#too hungry

[cupsiie]

Sometimes I think dogs are a little dumb for eating too fast and getting themselves sick

Then I buy food only to do the exact same thing. I am the fool

[dreammareismyjam]

I ate a pair of curly fries so intertwined they looked like one.

So of course, it was them.

It was dreammare <3

[cloudymistedskies]

skibidi toilet skibidi skibidi toilet

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!

YOU ARE BANNED FROM MY MINECRAFT SERVER FOR THAT.

[thecolombianviking]

So @dxrkfawn tagged me to post a selfie. Too hungry to think of something witty to say. I tag: @primoviktoriya @tarinya-quinn @bloodofheroes @valhallstruevalkyrie @elixmia and really anyone who wants to do this.

[revolutionary-pirate]

Historical Figure Tag Game

Tagged by: @little-lion-rampant  and @sonofhistory Thanks for the tags!!  1. Who’s your historical person?

I honestly... don’t have one? I like too many people? But the first that come to mind are Richard Kidder Meade (because that’s who I’m known for and am writing a biography for) and John Paul Jones (because that’s who I last read about and am basing my graduation project on). I mostly think in groups, though. The Aides-de-camp and the Continental Navy are my historical faves in general. My bio on Meade is just a part of my grand project to one day complete a full and fleshed out account of all of Washington’s aides-de-camp (especially the lesser known ones). I suppose I’ll simultaneously talk about Richard Kidder Meade and John Paul Jones cuz I can’t decide between the two. [I’m probably one of the only people on earth that knows Meade well enough to do something like this for him now that I think about it xD]

2. What is it about them that draws you to them like a magnet?

For Meade, it’s his obscurity. He’s a mystery. There isn’t a whole lot about him out there, but a lot more than I was lead to believe there might be. But even despite everything I know about him, It’s hard to know him. I can tell you what he was involved in, but I can’t tell you what he specifically did while involved with it or why he became involved at all. I can’t tell you what he thought about things and what was going on 98% of the time. I can speculate about his beliefs and reasons all day by looking at the people he surrounded himself with, but, in the end, I still know nothing because They’re not Him. I might know his story but it’s impossible to actually know him and that is frustrating as all hell. He’s A puzzle that’s missing 90% of its pieces. John Paul Jones is one of the most mythologized figures of the American Revolution, second only to George Washington himself. He is also a magnet for misfortune. I’m a sucker for tragedies and rags to riches underdog stories and Jones is both of those things at once. He was able to rise above his circumstances to fame and riches but plummeted back down into obscurity - never achieving his life goals. He’s also a walking contradiction, a man always at war with himself, who he was vs his ideal image of himself and who he wants to be and I find that to be fascinating. The misfortunes of his life also draw my attention. So many things went wrong in his life and looking at the whys is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. To tangibly see how he changed over time because of these failures, wrongs, and slights is an intriguing study. His life, in general, is just interesting and dynamic to me. There are constant highs and lows and you never know just what to expect when first reading about him.

3. Favorite thing about them?

My favorite thing about Meade has to be his kindness, patience, consideration, and genuineness that’s balanced perfectly by a dry/condescending sense of humor that I wish there were more examples of. My favorite thing about John Paul Jones has to be his persistence. In the face of repeated slights and backstabs, he kept pressing forward. He believed so much in his vision and in the cause of the Revolution that he refused to hesitate or back down in the face of his misfortunes. His endless pursuit of a better version of himself and his attempts to correct his flaws sits in the same vein as that. Every time he stumbled and reverted back to his incredibly flawed self, he picked up and tried again. Granted, a part of his persistence lies in the fact that he wanted to be remembered for something. “My desire for fame is infinite” he once wrote. He wanted fame because without it? He was no one. He was a Scottish servant boy living a false life under a false name and trying to be someone the world told him he couldn’t be. So he had to be persistent in order to stay ahead of the looming fear that he would die a forgotten man.

4. Least favorite thing about them?

My least favorite thing about Meade would be the fact that he owned slaves, but that feels like a cop-out answer to me. So another one of my least favorite things about him is that he hardly ever wrote things down. He seems like he never wrote about his opinions on paper if he could avoid it. Too many times have I read what was, in essence, “I’ll talk about it when I see you next.” He was incredibly prudent when it came to the written word, knowing that there was always a chance that a letter could be intercepted or read without his consent. He also, admittedly, wasn’t a fan of writing letters. So, he either kept his opinions to himself or only voiced them in private conversation. This, of course, means that I know next to nothing about his opinions, beliefs, and experiences. Then again, not many of his letters have survived in general. Some of the ones that I have found were lengthy and honest, like his letter to Hamilton in January of 1781. Or his letters to Theodorick Bland and his brother, Everard after the battle of Great Bridge. The latter two, however, were written before he was acquainted with the intrigues and politics of war and the former was written after he’d already left the army and wasn’t sure he’d ever see Hamilton again. So it can be argued that his prudence extended only to his time as an aide-de-camp. Regardless. He rarely wrote things down and I hate it. But the slave thing again. If Meade could fucking afford to give away so much of his money to charity and to help all the poor and needy in his community and lived like he himself was poor and made everything on-site instead of purchasing it, he probably could have fuckin afforded to manumit his slaves and then hire them to work for him if he was so concerned about them finding work in Virginia or getting forced back into slavery by some asshole who decided to claim they were a runaway. I don’t care that he never made them do anything that he himself wasn’t prepared to do alongside them and that he continued to work with them every day until his body started to fail him - he still fuckin owned them. That’s not cool. The least he could have done was tell his wife to manumit them when she died (she wrote in her will that the slaves were to be allowed to choose which of the children they wanted to go to. I have no idea which they chose. Hopefully, it was one of the kids that went on to free slaves and be an abolitionist). He treated his slaves so well that his daughter, Anne, didn’t realize slavery was a disgusting institution until she married a man who owned 400 which is, like, bravo on Meade’s part for being so great to his 19 but also somehow shittier because his kids didn’t think that there was much of anything wrong with the institution and he never taught them otherwise. Meade was an abolitionist(TM) and needed to be an Abolitionist.

My least favorite thing about John Paul Jones is his Brittle Ego and the fact that he got to a point where he stopped making friends and only took lovers because he could no longer trust anyone. He had felt betrayed so many times that he gave up on people ever being genuine with him and that’s just... it’s sad. He got so paranoid and convinced that everyone was out to get him that he pushed everyone away because of it. The only person he ever trusted, the person he considered to be his best and only friend... betrayed him and turned his back on him (and it wasn’t even his only betrayal. Jones never learned that his ‘friend’ was a British Spy feeding the enemy all of Jones’s plans and schemes from the beginning and was probably never his friend at all) and that was one of the last straws for Jones. Even the people who were genuine with him ended up hurting him in some way and he was unable to forgive them for it. Even if what they did was an effort to look out for him, was something outside of their control, or was just them trying to do what was best for him, he saw it as a complete and utter betrayal. Like it was them turning their backs on him just like everyone else. It was that tendency of his that I hate. His fragile ego, large but haphazardly built. He was insecure, constantly in need of validation, and always spinning the story in his favor in an effort to save face. He was constantly complaining about this thing or that thing (he also offered solutions to those things he was complaining about that everyone ignored because they didn’t care) and he was honestly an exhausting human being to be around at times. The thing about him, though, is that he was aware of that. He was aware of his faults and he was sickened by them but, try as he might, he could not overcome them. Benjamin Franklin once wrote him a scathing letter telling him to shape up and get over himself. Jones was hurt by it at first, but he ultimately took it to heart and tried. Tried so fucking hard because Franklin was like a father to him and he trusted his judgment... but he'd always end up back at square one: hurt, tired, miserable, brooding, and alone with all of his inner demons. Jones needed to stop blaming everyone for things that were outside of their control, blaming other people for things that were his fault, give credit where credit was due, and calm the fuck down and learn to let some things go. (And he tried. tried all of those things. made efforts to do all of those things... but people made that pretty difficult when they didn’t return the favor).

5. If you could fix one thing for them?

The one thing that I would fix for Meade would be him getting to see Alexander Hamilton at least one more time before both of them died. Ideally, they’d get to see each other frequently... if not all the time. The Meades and the Hamiltons would get to go on double dates together like they joked about. Anne and Philip would get together and maybe even get married someday like they hoped they would. Betsy and Molly would get to be best friends. I, just, UGH. I think about those letters all the time and I just want a happy Hamilton and Meade post-war friendship just like the one that they dreamed they could have. Gaaaaah. For Jones, I just want him to be happy. John Paul Jones x Happiness is one of my OTPs. So I'd give him a ship - a fast ship, not a crank ship like all the ones Congress gave him, but a fast ship to sail into harm’s way with and that ship would come with his best first lieutenant, John Rathbun. His perfect balance. The man was a skilled First Lieutenant who knew what he was on about, smoothed out all of Jones’ harsh edges, calmed Jones’ temper when it began to rise, and also served as the perfect mediator/buffer between a captain like Jones and his crew without ever putting Jones’ authority into question. I’d make sure that, no matter what, Jones never lost Rathbun again because while Rathbun was there... Jones was happy. So if I can’t give him a ship... I would still give him Rathbun and, through Rathbun, Jones would have a mostly cooperative, loyal, and content crew and that’s all I ask for. Jones reflected that the happiest time of his life was when he was sailing aboard the Providence with Rathbun and their crew, which was the best he’d ever had, and I just want him to have that back. 

6. If you could change their history, would you? If so, what?

This question is pretty in-line with the previous one. Are we talking about childhoods? I’m going to assume childhoods as being like their ‘history’. With Meade, nothing comes immediately to mind. I don’t really know enough about his childhood, really. But with Jones, I would change the fact that his father locked him inside of a glorified shed with no explanation or real reason to do so aside from wanting to make a sarcastic jab at their master about symmetry? Like, what the fuck? Little J.P. Jr. did nothing wrong??? He had no idea why his dad did that to him??? He was so confused????

If we’re talking about life in general. I would tell Jones that he needed to be nice to John Adams and that John Adams was not, in fact, out to get him like he was convinced he was. And then I would tell John Adams that he needed to be nice to Jones and that Jones was not, in fact, plotting against him like he was convinced he was. And then I would make them be friends so that they could build a navy together because they were pretty much the only two people in the entire god damn country that gave a shit about building a Navy in America and if they would have just, you know, worked together maybe Jones would have achieved his dream of playing a part in America becoming the naval power of the world in the near future and of becoming an admiral. WhICH IS ANOTHER THING? The fucking Jackass!!!! The guy who was #1 on the Navy commission list!! James Nicholson! That Asshat who did nothing to deserve or maintain that position!! I would prevent him from learning that Jones was lobbying to be made Admiral of the Continental Navy (which was a rank still unassigned) so that he wouldn’t be able to walk into congress one day, tell them not to do it because Jones was x.y.z. and causing Congress to nope the fuck out of there because they didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a feud between captains. And then maybe give Jones a commission as Admiral. But, in the end, the way it worked out was probably for the best? Because Jones probably would have made for a shitty Fleet Admiral. He did not have the temperament for it. But it’s what he wanted? So now I’m torn. John Barry was a better option than him, really (which is why Barry became the first Admiral of the U.S. Navy) Regardless, changing history is a no no in any situation because the ripple of those changes may cause some unforeseen changes down the line. So. yeah.

7. First thing you would say to them?

I’d probably say a greeting of some sort. Break the ice. Work my way to becoming a level 4-6 friend so that I can unlock their tragic backstories and gain access to the inner working of their minds. Learn about all of their hopes, dreams, fears, anxieties, desires, etc. from their own mouths and learn why they did the things they did and all of the fun stories. 

8. Bring them to 2017 with you... what does that look like?

With Meade? I honestly have no idea what that would look like. With Jones? He’d be thrilled that the US has the navy of his dreams, the naval academy of his dreams, the everything about the navy of his dreams because someone finally believed in him. Also, I’d tell Jones it’s okay to be Bi in 2017.

9. What WOULDN’T you tell them about the future?

I wouldn’t tell Meade that I’m writing a biography about him, that would be uncomfortable and awkward. I wouldn’t tell Jones that it took almost 200 years for America to appreciate him and that his fear of being forgotten and dying in obscurity came true. All he needs to know is that he’s a naval hero now.

10. Favorite story about them.

Meade was worried that his trusty black mare wouldn’t be able to hold up to the more rigorous riding duties his new station as aide-de-camp required of him. He decided that he would need another horse to rely on for sudden riding missions that required speed just in case because he didn’t want to push her too far. So in September of 1777, he asked his brother to send him one of his younger horses and requested a specific one that he believed should be good for the job, but then it takes almost a year for him to get this horse and he wrote his brother a couple times being like “...horse??????” When he finally got news that a man would be arriving with his requested horse in July of 1778, he got super excited and was anticipating the man and the horse’s arrival every hour. The horse finally arrived but it was injured/lame and sickly. He then spent time nursing this horse back to full health and taking care of it and it’s injuries himself until they were healed. Meade was not impressed with this new horses’ attitude, though. He ended up sticking with his trusty black mare, who had been able to get him out of many dangerous pinches with ease despite his former fears that she wouldn’t be able to handle it while he’d been waiting for the younger one to arrive. After years of war together, his old mare was handling the rigors of his position as aide-de-camp just fine so he continued to stick with her until the end of the war.

One of my favorite stories about Jones is the fact that he was the most wanted man in all of England and he just... walked into London? The guy he was traveling with was like “...I don't think this is a good idea. You know that everyone in England wants to see you hang, right?” And Jones was like “Well I have some secret letters to deliver to John Adams and I think I'll be quite alright.” So the guy reluctantly agreed and dropped Jones off in England.... and no one recognized him. The newspapers had distorted the image of “The Pirate” John Paul Jones so much that when the real man walked into London undisguised not a single person recognized who he was. They didn’t even realize he’d been there until he’d already left and arrived safely in France.

11. Reblog with a picture or painting or depiction of them.

There is nothing depicting Meade that has survived to this day (and potentially nothing ever made depicting him at all. Which is weird because both his older and younger brother had portraits done when they were 8-9 years old), but here’s a portrait of Jones painted in 1904 by Cecilia Beaux. His waist coat was actually White, not red. But I still really like it.

And here’s a copy of the bust of John Paul Jones made in 1780 that was the closest to capturing his likeness of anything else ever made of him during his lifetime and is the only thing that he was 100% satisfied with and wanted to flaunt to everyone. In the early 1900s, we were able to use the copy of the bust that he’d gifted to Jefferson to compare with his mummified corpse in order to confirm that the body they’d dug up from underneath a laundry mat in Paris was, in fact, John Paul Jones.

I’d tag others but I’m pretty sure that everyone I’d like to tag has either already done it or has already been tagged to do it. If you want to do it and haven’t been tagged, then feel free to claim that I tagged you and have at it! 

[jennifersoftpawz]

:<

[from-kal]

literally pacing my apt for the next 20 minutes until I can leave and pick up my chinese food ahhhhhhhhh

[wetwicksdry]

I'm sleepy. It's the kinda sleepy where I don't wanna move and do the things I need to do before I can rest comfortably. Too sleepy, basically. I also wish I had some friends here to hang out with. I miss someone. I don't even know him enough to call him a friend, it'd be cool if we were, though. I hope he is okay.