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bedlamsbard · 7 months ago

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Ok I am genuinely and independently curious about your opinions on the fall of Rome, but I do understand it not being the time, so answer this how you best see fit to not cause fuckshit

see, the thing is that I am immune to discourse about the fall of Rome because 99% of online comparisons to ~the fall of the Roman Empire just have a very culturally osmosed idea of Edward Gibbon's decline and fall and no idea what actually happened in the late 5th/early 6th centuries, and the thing I do professionally is The End of the Western Roman Empire. that is not an exaggeration. that's what my doctoral dissertation is on. (actually, technically it's about failures of Roman identity in specific regions of the (former) Western Roman Empire, but basically the End of the Western Roman Empire.) I have spent the bulk of the past ten years thinking extensively about the End of the Western Roman Empire. It is a safe bet that I know every major argument of scholarly discourse on the End of the Western Roman Empire. I have also read the original sources in the original languages. this is just to say that like. I have a lot of opinions about the end of the Western Roman Empire, and they digress pretty significantly even from common scholarly view, let alone popular opinion. (but I can back them up! I'm not sourcing stuff here, but I can.)

the traditional end date for the end of the Western Roman Empire is 476 CE, the year the emperor Romulus Augustulus was removed from the throne by a so-called barbarian usurper named Odoacer. after that, there were no other Western Roman Emperors and Italy was ruled by barbarian kings until the foundation of the Exarchate as a result of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian's invasion. Odoacer was, by the way, a Roman military officer and a citizen. Romulus Augustulus was fourteen years old and had been on the throne the year previously but his father and uncle, both of whom Odoacer killed. oh, by the way, the preceding emperor? yeah, Romulus Augustulus's dad didn't actually kill him. his name was Julius Nepos, and he did get chased out of Italy. he went to his native Dalmatia (modern Croatia) and wrote angry but pleading letters to his relative by marriage, the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Zeno, who was a little busy at the time because he had just been chased out of Constantinople by a usurper named Basiliscus. By the time Zeno succeeded in retaking Constantinople and knocking Basiliscus off, Odoacer was safely seated in Ravenna (the city of Rome had ceased to be the imperial capital some time earlier) and had 14-year-old Romulus Augustulus and the Roman Senate (still in the city of Rome) writing letters to Zeno on his behalf. Romulus and the Senate both said, essentially, hey, why don't YOU (Zeno) be the first emperor to control both halves of the empire for the first time in centuries and Odoacer can just be king in Italy, basically a governor, but it's YOUR empire.

(by the way, Romulus Augustulus was fine. he was quietly retired to a villa in Campania with his mother, we actually have letters to him from years later.)

the Italian legation seems to have arrived in Constantinople at the same time as the Julius Nepos's Dalmatian legation, which said, "hey, cousin, congrats on getting the throne back, funny story! I have the same problem. could you maybe help me out here?"

the problem is that Zeno, having just finished fighting a major civil war that almost succeeded, did not have any resources to help Nepos, and also everyone in the Eastern Roman Empire hated him (Zeno) a lot. so much. what he ends up doing is writing a strongly-worded letter to Odoacer thanking him for the offer but reminding him that he HAS a Western Roman Emperor already! right now! don't forget!

so true, bestie, Odoacer says to Zeno, and then proceeds to ignore Nepos for the next four years -- except. he continues to put Nepos on his coins. he continues to put Zeno on his coins. as far as the Roman senate and the population of Italy is concerned, they are still part of the Roman res publica. they are very clear on this fact. so are our Eastern Roman writers, interestingly, though the situation with the West is kind of tense, but Zeno is busy with like. six other civil wars. (because everyone hates him). so he can't actually do anything about the Odoacer and Nepos situation. Nepos dies in 480 (assassinated by his own nobles) and even though Odoacer springs up all "I WILL AVENGE YOUR DEATH, MY BELOVED EMPEROR" and conquers Dalmatia, this actually just makes the situation with the East worse because now there's not even the illusion of a Western Roman Emperor, but Zeno is busy having his five hundredth civil war so he can't do anything about it. (it's actually not his fault, there were numerous factors going on in the East, only some of which were that everyone hated Zeno for being essentially an outsider. his mother-in-law and his wife also hated him.)

eventually, however, Zeno manages to kill all of his problem noblemen and attempted usurpers except one guy and goes, huh, you know what. I would like you to get out of the Eastern Roman Empire but you're actually very competent so I can't beat you militarily. also would you please stop marching on Constantinople, that would be great.

that one guy is Theoderic the Great, King of the Ostrogoths. he was also a Roman citizen (Flavius Theodericus), a patrician, Zeno's son-in-arms (we're not actually sure what this entails), and a former consul, THE most prestigious office in both sides of the empire, with a host of Roman civil and military honors. he'd been raised in the court at Constantinople as a political hostage, which meant he knew the imperial system inside and out, and upon being released immediately went back to the Ostrogoths, raised an army, and started conquering things, both for and against the Eastern Romans. he had been on Zeno's side, he had been fighting Zeno, he had been on Zeno's side again, he had been fighting Zeno again, he was NOT responsible for the death of the other Gothic Theoderic, Theoderic Strabo (who once called him out for being too Roman), who died accidentally, but he was probably responsible for the death of Strabo's heir, which resulted in all of Strabo's Goths joining Theoderic's Goths. he marched on the walls of Constantinople. peak frienemy.

it's unclear if sending Theoderic and the Ostrogoths to Italy was Zeno's idea or Theoderic's, since sources differ, but one way or another Theoderic gathered up all of the Ostrogoths (men, women, and children) and set out on an overland trek to Italy, picking up various other barbarian peoples along the way, and arrived in Italy in 489, where he immediately set about making Odoacer's life a nightmare by conquering everything in Italy except Ravenna, where Odoacer holes up with his family. in 493 the bishop of Ravenna negotiates a truce between Theoderic and Odoacer, the two of them agreeing to rule Italy between them, and then Theoderic personally kills Odoacer and also has the rest of his family killed, leaving him as king of Italy -- rex Italiae.

or...what? we do know for sure that Theoderic used the title rex Italiae. he also used the titles princeps, imperator, and dominus. we even have one stone inscription, set up by a Roman senator (who ought to know) calling him augustus (emperor). what we don't know -- and scholarly ideas differ here -- is what Theoderic's actual legal relationship vis a vis the Eastern Roman Empire was because to all intents and purposes, for the next thirty years, Theoderic acted like, was treated like, and performed as the Western Roman Emperor, without ever explicitly claiming that title. but everything about his reign was centered around performing Romanness perfectly and about restoring territory to the WRE that had been lost decades earlier. which he did. he brought portions of Gaul and Spain and the Balkans under Italian rule again. he bragged about seating Gallic senators in the Roman senate for the first time in decades. every letter to he sent to the East was "okay, you're emperor, but I'm as good as you and don't you forget it, we're still the other republic (utraeque res publicae)." he went on what was essentially a triumph in Rome itself. he did the whole bread and circuses shindig. (literally, he reinstituted the annona, the grain dole, and held gladiatorial games even though he personally didn't like them.) most of the popes liked him and were happy to work with him (because they hated the patriarch in Constantinople and the various Eastern Roman Emperors). (I say most of because he definitely interfered with a couple of papal elections and may have had one pope killed.)

now, he wasn't a perfect Roman, because he was still a barbarian (non-Roman) king. there were legal distinctions between Romans and Ostrogoths in Italy. Theoderic made marriage alliances with most of his surrounding barbarian neighbors (who also all ruled former Roman territory); he wasn't a Nicene (Catholic) Christian, he was an Arian (Homoian) Christian. but he acted as a Roman emperor and seems to have been perceived as one by the bulk of the inhabitants of Italy. (yes, of course he had political enemies, yes I know about Boethius and Symmachus). also sometimes he did fight the Eastern Roman Empire but considering how many civil wars Rome had had that's basically one of the most Roman things he could do.

he dies in 525, without an adult male heir, and his grandson Athalaric becomes king under the regency of his mother, Theoderic's daughter Amalasuintha, who was essentially too Roman for most of the Ostrogothic nobility but made the Roman senate really happy. she was apparently pretty close to being a political genius, she was just unfortunately a woman. an unmarried woman. (Athalaric's father had died at some indeterminate point before Theoderic's death, we don't know when.) when Athalaric died before gaining his majority, Amalasuintha briefly reigned as sole ruler, then realized that that wasn't going to work with the Ostrogoths, and named her cousin Theodahad her co-ruler. (she did not marry him, anyone who tells you she married him is wrong. Theodahad was already married.) this backfired very badly. Theodahad had her arrested, imprisoned, and murdered.

this was a huge mistake, because Theodahad was actually incredibly incompetent, and the Eastern Roman Empire was out the lookout for blood since the Emperor Justinian was on his high horse about ~reconquering the Roman West.

and this is when the "the Roman Empire fell in 476" narrative enters the picture. it comes from an Eastern Roman Latin writer names Marcellinus comes, writing during Justinian's reign, and he is the very first person who points to that date, to the usurpation of Romulus Augustulus (who was never acknowledged by Zeno), and to Odoacer as a big, BIG change in the Roman world. previously there is no evidence that anyone in either West or East looked at 476 and thought "something fundamental has changed here." (I mean, maybe they did, but they didn't write it down or if they did it didn't survive.) in fact, Odoacer's and Theoderic's reigns were the most stable period Italy had had in decades; they'd gone through five emperors in ten years. Procopius, writing the Wars, also identifies Romulus Augustulus as the last emperor and Odoacer and Theoderic as illegitimate rulers, but the man is very much writing propaganda. (just because the Secret History hates women and also Justinian does not mean the Wars is not propaganda.) the East has a vested reason for identifying 476 and Romulus as a sea change: they want a legitimate reason to invade the West, and "avenging Amalasuintha" and "reclaiming Rome from the barbarians" are good excuses.

(Procopius really struggles with how to identify Theoderic, because he has to identify Theoderic as a usurper and a tyrant (in the technical ancient sense, not the modern one) for his propaganda to work, but even to him Theoderic is a good ruler, who could have been an emperor but never claimed the title, who held all these Roman honors, etc. there's even a big debate about Theoderic's legal status vis a vis the Eastern Roman Empire in the Wars, so it's clear that it was unclear.)

Theodahad fucks everything up, is murdered by the Goths, and the Goths name a man called Witigis as king. to legitimize this, Witigis (apparently forcibly) marries Amalasuintha's daughter (Theoderic's granddaughter) Matasuintha. too late, the Eastern Roman Empire has already invaded and they aren't stopping for shit. in 535, Ravenna falls, and the remains of the Ostrogothic court (which include a lot of Italo-Roman civil officials) are transported to Constantinople.

THAT'S the end of the Western Roman Empire, the fall of the Ostrogothic Amal dynasty.

the Gothic Wars continue for another twenty years, the Eastern Romans fuck up Italy almost irreparably (there are arguments that the repercussions were still echoing in the 20th century), and then the Lombards invade and make everything worse, but at that point there's no more Western Roman Empire, even if the Roman Senate's still around (and they are until what seems to be the early 7th century).

so basically, I feel very strongly that if anyone says they know anything about the fall of Rome, they almost certainly do not. it's not actually an equivalent situation to the modern U.S. or tbh anyone else. the 476 year is nice, it's convenient, you get the romance of Romulus Augustulus's name ("little augustus," named after the legendary founder of Rome Romulus), but it was not for more than fifty years that anyone actually decided that year was important. the situation was way, way more complicated.

#noblexcelestemorningstar #bedlam replies #your girl #I'm going to make this unrebloggable btw because my idea of hell is accidentally becoming a tumblr historian #primaries are cassiodorus's variae procopius's wars the anonymus valesianus various greek fragmentary historians ennodius's panegyrics #various papal letters boethius consolation of philosophy and some other bits and bobs

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aunt-pol · 4 months ago

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#proofreading #copy editing #writing #freelancing #taking suggestions for more helpful tags lol #all i know on this website is reblog and talk shit

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librarycards · 2 months ago

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@devilofthepit ok i got the ask notif in my email but not in my actual ask box - this may be a shadowban type of deal? not sure. anyway, here's some info about the cultural studies program!

so, cultural studies (henceforth cst) is a program, not a department, which has benefits and drawbacks: the main benefit is fewer required courses and a more minimal rotation of basics/fundamentals; this leaves you plenty of opportunities to take courses in a variety of programs. it also requires initiative inasmuch as making professional connections is *the* goal in grad school, especially as you do coursework in preparation for your dissertation. the main drawback is that there are fewer dedicated resources (such as cst specific faculty, courses, TAships, etc.) and you need to be proactive in seeking them out.

during your first three (coursework) years, you'll take one, two max. required courses per quarter, as well as one, maybe two courses of your choosing. the first year is about establishing a course base of knowledge on cultural studies historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches, and it's hugely beneficial to come in with a basic understanding of marx, foucault, adorno, althusser, derrida, all of those freaks. as with any grad program, the reading load is going to be significantly greater than undergrad, and you're going to need to reimagine the way you approach readings. you can expect easily 200-300 pages a week, which means a lot of skimming, strategic note-taking, etc. is required. hence why prior familiarity helps a ton. at the end of your first year, you take preliminary exams, timed, essay-based tests that determine your basic competency so far.

by your third year, you're expected to have a decent idea of what you're going to be doing for your diss, because your third year is the one where you do three directed independent studies, each with a person who, hopefully, will be on your diss committee. these independent studies will be on the subject areas that you aim to specialize in (think 'how will i market myself when looking for ac jobs') and require you to have working familiarity with around 30-35 scholarly monographs per independent study (so about 100ish total, and/or the equivalent in peer reviewed articles). you will do some kind of culminating assignment with each independent study faculty member, and they'll each write you some questions for your qualifying exams, also timed and essay based. you take three quals over the course of a week, responding to your committees' questions, and after that, take an oral exam. the oral exam will cover the dissertation prospectus you're required to prepare while in your third year, which is around 40-50 pages and outlines the dissertation project.

if you pass your quals, then you're ABD, and can begin dissertation work, and basically keep doing that while touching base with your committee until youre done.

in terms of davis specifically, i'd say it's a nice town to spend some academic years in. it's small and close-knit, and at least in cst, i've felt very supported by the faculty and students i've surrounded myself with. cst, as a department, is also notable in its pro-worker and pro-palestine politics, and it is very closely affiliated with ucd's critical ethnic studies, especially native american studies, programs. i'd say many, if not more than half (??) of us accepted to the cst program have some kind of organizing background, on campus or off.

the main reasons people dislike this specific program is its looseness. even to get in, you need to be pretty self-motivated and have a solid program of study delineated - otherwise, you'll flounder. some people have a solid idea and flounder anyway, but you can avoid this by establishing solid relationships with faculty early on. you also have the opportunity to make connections via the designated emphasis (DE) program, where you can gain a specialization in some discipline alongside cst - i have a DE in science & technology studies, and the chair of my dissertation is primarily affiliated with STS. DEs aren't hard to get, and can open up a lot of doors.

lastly, there's also the work aspect. Davis is on the quarter system, so whenever you're not on a fellowship, you're TAing/reading/grad-researching/(if ABD)adjuncting up to 3 quarters per year. because cst has no analogous undergrad program, so you'll be applying in disciplines relevant to your work, but competing with other grad students in those disciplines. while we don't have TAships guaranteed like others do, i have never had a problem finding one, and there are always openings coming and going.

overall, would i recommend cultural studies at davis? i think so. it was one of my top choices, and i'm glad i came. i don't think it's for everyone, but it's for me because it allows the autonomy i need in order to succeed as a student, and trusts me to be self-motivated and work on my own. CST has been nothing but supportive of my creative as well as academic ventures. that said, communication about more mundane bureaucratic stuff can be slow/absent, and i had to seek a lot of info out myself, especially in the beginning.

tl:dr: worth it for me as i reflect on the last five years, i've learned a lot and met a lot of great people. honestly, though, even if things hadn't been as good as they have, i would likely make this choice again solely because my program supported palestine and those of us fighting for liberation.

#i am happy to answer any and all other questions about ucd / grad school / admissions as best i can #academia #devilofthepit #mine

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ragana62 · 2 days ago

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Sending 🔥🔥🔥

"Bad" fan content (art, fics, videos, rambles, etc.) is actually more important to fandom and a better indication of the health of a fandom than the professional grade internet darling stuff.

More below the break, because I got longwinded and don't want to wall of text people who don't want to read my takes.

First of all, purity culture is bullshit. Liking and engaging with only the most popular/top tier in terms of 'quality' (used here in the strictest technical sense, i.e. perfect adherence to grammatical rules and formatting guides for fics, a high degree of technical skill in drawing/painting/whatever your artistic medium, a borderline PhD dissertation level of lit analysis going into each and every headcanon) is the same as deciding you can't rewatch your favorite movie/reread your favorite book from middle school because you're an adult now and can only like mature things, is the same as deciding that you can't like certain ships because they aren't canon compliant. And it all comes down to this need we've all developed to curate our lives perfectly to present ourselves as the best and most perfect people to ever exist on the internet. Which is also bullshit.

Fandom is and always was a deeply nerdy, cringe space at its very best. It was where you could subtly ask people at a con if they watch Star Trek for 'the Premise' and once confirmed they were safe launch into your hottest Spirk takes, or where you can scroll past someone's New York Times Bestseller quality 400,000 word magnum opus on the complex inner life of a character with no spoken lines of dialogue in canon in the same mouse drag as a 400 word crack fic about the main character in a fandom centered on a horrific dystopia going to the beach. So not only does the closet cosplayer who looks more like your local emo 7-11 clerk than the character they're tagged as belong here just as much as the professional costumer who hand wove the cloth for their undershirt out of flax they grew themselves in their back garden, but I think they're actually more important to a healthy fandom. First, a brief defense of cringe:

We all suck at some point. Maybe you (general) didn't start posting anything until you could do it perfectly, but that doesn't mean you emerged from the womb flawlessly gifted at writing complex worldbuilding and painting masterpieces. That just means you didn't show anyone until you could, and that's kind of sad. Writing/making art/doing textual analysis/making gifs or song edits/costuming/any of it, all of it takes practice to be any good at it, and while none of it is 100% guaranteed to be a good time had by all involved, if you weren't having some fun along the way why bother? You shouldn't have to feel like you need to wait to be perfect to be excited and show people what you're doing just because curation culture says it's only worthy if it's perfect.

We are all inherently cringe. You didn't stop being cringe when you pulled out the cheap neon clip in hair extensions from Claire's and start saying that your favorite cartoon was for babies, you just became a different sort of cringe. That's fine, it's a right of passage, we all go through that phase, but part of growing as a person is learning that it's okay to like what you like, to embrace all the parts of you and your passions, whether it's the big mature official adult interests that people can understand and are socially accepted like prestige TV and whatever self-help book is telling you all the ways you should feel miserable today or the silly youtube videos that made you laugh in middle school or the cheesiest pop songs imaginable. It isn't morally superior to only acknowledge your love for the former, or an essential part of growing up.

Fandom has also always been middle aged suburban moms rambling about the two characters they want to shove into a closet and make kiss, just as much as it has always been the middle schoolers doing the exact same thing, just as much as it has always been people spending hours researching every detail of the latest episode to perfectly justify why Character X is actually a closet fan of doritos. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do a massive formal analysis on the magic systems present in the world of whatever and how they have to work in relation to real world physics, or explore serious themes in a work of fiction, or whatever else either. One set of those things isn't any inherently better than the other, and we all do both when we are being honest with ourselves, even if we don't share one (and more often than not it's the former). Learning fictional languages is an inherently dorky thing to do, no matter how many awards the show or book it's from wins. Dressing up as your favorite imaginary friend is an inherently dorky thing to do, no matter how perfect the costume is. Writing about a made up person going on adventures is an inherently dorky thing to do, whether it's grimdark serious or the crackiest AU imaginable. Spending hours getting the shading just right on the book not the show version of your favorite character is inherently dorky, even if you're the Michaelangelo of old man Yaoi (as though Michaelangelo himself wouldn't rise from the grave to fight you on that). Embrace it.

Anyway, why does this matter? Because purity culture and curation culture are actually what's killing fandom. Like I ramble about the death of community in fandom, the death of comment culture, the loss of old fandom rules/etiquette, etc., fandoms dying too quickly, all the time, but those are symptoms. The bigger problem is, we've all convinced ourselves that we have to be perfect on the internet.

A breakdown:

Fandoms die too quickly. - Because we don't nurture them. Sure, dwindling attention spans do contribute, but we don't give fandoms (or shows, but that's a different rant) time to get good anymore. If we are all refusing point blank to interact with any fanworks that aren't complete works, at the highest quality, that are already popular/have certain ratios of hits to kudos to comments, or aren't at a certain word count, then we're killing it before it starts. Like it or not, by the highest standards we hold this stuff to, 90% of just about everything is a bit shit. It's going to be bad grammar and unfinished wips and 'cringe' AUs and self-insert whathaveyou. That's fandom baby. And if that 90% has no interaction, you can bet those wips will never be finished and those fics with good ideas and bad formatting will never bother to edit it or find a beta and you'll never know that the author writing that 'cringe' was sitting on a draft of your perfect fic that scratches every itch your brain has ever had for your OTP. Because we can sit here all we like and say we write/draw/create for ourselves, but we all know we publish it because we want to exist in interaction with others.

Nobody comments/interacts anymore. - Yeah, because we're all a little bit afraid of someone seeing our AO3 username popping up in the comments/kudos and being found out for enjoying that deeply self-indulgent smut fic or the random 'murder hobo left the child death arena to get froyo' fluff stick figure comic or whatever else we're so afraid of somehow being called out for liking. We've all had it drilled into us that every moment of our existence on the internet has to be curated perfectly to match our official image, so if we want to be serious and mature and proper we can't be seen enjoying the same 'cringe' as everyone else. But if we all feel it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where nobody interacts with any of it, and it all just goes away because as much as we liked it, the creators never found out and stopped sharing with the class.

Fandom etiquette is dead. - Purity culture and curation culture strike again. In the olden times, we had a little policy called 'Don't Yuck My Yum' (it does have other names, this is just the one I use, though 'Don't Like, Don't Read' is the more fic specific one). That isn't to say there was never negativity and flame wars and the like, because oh boy was there, but the point stands. Demanding updates like clockwork because you want more? Anon hate because an author writes a ship you don't like/engages with clearly tagged subject matter that isn't for you/doesn't write a character how you see them? They come from the same place. We need everything we interact with to match our perfectly curated internet persona, and part of that is being seen defending that perfectly curated internet persona's rules. So none of your mutuals can possibly disagree on your headcanons, and nobody can ship anyone else with the members of your officially stated OTP, and nobody can ever find out that you liked that one Dead Dove fic when all your bookmarks are the fluffiest of fluff, and inversely, your favorite author must be a bad person if they wrote a dark fic, or isn't doing fandom right if they don't have a firm update schedule or only publish once the work is fully complete, etc. etc. That's not how any of that actually works in the real world. Why would it be how it works in fandom?

Death of community in fandom. - No shit. Given everything above, why would you bother building that community? Why would you become a regular commenter on a wip you like if it's probably just going to be abandoned anyway and your inbox will be flooded with people telling you that one time at 5:02 PM Pacific Standard Time on August 27th, a fan artist who did the cover for the fic you just commented on once said that they don't like relish on hot dogs and are therefore evil incarnate? Why would you risk putting yourself out there with your craziest takes that have no support but are pure vibes if you're just going to get 'well actually'-ed out of your entire online presence because you had the audacity to say 'fuck it, this is just for fun, I don't care if it's a bit out of character or unsupported by canon'? Why would you bother publishing your art/videos/gifs/fics/whatever else until they were so perfect they couldn't possibly be critiqued at all? The answer is, you wouldn't. So, nobody talks to anybody, unless you've known them for years already before everything got so closed off and perfectionistic, nobody builds those communities, fandom disappears off to little insular discord servers where the creators never find out anyone cares and only people with your exact same takes are let in, and it all slowly goes away because eventually people stop investing their time in putting themselves out there to receive none of the positive interaction and all of the negative.

In short: perfect is the enemy of good, and the best thing your creativity can be is 'in existence'. Make the 'bad' thing and share it, not because anyone else will necessarily love it right away but because it deserves to exist. Maybe one day it gets better. Maybe it never does. Either way, it exists. Inversely, show love to the 'bad' things, because fuck it we all enjoy these things anyway in our own ways so why be ashamed of it? Watch your 'childish' cartoon and rant about it on main, publish the crack AU 'Evil Dictator Spends 20 Minutes Wondering How You Milk an Almond on Their First Grocery Store Trip in 25 Years', draw the stick figure comic and the jerky animation for your fan music video set to the schlockiest pop song imaginable. The only reason we aren't all doing it, is because we're all stuck in these little shame bubbles that can only be popped if we start poking at them. And that's how you save fandom.

Because healthy fandoms, they have lots of 'cringe'. They have lots of 'bad' art and fics and gifs and videos, because they've been around long enough for people to start off bad and get better in a technical sense, or because they haven't lost that community spirit and willingness to admit they're inherently dorky that makes fandom great and have no shame in admitting they read the reader insert smut or the crack drabbles or the badly formatted and unedited fic that might not consistently be able to spell 'orange' correctly but damn it if the story isn't good. Sometimes both. Usually both. If we want to actually fix the issues we all rant about all the time in fandom, we need to start by embracing the fact that we are all doing fundamentally dorky, cringey, things by engaging with fandom at all and there is no inherent moral or personal superiority to be had in acting otherwise.

If we're all irredeemable dorks with questionable taste, then who gives a shit that you saw the author of that fandom darling masterpiece of high-grade wordsmithery's name pop up in the kudos or comment section of that smutfic or darkfic or crackfic or whatever else we're ashamed to admit we read this week? You're both there, you're both reading it, if anything, that's an endorsement that you'll probably enjoy what they're doing since you're both enjoying the same other stuff. If none of us are perfect, maybe we can finally get back to just letting ourselves have fun.

Send me 🔥

#asks answered #RaganaThinksThings #fandom spaces #fandom thoughts #i am cringe but i am free #you should be too

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the-angry-nerd · 19 days ago

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Wednesday, May 28th, 2025

Finally, no contact. I feel great. I am honestly enjoying all the free time I have now that I am not...occupied. At first it was daunting, finding "things" to fill my time but, now, I feel excited. I love learning French. I love writing and reading my books. I am content with life.

I started my summer job. The first few weeks are always rough, every season. However, this time is different because I am a manager. It is stressful but I love doing it. I love being outside and meeting new people. My summer job definitely helps me grow as a person. I learn a new level of patience and professionalism every year that I always take with me wherever I go.

I will start working on big dissertation again. I needed a few weeks off post graduation. I needed to feel a bit of stability in my life before going back down that rabbit hole. There are a lot of edits and fixes... I basically have to re write the paper. I know it will be worth the blood shed and tears. I cannot wait to send it off completely almost perfect.

I am currently watching "Game of Thrones", hopefully I can actually finish it this time. I have started it at least 4 different times. I am determined this time. I am also watching "The Handmaiden's Tale". It has me hooked so far.

#book blog #writeblr #writblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writerscommunity #spilled ink #female writers #prose #lesbian

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rehobothacademicservices · 18 days ago

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steve-jackson · 4 months ago

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badbatchposts · 9 months ago

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🎱 🍓 🌵🔪🪲. I reblogged the ask game from you, so I wanted to be courteous and send you an ask! I'm honestly curious about these.

Thanks for the ask, friend! It's really nice to be able to reflect on some of these things!! Sorry in advance for the super long responses lol.

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats:

Works: 2

User Subscriptions: 6

Kudos: 204

Comment Threads: 84

Bookmarks: 67

Subscriptions: 51

Word Count: 67,351

I honestly have no sense of how these stats compare for the usual fanfic writer, but it makes me happy to see how many people have subscribed to my longfic, especially since I don't always get a ton of comments on new chapters. But it seems people are reading! And definitely more people than read my dissertation, lol.

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

I used to write a lot of original work in high school and early college, but then as things got busy--and as I convinced myself my writing wasn't good enough to be worth it--I largely stopped. I always felt guilty about it. I really enjoyed writing, but didn't think I was creative enough or had the right amount of stamina that it took to complete a long work, and I had this perfectionist idea where it felt like it wasn't worth doing if I couldn't be the best at it.

Then right as the new Bad Batch season came out this year I was struggling a lot with burnout and found that I was spending a lot of time thinking about the show, and decided that I might as well start reading some fanfiction--for the first time ever--and felt like writing it would be a nice creative outlet that might help me recover from my burnout. It really has been great, and some of what's made it so good is actually exactly the sort of things that used to make me think writing fanfiction wasn't worth it. Namely: it's not professionally publishable.

That is, legally, I will never be able to professionally publish and profit from any of what I write--it can only be posted and enjoyed. This actually just took so much of the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfect--it doesn't even have to be very good, because that's not what it's for.

I started thinking of it more as an exercise for working on my writing skills (things like, okay, in this chapter I'm going to practice writing dialogue, or in this next one I'm going to work more on establishing an interesting setting). As a result, I'm now thinking more about the writing process and improving my storytelling, rather than worrying about trying to make it perfect or good enough to publish or feeling competitive or down on myself when I encounter writing that I feel is much better than my own. It's been really freeing.

All of this happened over ten years since I stopped writing in college, and the other great thing has been seeing that my writing skills didn't disappear. In fact, they've gotten better and grown as a result of the learning I did in the meantime. I'm now much better at envisioning narrative arcs, outlining, getting myself to write consistently instead of just waiting for inspiration to strike me, and a whole load of other skills. It's really helped soothe a part of me that worried that I had abandoned writing, that it was too late for me to "do" anything with it, or that I only would have gotten worse.

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

Parasailing in Rio de Janeiro with a Caipirinha in Your Hand

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I've been spending a lot of time researching historical kitchens on sailing ships and historical brothels for the Pirate AU that I'm working on. Once for an academic paper I was working on a novel that depicts a (non-sexual) human-animal relationship but through very intimate and erotic terms, and I accidentally googled a combination of terms that came back with information on bestiality while on my university's wi-fi.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

The most recent thing I wrote for my Pirate AU (I'm skipping ahead SEVERAL chapters to inspire myself with the steamy bits haha)

“I hardly think I can get into much trouble here. Your crew have been perfect gentlemen.”

Hunter’s eyes glinted in the half-light of the lamps. Though he didn’t move, all of a sudden she was all-too-aware of how close he was, how easy it would be for him to reach out and touch her. “And what about me?” he murmured. “Haven’t you heard from the ladies in port? I’m a scoundrel. A very dangerous man. Maybe you ought to be afraid of me.”

Thanks again, this was a lot of fun!!

#ask game #tbb hunter #bad batch

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were-weenkie · 3 months ago

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Ok, Silco thoughts time. Gonna stick to OTSOTT Silco, else I’ll end up writing a whole dissertation.

You’ve written Silco in such a way that makes me want to simultaneously send him to a therapist, bash his face in, wrap him an blanket to keep safe, and fuck him so hard that he turns stupid for a good second.

The thing I love the most about how you’ve written him is that you’ve highlighted just how much of a damaged and traumatized he has become. He’s full bastard with little to no moral hangups in achieving his goals. But you can tell that’s not who he used to be, that this version we’re seeing is the worst version of himself.

He used to be one of the main leaders in Zaun’s community. He was trusted and respected. He was warm and gentle.

He’s a man who has lost everything; family, friends, lover, and trust of his community. All over one reckless mistake that lead to fatal consequences. He became the scapegoat over a tragedy that he might’ve sparked but he wasn’t solely responsible for.

And that turned him into a cold, callous, cruel, controlling and paranoid man. Who’s become so focused on achieving his dream of freeing Zaun because that’s all that he has left to hold onto in his life. So caught up in his hurt and hatred that he’s willing to hurt the very children he used to care for solely due to their association with Vander.

Vander never should’ve tried to kill Silco. He was well within his rights to cut things off and never speak to Silco ever again, but Vander crossed the line when he physically attacked Silco.

Silco is a deeply passionate man despite the air of calm he likes to portray. He feels everything deeply; anger, love, hatred, conviction etc. It’s one of his fatal flaws, how he lets his passion take control and it damages his relationships and plans.

Silco is a starving man. He’s starving for freedom, control, power, and although he might deny it love too.

He had a decades long relationship end in a very violent way. And he hasn’t fully processed and healed from that loss. It’s something that not only affects his personal relationships but his professional ones as well. He has to always be in control, demanding loyalty with an iron grip.

Which makes it even more painful with how much he misses being in a romantic partnership. It’s very telling with how he still referred to sex as lovemaking years after the river incident. Silco misses being a relationship with someone who not only shares his dream of Zaun but also will stand beside him to make it happen.

It’s not surprising that Viktor was his rebound. Yes, I very much consider the latter half of their relationship a rebound from Silco’s side.

Silco has a pattern of becoming attached to people whom remind him of himself. Viktor is not only physically similar Silco but he’s also a mixture of Silco and Vander when they were young revolutionaries. Viktor is slim with long legs, sharp cheekbones, sensual lips, and long hair. He’s also highly intelligent, driven, willing to get dirty to help Zaun but also keeping the wellbeing of the community at the forefront of his mind. Of course Silco would be attracted to Viktor and do anything to have control of him.

It’s like Silco is both subconsciously trying to both practice self love but also dominance when he’s with Viktor. Kinda egotistical but not truly surprising. Just another’s way of Silco trying to hold control of his life and the people in it.

The problem is that any love and affection that Silco has is wrapped in paranoia, compulsive control, and insecurity. He’s no longer the same man he used to be when he was with Vander.

His relationship with Viktor started as a superficial sexual one as a way of keeping Viktor under his thumb. Silco made sure that he was the one that maintained the power. When he finally decided that Viktor proved his dedication and elevated the level of sexual intimacy its was his sole decision. Viktor has had little say in the intimacy of their relationship.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any affection between them. But there’s little chance of it lasting long without resentment building up later as there’s little to no mutual trust and respect between them.

I heard somewhere that there are four components to great long lasting relationships. Intellectual compatibility, emotional compatibility, sexual compatibility, and timing. And the way it looks Silco and Viktor only share like two of those things.

The tragedy is that doesn’t have to be that way. It never did. If Silco had been able to heal from his losses, become less controlling, less violent, and more trusting, he and Viktor could’ve developed a genuine romantic relationship. Real lovers, not just enemies that kept each other warm and happened to get accustomed.

But who knows, maybe with Zaun finally being free Silco will get his shit together and do right by Viktor.

Though for shits and giggles I’m imagining them keeping their enemies with benefits dynamic only with Viktor being in a committed romantic relationship with Jayce. But Jayce is fully secure in his place in Viktor’s heart and doesn’t feel insecure or jealous of Silco. Instead he treats it like a bad habit of Viktor’s, as if he were a casual smoker.

There are boards in their home what say things like “Days Without Lab Explosion” and “Days Without Fucking Silco.” Viktor once has a triple digit streak going but a three hour elevator malfunction broke it lol.

The last paragraph….wow. Your mind.

#on the spine of the tide

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tutor850 · 11 months ago

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butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway · 1 year ago

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Do you have any suggestions on anti-psych books to read? I've read a little about it before, but mostly on the science/medicine side of things (like how some pharmaceutical companies pay psychiatrists to produce studies promoting their medicine, how diagnostic criteria can create problems in other cultures, stuff like that).

It sorta depends on what you mean by books? Literature, for sure, absolutely. But like. Mostly journals, zines, self-published narratives from those detained in various psychiatric institutions over the years, or even the odd clinical paper.

Personally, a lot of what I read that brought me to anti-psych had nothing (or very little) to do with psychiatric medicine in the first place. It was more about the role of autonomy and embodied trauma in self-concept and communal identity over time, the relationships between incarceration and institutionalization, prison abolition literature at large (which is often much more explicitly anti-psych than people realize when they choose not to read actual prison abolition literature and theory, especially Angela Davis' work), and anthropological research on personal and communal identity, as well as resource collection and distribution across different cultures and associated markers of quality of life. I realize that looking at all those different systems and smashing them together in your brain like rocks in a polishing tumbler isn't the most sexy method of radical learning available, but it has wprked pretty well for me in generating complex understandings of the systems at work in anti-psych conversations nonetheless.

Anyway, if you want some of the go-tos I often refer people towards, I'll send you to authors rather than specific works.

Angela Davis has phenomenal insight into the experiences of intersecting incarceration amd pathologization, allowing for some truly nuanced discussion of how mental health care is wielded as a weapon instead of a resource.

The Jane Addams Collective is a group of anarchist social workers and mental health practitioners who work to share their knowledge of praxis, trauma, recovery, and mutual aid to establish community care models that can be utilized even without professional supervision.

Michel Foucault's writing on identity, community, and surveillance are honestly essential to anyone who wants to internalize a comprehensive understanding of how these things impact each other through various systems and dynamics

Judith Butler is a bit of a classic and frankly I hate how she writes stylistically, but she does great work on embodiment and identity, both personal and societal/communal.

I also really like Julia Oparah's (formerly Sudbury) work on abolitionism and experiences of incarceration

The Mad Liberation Front is pretty well known within antipsych circles I think for putting out literature on various topics within the framework

You can also search the anarchist library for their dissertations, books, and other texts on anti-psych here:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/search?bare=1&bare=1&page=1&query=anti+psych

Anyway, I realize it's maybe not the kind of reading list you were expecting when you reached out but I hope it helps anyway!

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