#Construction Traps

[siffrins-therapist]

opening scene in ch 7 of my vampire!sif wip

[mamawasatesttube]

"Your hands are freezing." from the prompt list :]

Ma hasn't been sleeping too well lately, since Kal went missing. Now that he's back home, safe and sound in Metropolis, Kon has finally managed to succeed in turning Ma's own gentle-but-firm bullying techniques on her so that she'll actually get some rest, and you bet he's gonna be riding that high for a while.

It's a pretty warm spring day, so Kon decided he'll take the outside chores while Pa handles the inside ones. And he's breezing through 'em pretty fast! He's milked the cows, fed the chickens, collected the eggs, and weeded the kitchen garden, and...

And the entire time, Kal's been in the sky, way up out of sight, staring at him.

At this point, it's getting kinda ridiculous. Kon dumps the last of the kitchen scraps into the compost, washes his hands off at the hose, and leaps into the sky.

The sun buoys him up, full of energy and warmth as the air grows cooler around him. The farmhouse grows tiny under his feet, all the lush fields and farmland sprawling out towards the horizon. His TTK keeps the wind from mussing his hair as he zooms higher (up, up and away, right?), until he zips through a wisp of cloud and slows.

Kal, caught red-handed, gives him an awkward smile, clearly trying not to look too guilty. "Ah," he says. "So you noticed me."

"Uh, yeah, dude." Kon squints at him. His cape flaps behind him in the breeze; he's fiddling with the edge of it with one hand, almost like he's nervous. Since when does Kal get nervous? "You've been watching me for, like, an hour. It's getting freaky, man. What's going on?"

Kal rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. Isn't that wild? Superman, sheepish? What's gotten into him?

"Sorry," he says. "I, just, hm... How do I put this..."

He drifts closer, his eyes never leaving Kon's face. Kon tilts his head to one side, studying him. He looks... tired. Not, like, physically tired—that would be alarming, 'cuz they're in direct sun—but like, tired. Kon heard vaguely about the stuff that happened with Kandor, with Preus, but looking at Kal sets off some alarm bells. He knows what happened, but what happened?

Kal reaches out, and his palm brushes Kon's cheek.

Kon scrunches up his face in mild protest. "Dude, your hands are freezing! How long—"

Kal jerks away as if burned. Horror flashes through his eyes before he wrests it back behind the curtain. "I'm sorry!"

Kon blinks. "Uh... you didn't hurt me or anything." What is going on with Kal? "Your hands're just cold. You've been up here since way before I noticed you, haven't you?"

On impulse, he reaches out and grabs Kal's hands. They're cold, but he knows to expect that now; it only takes him a second to focus the energy behind his eyes, to warm them back up. Kal's the one who taught him that trick, just a few months ago, when his heat vision started to come in.

"I've... been here for a while, yes." Kal's voice is oddly soft, almost... fragile. He's staring at their joined hands like they contain all the secrets of the universe, and, uh, wow, Kon is definitely missing something here. "I'm sorry for freaking you out."

Kon's pretty sure Kal's the one who's actually freaked out, but if he says that, he knows Kal will deny it and shoot off back towards Metropolis. "No big," he says instead, and grins wryly. "You may as well come down 'n' come in, though. Pa's making cobbler."

Something eases in Kal's expression, and Kon knows he said something right. Warmth settles into his chest.

"Pa's making cobbler?" Kal raises an eyebrow, glancing down towards the itty-bitty farmhouse far below. "Ma let him?"

"He promised he wouldn't make a mess with the flour this time." Kon grins. "But maybe you better check on him, just to be sure."

A little of the ever-present weight on Kal's shoulders seems to fall away as he smiles. "You do make a compelling argument, Kon-El. Maybe I should."

"I make great points all the time, Kal-El." Kon squeezes his hands, bursting with pride. Kal's approval always makes him feel like he's basking in sunlight all over again. "C'mon, then. Krypto'll be excited to see you, too. And you can bring back treats for Lois!"

"Yes, yes, you've already persuaded me," Kal laughs. He lets go of Kon's hands to ruffle his hair, and Kon squawks in protest, ducking his head. "Let's go."

"Last one home's a rotten egg!" Kon crows, and zooms downward.

He can still hear Kal laughing behind him.

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[shizuostrans]

Minidura #13 [Eng]

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[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something trapped kid in a pipe at a home renovation and his older brother going in to save him Eddie and saving his sisters from their parents and Eddie reconstructing his life in the aftermath of Shannon…

[captainjonnitkessler]

The problem. The FUCKING problem with renovations. Is that they always start off small, you know? I once tried to replace the fan in my bathroom and ended by ripping the entire bathroom down to bare studs and replacing literally everything in it.

Take my washing machine, for instance. I want to move it twenty feet over to create a little laundry area in the basement. I'll have to reroute some plumbing, nothing too onerous. Except.

The concrete floor in the new area is a disaster. Last guy painted it with the wrong paint, it's scratched and marred and stained, it has to go. No problem! You can rent concrete grinders from Home Depot, grinding and repainting should take less than a week if I'm being lazy about it. Except . . .

Now that everything is moved out of the way for the grinding, I'm thinking about the lally pole that supports the main beam of the house. It's right in front of the basement door and makes it really hard to move things in and out of the basement. If I could move it over just three feet that problem would be solved. But even if a structural engineer signs off on that, I'll have to cut up the floor to remove it, which of course will delay the grinding and painting. No problem! I can spend that time painting the ceiling (it's too low to put in a drop ceiling, but if you paint the ceiling and everything in it one color it has a great effect). Except . . .

If I'm going to paint the ceiling I need to pull down all the gross, mouse-infested insulation from the rim joists and replace it with foam board insulation, which will also hopefully help with the severe pillbug infestation we have down there.

Except, as I'm up there pulling down the insulation, I can't help but notice how awful the romex wiring is. Just wires absolutely everywhere, they look like shit in a way that a coat of paint won't hide. Not to mention that my electrical panel is overflowing with romex. Surely, surely it would be easier and neater to just put up a few runs of nice clean conduit, and re-wire that half of the house while I'm at it so the breakers in the kitchen quit tripping.

And that's how moving a washing machine twenty feet ends up taking three years and thousands of dollars.

[peliginspeaks]

Listen, I'm sorry to the people who draw Veils in torn/bloody robes because of the whole Vake thing but you're simply wrong. Do you think Veils would Ever go out like that. Do you think it doesn't have fifteen changes of clothes ready immediately, with options depending on the day and occasion, to climb into when it comes back from killing things. Of course it does. Veils is getting home, taking a shower in the Bazaar, putting on a new perfectly clean robe with accent panels and silk trim, and then dabbing 1 (one) tasteful bloodstain on the hem of it with a claw because it's arrogant and it thinks it can get away with it. What is a Veils if it's not serving cunt. Of course it is.

[whatwooshkai]

2?

(important context in tags)

Dani sucks in a breath, and prepares for the worst. "There's no way you're fitting in that."

Blades gives her a blank look, the dress halfway up his thighs. "Huh?"

Even if there weren't love handles spilling over the waistband of his boxers, there's no way in hell Blades is fitting into anything Dani owns. He's taller than her, his shoulders are broader, and he's far more filled out. "You're not fitting in that."

"Why?" Blades asks, seemingly genuinely curious.

Because you're fat, is on the tip of Dani's tongue, but she holds it. Blades isn't even human on most days, she shouldn't subject him to human problems like body image issues. "We're not the same size," she settles on, tapping a beat on her arm. "You're bigger than me. And I'd rather you not rip that dress."

Blades' frown gets deeper, but he shimmies out of the dress and pulls back on the old tshirt and jeans from her dad, the only clothes they had that would fit him. "I could get smaller?" he offers.

Dani shakes her head. "No, you can't," she tells him. "You're not... y'know."

"Right," Blades mutters, crossing his arms over his chest. Dani can see the outline of his stomach through the shirt. How can he not be insecure about that? "But I don't like these clothes, I like your clothes. Your dad has no sense of style."

Dani cracks a smile at that. "No, he doesn't. But, uh..." she shifts, staring at the dress crumpled on the floor. Maybe she should've let him stretch out that dress. She always looks a little off in it... "I could take you shopping," she offers, and Blades absolutely lights up.

"Really?" he says, grabbing her hands. "Can we go to the mall? Oh, I've always wanted to do that-" he cuts himself off suddenly, eyes growing wide. "Oh my Primus. You have to buy me a pretzel."

Dani bites the comment on her tongue and forces herself to match his energy. "Of course!" she promises, squeezing his hands back. "You should enjoy your time as human!"

Blades' grin lights up the whole room.

Dani sighs when he turns away, babbling about all his plans and gathering up the clothes scattered on the floor to get an idea of what he wants. He's so excited, Dani wishes she could genuinely match that energy.

Maybe I could stand to learn a thing or two from him.

[nighthaunting]

You ever have a moment where you reconsider something you thought a lot about in the past but then sort of turned your attention away from for a while, and your new perspective just blows the whole thing open?

Me thinking about russ and magnus during ATS/PB today after years of taking a break from HH/40K lore yielded one such series of revelations.

I was thinking about Betrayer and Russ' attempt to give Angron a lesson via the Night of the Wolf. I was thinking about Prospero Burns and Russ' belief that he's had a direct line to Magnus this whole time via Kaspar. I was thinking about that 'please'. And.

I know this is pretty much canon to the text but I've never before really Considered that one of Russ' motives in keeping this guy alive and sending him out on compliances with his Legion was (Russ believed at least) letting Magnus see the SW in action and hoping that this might influence him into trying to Avoid doing anything that might cause Russ to be sent after him.

In the past I've talked a lot about the SW keeping Kaspar around to see what would happen in terms of thinking the TS were up to something or going to do something to the Legion, which is very much the assumption the Chaos entity wanted them to make, but looking back I tbh think i slept on the concept of Russ, who canonically has taken out at least one of the Lost Primarchs in an event which is prefers not to speak (or at least the codex Strongly Implies that Russ has been used against another primarch before), and who also canonically went into the Night of the Wolf fully willing to die to make his point to Angron if only Angron could understand what he was doing.

I'm sort of compelled by the concept because in a sense Russ was letting (what he thought was) Magnus take a peek behind the barbarian mask he likes to put on, to see into a more genuine heart of his legion, letting his guard down a bit by allowing this obviously-compromised spy in. Much the same way he let the mask drop when he went to try and talk some sense into Angron, bringing up philosophy and reading and ideals that Russ' ignorant-but-noble barbarian persona would never admit to being interested in let alone reading.

And both times the gambit failed, in Magnus' case because it wasn't Magnus on the other end of the line, and in Angron's case because he was too far gone to really get what Russ was illustrating for him.

The whole thing was orchestrated so well, ironically giving the "proof" that Magnus was up to something via this sleeper agent spy that the SW were toting around with them, playing on Russ being curious enough to keep this guy around and connect the dots on the (false) links between this guy and the TS. I have this headcanon that Russ and Lorgar were actually fairly close, with Russ actually talking to Lorgar about Lorgar's writings, because he didn't seem surprised that Russ had read them and had thoughts on them in Betrayer, so I actually sort of like the idea that he had a hand in setting up the fall of Prospero? I like the tragedy of the idea that he at least had some input on the idea, being familiar enough with Russ to know he'd take the bait.

Which would make that a third time Russ got genuine with someone and had it either fail or be used against him...

[charmcoin]

i think home alone is a lovely movie but i also think it just does a good job of representing the cruelty and ingenuity of 8 year olds

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: A Gathering of Dust (2.3, LWT, 1972)

"Judging from the wound, the gun was fired from very close range; almost point-blank, I should think. Indicates the possibility of suicide."

"That's right, governor: he blows his brains out, crawls in here, walls himself up, throws the gun away, and dies laughing. That's cos he's got a sense of humour, he knows that a quarter of a bloody century later two stupid coppers are gonna go out of their mind wondering how the hell he did it!"

[kkglinka]

After v9, I legit believe that Weiss' semblance is actually inherited magic, because the Brothers' actions only destroyed the physical world. It did not destroy all the souls and magic itself, and their assumptions it had was pure conceit. Indeed, I think everything and everyone systematically popped back into existence, ascension style, after a time.

That magic restructured itself into things like aura and semblance, but here and there, took an older form. This is also why she didn't have superpowers in the jla crossover; she was an untrained (and therefore incapable) magic user in that 'verse.

[fortjester]

mutuals, forgive me for the web weaving post im constructing in my drafts rn. yes it is homestuck. yes it is mountain goats. yes im being insane abt it

[impossible-rat-babies]

I love doing the occasional pollux art bc I miss him v dearly, but it’s fun and nice to see likes bc it feels like a chorus of people going look at him go!!

[subsequentibis]

there's something really, really interesting to me about an omnipotent character or to a lesser extent a character with heightened senses transformed in some way into a human and being keenly, horribly aware of the Lack. no longer being able to sense or know thing, no longer being able to see or feel or hear, being frustrated or scared by the dulling of their senses. it's really fascinating to me.

[pochapal]

this being a fact does not preclude most of my theory from happening i think. the mansion being habitable and the mansion being complete are two separate states of affair