#in case you didn't figure it out

[canada-with-a-blog]

here's a picrew I did of me! Canada

and this is Canada dark addition

I don't have any moots from this sideblog yet so I'm just gonna tag the gimmick/roleblogs that I'm following that are similar to this one that I don't already see in this picrew chain

@maryland-no-rabies @the-province-of-nova-scotia-real @the-principality-of-sealand @totally-ikea @totally-china @totally-romania @buildabearfr /nf

I’ve seen like 10 posts of Picrew chains today and while I only have 1 mutual on here I wanted to do it so

Make yourself with this Picrew and reblog

@moodlevoodle and also anyone else who wants to

[buttercupshands]

I started drawing this next day after I finished Act 6

13 or so days and it's finished!

Main things are traditional and Loop's body was edited digitally after

Unedited it looks like this

I've been torn on how to do Loop's body for the entirety of lining, also

A bit sad the main lines are visible only as a wip, most of this thing is literally just a ton of sharp lines

I think it's also my first day of drawing, Loop is just a sketch here (feat. my leg)

I even finished the beans before it so they were a moral support, because if you let me things like this take a year

[izzyviol3t]

Opposites attract, huh?

[chiyana]

Bruce: now, for the last part of this meeting

Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Damian, Cass, and Duke: ?

Bruce: -turns around to bring up a power point presentation, the title card of which just reads 'Please Be Normal About Tim'-

Bruce: -turns back around-

Bruce: ...Tim why are you the only one still here

Tim: I just like power point presentations

[spinnysocks]

hey *throws toxic tragic kiburi x ushari au at you*

kiburi wants to become the leader of his float. a snake has some bigger ideas for him. ushari says that kiburi can become leader of the pridelands too, then crocodiles will finally be respected to his standards. ushari wants respect for all reptiles. kiburi doesn't mind that. he believes him.

the plan fails, and he has nothing but his friends now. kiburi finds ushari, who offers him something in return for keeping his life. kiburi should kill him, but he doesn't.

kiburi meets scar, who ushari has complete trust in. if he follows scar, he could rule someday. with ushari by his side, reptiles could finally be respected. trusting him is working in his favour.

the army never wins. kiburi can feel every bruise, cut and scrape that doesn't have a chance to heal. he can see the weariness in his float from fighting every day. the pressure is destroying them all. ushari never gains a single tear in his perfect scales. scar rants and rages about how the army isn't good enough. ushari never has to face scar's wrath. maybe he was wrong to trust him, but there's no turning back now, there is nothing else. and traitors are no better than dead.

janja turns against them. he survives their attempt to kill him and finds happiness somehow. there is no peace for the army, so they're sure he was never really one of them. kiburi doesn't feel any guilt. scar promises this is the last battle to win the pridelands. ushari is sure of it, so kiburi is too.

and he was right. the army wins the very moment that ushari's venom infects kion's mind. there is nothing that the pridelanders can do. for once, there is victory for the army. for once, there is peace.

fire quickly takes over every patch of land in sight. all of it is theirs. kiburi's float will never have to get another wound again. they will never have to go hungry again. they will never have to share again. they will never be unhappy again. kiburi is glad he trusted ushari.

until all the lands had nothing left. there isn't enough water. his float are gone. kiburi barely manages to get by. this is all ushari's fault. such a smart snake should have known better.

ushari tricked him. those comforting words of ruling the lands were all false promises. everything was a lie, it must have been. scar's reign meant nothing could survive. such a smart snake should have known that.

ushari betrayed him, so kiburi makes sure he brings justice.

[birchbow]

Chapters: 2/17 Rating: Mature Relationships: Gamzee Makara & Karkat Vantas, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara, Lord English (Homestuck), Doc Scratch (Homestuck), Homestuck Ensemble, Calliope (Homestuck), The Felt (Homestuck), It's really a 'everybody is around doing things' fic I genuinely don't know how to tag this Additional Tags: Winter Soldier Pastiche, with everything that entails so read carefully!, Humanstuck, Urban Fantasy, Home-Brew Magic System Shit Don't @ Me, Time Shenanigans, Karkat Vantas Makes Bad Decisions This Is A Forewarning, Polyamory Negotiations, Hurt/Comfort, Lord English's Fun-Time Brainwashing Time-Travel Torture Gang, Aftermath Of...... Everything....., Past Torture(physical/psychological/spiritual/emotional--largely inexplicit but not entirely), Past Brainwashing, Possession, implied/referenced past rape/non-con, (sexually not described in detail and more explicity nonsexual Cal-flavored intimacy/tenderness), God Finds It Funny To Hurt You But Also Won't Let You Die, Let's be clear: plotty gamzee whump with a, Happy Ending

Chapter 2: The First Lesson

The video is of a man, dressed in pure white; white suit, white gloves, and some kind of blank, white mask.  It stretches down his neck and vanishes under the collar of his suit; it looks hard and slick, mirror-smooth, but it shifts with him like a second skin as he inclines his head to you. There’s no sign of eyes in his mask.  You can feel him looking at you anyway.

[itreference]

Stanley, to me, was always a gifted kid, sure he got held back in kindergarten but that was just because of lack of attendance. He's always studying for some test or had his nose in some book, he had a bunch of trophies in his room. He was the top student.

Then he came along. A kid who didn't even have to try, but nonetheless still got straight A's and effortless 100 percent's. The kid who put Stanley in second place, the kid who once got the gold shining medals now gets handed the silver sorry of a gift that's engraved with a '#2' that haunts Stan.

[haruneski]

I drew a thing!!! You know this one!!!

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[burnthatbridge]

illicit affairs

buddie | E | chapter 1 of 8(ish) | 3k | just a boy helping his boy bestie figure out gay sex, with a side of infidelity This is how it starts: Buck goes on a date with Tommy. How it goes from there, Eddie can't even begin to explain.

Chapter 1: born from just one single glance

It’s in the aftermath, when Bobby and Athena are safe and being checked over and the 118 plus family and friends is piled in the waiting room as usual — they all have their preferred chairs with how often they’re here — that Eddie’s unfocused mild interest in this new guy who his friends trust, turns to sharp notice. 

Eddie has to step away to call Carla, to let her know they got Athena and Bobby, to assure her that he’s fine, Buck’s fine, they’re all fine. And then he spares an extra moment to text Marisol because he knows she’ll see the news soon, if she hasn’t already, and will worry.

After, when he returns to the waiting room, Tommy’s in his seat. Eddie doesn’t really have a specific one he favors so much as he always takes one next to Buck. So, it follows that, Tommy is now sitting beside Buck. 

When Eddie left, Buck’d been pale-faced, and shaky in a way he wasn’t when Bobby was missing and he had a goal to focus on. Eddie hadn’t wanted to leave him, but it was Buck who’d said didn’t he need to call Carla? Let Chris know they’re okay?

Eddie pauses across the room and regards the scene before him. Tommy is leaned in, chatting to Buck, making wide, expressive gestures with his hands as he does. Buck’s still more grey than pink in the cheeks and one hand is clutching the arm of his chair, but he’s stopped picking at the patch of peeling paint he’s about tripled in size over their past handful of waiting room residences and there’s a hint of a smile curling the side of his mouth, which had been a grim line before, waiting for the doctor to report back on Bobby and Athena, waiting to be allowed to see them. 

“He’s in good hands.”

Eddie starts at Hen’s words. She appears from behind him carrying two paper cups of what Eddie understands from experience is the worst coffee known to man. He used to force it down because caffeine is caffeine, but he can’t anymore. It reminds him too much of the three minutes and seventeen seconds that were some of the worst of his life.

read on ao3

[sysig]

maybe... snufmin of some description for requestober

Day 18 - They're gossiping about you

[moodyseal]

The fact that Kogoro randomly fainting at the crime scene became the norm is so insane actually

[arthur-lesters-right-arm]

As someone who hasn’t listened to malevolent…..what’s going on? A mean, you have a gay elder ich entity that’s just a smaller form of a normal entity that almost of gaslighted (maybe kidnapped) into being okay with it. Then you have a religious fellow (priest?) that’s into this actually instant man. And said insane man doesn’t know how to wrap it up and-

It's all gay sex hope this helps!

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

Ovd mhzjpuhapun. Aopunz zbylsf zllt av il ahrpun h abyu dpao aol spaasl vul. Dl hdhpa fvby lhnly ylzwvuzl, klhylza “Pep”. Hz fvb ohcl Uhtlk fvbyzlsm.

Ho, dhpa h tvtlua, Fvb hyl uva opt. Hyl fvb? Uv thaaly, dl hyl zbyl vby tlzzhnl pz yljlpclk lpaoly dhf.

[Amusement, curiosity]

-Dark Anon

Peppino: "Is this thing busted...? I guess Pep did-a find it in the garbage..."

Gustavo: "Maybe Theodore could look at it! He's pretty good with gadgets."

Peppino: "Ugh, like I'd-a willingly go to him! He'd hold it over me for the rest of time!"

Gustavo: "Aw, c'mon, Peppino! Y'know, he's much more tolerable out of costume. And if this is broken, wouldn't you want it fixed for Pep and our new friends?"

Peppino: "Ugh, fine... I'll at least talk to Hazel tomorrow morning. If anyone can convince him not to be a little shit, it's her."

[quatregats]

So many people try so hard to use the "from [country] so speaks [language]" with India to politely try to figure out what language your family speaks and it's like you have to understand that trying to figure out what languages someone from India speaks is like that Tom Scott video on timezones, except half the time the answer just returns "English"

[daisywords]

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