From My Private Meme Collection. Since I Also Work As An Editor I Often Have To Remind Myself There Aren’t

“I’ll take my leave of you, Kassandra.”

It would’ve been a lie to say that those words didn’t cause her shoulders to drop.

Kassandra had gotten used to Brasidas’ presence during their days in Arkadia that she’d almost forgot he wouldn’t be accompanying her to Boeotia, returning to Sparta along with her mother instead. She watched as he did a small bow as a parting gesture, like the gentleman he ever was, and tried not to let her disappointment show.

But then Brasidas glanced up at her—those soft, gentle honey eyes she would never have expected to find in a battle-hardened Spartan man before—sending her a certain look. And just like that, she understood the unspoken words behind them, and found herself returning his smile with one of her own.

I’ll be waiting for you back at home.

Because Brasidas bowing to Kassandra before they part ways in Arkadia always makes me soft.

This is probably weird to ask, so here it goes. Where there ever any heroes of Egypt like Herakles, Bilgamesh/Gilgamesh, Arjuna, or Jamshid? I noticed that I have never really heard of any heroic epics out of Egypt and I was curious as be to why that may be.

Culturally, heroic epics simply weren’t a genre within Egyptian literary tradition. I think the closest you can come to such a “hero” within the Egyptian body of literary works, is the character of a magician, like Djedi or Si-Osire, or Isis herself.

There are for example the Demotic stories with protagonist Setne Khamwas (based on the fourth son of Ramses II, Khwaemwaset). Setne Khwamwas has two adventures: one in which he finds the Book of Thoth in the tomb of a prince called Neferkaptah, and another in which he meets a magician from the time of Thutmose III, aforementioned Si-Osire. Of course since these are Demotic texts, they’re very late in Egyptian history. The copies we have are from Ptolemaeic and Roman Egypt respectively.

Then there’s the Westcar papyrus, which is a Middle Kingdom text that includes a few “miracles” the 4th Dynasty magician Djedi performed during the reign of king Khufu. This text wasn’t meant as an heroic epic either; rather, it’s one in a tradition of programmatic texts. They reflect the outlook of the class and time in which they were created, but they are also literary works.

But like almost all Egyptian literature, the subjects of these works are either fully mortal (think the protagonists from The Eloquent Peasant, Sinuhe, The Shipwrecked Sailor), fully divine (e.g. the giant snake on the island of the shipwrecked sailor, the two brothers in Tale of the Two Brothers), or the spirit of a deceased person (Neferkaptah in Setne Khamwas). And like most Egyptian literature, there’s a greater lesson to be learnt from the narrative. E.g. in the Shipwrecked Sailor, the sailor admonishes the official he serves to speak the truth of what happened, and The Eloquent Peasant imparts on the reader the importance of good speech.

On my departure from Discord

I’ve been having a rough few weeks of doubts and strife in my online and fandom life, and I’ve decided to step down from Discord in an interactive sense for the time being. Saying that the decision was painless or easy on my part would be an understatement. The realization of this need for escape came on with sudden clarity, and took even me off guard.  That’s why I wanted to explain a few factors that led me to making this drastic decision.

Discord has been a social beacon for me in the time of Covid and lockdown and instrumental in getting me back in the writing groove since early 2019. I’m immensely grateful for the people I got to meet and the conversations I had, but as life reopened its doors for me, I started to become more aware of all the ways in which the platform chafed at my being and mental health.

Gradually, over time, Discord had turned from a convenient safe space into a dependency that fostered a constant need to interact, to be aware, and to perform to stay relevant. It’s all the things I hated about high school but ten times worse because I actually like the people I interacted with. To make matters worse, I noticed that this constant need to stay relevant was interfering with what truly mattered to me: building my future and fulfilling a duty I feel I owe to myself and the world.

As my resentment with the platform grew, I became more hard-line and less compromising in my communication. I’m not saying that Discord is a toxic platform, but simply that it can cause negative or toxic behaviours towards yourself and those around you. I did not like who I’d become under Discord’s influence, so I decided to step away and re-examine which values and activities I wanted to hold onto for my personal development and mental health journey. Maintaining a presence in the Discord fandom did not fit into that, so I decided to cut myself off in the most drastic way possible.

As soon as the next day, I began to feel better, like a weight of responsibility had dropped off my shoulders. Suddenly, I had mental room to breathe again, to explore the world around me, and to put words down on the page. I felt freer and more independent than I had in months, and I knew I had made the right decision.

Still, as I’m closing the metaphorical ledger, I feel somewhat obliged to apologize to those I might have hurt with my sudden departure, but I felt that putting myself first was absolutely the correct thing to do in that moment. (If only to spare everyone from my inevitable downward spiral.) I don’t know if the space is healthier or better without me there, but at least I’m taking care of myself and others by removing myself from it. It was the right decision, even if it’s still hard.

To all the people that I have known: I wish you well. Maybe our paths will cross again.

Judy The Dreamer

(Boy, does it feel good to have this off my chest.)

Time Magazine

July 2015 edition

Interview & Cover Subject: Steve Rogers

Interview by Peter Parker

PP: What made you so involved in the fight for marriage equality despite the fact that it was legal in your home state of New York even before the Supreme Court’s decision?

SR: “Me and Bucky have had things trying to keep us from loving each other our entire lives. The federal government was one of them for far too long and the fact that they were still doing it to people like us a century later is something that this country needs to be ashamed of. I never wanted anyone else to be denied of something that everyone deserves to have as an option- the option to love freely and legally.”

PP: How hard was it growing up gay in the forties?

SR: “I mean, it was illegal, so the threat of jail time was constantly looming over us. We were lucky to live in a pretty open neighborhood- lots of drag queens honestly, one was my babysitter as a kid. But it was hard, definitely, having to pretend. It was scary being worried about the law or anyone who might have seen you for what you were. There was a lot of fear in everyone I knew who was queer, but that was something both me and Bucky were willing to endure to be with each other. I’m glad that gay rights and acceptance have changed for the better in this century but I think we all need to admit we still have a long way to go. The Supreme Court’s decision was a step further in the right direction, but it’s not a place to stop by any means.”

PP: What advice, if any, would you offer to LGBTQ+ youth out there who look up to you and your story?

SR: “Ah, that’s a tough one. There’s all the standard stuff about not being afraid, accepting yourself, how it’ll get better as time goes on. That’s all true! But if I was going to give any advice, I don’t want it to be something they’ve all heard before. So, I guess the biggest advicr I can give you is: it’s okay to not be immediately sure of things. Not bring sure, questioning yourself, even changing your mind- it’s all okay. It’s part of the process, and it’s okay not to have an answer. And don’t let people use your uncertainty as an excuse to force their own opinions about you down your throat as the truth. That’s another big lesson. Don’t let other people’s decisions about you influence who you think you are.”

PP: Now that same-sex marriage is legal in every state, will you be popping the question to your boyfriend anytime soon?

SR: “Actually, Bucky proposed to me during the war. Of course we couldn’t do anything much about it back then besides trade dogtags and have one of our squad bless us- nothing binding- but we’ve always considered it a standing engagement, but now that it’s legal we’ll be going about it the traditional way this time- right now it’s just a matter of waiting to see who springs the question first. I’m pretty sure our friends have bets going. If Sam loses, he’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

PP: So, this last question isn’t actually one from me, but if you don’t mind I’ll just hand it over.

SR: “What?”

BB: Hi, baby. I’m taking over the interview.

SR: “Bucky? What are you doing? Are you going to-“

BB: I’m the one asking questions here, Rogers. Now, to get down to it: Will you marry me?

SR: “Did you just propose to me during an interview?

BB: Natasha said it was the perfect way to get the drop on you.

SR: “Is this on the record?”

BB: ...Only if you say yes?

SR: “Bucky, of course I’m saying yes. Yes, you idiot. Always.”

Feedback culture is dead, long live feedback culture!

AO3, fanfiction, and comments: the system isn’t working. 

Fic authors have a problem with feedback – or rather, with the lack of it. Fanfiction has a notoriously low ratio of comments to hits, and many of us have expressed our frustration that we can get a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, even a thousand views on our stories, but only a handful of readers will leave kudos, let alone comments.   

Unfortunately, this only gets worse for long, multi-chapter stories (aka, the longfics we know, love, and would sell our souls in a second if it meant an update), which also happen to be the stories that authors need the most support to continue and complete. Law of diminishing returns, y’all, and it sucks. 

We’re not here to guilt you into leaving comments. We want to address the problem by changing the format, and we need your help to do it. 

The goal is to increase the amount of feedback authors get from readers, especially on stories with multiple chapters, and to make it easier for everyone to show how much we love fics. We’re opening a discussion with ao3 to figure out how/if any of these options can be implemented, but first we need options to present! 

Some of our current ideas: 

Ability to leave a form of kudos on every chapter, instead of only once on the entire story: this lets authors know that you’re here and you’re reading their updates, so their hard work isn’t getting tossed into the internet void. 

Comment templates: suggested comments that can be customized or posted as-is. Many of us draw a blank or get nervous when we try to think of a comment, so having pre-made options will both increase the total level of feedback and serve as practice, making it easier to leave more in-depth comments in the future. 

Upvoting/leaving kudos on comments themselves: positive reinforcement makes giving feedback more fun and rewarding, and it lets the author know that readers are present and agreeing with other comments, even if they don’t leave one themselves. 

We’ll contact AO3 to discuss the possibility of adding any of these as native features, and if that won’t work, we’re looking into creating and sharing a user script. 

 What you can do to help: 

 As a reader, what would you like to have? What would you be most likely to use? New ideas, opinions on ideas that are listed here, they’re all good. 

As a creator, how would you feel about each of these options? Can you think of other ways of receiving or encouraging feedback? 

Pros and cons of these (note: our thoughts on this are discussed in this google doc) 

GET THE WORD OUT! Reblog this post, send it to your friends, link to it from your stories. We need as much input and support as possible to get this off the ground. 

Feedback makes for happy authors. Happy authors make for more stories. Let’s keep this part of fandom alive! 

More details about our thoughts, discussions, and ideas can be found in this google doc.

Toph’s Family

Ive been thinking lately about the Tony-deletes-his-brain arc from Iron Man (2008).

Steve is dead, the Registration Act is done, the Skrull invasion has put Osborn in power, and, thanks to Extremis, Tony is carrying the entire Registration database in his head. The logical and very Tony solution is to slowly delete his own brain by traveling the world and plugging into repulsor terminals he has stashed in various places. Each time, he loses chunks of his intellect and his memory and heads closer to total brain death. It’s the culmination of all his angst over Civil War and Steve’s death.

But one thing that really gets me is this scene in issue #17 when Tony is writing an email to Maria Hill:

Tony is thinking about Steve when there’s no particular reason to be thinking about Steve, which is very in character for him. But more importantly, he’s forgotten that Steve is dead.

It’s thing that destroyed him in the aftermath of the Civil War, the one thing he couldn’t live with, and he’s forgotten. There was no reason to put this in the scene, other than to highlight that.

I think this was exactly what Tony wanted, and the real reason why he didn’t just eat a gun or “throw himself into a volcano” as other characters suggested. Tony didn’t want to die. He wanted escape from the guilt and to and dull of his mind and lose his sense of self. And when he reboots, he gets to lose the entire year of memories he couldn’t handle. And it’s so, so in character because those are the same desires that made him alcoholic years earlier.

More than that, I think Tony knew exactly what he was doing when he put the database in his head. If things went wrong, really really wrong, he had a ready made escape. A planned loss of the worst of himself and the worst of his memories. (I’d also like to think that if Steve put these pieces together after he returned and Tony had lost a year, he’d be furious.)

So anyway, that’s my over-10-years-too-late extremely angsty analysis of post-Civil War Tony that no one asked for... carry on

I got stung twice by the same wasp today, because the class I was observing for training danced on its field for an hour.

i love twitter. why does this have 4.9K likes

Topical Legstagram I did last month and never posted. For some reason I find it really soothing to make fake chats!

Gandalf has had the gc on mute for a year.