miracle aligner, go and get em’ tiger @angelofstrings - Tumblr Blog

( you with the dark curls, you with the watercolor eyes

you who bares all your teeth in every smile. )

#the poppy war #tpw #qara suren #chaghan suren #angelofstringsart

“and I’ll never be ready, but I don’t care,” resonates with her. I just know it.

It just keeps you turning up the dial. Up and up and up. You start getting tunnel vision about it all. All that exists is the payoff and the dial.

I thought, Well, at least the rewards are so great. Persistence pays off. And then I realized there were no rewards coming. That it was too late, and there was no way out.” ...“It was the absolute farce of it all,” said Elspeth. “One day it all seemed so silly to me, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it. The symbolic system collapsed. You write a good paper, and it’s rejected because your reviewer was having a bad day. You’re a perfect fit for a job, and you lose to the committee chair’s godson. Once you have a job it doesn’t get better—do you know how many people are passed over for tenure because someone somewhere once felt they were rude at a party? I mean, what’s the fucking point? I couldn’t keep up the charade, but also I didn’t see the value in anything else, so I just put a stop to it all. I could not care anymore." ...But Cambridge gives you none of these. It just keeps you turning up the dial. Up and up and up. You start getting tunnel vision about it all. All that exists is the payoff and the dial. Until one day my dial broke.” She shrugged. “That’s really all there was to it. One day I stopped being able to feel anything at all. There was no difference between pain and pleasure. It was all just the same wash. Nothing mattered."

— R.F. Kuang, Katabasis: A Novel (William Morrow, August 26, 2025)

beautifulbookishdisaster

She had the absurd urge to take a swim, and it was the same kind of thought that invaded her mind when she stood any place high up. What if she climbed out that window? Tumbled off the edge? The waters seemed so cool, so soothing, and she imagined herself dropping down through that glassy surface without so much as a ripple.

#katabasis #THIS QUOTE….