he's like fire and ice and rage

Or at least that’s always how it’s been phrased for me, by others. Now I realize that my interest for the old thing didn’t fade so much as my interest for something new outshined it, and that’s vastly different. 

I was always made to feel bad about it, with every abandoned endeavour I was told I needed to stop starting things if I wasn’t going to stick with them. I was told I was wasting time and money picking up these random interests and abandoning them after a year. 

So eventually, I stopped picking things up. I told myself “what’s the point, I’m going to give up in a year anyway”. Even worse, I started dismissing every new interest, because I had no way of knowing if my interest was “real” enough or just another passing phase. I stopped trying new things, I stopped looking up stuff that piqued my curiosity, and having chronic depression made it really easy to leave everything on the dirty floor of neglected ideas. The more they piled up, the more depressing it was. All these things that could be nice, but I just can’t take care of them. 

I realize now how bullshit that kind of thinking is. So what if I stopped doing karate after a year? That’s one more year of karate than most people I know. And in that year I learned discipline, I learned to listen to a teacher, something I had never done before in all my years of private education. I learned the true meaning of respect, that it’s something you do out of faith at first and maintain as it’s reciprocated, not something you do blindly and regardless of how you’re treated. 

It gave me the foundation for the determination and grounding I needed to practice yoga. Another year. Not enough to be good at it maybe, but again a year more than most people I know and a year that is not lost, but gained. I learned balance, I learned to listen to my body, I learned how to let go of emotional tightness through physical stretching. 

And then iaido, only a few weeks because I couldn’t afford to keep going. The year of yoga I had done a couple years previous had given me a better starting point than the other newcomers to the class. I already had balance, I had strength in my legs and I had better posture. In those months I learned the importance of precision, the true definition of efficacy, the zen state that is incessant repetition. 

Did I practice long enough to get good at iaido, and yoga, and karate? No. Of course not. It takes years to become proficient and decades to master any of those things, but I learned other skills and those skills were an invaluable part of my growth both spiritually and emotionally. Likewise for my forays into painting, sewing, graphic design, film. I’m a photography student now heading into my second year of school, and every single second of practice I have in those other disciplines has given me more experience in those areas and made learning easier. 

For a few months I was really into costume makeup. 

For a year I was into sewing clothes

For a few months I was into sculpting and molding and casting

I’ve always had a sustained interest in animals, but the hyperfocus on birds in particular made me very familiar with feather formations. 

Couple months I loved the idea of engineering moving sculptures. 

Add all that together, and hot diggity shit, that’s some SOLID basework for making costumes, cosplay, and other impressive props.

—–

For a week I was into welding and took a welding class.

A year of interest in woodworking and fiddling with the tools means I’m fairly good at that as well. 

Add that to the engineering from earlier and the focus on balance and stable structures means I can make my own furniture - Couches, shelves, desks, just give me the material and tools and I can make it happen. 

—

Brief interest in business law meant two classes taken in college, and an accidental qualification for a business degree. 

Those same classes let me point out some serious litigation bait in a friend’s startup company. 

—-

A wide array of interests means I also have a TON of little nitpicky facts about how the world works, which translates into amazing immersive writing. 

I know how it feels to use a chisel, and the delicate precision of electronics. I know the smell of forests and barns and old yarn being put to use again. The bloody smell of a freshly slaughtered chicken, and the anticipatory fear moments before skydiving. 

To this

TO THIS

Digital artist Daniel Voshart recreates the ‘real’ faces of Roman emperors thanks to machine learning. You can learn more about the process, discover more emperors or buy a poster here.

[Marcus Aurelius]

[Lucius Verus]

in Europe, ‘white’ isn’t a thing

in the sense that there are so many shades of white, it doesn’t really mean anything

like, Spanish white and Swedish white are different things, but we wouldn’t consider either ‘non-white’ or ‘whiter’

you can generally tell where someone’s from, but there are people who ‘look out of place’ a bit everywhere

either because recent or century-old migrations, or because of a previous population that lived there and then the borders moved or something

and: in a nutshell, Italian geography discourages friendships

that means that before the Romans came along, people generally kept to themselves, so there’s more genetic diversity the farther back you go

at some point in the Neolithic, there were non Indo-European tribes living in Italy, but we don’t know exactly where they came from

the Indo-European people, on the other hand, probably invaded from the North

except for the Etruscans, because as it turns out, Herodotus was right (AGAIN! HAHHAHAHAHAHA SUCK IT HATERS) and they actually came from somewhere in modern Turkey

which still doesn’t mean they weren’t white, btw

even today, there’s plenty of people in the Middle East who look like this:

[top to bottom: a Kurdish fighter; Iranian politician Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; Syrian writer Samar Yazbek]

so the notion of ‘race’ as it’s understood in the US doesn’t really work elsewhere

if it even works in the US, that is

so anyway, from what we know from literary sources, the Romans weren’t incredibly dark

(btw people abroad, and especially Americans, tend to have a fixed idea of what Italians look like and act like)

(but most of the Italians who emigrated to the US came from four Southern regions - Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicilia - and because Italy basically became a united country, like, 20 years ago, it’s still a very diverse nation)

(so what you think of as a ‘typical’ Italian is probably the great-grandnephew of a ‘typical’ resident of one small village in Sicily)

and the ‘typical’ Roman you often see in movies, with tanned skin, dark eyes and curly black hair, probably wasn’t a ‘typical’ Roman at all

those traits are way more common in some areas of the South - where about 37% of the population has Greek DNA because ancient colonies

so while blond hair probably wasn’t really common (we can tell because it was greatly admired and sought after, and people generally like what they don’t have), neither were darker skin and black hair

in fact, a lot of politicians and other VIPs are described in the texts as having light eyes (light blue, green and gray) and some had blond or red hair

others died their hair blond with pigeon poop, but that’s another story

so the bottom line is - like modern inhabitants of Italy, ancient Romans were white, but in many cases you could probably tell from where their family came from, and some were ‘whiter’ than others depending on their ancestry

that said, the European past was a lot more diverse than our instinctive perception of it

there was a lot of trade going on, slaves from conquered lands, wealthy and poor people roaming about, and units of foreign-born Roman soldiers in unlikely places, so that’s something to keep in mind.

As a bonus for reading this far, here is a smiling wolf.

Pertinax

Caracalla: (UL) Vatican Museum; (UR) Met, NYC; (LL) The Severan Tondo; (LR) Naples National Archaeological Museum

Philip the Arab: (L) Vatican Museum

244–249 (died aged 45 — Killed in the Battle of Verona by Decius

Quintillus [Marcus Aurelius Claudius Quintillus]

Florianus

Carinus

Numerian

To add to the commentary above, many of the greatest men in Roman history came from provinces outside of the Italian Peninsula, but they were and have since been considered Roman (examples: the emperor Trajan was from Hispania, and Septimus Severus was born in an African province).

Later in Roman history, under Caracalla (who was born in Gaul and of mixed Berber and Syrian descent, so another Roman figure not Italian-Roman) in 212 AD all free men in the entire Roman Empire was granted citizenship. That meant that any Germanics, Africans, Latins, Hispanics, Syrian, etc. were all considered Roman! Regardless of race.

This is what encompassed the Roman Empire:

So you can imagine the intermixing that went on at the time and how the concept or “white” the way America presents it is absolutely inconsequential for the time period we’re talking about.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Commune cities formed, autonomous republic that survived exclusively on Marine trade with Spain, Africa, and East India. Amalfi, Gaeta and Venice in the 11th century were already autonomous maritime republics. Around 1100, Genoa, Pisa and Ancona emerged as independent maritime republics too.

I showed her a photo of the man who plays the angel in my film, who is both quite evidently white and is also from Greece, born and raised. Many other directors replied and told her that “Mediterranean” can mean just about anything. This same actor told me that he had responded to several auditions asking for “Mediterranean” looks, and would then tell him that he was not what they were looking for, because by “Mediterrranean” they meant “a darker skin tone”. He’d explain the same thing to them and when they’d double down on their description being accurate, he’d say, “But I’m Greek!” 

I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she reads my intent so clearly.

When I walk to the kitchen to get a popsicle or thaw a slice of banana bread or warm up some mango slices, she doesn’t care. She stays on her chair and waits patiently.

But when I walk to the kitchen to scoop myself a bowl of ice cream, she’s at my heels SHRIEKING by the time I turn on the light. She knows. She’s not smelling it, she’s not hearing me say ‘ice cream’, she’s not accustomed to some predictable pattern because I rarely eat ice cream.

I got up to make myself a cup of tea, thought Tea Thoughts, and then at the last moment I filled my tea cup with ice cream instead of tea.

My cat didn’t even notice. She didn’t smell it, or pester me while I was eating, or come running and yodeling her need when I opened the freezer.

james and sirius care about quidditch too much, peter is a much more casual fan, and remus literally could not be bothered

remus doesn’t know the rules of the game and he doesn’t want to. super afraid of heights. 

sirius and james literally will do annything to improve the chances of gryffindor winning a quidditch match. this has made for some idiotic decisions and also some ingenious pranks 

courtesy of remus, they put itching powder in the slytherin’s quidditch robes. the other team couldn’t figure out the muggle prank, and neither could the staff, so gryffindor won 

also courtesy of remus, they put ipecac in the slytherin team’s water cooler. pomfrey had the same problem with their second muggle prank, because as the gryffindor boys had realized, the staff at hogwarts don’t look for muggle problems. 

james & sirius repeatedly told remus he was the mastermind behind the gryffindor teams successes, which remus found hilarious becuase the pranks they were pulling were low hanging fruit for his muggle cousins

some idiotic decisions: once sirius and james charmed themselves to be lighter (lighter=faster?) and they completely lost control of their brooms because of it

another time they tried to charm the ravenclaw team to be slower on their brooms, but the charm backfired and they spent the entire game in slow motion 

a third time they tried to charm a bludger to follow around lucius malfoy. that totally backfired when lucius flew behind james, and james took a bludger to the chest. 

sirius and james will literally suffer through anything to be able to get on the quidditch pitch

when sirius and james were in the midst of the game, sirius took a bludger to the chest at an unreasonably high height. he fell off his broom, cracked two ribs and his shin, and got back on the broom to finish the game. 

“hurt like a bitch but we won so, worth it”

remus thinks this is particularly stupid & spends a LOT of time worrying about sirius and james because of their careless nature

remus became quidditch commentator by pure bad luck

he got detention with madam hooch for not wanting to practice flying and she made him do it

peter was really disappointed because he really likes quidditch unlike remus 

remus begged mcgonagall and madam hooch to let peter comment as well, because he actually wanted the position 

they agreed because remus was one of mcgonagalls favs

positions stuck and by the end of seventh year he and peter were sassy, sarcastic quidditch commentators