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quasitsqueeries · 9 months

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The Emperor wasn't 12 feet tall

I see this meme a lot in my Instagram feed and it really grinds my gears:

Not because it seems to be trying to shame a fictional antagonist for being "wrong" (although that really doesn't help), but because whoever made it seems to have missed that depictions of the Emperor as superhuman are meant to be Imperial Propaganda.

Now, I realise I'm going to be fighting an uphill battle here because there seem to be people working for Games Workshop and producing their media who also missed that memo, and for a while now the studio has started producing actual depictions of the Emperor, and some of those depections show him as 12 feet tall and immortal. This might be controversial but I think what this shows is that Games Workshop don't understand Games Workshop's source material.

Here's a picture of the Emperor from the original Rogue Trader rulebook.

Even this is obviously meant to be a propaganda image, but here he looks like just a regular guy in armour, he's about the same size as the people around him. Not a superhuman, just a guy with an excess of hubris.

There's this literary construct called the unreliable narrator. When I studied literature we were given this short story to read called Bartleby the Scrivener. It's told from the point of view of an employer about a clerk who was apparently really difficult to manage. The subtext is that the narrator is trying to manipulate the reader to make themself look good.

For a long time, that's what Warhammer 40,000 did, the Imperium was made out to be an unreliable narrator. Stories about the Imperium's "glorious past" were told through the haze of ten thousand years of unending war, by an ecclesiastical class with a vested interest in keeping Imperial citizens committed to feeding the war machine. To the Imperium, the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy serve the function of myths, more than history. I've gone on before about how important heroic figures like Siegfried and Perseus and Prometheus were to the Nazis. The Imperium, being a fictional state that draws on the aesthetics and ideology of Fascism, uses the figures of the Emperor and Primarchs the same way.

Basically what I'm saying is that when Imperial sources state that these people were twelve feet tall and immortal and could, um, turn a giant ork into a lightbulb on a whim, it's not because they had these powers, but because they've been ascribed these powers by their priesthood, who have total control over the flow of information in this setting.

And I get that this is hard, because most people don't get taught this stuff, and often people are probably looking for escapism from their fiction and why would the book I'm reading lie to me? But I think it really makes the setting more interesting if you look at it this way.

Also, I realise that since 2006 there have been books around that describe the Emperor, and they do show him as superhuman, and I think those depictions are based on the writers misunderstanding the material they're working from. I guess Tolkien wrote the existence of The Hobbit into Middle Earth as the Red Book of Westmarch so I can tell myself that the Horus Heresy novels are meant to be in-universe Imperial propaganda.

ADDENDUM: I need to add this because I've been reading about Perpetuals, which is apparently what the Emperor is since the Horus Heresy series was published. Apparently these individuals are human mutants that are both immortal and invincible. I remember Mechanicum heavily implying that the Emperor and St. George are the same person. Here's the problem with that. There are two themes that I think are really important in Warhammer 40,000. One is the Emperor's hubris, the idea was that he was playing god, genetically engineering monstrosities in the form of the primarchs. In the Greek tragic mould, it's this hubris that leads to his downfall. This kind of loses its sting if he's just trying to recreate what what he already is.

The other theme is the Imperium's superstition. This one is really the core of 40K. The Imperium has taken the corpse of a man who tried to rule the galaxy, told themselves he's not dead, plugged the corpse into a machine that "regenerates" him, and founded an intolerant, violent and expansionist religion around this husk. This theme changes significantly if the Emperor actually was as powerful as the Ecclesiarchy makes him out to be, and actually isn't dead, and has somehow been regenerating for the last 10,000 years. There's a question here about what would make an entity worthy of worship, or being called a god, and I probably shouldn't get into it but this is my blog so I'm going to. It seems like there's an assumption among some writers that if something can be rationally explained then it's not a god, because gods ipso facto don't exist. They've incorporated nonexistence into their definition of gods. This is where you get the idea that the Chaos gods aren't gods, because the setting explains their existince "rationally" with its internal logic (nevermind that there's nothing rational about the warp). If there were gods in a rational sense, then our model of the universe would have to change to accomodate them. I think the upshot of this is basically that if what the Horus Heresy novels claim about the Emperor is true, then the Ecclesiarchy are right and he is a god within the logic of the setting. That doesn't justify the genocide and expansionism, but maybe it does justify the worship, and that's something that I think takes away from the setting.

#warhammer 40000 #horus heresy #emperor of mankind #games workshop #wargaming

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i-can-even-burn-salad · 2 years

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Bookmarks, kinda

There’s a bunch of posts I want to find again on this hellsite, but there’s no real tag to sort them to, and search sucks, so... unsorted pile of things I Really Want To Find Again.

Everything Writing Related

So you write

On editing and proofreading

On dialogue punctuation

Alternatives to said but it’s great

Skyrim Prompt Challenge

Tropical Fantasy Worldbuilding

Questions for Beta Readers

A (whump) prompt list I might wanna do

When to capitalize words

Clearing up Ambiguity

Writing Sessions

Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation

Fic Patch Notes

Basic checklist for your story

Writing cheats

Ten questions to ask a beta reader

Weak words to cut

Writeblr Etiquette

Questions to break the ice

Find words you forgot

Words to kill when editing

Terms every writer should know

About comfort and disabled characters

Dialogue Formatting

Whumpy Favs

Terin’s Phantom Pain [image]

Not sure what to title this

Unbidden, Epilogue 1

Crowbar [gore warning]

Good way to put it

2023 Year of Whump [prompt list]

Not so tough now, asshole? [image]

Pick a hand [gore warning]

Leave your Whumpees ruined

The Librarian :)

Dehydration/Malnourishment/Sleep deprivation

Robin Hood

That one Purity of Sin chapter

It's all right when it's you

Other Stuff

Rainbow Game Consoles

Show me the Girl

Sorting posts chronologically

Staff replied, post is over

Medieval Torture Kid

The Book Wyrm

All About Shadowbans

Just gonna put Maksim here

You’re not in love

Unicorn fantasies

Find two tags

Being a non-american online

Reddit glitch

The Outsider gif set

Tragic greek figures

My Own Posts

Nykim my beloved

Five things I never get tired of writing

Another five things because I was tagged again

Anna’s Writer’s Associations (I’m not crying)

My Whumptober 2022 masterlist

Tumblr Links and You

Writing Wrapped 2022

My Year in Review 2022

The best incorrect quotes (HmW)

Thorns WIP Intro

Glass Shards WIP Intro

Nuisance WIP Intro

Knife: Part 1 and Part 2

HmW vibes

Braille Valentine’s

Stories described in the worst way possible [tag edition]

“Patch Notes” for my stories.

Badly Summarized WIP Poll

Saran’s review of Till Death

Rainbow bookshelf

Time zone woes meme

Posts about my OCs I liked

All my characters’ bios in a few lines

A worse take on character bios

The size of all my chars

10 minute lectures

Character pronouns

Riordan’s AITA post

Taking all OCs grocery shopping

Sorry, Damien

A bunch of my commissions

Photos of all my chars

Ten but...

Archive so I can find stuff again

The old Heal my Wounds release post

My first bad things happen bingo card. Finished.

My second bad things happen bingo card. Aborted.

My old pinned post

My old story list

Empty post because why not lol

#it's time again for me to need a post later #lalala #bookmarks

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testamari-blog · 2 years

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Why Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has shaken everybody to their core?

!! Contains spoilers for the entirety of the Netflix show Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.!!

-- David and Lucy sharing a moment together. source: netflixlife.com --

The misadventures of David Martinez has taken the world by storm - the currently one season series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has already joined the likes of Queen’s Gambit and Squid Game in terms of hype. Not only the show internationally started to trend short after its introduction, it even revived the game that the show is based on, which was considered one of the greatest launch failures of video games. From people trying builds in the game from the show to rampant memeing, what is the reason that this show affected all of us? Let’s see...

-- Everybody’s thought after watching the show. source: 9gag.com --

In his review of the movie The Social Network, The Royal Ocean Film Society talks about why this movie feels very relevant as it felt in 2010, transcending even its source material, Facebook. He states the reason as “Ultimately, it’s not a movie about technology. It’s Shakespeare, it’s Greek Tragedy, it’s the American Dream. Stories as old as time itself”.

Sophocles, one of the greatest Greek tragedians, lived in 4th century BC. His famous work, Oedipus Rex, follows the tragic hero Oedipus (the same character used as the Oedipus Complex by Sigmund Freud). He is the king of Thebes, which is ravaged by a plague because the killer of the previous king was not identified, neither was brought to justice.

Oedipus, who claimed the vacant king seat and married his widowed queen by merit years ago, swears to find the killer - “I will do everything to find his killers, as if he was my own father”. His investigation first brings him forth as the prime suspect, then reveals that he is not the children of who he thought, and finally it concludes with the most damning information of all: he killed his father and laid with her mother. Just as prophesized.

-- Bénigne Gagneraux: The Blind Oedipus Commending his Children to the Gods. source: wikipedia.org --

I didn’t watch Oedipus Rex on stage and I can only imagine what the original audience thought when they saw it on the amphitheater for the first time. How it felt to the audience when a prophet accuses Oedipus for the murder of the king; when Oedipus feels relieved to learn that his (supposed) father passed away, so he couldn’t fulfill the cursed prophecy; when it’s revealed that he’s not the son of that guy or when the queen figures out that the prophecy was actually fulfilled. From the first act, they probably understood that this story will not end well, they are just accompanying this character to his end. Every detail, every revelation must have felt like there’s something you don’t know, that you can only see out of the corner of your eyes - but it is coming. This, I cannot know for sure, again, I didn’t watch Oedipus Rex on a Greek amphitheater. But... I did watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

What’s the first thing you see? David Martinez, our tragic teenage hero, experiencing the death (through braindance) of a guy who is the original owner of the implant that he will get to own. Hints are constantly dropped. First, they are more subtle like this. Comments about how David should be careful using that implant, which comes to define him, otherwise he would turn psycho, etc etc. All of this is met by a quirky “I’m special, don’t worry”. Then, the dark signs become a bit harder to ignore.

-- David Martinez: The Tragic Hero. source: gamerant.com --

Episode 5 “All Eyez on Me” is an interesting one. Turn of events brings David’s gang in conflict with a guy called Jimmy Kurosaki, who also happens to be the favorite braindance director of David. Fortunately, they manage to convince him to set a trap to unsuspecting Tanaka, their target. This is like a idol-fan reunion, the whole episode has a lighthearted fun feel. Fortunately, however, is not a word to describe this story. A needle to the throat, Kurosaki breaths his last, as his eyes rest on David & David’s on his.

The parallels do not end there. The inglorious deaths of several gang members: as frightening as it gets when a homeless psycho headshots Becca’s brother, becomes an insignificant occurrence when the new recruit is blown to pieces. But the biggest parallel is of course, how Maine reaches his end. In a half conscious-half unconscious manner, he kills everybody that stands in his way, then what is most valuable to him, and finally; himself. Maine: the leader of the gang, which David replaces.

-- End of the line for Maine, but not for David. Not yet. source: youtube.com --

It was clear from the beginning that this story won’t have a happy ending. We have a limited time with David: a very short lifetime we’re accompanying him. But that’s not all - David’s tragedy has a second layer. When Oedipus was born, his fate was already sealed. When David’s mother dies, we learn that she was working around the clock and sometimes on the edge of legality - so that his son doesn’t have to. Consequently, the only thing she can leave David is a neural enhancement implant, which, can only be used illegally. This, like Oedipus, seals David’s fate. And it’s all more damning to see David come to die at top of the Arasaka tower: the exact place her mother would dream for him (to work). It is much more damning to see him say “look mom, I am here, the very top of Arasaka tower”. This is him at the point where Oedipus realized that he fulfilled the prophecy: the point of no return.

-- David at the point of no return. source: youtube.com --

I can’t remember where I read it, but there, it referred soap operas as modern tragedies. Well, let’s say I’m not a huge fan of soap operas. So, I’m eternally grateful to Studio Trigger for this modern tragedy that shook me to my core: one with amazing atmosphere, soundtrack and memorable characters. What is very exciting is that David’s story feels like one of many happening in the Cyberpunk Universe. As we’re done with his one, I hope we’ll start with another, soon enough...

-- A familiar name in the local bar. --

#cyberpunk: edgerunners #greek tragedy #streaming #netflix #studio trigger #modern tragedy

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synonymroll648 · 3 years

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why say “i have gifted kid burnout” when “i’m a child of icarus” sounds so much more godly?

#gifted kid burnout sounds like a disease #like no bethany i don't have a disease i'm following in the footsteps of a famous figure from greek times #i am flying too close to the sun and you can't fucking stop me #i will fall from grace in a tragically glorious blaze known as the consequences of my own actions eating me alive #serious shitpost #shitpost #i'm joking but also not #meme #gifted kid burnout #gifted kid burnout meme #how do i tag

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greentrickster · 3 years

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The problem with Shakespeare in school is that it’s never presented in a way that shows how engaging or interesting it can be. Because there are interesting ways to introduce these plays, and there really is a little something for everyone.

You like broody anime guys? So did Shakespeare, go read Hamlet, be sure to make notes of what sort of tone you think a manga-ka or animator would use in the scenes you find significant.

How about historical fiction? Check out Julius Caesar or Anthony and Cleopatra - bonus points if you do some side research on the actual historical figures in the plays and make a list of inaccuracies or biases you spot in the play as a result.

Want to see a guy thoroughly ruin his own life, his family’s life, and his entire kingdom because he decided to retire? Because that’s King Lear in a nutshell - how many spots in the story can you spot where disaster could have been potentially averted?

You just here for some really, extremely messed up stuff and excessive gore? Titus Andronicus was probably written with you in mind. Please read a list of the trigger warnings before committing to this one, and then, as you read, consider how you would explain what you’re reading to a little kid without terrifying them, how this play would work as a tragedy, and how it would work as a horror movie.

Is romantic comedy more up your alley? Then take a look at a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and read it while remembering that this entire play is supposed to be set in era of ancient Greek mythology. How often do you have to remind yourself that the characters are Greek or in Greece? What are some ways that Shakespeare could have made this concept more apparent in the characters’ dialogue or with the supernatural elements he included?

You want to read a classic love story? There’s always Romeo and Juliet, and, as you go, make notes of how you think their relationship would develop over an extended period of time, given how they behave within the play.

Are you more of a psychological horror buff? Try reading Macbeth with the perspective that none of the supernatural elements exist outside the characters’ heads. How well does this work within the play? What elements could be enhanced in a production of the play to really push this idea?

And so on and so forth. All of these plays have a lot of meat on their bones, a lot of subjects they’d be good to read alongside, including history, mythology, anthropology, gender roles through the ages, and modern literature. There are ways to make these stories interesting and appealing to a wide variety of ages, and they can be great tools for teaching comparative thinking, analytics, healthy skepticism, and more.

The problem is, instead of doing something like that, it’s just a standard rote of, “Why is/isn’t Romeo and Juliet a love story?” “Memorize this monologue/scene.” “Why is Macbeth a tragic villain?” Never, “How many crude jokes did William sneak into this scene?” or “So this play is sexist and awful by our modern standards, but how did it hold up to the standards of the time it was written in? How much can we track how much society has/hasn’t changed in this one scene?” or “Guess which word Shakespeare made up and which got used for the first time ever in this line.” or “Which of the characters in this play, if put in a modern setting, would be the meme-lord of the group?”

#shakespeare #school #shakespeare plays

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trans-xianxian · 3 years

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1, 6, 24, 58, 66, 67, 80, and 94!

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?: coffee mugs!!! I have soooo many mugs mugs my beloved the best gift is a rlly good mug

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?: WHATEVER I WANT TO WHENEVER I WANT TO!!!

24. favorite crystal?: already answered :3c

58. four talents you’re proud of having?: uhhhm my visual art, my writing, my baking, I'm a good problem solver, and the fact that I'm very well spoken/articulate and am good at arguing my point :^)

66. favorite flower(s)?: I answered the same question for an ask meme from a little while ago w explanations of the symbolism and why I like them so I'm just going to copy paste that for you here sjgznzhkxdn:

hyacinths and marigolds!! I've always loved hyacinths since I was a kid I just think they smell nice and are pretty :^) they symbolize playfulness and constancy w more meanings depending on the color. they're named after the greek myth of hyacinthus who was apollos lover, there's different versions of the story but either way in the end apollo accidentally kills hyacinthus with a discus, and there's lots of tragic greek mourning etc etc and from his blood hyacinths grow. marigolds are mostly just special to me because I associate them w healing and recovery and growth. they are a common funeral flower and are often used to celebrate the dead. they symbolize grief, morning, and despair. marigolds also represent the sun and its rising and falling across the sky. hard to explain how all that connects to recovery but I think you can figure it out ajhdnxuksjz I want my first professional tattoo to be marigolds on my hand/arm :^)

67. good luck charms?: hmmm I don't think I really have any??

80. earth tones or jewel tones?: jewel tones :00

94. favorite season?: autumn!! love the rain love the leaves love the cold weather clothes love the hot comforting food love that it's early enough into the nine straight months of short cold rainy days that the seasonal depression hasn't hit yet love that the three months of absolutely no precipitation at all and too hot weather for what's supposed to be a temperate climate finally ends love that it's not cold enough yet that I have to turn the heat on love halloween

#sowwy I didn’t want to explain flowers again but I wanted you to know 💔#ask #mewts

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rhythmelia · 4 years

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The Old Guard liveblog thread

@rhipidurafan finally has me watching The Old Guard with her, so that I can properly appreciate all the fics I’m soundboarding for her lolololol. Blacklist #liveblogging with mel if you don’t want your feed drowned. Spoilers ahoy!

~Pre-watch preparation:~

Okay, what I think I know about The Old Guard and what it's about based on:

that baklava guessing game clip @rhipidurafan sent me

the love not!confession not!declaration exactly maybe love... recitation? love aria? love exhortation? in a van with Joe and Nicky

fandom osmosis from @rhipidurafan‘s blog and the odd post elsewhere

Who I think is in it:

Joe aka Yusuf, a passionate, artistic dude who may have been a merchant? Probably from around the area of Tunisia/Morocco? Probably Muslim, definitely knew about the value of baths, in a romance with Nicky, they're the OG enemies to lovers trope. Immortal?

Nicky aka Nicolo (sp???), a scruffy dude from Genova??? who may or may not have been a member of the clergy, participated in the Crusades. Killed and got killed by Joe a bunch of times, now in a romance with him. Immortal? The opposite of bury your gays trope

Andy aka Andromache(sp???) - name sounds kinda Greek but apparently she's super ancient so maybe saying she's a Scythian horsegirl is inaccurate for being too recent? So probably somewhere Central Asia-ish Europe-ish somewhere in that giant landmass whatever. Has a giant fuckoff double-sided axe, enjoys baklava in a way that's dangerous for my blood pressure, may be in a tragic romance with Quynh???? Immortal?

Quynh (sp???), a warrior from the Vietnam peninsula area??? Battle-wives with Andy, possibly a tragic romance? Immortal? Currently unavailable because she's been lost at sea??? Seen only in flashback?

Nile - US soldier from the modern day(?) Audience stand in/way into the lore in the movie. Has an interest in antiques and history/historical items? Antiques Roadshow fan? New bb immortal? She's a quick tactical and strategic thinker and very adaptable. Wants to learn to use a sword because it's cool

Booker - no idea. Is he supposed to be a French soldier from some past era? Looks like a generic white dude because they gotta have one of those in a super hero movie to get it made in hollywood. Immortal?? He's one of the crew who has history with the rest but ends up Doing a Betrayal, a common trope in various comics/movies? *coughLoserscough*

What I think the movie is about/what happens:

Group of immortals who... do things. Heists? Save people? Try to help folks throughout history?

Nobody knows why the immortals exist, how they are transformed from regular mortals into immortals

They dream about each other when one gets transformed

Nile is the newest one, so at least a chunk of the story is probably about her trying to figure out wtf is going on

Plot????

someone knows generally who they are and that they're immortal, and is trying to extract essence of immortal to figure out what makes them tick. I've seen the red yarn Conspiracy Wall (which I always associate with that meme screenshot of that one guy from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia now) and a shot of a bunch of the immortals in medical beds hooked up to IVs and whatnot

scenes of found family and flashbacks to show us how they know each other

plot???

shenanigans happen so there are a bunch of battle and fight scenes because action movies - lots of shooting people with guns and stabbing them with swords and whatnot

immortal doesn't mean they don't feel pain, but they do regenerate (I guess everyone has nicer teeth than what era they started out with then?)

more plot and shenanigans and gunfights? I have no idea what the overall plot arcs and resolution might be lol

there's some stinger or open-ended finish that means Quynh might come back from where she was lost?

I think I've reached the end of my osmosed knowledge and misinformation about this movie lololololol

#The Old Guard #liveblogging with mel #my stuff #The Old Guard spoilers #spoilers #long post

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robocracker · 3 years

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so i’ve been thinking about rewatching atlantis, because for all that i loved season 2 and still feel pissed about how the show got cancelled, i’ve only ever seen it once and that was when it first aired. which was almost 8 years ago.

and one of the things i’ve been thinking about as well is just how little i remember of it. i mean:

there’s jason from the modern world. which as far as i remember is a detail that literally never comes up again, aside from him recognizing famous figures from greek mythology.

there’s icarus/pythagoras. the superior ship.

evil troll queen from merlin is also an evil queen here, minus the troll dna.

there was a pig in one episode? a cursed pig??

i remember medusa’s tragic fate but i cannot remember why it had to end that way for her

jason and the boys scaling a cliff. i literally only remember this scene because it aired at the same time as the “crave that mineral” meme was going around and that was all i could think about when i watched it.

jason having an affair with his cousin. i think.

and that’s pretty much it. i’ve got to be honest, when i first watched season 1 i wasn’t too impressed, so i’m interested to see what my opinions are on a second watch!

#bbc atlantis #i even went through my blog tag for the show the other day #and aside from icarus and pythagoras i remembered virtually nothing #i know i had a thing for 90% of the female characters #but aside from that and the canon gays my brain hasn't retained an awful lot #which makes me excited for a rewatch!

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chorusnihili · 3 years

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I'd love to hear more about the development of your Gaster! :D

BACKSTORY ASK MEME 1. How did you first come up with your muse’s backstory, if you did at all? Continued from here Also asked by @alagaster

So I left off with the question of just how Gaster's soul ended up in pieces.

I’m actually going to detour at the moment and say that it was around that point that I had decided to make the blog. I had a vague beginning and an ending, and usually that’s not enough for me to want to start, but I was excited, I had a lot of fun, so I went for it.

Honestly, one of the first things I need to have before I even think of making a blog is a good url. Urls are super important to me, and generally, whether or not I think of a good one is a key factor in whether or not I actually make the blog.

But in this case, I was too eager to start and I actually just threw together chorusnihil so I could get started on the pages. The thought process remained the same--the chorus is from Greek plays, the group of characters that narrate the actions occurring in the play. nihil is Latin for nothing--and I later changed it to nihili, which is Genitive, to roughly make the “chorus of nothing” or “nothing’s chorus,” a reference to the fact that the guy wiped himself out of history, and so there’s no protagonist to narrate. This was supposed to be a temporary URL, but I got attached to it, for reasons I’ll get to later.

(And really, isn’t a roleplay blog a modern chorus in it’s own way?)

Also there’s the phonetic pun-- CORE-us, anyone?

So I threw together a lot of the basic bios. Most of the stat pages are really bland, most of the guts of the story comes from the hidden details, most of which were added on later.

Something that came up around this point was Gaster’s relationship to Asgore. A lot of fanon pictures them as really close. A lot of fanon also portrays Gaster as Gaster as desperately wanting to retake the surface, which...as mentioned previously, my Gaster just, wasn’t into.

So it sort of put Gaster in between Asgore and Toriel--he wasn’t happy about the decision to go to war with humanity, but he wasn’t going to abandon everyone, even if he did become really reclusive.

I thought about the idea of the human souls, and I knew that Gaster would immediately hate the idea of working with them. And that was convenient, too, since it allowed me to further separate Gaster and Alphys’s work. At first, it was just a heavy disagreement. The idea that Gaster killed Asgore accidentally came a great deal later, but it honestly served to be a rather critical piece of the story.

The design of the DT Extractor and Sans and Papyrus were also very vague concepts at this point.

Revisiting the idea of his fall. We know from the canon dialogue that he fell into his own invention and that he was scatted across space and time.

The CORE is the common culprit and it was what I had chosen, too. But how? How could an energy source... do that?

So the idea occurred to me that maybe--maybe that was exactly as it was designed to do. After all, even in the real world, we have power plants that operate by ripping apart molecules. So... magic. Why not magic? A machine that derives power out of ripping apart magical energy.

And monsters are made out of magical energy.

Falling into that sounds like a very grisly fate, indeed.

The idea of how he got erased from reality isn’t one I really have solidified. G has a couple of theories, and I’m willing to roll with either of them, but, really? I’m not super interested in making a hard reason for it. Namely to adapt to other versions of fanon other muns might have.

Essentially, the theories say that the CORE destroying him released so much energy that it tore a hole in the Determination that pushes the timeline forward, thus allowing the Void to enter and merge with his soul.

From there, either,

A., his Determination very briefly was larger than that of the Timeline, and he himself invoked a Reset, but given that he was outside of the timeline at the moment, it was corrupted and only erased certain parts rather than fully resetting. I think that this was the original theory that I used in the original RP.

B., the Void acted as a corrective force trying to correct the hole in the timeline. In doing so, it erased Gaster from the reality, thus replacing the existing timeline with a new one in which certain things never happened.

C., something involving the power of Rewrite that Gaster has from the duality of Determination and Void.

D., something else entirely.

And so we had the scattered Unbound Gaster.

Which, funfact, the name Unbound Gaster for the form was supposed to be temporary, as well. It’s a reference to Unbound Hoopa for Pokemon. (Which is why Provoked Form Gaster isn’t called Unbound Form!)

Within the original RP that I developed most of this lore, Refused Gaster didn’t exist. In fact, that roleplay ended with Gaster’s permanent death--and being permanently forgotten to the world. A choice he intentionally made because the damage he did to the timeline by falling into the CORE was still present and only getting worse, and the only way to fix it was to allow his Soul to come together and pass on properly, thus allowing the damage to mend.

It was sad. I cried. I got emotional.

I got attached to a traumatic asshole character I literally had for four days.

Somewhere in here, I began to think about the origins of Gaster. Like, way way way in the past. Some people have Gaster being actively involved in the war, but it didn’t work for my portrayal, of having him be so afraid of humans and the surface. So for it to work out, I had him really young for the war, really young when everyone got driven underground.

I killed off his parents because ......

Frankly I didn’t want to design them :|

There’s a lot of varying opinions and interpretations about skeleton monsters, and it’s a section of the fandom I’ve decided to stray away from for now.

But I didn’t want the loss to be traumatic. Gaster’s been through a lot already, and I have personal vendettas against characters who solely consist of trauma after trauma.

So I decided to make the loss very distant--he’s aware he probably had parents, or maybe he came to be some other way--but he doesn’t remember them, there’s no tragic “my parents were killed in front of me,” it’s simply something he didn’t have, and something he never needed given the nature of monsters to be kind and caring.

...

But it felt like it was missing something.

So I started to toy around with this idea of a mentor, one who played the role of a father-figure, one who would plant the seeds to give Gaster the appreciation of science and knowledge. Someone who could take this lost and terrified boy and start to turn him into the intelligent and steady doctor we end up with.

Then came the problem of how he and this mentor would actually meet; Gaster’s scar proved to be a convenient excuse, plus it gave me a backstory for that, as well. A few humans attacked him and delivered the injury, and Gaster’s mentor found the wounded boy and took care of him.

The mentor is meant to be a vague entity, and you can view this in action in this memory. (Only partially because I didn’t want to name them.) Unfortunately, as per the nature of characters created post hoc, their fate was already sealed. I made the choice to cut their influence on Gaster’s life short.

(If they were around longer, who knows? Maybe they could have prevented some of the stupider things Gaster has done. Maybe they could have changed fate. But... as we’ll get to, everything happened exactly as it had to.)

Again, I made it a very distant loss. It’s a rather simple conclusion that not every monster would be happy vacating the surface--Gaster’s mentor had lived there their entire life. It was their home, they were not leaving, even upon threat of death. And so it was a bittersweet parting, but one with closure, and Gaster said his farewells and departed to the Underground.

Honestly, what I find really shocking about this character is just how intensely he wants to do good. I mean, I’m no stranger to good characters, but few of my characters push it as far as Gaster does, and how quickly that feeling came to me, considering he started in the original roleplay as a ruthless asshole bastard more than willing to fuck over and torture a bunch of children just for a chance at being whole again.

Most of Gaster’s early life in the Underground found in this post was written on the spot as I wrote that post, so it came really late.

I still find it hilarious that he used to work in therapy. You’re well aware you need therapy you fucking bastard. Quit denying it.

So, revisiting the idea of Gaster and Asgore. I do like the idea of them being close, and Gaster even calls Asgore his best friend. The declaration of war put a huge strain on the relationship.

I originally thought about the idea of him accidentally killing Asgore for shits n giggles. At my heart I am indeed an angst gremlin, so I was just thinking about what an alternate timeline where that happened might be like. After all, Gaster’s angry, Asgore’s full of guilt, with the way monster magic works, it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to think that it could happen.

But the more I thought about it, the more it fit eerily well. The guilt gave Gaster a reason to create Sans (and later Papyrus) as part of his belief in Karma (creating a life to replace the life he took) and to look into Alphys’s research into Determination enough to create the blueprints for the DT Extractor; both of these things were things that I couldn’t otherwise really fit into his storyline.

And finally...

His declining mental state and despair over the concept of the DT Extractor was what led to him being distracted enough to make such a critical mistake and fall into the CORE.

And given that the timeline changes when he falls, I realized that... I could have this happen, and the current timeline be unaffected.

Now, given that I said that I wanted to avoid more trauma in Gaster’s life, this decision might seem contradictory. But, it also served a very important point--Asgore returning to life, that mistake being fixed upon his fall gave Gaster something to hold onto. Something that made his fate not as awful as it otherwise would have been. A small piece of solace in hell.

Plus, Gaster’s guilt at the incident caused him to resign as Royal Scientist, further allowing him and Alphys to have their separate stories.

And pretty much everything snapped together at that point. Really, strangely well. I joked before on this blog if I’m really the one writing it.

If Gaster had not killed Asgore, he would have never created Sans and Papyrus, he would have never created the DT Extractor blueprints; if he did not create the blueprints, he would have never been distracted enough to fall into the CORE, if he never fell into the CORE, the blueprints would have never ended up with Alphys, she could have never created Flowey, and if Flowey was never created, he could have never used the souls to break the barrier and the True Pacifist ending would have never come to pass.

It all happened exactly as it had to.

It feels oddly poetic, given the way Undertale works.

In some ways, it’s cruel. Gaster regularly struggles with the idea that for his people to be happy, he had to literally be wiped out of existence. But in other ways, it’s a comfort--for at least he knows that his suffering wasn’t for nothing. That there was a purpose--that even if he had to be erased, he played a vital role in ensuring his people found victory.

Oh. One final note... In finalizing this story, you may notice that Gaster follows a classic pattern. We have a hero, who’s mostly good, but through his own flaws makes a tragic mistake and seals his own grim fate.

It’s called a tragedy and they’re common in Greek plays.

What was that about a chorus again?

I think that’s just about every important point I could cover. That being said, if you couldn’t tell, this is a very fascinating topic to me, so if you have any further questions or need any clarifications, feel free to send them in.

#let type = out of character #let type = answer

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 5 years

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Animal Instinct + Dead Disco | Writing Update

Hey People of Earth!

We’re back with another Moth Work update because ya girl has finished two chapters and is here to spill all the tea! If you missed update one, and two, be sure to check them out before reading this one! I’ve been having a bit of cabin fever with this project lately which has made it difficult to really immerse myself into the project. But we’re almost at the 20k mark of this project which is wILD! I never imagined writing so much of this story (which was initially just a guilty pleasure) and I’m happy with how much I’ve learned about my characters just through this small detour in the series.

The first chapter I’ll be updating on is chapter four, ANIMAL INSTINCT.

This chapter was a giant pain to finish! It had about 5000 revisions mid-draft, and I definitely feel like I had blinkers on when writing it. Because of that, I lost sight of the big picture and really got stuck on the little things, like the writing and overall quality of the project. This was not actually the purpose of Moth Work--it was supposed to be a dumping ground for whatever. However, in this chapter, I became really hyperfocused on all the small details I disliked which made drafting it a month-long process. I’ve now come to a slightly healthier place with quality in this draft, and found a middle ground between trash-dumping and nitpicking.

What’s it about?

Animal Instinct is a major point of tension for Lonan and Harrison as their goals deviate. This chapter focuses heavily on the volatility of their relationship and highlights Lonan’s current irrational mental state. The title stems from this idea of calculated action for the sake of a single person’s benefit.

The writing bit:

I struggled to write this chapter quite a bit. It took me the majority of July to complete because of a major logic problem I kept running into. After struggling for a few days, I finally realized by fleshing out what I’d written initially, I could overwrite the logic problem. The solution took a lot of work/test scenes to figure out, but eventually I got it!

Excerpts:

I shared this excerpt before because it’s one of the only paragraphs I don’t mind in this chapter! I think the flow is a lil funky but I dig the concept! This outlines the last bits of the cabin, specifically Harrison’s final check around the perimeter.

Around the corner, the back patio is static—like Anna and her son never stopped sitting there. Her bowl of avocado and Greek yogurt—the holistic remedy Emily said would make her glow like an angel—sits gummy and pestered with flies. One of Milo’s toys is wedged under the cheap lawn chair. It haunts him, seeing them while not seeing them, but he leaves everything like it is. Anna and her son will always remain on the patio, Anna with her cheekbones splayed for the moon, Milo babbling mildly about his father like he hasn’t made the connection. They’ve gone invisible.

After this first scene, Harrison does some driving in the dark which gives me major book three vibes lol, and eventually pulls into a motel somewhere in Nevada. This route from Oregon to Boston makes no sense but I conveniently needed Lonan to end up in Vegas, so!! do it for Vegas!!

In the motel, Harrison meets Jeremiah, his potential new man lol. Harrison is focused on getting in and out of there as quickly as possible, but he’s like dang mans teeth are the straightest I ever did see (me too tho). Because he gets distracted, he fails to notice his car turn off, and only makes the connection after passing it a few times in the parking lot. He minorly paniques as he looks for Lonan, but eventually finds him around the building.

The scene that follows gets volatile as heck, and really showcases how similar Lonan and Reeve are? Like dang that whole family tho? (Can I join?)

I’m not going to share much of this scene because she gets dramatic, but this is the wildest dialogue I’ve written in a while and I think I’m going to steal it and make Reeve say it because something like this would come out of her mouth:

“Do you feel that, Harrison? I could burn you with a cigarette and call it a wolf bite and nobody would know the difference.”

sounds normal at first then NOPE

The next chapter (chapter 5) is called Dead Disco:

This chapter came together very quickly because I’d had it basically planned out, however, it veered into an emotional direction I wasn’t expecting. This chapter was supposed to be fun and lighthearted, and it ended up being... not that??

What’s it about?

After the tragic drama that occurs in the previous chapter, Harrison wakes up the next morning to notice that Lonan has #left and #taken the car. This is v/ not good, but instead of getting super worked up he chooses to chill out at Jeremiah’s place and chill ft. some disco. I meant for it to be cute but Harrison ends up in a mental place I wasn’t expecting, so the chapter feels a bit “derealized” to me. After both Lonan and Harrison head out on their solo endeavors, they meet back up and this encounter ends *badly*.

Playlist:

July 31st Rachel was feeling very enthusiastic about the playlist for this chapter (I was writing while listening to music) and wrote down a list of songs that describe the progression of this chapter (in order + all Nothing But Thieves because predictable!):

Holding Out For A Hero

Crazy

Afterlife

Hanging

Excuse Me

Forever & Ever More

You Know Me Too Well

I’m Not Made By Design

Amsterdam

Number 13

Itch

Hostage

BUT SHOUTOUT TO: Disco by Surf Curse

Probably the most accurate vibe here lol

Excerpts:

This first excerpt is Harrison angsting hard about missing his friends. I don’t *love* her but I don’t *hate* her! I tried revising it but it... flopped, so here’s the failed revision:

Lonan could say those words and it haunts him, how easily he taints him like a bad omen. There are so many things Emily would tell him to do to cleanse the bad magic, but Harrison recalls none of them properly. He remembers words like moon, and black walnut, and quartz crystal, and cardamom, but can’t think of what to do with any. He wishes he were like Foster, curious enough to carry around a pocket dictionary, or like his mother, clever enough to make something up on a whim. All Harrison can do is bury his face in his palms outside the restaurant and hope no one watches him. The main road bustles by and he wishes to be invisible, like Anna and her son. He wants his friends back. Foster could lull him to consciousness with a quiz on the different kinds of plants, which are edible, which are poisonous. Reeve would split a cigarette with him and scare him back to life with her driving. Emily will never speak to him but at least she’d cast a curse on him, and even that’s better than his nullified state of living. It’s disorienting, to feel asleep while awake. Harrison blinks hard, but everything feels the same—the buildings all shimmering, the people staring barely even people, everything derealized like it’s all been coated in REM.

(tag urself i’m foster’s pocket dictionary)

This next excerpt outlines Harrison getting turnt with his new man and then getting philosophical? drunk Harrison be Aristotle and Madonna smushed together idk

Harrison knows he shouldn’t drink around a stranger but Jeremiah’s got a handmade bracelet and scribbly tattoos on his forearm so it’s hard not to trust him. Photo prints of hostels in Japan, statues in Europe, cathedrals in Paraguay decorate the walls in perfectly cut rectangles. Each is plumed with a dried flower and it reminds Harrison so much of Emily, he has to look away, back to the Lonan-coloured drink. He studies the shot glass like it isn’t transparent, the grooves around the perimeter, the engraving that reads Cancun 1987. He loses Jeremiah’s absent swish around him, and gets lost in the blue. The trifecta amazes him, how a colour as unnatural as this has manifested in Lonan’s eyes, his earring, this drink. He tips the glass back and finishes it in one go, and even though it’s strong and should taste like artificial blueberries, his mouth is tasteless and numb.

“You live here alone?” Harrison asks, raking his fingers through his hair. The apartment overlooks the strip across the street and Harrison gets lost in it, the artificial signs like bad advertising, the neons ill like influenza. When he looks toward Jeremiah again, his glass is refilled and he has to think hard to remember if he emptied it in the first place.

This is where Harrison manages to make disco big sad + some lowkey salt at Lonan which is always! a! win!:

Together, they move in a trance, limber and manic. The glass in Harrison’s hand isn’t a weight—it’s a lifeline. The apartment blurs, and waves in slow motion. Harrison doesn’t hear the music or taste the drink; he feels nothing in the ground, and everything in his tongue. His hair swims in his face like Lonan’s, moving like he did in the water, careless in his forehead, his eyes. The pictures on the wall become the pictures in his bedroom, and the blinking doesn’t get rid of them. In his sidesteps with Jeremiah he sees him, in the glass, across the street, under a streetlamp. Taking his cigarettes, his light, his car, his mouth like a cannibal.

To end this update, here’s some dialogue ft. savagery:

“You’re patronizing me.”

“You’re patronizing yourself.”

A meme to accompany this lol:

So that’s it for this update! At the time of drafting most of this post (which was a few weeks ago), I wasn’t really feeling this project, however, after writing chapter 6 and switching POVs into Lonan’s head (where there’s lots of messy stuff to work with), I’ve been having a lot of fun!

I’m sorry updates have been slow on this blog--I’m in the process of moving so I’m getting busy, however, I hope to post at least one more update before I go off to school! Thanks for reading. :)

--Rachel

#writing #writeblr #amwriting #writerblr #fostered #writingupdates #mothwork

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citialiin · 5 years

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ooc ; thank u for tagging me in fun memes and stuff! ヽ(　･∀･)ﾉ so i dont flood ppls dashes i just wait until i have a few & put them under readmores.

HORROR ARCHETYPE AESTHETICS tagged by: @ betelguide

GOTHIC HORROR.

gaslights. corsets. ballrooms. candlelight. mist. starless nights. full moons. cobbled streets. horse-drawn carriages. mysterious strangers. bogs. moors. forests. mountains. castles. velvet. silver. brass. gold. jewels. domino masks. the opera. dangerous romances. tragic romances. violins. roses. lilies. empty graves. crosses. cemeteries. snow. ice. the gallows. crows. milk-white skin. ambiguous illness. fangs. pointed nails. something howling in the night. capes. gloves. top hats. straight razors. lightning. pipe organs. underground caverns. bats. mice. rats. ravens. cats. pearls. attics. talismans. axes. wood. isolation in a room full of people. vampires. werewolves. ghosts. coffins. western europe. eastern europe. bones. churches. catacombs. mausoleums. spiders. books.

CLASSIC HORROR.

black & white. powder puffs. red lipstick. winged eyeliner. white kitten heels. black lace lingerie. icy blue eyes. rain. abandoned cars. skeletons. acid. poison. voyeurism. switchblades. strangling. overcoats. looking over your shoulder. trans-atlantic accents. private detectives. dinner parties. haunted mansions. alcohol in glass decanters. cobwebs. perfect blonde curls. kitchen knives. shock. cellars. dust. dark alleys. empty streets. driving at night. horn-rimmed glasses. radiation. zombies. serial murder. paranoia. the city. witches. the devil. cannibalism. conspiracies. amulets. abject terror. the american south. the american northeast. england. analog cameras.

SLASHERS.

bloodbaths. massacres. wanton nudity. newspapers. leather jackets. letterman jackets. converse sneakers. obscured faces. social unrest. bonfires. lakes. babysitters. suburbia. high school. lockers. dead leaves in the fall. jack-o’-lanterns. outdated television sets. nightmares. psychiatrists. hospitals. unstoppable forces. gunfire. police. landline telephones. household objects turned into improvised weapons. halloween. secrets. revelations. character masks. scrunchies. queerness. wild curls. morbid humor. jeering children. parties. fire. swearing. revulsion. california. the american midwest. ambulances.

PARANORMAL HORROR.

malevolent spirits. seances. spells. missing bodies. hidden graves. white noise. static. flickering lights. rings of salt. demons. poltergeists. dark histories. old buildings. cold air. mausoleums. wells. urban exploration. a dog barking at something you can’t see. black ooze. old photographs. faces you can swear you’ve seen before but can’t for the life of you figure out where. dark bodies of water. crucifixes. priests. possession. exorcisms. dolls. jump scares.

CRYPTID & URBAN LEGEND HORROR.

ALIENS. blinding light. dark woods. driving at night. claw-marks. bite-marks. men in black. memory loss. dismembered bodies. sewers. flashlights. cell phones. video cameras. cars with tinted windows. abandoned houses. unlabeled cassette tapes. bugs. big cities. urban crimes. clowns. something rustling outside your window. glowing light. unsolved mysteries. suburbia. mirrors. the american pacific northwest. the american midwest. the american east coast. hiking / backpacking.

THRILLERS.

daylight. fluorescent lighting. morgues. asylums. unwavering eye contact. tension. lit rooms with no one inside them. a dog digging in the newly-planted flower bed. steely gazes. paperwork. anagrams. codes. convicted killers. missing persons. law enforcement. federal agents. small towns. suspicion. paranoia. subdued terror. dimly-lit parking lots.

CLASSIC NOVELIST AESTHETICS tagged by: @ finestprize

JOHN KEATS. the lavender in sunsets, flowers in the rain, sunlight slipping through clouds, lazy summer afternoons, the heavy scent of musk, flickering candlelight reflecting off the gold titles of books, fireflies on a cool summer night, being wrapped in fresh bed sheets, the ache of wanting what you can never have, dripping sunlight like gold, loving someone so exquisite, soft lips and soft whispers, fingers through hair, names of lovers carved in trees, broken glass, the insistence of being perpetually dreamy.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. crisp winter skies with cold bright stars, mahogany wood, the solitude of an early autumn morning wrapped in fog, empty bottles on stacks and stacks of books haphazardly placed in a messy room, bruised arms reaching out into the darkness, cigarette smoke just barely hiding the scent of alcohol, a wall of books all poetry and old and weathered, the way tragedy strikes in your heart but ends up stopping your breathing for a moment, your favorite sweater, parties spilling into four a.m. with the stars above spinning and dancing, the contrast of blood against snow, a purple split lip oozing blood, black eyes fading to blue to pale skin, the butterflies of falling in love for the first time, the statues falling apart over time in cemeteries, the romanticization of self-destruction.

FRANZ KAFKA. the weight of dread that sits heavily in your stomach when thinking about the future, decrepit houses cloaked in mystery from children telling stories of people who died there, the way not even light can escape a black hole, the rich smell of old books, delicate veins in the wrist, ghosts filling lungs, shattered bones, raindrops on the tongue, rusting metal, nostalgia that aches, the way hope feels like a plastic bag over your head.

H.P. LOVECRAFT. the anxiety felt when staring into an unknown cave, pouring rain and mud, a child’s fear of the dark, thinking so many questions about your existence as you stare at the vast expanse of never-ending ocean, the silence of three a.m., ouija boards and urban legends. (WHO WROTE THIS???? HAVE YOU EVER OBSESSIVELY POURED OVER HP LOVECRAFT LIKE I HAVE??? THIS SUCKS!!! THESE ARE NOT HP LOVECRAFT AT ALL WHERE IS THE SECTION ABOUT CLIMBING UP MOUNTAINS TO SUMMON ELDER GODS AND HOWLING AT THE MOON LIKE A MADMAN AND HAVING A WIZARD BEAT YOU TO DEATH IN YOUR OWN HOUSE)

JACK KEROUAC. the brisk pine air of being on a mountain, travels without a destination, those nights where you’re missing three hours of memory, screaming to a lifeless desert about how you’re so alive, coffee shops late at night, car rides at night spent speeding and laughing in the dark, naps spent in the sun, novels highlighted and underlined with notes and epiphanies in the margins, the way uncertainty sits on the shoulders, ignoring flaws and loving life, wind through hair, depression as fog in the brain, impossible ideals, a quiet sunrise, walks alone, when you think about trying to discover all the secrets to the universe, dazzling people, open lands stretching out into infinity, falling in love with being alive.

EDGAR ALLAN POE. the ocean’s horizon inseparable from fog, hollow bones, a preserved heart held in hands, twinkling stars above an old graveyard, the way everything turns to dust, silent black birds with eyes full of wisdom, self-inflicted flames, perfection depicted as a rotting corpse, death as bricks in the heart, lips barely brushing against each other, glassy glazed eyes, biting into a lemon, heart-shaped bruises, rotting flowers on a grave, dried blood and spilled liquor, the hush of dusk when it begins raining, the intimacy of a secret.

LITERARY ARCHETYPE MEME tagged by: @ manenimittliv

HOMERIC EPITHET: You are THE GREAT TELLER OF TALES

The Greek hero Odysseus had many epithets ascribed to him (others included “much-enduring,” “cunning,” and “man of twists and turns”), and this was one of them, so you’re in good company.

FATAL FLAW: YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH THE IDEA OF A PERSON.

And then I deleted the rest of this because it didn’t really apply to him. Oh well

LITERARY SETTING: GATSBY'S MANSION

You got Gatsby’s mansion! This larger-than-life crib is the perfect place for a party animal like yourself. It’s located on the Long Island Sound (ideal for swimming, lounging, obsessively staring across the water with a LaCroix in your hand and unattainable fantasies on your mind, etc.), but it’s also just a train ride away from New York City (city of dreams and $1 pizza). But let’s not forget the best part: it’s got a library that’ll make you wanna grab a fluffy blanket and a chai latte and literally never see the light of day again.

this is a lot of useless information. steal them if youd like

#ooc #memes #I didnt get shit done today sorry

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mackayariel · 6 years

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INTRODUCING ARIEL MACKAY → 2018 muggle edition

vine expert. youtube star. all ‘round boss ass bitch.

EARLY LIFE

pretty much the same as before.

born to isabelle mackay, the product of a one night stand where the condom clearly didn’t work.

isabelle again was born into a devoutly christian family and was a disappointment from day one. when she was eighteen she ran away from home and lived with a friend, but it was after months of sleeping around and spending the nights partying away that she reaped the consequences and fell pregnant at nineteen.

no one would ever know that ariel’s true father was a critically acclaimed actor who’d fallen off the rails a year before his encounter with isabelle and tragically died after an overdose three months after ariel was conceived. no one would ever know his true role in the making of ariel, and he died without ever knowing that he had a daughter.

once again, ariel was a problem child from the moment she popped out of the womb.

girl wreaked havoc at every damn turn!! was basically bouncing off the walls with energy ten times as much as her little friends, to the point where she was expelled from two primary schools within four years.

during this time, though, issy was lucky enough to fall in love with a gorgeous woman she worked with at a retail store and alycia moved in after two years of them dating. she quickly adjusted and began treating ariel as her own, something that proved helpful in the long run as she certainly knew better how to discipline ariel than issy.

love my lesbian queens

due to the fact that things like mental illness were more readily talked about at this time, ariel was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she was eleven rather than fourteen. a psychiatrist explained that this was why ariel seemed so full of energy at times, as she was often struggling to deal with her manic episodes and found her only outlet was to cause trouble. though they didn’t start her on medication at this time, ariel started regularly seeing a psychiatrist from this time onwards.

during her primary school years, ariel had found it a big struggle to fit in, but after getting her diagnoses and moving to a new town to start high school, she quickly found that she actually had impeccable social skills. from the get-go, ariel became the It Girl of her grade, but she was never nasty or a bully. she was popular but she was still kind, she was a party girl but she was still respectful of people’s boundaries. her mother and alycia had taught her well, and she still remained close to them as she grew up.

PARENTAL DEATH TW: six days after ariel’s sixteenth birthday, isabelle was involved in a car accident and died in the hospital due to head injuries two days later. ariel was absolutely devastated.

similar to before, she fell into a deep depressive slump that not even alycia could coax her out of. for months and months and months she isolated herself from everyone she loved, her emotions completely closed off so all she felt was numb.

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE TW: after a year of complete and utter hopelessness in which she lost contact with all her friend and failed nearly all her classes, ariel felt the only option was to end it all and attempted suicide. her attempt was unsuccessful, and after remaining in the hospital for a month she was sent back out into the world with a new perspective on life.

she was still grieving, and maybe she always would be, but now ariel knew that she couldn’t suffer alone. she reached back out to her friends and concentrated harder on her studies then ever before, allowing her to get decent grades and to easily graduate in 2014. it was also at this time that she was put on a series of medication that kept her disorder in check and also maintained healthy sleeping patterns.

RISE TO FAME

after leaving school, she found herself stuck. she was still trying to battle her illness and she now had absolutely no idea what she wanted to do with her life. instead of going straight to university, she decided to take a gap year in which she found herself engrossed in social justice and became a rather prominent activist for feminism and queer rights with popularity mainly in facebook and instagram. she was also a prominent figure in the breaking down of stigma against mental illness, often opening up about her own ongoing struggle with bipolar disorder and her spout of major depression as a teenager.

it was during this time that she also started making vines and grew a separate form of popularity on there and with her linked twitter account. she was a well-known meme face within months and her vines are the kind that are constantly featured in #ripvine compilations.

in 2016, with her instagram growing in popularity to the point where advertisers were reaching out to her and her vine and twitter presence growing stronger than ever, ariel decided not to go back to school and instead kept a job at a cafe while she started to earn money through social media.

she was definitely #cut when vine shut down in late 2016, but she directed her followers to her still-growing twitter where she continues to post memes and videos that are just as popular as her vine once was.

in early 2017, a tourist company approached her and offered her a large sum of money if she started a youtube account linked to both her twitter and instagram and travelled the globe to advertise their company. she immediately said yes, quit her job as a barista and took alycia along with her to begin travelling the world.

she started small in places like the greek island, with fairly short videos mostly just showing what the company could do, where they could bring you etc.

when she started to tour more prominent places in europe like paris and rome, her account really started to pick up in popularity. those videos now receive hundreds of thousands of views, with viewers drawn to her hilarious little quips and stunning photography and videography skills as well as her side accounts which continued to tackle issues of the time (e.g. gun violence, the me too movement)

now in mid-2018, she is preparing to go to america to continue filming for her youtube account as the touring company has just expanded to the states. she’s highkey excited. thanks.

MISC.

has dated both men and women and is very open about her sexuality on her social media accounts.

is a bit obsessed with hayley kiyoko and would talk your ear off about how much she’s done for queer representation in the music industry.

her favourite movie is probably going to be ocean’s eight, but she also loved get out and i, tonya. is just a slut for recent movies tbh.

one time she was on tinder. it sucked.

binge watched brooklyn nine-nine and cried when it was cancelled for that one day.

quotes vines daily. not even her own. just out of nowhere will go “rOaD WoRk AhEAd?????????”

#⌜ character study ⌟ ✦ * · ˚ ɢᴀꜱᴏʟɪɴᴇ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ .#⌜ edit ⌟ ✦ * · ˚ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇꜱᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙɪʀᴛʜ .#maraudrshq:tasks #i had way too much fun with this Anyway

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madisilverflint · 7 years

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Ancient Greek Meme 8,15, 18?

8. what are your five favourite myths?

mmh, intresting ask :) “echo and narcissus”,both for it’s romantic (the one-sided love) and psychoanalitic (narcissism)meanings; “orpheus and euridyce”, I love the theme of the man that challengethe death even only to see his wife (according to Plato) or to gain her back,his impatience or cowardly is so human as his foolish hope to conquer death ; “Dionysus”he’s a mythological figure and not a myth but I love his fight to be recognizedas a god, his ambiguity, his link with the deepest (and often darkest) passions of the humanheart; “medea” here again, I love hernot only because she’s the real hero behind Jason’s heroic, but also for herstrenght and resolution and, why not,her clever cruelty; “Oedipus” one of the most complex figure in the greek mythology,he’s the perfect tragic figure, a good and smart man who’s damned till thebirth lives his life ignoring that he’s delivering on his destiny.

15. Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar?

As Italian I should say Julius Caesar (andbelieve me this is an hard choice) but Alexander the Great with his military valueand thirst of knowledge is unbeatable.

18. what is your favourite movie or TV show setin ancient Greece or Rome?

Alexander by Oliver Stone (2004)

classic ask meme

#ask #mythology #thank you!!!!#and sorry for the late reply :(

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misscrawfords · 7 years

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11, 12, 16

Sorry for the delay in answering @cinquespotted and thank you for asking! :) Been a manic couple of days and I needed to think about non-fiction books about classics because that’s not so easy to answer when I haven’t been in academia in the subject for almost ten years. (Yikes…)

11. recommend a piece of non-fiction about the classical world

I was thinking about this on and off for a couple of days and then the answer hit me. Adam Nicholson’s The Mighty Dead. I’m not sure that “non-fiction” is quite the right way to describe this utterly brilliant book. It’s a lyrical, imaginative, semi-fictional investigation of Homer’s influence and power, as simultaneously oblique and direct, beautifully written and πολυτροπος as one of Homer’s heroes.

I also pulled out my undergraduate dissertation bibliography which was the last time I read classical scholarship seriously and I remember being blown away by some of the things on it. (Unlike many students, I absolutely adored writing my dissertation - I was very lucky.) Here are a few of the academic books I read which I recall enjoying even at the distance of 9 years:

- Chew, Kathryn. “The representation of violence in the Greek novels and martyr accounts”- Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A study of the structure of romance (not classical per se but brilliant and influential - I read more Frye for my masters and I’m a big, big fan)- Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry- Loraux, Nicole. Tragic ways to kill a woman- MacAlister, Suzanne. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire

Yep, my dissertation was basically about sex and death. (What else is fiction about?) No, I didn’t do it on purpose…

12. who is your favourite poet? why?

(Oh how nice, this meme was created by someone writing British English. How delightfully unusual!)

Am I allowed to cheat and give two - one Greek and one Roman? Good! :P

On the Greek side, I have to go with Homer. I mean, I honestly feel he (he? As if we know!) might be my favourite author. Or at least sit up there alongside Austen. I guess at the moment I’m in more of a Homer mood than an Austen mood. Polite tea drinking and elegant sniping in a ball room really isn’t cutting it for me at the moment. (YES I KNOW THERE IS MORE TO AUSTEN THAN THAT. SHE’S MY FAVOURITE AUTHOR AND I’VE WRITTEN A DAMN MASTERS DISSERTATION ON HER. I’m just having a reaction against that kind of writing atm. I don’t know why. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel sad. But that’s another post.)

HOMER

I mean, where does one start? I’ve always loved The Odyssey from reading Book 6 for Greek GCSE and tittering over Odysseus covering his naked manhood with a fig leaf (lines inexplicably missed out from the Bristol Classical Press’ edition for fear of offending the sensibilities of school children, clearly not realising that by missing them out there is no indication that Odysseus isn’t stark naked in from of Nausicaa the entire scene lololololol). I did a final year paper involving reading the whole poem in Greek (spoiler: I failed, but I read about 2/3rds of it missing out the many books of recognition in Ithaca and it was a wonderful experience reading 100s of lines of Homer and getting a feel for the vocabulary and the rhythm of it all. I wish I had been a more dedicated student and had actually completed the whole thing.) It was my favourite paper. Professor Simon Goldhill (who looks and sounds like Zeus) opening the lecture series by booming, “The Odyssey is all about how to be a MAN”. ανδρα μοι εννεπε. First line of the poem. I get shivers thinking about it. Odysseus - his character. WHAT A GUY. (I don’t mean to say you have to like him or approve of him - that’s not what appreciating fiction is about, you clodpoles, but you have to admit he’s an amazing, amazing character and concept.) We actually had Professor Edith Hall come to my school today and she gave a talk on Odysseus as a hero and ngl I actually almost teared up at one moment. I just can’t believe such a great character exists and over 2000 years later, he still speaks to us and we can trace SO MUCH in Western culture back to these texts. Actually, while I was nursing a raging crush on Odysseus (I was 20 okay), it was Penelope who was the revelation to me in that paper. Did Penelope know her husband was back before the recognition scene? This had never occurred to me before and I was plunged into debates on the stability of the text and characterisation and feminism and narratology. I mean, it was just amazing! And whatever nitty gritty you might go into with it, I was just struck by this wonderful, admittedly overly romantic idea, that Penelope was absolutely Odysseus’ equal. That in this ancient epic, we had a woman who bested a man at his own game, that she was playing him - and he loved it. These two tricksters, separated for too long, finally getting their happy ending. And I know it’s not about that. But it also is. Emotionally, that’s what I got. And it made me so, so happy. Because, honestly, I don’t have a problem studying works written by, for and about men if they’re good, but there are SO FEW opportunities studying classics (at least traditionally; the approach is changing now which is great) to grapple with amazing female characters or figures - and here I had Homer’s hero and Homer’s heroine. I mean, there are many other things I love about the Odyssey but this is already long enough.

I always joked about the fact that I managed to get a classics degree from Cambridge without having ever studied the Iliad. (Ikr, it’s crazy!) And youthful, hubristic me was okay with that. I was an Odyssey girl through and through. I’d read the Iliad and it was all battles and death and the catalogue of ships. YOU FOOL. So the first time I really had to deal with the Iliad was when I found myself teaching it to A Level Classical Civilisation. And it was an absolute revelation. I’m teaching it for the third time at the moment and it’s not getting old. Every time I see something different, every time the students find something new, every time I cry quietly in class when we are reading. The places vary but the moments that are guaranteed to set me off are Achilles’ grief over Patroclus, him putting on his armour and his final unbending towards Priam. Why the armour? I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s something to do with this sense of inevitability of the approach of the end, of imminent climax (somehow more significant than the climax itself). It’s like how the lighting of the beacons in LotR is such a powerful scene. It’s not that the thing itself is particularly full of pathos but because of everything it signifies. I can’t altogether explain it but it always really affects me. When my uncle died the other year, I was reading the death of Patroclus with my class at that time and my mum came to visit. I didn’t know how to talk to her or talk about my uncle’s death and we had this absolutely awful walk around a country park in the rain (I am never going to be able to go back there for the memories it triggers) but somehow the only way I could articulate something of what I felt was by clinically and factually describing Achilles’ anguish and explaining to my mother how the ancient world mourned its dead and what Patroclus had meant to Achilles and what blinding grief and rage would drive him to do. And she gripped my hand and we both wept, silent tears, and we walked on in the rain talking about the Iliad. I’m actually crying again, writing this, right now. I am not sure there is ANYTHING in literature more powerful than Achilles’s rage and anguish.

If Odysseus is the hero of romance and comedy, a clever hero whose very wiliness makes my heart sing and my academic brain bounce up and down looking for mythic parallels, Achilles does something else altogether. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently - partly because I’m teaching the poem and once again we’ve got to Book 16 and Achilles’ tragedy is becoming the focus of the remainder of the poem (if it wasn’t before) so it’s literally my job to think about his character - but also in the context of my recent obsession with SW, Reylo and Kylo Ren’s Episode 9 possibilities. I’m not trying to be trivial here but it saddens me SO MUCH that people have the nerve to police interest in that character, one of the most fascinating and complex to grace the screens of a fantasy blockbuster series in - well, honestly, I can’t think of another one. What a treat we have. Nobody has a problem loving Achilles’ character and weeping over him (and making soft pastel shipping graphics of him and Patroclus…) but he was objectively speaking an awful person in many ways. A violent, unpredictable, psychopathic overgrown adolescent who holds an awful grudge. But of course, that isn’t the full story and it’s not the purpose of this post to educate the internet on the nuances of Achilles’ character and his profound tragedy. I’ve got emotional enough, but honestly, we NEED Achilles. We need that larger-than-life expression of all our deepest fears and regrets and violence and destruction - and also wit, compassion, sense of justice and deep love and loyalty. I think someone once said that everyone should read the Iliad at least once in their life. Whether they did or not, it’s true: everyone should.

Okay, so I was also going to talk about how much I love Ovid too but that would be literally going from the sacred to the profane, the sublime to the ridiculous and I have spent way too long on this already. So, yeah, I really love Ovid as well.

16. Cicero - love him or loathe him?

I unironically love Cicero.

Okay, so I started along this journey from the worst of reasons. The first guy I ever liked in high school was obsessed with Cicero. At the time, I’d never read anything by him, so I decided to like him because liking the same things as your crush is an A+ way of getting him to notice you and like you back. (Spoiler: it failed.) Along the way, I got really inspired by Cicero’s wife Terentia. My first internet handles were Terentia. (I WONDER IF HE KNEW I HAD A CRUSH. lol he did. it was awful. I cringe.) Anyway, Terentia was fabulously wealthy and responsible for financing Cicero’s political career, married twice more after Cicero’s death, including to the historian Suetonius, and died aged 103. What a BAMF.

So first off, I love Cicero’s Latin. He’s my favourite Latin prose author to translate. Even if his speeches are sometimes on the dull side (we had De Imperio as an AS set text a couple of years ago and it was such a snooze-fest), the actual style of writing is so lucid and balanced and satisfying I can forgive him the content. I love all the rhetorical devices and how you can still see them at work in (good) political speeches today. I just get tremendous pleasure from translating him. It annoys me no end that the prose unseen author at A Level at the moment is Livy. I have no patience for Livy’s Latin; it doesn’t thrill me at all.

But I also kind of like Cicero the man. He lived at one of the most fascinating periods of history and although you can’t altogether trust his bias, he was a really important figure in that history and documented so much of it. I wish we had more sources to sit along side as I think he definitely puffs himself up, but nevertheless he’s invaluable. I even quite like his arrogance. He’s the ultimate self-made, intellectual man in Rome and I think he has reason to be proud of what he achieved. He must have been formidable to listen to.

Thank you for letting me ramble on about classics and literature like this. I miss writing on tumblr and not just reblogging pretty things.

Ask me about classics (or anything else obviously)

#classics #homer #the odyssey #the iliad #cicero

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