riddles ; @mvlcobb - Tumblr Blog

Posts

✷i’ll tell you a riddle: you’re waiting for a train. ✷ indie ⇝ selective ⇝ mal from inception (2010) ✷penned by eliza also found here.

#crime rp #indie rp #indie crime rp #no idea on the tags for this one!#inception rp

megairea

“I shall bury you, like a dead woman, in the depths of my memory, and on the memory of you I will throw the flowers of my madness.”

— Renée Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904.

#I JUST THINK IT'S INTERESTING-#* insp #{ v. v. his kiss the riot }

vaeputodeusfio

Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X

Iamque iterum moriens non est de coniuge quicquam questo suo: quid enim nisi se quereretur amatam?

(via vaeputodeusfio)

#* insp #{ v. v. his kiss the riot }#:( she was really like look back dom take me out of here and he looked back and that meant she had to stay..#like does Chris nolan know he just rewrote the orpheus myth or..

antigonick

After screaming, [Cassandra] calls out the name of Apollo sixth times, then again a seventh time, but the seventh time, by shifting the inflexion of the name slightly, she shows its etymology. Apollo’s name is cognate with the Greek verb apollesthai, “to destroy utterly, kill, slay, demolish, lay waste.” By crying out “Apollon emos”, Cassandra can designate the god as “my Apollo” and “my destroyer” at the same time in the same words.

Anne Carson, excerpt of Cassandra Float Can, from Float (via antigonick)

#* insp #{ v. iv. weren't we birds of a feather? }#yea....#{ ch. the earth was made for lovers | dom }

imbricare:

@mvlcobb / cont.

She moves like underwater, a creature from another world, fins for legs and stars for eyes. Sluggish as he is, there’s something warped and garbled about the way she speaks: her mouth’s moving but his ears aren’t receiving yet, as if the words are stuck somewhere halfway between them, somewhere– Arthur glances. The PASIV sits on a small clinical side table with wheels, immobile and material. It’s not leering red anymore. Energy’s powered down, the thing looks almost like it’s sleeping.

It’s hard to imagine he can grow to love it one day but he wants to try. He wants to.

“I- I don’t-” He tries to talk but his tongue feels thick, furry. He clears his throat. They’ve only been under for five minutes? He takes her word for it, even when his body wants to pull him back into the deep sleep the drug simulated so terrifyingly well.

He doesn’t know yet that every time he lets it in, he buries real deep sleep under another handful of dirt.

Operation Dreamscape shoveled the ditch, and now this––this quiet dreaming, this new drug Mal’s working on, the way she pulls him deeper and deeper into the labyrinth as if by a golden thread… it’s like a dirge to some part of his brain that won’t come back from this. But what visionary hasn’t had to pay blood money on the trails that blazed scientific discovery?

Is he? Does he–?

Arthur blinks, temples pounding. His head is so full of– of– thoughts, no impressions– he thinks of the PASIV, the somnacin, the– the– Mal, Mal, a Venus looming above them, ready to swallow them whole; earrings as large as tires tumbling down the Ponte Vecchio. Arthur remembers locking his eyes on the horizon and seeing there the marble columns of an old Tuscan country villa, perfectly aligned against a perfectly azure sky. So much blue.

So much red, too, in the way Mal painted a sunset across that impeccable sky.

He blinks again, and rubs his palms against his eyes. She’s by his side, and he’s barely moved his hands from his face that she taps a finger to his temple, and he has to think of Michelangelo, Creazione di Adamo, the Sistine Chapel.

Have they lost time? Stolen it? Or created more, on this their seventh day of rest from Operation Dreamscape?

He blinks at her. He blinks. What else is one to do in the presence of a creator?

Then he tries again. “I–” There’s a small plastic bottle of water by the side of his chair. It’s tepid and it tastes gross, but it wets his throat and grounds him in the here, in the now. “I don’t know. Mais c’est pas pareil. Rien n’est pareil après… après cela.”

Arthur sits. It makes him dizzy; of course it does. French lies heavy on his tongue, like whiskey sometimes does on the next morning, and the comparison makes him huff. Yeah; he’s hungover, alright. Hungover on dreams. Waxing poetic on a married French lady in Kandahar.

Life couldn’t make this shit up.

And she’s asking him–

“Are you asking me,” he starts, very slowly, still getting the taste for the words, all the while figuring out what it is that Mal means, “that’s a hypothetical question, right? …well, I.” He chews it over for a moment, teeth worrying his bottom lip. “I dunno. It’s all relative, right? Everything is.” Plus ça change. “Depends on what you’re stealing and who you’re stealing it from, and on your motive, of course… hypothetically speaking.”

Oh, he has a sweet face; sometimes she forgets quite how young he is, but then, other times, it’s too easy to remember, to slip into the habit of being patronising, being maternal. He has that cusp-of-adulthood look about him, astride two worlds; it’s especially easy to forget when he’s out of uniform, like now. When they had first met him, she’d looked at Dom and narrowly resisted the urge to say, like a child at Christmas, oh, can I keep him? She likes the way he draws his youth about him like a shield and hides behind it, and she likes also how he dares people to underestimate him, with the crinkle between his brow and the determined set to his jaw. She likes all of these things, which is why she feels oh so terribly guilty about showing him how the PASIV works.

Not so guilty, however, that she doesn’t want to test him. It’s a habit learned from her father, who excels at it, the teasing out of knowledge from those more clever than himself. He had done it with Dom, in San Francisco, more than six years ago, had been thrilled to discover that this new hire he had brought on board with only vague hopes for had turned out to be, perhaps, the best of them all; he had done it to Mal, in her childhood, sat in the Tulleries gazing up at the great statue of Leda and the Swan, and what do you think of that? The gentle nudge of a born teacher: follow that thought to its conclusion. Where is she leading Arthur? These days, Mal doesn’t know where she’s headed, let alone someone else’s path. All she knows is that it’s dangerous, and it’s intoxicating, and it might get him killed, but it also might be the best thing that ever happened to him.

Mal has been working on the compound recently, trying to limit the after-effects; God, when she thinks of those early days, it used to make them sick, like the worst kind of hangover, she remembered spending days on the sofa with Dom recovering, before they were in love, making him cups of coffee and listening to him whine; maybe that was why she had loved him so firmly, because he’d held her hair back so well. Now it’s much better, but there’s still that lingering sensation of nausea, like stepping off a boat and finding the dock unsteady under your feet. When she sits up her mind swims, she feels giddy. Like morning sickness; her hand creeps to her stomach in remembered sympathy. Her elbow, where the IV had been, aches in sympathy too. Once they get back home to Paris she’ll take a test, she’ll confirm things, because then she’ll have to stop dreaming, but for now...

Hypothetically speaking; she laughs again and is glad to find that she feels a little more steady, swinging her feet round so they touch the dusty floorboards, stretching them out, admiring her small toes with a vain tilt to her head. “It’s all hypothetical, of course,” she confirms, and her tone falls into the pattern of her father’s, teacher, professor, “but I wonder what there is that is...” she casts around for the English word, “stealable, is that correct? What can be stolen from our minds.” She smiles at him, a little wry, a small amount of disrespect in the curl of her lip: “after all, our employers have shown very well that things can be lost in dreams. Humanity. Conscience.” She thinks briefly of Operation Titania, though of course, thank God, Arthur had not been involved then, in those dark and distorted early years of dreamsharing when they had had Dom building cellars and basements with steel chairs and handcuffs and endless weapons. As for motive...well, on this she remains silent and sips her water.

#{ ch. like a moonbeam a shaft of silver | arthur }#* thread #{ v. i. wedding song }

tackled

#* insp

we’re back bitches

kitaplarinicindeyasayankiz

#* insp #{ ch. the earth was made for lovers | dom }

cinemagraphs

Paris mornings

#* insp

imbricare “Are we thieves now? Do we steal time?”

“she likes everyone to be at least a little in love with her,” ��❤️❤️❤️

TEMPTING ARTHUR INTO A LIFE OF CRIME

#imbricare #shes/.............a bad person but she luvs him #* ooc

violentwavesofemotion-deactivat

Alice Notley, from Alma, or The Dead Women: Poems; “Glued To Our Bodies,”

#* insp #{ v. v. his kiss the riot }#{ ch. like a moonbeam a shaft of silver | arthur }

soracities

“But look–he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gestures one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.”

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

#{ ch. the earth was made for lovers | dom }#* insp #{ v. i. wedding song }

“Are we thieves now? Do we steal time?”

She’s only half awake; she turns to one side and Arthur is there, and the bleariness of her expression is like that of a lover. There’s something especial intimate in it, sharing a PASIV; not that Arthur looks at her like that. She’d be offended, she likes everyone to be at least a little in love with her, but Arthur is a special case: she doesn’t move to slide the IV from the crook of her elbow, but lets it rest there. There’s dry warm air coming through the vents of the clinical room, and the chair that would usually have a warm body in it, in the corner, taking notes, is empty: they’re on their own time. It’s only been five minutes. She reaches out her unattached hand, wedding ring solid and comforting, and brushes a loose lock of hair from his forehead.

“What do you think?” she asks, because she likes to do that to him, answer a question with a question, he reminds her of her students in the way his brow furrows with frustration. Not that she’s taught in a long while; they don’t have the time. “Does it feel like that extra hour was real? Are you an hour older?” She touches the slight crease at the corner of his eye with a smile. “You don’t look it, cherie, plus ca change, non?”

She sits up then, finally, shakes out her dark curls. The room is dim; even the five minutes they spent under has ushered dusk onwards, or perhaps it’s just her eyes readjusting to reality. She had been showing Arthur Florence, but it was the Florence of a childhood holiday, all the cafe tables as tall as they were, the streets bending about them, the map incomprehensible. David gleaming, soaring all the way up to the sky, distorted at the top in Mal’s childhood memory, his large hand reaching down towards them. The recycled desert air tastes dry after the sharpness of the Italian wine. When she does remove the IV, she’s brisk and matter-of-fact about it; it’s the only way she can manage it. Mal and needles don’t naturally mix. She looks at Arthur, one quick glance, judging him carefully. They should barely know each other. But she’s an excellent judge of character - at least, she likes to think so. “Would that be something that bothers you?” she asks, in her lilting, cautious, leading way. She laughs in a delicate scale upwards. “The thievery - not the gained time.”

#imbricare #* answered #{ v. i. wedding song }#OK LET'S DO SOME ACTUAL WRITING LADIES AND GENTS #{ ch. like a moonbeam a shaft of silver | arthur }#stealing more lore from presque vu lol

bonewitchery

Byzantium (2012) Sentence Starters

A sentence meme for the 2012 Neil Jordan film Byzantium, starring Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton. Change pronouns and tenses as needed.

“My story can never be told.” “I write of what I cannot speak.” “Maybe the birds can read it.” “I often find them here, these scraps. As if thrown down from someone’s window.” “But there’s a story there, I can feel it.” “She was morbidly sexy.” “There comes a time in life when secrets should be told.” “You’ve got secrets, haven’t you?” “All the time you’ve had and you’ve learned nothing.” “You have no idea, no fucking idea of what I do for you!” “You can’t throw the past away as if it didn’t happen.” “I like solitude. I walk, and the past walks with me.” “Can you speak?” “I remember everything. It’s a burden.” “I went around the house and smashed things up. Didn’t want to look at myself.” “Only those prepared to die will find eternal life.” “He was a fucking monster, I should get a medal for what I did.” “Look at you, fair as a lily.” “A pearl stays pure forever while the oyster’s flesh rots around it.” “It is still a fact that the day you are born is the day you are most likely to be murdered.” “My mother tried to murder me, but love confounded her.” “More human souls are killed by mothers’ hands, than by the hands of strangers.” “The world’ll be more beautiful without you.” “Humans need to tell stories. It’s a fundamental and uniting thing.” “It’s through stories that we come to understand ourselves.” “You don’t belong here.” “I’ve not come to take from you. I’ve come to give.” “Is this what you’ve dragged us here to find? A hermit’s hut?” “You frighten me sometimes.” “I don’t want to lie anymore, something has to change.” “It’s as if Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley got together and had a very strange little child.” “Forgiveness is a Christian value.” “My gods are older. More ruthless.” “Mine is a cruel existence.” “I would give my soul to be as you are now.” “I didn’t give you my story. I’ve been betrayed into this.” “Who the fuck wants death?” “Are we thieves now? Do we steal time?” “Will you not speak for me?” “I had eyes that cut through lies, I had lungs that breathed eternity. Felt I’d lived my whole wretched life just to prepare me for that moment.” “I’m never merciful, and knowledge is a fatal thing.” “When I was born there was only seven planets. Neptune hadn’t been discovered yso nobody believed in it.” “Heaven and Earth are full of things we don’t yet understand.” “Everything outside of time is cold.” “If you kissed me right now, would I live forever?” “I must say you definitely are [NAME]’s type. Earnest, clueless, about as sexy as a pair of shoes.” “I will never forgive. I will never, ever forgive!” “You’re exactly how I imagined.” “In her stories you were wonderful.” “By this act I cleanse the Earth!” “You gave her life.” “This is your last night, witch.” “You truly are a wonder.” “Go on. Look forward, not back.” “Your instinct is to hunt the powerful and protect the weak.” “If you could have anything, what would it be?” “I throw my story to the wind, and never will I tell it more.” “There comes a time in life when secrets should be told.”

#* ask meme