#Historically incorrect

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

Look, as much as I love celebrating Caesar’s death as the next Tumblrina, there’s an element to this that I think we need to address. About Caesar, about his assassination, about our reaction to it.

It didn’t work.

Killing Julius Caesar didn’t stop Rome from becoming an Empire. If anything it expedited the process. Because all the assassination did was turn Caesar into a martyr for his family and followers to turn into a standard to rally behind. The Republic fell, the Empire rose, and Caesar’s Assassination was the tipping point of it all.

In fact, there’s evidence Caesar had knowledge of the planned Assassination and went anyway, knowing what his death would turn him into. But why?

Fascists don’t get turned on by their followers when they die. They get turned on when they look weak.

By the time of his death, Caesar was sick. There’s evidence that he was incontinent and beginning to have mental problems. All in all, things that made him look weak.

I can’t say what would have happened in Brutus and the Senate had stayed their hand, but history would not have turned out the same way. Certainly, Caesar would not have been turned into a martyr with his assassination. If his followers had seen Caesar as he was, a shambling, dying, sick old man, would that have turned them on him? I can’t say.

The assassination of Julius Caesar isn’t a happy event, it’s a cautionary tale. I’m not saying this to ruin our Ides of March celebration, but I feel it needs to be said. Make Dictators look weak, and then stab them.

[eeviaylxix]

achilles: so you're telling me... you didn't go on a rage-induced murder spree after your boyfriend died in battle?

hamilton: ...no?

achilles:

hamilton: are you okay??

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

[crickets chirping] [Robin gasped as he woke, scrambling backwards through the brush; he was pretty sure by now that ghosts couldn’t hurt him, at least not directly, but this particular entity was still unknown-.. and very close] Robin: AH! ?: AHHH! [Seemingly just as surprised as he was, the startled sprit mimicked Robin’s exclamation] Robin: Sorry! ?: Thou see me-.. hear me?! Robin: Yeah.. that’s a good thing though, right? ?: ‘Tis certainly different. Robin: Wait, where are you going-.. what’s your name? Heath: Erm, ‘tis Heath-.. methinks. Robin: I’ve never seen you here before. Heath: I’ve seen thou-.. and that curious thing around thy neck. Robin: How long have you been, uh… Heath: Dead? Oh, a while. Robin: It’s a camera. Whatever you take a picture of will be captured just as you see it, forever-.. as long as the photo lasts anyway. Don’t ask me how it works though, ‘cause you wouldn’t believe me. [Heath squinted with simultaneous suspicion and bewilderment] Robin: Here’s one I took earlier-.. that weird orb thing there? That’s what you’d look like if I took a picture of you. I think because you’re not physically here anymore, you don’t show up, but I don’t know for sure. Heath: I’m not entirely certain what thou speak upon, yet it hath an air of witchcraft about it if thou bid me. [phone ringing] Robin: Hang on. Heath: I’m not e’en going to bid what that is. Robin: Sorry, mom.. I fell asleep. Courtney: Where are you? Robin: On the island-.. Devin said I could use the boat whenever. Courtney: [sighs] Can you just come home, please? Robin: Yeah, I’m coming. [Robin stared at his phone briefly before sticking it back in his pocket, he didn’t like phones at the best of times – being unable to read the person he was conversing with, even a little, felt inherently wrong – but this felt worse than usual] Robin: I’ve gotta go. Heath: Well, ‘tis not as though I be going anywhere-.. apparently. Robin: I’ll show you some more pictures next time, I promise! Heath: I suppose that’d be nice…

[good-soupmens]

Ngl I think Crowley would be besties with Galileo. He was kicked out of the church AND imprisoned for discovering that the earth went around the sun because it was thought to contradict the bible

Galileo: I told them curiosity is the key to problem solving!

Crowley: That's what I'm SAYING

[prefer-to-be-vilified]

Wednesday: If there was one thing you didn’t like about me, a tiny aspect, and there may not be, probably there isn’t. But if there was one thing I could change about my relatively flawless self, what would it be?

Enid, without hesitation: Your mercurial violence.

Wednesday: Really? Huh… father always thought that my best quality.

Enid: Really?

Wednesday: Yes, he’d say “she might not look like much and her social skills leave plenty to be desired but give her a knife and the girl has something”

Enid: Reason and compassion can win any argument better than violence.

Wednesday: You don’t have to win an argument with someone who has a slashed larynx. I find they struggle to make their point.

Enid: …

Wednesday: Not that I’m saying that’s a good thing. I’m not. It was a bad joke. I’m only saying… *notices enid becoming increasingly mad* …that I’ll work on that. Thank you for your honesty.

Enid: You’re welcome.

Wednesday: Aren’t you going to ask me if there’s anything I would change about you?

Enid: I can if you’d like, but you’re the one who will be forced to live with the consequences of your response.

Wednesday: …there’s nothing I’d change about you anyway.

Enid: Smart girl.

[thingsphoenix21]

Hades: I need help.

Demeter: Two words.

Hestia: I bet they won't be helpful.

Demeter: Your. Problem.

Hestia: I was right.

[escespace]

1893

Leon: *Looking Merlin with caution* What did you say that was called again?

Merlin:Caffeine

Leon: How many of those did you take?

Merlin: *Shrugs* On the bright side, I don't think I'll buy Coca-Cola again.

[kioneira]

Learning about the Polish situation after the partitions is so funny because you learn that after one of the Uprisings when everything from language to culture got banned in the Prussian part of the Annexation, (it got banned everywhere but let's ignore that for a moment) some Germans started to get interested in that because "why is it banned"?

And I just imagine the situation where poor Gilbert is just sitting in his study or just some office space doing paperwork maybe, and teenager Ludwig just comes in and is like:

Ludwig/Germany "I wanna learn Polish"

Gilbert/Prussia "You what now?"

It's the greatest revenge of Feliks.

[visenyaism]

i want to know if youve ever written ao3 fics becuz i love your writing

I’m not sure if anything I do on here can count as writing. I did write beloved maju @daensa a halloween present once about danelle lothston slash broader character study of harrenhal as an entity.

it is extremely weird and im not sure if i fully executed what i was going for but i did have a lot of fun doing it :)

[jewellery-box]

Dress, 1830-1833

A dress made of fine white cotton, with printed background of purple dots and stripes in whimsical motifs in lilac, beige, red and green and long sheepskin sleeves.

Kunstmuseum Den Haag

[vmpirevnom]

John: Hey, Alexander. Nice Hands.

Alexander: …thanks?

John: they’d look even better wrapped around my-

Ben: -covering Lafayette’s ears- BIBLE. WRAPPED AROUND YOUR BIBLE. PRAISE THE LORD, AMEN!

[harpyface]

My thoughts on the volta do mar

In-game, the Volta do Mar method was created to travel through the pale, being first used in the first successful voyage into the pale. Apparently it took years to develop the method, a "strict psychological regimen imitating the creation process of poetry."

In real life, the volta do mar is a Portuguese (volta do mar is Portuguese for 'Return from the Sea') sailing practice of, in simple words, sailing further out into the sea to avoid sailing directly against the wind and then catching winds that then move in the correct direction (useful since portugal is slightly north of the equator, blah blah wind directions)

While watching a playthrough, Joyce's description of Lely's tattoos reminded me of this 'return from the sea' business. Lely's tattoos are a history of his service, but originally the tattoo was a custom of sailors "mark[ing] their bodies to map their travels." "The sailor's soul would use it to fly back home if they should die abroad. This is a sort of… contraption. To be reeled back in by." If a sailor died, their soul would 'return from the sea'(😮).

The pale is likened to the ocean many times in Disco Elysium, so these tattoos and the volta mantras are very similar. They are linked even more when we see that the tattoo custom was begun "right after the discovery of Insulinde," so the creation of voltas and the creation of this tradition kind of bookend the eighth expedition. Likening the irl volta do mar practice and this in game example got me thinking about how exactly in-game voltas are used and created.

(Interesting note, Joyce describes these tattoos as "the silver cord" linking the soul and home, whereas irl, the concept of the silver cord is supposed to link the soul and the body.)

Personally, the concept that is pale was hard enough for me to grasp (even with it being an established fictional concept with, like, words to describe it.) It's "the opposite of reality," it's a property that suspends other properties, and it can damage human minds. According to Joyce, dialectical materialists argue that "pale somehow *consists* of past information, that's degrading. That it's rarefied past, not rarefied matter."

"They call it the *blend-over of the self*. The pale does not only suspend the laws of physics, but also the laws of psychology, maybe History, even… The human mind becomes over-radiated by past."

We can assume that this 'blend-over of the self' is true because of the Paledriver, who is observably pale-radiated and lost in worlds in lives that her body hasn't lived.

Operating on this theory, the pale is made of information, and I would also like to argue that pale is made of not only past information, but also future information, and information about alternate timelines.

In the moralist vision quest, we hear entroponetic crosstalk of Kim from the future *and* arguably an alternate timeline if he ends up in the hospital and doesn't end up at the islet. So pale is basically all information and possibilities.

The only explicit example of a Volta do Mar is from the Insulindian Miracle thought, and it's song lyrics from What If by Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld. This thought establishes that voltas are 1) Taught in schools and 2) Repeated like mantras while travelling. The voltas aren't mentioned in Sacred and Terrible Air, by name at least. Zigi does sing Helvetti, by Kauko Röyhkä & Riku Mattila, in pale, but that's explicitly a song and not a poem, and obviously he doesn't need to resist the effects of the pale (and if fact doesn't want to drive away the pale, based on his reaction to Nilsen's 'Communism is white' speech when it started to ward off the surrounding pale.)

When Joyce says that the method is a "strict psychological regimen imitating the creation process of poetry," my thinking was that it can't be as simple as reciting poetry while travelling through the pale. It might be, but wouldn't the process *be* the process of creating poetry and not 'imitating' it? Of course, it could just be referencing the research it took for the explorers to be able to safely traverse the pale, but I wasn't satisfied with that.

(I'll admit, when I first began building this theory, I didn't know that we had an explicit example of a volta, and it stumped me for a bit, but I think it works still.)

I've seen interpretations in which the poetic nonsense of voltas force the person to focus on reality/on their own mind, to focus on the next word in the sequence. But using the real world volta do mar technique as a base, I started building my own theory by considering that the voltas mirror the technique of the irl volta do mar. Voltas would be  performed by a person going deeper into the pale (whether mentally or physically) in order to somehow escape the effects more easily.

Having already established that the pale is information, it makes sense that the way to manoeuvre it would be via words and concepts. Prior to remembering The Insulindian Miracle thought, my theory was that, instead of pilots being *taught* previously written mantras, they were taught to create poetry while immersed in the pale. The pilot's mind would then grasp the floating information that is pale to string the words together into a distinct phrase/poem, intentionally going deeper into the pale to get enough material to work with. With the resulting phrase, it would be grounding enough to bring the pilot back to reality.

However, all of that is irrelevant when you consider the volta that Harry was taught.

Or is it?

The Insulindian Miracle solution says that "you were taught it at school. It is one of the Volta do Mar mantras repeated on the voyage that lead to the discovery of the Insulindian isola." I could interpret it as saying that voltas are written in advance, or that *historical* voltas are taught in grade school, just like we're taught historical documents or literature. Maybe children of Revachol are taught about the voltas that the discoverers of their isola used simply for academic knowledge. 

And as Joyce says, the Volta do Mar is also used by "other troubled souls even to this day." Ordinary people may not have access to the bank of information that is the pale, but they do have their own troubling thoughts that they can pick words and concepts from to still go through the same process that I've described in order to calm themselves or relieve stress.

I do want to analyse Kim's Volta do Mar skill at a later time using all of this, but right now this is what I have to offer :)

(An excellent post that I was inspired by is about the connection between water and memories by @/57sfinest, which I would like to briefly reference at the end of all this analysis. Imagine it as a triangle, one point is the ocean that the sailor's souls would have to return from (or the irl ocean that the volta do mar was used for, if you like), the second point is the past and memories, and the third point is the pale, the "rarefied past." It's all connected.)

[better-call-mau1]

Sabine: I can’t believe how much we have in common!

Satine: Our names, for starters —— just one letter different.

Sabine: Iconic style and fashion sense, of course.

Satine: And let’s not forget about our problems with estranged family members.

Sabine: We’ve both had precarious encounters with Maul, too!

Satine: Precarious indeed. Is there anything else you can think of?

Sabine: Hmmmmm...well...

Obi-Wan and Ezra: *standing together awkwardly in the background*

Sabine: ...nothing I’d admit publicly.

Satine: I suppose you don’t have your own Korkie, then? A ‘nephew’ of inexplicable origin?

Sabine: Sorry...a what??

Satine: Never mind. Give it a few years.

[sleepy-hyperfixations]

Bucky: So Buck, about that text you sent me last night-

Buck: Curt and Hambone convinced me to have a drink and it was mostly autocorrect.

Bucky: Autocorrect wrote, 'You're so hot I'm in love with you please suffocate me with your thighs'

Buck:.....it's very advanced John.

[schnitzelsemmerl]

Family picture time

Martha Washington: (showing her friends a picture of G.Wash, Laf, Ham and Martha's 2 kids Patsy and John) and this is my lovely family! Aren't they precious? They are so wonderful, I love them so much, my life is great <3

-------------------------------------------

The picture:

G.Wash: martha do we have to do this (holding a piece of paper that says "my 10,423th day of work"

John: (holding a piece of paper that says "first day of 8th grade!")

Patsy: (holding a piece of paper that says "first day of 6th grade!")

Lafayette: (holding a piece of paper that says "first day of 2nd grade!")

Hamilton: (holding a piece of paper that says "if im not holding a piece of paper too, im gonna scream")

[1895locktva]

Watson: Holmes, did you eat my powdered donuts?

Holmes, mumbling with his mouth full: Certainly not.

Watson: Then what is that white powder on your jacket?

Holmes, panicking: Cocaine!