#whether it’s abt me lmao

[vigilskeep]

i’ve never really had a problem with tumblr anon hate. i don’t know if it’s because i pack my arguments with so many apologies and “open to discussion!”s or because i tend to be so talkative and loud and interactive on here that it makes people nervous to say something to my face

[bacchuschucklefuck]

summer of junior year 06/11

[teddybeartoji]

i feel like suguru might not actually be a morning person on his own, but he is a morning person for you. like he wants to get up early and he wants to cook you breakfast. he wants to watch you wake up and he wants to see that darling sleepy smile of yours, so he forgets all about his morning grumpiness. you are way more important than that.

[hellonerf]

i feel like shit so im gonna pretend hetalia is waifubait

og i snuck in amesuka

[fluxweeed]

Hii, I just discovered your fics and am reading my way through them. Love, love, love the ones I’ve read so far.😊 I was just wondering what your favourite Draco is you’ve written, and what your fave Draco is in fics written by others? ☺️

ACK thank you!! what a question!! i've considered this v carefully and it turns out i have………a lot of thoughts. i will keep them under a cut so nobody is accosted with a full 700 words of my Draco Opinions 😂 so my quick answer is:

my fave draco i've written: the taste of țuică my fave draco ever: rookie moves by peu_a_peu

draco is an interesting one for me bc i don't really LIKE him? but i have sooo many feelings about him. really not sure i could summon the same fervour for harry, for example, who is my number one boy forever and always.

(i saw a thing once that said a pairing becomes ur otp when u relate to one of the characters and want to fuck the other one, and 🙈 i mean, i think you're supposed to relate to the gryffindor, aren't you. whoops.)

OKAY SO HERE'S THE UNHINGED DRACO MALFOY ESSAY BY FLUX W. EED.

listen. i love and respect people who are Refined Draco enjoyers. connoisseurs of redemption arcs. appreciators of majestic malfoy bone structure and ethereal grey eyes and soft windswept hair. fans of dracos who insult harry (with hidden affection) and who are a bit snobbish (in a rich, sexy way) but ultimately have realised the error of their teenage years and have become a better person. perhaps this draco has built a potions business and helps the aurors. perhaps he IS an auror. either way, he has a biting sense of humour, maybe, but he's a good guy.

unfortunately, the draco of my heart is a horrid mean little rat man.

i've never actually managed to write him the way i love him. i tried to aim for immoral bastardy in what's mine is yours but i got so caught up in trying to nail the feelsforbreakfast-style humour in the narrative that i ended up focusing much more on that and much less on writing genuine bastardhood.

i've written him as reserved and clever (in the four doors – this draco was written entirely for @jovialobservationanchor, who had a weak spot for closed-off academics with soft centres) and as a traumatised self-loathing mess (in two to lie and to some extent for lack of wanting and say no to this) and hopelessly sexually/emotionally horny for one harry james potter (in, um, most things) but i've never managed to capture the genuine cruel streak and flawed personality that is sooo so important to me.

WHICH IS WHY i picked țuică!draco for my favourite of the ones i've written. he's still a bit too emotionally intelligent to be Just Right, imo, but i think he's maybe the closest? he's unrepentantly rude to people. he's not attractive. and he has a streak of self-destructive fucked-upedness that is some form of wartime guilt, but certainly not a pretty one.

HOWEVER. rookie moves?? NAILED it. i adooored how genuinely fuckin MEAN he is, even tho he's an auror. i love love LOVED that he's kind of bad at his job in a way that's in complete opposition to how drarry!draco is often written these days:

The look on Malfoy’s face was not only troubling, Harry realized, but familiar. At once activated and dead behind the eyes, like an invasive species in an ecosystem that could not check it. It was the look of the meanest fucking teenager Harry had ever known, giving in to his urge to bully.

-

What Malfoy wasn’t good with was people. Despite his repeated insistences that his upbringing had equipped him with impeccable manners and a facility with society intrigue, the truth was that he rubbed almost everyone the wrong way. He was, undeniably, annoying. Witnesses were put off by his snide, dismissive tone, and he didn’t know how to coax out information with curiosity, warmth, or strategic silence.

that's not to say unrepentant cunt draco is the only one for me!! i DO enjoy the classic redeemed drarry draco!! i love a quirky draco, à la wwpwcs or maya's drop dead gorgeous. gallaplacidia's draco is sooo painful for me to read (complimentary) that even though i adore her fics, i still haven't read them all bc i have to space them out, for my health. and i'm sure there are dozens more dracos that i'm forgetting how much i like – basically, as long as he isn't super suave, absolutely gorgeous and/or obviously tom felton, i'm on board.

[rainofthetwilight]

hot take I guess, but tbh I Don't Really Care abt bruise...I can 100% see why people ship it and it's cute ngl but I just don't care abt it, it never really grabbed me tbh

[blushedfemmes]

Do you think it's possible for someone who isn't stone to have a respectful sexual relationship with someone who is?

oh absolutely. i vent a lot abt my anxieties over being stone and dating on here (sorry) but it’s really not that deep. i’m just a very neurotic person lol.

ofc there needs to be communication and a willingness to be open to one another’s needs and how they can be met! but people with incompatible needs negotiate and find ways to remain in connection all the time.

stone4stone is beautiful and important, but it is NOT the only option for stone folks. we can have sex and be in relationships with people who aren’t stone. all we need to do is communicate, and it’s up to the other person to decide whether they need something we can’t give 💓

[unproduciblesmackdown]

ooh big hug

[pinayelf-archive]

I know fans joke abt how the warden is more competent than the inquisitor bc they did all that w/o much help but the funny thing abt amihan is she actually isn't

she was 20, angry and hated herself and the world, she ended up in the situation she was in bc she was...a petty snitch. she also hates being a grey warden and continues to hate being one through dai - she actually leaves but then decides to search for the cure

for most of the Blight, it was fuck up after fuck up. like I play it so that I have enough ppl to help me fight the archdemon, but in my personal headcanon, she pissed off a lot of potential help (whether it be Circle mages who overheard her saying she was "gonna annul this shit" out of anger, eamon's men who did NOT like her, bhelen who didn't really trust the fact that she knew nothing about politics), left a bad taste in people they came across and picked a fight with anora

which I think makes sense for a 20 year old ill-adjusted young woman who had to learn how to be more selfless. beating the archdemon was pure luck mixed with people just NOT WANTING the Blight to destroy ferelden and realizing joining the fight was the only way to stay alive

amihan does grow, but it's slow, she has to process trauma, understand she hurt people and ruined their lives and to actually experience what it's like being loved (both platonic and romantic)

I tend to not post so much abt how much amihan fucked up and almost let a Blight swallow ferelden bc I tend to feel anxious abt how ppl will receive it but I think it's important to her character and it's fun and interesting for me to play with it in this case

immy is 100% more competent than amihan, in spite of her own flaws, but I love both my messy and my scaredy cat girl all the same

[ultrasopp]

Constantly fighting between trying to act So Normal and Casual about tog Oh yes ive heard of it haha yeah its okay VS i am thinking big thoughts about it all the time vibrating shaking foaming at the mouth bark bark bark rabies

Anyway the hill im dying on today is once again. Why is mr 1069 always depicted baby cheek smooth fresh shaved while crossing the ural mountains on foot in the year of our lord 1306. Not just him actually why are they all depicted as models. Make them uglier make them unconventional make them human

[kazumasougi]

im gonna be real for a second. if fantasy can only be enjoyable to you when removed from any and all real world implications then is it even good

[bacchuschucklefuck]

the one thing amiss from nsbu's concept and the general isekai/modern jumanji medias in general is the fact that in the original jumanji all that shit happened in the real life town. people died for real. we need to bring funny games (1997) to the tabletop scene

[teddybeartoji]

thank you everybody who crossed their fingers and toes bc aventurine AND acheron are now both safely at home:3333333333

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

Thoughts about the library of Alexandria?

THANK YOU FOR ASKING i'm always glad to talk about this lol

think about the library of alexandria. i bet i can guess what you think you know about it: a vast store of knowledge which was destroyed by julius caesar, as a result of which europe was plunged into a dark age.

what if i told you that none of that is true? or, at the very least, not substantiated in a way that any scholar would accept it?

putting details under the cut bc um. i am very passionate about this

let's start with the most egregious and outdated claim: that the loss of knowledge stored in the library of alexandria was responsible for a wider loss of knowledge in europe, commonly called the dark ages.

the whole concept of a 'dark age' in european history has been strongly contested in recent years, with many scholars pointing out continued scholarly activity and education, serious artistic development and monumental building, and little evidence for a large increase in illiteracy. basically, there wasn't a 'dark age' when all ancient knowledge was lost and barbarism took over - this is a fiction, first concocted by renaissance scholars who wanted to distinguish their age from earlier ones, and maintained by such bastards as edward gibbon, who had their own agendas to maintain through the claim that the birth of nations and the rise of christianity in europe was the death of knowledge. it therefore stands to reason that if there were no 'dark ages', then the destruction of the library of alexandria was not responsible for them.

"but pinkie!" i hear you cry, "maybe the destruction of the library didn't cause a worldshattering loss of knowledge, but it did exist, and it was destroyed? right?"

alas. the past is never as simple as that, especially not the ancient past. you might have seen this post about the difficulty in truly knowing 'facts' about the ancient world. while it is true that it is very difficult to know 100% for absolute certain what happened 2000+ years ago, there are many things that classicists can be pretty sure about. when a classicist says something happened, it is an argument they are making based on multiple independent written sources and supporting archaeological evidence.

a good example is the rhodes earthquake of 226/7BC - while we obviously don't have seismic data, or newspaper articles, or video of this event, we have multiple records of the event from different chroniclers, and epigraphic evidence of aid given from other Hellenistic kingdoms to rebuild the city after the earthquake. therefore, we can be fairly certain that it did happen, even if some specifics are still debatable (like whether or not there was a tsunami after the earthquake, or exactly what year it happened in since ancient greek years were different from the system we use now).

in the case of the library of alexandria - its construction, its contents, its scale, its destruction - we have very little in the way of corroborating evidence. the earliest source which mentions the library is a rhetorical letter by an unknown author, dating from the 2nd century BC. over the next six centuries many others wrote accounts which mentioned the library; they contradict each other on almost every point, and most of the agreeing facts are explainable by the fact that later writers were basing their accounts on earlier ones.

some of the key points these accounts disagree on are:

• who was responsible for building the library in the first place, and when (ptolemy I? ptolemy II? demetrius of phalerum? aristotle?)

• how many books the library contained (ancient estimates range from 40,000 to 700,000 - Bagnall (2002) and Nesselrath (2012) have both attempted to calculate the number of works which could have been held in the library, based on the number of ancient texts known to have existed at the time and have found the numbers. overblown to say the least)

• the kinds of texts the library contained (everything ever written or just texts in greek and latin? key point of contention in this category is whether or not early jewish texts were included)

• what happened to the library, exactly (destroyed by a fire started by julius caesar in 48 BC? destroyed by Christians in the 391 AD riots which also killed Hypatia? destroyed when the emperor Aurelian invaded in 272 AD? or, as some modern scholars have suggested, had the library already deteriorated by 48 BC due to natural causes and political neglect? many accounts also record evidence of scholarship continuing in alexandria long after 48 BC - how could this happen if the library had been destroyed? some accounts don't mention the destruction of the library at all)

what's more, there is, to date, very little archaeological evidence to support the ideas that:

1) a library of the scale described by even the most moderate of ancient accounts existed (remember that texts at the time were written on scrolls, which took up far more space than books)

2) there was any great destructive event in 48 BC (evidence has been found for the destruction caused by Aurelian's invasion in the late 3rd century - see Empereur (2008))

(it's worth noting that improved marine archaeology techniques have lead to some impressive discoveries in Alexandria in recent years - no evidence yet which has been argued to be the library, but it could definitely happen)

i could go on, but i feel like nobody would enjoy that (and i have to get my laundry from the dryer in like 5 minutes). to conclude, basically everything people think they know about the library of alexandria is either demonstrably false, or not able to be corroborated to any acceptacle scholarly standard. and it really annoys me when people still post that fucking bullshit graph of the """""knowledge lost""""" when the library was destroyed lmao it's bullshit!!!!!!!

rant over bc i do need to get my laundry lol. might reblog later and add sources in case anyone wants to read up on this!! bc u shouldn't just take my word for it obviously ❤️

[unnerving-presence]

unpopular opinion i think but i’m sad they didn’t stick with the cold, calculating, but calm wesker. it honestly just doesn’t fit him seeing him get impulsively angry at shit he wouldn’t have gotten angry at in re4 or uc

like he’s this character who has really deep lore and trauma, who has seen the worst of the worst, does bad shit, but is also calm and quick to think of solutions when things go wrong

in his newer iterations it just feels like that part of him is gone? like he just kinda gets angry (ahem re5) and we never really see his quick thinking. it almost feels like he’s so dedicating to his plan he doesn’t want to think of other options and it feels like he doesn’t. sure, you could argue that he’s a lil more crazy in re5, but 3 years ago that fucker didn’t beat around spencer despite him using him his entire life. but all of a sudden when it comes to uroboros he wants to get all cocky and just let his guards do all the work which clearly doesn’t work.

if this were like.. any other wesker iteration he would’ve thought to maybe.. i don’t know, do something smarter instead of letting all his soldiers die? wesker took down an entire umbrella base in russia by himself to get all of umbrella’s files but all of a sudden he’s too lazy to kill 2 people who he could impale in a second when they clearly threaten his plans? is he stupid? yeah probably lol

bring back smart wesker i’m tired of him being stupid aka typical comic villain in re5 :[

[wri0thesley]

i would like to feel pretty for once in my life i am feeling insecure today!!