04 ◈ voice & semi-spam

[characterdefect]

Forget everything you know about the end of the world.

I know, I know - some of you have experienced it personally, but just try to put it out of your mind for a little while. Start fresh. There's something more personal that I'm thinking of. Don't underestimate the intimacy of an apocalypse.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Maybe some of you still live in the downswing of the first world war, but I'm willing to bet most of us don't. That's when Yeats lived; that's what a lot of people think he was talking about. The world going to hell because of the people in it. We're not in that time and place anymore - like I said, most of us aren't. And yet people still fear and hate each other. Why is that? Why do we keep drowning innocence like it's done something to us?

The end of anyone's personal world brightens someone else's, somehow. Can you imagine turning out the lights on someone's everything?

Sure some of you don't have to imagine. Some of you already know.

[There will be a copy of The Second Coming handwritten in each level's common room. You're welcome.]

Comments

[characterdefect]

I always thought it was a shame that people only ever quote "The Tyger". "Earth's Answer" had a greater effect on me, but, well. That's just me personally.

[youwill]

'Does the sower sow by night, or the plowman in darkness plough?'

I find it much more intriguing than The Tyger.

[characterdefect]

The answer to "The Tyger" is too obvious. Not open-ended enough.

[God creates; God also destroys. He makes lives, he makes deaths. Roderick doesn't know who'd expect anything else.]

[youwill]

[Hannibal nods, silent for a moment.]

What open end do you pursue?

[characterdefect]

[Roderick, too, is silent for a moment, considering his answer. He means to speak truthfully, although his truth is so skewed it might not mean much.]

[To the average person. To Hannibal, well . . .]

I guess the simplest answer is freedom. The openest of all.

[youwill]

[Personal truth can be the most telling thing in the world. Hannibal smiles at that.]

Freedom from what?

[characterdefect]

Censorship.

[He grins mirthlessly. Then, more seriously:]

Imprisonment.

[youwill]

A shared plight. I have wondered, how many would see uniting as a viable option. [Considering a prison riot, him? Why, he never.]