la belle au bois dormant

THINGS TO DO IN THE BELLY OF THE WALE

Danusha Laméris, Insha’Allah 

“How lightly we learn to hold hope, as if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your hand. And still we carry it the way a mother would, carefully, from one day to the next.”

We fed wild dogs overripe apples and herring.                                                                                 My hands shine with hunger.

Her hair hung in willow boughs, mine in wild onion.                                                                                    I reel the small fish of time.

The end never happens and always happens.                                   In winter we suet the trees. The cardinals arrive like snow.

I braid her willow hair. I tie her shoes once more.                                               It is winter again. The birches like crooked combs.

Why are you crying?        Why are you crying?

rebirth.

Want to have a pact with a cosmic being that allows you to summon shooting stars when you cast eldritch blast?

Want to be the only mortal that can comprehend the madness of the great old ones?

Want to have an archfey that abducted you as a child to be the friend of their own child?

Want to have your soul sold to the lord of the hunt before your birth and have to pay the price for it by serving them?

Want to make a pact with a storm elemental that like a symbiote lives in your body disguised as your natural bioelectricity?

Want an ancient dragon to keeps you as part of its hoard and in exchange grants you a long life and its protection?

Want some sword you picked up whisper into your mind that you need to fight against those who oppress you?

Want the spirits of your ancestors to grant you great power to protect the current members of the bloodline?

Want Asamodeus to favor you because you remind them of a mortal they once loved many eons ago?

Want to be the only survivor of a shipwreck and then have the dead souls of your crewmates grant you access to the arcane and in exchange you take care of their unfinished business on the mortal plane?

Y'all REALLY like warlocks! In celebration here are some more warlock ideas!

Want a patron that is going into retirement and is training you to be its replacement?

Want your patron to be the very plane that you reside upon?

Want your patron to be a faceless corporation that has chosen you as its agent?

Want to be granted your power by a council of wizards?

Want to derive your power from the shattered consciousness of a broken world?

Want to be the prophecized hero said to save the realm and be granted a sword from which you draw your power?

THE ‘KEATON ST. JAMES IS ABSOLUTELY ENAMORED WITH ANGELS’ POETRY MASTERPOST

i’ve arranged the poems are in chronological order and included first lines, since there are so many pieces

texts between angels trying to live as mortals - “what is more blessed than watching / birds sing in the trees?”

trumpet concerto in e-flat major - “the saints come into heaven dizzy and scorchmark-darkened”

“one day the stars open up like flower buds”

fallen angel - “raphael comes to you in the middle of the night and says, there is not much time left, brother”

half-angel jazz - “out in the hall, the nephilim dance in their shiny church shoes”

“flowers bloom every place angels touch”

metamorphology - “in the dream i get new wings made with copper bones / and smoke feathers”

lake angels - “the angels arrive when the dawn lake-fog does”

guardian - “a six-winged angel leans against / the tennis court fence”

descend - “and the angels descend / like spears of light”

salvation - “angels ain’t just flesh & feather”

waiting - “i feel closest to the angels / when i’m in the middle / of a thunderstorm”

dictionary poem xlii - “in the beginning the lord said, let there be cosmos”

“yes you are like an angel”

fallen angel experiencing their first snow - “you first experience it while walking / back to your apartment with a paper bag / of mulled wine”

looking for god on channel 35 - “your body made of night, snow, humming”

angels and the theatre - “michael with his silver gunsmoke / bones fills up three box seats”

you meet an angel in a laundromat - “the angel sits on top / of one of the washers, kicking / their not-feet in time / to the laundromat muzak”

love that makes bones melt - “if the moon burns / like a saint”

triptych on guardian angels - “his silver-feathered hands rest / palms down on the table”

queer angels staring at the outside of heaven’s gates - “we make our own rules here. we with our / river mud wings”

angels who love humans - “as i walked down the canned & dried foods aisle, / i noticed an angel with hummingbird-feather / wings”

The Harpy

‘The Monstrous Feminine’ Female Abjection in the Works of Charles Dickens

Role Monsters [a series on monstrous female archetypes by Jess Zimmerman]

Female Monstrosity [collection of various pdfs on this topic]

“Normative Society and the Monstrous Female Transgressor”

The Monstrous-Feminine [the full book by barbara creed!]

“The Good and Bad of that Sexe‟: Monstrosity and Womanhood in Early Modern England”

The Monstrous ‘Other’ Feminine: Gender, Desire and the ‘Look’ in the Hindi Horror Genre

The Monstrous-Feminine [films]

I AM THE MONSTER: SELF AND THE MONSTROUS FEMININE IN CONTEMPORARY YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

Unnatural Women, Invisible Mothers: Monstrous Female Bodies in the Wonders of the East

A Regiment of Monstrous Women: Female Horror Archetypes and Life History Theory

POWERS OF HORROR: An Essay on Abjection [the full book by julia kristeva referenced by barbara creed] 

EMBRACE YOUR MONSTROUS FLESH: ON WOMEN’S BODIES IN HORROR

Art Nouveau Doors

I enjoy when language is used playfully and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The sky doesn’t always have to be blue. The air can feel goopy. Think abstractly. You create your own worlds. How do the clouds taste? Like acid, honey, coffee, toothpaste? Sometimes writing about worlds and feelings that are unrealistic (and/or surrealistic) can be the best ways to get an atmosphere or vibe across. 

Sometimes language that semantically makes the least sense has the best desired effect. I’ve been enjoying toying with language that makes the cogs in our minds churn, go “wait - what?” and try to dismantle it. There’s no right or wrong, good or bad with language. It’s okay to be experimental and actively try to shift the semantics of a word to fit your voice. Sometimes I use language not because semantically it fits, but the phonology of a word can accurately shape the surrounding language to get a particular message across. 

Think about your adjectives, your verbs, your adverbs. Think about word play and how it sounds on your tongue. It’s okay to be simplistic. It’s okay to be excessive. Don’t think only about image - but about rhymes and the psychology behind your word choices. Why should particular words/phrases be repeated/exaggerated? (or why not?) What connotations of words and worlds are you trying to get across? Think about semantic fields. About metaphors 

If you have characters think about their individual speech patterns, their individual word/language choices and how/why they would use this. Are your characters around family? Perhaps they’d use different language than they would around their lover. Where are they? What is their purpose for speaking what they say?  What terminology have they brought with them from their childhood?