#assignments not started. latin and history.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

oh no it is time for me to leave and i have not finished everything. i have got to come in early tomorrow.

[falling-hand-in-unlovable-hand]

i think i'm gonna enjoy science this year

[gorbo-longstocking]

Do Not Blame the Sea | Chapter One

Pairing: Emperor Geta/Reader, Emperor Caracalla/Reader

Summary: Everyday, you woke up and performed the steps necessary to complete your routine. It was monotonous, like clockwork, as you traveled down the tracks laid out for you since birth. With a mind uncontested, you found yourself graduating college before you were legally an adult, and at the behest of your controlling parents, you continued on to medical school, then further on into a surgical residency at a nearby hospital. You had always wanted to help people and this was the best way to do it.

So, why, with everything you had ever wanted at your fingertips, were you so unhappy?

Maybe that was why when you awoke in the past, surrounded by farmland instead of your blankets that you decided to ‘just roll with it’ rather than scream. That was your motto now as you were unceremoniously dropped from your assigned path onto untrodden ground with no hope of going back. So, even when you saved the life of a soldier and were carted off into the heart of the corrupt Roman Empire to be the twin emperor’s new physician, you barely batted an eye.

After all, you would do anything to save your patients.

Tags: Time travel, transmasc reader, no use of y/n, eventual polyamory, no incest, period-typical attitudes, Caracalla doesn’t have syphilis but he has PTSD, mentions of slavery, both historical accuracy and historical inaccuracy, obsessive behavior, eventual smut in later parts, medical inaccuracies,

Read on AO3

Playlist

Part Two

Authors Note: Hiiiiiii, I’m back at it again, starting another fic. Those freaky gingers have bewitched me, let me tell you. Anyway, some important things to note about this little fanfiction that I feel the need to clarify before we get into the real meat and potatoes.

First and foremost, Geta and Caracalla won’t show up until chapter two. Maybe even chapter three, it depends on how much more set up I write, so if you want to wait ‘till then to read this, you’re welcome to :3

Two, and very important, unlike my other fics where the reader is trans, but referred to with they/them pronouns or neutral language, this main character will be referred to with he/him pronouns and masculine language in the text because, as a plot point, they are assumed to be a cis man. Along with this, they have three descriptions in the text. They have dyed green hair — original hair color shan’t be mentioned — they have top surgery scars, and they have a vagina. I miiiiight make an accidental reference to heights (ex. ‘ooked up at him/looked down at him) but I will try my hardest to not.

While their real name will never be mentioned in text for self-insertion purposes, Geta and Caracalla come up with the nickname ‘Alga’ for them due to their green hair. It means ‘seaweed’ in Latin. It also means ‘something of little worth.’ :) So, that is how they’ll be referred to. Generally. It’s either that or ‘medicus’ or ‘physician’ or ‘you there.’

Third and finally, I am a huge nerd and fan when it comes to the Roman Empire. As a society, they have a bunch of hangups, taboos, and beliefs, mostly around sex, that I find incredibly funny and will pepper in here and there. I will try to make this fic as historically accurate as I possibly can using all the resources I have at my disposal (google, a few academic texts, and my best friend whose studying classical history) but there’s no guarantee I get all of it right. Half the reason I’m using a modern character as the main POV is so they have an excuse not to know things 😭 Also when it comes to conjugation of Latin words, please, PLEASE give me leeway, I haven’t taken a Latin class since high school.

All that said, I hope whoever reads this fic enjoys it, because that is my main goal. Writing is seriously a passion of mine and my favorite part about it is sharing it with people. That means YOU person reading this, I think you’re awesome.

Okay I’m done talking, on with the show!!

Chapter One ///

This dream sucked — because that was what this was, a very bad dream — and, if you had to guess, it was the worst dream you had ever had in your life. Which was saying something. As a surgical resident who did most of their studying in a hospital, you were chronically sleep deprived and had a lot of stressful material to work with. Whatever aid you used to help you get some semblance of rest had a tendency to give you weird dreams. Very, very weird dreams. You had a few recurring ones, like being chased by a sentient pool noodle — whatever that meant — and several where the ghosts of your patients blamed you for their deaths — far more self explanatory than the pool noodle — but none quite like this one.

Out of everything you had ever experienced in your bleak and desolate mindscape, this dream was long and boring. That was its only crime. Along with being terrifyingly vivid, of course, which you didn’t particularly enjoy thinking about. If you were any less logical, you’d almost be convinced this was reality. That you had woken up in a small farming village, close enough to the capital of one of the most infamous ancient empires that you could see it on the horizon. Sometimes, when the sun set, you would stare at the shadow of Rome dancing upon the skyline. It was beautiful, albeit impossible. Sure, the people who surrounded you only spoke Latin, and they didn’t trust you as far as they could throw you, but it wasn’t as if that mattered. Soon, you would awake in your bed, one day closer to your exam and the beginning of the rest of your life.

Why did the thought only fill you with a sinking sense of dread? Being a doctor was everything you had ever worked for. Helping people, saving people, it was your purpose, the very reason you were born with your exceptional mind. It was your destiny, so why did it feel like you were marching to the gallows?

You shook your head to rid yourself of these thoughts. Focus on the present, focus on the dream, it was far easier than the constant ever present march of time. It was why you were so certain that the predicament was a figment of your imagination. Time hated you, constantly pulling on your leash, dragging your forward even as you dug your heels into the muck. It would never, never move backwards. Not for you.

Never for you.

A low groan of despair rumbled in your throat as you tried your best to wash your filthy scrubs in a nearby river. The water wasn’t murky, but it wasn’t clear either. Unsurprising, considering the nearby village used this water for practically everything. They were close enough to the city to have access to aqueducts, carrying waste hopefully further downstream. You were determined not to think about it. Any other denizen of this small settlement would wash their clothes themselves. The village was too small for a fullonica, and you were pretty sure they were mostly meant for the wealthy. That said, you also knew that Romans used urine to wash clothes — thank you to the ancient civilization classes you took for fun — and you’d be damned before you let a random person’s piss touch your scrubs.

Outside of work, at least.

With your pants rolled up to your knees as you waded deeper into the water, you continued to do what you could to clean the few clothes you had on you. Considering you only had a little bottle of soap you stole from a hotel a few months ago, it was easier said than done. You wanted to ration what you had in case this dream went on for much longer. Just because this was a fictional scenario conjured by your stress addled mind didn’t mean you weren't going to go about things logically. You had already been asleep for three days now, who knew how much longer this neverending dream would last? Perhaps forever. The thought of avoiding reality as you waste away in your bed was far more comforting than it should have been.

A loud shout echoed to your right and you fought the urge to shoot a nasty glare at the <i>obviously</i> young soldiers goofing off several yards away. Well, young was a strong word, they were the same age as you. Probably. You couldn’t really tell considering how staunch you were in your decision to not make eye contact. Out of the handful of men playing in the water, they were all naked. It wasn’t that nudity bothered you, you were studying healthcare for Christ’s sake, it was the unfortunate fact that soaking wet, muscular hunks were a particular weakness of yours. You weren’t sure the soldiers would appreciate your ogling, the villagers already avoided you like the plague. Judging by the dirty looks you received from some of the, unfortunately armed and notoriously xenophobic men, they’d heard enough about you to be wary.

You let out another sigh, your scrubbing becoming a tad more vigorous. Soapy bubbles rose to the surface of the water and your face was screwed up in concentration.

This particular Roman century had arrived at the village only a half-day after you did. From what you could pick up from eavesdropping, instead of being sent to North Africa to get a little conquering done, their legion was shipped to Gaul to put an end to some dissent. Once that was over, the officer in charge received orders to head back to Rome so they could be sent to North Africa with the rest of the troops. They had only stopped at the village for a last bit of rest before their next assignment. Or something. You had been noticed, and you had scurried off the second you realized you were caught.

Letting out a small huff, you examined your scrubs and decided that they were as clean as they would get. Once you were back at shore, you wrung out the fabric the best you could before laying them flat on a rock beside the only other outfit you had, aside from the one you were wearing, to dry in the sun. Another bark of laughter drew your eye to the soldiers playing like schoolboys in the river. Weren’t these men hardened warriors of one of the most regimented militaries to exist? Surely, they should be more disciplined. Still, you couldn’t help the small smile that caused your lips to twitch upwards. Even thousands of years in the past, and in your dreams, humans were the same as they had always been.

The sun was warm, hanging overhead like an unripe cherry tomato. You closed your eyes to bask in it a bit more than necessary. Your skin prickled, indicating that there were eyes on you, though you didn’t particularly care. No footsteps approached you and the sound of laughter didn’t stop, so you figured you were safe enough to show your belly. You didn’t realize you had laid down until you felt grass tickle the back of your neck. Perhaps a little nap wouldn’t hurt. A dream within a dream would be rather funny, you thought as you fell into a light doze, lulled by the sound of soldiers playing.

You didn’t know how long you slept for. It was the sound of panic that woke you, sending you upright so fast, your head spun. The first thing you noticed was the merriment had stopped and had given way to an oppressive sense of desperation. You looked in the direction you had been avoiding all day to see a gaggle of soldiers, some clothed, some naked, dragging an unconscious body onto shore. One man was running with his tunic halfway over his head in the direction of the village, yelling for the centurion in charge. You were moving before you could stop yourself.

“Make way! Make way!” Your Latin was shaky, but not the worst in the world. While you were sure your accent was strange, you knew you were at least understandable as some of the men turned to block you from getting any closer. They didn’t look particularly pleased at your arrival, eyeing both your hair and your odd attire with an air of skepticism. You didn’t have time for this. “I am a doctor. A physician. I can help him, we must act fast.”

One of the soldiers raised a singular thick eyebrow. “A physician, you say? You look like no medicus I have ever seen.”

“Does that really matter?!” You shouted, your voice a harsh bark. The longer this went on, the less of a chance you had to save this man. While you were nervous to plow through the wall of stout muscle that blocked you from your prospective patient, you realized you might have to.

The soldier looked like he wanted to say something more, when an authoritative voice broke through the ranks. “Let the man through! We have lost too many as is without losing another to a few hours of games.”

Every head snapped in the direction of whoever spoke. All except yours. The second you saw a gap in the crowd, you slid through and fell to your knees beside the drowned man, the one you determined to save.

First thing you did was check for responsiveness. It was out of habit mostly. A tap on the shoulder, a shout, another tap. He didn’t respond, that was unsurprising.

When you checked for a pulse, you found none, so you began chest compressions. Placing your hands together on his chest, arms straight, you began to push. The rhythm came to you naturally — you had made sure to pay attention in class, and this wasn’t the first time you had done this. Despite the fact that you knew no support was coming, that if you couldn’t get this man back by yourself, he would die, your head remained clear.

Do not lose sight of your goal, do not lose hope, go until you can’t anymore.

After thirty compressions, you took a deep breath, pinched his nose shut, and tilted his head back, placing your mouth over his. You heard a few gasps, and even a cry of disgust as you pulled back to push another breath into his lungs. Determined to pay the growing crowd no mind, you placed your hands on his chest and began to pump his heart again.

This went on for… like with your nap, you didn’t know. All you knew was that you were drenched in sweat, your arms were sore, and your breath coming out in harsh pants. Thirty more compressions, you inhaled a ragged breath and pushed oxygen into his lungs once more. If this didn’t work, you’d have to call it.

There was a hand on your chest, shoving you away, a watery cough filling your mouth with spittle before the drowned man flailed back to life. You didn’t take offense to the harsh treatment. He had woken up to a kiss. That would startle anyone. You rolled him over on his side and rubbed his back as he hacked up a lungful of murky water and whatever he had eaten for breakfast.

“You’re back,” You muttered softly, as comforting as you could. “Breathe. Slow and steady. It feels good to be back, doesn’t it?”

The man met your eyes, his own a startling shade of honey, a confused, but grateful, smile on his lips. “I thought I was gone.”

“Yeah, we all thought that!” A soldier with a shaved head nudged him roughly with his toe. “Medicus here worked a miracle with his lips.”

A hand reached down to clasp your shoulder, shaking you firmly, if not playfully. You looked up to see a man with floppy blond curls grinning down at the man you just saved, his lips pursed. “The kiss of life!”

You let a small, uncomfortable laugh titter from your mouth. Being surrounded by so many people was awkward, and their banter was even more so. You felt entirely out of place. Rather than focus on that, you fixed your attention back on the man you saved.

“What’s your name?”

“Sextus Aelius,” He answered, voice hoarse.

With a small smile, you gestured to another soldier to hand you a nearby tunic. Sextus — you wouldn’t laugh about his name, you wouldn’t — had begun to shiver, even in the hot sun, and you wanted to keep him warm. Not to mention he was still naked. You tried not to study him too much, focusing on the sharpness of his jaw and the gentle slope of his nose rather than his nudity.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Sextus, I am—” You were cut off by a cacophony of noise, a few whistles interspersed within. A bit of heat rose to your face when you saw Sextus’ bewildered expression. “I fear I have made a blunder.”

To your relief, he merely laughed. “Aelius. Call me Aelius.”

“Right. I apologize, Aelius. How do you feel?”

Once you had given him the tunic, he slipped it on over his head, covering his modesty — not that anyone but you seemed to care all that much about it. When he stood, two men came to his side to steady him. Despite this, he still offered you his hand. It would be rude to deny him, though you didn’t feel comfortable accepting help from a man who had been, by many’s standards, dead a few minutes before. You gave him a small smile and pushed yourself to stand on your own.

“I could be better.” His grin was lopsided, the boyish kind that showed off his teeth. It was endearing enough for you to be proud of saving a good man, rather than a mere man. When he spoke next, there was no small amount of awe in his voice. “You saved my life, I am not sure if that is something I can repay.”

A snort pulled from your throat as you waved him off. “No repayment necessary, I only did what needed to be done.”

Aelius looked about to argue when he paled, his gaze flickering behind you. There was a creeping sensation of unease crawling up your spine, similar to when you had earned your parents displeasure. Standing behind you was a presence, one with enough authority to cause the men around you to stand at attention.

Thankfully, it didn’t seem directed at you. For now.

“What is the meaning of this, boy? I allow a bit of slacking off and you go and die on me?” It was the voice from before, the one who commanded his men to let you through. Taking a guess, you’d say this man was the centurion leading this particular century back to Rome. You didn’t dare look behind you, you didn’t dare move. Anything to keep his frustration off of you. It didn’t last long. A large hand clasped you on the shoulder, grip firm, but not harsh. “And to be saved by a foreigner! You should be on your knees thanking him for whatever trick on the gods he played at your behest.”

“That is unnecessary,” You tried to argue, only for the centurion to give you another shake.

“A humble medicus at that! Lucky boy! Very, very lucky!” He let go of you and gestured for Aelius to be taken elsewhere. “To the tents with you while I think of a suitable punishment. No man has died and lived to tell the tale on my watch, so I must be creative.”

Aelius, at least, looked ashamed, though the man with the floppy blond hair leaned down to whisper in his ear, a smirk dancing on his lips. Whatever was said earned him an elbow to the ribs. Men never change.

Before they could get too far, you found your voice. “Monitor him through the night! Fetch me if he stops breathing again!”

It was only once you heard the affirmative did you relax. Which lasted a moment before the centurion turned you around so you were facing him. His gaze was hard and his arms were crossed over his chest. Unlike the men before, the centurion was wearing his full armor, save for his helmet, another thing you were thankful for. You were not easily intimidated, but this man? He could crack you like a peanut.

After a moment of sizing you up, his eyes trailing from your clothes, so different from his own, with trousers instead of a tunic and a graphic t-shirt in an alphabet he knew, but words he couldn’t understand, to your green dyed hair. He didn’t seem impressed. In fact, he seemed suspicious.

“Lucius Marianus.” Unfurling one of his hands, he held it for you to shake.

With an awkward smile, you took his hand and introduced yourself. His grip grew a bit tighter at the sound of your obviously foreign name. You fought the urge to run away.

“A pleasure, Marianus.” This time, you called him by his second name, determined not to make the same mistake as earlier with a less forgiving man.

“Where are you from?” Quick and to the point, you could respect that. Logically, you knew that this wasn’t real, that ultimately, this was your dream and you held all the power, but there was a little voice in the back of your head telling you to be careful. “Are you a citizen, a slave, or a free-man?”

Licking your dry lips, you let your hand fall to your side, shoving it in your pocket before Marianus could see that you had begun to shake. “I am from a country far away. Across the western sea, farther than any have ever gone. I am a citizen of my country, but not of Rome, and I am no slave, so I suppose that makes me a free-man.”

“You suppose?” He pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. “Well, I ‘suppose’ I won’t assume you’re a liar and a runaway. If I hadn’t just witnessed that…” Marianus paused, searching for the right word, and you hoped it would be one you recognized. “Technique of yours, I would figure just that. Tell me, medicus, what exactly did you do to one of my men?”

“I, uh…” Your tongue felt too big for your mouth. Whatever answer you gave this man, it better be satisfactory. All you could hope for was that the truth would be enough. “His heart was no longer beating, so I pressed upon his chest as hard as I could in the same rhythm that his heart would take.”

Marianus nodded, his expression contemplative. “And the kiss?”

“It was not a kiss!” The words burst forth before you could stop them, your face flaring even hotter. This entire conversation was reminiscent of one you would have with your father, and Marianus’ disapproval was getting to you more than it should. “I was breathing air into his lungs. I inhale, pinch his nose shut so the air doesn’t escape through his sinuses, and then blow into his mouth. If his chest rises, I am doing the procedure correctly.”

“Still, an intimate gesture to bestow upon a stranger.” His lips twitched upwards ever so slightly. You got the feeling he was teasing you now. “From what I can gather, this technique of yours mimics the functions of life in order to coaxe the spirit back into its vessel.”

You blinked, opening your mouth to argue with scientific facts. A beat passed before you snapped your jaw shut with an audible click. Better to not look a gift horse in the mouth. “I, uh, yes. It does. That is exactly it. You are a very intelligent man, Marianus, perhaps a career in medicine is calling your name.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, medicus.”

An awkward grimace pulled at your lips. “Right.”

Marianus was both unmoved and undeterred by your lame response. You expected him to leave you be. After all, despite the fact that you saved one of his men from drowning, you were still an outsider to both the village, the army, and Rome. In your head, he owed you nothing, all you did was your duty and you expected nothing in return. Marianus seemed to think otherwise.

“Where have you been sleeping, medicus?” With a sharp nod of his head, he gestured to your duffel bag and drying clothes. “I assume outside in the heat considering how poorly you are spoken of in town. Looking and speaking as you do, it’s no wonder anyone is hesitant to even allow you to sleep in their barn.” Again, the edges of his mouth curled upwards. “You are far more useful than previously anticipated. For once, I am happy to have my assumptions proven false.”

“Um, thanks?”

“Fetch your belongings, there are more men waiting to be your patients back at camp.”

You blinked, dumbfounded, before a sharp raise of Marianus’ black eyebrows broke you from your spell. If there were more people to be treated, you didn’t have to be told twice. With a bit of pep in your step, excited to have something to do rather than waste away in tedium, you stuffed your, now dry, clothes into your bag and slung it over your shoulder. Marianus eyed it with no small amount of reservation.

“Do you carry any weapons?”

You thought about your taser and pepper spray tactically placed in an easy to reach pocket on the side. “No. As a doctor, I consider myself a pacifist.”

Marianus snorted. “A good way to die.”

“Better to die giving life than taking it,” You replied easily. This wasn’t a lie. While you didn’t fault other’s for violence — how could you fault human nature? — you would rather heal before harm. A part of you hoped to balance the scales, do enough good to make the bad seem worth it. It was a lofty goal, one you tried not to dwell on. So long as you managed to help even a single person in your life, you would be happy, though you’d never confine yourself to such a meager goal. “If you don’t mind me asking, do your men not already have a doctor to treat them? Why take on a stranger’s help?”

“We did. He is no longer with us.”

You frowned. “A shame. Lose one soldier, and you only lose one man. Lose a doctor and your losses double. I never met him, but I’ll remember him fondly.”

“You’re soft. It’s a shame.” His words made you raise your eyebrows, and, when you looked at him, there was pity in his dark eyes, though it was only there for a second.

Marianus clamped his hand on the back of your neck and began to steer you in the direction of the camp. With few trees in sight, only lush farms and tall grass, the countryside was a sight to behold. You glanced over your shoulder to see the river and the village disappearing in the distance. While the road the two of you walked on was dirt, it was well trodden, no stones or holes to trip over. This truly was the Roman Empire. How your mind managed to conjure an image so beautiful and so unmistakably alien was beyond you.

“Has there been anyone caring for the injured?” You asked.

“Our veterinarius has been doing what he can, though I don’t like it. These are men, not animals.” To punctuate his displeasure, Marianus spit on the ground.

You nodded placatingly as you approached the first cluster of tents. Some of the soldiers recognized you, though you didn’t recognize them in return. Word traveled fast when you save someone’s life, you supposed. “I’m sure he’s doing his best.”

“His best is not enough,” Marianus grumbled.

Before you could respond, the stench of infection and sick filled your senses. If you hadn’t done clinicals or worked in healthcare while you completed your studies, it would have caught you off guard. Instead of blanching, you took your last deep breath of clean air, and braced yourself as much as you could. Marianus almost seemed impressed by the determination on your face as you pulled back the flap of the tent, joining a frazzled looking man — the veterinarius, you assumed — in his rounds.

All you could do was your best, and you intended for that to be enough.

Even as a student, you had steeled your heart to the worst suffering had to offer. Growing up as you did, with parents more interested in results than feelings, it became all too easy to turn off your bleeding heart and do what was necessary. By now, it was as simple as breathing.

Your bedside manner was gentle as you helped a few men, too injured to move, drink water from a ladle. If you were any less busy, you would have insisted it be boiled. Marianus would likely scold you, it was unrealistic for an entire century to boil water for every sick man, let alone every soldier, no matter how sound your advice was. Posca would do for now, as it always had.

For hours, you worked tirelessly, cleaning wounds and calming fevers. You were lucky modern medicine wasn’t all that you studied. In order to help as many people as you could, you focused on ancient and holistic practices as well, though you had an easy preference for the tried and true methods. There was no denying that you were a medical prodigy, a genius for all intents and purposes. It wasn’t that you had an ego — well, maybe you did — it was the fact that it was the truth. You had graduated college before you had turned eighteen and gone through medical school soon after. Right now, you were the youngest student going through their surgical residency in your state, perhaps even the country if you dared to let your pride swell. All of this, your parents would call their doing, that you would be nothing without their guidance.

You grimaced in the middle of setting a skinny man’s broken arm. Better not think about them now, it would only serve to stress you out even further. For all your skill, you caught yourself floundering inside the medical tent, Marianus watching from the entrance as you flitted from patient to patient, and the veterinarius sitting back to take a much needed break. While you had some supplies on you — a stethoscope, a sphygmomanometer, a Taylor hammer, none of which you’d utilized yet, a bottle of antiseptic, some ibuprofen, and three clean syringes — it wasn’t enough for you to feel comfortable. Which was ridiculous, this was your dream, you could do whatever you wanted.

Then again, if that was true, then why were you fumbling through even simple procedures? You didn’t feel comfortable using more invasive methods, not unless you had no other choice. The likelihood of survival was low, even with your steady hands. Perhaps this was a nightmare, a look into what life will be like once you were done with your schooling. Your slumbering mind was preparing you to be the failure you were always meant to be.

Shaking your head, you focused your attention back on your patient. No one seemed to notice your lapse, not even you. You were quite good at multitasking, mixing self-deprecation with stringent work ethic like a talented seamster. The skinny man was lucky it was a clean break, and even luckier, it wasn’t his humerus, which would have been more complicated given your lack of equipment. A bit of sweat trickled down your forehead as you stood, surveying the men around you. You had done well given the circumstances, but you still couldn’t help but feel as though it wasn’t enough.

Nothing was ever enough.

Even dreaming, you felt tired.

Three men had infected wounds. One was oozing pus, which apparently was a good thing according to the veterinarius and Marianus, though you still took care to clean the wound thoroughly. Another man had a fever due to the infection, and, after washing your hands, you took care to clean it as the other. After much reassurance that it wasn’t poison to Marianus — consisting of taking one yourself — you also gave him an ibuprofen for his fever, though you decided you were going to ration them unless it was an emergency. The third man was a bit harder, enough necrotic tissue forming around the infection that you considered surgery. For now, you introduced maggots to the area, a treatment Marianus seemed to approve of, if not with some disgust. In the morning, you would check the wound, and then surgically remove the decayed flesh if the maggots didn’t do enough.

Four men had broken bones, one, his arm, another, his finger, and two, their leg. That was simple enough, if not time consuming getting all the bone fragments to set properly. While you would have much preferred a cast to a splint, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

That wasn’t even to mention the handful of other men with various ailments that filled the tent. Apparently there was someone quarantined elsewhere, suffering from dysentery. According to the veterinarius, the treatment for that particular disease was rest, fasting, and dehydration, which you were in the middle of giving him strict instructions to keep the man as hydrated as possible, it didn’t matter how quickly he discharged it, he needed to be drinking as much water as he could. You didn’t hold out much hope he’d make it, though you’d be damned before you gave up on someone who needed you.

It wasn’t until Marianus clamped his hand on the back of your neck and began to steer you towards the tent’s exit did you realize how exhausted you were. Your eyes burned and your head throbbed. If you were any less of a man, you would have taken one of your ibuprofen to ease the dull ache in your temples. Ultimately, you decided against it. If there came a time when they were necessary and you had run out because of your own weakness, you would never forgive yourself.

“You did well, medicus. Better than I expected, you are very skilled at what you do,” Marianus said as he led you deeper into camp. By now, it was dark, well into the night too judging from the full moon directly overhead.

How long had you been working?

“Thank you. I am usually better than that. I fear my nerves of being in such an unfamiliar country are getting to me.” With the heel of your palm, you scrubbed at your face.

Marianus frowned down at you. “Keep your foreignness to yourself, medicus and you will go far. Though, that will be hard to do with hair like yours.” He looked you up and down, hesitant curiosity creeping into his features. “That strange color… it is not natural, is it?”

A laugh bubbled from your throat. “No, I dyed it. Green is a color I am rather fond of.”

“I am fond of red, but you do not see me painting my hair that color,” He grumbled under his breath, and it reminded you so much of the comments some of your superiors made, that you giggled.

Before you could respond, he gestured to a tent with an outstretched arm. A lantern was on inside, casting the shadow of the single occupant, who was busy sitting cross-legged and writing what seemed to be a letter. While you had reservations of interrupting, Marianus did not.

“Out here, now, boy!” The shadow visibly jumped before pulling back the flap to reveal Aelius. He looked as tired as you did, and truthfully, he stank to high heaven. You struggled not to wrinkle your nose so as not to offend him. Aelius seemed like a nice man.

“Sir?” Was all he managed before Marianus continued to bark his next set of orders.

“Since the two of you were acquainted earlier, and the fact that you were supposed to be monitored, you’ll be bunking together. In the morning, we set a course for Rome.”

You blinked. Did that include you? While you wouldn’t mind getting out of the village and seeing more of what this dream had to offer, you couldn’t help but feel a bit of uncertainty. There was no telling how long this dream would go on, nor how vast it was. You couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if you strolled ‘out of bounds,’ so to speak. Would you be trapped in an infinite void until you awoke? The thought was enough to send a chill down your spine.

“And I will remain here,” You finally said.

Marianus barked out a laugh. “No. You will join us. I still have a use for you.”

As much as you didn’t want to abandon your current patients, you would rather not push your luck any further than you already had. Crossing your arms, you met Marianus’ furrowed brows with your own. “And that use would be?”

To your right, Aelius made a little noise. Your gaze flickered over to him, catching his motion for you to cease, before you ignored it and fixated back on Marianus. He was looking at you like you’d lost your mind. At least enough to question him. A bit of discomfort made your skin itch, you always hated earning the negative attention of a superior.

For a moment, you feared that Marianus would yell at you until the sun rose. He puffed up, shoulders squaring and his lower jaw jutting out before he deflated with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his angular nose. “You are too soft for the army, medicus, and you are too foreign to hope to set up your own clinic, especially without citizenship. There is very little hope for you in the Empire.”

You looked away, feeling cold even as a summer’s breeze blew against your skin. An argument began to boil in the back of your throat, an insistence that this was a dream, so none of that mattered, but you managed to swallow that poison before it could spew out of you.

Marianus paused, waiting for you to respond. When all he received was a defeated look, he continued, “There is, however, hope for both me and you. The emperors require a new physician and I believe they would be taken by your skill and your…” He looked at your hair again. “Novelty. In return for discovering you, if they choose to take you on, me and my men will be rewarded.”

“I see,” You muttered. Perhaps this was the route your dream wanted you to take. At the end of it all, there was sure to be a lesson or even a vision of sorts that could help you in reality. All you had to do to get it was allow the plot to pull you forward. “And Rome is not far?”

Marianus’ features softened, bordering on fondness, guilt, and pity. “Barely a day’s march, medicus.”

“I will go, then. To Rome with me, I suppose.” Though you smiled, when you turned to Aelius, he stared at you as if you’d been sentenced to death.

—————————————-

Tag list: @snazzynacho

[itsnathateasy]

Armin Week | Day 3 | SFW Prompts | Nerd Armin OR Exploring the Outside World

word count: 737 warnings: none author’s note: if my teammates found out i simped about asana online, they’d chop my head off, but it’s not my fault asana is such a useful and cool app, yk??

@armin-week-2024

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

nerd!armin carries his books around everywhere and i mean EVERYWHERE, you can never catch him not reading something, even when he’s out for coffee, he’s either reading, studying or taking notes on something

i feel that he prefers subjects that can spark moral or philosophical questions, not that he dislikes sciences or anything, but he finds subjects like latin and history more thought-inspiring (is that a word?) like you can read this very old piece of literature and talk about it, analyse for hours, compare it to how things are today on so many levels, these classes are giving him braingasms or something

nerd!armin keeps his glasses in his front shirt pocket. he used to hang them on the hook of his jeans or in his back pockets, but he kept either crashing or loosing them

he also pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose only using one finger

nerd!armin is the kind of guy to touch his forehead with his fingers and rub the area when he’s really concentrating or when he’s trying super hard to understand something

nerd!armin has the softest hands, i know he does! his hands are clean and tender, though his fingertips might display some paper cuts. when he pulls all nigthers in order to study, you'll simply know it because there's blue ink all over the side of his palm

he’s also the type of person to always have headphones on so his studying isn’t interrupted

whenever you come across nerd!armin he’s surrounded by various pieces of paper, how he manages to keep them all in organised stacks is truly a mystery

listen to me, nerd!armin is colour coding his notes, i know it in my bones

nerd!armin notices you but pays little attention, he just knows you’re a regular at the library and/or the study hall, but knows next to nothing about you

you approach him once and ask for his help, as you shared a couple of classes. in fact, this was only an excuse to talk to him, you really needed no help with the material. he took his headphones off, listened to you very carefully, asked a couple of clarifying questions, then brought out a fresh sheet of paper and started writing down a few keywords, as he explained to you what you already knew

“whoa thanks armin! that was so enlightening! fancy pairing up for the next assignment?” but your question was never heard, as armin had simply said “you’re welcome” and then popped his headphones right back on, the cue to leaving him alone

nerd!armin is definitely not mean or rude, but he enjoys his silence and has trouble working when interrupted, you know?

when you meet nerd!armin again after a few days, he waves hello and gives you an awkward smile before sitting right opposite to you on the library table. “mind if i sit with you?” he asked, to which you quickly responded with “not at all”, gave him an equally awkward smile and you both buried your heads in your books and notebooks

nerd!armin is so taken aback when, a few hours into your studying, you extend your hand towards him to give him a small chocolate. without removing his headphones, he pointed to his chest “for me?” and once you nodded, he ate it in a quick motion, because eating wasn’t allowed in the library

the next day, nerd!armin sits opposite of you in the library again and gives you a piece of chocolate as well. “it’s not like the one you gave me yesterday, but i hope you like it”

nerd!armin soon went as far as to exchange phone numbers with you, now you text a few times each day, mostly about the exact time you’d be at the library, how you did on this or that exam and whether you’d read that book he’d recommended

i think nerd!armin might ACTUALLY fall in love with you because you introduced him to asana and/or notion, these apps were second nature to you but armin mostly used his notes app or google sheets and the apps you showed him changed his life

a couple weeks later, nerd!armin texted you to “come over on saturday, let’s finish the politics assignment together?”

“sure but don’t try anything funny on me”

“now you know the objective of the mission “study date” WHO RU WORKING FOR???”

nerd!armin is probably more than meets eye

[lunarriviera]

on metahemeralism

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People Magazine).

Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. "Hello, hello,"' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. "Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…" He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: "Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism."

"I'm sorry. I don't know what that is."

"I don't either," Bunny would say brokenly. "Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see." He would resume pacing.

"Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it."

"Bunny, I don't think 'metahemeralism' is even a word."

"Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe."

"Is it in the dictionary?"

"Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean"—he made a picture frame with his hands—"the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?"

And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended.

He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in.

"This is a nice paper, Bun—," Charles said cautiously.

"Thanks, thanks."

"'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?"

"Oh, Donne," Bunny had said scoffingly. "I don't want to drag him into this."

Henry refused to read it. "I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really," he said, glancing over the first page. "Say, what's wrong with this type?"

"Triple-spaced it," said Bunny proudly.

"These lines are about an inch apart."

"Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?"

Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose.

"Looks kind of like a menu," he said.

All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence "And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore." We wondered if he would fail.

[Donna Tartt, The Secret History]

[graceofgondor]

you should go off about what you think henley hall is like. just a thought….

you are so right 👀

okay here it is folks, ✨my interpretation of henley hall✨

the main thing i've gathered from my surface-level research, is what kind of morals and long-term expectations they would put on the girls. i think for the boys, it's more the kind of strive for greatness, strive for the top of the ladder, the most money, the most success, the most rigidity such as to not allow room for failure in the present or the future. to where during the 1950s, girls were just starting to commonly attend college, and even still it was expected they would be either teachers or wives by the end of it. so at henley, i think the main expectation would be how to be well rounded, how to be proper, how to be a "lady." there wouldn't be so much pressure to fit into a career or aspiration, moreso a pressure to be good at versatility. be good at everything, well-roundedness. (not that the pressure to be a certain way would be any less harmful)

aside from core classes (english, latin, trig, history, etc.) i've repeatedly seen recollection of the "domestic sciences" or just the education in housekeeping and domestic-based practicalities such as sewing, ironing, embroidery, etc. cooking seems split, but assuming henley is geared more towards the wealthy (who have maids/cooks), i would assume they wouldn't bother with it, instead sparing that time for assigned extracurriculars or even chapel.

i think like the boys, the girls would have assignments given every year; school annual, paper, various service/honor/activity/academic clubs. from what i've heard it's more likely the physical assignments would be the likes of swimming, gymnastics, archery, and less competitive field sports.

i imagine their headmistress is an equally as old, equally as rigid, equally as unreasonable and loathed woman as gale nolan is. she knows everything about everyone, and something tells me she's infinitely more nosy just for the sake of wanting to be that way. she might even be british, just to further push that "proper lady" agenda.

the girls themselves obviously aren't as pristine as the curriculum expects them to be, though i imagine there are certainly some who strive to achieve it. i imagine they like to gossip and sneak around behind the (likely upper-middle aged and elderly) instructor's backs, there's probably stigmas around certain classes and teachers too. and i definitely can see the upper-class girls having certain traditions, like maybe there's a tree all the seniors climb or something to do with archery as a kind of unsanctioned ceremony. and likely, yes, there is a similar mockery of whatever the school motto or pledge is.

they aren't allowed to talk about boys, and they certainly aren't allowed to cross campuses (not that scandals don't occur every now and again... ehem charlie and ginny we see you) and even then its likely only an issue with the older girls. i imagine its so bad they'll even get scolded/demerits (by all women teachers btw) for whispering because it "isn't lady-like." the only exception would be the theater program, which according to the film the auditorium is off campus regardless. like a lot of the boys towards them, i think the girls would be a bit wary of them anyway, considering how isolated they are from each other. of course, it doesn't omit girls having their way via things like theater and out of school things like friends of their brothers or whatever, other families visiting or things like that, creating gossip of crushes and potential boyfriends and all the things the girls who aren't so fortunate would be more than jazzed about.

as far as daily life in general, it would be more of the same. stand when the teacher enters the class, weekly assemblies, standing prayer before meals, reciting the school pledge... history... honor... diligence... versatility... blah blah blah. no speaking out of turn, no fooling around, no sneaking around after hours, no lying to authority, etc etc.

maybe in some ways it seems like there's more freedom, but i don't think it's by much. it seems like the expectations are just slightly shifted, the strictness and pressure isn't too far off, and i bet the girls don't enjoy that one bit.

[stardustmuncher]

PLEASE STOP SCROLLING AND READ THIS.

(all fake names used.)

I haven't posted on here in quite a while, and this isn't my normal content, but I need this to be known.

I am in high school, I am a teenager. I am still legally considered a child.

Today, we had a child bring a gun to school.

For context, I attend a K-12 charter school. We have three buildings. Kindergarten through third grade are on the main floor and ninth through twelfth grade is on the second floor of the main building. Fourth and fifth share a trailer, while middle school also has a trailer on campus.

We are apart of the top one hundred schools in Colorado at the moment, although we have been rated higher. Our classes learn Latin from kindergarten all the way through freshman year, further if you so choose, we read about ancient Mythos, we learn about not only American history, but all backgrounds. Our student body continues to grow in diversity, with more students of color coming to attend. We pride ourselves on our classical learning, and we also pride ourselves on the bright young minds that we foster.

Today, a fourth grader brought a loaded and active handgun to school.

During second period, a shelter in place was put into effect. Just the day before, we had a fire drill. Everyone assumed that since it's the end of the month, admin were just doing all the drills that we could. I didn't think much of it, my close friends didn't think much of it, our teacher didn't think much of it.

Class continued as usual. I remediated a failed quiz, my friends chatted with me. A couple of people grabbed chicks that my biology teacher kept in the corner of the class and started messing with them. Initially, I was irritated because I was trying to work. It's hard to work when a handful of chicks are constantly peeping loudly. It wasn't until lunch that I learned that there was an active threat, and those people could have gotten us killed in the worst case scenario.

After the shelter-in-place was lifted, I continued on to my third period class as usual. We were reading Antigone, the first play in the Three Theban plays. I was excited that class was cut, it meant less reading. I asked my teacher what had happened. He shrugged; no one know yet.

I went to fourth period. It was a work day, and I finished my assignment early. I then moved to sit with a group of my friends, and discuss the news and random trivia. All four of them were on our Knowledge Bowl team. They had been awarded earlier for taking first place at state.

I went to lunch next, eating in my Latin teacher's home room with my friends. My best friend, Mk, showed up during lunch. She had spent the morning at physical therapy.

She told us there had been a weapon found, and we all laughed it off initially. There was no way. We haven't had a threat of violence to our school since a controversy back in 2009.

The teacher asked us to be quiet, there was an email she had to read to us.

A kid brought a weapon to school. We were going home early.

At first, our minds fixated on the fact that we'd go home early. It was Thursday, we don't have school on Friday. I'd miss drama club because of what happened, but I'd get an early weekend. I was ecstatic.

Mk and I then had to walk around the hallways, discussing her morning and telling her about the shelter in place. We were coming back around the corner when another friend, Henry, found us. His mother had texted.

A fourth grader, a child in his youngest brother's class, had brought a loaded, active handgun to school and was making threats towards students.

We were shocked. What could we say? The kid's nine, maybe ten by now. The information didn't settle in our mind until we had time to sit down in our fifth period class. We got locked in the class room until it was time for our early dismissal.

Everyone was just having fun, joking around, playing games on our phones (they're banned at their school), and being excited to get released.

In all honesty, a lot of it was really just us coping with the severity of the situation. Henry's little brother was in that class. Mk's little brother was supposed to be in the same building that day.

I texted my step mom and my dad in a panic. My dad was in a class, doing a presentation. My step mom was at work. I had to call my grandmother to pick me up.

I got home safely. I wonder who wouldn't have.

My dad called me as soon as he saw the texts. He was scared. He voted for Donald Trump, he voted for people to keep dangerous guns. I wonder if he knows he indirectly caused this.

My real mom texted me too, asking if I was okay. I responded lightly. She texted me again, making sure. I said I wasn't, and we called. It didn't make me feel better. I have to sleep in her bed tomorrow night.

Nothing happened today. But it could have.

I don't want to go to school on Monday anymore. I was excited for the next week, since we're participating in a "Kindness is Contagious" week, and we're allowed to dress up. I was excited to wear Barbie pants and a FNAF tee shirt on Monday. I don't want to go anymore.

I shouldn't feel terrified to be the place where I legally have to be. I should want to stay in bed longer in the mornings because I am so exhausted from having too much fun, not because I dread going in the case that my safety is compromised.

Not to mention how little the American government is doing for all of the kids of our country. This is the second time a student has brought a gun to school in my county in the past three weeks. We live in a small town, one that's rapidly growing, but it's still small. Our mall has had the same 20ish stores for ten years. Everyone gets excited when anything new opens up, we're still a tight knit community. Still, gun violence is too relevant, more than it should be here.

I don't understand how politicians can decide that tariff wars and bombing places in the Middle East is helping anything. People beg our government to focus on what's happening with illegal immigration inside the country, but ignore the students that die because of what happens every year.

I thought I was safe. I've never worried about going to school. Our shitty little town is too small, everyone knows each other.

Apparently not. That child stole the gun from their step father, and had been acting out violently for weeks.

Please, everyone, for the love of God or Allah or what deity you may believe, hold your loved ones a little tighter, be a little more grateful that you don't always fear for your life, think about the good a little more.

Reach out to your local governor about these concerns. Talk to a lisenced therapist. Band together, create a community. Create a safe space so that this doesn't happen again. Be a little bit kinder to the next person you see, you don't know what their last straw might be.

Reblog, reply, and share this post as you need. Share your experience with others. My DMs are open for anyone who is a victim of something similar. Please, don't isolate. Spread awareness, and please, keep in contact and try and help prevent any more gun violence and any more school shootings. We all play a part in this.

(By the way, link down below is my Twitter thread on the exact same situation. I don't have any credibility on Twitter, so it would be appreciated if people would share that around too.)

and then tags for reach.

[deadcroisany]

AMAVI || Joseph Descamps (Mixte1963)

AMAVI (latin; The second-person singular imperfect of amare. Meaning: to love)

Veni   Vidi  Amavi

I came  I saw  I loved

The first day of school never made Gabrielle feel anxious; it was just school, after all. This time, however, she didn't want to be the first one in. She decided to let some time pass as she leaned on the wall of one of the buildings close to the school with a cigarette in her hand, watching a red-headed girl walk through the crowd of boys staring her down like she was some foreign entity. Scared to approach while also wanting to pounce.

"They are going to eat her alive," she mumbled to herself, her eyes never leaving the scene before her. Suddenly, she wished the cigarette break would last longer. But she tried not to back down; there was no point in feeling regret now that she was already here, and after she convinced her parents to allow her to try this out, Backing down wasn't something she ever did, anyway.

A few more girls gathered, greeting her as they passed her. It wasn't a big place; everyone knew almost everyone. Yet, when a blonde stopped next to her, Gabrielle realized she didn't know her. In fact, she had never seen her; if she had, she would remember simply because this girl had to be the most beautiful person she had ever met. Gabrielle wasn't ugly; everyone told her she was beautiful, but this girl was something entirely different.

"Are you going to attend here too?" the blonde girl asked, and Gabrielle had to blink a few times to stop her admiration before answering.

"Yes. Want to go in together?"

There was always one thing Gabrielle could depend on: that no girl wanted to be alone in a place surrounded by strange boys. And, like she expected, the girl nodded. Gabrielle nodded with a smile, threw her cigarette away, and offered her elbow to hold on. "I'll be your chaperone," she joked at the girls confused expression. "I'm already wearing pants, after all."

The blonde looked down to confirm that she was indeed wearing light pants and a button-up short-sleeved shirt, accompanied by a smirk. Gabrielle knew she almost looked like a boy, and her mom only allowed her to wear them if she let her hair down and didn't act like a crude boy. Hence, her dark hair was half down.

Finally, the girl hooked her arm around her own with a hesitant smile. "The pants look good. I'm Annick"

"Gabrielle"

Walking inside the school was easier with company, and both girls—as if they had talked about it beforehand—held themselves pridefully, were self-assured, and chatted like they weren't fully aware that they had pulled the attention of everyone in the yard. The small walk consisted of talk such as 'I like your dress' or 'They look so stupid looking like that'.

"Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell," mumbled a dark-haired girl when they finally reached the board to see their assigned classes and teachers.

The rest of the day was surely something; if Gabrielle had to use one word to describe it, she wouldn't be able to find it easily.

The first lesson was history with Mrs.Giraud. Climbing up the stairs, Gabrielle heard the red-haired girl tell the brunette that she wondered how bad Mrs. Giraud could be. "I heard she is a stuck-up bitch." Gabrielle said quietly, her pace matching theirs.

"Who told you that?" the brunette laughed.

"Someone from my neighborhood. He had some other words to use too, but I think I summed it up pretty well."

Soon she learned that the brunette was Simone, the new girl, and Michele, the butcher's daughter. She also learned that'stuck up bitch' wasn't enough to disappoint her teacher, who immediately shot her a look of shock and clearly disapproval when she spotted her attire. But she didn't say anything until she did.

Gabrielle found a seat at the back of the class and started getting settled, unaware of someone staring at her until they had all settled, and the teacher started talking when she spotted Annick at the front of the class. She was absolutely, totally, wholly scandalized by her seat next to a boy and promptly sent the boy to sit next to the 'boy with the long hair'.

It didn't take Gabrielle to realize she was talking about her, and her eyebrows shot up.

"In the list, I thought that we were getting five girls in this class. One of them turns out to be just a pretty boy." Mrs.Giraud spat out, and some laughed around.

"I'm pretty" Gabrielle mouthed

"She also called you a boy," said the boy who sat next to her.

"A pretty boy."

The boy that was sent to sit next to her was Henri Pichon, and he went to sit somewhere else the moment the next class rolled around. Latin, not her strong suite. History she could manage, but Latin not so much.

Annick, on the other hand, seemed to excel in that too, much to the displeasure of the teacher, who refused to call upon her even when she was the only one raising her hand. Gabrielle made a distasteful sound when the old man simply looked around like a lost donkey, trying his best to inspire a boy to raise his hand. And when one of them did raise his hand, he immediately gave him all his attention.

"I think the lady has raised her hand," the boy said, forcing the teacher's hand.

As Annick got up to say the answer, Gabrielle tried to subtly sneak a peek at the boy who was a few seats to her left as she moved her hair out of the way before quickly looking away when she made eye contact. Descamps was not someone she wanted to associate with during school hours, that was for sure. That is a testament she will circle back to at the end of the day, or even in five minutes.

A piece of paper started circling around the boys in class, and a boy got in trouble. Another reason to not even touch the papers Descamps gives around.

The rest of the day was calm, except for an incident at lunch hour, which of course involved Descamps. All the girls quickly realized he was one of the main troublemakers at the school and a constant annoyance. He was confident enough to present his art skills, but Simone shut that down easily, and Gabrielle added:

"Simone, don't be so hard on him. Poor thing has never seen real boobs before."

She winked when he glared at her.

Then the next hour rolled around. Catastrophic was one way to describe it. Descamps decides to concoct a prank on Michele, or maybe he was aiming at Simone. Gabrielle wasn't sure as she just watched him place a bucket of water on the door, which would fall on whoever opened it first.

"This is so stupid," she said, reaching to remove the bucket, only for Descamps to grab her hand and pull her aside.

"No, this is fun," he corrected, taking the extra measure of blocking the way with his body. Now, Gabrielle was tall, but he was at least half a head taller.

"You are going to get in trouble on the first day for being stupid," she said, pulling her hand back, aware of the fact that no one else seemed to do anything to stop him. A quick glance at Annick did her no good, as she also seemed reluctant to help out.

"Don't be a bore."

Not having enough time to do anything, Michele opened the door, and she was drenched in water. Gabrielle just shook her head. Some people laughed, some others just seemed sorry, and most of them focused their attention on Michele's chest. They couldn't see anything of value, just her bra, but to immature boys, that was enough.

Gabrielle went back to her seat when the English teacher entered the class, but not before she exchanged a glare with Descamps, who winked at her.

Bastard.

Now to the catastrophic part: no, Michele having her bra exposed to the whole class was not the catastrophic bit.

"Then Michele's brother came into the class. He started punching around, and Descamps got glass in his eye; he was bleeding a lot. They took him to the hospital; he might lose his eye, they said. And yeah, that's about it." Gabrielle smiled uneasily as her parents stared at her in shock, speechless. "Other than that, the day was pretty quiet."

"The boy lost his eye?" her dad asked.

"Maybe, yeah."

"Are you hurt?" Her mom's sharp eyes scanned her, inch by inch, for any scratch.

She shook her head.

No, she wasn't hurt. She had been walking to her seat when this happened, and someone pushed her to the side when Magnan started punching. She just watched, even when Descamps was on the ground, hand covering his eye to the Dean next to him.

"Joseph Descamps is the boy that lives right across from us, right? Your friend"

"Not my friend," she mumbled, closing her eyes in exasperation and falling back on the armchair.

"Weren't you together all the time a few years ago?"

Her dad, who just a week ago was swearing to God he had never seen these girls' Gabrielle was with, even though she had been hanging out with them for years and they had been to her house plenty, suddenly seemed to remember that one old friendship that has been almost completely dissolved.

She blinked, her nose wrinkled. "Yeah, like 2 years ago."

They almost kicked girls out of the school; there is no need to mention something like that. It might actually make her mother happy.

"I heard they almost banned girls from the school." Her mother quiped, trying not to sound too dissapointed at the fact it did not happen.

"So much for, uh." Her dad looked towards her to fill him in.

Gabrielle smiled. "Progressiveness."

Javier Blanc was a large man with a beard and a scary disposition. A man like that you would think was fit for sons, but alas, God gifted him girls—four, to be precise. In the last 15 years, since the birth of his oldest, he has heard it all, from 'Oh, maybe next time you will get lucky' to 'it's okay, girls are gifts'. Yet he listened to his girls rants and echoed them to the best of his understanding.

Her mother never really agreed with that disposition fully. Marie Blanc did, of course, want her daughters to become capable and marry good men, but she still wanted them to remain girls. So Gabrielle being taught boxing, being more inclined towards math, wearing pants, and walking with her hands in her pockets rubbed her the wrong way. Gabrielle, breathing alone, rubbed her the wrong way.

She didn't care when her younger three came inside the house with muddy shoes and clothes or when it was obvious her oldest showed more promise at violin than the rest did. They were babies, and they would continue to be her babies till they reached their 50s. Heck, Sophie was 13 years old already. Precisely two and a half years younger than Gabrielle.

Not that it hurt Gabrielle. It annoyed her that her mother never had anything purely good to say about her without a backhanded insult, but it didn't wound her. So she simply listened to her rant about Voltaire without saying much before deciding to go to bed.

"I have school tomorrow after all," with a snarky tone and a pointed look. Okay, maybe she wasn't the easiest child. Maybe she had a short fuse and held a grudge. That wasn't her fault. Her mother was like that, too.

Finally, alone in her room she couldn't resist to urge to pull back the curtain that covered her window, peeking at the room that also looked directly into her own from across the street. Descamps' room. Well, back then he was just 'Joseph' but it felt wrong to use his first name now. Gabrielle had been the one to stop calling for him to hang out, after all. But when they were kids, when their mothers would tack them in bed, the window would be their immediate destination. 

Even now, once in a while, they would throw cigarettes at each other if one of them had run short. 

There was no light in his room tonight, they must have kept him at the hospital for tonight. As Gabrielle was about to close the curtain, she spotted some movement in the darkness of his room that had her immediately shoot forward, ignoring the art supplies she had accidentally kicked since they had been resting on the wall. Her eagerness was something that would torture her for a few days, and she would thank her lucky stars that no one saw that. 

Especially when she realised that the movement was Descamps' mother, who seemed to be packing some of his clothes to take to the hospital when she suddenly froze, and by the fact that she put her hand on her face, Gabrielle could only guess that the woman was crying or she was just exhausted by the day. When the woman raised her head, and looked directly at her Gabrielle found out it was both. 

The woman managed a smile, and waved. Gabrielle mirrored her actions, closed the curtain and climbed in her bed, holding the covers close to her chest. She wasn't sure how long it took for her to fall asleep, at some point everything just got quite and dark.

[intermundia]

hey so wait this is so cool. im also in love with obikin and im planning on studying classics in undergrad (your blog is like my own personal serendipity lol). got any tips/what's your fav thing you got out of your classics studies??

oh man enjoy!!! that's really exciting. looking back the thing i remember most fondly is actually the solitary hours i put in at the library preparing for class and doing reading to supplement the assigned readings. i enjoyed class too, discussion and developing bonds with your cohort is valuable, but there's nothing like pushing yourself to engage directly with primary and secondary sources.

i found there were just no shortcuts to mastering greek and latin. i don't know if you already have experience with the languages, but i didn't when i started, and it was one of the most difficult and rewarding things i've ever done. i promise all of the effort you put in early will pay off later, the more you memorize and internalize early on, the more sensitivity you have to understanding the original texts.

i'll say it's also valuable to read as many authors in different genres and periods as you can in translation to get a broad understanding and context for the things you study in class. professors can only ask so much and have a very targeted focus for class usually, so i got impatient with that. i think taking initiative and chasing your curiosity will lead you toward what you want to focus on in your degree.

i ended up doing my thesis on homer, but i loved the presocratics too, even though i didn't take a class on them specifically. there's nothing more beautiful to me than lyric poetry and the line between poetry and philosophy didn't really exist yet. if you view intellectual history as a long conversation, it's satisfying to track the discussion back all the way to see what everyone is responding to, you know?

you might end up interested in roman engineering though! or hellenistic art! the scope of what's available under the umbrella of classics is enormous, and it all reinforces itself, like the more you learn in one area, that light shines on others. i don't mean to be off-putting in any way, more like, if you are excited to chase after your interest, there is abundant space for you to grow as a scholar.

[writergracethepanda]

Advice I Have As A Recent High School Graduate

I graduated from high school last week (it still doesn't feel real agh!), so here's some advice I have for my younger moots <3:

Get Involved- I was at my school starting from grade 8 (we were grades 8-12 until a couple of years ago), and I didn't really feel apart of the community until a few years ago, until I really started to get involved with Latin Club and the Creative Writing department outside of class, and Reading bowl. (we are a very student run school). I got to meet a lot of amazing people, build so many memories, and even build connections for my future as a classics major.

Ask for help when and before you need it- I cannot stress this enough. I cold have saved myself a lot of energy and anxiety if I'd asked my teachers for help on assignments and such sooner. I also literally saved my own life by asking for help in my junior year. If I'd not told my parents how badly I was doing and not gone to the hospital, I would 100% not be here to type this out. This is also me saying I'm here for you guys if you need someone who's gone through this stuff to talk about this with.

The first time doing something is always the hardest- I'm reminding myself of this as I enter college. Talk to that person you think is cool, and that you want to be friends with. Sign up for that club. Raise your hand, even if you're not completely sure about the answer.

Don't take APUSH unless you love love love history- I love history, and I loved my apush class. It was, however, one of the reasons I had to leave school for a few months.

Remember who you are- You are going to be a completely different person coming out of high school than you were when you started. Embrace growth, but never let others change you into something you're not. You are amazing.

I'm here both academically and as a friend if you need advice- except for math ive already forgotten everything.

Let me know if you guys want any other specific advice. :)

Grace

[fariadraws]

Latin-101!

A little story for context under the cut!

"Mom, please tell Dad that I don't need a tutor. I can learn Latin, history, and math all by myself. After all, I learned botany, playing chess, and charting stars in the tower on my own!" Rapunzel insisted to Arianna as Frederic proposed hiring a home tutor for her.

"Sweetie, I know you're really smart, but it will be better if you study under the care of a professional. Besides, it won't take long for you to finish the courses since you are a very fast learner," Arianna assured her only daughter.

"Aw..." Rapunzel pouted.

***

"You have class this afternoon? But it's supposed to be our date today, Blondie!" Eugene expressed his frustration.

"I know, but there's nothing I can do. Mr. Muller is very strict; I can't just cancel his class. He taught my dad as well. Dad really respects him, and I can't let him down," Rapunzel sighed disappointedly.

***

Mr. Muller started teaching Rapunzel history, geography, math, law, and Latin a couple of weeks ago. Rapunzel had to take two tests on history and math already. She can't catch a break lately due to her tight schedule. That old man is always putting Rapunzel under huge pressure by giving her random assignments and tests.

"This week, you're going to sit for a Latin exam, young lady," Mr. Muller declared as soon as he entered the classroom.

Rapunzel almost cried. She had plenty of plans for this week because Mr. Muller said if she got good marks, he'd grant her a leave as a reward.

"But, Mr. Muller, I got an A on both subjects!" She reminded her teacher.

"So?" Mr. Muller frowned.

"You said you would grant me a leave if I got good marks."

"Define good marks first. You should have gotten an A+. I made the questions ridiculously easy for you, and still, you failed to get 90 percent!"

Rapunzel sighed.

"Anyway, today we'll learn some syntax. Uh... open your book to page 48."

***

"Did you hear me, young lady?" Rapunzel woke up suddenly as she heard Mr. Muller's monotonous voice. She had almost fallen asleep because of the boring lecture.

"Yeah, I did!" She replied while trying to suppress a yawn.

As Mr. Muller continued lecturing, she started drawing a sketch of the teacher.

"Hmm... his hair reminds me of a rat's ear! Ooh, and look at that nose, as red as a ripe apple! The bald part of his head reflecting the ceiling like a brand new mirror! His fat belly is trying hard to tear apart his shirt..."

"What are you drawing over there, young lady?" Rapunzel became aware as Mr. Muller shouted. Her heart skipped a beat.

"N-nothing," Rapunzel stammered as she tried to hide the drawing.

"Hand it over to me," the old professor demanded.

"I... I... I..." Rapunzel continued stammering.

"Give it to me!"

Rapunzel handed over the drawing finally. "Please, don't tell Dad!" Rapunzel pleaded.

Mr. Muller looked at the drawing closely, getting his eyes close to the paper, and then he peeked over his glasses and observed the drawing after taking the piece of paper far from his eyes.

"Hmm," he muttered.

Rapunzel was trembling in fear.

"Hmm... it's actually... it's actually pretty good! I like it! You certainly have a knack for it, don't you?" he asked Rapunzel, his eyes full of appreciation now.

"You liked it?" Rapunzel couldn't believe her ears.

"Yeah, I'm keeping this. You should continue making art; you're gifted."

Rapunzel's smile almost reached her ears.

"But NOT IN THE CLASS, hear? For the last time, I'm saying this... NOT IN THE CLASS." Mr. Muller roared like a crazy tiger.

Rapunzel listened to him silently while noticing embarrassedly that Eugene and Pascal had arrived at the door at her teacher's rising voice.

***

The End!

[thelostmetallurgist]

Dwemeris Rosetta Stone...

Dwemeris Rosetta Stone 2.0

A comprehensive framework for deciphering, learning, and playing with the Dwemer (Deep Folk) tongue—runic, spoken, numeric, and mystical.

I. Alphabet & Glyphs

Rune ID Direct English Phoneme Approx. IPA Numeric Value ⟨R1⟩ A /a/ [a] 1 ⟨R2⟩ B /b/ [b] 2 ⟨R3⟩ D /d/ [d] 3 ⟨R4⟩ E /ɛ/ [ɛ] 5 ⟨R5⟩ F /f/ [f] 6 … … … … … ⟨R26⟩ Z /z/ [z] 26 ⟨G0⟩ Zero glyph – – 0 ⟨G★⟩ Capital/Start – – –

Notes:

Runes are carved in sharp, angular strokes echoing gear teeth and vent grooves.

⟨G★⟩ placed at sentence start; ⟨G0⟩ marks numeric zero.

II. Systems of Interpretation

System I: Direct Substitution One-to-one mapping of each Dwemer rune (⟨R#⟩) to a Latin letter (A–Z), ignoring phonetic nuance.

System II: Romanized Phonemes Use English digraphs (/kh/, /th/, /zh/) to approximate distinct Dwemer sounds:

⟨R10⟩ → “kh”

⟨R12⟩ → “th”

⟨R19⟩ → “zh”

System III: IPA‑Precise Assign each rune an IPA symbol for scholarly transcription:

⟨R10⟩ → [x]

⟨R12⟩ → [θ]

⟨R19⟩ → [ʒ]

III. Grammar & Syntax Rules

Morphology: Polysynthetic. Single words can encode subject, object, instrument, and purpose.

Word Order: Typically SOV, but subordinate phrases nest within word‑vehicles.

Plurals & Cases: Indicated by suffix chains (-zûn for plural, -thak for dative).

Verbal Roots: Embedded in initial morpheme; tense/aspect follow as affixes.

Example Structure: duum‑zûn‑kharthak‑eft (dwemer-PL-TO/FOR-help) → “they build for the benefit.”

IV. Core Vocabulary

Dwemer Word System II Gloss duum duum “Dwemer” / “deep folk” duumzûn duum‑zun plural “Dwemer” nchuand‑zel nchuand‑zel “Radiant City” (Markarth) eftar‑ eftar‑ verb root “to promise/swear” fahlzûn fahlzun “great ones” (honorific) khaz khaz “metal” / “iron” zar‑tûk zar‑tuk “secret passage”

New Formed Words (structure follows polysyllabic compounding):

khaz‑duum‑tir: “metal‑deep‑gate” → subterranean vault

eft‑fahl‑khar: “help‑great‑forge” → master smith

V. Numerical System

Base-10. Digits 1–9 use ⟨R1⟩–⟨R9⟩; 0 = ⟨G0⟩.

Notation: Place-value; numbers read left-to-right.

Symbol Sequence Value ⟨R3⟩⟨R1⟩ 31 ⟨G0⟩⟨R5⟩ 05 ⟨R1⟩⟨R0⟩⟨R0⟩ 100

Mathematical Usage: Dwemer engineers carve equations alongside gearweights, e.g. “5⟨G0⟩ + 7⟨G0⟩ = 12⟨G0⟩”.

VI. Practical Examples

Divine Metaphysics (Inscription Fragment)

Runic: ⟨G★⟩ R4‑R1‑R5‑R3‑R7 …

Sys I: E A F D G …

Sys II: /ɛ a f d g/ …

Gloss: “Eternal forge awakens…”

Translation: “When the eternal forge awakens, the world trembles.”

Egg of Time (Mural Glyph)

Runic phrase: ⟨R10⟩‑⟨R4⟩‑⟨R3⟩‑⟨R15⟩

Sys II: kh‑e‑d‑s

IPA: [x ɛ d s]

Meaning Hypothesis: “Cycle” or “renewal.”

Nchuand‑Zel (City Name)

Runic: ⟨R14⟩‑⟨R3⟩‑⟨R21⟩‑⟨R1⟩‑⟨R4⟩‑⟨R14⟩ …

Translation: “Radiant City under the mountain.”

VII. Supplementary Materials

Pronunciation Guide (IPA): Full chart listing all 28 runes with IPA values.

Cultural Context: Dwemer believed sound was material—tonal resonances could animate automatons. Language mirrored their architectural philosophy: precise, durable, efficient.

VIII. Interactive & Collaborative Tools

Digital Rosetta App Mock‑Up:

Rune → drag‑drop to Latin; click to hear IPA playback.

Number pad showing glyphs.

Translation pane with System toggles (I/II/III).

Community Portal Concept:

Live forum threads for new inscription photos.

Crowdsourced lexical suggestions.

Versioning history of hypotheses and peer reviews.

This Rosetta Stone 2.0 is a living document—update with each new cavern find, artifact, and scholarly breakthrough!

[cellarspider]

Qunlat 4/12: Phonology

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

Qunlat pronunciation has varied widely between voice actors, and it seems likely to continue to do so. I’m of the “follow your heart” style regarding this--if you like a certain pronunciation, go for it.

…But if your heart tells you “follow someone else!”, then I’ll try and help out here. You’ll just have to sit through a bit of linguistics history first, while I explain how Bioware has made this complicated.

So. The spelling of European languages started to fossilize with the arrival of the printing press, at about the same time Europeans started inflicting themselves on more people who didn’t use alphabets. How do you tell people how to pronounce “開顛窗”? If you’re writing the first Chinese dictionary published in Europe (c.1670), you spell it “Çai tiēn h'oâm”, based off of how Portuguese was spoken when an Italian jesuit tried to write down Chinese  in the mid-1500s, then you define it in French as “ouvrir une feneſtre du toi🙲 ou une lucarne.”: “open a roof window or skylight”. For the French, you use a ligature variant on "&" so old that some default fonts on modern computers don't include it anymore (hello mac users! You might be staring at a little square that says "01F672" right now, I swear it's supposed to be a C with a fancy hat).

Also you don’t write down “開顛窗” at all, because obviously that wouldn’t help anyone.

These days, if you run into Chinese written in an alphabet, it’ll be using the Pinyin standard. How does it spell “Çai tiēn h'oâm”?

“Kāi diān chuán”. Would you get that from “Çai tiēn h'oâm”? Hell, if you don’t know Pinyin, do you know how to pronounce “kāi diān chuán”?

Pinyin and our ad-hoc 1600s-French-1500s-Italian-Portuguese model of spelling Chinese encounters the problem of attempting a phonetic transcription of a language, trying to write down what they hear so that others can speak it. They also have the challenge of romanization, using the Latin alphabet to write out a language that doesn’t normally use it.

So. Qunlat, arising completely separately from English The Common Tongue, doesn’t use the Latin alphabet, doesn’t use–uh. The Common Tongue’s writing system, I don't think we actually have a canon name for that.⁽¹⁾ So all Qunlat we’ve seen written down is using a romanization. But is this romanization actually phonetic? Romanization doesn’t have to be. If I show you “Meraad astarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun”, do you know how to pronounce that?

As discussed previously, the voice actors for qunari have all given it their best shot, but come up with different results. We don’t know what the scripts they’ve read from have actually looked like, but we have one potential answer.

And now we have to go back to World of Thedas, volume 2, and meet with my nemesis again.

“MARE-awed a-STAR-eat, MARE-awed it-WAH-seat, ab-AWN AH-kyoon.”

Hooboy. 

This is possibly useful. It’s attributed in the fiction to Philliam, a Bard!, so it’s not reliable, but the fact that it’s been written out implies that the IRL writer behind them was attempting to give people a real pronunciation guide regardless.

This is what we call a pronunciation respelling, where words with ambiguous pronunciation are rewritten to act as a guide to the reader.

…But here’s the problem: How do you pronounce “a-STAR-eat”? It depends entirely on your native language, dialect, and accent, and unless we know who wrote this, we can’t tell what they meant. If you, dear reader, don’t have the same accent, you might come up with something completely different. Just for English alone, wikipedia lists twenty-five different systems, with not a single sound having consistent spelling between all of them.

How do we get around this? How do we write down not just words, but unambiguous sounds?

Welcome to the wonderful world of the International Phonetic Alphabet!

Originally created in the late 1800s, the IPA (no relation to the beer) is a system that assigns letters to sounds based off of how and where sounds are formed. It allows linguists to accurately record the sound of a language, as long as they have a good ear. And from that, other linguists can reproduce the sound of a language, as long as they know how to read IPA. It helps capture accents too: "Car" might seem like a simple word, but in IPA, it's spelled /kɑː/ if you're using RP British English, /kɑɹ/ for General American, [kʰäɾ] for the Scots, and [kʰaː] for Bostonians.

It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s a reliable way to transfer sounds through text. Hell, there’s now ways to plug in IPA to a website and have a little robot voice read it out for you, though they have limitations.⁽²⁾

I, personally, have a hell of a time remembering parts of the IPA. I’m always opening up the IPA Consonant Chart on Wikipedia, because that includes little sound samples of every consonant. The vowel chart is even more helpful, because I can never remember the poxy little bastards.

For a bonus: the vowel chart is mostly pronounced by a single wiki contributor, who speaks loudly and clearly. …But then there’s ɞ and ø̞, which appear to have been recorded by people who were far more shy about it, and ɤ̞ is provided by someone who pronounces it three times, and seems to die a little bit as they finish up. These are the things you entertain yourself with when you’re learning the IPA.

Anyway! If we want to make this pronunciation of Qunlat equally accessible to everyone,⁽³⁾ we should try to translate this guide into IPA.

We’re just going to assume that the writers, when constructing their pronunciation guide, were aiming for a General American or the similar Standard Canadian accent. Those are the regions Bioware is mostly based out of, and they’re the easiest to find phonetic pronunciation. So, for example, “a-STAR-eat” would be transcribed as /əˈstɑɹ.it/, or possibly /æˈstɑɹ.it/ depending on what they mean by “a-”. Already, you can see we have some uncertainty here because of our starting point, but we can take these IPA transcriptions and throw it in a speech synthesizer to get pretty unambiguous pronunciations!

You'll notice that most of the letters line up with how they're spelled in English, though some of the sounds don't line up with how you'd first think to pronounce them. That's especially true around vowels, so always be aware of that when reading IPA.

Now, one might ask, if it was relatively easy to convert this from a generally readable pronunciation guide into the unfamiliar and technical IPA, why bother? Well because I did in fact start with the easiest word to convert. The rest of these were a lot harder. 

How do you pronounce the Qunlat word “ir-vah”? Because according to Philliam, a Bard!, it's “ihr-vawh”. Does that actually make you feel confident you can say it right? “Aw” has a known pronunciation in English, but what's “awh”? What's the distinction? Is there a distinction?

I'm going to have to make assumptions here, informed by my own background with this stuff. It will, by definition, be an opinion rather than an authoritative source. I’ll go with what I think is the most uncomplicated solution, and we can see whether it sounds like what we expect.

So, to start with, I’ve made a breakdown of the sounds found in this text, and what IPA pronunciations they match up with. When the respelling has included english words as pronunciation guides (ex. “a-STAR-eat”), I’ve directly referred to the General American IPA transcription. When the respelling uses nonce words (ex. “AH-kyoon”), I’ve referred to the Oxford English Dictionary respelling system, as it was one of only two that contained the majority of the nonce word respellings. This allowed me to be consistent, though sometimes the text itself was not. Check out the “Phonetics - WoT2” sheet in the workbook linked below:

Note that some words have multiple pronunciations listed. This can sometimes be contextual (ex. “The” can be pronounced at least two different ways in English), but in some cases the context was identical, but the pronunciation was different. If we want an in-setting explanation for this, we can say the transcription was taken from people with different accents. Even different energy levels or moods can affect pronunciation. But honestly, I do not know if this was intentional. There are phonetic spellings that also work their way into the Qunari romanization as well in multiple places, even with words that were previously established under other spellings.

To hear the sentences spoken, plug one into an IPA synthesizer, though be warned: it’ll be a little janky, and a little jarringly American. I don’t actually think this is what the writer had in mind, but this is what they gave us, so I’d like to make it clear why we prefer using the IPA.

I’ve also created an inventory of the sounds in these excerpts, formatted as we would for phonemic and phonological inventories: a chart of the IPA used, and a list of what letters make which sounds. When the list includes something like /x~y~z/, means that the letter can be pronounced as x, y, or z in the wild. When there's a letter with no pronunciation, it means that it's in some sort of Qunlat somewhere, but it wasn't in these examples.

And I have to reiterate: I've reproduced the implied pronunciations from WoT vol.2 as faithfully as I can, but these pronunciations do not accurately reflect the actual way the words have been spoken in the games! You can compare performances to phrases or words in here, and note the difference in pronunciation and stress patterns. 

So, as before, I say to you: if you prefer a different pronunciation, use it. If you want to systematize that pronunciation, organize it and save it for reference, then use the IPA to help you. I can speak from experience, it will save you a lot of trouble if you note down your language work in IPA, rather than assuming you’ll remember your own pronunciation later. Go forth, and have fun with it.

Next time! Finally, the meat of a language: grammar.

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

Footnotes

(1) Okay. I don't have enough material to make a full post on Qunlat scripts, so I'm going to just throw it in here, with a further digression about Common as a bonus. In brief: We have no consistent script for Qunlat. There's one in Those Who Speak which... it's okay? Reminds me a bit of Lontara or an Ulu script, but it doesn't have aesthetic cohesion. Inquisition uses another possible script on decorative horn coverings, which... It exists. I'll tell you right now, I'm working on creating a written script for Qunlat for personal use, and I'm not using either of these.

With regards to Common: the games usually seem to indicate that the Common Tongue is written in a runic script, which is not meant to be read by the players.

In Inquisition we have a weird split, courtesy of Varric's romance novels: Tales of the Champion, which the wiki says is "written in Orlesian", is just in English, and... backwards English on the facing page. It's in tiny squint-o-vision, but it is actually about Kirkwall's history and Hightown, and doesn't seem to be a copy-and-paste from anywhere else in the games. Cool!

But there's another book in the series with Aveline on the cover, which is very different. There's a new runic script there, which is mostly composed of rotations on actual runes, but they don't actually line up with any historical runic script. but there's not enough text available to see if it translates into anything. There's a bit that looks like it's supposed to be Varric's name that might give us the letters "V Te(th)ras", but none of those letters are in the title, so we have nothing else to compare to. The script is okay, but there's some letters I'd alter for visual consistency--runes were generally written using different combinations of just three line angles that remained as consistent as possible throughout a text. There's a letter in here that's just a triangle, and it doesn't fit the angles of the other letters at all. That triangle haunts me.

Here's the thing, though. There's also a couple books from Inquisition that I can tell were just straight-up written in an Anglo-Saxon rune font, then flipped upside down, which reminds me quite a bit of a certain web series I could mention. It's a short, non-canon English text repeated in different paragraph format, with some gibberish thrown in. I wasn't going to bother reading any of it once I realized it wasn't anything canon, but then I noticed there's a rogue "c" that appears to have survived the font change. Most runic scripts have no equivalent of "c", but Anglo-Saxon does, so I realized that had to be a capital C. And that's when I read:

"...that this is *not* the Cirth (Certhas) but the..."

Cirth is the writing system Tolkien made for Sindarin, Khuzdul, and Westron.

I think what we're looking at is part of the setting documentation, basically saying, like, 'we want the Common Tongue to look like Cirth, but not actually be Cirth because the legal department told us not to'.

(2) Many of these IPA-to-text things are language-specific. They’re only loaded with the sounds that are used in the language they were created for–so for this one, stick to english text-to-speech IPA synthesizers. Also, you will definitely note accent differences between different synthesizers, even when given the same input! Some of that is due to dialect-specific restrictions on what sounds they pronounce, but there's also smaller distinctions that the IPA is capable of reflecting, but in practice we don't transcribe things with 100% precision.

(3) Of course there’s the caveat that the IPA is based off of the Latin alphabet to begin with, so it makes the most sense to people who already use some form of it. One of the problems is that alphabets are actually uniquely suited to the task of phonetic writing, for reasons I’ll eventually get into. But I’m not actually aware of any equivalents that have been constructed for use with other alphabets or scripts, beyond a number of neography hobbyists (for Kannada, Arabic, etc.), including that one tumblr user who scared off an insufferable dude in a coffee shop by talking about the IPA equivalent they were making that was somewhat based off of the Georgian alphabet. That person is incredible.

⭅ Previous =⦾ Index ⦾= Next ⭆

[miirshroom]

The Shadow and the Anagram

At the start of June 2024 I released a post about anagrams in Elden Ring. Mostly because I found it a little too convenient that "Radagon" is an anagram of "a dragon" and an argument with the naysayers inspired me to search for other possible anagrams.

And now there is one confirmed anagram in Elden Ring! It was added with the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Count “Ymir” sits in the Cathedral of Manus Metyr above the Finger Ruins of “Miyr”. Furthermore, contained within the characters found in the Cathedral of Manus Metyr I suspect references to at least three works of fiction, including two that I already referenced: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code…and video game Devil May Cry 3.

1) The Harry Potter Series

Count Ymir himself is affiliated with the Carians considering that he teaches 3 Carian sorceries and a Raya Lucaria sorcery by default. Any magic school is bound to prompt comparison with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - but also I have seen this exact comparison made about Raya Lucaria.

And I suspect that Jolán is part of this reference for a few reasons:

a) Her name’s similarity to “Joanne” Rowling. The near portmanteau of Jolán and Anna makes Joanne, although “Anna” has its own separate significance. b) The weapon skill of her sword being “Witching Hour” c) It makes sense for her to be found in a Cathedral. Harry Potter as a series upholds a Christianized society of witches and wizards. This is shown through the following characteristics: the use of Latin in spells - which was the language of the Catholic Church for 1000’s of years, quoting bible passages for inscriptions on tombstones, avoiding comment on the real history where in both official and unofficial capacities the Christian church was responsible for witch hunts - and treating this real history of burning people as “witches” as a joke. d) The Sauron costuming of her armor set. Both JK Rowling and JRR Tolkein are British authors, and I would agree with an assessment that Joanne Rowling has used her overwhelming wealth and social capital to become something of a blight on the landscape of fantasy in recent years. Is that an extreme and negative characterization? Yes. But the point of media with subtext is that things like this are utterly unprovable by the people who would sue for defamation. Same goes for the armor set - enough features are different that it would be frivolous for the rights holders of the film design to take legal action....but I mean, what are the odds that the "Armor of Night" keeps so many similar features by accident.

2) The Da Vinci Code

Similar to Rowling, this book in particular makes use of a puzzle-phrase anagram: “O Draconian Devil” and “Oh Lame Saint”, which would resolve as a pair of anagrams: “Leonardo Da Vinci” and “The Mona Lisa”. What is especially awkward about this example is the linguistic hoops that need to be jumped through to make it work, as the setting of the book is France and these anagrams are created by a French-speaking man. Note also that the French name for the painting is “La Joconde”. And then there is the second anagram “So dark the con of man” which resolves to another famous Da Vinci painting: “Madonna of the Rocks”.

The answer that Dan Brown invents for why English is used in both cases: English is a “pure” language and the language of science that is used to create ciphers by secret societies opposing the Catholic Church. So the anagram word puzzles in this case are tied explicitly and indelibly to a concept of Anglo-supremacy. The logic of the world is contorted so that Dan Brown can have an exotic European setting where his American English professor self-insert character has an advantage in identifying the type of puzzle faster than the actual trained cryptographer who is actually assigned to the case.

This is different from what I have found to be the philosophy behind the anagrams of "Radagon". Casual knowledge of modern English is NOT enough - I looked at German, French, Tolkein's languages, and whatever popped up on wiktionary for each syllable.

But more to the point - Ymir’s questline reads as a spoof of Dan Brown’s plot structure used both in this book and in Angels & Demons:

a) A mystery is happening with a religious theme b) There is a scavenger hunt that involves travelling to various religious landmarks and solving very simple puzzles c) At the climax of the plotline the religious scholar who was a mentor for the quest turns out to have been a villain all along in a bizarre plot twist

3) Devil May Cry 3

This is more tied to Jolán’s questline and the decision whether to give her the Iris of Occultation or the Iris of Grace. If you give her the Iris of Grace, then Jolán’s identity is immortalized in the form of Spirit Ashes. If you give her the Iris of Occultation then Jolán’s identity is obscured (i.e. in the way that no writer attached to Elden Ring has ever cited the Harry Potter series as a reference), but her sword becomes available (i.e. the concept of “witching hour” - capitalizing on a young adult audience raised on fantasy stories of witches and sorcery and the dark academia aesthetic. The “witching hour” concept can be seen also with Bloodborne’s College of Mensis who research the blood moon that manifests at Midnight according to the astral clock).

The actual appearance of the witching hour skill is a series of katana slashes that have an appearance similar to the rapid katana combos used by Vergil from Devil May Cry. In Devil May Cry 3 (2005) Vergil is infamous for being a skill wall that needs to be overcome, and repeatedly asking “where’s your motivation?” as a taunt. This iris of grace/occultation questline basically acts as a soft confirmation of the idea that a character’s weapon acts as a visual representation of a character’s “motivation” or their “soul”. This is similar to another concept in Devil May Cry where the souls of defeated devils are transmuted into thematically appropriate weapons. Example worked through here for Maliketh's Black Blade.

The anagram comes from a semi-obscure Devil May Cry light novel released in 2002 where a bandaged-wrapped man named “Gilver” causes death and destruction and is implied to be “Vergil” operating under a fake name. This “Gilver” was later quietly retconned to be a demon clone by the time of DMC3 in 2005 - and the main feature that stuck with the character was his wielding a katana.

These references are consistent with a common trend in the Shadow of the Erdtree that it is fairly overloaded with pop culture references - but it’s easiest to identify them in places where it was already suspected of the base game. Other examples that I’ve looked at in particular being Midra as the King in Yellow, Hornsent Grandam as Enya the Hag from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and the sum total of weapon/ashes items found at Taylew’s Forge being a reference to the Wheel of Time book series.

Also one new anagram became revealed as of the DLC having the "rada fruit" item:

“rada gon” - From Old Czech “rada” means “advice/council, wisdom”, and from Old Polish it means “advice/tip, thought/decision”. There is also the Polish “gon” meaning “chase/pursuit” or the obsolete “hunt/hunting” which would frame Radagon overall as “decision hunting”. As in, literally eternally hunting a decision on how to fix the Elden Ring, but never achieving it.

[impatient14]

Anthony J. Crowley as Lucifer: A Meta of Facts, Fiction, and Everything in Between

The theory that Crowley is Lucifer is hotly defended and contested, with naysayers typically casting the archangel Raphael as Crowley's identity in heaven (@vroomvroomwee's Crowley is Lucifer is particularly good-read the replies and reblogs too!) However, despite Raphael's notably absence in Heaven and the matchmaking plot of S2 (Raphael is traditionally associated with love and marriage), I think there is far more evidence that suggests he was Lucifer, instead. Yes, I know Crowley refers to Lucifer as someone other than himself in S1, but I'll get to that and everything else below the cut.

Full disclosure, I stumbled into this analysis from a different angle. Originally, I was just posting a quick little thought I had about Crowley's role on Earth. TLDR version, Crowley could have been acting not only as an agent of Hell on Earth to tempt humans but specifically ordered to tempt Aziraphale to Fall, an order he almost immediately succeeds in doing but chooses not to report. Since S2 made it clear that Crowley did not reserve his mercy for Aziraphale alone (i.e., his sense of fairness is intrinsic and not a characteristic obtained through his love for Aziraphale), it would be reasonable to think Crowley maneuvered himself into being assigned Hell's agent on Earth specifically to protect Aziraphale from Hell. This would not only mean Crowley remembered him from the beginning, it would mean he had the kind of power to assign himself that role. (It would also mean Crowley has been lying to both Hell and Aziraphale this whole time- a detail that would support Agnes Nutter's prophecy that "He is not who he says he is.")

This idea, that Crowley not only refused to send Aziraphale to Hell but actively protected him from it, screams rebellion--a characteristic Lucifer is most known for. Sure, you could argue all the angels who fell were rebellious (note here that Raphael never fell), but Crowley is the only demon in Hell who continued to rebel after he fell, making his association with the characteristic as notable as Lucifer's. This will be important in a moment.

Let's start with some history/translation issues.

The difference between Lucifer, Satan, and the Devil.

The conflation of these three names is a Christian phenomenon thought to have occurred in the process of organizing a conglomeration of "lost gospels" from numerous Christian sects, each one with their own translations and traditions. In the original Hebrew, "Satan" is actually ha-satan ("the satan"), defined as a role rather than a name (specifically the role of testing one's faith). At some point in the translation process, "the" is dropped and the tempter is simply, "Satan." Satan, before being completely subsumed by Lucifer, was considered Lucifer's vessel on earth-a separate entity.

Now, "Lucifer" is Latin for Venus' morning appearance. The word was taken from the Greek words Φωσφόρος (Phosphorus), "light-bringer", and Ἑωσφόρος (Eosphorus ), "dawn-bringer." So how did Lucifer become synonymous with a fallen angel? Folklore and metaphor. I could go really deep here, but instead I'll just say the Sumerian myth about the goddess Inanna's ability to descend into other realms including the underworld and then rise again to heaven. This myth is based in the synodic cycle of the planet--you guessed it--Venus (more specifically Venus in retrograde). Jump to the Book of Isaiah when the king of Babylon is condemned, Isaiah refers to the king as "Lucifer:"

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! {14:13} For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: {14:14} I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. {14:15} Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. {14:16}

Thus, the "morning star" falling from heaven is a motif born out of a long list of myths and translations that get thrown in a pot together, stirred up, and then served according to disparate cultures and traditions. Some of those traditions combined "the satan" and "Lucifer" into Satan/Lucifer, some others kept "Satan" and "Lucifer" as two separate beings, with Lucifer ruling over Satan who acts as an agent of temptation on earth. (Sound familiar? Hold that thought!)

In contrast to "Satan" and "Lucifer," "The Devil" can be deterritorialized more simply. The title comes from a series of translations of Greek's  διάβολος (diábolos), or "slanderer." Thus, how the Devil became synonymous with all things Satan, Lucifer, and Hell can be inferred via its etymology.

So, if in some traditions Satan's role is to tempt people's faith, that would mean Crowley is Satan, right? Under my thinking, yes and no.

In the Bible, "tempting" Eve simply meant asking why she hadn't eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and then telling her the truth about what would happen if did (i.e., she would not die as God claimed but would instead be granted the wisdom to know the difference between good and evil). This is important if you recall that "the satan" may act as an agent of hell, but it isn't inherently good or evil, it's there by God's design to test people. So in this way, sure. Crowley plays the role of "the satan." But in the Good Omen's universe, Satan is given definition as the King of Hell (aka Benedict Cumberbatch and a team of CGI wizards), while Lucifer is only mentioned once (I'm getting there, promise!). Given all the amalgamations we've just gone over, it isn't outside the realm of possibility that Gaimon and Pratchett switched their roles. If anything, it makes far more sense that "Lucifer" would become "Crowley" over "Satan." Lucifer was an angel not a deity, so he would become a demon, while the Satan of Good Omens is set up as a direct opponent to God.

But why does Crowley have to have been Lucifer? Couldn't he have been another fallen angel?

Sure. But it isn't a coincidence that Lucifer and Raphael aren't mentioned by name (except once, I know!). Crowley's physical characteristics are more inline with Lucifer's than Raphael's (according to literary tradition, i.e., Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno); he was the first one to say "let there be light;" rebellion is intrinsic to him (continuously rebelling against hell); he's androgynous (Lucifer as the masculine fallen angel and the feminine Venus); and he has many faces (which he shows off more in S1). Plus, Lucifer is said to have committed the sin of Pride, something Crowley demonstrated a lot of after he cranked the cosmos.

Also, S2 has made perfectly clear that Crowley is insanely powerful for a demon. (I'm convinced the huge power surge they investigate is not the miracle that hides Gabriel but is in fact the burst of energy Crowley produces when he's angry. It occurs at roughly the same time and in the same place. Narratively, it'd be just as easy to have the blackout occur another way, so Crowley's power surge must have another purpose.) In the book, the Narrator of Good Omens (God) says, "Crowley has something no other demons have, especially not Hastur--an imagination." Crowley is repeatedly singled out as being different than the other demons. He is able to read the report that is locked to everyone but the highest of authorities in Heaven.

So, now let's talk about that quote from S1: "I never asked to be a demon. I was just minding my own business one day and then... oh, lookie here, it's Lucifer and the guys!"

It's reasonable to assume Crowley is referring to himself saying "lookie here" after he was the subject of the first part of that sentence. But in actuality, the suggestion that Crowley was "minding his own business" would contradict him then going up to a group of people and initiating a conversation. Therefore, the ellipses (as they are designed to do) represent an absent thought. In this situation, the transition of the subject. In this moment, Crowley is recalling the moments before he fell, when he was minding his own business (while in the company of others) when someone singled out him the other rebels/questioners.

Taken another way, it's also entirely possible that Crowley is referring to himself in the third person as an outside viewer of the situation because, in point of fact, even if Crowley was Lucifer, Lucifer no longer exists according to Neil:

What does all this mean?

It means that even if Crowley was Lucifer, Lucifer doesn't exist because Good Omens takes place after the Fall. Now, this may put a little hiccup in the idea that Crowley can read the top secret files because he was an archangel, but I think it can be explained away via the ineffable plan. It is obvious that God still loves Crowley and shows him preferential treatment. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that she allowed him to keep certain parts of Lucifer as he Fell--especially if he was going to play the role as tempter on Earth. Clearly Crowley retained some of his angelic "goodness," which includes a unique moral code on Earth. Otherwise he'd be just like all the other demons. Crowley has to have enough good in him to appreciate humans, to be able to differentiate who should be tempted and how. He has to understand them in order to tempt them. This, I would argue, is the perfect punishment for an angel that questioned God's creation of man (but we know now he was just questioning the subsequent destruction of the universe he created). For daring to challenge her plan, God sends Lucifer (aka Crowley) to Earth to live among the humans he didn't value in Heaven. But, as we've seen, Crowley can still go up to heaven even when he's not in Aziraphale's body. Just like "morning star" Venus, Crowley can rise to the heavens, idle at the horizon, or fall into darkness. Even as "Crowley," Lucifer is still God's favorite.

So to go back up to where we started, it's possible that Hell ordered Crowley to tempt Aziraphale into falling, but God allowed Crowley to retain a sense of justice, and, perhaps more notability, his ability to love. I think Beelzebub and Gabriel's coupling is a sign that Heaven and Hell's hold on angels and demons weakens when they are confronted with human experiences, which would explain Crowley's very loose allegiance and Aziraphale's increasing discontent with Heaven. The difference between them is that Crowley--on some level--remembers what it's like to be an authority but not THE authority in Heaven, and he knows how fruitless Aziraphale's mission is. As the serpent, he has all this knowledge but Aziraphale is still very naïve, still devoted to the idea of "good" vs. "evil." He needs to see for himself that this dichotomy doesn't exist, even with him in charge. Once he's able to see this and understand what it means for his identity, I think we'll see the most elaborate "I Was Wrong" dance in history.

(Note: I didn't proofread this before posting, because I don't wanna. Now I'm going to devote a stupid amount of time trying to see if I can figure out what the damn J stands for.)

[dreamnotnapss]

ive been think a lot about dream stance on solemates and snf's undeniable 'we will find each other in every lifetime and annoy the shit out of each other (affectionate)' vibes and 'you look like a god with the sun behind you' first meetings, the red string of fate transending miles and time zones, and dream assigning them their godly parents and i so desperately want to write about dnap as soldiers in the roman empire stationed in britannia and meeting some local boy and being so charmed by him and his terrible latin and eventually having to choose between him and returning home and choosing not to return. and 2000 years in the future dream is taking his boys around some museum in england with a great exhibition of roman era artifacts and they stop to look at a grave display, two swords that would have belonged to roman soldiers found together in a grave with other objects that weren't typically used in roman funerary rites and graves with a small plaque that suggest they may have belonged to some soldiers who remained in britain after the romans left and they none of them linger too long but its something they each think about for a while afterwards, it's not too hard (especially for george) to imagine wanting something (to be someplace else for someone else) that they would leave everything and everyone they knew behind.

wow this ended up being super long but i've been thinking about this for a while and i just don't think i'll ever be able to actually write it all out

OUCH wait anon come back i love this concept sm :') soulmate au's are so heart-wrenchingly beautiful and they fit so well with the dteam who have practically vowed with the start of their youtube channel that they love each other and they will continue to love each other GODD

i especially love the idea of them stumbling across evidence of their past life and being able to resonate with the history and come to the conclusion that they would make the same sacrifice if it came to staying together as a trio AUGH

anon i would read the heck out of that fic if you wrote it :') i'm sending you motivation and good vibes !!