#I mean he was almost a cyclops' wife

[rainydays12]

I love the scenes with Grover and Ares in the new episode.

I love how the TV show built up Grover's character. This 24 year old who as a nature spirit can feel and see the natural world dying because of things like war against the natural world is talking to the god of war himself and praising war because it's inevitable. He knows that war is not good and he doesn't want it to happen but he also understands that war is necessary sometimes.

Then there's him basically realising stuff about war himself while also trying to gaslight information out of Ares by showcasing his deep sense of empathy towards what the gods are doing to their own family and kids. And using his deep understanding of nature to showcase to Ares that nature is not all flowers and butterflies. It's brutal.

It's so nice to see Grover being brave and cunning as he's usually stereotyped as the scared mom of the group. He knows that Ares can kill him in like a second but he will try to gaslight him. He's not gonna chicken out if there's a chance that the information he manipulate's out of Ares can help his friends and solve the lighting thief conspiracy thereby ending a war that might occur. He's brave and smart in his own ways.

AND the scenes are also a great way to help introduce the gods, their behaviour, and the solstice to the show watchers.

[pale-opal]

I Listened to "The Wisdom Saga" and I Have Some Things to Say - Part 1

If you haven't listened to this part of "Epic: the Musical" yet, feel free to click off this post and do that because not only are you doing yourself a disservice, I will also be giving ALL of the spoilers under the cut, and the Epic sagas are best experienced blind. It's free to listen to on YouTube, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and it's also available to buy on iTunes.

Okay. Did you listen to it? You did? Great! Now let's get into it: 1. Legendary- This is my favorite song in the saga. - Telemachus is precious and must be protected at all costs - The "l-l-l-l-legendary" is giving Hamilton (2015), not gonna lie. - I mean that in the best way possible. - Some people have pointed out that Athena's melody can be heard in the background, and we know from past songs that when her theme or ticking sounds can be heard when she's not present in the song, that means that she's just observing to see what's going to happen before getting involved. - And that's a good thing, considering what's about to happen. - But we'll get to that. - I want to talk about this part of the chorus for a second:

"Give me sirens and a cyclops Give me giants and a hydra I know life and fate are scary But I wanna be legendary" - I just think that first line is so ironic because Odysseus fought both sirens and a cyclops. - I also think the giants line is interesting, since Odysseus almost got sent to the Land of the Giants after a certain someone opened the wind bag (*cough cough* Eurylochus *cough cough*). - Now I wanna talk about these lines:

"There are strangers in our halls Trying to win the heart of my mom But she is standing tall 108 old faces of men who call me small They keep taking space and it's not much longer we can stall

Cause they're getting impatient, dangerous tooAnd I would fight them if I was half as strong as you Somebody help me, come and give me the strength Can I do whatever it takes to keep my mom safe?" - While listening to this song, I got reminded of when my 10th grade English teacher covered the original Odyssey.- A phrase she kept using to describe how the suitors were treating Penelope and Telemachus was "eating [them] out of house and home." - To sum up what she meant by that, the suitors are basically taking advantage of the concept "xenia", which is an idea the ancient Greeks had. They believed that visitors were under the protection of Zeus, and that they had to be treated with respect. - Odysseus and his men try to invoke this when they first meet the cyclops. - Because of xenia, Penelope and Telemachus are sort-of "barred" from kicking the suitors out. - And even if they could... there are one-hundred and eight (108) of them. They're horribly outnumbered. They could easily be overpowered. - Now you may be asking yourself: "How come they haven't been overpowered already?" - The original text actually gives us an explanation for that: Penelope started working on what was known as a "funeral shroud" (a fabric a dead person is wrapped up in before being buried) for Odysseus' father. - She told the suitors that she would choose one of them to marry once the shroud was complete. - However, what she DIDN'T tell them was that she was going to undo some of the work each night, thus allowing her to work on the shroud for an indefinite amount of time, or until Odysseus came back. - ...or, at least, that's what would've happened if the suitors didn't find out what she was up to. Hence why their so antsy to find out which one of them she intends to marry:

"Where is he? Where is the man who'll have you to wife? Oh Where is he? Where is the man with whom you'll spend your life? Cause it's been 20 years (20 years) And we still have no king" - And now it's time to talk about the only antagonist in the entirety of "Epic" who is a clear-cut villain with no redeeming qualities: Antinous.- I want this man defenestrated immediately. - You know how Telemachus is a young man who respects women, loves his dad, even though he's never met him, wants his mother to be happy and safe, and also wants all of these sleazy men out of his house? - Yeah, okay, well, Antinous is the complete opposite of him. Just take a look at this interaction between the two of them (cw for implications of SA):

"[ANTINOUS] Boy! When's your tramp of a mother gonna choose a new husband? ... Why don't you open her room so we can have fun with her?

[TELEMACHUS] Don't you dare call my mother a tramp! ...

[ANTINOUS, spoken] I just did! Whatchu gonna do about it, champ?" - And you want to know what Antinous does after saying all of this? - He challenges the son of the woman he supposedly wants to marry, the same son who he sees as a child despite him being twenty (based on "108 old faces of men who call me small" and how he calls Telemachus "boy"), to a fistfight. 2. Little Wolf- This was the song I was the most excited for prior to its release, and I am pleased to say that it does NOT disappoint. - One thing I noticed before the song came out is that Poseidon refers to Odysseus and his crew as a "pack of wolves" in "Ruthlessness". - Considering how animal symbolism is used in this musical, Telemachus is seen as being in the same vein as his father, but is called "little" because he isn't quite on the same level as him... not yet, anyway. - But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Fight, little wolf, fight Wanna entertain me? Bite, little wolf, bite Let's see how you take this Strike, little wolf, strike Wanna be a man? Then Fight, little wolf, fight, little wolf, fight" - The chorus is literally a bunch of grown-men trying to pressure Telemachus, who they see as a child, mind you, into fighting a man who is not only older than him, but who is also implied to be stronger, too. - They want this boy dead, and that is apparent before they line "die, little wolf, die, little wolf, die" even leaves their mouths. - I can't wait for "King" to come out. I want these posers to get what they deserve. - Oh, and as for Antinous: "You've made your worst mistake here, might be your last one too You'll have run out of bones to break when you and I are through I'll teach you all the lessonsyour daddy never couldThis cruel world doesn't give out presentsjust for being good" - While I do agree that Telemachus needs to become less sheltered, beating him to death is NOT the way to teach him how harsh the world is. That lesson is going to do him no good if he has to die to learn it. - But, of course, Antinous doesn't care about that. He only cares about dealing with the person standing between him and "his" woman. - The further I go into this, the more I want Antinous chucked out of a window. - But it's okay. It's fine, everybody. Because Telemachus' real mentor soon arrives on the scene:

"[ATHENA, spoken]Need some help?

[TELEMACHUS] What's going on here?

[ATHENA] Is your plan to stand around? Cause I suggest you fight back

[TELEMACHUS] I don't know how" - Okay, so two things: 1. Athena being totally down with helping Odysseus' kid despite this being the first time they meet is awesome. 2. Telemachus wants to fight monsters, but he doesn't even know how to properly punch a guy. I love this. He has Odysseus' heart, but not his "mind" so to speak. He wants to do all these serious and impressive things, but when the time comes for him to do so, he hasn't the foggiest idea as to how.

"[ATHENA, spoken] Uppercut him, now.

[TELEMACHUS] Woah, how did I do that? Is time now moving slow?

[ATHENA] No, I just made your thoughts quick" - I'm so glad we get this explanation of how "quick-thought" works! It doesn't slow-down time. It speeds up the mental faculties of the person under its effects, and essentially puts them in a "bubble" where they can interact with the outside world in-real time while perceiving (and acting?) faster than their surroundings (I don't know if Jay explained this anywhere else. If he did, I'm sorry for being redundant). - And then we get these absolutely raw lines from Athena: "I've no respect for bullies Those who impose their will I've seen plenty enough to truly understand this kind of filth Let's teach this dog a lesson In front of all his kind One young wolf has a larger heart than all these men combined" - THIS IS WHAT I MEANT ABOUT THE ANIMAL SYMBOLISM! Dogs are considered by many to be the descendants of wolves. A genetic relative that is not quite as feral or quite as aggressive as a wolf, even if they're wild. And based on how Athena calls the suitors "filth" (ha!) and puts extra emphasis on how wolves are stronger than them, I wouldn't be too surprised if she was talking about domesticated dogs. And that case, they don't stand a chance against - oh, wait. Hold on a second: "[ATHENA, spoken] Ooh, maybe I pushed you a bit too hard!

[TELEMACHUS, spoken] Ow..." - I can totally imagine Telemachus getting a headache or a nosebleed here. It's his first day getting into a fight, and the first time he's experiencing deus ex machina. Ya boy is not qualified for all of this. He needs a break. - Oh, and then we get Antinous being butthurt about Telemachus actually managing to rough him up a little:

"Go back and cry in your corner Make sure your mother hears If she won't choose a man to adorn her We'll bring blood and tears" - Again. Defenestration. It would suit Antinous really well.- The next song is dedicated to Telemachus receiving an answer to this question: "Athena, why did you come to my aid?"

3. We'll Be Fine - I have a confession to make: I thought this song was going to be boring. - I am SO glad I was wrong. - I also thought that this would be a Penelope song. - I was wrong about that too, but I'm sure she'll get her moment eventually. - One thing that this song accomplishes musically is that it combines the melodies of "Warrior of the Mind" and "Legendary" together, making something that sounds new and different. It feels like Athena and Telemachus really see each other as friends, and that Athena felt the same way about Odysseus - she was just to focused on being his mentor to acknowledge that until now. - Oh, and we also find out that Athena has been dealing with some serious guilt since the cyclops argument:

"I had a friend before, and He was a lot like you I helped him fight through war, but He had his demons too And then we grew apart Then his light went dark

And so, I thought Maybe, if I made a different call Maybe if I hadn't missed it all Maybe, he'd be fine Maybe we'd unwind Maybe, if I help another soul Maybe, if I helped you reach your goal Life could be that bright I could sleep at night"

- This part of the song hurts, y'all. - Athena is genuinely convinced that if she had stuck with Odysseus then he would be home safely, and that what happened between them is mostly her fault, even though Odysseus told her to her face that he wanted to be rid of her, too. - AND she's losing sleep over this man? Somebody go get him immediately.- I really want to talk about the lines referring to light for a moment: - When I first heard "Then his light went dark" I thought that meant Athena legitimately thought Odysseus was dead. Which makes the fact that she feels guilty about everything that happened even WORSE. - And then "Life could be that bright" is just her saying that Odysseus made her life better and that she was wrong about not seeing him as a friend, and that friendship is necessary for living a meaningful life. - And you know, that kind of makes me want to grab Odysseus by the shoulders and violently shake him for shouting "YOU'RE ALONE!" to Athena all the way back in "My Goodbye". Like, no she wasn't, Odysseus, she had you. And you had her. And then you both screwed it up by being too stubborn to admit that the other person had a point. Now BOTH of you are sad and lonely. - But again, it's okay. It's fine (pun not intended). Because Telemachus is still here, listening to all of this: "Athena, I don't know who your friend is I don't know what he's like, but My time with you has been splendid The best day of my life Cause I got in a fight, and I didn't die" - He literally has doesn't know who Athena is talking about, and even if he did, it wouldn't matter, because he NEVER MET HIS DAD. - Why is this song so sad? - We're three songs deep, and I am HURT. - And it's just gonna get worse from here. - On a lighter note, Telemachus says that he has really enjoyed hanging out with Athena for the past fifteen (15) minutes, and that this is actually the best day of his life. His reasoning? He survived getting jumped! Hooray! - Wait, what? That's it? That's all took for this to be the best day of his life? Just... just how bad has his life been, until now? - ... - ...hm. "Maybe, if life wasn't spent as planned Maybe, it's time that you lend a hand I don't think he'll mind If not his friend, then mine

[TELEMACHUS & ATHENA] Maybe, to fall is to learn one way Maybe, it's all gonna turn out great I know we'll be fine I know it's light you'll find" - Telemachus offers to be Athena's friend, while also telling her that it's okay for her to move on from Odysseus. - And he still doesn't know that he's talking about his dad, I can't-- "To fall is to learn one way" = "Sometimes it's okay to learn things the hard way." - Athena had to learn that friendship was something worth pursuing with others by losing the first friend she ever had, and Telemachus had to learn to stand up for himself and come out the sheltered life he's been living by getting into a fistfight. - Light is being used as a metaphor for happiness, and that makes me happy. Because Telemachus and Athena needed a friends, and they have each other now. I love that for them. - This is also the point where the "Legendary" and "Warrior of the Mind" melodies combine. I know I said earlier that was a representation of how Athena and Telemachus friendship was forming, but I would like to off this interpretation as well: - Putting "Warrior of the Mind" and "Legendary" on the same level as each other musically could be a thematic way of saying that Telemachus is a "warrior of the mind", as it were. However, since I did say that Telemachus doesn't have Odysseus "mind" before, I would like to elaborate and say that in this instance, Telemachus is being considered to be an equal to his father due to his emotional intelligence. What he lacks for in book-smarts, he makes up for in heart.

Unfortunately, my complete thoughts on this particular saga are too long for tumblr to allow as one post, so I'll have to post a part 2 later today. We'll be covering "Love in Paradise" and "God Games" then. Furthermore, please do not confuse me talking trash about any of the characters or wanting to see them face consequences for their actions as me speaking poorly of or wishing harm upon any of the actors or crew for "Epic" or any other real people, because that is not what I am doing. I hold great respect for the "Epic" team, and I am eager to see what they do in the future. That's all I can say for now. I'll see you all in a few hours with part 2. Update: Part 2 can be found here.

[epicthemusical]

Thoughts on Eury

WARNING THUNDER SAGA SPOILERS!

Now don't get into me about bashing Eury or Ody okay. I understand that both sides have their own issues but just for this post I will focus more on Eury.

Now from the very start of EPIC there has been conflict between Eury and Ody. It's not a big deal really at the start but it sets a theme for later. Eury wants to raid the island but Ody chooses not to instead decided to just head out and scout.

Now Polites is dead and Eury as the protector of the crew. His entire purpose is THE CREW no matter his feelings on Ody no matter if he considers him a brother his job and duty is to protect the crew. Does Eury realize the possible danger Ody put them in when he announced himself to the cyclops? Is he worried about it coming back to haunt them?

Now his captain is going to go to another God for help. The whole reason the war happened was the gods, Zeus making Ody chooses, Athena abandoned them. And now his captain wants to go to another one? He has to stop that and he speaks his mind. Does he know the effects his blatant distrust would have on the crew watching or was he just too worried about Ody to care?

Now he comes back with a bag and the winds whisper about treasure and he tries to resist but his curiosity keeps growing. He watches his captain become so very paranoid to the point he won't let anyone touch it. He watches his captain goes days without sleep that he starts acting almost insane calling out for his wife. He feels hurt that Ody couldn't trust him with the bag and all that curiosity and guilt and hurt he decides to open the bag.

At the start of Circe saga he tries to admit his guilt of opening the bag causing hundreds to die. Ody just waves him off and some part of him is relieved that Ody doesn't listen. But the guilt still eats at him.Then Circe happens and he is terrified. He has had too much happen with monsters and Gods that he doesn't want to fight them anymore begs Ody to not go after them. But then...Ody succeeds he gets the crew back AND a way to figure out how to get home safely. This only adds to his guilt the fact that he had been willing to leave some of the crew behind. At this point by the time they leave the underworld he has sworn to do better and trust his captain more so when he is seen as more ruthless and cruel with the sirens he doesn't question it he follows his captains orders exactly.

In the lair of Scylla he notices something is off with his captain but he can't make the same mistake as in luck runs out so when Ody gives a non answer he respects it and leaves it be. Something about the inky darkness seeping into his bones causes the overwhelming guilt to come back and he can't keep it a secret anymore. He admits to opening the bag and Ody barely reacts.

Eury would be so desperate for Ody to forgive him and he didn't think twice about following orders because maybe if he shows he has learned from his mistake Ody will forgive him. Show that he knows now the only way for everyone to get back is to follow his orders. But then he finds out what was happening and the betrayal is so deep and he really doesn't want to but he HAS to shut this down because that is no longer the captain he knows. Throughout the entire fight and even afterwards the guilt burns and he just wants to collapse but he can't he has a crew to lead now. He wonders if this is how Ody feels all the time is this what it means to be captain?

Then thunder bringer happens and he has all but given up. He is so tired already and how could he have ever thought that he could do any better than Ody? He is not surprised at the answer because of course he would choose to stay alive. The crew had mutinied, stabbed him in the back literally. They have over and over disobeyed orders causing everything to go wrong. The guilt feels like it's choking him it's overwhelming. He always made the wrong decision. First at not trusting Ody and then once again trusting this new version of Ody. No matter what he chooses the crew is hurt. As he is dying he can't help but apologize in his head for all the mistakes he had made both to the now dead crew and Ody.

[bloodyshadow1]

look, the Odyssey is a tragic story, it's one of the oldest stories we have. Yes, Odysseus eventually makes it home at the end, but he's the only one to off all the men from Ithica that followed him to Troy. Regardless of him getting home, he lost everything to do so, the favor of Athena, his men, his mind, and in the end even though he gets home he still lost 10/12 years away from his wife and son, on top of the additional 10 years he spent fighting in Troy, and he will never get them back. Epic is a musical adaption of that story.

There aren't any good guys or bad guys really. Sure there are plenty of antagonists, I wouldn't call Polyphemus, Poseidon, and Zeus good guys by any means, but they're reacting to what happened just as everyone else. Over reacting in my opinion, I think in most people's opinion, but still Epic and the Odyssey is about people who make the wrong decisions and have to live with the consequences.

You can't really blame any character, because almost everyone is in the wrong at some point in the story. I see people condemn Eurylochus, for the mutiny and for being the one to open up the bag, but it's far more complicated than that. No, he shouldn't have opened the bag, but the story is about how people keep making mistakes, and things that seemed small turn out to be the worst thing they could have possibly done. If you're going to blame him for the rest of the fleet being smashed by Poseidon, you could also blame Odysseus for not finishing off Polyphemus, or even worse doxxing himself to the cyclops. You could blame Odie for not swallowing his pride and actually giving Poseidon the actual apology he demanded while holding the lives of hundreds of his men in his hands, instead of trying to use his silver tongue to deny responsibility. and you can keep going in circles until you're horse but the fact is there's enough blame to share in a tragedy like Epic/the Odyssey.

[elfecassepied]

hellooooo!!!

yap to me about your Dsmp x Epic AU!! I'd love to hear about it!! :DDDDDD

Yeeeesss *vibrating*

Me with this au right now:

Ok so. I'm a big fan of the Odyssey and Epic the musical, the story of the AU isn't a 100% copy of these sources materials mostly characters like and lore like. For what I've seen now the narrative course is the same than the musical until the Vengeance Saga (the Vengeance Saga rocks but I want to do something a little different and maybe closer than the original Odyssey. I'm not sure yet but I just love the Phaeacians so much I will do something including them). I don't really care about the Troy war (I mean in the au, I love classicals Iliad included) so I didn't bother matching dsmp's characters for Iliad's characters, like Diomedes, Aganemnon, Helen and all.

Dream is the reigning king of Ithaca(™) who is dragged, literally, in the L'Manberg war away from his family. George is his wife (we don't believe in gender in this house) and I chosed Tubbo to be Telemachus (inspired by one of the dynamic I sometimes see in fanfiction were Tubbo and Dream are brothers coded).

George gets a little more, proactive role I would say, in defending his house from the suitors. Suitors started to come since 11 years or something like that. He can't really fight all these men who are youngs, well equipped and full of energy when himself runs a kingdom low on resources and men where the current military force is young and unexperienced (missing the prev generation to teach them). So he uses more sneaky ways, and it's not so rare than some suitors suddenly change their mind and leave or were never been seen again after getting a little to bold. Callahan is George's confidant and "right hand man" and yes he helps him hide the bodies. George also has an ongoing deal with the god HD (Hera's role).

Tubbo doesn't know what's going on but George said him to always tell me if one of the men was rude to him (the ones who threatened his son always disappeared first). But he tries to help is own way which mostly translate by being a little shit and sometimes got into fights with the assholes, like the small feral gremlin he is.

On the other side of the sea, Dream just lost around ten of his men including his little-brother/almost-son figure Ranboo to the hands of an angered cyclop, Ponk. And follows it by having a fight with his protector god and perceived friend Technoblade, resulting in the god leaving him alone to face the new challenges on his way: especially the wrath of the god Sam, who was Ponk's boyfriend oops. He will encounter threats and allies equally, including: the god Philza and his crows minions, the shape-shifting enchanter Quackity on his island of Las Nevadas, visiting the underworld to have a chat with the prophet Karl Jacob, slaying some sirens and feeding the sea monster Nikki with some of his own men.

At first I wanted to make a parallel between the human trio Dream, George and Sapnap (Eurylochus), and a god trio XD (Zeus), HD (Hera) and PVP (as Apollo or Ares I wasn't sure). However I changed my mind, made Punz Dream's best friend and right hand man and yeeted PVP to make Sapnap himself a god because I wanted to have an unnecessary Karlnapity storyline in the background. Take it, it's free.

Also I separated Wilbur in two characters: L'Manberg Wilbur/Ghostbur named William who was the crown prince of L'Manberg and died in the war before the beginning of my story and Pogtopia Wilbur/Revived Wilbur who I call Wilbur and who is an exiled titan, ancient friend of Philza and Technoblade, playing the role of Calypso. Tommy was William's little brother and a literal toddler Dream killed by throwing him from L'Manberg's walls.

I have an ongoing theme with how mask/hiding face is linked to inhumanity and how gods or godly beings Dream will meet on his way will somehow hide a part or their full face ; and how he himself started to wear his iconic mask as he chose the path of monstrosity ; and at the same time George assassinated suitors in silence, wearing a veil and pretending to grief his husband ; while Technoblade even if he said he was done™ with humans will be befriended by Tubbo until he stops wearing his mask around him because he's growing closer to humanity. So yeah shits like that.

I will end this little vent with a non-fixed list of the gods I talked about and their domains:

XD (Zeus), king of the gods, god of order, power, lighting, possibilities and civilization

HD (Hera), queen of the gods, god of night, sleep, oaths and destiny

Sam (Poseidon), god of sea, strength, earthquakes, energy and creativity

Technoblade (Athena), god of blood, battles, vitality and strategies

Philza (Aeolus), god of winds, tempests, travelers, sailors and change

Sapnap (Apollo), god of the Sun, fire, protection and loyalty

Wilbur (Calypso), titan of music, song, chaos and free-spirit (for now *wink*Fundy*wink*) (ex titan of fire and war)

[sardonic-sprite]

SPRITE OH MY GOODNESS

NOW THAT YOU’RE BACK

Thoughts on The Underworld Saga?

ALL I HEAR ARE SCREAMS

They're mine. I'm the one screaming. Loudly.

It's so good it's so fucking. Ahhhhhhhh.

I accidentally like half memorized it already lmao, as well as Circe Saga, which I already had to catch up on and I ADORE them both, I will have literal blow-by-blow rants coming for every song in this show BUT IN SUMMARY FOR UNDERWORLD SAGA

"The Underworld"

So cool to have them GO to the underworld bc I asked my dad (who read the odyssey a long time ago) about the prophet and in the poem odysseus just summons Tireas's spirit so.

It starts quiet then eventually you actually hear the wails of the souls and it's v chilling and a great detail to add

The entire chorus is so good, it's survivors guilt in like 3 sentences, Jay, how?

I keep thinking of the infant from that night, I keep thinking of the infant from that night

POLITES!

And then it goes dead silent and then this soft wail of "waaaiiittttinnnnng!" And odysseus's reaction, oh lord, the way this of everything seems to hit home. The soft, quiet "Why, Mom?"

KEY CHANGE! DRAMA! And then unlike ending down the two previous times, where it gets softer, they end shouting DOWN JN THE UNDERWORLD! And it's almost like the underworld owns their screams too now

"No Longer You"

Tireas's voice is perfect I just. It's got this breathy edge making it ghostly ad then it's so low and soft it's kind of like

Ugh the whole song seems like a cross between a lullaby and a waltz and both are minor key and creepy as FUCK and I love it and wish I had the vocabulary to express this concept better

What?

A man who gets to make it home alive, but it's no longer you. As the audience we know what this means. Odysseus survives and makes it back but he is so vastly changed that he is "no longer" the man who left for war. But in the pernicious way of prophecies, this is left unclarified and I don't even know if Tireas does this on purpose. Maybe he genuinely sees it all fuzzy (unlikely to me given other details he gives) maybe he thinks Odysseus is clever enough to understand (you'd think he'd change his literal tune when Odysseus keeps reacting the way he does) and maybe... maybe Tireas just doesn't fuckin give a shit. Here's your prophecy bitch let's see you battle it til you come back down here to never leave again

The rage in Odysseus's voice when he screams WHO!? This might be me wanting to make him like unrealistically good with his wife, but it almost seems like rage on behalf of Penelope? Like he's angry someone perhaps tricked or forced her into wedlock? Idk it feels like if he was reacting to the idea that she was cheating, he'd scream "what" again

And tireas literally repeats himself he's so fucking unhelpfjl and tbh of course odysseus is gonna go off the rails. I can't honestly blame him 😂

"Monster"

I'm the only one who's line is haven't crossed. Um. Boyo I'm pretty sure you did a long jump over your line with the infant thing. Other than that tho it's such an interesting line esp bc it's true like. So many people have given odysseus advice and told him limits they want to set, and he's pushed through all of it. That literally has made him the primary danger to his crew in a lot of ways

OK the whole section where hengoes through the examples of the cyclops, circe the witch, poseidon the god, and finally turns to himself and the horse, basically SPITTING out the words- I love it all, I love the rhythm, the rhymes, the reasoning he goes through... so good

OK it gets quite andnthennthat soft, low "Oh, ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves" and it starts to build, he's shouting out what he's lost and what he needs to keep, and his plan, and finally screams "THEN ILL BECOME THE MONSTER"

Ugh building om that last it's so fucking interesting bc this is both corruption and sacrifice, this change that odysseus is kindnof allowing within himself. He's built up all this time thar he wants to stop losing his men, so it can be read as him being a good leader, willing to put his personal need (integrity) aside to keep them safer.

But on the other hand, who is he talking to/about the entire end? Penelope and telemachus. He's got to see them. He wants/needs to, and he's frankly doing this for them, and like it all sounded reasonable until he says he'll fucking drop a baby off a a wall "in an instant" and you go WHOA.

He's no longer himself. All itntakes is one fucking song, odysseus declares he's not just crossing his own line, the last line, he's obliterating that line completely. There is no more line for this man, anywhere. He's going to do anything he fucking has to

But not for his men. For Penelope and telemachus

It's so much devotion and corruption and love and desperation and holy hell it is so good and it flows through so naturally that you hardly notice what's really going on unti you watch thr lyrics change

So yeah I think the underworld saga is near 🙃

[goddessofeternity]

Chronicles of the Supernovas: Chosen

Chapter 24: Decisive Brawl

Nim

There was still something that we needed to do. 

The others were busy with moving Altair and getting the ship together and ready. Lady Serafina had drawn the Darkness away to give us our chance. The threat from that Atrocity was still too fresh though for Masami. Watching her now, she was fooling everyone else with her smiles and apologies, but the lies were deep in her eyes. She was ready to burst at the seams and her eyes held such bloodthirst that I was surprised that she could smile like that. The peaceful woman that we had all come to know was gone, or maybe she was never really there. I exhaled deeply glancing at Callum, because he seemed happy to have his wife back by his side. He was the one that was going to lose something if she kept it up, but the poor fool was too blind right now. 

“Hey…time to go…” Nerissa walked over and looked at me curiously. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing important…” I looked down and made a fist, feeling my energy coming back to me quickly. I never thought that I would be powerless like that. These weapons were a deadly foe. “Have your powers come back quicker?”

“Yeah actually…I feel pretty good right now.” To show her meaning, she drew the water out of the various plants and formed daggers made of water. Turning towards a tree…she sliced it and several others cleanly in half. “See? Not my best work, but still good enough.”

“Hmm yes…” I flexed my fingers and smirked at the electricity that flowed over them. I had to be almost at sixty-five percent right now. That would be enough to get us the rest of the way home. “I only worry about this Morlo…”

“Yeah…you would think that he would have shown up by now…” She scratched her head as we walked over to the ship. “He sends us all of these lackeys to face, but the big man himself just doesn't show up.”

“If he’s smart, he’ll stay away as long as he can. After the stunt that he pulled, he should stay in hiding for the rest of his life.”

“Heh…I want to get my hands on him before you do big guy…”

“Trust me little one…you won’t want to see what I do to him.” I smirked down at her as the woman finished healing Altair. It seemed that his captors took some turns roughing him up. He seemed better than he was when we first found him, but that was probably because the woman was babying him so damn much. 

“Hey cyclops! Hurry up, you old fart!” Nerissa snickered as a vein formed on my forehead and the child was lucky the woman was standing next to him and glaring at me. I picked up the pace as he chuckled behind her. “Surprised you could move that fast…”

“Listen you little fuc-” The smurf stepped into my view and I glared right back at her, but seeing the former hole in her clothes made me brush past her. She should have been more careful and not so damn reckless because of this kid. He was a walking red flag even more than Nerissa was at the time of her birth. There was always something about a star child that made the Darkness more jumpy than ever. Glanching at Nerissa, I could see why they wanted Altair so bad. Her untapped potential and power was staggering at times, and losing her was devastating to the Darkness. I could see the need to not want to fail again.

The other star children were safely hidden and protected by some of my best soldiers and Regan and Tove go on a rotation to guard them every few centuries. The Darkness was incredibly bitter about the whole thing, and I was quite smug about it. Although, being cocky about it was never in my mind for long, there was no telling what could happen when it concerned them. 

“Get on the damn ship brat…” I frowned at him over the woman’s shoulder and he laughed and strutted in with her close behind him. The others soon followed and it was finally time to head back to the temple. The woman was eager to pick up the rest of the children, but we had to secure Altair first. She thankfully didn’t fight it, but she also gave me a nasty look too. I let her have it though, she wouldn’t get the nice version of myself for long…just…just until I was sure that she was fully recovered. Callum gave me a look so that definitely meant that I had to let it go.

“Hehe…” That giggle meant that Ka’seem was once again flirting with Masami’s sister. After everything that happened and what he saw Masami do. I was surprised that he thought it was a good idea to keep pursuing that. Speaking of regrets, he was facing them now as Masami stomped over and grabbed him by the back of his throat. He let out the most unmanly squeak from his mouth as she dragged him away. Her sister was a pretty little thing, so I could see why he would attempt such a thing.

Nerissa started up the ship and Celica made her rounds to check up on everyone and I took the chance to sit back on a chair and close my eye and rest. The journey back would be enough for me to get an adequate amount of sleep.  The sounds of everyone's quiet chatter lulled me into an easy enough sleep. My mind did what it always did when it was at rest…think about her. I wondered if she was alright and healing after her fight. Or perhaps she was still fighting against them. 

Perhaps I should take Lady Serafina’s advice and check on Kay. No…I was just being sentimental right now because of Cel-

“Ow…” I opened my eye when I felt someone stand over me. I glanced out to see that she had reached her hand out to touch my shoulder. The grip I had on her wrist was turning it red. She didn’t seem fazed by it though. 

“Mmm…sorry…” I released her and she sighed before placing her hand on her hip. She looked well enough…the color was back on her face, and her eyes sparkled with intrigue. She had found some fresh clothes to wear, but I could still see the bandages that wrapped across her waist peeking under the small shirt. It is always painfully ironic that a goddess of health could heal so slowly. It was leagues better than most and was still fast, but serious injuries took her at most a week or two. 

Not that she ever got this hurt often. 

“I just want to make sure that any injuries you have are healing properly.” 

“My powers have been coming back quick enough.” I leaned back further in the chair to stare out the window. “You don’t need to waste your healing abilities on me.” 

“....” She sighed and I closed my eye again, figuring that she had walked away. “I’m alright…”

I released a breath through my nose at her tone. So small…so quiet…vulnerable. I opened my eye once more to see her standing over me with a frown. “Listen…you need to rest…stop worrying about everyone else and-”

“I’m fine-”

“You almost died Celica!” I hissed through my teeth at her, quiet enough that I didn’t disturb everyone else, but just enough frustration for her to know I was pissed off about it. She looked surprised at my tone as I sat up and rubbed a hand down my face. She had to be the most infuriating woman I had ever met! I’ve been around a long time and she was still the worst person to be around. 

“Nim…I had to keep him safe and I did that…I won’t apologize for that…”

“You’re a selfish one, you know that?” My fist tightened on the arm of the chair. Her care for children was commendable, but she made such a foolish mistake that almost cost her her life, and she felt nothing for it. “Have you thought about how everyone else would have felt with you being gone?! How would the rest of us would deal with that? Hell…do you think that is a conversation I want to have with your father?”

“I can’t help that I want to keep him safe! It’s my job! He is just a little boy who has his whole life ahead of him! I will not let the Darkness take his childhood away from him when he has already lost so much of his innocence! You can’t be mad at me! Not for this!”

“Goddamn it woman! You-”

She huffed out a breath before she grabbed my hand and squeezed it…tight. Tight enough that I could feel that her strength was definitely back, but not enough to break it. She didn’t stop there before she placed my hand against her chest. I furrowed my brow at the action and was about to move it, but she held firm. 

“You feel that right?” I was gonna ask what she meant, but the steady beating of her heart silenced me. “I’m alive and I’m not going anywhere. I know that everyone was worried and I’m not displacing any feelings here. If my time comes…then I would hope that I’ve done that fighting and saving someone, especially a child.”

She placed her hand on my shoulder and her eyes held my gaze hard with determination and strength radiating through her. “I’m sorry.”

“...fine…” She released me and I crossed my arms as I leaned back in the chair once more. “Just don’t let it happen again…bitch…”

“Yes of course stupid mutt.” She smiled at me before walking back to the others. The rest that I got was much needed and I only hoped that we were closer to finishing this mission so I could relax and get a damn drink, but we weren’t out of the woods yet, because the next thing I knew…I was thrown from my seat as the ship started spiraling through space. Once it began to right itself, I rushed to the front as everyone looked at a ship that was approaching us quickly. 

“What the hell is going on now?!” 

“I think something is coming at us!”

“Kid! Get further back in the ship!”

“Why?! I want to know what’s going on!” 

“You fucking brat-”

Crack!

“Get him off the glass!” Ka’seem yelled from the pilot seat and I took notice of a man outside the window. The glass was already cracked from his earlier strike, and he raised his fist to strike it again, but I moved to intercept him. I didn’t make it far as he jumped away from the glass and the ship that fired at us decided to become a battering ram. Ka’seem tried to turn the ship as best as he could, but it still slammed into us hard. It took me off my feet as I slammed into a wall. The side of the ship burst into flames and the force from space went quickly to work trying to drag us out. The woman had a grip on the child and Masami and her sister were holding onto other frames in the ship. The man from earlier burst from the flames right at Altair. A weapon raised and ready to kill him, but I charged at him with an angered cry. 

I caught the blade in my bare hands before I punched him in the jaw. He didn’t even flinch before he headbutted me. It surprised me that I reeled from it, but I suppose my abilities still weren’t fully restored. It would not matter because I would break this fool with only my bare minimum regardless. I gave him an even stronger headbutt before we spiraled through the air. I managed to get the weapon out of his hands before I slammed my fist into his face again. He retaliated in kind with his own flurry of blows. He gripped my shirt as we went through the air, and he planted his feet against a pillar before he pushed off, sending us flying across the ship and through a wall. 

“Nim!” Callum charged into the room and knocked the man off me before we all finally fell to the floor. I glanced at the other room for a quick second and saw that the woman managed to freeze the wall up, but the ship was still plummeting. Callum and the man wrestled each other for a bit before Callum kicked him across the room, remnants of his strength becoming clearer. The shaking of the ship was starting to make me sick to my stomach. 

“Ka’seem! Get the ship steady!”

“I’m fucking trying up here!”

The man roared like a beast as he fought Callum before I joined his side to combat the man as well. His rage washed over us like a plague as the force of his strikes became stronger and stronger. The only reason that this would be is if the Darkness gave him some of its power. I caught his fist before it collided with my face just as the kid shouted over all the chaos. 

“That’s him! That’s Morlo!” 

This was him?! I had to admit that I expected much more from this man and Callum shared a look with me. The room took on a sinister chill as the woman burst into the room and slammed Morlo onto the ground. He instantly coughed up blood before she slammed her heel into his nose, sending him through the floor. She blew out a chilled breath before she charged after him with a shrill cry. Callum and I were quick to follow her. 

“You son of a bitch!” She delivered a swift punch to his ribs, but he stood strong despite staggering back. “He’s just a child! All of them are!”

“Children are easily exploitable! That brat is no different bitch!” Withdrawing a gun, he shot at the woman but I jumped in front of her and cut the bullets with my sword. “I will not fail my mission again!”

“I will rip you apart for what you have done!” I held her back as she clawed at him. “Nim move!”

“We have to at least bring him back alive. Lady Serafina will want to question him…we need any information that he might have.”

“Fuck that!”

“I agree with Nim Celica…we have to take him back-” I flinched back as the man shot at us and we ducked behind various objects. I hated feeling defenseless like some mortal. My abilities needed to come back in full soon. I was ready to take him back, but if he kept this up I actually would kill him instead. The ship suddenly grinded to a halt, but the sudden force made us launch into the air. That bastard took the opportunity to launch himself at the smurf. She turned just as he grabbed her by the throat. 

I flung myself over as the zero gravity activated and punched him once more in the jaw. The woman kneed him in the stomach before Callum came over and slammed his elbow into his nose. He roared and took a hidden blade from his leg and stabbed Callum in the shoulder. Spinning through the air, the four of us finally settled on the ceiling, and we were once again in a brutal fight. 

This mortal would have never stood a chance if the three of us had our full abilities. I could feel my electricity slowly breaking through, but I could not risk it on this ship. The old fashioned way was perfectly fine with me. Morlo struck out at me, but I threw his arm down and two tapped him in the face before Callum followed up with his own punches. Morlo took a few but so did we as he proved to be a competent fighter despite our strange area of combat. The woman advanced on him too with her own blows and kicks. Her abilities seemed to be coming back as she wielded an ice dagger in her hands. I gave her a quick look before she tossed a pair to myself and Callum, and I blocked a strike to my face from Morlo. 

“The Light will taste defeat at the hands of my master! First however, I will break her spirit with the deaths of her precious Supernovas!” 

The man was a crazed lunatic as his strikes became more and more powerful by the second. His eyes were wide and crazed and saliva was spewing from his mouth. There was something in his eyes as Callum and the woman both charged at him. There was more than a growing sense of hatred, his pupils seemed to be changing. It would not be strange if he was changing in more ways than one. The Darkness seemed to be keen on making new creations. I would have to handle this quick if my suspicions were right. 

The zero gravity suddenly stopped and the four of us plummeted to the floor, but on the way down the three of us attacked Morlo as one. It was amazing how we could always be in sync when the chips were down. Callum struck towards his stomach, while the woman aimed for his heart and I went for his head. Morlo pivoted in the air and twisted just as Callum almost made contact with him. The quick turn almost made him collide his blade with smurfette, but she was quick to react and caught the blade and slammed it into his chest. I growled as he managed to dodge my swing to his head, but I continued my momentum and slashed his throat. 

He choked out some blood as we slammed through the ground and that is when he finally awakened. I didn’t react fast enough as a black mass consumed my face. I heard the others struggle next to me as we continued to crash through the ship. I was sure that I heard the others yell out for us before a harsh chill consumed my body and I realized that we were out in space now. My arms felt heavy and my sight came back and I saw the creature that Morlo became. 

The man was long gone and there was nothing but an amalgamation of various parts of different creatures mixed into the man. Most of the mass was a dark ball of liquid that was slimy to the touch and frankly I didn’t like that I could taste some it either as it wiggled across my face. Morlo or what was left of him was in the center of it. Only his head was visible, but his eyes had sunken deep into his skull and a shrill scream emerged from his mouth every few seconds. The thing that worried me the most was the fact that the mass seemed to be heading back to the ship and I could barely move. Glancing to my left, I could see Callum struggling to break me from its grasp. The woman was completely covered but she was fighting back against it. 

“Hey fucker!” I looked up as Nerissa was falling towards us with her ax raised over her head. Ka’seem was close behind her as they both collided with the mass, sending us further into space. Nerissa managed to sever Callum away from the beast and Ka’seem managed to dig me out. I spit out some of its disgusting gunk before moving towards the woman, but she didn’t need any help as the mass that had her started to freeze over. 

I flinched back as she shatter the mass around her and shards of ice flew out around us. Her face was red with anger as she willed her spear to her side. It was at this moment that I felt the familiar feeling of electricity coursing over me. Morlo’s face disappeared into the mass and that told me all I needed to know about finishing him off. 

Nerissa charged at the beast once more and we were all quick to follow her. The blue one managed to freeze its limbs as they swung at us with sharpened blades. Conjuring up some lightning, I managed to make a sword from it before I charged for the center of the mass. Morlo didn’t make it easy as one of the tendrils snaked out and caught me in the ribs. I coughed out a bit of blood as a chunk of my flesh stung from the wound. Such a wound would not bother me now or ever. I ducked and dodged as he shot out more tentacles at me, but Nerissa and Ka’seem came to my side and cut them away. 

The mass that was Morlo began to vomit out smaller masses that soon attacked us. Smurfette sprang into action alongside Callum and I, and the three of us made quick work of them. Although we seemed to be having the upper hand, Morlo seemed to grow larger and larger. His attacks became more targeted as well. Although our abilities were coming back at a good pace, we still needed to be cautious about the whole thing, but I wanted to finish this bastard because he had caused far too much pain. I stole a glance at the woman as she fought off the smaller enemies that were surrounding us. 

I hated feeling that this lesser being, this disgusting mortal had almost taken her away. She might piss me off, but that didn’t mean that some low life and his gaggle of imbeciles could finish her off. I roared as my sword blazed with raw power. Callum blasted the creature with his pure light and he recoiled in pain and agony and his core revealed itself. The woman floated above the mass and blasted it with her ice and his face twisted in pain as the entire thing began to freeze. I was so close to finishing this, but he was an annoying bastard. With a piercing roar, I was thrown back from him as my ears bled and my head began to spin. The others also flinched away from it, but Nerissa and Ka’seem recovered quickly. Nerissa gathered water into the air above her head before she formed a water snare for the creature, but he broke one of his tendrils free and pierced her through her chest. 

“NIM! HURRY THE FUCK UP!” 

It was easier said than done since I hated to fly and my ears were ringing, but feeling something around my waist, I looked down to see a vine. Ka’seem was almost as strong as me, so when he nodded at me and swung me towards Morlo. I knew that I had the force to knock this fucker into the next few galaxies. The others parted the way for me as Ka’seem slammed me into the mass. Callum’s light had still managed to weaken it, and it was still immobile from the ice and water from the girls. 

“N-No! I-I…the…the LIGHT!!!”

“You aren’t worthy to speak her name!” I cut through all of his disgusting body as my lightning consumed and broke him apart. The blade striking the top of his head, before I split him down the middle. Lightning crackled and sparks flew as we both roared, one of pain and one of determination and victory. His body cracked apart and exploded when I managed to cut all the way through him. We all were thrown away from him and I grunted as I managed to slam into the ship. My head was spinning as I looked over at the former mass. 

The others gathered around him and I held my head as I did as well. The only thing left of him was his split head, but the bastard still found the strength to talk.

“My…my master will…avenge me…destroy the…Light…” A broken chuckle escaped him as he began to disintegrate. “This is not…my end…you bast-”

“The Darkness has no need for weakness.” I rolled my neck as I looked down at his pathetic attempts to warn us. “They made you a monster because you were no longer needed. A brainless and weak creature that in the end still couldn’t finish the job.”

“F-Fuck you all!”

“No Morlo…you don’t get to have the last word for what you have done.” The woman moved up as her eyes glowed dangerously. Reaching a hand out, she grasped his skull and slammed it together once more. “Hell will not be your final resting place…no…I have something in mind for men like you…something far far worse than Hell…”

He yelled out more curses before the woman crushed his head into delicate shards of ice. With a final sigh, we watched as his pieces scattered away before returning to the ship, and at last we returned back to Lady Serafina’s temple to finally complete our mission. 

~~~

“You’re making this such a big deal…”

“I won’t have the brat in her home looking like…this…”

“Hey!”

“Shut up and move it…little shit…” Altair grumbled as I shoved him along through the halls of the temple. The trip back to the temple was mostly spent sleeping and feeling our energy come back, and thankfully nothing else. Now, we just had to make a final introduction. 

Opening the doors of her throne room, I inhaled deeply as I saw her looking up at the moon. She was covered in some bandages, but she looked fine from here…she always did honestly. Hearing the doors open, she turned to dazzle us with her smile. Altair even paused when she laid her eyes on him, but I just pushed him further in while the woman glared at me. 

“Altair…”

“You…you were the other voice that I heard…”

“Yes…I’m sorry if I was confusing you…” She crossed the room with slow steps and I frowned at that. She really needed to be resting and not worried about the brat, but I suppose that would be asking too much. “I just want to stress the point to you that you are safe.”

“I…I know…I feel…safe…”

“Good…” She smiled once more before she kneeled to his height and held her hand out to him. He hesitated for only a second before he took it. His face was a bright crimson as she brushed his hair back and held his cheek. “I will make sure that you never have to be scared and worried ever again. You deserve to live a life of peace and security, and I would like to give you that…for you and your grandfather.”

“W-What?! He’s alive?!” I glanced to the right of the room as a man walked into the room. He was quite young to be a grandfather. The pair ran at each other and embraced and I couldn’t help but smile at their joyous reunion. I guess the little brat did deserve a win after everything that he had been through, we all did honestly. 

“I trust that you all will get some rest?”

“I think we should be saying that to you instead, my lady.” I frowned at her before she laughed and patted my shoulder. “Seriously…”

“Oh my wolf…you worry far too much…all of you do…”

“With good reason, my lady.” Callum stepped up beside me before he looked over at Masami and her sister. “There is a lot that we have to discuss once we rest, my lady.”

“Yes I know Callum, but I want to thank all of you for protecting another one of my precious star children. You all fought valiantly and for that you have my eternal gratitude. Rest my Supernovas you have earned it. Until we meet again…”

I sighed as everyone began to break away and head home. I’d give Nerissa and Ka’seem a day before I show up to their temples and kick their asses. I needed to rest, but I didn’t want to leave her side yet. The woman smirked at me and I couldn’t help but send her one myself. I could admit that I was worried that we had almost lost her. It only meant that we still needed to train and grow ever stronger to make sure something like that didn’t happen again. 

This particular mission was over for now, but the Darkness always had more things up their sleeve. I knew that this was only the beginning and things were changing at a rapid pace. We would have to be more ready than ever, because now having the time to rest and think. Something in the air was making my hair stand on end. Something was happening and the feeling in the pit of my stomach was one that I hadn’t felt in…well it had been some time. I glanced at Lady Serafina to see if she felt what I felt, and the worry on her face confirmed it as she led Altair and his grandfather away. Ka’seem barely was out of the temple but his face changed as he stopped talking to Nerissa. I hadn’t seen him this pale in years, but the speed in which he left the temple and the raw energy that I felt suddenly shook my core. 

I ran outside the temple as I felt a familiar surge of power. Lady Serafina appeared at my side as we looked into the vastness of space. The battle…no…the war was far from over. Something had awaken and been unleashed into the cosmos again, something that should have stayed buried. This fight with the Darkness would now only get harder, fiercer, and more deadlier from this point on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[rei-ismyname]

Oh boy there is so much going on here. The start of the rehabilitation of Xavier's 'dream,' the erasure of anything Cyclops achieved, the polite fiction that the whole 'endangered species' thing didn't have Magneto and Xavier deferring to Cyclops, Logan proven right in the Schism bc the narrative kept the genocidal threats away, nobody mentioning that Logan was trying to kill Hope, or that he was the Avengers' expert on The Phoenix for some reason. You know that bird that killed the creepy perfect crush he named the school after, but when Tony Stark's arrogance puts Scott in the same position he's a villain.

The idea that 'we' failed 'him' as if Xavier hadn't spent most of the last 5 years as a pariah for very good reasons. Whatever 'did it our own way' means, as if that isn't one of Logan's defining characteristics.

IT'S NOT A SIMPLE THING. It's straight up delusional to claim so. It *should* be but people are shitbags. 'Chuck only saw one path' as if that's something to be proud of. 'Protecting those who hated and feared us til they stopped' said with a straight face as if it's a rational strategy. As if bigotry has ever been solved through the permission of the oppressor. As if decades of the strategy have led anywhere but ruin. There were less than 200 mutants left in the world until very recently, yet that mission never stopped. It maybe wasn't as effective as usual, on account of every threat being a genocidal one. Logan's class there would have been the last, but Hope and the Phoenix changed that. Good thing he didn't kill her. Almost as if Cyclops was Right and the Avengers messed everything up, kept poking the bear, then villainised the guy possessed by a cosmic entity against his will. Their fantastic idea of training Hope's body, mind, and spirit felt a little familiar. Oh yeah, that's what Scott was doing. We need to convince you he's a villain so we're telling you he was wrong and the guy who committed suicide by Phoenix was a saint.

Keep in mind Cyclops is in a maximum security solitary confinement and about to be moved to a for profit prison to be shanked. Held by a government that has sentinels and has never stopped building them. Chuck 'died without seeing his dream come true' is something that will always be true. It's not actionable. It's emotionally manipulative. Why is this man telling children this? Mutants have just started being born again - that's a win.

Look at the book it takes place in, too. Uncanny Avengers, the token, b-grade team that is too little too late, if it's even helpful. Why aren't there more mutants in the Avengers? That would make more of a difference than creating a remedial team for the non-humans. Scott and Alex's conversation gets cut off but Scott makes good points. I got you.

My dude didn't summon the Phoenix. It's the first thing he'd say. He didn't ask to be possessed, that was Tony Stark. Chuck and Mags both explicitly passed the torch to Scott as an evolution of their obsolete methods. 'Btw your dead wife is still dead.' What a dick.

That's not what happened. Xavier was on Magneto Island too. Alex has been one of the most unreliable X-Men ever. It's not something he wanted to be doing. He's bailed on the dream countless times, if he ever believed in it. He doesn't have a leg to stand on criticising Scott like this. I wonder if he enjoyed cleaning up after the 'dream' when their other brother resurfaced. Dead dad, space war, billions dead. Brainwashing traumatized teenagers woo. Clearly they don't teach The Socratic Method at Xavier's.

He's being blatantly tortured and is muzzled by the narrative because his response would break the premise. At worst, there should be shared accountability for the disastrous events following The Phoenix's visit. I don't buy The Avengers as the good guys in the event. If I'm being charitable they're control freaks. If I'm not they're the antagonists of a story who got away with their mistakes by scapegoating one guy for his actions while possessed by a cosmic abstraction.

At least they gave his dud brother a job though, right?

The Funeral of Charles Xavier

Uncanny Avengers #1 - “New Union” (2012) written by Rick Remender art by John Cassaday & Laura Martin

[7r0773r]

Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes

Patty Griffin, who covered The River's "Stolen Car" on her 1000 Kisses album, was struck by the violence that runs through the songs:

I think when I was in my thirties and digging into Nebraska, I was really just in awe of the storytelling. I wasn't listening for a big picture. It hit me over the head more recently, though, pulling it out and really listening to it again. It's just violence, violence, violence all through it. Different kinds of violences. About half of Nebraska's songs are about people reacting to this thing that's destroying them by trying to destroy something else. It's a rare, rare thing to come across a record like that, any kind of work like that. And it's so well done. He paints his masterpiece of America as a brand and what it does to people. To me, Nebraska is an album-length description of how America has struggled to find its soul, has never had much of an identity beyond the brand that's been sold over and over again to people living here. But lives are lived behind the brand, and Springsteen is unearthing them, exposing them to the light. (pp. 137-38)

***

"My big mistake," [Springsteen] insisted, "was leaving the Nebraska version of 'Born in the U.S.A.' off of Nebraska. I should have put it on there. I could have easily had it on both records. It would have made complete sense, and it would have been a fine part of the Nebraska record. It fit perfectly" (p. 184)

***

WZ: In Homer's Odyssey, the hero recovers his place as a husband and father, finds his home, but only by reentering that home, after twenty years away, disguised as a beggar, anonymous, stripped of his former glories [pause].

SPRINGSTEEN: Go on.

WZ: After war, misadventure, temptation, struggles of ego and lust, various trials, Odysseus returns to Ithaca, his true home, but the place is filled with suitors, men who want his wife's hand and control of his household. He can't simply announce himself; he's far outnumbered and would be slaughtered. So he returns disguised as a beggar. Meaning, Odysseus can only recover his position by first being nobody, Nobody, which he failed to do at the outset of his journey in a fit of hubris after escaping the Cyclops. So Odysseus learns from that earlier display of hubris and allows the suitors to treat him as nothing, a beggar in his own home, as an almost invisible man. But his power comes from exactly this, the relinquishing. From that position, he kills off the suitors who have taken his home. The point being that the only way to restore his place as man and hero was to first be nobody.

SPRINGSTEEN: Incredible.

WZ: I can't help but look at Nebraska, leading into Born in the U.S.A., as part of an artistic trajectory that somehow aligns with this. Nebraska sets it all aside, all the glory and achievement, the studio gloss, the big sounds, the band, the picture of a hero on the front cover, the interviews in which you tell the tales of your travels. It's all set aside. The recordings are loose, muddy at times, unfinished. And then you return, with Born in the U.S.A., with all the heroic trappings. But, like Odysseus, to get to the one, the heroic, you first have to give all that up. That's Nebraska. For me, the entire scope of your career, everything, fits between these two projects.

SPRINGSTEEN: It does. To this day. My perimeters were set in that moment.

WZ: In your book you actually use the word "odyssey," saying that between those two recordings was the beginning of your personal odyssey.

SPRINGSTEEN: I know that with Nebraska I was interested in making myself as invisible as possible. I just wanted to be another ghost. On that particular record. It spoke to some need in me. Some roaring need. That might have been a result of having had the kind of success that I had. But I needed to know that I could go back and be nobody. If I really needed to. It was an interesting moment. And, yes, then Born in the U.S.A. became possible. (pp. 267-69)

[bam-monsterhospital]

the life-journey of eventually landing on scott summers as my favourite superhero.

90s baby-child me vs the 90s cartoon opening: oh hay! i know that word! i know that name! i know what that is! i LOVE greek mythology! i understand this, cool eye stuff, awesome! 

(then i promptly watched almost no episodes because my brain didn’t want to keep track of everything, and i was frustrated with the ‘to be continued/last time on xmen’ constancy - i was a 90s spiderman kid rather than xmen kid)

12/13 yr old me vs xmen evolution: this. if i was a guy, this is how i’d want to be. how i’d want to look, how i’d want to act, how i’d want to carry myself. i want to live up to this. 

late teen seeing late 2000s comic book cover art of emma and scott with jean storming into the room in the background: 

-insert sideye drawing here-

early adulthood hearing tidbits of other people’s 90s xmen cartoon memories: oh, lotta complaints about cyclops, yeah okay i can see that. i can see that, maybe they thought he was boring, sure, i guess. never watched those cartoons so, enh.

still early adulthood, hearing more specific complaints about cyclops: wait what? left his wife? who’s maddelyne pryor? what happened.  i mean, i still like him, but what happened?

eventually re-delving into xmen: hah, wow this fanfic writer... that’s a very fucked up horror backstory to give scott summers (between the planecrash and recruitment).... surely it can’t be canon... ... oh my god it’s canon.

More re-delving into xmen in adulthood: oh no. oh. oh no. kait. kait, he’s my favourite. why are you nodding, what do you mean you already knew? what do you mean ‘duh’???

more. and re-examining my childhood: fuck, i’ve always liked him...

getting to the core of cyclops in marvel, going into the original xmen comics, digging through major arcs and misc storylines, finally coming across where the complaints came from, discovering lies: ... welp.

more digging, writing a goddamn academic paper on him, seeing the narrative push towards villainy post 2000, seeing the inklings and then major point where the hatred started and festered from, seeing the purposes and patterns and lines, the socio-political associations, etc etc etc: no one knows shit about scott summers! 

somewhere in there i also recognized that i always gravitated towards him because of a lot of his idiosyncrasies and qualities people like to show in a negative light, a lot of those qualities were ones I’ve struggled with and have displayed my entire life.  the self-destructive perfectionism, the seriousness he displays in everything he does, the obsessive wrangling of control specifically self-control and how that interplays with the core of his identity, on and on and on. 

[katerinaaqu]

Hehehe likewise

I am surprised that people feel like they can no longer say something just because it goes against popular beliefs. To me it is not just the thunder saga thing. It's the whole musical exactly because I had high expectations from it and ended up being yet another "loosely based on" story.

The sirens were NEVER about Penelope. They were about Odysseus's thirst for knowledge. It is just that many people who interpreted it (including the classic movie of 1950s "Ulysses") who thought the best idea would be for the sirens to sing like his wife and son. Someone else actually had a brilliant idea that the sirens were singing to Odysseus the story of his life; the most alluring and terrible thing you can hear. Either way we do not know what the sirens sounded like but we know the concept of it. It was Odysseus being thirsty for knowledge even if it hurts him. He could have blocked his ears like all the others. He chose not to.

Well I cannot hate HATE Agamemnon because all Iliad characters have flaws and all. Likewise Achilles is another disliable brat. Hahaha however Agamemnon was also a key point (something I use to my stories as well) he says to Odysseus "beware of your wife for mine killed me" so that could work as a lever of doubt to him like that analysis I made about Achilles telling him about how terrible death is but of corse Anticlea too. Odysseus knows in the original that she didn't die of old age or sickness while waiting she died out of sorrow. So what if the clock is ticking for his father indeed? Or his wife? Absolutely I agree it was a deadline. Plus the tender scene of him trying to embrace her. If was just scrapped off in the musical. Which worked against even the whole "monster" pattern that they wanted to force on the audience.

There is a big difference between "creative liberties" and "fucking up ghe whole story" especially the modern ones. If someone feels so uncomfortable with ancient literature then why choose it in the first place? Start an original story without needing to butcher the classic. Well the Trojan horse was touched in the Odyssey but yes it was expanded more in post homeric sources in the Epic Cycle. There are contradictions in the Epic Cycle but still one follows the writers and local traditions. And yes many people painted Odysseus as the bad guy almost but yes (I wouldn't say they actually work. But yes people visit them curiously to say the very least)

I would say indeed from the Cyclops Saga we began to lose every contact with what Odyssey was all about. Again if one cannot handle a story then why choose it for "adaptation" in the first place? They stripped Odysseus from his most traumatic experiences (who ironically would have assisted this whole "monster ascend" theme immensely) in the name of "monogamous relationship" even if Odysseus was a victim there and they stripped the story of what made it great in the first place and so interesting even to this day. And I felt much closer with Homer's Odysseus than I am with this "modern adaptation" because Odysseus was simply HUMAN. A complicated human being like all of us. Now much of the forced drama takes a lot of that relatability from me.

I would disagree that music is difficult medium. Music is what made Odyssey popular in the first place. Music is very stimulating. I get stimulated yo write my stories by Music alone. But I see how you mean it. Anyways okay I could also say that the songs are catchy in Melody and of course the singers are doing their best and even he himself is very passionate with creating everything but apart from that I cannot say I am really impressed though. I am impressed at how much it spread that's for sure. And I got into this for the exact opposite reason

I thought "fucking finally someone is faithful to the source!" And then after the storm I got massively disappointed that we get YET ANOTHER unfaithful fanficyion that claims is inspired by the original. I hoped that I would get something accurate. But I got crushed. There were even operas based on the Odyssey that were sang among others. So yes I was massively disappointed.

For real...Poseidon was angry because Odysseus was TOO KIND?! like what the heck?! And yeah Zeus later makes no sense being so cruel. In the Odyssey he freaking loved the guy bevause he was so religious!

Well Polites is mentioned only once and he is mentioned as "Odysseus's best friend" and "the kindest" so I guess that was the aspect. Why the hell did they wanna kill him off in the beginning? For dramatics I'd say. In one way remove Polites from the whole thing and you have no real plot. Polites became the lever for dramatics. My answer is; because the plot wasn't working without the drama. Polites had to die early because of the drama. Polites was mentioned only once and that was on Circe's Island. The choice to kill him off in my opinion was to give an epinephrine to a weakening plot.

Well I am and I am not. I like creative liberties as long as they fill some gaps or in a way add some more stuff to half made stories (see for example the I'm just a man in the musical that was a creative liberty to the Iliou Persis plot that stated just in two words that Odysseus killed Astyanax by throwing him off the wall without elaborating the song finally elaborated which was why I loved such liberties) apart from that if they are not faithful to the source I cannot say I love them. It must be great to get my attention but I see what you mean.

Hmm since you say that I wonder if you would be interested to read my fanfictions at my pinned post here on tumblr and give me your opinions and thoughts on them. I have two big ones (3 parts each) and some one-shots. I wonder since you did read the originals maybe you can give me some insight! 🙈

EPIC THE MUSICAL:

Zeus: I am gonna appear personally to you because why not and now choose my dear fellow! Yes I know I didn't give you a REAL choice years prior but now I am being clear this time so you choose them or your sorry ass?

Odysseus: Please don't make me do this! (Because the same thing worked wonders before!)

Zeus: Nope I think I will!

Odysseus: I'm sorry guys my wife waits

Them: Wtf?!

Odysseus: Sorry guys you must now join the other souls we so dramatically saw a few songs ago in the underworld. Bye!

The Odyssey:

Zeus: *never appears personally but he works as divine retribution against Odysseus comrades because Helios Hyperion wishes justice for his slain animals*

Odysseus: Makes one last attempt to save his men by sailing out of the island and actually TRYING to go home with them despite the fact he knows they are doomed from Tiresias's words and from Circe's warnings because he ACTUALLY CARES and he doesn't want to suffer the sea by himself and he wishes once more to try the inevitable and change fate even though he knows is impossible in a way adding more to the hubris thinking he can challenge fate.

[creativerogues]

Using Myths to Create a Campaign Setting...

So while researching for this Mega-Post (which will probably become one part of many), I’ve found that myths, legends and folklore as a whole is really just a cool thing to read about.

There’s so much creativity and wonder in every myth, and it’s been super fun to find story elements that have persisted all the way to the modern day.

With that said, and wait for it: Making a D&D Setting can be really really tiring.

So, after rediscovering my love of mythology, I thought I’d take a new approach to all this: Using “Comparative Mythology”.

“Wait! What’s Comparative Mythology?” I hear you ask. Well Comparative Mythology is when you compare myths from different cultures and identify all the things they share.

So let’s start this Mega-Post by ending this long-winded intro and getting to the whole point of this: The Common Myths!

The Creation of Mankind from Clay

The creation of man from clay is a thing that recurs throughout a bunch of world religions and mythologies. In this Myth, Mankind is created from dust, clay or earth by a single deity.

In Greek Mythology, Prometheus molded men out of water and earth.

In Egyptian Mythology, one of the several ‘Creator Gods’, called Ptah, is a Potter who fashions the bodies of humans (and some Gods) from clay.

The Theft of Fire

The theft of fire for humanity is another that recurs in many world mythologies. Where a deity, sometimes the deity of earth, the forge, or the deity that actually created Mankind, steals a portion of the Sun or a Magical Heavenly Flame and gives it to humanity so they don’t freeze to death or starve because they can’t cook their food.

Probably the most famous version of this Myth comes from Greek Mythology, where the Titan Prometheus stole the heavenly fire of the gods and gave it to humanity, the thing he created from clay, so they could build their first civilisation.

The Great Flood

Cultures around the world tell stories about a great flood that leaves only one survivor or a group of survivors. Sometimes the Flood is meant to restart the world, defeat a great evil, or as a punishment to Mankind for some known or unknown thing.

In the Hebrew Bible, probably the most famous example of this, God sends down a global flood that wipes out humanity, with only one man surviving and saving the world’s species by taking them aboard a giant boat.

In Greek Mythology, a Myth says that Zeus, Head of the Gods, sent down a great storm to flood the world after people started trying to sacrifice humans to him, which was completely against the Greek Laws of Hospitality and a big ol’ no-no in the eyes of Zeus.

The Dying-And-Rising God

Many Myths feature a God or Goddess who dies somehow and returns to life thanks to the help of the other Gods.

In Egyptian Mythology, Osiris, who was slain by his brother Seth, was brought back to life by his sisters Isis and Nephtys. Osiris eventually became the ‘King of the Dead’ while his Son became ‘King of the Living’, which may have something to do with a Father-like Figure giving power to their Son, which is another theme that pops up in a few cultures…

In Greek Mythology, it’s Adonis, a beautiful man born from his Mother that just so happened to be turned into a tree. But after being left in a Forest by Aphrodite and told to avoid any wild Boars (also known as Ares in disguise), Adonis immediately decided to do the opposite and hunt down the wild Boar (also known as Ares, the God of War). The fight didn’t really go in Adonis’ favour, and after Aphrodite found out, she stormed into the Underworld and demanded her Boyfriend back, and eventually Zeus got involved, deciding to split the Year in two, the warmer months (summer and spring) where Adonis would be with Aphrodite, and the colder months (autumn and winter) where Adonis would go back into the Underworld. This is why Adonis is associated so much with spring, renewal and rebirth.

The Creative Sacrifice

Many cultures have stories about divine figures whose death creates a certain part of reality. 

These myths seem especially common among cultures that are farmers or have agriculture as a major part of their society.

In Norse Mythology, the First Giant, known as Ymir or ‘The Cosmic Giant’ was killed to create the World of Norse Myth.

In Aztec Myth, after Huitzilopochtli kills his sister Coyolxauhqui and his 400 brothers, Coyolxauhqui's severed head becomes the moon, and her 400 dead brothers become the stars in the night sky.

In Greek Mythology, when the many-eyed Giant Argus was slain by Hermes, Argus' eyes were transferred by Hera to the tail of the peacock, hence the beautiful tail feathers of a peacock!

The Seat of the World

The seat of the world is usually noted as a place that sits at the centre of the world and acts as a point of contact between different levels of the universe: Usually Heaven, Earth and the Underworld.

And as a small Sidenote, there’s a LOT of mythologies and world religions that use a giant ‘Cosmic Tree’ to represent the seat of the world, and they usually describe it as “a great tree joining heaven, earth, and the underworld”, with branches that reach the Heavens and whose roots that reach the Underworld.

In Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist Mythology, Mount Meru (also recognised as Sumeru, Sineru or Mahāmeru), is a sacred five-peaked mountain, and is considered to be the centre of all universes, both physical and spiritual.

In Norse Mythology, Yggdrasil is an immense mythical cosmic tree that connects the Nine Worlds of Norse Cosmology.

In Greek Mythology, the “Seat of the World” was the City of Delphi, the literal centre of the Greek Mythological World. Delphi was almost always seen as “the belly-button of the world”, with many tales surrounding the famous Oracle of Delphi. You could also consider Mount Olympus to be a sort-of “Seat of the World” too, since that’s the famous place where only the Gods lived...

The Ideal God

This is usually referring to a King, Queen or some kind of Head of a Pantheon, a God to rule the Gods.

Even actual Official D&D Settings do this by having an ‘Overgod’.

In Norse Mythology, Odin is the Leader of the Gods.

In Greek Mythology, Zeus is Head of the Gods, though Hera (his Wife) also has some influence on the Pantheon.

In Roman Mythology, which is extremely similar to Greek Mythology, they have Jupiter as the Head of the Pantheon and King of the Gods.

In Egyptian Mythology, Ra is Head of the Pantheon, though some interpretations vary on his actual name.

And as a side-note, it seems most ‘Head of the Pantheon’ Gods are male with some sort of connection to the Sky, the Sun, or Storms, and are often extremely wise or extremely powerful, usually depicted as extremely ripped and wielding big ol’ stabby weapons...

And weirdly enough, most have some sort of connection to birds, I can’t really find out where that comes from, but it’s cool nonetheless.

The War with the Titans

This is usually the Myth that creates the “Official Pantheon” for a Place’s Religion. The Titans (or sometimes called Primordials, beings that represent chaotic and destructive elements like Fire and Lightning) fight the Gods, sometimes a few Gods die, but the Gods always win.

Again, the most famous version of this Myths is In Greek Mythology, where the Titanomachy was a ten-year series of battles consisting mostly of the Titans fighting the Olympian Gods and their allies. This event is also known as the War of the Titans, Battle of the Titans, Battle of the Gods, or just The Titan War, which is just a cool name in general...

Gargantuan Giants

By “Gargantuan Giants”, I mean Gargantuan compared to Humans, who in most cultures were less than 6 Feet Tall, so sometimes Giants were as short of 8 Feet, and others they are quite literally the size of the Universe…

In Greek Mythology, there’s the myth of Ourion (or more commonly known as ‘Orion’) the Giant, a Huntsman famous for being placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion. There’s also the Hecatonchires, also known as the Hundred-Handed Giants, as well as the Myth of the Cyclopes and a bunch of other Gods and Demigods who are described as “Giant” in size.

In Norse Mythology, there’s dozens of famous giants, also known as Jotuun in some texts. From Surtur, the fire giant that leads his kin into battle during Ragnarok, to the trickster giant Utgard-Loki, famous for annoying the Hel out of Thor and thoroughly embarrassing him in front of all the other giants.

Mythical Dragons and Serpents

Sometimes just large snakes and other times gigantic snakes, legendary snakes and serpent-like creatures appear in the folklore of a bunch of different cultures around the world. And speaking of Dragons, while they vary from region to region, they’re almost always depicted as gargantuan serpentine creatures with four-legs.

Mythical Serpents in Mythology

In Egyptian Mythology, Atum shaped the world thanks to four mythical serpents. Also in Egyptian Mythology is Apophis, a gargantuan mythical serpent that symbolises chaos, who tries to eat the sun every day as part of the Journey of Ra and his Sun-Barge/Sun-Boat.

In Greek Mythology, there’s the Lernaean Hydra, more often known simply as the Hydra, a multi-headed snake monster killed by Heracles as part of his Twelve Labours. There’s also Python, a big ol’ sea snake with the gift of prophecy, that was then promptly killed by a Baby Apollo...

In Aztec Mythology, there’s Quetzalcoatl, a giant feathered serpent (and sometimes a dragon!) characterised as the God of Wind, the Dawn, the Planet Venus, Arts and Crafts, Wisdom and Knowledge.

And another thing, it seems some Myths depict these giant snakes as pets or living weapons used by Kings, Queens or even the Gods to keep their subjects in check.

Dragons in Mythology

In Eastern Cultures and Mythologies, Dragons are usually depicted as wingless, four-legged, serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence and the ability to control rivers, the ocean, the wind and the weather.

In Western Cultures and Mythologies, Dragons are often depicted as savage, winged, horned, four-legged, and capable of breathing fire.

The Myth that founds a Custom

This myth is way more varied than the rest. Many cultures have myths describing the origin of their customs, with most societies often justifying their customs by claiming that the Gods or the Mythical Heroes of their Culture established those customs.

The Curse of Cannibalism 

Human cannibalism features in the myths, folklore, and legends of many cultures and is most often attributed to evil characters, with the idea that consuming human flesh is an evil act that usually transforms the person into a monster of some kind.

In Greek Mythology, there exists the Lamia, a woman who became a child-eating monster after her children were destroyed by Hera after Hera learnt of her husband Zeus’ little “escapades”.

In Native American Myth, there’s the famous Wendigo, a creature (or sometimes depicted as an evil spirit) from folklore, with some sources saying Wendigos are created when a human resorts to cannibalism to survive.

The Hero's Adventure to save their Lover

This is usually a story of three parts: Hero gains a Lover, Lover dies through unforeseen circumstances, and finally the Hero goes on an Adventure (most commonly going to the Underworld) to meet/save/resurrect their Lover.

This Myth can also be known as the “Hero goes to the Underworld to save their Lover” Myth, which is also super common when you look at all the different world cultures.

In an old Babylonian Myth, the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar (Goddess of Love, War and Fertility) gets trapped in the Underworld with the Queen of the Dead after trying to save her husband from the Underworld. But then Asushunamir, a gender-ambiguous individual constructed by Enki (a Babylonian Ocean God), is sent to the Underworld to save Ishtar, so I guess that’s two stories in one?

In Japanese Mythology, Japan has two Creator Deities: Izanagi and Izanami. But after the Birth of Kagi-Tsuchi (the Fire God), Izanami dies. So Izanagi decides to just go on down to the Underworld to get her back. But after lighting a torch in the Underworld when he’s specifically told not to, Izanami is understandably peeved and sends a bunch of monsters after Izanagi to chase him down until Izanagi decides to block the entrance to the Underworld with a giant rock so no monsters get out. Yay?

In Greek Mythology, Orpheus (one of Apollo’s kids) walks on down to the Greek Underworld to chat with Hades and maybe get his dead lover Eurydice back. Hades says “Yeah, sure bro! Just don’t look at her before you two get back to the World of the Living again, okay?” But Orpheus, like an idiot, decides to immediately do the opposite after thinking Hades is tricking him, and Eurydice is dragged back down in the Underworld to stay there forever...

The Sun gets eaten by a Giant Beast

This is usually what Cultures and World Religions use to explain celestial events such as an Eclipse.

In Aztec Mythology, they had a God called Huitzilopochtli (Yay! I spelt it right!) who was their Sun God and God of War and Human Sacrifice.  Huitzilopochtli also had 400 Brothers and one Sister: Coyolxauhqui. After murdering his sister, Coyolxauhqui’s severed head becomes the moon and several of Huitzilopochtli’s brothers become the stars. And now the sun is constantly at risk of being devoured by the night sky and to put this all short: Huitzilopochtli is constantly fighting off the severed head of his sister (The Moon) to stop her eating/murdering the sun and the earth. FUN!

In Norse Mythology, at some point during Ragnarok (the Norse “End of the World” Myth), the sun and moon are eaten, possibly by Fenrir, but definitely by Mythical Wolf of some variety, sources differ.

In Egyptian Mythology, the Egyptians would pray against Apophis (the giant snake in the Underworld) to squash his nightly attempts to eat the sun as it passed through the Underworld.

And as a side-note, this one doesn't have to be a Beast, sometimes the sun is stolen by a thief, or something happens and it's sealed away or just straight up nopes out and disappears for a few days...

Gods named after Planets

It’s right in the name, a lot of Gods are named after Planets, Stars, Constellations and other Celestial Objects.

In Egyptian Mythology, the Gods are actually named after the various Stars and Constellations that can be seen in Egypt’s night sky.

In Roman Mythology, examples include Jupiter, Head of the Pantheon, as well as Mars the God of War, Mercury the God of Merchants, and Venus the Goddess of Love and Beauty, as well as Neptune, Saturn and More!

The Beast to be Released and Kill the World

This is usually a Wolf, Snake, or other Giant Beast that, when the Apocalypse comes, is released from whatever bindings they have and wreak havoc on the Mortal World. Sometimes the Beast is chained away or trapped in the Underworld, but other times they’re just sleeping until the Apocalypse comes knocking…

In Egyptian Mythology, this Beast is known as Apophis, a Giant Snake trapped in the Underworld that tries every day to eat the Sun (and sometimes eat Ra too!) before Apophis is defeated by the powers of Gods and the apocalypse is stopped for another day.

In Norse Mythology, this Beast is Fenrir, a Giant Wolf and Son of the Trickster God Loki. Fenrir is bound by a series of heavy chains, and when Ragnarok (the Norse version of the Apocalypse) comes, Fenrir will break his chains and go on a big ol’ god-killin’ spree!

So there you go! I’m so sorry for having to cut quite a bit of content, since I didn’t want to make this Post a full-blown essay.

If I missed your favourite myth, or forgot to add a detail that you thought was important or cool, I apologise profusely.

The research for this Post was A LOT, and I just want to thank everyone in the Community who helped out and contributed to this thing.

I hope that when you’re building your own D&D Worlds, you can look back at this Post as inspiration for creating a pretty cool and realistic world for your Players to mess around in...

[gardenofkore]

The Theory of the Sicilian Origin of the Odyssey refers to a particular trend (particularly fashionable during the 19th century) according to which the true author of the Odyssey was a young woman from Trapani, who took inspiration from people and places familiar to her to write this famous epic poem. The postulation was made especially renowned after Victorian novelist Samuel Butler published his work The Authoress of the Odyssey in 1897 and is still debated nowadays. The main reasonings who could support the theory of a female writer are the fact that, in the Odyssey, women are depicted as more reasonable and positive than men, who act almost mechanically and aren’t as exalted as their female counterparts. While Iliad’s women are creatures who need to be protected, Odyssey’s women rule, counsel and protect. When Ulysses reaches Scheria, Nausicaa advises him to plead for help from Queen Arete rather than King Alcinous. No woman in the Odyssey is made fun of, and almost everyone of them is treated with respect, except if they committed a serious crime (like Penelope’s unfaithful handmaidens, who are showed no mercy) while men aren’t considered trustworthy and able. Also, the text is peppered with small errors (about navigation, the structure of a ship, the shape of a weapon etc) which no male author could have made.

Who, then, was she?

I cannot answer this question with the confidence that I have felt hitherto. So far I have been able to demonstrate the main points of my argument; on this, the most interesting question of all, I can offer nothing stronger than presumption.

We have to find a woman of Trapani, young, fearless, self-willed, and exceedingly jealous of the honour of her sex. She seems to have moved in the best society of her age and country, for we can imagine none more polished on the West coast of Sicily in Odyssean times than the one with which the writer shews herself familiar. She must have had leisure, or she could not have carried through so great a work. She puts up with men when they are necessary or illustrious, but she is never enthusiastic about them, and likes them best when she is laughing at them; but she is cordially interested in fair and famous women.

I think she should be looked for in the household of the person whom she is travestying under the name of King Alcinous. The care with which his pedigree and that of his wife Arēte is explained (vii. 54-77), and the warmth of affectionate admiration with which Arēte is always treated, have the same genuine flavour that has led scholars to see true history and personal interest in the pedigree of Æneas given in "Il." XX. 200-241. Moreover, she must be a sufficiently intimate member of the household to be able to laugh at its head as much as she chose. [...]

Lastly, she must be looked for in one to whom the girl described as Nausicaa was all in all. No one else is drawn with like livingness and enthusiasm, and no other episode is written with the same, or nearly the same, buoyancy of spirits and resiliency of pulse and movement, or brings the scene before us with anything approaching the same freshness, as that in which Nausicaa takes the family linen to, the washing cisterns. The whole of Book vi. can only have been written by one who was throwing herself into it heart and soul.

All the three last paragraphs are based on the supposition that the writer was drawing real people. That she was drawing a real place, lived at that place, and knew no other, does not admit of further question; we can pin the writer down here by reason of the closeness with which she has kept to natural features that remain much as they were when she portrayed them; but no traces of Alcinous’s house and garden, nor of the inmates of his household will be even looked for by any sane person; it is open, therefore, to an objector to contend that though the writer does indeed appear to have drawn permanent features from life, we have no evidence that she drew houses and gardens and men and women from anything but her own imagination.

[...]

Richly endowed with that highest kind of imagination which consists in wise selection and judicious application of materials derived from life, she fails, as she was sure to do, when cut off from a base of operation in her own surroundings. This appears most plainly in the three books which tell of the adventures of Ulysses after he has left Mt. Eryx and the Cyclopes. There is no local detail in the places described; nothing, in fact, but a general itinerary such as she could easily get from the mariners of her native town. With this she manages to rub along, helping herself out with fragments taken from nearer home, but there is no approach to such plausible invention as we find in Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, or Pilgrim's Progress; and when she puts a description of the land of Hades into the mouth of Circe (x. 508–515)—which she is aware must be something unlike anything she had ever witnessed—she breaks down and gives as a scene which carries no conviction. Fortunately not much detail is necessary here; in Ithaca, however, a great deal is wanted, and feeling invention beyond her strength she does not even attempt it, but has recourse with the utmost frankness to places with which she is familiar.

Not only does she shirk invention as much as possible in respect of natural features, but she does so also as regards incident. She can vilipend her neighbours on Mt. Eryx as the people at Trapani continue doing to this day, for there is no love lost between the men of Trapani and those of Mte. S. Giuliano, as Eryx is now called. She knows Ustica: the wind comes thence, and she can make something out of that; then there is the other great Sican city of Cefalù—a point can be made here; but with the Lipari islands her material is running short. She has ten years to kill, for which, however, eight or eight-and-a-half may be made to pass. She cannot have killed more than three months before she lands her hero on Circe's island; here, then, in pity's name let him stay for at any rate twelve months—which he accordingly does.

She soon runs through her resources for the Sirens’ island, and Scylla and Charybdis; she knows that there is nothing to interest her on the East coast of Sicily below Taormina—for Syracuse (to which I will return) was still a small pre-Corinthian settlement, while on the South coast we have no reason to believe that there was any pre-Hellenic city. What, she asked herself, could she do but shut Ulysses up in the most lonely island she could think of—the one from which he would have the least chance of escaping—for the remainder of his term? She chose, therefore, the island which the modern Italian Government has chosen, for exactly the same reasons, as the one in which to confine those who cannot be left at large—the island of Pantellaria; but she was not going to burden Calypso for seven long years with all Ulysses’ men, so his ship had better be wrecked.

This way out of the difficulty does not indicate a writer of fecund or mature invention. She knew the existence of Sardinia, for Ulysses smiles a grim Sardinian smile (xx. 302). Why not send him there, and describe it with details taken not from the North side of Trapani but from the South? Or she need not have given details at all—she might have sent him very long journeys extending over ever so many years in half a page. If she had been of an inventive turn there were abundant means of keeping him occupied without having recourse to the cheap and undignified expedient of shutting him up first for a year in one island, and then for seven in another. Having made herself so noble a peg on which to hang more travel and adventure, she would have hung more upon it, had either strength or inclination pointed in that direction. It is one of the commonplaces of Homeric scholars to speak of the voyages of Ulysses as "a story of adventurous travel." So in a way they are, but one can see all through that the writer is trying to reduce the adventurous travel to a minimum.

See how hard put to it she is when she is away from her own actual surroundings. She does not repeat her incidents so long as she is at home, for she has plenty of material to draw from; when she is away from home, do what she may, she cannot realise things so easily, and has a tendency to fall back on something she has already done. Thus, at Pylos, she repeats the miraculous flight of Minerva (iii. 372) which she had used i. 320. On reaching the land of the Læstrygonians Ulysses climbs a high rock to reconnoitre, and sees no sign of inhabitants save only smoke rising from the ground—at the very next place he comes to he again climbs a high rock to reconnoitre, and apparently sees no sign of inhabitants but only the smoke of Circe's house rising from the middle of a wood. He is conducted to the house of Alcinous by a girl who had come out of the town to fetch a pitcher of water (vii. 20); this is repeated (x. 105) when Ulysses’ men are conducted to the house of the Læstrygonian Antiphates, by a girl who had come out of the town to fetch a pitcher of water. The writer has invented a sleep to ruin Ulysses just as he was well in sight of Ithaca (x. 31, &c.). This is not good invention, for such a moment is the very last in which Ulysses would be likely to feel sleepy—but the effort of inventing something else to ruin him when his men are hankering after the cattle of the Sun is quite too much for her, and she repeats (xii. 338) the sleep which had proved so effectual already. So, as I have said above, she repeats the darkness on each occasion when Ulysses seems likely to stumble upon Trapani. Calypso, having been invented once, must do duty again as Circe—or vice versâ, for Book x. was probably written before Book v.

Such frequent examples of what I can only call consecutive octaves indicate a writer to whom invention does not come easily, and who is not likely to have recourse to it more than she can help. Having shown this as regards both places and incidents, it only remains to point out that the writer's dislike of invention extends to the invention of people as well as places. The principal characters in the "Odyssey" are all of them Scherian. Nestor, Ulysses, Menelaus and Alcinous are every one of them the same person playing other parts, and the greater zest with which Alcinous is drawn suggests, as I have said in an earlier Chapter, that the original from whom they are all taken was better known to the writer in the part of Alcinous than in that of any of the other three. Penelope, Helen, and Arēte are only one person, and I always suspect Penelope to be truer to the original than either of the other two. Idothea and Ino are both of them Nausicaa; so also are Circe and Calypso, only made up a little older, and doing as the writer thinks Nausicaa would do if she were a goddess and had an establishment of her own. I am more doubtful about these last two, for they both seem somewhat more free from that man-hatred which Nausicaa hardly attempts to conceal. Still, Nausicaa contemplates marrying as soon as she can find the right person, and, as we have seen, neither Circe nor Calypso had a single man-servant of their own, while Circe was in the habit of turning all men who came near her into pigs or wild beasts. Calypso, moreover, is only made a little angry by being compelled to send Ulysses away. She does not seem to have been broken-hearted about it. Neither of them, therefore, must be held to be more fond of men than the convenience of the poem dictated. Even the common people of Ithaca are Scherians, and make exactly the same fault-finding ill-natured remarks about Penelope (xxiii. 149-151) as the Phæacians did about Nausicaa in Book vi. 273-288.

If, then, we observe that where the writer's invention is more laboured she is describing places foreign to her own neighbourhood, while when she carries conviction she is at or near her own home, the presumption becomes very strong that the more spontaneous scenes are not so much invention as a rendering of the writer's environment, to which it is plain that she is passionately attached, however much she may sometimes gird at it. I, therefore, dismiss the supposition of my supposed objector that the writer was not drawing Alcinous’ household and garden from life, and am confirmed in this opinion by remembering that the house of Ulysses corresponds perfectly with that of Alcinous—even to the number of the women servants kept in each establishment.

Being limited to a young woman who was an intimate member of Alcinous’ household, we have only to choose between some dependant who idolised Nausicaa and wished to celebrate her with all her surroundings, or Nausicaa (whatever her real name may have been) herself. 

[...]

 The fact that in the washing day episode, so far as possible, we find Nausicaa, all Nausicaa, and nothing but Nausicaa, among the female dramatis person, indicates that she was herself the young woman of Trapani, a member of the household of King Alcinous, whom we have got to find, and that she was giving herself the little niche in her work which a girl who was writing such a work was sure to give herself.

[...]

At the same time I think it highly probable that the writer of the "Odyssey" was both short and plain, and was laughing at herself, and intending to make her audience laugh also, by describing herself as tall and beautiful. She may have been either plain or beautiful without its affecting the argument.

I wish I could find some one who would give me any serious reason why Nausicaa should not have written the "Odyssey." For the last five years I have pestered every scholar with whom I have been able to scrape acquaintance, by asking him to explain why the "Odyssey" should not have been written by a young woman. 

Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey

[st-clements-steps]

I’m not sure that the classical allusions you can read into asoiaf are always intentional. So even though I’m about to list a lot of superficial similarities between Theon and Odysseus and I’m gonna use that to say something about Theon, it’s not that I think Odysseus tells us anything about where Theon’s story is going. I personally think the classical allusions happen because of the weight of antiquity on Western thinking and because asoiaf is a rich new world made in patchwork and reconstruction from our own. (This is long, and kinda pointless so...)

Theon is an islander who, like Odysseus, has been kept away from home, and this dream of returning home is a key part what is propelling them both. Of course Theon does actually return to Pyke and feels rejected, and then what is propelling him is more the dream of glory which will in turn lead to his acceptance at home. 

Those tropes we associate with Odysseus; the sea, the bow, the women, the clever move instead of the brave brazen fight, for whatever reason, GRRM has given those to Theon. Yes the clever move turns out more problematically and is in the end less effective than it is in the Odyssey, yes we’re more overtly uncomfortable about Theon’s relationships with women than we are about Odysseus’.

Theon uses a feint to sneak into an impossibly fortified place, just as Odysseus uses a feint to get the Greeks into Troy. Of course Theon does not throw any heirs from fortified walls nor raze Winterfell to the ground but events escape from his control to almost the same place anyway. (In the Odyssey no mention is made of Astyanax’s fate and it is not until later writers that the idea becomes possible canon, of course this ambiguity about whether Astyanax has been killed and by whom could be seen as echoed by Theon’s thoughts flitting between the story the Bolton’s need him to present to the North and the events we as readers experienced…there is no truth here, it’s all fiction) (Also, if Euripedes can remake a story, perhaps an author’s version is no more definitive than a fanfic writer’s response???).

I would characterise the general view of the Odyssey as unfortunate adventurer and the Greeks viewed him as a hero.

The Romans, meanwhile, think of him as a villain, cos he's a trickster who sneaks into fortified Troy. Modern writers tend to write him as problematic, he loves his wife and child but he throws babies from walls and Penelope waits virtuously whilst he doesn't. I'm not sure if anyone has, but what if his repeated shipwrecking, his near escapes from monsters and his being held as a hostage by Calypso was written as a tragi-horror victim narrative?

It’s here where Theon’s echoes of Odysseus become important to me. Yes, Theon’s experiences are generally more overtly horrific than Odysseus’. Yes, Theon’s trauma is condensed into a much tighter time frame. No, he is not allowed any respite in the arms of immortal women. But Odysseus’ story is hardly a buoyant adventure of daring do, he initially escapes the Cyclops, Polyphemus, only to rashly boast of his name, which is what begins Poseidon’s persecution of him. Repeatedly captured, he first loses his fleet, apart from his own ship, to cannibals, he later has to journey to the Underworld, before losing his ship and the rest of his men to a shipwreck demanded by the God Helios. He is then held for seven years by the immortal Calypso, and only released when Hermes demands it of her (Theon saves himself in the end, Odysseus doesn’t escape). Although Odysseus 7 years with her tend to be dismissed as good time sex slavery to a beautiful woman, Emily Wilson’s translation shows an Odysseus filled with despair and fear, “sobbing in grief and pain,” unbelieving when she promises to send him home;

Odysseus,

informed by many years of pain and loss,

shuddered and let his words fly out at her.

“Goddess, you have some other scheme in mind,”

Having said she’ll let her leave she then claims he will “glutted” with “suffering” before he gets home and he has to appease her with “diplomatic” words. Their relationship definitely appears coercive, even if it isn’t physically abusive.

As I said before (randomly, when I was supposed to be talking about Theon’s mirroring of Patroclus), when Odysseus is shipwrecked again by Poseidon and washes up half dead in Phaeacia, he tells his story, and they laud him as a hero, gift him a ship and treasure beyond that he pillaged from Troy.

Of course the show gives Theon the opportunity of being a hero in the modern sense, sacrificing his life for the possibility that everyone may survive (let’s save the biblical allusions for another time), and to me Theon’s escape with Jeyne in the books mirrors an Oprah book of the week in its tale of survival. However his creator continues to deny Theon the label hero. When GRRM talks about Theon wanting to be hero he surely means it in the classical sense, the revered warrior (I actually have no clue what GRRM means). 

Well here is one of those classical heroes and Theon’s tale echoes his. A hero will, in one of the oldest pieces of fiction surviving today, fail, succeed, fuck, cry, expose himself to beautiful risk, travel into the underworld, be held captive, escape, hobble back to those he loves an old man (it’s magic, not abuse admittedly), fight with wrath but ultimately listen. 

He is saviour and villain, victim and abuser, failing and triumphant, because the best stories (even those filled fantastical things) reflect the complexities of being human.

In the end, a hero is the person whose story we clamour to be told. 

Tell me about a complicated man.

Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

when he had wrecked the holy town […]

and where he went and who he met, the pain

he suffered […], and how he worked 

to save his life

Homer, The Odyssey trans. Emily Wilson 2018

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)

To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants!  Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it. 

If not... to catch you up on last time....

All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill. 

Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:

So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets. 

And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form. 

The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period. 

Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in. 

Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high. 

And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm. 

Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated 

And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day. 

So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk. 

This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff

Imperial:

So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men. 

At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when. 

As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.

And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement. 

Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird. 

So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is. 

Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since.  Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar. 

After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body. 

As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it. 

It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.

Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips. 

And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would. 

Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc. 

We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you. 

But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...

It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to. 

So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target. 

Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either. 

Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.

But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!

Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...

So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?

Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:

It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying.  I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend.  It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia. 

So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange. 

It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary.  Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you. 

She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch. 

Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.

Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head. 

Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons. 

Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying. 

Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood. 

But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence. 

And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal

 Superdestroyer

On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears. 

Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...

But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get. 

Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?

Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...

Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings. 

But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...

The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome. 

Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this. 

Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.

Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves. 

WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good. 

Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works

Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left. 

Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:

Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again. 

Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition. 

All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them. 

We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them. 

Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...

Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time. 

We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out. 

So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild. 

So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.  

Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech. 

It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.

Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra.  So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store. 

Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright. 

Final Thoughts:

This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.

But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something. 

The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly.  And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series. 

Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha. 

Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!

If you enjoyed this review PLEASE join my patreon. The end of hte month is coming and I need eveyr cent I can get so join at patreon.com/popculturebuffet and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[thephoenixfirescout]

Tell me some headcanons about your favorite x-men, pretty please?

alright, I have a few headcannons to spare, and feel free to add your own! I always love sharing ideas about characters and stuff-

Brotherhood

Avalanche- Has a crippling fear of heights; he has to be grounded or else he’ll die, not ifs ands or buts. He’s a pretty talented Greco-Roman wrestler. He remembers living in Crete before coming to the states with his family, and hopes one day to visit there again.  

Pyro- though he can’t make his own fire psionically, he can steal fire from other sources, including lightening, concentrated heat sources, and a laser on one occasion. He’s not crazy, just a little bipolar. He needs some extra love and patience. Not a bad man, definitely not a bad man, he just has a habit of making some bad choices.

Toad- he’s not a toad, he’s a frog. Toads are dry and bumpy and crawl everywhere, and frogs are slimy and are great jumpers. He’s been living a lie. Also I love the idea of Toad being just this absolute Brainiac who gets all excited when he gets to talk about engineering and things all sciencey that make him happy. He deserves more love and affection stg

Blob- he might not be the brightest one of the bunch, but he sure ain’t stupid. Likes cooking, baking, grilling, and just fancies food in general. I personally see him being a great culinary mind. PIZZA PROFESSIONAL-

Scarlet Witch- Just because she emotionally distances herself, doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. If anything happened to any of these people, she’d go fucking ballistic. Periodt.

Boom-Boom- She’s not one to back away from a sticky situation if it means helping her homies, especially if she knows they’d do the same for her.

Quicksilver- I like @ohmygillygoshoppler ‘s headcannon that he likes manga and anime, and I kinda wanna roll with that, because I also like manga and anime sooo.... Also, he totally acts like he doesn’t need anybody, but let’s be real, he would do just about anything for his sister or his close friends if they needed him.

X-Men

Nightcrawler- ABSOLUTELY ADORE THIS MAN!!! MUST BE PROTECCTED AT ALL COSTS. I KNOW HE CAN USE A SWORD; I KNOW HE’S A SKILLED AND CAPABLE ACROBAT, BUT I STILL WANT TO SHIELD HIM FROM ANY AND ALL HARM, DO YOU HEAR ME???!??!?!?

Shadowcat- So, in the OG comics, Kitty became a skilled samurai by training mentally with this dude called Ogun, so I kinda wanted to implement a bit of that samurai-esque intimidation factor into a soft and squishy little Kitty Pryde. also @x-men-of-our-own ‘s version of Kitty is so cute, I love the idea of a chubby nerdy kitty who is also a badass not to be trifled with.

Jean Grey- WIFE. 10/10 best telepath, would pick her over Xavier’s bald ass any day of the week. She is kind, smart, empathetic, and almost always willing to be there to listen to your problems if you need her to. Also, I want her to be tall. Like, at least 6”10.

Cyclops- himbo. he has to be. He’s such a sweet, loveable dumbass, ya gotta love him for it.

Rogue- Keeping the gothic southern belle deal here because, lets face it; everyone loves a goth girl. And don’t let that sarcastic and sour attitude throw you, she’s a sweetheart once she starts warming up to you.

Beast- Team dad. Makes delicious sandwiches.

Storm- Team mom. Good luck getting anything pas her. She’s the type of super mom whose always eleven steps ahead of all the rest.

Logan- also team dad, but he’s gone nine months out of the year, shows up for a few months only to sort of sniff the air and go, “Sabretooooooth-” and then ride off on his motorcycle for another nine months.

Professor X- gay grandad in a wheelchair. Also he erases people’s minds, which is useful, I guess...