#and also Achilles kind of

[dr-rato]

"Somewhere in Elysium shades interact as long-lost friends"

[dootznbootz]

I currently have writer's block and fucked around and made Iliad and Odyssey memes :'D Some look like "repeats" but aren't. Just different scenarios/people. Enjoy!

There's... A LOT. I don't care if you pick out your favorites! I put this all in one post as I don't want to spam the tags! :D

[gingermintpepper]

“Your hair’s gotten longer.” 

It’s conscious effort that keeps him from tucking the strands behind his ear, from taking the knife at his hip and shearing it all off. He keeps his stance focused, attentive, there’s little else he can do when he’s taken so completely after his mother when it comes to his hair. His father scratches his chin, the clouds of his beard snaking about his finger like mist parting for mountain-peaks. Ares’ chin is still child-smooth. He can feel the tickle of his over-long fringe against his soft jaw. There’s no heart in his chest, but still he feels as though a pulse is lodged in his throat. 

Father sighs, put-upon, disappointed, and Ares feels a slight tremor start in his calves from holding himself so tense. “Well done, Ares. Go clean yourself up and get some rest. Phoebus will want to look you over later.” 

He should be ecstatic to be praised by his father. Over-the-moon with joy. There should be pride emanating from every pore of his body, the blood on his skin should be sweeter than ambrosia. 

Instead, he bows, manages a soft ‘thank you, Father’ around the lump in his throat and immediately flees the room. A mild ‘make sure to trim your hair’ hits the back of his head like a spear through the skull. He almost wishes the great door had slammed on his foot so he would have reason to feel this horrid in his retreat.  

Phoebus Apollo is waiting for him in his infirmary. 

He’s gilded as ever, gold from crown to heel. Perfect like the statues they carve of him in his temples. He has a smile for Ares when he sees him, a crinkle at the edges of his pretty eyes from the weight of his joy. Ares is waiting to see the crack in the marble, to see if that’s the chip that’ll reveal his fangs.

“Brother,” he greets, and his voice is warm - like the arms that embrace him, his voice is so warm, “Welcome back. I’ve heard you’ve done well.”  

There’s a tremble in Ares’ fingers he hadn’t noticed before. Strain from carrying his sword for so many days, a throb from wounds he hadn’t noticed he’d accrued. “Heard? There’s already gossip?” 

Phoebus blinks, disarming, demure, coquettish, “But of course,” and Phoebus’ voice is honey to Ares’ gravel, the juxtaposition is grating on his skin, “It’s Olympus. The gossip began long before you set your course.” Those warm hands lead him further into the room, bodily sits him on the chaise, pulls his helmet from his head. It’s all one, unbroken motion, “It’s summer alas, so I could not watch your war myself, but I hear it was quite the decisive victory.” 

A thousand thoughts run on horseback through his mind then. 

Did Father overhear some terrible slander that pre-emptively disappointed him? Was Ares’ victory merely a rumour, a bet his father hadn’t bothered to take? Was the gossip more enticing than the stark truth? That Ares wasn’t some child toddling about in the shadow of his sister, that his sword and spear weren’t merely for show - he’d think such a thing would warrant celebration. Not -

“Oh my,” Phoebus is in front of him, pleasant warmth more sticky heat with how close he’s pressed himself into Ares’ space. From this angle, Ares can see the multi-coloured flecks of his eyes, like shards of golden glass suspended in ichor. From this angle, with his hand so gently holding his hair, were Ares to blink too hard, he’d swear Phoebus looked just like his mother. “Your hair’s grown long again.” 

He pushes Phoebus off with such force that he bangs into the wall. It’s Phoebus, it won’t make even the impression of a scratch on him, but Ares wishes it would. Wishes he’d hit his shoulder or crack his neck or hit his head just hard enough for all that perfect, gilded gold to bleed. 

“I’m only here for you to heal me,” the tremble in his hand extends to his shoulder now. He flexes and unflexes his palm. Gods what he would give to just have a sword - “Don’t waste time with the pleasant-work.” 

Phoebus huffs, adjusts the fit of his himation, “...Only because we’re meant to be celebrating your victory.” He crosses the room in two great strides, his hair a swirling tempest behind him as he gathers his poultices and wraps. “The only reason I’ll not throw you from the window is because we are meant to be celebrating your victory.”  

There’s not enough acid in his tone for this to truly be a fight. Ares’ jaw clenches, he bites out a terse, “How benevolent.” 

“Aren’t I?” He’s got nectar and his sutures in hand, that focused look falling upon his face when he switches from overbearing busybody to Paeon of the Gods. “Now strip unfaltering Ares, let us see the measure of damage done to your indomitable flesh.” 

(Somewhere between the fifth set of stitches and the gentle frown that crosses Phoebus’ face when he notices the persistent tremble in his fingers, Ares pins his eyes to the far wall and asks, “What does it mean when Father says ‘well done’?” 

Any other sibling would mock before they gave a true response. Any other sibling would laugh and dismiss it, would say that praise is praise and any lingering ill feeling is just the worst of the war still fogging his mind. Phoebus does not answer immediately. He doesn’t make a single sound. The question settles like fetid water between them, unignorable, the scent right there on the tip of the tongue yet firmly unacknowledged. Ares closes his eyes and tries again to settle his squirming so he does not interfere with Phoebus’ work.  The metallic snip of scissors cutting thread breaks the silence. Phoebus bids him to sit up and slides his warm palms up his back until his fingers tangle gently in the ends of his hair. He twists the dark red strands until he’s gathered it all into a neat handful, holding it loosely as he switches his scissors for his shearing blade. “You should know it was not praise,” Phoebus says softly. The first of Ares cut hairs fall like viscera from his head. Phoebus treats each cutting with the sacredness of a blood-sacrifice. If he focused on the moment of tension right before the blade cuts though, Ares thinks he can imagine the agony of his sister’s sacred birth. “It is acknowledgement. Father thinks you’ve done well so he says ‘well done’.”

Gently, Phoebus releases him. Ruffles his head so all the extra hairs fall like red rain to the floor. Ares runs his fingers through the ends now curling against his ear. “Has he ever told you ‘well done’?” 

A laugh, warm and gilded, “No, and it would not make you feel better if he had.” 

Ares swallows down a thousand different questions. Phoebus wouldn’t answer them, he’s infuriating like that. Instead, he clenches his teeth, the phantom of Father’s dizzying tangle of grey cloud-hairs persistent in the corner of his eyes. “Cut it shorter.”

Phoebus doesn’t protest. He never seems to say a word when it really matters.)

[thelaundryghost]

Descent.

The first of hopefully a couple fancomics for Hades! I love this game dearly, and I wanted to explore one of the in-game quotes a bit with this. This took me about a month or so of inconsistent work, and I'm pretty happy with it!!

Hope you enjoy :D Explanation in the tags

[spineless-lobster]

Guys GUYS no no you don’t understand patroclus is amazing at cooking and achilles MISSES it!!!!! Fuck FUCK fuck just a day before he was sharing a meal patroclus prepared with the others as they tried to appeal to him and he doesn’t KNOW!!!! ACHILLES DIDN’T KNOW THAT WOULD BE THE LAST TIME HE WOULD TASTE FOOD FROM HIS BELOVED!!!!! I’m actually about to fucking crash out you don’t understand this is devastating to me

[prolibytherium]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ilions-end]

haha what's going on with the scene where the spirit of achilles visits neoptolemus at night after troy has been sacked

after telling neo how proud he is of him, achilles delivers an impassioned speech about the importance of virtue and kindness. he mentions kindness like five times because life is short and kindness makes all the difference, and then "btw i know you've just killed literally all male trojans but i need you to take priam's hottest daughter and do a human sacrifice at my tomb because i just hate trojans sooo much. if you don't i'll make sure everyone drowns on the way home. k love you bye"

???????????

[juno-stuffs]

was thinking about tsoa and made a bracelet based off it

[aroaceleovaldez]

I’m a bit nervous about sending an ask, but the curiosity has won me over, hope this isn’t too many questions

You said you headcannon Leo Valdez as dragon kin so I was wondering, do you think he has shifts often, if at all? If so, does he generally have some types of shifts more often or is it more balanced? And do the other campers and the seven know? If they do, did he tell them or did they piece it together on their own? If he told them, did he have to explain a lot or were they kind of just like “okay” and didn’t question it a lot? Like they just accepted it and didn’t want to overstep or something is what I mean

I think maybe I’m overthinking this, I really hope I’m not asking too many questions or anything

It's no worries at all! Asks/questions are always welcome!

I think his most usual shifts would be teeth/scales, but they're a lot more subtle so he either doesn't notice them as much or can ignore them. Those ones are probably semi-regular for him but again, more subtle most of the time (most of the time... every once in awhile he gets hit with a stronger maw shift and he's just sitting there gnashing his teeth at the air for like an hour cause his mouth feels weird until it goes away). Maybe also horns.

Less common ones for him but ones he'd notice more are probably wings, tail, and talons. Talons i mostly just think would be funny for him cause he has his habit of tapping his fingers as a stim. Him getting tripped up from the phantom talons while trying to stim, being confused for a minute about why his fingers aren't touching the table and he just ends up tapping out morse code into the air a couple inches above his desk instead. Wings and tail would probably just be pretty standard phantom limbs - they're just there and he's aware of them and maybe able to move them a bit. I imagine he'd eventually try to make some 'kin gear to help with those shifts specifically just so his brain stops error 404ing when his dragon limbs pass through solid objects despite his brain thinking they should be able to tangibly interact.

I don't think Leo would know what otherkin/alterhuman is when he first meets the Argo II crew, and probably wouldn't get the opportunity to learn about it for awhile. He doesn't really have the vocabulary to explain how he's feeling - just that he Is A Dragon. The rest of the crew probably also doesn't know what otherkin/alterhuman is either so they don't have an explanation for him, but, yknow, demigod life is already so goddamn weird, if Leo says he's a dragon that's not the most abnormal thing they've heard that week and they'll just take his word for it and accept it. And Jason probably understands the feeling re: being a wolf therian, even though he doesn't have the vocabulary to explain it either, so there's at least some solidarity there.

Earlier on I think Leo would just crack a lot of jokes about being a dragon, not particularly explaining how he feels about it to the others but just kind of putting the concept out there. He might try to explain it if the topic comes up but, as mentioned before, just struggle too much to try and find the words for it (the adhd/dyslexia/autism wording problems do not help there). I do like to think though that, due to their Hades/Pluto kid soul powers, Nico and Hazel would actually be able to pick up on spiritual-origin otherkin/therians/etc if they focused on it - Nico in particular, probably a lot more passively - and be able to kind of see phantom limbs/shifts sometimes (cause goodness knows how souls/spirit stuff works in the Riordanverse and I can have my self-indulgent silly alterhuman worldbuilding hcs if i want to - also at least partially inspired by some journal posts i've read of people mentioning people/animals/automatic doors picking up on their phantom limbs and being able to track the movement and stuff. if any demigod would be able to do that it's gonna be the kids with literal soul/phantom powers). I just find the concept amusing of Leo trying to explain this extremely metaphysical experience and Nico's just off to the side like "Oh yeah no, your soul is a dragon. Like, very literally. Dunno how that happened but good for you. btw why do you have ghost wings sometimes?" And Leo's grateful for someone helping him explain it but also isn't sure how he should react to statement. Eventually though one of the crew stumbles across alterhuman stuff - probably Leo or Annabeth, most likely accidentally through looking into daemonism stuff (you know they both read His Dark Materials) - and they put two and two together and finally have a means to explain it and Leo could not be more relieved (though he still doesn't know how to feel about Nico's soul comments).

I love rotating alterhuman demigods in my brain

[johaerys-writes]

Hi!!! I was wondering, do you have any headcanons for Patroclus living well without Achilles? If so, what would it take for him to be self-reliant? Born Baby Blue got me thinking because that’s a totally plausible take on an Achilles who wants more than Pathetic Patroclus.

Oof that one's a tough question. I'm honestly not sure. I think that they could both potentially reach a point where they're more or less content with their life, even when the other one isn't around (Achilles travelling the world/doing all those modelling gigs/perhaps even doing something with music like he’s always wanted, and Patroclus managing to find good work/life balance and focusing more on his relationships outside of work, spending more time with friends, meeting someone new, getting some therapy) but there’s always going to be something missing. Like whatever it is they're living isn't quite right. I just imagine Patroclus hanging out with Briseis and their other friends, or doing something he genuinely enjoys, and then it hits him that Achilles isn't in his life anymore. That he doesn't know what he's doing, and that there’s no way to have him back in his life without them both hurting in the process. He can never truly be a happy man because he's only half a man; his other half is missing and there's no way of getting it back. And all of a sudden nothing feels real.

*Cue cinematic of Pat with that thousand yard stare in the middle of a crowded room, while everything around him moves in slow mo*

[kindred-spirit-93]

about half way through a playlist for the grace siblings (courtesy of @xixovart) and i already want to go cry myself to sleep in a field of flowers. anyway now everyone has to suffer with me.

family

floofy haired jason hallelujah amen

[limblesstar]

achilles nation how do we feel about this manwhore outfit

[lonewolflink]

me, having slept ~5/6 hours a night for the last 10 days, working 16 hour days to try to finish this fuckass dissertation: brain no thinik good i can't do this i'm so tired also me: a statistical analysis of pierre-luc dubois x ovechkin's uptick in goals after finding a new stick he liked last season = ovechkin is going to score 50 goals this year and break the all time record (and PLD will hit 60/70 points as his centerman). in this essay i will also also me: ovechkin should sign a 1/2 year extension so he can hit 1000 goals, and piss off all the pittsburgh fans and xenophobic canadians haters who say he's an empty net/PP merchant

[dykesynthezoid]

I do think people love to hate on Madeline Miller just bc it’s cool (???) and bc they hate that she happened to inspire the wave of myth “rewrites” that came after tsoa but then it’s like. Her prose and her understanding of the mythos are not bad actually. Like she has an understanding of the context of the period. And she’s just doing her own thing with it. And it’s well-written enough. And it’s like. Literally fine. Like it’s fine.

[baejax-the-great]

can you….. share Images of the cosmically linked battle couple you created for dd2? 👁️👁️

I'm playing on ps5, and while dd2 has a photo mode, I cannot seem to move the camera so that it is not centered on the player character, which makes getting a picture of Pawn plus Arisen together very difficult. I am also too lazy to get a USB out and transfer screenshots to my computer.

Which means I took this picture of my tv with my phone and it's not good.

There were like three different haircuts I liked for Patroclus so my plan was to visit a barber from time to time and see what sticks.

[kdsburneraccount]

Anyways apparently Kirk is getting cut after the season which really begs the question of why the Falcons even signed him to that contract but it’s not my money so 😑