I Don't Know Anymore

Ram, they/them, white, mid 20s. Icon credit to @cryptidcatcreates.

[dasloddl]

op disabled reblogs but I think the point still stands

[eepyenbyfox]

reminder that the books themselves also suck ass actually. there's an entire plotline endorsing slavery. the one character who advocates to end slavery is bullied and made fun of. the one slave who doesnt like being enslaved is bullied and treated as an outcast. the bankers are the picture of racist stereotypes of jewish people. the one asian character is named fckn Cho Chang. the worldbuilding SUCKS. fuck harry potter and fuck rowling. stop giving her your money.

[thiswasachoice]

This is a spreadsheet from Old Kingdom Egypt, written about 4500 years ago. It was part of the diary and logbook of Merer, an inspector responsible for the transportation of materials to Giza for the construction of Khufu's pyramid. There's something beautiful about the organization here, how his rows and columns would fit in just as well in Excel as any modern spreadsheet of delivery records. Across the yawning gulf of ages, we're united by this mundane and incredibly human task. I love reading things like this. They remind me of the fundamental similarity of humans across time. They were no less intelligent or skilled than we, and oftentimes had to be moreso, to account for the many technological aids they lacked.

I often hear people talk about how showing a smartphone to a medieval peasant would shock him, but I want to show Merer Excel. I think pivot tables would make him cry tears of joy.

[fiumeikikotoben]

@copperbadge, could Merer be a distant ancestor of yours?

[copperbadge]

I mean I feel like, spiritually, Merer is an ancestor to all of those who kneel at the altar of Rows And Columns.

[susiephone]

so frustrating to be a skeptic with a sense of whimsy because like. I want there to be cryptids. I want there to be magic. I want there to be evidence of something we don't fully understand and can't explain. but then 99% of the "proof" out there for that stuff is like. the most obvious scam you've ever seen in your life.

[ckret2]

[en-theos]

the thing about the catalogue of ships is that it is not Epic in the sense that it is elevated action sequences or lofty emotional drama but people are trying to read it in the same way that they read those scenes (and often they try to read it like they would a novel. which also imo doesn't work for the combat or drama parts of the iliad.) it is a Catalogue and should be read as a Catalogue. it is a depository of knowledge and condensed into stacked references. it's the IMDB of the trojan and even the entire greek mythos. its Epicness is in its referentiality/intertextuality

so reading it with full impact means either 1) having your wikipedia/mythology handbook/etc open on the side or relying on your mythological foreknowledge and suddenly instead of just reading a list of boats you are going 'that guy is a son of THESEUS???? wait that guy SACKED THEBES mere years before this??? wait that guy is descended from poseidon and a witch??? wait that guy is known for his magic horses???' and suddenly all these guys, when they pop up in the rest of the epic, gain a whole new level of characterization because you know the Lore. but since the iliad is a SUPERMASSIVE epic the Lore has been packaged into a neat list form for maximum efficiency. an ancient greek audience, with the mythological knowledge they would have had, could do this effortlessly and would have enjoyed it immensely.

the impact and imo the enjoyment comes out when you follow up on the cues the catalogue gives you.

[en-theos]

#AND THIS IS WHY I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!!#it is absolutely FASCINATING how the catalogue positions the trojan war within the context of wider mythos#which i think people knocking on it dont really understand this but. so much of greek myth & legend is tied together thru the catalogue!!#you NEED that list so that you can grasp both the magnitude of the war and how it fits into the cosmic order (if that makes sense)#it also is fascinating in the context of EIA greek polities (thebes is instead called ‘hypothebai’ which could have so many implications)#also the trojan allies section how do you guys not enjoy this portion thats essentially a window into how greeks perceived anatolians??#although you shouldnt read like toooo far into it (epic tradition was constantly evolving atp) its still an immensely valuable source#for how many scholars approach the population distribution+political dynamics+percieved powers during that transitional period#which we have no written records during and otherwise have to rely on archaeological evidence like pottery#[which is. its own can of worms]#iliad#catalogue of ships#catalogue of ships my beloved. my fuckin beloved. i’d die for you catalogue of ships @doloneia

YOU GET ITTT

[en-theos]

have been seeing this reductive take wandering across my dash:

and like. while it's not wrong per se i hope the post i'm adding this to shows that there's so much more going on than just epic shoutouts. But more importantly i resent the cheap shot at classicists who more likely are saying 'the catalogue may seem boring as hell to a modern audience' but which here is garbled into classicists saying 'the catalogue is boring as hell' with the modifier 'to modern audiences' firmly in the mouth of OP. I think OP also means the former, that classicists are arguing that the catalogue has little straightforward entertainment value to a modern reader, but the phrasing trivializes the exact field that originated OP's take.

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[thoodleoo]

been reading cicero's rant about words being given obscene meanings and i don't think i've ever seen a latin sentence that made me burst into such immediate and violent laughter before

[thoodleoo]

had a couple people be like "i have no idea what this means" so to clarify: the word penis in latin originally meant tail and only later got the sense of, uh. penis. so this is cicero complaining that nowadays all these hooligans are using the word "penis" for naughty purposes

[atii-uqaulahaluanngilutit]

Thank you for this post, I will be showing it to every boomer who ever complains about how the kids these days are butchering the language.

[katanahime]

Sometimes people will ask "well, why didn't Bruce just explain himself properly" and the answer is always because Bruce Wayne hates himself and is 100% down to take the blame on anything, ever, no matter what his excuse is, he'd rather have you think he's an asshole than be emotionally vulnerable about why HE'S hurt instead of dwelling about how he could be hurting someone else, the only way there's a chance he opens up about that is if you are the one giving him the benefit of the doubt first, next question

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[gravitilly]

LOL

[teaboot]

hurts to see them living your dream

[ramblingsofamadnb]

It's been forever since I've made a post about fanfiction I've written, but I'm doing it again in the hopes that this one will find its audience! I've written a superbat-ish fic inspired by the first story in Superman: Red & Blue #1 and the World's Finest arc that inspired it, though I think the fic will read fine if you aren't familiar.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/88457076

Title: The Prison of No Escape

Rating: Teen

Archive warning: Creator chose not to use archive warnings

Category: Gen

Relationships: Clark Kent & Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne

Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne

Tags: angst, pre-relationship, pre-Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne, feelings realization, mild hurt/comfort, by which I mean a lot of hurt and mild comfort, comic: superman: red & blue (2021), comic arc: world's finest (1941) #192-193, canon related, cold war, Bruce Wayne is bad at feelings, this is a rough one and it doesn't end as happily as I planned, so don't say I didn't warn you if it hurts you, references to torture but no on-page depiction, references to starvation

Summary:

I’m Superman, right? Superman’s invulnerable. Superman can survive anything.

That was the lie I told myself every night.

- Superman: Red & Blue #1

When Clark is taken captive in the Soviet state of Lubania during the Cold War, Bruce takes it upon himself to save his friend. It takes eight excruciating months of heartache until he finally succeeds. But once Clark is safe, Bruce must come to terms with the fact that even for Superman, the scars of trauma don’t fade easily.

Or: in Superman: Red & Blue #1, Clark says that Bruce helped him escape when he was held prisoner in Lubania, but doesn’t explain how. This is my exploration of how that might have happened.

[have-you-been-here]

A country where the only place you've been is an airport on a layover, Earth

Have you been here?

I have been here

I have not been here

Voting ended onJul 17

[clingyduoapologist]

Your friend’s unpublished fic idea is kind of a dead wife

[dazzling-galaxy]

i also want to read this guy’s dead wife

[shigure]

i'm sorry i never did your tag game. i love you

[so-you-read-the-usernames]

*taps mic* Jason didn’t know that Joker was in the warehouse

Like his death still wouldn’t have been his fault because he was a kid and it was the Joker who murdered him but he also very much so did not disobey Batman because he very much so DID NOT KNOW THE JOKER WAS IN THE WAREHOUSE UNTIL JASON HIMSELF WAS IN THE WAREHOUSE WITH A GUN PULLED ON HIM

[skalidra]

I mean, he did (mostly). And he did. Of course it wasn't Jason's fault he was killed, but he absolutely directly disobeyed Bruce, and he absolutely did it thinking the Joker was in the warehouse.

We start with Bruce and Jason:

There are cars leaving the warehouse; Jason himself is the one to point out that they aren't Joker's trucks, and the dialogue here of both Bruce and Jason is very very clear that they both believe that Joker is still in the warehouse. Bruce tells Jason explicitly:

"You stay here and keep an eye on that warehouse. Take no action until I get back. I repeat: no action! ... ... Don't tangle with the Joker alone! Wait for me to get back, please! That madman's just too dangerous for you to handle. Do you read me?"

Then:

It is very, very explicit that Jason is deliberately disobeying the orders he has been given (Stay put. Do Nothing.). He knows he is; there's no other reason for him to have the thought-bubble apology.

Jason goes down to the warehouse. What exactly his plan is from there is hard to say, but at the least he was creeping along the sides of it in civilian get-up, and it appears to be luck (Watsonian perspective) that Sheila steps out and he can talk to her outside. There's no way of knowing whether it was his intention to stay outside or whether he would have gone in regardless, but he is certainly having this conversation directly outside the door of a warehouse that he still believes has the Joker in it, and the inner dialogue seems pretty clear that he went down there to save Sheila. (This part is pure extrapolation, but I personally think it's probably pretty fair to say that if Jason believed he had to break into that warehouse to save his mother, he would have done it. I don't think he went down there to stand around outside and look in windows.)

The last three panels in this page are the only ones where Jason believes to some extent that the Joker is not in the warehouse:

Sheila lies to him. She tells him Joker is gone and gets him to follow her inside, and whether it's trust or hope he does. For a few seconds, given his reaction in the last panel, he believes her, but that doesn't change anything that happened before.

Jason did deliberately ignore Bruce's orders to attempt to save his mother. He did not stay put. He did not watch the warehouse. He did not wait for Bruce to get back. He knew the danger and he did it anyway, against orders, because of course he did. That's his mother.

Jason did think he knew, right up until the moment that Sheila lied to him, that the Joker was inside the warehouse. The only action that he made believing otherwise was to follow her inside, but to say that he didn't know Joker was there is ignoring that he very much did know right up until he was told otherwise.

Jason's actions here are unfairly represented a lot of the time, especially by other characters and writers in the DC universe declaring it as 'his fault', but it is true that Jason disobeyed orders, went to save someone from the Joker, and was killed as a result of that. If he had done as ordered — do nothing; wait for Bruce — there's every likelihood he lives (from a Watsonian perspective).

Defend that Jason was a fifteen year old kid that had too much bravery and too much hope in his heart to ever sit on a hill and wait while his mother was in danger. Defend that he was lied to, and betrayed, and it's a narrative tragedy as designed that Jason trusted the wrong person. Don't defend Jason by disregarding the actual choices he made in this. He knew what he was doing. He knew the risk. Let him be as brave as he was.

[batsandbirdbrains]

Bruce Wayne at the circus, seeing a shocked eight year old little boy kneel on the ground in a puddle of his parents’ blood, and rushing from the stands to wrap him in his coat and carry him away. Bruce Wayne tucking the boy’s face into his shoulder and whispering as calmly as he can, “Don’t look. You’re going to be okay, I promise you’re going to be okay, just don’t look.”

Detective Gordon, watching as he walks by, being transported to twenty years prior when he was a rookie cop first on the scene for the Wayne murders and finding a shocked eight year old little boy standing in a puddle of his parents’ blood. Remembering how he wrapped his jacket around him and carried him away in a hurry, tucking his face into his shoulder and whispering, “Don’t look. You’re going to be okay, I promise you’re going to be okay, just don’t look.”

Gordon watching as the supposed playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne does everything he can to comfort Dick Grayson, this little boy from the circus he’s never even met before, because he knows exactly the kind of pain he’s going through in this moment.

Gordon realizing that his moment of panic when trying to get little Bruce Wayne away from his parents’ dead bodies had more of an impact than he ever could have imagined.

[blgblue]

[morningsaidthemoon]

I LOVE SUPERGIRL!!

[fragiledate]

the strongest bond is probably pad wings to themselves. the weakest is probably pad wings to your underwear