#posting for no particular reason

[dionysus-complex]

“At one level, Lucan’s poem is about the battle of Pharsalus, the decisive conflict of 48 BCE fought on the Emathian fields of Thessaly in northern Greece and pitting forces led by Julius Caesar against those led by his kinsman Pompey Magnus; it recounts events that prefigure Pharsalus, the battle itself, and the aftermath; it also portrays the dominant personalities of the time — Caesar, Pompey, and Cato. This battle, according to the more traditional view, ushers in the last chapter in the long, ugly chronicle of Roman civil war which stretches back nearly a century. Although it was decisive, the battle of Pharsalus was by no means the end of this struggle, for the war raged on until 31 BCE, when Octavian (later the emperor Augustus) won out. Equally, although Pharsalus is the first major engagement after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was but one battle of many fought by Roman factions in the last century of the Republic. For Lucan, however, more than any previous or subsequent episode in the civil war, Pharsalus was the death scene of the Roman Republic.

At another level, the poem is about Lucan’s Rome, how Roman folly and disaster led to the establishment of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; it is about the price paid to purchase Nero.

At its deepest level, the poem is a meditation on liberty in the state and free will in the individual. Lucan wrestled with questions of courage and patriotic ideals, even tyrannicide. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the poem is how it seems to reveal the poet’s own swings of mood, his ups and downs during the last years of his life, the period of his involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy.

The poem, then, is not so much an account of historical events as it is a study of politics and psychology, of disastrous patterns of behavior and the compulsion to repeat them, the compulsion of Rome to destroy itself. In Lucan’s poem, Pharsalus stands for all such acts of political self-destruction; it is the pure “type,” the gladiatorial match between Liberty and a Caesar. Pharsalus is to Lucan a doomsday; that day, almost a century before his birth, changed Lucan’s world for the worse. As the surrealistic vision of the battlefield at the end of Book Seven clearly shows, Pharsalus was for Lucan the event that brought the forces of death and destruction to power at Rome.

It is because the battle of Pharsalus holds such sway in Lucan’s imagination that Bellum Civile seems a less satisfactory choice for the title of the poem than Pharsalia. Lucan’s poem is not only about the civil war between Caesar and the Senate: it is about bella plus quam civilia (1.1), “wars worse than civil”; it is about the day Romans brought the Roman Republic to an end, the day the world turned its sword against its own vitals.”

(from the introduction to Jane Wilson Joyce’s translation of the Pharsalia, xvii-xviii)

[werewolf-cuddles]

y'all ever played Coloring Pixels?

you should, it's surprisingly addictive. peak cozy gaming.

perfect distraction for when you get the urge to doomscroll

[whyissupernaturaltrending]

a former US president gets shot at and rather than trend himself he causes supernatural to trend instead because everyone is sharing the news via the destiel meme. unparalleled

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole for getting my best friend killed?

I swear to God, it was an accident.

My (27) BF (34) has a reputation for getting himself out of any jam you can imagine; and at first it was just a fun little thing the friend group noticed: there goes Oily J wiggling his way out of trouble again. but as the meme evolved in the group, it got to the point where we'd loykey started getting him into situations just to see how he'd get out of 'em, and he akept getting out of em. He was having fun with it too same as us. "Oh you guys," he'd say, "getting me into situations again," before laughing it off and getting out of it, so it was enrichment for our shared enclosures, and as time went on, the situations got more intense.

The trouble is, it turns out that putting a man in too many situations eventually gets the police interested. And not local hobsknockers cops either; they was like, proper three-letter FEDs. They put out a bounty on any information pertaining to his capture and everything. It was good money too so I thought, hey why don't I put J in another situation he can wiggle out of like always (and he'd wiggled outta worse before, so I thought this one'd be relatively mild), and at the next boardgame night (cause it was too late to do anything special for this one) we can buy some extra strong booze and get absolutely blitzed while having a giggle about the situation.

Boardgame night, and we were playing some social deduction nonsense or another and he says: "One of you is gonna betray me tonight." and I can't help but think, looking back on it, that he knew. It's stupid, I know he was talking about the game, but the way he said it, it was like he knew. We all felt it, and we had a big round robin round the table taking turns promising that we'd never betray him. And I said it so easily cause I thought it was true. Sure, I was gonna talk to the feds about a bounty; but, I fully expected my big beautiful oily boy to wiggle his way out of the trouble I was 'bout to cause, and that's not a betrayal. I wasn't lying. I didn't think I was lying.

My big beautiful oily boy didn't manage to wiggle his way out of it. They killed him and I got my blood money. He's gone.

He's gone and I'm devastated, crying, mourning. I loved him so much. We all did. And I can't stop thinking that it's my fault: that I'm the reason he's gone. and it is. and the guilt is eating me up inside. and I just need to talk to someone about it. So, I tell the rest of the group what happened in the group chat, hoping they'd understand that I didn't want this. I didn't want the government's blood money. It was supposed the be a prank. some joint enclosure enrichment. He was supposed to wiggle out of it like he always does... did, i mean.

They call me, among worse things, the asshole and kick me from the group chat. And, I know it's my fault he's dead: I know that. If I didn't do what I did, he wouldn't be dead right now. But, I didn't mean it for it to end up this way. He was supposed to be okay, damn it. I loved him. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[melonsharks]

like a thing, make a character lineup to figure out how i would draw them. thats the way my brain works! you can find close-ups under the cut!

these were fun :] theres a lot of characters in this show that would be fun to draw, is there anyone you guys wanna see next? 🤔

[faithlesslovee]

[art-is-kayos]

Checking up on his commission

[starry-bi-sky]

mmm throwaway conversation between Dan and Danny that popped into my head that I had to write out:

"You spent ten years being a one-man mass extinction event, then went back in time and fought me, and lost." Danny snarls, arms crossed and throat tight. His mouth pulls back to bare dagger-sharp teeth, and his eyes burn with the familiar thrum of ectoplasm heating up behind his eyes. "If I didn't believe you were half of Vlad before, I do now."

His other self -- and really, can he even call him that? He's half of Vlad too. Two halves severed from each other and welded together to make a new whole, -- snaps his head over to him. Wild-eyed and furious, he looks unlike the man Danny fought before, the one unruffled and untouched, unbothered by the world around him. It's familiar, but not like the way a reflection is.

"What's that supposed to mean." The Other hisses, matching Danny's scowl one-for-one with fangs much bigger and sharper than his.

But there's a reason lions fear hyenas. Danny matches the rumble in The Other's chest with one of his own, and shoves his face close to his. "I don't lose."

[doostyaudi]

How bugs look at u whenever u lift up a rock

[cowardlykrow]

"Hah, dude doesn't even know he's in my tamagotchi."

[inkskinned]

you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.

you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.

instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.

you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.

your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.

because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.

so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.

all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.

[nattikay]

OC lineup! All the characters that currently exist in this "story"