+angel, 14, china, they/them. personal blog. previously mayanqelou. // This blog is now inactive and any future personal content will be posted on my main blog, linhcindar.
The unicorn, tamable only by a virgin woman, was well established in medieval lore by the time Marco Polo described them as “scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead… They have a head like a wild boar’s… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions.” It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros.
- Wikipedia’s entry on unicorns
(It occurred to me I should do some myth-checking if I wanted to keep working on my story, but I had to stop and laugh at the idea of Marco Polo looking at a rhino and going THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH UNICORN, THE BESTIARIES LIED AND I WANT A REFUND.)
out of sheer curiosity (and partially driven by my pre-renaissance art history courses) i want to know your opinion cause everything i read on alexander makes him sound really uh. partial to hephaestion. is this a case of historians shipping it or is history just way gayer than i was led to believe
The Yellow Wallpaper is a 6,000-word short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women’s physical and mental health.
Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working and has to hide her journal from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency,” a diagnosis common to women in that period. The windows of the room are barred, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, allowing her husband to control her access to the rest of the house. (x)
I really have discovered something at last.Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out.The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.
Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, people in the Soviet Union began making records of banned Western music on discarded x-rays. With the help of a special device, banned bootlegged jazz and rock ‘n’ roll records were “pressed” on thick radiographs salvaged from hospital waste bins and then cut into discs of 23-25 centimeters in diameter. “They would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole,” says author Anya von Bremzen. “You’d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha’s brain scan — forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.”
okay so in 332 b.c. alexander was two years into his pissing contest with his dead dad when he realized that he had Seriously Miscalculated the situation and that oh surprise, the persians had ships and he had disbanded the athenian fleet bc he thought the athenians were untrustworthy pussies, and the athenians thought he was a short sunburnt virgin and also because he murdered a fucktonne of people and sold a lot more into slavery
and he realized, oh no! the persians are half way to macedonia and could possibly cut me off from the chersoneses and starve me out in persia! and if you’ve seen the princess bride you’d know: never get involved in a land war in asia. but not this kid! instead of DOING THE RESPONSIBLE THING AND TURNING BACK TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PERSIAN FLEET DOESN’T MAKE IT TO HIS HOME KINGDOM AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY MURDER HIS OWN PEOPLE INCLUDING HIS ENTIRE FAMILY AND THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO HAD PLEDGED HIM LOYALTY
HE DECIDES TO STAY IN PERSIA. WHY? because fuck greece, that’s why, he already did greece two years ago and if those motherfuckers have the bad sense to die when faced with a superior force when all their available men had been taken away on an idiot war to persia, that’s their problem and he really couldn’t give two fucks, kiss u miss u xoxo gossip girl
so he comes up with this DUMBASS SCHEME that wouldn’t have worked for ANYONE ELSE and decides to conquer sea by land; aka, take every major port on the eastern mediterranean seaboard so’s to cut it off from the persian fleet and starve THEM out
and one of these cities was a place called tyre; you might know it from the phrase ‘tyrian purple’ bc they manufactured the most expensive dyes in the ancient world
so when alexander showed up and was like, let me make a sacrifice in ur temple, also surrender? also maybe let me loot ur town bc im short on funds, ja feel?
the governor was like, um no, please, fuck off
and alexander got SUPER PISSED. like HOW DARE YOU NOT LET ME INTO YOUR CITY? WHEN I’VE RAZED THEBES TO THE GROUND AND SALTED IT AND KILLED 6000 SOLDIERS IN A DAY AND SOLD 30000 MORE WOMEN AND CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY? YOU DON’TTRUST ME??? THE OUTRAGE
everyone was like, bro
and alexander was like THAT’S IT THEY’RE GONNA DIE THEY’RE GONNA FUCKING DIE KILL EVERYONE LET’S GO LET’S FUCKING GO
and everyone was like, maybe chill first yeah? then we’ll think of something because a lot of people are gonna die and -
YEAH, AND? said alexander
so in his infinite wisdom, this kid, this short sunburnt virgin decides to build a LAND BRIDGE ACROSS THE SEA TO REACH THE ISLAND OF TYRE
this is what tyre looks like now
keep in mind that tyre used to be an island
so then
it takes seven months and thooouuuuuusands of people die bc alexander was SO PISSED! ABOUT NOT BEING LET IN! and when he finally takes the city, he crucifies two thousand people up the beach kills seven thousand more sells 30000 people into slavery and then razes the city
but he spared the descendents of the poet pindar, bc he might be an asshole but he’s not a barbarian he cares about literature you guys
and then when all this is over
he heads up to the temple of melqart in the razed city
and, possibly while wearing raybans with both middle fingers up - the historical sources differ on whether he was wearing a ray gun shirt or a snapback -
If you ever feel like you’ve screwed up, just remember that in 1348 the Scots thought it would be a good idea to invade England because the English were weakened by the Plague. They subsequently caught the plague themselves, went back to Scotland, and killed half their own population.
