#and maybe roman literature too

[haljathefangirlcat]

#one thing I think it’s always important to think about when looking at ancient literature#and it’s evolution#is the fact that they are working with an array of knowledge and stories will never get to learn#they are being influenced by things lost to history#there are like 7-8 centuries between Hesiod and Ovid#it makes sense other versions or variations would pop up in that time#and these authors often did take artistic liberty with their material#people writing down these myths often had something to say with them#and that going to influence how they write it#like the anti authority (or really anti Caesar) themes in the metamorphoses#most myths have a bunch of variation#why would Medusa be an exception#anyways this was really good and interesting

The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

[fromevertonow]

Suzanne Collins is one of the few contemporary writers who realizes the importance of names in her stories and the significance they bear. They add so many layers to the story, additional meanings that otherwise would not have existed.

The original trilogy:

Katniss: named after a plant of which you can eat the roots. Her father taught her where to find it and told her that “as long as you can find yourself, you’ll survive” (quote may be a little bit off, but it’s from one of the early chapters in THG). Additionally, the leaves are in the shape of an arrowhead, referencing her skills with the bow which her father also taught her how to use.

Peeta: literally bread lmao. But bread is one of the basic nutritions humans need, a little bit goes a long way to keep you alive. Peeta’s presence in Katniss’s life also kept her alive, literally and figuratively—the burned bread he threw her in the flashback and their complicated relationship.

Primrose: a plant with medicinal purposes, even more significant in light of her work as a medic in Mockingjay.

Gale: literally means “strong wind” and considering that in every encounter with Katniss he’s caused some reaction, he pulls her into directions she maybe initially doesn’t want to go in. Additionally, his name also represents his determination and steadfastness in his beliefs.

TBOSAS

Lucy Gray: named after William Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray” which is about the titular character of the poem who got lost during a blizzard. She literally got lost in snow. Rachel Zegler sang this poem in two parts on the original soundtrack of the movie. When Snow asked who the girl in the song is, Lucy answers that she’s a mystery, just like her.

Snow: aside from the obvious snow references, I think his name is most significant in relation to Lucy and the poem. The only one who knows what caused her disappearance is Snow. He is the reason that Lucy is gone. But her traces in the snow are still visible. He will always remember her because the memory of Lucy has manifested itself in every part of his life.

Coriolanus: named after the Roman general (and also the titular character of Shakespeare’s play), Coriolanus wanted to attack Rome and become its ruler. He was scorned and celebrated by the people, only to be later exiled from the city by them. In TBOSAS, Coriolanus is the star pupil at the Capitol’s academy but sent into exile to the districts after he won the Games with Lucy through cheating.

Volumnia: Coriolanus mother who played a part in his ascent to power. In TBOSAS, she almost serves like a mentor to Coriolanus, teaching him how to think in terms of power.

(Edit) Sejanus: a roman soldier who was betrayed by the roman emperor Tiberius, just like the future president betrayed him.

(Edit) Plinth: got this info from here, but it was too good not to include here. A plinth is a base for a statue or vase to stand on. After Sejanus’s death, all of the Plinth fortune was given to Snow for being such a good to friend him. It was this money that skyrocketed the Snow family from poverty to filthy rich. The Plinth money was the foundation upon which Snow built his power.

There are so many other names that have historical (mostly Roman and Greek) connotations—Plutarch, Seneca, Cinna—but also regular names like Trinket and Beetee bear meanings that represent the character beautifully.

Names are important. For any lover of literature or (aspiring) writers, please look closely at them. They can shape your story into something unique.

Feel free to correct me if I’ve said something wrong. I know there are many names missing, but I can only add so many examples ✊🏻😔

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

A Balancing Act

There were so many wonderful prompts that I couldn't fit them all in here! Thank you so much to everyone who submitted one :)

Read on Ao3

Warnings: bruised ego, panic attacks, touch starvation

Pairings: none

Word Count: 6556

It starts, as do most things, in the Imagination.

Deep beneath the surface of the world, buried in layers of implication and mystery, lies a set of scales. Perfectly balanced? No, never, but always in a state of equilibrium. It operates on a set of rules far older than the theories of physics that govern the Waking World—that is, what most would refer to as Reality, outside the bounds of the Mindscape—for science is an intersection of math and literature and magic is a science based on a math most esoteric. Its golden rule is simply thus: whatever gives must be pulled, and whatever pulls must be given.

The scales must always hang. The scales must always be.

In the middle of the night, when no one will notice, Remus turns on his convincing loop of his own sleep noises—grunts, sloshing, the occasional rustle of bed covers—and sinks into Roman's room. Roman is awake, sitting on the edge of his bed, tying and untying the same knot in a length of rope as he stares into nothingness.

"Sorry," he mumbles as soon as Remus comes to sit next to him, "I'm…trying. I just can't seem to get anything…more."

"It's okay, Roro, I'm not mad or anything. I honestly thought it was kinda cool."

Roman huffs a laugh, only mostly filled with humor. "I figured you would. I mean, it's way more of a you idea, isn't it? Having the entire tower suddenly become as flexible as rubber and threaten to kill everyone inside?"

"I'm not gonna try and summon Janny at this point of the night, I'm definitely stealing it for my next video game dungeon idea."

"I'm glad at least one of us is getting some use out of it."

The humor dissipates quickly as Roman's fingers keep working unsteadily at the knot. Remus reaches over and rests his head on his shoulder, enjoying the warmth of Roman's breath ghosting over his temple as he wraps his arm around Roman's waist. "Are you doing okay otherwise?"

Another sigh. "I don't know, Remus. I don't—I haven't had the energy to know how I'm doing which I think is answer in and of itself, and every time I try to actually do something about it, the Imagination knows that I'm not—that I can't—"

Remus gives him a squeeze when his breathing starts to pick up a little. Roman winces and he sits up right away. "Are you bruised again?"

A suspiciously long pause. "It's nothing, Re—"

"Bullshit." Remus storms to the bathroom and returns with the first aid kit, tossing it on the bed. "Lemme see, Ro-bro, I'm not letting you get away with being bruised to hell and not letting anyone take care of you."

"Re," Roman almost whines, but he sets the rope aside and starts fiddling with the hem of his pajama shirt. "I'm—it's really fine, it's not even that bad this time."

"I'll be the judge of what's 'that bad,' thank you very much. You're not allowed to evaluate your own injuries after you hid broken ribs from me for almost a week."

"I was sort of proud of that, actually. Hey!" He yelps as Remus tugs on his hair. "Not the hair!"

"So lemme look at you. Come on."

"You're so demanding." But off comes the shirt and Remus has to begrudgingly admit that it's not actually that bad this time. A light smattering of yellow and a dusting of blue along Roman's side, probably just enough to make him wince if someone presses down on the right wrong spot. "See? It's fine. It'll probably fade by morning."

"You can't blame me for being suspicious, though."

"No," and Roman's voice gets all soft and gentle for a moment, "I don't. Thank you, Re. I…"

"No need to get too sappy, Roro, the night's still young."

"Yeah, maybe by your standards."

"I always go by my standards, because my standards are right," Remus remarks as he goes to return the first aid kit at a more reasonable pace, "how you should be treated better, how the others should know about some of this stuff—"

"No."

"But Ro—"

"No, Remus," Roman says, voice suddenly cold. He puts his shirt back on and hunches his shoulders. "We both know that them knowing isn't going to be a good idea."

"They care about you, Ro—"

"Evidently not!"

"But they don't know about it!"

"Yeah, because I've tried opening up to them in the past and all it's gotten me are insults, badly veiled pity, and the promise that it will be used against me at the first time it's convenient for them! I'm not going to give them an even more detailed guide of 'Press Here to Hurt the Prince!'"

Remus is quiet for a long moment and Roman sighs.

"You're thinking of how to make that into some sort of weird carnival game for your horror country fair, aren't you?"

"Only slightly—"

"I knew it."

"—but I'm also worried because you're my brother, Roman," Remus says quietly, coming over to sit next to Roman again, taking his hands and giving them a squeeze, "and I don't like seeing you hurting."

"But you know I'm right."

"��but I have a feeling that your instincts may be accurate."

Roman's brow quirks in amusement. "You've been spending more time with Logan, then?"

"Yeah. We, uh, we have an experiments lab in the mad scientist part of that big old spooky mansion you and I made when we were younger and it's…it's really fun, Ro, you should come hang out with us."

Roman chuckles, smoothing his thumb over Remus's scarred knuckles. "I don't think me and experiments would be very fun for all of us, but I'll happily partake in quests to gather the more obscure resources you might require. I'm sure you could convince Logan to take a small break for such an excursion in the future?"

"Ooh, a quest with an actual party! That might be fun. We'll have to think about that more tomorrow after we get some rest," he says pointedly when Roman looks eager enough to keep going now, only to chuckle at Roman's disappointed face, "hey, you're telling me—I'm being the reasonable one here and I'm exhausted already."

"Restoring balance to the universe, then." Roman leans forward to rest his forehead against Remus's. "Thanks for coming to check in on me."

"Hey, you're my brother. The entire world could be turned upside down and back to front and that'd still be true."

"Is that your way of saying you're always gonna be there for me?"

"Just like I know you will. And yes, before you ask, I'm enjoying imagining the others being surprised we're like this too."

"Just checking."

Remus ruffles Roman's hair. "Get some sleep, okay, Roro?"

"You too."

***

Roman wakes up cold.

Well, no. That's not quite right. He wakes up in agony that he can only bear to keep to himself because he's too cold to have the energy to move.

The first thing he registers is the pain. Deep, bone-weary agonizing pain that feels like he's been locked in a suit of armor that is being tightened, slowly, half-turn by half-turn of a screw. A noise threatens to escape his lips before he presses them tightly together, managing to roll onto his back.

He's on his side—or he was on his side. There's a soft rustle and a weight that indicates a covering of some kind. Blankets. He's in a bed. A bed he doesn't recognize in his state of delirium. The pain becomes enough of a dull roar that he can move his head, looking around at a blurred and darkened room. The barest sliver of light comes from a window just off to the side, behind his head, exposing the dark red of the covers slathered across his body. It stretches away into the darkness as though it were an ocean of blood, a tug of renewed pain reinforcing that as his neck cries out for release. Already exhausted, he lets his head flop back down onto the pillow—pillow, right, that's what it is.

He closes his eyes. It isn't often that he has nightmares as visceral and violent as this. To his—shame? Relief? He doesn't know anymore—it's been so long that he doesn't quite remember what he's supposed to do about it.

Behind his eyes flash aftershocks of his own screams of pain, his own bitten whimpers and whines as pain explodes along his body. He flinches away from the memories on instinct and the blood-red covers jostle with him. He remembers the darkness, the too-bright light, the pain, the waiting, and the voice.

The voice, taking observations and notes in a clinical, detached tone, ready to aim the next caustic remark to paint black and blue and purple across his fragile skin.

He knows it's probably a bad thing, to have nightmares about his fellow Sides. He knows it's probably not healthy, indicative of much larger problems between them—and for Thomas. He knows the best thing to do is probably to talk about them with the Sides in question so they can move forward together.

But bruises ache in a way that not many other injuries are capable of, and Roman has always, always been so, so sensitive.

He sees one last terrifying glimpse of Logan's face, a twisted curiosity pinned to him as though he were a bug to be displayed, and turns the idea away. He won't give it any sort of excuse to come true.

***

"No, no, no, we're not going over this again."

"On the contrary," Logan sighs as Virgil groans, slumping against the railing, "it seems that is exactly what we're going to do."

Janus rolls his eyes and examines the tops of his gloves, brushing away imaginary specks of dirt. "I don't understand what the hold-up is here, Patton, it's not as though we don't have endless possibilities for what we can watch for movie night."

"I'm just saying we can do better than getting them illegally! Thomas has access to streaming services, we can just ask one of his friends for their password—"

"Password sharing?" Janus mock gasps, holding his hand over his mouth. "Patton, didn't you know that's also illegal? The streaming services don't want you to do that! They want you to have your own account!"

"But that doesn't make any sense!"

"That's his point, Pop Star."

"But by all means, Patton," Janus continues, adopting a sickly-sweet tone that quickly morphs into one of disdain the longer he keeps speaking, "if you'd prefer to get the movies legally like a good little servant of this capitalist hellscape and contribute to the erasing of public ownership of storytelling by allowing corporations to scam us by 'selling' us copies of media that we can never actually permanently have, then by all means, let's keep looking."

There's a pause. Then Patton snorts. Soon everyone's laughing at the sheer ridiculousness—and accuracy—of Janus's little monologue. He holds his hands up. "Alright, you've convinced me."

"Thank you." Janus preens a little. "I always did think there was more validity in such arguments once you add just a little bit of flavor."

"Okay, if that's what you call a little bit of flavor, I'm never coming over for dinner again."

"Why, Virgil—"

"Nope." Virgil holds up a finger. "'Cause, see, I always thought it was weird that we went through spices so quickly over there when the ones in this kitchen have lasted for months—"

"I'm not sure Remus is entirely free of blame in this case," Logan remarks wryly, "in any case, thank you, Janus and Patton, for coming to an agreement. Now that it's all settled, shall we proceed with movie night as planned?"

"Works for me!"

"Yeah, I'm all set now."

Janus simply waves his hand in an 'of course' gesture. Logan glances around. "Alright, then—and Roman? You're all settled?"

He sees Patton and Janus visibly jerk, as though they'd forgotten he was there. He smiles a little weakly from his corner. "Yeah. I'm all good."

"Okay, I'm gonna admit something I really didn't think was possible," Virgil mumbles, fiddling with his hoodie strings, "but I genuinely forgot Princey was here and was just about to ask L what he was talking about."

"Gosh, I think I did too! I'm so sorry, kiddo, I didn't mean to!"

"It's okay."

"You better watch out, Princey," Virgil laughs, "pretty sure J's gunning for your spot as Thomas's theater kid Side with monologues like that."

Roman forces himself to laugh with everyone else—well, almost everyone. Remus shoots him a concerned look that he only nods back to, I'm fine, it's okay, as a bruise blooms warmly along the underside of his ribs. Thankfully, his little exhale disguises himself as part of the laugh as Janus starts preening again. Still, the words linger over his skin as they settle in for movie night, wriggling their way up from his stomach to the tip of his tongue.

During a loud part of the movie, he turns to whisper to Janus. "Hey."

"Hey," Janus whispers back, "you doing okay? You need us to turn it down?"

"What? No, far be it from me to keep you from enjoying something. I was just—I was just thinking. I have a proposition for you."

"Oh?"

"Did you, um, do you have any interest in learning how to fence?"

Janus fully turns to look at him, surprise painted in the many colors from the screen. "Really?"

"Yeah, I think you'd—"

"You know how to fence?"

A smaller bruise, colored mostly by the surprise, but a bruise nonetheless as Roman makes himself hold the smile. "Yeah, I know how to fence. I think you'd enjoy it."

"Yeah, yes, Roman, I think I'd like that very much." Janus blinks, surprise settling into something more akin to excitement. "I'm—well, I'm grateful you've finally noticed me as someone worth spending time with."

It's a tease, it must be, and yet the bruises ache no less at the implications. "What can I say, I need to make sure Thomas's theater kid Side knows everything."

Janus takes it as a joke. He usually does when it comes to things like this, which is why Roman knows he can get away with it right now. While Janus is distracted, high on the energy of winning the argument and the general daze that comes from being invested in a good movie with friends. Where he doesn't have time to realize that this isn't a lie, it's the truth, and if he uncovers that then this has a lot smaller chance of this actually working.

But Janus doesn't notice. And Roman can breathe a sigh of relief when no more bruises blossom across his aching chest.

***

The scales tip further and further to one side. The Imagination responds, growing wilder and crueler as the woods thicken and the rivers deepen. The skies grow darker, the wind colder. In the center of an old castle ruin, a garden that has lain untouched for years begins to wither. A single rose petal flutters to the ground.

***

He's grateful for the excuse of training Janus how to fence. That way, he has a reason to wince and smile sheepishly when the bruises covering him reassert themselves. Then again, as with most things that work in Roman's favor, it's a double-edged sword. Wow, Janus must be improving quite a bit, then! He's getting good enough to put you on your ass already, Princey? It's a good thing you've found a sparring partner that challenges you, then. Can't wait to fight, Snakey!

And then new bruises will spring up and the cycle will begin anew.

Janus is, in all honesty, quite an excellent sparring partner. His movements are fluid, graceful, no doubt in part due to his snake-like traits, and he internalizes the key lesson Roman teaches him on their very first day. It doesn't matter how quickly you get somewhere so long as you arrive at the right time. Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast.

"I'm curious," Janus asks once day while they're taking a break, sipping from a water bottle and eyeing Roman over the top, "why fencing?"

"What, am I not fulfilling all the stereotypes as you wished?"

"Most knights don't fence, not all swordplays are alike." Roman waggles his eyebrows and Janus rolls his eyes, smacking his shoulder. "That's not what I meant. You grow more like Remus everyday."

He's grateful that his entire body is covered when a light smattering of purple decorates the insides of both of his arms. "I like fencing. It's all about timing."

"You mentioned."

"I don't know, I think—you know, like with most stories. It's all about getting the pacing right. You can't rush into the narrative, you can't force the plot, it has to sort of…happen on its own. Your job as the storyteller is to make sure the pace is right so the story has the most impact."

Janus's eyebrows raise higher and higher the longer Roman keeps talking. "Careful, there, you're getting dangerously close to being insightful."

"Hey! I'm a storyteller, shouldn't I know my own craft?"

"I suppose so."

"You suppose—what is that supposed to mean? Oh, shut up," he grumbles when Janus makes a smug expression, "I'm not falling for that again."

"I believe you already did, dear prince."

"Don't call me that."

"Whatever His Highness commands."

Roman rolls his eyes and turns around to hide the flicker of genuine hurt behind putting his water bottle down. "Come on, then. If you've got enough energy to bully me with words you can do it on the mats."

"You'll make me think you like being pushed around."

"Believe me," Roman says darkly, "you have no idea what a glutton for punishment I'm turning into."

***

"Hey, Remus?"

Remus pokes his head out from the massive gorgon corpse he's butchering, draped in all sorts of gore with a manic grin on his face. Virgil mumbles a quiet sure, why not as Logan adjusts his glasses. "Friends!"

"Hello, Remus," Logan greets, "we were wondering if we could have a moment of your time."

"Sure. Gimme just a sec to finish up with this thing and I'll be right with you."

"Is there, uh, somewhere we can wait that's less…entrail-y?"

"Go over the hill to the back, that's where the big shed is. I'll be in there in just a moment." There's the whirring of some sort of machinery that no one quite has the patience—or stomach—to name as a spray of something wet and squelchy-sounding hits the ground on the other side of the carcass. Virgil and Logan glance at each other before making a strategic and somewhat hasty retreat to the shed.

True to his word, Remus shows up a few minutes later, wiping the remains of something off of his hands with a rag he tosses into a wash barrel on the porch before coming inside.

"My two favorite Left Brain Boys, how can I help you today?"

"We've come about Roman."

Remus sobers immediately. He runs a hand through his hair and pulls a stool closer, sitting down and immediately tapping his fingers against his thighs. "What is it about him?"

"He's been bad," Virgil blurts out, hands bunched in his hoodie pockets, "like…really bad. Worse than normal bad."

"I got that much."

"He's been distant during brainstorming," Logan says quietly, "and I'm not sure—I do not know enough about it to understand what I can do to help."

"He won't talk to me about anything that isn't meeting or food related anymore. I can't even get him to complain about stupid plot twists that don't make any sense."

"He's stopped writing in his notebooks, at least where the rest of us can see."

"He's not even singing as much anymore, Remus, it's bad."

"I know." Remus's quiet admission startles them into silence. He's still tapping out a frantic rhythm, eyes darting from beaker to chart to specimen as the silence grows fuzzier and fuzzier. The wind whistles through the holes in the shutters. "Believe me, I know."

"My apologies," Logan says after a moment, "we didn't consider—at least I didn't consider that you would know Roman better than we would."

"No, no, I didn't—fuck, shit, sorry, Remus."

"You guys don't have to apologize to me. Ro's—Ro's not having a good time right now, yeah. And I'm…not helping."

"What do you mean, you're not helping? You're always there for Princey."

"Yeah, but not—okay, shit, look, I'm actually—I need to check with Roman before having this conversation."

"What? Why? Is there something wrong that we shouldn't know about?"

"It's just—to explain why—you know what? No. We're gonna do the short version of this conversation where you guys ask me questions and I tell you what I can. I'll talk to Roman later."

"We don't mean any harm," Logan starts to say, but Remus waves him off.

"I know. It's not about that. It's about me making sure I don't fuck up Ro's boundaries."

"I get that." Virgil shuffles a bit on his stool. "So can we—can we ask you stuff now?"

"Go ahead."

"Princey's been off ever since the wedding. Is—is that accurate to say?"

"Yeah."

"And it seems like it's not—like, it sort of seems like it's getting better, but it's not, not really. He's still been really down and upset and it's—it's getting really hard to like, talk to him about things. I'm just—is there something else we don't know about Roman that's making this harder?"

"Yes."

"Are you…gonna tell us what it is?"

"No."

"Okay, I guess that's fair."

"Would I be correct to say," Logan asks, "that Roman's struggles are related both to the wedding and to additional factors?"

"Yeah."

"Would it be accurate to say there is something unique about Roman that makes this situation significantly worse?"

The corner of Remus's mouth twitches. "No."

"Amended question: is there something unique about both yours and Roman's relationship to the Imagination, the Mindscape, and Thomas himself that makes this situation significantly worse?"

"Where the fuck are we, in court again?"

"Do you see why Janny didn't want Logan to be part of it if he was gonna win?"

"Answer the question, please, Remus."

"Yeah, Lolo. You're right. And we're not in a court room, which means I'm not bound by any of those stupid fucking rules and I will tell you that you're walking a dangerous line over there."

"Forgive me. I'm not trying to pry into Roman's business—okay, I'm not just trying to pry," he amends hastily when Remus glares at him, "I want to help. But I need to understand in order to help."

Remus sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I know you guys want to help. But Ro…fuck, okay, this is the only piece of info you're getting from me about this that isn't gonna be just an instruction on what to do, but Roman…Roman really isn't good about letting people help him."

"Why?"

"He lets you help him."

"I'm his brother. I'm exempt and can make him let me take care of him."

Logan looks like he wants to argue for another second before he makes himself take a deep breath and adjust his glasses. "Thank you for telling us, Remus. How…how can we help?"

***

"It's getting worse." Patton confides in a whisper as Janus leans into his side. "I don't know what to do."

"There's not much we can do if Roman doesn't let us."

The irony of this conversation is not lost on either of them, not when the expression Roman wore when they glimpsed him all but fleeing back to his room is still in the forefront of their minds. They'd tried everything Remus had suggested, all of it: letting Roman have a say in what they watched for movie night, what they had for dinner, what they talked about when they all hung out in the living room just for the sake of it. They'd tried asking about his projects, expressing enthusiasm for things they didn't love for themselves but they loved because Roman loved them, even just asking Roman if he was okay, if he needed anything.

And Roman just kept falling further and further away from them.

"I don't know what to do," Patton confesses, prompting Janus to reach up and card a hand through his hair, "Roman's so quiet now, he's so small, he's not—Roman's not supposed to be small."

"He isn't," Janus agrees, "he's supposed to be our larger-than-life prince. I don't…I don't know how to fix this."

"If I'd known that it was going to be this bad, that the wedding would cause something like this to happen—"

"Don't play the 'what if' game, Patton, it never ends well. It's not—" Janus sighs— "believe me, as someone who's spent too long wallowing in the guilt of how badly my actions have hurt others when I truly didn't intend them to, it's not worth it."

"But I don't know what else to do! Roman's hurting, Janus, and I don't know how to fix it! I'm supposed to know how to fix it, we all have to take care of each other, and Roman's not—he's not letting us!"

"I know," Janus whispers, pulling him closer, "I know."

"What do we do?"

"The only thing we can do is keep trying and hope that Roman realizes how badly we want to see him alright again."

So they do. They try, and they try quite desperately to make sure Roman knows how much he is loved and how they care for his happiness. Roman, their wonderful vibrant prince who is greyer than any can remember him being. Roman, their songbird who hasn't sung a single note in weeks. Roman, who once could light up a room simply by appearing within it who has relegated himself to silent corners where their eyes long to skip over him. They don't know what to do. Roman is fading right in front of their eyes and nothing they do seems to have any effect on it whatsoever.

Remus is getting worse. He's more frantic, more hyper, more exaggerated. His ideas grow more and more frenetic, his experiments wilder and less restrained. The Imagination grows dangerous and chaotic as rules break and remake themselves over and over. The doors are soon locked and barred lest something try and escape and only the brothers can safely enter its depths without fear of getting lost in the storm. Remus tries to keep himself contained there, just because there is so much energy brimming within him that it would be catastrophic should it leak into the Mindscape proper, but Roman…

They're losing Roman.

Desperation makes fools of us all.

They have a meeting. They ask Roman what's going on. They try to be gentle. They try to tell Roman how much they care. They try to show that it's all coming from a place of love.

And Roman, their precious, lovely, wonderful, incredible Roman, collapses into a heap of tears.

***

The break comes. It's horrifying, tragic, and so very beautiful. The scales are upended, one side swinging wildly towards the heavens as the other shatters free from one of the links holding it aloft. The Imagination screams.

***

"Please—please—just tell me what you want, I can't do this anymore, I can't—I can't—" Roman's hands tangle in his hair and pull— "don't do this to me, I'll never—I can't—don't fucking do this!"

"Ro, Ro, you gotta calm down—"

Roman flinches away from Remus's touch, even as the others back up to give the brothers more space. His sobs run his breathing ragged, each inhale more pained than the last as they echo around and around the room. Remus swallows and reaches out again, carefully prying Roman's white-knuckled grip free.

"Ro-bro, it's me. It's just me. You know I'll never hurt you, right?"

"I don't understand, Re—"

"Shh, shh, hang on, breathe first. Don't try and speak, it's gonna be okay."

Sobs choke themselves free from Roman's lips as Remus coaxes him forward, wrapping his arms tightly around his waist and pulling him nearly into his lap. He sets Roman's head in the crook of his neck and keeps murmuring reassurances, stroking his hands up and down his brother's spine.

"Remus—"

"I'm right here, Roro. Don't you fall away from me, not again."

"I can't do this—"

"You can. You have to, Ro, I can't—I can't hold all of this by myself, you know I can't. Come on, just breathe with me, okay? I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere and neither are you. You're gonna stay right here, with me, and we're both just gonna breathe and let this even itself out." For indeed, Remus is trembling too from the force it's taking to restrain his nails from digging into Roman's back. Even now, there is too much energy thrumming inside him, two vessels forced together and it's not sustainable, none of this is. "I'm right here, Ro, you gotta let me be here for you."

"It hurts, Remus," comes the whisper against his neck, "it hurts so much and I don't know how to make it stop."

"I know, Roro, I know."

"I can't do this anymore. It's too—I can't. I just can't."

"You need to let us help you, Ro. I know, I know," he says, quickly hushing Roman when he cries out in pain again, "I know, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"I can't!"

"I won't let them hurt you, not again. I promise." He tightens his grip. "Just—just hold on for me, okay?"

"I'm so scared, Re. I'm so scared."

"I know. Me too."

The two of them stay like that for a long, long time. Long enough for the room to grow cold as the sun goes down, long enough for them to start to shiver from having expended so much energy just to stay in each other's arms.

"Here," Logan says softly, so softly so as not to startle them, "I have a blanket for you."

"Thanks, Lolo."

"Of course."

Roman eyes him warily as he approaches, blanket held out unfolded between the two of them like a peace offering. Logan offers him the gentlest of smiles and drapes it over them. He retreats to a safe distance where the rest of them are, still watching, still waiting.

"You stayed," he croaks, throat weary from overuse.

"Of course we did, kiddo," Patton murmurs, "we were so worried."

"We wanna make sure everything's okay, Princey," Virgil agrees, slumping down a little to make himself seem like a smaller target, "that's all."

Janus, scales glimmering from his bare hands, wordlessly holds up another blanket.

It takes another long pause for Roman to nod, but he does nod, and perhaps that makes all the difference.

***

"Come in, please," Logan says, smiling when Roman shyly knocks on his door. He steps aside so Roman can shuffle through. "Sit wherever you'd like."

"Even on your bed?"

"Even on my bed."

Roman looks at it, clearly tempted, before he decides to only partially push his look and sit on the floor, his back against the bed. Logan just chuckles and comes to sit next to him, getting comfortable before holding out his hand.

"It's not a trick," he says when Roman just looks at it, "will you let me hold your hand?"

"Why?"

"I'd like to." When that just gets him another look, he lets out a small sigh. "I'm…concerned that in my failure to realize how much you were struggling, I've cultivated a relationship between the two of us that is a great deal more adversarial than it needs to be. I'd like to amend that by offering you comfort, both emotional and physical. So…I'd like to hold your hand."

"…oh."

"But if that's something you're not comfortable with yet, I understand."

"N-no, I didn't—I didn't mean—" Roman splutters for another second before he puts his hand in Logan's—well, he more lets it flop in his direction like Logan might take it back if he lets it go for too long.

"Thank you, Roman." He covers it with his other one and pulls it into his lap to cradle it gently, raising an eyebrow at Roman's noise of surprise. "What?"

"I, um…didn't know that's what you meant."

"Is this alright?"

"U-um…yeah. Yeah, it's…it's okay."

"I'm glad." His thumb strokes soothingly over Roman's still-trembling knuckles. "Can I ask you something?"

"Aside from that?"

"Yes."

"Sure."

"Are you…is it possible that you're touch-starved, Roman? Shh, shh, easy," he soothes when Roman tenses immediately, "my apologies, I didn't mean to frighten you."

"I—um—I don't—"

"No tricks, Roman, I promise. I'm only asking because I want to help. Here: is it easier to just nod or shake your head?" Roman nods. "Alright. Can…are you?"

He nods again, his mouth twisting up to hold back a sob. Logan quickly squeezes his hand, still stroking over his knuckles.

"Thank you for telling me, though I am sorry to hear it. If…if it's alright with you—and please know you can say no or shake your head and I won't bring it up again—may I help?"

He likes to think that the work they've put in to making it easier to spend time together without it feeling like a fight or an interrogation is what makes Roman nod. He's unable to keep the grateful smile from spreading across his features, nor the way he scoots a little bit closer so their sides press together.

"Thank you."

They sit together like that for a long while. Long enough for Logan to start running his fingers up and down Roman's arm, long enough for him to squeeze his hand when Roman's grip shivers and shudders, long enough for Roman's head to drop onto his shoulder, breathing heavily.

"That's it," he whispers, turning his head so his nose brushes Roman's hair, "you're doing so well. It's alright. Is this still okay?"

Roman nods.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he can't help himself from asking, "I would've helped, I would've done this earlier."

"…I was scared."

It's not a surprise to hear, not truly, but Logan can't stop the slight pang of hurt. Quickly, he moves past it; Roman has been so terrified of asking for help for so long, he will not give him the opportunity to be further hurt by this. Instead, he carefully lifts Roman's hand to his lips and presses the smallest kiss to his knuckle.

"What were you scared of, little one?"

Patton had always warned him about asking questions, said at some point he might learn something he wished he hadn't. This…is not one of those times, as he does not regret learning about Roman's terrifying nightmares, but he does…ache.

"If ever you need to be reassured that something like that will never happen," he manages, voice slightly hoarse with Roman's confession, "please, little one, let me know."

"I don't think it'll happen anymore."

"Perhaps not logically, but fear is rarely logical." Roman shifts, caught out, but Logan doesn't give him time to murmur an apology. "It's alright, I understand, and my promise stands."

"You mean it?"

"Of course I do, Roman."

***

"Go on," Roman whispers when Janus, Patton, and Virgil don't say anything for too long after he's explained himself, "just get it over with."

"May I hug you?"

His head snaps up. Janus is looking at him with that foreign soft expression again and he—he can't have heard that right.

"May I hug you," Janus asks again, holding out his arms, "please?"

"I—um—sure?"

Janus stands and hurries—hurries?—over to wrap Roman up in his arms, pressing a kiss to his temple and Roman is confused but Janus is warm and solid and there are more hands than he expected and he's—he's going to cry again, isn't he?

"You're gonna overwhelm him, J."

"Too late for that, I think," as Patton and Virgil come closer too, "oh, kiddo…I'm so sorry we didn't know about this sooner."

"I know that was on purpose, Princey, but…" He runs a hand through his hair. "Shit, I didn't—I didn't know we were—that you—fuck, I didn't know we'd fucked up that badly, I guess."

Roman glances at Patton, who looks so upset that he doesn't even call Virgil out on his language. "I didn't know how," he manages, just as Patton reaches up to brush a tear from his cheek.

"You shouldn't have had to go so far for us to notice, and that's on us."

"But I should've said something—"

"But you didn't to try to keep yourself safe," Janus interrupts, his own voice thick with tears.

"…yeah."

"Will you tell us, now?" Patton wraps an arm around the part of Roman's waist he can still reach. "If we do something that hurts you?"

"Don't feel like you have to promise something if you don't think you can," Virgil adds when Roman looks even more terrified at the thought, "just…know you can tell us, okay?"

"Okay."

"There's no replacing you, Roman," Janus says, leaving no room for argument, "not at all."

"Not even with your monologues?"

"Not even with my monologues."

"Can we hug you too, kiddo? Please?" Patton has to keep himself from beaming when Roman nods, quickly ducking over to wrap his arms around both him and Janus properly. "Oh, kiddo, I'm so sorry."

"Move over, Princey," Virgil teases gently when Roman tries to lean against the wall, "I'm the one who gets to cuddle you, not the wall. Hey, hey, shh, it's okay—c'mon, let's all be a puddle on the floor, okay?"

"I like floor puddle plan."

"Me too."

Roman is crying too hard to say he agrees, but he thinks the boneless way he slumps into the embrace is as good as anything else.

***

"Hey, Remus?" Roman whispers in the middle of the night as the rest of the Sides slumber around him, curled up on the massive mattress with fluffy blankets and soft pillows.

"Yeah?"

"You were right."

And because Remus is a good brother who loves Roman so very, very much, he doesn't even hold it over his head. He just smiles, leans over to bonk their foreheads together, and tells his brother to go the fuck to sleep.

***

A new chain holds the scales together, forged in longing and heartbreak and strife, borne of an old magic far more ephemeral than whimsy and fantasy. Tendrils of roses curl up the sides of a golden dish, affixing it to links of courage and loyalty. The Imagination heaves a sigh of relief. The sweet smell of petrichor wafts over the exhausted landscape.

The scales stand balanced once more.

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[waytoobitofunction]

My fav historically accurate Good Omens fics

Ps. I such at summaries or uh explanations. But I loved all of them. That's what I can say.

Aaand I'll keep this updated as I read more. As one should.

1. Do You Know What Eternity Is? By Elderly_Worm

Probably one of my all times favs. Maybe my all times fav. Soooo long, Words: 373,711 Chapters: 606/606, but sooo worth it. Basically Aziraphale and Crowley through the centuries. The historical research 👨‍🍳🤌💋 Didn't really like the end but oh well, felt too rushed, maybe because in the latest centuries so much stuff happens in little time; still 9,9/10

2. DYKWEI extras by Elderly_Worm

What the title says, extended version of some scenes. Can be read as standalones.

3. The Ways We Loved by doyouwannadance

Inspired by DYKWEI. Cute them chatting.

4. Ark Gallery by Olfactory_Ventriloquism

Don't even have words for this one. I mean I have them but they're mostly nonsense like AAAHH CROWLEY... AJVDOSBWP, RELATED TO HIM TOO MUCH, KIKKED MY FEET A LOT AND WANTED TO SCREAM WHILE READING THIS.

5. Quisquis Amat or How am I Going to be an Optimist About This? by Olfactory_Ventriloquism

Set in Pompeii. Uh. Crowley is good with kids. Most of these are btw lol. YEAH LOVELY GO READ IT IF YOU LOVE THE ROMAN ERA.

6. Not Fall But Disembark by Olfactory_Ventriloquism

Short, focused around Aziraphale, loved the writing and also during this one wanted to scream a lot.

7. Literature and Liquor by Tossukka

SO. GOOD. THE JANE AUSTEN MINISODE WE DESERVED.

I, carrion (icarian)

Found out that there are like 14 with the title inspired by this song, which fair, cuz, IT'S THEIR SONG I LOVE IT SM, but 14 is not so much ykwim...

1. don't fall away from me by cassieoh_draws (cassieoh), ilikeblue

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH. If possible, made me want to scream and/or cry more than the others. Angsty.

Non historical ones:

1. Side Mission by KannaOphelia

Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship. Basically they discover Warlock is not the antichrist two years before than in the serie aaaand go to Tadfield and stuff. I usually don't like this trope but this was cute.

2. Taking Steps by JoyAndOtherStories

Set in the modern day. Crowley and Aziraphale take dance lessons 🕺 💃 🕺 💃 🕺 💃

[separatist-apologist]

Long Live

Summary: All archeologist Elain Archeron wants is answers about the past.

Fate is determined to give them to her

MASSIVE thank you @abbadinfluence for having the idea AND allowing me to write - I've had the time of my life, this has been so fun.

And @octobers-veryown for being my personal Rome/Italy consultant- thank you for your knowledge, your time, and most importantly, catching when I used a particularly offensive and/or wrong swear word

For @elucienweekofficial | Read on AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Life moved slower. Elain woke each morning to open windows and her husband gone, already up for the day. She’d become lady of the house which was a whole job in and of itself. Was it wrong to weaponize her knowledge from the future to smooth things over between people? Maybe, but she did it anyway. 

Partly because navigating this new world made Elain nervous. She knew everything in theory, but not in practice—and not in-depth. She made mistakes even children didn’t, which caused gossip about the barbarian the emperor had married. 

She knew men had gone to Lucien to complain, though the results of said conversations were never shared with her. She’d asked once, laying on her stomach as she traced designs over his bare chest.

Lucien had merely flipped her to her back and with a kiss, urged her not to think about it. But she did, nervous that it was going to be his downfall. What had she already changed? Elain spun herself in circles wondering if everything they knew about the Empress was simply her, right now, doing exactly what she’d done. Had she been studying herself?

Elain tried not to think too hard about it lest she drive herself insane.

She threw herself into politics much the way Arina did, the pair like university students all over again as they read works long lost to their present day time. So much of it was fascinating but a lot more was painfully dry. Even Arina couldn’t get through half of it, groaning as she stared upward, bored to tears.

“Just ask Lucien for a sword and we’ll start killing people,” she said with a roll of green eyes. “I don’t think he’d mind.”

“We shouldn’t murder the people who annoy us,” Elain hissed at her friend. Marrying Eris had been a mistake—Arina was becoming far too Romanized far too quickly.

Arina shrugged. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do and kill your rivals.”

“Did Eris give you a knife?” Elain questioned.

Arina grinned. “I’m starting a collection.”

Of course she was. 

For all the stress, though, Elain found she was happy. No longer did she have to wonder what things looked like—the vibrancy of the ancient world astounded her. She could see statues as they were, brightly painted in hues of red and yellow and blue. She could read the literature, could sit in grand atriums while philosophers debated passionately on topics they still discussed two thousand years in the future.

Sometimes she wished she could tell them they were immortalized in these discussions and their writings. That academics still taught their works and students still engaged in the same passionate debates. So many things from Rome still existed in the future, from their sewage systems to the roads they’d built, all the way to the language they used and the influence it would have on European languages. Their myths, their gods—all of it still existed as some faint echo of a past humanity would never return to.

And she wasn’t just witnessing it—Elain was part of it. Her mind couldn’t comprehend all of it. The whys, the hows—if it was magic or some other explanation they were too primitive to understand even two thousand years in the future—it didn’t truly matter in the end. Sometimes she thought she’d wake and find she’d merely dreamt it all up.

And other times she was certain she’d been born here for how natural it all felt to her. At times, Elain forgot everything else but the present—at least until something jolted her out of her bliss. She’d see something that reminded her of Graysen or her sisters or her home and spend the rest of the day wondering if they still thought of her. What they made of her disappearance.

She knew her sisters would be in pain over losing her. Gray would move on, eventually, and Elain genuinely hoped he did so with minor emotional wounds. 

Her sisters would never forgive her if they learned she could have returned and chose not to. Elain was grateful they’d never know. Maybe that made her a coward—she simply couldn’t bring herself to care, especially as time went on. They’d continue their lives without her and maybe they’d all see each other again some day.

But not in this lifetime.

What had once seemed like a terrible decision seemed like the best idea Elain had ever had. Maybe that was all the lead water she was drinking, though. She was happy, and that was all that mattered. She watched other women marry, participating in the ceremonies as the Emperor’s Consort. She was part of festivals and just generally seen in the city with a guard of heavily armed soldiers Lucien made swear to protect her, even at the expense of their own lives.

And she had Arina.

That was enough. 

Her favorite part of every day was when Lucien finished with the things he did to tell her everything, eyes bright as he stripped down to nothing. If he found it strange telling a woman about the political machinations of his empire, Lucien never said. He, instead, treated her like one of his advisors. He asked her advice on how to handle delicate situations both with his patricians and Senators and when trying to adhere to Roman diplomacy.  

And then, once he’d said everything he needed to say, Lucien all but got on his knees and kept her up half the night. He acted like he’d only just discovered sex. Sometimes she felt the same way. 

“Tomorrow I will be unforgivably late,” Lucien told her, hand on his stomach as he tried to catch his breath. 

Elain rolled to her side. “Why?”

Lucien shifted, eyes on the dark ceiling overhead. “I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

She’d heard him say that only once before, and in the aftermath it had been an assassination he claimed to know nothing about. Elain very much doubted that was true, though his hands were clean. Eris likely arranged the entire thing, which seemed to be how things were done between them. Elain often wondered if Lucien truly trusted his older brother, or merely kept him close to prevent a coup. 

She doubted being married to Arina would stifle his political ambitions. 

That was a personal question for Lucien to grapple with. She knew he loved Eris, and figured Eris must love his brother to some degree if he was willing to stand by him even when everything he’d worked so hard for had been ripped out from underneath him. Beron had intended to drag his own son down with him, and never planned for his wife’s illegitimate child to take his own full-blooded son's place.

History said Eris remained loyal until he died, but Elain didn’t know how much of history she and Arina had already rewritten. They’d never know without returning to the future to read the books. She assumed something must have been altered since all records of Helena were gone save for Lucien’s own writings. She was here, though she didn’t dare leave a record other than her mere existence which was immortalized on coins and paintings and whatever doodles Lucien left in the margins of his documents. 

She seemed to recall a half naked one with exaggerated breasts that had been so amusing at university and was now a little mortifying to think about. 

“Should I go to sleep without you?” Elain asked, pulling herself from her endless musings. 

“You can try,” he replied with that handsome, slick smile of his. “I’ll wake you up.”

“You’re a devil,” she said, forgetting he didn’t know that word—Elain quickly attempted to explain, foregoing the religious connotations to avoid getting bogged down with the future of Christianity. While Elain liked listening to Lucien talk politics, he loved hearing about the future. He was interested in the culture of her home, the art, the literature. She’d spent a full week explaining the Real Housewives to him in great detail while he’d listened, rapt and glassy eyed in his enjoyment.

Elain intended to explain Star Wars to him later simply to sketch out a lightsaber and see what he thought about it. She thought Lucien would enjoy that. 

Just enough time had passed that Elain had grown complacent. She’d forgotten everything that happened during Lucien’s reign. She forgot the early years.

She forgot the coup. 

The day passed like any other. She and Arina dressed and ate, talked with the other women living with them currently, and spent the later afternoon in the city buying materials for dresses and some rather pretty flowers likely handpicked by the small child Elain gave the coins to.

They returned home and bathed after eating and Elain intended to turn in for the evening mostly out of boredom. Lucien wasn’t coming back until late, there was limited lighting which made reading difficult, and the heat of the day had taken its toll.

“Where is everyone?” Arina asked, looking around the strangely empty halls.

“Wherever Lucien is, I’m guessing,” Elain replied glumly. Arina wasn’t having it through, brows knit together as she truly looked.

“Everyone? Even the children are gone—”

“To bed—”

“Oh please, there are no bedtimes here. I heard one of those monsters screaming at three in the morning last night.”

Elain, too, paused to listen. “Is anyone here?”

“What day is today?” Arina whispered, gripping Elain’s forearm before Elain could go any further. Heart racing, she only shrugged. 

“I don’t remember,” she admitted. The calendar was different, the days rearranged according to the Julian Calendar. 

“With me,” Arina whispered, turning while clasping Elain’s hand. If anyone watched them, it looked like two women merely wanting to be close. Not panicked, not scared—not yet. They walked as they normally did, eyes straight ahead as though nothing were amiss as they both counted back the days in their head.

When had it happened? The attempted coup that ravaged the city in flame—the assassination attempts, the upheaval? In her joy, Elain had forgotten how rocky the early years of Lucien’s transition were.

She’d forgotten his new wife went missing.

Arina closed them into the bed chamber she shared with Eris, locking it for good measure. “It won’t stop them—but we’ll hear the lock turn.”

“And then what?” Elain demanded as Arina made her way across the room for the collection of knives she’d bragged about. “We should leave.”

“They’ll be waiting to ambush us,” Arina replied coolly. “We have the element of surprise.”

“We’re also just the two of us against a bunch of men with swords,” Elain hissed, watching as Arina shoved a chair against a door. “There is no where to go.”

“Wrong,” Arina said with a relish, pushing against the wall. A little cubby opened, big enough for the two to slip through unnoticed. “You didn’t notice servants coming in and out?”

Elain wasn’t about to admit she was too busy admiring Lucien to notice what anyone else was doing, especially when they were alone in their room. Having given Elain a dagger, the pair slid into the wall just as the knob of their door rattled. They both froze, half hidden in the dark. Elain’s heart raced with fear.

“Where can we go?”

“The countryside,” Arina whispered before pulling Elain in. They still had time, though not enough. Not to mention, the last time they’d tried to flee they’d been caught by highway robbers and Arina had nearly died. Staying in the city was suicide, leaving a death sentence. 

Arina’s grip on Elain’s hand tightened painfully. They only thing they truly had going for them was near prophetic knowledge of the future and, hopefully, a memorized map of the city’s layout.

They burst into the kitchen, a place Elain had never seen and was desperate to snoop around in.

“Not now,” Arina replied, tugging her toward an open door leading to the courtyard. 

It would have been a clean getaway had that guard not been standing there. He was clearly just as surprised to see them as they were to see him. The pin on his armor didn’t belong to Lucien—it was another man's crest, another man's loyalty paid out in copper and gold.

“You ah…” he hesitated, clearly unsure what he should do. “You should go inside.”

“We’re just strolling through the garden,” Elain tried, offering up her most charming smile. “Surely you wouldn’t begrudge us an evening stroll?” His hand went to the hilt of his sword and Elain knew he had no qualms about killing them here. Arina took a step back, eyes wide with fear. 

“Stand down,” Elain whispered, hiding Arina’s dagger in the folds of her skirts. She wasn’t going to die this day—not after everything else.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” that dark haired soldier said. 

It was Arina who struck, slamming her blade so viciously into his throat that blood sprayed everywhere. Elain had never seen rage like that, manifesting in each brutal stab. Channeling her inner Brutus, Arina hacked even when the soldiers knees buckled, brown eyes bulging in death. 

“It’s over,” Elain told her, swallowing bile before she vomited everywhere. Oh, the movies made killing seem so easy. So elegant.

It was horrible. 

“It’s over,” Elain told Arina, pulling at her arm. Arina swung, sharp blade slashing through the air. Her beautiful face was coated in blood, staining the blonde hair now hanging over her shoulders. “He’s dead.”

Arina looked down, expression hardening. “Let's go,” she said, reaching for Elain with trembling fingers. She’d lie and say that killing that man meant nothing, but Elain knew the truth of things. She knew the hardened act Arina put on was just that—an act. Underneath it, she was just as soft as Elain was, and just as scared. 

“Do you think this is why there’s no record—”

“Smetti di parlare,” Arina hissed, holding a hand up to silence Elain entirely. “This is not where you die.”

But Elain wasn’t so sure as several more soldiers poured into the courtyard, unable to see them in the dark and yet clearly looking for them. Arina grabbed Elain, hiding the pair behind the large concrete base of the god Jupiter. Elain counted four of them, which wasn’t horrible, but they were well trained and armed, and they were unlikely to get away with another brutal stabbing before they were killed, too.

“This way,” Elain whispered. She knew the garden like the back of her hand—knew every shortcut, ever tall hedge, and where even the bees were kept should it come to that. They were somehow silent, dodging a chicken that hadn’t been put in the pens that evening. The servants seemed to have vanished, too—had they been told to go. Or did they simply know what was coming? 

Trying not to feel betrayed—and failing miserably—Elain continued on, wishing Lucien would come charging in. She strained her ears for any sound of his thundering voice as he heroically cut down anyone in his way to get her. There was nothing but the shuffling of feet and whispering of soldiers looking for them. Elain could see no way out.

“Look,”Arina whispered, turning Elains head toward vivid orange in the distance.

Rome was burning. 

It was a distraction, terrible as it was. A nightmare for her husband, wherever he was—did he know what was happening at home? Would he come back to empty bedrooms and blood soaked floors? Dead guards and her and Arina missing? She’d never wished for a phone more than she did right then, so she could shoot him a quick text telling him her plan. To tell him she was safe—and to hear he was, too.

There was only a stretch of silence before the screaming began. People flooded out of their burning homes both to escape a truly terrible death and in an attempt to keep the flames from spreading. Arina and Elain both stopped for a moment, half hidden by a copse of olive trees. 

“He’ll crucify Hybern for this,” Arina whispered. 

“If he isn’t slaughtered,” Elain replied, her voice cracking at the thought. Arina tugged, and the two took off again. They could consider the horror of the evening another night. For now, all that mattered was survival.

They weren’t lucky. When a soldier stumbled upon them just as they were headed toward the stone walls, it was Elain who struck first. He hadn’t seen them—was simply patrolling, sword still sheathed. Was it honorable to kill him? That was a question for the philosophers, though Elain did throw up when she pulled her knife out of that man’s throat. 

Arina only grimaced. 

“Do you think it gets better?” her friend asked. “How does Eris do it?”

“He’s a menace,” Elain managed, stepping over the still twitching body. “That was…”

No one ever mentioned the way you could feel the slice of tendon and muscle, the snapping of cartilage and the wet sound a human made when they tried to gasp for air that wouldn’t come.

Elain was sick again right there in the grass. 

“In another life, Eris would have been a techbro,” Arina said, trying to take Elain’s mind off of what she’d just done. “And I would have fist fought him in a parking lot.”

That made Elain laugh. “I think Lucien would have been a politician,” she admitted, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “I’m not sure I would have voted for him.”

“You’d be such a Jackie though,” Arina told her. “Vogue would have loved you.” It was almost funny. Blood in their hair, hands shaking as they continued their journey through the garden in an attempt to escape Rome with their lives while they made jokes about being in Vogue. 

They were so close to vanishing into the city. Mere steps away when they saw him, coming up the hill on a gray horse. Not Lucien or Eris, or anyone they recognized—but Hybern. He looked rough. Illuminated by orange glow, Elain could see an ugly, purpling bruise on his face. Selfishly, she hoped Lucien had given it to her.

“Arina,” Elain whispered, pulling them both behind the wall.

“No,” Arina hissed, back flat against the stone. “It’s suicide.”

“They think we’re dead,” she reminded Arina. 

“He will kill us,” Arina countered, grabbing Elain’s wrist. “We need to run.”

“There’s nowhere left to go. Rome is burning.”

Arina looked over the wall again before ducking back down, unnoticed as Hybern continued through, flanked by two men wearing wickedly sharp blades. “What do you want to do?”

Elain sighed. “Follow me.”

LUCIEN:

Striding up the steps, Lucien had a sense of deja vu. I’ve been here before, he thought to himself, which—of course he had. Hundreds of times in life, even. But right then, he felt the hand of the gods stopping him. 

Warning him.

“What is it?” Jurian asked, hand already on the sword at his hip. Lucien’s eyes cut to Eris, impassive as always. His brother looked from Lucien to the forum up ahead.

“It’s quiet,” Eris finally said. 

Was that what stopped him? No, he thought, feeling phantom fingers squeeze his shoulder. Minerva was warning him, her presence looming large behind him. It wasn’t just the silence and the lack of bodies milling around—it was her voice whispering against the wind.

Don’t go.

“What do you know?” he demanded as he rounded on Eris. 

Eris raised his palms in defense, eyes narrowed. “If I wanted to see you dead, brother, it certainly wouldn’t be a group effort.”

Their eyes turned toward the Roman Forum again.

“Surround it,” Lucien murmured to Jurian. “No one part of the plot leaves alive.”

Jurian vanished as Lucien took that next step. Eris glanced again. “I have no part in this.”

“I almost wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Lucien replied with a heavy sigh. He understood why so many who’d come before him were so paranoid. He could trust no one, maybe not even his brother. 

Eris turned to Lucien, face blazing. “I won’t pretend I’m not angry. It was supposed to be me, not you,” he hissed, face red with rage. “But it was father, not you, who thwarted my ambition. And I sleep peacefully at night knowing whatever pit in Tartarus he inhabits is made more miserable by the knowledge the bastard son of his wife rules in his stead.”

Lucien took a breath, allowing Eris to add, “I’m with you until the end, brother.”

Lucien wouldn’t pretend he wasn’t afraid as they continued their assent. Even with Juran placing his soldiers strategically, there were simply too many unknowns. He could die here. 

“If I die—”

“You won’t—”

“If I die,” Lucien repeated softly, careful not to let his words carry, “take care of my wife. Swear you will let no harm come to her.”

“I swear,” Eris replied, eyes glittering. “But only because there is no need to uphold it. You will be in her bed this evening while she tends to your minor wounds and praises you for rooting out the conspirators.”

That was a charitable picture of what Elain was likely to do. Lucien knew she was more likely to chew off his ear as she’d done after the games in the Coliseum. Still, that was better than never seeing her again. If he’d known that morning, when he woke up, that he might never see her face again, Lucien would have remained in bed a little longer.

He would have told her he loved her.

Taking a breath, Lucien forced himself into the same place that, nearly two months earlier had been soaked in Beron’s blood. There was a spartan group of senators, led by Hybern. Lucien should have guessed, he supposed—the man wanted war, wanted to push the borders of Rome into territory they couldn’t take. Hybern would fight Neptune himself if he thought it would win him favor and gold. 

He was no better or saner than Nero in that regard. Lucien should have killed him when he first became Emperor. 

“Oh, Hybernius,” Lucien said, adopting the air of a disappointed parent. “Is this what it's come to?”

“You’re weak,” Hybern replied, dark eyes nearly black. “And a bastard from Syria who has no business sitting on the throne.”

Lucien raised his brows. “Challenge me, then.”

Hybern gestured around at the Senators he’d managed to win over, their blades likely hidden beneath their togas. 

“Challenge me like a man,” Luicen replied just as Jurian stepped into the open room, sword in hand. He handed it to Lucien with a grim smile, glancing toward the pair of open double doors. 

“You have a rat in your number,” Jurian lied. 

True fear slithered other Hybern’s features. He’d been so confident of his course of action, so sure things would work out in his favor. Now he’d die on the same marble floor so many others before him had, his reputation tattered. Lucien would get to write history—he’d ensure everyone remembered Hybern as little more than a pathetic traitor intent on undoing the legacy of Rome for his own selfish gains. 

“I’m not going to kill you,” Lucien said, eyes sweeping the room. “I’ll let the birds do that. Your bodies will serve as a reminder to the populace of what happens to traitors of the empire.”

He was going to crucify them. He’d have them beaten and then made into a spectacle, forced to endure the humiliation of the city stares before hung up on the cross. It was, he’d been told, an agonizing death. 

It was what Hybern deserved. 

“Where is your wife, Augustus” Hybern whispered in response. Lucien froze. He wouldn’t dare. Eyes sliding to the windows at the far end of the room, Lucien found he couldn’t see his palace against the blinding brightness of the rapidly setting sun. Beside him, Eris had become taut with rage. 

Lucien’s plans shifted. He’d kill Hybern right here, right now, simply to satisfy his need. The threat against Elain was too far—she was innocent in all this. Lucien advanced, sword unsheathed as Jurian motioned for the Praetorian Guard to swarm in. It was meant to be a bloodbath—and in some ways it was. In the chaos, Lucien lost Hybern. The smell of blood and the flurry of bodies, the unsheathing of weapons—it gave the traitor a chance to slip away.

Lucien and Eris were just behind, Jurian at Lucien’s side.

“Get them to the palace,” Lucien ordered, knowing he ought to go instead. “Get Elain out.” Jurian hesitated—he wasn’t supposed to leave Lucien. 

“Please,” Lucien added, letting some of his fear slip from his otherwise cold countenance. Besides, he knew exactly who he needed for this endeavor. Jurian nodded, branching off as Eris and Lucien stepped into the city.

“You can’t trust him,” Eris hissed. He’d always been able to read Lucien’s mind.

“I apparently can trust no one but you and Jurian,” Lucien replied. “I’ll take men who fight for money over men who fight only for themselves.”

It was night by the time they reached the rather nice home Rhysand had made for himself. Lucien didn’t bother knocking—why should he? Everything Rhysand had was by his grace and mercy, and he could take it all back if he wished. Did the great Thracian General resent it? He had to, Lucien reasoned.

Rhysand looked up from a chair, dressed in a simple chiton and sandals. “Please, come in,” he said dryly.

“I need your sword,” Lucien told him without preamble.

“Why would I accept?” Rhysand countered, clearly bored with the whole spectacle. “I’d like to go to bed.”

“Would you like to kill some Roman’s before you fall asleep?” Lucien shot back, ignoring how the words felt treasonous. 

“We’ll pay,” Eris added in a bored tone. 

“It better be a lot of gold,” Rhysand grumbled as Eris tossed Hyberns emblem into Rhysand’s outstretched fingers.

“Only men wearing that,” Lucien said. “Kill them however pleases you best. Leave their bodies in the street.”

“Stop or I’ll think you’re propositioning me,” Rhysand said, throwing a wink at the pair. “Try not to die.”

Lucien only nodded as Eris sneered, clearly displeased with the whole thing. They turned to leave him, aware he needed to dress, just in time to see fire erupt in the distance. 

“He wouldn’t,” Eris whispered, his expression sliding into fear. Lucien’s heart raced at the sight, mind terribly empty.

Rome was burning. 

By the time Lucien made his way back to the palace, it was well into the evening. He and Eris had raced down to the sight of the flames, organizing the vigiles from their homes and beds to help citizens douse the flames. He trusted they’d get it under control, diverting the flow from the aqueducts so the water was more abundant where it was necessary.

But it took time—time that caused whole neighborhoods to burn to ash. The rebuilding would be costly and time consuming, especially in the middle of summer. If Hybern wanted to fund a war, burning his own city seemed antithetical to the cause.

To Lucien, it felt as though Hybern had decided to take as much with him to the grave as possible. Lucien wanted to kill him. 

Lucien would kill him.

Drenched in sweat, heart pounding in fear, he made his way into his palace to find the entryway soaked in blood. Eris paused, too, sword held in one hand. They said nothing as they stepped over the bodies of traitors, men who’d sided with Hybern and had come to slaughter innocent women sleeping in their beds.

Had they succeeded?

Neither Lucien nor Eris spoke a word as they made their way over more bodies. Blood seemed to stain the marble walls, seeping into the cracks as it dried. How much of it was Elain’s, he wondered with dread in his heart.

His bedchamber door was wide open, the furniture strewn about. Someone had come looking—and hadn’t found what they were looking for. There was no sign of a struggle, that Elain had been woken by violence and dragged out. Still, Lucien wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw her, dead or alive.

“She’s probably with Arina,” Eris whispered, his voice hoarse. They turned for Eris’s bedchamber, which was far worse than Lucien’s. They’d clearly been in the room at some point and the scene of destruction was violent. Furniture was splintered and ruined, clothes pulled from drawers, windows cracked. A panel in the wall was left open—is that how they’d gotten out? Had they heard the commotion and made a run for it? 

Lucien didn’t need to ask his brother to follow behind him. All he heard was his half panicked breathing as his mind began conjuring the most horrific images imaginable. He saw Elain’s body, broken and bleeding, eyes lifeless and her spirit gone. He could see no scenario in which Elain somehow managed to invade a swarm of well-armed soldiers with her life.

They emerged in the kitchen to a grizzly sight. 

Eris exhaled when he saw that dead body. “Arina,” he murmured as though he were some kind of prophet. How he knew, Lucien didn’t ask. He merely followed into the dark where they found yet another body butchered with the unmistakable politeness that belonged to Elain. He could practically see the apology written into the skin beside the smell of vomit wafting upward from the grass.

“Where are they?” Lucien asked, turning to look toward the glow of the palace. “You don’t think they went into the city?”

Eris crossed his arms over his chest. “How much of the future do you think they know?”

“Too much,” Lucien groaned. They sprinted for the palace, though in truth Elain and Arina could have been anywhere. Was Hybern stupid enough to return here, when fleeing the city, living in exile, and amassing an army to better challenge Lucien would have been the smarter course of action? 

In the end, Lucien and Eris found Arina standing before Hybern and six soldiers, kneeling before him with her eyes cast down. He was delivering some sermon, orating before a woman forced to listen. Lucien wouldn’t have wished it on his worst enemy. 

“Step away,” Eris ordered, ending the long-winded explanation.

“You’re outnumbered,” Hybern said. Who had given him the black eye, Lucien wondered? Was it Arina? Gods above, he hoped so. The humiliation at being bested by a woman would follow him straight to Tartarus. There would be no heroes welcome for Hybern in Elysium. “Its over only for you.”

Lucien’s tongue was stuck to his throat. If Arina was here waiting to die, where was Elain? There was only one explanation—she was already dead, body yet undiscovered. It filled him with an icy hatred he couldn’t quite swallow. 

They couldn’t take all seven without letting Arina die. Eris must have calculated the odds in his heads, too, and come to the same conclusion. Was her death acceptable collateral damage? Could Lucien look his brother in the eyes, could he ask for his support knowing he let his new wife die so they could retain control of the empire?

What would he do if it was Elain?

Lucien felt impulsive and reckless. Maybe he didn’t care. Why should Eris get his wife when Lucien’s was almost certainly dead. The unfairness of the fates to bring her to him, only to cruelly snatch her away.

He took a step forward as Hybern raised his blade for Arina. She looked up, eyes blazing not with defiance, but amusement. 

“No—” Eris halted as a shadow moved just behind Hybern, slipping from behind a curtain. A moment later the sharpened tip of a dagger protruded wholly through Hyberns throat, causing his eyes to bulge with fear. He tried to turn, but Arina was on her feet in a flash, taking advantage of everyone's surprise to add her own dagger to the mix. 

“I warned you,” Arina said. “I told you that you died tonight.”

Elain’s face was pale and splattered with old and new blood. She wasn’t built for war—Lucien’s sword was unsheathed, his mission reaffirmed. Hyberns soldiers never got within an inch of her beautiful face. They met Lucien’s sword swiftly, turning their attention to him and his brother while Elain and Arina continued taunting a dying Hybern as though they were Seers blessed by the gods.

It must have been terrifying final words, though, and for that Lucien was grateful for the pair of them. He’d laugh about it later. Right then, all Lucien cared about was Elain, staring at him with the widest pair of brown eyes.

She laughed when she saw him. Laughed even as tears began to gather in her eyes and laughed some more when her knees gave out and he had to hold her against him. It was nothing like Arina, who began yelling loudly at Eris in that strange language, hands flying while his brother merely nodded his eyes as if he understood a word of it.

Maybe he did. After all, Eris did say, “Watch your tone,” in a soft growl.

“Elain, I…” Lucien felt immense shame as he looked upon her. He’d sworn to keep her safe and failed at the first opportunity to prove he was a man of his word. 

Elain merely threw her arms around his neck, face buried against his blood stained toga. “You’re alive. I was so afraid…so afraid…”

Lucien murmured nothing that was reassuring before Jurian returned with a good half of the Praetorian Guard. The night wasn’t over—but his wife was alive. Ordering soldiers to stand outside her door, the three returned to the city to help with the flames and sweep up the last few remaining dissenters. 

They all met Rhysand’s blade while the Thracian General smiled widely, face upturned toward the inky night sky. He’d never seen the man happier which disturbed him. That was a problem for another day, another time. 

Right then—all Lucien needed was Elain.

He didn’t bother washing himself, still coated in blood when he found her standing in their bed chamber.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, making his way toward her. Lucien meant to cup her face in his hands, but his knees gave way, causing him to once again kneel before this woman. Lucien bowed his head, hair sliding over his neck and if she’d wanted, she could have taken his head from him. Maybe he deserved it.

Elain’s dress rustled as she joined him on the ground, doing what he should have done—taking his face between her hands so he had to look at her.

“It was worth it to be here with you,” she whispered, eyes searching his own. “I have no regrets. Do you?”

“None,” he swore. “You are my empire, Elain. The only fealty I ever swore loyalty to.”

“Then rise, Lucien,” she murmured. Lucien did, taking her hand in his so they came up together. He reached for her then, kissing her fiercely. Elain had defied the very nature of time itself to be here with him, to live in this place. For him. She hadn’t stayed out of duty or some great love of the past, though he suspected it didn’t hurt that she was interested in his home and this place.

“Never again,” he swore, holding his wife close. Mouth pressed to her hair, Lucien repeated his vow. “Never again. 

Two thousand years in the future, historians would examine the events of that July night. Papers would be written, accounts examined, sites dug up. Artists drew their renditions of the Emperor running into the street to put out the fire, of the Thracian Gladiator who fought side-by-side with Romans to quell a would-be coup.

And of the Empress who’d slaughtered the initiator of the plot. Elain understood, now, why there were limited records of Helena—because she was from the future, and couldn’t reveal how much she knew without destroying, perhaps, the very fabric of time.

Lucien wrote very little of her as well, though they did exchange letters that she knew would be mostly lost to time. Her face would be forever etched on coins, her memory preserved in academic works. In that way, she never really left her friends and family, though she doubted they’d ever see it that way.

But for Elain, it was enough. 

[zeherili-ankhein]

Hello (｡⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠｡)

Intro Post... Everything under cut

Now that I have enough things my blog is dedicated to, I am posting this introduction post hehe...

About Me:

◍ Just call me “Shaku” lmao.... T_T

◍ I'm a minor, 16 year old studying in 11th class from Kolkata

◍ Yes I am Bangali, (bati ami.. maa ghoti, baba bangal lol)

◍ A proud Slytherin 🐍

◍ Bengali literatures I have read

◍ Thakumar Jhuli fan since the day I started watching (which is as a fucking 2 and a half year old lol)

Favourite ones are - ofcourse Shakchunni, Arun Barun o Kironmala, Monimala, Shahasradal o Champakdal, Sath bhai Champa, Lal Komol o Neel Komol and everything else..

◍ Pandob Goyenda fan forever

◍ I love Chhota Bheem and Shinchan so much

◍ And I absolutely love green 💚

◍ If I could I'd become a forest witch maybe... or a blue lotus... or a snake perhaps..

◍ ornithophobic, ophiophile, selenophile and floraphile

◍ Kolkata biriyani is the best 🗿

◍ Official MohiniChanchal child (fight me if you dare deny it)

◍ Pinterest board for Hindu mythology aesthetics

About the blog:

✿ Jily playlist I made –

✿ Incorrect quotes for Chhota Bheem and Shinchan. (I only post when I get enough ideas about the quotes lol)

Chhota Bheem community invitation anyone?

✿ My OTPs — Jily, Hinny, DekiNobi, Ronmione, GiyuShino, Sanekana, Tankana, Zennezu, Inoaoi, ObaMitsu, GojoHime, ChosoYuki, BellaDolphus, VanMozhi, HashiMito, MinaKushi, Ikarishipping, DesimChiyuki and a lot more...

✿ Rp blogs I own

– @peoplecallme-netaji

– @hansome-est-godofwar

– @miss-lily-evans

– @pavbhaji-prabhakar

– @laddoo-hain-drugs-nahi

– @topper-sugi

And some more... But why reveal them 🤭

✿ “The Cult of Vasant 🌷🌸🌹🌺🌻🌼🏵️💐🥀🪷🪻”

Cult Rituals, Vasant goes ham at LakshmiNarayan wedding, Vasant and Kamdev, Vasant in Treta Yug, Vasant and Hanuman, Vasant in Dwapar Yug, Vasant urban legend lore, Vasant admirers, Vasant food choises, sun sensetive Vasant, Dance teacher Vasant, Vasant and Holi and everything Vasant

Vasant x Neto shipper all the wayyyyyyyy

✿ Yamraj appreciation, un-villainizing Indradev, defending Shri Ram, defending Draupadi, Arjun better than Karna truer, Behula and Lakhindar are my babies and many more...

✿ The Black Family is my Roman empire honestly...

✿ DADDYMON truer 🗿

— Doraemon Rp blogs

— An original Dekisugi lore, and a small fic written on it curtsey to @/nobita-ki-mummy aka @/hi-avathisside

— Doraemon moodboards

Doraemon moodboard

Nobita moodboard

Shizuka moodboard

Gian moodboard

Suneo moodboard

Dekisugi moodboard

Pippo/Judo moodboard

Riruru moodboard

✿ Mythology, Hinduism, memes, magic and anything and everything honestly...

→ Voices of the Gods part 1

→ Voices of the Gods part 2

→ Kartikeya Da Peacock Dance Master

→ Shatrughan da Ghoomar master

→ Hindu gods modern au

✿ I paint and draw... And do origami. Which I sometimes posts.. (I especially like painting sceneries and Hindu gods and goddesses)

෴ Paper flowers part 1

෴ Paper flowers part 2

෴ Other paper stuff

෴ Kartikeya with Paravani art (with og lore)

෴ Shri Hari (pencil sketch)

෴ Murlidhar (pencil sketch)

෴ silly landscape

✿ No place for homophobes, transphobes, pedophiles, racists, misogynists or any hateful people on my blog

✿ @/foreignink is my tumblr bestie... I know her irl too and I love her more than most of the things in this world... Donchu dare say anything to her 🔪

[mess-with-legs]

Cupid loves you - Part1 ♡

HEYYYYYYY yes it seems like im not gonna throw away this project the second I started it hell yeahh!! Anywayyyys I hope you enjoy it! Pleassse let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions i would just love to answer them! And I hope you enjoy! Again I am not a profesional writer or anything like that so if it's kind of shitty I deeply apologise

⋆˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆˚｡⋆

"Could I borrow your pencil?"

Literature class wasn't one of your favorite subjects, luckly, we were studying some poetry at the moment, and you just so happen to enjoy reading poetry every now and then.

I noticed my classmate sitting next to me, writting something that caught my attention. The teacher wasn't speaking, and I knew for a fact that it couldn't be any project or anything as such. If you who is reading this can make sense of what I managed to catch with a mere glimpse, perhaps you're smarter than myself. It read:

In my tail said the sun On my throat said the moon In the branches of the laurel tree I saw two naked doves One was the other and both were none

Cupid called for me again. "Sorry! yes of course, here you go" I handed over my pencil. I saw how hers was small, it looked as if she sharpenned it one more time it would cease from existence. We were still in the first week of class, how could a pencil be so worn? Perhaps she writes as a hobby...Or maybe she draws!

"What are you writing?" She closed her notebook, in a quick but clean movement. Turning her eyes to me.

"Nothing important. I just like to write."

"Is it a hobby?"

"Yes, writting words in paper has always been easier for me than speaking them outloud." It seems like you were getting closer, maybe she wasn't the mean girl you originally thought she was, maybe she was just shy and didn't know how to interact with others. At least that's what you thought until the class ended...

"Hey Barbie, think I could get your number?" Roman looked like the most stereotypical, one-dimensional, stupid boy you could ever imagine. He was the kind to smoke in the bathrooms, get in fights, sleep during class, disrespect the teachers... It never really bothered you since you had never spoken to him before, and he didn't seem to have any interest in starting a conversation with you either.

"Unluckly for you I still have standards. Why don't you go feed on some other dead meat? I have better things to do than to be seen around with..." She looked at him up and down. "You."

He was furious, yelling, ready to start a fight. She then grabbed my hand and began walking outside the classroom. It took me some minutes to notice it, but people across the hallways were staring at us, some with fear, other's with admiration. I had no idea why she had picked me as her friend, someone like Roman, despite being an asshole, was much more popular than me, surely he was the better option if this was a matter of reputation.

The light of the windows made her hair shine, everything about her seemed too perfect to be human. She was a sculpture, sculpted with precision, patience and adoration.

When I finally came to my senses, we were back at our dorm.

"Y/N?"

"S-Sorry! I had my head in the clouds haha..."

She got close to me, both of us standing in the middle of the room. She placed her hand on my forehead to check the temperature, but she took longer than expected. She stared at me, in silence, her gaze upon me was soft and warm. She moved the hand that was on my forehead to the side of my head, caressing my hair carefully. I didnt dare speak in that situation, something was keeping me from opening my mouth. Then, I saw her smile.

"Your hair is..." She then took a step back. "Sorry. I must get going now"

You were confused, you had questions, you needed answers! Why did she do that? Yet, you were still. Unable to move.

"I must go now. The cheerleader auditions will begin soon." She walked over to her closet and took out some comfortable sport clothes.

"...You are very welcome to come see me if you'd like. I would very much enjoy your presence."

With those words, she left the dorm, leaving me speechless. At least I was able to move now... Moving on, I tried to forget about the strange behaviour of my friend and instead focuss on something else, something like...Ugh, homework.

I took out my book, notebook and pencilcase. I had an assignment that I had to do by hand because certain teacher didn't like computers and simply couldn't stand a project made in a digital format! I decided to first write a draft in pencil, and once I'm satisfied with it, I will write it on a clean paper with pen.

"Wait, where's my pencil?"

⋆˚｡⋆୨♡୧⋆˚｡⋆

[a-luran]

Waaaaaiiiittt but potential of Arthur dyeing his hair . Vein little shit in his older years YES 100000% he’s too proud to admit he’s doing it. And out of spite he will stick to it until he’s last his hands.

Human au. But little baby Arthur shaving and putting anything in his hair to look more blonde his mother is 10000/10. Even better if his dad is somehow Differnet to his siblings dads (maybe his siblings have dads who are friends or some have the same dad) and he’s desperate for that connection to her.

Or if it’s nations au. Rome making him do it as he’s ashamed of him and hates that he is somehow connected to him. I just adore the idea of England having connections to Rome. Makes it extra angst if England and Albion are different people. Uk Celtic bros one day had Albion and the next had this new kid speaking another language insisting this is his land. With weird smelling hair (I dunno how he’d do it lemons???? Ammonia??) and some burning desire to conquer resting in his eyes (lemon smelling 6 year old is just a funny scary image)

He would absolutely be the kind of person to be shown a picture of (very obviously) himself as a child and say “I don’t know who that is” with a straight face, actively in the process of retouching his ends. (I have to admit that I am very partial to Arthur with blonde hair and dark dark roots. I don’t think that he’d hide he dyes his hair, just does not discuss it. It’s who he is at this point)

In a human AU I can definitely see this being a way for him to be closer to his mother, or who he thinks his mother is based off of old photographs. Maybe she had dark hair as well but dyed it— how could Arthur know, really? But it’s how he remembers her. It’s the her that left imprints in faded photographs.

In nationverse I think it’s a complex identity struggle, aye especially under rule. Either as a way to belong to himself, or forceful assimilation that sticks in a way he would battle to unlearn. The Arthur who existed before that influence does not exist anymore; he would literally not recognise himself in a mirror.

From a historical perspective he would have been able to lighter his hair with lye. There is a lot of evidence to suggest the use of ash as an alkaline agent. It’s not my area, but I can speak to a degree of different dyeing techniques for both hair and textiles across different periods of what we’d refer to broadly as the ‘Roman Britain .’ Even Pliny the Elder left behind commentary on how to achieve the perfect black and red dye job— in his opinion (for black he suggests rotting leeches in wine, for red he talks about a much more reasonable process involving beechwood ash and animal fat. A golden tone to is suggested to be achievable with saffron). You’ll find it suggested in some of the literature that sex workers and slaves were required to dye their hair blonde under Roman law. A lot of Roman law scholars and social historians disagree, for several reasons. Although it is true that prostitution was highly institutionalised, a likely middle ground is that blonde hair was desirable and pursued (which tells us plenty about the underlying social conditionings of desire, as well as the cultural, social and economic reading of blonde hair), and that in some instances may have been standardise as one of the professional markers of the sex trade.

[musicloverxoxo7]

Professor Kim’s Teaching assistant

Professor!Namjoon   x   fem!reader

Summary: You feel drawn to the new professor like to nobody else. Does he reciprocate that feeling? How far will you take it?

Themes/warnings: smut with a bit of plot at the beginning, age difference (reader is Master student, so ca 5 years), hand job, oral (m receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, y/n has mild dom tendencies, tied up hands, nipple play

Wordcount: ca. 3300 words

Disclaimer: 18+, DO NOT INTERACT IF YOU ARE UNDER 18

I do not own BTS. They merely inspire me. None of this is related to their persons in real life.

“I want to use the last 5 minutes to discuss the topic that will occupy next lesson. Greek mythology in Harry Potter.”

When this new course opened the previous semester, you’d been dying to get a space. Which you finally did the second time around. But now that you’re sitting in Professor Kim’s course, you are bored. Either you know too much about literature or your minds are too alike. You already know almost all the stuff he talks about, while everyone else is in awe at his creative angles.

You raise your hand. Professor Kim looks around. Since none of the other 15 students want to say anything, he gets back to you with a sigh.

“Go ahead, Ms y/l/n.”

It’s almost always a conversation between just the two of you. It has been like that the entire semester.

“For one, there are all the beasts and magical creatures that J.K. Rowling involved in her magical universe. Things like the chimera, centaurs, Cerberus. Aside from that we also have characters in the book named after actual mythological beings, not just Greek, but also Roman.”

“That is correct. Could you give an example? Greek or Roman.”

“Take Remus Lupin for example. Roman legends say that Romulus and Remus were twins that were tasked with building a city. The short version is that Romulus got to build it and named it after himself, of course. Mythology says that they were raised by a she-wolf. I consider this fact of importance, since Remus Lupin is a werewolf.”

“Accurate. Everyone, until next week, if you haven’t done so yet, please read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone. Ms y/l/n, my office, please.”

You file out of the classroom with the other students and head to Professor Kim’s office. You have no idea why he’d want to talk to you. He’s never asked you to his office before.

Professor Kim appears a minute after you, his glasses askew and his hair a slight mess. Same as usual.

You smile just a tiny bit. You’d definitely straighten out those glasses. But you’d definitely leave the messy hair be.

“Please, Ms y/l/n, come in. Would you like something to drink? I have tea, coffee or water.”

You sit down at the corner of his desk as he makes himself a cup of coffee.

“I’m good, thank you. Why am I here?”

He waits until the coffee machine is done, then leans against the cupboard on which it stands. His pecks are on display like that, and you give yourself a second to admire them.

“I want to discuss your future. You are exceptional in the field I teach.”

“I just like reading a lot and finding out what could have been behind it.”

You shrug your shoulders.

“Have you considered doing a PhD and becoming a professor?”

“Maybe.”  

“You don’t have to share with me, y/n, if you don’t want to. I merely wanted to offer you my assistance, in case you’d like it.”

Maybe it is because he’s trying so hard. Maybe because this is the first time he has called you by your first name.

“I did consider it for a while. But I had a professor last semester who said they’d do whatever it takes so I don’t get in anywhere as a PhD student.”

“What?”

Professor Kim moves so abruptly that he spills coffee all over his chest. Thanks to your long talk it’s only warm anymore, but he still curses. He puts the cup aside. It gives you a full frontal of his chest, including dark nipples that strain against the fabric.

You jump into action helping him clean up, because otherwise you might do something stupid. Something stupid like burying your face in his chest.

“Take it off.”

“It’s beyond saving. I never get coffee out.”

“Take it off. I’ll do it.”

He doesn’t even turn away to unbutton the shirt. When he tugs the rest of the shirt out of his pants to get the last 2 buttons, you have to cling to your composure very tightly. He hands you the shirt and you put it in the tiny sink in his office.

With the cold water and the immediacy of your reaction, the stain is out in next to no time.

“Et voila.”

You hold up the dripping shirt. No stain left on the light blue fabric. Your smile wavers when you see that Professor Kim is still standing there shirtless. His caramel skin looks like it is supposed to be savored slowly and explored extensively.

“Was it Lim?”

“Huh?”

“Did Professor Lim tell you those terrible things?”

“Oh, well…”

“Y/n!”

“Okay, yes, he did.”

Professor Kim sighs deeply. He straightens out his glasses and walks over to his desk.

“He hates women that are smarter than him. Especially if they are also beautiful. He’s an insecure pig. Time for some measures.”

“What? No!”

You are at the desk with 2 quick steps, your hand on Professor Kim’s upper arm. He looks up slowly from what he was writing, his eyes not focused on your hand but on your eyes.

“Y/n, if you want to go to university for a PhD, I will help you.”

“Okay, then help me. But please, let’s try to keep Professor Lim out of this for as long as possible. He won’t be able to do anything if he finds out last minute.”

Professor Kim straightens up and you finally let go of his arm. You’re a little sad, because it felt very nice. Strong and warm.

“How about you become my TA in the meantime, for your last semester here? That way we would have a valid excuse for spending some time together. Time we will mostly spend on prepping you for that PhD and the application process.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Professor Kim looks at his shirt in your arm and then his naked torso.

“I forgot I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Sorry about that.”

He grabs a jacket from a stand in the corner and buttons it up. This way, he is mostly covered up again. What a shame. You’d grown used to seeing him shirtless by now.

“And one more thing, y/n.”

“What?”

“Please call me Namjoon. Teaching assistants and their professors are almost always on first name terms.”

You hand him back the moist shirt.

“Got it. The shirt should be fine now. But please give it a wash in the washing machine as well.”

“Thank you for your help. I’ll remember that for next time.”

--------

As it turns out, Professor Kim – no, Namjoon – spills something quite regularly. No matter how elegant he looks, he can be quite clumsy. The following week you end up washing coke out of his shirt. The week after hot cocoa. You end up almost getting too comfortable with seeing him shirtless.

Being a TA is turning out to be quite fun and not all that much work, since Namjoon does not hold that many courses this semester.

The day comes when you get accepted into 3 different PhD programs at very prestigious universities. They are out of Professor Lim’s league, so he doesn’t dare mess with you. And finally, your graduation day arrives.

After a beautiful graduation ceremony, you have dinner with your mom and granny. Granny urges you to get married and mom wants you to finally start working full-time. They both talk way too much about your brother and sister and their little families.

Afterwards, you are in dire need of a drink. You end up in a poorly lit bar two houses down from the restaurant. Surprisingly, it smells like peppermint and lime in there. You sit down at the bar and order your favorite drink.

“Long day?”

Namjoon turns to you. You sat down on his right side without even noticing him there. You notice that the top 3 buttons of his shirt are open, and the sleeves pushed upwards. Your mind wants to go in some dirty directions, but you don’t let it.

Thankfully, the bartender puts down the drink in front of you right that moment.

“Kind of. Beautiful, but also laden. Like a landmine.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Sounds like family.”

Namjoon snorts into his drink.

“No matter how much I love my family, I understand what you mean. What did they say to you getting into the 3 best universities in the country?”

“Haven’t told them. They’d be livid that I haven’t gotten married or taken a full time, highly paid positions somewhere yet.”

“You’ll probably have to tell them sometime.”

“Yeah, sometime. I only see them once or twice a year and that’s soon enough for me.”

You let out a long, heavy sigh.

“You want to sit down in an alcove?”

“Sure.”

You move to an empty one with your drinks. The lighting is different here. Warmer, sexier. Namjoon’s dimples look like they want to pull you closer to him. You have a hard time resisting.

“Now that I’m no longer your professor, I’d still like to at least stay friends with you.”

“Of course. It’s thanks to you that I got to this point.”

“Not really. I only guided you a little. But thanks to you I now know how to clean almost all stains out of my shirts.”

You smile. That is true.

“I didn’t mind.”

You don’t because you find his clumsiness endearing. And also, because you got to see him shirtless on a weekly basis. Which was worth the effort.

Namjoon smiles. And something in that smile tells you that he knows.

You fidget a little. Since the nook is small and the bench short, your arm touches his in the process. You withdraw your arm and sit still again.

“I will miss having you around nearly every day. Of course, you were a great help, but mostly your presence is very stimulating to my mind.”

“Well, you wanted to be friends, so we will still get to see each other.”

“Of course. But that won’t be the same, will it?”

“I suppose not.”

Namjoon takes another sip of beer. When he leans back again, his cheeks are a faint strawberry color. You keep your eyes on him. He doesn’t look at you, though, but far into the distance.

“I am a very clumsy person. Which you know.”

“Yes.”

“I do spill drinks on myself quite regularly.”

“I know.”

“But maybe not quite so often. More like once or twice a month.”

“What are you saying?”

You’re still looking at him and he finally meets your eyes.

“I wanted to be close to you. The way you looked at my chest whenever I took of my shirt... I hoped you’d make a move on me someday.”

“Wait what?”

“Ridiculous, I know. You have marvelous self-restraint. And perhaps you only enjoy pecks in general, not specifically me as a person.”

His eyes are honest, with a hint of vulnerability. You hold his gaze for a few moments, then your eyes move down to his pecks. His shirt today is just the right amount of tight. But the fabric is midnight blue, so you cannot see through it.

You bite your bottom lip. You do like Namjoon as a person.

“I do like pecks. But yours are particularly… delectable.”

You slowly look up at him again. His dimples are showing. You move your hand up and gently poke one of his dimples with your finger. When you withdraw your hand again, Namjoon catches it and blows a kiss on your fingertip.

Butterflies flutter through your stomach. You move a little closer and put your hand on his thigh. He does not object. When you stroke up and down his thigh, his breathing becomes a little labored.

Encouraged by your bold movements, Namjoon leans forward and touches his lips to yours. You deepen the kiss. He tastes like peppermint and beer.

You break apart after what could have been seconds or hours.

“Would you like to disappear from here? My apartment is just down the road. If you aren’t ready, though, we can postpone that.”

You take him by the hand and pull him out of the alcove. Thank goodness the drinks are already paid for.

The warm summer air outside caresses your legs and arms. Namjoon takes your hand and guides you to his place. On the way you talk about books, as usual.

Only once the door to his apartment closes behind him do things change again. You’ve barely taken off your shoes when Namjoon grabs your waist and pulls you against him. This kiss is much less restrained and civil than the one in the bar.

You melt into him, your hands on his firm pecks. You run your hands over them, making sure to also caress his nipples gently. Every time you give them a twist, his breath catches. Finally, you can’t take it anymore and unbutton his shirt. He does not stop you.

Once you have peeled the shirt off him, you let your hands roam over his entire upper body. He gives you time to explore while keeping his hands at your waist.

When you break apart for a breather, Namjoon smiles.

“This kind of curiosity will bring you far anywhere, y/n.”

You giggle. Even in a situation like this, he can’t help but think of work and books.

“I hope it can also bring me as far as your bedroom.”

“If that is where you want to be, definitely.”

He walks to the bedroom door and pushes it open. You walk inside past him and turn on the light. There are beautiful paintings on the wall. The bed isn’t made, but overall, the room is very clean and organized.

You turn back to Namjoon.

“I love the interior design. I want a painting tour later on.”

“Whatever you wish, y/n.”

You put your hands on his belt buckle and open it.

“IF there is anything you don’t like, tell me to stop. Ditto for if it’s too much.”

“Who is the teacher here?”

You smirk up at him.

“Tonight, I think it’s me. But I’m always willing to switch roles.”

You pull the belt out of his pants.

“Lie down.”

He does.

“Put up your hands.”

He follows your instructions again. You tie his hands to the head of the bed with his belt.

“I’ll untie you whenever you want. Just say the word.”

“Got it. But I’m feeling pretty comfortable right now.”

You unzip your dress and drop it on the floor before crawling on the bed. Namjoon lies stretched out, the muscles in his arms and torso prominent. You sit down on his lower belly and give him a kiss.

“This could take a while.”

And it does. You start with feathery kisses on his dimples and then move down his neck. You are very tempted to leave marks there, but that wouldn’t be good for a professor who has to teach his students tomorrow.

So instead, you suck a mark into his bulging upper arm. You gently scratch your teeth over the inside of his forearm. That has goosebumps running over his arms. You bite down on the inside of his palm.

By then you’ve teased enough and move down to his chest. His gorgeous chest. Finally, you get to touch and savor. You place sloppy kisses all over his pecks. Namjoon watches you with hooded eyes. When you run your lips over his nipples, his eyes cross. You do it again and add a little tongue. He huffs out a breath.

You keep up the ministrations for another minute or two until you move down his stomach. You leave tiny bites there, which has his stomach muscles contracting like crazy.

You unzip his slacks.

“Hips up.”

He does and you pull the slacks and underwear down. As you already felt earlier, he is fully erected. You run your hand up the shaft and pay special attention to the frenulum. Namjoon takes a shuddering breath. Your thumb draws a circle around his slit.

“Baby, stop torturing me.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Namjoon sighs.

“Goodness, no.”

“Then stop complaining or I’ll gag you next.”

You smile up at him.

Then you lower your head and repeat the circular motion around his slit with your tongue. His moan is a true turn on. You ditch your panties, slip your hand between your legs and start playing with your clit, while you keep working him with your tongue and mouth.

It doesn’t take long until you have him at the brink of desperation. And ecstasy.

You raise your head and let go of him. His eyes linger on your other hand, which is between your legs.

“May I do that too, tonight?”

“Definitely. But later.”

You crawl back up to the headboard and untie him. He lowers his arms and presses you against his body. The close body contact feels heavenly.

Namjoon undoes your bra. You sit up and throw it aside. Then you lay down on him again, rubbing your nipples against his chest. It feels like heaven. Until you’re so sensitive you have to stop.

You kiss the tip of his nose.

“Your turn now, professor. I want to feel you in me.”

He rolls you around until you are lying on your back and he is hovering over you. With one hand he grabs your hands and pins them against the pillows above you. You find that very, very hot.

You arch your body towards him.

“Please.”

“How could I say no to that.”

You feel his tip push against your entrance. It’s a nice stretch once he finally pushes into you, slowly, so you can adjust. Except that you are so turned on that you don’t really need time to adjust.

Namjoon is breathing heavily by the time he bottoms out.

“Give me just a second like this, okay? I don’t want to cum right away.”

He smiles down at you and the dimples appear in all their glory. You pucker your lips. He gets the message and leans down for a kiss. A very deep, slightly messy kiss.

Once you break apart and he finally starts moving, your eyes meet. His are dark, almost black, with lust.

His moves are slow and steady at first. He lets go of one of your hands, so you can play with your nipple. It doesn’t take long until his moves become sloppier, harsher. With a few more twists or your nipple your high burns its way through you.

Namjoon’s breathing gets shallower while you moan into his ear. He lets go of your other hand and you sling both around his torso.

“I can’t… much longer…”

“It’s okay. We have all night for more.”

A few more sloppy thrusts, then Namjoon cums. He buries his face in your shoulder, and you hold him once his body ceases to move.

It takes a bit for both your breathing to normalize and for heartbeats to slow down again. Until that happens, you stroke Namjoon’s hair.

You don’t know how long you lay there like that, but you enjoy it.

Eventually, Namjoon raises his head and looks down at you. His eyes have cleared up to their normal dark brown. You see something in them that looks surprisingly like love. You’re even more surprised that you don’t mind that at all. Maybe it is time to trust another person and give them your love.

“Would you like to go and take a hot shower with me, y/n.”

“Gladly.”

He pulls out of you and helps you up.

“About that paintings tour of your apartment?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s postpone that until tomorrow. I think we’re busy for the rest of the night.”

Namjoon guides you into the bathroom, where he turns on the shower. There is easily enough space for two people in there.

“As you prefer, honey.”

When you look at him his eyes are crinkled in a smile.

© musicloverxoxo7, 2023

Please do not copy, translate, or repost my work (reblogging is fine though). Doing so will make you legally liable for stealing intellectual property.

[yamayuandadu]

was mithra/mithras worshipped in mesopotamia like was his worship introduced into this area during the achaemenid and later periods? what about cities near mesopotamia like Palmyra and dura europos? also was he syncrestised With any local gods? maybe shamash

I’m sorry but due to space constraints and lack of sufficient familiarity with (or deeper interest in) most Roman mystery cults I can’t help much with the dissemination of Mithras and Mithraism on the eastern periphery. There is no evidence of his cult being present in Palmyra (Javier Teixidor, The pantheon of Palmyra, p. 106) but on the other hand it was definitely present in Dura Europos (the mithraeum discovered there is notable enough to have its own wiki page, apparently); I’m not really aware of any attestations from even further east. According to Encyclopedia Iranica, “though represented virtually everywhere in the Roman empire, it was much stronger in the Latin speaking West than in the (predominantly) Greek-speaking East”. As for Mithra proper: the oldest datable attestation of him - or a derivative, at least, since we are dealing with a highly divergent oddity with a plural name, it seems - is technically at least Mesopotamia-adjacent. 

The treaty between Suppiluliuma of the Hittite Empire and Šattiwaza of Mittani (c. 1330 BCE) lists “the Mitra-gods (d.MEŠMitraššil; the determinative signifies plurality), the Varuna-gods, Indra, the Nasatya-gods” (translation courtesy of Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 43) among deities invoked as witnesses on the Mittani side. As stressed most recently by Eva von Dassow in Mittani and Its Empire (published in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East), their position is not prominent, and they do not appear anywhere else. People who try to make this attestation into a big deal are basically automatically untrustworthy. The Mitanni rulers, regardless of their origin, were culturally Hurrianized to such a degree the presence of some derivative of Mithra in a single treaty is borderline irrelevant - and it might not even be strictly speaking Mithra, but rather generic “treaty gods” (hence the plural). I’m not really aware of any Achaemenid, Arsacid or Sasanian efforts to introduce the strictly Zoroastrian version of Mithra to Mesopotamia.

Whether it’s possible to speak of any connection between Mithra and Shamash is a complex matter so that’s addressed under the cut. The material from Hatra pertains to that so it’s covered there too.

To begin with, I’m not aware of any clear case of identification between Mithra and Shamash. It’s a suggestion which sometimes pops up in scholarship, but without any conclusive evidence, as far as I am aware. It’s not entirely implausible, though.

Typically the comparisons depend on sharing both judiciary and solar roles, but it needs to be stressed here that Mithra didn’t really have strong solar associations until relatively late. This aspect of his character is absent from the Avesta, and according to his article in Encyclopedia Iranica there’s no clear evidence for him having a solar role predating Strabo’s account of Persian beliefs. Therefore, it probably only developed at some point in the Achaemenid period.

One relatively recent example of seeking possible connections between Mithra and Shamash I’ve stumbled upon is the article Mesopotamian Influence on Persian Sky-watching and Calendar. Part I. Mithra, Shamash and Solar Festivals by Krzysztof Jakubiak and Arkadiusz Sołtysiak (accessible via De Gruyter). Some quite bold claims are made there, with the supposed influence going all the way back to the Bronze Age. However, the authors provide basically no archeological evidence for early Iranian-Mesopotamian contact (they also don’t address the fact early Iranians would very obviously encounter Elamites first when moving westwards); and some of their sources indicate that a thorough survey of literature wasn’t made (in many cases outdated generalist publications are the only sources consulted). I’m reluctant to recommend it as a point of reference for this reason. It seems much more sound to seek possible influence in the Achaemenid period or beyond. However, matters are complicated by the fact that Mithra is essentially absent from some of the earliest available sources like the Persepolis fortification archives, and largely just appears in theophoric names before the reign of Artaxerxes II.

Margaret Cool Root suggests in Defining the Divine in Achaemenid Persian Kingship (published in Every Inch a King – Comparative Studies on Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, accessible via Brill) that there is already evidence for Persians being familiar with the iconography of Shamash and his association with royal power and legitimacy during the reign of Darius I. However, she doesn’t propose any connection with Mithra, only with the semi-divine king and Ahura Mazda, and relies just on motifs in monumental art. More sound evidence is available from the early centuries CE. Michael Shenkar (Intangible Spirits and Graven Images, p. 102) notes a figure on the relief from Tang-e Sarvak might be either Mithra depicted in a similar manner to Shamash or just outright Shamash. He also proposes that an unusual depiction of the Kushan emperor Vima Kadphises rising from between mountains with rays/flames emanating from his shoulders is patterned on Shamash’s iconography (Royal regalia and 'Divine Kingship' in the pre-Islamic Central Asia, p. 58) and that Iranian and adjacent groups might have associated the images of Shamash rising from between mountains with the customary description of Mithra as responsible for surveying the world from atop Mount Harā. He points out Shamash was still depicted this way in the second century CE, as indicated by works of art from Hatra. I personally found these arguments convincing at least in terms of iconography. The situation in Hatra is somewhat unique, and requires some additional explanations, though. 

A good recent outline can be found in Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider’s Hatra of Shamash. How to assign the city under the divine power? (there is a small mistake on p. 799 though - referring to Ereshkigal as a sister of Shamash is a questionable syllogism at best, and even her sibling credentials wrt Inanna are questionable as recently stressed by Alhena Gadotti). She argues the city god, Maran/Maren, was essentially a derivative of Shamash - or Shamash under an Aramaic title, something like “our lord”. Some of his local features are unique - for example, his symbol was an eagle, but Shamash was never associated with this bird elsewhere in earlier periods (it was mostly Zababa’s thing). Kuciak-Schneider suggests this might be an evolution of depicting him symbolically as a winged solar disk (p. 798). A slightly different view can be found in an earlier publication. Ted Kaizer in his 2000 overview article Some remarks about the religious life of Hatra states that it cannot be determined with certainty if the Shamash worshiped in Hatra was derived from the Mesopotamian god, or instead from the Arabic sun goddess (p. 234). He also the local pantheon combined “Mesopotamian, Arab, Syrian and Graeco-Roman elements” (p. 230) - but not Iranian. This obviously requires partial revision, since Lucinda Dirven in her fantastic My Lord with his Dogs. Continuity and Change in the Cult of Nergal in Parthian Mesopotamia does demonstrate at least a degree of Iranian influence on the worship of Nergal in Hatra. However, all I dug up in the case of Mithra is a handful of Iranian theophoric names listed by Enrico Marcato in Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra: Daosha-Mithra (“Mithra is my friend”), Mithra, Mithra-bandag (“servant of Mithra”) and Mithra-dāta (“given by Mithra”). It doesn’t seem these have any deeper implications than that there were some people with an Iranian background in Hatra, though. Marcato states that the presence of an actual cult of Mithra in Hatra is implausible (p. 167) and has been already disproven in the 1970s by Han J. W. Drijvers in the article Mithra at Hatra? Some remarks on the problem of the Irano- Mesopotamian syncretism, which I tragically failed to find online. For what it’s worth, he also notes some of the same theophoric names occur in material from Palmyra as well.

[ammstify]

Alright, crazy Persona 6 concept, hear me out;

What if the Personas our team uses are based either on the Knights of the Roundtable from Arthurian legends, or figures from Gaelic and Celtic stories and mythology?

From what we know of Persona 6 so far, the game's main color is green, which is often associated with nature, growth, harmony, fertility, and freshness. It can also be related to the themes of greed, envy, and wealth, and in Japan, can also be seen as a lucky color!

The code name for the game has also been revealed to be the word "carbon", which if you know, carbon is of course a very important element as it not only helps plants produce oxygen for us, but also regulates our planets temperature!

Many of the Persona games have themed teams of Personas, with each one being related to the overall concepts of the game, such as the theme and setting of the dungeons:

Persona 3's are all themed around Greco-Roman heroes, villains, and Gods, their respective affects on Greco-Roman mythology, and if they traveled into Tartarus (i.e. Orpheus, Castor and Pollock, Cerberus)

Persona 4's are all themed around Japanese heroes and Gods of myth, primarily related to the Izanagi and Izanami myth (i.e. Amaterasu, Susano-o, Take-Mikazuchi)

Persona 5's are all themed around literature and notorious rebellious figures and Gods who have challenged the status-quo, some as outlaws, others as rebels for their own cause (i.e. Arsene Lupin, Milady, Prometheus)

My idea primarily ties with the ideas of nature and the connections that both the Knights of the Roundtable and Celtic/Gaelic mythology inherently has to them. Perhaps our group and protagonist are trying to be heroes by healing nature, or trying to help society become less dependent on technology?

Or maybe, similar to the Phantom Thieves, are trying to bring justice to some individuals by acting as "heroes" or "knights", and protect those that are in need? And our group acts as these heroes, entering whatever shadow world to fight off evil doers in the name of heroism.

But what if this also turns against them too? And forces them to make hard decisions to decide what it truly means to be a "hero" and what it means to be a "villain?"

Of course this is all silly rambles but, if you're a fan of Persona, tell me what you think! What type of Personas or theme would you like to see in the next game? Tell me down below in the notes!

[juliakristeva]

does mary being a virgin actually matter?

i will talk about rape in this response.

it does and it doesn't. it depends on who you talk to and what they believe. on a social level an immaculate conception is important if you think that sexual activity is an unnecessary addition to an existence that was intended to never involve the need to procreate and thus symbolizes human fallibility and sinfulness. i think a more generous reading of the need for a virgin birth is that it simply means mary was unmarried. theologically mary's virginity also symbolizes (in mary as it does in the later celibacy of nuns) fidelity, total consecration, single-minded devotion, and submission to his will. i think that perhaps, and this is also me being generous, the assumption that many people, both christian and secular, make to the idea that virginity = purity is not really implicit to mariology or to the gospels. it wasn't that mary was pure because she hadn't had sex. the implication is that mary was pure because she loved God that much: she loved God as a lover, as a friend.

there's no doubt that mary would have been a virgin at the the point in her life when the events of the lucan narrative are said to have taken place. on the immaculate conception narraiteve makes it much too easy for mary to weaponized against abortion rights and women's bodily autonomy, which is inherently antithetical to scripture. i've read a lot of literature lately arguing that the lucan narrative is one of coercion, making the conception of christ inherently a rape: but my inclination is to read luke 1:38 (let it be with me according to your word) as mary giving her explicit consent. (an interesting point that i encourage people to internalize: "let it be", in koine greek, is γένοιτό, may it become, come into being, or (of a person) be born: in short mary explicitly consents to her pregnancy in the original text, meaning that the weaponization of mary as pro-life does not hold water and absolutely goes against scripture.)

but i also think that there is something extremely worthwhile in the idea that mary was a rape victim. this is a much more literalist, historicist reading of the gospels, which i do absolutely think can coexist alongside the theological. mary can be an eternal virgin and a rape victim. christ can be the son of God and a victim of rape. i'm not sure which theorist it was (its definitely elisabeth schussler fiorenza or elizabeth johnson but im too lazy to check and im sorry) but feminist theologians in the 90s proposed that mary may have been raped by a roman soldier (not a preposterous notion given that mary was a young, unmarried child living in an area that was being violently colonized). s much as i read that narrative as a consenting and mystical one, i think there is something very powerful in the idea that mary could have been raped.

(i've lifted the following two paragraphs from a paper i wrote on this topic last semester)

in considering mary as a rape victim, mary’s experience offers the opportunity for victims of religious and sexual abuse to gain a sense of empowerment and a defined place in christianity. it locates trauma as central to christian narratives and strips back the shadow of obscenity that clouds conversations of sexuality, even in instances of force or coercion. it shakes the exploitative patriarchal underpinnings of christianity. still, there is danger here. such analysis can and does reinforce narratives of the place of and necessity for women’s sexual and reproductive exploitation within christian dogmas. this danger is so pervasive that it maybe impossible to fully rehabilitate the image of mary as rape victim effectively within theology. it is a submissive, exploited woman that is useful for patriarchal epistemologies because a traumatised woman more properly embodies the “void” which femininity is said to be: a traumatised woman may be stripped of her sense of self and identity, her spirit, and her own body, reduced down solely to the violence which she has experienced, either in terms of what freud terms neuroses or hysteria. in this instance, a woman’s response to the trauma of her exploitation within dogmatic institution invariably becomes hysterical because it is a response to an exploitation which is perpetrated but also demands to be disguised, since the institution is unable to particularise women’s sexuality as meaningfully existing and instead as an absence demanding penetration. thus in the conceptualization of mary as a rape victim– and in the experience of all rape victims seeking a defined place within theology– both their bodies and their experiences are constantly under scrutiny and susceptible to outside patriarchal validation as orthodox or heterodox. 

the foil to Mary as rape victim, the concept of Mary as empowered, also harbours danger for theological analysis in that it may be appropriated as a means of validating rape and other forms of denial within patriarchal religious dogmas. it may be construed as meaning that when a woman is denied choice, it is for the “greater good” of humankind and she finds joy and fulfilment through being denied her divine Yes and No capacity. this renders her as one “victimized into a state of living death.”

either Mary is the victim of rape by coercion, or she partakes willingly and joyfully of an act of union that is unfaithful to human institutions of female domination and sexual ownership. to be more precise, either mary is disempowered by a masculine and penetrative god-man, or she is endowed with her own authority as a woman, an authority which transcends human dogmatic formulations and gender divisions. both of these are dangerous to the patriarchal underpinnings of theology, and both need to be taken seriously. so the answer to your question is, essentially: it stops mattering when women have full rights over their sexuality, regardless of how patriarchy identifies them, under repressive cultural authority.

[30fury]

im going to be so honest, helpol/polytheistic circles need to become more discerning and aware of a writers voice & intentions. first and foremost, unless you're reading the direct greek (and reading it CORRECTLY! that shit is hard!), you are reading someone else's best guess. read as many translations of the same text as you can. and pay attention to who is writing what/writing when/writing how.

especially when it comes to roman age texts, what we might label as "original intent", and maybe more accurately "original understandings", of legends and figures get diluted and replaced. rome was a very different world to the greek city state, to hellenistic egypt, to archaic-age islands. obviously greek stories aren't devoid of personal or cultural sentiments (see: hesiod's works, any philosophy), but a lot of the discourse i see about texts is roman v. greek interpretations.

(along this, don't be afraid of cold-emailing classical professors for book lists. the worst they can do is ignore you, but there's a 90% chance it's also their passion, so they may have useful commentary on different translations.)

also remember that texts are later versions of the stories we know and absolutely had alternate readings/etc. orality was a major part of storytelling in both markedly theistic and non-theistic* settings. a symposium story is not meant to have the same effect that rhapsodical stories have — setting and reciter are too different and aim at different things.

does this make confidently entering helpol spaces daunting? absolutely. absolutely it does. i hesitate to count many of my years as a follower because i did not keep much of this in mind. however, as a classics major, i will say that it, 1.) gets easier the more you practice this awareness, and 2.) makes it far more useful for you in the long run.

i will not deny the use of personal gnosis in your own beliefs and practice. you can argue, and many have, that the very foundation of greek religious thought was personal or local gnosis rather than panhellenic/codified gnosis. however, personal gnosis often comes after understanding the gods as the original members of our religion did. "if he means this for them, what does this mean to me?". being able to read not only explicitly religious texts (ie. homeric hymns) but cultural literature (ie. plays & lyric poetry & etc) with a discerning eye has improved my connection with the gods and changed the ways i root them in my life. i can only hope that others will be willing to make that plunge and do the work for themselves.

i do understand that this is hard — especially for people who are not academically inclined etc. — but this is also one of the many Research Religions. fundamentally, by following this path, you will end up doing some (if not a lot of) research, critical analysis, and extraneous academia. take your breaks, make the process as easy for you as you can possibly make it, but don't let the fear of it being hard deter you from doing it.

read, learn, think, worship. this is the foundation for connection.

[haljathefangirlcat]

Hungarian historical chronicles about Hungary's legendary origins puts their own spin on the legend of Attila, but the way they choose to incorporate Dietrich von Bern is fascinating and makes me think the authors were working with some authentic folklore/literature tradition instead of making things up on their own. Dietrich, known as Detre of Verona, starts as a Roman vassal, much like the historical Visigoth Theodoric, but after Attila defeats him in the Battle of Zeiselmauer, he swears loyalty to Attila and helps him in his campaigns against Rome. One chronicle at least consciously swaps the names of Theodoric and Ardaric the Gepid, historically one of Attila's vassals, and makes Ardaric the one who dies at the Catalaunian Plains fighting for Rome while Dietrich survives at Attila's side. Other chronicles still mention Theodoric as a separate character, but also replace Ardaric with Dietrich. Historically, Ardaric betrayed the Huns after Attila's death and defeated them in a great battle, which might have contributed to the legend of a war between Goths and Huns found in the Norse myth Hlöðskviða. The general outline of that myth is actually used in the Hungarian rendition of Dietrich. After Attila's death, his son by the Roman princess Justa Honoria (who did write Attila a marriage proposal in real history), Csaba, splits kingship of the Huns with his brother Aladar, Kriemhild's son. However, Dietrich, Aladar's foster father/tutor, reviles Csaba as a foreigner's son and spurs Aladar to make war on him. The huge, destructive battle makes the Danube run red with blood for fifteen days. Finally Csaba is defeated and driven seek shelter first in Byzantium, then in the land of the Magyars, the Huns' sister tribe. If you read the Norse myth, you'll find Aladar as Angantyr, king of the Goths; Csaba as Hlod, his half-Hun older brother making a claim to part of the kingdom as his inheritance; and Dietrich as Gizur, the old foster-father who sends the brothers fighting each other.

In addition to being a wild ride where you can see old legends reworked in the process of nation-building, these chronicles lend a bit of support for my Dietrich and Kriemhild/Gudrun as platonic best pals idea. Imagine them being so close that she trusts him to foster her kids.

You know, while reading this I had half a mind to talk a bit about the Goth/Hun war motif in the Saga of Hervor and Heidrek... but it seems we'd already had the same thought. ;)

I'm really not very familiar with Hungarian chronicles, tho it absolutely makes sense that they'd spend a lot of time of Attila and related legendary traditions, so maybe I should start looking into them. So, thanks for mentioning this!

And Dietrich fostering Kriemhild/Gudrun's children sound like such a sweet idea, too.

[dovesandmagpies]

More thoughts on literature (mostly history books) because it turns out I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. I feel like this got away from me slightly, but anyway.

When I was a child, I read many history books and historical novels (not much has changed really). Because most of these books were for children they tended to edit out things that were not considered appropriate, sometimes to the point of near incomprehense.

Once I started reading less violently child friendly history books, I quickly became adept at spotting where previous history books had failed to mention things. Maybe a book about the Wars of the Roses ended with the focus characters living "happily ever after" and not "being executed by the Tudors for being York-ists" maybe a book about Marie Antoniette ended with her being crowned Queen and not being guillotined (side note, why are there so many books about Marie Antoniette? She is boring, I have read 3 books about her and every one has failed to convince me that she is even a quarter as interesting as her mother, a person I have found 0 books about and am still very annoyed about it (really, all I currently want in literature is a really good book about the War of Austria succession and the 7 years War, surely there's one out there somewhere)).

However, not all vaguely worded things in children's history books are the author attempting to hide something inappropriate. One of my history books informed me that "France lost the Franco-Prussian war, Napoleon III was even captured! "

As Napoleon III was never mentioned again I drew the logical conclusion that he must have been killed in a truly horrific manner and my history book was trying to distract me from it by talking about other, admittedly interesting, things such as the em's telegram and why WWI happened.

But recently I remembered this incident in my history book and thought "I wonder what did happen to Napoleon III?" so I looked it up,

What was the fate so terrible that it could not be mentioned in a book that explained what being "hung, drawn and quartered" meant?

It was.... To go to England.

Napoleon III after his dethronement, retired in exile to England.

Oh the horror.

I do find this very funny, was one sentence explaining this just too much?

Anyway, as someone who can now read "grown-up" history books I find it really hard to find books on things I am interested in. I don't want to read about WWI, WWII, the roman empire, the renaissance or the Tudors. Currently I want to read about history between Elizabeth I and Napoleon because stuff must have happened in non-English speaking places, but good luck finding anything at the local libraries.

Certain time periods are just more popular and I understand that, but I also want to fill in the gaps in the giant puzzle that is my understanding of history, not read another book on Tudor England.

Sorry if this makes no sense it was very late when I wrote it

[vigilskeep]

Hello, vampire blood person again! Big fan of your presentations and have been getting very inspired lately thanks to you and your blog so I thought you'd be a good person to come to and ask, how do you know so much? The lore stuff is pretty easy to research on a wiki but in terms of the real world comparisons, I remember you comparing the angel and spirits and talking about how interesting the differences between andrastaism and real life is and you just seem a very knowledgeable person. I was wondering if you just grew up religious or have studied the bible or anything like that? I'll study that whole damn brick if I have to but are there any resources you can suggest to study such things and better study DA as a whole? Good luck on the next presentation and thank you for being an inspiration!

hi!!

ah so as for my general knowledge i’m religious and grew up christian, and i’m also a, uh, student on pause; i have two and a half years of a history & english literature degree that i wasn’t able to quite finish at the time. so i have no qualifications i’m afraid but my general knowledge about christianity and about history, especially pre-modern history which i vastly prefer, is, i like to think, quite good?

so i have a lot of basic knowledge yes. i’m trying to think of how someone could replicate that from scratch as it were

for andrastianism, for example, a refresher on the basics of christianity is a must, for comparison’s sake alone. here’s the first fairrrrrrly neutral (sorry for relying on the bbc. by fairly neutral i mean not actively trying to convert you) site i could find with a lot of quick information for the fundamentals as it were. where’s a good friendly starting point for the medieval church. maybe something like the you’re dead to me podcast? it’s a very light fun introduction designed for no starting knowledge, they put a comedian and a historian on, it’s a good time. try the early medieval papacy episode for a relevant starting place. as for andrastianism’s origins, you’re going to need a grasp on the roman empire and the rise of christianity to know what they’re getting at. probably a good idea to know who joan of arc is, as well. you’re dead to me has an episode on her too!

trying to think of what other historical areas are useful... judaism in medieval western europe is a must if you care about city elves as they clearly drew on that, whatever they like to pretend. i should learn more myself. the norman conquest of england would be the comparison for the orlesian occupation of ferelden that jumps to mind. i don’t know how much comparison value there is, nothing springs to mind, but if you want to know the mechanics of that kind of invasion it should be useful enough. anything about western european medieval kings and dynasties is great for building on just how those dynamics work. on i guess a heavier note i think it’s crucial to be aware of what the crusades were and the kind of myths that medieval europeans had about outsiders to recognise a lot of what’s going on with, and discomfiting about, qunari lore

in many ways the real knack is just having enough general knowledge to know what game lore is referencing from. so really just the more you broaden your knowledge the more of a uhhhh palette you’ll have to compare it all too. be a sponge for information. also all of this is super useful for understanding everything else in general not just our favourite viddy game series!! not to soapbox but i think the assumption that everyone in the west simply knows what christianity is and doesn’t need to be taught really sets us back in terms of understanding our own cultures, for instance

sorry if this wasn’t that helpful but thank you for the message!!