A TALAY WEB WEAVE/CHARACTER ANALYSIS
— vice versa (2022) ⪢ requested by @talays-portkey
abigail dewitt, when writing fiction hurts the people you love || t.s. eliot, the confidential clerk || vincent van gogh, letter from vincent van gogh to anthon van rappard June 1882 || margaret atwood, the woman who could not live with her faulty heart || franz kafka, letters to milena || curlzformetal, my collection the language of strangers || marya hornbacher, wasted || e.m. forster, maurice || anaïs nin, the diary of anaïs nin, vol. 1 || michael gray, i think love is something that happens to other people || zen cho, the four generations of chang e || kazuo ishiguro, when we were orphans || terry pratchett, a hat full of sky || tennessee williams, the night of the iguana || warsan shire, when i love
even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into oblivion.
“All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world.”
After the fairy tale, the world is hazy, blue.
The roles and faces here are unrehearsed.
The soldier sings the partisan’s laments.
The young girl plays her songs of mourning…
as the world caves in
memorial to a marriage / louise glück / mary ruefle / sylvia plath / life to the last drop, mahmoud darwish / leaving the movie theatre, wisława szymborska / gwendolyn macewen / from an old post by @librarycard / two umbrellas, heather ihn martin / howards end by e.m. forster / the conditional, ada limón / @soracities / certain days, certain hours by erik mattijssen / the hot chair by william ireland / come. and be my baby, maya angelou
[Image ID:
(1) a marble statue of two lovers lying down, embracing.
(2) text saying “I remember thinking the world ended a long time ago but no one noticed. I remember every dinner”. the first line is highlighted in green.
(3) If someone said to me again: 'Supposing you were to die tomorrow, what would you do?' I wouldn't need any time to reply. If I felt drowsy, I would sleep. If I was thirsty, I would drink. If I was writing, I might like what I was writing and ignore the question. If I was having lunch, I would add a little mustard and pepper to the slice of grilled meat. If I was shaving, I might cut my earlobe. If I was kissing my girlfriend, I would devour her lips as if they were figs. If I was reading, I would skip a few pages. If I was peeling an onion, I would shed a few tears. If I was walking, I would continue walking at a slower pace. If I existed, as I do now, then I wouldn't think about not existing. If I didn't exist, then the question wouldn't bother me. If I was listening to Mozart, I would already be close to the realms of the angels. If I was asleep, I would carry on sleeping and dream blissfully of gardenias. If I was laughing, I would cut my laughter by half out of respect for the information. What else could I do, even if I was braver than an idiot and stronger than Hercules?
(4) CROZIER:
(Speaking slowly, painfully)
We scattered our instruments behind us, and left them where they fell Like pieces of our bodies, like limbs We no longer had need for; we walked on and dropped them, compasses, tins, tools, all of them. Now we come to the end of science...
(5) a living room with a green couch and lots of ornaments.
(6) a painting of a white kitchen door with an umbrella and a pair of boots leaning against it.
(7) text saying “We know that there's poetry. We know that there's death.” the word know is italicized in both sentences.
(8) Say tomorrow doesn't come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright future, stuck like a bum star, never coming close, never dazzling.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified. Say the sun's a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter.
Say we never meet her. Never him. Say we spend our last moments staring at each other, hands knotted together, clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn't matter.
Say, That would be enough.
Say you'd still want this: us alive, right here, feeling lucky.
(9) a tumblr post by @/soracities, saying “maybe a lot of life really is just figuring out who you'd sit and do the dishes with even while the world ends”.
(10) a realistic painting of a bedroom. there is a desk, a bed and an open window. several baskets hang above the bed.
(11) an impressionist painting of a living room with an open door and beams of sunlight coming in. a few armchairs are seen.
(12) Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we've got a week or two
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
I would, in fact, be delighted if you would be pleased to expound on changes made in the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of A Room With A View. I vaguely remember dissatisfaction with the treatment of Cyril, but I return to the book much more frequently, and have a poor memory of what is and is not altered in the film.
@amethystineprose also made a request, so here is my quarter-century old rant about the nits I pick with the film.
1. The barley field instead of the field of cornflowers.
This I can find it in myself to forgive; if there is not a field of cornflowers to be had and the budget does not support creating one, one does what one must. (Even more sympathy after hearing James Ivory talk about how it rained for most of the production of Maurice and they managed to film the cricket scene on one of the few mostly-clear days.) But it means we don't get this:
George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.
"Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called, “Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!” The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett who stood brown against the view.
"He saw the barley beat against her dress in green-golden waves" is I suppose adequate. But we don't get enough of Lucy's radiant joy, and we lose the blue of the flowers mirroring the blue of the sky to create a perfect colorful silent self-enclosed moment plucked from quotidian reality. And then Miss Bartlett should appear breaking the moment and against the view to remind them of the brown and the conventional and the accepted back to which she will pull Lucy with virtuous vexation. The intercutting of Charlotte's approach with the kiss highlights the brevity of the moment, but also undermines its intensity and unity, and lessens Charlotte's impact as an invading force intruding suddenly upon the scene.
An offense against Forster's color and nature symbolism, with mitigating factors of filmmaking on location is hard and sometimes nature just won't cooperate. But Maggie Smith is a world champion at passive aggression and the soundtrack for this scene is glorious.
(Also just dropping this here: the symbolism of the Blaue Blume.)
2. Lucy plays piano, specifically two pieces by Robert Schumann, at a party at Mrs. Vyse's house in London, as part of her assumed assimilation into the Vyse set.
“Now some Beethoven,” called Cecil, when the querulous beauty of the music had died. She shook her head and played Schumann again. The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It broke; it was resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle to the grave. The sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art—throbbed in its disjected phrases, and made the nerves of the audience throb. Not thus had she played on the little draped piano at the Bertolini, and “Too much Schumann” was not the remark that Mr. Beebe had passed to himself when she returned.
[...]
“But her music!” he exclaimed. “The style of her! How she kept to Schumann when, like an idiot, I wanted Beethoven. Schumann was right for this evening. Schumann was the thing."
Schumann was the thing. Forster is emphatic on this point, as he was on the significance of Beethoven to Lucy's characterization earlier. So why on earth in the film does she play Schubert? My kindest explanation is that there was a typo or a misunderstanding somewhere, because it's such an arbitrary and nonsensical change.
An offense against Forster's music symbolism, with exaggerating factors of you could have had her just play some Schumann I mean come on.
3. OK, this is the one that irks me the most: the flattening of Mr. Emerson's character.
(This is not to cast any aspersions whatsoever on the magnificent Denholm Elliott and his performance, which is a treasure and a delight and in many ways is the heart of this film. No one else could bumble so exquisitely.)
Yes, sure, cut his backstory, it's tangential enough that it makes sense to lose it in a feature-length adaptation.
But it makes it all the more important that his dialogue evoke that unspoken backstory and the role it has played in George's development and in how he and George relate to Lucy. And a key moment of film dialogue is SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT from what he says in the book.
“I only know what it is that’s wrong with him; not why it is.”
“And what is it?” asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale.
“The old trouble; things won’t fit.”
“What things?”
“The things of the universe. It is quite true. They don’t.”
“Oh, Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?”
In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said: "‘From far, from eve and morning, And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I.’
"George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don’t believe in this world sorrow.”
Miss Honeychurch assented.
“Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.”
The film turns the rueful moderation of the last line into "By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes, and a Yes, and a Yes!" -- quite a different emotion! The novel's version maintains a delicate balance, as Forster's works so often take care to do: yes, the world doesn't fit, but we can still rejoice; the branch beneath us may fail, but we can still call out for beauty, joy, and love; we may be caught in a muddle, but we can still strive to know ourselves and others truly.
An offense against theme and Forster's whole artistic philosophy, and the misstep I most regret in this otherwise glorious adaptation.
Modern AU! Attack on Titan where it was real all along and it's 2022 you fell in love with a hero from a different era who saved the world.
╚══ஓ๑♡๑ஓ══╝
You first learned about the history of Titans at school, in middle school to be precise. Safe to say that it immediately sparked your interest. A never-ending war between Humanity and Titans? Eldians and Marleyans? You wanted to learn more about this fascinating yet terrifying era of history. So you've read books, watched documentaries, and you've never gotten bored of it! Even now as an adult, you still have a passion for history. Well, history and.. Him. One of the greatest hero of all time (the best to you) Levi Ackerman. You ended up falling for him throughout the years, as you became older and more mature.
Levi Ackerman, considered “Humanity's strongest soldier” for Eldians. You're pretty sure you know everything about him now. Where he came from, his years in the Survey Corps, the loved ones he's lost, what he liked, how he acted, how people viewed him.. Up until his last battle. Afterwards, you don't know where he ended up (nobody knows), and how was his life after his last battle. You only hope he had the life he deserved.
«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»
One sunny afternoon, your friends and yourself decide to hang out outside for the entire day. they end up surprising you by bringing you to a museum about the history of the Titans. After about an hour and a half visiting the museum with your friends, they get distracted and talk a few meters ahead of you, leaving you unintentionally behind. You pay little to no mind to that as you know how hard it already must be for them to spend their entire afternoon in a museum, considering they're all doing it for you. You decide to take your time, and you end up seeing dark, grey clouds covering the entire sky through the windows. You look out for a brief instant. You can hear rain, and its soothing sound hitting on the roof. It's quite pleasing, visiting an empty museum like that. Besides your friends and yourself, it seems like there's barely a living soul.
The room you've just entered is empty. It strikes you by how big, cold and utterly silent it is. It's filled with statues of all important figures relating to Titans' history. You slowly walk through the room, coming accross the faces of the heroes and the devils of history.
«Floch Forster»
«Armin Arlert»
«Mikasa Ackerman»
«Eren Jaeger»
«Erwin Smith»
«Hanji Zoe»
«Levi Ackerman»
You freeze and stare at his ethereal face, his expression hard and his marble eyes piercing yours. Ignoring the sign not to touch it, you walk up to him, caressing his cheeks made of stone. It's smooth and cold to the touch, and you can't help but smile fondly at his pretty face. Your smile suddenly drops.
That's not him.
It's just marble.
It's hard,
Cold
It doesn't breathe
It doesn't think
It
doesn't
see
me
Thunder falls out of the sky in a deafening flash, illuminating the statue and your trembling hand. You don't even notice until they roll down your trembling lip that fat tears of despair are escaping your eyes. You're so, deeply, genuinely in love with this man, this man who saved the world, gave his entire being for it and never asked for anything in return. This man who lost everything and stayed strong because he had to. This man who never experienced love, never experienced your love. Your love that would've fixed his broken, delicate heart. Your love that could've brought a genuine, rare smile upon his face. The love that you've never had the chance to give him. You will never hear his voice, see his living form, touch his warm body. You know everything about him, yet he died never knowing you.
You never had a single chance, because it's simply impossible. It's 2022 and he's dead, and you've never met, and you never will. It was never meant to be.
The heart-wrenching realization starts to physically hurt you, as you desperately grasp your chest, trying to get a hold of your broken heart, to just make it stop hurting. Your knees hit the ground in a hard thud, right in front of his statue, as violent sobs resonate through the big empty room. The roaring thunder covers your cries of despair, it being the only occasional source of light in the room.
Why?
Love is a cruel joke.
I'm very sorry if it's badly written I didn't even mean to write a whole goddamn fanfiction I just wanted to write a lil scenario
And sorry I couldn't put the divider and the words further apart, Tumblr stop fucking bugging, seriously this is not aesthetic pleasing at all
Nur noch 4 Tage bis zum Start der 3. Staffel #DasBoot! 🤩 Immer samstags auf Sky One & jederzeit mit Sky Ticket! ⚓
Die neue Staffel folgt dem Schicksal einer unerfahrenen U-Boot-Crew unter Robert Ehrenberg, die auf eine gefährliche Mission geschickt wird und dabei ins Visier eines besessenen Royal Navy Commanders gerät! Währenddessen deckt Hagen Forster im neutralen Lissabon ein tödliches Komplott um den Diebstahl von geplündertem Kriegsgold auf!
Fotos: Stephan Rabold, Sky Deutschland
Thank you Nelya - Tumblr nelyft - for the edited picture! 🌻 🚤 ⚓
The Band of Heathens and Jaime Wyatt team up with eTown hosts Nick & Helen Forster for this rendition of Neil Young's "Helpless."
____________________
Helpless
Songwriter: Neil Young
There is a town in north Ontario
With dream comfort memory to spare
In my mind, I still need a place to go
All my changes were there
Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us
Helpless, helpless, helpless
Baby can you hear me now? (Helpless, helpless, helpless)
The chains are locked and tied across the door
Baby, sing with me somehow (helpless, helpless, helpless)
Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes
Leave us