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Dorothy Gale in 1.04 

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let monster women look monstrous u fucking cowards

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Adria Arjona photographed by Lauren Dukoff for Vanity Fair

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No offense to God, but          every thing my mother prayed I wouldn’t be, I became. Every place she prayed I wouldn’t go, I went.     I walked so long I found Mercy.           I draped her thighs over my shoulders & drank.

Hiwot Adilow, “Mihret,” published in Nepantla

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There is magic in decay. A dance to be done For the rotting,

Dan Chelotti, from “Compost,” Poetry  (June 2014)

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anne carson sentence starters.

quotes are all taken from various poems and essays by the queen of aesthetes, anne carson. feel free to change pronouns/add things/etc if needed.

‘ you are not a god. ’

‘ we begin in the dark and birth is the death of us. ’

‘ now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time. ’

‘ [ name ] was a monster. everything about him was red. ’

‘ what are we made of but hunger and rage? ’

‘ i finally decided that understanding isn’t what grief is about. ’

‘ honey is the sleep of the just. ’

‘ it is perilous to live past the end of your myth. ’

‘ you remember too much. ’

‘ when i desire you a part of me is gone. ’

‘ humans in love are terrible. ’

‘ under the seams runs the pain. ’

‘ men know almost nothing about desire. ’

‘ sex is a substitute, like money or language. ’

‘ what is the holiness of conversation? ’

‘ —you burn me. ’

‘ i ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way. ’

‘ sometimes i just want to stop seeing. ’

‘ we’re all mortal, you know. ’

‘ i am the shape you made me. filth teaches filth. ’

‘ why does tragedy exist? ’

‘ you’re a beauty. ’

‘ madness and witchery are conditions commonly associated with the female voice. ’

‘ it made me merciless. ’

‘ desire is no light thing. ’

‘ i do not exist. there is nothing left. ’

‘ gods are stubborn. so am i. ’

‘ we had been seduced into thinking that we were immortal. ’

‘ i am someone who did not die when i should have died. ’

‘ why are you so in love with things unbearable? ’

‘ everything can collapse. ’

‘ someone will remember us. even in another time. ’

‘ my mind is burning. ’

‘ each night, about this time, he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing. ’

‘ love does not make me gentle or kind. ’

‘ i can give you reasons not do die. ’

‘ passivity is killing her. ’

‘ they are victims of love, many of them. ’

‘ he is a young god. ’

‘ you touch my soul, you pain my mind. ’

‘ it’s something of a cliché to say that we all think we’re monsters. ’

‘ i fear your sorrows make your tongue grow wild. ’

‘ it’s what they call ‘ecstasy’. ’

‘ a man who can’t die is no tragic hero. ’ 

‘ i want everything. ’

‘ it was like a beautiful dance where your partner turns and stabs you to death. ’

‘ to survive you need an edge. ’

‘ girls are cruelest to themselves. ’

‘ we are dust. ’

bonus! further quotations from award-winning poet and author anne carson:

‘ i am a philosopher of sandwiches. ’

‘ pilgrims were people glad to take off their clothing, which was on fire. ’

‘ english is a bitch. ’

‘ i wish i were two dogs. then i could play with me. ’

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airport security: sir please empty your pockets

me: ok *begins pulling out hundreds of knives*

airport security: is that all sir

me: *continues to pull out knives*

airport security: sir

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why did i email my imam back at 2 am...... i never email anyone back at 2 am..

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👑 take back whats yours

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so i saw a post joking about how corvo’s gonna have to get used to regular-ass boring swords again because emily’s never giving him his folding blade back and like... i get what ur saying and i appreciate u, but ur... missing some stuff.

the folding blade is corvo’s. regardless of who’s wielding it, that thing is corvo’s and it’s always going to be. he is too strongly imprinted on it for it to ever fit right in anyone else’s hand. emily wielding it through dh2 is EXTREMELY symbolically and narratively appropriate - whatever route she takes (coughhighchaos), she does it carrying her mother’s legacy in her left hand and her father’s legacy in her right. the symbolism in dh2 is so on point and emily kaldwin is accompanied in all she does by physical representations of the forces that have shaped her. so like. no i absolutely dont object to emily using her father’s weapon rather than something crafted specially for her, like we get in dh1. but like

she wouldn’t keep it. emily lets go of the last living remnant of her mother to carry her enemy instead - to carry another weapon, a thing of hate, a gun to kill delilah. she uses it and discards it and the last physical piece of her mother literally dissolves in her hands, and this ties into the symbolism of how daud murdered half of emily when he murdered jessamine and how in letting go of her mother in order to murder delilah emily is deciding, as she has been through the entirety of dh2, to let go of that which remains in her of her mother - mercy for enemies, compassion, patience, a kinder justice - (i forgot softness because it did not serve me)

emily lets go of jessamine. it’s hard for her as little lady emly - “i won’t, you were all i ever wanted” - but not as empress emily the first. her time in serkonos gives her a new understanding of what she needs to be as a ruler, who she needs to be for her people, and a renewed drive to do right by them. after serkonos, emily’s goal stops being to “be the ruler my mother wanted me to be” and becomes “be the ruler my empire needs.” relinquishing that which is jessamine in her is a good thing. she needed to do this in order to grow. but the point i’m trying to reach, and the symbolic narrative reason that emily would not keep her father’s sword after losing her mother’s heart:

emily does not release jessamine to become corvo. emily is not corvo. this isn’t as simple as a girl split in half down the middle, with a strong sword arm from her father on the right and an open helping hand from her mother on the left. corvo is also a creature of mercy. however he’s played as a young man in dh1, he’s canon low chaos in dh2 (if you play as emily, which obv is the canon im talking about rn). it’s a different kindness than emily carried from jessamine, a harder kind, but he teaches it to her: every enemy you leave alive is another man who gets to wake up and go home. if you play low chaos emily, then you’ve decided that she’s taken that to heart - that she wants to be the person her father wants her to be as well as the person her mother would want her to be. which is a nice and heartwrenching narrative, but it’s not emily kaldwin’s.

emily grows up with her father telling her someday our enemies are going to come for you - and then turning and telling her, when they do, let them live. and they do come for her, and she gets to serkonos and does... exactly not that. to her, every enemy she leaves alive is another man who’ll come for her again. emily kills when she doesn’t have to. that’s not corvo’s influence. that’s not anyone’s influence. that’s emily, a product of the rat plague, a girl who became empress at eleven with all the isles set against her. whether or not a high chaos corvo in dh1 brings it to light earlier, emily has a brutality and a viciousness in her that is all her own. she is cruelly efficient. when she lets go of jessamine, and stops trying to be jessamine, she’s not making room to be corvo. she’s making room to be empress. she’s freeing herself to grow into the leader (and fully developed individual!) she needs to be - releasing what was always in her, but strained against the bonds of imitation of her father and admiration for her mother. what emily is did not come from jessamine or corvo. she is a beast entirely of her own kind. she needs to rid herself of the expectations she has of herself in regards to both of them - jessamine’s heart in the ground with her, and corvo’s sword back in his strong hand. they are important to her, and they influence her, but they are not her. she is her.

emily would return to dunwall, free her father, dispatch the last of the traitors, and when the killing was done she’d give her father back his sword. and before he left she’d turn to sokolov for one of her own. this, too, is symbolically appropriate: sokolov as emily’s genius while piero is corvo’s. piero, an insurgent in a tavern, long mistrusted by his peers and ultimately cast out from his respectable post in disgrace - now, propelled to action by the outsider’s hand. he does his work in secret, in the dark, for a city that will never know all that he’s done for them. sokolov, sparks through dunwall city and locks in dunwall tower; a lord above it all, the violence he did in the name of the greater good cushioned by his safe standing among the nobility - and beyond that, he is a longtime figure in emily’s life, significant to her since childhood, almost a grandfather or elderly uncle. he has one last invention to craft for the empire’s security: a weapon that will sit in emily’s right hand while her left rests on the arm of her throne.

emily needs a weapon of her own. the folding blade, additionally, has an elegance to it that emily’s weapon should not. ironically, the flair and majesty of the folding blade aesthetically suits corvo, a scrapper from the streets of karnaca, better than it does the high-seated empress of the isles. look at corvo’s blade animation - the way he twirls it to sheathe and unsheathe it. it’s graceful, fluid. i’m pretty sure that for dh2 they just gave emily and corvo the same blade animations for ease of production, which i understand, and also why wouldn’t they want to show off how cool and flippy the blade is. but for a more in-character reference, look at how emily unsheathes the same blade in the trailer - the single, simple movement. she doesn’t twirl it. she doesn���t feel the need for fancy stylings or bells and garnishes. it’s just a downward shake - just the force to push the blade free, straightforward and clean and somehow communicating a violence that the spinning animation lacks. again: brutal efficiency. aesthetically, the folding blade doesn’t fit.

i don’t know if the concept of the blade folding would carry over to emily’s version, if sokolov would keep that in his design. i’m good at coming up with reasons why emily post-dh2 needs a sword of her own but not at coming up with any kind of design for that sword. i’d like to say that (whether in addition to the folding thing or not) it’d have some kind of gimmick of its own, some trick designed to complement emily the way “hey this sword folds in half” is for corvo.

but yea!! give emily her own sword!!!!!!! she’d want one. the only thing post-dh2 that she’d probably rather use corvo’s sword for? killing daud. though she’d rather find the blade he killed jessamine with and use that. emily does have a sense of poetry mingled into her ruthless and unforgiving concept of justice.

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deeerdraws:

WHILE I’M ALIVE YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP WELL

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dont forget to remind ppl who the fuck u r in case they start getting 2 comfortable

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 THIS  CITY  IS  HERS.    from  windowsills  to  alley  stones,  black  markets,  bustling  spaceports,  the  traitorous  banners  and  the  streets  that  in  reverence  echo  the  wrong  name.    those  streets  are  hers,  karnaca’s  salty  air  as  much  as  the  dampness  of  dunwall  that  WINDS  THROUGH  HER  BODY,  and  she  knows  its  people,  her  people,  the  way  they  saunter  on  their  second  steps  and  carve  wide  berths  around  the  duke’s  armed  men,  her  people’s  looks  and  sounds  ---  and  this  is  not  one  of  them.

 it’s  been  so  long  since  HER  MOTHER  RECEIVED  THE  DUCHESS,  her  silvery  yellow  hair  all  bound  up  like  mother’s  but  with  flowers  sewn  throughout  ---  so  long,  and  dead  now,  both  of  them,  and  that  armor  was  not  her  way,  so  what  does  she  matter?  ---  but  emily  knows  her  history.    the  stranger  WALKS  LIKE  MANDALORE,  LIKE  WARS  a  dozen  systems  away.    and  the  weapon  on  her  belt  ---  she  knows  its  shape,  can  see  how  the  mechanisms  would  move  within,  all  built  around  a  sliver  of  rock.    kyber,  emily.    there’s  nothing  in  the  galaxy  like  it.    so  like  her  father’s.    hers,  now. 

 she’s  tailed  from  a  distance,  light  feet  balanced  on  wrought  iron  balcony  railings  and  the  stonework  at  the  edges  of  the  rooftops.    she’s  ALONE  NOW,  the  stranger,  and  emily  reaches  out  as  she’s  learned  to  do  ---  A  CLAWED  THOUGHT  at  the  ground  forty  feet  below,  grasps  tight,  and  she  pulls  herself  down,  lands  firm  and  soft  on  one  knee.    as  she  rises  her  steps  are  not  so  muffled  as  she  could  make  them;  just  enough  to  make  her  presence  known.                    @weaponexpert

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[3:13:15 PM] knife dad's gay daughter: wyman: em could you Not emily, lounging across the couch in intangible undulating wispy shadow beast form because she couldn't get comfortable: flips wyman off with her shadow claw hand

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hey any girls wanna plot some gay shit hmu