5, 8 (gay country songs-- what qualifies is up to your interpretation), 99
5. Piercings i have:
I have my two baby gauges in my ears (They’re... 8 gauges? I think?), and my Industrial bar in my right ear. I used to have an industrial in my left ear but I lost one of the ball bearings on that side, and went too long without getting a replacement and let it close up on me =/. Hilariously, when I went to get a new piercing, I picked my right side because I always slept on the left side and would dig into my industrial... and now that I’ve pierced my right ear, I sleep on my right side. No winning!
8. Top 5 Gay Country Songs:
1. I think number 1 has to be “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears”, just on principle- by Lavender Country
2. Hope To Die is my favorite Orville Peck song so that’s the one I put on this playlist
3. Soldier by Trixie Mattel- I just really like this song, idk.
4. Landslide by The Chicks, because at my heart I’m a Gleek and I won’t apologize (Yes I know, Fleetwood Mac, but we’re doing country, hush and also this is the better version, just barely, but still)
5. Our Patron Saint of Gay Country, the unparalleled Dolly Parton. Literally take your pick- Do I Ever Cross Your Mind, Heartbreak Express, Backroads Barbie, Dumb Blonde, 9 to 5, Jolene, I Will Always Love You... the list goes on. But I guess I’m gonna stick to my gut- Do I Ever Cross Your Mind.
99. Have you ever met someone who didn’t seem real?
I ABSOLUTELY have, and I have told you stories about them. It is Amy from work, and she is categorically a fake person. She cannot be real.
I sometimes assume you're an actual tiger? Like I know you're a person, but sometimes I'll see a picture of a tiger and for just a second my brain will go "oh it's Tiger"
Oh man, this is awesome and pleases me to no end.
Alas though, I’m sorry to confirm that I am not, in fact, and actual tiger.
Fic prompt! Marcus/Esca "Where the land falls to an end, This hidden tale begins" (From Land's End by Siouxsie and the Banshees)
“We’ll go to the Brigantes,” Esca announced, and set his mead down with a thunk. He licked his lips. Marcus did not watch his tongue.
“I thought,” Marcus said, and had to stop and swallow, dry, “Forgive me. I thought they had all perished.”
Esca laughed, startling them both. “Marcus,” he hiccuped, “when the Ninth was lost–did people think all of Rome went with it? My father’s clan was large and fearsome, but there were others who lost few, or were too far to join the fight. Or were traitorous cowards who chose not to fight for their land or their people.” He spat upon the ground.
Oh. There was a small, shameful part of Marcus that understood and was sad–not that Esca had kin, but that, well. He had imagined Esca to be as alone in the world as Marcus felt, or near to it. To hear Esca might outstrip him in Uncles!
“I said you should choose.” Marcus felt his own eyelashes, cool against his heated cheeks.
He looked up in time to see the smile bloom across Esca’s face, slow and somehow surprised. “You did!” Esca exclaimed, reaching over to grasp clumsily at the back of Marcus’s neck, mostly catching in his hair.
“Of course!” Marcus said, shivering as Esca pet his hair against the grain, “What kind of friend would I be to go back on my word?”
Esca’s smile seemed to dim–or maybe it was that Marcus was drunk, and it had never been as bright as he imagined. Esca flexed his fingers. “What kind of friend,” he echoed, and shoved Marcus away with a laugh.
And so they went.
The travel this time was not so hard–they carried fewer ghosts between them, and shared the chores with near scales-set precision. Until one morning found them squabbling over who would get the privilege of tacking the horses–a task Esca enjoyed and Marcus found difficult to navigate with his leg stiff in the morning, but by the gods it was his turn–and Esca stopped to put his head in his hands and laugh.
It seemed to Marcus a much better alternative than tackling one another. He was not disappointed.
“Marcus,” Esca said, with a smile still curled in the corners of his mouth. “We cannot keep to this knife’s edge of fairness. Life is not fair.”
“I know that,” Marcus said, stung, and embarrassed for feeling so.
Esca sighed. “Let us choose what makes us happy and flip a coin for the rest.”
Marcus did not want to argue, and turned away before he could snap that he did not know what made him happy beyond being ever within reach of Esca–an impossible, nonsensical wanting.
Occasionally they met people along the road, other travelers or traders, sometimes small settlements. Esca spoke to a few of them, cheerfully enough, but most were granted little more than nods and standard greetings. Once, with a pair of women washing clothes down by the river bank, Esca spent near an hour talking and laughing. He even clearly introduced Marcus, though not by name, and the women looked at Marcus with something kin to fond understanding.
“Were those two of your people?” Marcus asked when Esca had said their goodbyes and walked on; Marcus had been a little surprised they had not been asked to follow the women as they walked hand-in-hand back to their village, or perhaps they had and Esca, for some reason, had declined.
“Oh, yes,” Esca said, as if this weren’t important, “we’re well in Brigantes territory now.”
Marcus reeled. “But surely–they clearly come from a settlement, don’t you wish to see it?”
Esca frowned, truly baffled. “Why?”
“Why would you not? Are they of a clan that did not fight?” Marcus pressed, annoyed if that were so, if Esca expected him to understand. “Was not the purpose of our travels to connect with your people and perhaps find you a home here with them?”
“Find me a home?” Esca stared at him, grey eyes gone wild. “I am not some pup who needs a new master for looking after–”
“No, of course not!”
“Then why do you not understand I am seeking a home for the both of us? …Oh,” Esca said, expression gone pained, and sad, at whatever bold thing was writ across Marcus’s face. “Because perhaps I have not said so.”
“No,” Marcus said, tearing all emotion from his expression, that Esca should find it so distasteful. “No, you did not.”
Esca raked his fingers through his own hair, and shut his eyes. “This is the damn horse tack all over again. This is why one man may not make a decision for two! Marcus, do you even want to be here with me?”
A soft exhalation of a cry slipped from Marcus’s mouth before he could gather up the words. “More than anything.”
Esca looked at him, mouth twisted. “Then why–”
“What did you tell the washer women I am to you?” Marcus felt everything in him rooted to the spot.
Esca shook his head. “What does that matter?”
“A brother? A friend?” The words bubbled up, painful and over-hot. “I cannot be only that to you, you are–you are much more than that to me.”
They breathed, the both of them, in sync.
“My heart,” Esca croaked, every line of him tensed and quivering. “I told them you were more dear to me than my own heart.”
Time slipped, and they were kissing, and it was one decision made by two minds. They were kissing, and Esca’s hands grasped as Marcus’s hands cradled, and together they held each other and were held. They were kissing, they were kissing, they were kissing.
“Sometimes I think on you so often it seems impossible you aren’t inside my head,” Esca told him, softly, murmured into his mouth. “Marcus. There’s a cove I want to show you by the sea where it’s always warm enough to swim. It’s surrounded by grasslands that move like ocean waves. If we both like it–if it withstands my memory and your considered impression–we might, together, decide to make it–”
Marcus kisses the word out of him, offering it on his own tongue for Esca to steal back. “Home.”
Home.
“Let us choose what makes us happy,” Marcus said, and Esca tipped his head against Marcus’s shoulder to shake with a laugh, “and flip a coin for the rest.”
wagnetic replied to your post: rewatching Lady Bird cuz i thought it was really...
I do not understand that movie
riight?! i feel like i understood the movie but not the following. just finished second viewing. still hold my original beliefs. probably like a solid 8/10 film in my book but all the hard core praise is beyond me.
incidentally, how did you feel about Juno? i’m curious about the relationship between films.
I have a Latin question! In Eagle fics on the rare occasion that Esca addresses Marcus formally as a slave, he uses "domine" but I'm watching Spartacus and they always use "dominus." Is there a subtlety I'm missing or something?
The thing you are missing is called the vocative case! It’s also the thing that Spartacus is missing!
Latin (and a bunch of other languages, but mostly not English) likes to alter the forms of words depending on what grammatical function they have in the sentence. (English mostly uses word order to accomplish this.) In Latin, the noun that is the subject of the sentence is always in the nominative case:
Dominus servum amat.The master loves the slave.
(I’m sorry; it was the only verb I could think of.)
The word dominus (“master”) ends in -us because it is in the nominative case, and therefore the subject of the sentence. The word servum (“slave”) ends with -um because it is in the accusative case, and therefore it is the object of the verb amat (“he/she/it loves”). You could put those three words in whatever order you want -- servum dominus amat, dominus amat servum, whatever -- and they would still mean “the master loves the slave” as long as you don’t change the endings. (If you want to say that the slave loves the master, that’s servus dominum amat.)
But wait, you might say! You said something about the vocative case! So what’s that? And what’s this domine thing? Domine is the form that the word dominus takes in the vocative case. The vocative is the case you use when you are addressing someone directly, such as when you are using their name or title:
Domine, ama servum!O master, love the slave!
If you wanted to command a master to love a slave (I know it’s a weird setup, but work with me here) and you wanted to specifically call them master, the form of the word you would use is domine. (If what you have is a mistress, domina is the form in both nominative and vocative.)
So basically the choice comes down to “I want to use a Latin word for master when my slave characters address their masters, and I’m just going to use the nominative form because we don’t have case endings in English, so what the hell” (the Spartacus approach) versus “I want to use a Latin word for master when my slave characters address their masters, and since I am going to be using Latin words I want to use the form that a Latin speaker would have used in direct address” (the fanfiction approach). Obviously I have my biases, but I don’t think that either of these are flat-out wrong, per se -- especially with Latin and Greek, English often has both native-English-style and borrowed-style forms for the same word, like the plurals of fungus or aquarium or formula or whatever you think the plural of octopus is -- but it’s really up to you and the effect you are going for.
Having said that, I should probably mention that everything I have said above is a filthy lie.
Oh, not the case endings. That part’s not a lie. The part that is a lie is the word dominus.
As @carminapossunt is even now helpfully pointing out to me, current evidence suggests that Roman slaves basically NEVER used the word dominus or domina to address their masters. The evidence we have from Roman comedy is that the word slaves used to address their masters, when they needed a word, was erus (vocative ere) or era. Which does also mean “master” but it’s not the same word. Really. No kidding. Dominus by the first century AD (which is later than Spartacus, but still) basically just means sir -- like, a polite term of address you’d use for anybody. So essentially WE ARE ALL WRONG. (For further information, please consult Eleanor Dickey’s book Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius.)
wagnetic replied to your post “Now that I’ve been doing turtle tending research for a bit, I can’t...”
I'm hoping it's a very tiny turtle or something so it has enough room (although I don't know anything about turtles so maybe that's not the only problem)
I’m pretty sure we do see the turtle and it’s not that tiny. That tank is too small, Ray Kowalsky!
