#also TUMBLR isn't letting me post this

[pookiethebloodsucker]

guess what i just became obsessed with!!! it's these lads!!!! i love their dynamic so much, and am obsessed with this injoke of theirs.

[lovecolibri]

*prying myself from the cold hard grip of post limit jail* Did anyone do this yet?

[emiliemaria]

Hey, Charmac community, it's me again.

[frobby]

Heres some of my favorite sorrows of yukio okumura

[some-mari-thoughts]

What do you make of the idea of Blackspace kinda fusing with Hellmari after a post-good ending Omori gave her true life, therefore making her the entire realm by technicality? Omori would do that cuz he needs something to kinda fill the void that appeared when Sunny left and he's getting desperate after not finding anything in Headspace to do that...

(woooooooooo explaining my omori au lore-)

Truthfully this is so wildly different to my idea of headspace and omori and after-good ending that i cannot make anything of this! i think that's up to u to decide

[blighted-lights]

I feel like your approach to criticizing a certain fandom was the wrong way of doing it. Don't get me wrong, you are a hundred percent right about the lack of representation for certain characters. But you had to have known that you would've gotten backlash for insinuating that the only reason that content is being made is because people are... misogynistic? The characters are well-written; that's why they get attention. The women are also well-written, you're right! But instead of getting mad at the people who enjoy specific characters, you could contribute to what you want to see in the fandom. Make fanfiction, make art, talk about your favorite ships, talk about your favorite characters, talk about the head-canons you have for them, connect with other fans of those characters, make AUs with them, make the fandom you want to see! But I don't know what you were expecting when you come out and say in the tags "you must be misogynists for liking these characters and you must be awful people for playing around with AUs" even though every fandom on this website does that. That was hostile and was only going to get a hostile response in return especially when you specifically put it in the tags for fans of those characters to see. Because it reads as you insinuating that fans of these characters existing is why you don't get any representation of your favorite characters. Or, alternatively, that everyone only likes certain characters because they're misogynists who hate women characters. People make content of them because they like them and because they want to make content of them.

Want more content of the things you want to see? Pay or support the artists and writers who make that content or start making it yourself. Its not helpful to complain that some characters get more attention than others but then make no attempt to contribute to it in any meaningful way. You cannot just get mad at people for liking characters and expect the fandom to magically decide its going to give you the content you want.

This is a long-winded way of saying you are correct in that the fandom seems to hyper-focus on some characters over others. But the way you approached that discussion was combative, hostile, and unhelpful, and you're not going to motivate a community into making content by being passive-aggressive to the people making the content they want to make. Be the change you want to see in the fandom, or support the artists and writers who make the content you want to see.

Its like... You can't complain your garden isn't growing if you're not watering it and not adding seeds, and instead are blaming everyone else for having plants in their gardens that you don't like.

anon i dont know how to tell you this but if you felt the need to write a five-paragraph essay talking about how i need to be nicer to other people when i am pointing out misogyny in a fandom space then, well... actually, i dont know what to tell you other than the fact that i was trying to be aggressive and im not going to be civil about misogyny. my post wasn't made in the hopes of getting people to make more content of the women in borderlands because that would never in ten fucking million years work. it was not a constructive post. you are assuming i have some sort of goodwill about this and i don't. i wanted to be an asshole because, surprise, i am an asshole. funny how that works.

you are also pulling so much of this out of nowhere and putting so many words in my mouth that i dont even know where to begin with it?? i mean this in the kindest way possible nonnie but. this is a wild response to make when all i said was essentially "wow it sure is weird that the majority of content made for bl is focused on only three men when there's a full cast of amazing women to look at" and then "its also weird that people are making aus to erase the canon abuse and exploitation of a CHILD in order to make jack a good father". but thanks for the essay, nonnie. i guess.

[chimchiri]

This might take a while until I respond publicly because I really wanna doodle 2-3 things for Fleetfoot... (maybe Soarin too but mostly Fleets) but I'll be a busy bee the next few days

[stonyponyofficial]

i love seeing how much paratext i can fit into the tags. read my footnotes boy

[vodid]

ok i keep seeing awfully targeted vagueposts about me pertaining to my silly idw-exclusionary prowlsweep campaign — which i didn't expect to have gained so much traction and negative reactions — so, while yes, i understand lighthearted jokes may still hit home a little too closely, i'm not responsible for your feelings /neu. but i get it. we're protective of our blorbos and i have a hard time with the jokes too. especially about prowl and especially especially about idw prowl, believe it or not. i do get upset over them, which i suppose was why i ran my campaign like that. many of the polls (from what i could see, i probably missed a lot) were just "my blorbo is so sweet he deserves to win" but swervesweep was solidly "do not vote for prowl he is a shit man" you can't tell me there wasn't some sort of bias because of idw prowl. there's a difference between lifting up a contender and slandering another so horribly. voting because you hate, not because you love.

so yeah, just like some had gotten upset over my campaign (even if it was a joke), i got upset upon seeing all the negative tags (even if they were jokes). i admit to getting defensive and decided to run a funny campaign focused on g1 and tfa, because there was more love for them and i wanted to try to make something a little silly but positive out of it. like "hey, ignore idw for just a second because i promise there are husband-material prowls." i do admit i may have let my saltiness show through that campaign too much, so this is a bit hypocritical of me and i fully acknowledge that.

i got more to say tho shdfdsfs this got long and messy, sorry. i'll put it under a cut. i don't usually talk this in depth about my opinion of idw prowl (or just. any opinion.) ironically for this exact reason but,,

i so desperately want to like idw prowl. i really do. and in some way, i do like him (surprising, i know). but i can't look past the way the writers and the fandom treat him. that's what i truly hate. he gets insanely (and imo undeserved) bad rep and i was just sick and tired of seeing all the unreasonable hate for him from cherrypickers. so if idw prowl is going to severely /neg affect people's opinions of prowl as a whole, then i'd prefer he didn't exist. that's my harsh and albeit a bit childish truth but i'm not sorry for it.

i dislike his portrayal for a number of reasons in that it's just not him to me. i can certainly acknowledge a character doesn't have to be consistently the same every time, and that idw was meant to be an expansion of these characters and what they can be. but it doesn't mean i like the direction they took with him. what they did to him/had him do. it was like they took his core being, what made his character solidly his, threw it at the mirror to reverse it and wondered why it shattered.

if it weren't prowl, i wouldn't have as much of a problem with his character in idw. but unfortunately, he is. in concept, he is a very interesting character with a beautifully tragic story and maybe i would've liked his skrunkly ass /affectionate. but he's just not my rodrick.

also i can't get past the ableism of his portrayal 🫶 that's not a page in my book i'd like to add besties. and not a page i'm getting into in this post.

it goes so much deeper than "wahh big titty cop man is so mean" like cmoooon. i'm not a coward for asking people to look past his wrongdoings in idw they unequivocally hate him for when literally everybody else in idw has in some way done equally bad or worse things ...but are still unconditionally loved? nah. if they can stop their bias for one (1) second, maybe they could see more. thus, idw-exclusionary campaign. in an attempt to get people to stop seeing every prowl as bad. because like i said, idw taints the fuck out of non-idw prowls. how is that any fair? (and how are we prowl lovers supposed to feel seeing all that?)

these are entirely my opinions. i'm entitled to mine just as you are yours, and i am entitled to spin the campaign in any way i want. idw-exclusionary, pro-jazzprowl, boob-loving 💖, what have you. if you didn't like it, then you were more than welcome to start your own campaign alongside me! you didn't have to leave it to me. should i have maybe tried to convince people why idw prowl's wrongdoings don't make him deserving of such hatred? sure, that'd been nice. but i'm not well enough equipped for that. you can do that tho, i'd love to see it

i can't stop you from vagueposting and i won't tell you your opinions are invalid. but if you get to share your thoughts, i'd like to as well. we can both be critical of these topics in our own way and it'd be nice to come to an understanding instead of having to resort to blocking and vagueposting. (me? the coward? /j) you have every right to do that though, especially if its for your own comfort, and i really can't stop you. but it'd be real nice if we didn't outright attack the person and call them names. this problem is bigger than me. i just happened to speak on it.

all in all, it's not that serious of a situation — or rather, i wish it wasn't and i'm upset that i'm even writing this. i shouldn't have to write this, but you guys cannot for the life of yourselves understand the basic reason behind the campaign. or do you just refuse to? did you think to ask why?

we're both protective of prowl. idw or not. we were on the same team and it's not an awful thing to want to encourage people to consider other prowls before idw. i want them to see he can be good! i want them to see what i see in him. he's just a little blorbo man and it's funny in a bit of a sad way that i'm getting so heated over a fictional character and a silly poll.

sorry to poll ops. i didn't want it to spiral like that. i truly did have a lot of fun running my little campaign, even if it looked a bit (lightheartedly) aggressive. i just wanted my blorbo to win fandom favor for once 💔 jazz vs prowl would have been absolutely hilarious too. even as a non-j/p shipper, i hope you'll agree it'd have been funny to see us losing our minds over having to choose but that's besides the point!

in the end (it didn't even matter) we're all robot lovers. and it's sad we tend to have such a difficult time getting along. i'm here to make art and it's all supposed to be fun and games.

sorry to my many new followers too, this isn't the best first impression. i try to keep this stuff off my blog. i hope u like my art and thanks for sticking around — yes, even u swervesweepers (you absolute TRAITORS /lh /lh 💕)

take care of yourselves

[squisheebugdoodles]

technology is trying to gaslight me tonight i swear to fuck

[wildkitte]

Let’s talk about Creusa!

Hooray @aeneiddaily has finally reached my favouritest blorbo of the Aeneid, Aeneas’ wife Creusa. I just finished my bachelor’s thesis about her (specifically what Maurus Servius Honoratus says about her character, also comparing to R. G. Austin’s commentary) and she’s been a special little brainrot of mine for the last couple years even before last schoolyear’s deeper dive into madness.

For now I want to just talk about some basics when it comes to Creusa, and then some more text based analysis later (probably tomorrow and the day after, I suppose?). Please note that my information on the topic is still limited - I only got as far as a BA thesis can go (around 33 pages overall), and I mostly used articles written in English and whatever was accessible through my university’s library.

Let’s start with a little introduction, and once Aeneid Daily gets to the Juicy Bits (aka lines 2.768–795) I’ll get to some deeper discussions of her character and what commentators, both modern and ancient, have said about her.

(And, uh… spoilers for the ending of Book 2? If that is a concern?)

SO, Creusa! Who is Creusa? Well, she is Aeneas’ wife and the mother of their son Ascanius, and she dies at the end of the Book 2, these are the basic facts. But are they? There’s actually some interesting stuff relating to her tradition.

Aeneas’ wife appears in earlier tradition, in both art and literature. In the famous depiction of Aeneas carrying his father and the penates out of Troy, he’s occasionally accompanied by a woman (or sometimes two) depicted with him, assumedly his wife. Sometimes she tags along with Aeneas to Italy, and in some traditions, she is saved and swept away by Venus or Cybele. To my knowledge she is never captured by the Greeks (like poor Andromache and Cassandra). For some reason Vergil decided to create a version where she dies (and I will get to the possible motives of this in another post), and that became the popular tradition after Aeneid was published.

One fascinating thing about Creusa (that drives me ABSOLUTELY INSANE) is actually her name – and specifically that it might not be her name at all.

She has been called Εὐρυδίκη (Latin spelling often Eurydica), and the name later changes to Κρέουσα (lat. Creusa). It is not certain when or why this change happens exactly. Pausanias talks about this in Hellados periegesis and explain that Creusa (Κρέουσα) is “naturally Aeneas’ wife” (εἶναι γὰρ δὴ καὶ Αἰνείου τὴν Κρέουσαν γυναῖκα) but that i.e., the author Leskheos has also used the name Εὐρυδίκη (Paus. 10. 26.1-2). But suddenly in the 1st century BC, Livy, Vergil and Dionysius of Halicarnassus start using the name Creusa – I have not been able to find an explanation as to why this happened. Austin speculates that it might have been some new finding of the antiquarians of the time, or perhaps one of the authors came up with the name first and it caught on (Pausanias certainly sheds no more light on this).

But hey why is the name important at all? Well, you might have picked up on the familiar name Eurydica there and maybe even made the connection to Vergil’s Georgics – and you would be absolutely correct to do so! While Vergil is partially creating his own tradition with Creusa, he references his own passage on Orpheus and Eurydice in the 4th book of the Georgics (4.453-527), down to direct quotes pulled from this previous work. There are some pretty obvious similarities between Aeneas and Creusa and Orpheus and Eurydice, which I found to be an interesting add-on to the character of Creusa (I’ll also come back to this later – let’s talk about PARALLELS BABY). In a way Vergil’s Creusa carries with her the earlier tradition of Aeneas’ wife, and Vergil is able to connect all these versions of her into one while also reinventing her for the purposes of the epic. (I am very normal about this) (trust me)

Her being Ascanius’ mother is actually something that has been contended as well. Servius mentions that it has been called into question – there are some who think Ascanius is Lavinia’s son (he mentions Livy as one; see Serv. Aen. 1.7) rather than Creusa’s. In Vergil’s version Creusa is very explicitly Ascanius’ mother, and this actually has a deeper reasoning than just a matter of taste. I probably don’t have to explain to anyone the importance of connecting Aeneas and through him Iulus to emperor Augustus, but it is indeed connected to that. Not only is Iulus of divine origin (being the grandson of Venus) but he is also descendent from the royal family  of Troy – Creusa is Priam’s daughter, Hector’s sister, and Vergil brings this up a lot (as does Servius, he’s really into proving the point). The Trojan royal family line brings even more legitimacy to gens Julia‘s right to power. Here Vergil creates a political myth (like Tarrant (1997) puts it) to emphasize Augustus' legitimacy and Creusa being Ascanius’ mother is an integral part of that.

But hey so, Creusa’s death, what’s up with that?

Once we get to her disappearance, I’ll talk about this a bit more because there is actually a lot of interesting discourse there, both in modern research as well as Servius’ commentary (Commentarius in Vergilii Opera, from c. 4th and 5th century (I include both Servius and Servius Auctus and use them interchangeably)). It all starts from today’s entry, lines 2.675-678, but I’ll talk about it more once we have full context.

So here’s my little introduction to Creusa, I have a lot more to say (I had 33 pages to say, actually, and would’ve had more if I didn’t have to narrow my research topic down, boo).

Oh Creusa, Creusa, you mysterious creature, most loyal of wives and yet another tragic female character who must die for Aeneas’ fate to be fulfilled. She’s a wife, she’s a mother, she’s chosen by gods and even… immortal? More to come tomorrow!

(Edit: the rest of my posts on her can be found in my creusa-tag)

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

A post in honor of General Jarod Fire Emblem my precious.

[fantasy-costco]

Ramble vent in the tags about. Tumblr.

[daz4i]

speaking of the fyodor age scare from twitter. I've seen a post running around with supposed leaks from chapter 108, presented as smth asagiri said in an interview about how fyodor's ability and backstory are gonna be revealed and then his ability will kill sigma

while i don't think the person who posted them on tumblr did so maliciously, they did say they found it on tiktok, and that the person who made the tiktok found it on twitter. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the tiktoker also wasn't being malicious but rather misled, but who knows

there's a lot of bullshit spread around on bsd twitter - like the fyodor age thing, which was later confirmed to come from a user who posted "exclusive information" multiple times in the past that later turned out to be wrong

but i think the biggest giveaways for this one being wrong are

1. asagiri said he loves sigma a lot which is why he wrote nikolai saving him from the fall. why save a character, get them to do almost nothing in the current arc other than comment about what's going on around them, and set up a future arc for them just to kill them before it happens. in the "life is worth living" series where there was yet to be an irreversible death in the main story, no less.

2. WHY OH WHY would asagiri go on an interview and reveal future plot twists??! what is there to gain from this. the setup to reveal fyodor's ability is already there. you don't need to hype people up for it even more. and you definitely shouldn't reveal a character is going to die in that reveal

like the first part i get not knowing or even thinking it's all gonna be a fakeout bc this would make sigma's death more shocking. but the second part. literally. this is just bad marketing and i don't think any higher up would let him say smth like that either. i am asking you to please think critically before spreading this sort of thing

also let's all collectively decide not to believe anything on bsd twt unless they supply direct sources to what they're saying.

[em-dashes]

now that suddence is out to betas i'm oscillating between getting more and more self conscious and overthinking about everything that might be wrong with the story vs. knowing that is literally THE POINT of betas and i can't in good conscience let my story slide out into the world with a bunch of faults i didn't catch simply because i was too close to it

[aeide-thea]

very much an off-the-cuff post so there may well be bugs, i'm still workshopping my thinking here, but—

i seem to see posts fairly regularly in which a member of some marginalized group A is objecting to attempts by less marginalized group B to make connections between discrimination against A and harm experienced by B (the main thing i have in mind here is when people attempt to align themselves with visibly-trans people by pointing out the ways that transphobic legislation also impacts gnc cis people, theatrical crossdressing, &c, but there are definitely also examples along other axes)—

and like. the main objection i've seen from A is 'why do they have to connect my experience to their experience in order to care about it? why can't they just agree that i shouldn't be discriminated against as a matter of, like, compassion for fellow humanity?'

and this reaction does honestly always just seem a little, idk, naive to me?? like, i don't know, it's gotten very popular ime to complain about normies' clumsy attempts to Understand Instead of Just Accepting [this feels potentially linked to like. the way many of us now prefer silently clicking 'like' to producing our own original, maybe clumsy, responses? but don't @ me on that point], probably because a lot of the time they aren't genuinely seeking to Understand but just to point out all the ways our queerness &c doesn't fit their received (unexaminedly conservative) understanding of the world, which feels to us (very reasonably!) like renewed pressure from the establishment to make ourselves fit that established framework, and so we resist… but at the same time, idk, maybe i'm just outing myself as lesser-than-thou here, but for every sort of person i was raised to distrust and have since arrived at genuine loving acceptance/appreciation of, it's involved first coming to understand their frame of reference at least a little? not to say that there isn't a place for shutting up and listening while you're still working to understand, because there definitely is! but i do kind of think this idea that's become popular in certain liberal circles of like, 'you don't have to understand my experience, you just have to respect it,' is fine and true for keeping peace with strangers, but really isn't a recipe for winning friends or influencing people—it's a recipe for keeping people at arm's length where they can't hit you. and then people turn around and want to apply that rule to coalition-building, and get all shocked-pikachu-face when others seek to identify more active points of connection.

...

another ~Radical Objection to Liberal Approaches~ i've seen, though often not specifically in this context (of discussing the way attempts to oppress A have knock-on effects for B), is like—'there's no point in deconstructing their logic because it's fundamentally illogical! insert that sartre quote abt anti-semites!' and like. no, there's absolutely no point in debating their logic with them. but fundamentally when people assert a logical resistance to bigoted positions they are not doing it to Own The Bigots, imo, or at any rate shouldn't be; they're (we're) doing it to reaffirm the basis of their/our own camp's position, namely, we see your knee-jerk fears and reject them; we substitute instead a patient allegiance to logic, that reasons its way into compassion.

that said, obviously there's a conversation to be had here about, like, platforming bad positions, and to what extent deconstructing them is implicitly platforming them! but. i do think that complaining that logic won't win over bigots is missing the very fundamental point that the logic isn't for the bigots: it's for us. we're talking to ourselves; we're affirming ourselves. and yeah, we need to understand that this sort of intra-party discussion doesn't, on its own, constitute sufficient activism! messages need to be communicated beyond the bounds of the party! but i do think i disagree that there's no place for it.