Cecil @smallfrogsinsmallsocks - Tumblr Blog

There are ten trillion pictures of flowering trees to the point where they sometimes seem trite and overdone. But then you see a tree in full flower and go holy shit this rules and I've gotta show this to everyone so they can experience the same magic and wonder and there are ten trillion and one pictures of flowering trees

unwholesome-gay

gutsygills

mold pisses me off so much

oh you have to eat your produce the moment it leaves the store or the fuckin Hungering Dust will get it. and. poison your food

tobiasdrake

I ran into this post years ago and to be honest, it has completely reoriented the way I engage with food.

Like. I’ve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.

But now I’m just like.

Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I don’t.

Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?

Pizza’s been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyone’s enjoying the pizza, but if we don’t want “everyone” to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.

That’s just. That’s how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you don’t make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what can’t be preserved before the dust can.

Life-changing.

necromancelena

Die temu ad die

necromancelena

Hmm. Accidentally looks like latin.

chef-boy-ar-girl

It accidentally is latin

spiribia

i would be a kittypet all the way in the warrior cats universe. if i heard a bunch of guys were in the woods killing each other for survival and they think i'm the lame one for getting mediocre banquets i would be like you guys are stupidd and then when the thunderclan medicine cat comes by my fenced lot to pick yarrow i would be like what are doing and shes like medicine so my clanmates don't die and i'm like wow you guys really have it that rough. and she keeps encountering me and one day i'm like why don't you come inside there's plenty of kibble and she averts her eyes shyly and is like ...no that would be against starclan and i'd go To have a little kibble? and she's like You know what i mean. and i do. 5 moons later she is getting adopted by my people and visions of her ancestors still haunt her and she is from time to time like Did I do the right thing...? how could i be so selfish...? and i'm like my toy mouse squeaks

meg-megbanom-ezt

Warrior Cats is one fandom I only know from indirectly from tumblr (though I still enough to enjoy this piece), BUT a tiny interesting side note- - -

I was at the winter MondoCon and noticed a few middle-schooler(ish) children with cat masks and turned out that they are actually Warrior-fans. I got curious and found out that the first three books were republished last year. So it looks like it certainly becoming (or already is) A Thing now in Hungary, too!

meg-megbanom-ezt

I just had to draw the original post because it lives rent free in my head

creekfiend

i think one facet of why I am so bothered by the framing of interpersonal harm/violence as always being perpetuated intentionally and knowingly as part of some sort of Evil Plan is that frames instances of interpersonal harm/violence as successful interactions. they wanted this thing and they went out and took steps and accomplished it. whereas I very VERY strongly feel that interpersonal violence and abuse is a profound social failure! human beings want and need genuine social connections. while people may lack a concern for the experience and well-being of those around them, etc, I think in general most people want to succeed in having interpersonal connections with others. and so, patterns of harm and violence are a failure in that. which is why I often find myself characterizing ppl who can't get out of the patterns of causing that kind of harm as pathetic, I guess - being pathetic in no way means I'm saying they're not responsible for that harm, obviously. it's just like. well for example with my evil abusive grandma, like... being herself is her own worst nightmare. I don't think she wants to have the kind of relationships with her family where we're only here out of a feeling of obligation rather than any kind of genuine affection and desire to be around her. but she is fundamentally unable to move beyond her comfort zone of coercive control to try to learn new ways of interacting that might result in the changes that she would probably admit she desires deep down. and ultimately that IS ALSO selfish, like, she is unwilling to endure the discomfort of taking responsibility for her behavior! she can't psychologically face the reality of what she has created and so she displaces blame onto everyone but herself in order to maintain any psychological stability. but it's also fucking pathetic. and it's a profound failure to end up in that situation. it doesn't mean she has it "worse" than the children she has abused and coerced for decades, because like. these things don't get weighted like that. ultimately she is responsible for the harm she has done. but the harm isn't a success, it's a failure. framing her as a manipulator who just Likes Hurting People because she gets some sort of inhuman pleasure from it would frame the results of her abuse as a success. and I just don't think that's true! at all! I think she's a failure! I think interpersonal violence is failure!

eta: to clarify this is a response to social constructs such as The Criminal, The Abuser, The Killer, etc, which posit people who do certain things as being fundamentally different from other people. I am not trying to come up with some sort of Abuse Formula. I am in fact speaking to the complexity of human behavior lol

dialogic

I think it would be really fucking funny to write a piece of fiction set entirely in real life but using lazy fantasy worldbuilding talk. I gather coin* for the road west** - I will need it to enter the Capital.***

* two quarters and two dimes

** Interstate 64

*** Richmond, Virginia

dialogic

I must traverse the treacherous way north* to visit my lover at their place of learning. This city is a crossroads, positioned near the boundary point of a dark land we try not to visit.** It is an ancient place, riddled with the memory of the War.***

* Interstate 95

** Northern Virginia

*** American Civil

dialogic

The road north is blocked by enemy forces.* I fear we will be overpowered if we continue,** and never reach our destination.*** Let us abandon the road and take the ancient mountain pass.**** We will mind the cruel structures of bygone years***** as you go.

* northern virginians

** get vehicular manslaughtered by a tesla driver just outside the mixing bowl

*** west maryland

**** cut through loudon county

***** mcmansions

ariaste

i need everyone to let me lay my head in their lap while they pet my hair and make soothing noises and tell me i'm doing such a good and brave job marketing this book. fuckin sisyphean indignity of hurling it at instagram over and over and getting basically no traction whwkwhfwlfwhjsklgfwhjkl

ariaste

meanwhile my BELOVED FELLOW TUMBLRINI are being so INCREDIBLY kind and generous with the signal boosting and the general interest and encouragement, i am so grateful

ariaste

#wait wait wait wait wait hold the fuck up#i was like ‘omg ariaste?? like ariaste from ao3?? like ariaste author of some of my favorite mdzs fics ever????’#‘they have a tumblr?! (how did this not occur to me before lol)’#and then ‘omg ariaste has a BOOK i must read it immediately’#then i go to their tumblr and am SLAPPED IN THE FACE by the fact that ariaste and alexandra rowland are the same person#like. ‘yield under great persuasian’ alexandra rowland.#you’re telling me tam beckett and attempting the impossible au!jiang cheng are written by the same person???? mind. blown.#*becket#this is like when i found out naomi novik was astolat all over again#sorry op you probably have this happen to you all the time it’s just my little mind is struggling to absorb this into rn lol (via @jcbmcdrmtt) it has only happened to me a handful of times (i am not nearly as famous and cool as @astolat) but it IS delightful fun to harmlessly jumpscare people in this way, i must admit.

extra funny in this case because i believe my AO3 username was listed in the bio at the back of Yield Under Great Persuasion lmaooooo

anyway hi hello yes it is me. a gremlin making questionable choices about doing a kickstarter and now i have played myself with having to do all this promo

ariaste

#to my deep shame for like 15 seconds I thought that the Fantasy Romans post was a colloquial misspelling of “Fantasy Romance”#And then I was like oh thank god like ROME ROMANS (via @peri-hellion) No no wait this is hilarious this is so good, this is a brilliant joke and you should not be ashamed of it. "Local romantasy author Alexandra Rowland has written a new romantasy novel" and then the camera pans to me and i'm standing there vibrating with excitement, my hands full of Ancient Roman Trivia And All The Best Bits of HOT GOSS AND EVEN HOTTER TAKES From Classical Antiquity, and the interviewer is like "uhhhhhh i thought this was.... a romance???? novel???? romantasy? romance fantsy?" and i'm like "oh. no. no it's very much not a romance novel this is a ROMANS novel it's about the romans, Roman Fantasy, haha yes can i tell you about the romans???? nevermind i've actually already locked all the doors and windows ANYWAY SO THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT THE ROMANS DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAVE A GENDER BINARY AND YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND DEEPLY AND *WITH SPECIFICITY* WHAT A 'VIR' IS--" and the interview is crying and shaking while i just hand them trivia tchotchke after trivia tchotchke and unload my pockets into their arms

leebrontide

DONT JUST TEASE US ABOUT THE LACK OF ROMAN GENDER BINARY GIVE US THE GOODS!

ariaste

oh my god okay so. For one thing. They straight up have words for intersex people. If a word exists, the concept exists. So already they're aware that sometimes bodies aren't easily categorized, so anyone who says "but the romans definitely did have a sex/gender binary" is just self-evidently wrong from the get-go.

They also straight up have words and social roles for people we'd now probably classify under the transfeminine umbrella, the galli. These were AMAB people who voluntarily underwent castration, dressed in women's clothes/jewelry/makeup, and were priests and worshippers of a particular religious cult to the goddess Cybele/Magna Mater, and Attis, her consort. (There is a character in the book who is a gallus! She is the emperor's augur, meaning she makes divinations based on observing the flight of birds. Important person to bring along on a quest.) Here is a statue of a gallus looking extremely cool:

But all of that is sort of.... normal to us? Like we get it, we understand that, we go "Oh, yeah, it's like this other idea we already know about," it fits into our mental model, it does not challenge us to bend our brains in any weird yoga poses.

"Vir" is the thing that will do that. "Vir" is often translated as just "man" but this is bad and lacks the weight of certain encoded subtleties. It is one of two words that means man, the other being "homo" (as in homo sapiens), but the vibes of that one are more generally just "a person (nonspecific)". "Vir", however, has extremely specific vibes, because it is not just "a man" as we would think of the concept today. A vir MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST possess ALL of the following traits to qualify as a vir:

adult

freeborn

male-bodied

CITIZEN!!!!!!!

with intact genitals

(behaves correctly as a vir)

If he's a teenage freeborn AMAB citizen, he's not a vir (yet). If he's an adult freeborn transmasculine citizen, he's not a vir. If he's a slave or a freedman or an immigrant (aka Not A Citizen), he's not a vir. If he used to be a vir and then got castrated (either by misadventure or as punishment for a crime), then oops he's not a vir anymore, he's a semivir (half-man). If he is a vir but he doesn't act reputably and adhere to the Required Gender Norms, then he's on THIN FUCKING ICE and should stop immediately and get his act together before his paterfamilias disowns him for Betraying The Vir Code.

From the word "vir" we get words like "virtue" (aka the qualities a vir should have), and "virile" (a vir's ability to be Fucking). This is also where we get words like "triumvirate" (a governing body comprised of three viri) -- which, when you realize what "vir" implies, REALLY showcases how unequivocally other genders were excluded from being full participants in government. Couldn't be elected to public office unless you were a vir!

The thing that makes this incredibly *GENDER* is that there were mandatory anxious toxic masculinity expectations forced on the viri that other AMAB people did not have to comply with. The Romans were out here conceptualizing gender as being something that was as much informed by your SOCIAL CLASS as it was by physical sex. So a male slave, freedman, or foreigner could (for example) refrain from shaving his armpits, and it doesn't really matter. Meanwhile, if you are a vir, you DO have to shave at least your armpits to be behaving Properly. JUST ARMPITS. If you shave your legs or your chest or your pubes, then [middle school voice] EW that's Gay. (The Romans' concept of vir-masculinity was very much a VERY FRAUGHT AND TENUOUS AND ANXIOUS attempt to find a Goldilocks zone in the midst of constantly shifting goalposts. If you're not manly enough, obviously that's gay and bad, we still have this concept today. BUT IF YOU ARE TOO MANLY THAT IS ALSO GAY AND BAD. Gladiators??? A super shredded mega-hot gladiator who's drowning in pussy? The viri are like, "Gay. Gay of him. Unmanly. Effeminate. Ew yuckie no no no." We do not have an upper limit on "how much masculinity is good" in our culture, we sort of think "the more the better" and that's why everyone's horny for a lumberjack.)

A lot of the time people are like "The Romans didn't have homophobia! They only had bottomphobia :D" but actually they DO have homophobia once you account for the fact that "vir" is a separate gender from "servus" (male slave), "libertus" (male freedman), or "peregrinus" (male foreigner/immigrant/other non-citizen), etc. A vir can fuck any of those genders, AND any of the AFAB-aligned genders, AND the galli, AND intersex people and that is perfectly fine and normal and Roman Heterosexual of him. Why is it fine? Because the default cultural assumption is that the vir will be topping. A vir absolutely must top, viri who do not top get mocked and made laughingstocks in satirical plays. This is catastrophic to them. They would genuinely prefer to die in battle, even though it's kind of gay to get stabbed when you think about it because that's basically another man penetrating you????? Cringe. Cringe and effeminate to be stabbed.

Actual Roman homosexuality would be a vir fucking another vir--someone of his own gender. This absolutely cannot happen, because then [GASP] ONE OF THEM WOULD HAVE TO NOT TOP. Morality crisis. Philosophers throughout the empire are clutching their pearls and scribbling the ancient equivalent of Reddit posts about how one time they heard about a guy (vir) who fucked his friend (another vir) and it's Probably Because Of Moral Bankruptcy Such As This That Society Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes, We Live In The End Times If Viri Think It's Okay To Kiss Each Other With Tongue, The Only Thing Morally Worse Than This Is How All the Twinks Are Becoming Gold-diggers (we can't get into the twink golddiggers panic of the 2nd century right now. it's about the viri buying twink boytoy sex slaves and then leaving them their entire vast fortunes in their wills when they died. Seneca the Younger had a Reddit tantrum about it)

basically the Romans did not INVENT toxic masculinity but they did perfect it and raise it to an art form. absolute slapstick comedy clown shit. Don't kiss your wife in public, that's gay. Don't fuck too much. Don't fuck too little. Don't fuck other men's wives. Don't chase pussy. Don't be too fashionable, don't be too unfashionable, don't belt your toga too tightly, don't scratch your nose in public, DEFINITELY do not be an actor, do not play music or dance in public. You can be an orator but that's still a bit sus tbh, because it's LIKE performing in public like an actor, and that's BASICALLY the same as prostituting yourself. Don't comb your hair too much. don't comb your hair too little. Don't be unkempt. Don't be too well-groomed.

[holds up the viri proudly like a naughty cat, stinky bastard man] they are making themselves miserable every day of their lives and that's one of my favorite things to watch a man do <3333 read my book. look at it on kickstarter

this is sincerely only scraping the surface of Roman gender nonsense and how absolutely fucked up these guys were. And i CANNOT get into stuff like how manumission (an enslaved person being voluntarily given freedom) was treated with rituals and attitudes that kinda make it feel like a gender transition process (you get new social roles, you get new expectations, you are washed clean of any "necessary shame" you might have had to endure, a sharp line is drawn between your old life and your new life). I also can't get into the Twink Genders right now or this will be impossibly long (twink is a roman gender, and there are multiple sub-genders under the twink gender umbrella ("puer" "exoletus" "pathicus/cinaedus" etc))

and you thought having a lot of genders was a new modern thing. no no. lol. lmao even. go read Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity, it will give you SO many more cool facts about these fucked up lil guys if you don't want to wait for my book (though the author, a presumably cis man writing in i believe 1994 doesn't have the "ohhhh wait this is GENDER, this is ALL GENDER, this is just GENDERS ALL THE WAY DOWN" epiphany that i, a nonbinary person on tumblr in 2026, am predisposed to perceive)

people should also ask me about the Latin Fuck Verbs sometime.

thepurplewombat

I was gonna reblog this without commentary but now I want to hear about the Latin Fuck Verbs again.

ariaste

I have explained about the Latin Fuck Verbs in a second post now 🫡https://www.tumblr.com/ariaste/814238044071854080/please-explain-the-latin-fuck-words-for-science?source=share

prismatic-bell

Okay I have to ask.

Vir.

Is this.

Is this related to "virus"?

ariaste

NOPE but good thought and I had the exact same curiosity a while ago when I was writing the book. From Wiktionary, Virus is: "via rhotacism from Proto-Italic *weizos, from Proto-Indo-European *wisós (“fluidity, slime, poison”)." whereas vir is "from Proto-Italic *wiros, from Proto-Indo-European *wiHrós." I have also JUST discovered that the prefix "were-" (as in "werewolf") is etymologically related, so that's fun and cool :D

And before you ask, "virgin" is unclear etymology (according to Wiktionary)

feanorinleatherpants

What is the book and where can I get my excited little paws on it???

ariaste

It's called THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS and you can back it on Kickstarter in a couple weeks:

A new fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland, author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND, & YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION

ariaste

#would love to offer a vir estrogen and see what happens tbqh (via @texasdreamer01)

IMMEDIATE vociferous debate in the forum, which devolves into a fistfight between a couple different guys, one of whom is furiously orating at the top of his voice and with the most violently Italian gesticulations you've ever seen that the acquisition of tits is a shameful and effeminate thing for a vir to do because look how many things have tits, ie: women, cows, chickens, too-swole gladiators, a human pet if he's chubby, etc, all of which are Extremely Effeminate as EVERYONE knows, so therefore all honorable viri must exert all their effort to resisting the onset of tits by whatever means necessary and must reject the estrogen, REJECT it!!!

His arch-nemesis is reflexively disagreeing mostly because he hates this guy specifically and would hurl himself blindly into the opposite debate position of literally whatever this first guy said no matter what it was, so he's saying things like "Oh so you're a traitor??? you hate rome?? you want to see rome fall??? you know who had tits??? the WOLF that NURSED BABY ROMULUS AND REMUS, the WOLF with her HONKIN ROWS OF TITTIES--

--i guess you think that rome should never have been founded because of it's tit-adjacent associations???? you think that a paterfamilias' whole job is NOT to nourish and benevolently watch over all his dependents??? You disagree that if he had juicy fat titties he could Provide for his wife and children and maybe especially his most cutest twink in the whole house???????? wow. wow so you hate family values???? you hate rome??? if the emperor, the symbolic paterfamilias of the whole empire, offered you his huge naturals to nurse on like the wolf with romulus and remus, you would turn up your nose and call him gay to his face?????? holy shit i can't believe you're saying these exact insinuations in public practically verbatim omg. btw i heard your son sucks dick and that's worse than sucking on a titty so like [sure jan.gif]"

first guy bursts into tears. while he's busy screaming on the ground about this devastating insult, total one-hit KO, a third guy comes up like "no no you're so right, it's not gay for a vir to HAVE titties to benevolently Provide for his Family, family values are sooooooo good actually (and you know i think if we could find a way to invent parthenogenesis so we don't really have to involve women in the process at all, that would be great and even more about Family Values; my son should ideally just be a direct literal clone of me and my father and grandfather etc etc that's why we all have the exact same name which isn't so much a name as it is a serial number), HOWEVER, THAT SAID, we do have to admit it would be gay for aforesaid paterfamilias to recreationally suck on anybody else's titties, because breastmilk is the same as semen on account of both of them are white and come out either by sucking or sometimes squirting, so therefore sucking on titties is exactly equivalent to sucking a dick, which means it's Not Okay for Honorable Viri to do it, but it's perfectly fine for other people to do it (local lower-class hotties, slaves, NOT wives tho, bc even though would be great for her to not be involved whatsoever in the son-cloning situation, she's still a respectable woman from a Good Family and you should not degrade her like that when you have other, more appropriately degradable people around who can do it instead. for example: The Poors)" and then the second guy is like "UMMMM OKAY SO I DON'T ACTUALLY WANT YOUR HELP IN THIS DEBATE, BECAUSE YOU'RE BASICALLY ALSO SAYING THAT ROMULUS WAS A GAY PERVERT FOR SUCKING ON THAT WOLF'S TITTIES??? YOU HATE ROME? get away from me don't stand near me"

then a fourth guy, deeply troubled, is like "wait...... you guys really think it's gay for a vir to suck on titties???? ummm are you sure??? haha. i'm not asking for me, i'm just asking for a friend--" Third guy is like "OMG! QUARTINIUS DO YOU SUCK TITS LIKE A GAY PERVERT? DO YOU ALSO GO DOWN ON YOUR WIFE???? DO YOU HAVE A FOOT FETISH AS WELL, DO YOU SUCK YOUR SLAVES' TOES???? EWWWW EW EW EW" Fourth guy is like "WHAT NO OMG I DIDN'T SAY THAT!!!!!!!" then they all try to kill each other, get dragged apart by their friends, and bring lawsuits against each other in court for libel and treason and conspiracy against the state. the emperor hears about this by the end of the week and he's like "hmmmmmmmmm SOMEONE is fomenting some kind of uprising here for SURE and, totally unrelated, it would be great if I had an excuse to seize those guys' land holdings and vast plantations. as a treat. For Me. #mylandholdings" so he sends them all letters that are like "well i don't like your whole sort of vibe, so u can either go into exile OR... kys <3" so three of them go meekly into exile and one of them throws a WILD dinner party where he invites all his friends for an amazing banquet which does end with him toasting all of them extravagantly and then honorably killing himself right in front of them with immense dignity, as per the emperor's orders, because going into exile is gay (somehow, probably) and he would prefer to smugly win the Vir-Off by demonstrating how he's sooooooo loyal and obedient to the emperor actually [sassy hair-flick while he falls over dead of hemlock poisoning and/or blood loss]

the great titty debate is recorded by three different writers, which means that this one random brawl between a pack of rich upper-class imperialist idiots is commemorated for the next 2000 years by Medieval/Renaissance/Enlightenment Rome Weeaboos as some kind of legitimate Deep Wise Insight And Incredible Good Thoughtful Oratory We Should Revere And Teach To Rich Upper-Class Teenage Boys So They Become Rome Weeaboos As Well And Carry That Indoctrination Into All Their Future Doings In Government And Further Imperialism, and by the modern era it ends up being taken wayyyyyyyyyy more seriously than it deserves by the most pompous and humorless flavor of philosophy professor you can imagine, who does not seem to perceive that this random ancient incident was a futile exercise that illuminates nothing so much as the profound inherent absurdity of human existence, and proves once and for all that Sartre was dead on the money when he said, "Hell is other people."

[drops mic] buy my fucking book

atinymekanie

Well sheeeeit. Now I gotta go get this book. That was damn convincing.

my two brain cells

This is what executive dysfunction looks like

a-book-of-creatures

Inside you there are two hamsters…

cyprozombiegirl

if you're a trans woman it is very important that you're friends with people who are interested in living and living well. Find gym rats, painters, academics, devoted gardeners, gourmands, cinephiles, audiophiles, wine snobs, fashionistas... anyone who is deeply devoted to something in life, that fascinates them, brings them peace, and compels them to live. Learn from them, ask them to show you what's so good about ____. Imagine yourself as one of those anime slice of life characters who've learned that they can be satisfied (fulfilled even) with life as long as they pursue their love of __. The world is full of so much misery for us, and so many of us let that misery and hatred eat away at us until we're depressed, angry shells of people. Refuse that, choose life, choose learning how to live well. Choose enriching your senses by training them.

wtf-is-hockey

God sometimes I'm writing smut and I'll like, delete a sentence because I'm like, no, I can't write that. It's too indulgent. And then it's like. Girl, what the fuck are you even going to the candy store for if you're just going to buy raisins. Get real.

typingoverworld

Buy the candy

yourwritingcoach

Valid for smut and valid for every other kind of writing too. Buy your goddamn candy even if what you want is a deeply weird flavor. Get those horseradish jellybeans. Metaphorically. Write that story you're longing to see. No one else will do it just right like you.

trynot-moved

MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) dir. Donald Petrie

#got to the last gif and went wait is that shatner??

wizardarchetypes

i think there should be a program to pair me up with people who have a rly hard time talking and want to get more comfortable in conversations but don't know 'how' to talk.

you know how dog foster organizations are like 'ideally Zeke the Puppy will be placed in a home with a confident, social dog that can teach him how to be a dog with lots of play and gentle corrections.'

there should be a that for me where people spend like 2 months following me around to the bank and parties and stuff where i just don't shut the hell up & sometimes i'm like 'yes exactlyyy gooo onnnnnn' and sometimes i'm like 'that's not a very kind thing to say, let's try again' and then one day we're having nonstop great convos and i'm like 'you're ready' and they get adopted by their own friend group.

wizardarchetypes

the temptation to foster-fail and keep everyone for my own friend group would be nigh impossible to overcome but i must persevere to keep having new shy convo partners