aaronofithaca05

[aaronofithaca05]

Dying in a constant sauna

Was in my August 2025 bingo

[aaronofithaca05]

Sketchy comic of Telemachus and Odysseus bonding lol

[aaronofithaca05]

Full Speed Ahead! Artworks that i did for russian cover!

[aaronofithaca05]

becoming an adult cheat sheet!

learn to coupon

what to do when you can’t afford therapy

cleaning your bathroom

what to do when you can’t pay your bills

stress management

quick fix meals

find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill

resume workshop

organize your closet

how to take care of yourself when you’re sick

what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment

what’s a mortgage?

how to pick a health insurance plan

hotlines list

your first gynecology appointment

what to do if the cops pull you over

things to have in your car in case of emergency

my moving out masterpost

how to make friends as an adult (video)

how to do taxes (video)

recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)

change a flat tire (video)

how to do laundry (video)

opening a bank account (video)

laundry cheat sheet

recipes masterpost

tricks to help you sleep more

what the fuck should you make for dinner?

where should you go for drinks?

alcohol: know your limits

easy makeup tips

find seat maps for your flight

self-defense tips

prevent hangovers

workout masterpost

how to write a check

career builder

browse careers

birth control information

financial management software & app (free)

my mental health masterpost

my college applications masterpost

how to jumpstart a car

sex ed masterpost

[aaronofithaca05]

Yup! That's me working on another fanfic as if I didn't have enough WIP already!

Mesdames et messieurs I give you...Circe and Odysseus!

[aaronofithaca05]

The bronze of the armor, greave, and helmet gleamed for an instant before he threw them under the leaf litter.

Now naked, he stood up.

An olive tree in form, another tree in that cave.

Charred, struck down, and worm-eaten, scars ran like rivers from shoulder to elbow, a purple lake on his abdomen, a pink vine from thigh to ankle, poorly healed.

His hand ran over that last one. The first mark of his life.

He exhaled a long-saved laugh.

—"What a bastard you were, Pappous,"—he said with half a smile, how could he hide it? Odysseus still remembered the wolf's sardonic grin and glare.

—"It’ll give him character." That’s what the Wolf told his poor father, Laertes, when they returned to Ithaca.

His good and kind father trembled more than a leaf in a storm when Anticlea showed her firstborn, Odysseus, crying bitterly at twelve solar cycles, bound in leather straps.

The Wolf? His father's father-in-law? Ecstatic.

A young, broken Odysseus writhed and howled in bed every time a nurse brought salves before his eyes. Green.

Odysseus could still feel the stinging burn on his raw, mangled flesh, the bone still visible in his memory—white. The boar hadn’t just torn up his leg that day; it had shattered his innocence.

More than fifty years had passed since then.

In the present, his hand still caressed his old friend and companion—pink and white—twisting from thigh to ankle like honeysuckle or ivy climbing the ancient palace, or vines like snakes in the Wolf's domain, high upon that snowy peak.

His mind drifted to the day he could walk again.

His grandfather had entered calmly, a feline, vulpine look behind those green-mirrored eyes. Odysseus had thought the old man would shower him with honors and praise.

But from his grandfather? Never a compliment.

Not for Odysseus.

Even after fighting off infection and shattered bones?

—“That’s my grandson. You didn’t disappoint me.”

And behind that grudging praise... a slap on the back.

He felt it now, in the present—a hand no longer there, the same slap he’d felt at twelve springs.

Odysseus turned his head, his glance furtive, hoping to catch sight of the marshy, herbal, green snake coiling in those crystalline eyes—that cunning, carefree look. The world at his feet until the stars spun.

He still remembered, even at the freshly carved circular tomb, a tholos, the ashes still stirred in the jar—restless, alive, and free.

Odysseus missed the thief.

—“Even dead, you’re still screwing with me,”—Odysseus said, sarcasm laced with grief.

It wasn’t his grandfather—just a tree.

To the olive tree, his words were as sharp as they were nostalgic.

Maybe the old man was listening.

His hand still rested on his thigh, thinking how to hide the "gift" his grandfather had left him, always with him.

He approached the rotten, stony, worm-eaten, yet living bark, pressed his forehead to it, and small crystalline beads fell with his sobs.

—“I’m back, Pappous.” Softly.

Against everything the liar and thief had taught him; his hand on the bark.

His Pappous was buried in Parnassus, not here, in Ithaca.

—“Thought I wouldn’t return, huh, you old dog?”—he said through tears and a strained attempt at camaraderie. It barely worked.

Odysseus hoped for a smirk, a head slap, or an ear tug—some cold green complicity with a sweet: "my bastard grandson.”

Silence.

—“I miss you, Pappous.”

Odysseus was honest now, his forehead against the tree, molding to his old wounds, like when his mother lifted him in flight—a kiss and a clash of foreheads—when he hid beneath his father's chiton, clinging to that smooth wooden mast.

Odysseus traced the olive tree—it wasn’t a fig tree, bore no brevas—but it helped him remember the sun, the wall, the goats.

Summer.

The old thief would come down from the north and the mountain to visit him and his mother; hunting dogs and uncles, aunts, and cousins descending in a ruckus like a flock of sheep guided by a fox when the incandescent stars speared the sky with heat.

The Ithacan kissed the ancient olive at the trunk—not that it mattered.

—“I love you, Grandpa.”

He kissed the worm-eaten trunk full of new shoots; the old man would be howling with laughter at that show of affection.

For Odysseus? It was revenge and truth in his gut.

Beneath all that falseness and harshness, he knew the sweet man that lay hidden.

He might’ve given him a slap on the day he recovered fully, but not when he convulsed for three days before that.

Real tears from the liar had fallen onto his own hands when he was a child.

—“Please, please, please,”—his grandfather had gripped his hand tightly, on his knees.

Autolycus never kneeled—not even to his father, Hermes the Argifontes.

—“Odysseus, my grandson…”—the words had tumbled out in a rush.

—“Please, Gods”.—

Autolykos choked on his own breath, not wanting to name him, he had never *begged to his own father*. Autolykos was only able to mutter a string of air: *Father*...

Silence.

He knelt deeper, sinking his own knees until they hid in the mud.

—Don’t take him from me, don’t take me from him… please, Father..please.”

In bed, Odysseus writhed like the eels of Parnassus, moaning like a starving hyena, until hours later, when the sun had already passed through the gates and Selene began to spill the night.

Autolycus—thief and deceiver—was prostrate, gripping with his calloused hands the pale and silent child, son of his daughter, flesh of his flesh.

— Odysseus, Odysseus… γλυκό μου...

Those clumsy words, that desperation he had felt in that hand—salt from the eyes of the thief of Parnassus, on his knees, begging—no one saw it but Odysseus, writhing in pain and fear.

By a miracle, he survived.

His grandfather denied, even on his deathbed, that he ever prayed to the gods for “

@katerinaaqu this is what I mentioned hehe

[aaronofithaca05]

i amnormal & can be trusted around mycenaean & minoan design elements. wearsbig shjrt that says I AM NORMAL AND CAN BE TRUSTED AROUND MYCENAEAN & MINOAN DESIGN ELEMENTS

[aaronofithaca05]

Today in the other side!

We had a little east wind that turned south but still quite enjoyable.

Last week though it was really choppy! And bad, 1-1.5 m waves too!.

Hope you had safe travels!.

For those who wondered this is how rough even the Ionian sea can be even in the summer. When I did this small boat trip our boat was rocking like crazy spraying us all with water making it impossible for us to stand or walk unless we held onto something

And that is the summer (imagine the winter) and still nothing like the Aegean or the open Mediterannean sea

So the next time someone says that "Odysseus stayed with Circe one year because he fucking loved it" Please show them pictures like these! Like our boat was small but still could fit over 100 people and has modern engines and hulls and all and STILL rocked us like no tomorrow. Yeah Odysseus just wouldn't go out in winter in the sea to die!

See also my addition to the Circe analysis that includes the link for Odysseus's ship:

[aaronofithaca05]

the gods on their distant thrones: oh boy, a new century! can't wait to see what exciting new mythic heroes humanity has come up with!

humans every single century no matter what: hnnnnnnnnrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhh odysseus

[aaronofithaca05]

question. do your irl friends know about your presence on this hellsite or are you in full hannah montana mode for life

[aaronofithaca05]

Everytime Patroclus is twinkified an angel loses its wings 💔

[aaronofithaca05]

Fact checking

Aka how do you actually check your sources???

There's been some very good discussion on tumblr lately about the difference between trained, academic reading and learning vs hobbyist reading. So here are some tips to engage critically with sources and information. (Disclaimer: I'm an archeology student, with a non-academic interest in classics, so this post is going to be slightly biased to my interest and areas of study. It's also tailored to laypeople who have no particular academic experience, so this might seem obvious or incomplete depending on your own experience.)

Step one:

Find the article. Did you hear something cool/suspicious/shocking in a youtube video, news article or tumblr post? LOOK IT UP. Type it into google, a lot of new articles are published open access these days. You can also check google scholar, academia.edu, DOAJ, JSTOR or hit up friends/acquaintances with university access.

Then, read the article, preferably. At the very least read the abstract as attentively as possible.

Check the methods for things like sample size, internal validity (is the method appropriate to answer the question they're asking), external validity (how representative is the method/group for populations as a whole (for example: was the study only done on elite burials? You can't always generalise those results to the population at large)). Read the results and discussion.

Check that the authors are citing other sources: are they backing up their claims?

Check the tone: is it neutral, professional?

Step two: Check the article.

Who are the authors? Do they have expertise in this area? (For example, there's a study that claims octopi come from outer space. No octopus experts were involved in this study) Do the authors have any conflict of interest? (what universities/companies are they associated with? Who's funding the study?) You can google them quickly to see where they've studied, and if they've written other articles on similar topics.

When was it published? How outdated is your information? This is going to vary from field to field. Some fields move very fast, while smaller fields take longer for things to shift.

Check the journal: What is their focus? This will clue you into potential biases as well as priorities that the researchers will have. What is their peer review process? You can do this by just typing the journal name into google, and you'll usually find it after snooping around on their page a bit. You can also check the impact factor of the journal. This is a number that tells you how important/well respected the journal is (basically how many citations it gets). Impact scores tend to vary quite a bit (eg the quarterly journal of economics has an SJR score of 35.995, the American journal of archeology has an SJR score of 0.422. They're both top journals in their field, but the size of their field varies). Additionally: check that this is not a predatory journal. Lists of predatory journals can be found online.

What are others saying? Check how many times the article has been cited. This can often be found in the metrics somewhere, or you can type the article's name into google scholar.

Just a note: really shitty articles can also get cited a lot, because academics love dragging their enemy's dead corpse through the mud. If you're really dedicated, go check some of the citations to see what they say on the topic (just click on the 'cited by' button)

Sometimes, there might be a metrics button, like in the picture below. Clicking this will lead you to an altmetrics page, where you can click on specific sites (eg bluesky or xitter) to check what other are saying about the article. You might find some experts here discussing or debunking the article, especially if its fairly recent, and the more official responses haven't gotten out of the peer review pipeline yet.

Step three: Read more.

If you're really interested in this field, I recommend looking for a introductory textbook, or a lecture series open online (or see if you can take up a class at a university nearby! Depending on where you live you might be able to enroll on a credit contract or something.)

One of the things you should pay attention to is the current and past paradigms that are relevant to the specific discipline. For example processual and post-processual archeologist will have very different approaches to archeology. Within the study of greek mythology, you have different paradigms such as structuralism, post-structuralism, ritualism, cognitive...

Try to understand the main viewpoints and theories behind each paradigm, and read different texts within each theory. When you're reading other articles, try to contextualise them in the right school of thinking. It can help you identify blind spots, and understand why certain methods were chosen or how the researchers came to certain conclusions.

It can help to be aware of the main thinkers associated with a certain school of thought (for example Binford for processual archeology, Hodder for post-processual.) If an article cites a certain authors associated with a certain school of thought a lot, it gives you a hint as to what their allegiance might be. Additionally, looking at the publication year can also help! Certain paradigms are more popular in certain periods.

[aaronofithaca05]

He has something every important to say to you

[aaronofithaca05]

I honestly think most allo folks don't understand that aspec folks who DO feel romantic/sexual attraction feel it in a way that is still absolutely different from allo folks.

[aaronofithaca05]

Fanart del chavo when!?

frien te juro que tengo ganas HORRIBLES de hacer fanart del don Ramón y el profesor girasol jsjfksnfk

[aaronofithaca05]

What its like when its her turn

[aaronofithaca05]

Is there a food you don't like that is considered very popular?