. He's specifically over here trying to track down Celes because he's got this warped idea of their relationship because he's a roboticist who sees himself as her one and only rival where as she doesn't even give him the time of day? The bracers are docking stations for drone stuff he uses. As far as Moirai go, he's not a recognizable animal from irl because he's technically descended from a snake line but it somewhere got mixed with some centaurs and so now he's just this. Big scaly "centaur" that has the general shape of one, but has a stupid long snake tail, a snake head and hood and it's just fucking weird looking. But also he's 9ft tall like that. Anyways, he thinks he's straight because of the Celes stuff but he's confusing envy for attraction and this bitch is gay. And an antag.
Avalon Tellus (she/her exclus) - this is another old ass oc that's gone through a lot of revisions. Avalon is a Moirai and a bounty hunter that specializes in taking down dragons. As far as marks go, dragons are...well they're tricky because first you gotta find the human form they hide in and then contend with their big ass dragon form. Avalon is one of the few that intentionally tries to keep them alive, so she usually gets hired by people trying to track down family that are being difficult. And that's how she met her current boyfriend, Akuma - she kicked his ass because his cousin wanted some sense beat into him, then the cousin changed the terms of the contract from "bring him back" to "no, you gotta guard him now". Part of what makes Avalon a pretty adept one is the fact that she's from a draconic line of Moirai, so she often leads like she's not but it ends up in a fight between two very large dragons (though since she's a Moirai, she doesn't look like any of the dragons that can be found in Daedrus). Because of Akuma being their godfather, she helped raise Diana and Hestia (and their brother, Marcus) when their parents were killed. More so the twins, but regardless she's been more of a parental figure to them than their own parents got to be. She's a bisexual trans woman, and like I said her boyfriend is a really obnoxious dragon named Akuma and they're assholes and stuck with each other now .w.
I’ve started a sub-series of personal journals dedicated to learning about poetry. I wanted to fill last few pages of the first sketchbook. Hallowe’en came up and I’ve contemplated serious work with ancestral spirits, so I thought of writing an exercise involving ancestral spirits. I even decided to attempt inventing a custom form, or nonce form, mainly with variations in accentual meter and a refrain. On the same day that I completed a draft, I read it when meeting with the discussion group at a metaphysical store—I may have temporarily derailed the planned discussion, though everyone did show appreciation. I went ahead and retyped and posted this on the same evening after going home.
Along a region of forests and mountains,
People came together to form
A lineage that crossed an ocean for good and ill.
What is buried within my bloodline
Cannot be all glorious.
Do the dead dwell among us unseen?
Dare I reach to the dead across the screen?
What is my duty here and now?
Whatever their errors and failures may be,
I may need to work to correct those.
My ancestors remain within my bloodline.
Do they still feel?
Do the dead dwell among us unseen?
Dare I reach to the dead across the screen?
The veil erodes on darkest nights,
When the bats hunt and the moon glares.
Do chills come from the weather or something else?
everyone and their mothers are posting spidersona stuff rn so I thought I’d share my doodle I made after the first spiderverse movie
I’m a huge spiderman nerd, I have a lot of the comics and was super excited to see Hobie Brown and Ben Reilly (rip Otto, I was really hoping to see him 😭)