#teeth fragments

[ripeteeth]

fragments: 01 (wangxian)

[I'm clearing out my incomplete wips and posting fragments that might stand alone as a bit of an amnesty of old projects. This is the first of that series.]

“He was important to you,” his brother says, and Lan Wangji considers the trouble of language. Is, he thinks, not was. There is no end limit to love. Wei Wuxian may not exist in the world, but Lan Wangji still loves him, and someday, when he himself is gone, his love will still be true. It is a fundamental rule of the world, just as gravity keeps his feet on the ground.

There are moments when he forgets: when a dark figure passes through a crowd, at the first notes of a flute, at the flash of laughter bright as a forest fire. Each time, his breath stops, and his knuckles whiten as he forms a fist, digging the half-moons of his nails into his palms, reminding himself of this break between desire and truth: Wei Wuxian had died in the Burial Mounds and is no longer here. 

Some griefs are deeper than others. This one cuts like a fresh lash each time. 

He wakes each morning at five, his breath shallow. Sometimes he dreams of Wei Wuxian, sometimes he does not. When he sleeps deeply, he wakes briefly uncertain which reality is the truth. Did he wake from a dream of this loss? Each morning, he presses his palm against his own chest, feeling the ridges of the Wen brand, and knows that no, the proof is borne on his skin. In no world with Wei Wuxian did they share this. He likes the feeling of it now, the way the scar tissue on his chest and back bears proof of his devotion.

(He remembers a boy, age seventeen, caught in a cave and laughing at his own fresh branding. A man should get scars for love, Wei Wuxian had said, dark eyes glinting. Now she’ll never forget me. He wonders if, wherever Wei Wuxian is now, if he has forgotten him.) 

Habits prop up the days. When he passes a shop selling jars of Emperor’s Smile, he cannot resist buying one. Each time, for a few moments, he might pretend that he is buying it for Wei Wuxian. When he pries up the floorboard, concealing the jars within, he might imagine that someday the other man might be here, filling the room with hot laughter. You thought of me? Wei Wuxian would say, and Lan Wangji would feel warm. 

No one comes. Sometimes he pries up the floorboard and stares at the jars, little pieces of Wei Wuxian that he might have. Like a magpie, he steals pieces. The brand, the wine, robes he orders in black and red. As if Wei Wuxian were a lover away for a week, a month, a year, and just waiting to return home. 

[rated e (explicit) below the cut]

He has never known Wei Wuxian’s touch as a lover. (Once, he had fumbled and pressed his mouth to the other man’s, but that was taken. Wei Wuxian had not reached back, had not kissed back.)

His nightly habits have not changed since he was seventeen. Retiring to his rooms, he slips the robes from his body like a peel from a fruit. Inside, he’s ripe already. He bathes, efficiently and with purpose. It’s only once he is alone, settled into bed, concealed beneath blankets, that he allows one hand to wander south between his thighs. He is thirty now and has long since ceased trying to fight his own mind. What he wants is impossible, except in the corners of his imagination, so he fucks his own fist, teeth clenched, imagining that this skin is Wei Wuxian’s golden own, and that this slick is his beloved’s. Some information is known. Again, nightly, he remembers how Wei Wuxian had looked, blindfolded and leaning against a tree, how the sinew and muscle of his chest had pressed into Lan Wangji’s own. His lips had been wet and soft and when Lan Wangji had bitten in, he had moaned and his hips had stuttered, as if he might have wanted it. 

So he imagines this again. Wei Wuxian, disheveled, pressed sharply into a tree or a wall, rutting against Lan Wangji’s thigh, his hair wild and dark, like treebranches in winter. He would take that cock in hand, redder and fat with blood, (like his own, now. In his mind, his cock is both his own and not his own. In his mind, his hands are both his own and Wei Wuxian’s.) and stroke them together until Wei Wuxian would shudder and break apart, all for him, here in the palm of his hand. 

He comes, spilling across his own sword-rough palm. His eyes squeezed shut, his breathing is his own and not his own. Again, as he has done each and every night, he drags his come-covered hand out from beneath the sheets. Self-abuse is forbidden in Cloud Recesses, and there is nowhere to wipe this, nowhere to wash it off, without potentially being discovered, so he drags his palm across his tongue, swallowing the spill of himself down.

The taste is his own, and not his own.

He sleeps alone. This is not new. It never has been.

[foxconfessorandthewolf]

fragments: 06 (snarry)

[I'm clearing out my incomplete wips and posting fragments that might stand alone as a bit of an amnesty of old projects.]

In the dark, with the pale light of the candle in one hand, he turns the pages of his sketches, watching Potter’s form appear over and over again in endless repetition. A shoulder in dark charcoal, a thigh in graphite. Gleaming and bright, perfectly captured in light and shadow. One and other. A sketch evokes the scene for him, the hot, dusty air of his studio, windows cast wide to release the fumes of oil paint and linseed oil, the drape of cloth at Potter’s waist, the perfect arc of his spine as he stretches, the impish grin as he yawns and ducks Severus’ censure. A saint of his very own, half-clad in only loose silk. A man would have to be a saint to resist; Severus has never been accused of being a saint. 

He has been accused of other things. Witchcraft, at times. Devil worship. The devoted of Baphomet. Those he didn’t mind. Worse yet, the Prince accuses him of being a monk. Each visit, the Prince comes to review the progress of the picture, stepping with clear disdain into the spare, sparsely furnished room. His displeasure extends to every corner: the bottles and jars of curious specimens, preserved for future study, the cadavers Severus buys from the city, removing them for dissection and anatomical interest, the cheap wine Severus has to offer, watered down. He curls his lip at the wine and shakes his head at Severus’ appearance, wearing the same threadbare black doublet and cloak, same black tights, all poorly and dearly mended over and over and over again. The high-necked collar of Severus’ shirt is sorely out of fashion; the Prince clucks. “Do you expect to be a monk, Severus?” 

The body has a price. Everything has its price, everything charges admission. The price of his body is want. He curses himself and the hard furious thing between his thighs. 

Begin here, with the sketch, with the underpainting. The saint, with all of Potter’s lithe, loose grace, is posed bound, his wrist tied to the trunk of a tree, his stomach sucked in and convex, as if caught on the inhale. His eyes, the bright green of chlorophyll, turned upward to Heaven as if in both supplication and reproach. Severus spreads the paint, building layers of smooth, pale skin, bared to archers and Heaven alike. Two arrows pierce him, penetrate him, wounding the perfect spread of flesh, taking the first bite of the feast. 

To paint, Severus will prime and stretch a coarse linen canvas, then prepare the surface with a smoothly ground gesso made of gypsum and animal skins. This color, this brilliant color. This is the only color he allows himself. He applies the paint in careful, thin layers, building up depth and texture piece by bright piece. For the saint’s draped loincloth, he paints a layer of deep, brilliant red to enhance the future ultramarine hue. Blue, he thinks, is the most appropriate shade. Blue, the color of the Virgin’s cloak and tears alike. 

Take all that wretched want within you, Severus, and make something beautiful out of it.

[feral-ballad]

Alex Dimitrov, from Love and Other Poems; “The Weather of Our Lives”

[citycrows]

Captain Maki's special strike force (yes I'm still on this)

Someone is missing but I can't decide who.

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

there is something so essentially ‘jonny sims’ about the consequences of mag200 being not just the dissemination of eldritch fear entities but also those very same entities being farmed by a soulless civil service department that runs on caffeine and vitamin d deprivation

[nugatorysheep]

Ş̸̻͕̺́̚Ṕ̵̛̪̃Ȩ̷̳̫̿̾Ã̶̞̺̇͐͘K̷͈̿̎̇.

This damn comic is fucking A N C I E N T but as far as like, the content of it- not necessarily the art because I always hate my older art, but the presentation, what is objectively here- still feels right to me, so I'm sharing it. again

[camembri]

actually the most impressive feat of Robin's is that she hasn't beaten Luffy to death for like. throwing some random vase (read: priceless unique historical artifact) over his shoulder because it was boring or ugly or something. she's so brave.

[kiwiaok]

neil josten

[agent-kansass]

Heyy so not sure BUT I did hear a rumor there might be a new ai distributed soon? Again, might be a rumor, but the math and speed of releasing them to us doesn't lie usually 🙏

[queenlua]

i've known for months now that this was going to be the hardest chapter to write but. this is getting ridiculous

i have "rewritten" the same scene every single day this week (read: deleted the 5-15 very-fragmentary sentences i had, and replaced them with 5-15 very-fragmentary new sentences) and that's IT and nothing WORKS aughhgaliehglaih

[ripeteeth]

fragments: 05 (harrykim)

[I'm clearing out my incomplete wips and posting fragments that might stand alone as a bit of an amnesty of old projects. This is part of that series.]

He does not say much. Not in bed, not outside. You’ve come to know Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi as a man of few words, all chosen carefully, dredged up past curtain walls and battlements. He kisses you, drawing your chin in with his gloved hands, just as he has always done. 

You pause, furrowing a brow, trying to remember the other times. Have there been other times? There must be. You cannot remember, but he touches you with familiarity, like he’s reached for you a thousand times before. 

“Kim,” you gasp. “Please.” He smiles, faint and beloved, never a full smile. You don’t know what a full smile looks like on him and you reach for his sides, trailing thick, coarse fingers along his ribs, trying to tease a grin out. He bites the inside of his lip, shaking his head. 

“Don’t you dare, detective.”

[nsfw below cut]

You like it when he arches a brow. You like it when he arches beneath you, wrists pinned into place. You want to keep him there beneath you always, writhing, breathing, gasping, endlessly and effortlessly alive. 

Just like this, in this hotel room. 

You pull back, his spit still on your lower lip. “Kim, wait, the room - “ 

“Detective?”

You look around. The room is clean, the same room you’ve had at the Whirling since you arrived. But how did you get here? You cannot connect the dots, cannot string the events together, leading from the fishing village to here, with Kim stripped and bare beneath you. 

It’s good, the way he reaches for you. His long fingers, still in their leather casing, coaxing your skin into gooseflesh. His eyes are kind and dark and you imagine that this is what you would like to take with you, if it were the last image you’d see in Elysium. 

“Harry,” he says, and he’s begging. You’ve always wanted him to beg for you, his voice broken across your back. You cannot remember what it sounded like the first time you fucked, 

He looks at you like you’re beautiful. He looks at you and isn’t afraid to reach. There’s nothing between you but air and he’s inhaling all the way. When he kisses you, his mouth doesn’t grimace, and you like the way a smile tastes on his lips. 

“Don’t,” he murmurs. 

“Don’t what?” you ask. 

“Don’t talk about the Pale.”

You weren’t, were you? But he knows it’s never far from your mind. You dream of the Pale and murmur in your sleep, and he hates the way you’re circling around, drawn closer and closer. Nearer to the center, like a moth to the flame. There’s something at the core of this, something you haven’t quite understood, and you think the answer might be there. You want him, you want to crawl into the back of his vehicle, let him tear across land and sky and Pale alike. Take me to the end, you think, go with me everywhere. 

You are in love, you realize, and you wonder if it’s ever been like this before. 

His mouth doesn’t have words, but he kisses as if to punctuate a sentence. “Please,” he begs, and you’ve never heard him like this before. You push him to the bed, between clean cotton sheets and his briefs tangled around his ankles, already hard and red and wanting in your shaking hands. You’re full, Harry, you’re full to bursting with what you want from him, and spit drips from your mouth, ready to dig in. You’ve got hands like forks and you’ve always taken taken taken, and what have you ever given back? 

I’ve sacrificed everything for you, you had shouted once, slamming a dish rack without realizing it, listening to the sound of broken ceramic like falling stars. Have you ever given anything up without begrudging it? Have you sacrificed without reminding everyone around you of what you’ve done?

Take another pill, Harry, take another drink. Swallow it down, you don’t have to remember. 

“Don’t go,” he says. Don’t let the Pale swallow you, like you do a beer. You’ve got your hands on his cock and he’s shivering, wide-eyed and wire-haired. 

Stay with me, detective. 

“Kim,” you gasp, rutting into his thigh, all whiplash and corded muscle. You like the look of him like this, spread out across the bed beneath you, every inch a fantasy. Skin on wire on a metal frame, like a dream. His cock feels like your own, when you would take yourself in hand, imagining how this might be. 

Oh, fuck. 

He gasps, shuddering at your touch. His gloved hands spreading across your puffy, ruined cheeks, staring at you, staring you down. Why has he left his gloves on? You don’t know. You mean to ask, but he pushes one finger into your mouth and you seal your lips around, licking at him. 

God, you’re hard, so impossibly hard, and you might shatter apart here, held in his capable hands. 

[longagoitwastuesday]

So so indebted to u for posting those lovely illustrations from Cyrano <333 & even more so for yr tags!! I'm completely in love w yr analysis, please feel free to ramble as long as u wish! Browsing through yr Cyrano de Bergerac tag has given me glimpses of so many adaptations & translations I'd never heard of before! I'll be watching the Solès version next, which I have only discovered today through u ^_^ As for translations, have u read many/all of them? I've only encountered the Renauld & Burgess translations in the wild, & I was curious to hear yr translation thoughts that they might guide my decision on which one I buy first (not necessarily Renauld or Burgess ofc). Have a splendid day & sorry for the likespam! 💙

Sorry for the delay. Don't mind the likespam, I'm glad you enjoyed my tags about Cyrano, and that they could contribute a bit to a further appreciation of the play. I loved it a lot, I got obsessed with it for months. It's always nice to know other people deeply love too that which is loved haha I hope you enjoy the Solès version, it may well be my favourite one!

About translations, I'm touched you're asking me, but I don't really know whether mine is the best opinion to ask. I have read... four or five English translations iirc, the ones I could find online, and I do (and especially did, back when I was reading them) have a lot of opinions about them. However, nor English nor French are my first languages (they are third and fourth respectively, so not even close). I just read and compare translations because that's one of my favourite things to do.

The fact is that no translation is perfect, of course. I barely remember Renauld's, but I think it was quite literal; that's good for understanding the basics of the text, concepts and characters, but form is subject, and there's always something that escapes too literal translations. Thomas and Guillemard's if I recall correctly is similar to Hooker's in cadence. It had some beautiful fragments, some I preferred over Hooker's, but overall I think to recall I liked Hooker's more. If memory serves, Hooker's was the most traditionally poetic and beautiful in my opinion. Burgess' is a whole different thing, with its perks and drawbacks.

Something noticeable in the other translations is that they are too... "epic". They do well the poetic, sorrowful, grief stricken, crushed by regrets aspects of Cyrano and the play in general, but they fall quite short in the funny and even pathetic aspects, and that too is key in Cyrano, both character and play. Given the characteristics of both languages, following the cadence of the French too literally, with those long verses, makes an English version sound far too solemn at times when the French text isn't. Thus Burgess changes the very cadence of the text, adapting it more to the English language. This translation is the one that best sets the different moods in the play, and as I said before form is subject, and that too is key: after all, the poetic aspect of Cyrano is as much true as his angry facet and his goofy one. If Cyrano isn't funny he isn't Cyrano, just as he wouldn't be Cyrano without his devotion to Roxane or his insecurities; Cyrano is who he is precisely because he has all these facets, because one side covers the other, because one trait is born from another, because one facet is used as weapon to protect the others, like a game of mirrors and smoke. We see them at different points through the play, often converging. Burgess' enhances that. He plays with the language itself in form and musicality, with words and absences, with truths masking other truths, with things stated but untold, much like Cyrano does. And the stage directions, poetic and with literary value in their own right in a way that reminded me of Valle Inclán and Oscar Wilde, interact with the text at times in an almost metatextual dimension that enhances that bond Cyrano has with words, giving them a sort of liminal air and strengthening that constant in the play: that words both conceal and unveil Cyrano, that in words he hides and words give him away.

But not all is good, at all. Unlike Hooker, Burgess reads to me as not entirely understanding every facet of the characters, and as if he didn't even like the play all that much, as if he had a bit of a disdainful attitude towards it, and found it too mushy. Which I can understand, but then why do you translate it? In my opinion the Burgess' translation does well bending English to transmit the different moods the French text does, and does pretty well understanding the more solemn, cool, funny, angry, poetic aspects of Cyrano, but less so his devotion, vulnerability, insecurities and his pathetism. It doesn't seem to get Roxane at all, how similar she is to Cyrano, nor why she has so many admirers. It does a very poor job at understanding Christian and his value, and writes him off as stupid imo. While I enjoyed the language aspect of the Burgess translation, I remember being quite angry at certain points reading it because of what it did to the characters and some changes he introduces. I think he did something very questionable with Le Bret and Castel-Jaloux, and I remember being incensed because of Roxane at times (for instance, she doesn't go to Arras in his version, which is a key scene to show just how much fire Roxane has, and that establishes several parallels with Cyrano, in attitude and words, but even in act since she does a bit what Cyrano later does with the nuns in the last act), and being very angry at several choices about Christian too. While not explicitly stated, I think the McAvoy production and the musical both follow this translation, because they too introduce these changes, and they make Christian as a character, and to an extent the entire play, not make sense.

For instance, once such change is that Christian is afraid that Roxane will be cultured (McAvoy's version has that infamous "shit"/"fuck" that I detest), when in the original French it's literally the opposite. He is not afraid she will be cultured, he is afraid she won't, because he does love and appreciate and admires those aspects of her, as he appreciates and admires them in Cyrano. That's key! Just as Cyrano longs to have what Christian has, Christian wants the same! That words escape him doesn't mean he doesn't understand or appreciate them. The dynamics make no sense without this aspect, and Burgess (and the productions that directly or indirectly follow him) constantly erases this core trait of Christian.

Another key moment of Christian Burgess butchers is the scene in Arras in which Christian discovers the truth. Burgess writes their discussion masterfully in form, it's both funny and poignant, but it falls short in concept: when Cyrano tells him the whole discussion about who does Roxane love and what will happen, what they'll do, is academic because they're both going to die, Christian states that dying is his role now. This destroys entirely the thing with Christian wanting Roxane to have the right to know, and the freedom to choose, or to refuse them both. As much as Cyrano proclaims his love for truth and not mincing words even in the face of authority, Cyrano is constantly drunk on lies and mirages, masks and metaphors. It's Christian who wants it all to end, the one who wants real things, the one who wants to risk his own happiness for the chance of his friend's, as well as for the woman he loves to stop living in a lie. That is a very interesting aspect of Christian, and another aspect in which he is written as both paralleling and contrasting Cyrano. It's interesting from a moral perspective and how that works with the characters, but it's also interesting from a conceptual point of view, both in text and metatextually: what they hold most dear, what they most want, what most fulfills them, what they most fear, their different approaches to life, but also metatextually another instance of that tears/blood motif and its ramifications constant through the whole text. Erasing that climatic decision and making him just simply suicidal erases those aspects of Christian and his place in the Christian/Cyrano/Roxane dynamic, all for plain superficial angst, that perhaps hits more in the moment, but holds less meaning.

Being more literal, and more solemn, Hooker's translation (or any of the others, but Hooker's seems to love the characters and understand them) doesn't make these conceptual mistakes. Now, would I not recommend reading Burgess' translation? I can't also say that. I had a lot of fun reading it, despite the occasional anger and indignation haha Would I recommend buying it? I recommend you give an eye to it first, if you're tempted and can initially only buy one.

You can read Burgess' translation entirely in archive.com. You can also find online the complete translations of Renauld, Hooker and Thomas and Guillemard. I also found a fifth one, iirc, but I can't recall it right now (I could give a look). You could read them before choosing, or read your favourite scenes and fragments in the different translations, and choose the one in which you like them better. That's often what I do.

Edit: I've checked to make sure and Roxane does appear in Arras in the translation. It's in the introduction in which it is stated that she doesn't appear in the production for which the translation was made. The conceptualisation of Roxane I criticise and that in my opinion is constant through the text does stay, though.

[feral-ballad]

Alda Merini, tr. by Susan Stewart, from Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini; “Roman Wedding”

[Text ID: “you will wound my flesh with your teeth, / you will settle into the fervor of my yearning / to choke its sense of urgency.”]

[chukalavulgarcita]

Titulo: Fragmento Canibal Tecnica: Digital

[nocentis]

x

[phonydiaries]

started daydreaming about writing a madness/lop crossover fic and I've already gone off the rails ladies I am so severely lost in the sauce