#i refer to it constantly

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

I’m about halfway through Cicero by Anthony Everitt. I like the book on the whole, and it’s excellent at bringing Cicero and his contemporaries to life.

However, I do disagree with Everitt’s portrayal of Caesar and the First Triumvirate. It’s a quite standard narrative - Caesar the radical populist, the Triumvirate steamrolling their opposition - but I think Robert Morstein-Marx (2021) makes a stronger case for Caesar as a moderate pre-50 BCE and the Triumvirate as only partly effectual.

Here’s an example of how they read the same set of events differently:

Everitt blames the First Triumvirate for Cicero’s exile in 58. Then he acknowledges that Cicero himself didn’t blame the triumvirs. Everitt also alludes to Caesar offering Cicero a military commission, at the same time, but doesn’t mention this would’ve given Cicero immunity from Clodius’ attacks.

Compare to Morstein-Marx’s take:

Where Everitt supposes that Cicero failed to notice who his real enemies were, Morstein-Marx assumes Cicero knows what he’s talking about. He also points out that Cicero didn’t change his mind about who was “really responsible” even after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, which is when you’d expect Cicero to start blaming Caesar more. The five footnotes here refer to lines from Cicero’s letters, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio, as well as sources that point out Clodius’ independence from Caesar and Pompey.

So far I think Morstein-Marx’s interpretation is more persuasive.

[bluuscreen]

one of the chocolate guys videos appears on your dash. you pause your scrolling to watch it, trying to guess what he’s making because this doesn’t seem to be one you’ve seen before. as the video goes on you get more unnerved and impressed — he seems to be making a whole human being this time, and it’s uncannily realistic. it’s even filled with candied fruit and sweet pastries in place of organs, red velvet cake and a cherry reduction making up flesh and blood beneath the chocolate. but something feels off. the person he’s making seems strangely familiar. upon the final reveal, you know why. amaury guichon has created a perfect replica of you

ETA:

[thethingything]

I just realised we can use the polls to ask the clone fucking debate questions. let's go!

(two answers are missing because you can only have 10 options. oh well)

[taikk0]

i cant think of a caption i have an exam tomorrow 💀(it is currently 12 am <3)

[linkeduniverse]

Will I integrate TotK into Linked Universe?

In truth, I just don’t know. It's gonna have to reach some high expectations to get me to overhaul stuff. It all depends on what transpires in this new adventure of Wild's. Who knows, I may just say “Forget it! TotK is better for Wild in LU!” it wouldn’t be the first time I changed my mind.

Is wolf link still available to assist? The answer will tell me a lot about Twilight.

How much does Wild's past as a Knight influence his post-calamity lifestyle? On behalf of the Hero of Warriors I would really like to know for…reasons…

What is Fi's fate? She looks in rough shape.

And I really would like to know where Wild stands with Zelda. Even Just simple scenes can say a lot.

If the theory that he is his own self-fulfilling prophecy, and he ends up as the hero from 10,000 years before his own birth, that would be great for LU. If not, that’s OK. But boy would that work in my favor.

Farewell all! I'll be in Hyrule for some time, hopefully you will too.

[batz]

playing the piamo

[puppyeared]

auggie!!

[saturnaous]

Accidently cooked up a silly little au the other day that I am very much enjoying gonna. talk about it under the cut because4 the FUCKING WORMS

OKAY so basically. literally everythign is the same except for the fact that. Ed got entirely yoinked instead of Alphonse. I dunno why that happens but. It does because I say so. Anyways. So this basically mean that Ed gets bonded to an armor instead of Al, and because I desperately wanted the secondary set of Armor to see some light I thought it would be funny to bond Ed to that instead. I haven't fleshed everything out, but as I'm working on that I wanna add a few of the different things in here just because. And I still might tweak things if I think it doesn't make sense. - Al lost his arm first, then traded his tongue and his eye to bond Ed to the armor, making him effectively mute. He's learned ASL and Ed has to translate for him a lot. Although in my hcs Al is a foodie so like. major bummer for taste buds. He likes fun textures and stuff though. I gotta figure out what problems this poses though so we'll figure that out. - Al most likely is going to go into being a state alchemist just for the fact of staying somewhat close to the storyline and stuff. and I don't know, insert random reasoning in here. Yeah - just a little design note. uhmmmmm I thought the cross thing on Ed's head/helm was cool and I had the bright idea of like "hey what if I put the emblem like. through the cross yk" and I might not do that. But at the moment it looks cool to me. so yeah. I'M STILL TOYING WITH THINGS. . . I have to figure out what happens and designs and stuff. but yeah. I think that covers. what I have for now. p sick. scuttles away

[the-magpie-archives]

Whenever I get really into something I get very paranoid that I'm making everything about it, and being an incredibly obvious fan.

Anyways the other day I was having a conversation and I thought to myself "I have to stop speaking like this, it's so obvious I'm just trying to sound like Jonathan Sims."

Because of my accent. My English accent. That I've had my whole life. Because I live in England.

[shakingparadigm]

what is the theory that ivan manipulated the event where till and mizi met the wagyein?

It's not a theory, actually! It's confirmed that Ivan orchestrated the whole event. The true reason as to why however is still unknown. The information provides more context to this scene, though:

During the earlier times of ALNST the most rational explanation for this scene was that Till ran after a flower crown (presumably Mizi's) and Ivan followed him in out of curiosity. Now we know that Ivan was conveniently just standing there because he was waiting.

Side note, I find it heartbreaking (and maybe a little funny, sorry) that Till most likely didn't notice Ivan in this scene. That's just like him, isn't it. Always too busy running after Mizi while Ivan trails behind, an ever-present shadow.

I'm not sure how Ivan manipulated the circumstances for both of them to end up there, but it is confirmed that everything was intentional. What strikes me most is how they describe this particular scene:

I can't copy down what they said word-for-word (Patreon info), but they described Ivan watching "creepily" as Till and Mizi are faced with danger. We know that Ivan was familiar with the Cerberus wagyein beforehand, enough to touch its teeth and even to rest himself inside its maw. To Ivan, the wagyein is not dangerous, but to Till and Mizi, it could be. Ivan prepared the wagyein, led them there, and watched "creepily" from afar as Till fell on his knees, seemingly injured.

The closest I can get to making sense of Ivan's "scheme" is that he wanted to see how other children would react in a dangerous situation. Ivan's always been an observer, after all, and he's learned to survive by copying the more "normal" behaviors of his peers. This situation occured when Ivan was still young and had not yet developed his more charming mask, so perhaps he staged this encounter to study a situational response, to learn and mimic the emotion of fear. And what better subjects for the experiment than two of the most expressive and reactive humans of their batch? It helps that he was already fixated on Till beforehand, too. I think Ivan became irreversibly obssessed after this incident, especially since it's framed as a turning point in Ivan's life, comparing Till to the stars.

This is just my attempt at an interpretation, though. It could very well be for another reason. He most likely chose Till and Mizi specifically for personal reasons, not just for reaction. I'm still not sure on the purpose behind the whole thing.

The team wanted to capture Ivan's "dark emotions" through the shot of his stalking, which could relate to his more sinister intentions. His gaze can be read in a few different ways, though. Curiosity, interest, fear, etc. Maybe that's why they decided to redraw the shot in ROUND 6.

I think this better sells the feeling they were trying to convey.

[whynotimtired]

The best part of Will saying he wants forever with Mike so blatantly is that he isn't the one who brought it up, Mike was. In an act of projection he asks "What did you think? That we'd actually get to be together forever? When we're both boys?" and will says yes. He says yes, and Mike immediately regrets it.

[beatcroc]

homest[ar/uck] posting. this was meant to be supplementary to the gerome comic as him 'explaining the joke' but i uhhhhhh forgot.

i'm not much for crossovers in the the traditional sense, but it IS one of my favorite character exploration exercises to just go like 'if x media existed in this universe, who would and would not be a fan of it?'. and these ones are pretty notorious and always very fun to mess with for that and so here we are

[oh-wow-im-still-here]

Mad respect for MXTX for making a point to mention in every beginning, middle, and end in every tgcf extra that the main pairing are fucking all the time. Like, allllllll the time. Im so sorry you were censored queen, you would have written the most unhinged sex scenes😞💐👑

[stagprince]

I have crazy art block rn

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

[max--phillips]

I know that we’re all here for the jokes and the hahas and the Laughs, etc, but like. Can we please take a moment to remember that Pedro Pascal is not old. He is. 48. Even Joel Miller isn’t really that old in the grand scheme of things