Platonic Angst Fic Ideas:

During yet another quick research dip into Wikipedia, I stumbled across Macaroni fashion in the 1700s.

As in "Stuck a feather in his hat / and called it Macaroni"

I was aware before now that Macaroni referred to the Macaroni Club-- though I had been told that it was an actual fashionable club in Italy, whereas Wikipedia claims that it's a ribbing term for men who took a Grand Tour in Europe and became Worldly and Cosmopolitan as a consequence-- a club that's entered by doing a thing, rather than a specific group of people who know each other (the way we use the Mile High Club in the modern day). The name itself references the fact that people who'd spent time in Italy would come back with a taste for pasta.

Macaroni gentlemen were fashionable. Very fashionable. Kinda extremely so. Which leads us to caricatures like these of such people:

But what really struck me was a contemporary description of members of the Macaroni Club:

"There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion." -- The Oxford Magazine, 1770

Now take the above caricature and compare it to this one:

Because when you look at the Fashionable Gentleman in this (yes, racially insensitive) cartoon, he's got big hair, sure, but nowhere near as big of hair as either of the Macaronis were portrayed as having. And for all his fashion sense, he's missing the Macaroni ruffles. His lady friend, however, is not.

Another quote from the Wikipedia page:

Design historian Peter McNeil links macaroni fashion to the crossdressing of the earlier molly subculture, and says "some macaronis may have utilized aspects of high fashion in order to affect new class identities, but others may have asserted what we would now label a queer identity".

And the thing that really gets me is that not too long ago, I noticed another bit of queer history from this rough time period, specifically the Italian cisibeo-- often an openly gay man who'd act as a woman's companion at social events in place of her husband.

And I wonder how many young people went on their Grand Tour, stopped in Italy to see all these openly gay people in parties, and came back having learned a thing or two about themselves. And meanwhile the folks back home are all going "seriously, what's going on in Italy that's making all our boys turn androgynous? Is it the pasta? Must be the pasta."

they do a little pumpkin craving

BTW GUYS.. HAND OVER🤲 THE PROMPT LISTS PLEASE I CANT FIND TGEM U--U any cool october art lists please olease please (<irresistible demand)

i have a disease its called Dumbass Artist Disease and its incurable

don’t delete caption or repost to other websites (reblogs ok ♥)

Odysseus: Penelope I am not the same person you fell in love with, I have done terrible things to get home. I understand if you can’t accept the monstrous things I have done-

Penelope: cool, could you please move this wedding bed

Odysseus: what, no!

Penelope: that’s my husband

Odysseus: Penelope I have killed so many

Penelope: I don’t give a shit

Odysseus: I sacrificed my crew-

Penelope: And I would’ve done the same

Odysseus: I am covered in the blood of the suitors

Penelope: and you look fantastic

Odysseus: I TORTURED A GOD ON HIS OWN WEAPON

Penelope: and that was incredibly sexy of you

Raise your hand if you support Seán not making videos every day anymore.

How I see the brothers, except I honestly can’t remember the last time I actually played the game and it’s so far removed from cannon that they’re basically my ocs now <3

tfw your own mom tells u to lock in