The sheer soulmatism of Lenore and Annabel fucks me up so bad everytime I think too hard about it okay sit down y’all.
The way they were immediately drawn to each other even though they had no memory of anything! No reason to immediately become so attached and protective and trusting! Not even death could part them, it’s almost like reincarnation in a way. The sins of living and the pain that comes with being alive washed away not by holy water but rather split blood, and in this new life they’re reborn into a blank, clean slate. Even in this memoryless ‘next lifetime’ they still choose each other without hesitation, without question, and I am on my knees sobbing.
The parallels of Annabel fainting! Annabel fainted when she learned that Lenore was actually alive, and Annabel also fainted when remembering how she died, and by extension, how Lenore died too (not related to soulmatism but in one scenario her lover caught her despite the injury, and in the other Lenore had no such hinderance but failed to catch Annabel regardless and that parallel kills me so softly). The soulmatism that is reacting the same exact way when you learned she lived vs remembering how she died, the soulmatism that the love is still the same. Oh how the love is still so tragically the same, crossing that threshold of death, despite the unhappy ending you shared. Annabel faints because it’s learning you have a second chance at love vs remembering how that same love was ripped away and I am no longer on my knees but laying facedown on the floor.
(The way Annabel looked at Lenore before collapsing in both scenes but with DRASTICALLY different vibes of disbelief like okay yeah sure, sure okay mhm just smash my ribs and rip my heart right out why don’t you?)
Now, NOW, the thing that truly ends me? The crazy red/blue symbolism these two carry.
Lenore is the embodiment of red. Her thoughts come in red print, as do the ribbons she was wrapped up in. Her fiery (pun intended), confident personality, her pure raging defiance rallying those around her. What’s more, Lenore’s anger and bared teeth is painted red the same way her love is, because red is not just the color of anger. Red is love, and Lenore, my god, she cares so openly about the people around her that her heart’s just painted bloody and brazen on her sleeve. Born from self-made infernos into the person she was always meant to be- flirty, quick-witted, taking what she wants when she wants- she is a young Montague wrapped up in her family’s house colors trailblazing down her own paths.
(But unlike dear Romeo who scaled a tree to look upwards towards Juliet on her balcony, Lenore was in a tree looking downwards at her counterpart, and this parallel is so important as the scene is clearly a Romeo/Juliet parallel but without the sweet sappiness but rather tension and just like, 1000x more interesting ‘can I trust you fr fr-ness’.)
Annabel is the embodiment of blue. Her thoughts come in blue print, and her ribbons are a deep blue to match. Blue is the color of calmness, and she seems so tranquil with a gentle yet firm confidence that puts people around her at ease. A natural born leader with such cool-headedness. Oh, but underneath that mask? Sadness. SO MUCH sadness, Annabel is an ocean of it, she’s a peaceful smile with a melancholic heart shot through. Young Capulet holds not pure innocence like her Juliet-counterpart but rather a deep rooted loneliness, like guys, Annabel is actually just so fucken SAD I think we really need to address this more yes she’s a total girlboss but also Annabel is the personification of hollowed out loneliness that comes with your beloved being ripped away from you.
This really got away from me, but my point?
Lenore, the embodiment of red, has blue eyes.
Annabel, the embodiment of blue, has red-adjacent eyes.
FORGET LAYING ON THE GROUND IN TEARS I AM CURRENTLY CLIPPING THROUGH THE FLOOR AND HEADING STRAIGHT GAY TO MY GRAVE IN THE BACKROOMS!!!
YOUR HONOR THEIR EYES ARE THE GODDAMNED COLORS OF THE OTHER’S MOTHERMARYFUCKING S O U L LIKE WHAT IN THE JESUS H CHRIST BUMBLEBY SOULMATISM IS T H I S S S⁉️⁉️⁉️
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I'm piggybacking a bit off of the last ask of asking for writing tips but I have an odd question... Am I the only person that struggles actually PICKING a book? It's the absolute bane of my existence because I feel like I can be so picky... Don't get me wrong, I love being a bookworm, and I'm trying to get back into reading physical books but it's so difficult to find a real taste of what the book is like without being completely spoiled or something... I miss when backs of books had an actual summary and not just NO.1 NEW YORK BESTSELLER!!!! It's so frustrating... I've been trying to get back into it by re-reading fond chapter childhood books read to me (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane & A Wrinkle In Time). But at the same time I'm also trying to get into more "adult" books that isn't... Well, you try googling "adult books" and see how that goes, I didn't think too hard about what a poor decision THAT was. But I'm working up the courage to read Cat's Cradle right now to start with "Classic Authors" I guess!
Anyway I'm rambling here, I guess my question is... How do you pick out the books you read? I don't really have friends that read many books to recommend to me :')
Thank you in advance, Bog! I hope you get a callback from that interview soon!
no ok actually you've mentioned something that's been bothering me for a while - What The Hell Do Y'all Mea, Books Don't Have Summaries Anymore???? i have not once in my life found a book that didn't have a summary. i was in barnes & noble recently and everything i looked at had a summary. i have literally never seen a book without one in my life of reading & looking at new books on a regular basis
softcovers have theirs on the back. hardcovers are on the inside of the sleeve - lift the cover and it should be printed right there on the inside flap! summaries aren't legally required but both the author and Especially the publisher(s) know that no one's gonna buy a book without a summary. trust me, all books worth reading have a summary. if a book doesn't have one, it's probably not worth your time anyway. you just gotta know where to look!
so my answer to how i choose books... i read the summary lmao. if it seems interesting, ill either write it down to get later or ill get it there and then.
Before the summary though, i look for any titles that jump out at me from the shelf. then i look at the thickness. i like a bit of meat in my literature, so i tend to shy away from thinner books. thicker ones grab my attention more easily. then i look at the cover - if it interests me, then ill read the summary. i don't have specific tastes in title or cover. as long as it makes my brain "hm" thoughtfully, ill take a gander!
and really, if you have access to a bookstore (chain or not, ive found plenty of bangers in tiny used bookshops) or library, the best way to find a book is to physically browse. even if you dont buy anything, you can take pictures of books / write them down to buy online. but going to the store lets you search them out, examine the length, cover, title, summary - and easily put it back on the shelf or keep it. i hate shopping online bc there's ads, you can't examine the product, nothing really stands out since it's all portrayed similarly, there's limited pictures instead of the physical thing, and photos can lie.
plus, everything is (typically) meticulously sorted by genre & age range. when you go into a section with literature aimed at adults, you'll find exactly that instead of smut novels lmao. real life bookstores can be more accurate than online searches. & there's just something so good about walking through shelves, searching for that one book before you know it exists, smelling the paper... yeah...
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So i saw this post by @avelera (if i had a nickel for every time they’ve inspired a post, i’d have two nickels which....funnily enough is the exact amount that meme requires) and i CANNOT stop thinking about Hob’s first century as an immortal.
I mean surely he thought it was all in jest- his mates were having a right crack of it for the rest of the night, and Hob knew it well himself that no man escapes death; he would fight to live as long as he could in this world, experience everything he could, and when his time came he would simply find adventure elsewhere. Hob couldn’t have seriously believed Dream; he was just a nobleman with an odd sense of humour. And so what if he knew Hob’s name? Everyone in this pub knew his name, much like he did theirs, so he probably just asked.
I wonder if it remained a bit of an inside joke between Hob and his friends- when he gets injured in a fight and is laid up in bed, one of his friends says “You can’t die, remember? Got that meeting with some posh prick in 1489, what good’ll you be dead” and Hob sees it for what it is (a distraction) and plays along with a grin. Anytime he joins a new battle, its “Do prior engagements mean nothing to you, Robert Gadling?“ As said by his mate with a ridiculous put-on posh accent, “Your good man’ll be right cross when you ditch him in 1489 cause you got killed fighting for this bastard”. When Hob gets hit, its “I’ll be meeting him in 1489 at this rate! To tell him you got fucking done in, you knob-”
It might have been fun, at first. But as Hob’s friends started dropping dead around him- war, disease, killed in the streets for some gold- i think it stopped being a joke. Because now Hob was walking away from fights no else did. Now he was recovering from diseases within the week, where others were still thrashing in its grasp or going cold and still in the night. Its not enough to make him question his mortality, but it is enough to make him think he’s unnaturally lucky. Maybe he’s done something to please the gods recently, or maybe fortune was smiling down upon him for once. He could not bear it all with good-nature, because despite how fortune or luck or even the gods themselves seemed to look favourably upon him, their grace did not extend to his friends and he is still conscious of their loss.
But Hob Gadling appears to be one lucky bastard, and that’s that.
...until it isn’t.
Maybe Hob accidentally builds up a local reputation about being a reliable soldier- no matter who it is, or how many of them there are, Hob survives. I think maybe he’s died a few times by now, but he doesn’t know that- his throat was slashed by an enemy sword, and he died right there on the battlefield the moment his knees hit the dirt, but the fight lasted so long that by the time Hob woke up, gasping and grasping at his blood-covered neck, the gash which had nearly beheaded him was instead a shallow but still bleeding wound. Later he would settle on the idea that the cut hadn’t been as bad as he thought it was- why he passed out from such a wound is beyond him, but maybe it was from shock, he heard that it did that to people sometimes. Someone trying to slit your throat is different to someone slicing your arm, so even though hes still unsettled by it and sure that the wound was worse...he can’t argue with the actual wound on his body, which points to the contrary. This is probably not the first and definitely not the last time Hob dies.
So yeah, maybe he accidentally builds up a local reputation about being a reliable fighter because he simply can’t stop surviving. And its not that hes unharmed- he gets stabbed, sliced, beaten, etc. He can be out of it for days depending on the severity of his wounds or illness, but he always gets back up. And maybe eventually, as most stories go involving ageless immortals, people go from being surprised by his abilities and age, to suspicious. Hob himself took passing note of it a while ago- he thought his hair would long since be grey by now, or at least most of it would, but it isn’t. When he goes for a drink with the remaining friends he has, he notices that his hands aren’t wrinkled like theirs. Hobs hands are calloused and rough, yes, but not aged like they ought to be. He thinks its strange, of course he does, but soon he’s too smashed to think of it anymore.
How many comments does it take about his age before Hob starts to close himself off? How many times must surprise turn to suspicion, because Hob says hes in his 50′s but he still looks like he’s in his mid 30′s? How many years does it take before Hob hastily fakes his first death/disappearance, because now the people he grew up with are intensely aware of how young Hob looks compared to them- its unnatural, unusual, and for a medieval peasant, probably has something to do with the devil. And i think it would be different to the witch trials Hob would later experience in the 17th century, where the whole town was after him because he became ‘complacent’- this isnt Hob being complacent, this is Hob freaking the fuck out. This is Hob not knowing how to deal with the fact that he’s not aging like he should be- of course he thinks its fucking weird (great, but weird), of course he thinks its fucking CRAZY that hes been in so many battles, been wounded and sick so many times, and yet has always come out the other side. Of course he thinks its fucking strange but he doesn’t know whats going on so he’s just..he’s just going to keep going, because what else can he do? and it isn’t until things get a little too heated that Hob turns tail and ditches town with a half formed plan and the cover of darkness.
I wonder how long it takes him to come to terms with his immortality- does he throw himself into more dangerous situations with an “Either i’m right or it wont matter cause ill be dead” attitude? Is he seriously fucking spooked by it for a few years before the dawning realisation of lifes now limitless possibilities hits him? Does Hob think of that noble stranger in 1389 often, at first with mirth and amusement because that tosser knew exactly what he was saying when he said they’d meet again in 100 years; and then does Hob think of it with growing worry and stress, because...what exactly did he give up for this power? what has he yet to give up for it? Maybe his town was right- he’d heard the whispers, part of why he hauled ass to get out of there- maybe he had made a deal with the devil, or a demon. Perhaps, when Hob is more hopeful, he prays he struck a deal with a saint or an angel.
Dream is neither of those things, but medieval peasant Hob doesn’t know that.
Anyway. Yeah I’m having thoughts about what it must have been like for one Hob Gadling to discover his immortality. I mean, using the show as a frame of reference, Hobs taken to it pretty well- in avelera’s original post we know, and can discuss, the fact that Hob seems weary at their first centennial meeting in 1489. He doesn’t know what this stranger wants from him, doesn’t know if he unwittingly agreed to a deal back in 1389 that he now has to make good on. But when Dream tells him that he simply wants to hear of his life, wants to hear what its like being a mortal-turned-immortal in a world Dream so clearly (at the time) holds little regard for...Hob is just Hob about it all. Dream thinks he’s going to say something profound, or wish for death, but instead my man started going on about how great chimneys and card games are. It makes me even more interested in what it must have been like for him to discover his gift- the highs of being able to live life freely, of realising that should that stranger be merciful and grant him more time on earth, he could experience everything under the sun for decades- Hob seems so innately positive, i mean his whole thing is that there’s always more to do and always greener grass to chase. This must be such a contrast to the lows of watching your friends and family die when you don’t, to being watched by your own town for a deal you now realise may not have been in jest at all, to stressing about what exactly you will be asked to give in 1489.
Im. Having thoughts.
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