#sidabro

i don't know how i missed this, i'm so sorry!!! but thank you for the ask:) i'm a couple days late, again i apologise, but here goes:

orchid — when you're being extremely quiet, what are you typically thinking of?

it's nothing good to be honest, if i'm being extremely quiet i'm either thinking of terrible things or else thinking of nothing but in a terrible way. anyone who keeps their finger on the pulse and addresses me when this happens is a lifesaver, i don't like being left in that silence of mine unchecked and alone for too long. it grows teeth.

azalea — what is the most recent song you listened to? how do you feel about it?

how to fight by eartheater, i've seen her live and couldn't be thankful enough. i love how gentle her voice is, but not in a tender-gentle way but rather far-too-spent-to-be-loud way. and the instrumental is so lush and incohesive. someone told me this song is about me, we lost touch quickly after, i've been big on goodbyes but this doesn't read like an epilogue to me, if i survive this summer this will be one of my favourite songs after. wet as a newborn, little horns, little hooves, sure feet, uncut wings, uncut wings, uncut wings.

tigerlily— do you have any favorite quotes from any movies, tv shows, books, or poetry? (or from people in real life)

christ, there are honestly so many? i'm not even sure where to start, half the time i don't write them down or anything, i just kind of swallow and digest them and they grow to be part of my body, of my internal vocabulary, and it's impossible to tell what i really thought and what i just heard some years ago and has now resurfaced out of the murky swirls. okay, so these aren't by far my all time favourites because i can't remember them at all at a moment's notice, but here are some random ones i like a lot that are currently popping into my head:

hello, my dear, here's a confession. i will love you the whole winter, and winters here are eternal. - grafitti in russian

god will forgive her the deeds of the heart and serve her raspberry ice cream - oczy tej małej, agnieszka osiecka (roughly translated by me rn, she's a polish poet)

god is not going to be able to put my sorry ass back together once i'm done with my great work - tumblr post by @dogheadhermitsshed

the trouble with you humans is that you are so concerned with staying afloat. go ahead, be gouged open by love. gulp that saltwater, sink beneath the waves. you’re not a boat, you can go under and come up again, with those big old lungs of yours, those hard kicking legs. - on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the titanic, we reconsider the buoyancy of the human heart, laura lamb brown-lavolie

purity is not of this world. but every 25 years or so, there is a glimmer. a flash. - (?)

every wave is tidal - king's crossing, elliott smith

i am an insane woman for whom houses wink and open their bellies. significance stares at me from everywhere, like a gigantic underlying ghostliness. significance emerges out of dank alleys and sombre faces, leans out of the windows of strange houses. i am constantly reconstructing a pattern of something forever lost and which i cannot forget. i catch the odors of the past on street corners and i am aware of the men who will be born tomorrow. behind windows there are enemies or worshippers. never neutrality or passivity. always intention and premeditation. even stones have for me druidical expressions. - (?), anaïs nin (my ebook broke and now i can't find where this is from!!!)

(also while we're on her topic:) reality doesn't impress me. i only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, i escape, one way or another. no more walls. - the diary of anaïs nin, 1932-1934, anaïs nin

i believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction. - the deadman, georges bataille

laika's still up there. not her body, sure, but her soul is. i saw it through my telescope one night when i was looking for aliens. she was sniffing for table scraps under saturn's ring. she chases comets and bites down on satellites. i saw her napping by neptune, she was kicking her feet. passing through the oort cloud is like the stroke of a hand on her fur. eyes like marbles and four little paws like flames. she bobs through jupiter's moons like cold moscow streets. up there the stars are a great big field. and look, she's running so fast. god damn, look at her go. - tumblr post by @hellforever

not often, but now and again there's a moment when the heart cries aloud: yes, i am willing to be that wild darkness, that long, blue body of light. - whelks, mary oliver

no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. - the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson (basic, i know, sorry, but i do love the book and this opening stirs something inside me.)

is this the glittering world i've been begging for? - manhattan is a lenape word, natalie diaz

i hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child and fell asleep on the couch during a family party. i hope you can hear the laughter from the next room - twitter post by @ petfurniture

there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy - hamlet, william shakespeare (listen. do not laugh at me. year after year these words ring more and more true.)

anyhow you had to perish hamlet you were not for life

you believed in crystal notions not in human clay

always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras

wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit

you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

- elegy of fortinbras, zbigniew herbert (the theme is a pure coincidence, i just happen to love this poem and i thought of it as soon as i attached the quote above)

very early in my life it was too late - the lover, marguerite duras

i don't paint dreams or nightmares, i paint my own reality - frida kahlo whenever she was called a surrealist painter

nobody's had more shots at the moon, and missed, than me - tired of singing the blues, lana del rey

there should be just one safe placein the world, i mean this world. people get hurt here. people fall down and stay down and i don’t like the way the song goes. - road music, richard siken

i'll be the gun and i'll be the one who points it to the sky - nichole, flower face

you can die now.

you can die now as

people were meant to die:

great,

victorious,

hearing the music,

being the music,

roaring,

roaring,

roaring.

- splash, charles bukowski

i sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. i like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing. - death comes to me again, a girl, dorianne laux

and in the same trail of thought:

when you die, you walk into the cold unknown hand in hand with a girl you met once when you were five in a hotel pool and her hand is warm. - tumblr post by @vampireghostlawyer

94. to someone from a warm climate (uiscefhuarithe) by hozier

i would say the entire song bc as all hozier songs..... its just so good!!! but i tried narrowing it down a bit:

there are some things that no one teaches you, love / that god in his awful wisdom first programs in

but darling, all my dreaming is only been put to shame / and darling, all my dreaming has only been given a name / but it happened easy, darling / as natural as another leg around you in the bed

96. carmen by tribade

this is a storytelling song, so its hard to choose just one specific lyric since it all ties together very beautifully and the song is amazing <3 but ill give it a try

Dicen que todo le duele Y al alba la ven llorar Que si el corazón te hiere Ay lo tienes que escuchar

heres a rough translation:

they say that everything hurts her / and at dawn they see her cry / that if your heart hurts you / oh you have to listen to it

98. butchered tongue by hozier

ok this one might easily be the song where THEEEEEE entire song is worthy of being chosen as favorite lyric. what with the whole minority and endangered languages thing ive got going on

and as a young man blessed to pass so many road signs / and have my foreign ear made fresh again on each unlikely sound / but feels at home, hearing a music that few still understand / a butchered tongue still singing here above the ground

oh karl. i'm sorry for what i've done to you posthumously. but think of it like those mushrooms that take over dead bodies or zombie cicadas! ...ah perhaps i should shut up now

favorite thing about them: the inherent tragedy of being so fucking old, truly an ancient being, and yet you're stuck in a child's body. the state you represent is strange. stronger when the sum of its parts are combined, but you yourself lack that imposing might. a mind so beautiful and active and yet it lacks the body to match. i...i get that

least favorite thing about them: i need a sitdown chat with the minds at funimation for why they decided the poor little german boy has to talk like 'it's-a me! karl-io!'

favorite line: i don't think i have one. is it him or young germany in the brothers grimm strips? i liked those. he was cute in them, pathetic, clearly dying

brOTP: per, i'm with you. i don't think this guy has ever had friends. true friends, people who don't want anything from him or see him as an avenue for their ambitions (whether by his/its destruction or through that nonsense that medieval austrians pulled)

OTP: i think by default it's feli but yeah also with you. it's never made much sense to me besides 'omg gerita star-crossed lovers twin flames my babies will find each other in every life.' which has never compelled me. but i like it well enough when i'm slogging through chibitalia sections again

nOTP: fuck, the guys only got one ship. should i make some up? yeah i really fucking hate the sickos that ship karl with matthew. see them all the time on this site and ao3. there, an answer!

random headcanon: i wrote this in my head but neglected to touch the keyboard. classic mistake. anways, i just imagine he's lonely. almost unbearably so. who can understand him? who has his burdens, his struggles, his pains? a holy child bogged down with the sins of this earth. poor guy needs a friend :(

unpopular headcanon: that him being the vessel for ludwig's soul or whatever is not a good thing. it's not sweet or anything. it's grim, man. it's fucking grim. and it's something i hope hima never canonizes. for this kind of stuff, i think our theories and speculation are better/more fun than what hima can come up with (and, to be fair to the man, i wouldn't be surprised if he knows that too)

song I associate with them: young lion by vampire weekend. it's a haunting song, one that's always made me think of death. only lyrics are 'you took your time, young lion' and it's just....yeah. yeah he did

favorite picture of them: again, the real answer is fanart. take something silly instead (because i gotta go marinate some lamb and can't devote myself to hetarchives time)

favorite thing about them: his persistence and stubbornness despite having multiple boots on his throat for generations. bastards and tyrants may come and go, but poland is forever

least favorite thing about them: canon him feels like it lacks some of the...teeth you would expect his character to have. by all means, stay silly in the face of adversity! but perhaps not total frivolousness? thankfully, a lot of the people who seem to write him with a historical lens do give him some of that grit he deserves!

favorite line: idk if this was a fandom thing or from the anime/webcomic, but him threatening "i will make warsaw your capital!" just delights me

brOTP: still hunpol! that's his bestie!! ....even if some of her choices cause him a certain amount of agita

OTP: probably lietpol? not that i love it but i just don't ship this dude

nOTP: polpru or ruspol. hasn't he suffered enough?

random headcanon: i think he likes to dress his horses up and match with them. down to how their hair is braided, decorated, every little detail. once they're all gussied up, time to ride around warsaw, krakow, gdansk, etc like that. there's local accounts on instagram or twitter that document these sightings

unpopular opinion: i'm not fucking around when i say feliks loathes ivan and gilbert. like prays to god and the immortal soul of pope john paul ii that a portal to hell opens beneath their feet for these two fucks to be tortured for all eternity. forever and ever, amen

song i associate with them: never thought about this before but this song is probably his ringtone

favorite picture of them: a silly one and a serious one :3

answered 13 and 25 here!

1. the character everyone gets wrong

erzsi. which i get, canon doesn't give you much to go on besides stronger/manlier than the men and austria-sexual. nor is anything helped by this fandom preferring to think about the men (and their rich/shallow interior worlds). but the crazy thing about this series is you can pull from an entire nation's history! and i think remembering that fact would result in a higher percentage of erzsébets that are equally as interesting as your garden variety gilbert, roderich, or whatever other dick you have her stand besides

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

my collection of Edgar Allen Poe's stories and poems is well-loved

5. where do you buy books?

physical bookstores! I need to touch the book, need to feel, need to know. need to be able to get a little mocha as i browse. preferably, i'm a mid-size local bookshop but these days i'm just happy to see a barnes & noble or books-a-million still standing

6. what books have you read in the last month?

Maus by Art Spiegelman, Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, and Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky. i recommend Maus and Suite. WTTMH, well, it's a short story collection so there's winners and losers

18. do you like historical books? which time period?

no, I detest the study of history lol. frederician prussia is the main one (which, for those bad at remembering dates is 1740-1786). but i also enjoy reading about the Wilhelmine era (both kinds!), the world wars, the Weimar era. certain topics pertaining to the Holocaust as well - 'enjoy' feels strong, but you understand - but there's a certain amount of that I can read before I need to lie down and contemplate the vacuous black hole at the pit of humanity's collective soul. we keep it light over here

19. most disliked popular books?