You should only write in present tense with extreme caution.
not because it’s bad or anything but because if you do it even once you’re going to be editing the bits where you shifted tenses out of your writing for the rest of your life
if u write in present tense enough times in a row, you can switch this problem around & get confused when your present-tense narrator is talking abt something that happened in Their past. I recommend this bc it keeps u on ur toes
The way that tumblr celebrates the Ides of March every year is so strange to me, because like.
The assassination of Julius Cesar is maybe one of the MOST controversial moments in western history. A thousand years later, Dante Alegari (who was Italian) when writing the Divine Comedy, reserves the deepest foulest pit of hell for Brutus, Casius and Judas, condemning them to be Satan’s eternal chew toys. Shakespeare devotes an entire play to how Julius Cesar is a complicated figure neither saint nor monster, and to how the assassin’s motives ranged from virtuous to petty and spiteful. To this DAY scholars and historians still argue about the actions of the assassins, spilling oceans of ink.
And yet all of tumblr seems to accept three things as undisputed fact:
That Julius Caesar was a dictator (true) and tyrant (debatable).
That the assassins, and Brutus in particular where righteous in the stabbing of him (A statement that would spark riots in any classical history department in any western country)
That the stabbing turned out great for everyone involved who was NOT Caesar (super super not true- it sparked off riots that nearly destroyed the city of Rome, and a Civil War that killed tens of thousands and nearly destroyed the country of Rome).
Every March 15th, this site throws a party and stubbornly insists that an event, a real historical event that unleashed untold chaos and death on the world, was actually just really cool and funny you guys: Caesar was a bad guy and his assassins where super cool, and that’s that.
And I get the memes are choice. But I think, we may collectively, be missing the point of this particular lesson of history.
This is a fair analysis, but also consider: I don’t think this celebration ever thought that much about the political implications. It started as a meme of a knife in a bottle of Caesar dressing. I know that’s probably frustrating for historians and classical literature fans, and maybe we should take it a bit more seriously.
That being said, you are possibly the first person to think that deeply about Tumblr’s view of this holiday. You made some claims about how Tumblr users view the historic event, and maybe it’s just because we’re in different circles, but I don’t usually see much thought. No one really talks about what Caesar conquered or how Brutus and the senate handled the aftermath, and no one really picks sides.
It’s more “beware the ides,” Caesar should’ve listened to his wife and stayed home, he ran into my knife 23 times even though there were supposed to be 60, “et tu Bruté,” Pizza Pizza with dressing and a side of salad.
The closest I’ve seen it get to serious is “Hey, any current senators want to be hilarious?” Which, fair, in that regard we maybe should think more about what the aftermath was and what a coup like that today would mean.
But also that gets drowned out in puns, edits of classic art, Mean Girls gifs, eyes of Marge, and the occasional acknowledgement of it also being a bad day across fictional history with Mr. Crocker losing his happiness, Marty McFly’s dad dying in the bad timeline, and even more if you get into some if the less universal fandoms (seriously, a few years ago I did a post trying to list them all, and I feel like every year a new one gets added).
Anyway, this was way too long of a comment where I said a whole lot of nothing, but also, that’s kinda what the Ides of March is: a lot of hype with little to no thought at all.
I think another factor here is that if you take the event out of context long enough to take a long view, it’s such absolute overkill. Over fifty people hated this one guy enough to stab the shit out of him, and at least half of them were really fucking bad at it. Yes, the repercussions were so severe we’re still dealing with them today, but the absolute absurdity of it is a form of dark humor. The plot to kill Caesar is like bringing in an Army tank to kill a squirrel and then only taking off its tail. It’s fucking ridiculous.
Add to this that the main formula for classic comedy is tragedy + time, and it’s absolutely ripe for the kind of cybermodernist dadaism this site specializes in.
I’m stealing the previous reblog tags because they are also absolutely true and sums up what i was thinkong reading this quite exactly !
ALT
