#readings were too big.

[lunapwrites]

2023 Recap and New Year Reading

One thing I think I'm proud of this year is how I approached bullet journaling. Despite sometimes going weeks at a time without making entries, instead of giving up I just went "ah, hell, we'll try again next month" and went about setting up the next few pages. That's... progress I think.

Anyway one of the reasons I bring this up is because last year, when I started this thing, I kicked off the year with a rune and tarot reading. And I think overall they were pretty on point, even if I was refusing to see the VERY COMMON THEME in all of it. Like... what brand of copium was I on that I saw 3 of Cups with the Empress and the Ace of Cups AND Death and went "Yep nope nothing to see here folks! Having a normal one!"

[This would be where I would stare flatly into the camera, Office style.]

The overall theme of 2023 was change. My partner and I did a lot of evaluating where we were and where we wanted to be, and started making moves to get there - some glacial, some... a lot quicker than I had expected lmao. But I think with my reading, my issue was that I made everything too broad and didn't focus on what was most on my mind - which turned out to be exactly what's on my mind now, and how it related to my existing commitments - including my fandom presence and writing. Which... has been difficult this year, particularly with being sick in one form or another for half of it.

With all of that said, 2024, it seems, is shaping up to be the transitional year - I pulled the Magician, which lends itself to a lot of power and potential. For the first half of the year, there's going to be a lot of good (or at least positive leaning) vibes up until April, supposedly - the Sun, Justice, the Empress (again), the High Priestess... all major arcana, all BDE cards. A lot of the messaging is about joy and balance and trusting my instincts. The vibes will be immaculate and everything's going to fall into place.

...Until May, which is when we can expect the Bean to make their appearance. Which... well, Five of Swords wasn't exactly the most surprising pull here. That is going to be a rough, scary transition, and I already knew it would be. But it's not forever.

We're (probably,) going to get our shit together a bit over the summer and into fall (Knight of Wands, the Chariot, 9 of Wands, King of Pentacles, the Fool) and then we're up for a setback of some kind in November (10 of Swords.) Given the context of the Fool and the overall timing, I think this is going to be related to moving Bean into their own room, and could be as simple as difficulty adjusting (for both of us tbh.) I'm not really seeing anything that indicates major issues, but the final card of the year (Judgement) is giving me a bit of an empowering message here.

Taken in aggregate, the message is clear: I have everything I need to succeed, so long as I remember not to rush important decisions and to ask for help when I need it. We can and we will achieve the balance I so desperately crave if we put the work in.

I did also do a rune reading, which overall seems to support the tarot one and gives me some additional context: likely looking at some conflict with work and family in the coming year (which I expected and which is already occuring to an extent) and my overall well-being is going to take a hit (also expected) - thurisaz and othala (r). However, my biggest pillars (my partner, my friends, and my overall... domestic situation? Home and finances lol) are going to be solid and are positive enough, in my view, to compensate - dagaz, uruz, fehu, jera, laguz. And of course the messaging is all the same: go with the flow, don't be fucking stubborn, ask for help, act with deliberation - tiwaz (r), perthro (r), eihwaz, ingwaz, mannaz.

Anyway. Yeah. Lots of big changes coming obviously, and I don't know what things are realistically going to look like six months from now, but I know whatever it is I'm going to do my best, and I'm gonna remember to breathe.

... And hopefully I can forgive myself for the times I mess up as well as I did with the bullet journal this year lol.

[crowkip]

ᯓ★

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[surreal-duck]

some business to take care of

[starry-bi-sky]

blood blossom danny except i briefly talk about his version of the accident

It all happened so fast that Danny doesn't really remember dying at all. It was like, one moment he was alive, the next he's dead. He remembers hitting the button, and the lights coming on, and then a great big flash.

Then he was outside of the portal.

He thinks he may have been screaming, but that's not true at all. The only sound he made was a split-second, startled gasp as the portal turned on, that was cut-off before he could finish the noise. The only ones who were screaming were Sam and Tucker; Danny was dead before he could feel anything.

The most vivid thing to him was the terror before the light. The blood rushing moment of mind-numbing fear and cold revelation that he was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. A weird sort of resignation, desperation, horror, and static calm that hit him all at once.

He was extremely disoriented when he woke up. Like waking up from a long nap and struggling to comprehend what the day or time was, but knowing instinctively that time has passed. He didn't stay in his ghost form for that long either, further cementing his confusion.

From the moment he hit the button to the few minutes after he woke up is an unsolved jigsaw puzzle to him.

It took him about a day and a half to fully remember what happened beyond 'went into the portal, then suddenly i was out of it and everyone was freaking out', and then a week to process.

Sam and Tucker remember his accident better than he does. They say he was in a daze after he woke up, before he recognized where he was. And he kinda just... squinted at them like he didn't know who they were, and said something in a language they couldn't understand. He was terrifyingly calm and passive, and still smoking.

(They later find out its ghostspeak. He was asking them where he was.)

It was only the moment he realized where he was that he transformed back into human. That's the moment where Danny's memory officially cuts back in for him. His first time as a ghost, and he doesn't really remember it that well.

[chronologically-challenged]

I think that the party's communication issues can be summed up as "man, is it awkward to tell someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with them if you've only know them for a few months? Probably."

[genesis-rhapsodass]

Just a found family on their way to a gentler life (hopefully)

So there's this really good fanfic by @eaymtb of Cloud being sent back in time together with child remnants that's got me SO hooked, I've been wanting to draw something for it for ages so here's some art of the boys on their way to Wutai

[crystalpallette]

frye inspires this sort of manic "i can do whatever i want" kinda will in people and god. I sure did do whatever I wanted here

[chalkrub]

For that ask meme... I guess you liked Where the Wild Things Are as a kid!

i wish i knew it back then, alas i missed out! i do love it now though, and i would've loved it as a kid

[psychomusic]

oc time again! + her town & culture (heavily inspired by pre-roman italic populations)

she is suri sauthon. her story is linked to my swtor imperial agent, tar'x, but most of her life except for the one year away where she meets him, is spent in a town in the mountains of mirial.

despite mirial being cold and desert, and many cities developing underground, her town flourishes thanks to a force nexus, venerated in the form of an ancient, sacred, alive crystal. the ecosystem of that mountain depended on what "the horned crystal" was capable of giving them, but mirialans couldn't live off of that alone, so they developed trade and some rudimental technology, even if oftentimes it was bought thanks to the highly profitable trade of a plant used to make medicines that slowed down aging and had overall healing properties.

note: everything that's generated by this nexus has these healing properties BUT they have to be processed, except for those who bathed in the waters of the cavity under the crystal - the "real" nexus, but not the worshipped one. the waters were sacred but they were not thought to be miraculous, unlike the crystal, who instead was thought of as the keystone of the ecosystem: without it, everything would fall apart (and that is partially true: the cavity was the "real" nexus but thanks to the crystal, also strong in the force, the properties were spread all over the mountains). those who bathed in the cavity's waters - so, all of the town, who had a sort of baptism there - could eat the plant, make whatever food with it, and not only that plant, but everything generated by the nexus, that, again, had similar properties. this allowed people to live up to normal life-spans without advanced medicines or, much, really. to those who didn't live there, though, after the processing, had incredible effects, slowing down aging - for those who took it regularly - and making people able to live up to half a century more than the average]

originally, there were four tribes of nomads that lived thanks to horned farm animals that decided to settle down into one bigger town and other smaller settlements, to live off of transhumance. this division of the tribes stayed into the political and social organization: every person belonged to one tribe specifically, and had slightly different rituals and culture. for examples, each tribe had their own priests and healers, with different techniques and traditions. the town, tho, was guided by a group of people in the high priesthood, a position you could reach only by having earned the trust of all tribes. those high priests had many roles: they guided the people into sacred processions common to all the tribes, they managed the trading with outsiders, they did the maintenance of the temple of the summit (the one that functioned as casket to the crystal) and created a special liquid to offer the crystal that helps it grow.

this particular temple was important because 1. it was very visible, from every angle of the town, and it became an important identity symbol; 2. it stored the venerated horned crystal; 3. it had the altar where sacrifices were made for the crystals. that altar had a hole connected to the cavity, that allowed the liquids to reach the underground; 4. it had various symbols: statues representing each tribe + the high priesthood, and typical mirialan tattoos carved into the wood of the trees that served as columns for the temple, symbolizing 8 values that who dared to enter HAD to have; 5. it was on the way to an important lake (called "mother lake" because the lake the town was built around to depended on the waters of that other lake) where they traveled to in important processions; 6. it was said that a the wizard who unified the tribes made it with its magic, making the plant grow to hold the temple's roof. this wizard was, actually, a force user, obv.

BACK TO HER THOUGH: she's daughter of one of the high priests, who was in charge of managing the trades with outsiders, and lives in a house on the mountains with her mother and him. her parents are from different tribes (that's one of the things that earned him trust from the 4 tribes): when a child is born from two different tribes, they don't pick one to allign to, but they're usually linked automatically to the one with more relatives in it (in her case, the father's tribe: she had many uncles and aunts on his side while her mom only had one sister).

later, though, she got quite tied to her mother's tribe due to a mysterious illness that only her mother's tribe healer was able to cure. she spent 4 years (from 10 to 14 years old) living with the healer and learned her secrets. to better study, she wrote them down. when she returned home, she studied to become a priestess with her father. at 22 (the average age: you can't become priest before your 20s), she was supposed to take a test and become a priestess, but the healer of her mother's tribe died and the tribe asked her to take her place. she couldn't technically do that, but both tribes estimated both her and her parents and she was allowed to become both. she then decided to try to become a high priestess, and became one at 25 (a quite young age). being part of the council, she tried to convince the various tribe healers to unite their knowledges and write them down, and eventually made it. healers still remained tribe based but they now had an "upper, inter-tribe level" similar to high priesthood.

years later, the sacred horned crystal is stolen from the temple by some Hutt mercenaries looking for a profit. given the trust she has earned from all the tribes and the fact that her father is the high priest that deals with outsiders (and she's been hearing stories and advice about it since she was little), she is the one tasked with getting it back. without the growing crystal, the keystone to their ecosystem, the village would have lasted only a few years. in hrr quest, she meets imperial intelligence agent tar'x laran and, as they "solve the mystery" and fight to have it back, they get closer. they'll get married and have a daughter, Vegoia (who's the only one who actually will get to the plot of my story. this was all background)

[bonesandthebees]

sigh feeling nostalgic for my old fics/the old community these days. I miss it man.

[ghostespresso]

staff logging on to tumblr dot com today

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

wanted to try my hand at a fake screenshot thing with a scene from one of the bttf fics of all time, Time Is a Flat Circle by @fourth-dimensional-thinker! i set in to draw only the "little canary" line but. as you can tell. my hand slipped and fell down a 6 story building

if you haven't read it already please check it out PLEASEEE it's very good. i read the whole thing in basically one sitting. the vibes are perfect for the spooky season too!

versions without the filter/subtitles under the cut:

[carebooks]

the only good thing to come out of D4 rise of red was the sapphic energy from the present and the past

[pinkyjulien]

▶ Wilding

One of the most common "rituals" in the nomad community is called (by the anti-nomad media) "wilding". Wilding is when a group of nomads, usually all youths, venture into static society to "see what it's all about." It is a fairly new occurence in the nomad community, but has gained an increasing interest among the youth. Despite the name and media portrayal, most wildings are peaceful and boring. ━ NeoTribes, page 21

Valentin & Mitch | 670/??

[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.