floriculture; except it has nothing to do with floral arrangements and everything to do with flowery language
i spent a good five minutes debating how i would structure my newly realized and niche content, and have come to the conclusion that i will simply exercise my most habitual approach of winging it. what does this mean for me? i’ll write first and think later - which will come after deleting my account once i post. let the mind work at its most unfiltered and all that. not to mention that any and all posts i have the courage to share on here will double as evidence of my illiteracy. what does that mean for you? well you have the agency to scroll past or scroll through the rambled study of my own thoughts and prose. while an audience is nice, i do not seek it, but while you’re here-
insomnia mind map starter pack
when the clock hits midnight my brain enters a stage of creative frenzy. i descend down a rabbit hole and i can either follow it immediately or bury it beneath my dreams. tonight chose the former so i’ll get right into the train of thought that initiated everything.
sometimes i pretend to be a youtuber. the girls that get it, get it, and the girls that don’t, don’t. but i mean speaking to the open air as if a camera is filming me list off the products for my skincare routine or steps for my day-in-the-life. it’s fun, that’s really all i can say about it. a good live, laugh, like and subscriber. as much as it gives me a good chuckle to joke and engage about it, i have enough self awareness to acknowledge that a youtube career is the least realistic route i can take. this has nothing to do with believing in myself or being camera shy or anything. i am simply not charismatic enough to be in front of a camera for an extended period of time. and talking at that??? goodbye. i pull off a one liner once a month and that’s it. even showing my face on tiktok would be cutting it close. plus, i forget to film enough content to slap a video together anyway. it would really be a loss for everyone involved.
i often cite these reasons for why i like twitter so much. my brainrot on there is quick and then i dip - or remain for hours on end because when i say twitter is a place i mean twitter is a place. i enjoy my quick updates and often out of context geeking because no one else is privy to the hold that my manuscript has on me, and i’d like to talk about it at length. twitter’s word count is not cutting it.
is my obsession with my work to blame? maybe,,, or we can blame the true culprit: my taste in youtube videos as of late. i’ve been introduced to new mediums of craft and inspiration recently, and i’m riding off my design professor’s observation that a lot of my process only exists in my head. yeah, he was so right about that, so i caved and decided to document my writing journey as executed through a blogging style. there’s no limit here - just unmeasurable freedom to express the wiring of my brain as i finish this damn novel. i think - i hope - this will make the task seem less lonely. i think it will be a nice little thing to look back on after a complete draft is finally on my screen.
what to expect from me, from this; a series
the game has a name, and it’s more refined than just rambling. what i am exploring is a justification of my thoughts. i like to write with intention, especially since introspection make up a large chunk of atlsr. instead of speaking to the void, i’ll just write it all here, where the small masses can share my brainrot, or at least side eye me while understanding why i write the way i do. any line edit/analysis i share will not hold major spoilers or material that goes in depth with the contents of my draft. as much as i love sharing, creative theft looms over my thoughts rather annoyingly.
snippets are what i’m used to, therefore snippets are what i’ll share. you guys haven’t seen anything atlsr related in ages so i’m going to cut up a paragraph i’ve written about sanaa’s mother. with this, i also intend to show you the style that all my floriculture posts will be organized in. if this series is something you’ll be interested in following (and if for some lovely reason you’re still here) i truly appreciate your presence and question your sanity :)
the mother; as seen through ch. 38
If the stars truly loved fairy tales, then Dasa Madaki would have been a princess.
from the moment the story begins, sanaa is characterized as cold and unforgiving. she gives not into temper, but into love, and perhaps the way she does so is twisted, but it is whole. the variations of selfishness that i explore with each character is seen through how they love, how they hate, how they live. dasa’s own arc is reflective of a gentler bloom from the same harshness i inflict.
She had all the elements of picturesque endings written into the features of her day. Eyes as soft as meteors landing, a voice that soothed violent winds, a disposition capable of taming birds that whistled songs of ice and fire. Even her behavior and movements took the beauty of swans and the elegance of grace winds. Her social status only amplified the potency of her loveliness.
dasa isn’t introduced until chapter six. up to that point, readers are only familiar with ouma, sanaa’s grandmother, who is credited with nurturing her very nature. whereas ouma and sanaa are of the variety that wear a bold red lip to intimidate, dasa comes to mind when i think of things pretty in pink and glowing in yellow. dasa is soft. that is all there is to it. it is a fact that ouma criticizes at some point for all the sugar and kindness that her daughter possesses. but look at how sanaa describes her mother. not with contempt or condescendence, but with the beauty that graces her.
Sanaa knows the story, and she knows it well. It tells itself in the way Dasa speaks with the most imaginative of phrases, crafting a happy ending into the air, as pretty as they are void. It is apparent in the way she brushes a thumb over the groves of a pendant looped three times over a thin wrist. Inside rests a miniature portrait, precious and pastel, and a love confession of the highest regards.
we don’t see a lot of dasa in the narrative. the facets of her character are broken down to two ideas: a whimsical patron and scorned lover. her arc and final destination of resolve has already plateaued by the time sanaa’s story is fated. there’s glimpses to her trials and triumphs through flashbacks and past callings. prior to this moment, much of dasa’s manner is surface level. what i love about this is weaving in my favorite method of characterization, which is seen through movement. it’s quiet, it’s revealing - and while i like to amount my details to subtle nature, this is anything but.
The story subsists in the way her mother latches onto care, latches onto flowers, latches onto the embellished and ornate, latches on the concept of love in separation with her own ordeals. Dasa’s movements were once timeless. She now engages with sensitivity—so fine tuned to inclinations of the heart, soft spoken in word, but not meaning. People love to attribute Dasa’s manner to bearings of whimsical coping. It has never been so, truly, if you take the time to appreciate fragility.
i’m going to continue the thought here because this next section highlights the rhythm of what make dasa differ from sanaa and ouma. i’ve always struggled with the idea of show not tell, but i think with this i have reached a tranquil middle that does the job best. when you think of movement, think about what that says about a character. the body’s ability to react is a tell itself, though how expressive are the moments that move with the intention to reveal yourself? sanaa takes note of how her mother’s origins impacted her behavior.
like i said before, dasa does not have the page time to be fleshed out through various chapters, nor does she have an active presence or role in the plot. i had to tell the story of her skin in a matter of literary seconds, and by that i mean a paragraph. can i express any complexity to her character through the eyes of our lead. i love looking back at this section in particular because of how sanaa describes her mother’s troubles in a pretty manner. ugly things happened to dasa, and now dasa latches on to pretty things in turn. the repetition alone stresses that point, but i wanted to deliver that in excess.
ah this is a point where i welcome straying off course because excess has so much depth in this narrative. this is a line from ch. 18 where sanaa reflects on her hedonistic tendencies: she does things in excess, just like them all. She isn’t an exception or rarity or outlier. She is the same. The roles of the main cast is rooted in nobility, in riches, in glamour. if there is one thing they know, it is the value of material.
any commentary on materialism happens naturally and is inevitable due to the setting. where my true interest lies is taking that theme of excess and applying it to the ideas i wanted to explore in depth. now we’re moving from a literal to more metaphorical iteration. that takes us back to love, to relationships, to selfishness. the excess that sanaa speaks about is feeling. she feels wholly about all things, defineity too much by ouma’s standards, but look at who is sanaa’s example when it comes to expressing such sentiments.
It is her mother who taught Sanaa how to be tender.
when sanaa loves, her heart burns for adoration. it is always with everything that she gives. with ouma’s influence, this isn’t an attribute she allows to presents itself physically. we go through patches in the story where the behavior she learned through her mother shines through, and i think those tiny reflections cements the way dasa’s influence fashions itself in sanaa’s behavior and philosophy when it comes to the fondness of care.
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