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I think one of the best examples of what went wrong with TSATS is from the book tour I attended -

At one point during the event, Mark Oshiro made a comment about Nico's card collection. Specifically, they joked that Nico collecting cards was a sign that he was gay, because clearly he was only collecting the cards to look at the men on the art (which ends up being a note made in the actual book itself).

I've said a lot that you cannot divorce PJO from neurodivergence and disability. You just can't. And I stand by that. If you remove the neurodivergence and disability aspects from PJO it is no longer PJO because that's the foundation the entire series is built upon - representing neurodiverse and disabled students and kids. If you do not understand that or try to ignore it you have missed the most fundamental aspect of PJO as a series and everything else falls apart. (This is actually a trend that begins occurring mid/late-HoO and throughout TOA and that's where I say the main series begins to feel like it's no longer itself, but that's a rant for another day.)

You cannot divorce any of the demigod PJO characters from being ADHD/dyslexic. It is a core part of their characters. You cannot separate Nico di Angelo from the fact that he is ADHD/dyslexic. If you agree with Nico being autistic-coded or not, he is explicitly ADHD, and MythoMagic as we're introduced to it with him is clearly his hyperfixation if not his special interest. It just is. MythoMagic with Nico is the main ADHD/autistic trait we see presented with him. You cannot erase that. You cannot say "Nico only collected cards because he's gay" because then you are removing the fact that Nico is ADHD and you have missed the entire point of the series. Failed step 1.

TSATS does things like this so often throughout the book. (Ex: None of the characters stim, ever. The closest we get is Will bouncing his leg in one scene, but that's heavily implied to purely be him feeling anxious in that moment and nothing else. Nico even gives up his most iconic stim object and it's replaced with a coin he explicitly never stims with. He only ever touches it, never stims with it.) The book refuses to acknowledge that Nico and Will (and Annabeth and Percy and Piper and etc etc etc) are ADHD and dyslexic (and autistic-coded, in Nico's case). And if it does even remotely acknowledge those themes, it does so in the most ableist ways possible (infantilizing Nico, blaming Nico for his own ostracization, magically healing all of Nico's problems, implying Percy is only bad at school because he's disinterested and lazy, etc). And that happens because they started on the wrong foundation. They treated the characters' neurodivergence and disabilities as secondary and optional rather than the literal foundations the entire series was built upon and it shows.

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Bezüglich der Unsterblichkeits Nummer. Werde wohl erstmal alle im Seminar aufgeworfenen Fragen, die Beachtung verdienen hier sammeln.

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Ganz ehrlich seit meinem Seminar über Unsterblichkeit möchte ich ein Buch mit unsterblichen Figuren schreiben.

Aber ich habe seit Jahren nicht mehr literarisch geschrieben.

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FAITH IN THE FUTURE (DELUXE) by Louis Tomlinson TRACKLIST (PLEASE DON’T REPOST)

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hope you get to go to the zoo today king

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best review of fellowship of the ring

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So the downfall of twitter kinda brings me back. So I will give this a try again.

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hey, tag this with a food people get really upset about you not liking

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I have many thoughts, but most importantly:

- Hennessy’s sunglasses are Maggie’s sunglasses

- i know ppl are asking where the consistency is, buy i can see it. the trees are the same, we’re moving on to something new and alien to Ronan

- I guess it’s safe to say the last book’s cover will be blue

- why have they each other’s swords?? like Ronan is holding FROM CHAOS (cold, pure white from the full moon, Hennessy dreamt it) and Hennessy is holding VEXED TO NIGHTMARE (made of the sky, sun blasting along every inch of it, Ronan dreamt it)

- what the fuCK IS THAT TITLE

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“let the night keep rolling” would be a much better title

consistently poetic AND a lyric from the mister impossible song which clearly has meaning to the themes

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We all know why Ronan is a good fucking role model.

Source: http://bit.ly/2nxqKh3

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So this excerpt that Maggie tweeted appears to be a quote from Cicero’s Laelius, also known as De Amicitia (On Friendship), and it means as if another self / just like another self.

I went to look up the Latin passage because I wanted to see how this worked within the paragraph, and after quickly translating it in my head, I thought it had some interesting potential for discussion.

The larger passage it comes from is as follows:

digni autem sunt amicitia, quibus in ipsis inest causa cur diligantur. rarum genus! et quidem omnia praeclara, rara, nec quicquam difficilius quam reperire quod sit omni ex parte in suo genere perfectum. sed plerique neque in rebus humanis quicquam bonum norunt nisi quod fructuosum sit, et amicos tamquam pecudes eos potissimum diligunt, ex quibus sperant se maximum fructum esse capturos.[80] ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita,nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se quisque sibi carus est; quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur: est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem. (Cic. Lael. 21, 79-80).

And this is the translation (I didn’t feel like re-doing it all from scratch myself and making it pretty, because I was possessed by the feral urge to make this post, so I am using the one from this excellent website) – emphasis mine:

Now they are worthy of friendship who have within their own souls the reason for their being loved. A rare class indeed! And really everything splendid is rare, and nothing is harder to find than something which in all respects is a perfect specimen of its kind. But the majority of men recognize nothing whatever in human experience as good unless it brings some profit and they regard their friends as they do their cattle, valuing most highly those which give hope of the largest gain. [80] Thus do they fail to attain that loveliest, most spontaneous friendship, which is desirable in and for itself; and they do not learn from their own experience what the power of such friendship is and are ignorant of its nature and extent. For everyone loves himself, not with a view of acquiring some profit himself from his self-love, but because he is dear to himself on his own account; and unless this same feeling were transferred to friendship, the real friend would never be found; for he is, as it were, another self.

While Cicero’s work is, as you can tell, a philosophical discussion about the value of disinterested/unselfish friendship, somehow I don’t think that’s quite what’s being discussed in the excerpt. There are a few other angles that could come into play here:

dream doubles: it’s pretty clear from the excerpt that Adam is visiting Ronan in one of his dreams, most likely by scrying/astral projecting (that is, unless Adam’s somehow figured out how to disappear in real life). So Adam could be taking the quote of context to explain how he’s there, not really physically but through a projection of his essence, “another self”

Lindenmere: Maggie replied to the original tweet saying that the excerpt might make more sense if you’ve read the Opal story. The first thing that came to my mind was Ronan struggling to make the new Cabeswater, because he wants to make it perfect, like the old Cabeswater but better, and Adam reassuring him that “it won’t be what you imagined, but it will be just as good”. So Lindenmere could be seen as Cabeswater’s “other self”. This also has additional meaning for each of them, because Ronan manifests Lindenmere as he manifested Cabeswater, and therefore they are a reflection of his soul (another self?); and though Adam’s special connection to Cabeswater was caused by his sacrifice to awaken the ley line, it’s possible that Lindenmere, being a manifestation of the same entity, taking energy from the same line, being Cabeswater’s other self, remembers him and might be responsive to him, making it easier for him to scry into it (and Ronan’s dreamspace). Currently, I believe this is the most likely option.

But there’s another level of it that intrigues me, and really, one that I think is true regardless of whether it’s what the characters are referencing. If you look at the passage I bolded, you’ll see that it compares disinterested friendship and sincere affection to loving oneself: we all love/care for ourselves in some way, at least a little bit, even if it’s just survival instinct, and we can’t have any ulterior motives in loving ourselves, because we have nothing material to gain – only acceptance and happiness. It’s that concept of being “dear to someone on our own account”. And that, ultimately, is how Adam and Ronan feel about each other. Now I personally think – watch me be clowned, but I’d bet on it – that Ronan is going to struggle a lot with the dangers his dreaming poses to Adam (both in itself and because people are hunting him down) and I can see him trying to distance himself to keep Adam safe. So it’s not a stretch to imagine Adam showing up in Ronan’s dreams and Ronan telling him that it’s dangerous, that he shouldn’t worry about Ronan, that he needs to look after himself, and Adam replying that that’s ridiculous, because he cares about Ronan as if Ronan was Adam’s own self. And mayhaps I’m emo about that, because it really is the truth, whether or not it’s what the quote means here.

So, until November 5 rolls around and we find out for sure… have fun picking your favourite interpretation (or heck, all three of them - I know I am), and if you have any other ideas, let me know what you think!

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Shelf-Confidence Book Photo Challenge | August | Day 11: Power & Corruption

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.

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Lyra tried to recall every image from the dream, but it was vanishing by the second. All that was left was that intense, intoxicating, saturating love.

The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman

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Last round starting with chapter 27. Spolieralert!!

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Prepare for spoilers. This is the second round of annotations.