#on that note i've just started SPQR by Mary Beard. so

[ashyjingles]

"oh, i'll write a fic of jason's time at camp jupiter before the swap! that'll be fun.

"oh, but i need to plan it out really thoroughly. let me make sure i nail down every single detail in the books so i know what canon to abide by.

"and oh, i need to get an accurate depiction of what military bases are like and how being raised as a child soldier would affect someone. let me do some research on that.

"and of course, considering this is all based in roman mythology i need to make sure i have all of the myths accurately recorded so i know what to reference in my writing. it would make for some great parallels and foils, especially ones jason already has connections to. and ive been interested in mythology for a while, may as well take a class at university to make my learning a little more guided because lord knows my adhd ass needs it

"and of course, there's the roman culture that camp jupiter has retained all these years, so i should probably study up on roman history. the rise and fall of rome would be an interesting concept to include given jason's rise to power and subsequent fall as he turns to camp halfblood and more greek ways, especially given the way rome took over greece and its myths. a good flipped reference for jason's character.

"and i should probably get into the mindset of a leader. some self help books would help me understand his thinking process and wouldn't be too bad for my own person, right?

"and one of the reasons i love being a writer is the psychology behind writing all the characters, so a few courses and books on child and adolescent development would be immensely helpful not only to myself, but to my writing and general life as a whole.

"...oh. this project has gotten very large, very fast."

*looks at my hobbit fics where i've done the same thing with the dwarven language system, tolkien's world building, norse culture, political nuances, and royal monarchies.*

"do i... have a problem?"

so about that poll i made about jason's time at camp jupiter.... you folks might be waiting for a good long while for that fic. for the time being though i have books to read! <3

[anyplaceisparadise]

I've been reading SPQR by Mary Beard and I'm compiling a list of the cool, interesting, or funny things I'm finding. To start, one long quote that I thought was wild to think about:

"The single most extraordinary fact about the Roman world is that so much of what the Romans wrote has survived, over two millennia. We have their poetry, letters, essays, speeches and histories, to which I have already referred, but also novels, geographies, satires and reams and reams of technical writing on everything from water engineering to medicine and disease.

The survival is largely due to the diligence of medieval monks who transcribed by hand, again and again, what they believed were the most important, or useful, works of classical literature, with a significant but often forgotten contribution from medieval Islamic scholars who translated into Arabic some of the philosophy and scientific material. And thanks to archaeologists who have excavated papyri from the sands and the rubbish dumps of Egypt, wooden writing tablets from Roman military bases in the north of England and eloquent tombstones from all over the empire, we have glimpses of the life and letters of some rather more ordinary inhabitants of the Roman world.

We have notes sent home, shopping lists, account books and last messages inscribed on graves. Even if this is a small proportion of what once existed, we have access to more Roman literature- and more Roman writing in general- than any one person could now thoroughly master in the course of a lifetime."

-Mary Beard, pg. 37-38.

I feel like a little kid, learning in wonder again. Obviously I'm not reading this completely ignorant to ancient Roman history, but it's not an area or time period I've ever really dug into before and I'm just so excited to get into it. Time and its passage is so mind blowing sometimes.