I really don’t think there’s enough appreciation for the fact that Tom kind of woobified a tyrannical Roman emperor. Like yeah, right off the bat it’s insane that he, a mid-40s Minnesotan who still calls his parents “mommy” and “daddy” and is a corporate stooge for a rapidly decaying media organization and agreed to an open marriage he didn’t want bc he was scared of his wife and is about to go to prison largely for crimes that he didn’t actually commit (like yeah the document destruction is on him but everything else? Not so much) read about a tyrannical Roman emperor and went “he’s just like me fr”. But the fact that he rewrote the Sporus and Nero story so dramatically…. Like most historical sources strongly imply that Nero killed his wife by accident and then married Sporus bc he kind of looked like her. Tom read that and went “okay, but what if Sporus was actually his favourite and he was secretly in love with him and he kinda hated his wife so he killed her to be with Sporus? He really IS just like me fr”. Tom is one more mental breakdown away from writing Nero/Sporus fanfiction and posting it on AO3
