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they should invent a high ponytail that doesn’t give me a headache and they should invent a low ponytail that doesn’t make me look like a miller’s apprentice going off to enlist in the continental army

#tal.txt

Went for a nice walk with Basil today!!

#pkmn irl #pokemon irl #tal.txt

one thing i keep coming back to about fallen london is how much literary culture would've changed. it touches on traditions, of course, but i keep thinking about the shifts that would've happened.

one feature of late 19th century poetry is fear of the death of the century; the piece i've already written as an in-universe literary review's main focus is this fact (the darkling thrush by thomas hardy is the poem i look at). the empress' commands would've only made this fear worse! how many poems would be chanting 'we are dragging the dead corpse of the 19th century behind us as we refuse to let it go!' or, as the empress refuses to let it go. there was a lot of hopelessness in these poems, and many use incredibly dreary and industrial language to get these feelings across; how many poems would use the neath as the metaphor!

and then, how would famous poems change? we have the continual use of light as hope, does this remain? a longing for the surface that is for light and hope and safety, or do we jump to the dark as the comforting and the familiar? when thinking about light, i often look to amy levy's a minor poet, which uses light and london cityscape to represent hope against all darkness. this is admittedly, a longer poem, and is very explicitly about suicide. that being said, i think it is an incredibly beautiful work and well worth the read.

a snippet of specifically the references to the sunlight and london.

Ah, my sun! That's you, then, at the window, looking in To beam farewell on one who's loved you long And very truly. Up, you creaking thing, You squinting, cobwebbed casement! So, at last, I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls. Across that endless sea of London roofs, Weaving such golden wonders on the grey, That almost, for the moment, we forget The world of woe beneath them. Underneath, For all the sunset glory, Pain is king. Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal; And I'll not grumble that it's only sun, But open wide my lips—thus—drink it in; Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky (What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue So tender toned, you'd almost think it green) And stretch my hands out—so—to grasp it tight.

i have a great love for levy's descriptions of light and hope in face of death and despair (also present in her poem xantippe, which features a continual use of the classical rosy-fingered dawn, which i adore).

the poem turns soon after, a turn away from the light because hope is cruel. the poet details how the world is intolerably unfair.

The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine! 'Tis a fair world: if dark, indeed, with woe, Yet having hope and hint of such a joy, That a man, winning, well might turn aside, Careless of Heaven . . . O enough; I turn From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope. I have hoped enough; I would not hope again: 'Tis hope that is most cruel.

but recontextualising these later lines to the neath? perfect! to turn away from the sunlight because of the neath, and its darkness. to hope to return to the sun and be unable to? contrasts of the surface and the neath, surface and fallen london. "careless of heaven"...

i think there is a great amount of real estate for poets in the neath to completely twist the traditional views of sunlight into something very different. sunlight as a destructive force, sunlight as upholding something unsustainable. those aware of the new sequence writing of sunlight as control. and in turn, darkness and the cold and damp being comforting and familiar. shifting common bird metaphors to be bats! false-stars becoming things of comfort, and the idea of a static sky being wrong. there is a treasure-trove of rhetorical devices to be employed which make use of fl lore, and i cannot help but just... spiral into thinking about it all the time.

i also desperately need to know everything about the pirate-poet...

i have more poems that could be converted into something appropriately neathy, but i just. literary traditions morphing and changing because of the great changes occurring in game!!

#fallen london #using my degree and specialty in 19th century literature and poetry for good. good being... meta <3 #levy is also an incredibly unique figure who i think would be very interesting in the neath but that is another discussion entirely #OH this got long. i removed an additional ~500 words of unfinished writing.#if you are someone who is interested in poetry and loves fl please please please talk to me i am a bit insane over this #tal.txt