& on earth we're briefly gorgeous

lexi | critic & crier welcome to my slice of this world

[lexiandliterature]

what is madness if not the burden of knowledge?

[lexiandliterature]

i have enough ideas to write 100 books and enough indecision to write none.

[lexiandliterature]

because somewhere on my childhood street is a little girl, and all i want to do is wrap my arms around her and tell her how much wider the world is when you unclench your fists.

[lexiandliterature]

& i am universe collapsing in on itself, an eternity of possibility in my back pocket, a symphony of unanswered questions echoing into the void, where the only response is the deafening roar of uncertainty.

[lexiandliterature]

i've done more with words than he will do in his entire lifetime.

[lexiandliterature]

you fashioned words into weapons that you used to pay for my silence.

[lexiandliterature]

my tears have grown gardens in your honor that you steal from to gift me flowers as apologies.

[lexiandliterature]

spilled ink has taken the shape of monsters that look so much like you.

[lexiandliterature]

to be loved is to be know. and yes, i want to know your freckles and your moles and the gapes in your face that dimple when you smile, but more importantly, i want to know the little things. i want to know the way your childhood bedroom was arranged and the garden you passed everyday on your way to elementary school. i want to know the friend who's favorite color you've adopted and the brother you lost your first tooth to. i want to know the hand-me-down ambitions you wear and the dreams that no longer belong to you.

i want to tell you about what my childhood bedroom smelled like and the books i read that made me able to fall in love with you. i want to tell you about the girl who gave me my favorite nickname and the poems i wrote about you before we even met.

i want to tell you why my favorite color is cerulean blue like its complicated but really its because its the color of the sky and your eyes and the sweater andy wears in the devil wears prada because that's the kind of person i am.

[lexiandliterature]

copy paste & copyright: i loved fourth wing and i think i know why.

like everyone else, i have been patiently waiting for the third book of the empyrean series "onyx storm" to release and as i've been waiting, i've had some thoughts.

i've come to two conclusions as to why i enjoyed it so much, the first being the pacing. when i first read the books i could not put them down. credit to rebecca yarros because the flow was amazing. the endings of each chapter we're excellent and i couldn't wait to read the next chapter after i had just finished the last.

and the more important second conclusion, that her books are the literally a copy and paste every single dystopian/fantasy novel that has come before her.

don't believe me? well think for yourself.

when i first read fourth wing, i got this really strange feeling that i'd already read something very similar. and i was not wrong! red queen by victoria aveyard IS SO SIMILAR. two girls get ripped from their lives to join a magical school to hone their abilities, both of them lightning wielders with eventually some kind of light dyed hair at their tips. Both of them have an older brother who's just mysteriously died who we later learn aren't actually dead. and they both have friends that are actually in love with them (Kilorn vs Dain). they both fall in love with someone very very off limits, get a shocking reveal and then realize they are the pinnacle of this giant rebellion! also the naming? war storm? onyx storm?

not convinced? then let's compare it to divergent by veronica roth.

they both come from a quiet more reserved and then go to a place where they are to become soldiers (abnegation to dauntless, scribe to basgiath). they both have to take a test of bravery (tris' jump into the pit and violet's parapet). they both are extraordinarily weak but still have to fight in weekly fights where they basically almost die. when they finally start advancing in the rankings due to training they both receive assassination attempts (tris being almost thrown into a pit and violet being almost killed in her sleep). oh and don't forget BOTH of them fall in love with their superior. to top it all off, they're both the pinnacle of some rebellion.

i still LOVE fourth wing though because it honestly has some of my favorite parts of every single trope. and i understand that writers take influence from one another....

just me?

[lexiandliterature]

Hot take on Kaur, I'm glad to see someone else is awake.

i'm genuinely surprised that more people aren't talking about this but i guess i will.

i'll first preface this with the fact that i understand why people like this kind of "poetry." it's accessible, it's easy to understand, and most importantly, its relatable. but is that what poetry is? i'm not sure, you tell me. more importantly, is that what poetry's become? if it is, it's quite sad.

the way i think about instagram poetry is that someone had an idea, found a few nice words that went with said good idea, and then... gave up writing the rest of the poem. they then proceeded to click enter a few times to make it appeal to the eye and draw some line art that is vaguely related to the poem but would be more impactful IF THE POEM WAS ACTUALLY FINISHED. a lot of the lines kaur writes are not that bad, sometimes they pack a punch and if they were with an actual fleshed out poem, i don't think it would be so bad.

my main issues with here are that:

her writing screams lazy and i personally don't believe she can classify this as poetry. there is no fleshed out effort and certainly no intention. if you asked me to identify what exactly makes her writing unique i would say the brevity, which isn't so much a writing style as it is just a pure lack of care.

something i will get into in a later post, is the fact that she's marketing blank pages. she is profiting off of having 2 words on a page, a tiny drawing of something and then nothing on the rest of the page. let that sink in. she is making money off of her relatable content that can't even comprise one page of work. i am so certain that if you tried to jam all of her work on to a page, you would be able to fit most of it onto like 3 pages maximum.

the irony of all of this is that this 2-3 line work of i don't even know what is likely PLAGIARIZED. that's right. she stole someone else's work to shorten it into this abomination. i have no words.

[lexiandliterature]

sam cortland broke my heart.

i just finished assasin's blade and i don't think i can love rowan as much as i love sam right now. like i physically don't think it's possible. i know i'm not even that far into the series, but what is going on.

sam loved her. FOR SO LONG. and maybe their romance may have felt a bit rushed, but the fact that the one thing he asked arobynn for in return for his forgiveness was making sure aelin was never hurt WAS GOLDEN. their interactions had me screaming.

AND sam and aelin had all these plans to move away but of course arobynn with his controlling little self had to meddle. that man is on my hit list now i swear, if he doesn't get killed off soon im going to be very upset.

rowan better be the best to aelin, because im not sure i'm ever getting over sam. i need reassurance that this gets better because i actually started crying.