i realize i’m maybe like, the Nichest of markets here, but i really really really desperately want to watch further adventures of Diana Prince, Curator of Antiquities™
…like, imagine the interdepartmental meetings
Diana: we have recently acquired several exquisite pieces of very early minoan kamares ware. i feel a refresh of the gallery might encourage our visitors to–
some marketing dipshit: look, we can’t get people in the door for pottery. we need another big show, like can you get a vermeer or–
Diana of Themiscrya, Amazon, God-Killer, Daughter of Hippolyta: pottery is important
some marketing dipshit, lightly pissing himself: i agree
THIS but also I just wanted to add that although logic dictates that Diana has to move around bc of the whole immortal thing I’m so enamored with the idea of “Mlle. Prince Has Always Been At the Louvre” in which everyone who works there just thinks it’s too gauche to bring up that she should be 95.
oh my God, yes, headcanon 100000000% accepted
“non, emil. never again ask why her file system uses the pre-war numbering. you are new here. we do not speak of this.”
Also, Diana unconsciously handling the weapons like she’s prepping for a fight.
Because, as someone who has had training, it sticks. So, you pick up a sword to look at it (in, say, one of those weird shitty mall stores that sell bongs and incense and shitty wall hanger swords) and you kind of unconsciously drop into a stance a little bit, plant your feet, and maybe give it a practice twirl to test the balance.
Then you look around and realize that everyone around you has stepped back four paces and is eyeing you with a sort of wide-eyed combination of shock and terror.
And you’re just like ‘what. Also, this thing’s blade heavy’.
Okay, but when and how did Diana settle into being a curator in the first place? I assume she traveled a lot of places, maybe ending up in Egypt after a bizarre set of circumstances.
What I’m saying is maybe Diana of Themyscira meets one Evelyn Carnahan.
1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3) Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4) Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5) Start as close to the end as possible.
6) Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8) Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Literally just from the first scene between
Escalus and his father discussing Rosaline I can tell you right off the bat
that I care 100x more about this politically fraught disaster of a relationship
than whatever tense affair they’re trying to arrange with Rosaline/Benvolio. Like, give me a relationship between two
people who genuinely love each other but are trying to deny it and betraying
each other because it’s the Right Thing To Do and doing massive amounts of
damage to each other in the process, and I will immediately and unhesitatingly
shove it into my awful maw with no regard for what canon tells me.
Rosaline being forced to live in the room of her
best friend who died for love while being forced into a marriage by the man Rosaline loves who also loves her
is kind of great to me? What if I wrote
a bunch of miscellaneous bullshit about Rosaline being haunted by Juliet?
I do not
care that much about Benvolio. Like, he’s
had a Rough Life™ and he Drinks And Sleeps Around and like…yeah, poor dude. Even though his carefully calculated descent
into artistic nerdhood endeared me to him for a hot second. Still don’t care. Maybe shove some backstory in there, throw in
some flashbacks, hit me with that gay Mercutio/Benvolio shit, ANYTHING to give
him a personality beyond ‘angry rich boy.’
Anyway. Moving right along.
“You make it sound like our noble lords are a
pack of dogs in the street.” …um, Escalus honey, they kind of are. There was a riot literally under thirty-six
hours ago.
I’m getting a lot of satisfaction out of
Isabella pulling the strings behind the scenes for selfish reasons—getting Rosaline
back as a friend, keeping her brother in power, retaining as much power as she can
for herself—as well as Protecting Her Home.
Also all of her clothes are real good.
Medical history aside: hey, look, boiling
oil. A+ historical accuracy, Paré’s
replacement for boiling oil only barely predated this and it’s entirely
possible for Livia to have learned that from her solider father. I’d also like to point out that this was not
standard procedure for sword wounds, as it was used to combat the supposed ‘poison’
of gunpowder, so like? Yeah, the nurse
being horrified is also totally feasible.
….I’m so pleased with Escalus for stabbing someone’s
hand, atta boy, but on the other hand I was really hoping for another
knock-down drag-out brawl at a serious formal occasion. Like, why else am I even here.
The way Rosaline spits Your Grace like her tongue is made of steel and her words are made
of poison is my life’s blood. Also
please have this become Escalus and Benvolio and Rosaline (and Isabella) all
having horribly tense meetings where they scramble to come up with a plan that
keeps Verona at peace without forcing anyone to get married. I just need a scene of all of them at each
other’s throats as they struggle to find a détente, with Rosaline throwing ice
cold cutting remarks left and right as Escalus fights to keep an even keel and
Benvolio is just generally an asshole (and Isabella cutting through the chaos
like a finely drawn blade with a plan that is terrible and awful and perfect).
ESCALUS, COMMIT TO SOMETHING. MAKE A DECISION ESCALUS. Something besides this sort of dangerously totalitarian
‘death for a death’ rule because, MY DUDE, you gotta at least give them a
trial.
Why am I still liveblogging this terrible
show? Why do I still love it so
much? It’s so bad and I’m enjoying the
literal hell out of it, guys, I don’t even know anymore.
Marco volunteers for the date immediately, as the only one on the team who is single and desperate. (Although, he admits, not desperate enough to sleep with a controller under any circumstances.) The thing is, though, that Sub-Visser Three-Eighty-One has a type: every guy Ax and Tobias have seen her flirting with in the two weeks they’ve been following her around has been tall, dark, and handsome.
Everyone on the team (especially Jake) somewhat doubts Jake’s ability to act well enough to play the part, but the only idea worse than sending Jake would be sending Ax to do it, so he reluctantly volunteers for the mission.
The setup goes more or less according to plan: Jake arranges to bump into the sub-visser coming out of a Sharing meeting, and to their enormous luck she becomes the one to ask him for a phone number. Jake suggests the time and the place, though, and doesn’t have to fake enthusiastic relief when she agrees.
The day of, Rachel spends nearly two hours dressing Jake in various combinations of the seven pairs of pants, eighteen shirts, and five and a half jackets that she bought for the occasion, before Jake throws up his hands and announces that he’s going naked if this nonsense doesn’t end soon.
Marco immediately declares that that would be a brilliant way to get Sub-Visser Three-Eighty-One dancing to their tune.
Cassie shyly volunteers the opinion that Jake looks nice no matter what he’s wearing.
Rachel tells them both to shut up, on the grounds that Jake getting arrested for public indecency would be just as bad for their plan as him showing up in the ill-fitting basketball shirt and ripped jeans he wore when he left the house this morning.
After Rachel’s initial attempt to teach Jake to flirt with her crashes and burns (“You’re the closest thing I have to a sister! I can’t just flirt with you!”) she substitutes Cassie into her own role. To her surprise, that manages to go even worse.
“Cassie,” Jake says, blushing so much he looks ready to pass out. “I like many things about you. You’re the sweetest person I know, and you’re brilliant at not just morphing, but, like, understanding the morphing. Oh, and you’re really smart at other stuff besides. You get people so fast, and there are all these things in science class that go way over my head that you pick up right away. And even though I was mad about it at the time, I thought it was cool that you saved those baby skunks—”
“CUT!” Rachel yells.
“You told me to compliment her,” Jake says indignantly. Cassie is currently examining the toes of her shoes with intense fascination, and appears to be fighting a fit of the giggles.
Rachel sighs loudly. “Not her personality. Think more physical.”
Jake takes a huge breath and draws himself up again. “You are, like, super strong for a girl,” he tells Cassie. “For anyone, really. That time when you pried that fox’s jaws open to make it vomit up the wolf poison—”
“CUT! Cassie, Marco, switch places!”
All three of them stare at Rachel in surprise for a second. Marco becomes the first to react, sidling up and sliding his arm through Jake’s. “So,” he coos. “Why’d a big strong man like you want to go out with little old me, anyway?”
“Because…” Jake glances at Rachel, who makes go on gestures. “Because of your hair. It’s very, uh, nicely done.”
Marco flips a few strands away from his face. “You really think it turned out okay? I only had time to run a brush through it a few times on the way over.”
“Yes,” Jake says firmly. “It is nice hair. And… you are… Notlikeothergirls!”
Marco bats his eyelashes, grinning now. “You really mean that?”
Jake attempts to smile as well. “I have never in my life met anyone like you, Marco. Seriously.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Rachel announces. She and Marco high-five at their own brilliance. Unseen, Jake and Cassie exchange a mutually baffled look and a shrug of bemusement.
Jake sets off for the date trailed fifty feet up by a red-tailed hawk and a northern harrier. He’s not sure why he’s wearing three shirts right now, or why the collars on all three are sticking straight up in the air (“Trust me,” Rachel insisted, “this is gonna be all over the country five years from now.”) like he’s a pastel version of Dracula. He’s also hoping he can take the weird flat sunglasses off soon—Rachel instructed him to hang them from the v-neck of his topmost shirt when he does—because the weather’s overcast and he feels ridiculous.
“What do we know so far?” he asks Tobias.
<Apparently, our dear little alien friend works in an arcade downtown, and is a big fan of shopping in her spare time. Likes: purple fabrics, smelling flowers, and spicy tacos from food trucks. Dislikes: dogs, dog owners, seriously don’t mention Homer, and small children.>
<Her selection of tacos was most excellent,> Ax adds. <The driver of that food truck adds large quantities of a wonderful substance known as Sriracha to his meat and meat by-products.>
<So we may have sampled the taco truck ourselves. Strictly for research purposes,> Tobias admits. <And yeah, Sub-Visser whatever’s got taste. Or Stacy does, jury’s still out on that one.>
“Stacy?” Jake asks, as loud as he dares.
<The name of her host?> Tobias says. <Seriously? Were you planning on walking up to her and being like ‘well, hello there, Iriess one-thirty-two’?>
“Stacy,” Jake mutters to himself, rather than admitting he forgot. “Stacy. Stacy, Stacy, Stacy, Stacy, Stacy.”
<And now you sound nuts, which should make a real good first impression.>
At Tobias’s urging, Jake stops at a stand outside a greengrocer’s and buys a dozen daffodils for her. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to take off the sunglasses when he’s standing under the shade of the awning, even though they make it very difficult to count out bills and change. He does know that he is not under any circumstances to push them back into his hair, because then all the gel will make a weird crunching noise and Rachel will boil him in oil when she finds his spikes deformed. He could probably fit the entire bouquet into one of the ridiculously large pockets on the pants that he’s certain are three sizes too large, but he tucks it under his arm instead. “I hate this,” he mutters.
<Be cool,> Tobias says. <If I could do meet-cute with Taylor in the middle of a coffee shop, you can survive ninety minutes of pumping a yeerk for recruitment tactics and Sharing plans.>
<I would recommend against bringing up Tobias’s decision to meet Taylor alone last March if you wish Rachel to leave the restaurant standing, Prince Jake.>
Jake gives them both a sickly smile of gratitude.
The initial meet’n’greet outside the restaurant goes reasonably well: Sub-Visser Three-Eighty-One exclaims over the daffodils, Jake remembers to call her “Stacy,” and with effort he ignores the skin-crawly sensation of Cassie (now a housefly) landing in his hair. By the time they make it into the restaurant, Tobias and Rachel are already posed at a different table with baseball caps in place, while Marco shuffles around in a white apron busing tables and Ax (despite eight or nine promises that this time he’ll be cool around food) remains safely out of sight and out of morph on the roof. If anything goes catastrophically wrong, the plan is for Cassie to alert Marco, who will create a diversion by overturning a dish cart while Rachel and Tobias hastily duck under the tablecloth of their own table—Rachel to morph, Tobias to demorph—as Ax provides everyone cover. Jake’s pretty sure that if his date wants to shoot him in the head there’ll be nothing the others can do in time to stop her, but at least he knows he probably won’t end up forcibly made into a controller by the end of the evening.
Rachel, blatantly eavesdropping even as she holds Tobias’s hand across the table and they stare into each other’s eyes (if anyone starts looking at them too closely they start loudly sucking face) has to admit that Jake does better than she would have expected. He asks “Stacy” where she got her shoes, laughs in a way that’s only slightly moronic when she compliments his sunglasses, and (after Tobias calls out a suggestion in thought-speak) even remembers to pull her chair out for her before she sits down.
As instructed, Jake waits until after they’ve already ordered their food to turn the conversation to the reason they went to all this trouble in the first place. He’s pretty pleased with how things are going so far, although then again he might just be light-headed from the smell of the instatan Rachel sprayed on him earlier.
“So,” he says. “You’re part of the Sharing, right? How’d you get into that in the first place?”
Ireiss 132 tosses a lock of Stacy’s hair over her shoulder. “My older sister got me into it, actually. She kept begging me and begging me to join, and then one time I just—Hey, you okay?”
Jake forces a laugh, doing his best not to think of Stacy, to think of Tom, to think but for the grace of God... “Sure. Just, uh, zoned for a second. So, the Sharing does a lot of recruitment events, right?”
<Don’t make her suspicious,> Tobias says unhelpfully. <Just keep her on her toes.>
“Yeah, we’ve got volleyball days, cookouts on the beach, whole weekends upstate…” She leans forward a little across the table. “You interested in joining?”
<Say yes!> Cassie suggests, at almost exactly the same time Tobias says, <Tell her ‘hell no.’> Marco, standing across the room, makes eye contact with Jake long enough to shake his head emphatically, just as Tobias adds, <Actually Rachel says to tell her yes.>
Jake closes his eyes for a second to find the patience not to swat at the back of his head and then throw a full plate of food at the next table over. “I don’t know, really,” he says diplomatically. “What do you guys do, anyway, besides sit around and eat hamburgers?”
“It’s all about community outreach,” Ireiss 132 says, apparently not noticing Jake’s hesitation. “We do days where we clean up litter at the park, we raise money to fund cancer research—”
<Of course they do,> Cassie says darkly. <Can’t have anything wrong with their prospective slaves, right?>
Jake, having missed the end of that sentence, has to make an educated guess. “Sounds pretty cool. Don’t you have, like, celebrity endorsements?”
“Oh, sure. There’s Jeremy Jason McCole, William Roger Tennant…” Ireiss ticks the names off on Stacy’s left hand. “That blond lady with the cooking show, Senator Malesin, Senator Argo, Angelina Jolie—”
<Angelina Jolie?> Tobias says.
Cassie gasps. <But she seems like such a nice lady on TV!>
<Who is Angelina Jolie? Is Prince Jake okay?>
<He’s fine. However, Rachel would like me to pass along a few comments with strong language about Angelina Jolie’s lifestyle, dress, and immediate ancestors.>
“Shut up!” Jake hisses.
Ireiss blinks at him a few times.
Jake clears his throat. “I just mean…” He changes his inflection. “Shut up! As in, you’re kidding me! You think maybe I could meet her sometime?”
“Join the Sharing,” Ireiss says. “We could make it happen. Once you get initiated as a full member your whole life opens up before you—you can’t imagine what it’s like.”
Jake forces another smile. He picks up his fork. This helps him to avoid giving into the urge to clamp both hands over his ears, slide under the table, and scream something about how they can never have his body. He can imagine the experience a little too well, and it’s not something he’s ever letting happen again.
Nonetheless, Jake manages to keep lightly deflecting Ireiss’s recruitment attempts while also digging for information, clear through until Marco—with a flourish—brings them a plate of mini cannoli for dessert. After he ducks away from their table he sweeps over to begin polishing the corner of Rachel and Tobias’s.
<Marco says he wants you to save him one, because they look delicious,> Tobias says a minute later.
Jake, who has just been distracted in the middle of Ireiss’s description of how they draw in community members to Sharing meetings, makes a mental note to define the term radio silence for the entire team when they get home. Then he picks up the last cannoli, very pointedly licks it, and puts it back on the plate uneaten.
<Marco says, and I quote, that there are ‘children starving in Montana’ that you are ‘not the man he fell in love with,’ and that he is ‘wounded to the depths of his soul.’ By the way, you do know not to offer to pay for dinner, right? Because you don’t actually want to get a second date out of this.>
“You were saying?” Jake says loudly.
Ireiss clears Stacy’s throat. “Oh, just that we really feel reaching out to vulnerable kids—as through the youth shelter I mentioned, and the after-school program—is the best way to offer them the Sharing as an alternative to gang membership.”
Jake dearly hopes that someone is taking notes on all of this, because if he suffered through the application of that much instatan for nothing he’s going to strangle someone. “That’s really cool. So is there, like, a place where you keep track of all the Sharing’s full members? Some kind of database or something?”
<Too strong, too strong,> Cassie says.
<Prince Jake, Cassie and Tobias have now been in morph for one-hundred-eight of your minutes. May I suggest that you put a wrap in it?>
<So close, Ax-Man, and yet so far.>
“…nothing that formal,” Ireiss is saying. “Hoping for more celebrities?”
“You know what?” Jake stands up. “It’s been real. But I’ve got a thing, so…”
Tobias is right: he emphatically doesn’t want a second date. Waving at Stacy, Jake pivots and walks out the door without another word.
They assemble in Cassie’s barn later that evening, Jake attempting to get one of Cassie’s horse-brushes through the horrible gel-stiff mess of his hair as everyone else trickles in. “Okay,” he says wearily, when they’re all present, “What did we learn today?”
“For starters,” Marco says, “That Tobias is apparently romantic as hell. Were I not healthily terrified of your beautiful and homicidal cousin, I would already be trying to hit that like a—”
<Before you can go any further, no.> Tobias glares at Marco. <Also, to answer your next question, I am also not interested in a threesome.>
“Besides that.” Jake rubs a hand over his face, smearing the makeup that Rachel insisted isn’t makeup across his skin. “What else?”
“I learned that, on second thought, lime green is not your color.” Rachel frowns. “I’m not sure the look works at all. You can take the boy out of the WalMart jeans, but you can’t take the WalMart jeans out of the boy, I guess.”
“Can we please stay on topic?” Jake asks.
“Angelina Jolie’s a controller.” Cassie smiles sympathetically at Jake. “So are two of California’s state senators, and a handful of B-list actors. The Sharing is recruiting at the youth shelter, which is just all kinds of gross and awful, and they’re making a push to move into more schools across the county.”
<Also,> Ax adds, <We have the names of several more businesses that have donated to the Sharing, and are therefore possible yeerk pool entrances. I suggest we start with further research on Burt’s Taco Truck, although I sincerely doubt that any yeerk would have that magnificent grasp of the subtleties of spicy and umami. Still, it warrants much more extensive exploration.>
They rehash everything Ireiss 132 said, hinted at, or confirmed in response to Jake’s questions for nearly two more hours. By the end of it they’ve got a decent plan in place for how to ensure the Sharing can’t spread any more feelers into any more parts of the community, and the beginnings of an idea for how to discredit the whole organization. By then it’s getting late, so Jake and Marco and Rachel all split off to head home.
There’s a note pinned on the fridge when Jake walks in. Midget— Some chick keeps calling the house wanting to know when she’ll see you again. Call her back or get rid of her, but stop clogging up the line with your dumb teenage nonsense.
Jake stares at it in incredulity for several seconds. “Goddamn yeerks,” he says at last, and balls it up to throw in the trash.
I’m usually pretty particular about the sorts of traits that get assigned as humanity’s “special thing” in sci-fi settings, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for settings where the thing humanity is known for is something tiny and seemingly inconsequential that it wouldn’t normally occur to you to think of as a distinctive trait.
Like, maybe we have a reputation as a bunch of freaky nihilists because we’re the only species that naturally has the capacity to be amused by our own misfortune.
Alien: Why are you happy? You’ve been seriously injured!
Human: *struggling to control laughter* Yeah, but I can imagine what that must have looked like from the outside, and it’s pretty hilarious.
Alien: …
Captain XXlr’y: First Officer Jane The Human, your olifactory protuberance is severely damaged! Why is this a matter for mirthful celebration???
First Officer Jane The Human: A SPARKLY LITTLE POMERANIAN THING WITH A GODDAMN UNICORN HORN CHASED ME STRAIGHT INTO A WALL! OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? I RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL.
Captain XXlr’y: Yes I just observed this sequence of events! It was terrible!
First Officer Jane The Human: OKAY WHO GOT THAT ON CAMERA, I WANNA SEE.
Captain XXlr’y: So you more fully understand that this is a situation you should never get into again?
First Officer Jane The Human: SO I CAN SEND THE VIDEO TO MY MOM!
Captain XXlr’y: For… for the solicitation of maternal concern…?
First Officer Jane The Human: NO, BECAUSE SHE’LL THINK IT’S HILARIOUS TOO.
viewings of the ancient human art based seemingly entierly around purposefully inducing misfortune are a source of constant xeno-anthropological arguments. As near as anyone can discern, these acts are some kind of core human performance form- so meaningful to their culture that recording these acts was very nearly the first concern on the invention of moving visual media.
Somewhat more disconcerting is the fact that these aren’t just recordings of accidental happenstance, but carefully choreographed, practiced, and refined to such a degree that there are nearly species wise recognizable symbols and routines performed.
There are thesis’ on ‘large wedding cake destroyed’, and hotly argued debate on the purpose of ‘Jackass’
Reblogging this again to suggest a different view of humanity, one where it’s not that we find injuring ourselves to be hilarious is the “defining quirk”. No, this one’s got to do with why you always want a human engineer or programmer (or both) if your ship’s going to be within two parsecs of a human.
Humans break things. They don’t mean to, and it can’t just be their curiosity – other species are curious, but they don’t break things like humans do. Humans make things stop working by trying to do things that they were never meant to do in the first place. I should know, I’ve seen it firsthand – one of the stubborn little bastards decided he was going to get the holodeck to show him an outdated media format called a “Vee-Ay-Chess”, and he spent twenty chrons trying to fix it after it started belching black smoke – and then he was at it AGAIN! And don’t even get me started on how he almost wiped our nav computer to try and play something called “Wolfenstein”.
But the scary part is, for every time it fails, there’s three times it works. There was a time when our warp drive broke down. You know, it was a Caledon Industries model, they’re cheap but they like to break. The problem was that it was a Tritium Reactron Fitting, and it got wedged in the back. Like, “take the ship apart and put it back together to get the fitting out” wedged. We were convinced we were going to be stuck for a few days before our signal got noticed.
And then the human – same one who broke the holodeck twice with his Vee-Ay-Chess crap and almost wiped all our nav data with his Wolfenstein game – he goes into the engine room and begins calling over the intercom for random tools, trash, parts of other things that were working just fine. He spends maybe twelve chrons in there, and when he comes out, he tells us to fire up warp. It sails us right to the nearest star system, no problems. And then the chief engineer takes a look at what he’s done. It looks like – I kid you not – it looks like the entrails of a Galthan Wingbeast. One that got splattered by a bomb.
Says he “jury rigged” it, whatever the hell that means, and we should get it replaced before it breaks again. And that’s why I never go anywhere without a human anymore.
one time alexander the great rode dick for 8 hours and then spent 8 hours the next day riding a horse, and that’s why i believe bottoms deserve more credit
Except no, he didn’t. There is no evidence anywhere that says Alexander the Great was gay. What historical reference says that? His multiple wives maybe? His many children born to them? Or whatever delusion you’ve cooked up to pass your own opinion?
honey , i’m not spending an extra year in uni to get a classics degree not to respond to this directly
i) alexander had one (1) unborn child at the time of his death, because he only, miserably, managed to knock up one of his three (3) wives after his boyfriend died
–> had alexander produced more than ONE (1) child, the hellenistic age would not have been defined by the fallout caused by his generals warring to decide a successor, ultimately destroying his empire and arguably sending everyone from macedon to modern-day palestine into a cultural dark age
ii) macedonian kings took multiple wives to secure succession, a political move that alexander resisted despite the urging of both antipater and olympias (i’ll let you google them on your own time) for almost an literal
decade
– > there’s an anecdote found in the curtius , your “historical reference” – you can google his dates – about alexander’s parents sending him a hooker because they were afraid he didn’t … how do i say it nicely? wanna fuck women
it’s absolutely true that you can’t say alexander was gay; that’s grossly reductive, because sexuality didn’t exist by modern definition in ancient times. more, alexander DID bone a woman, willingly, at one point – a satrap’s (google that) wife, named barsine, with whom he may or may not have produced a bastard child called heracles. getting dicked down doesn’t negate wanting to dick another down, an interesting concept that you would be familiar with if you took a quick jaunt out of that homophobic bubble wrap you’ve duct-taped yourself into. we also can’t FOR SURE 100% conclusively say that alexander and hephaestion boned; but plutarch, curtius, and diodorus are some notable biographers who delve into detail about alexander’s life-long, likely romantic connection to his right hand man, who he mourned so excessively at the time of his death that there was hardly a dime left for alexander’s own funeral. they didn’t make that shit up – you can google what source criticism is, but some of THEIR sources included ptolemy i soter and callisthenes – oof, more people for you to google! modern scholars from reames to borza to müller to green assume that he was getting dicked down for the above reasons, too!
at last, i shall acknowledge that my Humour Post refers to lucian (pro lapsu inter salutandum 8), who has some wink-wink-nudge-nudge content concerning who slept in whose tent when, but who wants to retread old ground? here’s another one of my favorites instead:
323 was the year of alexander’s death (historical!), but even if lucian made all of this up, as this scholar seems to nudge at, it’s still quite telling that a cultural memory and historical tradition that the romans associated with alexander included his love of massive, throbbing cocks, non?
people who share your dreadfully uninformed and outdated opinion include, if i’m not mistaken, a handful of stodgy greek lawyers, a man named william woodthorpe tarn, and helmut berve. tarn was an imperialist, and berve? a literal nazi.
I’m sorry but I just had to reblog this. This is a fucking epic beatdown.
