#Write for Revolution

[octavodecimo]

The worst kind of acceptance.

Last stand, Hôtel de Ville, 9 Thermidor

[letters-to-rosie]

timebomb headcanons 💚

(doing this because my fic talk revolution to me is over 15k hits on ao3! it reached that a while ago it's 23k now but I'm slow ahhhh it's a long story)

Jinx is the better cook. She learned the basics while living at The Last Drop and can canonically bake, so it's not too much of a stretch. Ekko's not a disaster in the kitchen, but he follows her lead

both of them suffer pretty bad nightmares; for Jinx, she finds that Ekko holding onto her helps calm her down, but Ekko is more likely to want to get up and clear his head

any shared living space gradually becomes covered in doodles

they are both very cuddly

Jinx's attachment style is more anxious while Ekko tends to be avoidant. typically, this isn't the best mix, but they work together to accommodate each other

they call each other their partner. idk why but I insist on this one lol it just fits

the biggest obstacle in their relationship (be it canon or an AU resembling canon events) is dealing with the harm Jinx caused many of Ekko's friends while they were apart. I think if she were able to get to a healthier place, she'd take the process of reconciliation seriously not only for Ekko's sake but for her own, as part of a process of coming to terms with everything

but I think that would work for her because Jinx, as we see hinted with season 2, has political goals that align with Ekko's and give them plenty of reason to work together. I doubt the Firelights would all love her, but there are certainly ways to imagine them reaching some kind of understanding. Ekko would also find this political Jinx very hot lol

despite their flairs for the dramatic, they have a lot of quiet moments together. they calm each other down, paradoxically. this idea is mostly based on them sitting together on the bed looking super cute in Act I lol

Jinx makes the first move. she says I love you first, too.

[somerandomcockroach]

A large burning canvas could be seen in the distance.

The neat fingers, full of small dents from the friction of the sword handle, caught a small flame, which immediately went out from faint pressure.

There was silence, a living silence, one of those that strains with its sound. A warm wind heated his battered, but carefully polished armor.

"You want to say something"

"I want" Blurr answered, turning sharply to the dark silhouette behind him that was quietly watching him until now. He clenched his fist with a grinding sound, where the spark died out, and demonstratively opened it towards the darkness. "And this is how you are paid for making the world freer! This is what remains of your legacy, and you react as if it doesn’t concern you at all!"

"It does not concern me anymore" the figure answered him calmly.

"Shockwave, stop!"

"Is that an order?"

"It's a request” His angry expression made it clear that this request was an obligation. “I just don't recognize you for these few months." His hand shook slightly with anger. Black smoke seeped through the cracks in his armor.

"I don't recognize myself for even longer time." Blurr visibly trembled at these words, realizing where the dialogue was leading. Shockwave slowly approached, his long, deformed fingers, three times longer than one of Blurr's fingers, carefully reached out to his hand and wrapped his palms in his huge paws, kneeling down to be on the same level with him. "Blurr, I-"

Blurr turned his head away so as not to see one piercing, but such a swampy dim light of his terrifying eye, which had become more precious to him than his weekly knightly brigandage. "Shut up. It's too early, we haven't agreed on when exactly to do this"

The dull mass of metal, which was only a tangible casing, after some hope of catching at least a spark of doubt, only lowered its head heavily. The crackling of the fire continued to be heard around. The soot reached them, gifting them with at least some warm light among the shades of cold before dying. Realization, regret, reluctance were not reflected in the knight's optics. His armor, always proudly looking into the face of danger, now reflected only the cowardly lights of the fire from behind. Despite this, he did not remove his hand from the strong lock until the blades themselves parted. Shockwave disappeared. Disappeared as he had done for the past few months.

Blurr turned back to the burning wall. From afar were heard screams, squeals, grinding, clanking. The column of fire did not subside, as if it was fed by fuel from secret reserves. It had been burning like that for hours, as if to show the greatness of this building over others that would have left only a column of smoke long ago.

Shockwave's last school of dark magic was burning out, as was the will of its creator to live.

[theorahsart]

My Frev comic gained traction on Instagram. Earlier today I was so happy, and I thought

"Yay! Now I can correct some myths about Robespierre to more people!"

Then I got these comments:

And now I'm like "Oh...I have to correct some myths to more people..."

I was trying so hard to keep my cool and just recommend books as I read this comment lmao

[valentinevandal]

My journal entries as a black nonbinary person currently living in the U.S. 01/20/2025 - 01/25/2025

Please excuse my rough handwriting and spelling mistakes, but I think it’s important to keep a written record of one’s own story while living through a rampant corruption of government. My utmost love and support goes out to my community, my fellow queer/trans folks, my fellow people of color. They will try to censor us, sweep us under the rug, deny our very existence and our right to share our truths. Things are gonna be hard, but we will find a way. If you’re reading this, remember that I love you ❤️✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

-Valentine Vandal

[culperscomet]

tallmadge: i need to create aliases for my friends and i to protect our identities as spies in case we are ever discovered!

caleb “if they wanna hang me, they gotta catch me first” brewster:

[dear-ao3]

omg wait you study bones??? i'm a biological anthropology major and i'm very into skeletal anatomy (primarily of primates, but honestly mammalian bone structure is all very similar)...

what's your favorite bone or bone feature? :D

i'm personally very partial to the zygoma, and i'm a big fan of processes (olecranon process my beloved)

ok okay correction to everyone. i dont like study bones as a career. im a fool in an anatomy class. and by a fool i mean i have three separate liberal arts bachelors degrees and have decided to take a stem class. and well. its going about as well as one can expect.

though!!! on the way to said class i have to walk up a staircase with a handrail that looks like the olecranon process/trochlear notch area of the arm and it makes me giggle

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Smell Check [Easy: Failure]

MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 1 (part 2 - part 3)

[astriiformes]

Hi, i just learned about the scientific revolution in europe at school. Can you tell me why you dont think scientific revolutions exist? im curious!

So I feel like I have to lead with the fact that I'm kind of arguing two different points when I say scientific revolutions aren't really a thing

One is that I'm objecting to a specific, extremely foundational theory of scientific revolutions that was put forth by the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, which I think really misrepresents how science is actually practiced in the name of fitting things to a nice model. The other is that I think the fundamental problem with the idea is that it's too vague to effectively describe an actual process that happens.

It's certainly true that there are important advances in science that get referred to as "revolutions" that fundamentally changed their fields -- the shift from the Ptolemaic model of the Solar System to the Copernican one, Darwin's theory of evolution, etc. But there are historians of science (who I tend to agree with) that feel that terming these advances "revolutions" ignores the fact that science is an continuous, accretional process, and somewhat sensationalizes the process of scientific change in the name of celebrating particular scientists or theories over others.

Kuhn's model that he put forth in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (which is one of those books that itself stirred a great deal of activity in a number of fields) suggests science evolves via what he called "paradigm shifts," where new ideas become fundamentally incompatible with the old model or way of doing things, causing a total overturn in the way scientists see the world, and establishing a new paradigm -- which will eventually cave to another when it, too, ceases to function effectively as a model. This theory became extraordinarily popular when it was published, but it's somewhat telling who it's remained popular with. Economists, political scientists, and literary theorists still use Kuhn, but historians of science, in my experience at least, see his work as historically significant but incompatible with how history is actually studied.

Kuhn posits that between paradigm shifts there are periods of "normal science" where paradigms are unquestioned and anomalies in the current model are largely ignored, until they reach a critical mass and cause a scientific revolution. In reality though, there is often real discussion of those anomalies, and I think the scientific process is not nearly so content to ignore them as Kuhn thinks. Throughout history, we see people expressing a real discontent with unsolved mysteries the current scientific model fails to explain, and glossing over those simply because the individuals in question didn't manage to formulate breakthrough theories to "solve" those problems props up the somewhat infamous "great men" model of history of science, where we focus only on the most famous people in the field as significant instead of acknowledging that science is a social enterprise and no research happens in a vacuum!

Beyond disagreeing with Kuhn specifically though, I think the idea of scientific revolutions vastly simplifies how science evolves and changes, and is ultimately a really ahistorical way of thinking about shifts in thinking. Take the example of the shift from Ptolemaic, geocentric thought to the heliocentric Copernican model of the solar system. When does this supposed "revolution" in thought actually start, and when does it "end" by becoming firmly established? You could argue that the publication of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543 was the beginning of the shift in thinking -- but of course, then you have the problem of asking where Copernicus' ideas came from in the first place.

The "great men" model of history would suggest Copernicus was a uniquely talented individual who managed to suggest something no one else had ever put forth, but realistically, he was influenced by the scientists who came before him, just like anyone else. There were real objections to the Ptolemaic model during the medieval era! One of the most famous problems in medieval astronomy was the fact that assuming a geocentric model makes the behavior of the planets seem really weird to an observer on Earth, referred to as retrograde motion, which had to be solved with a complicated system of epicycles that people knew wasn't quite working, even if they weren't able to put together exactly why. There were even ancient Greek astronomers who suggested that the sun was at the center of the solar system, going all the way back to Aristarchus of Samos who lived from around 310-230 BCE!

Putting an end point to the Copernican revolution poses similar challenges. Some people opt to suggest that what Copernicus started, either Galileo or Newton finished (which in and of itself means the "revolution" lasted around 100-150 years), but are we defining the shift in terms of new theories, or the consensus of the scientific community? The latter is much harder to pinpoint, and in my opinion as an aspiring historian of science, also much more important. Again, science doesn't happen in a vacuum. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton may be more famous than their peers, but that doesn't mean the rest of the Renaissance scientific community didn't matter.

Ultimately it's a matter of simple models like Kuhn's (or other definitions of scientific revolutions) being insufficient to explain the complexity of history. Both because science is a complex endeavor, and because it isn't independent from the rest of history. Sure, it's genuinely amazing to consider that Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and the anatomist Andreas Vesalius' similarly influential De humani corporis fabrica were published the same year, and it says something about the intellectual climate of the time. But does it say something about science only, or is it also worth remembering that the introduction of typographic printing a century prior drastically changed how scientists communicated and whose ideas stuck and were remembered? On a similar note, we credit Darwin with suggesting the theory of evolution (and I could write a similarly long response just on the many, many influences in geology and biology both that went into his formulation of said theory), but what does it say that Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the theory of natural selection around the same time? Is it sheer coincidence, or does it have more to do with conversations that were already happening in the scientific community both men belonged to that predated the publication of the Origin?

I think that the concept of scientific revolutions is an important part of the history of the history of science, and has its place when talking about how we conceive of certain periods of history. But I'm a skeptic of it being a particularly accurate model, largely on the grounds of objecting to the "great men" model of history and the idea that shifts in thinking can be boiled down to a few important names and dates.

There's a famous Isaac Newton quote (which, fittingly, did not originate with Newton himself, but can be traced back even further to several medieval thinkers) in which he states "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." I would argue that science, as an endeavor, is far more like standing on the shoulder of several hundred thousand other people in a trenchcoat. This social element of research is exactly why it's so hard to pull apart any one particular revolution, even when fairly revolutionary theories change the direction of the research that's happening. Ideas belong to a long evolutionary chain, and even if it occasionally goes through periods of punctuated equilibrium, dividing that history into periods of revolution and stagnancy ignores the rich scientific tradition of the "in-between" periods, and the contributions of scientists who never became famous for their work.

[jarondont]

okay so i was inspired by @two-bees-poetry to write a few contrapuntal poems (btw, alex, how do you do it, your poetry is MIND-BLOWING)

i wrote one about odysseus and telemachus, one about telemachus and pisistratus, and one about my ocs: annwyl cadarius and her mom kavnili

Backstory for this one: Kavnili was sold into servitude so she could repay her debts—they would have taken Annwyl, but Kavnili insisted that they let her daughter go and take her instead. Annwyl then tried to live on the streets, but was eventually taken to an orphanage, which she ran away from after a few years so she could find her mother. Kavnili, unfortunately ... died of sickness before Annwyl could find her.

[otaku553]

Thinking very hard about an AU idea of mine. Reluctant king Sabo AU!

In which Sabo isn’t saved by Dragon, but survives long enough to drift ashore and be saved by the doctors of Goa Kingdom, who do so only to ransom his medical bills from Sabo’s parents. Sabo’s parents take him back, thinking that his amnesia makes him a clean slate, but Sabo, young and stubborn and unsure of his entire identity, knows that everything is wrong and runs again, and again, and again.

Until at some point, he meets the Revolutionaries, and realizes that he can be useful to them, provide them information, make something good of an inescapable situation. From then on, he starts acting the noble that he was born as, in order to be a more useful informant to the Revolutionaries, until sunk cost fallacy hits and he believes that being a noble is the only way that he can be useful to the Revolutionaries. So at that point, why not take it all the way?

At 17, Sabo becomes one of Princess Sarie’s suitors, and at 17, he has doubts about using the princess for his own goals. Sarie is a romantic, and she wants a dramatic fairy tale of a romance, and she was already charmed, but the moment Sabo opens up to her about not wanting to use her to get to the throne, having lofty ambitions of helping the people (just not the people she thinks he’s talking about), Sabo becomes the one she simply must marry, because surely if she tries hard enough, she can make him love her back.

Soon after, the king and his son die. Sarie’s father and brother die. And while Sabo conveniently ascends to the throne, he also swiftly implicates his father, Outlook, in the assassination of all heirs to the throne, resulting in Outlook’s arrest and subsequent execution. And thus, at 18, Sabo becomes king, and begins to gradually institute great changes to Goa Kingdom.

Design-wise, Sabo wears an eyepatch because his damaged eye is considered a grotesque sight by nobles’ standards. Under the eyepatch, he wears heavy makeup to hide the burn scar. These are both at the behest of his birth parents, who spin a story about Sabo having been born half blind to hide the fact that Sabo had been shot by a Celestial Dragon and save face. To those who have seen his scar, they fabricate a second secret story that he was unfortunately kidnapped as a child. Sabo never does find out, until he regains his memories, where the burn scar is actually from.

[octavodecimo]

Anxiety and paranoia following an assassination attempt.

[inonibird]

“What if I told you that there was a way for you to fight again?”

_

Chapter 3 of Part Six - Grievous of the Sahuldeem series is up!

[lebuc]

revolutions

* bones in my back have felt rain approaching, registered a baby's cry;

move me away, slowly from angry bears wanting my picnic lunch;

repentance looks red from my vantage someone's got to pay for their misdeeds;

the pattering rain provides a fine backdrop for disguising tears like the Temptations wished;

in my soul's disquiet, nonetheless - forward is the future never a rear-view, however ambered.

all to say: when the autocrats

never stepping foot in troughs where real ones tread, deciding who lives or dies or eats

aren't checked,

revolutions will not be televised or publicized; heaven knows. * 9/23 - 11/24 (reblog) - lebuc - revolutions

[theorahsart]

I'm updating again on the whole 'Peter Mcfee emailing me' thing, because: he asked why I was interested in Frev/Robespierre, and I decided to be completely honest/possibly look like a fool, and explain in detail my opinions on Robespierre possibly being autistic, alongside my personal experiences as queer person living in a time of upheaval.

Much to my surprise and delight, Peter has replied with so many interesting things to say!

He said he's very interested in the autism hypothesis, because his grandson is autistic. He has a historian friend who's "a great authority on portraits of Robespierre" (Marianne Gilchrist, I haven't heard of this person) who apparently also strongly believes in the idea of Robespierre being autistic. He linked to their bluesky account, so maybe I should try get in contact one day to have some more interesting discussions~

In his words on his personal opinion on the topic: "I’m not so sure but in any case, I think that many/most people who are passionate and brilliant about something are somewhere ‘on the spectrum’."

Because I mentioned my books being banned as another reason for being interested in Frev, he had this to say, which I also found very interesting (I dont know how to rephrase it, so just gonna copy n paste):

"I guess one of the banned books was your memoir on asexuality and that made me think of the advising I’m doing for a PhD student in Turin. She’s particularly interested in Robespierre’s distinctive masculinity, which was responded to in such polarised fashion among men and women. One key dimension of that was his sexuality and probable celibacy and why that might have been the case."

[novella-november]

Here's a reblog game for Novella November:

What is the worst possible way you can describe what inspired your story?

I'll go first:

"My story was inspired by a subgenre of ancient hp fanfiction, except its actually going to tackle the really big problems in that subgenre and take them seriously while multiplying the Creature Factor by ten so it can tackle a million other xenofiction tropes. Also Megatron from Transformers may or may not have inspired a background character as of my last writing session."