#sol-liloquy

[solo-walker]

The ending of this longform was beautiful and bittersweet and I'm in love with Wife and Hans (R.I.P)

Excuse me while I bawl over the way she finds it in herself to sing the child to sleep while Penny escapes, even after he broke her husband's neck just minutes ago. she tells his story, doesn't shy away or brush it under another rug of mystery and secrets and untruth. and the child leans into her shoulder and it's suddenly just a kid who's lost and cold and trapped and so so tired and won't she comfort him? like she couldn't with her husband in his final moments? the child they've been staving off for YEARS, always failing to save the chalet residents, pots of soup for the wives growing colder and staler. the hungry child doomed to wander the snow forevermore, now finally at their door, resting by the final pot of spilled soup. the child who's tried to die but has never been able to. the child now curling into her side, eyes already closing, fingers too small to be so calloused and bloodstained.

She looks away resolutely from the figure sprawled on the floor and the woman running into the night. "It's over for you", she says to the child. It's anger, it's a threat. It's a promise and a last lullaby.

It's over. For both of them. They can finally rest.

[solo-walker]

idk man, something about ba sing se just speaks to me on a deeper level. the anonymity of a huge city, the way the metropolis itself seems to be a living breathing creature cradling millions in it's maw, the way the darkness is never truly darkness and the shadows are never truly still and the silence is never truly absolute. the way it would be so easy to forget and abandon yourself to it, so easy to imagine yourself living out the rest of your days in a shabby little side street, packed in like sardines with the people who never stop pouring into the city, disappearing and reappearing like any unknown city dweller is wont to do. and there is never any war here, even as you say you can never go back home. you almost mean it this time. it's so easy to let yourself believe you could be someone else here, someone different, the way the city is both a prison and an escape, the stifling exhilaration of being free to be absolutely nobody. and you wish it could last even though you know you shouldn't wish it could. and sometimes, in the night, you'll hear the rumble of the last train and you'll wonder what the point of going anywhere even is. and sometimes when it rains you'll walk with your head bowed through the uneven roads, mud and grit squeezing up into your slippers despite your best attempts to avoid it and you'll think for a moment that you can smell the sea on the wind. and you know it should be impossible because it's too unbounded, too unimaginable for these walls and much much too far away for you to ever be set adrift again.

you don't think you want to drift anymore.

you're not sure you can.

[solo-walker]

Going insane over depictions of grief in The Cardboard Stegosaurus again. This time, overanalysing the car radio scene:

You're in a car, driving to a place you both loved. You turn on the radio to help keep your eyes on the road and your mind off those memories. It's a news channel. The first headline, the only headline, is about her. Even though it's been months, even though it should have gone stale by now, that's still somehow the only thing worth reporting - a wound as fresh as yesterday. Or maybe, it's the only thing your mind can keep replaying.

You switch to music instead. Every damn song circles that cliff. You try to back away, try to turn off the radio or drown out the noise, but it only gets louder. You hear it everywhere, all the time, and you just can't turn it off.

You try not to think too hard about the lyrics. How it refers to two people jumping in unison rather than one. You panic, telling your son to turn the radio off.

He doesn't quite succeed. Neither of you will ever succeed in turning it off, will you?

You tell him he's bad at this. Deep down, you know you're worse. You're bad at coping, bad at forgetting, bad at moving on, bad at enjoying one damn fathers' day with your son who made you the cardboard stegosaurus wobbling on the dashboard.

You try to shut it out. Maybe you manage to, for a while. "BBC News". There's nothing to report. There's no news that could possibly matter, apart from that. Just an odd, familiar blankness, an emptiness where headlines should be, a ringing silence where the words were gouged out. A broken record - repeating the same inane, meaningless phrase.

"BBC News-". You think, for a second, that the announcer is about to say something, finally fill the space with something other than songs about jumping into oblivion. Nothing. You don't know whether to feel relieved nothing's happening, or scream because nothing ever happens and nothing is ever said out loud.

You're in a car, driving to a place you both loved. There's something wrong with the radio. Volume control gone awry, channels either saying too much or too little, but always, always circling that cliff.

It's broken. And you're not sure either of you can ever fix it.

[solo-walker]

Let's normalise drawing teenage boys with stupid little moustaches /aff

[solo-walker]

Resisting the urge to sit down as overanalyse why the stegosaurus made by chip for his dad is made of cardboard and its broader thematic implications and symbolism

[solo-walker]

Having hands that run warmer than most is awesome because you get asked to be a human heating pad by others and it's all nice and comfortable for them until it starts to get too hot. and that's when you start smiling too widely and not letting go

[solo-walker]

ok, even as a certified Summer Hater™, it should lowkey be illegal to make a room freezing beyond a point, especially when you expect people in there to stay for an extended period of time THAT TOO WITHOUT JACKETS. WHO THE HELL IS GOING TO COME PREPARED WITH WARM-UPS IN THE MIDDLE OF GODDAMN JUNE. i can barely feel my hands, how do you expect me to fucking type. i walked out of there and was finally able to remember i'm a mammal with warmth in my veins. bloody hell.

[solo-walker]

Do you ever listen to a song and sort of black out for a while with an entire animatic flashing before your eyes like a movie or are you normal