#thank you both for the kind words

[gentlebeard]

If I could hold you for a minute, Darling, I’d go through it again

For @edsbacktattoo & @stedesearring 💕 Show: Our Flag Means Death - Season 1 & 2 Music: Francesca by Hozier YouTube

[shepscapades]

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

I’ve been scrolling through some of the Linked Universe tags the past few days and every so often I’ve come across your art, mostly of Warriors and Time and I just wanted to say I absolutely love it! Your art style is really cool and I love the way you colour the pieces you draw, it’s very nice! I hope you’re having an excellent day!

Thank you so much!! I’ve had so much fun drawing Warrior and Time shenanigans and it’s really helped push my art wrt character interactions

I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! 🥰🥰🥰

.

Time: So, what’s going on here?

Warriors: Not sure, but it definitely seems like something you should deal with.

[katabay]

trains :)

this is a very rough and scribbly comic, but sometimes that's all a comic is going to end up being lmao. the guy with the jacket is darren, glasses is andy. not featured, andy's dead brother who nevertheless insists on haunting the subtext

the main thing I wanted to draw was the train tho

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost ⭐ cara.app

[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.

[questionthedompler]

what was ur first kiss with pim like? (ur blogs are both amazing btw :])

perfect

[lilaira]

Hey there!

I’m currently looking for love as a potential pansexual and I was wondering if you would have any advice on finding a partner (or multiple?). Also your artwork SLAPS

Make an enderman ask blog. Just kidding.

Unless...

[sharptoothed-gaze]

Hello fandom. I understand that very few of you will care about my personal opinion, and that's fine, but I find it important enough to how I run my blog to share anyway.

In the future, all of my posts will simply be avoiding any mention of Wilbur wherever possible. His character is a major part of Tallulah's story, but I will be keeping him away from my blog as much as I can.

Typically, I would go with a "death of the author" approach and keep mentions of the character and cc more separate. However, the cc's alleged quest for money and fame changes that entirely. I will not be contributing to that. That's just my personal choice, so there should be no shame to anyone who chooses to separate the two, obviously.

I watched Shubble's video and I saw his response. In my opinion, it was terrible. The way he centralized his own "growth," minimized the pain he caused, and left the actual apology on the second page is revealing. His statement reminds me of some of the past emotional abuse I've experienced, so his content will no longer be welcome on my blog. I believe in the merit of archiving, so I will not be deleting any past posts, but he will no longer have any place in my death family related tags.

[jeeaark]

You genuinely seem like a very funny person and im sure ur a delight to be friends with. Like. Genuinely you seem like an all around cool person and I hope ur day is great! (Also Greygold lives in my head rent free)

I'll be honest, as an absolute gutter goblin, my knee-jerk reaction is to make a dumb joke of denying my delightful friendship capability.

But, you know what? Sometimes you gotta stomp out that self-fault-finding habit and ego-maniacally graciously go 'Fuck yeah, I AM a delight to be friends with'

So. Thank you amazing anon, you're too kind! I hope your day is EVEN MORE GREAT as well!

[lorei-writes]

Curious, no? I like looking at reblog graphs sometimes...

Does every reblog matter? Are some pointless? What about comments? What's the use of it all? I don't know. In the grand scheme of things, all those divagations in this form, this particular configuration, matter only for as long as this site exists.

... Yet there is a certain undercurrent there that seems to matter, at least to me. To say something back to any form of creation is to state that you've been there, that it happened. In that sense, even a couple words, however few, gain incredible value... and the sentiment so often seems to spread. Maybe it is just my biased perception, but it always seems harder to start talking in a quiet room.

We could make it about obligation, about fairness, about what is owed, what is earned... But I don't think there is any point to that. Neither of the sides owes the other anything. Neither needs to earn anything, and there is no duty, no obligation. It is not a transaction, not to me.

It is just an "I've seen you. I was also there".

[blinkees]

Hi!! love what u do, could i please request a fnaf mimic blinkie with the text "robots are cool" w brown/red colors?

ty :)

[14dayswithyou]

absolutely fantastic game, I’m playing through all the endings, just got the bad ending and I am filled with SO much intrigue!!! the game did manage to scare me not even a minute in because I put my rl name for the protag, but then Moth was mentioned and ai was like “wait…but I’M Moth. How did it know???” because that’s the name I use online and what most of my friends call me agshdhd

✦゜ANSWERED: Wahhhh, you got the bad endings?? Both of them?? Let me know what your thoughts were!! ^^ 💗

But KJGNGKDGJ I'M CRYINGGGG /pos The coincidence..... T_T Maybe one day I'll put in a cute lil easter egg for the players who share the same name as the cast >:3c

[hellcab]

Hell yeah man. Sometimes I think you don't know how much you make people smile, that we all are really attached not just to Roth, but to YOU and your writing style, your vibes. You are one of my favorite RPers, and even though I never want to tell anyone to be around more because I worry it will leave them feeling pressured? I am all smiles the second you're around. You're a quiet mun, chill as heck, but jsyk, you are noticed and wanted and people genuinely adore the hell out of you <3

I honestly don’t know how to respond to that. But thank you, it means everything to me.

Thank you so much.

[userautumn]

my time in this fandom is genuinely so improved with you in it. thank you

what the fuck this is so nice. thank you

[motleyfam]

So, in the fic where Tim gets his appendix out, Jason tells him that he usually freaks out before he gets put under, not after. Now that Tim knows, how would he comfort Jason? I'm thinking, like, imagine that Jason breaks his leg badly on patrol, so urgent surgery is in order. Would Tim try to prevent him from freaking out? How?

P.s. i said i a thousand rimes bur I love your works!! You're amazing!!

Ooh so I've actually answered a similar question pretty recently (although that was focused more on the needle aspect than the anesthesia/loss of control aspect which I headcanon to be Jason's main issue with being put under)

Honestly? I think Tim would be the worst family member to try to comfort Jason through something like this. Not for anything that Tim is doing right or wrong, just because anesthesia is something that really freaks Jason out, and his response to being freaked out is a) to angry cry, and b) to lash out at people. Because he knows this about himself, and he's also extremely protective of Tim, he tries not to let Tim see him when he's not fully in control of himself. So while Jason would totally be great in a crisis involving Tim, he does terribly when the roles are reversed.

BUT that being said, if Tim was the only one available, I think Tim would end up offering his hand to squeeze, and Jason would hesitate at first but eventually take it. He'd probably also be trying really hard not to cry, which Tim would very intentionally act as through he wasn't noticing because at the end of the day, Jason needs his dignity more than anything.

[holocene-sims]

a sneak peek for an upcoming (timeline tbd) update 😊