Writing Wednesday: The Feels Song of J. Alfred Blogfrock
This week's assignment for creative non-fiction was to translate a work of classic literature into a modern dialect. I decided to combine of my favorite poems, TS Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" with the memes and references of my favorite blogging platform, Tumblr. It went over surprisingly well when I read it in class. My 85-year-old professor didn't understand any of it, but he gave me a 98% on it anyway, which I think is my best grade in the class so far.
If you want to see my post about it on Tumblr AND MAYBE LIKE OR EVEN REBLOG IT THAT WOULD BE COOL, here it is.
Let us post then, you and I
When the night-bloggers are spread out against the dashboard
Like what if you went to the beach but instead of sand it was covered in french-fries
Let us scroll, through certain ignored text posts
#of #mumbling #tags
Restless nights spent on one-shot fanfiction
Layers of Photoshop-textured gif-sets
Asks that trace a flame war
With grey-faced Anonymous
It may press you into replying
Oh, do not ask, “BUT WHY THO”
Let us go and open another tab.
In their rooms the fangirls sit and watch
Talking of Benedict Cumberbatch.
The feels that sneak up on you
The feels that whisper in your ear
Infected the corners of your mind
Lingered upon your brain
Make you lie down on the floor, try not to cry, cry a lot
Slipped from drafts into posts, made the sudden leap to otp
And seeing that it was late at night and you had school the next day,
Curled once about your soul, and kept you from falling asleep
And indeed there will be time
For the feels to make you fly into the sun
Pressing their tears into your eyes
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a url to meet the url that you meet;
There will be time to post and reblog
And time for all the hands of followers
That type and drop a question into your askbox;
Time for peasants and time for Beyonce,
And timey-wimeys yet to detect
And go ding when there is stuff
Before the taking of fish-fingers and custard
In their rooms the fangirls sit and watch
Talking of Benedict Cumberbatch
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I Dave/John?” and, “Do I Dave/John?”
Time to paint myself gray and take out my webcam,
With horns sprouting out of my hair-
(They will say: “How awkwardly that wig is constructed!”)
My stripes of red, orange, yellow, reaching down to my scalp
My black shirt, asserted by a simple Zodiac sign
(They will say: “But how poorly that was painted on!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the AU?
In a post there is time
For decisions and revisions which a button can delete
For I have head-canoned them all already, head-canoned them all:
Have known the afternoons, nights, later nights,
I have measured out my life with updates;
I know the comments screaming omFG cANT BREaTHE DYINGgg
Beneath the music from an autoplay
So how should it be okay THIS IS NOT OKAY
And I have known the icons already, known them all-
The icons that click you in a following phrase,
And when I am followed, sprawling on a pinned post,
When I am pinned and gifed on the dashboard,
Then how should I begin to can
To type out all the tags of my metas and feels?
And how will I get sempai to notice me?
And I have known the arms already, known them all-
Arms that are muscled and green and incredible
(But in the lab light, pale and thin and busy with science!)
Is it curved horns on a crown
That make me bow down?
Arms that throw a hammer, or shoot a bow and arrow
And should I then understand that reference?
And who wants to go for shawarma?
Shall I say, I have gone at day through Truffula forests
And watched the Thneeds that knit out from the needles
Of cheerful men in striped pants, leaning out of wagons?
I should have been a set of sassy tentacles
Glaring across the floors of burger restaurants
And the pictures of cats, they sleep so peacefully!
Petted through the screen by strange fingers
Glowering … frolicking … or it wears a Pop Tart
Flying through space, where I swear we were infinite
Should I, after triangles and scalene triangles and SCALENE TRIANGLES~
Have the strength to clim the whole mountain?
But though I have wept and made whale noises, wept and made pterydactyl noises,
Though I have seen my graphic (caption removed) reposted upon a hipster blog
I am not tumblr famous - it’s not my division
I have seen the number of my followers flicker,
And I have seen the Absolute Funniest Posts say I will love them on my dashboard
And in short, I was 300% done
And it was worth it, after all,
After the ships, the scars, the tea,
Among the secret tunnels, among the secret lakes
It was worth it
To have visited Ember Island with a smile,
To have bent the earth into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming Fire Nation
To say: “I am the Avatar, come from the dead,
Come back to master all elements, I shall master all four elements”
If one, settling a fluffy cloud by his head
Should say: “That’s rough, buddy.”
And it was worth it, after all,
It was worth it
After the death and the angst and the ALWAYS
After the novels, after the movies, after all the crying on the floor
All that, and never any more?
It is impossible to accept that Fred is dead!
But as if a magic spell threw the feels in patterns on a screen:
It was definitely worthwhile
If one, putting on a tie or throwing off a robe
And turning toward the train, should say:
“I’m not going home. Not really.”
No! I am not on the side of the angels, nor was meant to be;
I am a consulting detective, one that will do
To solve a case, crash a crime scene or two,
Advise the royals, no doubt, an easy task.
To use the Science of Deduction,
Clever, honest, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
Almost, at times, the Fool.
#Anderson
#youtried.jpg
I grow old … I grow old …
Old as balls
Shall I hide behind a “Read More”? Do I dare to eat the whole jar of Nutella?
I shall wear pink on Wednesday, and just have a lot of feelings
I have heard the Santas singing, each to Glen Coco.
I do not think that they will give a candy cane to me.
I have seen them riding heavenward in their Impala
Shooting salt at the demons blown back
When the wind blows the wings white and black.
We have lingered in the tags of the blogs
Of girls wreathed in fandom t-shirts
Till parental voices wake us, and we sad-david-tennant.gif