effeminate and whimsical

🍉 - call me moth - he/it - my mind is not functioning to standard parameters – ken toki kepeken toki pona!! - enjoyer of Characters

[soweli-mosiwa]

Hamlet, Act VI, Scene I by soweliMosiwa

Your name is Horatio. You can't save him.

An exploration of the one left behind. There is a way out - more than one, in fact - you just might have to wander a while before you find them. Do tell me in the tags which you stumble on first.

Content warning for Hamlet-typical explorations of murder, suicide, and death in general, alongside a similarly Shakespeare-typical understanding of "insanity". Also, spoilers for a centuries-old play (bet you can't guess which one).

[whetstonefires]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[fairyysoup]

reading this post be like

[sexandmagic]

the other night i was jacking my meat off but had to stop because i was suddenly overcome with a new interpretation of the problem of evil and my fucking vibrator died because i was too busy pondering that particular theological quandary to think about sex. so that's how i've been doing

[sexandmagic]

my minions are being funnier than me on my own post

[bombusbombus]

Everyone except me is wrong about The Character

[bombusbombus]

And my beloved mutual who fills a sort of "scheming advisor" role in my opinions about The Character

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

on a separate note i can’t stop thinking about evil therapy speak claudius

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

“honestly hamlet you’re violating a lot of boundaries by constantly trauma dumping on your mom about your dead father. it’s manipulative and toxic to refuse to hold space for her and her new marriage when she’s just trying to do what’s best for her peace. anyway get the fuck over it it’s been a month”

[daggerdoggy]

settings > wound > my wound > reopen

[daggerdoggy]

do not forget this

[ID: Tag that says, "#options > add salt". End ID]

[xinakwans]

to you he's a sex object to me he's a chronically ill white dog

[apoemaday]

How to Drink Water When There Is Wine

by Barbara Kingsolver

How to stay at this desk when the sun is barefooting cartwheels over the grass —

How to step carefully on the path that begs for the fleet unfettered gait of a deer —

How to go home again when the wood thrush is promising the drunk liquid bliss of dusk —

How to resist the kiss, the body forbidden that plucks the long vibrating string of want —

How to drink water when there is wine —

Once I knew all these brick-shaped things, and how they protract the striving and virtuous life.

Now I have lived long and I know better.

[hellish-undeath]

disabled people who do not directly "contribute" to society and need large amounts of care and resources to survive deserve not only to survive but to have comfort, stability, and fun within their lives while they do. no compromises.

[chandra-telescope]

hope is a skill

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

[chandra-telescope]

favourite additions

[chandra-telescope]

[tenaciouswritingdragon]

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

[wonderwyrm]

[butchhamlet]

"In nearly every modern edition of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the final scene of the play culminates in Benedick saying to his bride Beatrice, "Peace, I will stop your mouth" before they kiss. However, in one of the first print editions of Much Ado About Nothing (Gillespie Collection, First Folio, 1623) the line is spoken by Leonato, Beatrice's uncle, and there is no stage direction for a kiss. This difference considerably reshapes how readers and audiences experience the end of this play. What does Leonato mean by this line? When and why was the line changed in the text? And what are the patriarchal implications of a young woman's tongue being stopped by her uncle?"

--Katharine Cognard-Black, "Shakespeare's Stopped Mouths"

what does it mean to "stop a mouth" in shakespeare? a lot more than kissing, it turns out. i really really enjoyed this online version of this exhibit; apparently there is textual emendation stuff happening with this phrase that i had NO idea about (cw for discussions of misogyny sexual violence)

[shakespearenews]

[apoemaday]

Last Day on Earth

by Lawrence Raab

If it’s the title of a movie you expect everything to become important — a kiss, a shrug, a glass of wine, a walk with the dog.

But if the day is real, life is only as significant as yesterday — the kiss hurried, the shrug forgotten, and now,

on the path by the river, you don’t notice the sky darkening beyond the pines because you’re imagining what you’ll say at dinner,

swirling the wine in your glass. You don’t notice the birds growing silent or the cold towers of clouds moving in,

because you’re explaining how lovely and cool it was in the woods. And the dog had stopped limping! — she seemed

her old self again, sniffing the air and alert, the way dogs are to whatever we can’t see. And I was happy, you hear yourself saying,

because it felt as if I’d been allowed to choose my last day on earth, and this was the one I chose.

[cryptotheism]

What’s been the hardest advice for you to swallow? Ever?

If you are correct and annoying, nobody will listen.

[cryptotheism]

Like it does not matter how correct you are, or how beautiful your coherence of thought may be. If you're annoying, people will spend their time and energy elsewhere

[rocketdrifter]

(tags via @.self-loving-vampire)

[lilyblisslys]

*sexting* oh yeah I checked out that book you mentioned

[stuckinapril]

This is actually so real

[fiddlertoad]

@funnier-as-a-system

[funnier-as-a-system]

[image description: a quote by Simone de Beauvoir that reads: "I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish... You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger." / end description]

[starpeace]

the only real good ship dynamic: tragic hero x person with genre awareness

[starpeace]

oh to walk blindly into ruin and have someone who would follow, even with their eyes open, because they cannot bear to let go of your hand