vienna-lily

[vienna-lily]

honey, it’s getting harder to pretend

kissing your cheek beneath the covers, loving you in the small space between these four walls

(avoiding your eyes in the hallways

loving you in secret)

[vienna-lily]

honey, it’s getting harder to pretend

kissing your cheek beneath the covers, loving you in the small space between these four walls

(avoiding your eyes in the hallways

loving you in secret)

#lesbian #lgbtq #sapphic #wlw poetry #heartbreak poetry #growing up #love poem #closeted #hidden love #homophobia #poetry

[vienna-lily]

A Clockwork Orange Notes

PART ONE

-Already the book starts differently than the movie, don't hate me for watching the movie before reading the book. The boys hassle a smoke shop before the homeless man, which was not included in the movie. They sweeten up some old ladies at a diner (?) as an alibi.

-"It's a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no more."

-"--The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen" pg 27. Foreshadowing.

-Alex is the alpha of the pack, just as he was in the movie.

-Alex is a teenager, or college age student.

-Alex's dream of Georgie being a general is also foreshadowing.

-P. R. Deltoid's warning to Alex tells us that Alex has been caught and in trouble before, enough times for him to have a post corrective advisor stop to visit him in his home. Sent there by Alex's mother.

-I think it's important to note that Alex using the same "my friend has fainted" play has it's own glimpse onto Alex's intelligence. While he does make himself appear to be high and mighty, no one is smarter than me, type character, why would he use the same play to lure people into opening their doors for him? If it's worked a few times in the past to get him what he wants, eventually people will catch the repetition and become warned of that phrase. Maybe that is why the cat lady was suspicious of the phrase from the start. She'd been warned and did the right thing but denying him entry and calling the police right away. Our Humble Narrator isn't as smart as he thinks.

-Alex is 15 at the the story takes place.

-Alex's lingo has a chokehold on my every waking moment. It haunts me how fluid it feels when I'm reading it, even though I have no idea what he's saying most of the time. I do find it interesting how the author indicates that the adults in the story speak without Alex's lingo, they speak "proper".

PART TWO

-Alex is now 17.

-It seems like in the film they completely removed the second murder Alex was convicted of, which I feel would have been important towards telling his story. In the film, they show Alex having taken responsibility and showing interested in becoming a better man. In the book, Alex is still manipulative and a bad character. He hasn't learned from his crimes. He's just annoyed that he is forced to be around people he considers to be lesser than him. He's disgusted by them. He's looking in the mirror and refuses to see his own reflection.

-Aversion therapy is what is happening here, where the patient is given an undesirable stimuli while being shown images, or in Alex's case, films, in order to treat the unwanted behavior. This was also administered as treatment for "curing" homosexuality back in the day alongside castration to cure gayness. While the practice has been looked down upon and shamed for the mental harm it causes patients who underwent this treatment, unfortunately conversion therapy and aversion therapy is still practiced today. However, there are proper non-harmful ways to use aversion therapy and is sometimes recommended by therapists. Aversion therapy is a type of behavioral therapy. It is sometimes used to help treat nail biting, alcoholism (some medications used to treat alcohol abuse trigger a sick feeling response when alcohol is consumed), and smoking.

-The "vitamin" injection was the undesirable stimuli, making Alex feel weak and the showing of the criminal activities on film made Alex condition criminal activity with feeling sick. Which is why later on when Alex is kicked around and shown breasts, he becomes sick. This is similar to the alcoholism aversion therapy medication which makes the patient nauseous when they consume alcohol. The author writing about this therapy did a great job at expressing the thoughts and actions and makes me wonder if he did this on purpose or if it was accidental.

-Alex is quickly beginning to realize the horrors he had committed. While it was fun and games for him before, now having the undesirable stimuli to punish his behavior is teaching him that crime is not fun and games.

-I wonder why they didn't show a scene of Alex hitting his head against the wall and showing sickness from it in the film. I feel they grazed over this part of the book, showing Alex and the films, his shouting and anger at the doctors playing his favorite music, but the read pain is in Alex's physical reactions. A duality can be found between pre-cured Alex and the correctional doctors, the violence is different but still violence. Same with the police violence towards the end.

-"Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?" page 129.

PART THREE

-Alex still feels higher than everyone else, that he's more important than everyone else.

-In the end, Alex didn't learn anything. He went right back to worshipping violence.

#read this when trying to understand tco 😭

[vienna-lily]

SUCCESSION 2018 - 2023

Is that why you're paying a billion dollars for a gay little website?

[vienna-lily]

I want to reread pink lemonade but I also want to reread crimson rivers but I also want to reread just lovers but I also wanna reread cadence but I also wanna reread only the brave but I also wanna reread you signed up for this but I also wanna…

[vienna-lily]

Do you think that if I were someone better, I could have been something different than what I am now?

Its part of the job description; hating yourself and every single thing about you. When you realise that you are, in fact, just an ordinary teenage girl who isn’t especially clever, or pretty, or friendly, then it becomes harder to get up each morning - every movement before 10 a.m. is a struggle, to keep going, to not give up.

It is your parents that made you feel special and different to everyone else, who made you believe you could be someone extraordinary. And so, when you become an unsurprising person as you grow, your parents don’t lose faith in you, they aren’t disappointed. No, instead they are kind and warm, an embodiment of extraordinary people who had once been ordinary.

They give you hope that you can become as fundamentally good as they are, but its not quite enough; there will always be things and people and thoughts that make you feel ordinary, or even less than. I don’t know if it was built into me from childhood, this desperate need to be better than everyone else in everything I do, but it is there and it will not leave.

If it is finding love, having children, and growing older that makes you extraordinary, then I cannot see myself ever being in that position. It isn’t self-pitying when I say that I don’t think anyone could ever love me in that all-consuming way that everyone wants to be loved. The love I have for my parents, for my brother, feels at this moment that it can’t be topped by anything or anyone else. But more precisely, I haven’t seen a type of romantic love directed towards me that makes me feel beautiful - something I want to feel more than anything.

As of now, I don’t feel like things will change for me.

I find myself looking at old photographs, wishing to go back to a simpler time where my only worries were what was for dinner that night, if mum would let me watch tv before bed, how my brother could fit so many grapes in his mouth.

#poetry #family #lesbian #lgbtq #sapphic #heartbreak poetry #growing up #eighteen #turning 18 #kinda freaking out about the future #poemsbyme #sad poetry #original poem #tiktok saw it first #cynicism

[vienna-lily]

i think i fell in love with her as soon as she leaned close to me and whispered sweet noise in my ear

or maybe it was the way her nose scrunched up when she laughed

she used to laugh a lot, with me

i hit her on the shoulder playfully, just any excuse to touch her

was it when she asked if i liked her hair, when she told me my nose ring looked nice?

or when she warmed my hands up by letting me touch her radiator palms.

i fell in love with her either way,

her with that laugh, that hair, those eyes, those hands.

#wlw poetry #poetry #lesbian #lgbtq #love poem #sapphic #teenage love #original poem #poetic

[vienna-lily]

Favorite Books of all time for now

[vienna-lily]

i guess when you feel unloveable it’s because you’ve never been loved by someone that doesn’t have to love you. you’ve never been loved by choice, and that really fucks you up

#growing up #unrequited love #teenage love #family #poetry #i think never being in a relationship before has seriously damaged me lollll

[vienna-lily]

if silly fanfic can’t be considered the best piece of literature you’ve ever read, then why Turn ? why Away Childish Things ? why Running on Air ? why Dwelling ? why The Man Who Lived ? why Reparations ? why The Bolthole ? why Grounds for Divorce ?

#drarry #drarry fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #saras_girl #away childish things #running on air #aideomai #fic rec #harry potter #draco malfoy

[vienna-lily]

i was never afraid of being ordinary - now i think i am.

i’ve felt the recklessness of being alive and now i am unstoppable.

or did i just disappear with the bustling crowd?

our love ran away with the wind.

it trickles down open grates, dripping dripping dripping.

do you think you’re the only one who can still taste the chlorine?

could you just fall, head over heels, for me.

i’ve done it for you time and time again - it’s not hard, honey, it’s just like falling asleep.

loving in screams, loving in whispers

that was all we were meant for -

touching each other in a time of desperate need

#poetry #love poetry #wlw poetry #lesbian #lesbian poetry #sapphic #lgbtq #heartbreak poetry #unrequited love #lots of nonsense metaphors #that probably don’t make any sense

[vienna-lily]

i know that i am difficult to love, that i never make things easy for you, but loving you feels like the most simple thing in the world

#poetry #lgbt #in love #maybe #love poetry #he makes me smile so much

[vienna-lily]

one day you’re 10 years old and he’s sleeping on the sofa bed downstairs because he ‘snores too loud for mom’, the next you’re 17 and you miss your dad more than anything

#divorced parents check #family #i love my dad okay #ig i never got over it #prob never will loll #poetry

[vienna-lily]

yes, sometimes i forget my fathers favourite colour, the year he was born, his first girlfriends name. but i will always remember that he is kind. that his eyes twinkle mischievously when he’s happy. that he loves me, effortlessly and without condition.

#father and daughter #poetry #family #i love my dad so much #i don’t want to leave him ever ever #growing up sucks

[vienna-lily]

if loving you is like falling asleep, i want that moment where i feel myself about to drift off, can even see the beginnings of a dream in my mind, and i feel peaceful and gentle and warm and safe.

you feel peaceful and gentle and warm and safe.

[vienna-lily]

if loving you is like falling asleep, i want that moment where i feel myself about to drift off, can even see the beginnings of a dream in my mind, and i feel peaceful and gentle and warm and safe.

you feel peaceful and gentle and warm and safe.

#poetry #kind of #on my unrequited love sh!t again #unrequited love #love poem #sad poetry

[vienna-lily]

i love you. i’m glad i exist. 🍊

#the orange by wendy cope