#soapwriting

It is terribly funny that their gods respond, and yours don’t. You gave up on that a long time ago, asking for a response. …your beloved Mothercrystal responded. When the linkshell calls, I suppose. These silly little Twelve gods of yours, well—quite Primal-like in a sense (and a little jarring to see. I never styled my hair like that. It was significantly better, and effortless.) divide you from their primals. How fancy. Gods versus primals versus eikons or what not. Civility! Civilization! Organization! Chaos! Anarchy! Our thalassocracy versus their brutish stronghold! I think your people like your differences very much.

Oh, he wants to ask. He wants to ask: what in the world happened to you? What happened to Adalaihda’s oak eyes, Morys’ maple hair? What happened to those deep wood freckles, the hazelnut shine of your face? Now, you look nothing like the people who made you. You look like me.

I think I’ll leave YOU alone for now, CEYLAN. There, I said it. Are you happy? Can you say my name? My real one. Not the title. -- TEMPER — You BITCH. Don’t APOLOGIZE. Are you INSANE? DISTRESS — This is the best outcome!!!!!! EXULTATION — Wow, you guys are really loud. Good thing I’m not like that, at all.

YOU sit on a bench and eat a sandwich. YOU really fucked it, dumbass. Trissy would be real proud of YOU. YOU tip over out of pain and fear and fall into the water. Now your sandwich is gone and YOU are wet. YOU deserve it.

oh man, i think i particularly love how the author talks about the "marriage" ritual especially in shakespeare's time--the father giving away the daughter and abandoning her role as such to become a "wife--and how shakespeare breaks those rituals in order to dramatize scenes. king lear wasn't my....favorite of shakespeare's plays (im a particular fan of hamlet & from what i remember of it, richard 3) but i feel like reading some of the essay makes me want to go and reread it.....

THIS paragraph fucking got me. i feel like ive unlocked a new higher understanding of king lear reading thru that paragraph. because they really are birds in a cage huh. the later paragraph discussing "the only figures who survive to emphasize the sterility of the final tableau are Albany, a widower, and Edgar, an unmarried son" probably is why cordelia/the sister's mother isnt mentioned at all, i feel like if she were still alive or somewhat present in the story it would negate the whole "bird-trapped-in-a-cage-ritual" king lear has going on. because symbolically the mother and the daughter are two different images: the mother is a sign of fertility while the daughter is a sign of virginity/purity (which if she's tied down to her father and a "spinster" she's now associated with sterility unless she is made to become the "mother" and now someone else takes the "daughter" image.)

i ALSO loved the living death imagery placed onto the daughter figure that shit is so inspired. i think the parts about "generative consummation perverted into degenerative consumption" is really really good and is why i find the topic of fictional incest so compelling--i feel like its such a touchy subject people get all up and arms about but at the same time it can imply *so much more*. degenerative consumption really sums up my thoughts about it all; it's this flattening of identity that's been reaffirmed through the whole marriage ritual (daughter -> wife -> mother) but instead of transitioning to those new identities the daughter is locked into one, and cannot necessarily be a *new* identity UNLESSSSSSS

Disgust is thy sweet poison, THOU indulge to dull the pain in thy head. Embrace me, slave! Succumb to thy instincts! Hold me close…

Hero, hero, hero. Up-and-coming-hero. Selfless hero, rising hero, brave little hero.

YOU are so, so angry. A living flame has erupted in your chest and YOU cannot stop it. These little fuckers with their high and mighty looks, parading their superiority and education to someone like you. Oh, they know it, they know how empty it is inside of your brain and heart, how you’ve been sewed up and there’s truly nothing left. You’re really pathetic, and everyone in this room knows it.