#this thesis was extremely fun to read btw. 10/10

[brother-emperors]

OCTAVIA AND KLEOPATRA

listen it's like. cleopatra had gifts put aside for octavia. and livia, but that's not as interesting to me. there's an implication, and outline, of some kind of relationship, and that not all hope was lost there. yet.

Octavia Minor and the Transition from Republic to Empire, Katrina Moore

however. octavia is made of the same cloth as her brother. octavian said roman dominance: be consumed or get buried, and octavia took that directive in her hands and open mouth kissed it with tongue. mark antony never stood a chance, but this isn't about him. he was already buried, kleopatra stayed a moment longer, and octavia outlived them both. it's checkmate or nothing, baby!

#this thesis was extremely fun to read btw. 10/10 #as always i think dynasts should just eat each other #i almost made the title for this 'best of the best on first class' but you would not believe how weird people got #when i did that grandson/ides of march comic. fully do not think people could handle dealing with fucking. kpop lyrics #which honestly. skill issue for those people. i think the song's okay™ but that line fucks so it stays on my playlist unfortunately #octavia minor #kleopatra #(squints) uh. timeline. lets see #roman empire tag #drawing tag

[niamhuncensored]

Whats Fantasticland about?

SO GLAD YOU ASKED (this summary does contain some spoilers btw) Fantasticland is a book about a few hundred theme park employees, most of them teens and college students, who are trapped by a hurricane into a knockoff disneyland. it's formatted as a series of interviews. Quickly after leaving the park's storm shelters, one of them dies/is killed and this causes them to splinter into a handful of factions which the book calls "tribes" but i think should probably be called literally anything else.

The park is split into a number of different regions to accommodate different kids, so the factions take those up as territories and name themselves accordingly.

The factions are

The Deadpools. They stick to the Hero Haven and use improvised weapons.

The Pirates. Stay in the pirate cove under one of the rides. use swords, guns (iirc), and at one point a cannon. they kidnap and kill people for various reasons. The clear aggressors.

The molemen. Maintenance people who holed up in the tunnels under the park (just in case you forgot this was disneyland.) mostly keep to themselves.

The Freaks. They stick to the World circus. use traps and improvised weapons. They used halloween decorations and stories to keep everyone else out.

The fairies/pixies. stuck to the fairy prairie. decimated by the pirates, due to their disorganization.

The Robots. no fucking clue. they're not mentioned beyond the fact they exist. in fantastic future world.

The shop girls. protecting the shops on the golden road. use bows and arrows and improvised weapons.

the whole book takes place over 34 days from storm to rescue, but it's never entirely clear what's happening when. You get a vague sense, mainly, and you can kind of track it by body decomposition (not kidding), but it's wishy-washy. i guess that's natural, given the format.

The thesis statement, by the end of it, is mostly "These damn kids and their iphones" with a sprinkling of "the media and people in general are assholes who profit off of suffering."

AND IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER

The existence of one clear aggressor makes the timeline work. kind of. Because i don't think it would have become omni-directional warfare in a month, especially when A.) there is explicitly enough resources to go around and B.) everyone is so far apart (at one point a character says that you could scream bloody murder in one part of the park and not hear it in another) that they're unlikely to bother each other.

So like. it works kinda. but it doesn't serve their purpose or the story! If you're going for moral ambiguity and "are any of these kids actually Bad and Violent or are they just in an extreme situation", don't have one group provoke everything! Just make it last longer!

And if you make it last longer, you could have each group develop more of an identity based on the skills their terrain would require. Pirates are already brutal and have a literal code of honor. The deadpools could be very strong and good at parkour. The shop girls could still be badass archers but might actually fight less, since they worked retail and developed some deescalation tactics. The fairies could use poisons. the freaks could be acrobatic when they need to be. The robots could have homemade tazers or some shit. Just any kind of identity beyond the aesthetic.

and the theme is really fucking annoying holy shit. how many times have we heard some variation of "Kids are glued to their phones and this is morally corrupt"?

and btw in situations like this, people generally work together.

All in all a 4/10 hated every word mandatory reading. I feel like i just ate mashed potatoes with no butter milk or salt. cannot stop thinking about how much better or at least more fun it could have been.