#theme: spark

[sforzesco]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong

[szilverer]

y'know... for a setting that places so much importance in Language and does so many ice cool things playing with it (Correspondence/Discordance, Parabola & Irem, etc) i think there's a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to the terms and words people use in their day to day life... like for example:

do you think radical revolutionaries would avoid words like "enlightening" in their vocabulary and flip them for LON-appropriate counterparts to signal their beliefs?

like substituting the word "light" with "blight". lol

similarly, pet names relating to light like "sunshine" kinda have a whole extra flavour tied to them, leaning into nostalgia, melancholy and/or danger depending on the people using it. irony, even

"honey" as a pet name also has extra connotations now and might actually bother some people instead due to the association with the drug...

do you think SMEN, taboo as it is, and seeking being a recognizable phenomenon even to the common londoner, would spawn swear words and insults? (imagine the weight of telling someone to Go Seek or Fall Down a Well)

the word "well" itself. well as an adverb, interjection, adjective. just. think about it. think about what it represents. idk something is happening to this word for sure

[dandyads]

Champion Spark Plugs, 1952

Theme Week: Summer 🌞

[sparkpluqs]

Their friendship is everything to me, actually.

[alackofghosts]

two brave little sparks!

[perhaps-in-anotherdream]

[CN] Li Zeyan’s Free SSR!

“The key frames of our journey are yours choose.”

“In the world of love, you are the very heart of it.”

—

[kylejsugarman]

walt reacting with disgust when jesse suggests they hang out together outside of the lab via the go-karting invitation vs walt desperately offering ed a giant hunk of cash just to stay with him for an hour longer when the latter comes to deliver his chemo.......ohh. the turns. and the tables..

[the-temptress-and-forger]

Oh another Aphrodite! Hello beautiful.

~ @love-from-the-sea

That is correct, darling. What version are you exactly…?

[hephaestiions]

day 21 of @hprecfest — a fic rated M | previous recs

author rec! more importantly: tacky rec! evocative, poignant & mature (heh), @tackytigerfic's works are charmed slices of aching life. tacky has a gift for making a meal out of the mundane: their style is imbued with the hush of a glade, something quiet that burrows under your skin and expands there. writing about magic lends itself to the excitement of outlandish predicaments— fuck or die marriage bonds, werewolves, time travel— but i love how tacky takes these improbabilities as opportunities to explore the vulnerable and common humanity that fuels love, friendship, desire, grief. i'd take a chance on tacky's spin on every ship, every trope & every circumstance, purely because i'm convinced they'd take as good care of me as a reader as they do their brilliant, complicated, messy characters.

i chose tacky's M-rated works because i think they best demonstrate how narrative pleasure can, and often does, lie outside the graphic. for an action-oriented, fast-paced reader like me, fics that hold my attention through careful tension & hard-earned payoff are especially enthralling. everything tacky writes, regardless of rating, is glorious & an instant recommendation, but when i think of especially fascinating work with a rating that doesn't usually hold space in my preferences, it's these:

between the power lines (M, 3.2k)

For Harry Potter, all roads eventually lead to Draco Malfoy.

an elaboration & attestation to my personal maxim: to fall in or out of love with someone, take a trip with them. glory be that these two do, glory be that it's the former. this fic stretches and softens with every word, like resin in the sun.

the long fall (M, 3.6k)

It's supposed to be a simple house renovation, and maybe it's just the paint fumes, but Harry is feeling dizzy around Draco Malfoy. And what's the real meaning of family, anyway?

vignettes from a life & love that glow hotter with every change. every word exchanged carries the weight of so much history, care & consideration. the dynamic is sweet & achy, a take on new parenthood that leans entirely into the uncertainty & joy of changing realities.

last offices (M, 6.7k) (mcd)

It didn't seem fair that Malfoy was dead, and Harry was supposed to just keep on living without him.

i reread everything before reccing, but i couldn't bring myself to reread this one because of the sharp, acute devastation of it. pain, regret, grief, dialled up to the extreme and done shatteringly well. the non-linearity of this fic is especially cruel; the heartbreak is never allowed to settle. 100% recommended!

our little life (M, 7.2k)

Sometimes Harry dreams. Only they're not really dreams at all, and Malfoy is always in them. It's time travel, but not as we know it, and Harry just needs a good night's sleep.

entire lives woven into snippets of togetherness, the call of something distant yet inevitable. harry dreams of universes with draco, which is to say, harry dreams of universes where he's loved. also includes the absolutely stellar line: Harry wondered if there was any possible universe in which Malfoy wasn’t an absolute dick about his dad.

take the moon (M, 15k)

Harry Potter has always wanted a family of his own, and when a deadly blood curse forces him into a marriage bond with his best friend Draco Malfoy, it looks like he might just have found one. This isn't the story of the marriage. This is the story of two hurt and damaged men who learned how hard they could work for the sake of love.

two men who don't quite know how to allow what they want fully into their lives, a slow crunch of yearning, the even heat of a dynamic that holds itself away from the brink, brilliantly satisfying when they give into the fall.

in conclusion: a stellar author with a flair for the understated whose works call to be savoured. as always, if you love them (it's tacky, who doesn't?), let me know!

[kiatnirans]

[howdoyousleep3]

girl i'm out here not wanting to exist of course i'm clinging to my tumblr blog

[simikae]

four hundred and ninety yen

[spark-circuit]

Limbus Company - Intervallo V-1 Boss Battle Theme (Distorted Hohenheim)

[muninnhuginn]

no but like. spy x family shows time and again that you need not just the larger picture but also to take into account what's closer to home

[redacted]'s dad pointing out that ostanians aren't monsters, but still slapping his own son and making [redacted] terrified to even consider lying to him.

donovan desmond. regardless of whether his role in government is "in the right", he still prioritises his aims over his family. both damian and demetrius have estranged relationships with him and I don't even know where to start with whatever is going on with melinda.

handler. lost her own family and this forms part of her current motivation towards heading off war. but it's shown that her personal life is in tatters. that she's only living for her job with nothing at home for her anymore. it's unhealthy for her, but the connection with her new dog is a start.

twilight. increasingly at odds between "his mission" and his family. and yet, the whole reason for his mission is to protect the smiles of children. to make it so that they don't have to experience what he did. if he completes his mission and then leaves, he's still inflicting that same heartache onto his family.

at the same time. twilight's mantra that "ignorance is sin" comes from the right place. if tensions are ignored. if people aren't actively leveraging the information they can obtain. that's how war happens.

all the adult characters have experienced war in some capacity and they recognise the pain and suffering it can cause. that's why they work so hard to avert it. but they have to be careful that they don't echo that conflict down onto their own personal lives and younger generations. that they aren't so held back by the spectre of war that they forget to live for themselves.

[randomrabbidramblings]

Casanova

Out of the noise of the Carnival, a bizzarre dark clothed figure offers you a rose.

Will you fall for his charm?

Alternate version without moustache under the cut (because I spent too much time deciding if the mask was better with or without it and I'm still not sure, lmao).

[oldshoolb]

[id: a digitial drawing of claudia from amc's interview with the vampire. claudia is a young-looking black teenager who has her hair stylized into ringlets. she's wearing the lulu costume, her smile is sharpened by visible fangs, and her red eyes pop against the blues and whites of her dress. hazy yellow light fades into the blue background from above.]

the yellow creeps through