introspectivememories

[introspectivememories]

Happy pride month to Tim "happy fir pri" Bern.

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thinking about shanks and buggy and how the love was there!!! it was there and it was clear and it was real and it was tangible and it still was not enough!!! the love was there when they grew up together and the love was there when they traveled the world together and the love was there when shanks gave up on the one piece for buggy and the love was there when shanks dived into the ocean to save buggy and the love was there when they promised to go to raftel together on their own ships and the love was there when they lived together in loguetown in the hiatus before roger died and the love was there when buggy damaged luffy's hat and the love was there still when they saw each other at marineford after two decades and shanks still trusted buggy to get the strawhat back to luffy and the love was there still, still, still, when rogers' body was cooling on the execution stand and his blood was being washed away by the rain and shanks put out his hand, palm faced up in supplication, and said "i'm not going after the one piece" and said the words he's been saying since he was a child, a plea, a prayer, "come with me buggy" and buggy who had given up on his hopes and dreams, crushed under the promise of shanks' shining future and his brilliant potential, humiliated by his cowardice and his belief in his would-be king, his friend, his brother, his shanks, slaps his hand away, closes his ears to the plea, the prayer, the devotion shanks is saying, and said "i'll never come with you!" the love was there still and it was not enough.

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you know how the universe tries to tear itself apart whenever gumball's dad tries to get a job? the universe does the same thing whenever it looks like there might even be a chance of shank and buggy working things out.

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I think New Rome has the most beautiful and lavish weddings.

oooh i can see that so much!!! i think your entire cohort comes to the wedding and it's a huuuuge celebration at juno's temple. and ofc, bc i cannot do anything without making it about jason grace, jason is 100% there for all weddings to do the blessing. i think jason cries at every single one and everyone in the legion knows and makes fun of him for it. "why is praetor grace crying?" / "oh he had to bless chiara and antoine's wedding this morning" wedding season is hell on jason. he's drinking 7L a day to keep up with how much he's crying lol.

also bc ppl are from everywhere, they have one big building that they switch up depending on the religious person's needs. once jason becomes pontifex maximus, aka new rome pope, he oversees everyone's religious needs. like "oh anjali needs a hindu temple bc tmrw is hanuman jayanti? okay how can we get her that" and so on and so forth. and bc ppl are from everywhere, i think new rome is really free about practicing religion. i think it's super common for someone to attend a buddhist temple service one day with a friends and then turn around the next day and go to mass. all while still believing in the gods.

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camp jupiter hcs:

we'll keep the military aspect but it's less military camp and more military base

so the legionaires get trained like proper military. if you're serving, then you're attending weapon training and you're attending strategy classes and if you're 18 and under, you gotta go to school in between all this

yes they have cohorts and yes, there are superiority complexes about which cohort you're in but it's less their whole personality trait and more about cohorts 1-3 are more likely to get rank promotions

rank promotions are important bc after a certain rank you can retire from the legion and everyone wants to retire young

promotions are super hard though. you have to prove yourself worthy of the rank and you have to have at least 1-3 character witnesses and a letter of recommendation from your centurion and it's real serious business

and i know everyone's up in arms about cj having a child army while the adults in new rome do nothing but im sorry to me that is such a non issue. these kids are going to be fighting for their lives anyway. theyre going to be hunted by monsters just for existing and we're getting worked up over child soldiers being in a child army????? is chb not also at fault for having child soldiers??? or do they get a pass bc it's more a summer camp than a military base like cj?

that being said there is like an adult senate in new rome that the army senate has to go through when making decisions that affect the entirety of the camp. like the war? and mt. tamalpais? they had to put that to vote in the new rome senate before they went.

there is weapons training and fight training for adults in new rome up to age 50. sorry, you have to keep your skills sharp just in case we go to war.

yes, new rome adults did fight in both wars. yes, they took orders from the 16 yr old praetors. no, it was not weird, the kids are praetors for a reason. if the orders they gave were that shit, they wouldve been kicked out of the position so long ago

they hold the war games every other week so the cohorts can test their strategy and fighting skills obvi.

they hold a special war games twice a year where the army gets split down the middle and each praetor gets a half and they fucking go at it. it's a great way to see if the praetors deserve their spots.

getting court martialed is the worst thing in the world. if you do smth that bad, bad enough that you get sent to court over it? consider your life over. and gods help u if your crime is injuring a fellow member. you're 100% getting kicked out of cj. sorry not sorry. they cant have someone who's a danger to the army.

new rome has everything a regular city has. schools, hospitals, quaint little cafes, city bikes bc its too small for a bus. the army hospital is better at injuries than the city hospital though both army and city doctors get trained the same.

you've heard of getting "grandfathered in"? now get ready for getting "granfathered out". if you have less than 1/8 godly blood, say goodbye to new rome and hello to the outside world. if you have less than 1/8 godly blood, it's my personal hc that monsters are not interested in you, and if they are, it's the ones that are so weak it's almost laughable.

there's limited space in new rome and it's supposed to be a safe space for demigods and they can't do that if they let everyone stay. ppl who leave but have family in new rome are added to a database and they have to show their new rome id card when they come back for a visit.

NEW ROME ID CARD!!! holy shit, there's the army dog tags and there's the army id cards but everyone wants to retire so they can get a new rome id card. 9 times out of 10, it means they're a real adult.

yes, they have a graveyard. yes, it's a mismatch of everyone's traditions. yes, everyone loves it. hazel, in particular, loves stopping by to see everyone take care of the dead.

for everyone who dies in battle or in service, their names are carved into the senate walls. also it's pretty common for service members to get their fallen friend's tattoo symbol down their spine. so like if your friend who died was a legacy of apollo, then you'd get a lyre down your back.

yes, there are jobs in new rome, but if we're being honest, everyone wants to leave. not bc the jobs suck but because staying in new rome means missing out on the rest of the world. most people end up staying though. nobody wants to live their life constantly on guard.

i know riordan said that sometimes the gods come down to new rome to relax and they even have kids with the new rome citizens but i hate that. unfortunately hitting on your sibling's kid and even being your sibling's kid's baby daddy is the exactly the kind of skeevy shit i expect from the olympians.

to add on that, it is kinda looked down upon to get knocked up a god if you're a new rome citizen mainly because everyone already knows demigod life is so hard and then you went and had a baby with an actual god? thereby condemning your child to the same demigod life you suffered? nahhh, wrap it up.

the romans are not cartoonishly evil like riordan wrote them. they're just practical and to a fault. ruthlessly efficient. rooted in their traditions. they're warm people but they're cold with people they don't know. camp jupiter is very insular.

speaking of cj being a efficent and a military, they got backup plans for their backup plans. everything is ordered. when jason was getting mt. tamalpais war premonitions courtesy of lady juno, he immediately started his cohort on war protocols. they called him crazy but when his cohort had the least amt of deaths of all the cohorts, they never questioned his judgement again.

your cohort becomes your family. these are the people you're running laps with. these are the people you're doing drills with in full armor. these are the people you're going to fight and die with. these are the people you're going to live with once you get out of the legion. your cohort is your people.

new rome has certain areas divided into cohorts. like city center is prime 2nd cohort area. near the back is 3rd cohort. and yes, there are people who who live outside their areas but mostly ppl just wanna live near the people they know and love!

they do celebrate all the feasts for the gods. unfortunately the kids dont get a day off from training. if they got a day off from training every feast day, they'd never get anything done.

there is sooooo much paperwork that goes into being praetor. it's a running joke amongst praetors that they wont die in battle but in their office. death by a thousand paper cuts.

praetorship is an honor that everyone takes seriously. you are not just leading an army, you are their example of what it means to be roman.

in my mind the conflict between the greeks and the romans is that the romans take everything too seriously and in turn forget that their base is mostly teenagers and the greeks don't take this seriously enough. bc like this has been bothering me so much. what do you mean chb has year-rounders? do they go to school? how? if everything is easy-breezy summer camp, are they training enough? idk imo if i knew that my training was the diff between life and death outside the camp, i would be putting in 7hrs a day on my preferred weapon. so in my preferred version of this conflict, they both learn something from each other.

the romans had heavy losses from the titan war. the greeks had the gods fight with them. the romans had no one, just them and their drive. there were too many casualties and they've never forgotten.

there is fundamental belief diff between the romans and the greeks. the romans don't really believe in the gods. like they know the gods are real and that they exist but faith in them? no not really. they'll do stuff for the gods but they dont fucking believe. it's like getting orders from your boss. and why would they when the gods are so distant from them? every new recruit knows or eventually learns the mantra of "faith will only lead to disappointment". the only person that never truly understood was jason grace and look where all that faith got him.

contrary to what riordan would have you believe, new rome did search for jason. he is rome's favored son, their saving grace. when he left lupa's house under lady juno's watchful eye and finally entered new rome, everyone swears they felt something shift into place. he is their praetor, their leader, and they searched for weeke. even after lady juno told them to stop, they continued but they had no leads and no clues to even start searching. and then the son of neptune shows up and they know that whatever is coming up must have their jason involved and that he will come back to them. his is theirs and they are his after all.

ik riordan implies that lupa kills demigods who she considers weak but imo opinion that is way too harsh for a ya series. if this was adult fantasy i would understand but as it stands lupa killing what 12/13? year-olds is insane. my opinion? she wipes their memories and sends them back where they come from. they eventually pass but it usually takes them a try or two.

cj had a loooot of defectors during the titan war. it's what made it so brutal for them. a lot of them were fighting their old friends and in some cases having to kill them.

cj's swordfights or any fight in general is usually till "first knockout" or "first blood". it throws a lot of the greeks off at first.

there is an underground tournament ring at cj. yes the praetors know but it's an easy way for the legionnaires to get their frustrations out so they turn a blind eye to it. yes both jason and reyna have won multiple times.

they're paying for all this shit somehow. i just dont know how yet. money laundering maybe? 🤷🏽‍♀️

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this is my roman empire

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jason and juno's relationship is like "you were my mother, why couldn't you have just been my mother? and "i will be your sword and your shield" and "i made you into a hero. you ruined me. it's the same thing!" and "i will spend my lifetime being your dutiful champion" and "everything i am is because of you" and "it was my life! you had no right to take that from me. it was my life" and "a girl will be the daughter of zeus but you, jason grace, shall be mine" and "mom, am i still young? can i dream for a few months more?" and "i love you and i always will and i am sorry. what a useless word" and "i have my father's nose and all his rage, but i have my mother's face and her grief" and "or was my rage my mother's? or her mother's? or hers? an inherited creature?" and "but i am very homesick for arms that have never held me" and "the arms that cradled you are covered in an unfathomable amount of blood. but they cradled me, yes?" and "i will die your daughter and i will die your daughter and i will die your daughter" and "i hate you for what you did and i miss you like a little kid" and "hello? this is your mother. are you there? are you coming home?" and "mother, eat me and give birth to me again. this time around i'll make you proud" and "a fragment of god has been found in my mother's tender, fleeting smile" and "beause i'm my mother's son, i leave the arrow in my throbbing heart. what kills me keeps me alive" and "i have searched for my mother's love in all corners of the world" and "to say that you abandoned me would be very unjust, but that i was abandoned, and at times horribly, is true" and "i've done everything you have ever asked me. everything. i have given everything i've ever had" and "if i let him do this to me, what else will i allow? anything, anything, anything" and "i love you so much i'm going to let you kill me" and "you believe me like a god and i destroy you like like i am" and "i am forever your most devoted believer" and "somebody always needs to go first. i know this. i go first" and "i ache for the idea of it" and "i still loved you. i still have to live with that" and "i forget about you long enough to forget why i needed you" and "i miss you more than i remember you" and "when you find an old picture of us, and you clear away the dust, i hope you miss me sometimes" and "if home is where the heart is, then we're all just fucked. i can't remember, i can't remember" and "and i'll dream each night of some version of you, that i might not have but i did not lose" and "it's been a long time since i've been me" and "i am not the person i dream of being" and "i want everything back, the way it was. but there is no point to it, this wanting" and most importantly, "of course the love is there. still, still, still."

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thinking about jason and juno again. and juno specifically, not hera. bc like hera likes him, loves him even if the moon is blue enough, but he's juno's son champion through and through. like that's his mom. juno and lupa. when he thinks about his mom, he doesn't think about beryl, he thinks of how cold and wet lupa's snout was when she used to nuzzle him. he thinks of juno's hands in his hair when he would fall asleep in her temple. like that's his mom!!!!

and i really do wonder what their relationship was like before the switch. what did it mean to be juno's champion? and it's not like juno was just some big goddess. contrary to what riordan thinks, the romans were not some temu knockoff of the greeks. juno was the protector of rome and she was part of the capitoline triad. what did that mean for jason who so clearly bore her favor?

the romans considered her the protector of rome. they called her juno moneta, juno the warner. did jason also feel when threats to new rome were made? maybe he didn't get visions but did he wake up somedays and tie his shin guards tighter? did he run drills twice as hard in the year before the battle at mt. tamalpais? as the romans were preparing for war with the greeks did he move restlessly on the argo II? when he was out on missions in new rome, did he take out monsters near the camp? and in a more day-to-day experience, did he vote against seemingly harmless policies in the camp and in the city because of a gut instinct?

she was the patron of marriages in rome. did they have come to weddings in new rome so it could be blessed by juno? did she let him bless unions? do you think this was jason's favorite aspect of juno? do you think he tried to attend as many weddings as possible? do you think he felt like something was missing when he was a chb when he couldn't perform these duties? she was a fertility goddess as well. when a baby was born in new rome, do you think jason woke up with a pull in his chest? do you think jason liked holding these infants, the newest member of his city, and blessing them? do you think jason became a common sight in the maternity ward? how many children had a "big brother jason" or an "uncle jason" who came over every once in a while to play with them? do you think he let them play in her temple when they came by? do you think he lifted them up so they could adorn her with flowers?

like do you think he was her priest in addition to being her champion? did he raise the geese that lived in her temple? did he slaughter the goat for her festival? did he sweep and clean her temple? did he sing the songs and lead the prayers? did he find the peacock that lives there? did he plant the lotus flowers? how much of the temple duties did he perform? how long do you have to do something before it becomes a part of who you are? and when he's at chb, did it make him angry to see how cold and impersonal hera's cabin was? did it make him uncomfortable to see it so empty? was he twitching with no temple duties to keep busy with? with no geese to run after? with no rome to protect?

when he was younger, how often did he fall asleep in the temple, under his lady's watchful eye? how often did he wake up to a woman in a goatskin running her fingers through his hair singing lullabies? how often did he talk to her? how often did she respond to her champion's prayers?

and i think ultimately this removal of such a core part of him is why he never truly repaired his relationship with juno. because she took out a core part of who he was. maybe it was conditioning, maybe she raised him from birth to be a lamb for the slaughter, but it was still who he was. he was jason grace, "champion of juno" first and "son of jupiter" second. and in many ways, he was her only demigod son. and when she took it out of him, there was hole. a yawning, gaping, chasm. and he filled it with other things so well that there was no need and no room for her. he had now become jason grace "son of jupiter" first and "champion of juno" second.

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love as recognition

anna gavalda / friedrich nietzsche / clarice lispector / jandy nelson / rebecca perry / mhairi mcfarlane

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why am I scrolling . What am I hoping to find

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jewelry set, italy c. mid 1800s.

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The new TOG trailer got my muse going again. Fuck you, muse.

Let’s see if I do anything with this.

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"doesn't this charater under insane stress going through extremely traumatic events realize how inconvenient their irrational emotional reactions are to the people around them?" well, see, you're not gonna believe this, but the thing is,

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the thing about booker that drives me crazy is that he's suicidal and yet he's unable to die. he wants nothing more than to stop living, because he can't handle it anymore. the scene in copley's office where andy asks him why he betrayed them and he says he hopes the scientists will find a way to end it. the love was there and it wasn't enough to stop the grief. insane character motivation.

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imagine you are on the sea floor locked in an iron casket and imagine that one day on top of drowing every day, you start dreaming of a french man. and imagine you dream of him choking and begging and repeatedly dying for 3 days straight. and then imagine your relief and anger when your family finds him and you are happy even though you're a little mad that it's been like 3 centuries and that they still have not found you. and then imagine dreaming about his new life, the happiness at coming home to his sons, the grief at losing them to their anger and jealousy, and the grief again when this frenchman loses them for real when they die. and then imagine dreaming about his constant need, his constant want, his dangerous desperation to die on top of you drowning repeatedly for like 5 centuries. and then on the frenchman's side, imagine dying for 3 days straight, and then you die again every day after that. imagine losing your beloved children, and they hate you for not dying and not being sick, and then they die, and you lose them in the way that matters the most. and then imagine you have to keep on living, and nothing ever stops it, not bullets or swords or bombs. you just keep on living, and there is nothing to make it bearable. sure you have your family, but even then, they have each other, and it's not like they'll miss you too much if you figure out a way to die, right? oh, and on top of this, you have been drowning on dry land since the first day they killed you in that noose. how many times do you have to run out of air before you give up? once? twice? a hundred? 3 centuries? does the love even matter in the face of such overwhelming pain?

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they should invent a male friend that doesn't want to fuck you

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20 examples of periodic solutions to the three-body problem