#[epistulae ad atticum]

[edwardscissorfeet]

reading letters to atticus is like. wow this guy is so pathetic *clicks next page* wow this guy is so pathetic *clicks next page* wow this guy is so pathetic *clicks next page* wow rome is so fucked *clicks next page* wow this guy is so pathetic *clicks next page* wow this guy-

#my beloved chickpea #your tearful and whining ways have bewitched me #currently referencing the part wheres hes like *visible tensed* atticus help me save me atticus save me #cicero #epistulae ad atticum

[anaundying]

Atticus: *getting updated on roman politics* Cicero: And then I made such a banging speech you must have heard about it all the way in Epirus, so I'm not even going to tell you about it.

#marcus tullius chickpea #epistulae ad atticum #14 (I.14) #Rome #13th of Feburary 61 BCE #Bona Dea

[thesarosperiod]

being a new latin student as someone who was always firmly in the hellenist camp is so funny because i'm being introduced to new information about rome at the speed of light and it's giving me five new hyperfixations an hour. like i had plans for today but i gained a few new pieces of information and now i guess it's Marcus Tullius Cicero Saturday and i've been reading pieces of the epistulae ad atticum for the last several hours

#truly so much going on in my brain #so much #cicero #tagamemnon #latin #epistulae ad atticum #gids meditations

[veilchenjaeger]

considering each of the mxtx main pairings, which do you think would be most fun as a f/f ship, and please also talk about why (and what, if anything, changes about the dynamics)

Excellent question that I'm not yet fully qualified to answer bc I still haven't read the entirety of TGCF - but I'm pretty sure that my opinion on this won't change even once I have. I just think that the objectively correct answer here is Bingqiu.

I mean, from what I've gathered from the first 2.5 volumes of TGCF, F/F Hualian is like... partly canon anyways, due to the general gender stuff TGCF gods seem to have going on. And Wangxian would be interesting mostly due to the fact that the MDZS universe seems to be the most sexist one out of MXTX's universes, but I'm personally a little tired of Narratives About Historical Sexism. I'm absolutely deeply in love with fem!Xie Lian and Lan Wangji and I would let both fem!Hua Cheng and the Yiling Matriarch step on me, but the thing is.

Bingqiu.

BINGQIU. F/F Bingqiu fucks so hard! LIKE. OKAY. The thing about Scum Villain is that this story happens on approximately five different layers. You have the actual "reality" of what is happening in Scum Villain, including the emotions and experiences of the characters, but this "reality" is also shaped by the fact that it's a novel, and a particular genre of novel (a stallion novel at first and a danmei novel later on). There is a meta level built into the story. On top of that, you have the additional layer of the original PIDW plot, which again is driven by the conventions of its genre. These are all layers Shen Qingqiu is aware of! But there's ALSO the world Shen Yuan and Airplane are from, and their experiences in that world, including the tropes they know of and the internet they interact with, direct their actions in the world of PIDW as well as the way PIDW itself was written. And then there's obviously the actual meta level, the one that we and MXTX are on, where MXTX writes trope subversions and commentary on webnovel genres and internet culture that we as readers can pick up on. I love Scum Villain.

Anyways, all that means that if you change something as fundamental to the narrative as the gender of its main characters (bc gender dynamics are pretty damn important for a story that is in part about male power fantasies), you have to adjust every single one of those layers. Which I think is dope.

Luo Binghe has a lot of character traits, but on the first meta level, Luo Binghe is primarily the protagonist! So if Luo Binghe is a woman, PIDW can't be a stallion novel. What, then, is PIDW? I think there are a bunch of different options, and every single one creates a slightly different dynamic! Additionally, every single one creates a very slightly different Shen Yuan, AND - and this is vitally important to me - every single one creates different commentary on the second meta level. Subversion and commentary are such a huge part of what Scum Villain is (and what Bingqiu are) that I, at least, want that layer to stay intact in this AU.

I've talked about this before, I think, but I want to talk about it more. Scum Villain is in part about the effects male power fantasies have on men! If PIDW were a reverse harem novel targeted at straight women, for example, Scum Villain might be about the effects female power fantasies have on women! You'd have Luo Binghe, who can have everything she wants bc she's the protagonist, but whose life has to be centred around romances with various men. I'd love to read a deconstruction of the reverse harem genre, bc it's such an alienating type of story for me as a lesbian - like, this type of female power fantasy hinges on the protagonist being attractive and attracted to men; it's unimaginable to have a classic female power fantasy without a romance with a man! On the other hand, PIDW as an erotic novel targeted at men would create so much fun commentary on sapphic sexuality. That's probably my favourite version of F/F Bingqiu, so I'm picking that dynamic to talk about in-depth:

Shen Yuan, in this, hate-reads a bad porn novel where the badass female protagonist - her favourite - is objectified and over-sexualised on every second page and exists to be masturbation material for the primarily straight male audience. I imagine that she writes a lot of rants in the comment section about how sexist PIDW is and how Luo Binghe would be an exceptional female character if she weren't the protagonist of a porn novel.

Luo Binghe, protagonist of a porn novel, after the Abyss starts to utilise her looks and her sexuality to make her way to the top. In the Scum Villain setting, of course, she's however deeply in love with Shen Qingqiu, who unfortunately is the only person her seduction techniques don't work on – because Shen Qingqiu is horribly attracted to Luo Binghe, but can’t detach her perception of Luo Binghe as attractive from the objectifying descriptions she read in the original novel. She already brainwashed herself into believing that she was never affected by Luo Binghe in writing, just disgusted by the fanservice, and now she brainwashes herself even harder bc Luo Binghe is a real person she knows now and not a sex symbol to get off to. (Plus, she’s into the submissive pouty housewife act! That’s even worse! She’s not even close to admitting she’s into women at all, she has to brainwash her way out of that!)

Meanwhile, everyone wants Luo Binghe except for the one person Luo Binghe wants to want her! I imagine that would mess with her head, especially after Shen Qingqiu’s death. Her relationship with her own sexuality is also pretty messed up, because her experience with it is focused on making herself desirable to other people, not on her actual desires. Luo Binghe, who only knows how to perform for the male gaze and gets no satisfaction from that vs. Shen Qingqiu, who can’t deal with the fact that she feels sexual attraction to a woman written for the male gaze. I think that sounds suitably disastrous for Bingqiu, and I feel like these are also extremely common wlw experiences. Layers! I want them to kiss, and I want them to kiss on the meta level! (And I want Luo Binghe to become comfortable with being seductive for the person she actually desires, and Shen Qingqiu to admit that she wants Luo Binghe.)

Finally, I think that there's one aspect of Scum Villain that would work better if Bingqiu were women, and that's Airplane. Like, PIDW is bad because Airplane had to abandon every notion of writing a serious, good story in order to make enough money to eat. In the end, the changes Shen Qingqiu makes to the novel are much closer to the original outline and Shang Qinghua is pretty satisfied with them. But like, danmei is a popular genre. Internationally popular, by now! You can make money with danmei! I think that particular message would be a bit more poignant if PIDW ended up as a baihe - the kind of story you wouldn't tell if you wanted to make money.

#/thanks for enabling my lesbian bingqiu obsession #/it was really fucking difficult not to write an entire novel here #/tl;dr: the answer is BINGQIU A MILLION TIMES #[epistulae ad atticum] #girls night girls night girls night #genderbend #svsss

[noxwithoutstars]

epistolary -genric gender?

queued !

#requests #also #epistulae ?? #ad atticum ??

[catilinas]

it’s because you’re always on that goddamn epistulae ad atticum

#terentia voice #beeps

[tityre-tu-scurra]

Out of context Cicero:

"You must know, your grandma has died because of your wish."

Epistulae ad Atticum, I, III, 1.

#been reading stuff to get to know Terentia #seems like he mentions her in the Letters to Atticus so I'm getting into them #out of context Cicero #my beloved #marcus tullius cicero #gerrarum tag #roman tag

[museofpangolins]

Thinking about that time when Petrarch discovered Cicero's "epistulae ad Atticum", where he said that despite having written the Catilinarian Oration he was considering teaming up with Catiline in court. My man Petrarch, being the #1 Cicero fanboy, was NOT happy about it, and felt so betrayed that he wrote a fictional letter to Cicero where he complained about the latin author not living up to the perfect idealization he had in mind.

He apologized in the next letter for having too high expectations

#pov you just found out the celebrity you have a parasocial relationship with is actually a human being with flaws #except cicero lived 1400 years earlier #realistically cicero would have written an oration on what a pussy Petrarch is #and Petrarch would have been extremely uncomfortable around 1st century bce roman polititians #tagamemnon #literature #roman history #cicero #petrarch #italian literature

[girlcavalcanti]

"You came and I was longing for you. You cooled a heart that burned with desire."

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum

#that old man sure could write #cicero

[edwardscissorfeet]

i interviewed titus pomponius atticus about epistulae ad atticum and asked what he thought about his best friend marcus tullius he said. who give a shit.

#atticus #cicero #epistulae ad atticum

[anaundying]

If you could keep one ancient text to read for the rest of your life, whilst the others get banished to the shadow realm, which text would it be?

Girl help! Do the ad Atticum letters count as one text? What about the familiares? Fuck. Can I pick the text that would allow me to enter the shadow realm? (Obviously not, yeah.) Can I pick one that's lost to us?

Cause in that case I think I'll go with Ovids Medea. If not...epistulae ad Atticum, please let me keep all of them, at least. I am begging you, on my knees!

#for both the information and the humanity #and little Tullia #it took me so fucking long to answer this question

[yorgunherakles]

okuma ve yazma beni avutmuyor, sadece oyalıyor.

cicero - epistulae ad atticum

#Marcus Tullius Cicero #Marcus Aurelius #epistulae ad atticum #Lucius Annaeus Seneca #friedrich nietzsche #milan kundera #Jean Paul Sartre #trend #felsefi fragmanlar #felsefenin tesellisi #literary #library #alberto manguel #geceleyin kütüphane #kitaplık #kitap kurdu #felsefe klübü #okuma günlüğü #kayıp kelimeler #günün sözü #felsefe parçaları #Latin poetry #greek philosophy #philosophy #latin philosophy #books #poems #edebiyat #konstantin kavafis #şiir

[veilchenjaeger]

(I'm going to talk about non-consensual sex in media below, obviously. Just a head up.)

@stripedroseandsketchpads I’m not super knowledgeable about these tropes either, so I’m definitely not the right person to do a detailed analysis of the trope subversions here (or trope subversions in Scum Villain in general). I don’t read a lot of danmei, though I do have a background in old 2010s BL manga, and a lot of tropes do seem familiar to me. I have looked at a few stallion novels, but those are so incredibly misogynistic that they’re impossible for me, a person without access to copious amounts of alcohol, to read without taking permanent damage. But like… What bothers me about the Maigu Ridge takes I see isn't a lack of understanding of the trope subversions (which I don't fully understand either) but how many people miss the basics of what's happening in this scene? I don't think it's necessary to do, like, a close analysis of the text to recognise that Maigu Ridge is not supposed to be sexy?? Maybe I'm wrong and it is hard to tell, but?

I am genuinely baffled by the amount of misinterpretations I see about Maigu Ridge mostly bc I don't think it’s subtle about what it is! I, too, think that MXTX's sexy scenes are sort of odd and not very sexy [Edit: @stripedroseandsketchpads pointed out that this is likely a translation bias, and I agree 100%], but the difference between e.g. the wine enema extra and Maigu Ridge is blatant? Shen Qingqiu is in so much fucking pain at Maigu Ridge that he can barely think! He's hurting in the other sex scenes, too, but not nearly as much, and the tone of those is light-hearted and Shen Qingqiu's narration is funny. There's nothing funny about Maigu Ridge! Shen Qingqiu doesn't very nearly black out from pain in the You Understand extra, because that one's supposed to be cute and awkward and not absolutely horrifying!

And even if we ignore the actual sex (I hesitate to use the term!), the entire way Maigu Ridge is framed makes it obvious that this is very much intended to be read as a traumatic event. First of all, they stop. It’s so important to me that they stop. It would have been so easy to transition into a good, pleasurable sex scene as soon as they're both able to consent, but it doesn't. They stop the second Luo Binghe comes to, because none of what just happened was arousing or made them want to continue having sex. This shouldn't be special, but it is, because this is a romance novel and romance novels don’t do bad sex, but I’ll get into the trope subversion later.

More stuff about the way Maigu Ridge is framed: My favourite thing about it is not the sex scene itself or the build-up to it - I'm not that hardcore - but the conversation they have afterwards, after Luo Binghe regains consciousness. They stop having sex, and they immediately start taking care of each other. This is a scene where they just went through a very traumatic thing together, and they support each other in the aftermath. This is one of the ultimate Bingqiu conversations for me, which cemented my love for them and imo proves how much they care about each other.

Within that conversation, it becomes obvious how shaken Luo Binghe is by what happened. He fucking asks why Shen Qingqiu didn't kill him instead of letting him do this! It's. Just. It's so much. It shows how horrified Luo Binghe is by what "he" (in quotation marks bc he wasn't conscious) just did. He's hurt Shen Qingqiu a lot in this book, in various ways, but here, we see him break down after doing so and pretty much say outright that he'd rather have died. Bingy.

There’s also the fact that Shen Qingqiu tries to calm him down by pointing out that he "was willing". No you weren't, king, but I appreciate you reassuring Luo Binghe that he didn't just outright rape you. It's such a weak reassurance in this moment, when Shen Qingqiu is literally dying, but it still means the world. Everything is so horrible, but Shen Qingqiu successfully pinpoints the thing that makes it slightly less horrible.

Later developments support this reading, too! Luo Binghe, Mr Pushy himself, doesn't dare initiate anything sexual for the first weeks of their relationship! Maigu Ridge is the catalyst for him letting Shen Qingqiu go and not being there when he wakes up (despite having waited five years for Shen Qingqiu to wake up before), because he doesn't believe they can come back from this! In the interview extra, Luo Binghe refuses to name Maigu Ridge as their first time, preferring to pretend it never happened! Shen Qingqiu mostly refers to it as a failure, something that’s tragic bc Luo Binghe as a stallion protagonist should have had a better first time, but his tone in those moments of narration is seriously mismatched with his narration during Maigu Ridge, and ignoring his own feelings about the matter completely and re-framing it as a plot point in a novel instead of a real thing that happened to him is precisely how Shen Qingqiu deals with trauma all the time. Maigu Ridge is so obviously written as a traumatic event, so I really cannot understand people who are either mad that the sex scene wasn't hot (It's not meant to be!) or complain about this scene being super problematic and Bingqiu thus being horrible. (This was very intentionally written that way and Bingqiu themselves acknowledge that it was awful!)

And that isn’t even getting into the trope subversion yet. As I said, I’m not super knowledgeable about that, but I read a post recently that pointed out that a lot of danmei tropes are just romance/erotica novel tropes, and… yes. That’s true. What happens a lot in these stories is the “It starts out non-consensual but the main character (the woman in straight romance, lbr) ends up liking it anyways!” trope. Afaik, this is a staple of stallion novel sex, too. I hate this trope with the fire of a thousand burning suns, and when I first read Scum Villain, I was afraid that Maigu Ridge would turn into that. And then it didn’t. Which blew my mind a little, because main couples in romance or erotica novels don’t have bad sex. Bingqiu are an obvious subversion of that bc they suck at sex even if it is consensual, but Maigu Ridge is that subversion times 100. Scum Villain talks a lot about satisfaction points, so let’s think about reader satisfaction here: For this entire novel, we’ve been waiting for Bingqiu to kiss and get together and fuck. And a romance story isn’t always over with the first time, but usually, such a scene is satisfying because it shows them finally coming together after chapters upon chapters of build-up. Usually, it’s good sex. It shows us that the main couple is meant to be together. (Wangxian's first time is a pretty good example of a sex scene that is more of a problem than a solution but is still good.) Apparently, the “Fuck or Die” trope is a lot more prevalent in the genres MXTX is commenting on than in stuff I know about, so that plays into it, too: It’s the kind of scene that’s meant to be satisfying, and Maigu Ridge absolutely fucking isn’t. This book, which is very much a romance novel, looked the “Fuck or Die” trope in the eye, said, “This would fucking suck irl”, and ran with that. And I think that owns.

Non-consensual romantic or sexual actions are a fucking staple of romance media, and while there can obviously be kinky reasons for that, the fact that it's so prevalent is awful imo. The amount of completely innocuous prime time movies targeted at girls and young women that I've seen where straight-up stalking and sexual harrassment are played as a romantic ideal is horrifying. Not to mention that Scum Villain is commentary on stallion novels, too, and the way non-consensual sex is portrayed in those – books targeted at an audience that is meant to identify with the rapist – is terrifying imo. It genuinely scares me that there are men out there who read these books uncritically and buy into that portrayal of women and consent. I could talk a lot about the nuances of this topic (bc it is nuanced), but let’s just say that it's so important to me to see a scene like this portrayed as the horrible, traumatic even it would be in a realistic setting (while still being a scene in a romance novel that doesn’t end the main couple’s relationship). Maigu Ridge is one of the main reasons why I trust MXTX to address and play with consent issues (as she does with Wangxian).

I don’t think that the message of Maigu Ridge is “The Fuck or Die trope/non-consensual sex in romance novels is horrible and shouldn’t happen ever” – MXTX does include a whole parody of super tropey danmei novels full of noncon with Resentment of Chunshan, which is portrayed as silly but harmless, kinky fun – but it invites us to think about these tropes and the implications they have. There’s a lot of nuance here that I appreciate, especially with the distinction made between the Scum Villain plot, which is situated in “reality”, and Resentment of Chunshan, which is very firmly fantasy. I’d love to read an analysis on this by someone who really knows their shit when it comes to danmei, stallion novels, and Chinese media tropes in general (My perspective on this is obviously very Western!) bc this is all I really have to say about this, but like. Bottom line is that it’s fucking baffling to me why Maigu Ridge is so often treated as the Big Problematic Scene of Scum Villain when it’s literally commentary on noncon tropes in media. If anything, this is the single least problematic Bingqiu scene! What the fuck are y’all talking about!

#rape cw #[epistulae ad atticum] #/everyone always lists maigu ridge as the main thing that makes bingqiu ~problematic~ bc it's noncon and i'm like. #/you're talking about the house arrest scene. please tell me you're talking about the house arrest scene. #/of course warning new readers about maigu ridge is valid and important bc it's a horrifying scene but it's not ~problematic~. #/i hope this post doesn't sound rude or condescending? it's not meant that way i'm just very confused by the discourse around this scene #/i also don't currently have my books with me so if i got anything wrong pls point it out to me! #svsss

[thoodleoo]

I just wanted to say that I started reading Cicero's Philippicae because of some of your posts and I'm absolutely loving it. That guy is fenomenal 😎.

aw anon you’ve seriously made my day, i’m so glad somebody got into cheech’s writing because of me!

#reminds me that i need to read more epistulae ad atticum #Anonymous

[catilinas]

i’ve been following a tutorial on how to dry very wet books except i didn’t read that far ahead and just got to a step that’s like. now put it into a book press. do you think squashing it under several volumes of the epistulae ad atticum will have a similar effect

#wikihow do you expect me to have a book press just casually lying around #notebook babble #<- the situation continues :/ #beeps

[tityre-tu-scurra]

Out of context Cicero:

"And if I manage to pursue [this], I will feel richer than Crassus."

Epistulae ad Atticum, I IV, 3.

#my new reaction quote from now on #ofc my translations aren't majestic but that's basically what he says #yes I personally translate it #I study latin for a reason after all. #out of context Cicero #marcus tullius cicero #marcus licinius crassus