š š¬š¢šššš„šØš ššØ š„šš¦šØš«šš¬ : a roleplaying blog focused primarily on writing ā here i keep inspirations & information posts on the character of ššššš” as created by amanda, an original concept. navigation links.
death is beautiful ā there is no other word for it and there is no need to play at euphemisms. the matter at hand is the contrast between what would be expected of her to appear as : a skeleton or a corpse, the grim reaper in dark robes, morbid and terrifying, and then what she currently presents as, which is a profoundly human woman that looks almost artificial & uncanny. when i say "beautiful", i mean "perfect" as in lacking any human characteristics that would mark her as one of our own. what adult has skin untouched by time, the proof of life itself ? her face lacks marks of it: there are no lines, blemishes, spots, little to no blush or glow upon her pale ivory skin. the point is that she has crafted her looks according to biased ideas of aesthetics, or rather, her own personal interpretation of them which she got from films & paintings. this makes the bodies she creates unnatural in their appearances; so she looks like old hollywood stars stepping out of their time or like animated paintings. it's a feminine face many would readily confirm as beautiful but that seems at odds with everything around her, as if she does not fit in the world around her.
still, her oval face shape has been the same for over thousands of years, the same as the high cheekbones or the sharp angles of her jawline, the long pale neck and that feline stare of her eerie, mysterious silver eyes, like as bright as mercury. her eyes always seem to have a certain radiance to them and there's a classic or antique quality to her features, like she belongs to black and white films. hers is not a face that would fit the era of instagram, social media or aesthetic procedures. the way she looks artificial is a consequence to the fact she is something beyond human, a natural phenomenon, playing at the attempt to look like one : her copy is perfect and in that is her one flaw, for no human being looks perfect the way she does. most humans, if interacting for too long with her, will come upon the afterthought that something is wrong about the woman, even if at first glance, there is nothing about her appearance that would imply anything other than sophisticated distance, a sort of beauty that is almost nostalgic and cold. but if you want to play at poetics, than try to imagine what it would be like to have the all-embracing phenomenon of death & transformation in all universes try to contain all its multitudes into a puppet of flesh.
an important part of the concept behind this blog, as stated previously (as in my rules), is that i see death, the character, as the narrator of every story, which means, essentially, that most writing here is primarily focused on her impressions regarding the feelings or psychological aspects of those who interact with her. the reason for my stylistic choice of using the first person when writing. in other words, if you go through the blog, all threads / interactions are much more descriptive of other peopleās characters than my own or if not them specifically, the setting of the scene is so that my writing partner can use the scenery in their favor (and most often the scenery will match the character in some way or metaphorically expose inner characteristics or details of a story). the attempted experience here is that your character is the main character in a story you are simultaneously reading and collaborating with and death presents herself as a sort of omniscient figure that is simultaneously the third-person narrator who observes the story and the first-person witness narrator that is part of it, which is the core of her character. by this i mean: curiosity & understanding through observation and experience.
this blog is a reflection on storytelling and how it shapes identity and the very essence of what it means to be human ( word that i use here in a very vague sense ). try to imagine something or someone who has never had a previous sense of individual consciousness or need for it, but is forced to confront the perspective of "being" by the simple fact it was anthropormophized. human beings, as a rule, have great fondness for assigning anthropomorphic characteristics to those that are not human and i'm no different. my objective as a writer on this blog specifically is to present us with an informal study of humaneness and storytelling as intricately linked ideas.
death here takes on more abstract meanings than merely the permanent ending of vital processes or the end of the life of a person or organism ( both the psychopomp grim reaper figure as well as the phenomenon ). death, as she appears, is also a representation of the tarot card, or rather, the meaning of it: the end of a cycle; or to better reference the rest of the blog, the end of a story. she is the end of all things and she stands at the end of them and apart from them at the same time. death knows the unfolding of everything.
another important point regarding death acting as narrator is that she will very subtly tell her own opinion of human experiences, their actions but she herself believes sheās detached from them and that her opinions are exclusively neutral which is not true, the narrator, even the most detached one, is biased through the hands of the writer and so i act through her to express my own opinions. for example: anti-war propaganda, the issues of duty without critical thinking or the exploitation of children being forced as soldiers ā most of which will be directly related to the matter of the self / identities. an important aspect of understanding death as a character beyond the narrator is that she has no "self" because she exists as an event, a natural phenomenon. by interacting with others and having a physical manifestation, a body, she is subjected to feelings, she constructs an identity that is no longer as neutral or detached as she had previously imagined.
it is by interacting with others and then experiencing things by her own accord, such as love, desire, empathy or even annoyance, that she creates her ever-changing sense of "being" and by interacting with humans or those capable of human reactions, she learns she too is capable of them. the one aspect that is truest to who and what she is or rather, what she embodies in this blog, is "curiosity".
what i meant to say is that all this is a lesson in storytelling which is the very principle of human nature & death is the ultimate witness of the human existence and as she looks into you, you may look back at her.
āI donāt know why itās easier for some people to talk about aliens than to talk about death. Aliens only happen to some people. Death happens to everyone.ā
keep thinking now about the idea of the ancient greek stage building as a doorway into death, which is separated from the stage (the space of the living) by the screen of the skene. cassandra calls it as much ("the gates of hades") when she enters the house of atreus. by convention characters cannot die on stage but must exit, usually into the skene, to be killed. cassandra's just extra explicit about it because of her foresight, but every entry into the stage building is a step into death. and then some people come back out of it!!!
āFor a moment, death let herself go, expanding out as far as the walls, filling that whole room and flowing into the room next door, where a part of her stopped to look at the sheet music open on a chair, it was suite number six opus one thousand and twelve in d major by johann sebastian bach, composed in kƶthen, and she didnāt need to be able to read music to know that it had been written, like beethovenās ninth symphony, in the key of joy, of unity between men, of friendship and of love. Then something extraordinary happened, something unimaginable, death fell to her knees, for she had a body now, which is why she had knees and legs and feet and arms and hands, and a face which she covered with her hands, and shoulders, which, for some reason, were shaking, she canāt be crying, you canāt expect that from someone who, wherever she goes, has always left a trail of tears behind her, without one of those tears shed being hers. Just as she was, neither visible nor invisible, neither skeleton nor woman, she leapt, light as air, to her feet and went back into the bedroom.ā