#jon ware

[anemosigil]

orpheus but he's sisyphus

Ovid’s The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice (tr. Rolfe Humphries) / Spirited Away dir. Hayao Miyazaki / @mag200 / Jenny Diski, “Housewife” / Franz Wright, God's Silence / Adrianne Kalfopoulou, “Poem in Pieces, a Log” / Jon Ware, I am in Eskew / Kazimierz Wierzyński, “A Word of Orphists” (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) / @prisonhannibal / Aeschylus, The Oresteia / Ocean Vuong, Eurydice

image ids under cut:

image 1: a quote from Ovid that reads: "And Orpheus received her, but one term was set: he must not, till he passed Avernus, turn back his gaze, or the gift would be in vain."

image 2: excerpt from the script of the film Spirited Away that reads: "Haku: But I can't go any farther. Just go back the way you came, you'll be fine. [highlighted] But you have to promise not to look back, not until you've passed through the tunnel."

image 3: a drawing, labeled in all-caps handwriting "a venn diagram of love vs. grief:". the drawing is a single circle.

image 4: an excerpt, highlighted and italicized, from Jenny Diski that reads: "People don't understand about repetition, do they? How it is at the heart (thump, thump, thump) of obsession; at the erotic centre (drip, drip, drip) of desire. You do, of course. Repetition is insatiability spelt sideways."

image 5: a quote from Franz Wright reading, "And let me ask you this: the dead, where aren't they?"

image 6: a quote from Adrianne Kalfopoulou in red text, reading, "Grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there"

image 7: an excerpt from Jon Ware that reads, "Here's my question. If the ghost wants nothing more than to be witnessed, why would it appear behind you, not in front of you? The only answer I can think of is this: [underlined] it appears behind you because it already knows, to an absolute certainty, that you will have no choice but to look back."

image 8: a quote from Kazimierz Wierzyński that reads: "I understood the true fate of Orpheus, that [highlighted] love is a constant terror of loss."

image 9: a screenshot of a tumblr ask from an anonymous user who says, "What's the point?" user prisonhannibal responds, "of what? it's love though".

image 10: two lines from aeschylus reading, "Orestes: This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning."

image 11: an excerpt from Ocean Vuong that reads, "Your absence has gone through me // Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color."

end ids.

[vivacissimx]

🗡 Viserra, Alysanne, and Baelon Targaryen 🗡

fire & blood / franny choi, soft science / elisabeth le brun, julie le brun looking in a mirror (1787) / fire & blood / kim addonizio, queen of the game / marie laurencin, jeune filles et fleurs (1950) (with details) / milan kundera, the unbearable lightness of being (1984) / commissioned art of viserra and baelon by @chillyravenart / fire & blood / le mains négatives (1979) dir. marguerite duras / leo tolstoy, war and peace / mel ferrer as prince andrey bolkonsky in war and peace (1956) / ava gardner photographed posing before a mirror / richard siken, litany in which certain things are crossed out / laura makabrescu interspersed with a fire & blood snippet / the swanee review: thesmophoria by melissa fabos, interspersed with a fire & blood snippet / david thauberger, prairie thunder (2020) / fire & blood / virginia woolf, a writer's diary / peter paul rubens, deborah kip and her children (1630) / c.w. gluck's opera orfeo et eurydice / niki de saint phalle, altar of women (1964) / jon ware's 'i am in eskew' podcast

[theboombutton]

Since this episode was written by Jon Ware, I'm going to headcanon that the monster was a certain minor god from The Silt Verses and you can't stop me

[abearbutch]

choosing the thing that eats you

The Silt Verses - Ch. 6 / I Am In Eskew - Ep. 23

(ID in read more)

[Image One ID: a screenshot of the script from the silt verses chapter 6, image reads:

VAUGHAN:

Isn’t this great? We each get to choose the thing that eats us.

CARPENTER:

(Narrating)

They say it so casually. Tossing the thought out into the world. Lets it go. Forgets it happened.

They have no idea how long I’ll keep turning that phrase over in my mind.

We each get to choose the thing that eats us.

End text. End Image One ID].

[Image Two ID: a screenshot of the script from I am in Eskew, episode 23. Text begins:

Because of course it’s already occurred to you that if the tide is rising, there may come a time soon when the sea creeps inwards to the very roots of the palm trees at the peak of the island, and you will be caught between the land and the ocean, and you will have to make a choice between facing the creature that dwells in the trees and the creature that dwells in the water.

End text. End Image Two ID].

[arcane-strangeness]

so um. I may have listened to like 8 episodes of I Am in Eskew in 2 days. I'm being normal about it. Spoilers for episodes 10 (Performance) through 22 (Ingratitude) below the cut.

Oh. Okay. This is the first time I think a series has made a decision that I absolutely loathe though completely respect. I hate that it happened, but I understand why they did it.

I can't imagine how David is feeling. He finally had something real, something tangible, someone who could see this cities horrors just like him, who is trapped just like him. They get close, weathering whatever Eskew tries to throw at them, and Allegra opens up to him, telling him her story, how she got there. David, this poor, miserable, repressed man can't, or won't do the same. So she tells him she understands, but warns him not to wait too long or Eskew will get to him, or her, before he gets the chance. This is the beginning of the end.

its David's reluctance to trust that takes him down. Eskew forcefully evicts him from his apartment, little by little, ripping away everything he thought he knew as fact. He has a chance to reach out for help, to reconnect with Allegra, but doesn't take it. Eskew takes that away from him too, when he refuses.

So now he's out on the streets, homeless, cold, in the perpetual rain of the shifting streets, struggling for help and money. He's now begging anyone he comes across, but no one lends more than a few coins. The City breaks him, over and over and over again. And only when he finally succumbs, bending his head to the higher power, is he allowed to reunite with Allegra.

But she's... different. She knows things she couldn't or shouldn't possibly know. Her eyes are dull, flat. She no longer notices the monstrous creatures that lurk in the shadows, the shifts and changes The City makes as easy as breathing. Eskew has gotten to her. Or perhaps, David is the one who's changed, just as she warned him. Was she ever real? Or just a clever puppet pulled on the strings of Eskew, playing a part.

The one person he could trust, the one solid, consistent part of his life, is gone. He waited too long, kept himself shut off, and The City punished him for it. Allegra goes from his acquaintance, his girlfriend, maybe, to his wife without any further warning. Eskew gives him a family in the course of a night, takes away the creatures that haunt him, and trusts that his reluctance to trust will lead to his downfall, which it inevitably does. It's unclear if things would have gone differently had he just accepted it. The likely outcome would be Eskew takes him too, just as it took Allegra.

I love how he's such an unreliable narrator, he truly thinks he can outwit this place. But it reads him like a book each and every time, manipulates him and steers him towards the next series of horrors. It uses his own nature against him, the mistrust it itself instilled in him, and lets him ruin things for himself over and over and over again. Any sense of happiness he gets, The City is allowing him to get. There is no pleasure without pain, but the opposite is even more true. Hope is the worst feeling anyone could have, as it hurts the most when it's taken away. And Eskew uses, and continues to use that against him.

I truly cannot emphasize the absolute devastation and hurt this reveal in 20: Bug caused. I can only recommend experiencing I Am in Eskew for yourself, if for some reason you're reading this before having listened, Job Ware and Muna Hussen (also known for The Silt Verses!) are absolute masters at their craft. At 30 episodes long, with 20-30 minutes in each, it's a fairly short watch compared to the likes of The Magnus Archives or The Silt Verses.

[catschimericalcreations]

Happy 3rd Birthday to Augustus Roake, a Silt Verses inspired mix and match crab monster frankenstuffie by Cat's Chimerical Creations!

Like what I do? Please consider supporting me with a donation on Ko-Fi.com/catschimericalcreations

[random-poetry-account]

[throwupgirl-deactivated20240906]

Jon Ware didn’t put his entire britussy into i am in eskew for people to attribute its heart-felt themes to rusty quill when they just bought the rights to replace their intro with a shitty, atmosphere destroying “rusty quill presents”. 

Anyways, shout out to the birthday boy