#Who’s Reading Your Blog?

[polepositioned]

AYRTON SENNA / ALAIN PROST / THE MEDIA x mark antony's "friends, romans, countrymen" monologue from julius caesar by william shakespeare, act III, scene ii

[ @nicaeno , @sebsonism , @l0vagrend , @dafunzies , @28ms28 , @schumi-honey \ if you'd like to be tagged in stuff like this, tell me! ]

[teethkid67]

PAYDAY

aka a valentine for the lovely @itsnotmystic / @corvids-calling - fanart for stars fic of the same name, which you can read here !!! i really enjoyed this concept and wanted to do some art for it :3 hope you like it because i REALLY loved your work & i hope this shows that !!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY !!!!

this is also a loose love-letter to the wonderful @arginnit 's crazy background-drawing-ability and style/skill at portraying environments . wadds your stuff is insane and i love it

happy @mcyt-valentines exchange !!!!

[geddyqueer]

listen. you all know me. i'm a guy who is very pro-weird and toxic dynamics. that's great to explore in fiction! love it! but i'm going to be honest. the fact that every day i have to scroll past fics in the bucktommy tag where the writer has cast tommy, a canonically gay man, as this abusive violent piece of shit only to have eddie swoop in and rescue buck, while in reality ryan guzman is out here consciously playing eddie as getting violent against buck, is really fucking irritating. and i'm never going to tell people to stop writing whatever they want, but i wish i didn't have to fucking see it lmao

[3liza]

remember a few weeks ago when we were discussing the "vibes based reading" or "cued reading" catastrophe and a few of us on here noticed that the techniques taught in this syllabus were identical to the dysfunctional, compensatory techniques developed by people with dyslexia to handle expectations of reading performance in primary school? i recognized them from reading a book called uhh i think "The Gift of Dyslexia" which is both by and about dyslexic people, and how their brains differ from neurotypical brains etc. a lot of the book describes the processes dyslexic people use to try to keep up in basic societal expectations to deal with the way they experience letter reversal, perception differences, letter swapping, left-right confusion, etc.

so i felt like i got a better handle on what dyslexic people are actually going through. i wanted to be able to communicate and be supportive of dyslexia and understand how i could make things easier when talking or writing to them. i had a shitty boyfriend who was so dyslexic he couldnt speak clearly (dyslexia had nothing to do with him being a shit) and since he wasnt pursuing any help for himself i did it for him. dont do this btw just dump men who choose not to handle their own problems.

anyway i think i speculated that teaching children to read this way could give them a form of pseudo-dyslexia just for reading (dyslexia is not just a reading disorder btw, it is a fully different way a brain is formed and operates) and seriously harm their neurological and literacy development or something. well i just got anecdotal confirmation of this being the case in the comments of a video about this subject, a guy said he was a private literacy tutor for rich people and said he has seen a massive uptick in demand for his services and all the new kids who cant read have "dyslexia" diagnoses which appear to only be applicable to their reading processes, and not a wider disorder that affects any other part of their lives. his conclusion was unfortunate, which was that "dyslexia isnt real", and hes wrong of course but it's an understandable conclusion to reach after teaching dozens of kids who have been diagnosed with "dyslexia" that goes away when you just teach them to read correctly

so thats an interesting outcome of this shitshow that i hadnt anticipated. the "dyslexia isnt real" thing, not the other stuff. of course there are always a ton of abled people who think all disability is fake but this seemed like a direct result

[jesncin]

since this is at least the second time a white queer person tried redefining what "pinkwashing" means to me in a way that conveniently absolves them of white guilt based on how they've interpreted my Immigrant Clois comics- let me be clear! "hc-ing characters as queer isn't pinkwashing" well yeah duh of course not. But this framing conveniently removes the context of what character is being interpreted as queer. And what is being erased in the process of that interpretation.

Pinkwashing as a term was coined by Palestinian and Arab people frustrated at Israhell's tactic to tout progressive and performative queer acceptance as a means of distracting from issues of racism, colonialism, and islamophobia. "Pinkwashing" has broadened to include more things such as criticizing how capitalist marketing touts performative representation without material support for queer people's needs. However. "Pinkwashing" was always an extension of "whitewashing".

Yes, people who hc characters as queer for fun don't hold the same power as corporations or governments do when they employ pinkwashing as a tactic for imperialism. Still. We need to be critical of how these bigger systemic problems influence how we consume art. If whitewashing is a big white brush scrubbed on characters of color to erase who they are, then imagine pinkwashing as a big corporate rainbow brush doing the same thing.

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

we need to go back to judging BL/yaoi fans by whether or not they can handle Ai no Kusabi

lemme be clear: you do not have to LIKE Ai no Kusabi. but can you handle it.

can you handle a dark story that is fundamentally about the complexity of human emotions within abusive power dynamics, which are not just maintained but in fact demanded by a dystopian social structure that dehumanizes everyone within it?

can you handle morally complex characters who do fucked up, awful things to each other both out of malice and a dysfunctional desire to connect to another human being?

can you handle being expected, as the reader, to comprehend these nuances to the setting, while also being compelled by the plot to feel compassion for the tragic characters trapped in its doomed narrative?

can you handle navigating the uncomfortable intersections between hate, lust, love, and abject loneliness?

can you handle when a social class is literally called the Blondies and you just have to, like, accept that and take it seriously?

can you handle a cockring being a serious plot device?

NO??????

fine. can you at least handle other people enjoying all that shit? can you handle Ai no Kusabi merely EXISTING??

STILL NO??????

then you're outta the club, buddy. SCRAM

[waytooinvested]

Tag game🎉

Tag your moots and ask them where they got the idea for their tumblr accounts name!

Mine is because I had just finished being utterly eviscerated by one half of my OTP getting hit by a car (on the cusp of them getting to live happily together against all the odds on a show I genuinely trusted to be BETTER than that. Reader, they were not better than that), and I felt the burning need to create a fandom blog RIGHT THAT SECOND so I could share the pain with other fans without totally flooding my main blog with it (in retrospect, I should have just flooded it. But ah well).

Only I still had actual tears running down my face so was not in much of a state to choose, and am in general just SO BAD AT NAMING THINGS. And I was feeling a little silly for caring so much about what happened to these fictional characters in the first place, so I went with exactly what I was feeling in that moment, which was WAY too invested in a tv show. The plan was always to change it to something better as a soon as I calmed down and worked out what that might be.

Only remember the part about how I am SO BAD at naming things?

Yeah. Well, that never went away. And then people started getting to know me as waytooinvested and therefore changing it would cause confusion, and, well, now it's 10 years later and here we are.

I still want to change it. I still don't know what to change it to. I still have the issue of once more being known by this name and not wanting to accidentally lose people via a change.

No pressure tagging:

@fazedlight, @not-a-robot-i-swear, @cinnis, @hopefulwitchgentlemen, @snowydragonscave, @mercifulfrog, @thexfridax, @casualkoalatea, @kj-yikes, @theredcapeofk

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Teehee! (Spritesheets your Wangxian)

[thatneoncrisis]

race as an element in fantasy stories will never not intrigue me btw i will always yap about the external choices and author makes affecting the internal machinery of text itself and how intentional any given off the cuff statement appears to be

[wildsaltair]

This will be my single controversial rant about Gladiator and its sequel (specifically my thoughts on Maximus being retconned as Lucius' father), and then I will be silent on the matter because this blog is meant to be A Good Time and I just enjoy sharing my love for Gladiator with everyone on here :)

KIND OF SPOILERS FOR GLADIATOR AND THE SEQUEL (BUT NOT REALLY) BELOW

As everyone knows, Ridley Scott made the choice to reveal in Gladiator 2 that Lucius is actually the son of Maximus from a secret affair with Lucilla. In G2, it's apparently implied that Lucilla was trapped in a bad marriage, fell in love with Maximus, and kept the truth about Lucius' father a secret. Lots of viewers have been split about this, with some thinking that plot point was implied in Gladiator and others feeling that it contradicts what was established in Gladiator.

I am strongly of the opinion that this choice was a bad one, that it does interfere with the integrity of the original film, and that Gladiator 2 would have been much better without that change. I'll give my reasons below.

1. Yes, rewriting Maximus as a cheater does destroy his entire character arc in Gladiator.

We've all seen Gladiator, right? The one where the hero has everything life can offer but longs only to return home to be with his beloved wife and son? Carries their figurines with him into battle, cares only for them when his own life is threatened, lays down to die by their graves after he finds them dead? Spends the whole movie only wanting to meet them again in the afterlife and only gets peace once he's there?

Yeah. Apparently that guy cheated on his wife with a princess. His son and Lucilla's sons are the same age, which means Maximus would have to have been married to his wife while also sleeping with Lucilla.

Maximus' entire character arc relies on his pure, unconditional, self-sacrificial love for his family. Take that away, and you have a generic action movie about a guy who wants revenge because the Emperor tried to kill him once. Even when Maximus has lost everything inside himself and cares about nothing else, he still honors the memory of his family and fights to avenge them as well as join them. He is shown still talking to his wife in the afterlife through prayer and believing she can hear him. As @streets-in-paradise pointed out, it's the equivalent of having Aragon or Hector of Troy cheat on their wives — it's just painfully out of character for them.

There's also an element of Maximus' love and respect for his Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, another driving force in his characterization. I think Maximus has too much respect for Marcus to have had an affair with Marcus' married daughter, even if he knew Marcus maybe would have wished Maximus had married Lucilla. We never get much insight into that part of the past, but if we go by the virtues Maximus upholds throughout the movie, I just don't think Maximus would have considered sneaking behind Marcus' back to sleep with his daughter.

Either way, the emotional heart of Maximus' character is his love for his family, and retconning that so your sequel has a "bigger emotional impact" is nothing short of undignified and sloppy.

2. All the conversations between Maximus and Lucilla in Gladiator imply that they did have a romantic relationship — but that it was public (not clandestine) and took place before either of them were married.

Yes, Maximus and Lucilla definitely were in love at some point. Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen have great chemistry, and their conversations (both of them) hold so much weight with "what could have been." Lucilla talks about how she wounded Maximus deeply as he did her, and their conversations are full of things like, "Is it so terrible seeing me again?" The weight of their previous emotional attachment pervades the movie in a way that is inextricable from the plot.

BUT. Maximus and Lucilla had their relationship A LONG TIME AGO. This is very clearly established by the way they talk to each other. Maximus has been in Germania for twelve years (taking breaks only to go home, but NEVER to visit Rome). He and Lucilla presumably met sometime before that, probably while the royal family was visiting some city where Maximus was serving in / commanding the army. The details are never established.

However, Maximus and Lucilla clearly had a public enough relationship that Marcus and Commodus knew about it, but there is never the slightest mention in Gladiator that Lucius might be Maximus' son — something Commodus surely would have exploited had he known it was a possibility.

Maximus and Lucilla were in love, but it was before they married other people. They were probably teenagers or young adults who fell madly in love, wanted to marry, but were stopped for whatever reason (probably Maximus not wanting to play politician's games, as he implies). Maximus met the woman he eventually married, Lucilla married Lucius Verus, and they carried on with their lives until they met again at the beginning of Gladiator.

Also, Maximus talks about the respect he had for Lucilla's husband (a far cry from what Gladiator 2 implies about Lucius Verus), and she talks about how she mourned Maximus' family. Sure, you can read into the script and find stuff about how Maximus could have been Lucius' father, but it explicitly goes against the values and implications of the overall acript.

Connie Nielsen stated that she played her scenes thinking that Maximus was Lucius' father. She's an actress, and she plays Lucilla brilliantly. But she's not the scriptwriter, and no matter what her intentions were, the script implies that their relationship took place much longer ago, before either of them were married. @becomelions made a great post about how Lucilla, too, can wish as much as she wants that Maximus was Lucius' father, but he couldn't have been. Not unless you retcon all of Gladiator as fanfiction.

3. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are not meant to replace those he had with his wife and son — they are meant to be reflections of some of the bigger themes of the film.

With all that said, this is not a hate post about how Gladiator should have been about Maximus and his wife and son, and how I hate Lucilla and Lucius' story and think it contradicts that blah blah blah. NO. The storyline with Lucilla, Lucius, and Maximus is one of the strong points of the whole movie — but not as a replacement for the family he has lost.

In a lot of ways, Lucilla represents Rome as the ideal Maximus always believed in: beautiful, noble, and proud. When he becomes disillusioned with Rome, he becomes disillusioned with Lucilla; when he starts to believe in the hope of Rome again, he starts to believe in Lucilla again. They're always linked. Lucilla is not the woman he wants to start over with and marry now that his wife is gone. She is an old friend and ally whom he eventually learns to trust again.

Lucius, on the other hand, represents what Rome can be again. Lucius is the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, and I think Maximus longs to honor his mentor by preserving the life of his last living heir. Lucius reminds Maximus of his son, yes, and he brings out the protectiveness and the desire to do for Lucius what he couldn't do for his own son. But that doesn't mean Lucius has to be his son for that relationship to have emotional impact, as I will explain further in point 5.

4. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are genuinely integral to the film, but as they are — not as what they could be.

Again, I absolutely love the dynamics between Maximus, Lucilla, and Lucius throughout Gladiator. Russell and Connie play off each other so well with those "I remember how you used to be but that was a long time ago" vibes. Russell and Spencer Treat Clark only share one scene, but it's one of the film's most memorable scenes.

However, we are not meant to question those relationships as "oooooh but what if Lucius is actually Maximus' son????" Maybe Ridley left that door open for the audience to consider, but again, I feel like the film contradicts that by implying that Lucilla and Maximus loved each other much longer ago.

When you make Lucius Maximus' son, Lucilla's seeking out of Maximus as his savior becomes less interesting. It becomes "I'm calling on you to save your son even though you don't know he's your son" instead of "I'm asking you to act out of the goodness inside you to save a boy who doesn't deserve to die any more than your own son did." The version we see in Gladiator is so much more impactful.

It also cheapens what Lucius' journey could have been in Gladiator 2! Again, @streets-in-paradise pointed out how much better the sequel could have been if Lucius had been acting in the shadow of a brilliant man who captivated the city of Rome but also was his friend for a little while. As I'll discuss in point 6, having the reveal of Lucius as Maximus' son is just the laziest possible route for a sequel, and it certainly drags down the dignity of the relationships we see in Gladiator.

5. One of the strengths of Maximus' choice to fight for Lucius' survival in Gladiator lies in the fact that he doesn't have any familial obligation to him.

This is one of my favorite points, because I do love the dynamics between Maximus and little Lucius! Maximus has a bone-deep obligation to save his family — he rides for days and nights to get home and save them, but he misses them by a matter of hours. He wrestles with guilt and misery because he feels like he failed them. He was supposed to be their protector, and he couldn't save them.

BUT. Maximus has no such blood ties to Lucius. This kid is the son of Maximus' ex, the grandson of Maximus' dead mentor, and the nephew of his most hated enemy. Maximus doesn't have an obligation to Lucius as his father: he doesn't even know him until Lucius approaches him in the arena.

And that's what makes his decision to fight for Lucius so powerful. Maximus sees Lucius as the hope of Rome, and he decides that's still worth fighting for — something he had given up on before. Even though he has no obligation to save Lucius as his son, he wants to save him as an innocent young boy caught in political matters over his head.

Again, making Lucius Maximus' son cheapens the impact of that decision. Ridley Scott built up so many amazing plot points and relationships, and it really disappoints me that he just cast them aside to make some easy money by relying on the success of the original.

6. Relying on such a trite, overused plot point to make up the emotional foundation of your sequel can only weaken your sequel and ruin the dignity of your original film.

My final point is simply that Gladiator 2 could have been really well done. They could have done something original with it (or something totally off-the-wall like Russell Crowe's vision LOL). But I think Ridley Scott was banking on that nostalgia factor, and he chose a plot point that he knew would be easily marketable — the hero of the second film is the son of the hero of the first film.

We've seen it done literally hundreds of times, from Star Wars to Superman to Toy Story, and having that be the big reveal of Gladiator 2 is just lazy writing. To have Lucius trying to live up to the legacy of Maximus the hero would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of literally anyone else would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of Maximus is an eye-roll-inducing move that should have been trailer bait and nothing more.

Primarily! Because it can't be the emotional foundation of the movie! Lucius has to have his own journey if it's his movie; he can't just walk in Maximus' footsteps and be like, "Father, speak to me," if he's not going on his own individual emotional journey. We as the audience have to relate to our hero because he's our hero, not because he's the son of our hero.

I'll be honest — I probably wouldn't go see a sequel to Gladiator no matter what it was about because I think Gladiator is a perfect standalone movie and should have stayed that way. I just don't think you can recreate the scale and impact and simplicity of Gladiator in today's film industry.

However, I could at least have had respect for a sequel to Gladiator if Ridley Scott had shown some respect for his own movie. I just hate the fact that Maximus' noble, honorable character is reduced to a cheating husband whose only character trait of note is that he served Rome. Maximus is one of the best characters of the 21st century, and I love him too much to support a movie that trashes that legacy (as well as tries to replicate the beauty of my favorite film of all time).

Final thoughts:

Gladiator is a movie. You can read into it whatever you want, and it doesn't hurt anyone.

I love Gladiator more than I can say, and it's really important to me not just as a cultural icon but on a personal level as well.

Anyone who knows this blog knows how much I love Maximus Decimus Meridius, and Ridley's choice to change Maximus' character so drastically is one that really just ticks me off.

To me personally, Gladiator 2 is not canon, and I will never consider it so on this blog.

[laurent-ofvere]

hey lol

idk if anyone is still here but how y'all doing. life is pretty fuckin brutal and i used to use writing and fandom to cope but ahhhhh ahahaha

[madsresearchship]

dofuwani cameo because this one doesn't deserve a spot on my main account in any capacity.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

ORV is about enduring the horrors in real time.

(for @everyonesfavoritebastard)

[chimera-dolls]

Hey actual-users-of-the-dollblr tag!

Yes you! Reading this! I bet you're into actual dolls. Physical dolls. Doll collecting, custom dolls, art dolls etc. and not c0qu3tte shit.

This is your friendly reminder that spamming irrelevant tags on posts is spam. Legitimately spam, and against Tumblr User Guidelines!

You can, and should! report them! If you're familiar with how to report a spambot on tumblr already, you know how to report for spam.

May you have a blessed, and on-topic Dollblr feed~

[korolation]

yeah whatever. you get to be posted too