(no subject)

Be wary, young sailor,
Of wind and high water.
The sea has a secret,
The sea has a daughter.
She'll swim along starboard,*
And capture your heart.
With a flip of her tail-fin,
Underwater, depart.

~Unknown.


---
**for those real landlubbers, 'starboard' is right (meaning 'port' is left)
It's hard for me to imagine anyone not knowing this, but then I take a lot of more obscure boat-speak for granted, so I figured I'd add this footnote just in case.

Random side note: did you know the verb to "deck" someone comes from sailors, who would punch someone hard-- and because sailors back in those days (and still some now) had massive arm muscles, that meant knocking them down on the deck of the ship with one swing. A girl in my class last year gave it as an example of figurative language, and my English teacher said it was slang, not f.l. Feh. What would she know about it anyway? yeah, teacher, but still. More than half of common slang IS figurative language. Just not pretty or eloquent kind of f.l.

(no subject)

Wow. I just read chapters 40-43 of Holly's Sang et Ivoire. And... wow.

Really, it's... very very good. And... wow. The last chapter ending. Surprising. And, just... dramatic. whoa.

got this idea from herself_nyc

Somewhat hampered by my not having every favorite book available...

First lines of favorite books:


The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

--The Gunslinger, Stephen King (1st of the Dark Tower books)


Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams


"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."

--Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card


It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.

--The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling


It was a pleasure to burn.

--FAHRENHEIT 451, Ray Bradbury


In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

--The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien


The great gray beast of February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.

--The Thief of Always, Clive Barker

Buffy speculation

an addendum to my previous post~


"ASK ME A RIDDLE," Blaine invited.
"Fuck you," Roland said. He did not raise his voice.

--Wizard and Glass, Stephen King (4th of the Dark Tower books)

-----------------------
now, onto the rest
-----------------------

Ok, point of thought:

About the possible foreshadowing of Spike's death this season, especially in a self-sacrificial light. (cross, BY, over-amount of torture)

Really, if they wanted that, couldn't they have sacrificed him in The Gift? I mean, hello--- drink Dawn's blood. Jump off tower into lightning inferno, and stake self mid-fall.

ProBLEM solved.

No messy resurrection issues, and self-sacrifice made and stuff.

Also, I not only don't like the Spike/death idea because I want Spike's character to be alive, but also for Buffy's sake. It would appear to even the most jaundiced anti-B/S fan by now that Spufy romance, or the implication of future Spuffy romance, is something that ME is doing this season. And after all that build up, wouldn't it be horrendously cruel to rip Buffy's heart out AGAIN?

I mean, I know that ME is into the whole tragic comedy thing, and that angst is their writer's lifeblood, but I've had the impression that they mean to show the pain of living along with the joy of it, and to show that living, and loving, is hard. But I never got the feeling that they would kill off characters or make them miserable forever-- it was more of a journey thing. With the idea that you suffer greatly, but that there is hope and love still to be found in the world and people around you. And there is a point when one can overdo trajedy so much that it becomes comedic instead of heart-felt.

I keep thinking about it, and that's why I can't imagine them doing a Spike-self-sacrifice plotline. So Buffy loves yet ANOTHER lover? Possibly the second great love of her life? In the end of the final season? It'd be... a joke. Stupid. I'd look at the screen and go, "the Hell?" It would be like saying the whole show's theme was that you can't find love or happiness--ever, that anyone who does always looses it, and that a hero is always punished for loving. To say that if your work hard for a relationship and you manage to make it real, make it finally good, that it will only be destroyed or taken away soon after.

That'd be a crappy-ass theme. And I think ME is better than that. That'd be like... well, like magic starlight stealing away your sister, because the aliens were too obvious a plot twist by now.

really obscure boat-speak

That Time Between Skirting the Sails

Light beating down
on legs, arms
stretched over the white
a queen of fiberglass
and cord
raised bumps beneath for grip
under way
but lazy now
hair flying, eyes swaying
frame lilting
back and forth while salt below
cradles the hull
swings the jib to, fro
with snap, whip-crack
trapped in irons
eclipsing,
then releasing,
the sun.