#litstack

[creacherkeeper]

is this old religion, are we calling it love?

{sweet movie, alisha dietzman / @gaphic / tiktok / @iamalivenow / on earth we're briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong / @manywinged / these violent delights, micah nemerever / the reader, bernhard schlink (trans. carol brown janeway) / hestitations outside the door, margaret atwood / a self-portrait in letters, anne sexton}

[ID: ten images of text together in a litstack

1: Confession: I will think of you forever

2: a post by gaphic: It’s only tragedy if you convince yourself, for even just a moment, that everything could be ok, despite knowing it won’t be. Tragedy lies in ‘so close, yet so far.’ It’s avoidable because it would only take a tiny alteration to prevent disaster, but human nature is in the way- not maliciously, not knowingly, despite trying so hard.

3: a tiktok comment and answer: Are they lovers? / Worse

4: a post by iamalivenow: gay sex won't fix this. it'll probably make this worse. that being said don't you want to see how much worse it can get?

5: Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.

6: tags from manywinged: #technically they know and understand each other better than anyone else alive #but they communicate that in the most fucked up insane unnecessarily complicated way and think thats normal

7: I don't think you've ever felt anything that didn't hurt you. / We've found each other, out of everyone else in the world. Does that hurt, too?

8: "I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do."

9: Should we go into it together / If I go into it with you I will never come out

10: of course the love is there. / still, / still, / still.

end ID]

[paladinbaby]

a patch of white anemones

the iliad, tr. emily wilson / electra: a tragedy, tr. anne carson / the lathe of heaven, ursula k. le guin / @insomniac-arrest / the first bad man, miranda july / what resembles the grave but isn’t, anne boyer / rabbit heart (raise it up), florence + the machine / burrows end, @dimension20official / the burglar of babylon, elizabeth bishop

[Image Description: Ten images of text. The first image is a photograph of a book page but the rest are black text on a pure white background.

1: “You already know this story. You will die. Everyone you love will also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand the unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.”

2: “Electra / And I know there is something all wrong about me - believe me. Sometimes I shock myself”

3: “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

4: “The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try there is no escaping being yourself forever.”

5: “Then I realised that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

6: “Always falling into a hole, then saying “okay, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,””

7: “I must become a lion hearted girl / Ready for a fight / Before I make the final sacrifice / We raise it up, this offering”

8: “i think for myself, when I go back to that time, the number one emotion associated with it is tremendous shame and embarrassment which is the emotion it would take to never mention that to anybody”

9: “You were good to me, and I love you, / But I’m doomed” End ID.]

[punkbarbarian]

a life you never thought you would know (will arc 3 thoughts)

@canisfamiliars // to the film industry in crisis, frank o'hara // busyhead, noah kahan // starparkdesigns // spring, mary oliver // times like these, foo fighters // wolf & lamb, gale o smith // the painted drum, louise erdrich // all these things that i've done, the killers

[grasslandgirl]

slasher domestic.

[True Blue, boygenius. screenshot of this post by @metamorphesque . screenshot of this post by @sawasawako . screenshot of this post by @handotcom . "Our Last Summer In Brooklyn" by Pq Kim. Living Room Floor by Sammy Rae & the Friends.]

***

Fig was finally starting to accept that she was going to keep growing up.  The world was going to keep turning, everyone getting older, the seasons passing. She was never going to be that terrified teenager covered in blood again. For better or worse, she couldn’t ever go back. She was trying to get used to that idea, trying to accept it. Some mornings were easier than others. But then nights like this- giggling with Gorgug, stealing food off his fork, watching mindless youtube videos while the world grew dark outside- made the bad mornings easier to handle.  Maybe that’s what growing up was.  Figuring out how to handle everything the best you could.

[masculinepeacock]

the arc of regression

My Father’s Son, Blake Rouse // Scott Carroll // Narcissus, Delmore Schwartz // @creacherkeeper // The Waves, Virginia Woolf // Field Dressing, J.L. // @miseria-fortes-viros // Prayer Can Be Anything, Karen Elizabeth Sharpe // Phillip Pilz (crop by me) // My Father’s Son, Blake Rouse

[ID: (1) handwritten cursive that reads, “i’m so fucking scared that i’m just you”. (2) a photo of a white tailed deer in the woods. (3) “THE FEAR AND DREAD OF THE MIND OF OTHERS”. (4) “in this case the toughest battle is talking to divine”. (5) “‘For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.’”. (6) my father takes me hunting to show me that he loves me // as if trying to kill things together will prevent us from killing each other”. (7) “the gods will not save me. i suppose this is a lesson in hubris. i am forever a flightless thing”. (8) “the clean dispatch of a blunt tool some call the priest”. (9) A photo of a wolf snarling. (10) handwritten cursive that reads, “i’m only my father’s son”. /end id]

[sugarglazed]

does anyone have any tips on web weaving/litstacking. I lowkey want to get into it but I’m not sure where to start

[holy-loki]

“twelfth night” - william shakespeare // deadpool & wolverine (convinced to post this by @precalamity)

[chaos-burst]

"Healing is over."

Euripides, from Grief Lessons: Four Plays; translated by Anne Carson // paramore, “interlude: i’m not angry anymore” // Langston Hughes, from ‘Tired’ featured in Selected Poems // Fyodor Dostoyevsky // @shorthalt // Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

[ID: a litstack comprised of various quotes on white background.

Gods are stubborn. So am I.

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

i'm not angry anymore well, sometimes i am

i am i am i am furious

I am so tired of waiting. Aren’t you, For the world to become good And beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife And cut the world in two— And see what worms are eating At the rind.

i often hear how humans talk of crossroads how they look the devil dead in the eye and dare him to move forward. i stand alone on ground which kills and look the devil in the eye and dare you to move forward.

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” End ID]

[deerinhorror]

i just wanna say you reblogged one of my litstacks and it’s perfect bc it’s based on a dnd pc that is the literal aasimar of a deer god and oh boy is she in the horrors

Did you mean this lovely post? I love all the 💕 They can be symbols and vectors of so many different horrors

[jessaerys]

Any webweave/litstack tips for someone who's never done it before and thinks you are a genius?

HEHEHE thank you ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to make people insane about fictional characters.

the only advice i can think of is, take it slow! they'll be ready whenever they're ready. mine usually languish in my drafts for weeks as every now and then i read or see a post/quote that fits, and collect them at their own pace.

also: i think people often neglect rhythm. a webweave is an entire piece of writing, not just a collection of quotes. the same rules of prose apply!

i haven't read every single piece of literature the quotes come from, but some of them are made in-house. i am actually trying to remember to post more quotes from whatever i'm currently reading so i can trick myself into reading more through the peer validation of the alleged dopamine hit via the candy colored social media notification

also i am on pinterest an unhealthy amount

[paladinbaby]

returning home

no light no light, florence + the machine / gallant, v.e schwab / @arunima / where does the temple begin, where does it end? mary oliver / @doomed-bythe-narrative / caitlin conlan / @wolfythewitch / tired, langston hughes / hum hum, mary oliver / nine lives, ursula k le guin

[Image description: a collection of ten texts mostly on white backgrounds.

1: “Would you leave me / If I told you what I've done?

And would you leave me / If I told you what I'd become”

2: “Perhaps you are haunting me. / What a comforting thought. / Maybe it's you in the darkness. / I swear I've seen it move.” The first two lines are highlighted in pale green.

3: “in summer wounds fester and in winter they ache. another one of life's classic no win scenarios”

4: “I look; morning to night / I am never done with looking.”

5: “some people are taking “doomed” to mean “dead”. this is actually a misconception! you can be doomed even if you don't die! it's sometimes worse if you don't die!”

6: “It was never so romantic to become so obsessed with the past that I put my whole life on hold just to spend more time thinking about it.” Block capitals written in purple marker on pale blue paint chips.

7: “Constantly obsessed with the concept of a man forced to be a myth. What do you do when every step you take is embedded into the text. Every word you say prose to read. You're part of something bigger than yourself. The narrative tugs you along lime water currents. There is no time to rest, to be human. You must be great, you must be legend”

8: “I am so tired of waiting, / Aren't you / For the world to become good / And beautiful and kind?”

9: “Some wounds never vanish

Yet little by little / I learned to love my life.” The second two lines are highlighted leaf green.

10: “We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand our in the dark?” End ID. ]

[vilebird]

FUNERAL AFTER A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

a painting of a pale sky and bright blue sea crashing onto dark rocks and foaming. it's oriented the right way. - Day, by Frederick Judd Waugh

"and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven's gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and i know i know i can't see them but i know" - And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes, by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

"i've cut myself off. i can feel the place / where i used to be attached. it's raw, as when you grate / your finger. it's a shredded mess / of images. it hurts." The Door, by Margaret Atwood

"i found you / i found the door / but when i stepped through / there was no floor" I want you, by Mitski

a still from a video of a bright setting sun against a dark orange sky and dark blue sea, with the caption "don't cry" - The Green Ray (1986)

"i feel dead. / i feel as if i were the residue of a stranger's life" - The Lost Pilot, by James Tate

"the shuddering moan of blood, a song to calm the sacrificial, the loss across the river. the way a dying animal will look at you is seared into me. we tie together and all over again." - i cant remember what this one is sorru

"i am feeling numb. it's a curious feeling, and i get it all the time. my attention to the world around me disappears, and something starts to hum inside my head. far off, voices try to bump up against me, but i repel them. my ears fill up with water and i focus on the humming inside my head. / i am inside my skull. it is a little cave, and i curl up inside it. below it, my body hovers, unattached." - Madness: A Bipolar Life, by Marya Hornbacher.

"-though we're dry and waiting. part of me died here so another could go on. the body i raised-" - When They Say you Can't Go Home Again What They Mean is You Where Never There, by Marty McConnell

text: "there'll always be a few things / maybe several things/ that you're gonna find / really difficult to forgive" image: a black silhouette of a minotaur sitting on top of a pale pillar rising out of a pale maze, looking out at an orange sunset over an empty desert beyond the walls of its maze. the text is black letters on white pasted in strips over top. - Up the Wolves by the Mountain Goats and Minotauro by Jordi Garriga Mora. collage put together by @scatterghosts

"i know there are things i haven't survived." - Lord of the Butterflies, by Andrea Gibson

"it seems to me that the dead only return for love or for revenge. who did you come back for?" - White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi

a painting of a bright white bird on a background split between dark blue and black - Promised Land (2013), by Michael Creese

"and with or without your support, i will continue / what im trying to say is you never know what you've been through / til you pause and cough it out" - Cough It Out by The Frontbottoms

"painting all the mirrors black / i won't see you staring back / i'm getting lost forever / searching in the broken glass / trying to ignore the past / and put myself together" - Mirrors by 8 Graves

"saint calvin told me not to worry about you / but he's got his own things to deal with / there's really just one thing we have in common: / neither of us will be missed" - Saint Bernard by Lincoln

"so many bright lights to cast a shadow / but can i speak? / well, is it hard understanding / that i'm incomplete?" - Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance

"being in a completely normal nonthreatening scenario & environment and thinking 'i have GOT to get the fuck out of here' with the intensity of some trapped neurotic prey animal" - tumblr post by user @greelin

"but you know me / what can't i conjure into hysteria / and longing? / any place is a funeral as soon as i get there. / of course i'm the disaster / but you're the one foolish enough / to learn my name." - The Next Time We Talk on Facebook, by Clementine von Radics

"if your wounds are still open, trust / they are the doors to an answer, / and walk through." - You Better Be Lightning, by Andrea Gibson

text: "what a tremendous thing to learn from" image: black text on white strips across a blue-orange gradient - i forgot this one too sory

"when the body remembers, it bucks wildly / when we try to heal, the phantom smell returns / while in the shower, you break down / while you wash your body you realise it is not your body / and at the same time, it is the only body you have" - Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, by Warsan Shire

"that was the thing. you never got used to it, the idea of somebody being gone. just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking." - The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen

"the spirit is so hurt / it don't know the / body / it / looks in / the mirror / and asks, who is it?" - On/My/Aging, by Carolyn Marie Rodgers

"could we sit together in new bodies, shoulder to tender / shoulder, / the lovely and the thorned, the bitter and the failed, / the grave to the left of us, the sea to the right?" - 8, Always a Rose, by Li-Young Lee

"the fact of the matter is / you survived, / it's what you do. / death and you / walk side by side / all sigh and scythe / you stay alive. / and you have the right / but struggle to believe. / you're still allowed / to be alive. / it feels inappropriate." - It's What You Do, by Lena Oleanderson @lena-oleanderson

a painting of a bright orange sky at sunset, sun nowhere to be seen, over a pale sea crashing onto dark rocks and foaming. it's oriented upside down. - Night, by by Frederick Judd Waugh

[punkbarbarian]

a family reunion, from fistfight to cigarette

up the wolves, the mountain goats // the elektra complex, joan tierney // all about love, bell hooks // on earth we're briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong // the wee free men, terry pratchett // you're gonna go far, noah kahan // brother of mine, jun miresa // wild geese, mary oliver // lost in my mind, the head and the heart

[image id: 9 screenshots of text on white backgrounds. 1: "[chorus] our mother has been absent ever since we founded rome / but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home" 2: "ORESTES: how could you recognize me after all these years? / ELEKTRA: what a stupid question. i was born knowing you." 3: "we can never go back. i know that now. we can go forward. we can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart's longing." 4: "you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes over you and you find that--yes--your name is still attached to a living thing." 5: "he said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there." 6: "we ain't angry at you, love / you're the greatest thing we've lost / the birds will still sing / your folks will still fight / the boards will still creak / the leaves will still die" 7: "oh brother of mine, we're no longer alike / though you're still the same dear brother of mine" 8: "you do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles in the desert repenting. / you only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves. / tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine. / meanwhile the world goes on." 9: "won't you tell me, my brother? / 'cause there are stars up above / we can start moving forward." /end ID]

[grasslandgirl]

EVIE AND AMITY

or: women and werewolves and small towns and queerness and doubles and recognition and tension and grief and guilt and understanding and --

[me and my husband, mitski / stay soft, mitski / ania catherine / i'll be your mirror, the velvet underground / love letters or suicide notes, doc luben / calling a wolf a wolf, kaveh akbar / mirror traps, hera lindsay bird / google search / selkielore on tumblr / howtoescapethis on tumblr]

[masculinepeacock]

the prodigal daughter returns.

@creacherkeeper // Take Me To War, The Crane Wives // Watch Over Me, Nina LaCour // Jean Genet // @masculinepeacock // @inkskinned // The Sorrow Festival, Erin Slaughter // Hozier // @fluentisonus

[Image Description: A collection of nine quotes and screenshots. 1: "she rendered the god of of poetry speechless". 2: "Take me to war // Honey, I dare you // I'll be the sweetest thing // To ever scare you // Give me a fight I can't resist // Give me something to break with my fists // Take me to war // Oh, honey, I dare you". 3: "I am good, I thought. I am good." 4: "I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and he cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty." 5: "I get it now. I'm sorry for turning my back on you before." 6: "of course i'm angry. do you have any idea how many times someone should have helped me?" 7: "& if I present my body as sacrifice I can finally walk away from it." 8: "Love isn't any one good thing; it's a very, very strange mishmash of emotions. Your love for somebody is, oftentimes, informed by the terrible things you might believe about yourself, and comparatively, the person you see them as is everything that you're not." 9: "'how fucked up would it be if there was a ghost' how fucked up would it be if there WASN'T a ghost". /end ID]

[strangetorpedos]

[Image Description: A litstack of 10 screenshots.

1: “I am half afraid to hope for what I long for.”

2. XX. i want you to love me / fiona apple

“i’ve waited many years / every print i left upon the track, has led me here”

what it represents: nox’s desire to be loved & to be wanted. especially after leaving home, there was a lot of loneliness involved with that, and they really just want to have some sort of solid connection.

3. Travis Bickle: Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I am God’s lonely man.

4. describe it to them. You find ways to say, “You don’t want any part of this mess. I’m mediocre, aging rapidly, and poor. Do yourself a favor and leave me behind.” You want to be left behind, though. That way, no one bears witness to what you’ve become.

5. (all caps) They need to be friends

simply all the pcs growing up lonely for such radically different reasons

oughh

6: Without you, I am surely the last of our kind

Without you, I am surely the last of my kind

7: A text post reply from @creacherkeeper : okay i know you reblogged this from me but “literally cosmically-defined not cut out for greatness but you simply have to save the world anyway because we need you and there’s no one else” is something that can be soooooo

8: ME: How do you feel, now that we’ve traded hands?

YOU: Oh.

[YOU looks at ME’s hands, which are now YOU’s hands, & vice versa. YOU bends the fingers, closing the hands, turning them from hands into fists & then back again.]

YOU: I guess I feel much the same.

ME: Still scared?

YOU: Yes.

ME: Me too.

9: A series of discord messages between archats and rosebudded

(archats) theo: yeah 😬😬 at least none of us. died?

(rosebudded) nox: true! could’ve been much worse

nox: glad you’re holding up okay :)

10: I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

End image description]

emily dickinson / nox playlist / taxi driver / i’m broke and mostly friendless, and i’ve wasted my whole life / @creacherkeeper / lucy dacus / @creacherkeeper / a one act play in which not all problems can be solved, & not all problems are problems, but even so, some are / @strangetorpedos and @beatricexbenedick / wendy cope

library of lensa on love, loneliness, and duty