#rat kiley

[writer-of-various]

Bro, I'm not even fucking joking, why the fuck am I obsessed with medics?! Specifically WW2 medics. I'm something else, thanks for coming to my rant.

[rosewilsongf]

Rough post-it doodles I made during Maths - I was just thinking a lot about Shifty (with ducklings) and Luz. Then I thought of how Ron loved dogs, and then I thought about Trigger the dog, and then I learned I can't draw dogs..Then there's Rat Kiley from The Things They Carried as I imagined him.

[slutabed]

idk why I get so fixated on particular niche stories of men and masculinities and male friendships that are never quite spoken of as romantic or homoerotic but bridge that gap without saying it.. but I am back on my the things they carried rat kiley/curt lemon bullshit because oh my god. oh my god I need a minute rat poured his heart out in a letter to curt’s sister and the dumb [expletive] never wrote back

[winged-wolf-s-collection-of-arts]

thinking more thoughts!!

Kiley time-

I uh- kind of poured all my chaotic energy into her, and separated her from the rest of the npc cast? Otherwise the dialogue would get totally fucked, and my ‘I need to hit this story with a drama nuke’ desire would cause trouble.

So she’s uhhh off on her adventure of a different genre. (But stuff she does Will affect things... dun dun dunnnn) but dude Wow she would be so irritated by Jun. Good thing we’re going to Sanctuary to leave them and take Preston.... OR THAT IS WHAT I WOULD SAY if she didn’t want to be anywhere near the vault!! We’re going somewhere else, babeyyyyy! Maybe talking with him and Murphy would bring some understanding (is what I would say if I were doing big character development in the beginning but we’re not!!) Shoving my desire for conflict into this.

[stormeris]

“i’m gonna be the snack that smiles back 

I’m gonna be the kit to your kat “

Cooldown doodle to help put off the edge of film crunch

[timechange]

Noticing @oddlies is way more comfortable out here taking a drag on his cigarette than in the store (and honestly, who could blame him? Marty doesn’t know how he and Dave handle it), the teen smiles and takes a minute to strum a few chords. Who said an alleyway didn’t have great acoustics?

“Any requests?”

[bettsfic]

What are some qualities of a “good” writer in your opinion?

i can't really articulate in general terms but i did find an example recently. (i wrote these out as examples in the writing log i kept while i was at this residency.)

this is from The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a book about the Vietnam War:

If Rat told you, for example, that he’d slept with four girls one night, you could figure it was about a girl and a half. It wasn’t a question of deceit. Just the opposite: he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation.

what i love about this paragraph, this whole book really, is that it has a strong sense of voice. the humor of "a girl and a half." the fragment of "just the opposite" and the placement of "i think." there's a rhythm here. to me it reads as though every word was chosen because every other word was considered and dismissed.

next i attempted to read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, which is also about the Vietnam War. here's a paragraph that happens a few pages into the book that was so bad i put the book down and never picked it back up:

Bass handed him some coffee in an empty C-ration fruit cocktail can and then poured another can for Hamilton, who had dumped his radio in front of his and Mellas’s hooch and was sitting on it. Hamilton took the coffee, raised the can to Bass in toast, and wrapped his fingers around the can to warm them.

this paragraph from Matterhorn is littered with unnecessary descriptive adjectives among bodily action that's not needed and serves only to show the detail of the C-ration fruit cocktail can. that information is better placed elsewhere, where it might be more relevant and interesting to the narrator. there is no tension in this paragraph. it's only bodily direction as if in a film, and because this is prose, that's not needed unless it's relevant to the conflict. in this case, the conflict is that our narrator, Mellas, is absolutely terrified and trying to scheme however he can to get out of the combat zone. but do you get any sense of that urgency in this paragraph? no, it's just things happening.

i think good writers (and i use that term loosely, because we all determine good writing based on our personal tastes and the art/media we've encountered in our lives thus far) draft these kinds of sentences for the sake of knowing where their characters are in time and space but eventually cut them, even if they love the image of the C-ration fruit cocktail can. but if you love the C-ration fruit cocktail can, you can lend it meaning. you can honor it by making it matter to the narrator. here it's just kind of thrown in along with the other details, like a valuable antique thrown into a pile of junk. that antique deserves to sit on a shelf and be admired.

maybe the C-ration fruit cocktail can arrives in drafting totally on its own. in revision--when you're going through the pile of junk looking for valuable things--is when you find it again and go, "oh, this is good, i need this." you know so much about your story that you know how to find what's valuable, what sings. so when i say that in TTTC every word was chosen because every other word was considered and dismissed, what i'm saying is that O'Brien meticulously went through that pile, found the good stuff, and put it on the shelf in a beautiful way.

that's where creative skill comes from, i think. the endurance to consider, to make millions of little choices meaningfully.

[teenagerebellion]

Hi again I just thought of some more rat grinders songs :)

Contractual by chase petra

Execution of all things by Rilo Kiley

Beady eyes on the horizon by jukebox the ghost

Good that won't come out by Rilo Kiley

hii!! welcome back LOL

i can’t even quote contractual here to show how good it is because ALL OF IT IS SO GOOD AND FITS SO WELL HOLY SHIT. this is all unwilling rat grinders but ESPECIALLY ruben to me. “or god-forbid they deem you the weakling and cut you from the cast you’ve been conducting” LUCY UGH and the guilt ruben feels over it!!!!!

the execution of all things - vibe immaculate. this one i Get but can’t put into words. it’s going on the playlist for sure but i’d love to hear ur thoughts for this one too :)

BEADY EYES ON THE HORIZON AAAHH!!! i love ur recommendations so much btw bc almost all of them are songs i’ve never heard before and they’re so good. this is another one where the whole song fits so so well & i can pick out individual lines that correspond to different characters!

And the devil was gently breathing, sleeping face-down in my apartment / And like all his friends I’m growing tired of his games

this is jace about porter i think…

This was a story told to me when I was just the age of 17 / One which God himself dictated to me, he said / “This is how all this shit’s gonna be when I blow your little planet into smithereens.”

well God is porter here for sure. and i think kipperlilly or maybe lucy? is singing… it’s So crazy how the ages just about match up too…

She sees faces in her dreams / Strange machines she’d never seen

ruben and fig’s dream terrorism LMAO

And there were preachers in the desert, waving to the crowd / Dictating seven angry letters from a man up in the clouds

bobby dawn! and buddy. and everything with the church of sol/helio. anyway i’m obsessed with this one it’s so perfect. on the playlist it goes

the good that wont come out is another one where it’s so good and fits so well and i can’t! articulate! why! so i wanna hear from you on this one too :)

[high-school-lit-tournament]

High School Lit Tournament Side B

Beloved: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present.

The Things They Carried: The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

[msmargaretmurry]

rules: tag 9 people you want to get to know better or who are just your friends who you always tag on these things wait who said that. i was tagged by @vivathewilddog

last song: "the absence of god" by rilo kiley. when i was at a wonder years show last month, "it's a hit" came on one of the between-sets playlists, which obviously made me want to listen to the entirety of more adventurous, which i then went home and did, and then my favorite tracks from the album migrated over to my metro playlist, which i was listening to on shuffle on my way home from work today and that was the last song that played before i got back to my apartment.

last show: i am going to interpret this as last music show, since there's a tv question right below this, and concerts are more interesting. i saw vienna teng at a tiny coffeeshop this past weekend! it was lovely! she's so good!!! also last month i went to two wonder years shows in a row and lost my voice for several days. they're also so good!!!

currently watching: i'm watching 911, abbott elementary, and bob's burgers loosely as they air (usually within a few days of the new episode dropping), and i'm watching ted lasso but i'm a few episodes behind, because apple tv logged me out of tasha's account and it's a pain in the ass to log back in. i am very slowly working my way through succession and just finished season one. also, because sometimes you need to put on a gimmicky procedural from the mid-late '00s and let it totally smooth out your brain, i've been watching the mentalist to unwind before bed. it is such a stupid little copaganda show and it makes my brain feel so smooth.

currently reading: i just finished the member of the wedding by carson mccullers, which is the book for this weekend's book club meeting and i'm excited to discuss it with my pals! and i just started the dead romantics by ashley poston, which i can tell is going to grate on me a little, stylistically, but i'm soldiering on because i'm trying to give more contemporary romances a shot. i am also still slowly working my way through the home team: fathers, sons, and hockey by roy macgregor — i read a chapter every week or so, it usually makes me cry, etc etc.

current obsession: god i guess it's still. fuckin rat boy. ratthew. tkachuckles cheese himself. and his big dumb german boyfrienemy. also i know it's been over half a year but i'm still obsessed with the hum goes on forever. also obsessed with playing old jimmy eat world songs on the guitar, with making silly little beverages with the office keurig as afternoon treats, and with maggie’s and my current main chatfic, which will never leave the gchats but sustains me nonetheless. OH also obsessed with that one cidery, iykyk, i wanna go baaaaaaaaack

i'm tagging @hopetorun @bropunzeling @leapyeap @drysdaales @birdcage @thecroissantgirl @bakingblues @slightly @devantesmithpelly if y'all want to! 💖

[scienter]

I listened to an episode of Pod Meets World (Boy Meets World podcast) yesterday, and I found out that the actor who played Joey the Rat was the lead guitarist of Rilo Kiley. 🤯

[oddlies-a]

Johnnie rambles about potential new muses:

So there’s three I’m thinking of, and they’ll require some character-building, thinking to place them in a modern setting, and they’re out of my usual comfort zone of muses, but I think I might go for it.

One is Bob “Rat” Kiley, he’s a combat medic. He’s a young guy, much like the others. He takes the war hard, though, and starts having breakdowns due to all the stuff he’s seen. One thing he worries about specifically is “the bugs coming to get him”. He ultimately shoots himself in the foot so he’ll be discharged.

Another is Ted Lavender. He’s a grenadier, I think. He technically dies in the book, but… I’ll change that for my writing purposes. He’s a huge departure for me. He depends on sedatives and weed to keep himself sane.

The last is Curt Lemon, who’s probably the sweetest of the three. He tries hard to be a soldier, but isn’t really cut out for it. He also dies in the book. He and Rat are good friends.

I have many feelings about them and probably will have more when I flesh them out as characters outside of the war, whether before or after.

[ruinpowder]

♫

the execution of all things - rilo kiley feral rat anthem - hospital bracelet pure heat - the mountain goats russian roulette - red velvet venus - bananarama

[stormeris]

Couple comics of memory flashbacks + the frustration of being in a post apoc setting while looking for a friend whose MIA

[stinkyhyena9000]

somewhat related but theres a disgusting of ash x kristofferson fanfic on ao3. like, why do you have to ship the cousins?? literally mr fox x kiley is right there. hell, even make mr fox kiss that rat idk man. just not ash x kristofferson

[jupiterlvr]

Some things I wrote for my English class. Written from the POV from Rat Kiley in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Almost all of this is from my mind, enjoy <3