~ ♔ ꧁ OTMA ꧂ ♔ ~

❧ “In the darkness of the mystery which surrounds the fate of these innocent children it is with poignant emotion that I recall them as they appeared, so full of life and joy, in those distant, yet incredibly near, days before the World War and the downfall of Imperial Russia.”

❧ “Olga was perhaps the cleverest of them all, her mind being so quick to grasp ideas, so absorbent of knowledge that she learned almost without application or close study. Her chief characteristics, I should say, were a strong will and a singularly straightfor, ward habit of thought and action.”

❧ “Tatiana was almost a perfect reincarnation of her mother. Taller and slenderer than her sisters, she had the soft, refined features and the gentle, reserved manners of her English ancestry. Kindly and sympathetic of disposition, she displayed towards her younger sisters and her brother such a protecting spirit that they, in fun, nicknamed her "the governess."

❧ “Marie had splendid eyes and rose-red cheeks. She was inclined to be stout and she had rather thick lips which detracted a little from her beauty. Marie had a naturally sweet disposition and a very good mind.”

❧ “Anastasia, a sharp and clever child, was a very monkey for jokes, some of them at times almost too practical for the enjoyment of others. I remember once when the family was in their Polish estate in winter the children were amusing themselves at snowballing. The imp which sometimes seemed to possess Anastasia led her to throw a stone rolled in a snowball straight at her dearly loved sister Tatiana. The missile struck the poor girl fairly in the face with such force that she fell senseless to the ground. The grief and horror of Anastasia lasted for many days and permanently cured her of her worst propensities to practical jokes.”

- Anna Vyrubova (friend and personal confidante of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna)

-Sylvia Plath, The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956

Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry written in October 1920, featured in The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol.2, 1920-1924

Franz Kafka writing a letter to his dad

~ 1919, colorized

— March 26, 1911 / Franz Kafka diaries

[Draft of a letter to Max Brod for his birthday on May 27]

moodboard for @deadalivedoll

one thing about me is i am very sentimental i am going to keep every receipt and ticket and photobooth picture and cherish it in my heart forever

fav fact about Elisabeth of Hesse?

Hi anon! My favorite “facts” about Ella are the mentions of her and her cousins in Margaretta Edgar’s book “Six Years At The Russian Court”. These might not be specific facts but they definitely are something about Ella’s personality that I love. Because of her short life, there wasn’t much time to observe Ella so any memoir that mentions her amazing personality is so special.

“My children were delighted to see their cousin Ella once more. This dear child was then between eight and nine years old, and very like her beautiful mother in appearance. But the child's eyes had ever a look of fate in them. Looking at her I used to wonder what those wide grey-blue eyes saw, to bring such a look of sadness to the childish face.”

“In spite of this look of intense sadness in her eyes the little Princess herself was full of life and happiness. I never saw so sunny a nature; never saw the child out of temper, nor cross, and should any little dispute arise amongst my four charges, she would settle it with perfect amiability and justice, making whoever was the most in the wrong give in, and reproving with great gentleness the others. Where Princess Ella was, no angry disputes could exist. She was so sweet and just that the other children always gave in to her arbitration. Looking back on her short life often wonder why we did not see that she was quite too good for this world, her fit companions were the angels. She was a regular little mother, and was never so happy as with the ‘tiny cousin’, as she called Anastasie.”

“She always enjoyed life so much, and she ran and bicycled about the gloomy old park, took the lead in all the games and was like a sunbeam; yet all the time she was stricken with mortal illness, though none suspected it.”

“One day she and Tatiana were wonderfully busy and mysterious, running in and out of the rooms, and exploding into laughter every now and then. In the evening after they were in bed Tatiana took from under her pillow a little box which dear cousin Ella had prepared for her. This contained some little coloured stones which they had picked out of the gravel the day before, some bits of matches, luminous ends, of course, the sand-paper off a matchbox and some tissue paper. This was a toy which they had prepared. After Tatiana was in bed, if she felt lonely she was to sit up in bed, light a match upon the sand-paper, set fire to the tissue paper, and by its light to play with the stones. Well, of course, that could not be allowed, and the poor little Princess was overwhelmed when I explained to her that they might all have been burned in their beds.”

“The little Princess was full of life and fun. never remember to have seen her in higher spirits than she was on Saturday evening. She prepared and carried out an innocent little practical joke on her father and the Empress. She asked me to put her three eldest cousins in her bed, and leave little Anastasie alone in her bedroom. "When auntie Alix and papa come, said the child, "auntie Alix will be looking everywhere for her children, and papa will not know how he has got four." Accordingly it was done, and I stepped into the corridor to ask the Empress and the Grand Duke to be very much surprised. They were, of course, exceedingly surprised, and the Empress pretended to be much frightened, to the child's great delight. You could hear her laughter all through the house, as one by one the cousins were disclosed.”

She was a beautiful and unique soul who will be missed forever! Happy belated birthday dear Ella! 💜

Thank you for asking!

franz kafka i love you

I think one of my favorite things abt all systems red in hindsight is that it’s not written like a letter. At all. Probably bc murderbot has no experience with letters but it has read a ton of books so it wouldn’t really know how a letter is structured. So instead it just kind of told her everything 😭

Fictional Notes and Letters

                Notes, journal entries, lost letters, a book tucked into the back corner of the store—written hints and exposition can show up in storytelling across many forms. Given how useful and easy as it is to divulge information through perfectly scattered journal entries or a conveniently timed newspaper article this form of sharing information is a common trope across storytelling. Because of this, it can feel cheap or unearned.

                So here’s how to use written hints without making your readers feel cheated:

Don’t overuse it

Unfortunately this is the long and the short of it. The more information you have through written mediums, the less realistic or earned it will feel. If you can, keep this trope down to once or twice in a piece. If you can convey that information another way, choose that instead.

2. Create purpose behind its creation

Not only does the writing have to have the relevant information you need to convey, but it has to have a purpose for existence. Remember that people write notes to remember something, something they’d be likely to forget. If you can’t think of a reason someone would need to remember (or would believe they might forget) a piece of information, don’t convey it on a note. Journals are made to review someone’s day or emotions, it’s unlikely someone would journal about the government’s secrets (and even more so, scatter the pages around in an order for the protagonists to find to pace out said information—I’m sorry, I’m throwing just a little bit of shade at the indie horror community ;))

                If it’s not news worthy, it shouldn’t be in the news, etc. and so on. Think about why your written material was created, and by who, and how it ended up where it did.

3. Place it behind a barrier

This is a bit of a sneaky trick, but hiding your written hint behind an ‘effort wall’ is going to make it feel so much more earned to gain. Maybe the journal they’re looking for is within a locked desk, and the characters have to break in to get it. The sticky note with the password is in the suit pocket of the antagonist (they just happened to leave at the dry cleaner that morning). The binder of secrets is behind three security guards and a locked door.

                Any effort your protagonists have to make to gain the information is so much better than just happening to find it, and could trick readers into believing the information was more difficult to gain than it was.

4. Don’t make it too convenient

Lastly, make sure the characters don’t just learn what they were looking for, but a little bit less, and a little something else. If they need to know exactly who was at the party in 2005, maybe they don’t find a list of names, but rather a photo album of people they then have to do a bit more work to identify. The written hint should be that—a hint, a start of a greater solution. If it’s the end, a lot more effort should have come before.

                Good luck!