daltonesque - Tumblr blog

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I smiled. We were under the same sky at least.

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some of y’all didn’t base your entire personality on dead poets society after the first time you watched it and honestly it really shows

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Mads Mikkelsen dancing in ANOTHER ROUND (2020)

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On Fathers and Rage: Collected Works #2

— me and him, on two opposite ends.

Excerpts from:

Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics • Pinterest • Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz • Vader en Dochter: Waarover Praten Zij? by Scheveningen 1999 • Pinterest • Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur • I hope this reaches her in time by R.H. Sin • Doomed From The Beginning by @/veniennes on tiktok • Lyra Wren • Woodtangle by Mary Ruefke

(read part 1 here)

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no more group chats. we meet once a week from now on and everyone prepares 2 personal stories and 3-5 memes and we sit in a circle and have a Socratic seminar covering these topics

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{Words by Anaïs Nin, from The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4 (1944-1947) / Cynthia Cruz from diagnosis,The glimmering room}

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I will wander down it and pick flowers, green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, wild roses and ivy serpentine.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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“And it would seem that Cicero was naturally prone to laughter and fond of jesting; his face, too, was smiling and peaceful.”

— Plutarch

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Matching Misfortunes: Susan Pevensie

I enjoyed writing this one so much. I hope you enjoy reading it just as much!

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Susan’s cheeks hurt.

She smiles at the boy as he throws an arm around her and winks, and she feels the muscles of her face ache with the effort of holding a smile for hours and hours on end. She wants to shrug off the black-haired boy’s arm, wants to tell him to piss off and not bother her again lest she ask Peter to ensure his distance from her with violence, but she simply smiles at him.

She straightens her spine and smiles.

She ignores the glares her female classmates are throwing at her from all corners of the classroom. She is beautiful, she knows she is, but that does not mean he enjoys being the nectar to the bees that are the hormonal, idiotic boys of Westbrook. She has never enjoyed being known for her beauty, for it has always been nothing but a miserable curse— three wars had been fought for her hand in marriage over the course of twenty years, and Edmund has sometimes called her Helen of Troy for her troubles.

She hates that fucking name.

Her cheeks hurt. Yet, she smiles her most charming smile as she subtly leans away from Raymond— she has heard of the way he treats girls, and she has no interest in being one of his thrice-damned conquests. She has no interest in being a challenge, a trophy to be earned, a thing to be owned. She is to be respected, dammit, she is smart and keen-eyed and knowledgeable. Heaven’s sake, she is a Queen—

She breathes. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.

Raymond smirks back, dull greyish blue eyes glinting like a broken steel sword in the sunlight that streams in through the windows, and tries to draw her closer to him using the arm that he has around her shoulder. Susan does not deign to move. She does not bother to pretend that she is not stronger than this arrogant youngling, this boy playing at being a man, and simply sits there, unmoving and seemingly oblivious, until he furrows his eyebrows and stops trying to move her without her permission.

Her cheeks hurt.

“C’mon, Pevensie,” he leers at her, and she stops herself from lifting a hand to her back. Five and a half years, and she still hasn’t forgotten the phantom presence of her quiver full of arrows, her bow made of the finest wood covered in intricate carvings.

“Say yes, darling,” he says, and she smiles so that she does not try to stab. “The party would be boring without the prettiest girl in school there.”

Susan has heard that compliment fall from the lips of powerful Kings and lovesick fools alike, and she has never been affected by it. Raymond falls into the third category of the people who have called her pretty, the one where they simply want to be known as the one who broke the prettiest girl’s heart, who claimed the love of the Beauty of Narnia—

She breathes in. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.

“Well, I don’t know about that, Raymond,” she says in the smoothest, most convincing one that she can muster, and she does not fail to notice the way boys and girls alike sway towards her just to listen to her speak. She ignores the way her heart hums at being listened to, a song she has tried (and failed) to forget for five and a half years. “Parties aren’t really my fancy, you see.”

Raymond waves a hand lazily, and Susan wants to scoff at how far the action is from the effortlessness she is sure he wants to portray. He is an arrogant airbag of a boy with an inflated sense of importance playing at being a powerful man. “Oh, now we both know you’re lying, my darling.”

Susan feels the sudden urge to cut off his tongue, for daring to refer to him as his darling. Instead, she folds her hands in her lap and laughs softly, notices the way the students gathered around laugh with her as if following her lead. Her throat feels tight and her eyes burn, and she pushes both feelings away.

“No, I’m telling the truth,” she says, laughter colouring her words in just the right amount that tells everyone that they are welcome to laugh along and sure enough, they do. They do not take their eyes off of her, and follow her unspoken command by laughing along. She ignores the strange warmth that settles behind her heart in her chest. “I get too tired at parties, they’re too much for me.”

She loves parties. She has loved parties for ages and ages, since she was a nine-year-old child and she dressed up to let her father take her and mum out for dancing, and then a twenty-something year old Queen dressed in the finest silks and talking circles around Princes enchanted by her beauty and Kings madly in love with her—

She breathes in. Pushes the thought out of her mind. Maintains her smile.

Raymond’s arm tightens around her shoulders. Susan’s fingers twitch, but she forcefully presses her hand into her lap to stop herself from reaching for the quiver that no longer hangs from her back. There is no quiver. There is no bow. She is a schoolgirl, not an archer. She has textbooks in the bag that hangs from her back. She is a schoolgirl.

“Oh, be a sport, Pevensie,” Raymond scoffs, and Susan wants to rise to her full height and demand that he treat her with the respect she deserves. “It’s just one party, and it’s the first party of term. C’mon, you can even be my date.”

Susan ignores the way the glares are once again aimed at her, ignores the disgust that roils in her stomach, and masterfully stops her smile from curving into a disdainful sneer. An arrogant boy playing at being a powerful man, who wishes that she would clamour for his love. Ha. She has seen many thousands of men just like him.

Many thousands of men trying to seem more important than they are, vying for her attention, looking to claim her, looking to own her, aiming for her throne and her kingdom—

All of them learnt to fear her over time.

All of them learnt over time that she was not just Beauty. They learnt that she was not just respected for her looks. They learnt, over time, that she was Beauty and Brains and Brawn. She was beautiful, she was the peacekeeper, and she was the most talented archer in all the known lands. She was a dangerous enemy to make, and despite her preference for non-violence, would not hesitate to hand out gruesome and painful deaths if needed.

Susan is Gentle, not Harmless.

Men learnt over time, in Narnia, and so will Raymond learn it in England.

She straightens her spine and gently shrugs off Raymond’s arm. He tries to move it back to its former place, and she stares at him with a smile she knows looks too wide and too sharp, making him stop halfway through his movement. That is one good thing that comes out of being truly beautiful— Beauty, true Beauty, is terrifying. It is deadly. It is something that a simple human cannot help but be bewitched by, and Susan knows this. She has known this for decades. She has successfully used this piece of knowledge to her kingdom’s benefit time and again.

Raymond does not try to throw his arm over her shoulder again, and Susan makes sure her smile goes back to its most charming as she engages the rest of the students.

“I will have to decline your.. generous offer,” she says, laying the sarcasm on so thinly that only Edmund would have noticed.

Alas, her dearest younger brother is not here to witness her exercise her power over her classmates. If he were, he would have enjoyed watching them move to her word like mice moved to the Pied Piper’s tune. He is absurd like that, but who is she to deny him his entertainment?

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she sighs as she pushes herself off the desk and stands to her full, impressive height. She brushes her hands over her skirt, takes her water bottle from a boy with a soft smile that has him blushing bright red, and waves to everyone. Without saying a word more, she walks out of the classroom with her head held high and her shoulders pulled back.

Her cheeks hurt.

She walks in silence, ignoring the students that mill around in the corridors of the school. The girl’s bathroom is on the floor above, and it takes her barely a minute to reach it; people clear a way for her, moving out of her path as she walks with measured and careful steps. They do it almost without noticing that they are, almost like a force is making them do it.

Susan locks the door of the bathroom behind her, takes a good look around to make sure she is alone, and bursts into silent tears.

She drops her bag to the floor and leans her back against the door, screwing her eyes shut and letting the tears run down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. Her chest heaves with quiet sobs, and she sucks in shuddering breaths as she slides down to sit on the floor with her head buried between her knees. The warmth behind her heart turns into a painful burning sensation, and she chokes on her tears and emotions that she cannot fully understand.

No matter how much she tries to bury her memories behind smiles that sway the students, no matter how much she tries to forget, she knows what she is. She knows what she always was, and what she always will be.

She is Queen Susan the Gentle of Narnia, the Eagle-Eyed Marksman Queen, Second of the Beloved Four, Defender of the People.

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Btw, that "no" that Neil told Todd was more romantic than all the love poems I've ever seen

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I wish I were a Pevensie.

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grieving the person you used to be

marian keyes// ?// bigger than the whole sky, taylor swift// fiona apple// @inkskinned// would've, could've, should've, taylor swift// father, the front bottoms// @inanotherunivrse// ?// memento mori, crywank// @dakotajohnsongf// @ryebreadgf// quote: deathless, catherynne m. valente edit:? // bojack horseman s6 e16// a pearl, mitski// would've, could've,should've, taylor swift// ?// @fridayiminlovemp3 // ?// @heavensghost

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Edit: Taylor's playlists she personally curated for Apple Music + her messages

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all of the most important women in pauls life being the only ones not kneeling before him in the throne room scene. not chani because she refuses to bow before what he represents. not irulan because she is a princess royal and bows before no one even as her house crumbles around her. not jessica because she made him she made him into what stands before her now and by extension not alia who has loved her dearest brother from the instant she became aware and who will rule in his stead one day

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can’t stop thinking about that shot where everyone in the room is kneeling and princess irulan, paul, and chani are the only ones standing. paul’s back to chani signifying his betrayal while princess irulan and chani are eye to eye - both heartbroken over what the man between them has done. my chest hurts that was so beautifully executed

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“i want you to know, i will love you as long as i breathe.”

dune part ii / ojibwa / waiting for this story to end before i begin another, jan heller lev