#and because of the tagging problem if I like anything Greek myth related my for you and other tabs are instantly flooded with epic

[sunnist4rs]

Tw Rant

I hate how the TRAs have to take over everything and make it about their stupid message. I’ve been a huge Greek Mythology fan all my life and Telemachus has been my favourite character ever for years and years (and years).

Personally I love Epic the musical, I think it’s a funny adaptation of my favourite book but in Different Beast (my fave song from Epic but it’s being ruined) Odysseus sings ‘I don’t have a daughter’. This is perfectly fine in context but the Tras have started using it to joke about trans!Telemachus.

At first I ignored this but they’re still talking about it, drawing art about it and now they’ve started saying ‘this is the modernised Odyssey’. I even saw people saying it’s transphobic not to headcannon Telemachus this way. It’s so annoying seeing them take a character like Telemachus who I’ve cared about before some of these people learn the alphabet and turn him into some annoying as trans ally.

I have plushys named after this guy (parents didn’t let me name our dog after him), see him as the ideal (and only good tbh) man and he’s just generally my comfort character. I don’t want to associate him with the removal of woman’s rights and the disfigurement (idk if that’s the right word so sorry if it’s mean) of children. It sucks that they have to go and trash everything without knowing anything about the source material.

[awed-frog]

in which caesar doesn’t do anything much and all the women are named julia

[Hi, this is me stanning Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography of Caesar. I studied Classics, but not this period, so all I can contribute here are squeals of delight, a few mistakes and the occasional witty comment. If you’d like to know more, please buy the book - it’s really good and a fun read.]

PART 2

The thing is - there’s a lot of boring relevant political stuff going on in this chapter, but I’m mostly fascinated by the glimpses we get into the world of Roman women. 

As I said, this is not really my area, so I know random, unconnected facts about how life was like for them; also it doesn’t make much sense to talk about ‘Roman women’, because, as a reminder, ‘Rome’ stretches from the 14th century BC to the 14th century AD, came to include dozens of very different regions, and obviously was home to an incredibly diverse population. And if we’re talking about the late Republican / imperial aristocracy, there’s a sharp divide anyway: on the one hand, the ‘ideal woman’ is the same old model we’re all used to and heard about (silent, obedient, virtuous, chaste, a perfect mother and so on), but on the other, Roman noblewomen had a lot more freedom than, say, their Greek counterparts, so there was usually some political scheming going on - something that in Greece was reserved to a handful of very well-placed courtesans. 

(In this sense, think about the contrast between Lucretia, the mythological wife of Collatinus, whose fridging created the Republic, and Agrippina, mother of Nero, empress and all-round badass bitch.)

Anyway, this chapter made me think about women because it starts with Caesar being born and getting his name - it’s sort of an urban legend, btw, that every single Roman had three names: that was just for the Moste Noblest - and how Goldsworthy casually mentions that, unlike men, women of noble birth would just take their family surname as first name. In Caesar’s family, for instance, all the women were named Julia.

(As a reminder: his given name was Caius, then ‘Julius’ identified the tribe, and finally ‘Caesar’ was a nickname that was possibly given to his grandfather for something elephant-related. 

People whose grandfathers did not do elephant-related stuff generally never enjoyed the prestige of a funny nickname passed down through the generations.)

So it’s bad enough that twins might be named ‘Peter and Not-Peter’ or ‘Peter and Twin’, but imagine going to the park with your buggy and meeting your old friend Oldest She-Jones (daughter of Ferdinand Jones), now married to George David Taylor, and her five kids - Louis David Taylor, She-Taylor, She-Taylor the Second, She-Taylor the Third and She-Taylor Born on Christmas. So damn cute, and also the reason why the Romans never developed smartphones or social media - how the hell are you supposed to find someone on Vultocodex when every single cousin and aunt has the exact same name?

Poor management, that is.

But anyway - as I said, there’s a dissonance here because women being treated like garbage (like, not given normal names and married off at fourteen) also led to the very peculiar phenomenon: generations of (male) politicians and VIPs being raised by very forceful, strong, and ambitious (widowed) mothers. Because if you count old age, wars, trampolining injuries (let’s be honest, men have always been obsessed with attempting dangerous stunts just for the fun of it) and the general risks of Roman politics, it was very usual for a noble kid to not even remember his father at all.

(Nero is a good example of how weird and all-consuming this boy-mother relationship could become - there’s entire books about it, but I’d point 16-and-over readers to Suetonius’ Life of Nero for details.

Keep in mind 95% of it is propaganda because Suetonius hated Nero, but still. HBO-worthy stuff in there.)

All this to say - we know that Caesar had a very close relationship with his mom (named ‘Aurelia’ because - you guessed it - she came from the Aurelii family), who was a near perfect figure of virtue, intelligence, beauty and common sense. Very powerful in her own right, Aurelia raised Caesar basically on her own, because her (much older) husband was either away at war or dead for most of their marriage.

Aside from drinking in Aurelia’s wisdom, Caesar’s education also included the normal lessons noble Roman boys were required to learn: self-worth, narcissism, delusional manias, rhetoric, martial arts, horse-riding, and writing really bad fanfiction based on Greek myths.

And now for the MEANWHILE part.

(I have no idea why this gif was tagged ‘meanwhile’, but I’m not enough of an idiot to let it go to waste, so.)

Meanwhile, all sort of messes were going on.

As I’m sure you remember, at some point the consul was Marius - Caesar’s uncle and a military genius, but not much of a politician. His negotiation tactic of choice was secretly inviting groups of unconnected people to his house on the same night, serving them dinner in two separate rooms so they wouldn’t see one another and try to work out some kind of agreement between them. Whenever a new point came up, Marius would say he had diarrhoea, pretend to run to the bathroom and instead sit down with the second group and see what they thought about the first group’s proposal.

(Isn’t ancient Rome magnificent?)

A big problem Marius had to deal with was how to grant citizenship to the allied tribes in Italy without pissing off current citizens. Basically no one wanted these other guys to be given new rights, but since they supplied more than half the soldiers of the Roman army and got nothing in return, their patience was running a bit thin. At some point, Roman bureaucrats started to erase foreign-born citizens from their lists claiming they were not actual citizens (something so openly dishonest NO OTHER GOVERNMENT would EVER attempt it again), and next yet another tribune working on a citizenship reform was stabbed to death in the street. 

So the allies went to war. 

(This war, confusingly, is known as the Social War, because ‘socius’ means ‘ally’ in Latin.)

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. Most of the allied communities had been part of the Roman republic for I don’t want to check but let’s say decades, they lived side by side with Roman families and fought in the same wars, so it was more of a civil war than anything else. Some tribes chose to remain faithful to Rome, others didn’t. Lots of people died.

Caesar was too young to be a soldier, but this was Cicero’s first taste of war (bet you never thought of that weaselly weasel as a soldier, uh? appearances can be deceiving, folks!). Marius was also involved, but since he was old as shit and had famously weak and leaky guts (hahahhaha), he mostly stayed out of active combat, which wasn’t all that normal for a Roman general. In the end, the whole of Italy, down to defeated tribes, cows, dogs and random patches of mossy rocks, was granted citizenship and everyone went home. Their votes, however, were inserted in the system in such a way that they didn’t count much. 

On the whole, the one winner of this war was Lucius Cornelius Sulla, one of the military commanders, who became a consul soon after.

Another war, because this is Rome and Romans were dicks, but! this one was in the East, which means every single soldier would get super rich and also! wars in the East were considered easy because *insert racist trope here* and! Sulla had been promised that, as the big winner of the Social War, he could go there with his legions and basically enjoy this Disneyland of golden cups and ultraviolence but! at the last moment, Marius, who never liked Sulla much, managed to snatch the commandership from him, which! was completely legal but also *insert outraged emoji* and wait for it! instead of going gentle into the good night, Sulla made a fiery speech to his soldiers all like GUESS WHAT FOLKS WE’RE STUCK HERE SCRATCHING OUR TESTICULI AND THOSE IDIOTS FROM THE 25TH ARE TAKING YOUR GOLD AND YOUR UNWILLING WOMEN and! Sulla’s entire army marched! on! the! city! of! Rome!

It was the first time a Roman army had ever invaded Rome. Nobody was expecting it, and people panicked. Sulla’s men won easily, burned down some buildings, killed some people, generally had a great time; and then Sulla announced a bounty for anyone who’d disembowel his political enemies (including Marius) because he didn’t have time to go to Braavos and learn how to do it himself (remember, he still had his war waiting for him in the East).

(This turned out to be a success, btw. One guy was even killed by his slave - Sulla gave him the promised reward, then shoved him off a mountain because duh, slave and “When I said ‘anyone’, I meant people, not IKEA furniture” and “Honestly”.)

As nobody could have imagined and/or predicted, as soon as Sulla left for Greece Weak Guts Marius came back with an army and took back the city, beheading his way to the Senate and leaving a trail of blood wherever he passed. As soon as he got there, however, he dropped dead - heart attack, trampolining, diarrhoea, who can tell - and the city was taken over by his second-in-command, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

(Man, what a ride.)

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know what Caesar was doing during this time.

Personally, I like to imagine him in Rome - a well-dressed, grey-eyed 15-year-old, freshly orphaned, horrified and exhilarated by the violence exploding all around him - I see him running down the streets, stopping to watch the corpses float in the dark waters of the Tiber, daring his friends to go and touch the severed heads nailed to the doors of the Senate; recognizing many of those heads as friends and colleagues of his father and uncle (passing a hesitant finger on the cold flesh, remembering how they’d once laughed and frowned and spoken about boring matters from the dais). 

The truth is, Caesar was just a kid. He was supposed to learn about the Republic, and his own role in making it great, by watching his elders. 

God knows what he actually learned, and what he thought, as he was passing through Rome’s paved streets, now shimmering with blood. 

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[hourglassgod]

Mythical Creature Test

<https://uquiz.com/vt5GNs/which-mythical-creature-are-you?p=47965>

I was tagged by @milk-and-ilya

I’ll tag... @atomicshitpost and @agent-darkbootie

It’s basically doing the quiz for your apprentice(s).

Nero: Ogre

An ogre is a being usually depicted as a large, hideous, manlike monster that eats human beings. Ogres frequently feature in mythology, folklore, and fiction throughout the world. They appear in many classic works of literature and are most often described in fairy tales and folklore as eating babies. In mythology, ogres are often depicted as inhumanly large and tall and having a disproportionately large head, abundant hair, unusually colored skin, a voracious appetite, and a strong body. Ogres are closely linked with giants and with human cannibals in mythology. If you get this result, you are known to be very sensitive. You may often be very negative due to the people around you. The moment someone decides to ruin your day, you automatically become bitter. People generally steer clear of you because you are known to start trouble. You do have a few close friends, but not many. Ogres are usually seen as the jock type of creatures, so there is a possibility you have amazing endurance and great physical strength. You also have a problem with speaking before you think.

((Savage. I mean, he is a swordsman. And slightly crazy. But that’s to be expected when you lose part of your humanity coming back from the dead.))

Alys: Dragon

A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern mythologies, and the Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian countries. Getting this result, you are generally viewed as the motherly figure of your friend group. You look after your friends and tend to their needs. For example, you probably lend your friends money or do favors for them without asking for anything in return. You don't need anything else but the satisfaction that you're helping your them out. You give the impression of being always easygoing and harmless until someone pushes your buttons. When you lash out, you become NASTY. You will insult, unrelentingly rage, and spew every curse word until someone is on the floor crying, especially when someone insults or hurts your friends. You're very protective of the people that you love and NOT a force to be reckoned with.

((Honestly, I was just like “wot???” until I read it. This makes a lot of sense. Considering their reaction to Lucio was “burn the painting because you were a bitch to Nadia” it is surprisingly accurate))

Alastair Nemrac: Phoenix

In Greek mythology, a phoenix or phenix is a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn. Associated with the sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. According to some sources, the phoenix dies in a show of flames and combustion, although there are other sources that claim that the legendary bird dies and simply decomposes before being born again. According to some texts, the phoenix could live over 1,400 years before rebirth. Getting this result, you are probably a very mature person at heart. You're practically laidback about everything and couldn't care less about anything. You're definitely a 'go with the flow' type of person who doesn't mind change. You're generally apathetic and you don't exhibit much emotion. People don't mind having you around because of how calm and collected you are. You're open-minded and tend to see things from both sides of a situation. You don't like to argue or fight and you typically like to talk things out. You have a few close friends, but not many.

((Fitting for my distant, cunning, apathetic mathematician apprentice. Do phoenix(es?) sing?))

[someoneimsure]

Aghdjd cass cain x Tim Drake Anon here I KNOW it’s so hard to find tagged content of the ship I want, if there’s even that much of it to begin with. Why are there so many characters named Cassandra 😭!! Also thanks for answering the ask so in depth with panels and all that was really nice of you. If anything I think I’d be #cancelled because of the age difference between the two rather than their ‘blood’ relations but I just wanted to make sure because I never really see posts about cass being anyone’s sister, I more get the vibe that general fandom views her more as like an associate if anything? But yea you’re probably right about general fandoms reaction thanks for giving it to me straight <3

I ask myself that question every single day! Why can't DC editorial come up with names that aren't just the names of random people on staff or that one Greek myth about speaking the truth and nobody listening? It's a sad state of affairs, anon. :(

Aww, thanks!! I try to be as nice as possible! <3 I want to make sure you're informed about the facts and unfortunate realities of our fandom spaces <3

I have looked at a lot of meta on ages and can assure you that age difference would not be a problem as long as fanon knows their real ages. (Btw, Cass is only 2.5 years older than Tim and they met when he was 16-17 and her 19.)

If anyone does try to use ages against you, anon, there's plenty of real life things we can try to get them to focus on. Such as how 16 is the legal age in many states for which a young adult can have sex with someone older than them even though girls are more likely to die giving birth if they are pregnant before they reach the age of 20. Unfortunately, my experience has told me that they rarely ever read the links. :(

I also found some really nice dc meta when I started asking myself 'How do Tim and Cass see each other in canon' question and found out they have met before in Batgirl 2000 #59. I like how their relationships with Steph are brought up in this one and how their ideologies conflict but they aren't enemies, just respectful.

*stares at Batman hard*

Thanks for the ask! <3