#(the one with the Hit Piece and the Bibliography)

[carolinanadeau]

sometimes I worry that that blocked blog I almost-openly hate on here by saying everything short of naming names is actually a sideblog and they will find me anyway

[inhonoredglory]

Good Omens Season 3: Heaven and Hell dividing humanity; humanity as Leviathan; and Aziraphale locking the doors of Heaven and throwing away the key [A Meta]

(This meta is long, but I swear there's some good stuff in here. It took me 2 months to get it together for these two longsuffering Anons. Thank you so much for asking me these very important questions.)

In preparation for answering two Asks above (and to aid my own predictions of Good Omens 3), I read and reviewed the Book of Revelation, W.B. Yeat’s iconic poem “The Second Coming,” Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, Neil Gaiman’s deleted scene from American Gods (Shadow meeting Jesus in America), and Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies’ 2003 miniseries The Second Coming (starring Christopher Eccleston!). The first two are definitely going to be referenced in season 3, Davies’ show is one of the few stories dealing head-on with the coming of Christ, and Terry and Neil’s bibliographies are probably the biggest resources for how Season 3 will shake out thematically.

🕊 How Aziraphale Will Change Heaven

I think GO s3 is the season we see Aziraphale really come into his own, when we see him implement the moral vision he’s taken this long to coalesce, when all the pieces he and Crowley have put together are finally put on stage in a terrifying, beautiful display (all that righteous anger and conviction, merged with his kindness and empathy is going to be Something Else).

There’s an angel in the Book of Revelation who stands between the Earth and the Sea. This angel wears a rainbow halo and speaks with the voice of seven thunders, and yet John (the writer of Revelation) is told not to write down what this angel speaks. (Sounds like someone has hit on the Ineffable Plan?) If Neil and Terry were going to pick up an image from Revelation for Aziraphale, I really like this one, because it feels like an intermediary role (between two Sides), one that god dare not make public because it speaks an uncomfortable truth. And it’s about speaking and revealing knowledge, instead of fighting or destroying something.

Because even though we know Azi and Crowley will fight to stop the second End Times, fighting itself is not a theme Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett really champion. Instead of war, Aziraphale will oppose Heaven in all the little ways he and Crowley opposed it before: By enjoying human comforts (Azi will definitely bring food and trinkets to Heaven and send scrivener angels and seraphim alike to tour earth). By asking questions (Heaven’s new suggestion box). By telling stories about humanity and why it’s important to know who these humans are before anyone kills anybody (Azi was, after all, brought on board because of his human expertise).

Aziraphale will become what Crowley wanted to be before the Fall, but Azi’s got the benefit of thousands of years of knowledge, cunning, and intelligence about how both Heaven and humanity work. He knows Heaven’s weaknesses, he knows humanity’s strengths, he knows his own capabilities, and he knows where Heaven will turn a blind eye. He’s going to be such a bastard the likes of which we’ve never seen. And he’s going to drop truth bombs like there’s no tomorrow.

Season 2 brought back the book banter about “the lower you start, the more opportunities you have.”

Season 3 will bring back Aziraphale’s most badass book moment. This scene takes place after Azi possesses an American televangelist talking about the fire and brimstone of the End Times and the Rapture (the mass teleporting of all worthy believers to Heaven). Says Aziraphale,

Aziraphale is fed up with Heaven’s hypocrisy and he's scathing in his condemnation of both Heaven and Hell. Everyone will die and become collateral damage, no matter which side is doing the killing.

Sound familiar?

That's the arc Aziraphale is heading towards: that blazing conviction of Crowley's, spoken out loud and fearless and in spite of his eons of trauma. And Season 3 will see Aziraphale get to that place, where he gets to tell off Heaven, but not just in the privacy of the bookshop or the bandstand, but to their faces in Heaven's hallowed halls.

The demons and angels in Season 2 were much less icky and ethereal (respectively) from their appearances in Season 1. Because it's working towards a further humanization of both sides in Season 3. Because one of the biggest themes in s3 will be Aziraphale humanizing Heaven in all the little quaint ways he loves humanity. All in preparation for the endgame of Heaven and Hell not existing at all.

(Season 3 deep dive continues under the cut...)

Because angels and demons won’t be fought, but changed. Maybe not by much, but just enough to break the loyalty they have to a Great Plan no one understands. This is how both Neil’s American Gods and Terry’s Small Gods conclude, with the build-up to an incredible battle, and then for the human hero to step in and talk down the gods and armies into seeing sense and reason.

I don’t think Aziraphale himself will be that person. It might be a very human Jesus. Or (more likely) a random human being caught up in this craziness (maybe someone in Tadfield, per the working title of the second GO book: 668: The Neighbor of the Beast). But Aziraphale will be fundamental in changing the atmosphere of Heaven in the little ways Earth changed him.

🗝 Season 3 Themes: Morality and God

In the Job minisode, Aziraphale casually but boldly assumed that god didn’t want the goats and children to be killed. Because Aziraphale has a firm and dogged idea about what god should be. It’s his own personal morality, but he calls it god’s because he doesn’t want to imagine the symbol of ultimate goodness being anything other than what he Aziraphale himself feels to be true.

And I don’t think that’s a theme that Good Omens will deny for Aziraphale. Because it’s not really about how evil or good god is. It doesn’t matter what god thinks or is. god doesn’t answer questions, doesn’t deliver messages we can understand, doesn’t show up when needed. god is inscrutable, shifty, absent, “a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

What’s important is what humanity has done with god, what humanity has said about god, what they do in god’s name, what they interpret god to be. That’s the real danger.

And Aziraphale, in his profound goodness, will become the person he wants god to be. Because that’s the injunction we all have. To live up to the ideal we have made for ourselves: In many ways, that’s what god is.

Aziraphale is now in a privileged place that allows him to affect basically the entirety of Creation with that driving idealism. He will level the playing field in Heaven. I firmly believe Aziraphale will be the one to close the doors to the pearly gates and throw away the key.

So, like you asked Anon, will Aziraphale try to make Heaven better or stop the Second Coming? I think those are the same goal. Changing Heaven will fundamentally change how the Second Coming happens, because just like the End Times in Season 1, Heaven and Hell’s scheme will be turned on its head because the Chosen One refuses to follow the script.

The Second Coming will end, not with a bang, but a whimper, because everyone decides to turn in their guns and forget the whole thing.

⚔️ Heaven and Hell v. Humanity

But before that ending happens, I think there will be another threat the world has to face: the individuals who are so sure of their own righteousness that no amount of sense could stop them from destroying anyone who thinks differently. This is an important theme in both Neil and Terry’s works (see Vorbis, the Exquisitor in Small Gods, who tortured unbelievers for the Church), and I believe it will show up in the new season.

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous. –Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Because it’s humanity who takes Faith and shapes it into Religion. We are the ones who created the Heaven we see in GO: cold, unfeeling, strict, judgmental. And I think Season 3 is going to address this fundamental belief of both Neil and Terry: that humans are just so damnably human (fundamentally innocent and stupid and wonderful) and yet there’s a few of us who will take things too far and think that Someone wants them to destroy everything in the Name of God. And in these changing contemporary political times (the passage of an old generation, still clinging to their old ways and growing more extreme by the minute *cough*Trump*cough*), the dangerous people become even more vocal and violent, like the frightening, monstrous creature in WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” a devastating scourge on the world born in the name of God:

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. […] A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, […] And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? –WB Yeats, "The Second Coming"

That’s who I think the Metatron will team up with in the end, someone like Vorbis. Because we’ve already seen how petty and small Heaven and Hell is, especially in Season 2. Only the Metatron really carries some heft and foreboding. I believe he’ll team up with some extremist faction of humanity who wants to see the End of Days and divide the world into Yours and Mine, with Heaven taking a portion and Hell taking a third and calling it a day. Not a War, but a divvying out of souls. With no consent or permission on the part of humanity.

That’s what I think the zombie reference is all about. Like Gabriel said in 2x03:

Yes, we’re going to get zombies. And it’s going to be insane and funny and horrifying (and I think we’ll get to know one or two historical figures who pop back up to earth). But the thematic and fundamental metaphor of zombies is how they have no free will. They’re not alive, they have no souls, they have no choices. That’s what Heaven and Hell want humanity to be: To do away with the dance of choice and free will and divide humanity once and for all between both sides. That’s how Heaven and Hell team up against the human race.

🐳 Leviathan (Job 41:19) as Humanity

And that’s how I believe the Leviathan fits in, who is the subject of the quote from Muriel’s matchbox:

The Leviathan is a magnificent creature, and this passage goes on and on about how fearsome this being is:

Who can penetrate its double coat of armor? Who dares open the doors of its mouth, ringed about with fearsome teeth?… Nothing on earth is its equal—a creature without fear. It looks down on all that are haughty; it is king over all that are proud –Job 41:13b, 33-34

And yet why does god want to explain how amazing the Leviathan is? To show how god has control of it. God says,

Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook… Can you make a pet of it like a bird or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?… Can you fill its hide with harpoons… No one is fierce enough to rouse it. Who then is able to stand against me? –Job 41:1, 5, 7, 10

The reasoning is that because god created this dangerous and terrifying being, then god must be even more dangerous and terrifying. And if god can so easily abuse and humiliate this beautiful monster, then god must be worshipped and respected. (Yes, it’s as messed-up as it sounds.)

I can’t help but think of this Leviathan as a metaphor for humanity. A beautiful, ferocious being whose ownership and control is the focus of god’s attention and qualification for worship? Of the Leviathan, Job says: “Will traders barter for it? Will they divide it up among the merchants?” (Job 41:6). That’s how humanity is going to be treated in Season 3.

Because both God and Satan want to control humanity. They want to put their thumb on human souls and claim them for each side. But humanity doesn’t have to be so easily fooled, because we are more powerful than we realize. Our hearts and imaginations can forge a path of purpose and goodness without the entrapment of organized religion and fundamentalism. We, like Leviathan, are ferocious and angry and fed up with being treated like this. We can and will fight back.

🌟 Becoming Gods

Ultimately, we will shuffle off the need for Heaven and Hell (symbolized by the shutting down of both at the end of Season 3). We will lose the need to unquestionably defer to a Being who plays dice with our lives. I’m reminded of the opening passage to Terry’s Small Gods:

The lowly tortoise will learn to be the eagle; humanity will learn to be like god. Because we are as powerful as god, since we created god. Adam Young pointed out that having a god figure to solve all our problems doesn’t make humanity any more responsible for the evil things we’ve done. We need to learn that we are all we’ve got, and we have to answer for the shit we’ve done to each other and to the world.

I like how Russell T Davies put it in his show The Second Coming, where Jesus comes down again in the body of ordinary human Steven Baxter and tells humanity:

You are becoming gods. There's a new master of creation, and it's you! Unraveled DNA, and at the same time you're cultivating bacteria strong enough to kill every living thing! Do you think you are ready for that much power? You lot? You lot? Cheeky bastards. You're running around science like kids with guns, creating a new world, while the world you've got is stinking…. If you want the position of god then take the responsibility. –Russell T Davies, The Second Coming

I legitimately think that’s how Jesus in Good Omens 3 will come down. In the body of a regular 30-something off-the-streets guy, who thinks the pomp and circumstance made about him is insane. And Aziraphale will be his minder, trying to tell him how the whole scheme is supposed to play out and giving him wise asides on how warped Heaven’s standards are and trying to tell him how to go about changing things for the better. (Jesus will be terribly confused, meanwhile; he just wants to go out for a pint and get on with his human life, none of this god business.)

🐍 Crowley’s Growth

There will be some big things at play in Season 3. I think Aziraphale will change how Heaven operates and close Heaven for good. I think Aziraphale will initially try to get Jesus on board with Azi’s own private mission of Goodness. I actually think Crowley will end up becoming Aziraphale’s “back channels” to Earth, and they’d exchange trite, bantering messages about the state of affairs from secret rendezvous points in America. (There was a whole thing about Jesus getting lost in Times Square, according to Neil Gaiman.)

I think Crowley will learn how to trust Aziraphale and learn that doing the right thing means being brave and selfless. He’ll realize that humanity is worth saving, even if it means dying. In fact, his depression at the start of Season 2 will probably only get worse after the loss of Aziraphale, and his altruism might get colored by the taint of suicidal recklessness, because he might as well go out for what he believes in, if what he wanted most in the world chose being selfless over being with him. (If Crowley’s character takes a suicidal turn like the Tenth Doctor after losing Rose, I’m gonna scream.)

This is how Aziraphale helps Crowley be brave in the finale of the Good Omens book. That’s what I think will happen in Good Omens 3:

Aziraphale here displays a gentleness and kindness that comes from a place of grounded knowledge and responsibility. He knows how much he and Crowley have in their own ways fucked up humanity too, and he knows that no matter what their own personal feelings, they each need to do something to defend the human species they've come to love so much.

Crowley is scared of risking everything to help save humanity, but with Aziraphale's encouragement and wisdom, he realizes that doing the right thing is the only option he can choose, no matter the risk to his own happiness and safety.

So I believe Crowley will learn to understand why Aziraphale chose to return to Heaven and fight in the trenches. Crowley will see it as a choice made to save, not just each other, but the world they love so much.

Ultimately, I think Crowley on earth will take on Aziraphale’s strongest qualities: being selfless and bold to protect humanity at costs, and connecting to humanity on a personal, individual level.

While Aziraphale in Heaven will become like Crowley: asking questions, sabotaging the System, and condemning Heaven with all the uncomfortable truths they need to hear.

[princesssarcastia]

i can't say that we do america's youth a disservice by making them read the western literary canon nonstop from the time they're eleven to the time they're eighteen, because that practice helps us develop a ton of necessary skills, and exposes us to the kind of arts and culture that expand our internal horizons.

but man, does it make some fantastic pieces of writing into a chore, an utter bore, one we may not be primed to properly understand or enjoy.

the first time I read one of shakespeare's plays and felt like I understood it was my senior year of high school; it was King Lear, and it hit me like lightning. it remains my favorite of his works to this day. shakespeare's language and meter finally felt like music in my head, a full six years into that inconsistent tour american kids take of his bibliography. every single work of his we read before then—Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, even Much Ado About Nothing—went in one ear and out the other the second exams were over. I struggled with the language and the meaning, and it drove me to hate them.

probably, struggling through his work for six years leading up to that moment helped make it possible! but I still hate that the struggle and the lack of understanding kept me from the joy in those stories for so long. even after King Lear, I didn't have any great interest in reading his stuff, or watching performances and adaptations.

do I have a larger point here? I'm not sure. Maybe it's this:

if you hated everything you ever read in school, try picking some of those books and poems and essays up again. you may find you finally have the mental tools to understand and enjoy them.

[bonnielass23]

Writer WIP Poll Game

Rules: make a 24-hour poll with the names of your wip's, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner got.

I was tagged by the lovely @astarkey and @alwaysupatnight. Thank you for allowing to open the floodgates of just how many WIPS I have.

Since I was tagged by a fellow Dusk fan I'm gonna list my fdtd wips all of which are sethkate. Some serious. Some complete crack. Most of these do not have titles yet

Outside of my fdtd friends who have already posted, I'm gonna tag everyone else across multiple fandoms : @lilmissuncreative @saltyunderscored @kelkat9 @fortysevenswrites @psilocybinlemon @elialys @milkshakemicrowave @kelkat9 and anyone else I missed or wants to do it!

Some of these have an official summary, some is just me throwing out the info. It should be obvious which is which lol

If anyone has any questions about these feel free to hit me up!

Raccoon Amaru - Canon divergent post season 2. With Kate surviving the blood well and Seth bringing her back to Jeds from the hospital to recover, Amaru finds herself in a different vessel.

La Jefe - Canon divergent post season 2 episode 9. At the blood well Kate stays up on the hill with Richie. It’s only after he’s gone down to try to take the blood for himself, in a move that is peak dumbass, that Kate has to intervene. With Richie wounded by a Xiblaban weapon and lying useless in the backseat of the car it’s up to Kate to deliver the blood and unwittingly become the new La Jefe, the head of Malvado’s empire. Seth lives his best life as a sugar baby and Richie is crying in a corner because he's supposed to be the boss.

Wild West AU - Wild West likely with supernatural elements. Kate frees Seth from the jail in Bethel the night before he's set to hang in exchange for him helping her track down her brother who disappeared with Carlos six months earlier. (Also the memorial piece for my mare, Bandit, who passed away almost a year ago and will be written in as Seth's horse.)

SethKate Wedding Date AU - Modern Day. No culebras. Kate is invited to her cousin's wedding and decides to ask Seth to be her date

“He’s not just my date, Scott.” A maniacal grin spreads over Kate’s face. “He’s my weapon. You really think I’m gonna walk in there with all their passive aggressive, pretending to be concerned comments? No, Scott. I’m going to fight fire with fire.” “That’s not fighting fire with fire Kate. That’s fighting fire with a nuclear warhead!”

Shangri-La - Canon divergent post season 2. With Eddie in critical condition and his chances of survival slim, the Geckos chose to go through with the plan to rob Malvado, even managing to save Kate’s life in the process. After coming back from their meeting with the lords, their relief at the news of Eddie’s survival is soon eclipsed by the sheer panic of realizing they now have to explain to him that not only did they pull his Shangri-La, swan song job without him, but they also lost the money.

Hero Twins AU - Canon divergent post season 2 episode 2. Kate reveals to Seth that she's pregnant during their fight in the car. After Sonja gets Seth clean, and with Eddie's help they hide away from the culebra world. 7 years later Richie and Kisa come crashing in with the news that their daughters are the next set of Hero Twins, destined to shake up the culebra and Xibalban hierarchy.

This leans very heavily into Mayan mythology, including a bibliography of academic sources, that will be included. It could be considered an exploration of the hero twin archetype told through Seth and Kate's fictional twins.

Witch AU - Modern day with supernatural elements. No culebras. Kate comes from a line of witches cursed to die when they begin to manifest their magical abilities. When she starts to have visions of her own death she goes to a professor of the occult Richard Gecko to try to figure out why her family keeps dying young. A witch himself, he tries to help her figure out the curse along with Seth who has turned his back on his supernatural abilities. It's a race against the clock to see if they can save Kate before her visions of her death come true.

Selkie AU - Coming home from college to attend her mother's funeral, Kate finds a package Jenny had left her. Kate's seal skin and an explanation of what she is. After going out to learn more about who she is her skin is stolen and she has to rely on the owner of a nearby bar, Seth Gecko, and his friends to steal back her skin.

[halucygeno]

The Strugatsky brothers: general notes on style and storytelling

Heya. If you want something to disagree with right out of the gate, here’s my tier list:

Ok, but seriously, I'm about halfway through the whole Strugatsky bros bibliography, and it's been kinda hit-or-miss. Some books are fantastic in terms of both storytelling and themes, some are a bit confusing and start very slow, but stick the landing with the drama and philosophy kicking into high-gear towards the end, and others are just... meh.

Anyway, here’s a loose, disorganised list of things I’ve noticed:

1) The Strugatsky's style of narration feels a tad homogenous after a while. Their POV character is usually a pragmatic, goal oriented man, intelligent enough to analyse themselves and the world around them, and often cynical to the point of distrusting simple, comforting narratives (voicing their scepticism through dry wit or sarcasm). The main variation seems to be in the protagonist's level of refinement vs. crudeness (some of them have a short fuse and poor manners), and how much they are motivated by a sense of duty vs. self-interest. The other character archetype they sometimes do is the "inexperienced young man with ambition and spunk" ("Space Apprentice", "Monday Begins on Saturday"). Yet there's some crossover - Sasha from "Monday" often shifts between bewildered novice and confident snarker, depending on the scene - and it all still "sounds" quite similar. I guess you could say this is their authorial voice - the "Strugatsky style", if you will - but to me, it makes reading their books back-to-back feel a bit... same-y.

2) Mystery is everywhere. Im surprised the Strugatskys only wrote one detective novel (which kind of turned out not to be a detective novel anyway), when tons of their works start with some inexplicable, mysterious event which then goes on to be gradually unravelled. I mean, half of "The Waves Extinguish the Wind" is just reports from an investigation into the motives of a mysterious alien species. "Beetle in the Anthill" is one long hunt for a mysterious fugitive, gradually finding out who they are and why they're so dangerous, and "The Final Circle of Paradise" is about busting a crime ring peddling a new, mysterious drug. But even when it’s not explicitly about detectives or investigations, they still often focus on an unexplained event or series of events ("Space Mowgli", "One Million Years to the End of the World").

A lot of the appeal which keeps the stories engaging for me is that they either set up a big question and slowly reveal pieces of the answer, or set up a lot of small questions that get much quicker answers, which then lead to more questions (sometimes both). In one case, they even nested a mystery within a mystery! “Beetle in the Anthill” is both a question of “where is Lev Aboukin hiding and what is his next move” and “who is Lev Aboukin and why was I ordered to track him down”?

Maybe this mystery focus is just part of the wider space fantasy sci-fi genre. Alien contact, phenomena beyond our understanding... these are very conducive to mystery; A few other sci-fi authors I've read have very similar set-ups. Well, whatever it is - authorial style or genre trope - I love it. It gives stories this feeling of discovery and learning, often with only half-satisfying conclusions that leave room for interpretation and reflection.

3) Holy shit, their representation of women is (mostly) terrible. I've heard a few people call the Strugatskys' writing misogynistic, and while I was sceptical at first (Guta from "Roadside Picnic" struck me as pretty cool and strong), after reading more, I definitely see it now. Most of the time, they depict women as trivial side characters, love interests for the protagonist, or worse, symbols of promiscuity, decadence and stupidity. I could maybe argue that some of these portrayals are more nuanced than it would first seem, but others are just... blegh.

A handful of their works ("Space Mowgli", "Monday Beings on Saturday" and "Space Apprentice") show women working alongside men as equals - suggesting some progressive ideals. "Space Apprentice" even has one chapter where they take down Shershen - a controlling, misogynistic professor who tries to sabotage his female student's career because he doens’t think women should work in space.

But none of this counters the causal sexism displayed generally, even in these seemingly positive examples. Stella's introductory scene from "Monday Begins on Saturday" shows her cowering in fear from Vybegallo's upiór, screaming hysterically. While she goes on to be much cooler in Story 3 of that book, she's still a rather lowly employee of the institute - not as experienced as the magisters (who are, you guessed it, all men).

Maya Glumova in "Space Mowgli" - the female character with perhaps the most screen time and agency from everything I've read so far - is still hinted to be more emotional and motherly towards the alien which the team discovers. So even when the female character is important and actively participates in the plot, she is partially defined by her femininity. And when she comes back in "Beetle in the Anthill", she's basically just a childhood love interest, acting as another clue to the mystery of Lev Aboukin's identity.

Natasha from "Space Apprentice" is the only time I've seen the Strugatskys write from a female POV, and even so, it only lasts two chapters, with her being completely irrelevant for the rest of the story. For the short while we get to see from her perspective, she mostly sits around and listens to other people, rarely taking the initiative to do anything. Some of her scenes feel like they could be commentary on workplace sexism, but they're too short and fleeting for the message to read clearly.

All these baby steps towards decent female representation are even harder to appreciate when you consider... everything else. Most egregiously, some visual descriptions of female characters are just gross, focusing on the lips, curves and skin in a very sexualised way. At first I thought that maybe this was a condemnation of the POV character, showing that we're following a crass, tactless protagonist who isn't above ogling someone they find attractive; a contemptible person who doesn't reflect the opinions of the authors. But without clear textual elements criticising this creepy behaviour, it really feels like it's being treated as normal, which... no, it really, really shouldn't be. At least the Strugatskys had the decency not to use this kind of sexualised, beauty-obsessed language when describing the aforementioned respectable worker women - Stella, Maya and Natasha.

On two occasions, women are shown arguing in favour of shallow, self-interested hedonism - an ideological foil to our responsible, socially-minded male protagonists. While this is a fine direction to take a character (and some male characters are criticised in a similar way - mostly in "The Final Circle of Paradise", where hedonism is a central theme), it feels like a waste to use an already small female presence as fodder for this philosophical debate.

So yeah, even though I love these stories, my appreciation is heavily dampened anytime a female character is introduced and turns out to be underutilised and irrelevant (which is disappointing), some dumb bimbo for the protagonist to sexualise (which is cringe), or a proxy for an ideology the Strugatskys want to criticise (which is disappointing).

4) Bromance! While the Strugatskys’ depictions of relationships between men and their female love interests are rather underdeveloped (a side effect of women having so little prominence, I think), the way they write emotional relationships between men and men is quite amazing. Most of these stories are brimming with a sense of camraderie and emotional closeness, with the male characters inspiring each other, guiding each other, criticising each other, learning from each other, etc. My three favourite dynamics have to be from "The Inhabited Island", "Space Apprentice" and "Monday Begins on Saturday".

In "The Inhabited Island", Maxim manages to gradually deprogram Guy from his nationalistic, fascist ideology by just being there, acting kind and showing him that an alternative way of thinking is possible. He points out inconsistencies in the government’s propaganda in a non-confrontational, innocuous way. Then, we see Guy's inner conflict when Maxim defects from the military and joins the resistance - having to view this close friend as a "traitor", despite having a lingering affection for him. And when Maxim finally gets Guy to defect and join his side, this affection is twisted into something monstrous and horrifying in a scene that I dare not spoil. It's an emotional roller-coaster, that one.

"Space Apprentice" has an interesting tension between two role models. Young Yura Borodin, despite his somewhat mundane job as a space welder, is eager to travel the stars and self-actualise. He's hungry for action, and would rather die than retire. Due to unfortunate circumstances, he's unable to catch his flight for the planet Rhea, and has to join the crew of another ship as a trainee (kinda like hitch-hiking, but in space, haha). He ends up under the supervision of Yurkovsky and Ivan Zhilin, both of which try to impart different lessons onto him. Yurkovsky is the embodiment of Yura's ideal - a world-renowned planetologist past his prime, still yearning for exciting work and hoping to make the "discovery of his lifetime". Zhilin is the ship's engineer, and has a far more cautious, protective attitude. Both of them like Yura's youthful enthusiasm, but while the former encourages his ambition and adventurous spirit, the latter tries to temper his expectations and teach him about responsibility. The stops along their route form a series of unrelated vignettes where we see the two philosophies in practice, and the ending resolves this tension in a really beautiful, heart-wrenching way.

"Monday Begins on Saturday" is just one huge "me and the boys" meme and I fuckin' love it. We have the confused yet curious newbie, Sasha Privalov, the measured and wise mentor figure, Roman Oira-Oira, the talented but rude snarker and critic, Vitya Korneev (who is still affectionate in his own way - he doesn't actually hate people, just enjoys banter), and the polite and helpful sidekick, Edik Amperian (+ a whole bunch of other colourful characters). The shenanigans these lads get up to are just a wonderful romp, as they juggle their own eccentricities and the absurd bureaucracy of a magical Soviet institute. Despite the chaotic nature of their work, often wrought with disagreement and a lack of resources, everything has this undercurrent of mutual respect and affection. I swear, this book has the most idyllic workplace culture I've ever seen, to the point that it makes it actually fun to read about office politics.

5) They start in medias res and fill the gaps with natural-sounding exposition. This is one of the core things that I believe makes the pacing of (most) Strugatsky novels feel very brisk. Characters are dropped into already unfolding situations - no lengthy backstories or elaborate speeches about the history of the world. Flashbacks are relatively rare and often contextualised (some focal point prompts the memory, making for a smoother transition). The majority of what we learn about characters comes from clues in their speech, thoughts and actions. Same applies to the world - details are drip-fed to you as they become relevant.

That's not to say that the Strugatskys never drop exposition dumps on the audience, but it's less common, and even then, is usually done intelligently. Most often, a character will see something and, in the process of expressing their opinion, bring up background details that show how they feel about it - we get both world-buiding and characterisation at the same time.

An even better way they disguise exposition dumps is by having characters casually debate something - in a moment of respite from the action, they sit together and bounce arguments back and forth: “is X thing ethical”, “what would happen if Y”, “these Z activists are starting to get on my nerves”, etc. As they make their points, they bring up examples, facts, anecdotes, and very quickly, not only do we know what they believe, but also learn about a whole bunch of things that exist or happened, all while never being explicitly told.

This is probably the best lesson you can learn from the Strugatskys - if your setting has interesting elements, either show them directly in the action of the story, or make them a talking point which characters have conflicting opinions on (better yet, do both - the Zone in “Roadside Picnic” is a masterclass in being a springboard for both characters and plot). If not, don’t bother - you’ll just distract the audience with pointless guff.

* * *

That’s about it. I could probably go on, but I’m too tired to continue writing. I’d love to pick apart more specific examples of points 2), 4) and 5), so maybe I’ll make separate posts for them in the future (lemme know if that’s something you’d be interested in). Mostly, though, I'm desperate to find other people as obsessed with the Strugatskys as I am and discuss their lesser known works. I personally feel that "The Final Circle of Paradise" is a hidden gem of theirs, one that has flown under the pop-culture radar but is well worth discussing.

Peace.

[friendly-rat-king]

2023 Books

In October I decided to start writing short tumblr posts in response to each book I read. Did I follow through with this decision? Absolutely not! Here's a half-assed list of books I read in 2023, assembled way after the fact:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (4/5)

I enjoyed comparing/contrasting it with The Handmaiden (aka Park Chan-wook's 2016 film adaptation, which shifts the setting from Dickensian England to Japanese-ruled Korea and dramatically changes the ending). As with The Handmaiden, which I watched first, I feel like if I cut the story into pieces and Frankenstein-ed it together into two separate stories, I would end up with one of my favorite books and one of my least favorite books.

Why I read it: in the process of reading Sarah Waters' entire bibliography.

2. Bunny by Mona Awad (2/5)

This book sucked, BUT there was a really funny scene about 1/3 of the way in where the narrator's high school crush inexplicably shows up and dances with her. It might be worth reading just for that scene (you can stop reading immediately afterwards).

If a book is supposed to be a satire about wealthy women attending graduate school, its not a great sign when it seems like the author has never met a rich person, a woman, or a graduate student. This is even stranger because the author, a woman, attended an Ivy and got a graduate degree in creative writing. I'd love to read the book this is trying to be, but this isn't it.

Why I read it: my sister-in-law recommended it to me specifically (yikes) and I felt obligated to finish it.

3. Infamous by Lex Croucher (5/5)

In the summer of 1816, 18-year-old Mary Shelley famously stayed at the Lake Geneva villa of noted jackass Lord Byron. Trapped inside by shitty weather, Byron's guests competed to see who could write the best ghost story (the winning entry was, of course, "Frankenstein"). Lex Croucher obviously thought this setting in itself was a great book premise, and was absolutely correct.

I was expecting the basic shape of this novel after reading the back cover, and my assumptions about the plot were basically correct. I was NOT expecting even the most minor characters to feel three-dimensional and complicated or to be hit so hard by - well, I can't tell you without spoiling it, but three different conflictto s that are simultaneously of their time and cut very, very close to home. I also wasn't expecting to laugh as hard as I did.

Why I read it: people on my dash kept recommending Gwen & Art Are Not In Love but I didn't want to read YA.

4. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (4/5)

It took me forever to finish this one because I kept finding myself pausing to design a digital glossary to accompany the book. What if, as you read through the description of the garden, the glossary's map of the monastery was suddenly filled in with all of the herbs mentioned, and as you hovered over each illustration (drawn in a pseudo-medieval style, of course) you could learn about the purported and actual properties of each herb? What if I illustrated the intricately carved portal and thoroughly researched the symbolism and history behind each of its components?

Anyway, I was lukewarm enough about the actual ending that I gave up on the project. It would probably be impossible for any ending to live up to a beginning this ambitious, to be fair.

Why I read it: I read that it was an inspiration for Pentiment (a game I still haven't finished, oops).

5. The Bell by Iris Murdoch (4/5)

I might try reading this one again -- there was obviously a ton of cool symbolic symmetry going on that I never quite got the significance of. What I did enjoy was Dora's POV. There's this really wonderful scene near the beginning where Dora spends several paragraphs internally justifying why she shouldn't give up her seat on the train for an old woman. Then, the moment the old woman asks, she impulsively gives up the seat without even thinking of it. Dora spends the rest of the story stumbling haphazardly between moments of grace, never quite aware of why she does any of the things she does, in a way that's simultaneously alien and yet completely plausible.

Why I read it: @conven1encestorewoman mentioned it was one of her favorite books.

6. Either/Or by Elif Batuman (5/5)

I would read anything she wrote. Fingers crossed she makes this into a four-part series.

Why I read it: I loved The Idiot. (Shout-out to @a-rhombus to loaning me her copy.)

7 + 8. A Free Man of Color & Fever Season by Barbara Hambly (5/5)

The book that made me love murder mysteries. The author obviously did a ton of research on 1830's New Orleans and I do love great historical fiction, but what really made it shine was that the "red herrings" weren't dead ends -- each one was essential to the themes of the novel. Highly recommend.

Why I read it: I think @sea-changed mentioned that it was good, I added it to my library queue, and then didn't think about it again until I was notified it was ready to checkout.

9. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (2/5)

Mehhhhh. All (attempts at) shock, very little substance.

Why I read it: my baby sister recommended it.

10. Geek Love by Katherin Dunn (5/5)

"Geek" as in "circus geek," a performed who bites the heads off of live chickens. Tender is the Flesh fuckin wishes it had what Geek Love has. (I have reached the point in this post where I realize I'm not even at the halfway mark and decide to hurry up -- sorry Geek Love, you deserved better.)

Why I read it: @mylestoyne mentioned there were some cool parallels to The Tempest and I decided to check it out.

11. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (5/5)

Absolutely lived up to the hype.

Why I read it: the hype.

12. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (4/5)

The rare book I consumed in audiobook format -- reading James' prose was very difficult for me, and filtering it through an actor helped. I don't know that I enjoyed the process of listening to it, but I really enjoyed thinking about it afterwards.

Why I read it: the prologue of The Haunting of Hill House name-dropped it.

13. The Tempest by William Shakespeare (3/5)

Look, I bumped it up to 3 stars because I felt like I couldn't give Shakespeare anything lower than a 3-star rating, but I really disliked this. Part of is is that I was already familiar with the highlights, and putting them in context diminished them. Ariel's song is way less interesting when you know for a fact that the man supposedly undergoing a sea-change is completely fine; Prospero's final monologue feels less like it's tying together broader themes and more like Shakespeare thought it would be cool to break the fourth wall at the last minute.

Idk, maybe I'm just an idiot. I immediately sought out a series of lectures on youtube about the play + texted people I know who love this play to elaborate on their opinions so they could correct my incorrect opinion, but so far, no dice.

Why I read it: because of the Geek Love parallels.

14. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (2/5)

Bad, as previously discussed.

Why I read it: someone at by brother's wedding said the essay on ketchup was worth reading (it wasn't).

15. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin (4.5/5)

Why I read it: because I wanted to read the sequel.

16. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl (4/5)

Discussed previously.

17. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (4/5)

(Already reviewed this on Goodreads so I can just copy-paste, hurray!) An enjoyable read. The pacing was great, the scene composition reminded me of a Wes Anderson film, and the footnotes were a very effective way of shifting the POV from third person limited to omniscient and back again. I checked the author's Wikipedia page midway through and was unsurprised to learn that he is an investment banker from New York; after all, the villain is the only character who refers to Rostov as "Comrade" (everyone else continues to deferentially call him "the Count") and he doesn't even know his wine pairings! The idyllic representation of pre-revolutionary Russia partially undermines the author's ability to convey the horrors of Soviet Russia. That being said, the tone of the novel is mostly light, and I was able to have fun in spite of this.

Why I read it: my older sister mentioned it was the last book she tried to read before she had kids and they took over her life. So I guess I tried to... symbolically finish it on her behalf? Who knows.

18. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (5/5)

No idea how to describe this one, so I'm just screenshot-ing the first page:

Why I read it: an @a-rhombus recommendation.

19. The Merry Spinster by Daniel Lavery [reread] (5/5)

Extremely effective horror retellings of fairy tales. Impossible to pick a favorite.

Why I (re)read it: because I read a bunch of other good horror fiction this year (not my usual genre) and it reminded me how much I love this collection.

20. The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault (5/5)

Set during a failed attempt to make Plato's Republic a reality (a historical event I somehow didn't know about but that is Highly Relevant to my interests), told from the perspective of an artist (the most interesting viewpoint Renault could have chosen). The descriptions of places made me desperately want to hike across Greece when I get the chance.

Why I read it: @catilinas posted an excerpt that compelled me.

21. The Once and Future Sex by Eleanor Janega (3/5)

Spends a lot of time proving a thesis about modern women I basically already agree with when what I really wanted was more historical details. My fault for not taking the blurb at its word.

Why I read it: a friend I play D&D with recommended it.

22. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K Le Guin (6/5)

Ok it's almost midnight and I don't want to fuck up one of my New Year's resolutions (10 minutes of yoga/day) when I'm only three days into the year. Real summary coming soon (hopefully. maybe).

Why I read it: one of my favorite worldbuilding youtube channels mentioned it was in her top 5 books.

23. Borne by Jeff VanderMeer (3/5)

The thing about giant flying bears is that they're just kinda silly.

Why I read it: the Southern Reach Trilogy was so good.

24. Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (4/5)

Very strong start -- strong enough for the four-star rating -- but the final act pulls way too many punches.

Why I read it: I heard emilyenrose was publishing original fiction.

[percervall]

Hi Mar!! ✨ been thinking a lot about the process of creation recently and I would love for you tell us about a piece of writing of your own that’s near and dear to your heart! What inspired you writing this piece, what were some outtakes that didn’t make the final cut and what you hoped the readers felt or took away from the story? What did you imagine happened after your story ended? Also feel free to discuss fun trivia that led to its creation! Love you and your work 💕

I have three fics that immediately came to mind when I saw this question so I'll try to answer it for all three. Buckle in, this is about to be a long-ass answer

What inspired you writing this piece? Okay so, like I said, 3 fics immediately came to mind: la gente que es mi hogar, the past has tasted bitter for years now and there's a sorrow (in the corners of your mind). The first one was inspired by a song, Hogar by IZAL which was just filled with this nostalgia and a wistfulness that hit me right in the feels without really understanding the lyrics and when I looked at the translation it hit me how much it reminded me of the beginning of Gerlonso -that partnership between Xabi and Stevie. I mean, the first verse literally translates to: "Today I stay With my feet glued to this ground That is mine and at the same time the rest Of the people who are my home" Yeah. I'm not okay. The Iker fic (the past has tasted bitter for years now) was inspired by my curiosity when I wanted to know for some weird reason if real madrid had club songs similar to Liverpool for the players. I'd also read two different fics in the same time period that dealt with Iker's retirement and then I came across a club song that translated to my heart is a madridista and it just spiralled from there really, because Iker came through the academy, he was the personification of Real and when you read how the club treated him towards the end of his career there, I truly ached for him (and then the poetry in him having to quit football after suffering a heart attack. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish that fate to my worst enemy, but knowing he loved his childhood club so much only for them to turn around and spit him out, for him to move to a different country and for his body to give out on him? You know that phrase the body keeps the score? well, that's how that news felt; almost as if his body finally caught up with what had happened and it just... it just shut down) And then I fell down a rabbit hole of research and ended up reading article after article about Iker's departure from Real and the fic is technically me just giving you an interpretation of those articles. I kid you not, this fic has a bibliography of like 9 different pieces of evidence. And finally, the Darwin fic was actually inspired by something you posted and I couldn't stop imagining how he'd look. And then it just snowballed into this fic about a man who's just barely older than a boy, suffering from his need to be good enough for the people he loves and admires, who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and the season that's anything but the dream start to his Liverpool career and oh god it made me ache. There was something almost so.. i don't know.. In a way Darwin's start at Liverpool feels Grecian to me, in a way, like in a Greek tragedy kind of way. He reminds me of Atlas and there was something so heartbreakingly beautiful about that analogy, especially combined with his partner reversing the roles and wanting to take care of him for a change that I just had to write it. Ended up writing it in a day. Also ended up giving myself all the feels when I was done.

Outtakes For the last two, there are none. I usually don't save the scenes that don't make the final fic, but I did save one bit from the Gerlonso fic that I ended up scrapping: The call had come sort of out of the blue. His former manager hadn’t been surprised and when he had told Xabi at the end of the season that clubs would be calling, Xabi had categorised that as improbable. Sociedad was a small club, and had never been one of the greats who competed for the title season after season. Yet they had found themselves second at the end of last season, something that hadn’t happened since the late eighties. Finishing that high in the league had also meant the club would play in the Champions League, which Xabi had to admit, had been a short lived experience, but it had left him wanting more. It made no sense to him why other clubs would pay attention now. Raynald told him after Spain was knocked out of the EUROs that despite them not even progressing beyond the group stage, he had told him people had been impressed by him. I think a version of this did end up in the final fic though, but timeline wise this version didn't fit in with the fic.

Takeaways Oof. I think the biggest takeaway for all three is that there's always more to a story than what meets the surface, that people are infinitely more complex than we perhaps give them credit for, that it's so easy to judge someone solely on what you see. That, maybe, despite the fact that we think of these footballers as being lucky and privileged, that they are human first and foremost. We are so used to just watching them perform, praising them when they score and criticising when they don't that we maybe sometimes forget that they are people with real feelings and real emotions.

After the story ends For the Gerlonso fic, I created a whole playlist of songs that reflect their journey. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll make a separate post for it. But basically, it's a story of drifting apart, of wanting different things in life. Don't get me wrong, Stevie and Xabi both want to chase that taste of success, of lifting that CL trophy, but the difference between the two is where Xabi is able to uproot his life in the chase for success (first back to Spain and then to Germany), Stevie has the weight of a city on his shoulders -an albatross around his neck if you will. Liverpool is Steven Gerrard and Steven Gerrard is Liverpool. And I think that during their careers/relationship, this lead to a quiet resentment that ultimately turned into acceptance on Stevie's side. His career would always be tainted by the almosts where Xabi's is littered with trophies. For Iker it's a story of healing and acceptance, of reconnecting with old friend and repairing what was broken. It's repaying Sergio for all the support and being there for his best friend as he faces the same fate Iker faced: being forced out of a club you thought would keep you until retirement. But also about re-discovering who you are without football. For Darwin, it's a story of growth, of vulnerability. It's about becoming comfortable being in your own skin and accepting that there are things outside of your control. It's about being open and honest about your feelings and emotions and that transition from surviving to thriving.

Thank you so much for this wonderful ask ivy! 🥰

[preyed-llama]

It’s frustrating when assignments make you include your bibliography and references in your word count- like I am going to source every claim I make and I will use different sources at times to mitigate the bias because we are talking about people talking about experiences and then you hit me with ‘too many sources’ like no. Not enough sources. One opinion piece is not enough.

[miniaturemoonheart]

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Dynasty

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Miia

3:45 3,842 #11

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Some days it's hard to see

If I was a fool, or you, a thief

Made it through the maze to find my one in a million

Now you're just a page torn from the story I'm living

And all I gave you is gone

Tumbled like it was stone

Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake

Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made

Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

The scar I can't reverse

When the more it heals the worse it hurts

Gave you every piece of me, no wonder it's missing

Don't know how to be so close to someone so distant

And all I gave you is gone

Tumbled like it was stone

Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake

Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made

Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

It all fell down, it all fell down,

It all fell, it all fell down, it all fell down

It all fell, it all fell down, it all fell down, it

It all fell down, it all fell down, it all fell down

And all I gave you is gone

Tumbled like it was stone

Thought we built a dynasty that heaven couldn't shake

Thought we built a dynasty like nothing ever made

Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

It all fell, it all fell down, it all fell down, it

It all fell down, it all fell down, it all fell down

It all fell, it all fell down, it all fell down (and all I gave you is gone)

Thought we built a dynasty forever couldn't break up

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Written by: HILLARY BERNSTEIN, JOACHIM RYGG

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[canichangemyblogname]

Congrats on one year! You have such a thoughtful, detailed approach to everything you write/theorize. Do you have any particular research you do when writing, or do you outline what you’re going to write?

IRIS! Thank you so much!! ☺️

I am so glad that people find my lil essays and whatnot to be thoughtful. I don't *feel* like I put a lot of thought into them, but I've learned that's because all the things I learned during my education and/or through reading have more-or-less become knowledge.

When I'm writing a little analysis on, say, the symbolism of Syril Karn trading in a brown shirt for a suit and tie and how this relates to the "new" uniform of white supremacy, I am writing about something I have knowledge in. I do sometimes link sources or further reading, but this is Tumblr and I want to write about the things I know and their representation in Star Wars without putting in all the work to create a bibliography.

I do have two shelves full of all the (second hand, paperback) books I had to buy for school over the years. My favorites- the only ones I bought new (they didn't have used)- are the "A Very Short Introduction" books from Oxford University Press. It's like an academic's version of "for dummies." It introduces you to the topic and some essential things to know before introducing you to further reading. Sometimes, I do reference the books on my shelf or look back to them for something specific I'm thinking about when I'm writing.

Now, if I were writing an essay for a program or lecture there would be lots of research and well-cited sources. If it's a research paper, specifically, my outlines are extensive because I have to hit such things as a literature review and a methods, etc. If the paper is just a narrative or a non-research based paper, my thesis statement in the intro paragraph lays out the rest of the paper well enough, imo.

Because of this, I used to feel as if I were always pulling papers and writing out of my ass. I'd spend several hours writing something the night before it was due, turn it in the next morning and would get it back with, like, a 93 on it. I just figured I was bullshitting my way through school. I was not, but I still felt like I was a terrible and incompetent student. It took me a lot of years to realize that maybe I had developed a skill in writing.

When it comes to creative writing, like stories, my outlines and research depends on the length of the story. I put lots of planning into my novels. I'll have a story outline plus profiles for each important character and important location and each important event. There is often a good bit of research that might go into this, depending on how realistic and detailed I'm going for. Reader's don't need to know the intricacies of how cast iron is made, but I do need to know whether a story taking place in 1500s England could have any cast iron (the answer is yes).

My favorite tools when I'm writing are a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and the delete button (or the cut function). Sometimes, I need to find a different word. Sometimes I need to look up whether a flintlock pistol existed yet. Sometimes I just need to start over.

And that's what I do. A lot. No matter what I'm writing. I start and restart sentences. I cut or delete entire paragraphs. I cut and move stuff around. If I can't make it work; if it still sounds "off" or awkward, I just get rid of it. I probably delete more than I write, even before I get to an editing process. If I had the time and the will, I could write about a chapter or about 2,000-4,000 words a day. I had a week off once and ended up hyper focusing on a project and I wrote some 18,000 words in 6 days. I cut that down to just under 11,000 after some tweaking and editing.

If I'm really attached to a piece of information or a scene that I wrote into the story, but need to cut for the sake of length and cohesion, I have a separate word document titled "misc excerpts" with a table of contents and a title for each scene. That document is longer than my actual projects, sometimes. I also do this (kinda) if I'm stuck. If I'm stuck, I'll cut the scene and paste it into a separate document and then start working on it from this new document.

I also highlight things as I go along. If it needs fixing, I'll add a little [FX] at the end of the sentence with a comment attached like: "awk" or "unfired gun?" or "who tf is this?" or "why? do you need this detail?" or "this is too convenient," etc. I'll also leave comments along the way for background. If I introduce a character, I'll leave a comment by their name explaining their further relevance to the story. If I introduce a Chekov's Gun, I'll leave a note explaining how I'll use this detail later. My goal is to not have any extraneous details or plots or features in my stories.

I feel all of this makes editing quicker and more efficient later, especially as it's real easy to search up [FX] and find everything that needs an immediate fix before I get into the weeds of editing for grammar.

[marcholasmoth]

OSRR: 3053

i'm finished with my capstone.

i took a little bit of time at the end of my day at work before i left to write up a bit about what i wanted to say but how i speak instead of overly formal, but i got all of the points i wanted and i was able to answer questions without hesitation at the end. i'm pretty proud of myself. and my group mates were happy with it too - they and others said i knocked it out of the park! i'm just proud of myself. i went from being frustrated and lost and confused to broken and frustrated and lost and confused, to hitting the ground running and getting a ton of things done in a week.

hell yeah.

anyway, the paper for the other class remains. i have a lot to do for it, so i anticipate sending in pieces over the next day or two before getting the chance to sit down and write on wednesday and thursday. i'll be done by then. the good news is all of my research is done. i just have to read now. and my annotated bibliography doesn't have to be all of my sources either, just a good collection of a few i'll most likely use.

also after work today i stopped for gas for the first time in a month and picked up some snacks for joel. i brought them over to him and he grabbed me and pulled me down to cuddle with him. i was happy to see him. i miss him when i don't get to see him. :(

but he should be getting his job offer this week. yay!

and i got approved to be paid through the kiddos' school, so nancy doesn't have to pay out of pocket for me anymore. which is a win-win.

i gotta get up early tomorrow to go get my tire pressure sensors checked - i think one may have been jostled out of its correct position as i drove to work this morning. the tires are new, so it makes sense.

but i gotta sleep now, im pretty fuckin tired.

[camiladaviladigitalmediablog]

Blog Post #2

   In this second class, the main focus was Gesamtkunstwerk, which means a total work of art. Of course, that statement can be difficult to perceive. Although we can analyze pieces of media through the lenses of Karl Friederick, specifically under the popularized view established by Richard Wagner during the 19th century that presented theatre as the ultimate medium. Fortunately, artists today do not have the obligation to accommodate to this definition. And their pieces can be dissected via their medium and other elements or categories.

   Returning to last week’s blog post, about the movie Incendies, I would consider it Gesamtkunstwerk. Since not only is an audiovisual work, that includes music, environment design, acting, etc. It is also a tragedy in the same way as Oedipus. It would probably be approved by Friederik. It was also originally a theatre play. This film takes the ancient Greek tragedy in a contemporary setting, and as a well-crafted film, it resorts to the works of a scoring band, a dedicated cast, writers, stage supervisors, etc.

   Now, analyzing a different piece of media. Like the movie Network, from 1976. Which revolves around the people working in the news section of a TV station that is going to shut down due to low ratings. Today that movie is praised for its accuracy of how media in general, no matter the focus, has turned into entertainment that needs to cling to the average viewer’s life and finally turn into a parasocial relationship between the piece of media and the spectator. All social media today benefits from the perpetual attention of viewers.

   The movie is almost 50 years old, and yet, it touches on media convergence and how intertwined we are now with everything consumed by almost everyone in today’s society. Basically, the people running this news section turn it into a hit show not only tuned by everyone but with influence in their lives beyond watching the show. By that logic, their work, the news show, becomes not only Gesamtkunstwerk (the movie demonstrates all kinds of work behind the result) but also lies in the media convergence territory. It may be not digital because at that time everything was still analog, but it is still the connection of information among people with the technology available during those times. As I said before, the movie manages to show how a news section turns into entertainment to gain better ratings and the way they managed to do so is via parasocial relationships. By the end of the movie, the spectators augmented and no one wanted to be excluded, the news section became part of their routines. This connection by the end of the movie transforms into interdependence. Where people look forward to the (no longer) news show to alter their daily lives. 

    This cycle of media consumption and media production with the latest technology is what most of us live in our daily lives. And the movie The Network was able to do that in 1978.

Bibliography:

Incendies. (2010). [film]. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Canada: Micro_scope

Network. (1976). [film]. Directed by Sidney Lumet. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Network (2016). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cSGvqQHpjs (Accessed: 09 January 2024). 

[jambjars]

ACADEMIC BLOG POST 1- Narrative: Can It Boogie?

What makes a story compelling? Is there one answer that applies to all narratives, and, if there is, is it so horribly broad as to be utterly useless? From Aristotle to Campbell to Juul, we've been trying to figure out a way to pin down the key to a good story for centuries. Like many modern narratologists we covered in the lecture, I have trouble coming up with an all-encompassing, meaningful theory that's inclusive of the video games I enjoy and traditional narratives. Interactive media, especially video games, can follow a strategy all its own. That's not blasphemous to the media before it.

While researching some articles on ludology for this lecture topic, I came across an article that, while risqué, does have some points to make about the merits of viewing video game narratives through an entirely different lens. I believe Shira Chess's piece The queer case of video games: orgasms, Heteronormativity, and video game narrative to be an extremely welcome takedown of the Freytag and subsequently the Brooks model. It's true that many traditional narratives have a singular climax, and indeed many video games can fall under this mold as well, but at the urging of Chess to consider other viewpoints of ludological narrative, I'm quite pleased at the prospect of games not following that route in favor of "little victories"-- incremental pockets of pleasure in limbo.

Figure 1: The main characters from hit 2019 video game Disco Elysium: The Final Cut

DISCO ELYSIUM

I sincerely doubt Propp had anything like Disco Elysium in mind when he penned his theories, and yet it's a game that rings true to everyone I've known that's played it-- especially myself. It's dense, jam-packed with 20+ hours of fully voice-acted dialogue, and tightly woven into a story both alien and familiar. Sure, it has a beginning, middle, end, and you could even fit some characters into Propp's archetypes in there if you pleased*. Not only is it an interactive narrative, however, it leans into its own absurdity to a degree that can derail the entire story itself. In an interview with some of the minds behind this grand-scale narrative, writer Argo Tuulik admitted that a great deal of Disco Elysium's success is owing to the creative team's naive willingness to explore even the most off-the-wall idea and not being too precious about the moral integrity of its characters. That's something I really, really value in a piece of media; the ability to not let any character be utterly invincible or badass without reason, for even the most level-headed to be open to humiliation and bizarreness.

*Here, I'll rattle some off now: Harry is the hero, Kim is the helper, Klaasje could be a false hero, the Thought Cabinet is a Dispatcher, etc.

Figure 2: Disco Elysium Character Sheet Screen.

Gameplay is almost Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque in nature. As a player, you must level up your skills, each representing a different facet of your ability to do your job. While each route is plotted, this is a massive departure from the narrative styles we are so used to in traditional media.

Figure 3: A brilliant graphic of the Disco Elysium cycle by Gabriel Chauri.

There are standalone events in Disco Elysium, set in stone or otherwise, and they are fantastic, but so much of the fun of the game lies in the mechanics themselves.

As a 2D animator, my skills would still be valuable in creating such a game-- while I'm picking up Blender on the side, Disco Elysium's still utilizes 2D animation and overlays on top of 3D models. It feels grungy and artistic and gross, something I would adore emulating on my own time. Perhaps After Effects can help me out.

Bibliography

Aarseth, E. (2004). Genre trouble: Narrativism and the art of simulation. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (Eds.), First person: New media as story, performance, and game (pp. 45–55). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.]

Brooks, P. (1977). Freud's Masterplot: Questions of narrative. In S. Felman (Ed.), Literature and psychoanalysis: The question of reading: otherwise (pp. 280–300). Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, Calif.: New World Library.

Chauri, G. (2021). Disco Elysium RPG System Analysis. [online] Game Design Thinking. Available at: https://gamedesignthinking.com/disco-elysium-rpg-system-analysis/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2023].

Chess, S. (2016). The queer case of video games: orgasms, Heteronormativity, and video game narrative. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), pp.84–94. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1129066.

Freytag, G. (2012). Freytag's technique of drama: An exposition of dramatic composition and art. London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1863)

Inderwildi, A. (2021). What the Epic of Gilgamesh can tell us about Disco Elysium’s most troubling character, the Deserter. mashxtomuse. Available at: https://www.mashxtomuse.com/single-post/what-the-epic-of-gilgamesh-can-tell-us-about-disco-elysium-s-most-troubling-character-the-deserter [Accessed 14 Oct. 2023].

Juul, J. (2005). Half-real : Video games between real rules and fictional worlds. Cambridge (Massachusetts, Usa): The Mit Press.

Roof, J. (1996). Come as you are: Sexuality and narrative. New York: Columbia University Press.

Williams, L. (2022). How a collaborative writing process birthed Disco Elysium. [online] Games Hub. Available at: https://www.gameshub.com/news/features/disco-elysium-narrative-writing-process-18597/ [Accessed 1 Nov. 2023].

ZA/UM (2019) Disco Elysium: The Final Cut [Video game]. ZA/UM

[hedgewitchgarden]

”It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” -Elisabeth Báthory

In July of this year, an independently-published book called Witchtoker’s Grimoire appeared on Amazon, the description of which stated, “This Grimoire is a collection of spells, how to’s, [and] magical writings, by a collective of creators from Tiktok.” I myself was unaware of said book until a snarling gaggle of videos about it popped up on the witchier corners of the Clock App, and the fury with which the Grimoire was being discussed piqued my curiosity, so I started doing some digging.

I am not sure when work on the Grimoire actually began, but from what I’ve been able to piece together, the creator behind it reached out to a handful of other WitchTok personalities and asked them to contribute spells, recipes, etc. A few people took issue with this — claims floated around that the creator would not accept submissions from witches she didn’t “approve” of, which seemed counterintuitive to a “community” driven book. But within the greater publishing industry, some projects involve open calls for submissions, while others are invitation only, so if the creator hand-picked her contributors, that doesn’t constitute compromised ethics.

The contents of the book, however, raised legitimate ethical concerns. One essay seemed to suggest that corpse water could be consumed. Another provided instructions for a spell jar that the author had made for a friend undergoing surgery to remove cancer: Because of the phrasing, some readers thought that the author was declaring the spell jar cured cancer.

Having read both snippets (screenshots abound), I can say that the actual problem is a severe lack of editing — like, if the cancer anecdote had been cut, the chapter on the spell jar would’ve been just fine. But it’s this dearth of editorial oversight that led to even bigger problems, primarily accusations that a good chunk of material in the book was plagiarized.

According to allegations, passages from at least seven different published works were lifted whole-cloth and incorporated into the Grimoire. Additionally, someone ran sections of the book through a plagiarism detection engine and apparently found that a number of spells had been copied and pasted directly from websites. And while the Grimoire does feature a bibliography, it does not include citations, which, honestly, would’ve only be helpful had the authors used their own voices to rewrite or summarize the info in question.

In a way, the bibliography almost functions as an admission of guilt. Like, “Oh, you wanna know where we swiped all this stuff? Feast your peepers!”

Lines were immediately drawn in the sand once official controversy hit the algorithm, with people on one side vehemently denouncing the Grimoire, and friends and family of the book’s creator vehemently denouncing the people denouncing it. The online battles escalated, and I decided that not a damn bit of it was any of my business. (Although I did throw the lithomantic stones to see if I should offer some objective clarification on what corpse water actually is. It felt like a neighborly thing to do.)

But as evidence of plagiarism piled up, and the book’s supporters realized that they were going to have to switch tactics if they wanted to stay on top of the situation, one of them said something that made me understand how problematic the Grimoire had been from the very onset.

I was scrolling through my For You Page a couple of mornings ago, flipping past conspiracy theories and videos from disillusioned contributors publicly requesting that their submissions be removed from future editions, when I landed on a live conversation between the book’s creator and one of her more ardent apologists. And that’s when I heard the following:

“[You] put together a conglomeration of people’s submissions. I don’t understand why all this comes on you. Like, you have to double- and triple-check every submission?”

“Or tell people that fire burns,” the creator replied. “Or that water is wet. Or that you should not get in the shower with a hairdryer going.”

And I had to stop for a second and collect myself, because the answer to all of the above is a non-negotiable yes: The editor of an anthology must absolutely double- and triple-check every submission, and the anthology itself must contain disclaimers to protect everyone involved. Whether desktop or traditional, this is how publishing works.

But this also made me understand that the people who put out the Witchtoker’s Grimoire approached publishing the same way they approach witchcraft: It’s something you can just do successfully without any education or training or skill. It’s not about growing, or teaching, or sharing knowledge: It’s about snatching up unmerited authority and using it to bully all of the smaller fish in the pond.

And when called out for troubling behavior, or spreading misinformation, or outright theft, it’s about redirecting the narrative, and manifesting a projective shield of victimhood behind which to hide: Anyone who speaks ill of them is a jealous detractor who doesn’t want you to know the truth.

It’s a shield that tends to collapse and bonk heads when the unbiased truth comes out.

As of this writing, the Witchtoker’s Grimoire has been pulled from publication, and the creator has issued a public apology, taking full responsibility and letting her viewers know that there will not be a revised edition. (The original plan was to tweak the worrisome bits and rerelease it.) To her credit, this was the right thing to do, and it displays some maturity on her part. Although as contrite as the video came across, it may have also just been an attempt to stave off the legal ramifications of selling a plagiarized manuscript.

If that’s the case, she’s in for a series of unfortunate surprises. Regardless of how sorry she may be about the debacle, the book went to print, and multiple copies were purchased — if the allegations prove accurate, this means that copyrights were actively infringed, and there will be  consequences for that. A remorseful “whoops” won’t protect her.

I don’t know if she’ll ever try her hand at publishing again, but if she does, she’ll have a very hard time convincing anyone to take a chance on her pitches. Traditional publishers will more than likely give her a wide berth, and freelancers who want to keep their reputations stain-free will avoid collaboration. This particular path has ultimately come to a dead end for her.

Speaking of paths, the whole saga of the Witchtoker’s Grimoire reminds me of Mandrake from the Liminal Spirits Oracle (by Laura Tempest Zakroff; Llewellyn Publications, 2020), and one of Tempest’s interpretations of the card strikes me as a fitting end to this post:

“There is no easy or fast road to big rewards that are truly worthwhile. Eschew tantalizing shortcuts and lazy practices. Fully invest the time and care needed to perform a task properly and responsibly — build any house as if you yourself were going to live in it.”

The results we get out of our craft are directly and prosperously proportionate to the effort we put into it. If we expect good results from whatever it is we’re doing without honest effort — or if we expect results without honesty, period — we’re better off not doing it at all.

And y’all, we don’t just have to live in what we’ve built.

We have to live with it.

[mikeyscontextuals]

A Disquiet Evening_ Brief 4

Welcome once again, everyone!

This is the first post, of many, regarding my journey through this last brief!

So the "gist" of it is pretty much the following: Taking from at least one of the previous themes we had, either Identity, Modernity, or maybe perhaps the Animal, we would have to lead on another separate piece, or continue a previous one we had made, refering to the chosen subject, obviously.

For me personally, it was the Identity brief that was my biggest hit and miss, at least according to my expectations for the given brief.

Therefore, it is said theme that I shall be tackling! Now back to the drawing board. It was here that I curiously ran into a video titled: "The Terrible Paradox Of Self-Awareness | Fernando Pessoa."

It immediately struck my interest for two reasons: Fernando Pessoa is the biggest and most important name in Portuguese history, and because this was all about Existencialism, and that is exactly what I am pursuing, especifically paralleling with his work: "The Book Of Disquiet", which was released in 1982, exactly 47 years after his passing, at just 47 years of age. It was released under one of his many semi-heteronyms: Bernardo Soares, which poses no comparison when standing beside all of his bigger heteronyms, and is a compiliation book, made of over 500 loose texts written by Fernando Pessoa. Consequently, the book has no beggining, no middle and no end! One can loosely open the book at any given text and read a passage that would make himself think, question and ponder. Here are some examples:

“My past is everything I failed to be.” ― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.” ― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.” ― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

The quotes previously mentioned that should paint a pretty good picture of the Existencialism portraid in this work by Fernando Pessoa.

In further posts I will be developing this subject! Stick around for a great time!

Bibliography:

[phykios]

Five Times Percy Jackson Cheated At School (And One Time Someone Cheated Him) [read on ao3]

thank you as always to @darkmagyk for inspo and beta-ing 💙💙💙 and thank you to @arosnowflake for the homer idea!

1)

Percy squints at the paper prompt again, tilting his head, as if the new angle will extract some hidden information. It doesn’t change. The font is the special dyslexia-friendly one used by most departments at NRU, so he isn’t misreading it, either.

Your final will be an 8-10pp (TNR, 12pt, double-spaced) research paper expanding on one of the topics discussed in our class so far, or an alternate idea of your choosing, to be submitted in writing by May 7 with footnotes and bibliography. By 10am on the Wednesday before the Thursday class you will submit online a 750-word essay (word count does not include footnotes) on the research thread you have pursued that week (no written assignments due Week 6 or Week 12). 

Percy might hate college.

“Your neck bothering you again?” Annabeth asks, coming up behind him, her hands already on his shoulders. She’s sweaty, dressed in workout clothes, having just come back in from a jog. 

“My neck is fine,” he says. “Just preemptively freaking out over my Roman history final.”

He tilts his head back over the top of his chair, staring into the upside down, prettily frowning face of his girlfriend, and it does nothing to improve his mood.

“How bad is it?”

“Eight to ten pages,” Percy says, “not including footnotes.”

“Ouch.”

“And,” he grimaces, “it’s a topic of our choosing.”

Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” She squeezes his shoulders lightly, an open invitation. 

He shakes his head, stretching his arms back to grab her waist. “Promise not to break up with me when you catch me crying at 4AM over it.”

“Promise.” And she seals it with a kiss, bending down to reach him. “Dad wants to know if you’re free on the 16th.” 

“The 16th?” He wracks his brain. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t conflict with sailing, or Greek Club, or the monthly intra-pantheon relations council meeting that Chiron and Clarisse both guilted him into joining. “Pretty sure. Why?”

“Dinner--Charlotte’s out of town that weekend.”

“Sounds good.”

“Great, I’ll let him know. Now,” and she grins, “are you going to stare at that computer all day, or do you want to come and take a shower with me?”

Percy slams the computer shut. 

He doesn’t think about his paper topic for a while after that.

***

To his great dismay, Percy gets to her dad’s house first on the 16th. Drama in writing group 🙄 she texts him as he gets to the door, be there asap.

Great. Alone in the house with his girlfriend’s dad. Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door. 

Not a minute later, Dr. Chase opens it. Last time they went to visit, Percy and Annabeth had ended up waiting outside for almost a quarter of an hour. “Oh, Percy,” he says, fumbling his flight helmet off his head. “Goodness, I thought I’d lost track of time again. Come in, come in.”

“Thanks,” Percy says, stepping inside and shedding his jacket. “Annabeth’s running late, but she said she’d be here soon.”

He frowns, looking so much like Annabeth that it throws Percy for several loops. “Well, that’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure we can entertain ourselves well enough until she gets here.”

“Yeah,” Percy chuckles, uneasy.

Several seconds pass. 

“Oh!” starts Dr. Chase. “Right, yes. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get much better.

A few minutes of staggered conversation later, it becomes eminently clear why they need Annabeth between them. It’s not the awkward small talk that doesn’t go anywhere (“How’s school going for you?” “It’s okay.” “Good, that’s good to hear.”) or the fact that Dr. Chase doesn’t really grasp how to relate to younger kids (“Have you heard of this website called ‘Vine’?”), but more that it’s just painfully obvious that the two of them don’t really know where they stand with each other. 

Now, he knows that Frederick Chase doesn’t hate him. Objectively, he’s aware of the fact that, if it weren’t for him, Annabeth never would have reconnected with her father in the first place, and he kind of owes him for that. Also, Percy knows that he’s a pretty chill guy--a little scatterbrained, but chill. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make a good impression, though. Or that Dr. Chase thinks that Percy is smart enough for his daughter. Because, like, Percy isn’t smart enough for Annabeth--that much is obvious. Dr. Chase was courted by Athena. Percy barely made it out of high school calculus.

“Would you…” Dr. Chase hedges, plucking off his glasses and giving them a quick wipe with his shirtsleeve. “Would you like to see some of my current research?”

“Uh… sure. I’d love to.” 

At the very least, hopefully Dr. Chase will talk enough for the both of them, eating up time until Annabeth gets here.

A new spring in his step, Dr. Chase leads Percy to his study, where he’s got a setup worthy of Cabin Six: on his desk is a massive map of the Mediterranean, littered with miniatures of tanks, planes, and ships. Ringing the room are wall-hangings, depicting different types of planes, half of their structure in x-rays like people in an anatomy textbook, sandwiching the giant viking sword which hangs directly behind his chair. Every inch of floor space is occupied with a pile of books, some serving as additional desk space for mugs, notepads, spare toy soldiers, and, in one case, what looks like the leftovers of a handful of celestial bronze spearheads, melted down into shiny, useless nuggets. 

“You know I primarily study aviation,” Dr. Chase is saying, tidying up as he walks around the room, “but my colleagues and I are collaborating on an interdisciplinary re-evaluation of the entire North African theatre in World War II. It’s fascinating stuff; until very recently, they used to call it the ‘war without hate,’ given the lack of partisan roundups and, ah, ethnic clashes that you see in Europe--absolute garbage, of course. As if there weren’t civilians caught up in the fighting, too!” He chuckles, pleased at his own joke. Percy forces a laugh out of himself. “Anyway, with my prior experience studying the invasion of Sicily, I was brought on to assist in piecing the timeline together, working backwards from 1943.”

“Cool,” says Percy, filling the natural gap of conversation.

“Extremely! Operation Husky was a terrific endeavor of airborne, amphibious, and land-based combat.”

Percy nods. Amphibious? “Uh-huh.”

“Though, I must admit, I am having a little trouble retracing some of the ships.” Peering over his map, he leans down, fiddling with one of the ships. “You see this one here? The Palmer?”

Stepping up to the desk, Percy crouches down so the little toy ship is at eye level.

“Well, based on official records, the Palmer was supposed to have arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as all the other ships, but ended up delayed by two days, and I can’t… quite…” He moves the ship again, frowning. “Figure out… why…” 

“Where were they sailing through?” Percy asks. 

Dr. Chase points to the map. “From Alexandria to Malta.” 

“They probably just hit a bad couple of currents,” Percy says, standing up. 

Tilting his head, Dr. Chase peers at him. “How do you mean?”

“If you’re going through the Cretan Passage, you’re going to hit all kinds of West-East currents which will push you backwards.” Snatching up a pencil from a nearby book stack, Percy lightly sketches on top of the map, tracing along the North African coast. “There are tons of overlapping currents in this area that push boats around in circles, especially around Sicily. That’s one of the reasons why so many historians figure that Homer was referring to the Strait of Messina when Odysseus goes through Scylla and Charybdis, here.” And he circles the strait, with a confident flourish.

When he pulls back, Dr. Chase is staring at him.

Percy blinks. “Um… sorry I drew on your map.”

“You--I have been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

He coughs, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry.”

But Dr. Chase just laughs. “You can make it up to me by helping me with these next.” Clearing crumbs off of southern France, he bends over, pencil in hand. “So, say you were trying to get from Marseilles to Tunis…” 

Forty-five minutes later, still embroiled in battle recreations of the Mediterranean theatre, they don’t hear Annabeth letting herself in with her key, not even registering her presence until Dr. Chase, grasping for a notebook, spots her leaning against the doorway. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, Annabeth, dear! I’m sorry,” says Dr. Chase, going over to give her a hug. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can see that,” she says. “What are you guys doing?”

“Percy here has been assisting me with naval movements,” he says, proudly.

Lacing her fingers with his, Annabeth steps over to Percy, studying their battle map. “Really?”

“Oh yes, he’s been phenomenally helpful.”

She kisses his cheek, pleased. “Look at you, Mr. ‘Phenomenally Helpful.’”

“It was pretty fun,” he admits, warm all over.

“I’d bet. Although, I guess this means we should probably order in for dinner…?”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dr. Chase smiles. “Yes, I suppose we should. Does pizza sound all right to you two?”

“Let me take care of it,” she says, slipping from Percy’s side. “You guys looked like you were in the middle of something. Extra olives, dad?”

“Don’t forget--”

“And anchovies, Percy, I know.” She rolls her eyes, taking out her phone.

Rather than the three of them move into the kitchen, Annabeth ends up bringing the pizza in with her, because of course she has opinions she’d like to share about the Allies’ naval movements. 

“You know, Percy,” says Dr. Chase, “I must say, you have a real knack for this kind of thing. Have you thought about what you might major in yet?”

Ah, the million drachmae question. “Not yet,” he says, fiddling with a pencil. “I figured I’d get through my gen eds first and then see which one I hated the least.” 

“I think you should consider majoring in history.”

Percy’s head snaps up. “History?”

“Specifically maritime history, I suppose. Your predisposition to sailing and ocean currents would be a huge asset to your research.”

“But--wouldn’t history have, like, a metric ton of required reading? I’m not really sure that’s my area.” He has a daughter with dyslexia and ADHD; surely he’d understand Percy’s hesitation.

But he just shakes his head. “Graduate programs these days are very favorable towards interdisciplinary methodology, I sincerely doubt you’d have to barricade yourself in the library. And recently there’s been a significant push to make the field more accessible to students with disabilities, including things like digitization, screen reading for people with vision impairments, and even restructuring programs all together so that students no longer have to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica in order to pass their general exams.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Dr. Chase,” Percy says, “But history class isn’t like talking over naval movements with you.” He thought back to the paper that had lowkey been haunting his dreams. “Like, in my classical history survey, I can’t just… talk about currents and battle plans. I have to come up with a topic on my own, and then write about that.” 

“Surely something involving Roman naval movements would be well within your skill set. You have a second sense about these things,” he chuckles, “clearly.”

Percy glances towards Annabeth, hoping she’ll back him up, but she looks thoughtful. Considering. Like she’s actually thinking about her dad’s proposal. “I can’t just choose something in naval history.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it's too easy?” 

If it was anything like his afternoon with Dr. Chase, it might even be fun. And school isn’t supposed to be fun. 

He repeats that thought to Annabeth as they drive home. “School isn’t supposed to be fun.” 

“No,” Annabeth agrees, “but I don’t know… I like my intro art history class way better than anything we ever did in high school because I actually care about it. Maybe if you write about stuff you’re good at, like my dad suggested, you’ll like it more.” 

The idea follows him all the way to bed, where he’s still mulling it over at 2 in the morning. Before he can chicken out, he grabs his phone, shooting off a quick email to his professor with his potential paper topic, then rolls over, eventually falling asleep.

By morning, he has a response. 

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.

***

With shaking hands, Percy calls his mom. “Yes?” 

“Hey mom.”

“Percy?” He hears her perk up, almost visualizing her sitting up in her chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Mom instincts. They can always tell when something is different. His heart throbs in his chest. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, smiling stretching across his face. “It’s just--I got my paper back.” 

Percy had ended up writing his paper about the Roman navy movements in the Battle of the Aegates in 241 BC. It was probably the most fun he’s ever had on a school assignment, or at least the most fun he’d ever had writing a paper. 

“And?” She sounds expectant, hopeful. His mom has always had such faith in him, even with thirteen years of schooling to prove her otherwise. 

He looks back at his email, just to make sure he’s reading it right. “I got an A.”

She gasps. He can hear the scrape of the chair as she stands up. “Percy, that’s wonderful!” 

“Thank you.”

“An A!”

He smiles into his fist, inordinately pleased. “Thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so happy for you!”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m so proud of you, Percy.” Her voice is soft now, like twilights on the beach with blue marshmallows. “I know how hard you’ve worked for this. You should be very proud, too.”

“I am.” And he is, weirdly enough. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I can.” His mom must be grinning, her eyes sparkling. “I always knew you could do it.”

“Sally?” He hears in the background, muffled. “Is that Percy?”

“Paul, Percy got an A on his Roman history paper!”

A second voice crowds its way in, equally excited. “An A? That’s great, kiddo! Congratulations.”

Why can’t he stop smiling? “Thanks.”

“I bet that feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Well, it is very well-deserved,” says Paul. “That was some great work you did. I could tell how passionate you were about your topic just from your first sentence.”

“Thank you.” Maybe he should be worried about all this praise going to his head, but damn, is it nice. “Listen, I have to go get started on dinner, but I just wanted to give you a call.”

“Of course,” says his mom. “I want to hear from you more, okay? Tell me more good news! Like when are you and Annabeth going to--”

“I’m working on it, okay?” says Percy, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll keep you posted, promise.”

She laughs, tinny and happy. “You’d better. Congratulations again, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” 

And he hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, tilts his head back, and sighs, full, happy, a release. 

Maybe college won’t be so bad after all. 

2)

“You don’t have to do this,” Frank says, hushed. “All you have to do is walk away.”

Five Greek Fire bombs, cloudy yellow, are lined up on the table in front of him, neatly laid out in front of five twenties. From the side, Frank stares him down, surrounded by an army of morbidly curious Romans. Someone turned off the music and turned on the lights a while ago, stopping the party in its tracks, every eye on Percy and his opponent. Figures, his first college party all year and he causes a scene. 

Percy grips the edge of the table. “He insulted the Mets,” he says for the millionth time. “I can’t let that shit stand.”

Frank sighs. “Annabeth?” he asks, hoping to stop this nonsense.

Turning to his side, Percy sees his girlfriend, two drinks in, her cheeks lightly flushed, but solid as she stands beside him, supporting him. Her eyes are hard, fierce, the warrior gaze of Athena all but leaping out of her. “Do it,” she says. 

William, the sour-faced Roman legacy of Juventus, scowls. “A hundred bucks on the table. Sixty seconds. No throwing them back up.”

“Deal.”

“Frank,” Annabeth calls. “Start the clock.”

He sighs. “You guys are idiots.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out his phone, thumb primed, hovering over the screen. “On your marks, in three… two… one…” 

He hits zero, and Percy grabs a shot glass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings it to his lips, and throws it back.

It’s… not what he expected.

The tequila is awful--no getting around that. Even to Percy’s untrained taste buds, having really only ever had some of Gabe’s sour beer (under duress) and some of the Demeter cabin’s strawberry wine (on his eighteenth birthday, a celebration for actually getting to graduate high school), he can tell it’s cheap, rank, unrefined shit, like he’s drinking straight toilet cleaner. But the garum, the weird Roman condiment that the shot is mixed with, the one that Percy had never heard of before, it’s… it almost tastes like the fish sauce that comes with the pork and rice noodles from the Vietnamese place down the corner of his mom’s apartment, only less… fishy? Yeah. Less fishy.

It’s a weird taste. It’s not bad, by any means, it just--straight up, it just tastes like saltwater. Like the sea. 

And, well. Percy can handle the sea.

He looks at William, and grins. “You are so fucked.”

The assembled Romans cheer, spectators at a gladiator show, as Percy knocks back the rest of the Greek Fire bombs, one after another, clearing them all in under thirty seconds. Annabeth swipes up the cash, shrieking as she throws her arms around Percy. William wanders off, red-faced and glaring, as whoever turned the music off before flips it back on, the night, and the party, saved.

Silly Percy. He should have known what was coming next.

Thirty minutes later, he is well and truly wasted.

“You’re, like, really pretty,” he shouts at Annabeth over the loud music.

She snorts, grinning at him. “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” he slurs, tipping forward on his feet. “You could be a model.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember when we were fourteen,” he yells, bracing himself against the wall, “and you got kidnapped by that monster?” Slightly soberer but still a little flushed, she bites her lip, nodding. “Well, I followed the rescue party--I told you that, that I snuck out of camp to follow the rescue party? Right?” 

“You did.”

He takes a sip of water, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Feels goofy as fuck. “We got hijacked by Aphrodite halfway through, and when I saw her, I thought--I thought, ‘Holy shit, she looks a little like Annabeth.’”

Her brows shoot up, smile pulling at her lips. “Really?”

He nods. “Totally! But you’re way, way p--” 

Still smiling, she silences him with a kiss, the lingering taste of hard cider on her tongue. “I appreciate it,” she murmurs, grinning, “but you probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Gross.”

From out of nowhere, like he always does, the weasley little shit, Nico di Angelo is suddenly in their space, looking surly and emo as ever, red solo cup in his left hand. “Nico!” Percy crows, grabbing for him and missing. “How’s my favorite cousin?!”

Ducking his wildly swinging limbs, Nico grimaces in the way that Percy has to come to recognize as his attempt at a smile. “Better’n you,” he says, a little wobbly. “What’s up with him?” he directs towards Annabeth.

“Greek Fire bombs. Five.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“What!” Percy pouts. “He insulted the Mets.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be, like…” Nico snaps his fingers, words momentarily escaping him. “A--representation… person? For the Greeks?”

Percy waves his hand, hitting the wall. “Fuck that. The Greeks can handle themselves. The Mets are sacred!”

“Are you with anyone?” Annabeth asks, momentarily taking up Percy’s usual role of concerned parent friend while he is drunk off his ass. Theoi, he loves this girl so much. 

Nico shakes his head. “No, but Will and I are staying with--”

A thought suddenly blooms in Percy’s tequila-soaked brain. “Nico!” He shouts.

“What?” he hisses, glaring.

Percy pushes himself off of the wall, outstretched arms managing to box Nico in, falling on his shoulders and trapping him. He’s still a short, skinny little shit, the fuck, when are his Big Three genes going to kick in? “I need to talk to you about the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing! The--the,” then he leans in, scream-whispering over the pounding bassline. “The thing.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You know, it’s…” Percy licks his lips, language escaping him for a hot second. “Round. Metal. Jewelry thing.”

A beat, then Nico’s eyes widen. “Oh, that thing.”

“Yes, that thing!” Pulling back, he pulls Nico towards him, slinging an arm over his shoulders in a half-headlock. Annabeth watches, bemused, lips pursed as she tries not to smile. “I need to borrow Nico for a sec,” he says, words spilling out of him. “Back soon. Later. Soon.”

Her eyes crinkle, grey sparkling. She’s so fucking pretty. “Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then together, like some three-legged beast, the two boys lurch away deeper into the party, Nico leading them towards the kitchen. “Where’re you taking me?” Percy slurs. “‘M I being kidnapped again?”

“If I’m helping you plan out this stupid proposal,” he grumbles, pouring himself more vodka, “then I need to be less sober.”

***

Some mistakes may have been made.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Percy mumbles, looking back towards the house. The party is still raging, someone’s muffled Spotify playlist making a real racket, the greatest hits of ABBA still bouncing around his skull.

“Simp.” Nico, swaying a little, tries to stand up from his kneeling position, only to fall heavily back down on his knees. “She’s right where you left her.”

Discussing Percy's proposal plan had led to more drinking. More drinking had led to the two of them discussing their shared preference for blondes. (“Malcolm is pretty cute,” Nico admitted, flushing, and Percy almost screamed, “Isn’t he?! Sometimes I think about Annabeth with short hair looking like Malcolm and I almost start crying because she’d be so cute!”) Which then led to even more drinking. Which then led to general bitching about their lives, about Percy's hard-ass classics professor Dr. Bauer who he actually really liked but just pushed him so hard and expected so much of him, and Nico's half-brother Zagreus who was causing some family drama by picking fights with Hades all the time and also hooking up with both Thanatos AND the fury Megaera, which, ew, which then led to Percy inhaling his drink, nearly choking to death on unspecified college punch, Nico laughing at him all the while, as he had the most incredible idea.

"Nico!" He shouted, crushing the red solo cup. "Can you resurrect Homer for me?"

Nico gaped, staring. "What."

"Seriously! I need to ask him something for my paper."

"Percy." Nico gazed at him, all the power of the Ghost King boring into his soul, deep and haunting. Percy stifled a burp. "You're a fucking genius."

Which is how they found themselves around a shallow hole they had dug in the backyard, a large bottle of Pepsi originally intended as a mixer pilfered from the kitchen along with two slices of pepperoni pizza dumped on the grass beside them.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this," he says, uneasy even through his drunken haze.

"It was your idea!"

"I don't have good ideas."

“Fuck you, I’m doing it.” With all the force of a tiny, angry kitten, he snatches up the Pepsi bottle, wrestling with the twist cap for a good ten seconds. “I wanna give that bitch a piece of my mind for making me cry in school.”

Percy looks at him sideways. “Hector killing Patroclus got you, too?”

He snorts. “Fuck no. Achilles didn’t pay his dues to the dead.”

“Seriously?”

The cap pops off, and Nico tips the bottle over, dumping flat, lukewarm soda into the shallow hole. “It’s the ultimate dishonor!”

Freak. Percy would die for the kid.

“Let the dead taste again,” Nico mutters. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Says the guy who’s related to both horses and water.”

“I’m not related to water, I just control it.” 

The dirt turns black, dead soil mixed with sticky sugar water. Nico drops in the pizza, and begins to chant, that same ancient Greek that Percy heard in a dream once, talking of death and memories and returning from the grave or whatever. It’s still creepy as shit. 

Despite the warm California night, the air thickens with chilly fog. Silence, impenetrable, surrounds them, blocking out the noises of the party. From the earth, blueish, vaguely person-shaped figures begin to form, like thunderous clouds before a storm. “Which one is Homer?” he asks, hushed.

“Shh!” Nico hisses. 

Like little wells of gravity, the fog begins to coalesce. On one of them, Percy can almost make out, like, fingers. “Um, Mr. Homer? Sir?”

The figure doesn’t say anything. It lowers its mouth, drinking the soda out of the dirt. When it raises its head, Percy can see it more clearly, curly hair and milky white eyes and a straight nose. It--he?--seems a little more solid than your average run-of-the-mill ghost.

Nico frowns, eyes closed, concentrating. “What’s your name?” he mumbles. 

That mouth opens, soundlessly, jaw working on nothing.

“Speak.”

It--there’s a sound, like hissing, only it’s not coming from the mouth, Percy thinks. It sounds like it’s coming from the earth. “Nico?” he asks. “You good?”

The ghost opens its mouth again, moaning, raising its hands. Weakly, unsteadily, it stumbles forward on feeble legs, tripping over the shallow hole in the dirt.

“Nico?” he asks again, a little more forcefully. “What’s going on, dude?”

Nico blinks, slowly, mouth hanging open a little. “Uh.”

The… thing… raises itself up on its hands? He guesses, and knees, crawling its way over towards them.

Now, Percy may be drunk off his ass, but he has seen enough movies to know exactly what the fuck is up.

Moving with a speed he didn’t quite think was possible right about now, he grabs Nico’s wrist, and pulls him up, dragging him along as he lurches towards the house. “Percy…” Nico moans, stumbling over a rock. “I think I fucked up.”

“You think?” Percy wrenches the door open, tossing Nico inside, before following in after, throwing himself against the door. 

Nico groans, throwing his arms over his face. “Dio santo, my head.”

“Forget your head,” he says, “did we just raise a Homer zombie?!”

Panting, Nico stares up at him, sprawled on the floor of the house. “Oops.”

Percy thunks his head against the door. He does not have nearly enough mental capacity to deal with this right now.

But, he thinks ruefully, at least it’s just one. Even drunk, he’s pretty sure he can handle one zombie.

Nico’s eyes widen. 

Percy stares. “What.”

“I didn’t stop the ritual.”

His stomach goes cold.

Turning around slowly, he pulls aside the little curtain on the window. “What?” Nico asks. “What do you see?”

Percy can’t speak, mouth dry.

Slithering up behind, Nico peers over his shoulder. “That’s… not great.”

“Nico,” Percy says, eyeing the horde which slowly shambles closer, half-decayed bodies in togas bumping into each other, almost identical to the drunk college students inside, as the song changes, once again, to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).’ “Please go get Frank and Annabeth.”

The following Monday, an announcement is sent out to the entire campus: Per new department guidelines, students may not utilize the ambassador of Pluto to interview the dead for academic purposes.

3)

Percy attempts to flatten his hair. He readjusts his shirt. He almost wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, before he realizes what he’s doing, and clenches them instead, nails digging into his palms. He turns to Annabeth. “Do I look okay?”

“Ooh, ‘Mapping Funerary Monuments in the Periphery of Imperial Rome.’”

“Annabeth.”

She looks up from her brochure. “Relax, seaweed brain, you look fine. You look better than most people here.”

“That’s because I bring down the average age of presenters by about thirty years,” he hisses, eyes darting about at the milling mass of attendees, all packed into the hotel ballroom. 

Dr. Bauer had alternately convinced/pressured/guilttripped him into attending this year’s annual conference for the Society of Classical Studies to talk about the research he’d been doing with her. This year, the conference was held in San Francisco, so at the very least Percy didn’t have to spend five hours stressing about his poster presentation while simultaneously up in the air. But now that he’s here, in the ballroom, surrounded by strangers who know way more about this subject than he does, who are actually smart and probably never nearly flunked out of school or got kicked out or--

“Hey.” Annabeth takes his hand. “I know that look. You deserve to be here just as much as any of them.”

“Do I? I feel like any moment someone is going to come over and throw me out for trespassing.” He vaguely recalls something similar happening to him as a kid after he had ducked into the lobby of a semi-nice hotel to dodge what he had thought, at the time, was just a weird stalker, but had later realized had only had one eye. In any case, the hotel security guard had practically picked him up by the scruff of his neck, tossing him back out into the street. 

“That’s just your imposter syndrome talking,” she reassures him. “No one is going to throw you out.”

He sure as shit hopes so. It would be a shame to have done all this work for nothing. 

Glancing back at his poster, Percy can’t help but feel… good. Accomplished. Proud. About a school assignment, of all things. 

His poster traces the development of the prow from the Greek penteconter, to the Roman liburna, and finally to the Byzantine dromon, looking at artistic depictions in history. Percy had picked the topic himself, spending hours in the library reading, writing, and hand-drawing cross-sections of the ships on the poster board when the images he had gotten from the Cambridge University library had been too small. It had been grueling, frustrating work, but fun, too. And not nearly as much reading as he had feared.

Dr. Chase proofread it for him. Dr. Bauer signed off on it. And Annabeth had taken one look at it, smiled, then kissed his cheek.

That was the best compliment he had gotten.

Though now he’s kind of torn between showing it off and hiding it away before one of these attendees figures out that he doesn’t belong.

He rocks back and forth and his feet, pursing his lips, randomly clicking his tongue. Annabeth nudges him. “Your ADHD is showing.”

That’s when, finally, one of the attendees steps up to his poster. He certainly has the look of a professor, in a black cable knit sweater with grey, curly hair and a receding hairline, thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. He squints at Percy’s poster, rubbing his chin with one hand. “Interesting,” he murmurs, in a thick German accent. “Very interesting. This is yours?”

“Um.” He glances at Annabeth, who is frowning at the brochure, silently sounding out words that she can’t read. “Yep. All mine.”

“Very interesting.” He leans in closer, tilting his head. “So you agree with Pryor and Jeffreys about the skeleton-first construction, then?”

Percy blinks. Pryor and Jeffreys had written The Age of the Dromon, arguing that the ram, which had been a key feature of Roman liburnians, had gone away in ancient ship construction because of developments in how they built the hull. Right. “Yes,” he says. “The skeleton-first construction is a lot stronger than the, um,” shit, what was the name for this, Leo had only told him about a million times--oh! “Mortise-and-tenon!” He nearly shrieks. “The mortise-and-tenon method. It, um, it wears out a lot more quickly than the frame, so… yeah.” He clears his throat.

He nods. “Very interesting.” 

Percy stares. Can this guy say anything else? 

“This is very well done, young man.”

Oh. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Who are you working with?” 

“Um, June Bauer?” He winces at the accidental question. 

He frowns. “I’m not familiar with her work. Where does she teach?” 

What a loaded question. “Uh… New Rome University.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s--she used to teach at Northwestern, if that helps. Um, retired,” Percy says.

The frown stays, but at least he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Hmm. Well, this is excellent research, nonetheless. I look forward to reading your dissertation.” Then, distracted by something else, he wanders off, chin still attached to his hand. 

“Who was that?” Annabeth asks. 

Percy shrugs. “Beats me. Also, what’s a dissertation?”

“It’s like a senior thesis, but, like, five hundred pages long.”

Five hundred?! “Fuck me.” 

“Maybe later,” Annabeth smirks. “It looks like you’ve got company.”

Sure enough, a smallish group of four people are approaching, led by Dr. Chase, making a beeline straight for them. “Here we are,” Dr. Chase says, gesturing. “This is the project I was telling you about. Percy, would you mind going over your poster for us?”

“No problem, Dr. C,” says Percy, smiling his least-grimace-y smile. 

As one, the adults all turn to look at him, faces politely blank, expectant.

Percy swallows. “So,” he begins, “um, this research is about the development of ship construction in the Roman empire…”

He trips up on some of the words, and at one point, he sees Dr. Chase squint in the way that usually means that Percy is speaking too fast, but all in all, he doesn’t totally fall flat on his face. His audience looks engaged, nodding along as Percy moves from point to point, and no one accuses him of being a giant fraud, which is pretty nice. 

At one point, Percy turns to the poster to indicate a specific point on his ship diagrams. When he turns back, his audience has suddenly multiplied, four people turning into a whole goddamn crowd. Each person gives him their undivided attention almost unblinking.

His mouth goes dry. “Um…” 

Dr. Chase, bless him, saves his ass once again. “Would mind starting again from the beginning, Percy?” he asks, a little bemused himself at the amount of people that had suddenly appeared. 

Silence stretches on for a moment, the muffled noise of the rest of the conference like a dull roar in his ear. 

Annabeth, behind him, coughs. 

“S-sure. No problem.” 

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. Why, oh why did he let Dr. Bauer talk him into doing this again?

He pictures the tides of Long Island Sound, gentle and rocking, unhurried and unbothered, tries to match his breathing to them. When he opens his eyes, unfortunately, the crowd hasn’t disappeared. Everyone is still staring at him. 

But Annabeth stands next to her dad, flashing him a big smile and two huge thumbs up.

Percy relaxes. He’s got this.

“Okay,” he says. “So, about the middle of the first millennium CE, ship construction went through a couple of major developments…”

This time goes much, much more smoothly. He’s not sure what it is--though it’s probably Annabeth, her face fixed in a gentle smile as she watches him speak. Gods, what did he do in a past life to deserve someone as amazing as his girlfriend? 

That’s the only reason he can do this. Hell, that’s the only reason he even thought to do this. If he didn’t have Annabeth there, encouraging him, cheering him on, he never would have had the confidence to put himself out there like this. She’s there to pick him up when he doubts himself, there to listen when he can’t explain himself, there to give him feedback when he needs to practice. 

She makes him feel so strong. She makes him feel like he can take on the world--or at the very least, that he can impress a handful of academics.

And they certainly seem impressed with his talk so far. 

“Excuse me,” says a nasally, pinched looking older British guy, face lined as though he lived his life in a state of perpetual squinting. “I find your conclusions to be suspect--wouldn’t the frame method be more susceptible to breaking than the mortise-and-tenon?”

Well, most of them, anyway.

Percy shakes his head. “You’d think, but no. If you look at the study by Steffy, you’ll see that the three-finned ram from the Athlit wreck was designed specifically to break the mortise-and-tenon hull by causing the planks to flex, so that they’d dislodge the joinerys right next to them. A blow like that can cause the wood to split right down the middle.” A blow like that had sunk Sherman Yang’s ship when they tested it out on the lake at camp last summer, the naiads practically hurling him out of the water so quickly Percy didn’t even have to dive in to save him.

“How were you able to do these strength tests?” asks another listener, an older woman with a thick Hungarian accent.

“Hands-on battle simulations,” Percy replies, easily. “We took our models and tested them in as accurate a simulation as we could make.”

“And how big were these models?” 

Percy holds his hands apart, a vague, entirely inaccurate estimate. “About thirty meters, give or take.”

Her eyes widen. “How on earth did you get your hands on such a large ship?”

Percy freezes. “Uh.”

Oh, shit.

He had forgotten--most people didn’t have dads who could summon shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea, dropping them off at Camp Half-Blood with nothing but a sand dollar and one or two exhausted, pissed off hippocampi who had had to drag them all the way there.

“Um,” he stammers, licking his lips, thinking fast--c’mon, Percy, think! “I…” He swallows, panicking. “I… b… built one.”

In the corner of his eye, Annabeth facepalms.

Simultaneously, every mouth in the crowd drops--in shock, outrage, and even excitement. “You built one?!” the woman yelps. 

Oops. “I had help,” Percy says, quickly. 

Annabeth adds a second hand to her facepalm.

“Where?” The first man asks, his bushy brows flying above the rim of his glasses.

“At my… summer camp…” 

Dr. Chase sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I mean,” Percy chuckles, shrugging his shoulders, trying not to sweat too obviously, “it was either that or lanyards, am I right?”

Dr. Chase, thank Athena, raises his hand, ready to step in. “What Percy means to say, I believe,” he says, attempting to draw their attention, “is that--”

“That’s amazing!” says another woman, probably a grad student attendee based on the fact that she’s wearing jeans. “Do you have pictures?”

Oh this is not good. “Um, not--not on me, but--”

“I do.” Annabeth takes out her phone, holding it up to the person next to her.

Percy blinks. “You do?” He doesn’t remember her taking any pictures.

She shoots him a look, two parts exasperated and one part “shut up and let me handle this,” with just a dash of fondness in the mix. Pointedly, she looks at him, eyebrows raised, indicating that he should continue.

Oh. She’s using Mist. And he needs to keep their attention on him so that they buy it. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Any more questions?” 

His audience placated for now, passing around Annabeth’s phone, he manages to finish up his presentation. After fielding a few more questions, people start to peel off, distracted by other posters and presenters in the ballroom. When everyone has finally wandered away, Dr. Chase comes up and pats Percy’s shoulder awkwardly. “Nice work,” he says, and he seems like he means it. “A little touch-and-go there for a while, hm?”

“A little.”

He chuckles. “Still, you should be proud. I don’t know how many undergraduates would be able to handle that kind of pressure.”

“I mean,” Percy says, shrugging a shoulder, “it’s about on par with leading an army. Maybe a little less.” Honestly, maybe even a little more stressful. If a monster had decided to attack the convention center and interrupt his presentation, he probably would have been relieved.

He’d been worried for a moment that he’d undone all those years of work in making Annabeth’s dad like him. And that he’d be charged with some sort of academic fraud, for the whole “I have a boat” thing without proof. Thank the gods for Annabeth, as always.

She’s looking at him now through narrowed eyes. She at least can’t be surprised--that was far from the dumbest thing she’s ever seen him do. At least his “I spent most of my time at magic greek mythology summer camp” covers are normally better than hers. As someone who spent his formative years in the real world, he’s usually pretty good at keeping the demigod thing under wraps. 

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. She pulls him off, through the dispersing crowd, lacing their fingers together, sweet and intimate, out of the hall and then down another one, and through a smaller corridor. Bringing them up to a little door, with a shake of her wrist, she pulls out her Estruscan keyring bracelet. About several of the keys have found themselves used in various misadventures, vanishing once their purpose is fulfilled, but her favorite key is still there. And, just like a clever child of Hermes, it can pick just about any lock. 

Inside is just an empty room, a little staging area surrounded by tiered desks going up, no more or less remarkable than any of the other conference rooms they’d visited before. 

“What--?” His question is cut off by Annabeth’s mouth on his. 

Surprising, but definitely not unwelcome.

It's a while before they separate again. “You’re so good at this,” she tells him, unbuttoning his shirt.

He runs his hands along the lines of her flanks. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he grins. He’d practice kissing her all day long if he could. 

She smiles, shaking her head. “No, not this,” though she does lean in for another kiss, pulling at his lower lip with her teeth. “I know you’re good at this.” They break away, Percy pulling her shirt over her head, Annabeth shucking off his. “But history. Presenting.” She runs a finger over his chest, kissing his cheek, headed towards the sensitive spot on his jaw. “Gods, you’re so smart.” 

Something about the praise vibrates through his chest. She doesn’t sound surprised, or anything, just--turned on.

“You had all those crusty academics eating out of your hand. Just, so impressed by you, knowing you know way more than they do about naval history. When you were explaining the--” Her compliment is cut off with a moan, as he leans down and starts sucking on her throat. Her blouse has a high neck, so he feels no guilt for using his teeth.  

“Watching you today, gods.” Her breath is labored as his fingers play at the waistline of her skirt. “And then thinking of you defending your dissertation.” He bites at her jugular, and she lets out a long, deep moan. 

“I don’t know what that means.” Do academics fight each other? Like, with weapons? He’s pretty sure he can take most of the people he met today. 

“It means you get to show off how smart you are,” Annabeth says, grasping his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. “I was born the day my dad defended his. Gods, it's going to be amazing to watch you go.” She yanks his belt out of his pants, tossing it to the floor. 

They miss the panel on recent translation efforts. But Percy can’t say he minds one bit. 

And when Annabeth presents him with a positive pregnancy test two months later, Percy definitely knows he made the right decision. 

4) 

He almost doesn’t realize he’s having a dream-vision at first.

It has been literal years since he’s had a demigod dream. Hell, it’s been a long while since he’s had a dream, period--being a new dad to a one-and-a-half-year-old saps too much of his energy to even think about dreaming. Once Junie is put to bed, when he’s out, he is fucking out, and he does not have the brainpower to spare to manifest any messed up subconscious fears.

Which is why when he blinks open his eyes, taking in the too-bright colors of the Parthenon and the gleaming shine of the bronze statues which are somehow all looking at him--also, you know, how the Parthenon is complete, standing as it did thousands of years ago, and not crumbled into ruins--he knows, immediately, he is being contacted by a god.

And only one god in particular would bring him to Athens.

Without even checking, he heaves himself up off the ground, folding into a kneel. “My lady Athena,” he says, “can I ask for what quest you’ve brought me here?”

“Impertinent as ever, Percy Jackson,” rumbles the goddess, but Percy doesn’t think he can sense any ill will towards him. He hopes, anyway. “Perhaps I have summoned you here for a social visit.”

“Perhaps,” he says, choosing his next words as carefully as possible. “But I assume you have too much to worry about to randomly check up on your daughter’s boyfriend.”

He lifts his head, catching her expression--stoic as always, but maybe with just the barest hint of a smile. “You assume correctly. You have become, contrary to my initial expectations, very wise in the time that I have known you.”

“Thank you.” He knows better than to do anything but accept the compliment for what it is.

“I have observed your work as a scholar in recent years, and I must say that I am surprised, yet pleased, that you have chosen to pursue such a path. I had not thought you to be suited for a world of old men and dusty papers.”

He grits his teeth. Don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait--

“I understand, as well, that though you and my daughter have,” and here her careful composition cracks, just the slightest, the tiny lift of her lips falling, “made a child together.”

Percy swallows. He figured, you know, in the abstract, that Athena would know about Junie, but hearing her say it out loud is… well, he’s just glad that Dr. Chase has always liked him. “Yes, my lady.”

“It is customary in your time to marry prior to childbirth, is it not?”

“It is.” Oh, fuck, is she going to smite him for that? “I--that is to say, we, Annabeth and I, we, um, we definitely want to get married, but, Annabeth kind of…” 

He trails off. He can’t tell Athena, goddess of war, that his daughter pissed off the queen of heaven! And if he does, he definitely can’t imply that it was because she was being too stubborn!

“I know well of my daughter’s history with my father’s wife,” Athena says, smoothly. “I come to you now with an offer of peace.”

Percy straightens his back. Peace?

Raising one graceful arm, Athena turns, indicating the structure behind her. “Look upon my temple,” she intones. The white marble shines even more powerfully against the blue and red paint, intricate scenes and figures ringing the top of the columns. “In the time of Pericles, it was built to commemorate the victory of Hellas over the armies of Xerxes the Great. It was to be the shining beacon of our world, a triumph of our power and influence over the race of men.”

The race of men might have had something to say about that, he thinks to himself.

“But it was not to be,” Athena says, mournfully. “As our influence waned, so too did our temple, until its might was all but forgotten.” 

Before his eyes, the paint fades away, ceilings and columns collapsing, the destruction of the Parthenon playing out in front of him. 

“Some two hundred years ago,” she says, her voice taking on a darker, more dangerous tone, “a grave insult was paid to the ruins of my ancient sanctuary.” Like curtains falling on a stage, darkness swallowed up the structure, swift and impenetrable. “Many treasures were taken from my temple, stolen, by foolish, greedy men, spirited away far to the north, where they have languished in unworthy hands.”

He narrows his eyes. She can’t possibly be talking about--

Athena turns back to him, her eyes blazing, somehow twice as tall. “Retrieve my treasures,” she commands, war personified, “return the prizes of Athens to their rightful place, and I shall give you my support against my father’s wife.”

“You…” Percy leans back on his haunches, staring dumbfounded up at the goddess. “You don’t happen to mean the Parthenon Marbles, do you?”

“Yes.”

“The ones in the British Museum.”

“The same,” she says, imperious as ever.

Fantastic. “Welp,” Percy says, slapping his thighs, scrambling up. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. Nice seeing you, by the way. I’ll tell Annabeth you stopped by.”

Her sharp gazes pierces him, full of fury. “You dare to refuse my support?”

He snorts. “When it means trying to get the UK to give the marbles back, absolutely. Do you know how stubborn they are about this?”

Lightning flashes behind her, nearly blinding him. “You will regret this,” Athena says, dark and foreboding. “You may have your father’s goodwill, but the queen of Olympus is clever and cunning, her displeasure swift and merciless.”

But Percy still shakes his head. “When Annabeth and I get married,” and it’s definitely a ‘when,’ it’s just a matter of when precisely, like after Junie can sleep through the night maybe, “I’d rather take my chances with Hera than try and untangle that particular can of olives.”

A growl, and a snap of her fingers, and Athena disappears.

With a start, Percy wakes up. Junie had gotten her chubby little hands around his nose, and had decided to pull.

“Ow, ow, Junie, hey,” he squawks, attempting to dislodge her grip from his face. “Hey, I’m awake, it’s okay.”

She laughs, illegally adorable, her grey eyes sparkling, squeezing harder. 

“Okay, okay,” he laughs along with her. “You got my nose, you win.”

As if she were waiting for him to admit defeat, she lets go, clapping her pudgy toddler hands together. 

“That’s right,” he picks her up, raising her above his head. “Barely sixteen months old and you already know how to take me down, don’t you? Just like your mommy.”

She smiles, waving her little fists.

Gods he loves this little monster.

Junie really is the best parts of both of them. She’s got her daddy’s hair but her mommy’s brain, quick and sharp and painfully adorable. She’s already learning to read Greek, Annabeth sitting her in her lap and sounding out vowels together, Annabeth taking her finger and tracing it over the letter shapes. This kid absorbs information like a sponge, which Percy can only assume is the natural conclusion of taking a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena and mixing their DNA together. 

Thinking about his dream, he frowns. “What do you think, Junie,” he asks his toddler. “Should I take her up on her offer?”

The baby says nothing.

“I mean,” he tilts his head, “Greece has been trying to get the marbles back for two hundred years. UNESCO has top lawyers on this. What does Athena think I can do?”

Junie blinks at him.

“On the other hand, I do really love your mom,” he admits, “and I really want to marry her. You’d like that, right? To have your parents be married?”

There’s no way she can understand what he’s saying, but she moves her head like she’s nodding. Or maybe she does understand. She is Annabeth’s daughter after all. 

Percy sighs. Dammit.

Time for a new project, he guesses.

***

Several months, a college graduation, and one relocation to Boston later, Percy growls, hurling his pencil at the wall. Mother fucker. Fuck the British Museum, fuck his tiny laptop screen, and fuck the Italian prick who decided to have the least ADHD-friendly handwriting of all time. 

Why the hell is he doing this again? Like, seriously. Why in all of Hades is he, an inexperienced, snot-nosed, first year master’s student deciding to tackle the return of the fucking Parthenon marbles of all things. Like, what is wrong with him? 

Roughly scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Percy stands up. He has to go for a walk, clear his head, or he might actually explode. 

Then he catches a glimpse of the photo pinned to the fridge.

Percy’s mom had taken it, a candid of Percy and Annabeth and Junie on a sunny day in Central Park. There, in perfect 1080p, Junie is laughing, at what he can’t even remember, her pudgy fists yanking on Percy’s hair, while her mother and the love of his life does nothing to extricate Percy from her grip, her face screwed up so hard she had tears in her eyes. 

Percy had talked a lot of shit to the goddess of war’s face, but truth be told… Hera still terrifies him a little. Which, he assumes, was her goal all along, but it would be nice to marry Annabeth without fear of something going terribly wrong--or, gods forbid, something happening to Junie. That simply was not a risk he was willing to take. Percy is content to spend the rest of his days as Annabeth’s life-partner and roommate, if it means that the queen of the heavens won’t have a reason to take out her issues on his children.

Even if the engagement ring in the back of the pantry is gathering dust. 

Sunlight, wan but warm, falls in from the window, landing perfectly on his pile of open books. “I know, I know,” he growls, speaking to the air, rubbing his face so it doesn’t get stuck in a permanent glare. “I just--I just need a few minutes, okay? Let me go down the block and get a coffee or something. Two minutes, Lady Athena.”

The light fades. Percy takes that as an acquiescence, angrily scribbling a note. He’s not sure when Annabeth and Junie will be back, but even angry as he is, he doesn’t want to worry them.

Snatching up his jacket, he slams the door shut, stomping out of his apartment building and down the streets of Boston. He must be accidentally doing his wolf stare, because people are practically flinging themselves out of his path as he hurtles down the sidewalk. Literally--some girl is walking her husky, and the poor dog actually whimpers, cowering as Percy rounds the corner. 

Coming to a stop, Percy slaps his hands over his face, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. 

He might be in over his head a little.

Sighing, he looks to his right. He’s standing outside of a Starbucks. 

Percy doesn’t drink coffee, Annabeth does. And he knows exactly how much of a coffee snob his girlfriend is. Starbucks? Overpriced, overrated, over-sweetened garbage.

He pushes the door open, sliding up to the counter. “I’ll take a… iced mocha, I guess,” he says. “Large.”

“No problem,” chirps the barista. “I’ll have that out for you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

One thing Starbucks does have going for it, though, are really good napkins for doodling.

Slumping down in his uncomfortable metal chair, elbows resting on the hard, faux-wood table, Percy takes out his pen, and doodles aimlessly on the brown napkins. No, not that pen. Just because it can write doesn’t mean that Percy wants to risk slicing his face open every time he has a stray idea. Completely out of the blue, Annabeth had gotten him a nice set of pens, and ever since then, Percy always keeps one on him. Now, if he could just remember to use the little notebook she had gotten him, too.

Percy is not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have an image in mind, just lets his pen move, drawing endless chains of triangles and stars, nebulous shapes which form themselves into Greek letters. After he catches himself writing γλαυκῶπις for the eighth time in a row, he sighs, dropping his pen, and picks up the cup, taking a sip.

Yuck. At least the chocolate outweighs the coffee taste a little.

Gods, and their cups are always, like, drenched from condensation--not that Percy can feel it, but there’s practically a whole other drink on the outside of the plastic, dripping all over Percy’s pile of doodle napkins. That must be why they give out so many.

Grumbling, he mops up the mess, ink smudged into a blue-brown slurry.

He stops. 

He squints at one of his doodles. 

Not that anyone else could tell, but Percy had apparently been trying to recreate the signature of Ottoman sultan Selim III, the guy who had supposedly authorized the Earl of Elgin to take the Parthenon Marbles. Percy had been staring at copies of his signature all damn day, trying to tell if it had been forged or copied, but classical Arabic was just so far beyond anything he could even begin to wrap his head around. It was gorgeous work, but even looking at it made Percy’s eyes swim.

This particular doodle is not his best attempt. It looks nothing like the signature. It’s smudged, blotchy, but in a way that’s… weirdly familiar. 

Snatching the napkin up, Percy bolts from the Starbucks, leaving his mocha behind.

Taking the steps of his apartment building two at a time, he bursts into his kitchen. His set up is exactly how he left it, books spread out all over the table, laptop shut and laid askew, the dry, half-eaten remains of his morning muffin on a plate on top of his encyclopedia of illuminated manuscripts--except for one book, the one on Ottoman history of the nineteenth century. It’s been opened, its pages facing the door, in the exact opposite direction of all the other books. 

“Hello?” he calls into the apartment. “Anyone home?”

No response. 

Percy approaches the table. 

From the pages, Selim III stares at him, his portrait rendered in black and white, sitting just above a figure of his signature, his tughra. 

Percy picks up the book, squinting. 

The signature is crisp, clean, a work of art all by itself. 

He looks at his napkin drawing. Blurry and smudged.

Opening his laptop, he pulls up the scans of the documents in the British museum, zooms in on the letter’s seal.

Blurry and smudged.

Percy stares. 

It… can’t be that simple, can it?

In a daze, he fires an email off to his new grad advisor. Hopefully he won’t mind Percy sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong. Hey Dr. T--was looking at the Parthenon marbles docs in the BM (don’t ask) and I noticed this weird smudge on the tughra. Lazy scribe, maybe?

And he closes his computer.

Later that night, while he puts Junie to bed, he gets a response. not sure. sent it to a colleague for a closer look. 

He can’t even be bothered to really think about it though, not with Junie looking up at him with Annabeth’s eyes, and asking for another book. “Alright, kiddo,” he acquiesces, settling in beside her. All her story books are in ancient Greek, and at age two, she’s starting to recognize the letters. “Which one are you thinking?” 

“Daw-fins, daddy,” she says, smiling.

“Dolphins, eh? Getting Mr. D on your side early, I see. As smart as mommy.” He leans down and kisses her forehead before he starts to read her the story of the sailors and their sudden dolphin madness. 

***

“Huh,” Percy says to himself a few weeks later, as he and Annabeth are chilling on the couch, watching some Netflix.

His advisor has forwarded him an article from the BBC (New evidence suggests Elgin documents to be forgeries) with an accompanying note: Amazing catch! 

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, nudging him with her elbow--a feat, since she also has an armful of a squirmy Junie to deal with.

“Update in the Parthenon marbles thing.”

That gets her attention. Anything Parthenon-related does. “Really?”

He shows her his phone.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Damn.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels his lips pulling at the sides of his mouth. 

“My mom is probably your biggest fan right now.”

He starts. “What did you say?”

Turning back to the TV, she still manages to cast him a weird look. “I said, my mom will probably love you for this.”

A beat, then Percy practically somersaults over the couch, darting into the kitchen. Wrenching open the pantry door, he shoves his hand behind their collection of flours, fingers grasping for--

“If you’re looking for any more sacrificial cookies,” Annabeth calls after him, “we burned them all when Junie got a cold.”

“Remind me to make some more,” says Percy, pulling out his prize. It’s a little dusty, streaks of flour clinging to the blue velvet. “I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles. “What, did Olympus put in a special order?” 

Percy slides back down next to her, ring hidden in his closed fist. “Can I have the baby for a sec?”

Eyes fixed to the screen, Annabeth passes her over. Junie’s hands automatically reach for his nose, ready to grab, but Percy places the ring in her grasp instead, kissing her forehead. “Hey, babe?” he asks Annabeth, handing her back. “I think our daughter has something for you.”

Annabeth takes her without a second glance. 

Then she does take a second glance.

Ring closed in her pudgy toddler fist, Junie holds it out to her.

Annabeth gapes. 

“So,” Percy says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “quick confession: I wasn’t just working on the marbles for fun.”

Annabeth just stares. Junie babbles.

“Your mom told me that if I helped get the marbles back, she’d back us against Hera if we ever got married. So…” He trails off, waiting for her response. As close as he is, he can see the tears start to well up in her eyes--a good sign. “Shall we?” he prompts.

“Oh thank all the gods.” Annabeth is crying, because she's Annabeth. And because she's Annabeth, she also wastes no time in transferring Junie to her other side, and holding out her hand so Percy can slide the ring on her finger. “I was so worried I'd have to have Chase on my Masters’ diploma, too.”

5)

Percy is making sauce when his phone lights up. He hits speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey man,” comes the tinny voice of Magnus. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy says, “I figured you were dying or something.”

Magnus’ eye roll is almost palpable. “Very funny. What’s up?”

Bringing the spoon to his lips, he blows on it, taking a taste, before reaching for the salt. Needs way more. “Do you happen to have any Varangian guards in Hotel Valhalla?”

“Varangian guards? Uh, maybe. Probably. Why?”

“I’m doing a thing on the attempted reconquest of Sicily,” he says, lowering the heat a little to a simmer, “and I’m having some trouble piecing together the Battle of Montemaggiore. Know anyone who was in it?” 

Magnus hums. “I’ll ask around. Anyone in particular you’re looking for?”

Rifling through their little spice cabinet, he makes a mental note to get a new thing of hot sauce, tipping the rest of it into the pot. “If you have anyone who fought under Harald Hardrada, that would be great.”

“Hardrada? I’m pretty sure he lives on the fifth floor.”

Percy nearly drops the bottle. “No shit?”

“Big dude, long mustache, writes poetry?”

“Yes!” He picks up the phone, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you think I could come up and talk to him sometime?”

“Sure, but I thought you were doing something on Homer’s identity?”

He groans. “Backburnered for now until she stops driving me crazy.” No matter how many times Percy tells her, he can’t just drop the “Homer was actually an Egyptian woman” bomb without some serious evidence backing that up. And forgery is not one of his strong suits. Hence the need for a different topic for the time being.

“Has everyone ever told you your life is weird?”

“No, why do you ask?”

His phone suddenly vibrates, shocking him so badly he nearly drops it into the saucepan. Almost home, texts the love of his life, a shot of serotonin directly into his bloodstream. V hungry

“Sorry, Magnus, but I gotta run. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Say hi to my cousin for me.”

“Can do.”

“And make sure you pick a date soon! Sam needs to know so she can schedule her flight home.”

“Soon as I can.” You know, when his brain isn’t melting from grading undergrad papers. And making sure Annabeth and Junie are fed. And that Annabeth doesn’t lose herself in graduate school. And finding Junie a new preschool after she destroyed a classroom last month because of a monster. His toddler is a badass. But he’s a little worried she’s gonna follow Mommy and Daddy’s example as far as school goes. 

Sometimes, he thinks that their wedding just won’t ever happen. With Athena on board, he figured it would happen sooner or later, but time just… keeps getting away from them. Which isn’t the end of the world. A lifetime at Annabeth’s side is all he really needs, Mrs. Jackson or no. But he’s seen the silver fabric she weaved for her wedding dress. It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

And, yeah, he wants to see his little Junie dancing down the aisle flinging seaweed before her mother. He wants his mom to cry a little and he wants all his friends to be there to celebrate with them. Is that so much to ask? 

Speaking of his two favorite girls--”We’re home!” Annabeth calls from the hallway. “Junie, go say hi to daddy!”

Her bare feet slapping against the floor, his daughter comes toddling in, making a beeline for him. “Hey, kiddo,” Percy says, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?”

“She’s just fine, thanks,” Annabeth says, setting her work bag down on the table. “Tell me I don’t have to wait for dinner--Margie kept me for the entirety of my lunch break, and I am starving.” 

“Just gotta make a salad and we should be good to go.” But he makes no move to finish chopping vegetables, entirely too enraptured with the way Junie smiles when Percy sticks his tongue out at her. “Let me guess,” he says. “Does my best girl want some olives?”

“Peas,” Junie says. 

“Oh, you want peas instead?”

She giggles, waving her arms. “Elaia, daddy!”

“Fine,” and he kisses her nose. “Extra olives for you.”

“Chip off the old block,” Annabeth says.

Handing her back to her mother, Percy sighs. “When am I going to get a kid who likes anchovies?”

“I’m doing my best here, okay?”

***

Hardrada is… not what he expected.

“Reputation isn’t that bad.” Hardrada is saying. “The production isn’t what it should be, but lots of her lyrics are still on point.” 

“The production ruins it,” Percy insists. “And as a follow up to 1989? It's just bad.” 

“And what about Lover?”

“What about Lover?”

“You can’t argue with the genius of that one.”

“It is terribly inconsistent,” Percy shoots back. “Yeah, ‘The Archer’ and ‘Daylight’ and ‘Miss Americana’ are sublime, but ‘ME!’? Come on!”

“Are you one of those people who thinks she peaked at Red?”

“Red is a bop from start to finish,” Percy fires back. “But she definitely peaked at folklore.”

“Thinking she peaked at folklore is just pedestrian when ‘tis the damn season’ exists!” Hardrada yells, drawing his axe, which is then promptly flung over Percy’s head. 

As the only mortal in a room full of armed, excitable, undead Taylor Swift stans, Percy beats a hasty exit, Magnus and Jason covering him as he flees, because they’re just so thoughtful like that. Percy’s pretty sure he saw Magnus take an arrow to the knee, going down in a heap, before he shuts the door to the hotel, finding himself in a Forever 21. 

Looking over his notes later as he gets back to his apartment in the North End, he frowns. They had spent… approximately twenty minutes talking about Sicily before getting solidly off track. Who knew an eleventh century viking would have such intense feelings about pop music? 

And now he’s singing “seven” to himself as he unlocks the apartment door, because it's a good song, and because it made him think of Annabeth. And he always wants to think of Annabeth. 

“Hey, babe,” he calls into the apartment, toeing off his shoes. “I’m back!”

He gets no response.

Percy looks up, confused. “Annabeth?”

“In the bathroom,” he hears, faintly. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Totally fine!” she says, unconvincingly. 

“Alright,” he calls back. “Let me know if you need something.”

Moving Junie’s toys out of the way, he drops down onto the couch, grabbing his laptop. Hopefully he can make some sort of sense of the… notes… that he got from Hardrada. Though he’s probably going to have to trek out to Beacon Hill again, which, while not really out of his way, does mean he has to hike a bit from the Park Street station through the Commons, which makes him super sweaty and out of breath. It’s just embarrassing, walking into a hotel full of the greatest warriors of Valhalla, and Percy can barely handle a hill. 

However, he’s not so out of practice that he can’t sense Annabeth coming up behind him. “You good?”

“What do you think about getting married by the end of the month?”

“Sure,” he says, pecking at his computer. Damn autocorrect ruining all the Norse names. He keeps forgetting to download the right language package he needs. “But I thought you wanted to wait until after you turned in your portfolio?”

“Well… I might not be able to fit in my dress if we wait much longer.”

That gets his attention.

Percy turns around, slowly. Annabeth is grinning, holding a thin little piece of plastic with a circle on the end. She wiggles it. 

“Is that…?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

Her smile falls. “Are you mad?”

“What? No!” Percy slides his computer off his lap, twisting around to face her, up on his knees. “No, no, not at all. I’m not mad.” She slings her arms around his neck, pregnancy test warm against his skin. “I just…” 

Eyes warm, she looks into his, unafraid. “What is it?”

“It’s…” It’s silly, is what it is. But this is Annabeth. If he can’t tell her, who can he tell? “I just feel bad that I’ve gotten you pregnant twice before getting married.”

“Well, at least I’m not nineteen this time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a horndog.”

Percy snorts. “Me? What about you, Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before my first lecture’ Chase.”

“Jackson,” she corrects.

“Huh?”

“It’s Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before your first lecture’ Jackson.”

Grinning, he presses his mouth to hers. After all this time, she still smells like lemons, her lips soft and warm. “Not yet it’s not.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

And, well, Percy can’t think of a better plan.

+1

Jamie hisses. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispers, the sound dropping like a stone in the dead lecture hall. “Goddamn shit fuck ass.”

And the worst part is, she’d actually spent a lot of time preparing for her Latin midterm. She’d made flashcards, she’d drilled noun endings, she’d even slept with the textbook under her pillow for fuck’s sake. 

Typical--the moment she sits down to take the test, it all goes out the window. 

“Legistne carmen longum de Troiano,” she reads under her breath, as though saying it out loud will unlock some hidden secrets of the cosmos. 

Nope. Nothing. The multiple choices remain as inscrutable as ever.

“Psst.” 

Jamie looks up. 

There’s a four year old staring at her. 

“Hi,” Jamie says. 

“Hi,” says the four year old. Junie, her name is, she thinks. 

Mr. Jackson, Jamie’s Latin TA, will bring his kids to class with him sometimes--his wife works full time, and Jamie guesses that they can’t afford a babysitter. She’s a cute kid, quiet, usually sitting in the corner of the lecture hall, drawing or even knitting, sometimes with her little sister playing with toy ships next to her. 

Now, she’s still staring at her. “What’s up?” Jamie asks.

“Bello,” says Junie.

Jamie blinks. “Sorry?”

“Legistne carmen longum de bello Troiano.” 

She squints down at her test sheet, attempting to visualize her flash cards. That’s… “Bello” is the right answer.

The fuck? The fucking four year old can speak Latin? “Thanks,” she whispers. 

Junie beams at her.

Darting her eyes to the front of the lecture hall, Jamie spies her professor, Buck, completely conked out at his desk, his chest rising and falling with his snores. Percy is nowhere to be seen, his laptop open at his chair. “What’s the next one?” Jamie turns her paper so that Junie can see better.

“Pluto Proserpinam infelicem cepit,” she announces, perfectly accented.

Jamie points to the one after that.

“Rex qui pontem fecit erat Ancus Martius.”

“Awesome.” 

The door to the lecture hall opens. Jamie whips around in her seat, startled, and sees her TA, walking down the steps. From the corner of her eye, Junie disappears, booking it to her dad, who scoops her up without missing a beat. “Hey kiddo,” he murmurs, smiling crookedly. “Were you bothering my students?” Then he glances at Jamie. “Sorry about that--hope she wasn’t too annoying.”

But Jamie shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Dammit. 

Still smiling, Percy makes his way back down to his seat. Junie grins at her over his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s neck.

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Buck had droned on and on about Mr. Jackson, about how he was one of the best up-and-coming classics scholars in the world, how he could have had his pick of PhD programs, and how NYU was lucky to have him. He got first pick of assistantships this semester, apparently, but had volunteered to teach Latin 1001, and they should all be grateful, because he had done some beautiful new translation of Virgil for his Master’s thesis, and they were all going to learn a lot from him. 

Turning back to her exam, Jamie snorts. Of course a guy like that would have a kid who could speak perfect Latin. 

She really should have just stuck with German instead.